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I think I'm going to have to make this a tad longer than the 3 chapters that I'd envisioned.
Same as the previous chapter, some names and places are property of Bethesda Game Studios, since this tale is set in Skyrim.
So if you're read that one, the previous chapter, I mean, I won't need to explain what Khajiit are.
Redguard are humans coming from a place known as Hammerfell. They're perhaps the most naturally talented warriors anywhere. They tend to have darker skin than the others and it has a bit of a reddish tone to it. Their name in general stemmed from a mispronunciation "Ra Gada" is a term out of their ancient tongue which means 'warrior wave'.
In this, a Redguard woman is getting well and truly tired of doing something that she'd never sworn to do. The person that she does it for is a character in the game.
Some name stuff:
Ysolde = Isold = eesold
Do'Tanaht = dough-tan-ought
Do'Mu-Jinn = dough-moo-gin
Those ones are spoken quickly.
This one piece will pick up in the start of the next one.
Which will be ... uh, busy.
Group um, sex busy.
Whoa.
0_o
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She stopped at the edge of the forest, pausing to catch her breath and to look ahead. She saw little, other than the meandering old road as it wound its way across open and slightly rolling plain land. There were mountains in the distance and off to her left, she saw the city of Whiterun.
That was where she was headed – if she could manage it.
She looked back, able to see through the trees back to the last large bend in the roadway. She would have groaned quietly at what she saw there only a year ago, or even two. It had been more than three years and so she had no groans left anymore.
This had to end sometime. Why not here? Why not today?
They were coming.
She looked ahead again and ran on, dashing from one bit of cover to the next, never going near the road, since in most places, one could see ahead a good way from it. She was so tired of having to do this. She just wanted to walk the road like any normal person had a right to.
Crouching behind some stones, she looked at her quiver, wishing there were more arrows than she knew that she'd see in it. Seven arrows, that was all. After that, she'd be down to using her blades against Alik'r warriors armed with scimitars.
There were five of them back there.
She sighed.
This time.
It had gone on long enough. She wasn't bound to this task and it wasn't her duty and never had been. She'd only agreed to try and anyway, there was nothing left.
She'd been doing that for all of this time.
She saw a place where a stream ran near the road, and from the nearest point all the way to that place, there were tall reeds and long grasses. She hoped that would let her get close enough while remaining undetected.
Seven arrows to kill five men and she knew that only the first would fall dead for certain.
After that, they'd all be in motion and the chances of attaining one-off killing shots dropped to almost nothing.
Not the odds that she would have preferred.
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He stood in the water washing himself. It took him a while, since it always did, being the way that he was. He didn't know what it was like to be someone like the others that he saw around here, the Nords and the Imperials and like that. He only knew that it probably took them a lot less time standing in cold mountain stream water to get clean.
He was alone here. Well, that wasn't true; it only felt that way a lot of the time. He was here to help guard the caravan like the others and to do whatever work the master needed done. He was being given a chance and he was determined not to fail.
But that didn't make it any easier.
He was a Khajiit, the same as the rest – but he wasn't the right kind, strictly speaking. The master had let the young niece that he'd been taking along on his journeys go a while back and so he'd needed someone to take up that slack.
He was that someone.
The Khajiit who traveled the known world were almost exclusively Cathays. He'd learned that most of the people who ever saw the Khajiit thought that there was only one kind, which was incorrect. It was just that the other types tended to remain in Elsweyr, where they'd been born. He wasn't one of those, not all the way, anyway.
When he'd been born, his mother had trouble passing him and the labor had gone long.
Long enough to have taken more than two days and in that time, the phase of the moons which favored the chances of the kitten being born a Cathay was passing.
So he'd been born not quite a Cathay.
He was a Cathay-raht, alike to the Cathays in many ways, but a little different.
Different enough to be thought of by many of them as slow, for he tended to be quiet and when he spoke, it was with care. Different enough to ...
Well, he'd been a large kitten anyway. He was larger and heavier than any Cathay alive. He only thanked the gods that he'd been given a good form to live in and not just a large, soft one.
Three hundred pounds.
He looked down as he scooped up a little more water. He saw his arm, quite usual to him. But the muscle there on that arm was wider than the waists of most pure Cathay females.
He sighed. All of his life, he'd had to live in a place where there were only Cathays. All of his life, he'd been the butt of jokes and laughter. The one time that it had gotten to him and exceeded his store of stoicism, there had been blood.
One fatality, two maimings and one completely crippled fool who now had to beg at the side of the road for the rest of his life.
He'd been cast out over it and for someone as large and easily identified as he was; the life of a thief wasn't a promising one. It had been the master who had taken him and given him work before things had gotten any worse.
But there was a downside and that was the sheer amount of food which was required to fuel his body. The others, pure Cathay all of them, just didn't see that it held any worth to them. The only one who cared at all about him was his cousin Dyla.
His train of thought came to an end when he noticed the ripples.
Looking over, he saw that there was something or someone in the reeds not far off. His ruminations had kept him still for a few minutes and he guessed that whatever or whoever this was, he'd escaped their notice.
He almost smiled at the thought. That didn't happen every day.
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She waded slowly, feeling her way with her toes along the muddy bottom, up to her knees. She could just hear the men approaching, laughing and joking as they came, dumb and happy, none of them knowing that at least two were going to die in the next little while and that was only if it all turned to shit.
Which she knew was the most likely outcome here.
She knew she could absolutely count on shooting one fatally and killing one with her blades. Everything else was a wild chance, and people like her – they never like wild chances.
It was a little bitter to her to have to think of. All of this time, spent mostly running her ass off to head these mercenaries off one group at a time, as soon as she'd become aware that they were out there searching. And just on the day when she'd decided that it was as far as she'd go, she was looking at the fair to just about certain probability that she'd die here. For what?
Someone who didn't really care, never had cared, and as long as she did her informal job, that someone never would give a thought over her.
She listened to them come for a moment longer, understanding their banter, since it was spoken in her mother tongue.
Mercenaries.
How many times? How many groups had she killed off single-handedly?
She almost snorted. Clowns might be a better term. The money offered must surely be good, since they kept on coming.
The wall of reeds before her parted and she tensed, wishing that she'd had her head in her game more than this. She saw someone and looked up.
And did nothing as her mouth began to drift open all by itself.
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A female, he thought.
The kind called Redguard by the look of her. He stared a little because he had to. She was in the water and since she'd been quiet about it, he guessed that there must be some reason. He saw that she had some light armour on under a dark and open cloak and he saw the bow on her back.
Was she hunting? Not actively, or the bow would be in her hand, likewise the swords on her back there, the hafts sticking up.
He'd seen the odd Redguard here, but not one like this. She ...
He'd never even thought of the females here that he saw now and then, the ones who came out of the gates of the towns that they camped near to look at the goods and maybe buy something. Most of them just looked at him like he was an unspoken threat and kept their distance.
He knew when that happened and he made sure to make himself a little scarce at those times, not wanting to hurt the master's chances of making a sale. He could hear the master's voice in his head even now.
"Come come, see the wares that I offer. Do not mind the large one. He is only here to protect you as you look. Nothing will happen to you while he is near, Ri'Saad gives you his word. Come and look."
She was ...
Not what he'd have ever thought of as someone who could ever appeal to him – and yet she did.
Her hair was dark, also her skin, just as his hair and fur was. Her eyes, so foreign to him and yet he was fascinated. He saw markings on her face, white ones which looked faded and he liked them for the way that they added to her beauty.
He thought of that suddenly. She was beautiful to him.
How could that be?
