Nikolai wanted me to go with him to Little East Lake, but I said that I had to wait for the Valans to board the fleet.

Nikolai asked me, "How many men is this fleet expected to carry?" ”

"Six or seven hundred."

After hearing this, the man from the Puning family said sarcastically, "It seems that the Valans don't need such a big place. ”

Nikolai then told Giovanni that he would be with us. Giovanni had no way to refuse, after all, this boyar had the same enemies as him, and he would make us safer. The addition of cavalry lifted the spirits of the Valan soldiers, and as we marched along the river beach, there was noticeably less harassment on the road. Nikolai seemed convinced that there would no longer be large-scale forces at the front.

"Kalinin had less than two thousand men," said Nikolai, "and he did not take part in the search for the Valans, but returned to the city of Xiaodonghu with his own guards and the cavalry of his allies in Ryazanburg. ”

"What about the soldiers of Dadonghu City?"

"The prince of the Great Eastern Lake City said that his soldiers needed to rest for some time in Valankov. Maybe it's the result of watching the siege of Xiaodonghu City. ”

"The cavalry of Ryazan Fort supported him."

Nikolai nodded, "Ryazan Fort has already married into Little East Lake City, and it will not be good for them to be weakened Little East Lake City. I heard that Kalinin had given the monopoly of leather goods and amber to the princes of Ryazan Fort. In this forest, the trading post belonging to Xiaodonghu City was also handed over during the siege. Now the soldiers of Ryazan Fort may not like the city of Little East Lake, but the princes and nobles did not dislike Kalinin too much. ”

"Will the prince of Denia be able to break through Little East Lake City?"

"Xiaodonghu City is not a fortress, but a city." Nikolai said. "Cutting off its route with a warship can kill him."

"There aren't that many warships in Denia."

"There's always going to be someone." Nikolai said.

I rode on my horse and wondered who Nikolai was talking about. I think about it, either the parliament. Either the Burkes. Of course, the parliament is willing to stir up infighting between the two princes in order to increase its influence, but will such support not leak a little bit of news? As for the Berks, it seems that they had made a private agreement with Kalinin, otherwise the dispute between the rivers would not have been so easily resolved. It was not an easy task to get the Burks to spit out the land they occupied. This happened only a few hundred years ago, when the ancestors of the Kugit people attacked from the east. After that. Even if Burke was on the verge of extinction, he would never give up his claim to any land. Any country, as long as it occupies the land where the Burkes are the mainstream, then the Berkes, from top to bottom, will hate the country incomparably and will regain their land at the first opportunity. This makes the Berks extremely united, but it often makes the Berks a country that their neighbors don't like, and the friends of the Berks can only be countries that don't border them.

A group of Kalinin's archers followed us from afar, but when they noticed a strange trooper of cavalry around us. They retreated, knowing that their harassment tactics were lethal to the infantry, but to the disciplined cavalry, it was to death.

On the river, corpses kept drifting down the Ryazan River. Some were council soldiers, but most were Valan soldiers. It is possible that these are our soldiers who have been killed in action in the past few days, and have been thrown into the water from upstream by the council soldiers. When the corpse floated by. Occasionally, the Varan soldiers would turn their heads and watch in silence, but they didn't spark much discussion. Duchy of Valan. There were more than a thousand warriors and thousands of armed farmers, at that time. No prince dared to face the edge of the Duchy of Valan. But now, the Duchy of Valan looked around, and there were only a little more than a hundred soldiers left. Giovanni and Joey rode on two mares, tame and easy to handle, and Prince Varan and his heirs barely had to manipulate the reins, and their mounts would walk forward on their own. The flight was coming to an end, but the future of the Principality of Valan was still foggy, and the difficulty of rebuilding an army with 600 men was absolutely different from rebuilding an army with more than 100 men.

Elon had injured his arm and was now unable to walk. Nikolai's cavalry gave up a few horses for me to ride with Giovanni and Joey, and they were already dissatisfied, and they would never agree to let them have another Kugit at this time.

Nikolai found out about it.

