Rome Must Fall

In front of the village gate, there were dozens of Noriki warriors wearing iron helmets and armor, with long swords on their waists, standing in a line on both sides of the road. One of them wore a large helmet with horns and shiny silver armor. He was burly, with broad shoulders and a broad body. His arms were strong and powerful, with bulging veins, and a thick beard that completely covered his mouth and nose.

Seeing Alakosia and his group coming, he stepped forward and said in a loud voice: "Messenger of the Nix Tribe, I am the leader of the Iron Core Tribe, welcome to you!"

Alakosia bowed and saluted: "Respected Chief Sfeli, I am Alakosia, the messenger sent by the Nix Tribe. Our Chief Maximus asked me to extend my sincere greetings to you and asked me to represent the tribe, hoping to discuss friendly matters between the two tribes with you!"

Alakosia pointed to the wooden box behind him and said seriously: "This is a gift that Chief Maximus carefully prepared for you to express his sincerity. I hope you like it!"

"Good! Good!..." Sfeli grinned, revealing a row of neat and white teeth. He waved his arms vigorously: "Your chief is too polite! Come on, follow me into the village first, let's sit down and talk slowly."

To be honest, Alakosia did not expect the leader of this tribe to come out to greet him in person, but the welcoming line of dozens of heavily armed warriors showed them the strength of the tribe.

How could Alacosia, who had experienced many hardships, be frightened by such a small scene? He followed Sfeli calmly, passing through the majestic Noriki heavy-armored warriors, and leisurely looked at the towering stone wall in front and the fully armed patrol on the wall.

He found that compared with the Segestica army, the Noriki tribe's warriors had a high rate of armor, but it was understandable, after all, the Norikis were famous in the Mediterranean for their iron smelting and ironmaking.

After passing through the village gate corridor and the short mountain pass, Alacosia saw a relatively flat and wide valley.

In the central area of ​​the valley were neat rows of wooden and stone houses, and a large square where children played and the elderly chatted in the sun.

There are several water diversion channels in the small river near the cliff. The river water is diverted to a row of stone houses on the shore. This is where iron ore is smelted. The blazing fire is burning day and night, and impurities are constantly melted and flowed out at high temperatures. The softened iron in the vertical furnace is called "iron fish" by the Noriki people. After cooling, these iron fish are carried to the spacious stone warehouse next to them for storage.

On the other side of the valley is a low forest. There are also several stone houses built between the forest and the valley. That is where this tribe makes iron tools. The Noriki craftsmen hold hammers and work tirelessly to beat the iron blocks. After repeated hammering and polishing, exquisite iron tools are gradually formed. There are farm tools, but more are spears, long swords, short swords, javelins, shields, helmets, breastplates... and other various weapons. They are carefully placed on the weapon stalls on both sides of the road that Alakosia and his party passed.

There was the sound of iron hammering in his ears, and the strong smell of charcoal in his nose. Listening to Sfeli's introduction to his tribe and looking at the many exquisite weapons on the roadside, Alakosia kept thinking in his mind: What is the motive of the Noriki people doing all this in front of him? ...

Arriving at the main house, Sfeli took him into the living room. Alakosia was surprised to find that there was another person in the living room, but he was sitting in the main seat. He was wearing a linen robe, with long hair tied on his shoulders and a white beard floating on his chest. Although he was an old man, his face was thin and ruddy, his eyes were deep and gentle, and his elegant and elegant temperament was very different from the Noriki people he saw on the road.

"Sage, the messenger of the Nix tribe is here." Sfeli saluted respectfully.

This move surprised Alakosia a little.

The old man smiled: "Guests from afar, I am Bodamochi, the druid of the Iron Core Tribe. On behalf of the tribesmen, I welcome your arrival. Please take a seat!"

Druid! ...Alacosia, who had learned about the Noriki people before coming, suddenly realized: in many traditional Celtic tribes, the main responsibility of the leader is to lead the warriors of the tribe to fight, but the druids have the highest status and the greatest power in the tribe. They have many rights such as sacrifice, judgment, diplomacy, teaching, etc., and even the tribal leaders are appointed by them.

The Iron Core Tribe is obviously also a traditional Celtic tribe. No wonder the leader Sfeli took the initiative to greet them outside the village when they first visited, because he was not the leader of the tribe. This is very different from the power system of the Nix Tribe, the Ardi Tribe, and the Pannoni Tribe! ...Alacosia secretly alerted and quickly introduced himself again.

