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HoA 04

H E A R T _ O F _ A R S O N

Ulfric has faced many years since the Great War but there is a face that has hung in silence in his mind since then. All those years later, finding that face again would draw new memories to be made in the wake of the war he waged against the claws of the Empire. And the matter of other claws that would sink into the very flesh of Skyrim itself brought its own problems, along with a mysterious stranger. The path of the future was not certain. But the fresh return of that face in his mind brought questions. Ones he felt needed to be answered.

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TW: Dragon Attack and Mayhem, Nameless Character Death, Minor Character Death

FOUR

In the weeks that followed after the Greybeards very vocal announcement of the coming of the Dragonborn, there had been increased sightings of dragons and more and more signs of dragon activity.

Places that were rumored to be home to dragon remains were stood corrected as they no longer were home to remains but living dragons as well. And Ulfric was grateful that he had sent word ahead to the forts and camps and holds under the Stormcloak banner to arm themselves better and seek better shelter if they were out in the elements.

One Imperial camp in the Rift had been burned to the ground by a local dragon and as far as Ulfric was aware, the dragon had yet to be killed either.

And then there was the rumored Dragonborn.

There was not much known about the Dragonborn himself except for the three things that all the rumors about the Dragonborn had in common: that he was a man, that he was very tall, and that he was entirely shrouded by his strange armor.

As far as anyone knew, only Whiterun had been graced by the Dragonborn’s presence, that was a fact for certain, but there was also rumors of a tall man entirely hidden by his armor going through Ivarstead on his way up the 7000 steps to High Hrothgar.

A week later, he heard that a man of that same description passing through Morthal, and a few days after was spotted in Riverwood.

It seemed that the Dragonborn was being kept busy.

From the rumors Ulfric also got to hear, the Dragonborn had killed at least two dragons in the hold of Whiterun, one in Morthal, and another near a Nirnroot farm not far from Ivarstead.

And then, as Ulfric walked the streets of Windhelm with Galmar, discussing matters of the city, there was a terrible sound in the distance to the south.

Galmar had never heard the sound a dragon could make, and his startled reaction only suited Ulfric enough to state, “Believe in dragons now?”

His housecarl skulked and huffed, putting away his weapon that he had drawn on instinct. “I’ll believe in them when I see one. Especially once I put my axe through its head.”

No, friend, I don’t think you would really want to see one, Ulfric thought.

It wasn’t long after that a guard hurried to him.

“My lord, there’s been a dragon sighted at Kynesgrove!”

Kynesgrove.

Fuck!

If there was any time to swear, it would be now, and Ulfric stepped past the gate, Galmar’s hand closing around his wrist and that was as far as he went, seeing black wings flying away from Kynesgrove and heading north, north-west of the city. That big black bastard of a dragon flew right over the mill to the west. In the south though, where Kynesgrove rested just barely in view of the city from the gate, Ulfric could see movement in the distance, a dragon circling and bringing down flames.

It was attacking something.

Or something was attacking it.

Ulfric watched on baited breath, counting the seconds in between each Thu’um that he heard and each Thu’um that he saw. For each Shout that he saw, there were two Shouts that he heard. Someone was attacking the dragon as a dragon.

Dov verses Dov.

No.

Dov verses Dovahkiin.

Dragon verses Dragonborn.

The Dragonborn was in Kynesgrove.

And then, the dragon’s flying shadow disappeared, and for a long while after, there was only one Thu’um that he heard, echoing across the landscape like a rumble of thunder in the distance.

And then there was nothing but stillness.

Ulfric held his breath, straining his eyes to try and see anything that might have been happening, but there was nothing he could see.

There was stillness though.

And if Ulfric had learned anything about dragons from Helgen, it was that a dragon didn’t stop until either everything in its sight was dead.

Or it was dead.

And with the close quarters Kynesgrove held to Windhelm, that meant that if the dragon had won that fight, it would either retreat to lick its wounds or it would turn its attention to Windhelm.

The Jarl of Windhelm stood in deathly silence, housecarl at his side and all the guards watching with the same intensity as him for a very long time.

But there was no sound other than the distant rush of wind.

No sound of wings nor Thu’um, no sight of smoke rising in the distance.

There was only the single inn and a few other small buildings in Kynesgrove, and if Helgen was any example, if the dragon had won that battle, the buildings would have been burning as well.

The Dragonborn had won that fight.

“I want a patrol to head to Kynesgrove. I want every sign of that fight observed and brought back. If there are any dead or wounded, I want the wounded cared for and the dead brought back for inspection. Immediately,” Ulfric ordered.

