"Please, don't sing, okay?"

"Why?"

Houdini picked out a dirty piece of black bread from his pocket, picked the moldy hairs on it and stuffed it into his mouth, which made me sick to watch.

"Oh, I see, isn't it singing that tickles your heart? The little squire misses his lover, the female cousin who made him almost unable to be a man, haha! ”

Idiot!

I was so angry that I almost fainted, but I couldn't understand it with such laymen.

"In the castle, I either listened to the heroic tales sung at the minstrels' feasts, or the priests recited Bible stories, and as for the nonsense of the ballads you just sang, I really can't get enough of them."

Houdini stopped humming and stared at me from head to toe with disdain, like a mother and mother-in-law who looked at her son-in-law.

"Our lord can't get used to the grass people's garbage, and wants to listen to some neat farts?"

He made no secret of his contempt for the Church and the aristocracy: "Then listen to this! ”

"When the snow does not stop falling, when the snowballs rush to me in the snow, the family is too poor to open the pot, and the room is broken and cannot withstand the cold wind, oh dear, please have mercy on me for such misfortune. Quickly embrace me in my arms, let the cold winter leave me, I have chosen a beloved man, the one who has made me lose love and loyalty, this song sings for bitter thoughts, but another person has replaced me, lonely so, I have no choice but to leave......'"

I covered my ears in a pretended to be in pain, and pleaded bitterly:

"Please, don't sing, okay? I'm dying of hunger, and if I listen to this ghostly song again, I'll definitely die! ”

"My friend, you can't die, you have to pay me gold!"

He put his arm around my shoulders and brought half of the brown bread to my mouth.

"You're not a person in my eyes...... No, no, it's not just individuals, you're a bag of gold coins that can walk, you know? ”

"Get this filth out of my eyes!" I struggled to escape Houdini's restraints, but the more I struggled, the tighter I was hugged.

"My friend is unhappy again."

When the sloppy beggar saw that I didn't eat it, he had to bite the bread into his mouth and chew it with relish.

"If you don't get to it like this****** you'll starve to death, or you'll be swollen and unable to walk, and your skin will break if you poke your finger lightly, poof! Like this! ”

He measured his arms, and made an exaggerated expression on his face, as if he had experienced something before.

I finally broke free of his big iron pincer-like hand, and said angrily, "Have you seen it before?" It pops open with a pop and cuts! ”

Houdini stopped talking, his face was blue like the steel lines left after the quenching of the long sword, and the whole person became different from before, shrouded in an aura of terror and slaughter, he was very annoying when he chattered, but when he quieted down, he looked like two people.

"I've experienced it? Of course, how could a wild seed like me never see it. ”

His voice rose an octave, startling a nest of birds in the bushes.

"War, hunger, sickness, and death filled my life, and from the moment my mother, who was born as a daughter, fell to the ground in her belly, the old men fought back and forth, and whoever won would naturally levy a war tax, and whoever won the church would collect tithes on time, and whoever won the executioners whose blood had not yet been wiped clean had to find joy in my mother! They abused her in front of me, bullied her, took turns to ****, and made her moan in pain while screaming happily! Those men occupied my mother's tent from morning till night and drove me out of the house like a wild dog! ”

"When I was a child, I was hungry, and my mother gave me all the food she could get, and she couldn't fill this bottomless stomach, what can a child do when she is homeless? The vegetable garden of the monastery is full of fruit, but they refuse to help the hungry people who are begging outside the walls of the monastery, the lord's castle cellar is full of dried grain, and they would rather feed the horses with wheat than give it to us, rotten vegetables, dead dogs, rotten wood and scorched earth, what have I not eaten? Even the skinny dead will make the hungry people and wild dogs grab each other, and as for the swollen and exploding hungry, it is not delicious, but it is a piece of meat after all......"

Looking at Houdini who was panting with excitement, I bit my lip and didn't dare to squeak, my heart was mixed with taste, his unbearable past made me both unexpected and unexpected, in this era of careless human life, if you don't eat people, you have to be eaten, the prey does not have to be sad, the hunter does not have time to be happy, even if the civilization is highly developed to the future, cannibalism is still a common theme in society, but the two sides of the law of the jungle have become more gentle and natural, they have even formulated a special law to regulate cannibalism, Completely destroy the prey physically and mentally.

