When you wake up from a deep sleep and you hear the sound of swords in your ears, don't panic, what you have to do is to draw your sword in the same way.

- "The Bear King" Matthew Coles

Jack, who said goodbye to his brother at the fork in the road, walked all the way under the escort of seventeen knights and two old retainers, the definition of knight in the Naranster Continent actually had a very high standard at the beginning, but with the passage of war and time, it has now developed into a general term for warriors wearing armor and riding horses, and this kind of soldiers are generally relatively high-level soldiers, and they are extremely satisfied with this title.

However, if the nobles call them knights when they encounter commoners, they will report their names so as not to be mistaken for a soldier, for example, Jack will say that I am Baron Jack Arthur, the youngest son of Lord Rodoco Arthur of Northridge, the title of baron was born with Jack, and when he becomes an adult, he will be automatically promoted to a viscount, and Jack's brother is already a viscount.

Although the title of knight can be said to be worthless, there are still some people who have great respect for knights and demand themselves as a knight, and most of these people are children of noble families, and they all have their own titles, such as "Knight of the Earth" Haig Sameer and so on.

The two old retainers who traveled with him were all trusted subordinates of Jack's father, and the rest of the knights were also carefully selected, so along the way, Jack actually didn't regard these people as subordinates, on the contrary, these people were elders to Jack, as the largest port city in Northridge, Angry Horn had to fight with pirates every year even in peacetime, so the quality and loyalty of the warriors were tested.

It took about twenty days for the group to reach the Rhine, and of course this was also because of the speed at which everyone was in a leisurely manner without hurrying. The first night of coming out of the three forks to the Rhine must be to sleep in the wilderness, and it is naturally very difficult to sleep in the wilderness of Northridge in winter, but there is no way to do it. Don't look at the North Ridge is the second largest territory on the Naranster continent, but in terms of population, it can only rank fourth, and the entire North Ridge can be said to be deserted if compared to the Rhine. The harsh living environment has greatly limited the population and development of Northridge, and as many as 40 percent of the children of ordinary families have died in infancy.

Moreover, although the territory of Northridge is large, there are few villages, towns and castles, and they are scattered in some places suitable for survival or military points. The three-way crossing refers to the first fork after entering the North Ridge from the cold block, this road goes deeper into the North Ridge on one side, and the other side goes to the Angry Corner, and the other side naturally goes to the Rhine Empire beyond the North Ridge.

For this trip, neither the entourage nor Jack himself actually had much sense of danger, after all, it was now a peaceful year, and Jenny had gone out of the door so far for the first time since she had grown up. In fact, not to mention Jenny, even Jack was so far away from home for the first time, and after several struggles, he was laughed at by the old retainer and drove him off his horse to play with Jenny.

The camp for the night at the fork was quickly set up by the experienced veterans, and several tents were dressed in thick clothes, except for some extra blankets for Jack, the veterans behaved very casually, and they could even go all night without sleeping and sleeping again in the next town tomorrow.

In the middle of the night, a retainer woke up Jack and Jenny, and made a boo gesture to signal them not to speak, and Jack looked around, only to see that the campfire had been extinguished, everyone had swords in their hands, and the sound of killing and screaming could be heard in their ears.

"There's a situation ahead, Warren has gone to investigate, you two hurry up. The retainer said, Warren had retreated as he spoke, and Jack got up and one of the retainers hurriedly helped him put on the plate armor.

"It was the bandits who raided the caravan in front of us, numbering about twenty people. The knight named Warren said.

"How dare you raid so close to us?" the retainer frowned, "This is to conclude that we will not help." "To be honest, according to this old retainer's thoughts, he is indeed not prepared to help, first, it is not a caravan of Angry Horn, second, this is not within the range of Angry Horn, and third, they are not the Amber family with the wolf-faced badge, the way of the world is like this, there is no need to fight for irrelevant people, although it is not difficult to deal with such a group of robbers.

"Sir, help us, please!" A hysterical wail came from the unwilling grass, and following the sound, a figure ran deep and shallow in the snow, and finally ran close to the back, but a tall thief chased after him, and he didn't know whether he was holding a stone or a chain hammer, so he threw it at the man in front of him, who seemed to be quite Sven, and the man fell to the ground and struggled to crawl forward.

