Fifty-eighth palm selection

Konstantin silently led me to the backyard

"Boy," he said to me as he walked through the courtyard, suddenly turning his head around and saying to me, "you have caused me to lose six swords and three horses."

"He's your father," I said to him, "what's there not to lose?" ”

"You can't say that, the Valans have been men since they were children, and they were born to be, and they were in front of their own fathers anyway, you disappointed me, how can you not like swords? How can you not love a horse? "I'm a little curious

"I like them all," I explained, "and if those women weren't Burkes, I'd have asked Master Lucasino for the first two things."

"You just go on making up the reasons," Konstantin's tone seemed very boring, "when I was as young as you, I rode around on horseback every day, and once I ran out for a month, and when I came back, I caught up with dinner, but the family didn't say a word, as if I had never left them, and I didn't know how good a woman was at that time, you little tsk."

A cheer came through us, and we walked into a training ground

The backyard here is not a chic garden, nor is it a storehouse for storing grain, it is completely an arena, many Valans fight here with wooden swords, they wear light leather armor with iron bars on top of the leather armor, they still hold small round shields, these Valans move quickly and agilely, paint white ash on the head of the sword, and once they hit their opponents, they leave a symbol

I saw a young Valan who had been hooked and knocked to the ground, barely shielded himself with his shield, and slipped backwards on the ground, but his middle-aged man was beating the wooden shield like crazy with a wooden sword, and the young man stepped back a little, and the middle-aged man followed a little, as if he were whipping a mouse on the ground

"Does that middle-aged man have a grudge against this young man?" I asked Konstantin curiously, "If you win, stop it"

"Hmph, you won't stop winning on the battlefield, you have to see blood, this young man is dead, this middle-aged man just wants him to know, if he is not optimistic about his next game, what will happen after being tripped and beaten, the young man always can't remember" Konstantin hammered the chest of an oncoming Valan soldier, the soldier laughed, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth, that tooth is really terrible, it should have been smashed by a big hammer, his mouth is cracked, and his cheeks are sewn with thick threads, The thick lines are shiny with a dark shine

"The man just now," said Constantine as he showed me past a shooting range, "the freedmen who saved my life while in the Riverlands sold us news to the Burkes, and I was patrolling the rye forest with a band of council soldiers, and there were only forty of them, but the Burks came with more than a hundred men and fought for only a few minutes, and we were routed, and everyone wanted to run to the castle a few miles away," Konstantin's voice changed, "but the Burke cavalry ran out of all the woods like ghosts, The back feathers of the red sè are like something burned out of hell The lone person was stabbed through the stomach, do you know the sound of the spear piercing into the stomach and breaking? The Berks used to do this kind of thing, and their cavalry was trained from a young age to run less than a hundred yards, and to set up their spears, as nimbly as if they were using their own fingers, until they pierced the spear into someone's body."

Konstantin slowly fell into the memory, "He saved you?" I reminded him

"Well," Konstantin came back to his senses, "my horse was lame with a hammer from a Burke, and that man and I had just switched horses."

"You know what? I almost thought he was dead, I stopped running, and finally returned to the castle with fleeing peasants, but the soldiers of the castle ordered to pull up the drawbridge in advance, and if the farmer was allowed to come in, the Burkes might have come in too, and if I did the same, I would have done the same, and when I returned to the castle, the drawbridge had been halfway up, and I tried to jump over, but the clever brute threw me off and ran away, and it knew that it couldn't jump, and if it fell off the moat, it would definitely die, so I crossed the moat, and swam all the way to the opposite side, Fortunately, the garrison didn't think I was a Burke, they gave me a rope."

"Then the Burks took the captured soldiers under the city, trampled on their faces, put their pickaxes into their mouths, and pulled them violently, breaking their teeth, and churning their tongues, and pulling their mouths," Konstantin shook his shoulders, "and so the Berks stayed for several hours, burned some cottages and mills, and then I went out of the city, and carried the fellow back, and the physician told me that it would cost seventy dinars to cure his face, and to hire a fully equipped servant for two months, and only one hundred dinars." , he asked me to think about it, I gave this doctor a hundred dinars, let him take care of everything, this guy is the retinue of some small lord in the river, but that lord defected to the Berk, he felt that he was a Wiki, and came back to us"

"Can he still speak?" I asked Konstantin

"Talk?" Konstantin shook his head, "He kept burning, his tongue began to rot from the next day, the doctor asked the cobbler for a small dagger, burned it on the candle, and ripped off the rest of his tongue, he couldn't say a word now, absolutely quiet but his two-handed sword made it so good, so lucky he was on our side"

Konstantin chuckled, "Okay, let's not say anything so serious, let's get here, see which one you have your eye on?" Although my dad won my first game, I won't lose to him in the second game, see who you look like."

