Vitus closed the door to their room behind him with a sigh that released all the tensions of travel, but he only managed one step forward before his hopes of a soft, warm bed were dashed upon the rocks.
“Ah, nope.”
Lydia had beaten him to the inn somehow and by the way she lay with her fingers laced behind her head and feet propped up on the base board, he would have better luck making a sload move. Resigned to his fate, he reached behind him and grabbed a corner of his roll mat at the bottom of his pack, and then with a practiced flick, the mat unraveled as it flung out and he flopped down atop it one fluid motion.
Khjaro had beaten him there too and still had enough energy to carve who knows what type of message in the rafters from where he perched atop the dresser. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, Vitus settled in and slung his pack around in front of him.
Maybe I’m just getting old, he thought with a burst of sound that was some horrid hybrid between a snort and a chuckle.
It was the same pack from when he’d first enlisted in the Imperial army, though it had been patched, sown, burnt, crushed, and dyed in fluids of a nature best left unsaid so many times that hardly a stitch remained from the original; much like the one who held it.
“Let’s see if the insides match too…” Vitus muttered to himself and dumped the packs contents out:
A waterskin he still couldn’t get the moonsugar out of, not that he was complaining; a well-used whetstone; a dubious tinderbox enchanted by an aspiring battlemage years ago; a battered Imperial field kit; rope – one always needs rope!; a roll of dried roots and meats – including a few slaughterfish steaks. He laughed at the last and tossed one at Lydia.
“Look what we still have a few of!”
In a flash of movement, she punched the steak across the room before it could touch her.
“EEK! I never want to see one of those again!”
Khjaro caught it as it flew by and started happily munching away on the dried fish.
“But you have such talent for alluring them.”
Lydia glared at him and rolled to face the wall. She seemed incapable of entering any body of water without emerging with one attached to her ass. They caught ten one day in Blackwood.
“What other memories lie hidden within?” Khjaro asked. The dresser creaked in protest as he leapt off his perch to sit by the growing pile.
Vitus shook the pack and a stream of sand escape followed by a fossilized cliffracer plume; part of a broken bar stool; a helmet that doubled as a cooking pot; a book on field tactics with another book’s worth of pages gathered from many lands bound to it; and a cloak buckle with the sigil of a bear on it.
Khjaro’s ears had perked up at the warm memories of home the sand brought, but were now flattened by the weight of the darker memories bared by the sigil. Even Lydia lifted her head enough to look over.
“Why do you still have that? Isn’t that the one Ulfric wore?” she asked.
Vitus nodded. “I spent – we spent – so many years fighting for the Empire; always defending the dream of a land never seen. I never questioned why, never questioned why anyone would rebel against it…”
“Soldiers are the blade of the country whose strength lies in its unity and decisive action. Hesitation is defeat,” Khjaro recited.
Lydia sat up. “But what do you do when you finally see the heart of that land and the dream shatters? At what time should the soldier speak out?”
“I don’t know,” Vitus whispered. He felt something still stuck to the bottom of the bag and started prying it out. “I just know I want my word to mean something.”
The object broke free and a weathered, stained bundle fell out of the bag, rolling to a stop before Khjaro. The Khajiit warily picked the bundle up between the tips of his claws and sniffed it. He sneezed the scent from his nose and tossed it back to Vitus.
“Sometimes this one learns too much about you.”
Vitus caught the bundle and sniffed it too.
“I thought I already tossed everything from that night, and I already told you both what happened! It was the Daedra, not me!”
Lydia snorted. “Riiiight, because demons would travel across dimensions just to frame you in such a… creative way.”
“Some would – and did,” Vitus defended. “Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.”
He ignored their snickering and unwrapped the bundle. Lydia flopped to the opposite end of the bed to peer over Vitus’s shoulder.
“Did the Daedra write you love letters too?” she teased when she saw the contents of the bundle.
“No…” He wracked his brain trying to remember where he got these letters. To: Mother and Father, From: Sylgja. Who was Sylgja?
Lydia, still reading over his shoulder, gasped. “You have a daughter!”
Khjaro gasped too and clasped his paws over his mouth. “Was it from that time off the coast of—”
“What! No!” Long abandoned bridges of thought reconnected and he remembered. “Ah yes, it was at Shore’s Stone; how could I forget her? A young woman asked me to deliver these to her folks in Darkwater Crossing since she had a broken leg at the time.”
