#argis x male dragonborn

[monstersandmaw]

I just finished binge reading Footsteps In The Snow and I wanted to say that I loved it so so much!

Skyrim was my first real video game experience and you captured what I've always enjoyed about the game so well. And your writing was just so fun to read!

I know you mentioned you might rewrite it soon, and if you do I'm looking very forward to it!

Thank you so much!! I’m so happy to hear that, thank you!! I’m glad you found the same kind of joy I felt on playing it reflected in my writing :). Lein is very dear to me, and Skyrim was also my first video game. Not sure where I’d be today without it, if I’m honest!

I hope to be able to work on it some more soon.

[monstersandmaw]

I hope this is okay to ask but in Footsteps in the Snow when Lein talks about the forsworn camp he is going to and Argis freaks out it seems like a big deal but it isn’t brought up at all yet? Is it something to do with the Hagraven marks he bears on his back or perhaps the death of his sister? Sorry if this has already been asked of you or if you plan to do a reveal later but it’s been driving me nuts since my first read! Thank you Ghostie!

*excuse me while I just squeal and wibble into a pillow with happiness that someone is asking about these two!*

(I did just write out a reply but my phone/app glitched into my notifications halfway through and I lost it.)

I don’t think that (unless there’s a comment on AO3 that I’ve forgotten about) anyone has asked about that moment in Markarth when they don’t know each other very well. The three incidents you mentioned are related, and Argis will be telling Lein about it on the next leg of their journey, which starts in chapter 17.

Thank you so much for asking about these two. It always makes my heart indescribably light when people care about these two enough to send an ask about the story, whether it’s a tiny question like ‘would Lein like hot chocolate’ or something like this which warrants a deeper dive that I can’t give you without spoilers.

[monstersandmaw]

Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter Six

Lein and Argis bond a bit more over a campfire breakfast, Lein and Argis go hunt a dragon down, and Lein gets characteristically over-excited and does something stupid. Argis is left, once again, to pick up the pieces...

<---- Previous Chapter | Table of Contents

Lein inhaled deeply, slowly, when he woke. Light pressed against his eyelids, hard, sharp, and much too bright. He shuffled. And then yelped in horror as something cold slid down his neck and into his shirt. Flailing, magicka boiling to life in his hands, he sat up with a shriek, expecting to see perhaps a frostbite spider standing over him, mandibles dripping thick ropes of icy venom.

Instead he saw that his sleeping bag was covered in a layer of soft, cold snow. Breathing hard, he closed his eyes and laughed hoarsely at his mistake, sweeping the remaining snow off his neck and shoulders and shivering. It was only as he heard the low rumble of another laugh nearby that he looked over and saw Argis crouched beside the campfire, prodding the logs and rotating a couple of fish that were spread over a stick above the flames, flavoured with what looked like tart snowberries.

“Morning,” he chuckled, eyes glinting with mirth at his thane’s cold-weather antics.

“Fuck off,” Lein retorted sleepily, which only made Argis laugh harder. “Urgh. I was sure it wasn’t going to snow this far over.” He suddenly remembered the wet clothes which they had left to dry beside the fire the previous evening, and groaned. “I bet the clothes are frozen stiff,” he grumbled.

“No,” Argis said brightly. “I shook the snow off them this morning before it melted, and finished them off when I stoked up the fire. They’re all dry now.” He eyed Lein’s torso, covered only by his thin linen shirt. “Speaking of… you should probably put some more clothes on before you freeze.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, catching the leather trousers as Argis tossed them over from the fireside.

It was only as he laced his fingers together and reached up into a languorous stretch that he recalled waking in the night with Argis’ hand holding his. How long had they stayed like that? Had Argis awoken to find them linked together? If he had, what had his reaction been, Lein wondered, as his gaze flitted back to the housecarl.

Argis frowned slightly. “Thane?” he asked when he found him staring. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” he said again, his voice cracking in the middle of the word. He coughed, shuffled, and squeaked as a bit more snow fell off the sleeping bag into his lap, and then got out in a rush.

Argis blinked when he saw him standing there in just his shirt and his underwear, and Lein wondered if he didn’t take half a heartbeat too long to look away. Could it have been the glow of the fire adding colour to his cheeks? It was hard to tell at that distance.

Lein stuffed his legs into his warm, softly-lined leather trousers and bundled some woollen socks onto his chilly toes. As he snuggled into a fur-lined jacket, still standing on the top of his bedroll, he looked about for his boots.

“Here,” Argis grunted, throwing them over too from where they’d been standing beside the fire.

As he slipped his feet into them, he hummed gratefully at the warmth. “Mmm, thank you,” he smiled. “Toasty feet. Nice start to the day.”

Argis’ expression to start with was difficult as ever to read, but it rapidly broke into a smile. “Hopefully this’ll help too,” he said, gesturing at the cooking fish with the stick he had in his hand.

“Smells amazing. I’m surprised you haven’t got an orderly queue of bears and sabres lining up for service.”

Argis only laughed. “Should be done by now. You hungry?”

“Starving,” he said, working out the crick in his spine with another feline stretch. “And stiff.” He exhaled with a grunt and asked, “How are you this morning?”

“Same as you, I think,” he grinned as he hoisted the fish off the fire and slid them both onto a little wooden platter. Digging out two forks from his bag, he handed one to Lein as the smaller man sank down cross-legged beside the fire like a Khajiit.

“Well, we don’t have to go so far today,” he smiled. “We can even split the journey to Morthal, so long as you don’t mind another night in the snow.”

Argis shook his head and took another bite of the slightly charred fish. “I don’t mind the cold,” he said.

“I wish I didn’t,” Lein said miserably, rubbing his thighs with his spare hand. Being left-handed, and with Argis holding the plate between them on his right, Lein had to reach right over his legs to stab the fish on their shared platter, but he didn’t object. The rocking motion put him momentarily closer to Argis each time he reached for the plate. “Gods, Argis, this salmon is good. I can’t believe you’ve been up fishing already, unless you charmed it off that fisherwoman back at Crabber’s Shanty…?” He nearly added another rather more inappropriate comment, but he bit it back. It was too early for that.

Argis’ smirk made the scars on his left cheek stretch, his blind eye crinkling softly in the corner. “That what you think of me, eh?” he asked, turning to face him fully.

“Well,” Lein said casually, casting his eyes up to the soft, silver grey sky, “It is the middle of the morning now… You let me sleep a long time. You’re a good-looking guy… Who knows what you’ve been up to since dawn?” He laughed, showing him he was being playful, and Argis took up the tone.

“Well!” he retorted right back, his voice deep and gruff as usual, though he spoke with a mock-affronted tone that made his hazel eye glitter, “Here I was letting my little princess of a thane sleep in, while I went off and braved the icy waters of the river to catch you some breakfast. And all you can do is assume I went off to work my charms on a poor defenceless woman in the wilderness.” He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. “What do they teach you thane school?”

Lein tipped his head back and laughed. It felt so good to laugh like that. The sound of his gentle baritone filled his chest, his head, and the whole campsite like a bard’s song in a high hall. “Ah, Argis,” he chortled, “I knew you’d be good for me the moment I saw you.”

The corners of Argis’ lips twitched again, but he didn’t add anything.

“Seriously though,” Lein said. “Thank you for this. It’s delicious.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “And I was starving this morning too. I thought about doing something with one of those mudcrabs, but really you need time and space and a big old cook pot for that.”

“Maybe you can cook some for us when we get to Windstad,” he said, impressed. “There are lots of the fuckers in the boggy bits down by the shore. And the Nine know neither Valdimar nor I can cook half as well, and I have no experience of Iona’s cooking.”

“Iona?”

“Val’s fiancée,” he said. “They’ve been engaged for forever, but bless them, they wanted to wait til I was there to have the ceremony, would you believe it?”

Argis smiled knowingly but kept his thoughts to himself.

Lein finished the last of his salmon, crunching the crispy, salty skin between his teeth with particular relish, and leaned back, hands splayed on the bedroll he was using to sit on and keep his clothes dry. “They’re going to have the ceremony in the Temple of the Divines in Solitude.”

“Sounds fancy,” Argis said.

“Ho boy,” Lein nodded. “Yeah. Iona’s father is one of Jarl Elisif’s advisors, and stinking rich. Iona’s his youngest daughter, so he doesn’t really mind her marrying the housecarl of a lowly thane like me, though I think he could probably be a bit happier about Val’s employer.”

Argis frowned. “Why?”

Lein snorted and tilted his head back to stare up at the sky above them. It was one of those still winter days where the sky was endless, but veiled in a layer of high, silky cloud, and the air was crisp and fresh, and full of the smell of more snow. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that I don’t exactly conform to what they expect of a thane in Solitude. I mean,” he went on, “I do answer the summons… mostly… unless I’m in a different hold or something, but I don’t give a skeever’s arse for politics, I refuse to engage in any Stormcloak or Imperial business, and, I think perhaps my greatest flaw is that I always seem to use the wrong fork for my starters…”

“Shocking,” Argis deadpanned, and Lein couldn’t contain his little snort of laughter.

“I know. The thing is, I know how to behave, but I just get such a kick out of watching them get their underwear in a twist, I can’t help myself. I think that’s why I don’t get invited to things very often any more, which is fine by me.”

“So,” Argis asked as he scraped up the last few flakes of his salmon, “What do you spend most of your time doing then?”

Lein blinked and then turned his mismatching eyes on Argis. “I guess I haven’t really had the chance to show you what I do, have I? What with falling off mountains into necromantic rituals and taking so long to recover…”

His housecarl shrugged and set the plate down on the frozen ground.

“I’m not normally so shit at surviving, I promise.”

Argis laughed, and muttered, “I’ve seen your scars, thane. I can tell that.”

Lein felt the slight warmth of a blush in his cheeks. “Well, when I’m not giving in to my own overly-excitable nature, I actually do some work. I owe my allegiance to a couple of guilds, I guess, so I do jobs and contracts for them when they call on me. I’m lucky enough to have quite a lot of wealth saved up and stashed away so I don’t technically need to work a normal job all the time.”

Argis blinked.

“I know, I dress like a tramp. You’re not the first person to be surprised to learn I’m actually quite well off.” He snorted and left it at that. “I studied at Winterhold for a while, so I also offer my services as an enchanter. I have spent quite a long time with the Dawnguard too.”

“Vampire hunters.”

He nodded. “It was a few years back when the attacks got so bad that you couldn’t travel round even the major cities at night without tripping over a master vampire and his thralls. People were getting scared, and I was free, so I offered my services and my blades to the Dawnguard. They’re decent people, good fighters, and we eventually managed to stop that lunatic, Harkon, from blotting out the sun.”

“Harkon?” Argis paused, frowning. “That was you? You were the one who stopped him?”

Lein’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m surprised you heard about that,” he said. “Most people just think we wiped out a massive coven. Few people know Harkon’s name or what he’d planned.”

“You know how word gets around the guards,” he said. “I was in Markarth’s City Guard for years. We heard about the vampires, and knew to watch out for the Volkihar ones especially. We heard the Dawnguard had defeated their leader, Harkon. Even heard that the Dawnguard was running around with a tame vampire of their own… that true?”

“Serana,” he said, a warm fondness filling his voice at the thought of her. “Yeah. She… She’s pretty unique.”

“Oh?” he asked, his voice sounding somehow different.

Lein chuckled. “Yeah, I mean, if you told me before I found her in Dimhollow that I’d be adventuring around Skyrim with a 4000 year old woman by my side, I’d have told you someone had slipped some skooma in your tea. And then if you’d told me that said 4000 year old woman didn’t look like some shrivelled up corpse but in fact was quite possibly the most intelligent and beautiful woman ever to set foot on our great continent, I would have laughed you out of the room, but…” he shrugged. “It’s all true.” He ran his fingers through his white hair, combing out the tangles in it as it fell loose to brush over his shoulders. “And I’m such a scholar, I had a real hoot asking her all about what Tamriel was like before she got sealed away in the crypt. It was fascinating.” He pushed a hand through his hair one last time and tied it half back with a leather cord. “And even I’ll have to admit that travelling with a woman had it’s benefits.”

“Oh?” he asked a second time, his voice now tinged with a hint of… of what exactly?

Lein huffed a nervous laugh. “You wouldn’t believe the doors a beautiful woman can open for you, in all sorts of circles. We had a lot of fun.” He sighed and realised he should probably correct any stray thoughts Argis was having about him and Serana, alone on the road together. Even if it meant the possibility of having to admit, finally, that he was interested entirely and exclusively in men. He wasn’t sure Argis was ready for that, but if the time had come, then maybe it had come. “She said she liked travelling with a man who never showed the slightest bit of interest in her… you know… that way. She said it was nice just to have a friend.” He risked a quick look at Argis’ face, but it was intense and impassive all at the same time. Lein made a mental note never to play the man at cards. “And she was right. It was nice to have a friend. I usually spend so long on my own I forget how to use my voice, and I don’t mean all that dragonborn shouting nonsense.” He sighed. “Maybe you’ll get to meet her if we swing by Fort Dawnguard sometime.” He paused. “She’s sassy. You’d like her.”

Argis smiled, but it didn’t carry his usual warmth. He looked away and prodded at the dying fire absently with his poking stick. “You talk a lot about travelling, but you ever think about settling down?”

“What?”

“Well, you said your housecarl’s getting married…” He didn’t look away from the tiny flames dancing on the charred logs.

Lein snorted. “I have thought about it,” he said glumly. “But I lead a… a somewhat ‘nomadic’ lifestyle to say the least. My partner would have to be prepared to sleep rough on the roads for nights on end between backwater inns, and trail around after me while I clear out crypts full of draugr and risk my life battling dragons on mountaintops.” He fiddled with a toggle on his boot, and studiously avoided using the words ‘she’ or ‘wife’. “Not everyone can wield a sword, or wants to put themselves in danger like that all the time, and if they didn’t want to, they’d have to rattle around one of my houses alone, perhaps for months at a time, wondering if I’m ever coming back. That doesn’t seem like a fair ask to me, and no one I’ve ever been with has seemed to think so either.” He released the toggle and stood up with a grunt. “Not that I’ve tried the idea out on many people.”

Without looking at Argis, he grabbed the platter and their two forks from the ground beside him, and stumped over to the waterfall to rinse them clean. Argis took them from him when he was done, and began to pack up the camp. Lein took himself off to splash his face in the waterfall and to answer nature’s call in private.

By the time he returned, Argis had doused and scattered the fire, and packed everything up, including Lein’s own bedroll. He’d strapped it already to the bottom of Lein’s bag. Standing beside his thane’s bag, he looked up, scowling, when Lein returned.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, “You look like you trod in a falmer turd.”

Argis’ frown shattered into a snort of laughter, but it soon returned. “What the hell have you got in here?” he said, lifting Lein’s pack with one arm and a loud grunt. Lein allowed himself the small pleasure of watching his huge bicep work to lift the heavy bag. “And why didn’t you give me some of it to carry?”

Lein shrugged. “It’s only what I usually carry on the road for a long journey like this one.”

“This weighs easily a hundred pounds,” Argis blurted, clearly looking at Lein’s slight figure and wondering how the hell he did it. “That’s, like…”

“Almost as much as I weigh?” he countered playfully. “Gods, Argis, I know I’m small, but I’m not that small. And I’m not that weak.” He swallowed. He was probably just shy of a hundred and forty pounds. On a heavy day. After a big meal.

Argis blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said in a rush. “I just…” His scowl deepened. “You can damage yourself carrying this much weight on your shoulders.”

Lein knew that. He’d seen Imperial soldiers forced out on marches carrying 100lb packs with no support, and who ended up being unable to use their arms for a while because the nerves in the shoulder and neck had been compressed. “You’ll notice the waist straps I’ve got on it,” he said sharply, pointing at the thick support straps which did up around his middle. “I didn’t leave home yesterday, Argis.”

Again, the housecarl looked abashed. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean that you don’t know what you’re doing. But you can ask me to carry stuff for you, you know? Mine doesn’t even weigh half that.”

Lein toyed with the idea, and faced with those puppy-dog eyes, even if one of them was milky white and stared blindly almost through him rather than at him, he found it hard to refuse him. “Fine,” he said. “Look, if we pick up anything else today, you can carry it. Deal?”

Argis clearly knew when to back down. “Deal.”

Lein smiled. “And you can lift it up for me to put my arms in,” he added. “Save me wrenching my back out trying to get it on.” Argis only rolled his eyes at that, but he heaved it up and helped Lein get the straps over his arms. “Right,” Lein said as he adjusted the weight of it on his back. “Now. We have a choice.” He looked over his shoulder at the mountain towering above him. “Up there is a word wall, I can feel it, but it’ll be guarded by a dragon, and it’s a bloody long hike up to Eldersblood Peak. I checked the maps before we left.”

The hazel eye that stared back at him looked wide and full of awe and excitement. “A dragon?” he breathed. “You’re actually going to seek out a dragon?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, if I want to learn new word in their language, I have to find the word walls.” He paused and then added, “But we don’t have to go now if you don’t want to. We can go straight to Morthal.”

“You kidding me?” he exclaimed. “I’d love to!”

“Great,” Lein grinned, setting off at a decent pace after one final look around the campsite to check they had everything.

As they made their way along the riverbank, cutting back up the hillside through a band of tall pines, the mountain seemed to grow higher and taller over them. Argis made him discuss every conceivable weakness in the dragon, and demanded to know what felt like the hundred best ways to bring one down. By the time they were half way up, Lein had exhausted himself with explanations, and had fallen into a puffed silence. The pack was perhaps a little on the heavy side, and, fit though he was, he still hadn’t quite regained his usual trail stamina after his stupidity in Markarth.

A column of wood-smoke drifted up into the clear sky, and as they stumped up the slope to a flattened out corner in the road, a tattooed wood elf sat crouched on an upturned barrel beside a fire, the carcass of a freshly-slain frost troll clearly waiting to be dealt with. He smiled warmly as they tramped up the path, and Lein took the chance to stop and ask him what wildlife there was about. Sweat rolled down his temples and made his hair stick to the back of his neck. He was regretting wearing his fur jacket now, but couldn’t be bothered to take the pack off to remove it.

“Oh, I think there’s another frost troll higher up,” he said cheerily. He had to be easily the friendliest elf Lein had ever met. Normally his kind were sullen and haughty. Perhaps the fresh air had done this one some good. “And I think there’s another lurking in the cave at Cold Rock Pass.” Frowning, the dark-haired Bosmer added, “You going all the way to the top of the peak? There’s a dragon circling around up there you know…”

“Yup,” Lein smiled, enjoying the look of surprise on his face.

The elf looked from Lein to Argis and back again. “You gone bloody mad?”

Another laugh rippled out of Lein and he shook his head. “Quite possibly,” he chuckled. An idea struck him and he undid the straps of his bag, slinging it gently to the ground. Taking off the fur jacket, he rolled it up and opened the top of the bag. Pulling out a bottle of Nord mead, he offered it to the elf. “Reckon it’s probably been a while since you made it into town,” he smiled. “Here.”

“For me?” he asked. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” he smiled.

“Thank you, divines smile on you, friend,” he said. “This is most welcome.”

“I’m glad.” Wishing the hunter a good day, Lein hoisted the pack back up onto his shoulders, feeling cooler now without the jacket, and the pair left him and continued the winding climb up towards Cold Rock Pass.

Crouching suddenly as an icy blast of wind brought the pungent stench of a frost troll, they both hovered a moment, listening. “Thane,” Argis hissed behind him. “You hear that?”

“You smell that?” Lein replied. He nodded ahead of him and they saw the creature, cavorting about in the seemingly random way of frost trolls, apparently just enjoying the snow. “You think I can get it in one?”

“With your bow, and the way you shoot, yeah,” Argis smiled.

“My honour’s on the line then,” he chuckled. The laugh echoed a little in the tiny passage in the rocks, but the frost troll was too busy farting away in its little section of the path to notice. Lein did bring it down in one shot straight between its piggy little eyes, using his beautiful, supple bow. He saw the way Argis eyed it, and as he straightened out of his crouch, he muttered, “We’ll have to get you one like this.”

“Can’t have me embarrassing you with my little hunting bow?”

“Absolutely. I mean,” Lein said, delicately stepping around the bleeding carcass, “What would they say at court?”

Argis’ laugh boomed out, but it didn’t last very long. “Though… you know,” he murmured, “I’d like one, don’t get me wrong, but… I probably couldn’t afford one…”

Lein halted so suddenly that Argis careered into the back of him with a short ‘oof’ of surprise.

“My thane?”

“I meant I’d have to get you one as a gift,” he said. “I’d never force you to spend your own wages something like that, Argis.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Lein chuckled, shaking his head. “When’s your birthday?”

“Not for a long time,” he said. “Just had it, back in Last Seed.”

“Wish I’d known,” he sighed. “Yule gift then maybe,” Lein said, more to himself than to his housecarl.

“Please,” Argis murmured, “Look, you don’t have to get me anything, really…”

Lein knew that tone. He’d made him uncomfortable again. He sighed. “Think of it as being able to protect your thane better if you’ve got better weapons?” he said hopefully, turning gracefully and putting on his sweetest expression, smiling as he watched Argis’ discomfort melt. “I won’t bring it up again though,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got a dragon to slay.”

The air got colder and colder the higher they climbed, and, pausing on a rock to grab a mouthful of water, Lein put his jacket back on. Reaching the mountaintop wall was a long slog, but when Lein felt the tug of the wall at its strongest yet, like a second, pulsing heartbeat in his chest, he held his hand up to Argis. “Take your pack off. We’ll collect them afterwards. You'll need to be able to move around properly, and maybe dive out of the way… Try and land as many hits as we can if it’s still sitting on the wall when we get there. They like to perch up on the top of them, and you can usually deal some damage while they’re still asleep.”

Argis nodded, looking serious and apprehensive, following behind his thane as they crept forward up the last set of stairs. Behind him, Lein heard the housecarl’s sharp intake of breath as the dragon came into view, sleeping, just as Lein had said it would be, atop the word wall. “By the gods. It's huge.” It was. But it didn't look any bigger than anything Lein had faced alone.

The dragon sat perched on the curving monument, dozing in the freezing blasts that whipped and gusted around the peak. “Frost dragon,” Lein whispered, squinting at the scales glimmering like ice and the enormous wings folded softly by its side. “Good, she won’t like fire.” She was a beautiful thing to behold, and Lein felt that familiar lancing regret in his chest as his bow creaked softly and he took aim. They'd both coated their arrows in a poison which would drain the dragon’s magicka, and while Argis’ hunting bow was powerful, it would be Lein’s daedric Flamekiss that would do the most damage.

“These crosswinds are gonna be a bitch,” Argis muttered as he held the bow effortlessly at full draw, waiting for Lein to loose first.

Nodding, Lein asked, “Ready?”

“As I'll ever be.”

Lein’s arrow sank itself straight into the dragon’s sleeping left eye, while Argis’ shot tore through the muscle at the shoulder of the dragon’s wing. “Nice,” Lein cried as the dragon gave a scream and lurched upwards into the air. “Watch out for that breath. It’ll give you hypothermia in minutes if you get caught in the full blast.”

Enraged by the intrusion and the loss of one eye, the dragon circled the peak a couple of times, screaming and howling her defiance, and each time she swooped close overhead she was forced to rear up again into the snow-filled sky, faced with a small volley of arrows from the two men. Blood spattered down, heavy and red, into the snow from her wounds, and they largely avoided her icy breath by ducking behind the stone columns. Once, Lein got caught in the open, but he countered the dragon’s shout with a fire breath of his own, negating the effects of the dragon’s blast, and he thought if dragons could express surprise, perhaps he saw a flash of it on this one’s face as she got an answering shout yelled back at her.

The fire-bow proved deadly, and on her fourth pass, the dragon lost the strength from her tattered, blood-streaked wings, and came crashing down to shake the frozen earth, powerful jaws snapping and long whip tail thrashing like a bullwhip.

“Stand back!” Lein yelled desperately as Argis got too close to the tail, but before he could reel backwards, the long spines caught him full in the chest. His armour bore the brunt of the force, but he still flew backwards through the air, landing heavily against a stone buttress twenty feet away. “Argis!”

The housecarl staggered and lurched to his feet. His bow was nowhere to be seen, but he still had his greatsword strapped to his back in its scabbard, which he began to draw.

Lein turned on the grounded beast with a snarl, feeling his ability to shout restored, and unleashed a fiery blast at her, which made her whine and cringe before snapping her dagger-sharp teeth shut right in his face. Foul breath, laced with needles of ice, rushed from her open maul, but Lein unsheathed the ebony sword from his belt and in a fluid motion, rammed the blade up into the still-open mouth. A long fang sank deep into his bicep, but he wrenched his blade free before the felled dragon’s head could twist and snap the blade in two with the force of its fall.

Staggering, with blood running down his arm into the snow, Lein ran to Argis. If he'd suffered a concussion, this exposed peak was not the place to stay for long.

“My thane!” he exclaimed in alarm at the sight of the blood on Lein’s arm, painting his hand bright red and dotting the snow in a trail of scarlet behind him. “You're hurt. Quick, get back to the bags. You need a potion.”

“Are you alright?” Lein asked, ignoring the searing pain in his arm. “She knocked you flying like a bowling pin.” The sword suddenly clattered to the stone as the strength went from the muscles and his hand started to go numb.

“I’m fine,” Argis grunted. “Just winded and a bit bruised. I was lucky not to hit my head. Stay there.” He rushed away and returned a few moments later with a huge potion, the red glass marking it out as a healing potion. Lein was glad he always used the same bottles each time, since the man couldn’t read the delicate copperplate writing on the side of the bottle.

Lein drank it and felt the heady rush as the herbs and medicines did their work. As he offered the bottle back to Argis, his hand froze half way through the gesture. “What?”

Argis’ eyes were wide, staring at the carcass of the dragon behind them on the uppermost platform of the peak. In the rush of making sure his housecarl was unhurt, Lein had entirely forgotten about the fact that the dragon’s soul would bind with his in a maelstrom of whirling, burning light and colour. Before he could warn him or explain to Argis what was happening, the roaring grew in his ears until he could see only rippling light, surrounded by a vortex of noise and light as the dragon’s anger and power, its strength and will, became one with his own.

When the storm passed, Lein staggered and gasped, but remained on his feet as the fleeting dizziness passed. It had never become easier. The greybeards had said it would, but each time he absorbed the soul of a dragon it made him feel sick and weak and lightheaded.

“Was… Was that… Did you…?” Argis stammered when it was all over. For once, he hadn’t made any movement to help his thane. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to make himself move.

Lein nodded and watched as Argis’ gaze slid from his thane to the body of the dragon behind him.

“Shor’s bones,” he cursed.

Where, only a minute before, there had been the bloody body of a frost dragon, still adorned in shimmering blue and silver scales, now lay empty grey bones and sightless eye sockets. “Yeah,” Lein said, his voice a harsh croak. “Show’s not over yet though,” he grinned weakly. “Come on.”

Warily walking with him, perhaps half a pace behind, Argis followed Lein to the word wall. “Can you hear that too?” the housecarl asked, unnerved.

Lein nodded. “All the walls contain words in the ancient dragon language. Words of power. What you're hearing is that knowledge reaching out for me.”

“Do I need to… stand back or something?” he asked, sounding ever more uneasy.

