Angus's small fortune from Greenwich was shrinking at a visible rate, and after paying the price of the ships and carriages, there was not much left, and the news of the purchase had cost him a lot of silver, and now he was in desperate need of an employer.

"Which side are we going to join?"

"The one who is willing to pay, of course." Angus drew a figure of eight on his dagger on his chest and performed a few wonderful tricks.

Maeve and Gillick were dressed almost identically, two well-equipped squires and their war lords formed this small warband, and no one dared to provoke such three heavily armed pedestrians along the way, but they were in such a hurry that they could not help but sweat in the scorching sun of the south.

They had learned from their drunkards that the city of Lucca in the south had fallen to the Emperor, that Turin in the north was under the control of the Emperor's mother-in-law, the Adelaide Daughter-in-law, and that Bishop Anselm and Madame Matilda of Lucca were continuing their resistance in the eastern region of Modena, where Matilda had fallen under siege and even lost her ruling center, Lucca, since the defeat of Volta-Mantuvana four years earlier. At present, although the emperor himself has left, the heir of the empire, Prince Conrad, has remained in Italy, which means that the emperor's supporters have a strong enough core, and Matilda, who has been stripped of her fief by the emperor, can no longer afford a second defeat.

"Maybe by the time we arrive, the battle will be over." Gillick said casually, "What are we going to do then?" ”

"Then you go to the battlefield and search for the corpse!" Angus replied angrily, and pulled the neckline of the zipper again, he now felt that wearing chain mail was really a bad decision.

A samurai on horseback approached the three from a short distance, interrupting their small talk.

"I'm Hugo of Reggio, who are you?" The knight looked at the three people on the other side vigilantly, as if he were examining the three thieves, but his voice maintained a basic dignity, almost polite.

"I am Angus of Morai, a mercenary." The Scottish bastard raised his eyebrows.

"And who are they?" The Italian knight's forehead tightened, and at first, judging from the other party's attire, he thought he was facing a knight, but the mercenary profession was obviously not worthy of his equal treatment, and he immediately changed his tone.

"My slave."

"You allow your slaves to carry weapons?" The Hugo knight remained on guard, as if he would kick his horse and charge at the slightest disagreement.

"They, like me, are from the Highland Clan, and now it's safer to do so." Angus's face did not change, but this answer did not seem to satisfy the other party.

So the Italians went on to ask, "Who are you serving?" ”

"Not for anyone, we will rent the sword to whoever can afford it."

"They're all from the north, just like you?" The knight began to look at Maeve, the highland girl looking more and more suspicious.

"What, you doubt my words?" Angus's arrogant tone seemed to be beginning to irritate the other party, and the knight waved his whip without saying a word.

"Damn spies!" Knight Hugo scolded viciously, "I will hand you over to the Marquis of Adalbert......

Angus turned his horse's head, avoiding his whip, then urged his mount and slammed into it, and with a clatter, he drew his broadsword from his waist, and before the knight could retract it, it pierced through his opponent's armor, penetrated through his sternum, and plunged deep into his heart.

Picking up the horsewhip from the corpse on the ground, Angus turned around and smiled bitterly at the stunned Gillick and Maeve: "Now we only have one choice......

After watching the bow and arrow training after Sunday Mass, Edgar hurried out of Buckinghamshire, the sensational burning at the stake had been recorded in the annals of Winchester as a testimony to God's glory, and the situation in Burton finally returned to a semblance of calm - except for the new Elder Theowulf's home, which seemed to have some backyard fires, but this was no longer something Edgar could help, and now he was more concerned with his secret weapon.

Near Ulwich on the banks of the Thames was a newly built tower and pentagonal fort, and as the king passed through the heavily guarded gate, the bells rang from the other side, and Edgar looked up, and in the distance lay a pile of huge brass pipes, all of which looked like cast-and-use cannon barrels.

The new ordnance factory was originally built on the River Ouse near York, and was originally used only for the repair of ordinary weapons, but after the Brittany Succession, with the success of the trial production of the first version of gunpowder, Edgar set up a new secret ordnance department, and began to try to cast artillery.

In the past ten years, due to financial constraints, the progress of black powder improvement and cannon casting has been quite slow, and the alder buckthorn in England has been used in large quantities for the charcoal needed to make gunpowder, and in order to obtain saltpeter raw materials, the Ordnance Department has also set up a special nitrate collector, and it is only recently that the technology for the production of granulated black powder has basically matured.

The artillery was more problematic, the early trials were not satisfactory, the thick barrel and vase-like design naturally did not satisfy Edgar, and even the cannonballs were a problem, the spherical stone projectiles used by the trebuchet were somewhat destructive to the fortifications, but they were extremely weak when attacking other targets, and finally the king ordered Greenwich to sell the cast iron raw materials directly to the ordnance factory, and the craftsmen were able to obtain an ample supply of high-quality shells.

Casting cannons is not a cheap project, the scrap rate has always been high, and Edgar is unwilling to compromise, he knows very well how James II of Scotland was killed by the Burgundian gun "Lion" imported from Flanders in the history of his previous life. Edgar was reluctant to equip it with a weapon too soon if it could not be made to be reliable enough, especially if England itself was not yet threatened.

With the current level of forging and scientific foundation, many overly advanced technologies cannot be applied to the casting of cannons, such as the Rodman internal mold water-cooled casting method that appeared during the American Civil War, which is far from being mastered by these craftsmen who have no concept of cooling coefficient. Rather than wrought iron or steel rifled guns with high technical barriers, consider the bronze or brass cannons of the Napoleonic era, an idea that Edgar called "gear down."

Recalling the suppressive power of the two 18-pounder guns he had seen during the Battle of Inkerman, Edgar was rather indifferent to the antique artillery samples that his Ordnance Director had displayed in front of him.

"Let's test shoot."

At the king's order, the gunners who had been prepared at the shooting range began to load nervously, and all the samples were engraved with a griffin pattern, next to the year of manufacture and the number of pounds, and they all passed the internal crack test, and the accuracy of the inner wall was quite good by the standards of this era, all of which were drilled and sharpened by the craftsmen of the cannon using hydraulic boring machines. At the current level of 6-8 horsepower, this machine can run at up to 16 revolutions a minute. The ear is added after the fire door is drilled.

The roar continued to be heard, and the relatives and nobles who had put on earplugs in advance were still startled, and after the smoke cleared, the target had been torn to pieces by solid cast-iron bullets, and even the farthest ones could not stop the cannon shells that had almost run out of momentum.

"O God!" The English could not help but draw a cross, most of them knew nothing about this weapon, and very few who knew about it only indirectly through the huge annual expenditure of the Ordnance Department, and had no direct knowledge of this devil's weapon.

"How many horses do these 'griffins' need to transport?" Edgar asked suddenly.

"Your Majesty, you need 4 heavy pack horses for a 3-pounder gun, and 7 for a 9-pounder gun."

Edgar turned back to Knight Edwin and said, "It seems that this time to negotiate with the Count of Boulogne, in addition to the matter of Italy, we also have to talk about the import of heavy horses, and the last time I transported the trebuchet was thanks to the help of the Earl of Lincoln." ”

Edwin was still immersed in the shock of the shelling, and nodded his head in a trance: "That's right...... Buy a horse ......"

Seeing this, the king did not go on, but looked at the golden barrel and the iron-edged gun carriage, and suddenly the image of a sailor in his previous life who had been disemboweled by a cannonball, the widow of this poor creature was good, docile and plump like a countess......