The Knight of Chivalry

Chapter 15

For the next few days Simon went out with the scouting party as they searched for a secret tunnel or entrance to get into the castle. They searched quite extensively but could find no sign of this secret way until quite by accident, one scout stumbled upon one secret way as he needed the bathroom and went to go behind a bush when he fell down a hole which turned out to be the tunnel they had been searching for. Now that they had a way in, they carefully planned the next move with the people who was going to go into the city. Captain Rodgers being an old hand at this carefully selected a team who had the skills needed to disrupt the enemy, this included Simon as well as the knights he fought on the training field and the silent knight. Also in the group were the engineers Brook and Rivers and an archer who went by Longshot, as well as a half dozen men at arms and archers who had served under the captain before. The plan was for them to sneak in that very night, disguised as northern troupes so that they could move around more easily once inside and once inside slowly wreak havoc with the defenders, killing captains and burning food supplies and whatever else to slowly destroy the moral of the soldiers inside. After a week or so of doing this they were to capture general Vividius and this will hopefully make the rest of the north men surrender to them but if this doesn’t they kill him and open the outer wall gate to let everyone else in. so for a few hours before sunset Simon got ready to go by making sure his northern armour was in the correct condition and that he had all his weapons honed sharp, once he was ready he set off to the rendezvous point where he met the captain and his men.

            “Well you are right on time, good I like that, you seen the others who are coming” the captain asked.

            “No sir I have seen no one on my path but then I was mostly sneaking as I thought that out own soldiers was likely to attack me when I’m dressed as I am” Simon replied.

            “It’s good to have someone with some sense on this mission, fall in we’ll wait a few minutes for the others to show their faces” the captain said and Simon did as he was ordered. A few minutes past and then out of the bush two people came striding out both in northern uniform, one was wearing a helmet and had a sword and shield and the other had a bow slung on their back.

            “Sir Arthur, longshot you look very convincing” the captain said, the helmet shoulder nodded.

            “It’s not that hard to look like a north man, especially as I have seen quite a few down the length of my arrows” Longshot said.

            “No doubt, we just have a few more to wait for and then we can set of” the captain said and these two fell in with the other men. Barely another minute had past when two more north men came from the west with bags slung over their soldiers and Simon figured that these were the two engineers that would be coming with them. It was another ten minutes before the other knights emerged together.

            “You lot take your time” the captain said.

            “Hey it’s difficult to get past our own men dressed as we are, we were nearly caught twice” the bear replied.

             “Yeah, yeah whatever you say, right we are all hear now let’s get going” the captain said and so the group set of and got to the secret entrance. Once here they lit torches and then descended into the secret tunnel, which they proceeded to walk along towards the castle. It was a long, dark tunnel with water dripping down from the ceiling and it took them over an hour to walk along it before they came close to the end where the saw some light, so they put out their own. They carefully listened for a few minutes but they heard nothing coming and so they opened the door to the tunnel and emerged into an empty room which appeared to be some kind of cellar. There was a stair chase that went up in one corner of the room and one of the captains men went up these and checked above, he was gone for a few minutes before coming back down and saying that the coast was clear. So they all went up and existed the house that the cellar belonged too and came onto a street, they could see that they was within the first wall of the castle but not the second. The captain nodded and they set of and explored a little of the castle before they found a nice building which was empty which they chose to rest in for that night.

            The next day they split themselves up into a couple of different groups and explored the castle, finding out where the food and water was kept, where the soldiers patrolled and slept. With their disguises they managed to get through the second gate into the inner keep and even wonder around that for a bit and find things out. With all of this reconnaissance they met up again and told the others what they had found out.

            “This is really excellent information that we can act on. Tonight I want Simon, the knights and the engineers to burn down the food storage on the western side of the castle. Myself and my men will be poisoning the water supply on the eastern.” The captain said and everyone nodded at this plan and then they ate some food before going their separate ways at sundown. Simon with the knights and engineers went off to the western side of the castle where there were a few storage buildings in close proximity to each other. The knights and Simon kept an eye out while the engineers went to work by creating a fire but making it look like an accident rather than a deliberate action. It was not long before quite a blaze was going inside one of the storage buildings and this was destroying the food inside and the engineers said that it would soon spread to the others even if the alarm was raised and people came to firefight it but they may be able to save some of the food and that we should get out of here so to not look suspicious and they all nodded at this and left the area. They heard the alarm being raised but they kept to the shadows and returned to the base of operations. They waited about an hour and then the captain and his men came back with smiles on their faces.

            “Looks like we’ve had a good night’s work boys, we saw the smoke as we were walking back, good job lads. We poisoned all the water on the eastern side so now for the next couple days the people and soldiers on that side will start to be ill and won’t be able to defend themselves as much” the captain said and the men all wore big smiles at this though they did not cheer even if they felt like it just in case that gave themselves away.

“Tomorrow is another day where we can get some good work is, see how the mood is within the castle and find out more about the defences and the captains” the captain said “So you lot better get some rest we have a lot more work ahead of us.” So the men settled down for the night and slept.