A/N: I just want to take a moment to thank all of the people who have checked out my story so far, and especially those who have followed the updates. It means a lot to me! As always, I am open to all remarks and criticism. Feel free to talk to me!
I also want to make use of this note to let readers know that from now on, I'm going to be aiming for more of a weekly update.
Enjoy the chapter!
She'd decided not to stay the night in Riverwood, and by the time she'd made it back to Whiterun, night had well and truly fallen. The businesses had all closed for the day, the dinner hour was past, and people were settling into their homes to enjoy the rest of their evening.
She hadn't figured that the Jarl would appreciate an interruption this late in the day—and after the time she'd had in the Barrow, she wasn't much in the mood to see him, either, let alone his insufferable wizard. So instead of passing through the Wind District and making her way to Dragonsreach, she'd made for the Bannered Mare.
Hulda had looked surprised to see her, but had welcomed her inside all the same, beckoning her towards the bar; Merrin had taken one of the stools there, tucking her rucksack between her legs, and had ordered a bowl of beef stew and an ale. The tavern had been far from empty, with a group of rowdy people huddled on the benches around the fire, all drinking and singing badly off-key. But she'd been the only person sitting at the bar, and she'd been able to eat her dinner in relative peace.
She'd paid for the same room she'd taken the night before, and Hulda had pursed the money and smiled at her. 'You know your way upstairs, I trust. You have yourself a good night.'
As soon as she'd locked the door behind her, she'd stripped her armor off as quickly as she could manage, tossing her detested boots into a far corner of the room, and had stuffed her knapsack holding the Jarl's Dragonstone and all of her recently acquired valuables under the bed and out of sight. Then she'd snuffed all the candles and thrown back the red quilt, falling exhausted into the bed with all of her clothing still on.
She'd slept for a long time, well into the morning, and had woken to the sounds of a lively drumming song and people talking and laughing downstairs.
At some point during the night, she'd wiggled her way out of her clothes, and she'd needed to redress herself before she could retrieve her knapsack and don her armor. She'd groaned and cursed as she'd put everything on; after all the fighting at Bleakfalls, every muscle she had felt tight, and most of her body felt sore and bruised. She should've healed herself some more before she'd gone to sleep.
The serving girl had approached her when she'd headed downstairs, and she could see that the breakfast crowd was still going strong. But she'd smiled politely and waved her off, slipping through the painted wooden doors and out into the sunshine.
And now she was climbing the long staircases up to Dragonsreach and doing her best to ignore her weeping muscles, to present the Jarl with the Dragonstone.
When she came into Balgruuf's sweeping throne room, she found him sitting at the head of one of the banquet tables, engaged in conversation and eating a late breakfast. He was talking to a burly blonde that looked to be some kind of relative, and further down the table sat three children of varying ages, two of them looking sullen as they picked at their food.
After a moment, Balgruuf noticed her, and he pushed back from the table to stand as he greeted her. He was wearing fur-trimmed robes that denoted his stature in a dark blue that brought out his eyes, and he looked pleased to see her this time.
'Hail, good woman! You return from your journey to Riverwood. Tell me, were you successful in your task?'
'I was.' She bowed her head as she approached the table, and ignored the curious stare of his relative and the bored speculation of the children as she swung her knapsack off of her shoulder. 'I have the Dragonstone for you right here.'
'Excellent, excellent!' His eyes lit up and his face broke into a smile as he rubbed his palms together excitedly. 'Let me have a look at it.'
She withdrew the Dragonstone obediently from her pack and placed it into his waiting hands, while Irileth glared suspiciously from where she stood nearby. He unwrapped the linen eagerly, but when his eyes finally fell on the old stone tablet, his brows furrowed, and he looked confused.
'This...is what Farengar sent you to bring?'
'Yes. That is the Dragonstone of Bleakfalls Barrow.'
He squinted his eyes at the grey block of stone, and then after a moment he looked up at her. 'I'm happy to see the job finally done. And you will be rewarded, as promised. But I confess, when Farengar announced that he needed the stone for his studies, I figured it would be more...legible.'
She wasn't sure what his response would be if she actually agreed with him, so she just nodded and kept her tone neutral.
