Dagnell rose early. As she walked through the inn’s main room a sour-faced girl said “Oh great, another wanderer. Slumming it before heading to Windhelm?”
“Why, is Windhelm close?”
The girl snorted. “Just to the north. I thought everyone knew that.”
“Thanks, that helps a lot.”
“Whatever.”
It was not a pleasant walk from Kynesgrove to Windhelm. The farther she went, the colder it got, until she had a bit more first-hand instruction on being in a Skyrim snowstorm. It was as ugly an experience as she had expected. And then there were the wolves. She’d accumulated another good few pelts by the time the city appeared over the crest of a hill.
Windhelm looked nothing but gray and unwelcoming. It sat at the far side of an enormous bridge over the river she’d seen from Kynesgrove. The approach to the bridge looked icy, the wind was howling, it was snowing sideways, and yet a Nord carriage driver in short sleeves sat in his rig at the near end of the bridge, seemingly unconcerned, waiting for his next customer. She had to marvel at it.
“Need a ride? I can take you to any of the hold capitals.”
“Not right now, thanks.” She would gladly have taken a ride to the south somewhere, but figured he wouldn’t appreciate taking her for the pitiful few coins she had.
Windhelm proper was guarded by a pair of enormous, unforgiving iron doors – a far cry from just-wander-in Kynesgrove. “Nice,” she muttered under her breath. “But here goes,” and heaved at the heavy doors.
There was a loud argument happening right inside the doors, an argument from which she stepped just far enough away to listen. Two Nord men stood face-to-face with an elegant Dunmer woman.
“You come here where you’re not wanted,” said one of them. He was short, and red-faced, and clearly drunk. “You eat our food, you pollute our city with your stink. And you refuse to help the Stormcloaks.” The other man nodded in agreement.
“We haven’t taken a side because it’s not our fight.” She didn’t seem at all fearful, but there were two of them and only one of her.
“Maybe,” said the second Nord, “they don’t help the Stormcloaks because they’re Imperial spies!”
The drunk nodded, and stepped closer to the Dunmer woman. “Maybe we’ll just come out at night and follow you, little spy. We have ways to see what you’re really all about.” Both men took a step closer to her, the mouthy one weaving unsteadily. This was just about to get out of hand, Dag saw. It was quite enough.
“Hey!” she said sharply, stepping up to the ringleader, who looked at her in surprise. “I don’t like your attitude.”
He frowned at her. “You. You a dark elf lover? Get out of our city, you filthy piece of trash.”
Dag’s temper flared. She was tired, she was cold, and she was an outsider in a strange city but she wasn’t and never had been filthy trash. She must have looked angry, too, because he swayed on his feet and continued belligerently. “Don’t like it? Too bad. This is our city. OURS. A hundred septims say I can punch you back to where you came from.”
“You’re on,” she said. Bring it, you pitiful excuse for a Nord.
As short a fight as the one with Roggi had been, this one was shorter. The man was clearly out of his element, and hampered by his own indulgences as well. Dag was not in the mood. She punched hard, and it wasn’t long before he was on the ground. He gasped for air for a few moments, then pushed himself up, still belligerent.
“That wasn’t a fair swing.”
“It was fairly much better than yours, though. You lost. Give me my money.”
“Yeah,” he muttered sourly. “Here.” Dag found herself two hundred septims wealthier and, she realized with amusement, had managed to work out a few frustrations in the process. He stood swaying in place, shaking his head as if to settle his brains.
“Hey, you,” she asked. “Why do you hate the dark elves so much?”
He glared again. “They’re leeches. They take our protection and do nothing in return. High King Torygg invited them here, but he didn’t ask any of us what we thought about it.”
Dag looked at him in disgust. Really? The Dunmer’s home island of Vvardenfell had been mostly destroyed in an eruption many years back, and the continuing eruptions choked the rest of Morrowind with ash. Even people far off in Stros M’Kai knew that; the world wasn’t that large a place. Torygg, so recently deceased, had simply been decent and humane to the Dunmer; and now that he was gone all of the scum felt safe to come out of hiding, it would seem. Why High King Torygg would have asked this man’s opinion anyway was beyond her. Kings had advisors for things like that.
She watched in disgust as the pair shuffled into a brightly lit building directly ahead of her; the inn, it would seem from the noise that wafted out when they opened its door. The Dunmer woman approached her. Her voice was as elegant as her appearance, deep and cultured. “Do you hate the dark elves too?”
“No, not at all.” Look at me, madam, she thought. I’m nearly as dark as you in this pale, pale place.
“Well Windhelm’s not the city for you, then. The Nords here don’t seem to like anyone who’s not a Nord, and now that Ulfric is Jarl there’s nothing keeping them civil. But that Rolff is the worst. Every night he gets drunk and wanders around the city shouting horrible things about us.” She shook her head and walked away.
