It had been just a ghastly trek through Hammerfell. Dardeh supposed that he should have felt some kind of affinity for the land, the people, fully half of his heritage, but all he had felt while he was there was hot and gritty. He’d gotten sand in places he hadn’t known sand could go, and had sweat in some of those places as well as others he hadn’t realized could do such a thing. He was, to put it simply, uncomfortable the whole time he was there.
And discouraged. Even now. He did feel discouraged, and frustrated. With as little as he had to go on – hair and eye color, a facial scar, a name, and some small amount of background on his father and his father’s wife – he hadn’t been expecting to find his sister very easily; but he hadn’t expected the travel itself to be quite as unpleasant as it was.
I’m a Nord. I’ll always be a Nord. It was even worse in Hammerfell; he looked like a Redguard, he was surrounded by Redguards, and everyone assumed that he was just another Redguard. He wasn’t.
He tried to remember his mother’s positive, unflappable outlook on life and wished he could share it. He could, to some extent, some of the time. But the rest of the time he felt… resentful. Resentful that he was always judged on his surface appearance.
He had gone to the mine, after his mother passed, day after day for months, and had done his work. Then he would come home to a silent house with nothing left of the cheerful sounds and the love his mother had always supplied, and wonder why he was doing it and whether he intended to spend the rest of his life like that. Sitting around on the outskirts of Markath was joyless, alone as he was, and he was young and strong and wanted to see more of the world. One day he found himself visiting a shop in Markarth and buying a map of Hammerfell. Then he found himself speaking to Raj’irr, the leader of one of the Khajiit caravans, asking about what sort of things a traveler might want to take along.
It seemed that he had decided to go in search of his maybe-sister before he was even completely aware of it. The logical place to go was Stros M’Kai, since that was where she’d supposedly been seen last. And Stros M’Kai was south and west.
So he went south and west, through Hammerfell.
In retrospect, he thought, it would have made a lot more sense to have taken a ship from Solitude, the long way around the coast of High Rock down to Daggerfall, and then over to the island. But no, he hadn’t thought of that until about half-past Skaven, with too many leagues beneath his feet to justify turning around, and not enough gold left to his name to book passage if he had. So he kept walking.
In truth, he felt as though he had learned some things on his trek across Hammerfell. He learned that he was a better fighter than he’d thought, because the bandits were at least as much of an issue there as they were in Skyrim. He’d learned that even though he didn’t want to kill, he could and would if he was attacked, and could do it easily. He’d learned to appreciate those swords, his father’s swords, for their balance and their sharpness. He learned that he had a better sense of humor and a worse temper than he’d imagined, and that he preferred the nice, comfortable, chilly climes of home to a desert.
Mostly, though, Dardeh had learned that he was determined. He meant to find his sister one way or another. He was particularly determined once he’d taken the short passage from the mainland to Stros M’Kai.
One of the merchants near the docks, a white-haired woman selling seafood, had remembered her well.
“Yes, of course I remember her,” the woman had said, smiling. “She grew up here. She was a little troublemaker, that one, always trying to filch bread or fish and thinking that we didn’t see her. Now that I think about it,” she chuckled, “we didn’t see her do it, after a while. She got good at it. Nobody ever minded much, though, her running around without parents. I never knew who took care of her, honestly. She and a couple of the boys were always together, so maybe they just all took care of each other. Bunch of little urchins underfoot, but they never did anything really bad, just… mischief.”
“They didn’t have any adults watching them?”
“Not that I ever noticed. But we all more or less kept an eye out and made sure they had enough to eat and a place to duck into if the weather turned. Once they got old enough we put them to work. She was a tough nut, that one.”
The woman laughed.
“Never did teach her to keep her hands to herself, though. I wager there were a lot of travelers off the ships who were shy a few coin purses by the time they made it to the inn. Maybe that’s how she got that scar, I don’t know.”
“I don’t suppose you know where she is now, do you?” Dardeh asked, while choosing some fish to buy. That much information had been well worth a few coins.