'Hopefully your wizard can make sense of it. Maybe it will still be of use to him.'
'That's my hope as well. But I've kept you waiting long enough.' He tossed the linen carelessly back over the stone tablet and handed it to her. 'You should bring the Dragonstone to Farengar now, and see what he makes of it. Come to me for your payment when you've finished.'
With that he sat down again and returned his attention to the blonde man seated beside him, resuming their conversation as he reached for a pastry. The children went back to looking dissatisfied, and playing with their food.
She had reached the threshold of Farengar's study when she realized that somebody else was with him. A woman in full leather armor stood beside him, her face shrouded by a dark hood, and they were discussing something animatedly. They were bent over an open book on the desk, and were so involved in their discussion that they didn't notice her standing there. Merrin hung back, not wanting to intrude.
'You see? The terminology is clearly First Era, maybe even earlier.' Farengar was speaking, and he sounded genuinely excited—nothing like the pompous, disdainful man she'd met.
'I'm convinced this is a copy of a much older text, perhaps dating back just after the Dragon War. If it does, I could use it to cross-reference the names with other, later texts.'
'Good.' The woman beside him sounded brusque, and not nearly as excited at whatever they were studying. 'I'm glad to see you're making progress. My employers are getting..anxious, to have some real answers.'
Farengar waved a hand at her words, clearly unconcerned. 'Have no fear. Balgruuf himself has finally taken an interest, so I'm able to devote most of my time to this research, now. It's coming along.'
The hooded woman's response came out sharper than before. 'Time is of the essence, Farengar. You'd be wise not to forget it. This isn't one of your hypotheses. Dragons have come back.'
A floorboard creaked as Merrin shifted her weight, and the hooded woman's head snapped up at the tiny sound. She stared right at Merrin, and her eyes were glinting out of the shadows shrouding her face as she took her in—assessed her.
'Farengar, you have a visitor.'
Farengar tore his eyes away from the book, clearly still deep in thought, and it took him a moment of staring at her before recognition lit his features. 'Ah, yes. The Jarl's protege.'
His voice was tinged with sarcasm, and she felt a wash of anger rise up to mingle with the prickle of embarrassment she felt at being caught standing there.
'You're back from Bleakfalls Barrow already?' he continued. 'It looks like you didn't die, after all.'
She squared her shoulders and stood straight and tall, ignoring the pain that the motion caused her.
'No, I didn't die. The job was easy, as you said it would be.'
She'd be damned if he'd know what a difficult time she'd had getting the tablet from the Barrow, and she stared him down as she lied, showing no signs of weakness. Before he could reply, she walked right up to his desk, and placed the Dragonstone down in its linen with a heavy thunk.
When he uncovered the tablet and picked it up, his eyes went wide, and his hands were shaking.
'The Dragonstone of Bleakfalls Barrow. I can't believe you actually...' his long tapered fingers gently caressed the tablet's surface, and when he looked at her again, he had the decency to look humbled.
'It seems you're a cut above the brainless layabouts the Jarl usually sends my way. My associate here will be pleased to see your handiwork. She was the one who discovered the location of the tablet...although, so far, I can't get her to divulge how she did it.' His voice was plaintive and long suffering, but neither woman responded in any way, and he cleared his throat awkwardly in the following silence. Then he tossed aside the linen wrappings and placed the Dragonstone down on the desk for the hooded woman to see—but the woman hadn't taken her eyes off of Merrin.
'You went into Bleakfalls Barrow and got this?'
There was urgency in the woman's tone, like it was critically important that the point be clarified. Merrin only nodded, staring at her warily. Was this another person who would underestimate her?
But it quickly became obvious that the woman wasn't interested in estimating her at all; she nodded slightly at the confirmation, and then straightened up from the desk to look at Farengar.
'You've got work to do, and I'll leave you to it. Just send me a copy when you have it deciphered. And remember—time is everything.'
Farengar assured her that he'd get started straight away, and then she swept out of the study without another word.
Merrin's spirits were considerably higher than they'd been yesterday as she walked through the Wind District and towards the market—she hadn't even felt the usual twinge of annoyance at the wailing sermon of the priest of Talos as she'd walked down the steps of Dragonsreach, informing her she was 'naught but a maggot, writhing in the filth of her own corruption'.
