Mercenaries and Adventurers

Blood Licker is a tall, strong and young prairie horse that is black and gray in color with gray and white hooves.

After asking its owner, it turned out that the horse had been gelded last year and could be trained for horse riding and obedience. But for more than a year, not only did their three sons fail to capture this powerful and ferocious young prairie horse, but even none of the merchants who came and went could capture it.

"The old overlord's species is so powerful that it is impossible for ordinary people to get close to it, and they will be knocked down immediately."

Speaking of this, Fire Beard shook his head.

He watched with some reluctance as Kiel added the harness needed for the horse to be ridden on the horse one by one.

Seeing Fire Beard's appearance, Bloody Fangster came over with a blushing face: "What? It looks like he's going to regret it? After being tamed, you want to sell it to the big chamber of commerce? You're not afraid of others lowering the price to trick you. .”

Quickly waving his hand, Firebeard said with a smile: "Where can I find it? Is it just the price of this blood-licking grass?"

Seeing the way his old friend smiled, Bloody Fangster knew what this man was thinking, so before the other party spoke first, he calculated the price of the horse: "Go to the old overlord to breed it, it will cost a lot." A gold coin, right? That’s what everyone says about this price, don’t say you spent too much money.”

So Firebeard had to close his mouth and shrug his shoulders.

"I guess the cost of raising blood-licking female horses during pregnancy is around two silver coins."

At this point, Fire Beard interjected: "It's impossible. Its mother is also a famous horse, and the children she gave birth to are very good horses. It's impossible to count two silver coins. You know, such a horse has a good reputation." The maternal line of blood relations, the limited chance of pregnancy alone costs more than two silver coins.”

Finally, Firebeard raised two fingers: "It must be this number!"

"Two gold coins? Are you crazy?"

"I'm not crazy. There are other old overlord species on the market, but because the ones on the maternal side are not good enough, only twenty-three out of ten will become successful. The key lies in the blood relationship on the maternal side. Look, Compared with other prairie horses in my stable, his height, agility, strength, running speed, corresponding speed, and obedience to people, he is far superior to other horses in every aspect."

Bloody Fangster rolled his eyes: "The more you talk, the more nonsense it gets. It is still obedient to people. It has not been tamed before, so there is no obedience in it."

Firebeard knew that he was lying, so he changed his words with a smile: "Can you tell it soon? Look at how obedient it is now and how well-behaved it is under Kil's hands. Other horses are animals after all. Even after being tamed, they are still wild. It is difficult to tame, but blood licking grass is different. It is well-behaved and will stay where it is if Keel doesn't let it move."

"It's nonsense. At most, half a gold coin will be added because of the maternal relationship. You can use this experience to breed in the future. You will still make money in the future. You have to thank Kir for helping you get the blood-licking grass." , on this point, it’s not too much to convert some money into it, right?”

The two messed around and argued, and in the end Bloodfangster helped Kil set the price of the blood-licking grass at four gold coins.

At the same time, Firebeard also had to shoe the horse, as well as a complete set of horse equipment and several bags of dry bean rations.

Dried beans are for horses to eat. When there is no fresh and nutritious grass to feed, you can add some more dry beans to the ordinary grass to supplement the nutrition of the horse.

The money was in Bloodfangster's hand, so he gave it to Firebeard right on the spot.

At the same time, Firebeard also asked his eldest son to issue a document for the sale of their stable, and asked Keir to sign his name.

There will be two copies. Kil will take one copy and the other will be handed over to the local church of the God of Animal Husbandry, which will be kept by the church and have the priest read it out to the God of Animal Husbandry and record it through the god.

In this way, even if all the documents on the horse are lost in the future, you can still spend a sum of money to go to the church of the God of Animal Husbandry to confirm through the priest where the horse belongs and whose property it is.

-

Keir carefully examined the rather large sales document.

This is a refined grass stem paper with a light green background and a grassy aroma. Because a specific wild grass is used, the paper is extra strong and easy to write on.

At the beginning of the document, the details of the horse purchase transaction were explained, followed by the name of Blood Licker and the characteristics of the horse.

Then a large space was spent below to explain the lineage and special features of its father and mother.

There is a lot of information about Blood Licker's father, Old Overlord, and there are also many mothers. Several of its half-brothers are also excellent horses.

There is still a lot of space at the end of the file. This is where Keel can later add the honors and results obtained by the blood-licking grass.

For example, which horse competitions have been won, or which wars have been participated in, and which famous knights or nobles have ridden them at what times.

Keir carefully rolled up the document, put it into a cylindrical document storage bucket, and sealed it.

