Three gaping, sturdy peasants, they helped me up and led me through the debris-strewn archway into the hall. God, what a mess it was. Krafstein lay beside the wheel, with his skull split and his great hands crooked like talons; I remembered their grip and shuddered. Nearby were half a dozen other bodies—Sapten had kept his word, then; there would be no survivors of the Jotunberg garrison. There was a pool of blood in the very centre of the hall, and lying in it was the fellow who had complained to Krafstein of boredom; well, ennui wouldn’t trouble him any longer. The smell of powder was harsh in my nostrils, and a faint cloud of it still hung in the shadows overhead.

The peasants pushed me down on to a bench, and while one helped me strip my sodden clothes—the second time that night—another washed the stinging gash in my arm and bandaged it round. The third, practical fellow, realising that I had to be clad in something, was pulling the garments off one of the corpses—he chose one who had been neatly shot in the head, and had been considerate enough not to bleed much—and I can’t say that I felt any revulsion at all about wearing dead men’s weeds. In fact, they fitted uncommon well.

Then they presented me with a flask of schnapps, and I sent half of it down my throat at once, and felt the fiery warmth running back along my limbs. I poured a little into my palm and rubbed it on my face and neck—a trick Mackenzie taught me in Afghanistan; nothing like it for the cold, if you can spare the liquor.

I sipped the rest slowly, looking round. There were several Volsungs in the hall, staring curiously about them, and I could hear the voices of others in the upper rooms; they seemed to have everything in hand. Of Sapten and Grundvig there was no sign.

Well, this was fine, so far as it went. I was beginning to feel excellent, now that the shock—no, the series of hellish frights—of the evening were wearing off, and I was savouring the blissful knowledge that here I was, hale and whole, with drink in me, warm clothes, and nothing more to fear. With every moment, as I realised what I had endured and escaped, my spirits rose; I could contemplate the future, for the first time in months, without feeling my bowels drooping down into my legs.

“Where’s Major Sapten, then?” says I, and they told me he was down in the dungeon still; on no account, they said, was anyone to intrude. Well, I knew the prohibition wouldn’t include me, so I brushed aside their protests with a show of princely authority—remarkable how habits stick, once learned—and marched across to the passage. I checked at the archway, though, and asked if they were sure all the defenders were dead, and they beamed and chorused “Jah, jah.” I took a sabre along anyway—not for protection, but because I knew it would look well, and went down the staircase and into the cloister. Through the far archway I heard the murmur of voices, and as I came closer Sapten was saying: