Chakalan Valley, Northern Bosnia.

Chakalan is a place in Bosnia adjacent to the Duchy of Kaniola in the north, and the valley terrain is narrow and complex, and the mountainous terrain of the northern origin of the Balkan Mountains contrasts sharply with the low and rugged valley.

The vast mountainous area that runs between the two countries is divided by a valley tens of miles long in Chakkaran, with the northern foot of the mountain belonging to Kaniola and the southern foot belonging to Bosnia.

In a slightly wider basin in the valley near Bosnia, there was a small town which, like most cities in northern Bosnia, was small and depressed.

This was not the case with the city of Siyah, which was once prosperous because it was adjacent to the northern countries and on the main route.

Noble emissaries from Western Europe, wealthy merchants were once regulars, but since the Ottomans conquered Bosnia, everything has changed.

All at once it seemed to be completely cut off from the interior of Europe, and Bosnia was full of Ottoman horsemen, which became a conquered land.

More and more people fled from the occupied south to the north, while the local nobility actively recruited mercenaries and peasants into their armies in a desperate battle against the Ottomans to retake their country.

However, in the face of the incredibly powerful army of the Ottomans, even the Balkan farmers, who had defeated Muhammad II and were known for their fierceness, were inevitably defeated.

However, the mountain people of the Balkans also showed the Ottomans what it means to be ferocious, tenacious and unruly in the mountains.

After several successive defeats, which cost the Ottomans dearly, Mehmed II, who was already in his prime and was not as energetic as his predecessor, finally realized that it seemed unrealistic to annex the land all at once.

The "conquerors" conquered the land, leaving the task of stabilizing and completely domesticating the people of the land to their successors.

The Northern Bosnians paid a terrible price for their resistance in exchange for the Ottoman conquest on the south bank of the Nausava River, and the confrontation between the two sides across the river was roughly determined.

As a result of the negotiations, the Northern Bosnians accepted the reluctance of the Ottoman Sultan as their monarch, but that Northern Bosnia was much freer and more expensive than the completely conquered and occupied South.

The conquered southern Bosnia was forbidden to send any supplies to the north, and the northerners were forbidden to hold any position of modest position in the conquered lands, and although the agreement made the two sides appear to be a truce, the sultan never stopped invading the north, and the Bosnians in exile in the north never gave up hope of recovering their homeland.

The nobles who fled to the north sent many emissaries to European countries and the Vatican, but the result was disappointment again and again, and the courts of Western Europe, although they feared the invasion of the Ottoman Empire, asked them to send troops to help Bosnia, but they were repeatedly refused.

Even Poland and Hungary, which are more directly threatened, seem to have little interest in liberating the Balkans, and are more concerned with how to protect their countries from threats.

The Northern Bosnians were disappointed in Europe, and the Southern Bosnians were equally disappointed in the nobles who had abandoned them and fled to the North.

At the same time, the Ottomans' repression of the North was becoming more and more powerful, as the economy of Northern Bosnia was hit by the lack of connectivity to the South, and Europeans' fears that war might cost them money in the event of a loss of investment.

As in the case of the city of Siyah, the original wealth has long since disappeared, and many people have become impoverished due to unemployment, especially since the accession of Bayezid II to the throne more than a decade ago, the sultan may not have been as great as his father in conquering and expanding, but he has a strong control over the occupied areas. But it is much better than Mehmed II, who only expanded his territory, but inevitably ate too much too quickly and was difficult to digest sometimes.

In response to the conquered southern Bosnia, Bayezid II adopted a series of powerful regimes, strengthening the iron and blood, while the Sultan skillfully divided the vanquished, he gave certain status and power to the local nobles who were willing to submit to him, and allowed their children to inherit their status, and he forced all families to send their young sons to the Ottomans to train in the paramilitary villages set up in various places, so that they could adopt a new faith from an early age. They were also forced to undergo various military trainings in order to serve as an important source of troops for the future Sudanese army.

In Northern Bosnia, Bayezid was equally unrelenting, and his emissaries frequently crossed the Nausava River to haunt the numerous exiles and the local nobles, in addition to various promises of peace, but also to sow discord between those nobles.

The Sultan's approach had clearly paid off, and rifts had begun to emerge between the originally united northern aristocracy, especially as time went on, and both the exiles and the local nobles were faced with confusion as to what to do with the realization that European support was unlikely.

An old man sat in a carriage jolting through the snow, and behind him a woman with a thick shawl wrapped around her head stared blankly at the trees that kept passing by.

