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the window to glance at the sun. Soon, soon they could go. |
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Simon and his troop rode over the drawbridge and under the portcullis into Iford just after dusk. The men had been warned and were ready, but ordered not to attack unless violence was offered them. There were some very nervous moments in the outer and inner baileys where missiles could be launched at them from the walls, but nothing happened. Sir Giles, Simon supposed, did not wish to risk a war inside his castle. The attack would be against Simon alone and in private. So much the better. He smiled and agreed with real pleasure when Sir Giles met him and urged him to come inside. |
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Simon's first doubts rose when no attempt was made to delay the men who followed him up to the Great Hall. The doubts increased when Sir Giles, all unarmed except for his eating knife, urged Simon, still mail-clad and with his sword at his side, into a wall chamber. When Simon saw the place was completely empty, that no band of armed assassins waited, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Perhaps they would rush in through the doorway? Nonsense! His own men were outside. One at a time he could cut down many, many men before they could overpower him. Also, with their unarmed master as his hostage, it |
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"My lord, my lord," Sir Giles whispered, breaking into Simon's befuddled train of thought. "I did not know what to do. I hope I have not done ill, but I could think of nothing else, no other way to warn you, and I dared send no second messenger lest that henchman of the Lord John should discover it." |
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Struggling to reorient his thinking, Simon could only stare at the man he had been casting in the role of villain. |
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"I beg you not to be angry," Sir Giles continued, "and to pardon me if I judged wrong, but it seemed more dangerous to refuse his offer outright and throw it in his teeth as I wished to do than to seem to accept. |
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