A soldier munching on a leg of mutton looked at me gloomily, took the key from his waist, and opened the door

I was pushed in by Konstantin, the darkness enveloped me, for a moment I almost thought Konstantin was going to put me in the dungeon, but under the shaking of the light and shadow, Konstantin also walked in, the ground was wet, Konstantin's black cloak was sticking to the ground, he picked up a few pieces of mud as he walked, the smell of it was disgusting, everything from stones to dead grass was moldy, I also heard the sound of rats and the cries of people spiraling down with the stairs, and the muddy dungeon finally reached the bottom

On both sides were cells with a narrow corridor of and urine on it, and several large vats were dumped on the ground, and there were a few rotten vegetable leaves on them, and there were some heavy prisoners in the cells, who barely reacted to our arrival, and the two torches at the end of the corridor lit it all up, and I wondered how the torches could burn so vigorously in such a muddy air

A cell boss walked over with blazing eyes, "Young Master" He bowed, "Your prisoner is all right, there is nothing to report"

"Well," Konstantin responded, "have the Burkes relented?" ”

"No" The cell boss was a little embarrassed, "give me two more days and I'll be able to pry their mouths open"

"What you haven't done in two months, you may not be able to do it in two more days" Konstantin shook his head, "It seems that I have to find some experts to deal with these things"

The cell boss showed an unconvinced expression, "Young master, the main thing is that you don't let me use torture, if you let me use torture, I guarantee that they will be able to speak in an afternoon, and they can even remember how old their mother was when she gave birth to them."

"Then I won't need you," Konstantin asked the cell boss to lead the way, and the cell boss was a little unwilling, but he still turned around and picked up a torch, and walked down, and I felt a little creepy at the thought of going deeper below, "Victor, these women are worth more than the fool you caught"

"You're going to lock them up for ransom?" I asked him curiously

"It's really smart that they are all girls from big families, otherwise the battlefield will be a mess, who wants to carry these girls on their backs and so many men, to bring these women back intact, if you can't get the ransom, hehe" Konstantin laughed dryly, and the cell boss also sniffled

"How many Burke women did you rob?"

"I don't know, with a cart of Jot, how many are underneath?" Konstantin asked the cell boss

"My lord, you brought back sixteen female captives from the battlefield, three of the Mel family, one of the Colwins, four of the dead, one ransomed, and seven left" The cell boss sketched out the fate of a dozen women word by word, "All of them are below"

"Why are there still four dead? Didn't you keep them for ransom? I asked Konstantin

I didn't expect my words to offend the cell boss, after all, it was equivalent to questioning him, and the cell boss turned around and said angrily: "A woman chewed her tongue, we are already dead by now, even if we are saved, we can only be the wife of the open-minded guy above, and the remaining few"

Konstantin sniffled, "I warn you, the next time you say he's an open-mouthed person, I'll let you stay in the same room with him for an afternoon to see what he thinks you're superfluous, so that I can unload it for you."

The cell boss muttered, no longer talking, but unscrewed a door and introduced the prisoner inside, "Yellow head, green eyes, about twenty years old, white and chubby"

He reached into the torch and lit it up, inside a woman squatting in the corner of the wall shaking the hay on the ground, and a dung bucket was placed on the side, the woman's feet were tied to the dung bucket with a straw rope, but the straw rope was very long, the woman could sit far aside, but after all, it was a small room, and the smell was still very smoky

Konstantin looked at me and licked his tongue to himself, "How?" White and fat, 'a woman is a bed', that's what it says."

I looked at the woman and suddenly felt that this was the hardest deal I had ever made in my life, although it didn't cost money, but it was difficult to choose much I opened my mouth but couldn't speak, Konstantin shrugged his shoulders, "Hell, this kid doesn't like it, next, Jot"

The cell boss looked at me dissatisfied, and closed the door with a bang, and as she closed the door, the woman let out a sigh, did she know that she had just passed by a chance to get out?

