Fredas, 29th of Last Seed, 4E 201

As Yngve began moving farther north and farther into the mountains, the air became bitterly cold. He was extremely thankful for the furs that Heimskr had packed for him, and for the warmth that he and Hilde provided each other sharing their small tent the previous night. He followed a worn path that, according to his map, should lead him to Northwatch Keep. As the temperature continued to drop, he kept going only thanks to the notion that the keep, however dangerous, would mean shelter from the cold.

He got as close as he possibly could to the keep during the day, but the trail had to gradually snake its way down the side of a cliff. In the ice and snow, it was slow going, and while he could use his torch to warm his feet instead of stopping to build a fire on the ground, he still had to stop often in order to do it. Eventually, exhausted and facing yet another nightfall, Yngve was forced to abandon his hopes of reaching the keep before another day dawned. He needed to stop and build a campfire or he and Hilde would surely freeze to death. All he could do was wait out the night and try to approach the keep under the sun.

. . .

Loredas, 30th of Last Seed, 4E 201

The moment Yngve saw dawn break, he started to pack up. As soon as it was possible to move, he and Hilde were on their way. They were very close to the keep – after only a few hours, it was visible even through the snowy haze. On their approach, Yngve spotted what appeared to be Thalmor guards, and if he wasn't already sure that this was the right place, now he knew.

He managed to get close to the keep and carefully moved along the wall. Luckily, he managed to find a side opening in the wall that was unguarded. He didn't know how he and Hilde managed to sneak inside the walls and pick the lock to the door undetected, but they made it through. By now Yngve's heart was pounding and his hands were shaking. Not for the first time, he considered the very real possibility that he would be caught and killed – or worse. But at this point, there really was no turning back; if he tried to leave the way he came in, the guards would be sure to notice.

When Yngve took time to think about it, he hated the idea of killing anyone at all. But the initial panic no longer came to him in the situations that called for it. Now, when threatened, he felt almost as if he acted automatically. But still, the sorrow would come. There were those, he knew, who did enjoy killing an enemy in battle, but Yngve felt that he was decidedly not one of them. But when one of the Thalmor guards discovered Yngve inside Northwatch Keep and began to charge him with a mace, he loosed an arrow right into her neck without a second thought. Making his way gradually through the keep, he fought through several more such encounters.

Before he reached Thorald Gray-Mane, Yngve freed three other prisoners from the Thalmor's cells. Thorald himself was found in a separate room, surrounded by torture equipment and shackled to a wall. The moment Thorald was freed, he was on his feet and ready to fight his way out. They clothed the prisoners, Thorald included, in what they could find in the keep and what little Yngve had with him; he never did get rid of the blue robes he had worn out of Whiterun, and now it seemed they would come in handy.

According to Thorald, there was another way they could exit the keep, if they continued all the way through to the back. So the party fought their way through, picking up any supplies they could use as they went. With a party of five, it would be a long journey back to civilization. Yngve hadn't even been well equipped for one.

By the time they exited the keep, it was already near dusk. Yngve felt mildly certain that the group could handle themselves if the Thalmor came for them, or in the face of any other direct threat. But, underequipped as they were for the weather, he didn't like the idea of trying to travel through the night – a plan that he would have considered ideal under better circumstances. Their best chance was to seek shelter in one of the numerous mountain caves nearby and hope to lose the remaining Thalmor, who would no doubt come searching when they realized that their entire prison had been evacuated. The party made it as far as they could go into the waxing night and made their hideout in a small cave, tucked back away from the footpath they had been traveling on. They would have to rely on luck to get them to safety, as the footpath that Yngve had followed to get to the keep in the first place was the only viable path back out of the area.

. . .

Sundas, 31st of Last Seed, 4E 201

The party set out at the first hint of dawn's light and shortened the road everywhere they thought they could afford to. They ascended the mountain path with a newborn blizzard on their heels – something Yngve took for an ill omen. But Thorald Gray-Mane thought otherwise.

"The Divines have granted us a blessing," he said. "We can make it over this pass because we're already halfway there. But the Thalmor chasing after us will be waylaid by the storm." He was right, and when the party found their way back to the cobbled road, things didn't seem as grim.

