() The Creelians, after counting their pay, left from the side of the woods.

One of the dark-skinned Creelians patted me on the head and asked Joey for credit, and he pointed to his own nose, "This kid will grow so tall that he won't be shorter than this." Your money won't be spent in vain! ”

Joey looked at him and was silent. It wasn't until the men had all left that Joey looked frail and the two soldiers behind him helped him to sit down. There were more than twenty soldiers around here, each of them simply armed, with a sturdy leather belt on his body, six or seven javelins on his back, and his helmets were taut with thick strips of cloth, all of which were like the thick strips of white cloth of the Salander soldiers. Two of the soldiers, wearing chainmail coverings and revealing only two eyes, mounted their horses and quietly followed the Creelians after they had gone.

"I thought you were dead." I said to Joey.

He looked at me, "Giovanni promised to give me three wives, a Rhodoc woman, a Nord woman, and a Salander woman. I haven't gotten a single one, how could I die so easily. ”

When the soldiers around saw me, they gave me a helmet, a pair of boots, and a simple suit of armor. I've been able to put them on myself, though they're a bit big. In a few moments, I was dressed in the same way as the men, only half of them had horses, and the rest sat on top of an ox cart and a carriage. The ox cart seems to have been requisitioned from the farmer's house, and is poor and shabby, and it seems that it is usually used for firewood and thatch.

We hit the road.

"Your "hand?"

I sat next to Joey and we all stayed in the carriage and asked him after he looked a little bit of a jīng god.

"One less, and life in the barracks will be even more monotonous in the future." Joey smiled weakly and said, "I'm lucky, the guy with me was chopped into pieces." ”

"Were your hands chopped by barbarians?"

"The big man, you say? No. "I poked him blind and fled into the woods." Then came across a group of horsemen from the damned Iron Shield River. "There was a cruel glint in the gray eyes of this Burke." What do you Wikibians call these cavalry? 'Zì yóu cavalry'. 'Zì yóu saber', well, these people chopped off my hand. ”

I remembered the Vicchian captives who were executed, slaughtered like cattle by the cavalry of the Iron Shield River. Joey's teeth seemed to bite into his lips, as if a cold wind had come up from hell and made him shiver.

"Does it hurt?" I didn't know what was going on, but I suddenly asked such a sentence. I know it's very rude to ask about someone's wounds. But I couldn't help but keep looking at the wound. Joey used to pat me in the hair with this hand, handed me a saber, and fought to cover me at the edge of the woods. He was skilled and experienced, but he could no longer ride the field like a gust of wind.

"Someone stupid enough to ask you that question." Joey said, suddenly starting to shiver and rolling his eyes.

I saw beads of sweat pop up his forehead like water. A soldier on horseback came up to us and jumped off his horse. Dragged him into the carriage. A man in the carriage chewed a leaf and spit it in his palm, ready to apply the medicine. There were cries and screams from inside the carriage, the sounds of pain, and I don't know how these men were healing Joey's wounds, and the way the Valans healed their wounds, I had never wanted to imagine.

Someone seems to be pouring wine on Joey, and it's a mess inside. The surrounding soldiers watched the situation with concern from time to time.

I sat in the carriage feeling desolate, thinking about the slaughterhouse in the woods and Joey's hand, and before. Around the burned village. Countless flying crows. I climbed onto the knight's horse and looked up at the sun. Instead of going north or south, we headed west, away from East Lake. I didn't ask much about the reason for the trip, and since Joey had already arranged it, I just listened honestly.

Along the way, crumbling houses smoke from the roadside, and there is no hope of rebuilding in the Riverlands. I feel that the people of the Riverlands are also too optimistic, and they have begun to rebuild as soon as the war has left them, and one day, whatever army enters there, will not their gains be ruined?

