For the purpose of the field survey, Edgar traveled on horseback to Buckinghamshire, where Watling Avenue and Foxy Avenue joined east and west, near Old Fort Burton, and suddenly remembered his previous assassination.

"Lord Benedict, we're going to meet someone, you go to the magistrate's hall first, they'll give you the best honey."

"No, my majesty, I'm going to take a look on the Military Avenue." With astonishing dexterity, Abbot Benedict turned his horse's head and rushed almost impatiently towards the eastern section of the Roman road, where the flocks flew in both directions.

"Take off your robe, Edwin, you look like ......" The king shook his head and commanded his retainer when he saw the abbot's mount drift away.

"The King's Chief of Guard?" The eldest son of the Earl of Mercia asked rhetorically as he expertly unfastened the oak leaf brooch, and Edgar couldn't help but laugh.

"Yes, we're not going to a decent banquet hall, and if you dress like that, you're going to scare everyone away." The king took off his suede gloves, and his white robe was rather plain, far less ornate than the garb of his own chamberlain.

"Oh my God, your shirts are all made of Zendar's silk, are you a?" Seeing Edwin's extraordinary appearance, the king began to wonder if he had paid his chief guard too much.

"This is a gift from my poor mother, and your majesty should see what my brothers are wearing." Edwin replied nonchalantly, his carefree expression reminding Edgar of his deceased uncle.

"Well, it looks like you're going to need a cloak, not the rose-soaked velvet, or I'll wonder if you're a seed."

The king's order made the Knight of Mercia sigh, and after a long rummag, he found a woollen cloak with a squirrelskin shawl from the leather bag on his saddle.

"That's enough." Edgar chose to give up, knowing that the clothes would make them as glaring as the lord in the village, but at least not like kings and royal attendants.

The approach of the riders made the atmosphere in the village tense up, and Edgar forgot about his horses, the mounts they were riding were so conspicuous that they were worth more than the entire village in their possession.

"We're looking for Master Theowulf." The Edwin knight's loud voice made Ker, who had fully drawn his bow and adjusted to a ready-to-shoot position, nervous.

"You're scaring him, be careful, that bow isn't for shooting rabbits."

"Don't go any further!"

"Be careful, lest you hurt yourself." Edwin smiled, his hand not even touching the weapon.

"We didn't mean anything, we just came to find someone." The king, fearing that the fellow would miss, stopped his horse and shouted.

The village elder had already arrived, and when he saw the knight's dress in front of him, he immediately scolded the archer, and then carefully tested the identity of the two: "Do you need to see our county chief?" ”

"No, we just want to see Master Theowulf." The king did not show impatience, but explained his purpose again.

"Isn't it the 'boneless one', what a master, just a shepherd." The archer muttered quietly, and the village chief, apparently enraged by his attitude, reprimanded him again: "You fool, shut up and go and bring the shepherds here!" ”

The king did not stop it, it seems that meeting in this village office is already the best choice, if a noble person dressed like this comes to the other party's house, I don't know what kind of commotion it will cause.

"I'm sorry, noble lord, it's not been peaceful lately, he just doesn't know who the two are."

"You don't have to know, and you don't need to alarm the county magistrate, we're just passing by." The king's tone was unmistakable, and the other man nodded almost involuntarily.

"You say it's not too peaceful here?" Edwin noticed the village chief's previous words.

The other man did not reply, but looked at him warily, and the king noticed that his unkempt golden beard twitched.

The shepherd finally came, still grim, his voice as thin as if he were afraid to wake up the greyhounds at his feet, evidently unaccustomed to human dealings, and Edgar had seen him command the wolfhounds with such ease as Caesar of Alesia.

"Remember me, old friend?" Edgar revealed his face from the gray shadows, he had barely aged over the years, unlike the shepherd in front of him, the exhaustion on his face almost seeped into his soul, and only his eyes still retained a religious innocence.

"My lord, is that you?" It took Theowulf a long time to recognize the noble man in front of him, mostly because he didn't dare to look directly at Edgar himself, this was not the embarrassed young man he had rescued from among the bushes, but a warlord who behaved in a terrible manner, as if he had everything in front of him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have to go and inspect the granary, who can say for sure what the hell is going on." The village chief left the place very sensibly and handed over his "palace" to Edgar.

"Don't you look better than you used to, didn't the county magistrate give you that money?" The king asked.

"Give...... Given. Theowulf explained in a panic, as if afraid of causing unnecessary misunderstandings, "I used to herd sheep for others, and now those sheep are mine. ”

Edgar thought it was very funny, the money he gave away was enough to buy a manor, and how many sheep did the shepherd buy?

However, he soon learned that he had used the rest of the money to pay off a debt owed by a neighbor who was engaged in a wool trade, and that the neighbor's youngest daughter was now his wife.

"I thought you'd buy a piece of land and be a Sain."

"But my lord, if I go out to war, who will take care of my family?"

"Is your family okay?"

Theowulf was silent, he no longer answered the question, but sighed: "I should go back, this is not the place I should be." ”

Looking at the back of the shepherd, the king became interested in the life of this poor man for the first time.

"What the hell is going on here?" The king slowly relived in his mind the scene after his arrival, the hostility of the archer, the perfunctory attitude of the village chief, and the anomalies of Theowulf, "You don't see a woman outside. ”

"If I had to say, they must be fighting taxes." Knight Edwin said suddenly.