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-----Sol swings at the final guard who took Rinda’s club to his head. But in recovering his senses, the guard moves quickly avoiding the sword. Unnerved by the warrior’s attack, the guard misses Sol with a wild slash. With that, Rinda steps up and catches the guard with a blow to the back of the neck. He then tumbles quietly to their feet.
-----Now everything is quiet on the wall and in the courtyard. Curiously, there seems to be no light or movement from inside the keep.
-----Raven looks back to Sarah and gives her a thumbs-up. Raven moves forward quickly and takes the weapons away from the sleeping men and throws the weapons over the wall into the woods. He then ties and gags the men.
-----He looks over to Sarah to make sure she is keeping a look out for any more men coming out of the keep.
-----Keeping a wary eye on the rest of the courtyard, the Dread Pirate scuttles forward to relieve the two guards of the burden of their weapons. Grabbing the short swords, he hurls their weapons far into the shadows of the keep wall.
-----Seth is amazed at the power of this new spell. When he sees Dread move forward to disarm the guards, Seth also moves forward and binds them, as well as gags them with some material from their clothing.
-----Kazel stands guard in the shadows, her bow drawn. Within a few moments, Sol and Rinda come out of a door at the base of one of the towers. They carefully make their way over to the trio.
-----Out of the other tower emerges Raven and Sarah who likewise make their way over to everyone. As they approach, Sarah’s owl appears out of the night sky and lands softly on his mistress’s backpack.
-----As everyone gathers over the two sleeping guards Seth enspelled, the dim glow of a torch is seen coming from one of the lower windows of the keep.
-----Sarah nods to the others and speaks quickly. "Quick spy flight." As Sarah says these words, Chessie takes off once again and glances through the window as he flies by. "What's inside, baby?" Sarah asks her owl as he returns.
-----Scampering through the shadows, the Dread Pirate sneaks forward to take a quick glance through the window. He stops short when he finds that the lowest windows are almost as high as the battlements on the wall.
-----Sarah groans and rests her head in her hands briefly. "If I have to restrain him again it’s not going to be pretty," She mutters.
-----The Dread Pirate gazes up at the distant windows and grasps the wall with both hands. Suddenly, he seems to pause and reconsider his chances at wall climbing, then steps back and rejoins the group. At Sarah's words, the Dread Pirate replies, "Ye ever cast that stinkin spell on me again ye'll be wearin yer rear end fer a hat."
-----Sarah turns to Dread with a dark smile on her face. "I had a different spell in mind."
-----Sarah, ignoring whatever whiny smart remark Dread comes up with, says, "There’s apparently a lot of people inside, gathering. They have to know we're here, our entrance was rather loud." She glances briefly at Rinda and Sol.
-----"Come on. We've barely started." Sol says purposefully, and begins heading towards the keep's entrance.
-----Sol leads everyone around the corner of the structure and there they see large stone steps that lead up along the side of the keep to an entrance door. Very quietly, the party steals up the steps. They pass under very dark arrow slits but still they don’t seem to attract any attention from anyone inside. The uncanny silence also continues in the courtyard before them. The sky appears to darken with the sinking moon behind the trees and a few hours left before dawn.
-----At the top of the steps, Sol attempts to carefully and quietly open the large wooden door. With an almost look of surprise on his face, the door proves to be unlocked.
-----"Because we don't really know what kind of people are inside I wouldn't suggest bashing in. But out here we can assume that they have an agenda that is at least regional if not national. So we can't just get on the walls and wait for them either. It would be best if we could draw them into the courtyard and ambush them from the walls." Sarah pauses, waiting for any other suggestions from the group.
-----The Dread Pirate dons a look of long suffering patience as Sarah jabbers away. He then begins clapping the fingers of his right hand against the thumb of his right hand as she continues with her inane chatter.
-----"Okay...so we are going to just barge through the front door?" Sarah says, glumly, not at all surprised everyone ignored her.
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