Garmic Mountains.

Saabmarion had just returned from Fort Amera and asked to go down to the cave to observe. Marion brought the cone drill from Amerafort, which has always been used to break through enemy gates and even city walls during sieges, and when used, it is necessary to erect a wooden frame, and three to five soldiers use a ratchet to twist two thick ropes that are full of elasticity, and then release the ratchet turntable, and the cone will quickly rotate and chisel through the wall.

In the past few days that Marion has been gone, the soldiers have done a very good job, and there are already several baskets of gravel chiseled down, and several deep stone troughs have appeared on the originally smooth stone walls. After going down the shaft, the soldiers generally developed a disgust, and after the mechanical work in the black hole, the soldiers were reluctant to go again. There was one soldier who did well, and that was the guy who was a miner--- Bruno from the Viruga mines. Because of his usual professionalism, this soldier insisted on staying in the cave to guide the soldiers in their work, and when Marion arrived, he was able to accurately explain the progress of the project to Marion.

Marion's tools were sent down the shaft in parts, where they were reassembled inside the cavern, and from then on, the clanging of the cavern became the sound of the drill bit spinning and rubbing every few minutes. The excavation efficiency has been greatly improved. Crumbling stone scum kept popping out of the ends of the drill bit. The soldiers kept putting the winch on their feet, then releasing it, and so on. I don't know how long it took, Bruno once again led the soldiers to tighten the drill tool and then release the winch, and in a monotonous drilling sound, there was a sudden different sound, and the whole drill tool trembled. After Bruno and the soldiers carefully pulled the drill away, a small column of intense light shot into the dark room. This pillar of light is extremely white and dazzling, and it almost has a bit of divine flavor in the dark and dull hole. The soldiers cheered, and Bruno immediately ran out to find Marion.

At this time, it was just dawn, and my father was standing on the edge of the mountain with Marion and Sabel. Just now, the Scout came to report that something was wrong at the bottom of the mountain. When my father arrived at the side of the mountain, he had already seen the Rhodoks in battle formation in front of Fort Garmic. The Rhodok trebuchet was throwing huge stones into the fortress of Garmic, which looked like gravel due to the distance, and there was no sound of them hitting the walls of Garmic. But it is conceivable that at this time, a huge roar was constantly resounding in the fortress of Garmic, and every flying stone projectile was an unknown killer for the Salander soldiers, enough to instantly turn a person into pulp.

Marion told my father that the chapel at the fortress of Garmic used to be a pointed dome in the style of Kallad, but after the Salanders came to power, the dome was removed and replaced with the golden domed tower it is now. More than a decade ago, when the Rhodok soldiers were forced to abandon the fortress of Garmic, the local bishop and several priests, after giving the soldiers a final blessing, prayed quietly in the tower and waited for death to come. Now, Saland's imams may also be muttering to themselves where the Reodok priests knelt and reciting the last verses.

It looked like after a few hours of bombardment, the Rhodoks would begin to siege the city. The tactics of the Salanders can be clearly seen here, the soldiers are concentrated in a narrow corridor under the tower, standing densely against the city walls--- at this angle, the stone bullets of the Rhodoks cannot hit them, and the Salanders are waiting for the Rhodoks to attack.

The Rhodocs did a good job of espionage, and Marion, after observing the field, provided Garcia's troops with more precise strike coordinates. The three stone thrower positions of the Salanders were hit by the stone bullets of the Rhodoks at the beginning, and did not make any decent counterattack at all. Rhodok continued to attack the catapult positions after destroying the Salander positions, and it was clear that the Rhodoks could not accept the results of their attacks. However, the Salander trebuchet's position was completely destroyed, with the exception of the three trebuchets closest to the wall, and only one and two were damaged in the remaining two--- Salander seemed to want to give the Rhodoks the illusion that Garmic's long-range weapons had been destroyed. After all, when the Rhodoks were attacking in a dense formation, these Salander trebuchets could be of great use.

