Fog had been falling from the morning of the next morning, and the damp and dreary air had made it more difficult to get on the road and a new problem to find the way.

"Your Majesty, there are no conspicuous buildings here, how do you guarantee that this path must be right...... Oh, there's not even a road, it's our own foot by foot. ”

"The road is changing, but the mountains are not changing, as long as we can be sure that our altitude is decreasing, then we are going south. If you're lucky enough to find a stream or something down the river, it's more convenient than catching a blind rush now. ”

If gooseberries and cloves are there, I'm afraid it will save you a little more trouble. Now she carries Sophia on a stretcher made of tree branches, vines and palms, and she can only choose relatively gentle trails.

Fortunately, the resources available in this dense forest are quite abundant, and there is also a clean water source. In addition to the fact that it was very difficult to maintain his physical strength, four days later, John finally saw the fortress between the two peaks.

Sinvaze Fortress. Its structure is more like an ancient pass. Made of stout logs and boulders, it looks sturdy despite being deserted for a long time. Because of the inconvenient transportation of mountain roads, after Serbia was divided between the empire and Hungary, there were more convenient routes for trade routes and people-to-people exchanges, and naturally there was no need to spend more troops in this tasteless and abandoned mountain pass.

Of course, although such a move saved a lot of military spending, it also meant that John and his party did not receive any support in this fortress.

"Next time...... I will tell Your Majesty that you can save money, but the military expenses are still ......."

Because of prolonged hunger and mild dehydration, not only John, but also the group looked a little ugly at this time. But the iron gates of Sinva Fortress were ajar, which made the two secular knights immediately nervous.

Even if Morey really had great powers, and he could not have made the mistake of not closing the city gates while facing such a large number of pursuers head-on and rushing to the fortress one step ahead of them.

The rest of the possibilities are a bit bizarre.

Either the Imperial and Hungarian armies forgot to close the mountain pass when the Serbian prisoners were leaving...... But this is a small possibility. According to Imperial law, it is not only the pawn who is responsible for closing the door, but also the servant who leads the horse and the top commander of the legion, who will be held accountable in varying degrees. It was a foolish mistake to expose the Imperial Portal to the enemy, and even if the fortress had been abandoned, it would be extremely vulnerable to a sneak attack with no defenses in the rear.

Another possibility......

It was the bandits and bandits who were entrenched in the vicinity who used various special methods to unlock the multi-ton iron weights needed to open and close the gates, and took the fortress for themselves.

In fact, this is the case with many abandoned fortresses, especially in wartime, when the garrison of the fortress is transferred to the front line and the troops are empty, and some of the rear fortresses are vulnerable to looting or even occupying attacks. The robbers would use it as a base to plunder and wait for the war to end.

Naturally, it was impossible for the empire to send regular troops to exterminate the bandits in the entire territory, and the existence of regular garrisons in villages and towns was to deal with the raids of mountain bandits. It's just that, under some tacit compromises, as long as the bandits do not violate the core interests of the empire, the attitude of the royal family towards their existence is always quite ambiguous.

The costs and benefits of exterminating bandits are completely disproportionate, and because of the inferior nature of human beings, the criminals will always be endless, and it is a normal situation for some poor people to fall into the grass in order to avoid criminal responsibility after breaking the law. Normally, the royal family's approach was to keep the concentration of bandits within its borders to a considerable number and leave them to fend for themselves. To a large extent, dealing with bandits became a way for the nobles and magistrates of the empire to pass the time and train the quality of their soldiers in peacetime.

But at the moment, John had never hated and hated this group of outlaws who were kings of the mountains.

The two secular knights in charge of the escort each drew their weapons and slowly approached the fortress of Sinvaze. In the middle of the fortress, in the middle of the square, which was about half the size of an arena, there was a bonfire blazing. There were bottles scattered all around, and although the alcohol had evaporated, it was not difficult to see that there was a big party here last night.

The two knights probably had an estimate in their minds. He continued to slowly search the inside of the fortress. The construction of Sinvaze Fortress is a classic pass fortress. There are steep mountain walls on the left and right sides, and strong walls in front and back. Only one corner of the fortress has a fortress building that can be used for daily habitation. Other living and forging buildings and supplies, such as furnaces, stables, and anvils, are scattered around the central square.

Whew——

A secular knight took out a single light crossbow from his back, and pierced it precisely through a middle-aged man dressed as a ruffian leaning against the gate of the fortress, resting with his arms folded.

No non-garrison unit was allowed to stay for more than an hour at any of the Empire's frontier forts, and this man, apparently, made Sinvaze Fortress his home.

"Your Majesty guessed right...... Sinwa must have fallen to this group of blindless robbers and bandits. The knight named Itney reloaded the crossbow bolts and quickly moved the body aside, "There are only a dozen stools on the campfire, and it doesn't look like this group is particularly large. What are we going to do? Go and report to Your Majesty first? ”

"What? Do you have to wait until Morey and they come and get out of this group? The other knight obviously didn't pay attention to the mountain bandits, and easily split the iron rope with the knight's sword in his hand, this huge movement naturally alarmed the other robbers in the fortress, "We are secular knights, my dear Itney. While devotion and sacrifice are the will of the Church and God, for now, we serve only Valleologo. ”

The robbers, who had risen from a hangover and a half-asleep, had apparently not yet realized the gravity of the matter, and when they hurried out of the room with rusty knives, daggers, and even daggers or hatchets, the scene was undoubtedly extremely comical.

And this comical scene turned into a massacre in an instant. The purpose of the broadsword and the full-body armor is that as long as you can afford this weight, even if you don't know anything about combat, you can easily defeat any opponent.

Today, it is the most powerful warriors in the entire empire who wield this monstrous weapon.

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