Chapter Text
The Horizon Brave had been moored in Windhelm for over an hour, and Hermann was having a miserable time. The wind was freezing, the bay stunk of greasy smoke and fish, and every single human lurking out on the docks was eyeing him as though he was about to turn rabid, rip off his robes and run screaming for the blood of their women and children. It was incredibly trying on his travel-worn temper; the initial voyage out from Blackmarsh had gone smoothly enough, but once he had hit the halfway point across the Sea of Ghosts and Skyrim was sitting on the horizon, the mood on board had swung into a low.
He shifted his pack, wincing at how the leather straps bit through his cloak, fur-lined jacket, and robes straight into his shoulders. The additional clothing was heavy and uncomfortable for someone so used to far more humid and warm climates, and anyway were completely ineffective – he was shivering like mad, every gust of wind seeming to spear right through him. The incessant rocking of the boat was deeply unpleasant as well. An Argonian getting seasick seemed laughable in theory, but Hermann spent the majority of his time in the water, not on it – all a sensible person had to worry about in the water were unexpected twists in currents and large, hungry animals, not the completely unbearable turbulence of a wind-tossed surface.
“Pardon me,” he said finally, grabbing a deckhand who had been trying to skirt his way around Hermann and avoid eye contact. “We’ve been moored for some time and I still haven’t been allowed to disembark. Is there a problem?”
“No,” the deckhand said, letting a pregnant pause sit between them and looking pointedly down at Hermann’s hand; Hermann let him go with an affected pleasant smile, withdrawing and clasping his hands in his sleeves like a monk.
“Well, that’s good to know,” he said. Silence spiraled awkwardly, broken only when Hermann cleared his throat. “So…the reason we haven’t disembarked…?”
“Harbormaster’s got some issues with passengers,” the deckhand said abruptly. “Might be having to reroute to Dawnstar.”
“What for? The dock is seven feet away. I could jump to it.”
“Maybe you ought to,” another deckhand muttered. Hermann looked at him, chagrined; the ship’s crew had been blithely indifferent to his presence at best the entire trip, and the sudden switch in mood was unsettling.
“Have I offended you somehow?” Hermann asked. The second deckhand simply kept walking, though the first found a glimmer of awkward sympathy.
“Argonians aren’t exactly popular in Windhelm,” he said. “It’s always a slog trying to get your lot processed.”
“My lot?” Hermann repeated icily. “You know, you all seemed perfectly affable having me aboard when I paid to be taken to Windhelm. And lo and behold, here we are. I see the gangplank has already been lowered, so I can happily remove my presence and we can all be on our way.”
The deckhand had the grace to look embarrassed, turning away from Hermann and gesturing uselessly at the docks.
“It’s just that…the harbormaster, sir,” he said lamely. Hermann gave an impressive snort, adjusting his pack and picking up the staff that leaned innocuously by the crate he had been sitting on.
“I think I’ll just be going now,” he said. The deckhand’s embarrassment turned to slight alarm as he followed behind Hermann, a hand hovering just over his shoulder as though debating whether to grab him or not. The Argonian’s lurching gate was slow; the effort to walk on the deck had been a sore trial for him, the old injury in his leg giving him nothing but trouble as the boat swayed and pitched beneath him. The staff had been even more invaluable than usual, though he had had to be careful not to trip people with it in the close quarters.
“You can’t just waltz into the city, sir. You’ll be turned out on your ear,” the deckhand said, edging anxiety. Hermann clicked his teeth in annoyance.
“Lucky for me I have no intention of staying in this glorified pile of rocks then,” he muttered. He pushed through a gaggle of port officials and the rather harassed-looking captain, who had been in quiet, irritated discussion with a Nord with skin so weathered by sun and wind he looked positively leathery.
“Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me,” Hermann said, wending his way towards the gangplank. The Nord caught his arm roughly.
“You’ll need to register-”
“I’ll do no such thing, as I have no intention of inflicting myself on your city. Unhand me. Right now.”
