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It was early morning as I sat up in bed, a cold sweat broken across my body. I'd kicked away the thin blanket that was over my body during the night, and as I took a deep breath, the last bits of the dream still hung in my mind. _But was that a dream? _I asked himself.

Now I shook my head, and rubbed my face. I was warm, my apparent nightmare had seen to that, and I sighed. Skyrim was a cold place, and my body would cool down fast enough with the ever-cold weather.

Rubbing my face again, I pushed my darkened red hair from my face, then stooped to pull on my pants and boots. I'd come to Skyrim... four, five years ago? It doesn't matter. I had been born and raised in Solstheim, which was still considered a part of Morrowind, and spent years there with my family. That is, until I grew old enough to learn that my father was an assassin for the Morag Tong, and my mother was a skooma dealer. By the time I learned that, I was well into my twentieth winter, and was on my way to Skyrim a month later.

It was in Skyrim that I ran into Brekish and his gang of bandits, who lived at a set of towers. The tower were connected by a bridge that ran over the White River, and Brekish had only taken me in when I didn't bring up any coin to pay the toll he threatened me with. The orc was a tall brute with no hair, a thick black beard and two long scars over his left eye, which was white and blind. The orc had asked me to hand over eighty gold to get past the bridge, but after I didn't hand it over, he set a member of his gang on me. A khajiit named Ra'Shar. The cat had fought with a knife and I, growing up with a skooma-dealing mother, had defend myself. In the end the cat wound up with the same knife in his gut, and Brekish had put me in the khajiit's place.

So now, here we stand, five or so years later. I've been on raid after raid with the same gang, and accosted caravans aplenty with the group. Two dark elves, myself and another named Raylus, Brekish the orc, a regard named Saldin, and two wood elf brothers. Since joining the gang I'd had my share of hard fights and rough days, as well as cold nights. As I said Skyrim is a cold place, and not much can be said for the walls of our holdout. A tower on either side of the river, joined by a bridge. We keep the loot and treasure pulled from caravans and raids in the top of the far tower, locked it a chest, and Brekish wears the key around his neck.

Picking up a heavy shirt I pulled it on, then picked up the bandoliers i wore over my shoulders. The right bandolier carried my sword, a sturdy and fine weapon made of steel, and the left bandolier had a set of four pouches on the front. I ran a hand through my hair again, then pulled it back into its usual horse-tail, and rubbed my face again. I felt the short hair there, then pinched the bridge of my nose gently. I wniced feeling a small pain shot through my face, and cursed the last raid we'd went on. Myself and the two wood elves, a pair of brothers named Rekir and Rokir. A cart, drawn by a sole horse and guided by a sole nord, had been our target. It had gone down easy, the take of seven hundred gold to be split between us and the rest of the gang back at the towers.

But the elves got into an argument, as brothers tend to do, back at the towers. I'd earned plenty of respect from the rest of the gang, and Brekish himself, and we'd sat back as the brothers began to fight over their shares of the take. It went on for maybe four minutes or so before I attempted to step in, and Rokir, the elder of the brothers, took a swing at me. He wound up breaking my nose, and then his brother and I both put a a beating on the elf. In the end Raylus and the redguard Salin stepped in, pulling the brothers apart, and Salin fixed my nose later that day. In the end Brekish took both shares from the elf brothers, and split it up with the rest of the gang.

That was four days ago, and since that excitement, the most entertaining thing I've seen happen is Salin using books for target practice. Surprisingly, all of our gang can read as well as write, which is something to be said for any bandit gang. Plenty of the vagabonds and low-lifes out there couldn't read a three page memoir to save their life, although I spent a small amount of my time with the gang reading on the cliffs, or writing in the journal I keep.

Leaving my quarters at the top of the road facing tower, I went down the steps and walked across the bridge. But the dream I'd had was still bothering me, although I did my best to shake it off. Overhead the sky was a pale blue, with a few grey clouds drifting here and there. The past few days had been cold and bleak, and near the end of Last Seed we'd seen our first snow fall since last year. Now though, as I walked over the bridge to the far tower, I didn't think it would snow soon.

I was looking for Raylus, after Brekish told me he wanted to see the other dark elf, and was assuming the elf was still in his own room at the far tower. Most of us slept in bedrolls on the floor, and the bed I had slept in was empty, and I'd taken it. We had rules and standards we upheld in the gang, but assigning beds wasn't one of them. "Don't steal from my chest," Brekish said, "Don't be stupid and try to dive off of the bridge," was another one. We'd had a surprisingly large group of bandits two years ago. We'd stood at almost twelve men large, but we saw that having a group that big at the towers was, for starters, an issue of space. Not many men liked to sleep outside during Skyrim's nights, and tents were sometimes hard to come by.

Across the bridge I went up a set of stairs, and indeed found Raylus, laying on his bed. The elf looked up at my approach, and I jerked a thumb behind me.

"Boss wanted to see you," I said.

"What for?" asked the other dark elf. He got up from bed though, picked up the bow that was near the tower window.

"Don't know," I shrugged, "But you know how the boss is."

"Yeah," Raylus nodded, pulling the bow over his back as he picked up a quiver of arrows. His rough looking leather shirt and pants looked old, but I knew the elf took care of both his clothes and his bow.

I walked with Raylus over the bridge, and I yawned, rubbing my face.

"Not sleep enough?" he asked.

"Sleep fine," I said. I paused, wondering if the other elf would care about my strange dream, then I said, "bad dream is all."

"Ah," the elf nodded, pulling at his longbows string.

Moving back over the bridge, I let my mind briefly wander to the dream I'd had. It had been strange to say the least. In the dream was a man, who wore black, and another man who wore the wealthy clothes of a Jarl, or a Lord. The man dressed in the black and wielded a silver sword, and had decapitated the man in the wealthy clothes. The man in black had taken the other mans head, and then run off when guards began to chase him. The wealthy man's severed head still wore the crown on his brown, I saw that clearly in the dream. A crown of gold and red. Before I woke from the dream, the murderer had jumped from a high wall, and landed on the back of a dragon.

"...Fathhas?" I heard my name being called, and I snapped out of my thoughts. Raylus was to my left, and leaning against the wall across from me was Brekish. To the orc's left was Rokir.

"What?" my tone came across as distant, but carried the same smugness I and picked up over the past few years.

"Raylus and Rokir are going hunting," said Brekish, "So someones gonna have to watch the tower till they get back."

"Right," I nodded.

Brekish gave me a nod in return, and Rokir and Raylus left the tower. As the elves walked down the short wooden ramp that lead to the towers base, I made to go up the steps to the top of the tower.

The orc stopped me before I started up the stairs, and said,

"You gettin' enough sleep?" he asked me in his usual rough voice.

"Yeah," I said back.

"You had some funny look in your eyes," the orc continued, "Like you saw somthin' and didn't know what it was."

"Bad dream," I muttered.

"Hm," Brekish nodded, and before leaving the tower he said, "Just don't fall asleep up there. Don't wanna be fishing your body outta' the river."

I smirked as the orc left the tower, and I went up the steps, then up a second set of steps that led to the top of the tower where someone would keep watch. I pinched the bridge of my nose again, then sat down in the single chair that overlooked the far tower and the bridge, as well as the main road that would lead bak to Whiterun. For now though, it was all quiet.