Once again, the Salanders were repulsed.

The Salanders seem to have received some kind of signal to suddenly intensify the nuisance to the Rhodoks. Even Garcia was a little puzzled by this situation, because the best option for the Salanders was to hide in the castle and wait for the Rhodocs to drain their spirits. Either the leader of the Salanders is extremely reckless, or something must have happened.

This situation was not only noticed by the Rhodoks, but even Edward in Gammich's fortress felt that something was wrong: after Aziz left, Garmic's Salander generals continued to take the initiative to fight as if they were urged by something. In this regard, the Rhodok people are still steady and steady, and there is no intention of premature confrontation with the Salanders.

Edward pondered the meaning of what Aziz had said before leaving. Gradually, he was inspired by the stories about political turmoil that Zaitsev had taught him over the years.

The Salanders conquered Fort Kamich more than a decade ago under the leadership of the old Sultan in the prime of life, and now the officers of this fort are the henchmen of the old Sultan, and their years of loyalty have made them conservative and only want to pay allegiance to the Sultan's rightful heir. This smooth transition would have one person who would be most dissatisfied, and that was the second prince of Salander. At present, the second prince controls Salander's navy and completely controls the rear supply of Fort Garmic. That is to say, if the officers of Garmic refuse to turn their allegiance to the second prince, as long as the prince is willing, then even if the Garmic Fort is burned clean by the Rhodoks, not a single reinforcement and a bag of grain will be transported here; And if the defenders of Gamic follow the correct strategy and cannot defend it, they will be reported by the second prince as 'playing with self-respect'.

Obviously, Aziz came to the fortress to Kamić remotely and could not have simply interrogated a few prisoners, it was a façade for others to see. Aziz must have negotiated with the generals of the defending army, and judging from what Aziz said before leaving Karmaqi, it is likely that the generals of Garmic did not choose the second prince. Edward could not help but break out in a cold sweat: the officers and men of Fort Garmich would probably fall victim to a political struggle.

Aziz's words kept lingering in Edward's mind: "If you can't win, run, leave you a boat on the beach". Although the Salander soldiers have not achieved a great victory at present, they are generally optimistic about the battle situation, and Edward has a strong sense of depression when he looks at the people around him.

During this period, the Salander generals went out of the city several times to invite battles, but they were all avoided by the Rhodoks. The Rhodoks only sent a small force of cavalry to follow the Salander soldiers not far away, never engaging head-to-head, and only when there were flaws in the march of the Salanders, the Rhodok cavalry rushed up and cleanly eliminated the stragglers.

However, the Salander offensive still had some success. A clever Salander officer sent a detachment of Barryans on their camels to harass the Rhodok supply lines, and soon the Rhodok patrol heard the news. The Barriya were on the verge of collapse, and even the Rhodoks felt that this time the success was too smooth, so much so that they let go of their hands and feet to torture the Barryas, who called them soft-footed shrimp--- and lacked any other means than to bluff. Just as the Rhodok cavalry straightened their spears and scattered across the field against the warm southerly wind, some of the horsemen suddenly fell to the ground with their mounts: some Salander soldiers straightened their ropes from the grass and pits where they were hiding, tripped the Rhodok knight to the ground, and surrounded him to pierce his armor. The Rhodok cavalry had lost more than a dozen cavalry before they could react, when the Salander soldiers rushed out of the trenches and haystacks camouflaged all night like marmots, and this well-planned ambush disgraced the Rhodok cavalry, and when they returned to the camp, they made a request to General Garcia: to fight as soon as possible.

Garcia did not rebuke the young cavalry units too much, but simply allowed them to continue to harass and weaken the offensive of the Salanders. As for Rhodok's infantry, Garcia had no intention of scheduling them for battle. The Rhodoks continued to flee the war.

One day, while Garcia was sitting in his tent reading the report, he heard a commotion in the distance, and Garcia asked one of his attendants to see what was going on, and when the attendant returned, he told General Garcia: "The soldiers are throwing stones farther than anyone else."

