The Knight (A Skyrim Inspired Series)

One

The meat leaked salt water. Tough. Leathery. The innkeeper, Dagur, kept it stacked in the snow pits at night. The cold kept the wolves from smelling it, but dried your tongue from all of the salt in the snow. The dead sea only gave dead snow, and meat never went bad around here because of it, but everything tasted the same. Salt.

"Horker and grilled leeks tonight aye 'gur?" Ranmir shouted with a raised tankard.

He was a drunk man as was everyone else, cooped up by the firepit that reeked of soot and coal, bundled in goat fur and dirt.

"Ah, temper down, will ya?" Dagur scowled.

Haran and Ysala were the maids, yet Ysala kept the crowd's gaze the most. She kept a green gown wrapped 'round her goods, but stayed exposing just enough to stoke the men. Occasionally, she'd slip her nip out for a few septims, but never slept with any of the hounds at the wretched inn. 

The bard was beating his drum, clicking and tapping his tongue while the men sang. His name was Traduleith. A pitiful lad he was, beating drums or sucking off men for food. He swore on his dead mother he'd never do such a thing, but Ysala had caught him in the dead of night, sucking off Dagur or a few of the loyal paying men. He kept the inn alive, which was the only reason he was kept here. Aye, forced to stay here really. He'd die a night out in the blizzard, just like his pa who tried fleeing through the dead sea. Died of frostbite and the wolves took care of the rest. 

I watched the kid while I gnawed on the horker meat as he pranced around. Too young to have been missin' teeth. Too young to have been a bard. Too young to have been playing around all these men. Closest thing to a woman was him, besides Ysala, and she had more of a voice than the lad did. He wore the same clothes, sweated and stained at the pits, holes and rips from having been tossed between men.

"I can ask him to cut it short if he's bothering you, ya know? Or if you're waitin'." Ysala interrupted.

I hadn't even noticed her refilling my tankard with mead, and she grinned down at me while eyeing the stall in the back.

"Ysala I have no interest in messing with that boy."

"Well you sure stare him down when you're here."

"He's a disgrace to the Nords is what he is." I grunted. 

"Then why don't you show him a real one?" 

My nose wrinkled in disgust as I brought my tankard to my lips and gulped down my mead. She had taken to grabbing on my arm whenever she made sexual hints, but knew well I wouldn't sleep with anyone.

"'Sala! Where's my mead?" Ranmir shouted over the singing.

She ignored him and rolled her eyes before pressing her hip into my shoulder.

"Why don't you get a little action tonight aye? 

I swung my leg around the wooden bench to stand, and snatched up her pitcher of remaining mead. 

"I have a wife home." I grumbled.

"And a daughter." she added, "But out here you're a single man, and I know your wife isn't letting you pound her with those see-through wooden floors and thin walls." 

I had dismissed the discussion by downing the remainder of the mead in the pitcher, and set the empty container back into her hands before snatching up my wool cape. 

"Night." I nodded.

She was a redheaded woman, freckled and pretty, but a slut to this inn with her ways. Her legs stayed closed but I knew her mouth didn't, and she wouldn't dare marry a man to keep her settled. She liked being free.