While his father was worried about the Rhodok soldiers, Bruno ran from the direction of the mine: "Your Excellency, General, we have broken the stone, what a blow!" ”

The father looked at Bruno's jubilant expression, turned back to Marion and said, "Let's go, let's see."

Sabel stared at Fort Garmic for a moment, as if remembering something, then shook his head slightly, and turned back to chase Marion.

Once a breakthrough was made, the progress of the project was greatly accelerated. The soldiers, inspired by the light, happily stirred the ratchet in their hands, and by the time Bruno ran to call for a few commanders, the hole had become the size of a fist the size of a coin. Marion saw the light as he crawled through the gap, and as he crawled out of the gap, he was also struck by the sunlight shining through the hole. This shock of suddenly seeing light in the darkness is like being fascinated by the colorful lights of a church as a child.

"Mr. Marion, how big of a hole are we going to drill?" Father asked, touching the smooth edge of the small window.

Marion removed a soldier's helmet, the kind of domed helmet with slightly upturned edges, which looked like a hanging pot. Marion took a closer look at the helmet: "If this helmet can pass, people can crawl over with their shoulders shrunk."

Several soldiers took their helmets and looked at each other, indicating that it was simple.

"Sir, it'll be fine tomorrow morning."

"No, we'll dig it tonight," said my father, "and to-day we're going to go down from here to see what Fort Garmich is all about, and if it's going to be dug tomorrow morning, we'll have to wait until tomorrow night, and we'll have to let the outside know as much as we can that we're in the city."

The soldiers looked at each other with a blank eye, meaning that this order was a bit difficult for a strong man, and the father shrugged his shoulders: "Ten dinars per person tonight, five per person tomorrow morning."

As soon as the words were finished, the soldiers hurriedly set up the drills, creaked and stirred the ratchet, and one soldier muttered, 'What a waste of time to speak.'

The Rhodoks began their attack around one o'clock in the afternoon. Clustered behind three tall siege towers, more than a thousand Rhodoks were divided into three rows of shield-bearing slowly advancers. The Rhodoks in the main camp took turns shooting arrows into the city, and the trebuchets bombarded the most densely populated areas of the Salander archers.

Rhodoc's sappers felt that the attack on the Salanders was not enough, so they pushed eight stone throwers slowly towards the fortress of Garmic. Soon, the Salander archers and stone throwers at the head of the city were violently suppressed. While the Rhodoks were cheering, the Rhodok scouts on the hill were in a cold sweat: the Saland's sappers were adjusting the surviving stone throwers in the two positions. When the Rhodok sappers were aiming at the Salanders on the tower, three stone projectiles flew out of the Garmic fortress in an arc almost at the same time, the first and third fell in front and behind the Rhodok stone thrower in front of the front, and the moment in the middle accurately hit the Rhodok stone thrower, the central axis of the stone thrower was smashed, and the Krakala was broken into a pile of wood, and several sappers pressed their helmets in panic and ran away, alerting the surrounding stone throwers to make them retreat.

The Salanders seized the opportunity, and before the Rhodoks were out of range of the Salanders, three catapults were blasted to pieces by the Salanders. The Salander's trebuchet was not as far as the Rhodok's, and by the time the Rhodoks had retreated to their main position, the Salanders were powerless. Annoyed and angry, the Rhodok immediately aimed at the Salander trebuchet's position and bombarded it violently, the Salander sappers knew that time was running out, so they tried to attack the Rhodok siege tower, when the Salander trebuchet's position was completely destroyed, one of the Rhodok siege towers had been heavily damaged, no effect, and could only slowly retreat under the encirclement of soldiers.

Eventually, more than 700 soldiers pushed the two siege towers under the walls of Garmic, and the soldiers began to climb up the siege towers. The Salanders set fire to a black mud and poured it on the Rhodoc siege towers. Many of the Rhodoks who were gathered under the tower were burned and let out screams.

