"Come here and help me, the carriage is stuck again."

On the broken and somewhat muddy road, members of the caravan hurriedly got out of the car to check. The leading aunt frowned and walked over, then yelled loudly, calling for others to come and help.

As the leader of the caravan, she was no longer young. Judging from her appearance, she should be around forty years old, but in fact she was slightly older. She is not tall, and her face can barely be called charming, and she should have been pretty when she was young. As the leader of such a caravan with 20 people, five one-horse two-wheeled carriages and six pack horses, she was dressed in a bit shabby, an old cotton jacket, leather apron, belt Pinned to it was a mounted dagger, a practical tool like a butcher's knife, but also useful in fighting. In addition to this knife, there are many other standing tools hanging on the belt, and the ledgers and some dinars that are crucial to the caravan are placed in the cross-span backpack.

Her name is Catherine, and she is a well-known military merchant in Swadia who has been wandering between Palaven and Suno for a long time. When she was young, she also provided physical services. But even so, the meager profits and the endless arrears of wages from those damned nobles made her always poor with only her principal left, and her children left her before her for various reasons. It was not until the appearance of the lord named Byron that her fate was completely changed. Before and after the earthquake, Byron's territory had always had a great demand for supplies. Not only were the profits huge, but also the accounts were settled on the spot, and sometimes even a little more was given. The most important thing is that, as vendors who provide supplies for the army, they enjoy some preferential treatment in territorial customs duties and various miscellaneous taxes, which made this poor old woman understand for the first time what a truly profitable business is.

Now, she has her own caravan, not only that, maybe because she was not afraid of hardships to send supplies to Amira after the earthquake (actually because she saw that it was profitable, the Amira people rescued after the disaster She bought a lot of dinars but was short of everything), Earl Byron planned to meet her after the goods arrived, and the soldier who gave her a letter also revealed to her that the Earl might invest in her caravan, which made her very happy , so deliberately spent a lot of money to expand the team and shipped more goods. She was fully expecting that the lord could bring her business to a higher level. After all, she had cooperated for so long, and she believed that the young lord who was born as a mercenary would definitely understand the difficulties of an army merchant like her.

Members of the caravan came to help one after another, and pushed out the carriage whose wheels were stuck in the mud. Even the groom who watched the horses came to help. It was getting late, and they had to arrive before dusk. a village.

But even so, there was still one person in the caravan who did not act. He was still sitting in the car, seemingly trapped in some kind of memory. Judging from his thick chain mail, battle ax at his waist, shield on his back, and sledgehammer on his carriage, he is obviously a reliable guard, although it may not be a good helper.

"Big man, don't think about you killing ten people by yourself in the past, come here and help, can't you see the car and can't move!" Catherine shouted dissatisfied.

"You can call me Wolfhart, or a giant bear, I'm not a big man, ma'am." The big Nord raised his head and said solemnly.

"I can call you whatever I want, big man, half-breed. Now, get off the wagon and help us move this **** wreck off the wheel, I saved you and took you in Paying your salary is not for you to eat here!" Catherine's words were very sharp, and Wolfhart, who looked strong and really looked like a bear, also shrugged helplessly, and left the carriage with his head down.

"Okay, okay, ma'am, don't be angry." As a half-blood on the Swadian and Nord border, Wolfhart's father was a Nord infantryman, a squire and the captain of the village's militia. His mother is the daughter of a Swadian knight. He has the status of a nobleman. Even if he becomes a mercenary, he is also called a hired knight, and he has a bit of aristocratic pride. But in front of this old Swadian commoner woman, he dared not show any temper at all. After all, it was Catherine who rescued him a few years ago when he passed out in the field, wounded and dying, paid what was a large sum of money for her to bring him back to life, provided him with food and work, and treated him like Treating his family like he did, he vowed to guard Catherine by her side before she got married again, so he didn't dare to have any temper with this eldest sister.

With his power, the carriage, which was difficult to move at first, finally started to move this time. Everyone worked together and finally pushed the carriage out of the **** mud pit. Several people came over with shovels and planks to fill up the pit. , lest the carriage behind cannot pass.

At this time, everyone's attention was focused on their carriage and the big pit, and the complex environment around them was temporarily ignored by them. But in today's Rhodok field, this kind of mistake is fatal!

A crossbow arrow flew across the sky and shot at Catherine's neck. But Wolfhart had quick eyes and quick hands, and quickly stood in front of Catherine, using the shield on his back to block the deadly crossbow, and then roared:

"Bandits! Protect the convoy!"

The members of the caravan were taken aback. In a brief panic, one crossbow arrow shot a caravan guard in the eye, and the other shot through the knee of an unlucky crossbowman. The caravan guard At this moment, they were relieved and raised their shields around the carriage, while the remaining two hired crossbowmen hid behind the shields and looked around for traces of their opponents, preparing to fight back.

"Okay, what do you want? Stand up and tell me, we can talk!"

