Mordas, 17th of Last Seed 4E 201
I’m alive and free! I’m also very far from home. In fact, I don’t even know where home is from here.
I’ll start with the guard who decided to amuse himself by taunting me.
“Hey orc! I’ve got good news and bad news,” he told me. I was too stunned at hearing his voice to speak. I just looked stupidly at him through the food slit in the door. Anyone’s face was good to see. Anyone’s voice was good to hear. Any news was better than endless nothing.
“The good news is, your friend the orcish Captain escaped last night. Looks like he had help from inside. There’s gonna be an investigation and some heads are gonna roll.” He said this with obvious satisfaction. “Ready for the bad news?” I was afraid if I said anything, he’d back away to spite me. “Bad news is, he left you here to rot.” He laughed heartily and slammed the slit shut.
I couldn’t decide at first whether to be happy for Durz or betrayed that he left me behind. In the end, I think I was glad. Probably Durz didn’t know where I was anymore than I knew where he was. He saw a chance and he took it. Yeah, that must be how it was.
Anyway, next time I saw the guard, he opened my door and stood over me with a torch and one of those heavy truncheons they carry. I couldn’t shield my eyes because of my shackles, so I just had to squint up at him. He started out with the same words.
“I’ve got good news and bad news. Good news is, for some reason the magistrate changed his mind about having you publicly executed in the City Square. Maybe you still have a few friends in this blasted town, eh orc?” He waited to see if I would show hope, but he must not have seen any. “Bad news is, we’re going to do it someplace else.” And then he whacked me with that truncheon.
I woke up in the back of a horse cart, hands bound, somewhere in the mountains, and my first groggy thought was, “So the world is still here.” I wasn’t alone in that cart. It was filled with criminals and rebels. I didn’t even know there was a rebellion. The other prisoners thought I had been caught trying to cross the border. I didn’t argue. The talkative one said we should be thinking of home, and that’s what I was doing.
They took us to a walled village called Helgen. What a tiny place—just a few flimsy houses, a keep, and a gallows! Seems to me the gallows is the entire reason Helgan exists. If I’d had any thoughts of escape, I lost them when I saw what happened to the guy who tried it.
One of the soldiers reported to his captain that I wasn’t on his list. She told him to shut up and execute me anyway. I’m guessing the magistrate paid her off to see me dead, no questions asked.
They called the first man on the list up to the block. He walked proudly and laid his head down on the block. I looked away when they did it, but I looked back too soon, and saw his head roll away and his body slump to the ground. Then they called my name.
I remember thinking that I’d rather be shot in the back, but it was like my feet wouldn’t obey me. I walked up to that block and laid my head down where they told me. They made me set my head to the left, so I could watch the executioner raise his axe. And that’s when it happened.
What do you call it when you are about to be executed and a dragon attacks the town? Villagers screaming, buildings burning, and the executioner completely forgets his job. Does that count as a miracle?
There were at least two people calling to me, “Prisoner, run! Follow me!” Finally my feet obeyed me, but I couldn’t tell who was calling. I saw a bald man hiding in the shelter of an overhang, and I joined him, while the dragon (a real live flipping dragon!) flew in circles overhead hunting people and burning houses. I realized I had followed the wrong guy, and ran for it when the dragon circled away. Out of sheer luck, I found one of the men who’d called to me.
My savior was the guard who had objected that I was not on his list. I followed him into the keep, which was built of stone and was fairing a little better under the dragon’s assault. The guard, Halvar, led me to an armory, cut my bindings, and told me to arm myself. That’s how I found myself wearing Imperial armor and carrying a truncheon. The thought flickered through my mind, “If Durz could see me now!” And then we were off and running again.
Next thing I remember was Halvar running into the rebels, the Stormcloaks. He tried to talk to them, but they weren’t interested. At first, I held back while they attacked him. The Empire had just tried to execute me and I had never been a fan anyway. I seriously considered letting them kill him, but then I remembered that he had waited in the open to lead me to safety. So there I was, wearing Imperial armor, fighting and killing Sons of Skyrim—just another measure of how upside down it all was.
I did cling to one familiar thing though. I searched each room and body for valuables, thinking that wherever I ended up, I was going to need money. Halvar was impatient, with good reason, so I had to work fast.
He led me down into the dungeons, through the torture chambers, and out a secret entrance into a cave—sort of like a sewer, except cleaner and no straight lines. Eventually we came out on the side of a mountain, no dragon, no Imperials, no Stormcloaks in sight anywhere.
Halvor said we should split up at that point, but that his uncle was the blacksmith in Riverwood, a small town that I could find if I stayed on the trail. Then he was gone, barely taking a moment to catch his breath, and I took my first look at the view.
The highest point to which I have ever climbed was the roof of the City Revenue Building. You could see much of the City from there, and a few treetops outside the wall.
This was different. It’s like I could see the entire country from there. I’ve lived all my life in Skyrim, but I had never imagined it was so vast. I felt very far from home, very small, very lost, alone, exhausted, and overwhelmed. So much had happened that was completely beyond my ability at that moment to process… I might have lay down right there and cried, except that Halvar had given me a place to go where there might be a friendly face, some food, a bed, and some time to think. So I willed my feet for move, and set off for Riverwood.
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