From time to time, the old man looked back at the woman in the car behind him, and smiled with satisfaction and a slight obscenity.

This woman was selected by him from among the refugees who had fled from the south, and although life in the north was becoming more and more difficult because of the Ottoman coercion, it was still somewhat acceptable compared to the south.

The rule of the Ottomans was cruel, and even though the Sultan himself had a good reputation for mercy, his pasha were more terrible than the other, and in addition to resolutely carrying out the various strategies of the Sultan's rule, these people plundered the wealth of the Bosmians in all kinds of clever and even nominal ways.

Many families have been ruined as a result, and many more who have no way out have to leave their homes to find a way out.

The North, though equally turbulent, is still the territory of the Bosnians, and the like-minded civilians are looking for a way out in the North, which brings a large number of people to the North, but also a huge burden.

The huge number of refugees made many nobles tired of it, and their initial joy gradually turned into disgust and hostility, and later many nobles had forbidden refugees to enter their territory again, and those who trespassed were not only driven away, but might even be killed.

Refugees can only wander from one nobleman's territory to another's territory again and again, and their fate is mostly the same.

Few people are willing to accept them anymore, even if they barely meet some rare benevolent masters, but the lucky ones are only a few, and those nobles value those young and strong men and women, and most of them are still rejected.

There are many such things, and the refugees are completely disillusioned with the nobles, wandering aimlessly in the strange lands of the north, hoping to meet good luck.

Hungry and cold, some of the people took up the idea of the local populace, and the women began to knock quietly on the doors of each house, and if they could be taken in, the women would leave the wandering procession, but most of the people who did so were widows or a few unmarried women who had lost their loved ones and had no way out, while the young women who had husbands or were not yet married had to follow their families on a seemingly never-ending wandering.

The carriage kept running in the snow, and the old man looked back at the woman in the carriage, he was not worried about the woman escaping, where could she escape, she seemed to have been hungry for several days when he saw her, so it was only a little food for the woman to obediently get into his carriage.

"It's actually quite good here," said the old man to the woman behind him as he drove the car, "You know, before the Ottomans came, this place could be said to be a place full of gold, and many people made a fortune, and the nobles were quite kind, but now it doesn't work, the Ottomans have made us suffer, and because I heard that the Sultan's army is going to fight Bucharest, I don't know what it is, but because this nobleman is very nervous, so you came at a bad time." ”

The old man looked back at the woman and smiled smugly, there was something he didn't say, although it was not a good time for these refugees, but it was a good thing for him.

After all, being able to "buy" a young woman with just a little food is a blessing from God.

The woman raised her head and looked at the front a little blankly, the snow fell a lot the day before, and it was this snow that took the lives of many people, including her relatives.

The old man gave her something to eat, but it wasn't enough to keep her alive.

Looking at the old man's expression at the time, she already knew what it was implying to her.

The woman only hesitated for a moment before making a decision, what would happen to a single woman who had lost all her loved ones in this freezing place was conceivable, at least she had a chance to make a choice before things got worse.

The woman got into the old man's carriage, and was dragged to a strange place, and she did not know what was waiting for her, and she could only pray secretly in her heart that the old man was single, or at least that she would not be reduced to the point that she would not feel that she would not be able to wash away her sins even if she repented before God.

The old man seemed to be chattering endlessly, but the woman had no intention of listening to what he had to say, and she was only at a loss for her future, until she heard the old man suddenly let out a rather surprised "poof".

After wandering all the way, she had already encountered many frightened women, and immediately paid attention to the old man's unexpected tone.

The woman craned her neck to look over the old man's shoulder, and in the distance there were several black dots on the snow that were shaking in their direction.

The old man's face became solemn, and now there was chaos everywhere, especially after the nobles refused to allow refugees to enter their territory, and there were even more desperate refugees attacking local civilians.

"Hand me the knife that I put behind me," the old man hurriedly urged the woman, and seeing that she was a little flustered, the old man impatiently pushed her away, and pulled out a somewhat rusty scimitar from under the pile of miscellaneous items in the carriage.

"This is a knife that fought with the Ottomans." The old man shook his scimitar in front of his eyes, as if he had suddenly gained courage.

But the old man's confidence only lasted for a short time, and when he looked again at those who were already approaching, the old man's face gradually showed panic.

"Ottomans, Ottomans!"

The old man shouted in panic, he never expected to meet the Ottomans so unlucky.

