Roger of Hereford sat in the chair that had belonged to his father, and seemed to feel the power of reincarnation, the fate from which his father had sought to escape now fell on his shoulders, and at the moment of receiving the letter from the Earl of Mercia, the Norman knight was at once like a sword unsheathed, shaking off the dust and rust of many years of idleness, and setting his eyes to the south of the Wei River.

The Normans' ambitions for conquest never stopped, and even if they lived in castles, they did not have their eyes on the lands of their neighbors, whether they were Normans like themselves or other peoples. Over the years, Roger Knight has already understood most of the geography of the entire Welsh Frontier, and he can only make plans in the palm of his hand. However, there is another thing mentioned in the letter of the Count of Mercia.

"Where the hell did that Spaniard come from?" Roger couldn't help but curse secretly.

He only thought about it for a moment, and then made a decision - no longer waiting for that Rodrigo reinforcement, and sent out Gwent alone.

Nearly a hundred Norman knights marched from Hereford, riding lightly, and Roger himself rushed to the south without even armor, and to his west, the beacon towers of the ancient kingdom of Brecchenog stood proudly on the top of the gray hills, as if to warn any intruder who dared to invade the land of the Britons.

The Norman army had ravaged the lands from the Luger to the Haverland by their prowess, and by this time the armies of Glamorgan had been massed on the western border of the kingdom, and the eastern lands were almost undefended except for the port of Kelwent. The Normans did not penetrate far into the mountains to the west, and after annihilating a few small defenders, they immediately moved, leaving behind only large smoky tracts of land.

The onslaught of these invaders caused panic among the Gwentes, and a large number of townspeople who saw the smoke pillars in the distance began to flee westward, but their king seemed to have completely evaporated, and the weak defenders were completely unable to protect their own people.

Rodrigo set out from Chester with a total of fifteen hundred men and a hundred horses, but most of them had a pack horse. The Spanish knight had intended to speed up his march, but an autumn rain disrupted the Derbyshire militia, and when he finally reached Hereford Castle, he learned from a strange-looking Norman that Roger's knight had headed south.

"Didn't they receive a letter from Count Mercia?" The Spaniards, though very dissatisfied, had no choice but to leave the Norman castle.

"My lord, what shall we do now?" Alva asked.

"The Normans are cavalry, and we know nothing of them except they are in Gwent, so we should go to Boas and defend the king's army, as the Count has ordered, than to try our luck in the south." Rodrigo made a quick decision.

"But......," he said, "since the Normans have gone south, we might as well take advantage of it." ”

Under Rodrigo's orders, the English undressed and lightly crossed the river to the south, and then made a great southward invasion, and the front quickly reached the north of Kelwent, where they were stationed at the foot of the mountains of Brecheniog, and rode out in all directions, as if they were ready to go south to besiege Kelvint.

Taking advantage of the darkness of the night, Rodrigo quietly left the camp with 1,200 men, then turned northwest and disappeared into the Gavinny Pass. Behind them, three hundred Derbyshire militiamen continued to collect supplies with great fanfare. For the Welsh defenders of Kelvant, the Norman cavalry that had recently appeared in the direction of Casgwent was clearly an outpost of the English invasion of the south, and the main force of the other side had now arrived, so the next step was naturally to besiege their own port.

Within half a month of Gwent's messenger for help, Rodrigo's main force had already crossed the mountains. For the Spanish knight, the terrain was similar to his homeland, and after some modest fighting, the Derbyshire militia had become comfortable with mountain warfare. The English were amazed by the swiftness of the spear-wielding mountain dwellers, the rain of javelins, and the constant movement of the terrain, allowing some of their forces to take covert detours and then suddenly attack from behind or from above the enemy's flanks or from above.

In the last battle, Rodrigo saw another red-robed Welsh hillman shot in the lower part of the eye, blood pouring down on his back, and some of his own soldiers being hit in the head by the enemy's stone, and he remembered the passage of Xenophon that he had recited, the light armoured Greeks were more powerful than the heavy armoured soldiers in the mountains, and the poorly armed Kaducoya hillmen had inflicted on the heavy armoured Greeks in seven days, even more than the Persians had inflicted.

If it weren't for Rodrigo's experience of fighting with Spanish Christians and pagans for many years, he specially trained the English militia to fight in this complex terrain, and crossing this mountainous area would have been a life-and-death for the English. In fact, their Boas guides were terrified of dying with the Englishmen.

The people of Derbyshire who walked out of the mountains felt a sense of rebirth, many of them were just farmers who had not been armed for a few days before entering the pass, many had not set foot in the mountains and rivers dozens of miles away since they were born, and they were even so frightened that they could not grasp anything when they first saw the unkempt mountain people. Listening to the howls of wolves and monsters in the distance, and thinking of trolls and other creatures in the distance will make the recruits toss and turn. Now the youngest member of the team was accustomed to the pungent blood, although the armor of the sergeants was no longer distinct, the knights who had not shaved for the month were like grizzly bears and golden lions, and nearly half of the heavy equipment and horses had been lost, and the morale of the whole army was unprecedentedly high.

Brother Beautrick had also regained his spirits, and in recent days he seemed to be planning to write about this experience in the chronicles of the monastery, so Rodrigo had to endure once again all the stupid questions of the monk.

"It's a nice day." Brother Beotrick sighed as he drenched in the rain, and Alva rolled his eyes.

Soon a man on horseback approached from a distance, and he did not care about the rain that shook off the ends of his hair, and replied in a loud voice: "My lord, we have not seen His Majesty's troops or banners in the west, and there are too many rebel sentinels around the road in the direction of Emrin, and we can only withdraw them all." ”

The Spanish knight's heart sank, shaking in the breeze like a bat hanging upside down on a rock wall, could it be that King Edgar had been defeated?