The Nord’s eyes widened and he let go, surprised at the sharpness in Hermann’s tone; it seemed likely he wasn’t used to being talked back to by Argonians in any capacity. Taking brief satisfaction in the small victory, Hermann stepped off the ship and took a moment to enjoy the feeling of solid, unmoving earth beneath his feet again. His gloves made the grip on his staff tenuous and he held it more tightly as he noted the Nords watching him go – there were more than a fair share of Argonians and Dunmer giving him passing looks as well. He walked stiffly past them all, climbing the slippery black stone stairs into a back passage worming through the city, set on finding the front gate.
It was somehow even colder in the inside. The corridors were dank and smelled of unnamable, unpleasant things; Hermann nearly tripped over several abandoned mead bottles and more than once had to catch himself from slipping on hidden slicks of ice. The butt of his staff rapped sharply against the worn flagstones; Hermann felt half-blind in the murky environment after spending the whole morning being dazzled by the harsh sunlight glancing off the water. He rubbed at his eyes periodically, grumbling to himself.
“My lot,” he muttered. “What about my lot. Never seen an Argonian before? Plenty of them slaving on those bloody docks. What am I going to do that’s so offensive, start shedding my skin and laying eggs everywhere?”
There was a susurrus of conversation drifting towards him from a branching corridor that lead out into the open air. Hermann walked towards it as fast as his sore leg would allow, relieved to be out of the rank tunnel and back into fresh air. The relief was short lived as another gust of wind rushed up to greet him, clawing at his eyes and setting a deep, miserable ache in his sinuses. He groaned, putting a hand over his face and wishing he’d thought to bring a hooded cloak. It was supposed to be late spring in Skyrim, for the love of the Hist; if this was what spring was in this Nord-infested province he had no desire to experience winter.
Conversation lulled as he left the tunnel, walking stiffly across the snowy plaza. He gave the inn belching smoke from a high chimney a longing look, briefly tormenting himself with the idea of a blazing fire, warm food and a place to sleep that didn’t smell of brine and too many people packed into a small, unventilated area like the ship’s hold. Hermann reasoned that the inn wouldn’t be a pleasant spot to stop anyway, not with the anti-Argonian sentiment floating around so obviously. He shifted his pack on his shoulders again, took a firmer grip of his staff, and turned away.
The road was empty. Hermann had left Windhelm several hours ago, asking a cheerful Bosmer and his decidedly less-cheerful wife directions towards proper civilization. Winterhold was approximately two weeks away going on foot, and several days by carriage. However, yhe stable’s lone carriage was currently out with other passengers, and wasn’t expected back for a week. Hermann had briefly toyed with the idea of purchasing a horse for lack of better options, but the Bosmer’s stables were unhelpfully empty of the beasts.
“There’s a war on,” he’d explained apologetically as Hermann ground his teeth and tried to keep his tail from lashing in useless frustration. “Sometimes the Jarl….requisitions.”
“That can’t be legal.”
The Bosmer had merely shrugged.
“Jarl’s hold, Jarl’s laws. Sometimes you have to flow with the current rather than struggle against it.”
“How poetic.”
And so, Hermann found himself walking alone on a road that, while uneven and isolated, was at least growing warmer. The Bosmer stable-master had even given him a map, pointing out locations both safe and potentially life-threatening. It didn’t do Hermann’s mood any favors to find the latter was far more common than the former. Skyrim, he decided, was a place that would make or break a foreign visitor within the first twenty four hours of their stay. A lone traveler limping his way through forested roads was easy pickings for several different breeds of unpleasant things that would love to see him ten different kinds of dead .Luckily enough Hermann knew how to handle himself. He hardly counted himself as fearless and would gladly avoid skirmishes if he could, but he was quite confident in his own ability to survive.
