LI. The Tomahawk

The warrior who was advancing towards him stopped suddenly.

"Fuck! Is it true?" asked the other from behind.

"Of course it's true. The choice is yours" continued Dag, who stood still in the same position with his arms open.

"Alive, yes... But if hurting you means putting you back in the cage, I'm sure we'll be rewarded for it!" replied the warrior with the dagger.

Soon after, he started running towards Dag, trying to hit him.

"Okay..." sighed Dag.

He easily dodged the blow and counter-attacked the man with a punch in his face.

The Renegade continued to lunge with the dagger, but Dag once again managed to dodge every hit and after hitting the enemy again with a punch in the face, he managed to disarm him and take the dagger.

The man with a fully broken and bleeding nose tried for the last time to hit Dag with a left jab when Dag grabbed his fist with the palm of his hand and paralyzed his arm.

As the Renegade retreated and touched his paralyzed arm, with a sharp blow from the dagger, Dag slit his throat and his opponent fell to the ground lifeless.

"Run! Go warn the others! The prisoner is free and dangerous!" shouted one of the two remaining guards.

At these words, the other Renegade turned and began to run towards the door leading to the left corridor, but Dag threw the dagger and hit him violently in the back of his head, killing him instantly.

"What the fuck..." said the last remaining guard as he watched his comrade exhaling his last vital breaths.

He turned to Dag, who was charging towards him.

Dag tried to hit him with his bare hands, but the warrior dodged.

"Who the hell are you?!" said the guard.

Dag didn't answer and crossed his arms, hitting the Renegade with Earth Stomp, causing him to fall to the ground.

Right after that, Dag jumped on him and kicked him in the stomach. The enemy spat blood, losing his breath.

Dag picked up the short sword of the enemy he had killed by throwing the dagger and slowly approached the Renegade on the ground, which continued to cough, touching his stomach.

"No... No, please" the man said on the ground, begging Dag not to kill him.

"How do I get out of this shitty place?" asked Dag to the man, pointing his sword at his throat.

"The exit is that way. But there are guards everywhere. The Castle Of Mork is the Renegades' main lair and is the most guarded. You will never get out of here alive" the man replied.

"The main lair? Are there others?" asked Dag, who was beginning to lose patience. The Renegade could have shouted at any moment, with the little breath left in his lungs, alerting the guards.

"Aha…haha" the man chuckled, continuing to cough blood.

"We Renegades are everywhere. There is no region of Skjold that is not under our control! We are more powerful than any Clan, more powerful than..."

...

Dag sank his sword into the Renegade's throat, killing him.

"Shut up now, stop raving" Dag said, turning the blade of the sword into the man's throat, shattering his neck bone.

He bent down on the ground and picked up a torch.

He thought of Claire, who was trying to rescue the other women prisoners.

Maybe they almost got to the end of the tunnel.

Also if he had returned the bodies of the three men would have been found immediately and he would have endangered all the prisoners who were fleeing.

Nothing would have changed.

With the short sword in one hand and the torch in the other, he walked slowly toward the left door.

That hallway, unlike the other that led to the dormitory, was well lit.

He continued to walk in that direction with circumspection.

Despite hearing voices in the distance, the corridor seemed empty.

The voices were far away and Dag couldn't listen better even by concentrating. There were several doors in the hallway: those voices had to come from inside one of those rooms.

The thick walls and heavy wooden and iron doors perfectly insulating the sounds.

After about twenty meters, the left corridor also curved, but this time to the right. Dag saw a rack with weapons leaning against the wall.

There were other short swords like the one he was wielding at the time and a tomahawk.

He tucked his short sword into his belt and picked the tomahawk, continuing to walk.

That corridor seemed much longer than the other, perhaps it was an effect due to its different geometrical shapes.

Soon after, Dag found himself in front of a large door, right in the middle of the hallway. It was impossible to continue in other ways: that door was the only way to continue towards the exit.

He had managed to evade the attention of several guards in the previous rooms. He had to be careful, every move could be the last one.

He approached the door, resting his ear on it, to try to figure out what was on the other side.

He closed his eyes, concentrating.

He heard a noise. A constant sound approaching in that direction.

It sounded like the sound of a wooden staff.

It was Myr!

No one could have alerted him about the incident, he must have realized he no longer had the cage's keys.

Dag turned, looking behind him.

Hiding was impossible, there were no hiding places.

It also wouldn't have mattered: Myr would arrive in the banquet room and then head to the slave dormitory, finding the hole leading to the tunnel.

He had to stop him.

The shaman was very powerful, he had to be careful.

The torch he had in one hand almost gone off and the corridor was well lit. He decided to drop the torch off the ground.

He had to open the door and fight Myr on the other side.

In the heat of the fight, they would make too much noise and alert the men in the rooms, who would go out into the hallway and Dag would again find himself outnumbered.