Translator: Transn Editor: Transn Gerdos City was not far from Burdock's Manor Castle. It would only take the Lancers one day and one night to get there. However, the garrison would have to march for three days and two nights. Also, there were a few vassal nobles and a messy army of two thousand soldiers, which was a burden to the whole army. It was too late for Count Corby to regret. He could only order two squadrons of Lancers to set off first.
The army marched for a day, and just as they set up camp at night, Count Corbili received news from the Lancers. Unfortunately, this was bad news. Count Corbili had lost two illegitimate children. One was a Gold-tier, and the other a Silver-tier. Facing the furious Count, the messenger of the Lancers who got this unlucky job because he failed to draw lots told the Count what had happened.
Just this afternoon, the two squadrons of Lancers found the enemy's camp on Mount Moz, which blocked the way to Burdock's Manor Castle. The commander of the Lancers who was transferred back from William Mills Castle was also Count Corby's illegitimate child. He was a Gold rank warrior. He went forward to take a look and found that although the enemy's camp was in an advantageous position, it was still a village built by the bandits. It was rough, simple, and poorly defended.
This illegitimate child thought that as long as he led the squadron of Lancers to charge forward, they would be able to break the camp and kill all the bandits in front of them. Therefore, he did exactly that. However, when he led the team into the simple camp, he found that the camp in front of them was just a cover. The real enemy camp with perfect defense was behind it. Furthermore, the bandits had used the camp in front of them to set up a trap. When the lancers charged into the camp, they were ambushed by the bandits. There were long arrows, crossbow bolts, and even these huge crossbow bolts … …
The messenger of the lancers presented a long bolt that looked like a javelin. It was pulled out from the corpse of the bastard leader. Even though he was a Gold-ranked warrior, he could not block the twelve bolts that were aimed at him. Even his Silver-ranked bastard brother was killed along with him.
The squadron of Lancers that rushed into the camp suffered a great loss. Only two squadrons made it back, and dozens of them came back with injuries. Fortunately, the bandits only relied on the defense of the camp and did not dare to leave the camp to pursue them. Therefore, after the other Gold-ranked bastard commander gathered his men, he did not dare to act rashly. He could only set up a camp opposite the bandit camp and wait for the arrival of the reinforcements.
"This is a ballista bolt …" The experienced Count Corbili quickly recognised what this giant ballista bolt was. But what made the earl angry was where the bandits had gotten such a powerful weapon from.
Generally speaking, although ballistae were powerful, they were bulky, inconvenient to move, difficult to maintain, and extremely expensive. Even if a ballista wasn't used much, it would still need to be replaced after a year or two. This was to prevent the aging of the wood from affecting the power of the ballista. This was especially true for the crossbow strings, which had to be replaced after shooting a dozen or so arrows. Moreover, these crossbow strings had to be custom-made and were expensive. Apart from the regular armies of the kingdom and some large cities that needed to be equipped with a few ballistae, the nobles of the territories wouldn't bother with ballistae. One reason was that they couldn't afford it, and the other was that it was too troublesome.
The bad news of the loss of a general and the ballistae in the hands of bandits caused Count Corbili to be unable to sleep for the entire night. Before the sun had even risen, he had already hurriedly ordered the garrison to move out. After leaving behind the peasant soldiers gathered by the vassal nobles, he finally arrived at the camp set up by the Lancer Company at noon.
After resting for two hours, Count Corbili ordered the sword-and-shield soldiers, longbowmen, and a platoon of lancers to launch a probing attack on the bandits' encampment. Count Corbili realized that it was easy to break into the encampment in front of him. All he had to do was enter the encampment, and the bandits would shoot arrows at him from the encampment behind him. Count Corbili's men couldn't hold their ground, and after leaving behind hundreds of corpses, they retreated from the encampment in front of them.
The earl didn't find any traces of ballistae. As expected, these things weren't something the bandits could afford to play with. It seemed that after using the ballistae yesterday, the crossbow strings had been damaged, and they couldn't be used today. This was good news for the earl. Although he had lost a hundred men in this afternoon's probing attack, the earl was clear about the strength of the bandits. They were only relying on the terrain and the power of their crossbows. In the afternoon, when the peasant soldiers of the vassal nobles arrived, with these cannon fodder, it would be a piece of cake to take over the bandit camp at the back.
