"Svadians! It's Swadia! ”

In the drizzle, a Rhodok scout slammed his head through the camp fence with an arrow wound and fell to the ground. When the nearby soldiers gathered towards him, with blood in the corners of his mouth, he shouted at them with the last of his strength:

"Von Byron is here!"

The soldiers in the camp originally felt that something was wrong, but when they heard this, they picked up their weapons one after another and rushed towards the foot of the mountain.

The officers shouted and ordered them to form a line, but the terrain was steep and the trees were so dense that the phalanx could not be lined up at all.

And when the logging mercenaries, who also had the appearance and accent of the Rhodok area, appeared in their sight, a large group of bandits suddenly appeared on the other side of the camp and attacked their patrol in the middle of the forest.

Rhodok's crossbowmen took out their crossbows and wanted them to be usable under their protection. Unfortunately, the moisture and fog caused by the recent continuous rain had already damaged the strings of these southern heavy crossbows, and even if they used so hard that they cut their fingers, the crossbows could not be used.

On the other hand, the longbow strings used by Byron's Vecchian archers were made of fiber, which was not afraid of rain soaking. So while the Rhodok crossbowmen were fiddling with their crossbows, the Northland archers were already shooting sharp cone-headed arrows at them from behind the trees.

As a last resort, they had always preferred to suppress their enemies with long-range fire, hiding behind their shields and charging with their military hoes and spearmen.

The strength of the Rhodok spearmen, who had lost the cover of the military formation, would have been weakened by more than half, not to mention that more than half of the soldiers had diarrhea due to water pollution yesterday, and their combat effectiveness was seriously reduced, and their morale was also on the verge of collapse. In the face of the fierce mercenaries and robbers, these regular Rhodok troops were suppressed by the other side, and the defense line was breached in just a few minutes.

The sergeants dragged their tired bodies to stop the mercenaries to buy time for the rest of the troops to break through. They didn't realize until now that the number of troops they had surrounded was actually half of theirs.

But so what? The camp was already in chaos, many soldiers had diarrhea and lost their strength and had taken off their armor and lay in their tents, when there was an enemy attack they had no choice but to surrender. And those armed soldiers, who had also lost the fighting spirit to resist at this time, fled with the officers, broke through in the direction where there was no enemy, and left almost all their baggage.

However, when they managed to escape the mountain, they found themselves in another trap.

Hundreds of heavily armed heavy cavalry came into sight and circled from both directions, cutting off their rear. The commander of the unit could only stubbornly order a line of resistance, and set up his spear to resist the charge of those cavalry.

When the cavalry saw the whole platoon of spears raised, they quickly stopped their horses, threw a lot of javelins at them, circled them a few times, and tentatively launched a round of charge, but without success, and lost several cavalrymen. They chose to retreat, leaving this force with a large gap to leave.

Originally, Rhodok's commander wanted the troops to leave there slowly in an array, but he didn't expect the order to retreat, and the troops under his command began to flee like crazy, and the phalanx that was originally built for survival also collapsed instantly because of the desire to survive at this time, and the officers couldn't stop the spread of this chaos at all.

Byron's cavalry had been waiting for this opportunity, and the previous deliberate retreat was also to provoke the other side to flee. Now that the opportunity had come, Ken had an order, and hundreds of cavalry launched a charge against the Rhodok rout from the rear, directly tearing apart the formation of this force of more than 1,000 men, and a large number of Rhodok soldiers were captured in the pursuit, and a few died under the sabers and lances.

Eventually, the noble officer in command of the unit was shot through the chest with a rifle in the chest during a battle with two Swadian heavy cavalry, and his men surrendered, demanding that their captors be kept alive.

After the battle, Byron told Kenrad that he thought it was better for the commander to die than not to die, because the performance of the Rhodok army in this battle was terrible, and I am afraid that for the first time since the death of Gruenward, the troops of the Rhodok kingdom behaved so badly, and if he returned home alive, whether he was redeemed or fought out, he was destined to become a laughing stock.

In this regard, Kenla laughed a few times for the first time in a long time, agreeing with Byron's opinion.

After this battle, Byron lost no more than 20 light infantry and 6 cavalry, and the loss of horses, weapons and armor was also very small. Even those mountain bandits lost less than a fifth of their losses after a fierce battle with the Rhodoks, and the number of kills even exceeded their own losses.

As for the result, it gave Byron a bit of a headache. Although there was a lot of crossbow armor captured, the equipment of this army was badly worn out after months of siege, and it would take a week for the blacksmiths of the entire Veruga to repair the weapons and armor that were still working. Even if you go to sell it, you can't find a buyer who can digest this batch of materials for a while.

As a last resort, Byron had no choice but to reward the troops and the newly joined mountain people once again, rewarding them with hundreds of trophies of slightly inferior condition, and letting them watch and dispose of them for themselves.

The problem of captives was even more serious, because of the long march and Byron's poisoning, the physical strength of these Rhodok soldiers was greatly reduced, and most of them chose to surrender, and after the first battle, there were almost 1,200 prisoners!

Most of these captives were weak and needed food, water, and a place to rest, and they would severely slow Byron's march and consume a lot of supplies. The sick and wounded, in particular, had to occupy the wagons in which they had placed their booty and supplies, which was an important reason why Byron gave up nearly half of his booty.

The only thing that can make him breathe a sigh of relief is that most of the captives are Viruga locals, Byron only needs to entrust a ransom broker to get the ransom quickly, and if there is a suitable one, he can also let them join the Viscount's army, and there is no need to worry about the disposal of these more than a thousand captives.

After all, with so many people, Viruga's prison couldn't fit twice as big.

Byron took his soldiers and a large number of captives to rest for a day in the original position of the Rhodoc actor, but did not celebrate, because Kenrad feared that if the soldiers were drunk at night, they might let the captives go, or even be stabbed by the captives.

On the way back, dozens of captives escaped in various ways, and many others were so poisoned that they were ordered by Byron to be "released on the spot" near the villages they passed through along the way. That sounded good, but everyone else knew that the end of these abandoned captives would not be much better if no one cared for them, especially now that they were penniless.

But now Byron didn't care about the life or death of these captives, and he finally breathed a sigh of relief. He won the battle, and the north was safe for the time being, but there were still many things waiting for him to solve.