Day after day, along the bed of dry bones, hiding during the day and hurrying by night, until at last the trees thickened, rolling green hills appeared before me, a meandering stream loomed like a small snake from its shell, and on the sun-drenched oasis, a huge wolf's tooth castle stood like a charred rotten tooth.

It won't be too long, Solanda told herself, drinking horse springs is a hundred miles away.

Solandar ordered a camp outside the Wolf's Tooth Fort, and the soldiers began digging their own sand holes, removing the planks and shields from the wagons to support the sand holes, and then putting them back together, leaving only numerous honeycomb-shaped holes along the way.

Solanda walked under Akira's cross, and Katuru, one of the Blood Wolf Guards, stood up and gave her a military salute. Solanda looked at the pale Katulu and asked, "Can you still hold on?" ”

Katulu was a fierce-looking strong man, but at this point he was so weak that he could barely speak, "No problem, but don't let her bleed again." ”

"Okay, I promise not to interrogate her again, and you promise that she won't die before she reaches the Drinking Horse Spring." Although Katulu is a good fighter on the battlefield, magic is to sustain people's lives, and he can delay the time for any thing that is dying to report to hell, of course, the price is also high, that is, his own vitality, but fortunately, as long as he is not overdrawn too much, after a while Katulu will return to normal.

"Hmph, then you'd better control her menstrual affairs, this girl will hang up if she bleeds a drop of blood."

Solanda looked at Akira on the cross, her head hanging on her chest, her skin black and cracked, the blood was gone, and a green fur grew from the wound, shining in the sun, and when you got closer, you could see that it was a layer of green-headed flies, lying on the Sand Rider Princess, licking the juicy serum. She really couldn't hold on any longer, Solanda regretfully admitted. She patted Akira's foot, "Hold on, my princess, you'll see your father soon." ”

Solandar turned to look at the Wolf's Tooth Keep, the building large and twisted, looking gloomy even in the midday sun. The country of sand riders does not produce wood and stone, all the stones used to build the city are quarried from the western coast, and the sand riders drive countless slaves to carry them with their bare hands, from the Yarra Strait to the Wolf's Tooth Fort between thousands of miles of sand, tens of thousands of slaves, horses, and even a large number of sand knights are buried, some people have made statistics when the Wolf's Tooth Fort was completed, and the Sand Horse Country lost half of its population for this castle. At that time, the king of the sand knights, Wolf I, was complacent about this, and he was finally able to feed twenty percent of the people with one percent of the water on the continent of Orops.

It is a castle built of death.

The thick walls rose from the sand, steep and abrupt like a mountain cliff, and the battlements were lined with crossbow holes made of wood and iron, which looked as small as insects. Solanda couldn't see the many flags between the city's teeth, but she knew it was the Whirlwind Wolf Banner of the Shad family, who had spent months in the Wolf's Tooth Castle and knew the castle's interior. Hidden courtyards, dark cellars, walls that change shape behind people, seemingly endless spiral staircases, but that information is of no value to the siege, and now she needs to plan carefully and arrange her forces to take this ghost city in one fell swoop.

The Sand Rider King Voguson handed over the Wolf's Tooth Castle to his eldest son, Wolfe, not only because he had powerful magic to control his vassals, but also because Wolf's bloody skills were so intimidating that even his own father avoided them. However, from Akira's mouth, Solanda regrets to learn that the terrible prince is dead, and that the lord of the city is succeeded by an unknown sand rider nobleman named Gongatu.

Solanda's only impression of Gungatu is his face full of chickenpox marks, and it is said that he caught up with an unprecedented sandstorm when he had chickenpox, and the sand smashed chickenpox into his skin, which is the most intuitive memory of that sandstorm. "What, Vogtson wants the Mazi City Lord to send him to the end?" Solanda asked Akira sarcastically as she asked them. But in fact, it was this pockmarked lord who saved Solanda a lot of trouble - he cut off the half-pulled head of the Terror Prince from behind, and heard from Akira that Wolf was his wife at the time. It's really strange how the old wolf Voguson could endure the revenge of killing his son and give the wolf's tooth fort to Gongatu. But Akira avoided talking about it, and she refused to say anything about it.

Solanda had a vague sense that she was walking towards a conspiracy trap.

But what does it matter, I will crush your plot with your blood and fill the trap you have set with your wail. With a wave of his hand, Solandar summoned the Blood Wolf Guards into his tent to study the battle plan.

"Why do we stop?" Goru the Red Boots said loudly, "Give me fifty well-equipped Rangers and rush in through the gate, and I'll see who dares to stop me!" "Goru is a meat shield warrior, once boasted that he could defeat Wolf with only his hands, but was skinned by the Prince of Terror, but he still won Wolf in the arena, and since then he is known as the "Red Boot" Goru, he was not qualified to enter the pre-war meeting, but since the beginning of the war, the blood wolf guard has consumed a lot of money, and now Solandar can trust only a few of them.

"If you don't get half a mile from the castle, you'll be shot off." Skillful Cherno sneered, pointing to the map of the Wolf's Tooth Fort hanging in the tent and said, "See the crossbow arrow hole on the platform on the fifth floor?" There's their strongest crossbow there, and we've been walking for more than a year, and I don't know if they've improved the circlip on the crossbow, and if it's an improved version now, we'll have more casualties. ”

"Who's more lethal than your projectile or these trap crossbows?" Solanda asked.

