She met blindness when she opened her eyes, until the white faded to blue and wisps of gray. She would have groaned at the cramp on the back of her neck as she dragged her eyes down over the dark pines, but her throat was too dry even with the fresh leafy mint hanging in the air, so the cloud that formed beyond her lips was partnered only with a hoarse breath.
Understanding came slowly, and she winced her eyes closed to pull the memory. The border was supposed to be safe, or so she'd heard from the weary soldiers ahead of her. She was fairly levelheaded in battle, but ambushes were beyond expectation and her bow was hardly effective if she had barely enough time to understand what she need be aimed at.
She could hear the carriage wheels rolling over dirt and rock, and a crow crying out somewhere off behind her.
Beneath prior circumstances, she was Johanna, a Breton living with a Bosmer family of Haven in Valenwood, and had a newly brewed distaste for those named the Thalmor ever since she underwent training in the country's capital. Persecution for the possession of her mother's amulet, that or murder; take your pick. Either seemed the likely scenario considering her wrists were bound so tight she couldn't feel the backs of her hands. Although, she should've been glad. The numbness didn't sting, taking regard to the icy breeze burning into her face and seeping into the thin roughspun cloth of her tunic, chilling straight through her bones.
Her hair was in dire need of washing and what she wouldn't give for some rosemary so she could at least clean her teeth. She still had the lingering taste of raw cabbage mixed with the chapped skin as she moistened her lips with a quick stroke of her tongue - allowing it be noted that she held only partial unanimity with the Green Pact, given her Breton blood.
"Hey, you. You're finally awake," said a man. His accent was thick, Nordic. She remembered it, and she remembered him. He was there when Imperials flooded out of the trees and houses, torches like small beacons of what was about to come as the orange light reflected off their raised swords.
"You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." He was looking at her with those pastel eyes, once fierce, but they then exerted a gentle stare. Ralof, she recalled. His name was Ralof.
"Damn you Stormcloaks. Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn't been looking for you, I could've stolen that horse and be halfway to Hammerfell." Angry fear wrinkled the outspoken man's face as he scorned beside Ralof, and she remembered him, also. He'd been wrestled to the ground at their capture, as she had been, but with much less resistance. "You there. You and me - we shouldn't be here. It's these Stormcloaks the Empire wants."
She couldn't be certain of that. She'd murdered her Thalmor escorts without so much as a second thought the moment they ripped the amulet off her neck. With only a shiv and a well placed rune, she staggered two and killed one with the explosion as she cut her wrists free. After she sliced one throat and submerged her shiv fully through the other's, she plucked her mother's amulet from the Altmer Lieutenant and went on her way. So if she'd learned anything of passivity from her training in Haven, none of it had shown then.
She didn't comment, just kept silent and drifted her gaze to the finely-clothed man beside her; his mouth gagged.
"We're all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief," said Ralof.
"Shut up back there!" she heard from the Imperial driving the carriage.
The thief spoke regardless, "And what's wrong with him, huh?"
Ralof reprimanded him, his tone sparking with respect, "Watch your tongue. You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King."
"Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm? You're the leader of the rebellion. But if they've captured you..." Truth eased into his pause, as gently and coldly as it may, "Oh gods, where are they taking us?"
Johanna didn't know and neither did she want to. Lolling her head back, her sore eyes met a clearer sky, and sunlight speckled her face through the trees. Her first thought was of Haven, but the next, as she glimpsed over the colossal mountains that stood beyond the pines, she caught fractures of High Rock; of her maman and papa, and their warm, quaint cottage by the river.
"I don't know where we're going, but Sovngarde awaits." She didn't know exactly what he meant, but gathering from the founding of this situation his gist was clear.
"No, this can't be happening. This isn't happening."
"Hey, what village are you from, horse thief?" asked Ralof.
The thief took snide, "Why do you care?"
"A Nord's last thoughts should be of home."
"Rorikstead. I'm... I'm from Rorikstead," he stuttered.
"General Tullius, sir! The headsman is waiting!" Instead of following for the speaker, her eyes lowered to her knees. Indeed, her nerves were racking, but to deny death as fate demanded was to deny her place; and when she did not know exactly where that was, she couldn't be certain that refusing that place would be wise.
"Good. Let's get this over with."
Those words seemed to shake the peace from the disquieted thief as they pulled through the gate bridge. "Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh. Divines, please help me."
"Look at him, General Tullius the Military Governor. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves. I bet they had something to do with this," said Ralof.
She ignored the flame that ignited in her blood, as such a flame was just what got her into this mess.
"This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in," he continued, "Funny, when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe."
