Lake Ilinalta, in Falkreath Hold, must be my favorite place in all of Skyrim: it’s beautiful and interesting and (so far) relatively safe. Following my trip down the mountain, I spend a little time hunting and exploring there; I’ve picked up the Eagle Eye perk (after my lessons with Angi, it seemed appropriate), so now, when I shoot an elk, it appears so much closer as it flees with my arrow sticking out of it. I even go diving and manage to find a sunken boat. There’s nothing left on it except for a steel battleaxe, which I struggle, pointlessly, to bring to the surface. I also find another of those tall, smooth stones, this one carved with an image of a kneeling woman. It looks so utterly harmless that I reach out and touch it, and its magic activates, shooting a ray of blue light into the sky. I now have the blessing of the Lady Stone, which helps me recover more quickly when I’m tired or hurt. Huzzah!
So the day passes enjoyably enough, and on the following morning--the 17th of Heartfire, my one-month anniversary in Skyrim--I feel ready to begin my journey to Solitude. The first leg is uneventful and full of impressive sights--in fact there’s so much to see in the region west of Whiterun that I have great difficulty keeping to the road. I find a pool containing an enormous brown crab, or rather the shell of one; the actual animal is dead, but several of its smaller cousins appear to be using it for shelter. I find a tall stone monument (Gjukar’s Monument, my naming instinct informs me) shaped at the top like the head of a predatory bird. Somewhere in the same general area I successfully bring down an elk with two shots and gain another level. After lunch, I climb a hill and see Rorikstead in the distance; the road has long since been forgotten, and we scramble over gentle slopes and outcroppings to the farms lying just outside the town.
In Rorikstead, the talk is mostly of war and agriculture; the town has so far been fortunate in the health of its crops, but its leader, Rorik, sees only a bleak future if the fighting continues. The local farmers are proud of their livelihood and serious in their work: they regard any interruptions, including my attempts at conversation, with deep suspicion, so I leave them to it. The most cheerful reception I get comes from a young man named Erik, who says he would become an adventurer if not for his father Mralki, the innkeeper. Erik reminds me slightly of Hjoromir, but he’s much more down-to-earth, and as it’s rapidly becoming obvious to me that Skyrim needs more adventurers, if the frequency with which people ask Nona to attempt dangerous tasks for them is any indication, I decide to intercede with his father. Mralki, as expected, is not at all fond of the idea, but he clearly wants Erik to be happy, and eventually accedes to his son’s wishes: he even agrees to buy some basic adventuring equipment.
I stay the night in Rorikstead, walking out the next morning into the worst rainstorm I have yet experienced. The rain is so thick, the sky so dark, that I would be tempted to delay our journey for another day, if there were anything at all to do here. Rorikstead has no shops, no crafting equipment. I can’t see anything of the countryside in this rain, and the inn is almost literally haunted by a shut-in named Sonja, a former Stormcloak who has decided to withdraw permanently from the world rather than face--it isn’t clear what she’s facing, but she claims to have experienced all manner of disturbing visions, which she describes to me at considerable length. She’s a little worried about her ability to continue to pay for her accommodations, and talks with apparent seriousness about the possibility of marrying Erik so as to be allowed to stay for free. (In arranging for him to become an adventurer, I may have done him a far bigger favor than I could have imagined.)
So Jade and I press on through the storm; and with the visibility as poor as it is, a party of bandits is practically upon us before I notice them at all. Jade and Vigilance immediately fight back--Jade has gotten more courageous of late, perhaps because of the dog, and that worries me; I’ve given her a couple of healing potions, and I only hope that she has the presence of mind to use them if needed. I can’t shoot effectively, as I’m practically blind without a lantern and I need both hands for my bow, so my companions kill two bandits without my help and rush off into the rain; I can’t tell where they’ve gone, where the sounds of battle are coming from, so I stand around uncertainly, holding my sword ready in case I am suddenly assaulted. But the noises fade, no more enemies show themselves, and my dog and my friend eventually return looking none the worse for wear, having either killed or routed the rest of the bandit party.
