460 CDLX. Holding His Nerve

"Excuse me, can I ask you a favor?" Dag asked, approaching the wooden closet and looking up.

"Mh? What? Are you talking to me?" the man asked.

"Yes, I'm talking to you. If you really want to make things faster, can you help me pull this chest down? I can't do it alone, and my girlfriend isn't tall enough to help me. There are some important things I can't leave here" Dag continued, always looking in the same spot, inside a kind of closet that almost touched the room's roof.

The soldier was hesitant for a moment and began to look around, trying to understand how far his colleagues were when Dag drew his attention again.

"Come on, hurry up! It's only going to take a minute, then we're going to get out of this place together. Look we are allies, we also fight for the King, don't forget it" Dag replied, who, with his usual way of doing, convinced the man to help him.

When the soldier walked through the door, he approached the closet, stopping next to Dag.

"Do you see that leather trunk? That's exactly what I need. We have to pull it together to drop it down, but gently... it's very fragile" he said again, reciting his part perfectly and making Freydis think it was all staged.

She, who was not very capable of pretending, walked away from the two men, stepping aside, until Dag looked at her and winked at her, while the soldier, with his hands resting on his hips, looked at the trunk located on the last shelf of that closet, devising a way to extract it.

Freydis, who was at the game, immediately understood Dag's signal and tiptoed, approached the front door of the room.

"Put a foot up here with me... let's both cling to that leather handle and pull it hard... are you ready?" Dag asked the soldier, who nodded, displaying the object to grab.

"Well! So, one... two... and three!" 

An instant before the 'three', Freydis gently closed the door, thus preventing the noises from the room from dispersing into the rest of the building and Dag, instead of climbing up with the soldier, waited for him to climb up and when he put his foot on the lower part of the furniture, lifting the body from the ground, the young Master pulled the axe with one hand and grabbed the back of the man's armor with the other, pulling him down and dropping him backward.

As if he was a real thief, he dropped the soldier on him, preventing his body from touching the ground, and cut his throat with the blade of the axe.

Soon after, the hand that was before on the armor, strongly grabbed the soldier's face, blocking his mouth and preventing him from screaming, while a river of blood gushed from his throat, squirting on his entire body and the floor below.

"Mmmh! Mmmhh!" 

The warrior tried to free himself, but Dag's grip was too strong and the blood loss reduced him in a few seconds to exhaustion.

"Fuck, Dag... that was close! Luckily he was just a man, otherwise things would have been much more difficult! Now get up, there's no more time!" Freydis exclaimed, who ran to the window and opened it wide, waiting for Dag to make the first move.

He got up, wiped the soldier's blood from his eyes, and grabbed the neck of his armor, dragging his entire body.

"What are you doing? Are you crazy? I just told you there's no more time! King Einar will have already realized that we are trying to deceive him!" she replied, who was beginning to enter a state of anxiety, fearing that they would not make it.

"Calm down, stop fidgeting... in doing so we solved two problems! One, we avoided getting caught... and two..." 

Before he finished speaking, Dag lifted the man's body and placed it on the edge of the window, looking down, as if he wanted to aim.

"... we found something soft to fall on!" he concluded, throwing the corpse down below, causing it to fall over the walls. 

The soldier's lifeless body, thanks to the dense layer of snow that covered the ground, more than a meter thick, touched the terrain without making any sound.

"Come, Thalos... come to me!" he said, leaning down to the wolf, who began to retreat, sensing that what was about to happen would not be pleasant.

In a very quick gesture, Dag grabbed him by the belly and made strength, lifted him, taking him in his arms with difficulty.

"Fuck! How heavy you are... umpf!" 

With Freydis's help, he approached the wolf at the window, and without ever leaving him, he too climbed over the edge, resting his feet on the top of the cold outer walls of the Fort.

Thalos, noting that beneath them was the void, looked terrified and turned his head to the other side, clinging with one claw to Dag's back and leaning backward, intending to return inside the palace.

"No, Thalos! Don't even try it! I'm not going to leave you here alone, you're coming with me! Freydis, get ready! As soon as I jump, get out the window right away and close it soon after!"

As soon as Dag finished speaking, a bundle of dark liquid came out of his back, and the wolf, as soon as he saw it, turned his head forward again, squinting, realizing that from that moment on, his life would depend on his master once again.

As the liquid began to take shape, Freydis exclaimed: "Dag, I hear them! More men are coming! I can hear their steps on the stairs! Move!"