Mercenaries and Adventurers

"How's it going? Where's the patio?" Delang, who had just brought people back to his lair, was asked about the situation by another bandit leader.

Delang looked at the number of his trusted men who were missing half, and was very reluctant to tell what happened just now, but after all, it was a matter of everyone's life, so he ordered one of his men to give it to his leader partner. Tell me what happened just now.

As for himself, he returned to his house with a gloomy face.

In the house, his woman was trying to tease the child, but the entire cave was filled with smoke. Both she and the child were choked and coughing.

Delang put down the weapon in his hand and sat casually on the floor of the wooden house.

His woman took a careful look at the blood on Delang's ax and handed the coughing child to Delang.

The child was coughing constantly due to the choking smoke, his face was flushed, and his brows and eyes were filled with pain.

"This won't work. The children choked like this." Delang lost his temper at the woman.

But his woman could only say aggrievedly: "Master, what's going on? Does everyone say that we are all going to die? Woohoo." As she said that, she started to cry.

Delang's face changed again and again, and finally he had to hold his throat and squeeze out a sentence from between his teeth: "No matter what. I will let us survive."

After speaking, he instructed the woman to find two pieces of fine cloth, soak them with clean water, and hang them on her face, so as to slightly block the smoke everywhere.

"How is it?" Delang carefully rubbed the child's hair and asked gently.

"Yes." The child, who was not very talkative, hugged Delang's fleshy head and face and agreed firmly.

-

Keir returned to the bandit's lair via a simple wooden ladder.

There were more and more flames and burning debris at the entrance of the cave. The militiamen threw all kinds of garbage and unwanted things in. The smoke and hot air near the cave entrance were all sucked in. Inside the bandit's lair.

It was already close to noon, and Knight Crow was arranging the remaining close combat militiamen, preparing to use them to strengthen patrols on the periphery. The gangsters' lair could be said to be doomed. They had no other option but to escape through the vertical patio at the back.

Knight Crow did not intend to block the bandits inside and roast them all to death. He wanted to use a method that did not delay time and caused very few casualties to finally deal with these bandits.

Kil came to report the situation just now, and the knight asked Kil to lead people to release the guard in the vertical patio. After all, he had already described the internal scale of the bandits' lair and knew that behind the vertical patio passage for smoke exhaust, there were still There is a smaller cave that was set on fire by Kil when he rescued people, but now, it may be the last place where the bandits can hide.

The knight did not intend to give them a chance to unite and resist, but to give them one more possible option that seemed to allow them to escape.

"I understand. I will take my men with me. Then where is our better defense?" Kil asked.

Knight Crow waved his hand: "I have arranged all the other melee militiamen. You and your men can choose a place at will. It won't be long before those bandits hiding in the turtle shells don't want to die. You have to run away. Do you understand the specific situation and what should be done?"

Kil nodded. He knew that he would let the bandits who wanted to run away, and then pass through the steep cliffs and large-scale siege to kill the physically and mentally exhausted bandits remotely in the wild.

The militiamen can wait and wait for the last bandit to run away, and then they can deal with the remaining bandits who are still hiding.

Knight Crow will arrange his manpower to prevent the bandits coming out of the courtyard from affecting the fire at the entrance of the cave.

"Don't stop, the bandits will be finished soon! Look for something easy to burn, something that can be burned, and it will be very smokey. Get more of it." Knight Crow walked among the militiamen, encouraging them to look for more. Smoke that can burn.

Kiir once again used the simple wooden ladder to call up the few militiamen who had been following him these days. They packed up, came down through the wooden ladder, and then returned to the camp at the rear. They each replenished their supplies, and then went to the base. Under the leadership of Er, we left here and sat down on a hillside in the wild where we could see the outside of the patio, waiting for the bandits to come out.

-

The bandits couldn't stand the increasingly thick smoke. Everyone was coughing and their eyes were red and bloodshot from irritation. But that's not the worst thing.

In the passage at the entrance of the cave, high-temperature air heated by flames is constantly pouring in. The air is invisible, but as long as you dare to take a breath there, the inside of your neck and lungs will be burned by the hot air.

The cave nest can no longer accommodate people.

Therefore, the bandit leaders quickly asked all the bandits and their families to hide in the depths.

Some people thought that there was an underground river at the pool, so the temperature couldn't be very high, and it was a slightly lower place where they could hide, so some people went there.

The other small group hid in the high cave where the previous material warehouse and prison training ground were located.

Although the passage there is also the place where the smoke is discharged, as long as you run through the section under the vertical patio, although the smoke is still there, it is much less, and you can barely tolerate it.

Iron Arm chose the water pool, while the other bandit leader, who was usually calm and composed, led his people to choose the warehouse.

As for Delang, the beheaded man, he wanted to go out from the vertical patio with a large number of remaining bandits and bandits' families who did not want to hide in their lair and wait for death.

This group of people all felt that only by escaping from this place of death could they survive.

Delang handed over the women and children to his close men for protection, and he was the first to take the lead in getting ready to climb up.