"Do you think it's safe for us to travel on the main road?" Yngve asked Thorald. In truth, Yngve wasn't sure who was in charge here. Were the rest going to defer to his own rank and station, or was Yngve deferring to Thorald's age and experience? Half of their current stockpile of resources had been brought with Yngve, while the other half had been looted from Northwatch Keep, effectively brought by the rest of the party. Undoubtedly, everyone needed each other to survive, so Yngve decided to gauge Thorald's attitude.

"We should keep ourselves hooded, certainly," Thorald granted. "And we should try not to linger or be seen anywhere, at least until we're farther east. But we should be able to handle it, as long as we stick together."

Tirdas, 2nd of Hearthfire, 4E 201

Pushing themselves hard, the party made it as far as Dragon Bridge by Morndas evening, after two days. They knew they wouldn't be able to stop in Dragon Bridge to resupply, but now that they were heading toward a warmer overall climate, they all agreed that they should be able to make it to the next settlement before stopping to resupply; for now they had taken enough food and other items from Northwatch to get by.

So, when Tirdas morning dawned, they packed up from outside of Dragon Bridge and bypassed the town. They still had to cross the town's namesake in order to proceed along the road. As they traveled away from the town, Yngve noticed that the slain merchants he had passed were no longer splayed across the road, and his spirits lifted some. Under better circumstances he would've liked to visit them at in their final resting place, wherever that turned out to be, but he knew this wasn't the time.

Despite the rough travel conditions, Thorald and the other prisoners didn't look as pitiful and unkempt after a few days of being on the road. They were getting their bodies used to moving again, eating regularly, and being back in the light of day. By the time they did stop in a town to resupply, they might even look more like a band of travelers and less like an obvious band of escapees.

They managed to get a total of several hours out of Dragon Bridge before that afternoon, when they had to stop for the day. The rest of the party had reached their limit after traveling far more than Yngve had expected them to in a day at this point. As he reflected on this, Yngve began to think about how much longer it would take him to reach Windhelm again this way. Having a larger party, especially one consisting mostly of newly freed captives, would severely slow their travel speed compared to how quickly Yngve was able to travel on his own with Hilde.

They sought a site out of view of the road to make their camp. The air here was pleasant, and the former captives relished an opportunity to bathe in part of the river and let the afternoon sun warm their skin. Since they had been traveling near rivers, they were able to catch several mudcrabs during the day, to prepare along with a feast of the last perishable supplies they had taken from Northwatch Keep. After the time Yngve had spent traveling alone and fearful, he had become a dreary companion. But as the entire party gathered around a campfire, sharing food, stories, and even jokes, he felt himself begin to open up again, and even enjoy the evening.

After a while, what laughter and mirth they could each bring to each other died down to a companionable silence, and inevitably the subject of the immediate future came up. Yngve had told them little, at this point, except that he had come for them after speaking to Thorald's family. He asked the group where they planned to go. Resoundingly, they all answered that they would go to Windhelm, to join his father's cause.

"That's where you'll be going anyway, isn't it?" one of the party asked, an Argonian called Veezeeus. "You're a Stormcloak, aren't you?"

For a split-second, Yngve became worried that the escapees he was with had somehow identified him. Then he realized they were referring to the militia, not his own family. He hadn't even really gotten used to the convention of identifying the members of his father's militia as Stormcloaks, he supposed just because he had grown up knowing it simply as a name. When he realized what Veezeeus meant, he nodded in confirmation.

"Yeah," Yngve said. "I'm going back to Windhelm." Everyone nodded or grunted their agreement, and the camp lapsed back into silence.

One by one, the party members gradually left the fire and went to sleep, until Yngve was the only one left awake. They still had a long way to travel, but he was already becoming anxious about what problems they still might face between here and the safety of Stormcloak territory. It had been more than a fortnight now, since the dragon attacked Helgen and Yngve had been on his own. Even if Jarl Balgruuf had sent word to his father seeking ransom, as far as anyone could possibly know right now Yngve was missing and had been for ten days or more, depending on who was doing the reckoning. Gone ten days from Whiterun, leaving no word, running headlong into mortal danger in the opposite direction of home, for what? He searched himself for the answer but even he didn't think he knew what he was trying to prove, or why. For all the resolve it had taken, when Yngve looked back on it now, with the worst behind him, it only seemed monumentally stupid. What will my father say? he wondered, as the moons slowly rose in the sky. What will he think of all this when I come home? Is he going to be angry, or relieved? Have they given up on finding me yet? Am I already dead at home?

