Mercenaries and Adventurers

Bloodlicker is a tall and strong young prairie horse with a black and gray overall body and gray-white hooves.

After asking its owner, it turned out that the blood licking grass had been steered last year, and the horse can be trained for riding obedience. But for more than a year, not only the three sons of their family failed to win this fierce and fierce young prairie horse, but even the merchants who came and went were unable to win it.

"The seed of the old overlord is powerful. It is impossible for ordinary people to get close to it, and they will be knocked down directly."

Having said this, Firebeard shook his head.

He watched Kiel adding the harness needed for the horse to be ridden to the horse one by one, feeling a little reluctant.

Seeing the appearance of the firebeard, Xueyasite came over with a blushing face: "What? It looks like he is about to repent? After being tamed, he wants to sell it to the Great Chamber of Commerce? You are not afraid of being cheated by the price. .”

Quickly waved his hand, Firebeard sneered and said, "Where is it? It's just the price of this blood licking grass?"

Seeing the way his old friend laughed, Xueyaster knew what this man was thinking, so before the other party spoke first, he calculated the price of the horse: "Going to the old overlord to breed, it costs a lot of money." A gold coin, right? That’s what everyone says about this price, don’t say you spent more money.”

So Firebeard had to keep his mouth shut and shrugged his shoulders.

"The cost of raising a female horse from Bloodlicking Grass is about two silver coins, I guess."

The little firebeard interjected: "Impossible, its mother is also a famous horse, and the offspring are all very good horse breeds, it is impossible to count two silver coins, you know, such a horse with good horses The matriarchal line of blood relationship, the limited chance of pregnancy alone is more than two silver coins."

Finally, Firebeard raised two fingers: "It must be this number!"

"Two gold coins? Are you crazy?"

"I'm not crazy. Don't look at other old overlords on the market, but because the matrilineal side is not good enough, only two or three out of ten will be successful. The key lies in the matrilineal blood relationship. Look, Compared with other prairie horses in my stable, its height, agility, strength, running speed, corresponding speed, and obedience to people are far superior to other horses in all aspects."

Xueyasite rolled his eyes: "The more you talk, the more nonsense it is, and the obedience to people. It has not been tamed before, so there is no obedience in it."

Firebeard knew that he was talking, so he sneered and changed his words: "Can you see it soon? Look at how obedient it is now, how well behaved it is under Kiel's men. After all, other horses are animals, even after they are tamed, they are still wild. It is difficult to tame, but the blood licking grass is different, well-behaved, Kiel won't let it move, it just stays where it is."

"Nonsense and obsessive. At most, half a gold coin will be added because of the maternal relationship. You can use this experience to breed in the future, and you will still earn some money in the future. You have to thank him for being able to help you win the blood licking grass." , this point, it’s not too much to convert some money, right?”

The two quarreled and quarreled, and finally Bloodfang helped Kiel lower the price of blood licking grass to four gold coins.

At the same time, Firebeard had to shoe the horse, as well as a complete set of horse equipment and several bags of dry bean rations.

Dried beans are for horses. When there is no fresh and nutritious grass to feed, you can add some more dried beans to the ordinary forage to supplement nutrition for horses.

The money was in Xueyasite's hands, and he gave the money to Huobeard on the spot.

At the same time, Firebeard also asked the eldest son to issue a sales document for their stable, and asked Keir to sign his name.

There are two copies, Kil takes one, and the other will be handed over to the local Church of the God of Animal Shepherd, which will be kept by the church, and the priest will read it to the God of Animal Shepherd, and it will be recorded by the god.

In this way, even if all the documents of the horse are lost in the future, you can spend a sum of money to go to the Church of the God of Animal Husbandry to confirm where the horse belongs to and whose property it is through the priest.

-

Keel carefully examined the rather large sales document.

This is a refined straw paper with a light green base and a grassy aroma. Because a specific weed is used, the paper is extra strong and easy to write on.

At the beginning of the document, it first explained the details of the horse purchase transaction, followed by the name of the blood lick and the characteristics of the horse.

Then, a lot of space is spent below to explain the lineage and special features of its parents and mothers.

Here, the blood licking grass's father, the old overlord, has a lot of content, and the mother's generation also has a lot of content. Its several half-brothers are also excellent horses.

In the end, there is still a lot of space at the end of the file. This is a convenient place for Kiel to add the honors and achievements of the blood licking grass to it later.

For example, which horse races have been won, or how many wars have been participated in, which famous knights or nobles rode when and so on.

Keel carefully rolled up the document, put it in a cylindrical document storage bucket, and sealed it.

