Prologue: The Tale of the Horse Thief

――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――

"Javil Boye is back!" shouted the gate guard, and the army outside the city slowly entered the Riwa Chariot in the blood-red sunset, while the servants inside the castle busied. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"Take good care of them!" commanded the officer in a fierce voice, and the boy knew that it was Mistress Mithier, the knight of Lord Poye's guard, and hastened to take the reins of the horses and lead them back to the stable. After tying the horses one by one, the boy poured the hay into the wooden trough and went to fetch water, ready to wait for the horses to finish eating the hay and drink water. While the horses were grazing, the boy brought the brushes, unsaddled them, and brushed their fur.

Javier Boyer entered the castle, and the Mitil knight led the men to the blacksmith's shop, "Aiken Boyer, are you ready for the weapons you want?"

"Of course," said the blacksmith known as Aiken, poked his head out, "a hundred swords, two hundred spear tips, one hundred and sixty horseshoes, two thousand arrow clusters, all ready, Mistress Boyer's strips?"

"Give. The Knight of Mittier handed Ayken the note of Marigapoye, and even doubted that he recognized the names of the numbers and weapons.

Aiken squinted at the small slip of paper with his thick hand to confirm the numbers, and then put the note on the wooden table beside him: "It's all in the storage room at the back, bring your people with me." ”

When they were gone, a man walked into the blacksmith's shop, picked up a note from the table, looked at it, whistled softly and left.

"Where have you been, Alvin? Come and help," cried the boy to another eleven or twelve-year-old, "there are dozens of horses that have not been washed, where have you gone to play?

"Alright Bob," Arvin grumbled, "Am I not back?" said as he picked up another brush and neatly brushed the back of a horse. "Actually, the steward won't be back so soon, I saw him go to Linhe Street, and he must have gone to find a woman again. ”

"Whether he finds a woman or not, won't he be punished if he comes back before we finish our work?" Bob said indignantly, "If you want to go out to play, tell me, otherwise I won't know how to explain it if the adults find out......"

"Come on, tell you you're going to let me hang out......"

"Hey, boys!" their argument was suddenly interrupted by an outsider, "Excuse me, is the Lord Steward here?"

Bob looked at the man, with short wavy black hair, short, black eyebrows in the shape of a figure-of-eight, a small black beard, some on his chin, and red flesh on his nose and cheekbones, which looked as if he had suffered a lot. "Who are you, Lord Steward, here?"

"No?" the visitor seemed disappointed, "I'm a horse trainer invited by Lord Javier Boyer, my name is Mo Cha Pandoa, so you can call me Mo Cha." ”

"What about tea...... Trainer?" The two boys looked at each other quizzically.

"Don't believe me?" Mo Cha took out a herald note from his bosom, pointed to the text on it and read: "Mo Cha Pandoya is now appointed as my chief horse trainer, and in order to cooperate with Mo Cha Pandoya's horse training work, please meet all his needs - Javier Poye." ”

"Ah, that's right, Lord Tea!I'm so sorry!" Bob hurriedly apologized, and Tea tucked the strip into his arms in satisfaction.

Alvin asked curiously, "What does a horse trainer do?"

Mo Mocha stroked his short beard and said: "A horse trainer is a person who communicates with horses with his soul, ordinary people can only be familiar with each other with horses, guess what the horses think, and the horses can't know in time when they are sick." The trainer knows exactly what the horse is thinking, where it is uncomfortable, whether it wants to drink water or eat grass, whether it wants to have fun or run, and I can tell the horse what to do and how to do it. Would you like to see what I'm capable of?"

"Yes!" said the two boys almost in unison.

Tea whistled, and all the horses in the stable looked at him in unison. Mo Cha walked up to a red horse and looked at him, the red horse's ears were pointed and erect, and his big nostrils sniffed him urgently. "Hello!" Mo Cha said softly, slowly raising his hand to gently caress its cheek, and the red horse also gently rubbed his hand, Mo Cha untied its reins and pulled it outside, patted it on the shoulder and said, "Lie down, lie down, be ......" The red horse quickly fell to the ground. Tea patted it on the shoulder again and said, "Stand up!" and the red horse immediately stood up.

"Can you make it spin in circles?" said Alvin, his eyes widened in amazement, "this is the mount of the Knight of Musiri, and he usually has a great temper!"

"Of course!" Mo Cha patted the horse's head, gestured a circle with his hand, and told it: "Turn in a circle, turn in a circle...... and then pulled the red horse to slowly turn around twice, and then completely let go of the reins, and then gestured, and the red horse actually turned around slowly.

"Oh my God! it's amazing!" exclaimed Alvin, "can you teach me?

Not to be outdone, Bob also ran forward: "I want to learn too!

