This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended.
Reads-With-Tail was not having a good day.
It wasn't as bad as most lately, he supposed. The skies were clear for the second time in two weeks, the sun was high and close and warmly yellow instead of wan and distant, the breeze was slow and cool without the knife edge he'd grown up with. Low golden steppe scrub dotted with colorful flowers and the occasional stand of trees spread out far to the west and out of sight behind him, bordered by a great mountain range that swooped up to the south and a lower and a more distant one that rolled away to the north. The aura of fragrances and warm light swirled around the lanky boy, glittering off the damp grey rocks and bright thatched roofs above him. Yes, judging only by the weather, this was one of the nicest days he'd ever lived through, though it didn't have much competition.
But he wasn't judging by the weather. It was a constant and losing battle for him to keep his eyes open after the misadventures of the last two weeks, and the surging pains that permeated his body had only ensured he missed most of his sleep each night. Everything from hurdles on the mountain trails to the simple and ubiquitous pine needles had worn at him, leaving every joint from tail to tip sore and tender. His deep burgundy scales, which he glossed so diligently whenever he had the opportunity, had been dulled by the rough travel to something more like the scabs his friend Kennet brought home every couple of weeks. At least the senses had come back to his feet; they'd been cold and heavy as lead half the morning after crossing one last brook of snowmelt that had carved its way across the cliffside path, and his last bundle of footwraps not to shrink beyond use hadn't yet dried.
And after all of that, this dratted guardsman wasn't helping him in the slightest.
"The city. Is. Closed," the solidly built man repeated from behind his masked helm. He waved his shield arm to punctuate each word, setting his mail hauberk jangling beneath his faded yellow linen tabard. "No one in, no one out but by leave of the Jarl."
"But I'm here as a courier," Reads-With-Tail repeated in turn, trying to sound as forceful as possible this time since the plaintive approach hadn't worked so far. From what little he could see through the guard's spectacle helm and facemask – a raised eyebrow – it wasn't making much of an impact. Of course, with his cord belt puddled around his feet and his far too wide quilted shirt drifting in the tundra breeze, he doubted he looked very impressive in the first place. As proud of that shirt as he was, and as useful as its thick layers of linen padding were in all manner of situations, he frequently found himself thinking back over creative curses from Miss Berit's books whenever it fluttered up over his head and bared his scrawny abdomen this way.
And he couldn't imagine that tripping over the haft of his carpenter's hammer and nearly impaling his bony chest on his own mining pick just after shedding the belt had made much of a first impression. Still, the young Argonian tugged his shirt more snugly around his sharp shoulders and kept trying. "I've already shown you my message. I'm only asking to visit the inn and maybe the provisioner, ask around after the person I'm bringing this to, and then I'll be out tomorrow morning."
The eyebrow dropped. Both eyes narrowed. "What you've showed me is a piece of sheepskin with a rebel seal on it. Jarl's got enough trouble in the hold since Helgen vanished without me letting Stormcloak spies inside the walls." For the first time since their conversation had started, probably a quarter-hour ago, the guard let his gloved hand rest on the neck of his handaxe. "If you're telling the truth, lizard, you'd have better luck asking in the villages anyway. And if you're not," he raised the axe fractionally out of its loop on his belt, "I've nothing more to say."
Tail drooping, Reads-With-Tail accepted defeat. "All right, I understand –"
"– Good."
"Can I ask one thing, at least? Do you have a map, or at least directions to one of the villages you mentioned? I lost mine crossing a flooded path a week or so back." And because of it he hadn't been able to make his way through the wilderness like a proper Nord would – like a proper Nord had told him to, in fact – and had probably missed Master Ralof's party while he floundered about looking for the border with Cyrodill. "I'd like to make myself helpful if I can, too – perhaps I can bring back news about Helgen if you point me in that direction."
"Rumor's spread that fast, eh?" Reads-With-Tail nodded. Rumors of elvish armies and living dead and even the Dragons of the End-Times, each of which had left the youth with some vivid dreams and restless nights in their turn.
The guard's hand was back on top of the axe now, fingers drumming on the haft, and the Argonian relaxed a little, twisting his back a bit to loosen his nervous muscles. "Well, if it gets you out of here. Head back south the way you came, cross the bridge, and work your way west along the river and the foothills. Should be, oh, a day's walk to the next village for a grown man."
