It was that most unusual of things – a clear, crisp, gloriously sunny day in the mountains that formed Skyrim’s southern border. Birds sang, the wind rustled spruce branches, and the air smelled fresh and clean. It would have been a perfect day for a leisurely cart ride if not for the fact that Dardeh had his hands firmly bound in front of him. There was nothing for him to do but sit and wait.
The cart rumbled agonizingly slowly down the slope toward Helgen. It had to. These old Imperial highways were not much more than rough collections of raised stones in some places; eons, weather, and nature having filled them in, washed them away, and provided fertile territory for shrubs and small trees. In some stretches the only evidence that there had once been a skillfully paved road there was a dirt path of the same width as all those old roads had been. Here, nearing Helgen, the road was in reasonable condition; but even so neither any cart driver worth his salt nor the horse pulling the load was going to go hurtling down a slope this steep. The four men riding in the back of this particular cart sat together in miserable silence, listening to the wind, the horse’s hooves, and the clatter of wooden wheels on stone.
I just can’t believe this, Dardeh thought. I walked up to the border and they arrested me without so much as asking why I was there. “Why are you crossing the border, Dardeh?” they could have asked. “On my way back home to the Reach,” I would have said. “I was just in Bruma looking for someone,” I would have said. But did they give me a chance to explain? No. They just took my armor, put me in this ratty prison clothing, bound my arms, and tossed me into the cart with a bunch of rebels. If not for this Stormcloak band I’d have been well on my way by now. He grimaced. Right. And that’s exactly what that horse thief said too, isn’t it. We’re both just whining. I don’t suppose there’s any reason for them to have believed my story any more than they believed his. We are in the middle of a war, after all. I was just sloppy, and so was he. I should have changed back into my mining clothes; they’d have never looked twice at me.
Across the cart from him was one of those very Stormcloaks, a blonde Nord in steel plate who looked like he might be a minor officer of some sort. He was a handsome man, with a single braid in his bright blonde hair. Leaning forward with his arms on his knees, he was deep in thought, and intense.
Next to him sat a commoner covered in dirt; the horse thief, according to the Imperial legionnaires who had arrested them all. Dardeh didn’t know whether he was or not but the man certainly seemed nervous enough to be someone who had just failed an attempted theft.
At the far end of the cart, on the same side as Dardeh, was an older Nord; large, as Nords tended to be, with a full head of blonde hair and wearing an imposing set of armor. The pauldrons alone were half again as wide as his shoulders; there were animal furs draped around his neck, with a drape of Stormcloak blue beneath them covering his armor. The man was gagged as well as bound.
As they approached the town, the man opposite Dardeh scanned ahead of them. He started ranting about Imperials and Stormcloaks, look, there was the General, and the Thalmor, and the damned elves must have had something to do with it, and true Nords and all of the rest. Imperial walls used to make him feel safe. Dardeh groaned internally. I’m not going to say a word, he thought. You’re not good looking enough to make it worth the bother.
The horse thief was clearly terrified. “Where are we going?”
The blonde soldier dropped his eyes, and his head, and said “I don’t know where we’re going, but Sovngarde awaits.” He fell back into silent contemplation.
I hope that was meant rhetorically, Dardeh thought. We’re going to Helgen. Anyone can see that. I can see that, and I’m not even that familiar with this part of Skyrim. It’s where the road from Bruma goes, after all. I can’t blame him for being thoughtful, under the circumstances, but Sovngarde always awaits. Personally I’m not going to ponder my imminent arrival there until I see whether there’s a way out of this mess. If there’s not, well, I’ll do a quick prayer to Talos at that point and hope he’s fairly welcoming on the other side. He’s probably waiting to give me a good talking-to for being foolish and not being more careful at the border.
He sighed, and stared at the rugged bindings holding his crossed hands. They were big, brown hands, and that was part of the problem.
He didn’t look like a Nord. Not at all. He had blonde hair, a gift from his blonde, honey-eyed Nord mother, but it was messy hair, and he wore it in a Redguard style because it was easy that way. One of his eyes was the same bright honey color as his mother’s, but the other was green, like those of his father, a Redguard. And he had his father’s mellow brown skin.
There were certainly advantages to being half Redguard: he had the generous stores of stamina that went along with that part of his racial heritage, as well as a Redguard’s natural fighting ability. From his Nord side he had inherited big muscles and a wide, deep chest; but he was much shorter, like a Redguard. Outwardly, he just looked like a big, blonde Redguard man — not something one saw every day, but not completely out of the ordinary, especially in northeastern Hammerfell or western Skyrim.
The problem with not looking like a Nord was that everyone in Skyrim seemed to share some kind of divinely-fed compulsion to tell him its history, impart the wisdom of its elders, and prompt him to consider joining the Stormcloak rebellion in spite of the fact that he had grown up just as much a Nord as the blonde man sitting across from him. He already revered Talos most of the Nine. Still, he wasn’t about to join the civil war on either side. Talos didn’t need him to kill his fellows in order to prove his devotion, as far as he was concerned, and it struck him as being a bit presumptuous of people to assume that they knew what a god thought. Besides, while he would kill a man if he had to, he really didn’t like it much.
But you couldn’t tell any of that to the average Nord. They looked at him, saw his dark skin, and knew everything they needed to know. Dardeh had tried to compensate. He tried to be a good guy, helpful, friendly. There was nothing to be gained by being angry and defensive all the time. Still, it had gotten pretty tiresome over the years.
