Several workers stood in front of Alexander, some of them holding their hats in their hands, some of them rubbing their hands around the corners of their clothes, and for a moment they seemed to have no idea what to say.

At the same time, they kept snorting, but whenever they smelled the unconcealable smell of blood in the air, their faces became ugly.

But their eyes were fixed on the table in front of them, and on the table in front of them was a very bulging money bag, and they remembered the shock caused by the heavy muffled sound when the money bag was put down.

"Thank you, you deserve it," Alexander said to the worker, who seemed to be standing in front of him, "if you hadn't found these people suspicious, they might have been fooled, you probably don't know what it means to me, and I must thank you for saving my life." ”

"Your Excellency, please be polite." The workers who took the lead hurriedly responded, and they themselves did not know that they had just seen a few random people when they returned to the town, but they did not expect to discover the secret of Father Neder.

When the workers saw the men on horseback disappear behind the church, they didn't realize what they were seeing, but as they were about to continue their way home, the carriage unexpectedly sank into a nest in the snow.

At that time, the three people in the car were almost lifted off the car, they were busy for a long time but still couldn't get the carriage out of the pit, and the three people who had no way for a while finally decided to go back to the town to find someone to help.

It doesn't matter if the carriage is thrown on the road, the people in this place know each other, so don't worry.

The three of them chose to take a shortcut from the back of the church through the wilderness, but when they passed the back door of the church, they saw a large number of war horses that looked different from ordinary pack horses gathering in the open space far from the back door of the church.

Naturally, this attracted the attention of several people, but what caught their attention even more was that they saw that the wanderer brought by Father Ned was talking to a group of fellows who also didn't look like ordinary people.

Although it was far away and couldn't hear clearly, these workers still instinctively felt that they seemed to have found something strange, in fact, as long as they thought about it, they knew that a homeless man who had nothing and relied on odd jobs suddenly pointed fingers at a group of guys who were not good at stubble at first glance, and this matter seemed to be something strange no matter how you look at it.

The three workers were very clever not to go any further, but to leave by detour, they did not know that this little inspiration had saved their own lives, but when they returned to the construction site, they heard that the homeless man had already found a dozen helpers, which made them angry and involuntarily remembered the people they had seen at the back door of the church, and they quietly approached and looked closely, and then they were frightened by those people.

Anyone who saw a group of horses galloping in high spirits before would be surprised to turn their heads to find their faces covered in mud and rags and doing coolies, which always smells of something of intrigue.

The short man doesn't want to, and the reason why he will fail is purely because the few locals resented him for stealing his job.

"My lord, that," the leading worker asked, somewhat tentatively, "how is Father Ned?" ”

"The priest is missing."

Alexander frowned slightly, and when he saw that the old man was unhappy, several workers looked at each other uneasily, and then quickly grabbed the money bag on the table and left.

In fact, Alexander was worried about the disappearance of the priest.

Ned, not only the priest of the town, but also a priest in the church territory, is so involved in a conspiracy to attack him several times in a row, and even disappears, which cannot but make Alexander suspicious and at the same time have to find a way to solve the current problem.

The problem is that churches cannot be without priests for a day.

Because of his direct affiliation with the Holy See, Alexander had to write to Rome asking them to send a priest to pacify the diocese at once, and he had the entire church closed off from trespassing.

Now he himself was in the priest's room in the church, watching his men carefully search every corner of the room, and he went to the door to look at the cold, stiff corpse on the ground.

It was the long-haired man who had attacked him earlier.

The blood that had been poked through several holes in his body had solidified into black and red stains, and his wide mouth and round eyes seemed to not believe that he would be killed until he died.

"The fatal one was stabbed from behind," said a somewhat curly bearded bohemian and made a stabbing gesture, "someone gave the guy a blow from behind, and then saw that he wasn't dead before stabbing him a few more times." ”

"Did the priest do it?" Despite the thought that it could only be the priest, Alexander still had to ask.

The bohemian turned the corpse over and turned his heart upward, looked at it carefully and nodded: "It should be, I have seen this priest, judging from the height and direction of this wound, it was that person who did it, he should have held a short sword like this, and then stabbed this guy like this." ”

The bohemian gestured as he spoke, his hand moving along a seemingly invisible line, and then gently stroked the blood stain that had splattered on the door: "This blow is ruthless enough, the man who killed him must hate him very much, otherwise he would not have used such force to kill him in one fell swoop." ”

Alexander nodded, he didn't really need the Bohemians to analyze it so carefully and carefully, just think about the traces of the workers who reported the news before and then followed those people to escape all the way to know that these people were obviously in collusion with Father Nerd, but why Ned wanted to kill his companion was not understood for a while.

Perhaps to kill someone, Alexander said and gently opened the door, and despite the cold weather, a strong smell of blood greeted him.

Outside the door, the original white snow had completely turned into a mass of indescribable color, mixed with trampled gray dirt and unsettling purple, dark red snow stirred into a dirty mud that made a "puff" sound when people stepped on it, and in the mud, there were pieces of corpses that had been gnawed to pieces, and a few wild wolves that had also been torn to pieces.

The head of a wild wolf and a human head that had been bitten so that it could not be recognized were placed on the ground as if they were facing each other, and the sharp fangs in the open wolf's mouth seemed to be biting the prey in front of them, and the unrecognizable human head had been bitten off the lower lip of the empty mouth, and the mutilated teeth were also exposed, as if it was about to face the wild wolf to make a final struggle.

"The wolves here are amazing." Alexander whispered.

Although he had known the horror of the wolves for a long time, he had never seen such a scene, and when they followed the trails all the way, he had already seen several enemies on the road who had escaped and been attacked by wild wolves, and all of them had been torn beyond recognition, and it was impossible to find clues from them.