. . .

Middas, 3rd of Hearthfire, 4E 201

Inside a tent under the shade of the trees, Yngve didn't wake until late morning. After such a long sleep, he woke feeling a little disoriented, and his right arm was numb from being tucked under the weight of his head all night. He was the last of the party to wake, though only by a matter of minutes. Still, he found it embarrassing.

"Why did you let me sleep that long?" Yngve asked no one in particular.

"Because you looked like you needed it," Thorald replied. Yngve scoffed. "No one came looking for us," Thorald added gently. "So don't worry."

They packed up the camp site and got back onto the road. At Yngve's insistence, they didn't lose any more time waiting for him to eat before moving on; he could eat an apple or some hard bread as they walked. Thorald matched Yngve's pace for a moment and, in a low voice, explained that he had insisted they let him continue sleeping so they wouldn't feel guilty about taking some extra rest.

The day of travel passed without incident. Thorald's earlier point about letting the other escapees take extra rest certainly seemed legitimate at the end of the day. Yngve found the pace gruelingly slow, but tried not to dwell on it. He was well aware that the rest of his party was still trying to recover, and that the road was hard on them. He had to remind himself that he just couldn't push them. After spending who knew how long in a dark cell, not using their muscles or joints, likely being tortured for information, they weren't conditioned for travel. He also remembered how exhausted he had been at the start of all this, when he left Windhelm to travel with the soldiers, and tried to imagine it ten times worse. Even if the pleasant weather held, they would have to rest long and often if they were going to survive a journey as far as this one.

As the day wound down Yngve realized they were nearing the bridge spanning over the road, where he had passed the bandit camp coming the other way. They wouldn't pass it until the following day, but he warned the party of it anyway. He doubted they would remember him specifically, but he was sure whoever remained wouldn't let them through without a fight.

. . .

Turdas, 4th of Hearthfire, 4E 201

When they neared the bandit outpost the following day, they were surprised to find that nothing happened. Although Yngve knew he had taken out two of the bandits, he was sure that couldn't have been all of them. Eerie, he thought. As they passed under the fort's bridge, there appeared to be no one, and all there was to do was keep on walking.

. . .

Fredas, 5th of Hearthfire, 4E 201

As they approached the town of Rorikstead Fredas evening, the party had wanted very badly to stop there. Yngve felt strongly that it wasn't a good idea. In a small settlement like that, they would stand out and may draw attention. On top of it, Yngve knew that they would have to stop in Whiterun whether he wanted to or not. They had gone through the last of their perishable supplies, and would need to restock. But there wasn't a guarantee, or even necessarily a likelihood, that Rorikstead would have everything they needed to get. It would only eat into their time and what septims they had to stop in the town.

Yngve begged the group to skip Rorikstead entirely and stay on the road another hour – hoping to put distance between himself and any settlement that might have guards of Whiterun hold – but they were too tired. So he offered them a deal: if they would camp outside of Rorikstead, rather than stopping in the town, he would agree to spend an extra day in Whiterun. Even this took a good deal of persuading, but eventually they all agreed.

. . .

Loredas, 6th of Hearthfire, 4E 201

In the morning, despite not staying in the inn in Rorikstead, the travelers were feeling somewhat better rested and somewhat more eager, with the promise of Whiterun and all its amenities calling to them. The road they traveled was once again quiet and calm. Although they had come within sight of Whiterun, they were still too far away to make it in a single day. There were mammoth in the area, leading them to suppose there would also be giants. Thorald saw no problem, assuring the party that if they left the giants alone, the giants would also leave them alone, and Yngve's experience so far seemed to support the claim. So they camped off the road by night and traveled along it uneventfully by day, their goal looming ever watchful on the horizon.