To Kill a Nightingale

Not Quite Like Friends

"Uh, Runa."

Squatting on the side of the winding mountain path, she hissed. "What now? I'm trying to concentrate."

Rusty pointed at the road ahead. "Someone's coming."

"What?"

Runa finished up and dried herself with a handful of leaves. Still tying her breeches, she fixed her eye up the road. True enough, a hunched figure hobbled towards them at a steady pace. Of course it made sense that the Alik'r warriors had not closed off the other end as well, but then what was the point of clogging the other one either? Did they simply turn you back if you came from this direction? Though with Helgen, a ruin of a town overrun by bandits, being right at the pass's westernmost end, not many honorable folk used this pass these days to begin with. And that did not seem to be the case this time either.

Not that the figure approaching looked particularly dishonorable. Tatty was more like it.

"Well, I never," said Rusty. "Fancy a beggar knows the right tricks to charm his way through the desert folk?"

"You never know," she said.

"That's no beggar," said Hroar, suddenly appearing on Runa's other side. Their horses stood grazing by the side of the road.

"No?" asked Rusty. "Looks just like a beggar to me."

"No. See the shorn hair? That's a mendicant."

"A what?"

"Greetings!" called the old man. Either he'd only seen them there, or simply had the habit of walking with his head down.

"Afternoon," said Runa.

The squat, goblin-faced fellow stopped in front of them. "Is it afternoon?" he looked about. "Ah. Aye. It is, it is indeed!" He chuckled. Must've been easily entertained.

"The road's blocked," she said.

"Is it?" he peered behind the three companions.

"Not here. At the very end."

"Aah, so you must be speaking of the Redguard then? I know them, they're very nice lads underneath all that . . . soldiery stuff."

"You mean to tell us they just let you pass?" asked Rusty.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Of course they do! Why wouldn't they? Old Plautus never did anything to them."

"Well, young Runa and her friends didn't do anything either—"

"Young Runa did something to one of them," said Rusty out of the corner of his mouth.

"Hush," Runa said. To the old man, "So you're some sort of a priest?" The second time in a short time now that she was asking that.

"Me? Oh no! No, no! Fools, the lot of 'em. If you don't mind me saying. And even if you do."

"We ain't exactly the devout lot."

He studied them with that perpetually amused expression on his leathery, weathered face. "Yes. I can see that. Well, that's good, I suppose."

"That's a peculiar attitude for someone like you," Hroar said.

"Is it? And what am I like?"

"Well, you know. A monk."

"A monk? Hmm, well, I guess you could say that I am one of those. I do seem to be short of a monastery, though!" And he chuckled again. Runa was starting to suspect that he was more than simply easily entertained.