"Have you paid the money? How much is it?"

He did not ride on the blood-licking grass, but tied his reins to the back of the horse he came from. Kil and Bloodyaster also planned to buy another grassland horse for Bloodyaster to use.

You can just buy an ordinary prairie horse for this one.

"This number is not bad, because the blood-licking grass is much better than the ordinary grassland horse in every aspect." Geer gestured with a number and nodded looking at the gesture.

Anyway, this money was all won by him in fighting gambling recently.

Money comes easily, and spending it is painless.

If he had been asked to spend this money before when he was hunting slime monsters in Kendall County, he would have been reluctant to part with it. At least he would have been very sad that the money he earned from his labor was spent too easily.

In the end, Bloodfangster chose a fat piebald mare. This kind of prairie horse has a docile character and amazing endurance. It can march long distances and is very convenient for riding to keep up with the Kendall army.

The mare is also suitable for riding by Bloodyaster, who is recovering from his injury, so he doesn't have to spend more energy dealing with the horse under his crotch.

-

In the end, after they slowly purchased two new horses at noon, they worked hard to catch up with Kendall's army that had been marching south in the afternoon.

"Yo ho!"

Kil rode the blood-licking grass and ran quickly in circles on the spacious business road.

He was extremely happy, and the blood-licking grass he was riding was running so freely in the open world for the first time in his life. He ran very powerfully and ran for a long time without stopping.

Everything around him whizzed past both sides of Kil's body, and the originally vast land felt smaller at this speed, making Kil feel like he had conquered the entire world. This good horse felt different when running, far better than the horses he had ridden before.

I'm really sorry, but the two remaining horses he got from the bandits last year will probably only be used to pull carts from now on.

It's a pity that they are all brave and good children, and they are not afraid of fighting against harpies.

The Cavan Territory is indeed much more prosperous than other places in the Western Province. Unlike the previous trade routes, which mainly only had one trunk line, the north-south trade route taken by the Kendal people entered the Cavan Territory, and not only was it used by large caravans. The main trunk lines connect branch lines to towns and villages in other directions.

These branches are like webs woven by spiders, or like their eight legs, densely connected to other places.

At every intersection there are complicated road signs that can only be understood by locals or businessmen who frequent trade routes.

The text on it was not only mottled, but Geer guessed that there were also typos in it.

"Really, such an important road sign can have typos written on it. Could you please find some educated guys to write it when you were making it?"

Keir complained casually. He didn't need to identify where to go. The Kendal people must have passed through the Cavan Territory along the broadest north-south trade route.

"There is no way. The nearby villages are all herdsmen who farm or raise horses, cattle and sheep. They will never need to recognize characters in their lives. Even if the first generation of immigrants who settled down knew the characters, by the second generation after they settled, they would not be able to recognize characters. Not many people spend time and energy training children to be literate anymore.”

Bloodfangster is very familiar with Cavinland, because he usually runs trade routes that end or start in Cavinland. If he finds a suitable job here, he will definitely live nearby for a long time.

In his words, he can be considered half a Cavan leader.

The people here are relatively wealthy, because the goods they produce have never had to be sold, and the market has always been very good. The cattle, horses and sheep produced in the pastures of various villages in Cavernland not only supply most of the kingdom, but are also sold to other kingdoms in the south through the trade routes to the south. Go inside.

"Those dwarfs sometimes buy some of the cattle here, as well as a special type of bighorn sheep."

"Do dwarves also plow the land and grow food?"

Kil was a little curious. He had never come into contact with a foreign race like dwarves. After all, the Kingdom of Saint Holes was an emerging country with humans as the main race.

Especially after the dwarves were defeated here before, I heard that there are some dwarves here, but not many. Kil has never seen anything like them.

Faced with Kiel's question, Bloodfangster felt as if he had heard a funny joke: "What a joke, which race in this world does not cultivate crops to survive, is it difficult for them to eat food and meat that fall from trees? "

"Where are the elves? In poetry and drama, don't elves only eat fruits from fruit trees?"

"I don't know about this, but I heard that there are many kinds of elves, and they are not just the green ones that eat fruits, right? I heard someone said that there is a large forest of elves in a kingdom in the south. There can be Saw rare elves.”

At the same time, he whispered: "I also heard that there are elves in a forest in the west of Caohai. The dwarves fighting for territory there have elves supporting them."

"real or fake?"

"What you hear cannot be true. Just listen to it. It's all nonsense from the mouths of drunkards who have drunk too much. If you believe it, they are sober after just one or two points."