Chuckling softly, Lein shook his head. “No. Actually,” he amended, “I have been known to pass out after learning some of the more powerful shouts…” His mismatching blue and brown eyes skimmed the words, and he shrugged. “I should be ok with this one though. It’s a shout to disarm your opponent.”

“Handy,” was all Argis could muster in response.

Lein shrugged. “Some people are more resistant to it, and I don't know all the words to the shout yet. Still,” he said, stepping into the semicircle of the word wall and feeling the first few cords of connection already forming to link him to the ancient knowledge of the dragons, “No harm in expanding one’s vocabulary, right?”

With a wry chuckle, he closed his eyes and opened his hands, opening himself up to the rush of new knowledge and power. The connection was made, the bond forged, and the yelling voices of a thousand dragons pounded against his eardrums. He felt the cry tear itself from his throat, but never heard it. His knees buckled and he lurched to one side, catching himself on the chisel-carved wall before he fell.

The voices went quiet, and his vision went black.

Breathing hard, he let the adrenaline course through his body, filling his muscles until he felt like his skin was itching on the inside. Recovered moments later, he pushed himself off the wall and turned back to Argis. He took one look at his housecarl’s astonished face, and let out a little laugh. “You've gone paler than me,” he snorted. “Come on, now the show’s over. Let's find out what treasure that little lizard was guarding, and head back down, shall we?”

It took Argis a while to fall into step behind him again, but Lein didn't push it. It was a lot to take in the first time. Casting his housecarl a sideways glance, he smiled. The big Nord was staring at him with a mixture of awe and apprehension on his scarred, tattooed face.

Lein knew that look. He'd seen it in villages and towns the land over, any time he felled a dragon and claimed its soul where there were witnesses, they all wore that dumbstruck, fearful expression. Usually it meant they left him alone, but occasionally the children, and sometimes the adults, would crowd around him, firing questions at him a mile a minute, demanding to know how he did it, if he was could do a shout for them, and if he was going to use the Voice to shout Ulfric Stormcloak out of the kingdom.

Lost in thought, he almost missed the chest tucked away beside the wall, but, cranking its heavy lid open, he saw an ebony shield, a little glass dagger which crackled with energy, a pair of plate gauntlets, a sapphire, and a purse of gold. Pulling the shield out, he held it up to Argis. “You fancy this?”

Argis’ eyes went wide again and he bit his lip. “Yeah,” he rasped, “I mean, if you don't, that is…”

“Can't stand shields,” he chuckled, holding it out to the other man. “I get that they're useful and all, but I'm so clumsy with one. And usually they're too heavy for me anyway.” As if to emphasise his point, he grunted with effort as he held it in front of him. It dipped as his arm shook, and Argis laughed, taking it up easily and sliding his hand into the straps.

“Feels good,” he said. “Nice balance…”

“Then it's yours. You want these gauntlets too? Otherwise I'll sell them and the dagger when I get the chance. Won't make that much, but it’s not to be scoffed at.” As before, he divided the gold in half, and, yet again, the act seemed to take Argis by surprise. He accepted it with the same uncertainty, but Lein just grinned at him.

The cold began to bite into his skin despite his furs, and he shivered.

“We should get off this exposed peak,” Argis commented, eyes lingering on the way the snow drifted and whipped around the area, gusting over the tops of the walls. “Weather’s closing in.”

They slung their packs back on, bundled up against the cold, and left Eldersblood Peak behind them. Lein glanced back and watched the wall disappear into the swirling white snow. The temperature was dropping fast. “You’re right. Storm’s coming.”

Cairns topped with ragged banners flapped and cracked in the wind as they wound their way down the mountain path. Wind roared and moaned between the rocks, and particles of ice lanced through the air. Argis slipped on an ice-glazed stone and landed hard on his backside with a grunt, and a little while later, Lein would have done the same, had he not steadied himself by snatching for a sharp piece of rock beside him. It tore a gash in his palm, but he’d healed it with a spell before Argis could even reprimand him for not paying attention to where he was going.

Lein was glad he’d decided to leave the bones where they were. He reckoned he’d schlepped enough dragon bone across Skyrim to recreate the skeletons of half a hundred of the beasts, and he wasn't in need of the cash the bones would bring at a city trader’s either. He noticed how Argis had avoided the skeleton altogether as they'd left the platform, and he couldn't blame him. There was a strange energy to all places that were linked to the dragons, and even those with no magical gifts could feel something.

Rounding a rocky bluff, they caught the winter wind full in the face, cruel shards of ice slicing at their cheeks. Argis gave a soft grunt, turning his face away, while Lein actually let out a yelp as one struck him in his blue eye. Turning away, he rubbed fiercely at it, cursing.

“You alright?” Argis asked, automatically stepping across to shield him from the worst of the wind while he stood with his shoulders hunched, complaining.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Just got some in my eye.” As he turned to resume their progress, he caught sight of a crack in the rock. “Cold Rock Pass,” he murmured, a mischievous grin kindling on his handsome, wind-burned face. “Wonder if there's treasure inside. Wanna find out?”

“There's probably nothing but a frost troll in there. You sure?”

“Yeah, come on,” he smirked. “Unless you're all ‘adventured out’ after the dragon…” Whether it was the lingering adrenaline from the fight, or the head-rush from learning the shout, he wasn’t sure, but he capered off towards the opening like a lamb through spring grass.

Chuckling, Argis followed him more carefully to the entrance of the pass without complaint. They quickly learned where the cave got its name, discovering that it was quite possibly colder inside than outside, with thick sheets of glistering ice coating the walls and floor. There was, however, the sound of water splashing from further ahead.

Sacks of old flour and vegetables, preserved and frozen solid by the ice, stood in a little pile just inside, and he noted a corundum ore vein to his left as he snuck up a short slope into the larger cavern inside. The stench of troll burned his nose and he lifted his bow from his back once more. The troll never saw the arrow that killed it, and it went down with a crash and a bellow that echoed around the walls like a shout in a temple. Nothing else moved in the cave, and Lein straightened confidently, returning the bow to its hook as he slung his pack off to explore the cave with more freedom.

Despite the fact that his teeth were chattering, his mood was high and bright as he flitted around the cave, exploring the corners and looking for stashed treasure like a squirrel after a nut. In no time he had found a chest with a coin purse and some refined malachite, which he stuffed into his pack, and as he turned away, he saw the body of a bandit lying on the thick ice beside a gushing waterfall. Heedless of any danger, he stepped out onto the ice and crossed to the corpse. The bandit was frozen solid, and as he turned it over, hoping to find some lock picks as he'd snapped a couple of his last ones, he heard the ice give a deep, sonorous crack.

“Lein, get out of there,” Argis called the moment he heard it. “The ice isn't going to hold you and that body. Move!”

But as he dropped the stiff corpse and tried to spring for the stable ground of the rock where Argis stood, he felt the world dip beneath him, and with another crack like breaking bone, the ice gave way, plunging him into the water of the pool beneath him.

Argis lunged at him with a bellow, but missed.

The pool wasn't deep, but the cold bit deep into his bones, and his lungs stopped working instantly. Fighting against the pain, the water burning his skin like acid, Lein flailed hopelessly. His feet caught the bottom and he pushed upwards, hands reaching, jerking, up to where Argis was kneeling on the edge of the rock, stretching out his own hand. “Come on!” the housecarl thundered. “Reach!”

Lein didn't feel his fingers catch Argis’ but he was hauled from the pool and was up on the frozen rock before he realised it. Gasping and shaking, he fell like a landed fish at Argis’ feet. I am such an idiot, he thought. Why do I never think anything through?

Argis’ brain was mercifully thinking more practically, and he said, “Thane, you're going to need to get out of those wet furs. If you don't, you'll die. You’ll freeze to death” He dragged Lein up out of the half-frozen puddle he was lying in, and began to delve into his thane’s pack for some dry clothes.

Lein couldn't feel anything other than pain. Well, perhaps there was an undercurrent of shame beneath it all, but still, he was overwhelmed by how much it hurt. His muscles cramped tight and his lungs spasmed. He didn't notice that he'd stopped shivering.

When Argis saw him lying there, immobile, hardly breathing, lips blue, he swore and fumbled to remove the heavy, waterlogged fur jacket Lein had been wearing to keep the wind and snow out. With his torso naked, his scarred skin bare and pale as the ice walls around them, he felt no difference. Unable to sit up, he let Argis stuff his arms into a linen shirt and then into something else that was far too big for him. His leather trousers were a battle to get off, and Lein cringed as the backs of his bare thighs touched cold stone for a moment. The touch hurt like he’d touched hot iron. He thought he heard Argis apologise, and then he said, “Thane, you'll… You'll need to undress… You can't stay in wet… um…”

But Lein couldn't move, every muscle was locked up.

“Fuck,” Argis hissed, “I'm sorry.”

Lein wasn't able to feel anything, and he closed his eyes, wishing the pain would stop. Perhaps a flame spell would warm him? He tried to conjure some fire in his hand, but at a sharp cry of alarm from Argis, he lost concentration and the magicka fled. Whether it was from the effort of trying to wield magic, or from the energy his body was trying to use to warm him up again, Lein wasn't sure, but he felt his mind go blank around the edges, and he tipped back into exhaustion without complaint.

When he woke, he felt cold wind on his face again, and a strange, lurching sensation, like being on a horse. He cracked his eyes open and found he had his chest pressed against the soft weave of a shirt. “It’s too cold to be wearing that,” he tried to say, but it came out only as a mere, “Too cold.”

“Almost there,” he heard as a deep, rumbling response.

“Argis,” he whispered. And then he began to shiver. His shivering gained momentum, and shortly he was shaking so violently that it became spasming. He heard Argis swear again, and tell him to hold on.

Woodsmoke. The sharp, rich smell of woodsmoke filled his mind and he heard a shout, followed by an answering rumble from Argis. He didn’t catch what words were exchanged, but soon he was being bundled up inside a warm, dark tent, the soft folds of a thick bedroll engulfing his quivering body. There was the hum of more conversation, and then a soft sigh and a shuffle in the shadows beside him. He thought he heard Argis whisper, “Forgive me,” before he became aware of a delicious warmth behind his back and a pressure around his waist.

He nuzzled into it, letting the heat soak into his skin, and then he drifted off again into dark oblivion.

Chapter Seven

[monstersandmaw]

Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter Two

Thanks for your interest in Chapter One! In this chapter, Lein and Argis spend a little time together, getting better acquainted, before Lein accepts a contract from Lisbet and disappears off on his own to track down a statue. And almost gets himself killed. 

Warnings for some violence, and one hell of a night terror for Lein at the start.

Table of Contents | Previous Chpt. 

Lein woke in the dark with a scream that ricocheted off the dressed stone walls of his bedroom. Adrenaline coursed through his arteries, searing the inside of  blood vessels like frostbite venom.

He had no idea where he was, or even who he was, and all that lingered in his mind after waking was an overwhelming sense of terror. Terror and raw power. The power which surged in him came from the blood of the dragon flowing in his body, and from the souls of all the dragons he’d slain since that first one outside Whiterun nearly five years ago.

All that power seemed to come with a terrible price. His sanity.

“Thane,” a deep voice rumbled insistently from a small pool of warm light. There was a single lit candle on the shelf near his bed. His eyes found it before they found Argis’ face, but when they did, Lein never wanted to see another sight as long as he lived. The copper which flecked through the hazel of his right iris was mesmerising. Warm as the burnished-gold statues of Dibella which adorned homes and temples alike, soft and twice as inviting, Argis’ right eye brimmed with concern. His left was a white, blank canvas, staring blindly at him. Lein felt like it was drawing him in, absorbing all the terror, drawing it out of his body, stilling him, quietening him. When Argis realised Lein was staring at it however, he turned away slightly, shielding him from the full sight of it. “Thane?”

Breathing heavily, still shaking violently, sweat rolling down his temples and tracking between his shoulder blades, Lein swallowed, beginning to come back to himself. “Argis, I’m sorry,” he hissed, fighting to remember how to breathe, let alone speak. “I’m sorry I… woke you. Please, go back to… to sleep.”

“Here,” Argis said, and it was only as he released Lein’s shoulders that he realised Argis had been holding him upright in one huge hand. Lein swayed at the absence of his touch, but Argis was pressing a dwemer cup into his hands in a heartbeat.

It was cool, sweet water, and the gesture struck Lein deeply. “Thank you,” he croaked, trying to take the cup from him. His hand shook so badly he couldn’t hold it steady, and he said, “Set it on the table. I’ll have it in a minute.”

It took him only another few pounding heartbeats to realise that Argis was actually kneeling at his bedside, and that he was half-naked. His enormous chest, slashed with just a few claw marks and scars, practically gleamed in the half light of the single candle, but what made Lein weak at the… well… everywhere, was the way his shoulders curved into his enormous biceps. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And he had seen some sights.

Not only that, but Argis was there for him. All that raw power and potential aggression were focused not on an act of violence, but a gesture of compassion. It was enough to make Lein’s lip tremble.

And that was when he knew he had to get it together. More accurately, it was as Argis blinked and shuffled backwards half a pace that he knew he had to get it together. He was making the man uncomfortable, and they hadn’t even spent twenty-four hours as thane and housecarl.

Lein wrestled his shivering body back under some semblance of control and rasped, “Thank you, Argis. I’m fine. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure I’m sorry,” he managed to grin.

Argis snorted suddenly, and pushed himself upright, using the bed for leverage. “I’m sorry for intruding. I thought…”

“It’s alright,” Lein laughed softly. “I know I scream like a little temple virgin when I’m having a nightmare. I’m sorry.” Lein lay back on the covers and closed his eyes, feeling exhaustion sweep though his whole body like a rip tide.

Argis couldn’t help the laugh that rippled out of him, and he set the cup down on the drawers beside his thane’s bed as he stalked towards the door of the master bedroom.

“Thank you, Argis,” Lein called after him without looking up. The sheet still stuck unpleasantly to his body, but he ignored it.

He didn’t see Argis glance over his shoulder, frown slightly, and then nod, but he did hear him wish him a good night. He had no idea of the time, but he couldn’t have been asleep that long. Perhaps he might even get a few decent hours’ rest.

When Lein emerged the next morning, groggily shouldering open the heavy door like a frost troll emerging from its lair, Argis was already up. He had been toasting a couple of slices of bread on a long toasting fork over the fire, and had just piled them up onto a platter with some fresh butter when he noticed his thane. He bobbed his head and smiled. “Good morning, sir,” he smiled. Lein couldn’t help but notice how he kept his blind eye turned away from him as he approached.

Lein was wearing the loose fitting robes he liked to use when enchanting weapons, and since he’d brought back enough loot to make his poor borrowed horse’s back groan, he intended to spend the morning stooped over the enchanting table, staring into the depths of the crystal sphere. It would be exhausting work, but he could get nearly three times the price for enchanted weapons, so it would be worth it. He just hoped he wouldn’t freak Argis out too much on their first full day together. Nords hated magic on the whole, and he was worried he’d pushed it to the limit by heating the bath water for him yesterday.

He nodded and smiled, and opted for a simple, “Morning.”

With a great sigh, he flopped down into a chair beside the fire and leaned his head against the back rest. After another long inhale, he turned his brown and blue eyes on his housecarl. “Argis?”

“Aye?”

“Will you tell me a little bit about yourself?” He could tell from his accent that he had spent much of his life in or around Markarth, but other than that, there was little to discern about the man.

“Me? Nothing much to tell, sir,” he smiled. It was an empty smile, but hardly less friendly for being so. “Born in the Reach, served the Jarl in his palace guard, now I serve you.”

Lein frowned, and Argis sighed. He knew Lein wanted more than that, but Lein could see the big man wasn’t a sharer.

“Alright,” Lein said gently. “Well, look, I know I’m not like your average Markarth thane. I wasn’t born in a castle, and I don’t wear fancy clothes… My mother is a Skaal, and my father was a fur trader who used to sail between Windhelm and Solstheim. I’ve basically spent my life on the road on my own since I was ten.” He didn’t watch, keeping his eyes on the fire, but he could feel Argis’ expression widen from interested to softly slack-jawed. “I don’t know what you were expecting from a thane, and I’m sorry about the scene last night, but whatever you were expecting, I’ll bet my last septim it wasn’t a goofy looking fucker like me.”

Argis concealed his snort artfully behind a small cough.

“As long as you don’t do anything to disrespect me or my name, you’re free to do as you please here. I said it yesterday, but come and go as you like, just tell me if you want to leave the city for a while so I know you won’t be here.”

Argis couldn’t have looked more stunned than if Lein had slapped the housecarl around the face with a dead slaughterfish. “Sir?”

Lein sighed. “I mean it. I’m not here to lord it over you, Argis. I’m honoured that you’re prepared to dedicate your life to me when you don’t even know me yet.”

Argis gave a soft chuckle and then bowed his head. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.”

“And you don’t have to call me ‘sir’ all the time. Just ‘Lein’ is just fine. “ He stretched and grinned. “That’s not to say I won’t be grateful if you bring me breakfast every now and again, but you’re under no obligation to do so.”

Argis’ lopsided smirk reassured Lein that his humour was well received, and the huge warrior held up his plate as if to offer it to him, but instead he said, “This toast… took me a good ten minutes to make, and it’s perfect. No way I’m giving it up without a fight.”

Lein’s belly-laugh ricocheted off the stone walls of his new house and he waved a hand at him. “As you were, soldier,” he chortled. “Who am I to demand your hard-won toast from you?”

The housecarl snorted again and took a long drink from a dwemer cup on the table before tossing an apple at Lein and smiling. “Here.”

“Oh wow, Dibella be praised,” he sneered with sarcastic humour as he eyed the sour-looking green apple. “I must have been a good boy to earn such favour.”

Argis laughed again, a rich, husky sound, and Lein smiled back. He cracked the tension from his neck, bit deeply into the apple, and stood up.

“Well, I’m going to be in there, enchanting some weapons,” he said jabbing a finger of hate hand holding the apple towards the room with the arcane enchanter.” Don’t panic if you hear loud bangs or smell strange scents.” Argis frowned curiously, but didn’t look overly alarmed, so he explained, “I swear, the shock-damage enchants smell like ozone and lavender; it’s gorgeous. Much nicer than the ones that fortify stamina, which come out every time like pickled chaurus eggs. No idea why, and there’s apparently nothing I can do about it.” He shook his head and took another bite of the apple as he slouched towards the room where the enchanting table sat with its skull looking silent and about as inviting as a gravestone. At the threshold he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll shut the door, but feel free to interrupt at any point.”

Argis looked both fascinated and horrified, but nodded and turned his attention back to something more mundane, namely his unfinished toast.

Lein had been in the enchanting room for nearly two hours when the bronze door creaked open and Argis peeked nervously around the edge. His gaze took in Lein’s sweating figure bent over the table, a beautiful daedric bow lying across the onyx surface, wrestling with a tricky enchantment. The procedure wasn’t exactly complicated, but Lein had decided to use a black soul gem and a double enchantment on the bow, and it was his eighth enchantment that hour. Sweat rolled off his temples as he murmured the binding under his breath, and his arms began to shake. A wordless shout of frustration boiled out of him and he raised his hands, forcing the energy from the soul gem to bind with the daedric bow, and as the spell took hold on the object, energy began to whip around the room, and the intricately inlaid surface of the table lit up once more.

Argis’ eyes widened, and he froze, keeping perfectly still while Lein worked. When the enchantment was complete, and the soft spiral of energy had stilled, Lein picked up the bow and carefully turned it over in his hand. He nodded and gave a hum of satisfaction, but the instant he set it down, the weakness washed over him and he clutched the table and swore.

“Dibella’s tits,” he hissed, and then caught sight of Argis. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Did you need something?”

“No,” Argis murmured. “I… I’ve just never seen… Are you alright?”

“Fine. I probably bit off more than I should have done for one morning, but I’m glad it’s all done. I’ll take it all to Ghorza this afternoon and see what I can persuade her to give me for it.”

He cast his odd eyes at the pile of weapons which crackled and tingled with energy, but he suspected the Nord wasn’t perceptive enough to register the magicka.

He wiped his brow and licked his dry lips. “My mouth is dry as a hargraven’s pussy after all that. Any chance there’s some ale or perhaps something a little stronger kicking around?”

Argis seemed amused by his humour, and tried, badly, to hide it. He jerked his head over his shoulder and said, “Fresh shipment of Black-Briar Mead came in this morning while you were in here. I think there are even some Black-Briar Reserves in there… other than that, there’s the standard Nord Ale.”

“You know what, a mug of water first, and then some mead sounds amazing.”

“Normal or reserve?” he asked as Lein followed him shakily out into the main living area again. When Lein didn’t respond, he looked around, and in three huge strides, he was at Lein’s side. “You alright?”

The room was spinning. Lein knew he should have taken a break halfway through, had a drink and a scrap of food, but he’d pushed on through. “I’m fine,” he hissed as he lurched for the bookcase to his right. “I just… I shouldn’t have spent so long in there. Stupid fucking mage,” he scolded himself. “I always do this. I always…” the room continued to spin, and he breathed, “Oh dear,” in surprise as his knees folded.

Argis’ strong hands looped under his arms and he lifted him to his feet, bearing his weight as he walked him to the chair beside the fireplace, one arm hooked beneath Lein’s arms. “Here,” he said nervously. “I’ll… get you some water.”

“Thank you,” Lein murmured as Argis turned away. “I swear I’m not usually such a weed,” he laughed hoarsely. “You promise you won’t breathe a word that your dragonborn is really just a little wilting wallflower?”

Argis halted, the cup halfway between him and Lein. “So it is true?” he asked in hushed tones.

Lein blushed. “I didn’t exactly ask for any of it, but yeah, it’s true.”

“So you, like, what, absorb power from dragons?”

“Something like that,” he said. He didn’t want to freak the living shit out of the poor Nord by telling him he actually devoured their souls and used it to fuel the power of his own Voice.

Argis seemed to remember what he had been doing, and passed Lein the cup of water before crossing back to the table a few paces away. Lein suspected he was giving himself some space as much as he was Lein.

“But just because I can shout the shrivelled meat from a draugr’s bones doesn’t mean I’m good at everything. People seem to think I must be some kind of all-around champion, just because I’m dragonborn. I’m not.” He ran his hand through his white hair, smooth as silk now that it was clean, and he sighed. “I mean, I’m a crack-shot with a bow, but something tells me I’m going to be asking you to show me a trick or two with a greatsword sometime.”

Oh gods, Lein thought the moment the words were out of his mouth. It sounded horribly like a line to his ears. On reflection, he was glad he hadn’t said that he ‘fancied getting better acquainted with using two hands on a weapon’ or something, but still, he was flustered by his own comments.

Argis, blessedly, didn’t seem to notice. “I’d be honoured to train with you, dragonborn,” he said.

“Oh gods,” Lein practically snarled, “Look, if I’m uncomfortable with ‘sir’, please don’t call me dragonborn. That’s what the Greybeards call me when they’re pissed at me for not coming to see them in over a year, or what the Windhelm guards now call me after I sneezed and shouted a ship’s worth of goods off docks by accident.”

“Now that’s a story I’d like to hear,” Argis chuckled, leaning against the stone table in the centre of the room.

“What, blasting half a year’s trading into the Windhelm harbour, or making a bunch of grumpy old men in grey dressing-gowns cross?”

Argis’ smile was warm and open, and it went right through Lein’s chest. He laughed, his deep baritone gravelly and friendly. “Either, thane, either…” he chortled. “And here’s your mead.”

“Ah, my thanks,” he grunted, reaching for it and downing at least a third of the sweet, spiced honey-wine in one go.

Later that afternoon, when Argis had gone out on business of his own, and feeling much recovered, Lein gathered up the enormous sack of enchanted weapons and slung it across his lean back, taking a few of the others which wouldn’t fit in the bag in his arms. He was so overburdened with goods that it took him a long time just to shuffle down the stairs outside his own house. A guard at the bottom snorted, “By Shor, you're hauling around a lot of junk. Best stop in at the Arnleif and Sons Trading Company, sell it off.”

“Thank you,” he grunted. He thought vaguely that he might actually call in there on the way back up, and see if Lisbet was interested in anything Ghorza rejected. Eventually, he made it to the smithy where the sassy orc and her exasperatingly-useless young apprentice spent their days.

The massive waterwheel creaked and groaned, driving a tilt hammer and a small drop hammer in the corner of the open air forge, and when he dumped the sack down for her inspection, she put a hand on her hip and arched an eyebrow. “All this for me, Lein?” she asked. “You shouldn’t have.”

“You’re right,” he retorted, pretending to pick it all up again. “I’ll go take it to Moth up at the keep. Your brother has a real thing for enchanted arms and armour, but here I was, bringing it to you instead…”

“Alright, you mewling milk drinker,” the orc laughed, “Let me take a look at it and see what I can scrape together to give you for it.”

In all fairness, she gave him a very good price. She knew he was the best enchanter in the city, short of asking Calcelmo or his creepy nephew to do it, and everyone knew how she felt about them. All in all, Lein walked away with a purse groaning with gold, and she had a load of new arms and armour to offer her customers.

As the afternoon wore on, he emerged from Arnleif and Sons with an even heavier purse, as well as a new contract. He passed Margaret in the marketplace on his way back up to Vlindrel hall, and she bobbed a reverential curtsy, and asked him how he was. Degaine tried to coerce him into stealing a statue of Dibella from the temple for the hundredth time, and he caught the Vigilant of Stendarr staring intently at him from the doorway of an abandoned house. Not wishing to get caught up in doing another favour for someone just yet, he doubled back and trotted up a steep flight of stairs towards the hall, choosing a back way which didn’t involve meeting anyone or discussing anything at length.

The house was empty when he returned, and he stretched his shoulders out, wondering if he should practise a few of the martial arts forms he had learned with the Dark Brotherhood. It had been a while since he’d run through them, and he was loathe to let them get rusty in his mind. There was a rhythm, almost meditative, to the patterns, and after changing into a pair of simple linen trousers, leaving his chest bare, he began.

The first sequence was simple, designed for beginners to practise moves in a stylised manner, and involved a number of defensive blocks and short, precise attacks. As he moved up the patterns, getting progressively more difficult and elaborate, he enjoyed the fluid and beautiful postures, ignoring the way his muscles burned when he did each technique more slowly, exploding into each finishing move after an agonisingly long approach to each one. Breathing hard, he spun into a back spinning kick and launched an attack with his elbow, creating the illusion of a cartwheel through the air. He landed, silent as a cat, and his white hair, tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, lashed his face. He fell still, panting.

The snap of the front door made him jump, and he whipped round to find Argis, frozen in the doorway to the living room, a small wooden crate of vegetables in his enormous hands, staring at him, his eyes wide and his lips parted. “Sorry if I disturbed you,” was all he had to offer as he kicked his feet into motion again and made his way towards the little store room they used as a pantry. “You’re feeling better, I see,” he added conversationally as he disappeared inside.

“Argis,” Lein panted. “You made me jump. I thought you said you wouldn’t be back til sunset? I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all. You didn’t disturb me.” He wiped the sweat off his body with a towel and added, “Gods, I hate the fact that I can’t train outside in this city. Is there anywhere I can train that doesn’t involve being surrounded on all sides by hundreds of tons of rock?”

