A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

It would have been nice to see a camp that was still unaware of what was going on. To see a place that he could have once more just sliced straight through with speed alone, that would have been a blessing, a most pleasant way to finish the darkening day.

Of course, though, reality never happened that smoothly. The camp was in chaos, and there seemed to be far too many tents to be a mere hundred men below.

Even as Oliver climbed, he could see men looking up at him, gathering weapons, and pointing. They made gestures, seeming to want to attack him whilst he was still climbing down, but they talked each other out of it, and instead pointed deeper into the fort, towards the stone brick walls at the back of the fort.

They soon went rushing off, along with the stream of other people.

"They're letting us descend…?" Oliver murmured to himself cautiously. Of course, this was a military fort, so it wasn't surprising to him to see another structure behind its walls, though he hadn't expected it to be buried into the back of the cliffs.

Beyond the tents, two sets of stone stairs lead up to it, and then another stone tower defended its coming. It was like the keep of a castle, only this keep seemed to be just another defender of something more important.

"We alright to follow, Ser?" Amberlan called down towards him. Oliver paused, considering it. There were certainly quite a few foes to be taken down, judging from the number of their tents, but it was also true that they would need to descend eventually, if they wanted any chance at taking the fort.

"Fine," Oliver decided. "We go for the gate instead, see if we can get it open."

At least then, he reasoned, despite the scent of the trap in the air, they'd have somewhere that they could fall back to if it proved necessary.@@novelbin@@

With that goal in mind, he once more began moving, sliding down the ladder a bit at a time, so as to clear it quickly, without ruining the gloves with the relentless friction.

He hit the ground. The snow was slushy from use, and the fires were still smouldering.

The tents hung all around like sentinels. He eyed them with a good amount of suspicion as he slowly walked past them. Any one of them could be a hiding place for a hidden blade in the darkness.

He slit any ropes that were near him, and kicked down any tent poles that he could. He was under no illusions that he would be able to quickly dismantle all the tents himself, but he figured that he could at least confirm there was nothing hiding in the tents nearest him.

The men came after him, their movements as tense as his. The campground was suspiciously quiet after all the violence atop the wall. It was vast, too. There must have been fifty tents there, but despite that, it still seemed spacious. The fort was large enough that it could have quite comfortably housed a thousand men.

"Come," Oliver said, when they found themselves standing, merely observing the vast area of the ancient fort, with the piles of rubble next to the cliff walls. He took them towards the gates.

Giant gates they were, but decrepit things. The old wood that had made up most of them – giant beams, laid next to each other, then held together by a lattice of the same wood laid on top and nailed deep with the thickest longest nails Oliver had ever seen.

Of course, as old as that wood was, it was in a state of terrible disrepair. The repairs that had been done on it couldn't hope to match the original. The wood was thin and fragile in comparison, laid over sections that were especially rotten, and used to support the hinges.

Observing it from the inside, the weaknesses were all the more evident. A battle ram could have quite easily taken it out. In fact, they could already see a slight bow of the brackets just from where their wagon had hit it.

"Hm…" Oliver murmured as he appraised it. He knew that heavy gates were usually opened by teams of horses or cattle, but he couldn't see any nearby that would help with these. Nor too could he see any contraption that might help them free the two wooden beams laid over the centre of the gate to prevent it from opening.

"Not so heavy, I think," Amberlan said, walking over to give the lowest of the beams a test with his shoulder. It shifted, just slightly. Oliver raised an eyebrow in surprise. From the thickness of the wood, he would have expected it to be far heavier.

It was only when he joined Amberlan that he could appreciate just how rotten that wood was, making it lighter and flimsier than it had been in its prime.

He motioned with his hand for the other men to help, and together, with a great heave, they freed the first of the beams from the giant rusted metal brackets that held it and tossed it out of the way, free of the gates.

The second one was more of a struggle. It was higher than head height for Oliver. Some of the other men – such as Gamrod – experienced the same problem. It wasn't exactly a powerful starting position. If it had been any heavier, Oliver guessed that they wouldn't have even been able to budge it. Experience new tales on My Virtual Library Empire

Thanks to Amberlan, though, they were able to lift it just up out of the way, and then toss it off from over their heads, before picking it up again to shift it off to the side, away from the path of the gates once they opened.

Giant ropes were attached to the centre of the gates. No doubt that was how the bandits had been able to open and close them. With the weight of a dozen men or so, they could have attempted to do work that even horses struggled with.