When I asked him if I could give Elon a horse, Nikolai said to me with a frown, "Victor, just because you're someone the Lepnin family values doesn't mean you can let your soldiers take someone else's mount. A wounded Kujiit, since he can't protect you, send him back to the grassland. ”

"Send him away, or kill him. Anyway, if he returned to the grassland, he would be killed by a woman. ”

"What woman?"

"A chieftain." I rolled over and dismounted, and said to Nikolai, "That's a long story. ”

Crucedel and I helped Elon onto the horse, and as soon as Elon climbed onto the horse, he vomited bloody slime. The horse immediately gasped and twisted its thick neck to look back, and the soldiers around him let out an exclamation. Some say that the intestines of this Kugit must have been broken, and some say that this Kugit must have had a pile of minced meat in his stomach. But I don't think that's the case.

When Nikolai saw me dismount, he didn't say anything, but rode his horse and talked to Giovanni.

When no one was around, I whispered to Cruzedel, who was walking beside me, "Has Elon contracted the plague?" ”

"Plague? Countless. ”

"I mean the Great Death."

Crucedel was stunned for a moment, "It won't be. We've been to three towns, Iyu and I have been infected, but Elon hasn't. He doesn't seem to be naturally immune to the plague. ”

"When I contracted the plague, I vomited blood and had sores on my chest. The pastor said that the plague carries a curse and that everyone will be infected once. ”

"Don't tell anyone about it."

"Naturally, I won't say." I replied to him, "I don't know how the Wikibians do it." But the Valans found out who had the plague. Will definitely leave him behind. It's not hard to understand why this would threaten everyone's lives. ”

Crucedel nodded silently. He walked up to Elon's horse and took the reins to the side.

Exhaustion comes after a brief period of safety. Immediately crawling from the soles of my feet to the top of my head, I followed the crowd towards the front, almost half-asleep. My boots were broken, but I didn't realize them until a dead branch scraped the flesh on my foot, cutting a pus-and-blood wound there. There were blisters all over my feet, and my thumbnail was missing, I don't know when it fell off, and it was a little strange to look red now, and I couldn't walk out in stride. It made me limp while walking.

I don't know how long it took, but with a long trumpet, our soldiers stopped one after another.

Nikolai's cavalry was complaining that the Valans were dragging their feet, saying that if it weren't for the Valans, they would have arrived two or three hours earlier. The Valan soldiers endured the scolding silently, for the cavalry with the grace of saving their lives, no Valan soldier would be rash, and it was far better to be insulted alive than to die and be sacrificed. This is the belief in survival that the Valan people admire. The Valans often seem contradictory, sometimes they die calmly, defying many adversities, and fighting their enemies to the death even if they suffer their destruction; Sometimes. The Valans were able to endure shame and criticism, and lived cautiously far away. It is often said that the Valans have an eccentric personality.

As a matter of fact. Only when the nation is weak, will they talk a lot about the character of the nation. Some peoples fought in the first place. There are many followers who say that this nation is fierce and aggressive; Some nations prosper in a war, and many people say that such a nation is brave and wise; Some peoples are being exploited. Deferentially attached to a powerful alien race, will be dragged into servile thoughts; Some peoples occupy mountain passes and rivers, and they do not compromise with any other race, and although they do not prosper or perish, they are said to be tenacious. There are many wars and diplomacys, and strong and well-populated peoples have experienced more, and there is also a difference between belligerence and ease among them, but there is never a nation that is really ruled by any character. All nations have different destinies, but they have made different decisions in the face of challenges and changes. The difference is that a weak nation is often about to be destroyed or suddenly prosper because of one or two things, while a huge country will only face a small twist and turn. It is ridiculous that the people around them do not even understand the thoughts of the people around them, but judge the character of a nation on the basis of a page or two of history.

Several horsemen made a quick advance in the direction of the trumpet, and soon bypassed a wooded field.

The rest of the soldiers waited eagerly, waiting for news from the cavalry.

A quarter of an hour later, a cavalryman was the first to return, "Pioneer, Pioneer"

His distant cry was like to the Valanites as if the dying had heard the order of forgiveness.

The Valan soldiers actually cried together.