Argis shook his head as he emerged from the store room. He’d picked up a different crate and seemed to be heading to the kitchen. Lein would never have guessed that the big warrior liked to cook, and it only endeared him further to him. He was good at it too, from what he’d seen so far. “I train with the city guards and other housecarls in the stable yard just outside the city walls. I’m sure you’d be welcome there if you wanted to…”

Lein shook his head with a wry smile. “Somehow I don’t think the guards would appreciate it if a thane decided to come and cramp their style by training with them…” He shot Argis a knowing look, which was received and returned with good grace. He sighed. “Perhaps I’ll just have to move back to my house up north. I’d just finished building it about four months or so before I came to Markarth. I miss the open spaces.”

“You have a house in the north?” he asked, half awe and half curiosity.

“Mmm,” he hummed, throwing the towel around his bare shoulders. His chest was slim and lean, but the scars which lashed across it were all too obvious. Half of him had hoped to impress Argis with his athletic, if slender, physique, but he knew that even if, by some miracle, the big warrior was interested more in men than women, he wouldn’t go for a weed like Lein. He’d probably be impressed by someone like Valdimar, his housecarl in Hjaalmarch: big, muscular, tough, and built like an ox, with the stamina go with it. Lein was a light-boned sneak-thief, and an assassin. He hunted from the shadows, practised magic, and looked about as beefy as a wisp. He sighed before he’d meant to, with an unblinking, thousand-mile stare.

“My thane?” Argis asked, cocking his head curiously.

“Hmm?”

“Whereabouts is your house?”

“Oh, it’s in Hjaalmarch,” he said vaguely. “Nice big manor house I built  in the middle of nowhere, right on the coast of the Sea of Ghosts…” his eyes went glassy again just thinking about his beautiful home, and he sighed a second time, still staring at a spot of carved stone somewhere behind Argis’ left ear.

“Sounds beautiful,” Argis said wistfully.

Lein blinked suddenly, and looked closely at him. “Have you travelled much, Argis?”

The Nord shook his head. “I have seen about as much of the Reach as it’s possible to see, but I’ve not been far beyond the hold. I travelled to Solitude with the jarl a few years ago, but that was only once.”

Lein thought about the job he’d accepted to retrieve a statue of Dibella, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve taken a contract for Lisbet at Arnleif and Sons. It’s just a quick fetch and retrieve contract, but once it’s done, I might head back to Hjaalmarch.”

“What’s the job?”

“She wants me to retrieve a lost shipment of hers from Druadach Redoubt Cave.”

The hearty face of his housecarl blanched the colour of cold oatmeal and Lein thought the huge man was going to pass out. He dropped the small crate of vegetables, sending tomatoes and cabbages rolling all over the floor. “Gods, I’m sorry,” he blustered, scrambling to pick up the ones nearest to his big feet. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Argis?” Lein asked, sticking his foot out to stop a wayward tomato before it made it down the slope to the front door. “It’s fine. Argis, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

But Lein noticed the tremor in his voice, and the way his fingers shook when he closed them around a couple of cabbages. “Argis?”

Argis straightened and refused to meet his eye.

“Something I should know before I head off to this Forsworn  camp?”

When the brown iris of Argis’ remaining eye finally met Lein’s gaze, he saw fear in his face for the first time. “I… I’ve been there before,” was all he had to offer.

Lein spoke slowly, cautiously. “Inside knowledge would be good on a job like this… I don’t want to walk into a trap…”

“It’s not like that,” Argis began, setting the last few vegetables back in the crate. “It’s a small Forsworn hideout. A riverside camp outside, a few barriers but nothing major.” He took a shaky breath. “Inside it’s a large cave that goes back into the cliff.” He coughed. “It’s not a very well fortified camp. They use it mostly for crafting and storage of… of supplies before moving them to the bigger places like the Lost Valley Redoubt, or Hag Rock Redoubt.”

“Right,” Lein said slowly, crossing over to him and setting the tomato down in the crate. “So I shouldn’t run into too much trouble there if I go alone?”

Argis shook his head and stepped back. “There used to be two guards outside, and only a few Forsworn  craftsmen inside, but they used to have a… a briarheart captain in there with them.”

He itched to know how Argis knew so much about them, but this was something more than just an unpleasant run in with some Forsworn bandits. Something had happened to him there. He dropped it, not wanting to piss his housecarl off in the first week by asking more questions than was welcome. “Well, thanks,” he said politely. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow at dawn, and I’ll be gone for a few days I guess.”

Argis looked like he wanted to say something else, but Lein turned away and headed for the bathroom. His wash was perfunctory, unlike the previous evening’s, and he was dressed again in no time. He retreated to the enchanting room to read the spell tomes he had brought back in his last haul, and when they had been consumed he headed back out into Markarth. Argis was sitting quietly beside the fire, and only smiled shyly when Lein announced he was going to he Silver-Blood Inn. When Lein returned, the door to Argis’ room was shut, and all was quiet. The fire had been banked and the whole hall was tidy and silent.

Lein rose early, before Argis was up, and prepared his gear: enchanted daedric bow and arrows, one smooth ebony sword he’d had for forever and loved, and a wickedly sharp dagger which he slipped into the sheath on his belt with an easy familiarity. His shrouded boots made no noise as he crossed the stone of the living room, and as Argis rounded the corner form his chambers, bleary-eyed with sleep, he let out a shout of surprise as he almost barrelled straight into his thane. “Gods!” he swore, clutching his chest. “Sorry. You startled me.”

“I’m sorry,” Lein chuckled. “I don’t make much noise.”

“Much?” Argis panted, failing to recover his composure. “How about none at all. Fuck.” Argis’ cheeks coloured the instant the profanity left his lips.

Lein’s laugh echoed off the walls, and he turned away to where he had laid out all his gear on the table. He liked that Argis wasn’t shy about swearing. And curses, Lein was delighted to discover, sounded beautiful on his full lips.

“You’re almost ready to leave then?” Argis asked stiffly, scratching his beard and running his huge hands through his messy hair.

Lein nodded. “Yeah. Just a bit of food and a couple of potions for the road, and then I’ll be ready.”

He turned and saw that Argis’ face was grim, but the big housecarl said nothing more. He ground his teeth and looked away as Lein made his last preparations and shouldered his massive bag.

“I’ll probably be gone no more than a week,” he mumbled, “Maybe less.” He wanted to take his time out there, though according to his maps it should only really take him a day to get to the cave from Markarth.

Argis nodded. He still looked like he wanted to say something, but he was biting it back.

With a final sigh and farewell, Lein slouched out of the door, as laden and loaded as he could ever bear to be for short journeys on the road, which was to say he was carrying only minimal supplies. He scurried nimbly down the steep flight of uneven steps into the market place below just as dawn broke over the mountains beyond.

No sooner had he entered the space between the stalls than a hand gripped his shoulder. As he made to grab the offender by the wrist and flip them over, he saw the familiar, scarred, taloned hand of an Argonian, and roared a laugh. “Veezara!” he chuckled, letting go and turning around to clap the lizard on the shoulder. “Gods, don’t sneak up on a man like that.”

“It’s what we do, brother,” he laughed, returning the gesture.

“What are you doing here?”

“Astrid,” was all the answer the Argonian gave him, and Lein nodded. They didn’t talk much about contracts on the whole. “Where are you headed to, brother? I thought you were setting roots down here for a while?”

Lein shrugged, his white hair falling forwards over his shoulder. “Got itchy feet I guess,” he chuckled. “I took a contract to recover some stolen goods. It’s really just an excuse to get out under a big open sky again…”

Veezara chuckled his scaly laugh. “You’ve become nothing but a dog fetching things for new masters now, eh?” he jibed.

He knocked the lizard playfully on his right horn. “Favour for a new friend. She can’t exactly go out there on her own. It’s worth a lot to her.”

Veezara shook his head fondly, his eyes smiling. “Always helping people out, brother. Well, if you insist on going out there on your own, I would like to give you something.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a small vial. “A little poison to coat that bow of yours you’re so fond of.”

“Thank you,” Lein said, receiving the gift with a heartfelt smile as he slid it into his pack. There was a prickling on the back of his neck, but, staring around the market place, he couldn’t find any eyes lingering on them.

Shaking it off, he said his farewells to the former Shadowscale, leaning in to give him a traditional Argonian gesture of trust and brotherhood. Veezara smiled when he saw the gesture coming, bowing his forehead down towards Lein's to meet in the middle, careful not to bump him with the short, hard horns in the centre of his forehead.

“Take care,” Lein smiled before striding away towards the open bronze doors of Markarth city.

With one final look over his shoulder, he glanced up at the balcony of Vlindrel hall and saw Argis leaning his forearms on the balcony. He raised his arm in a friendly wave, and got a taciturn nod back in response. At least he'd found the source of the prickling on his neck.

The air was cool but the sun warmed his face as he stepped from the shadow of the colossal gateway and tilted his chin up to the sky. The rich, sour smell of horses and dogs wafted towards him as he left the city gate and passed the stables. He smiled and raised his hand at a man training dogs in the yard as he nodded him. “Still don’t want to take a dog out there with you?” the man all but growled, a wide, toothy grin plastered across his tattooed face.

“Not this time,” Lein called back as he practically scampered down the path. Those damned dogs never shut up for long, and he couldn't sneak about with something on four paws constantly yipping and whining.

The field at Salvius Farm lay empty that early in the day as he tramped below the idly-creaking sails of the windmill and began to climb the steep hill which overlooked the approach to the city.

The journey to Druadach Redoubt Cave didn’t take too long, and all was as exactly Argis had said it would be. He arrived not long after dusk, and, using the darkness to his advantage, and dispatched the two Forsworn on guard outside with an arrow each to the face. Once they were down, he emerged from behind the sharp barricades on the approach, and then snuck gingerly inside the cave.

Sounds of people moving around filled his ears: one working on some armour in the distant corner, another tanning a hide, a third tilling the earth around some crops. The musty scent of damp rock and lichen hit his nose.

A goat bleated from right in front of him, frightening the life out of him. It was a miracle he hadn’t cried out or lashed out. Curiously, the goat took one look at him and cavorted off through the cave, butting the one working the crops with as much feeling as it could muster.

Lein would have stopped to laugh if he hadn't been worried about drawing too much attention to himself. Nocking an arrow, he breathed in slowly. On the exhale, he released the string and the shaft whirred away, sinking deep into the skull of the Forsworn farmer before she could cry out. The others were dispatched with similar stealth, and even the briarheart captain at the back was no problem. Somehow, Lein managed to sneak right up behind him and rip the artificial heart from the man’s chest before he even realised Lein was there, and he crumpled instantly.

When he had made sure he'd cleared the small cave system of all its hostiles, he was able to see it for the first time with the eyes of a traveller. It was beautiful. Shafts of light filtered down through holes in the cave roof, striking the damp moss and making it glisten in the half light.

It looked almost homely.

There were warm corners, cosy corners, where the Forsworn had made it their home. Although, when Lein explored the back of the cave a little more in search of the statue of Dibella for Lisbet, something caught his eye which made him shudder. Homes didn’t have iron cages at the back. Lein eyed the stinking cell and wondered what could have been kept in there. His first thought was a dog or a wolf, but when he saw the tankard and a festering pile of bloody rags in the corner, his blood ran cold. A human being had been kept in that cage.

He’d heard the Forsworn were evil and insane, but something in his mind wouldn’t process what he was seeing. It brought back memories from his youth of necromancers that he’d much rather have left slumbering and undisturbed in his mind. Unable to focus on it, he turned around and spotted chest at the back of the cavern where he was sure the statue would be. He grabbed it and whatever else he thought he could take with him and sell.

Lein took his time in the cave, stopping to use their cooking pot to make some stew with a rabbit he found there, checking first that it wasn't rancid or poisoned or full of strange herbs, but it was just a rabbit. He guessed new Forsworn wouldn't be coming for a while. It was late, and he didn’t fancy picking his way through the unfamiliar rocks in the dark. He would head home at daybreak.

He bedded down on the only bedroll that wasn't crawling with lice, and let the soft straw beneath cradle him while he slept.

His waking cry of terror in the early hours of the morning resonated off the roughly-hewn walls of the cavern, yelling his fears back at him a thousand fold. Sweating, he fought free of the bedroll and sat up, panting. "Fuck," he hissed, pushing his stringy white hair back out of his eyes with shaking fingers, his breathing hard and rasping. Unfamiliar shapes and shadows, dark eyes and hushed whispers filled the vaguer corners of his mind, and he tried to still his spinning head. The dragon's blood was pounding in his ears and he was afraid to open his mouth in case he loosed some of the terrible power inside him.

For a long while, he sat there, hugging his knees, trying to calm his heart rate down as cold pre-dawn light filtered through the holes in the cavern roof like fine sediment in a still pool. Eventually he got a hold of himself, and set about gathering up his belongings. No use staying put now that he was awake when he could be on the road.

After a breakfast of some scavenged bread and cheese, Lein stuffed the weighty statue into his bag, paying no mind to how the large satchel was packed or what was underneath the sharp corners of the plinth, and made his way out of the cave. He cast one look back over his shoulder at the cage, and narrowed his mismatching eyes. Something about it made him wonder.

Argis had lost his metaphorical shit over the mere mention of this place, but the man was massive. There was surely no way he would have let himself get captured and held anywhere. It'd take the great chains and yoke of Dragonsreach itself to hold him.

The goat shuffled and emerged from a quiet corner of the cave, disturbing his thoughts as she nudged her sweet little bearded muzzle into his hand, dripping with water from the pool by the entrance.

He chuckled in surprise and wondered what kind of training this goat had had in order to sneak up on him, twice. She didn't seem bothered by his surprise, and accompanied him outside into the fresh sunshine almost as though she were an old lady fondly shooing her grandson from her doorway.

He chuckled, reaching down to scratch her under the chin. "Go on," he said, giving her a friendly smack on the rump. "Go and be free. And watch out for wolves, alright?" The goat scampered away down the slope and careered off amongst the rocks like a bird let loose from a cage.

His journey back from Druadach Redoubt Cave took somewhat longer than he’d anticipated.

It should have been a fairly simple route, south west back through the rocks: there were no Forsworn camps, and only an old dwarven ruin which he had no intention of visiting on this trip, and the area wasn’t particularly known for bears or even bandits.

Winding his way up through the rocks, he came upon a shallow pool, warmed by the sun, and had just entertained the idea of pausing and washing off some of the dirt and dried sweat from his face, when his mismatched eyes landed on a figure. She was naked, lying face down in the water. On seeing that an arrow was embedded in her spinal column, he froze. There was no movement in her chest, and the water was utterly still. His senses thrummed as he used an ironically quiet shout to detect life, but nothing fluoresced red in her body, nor in the rocks around them, other than rodents, rabbits and deer. Whoever had attacked her was long gone now. Perhaps it had even been the Forsworn he’d killed back at Druadach Redoubt Cave.

Breathing half a sigh out, he stepped closer and examined the arrow. Its sloppy flights spoke of Forsworn fletching, and he narrowed his eyes. A little way off on the grassy bank of the pool were her folded clothes, and a book. Curiosity stirred in him, and he waded through the mud at the edge of the pool. The leather-bound journal revealed that she had been a free spirit who had just wanted some adventure. Unfortunately, bathing in an area with rabid Forsworn had cut her adventure short. Sunlight flashed off a pretty necklace and ring, and he sighed and slid them into his pocket. Perhaps he could find out who she was and return the trinkets to her family when he got back to Markarth.

With a sigh, he straightened and decided to look for another pool, preferably one upstream which was flowing, and which didn’t have the corpse of a young woman floating in it.

Further along his route back to the city, the sound of thundering hooves rose above the whistling of the wind through the rocks, and he crouched low with his back pressed against cold stone as an enormous elk burst from a side gully. From his hiding place, he saw two men in fur and skins, bows drawn, scrambling down the hillside after it, and as they loosed their final, well-aimed arrows, the elk fell, skidding and crashing to the ground with a wheezing bellow. Lein straightened slowly and called out a warm greeting at the two hunters, who seemed surprised to find the young yet white haired man popping up from behind a rock, but they returned his friendly wave cautiously, and Lein continued on his way south west.

Lost in thought a while later, he found himself amongst the jagged teeth of an ancient dragon burial mound before he’d even realised it.

When the cold horror ran through him, he looked suddenly down at his feet, as though the ground itself would erupt and spit forth a dragon. It brought flashbacks to Kynesgrove all over again, with Alduin hovering like a great, leathery bat, his rattling, booming voice bringing a creature back from the dead. He shuddered as unbidden memories flooded back to him of the way Alduin's voice had sculpted flesh and blood, muscle and scales, back onto the creaking bones of the skeletal dragon as it had reared its head above the earth.

Lein let panic grip him by the throat, and he scuttled away blindly, heart hammering, haring his way downhill in a shower of skittering rocks and loose stones. His mind overcome by wild fear, he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to where he was going, or to what was waiting for him at the bottom of the slope. He barely had time to be surprised that he hadn't broken his own neck, before he'd stumbled into the scattered ruins of an old dwarven building or outpost on the slopes of the mountain outside Markarth. He didn’t have a chance to register what else was there before they were on him.

The creak of rotting bones should have given them away, and the long, drawn-out death rattle of a draugr, but he didn’t register it until the sickly face of a necromancer was laughing into his own, and murmuring something about a sacrifice dropping right into their dawn rites, sparing them the effort of going out to search for one.

He had no time to react before she had brought her dagger slicing across his belly. Fire bit deep into his stomach and he panicked, launching a fireball at the mage, who just blocked it with a simple ward, and laughed. “Fancies himself a mage,” she spat derisively over her shoulder at her friend, similarly clad in the black robes of a necromancer and standing in the bright sunlight a little way off.

That was when the foetid fingers of the draugr latched onto the back of his neck from behind, and he twisted in terror, forgetting the damage done by the blade to his stomach. Instinctively, he lashed out with a kick that should have sent the creature flying, except that as he launched his kick, a skeleton standing a way off beside the second mage landed an arrow in his chest, the point sinking straight through his leather armour from the back, emerging below his collarbones, and the second mage then hurled an ice spike at him. The force of the shard of ice colliding with his ribcage dislodged him from the draugr’s grip, and he tumbled away over the earth, snapping the shaft of the arrow, and causing blood to begin spewing from the wounds in his torso.

“Fuck,” he hissed as he went down, blood freezing along the ice. He couldn't breathe. The arrow was lodged through his left lung. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The corpses were advancing on him again, and had what looked like half his lifeblood painting the ground in a wide, spattering arc around him. Conjuring one last rush of magicka before he lost consciousness, he summoned a frost atronach to help him. He felt its huge feet shaking the ground as it careered about, flattening everything that moved, but he blacked out before he could be sure they were all dead, or before he could heal himself with a spell.

Waking on the side of a mountain in the middle of the night, not knowing where he was or which part of him hurt the most, was sadly not an unfamiliar experience for Lein, but it didn’t get any better each time it happened.

He tried to ease himself upright, but he’d lost a lot of blood. He could barely draw any breath at all, the leather armour beneath his fingers was alternately crisp and sticky with clots of blood, and the wounds in his chest and stomach were still bleeding sluggishly. It was a miracle he was even still alive, but the strength of his dragonblood was only going to keep him going so long.

His backpack. He needed a potion. Hell, he would need a whole apothecary's worth of potions to fix this mess.

Rocking his head vaguely from side to side, he caught glimpses of the familiar fabric of his travel sack not far from him, and lurched for it from where he lay sprawled. Pain ripped through his abdomen, but he caught the strap of the bag and tugged it closer. With shaking fingers and a spinning head, he dug through it for his potion supply, and groaned as his fingertips found soggy, sticky fabric and sharp shards of glass beneath the statue. “Oh, you idiot,” he cursed as he sifted through the perilously jagged remains of his limited potion supply. “Please. Please don’t let them all be broken.”

It was impossible to move with the arrow half protruding from his chest. If he could remove it, he could pour any remaining drops of potion directly onto the wound. Of course, he could pass out or die from blood loss well before then, but it had to be worth a try.

Lying on his back, he mustered all the scraps of courage he had left, and dug his fingers under the barbed arrowhead. With one smooth tug, he drew the stump of the arrow from his chest, and nearly passed out again. Fresh blood welled ominously. Fighting to retain consciousness, he felt around in the bag again and found just a single minor health potion in tact. His blood-slippery fingers shook so badly and had so little strength that he could barely uncork it, but when he eventually did, darkness raced in on his mind again. He poured it on his chest like it was the nectar of the gods, and lay back, panting as the liquid tried its best to get to work on the deep wounds in his body. When the gashes and punctures had begun to close over a few moments later, he felt he should try and push himself to his feet. With a groan as the barely-knitted together cuts ripped perilously and stretched, he levered himself upright with a triumphant grunt.

His knees buckled and hit the dirt. Hard. After another few minutes of kneeling on the ground trying to still the spinning, he tried again.

Lein made it three paces before he collapsed once more.

The night stars wheeled slowly overhead for a few hours, winking silently above him until he woke again.

He licked his lips and tried to move. He was so weak. Skyrim’s largest moon was a blurry smudge in the blackness above him, and judging by its position, it was a few hours after midnight. He swallowed, aching for some water. He wondered if he could heal himself with a spell, but when he tried, his head spun and he cried out in pain. His body was not ready to handle magicka just yet.

But Lein was the dragonborn, and he was damned if he was going to expire on a half-frozen mountainside with winter closing in, surrounded by the smashed corpses of two necromages and the remnants of their undead minions. Forcing himself to take it slowly, he crawled onto all fours and let his breath come in and out for a few minutes. When he didn't immediately pass out again, he took it as a good sign, and gathered his bag onto his back, pushing himself upright. He staggered, spots of light winking and sparking in his vision, but he didn't collapse, and once he'd got his balance together, he drew a longer breath in, testing his damaged lungs. It hurt like he was inhaling a mammoth fart directly from the source, but he knew he could make it. He had to make it. The little potion had stopped the bleeding, though it probably hadn't stopped the impending infection from the draugr's foetid claws and the necromancer's undoubtedly poisoned blade.

He fell more times than he was prepared to count on the scramble down the slope towards the Salvius Farm. He contemplated banging on their door for aid, but he knew that Leontius, the grumpy old farmer, probably wouldn't have a potion, and the elderly couple wouldn't thank him for disturbing them at this time of night, no matter how fond the old woman, Vigdis, was of him. If they even would even hear him at all, that was.

He staggered along up the road, with the shadowy outline of Markarth’s ramparts looming through the night, unsure if the roaring in his ears was the noise of the waterfall or what was left of his own blood. After what felt like an age, he passed by the stables, abandoned and silent at that hour.

Two guards eyed him suspiciously as he lurched up the steps, but when he snapped his name at them, their eyes widened. "I know that name. You’re the jarl's new thane?" one of them murmured. “You're hurt…”

No shit, Sheogorath. "Yeah. Just let me in. I have potions at home. Please, open the gate."

She nodded and cracked open the smaller bronze-clad sally port for him to pass through. She couldn’t offer to help him, since that would mean abandoning her post, and she apologised profusely. He waved her worries away and staggered off into the city. If he stopped now he might never get up.

The marketplace was as devoid of people as it was full of shadows and dark corners, and it was all he could do just to put one foot in front of the other as he began the long stairway up to Vlindrel. Dizziness overwhelmed him halfway up, and he nearly toppled backwards like an upturned mudcrab, dragged down by the weight of his pack and that stupid statue, but he snagged a rough stone with his palm and clung to it, begging his body to hold out a little longer until he could reach the alchemy room inside the hall. He just prayed he had a potion ready that would fix him.

Eventually the bronze door of his home swam into view and he fumbled the key in the lock four times before it turned. Relief washed through him as he pushed it open, breathing ragged and so difficult he wasn't sure he was even drawing in any air at all. The effort of dragging his fevered, bleeding body up the steps had drained the last of his reserves, and he tripped on a stray bucket or something in the shadows and went down with a crash.

His head hit the stone floor and he careered into unconsciousness once more.

Chapter Three

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Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter Five

Lein and Argis begin their journey (finally!) to Windstad Manor, and Lein sees a slightly different side to his housecarl along the way.

Table of Contents | Previous Chpt

He knew, as soon as his brain remembered how to think, that no one would come to him this time. He had ordered Argis not to come in if he heard him screaming in the middle of the night, and Argis had obeyed.

Shaking in the aftermath of the night terror, Lein felt dreadful. His head was full of sawdust and his muscles ached. Drier than the sands of Elsweyr, his throat was parched, and he reached a trembling hand out of the bedside table where his dwarven cup sat. The room was utterly dark, but that didn’t bother him. He was used to moving in shadow, and his spatial memory was excellent. He found the cup faultlessly, but the shaking in his muscles hindered drinking somewhat.

He sighed. He’d had too much to drink at the inn, made a fool of himself, and worked his brain into one of its darker corners. He got like that sometimes. And it would often come upon him when he’d been drinking.

Depressed, shivering, and suddenly overwhelmed by the power in his own body, he felt hot tears prick his eyes and begin to pour silently down his face. Perhaps the true legacy of the dragonborn was to walk through the days of their life alone. Vipir was gone, and in the wake of their fleeting reconnection, Lein felt loneliness wash over him until he began to drown in it. He ached for a closeness. Only a few months ago, Valdimar had written to him to say that he intended to marry his childhood sweetheart, Iona, and was worried about the future of his position with Lein as his housecarl in Hjaalmarch.

Lein of course had replied that he was delighted that Valdimar was going to be married, and that should he wish it there would always be a place for him and for his wife at Windstad, but if he or Iona would prefer not to live in the arse end of nowhere, right on the Sea of Ghosts, known for its violent winter storms, then he would quite understand. Valdimar, bless him, had sent a letter back with the same courier to express his gratitude, and to say that they would postpone the wedding until Lein returned to Hjaalmarch and would be able to attend.

Knowing that Valdimar and Iona would be planning their wedding now that they knew Lein was going to be there by winter solstice, knowing that he would be greeted by a couple very much in love, knowing that he would have to see their close fondness every moment of every day when he got there did not make him sour, but it did make him sad. He ached for that. He ached to have someone to share everything with. To stand by his side and just hold him up when it all got too much, and to do the same for them in return.

Sleep was a cruel and fickle mistress, and she too had left him that night.

He guessed it must have been some time near dawn, and he cast a candlelight spell, shuffling blearily around his room by its ethereal, blue glow. He splashed himself in a perfunctory wash, dressed, and then headed out into the hall. He avoided looking at Argis’ closed door as he passed, hoping the man was fast asleep. He paused though, listening hard, and heard thunderous snoring coming from the other side.

Because he was feeling sour and lonely and grumpy, and his entire body was still crackling with magicka, he summoned a flame atronach and used her to light the fire in the grate. She frowned when he gave the command to ignite the logs gently, her slender body shimmering with heat like strong sun on a dirt road in summer, but she shrugged and obeyed, tumbling backwards in a lazy somersault. When she had breathed life into the little flames around the logs, she stayed beside the fire, clearly loving the warmth and the noise of it.

Lein went to the little storeroom and saw that Argis had been right about the food situation. There were a few crates for perishables but most of them were empty. Only hard cheeses which kept for years in the cool dark of the larder, and a few cured hams were left. Lein sliced these up and prepared them for the road as he had done a thousand times, laying them between the folds of a waxed cloth and rolling it up after each piece was set down in order to keep the meat fresh and tightly sealed for at least the first day of their journey. Skyrim was not Elsweyr, and the meat would not spoil that quickly in the chill air. He cut the big cheese into sections and wrapped that up too in sheets of greaseproof paper he’d got from the butcher, and he stuffed one or two other things into the bundle as well.