It seemed that even now, with his recent growth spurt catching him up to the average Nord workman in height and most of that in his legs, the guards and soldiers of the world couldn't resist reminding him that he couldn't do all the work they could. But that didn't excuse him from trying, of course. Skyrim was Nord land, nobody in Windhelm was allowed to forget it, but Jarl Ulfric had made it clear time and again that anyone who was willing to help the Nords was welcome in the kingdom he was building. So, since so many of the other Argonian dockworkers were servicing neutral and even Imperial trade shipping as much as they did Windhelm's own merchant and fishing fleets, that made it Reads-With-Tail's responsibility to do everything he could on their behalf.
Which brought the boy back to the present. "Right, then it's time I get moving. Sorry for the trouble," he added a little ruefully as he turned. The guard clucked behind him – not the sympathetic chuckle he normally got from the Stormcloak warriors and Windhelm city guard out on the docks, but still not a club over the skull. All six of his horns swept down from the top of his neck, and they were tiny smooth stubs rather than the polished spears some of the other dockworkers boasted – certainly not anything that could turn or catch a real blow.
Reads-With-Tail shook his head at his morbid musings. Yanking down his shirt as it tried to float off his chest again – not a chance while it was lashed to his wrists and elbows, but it was still annoying – he turned to look down his path. The south "road" barely lived up to its name anymore – clearly the Jarl of Whiterun Hold had better things to spend his money on than keeping the cobblestones weeded. The young Argonian liked to think that Jarl Ulfric would do better, but he'd seen enough of Eastmarch Hold - indeed, old Windhelm itself - to know better, and he'd read enough books to understand why.
And besides, he'd take this loose stony dirt and golden-brown lichen over the ice and snow that had swallowed Windhelm's brickwork! After all, he could at least see where he was supposed to go along this path, and there were still plenty of well-kept buildings stretching south to the river. And the creek that burbled along next to it was shallow and almost warm compared to that river, as he'd found out earlier that morning.
The red-scaled Argonian stooped for his belt, taking a moment to thank the Nine that Shahvee had insisted he lash his baggy pants and over-long sleeves at the joints. It didn't make the thick billowing shirt any less awkward, but it at least helped him move freely in burlap leggings meant for a grown warrior. And it let him get away with pretending he wasn't wearing the only outfit he owned, one meant to last him all the way until he stopped growing. Neetrenaza said the tighter, cleaner look made the Nords less likely to do anything worse than just arrest him on sight. Reads-With-Tail thought the veteran dockworker was much too uncharitable towards their hosts, but he wasn't quite brave enough to ignore his advice.
His rambling thoughts kept him occupied while he cinched the cord back around his waist properly, settling the hammer and pick against his thighs again. It was a purely instinctive motion at this point anyway, one he'd repeated so often with some tool or other that he didn't need to actually pay attention to the process. He pushed his right palm down against the head of the pick, stretching out his arms and kicking the tension out of his legs. Then he turned back to the path properly, crossing his arms between his horns, and set off south as the mountain shadow started to grow.
The shadows had lengthened enough to simply melt together into dusk long before before Reads-With-Tail finally halted. His tail had been dragging in the moss for easily two hours, his energy thoroughly spent from racing the shadows of some windmill along the road. Then he'd had to plow his way up a deceptively steep and slick hillside under a soothingly warm and humid canopy of trees. And then, of course, a pack of five Imperial Legion footmen had gone clattering past back towards Whiterun, ignoring the little Argonian who was trying to melt into a rock face.
All he'd gotten from that rock was a smear of green slime along his spine and shoulders and a trickle of chilly water down his neck, but at least the legionnaires hadn't challenged him. Still, with no idea what had them in such a hurry or if more were coming, he'd clambered up the boulder behind him and rolled, panting, up over the top. He'd used his pick to help with the quick climb, anchoring himself to the top of the ledge with a wild swing that left his shoulder joint burning, but all the hammer had accomplished was bruising his hip and nearly getting him caught as he tried to roll over the lip.
Still, he was safe from the soldiers, and with the moons on the rise and the river cheerfully lapping at its banks somewhere below him he was ready to curl up inside his nice warm shirt and let the day be over. He'd driven himself hard the last two weeks, especially after reaching Darkwater Crossing at last and finding no sign of Master Ralof or his mysteriously nondescript war party, but for some reason his encounter with the Whiterun guard had leeched away his enthusiasm.
He hadn't really thought about it until now, but Skyrim was a massive place and he had to find one specific person in it, and one of his three clues had faded away days ago. The other two were little better – he knew Ralof vaguely, but veteran Stormcloak armor was nowhere near as distinctive as perhaps it should have been, and looking for "the straw-haired Nord" only narrowed his search down to about nine tenths of the realm. Maybe talking to the guard, trying not to mention the Stormcloak warriors by name, trying to keep his own origins in secessionist Windhelm a secret, and getting a "lead" that had nothing to do with his task had made him realize that.