The two smiled, speeded up their horses, and soon caught up with Kendall's army before dark.

-

When he was camping near the village at night, Kiel saw the senior clerk in charge of logistics leaving the camp with the baron's order.

The secretary found the Bingxunguan army caravan that had been stubbornly following the army here. They talked for a long time, and a box of the baron's money seemed to be handed over to them.

Keir didn't know what he was doing. He guessed that the prosperity and wealth here made it suitable for the caravans he controlled to operate here.

Not far outside the military camp is the village he passed tonight. It is similar to the Dongyaohua Village that Keir has visited before. Outside this wealthy village called Cow Dung Village, there is also a large pool of refugees from the southern provinces who have fled here to live and make ends meet. A large shack.

Locals have mixed feelings about this.

The refugees are no different from them in terms of status. Most of them are farmers. Since the refugees fled to the village, all basic manual work in the village can be completed by hiring these people with food.

There is no shortage of food in the wealthy villages and towns in Cavernland. Therefore, when these people came, the local saturated food production actually increased a lot. All the food in the granaries that used to be able to cause trouble for voles, grass rats, and house mice was distributed. Great use.

After the locals got rid of basic manual labor, a large wave of labor force was released, allowing the local area to undergo a short-term industrial upgrade based on the agriculture and animal husbandry industry.

It sounds a bit hypocritical, but in reality, the grain and livestock produced locally finally have the opportunity to be processed on a large scale.

The local villagers in each village have made a lot of money from the refugees, and the big families or lord families in the village have also collected a lot of wealth by leasing land near the village. These new money has new sources. place.

-

The discerning family took this opportunity to organize the idle local manpower in the village and opened a simple workshop in the village, specializing in new and advanced processing of the perennial surplus of grain and industries that usually only sell live animals.

The grasslands are windy, and Cavan is considered to be half a grassland area, so the wind here is quite strong.

So new windmills were erected in various villages.

The wheat seeds were husked by a threshing machine designed by craftsmen, and then finely ground into brown-white wheat flour in the stone mill under the windmill. The straw bags are filled with finely ground wheat flour, then tied tightly and loaded into trucks, and sold to the big cities in Cavernland at a higher price.

These newly produced wheat flour will spread through trade routes, greatly lowering the price of refined grain in nearby provinces and neighboring countries.

If nothing else, the locals can now eat bread that they could only eat during the holidays in the past. Even if the bread made at home is not as delicious as the bread made by various churches, it also has no miraculous effects.

In addition, in the past, locally produced livestock had to spend a lot of effort in caravans to transport the entire truckload of sheep and cattle to other places.

It's okay to take livestock without a car, but after a long journey, no matter how fat they are, they will be exhausted when they arrive at the destination.

Can't sell it for a good price.

So since refugees from the southern province came here to take refuge last year, most of the villages and towns in Cavendish have been upgraded.

The fat animals do not need to be sold elsewhere, but are slaughtered directly in the hands of local butchers. Large pieces of meat are rubbed with salt and dried in the spring sunshine and warm wind into jerky that can be stored for a long time.

Such goods can be transported for a long time, and even the northern provinces of the kingdom can eat their dried meat.

Large pieces of cowhide are tanned, layered, aged and other processes to create a leather base material that can be made into various utensils. This thing has a wide range of uses and is easy to sell.

The beef bones are boiled to extract the fat, then smashed into powder with steel hammers, and then plowed and then spread into the fields to secretly increase the fertility of the fields.

A large amount of agricultural work can be done cheaply by the refugees, and with sufficient manpower, the production of livestock and food will increase.

The prosperous future of Cavan Territory seems to be within reach. As long as the war in the southern province does not end and the refugees do not return to their hometown, this prosperity will have no end.

But Baron Kendall didn't seem to think so.

During dinner in the evening, Kil, who was sitting behind Knight Crow and competing with the harpy monster's liver, heard what the baron was discussing with the two knights.

Of course, the local prosperity was noticed by Baron Kendall.

He proposed several other analytical possibilities.

"The biggest question is, do they have enough force to defend all this in Cavan Territory?"

The baron used a silver knife to cut a piece of the tenderest beef from the cow bought in the village. The beef after being simply grilled is also extremely delicious. The baron cuts the beef with a sharp silver knife in one hand, and rubs a ring in his left hand with the other hand, causing the ring to release a small ball of blue flame on the slices of tender beef. Flirting gently.

The beef slices quickly shrank and curled up.

The baron gently rolled a few fragrant wild vegetables into the meat slices, then inserted the tip of the knife into the meat and chewed it.

