Ivarstead Independence

Snow chilled and griped his body, but Barknar was showing no indication of giving in to his grievances. The constant watcher, he sat, cross-legged, below the Grey Heavens themselves in meditation. If he focused intently enough, he could hear the quiet chanting of the Greybeards from their sky kingdom; rhythmic chanting in the Dragon language he could not understand. It was peaceful up here, far away from the strife and troubles that plagued Skyrim; Imperial and Stormcloak caught in an endless sparring contest. Blue and Red, each spilling their life force on this ancient soil. He had to scoop a handful of snow into his hand, and examine it finely. So innocent and pure this high up. There were seldom a place that could call itself that any more.

Below him, well in his view, nestled into the Seven Thousand Steps, was the holdfast of Ivarstead. A small town, merely just more than a village with its thatched houses by the handful and its Inn and farmstead comprising it almost fully, it was strategically part of the Rift by law. It was disputed, by of all people the Balgruuf the Greater himself, that it fell into Whiterun's land. The small populous that called Ivarstead their home, for all that it counted for, would consider themselves fairly independent; they never trifled in the affairs of the rest of the Rift and governed their own land, but this meant very little in the grand scheme of things. Ivarstead was minuscule, and if nothing else just another cog in the Skyrim wheel that was being jousted over.

This all flowed though Barknar's mind as he concentrated. The geo-political state of affairs meant very little to him; he was only affiliated, he felt, to Ivarstead itself and the Greybeards in terms of reverence. He did enjoy to meditate over such matters, though, as it focused his moral decision making. As the soothing echoes of Dragontongue bathed his still studies, Ivarstead rumbled and muttered below. Lights flickered in the Wide-Arm manor; the largest and most grand of all the homesteads in the holdfast, in the Vilemyr Inn, and too in the houses that dotted the view like buzzing, glowing flies. The mill also showed faint signs of life; dying embers of a days work as Temba Wide-Arm and her husband Lygor retired for the day. Mid-evening sunshine paid its last respects to Skyrim before settling down behind the Eastern mountains.

Barknar knew it was time to return, there was no sense in staying out any later. As cold as the North was in the day, its evenings were far more perilous. As Nordic as he was, even he did not want to risk succumbing to the Chill.

Now standing over the near-sleeping shadow of Ivarstead, eclipsed in the nightfall, Barknar stopped to hear, for the last time that day, the chanting of the Greybeards.

"Strun...Strun...Strun"