After the hooded stranger had walked out, she'd been left alone in the study with Farengar, who had stiffly thanked her for a job well done, and suggested she see the Jarl about her reward. But instead of leaving right away, she'd looked at him again and opened her knapsack.
She'd told the court wizard that she'd found some items on her trip that he might be interested in, and that she was looking to sell, and had suggested that he look them over.
She wasn't sure why he'd been so agreeable; maybe the scrolls and enchanted dagger really did interest him. Or maybe he was worried about having another talk with the Jarl, if he tried to dismiss her again. Whatever his reasons might have been, he'd given her an exceptionally good deal on several of the items, and she'd walked away from his study with a considerably heavier purse than when she'd entered.
Combined with the gold she'd been given by the Jarl on her way out of Dragonsreach, she'd earned enough money to really expand her options.
She was no longer financially stuck in Whiterun. She had enough gold to hire a carriage to Windhelm, and to board the Northern Maiden for passage to Morrowind.
As she walked, her satisfied thoughts were interrupted by the growling of her stomach, and the sudden loud sound made her laugh; she'd skipped breakfast, and that combined with the flush of success had given her an appetite. So when she made it to the Plains District, she headed back into the Bannered Mare and took a seat at one of the wooden tables near the back. When the Redguard woman came over to her, she ordered a cheese and leek pie, and a tankard of the home-brewed mead to go with it.
The food came fast and it tasted delicious, and as she ate she settled happily into making travel plans.
She hadn't been at it for very long when she heard the front door bang open, and the sounds of loud laughter reached her at the back of the inn. Three new patrons came walking towards her, talking and joking amongst themselves, and they sat at one of the benches by the fire pit.
Merrin looked up from her mead to watch them sit down, and she was surprised to realize that she recognized one of them. It was the Imperial woman with the long dark hair—one of the three Companions who'd fought the giant. It was a sudden shock to see her again, and Merrin found herself watching the three strangers closely as Hulda handed them tankards of mead.
The Imperial woman was flanked by a man on either side; a Dunmer in hide with a ponytail on one side, and a blonde Nord with a scraggly beard on the other. The three of them all seemed dusty and tired, like they'd been working hard for a long time, and they drank deeply from their tankards in the pause between sentences. But they were clearly all in very high spirits—laughing, clapping one another on the back. She surprised herself when she brought her own tankard to her lips, and started listening in to their conversation.
'I don't know, Tor.' The woman laughed. 'Maybe you should start taking lessons from Athis. If you'd been moving just a little slower, that second troll would've probably been picking his teeth with your bones by now!'
'Listen to the lady, Torvar. Clearly, she's of superior intellect.'
'Oh, shut it, the both of ya.' The blonde Nord signaled Hulda for another tankard of mead, and gave his friends an easy grin. 'That troll never even knew what hit it—couldn't stand the sight of all this Nordic glory.'
'Oh, to be sure,' the woman agreed innocently. 'That must've been it. It had nothing to do with my sword in its back. Your glory was just too much for it.'
The Dunmer burst into laughter again, and the woman grinned at the Nord as he cast her a sour look.
'Cheer up, Tor,' she said to him as Hulda handed him his fresh tankard of mead. 'We're all getting paid when we get back home. Those trolls won't be bothering any more travelers. And you're a boaster for sure, but at least you're still not as bad as Vilkas.'
The Nord man snorted as he raised his tankard, and the sour look vanished as he grinned again. 'You're right about that. Nobody boasts like Vilkas.' Then he made his voice gruffer and significantly more accented, and his next words were obviously an imitation.
'I think by now, I've killed at least one of every creature in Skyrim.'
'Maybe even Tamriel!' The Dunmer had joined in the fun, his imitation considerably poorer, and all three of them lapsed into giggles.
Watching the three of them talk and laugh, Merrin felt a strange tightness gathering in her chest. For several moments she didn't know what it was, and then it suddenly hit her: loneliness.
