Sagax slept very well for the first time since fleeing Windhelm, being out cold straight until the next morning. His position in the dark corner near the door to the inn ensured he was ignored, as most patrons were either too drunk or too tired to take note of the human-shaped dark mass snoozing quietly and resting against the back wall. He was only roused from his slumber by the clanking of platters and the murmuring of his compatriots as they shuffled into Windpeak, heavy bags still under the eyes of many.  Looking up, he could see daylight peeking through the openings at the very top of the inn, and from the aroma and the smoke rising from a few cauldrons, Sagax guessed it was time for breakfast. Getting to his feet slowly and looking around for familiar faces, he saw several friends but unfortunately there were no open spots near any of them. There was one open table with just a few people in the back, and decided to take a seat with them. Halfway through eating the last bit of the bread still in his pack, Sagax was greeted with an all-too familiar voice.

"That's all? You ought to eat more, Sneak." Looking over, Sagax once more met eyes with the Windhelm guard that came to his aid time and time again. The poor man's uniform was filthy and in complete disrepair, and his helmet was no where to be found. 

"Well, hello again. I didn't realize you made it out, friend." 

The ex-guard shrugged and bit into a small sweetcake. "It was chaos, hard to tell who made it out and who didn't. Besides, you seemed too busy sleeping to say hi to anyone, eh?" Almost as an after-thought, he swallowed and waved his arm at the two people opposite. "These two are my mates; we serve...served, as city guards together. The one right across from you is Vori, and the other is Alarik." 

Vori and Alarik were Nords all right. Vori's coarse black hair was slap-dashedly tied into a bun, with hard green eyes and shallow cheeks with a rigid jawline, much like Alarik. Even while sporting a more lean and athletic build than her compatriots, she was still clearly far, far stronger than Sagax, that much was clear when they two shook hands; it felt like she nearly took his arm off. Alarik reminded Sagax of Jorwen, if he were clean-shaven and wore his hair short. The hulking warrior was taller than both Sagax and Vori, and had more than plenty of muscle to spare. Scars were etched on both of his cheeks, and three big ones drug themselves across his left eye, which was pale in contrast to his right eye which bore a dark brown irid. 

"This here's the Sneak I've told you about. Although it might be time to go passed that, yeah? Since I went and introduced my mates here, it's only common courtesy to introduce myself. The name's Frald."

"Sagax. A pleasure to meet you all." He rose to, finally, shake hands with the mystery guard that helped him several times back in Windhelm. Not knowing the man's name had started to bug him a bit, and he wasn't exactly sad to lose his nickname.

Downing her apparently third tankard of mead, Vori snorted facetiously. "This is the Sneak, huh? The guy that hopped the wall to get, what, his bag?" She looked at Sagax with one eyebrow raised and a coy smile. Alarik scanned Sagax harshly, but eventually nodded and uncorked his own mead. "You can never judge a book by its cover, Vori. He looks like a slippery one...no wonder the Kamal kept missing him. Probably as small as a tick from their distance." 

"What was it you were trying to get specifically? A book, you said?" Interjected Frald. 

"A manuscript a comrade wrote. Before he passed, he asked me to get it published. I wasn't about to let him down." 

Alarik nodded again. "Good man. Your brother in arms is damn lucky to have a man of his principles like you honoring him." The giant was clearly the honorable sort. He spoke nobly and with a calm tone. His hulking physique betrayed his inner wisdom.

"Yeah, that's all well and good, and that was pretty fucking crazy of you, but the person I wanna meet the most is the mad bomber that charged down that Kamal ship! I could feel the ground quake from atop the wall!" Unlike Alarik, as anyone that was paying even an inkling of attention to the sounds around them could tell, Vori was loud and brash, and her low voice carried surprisingly well. 

"Well Vori, today's your lucky day, 'cause here he is." Frald said, clapping Sagax's shoulders with a smile. "Saw it with my own eyes, him running down that pier with a little disk in hand. That was the explosive, right?"

Sagax felt odd being in the spotlight all of a sudden, and Vori didn't help with how she looked at him. "Ooooh...is that so?" She smiled daintily with a faint hint of a smirk, and she held steady eye contact with the Imperial. Nudging Sagax, Frald laughed. "Watch yourself. Vori here? LOVES crazy." Alarik rubbed his eyes and sighed. "Yes, Vori's a bit of a wild-card herself." 

"Crazy's good, but crazies don't usually live very long; this one here's a different breed, obviously. No, I like a man who knows his strengths, and does something with'em." Finishing with a wink at him, Sagax began to sorely wished his hood was still intact.

In an attempt to divert even a little bit of attention away from himself, Sagax corrected Frald's retelling. "Actually...it wasn't just me. I had some help, a Breton woman, Rozalia. In fact, without her I don't think I would have-"

"Oh don't be so modest!" Interrupted Vori loudly. "You would have been just fine, I'm sure of it! Come on, don't be so afraid of taking credit!" Fourth tankard. She could really hammer those things down! It was almost frightening...

Alarik rubbed his chin in thought, as if he were trying to remember something. "A Breton woman...and if she were to help you charge down that pier, she would have needed to be like you, right? Stringy, and fast. I might've seen her before. She seemed the...unsavory type." Well, he wouldn't be wrong, speaking from the perspective of most people.

"She's a good person at heart, and I'm glad to call her my friend. You wouldn't need to worry about anything around her." Well, as long as you're her friend, but they didn't need to know the intricacies, right? "Besides, she did what she did to try and keep the people of Windhelm safe." Alright, even with Sagax's positive bias towards Roze, even he knew that was an outright lie. She helped him bomb the Kamal ship to get some of those giants off of her back. The knock-on effect was that there were less Kamal to raid the pier, but ultimately she operated in self-interest, not that Sagax could blame her for it. You do what you need to do to survive, right?

Frald looked as if he were about to say something, but Ashav's voice rang out first. "We can talk more later, looks like your boss is making an announcement." Getting up from the table, the Nord man beckoned to his friends. "We'll be around; need to prepare for our journey to Solitude. See you soon, Sagax." As Frald left, Alarik and Vori follow suit, Vori giving Sagax the same coy look as she left. First that angel thing with Roze, and now this Nord's giving him looks. At times like this Sagax wished he could just disappear for a while…

Getting up and moving from his table to hear Ashav better, Sagax listened intently. They would be going to Winterhold, or what was left of it, apparently. A bunch of sailors were going to perform rescue efforts for the College there, and they all would be joining. Didn't seem like it would be too horrible of a job; nearly anything would be better than fighting those snow demons. He was surprised that not only did nobody take Ashav's offer to leave, more were joining with the company; though perhaps it wasn't so strange, as most in the company most likely didn't have anywhere else to go; they certainly weren't about to go marching back to Windhelm.

Having no questions to ask of Ashav, Sagax sat back down and brought out his writing tools. He had yet to send out a letter of his well-being due to the Kamal siege, and could only imagine how worried his family must be. Scratching at the parchment with his quill, the Imperial detailed his current situation and where he was going next, and didn't spend long talking about the siege. Why spend so much time on that nasty subject, anyway? Folding up the letter and writing down the address for it to be sent to, Sagax slipped the paper and his writing utensils back into his bag to give to Edith or whoever would be sending off to Solitude later, when Ashav was done talking. He also needed to give them Felix's manuscript and axe. Perhaps they could find a nice place in the Bard's College to hang it up?