The Dragonborn’s Game

“Ale,” the big man says without looking up. “The good stuff. And a wheel of cheese with bread.”

“Coming right up,” I say, and head back to the kitchen to fetch his order.

It’s a slow night at The Bannered Mare, but I don’t mind. Hulda pays me the same whether the place is filled to the brim with sweating bodies, drinking and dancing and fighting, or if it’s just me and the mice keeping each other company, so I’d just as soon have some peace and quiet.

Thing is, when the other women of Whiterun aren’t here, it’s me the travelers look to for distraction.

Back in Rihad, I received my fair share of advances from men, sure. But a highborn maiden is not courted in quite the same way as a tavern wench of unknown origin. Instead of a dozen rare flowers delivered by courier, I get greasy hands squeezing my ass and leering down my shirt.

It’s been an adjustment, to say the least.

I come back with the stranger’s food and drink. Set it down in front of him. He’s sitting at one of the tables in the back, staring at the fire, but when the jug of ale hits the table he finally looks up at me. I feel his eyes start at my wrist and crawl up my ebony skin like a snake, weaving their way beneath my dress and slithering along my chest and neck, ending on my dark eyes and the scar I try my best to conceal.

“Well, well,” is all he says.

“Ten septims,” I say.

He digs into his coin purse without breaking eye contact with me. He’s a Nord, tall and handsome with ice-blue eyes and golden hair. A true son of Skyrim, to be sure.

He slides what looks like well over fifty septims onto the wooden table.

“How’s about I pay a little extra, and you keep me company for a while?”

“I have work to do, Hulda doesn’t let me take breaks. Even if the guests pay for them.” I start to walk away. The man may be pretty, but I’m full out of energy for pretty Nords looking for a tumble in the hay.

“Oh, Hulda!” the man calls. Hulda stops wiping the bar with her cloth and looks up, frowning.

“If I pay a hundred septims for the room instead of ten, think I can chat with the wench a while before my bed time?”

Hulda scans the room and, finding it mostly deserted, shrugs. Then she goes back to wiping.

Thanks for the help, Hulda.

The man uncorks the bottle of ale and motions for me to sit down. I sigh and obey.

That’s what tavern wenches do, they obey. And royal blood in my veins doesn’t do a damn thing for me so long as it’s a secret between me and the wind.

“I’m not a whore,” I say. “Let’s get that straight before this goes an inch further.”

He ignores that and takes a long drink of his ale. Then offers it to me. I take a glance at Hulda, see that she’s still occupied with her cloth and her counter, and grab the bottle.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Saadia,” I say, then take a gulp of ale that matches his own. “Yours?”

“Dovvakin,” he says.

“Now, now, that’s not a name, that’s a silly bit of nonsense for drunks and old wives.”

“Tell that to the dragon I killed out by the watchtower,” he says, motioning westward with his shoulder and his pale blue eyes.

I don’t think he’s really the one who slew the dragon, but I decide to humor him. “I told you the name my mother gave me, not a bunch of geezers on a mountain top.”

He smiles. Perfect white teeth. How rare are those? I wonder.

“Eamon,” he says. “My name is Eamon.”

“See? I like that one much better. Me and your mom, we’d have gotten on all right, I think.”

He shrugs. “Doubt that. She wasn’t much for Redguards.”

“Something against dark skin?”

“Dark skin, dark ways is the wording she’d have used.”

“Why, Eamon, are you trying to woo me with nostalgic memories of your racist mother?”

His smile disappears for a moment, just enough for the candles to flicker once, and then it returns again. That’s when I start to notice that his face smiles but his eyes stay icy cold.

There is no real laugher behind those beautiful eyes, only frost.

“Nostalgia,” he repeats slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Now there’s a fancy word for a tavern wench to be using.” He takes another sip of the ale and then reaches for the bread. Tears it in half and uses the small knife I brought him to cut out a thick chunk of cheese. Stuffs some in his mouth.

“Maybe you’ve just been mingling with stupid wenches up until now,” I say.