It had been a long time since she'd experienced anything like the camaraderie in front of her; she'd left her dearest friends behind at the same time she'd left Skyrim, and it had been years since she'd seen them. She'd made new friends in her travels, of course—it was hard not to, in her line of work, and some of those friendships were ones she'd cherish forever. But when it came to her actual job...well...she did it alone. Watching the three Companions now made her wonder what it would be like to make a living amongst actual friends.
Clients weren't the same thing at all. She thought of Dalan Dufont with angry disgust—and then a sudden stab of cold fear punctured the empty feeling in her chest. With an unsteady hand, she set down her mug. Dread started to seep into her like a tendril of poisonous fog.
It was actually the first time she'd thought of the Breton since they'd both been arrested by Darkwater Crossing, and she was hit with the sudden realization that she didn't know what'd happened to him. She had no way of knowing if he'd died in Helgen; she'd overheard in the market this morning that Whiterun guards were still tallying up the casualties and sorting through the charred rubble.
She far from wished him dead, even though he was a worm. But what would it mean for her, if he wasn't? What if he'd managed to make his way back to Windhelm? Talked his way onto the Northern Maiden? He'd threatened to ruin her when she'd broken their contract—to drag her name through the mud with everyone he knew.
If she went back to Morrowind now, what would be waiting for her there by the time she arrived?
The Dufonts were some of the most important, influential non-Dunmeri in all of Morrowind; they had estates all over the province, and money to see them all maintained. Samuel Dufont was at the family's head; the man came from old money, and even as an outlander, he'd been regarded favorably because of his family's long-standing support of the Empire. His wife Elina was a prominent noble from Wayrest, and their union had doubled Samuel's considerable wealth. Apparently they'd relocated to Blacklight in the year following their marriage, and Samuel had gone to work straight away; he was a smart man with a keen eye for investments, and he'd wasted no time investing in Morrowind. He'd poured his money into all of the fields that would capture the interest of the most important people. At first, the Houses had turned up their noses—they saw only an outlander, trying to buy respect. But one very important man took a shine to Dufont—Sidri Naalan Redoran, son of the head of House Redoran at the time.
Samuel and Sidri had forged a true friendship, and that friendship had opened inumerable doors to the Dufonts; in a short amount of time, the Breton man was respected, and when Sidri's father died in 163 and he rose to be the head of House Redoran, he took Samuel on as a trusted advisor. In a handful of years, Dufont had power on the three most important fronts: politics, trade, and military interest.
Today in 201, the name Dufont was institutional in Morrowind; Samuel and Elina had their hands in every pie, every lucrative trade, from textiles and tailoring to fishing and agriculture, to metalworking and stock bonds. They owned farms, banks, ports, vineyards, markets, taverns...they poured charity into Morrowind's military muster, supported Dunmeri art and theatre, and made generous donations to hospices and shelters for the widowed and beleaguered every year. Sidri was still alive and well, and so was he and the Dufonts' friendship.
And their family had taken strong roots in Morrowind over the following decades; Elina had given her husband seven children, all of whom had survived to adulthood, and all of those children had married well. So far as Merrin had heard, they were the proud grandparents of nine, and counting. Their hold on the province was all but unshakeable, and there was no end to their lineage in sight.
And by some malicious Daedra's doing, she was the sorry soul who had angered Dalan, Samuel and Elina's youngest child.
The family's social importance had nearly put her off, point blank—the only reason she'd ever agreed to take a Dufont to Skyrim was because the family had such a clean reputation. She had no way of knowing if Samuel's exports had expanded over his years of prosperity to include the underground markets, or if Dalan had simply used his wealth and status to start a new limb of the family business all his own.
In the end, it didn't really matter; there was one thing she was absolutely sure of. If Dalan wasn't dead, then in all likelihood, he was doing his best to ruin her.
Several minutes passed in the Bannered Mare as this belated realization fully sank in for her; she gripped the table with white-knuckled hands, and hunched over her plate as her stomach did somersaults, threatening to toss the pie she'd ordered.
It was the sound of the Companions clambering to their feet and making their way towards the tavern's front door that brought her back to the present moment. She lifted her head to watch them leave as they waved goodbye to Hulda, and the Imperial woman threw her arm around the Dunmer's shoulders as they walked through the door. As she watched them take off she felt another pang of loneliness, even more acute than the first.