"Did you pay the money? How much?"

He didn't ride the blood lick, but tied his rein to the back of the horse that came. Kiel and Bloodfang planned to buy another prairie horse for Bloodfang to use.

This horse can be bought as an ordinary prairie horse.

"This number is not bad, because the blood licking grass is much better than ordinary prairie horses in all aspects." After gesturing a number, Kiel nodded while watching the gesture.

Anyway, this money was won by him in a fighting bet recently.

Money is easy to come by, and naturally it doesn't hurt much to spend it.

If he had been spending the money while hunting slime monsters in Kendall County, then he would not say he was reluctant, but at least he was very sad that the money he earned from his labor was spent too easily.

In the end, Xueyasite picked a fat piebald mare. This kind of prairie horse has a docile personality and amazing endurance. It can march long distances, and it is very convenient to ride to keep up with the Kendal army.

The mare is also suitable for the blood tooth who has just recovered from his injury to ride, so he doesn't need to spend more energy dealing with the horse under his crotch.

-

In the end, after purchasing two new horses slowly at noon, they rushed to catch up with Kendall's army that had been marching southward in the afternoon.

"Yo hoo!"

Kiel rode the blood licking grass and quickly ran in circles on the spacious business road.

He was extremely happy, and it was the first time in his life that the blood licking grass being ridden galloped so happily in the open world. It ran very powerfully, and it ran for a long time without stopping.

Everything around him swished past Kiel's body, and the originally vast land also felt smaller at this speed, giving Kiel a feeling of conquering the whole world. This good horse feels different when running, far better than the few horses he has ridden before.

I'm sorry, but the remaining two horses he got from the bandits last year will only be used for pulling carts afterwards.

It's a pity that they are all brave and good boys, and they are not afraid of fighting harpies.

The Cavan Territory is indeed much more prosperous than other places in the western provinces. Unlike the previous trade route, which mainly had only one trunk line, the north-south trade route taken by the Kendalls entered the Cavan Territory. Not only were there large caravans The main trunk line connects the branch lines to towns and villages in other directions.

These branches are like the webs woven by spiders, or their eight legs, densely connected to other places.

At every intersection, there are complex street signs that can only be understood by locals or businessmen who often travel on commercial routes.

Not only was the text on it mottled, but Keel guessed that there were also typos in it.

"Really, such an important street sign can be written wrongly. Could you find some educated guys to write it when it was produced?"

Keir complained casually, but he didn't need to identify where to go. The Kendalls must have gone through the entire Cavan Territory along the widest north-south trade route.

"No way, the nearby villages are full of herdsmen who farm land or raise horses and cattle and sheep. They will never need to recognize characters in their lives. Even if the first generation of migrants who settled down at the beginning knew characters, after the second generation after they settled down, Not many people spend time and energy teaching children to read and write."

Xueyasite still knows about Cavan collar very well, because he usually runs business routes that end or start from Cavan collar, and if he finds a suitable job here, he will definitely live and live nearby for a long time.

In his words, he is considered half a Cavin leader.

The people here are relatively wealthy, because the products produced are never worrying about selling, and the market has always been very good. The cattle, horses and sheep produced in the pastures of various villages in Kawen not only supply more than half of the kingdom, but also sell them to other kingdoms in the south through the southward trade route. to go.

"Those dwarves sometimes buy some cattle from here, and there is also a special type of bighorn sheep."

"Do dwarves also plow the land and grow food?"

Keir was a little curious. He hadn't come into contact with a foreign race like dwarves yet. After all, the Kingdom of St. Halse was an emerging country with humans as the main race.

Especially after the dwarves were defeated here before, I heard that there are dwarves here, but not many, and Kiel has never seen what it looks like.

Facing Kiel's question, Xueyasite felt as if he had heard a funny joke: "Joke, which race in this world doesn't grow crops for a living, is it difficult to eat food and meat that fall from trees? "

"What about elves? In poetry and drama, don't elves only eat fruit from fruit trees?"

"I don't know about this, but I heard that there are many kinds of elves, and it's not just the kind of green elves that eat fruit, right? I've heard people say that there is a large elf forest within the territory of a kingdom in the south. You can Saw rare elves."

At the same time, he said quietly: "I also heard that there are elves haunting a forest in the west of the Sea of ​​Grass. There are elves supporting the dwarves fighting for the territory there."

"real or fake?"

"I heard it, but it can't be true. Just listen to it. It's all nonsense from the mouths of drunkards. If you can believe it a little bit, they are already sober."

The two smiled, speeded up their horses, and soon caught up with Kendall's army before dark.