He shrugs. “That could be,” he says between a big bite of cheese. Then he swallows it and washes it down with the rest of the ale. “Or it could be I’ve stumbled on some, oh, how shall I put this. Interloper?”

I scoff. “Nostalgia I know. But you got me on that one.”

He grunts a noise out that I don’t know the meaning of. Then he shakes the empty bottle of ale.

“Anything to be done about this?”

I take the empty bottle back to the kitchen and bring up another one. A special one, from my private side of the cupboard.

I bring it back to him and he takes a gulp, but nothing compared to the chugs he was taking before. Too bad, that’ll slow things down.

“So, how’s about I cut to the point.” He puts both of his huge, strong hands flat on the table. “I think you and me should head up to my room and see if we can’t find out how strong that bed is. What do you say, want to have a go with a living legend?”

He smiles again and tries to get at me with those blue eyes. I bet he thinks those twin shards of ice can cut apart every piece of pussy he comes to. But they don’t cut into me. Not the way he expects them to.

“Oh, and is that your legendary charm at work here? Think I’ll pass.”

He frowns for a moment and then takes another swig of ale. Larger this time.

“You don’t know what you’re missing. I’ve got talents nobody in this world has. I can suck up a dragon soul and make it a part of me. Just think what I can do with a woman’s body.”

“Is that supposed to get my knickers dampened? What do I care if you can suck up a snake’s soul? How do you get it out, through his ass?”

I cross my arms and give him a smile of my own. Dark and sultry and full of all kinds of passion he wants and can’t reach yet.

“You mock me?!”

He slams the table down hard with a flat hand and it just about shakes the entire damn room. Hulda looks up for a moment but does nothing, then she seems to suddenly remember urgent business elsewhere and leaves the tavern out the back door.

She always was a cowardly bitch.

I sigh and pretend to think it over. Mostly I’m biding time because as big as he is that third of a bottle he’s drunk down isn’t going to do the trick.

“How about this, Eamon the famous dragon slayer. You finish that drink and I’ll let you take a few more tries at convincing me.”

Then, because I can see his face is full of doubt, and his hand is drifting down towards the big sword he’s got leaned up against the wall, I have to give him a little more.

I keep my eyes on him, but take both hands and pull down my blouse, just enough for him to get a peek at my hard, black nipples. And I see those blue eyes of his get lost for a moment.

Men are such pigs, I think. He’s got me dead to rights for the Alik’r, and his cocks going to muck it up for him.

I pull my shirt back up and see his eyes turn all sad-puppy and forlorn. “I will say this, you’re getting closer each time,” I say.

He smiles, cool and collected again. Then he licks his lips and takes the big gulp of ale I’ve been waiting for. I watch his throat bob up and down, once, twice, three times. Then he slams the thing down proudly and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand like the peasant that he is.

“I can take you places girrrrlll,” he says, and then stops. Surprised by his slur for a moment. “Take you plashes you’ve never….never sheen befossrse.”

His eyes are cloudy now, an overcast sky that’s about to burst open with rain. His head bobs and he looks at the ale bottle accusingly, as if it has just jumped up and bit him on the dick.

I lean in a little so he can hear me over the crashing sound of the sleeping draught working its way down into his blood.

“When the Alik’r ask you what happened, how you missed me,” I say. “Tell them that you got beat by a three second look at my tits.”

He wobbles one more time, trying to grab at the sword but not coming anywhere close to the hilt. “You bishhtch,” he says, voice all thick.

Then his head smacks down on the table with a heavy thump and he starts to snore louder than an ox. Hulda comes back in, looking wary and then looking surprised. I’m already standing up.

“What happened to him?” she asks.

“Drank too much,” I say, one foot on the steps upstairs.

“And where do you think you’re going? There’s still sweeping and cleaning up to do,” Hulda calls.

“Sweep it yourself. I’m going to bed.”

She doesn’t stop me, guess she figures she owes me one for that little abandonment. I couldn’t care less, because I’m not going to bed. I’m out the second floor window just as soon as I can get a bag packed and change into my boots.

The Alik’r have found me, and that means I’m done with Skyrim.

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