She propped her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands.
What in Oblivion am I going to do?
Until now, Merrin hadn't considered any option other than returning to Morrowind and picking right up where she'd left off, and she considered that to be only natural—she'd been working hard at establishing herself for the last four years of her life. She'd worked back-breaking hours taking dangerous jobs, sometimes working for free to garner favors. She'd painstakingly built a foundation of clients who trusted her to do their jobs right, and a contact list of other mercenaries willing to give her a hand or somewhere to stay when she was in town. She'd forged lasting friendships in several provinces, some of which she expected to be life-long. She had struggled and clawed her way to a respected name, an honest income, and while it had been far from perfect, it had been hers.
She'd had no intention of losing what she'd built for herself. But if Dalan had made it back into Morrowind, she could already be in the process of losing it. Depending on his condition when he got there, it might be dangerous for her to even show her face.
Anger and despair speared through her in equal measure. She'd always been a confrontational person, and she had half a mind to go blazing back to Morrowind anyway, to try and defend her name. But enough common sense rattled around in her head for her to know that it likely wouldn't do any good. She'd crossed an important family by tangling with Dalan Dufont; they had resources and connections she couldn't hope to match.
She wouldn't need any kind of income at all if she died with a Morag Tong's dagger in her back.
She knew it. But the idea of just giving up on the life she'd built rankled like rot in the pit of her stomach.
Merrin turned these thoughts over in her mind for long minutes, trying hard to be constructive in her anger. Suddenly, a new thought occurred to her.
Being in Helgen when that dragon attacked presented her with a unique opportunity. Because if she had no way of knowing if Dalan had survived...then Dalan had no way of knowing that she'd survived, either.
If he never found out one way or the other, or just assumed that the dragon had killed her...then what she had could be a new lease on life.
She was hit then by a flashing image of Ralof, the words he'd yelled at her as he'd dragged her from the executioner's block.
'Come on, Merrin! The gods won't give us another chance!'
And yet, they really had; in the form of a murderous fire-breathing lizard, Merrin had been given a chance to start a new chapter of her life, out of the possible ruin of the one she was standing in. The part of her that was stubbornly superstitious tingled as she thought about it—at the very moment she was to be executed, the first dragon seen in a thousand years had swooped down on the one tiny village she'd happened to be in, and had saved her from a certain death. And the very next day...she'd received a very unexpected offer to do something new with her life. Something she'd dreamed about as a little girl.
She thought again about the three friends she'd just seen talking and laughing, and there was definitely yearning in her chest as she considered Aela's offer again.
But she felt like she was in a hopeless situation: it was a hell of a decision that'd been dropped in her lap, and she didn't have the slightest interest in actually making it.
And so, she wrestled with it instead. For the rest of the day she sat at that table, ignoring all of the other patrons, occasionally ordering herself another mead. As she sat there staring into her cups, she mentally sparred with herself, twisting one way and then the other.
At first, there was only scorn; she berated herself, wondering how she could even think of dropping the career she'd painstakingly built. Several times, she worked herself up nearly to the point where she'd have shoved away from the table and ran through the city gates, throwing herself into the carriage waiting by the stables, telling the driver to take her to Windhelm.
But every time, she pulled herself back.
She paid to stay another night at the Mare, and Hulda looked at her with some concern in her eyes as she took her gold and wished her a good night. Merrin barely heard her as she trudged up the stairs, and she didn't bother undressing or even turning the quilt down before she dropped face-down onto the bed.
With the help of the mead she found herself pulled into an only semi-fitful sleep, and while she slept, she dreamed.
At first, the dream was dangerous; she was fighting for her life against another dragon. This dragon wasn't black like the one at Helgen—it was a deep royal blue, and instead of eyes, its sockets held carvings of the Dufont family crest. The dragon laughed as its fire came a hairs breadth away from searing her, and although a large crowd of people stood watching at her back, not a single one stepped forward to help her.
Merrin could feel herself slowing down—soon she'd be too tired to keep dodging the dragon's fire.