Unexpectedly, after hearing the news, Garcia smiled and rubbed his hands: "It seems that the time is ripe." ”

Fort Amera had sent news to Garcia a few days earlier: a group of soldiers sent to the snowy mountains had returned and set out again after a day's rest. This made Garcia feel a little curious, and it seemed that there was a breakthrough point in the mountain. Soon, a more detailed piece of information from Marion was passed to Garcia, and Garcia couldn't help but laugh after reading it: "Did you start a miner in the mountains?" ”

The troops on the hill agreed with Garcia that if they succeeded, the soldiers would attack the gates of Garmic and set them on fire. After seeing the flames, Garcia had to hurry up and send troops to respond. Garcia felt a hint of excitement, and this unconventional approach was Garcia's favorite, as it didn't bring too much to lose, and when it did, it was often very rewarding.

One morning, the Salanders threw out dozens of carts of firewood, lit them and drove them to Garcia's camp, which burned down some of the horses and fences in front of Garcia's camp, and then more than 300 Salander soldiers and more than 200 men followed them out of the city. The men followed behind seven tall anti-arrow carts, two of which the Rhodoks had damaged with a stone thrower, but the Salanders had managed to push the carts to the edge of the camp and overturn the behemoths. Crashing siege engines filled the trenches dug by the Rhodoks and crushed the fence behind them. Salander's soldiers marched in with shields, spears from them, and pointed straight at Rhodok's tent. During the time that the Salanders had been out of the city to the edge of the camp, the Rhodoks were only weak and shot arrows that were completely ineffective, and used their trebuchets to resist the advance of the Salanders. In general, the Rhodoks did not stand in the way of success.

The Salander soldiers fanatically seized this hard-won opportunity to fight the Rodoks. The Rhodoks quickly formed several strong lines of defense in the camp with their shields, and as soldiers joined the lines, they increased in thickness. The Rhodoks slowly pushed the Salanders back. The Salanders divided into small groups, nimbly interspersed between the Rhodok camps, setting fire to everything of value they could see, and the Rhodoks did not have any countermeasures to this, but did not hurry to force the Salanders back from the original gap. The Salanders took it when they saw it, and were about to withdraw from the Rhodok camp through the gap, but after the Salanders rushed out of the camp, they found a long line of Rhodok infantry in front of them, more than ten meters thick, these people buckled the ground with large shields, and the rows of soldiers behind took turns shooting the Salanders with crossbows. The Salanders organized several assaults, all of which were beaten back; Inside the camp, the Rhodoks relied on their numerical superiority to shrink the encirclement unhurriedly. Like a caged snake, the Salander spurred to find a way out.

If the situation had gone according to this, in less than two hours the Salanders would have been wiped out. At the critical moment, the cavalry of Fort Garmich rushed to the battlefield from the west, and these Salander cavalry rushed in dense formation to the flank of Rhodok's soldiers. In less than ten minutes from the appearance of the Salander cavalry to the time they sprinted, the Rhodok infantry quickly changed formation: nearly a third of the soldiers turned to face the cavalry, stuck their spears diagonally in the earth, and stepped on them with their feet, forming a jungle of spears on the side facing the Salander cavalry. If the cavalry collided, they would be pierced by their spears because of their strong momentum. This formation against cavalry is not uncommon, but it is difficult to effectively contain the torrent of cavalry, because most infantry will be terrified when facing the sweeping cavalry, and if there is a trace of timidity, this array with high coordination requirements will fail. Because the cavalry came and went, they only had to retreat a little, and then seize the weakest point to attack, but the infantry could not afford to lose at all.