-

When camping next to the village at night, Kiel saw the senior clerk in charge of logistics leaving the camp with the baron's order.

The clerk approached the Bingxun Pass military caravan who had been stubbornly following the army here. They talked for a long time, and it seemed that a box of the baron's money was handed over to them.

Kiel didn't know what he was doing. He guessed that this place was prosperous and rich, and it was really suitable for the caravan he controlled to operate here.

Not far from the barracks is the village that I passed by tonight. Similar to Dongyaohua Village that Kiel visited before, outside this wealthy village called Cow Dung Village, there are also a large pool of refugees from the southern provinces who fled here to live and survive. A large number of shacks.

Locals have mixed feelings about it.

The refugees are no different from them in terms of identity. Most of them are farmers. Since the refugees fled to the village, all the basic physical work can be done by hiring these people with food.

There is no shortage of food in the rich villages and towns of Kawenling. Therefore, when these people come, the food production that is saturated in the local area has increased a lot. The food that was originally large enough to make the granaries of voles, squirrels and house mice has been dispatched. Useful.

After the local people got rid of the basic manual labor, a large wave of labor force was released, which made the local area based on the agricultural and animal husbandry industry undergo a wave of short-term industrial upgrading.

It sounds a bit hypocritical, but in reality, the food and livestock that were originally produced locally finally had the opportunity to undergo large-scale processing operations.

The local villagers in each village have earned a lot of money from the refugees, and the big households or lord families in the village have also collected a lot of wealth by leasing the land in the village. These new money will have new place.

-

The discerning family took this opportunity to organize the idle villagers in the village and set up a simple workshop in the village, specializing in the new high-level processing of the perennial surplus grain and the industry that can only sell live animals and livestock.

The prairie is windy, and Kawen Ling is half of the prairie area, and the wind here is not small.

So new windmills were erected in various villages.

The wheat seeds are taken off the husk by the threshing machine designed by the craftsmen, and then finely ground into brown-white wheat flour in the stone mill under the windmill mill. The straw sacks were filled with finely ground wheat flour, and then they were fastened and loaded into carts, and sold to the big cities in Cavinland at a higher price.

These new wheat flour will spread through trade routes, greatly reducing the price of refined grain in nearby provinces and neighboring countries.

Not to mention anything else, the locals can now eat the bread that they could only eat during the festivals in the past. Even if the homemade bread is not as delicious as the ones made by various churches, and it doesn't have any magical effect.

In addition, in the past, locally produced livestock had to spend a lot of effort on the caravan to transport the whole car of sheep and cattle to other places.

Livestock can be done without a car, but after a long journey, no matter how fat they are raised by the people in the Cavin collar, they will be exhausted after arriving at the destination.

Can't sell for a good price.

So since the refugees from the southern province came here to take refuge last year, most of the villages and towns in the Cavan collar have upgraded this.

Fat animals do not need to be sold to other places, but are directly slaughtered in the hands of local butchers. Large pieces of meat are salted and dried with spring sunshine and warm wind to become jerky that can be stored for a long time.

Such goods can be transported for a long time, and even the northern provinces of the kingdom can eat their dried meat.

Large pieces of cowhide are tanned, layered, and matured to make a leather substrate that can be made into various utensils. This thing has a wide range of uses and is convenient for sale.

After the beef bones are boiled out of fat, they are smashed into powder with a steel hammer, and scattered into the fields after burning and plowing, secretly increasing the fertility of the fields.

A large amount of agricultural labor can be handed over to refugees cheaply, and with sufficient manpower, the production of livestock and food will increase again.

The prosperous future of Cavin Land seems to be at your fingertips. As long as the war in the southern provinces does not end and the refugees do not return to their hometowns, this prosperity will have no end.

But Baron Kendall seems to think otherwise.

At dinner in the evening, Keel, who was sitting behind Knight Crowe and wrestling with the Harpy liver, heard the discussion between the baron and the two knights.

Of course, the local prosperity was captured by Baron Kendall.

He proposes several other analytical possibilities.

"The biggest question is, do they have enough force to defend everything that Cavin led?"

The baron was cutting with a silver knife the most tender piece of beef he had bought in the village. The beef after simple grilling is also extremely delicious. The baron cut the beef with a sharp silver knife in one hand, and rubbed a ring on his left hand with the other, causing the ring to release a small ball of blue flames on the sliced ​​tender beef. Gently flirt.

The beef slices quickly shrink and curl up.

The baron gently rolled a few wild vegetables with fragrance into the meat slices, then inserted it with the tip of the knife, and put it into his mouth to chew.