The previous disastrous defeat made him furious, so he could only regain his dignity by defeating the enemy with his own hands and cutting off his head.

"Get ready, follow me and climb up. Whether we live or die, it's up to us!" Before starting to climb, he yelled, slightly boosting the momentum of the bandits who were willing to walk this road with him.

"oh!"

"superior!"

At this time, the bandits no longer distinguish who was their former subordinate. A disaster is approaching, and it seems that the leaders cannot defeat the militiamen, so the bandits follow their own choices and follow the bandit they think can best survive. Leaders, let’s find a way out together.

Delang's strength was amazing, so he carried his weapon directly on his back. He also carried a large roll of rope and a well-made wooden shield behind him.

As the first person to start, he also wore a set of metal ring armor on his upper body that was connected with a large iron ring.

Different from the general formal metal mail armor, his body weight is seriously excessive, and the defensive effect is not very good, and it can only defend against some hacking attacks with swords and axes.

But at least, it's much better than ordinary bandits with no defense.

The thieves' status was not good, so it was difficult for them to find armor-making craftsmen who were valued everywhere, and those craftsmen rarely went out to do business or move around, so it was impossible for them to rob even one of them.

Therefore, Delang's body was made by him who sent his men to remote villages to find unskilled village blacksmiths, each of whom made some iron rings. Finally, he brought them back and put them together in the bandit's lair to piece together a simple metal half-body. ring armor.

Delang put on his gloves and specifically found the largest rock crack to climb up. He followed closely behind the other bandit. They all wrapped their mouths with moist fine cloth to ensure that they were not exposed to the burning and choking smoke around them. Qi affects.

But it's impossible not to be affected. When Delang was climbing up, two bandits fell down from the climb because of a continuous cough.

Fortunately, they didn't climb high, and there were people at the bottom. They were caught by people, and then they climbed up again.

Delang moved quickly, but when he reached the top of the patio, he paused, grasped the rock crevice with one hand, and took off his double-edged ax from behind with the other hand.

He held only the last section of the ax in his right hand, then swung it upwards and swung it several times along the edge of the patio.

Nothing was hit, which made De Lang feel puzzled. He guessed that the militiamen should be not far away at this time, each holding a crossbow and waiting for someone to come up.

Thinking of this, Delang threw the double-edged ax upwards, and then quickly jumped out of the smoke in the courtyard.

When leaping, he took off the specially prepared fine wooden shield from his back and held it in the middle of his body in mid-air to protect his main torso from being shot by crossbow arrows.

But when he landed on the ground next to the patio, Delang opened his eyes and saw that there was no militiaman setting up a killing array around the vertical patio, waiting for the bandits.

Although this made him particularly confused, he still took off the rope from behind and then lowered it into the patio.

A bandit who was crawling behind him felt the rope hit him, so he immediately caught him and asked Delang to pull him up.

In this way, seven or eight bandits soon gathered above.

After the bandits below confirmed that they had occupied the top, they immediately connected a large wooden barrel to a hanging rope and let their women and children get in one after another.

The bandits nearby who had originally decided to hide in the caves high up saw them coming up, and more than half of them also ran over, vying to join the group leaving together.

The calm bandit leader and his cronies did not go over. If they really went over and followed Delang at this time, if everyone survived later, they would probably be eliminated by Delang, who was more trusted by the bandits.

And hiding here, you may not survive until the end. After all, there are so many people following Delang, and the militiamen will definitely put most of their energy on them.

And here, maybe it is a place where you can really live.

-

Standing at the edge of the patio, Delang pulled off the fine cloth covering his mouth and nose, and then took a deep breath of cold air. He had never felt that just breathing such a breath of air was so wonderful.

Although I don't know why those insidious militiamen withdrew, but since a large number of bandits came out, those militiamen could only deal with them through hard power.

Delang directed the bandits who joined him to bring up the people below one after another. Unfortunately, because they gathered in the main passage where the smoke circulated, many women and children with weak constitutions fainted and suffocated to death, and many of them had died before. The bandits who were injured in the day-to-day battle were also roasted alive by the hot and pressing heat wave in their lair because no one paid attention to them.

Half of the remaining people stubbornly followed the other two bandit leaders and hid in the corner of the cave, firmly believing that they could barely survive there.

Delang shook his head, not thinking that if he stayed there, he would survive in the end.

He immediately asked the clever bandits to scout around the top of the mountain.

But soon, all the bandits heading towards the entrance of the cave were shot to death by a wave of crossbow arrows. There was not a single tree here, and there was no place to hide.

But Delang knew that there were no other places to go here.

Soon, two careless bandits were lost, and they found a steep mountain road that was barely manageable.

There are a lot of climbing and walking footprints on the mountain road, probably left by bandits who escaped here before.

With nothing else to say, Delang immediately sent people down to investigate.

In the end, only more than a hundred people were able to escape with him, half of whom were women and children robbed by bandits. Some cold-blooded and ruthless bandits did not care about the family members who stayed in their lair before, and only focused on escaping for their own lives. But after all, the bandits were just a little more brutal, and they also had what ordinary people should have. Many people still tried their best to save their lives. The women and children were brought out.