When all that remained were six eggs, a little soft goat's cheese, some lightly-smoked, raw bacon, and the last of the shallots, he decided to make an omelette. He wasn’t the greatest cook, not a patch on Argis, but there were a few things he could make better than anyone else. Omelettes were one such thing.

After whisking up the eggs and chopping the onions into small chunks, he realised it was still too early for food, his stomach still feeling more than a little queasy. He swallowed down the last of the cow’s milk that stood on a block of enchanted ice, hoping the softly-creamy texture would sooth the churning in his belly.

With a crackle and a pop like a log of crumbling firewood, the atronach got bored and left him. He knew it’d been petty to summon her just to light the fire, but he didn’t really care. It had been nice to have something else moving around the still living room, even if it was a creature from beyond the doors of oblivion. He sighed, and toyed again with the idea of getting a dog. Maybe one of Gunmar’s war dogs that were half-wolf, half-dog? He couldn’t stand the way Banning’s war dogs constantly barked and yipped.

Perhaps a bit of gentle exercise would make him feel better, he mused.

Heading to the clear space near the fire, his bare feet hardly noticing the chill of the stone floor, he stood a moment with his eyes closed, hands quietly resting in front of his hips. Beginning some of the patterns he had learned with the Dark Brotherhood, he started with a slow, gentle one. It was more about balance training and precision of movement than practising killing strikes, and he had always enjoyed the tug and strain of muscles. He lost himself in the motions, his body working with the fluid grace of a dancer as he shifted with the speed of glacial ice from one stance to the next.

Twice he worked his way through all twenty four of the patterns, the last being the most fiendish of all. His body came to a halt at the end of the second cycle, centred and calm, if still completely exhausted and sleep deprived, and he stood motionless in the very centre of the space. Breathing hard, sweat rolling down the back of his neck, he remained otherwise perfectly still for nearly five minutes, concentrating on the intake and exhale of breath, working with the slow and steady surety of a blacksmith’s bellows.

When he opened his eyes he found Argis standing in the doorway watching him. “Morning,” he rumbled, his voice thick with sleep, though something burned in his eyes behind the grogginess.

Lein nodded silently, inhaling more deeply as though surfacing from underwater. He wondered how long Argis had been watching him.

Argis frowned when he saw the shadows under his thane’s eyes. “Did you even go to sleep, thane?” he asked.

A soft sigh shivered out of Lein’s lips, and he nodded once. “I didn’t get much rest though.”

“More terrors?” Argis asked carefully, sensing he trod on very thin ice.

Lein nodded again.

“Does… Does anything help?” Argis asked, still speaking tentatively.

Lein shook his head. Ruefully, he added, “Actually, skooma does, but I’ve seen too many of those poor bastards shaking and twitching on the side of the road to go down that route.” He sighed. “Mostly I just don’t sleep.”

Argis shook his head, his features filling with a sad kind of compassion that rekindled a lot of the ache Lein had worked so hard to drive from his chest. Argis crossed sleepily to the table where Lein had begun his breakfast plans, and looked up at him, forced by his blind eye to turn all the way around so he could see him properly. “You want to cook this morning?” he asked in a warm, even voice.

Lein sighed. “I had thought about making one of my speciality omelettes,” he said, “But if you have something you’d rather do with that lot, I don’t mind. I was going to have a proper wash and come back and cook it.”

“I’m happy to make one for you, or to leave it. Up to you,” Argis smiled.

Lein wondered why he was being quite so polite. Perhaps Lein really had made him uncomfortable with his mood swing the previous evening. Or perhaps it really was that he knew the truth about Lein’s preferences. Yet another sigh rolled from him and he shrugged. “I don’t mind.” The weariness in his tone caught even Lein by surprise as he shuffled out of the room towards the bathroom, feeling little better than he had when he’d gone to bed.

The searingly hot bath went some way towards making him feel more like a human and less like a six-hundred year old desiccated draugr, but still, when he emerged with his white hair dripping around his neck, bundled up in his favourite fur-collared jacket, he remained about as grumpy as a frost troll. Argis had left the ingredients alone and had returned to his bedroom, though the door was open. The smell of frying cubes of bacon seemed to draw him out, and as Lein began to soften the shallots in the hot bacon fat, he strolled out and quietly stood by the table.

“Would you like some tea?” Argis asked a moment or two later.

“Mmm, please,” he hummed, stirring the onions and adding the circles of goats cheese to fry before adding the whisked eggs to the enormous skillet.

“There’s no milk,” Argis murmured as he set the ceramic mug down beside Lein. The gesture was an easy, graceful lean, and it made Lein’s insides flip weirdly. He rolled his brown and blue eyes to himself, scolding himself for not getting a handle on his crush sooner. He really was behaving like some thirteen year old girl. And now Argis had to know.

“I drank it this morning, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t take my tea with milk, and it was thoughtless of me.”

“I don’t mind,” he chuckled, setting two plates down near Lein so he could tip the omelette onto them when it was ready. “I like it either way.”

Lein snorted a soft laugh to himself at the irony of the comment. He shook his head, a strand of hair falling into his eyes. He swiped it away angrily. Argis seemed to sense that strange mood hovering above his shoulders like a wraith, and left him in peace.

With breakfast ready and smelling so good that even Lein felt like he could tolerate some food in his stomach, he cut the omelette in half and slid each bit onto the waiting plates.

Argis dug in with relish and was halfway through the hot meal before he paused to thank his thane. “This is great,” he enthused. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

“I can’t, generally speaking,” Lein said, picking at his own food with a lot less vigour. “Not like you, but I can do a few things.” He gestured towards his plate with his fork, “This is one of them.”

“It’s good,” he smiled, polishing off the last few scraps of bacon and standing, taking his plate with him. He crossed to the table and cut a slice of thick, white bread from the last loaf on the table, wiping it over the plate to soak up the last few delicious smears before turning to Lein and asking, “You want some bread?”

Lein shook his head and looked back at his plate. There was still more than half left. “I can’t even finish this. You want it?”

“If you don’t,” Argis hedged gently. “You sure?”

Lein nodded, holding the plate out to him and closing his eyes briefly.

“You still want to head out today?” Argis asked, practically inhaling Lein’s leftovers. It was rather sweet, really.

“Yeah,” Lein said. “Yeah, I do. I think a nice open sky and a dozen or so miles of walking will do me some good. I don’t do well cooped up in cities. I get…” he gestured vaguely with his hand, “Funny…”

Argis only nodded once, before washing the plates and beginning to do the last checks on the house. Lein stayed by the fire, lost in thought. His bags were packed, his few valuables locked in the safe or stowed in his bags, his weapons readied. All that was lacking was his usual enthusiasm. He guessed that would come back under the gathering winter skies and after a few lungfuls of Skyrim’s freezing air.

The view from the balcony, over the valley beyond the walls, took Lein’s breath away. He wasn’t a morning person on the whole, so he rarely saw the dawn in all her splendour, but that morning was particularly lovely. A few clouds hung lazily in the ripening morning sky directly above them, with a thick bank building on the horizon. The sharp tooth of a lone mountain peak broke through the rising colour of the sky with a dark shadow. Mist gathered at the end of the valley where Markarth was nestled, woolly clouds snagging on the razor spine of the mountains, and as he lost himself in the sight, Lein was relieved to feel a little hope and happiness kindle.

The world was out there waiting for him. There were larger things than his petty personal struggles. He would overcome this. He had the World-Eater to destroy at some point, after all. He sucked in a huge breath of air and turned to look at Argis, who was also smiling softly at the view.

They locked Vlindrel Hall up, and Lein’s backpack bashed against his spine on the stairs, but he paid it little mind. A few guards paced about, their footsteps barely audible over the rush of water in the gullies outside the Silverblood Inn. Some spoke to Argis, but neither he nor his thane informed them they were leaving for a long time away. No use advertising an empty house to one and all. It was still early, but one or two traders were there setting up in the marketplace. For the most part, though, Argis and Lein were ignored as they moved towards the huge bronze gates.

Beyond in the stable yard, a pair of guards trained together breath billowing in the cold air, and one yelled at Argis to come over and have a swing. Argis chuckled at her and hefted his pack up his shoulder. “Can’t today, Morana.”

“Chicken!” she yelled, grinning, and Argis chuckled back. She waved at Lein, her plate gauntlet clinking warmly. “Safe travels, and may you find softer beds than those in Markarth!” she joked, playing on the old blessing which wished travellers safe skies and warm beds.

Lein nodded his thanks and waited for Argis to begin walking again, not wanting to rush the man out of his childhood home and onto the road before he was ready.

As they passed the carriage, Kibell the driver called out to him from his seat on the top, a mug of steaming tea in his hands, and asked if he wanted a ride. Lein politely turned him down, but crossed over to stroke the shaggy bay gelding’s nose anyway, laughing softly as the horse blew warm breath into his gloved hands and nosed about, hoping for an apple. Yes, his mood was brightening.

Not for the first time, Lein marvelled at the intricacies of the stone carvings on Markarth’s outer ramparts as he walked by them. Every surface bore a chisel mark of some sort, every corner a decorative band of egg and dart or swirling scrollwork. The towers as they passed beneath them were still clad in curved sheets of ancient, riveted dwarven metal, blazing untarnished like burnished gold in the early morning light. All the while they walked, Argis kept a steady, silent pace beside him.

The waterfall at the base of the top ramparts crashed spectacularly, and little flashes of light caught Lein’s keen eyes. The dragonflies darted in and out of the spray, their iridescent bodies glinting in the light like the tower roofs above them. Nature was getting on with its rhythm, and he sucked in a great breath of clean air. His tired body seemed to fill with new vigour, and the prickle behind his eyes began to vanish.

They were not the only ones out and about at that hour, and Left Hand Mine was bustling over the river to their right, and the scrape, scrape, scrape of a bristle brush on the air told him that old Vigdis was up, sweeping the path to the Salvius Farm. When she caught sight of him, she raised the broom and beckoned him over. He didn’t have the heart to turn her down, and he indulged her in a lengthy chat about how much she missed her son, Vigdis rabbiting on and on about Leontius, and how she wished he’d make the journey to see them from Old Hroldan. When Lein noticed Argis smiling indulgently as he rolled his shoulders out, Lein excused himself and wished her well, rejoining Argis on the road.

A rangy, wire-haired mutt came loping over to them before they’d gone another few paces down the road, the short shriek of a girl following in its wake, and Lein chuckled as Erith ran after the dog. “I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever leave,” he shot sideways at Argis.

“Toran!” Erith yelled at the dog, “Toran, come here!” but the hound ignored her completely, marching up to Lein and sticking his wet nose straight into Lein’s hand. The scratchy muzzle tickled and Lein knelt to play with his ears. Eirith laughed too, and begged him to play hide and seek with her again. “I can’t this time,” he said, and her little face fell. “I’m going on an adventure with my friend.” But when he straightened, he fished a taffy treat out of an accessible pocket of his bag for her, and took her chin gently between his thumb and forefinger. “You look after Toran here,” he said, “And be good, won’t you. You remember what I taught you last time?”

She brought her little fists up into a pretty decent fighting stance and lashed out at him with a good jab-cross combination. He let the strikes connect with his stomach, though he tensed against the blows just in case. They weren’t half bad.

“Don’t let them get hold of you, but if they do, kick them where it hurts and run,” she said seriously.

“That’s it,” he laughed, ruffling her hair. “And don’t ever let anyone push you around. You still practising your reading and writing?”

She nodded again, her face earnest. “Pavo’s been going through some stories with me.”

“Good. You can make anything you like of yourself when you’re old enough,” he laughed. “Now, I must be going.” He scratched Toran’s ears one last time, and Argis said nothing as they left, though Lein had the distinct impression that he was looking at him more intently, as though he had just learned something new about his thane. “She’s sweet,” Lein mused aloud. “She often gets lonely there I think. Her parents work the mines, and Toran’s her only friend really. I got to know her a bit when I did a favour for one of the other miners.”

“Taught her some useful tricks too,” Argis added, eyeing Lein’s stomach where the girl had punched him.

“Yeah, well… It never pays to be too careful out here, and especially for a young girl.” He cast his eyes back at the retreating pair, cavorting around in the road again, Toran barking furiously. “And she’ll be a pretty young woman when she grows up. I’d hate to see her get hurt.”

Argis smiled again, and fixed him with his hazel eye. “Yeah,” he said, voice cracking.

Lein flashed him a quizzical look, but the housecarl only shook his head.

Neither man spoke as they walked briskly down the path, and Lein caught the whiff of wood-smoke as they neared the bridge and the signpost at the end of the valley. The sun broke gloriously above the mountains, light gilding the curved under-bellies of the clouds and filling the early day with a weak warmth. Their breath still fogged the air, and Lein took the path that led to Solitude. Up ahead they saw the signs of a Khajiit camp, the bleary eyed traders wrapped up against the Skyrim cold. Ri’saad, the elderly Khajiit sitting cross-legged on his mat, looked up brightly and purred when Lein crouched in front of him. Lein traded a few bits and bobs from him more out of courtesy than necessity, and Ri’saad murmured softly, “May your roads lead you to warm sands.”

Lein straightened with a rueful laugh and said, “I’m afraid our road leads us to icebergs and snowstorms, but I pray your road leads you back to warm sands soon, friend.”

The Khajiit nodded, tip of his tail twitching against the thick mat beneath him, but he said nothing more as they left.

Thick, heavy raindrops began to darken the earth about an hour later, and Lein grumbled, pulling up the shrouded cowl he liked to wear on the road. It was enchanted to improve his already impressive archery skills, but it served nicely to keep the rain out as they followed the wide, gushing river which carved a deep path, rushing and rumbling away to their right. A series of stunningly high waterfalls plunged down into foaming depths, and Lein felt his head spin a bit as he got too near the edge. For a dragonborn, who could supposedly ride on the backs of the great winged beasts, he had a piss-poor head for heights. Added to that was the evidence of mudslides and cliff collapses, no doubt brought on by the autumn rains. Piles of rubble, and raw-looking wounds gaping in the hillside, were clearly visible from the edge, and he rapidly found himself back on the relative safety of the paved road.

As they glimpsed the stone bridge at the end of the road, Argis grabbed him and hissed, “Forsworn, outside Kolskeggr Mine.” And he dropped down out of sight behind a boulder, leaving enough space for Lein to duck in next to him.

“How many?” Lein asked, sinking into a crouch beside him and drawing his bow from the hook on his pack, nocking an arrow in a swift, silent motion. The daedric bow, Flamekiss, crackled with magicka in his hands.

“I saw three, but there could be more,” he breathed, also nocking an arrow to his own bow.

Lein saw a movement then on the road and took aim, loosing the shaft on the exhale. The Forsworn went down with a yell in a cloud of red flames, and the other two rushed over to inspect the commotion, setting themselves up perfectly for Argis and Lein to take them out from their hiding place.

“I can’t see any more,” Argis murmured, straightening. “Wait here though. I’ll check…”

“I’m coming with you,” Lein hissed, and they made their way down the slope together. When no shrieking Forsworn hurled themselves out of the underbrush at them, they carried on their way, taking the road towards Karthwasten.

Just past Kolskeggr, the river broadened out into a rocky valley, splitting off east in one direction and north in another, the rocky promontory forming a bastion for what Argis told him was a series of Forsworn camps. Lein also knew that the Skyhaven Temple stood perched on the very top, wreathed as usual in a gloomy, dark cloud.

Beneath bare, wind-blasted trees, their branches adorned only with wet hanging moss, the two men passed in silence once more. Lein paused on the bridge below the Lover’s Stone to admire the plunging cascades, leaning on the damp stonework a moment. The dull ringing of a nirnroot caught his ears and he looked down to see the little plant glowing softly in the shadow of the bridge. He cast a playful look back at Argis, grinned, and then, to his housecarl’s complete horror, vaulted over the side of the bridge. Argis must have thought he was leaping to his death, because he yelped Lein’s name and rushed to the masonry edge, but sighed in relief when he saw that his thane was standing in ankle-deep mud just a short distance down, with the now-silent herb dangling triumphantly from his gloved fingers.

Lein flashed him another white smile, and Argis shook his head. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he said, still shaking his head. “I swear it, you’ll scare me to death.”

Lein only laughed and stowed the plant in his herb pouch before scrambling back up to the road again, accepting the gauntleted hand that his housecarl offered down to him. Argis’ good mood faded noticeably, however, as they neared the shadowy entrance to a cave. “Blind Cliff Cave,” he murmured. “Forsworn bastion. There’s a pair of hagravens there too.”

“I know,” Lein nodded. “Though there’s only one now, and she’s actually not entirely evil.”

“What?” he blasted, clearly shocked, coming to a dead halt. “They’re all evil.”

He shrugged, though Argis’ reaction had taken him by surprise. “Yeah, I’ll agree with you, but I had a contract from the jarl to recover his familial shield. One of the hagravens had stolen it. Petra, her name was.” Argis’ scowl deepened and he stayed rooted to the spot, glowering. “Anyway, Petra pissed Melka, her sister, off by taking over the tower and locking her up inside. I met the sister when I did the contract, and she started talking to me through the bars of her cage.” Argis was clearly still astounded, but Lein pressed on. “I nocked an arrow quick as you like, but she promised she wouldn’t harm me if I helped her kill her sister. I figured I’d give it a go – I’ve taken on hagravens before – so I freed Melka, and she gave me a flashy staff in return for my help.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t choose to go back in there, but I think that’s the only hagraven in the whole of Tamriel we don’t need to worry about.”

Argis’ huge feet seemed to have frozen to the hard-packed dirt of the road. “You helped one of them?” he hissed, breath shivering. “You know what they’re like, what they do to people… and still… you helped one?”

Lein’s eyes narrowed. “She was a useful ally in a very hairy situation,” he said carefully.

“You should have run her through afterwards,” he spat, stamping off down the road away from Blind Cliff Cave entrance.

Lein was stunned. He had never heard such acid venom from the quiet, gentle man.

With one last look over his shoulder at the bastion walls just visible in the cliffs above them, he hurried after him. With the river on their right, Lein walked along at the pace of a soldier, and Argis, equally unrelenting, kept perfectly in step along the mountainous river-gully path. His mood was black and sour as the clouds above them.

The silence that hung between them was different after that. It was awkward and sharp, like a stone in Lein’s boot, and he kept casting sidelong looks at his housecarl. Argis marched beside him, eyes locked on the horizon, jaw grinding, mouth set in a grim expression for miles until they came to the fork in the road which led to Karthwasten. Three imperial soldiers took a collective look at the two men and encouraged them to head to Solitude to join up. Lein had no interest in taking sides, and was a thane in places under both Stormcloak and Imperial control. He nodded politely at the soldiers and then continued on down the road.

They ate bread and cheese on the side of the road, barely stopping long enough to wash it down with some weak ale, and continued on their way as the day progressed. They’d barely said more than two words to each other since Blind Cliff Cave.

Smoke rose from an upper courtyard when they neared Broken Tower Redoubt, and Argis hissed that they could probably sneak past the lower battlements undetected or turn left at a cairn just before the keep, a route that would take them north instead towards the Stormcloak camp and then Dragonsbridge.

“I’d planned to go through Morthal and up that way to Windstad rather than over towards Solitude…” he said, still speaking cautiously as Argis was clearly still rattled by their talk at Blind Cliff Cave. “Which way would you rather go?”

Argis seemed taken aback by the question. “I… Why would you ask me?”

Lein smiled. “You said you’d been to Solitude but that it was a while back, but also that you’ve never been to Morthal. You might want to go to either.” He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

“But…” Argis scowled. “But…?”

“But what? I’m the thane so we have to do what I say?” he snarled. “I’m the monster who helped a hagraven once so I’ve lost all your respect, if ever I had it? Is that it?”

Argis blinked, looking surprised all over again. He licked his scarred lips and sighed, softening, the anger draining out of him at the sight of the hurt expression plastered across Lein’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually, exhaling. “Truly, I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok,” Lein murmured, casting a glance back at the fortress looming ahead, hoping no one could see them.

“No,” Argis muttered. “It isn’t. It’s no secret that I hate the hagravens and the Forsworn with everything I am, but I wasn’t there with you in that tower. I had no right to judge you for your actions, or tell you how you should have handled it. I’m sorry.”

Lein’s mouth twitched into a smile and he clapped Argis on the shoulder. “You scared me there, big guy, with that anger of yours. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Argis’ face fell a little further and he blushed. “I don’t get angry very often,” he said, his voice rough and harsh as gravel, “But after what happened to… Something about hearing that you helped them just made me snap. I’m sorry.”

“Now’s not the time for this,” Lein said, turning back to the keep. As much as he desperately wanted to know what had happened to Argis, they had to get past the keep. “You want to sneak past, and head down to Morthal, or go to Dragonsbridge and Solitude?”

Argis eyed the keep, squinting in the flat light of the wet afternoon. Lein wondered if his eyesight gave him trouble. “What do you want to do?” Argis asked, still keeping his eyes on the castle.

“Either is fine,” he grinned.

“Alright,” he sighed. “Morthal. But I’m not sure I’m going to be as stealthy as you in this plate armour…”

Lein eased his pack down off his shoulder and rummaged around in the bit where he’d stashed his potions - carefully this time. He handed Argis a small bottle and said, “This should help…”

He looked at it with the same suspicion all Nords regarded potions that weren’t directly for healing, but he obviously decided Lein wasn’t about to give him skeever poison, and downed it.

“Come on,” Lein grinned. “You’re so quiet even I can’t hear you behind me.”

“Shut up and keep going, thane,” Argis snickered as they passed the doorway, creeping around the buttresses and making it past the keep without being discovered.

Shaking a little with built-up adrenaline, Lein stood on the cliff-top out of sight of the castle, and stared off into the distance. Argis stood beside him. “Is that Solitude?” the big housecarl asked, nodding at the barely-visible outlines of the city on the promontory.

“Yeah,” he said. “And behind that low, jagged peak there is Windstad. Morthal,” he added, pointing further east, “Is over that way.” He squinted through the rain that had been falling steadily all day. “Looks like the snows have come early this year in the north,” he grumbled as he saw white-dusted pine trees and the shoulders of the mountains banked with deep snow already.

With a sigh that mingled with the whipping wind, Lein turned away and began to walk slowly down the steep hill. He snagged idly at some sweet lavender from the roadside as they descended the blustery ridge, and he busied himself with tucking some of it jauntily into a buttonhole on his warm leather jerkin. He was so preoccupied with it that he didn’t even see the wolf in the craggy rocks to his right before Argis had snatched his own hunting bow from his back and loosed at it. It went down with a snarl, one of Argis’ ebony arrows lodged deep in its eye socket.

Lein looked up in surprise and then turned to Argis, who was calmly fitting his bow back on his backpack. When the housecarl looked up, he seemed almost embarrassed.

“Thank you,” Lein breathed. “I wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Argis mumbled modestly.

“Good thing,” Lein chuckled. “Come on.

Their progress east drew a yawn from Argis and Lein realised that while the heavy-set housecarl trained every day with the other guards, he was not used to walking long distances. “You think we should make camp soon?” Lein asked him.

Argis looked at the cloud-covered sky, squinting as rain splashed into his eyes, and he shrugged. “I’m tired,” he admitted, “But I don’t think it’s even late afternoon yet.”

“You’re good to keep going a little while longer then? We could rest up near Crabber’s Shanty,” he said. “But it’s a good five or six miles til then, and there’s a bandit camp at Robber’s Gorge we’ve got to get round first…”

“No, that’s ok,” Argis smiled. “I’m not gonna faint on you.”

“Good to know,” Lein grinned. “I don’t think I could carry you.”

Argis’ smile broadened and he looked at him more softly still. “It won’t come to that,” he said as they tramped along the curving road together. “Don’t worry. How are you holding up though? If you’ve had more than three hours sleep, you can call me a goat.”

Lein’s laughing response was cut short as his sharp eyes caught sight of a trio of dark wolves high on the hill above the path, but almost before he’d had time to register them, Argis had tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at two much larger predators stalking the paved surface of the road.

“Sabres,” he murmured.

“One each, one shot only?” Lein smirked.

“You’re on. And no extra magic.”

Lein raised his hand to his chest in mock horror. “I’m insulted!”

“Shut up, or you’ll lose our advantage,” he chuckled, sinking into a crouch and nocking an arrow in perfect synchrony with Lein.

Lein’s shot sailed through the air and thudded home in the beast’s forehead. Its mate spun with a snarl, claws digging into the road as it thundered along towards them. Argis cursed and loosed, but missed wildly. He swore and nocked another arrow, but Lein could see it was going to take him too long to aim. He already had another nocked. “Argis?”

“Do it,” he sighed. “I’m much better with a greatsword anyway.”

The second arrow whizzed and hit its mark, the sabre crumpling into the dust, carried several yards in a dramatic skid by the momentum of its charge. “Phew,” Lein breathed, stowing his bow back in its place. “Right, that’s enough, Mother Nature. I just want to get to Crabber’s Shanty now.”

Argis laughed softly in agreement. The road down onto the rocky pass in the mountains was mercifully empty, and Lein stopped every now and again to pluck tundra cotton and mountain flowers from the side of the way.

“You ever actually do anything with those?” Argis asked.

“You mean ‘do I weave pretty purple flower crowns with them’?’” Lein half giggled, skipping a couple of paces. When Argis barked a laugh in response, he added, “Yeah. This one’s got a number of uses,” he said, holding up a purple mountain flower and twirling it thoughtfully between his finger and thumb. He tapped Argis on the breastplate with it. “There was one in the potion you drank back there to sneak past those Forsworn.”

They laughed and joked, and Lein was pleased to find Argis relaxing again in his company. He wasn’t about to push him to talk about his hatred of the hagravens or the Forsworn just yet, but he would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t interested.

Rounding the corner to a crossroads as evening deepened behind the dense grey clouds, Lein caught sight of a cart standing abandoned in the centre of a crossroads, with a chest sitting in the bed. Suddenly everything felt very wrong. He froze, and then tugged Argis back behind a rock.

“What is it?” Argis asked warily, recovering his balance, though he did not pull his arm out of Lein’s grip.

Lein shook his head, fingers clenched tight. “Bandits in the rocks. I’m sure of it. Hang on,” and he cast Argis a sidelong look. “I’m… er… going to shout, but, don’t worry, it’ll be a quiet one.” He watched Argis’ mismatching eyes narrow first in confusion, and then widen when he realised he was going to witness the dragonborn using the power of the Voice.

“Why?”

“It’s a shout to detect the life-force of all living things nearby. It’ll tell me how many there are. Ready your bow though, just in case.” He cleared his throat and added, “And it might make my eyes look kind of funny for a bit. Well, funnier than they already do anyway.”

Argis nodded, but still didn’t say anything. He seemed to have gone completely mute, and Lein couldn’t work out if it was from fear or excitement.

Lein took a moment to think on the words he would need, and on the true essence of their meaning. He inhaled deeply, and drew on the dragonblood inside him, calling on the power of the Voice, channelling the millennia of knowledge and magic. He felt the words rasp out of him in a shuddering whisper. “Laas yah nir.” His vision went black as his eyes readjusted and then the scene returned to him, exactly as it had been before. The only difference was the addition of five shimmering, red auras concealed in the rocks ahead.