The two knights didn't have such an exquisite way of eating. They each roasted a lamb, broke off the burnt leg of the lamb, and chewed it in their mouths: "How do you say? The people here have a lot of weapons and training. "

"The number of knights in Cavin's territory is also far more than other places. In the past two days, I have heard the names of at least six knight families. Although none of them have the names of knight families that have been famous in the Kingdom Knight Competition. But at least it shows that the local rich foundation still allows the accompanying force to develop!"

The front is what Knight Rumi said, and the back is naturally what Knight Crowe said.

The baron was observing while walking through the Cavin collar these days, and the other two were not idle either.

The baron stopped their words and shook his head: "It's all appearances. Think about it carefully, although the villagers in the village have enough weapons and equipment and decent training. But these things can only be fooled at a low level It’s just local bandits and bandits. In a real fight, I don’t think even the caravan guards organized by the Great Chamber of Commerce will be able to deal with it.”

The baron paused: "Of course, we have to take into account that the local area is adjacent to the iron-producing southern provinces, and there is no shortage of iron. I can also produce a large number of armor and leather goods. Although the level is not good, the technology can be improved quickly. And the local villages and towns With their own pastures, after the villagers are armed, they can even transform into cavalry one by one. This is terrible."

The baron stroked his beard: "Perhaps this is the fundamental basis for Viscount Cavin to not be afraid of anyone and organizations around him."

The three of them were silent for a while, but they were all silently calculating the possible recruitment scale of Caven's cavalry.

"Thirty thousand?"

"Impossible, twenty thousand!"

"fifty thousand!"

Each of the three gave a number.

Both are the number of troops that can level one or two kingdoms.

Pure cavalry.

Among them, Crow Knight gave the most numbers.

The other two looked at him: "How can it be fifty thousand?"

Knight Crowe coughed lightly: "Women can fight, too. The entire Cavin Territory is about 100,000 people, and all young men and women are armed. That's probably the number."

The baron smiled: "Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But if I say less than ten years, Cavin collar is finished?"

On this point, the Baron had discussed this with Knight Crowe before, and Knight Crowe knew that Baron Kendall was not talking nonsense.

"I estimate the number of harpies to be at least a thousand. If they gather together, no matter how many ordinary troops there are, they will be defeated. This is especially true when there are many horses."

Knight Rumi did not speak, but listened carefully to the words of the other two, and understood that they were talking about the possibility of the harpies on the Guaifeng Grassland going south to invade the Cavin Territory.

Don't look at the fact that Kendall's army defeated dozens of monsters with limited losses, a settlement of monster tribes. That is entirely due to the combined result of the abundant priest power inside, the combat power of knights and barons, and the fact that almost all of the soldiers have the ability to project.

If other armies encounter a harpy of this size, it is estimated that they will be disorganized by the monster's special ability after a face-to-face meeting. Then the soldiers and horses in the front row will be picked up by the monster and thrown, and soon the entire army will be defeated. up. UU reading www.uukanshu.com

At this point, the result is the same whether the soldier is on horseback or not. Even riding a horse is troublesome, because the horse weighing hundreds of kilograms is smashed down, but it is even more fatal.

If you run, there is no difference between the evacuation on human feet and the evacuation on horseback for the flying harpies.

It's all slow to die.

"Will it be like this in the end? Cavin collar? It looks very prosperous here. What a pity."

Knight Rumi muttered a few words, and then ate the roast lamb sullenly.

After the baron finished speaking, he was silent for a while before speaking: "I have an idea."

Knight Crowe looked at the baron and motioned for him to talk.

"If, I mean if, the master of the western province, Earl Vedel, understands the development of the Cavan Territory. Is it possible for him to arrange some means in the strange wind grassland. The 'control' monsters will invade south at any time. "

As soon as these words came out, Knight Crowe immediately blurted out: "Magic Ballista! And the knights who were dispatched in turn many years ago!"

The knight narrowed his eyes: "If it is as you said, then Earl Vedel has already intervened many years ago and made all possible arrangements? The underground villages and towns along the commercial route, the military equipment investment in Weifeng Town, several batches before and after Knight 'No Fruit' went deep into the steppe to crusade. Could it be arranged in advance?"

"I don't know. But my family knowledge and my life experience tell me it's possible, and very likely."

Baron Kendall sighed, and several people fell silent.

"We may have discovered a little secret of the Earl of the Western Province. Perhaps, this guess can be exchanged for some practical help from Viscount Cavin when needed in the future. But now is not the time."

the Baron murmured in a low voice.