As the carriage came to a steady halt, everyone was ordered to file off. "Step towards the block when we call your name. One at a time."
"Empire loves their damn lists," she heard Ralof mutter to himself as he stepped down.
"Ulfric Stormcloak," said the man with a ledger and quill in hand, "Jarl of Windhelm."
"It has been an honor, Jarl Ulfric," Ralof said to the silenced man who left their line to join the lot at the block.
"Ralof of Riverwood." He cast her a glance that could have only meant for an acquainted goodbye as he left her side.
"Lokir of Rorikstead."
"No, I'm not a rebel. You can't do this!"
"Halt!" called the captain, presenting no further effort to stop him as he blew past her. She'd half-expected the skitter-hearted man to flee, and she also half-expected his death; however, that did not mean she would be content to witness it.
"You're not gonna kill me!"
"Archers!"
She heard the strings tighten and soon after, followed the fleeting of the arrows. The man had folded over with one through his knee. She even tried to contain her flinch as another pierced through the back of his skull. The cruelty was maddening, and she clenched her tingling fists against the will of her binds.
"Anyone else feel like running?" The captain's voice was caustic and her words seemed to form in more rhetoric than they did a question.
"Wait. You there. Step forward," ordered the soldier.
Each step felt dangerous, like her instinct was telling her not to.
"Who... are you?"
She was to be executed and they had not the slightest clue on who she was? Oh, by the Nine.
"Johanna... from Haven in Valenwood." She spoke as clearly as she could with her parched throat.
"Valenwood?" he commented, "I suppose that doesn't matter now. Captain. What should we do? She's not on the list."
"Forget the list. She goes to the block."
Karma, she thought, was making its rounds. "By your orders, Captain. Follow the Captain, prisoner."
She did, and seemingly not of her own accord. It was out of her own dignity that she could place one foot in front of the other, because what would she be if she was without this ounce of courage to answer for her own actions? Whether they knew what she'd done or not, at the end of the day they were not the ones to judge her character.
As General Tullius began speak, Johanna's gaze drifted off towards the mountains beyond the guard tower. She tried to remember her home, the one through which she first entered this world; though, all she could come to recall was a man she knew only as her father - whose beard smelled of wood and his fingertips of tree sap whenever he held her - and her mother's deep oak eyes with long brown hair braided back. She wished she could remember their voices. She wished she could be back home with them.
The sound of an axe searing through what she could only deduce as lumber pulled her from the reverie. She quickly tore her eyes away from the sight as the man's head rolled into the crate beyond the block, but strangely felt compelled to reset her gaze at the revelation that she would soon share his fate. His detached body tipped over, and it made her shiver aside from the cold.
"You Imperial bastards!"
"Justice!" someone called.
"Death to the Stormcloaks," called another.
Though as unkind the outspoken townspeople were, Ralof's compassion at least remained among them as he commended, "As fearless in death as he was in life."
"Next, the Breton!" An unfolding, she felt, had begun. Of whether it was the beginning of her end or the end of her beginning, she was unsatisfied. This end did not belong.
The call came from the wind, she thought, the affirmation or the declination of her fate in death; but which of those two, she didn't know.
"There it is again. Did you hear that?" A flicker sparked in her chest. Hope or instinct, she couldn't distinguish.
"I said, next prisoner!"
Her faith pushed her forward, and her trust was placed solely in Y'ffre's hands.
She dropped to the caps of her knees, sinking further to humility, and then forward against the damp wood by the press of a hard metal foot.
Her gaze remained steady on the mountains as she could feel a stronger gaze upon her. Could fate deny karma?
Again, she could not answer, but a creature — black as a raven and bigger than any bird she had knowledge of — emerged from what she could only say as destiny itself as it soared the mountainside, that same call reaching out, shaking these men from their casual beheading when its nimble yet heavy form planted firmly on the guard tower. As it remained nestled upon that tower, the smaller bodies gauging its being and its purpose through confusion, it seemingly did the same. However, once those fierce eyes locked with her own, she felt a certainty in her own heart, and she could see that certainty reflecting back at her through this creature.
It called, shaking the air and her bones, before it called again, breaking her perception and unshackling her instinct to stand. She wavered a moment, like a trance had lulled her mind, before Ralof's deep yell reigned her back in.
She followed him to the tower, as if she had another choice.
This was her chance, she thought. A road had been paved to her place; though, which she had yet to see, she would follow it, because fate was calling.
A/N: I was debating Brynjolf or someone for a romance interest, but Brynjolf/Dragonborn stories are beginning to sprout as majority. Ideas?
