Of Snow and Bone - Part Fourteen

30th of Last Seed, 4th Era 201

When I awoke, it was late morning. The inn was abuzz with talk of the Dragonborn; she had climbed the seven-thousand steps to High Hrothgar and returned. She had slain two more dragon, no three, no five! Some claimed she was an Orc woman, like me; others said it was impossible for the Dragonborn to be anyone but a nord.
They looked at me oddly when I sat down to breakfast: maybe they thought I was the Dragonborn. Wouldn't that be amusing? A trader from Whiterun claimed he had seen her there: she had helped slay a dragon out by the watchtower, and she was indeed an Orc, and now she was Thane of Whiterun. When I realized he was talking about the very same battle I had witnessed when I had come to Whiterun, I started to think he might be telling the truth.
If that was the case, I hoped nobody would mistake me for the Dragonborn. Such a thing could cause problems, and there weren't a whole lot of Orc women running around Skyrim. With a hungry growl I decided to stop thinking about it and bought breakfast. Several cups of hot tea and minced horker meat pie with chunks of grilled leek.

I stopped by the iron mine just outside of Markarth, to see if I could purchase ore to smelt and practice my smithing on. They wouldn't sell it to me direct, but for 50 septims I was allowed to go inside and gather as much ore as I could dig up before nightfall.
I spent a few hours getting at all the easy veins, and ended up with enough or for nineteen ingots. I headed back to the city to forge them into simple daggers and plates. Blacktail's bags were still heavy with dozens of pieces of jewelry I had forged from the gold and silver ingots before, even though I had sold several to a jewelry merchant.
Stopping inside a general store to try and sell more of the jewelry, I discovered the shelves were practically bare of goods. When I asked the owner, a Nord woman, she said that the Forsworn had been raiding all her shipments. Then she gave me a strange look and asked if I was a sellsword for hire. I took up her offer of recovering a golden Dibella statue in  return for payment. Besides, I thought; maybe it would help her store out and next time she would have enough money to buy more than just a few of my rings.

When I spoke with the blacksmith to buy some leather for the dagger hilts, she mentioned she had gotten a few more orichalcum ingots in a shipment yesterday. I eagerly bought them up and was finally able to forge an Orcish shield for myself. It felt more comfortable and better balanced than my old Dwemer one had.
Afterwards I mounted Blacktail and set out to find the Dibella statue for the owner of the general store. I couldn't remember her name, but the store was called the Arnleif and Sons Trading Company. It seemed a pretty grand name for such a small store, but maybe it had once had better times.
She had said that the caravan had been attacked just after passing south of Rorikstead, so if I checked the caves around there I would probably find the Forsworn and her statue.

It would take a while to reach Rorikstead, so I ate a late lunch and then mounted Blacktail and was on my way, down through the rocky granite mountain passes. I took a narrow dirt path over the mountain ridge, a shortcut to Rorikstead, and stayed at the inn there. It would not be wise to go searching for Forsworn in the hills they called home at the dead of night.