“You heard the Jarl,” Galmar said sharply.

And the men jumped into action, the next shift that was supposed to be sent out to Kynesgrove taking up the task and they set out quickly while Galmar and Ulfric went back to the Palace of the Kings.

Ulfric felt anxious.

The Dragonborn was so close to Windhelm, which meant that there was a chance that the Jarl might have an opportunity to meet the man of legend himself and perhaps pose the question of the Dragonborn joining the fight to free Skyrim.

It was a chance that Ulfric was anxious to try and seize.

He needed strong allies, and the Dragonborn himself would be among the strongest.

If the count was correct, the Dragonborn had now killed five dragons.

Talos only knew how many words of Thu’ums there were to learn.

The Jarl knew that a Dragonborn was supposed to be able to absorb not only a slain dragon’s spirit, but also absorb their knowledge, allowing the Dragonborn to be able to quickly master a Thu’um.

Five dragons dead and the Divines only knew how many words there were for this Dragonborn to master.

His head was spinning from how hard he was thinking about all this and he sat down at the desk in the War room, his face resting in his hand and he breathed deeply.

He remembered the ruins of Helgen.

It had been over a month since the first dragon attack, and this was the second he had witnessed, the first one from afar but it was still too close to the city that he loved.

The city that was his.

Ulfric was so nervous with anxiety from the wait to hear anything back that he could barely eat his supper, even with Galmar doing what he could to ease his Jarl’s nerves with some good mead and some short, cheap talk of old things that would have made him laugh but now only drew small, tight smiles.

And then he heard the door of the main hall open and he was on his feet quickly, seeing two men of Stormcloak colors approach, a scout and a soldier.

“Jarl Ulfric, we’ve brought back the report for Kynesgrove,” the soldier told him, the written report ready in his hands and Ulfric took it to read.

What was written wasn’t enough information though. These were soldiers, not analysts, and he wanted to know what had been found in Kynesgrove.

“Tell me what you saw,” he requested.

Two dead Stormcloaks of the regular Kynesgrove patrol, a sign of what was assumed to be a dragon fight, and a huge dragon skeleton. The details just weren’t enough. He needed to know what the soldiers had seen.

“The dragon mound, it looked like it had…” and the scout searched for words, “exploded. From the inside. There was rocks and dirt everywhere. And the skeleton…”

“I’ve never seen bones so huge, sir! Its teeth alone were as long as my hand!” the other gushed, and for a while, the two spoke only of the dragon. It was large, it was terrifying, even dead it was terrifying. And the site of the fight… It looked like the dragon had not spent much time on the ground before it had been killed, its claws had scored the ground from walking, and there was a lot of blood on the ground, and there was a spot on the ground that looked like it had been pounded flat and tight maybe from the beast’s tail. There had been some blood on the ground a bit further away from the skeleton, among the padprints of boots, but not enough to be dragon’s blood.

Perhaps the Dragonborn had gotten hurt in the fight.

The shadow Ulfric had seen had not looked like a skeleton but full of flesh and blood, and he had heard rumors that when the Dragonborn fought his dragons, those corpses were reduced to nothing more than piles of bone and skin and whatever had been the dragon’s last meal most likely.

And then, at last, the two reporting Stormcloaks spoke of the two dead Stormcloaks.

And that was where Ulfric felt odd as the scout spoke first, telling him how the bodies had been laid out on the ground, one looking like it had been bitten almost in half yet they were rested side by side like soldiers waiting to be buried, clothing straightened, weapons in hand, eyes closed. Peaceful.

Like the person who had moved them wanted to honor them as warriors.

And Ulfric found himself drawing in a breath to speak but words evaded him.

Whoever had tended to the bodies respected those men as warriors and left them ready to be brought back home looking like great heroes who fell in battle.

“Were they taken to the Hall of the Dead?” Ulfric finally asked.

“Yes, my lord. The priestess is probably down there doing her work with them now,” the soldier said.

The Jarl nodded.

“Thank you for your report. You are dismissed.”

And at the wake of their leaving, Ulfric rubbed his mouth, falling deep into thought.

Those two dead soldiers had been with the Dragonborn and they had died in the fight. One nearly bitten in half by the dragon. And the Dragonborn respected those two dead boys enough despite his own injuries to make sure they looked like proper heroes to those who found them.

And Ulfric sighed, rubbing his face. He felt sick to his stomach and he wanted answers, but answers wouldn’t be able to come unless he gave the priestess of Arkay enough time to examine the bodies.