Without turning to look at Argis, Lein readied his bow and crept forwards. Using signs he’d picked up from guards, he signalled how many there were, and their locations. Argis tapped his shoulder to signal his silent understanding.

Loosing two arrows in rapid succession, Lein silenced a couple of bandits before they could even work out what was happening. The others ducked out of range, and he heard an arrow sailing through the air, sinking into the frost chilled ground not three feet from where he had taken up position. He knew he’d have to fight at close range soon.

Drawing his ebony sword, feeling the magicka crackling in it, he stowed his bow again and sprinted out of his hiding place and ducked as another arrow shot at him. He heard Argis yell his name in desperate warning, but he didn’t stop to look. The hilt fitted perfectly in his palm, his fingers gripping it just tightly enough to wield it with confidence. As a huge orc charged, bellowing like a wounded mammoth, he ducked beneath the blow and drove the blade deep into his belly, turning and slicing his head clean off from behind. Another arrow embedded itself in the hillside beside him, and he rolled behind a boulder. He heard Argis give a great war shout, and peered out to see the steel of his massive greatsword flashing in the dim light.

Locked in combat with a big Nord in heavy near the cart, overburdened by the pack on his back, Argis couldn’t see the other bandit along the road on his blind side, aiming an arrow straight him. The shimmering effects of the shout still half blinded him, but he pelted down the hill, stones flying as he sprinted down the road. He shot past Argis and took on the remaining bandit alone. Their fight didn’t last long.

Lein turned back towards the chest, blade running red with blood, and saw Argis leaning on the hilt of his greatsword, the point dug into the cobbles of the road, clutching at his stomach, with the bandit lying dead at his feet. Blood was running between his fingers, and Lein’s heart lurched. “Gods, Argis,” he said, darting to his side. Dropping his sword in the dust, he reached his hands out, a golden light blossoming in his palms, and Argis sucked in a sharp breath as the warm light wrapped itself around him.

"Wha-? Hey!” he coughed, “That felt good!” He staggered a bit, and Lein steadied him, beginning to laugh in relief, amused by Argis’ head-rush.

“First time anyone’s used magic on you, I’m guessing,” he chuckled. And then he realised what he was really seeing. The aura whisper was still active, and red mist swirled around him, through him, in a pattern that Lein had never seen before. It was entrancing. Mesmerised by it, he simply stared until it began to fade and he felt his eyes returning to normal again.

“Lein?”

Wide eyed, he still couldn’t tear himself away from it as the last swirls of energy whipped around Argis’ chest.

“You ok? What’s wrong?”

“I…” he breathed, faltering, feeling lightheaded himself. “I’ve never seen an aura so beautiful,” he hissed, not even caring if he sounded foolish. He blinked and stared again. He realised with a jolt that his hand was actually resting on Argis’ chest-plate, fingers splayed, palm pressed against him. He jerked it back like he’d been shocked by lightning. “Gods, I’m sorry,” he spluttered. “I’m sorry. Forgive me,” and he turned away, busying himself with opening the chest and exploring the contents. “Fifty two gold, three lockpicks, and one bar of refined malachite,” he murmured to himself. He counted out twenty six gold pieces and popped them into his own coin purse at his belt. The rest he handed to Argis.

The housecarl took the pouch, but did nothing with it. When Lein realised this, he frowned. “It’s yours,” he said.

“What?”

“Half of it anyway.”

Argis stared at the bag in his hands like he’d never held so much gold in one go. It wasn’t that much, and Lein didn’t understand his bafflement. “My thane,” he murmured. “I… Are you sure?”

“You fought for your life back there - and mine - you earned it nine-times over!”

“But…”

“Come on,” Lein scowled, picking up his sword and tramping off down the road without looking back. The rain was easing up now, but the road was slick, slowing his usual march to a fast walk.

At the base of a waterfall, Lein noticed the setting sun flashing off a chest tucked away beneath a tree, and slithered down the rocks, wading up to his thighs in the freezing water. The lock must have been designed by a master locksmith, because it took him a couple of goes to get it open, but he was rewarded with another load of gold, a flawless diamond, and an enchanted ebony dagger. He looked up to see Argis coming more carefully down the riverbank, his heavy frame and armour putting him at a disadvantage over Lein in his flexible metal-studded leather.

Paused on the island in the middle of the shallow river, Lein nodded up at the palisade wall of the camp on the promontory. The towers of the encampment overlooked a mudcrab-filled pool into which the river drained, and he hissed, “That’s Robber’s Gorge. We want to avoid that if we can.”

Argis nodded in agreement, and followed Lein’s lead as he snuck up the hillside, his leathers squelching horribly after wading through the river. The little hut drew into sight in the distance, just visible in the middle of the narrow pass in the mountains as darkness fell properly around them.

Lein picked his way up the river, calling back to Argis, who was falling further behind him, to watch his ankles. There were hidden mudcrabs everywhere in the soft silt, and they liked nothing more than to grab at the heels of the passers by who disturbed them.

He heard Argis trip and stumble more times than he could count, and eventually there was a louder crash and a curse as he went down. “Fuck.”

“You ok?”

“Yeah,” he moaned, with a definite tone of dejection in his voice. He dusted himself off and mumbled, “I… I just… with my eye, I don’t do very well in the dark.”

“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” Lein said. “That was thoughtless of me. I completely forgot.” He looked up at the shack and then back at Argis’ face. “Forgive me.”

In the fading light he looked surprised, but not offended, that Lein had forgotten that he was blind in that eye.

“It’s not far. I’m thinking we should camp on the far side of the hut. There’s usually a fisherman there, and I doubt she’ll share with us.” He watched Argis brushing dirt and mud off his trousers and adjusting his pack where it had shifted during his fall. Lein stepped back to him and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t bring a torch. We’re out of sight of Robber’s Gorge now. Here,” and he took Argis’ hand in his. Before he could get distracted by the smooth calluses and warm gentleness of his hand in Lein’s, he placed a ball of magelight in it, and when it hit his palm, it stuck there.

Argis turned his palm down to illuminate the rocks and then looked up at Lein. “How… How long will this last?”

“Not very long,” he said, trying hard not to laugh at the Nord’s nervousness. “And if you like, I can re-cast it when it goes out.”

“Thanks,” he said warily, still unsure about the magical light stuck to his hand. “It’s kind of freaky,” he said, wiggling it around. Lein did laugh then, and turned away to keep walking, more slowly this time, and much closer to him.

Argis still had trouble in the dark, and Lein wondered if perhaps the contrast between the blue-white glow of the magelight against the blackness was too great, still distorting the distances which he must have had trouble judging in full daylight, let alone darkness.

He coughed nervously after a few minutes and then, as Argis stumbled again on a loose river rock, said, “Look, I don’t want to patronise you, but would it be easier if you grabbed my arm?”

The housecarl sighed. In the silence behind the gesture, the magelight glimmered into nothingness and he watched Argis’ head lower, both his eyes closed. “Probably. I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t want to be a burden to you.”

“You’re not a burden,” Lein said, stepping close to him. “And it’s not your fault. Come on,” and he touched Argis lightly on his left arm. He slid his left hand up Lein’s slender arm and held him gently between his thumb and forefinger just above his elbow.

He didn’t trip half so much with Lein to guide him, and when they reached the hut a few minutes later, they saw the sleeping figure of a woman lying in the bed, just as Lein had predicted. His hand was warm and his grasp gentle, and Lein never wanted him to let go.

“There’s a nice spot I’ve used before, just up here,” he said. “There’s a good, clean waterfall, and some sheltered rocks.”

They waded through the shallow stream and crossed onto the far bank. All was exactly as Lein remembered. Except for the sabre cat curled up in his usual campsite. “Perfect,” Argis murmured when Lein told him what he could see. “What do we do now?”

With a snarl of frustration Lein drew his bow and shot the creature while it slumbered. He felt sorry for killing it, but there was no way he was making Argis walk another step in the dark. The man was exhausted and embarrassed, and they needed to curl up themselves, dry off their clothes around a fire, and get some sleep. They could afford to take a much shorter day the next day, even though the snows were beginning to fall over the forests around Morthal.

“Do we have to sleep with the corpse of that cat?” Argis asked. If Lein had told him to kiss a draugr he wouldn’t have sounded less thrilled.

“No,” Lein chuckled. “I have an idea. It’ll take another shout though. First one I ever learned. You up for one last bit of magic tonight?”

Argis smirked. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, but sure, why not?”

The carcass of the big cat was blasted away under the power of Lein’s full shout of unrelenting force, leaving the campsite clear for them. They watched as it was washed away on the current of the river below.

Argis laughed long and loud as it spun through the air like a child’s toy flung aside, then let out a huge grunt as he took off his pack and rolled out his shoulders. “How far have we come today, you reckon?” he asked as he flopped onto the ground beside it and began to undo his bedroll from where it was strapped in a waxed sack to the bottom of the pack.

Lein undid his own and set it down on the ground in the relative shelter of the rocks. “Easily twenty miles,” he said. “I’m going to be sore tomorrow. It’s been ages since I’ve covered that much ground on foot.”

“Me too,” Argis groaned, kicking off his wet boots. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a spell for drying out clothes, have you?”

Lein chuckled. “No, but if you take your wet things off and give them to me I’ll light a fire and they can dry overnight.” He could have sworn he heard Argis mutter something about Lein stripping him, but since he wasn’t entirely sure, he definitely didn’t want to mention it.  “I don’t think it’s going to rain or snow any more tonight.”

With a fire going, wearing clean clothes and with their wet ones drying beside it on a makeshift driftwood rack, they both wolfed down some more bread and cheese, washed down with fresh water and a pint each of Nord Ale, and slipped into their bedrolls. Both men lay close to the fire for warmth as the late Frostfall snows began to gather in the distance. Lein lay on Argis’ right side, close enough that if they stretched their arms out, they would meet in the middle. He curled up in his bedroll, wearing just a linen shirt and his underwear inside the thick fur-lined sleeping bag, since his trousers were still soggy from the river. Normally he’d have put socks on, but he’d been too lazy to fish them out, so he lay there with icy toes and waited for sleep.

Argis was asleep in two minutes flat, snoring softly, the bedroll folded slightly back off his chest, as though he needed to vent heat instead of conserve it like Lein. His left arm was flung up above his head, and his right bent at the elbow, hand resting on his chest as it rose and fell. He shuffled in his sleep, and that hand shifted to lie on the damp grass beside him. The heat and glow of the fire was gorgeous, and Lein tried hard not to stare at the sharp planes of Argis’ roughly-hewn face in the light of the little flames, at his long lashes, or the way his exposed arm lay elegantly over the cool grass, fingers curled softly inwards, palm up.

He closed his eyes, fighting the urge to reach out and touch the bare skin of his arm, to feel those calluses again, to slip his fingers into Argis’ hand and feel his warmth flow into him.

Unable to bear it any longer, he allowed himself one tiny luxury. Repeating the words of the aura whisper shout from earlier, he sighed as that gently-swirling red energy filled his vision again. It twisted in and out of Argis’ body like smoke from an extinguished candle, spiralling and coiling around him lazily, richly, warmly. He stared unashamedly at him until the effects died and exhaustion washed over him.

When he woke with a start as usual some time in the dead of night, he saw that Argis hadn’t moved. Lein realised that he’d not shouted or screamed this time. He’d only awoken suddenly with that feeling of falling common to many dreamers who found themselves jolted awake in the night. Lein lay on his left side facing Argis still, and sighed. And then he frowned. There was a pressure on his right hand. He turned his eyes and looked down to where his right arm was lying on the ground between him and Argis. His eyes widened and his heart began to clang when he saw what was causing the pressure.

The housecarl’s strong fingers were clenched around Lein’s own.

His brown and blue eyes darted to Argis’ face, but the man appeared to be fast asleep. Lein couldn’t breathe for a moment he was so overwhelmed by the gesture. He didn’t care if it was an accident; he didn’t care if Argis had no idea he’d done it, or whether Lein himself had reached out for him in his dreams. What made his heartbeat thud in his throat was the fact that Argis was holding him, not the other way around.

Right then, as the unease that had woken him faded from his consciousness, that touch seemed the only thing anchoring him to the rocky hills of Skyrim, and he clung to Argis. He clung to him as sleep reached up for him a while later, letting the tingling warmth of the man’s hand guide him into a deep, and astonishingly peaceful sleep.

Chapter Six 

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[monstersandmaw]

Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter Three

Hope you enjoy Chapter Three - thank you so much for your amazing feedback on this story. I never expected it to gather any support on a blog that’s mostly dedicated to monsters, but I do do fantasy fiction as well, so I guess it has a home here too. Enjoy!

Lein recovers after his brush with death, meets a sassy priestess of Dibella who sees *instantly* what his feelings are for Argis, and an old lover comes calling...

Table of Contents | Previous Chapter

Everything hurt. There wasn't a scrap of skin or muscle that didn't hurt. He ached, and sweat rolled down his temples into his hair. Moaning vaguely, he tried to remove whatever it was that was making him so Nine-damned hot, but his fingers groped too feebly and he cried out in frustration. All the sound that left him, however, was a dull croak and a whimper.

"Shh," a voice murmured from beside him. "Shh, rest."

Lein had the vague impression of a woman in orange robes beside him, and a shock of silver-blonde hair, before he slipped into fevered dreams once more.

When he crawled his way back to consciousness the next time, the aches had gone, but he felt terribly weak still. And cold now. Washed-out from the combined action of fever and potions, he shivered and rolled over, drawing the blankets up around his ears and drifting off again.

After sleeping the sleep of the dead for what might have been hours or days for all he knew, Lein finally surfaced and felt brighter: weak, wobbly, and watery as a new-born elk, but alive. He grunted, rubbing his eyes, and levered himself upright, blinking the vagueness from his vision and brain as he stared at his surroundings.

He was in the master bedroom of his house in Markarth. The door was open, and he could hear the friendly crackling of a fire in the grate next door.

His head swam only a little as he pushed the covers back and stood. The long, loose, linen nightshirt which he had been put into fell to just above his knees, and it flopped open a little at the chest. He tugged at it and saw two new scars, livid pink against the pale of the rest of his skin. One was a ragged star shape, where the arrow had pierced his lung from back to front, and the other was an angry slash across his abdominal muscles. 

"Gods, I was such an idiot," he whispered to himself as recalled his frantic plummet down the mountain-slope away from the dragon burial mound and right into a pair of necromages. His stomach growled and he felt faint for a different reason this time, and he turned to make his way barefoot towards the living room and kitchen in search of something simple to eat.

Sitting beside the fire, apparently lost in thought, was the figure of his housecarl. He had his back to Lein and seemed to be staring off into the flames. Lein smiled at the sight of him looking so still and calm, in stark contrast to his bulky warrior’s appearance and gruff manner. With a hand on the doorframe, he made his way into the room, and Argis jumped almost out of his skin at the sound of the door knocking softly against the wall.

"My thane!" he gasped, leaping to his feet and bolting towards him. "You shouldn't be up. Senna said you had to rest. Please... whatever you need, let me get it for you."

He held up a hand to quieten the enormous man's bellowing, and gave a soft, hoarse chuckle. "It's alright, Argis. I'm alright."

The housecarl's eyebrows knotted and he scowled. "Sir," he began, but again, Lein cut him off.

"Please. I want to sit by the fire. Is there anything to eat? Something simple?"

Reluctantly, Argis nodded. "Let me help you," he said as Lein swayed perilously.

He allowed the giant to steer him into a chair, and sat back with a deep sigh as he watched Argis move away and fetch a clean bowl from the table. As he turned to ladle broth into it, Argis cast him a wary look, which only made Lein chuckle again. "I'm alright, Argis," he insisted. "I'm not going to pass out or combust. I'm just a little weak."

"A little? You should be dead!" he hissed. "When you fell in through the door three nights ago, I thought it was an intruder. I came running down the hallway with my sword drawn, only to find you tangled up in a load of shit by the doorway, half crushed by your own backpack." He strode over and all  but thrust the bowl at Lein, and when he passed him an elegant dwemer spoon, Lein wondered fleetingly if he was going to stab him with it.

Argis watched carefully to see if Lein was too weak to hold the bowl, clearly afraid he'd send scalding hot stew all over his lap, and then went on with his story.

"I rolled you over and discovered there was more blood in your clothes than there was in your veins, and nearly had another heart attack." He drew a deep breath and eyed Lein's face. He added more calmly, "I thought you were pale before, but I've never seen anyone that white.” There was another pause. “I thought you were dead."

"I'm sorry I frightened you," he said, blowing on a spoonful of simple but aromatic broth.

Argis shook his head, still looking angry. "I got you into your room, but the potions weren't working. I had to get someone from the temple to come and treat you. Senna said it was the poison from the wound that was counteracting the healing potions. She said necromancers use that sort of shit. What the hell were you doing pissing off necromancers? I thought you went to get a statue from the Forsworn?"

Lein had to laugh, even if it only came out as a hollow rasping in his throat. "I hadn't intended to, I promise you. I... I sort of fell into it... as it were..."

Argis wasn't amused. "I thought you were going to die. Fuck, I've not been your housecarl much more than a week, and I thought I was going to lose you already."

"It wasn't your fault, Argis," he sighed, beginning to shovel the stew into his mouth in earnest. "You weren't even there. How could it have been your fault?"

"That's just it," he said, falling back into his own chair across from Lein with a huge grunt. "I should have been. I'm sworn to protect you with my life."

"I'm more of a lone wolf usually," he shrugged. Waving his spoon at the broth, he added, "This is excellent, thank you."

His housecarl merely grunted again.

Lein sighed. "Look, I chose to go alone. I don’t know if you've ever served another thane, or what your expectations of me are, but this is going to take some adjusting to. I have titles in other holds, but Markarth is different. My housecarls in Whiterun and Hjaalmarch are... well... they're as much my friends as they are anything else. The thanes there don't behave the way they do here. There's no pomp and ceremony. You just turn up at the jarl's court, you have your meeting or whatever, your housecarl sits next to you, or buggers off to the inn if they don't feel like coming to the meeting, and it's all very relaxed."

Argis listened intently, expression mostly blank, mild incredulity creeping in at the edges.

"So coming here and seeing all the thanes parading around like peacocks, showing off and barking orders at their housecarls like... like hunters with dogs... I'm not used to it. And I don't like it. I'm not going to treat you like that. Ever."

"Is that why you didn't ask me to come with you?" he murmured eventually.

Lein nodded, taking some more of his stew. "I just assumed you'd ask me if you wanted to come along. Valdimar does, but Lydia never even asks. She still just trails along like a new puppy until I actually have to send her back to the house because she's nearly got us both killed." He chortled, blowing on the spoon before swallowing another delicious mouthful. "Gods, she was so green when we first met. Must be about five years ago now. She was barely seventeen, had had about a week in the city guard, and then she gets assigned to me because I killed a dragon and got myself made a thane. I think Balgruuf thought it'd be funny to give her to me and watch me have a go at courting her, since most of the men in Whiterun have tried to get up her skirts, but we actually ended up getting along really well."

"What do you mean?"

He snorted, realising he was just about to confess his tastes ran towards men, but he settled for the other side of the truth and said, "She's more interested in women than men. I think he thought it'd be funny to watch me try and get her to sleep with me, only to be shot down, or slapped, or have my cock cut off or something."

"Was it?" Argis asked, a strange catch in his voice. “Funny, I mean?”

Lein laughed fully this time, the last of his stew slopping around in the bottom of the bowl. "I never bothered," he chuckled. Tiredness washed over him and he sighed, resting the bowl on his thighs a moment. "I mean, she's pretty, sure, but... well... she didn't do much for me, let's just say."

Argis frowned, but didn't ask any more. "Can I take that for you?" he asked instead, gesturing at Lein's empty bowl.

Lein could barely muster the energy to lift the bowl from his lap. "Thank you," he nodded as it was taken from him.

As Argis' heavy feet stumped away, with a belly full of warm food Lein felt his eyes drooping and his head nodding, but he was asleep before he could summon the strength to return to bed.

A vague pressure around his shoulders and under his knees, followed by a lurching sensation, stirred him just above the surface of sleep, and he opened his eyes to find, to his utter mortification, that he was being carried back to bed like a child. The musky warmth of Argis' chest was so deliciously close that he would have been turned on under different circumstances, but as it was, he could barely bring himself to look up at the bigger man. When he did, he found that Argis was smiling softly, and he grinned down at him as he set him tenderly down onto his mattress.

"I'm sorry," Lein hissed, feeling vague with exhaustion. "You could have just left me there..."

Argis gave a whickering chuckle and pulled the covers over Lein's feeble body. "You need some more rest," he said. "And all you’ll get in one of those old chairs is a terrible crick in your neck."

He hummed a vague response, and let sleep claim him again.

It was a full week after that until he was strong enough to convince Argis to stop hovering nervously. "For Nine's sake," he finally grumbled. "I only fainted once, and that was three days ago. You don't need to keep orbiting me like some damned dragonfly..."

Argis laughed softly and mumbled his apologies.

"I'm going up to the temple to settle my bill with Senna," Lein announced as he moved down the stone ramp.

"Please don't decapitate me," Argis rattled quickly from behind him, "But you want me to come with you?"

"Now, do you want to see Senna's pretty face again, or to keep me from falling on my pretty arse?" he quipped.

To his surprise, Argis blushed a very pretty pink himself, and muttered something about better being safe than sorry.

Lein snorted indelicately and waved his hand. "Fine, come on then."

The two made their way silently along the stone walkways of the city, moving towards the stairs which led to the temple. A few people stopped to talk to Lein, the guardswoman who had let him in after the incident with the necromancers for one, and he laughed brightly as Adara bounded up to him shortly afterwards. He encouraged her to keep going with her training, and promised her he’d buy the first piece of jewellery she put up for sale when she’d completed her apprenticeship with her father. All the while, Argis stood there watching, observing from a couple of paces’ distance in silence, his expression inscrutable.

The ascent to the temple of Dibella took a bit more puff out of him than he’d been expecting, and he pressed a pale hand into the rock doorway at the top to recover, but when he caught Argis lingering at his elbow, he rolled his mismatching eyes and grinned. "I’m not on the floor yet, Argis," he smirked.

With nothing but a shake of his head, Argis followed him into the temple.

At the sound of the door opening, a priestess called from the back of the room without looking up. "The sisters are communing with Dibella. They can't be disturbed. You'll have to come back another time."

"It's alright, Senna," he called softly. "I don't need to see the sisters. I just came to offer my thanks, and give what's owed to the temple for your help."

"Lein?" she gasped, setting down the jug of water she'd been using to wash her hands and scurrying over. "Dibella be praised, you look so much better." She surveyed him more closely. “Which is to say you look as terrible as you always do.”

His laugh echoed in the high-ceilinged sanctuary. "Argis tells me that it’s thanks to you that I’m back on my feet."

She eyed the housecarl from under her golden hood and smiled, her strange tattoos stretching. "Not entirely down to me," she smiled. "He cleaned you up first. Gods though, you were a mess. Infected and oozing..." she grimaced. "I've not seen someone that close to crossing over since my training days. Still," she added more brightly, "Here you are, to live and pester me another day."

He held out a heavy coin purse to her and said, "Well, you have my thanks,” and he turned to his housecarl and added, “As does Argis.” He eyed the bag of coins and said to Senna, “See to it that this goes to helping others, will you?"

She smiled. "That's what we do here, Lein." She slid the purse into a pocket of her robes and spoke again. "You look like you could use some sunlight and fresh air now. Take it easy though... no more quests or contracts, you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"And Argis?" she barked at the big man standing slightly behind him, "You make sure he does as he's told, alright? No going off adventuring just yet."

"Yes ma'am," he smiled, bowing his head.

"You see, Lein?" she said, jabbing him in the ribs with a sharp elbow. "At least he listens to me."

"I told you I heard you," Lein smirked, flashing her his most disarming smile.

She shook her head with a wide, fond smile and bundled them both back out into the sunny morning. "There's a great difference between hearing someone and listening to them, Lein. If my charms weren't so entirely wasted on you, I'd have you wrapped around my little finger like every other man in Markarth. As it is, I have to threaten you instead."

"Threatening me with Argis?" he smirked, eyeing Argis’ colossal  bulwark of a body up and down. It was easy to see where he’d got his nickname. "Come on, Senna, look at him… Have a little mercy."

A light glinted in the priestess’ eyes and she hissed, "I know your type, Lein." She giggled, and actually smacked him playfully on the backside as he halted on the temple steps. His skin stung strangely, but it soon passed.

He rolled his eyes and trotted down the three steps onto the landing where Argis stood waiting for him, a baffled and slightly wary expression on his handsome, scarred face.

"Don't ask," Lein chuckled, turning and stepping off the first of the stairs which led back to the city below. But he missed his footing as his head spun unexpectedly and his vision blurred. He cried out in surprise as he tipped backwards.

Argis lunged for him and caught him with his massive hands. "Careful," he growled.

"Thank you," Lein frowned, casting a quick glance up at the temple doorway as his vision cleared again, the weakness passing as swiftly as it had come. Still holding him by the arms, Argis followed his gaze.

Lein called out to Senna, "Did you...?"

Her eyes went wide with over-acted innocence. She brought her finger to her lips and winked before shutting the door with a booming clank.

Lein growled in her direction, and patted Argis on the forearm.

"What was that about?" his housecarl quizzed, letting go, still staring at the door as though she might re-emerge and come at Lein a second time.

Laughing softly once more, Lein resumed his skipping pace down the stairs now that Senna's devious magic had done its work. "Never mind," he called. "The mischief of priestesses is a surprisingly well-kept secret in Skyrim."

Argis didn’t say another word to him all afternoon, and Lein wondered if he'd offended the big man somehow with all his playful irreverence. Perhaps Argis still expected a little more decorum from his thane, though Lein had been careful not to push it from playfulness into flirtation. He still had no idea of the housecarl’s preferences, and he wasn't about to make things a thousand times worse by flirting with him.

Perhaps Argis had cottoned on to what Senna had been playing at though, and perhaps that had freaked him out. Skyrim’s civilians were pretty open minded about people’s relationships, but it was a different story for those in military service. Lein had learned the hard way what guards and soldiers thought of men who liked other men. His ribs ached at the memory of a beating he’d taken at the hands of two Markarth Guards when he’d been just sixteen. He hoped that if his housecarl wasn’t interested, he was at least open minded.

He spared Lisbet the details of his difficulties when he returned her statue to her that afternoon, and he still received a handsome reward for his efforts. He also convinced her to buy a bunch of the crap he’d picked up on the way, as though he was no better than a hoarding magpie. However, Lein’s buoyant mood soured the longer Argis remained quiet in his company. Somehow it felt like a different kind of thoughtful silence from the kind he’d grown used to around the man, so that evening Lein excused himself and retreated to his enchanting room before supper.

The stone fireplace truly roared, the fire egged on to hotter temperatures by the flames he directed at every so often, loving the heat as much as a Khajiit or Argonian would have. The glow of it seemed to make his bones glow too, but it felt wonderful, driving the last aches of his injuries almost into nothingness. He’d cleared the stone shelf at one end of the room of all its junk, and, sitting in the comfy wooden chair beside the fire, he had his feet perched on it, one ankle crossed casually over the other, eyes on the last page of a very bizarre volume with the title ‘Withershins’.