Or maybe he was just tired, the young Argonian admitted as his jaw popped in a yawn. He'd only had one real rough encounter, though, and that had been right after Darkwater Crossing – sure, he'd sprinted until he'd thought his heart had burst after clubbing a single Frostbite Spider aside, but that had just been once! Certainly not an excuse for being so weary now.
And he was no stranger to hunger, either, he reminded himself as he tucked his scaly hands into the pockets he'd ripped into his shirt. The open quilt pouches hung heavy across his chest, but the right-hand pocket was hanging considerably lower than the other. Aside from the copper cylinder that held Ralof's message there were nothing but loose crumbs and flakes of salt to his left, but at least he'd kept the waterskin in his right pocket topped off. He drew out the floppy leather sack, popping the pewter cap out almost before it had cleared his shirt.. He knew he ought to at least boil the water first, since he couldn't switch it out for a proper ale, but he had finally realized he was too thirsty to wait.
Besides, he thought as he gulped down the chilly, bitter water he'd skimmed from the snowmelt, if Ralof had been tracking me down – and Jarl Ulfric cares enough about his city that he might just order it, if the war permitted – he'd probably have been here a week ago with ale and meat to spare, no fatigue at all. Of course, a real warrior, a real Stormcloak, wouldn't have missed the meeting site in the first place, now would they?
Reads-With-Tail writhed on his bed of moss, now completely unable to get to sleep despite the lethargy of moments before. You see, this is why Berit pins you down and shoves a book in your muzzle whenever you get a spare moment, he told himself. If I ever save up enough for a proper backpack, I'm definitely starting a travel library of my own! Of course, he'd have to save up for that too, now that Berit and her sister Selma were up north visiting Winterhold. Not that she'd want him dragging her precious books all across Skyrim in search of a missing warband, however helpful he might find having proper reading material to distract himself with.
I suppose I've distracted myself without a book anyway. He sighed and rocked to his feet, stooping to refasten the his wrist and ankle laces and tug on the ankle wrappings that passed for shoes. At least this last set hadn't collapsed as it dried; there was no practical footwear in existence that could cover the wide webbed paw of an Argonian, but here in Skyrim the less of the body that saw the night air the better. Warmth aside, he had always thought the tension and pressure the wraps gave when snugged up was far more comfortable than it had any right to be, something none of his bunkmates on the docks had ever understood.
Well, if sleep wasn't going to come, there was no sense in waiting here in the woods, even if it probably was the most comfortably warm night of his young life. Reads-With-Tail stretched mightily, twisting his back and hips in as many different directions as they would go and luxuriating in the popping of liberated muscles and joints. Then he paused with his body arched nearly to the ground over his left side. Paused and listened. Something was scraping the moss and crunching the carpet of leaves and ferns...somewhere uphill from him, or at least he thought so. It was so hard to tell with all of the other noises of nature surrounding him.
Frustration surged up and blinded him, mercifully choking off his panic before it could take hold instead. His muscles stiffened and tensed madly, turning what should have been the gentle hefting of his hammer into an ungainly thrash that nearly tossed the heavy tool into the brush. As it was, his left shoulder jerked forward and immediately started to ache keenly, mirroring the pain in his right shoulder from his earlier climb. Of course, that just made his general frustration even worse, and he slapped the haft of the hammer into his stronger and less sore right palm with stinging force.
For a three-minute eternity Reads-With-Tail stood there wringing his hands and spinning the hammer in his tingling palm, but nothing came out of the woods towards him. Of course, hemmed in by trees the way he was he supposed that whatever it was might simply have overlooked him in favor of something more obvious. Aside from the ledge behind him and the switchback in the road just below it, he couldn't really claim to be in a clearing. Through the trees he could see lichen-encrusted rocks and loose trees building Giant-sized stairs into the side of the mountain. Nothing as regular as real stairs, obviously, though that sort of thing turned up in his books far more often than he thought it should. Just enough of a climb to separate him from whatever was making so much noise.
Tentatively the Argonian moved forward into the woods, wringing his hammer's neck with his left hand while his right clenched around the haft into a fist so tight he wasn't sure he'd be able to uncramp it later. His shoulders were high and tight and strangely itchy, and not the familiar itch of dry and frozen scales either. He still couldn't tell exactly where the sounds were coming from, but he knew he was getting closer, or maybe they were, because he could make out voices now.