So he took a very long bath to try to sooth his nerves and he went to bed early.

And that night, he dreamed of dragonfire and the carnage of Helgen, and woke with Galmar’s hand around his wrist, preventing him from striking his housecarl in his thrashing.

Another bath was drawn and Ulfric meditated while he soaked. He needed to be calm.

Peace.

Drem.

Su’um ahrk morah.

Breathe and focus.

He went to the Temple of Talos and prayed for strength.

And then, he descended into the depths of the Hall of the Dead.

Ulfric was quiet among the coffins waiting for the ground to thaw enough to be buried, and when he stepped into the room where the process of preparing the bodies was done, he found himself taken by the sight.

All items on the bodies had been collected and removed, leaving the two soldiers bare and cold and dead on the examination table, one with deep teeth marks that covered the meat of his ribs and his abdomen, severing one arm at the wrist and the other near the shoulder, the man’s arms settled right where they belonged and stitched back to his body so that they would be in proper arrangement for when he was to be buried. The other man looked like he had suffered burns but they were the least of the damage. What had really killed the man was the way his ribs had been shattered and turned concave. One man had been killed by the bite of the dragon and the other had been killed with a flick of the tail.

Helgird looked up to him.

“You have impeccable timing, Jarl. I just finished with our boys here.”

He nodded. “What can you tell me?”

She started with the obvious. Her little joke that they were dead, which lead to an unimpressed expression from the Jarl, before she moved onto the causes of death, followed by little details he didn’t need to know like their immediate health right before death, the state the bodies had been in when they had been brought back to her like the wounded on stretchers rather than two dead men, and that she had also found something strange.

Something that didn’t belong.

And Helgird cleared her throat before she picked up something off the table. “Both bodies had these in their mouths, put under their tongues.” And when she extended her hand to him, he picked up the two chips of stone, smaller than coins, and they were an unusual blue-white color.

He had never seen anything quite like it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“You may want to ask the Smith that, I’ve never seen this sort of material before. All I know is that it’s hard and it doesn’t belong on a body.”

Ulfric quietly nodded. “I see. Was there anything else?”

“No, Jarl, there wasn’t.”

“I will let you return to your task then.”

She didn’t seem to mind as he turned and left the Hall of the Dead, allowing Helgird to finish preparing the bodies now that she was done examining them.

Oengul War-Anvil himself was sitting at his forge on his break for a bite to eat when Ulfric approached, the smith’s apprentice staring with a look of enamor upon her face as he stepped past and greeted the smith calmly, much to Oengul’s surprise.

“Jarl Ulfric, what can I do for you today?” he immediately greeted and asked, seeming both startled and pleased by the untimely visit he was making.

“It was suggested to me that you might recognize what this is,” Ulfric said, offering to him the two small stone chips and the smith picked them up from his hand and held them out to gaze at them in the sunlight before he let out a startled breath.

“Shor’s beard! Enchanted ice!” he marveled aloud and Ulfric’s brows pinched in curiosity.

“These are pieces of Stalhrim, a material that’s only found on Solstheim. I’ve seen a weapon made out of the stuff maybe twice in my life. The Skaal are deathly protective over the ore though and I would be too. A pound of Stalhrim ore can cost twice as much as a single ingot of gold! These pieces though, they weren’t just leftovers from forging some weapon or piece of armor,” the smith explained in amazement before he held up the pieces for the Jarl to see.

And he wondered just what the smith was trying to show him.

“Look at the shape, the size. They’re the exact same, and there’s holes for them to be stitched to something. With more pieces like these, someone could make some damn fine scale armor.”

That got the Jarl’s attention.

Scale armor made with chips of Stalhrim. And if a lump of ore alone cost 200 Septims, he could only imagine how much scaled armor of the stuff would cost.

And the person who had placed these two ‘scales’ of Stalhrim under the tongues of those two dead soldiers either didn’t know the worth of the chips or didn’t care.

And Ulfric let out a breath of amazement.

“Thank you for your help, Oengul,” he finally said.

The smith just seemed grateful that the Jarl bothered to stand by the forge for five minutes and easily gave the pieces back to Ulfric.

If the Dragonborn was carrying around Stalhrim scales, Ulfric could only wonder where the man was from. Was he from Solstheim? Morrowind? Had he traveled all over? Ulfric was deathly curious about the man and he didn’t even know the name of the man. Balgruuf the Greater would though.