It had been so long since the birth of the universe, the sun had risen and set, set and risen, the grass and trees withered and the geese had come and gone, and Houdini and I had been so far away that his breath could be heard clearly in my ears, but I could not feel his heartbeat at all.

"Let's go! There is a village not far away, and you should be able to get there before dark, and maybe some kind person will have a hot meal. He said tiredly, checking the unbuttoned buttons in his pockets.

Sure enough, when the last rays of sunlight fell behind the hills, we arrived at the village that Houdini had spoken of, and I was not surprised by the low grass houses, the muddy streets, and the bare fields, for almost all the villages of this day were the same, and the only thing that surprised me was that there were no castles of lords, or wooden villages where the tax collectors lived, which were indeed unusual.

There are no main roads and auxiliary roads in this village, and the main road is facing the sky, and Houdini turns left and right on the familiar road, and soon finds a house with collapsed beams at the other end of the village.

"It's called Ox Horn Road, remember the way you came in? The lord of the village was a baron, who died in Ravenna the year before last, thanks to his wife sleeping with the earl, to keep this barren fief from being recovered, and now the mother and son live in the Earl's castle, and come to collect a pitiful tax in kind once a year, so it is not visible that the dog's legs are everywhere, and it looks a lot cleaner. ”

Houdini's broken pocket dangled before my eyes: "Those boys are early, damn it!" ”

"Those boys?"

"That's right, they're my subjects......"

I'm afraid this house has been abandoned for a long time, the thatch that was originally used to lay the roof is slowly rotting in the ruins, and a few people are singing and dancing around the bonfire to roast something, maybe because I haven't eaten something hot for a long time, this smell is quite tempting, constantly drilling down the nostrils, quickly arousing the eager cravings, if it were not for the only remaining intellectual restraint, I am afraid I would have flown over like a hungry tiger.

"It's too late, Your Majesty."

A man crouching on a stone used to build the foundation greeted Houdini warmly.

"Dognose stole an extra fat hen, and let these hungry ghosts snatch it up before it is cooked, if you want to fill your stomach......"

He tipped his fingers at his throat and spat out half a bone with saliva and filth: "The rest of this bone will be stewed in a big pot of hot soup." ”

Houdini kicked away the two people who were roasting the fire unhurriedly, took off his rotten straw shoes and comfortably baked the damp soles of his feet: "If you can't control that mouth that spews feces indiscriminately, I'll stuff the bones into your **, even if you call wolf eyes, it's not good, you know, bastard?" ”

The man known as Wolf Eyes laughed, with a look of indifference, his gaze fell on me, and his eyes really emitted a sharp light like a hungry wolf: "Who is this guy?" It looks white and fat, and it tastes good, is it the ration you brought back? ”

"He's mine, don't make a fool of yourself."

Houdini picked up a twig from the ground, untied his pocket, and skewered the begging bread and lettuce leaves on it, and set it on the fire to roast slowly.

"In a sense, he's my ration for the future, eh...... Of course, it wasn't that he ate him, and besides, he didn't have any good meat, at most chopped up the stew. ”

The lettuce leaves were blackened, and the crust of the bread near the heart of the flame was slightly charred, and Houdini hurriedly changed to the other side: "Dog's nose!" ”

He shouted without raising his head, and not far away, an old man with a rickety face and wrinkled face responded in a deep voice: "Is there anything else to eat?" It's really not good, you go to the village to get some, these days the mushrooms are growing in your mouth! ”

"No, Your Majesty, it's gone."

The dog's nose shrugged: "You don't know this village, it's so poor that you can't even catch lice, that chicken was brought by a Jewish dealer who crossed the border during the day, and he should be unlucky, just let me see, this is simply God's grace!" ”

Houdini sighed helplessly and continued to concentrate on baking bread, and I felt uncomfortable under the watchful eyes of those around me.

"Who are they and why do you call you Your Majesty?" I asked in a low voice.

"They all said they were my subjects."