"Projector." "But it takes a lot of time to reload a spear, and a trap crossbow can fire five in bursts." ”

Solanda pondered, then looked up, "Then let's not load the spears, but throw the captives into the city in projectors and let them take the lead." ”

The people in the tent paused visibly, and the red-haired Sir Cedric coughed his throat before finally speaking: "Since ancient times, killing and surrendering have been ominous. "He was one of the Neverfall vassals who had been forced to follow Solandar into the Sand Knights, and he had almost never spoken out against expeditions, but this time the princess had once again acted contrary to his noble chivalry, and he had to stand up for the captives.

However, Solanda dismissed him with a word: "They didn't surrender - the sand riders never gave in." The others followed her. Solanda is also a sand knight at heart, and she follows the predatory spirit of the Sand Knights, and of course agrees with their laws of killing.

"But they've been disarmed, they're no longer enemies, you can't kill innocents indiscriminately!"

"They are my captives, and I have the right to dispose of them." Solanda glared at Sir Cedric, "If you can't give me a better build, Sir, please leave!" ”

Cedric blushed, shook his belly, studded leather and chain mail with an angry rattle, and turned away from the tent.

"Useless old stuff." Solanda scolded, turned back and continued to study the combat deployment, "The main gate wall of the Wolf's Tooth Fort is ten yards thick, easy to defend and difficult to attack, so the main gate can only be feintmed, Goru, this job will be left to you; Nauru quietly walked around the north side of the castle with two hundreds, remembering to bury the barrels of lard and asphalt, and the projectors will all go to you when the battle begins. ”

One-Eyed Nauru interrupted the princess, "I don't agree, the watchtower in the east is the weakest guard, why don't you attack here with all your might?" "One-eyed Nauru was missing an eye in battle, but according to himself, one eye is more accurate to see.

"There is an alarm bell on the watchtower, and once it is discovered, the sentinel rings the alarm bell, and the whole city will concentrate its forces there." You fool. I'm surrounded by this kind of stuff, I wish Koeman was right now.

Skillful Cherno wrinkled his nose, it was a sign that he was using his brain, "It's not a way to fight like this, it's better to convert some of the projectors into siege towers." ”

It is true that encounters can be won by combat effectiveness, but siege warfare is not Solanda's specialty. There were 2,000 battle-hardened sand knights in the Wolf's Tooth Castle, as well as at least 10,000 civilians, almost as many as their own troops, and if they fought desperately with the fortification of the castle, it would be difficult for them to win this war of attrition without backup. "It's time-consuming to build siege towers," Solanda points out, "and I'm afraid Katulu won't be able to hold it that long." ”

"Then let Akira die," Nauru laughed, "I don't understand why you had to keep her alive, she used to treat you like that." In my opinion, I would have given her a good time. ”

"She has a conspiracy!" Solanda said gloomily, "There must be a reason why she's delayed using her magic. And no matter how much I tortured her, she wouldn't tell her whereabouts about Phoenix. ”

The Blood Wolf Guards looked at each other, and of course they knew what their princess was waging war for—ridiculous love. If the soldiers outside had known that they would be desperate for this reason, I believe that most of them would have turned away. But now they have no choice, the Wolf's Tooth Fortress is in front of them, and the shield of the Misty Forest has been closed behind them, they have no backup, no supplies, no way to retreat, only to rush into the Wolf's Tooth Fortress to have a chance of survival.

"With enough manpower, the siege towers can be built in three days," Cheno, pointing to both sides of the gate on the map, "There are two on each side of the gate, I don't know if there is enough wood on the supply truck, and the trees in the surrounding oases should be able to replenish it." ”

"No, don't siege towers." Sir Donald, a vassal of Neverwinter, said decisively, "The walls of the Ivory are already filled with barrels, sawn firewood, and bundles of oil ropes, and your siege towers will be burned in ten minutes." ”

Solanda nodded, "I still like to carry out surprise attacks, the main gate and the east wall of the Wolf's Tooth Fort only need to be feinted, the infantry and projectors are placed on the north wall, and the west wall is full of granaries and wells, don't attack until you have to." ”

Sir Donald shook his head, "These are still on paper, we need a good backup plan, I have never seen a castle in the desert, it can stand in the wind and sand, it must have its own unique structure, I think we should start from the inside." "Sir Donald is a middle-aged man, with a clean beard on his square face, he has never been out of Winterfell in his life, but he is a high-ranking general of the garrison, and the advantage of peacetime is that he has raised a large number of well-trained cowards. However, Donald's words reminded Solandar that the internal structure of the Wolf's Tooth Castle was indeed significantly different from other castles.

Solanda looked at the map thoughtfully, then pointed out a direction with his hand: "Here, there is a vent thirty yards above the ground. The place she was pointing to was at the northeast corner of the wall, diagonally below the watchtower. She turned to Sir Donald and said, "Give you fifty sappers, I don't care what the cost, I must take the exhaust before the second charge," and then turned to Goru the Red Boots, "You are in charge of the frontal siege, try to delay as much time as possible, and attract the main force of Gungatu," Finally, she gave Cheno the biggest problem, "You are in charge of covering Sir Donald, and if his mission fails, I will let you drink what they dug up with your own blood." ”

(l~1`x*>+``+