After all, if rumors still held any truth to them, the Jarl of Whiterun had made the Dragonborn thane of the hold in return for killing that first dragon spotted since the destruction of Helgen, which also meant that every guard in the city of Whiterun knew the name of the Dragonborn, if not the entire hold itself.

Perhaps it was time to write a message to that quiet contact in Whiterun?

No, it would be best to wait. It would be best to hold onto that resource until he really needed it, not use it for something as petty and simple as a name.

Tall, male, shrouded by mystery, and carrying scales made of precious ore.

Well, one day Ulfric would have the opportunity to meet the Dragonborn, and if Windhelm was the last major city for the Dragonborn to visit, Ulfric would be patient.

A man of that importance would find his way around, especially if he was hunting down legendary beasts like dragons. Either that or someone or many someones who might know of anyone’s interest in having the Dragonborn side with either side in the war might encourage the Dragonborn to pay a visit to the leaders of each fraction.

It was a lot to think about.

And frankly having the dragon attack just yesterday was still enough to make his head spin. And with today’s discovery of the Dragonborn’s method of showing respect for the dead, Ulfric brought those two scales back to the Hall of the Dead and told Helgird to place the stone chips back where they had been. It was how the Dragonborn had wanted them to be, and unless the Dragonborn stated otherwise, let the two men be buried with the Dragonborn’s sign of respect.

She shrugged and did as requested, Jarl’s orders and what not, she could see the logic behind it despite the oddness, and when Ulfric took himself back to the Palace, he told Galmar of the finds as well.

“This Dragonborn fellow is an odd one,” he stated flatly as he took a long drink from his tankard at supper.

Ulfric couldn’t help but agree.

He wanted to meet him.

Badly.

The next few days lacked anything of interest or of note aside from dreams of dragons instead of war and that suited Ulfric just fine. He had sent more men over to Kynesgrove to see what repairs were needed to the little settlement and he had letters to read from the captains at the different forts and camps. Any sight of dragon activity was to be written and reported back to him.

If they ignored their dragon problem in favor of their focus on the war, they would all get roasted alive by enormous flying lizards. He wasn’t certain about the movements of Imperial troops in regards to this whole dragon business but he did not doubt that General Tullius would make equal efforts as Ulfric in regards to avoiding losses of good men.

Losing men to dragons was not particularly favorable to either side.

Losing Skyrim to dragons was among the list of things he did not wish for.

And that thought followed him into his dreams on the fifth night after Kynesgrove’s own encounter.

He was back at Helgen, back in gag and binds, but instead of the Imperials and their headsman and his block, the Thalmor were feeding soldiers of the Empire and Stormcloaks alike into the horrible gaping maw of that awful black dragon, its eyes glowing red and its body a cruel twist of power, talons scoring the ground.

The heat from the beast was scorching, even without its mighty Thu’um.

And just as the Thalmor grabbed his shoulders to push him forward, a shadow flew over the square in a whisper of silence and for a moment, everything stopped. The Thalmor, the soldiers, even that black creature. All eyes turned skyward.

And then, with all eyes in the wrong direction, Ulfric witnessed a great flash of scales like shimmering sunlight streak down from the sky and slam into the black dragon with its entire body, sending that one sprawling away from the prisoners and directly into the Thalmor.

Crouched on the ground was a sleek creature with spines scattered over it shoulders and jagged scales armoring the hearty muscles at its wings, its body shifting colors in the light but all of them were tones of yellow and fire.

And then, the golden dragon lifted its head and released a great Thu’um to the sky.

Every solders binds were cut. Every solders hands held weapons.

And the black beast roared its challenge at the golden one.

And the gold one huffed powerfully, head lifted proudly, and the dragon shot into the sky with a simple sweep of its wings, the gust powerful enough to knock the Thalmor down and ground the black dragon for a moment. And when the black dragon had its bearings, it took to its wings as well.

The Thalmor were downed again by the blast, and the Empire and the Stormcloaks remained standing.

And while the dragons took their own fight high above them, the men and women of Skyrim and the men and women of the Empire stood beside each other as brothers and sisters in the Great War once more and they brought their rage down upon the Thalmor like a headsman’s axe.

Ulfric found himself fighting shoulder to shoulder besides Tullius, Elenwen herself facing off against the two and she held her own like a whirlwind of fury, wounding them both multiple times in the same amount of time it took for each of them to manage only one successful wound on her.

He watched Tullius parry an attack before she brought the general down to his knees with a cheap strike and kicked him away and the woman turned her full attention onto Ulfric, that same nasty smile she always wore when she tortured Ulfric on her lips and fear rose in his throat.

