Chapter 5: Companion trouble
[23rd – 28th of First Seed 4E 202]
A group of companions and I had ventured into Shimmermist Cave, northeast of the city of Whiterun, as farmers in the region had complained about nightly attacks and such. Inside, progress had been slow at first, as we had been under attack by Falmer and chaurus. My three saber cats, the two real ones and the conjured one, had helped us to get ahead, and we had found two farmhands still alive; they were now with us. The cave led into a Dwemer ruin, and we had come to a stop when we looked out of a narrow passage and saw a Dwemer Centurion right ahead of us, with a few Falmer a few levels higher. We did not really want to wake up the Centurion and fight it from our current position, and we certainly did not want to have to fight Centurion and Falmer at the same time. So, what to do? After a few minutes of silence Irene, the Breton, suddenly voiced an idea:
"If we attack the Falmer with arrows from here, while still staying sneaky and not showing ourselves, isn't the noise likely to wake up the centurion and direct its attention to the Falmer rather than on us?"
After some whispered discussion we agreed that this appeared to be the best option available to us, and Aela nodded:
"Right, whelp, good idea; this might actually work. I don't think that any of us has a lot of experience with Dwemer automatons, but if we manage to keep quiet and hit the Falmer with arrows, the noise they are going to make should make the Centurion turn against them and not notice us here."
I could understand that the Companions were not experienced with Dwemer ruins and automatons; there were not many of those places around Whiterun, as far as I recalled. Anyway, Aela, Irene and I stepped forward, and we launched a coordinated attack of bolts and arrows right up into the group of Falmer, stepping back right away to avoid being seen or heard by either Falmer or automaton. We were able to completely surprise them; some of them shouted, and a few moments later the centurion started to move with a deep rumbling. We had moved back close to the door, so that we could be reasonably certain that we were not in the mechanical monster's line of sight, and indeed, we could hear loud steps; when I cautiously looked around the next corner, I could see the centurion blowing hot steam up towards the Falmer. The snow elves retaliated with arrows and spells, and we should be able to wait and see who was going to win. On one hand the Dwarven Centurion was really robust and strong, but on the other hand some more Falmer came out from the tents, and at least three of the degenerated snow elves were mages and continued to send flames into the mechanical contraption.
After some time half of the Falmer were down, whereas the Centurion still seemed to be in almost prime condition; the flame spells did not do much damage. All of a sudden Erik, our latest whelp, shouted "Time to end this!" and ran ahead, swinging a mace he had picked up earlier. Aela tried to stop him but failed to do so, Farkas called out "No, you fool!", but to no avail. Erik rushed forward and swung his mace with full power into one of the centurion's legs. That seemed to cause some damage, and the Nord was smart and quick enough to jump to the side immediately, so that the monster's huge hammer missed him. Erik continued the same plan of attack a few times, caught a couple of Falmer arrows on his armor, and when I shot a few bolts into the centurion, the monster, already weakened by the Falmer attacks, seemed to succumb. As a last effort, though, it blasted a huge cloud of steam in our direction, and Irene just managed to set up her ward to protect us. A last hit from Erik's mace broke the weapon, but brought the centurion to the ground; however, the surviving Falmer now raced down the stairs, howled, and attacked. With the danger from the centurion being out of the way, Farkas and Ria stopped the two first ones, and Aela and Irene shot arrows into the next ranks. This time I also joined the front, and taking advantage of my size, I swung my glass battle axe in a wide arc, cutting down two Falmer with one swing. The long range provided by my arm with the axe prevented any enemy from getting too close to me; that was not very elegant, but efficient. The two farm hands we had rescued also got involved, and a few minutes later we were victorious; all the enemies we could see were down, and once again we checked ourselves for injuries. This time, there were not a lot, and only Farkas and Ria had a few smaller wounds which we could quickly heal. The big Nord now looked angry; he talked to Erik and chided him:
"Whelp, what you just did was not what we Companions do. You put all of us at risk when you started attacking without checking with us first."
"But it worked, didn't it?"
"This is not the point, whelp" Aela chimed in. "We had decided to wait until the centurion and the Falmer had decimated themselves as much as possible, and that was the plan with the least risk. There was no reason for you to deviate, specifically not with you being a whelp! If you intend to impress us with acts like this one, it certainly does not work."
Erik shrugged and uttered a word which sounded like "wussy", and I was not sure if he understood that he had really done wrong. I was not sure why he behaved like this. When I had met him in Rorikstead last year, he had appeared to be more controlled, but on the other hand, we had not really talked much. It would be up to the Circle members to teach him, I thought, and I fully agreed with Farkas and Aela. Had I made a mistake by telling him to travel to Whiterun and ask to join the Companions? No, I did not think so; after all, it had been for Kodlak and the Circle to decide whom to accept, and I happened to know that more than half of those who wanted to join were rejected for various reasons. It also happened from time to time that a whelp never got any further and kind of failed their probation period, but those people usually found an occupation with the hold guards or so.
