Fort Brave.

Baron Kedren stood on the watchtower of his castle, holding a monocular, and slowly corrected the knob with two fingers until he had caught the eye of the procession heading in the direction of the Gato steppe. As soon as the nominal Saarion caravan had entered his territory two days earlier, Kedren had received news from the sentinel, but eighteen hours before the sentinel's message, a silver king-pigeon smashed the window of his bedroom and brought with him a parchment sealed in beeswax, with a short, sloppy order, but in an extremely strong tone: do not think anything about the caravan, or you will bear the consequences. There is no signature, only a dark red creeping lion print. Grabbed by Schneider's hair, Kedren was forced to memorize this seal, a royal seal granted by the Ullik family to the president of the Sarion Chamber of Commerce, and any order to affix this seal was only the king's power to change. Kedren immediately realized that this was not something he could provoke as a mere border baron.

Of course, Kedren did not dare to cause trouble, but it was difficult for him to restrain his subordinates in this respect—if he did this business too many times, he would inevitably become tainted with the habits of bandits: loose, cunning, and only driven by profit. Most of the command units of Kedren's immediate forces were made up of rogue knights who followed him in the early days, and they might follow his orders when fighting abroad, but once they reached their tacit "territorial internal affairs", they all disobeyed each other. When he first settled at Shield Fortress, Kedren led these rogue knights to rub oil on passing caravans, and he didn't do much of it now, and was bent on muddying the waters between the Cato and the Noldor elves in order to profit from them, but his subordinates kept it as a "tradition". And there has been a trend of intensification recently. Fortunately, the caravan armed force under the seal of the head of the Salion Chamber of Commerce was not weak—thirty heavily armored mercenary infantry armed with spears, twenty Larria patrol sentinels, twenty crossbowmen, fifteen Buckley musketeers, and five light cavalry with bows, as far as a caravan was concerned, such a large escort force was quite strong, and even a force led by Kedren himself might not be able to eat easily, so he was not at all worried that his subordinates would be stupid enough to take a dozen or so men to find fault.

But gradually Kedren felt that something was wrong. Yesterday he inexplicably lost a group of hussars escorting his captives, and found their miserable bodies by the river. But the real loss was actually a Noldor elf who was guarded by that small force. Kedren actually knew very well why his men were on the riverside, and he had always known that his soldiers were sneaking behind his back to do similar little things, but he didn't mind. You can't monopolize the wine jar by yourself, and occasionally you have to let your subordinates moisten their mouths. The auction houses of Larria never valued the chastity of the Noldor elves, but instead their purity symbolized wildness and danger, and the rich who had a soft spot for it often paid a terrible price.

At first, Kedren thought that his light cavalry had been ambushed by the Noldor team, but since the defeat of Tildo Aoracan Aldarian at the Shield Keep, few Noldor elves have been seen on his territory, and Kedren has not received sightings for a long time. In addition, the most suspicious is naturally the caravan that "just happened" to be stationed nearby.

Kedron silently turned his binoculars, and he saw that a rogue knight he had recruited only the previous year was sneakily following the caravan with a few light cavalry, and pretended to release a carrier pigeon towards Fort Brave. Kedren knew very well that the pigeon had nothing strapped to its feet, that it was just a symbolic signal, and that the idiot would then stop the unit in his own name and try to rub the oil.

A ranger quickly broke away from the caravan and unfurled his bow on horseback, firing five arrows in quick three seconds! And his subordinates, together with those light cavalry, without exception, were shot in the head and planted on their horses.

The telescope slipped from Kedren's hand, the lenses shattering against the brick wall of the watchtower, and he stared at the tiny black dot on the plain and muttered, "Fuck...... Is this the shooting method of the Noldor elves? ”

Kedren believed in his eyesight, especially after he had been dealing with the Noldor elves for so long and unpleasantly, and he was even more impressed by the amazing prowess of those green eyes on the bow and arrow, the natural and smooth flow of arrows falling in Kedron's eyes made him reflexively afraid, and the best Silver Mist Ranger under the Marquis of Eldred could only shoot four arrows in a row, and it was not completely accurate.

"Sigil bows, elven horses, and ...... Noldor's archery ......" Thinking of the window that had been broken by the silver king's pigeon and had not yet been repaired, Kedren bared his teeth slightly, and showed a meaningful smile, and he took the letterhead from his bosom, tore it open three or five times, and crumpled the piece of paper with the creeping lion printed on it into a ball and ejected it from the watchtower. He leaned his hands on the stone wall and breathed hard, but he still felt the flames burn brighter and brighter. "At your own risk? President Schneider, I am not to blame for your own oversight. Kedren muttered vaguely but disdainfully, and walked briskly down the watchtower, his steps so hurried that he almost fell down the stairs. The order was sent to all the sentries patrolling the south to the vicinity of the Long River and to patrol as soon as possible. Gather your troops, prepare for battle, and report if you spot the departing caravan approaching the river. ”

"My lord, do you want to send scouts to keep an eye on them?"

"Excuse me, just keep an eye on the border." Kedren waved his hand, keeping an eye on a caravan patrolled by the Noldor Ranger? He's not that naïve yet. "Fetch a silver king pigeon, and I'll write a letter to the Inquisition."

……

Not long after the caravan crossed the long river, several battle cavalry came up from a distance. They recognized the flags hoisted by the team, then Randolph and shouted hello. Randolph also greeted them in Gato and threw over several bags of fine spirits. The cavalry then took Estheus and Rietydilan's place, escorting them all the way. The rangers were summoned back to the carriage where Aldalian was riding.

The back of Randolph's grip on the reins tensed, and he chatted with a combat cavalryman in the Gatu's dialect as he repeatedly looked at the faces of the nearby rangers out of the corner of his eye, for fear that a conflict might break out at the slightest mistake. Then a thought came to his mind for no reason: they couldn't be trying to use me to approach and assassinate a Cato warlord, right? Or is it that young Ardalian is going to slaughter the entire Gatu Grassland with the Bow of the End to help his family establish prestige in Eraclair? Although his master has been sincerely fulfilling his obligations under the original agreement, and in exchange, the current patriarch of Noldor will not rashly provoke a large-scale armed conflict outside the Great Eastern Forest, but considering the "illustrious deeds" of the Ardarian family, especially the previous patriarch Tildo Aoragon, he feels that his assumptions are not unrealistic.