The day was waning from late afternoon to early evening when he found his first way-post; the hunter’s hut was tucked away a short distance from the main road, with a cold fire pit that hadn’t seen use in at least a fortnight. The Bosmer had marked it on the map for Hermann helpfully, remarking the shack had a decent roof and sturdy walls at the very least. Hermann ducked inside the hut, looking around. His lips curled over his teeth in disdain at the drab, dusty room, hardly more than four paces wide. It would have to do; the next stop would take another full day of walking to get to, and his leg was aching with the promise of worsening pain if he didn’t rest.
Sitting down on the ‘cot’, which was little more than a webbing of hempen rope stretched between four stout posts in one corner, Hermann eased the pack off his back with a sigh of relief. He set his staff on the wall beside him, leaning it so that it was within quick and easy reach. He rooted through his pack, taking out a book, a tightly-wrapped loaf of traveler’s bread, and a lump of hard cheese. A brook trickled musically behind the hut, and for that he was grateful; he’d drunk all his water several hours ago.
“Hardly the best start to the endeavor, is it,” he said to himself sullenly. “Squatting in a hunter’s hovel in the middle of nowhere.”
The reception in Windhelm had soured his attitude towards the entire venture, though it wasn’t very venerable and important to begin with. The whole thing had been set off with the arrival of a water-stained, crinkled letter from an old acquaintance of his father’s, requesting access to research materials. The chance to visit and play courier to the College of Winterhold had been an opportunity he’d jumped on - his father was away on business in the Empire and would be away for months yet, helping with…well, Hermann didn’t quite know or care. Lars never included Hermann in any of his own work; the rare opportunity for Hermann to free himself of Blackmarsh and do a little fieldwork on his own had been too tempting to resist.
Hermann gnawed at his poor excuse for a dinner, eyes narrowed as he stared at the rough planks of the hut’s walls. Play courier. The idea had held immense appeal while he was stuck in Blackmarsh, but now that he was here in Skyrim the silvery veneer of Good Idea had effectively worn off. The longer Hermann sat on his rope cot, the more he realized just what his situation truly was. The artifact in his pack was ancient, heavy, and of absolutely no importance to anyone but a Dwemer scholar. A scholar like himself, actually, though he admitted freely he had no idea what the damn thing was. For all he knew it could be a complicated child’s toy.
He peered into his pack and gave the oilskin-wrapped package a cursory look. The weeks of travel by road and sea hadn’t damaged it, though somehow Hermann was certain it would take a lot more than being bounced around in a rucksack to harm it. He set his pack aside to serve as an eventual uncomfortable pillow on the cot, picking up his book and squinting in the waning daylight as he ate. Night birds and crickets soon began to sing as the sun slid behind the pines and out of sight, leaving the world in a cool gloaming. Hermann read until the words were undiscernible; he put the book away with a sigh and stood, stretching. The ever-present ache in his leg had faded to its usual bearable levels, and he found he could hobble out of the hut with little issue. He looked around speculatively; the woods were quiet but not threatening with it, the world not holding its breath as some terror from the wilds crept up on unsuspecting prey.
Satisfied with his apparent safety, Hermann nonetheless knelt down and traced a sharp claw in the dirt. The runic wheel was a simple one; he had drawn it a thousand times in practice and several times in practical use. A simple, deeply effective deterrent to nighttime visitors – one step on the wheel and it would ignite instantly, immolating the victim. Hermann had never actually had one of his wheels detonate before and didn’t look forward to the theoretical day when it would; he didn’t relish the idea of someone dying at his hands. But it was either him or the bandit, animal or whatever else lurked in Skyrim, and he wholeheartedly chose himself over the lot.
The wheel glowed with faint red threads of light by the time he’d sketched the last symbol, murmuring under his breath – intention of fire, of light and heat, of burning flesh and melted armor. The air shimmered faintly around the wheel as it glowed in completion, going dormant as he stood stiffly and hobbled back into the hut. Hermann settled back down on the rope cot, head pillowed on his lumpy pack, and eventually fell asleep.