But the horses told me that they were well fed and drunk, and that they needed to take a walk, and that we should take them for a ride outside the castle before the sun went down, and that when I came there was a great meadow to the south of the city, which I thought would be the most suitable. ”

"Out of town?" Bob hesitated, "the guards won't let us lead our horses out of the city without orders from the adults." ”

"You forgot?" said Mocha, patting the note in her arms, "Lord Boye's orders are here, and everything must cooperate with my horse training work!"

"But there are fifty or sixty horses here," Alvin scratched his hair, "we can't control so many. ”

Mo Cha patted him on the shoulder with confidence: "Young man, have you forgotten who I am? Go, just untie the reins of them all, and leave the rest to me!" So soon the herd of horses was led by the three of them to the gate of the city.

"Hey, boy, what are you going to do?" the guards stopped them with their spears.

"Who's called 'boy', watch your tongue!" Tea threw Javier Boye's strip at them disdainfully, "Of course it's Javier Boyer's order, idiot!"

The guard looked at the note, but unfortunately he didn't recognize a word: "Who are you? What kind of order is this?"

"I'm Javier Poye's horse trainer 'Master Pandoya,'" Mo Cha emphasized, "Isn't Lord Poye's order not clear enough?, we're going to walk the horses of Lord Poye, Lord Poye is about to go on a campaign, and these horses need to be trained well." ”

One of the guards looked at Porcha suspiciously, and asked, "But, I don't think I've heard of any horse trainers for Lord Poyer?"

"Does Javier Boyer need to ask for your permission to ask for a horse trainer?" said Tea, pulling down his face, "If in doubt, go and get Lord Boyer!The sun is about to set, and if it delays my work, let's see if Lord Boyer will hang your head on the spear!"

The guard looked at the two boys behind him, and muttered and withdrew his spears, so that Mocha, Bob, and Alvin mounted their horses and walked out of the city gates, while the horses obediently followed them.

"Young men!" said Mo Cha, "horses are natural runners, elves flying on the earth! The stables are their prisons, and the castles are their shackles! The grasslands are their paradise! Let us run to our heart's content!"

"Strange, why do I think this Lord Pandoya is so familiar?" said one of the guards to himself, holding the spear in his hand.

"I know why. Another guard said, pointing to the wanted notice affixed to the wall behind him.

"What about Lord Tea, Lord Tea!" The excitement gradually faded after the horses galloped for half an hour, and Bob shouted loudly when he saw the sun set, "It's getting dark soon, we should go back!"

He heard Bob's shout, stood on the bare back with his hands on the horse's back, and turned back to his chest and crossed his arms in the direction of the horse's running.

"Gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself once again," Mocha tilted his head slightly, "I am Mocha Pandoya, who is known as the 'King of Horse Thieves' from the steppes south of Kujit!"

Bob's eyes widened in surprise, his mouth big enough to fit an egg.

Alvin exclaimed, "Oh my God! I know you! Everybody calls you Grand Theft Jack Tea!"

"That's what the poor call it," objected Bob, "that's not what the nobles and knights call it." ”

"Hah!I'm honored!" Teatea snapped her fingers at Alvin, "I know what your nobles call me—'Cunning Tea,' 'Damn Horse Thief,' 'Tea,' 'Tea,' Tea,'

"We're miserable...... Bob said with a sad face, "Master Javier Boyer knows that we have lost our horses, and will kill us!"

The little face of Javier Boyer Alvin was also full of fear at the mention of Javier, and the original excitement was swept away.

The tea whistled, and the horses immediately slowed down and stopped. Mo Cha urged the horses to ride in front of their horses: "I'm sorry boys, I lied to you at the beginning. Do you look like you're just slaves, and you still have family in the city?" Seeing that Bob and Alvin both shook their heads, Mo Cha took out twenty gold dinars from his arms and put them in his hands: "If you go back now, you will definitely not escape punishment, and nine times out of ten you will lose your life." Now you have two options: one is to take the money and go to Zenda, where you will not be hunted, you can work in the tavern, you can do apprenticeship to craftsmen, you can go to the port to do odd jobs, whatever you want. The second is to come with me, tomorrow morning a friend of mine will find you a good master, and you can continue to live your old life and serve another lord, you decide. ”

"I'm going to go with you!" Alvin shouted, Bob tugged at his sleeve, but Alvin ignored him, "But I don't want to serve the lord, I'm going to follow you!"

"Are you crazy?" said Bob in horror, "you're going to be caught and hanged as a robber!"

Mo Cha laughed: "Your partner is right, but I am not as fun as you think, and I have a partner of flying geese, and who am I?

"I've seen it!" said Alvin affirmed, "I've seen so many eagles eating dead people in the village!"

