Page 9 Chapter 3 Crushed by Destiny

Reality slipped slowly into his consciousness with a stinging pain in his temples. He was still trying to twist it all into a dream in which he had just pulled blue sparkling gems from between the cracks in the coblle and filled his pockets with them, glad that he was the only one who had spotted them. This crystalline vision vanished, however, as his head banged against the iron bars of a cage on a dismantled cart. It was pulled by two mighty oxen, and every movement of the furry bodies brought with it a crushing creak that felt like nails being hammered into his skull. He couldn't even grab his head because his hands were bound by heavy cuffs. He was terribly cold, and the feeling was intensified by the merciless gusts of wind that pierced through the dense mountain forest. 
'Frahmat dum oxe!' came from above, and a snap of the whip left a deep mark on the animals' fur, making them quicken their sluggish steps. Only now did he notice the coachman’s legs dangling from the roof as he began a drunken song in Holkonian, roaring at the top of his lungs.
'Please!' Hanor groaned.
'Snalla? Hahaha. You'll be begging for real once we get there!'- the teamster rasped tapping a wide butcher's cleaver against the bars. Perhaps sensing the threat, a well-fattened, pitch-black pig suddenly stirred in the heaps of straw on the opposite side of the cage. He’d seen such beasts at the flarkt before, yet fear still made him shudder. He tried to rise, but a collar around his neck dug painfully into his skin. He sighed heavily, trying to grasp his situation. 
'Where are you taking me?'
The driver leaned his bearded face against the cage and sneered through yellowed teeth: 
'To the Smirsund mine, where the likes of you belong!' He burst into a wheezing laugh, ending it with a long 'Whoa!!' The oxen obediently halted, shaking their heads nervously. His captor jumped down, staggering toward the nearest tree and blessing it with a yellow fountain. Not wanting to watch, Hanor shut his eyes, struggling to master the pain, but the man was suddenly right beside him. Hanor had once heard old tales about dwarves, and he was exactly how he imagined one. Short, with shoulders as broad as a bridge, and a thick beard covering half his face, catching every crumb of his meals. And he must have eaten plenty to fill the belly he was now patting with one hand.
'You know Ilky Skal?'- he asked, breathing out the liquor he was sipping from the battered flask.
'I do' - Hanor lied.
'Then sing, or I’ll cut that tongue out. Won’t need it where you’re going!' The dwarf leaped back onto the cart with surprising agility.
Desperation welled up in Hanor who moaned 'Let me go!'
'Not even if the mountains shit stone and drown!' The coachman bellowed with satisfaction and cracked the whip across the beasts’ shaggy rumps. The oxen bolted forward. The pig fell back onto its spilled belly and made no further attempt to resist. He, too, sank into resignation, fighting off visions of hell in the holkonian drifts. He watched the landscape pass by, trying to pick up some hint of his next steps from the endless sequence of spruce trunks. The monotonous swaying, however, lulled him into a state of lethargy from which only the louder tone of Ilky Sund pulled him out. They slowly approached the face of the massif, and the gravel path became bolder and steeper. The oxen wheezed heavily. A greyish foam began to rise from their thick musk. The wooden drawbar that connected them to the cart seemed to be stretched to the limit. It looked as if it might burst at any moment and throw the cart into the arms of the mountain cliffs. CRASH, BANG! A mighty thud shattered the tense silence as a large boulder landed directly beneath his feet, having previously torn apart a thin plank roof. A chunk of rock must have come loose from the scarp they had just skirted. But it was immediately followed by another. THUD, THUD, BAM, BAM - the loud rumbling of stones landing all around resounded. The prophetic words 'even if the mountains shit stone' ran through his mind. 'Faaaaaaaandhensk!' the wagoner yelled, trying to control the panicking animals, but he was cut off in mid-sentence and involuntarily fell forward directly under their pounding hooves. BANG, BANG, KRAK. One of the next pieces tore off the drawbar, causing the cart to crash backward. The quaking body of the pig was flung at Hanor, pressing its huge mass against the metal rungs and trapping him between them. He blacked out and scenes from his youth flashed before his eyes.
He had just run up the hill in his homeland, the one from which he had always watched the barges on the river. From the top he heard a woman's voice urging him: 'Come on, come on!' So he pushed himself as hard as he could, but impenetrable undergrowth held him back, and large leaves lashed his face. 'Leave him, he’s probably dead, no point wasting time' - he heard a man’s voice say. So the woman on the hill wasn’t alone. 'He’ll wake up any moment now, you’ll see!' SMACK, SMACK. After another lash, he fell, blindly defending himself against the aggressive foliage, but as he opened his eyes, instead of bloodthirsty plants, there was a woman sitting astride him, with masculine features, which were further emphasised by her short-cropped hair. 'Enough' he muttered, to his surprise in Polkonian,even though he hadn't use his native language in weeks.
'Redlock, look, it’s one of ours!' - the woman stood up and shouted in the same tongue. A bald man with a strongly defined jawline covered in gray scruff leaned over him. Despite these aged features, he seemed to be in his prime. 'We pulled you out of quite a mess, brother!' - he said in a deep voice that matched his massive frame. 'I’m Redlock' he said, tossing his head, and a red fox tail landed on his shoulder, somehow attached to the back of his bald head. 'I’m the one leading this bunch of misfits!' The lady snorted with laughter. 'You have doubts, woman?!' - Redlock said. Hanor glared at her. From below, she looked like a statue—imposing, carved from solid rock. One could have doubts. 'Absolutely none, our leader!' It was clear how hard it was for her to keep a straight face. But a moment later, she turned serious and shouted loudly behind her, 'Move up, grab what you can and let’s get out of here! And you,' she turned to Redlock in a tone that brooked no argument, 'go and help them. I’ll take care of him.'