Vognar on the run

The runners’ ragged breathes where labored, his heart beating, so hard that he felt as if it would burst through his ribs. Trudging the icy fog clogged fens, which filled his lungs so that it burned to inhale the frigid air. The sweat mingled with blood on his face was flash frozen to him. Wearing a simple cotton shirt wet, now stiffly stuck to his chest, from falling in shallow freezing puddles during the previous day. Worn dirty leather breeches where torn in several places from briars and branches that gouged at his thighs as he sprinted strait through them in his flight. His feet had gone numb sometime the night before; he hardly felt them and the only sound apart from the rhythmic rattle of the manacle chains he wore were his own ragged breaths.

A howl could be heard behind him in the distance, Vognar didn’t turn to look he just ran on, it felt as if he had been running for months but really only over four days of the frozen taiga and marshlands of the Linnorm Kings had he fled from his pursuers.

Outcast and criminal was what they called him. Hunted for his head, not worthy to be brought to justice, alive they did not bother to brand him; instead they chained him like an animal, but underestimated his will to survive and his great strength. The guards’ neck made a popping noise like a tree branch being snapped wrapped in a rug and in an instant he was dead. Much easier than he thought it would be.

‘Demons take him for not having the key to my chains.’ He bemoaned his rotten luck. ‘What jailor does not have the key to his prisoner?’

He wanted to feel bad about the guards death, but didn’t, the man was a drunken bully and a lout and deserved his fate. Contemplating his current situation Vognar felt his face go flush with anger at the thought of being a branded as a criminal. “What did I do to deserve this? NOTHING that my people had not been doing for thousands of years.” The difference he thought is that he was honest about it and not ashamed, it was inconvenient and now he was to be made and example of.

They will not grind me to dust and I will make a name for myself so loud that my kinsmen will here of my deeds some day they will need me and I will answer with death call for them all. So he ran on...