When he heard Argis call that supper was ready and that he’d leave it in the pot for Lein, he replied that he’d be out in a moment. He finished the book and set it back on his shelf, stretching, feeling the restorative powers in his body almost glowing, the new scars creaking on his skin, and headed out to join Argis.

The housecarl was sitting at the stone table in the dining room, tucking into a massive piece of pot-roast venison when Lein emerged. Lein had just gone over to grab a plate when there was a knock at the door. Frowning, Argis set down his knife and fork, but Lein waved him to stay put. “I’ll get it. You keep eating.”

Argis complied, though his expression remained sullen, and Lein snatched up his favourite dagger and slid it down into the leather belt at his side. It wouldn’t have been the first time thugs had been sent to his door, and it never paid to be too careful.

He called out as he ambled down the slope. “Who is it?”

“Lein?” a soft, lilting voice called from the other side. The sound of it made Lein’s gut twist and his world tilt oddly. “Lein, that you?”

“Vipir?” he gasped, flinging the door open. “What the hell are you doing here, so far from Riften?”

The man who stood on the other side of his bronze door was tall and muscular, wearing his own custom version of the tough, supple leather of the Thieves Guild. His bare arms showed under the large, studded leather epaulettes, and a belt of small pockets hung diagonally from left shoulder to right hip. Lein knew they’d be full of lockpicks and other tools, and probably the odd diamond ring, snuck off a wealthy lady’s finger right under her nose. Vipir was damned good at pickpocketing.

Vipir was many things, and among them, he was Lein’s ex lover.

The brunet laughed softly and jutted his square jaw out at Lein. “You gonna let me in, or are you gonna make me freeze my balls off out here?”

“Just as long as you don’t ask me to warm them up, eh?” he snorted quietly, holding the door open for him. He yelled over his shoulder, “Argis, we got company. This is Vipir, and old friend from Riften.”

Vipir leaned in close to Lein’s ear as he entered the house, and hissed, “He your new lover-boy?” The sudden closeness was intoxicatingly delicious and it took Lein a moment to recover.

Lein replied in the same hushed tones, “Housecarl. I’m a respectable thane here now, you know? Don’t go sullying my good name now, will you?”

Ignoring Vipir’s snort of laughter, he walked up the slope back into the house ahead of him, just as Argis got to his feet, wiping his hands on a square of linen from the top of a fresh pile. When they were both in the room, Argis extended a hand in greeting to his thane’s guest with a steady gaze that weighed him up. Lein suspected Argis had worked out Vipir’s slightly weaker left side, and preference for a bow already.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Argis asked politely, his expression just about warm enough not to be called rude.

Viper laughed again, clearly unfazed. “A good mead would go down nicely, thank you,” he said, easing himself into a chair by the fire with a huge sigh. “By the Nine, Lein, it was a long carriage ride here.”

“You didn’t run this time?” he chuckled, easing himself into the chair Argis had recently vacated.

“Oh balls to that,” Vipir retorted. “You and Vex are never gonna let me live that down, are you?”

Lein shook his head and took a swig of the bottle Argis offered him at the same time as he handed one to Vipir. They clinked drinks and downed a good few gulps before Lein asked, “So, what are you doing here?”

“Job for Delvin,” he said evasively, swigging his mead. “Little Vexy told me you were planning on being holed up here for a while.” He squinted his dark brown eyes at Lein and added, “Gotta say though, you look like shit, friend.”

Lein barked a loud laugh and took another long draft of his own drink. “Yeah, well, I had a rather close brush with death about a weak ago. Still recovering.” He flopped down into the chair opposite Vipir and ran his finger thoughtfully around the rim of the bottle.

“Shit,” Vipir cursed, suddenly serious. Concern flooded into his warm eyes and deep, accented voice. “You ok?”

Lein nodded. “Yeah. Think I gave Argis the fright of his life when I stumbled in through the doorway in the middle of the night, bleeding to death, but I think he’s nearly forgiven me now. Is that right?”

The housecarl had returned to his seat at the table to finish his supper. Lein turned to look over his shoulder at Argis, who surveyed the two of them with a calculated stare for a while and then grinned. “I think you’ve got a little way to go before you’re forgiven for that, thane,” he smirked.

Vipir shot Lein a look over the rim of his mead bottle, but kept quiet.

“Where are you staying?” Lein asked. “Silverblood Inn?”

“I know you think I piss everyone off, Lein, but I do have some friends in the city.”

Lein cocked an eyebrow. “Bridges you haven’t burned? Vipir, I’m impressed.”

He rolled his eyes and slouched further into his chair. “I’m meeting my contact tomorrow,” he said, adding, “But yes. Silverblood Inn tonight. So when you haven’t been getting yourself killed, what have you been up to? Feels like ages since you stopped by the Ragged Flagon.”

Lein cast half a glance at Argis, who was nearly done with his meal, and said, “Taking contracts mainly…” he shot him a meaningful glance.

“Our brothers in Falkreath, or jobs for Brynjolf I don’t know about?”

“Both,” he smiled.

“Dancing with death and the law,” he whispered, barely audible above the crackle of the fire. Then he sat back and uttered his next statement just loudly enough for Argis to hear, and in such a tone that made Lein want to kick him. “You always did have a wild side.”

Lein shared his supper with him, and the two friends who had once been lovers chatted for hours by the fireside.

While Argis excused himself fairly early, Lein found it impossible to tear himself away. Vipir was one of those old lovers who had never done anything wrong. Their relationship had never soured, only grown distant as Lein had left Riften to roam Skyrim’s roads. It had never been serious, but it had always been heartfelt. The banter came as easily as it ever had, and Lein enjoyed hearing how the guild was picking itself up again now that Mercer was no longer dragging it down. “Brynjolf and Karliah are the next hottest thing in Riften,” Vipir laughed.

“Oh wow, predictable much?” Lein scoffed, cheeks rosy, a most of the way through his second bottle of Blackbriar Reserve. Vipir’s booming laugh resounded around the chamber yet again, and Lein wondered if they were keeping Argis awake. Feeling a pang of guilt, he yawned and set the bottle down, stretching out his shoulders. “Listen, Vip,” he sighed. “How long are you in Markarth for? Maybe we can catch up over breakfast or something tomorrow? I’m kind of beat…”

“Yeah,” he agreed with a yawn of his own. “Me too. I came straight here from the road. I got here a day earlier than planned, so I should go and find some lodgings at the Silverblood Inn. I’m due to leave again tomorrow. You want to meet at the inn at eight?”

“Nine?” he countered with a hopeful grin.

“No stamina,” Vipir chuckled. “Not like the old days.”

“You forget I almost died last week,” Lein retorted. “I’m not myself.”

“Yeah, well, you were always good at keeping your scars from me,” he sighed, standing and setting his bottle down on the edge of the fireplace.

Lein stood and felt the room spin.

Vipir let out a soft laugh and stepped close to steady him. Too close. “Never could hold your liquor either,” he murmured fondly, pressing his body against him, his strong, archer’s hand still wrapped around Lein’s forearm.

Lein bit his lip and groaned involuntarily. It had been a long time since he’d felt a connection deeper than a formal handshake, and he suddenly found himself aching all over to be touched, kissed, held, fucked…

Vipir read him as easily as he always had, and closed the last of the air between them by sealing a kiss onto Lein’s softly parted lips.

In an instant, passion flared in both of them, and it deepened. Vipir’s short beard scratched against Lein’s white stubble, while Lein’s hands raked through his shoulder-length brown hair, grabbing it, pulling it, shoving him deeper into the kiss. Teeth clacked before tongues began to explore further, and Lein moaned at his old friend’s familiar taste and touch.

Vipir was bigger and stronger than Lein, and he easily backed him up against a blank bit of wall. Lein let out a grunt as his back collided with the cold masonry, and Vipir chased the sound with another kiss. His hips ground against Lein’s and they each felt the other’s hard cock and gasped. “Been a while since you and I…” Vipir breathed. “You want…?”

Lein’s mismatched eyes flitted to the archway which led to Argis’ closed doors. “Keep it quiet,” he hissed.

Vipir didn’t even wait to get him into his bedroom before he’d stripped his shirt off and had undone the ties of his trousers. Lein knew he shouldn’t be doing this here, in his living room, but the sensations overwhelmed him and he suddenly found he had no objections whatsoever to Vipir jerking him off. Lein came loudly, an embarrassingly short time later, head thrown back, hands clutching at Vipir’s shoulders as he shuddered violently, knees buckling beneath him. Vipir actually had to hold him up as he painted his old friend’s hand and part of his own stomach white in the warm air of his own living room. “Thought you said to keep it quiet,” Vipir chuckled.

“Fuck you,” Lein growled vaguely.

“With pleasure,” Vipir answered, passing him a linen cloth to clean himself up. Vipir was still desperately hard, and didn’t wait very long for Lein to get clean before he was back, biting and sucking kisses into Lein’s collarbones.

A few heartbeats later Lein pushed Vipir back off him and stalked away to his own bedroom.

He never thought he’d bless Markarth’s stone beds, but at least they didn’t creak.

Chapter Four

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Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter Eight

Lein and Argis spend a quiet day in Morthal, and Argis (finally) gets his first reading lesson.

<—- Previous Chapter | Table of Contents

When Lein woke, he was groggy but surprisingly warm. It took him a while to remember what had happened, but when he did, he cracked his mismatching eyes open and realised his head was resting on the mountainous shoulder of his housecarl. He didn’t fight to suppress the grin that split his face. Gods, this felt so right. Argis’ shoulder was warm, and he smelled incredible. His skin was tough and tanned hardly marred by a mark on the front, unlike the back, and Lein traced his fingertips tentatively up his sternum, enjoying the light dusting of hair on his chest.

Argis, with his head tipped back, lips parted, was snoring softly, his blond hair spread out on the pillow beneath him, and one hand on his gently rising and falling stomach, was deeply asleep. Lein had never been this close to him, and he was lying on Argis’ right-hand side, trapped between housecarl and wooden wall, so there wasn’t much room to wriggle free, and not much he could do except lie there quietly and stare at him.

He never wanted to move, ever again.

Argis’ eyelashes, gently twitching as his eyes roved lazily back and forth beneath his lids, were long and a few shades darker than his blond hair, but they only held Lein’s gaze for a moment before he began to let his eyes wander over the lines of the red tattoo on his cheek. He had seen it on a few people on his travels around Skyrim, but he didn’t know if it held any meaning. He did know it must have been extremely painful to have the work done on his face though.

The man was clearly very deeply asleep, as Lein sneezed quietly if unexpectedly, and he didn’t so much as change his breathing in reaction, so Lein decided to spare Argis the awkwardness of waking up still cradling his thane, and drew on his reserves of magicka. He used it to cast a muffling spell on himself, just in case he disturbed the unconscious housecarl by some movement. And as gorgeous as this all was, nature’s first call of the day was already tugging at him. He groaned in reluctance, but the sound was almost silent, muted by the spell.

Silent as a shadow, he slid along to the end of the bed and climbed off onto the flagstone floor. The spell would not last very long, so he recovered Argis’ body made the most of his time as a silent ghost to dress and slip out of the door into the main hall of the inn. No one was around, though there was a steaming mug of tea on the end of the bar, and he went to the bathroom to go through his perfunctory morning ablutions.

Jonna was stoking the fire in the main hall and looked up when Lein closed the door behind him.

“I think my housecarl is still asleep,” Lein said after wishing her a good morning. “Knowing him, he will be cross with me for not waking him,” he added a cheeky grin. “But I would like to go for a walk alone anyway. Would you be so kind as to tell him when he wakes that I am going out of town to the north a little way? I want to collect one or two alchemical ingredients from the swamp.”

“Aye, I’ll tell him.” She watched him with curious, dark eyes, but said nothing further.

Lein thanked her, and stepped out, inhaling the perfume of silent deathbells, their purple heads delicate as folded paper. He caught the soft chiming of a nirnroot nestled in the lea of a building nearby. There were hundreds of the pale, sonorous plants in the swamp. No wonder Idgrod and her family all had strange visions; it was enough to drive anyone a bit mad. He ignored it, and stumped along the road, heading north. Ice cracked and fractured beneath his boots, and patches of freezing fog hung low in the hollows of the landscape, drifting eerily between the trees, and as Lein crossed the bridge, leaving the noises of the waking town behind him, he yawned.

He was tired, but somehow he felt more rested than he usually did on waking, and he tried not to wonder whether it had anything to do with being curled up with his housecarl for most of the night. He also tried not to dwell on how perfectly his head had fitted into the curve of Argis’ shoulder, how perfect his arm had felt resting across the muscles of Argis’ taut stomach, how perfect Argis’ sleeping expression was, how… He tripped on a loose stone and schooled himself to be more careful. It would not do to stumble into a bog and freeze to death just because he was still crushing on his housecarl like some teenage girl mooning over a cute city guard. Besides, he was done being stupid as a spring hare now. No more accidents.

He stepped silently off the path and moved beneath the frost-blasted trees. Drajkmyr marsh was cold and foreboding at any hour of the day, but in the chilly light of dawn it was especially eerie. He kept a wary eye open for the shimmering movements of vampires and other creatures who liked to move in the half-light. Hanging moss dangled off some of the branches, frozen stiff in the early morning, and the frost-rimed grass was brittle as blown glass as he pushed carefully through the scrub in search of fungi.

His alchemist’s gloves were not as warm as the supple leather of his Nightingale ones, but they offered better protection against the toxins of the plants and mushrooms he needed to collect. He had little idea of passing time as he set about searching for the various ingredients he was running low on, and as he slipped his last cuttings into the gleaner’s bag at his hip, the morning light caught the frost on the edge of an old standing stone and it flashed and glittered like thousands of diamonds. He drew up short at the sight of it: a little moment of delicate beauty in the dark, dingy murk of the swamp.

The distant bustle of the village, the creek of the mill, and the slap of water against the little fishing boats they kept moored to the pontoons and raised walkways, began to rise in volume as the morning progressed, and he realised he should get back before he upset Argis. Thanes who took housecarls with them were expected not to leave them behind. It was insulting.

When he rejoined the path and began to stride along, the leather of his soft boots darkened by the dew and melting frost, he saw that Argis had left the inn and was walking casually up the road in his direction. He didn’t seem angry, his arms hanging loose by his side, though he was wearing his steel armour, and strapped to his back was that massive two-hander. Instead of having it half tied back, his blond hair was loose, and he shoved his huge hand through it to lift it back off his face.

Lein smiled at the sight of him, and as he did so, Argis looked up. The smile he offered in return was soft, almost shy, and he stopped, choosing to wait for Lein to reach him instead of joining him.

“Morning,” Argis said gently as Lein drew level with him. He eyed the apothecary’s satchel at Lein’s hip and asked, “Find what you were looking for?” His voice was soft as fresh-cut hay, warm and slightly husky.

“I did,” Lein nodded. “I assume Jonna passed on my message then?”

“She did,” he said.

“Have you had breakfast?”

Argis shook his head.

“Neither have I. A bowl of porridge or perhaps even some eggs and bacon beside that fire would be very nice right about now, I think.”

Argis merely nodded once, Nordic braids clinking, smiled, and fell into step beside him. Lein desperately wanted to ask him about the previous night. He ached to know how Argis felt about his thane asking him to climb into bed with him like he was some pathetic child suffering the effects of a bad dream, how Argis felt about his falling asleep there, how – or rather what – Argis felt about him, but instead, he bit his lips together and sighed.

“Sleep ok?” Argis asked a few paces later, and Lein nearly fell over his own feet.

“Very well,” he said stiffly, trying not to give too much away. “And… you?”

Argis chuckled. The sound of it made Lein think of the warm rasp of a saw through pine, rich, biting, and full of energy. Argis didn’t look down as he answered, his gaze fixed on the rocks above the town to the south, and he said, “I did. Though you didn’t get to make the take proper advantage of having the bigger bed…”

“I was much warmer for it, I’d wager,” he said cautiously, nudging his elbow into Argis’ armoured waist, the little spark of hope flaring brighter for a moment and fuelling his bravery.

Again, Argis rumbled a laugh, but he offered no reply this time. Was it the chilly air that had lent the apples of his cheeks that colour?

They tramped up the steps to the inn and Argis held the door open for Lein to step through first. As he passed in front of the massive warrior’s barrel chest, in a rush of bravery or stupidity, Lein brought his palm to the cold steel and pressed lingering fingers to the metal, smiling. “Thank you,” he muttered, turning his face away before Argis could see the blush in his pale skin.

Jonna was polishing pewter tankards behind the bar at the far end of the hall when they were both inside, and she smiled at them, adding, “Ready for some breakfast, I assume?”

“Please,” Lein nodded. “I’ll just dump my stuff in the room and I’ll be right back out in a moment.”

Argis nodded and took a seat at the bench.

When Lein emerged from their room, he saw Jonna standing with a hand on Argis’ shoulder, murmuring something in his ear. Lein paused, watching with a softly curious smile on his face, as Argis tipped his head back and barked a laugh, the little beads in his braids flashing in the low light. She patted his shoulder, laughing as well, and when she turned away, Lein saw two plates of egg and bacon steaming on the table, with a basket of fresh loaves and a little plate with some fresh butter.

As he went to take the seat opposite his housecarl, Lein passed close to Argis, as much by necessity as desire, forced to do so by the proximity of the table to the tall, carved column that supported the roof. “What was that about?” he asked as he sat down with a grunt, jutting his chin at the far end of the room where Jonna was fussing with some bottles of cold, pressed apple juice for them.

“Oh, nothing,” he muttered, looking down at his cutlery. “Just offering me some advice.” If his large fingers fumbled with it slightly as he picked his knife and fork up and began eating, Lein offered no comment. Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to press him.

Jonna returned with the tankards of juice and two ceramic mugs of steaming tea, one black for Lein, one with milk in for Argis, and set them down on the table. “You boys got far to travel today?” she asked, lowering the tray in her left hand and parking her right on Argis’ massive shoulder again.

“No,” Lein said. “Perhaps fifteen miles or so. I’m heading home for the first time in a while.”

“Oh, where’s home then?”

“Windstad Manor, to the north of here,” he said, and her eyes widened in surprise or recognition, or both.

“Forgive me,” she said, letting go of Argis and nodding a more formal bow, “Thane. I had no idea you were a thane of Hjaalmarch.”

“Please,” Lein all but scoffed, “There’s no need for any of that. I am a thane of the march, it’s true, but really, there’s no need…”

“Valdimar is your housecarl, no?”

“That’s right,” Lein smiled. “I’m looking forward to seeing him again. I hope he’s not caused any trouble while I’ve been away.” He spoke with a playful light in his eyes, and she forgot her embarrassment at her potential faux-pas and laughed.

“Oh he’s a darling,” she chuckled. “He stopped by here only last week with that lovely fiancée of his. They came to buy one or two things for the house I believe, and to order some more lumber to repair a pen or something that had been damaged in one of the autumn storms. Oh he did make me laugh.”

Lein’s face cracked into a wide smile. “I’m glad.”

“Well,” she said, eyeing Argis’ almost-finished plate and Lein’s breakfast that was barely touched. “I mustn’t stand here yacking all day, or you’ll never get on. It’s a pleasure to have had you here in my inn, thane.”

“Please,” he said, “It’s just Lein.”

She nodded and left them to it.

Argis sat back as he swiped a chunk of white roll around his plate to mop up the last of his egg yolk and some of the bacon grease. His gaze was steady and for once, he seemed to have forgotten his shyness about his blind eye. Lein tried to look him in his right eye, but he was aware that the iris of his left, once hazel and now veiled behind a milky film of damage, did not quite match the focus of his right. It drifted slightly upwards. For some reason that Lein could not articulate, it made his stomach flip over slightly. The man was massive and powerful, with muscles that would make any maiden swoon to see, and any man think twice about, and yet as his rough hands rested around the curve of his mug, cradling his tea, there was a delicacy to him that made it hard to breathe. Added to that the perceived vulnerability of his blindness, and he was an intoxicating mix of steel and silk, power and kindness.

“Septim for your thoughts?” he chuckled softly, and Lein’s cheeks warmed when realised he’d been staring.

Settling for a vague kind of honesty, Lein sighed and said, “I was thinking how much more there is to you than people must give you credit for, that’s all. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t,” he smiled, a humble bashfulness now in those eyes. “I just wondered where you went for a minute there…” His face was bright with silent laughter, and Lein felt relief slide through his stomach like a lump of melting ice.

“Listen,” he said. “With all my floundering around in puddles of late…”

Argis huffed a quick laugh at that, but let Lein continue.

“I’m conscious that I’ve let you down in a number of ways, no, hear me out,” he added when Argis made to contradict him. The housecarl nodded and fell into silent, though not sullen, obedience. “I would like to make good on that promise I made to you back in Markarth.”

“What promise is that, thane?”

“A promise to teach you your letters.”

“Oh,” Argis breathed. The exclamation was so small and soft that Lein almost missed it, but Argis let out another little laugh, and added in a gruff, scratchy baritone, “Sure. I’d like that. I don’t want to delay us though.”

Lein shook his head. “No, it’s no delay. It’s still murky and misty out, and the marsh might still be crawling with vampires until the sun burns most of the mist off at midday.” Argis looked a little pale at the mention of vampires, but other than a shift in colour, he gave no other reaction. “What say we start here? There’s plenty of room on this table, and it’s private enough in here during the day that I imagine we won’t be disturbed.”

The colour returned two-fold to Argis cheeks, the scars standing out against the rest of his weathered face, and Lein smiled as he drew in a deep breath and smiled shyly. “Thank you,” Argis said awkwardly. “I… I can’t express how much… I mean… I never had the chance as a boy, and then… in the barracks, it… they didn’t…” His face reddened until Lein thought he might burst into flame, and he looked away, glaring into his nearly empty mug, as though the rest of his courage lay in there.

“I understand,” Lein said.

How many times had he encountered men and women of astounding intelligence who had simply never learned to read? And how many times had men and women of elite and academic backgrounds sneered down their noses at those who had simply not been afforded the same privileges they had? Recalling those cold glances, those empty giggles, was enough to make his hackles rise, and as he looked down at Argis, insides clearly writhing with emotion, he saw the same history in his housecarl. Something stabbed in his chest to think of Argis being mocked, called stupid, simply for not being able to read.

“Argis, it’s not your fault that you never had the opportunity, and whether you’ve been taught to read yet or not bears no reflection on your intelligence.”

Argis looked as though he might cry at that, his eyes sparkling and a muscle in his neck and jaw working as he ground his teeth together. “Thank you,” he finally rasped, unable to look Lein in the eye.

Lein smiled and touched him on the shoulder as he slid out of the space between table and column and paused a while longer. The steel plate beneath his fingertips was cold, but he could feel the heat Argis was throwing off. There was a pull to it that drew him in and made him want to press his body close. “I mean it,” he said, and left to fetch the paper, quill and inkpot he would need, as well as one of his favourite printed books.

As much as he thought Argis could use the time alone to compose himself, he needed a few minutes to himself as well.

When he returned, Argis was his usual gruff, silent self, staring off into the depths of the ceramic mug that was resting empty in his big hands. His knuckly, scarred fingers cradled it as gently as though it were a tiny bird.

He jumped when Lein reappeared and laughed. “You’re so quiet in those boots, thane,” he muttered.

“That’s why I wear ‘em,” Lein grinned. “Good for sneaking up behind ugly old draugr in tombs and stinking frost trolls in caves, among other things.”

“Which of those categories do I fit into then?” he laughed, starting to shuffle along the bench so that his thane could sit beside him instead of opposite him. That new position, however, would have put Lein on Argis’ left side, his blind side, so Lein stopped him with a silent hand on his right shoulder and nipped behind him to the other side to slide onto the bench on his right.

“Neither, Argis,” Lein said seriously as he sat. “And I have no desire to try and evade you.” Before Argis could unpick the other layer of meaning to that, Lein spread out the roll of paper and weighted it down in the top corners with an empty tankard and a mug. “Now, before I get going, do you know any of the letters?”

Mutely Argis shook his head and then, after a little hesitant breath, added, “Not really. I mean… I recognise a few of them, but…”

“Alright, I’ll stick with my plan, but if I’m going at a pace that doesn’t suit, or you have any questions, just butt in, ok?”

Argis’ lips hitched into a lopsided grin, and he nodded.

“I plan to familiarise you with the vowels and consonants of Tamrileic, and how the same vowel can have different pronunciations etc. and then we’ll go from there.”

Argis nodded in understanding, a tense kind of readiness saturating his body, seeming to swell the muscles of his arms and back so that he sat straighter, drawing himself up almost as if for a fight. Lein resisted the urge to tell him to breathe and relax, and began.

The housecarl was anything but stupid. As Lein had suspected, he was as quick with his mind as he was with a blade, and in no time, had set aside his embarrassment and hurled himself into this new challenge with all the raw determination of a snow bear.

Lein worked on Argis’ recognition of letters, with Lein printing them clearly, though not patronisingly large, on the white paper, in his own neat hand. He also wrote them in his normal, cursive script to show Argis how they might look in every-day handwriting. Mostly, however, he stuck to precisely-printed letters, and in no time, Argis could recognise all the letters of the Tamrileic alphabet, and give all the possible pronunciations associated with them.

He handed the quill over to Argis, who looked at the sharpened goose-feather as though he expected it to sprout the rest of the bird and start flapping wildly in his lap. “Your turn,” Lein said.

Argis chewed his lower lip adorably as he scratched out the letters of the alphabet in a shaky, sputtering hand, sitting back with a grunt when he finally reached the end of Lein’s reference sheet. He’d mirrored a couple of them, but scrubbed them out almost immediately on recognising that, and redid them. It hadn’t helped that Lein was left-handed, but they made do.

In total, they had worked solidly for nearly two hours, and he could sense Argis’ flickering concentration. He was, however, determined to end on a high. As Lein made a noise of amused epiphany in his throat, his housecarl looked at him expectantly, and Lein grinned. They had also worked on phonetic recognition of letters, and Lein said, “This time, I would like you to try and write down the letters that correspond to the sounds I’m going to say. Then we’ll finish.”

Argis nodded, thick brows furrowing with the final effort of rallying his faltering concentration.

“Remember to think about the sounds I’m making, not the individual letters this time,” he said, since they had already covered Argis drawing letters as Lein called them aloud. “It might mean a combination of letters, but it won’t be too hard, I promise.” And as Argis looked warily confident, Lein began to speak, syllable by syllable. “Ar...” Although he was unable to roll his ‘r’, Lein made sure it was clear that he wanted an ‘a’ and an ‘r’.

His blue and brown eyes sank to the page to watch Argis refer to the roll of paper with the full alphabet on, before beginning with an ‘a’ and then, hesitantly, an ‘r’. He looked uncertainly up at Lein, who was already nodding and beaming, and he inhaled with a renewed confidence when he saw it.

“Gi,” Lein said, still smiling.

Argis’ eyes narrowed slightly, cottoning on to what he was being made to write, and Lein did not miss the way his hand began to tremble and his heart rate picked up, the skin below his Adam’s apple pulsing visibly.

“S,” Lein finished.

The quill spat a few drops of ink when Argis finished the ‘s’ of his name, but he turned to look back at Lein with a look of tearful wonder on his handsome, scarred and tattooed face.

Lein smirked a lopsided grin, and chuckled. “I don’t think you need me to tell you what you just wrote…”

“No,” he said, chest swelling with pride as he stared back at the wobbly letters. “Thank you.”