After the fight, we needed some rest, and after that, we looked around carefully to see if there was something worthwhile to take with us. There were a couple of chests close to the Falmer tents in the upper section, but nothing really valuable in them. A final chest, partially hidden by one of the tents, revealed some simple ornaments, artifacts and jewelry which could well belong to the farmers who had reported stolen valuables. In a corner close to where the Centurion has rested, there was a stash with various pieces of Dwemer metal, and I packed as much as I could reasonably carry in my voluminous backpack; those pieces might be helpful for the Dwemer plumbing I had in mind to add to my house.
Erik found some pieces of Falmer armor, and he burdened himself with several heavyweight parts. Farkas told him that he'd better not overburden himself, as we might encounter more enemies, but the whelp shrugged again and ignored the seasoned Nord՚s advice. The young man from Rorikstead even pointed at me and said:
"Look at B'lushona, his backpack is as loaded as mine!"
"Yes, but you know, he's about twice your weight and can thus carry much more without being overloaded!"
That statement failed to impress the whelp, and he refused to unload anything from his pack. Indeed, my own load was quite heavy, too, but I had gained some experience on carry load, and I knew that the load I had with me would not impact my abilities much. My backpack might be something like 50 kg now, but my own weight was probably at least three times that, so that the ratio was still reasonable. In my previous body, of course, I would have barely been able to move at all while carrying that much.
While we had looked around, we had noticed a passage leading on from close to the Falmer tents; either this would lead us to new area or back to the entrance, or maybe both; we quickly agreed to investigate. However, after we had followed the new route for a few minutes, we found the way forward blocked by spider webs. Farkas groaned when he saw that, and he stepped aside to allow somebody else to go first; I smirked at him and decided to lead the way. By now, I knew more or less what to expect, of course, and while I was not exactly fond of frostbite spiders, I was not terribly afraid of them either. Likely there would be a big spider or two further ahead, and smaller ones first. I had my crossbow ready, and once Irene had pierced the web curtain with flames, I stepped though slowly. Ideally I wanted to operate my crossbow with both hands and kill spiders before they could even blast their poison out, but when the first spider appeared, I was not quick enough; I had to drop the crossbow and defend myself with the axe. Due to the narrow passage, I soon realized that using the crossbow was not a good option anyway, and once I had cast Oakflesh on myself, I proceeded with the glass axe in my right hand and a flame spell ready in the left hand, which allowed me to clear the passage until we got to a cavern; the few poison blobs which hit me were stopped by my armor. At this point, warned from similar places, I looked up at the ceiling and quickly found a web covered hole there. I pointer a finger up there; Irene and Aela stepped next to me and shot their arrows, which made the expected giant spider appear; it did not have a chance to counter our combined attack and was defeated without getting too close to us. Nevertheless, I had to admit that the giant spiders were somewhat scary, and I was not keen to risk getting under one of those. I wouldn't want to end up like Frodo after encountering Shelob, even knowing that friends were going to help.
From this point on, Irene went ahead. She found the exit from the cavern, and used her powerful flame spells to blast ahead, killing the remaining smaller spiders. That was like I had usually done in the game, using flames with both hands and not bothering with conventional weapons. Aela got a blob of spider poison on the bare arm and needed some healing, but maybe due to her werewolf nature, that seemed not to be a big deal for her.
We passed the web curtain at the other end and found ourselves on a ledge which overlooked the bridge crossing the pool in the first large cavern, and while it would have been very difficult to get up here, jumping down to the edge of the bridge was easily possible, and we did that. From here we walked back to the cave entrance, and we were not really surprised that most of the day was gone; the sun was already quite low and dawn was very close.
As a matter of fact, when we had almost reached the main road, the sun was now almost directly ahead of us, very low above the horizon in the west, and seeing what was in front of us was very difficult. That was probably the main reason that nobody, not even Aela, who usually had a sense for dangerous animals, had noticed a saber cat getting close to us. We had all focused on the path ahead of us, and the animal had approached from the left and against the wind, which was blowing from northerly directions; suddenly it was right in front of us and Aela, who had gone first, barely had time to jump to the side. Erik, who was next, shouted:
"I got it!"
His call startled me, as I had been busy admiring the mountain flowers next to the narrow path and observing the bumble-bee like insects and butterflies occasionally swirling around them. When I looked up again, Erik had his sword out and attacked the saber cat, and at least he seemed to know how to handle a sword, with much more skill than I had, I even admitted. The saber cat managed to evade the first swing of Erik's sword, but was too slow in reacting to the second one, and a victorious Erik turned around to us, shouting:
"I did it! I managed to slay the saber cat!"
With some admiration I had to admit that killing a fully grown saber cat that quickly and efficiently was indeed an achievement, and I would probably not have managed that without help. In my opinion, though, this might not be the best time to celebrate and kind of behave like Tarzan here. Actually, what if this was one of the saber cats we had encountered in the morning when we had arrived, and if so, where was the other one? I had just started to think in that direction, when I noticed a second saber cat, even slightly larger than the one before, swiftly approaching behind Erik, who was looking in our direction with a proud smile on his face; thus, he totally missed seeing the approaching danger. I froze for a moment instead of shouting a warning, but Aela had noticed the second beast as well, and she shouted out:
"Erik! Look around!"
But her warning came too late, and just when Erik started to turn, the huge predator jumped and landed right on him, instantly pushing him down to the ground. With the heavy animal's weight and all of the stuff the Nord also carried, he did not have a chance to get up, and before anyone of us could do something, the Nord՚s belly was ripped open; somehow the saber cat had managed to tear off part of Erik's heavy armor. Irene was very quick with her bow, and so was Aela, and with our joined effort, we managed to kill the saber cat, but Erik was already dead, and what was left of him did not look good at all. As a matter of fact, the bloody and badly mangled corpse almost made me vomit. Once we had made sure that there was no other danger around, we stood around silently for a few minutes, until Farkas said:
"The Harbinger won't like to hear about this."
With Erik still being a whelp, he did not warrant a full Companion funeral, as I learned. However, leaving the corpse out here in the wilderness was not an acceptable option either, and we decided to bring the body to the Hall of the Dead in the city. We wrapped the corpse in a couple of sacks, and while we slowly walked to Whiterun, we alternated carrying our additional load. Naturally, we had to leave some of the collected loot behind, and we hid it under a small stone pyramid we quickly erected.
None of us talked a lot when we were back in Whiterun. We guided the two farm hands we had freed in the cave towards Battle Born farm, and back in the city, the corpse was delivered to Andurs, the priest of Arkay. I made a little detour to deliver the various mushrooms I had collected to Arcadia and Mia, and when we got to Jorrvaskr, Farkas and Aela had the task to report to Kodlak, while Ria and I spent some time with Irene, the whelp. We all needed distraction, so that we got involved in some training exercises in the backyard. The Breton was clearly different from most other Companions in fighting style; while 'typical' Shield-Siblings trusted in their strength, weapons and armor mostly, she relied more on her magic. That could be a problem when she was forced into close combat, but as we Companions rarely did something alone, but preferred to go in groups of two or three, this could make an excellent basis for teamwork. Nonetheless, she had to do 'normal' training as well, without using any magic, and Vilkas made sure that this was not neglected. The two brothers still strictly refused to learn any magic, but some others, specifically Ria, were warming up to the concept. The young Imperial understood that being able to cast some healing on oneself after combat might be quite useful, and distracting an enemy even with a weak flame or lightning attack, as I had done frequently, was also something which could make a difference. So, once or twice a week, Ria and I had some magic lessons with Irene, and while my own capabilities in that area had certainly improved a lot since I had arrived in Skyrim, they were far behind the Breton's.
Later on we sorted through the various loot we had collected and made a big pile in a corner of the mead hall. Items which looked liked they had been stolen were put aside, and on the next day some of us were going to bring those up to Dragonsreach; the steward was going to find rightful owners, if possible. Generic items, such as gems and septims, were ours to keep, and the Jorrvaskr community chest got quite a lot added today.
Celebrations in the mead hall were very muted on this day, and nobody felt like singing and story-telling. Instead, some decided to imbibe more than usual, including some who had not been with us, and it did not take long before I decided to retire up to my attic room. When I was finally in my bed – the camp bed in the shed on my site was less comfortable than the bed up here – the dark thoughts were back. Could I have done anything to prevent Erik's death? That quest and the end had surely not been part of the game, but even though, maybe I should have spotted the second saber cat before it got too close? Not, it had come against the wind, and even Khajiit senses had their limits, specifically untrained one like mine. Not even Hanni and Nanni has noticed the approaching danger, as far as I could tell. Surely, the logical section of my brain told me, if neither Farkas nor Aela, both Circle members and werewolves, had failed to grasp the situation quickly enough, I was not to blame. Yes, if I had seen the second beast earlier, I might have been able to calm it down with 'KAAN', but, a far as I recalled, even those powerful shouts had limits, and while I had successfully applied the shout on bears and wolves, I was not even sure if it worked on an adult saber cat. No, wrong again; I suddenly recalled that I had used the shout successfully on saber cats before we had entered the cave; on the other hand, I did and could not know if this implied that 'KAAN' worked on all saber cats or maybe just some of them. Similar thoughts plagued my mind, and although I was a person largely driven by logic, as I had worked as an engineer for decades, some emotions kept bothering me, and sleep was not coming easily this evening. Eventually, cuddling with my two saber cats helped.