"Is the messenger an Illyrian?" asked Podmochi.

"Yes." Alakosia nodded and emphasized: "Our Nix tribe is an Illyrian tribe."

"But you speak Celtic very well."

Alakosia took the opportunity to say: "This is mainly because there are many Scodischi people in the Nix tribe. Although they are Celts, the tribe still accepts them as tribal members, because our leader Maximus has always advocated, 'No matter what race a person is, as long as he is willing to join the Nix and willing to contribute his strength to the Nix, we should not refuse him, but should regard him as one of our own.'"

"Your leader is really open-minded! I am very grateful that you can treat the Scodischi people so kindly!" Podmochi said in a gentle tone with a look of surprise on his face.

Then, he changed the topic: "We live in the mountains and don't know much about things in the south. We only know that there is an Illyrian tribe called Ardei to the south of the tribe. I didn't know anything about your Nyx tribe before. I'm really ashamed. !”

These words of apology gave Alacosia a different flavor. He explained with a calm face: "We, the old people of Nyx, originally came from the Illyrian tribe further south, but because of the difficulty of life in the mountains, , was forced to walk out of the mountains and work as a mercenary. He barely survived for several years by being hired by coastal city-states to fight.

Later, because the envoys of the Ardei tribe came to us, hoping that we could help them defeat the powerful enemies that invaded their homeland, the Pannonians, and also promised that as long as we defeated the Pannonians, they were willing to give us what was originally theirs. The land of the Kupa River was given to us to live in, so we came here and later established the Nix tribe..."

What Aracoscia said was not made up by himself, but the official version that had been discussed by the Political Council long ago, and was publicized by the Ministry of Commerce when dealing with surrounding tribes, thereby eliminating the traces of the rebels and allowing Other tribes developed the impression that the Knicks were the local tribe.

"So that's it." Podamochi nodded slightly, and then sighed: "The Pannoni have a large population and strong strength. They are a major race in the great river plain in the south of the mountain, and the Segostika tribe among them is even more powerful. When you first arrived, the Knicks were not only able to defeat them, but you were also said to have destroyed them. This is really surprising!”

"Dear Sage Bodamoch." Arakosia explained seriously: "We, the Nyx, are indeed far from being able to compare with the Pannoni people who have a large population in terms of strength. But although we have a small number of people, we have been fighting outside all year round. , every soldier has rich combat experience.

We also learned better military technology from the Romans and Greeks. In order to survive in battle, our soldiers bought better weapons and armor to equip themselves when they had money... Therefore, as far as war is concerned, The Pannonians are far inferior to us Nyx.

But it happens that the Pannonians rely on their strength and look down on us Nix. They are negligent every time they fight with us. However, we have the wise and decisive leader Maximus, so we can win again and again.

However, the several wars between our Nyx and the Pannoni were all started by the Pannoni! It was they who invaded the territory of the Ardi people and even wanted to destroy the entire Ardi tribe, so we Nix were invited here!

After we Nix settled along the Kupa River, we even took the initiative to sign an armistice agreement with the Segestica tribe. However, the Pannoni were unwilling to fail and formed a large army a year later to completely eliminate us; After our Knicks completely defeated the Segestica tribe, we once again signed an armistice agreement with several large Pannoni tribes such as Daixi Tiatai...

But I guess the Pannonians already hate us Knicks so much that they might start another war one day. Chief Maximus once said, 'We, the Nyx tribe, are newcomers to this land, and we must try our best to maintain friendship with the surrounding tribes so that the tribesmen can live a stable life. But if a tribe wants to bully the Knicks, the Knicks will fight back with all their strength, because only victory can guarantee the peace of the tribe! ’”

The reason why Alacosia mentioned in his words that the Nyx military technology and weapons and equipment were learned from the Romans and Greeks is because the battle between the Nyx army and the Japods took place not far to the south from here, Nori As long as the Ki people inquired carefully, they would naturally find that the attire of the Nyx soldiers was very similar to that of the Romans, and the Noriki people had trade relations with the Romans, so in response to Bodamoch, Alacosia gave this A reasonable reason to prevent the Noriki from being too surprised and telling the Romans, who would then guess the truth.

However, Podamochi's focus was not on the military equipment of the Nyx soldiers. The external attitude of the Nyx tribe expressed in Alakosia's words made him feel a little relieved.