Lein gave one more gentle laugh and laced his fingers above his head, leaning back where he sat on the bench and stretching his spine and stomach out with a grunt. “Enough for one day,” he said, extricating his lean legs from the bench and table and standing. “I knew we’d cover a lot of ground, but I wasn’t sure we’d get quite this far.” He put a hand on Argis’ shoulder and squeezed, even though it was cold metal beneath his fingers and not hard muscle, and added, “Well done. I mean that. We’ll be done in no time at this rate.”

Argis beamed and blushed, looking back at his wibbly scrawls and then at Lein’s self-assured writing. “Got a ways to go yet,” he muttered, but Lein could tell he was pleased.

Without another word, Lein stepped away and crossed to the fire-pit, which was crackling and softly spitting sparks from the logs, and rubbed his hands together.

“You cold?” Argis asked, genuine surprise in his tone. He rose as well, folding the paper in half and leaving it on the table.

Ruefully, Lein chuckled. “I’m always cold, Argis.”

“You sure you’re not a vampire?” he asked, narrowing his eyes dramatically. “You are kind of pale, you know?”

“No,” he said lightly. “Not a vampire. Just a pathetic excuse for a Skaal.”

Argis snorted and headed away to their room without a word, emerging a moment later with a jacket in his hands. Lein watched without moving as Argis crossed to the fire, coming up behind Lein and holding it out to him, almost like he would hold a coat for a lady. “Here,” he said.

“Thanks,” Lein smiled, burrowing down into the fur-lined jacket.

His breath caught when Argis squeezed his shoulders for the briefest of moments, before clearing his throat and stepping back.

“I’d better go pack my stuff up,” he said, his voice suspiciously hoarse, and he retreated without another word.

Chapter Nine

[monstersandmaw]

Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter Ten

Lein and Argis pass their first evening at Windstad with Iona and Val. A little slice of Hjaalmarch life for you.

<—- Previous Chapter | Table of Contents

Lein had made a number of additions since he’d finished the core of the house. The armoury stood on the eastern wing, while on the west was his enchanting tower. To the rear, behind the secluded little sitting area was another tower, devoted to alchemy. Little terracotta pots sat on the shelves, filled with strange plants which Lein had left in Val’s capable and surprisingly tender care; some of them even required regular flows of magic to keep them alive, and Val was a skilled enough mage to keep them flowering all year round. Hundreds of tiny glass phials and bottles stood arranged in perfect rows on shelves, with sacks and barrels and buckets of other, less delicate, ingredients stored on the ground floor. The second floor of the alchemy tower housed his alembic and distilling equipment, along with a range of pestles and mortars, knives, and various other equipment for the brewing of potions and the preparation of salves and ointments.

Lein loved his house, and had added extra rooms and features since completion. One such change was a massive, dwemer-inspired boiler in the basement, and two massive copper baths, each one twice the size of the ones at the Moorside Inn in Morthal. Deciding to give Argis some privacy, he insisted that his housecarl have the honour of bathing first, and made him swear an oath to soak for as long as he wanted. Argis, ever true to his word, was an hour in the tub, and Lein had just begun to think he might have passed out down there, or fallen asleep, when he heard the latch on the basement hatchway go, and caught the creak of the wooden ladder as Argis’ feet stumped up the rungs.

Lein was sitting in a chair by the fire, his feet resting on the raised hearth, a book in his hands, his hair down, leaning back against the cushions. He looked over his shoulder, tipping his head right back to watch Argis as he emerged from the sitting room into the main hall. “Feel better?” he asked as Argis came into view.

Argis had dressed again, but instead of his usual armour, he was wearing the soft, dark trousers he’d often worn in the evenings in Markarth, and a linen shirt fell open at his throat to reveal a small sliver of his chest beneath, dark golden hair just visible. His braids had come out in the water,  his towelled hair was still wet, and there was a softness, bleeding into plain tiredness, to him that made Lein’s heart lurch. He wasn’t the only one affected by the sight of the other, however, as Argis’ feet faltered when he saw Lein leaning languorously back to look at him like a khajiit in the sunshine. He didn’t speak for a moment, only stood there, his breathing shallow.

Finally Lein realised he had to get up and move, speak, do something before everything grew weird, so he closed the book with as much grace and dignity as he could muster, and cracked his neck and back slowly, deliberately. “Been talking with Iona about the wedding,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Mmm. They’ve booked the Temple of the Divines in Solitude for the winter solstice.”

“That’s, what, a week from now?” Argis asked, crossing one ankle with the air of a horse resting a hock.

Lein nodded. “Look, I’d love you to come as well, but I’m aware that you’ve not been here long, and you don’t really know Val and Iona yet… It’s fine if you don’t want to, but I’m heading into Solitude in a couple of days’ time to get some decent clothes. We could get you something then if you wanted to come.”

So much for not making things awkward, he thought as he watched Argis’ cheeks colour a little.

Argis sucked in a great breath and then smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Never been to a fancy wedding…” His eyes glittered and a smile played at the corners of his lips. “If they’re alright with me coming, I’d like to go.”

Lein’s stomach flipped over and his own face split into a grin. “Great,” he beamed. “Alright, well, I’ll go and have a bath. Please, treat this place as your home. No standing on ceremony here.”

“Yes, thane,” he said, and for once, Lein couldn’t tell if he’d said it to remind either one of them of his position, or as a joke.

Perplexed, Lein narrowed his eyes for a second, and then headed down into the basement without another word. Argis was a puzzle he was determined to figure out.

When he climbed up the ladder from the basement in just his towel almost an hour later, the most delicious smell hit his nostrils, and his stomach growled. As he rounded the corner from the sitting room into the dining hall, something flew at his face and he reacted on instinct, swiping it out of the air and adopting a ready stance as though he were expecting an assailant. The knot on the towel never slipped.

“Told ya,” Val’s voice rumbled.

“Told who what?” Lein barked, straightening and relaxing his body out of the fighting stance. “And why are people flinging things at me?”

“Reflexes of a cat,” Val chuckled. “You can’t sneak up on Lein.”

Lein’s gaze flickered to where Argis was standing quietly, carefully not saying anything. If Lein had been a betting man, which he most definitely was not, he would have bet serious money that Argis thinking of the time he’d saved Lein from the wolf in the rocks. His eyes still said plenty and Lein just winked at him, which made Val and Iona exchange their own glances. It was seemingly resolved when Iona tossed Val a gold coin from the pouch on her belt, and turned back to stir the cook-pot.

“Anyway, when we’ve all finished treating Lein like some kind of menagerie animal who occasionally does tricks to order, what’s for dinner? It smells amazing.” He stooped and picked up the tea-towel that Val had launched at him, and folded it tidily over the top of a ladder-back chair at the dining table.

He was still wearing only his towel around his slim waist, all his knotted scars on show, and Iona pointed her wooden spoon at him and shook her head. “Prove to me the menagerie animal knows how to dress properly, and then I’ll feed it.”

He laughed softly and obediently made his way upstairs. He could almost feel Argis watching him from his spot on the far side of the hall, tall body leaning against one of the massive wooden columns.

In the quiet stillness of his bedroom at the top of the stairs, Lein sighed. Two massive wardrobes were stocked with simple shirts and leggings, soft leather boots and cotton trousers - things he wore in the comfort of his warm home - and he pulled a pale blue shirt out, the colour of a thrush egg, and shook his shoulder-length hair free from the collar. It had almost dried, and indeed, as Iona had said it would, it shone like burnished silver in the low light. He dug out some black leggings that hugged his lean, slender, but still muscular thighs, and it would have been a lie to say he hadn’t chosen them to show off his figure for Argis. Things were starting to get interesting; the thick outer ‘bulwark’ of his housecarl shifting to reveal cracks and secret ways in. Lein may have been a fair bit shorter than most towering Nords, but he knew he had a good body, if scarred and perhaps pale even by Nord standards, and he’d seen the way Argis looked at him. There was something there, but patience was the key, he knew.

Finally donning some thick, woollen socks, he ran a hand through his white hair one last time, and realised as he rubbed his jaw that he really ought to trim his beard again. That would have to wait. His stomach was chewing its way through his body to his spine, and he was probably going to pass out if he didn’t have some food.

As he trotted down the stairs, he saw Val pulling back a chair, and Argis moving to take a seat opposite him. Argis, his eyes drawn instinctively to the movement by years of military and guard training, swallowed visibly when he saw Lein, but Lein just tossed him a roguish smile and clasped his hands over Val’s shoulders when he reached the bottom of the stairs. “I’m surprised you waited,” he grinned.

“You might be Iona’s performing menagerie animal,” Val said, his tone slightly altered now, more formal, weightier, “But you’re my thane.”

Lein sighed. Nothing like formality of a social situation, even if it was just dinner, to remind people of their place in the hierarchy. “Well, that’s as maybe, but you’re my friend too, Val.” He glanced around and saw that there were no bottles on the table and asked, “You decide on something to drink?”

“Oh Nine,” Val swore, shoving his chair back so sharply that Lein had to skip to the side to avoid being rammed by it. “I’m sorry!” he gasped. “What do you want me to fetch?”

Lein’s laugh bubbled into his words and he waved a hand. “At ease,” he said. “It’s venison, by the smell of things. Am I correct, Iona?”

“You are,” she said, beginning to plate up the casserole by the fire.

“Hmm, how about one of those bottles of Argonian Bloodwine?”

Val’s thick eyebrows shot up. “I thought you were saving that for a special occasion?” he asked.

“I am. And this is,” he looked over at Argis and said, “He got me here in one piece, despite my best efforts to thwart him it seems. The man deserves a decent drink.”

“Please,” Argis blushed, “Don’t open anything special on my account…”

Lein rolled his eyes and jabbed his thumb in the direction of the cellar. “Go on, Val. Get the fucking wine please, will you?”

“Only you could be so politely foul-mouthed, thane,” Val chortled as he moved away.

Lein crossed to the other side of the table and tugged back the seat beside Argis, lowering himself into it with a grunt. The injury to his torso from that necromancer’s arrow still sent a sharp jab of pain through him every now and again, and it caught him by surprise as he hit the chair. He winced and closed his eyes a moment, unconsciously bringing his fingertips to the place where the star-shaped scar was.

“You alright?” Argis murmured, his gruff voice low enough that Iona, busy with the dishes, would catch his question and begin to fuss.

He nodded and looked up as she set his bowl of steaming venison down. “Thank you, Iona. This smells delicious.”

“It’s got some of those juniper berries in that you brought back last time,” she said with a smile. “And the beans are the ones we planted in the little greenhouse. They’re doing well.”

Lein didn’t miss how Argis’ eyes lit up a little at the mention of the garden, and he turned to him just as Val came back in and began pouring them all glasses of wine. “You like to cook, don’t you Argis? Do you also happen to know much about crops and farming by any chance?”

“I know some,” Argis said, swallowing a mouthful of his stew and looking at Iona. “This is beautiful, thank you.”

She smiled.

Argis cleared his throat and met no one’s eye as he went on. “I grew up on a farm, so I know a bit. Why?”

Lein’s expression brightened. “We’re looking to try and grow a few more crops here at the manor,” he explained. “Morthal is a bit of a hike, though not that far, but it just doesn’t have the trade to provide us with all that many vegetables and fruits. I built the glasshouse here with Val when we’d finished furnishing the main house, and we put in one or two things - a couple of types of bean, some peas, and a lemon tree, but other than that, we’ve not really done much with it yet.” He paused, taking another bite of food. “Perhaps if you want, you could help us?”

“Sure,” Argis nodded. “Though we didn’t have a glasshouse, so I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.”

“I’ll show it to you in the light tomorrow,” Lein said. “And then when we go to Solitude, maybe we can find some seeds and stuff as well.”

Iona perked up at that. “You’re heading to Solitude?” she asked. “When?”

“Day after tomorrow. I want to get some new clothes for the wedding,” Lein said. “Why, you need something?”

“Would you mind taking a message to Freir at the Temple for me please?”

“Sure.”

The rest of their dinner conversation revolved around polite questions to Argis about Markarth, and Lein regaling them with tales of his adventures, or, as Val snorted halfway through his third glass of wine, Lein’s misadventures. Iona was horrified to hear about the time he’d nearly been skinned alive by a pack of Forsworn before being made thane of Markarth, and it was only when Lein reached the end of that story that his stomach dropped horribly and he realised he probably should have kept his mouth shut. Argis was breathing steadily enough beside him on his right, but Lein could see the way his knuckles blanched as he screwed his left fist tight in his lap below the table. Lein thought for a moment that Argis had caught him staring, until he realised he was sitting on his housecarl’s blind side.

“Nothing like a gruesome story to crush the mood at the dinner table, eh?” Lein grimaced. “I’m sorry. Tell me what’s been happening here? How’s Millicent been doing?”

“The cow is doing much better since Val worked his healing on her,” Iona smiled. “But we lost a couple of chickens to wolves a month or so ago. I wish you still had that dog from the Dawnguard. He was such a sweetheart.”

“Sceolang is a darling, but he’s too busy ripping the throats out of vampires with Isran and Durak at the moment,” Lein chuckled. “No trouble other than the wolves? No bandits?”

“No, but don’t forget about that giant who decided he absolutely hated what we’ve done with the front porch and found it utterly offensive,” Val added, waving his wine cup around. He had a higher tolerance for alcohol than Lein, but the fine wine had gone to his head and made him even more extroverted than usual. Lein could only smile. Val was a happy drunk and a pleasure to be around.

Argis eyes widened. “You get giants this far north?”

“Occasionally,” Lein said. “They’re mostly wandering loners though. They don’t herd their mammoths too close to us in these parts. They like the plains around Whiterun a lot, and in Eastmarch too.” He turned to Val and asked, “Did it do any damage?”

He shook his head. “Iona shot it in the eye from the enchanting tower, and I brought it down with that daedric battleaxe you asked me to sharpen. Hamstrung it like felling a tree. Sol and I dragged the carcass up to the northern beaches and left it there for the snow bears to pick over. Shame really, but if he hadn’t decided to dismantle the porch for us, we’d have left him alone…”

Lein nodded and then cracked a jaw-popping yawn.

“You must be exhausted,” Iona cooed. “Let me clear the things away and you can relax in the sitting room.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Lein said. “I want to turn it into Argis’ room. He needs a space of his own while he’s here. We have the components of a spare bed in the cellar, and we can knock it together in no time.”

“I don’t want to put you out,” Argis said hastily. “I can take a bedroll by the fire…”

“No, no,” Lein said, waving his hand dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve got the space.”

“Well,” Iona said, standing and gathering the plates. “Why don’t you boys do that now before you’re too drunk to see straight, and I’ll sort all this out.”

They passed the bits of the wooden frame up the cellar ladder, and assembled it in a quarter of an hour with a wooden mallet and only a couple of mistakes. Val found an empty, linen, single mattress-bag and headed out into the snow to begin stuffing it with clean hay from the hayloft over the stables. When he was done, he and Argis carried it between them back into the house while Lein found some bedclothes and blankets from a cupboard. All in all, it took them under an hour.

Lein dug out a good bottle of Flin from Solstheim and the three of them returned to the dying fire in the dining room to share three glasses of the fiery liqueur before bed.

“I thought I might take Sol out tomorrow and show Argis some of the country,” Lein said, swirling the dregs of his Flin around the bottom of the specially shaped, hand-blown glass.

“If the weather isn’t too bad,” Val said, more than a bit of a slur in his words now.

Lein waved his hand dramatically, accidentally catching Argis’ elbow. “Sorry,” he laughed. “I was going to say there’s a shout for that anyway.”

“There’s a shout to make the weather better?” Argis asked, astonished.

“Oh yes,” Lein said. “Those Greybeards have come up with a shout for a lot of things. Look,” he said, remembering to put his glass down first this time before opening his mouth. “Feim zii gron,” he rasped, and Argis nearly dropped his own glass in surprise.

Val roared a laugh, and immediately stuck his finger out to try and poke Lein in the chest. When his hand passed through the ethereal image before him, he laughed again and said, “Now that’s a useful one!”

“Becoming ethereal is great,” Lein said, his voice sounding strange, disembodied almost, like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “I can hurl myself off a cliff and arrive in one piece at the bottom. But,” he added, swiping his fist in a parody of a punch at Argis, who actually flinched and held up his hand in defence, “I can’t do any damage either.”

“How long does it last?” Argis asked, ignoring Val’s slightly derisive laughter at his reaction to Lein’s punch.

“Not long.”

“So…” Argis said, looking at Lein’s Flin glass in his hand, “I’ve got time to finish your Flin as well?”

“Don’t you dare!” Lein shrilled as Argis brought the glass to his lips. His breath fogged the clear glass rim, but he didn’t drink it, lowering it again, laughing quietly.

“You got balls,” Val chortled. “Don’t mess with your thane’s drink…”

“Our thane,” Argis grinned, cocking an eyebrow.

“True.”

“I can’t believe you two haven’t tried to kill each other yet,” Lein said, looking between the two men. “I mean, Lydia did everything she could think of to piss you off when I brought her here that time.”

“I like him,” Val said, not taking his eyes off Argis, “We can still go at it if you want us to, but I like him.”

Argis grinned lopsidedly and said, “I’m sure we can always go a couple of rounds in the morning with some practice swords or something if you like.”

“I would like that,” Val said, “But not for the reason Lein’s thinking. It’s been bloody ages since I’ve had a good sparring session. Don’t get me wrong,” he added, looking guiltily around him for his fiancee, “Iona’s a bloody tomcat with a pair of daggers, and I’m grateful to Lein for teaching her how to handle a bow, but I can hardly go all-out against her, can I?”

Everyone shook their heads, and Lein’s body winked back into full existence. “Give me that,” Lein said, gesturing at Argis for his Flin. Argis obliged, and Lein popped another cavernous yawn after finishing the dregs of his drink. “Right,” he said, “I’m off to bed.”

Standing and setting his glass on the dining table, he waved coolly at the other two. “See you in the morning. Not too early please.”

Val nodded. “Honoured to have you back, thane,” he said seriously.

“It’s a pleasure to be back, Val,” he replied. “Night, Argis. See you tomorrow.”

Argis nodded curtly and Lein tried not to fall up the stairs as he went to undress and get into bed. He wondered if he’d sleep through the night, bone tired as he was.

Sadly, of course, it was not to be.

Chapter Eleven

[monstersandmaw]

Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter Four

Thank you for your overwhelmingly positive responses to this mlm story set in the snowy world of Skyrim! I can’t tell you how much it warms my heart to have people love something that has become my absolute baby, and probably my favourite piece of writing to date. 

Table of Contents | Previous Chpt

Lein realises Argis does know, and feels like his dreams got stepped on a bit. Maybe not the happiest of chapters but it's got some really sweet moments between Argis and Lein, so it's all just Lein being an idiot. Don't worry :P

Lein returned from the Silverblood Inn the next morning with a belly full of sickly sweetroll and strong black tea, and a strange feeling in his gut that had nothing to do with the rich food. His body ached from their activities the night before and that morning, sore and stretched in places he’d forgotten it could ache, and it was a sweet pain that reminded him of easier times and closer relationships.

Argis wasn’t there when he got back, but he wasn’t bothered. If the big man had ever learned to read, perhaps he’d have left Lein a note, but as it was, he had no idea where his housecarl had gone. Most likely he was training out in the stable yard with the other guards and housecarls of the city. He seemed to spend a lot of his spare time training, but Lein wasn’t surprised. He only had to look at the man to know he took his body and his job seriously. Before he got too distracted with thoughts of Argis’ muscles, he rolled his own shoulders out and decided how to occupy himself for the morning.

The heady scent of herbs began to fill the house as he set to work restocking his potion supplies after the fiasco with the statue in his bag. The damned thing had done more damage than if he’d conjured an atronach in there and let it get to work on the contents. Still, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to make more potions. His stock of ingredients was excellent, Lein having compulsively gathered almost every alchemical specimen he came across on his journeys. Wearing some enchanted gloves which not only protected him from some of the nastier ingredients, but which enhanced some of the effects of his brews and tinctures, he managed to create more than he needed to in order to replace the waste from the necromancer incident.

Sighing with satisfaction a long time later, he stacked the glass phials, colour-coded and carefully stoppered and labelled in his impeccably neat copperplate writing, onto the shelves in the alchemy corner, and wondered idly what the time was. He set the enchanted gloves back on the table and turned to leave the room.

Using the little stone basin in the corner, he washed his hands and arms all the way up to the elbow, making sure that not even a single speck of anything remained on his arms that he might accidentally ingest later, and he cracked the pooling stiffness from his neck. He had no way of knowing what the hour was while he was indoors, and so, grabbing a soft white roll and some ham and cheese, he took a plate of food out onto the balcony and stared up at the sky for a while. The fact that his stomach was empty again told him it had to be at least after midday, but he was surprised to see how far the sun had wheeled around in the clear blue winter sky. It had to be closer to two in the afternoon.

He set the plate down on the stone rim of the balcony and leaned his elbows forward as he chomped down on the bread. The roll was fresh and light, and still ever so slightly warm in the centre, and combined with the pungent goat’s cheese, was perfect. He made a mental note to thank Argis for having the foresight to bake a fresh batch before he’d left that morning. The man really was a blessing. He snorted as he tried to imagine Lydia trying to bake him something; the woman would probably blow up his tiny Whiterun house before she successfully made even a single sweetroll. Lydia’s talents lay elsewhere than cooking and baking.

Vipir had left to meet his contact after breakfast, and while Lein was sad to see him go, it didn’t feel too awful. They were never going to be more than two ships that occasionally clashed oars in the night, so to speak. That was alright. He felt good for their fun, and he just hoped Argis had no idea. Lein hadn’t exactly been quiet, but the bronze doors were thick. He could live in hope, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he saw the expression his face. Still, that was not a conversation he wanted to have, or, more likely, pointedly not have with his housecarl just yet.

The sound of boots tramping up the stairs to the hall made Lein look round, but he didn’t straighten up from where he was leaning languidly on the wall. Argis came into view a moment later, apparently lost in thought as usual, staring at the ground. “Hey,” Lein smiled, and Argis looked up sharply, blinking and surprised by the unexpected greeting.

His smile was friendly enough, but there was a distance to his expression that told Lein he knew at least something of what had been going on. He nodded politely. “Afternoon.”

He was wearing a dirty linen shirt, ripped and nicked, and darkened with sweat and a few patches of blood, tucked vaguely into loose-fitting trousers. The damp fabric of his shirt clung to every curve of his muscular torso and arms, and Lein felt his mouth go dry at the very sight of it. He took a moment to breathe the tension from his groin, and stared instead at Argis’ soft, flexible looking boots.

“Listen, Argis,” Lein began when he was a little more composed, pushing himself upright and turning round to lean his back against the cool rock instead. He knew he looked casual and laid back as a Khajiit, but inside he was considerably less so. That morning he’d also made up his mind about something he’d been debating for a while. “I’ve pretty much recovered now after my episode of utter stupidity, and I’m getting a bit claustrophobic here in the city…”

The housecarl smiled again, but it was sadder, softer, this time. “I said just the other day you were getting like a sabre cat in a cage.” He leaned one massive hand against the rock on his left. “You planning on heading off again then?”

Lein nodded. “Yeah. I want to head north on foot before the winter snows get too bad. I hate taking the carriages – they take fucking forever, and the bandits always know their schedules.”

“You’re going to Hjaalmarch then?”

“Yeah. I miss those big open skies,” he said. “But listen, I just wanted to say that you’re more than welcome to come with me, you know, and see a bit more of Skyrim if you wanted to. No pressure, and you could head back here whenever you felt like it. I know your life is here in Markarth, but at the same time, I don’t want you to think…” Don’t want him to think what? That you don’t value him? That you have a fucking mammoth-sized crush on him? That you are barely having any more luck containing your fantasies than a hormonal teenager? He sighed. “Don’t want you to think that you’re not welcome or whatever. I’d love you to come with me, but I quite understand if you’d prefer to stay here.”

Argis looked thoughtful, and Lein found himself admiring the expression on his face. He looked like a brute and a bruiser, with his one milky-blind eye and his scarred cheek, his huge muscles and massive bones, but he was intelligent and kind behind his tough exterior.

Before Argis could give a rushed answer, Lein held up a hand and said, “Think on it. Don’t say anything just yet.”

“Alright,” Argis hedged. “I won’t.”

And without another word, he stumped into the house, letting the door close softly behind him, and leaving Lein standing alone on the balcony to finish the last few crumbs of his lunch.

Returning to the kitchen and washing the stubborn remnants of the gooey cheese from the plate, Lein heard the bath running and, a short moment later, the sounds of Argis washing himself. Lein knew he had to do literally anything to distract himself, and that this crush of his was getting stupid. His activities with Vipir had awoken him as much as they had satisfied him.

When the housecarl emerged a while later, his hair was wet and dripping into his clean linen shirt. His usual braids were missing, washed away in the hot water of his bath, and his beard was neatly trimmed once more. Lein swallowed and returned his mismatching eyes to his book.

“Thane?” he asked a moment later, getting Lein’s attention. Argis still hadn’t quite mastered calling him by his name all the time.

“Hmm?”

“How soon would you want to leave for Hjaalmarch?”

Lein closed the book, marking the place with a finger, and stretched out his lean legs where he’d had them propped up on the high stone shelf that guarded the fireplace, crossed at the ankles. Argis’ eyes tracked the motion but the housecarl remained silent. Lein pouted thoughtfully and said, “I sent a letter by courier to Valdimar, my housecarl at Windstad Manor, to say that I’d like to be there before winter solstice.”

Argis nodded, clearly running the maths in his head. “That’s a couple of weeks or so from now…”

“Yeah, so I’d need to be on the road in a few days. It’s a fair hike from here, and I might stop off either in Solitude or Morthal before hand.”

“Morthal,” Argis murmured.

Lein wondered what thoughts were slowly rolling through his head, but he just nodded mutely. After another few heartbeats of silence, he finally asked, “Have you had any more thoughts on coming with me?”

Argis blinked and looked a little bashful. “You… You still don’t mind if I come along?”

Lein had to work hard to contain the full force of his smile, but he practically felt his eyes glittering as he shook his head. “On the contrary – I’d love you to come along.”

“I thought you said you were a ‘lone wolf’.”

He cringed a little at that. “I am, most of the time. But honestly… I think it’d be nice to get to know you better. And it’s dangerous travelling Skyrim alone. Fuck knows, I’ve got the scars to prove it.” Argis was nodding a moment later, his eyes flickering almost imperceptibly to Lein’s chest. He knew the mess of scars and marks that lay beneath the fabric of his rich, green, linen shirt. “I’m going to start packing up my things and making preparations today, and I’ll aim to head out on Loredas morning at the latest.” He paused and scratched the neat stubble on his chin. “Maybe even tomorrow if you’re up for it.”

Argis nodded once. “I would like to come with you. I don’t have much I’d want to bring with me, just my sword and some spare clothes. I can be ready to go whenever you are.”

Lein yawned and slid a small slip of leather into the book in his lap to mark the page. Argis’ gaze went to the book and lingered there a moment. Lein looked up again just as Argis turned his eyes away. Lein narrowed his, but didn’t speak. It looked like Argis was about to say something and Lein decided to wait patiently, quietly, trying not to spook the impending question out of the man.