She rose her blades and he lifted his to try to block, and a fierce gust of wind descended upon them before great golden jaws closed down over Elenwen just as it landed, snatching her up and tossing her high like a child would throw an apple high into the air in hopes of trying to catch it.

Elenwen never came back down, as two dragons, one with scales like wine and white wings and the other the color of earth and rot and with tattered wings, both snatched up the woman and tore her apart.

The sleek golden dragon watched the two dragons above before turning great amber eyes with slitted pupils to Ulfric and the wounded Tullius.

And the beast sat back on its haunches, knuckles of its wings bracing it to sit tall and proud before the two leaders.

And in a low and rolling Thu’um, the golden dragon rumbled out three words.

“Su’um ahrk morah.”

Ulfric blinked in surprise before he drew in a deep breath.

“Drem, Strunkodaav. Drem, Sahqokonahrik. Yuvon hokoron fen mah.”

“What is it saying?” Tullius asked, clutching at his crippling wound.

And Ulfric translated.

“Peace, storm-bear. Peace, red-general. The gold enemy will fall.”

And the dragon almost hummed in satisfaction.

“Viing dovah ahrk bah mun. Hi fen kron.”

Wings of dragon and wrath of man. You will win.

You will win.

And Ulfric woke to sunlight on his skin and that Thu’um echoing in his mind.

And as the haze of sleep wore off, so did his memory of the dream and all he was left with was the image of that golden dragon and one fact.

That dragon did not speak as though to Thu’um came naturally.

It was like how Ulfric himself had began to speak in Thu’um. The words were there, they were known, but they didn’t feel right. It had taken Ulfric himself almost the entire time he lived among the Greybeards for the words to sift into the right spots when he spoke. Yet that dragon…

That dragon was a new speaker to the language of dragon tongue. It knew the words but saying them just wasn’t right yet.

It bothered him.

And even that fact faded away as Ulfric bathed and meditated all at once.

Peace.

Drem.

Su’um ahrk morah.

Breathe and focus.

And when he felt ready, he dressed and stepped out of the palace.

He needed to speak to the captain of the guard that morning who was currently stationed just outside the gate and as Ulfric and Galmar passed the path just by the graveyard, Ulfric heard one of the guards speaking.

“You look a little sick, are you sure you shouldn’t be at home in bed?”

“Not when ye ol’ Skyrim weather is saving my ass yet again.”

Ulfric stopped dead in his tracks with wide eyes, blinked, and backtracked.

He hadn’t heard that voice in almost two months.

And there on the streets of Windhelm stood that face.

The Altmer, Loriel Elsinlock.

Identical brother to the Thalmor aid.

The last time Ulfric had seen him, the Mer had been wearing chainmail underneath his blue merchant’s clothes and looked well enough to spit skulls despite his injuries at the hands of the Thalmor and received under dragonfire.

The person he found himself seeing this time was a tall Altmer standing on the stairs, wearing a loose miner’s shirt that was comfortably soaked with sweat that dripped down the Altmer’s neck, a dark blue merchant’s shirt folded over the satchel he carried, his golden face on the rose-gold side and misted with perspiration, and hair the color of harvest wheat swept back and tied up off his skin.

And the feverish fool was enjoying the weather.

“Perhaps you should head to the White Phial, friend, get a potion to cure you,” Ulfric commented, making the Altmer look away from the guard and his mouth quickly curved into a smile, brows rising in humor.

“If a potion could cure me, I wouldn’t be walking around in the cold to keep myself from being miserable. Good morning, Jarl of Windhelm.”

Ulfric huffed out a laugh.

“Good morning, fugitive. What brings you to the city?”

It was Loriel’s turn to laugh.

“Beauty of Dawn.”

Ulfric blinked in confusion.

“That was the song I was singing the first time I saw you. I was just past Radiant Raiment’s and you were leaving the city after having just killed Torygg. The guard who opened the gate for you was Roggvir. He used to pay me six Septims to sing Ragnar the Red when he had just gotten off shift every Tirdas. It always put him in a good mood. He’s dead now, just so you know. Because he opened that gate. And until the Thalmor are kicked out of Skyrim, I can’t go back to the Bard’s College. I bet the Thalmor confiscated all my stuff too. And visiting Imperial-sided holds will be troublesome.”

Loriel was smiling the entire time he told him all these details, and Ulfric got the feeling that he was less than happy about the latter half of his statement.

Every detail was a further punctuation as to what a problem Ulfric’s rebellion had caused for the elf.