Some people say that the war between the rivers was only a war between nobles, just the victory or defeat of knights full of glorious dreams in a few charges. But this is obviously not the case, I have seen the post-war riverland, and I have also seen the west bank of the East Lake at the beginning of the war, and the war is far from being so romantic and glorious. Songs and legends of the past have it that men with a sense of honor will allow helpless women to make their way through the battlefield and compete to protect her. It's ridiculous, even a gray-haired old woman would never feel safe on the battlefield. Whenever possible, I think that these soldiers around me will not hesitate to slaughter or ravage civilians.

Compared to the battlefield, Valankov is a barn-like refuge, and Ivangorod is a city of order under the guardianship of God.

The woods by the roadside were constantly filled with hanged soldiers and paupers, and I noticed that some of the soldiers had their legs cut to the bone, and one of my knights told me that many of the outcasts had formed a raiding process, and that they 'needed food and could eat everything.' I felt sick. The cruelty of the peasants, I have seen in the blizzards of the Riverlands, is no different from the hungry hounds. Once these people have their crops burned and driven out of their homes, they become cháo water that destroys everything as long as someone arms them.

"How many displaced people are there on the west shore of East Lake now?" I asked a knight.

"I don't know." He said to me, "The largest group I've ever seen has over 400 people. Most of them were driven out by Yuri's soldiers. The Count plundered more than a dozen villages and strongholds further north, with an estimated few hundred people roaming around. ”

"Didn't Little East Lake City recruit these people?"

"Hehe," the cavalryman smiled, "women will be made to be jì women, and after the war, if the Salanders like them, they will be sold to a foreign land." Men who dare to approach the city gates will be dispersed. However, around the city walls of Xiaodonghu City, as well as in the swamp, there were indeed a lot of homeless people. I heard that the city of Little East Lake sent soldiers to guide them in resisting the invaders and sending the dead cheaply. ”

Said the knight. On the one hand, a famine broke out, and on the other hand, in the surrounding fields, all the soldiers were burning food, and the black smoke that rushed into the sky was like black silk silk rising from the field, stretching almost vertically towards the blue sky.

"Over there," the cavalry pointed into the distance, "yesterday the Count sacked it. Then he killed almost all the villagers. He didn't let his soldiers raise the flag, guess in whose name did he do it? ”

"Little East Lake City?"

"Giovanni." The soldier pinched his nose, then pressed one side of it, snorting hard through the other hole. "Now hundreds of people hate us to death, and the Count can recruit dozens of farmers to fight for him with a bag of grain."

Giovanni probably did the same thing somewhere in the name of the Count.

"Where did that guy Giovanni go?" I asked this soldier.

At this time, one of the cavalrymen in front of the team turned a corner. Turning slightly north, it seemed to be dodging a river that emptied East Lake, the name of which I have forgotten.

"Giovanni?" The soldier said, "He has a big plan, and it is estimated that only a dozen or so people know about it, who knows?" Many of the soldiers were scattered, and today we agreed to assemble here, and we will go and have a look. Only traces of the evacuation were found. So I hurried to the next place in a panic. No, no, no one knows where Giovanni is now. I only had a message from a few days ago. He was in Roland Tower at that time. ”

"Impossible," I exclaimed, "Loranta is between Valankov and Ivangorod, what is he going to do there?" ”

"Who cares?"

The soldier's companions were Giovanni's sentinels scattered throughout the western shore of the lake, and they were responsible for gathering intelligence while leading their scattered troops towards a fixed goal. These people also come from a variety of sources, most of them are farmers, but there are also shepherds and woodcutters, as well as fishermen and zì yóu people. I don't know how much effort Giovanni put into setting up this mechanism, or if it will work.

"I thought Giovanni was around Little East Lake City." I said to myself. "What do you say he's going to do in the west?"

"Hell knows." The soldier said, "I will send you to the Ryazan, and then the next group will take you to the west." ”

"Farther west I'll be back in Varynkov."

"Huh," the guy pressed the other nostril, cleaning up the previous one. "Maybe it really is."

