Rodrigo lay quietly beside the hazel bushes, his cheek pressed against the moss with the smell of moults and the warmth of the sun, and listened to the wind among the elm trees, escaping into the darkness of the daylight. Beside him was a young Englishman with a shield and a spear, his eyes like iron, and the Spanish knight glanced at the white-robed warrior, who, like the thousands of others under his command, was already a qualified soldier - you could train them for a year and teach them swordsmanship and spear skills, but a soldier could learn so much more in five minutes on the battlefield.

The ground began to shake slightly, and the experienced knight jumped to his feet, it was the sound of horses' hooves, and Rodrigo could even tell at once that there were more than a thousand horses approaching! The many years of warfare enabled him to tell from the horsemanure left behind by the enemy whether the enemy was a well-prepared army that cared for the horses and fed them with plenty of oats, or a group of soldiers who were tired and lacking in supplies.

The English in the barracks began to prepare for the surprise attack, and when Rodrigo entered the camp gate, Alva happened to lead his horse. At this moment, a knight wrapped in a black mink fur appeared from the opposite side of the hill, and he ran to Rodrigo's place with beautiful steps, and then shouted in a loud voice: "Your Majesty is on the other side!" ”

There was a slight commotion from the Derbyshire militia, and even Rodrigo himself was surprised, after the victory over the Welsh, he had learned from the prisoners of war about the whereabouts of King Edgar, but even then he did not expect the king to come so quickly.

So the Spanish knights and the bishops went to the king's place, leaving Alva to look after the army. As soon as he crossed the hillside, Rodrigo saw a cloud of horsemen on the opposite side, about a hundred horses striding forward, long grass cutting through the legs of the horses, hooves crushing the white petals all over the ground.

In front of these cavalrymen, a knight with a white glow was rapidly approaching from below a golden dragon banner wind vane. Rodrigo immediately recognized the familiar figure - King Edgar of England.

King Edgar was no longer as gentle as he had been, his beard was golden and his cheeks were as tall as he was, his iron armor was wrapped in a white robe, a kite-shaped shield on his left arm, a long sword was tied around his waist, and a special cavalry officer's sword hung from the side of his saddle. This is the style designed by the king himself, the hilt uses a three-beam cage-shaped gauntlet, the sword body is slightly curved, and the Wilkinson shape is used, which is closer to the traditional style than the column-backed cavalry knife popular before 1845, the whole is still a single-edged sword, but there are more grooves to ensure the strength of the structure, and from the position of the end of the groove to the position of the tip of the sword, it is a double-edged spear-shaped straight blade about eight inches long, this is a heavy cavalry sword, the attack distance is also far enough, with a good cutting ability, and at the same time can be used for straight stabs.

For many years, Edgar had been troubled with the maintenance of his swords against rust, and while serving in Queen Victoria's guard, his colleagues had been using nickel plating to protect the hilt and scabbard as early as the fifties, which was naturally impossible in today's era, and he had to choose the more ancient method - silver plating. This is not without examples, in Edgar's previous life, there were some wealthy officers who gilded their hilts and scabbards with silver, the craziest was a Cold Creek Guards officer he saw in Crimea, the officer's sword hilt was made of white alloy material, and not only the scabbard, but also the entire sword body was silvered! Now, Edgar has followed suit, protecting the hilt and the metal scabbard with a wooden lining with silver, and then plating the sword body with silver, exposing only the steel blade, fortunately, it is protected by the scabbard every day, and moisture is not easy to enter the silver layer, so that the silver on the surface falls off. As a result, his cavalry sword was much brighter than the original sabre, and Edgar named the new sword Ises-Sceard.

The Spanish knight's eyes were so absorbed by the king's splendor that he could not even hear the voice of the king's stable, Sein, until Edgar himself spoke.

"My lord, it's been a long time, but you've given us a big surprise!" King Edgar resisted the urge to call the Spanish knight "Cid", and only congratulated him on his exploit.

"Your Majesty, it's a pity that we have too few troops, and most of the enemy have fled, and now most of them have fled to that Grufiz in Ireland." The knight's words made the king's expression change a little, Rodrigo did not know the situation of this Grufiz, but Edgar, as a well-born English gentleman in his previous life, knew very well how capable this famous ancestor of the royal family of Aberfellau in Wales was, and this Welsh royal family, Grufiz and his children and grandchildren, was heroic and indomitable in resisting the Norman invasion, and was by no means comparable to such figures as Caradoger of Glamorgan or Rees of Dafeld.

"Looks like we're going to need to make a trip to Dafeld in person." The King of England stroked his beard and replied slowly.

On the east coast at this time, the Danish ships entered the Humber River, and their invading army was soon harassed by the Norman knights in the former territory of the House of Thurbrand, and the Normans used the wooden castle as a base to harass the Danish army, and even set fire to some of the dragon chiefs anchored in East Redding.

"Bastard, why don't you Yar dare come to see me yourself? Didn't he dare to face the Norman mongrel, and now he didn't even dare to face his own king? ”

Although the king of Sven was very angry at the actions of these Norman mongrels, he did not take the initiative to besiege these rather fortified Norman castles, but only burned their territory, plundered the Norman horses and a large number of dwarf wild horses used for transport, and then ordered some soldiers who did not find horses to stay with Prince Harald to guard the ships and keep an eye on the Normans in those castles. King Sven was still resentful of his eldest son's opposition to his expedition to England, and he took the opportunity to come out.

The main force of the Danish king began to advance westward, heading straight for York, an important town in the north of England.

Invasions from the sea soon spread throughout the kingdom, and the bells of London rang several times, and some of the older Englishmen could not help but recall the days of the Danish conquest, the defeat of King Edmund by Canute, and the fact that London was surrounded by enemies.

At the Tower of London, the number of guards had doubled, and Queen Emma had learned of her husband's victory in Wales a month earlier, but now that he was still fighting in Wales, she didn't seem to take the threat of Viking wolves to heart. The young queen, though worried, could not show any signs of panic, and had to look down on the Thames every day from the walls of the Tower of London, just as she used to look at Normandy from the Royal Palace of the Cité in Paris.