“Ah, so that’s why she’d talk to you. Poor girl couldn’t get away.”
Vitus glared at Lydia, but she blithely ignored him and caught the date in the corner of one of the letters. “From nine months ago? So much for keeping your word.”
Vitus stood up. “No matter, I’ll follow through with my word even if slightly tardy! We leave at once; find the carriage driver!”
Khjaro peaked his head around the door. “You mean the one passed out at the bar?”
“Not rain or snow, or even drunken drivers will waylay this quest a moment longer! A man’s word must be upheld!”
***
Late morning the next day saw them finally on the road. Vitus ended up riding in front with the driver, more to make sure the hungover sod didn’t fall off the carriage than anything else. The only problem was the man reeked; he might have even pissed himself during the night. Khjaro would be able to seperate the different scents.
“Hey fur-face, take the next shift up here!” Vitus yelled behind him.
The Khajiit shook his head. “This one could never impinge on the native culture by showing his beastly fur so openly in such a role held so distinguished by the Nordic people.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you before,” Vitus muttered while rolling his eyes, then turned to one such distinguished Nord. “Lydia?”
She promptly started snoring from where she hung her head. Times like these Vitus missed not being able to issue orders like he used too, but that was the past. He shrugged, if you can’t beat them, join them. He pulled out a flask and took a long swig, then passed it to the driver; this should be interesting.
***
Come an evening with a golden sky, they veered into the small mining town of Darkwater Crossing and promptly crashed into a ditch. Khjaro leapt out before the carriage hit and immediately began to gratefully kiss the dirt like a shipwrecked sailor finding land. Vitus hooted and high-fived the driver.
“Now that’s how you ride a carriage, Sigaar!”
The driver, now fast friends with Vitus, laughed. “In all my years in the business and I never knew you could drift those sidewinders in one of these!”
“Well you just need the right mud conditions,” Vitus explained and then stumbled out of the carriage.
He slapped a hand on Lydia’s shoulder to keep his balance and she jolted awake.
“What? Are we there already?”
Khjaro looked up from the ground at her in disbelief, then just accepted it as he remembered who his travel companions were. They parted ways with the carriage driver and followed the letter directions to Sylgja’s parents’ house.
The door to a sturdy stone and thatch home warily creaked open after a second set of knocks. A young woman with brown hair cropped to her neck looked out in shock at the two companions behind Vitus. Vitus never thought much about how they looked anymore, but Khjaro came from the warrior clans in the northern badlands of Elyweyr and towered over all but the tallest Nords, like Lydia, who was the spitting image of a shield maiden of Sovngarde, and all three of them were clad in heavy, steel armor of Imperial design. They did make an impressive appearance, although those two did overshadow his average Imperial frame.
I should have recruited some Bosmer instead, he thought.
“Who is it Sylgja?” A man’s voice called from the house kitchen. “Is it Deekus again? The ore counts should be ready by now.”
Sylgja shook her head, then remembered the man couldn’t see her. “No Father, it’s uh…”
She trailed off as her eyes fell to Vitus holding the bundle of letters and recognition began to dawn, but her mother walked by and interrupted before she could regain her words.
“We have surprise guests? They look like adventurers; stop being rude and invite them in Sylgja! They must be hungry.”
Khjaro shouldered forward and clasped the striking blonde’s hand and gave her a grin when he recognized that spark of wanderlust still burning in her eyes.
“That is most generous of you, the one called Khjaro is most appreciative,” he said, letting his desert accent roll across the words.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said with a blush rising to her cheeks. “I’m Annekke Craig-Jumper, that’s my husband, Verner Rock-Chucker, starting a stew in the kitchen, and you already met our daughter Sylgja who’s visiting.”
Lydia pushed by more brusquely. “What he said, I’m Lydia. Is that rabbit I smell?”
Khjaro’s ears perked up and they both rushed into the kitchen, forgetting all else at the scent of food. Vitus shrugged apologetically at their hosts. A Khajiit’s outraged scorning soon erupted from inside as the cat commandeered the cooking and a bewildered miner stumbled out, still at a loss of how he got thrown out of his own kitchen.
“Fancy seeing you here too; remember me?” Vitus asked Sylgja and gave his best smile.
“You’ll wish I didn’t, Vitus the letter thief,” Sylgja finished. It was starting to come back why he’d avoided this area.
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Comments
Its always fun to write about this crew; each has quirks just helpful enough to compound the trouble another stirs.