Back at my building site on the next day I learned that Aicantar, the Altmer and expert in Dwemer technology, had started to walk around with a strange wooden rod. One side had two ends, one for each hand, and the other side had only a single end, so that it was formed like a branch in a tree. Closer to the end point, though, there were a few pieces of Dwemer metal attached plus a special gem. When I asked what he was doing, I got this reply:
"This is a dowsing rod. Some people claim that it can be used to find water, and with the Dwemer attachments it works even much better."
I had heard about such devices, the wooden ones at least, in my former life, but I did not understand why we needed that here:
"But, there is plenty of water around; why do we want to find more?"
"See, the water around is water from the creek coming down from Dragonsreach, and it is cold. Wouldn't it be nice to find access to hot water, too?"
He had a point, but where should that come from? Wait – Jorrvaskr had a bath with hot water, and the Skyforge was somehow supplied with heat from the ground, too. In addition, I believed that somebody had mentioned Dragonsreach being heated in winter by natural sources. Was it possible that geothermal energy was available plentiful in the hill a part of Whiterun was built on?
He saw my facial expression changing and smiled:
"Are you now thinking what I am thinking?"
"Yes, I get the idea. If there is heat from below the ground supplied to the Skyforge and to the bath in Jorrvaskr and to Dragonsreach, we might be able to tap into that."
"Exactly, and while the main source is probably further northeast, there is a chance to find a side line closer. My special rod can distinguish between cold and hot water underground, and I am curious and excited about what we might find."
That was totally cool, and I was looking forward to whatever he might find out. If we could get access to natural hot water, heating the house would be so much easier, and being able to take a warm shower whenever I wanted would be wonderful. Getting my fur dry afterwards was a different issue, and constructing something like a hair dryer might be a real challenge; I might have to use a lot of towels instead, which raised the issue of how to handle the laundry. In theory, I might be able to use a low intensity flame spell on myself, like the weak one I could do with my tail, but my experiments in that direction had been only partially successful so far. Right now, though, I suddenly had another concern in my mind:
"Say, Aicantar, what about water quality? I mean, the water from underground should be fine, but the cold water which comes down from Dragonsreach and ends up in the pond behind my new house, what about that one?"
"Water quality?"
"Yes, what about waste water and such from the city? Like where people do their laundry?"
I did not think that the term 'sewage' was known here, but that's what I suddenly thought about. In my previous life, I had always taken a proper sewage system for granted, and so far in Skyrim, I had not really thought about it.
"Oh yes, I see. Actually, I had been thinking about that, too, and Antonius helped me to find out about it. The Jarl, or more likely previous generations of Jarls, had been doing a great job with that. You know that there are three water creeks leaving the city?"
"Three? Oh yes, the one right next to the city gate which fills the pond here, and two south of the city, towards the Whiter River."
"Indeed, quite so. Your housecarl and I found out that only the most eastern ditch is used for waste water, and the other two are kept clean. Some old city records claim that it used to be different, centuries ago, but they found that specifically the creek next to the city gate causes the pond here to stink and look ugly, unless the water is kept clean."
"Oh, because the water cannot move away quickly, right?"
"Yes, the pond does not have a natural drain, and water just seeps away slowly. You may be able to imagine what happens if you drain foul waste water in there over longer periods of time."
I was able to imagine that, indeed. The oxygen content in the water would have dropped, most life would be gone, and there would have been quite some smell. Nowadays, the water looked clean, there were fish in the pond and various plants all around, so that must have been some time ago. Aicantar continued:
"This is likely the reason that there is a well here on the site. It is not really used or needed nowadays, but it was needed at the time when the creek and pond here were foul, a long time ago."
I had already wondered about the old well, and the explanation seemed to be reasonable. The Altmer had more information for me:
"Specifically the ditch in the city leading to the pond here is kept very clean, and there are fines for emptying waste water in there. The city has drain openings specifically for the most eastern creek, and the idea seems to be that the middle one helps to create some current to wash the waste water down towards the White River. Honestly, the concept is sound and advanced, more than I would have expected. On the other hand, not every city has the advantage of water wells close to the top. In Markarth, we have this as well, so that I know at least what to look into."
In civilized countries on Earth getting sewage water into a creek would have been an issue, still, but Whiterun did not have the population of a big city in Germany, and waste water from a few thousand citizens, or even less – I had never asked what the population count actually was – should be all right for a good sized river with decent flow, without the need for a sewage plant, which wasn't invented yet anyway. It was certainly good to know that the water from the creek and the pond close to my house had a reasonable good quality and was suitable as drinking water. Sure, it might not fulfill the standards in Germany, but that was what we had here.
[Author's Notes: My views on geothermal energy are likely not fully scientific here, but they seem to make some sense. At least Balu can use some of his engineering background here.]