Frida, the missing proprietor of the Mortar and Pestle, shows up in the Windpeak Inn as I’m getting ready for bed. She and Thordir launch into a discussion of the extreme aggression displayed by the local wolves, who, they observe, are constantly running into town in packs and attacking people indiscriminately. (If they only got out more, they’d know that this unfortunate psychosis afflicts wolves all over Skyrim.) I talk to Frida briefly; she complains that the Jarl Skald is a fool, and tells me that Brina is the one that people really turn to for help. This topic is not without interest—Skald practically accused Brina of treason in public once, for no better reason than that she used to be in the Imperial Legion—but Frida does not tell me what I most wish to hear, which is an explanation for why her shop has been closed all day and a promise to reopen it. I turn in, still determined to leave Dawnstar at first light.
I decide to head towards Solitude, with its busy marketplace and multitude of shops. It’s a miserable snowy day, and I can barely see the flowers I’m picking. (They’re blue, as it turns out.) We trudge through the snow without incident until a faint rattling sound reaches my ears, and Vorstag is attacked by an ice wraith. These creatures are quite deadly—they weave about in the air and are translucent, almost invisible. Most of my arrows miss completely, and I can see Vorstag dipping into his supply of health-restoring potions as the creature strikes at him. But he makes steady progress against it until a heart-stopping moment when it breaks away abruptly and lunges at my horse. Snowberry runs into the woods in a panic, and Vorstag and I pursue—an exercise most likely doomed to failure unless the terrified animal randomly decides to change direction and run toward us. She eventually does, to my relief, and Vorstag finishes off the wraith.
Later, I am attacked by hooded Khajiit assassin, whom I almost feel sorry for—he or she (it’s hard to tell, with the cat-like face and the very dark clothing) must have waited a long time in the dismal, freezing weather, in clothing that offered neither warmth nor camouflage, to encounter me, only to be unceremoniously hacked to death by Vorstag. I gain a level while fending off the assassin—I’m honestly too surprised to do much more than that—and retrieve a note, identical to the one I found on the assassin who attacked me outside Whiterun. It appears that this mysterious Astrid person still wants me dead. Well, I have no better notion than before of what I might be doing that could induce someone to take out a contract on me, so I can hardly stop doing it. I wonder when—and if—these attacks will finally cease; surely Astrid will run out of assassins to send after me eventually? I mean, if Vorstag slaughters enough of them, they’ll start asking for more money than anyone is willing to pay, right? Right?
I mix and sell some potions in Morthal, and taste a few ingredients I haven’t tried yet, including, with some trepidation, the teeth of the ice wraith that Vorstag killed earlier. After recovering from the usual reagent queasiness, I take my mind off the possible long-term health effects of consuming ice wraith teeth by completing both the elven sword I made for Vorstag and my Bosmer armor set. Well, almost: there are a couple of extra pieces that I don’t yet have the materials for, but the basic outfit is done. Then I enter the wizard Falion’s house, right next to Al’Hassan’s smithy, where Falion immediately assumes that I have barged into his home to accuse him of sacrificing children and eating the hearts of the dead. I haven’t, of course: I’ve only barged in to boil water in his cookpot, which appears to be free enough of children’s hearts for my purposes—not that I’m generally inclined to be picky, to be quite honest.
In the Moorside Inn, I talk to Gorm, housecarl to Jarl Idgrod Ravencrone. He tells me that he’s very worried about the Jarl and her mysterious visions, and seems to be trying to work up the courage to ask me to do something about it. From his hesitancy, I can gather that the something he would have me do is something that Idgrod might not like, and so I cut the conversation short before he can get to the point. I’m not about to get into the business of undermining Jarls, however lucrative such a business is likely to be in Skyrim. I pay for a bed for the night and go into my room to try on my new armor. I am pleasantly surprised to find Anum-La sitting in there, and we chat about her past. She was in a mercenary company, she tells me, that split up in disgrace after a terrible incident in which they mistook a group of mourners for necromancers and slaughtered them. (Gods be thanked, I tell myself for neither the first nor the last time, that I am not an adventurer.) She came to Skyrim in the company of a child who was present that day and would not leave her, and who may in fact have been a figment of her imagination. This leads her to the subject of the funereal garb she wears, which might be interpreted as mourning for the innocents who died that day: “There’s only one thing in this world I truly mourn,” she declares. “My sanity!” It’s a pity I can’t spend more time with Anum-La; we enjoy each other’s company and she would even be willing to travel with me, but she’s clearly the heroic type—I’m sure she’d find my lifestyle stupefyingly dull.
