and the broken section began to move. Exerting even more pressure, Björn opened the cracked section of the door until the cleared space was large enough for him to pass through.
Twisting his body, he slipped into another passageway. A flickering light appeared in the distance, but Björn continued his forward progress exactly as he had in the darkness.
After advancing a distance, he heard voices and paused to peer around a corner. Three guards a short span away from him were arguing. They appeared spooked, and Björn guessed that they had heard his attack on the door. One wanted to investigate, another claimed it was only the sound of a rock falling, and the third could not decide what they should do. Björn crept noiselessly toward them.
The discussion eventually abated and the decision became one of doing nothing. The guards remained at their posts with occasional short conversation. While it appeared they took their guarding seriously, they were not on high alert.
Björn waited. He was very good at waiting.
The guards grew quiet, and Björn heard snoring. One of the guards kicked the snoring one, and a second short argument ensued. Then it was quiet again.
Björn continued to wait in silence. The snoring resumed and this time was not interrupted. Björn moved warily down the corridor, a shadow. When he reached the sleeping guards, there was a short struggle and the sound of throats gasping for air. Then Björn moved on, and the bloody scenario was repeated throughout the night. Björn detected men before they were aware of him and then quietly and efficiently dispatched them.
He found a room where many men slept, concluding it was some type of dormitory. Passing it by, he twice more came upon rooms filled with sleeping men, and again crept silently past them.
Discovering a small room dimly lit by a flickering torch, he found three females huddled on the floor. When the two women and a young girl saw him, they clutched each other in terror and drew as far from him as possible. Both women were without clothing and the girl was clothed only in wisps of fabric.
Björn crouched just inside the door and spoke to them softly, reassuring them until they were calm. He moved slowly to them and held out his hand. After a time, one woman took his hand. Motioning to the others, he led them from the room, guiding them down the halls to the place where he had entered the castle. Standing outside in the darkness with only light coming from the stars overhead, he pointed the way for them to take to reach their village. As they moved away, the girl turned to look at him, then turned and walked toward the village with the others. Björn watched until the captives disappeared in the darkness.
“Those are the last females they will take,” he muttered to himself. “This world will be a much better place when these monsters are gone from it.” He re-entered the castle and continued his careful exploration.
It was early morning when he reached the upper chambers of the inhabited section of the castle. The rooms were lit by sunlight filtering through large windows, in sharp contrast to the lower floors that received no external light and remained in the same darkness both night and day, lighted only by torches placed in wall brackets or carried by patrol squads.
Reaching an area that was richly furnished compared to the Spartan layouts of the rooms he had seen below, he heard voices. He drew into the shadows and waited. The voices came from a chamber beyond where Björn had penetrated. He crept through the outer room to a door at the opposite end. The voices came from within. They were muffled, but Björn determined that there were three men talking. He returned his swords to their scabbards and crouched in front of the door.
Slowly, with efficient movements, he moved the latch, which was locked. Under his slow and precise pressure, the latch opened soundlessly. Applying pressure to the door to open it, he stepped back, drew his swords and kicked the door in. It flew open to reveal three black-robed men, hoods thrown back as they lounged on luxurious chairs in front of a roaring fire. They were tall gaunt men with narrow pinched faces.
As Björn launched himself into the room, they rushed to their feet, scrambling for weapons arranged on a table behind them. Before they could arm themselves, Björn drove a sword through the chest of one and beheaded the second with his other sword. But the third man moved with extraordinary quickness, scooping up a sword as he turned to meet Björn’s attack. He wielded the sword expertly and held Björn at bay long enough to shout an alarm, but he was at a severe disadvantage against the two swirling swords.
Focused tightly on his task despite the potential attack the shout might bring, Björn speared the man’s midsection with one sword, and with the other sheared his head from his shoulders. Then he fled across the room and down the hall, running into a spacious room he had explored earlier. Like a rabbit in its warren, he had established three escape routes. He sped down one of them. He was confident the room would still be unoccupied, but whether it was or not did not matter; this was his preferred escape route.
He slipped quickly behind a large tapestry hiding a large window. He had opened the window when he first checked the room, and now stepped through it, placing his feet carefully on a narrow ledge running along the castle wall outside. He edged along until he reached a sharp corner. Here the ledge ended, but the corner was actually a deep V and the ledge resumed on the other side. Björn eased into the V, bracing himself against the sides with his feet and arms.
Pandemonium broke loose in the castle. Sleeping men were abruptly awakened, and Björn heard them as they spread out searching. Cries of alarm and terror sounded as the searchers discovered bodies. By the time the search sounded more organized, the sun had risen over the far mountains.
Björn was still braced against the walls in the V. An ordinary man’s muscles would have long ago become cramped from the strain, forcing him to give up the effort, but Björn was unaffected.
He heard rooms and corridors being searched and windows and doors being flung open. The searchers became more quiet. Björn assumed they were frustrated from the hours they had spent trying to find him. He heard the leaders barking commands, ordering the men not to overlook any possible hiding place.
The window from which Björn had exited was opened. It remained open for a short time, and he could hear a man breathing heavily. Then the window closed.
Hanging on his precarious perch, Björn reflected on what he had seen in his clandestine survey of the castle. A few men, most probably the priests, lived in luxury. The rest lived in regimented sparse quarters. There had been one large room with no furniture other than a flat rectangular stone slab set on short stone columns. Four chains were anchored to each side of the slab, and a dark red, and in some areas black, substance that Björn recognized as dried blood covered the slab, the column, and the floor around the slab.
Behind the slab, an enormous tapestry covered the entire wall. Painted on the tapestry was a huge face, long and narrow with prominent eyes, nose, mouth, and protruding teeth. In all his travels, Björn had never seen anything so repulsive and hideous. He guessed the tapestry to be ancient because of many creases and cracks in a few places where it appeared to have been rolled up like a rug. He presumed this was the cult’s place of worship, with live sacrifices taking place on the altar, and he could make a good guess as to what type of living creatures were sacrificed there.
Björn estimated that he had killed a few more than forty men in his furtive sortie through the castle. According to the estimate of the man in the village, there were at least two hundred men in the sect. This left considerably more to do.
The search extended to the grounds outside. From his perch, Björn saw small groups of men walking the open spaces, checking the woods carefully, poking spears and sometimes swords into thickets. They found nothing but small animals and birds. He thought