Mo Cha put away her smile and patted him on the shoulder, the kid had obviously experienced something terrible. "That's not an eagle," said Porcha, "it's a crow or a vulture." Well, we don't have much time, Marigapoye will not be the only ones with these horses, the pursuers will be chasing them soon, so choose quickly!"

Bob hesitated for a moment and said timidly, "I...... I want to go back ......."

Mo Cha looked at him and asked, "Are you sure you want to go back?" Bob nodded.

"What about you, little one!" asked Alvin again.

"I'm going with you!" Alvin said stubbornly, and Mo Cha frowned.

"Since you have decided to go back, then I will do you a hand," said Mocha, pulling out a dagger from a horse and cutting the reins, pulling Bob onto his horse, "which will make you go back with less punishment." As he spoke, he suddenly slapped Bob in the face, and his face immediately turned red, and blood even flowed from the corners of his mouth, and his teeth were also stained red.

"Don't kill me! Oh, please don't kill me......" Bob cried.

Ignoring his cries, he tied him up with a rope in his hand and threw him on the grass.

"They will soon catch up and tell them how I deceived you and how I abused you, and you jumped off your horse and ran away while I was not looking, and although I found out, I did not look back after you, remember what I said. "If you ask me where I've gone, I'll say I'm going south." Then he urged the horses to run south with Alvin.

"What about Lord Tea!" Alvin asked aloud, "you told Bob to tell them that we were running south, why should we run south?

Mo Cha laughed and said, "If we don't go south, the pursuers will think that your friend is lying, and he will die." Further south, at the foot of the hill is a crossroads, where the trade routes of the three major towns of Zhivading, Zhiwache and Wocheze meet. It's easy to track the hoof prints of so many horses in the grasslands, and it's already completely dark there, and the horses' hoof prints are so messy on the trade roads that it's hard for them to find us!"

Soon it was dark, the moon had not yet risen, the sky was only full of stars, and human figures could be faintly seen in the distance, but it was blurred in the distance.

Tea slowed down, and Alvin caught up and rode side by side. In the middle of the night, they finally arrived at the three-way junction that Mocha said, to the north was the Riwa Cheze, to the southwest they could go to the Wocheze of the Nord Kingdom, and to the east they could reach the capital of the Kingdom of Vegia, Zhivadine, next to the intersection there was a dilapidated tavern, the walls were broken, and the roof had collapsed, and Mocha circled in front of the tavern for a while and led the horse team on the road to Rivadin.

"Your Excellency," Alvin asked worriedly, "will Javier Poye's men catch up with us?"

"Of course," said Mocha, who felt that he was beginning to like the little fellow, "Maliga's men must still be chasing us, and if he lost so many horses at once, Maliga would have gone mad, and if he heard the news, he would have jumped on the table and asked his men: 'Are you all pigs? Let that damn thief take my dozens of horses from my stables?, go after them, and don't come back if you can't catch you!'"

The little guy listened to Mo Cha's exaggerated tone, and smiled backwards, "If only there was a moon, it is so dark, can the horse still see the road?"

"Of course," Mocha told him affirmatively, "the horse's eyes can see the road in darker nights, and they can smell the distant stream of water and grass in the wind." Don't expect the moon anymore, today's moon won't come out until the second half of the night, and it's just a waning moon like a watermelon rind that has been eaten up, and there is not much light, all of which I have calculated. Those who chase us will definitely be holding torches, and although they can illuminate the nearby path, their eyes will be less able to see dark places and distances, let alone the eagles that want to catch up with Darth Befa!"

The horses followed the tea along the main road, then turned southeast through the tall arbors, waded through a river beach, turned west through the canyon path, and by the time they came into a narrow and winding forest path, the sun had risen in the east, and Alvin had already fallen asleep in his arms. Tea led the horses into a glade and woke Alvin.

"Where is this?" Alvin asked, yawning.

Mo Cha looked around and said, "This is already the territory of the Swadia Kingdom, I have to find an old fellow, he will buy us off." "Make sure it's safe to all the horses and tie them all to the trees.

Mo Cha threw ten dinars of gold to him, "These are the rewards for helping me bring the horses out of the castle." The little guy was pleasantly surprised, "Wow! It's the first time I've held a gold coin in my hand!"

Tea and Alvin rode eastward through the woodland, and by noon they came to a bazaar of countless tents. Although there were wars between kingdoms, there were still markets for private transactions between the people of various countries, such as the one in front of them, who did not need to go into the city to pay taxes, but only traded with each other in some old places where there were conventions. He asked Alvin to buy something to eat, and he spun around and got into a canvas tent.

"Hey!Asi," Mocha greeted the man inside, "are you alone?"

"Ahh ”

At this moment, four Virgian soldiers walked outside the tent and grabbed Mo Cha's arm.