The two knights did not have such a sophisticated way of eating. Each of them had a roasted lamb. They broke off the burnt leg of the lamb and put it into their mouths to chew: "What should I say? The people here have a lot of weapons and training." "

"The number of knights in Cavin Territory is far higher than that in other places. In the past two days, I have heard the names of at least six knight families. Although they are not the names of knight families that have been famous in the Kingdom Knight Competition. But at least it shows that the local wealth base has allowed the accompanying military force to develop!"

The first is what Knight Rumi said, and the second is naturally what Knight Crow said.

The baron was observing as he walked through the Cavan Territory these days, and the other two were not idle either.

The Baron stopped what they were saying and shook his head: "These are all appearances. Think about it carefully, although the villagers in the village have enough weapons and equipment and seem to have decent training, these things can only be used to fool people at a low level. They're just local bandits and horse bandits. If we really fight, I don't think even the caravan guards organized by the big chamber of commerce can deal with them."

The Baron paused for a moment: "Of course, we have to take into account that the local province is adjacent to the iron-producing southern province and there is no shortage of iron. We can also produce armor and leather goods in large quantities. Although the level is not good, the technology can be improved soon. And the local villages and towns are all They have their own pastures, and after the villagers are armed, they can even transform into cavalry to fight one by one. This is very scary."

The Baron stroked his beard: "This may be the fundamental basis for Viscount Cavan to not be afraid of anyone and organizations around him."

The three of them were silent for a while, but they were all silently calculating the possible recruitment scale of Cavin's cavalry.

"Thirty thousand?"

"No way, twenty thousand!"

"fifty thousand!"

Each of the three gave a number.

They are all armies that can defeat one or two kingdoms.

Pure cavalry.

Among them, Knight Crow gave the highest number.

The other two people looked at him: "How can it be fifty thousand?"

Knight Crow coughed lightly: "Women can also fight. There are about more than 100,000 people in the entire Cavan Territory. All young men and women are armed, so that's about this number."

The Baron smiled: "It sounds terrible, right? But what if I say that in less than ten years, Cavan Territory will be finished?"

The Baron had discussed this with Knight Crow before, and Knight Crow knew that Baron Kendall was not talking nonsense.

"I estimate that the number of harpies is over a thousand. If they gather together, no matter how many ordinary troops there are, they will be defeated. This is especially true when there are many horses."

Knight Rumi didn't speak, and listened carefully to the words of the other two, and figured out that they were talking about the possibility that the harpy monsters on the strange wind grassland were going south to invade the Cavern Territory.

Even though Kendall's army suffered limited losses, they defeated dozens of monsters, a tribe of monsters in a settlement. That is entirely due to the comprehensive strength of the priests, the combat power of the knights and barons, and the projection ability of basically all the soldiers.

If another army encountered a harpy monster of this size, the monster's special ability would cause the organization to collapse as soon as they met. Then the soldiers and horses in the front row were picked up and thrown by the monster, and the entire army soon collapsed. .

At this point, whether the soldiers were mounted or not, the result was the same. Even riding a horse is troublesome, because the horse weighing hundreds of kilograms is smashed down, which is actually more fatal.

When running, there is no difference between evacuation on human feet and evacuation on horseback for the flying harpy monster.

They are all terribly slow.

"Will it be like this in the end? Cavernland? It looks very prosperous here. What a pity."

Knight Rumi muttered a few words and ate the roast lamb in a dull mood.

After the baron finished speaking, he was silent for a while before speaking: "I have an idea."

Knight Crow looked at the baron and motioned for him to talk.

"If, I mean if, the owner of the Western Province, Earl Wedel, has a clear understanding of the development of the Cavern Territory. Is it possible that he will arrange some means in the Strange Wind Grassland to 'control' the monsters to invade south at any time. "

As soon as these words were spoken, Knight Crow immediately blurted out: "Magic ballistae! And the knights under his command who were dispatched many years ago!"

The knight narrowed his eyes: "If it is as you said, then Count Wedel had already intervened many years ago and made all possible arrangements? The underground villages and towns along the trade route, the arms investment in Strange Wind Town, and several batches before and after The knight's fruitless crusade into the grassland. Could it be that it was all arranged in advance?"

"I don't know. But my family knowledge and life experience tell me that it is possible, and it is very likely."

Baron Kendall sighed, and everyone fell silent.

"We may have discovered a little secret about the Earl of the Western Province. Perhaps, this guess can be used to exchange for some practical help from Viscount Cavan when needed in the future. But now is not the time."

The Baron murmured softly.