Every detail behind the misery the Mer currently had to face was Ulfric’s fault.

And Ulfric drew in a breath.

“Windhelm is far from being Solitude, but if you can find it in yourself to tolerate the city until the war is over, you are welcome here. Just don’t cause any trouble,” Ulfric told him, his last statement holding a faint note of teasing.

Loriel gave a huff of a laugh.

“One measly Altmer bard on the run in Stormcloak country, what a story to tell my brothers,” he commented with a cheeky grin. “I’ll see what mayhem I can create without too much effort.”

And the Altmer gave a playful two-fingered salute to him before he walked off to possibly explore the city.

Ulfric found himself amused at the presence of the wanted fugitive in their midst.

A bard.

If the elf knew the Beauty of Dawn, Ulfric wondered what other older-era songs he knew.

It would lend some more vibrant variety to the people.

And variety always offered a means to make more people happy.

Ulfric would certainly have to wait and see how things would go with the elf’s added presence. There weren’t many Altmer in Windhelm, just the general goods merchant woman and the owner of the apothecary shop, so the addition would be noticeable to the people but only slightly. The Altmer seemed to be the biggest minority in Windhelm but they still lived better than both the Dunmer in the Grey Quarter and the Argonians who weren’t even allowed into the city.

“That elf was too comfortable with you,” his housecarl said gruffly.

What Galmar really meant was that he wasn’t comfortable with how casual the Altmer had been with him.

“That’s the elf I told you about. The one who escaped Helgen with Ralof.”

And Galmar frowned.

“Lucky elf, I’d say. Looks like a peasant.”

Loriel probably was in comparison to the rest of the soldiers.

“He’s can swing a sword as well as he can sing a tune.”

And Galmar scoffed.

“As long as he stays out of the way, I don’t care,” he stated, and Ulfric felt himself absently shrug before returning to the Palace of the Kings.

And Ulfric continued about his life, not worried about the presence of the elf in Windhelm, but he found himself staying absently aware for mentions of him.

At the end of a week, the bard had made himself rather popular, singing in the inn during the times the normal bard was sleeping and resting her voice, occasionally the two performing duets for the amusement of the patrons of the tavern, and he also heard whispers among the guard that the Altmer bard was doing performances in the Grey Quarter on certain nights and even going down to the docks some afternoons and singing for the Argonians while they worked.

Over all, Ulfric could simply note that the bard really loved to sing.

And had quite the collection of songs to sing.

The song that he sang the most though was Three Hearts as One, the song of the Ebonheart Pact.

Ulfric had heard the story perhaps once or twice in absence in his youth but he was not incredibly familiar with the tale or the history behind it. But he did know that it was about the three different races who rose together in arms in the Three Banners War, calling their alliance the Ebonheart Pact, Nords fighting beside the Dunmer and the Argonians, and that in the war that came, the army that had developed the biggest foothold, before cooperation between the armies was found to defeat a greater evil than each other, had been the made by the cooperation of the people of Skyrim, Morrowind, and Black-Marsh.

And with the song, Loriel had stirred the hearts of the Argonians and the Dunmer, and Ulfric found himself being approached more frequently about how the two races were treated.

But there was still concern in Ulfric’s heart.

The reason why he kept the segregation had not been out of hatred or disdain for either race, but because the Argonians and the Dunmer had more recently been at each other’s throats than they had been allies, and Ulfric wanted to avoid bloodshed in the city should those bad-blood feelings still linger.

But the rousing of spirits Loriel had done had given the Jarl of Windhelm something to think about.

And then, three weeks after he came, Loriel wandered out the gate of Windhelm wearing a cloak over some cheap leather armor he had bought from the city’s blacksmith, and he disappeared.

They had not spoken since that very first day that he came to the city.

And from what he overheard from the guards was that the gold bard had told the grey bard that he was going off adventuring for a while and promised that he would be back before she knew it.

But when one was out adventuring, there was a tendency to lose track of time.

And with the bard being so little known outside of Windhelm itself, Ulfric got to hear little news of the bard and his adventures from word of mouth from visitors to the city or even guards.

And in his absence, Ulfric found that things went back to the way they had been before he even came, ignoring the fact that the greyskins and scalebacks still had their newfound vigor from the bard which made the aquatic dockworkers and the dark elf laborers work harder though.

So the bard had turned out to be good for business after all.

To the Jarl of Windhelm, that was good enough for him.

And just when Ulfric’s thoughts were starting to dwindle away from their dragon problem due to the lack of reports, the Dragonborn came to Windhelm.