I've known the Varan soldiers for so long, I've known so many Varan soldiers, and I've seen badly wounded Varan soldiers cry out when their calves or arms are amputated, but I've never seen Varan soldiers gather together and hug their heads and cry. The once heroic Varan soldiers felt that once their war drums sounded, blood would be shed, but glory and victory would eventually come. But today, the soldiers of Valan finally know their limits, and they also know that in war, glory is only an illusion, victory is only temporary, and most of the time, an army has to face shame and defeat.

Whether an army is strong or not depends not on how much glory it has received, not on what battles it has won, but on what kind of defeat it can withstand.

Giovanni's years of hard work were almost wiped out, and his Duchy of Valan was wiped out overnight. But in the future, Giovanni may not be the same as before, he once felt that everything he had created with his own hands, he had suffered so much, he would inevitably be rewarded with it, in the future, he might not think like this anymore, he would become more cautious, and he would become more tenacious--- if he could quickly get out of his current failure.

Ship after ship, not as big as the ships of Cesar I have seen, and the crews were dressed in a variety of ways, some with red turbans and looking like Salanders, some in Creelic coats with their chests exposed, and others like monkeys, jumping up and down the mast and deftly pulling the sails with a rope in the air. The ships are also quirky, with almost every one of them having some paintings painted on the stern, some of the anchor holes depicted as women's eyes, some of the ramming angles depicted as men's bodies, and some of the cabins depicted with women's breasts. These guys don't look like decent sailors at all, they look like a bunch of cobbled together pirates. As they marched, they were not as solemn as the crew of Cesara, but played the flutes and the shamisen, and their laughter and whistles stunned the soldiers on the shore. The soldiers and the sailors are completely people of two worlds.

As the ships went against the Ryazan River, every sailor curiously leaned on the side of the ship near the shore and looked at us. Some of the sailors whistled to catch our attention, and when we looked at them, they would throw a shriveled apple far away, or throw a bottle of wine far away into the river.

As the first ship dropped anchor and lowered the boat, more and more ships dropped anchor.

What surprised me the most was that on some of the ships, we found the Valan warrior and his surviving soldiers. These guys actually arrived here half a day faster than the two of us. The two Valan soldiers stood on the boat and on the shore, asking each other loudly, most often about the life and death of certain people, though the answers were often black. As long as the soldiers who didn't show up here, most of them were dead, that's almost certain.

After the first dinghy arrived on the shore, after a brief inquiry, they found Giovanni.

Giovanni told them about Nikolai's request, and the sailors said that they could not decide whether or not they would be able to transport Nikolai, and that they had to get the captain's approval.

That must have been Cesar. Strangely enough, however, whether it was the sailors on the dinghy, who were all called their leader by the title of captain, Cesar seemed to be much more powerful than I thought. If it was just an ordinary captain, people would call him by his first name, such as Captain Cesar and the like, and only when a fleet belonged to one person, people would omit the name and call that person the captain.

The captain would arrive in a moment, and Giovanni and Joey and I stood on the shore and waited. Nikolai, on the other hand, refused to dismount and watched coldly, as if he did not like the mess of sailors very much.

A dinghy approached us, and as it approached the shore, all the sailors on board, except for one man wearing a pioneer's cloak, jumped into the water, and they made a white splash, and the sailors pulled and lifted the lilting dinghy almost to the surface of the water.

When the dinghy was only a few meters away from us, the pioneer suddenly stood up and jumped to our side from the dinghy. The man under the cloak glanced at us, spotted me, and then leapt in front of me, pulled out his dagger, and placed it under my neck.

"Arcadio! You're my captive. ”

Nikolai, Giovanni, and Joey drew their swords, and even the sailors in the dinghy were surprised by the man's move, but they were so surprised that they immediately drew their swords to protect the man with the cloak.

In the tense atmosphere, a white hand pulled open the cloak, and under the cloak was a face that had traces of age, but was still extremely moving.

She withdrew the dagger.

"Haha, put away your sword." She smiled slyly, like Victoria's, "I'm just avenging a little vengeance from years ago." ”

She smiled and looked at me with some emotion, "Hello, little Arcadio." (To be continued.) )