Our troubles aren’t over, though. North of Rorikstead, the road leads to a bridge. Visible on the other side--even in this driving rain--is a structure not unlike the pair of wooden towers south of Falkreath with the walkway suspended in between, although here the walkway hangs over what looks to be a natural ravine. This place, too, is likely occupied by bandits--quite a few of them, judging by the additional buildings perched on the cliffs--and the name that drifts through my consciousness, Robber’s Gorge, seems to confirm my suspicion. After a few minutes of indecision--during which Jade gets struck by lightning right in front of me (fortunately, the lightning mod is set to produce non-lethal lightning strikes)--I decide to proceed by passing around the structure to the west, following the north bank of the river; this will require us to scramble over some rocky terrain, but I know that the road will, after passing through the gorge itself, bend back towards that bank. There’s only one problem: getting my companions to come with me without making a ruckus. I have little doubt of being able to keep myself inconspicuous in this weather, but neither canine nor human friends can be relied upon to stay calm and quiet.
Leaving Snowberry on the south side of the bridge, where I hope she will not get spooked, I creep to the north end and watch the structure carefully. A bandit appears on the walkway; I seize the moment and release an arrow. It’s a perfect shot: the man is already dead as he tumbles onto the road and the storm masks the sound of his fall. My companions stay quiet, and I spend a few brief moments in dizzy elation at the thought that this will be easier than I expected. But, as I am adjusting my position, Vigilance suddenly gets excited about something and charges off into the rain, followed closely by Jade. Nobody has spotted me yet, and, as before, I have no idea where the actual fighting is taking place.
I fear for my friends, but I doubt that going after them will be of any help; so I creep along the edge of the river, just as I was planning to do before, and hope for the best. On the west side of Robber’s Gorge I find a barrier of sharpened stakes; near that, a bandit is shooting at one of my companions. I have no trouble taking him out, and Jade and Vigilance manage to find me soon after. No other bandits come to investigate--either they have all been taken out, or those that remain are studiously ignoring the deaths of their comrades. Finding the road again, I leave Jade waiting a safe distance from the Gorge--she hates to be left alone, but she at least has Vigilance for company--and go back for my horse. I have some small difficulty getting Snowberry over the rocks near the bridge, but soon we are all together again and able to continue.
In Dragon Bridge, as in Rorikstead, the war is an urgent topic: Horgeir fears that the bridge the town is named for, an important strategic crossing, could be destroyed in the course of the conflict; Azzada Lylvieve tells me angrily that neither the Imperial nor the Stormcloak scouts that have been by recently have shown any consideration for the town whatsoever--both stayed at the inn without paying and one even tried to have his way with Azzada’s daughter. I visit an outpost of the Penitus Oculatus (this is the Emperor’s personal security force) where an agent named Orenius tells me of his obsessive pursuit of an Imperial thief called the Raven of Anvil, who, it turns out, is his own daughter. (She sounds interesting, actually; according to her father, she is a very accomplished bard.)
There’s probably enough time to reach Solitude before nightfall--not that daylight has a lot of meaning in this storm--but I’ve had enough slogging through the rain for today. In the Four Shields tavern, a Dunmer woman named Gilsi asks me whether I consider her attractive. I don’t, actually, although I’m too nice to say so, and at any rate her self-regard seems unassailable by the likes of me. The one whose esteem she actually covets is a wizard named Nelos, who apparently has run off with Eldawyn, the wine-obsessed Altmer woman I encountered in Whiterun. Gilsi tells me that their group, the Radiant Dark, is working to bring about a phenomenon called “The Long Night,” her explanation of which is just coherent enough to suggest that it would be a Very Bad Thing. Fortunately, Gilsi appears to have no thought for anything but Nelos and her own pride; I’m no magician, but I would assume that a drunk and an obsessive groupie are unlikely to be capable of whatever feats of concentration are required to bring on the Magical Apocalypse. Nelos’s power must be great indeed if he is to accomplish his sinister purpose while relying on the assistance of such silly allies as these.
Before retiring, I chat with Skjarn, the local bard. The conversation is brief, as he is insufferably vain and arrogant, and quite unhampered by conventional notions of decorum. (I cut him off while he is crudely describing a sexual encounter he supposedly had with a woman who accused him of being a werewolf; perhaps I’m being overly nice.) But, after listening to all of his boasting, I can’t resist hearing him sing: against my better judgment, I request a performance of “The Dragonborn Comes,” a song I pretty much despise. Skjarn’s voice is not at all what I was expecting; his singing has a tentative, faltering quality--I would have expected him to be more of a belter--and his arrangement of this simple tune is startlingly good. If I was seeking to confirm my dislike, I failed, and I head to my room with the dissatisfaction of having been charmed by an obvious creep.