The Salander cavalry showed great quality, and these men skillfully made a large circle, bypassing the sniper line of the Rhodoks and moving behind the part of the Rhodok soldiers on the edge of the camp. The Rhodoks, who were greatly threatened, changed formation: half of the soldiers, spears pointed inward, and continued to prevent the Salander infantry from escaping; The other half of the spear was facing outwards to guard the cavalry. Seeing hope, the besieged Salander infantry regrouped and tried to make peace with the reinforcements. The soldiers in the Rhodok camp went out of the village in three ways, intending to encircle Salander's army. However, Salander's cavalry galloped left and right, blocking the Rhodok soldiers, while Salander's infantry escaped from the gap and retreated to Fort Garmic under the cover of the cavalry.

The Salanders were repulsed again, the largest of their own initiative since the siege, and the battle lasted from morning to evening. More than 190 Salanders died, most of them civilians; Rhodok lost more than sixty soldiers. The Salanders suffered a loss and closed their doors. After a long period of recuperation and the encouragement of this victory, the Rhodok people had a strong will to fight.

When the fog reappeared, Garcia knew that the time had come for the siege: there was no sign of reinforcements at the fortress of Weiyeha; The Salander navy remained unmoved, anchoring at several bases on small overseas islands; Not a single Salander was found on the coastline.

Of course, what reassured Garcia the most was that the spy sent back the news that there would be turmoil within Salander: the second prince, who had mastered most of the military affairs, was not willing to be only a prince in the future, and was vigorously eliminating those who sympathized with the eldest prince, but the old sultan ignored this, and it would not be long before the Salanders would voluntarily withdraw from the war due to civil strife.

The weather officer told General Garcia that the fog would be blown away by the sea breeze the next morning. Garcia nodded, and gently told the herald, "Let the generals come here."

Garmic Castle.

Edward walked out of prison. A night at work left him exhausted. There were also more than 200 Rhodok civilians in Fort Gammich, who were given only one meal of gruel and half a loaf of brown bread a day. When Edward and his brother were amateur osteopaths, they once caused a large Rhodoc to become lame, but Edward later had a good relationship with the Rhodok. Later, when Charles wrote that the Rhodok died of fever, Edward was really sad for a while. During these days at the fort of Garmic, Charles felt a sense of guilt when he saw the Rhodok man with yellow faces and thin muscles because of hunger. He occasionally took advantage of his position to increase the food of some of the prisoners, and although the fort of Garmicch had plenty of food, as one of the Salander generals put it, "the food was for the people to eat."

A general approached Edward: "You are too young and a Wikibian, and if you do this, there is no way out in the Sultanate." It doesn't matter how hard you are."

Edward, however, was very open-minded, and, since the departure of Little Mary from the fortress of Garmic, Edward had a strange feeling in his mind, and he became more gentle towards the Rhodocs. Several Salander soldiers underestimated each other with a smile of 'know the truth': "The leader is comfortable being served by the Rhodoks, this is a return for the favor".

There aren't many files left in the prison to deal with. The Rhodoks who were once arrested for stealing and killing have now been arrested for reasons other than 'crimes' to 'Rhodoks'.

Edward was not only somewhat skeptical of the Sultan's policy. The Sultan did not exterminate the Rhodoks, but on the contrary, the Sultan was always protective of the aliens in the land of Salander. This is different from Vekia, where, with each conquered land, the first thing the new lord did was to expel the original inhabitants and then buy cheap serfs from the country or hire skilled yeoman farmers. Every year, countless artisans are hired by the lords in the towns of Vekia, and if the citizens choose to emigrate to a new colony, the local lords give them a large amount of housing and land for the original residents. Wikibians don't like the aborigines, don't trust them, they only trust the Wikibians themselves. In retrospect, it was the right decision, and while the new lands opened up by Vekia were often accompanied by violent and bloody migrations and massacres, they were stabilized for a long time. That's because Vekia has turned every inch of land into a new wiki, and even a few outsiders can quickly wiki-convert them, which is why Vekia has been able to expand rapidly.

