Beyond the Pale

Back Behind Bars

A rat would have rejected these conditions, Castorius reflected, sitting on his bed and letting his eye wander around the cell. The floor tiles were cracked, the corners of the ceiling festooned with thick cobwebs, and the wall speckled with mildew. But then, how much could be expected of a dungeon? At least there were no rats.

Stomach growling, he reached for his trencher. All he'd been given to eat was a loaf of stale bread, which, to think on it, was not all that different from being in the service. And at least there was the consolation of a small bottle of good Cyrodiilian olive oil, which some sympathetic soldier had brought him. Troops from Cyrodiil always stocked those, for they were unaccustomed and, quite rightly so, off-put by the indigenous Nord custom of slathering their bread with butter.

Castorius ripped off a piece of the loaf, and dipped it in the oil sitting in a small bowl. The oil was nice and spicy, nearly flavorful enough to drown the dreariness of its vessel. Chewing, he scoffed internally at these barbarians, wasting perfectly good cooking-butter on their bread.

From some other cell, a long, haunted wail sounded the jail-complex, reverberating in the masonry. It was abruptly cut off by a clang, like a heavy iron pot clattering on the stone floor. Then it was quiet again. Somebody further away launched into a coughing fit.

And to think: just less than an hour ago Castorius had been ready to trade the joys of Aetherius for this. Well, at least he could be sure this place existed. There was something to be said for certainty at times.

No word of what went on outside had come to him. Had an actual war really broken out? If you'd asked him, he could've sworn a proper armed conflict between the Stormcloaks and the rightful imperial rule of Skyrim would never take place. Surely Ulfric Stormcloak was out of his mind if that was the case. Castorius had with his own eyes seen the kind of "army" the man boasted: miserable, poorly trained troops for the most part, with plenty of conviction but not any real battle experience. They could never have in a million years waged a successful war against the best-trained military in all of the known world. In fact, Ulfric should have damn well thanked his lucky stars that his actions thus far had been so well tolerated. He'd been allowed to rally people to his side, raise his own private army off the peasantry, and train them freely without getting hassled.

It had been only The High King Torygg, the nominal ruler of the province, and his heartfelt patience, completed with his prestige in the Emperor's eyes, mediating the situation and keeping the imperial forces from fully rolling in on the ill-equipped would-be rebels—from crushing their pitiful resistance before it had time to take even the first of its wobbly little baby steps.

They would hardly break a sweat doing it.

Castorius was quite offended, then, that he should have been believed to have affiliated himself with such a foolish, doomed endeavor. Sure, he'd had tentative business with Ulfric, as any man of the game sought to cover all possible bases, but to abandon his cozy position to take part in this ridiculous enterprise to "liberate" the province from the Imperial rule? Talk about trading your jewels for marbles!

Of course, Castorius knew the allegations against him to be totally disingenuous. It was part of some charade, the nature of which presently alluded him. So he'd seen best to keep his mouth shut, and just play along. Among other reasons . . .

The brief post that had gotten him to talks with Ulfric in the first place—as a member of the city guard of Windhelm, the hub of the Stormcloak movement—had been among the most miserable of his life. The cold and the wind had been even worse up there, the food largely tasteless and sparsely supplied. But worst of all, the women had all but shunned him. One might have not anticipated it, but the frigid climate actually seemed to have frozen the local womenfolk's legs permanently together.