Eventually his patience was rewarded as Argis mumbled, “Thane, can… can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

Argis smiled at that. He sucked in an enormous breath and then asked in a big rush, “You said a while back, when you first got here that you... that if… that if I wanted to learn to read, that you’d teach me…?”

“I did,” he smiled gently.

“So… I was wondering if that’s still the case? If you’d still want to teach me? It’s always been something I’ve wanted to learn, but I’ve never had the chance… My parents never learned either… They were just farmers, you know?”

“I’d be honoured to teach you,” he said, sincerity ringing like a temple bell in his tone. “Perhaps it’s something we start do on the road. I’m going to bring a few books with me anyway.”

Argis looked embarrassed and grateful in equal measure, and Lein couldn’t help the lopsided smile that twitched on his lips at the sight of him.

“Thank you, thane,” he said, his voice deep and gruff. He cleared his throat awkwardly and then said, “Well, I’ll, um, leave you to your preparations then…”

Lein nodded, knowing that the big man’s admission had made him feel vulnerable, and so he didn’t linger, busying himself by fetching and laying out his weapons and supplies on the clear kitchen table.

“Alright,” Lein murmured to himself when he was done, rubbing his cold hands together.

He’d lost himself in getting his belongings ready, and had let the fire die down. The room had chilled, the smooth stone walls sucking the heat from the air, and he eyed the fire. He crossed to it and grabbed a couple of logs from the bronze log rack and dumped them among the embers. He brushed his fingers against his palms, feeling the crackle of magicka as he summoned a gentle ball of flames and set it down into the fresh logs. They began to smoulder immediately, and then bright golden flames licked up around the bark, snapping and popping as they caught.

“Handy,” Argis remarked with a  chuckle, and Lein turned to see him leaning against the wall. His heart lurched wildly at the sight of him. He had tied his hair back in a loose bun, a few strands falling around his face, and his arms were casually crossed over his chest, one leg bent with the ankle crossed over the other. It wasn’t the heat of the freshly-kindled logs that filled Lein’s face, and he was fairly certain that he didn’t imagine the slight twitch in the corner of Argis’ mouth either. The enormous man didn’t move a muscle but continued to stare at him.

“Yeah,” Lein croaked, rubbing his palms together subconsciously. “Well, what good is magic if you can’t use it to warm the place up a little, huh?”

Argis’ little smile stretched into a smirk and he huffed a laugh. “True.” He sighed and uncrossed his long legs, pushing himself upright off the wall. “What do you fancy for dinner?”

“What have we got left?”

“Well, since you asked me not to restock the cupboards with anything, not much,” he said regretfully.

Lein sighed. “We could head to the Silverblood Inn instead? My treat since I told you not to get any food…”

“Alright,” Argis smiled after a moment. “Sure, that’d be nice.”

“Give me a moment to get changed,” Lein said, eyeing the ripped trousers he was wearing and the fact that his feet were bare on the chilly stones. “I’ll be right out.”

When he emerged a while later, he’d have been lying if he’d said he hadn’t put on the nicest pair of leggings and boots he owned. The figure-hugging leggings were soft deerskin, dyed black, with a panel of deep russet brown on the thigh and calf, though the latter was hidden in his tall, soft leather boots. He was still wearing the green shirt, because he seemed to recall Lydia saying it set off his mismatching eyes nicely, and he had his hair loose for a change.

Argis was sitting beside the fire, staring into the flames as usual, when Lein entered the room. He wondered where Argis’ mind went in those quiet moments when he himself would have been reading.

He sighed, perhaps a little too loudly, and Argis caught the sound. He turned and stared for a heartbeat too long before coughing slightly. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yup,” Lein smiled, running a hand through his ghostly white hair. He could barely remember the exact colour it had been before he’d gone white. He sighed again as he twiddled the end of it through his fingers and picked up the housekeys.

“Everything alright?” the housecarl asked as he locked the door behind him.

“Hmm?”

“You seem… I don’t know… distracted?”

Lein looked up at him, craning his neck up from his five foot seven height – five foot eight if he really stood straight – to stare up at the man who was basically a foot taller than him. “Oh no,” he bluffed. “It’s nothing.” The slight flicker of a frown ghosted over Argis’ face, but it was gone when Lein added, “Nothing a pint or two won’t cure. Come on.”

Klepper showed them into a quiet corner of the inn near a fire, and they were brought plates of steaming goat curry and a sweet mead that complimented it nicely. Once the mead was all gone, Lein ordered a pint of his favourite, malty ale, and Argis polished off another few pints of the same. They talked a little of the city of Markarth itself, of the Forsworn, but Lein noticed how Argis quickly closed off if he asked him too many questions about the Forsworn, or even about his own childhood. Yet again, he wondered what had happened to him, and whether his scars and the loss of his eyesight were tied to the Forsworn.

Argis asked him about the other cities, about his travels, and, tentatively, about the time he’d spent at the College of Winterhold.

A doe-eyed serving girl sashayed over to them as the evening wore on, and she leaned close to Lein, her eyelashes fluttering. Unashamedly, she gave Lein a clear, straight shot at her breasts in her low-cut dress. “Can I get you boys some more drink?”

Lein’s eyes went first to Argis’ face, and he watched as the housecarl’s eyes flickered up the girl’s body, lingering on the curves of her hips and the lines of her small waist, before darting over to find his thane staring at him. Instead of the customary blush which Lein had grown to expect whenever this happened, Argis smirked. He actually smirked. He said nothing; he didn’t move a single other muscle, but he smirked. Argis knewthe pretty serving girl’s efforts were completely wasted on Lein, and for some reason, that suddenly made Lein nervous.

“No, thank you,” Lein said darkly. “Not for me. I’ve never been very good at holding my drink, and I’ve had too much already. Don’t let that stop you though, Argis,” he said, trying instead to smile openly at him.

“Worried you won’t make it up all those steps if you do, thane?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

Lein wasn’t sure if it was the drink making his ears woolly or whether Argis’ voice really was that gravelly. “Worried you’re going to have to carry me, more like,” he grumbled, feeling his mood darkening. The last thing he wanted to do was impose himself on an unwilling housecarl. Worse yet, Argis knew about his preferences now. Of that he was certain.

Argis laughed and shook his head at the serving girl. “Thank you, not for me either.”

She pouted and reached for Argis’ tattooed cheek. “Too bad,” she cooed flirtatiously. “I was hoping you boys would stick around. You’re a lot easier on the eyes than the rest of these ugly brutes in here.”

Argis laughed again but looked back at Lein, who felt more than a little sad around the edges now as he stared into the flames of the nearby fire. For a while he’d entertained the idea that Argis might be interested in him, or at least in men, but the way he was staring at the girl wiped that hope clean away. Of course, he might be one of those rarer individuals who liked both, or for whom it didn’t matter, but Lein just knew his luck wouldn’t stretch that far. Couldn’t. Suddenly he didn’t want to stay in the inn, in the city, a moment longer.

“Hey,” Argis’ soft voice said once the girl had left them. It also sounded suddenly a lot closer. “Hey, you ok?”

Lein looked up and did a double-take. Argis was leaning forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, brows puckered in a frown of concern. He was looking at Lein straight on, instead of tilting his head away slightly, which meant that Lein got a perfect view of his blind eye and scars. Gods, he was so beautiful.

“Yeah,” Lein rasped, something excruciatingly painful lancing through his chest. “Yeah I’m fine. Like I said, too much to drink probably.”

“You want to head back?” he asked, still leaning forward, still frowning. His forearms looked incredible, shirt sleeves cuffed up to the elbow.

“I think I will go home,” Lein said. “But don’t let me dampen your evening.”

Argis’ frown only pinched tighter. “Dampen my evening? I don’t have plans beyond this.”

“Maybe you should,” Lein half growled, standing and striding towards the bar, ignoring the way his head spun, leaving a handful of septims on the counter and nodding at Kleppr. As he turned away, he almost ran into Endon, who greeted him warmly in his rich baritone, asking him how he was. “Fine,” he replied curtly, “Thank you. Please, excuse me.” And he stalked out of the inn and into the cold air of Markarth beyond.

He felt sick, and it wasn’t just the alcohol sloshing around his stomach. “Like you ever had a chance with him anyway,” he snarled at himself.

Water gushed down the gullies and while he wasn’t truly drunk, he was far from his steadiest. He cursed his inability to manage alcohol. How many times had Vex teased him in the Ragged Flagon about getting drunk on two measly bottles of ale? How many times had Veezara and Arnbjorn drunk him under the table in the Brotherhood Sanctuary? Even tiny Babette could handle more than him. And yet here he was, still merrily making a fool of himself in front of Argis. He shook his head as he crossed the little bridge in front of the inn, miraculously managing not to slip off and land on his arse in the freezing water, and began to make his way between the deserted market stalls.

“Thane!” Argis’ voice boomed in the quiet evening, and he heard his heavy footfalls as the huge man jogged the distance between them like he was on was an early morning run. Lein almost cursed him for his tolerance. “Thane, wait” he called again, drawing level with him as he began to climb the steep staircase that overlooked the marketplace. “Did I say something to offend you?”

Lein sighed. He sighed like the weight of all Tamriel rested on his shoulders. “No, Argis. You’ve done nothing. You’ve done nothing wrong. I’m just…” he shook his head again, regretting it as it upset his balance a little. He put a pale hand on the rock wall to steady himself. “Tired. I’m tired, Argis. And I’ve had too much to drink.”

“Alright,” Argis said, his tone clearly saying he didn’t believe a word of it.

“I’m going home, and I’m going to bed. You should stay out and have some fun. It’ll be a while before we hit another town after tomorrow.” Nine know, you won’t want any fun with me, he thought sourly. He trudged away up the stairs and hit the first landing, turning his steps up towards the next staircase which led, eventually, up to the bronze door of Vlindrel Hall. He really had to focus hard in order to keep from swaying or tripping, but he was a pretty good actor, and he just about managed it.

Argis walked beside him all the way, and when Lein stopped in the doorway and turned to him, he stopped. “Argis?” Lein asked, confused.

Argis only smiled a soft smile. “I’m actually kind of boring,” he laughed. “I don’t need to stay out late anymore.”

Lein flashed him a confused frown, but said nothing. Turning way, he fished the keys out of his pocket and fumbled it awkwardly in the lock and cursed.

“Here,” Argis said, stepping round Lein and reaching for the key while it was still in his hand. When the smooth calluses of his skin touched Lein’s, he felt a jolt deep inside him. All the blood seemed to leave his head and pool in his groin. It was all he could do to stifle a moan. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Argis steadied him with a hand on his lower back as he took the key gently and put it in the lock, pushing the door open and stepping inside. He held it open for him, an utterly unreadable expression on his face.

“Thank you,” Lein managed to mutter as he made his way up the stone slope. He headed straight to the little kitchen area and grabbed a dwemer cup. Filling it with the icy water that flowed clean from the taps, he downed it in one before filling it once more. When he turned, he saw Argis had finished locking up the hall and was just entering the living room.

“Thank you for this evening,” Argis smiled. “You need anything else? Otherwise, I’ll head to bed. What time do you want to leave tomorrow?”

Lein couldn’t find words easily, but he managed to rasp, “Um, after breakfast? And you’re welcome.”

Argis’ smile was easy and relaxed as he nodded and headed to his bedroom, but Lein couldn’t relax.

He sat up for a long time, staring into the embers of the banked fire, watching it die. He had never felt so conflicted about someone. Vipir and he had locked eyes across the murky water of the Ragged Flagon Cistern and he had just known, instantly, that the man wanted him. This? This was something else entirely. The man was in his employ, and he had no idea what to do. “Urgh,” he snarled to himself. “What a fucking falmer turd of a mess.”

He leaned forwards on his elbows and let his hair fall down around his face. He stayed like that for a long time, and only crawled into bed when midnight had long gone and passed.

He woke screaming and soaked in sweat three hours later.

Chapter Five

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[monstersandmaw]

Excuse the shitty photos of my monitor - for some reason screenshotting no longer works with Steam with my keyboard… if anyone knows a fix for that btw lemme know.

Anyway, I cannot with this man. Argis has no chill when it comes to Lein. He just has to be checking him out the whole time. That, or he’s making sure Lein hasn’t fallen arse over teakettle into another life and death situation. Or both. It’s probably both.

I fired up my old save to check out my besotted murder husbands Falkreath for the next instalment of Dremora lad, and they just looked so perfect I had to share.

[monstersandmaw]

Working on Chapter Fourteen of Footsteps in the Snow, with these two crazy in love dorks. It’ll be up later, if anyone is interested.

[monstersandmaw]

Footsteps in the Snow - Chapter 14 (nsfw)

<—- Previous Chapter |  Table of Contents | Link to AO3 if you prefer to read it there

So... it’s been... 84yrs since I updated this, but I finally got back to these dorks today. If you’re new, here’s the summary and a link to chapter one:

Lein (pronounced ‘lane’), a half-Skaal half Nord, is made thane of Markarth and acquires Vlindrel Hall, and a housecarl. Argis has had a tough start in life, but things have been looking up since he joined the Markarth Guard, and then the Jarl’s Guard. Then he is assigned to Lein, a white-haired, 5'7" mage with mismatching eyes and a propensity for nearly getting killed. Lein feels an immediate attraction to the huge, half-blind housecarl, but has no idea if Argis is even into men. Journeying from Markarth to Windstad Manor for Valdimar’s upcoming wedding, the two forge a friendship that begins to blossom into something else as time passes and they make their tracks in the snow. Buckle up for dragons, necromancers, hagravens, Dragonborn shouting, pining, friendship, angst, and some eventual smut. 

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Lein woke slowly, surfacing gradually, eyes and brain fogged with a sleep undisturbed by nightmares for once. Beside him, the shallow snores of Argis nudged his mind further to full consciousness and he rolled onto his side.  

Outside, the wind tugged at the eaves and shingles of the house, no doubt whipping the snowflakes into wild, frenzied flurries, but inside all was still and warm and quiet, for the most part.  

Cracking an eye open, he took in the huge, bare shoulders, the curve of muscle in Argis’ colossal bicep, the sculpted back, the sweetly intimate glimpse of dark blond hair at the nape of his neck, and he sighed a private smile. How a man could snore like that while lying on his side was beyond Lein, but still Argis managed a steady rumble that could probably have cleared the snow off the roof on a still day.  

Now that he was fully awake, Lein intended to make full use of his time, and he stared openly at the sleeping man beside him.

Of course, the scars on Argis’ back could not be avoided. With Argis facing away from him, it was shocking to see up close the damage that the hagraven’s claws had wrought in his flesh. What looked like an ‘X’ shaped, two-handed attack - first a sweep of the right hand followed by another from the left hand of the hag - was then cut in half by a vertical slash from the nape of his neck down to the middle of his broad back. He was lucky not to have been left paralysed by the damage, and Lein shuddered,the skin on his own back tingling.  

Tentatively, Lein brought his fingertips to Argis’ massive right shoulder and inhaled slowly as he traced the raised lines of the scars which had stretched and distorted slightly as he’d grown and filled out. They were old, the skin hard and puckered;  no longer the livid, angry pink of newly-formed tissue, but a hue darker than the rest of his warm, brown skin. How young had he been when this had been done to him? And how had it even happened? How had a child from the hills of the Reach been caught up in the business of hagravens?

For a while, Argis slept on while Lein let his hands wander idly, tracing patterns on his surprisingly tanned skin. Perhaps he had trained for years, shirtless, in the thin sun of Markarth’s training yard during Skyrim’s short summers. Now that was an image. Lein smirked softly and pressed a chaste kiss against his right shoulder blade. Lein himself was almost colourless he was so pale, and many a joke had been made at his expense in alchemy classes at Winterhold, comparing him to glowing mushrooms, or asking people if they thought a ball of magelight would shine right through him if the caster stood behind him.  

Thinking about his time at Winterhold - almost ten years ago now - made him chuckle softly, and the sound finally seemed to stir Argis from sleep. 

“Mmmph?” he grunted, half-trying to turn over but finding he couldn’t because Lein was pressed against the entire length of his back, acting like a chock against a waggon wheel.  

Lein kissed his back between his shoulder blades and gripped the solid curve of his shoulder, tugging himself somehow even closer; close enough to grind his wakening cock against the curve of Argis’ muscular backside. He felt Argis inhale slowly and then he relaxed beneath Lein’s touch. “Morning,” Lein murmured, kissing him again.  

Argis shifted and shuffled around to lie on his back. He had a pillow crease on his right cheek, down over the fierce russet of his tattoo, and Lein leaned in to kiss it. In answer, Argis tilted his head back and let out a long, luxuriant groan.  

He reached for Lein, big hands fumbling slightly, groggy with the sleep that still clung to him, and slid one arm under his back. With one tug of his huge bicep, Argis tugged Lein over to sprawl half atop him and Lein let himself be manhandled into straddling Argis with nothing but a breathless laugh. As he rolled his hips playfully over Argis’ groin, the big warrior tipped his head back again and closed his eyes, scarred lips parting. “Lein,” he breathed.  

“Mmm?”

As his breathing hitched and quickened, Argis’ palms wandered down to Lein’s hips, where he anchored them and began to control the slow, steady tempo at which Lein had begun to grind against him.

“Lein,” he said again.  

“Mmm?” Lein repeated with a chuckle. “What do you want? You’re going to have to use your words eventually, you big troll,” he laughed, gripping him with his lean thighs.  

Argis snorted, a wonky grin decorating his handsome, rugged face. “You. I want you, you sassy, tricksy man.”

With another laugh, Lein pitched forwards and lay completely atop Argis, nuzzling his nose against his neck and feeling Argis’ cock twitch with interest beneath the pressure of his body.  

“I want you too,” Lein hissed in his ear, biting the soft flesh of his earlobe. “Now.”

Beneath him, Argis paused, going a little tense and nervous. “How… How do you want me?”

Only then did Lein remember that Argis had no experience of being with a man before. “You want me to show you, or to tell you?” he said, keeping his tone light and relaxed.  

He anxiously settled on ‘tell me’ after a little deliberation.  

Nodding, Lein rolled off him and reached for a phial of oil in the bedside drawer. “Fuck, I’m so hard already,” he chuckled as he turned back and found Argis sitting up on one elbow, watching him carefully. Argis didn’t have any clothes left to take off, but when Lein shucked himself out of the loose pants he wore to sleep in, he heard Argis exhale softly behind him, and glanced back. “What?”

“You have so many scars,” he said, reaching for him with a hesitance that bordered on reverence. “I’ve never seen anyone with as many as you have…”

Lein offered him a half smile and tipped a small pool of oil into his hand. That distracted Argis instantly. It was a little too much for what he had in mind, so he took his hard cock in his hand first and coated it in a few delicious strokes before lying back in the middle of the bed and spreading his legs. “You want to do it or just watch?” he said.  

Argis was as quick a study at this as he was with everything else new. Lein soon lost the ability to speak as he took a second finger all the way up to the knuckle, and he bucked at the delicious stretch. The burn of intrusion was fading fast, and now all he was left with was the shivering want of it all. “Crook your fingers,” he rasped. “You’ll, you’ll find… there. Oh fuck… there!” and he lurched, spine arching as Argis brushed against his prostate.  

“There?” Argis crooned, playfully now, repeating the gesture.  

“Oh fuck… oh fuck that’s so good. Oh fuck…” he chorused, wanting to close his fist around his desperately hard and weeping cock, but not quite having the coordination or the presence of mind to unclench his fingers from the sheets beneath him. “Please…” he begged. “I’m ready. That’s enough, I’m ready…”

Argis swallowed and carefully withdrew his fingers from Lein, wiping them on a cloth nearby before lining his cock up with Lein’s entrance. It was thicker than the girth of the fingers he’d had inside him, and Argis hesitated. “You sure?”

“Yes, dammit,” Lein huffed, shuffling slightly to give him a good angle. “Please…”

Slowly - too damned slowly for Lein’s liking, but it was Argis’ first time, and the clenched heat of him would be different from a woman’s, or so he’d been told - Argis entered him.  

When little more than the head of his cock had sunk into Lein, Argis let out the most beautiful, strained groan, eyes rammed shut. “Fuck,” he cursed. “Fuck, that’s tight.”

Lein had no breath to form words, and as Argis resumed his torturous slide inside him, he wheezed and curled his torso inwards. Lying on his back meant the intrusion was almost unbearably overwhelming, but there was no way he was not going to witness Argis’ expressions as Lein took him for the first time. Eventually, after only one brief pause, Argis seated himself fully inside Lein, and froze there, head bowed, fingers digging into Lein’s muscles so hard they’d leave plum-coloured bruises on his white skin within the hour.  

“Lein, you’re so tight, I…” Argis hissed. “I’m…”

“I don’t need you to last,” Lein grunted. “I need you to move.”

Gods, the stretch was beyond anything he’d ever taken, even when Vipir had found some polished plug from a Khajiit trader, but the rightness of the connection almost made him cry. His chest thrummed with emotions he didn’t know he had, and as Argis finally began to make tentative motions with his hips, Lein found a long, low moan leaving his lips. He tilted his chin up, and then cracked his eyes open again.  

Argis looked like a god above him, all bronze muscles and stoic control, but there were fractures already beginning to skitter across his expression: a tiny flutter of long, golden eyelashes here, a twitch of his scarred lips there, a rough exhale, and an unsteady snap of his hips.  

“Argis, don’t you dare hold back on me,” Lein growled at him. “You’re not going to break me.” With Argis’ thighs and backside looking like they’d been hewn from rock itself, that last point was probably debatable, but Lein could certainly take more than Argis was currently offering.  

The delicious slide of his cock in and out, the stretch, and then, Nine be blessed, the starburst of pleasure as his cock first nudged and then began to drive into his prostate, all proved beyond perfect, and in no time, Lein’s weeping cock twitched again and drooled a mess of pre-come onto his scarred abdomen. “Argis,” he whispered.  

Argis picked up his pace and found a steady rhythm that had Lein utterly breathless and gasping, head thrown back, cock bouncing with each thrust. “Fuck,” Argis grunted, the movement of his hips faltering slightly again. “I’m…”

“Me too,” Lein panted, nerves afire, legs shaking, skin hot and stippled with sweat.

Argis opened his eyes, and as his single hazel iris met Lein’s green and blue, Lein’s orgasm ripped through him, untouched. The force of it wrenched Argis’ own from him in seconds, and he came with a wordless bellow of pleasure, back heaving, hips snapped tight against Lein, filling him and prolonging his own pleasure beyond anything Lein had ever known.  

It took a while before either was able to move, but when Argis finally shifted, cock relaxing, he rolled gracelessly onto the bed beside Lein and lay there, breathing softly.  

Lein tried not to wince as he felt a little of Argis’ release slide from him, and he fumbled for the cloth on the stand, cleaning himself before dropping it onto the floorboards and rolling onto his side to look at Argis.  

“You alright?” he asked.  

The big man nodded but didn’t speak, so Lein drew the sheet back up over them, leaving the heavier blanket scrunched up at the foot of the bed. He laid his head on Argis’ colossal chest and draped an arm over his stomach, listening to the resonant, hammering drumbeat of his heart. Now, in the flush and prime of young adulthood, Argis had the defined musculature of a bulky fighter, but Lein suspected that in time, a softer layer of fat would develop around the muscles of his belly, and he found the idea equally appealing. Gods, he was already imagining growing old with this man. He, who still had to defeat Alduin once and for all, who never found a moment’s peace, the permanent pilgrim, wandering the paths of Skyrim come sun or storm…  

Fingers raked gently through his hair, recalling his attention to the moment, to the colossus he was currently using as a pillow. “Are you alright?” Argis asked, voice deliciously rough.  

“Mmm.”

“You went… You went somewhere else for a bit there…” he pressed gently. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“What? Oh, no, not at all. Quite the opposite, actually,” Lein babbled, scraping his thoughts together again with little success. They’d scattered like chickens in the yard, and he found it hard to concentrate on anything but the touch and blunt score of Argis’ fingers against his scalp. “Just… happy.”

He felt - instead of seeing - Argis smile. “You deserve it,” he said quietly.  

Lein thought suddenly of the scars on his lover’s back. “So do you. I’m not the only one who’s spent half his life fighting, Argis. We all deserve a moment to ourselves.”

“Aye,” Argis murmured, his Markarth accent deepening as he added, “I never dared think it’d feel this good though.”

At that, Lein shuffled and looked up at him, a fierce scowl on his face, but his expression only seemed to make Argis chuckle. He kissed Lein on the forehead. “What time is it anyway?”

“Dunno, but I’m starving,” Lein said. “You worked up quite the appetite in me.”

“I’ll wash and then cook us something for breakfast. Any plans for the day?”

Lein flopped off his shoulder and lay prone on his back, hands lying palm-up beneath the sheets in perfect supplication to the ceiling. “None whatsoever. I might tend to the plants a little bit, and pick your brains about those in the glasshouse. Maybe we can do a spot of reading, or see if Sol wants an outing this afternoon.”

It all felt so… domestic, and he wondered with a sinking in his heart how long it could last.

Next Chapter -->

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I really hope you folks enjoyed this one! Don’t forget to let me know if you did enjoy it by leaving a like and/or reblogging it!

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[monstersandmaw]

I posted this to AO3 during my unplanned 3 week absence from Tumblr, so you may have missed it if you’re one of the 0.004 people who are into this story.

[monstersandmaw]

i really like ur skyrim fanfiction

Thank you so much!!!

Footsteps in the Snow is one of my absolute favourites, and people so rarely bring it up these days because I haven’t had time to continue it, and it’s not non-human romance, but I fully intend to give Lein and Argis the rest of their story. It’s all plotted out, with lots of angst and fluff and sexy times...!!!

Again, thank you for leaving me this. You made my entire week, I think!

[monstersandmaw]

Casual ‘WIP’ poll...

Ok, out of the following stories I’ve got ‘on the go’, which one has more interest from you folks?

Please let me know with a comment or an ask!

Gabe & Odessa (werewolf x female character)

Dremora & Alys (demon/dremora x female character)

Winter Solstice (fae prince x female character, previously undergoing a re-write, so the Tumblr version is an older draft)

Footsteps in the Snow (male dragonborn (Skyrim) x Argis the Bulwark, beloved by a few but otherwise mostly not known by my followers I think)

Ashridge Pack (working title for a modern, male ‘alpha’ werewolf x male human I started to share on Patreon but got overwhelmed by)

Chiaroscuro - Hades and Persephone retelling

Or a new monster x reader one shot (give me some monster inspiration if that’s the case)

LAST MINUTE ADDITION! The ‘eventually-poly’ male witch x childhood friend x female character story that got a surprising amount of interest/notes a while back!

Leave me an ask with the number or comment with the number, and add anything else if you feel like it.

I’m really curious, and I need a metaphorical kick up the backside to get going on projects again, plus I genuinely love hearing what you actually want to read from me.

[monstersandmaw]

What storie do you wish you finish but don't yet manage? (sorry for my English)

Don’t ever apologise for being talented enough to speak another language, especially if that second language is English of all things! I salute, you Anon!

As for the answer to your question, probably these:

Footsteps in the Snow (Argis the Bulwark x male dragonborn thegn)

Chiaroscuro (Hades and Persephone)

Winter Solstice (fae Prince Cirdan of the Court of Winter x female character)

Ashridge Pack (mlm werewolf)

Plus a fanfic that I’m background working on just for fun and just for me mostly.

Hopefully one day I’ll get the time and the spoons! Thank you, Anon! Take care of yourself!