The next morning, I leave Morthal and head west, wearing my new Bosmer outfit. What a difference it makes! In my Thalmor-style armor I always felt sluggish and awkward—as though someone had drugged me at a party and left me dressed that way. Now I feel sprightly and competent: a dangerous sensation, as the most sober self-assessment I can dredge up informs me that I am neither of those things. Fortunately, no truly dangerous enemies appear for me to embarrass myself against, and I have ample time to consider a subject that has been weighing on my mind. We’ll soon be passing the area where I found Meeko, the dog who was living in the shack in which his owner died, and I can’t decide whether I should adopt him. I miss Vigilance terribly, and I’d love to have another dog. But if something similar were to happen to Meeko—Vorstag doesn’t use spells, but he might accidentally shoot Meeko with an arrow—I don’t know what I’d do. I never liked Marcurio to begin with; he was always a smug, irritating man, and in losing what little regard for him I had, I wasn’t truly losing anything. But I like Vorstag: if I were forced to send him away because I could no longer stand the sight of him, it would be a grievous loss indeed.
I resolve this inner conflict by trying an experiment: I confiscate Vorstag’s hunting bow. If he can function without it, I decide, then I’ll adopt Meeko, assuming he’s still there. Vorstag doesn’t seem overly concerned by the loss of his bow, and in fact his tendency to close immediately with frost spiders rather than firing a few opening shots at them is, on the whole, a change for the better. We pass Fort Bunny-Killer without incident and find the dog, still hanging around his dead master’s shack, on the other side. He’s overjoyed to leave his ramshackle home and come along with me, and when I shoot and injure an elk, he and Vorstag merrily charge off in pursuit of it and don’t come back for several minutes.
We reach Dragon Bridge just after lunch and continue north, having no pressing reason to stop. Past the settlement, we are attacked by an angry troll, and a few unarmed drunkards who are having some sort of party nearby come running over gallantly to assist me. I get very concerned for their safety as they crowd around shouting and punching at the monster, getting in the way of my shots and interfering with Vorstag, but to my great relief we manage to kill it before any of these well-intentioned morons get torn apart. They are so delighted by their victory that they offer me a bottle of Honningbrew mead in celebration. Caught up in the festive mood, I drink it down immediately and chase it with a big, gooey lump of troll fat.
And then I … don’t feel so good. I’m not sure whether it’s the alcohol, the troll fat, the combination of the two, or perhaps something else that those nice fellows may have slipped into my drink, but this is even worse than Nona’s Rabbity Reagent Salad. Everything looks very wrong, and I begin to have trouble keeping my balance. I continue to totter vaguely in the direction of Solitude, hoping that nobody, except possibly Vorstag, will take advantage of my impaired condition before I reach the safety of the city’s walls.
I’m feeling much better by the time I reach the city gates, where I vow never again to eat or drink anything that has been given to me by a random stranger or that used to be attached to a troll. I realize that only a complete fool would find it necessary to adjust her behavior to include a rule that should be glaringly obvious to everyone, but the first step to recovering from extreme stupidity is to admit you have a problem.
I visit Radiant Raiment to buy a new set of fine clothes, then go by the smithy in order to craft some Bosmer arrows and a new hunting knife. At suppertime, I retire to the Winking Skeever, where a hooded and robed orc named Cassock engages me in what at first appears to be a friendly bar conversation but quickly takes a turn for the worse. I tell him I’m just here for a drink, and he rambles on in an increasingly sinister tone about thirst and blood and spilling. Rather than find out to what or whom these insinuations tend, I turn away from him (I’ve become quite adept at cutting people off before they can burden me with quests) and ask Corpulus for news. He hands me one of those helpful notes that I like to carry around to remind me of the many unique and interesting places in Skyrim that I would very much prefer not to visit.
I spend the rest of the evening strutting around the Skeever in the hope that Sorex will notice that I’m with Vorstag and, I don’t know, get all stupidly jealous and make a huge scene that ends in his bursting into tears and being knocked out in a fistfight. Or maybe he should get into a fistfight with Vorstag and then burst into tears; I would think less of Vorstag if he hit a man who was already crying. Sadly, Sorex remains completely indifferent, no matter how determinedly I march back and forth through his field of view, and when I finally decide to speak to him, he immediately begins flirting with me even though Vorstag is standing right there. Confound the fellow! He won’t do even the simplest thing to make me happy. I can’t believe that I seriously considered marrying him.