Inside the second door were two sisters, and they were cursing at each other as we went, when the bucket was toppled over, and the head of the cell was dragged open by the dirty water on the floor, and warned them to catch lots if they made any more noise, and then kill one of them at will, and the threat silenced the two women for a while, one woman hugged her knees and cried, and the other sat on the ground, her head bobbing up and down, and she was chanting

Konstantin could see that I was uncomfortable, "Okay, next"

When the door was opened, it was a girl of about sixteen years old, who sat quietly on the ground, tied a pony with straw, as if indifferent to our arrival, and the cell boss turned back to Konstantin and said: "This is a mute, only squeaky and bite her tongue, we ask her in Burke, Vicchian, and Salander, and she doesn't understand the priest of the Colwyn family who came to ask her about Swadia, and she doesn't react, she's a dumb."

"The pony said I was dumb, but I was deaf" A sentence that seemed to come to me, this is Zenda?

Chanda dialect is an aristocratic language, generally only senior priests and nobles will use it in a small circle, many junior bachelors can only speak a few words, village priests can only imitate a rough If the tutor can speak Swadiya, he can live well in a foreign country, if he can speak Zenda, he will not have to worry about food and clothing anywhere

"No, listen to it, she will babble like a fool It is said that Orientals like to make up scarecrow curses, this little girl makes it up every day, I don't know how many times she cursed us" The cell boss looked at me, and then made a decision for me, "It's not this, it's it?" ”

I didn't know how I got out of that cell, but I rushed to say something anyway

"'It' is used to describe animals, and it is uneducated when used on people" I have a little weak heart, Alexei's Zenda is very bad, and even Swadia is very bad, but Mr. Goth has learned Zenda, and so is Renault's tutor, but unfortunately I have never been willing to learn it seriously, and now I still stay at the level of being able to hear simple conversations, and I understand some grammar, but when it comes to abstract descriptions and academic vocabulary, I don't understand it at all, for this reason, Christopher always likes to say puns on Zenda to sarcastically mock me, It's a pity that I rarely hear it

But I said it very handily, for I myself have often mistaken these words, and have been reprimanded by Mr. Goth

The woman looked up, and as she closed the door, her eyes reflected the torches like two flaming black jades

The door closed

Next was a naked woman, she tore her clothes and sang hoarsely, I noticed that Konstantin and the cell boss were a little uncomfortable, and I shook my head

The two women in the back pitifully begged us to let her go in Wiki, and they almost rushed over to grab my feet, and I panicked back, in fact, if these women just sat quietly on the ground crying, begging us to let her go, I would have done the same, and any of the previous women would have let them go

But they only know that they are afraid of us, but they don't know it, and I am almost as afraid of them

"Have you chosen which one you want?" Konstantin asked me as he closed the last door of the cell, "But any of them is fine, as long as it's not."

"I want that dumb one"

"Isn't it?" Konstantin's eyes widened, almost as if he were about to open the dungeon

"What's wrong?" I'm a little curious

"No," Konstantin said as if he had a large acorn stuck in his throat, "nothing but three other swords and six horses"

Konstantin and I returned to the council chamber

Old man Lucasino laughed out loud when he saw Konstantin's expression, "Not bad, Victor"

The old man screamed, but I knew he wasn't calling my name, he was saying 'victory'

Konstantin was a little depressed, and arranged for the butler to bring the girl up, so that I could take her away after I had brought the servant back, and it seemed that I would have to wait here until the afternoon

The old man, after waiting for the people to leave, was very happy to praise me for having a good eye: "The girl was plastered with ash on her face, and she was dressed as a maid, and she wanted to hide from it, but the feathers of the dove were too bright to hide from the sparrows, and I could see at a glance that this girl was valuable, and I doubted that she was the daughter of a baron or even a viscount."

I shook my head in my heart, many of the grandchildren of Count Kalinin don't speak Zenda, they can't even speak Svadia but I don't have anything to be proud of, I can speak Svadia myself, I can learn Zenda directly, three to four years ahead of them

This Burke girl should know a lot of things

"Finally, there is one more thing," the old man's gaze seemed calm and decisive for the first time, "you go back and tell Count Kalinin: the nobles of Little East Lake City have moved, you ask him what he thinks, but the Valans are watching the Count's reaction."

After finishing speaking, the old man returned to his hippie smiling face, laughed and drank a sip of orange peel water, and grinned burned.

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