Catherine has seen many scenes in her life. She even hid arrows to pick up corpses on a battlefield full of corpses and was still fighting, so he didn't panic, but hid behind Wolfhart and shouted, trying to Negotiate with the other party. This method has always been very useful. The bandits don’t want to risk their lives when they ask for money, and they often kill to intimidate the merchants. As long as the conditions are right, they will definitely choose to take the money and leave instead of going with this group, which is still a lot of people and has many guards. Team battle. And Catherine has long learned how to bargain with these criminals on road money.

But this time, the other party did not answer, but continued to shoot crossbow arrows at them. Their aim was very high, and a hired crossbowman who took the lead to fight back was shot in the shoulder blade, and the crossbow bolt that had been aimed was also slanted.

"Coward! Stand up!" Wolfhart yelled a few times, but only more crossbow bolts answered him.

"Damn it, they're not bandits!" Feeling the power of the crossbow passing from his arm, Wolfhart cursed. His numb arm and the shield with holes made him understand that the other party was definitely not a bandit. Ordinary bandits, those desperadoes can't get several heavy crossbows used by the army, and it's very difficult to reach this level of accuracy, and there are almost no arrows in vain. These people are either Rhodok's rebellious army, or a small Rhodok army who sneaked into Byron's territory.

"You Rhodok cowards! Surely your lords and kings will be ashamed of you. I will leave here and tell Lord Byron who in this land is attacking his people and merchants! "

Wolfhart's tentative reply obviously had an effect. The crossbow stopped firing for a while, followed by a terrifying volley, and then a dozen or so shield-wielding soldiers appeared from behind the bushes and trees on all sides. A Rhodok veteran spearman of the spear. They had hidden their shields under them to avoid detection, and there was evidently an army of Rhodok's experienced crossbowmen in ambush all around them.

They didn't have to show up, they just had to drive them away and then burn the supplies or take them. But when the other party found out their identity and yelled, they had to appear to surround those businessmen, kill everyone, and leave no one alive. They had already killed two batches of Byron's merchants and a patrol team on this trade route before, and they had to cause as much damage as possible before Byron's troops found them.

"Okay, now you're here, **** bastards!" Wolfhart spat, then stepped back to the carriage where he was saluting, picked up his two-handed warhammer and rushed up.

The senior Rhodok spearmen who were shrinking the encirclement certainly expected the resistance of this dying struggle, and they erected their shields and erected their spears skillfully. Three Rhodoks blocked the front, and two approached from the flanks. Facing this tight formation, even a knight would have difficulty parrying it.

But they still underestimated the strength and bravery of this Nordswadian hybrid. Wolfhart completely dodged a few spears, and then ignored the last spear that pierced his chain armor without piercing. spear, and directly bumped into the shield of a senior Rhodok spearman with a sideways body. The huge momentum forced the opponent to take two steps back, and he also seized the opportunity when the opponent was unable to stand still and directly hit the shield with the hammer. He bumped his head forward, then immediately dodged another spear and swung it, knocking the veteran spearman to the ground, and swung the hammer to force the two people next to him to dodge, then swung the hammer vigorously to the ground The face of the senior spearman in front of him touched, and this time, people could clearly hear the cracking sound of the skull.

After completing these, he immediately turned around and swung the hammer continuously to force the other spearmen away from him~lightnovelpub.net~ and ensured that the shield on his back could resist the arrows of the crossbowmen behind him. After a while of circling, he leaned close to the opponent at the moment when a person stabbed his spear, put his body against the opponent's shield, and smashed down on the opponent's instep with the hammer handle, causing the opponent to scream, and then knocked down He added a hammer.

But at this moment, the other three spearmen quickly approached and stabbed him several times, causing many iron rings to fall off the chain armor on his body, and two wounds that were not deep on his body. But this also meant the failure of his offensive tactics, and Wolfhart could only retreat helplessly, standing in line with the others. But at this time, he found that the caravan guards had been defeated by the attack of the remaining spearmen, with more than half of them killed or injured. If it weren't for the other party not keeping alive, these guys would have surrendered long ago.

At this time, the encirclement circle has been formed. Wolfhart once defeated a small group of enemy light infantry alone, and captured the leading noble officer, but this does not mean that he can defeat an entire group of well-trained and formed formations alone. Rhodok veteran spearman. In fact, he felt that it would be difficult for another knight with similar skill to him to break through, let alone bring Catherine with him.

All he can do now is try his best to protect Catherine so that she can escape. At this time, Catherine had also drawn out her sharp knife, and was confronting the approaching spearmen.

This is a lost situation, unless... there is a turning point!

Accompanied by a quick sound of horseshoes, the Rhodok spearmen immediately turned around and lined up. But they were too late, a fast and scary strong horse directly knocked over the first few people, and the rider on the horse, wearing a full body plate armor and a giant wing helmet, entered the battlefield with a lance in his hand. In the middle, on his cape fluttering in the wind, is a peony flower in full bloom.