Human voices, he realized, his whole body shivering with relief. Not spiders, not trolls, and definitely not Draugr. Being torn apart by mummified Nords from centuries ago and reassembled on some marble barrow shelf so he could attack his friends when they came looking...that held a special place in his nightmares. Even if the thought of a well-brined body completely tangled up in linen did actually sound fairly ridiculous when he thought about it.
Reads-With-Tail started to giggle uncontrollably at the mental image he'd just conjured up, a regular nightmare turned to hilarity completely by accident. And as he doubled over, chest heaving with thin, rapid laughter, the voices rose into a shout and then vanished into an immense thud just in front of him. The young Argonian looked up as best he could with his arms twisted tightly around his stomach and the side of the hammer digging into his ribs. The panicky laughter caught in his throat, sending him to his knees in a coughing fit and bringing his face far, far too close to a freshly made corpse.
It was a massive body, Reads-With-Tail noticed as he scrambled away on all fours, chest to the sky but eyes fixed on the dead man. He was easily as tall as a Nord, and probably even broader despite being scrawny enough for his ribs to show prominently. But he was no Nord; the snapped tusks that jutted from his lower gum made that obvious. As would his grey-green skin, Reads-With-Tail supposed, though in actuality he couldn't make out the exact color in the fading light. But the young Argonian had little attention to spare for anything but the slow trickle of blood that oozed from the Orc's broken tusk-teeth.
With great effort, Reads-With-Tail dragged his gaze away from the lifeless face. His stomach seemed to flip over and crawl up into his chest as he took in the bend in the Orc's neck, the long nub that threatened to push out of his throat. The boy swallowed again and again, as hard as he could, trying to hold down a much different lump in his own throat, and quickly looked past the twisted neck to the rest of the body.
A surprisingly elaborate design on the Orc's upturned roundshield caught the faint starlight through the trees, as did the iron rim that held the shield together and the even duller studs that dotted his shaggy overcoat. Reads-With-Tail blinked, the itch at the back of his eyes finally filtering through to make him realize he'd been staring at the corpse the entire time. A second blink, a moment to refocus, and he also realized that the Orc's arm had to be twisted even more impossibly than his throat in order to tilt the shield upwards even though his body was lying draped across a bush.
All right, all right, I need to stop looking. Just...look away. Think of something different. It might not help him fight down the surging bile, but maybe there wouldn't be any more. Visions of the salt fish and horker loaf he'd packed for the trip danced in front of him, setting his stomach churning in yet another direction as he realized just how hungry he'd let himself get. Argh! Reads-With-Tail balled up both fists even tighter, swinging his arms jerkily. Now I need to stop thinking of food, too! He dropped to his knees and clutched his stomach, letting the hammer fall at last.
The young Argonian kneeled there in the loam and retched. His chest turned hollow, his already sore muscles conspired to yank his insides into perfect upright order, and yet nothing actually came out. Finally, dizzy for air, he looked up and took a deep, greedy breath. After briefly feeling around for his hammer, he straightened up at last.
Directly into a stiff, heavy glove.
The Argonian started squirming, and whoever was behind him tightened their grip on his left shoulder in response. It wasn't a harsh grip, not even particularly strict, but it served to keep his hammer in place. In fact, at this point it was enough to keep the frightened youth completely in check. "Easy, boy," a deep voice said in his ear. "You look so out-of-place that there's no chance you're a bandit." The heavy Nordic accent was no obstacle to Reads-With-Tail after sixteen years in Windhelm, though his own thunderous heartbeat was. "More than that, even in this light there's something about you...look at me."
Reads-With-Tail complied immediately, his lungs and heart finally slowing back to a more normal speed. He cocked his head back, baring his throat and looking up – well up – at the Nord who'd caught him. Just when I thought I'd started catching up to them, they get even taller. In better light the man's hair would probably have been the color of straw or good wheat, but it was hard enough for Reads-With-Tail to focus on anything with his head tossed back this way, especially with the dense fur hood framing the man's face so closely.
The man frowned down at him, then blinked and let go of his shoulder with a sudden grin. "I do know you, don't I, boy? From the docks! Ah...Reader, isn't it?"
The Argonian turned quickly, nodding as he went. "Reads-With-Tail, sir, yes." Now it was his turn to frown and blink. "Wait. No, the Nine have a better sense of humor than that. You can't be Master Ralof! I've been looking all over for you, sir!"
"I don't see what's amusing about it." Nevertheless, the towering man chuckled softly, if a little hoarsely. "It seems perfectly like Them to let us meet up so randomly out here." He nodded at the youth. "So, you came out searching for me, and managed to end up all the way out near old Riverwood. I'm sure I'll hear the rest of the story eventually, but first, what do you have for me?"