He didn’t know much of anything about his father. The man apparently was from Hammerfell, as most Redguards were. The only real connection Dardeh had to his father’s heritage aside from physical attributes was the pair of Alik’r scimitars his mother had given him as a young man, and which were, to his utter disgust, currently stashed in a chest fastened under the cart they rode in.
Why the man had left the swords with his mother, Dardeh would never know. But they had taken down many a wolf and saber cat and, more recently, had saved him from more bandits than he cared to remember. If he was honest about it, he was drawn to what his mother had told him all his life. These sabers were for Redguards, she told him. That’s what his father had said to her. They were the symbol of a Redguard man’s status as a warrior, in the same way as the ancient Akaviri had their katanas. Dardeh considered himself a Nord, but they were his favorite weapons, the only thing resembling a family heirloom he owned, and he was determined to get them back.
“And what about that guy?” the horse thief asked, rousing Dardeh from his thoughts. “What’s his problem?”
The blonde soldier snapped at him. “Watch your tongue! You’re speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King!”
What the… ?
Dardeh turned to look at him. Well that would certainly explain the elaborate armor, but what on earth was Ulfric, the Jarl of Windhelm, doing in a cart of prisoners? He’d never seen Ulfric before, only heard descriptions of him; but tales grew, stretched, and changed during the telling and this man looked nothing like what Dardeh would have expected. He would have expected – a giant. Something above and beyond normal men. This was simply a Nord. He had a heavily lined, craggy face that carried a cold, unwelcoming expression. In spite of the generous mane of hair mostly untouched by gray, his substantial build, and his obvious strength he was, still, just a man. Handsome for certain, Dardeh thought, but oddly unsettling, and not in a good way.
Ulfric met Dardeh’s eyes for a moment; then he looked away. Yes, there it is, Dardeh grumbled to himself. Look at me, see a Redguard, and put me out of your mind. This is exactly why I won’t ever join your cause, Ulfric. I hear you’re even less welcoming to Dunmer and Argonians. I wonder how these Imperials managed to catch you. Guess you’re not the god they all describe, after all, huh?
There was another cart full of Stormcloak regulars just ahead of them, and from just ahead of it came the sound of an officer’s voice.
“General Tullius, sir! The executioner is ready.”
“Good. Let’s get this over with.” Dardeh couldn’t see which man had said that, which man was the General, but he was an Imperial alright, judging by the sound of his voice as well as his name. It probably was the man with steely gray hair wearing what he thought was an overly vivid cape. He makes an excellent target of himself wearing that, Dardeh mused. He must be good, to have lived long enough to be that gray.
“Helgen,” murmured the blonde soldier. “I used to be sweet on a girl from here.”
Well, good for you, Dardeh thought. Sorry to be sour, friend, but I can’t really sympathize with you on that front and besides, I’m about to die. I’m usually a happy sort of guy but not today, so much.
The carts groaned to a stop, the Imperials trundled all of them out and herded them into a mass, calling their names one by one to line up for execution. The horse thief was, apparently, Lokir of Rorikstead. He was, definitely, an idiot, Dardeh decided as the man tried to run away and was instantly felled by Imperial archers. Rorikstead was too small to be losing capable men; on the other hand, they probably had no great need for idiots and horse thieves. He did have to feel bad for how frightened the man had been, though. That was not a heroic death by anyone’s definition, and not the way a true Nord would want to die.
Heh, he thought. And here I am, defining a true Nord. Good.
“Well, let’s go,” said the blonde Stormcloak soldier. “Shouldn’t keep the gods waiting for us.” He dropped down from the back of the cart and joined the other prisoners.
Dardeh followed suit, then looked around, trying to gauge whether there was any way he could get out of this situation and then perhaps return for his swords later. It didn’t look that way. Helgen had a large keep, walls, and a big, mean-looking executioner waiting at the block just in front of them. He wasn’t going to have enough time to find a way out.
They called Ulfric to line up for the block, and General Tullius gave him a proper chewing-out for having killed High King Torygg with the power of the Voice. Dardeh had heard that version of the news but assumed that the stories had inflated the deed to legendary proportions as stories tended to do, because he had never heard a living soul use a Shout. In theory, people could. In theory, Ulfric could. He thought it was just a tale; Tullius seemed to be suggesting otherwise. Interesting. Ulfric glared and grunted at him through the cloth in his mouth. That explains why they gagged him, Dardeh thought, just in case the rumors were true. Well then. I don’t know whether a voice can kill, but it’s a good thing looks can’t. Those two obviously know each other and they are not in any sense of the word old friends.
“Ralof of Riverwood,” they called, and the blonde man he’d been riding with stepped forward.
“And you…” said the man holding the list of prisoners, looking between it and Dardeh. “Who are you? A sellsword? A sailor from Stros M’Kai?”
Dardeh ground his teeth. No. I’m not from Stros M’Kai. That would be the person I was in Bruma looking for. I told you that earlier. But he forced his face into a pleasant expression.
“Again, my name’s Dardeh. I live near Markarth, and I was trying to get back there when you all nabbed me.”
“Hmm,” the man said. “Sorry, Redguard. I’ll be sure your remains are returned to Hammerfell.”
“I’m not from Hammerfell,” Dardeh grumbled. The man hadn’t listened to a single word he’d said.
Not that there was anyone to collect his remains, anyway, regardless of where they sent them.