The Kingdom of Bagnia's mountain forests consisted mainly of mixed coniferous and broadleaf woodland, with straight trunks and densely packed trees that could easily conceal plenty of people and things.
Wearing a camouflage cloak made from fresh branches, leaves, and weeds, Knife-in-the-Butt rose from a patch of undergrowth. He raised a brass monocular with black gauze covering its front and began observing the cliff-lined gorge where Bolas Fortress stood a thousand meters away.
Little Knife was now directly opposite Bolas Fortress, on Nameless Hill at the far end of the relatively flat terrain on the other side.
The gorge containing Bolas Fortress was an interesting place. Known to the locals as Bolas Gorge, it was about a hundred kilometers long, but its average width and depth remained unknown to the players.
All Little Knife knew was that the stretch where Bolas Fortress stood was the shallowest and narrowest part of the entire gorge. The cliff below it was only a little over fifty meters high, and the gorge was ten meters wide.
That narrowest, ten-meter stretch was where Bolas Fortress's Outer Keep stood, and the only way across was the drawbridge, which had already been raised.
Ten meters did not sound particularly wide, but with Bolas Fortress there, those ten meters became an impassable natural barrier.
After observing for half an hour, Little Knife confirmed once again that, barring some unexpected development, he had no way into Bolas Fortress from this side... The Outer Keep always had sentries watching this direction, twenty-four hours a day.
The length and depth of Bolas Gorge did not make it impossible to cross. Little Knife had reached this side by spending five days taking a detour.
And the fact that Little Knife could appear on the far side of Bolas Gorge was precisely why