He tested the temperature of the bread and leisurely blew the burnt part of the ash smoke: "Welcome to the kingdom of beggars!" ”

——————————

Houdini's kingdom of beggars is as far as the eye can see.

A collapsed roof house that can only shelter from the wind and rain, has been collapsing for more than ten years,

A stew pot with thick black ash, the bottom is about to burn out,

More than a dozen old and weak ones are called Hanako, the old ones are about to die, and the small ones are yellow and drooping, uneven.

Their daily begging is not enough to fill their stomachs.

"You're really ...... The people of Wufu are abundant. ”

I deliberately dragged out the long tail note, picked a crepe word and stuffed all the ridicule into it, and expressed my dissatisfaction extremely nakedly.

"I don't understand the word, but what's the matter?"

Houdini grinned at the burnt crust and said indistinctly, "But I know that's a bad thing, friend, don't tease me with the quips you learned in the castle, or I won't give you another chance to be sarcastic." ”

I rolled my eyes, but my stomach growled uncontrollably, protesting against the mistreatment I had endured these days, pretending to glance casually at the soup pot that had been drunk to the bottom, and there was not a single bone left in it, leaving only the tempting taste to seduce the hungry and shivering hungry intestines.

I finally decided to continue to challenge the limits of human existence, just drank some cold water from the stone water tank, and forcibly didn't care about the flying and floating unknown objects inside, so I prepared to sleep in my clothes, and asked uncomfortably before lying down, "How long do we have to get to ******?" ”

"God knows."

He pointed to the sky indifferently: "More than ten days, less than five or six days, who knows if there is chaos in front?" ”

"In chaos?"

"That's right, just after the battle, it must be very chaotic."

Houdini swallowed the rest of the bread and shouted to the beggars, who were playing some kind of gambling game loudly, "Who, the boy from the dog's nose, tell our friends what you see." ”

There was a thin boy standing out of the beggars, and if I judged by the wrinkles on his face before he grew old, I would have to call him an uncle.

"My name is Rabbit Legs, Your Majesty, and I run as fast as a rabbit! The fastest in the village! ”

The boy seemed to be excited that he would be appreciated by the king, and he was excited to make a gesture.

"Dognose and I just came back from the north two days ago, and it was not long after the battle."

"Tell him!"

Houdini, apparently unable to stand the noise of the boy, pointed at me impatiently, and then fled to the other side of the fire wrapped in his coat.

Rabbit Legs looked at his king reluctantly, the wrinkles on his face seemed to have become more, he sighed and sat down next to me, and said impatiently, "What do you want to ask?" ”

This attitude is very different from what I just said, and the beggar is so snobbish!

I was dissatisfied, but I was still very polite: "Tell me about the situation in the north, okay?" ”

"What is there to say in the north, it's nothing more than lords, you beat me, I beat you, and more and more taxes are levied back and forth, but there are fewer and fewer farmers who pay taxes."

The rabbit's legs stretched out of his unspeakable legs, and his legs were long and slender, definitely a clothes rack by today's standards, but this was entirely due to malnutrition, skinny and skinny:

"When the Normans came last year, they cleaned up a lot of disobedient local nobles, and I became an orphan at that time, and then the Pope also came to mix with this muddy water, and the common people did not have a good life, the land was simply abandoned, and people starved to death everywhere, and last month a group of fierce Franks came from the north of the mountain, holding strange dragon flags, and killed the Grand Duke of Milan in Colico, and then rushed to Rome in a hurry, and another group of Franks who had just won the battle in the past half a month......"

"I heard that it seems to be the same group as before, they defeated the lord of Verona, and they are rushing to ******...... non-stop."

I doubt that if it hadn't been for the hindrance, it would have been nagging from the day God created the world:

"If you want me to say that the road is very chaotic now, either deserters or bandits, maybe there are fierce wild dogs and vultures waiting to eat the flesh of the dead, your journey to ****** is estimated to be more auspicious, watch it yourself!"

After speaking, the young man squeezed away a piece of land to accommodate himself, lay down with his back to the fire, and said again the moment he closed his eyes: "But with Your Majesty, it shouldn't be a big problem." ”

(End of chapter)