The archers of Rhodok's main position also divided into three groups and began to approach the fortress of Garmic, and the reinforcements attacked the soldiers of the wall. The heaviest battles took place on the bridge connecting the two siege towers to the city walls. With spears and axes, the Salanders tried to push back the Rhodoks who were pouring in with their shields. Once the shield of a Rhodok soldier is shattered or knocked down, his situation will be extremely dire: pierced by several spears or slashed by an axe. The Rhodok crossbowmen followed the shieldmen, shooting the Salanders through the gaps. The battlements were like a meat grinder, killing or battering people every minute, and once the two groups collided, the long weapons were abandoned, and the soldiers used short swords, hoes, or axes to strike at the surrounding enemies.

While the Rhodoks were trapped in the siege towers, the Salander burning oil came into play--- several Salander soldiers risked their lives to splash pots of boiling black mud on the heads of the Rhodoc soldiers, and the helmets of those soldiers were burned and burned their skin; The burning hair and cotton armor of the soldiers emitted a strong and terrible smell; The Javelinmen and archers of the Salanders hid on the two walls, and they spared no effort to shoot at the Rhodok soldiers who were crowded behind.

All this caused the Rhodoks to retreat after attacking in turn for nearly two hours. A siege engine had already been set on fire by the Salander soldiers, and most of the Rhodok soldiers fled before the fire could block the road, but a group of more than forty Rhodoks remained on the walls. As another siege engine was slowly pushed away, the small group of Rhodoks lost their last hope, and the Rhodok soldiers under the city watched as the Salanders flooded the team like a mudslide.

In the evening, all the Rhodoks retreated to the camp, and the Salanders at the head of the city were busy cleaning up the corpses, and the Rhodok camp was silent, except for the sporadic campfires. The most dazzling thing about Gamic was the burned siege tower, which was flanked by more than forty dead Rhodok advance soldiers.

Unnoticed, on a stone wall behind Fort Garmic, a soldier emerged from the wall as if by magic, with a rope tied to his back. He slowly fell to the ground, disappearing like a ghost by the surrounding grain and grass storehouses.

Behind Garmic were places where grain and forage were stored: countless pieces of wheat were piled together; Dried meat and dried fish in straw frames were hung on wooden beams in layers, surrounded by herds of pigs and sheep; A little farther afield, hundreds of baskets of live chickens and ducks. It was a very troublesome thing to transport these supplies every day, and after today's battle, General Salander decided to enrich the food of the troops, and the busy people crowded the area around the warehouse. Manpower was insufficient, and the warden of the fortress of Cheekmitch and several prison secretaries had to come over to register the distribution of supplies.

A young man in the uniform of an officer in Salander walked to the edge of the warehouse, lifted his pants for a moment, and just as he was pleased to lift his pants, a black figure punched him on the back of the head, and the man collapsed to the ground. The man who came out of the shadow carried the Salander officer on his back, and after walking two steps, he felt that it was a little inappropriate for the two men to be disheveled and back together under the dark wind of the night, so he stopped and put on the officer's trousers, and then hurriedly carried him to the secluded gable. There are some miscellaneous items piled up in this place, which no one usually cares about, and no one notices a rope falling from the sky at night.

Bruno was ecstatic in his heart, this time he had done a great job. He tied the Salander officer tightly, and then pulled the rope, and the man in the gable began to pull the man up. When Officer Salander was suspended in mid-air, he woke up leisurely, and found that he was tied with a rope, and was being pulled into the dark sky by the ghost, and between the lightning and fire, the officer thought that he had been captured by the demon, and screamed in fright. The rope then quickened, and Officer Salander watched with untold horror as several hands from hell reached out of the stone, grabbed him by the hair, and dragged him in.

Bruno was also frightened, and the pig-like cries of Officer Salander were harsh here, and although the noise of the distant warehouse might have drowned out some of the noise, it was hard to guarantee that something was wrong. In his anxiety, Bruno waited for his rope, which he hurriedly pulled back the way he came.

As he was taken into the cave, Bruno watched as the soldiers around him were counting their ten dinars. Arcadio shined a torch at Officer Salander, who was sitting on the ground, and said with a look of surprise:

"Edward?!"