Suddenly, the dream changed. From the crowd behind her she could hear shouting, and then the sounds of booted feet were rushing up to meet her. In another moment, she was flanked by three people; she recognized them easily as the Companions she'd seen drinking in the tavern. They smiled grimly at her as they raised their weapons, and turned to face the dragon head on.
'Hold your ground, Shield-Sister!' Aela had materialized out of nowhere beside them, and her voice was loud and fearless as she loosed an arrow from her bow that sank deep into the dragon's chest; it shrieked in pain and reared up as they watched it, and instead of blood, golden Septims started spilling from the wound. With a mighty cry, the three other warriors jumped into the fray, descending on the dragon. And then everything dissolved.
For a moment, she floated in a pearly nothingness. She was still flushed from the heat of the dragon's fire, but now she felt warm on the inside, too; just as she'd thought she was doomed, friends had rushed forward to fight at her side.
And then she was standing alone on the plain outside of Whiterun; green grass blew on a sultry wind, and small white clouds skidded across a magnificent blue sky. As she stared up at that sky, two eyes suddenly emerged from it, each one bigger than Masser, dominating the entire vista. They were lovely, almost the same blue as the sky they hung in, and ringed with smudged black circles. They stared directly at her, seemingly into her. As she stared back, transfixed, a deep voice came to her on the wind, shaking the ground beneath her feet, making her tremble as she listened. She'd heard the voice, once before—the same time that she'd seen the eyes.
'Don't be discouraged. Anything can be intimidating, before you know what it looks like.'
When Merrin woke up the next morning, her scorn had melted into a sort of uncertain despair.
She still hated the idea of giving up on her mercenary work—letting go of what she'd built. But her initial rage had dampened some, and in the morning light she had to admit that there was no point in running to Morrowind. If Dalan had survived Helgen, then whatever was going to happen had already been set into motion, and she wasn't going to be able to stop it. She could only ride it out and see.
And something about her attitude had changed while she'd slept. She could probably blame that on the dream. Suddenly, she wasn't nearly so dismissive about the idea of being asked to join the Companions; if she tried just a little, she could still remember what it had felt like to have them standing all around her. Remembering it made her feel...warm.
But she was a long way from decided, and her mood was still foul as she came downstairs and snagged the same table she'd had last night. Not even a boiled cream treat for breakfast could do much to cheer her up.
As soon as she'd even really considered the possibility of going to Jorrvaskr, she'd been hit with an uncharacteristic boatload of nerves. She was a confident woman—so why did she feel so unsure of herself?
Sitting there picking at the huge caramel, she could only think of two potential reasons.
Being a Companion was a childhood dream that she'd set aside for other things—and if there was one thing she'd come to realize in adulthood, it was that little girl's fantasies rarely ever lived up to a grown woman's reality. Especially in Skyrim.
The other reason was that, for Merrin, memories of the Companions were directly tied to memories of her father.
Not a day went by that she didn't miss him...but usually she tried not to think about it. Today though, as she sat at the scarred wooden table, she let herself conjure him up clearly.
It was her father who had first started telling her stories about the Companions of Jorrvaskr, either from the pages of a book or his own memory. In no time at all, she'd been hooked; she would plead with him to stay up just a little later at night when he'd put her to bed, so he could tell her 'just one more story'. On the rare occasion that he'd forge a battleaxe, it wouldn't have even cooled all the way before she'd announce in her small high voice that its battle-name was to be Wuuthrad. And he'd always laughed, and humored her.
Their admiration of the Companions had been one of many things they had in common, and often as a girl she'd wondered about whether he'd ever wanted to join them; she'd worked up the courage to ask him when she was significantly older, and he'd given her a crinkly-eyed smile and confirmed it.
'I don't regret my lot for a minute. You know that. But...if I hadn't ended up with you and your ma, I think I would've put down my hammer, and raised an axe with the Companions in Whiterun instead.'
More than anything, she wished her father could see her now. She was wracked with indecision; would he approve, if he knew that she was considering joining the group he'd nearly joined himself? Or would he have wanted some different kind of life for her?
She snorted at herself the second she'd finished the thought—she already had her answer. Her father had been a soft-hearted man, and a protective one to top it. If he were still alive, he wouldn't want to see her running around, swinging a blade and chasing honor. He'd want to see her settled down, married to a good man. Happy, and provided for.