This sentence provided a lot of interesting information, and I looked at the soldier, but the soldier didn't seem to notice. He waved his hand to get the others behind him to follow.

I pulled the horse's head and walked behind me, and the soldiers nodded when they saw me. I met a few of them when I was in the barracks, and I helped them write letters to their families, and these soldiers were more kind to me than others, and were very kind to me. In the barracks, I was treated as equals, so I preferred to be with these people.

I don't know how the Count will react when he finds out that I'm missing. I think it was too easy for me to get someone out of myself. The Count may not have taken me to heart at all, so he let others take me away.

Bella sat in the seat I had just sat on, and as I passed by, she looked up at me.

"Young Master?" She imitated the tone of the castle's servant, "This title suits you well, and you deserve it." ”

Several knights in front and behind looked at us curiously, and it was clear that they were not very familiar with Bella either.

"Bella," I told her, "don't go crazy here. ”

"You ran away with the Earl's opponent and said I was mad? You should go and besiege the city of Little East Lake, but march towards Varankov and say I'm crazy? ”

This made the Valan knight closest to me look puzzled, and he looked at me curiously, as if to ask me who this girl was.

"Listen," I said to Bella, awkwardly, "we are all Earl's subordinates, under the Earl's command. Don't say anything like 'the right one' in the future. ”

Bella nodded, "If you don't admit it, I won't mention it." ”

"Bella," I asked, a little puzzled, "why do you know Joey?" ”

"I'm destined to know them, and how do I know them, it's just a boring story. Anyway, he wanted to find you, and I happened to know where you were, so I took you out to meet him. ”

"Nonsense," I told her, "I was kidnapped by a group of Creelians. If you had identified yourself and let me know that you were Giovanni's man, I would have followed you a long time ago, so why should I go to Baidan Harbor to suffer a crime! ”

"I'm not Giovanni's man," she said, "I'm just listening to Joey and them tell me stories, and I think you're fit to leave the harbor and follow them." ”

Bella's incoherent words left me scratching my head, and Joey was now in a coma and couldn't ask Bella what the hell was going on. I am more convinced that Bella is the Jiān fine of the Giovanni faction at the Count's side.

"It's very light," I said, "to tie me up by force, and if I move a little too much, your plan will be ruined." ”

"It's nothing," said Bella, "and the Count won't stop you if you're leaving." On the contrary, the Earl will deliberately let you leave Baidan Port: Isn't it the best way to deliberately snub you and make you feel distracted? But as soon as you left Baidan Port, someone followed us. Why else do you think you walked so easily? ”

"This?" I was a little surprised, and the soldiers around me also looked suspicious.

I thought for a moment, and then rode up to the knight who had taken the lead, and told him what Bella had said.

"Oh?" "Tell you the truth, Victor, I don't know where Giovanni got such a mad bitch, but if she says so," the knight said, "Well, we can test it." ”

After a few minutes, our team split into two groups.

I followed one of them in a large circle, and at the edge of a dense forest, we quickly changed direction and plunged headlong into the woods.

Then, we quickly maneuvered into a pine forest. Waiting on the side of a road to the northwest, we waited quietly.

"Victor." The knight said.

"Huh?"

"Joey lost a hand."

"I know."

"It was the Earl's men who did it."

"They probably don't know that Joey is Giovanni's subordinate." I said this, feeling a little remorseful, and wondering why I had to excuse the Count again, and I seemed to have developed a habit of refuting the Count and the Romanov family at once when I encountered a slander against the Count and the Romanovs.

"It doesn't matter," said the knight, quiet as a wolf, "you have been with us for the winter, but I still do not know whether you are a Romanov or a Valan. ”

"Huh? Your Excellency, you''''"

"If," interrupted me with a quiet gesture of boos, the knight continued, "if that little bitch is telling the truth, the Count has really taken you as bait to investigate us, and sent someone. Well, it's time for you to prove yourself. ”

"What do you mean?" I asked.

The knight looked at the avenue in the distance and did not answer.