Dagnell hadn’t relished the idea of spending time in this place from the moment she’d seen the gate. Now she relished it even less, and was determined to leave as soon as possible. But first she needed to do some trading. She walked forward past the inn, and circled around the great plaza of which it was the center.
There wasn’t anything about Windhelm that appealed to Dag. Grey, cold, and clearly ancient, each part of the city was on a different level, as though its architects couldn’t be bothered to level the ground but had merely plopped new buildings atop whatever was at hand. Or perhaps there had been some great shaking of the land that caused parts of the city to subside. She had heard tales of parts of Skyrim’s far north simply falling into the sea in times long past. Some of the stairways leading from the inn ended several feet short of the ground, dangling in midair like an unfinished melody. The great stone steps leading from one level of the city to the next were worn, broken in places, partially covered over with snow piles and the accumulated dirt of centuries. Why a city the size of Windhelm couldn’t have repaired them was something she couldn’t fathom. Even if the huge slabs couldn’t be replaced, they could at least be repositioned so that a person could walk up them without risking a fall. All it would take would be some volunteers and a little time.
Everything seemed somehow weary to her, resigned, heavy with the weight of centuries and cold and decay. Past the inn was a great open gateway with plaques on either side, honoring Olaf One-Eye and Harald, two of Windhelm’s great leaders from the First Era, many centuries past. It should have been an awe-inspiring entry to what was clearly the Jarl’s palace beyond. Instead, even these great stone plaques were tired, covered in moss and worn to the point that some words were almost unreadable. Dag could imagine that this had once been a magnificent place. Now it seemed like an unwelcoming pile of rock.
She wandered toward the eastern side of the city and down into narrow, dim streets flanked by rickety stone and wood buildings that had an even more profound air of neglect than the main square. The people darting from building to building were almost exclusively Dunmer, and they all had a pinched, defeated look about them. And yet, she noticed, this was the only place in Windhelm with any color. Near the southern end of the neighborhood were businesses marked with tattered but brilliant banners, in vibrant shades of red and orange, an echo of the homeland of Morrowind from which many of these people had fled. Dag pondered going into the “corner club,” the Dunmer inn, but wasn’t sure what attitudes might be toward a Redguard woman in a place like this.
The distinctive clanking of an anvil in use caught her attention. Climbing back to the main square and following the sound down a narrow street next to the city wall, she found a small but busy market area. The smithy was tucked up against a stone half-wall next to the marketplace. The smith, an older man, was pounding away at a soon-to-be sword. Dag approached him and hoped for the best.
“Can I use your forge?”
“I see no harm in it. Go right ahead.” He then went back to arguing with a girl who was either his daughter or his apprentice, as far as Dag could tell. “Did you use my good hammer again? Damn it, girl, I’ve told you over and over; you have yours and I have mine.”
The girl rolled her eyes, barely missing a beat from her work on a piece of iron armor. “Did you look behind the forge?”
He blinked and leaned away from his anvil to peer at a space next to the wall. “Oh. Um, yes. I forgot. Sorry about that.”
Dag smiled to herself and set to work. There was a decent amount of leather after scraping down all the pelts, enough to make some armor in her size. Boots, helmet and bracers were next.
“That’s some fine-looking armor you’ve put together there,” the blacksmith noted. Dag raised an eyebrow at him. It really wasn’t. It was barely serviceable, just enough to get by with. Still, it was nice that he hadn’t simply made fun of it.
“Thanks. I needed something that fit me better than what I had on. What do you have for sale?”
She started haggling with him. While he was looking over her offerings, he nattered away about having the honor of making Jarl Ulfric’s new armor. Ulfric was the leader of the rebellion, the man who had killed High King Torygg, and his father had been Jarl of Windhelm before him. J’hall had talked a bit about him, and so had some of the soldiers they’d met along the road. He had, supposedly, “shouted the king to death. With his voice.” Dag loved a tall tale as much as anyone, and that tale was pretty tall, especially the way they’d told it. Still, she had no urge to run across Ulfric Stormcloak. If nothing else, he was a dangerous man, and a powerful one. All the more reason to wrap up her business here and head south.
The blacksmith took Dag’s old armor – not for much, but it was something. The warhammer was a trade for an iron sword and materials with which to sharpen it. A few minutes at the grindstone turned the sword into a respectable weapon; it wouldn’t even come close to her scimitars but it would cut, and she wouldn’t be worn out swinging it. A few more minutes at his workbench improved the fit of her new armor. It wasn’t her old gear, but she felt more confident in setting out again. She wanted to go south, to Morrowind, or to the southern parts of Cyrodill, where it was warm.