Night had fallen. Owls hooted in the treetops, and the night wind brought a chill and a sense of menace.
Little Knife crouched behind a patch of grass, peering out at the drawbridge of Bolas Fortress half a kilometer away. Everything was quiet. Nothing seemed amiss, and the torches behind the drawbridge were still burning.
He ducked back down and quietly asked the man crouching beside him.
"Log out and check how the assault team is doing..."
The player lay down on the ground without another word. A minute later, he logged back in.
"No reply."
"No reply is good news."
Little Knife muttered to himself. He looked up at the moon hanging in the middle of the night sky. No stray clouds had come out to meddle tonight, leaving the clear moonlight to spill evenly across the earth.
That was dangerous. In front of the drawbridge lay a slope whose trees had been deliberately cleared, leaving only waist-high weeds and a few low shrubs.
It was time to put their prearranged plan into action.
If Little Knife led his men straight toward the drawbridge like this, any sentry on Bolas Fortress who wasn't blind would easily spot all those dark shapes moving across the open ground.
Walking straight over was clearly out of the question, but they still had to get close to the drawbridge. Once it was lowered, Little Knife wasn't willing to gamble on how long it would take the guards inside the fortress to notice something was wrong.
One minute, two minutes, or ten?
Or would the surviving sentries hear the drawbridge coming down, turn around, and ring the alarm bell?
Anything was possible.
Little Knife knew perfectly well that he had only one chance. So even if the conditions were poor for sneaking around, he