When they finally found the church, they saw this horrific scene on the hillside not far from the church.

Apparently, the last few who escaped fought to the death with the wolves, killing a few wolves, only to be eaten by more wolves.

"My lord, the people of the town are terrified," Carlo came from a distance, and he had a crossbow on his back, which he had been a fellow of the hunters, and now he took it out again, "They said that there were indeed wolves in the vicinity, but there were very few attacks on people, and this time so many people died at once, and the townspeople feared that from now on wolves might keep attacking people." ”

"It was yesterday that these men were wounded and bleeding and attracted the wolves," Alexander whispered, looking at the rolling hills in the distance, "and yesterday you did a good job, especially the men of Busaco, who even surprised me. ”

"My lord, they would be glad to know that you praised them so much." Carlo looked back at Paul Busako, who was on guard with his guards.

The night before, when the short man sneaked into the village with his men to prepare for an unexpected second sneak attack, they did not expect to be greeted by a row of oncoming musket pellets that had been prepared for a long time.

This sudden on-the-head blow instantly threw the short men into a hurry, and the first row of gunfire echoed in the air, and the prepared Agri musketeers sent out the second row of bullets from the rooftop, from behind the door, and from the window.

The first few people were immediately shot and fell to the ground, two of them lost their lives immediately, and the rest fell to the ground and groaned in pain.

Before the smoke cleared, the Bohemian saber had been raised high from behind the smoke, and as the figure flickered and the sword light flew by, the screams came and went for a while.

But even if he was beaten by the sudden attack, no one expected that these people would still stubbornly rush towards the house where Alexander lived, or that no one thought that the short man would be so stubborn or even crazy, he took the rest of the people to rush forward desperately, and even took advantage of this unexpected move to avoid the heavy troops led by Carlo who thought they would turn around and retreat and deliberately stayed behind to cut off their retreat, but rushed directly to Alexander's house all the way before!

This move was really unexpected by everyone.

Carlo, who had been waiting for a long time, did not welcome the defeated enemy, but heard the fierce slashing sound from the village.

This unusual move really frightened everyone, and when he found out that the enemy would be so crazy and desperate, Carlo could only lead people to chase after those enemies, and by this time the short man had already reached the fence in front of the house.

Paolo Busako stood in the wall and watched the figure swaying in the distance, the smoke of the previous attack enveloped the entire courtyard, and the choking smell of gunpowder made people's throats dry, but Busako kept his eyes on the front without relaxation, even if his eyes were very uncomfortable with smoke.

It was his first time on the task of defending the lord of Gombray, which made Paolo Busako a little nervous, but it was this nervousness that helped him.

Everyone thought that the enemies would flee in fear after a sudden attack, and after several successive attacks, Alexander had already made up his mind to take advantage of this opportunity to completely surround and destroy these enemies.

Because of this, Carlo placed most of his forces around the village, and then patiently waited for the enemy to fall into the trap.

It's just that no one expected that these enemies, who didn't know where they came from, would be so crazy and stubborn, and after being ambushed, instead of fleeing, they continued to attack Alexander's house like crazy.

In this way, when the short man rushed over with someone, he was met by Paul Busako, who was guarding the house.

The hunter and the prey saw each other almost instantly, and Busako could even clearly see a face that didn't look anything special, and then he raised his musket and opened fire on the man opposite.

The Agri Guard is a group of hunters, both talented and hard-trained, who are more accurate in their marksmanship than other musketeers, and more importantly, calm and determined far more than the others.

This made Alexander already think about giving his guard a resounding name, the "Huntsman"

When they saw the oncoming enemy, the guards standing behind the wall raised their muskets in unison, and a deafening roar accompanied by a large cloud of smoke erupted with a loud command from Busako.

A musket with a poor head may not hit one in the face of a group of people, but if a dozen muskets are fired at the same time, it is terrible.

What is truly valuable to the Agri guards is their calm composure even in the face of the enemy rushing in front of them.

When the first shot was fired, the Agri guards did not immediately draw their sabers to meet them, they threw down the guns in their hands, and then picked up the second musket that had been prepared by them for a long time and calmly aimed at it, and just when the enemy was already impulsive, they raised their weapons and prepared to slash, the gunfire rang out again.

If they could bravely rush forward in the face of the first round of muskets, when they faced the muzzle of the gun that was almost sprayed against their chest and head, the enemy finally wavered.

Some of them couldn't help but bend their feet, some instinctively backed away to hide behind their companions, and the short man, who was lucky enough to dodge a few musket volleys, was finally unable to dodge this last shot.

The projectile shot him directly in the face, and at that time he felt as if he had been punched in the face, and then his whole body fell backwards involuntarily.

The short man couldn't remember how he had escaped with his companions, and he even thought it was impossible for him to escape.

But they did escape the encirclement, and even kept running through the woods towards the town.

He no longer felt any pain on his face, and he could only keep running after the people in front of him, until he heard a terrible wolf howl all around.

"My lord, we searched the whole church, but we found nothing special," Carlo reported to Alexander, with some dismay, "it seems that the priest is very cautious, and we asked the residents of the neighborhood, but no one knows where he came from, only that a few years ago he was suddenly sent here as a resident priest, and strangely enough, for several years, he has been in this town, except for the monthly Mass in the diocese, he has never left the town, let alone to be consecrated in Rome." ”

"It's kind of weird." Alexander was secretly strange in his heart, and from his portrait, it was clear that these successive attacks were obviously aimed at him, which made Alexander can't help but be annoyed that a force is secretly staring at him, and secretly vigilant.

The bohemian with the curly beard came up, looked at the corpses that had been collected in the distance, turned back to Alexander, and said, "My lord, those people are there, but ......"

"But what?"

"We see that there seems to be one person missing."