The bandit kept approaching, and with the sound of footsteps getting closer and closer, the man instinctively turned his head, only to see that the long sword in the hand of the tall bandit had been raised high towards him, and he subconsciously raised his left hand to make an instinctive defensive action, but how could a flesh-and-blood arm block a long sword, even if it was not sharp.

The man opened his eyes slightly in horror, and in the dark night, he saw the thief who was chasing him take two steps back, the hand sword holding the sword had been dropped, and the other hand was holding a short spear that had passed through his throat.

One of the two retainers was a middle-aged man with a curly beard and the appearance of a standard pirate captain, standing there as if he had done nothing, as a nobleman's servant, they could ignore the robbery of civilians by bandits in the distance, but they would not allow such a thing as a thief killing a civilian in front of his own young master.

"My lord!" the man struggled as if he had grasped a life-saving straw and rushed over, kneeling on the ground and kneeling down at Jack, this was also good in his eyes, and he could see at a glance that the position of several people was mainly based on this position, and he had seen this young man during the day, and knew that he was the big man in this team.

"Sir, please save us!" the man knelt down and said, "We are merchants of the Rhine Empire, we are from Loraine, and we are also nobles! Save us, there are still many women and children in the caravan! We will definitely tell the adults about your heroic deeds when we go back!"

Jack looked at the two retainers and said nothing, saying that he was listening to them, but the obvious sympathy was evident in his eyes. The two retainers glanced at each other and read each other's meaning, and if what the man said was true, then they might have won a friend for their young master before they even arrived at Loraine.

"Our young master wants to know who your family adults are. The pirate-looking retainer asked.

"Our lord is a member of the Imperial Senate!, and they call him the rich Earl Gilson!," replied the man, as if he were an ant on a hot pan.

"Oh. Another retainer pretended to have admired the name for a long time, but in fact he heard that it was an earl, and thought it was not bad, and said casually: "That is a noble lord, we should help, and my lord agreed." "Actually, who knows which green onion it is, it is said that the counts of the Rhine Empire, especially those in Luolan City, are as many as cabbage, and this kind of person who has no fiefdom and has the title of earl is no different from not being a nobleman in the eyes of the people of Northridge.

The man kneeling on the ground was also in a cold sweat on his head, he had been in Luolan for almost fifteen years, and his own adults never seemed to have heard of anyone commenting on him as "noble", but he couldn't care so much about it, and it was already very undesirable to think about it like this.

No one paid any attention to the men who knelt on the ground and kept thanking them, the knights rode their horses, and Jack stepped on his own horses, with two old retainers guarding the sides, one of whom was holding Jenny. The four men marched forward at the end, and the remaining knights were already rushing forward.

The caravan's camp was already in shambles, there were several corpses on the ground, there were caravan people, there were also bandits, as a caravan was not without self-defense, except for a few guards, weapons had been picked up by everyone, if you count women and children, the caravan still has an advantage in numbers. However, in the face of a group of outlaws, these individual numerical advantages can become a burden.

"Drink, drink!" came the voice of the knight on horseback, and both the caravan and the bandits looked sideways. The standard gray iron armor, the long sword and spear in his hand are not shiny, not to mention the sophisticated equipment, but the regular army can not always be compared with the miscellaneous fish, not to mention that these dozen people are carefully selected by Jack's father.

The originally scorching battle situation was immediately reversed with a wave of more than a dozen knights, and years of combat experience allowed them to easily distinguish which were bandits and which were merchants. After this wave of killings, the battle became suspenseless, and most of the dead and wounded bandits began to flee one after another, but the knights did not seem to have any intention of letting one go.

Just as several knights scattered to pursue the bandits, Jack and the two old retainers also rode slowly on, and there was the middle-aged man who was trotting after him who ran to ask for help. The people in the camp also looked at each other at this moment, some were busy caring for the wounded, some were comforting the women and children, and a few of the older ones came to salute Jack.

"Thank you, my esteemed lord, for the privilege of knowing which honorable one saved us. One of them, who looked to be the leader of the caravan, asked.

"In front of you is Baron Jack Arthur of Horn, the youngest son of Lord Lord of Horn, Count Rodoco Arthur. The pirate-faced retainer replied that in such a case, unless he was alone, the nobleman would not usually introduce himself to a commoner.