She was yanked from her brooding reverie by an irritated voice nearby.
'Hey, stranger. Are you just about finished your moping? It was getting old by last night.'
Startled, Merrin looked to her left, thoughts of her father dissipating. A tough-looking Nord woman in steel armor with her hair tightly plaited was sitting in an armchair and scowling at her. Before she could answer, the woman spoke again.
'Yeah, I'm talking to you. The long face is damned annoying.'
Quick as always, anger flickered to life in Merrin's gut, and she glared at the woman as she took her in. 'Excuse me? Who the hell are you?'
'The name is Uthgerd. Who are you? And what's your gods-damn problem? I come here for the atmosphere, and you've been murking it up since you got here.'
Merrin hissed out an exhale. 'My name and my problems are none of your business.'
The woman named Uthgerd put her drink down, and her eyes were smouldering when she shrugged.
'If you say so—it doesn't really matter. I think you should leave. Go and take your black cloud somewhere else.'
'That's nice for you, but I'm not going anywhere.' She'd dropped her breakfast, and she could feel her hands balling into fists.
Uthgerd leaned forward in her seat, and now she wore a dangerous smile. 'I could make you leave, if you don't see fit to move yourself.'
Merrin leaned forward too at those words, and she had to work to keep her voice even. 'That's big talk, from a total stranger.'
The other woman snorted. 'Please. If I met you on a real battlefield, you'd be dead in six seconds or less. That's not big talk. That's truth.'
Merrin's eyes narrowed to slits. It was the wrong morning for someone to test her patience. 'You really think that you could take me?'
'I could take any milk-drinker in this entire city. Bare-handed.' Suddenly her smile widened into a sort of feral grin. 'You want to test the theory? One hundred gold says I can knock your lousy hide to the ground.'
It wouldn't be her first brawl. It wouldn't be her last. She shoved up from her seat at the table, palms still pressed flat to the old wood as Merrin met the woman's challenging stare.
'You're on.'
The embers that she'd seen in Uthgerd eyes came blazing into full flame. 'Alright then. Just fists. No weapons, no magic...no crying. Let's go!'
Uthgerd had ripped off her steel gauntlets, and they'd gotten started. They began by circling each other slowly, each sizing the other one up. Hulda had been the first to notice, and the older Nord woman had only sighed; a girl with long white hair clutching a broom looked like she wanted to intervene, but the Redguard serving girl reined her in.
Merrin was the first to land a jab. Her knuckles connected painfully with Uthgerd's jaw bone, and the big woman's head went snapping back. But when she quickly refocused she only looked invigorated, baring her teeth in an expression that was downright feral, and she'd returned with a swinging haymaker Merrin had been forced to catch on the shoulder.
After that, a crowd of spectators had quickly formed, cheering one or the other on. When the table got flipped and Uthgerd's drinks spilled everywhere, they only cheered more enthusiastically.
'My money's on the big one!'
'Show her what we're made of, here in Whiterun!'
It went on for a while, but eventually, most of the crowd grew quiet. The fight went on longer than anyone was expecting—probably because both women refused to lose—and people had started to titter uneasily as they'd kept on determinedly trading blows.
In the end, anger gave Merrin the upper hand; it fuelled her hits to be harder, faster, and it helped her ignore her many screaming injuries. Uthgerd had forgotten to block her face in the heat of the moment, and Merrin took advantage of the distraction. She felt at least one knuckle break as she landed a last punch to Uthgerd's jaw. But it was worth the effort, and the pain—the older woman fell to her knees, reaching out to grab the toppled table as she fell, and roared in frustration as she slumped against the wood, whistling strangely as she breathed hard through her mouth.
Merrin wanted to scream her own triumph, but she held it back with a lot of effort. Instead she wiped the blood out of her right eye from where it trickled out of her busted brow, and gave Uthgerd a wild grin with teeth stained red.
'I think I've earned that hundred gold.'
Uthgerd looked up at her, and Merrin was surprised to see that her anger seemed to have evaporated; despite an eye swelling shut and an obviously broken nose, she was smiling right back at her.