On the other hand, although the Salander war machine is indeed very efficient, the Sultan of Salander's national policy is too mild. During the more than 10 years they lived in Gamic, the Salanders had almost no influence on the living conditions of the Rhodoks, except for expropriating part of the land and demanding that the inhabitants serve on time: the local Rhodok inhabitants retained their own writing, customs and even beliefs! Edward consulted the records of the previous prison officers, and they judged the case very fairly, and the law and order of Garmic over the years was impeccable. Suffice it to say, the Salanders did a good job, but they suffered greatly by not pursuing a policy of assimilation, and in the event of a war with Rhodok, the lords and lords could not trust each other at all. While Vekia can mobilize hundreds of men in the event of a crisis, the Salanders can only suspect that their people have different ambitions.

Edward shook his head and walked up to the wall, where the soldiers on the road stood up and saluted him when they saw the junior officer.

The breeze blew, and several Salander scouts suddenly ran back to the city with a shout, and before Edward could hear what was happening, he was attracted by the faint rumbling of drums in the thick fog. Although this voice is slight, it is full of confidence and strength. The cavalry returning to the city caused a commotion, and soon bands of Salanders began to run up to the city. Edward felt tension among the soldiers running back and forth.

Dawn is coming, and the fog is getting thinner and thinner as the sun appears. The wind blowing from the seashore is cool and moist, but it does not soothe the soul as usual. Edward looked up carefully, and under the reflection of the sun, he couldn't help but gasp: the Rhodok soldiers lined up out of the city, spears were lined up, battle flags fluttered, rows of queues meandered, siege equipment appeared like giants in the fog, and as the Rhodoks approached, dozens of war drums echoed each other from near and far. The sun swept away the mist, reflecting a dazzling light on the glittering armor of the Rhodoks.

As the Rhodoks halted their advance, thousands of men hammered their shields or weapons to the ground, and a loud muffled sound shook in all directions.

As Edward stood on the tower in amazement, Garcia rode a richly decorated horse and was led by the guard of honor to the front of the soldiers, who held their weapons and raised their helmets and watched their general in silence.

"Soldiers," Garcia said as the soldiers were completely silent, his voice being heard by dozens of heralds to every corner of the battle line.

"You should know the history of Rhodok. Rhodok, like any other nation, stems from the war of iron and blood! But unlike other countries, most of the citizens of Rhodoc who are alive today have seen the brutal wars with their own eyes: watching our fields burn down; Watching our neighbors be killed; Watch our children cry in fear. For other countries, war may be a heroic story of legends, but for our compatriots, war is a picture full of fear buried in the bottom of our hearts. ”

"But the people of Rhodok, the sons and daughters of the land of Rhodok, should not be afraid of war, especially of unjust war. When the Swadians came out of greed, if we were afraid of war, now we are all living as slaves; If we were afraid of war at a time when the Salanders came because of arrogance, we may have forgotten our faith by now. War is cruel, but we are not afraid to fight to protect our children, our women, and our land. ”

"If we don't forget the war, we shouldn't forget the heroes who resolutely chose to die in the war so that we could live!"

"Over the years, the wounds left by the Salander people are still alive and well. Do you know that there is a man whose soul is more painful than you and me! On the castle behind me, years ago, the weak republic had to leave behind one of her best sons to guard the frontier for her! At that time, General Garmic stood quietly on the city wall wearing a tattered armor and pressing a sword full of gaps! ”

"There was no moonlight that night, for the moon could not bear to see the death of this hero; That night the land was filled with the campfires of the Salanders, but it could not match the dazzling light of the general's soul! ”

"Sixteen years, the general's heroic spirit is not gone! I know that right above that tower, the general has been standing for sixteen years. He waited for us, and he knew that one day, the banner of Rhodok would reappear at the end of the earth, and countless Rhodok soldiers would return. The general has been waiting for so many years. We're here today, and we've been here for 16 years! But today, the general can rest in peace. ”

"Today, reinforcements have arrived!"