Mount and Blade

.........

Dawn.

"A-choo!"

Sneezes were heard from the army early in the morning. It was still painful to spend a night in the cold snow.

Because many tents were destroyed last time, Green and his men lived in a tent with the other two servants. Although they barely built a fire in the tent and changed into rawhide coats, their hands and feet were still cold. After all, in the deep winter, no one could sleep in armor that was as cold as ice at night. It was even better to wear leather gloves and hold the armor to warm it before wearing it.

Since the last negligence, the scouts were rotated every hour at night, and there were special soldiers to monitor to confirm whether it was the real person. It was a calm night.

And Kadi has been quiet recently. Those scouts who were replaced were from Judah, not Kadi's confidants. It was an old rule to assign the right person to do the right thing.

It was no surprise that the Jodah people didn't care about his life or death. After all, they were just using each other. His death was just a loss of a relatively good spy captain for Jodah, which was not as important as the army.

But they didn't know that Kadi hoped that they would fight for hundreds of years. Anyway, he would not give up easily.

Since the tent was destroyed, Green and Bazso crowded in a tent with a group of people to rest. After wearing their equipment, two layers of wool socks, thick animal leather boots, and a rawhide coat over their armor, Bazso and Green were wrapped up like a ball, simply chewing some frozen air-dried meat that could knock out their teeth. Look, Green lost a milk front tooth early in the morning.

"Gada"

"Hiss, it hurts."

Green took out the baby tooth embedded in the dried meat and looked at it. There was still a trace of blood on it. It felt like air was leaking when he opened his mouth to speak. He just took a breath of cold air and felt that his teeth and tongue were frozen. He honestly closed his mouth and followed the army on the road.

............

At noon, the group finally saw the fortress standing in the distance. Only when they got closer could they feel the unique charm of the Middle Ages, although it was not as spectacular as the royal castle in Wendam City.

The outer wall alone was nearly 30 meters high, and the ramparts were well maintained. Unless a large gap was smashed with a trebuchet and a precisely designed siege tower was used to transport soldiers to the wall, or a lot of time and energy was spent directly to blast a gap in the wall. The surrounding arrow towers and shooting holes were also very dense, some of which were equipped with small trebuchets and crossbows, as well as two primitive black iron gun barrels.

Firearms have been introduced from the distant Eastern Empire, but they are not the mainstream in this era, and the use of gunpowder is not a stable weapon in the current war, because the proportion of gunpowder preparation is different, and it is good if it does not burn, and it cannot be used continuously, otherwise the high temperature of the barrel will also cause the barrel to explode. Not only do you have to empty the slag in the barrel, but you also have to refill the gunpowder, which wastes a lot of time. The enemy may rush to your face before you cause any effective damage to the enemy.

However, it is still quite useful for counterattacking siege weapons and attacking castles, but it does not play a big role for castles on high mountains. First, artillery cannot fire shells at an elevation, because the recoil is not something humans can bear, and it is quite easy to accidentally injure friendly forces; second, although the current shells can explode, the explosion range is too small, and it has no effect on the mountain.

As for why it cannot be developed? Of course, the nobles were more interested in and yearned for knights who rode horses and carried guns. Moreover, gunpowder was difficult to preserve in the humid marine climate and was easily affected by moisture. In addition to its advantages in capturing small to medium-sized castles, it did not play any significant role in war. No lord or country was willing to spend a lot of money on firearms. In addition, under the influence of the church, the development of firearms never made any progress. Only cannons were invented, and there was no clue about matchlock guns. Perhaps the only benefit was that there were no large-scale battles with more than 10,000 people in the world with a sparse population.

In short, this was still an era dominated by cold weapons. Classes were destined by birth, and it was still difficult for civilians to change the status quo.

Entering the fortress, the houses of the residents are on both sides of the road. Due to the influence of the war, the residents who can live in the castle are very lucky. Now it is deep winter, every household has a small stove and the door is closed. Some taverns have simply closed their doors, and the hotel has become depressed. There are only a few butchers on the street who sell a small piece of bacon at noon, and are always vigilant against the refugees and beggars who come from the street because of the war.

Or Castle has a long history, and it is not surprising that some small urban settlements have formed around it. Many villages also buy and sell what they need here. Although there are fewer small shops than in Windham City, it feels like a different small town. Most of the roofs of the houses are covered with straw, and there is some yellow mud outside the wall. Few chimneys on the top are burning.

Homeless refugees and vagrants can be seen almost everywhere. Seeing this, Laban could only sigh and shake his head. I believe that the Rhine Wood Castle is also in the same situation.

In such a deep winter, countless refugees died of hunger and freezing every day. Although many serfs would starve and freeze to death in the winter, such a large number of refugees who were homeless to avoid the war would only die more. Many of them were residents of the surrounding villages invaded by the Joda people, as well as survivors of the villages around the Vidas Fortress.

"Lord Laban..."

"Please give us some food..."

"Lord Laban... Isn't that the White Dragon Knights? General Yuris! Please, give us something to eat..."

There were obviously some educated people among the refugees, who recognized the emblem of the White Dragon Knights at a glance. As he spoke, more refugees poured into both sides of the street and knelt down in front of Laban and Yuris.

"This..."

Yuris had been frowning since he entered the city. He didn't expect that the border fortress was already in such a state. It was really miserable. It was a pity that they didn't bring much dry food.

"Everyone, please be patient. We will set up porridge sheds and shelters in each area when the supplies arrive."

Laban raised his left hand. With many years of experience in frontier battles, he already knew how to deal with such a situation. The only thing he could do was to appease them first to avoid large-scale riots. The Hundred Years' War did not allow Midland to have much financial resources to support these refugees. Even if porridge sheds were opened, they could only barely keep them from starving to death. In such weather, some people would still freeze to death every day, and some people would choose to return to the village to see if there was any food they could not stand such hunger and cold. Usually, these people's villages had been looted to varying degrees before they chose to leave their homes. Where would they find any food?

In such weather, in addition to choosing to freeze to death and starve to death in the castle, even if they had some food on them, they had to live carefully and be careful of the disasters that might be caused by accident. If they did not have the help of relatives and friends in the city, they would freeze to death accidentally. Then they would just wash their necks in the village and wait for the Joda people to rob and starve to death or be humiliated and killed.

Under the current conditions, whether serfs or free farmers are freezing to death or starving to death, it will be difficult to maintain the autumn harvest and income next year.

Apparently the governor here has not considered these things at all, or it can't be said that he is completely indifferent to these refugees, because until now he is still indifferent to these refugees, and it seems that he is more worried about the attack of the Joda people every day after the fall of Vidas Fortress, and frantically collects money to recruit soldiers, including the strong men who seem to be pretty good among the refugees.