Visitors passing through Westminster Castle experienced a sense of novelty.
The buildings did not stand on a flat foundation. Instead, they occupied the entire mountaintop, following its contours. Buildings at different levels and in different directions often did not share the same elevation.
The walls enclosing the Barbican could also serve as roads leading to the bastions. After circling around inside a bastion, one might come upon an archway topped with a Double-Wing Ring on the third-floor open-air terrace. Beyond it lay a small chapel, where the pulpit cleverly concealed a passage behind it leading to the Inner Castle tower.
Everything was connected and closely packed, yet each area was clearly separated according to its function. This turned the uneven terrain, which could not be leveled, from an obstacle into an advantage.
Outsiders could lose their way in this network of passages, while defenders could use their familiarity with the routes to appear anywhere or seal off an area. And that was before considering how every design detail had been deliberately made convenient for the defenders, such as the uniformly clockwise spiral staircases that ascended from the bottom, which gave those above the advantage of using right-handed weapons in confined spaces.
With Martin as their guide, they followed the shortest "shortcut" available after an attacking force breached the outer wall—assuming anyone could actually manage that. The route wound gradually around almost half the fortress. For half the way, they were exposed to crossfire from the Inner Castle walls and flanking towers; the other half consisted of the kind of obstructed interior terrain found in the aforementioned spiral staircases.
Anyone who wanted to avoid being trapped in this hopeless, one-sided maze of alleyway combat had to face the "inner gate" instead. It stayed shut at night, forcing attackers to repeat the