'I think you're right. I was wrong about you. Best fight I've had in years.' The woman grabbed hold of a table leg and heaved herself painfully to her feet, ignoring a glare from Hulda when said table leg gave an ominous crunch. The white-haired woman reached out to help her, but Uthgerd waved her impatiently away.
'Here.' She slipped her coinpurse from her belt and made to count out Merrin's coins, but this time Merrin shook her head.
'Not yet.' She pointed to her mangled face, using the hand with the broken knuckles. 'It's not worth standing around like this. Hang on.'
She didn't want to piss off a room full of Nords by using her restoration magic. Instead, she went to her bag where it sat beside her forgotten breakfast, and pulled out a huge bottle of strong healing potion that she'd bought from Lucan in Riverwood. She yanked the cork out with her teeth, and then tipped her head back to taste the contents. Her nose and jaw were both brutalized, and at first she could barely force herself to swallow. But the potion was sugary and refreshing, and in a couple of seconds she started feeling its effects.
She drank deeply, not pausing to breathe, relaxing as she felt her scrapes knit shut, her swelling go down, and the bones of her knuckles click back into place. In the end, a little more than half the potion was more than enough.
She took a deep breath and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and then stared at Uthgerd as she offered her the remaining potion.
Uthgerd—not to mention several other people—looked exceedingly surprised at the gesture. But after a second she reached out a hand, and gingerly accepted the bottle. She too started downing the contents, and it was Merrin's turn to watch as someone else healed; her nose made a funny popping sound as it clicked back into joint.
The woman drained the rest of the potion, and then awkwardly righted the table she'd been sitting at so she could set the empty bottle on its top. Then she opened her coinpurse and poured most of its contents onto the table too, staring at Merrin before she nodded.
'You can take a good hit, and you're honorable to boot—it would seem that you're a real warrior. I'm sorry that I harassed you before. Sometimes I can be too hotheaded.' The woman's cheeks colored before she continued. 'If you ever need another blade at your side during your travels, let me know. I'd love to see how you handle a few trolls.'
'I'll keep it in mind,' Merrin answered faintly. Her mind was still caught on what she'd heard several sentences ago.
Uthgerd had called her a real warrior. And now her pulse was racing all over again—her stomach felt like it was full of Aldmeri champagne.
She'd been a sell-sword for four long years, and not once had anyone made that mistake. Not once had anyone applied the arguably much more glamorous title.
Hearing it applied to her now for the first time, it brought those childhood dreams unfurling like a flower to the front of her mind, and as she stood there she felt all of the previous days' doubt crumbling to dust under a burgeoning wave of yearning and resolve. Her decision was being made right in front of her.
'I need to go.' She turned from the woman and broke through the loose crowd of dedicated spectators who had stayed this long, sliding her pack from the table and shouldering it, leaving her breakfast untouched. 'Thanks so much.' She nearly forgot to claim the gold on the table, and Uthgerd and several others looked plainly confused as she threw her coinpurse into her bag and rounded towards the door.
'Any time. And your name was...?' Uthgerd called after her, but Merrin didn't stop to respond, and the doors to the tavern slapped shut behind her as she took off purposefully up the stairs to the Wind District.
She didn't stop to talk to anybody, afraid that if she did, this new found resolve would crack and crumble; she didn't even slow down until she'd reached her destination.
Jorrvaskr sat proudly in front of her now—the ancient mead hall of story and legend. It was a marvel of construction, with gracefully carved wooden beams, colorful stained glass windows, and a roof that looked like someone had simply topped the building with an upturned longboat. The rudders arched up proudly through the air, and were carved in the ancient Nordic style to depict dragons Shouting to the sky.
She'd purposefully avoided even looking at it in her journeys to Dragonsreach, and as she walked up an old stone staircase and under a sweeping arch, its beauty hit her for the first time.
As she placed a hand on one of the sturdy wooden doors, she suddenly saw that she was trembling, and she felt a stab of the earlier doubt and worry. But it was too late to turn back now; she'd had enough of indecision. She rolled her shoulders back, lifted her chin, and pushed her way through the heavy door.
Merrin didn't know what she'd find inside. But whatever she found, she could rest secure in the knowledge that she'd chosen it.