Seeing that no one was willing to come out at this time, Delang thought for a moment and asked his men to take back the ropes.

"Since you like to stay here, just stay here honestly." He left a message towards the patio that was still spewing thick smoke, then spat again, and then started to lead people away from here.

The bandits were carrying various things, miscellaneous, mostly valuables saved during their robberies, while women with or without children were carrying large bags of food and furs as they all escaped. Survival supplies here.

Many people who had not climbed the steep mountains fell down the cliff while walking down. Fortunately, they escaped here in the afternoon, unlike the previous bandits who escaped secretly at night.

The bandits only focused on hiding in the night, but they did not expect how difficult it was to walk down the mountain with a lot of snow in the night. At least half of them died on this downhill path that usually did not attract the attention of the bandits.

After losing more than ten people, the bandits finally came down in fear.

After they came down, they looked at the corpses of the bandits who fell to death around them. They were scared to death and asked to leave here quickly, because they didn't know when the militiamen would discover their traces and follow them.

After several days of fighting, the bandits at least had a clear understanding. They knew that in normal offensive and defensive battles, they really couldn't beat the farmers who were said to have only trained for half a month.

This realization brought a major psychological blow to these usually brutal bandits.

It turns out that the reason why they dealt with the various caravans migrating before was not because they could fight, but simply because they had more people.

Facing militiamen whose numbers were twice as many as theirs and whose fighting capabilities far exceeded theirs, these bandits had lost the confidence and courage to dare the militiamen to fight head-on.

Faced with the bandits' request, Delang felt that they should all gather together, and then head towards the forest where the bandits had heard about the winter forest. Not to mention settling down there, it is not impossible for everyone to break up and join other bandit gangs.

However, once the bandits no longer faced a strong threat to their lives, and Delang, who had not performed well in fighting the militiamen before, lost the trust and authority of the bandits, the bandits who escaped immediately gathered into several groups. Scattered small groups.

Those men with iron arms were still beyond the control of De Lang, and the men of other bandit leaders quickly gathered together and immediately walked towards the surrounding forest before De Lang could react. No matter how much they shouted, they never looked back.

"Ignore them! Let's go this way!" Delang felt that their escape process was surprisingly smooth, unlike the militiamen who had been tricked in the courtyard before. He couldn't help but feel an unpleasant feeling in his heart, looking at the quiet mountains and forests around him and the large tracts of white snow on the ground.

He swallowed the dry spit, bent down to collect some snow balls, and ate a little. After thinking for a while, he decided to take a route that others would never think of.

"Let's go! Go to the east, to the ridge where the corpse pit is." The order was given, but the bandits under his command couldn't figure out why their boss wanted to go in the opposite direction to the bandits' winter forest.

"Boss, why did we go that way? Are we going the wrong way?" A close subordinate asked after hesitating for a while.

He knew that it would be impossible to subdue these guys with force like before. After all, those who were willing to follow him here were all true confidants who had gone through various tests of trust.

"The situation is not good. Will those large militiamen expect us to escape?"

One of the bandits immediately said: "Even if they didn't expect it, they would probably send people to guard the area. Are we being targeted? Boss?" At the end of the sentence, the bandit's expression seemed a little broken.

Delang knew not to be too scary, otherwise these guys who have repeatedly failed against the militiamen would probably lose the will to resist the final battle: "Maybe. But just now those guys acted separately from us, and we went in a direction that is difficult to pursue. Let's go, those militiamen will definitely deal with the other guys who escaped. Haha, so I have to go east abnormally, just in time to separate from those people who are all going north and west."

Delang said this, and with comparison, these subordinates felt that it was very beneficial to go with the bandit leader who had rich experience.

"Besides, there are corpse pits to the east. I wonder if the militiamen know where we usually dispose of corpses. I don't know what's best. If they knew, they would probably not dare to send people there because of fear and fear."

"If any militiamen catch up, we will get rid of the militia pursuit right there!" Delang finally said.

"The boss is actually the smartest among all the bosses!"

"We all think so."

While talking quietly, their team of less than fifty people stared at the gloomy sky, walked on the edge of the forest, and walked slowly towards the east.

-

"Did you see that guy? This guy is one of the leaders of the bandit gang. Let's deal with him. With the more than 20 bandits under his command, he is worth a lot of money." Keir gave several spears to the people around him. said the militiamen.

"Kiel, can we do it with just a few of us? I don't think it's possible at all. After all, it's not the very powerful terrain we had before." Some militiamen questioned.

Kil nodded and continued: "Of course not, not even one-on-one. But the bandits still have women and children with them, so they move slowly. Let's take a quick step and invite a group of close combat militiamen from the east direction to deal with them together." A group of bandits. After these people are dealt with, there will be no more fighting for this bandit group."

"Then let's go!"

"Let's go!" Kiel took the lead. They quickly surpassed Delang's bandit team from the forest and went to look for the melee militia patrolling the outside.