Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

Chapter 459: CDLIX. And What Now?

"What's gonna happen to the others? Are you going to let them go without explanation?" she asked when her lips peeled off Dag's and their breaths came together again.

"Reidar, Gridd, and Egill have already understood what I had in mind, they know me too well. As for the others, I don't need to explain. Their behavior disappointed me, I thought they had shown more respect for the ideal that united us and for the men who lost their lives for the mission." 

"Where will we go? How are we going to survive in these hostile lands?"

"We will head to our new allies and I will explain our situation to them. If I'm really that important to the prophecy, Kranus will agree to help us, otherwise... I'll find another way" Dag said, without stopping for a moment to look her in the eye.

Freydis nodded with determination, certain that her man would never allow anything bad to happen to her and intended to help him in his mission, which would give a new meaning to her life.

"I forgot to say goodbye to Karl. He will never forgive me for that..." she continued, tying tightly her spear behind her back.

"Don't worry, we'll meet everyone again. It's going to take a while, but it will happen for sure, you'll see. Rather... now we have to think about running away from here and we have to do it quickly because we will do that without horses" Dag said, who, being ready to flee, began to look around.

Just then, unable to wait for his master outside along with those unknown and menacing warriors, Thalos entered their room, approaching the two lovers and wagging happily, as if he had not seen them in years.

"I would never have left you here, Thalos... but you already know that don't you, buddy?" he smiled, stroking the wolf and letting him sense that it was time to awaken his muscles and instincts.

"How do we do that, Dag? There are guards everywhere, even in here... if we kill the men inside the palace, I'm sure some of them would be able to attract the attention of the King's chromed army, which would kill us instantly!" Freydis asked worried, trying to study an effective solution with Dag.

"Mmmh... how do you get out of a Fort without getting noticed? The only entrance is the door behind those soldiers, so it's a hypothesis to be discarded a priori. But this way, one of these windows maybe..." 

While Dag made his remarks aloud, he noticed that the window wall of that room matched perfectly with the outer walls of the Fort, being the palace built sideways, to leave the space necessary for the creation of an inner courtyard.

Despite his intuition, it didn't take him a long time to notice that behind the window there was a rusty iron grate, designed to prevent enemies coming from the outside from climbing the walls and accessing the Fort from the back, just as they were thinking to do at the moment, but on the contrary.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, he completely opened the wooden window, which squeaked slightly, but whose sound was covered by that of the cold wind.

He crouched down, avoiding touching the iron grate with his head and looked left and right, noting that a window identical to that, but without the grate was accessible from the room next to theirs.

"I found a way, but you won't like it" he said, walking back inside the room and looking at Freydis and Thalos, who turned his head to one side, trying to figure out what the plan was.

After explaining to his woman that the only way to get out unnoticed would be to jump out of the window to the edge of the walls and then find a way down, she, without complaining, began to look for a rope among the thousand objects scattered around the room.

"There is no time, we must move! The King is definitely starting to suspect something!" Dag said in a low voice, ordering Freydis to stop wasting time unnecessarily and stick to the plan.

Before she could answer, he waved to her with his hand, suggesting she stay still and silent, and walked out of the room crouched.

Of the King's guards, there was no sign: they were all downstairs, busy moving the table to make room in front of the fireplace, thinking that this was the warmest place to spend the night.

At that point, Dag called Freydis and Thalos who followed him like two shrapnel into the other room, whose door was closed soon after, making no noise whatsoever.

"Here we are... the window from which to descend is this one" he said, approaching the wall and opening the two wooden doors that separated them from the outside.

"I'll go first, carrying Thalos with me, in my arms. You will come soon after, I will help you to come down with my powers!" he said, trying to calm Freydis, who looked down from the window terrified of heights.

As he approached the wolf, Dag heard suspicious voices coming from the upstairs hallway and immediately closed the window.

The door to their room opened and Dag opened the first piece of furniture he could find, peeking inside.

"What the hell are you doing?! You're taking too long! The King is impatient! They told me to come and urge you!" a soldier in armor said, breaking in and scolding the two warriors.

Thalos immediately turned to him and began to growl. 

"Calm down, Thalos, calm down... he's a friend. Don't worry, he just came to call us" he said, stroking the wolf's neck, which immediately stopped growling and moved behind his master.

The royal soldier, who had almost drawn his sword, put it back in its place and stood still, intimidated by the orange eyes of Thalos, who in the shadow of the room looked like a monstrous beast.