Although the Ottoman cavalry would sometimes cross the Naussava River to the north and sometimes penetrate far away, it was mostly in the summer or warm spring and autumn, and the Ottomans did not like the cold season.

What's more, the Ottomans, although they sometimes went deep into the north, had never traveled so far in the old man's memory.

Didn't the nobles along the way know that the Ottomans had arrived? The old man wanted to question anyone, but now he couldn't think of any way out of the car except to hide in panic with the woman holding the rusty scimitar.

The Ottomans were fast, their horses neighing from far and near, mixed with the shouts of the riders.

The woman looked at the incoming pagans in alarm, her eyes full of fear, which had been under the rule of the Ottomans in the south for many years, made her even more frightened than the old man.

The speed of the Ottomans was really fast, and before the old man could get to the side of the road, he had already rushed in front of them, and the speed and strength of the Arabian horses were fully displayed at this moment.

The old man instinctively raised his sword, he didn't know whether he was going to resist or to forgive, but there was despair in his eyes, because he knew that the Ottomans would rush so wildly, and all that awaited him was a sharp sword.

But the imaginary massacre did not take place, and the Ottomans did not pay any attention to them at all, and rushed past them, and the Ottomans did not even look at the two people in the carriage.

The old man stood in the carriage with a cutlass in his hand, but his face was full of sluggishness.

It wasn't until he turned his head to look at the backs of the Ottomans that he realized that the Ottomans were running away in disarray rather than rushing towards them, and several of them looked unusually embarrassed, and even the last two people were urging the horses and throwing away the things that looked cumbersome on their horses' backs to lighten their loads.

The old man looked at the vanishing back of the Ottomans in a daze, and then he suddenly thought of something and hurried the carriage to the woods beside him.

But before he could drive the carriage into the woods, a thunderous roar came from the direction where the Ottomans had appeared before.

The old man paused slowly, he knew that it would be foolish to rush to dodge at this time, and he could only secretly pray in his heart for now that it was some noble army that was hostile to the Ottomans, or at least some reasonable man.

The people came just as quickly, but unlike the Ottomans who were desperately trying to escape, the team seemed to have deliberately maintained some kind of unhurried pace, but as soon as they came into view, the old man saw that it was clearly a well-trained army and not some haphazard army of mercenaries or some local nobles, for the strange and strange uniforms of the army had attracted his attention as soon as they appeared.

On the white snow, the old man's eyes were met by a striking crimson military uniform and a dazzling cuirass shining against the snow, which made him have to squint his eyes to see the army on the other side.

The old man's eyes narrowed slightly, as he looked rather peculiar and looked different from that of the Bosmians.

When they were close enough to see clearly, the first impression that flashed through the old man's mind was that "this army is so clean."

It would not be true to say that it was clean, for many of the men of the army, who had apparently made the long journey, looked dirty, some with mud stains on their armor, while others looked better, but their faces were also smeared with sweat and dust so that they could not be seen at all.

But even so, the old man could still feel that this team was very different from the aristocratic armies he was familiar with.

A horseman ran out of the ranks towards the old man's carriage, and at a short distance he grabbed the reins, and then asked the old man in a very peculiar tone in a loud voice in the local dialect: "Do you see a group of Ottomans, just some ......" The cavalryman thought for a moment how to describe it, but in the end he only made a gesture urging the horse to run. ”

"We saw them just passing, but we were scared to death, and we thought they were going to kill them, but they fled quickly and it was too late to catch up with them as soon as possible."

The old man said anxiously, he noticed that some of the weapons in the hands of these cavalrymen were still stained with frozen blood, and then thought of the appearance of those Ottomans fleeing for their lives, and the old man's eyes couldn't help but have a trace of fire.

"Please forgive me for being unreasonable, I don't know which noble lord's army you are?" The old man asked respectfully and humbly, the Bosnian nobles were not cruel to the commoners, but they were absolutely arrogant and contemptuous.

"Our lord is not a Bosmian, so you won't know even if you tell you," said the horseman in a proud tone, "but you will soon hear his name, and the nobles of all Bosnian will be proud to know him." ”

With that, the cavalry turned their horses and caught up with the group that had already passed by the edge of the woods.

"Captain, those Ottomans fled in that direction, and they should be able to catch up soon after a short time." The cavalry reported loudly to one of the officers at the front of the line.

"Then hurry up and catch up, speaking of which, we may really be in trouble this time," the officer, who was pulling the restless war horse and kept spinning in place, said to the people next to him a little helplessly, "I hope the Count will not punish us, after all, we are attacking a team of Ottoman envoys." ”