Reads-With-Tail reached into his left flank pocket for the waterproof cylinder that held the message. "This, Master Ralof. I was told you'd be heading towards Darkwater Crossing with a war party of some – hey!" The Nord warrior yanked the canister away, tossing the long cap into the woods in his hurry to unseal the message. Popping the wax with a belt knife, he unraveled the short paper and scanned it hurriedly.
Then, to Reads-With-Tail's shock, Ralof closed his eyes slowly, rocked his head back, and began to laugh. It was nearly as soft as his chuckle from moments before, but with a far harsher edge to it, and his shoulders shook more as if he were crying. The young Argonian reached out to him tentatively but refrained from actually touching him – after all, this was a captain of the Stormcloaks here, hardly someone he was fit to comfort!
Finally Ralof opened his eyes again and looked back down at Reads-With-Tail's outstretched hand. He gripped it in his own much larger hand, closing his bear-paw-pattern glove around it. "I take it back," he said after a moment. "I may have overestimated the Divines' idea of a good joke." Reads-With-Tail cocked his head. "The message was there to warn us that Tullius was moving troops towards where we were headed. But they told you to meet us at Darkwater Crossing? We ran headlong into the Governor's legionnaires there not four days ago. To come all this distance on foot, well, you must have run like a horse!" And with that the Stormcloak warrior tossed his head back and laughed again, a little of the pain gone.
For his part, Reads-With-Tail simply stood there, his hand shaking slightly as Ralof rocked back and forth on his heels, his half-mad laughter going silent at random. It was such an absurd situation, indeed, both the missive and the moment. He'd been so convinced he was running behind, yet something had delayed the Stormcloak band so much that he'd gotten over a week ahead of them? It made no sense to him, but then he still had no idea what the warband had actually been up to.
As for the strange and awkward position he found himself in now, his tail stiffened in protest but his mind ordered it to relax. If the warrior thought he needed to let this out, then no matter how undignified it might seem there was no way the boy was going to pull away from him now!
Not until another voice called down from the rocks above the fallen Orc. "Well, I'm glad your spirits are so high, Ralof." Reads-With-Tail whipped around, his hand still caught firmly in Ralof's mitt. Above them stood a soft-faced man in the studded leather and mail mesh of an Imperial light footman, one arm weighed down by the Legion's signature steel-banded kite shield and the other holding aloft a torch that illuminated the stabbing spear slung over his back. "Oh? I see you've made a friend. This does seem to be the day for it."
The man's expression was unreadable. Perhaps it was just distorted by the firelight, but it seemed far too stern for its rounded features to take. His voice, too, was strange – teasing enough to set the Argonian at ease, yet colored by all kinds of negativity. And through some trick of the gods he carried an even thicker accent than Ralof's, making it even harder to work out his meaning. Reads-With-Tail twisted around to look at Ralof, only to see the Stormcloak's face similarly muddied.
"Hadvar. Have you cleared out the rest of the tower yet?" he called back, clearly preferring not to spend any more time talking with the maybe-Legionnaire than he had to.
"Faster than you did, clearly," the man on the cliff spat back. Reads-With-Tail cringed. He'd heard warriors and sailors of all stripes recounting their exploits before, but this had none of the playfulness he expected. "That Orc sent you tumbling all the way back down the path. I had plenty of time to manage the archers and get back to you."
"Well, I'll let you have this round," Ralof answered, barely bothering to raise his voice so the other man could hear. "I'll take the watch, then."
The maybe-legionnaire shook his shield in an unmistakable command to halt. "Who's the Argonian, though?"
"He's from Windhelm. Not a Stormcloak, if that's what you're thinking –"
"– Hardly. Even if Ulfric let him in the rest of you would tear him apart."
"Or you would on the field. Does it matter now?" There was a surprising touch of venom in Ralof's voice. "Either way, he's coming with us. I don't know about you, Hadvar, but I don't want him getting us both into even more trouble with our commanders than we probably already are."
Hadvar nodded crisply. "Of course we'd take him with us! That or pack him off to Riverwood." He paused for a moment, considering something. "Sorry, I shouldn't talk to you like you're not here. You two get up here and we'll set up in the watchtower for the night. This can all wait for morning. One thing though," he added as an afterthought. "Are you actually interested in following? If not, the village is just down the hill. Talk to the smith, mention my name, you'll do fine."
Reads-With-Tail glanced up at Ralof again, but he didn't even need to see the warrior he'd run so far to find before he gave his answer. All he had to do was nod.
