Sitting in the mud by the river for too long, unknown little insects bited my shoulders and sucked my blood happily, making my body feel very uncomfortable, especially the inside of my pants, which was wet, and the mud dried on my face like a twisted mask.

I moved to the side tiredly, looking left and right but not finding a clean place, so I sat down on the corpse beside me, its owner had long since left the cold shell and gone to heaven, its muscles had hardened and stiffened, and its hideous facial expression showed the pain of dying.

"Sorry, buddy."

I apologized softly to the corpse that seemed to be angry with its big eyes, turned around and took the kettle handed by Rollo, patted my chest and gasped, and poured a large mouthful of ale that had been in the cowhide bladder for a long time, and even a little rancid, smacking my lips unsatisfied, sticking out my tongue and licking the liquor hanging from the corner of my mouth, I burped contentedly, sleepiness hit, and things in front of me began to become blurry.

The corpses of the enemy in the river not far away were salvaged, cleaned from head to toe, and then thrown at random on the mountain of corpses on the side, those stiff limbs interspersed together, forming a terrifying magic tower, and everywhere there were unwilling eyes and frightened open mouths, as if in silent protest.

I don't look around, I really can't stand the horror scene in front of me......

Hundreds of peasants sang cheerful songs, while peeling off their belongings as if they were usually working, or simply knocked an axe on the head of the enemy begging for mercy, and shouted excitedly at the moment when their brains burst, and their eyebrows were full of schadenfreude against the landlords and big households, who would have thought that these devil-like people who played among the corpses would be honest peasants on weekdays, hillbillies that knights and lords looked down on.

"Lord Earl, please allow me to pay tribute to you on behalf of the knights who fought on behalf of Flender, and you are a model of chivalry in the face of enemies many times your own without flinching to the end, and finally defeating them."

Knight Kyle laboriously pulled his helmet off and threw it to his attendants, and without bothering to straighten up his messy lion-like hair, he walked over to me and sat down.

After making sure that his words were not sarcastic, I politely nodded in thanks, handed over the remaining half of the water bladder, and replied seriously:

"If it weren't for the timely appearance of Flender's knights behind the enemy's flanks and completely shattering their fragile and insistent beliefs, we would have been killed by their counter-encirclement, but then again, when did you cross the river? No wonder the scouts I sent out to contact couldn't find you. ”

"In fact, not long after your army was deployed, we quietly set out, but simply to be closer to the battlefield so that we could support you at any time."

Knight Kyle saw me staring at him without blinking, foaming at the mouth with a weak heart, trying to pretend that nothing happened, and finally reluctantly spread his hands and gave up:

"Okay, okay, I admit that I have the intention of taking advantage of the fisherman, but I never thought of a sneak attack, until we participated in the war, we appeared above board, helping Nijmegen in danger to turn defeat into victory, this is called hoeing the strong and helping the weak, which is in line with the rules of knights."

He blushed and had a thick neck, for fear that others would see him as such a despicable villain, but in fact no one present was obsessed with such small details except him.

I looked inexplicably at Knight Kair, who suddenly became indignant, but I was so tired that I didn't have the strength to ridicule him at all, so I had to empty myself, and I looked in the direction of Utrecht over the crowd, and began to mutter:

I don't know where my eldest brother has gone, the defeat of the enemy's army is completely unexpected, and now Utrecht is like a girl who has been stripped naked, trembling and crying, it is a good time to ravage her, but who knows if there are sharp scissors hidden under the girl's pillow.

"Lord Count?" Knight Kyle cautiously reminded me from the side.

"Utrecht is in front of us, their battleable soldiers are almost lost, we are facing almost an empty city with only the old, weak, sick and disabled, the vassals of the Count of Friesland are all timid and mouse-like villains, few people have come to respond to the call, the citizens of the city must be trembling and preparing to buy gold, silver and jewelry, the knights of Flender are in full swing, we can ...... in one go"

After sitting for so long, I finally managed to save some strength, and I used my peripheral vision to look at the hideous corpse under my buttocks, and the painful expression on its face was even more hairy.

Standing up in disgust, he didn't take a few steps to meet the bull who was organizing the peasants to dig a pit, throwing Bai Huahua's corpse into it and setting it on fire, the billowing black smoke seemed to be wrapped in countless resentful spirits that could not be exceeded, the thick cover of the sky and the sun, the pungent smell of burning choked people's stomach, and even the war horses were restless and wanted to break free from the traction of the attendants, stomping their toes and neighing.

I pointed to the peasant who was full of excitement and made a fortune, and said to Knight Kyle with a complex and transparent expression: "Why do you think we can take Utrecht?" Just rely on these buns in front of you who can only fight with the wind? Utrecht is a walled fortified city, and regardless of the number of enemies there are for the time being, it would be impossible for us to break through the cast-iron gates, which were supposedly from Charlemagne's time and smelted with captured barbarian weapons. ”

From the way Knight Kyle scratched the back of his head, I couldn't tell if he was worried about the lack of siege weapons, or if he couldn't understand the meaning of the Arabian Nights like Rollo, but the way he thought was painful to watch.

