My eyes crack open and a shaft of light seems to split my brain in two. I shut them again, reeling even though I am lying on the floor, and the light I see merely comes from a candle in a sconce high up on the wall. It was not certainly a dwarf that put it there.

I sit up painfully and almost laugh at myself. I thought I had outgrown my wild escapades as a boy, when I threw myself mindlessly into the clutches of giants. I think about the very time I gained the Eckisax in a fair fight... and yet I would have died, if my horse Falka had not dispatched my adversary. My horse. And now I let myself be captured like an idiot. My father used to say that actually my innocence was my strength, even though it led me into such trouble.

I do not want to think about my father.

I get up, staggering. I check the bruise beneath my hair and find some caked blood. I daresay I will survive. At my feet lies my cracked helmet. I kick it in frustration. The magical Hildegrim would have protected me, but I gave Hildegrim to Hildibrands, and I do not regret the honour I made to my old weapon master. But the damage done to the helmet tells me that if they had wanted to kill me they could have. Instead, someone in league with Alberich wanted to capture me alive... but to what end?

The walls of my cell are raw rock, the door is a slab of stone. I could not get out even if I had Eckisax. As I walk nervously like a caged cat, however, I catch an echo of voices. There must be an opening somewhere... I try to get near the source of the voices and lay my ear against the wall...