“No, I don’t. I wish I could tell you more. All I know is that I haven’t seen any of them in a while. Not her nor the boys. It’s too bad, too. They were good workers, the lot of ‘em, and there’s few enough of them to be had around here.”
He talked to a few of the older fellows on the docks, even helped them unload one boat as it came in, his strong back helping loosen tongues. It seemed that Dardeh’s sister had suffered fools not at all and had been known to hold her own in a fistfight when needed. That had made Dardeh smile. He could like having a sister like that to balance out his own tendency to be the nice guy all the time.
She wasn’t there any more, though. She’d taken a ship and left, and the people he talked to weren’t certain whether she’d gone west to Daggerfall, or east to Anvil, in Cyrodiil. So he had taken the long way around. It was good to have tough muscles and a solid build, because they got him passage to Daggerfall. Hauling lines at sea was a far cry from breaking ore in a mine, but they both needed bulk and arm strength and he had both. He found that he enjoyed being at sea; maybe it wasn’t something that he’d ever want to do for a long time, but it was a good change from dark, hot, dusty mines.
Dardeh had worked his way up the long peninsula of High Rock, following all of the tantalizing hints he found. Yes, she’d been there; or at least a girl matching her description had been there.
A young mother in Camlorn remembered her vividly.
“Oh yes, she helped me around the house for a few weeks,” she said as her twin infants howled. She sighed. “Would you?” and handed one of them, a dark-haired, red-faced boy, to Dardeh, while she turned to the other’s diaper.
“Um, I’m not very…” he sputtered, trying hard not to drop the child. Talos help me, but I’m not experienced with children. I have no idea what I’m doing. But he held the baby and bounced him, and the child decided that Dardeh’s blonde beard was the most interesting thing he’d seen, ever. Dardeh ended up giggling at him, and making faces so that his beard would wiggle. The little boy grabbed again. Babies were loud, for certain, Dardeh decided, and kind of smelly, but there was something about holding that little bundle of solid warmth that spoke to him. He almost didn’t want to hand him back to his mother.
“Your sister,” said the young woman, swapping out the children and leaving Dardeh holding a delicate but very loud little girl, “was a real boon to me, what with these two squalling all the time and their da at work. They’re getting big enough now that it’s a little easier but my goodness try to keep a pair of twins fed and do anything else in a day? I might have pulled all my hair out if I hadn’t had her around.”
The woman smiled at Dardeh. She had black hair and blue eyes and, in spite of looking nearly exhausted, she was extremely pretty. A sweet person, he decided. Just lovely. And her baby girl was going to be just as pretty and probably just as feisty as her brother, judging by the way she squirmed and grabbed at him. He couldn’t help but laugh. I wonder if my sister was like this when she was a baby.
“Your sister seemed awfully sad when she first came here looking for some work. She wouldn’t tell me why, try as I might to get her to talk. Goodness knows it was wonderful to have someone besides babies to talk to, and a woman besides; but she just wouldn’t talk about why she was sad. It bothered me. By the time she left she seemed a bit better, though. I would think it would make anyone happy to be around this much joy, noisy though they are,” she said, kissing her children. “Are you married? Children?”
Dardeh smiled. “No, I’m afraid not. But I have to say that your children are wonderful. I’ve never actually held a baby before. Maybe I’ll be an uncle some day.” I suppose I could adopt a child, some day, maybe, he thought. If they’d let me.
She didn’t know where his sister had gone, either. Probably north. The woman thought she’d said something about heading to Cyrodiil. Or Skyrim. She wasn’t certain.
It had gone that way, for weeks on end. His sister definitely existed, but she was more than a few steps ahead of him. She had worked her way up the length of High Rock, but long enough ago that he wasn’t going to just run across her by accident. Finally, he had found himself back in Hammerfell, in Dragonstar. He hadn’t found a single clue there on his way south, but this time he ran into several.
“Yeah, I know who you mean,” the innkeeper told him. “You’re not some kind of bounty hunter or something, are you?”
Dardeh laughed. “No, not at all. I just found out that I’m her brother and I’m trying to find her. Only family I have left, and, well, it just feels important.”
The man nodded. “Well in that case. She met up with some Khajiit fellow sitting here at the bar and they started talking. Decided to head into Skyrim together. I’m certain of it.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know for sure. A month, maybe? Two? The days all run together in this job.”
Dardeh had made sure to drop a goodly amount of coin on drinks that night. His head complained in the morning, but the man had given him some good information.
That morning he visited the local market to stock up on supplies. It had gotten to be a habit to ask every soul he could ask about the tough girl with the scar and green eyes. The vegetable vendor shook his head.
“Don’t listen to the barkeep; he never knows what’s going on any more. I know exactly who you’re talking about. She was around here for a couple of weeks or so, doing odd jobs to raise some coin.”
And helping herself to what she didn’t earn, I’ll bet, Dardeh thought with a grin.
“She went to Bruma. No doubt about it. The girl talked about going to Cyrodiil every time she was here. How cold was it in the mountains. Was there another way around to get there. That kind of thing. Your best bet is to head east.”
Dardeh had spent a day pondering his next move. Starting out he’d crossed the border nearest Dragonstar and gone south, and nobody had even hinted at her presence until he’d reached Stros M’Kai. That made it seem less likely to him that crossing back into Skyrim was the best choice. Instead, he resupplied and went east into Cyrodiil, to the city of Bruma, only to find that it was yet another dead end. There were plenty of Nords there, but not a lot of Redguards and none that fit her description.
Dardeh was stymied, and disappointed. He had seemed so close, back in Dragonstar. Probably the innkeeper had been right and she’d gone into Skyrim; but where she might have gone from there was anyone’s guess. He needed to head home, find work, make some money and resupply before doing anything else. Maybe someone on the Skyrim side of the border had seen her come through with a Khajiit. So he headed north, into the Jerall Mountains and through the Pale Pass, reveling at being back in the crisp mountain air.
And that was where Dardeh had been, no closer to finding her than he had been months before, when he tried to cross the border into Skyrim, found Ulfric Stormcloak and a dragon instead, and ended up with Ralof in Riverwood.
That afternoon, Dardeh visited the smithy in Riverwood. Alvor, the smith, greeted him warily, with “Ain’t too often we get visitors in Riverwood,” but bartered for the few things Dardeh had managed to carry out of the keep: some Imperial swords, some ore he’d picked out of the rocks on the way through the tunnels much to Ralof’s impatience, and a few odds and ends.
Dardeh hadn’t spent his whole life working around miners and smiths for nothing. He was no expert, for certain, but he convinced Alvor to let him use the forge in exchange for some simple jobs – an iron knife. Honestly, he thought; is there anyone who can’t craft an iron knife except for a child just starting out? He came away with a basic set of steel armor, nothing fancy, but something that really fit.
Taking off the Stormcloak cuirass was like dropping a heavy weight, even though the steel armor was much heavier. It didn’t keep him from seeing the soldier he’d killed on his way into Helgen Keep, but it felt like a new life.
He left Gerdur’s house that evening and made a quick trip back up the road to Helgen, hugging the sides of the path and keeping under cover. There were wolves – lots of them – but nothing else to contend with. He took their pelts, gratefully; the Imperials had confiscated his pack and everything in it, and he was sure none of it had survived the fires. The wolves would provide him a new one.
Helgen was still smoldering. The air reeked of burned flesh and hair. Dardeh had thought of checking any bodies for coins, or valuables, anything he might make use of, but they were all so badly damaged that he couldn’t bear the thought of violating them any further. He made his way around and through the remains of the houses toward the southern gate, and there he found the charred, overturned cart he’d ridden in.
Almost everything in what had been the chest was damaged or destroyed. There was nothing left of his other gear. But he pushed aside the ashes until two pieces of curved metal emerged from the wreckage. The grips were badly damaged, but the steel itself was not. The fire had burned hot, but not with the heat of a forge. They could be repaired, his father’s swords.
He turned and ran back down the road to Riverwood.