"We don't have enough troops to guarantee the siege of the city, even if we capture all the peasants nearby, we may not be able to completely cut off a city built on several islands in the middle of the river, completely cut off the connection with the outside world, their fleet can still come and go freely to replenish soldiers and food, and maybe they can transport the army behind us for a sneak attack, not to mention that there are no engineers with the army, small ballistas and catapults of this level of siege weapons cannot be made at all, and it is simply a fool's dream to capture Utrecht by relying on ladders and human walls alone."

I really don't understand the logic of this group of medieval knights, can the knights who are rampage on the plains like armored tanks smash through the fortified castles of masonry?

If they are lucky enough to pick the fruit, they want to climb to the thinner part of the branch, their thinking is as simple as a monkey, and the war seems to them like a child's play, just a group of steel monsters, a head-on charge against another group of steel monsters, and the loser admits defeat, that's all.

Knight Kyle stammered to plead a few words, looked at the peasants who were busy disposing of the corpses around him, and the soldiers on the other side who were silently cleaning up their wounds, and felt that he couldn't pose one, two, three, no matter what, and finally stopped talking, he lowered his head and played with the rounded metal weight ball hanging from the top of the longsword hanging from his waist, on which was carved a delicate cross, and the letter K in the middle represented his name.

He originally thought that things would be as simple as he imagined, the enemy knights were almost wiped out, and the group of small citizens in the city who were shrinking and couldn't even hold their guns were not considered at all, and the iron cavalry promised to obediently open the city and surrender as soon as it arrived.

But the Count is right, he ignores another force that cannot be ignored in Utrecht, the fleet and sailors with a considerable number, even if they are as powerful as Flender, they have suffered several times on them, and they have been buried in shame and ended in a fiasco, once the war drags on into a protracted war, the forces of many sides may take the opportunity to intervene, it is the so-called despicable means of the Earl to watch from the wall and wait to go down the mountain to pick peaches, so far the most powerful and powerful Bishop of Utrecht has not yet stood up, and the situation is confusing at that time, It's not something he can control.

"Then we will camp far outside the city, at least block the connection with Utrecht on land, and wait for the arrival of the captain's fleet." Knight Kyle thought for a moment and put forward his opinion, as long as he could contain the attention of the lowlanders, he would definitely be able to win easily once Flender's army arrived.

"You're right, but we can't just keep it."

Seeing that the bull and their battlefield were almost cleaned, I took the long sword from Rollo's hand, hung it on my belt, sorted out the chain mail on my body, walked to the war horse led by the squire, grabbed the reins and turned back: "They must let their only tentacles also honestly dry up and sit in the city to die." ”

With that, I took a few cavalrymen around the crowd where the ashes were buried and walked away to the sound of the assembly horn.

I have fantasized about the city of Utrecht countless times, because in the mouth of others it is a city that never closes its gates, with a constant stream of caravans coming and going out of the city, satisfying themselves to pick out their favorite goods, and a few loaded cargo ships moored on the docks at sunset, waiting for their masters to refill them, and then at the helm of the old sailors with beards and beards, sailing to the other side of the unknown sea, bringing back the treasures of a foreign land. Enrich children's colorful dreams.

The family of the Counts of Friesland has stood tall in the waves of the North Sea for many years, whether it is the stormy invasion of the Danes, or the thousands of troops of the German Emperor coming to the city, or the great lords of Lorraine and Flanders who are idle and bored and want to make some foreign money, they can survive in the cracks in all directions, and then accumulate amazing wealth day after day, endure humiliation and burden to explore and demand the boundless sea, and train the offshore fleet that everyone fears. Become a small person that the big guys can't ignore.

Located in the inner city of Utrecht, the Count's castle has been expanded and fortified by several generations of Frisian counts and has become a fortress that is difficult to breach from the outside.

The waterways crisscrossing the rivers, the abundant grain stocks, the people who yearn for freedom, and the walls that were rarely built for the outer cities in the Middle Ages, the powerful Emperor Otto I was also at a loss in the face of the tenacity of the Low Countries, and finally besieged the city to the point of running out of ammunition, and spent a huge amount of money to build a giant trebuchet to break through the walls of Utrecht, which greatly damaged the vitality of Germany.

I regrouped the army, then divided the peasants, the Nijmegen soldiers, and the Flemish knights into different fronts in proportion to the probable defensive situation of the enemy, surrounded the Utre tribe, erected countless tents under the noses of the enemy, set up fires as dense as the stars in the sky, bluffed them to create an illusion, magnified the victory outside the city by a powerful visual impact, and broke their confidence in resistance.

"In case the enemy finds out what we are doing one day, every military camp will not be able to withstand even a wave of attacks."

Knight Kyle told me worriedly before leaving the camp for his own camp, complaining that the forces available to him were better than nothing, and that it would be difficult to defend such a large front.

"I'm afraid they won't dare to go out of the city to break through!"

I turned my back to look at the bustling blacksmith shop not far away, a dozen blacksmiths from various towns were busy taking out the red-hot iron and beating it, and then throwing it into the cold water to leach out white steam, and the upper body was dripping with sweat.

"Hehe, watch me put an iron lock Lianjiang array for them!"

(End of chapter)