Overnight, the Count ordered the peasants and soldiers to make more than a hundred wooden carts. On the next morning, the peasant soldiers pushed the wooden carts in front of the bandits to block the arrows. Soon, they broke into the camp at the back. Seeing that the situation was not good, the bandits released a series of arrows randomly to block the pursuit of the Lancers, and then ran away quickly.
The operation to take over the camp was very successful, with only a few losses. However, when Count Corbili arrived at the second camp, he found that there was another camp in the middle of the road hundreds of meters ahead, and on the hills further away, there were flags fluttering in the wind. He could vaguely tell that it was another camp.
Mount Moz was not the name of a hill, but the general name of more than a dozen hills of various sizes in this area. As for why it was called the Moz Hills, nobody knew. It was just a name on the map that had been passed down. The road from Gerdos City to the castle of Burdock's manor passed through the hills of Moz Hills, big or small. The hills, which looked inconspicuous before, were blocked by the rough and crude camps set up by the bandits, and they became the key to control the road.
Sadly, Count Corbili found that if he wanted to reach the castle of Burdock's manor, he had to conquer the dozen or so camps in front of him first. This discovery infuriated the Count to the point where his nose was not a nose and his face was not a face. It was too disgusting. They could not stop the earl's army, but they had set up these camps to deal with the enemy. If you ignored them, he could hide in the camps and shoot arrows at the road, and you would not be able to pass. If you ignored them, you had to conquer the camps one by one, which would be time-consuming and exhausting, and you would lose some men.
His Excellency the Count very much wanted to command his troops to flatten the few camps in front of him, but it would take several hours to push the hundreds of wooden carts to block the arrows. Moreover, he did not sleep last night and attacked the camps this morning. The farmers and soldiers were all exhausted. His Excellency the Count did not want to waste his own troops to attack the camps, so he had no choice but to rest for the night first.
The next day, with the great reward from the earl, the peasant soldiers marched forward bravely and conquered three camps in a row. Although more than two hundred unlucky guys died, those peasant soldiers were cannon fodder after all. For Count Corbili, as long as the garrison soldiers and the lancers under his command suffered minor losses, it would be enough.
However, on the third day, the peasant soldiers began to dawdle. The reason was very simple. The earl did not fulfill his promise yesterday that he would reward them with one imperial silver coin for every camp of the bandits that they conquered. Count Corbili had no choice. Who would carry thousands of imperial silver coins when they went out to suppress bandits? He could only promise again that he would give them the reward when they reached the castle of Burdock's manor. However, the peasant soldiers felt that they had been fooled and lost their morale. After a long time, they finally conquered one camp. Although the loss was smaller than yesterday's, the earl was not happy. There were still seven or eight camps to be conquered. At the efficiency today, it would take at least another five or six days.
Count Corbili wrote a letter and decided to send a small team of lancers back to Gerdos City. First, it was to prepare a batch of provisions. Second, it did not occur to the earl that he would have to conquer so many camps to suppress bandits. Before he set off, he only brought the provisions that the troops needed for seven or eight days. His plan was to finish the battle as soon as possible. Besides, it was very easy to deal with the bandits and mobs. If he really wanted to fight a big battle, he would be laughed at if he was well prepared.
However, he did not expect that the bandits had set up so many camps and dragged Count Corbili to the Moz Hills. What Count Corbili was worried about now was that after all the camps were conquered, his troops would have no food after they left the Moz Hills area, and they would have to go back. In that case, it would really be a big joke. Therefore, Count Corbili planned to ask Gerdos City to transport a batch of provisions that would be enough for the troops to consume for fifteen days.
Secondly, he would transport some property and pay the bounty of the peasant soldiers first, so that these peasant soldiers would be willing to be cannon fodder. After the bandits and mobs were wiped out, Count Corbili would naturally settle accounts with these peasant soldiers. He wanted to let these money-hungry stinky guys understand that it was not so easy to take Count Corbili's money.
The third order was to ask his illegitimate son, who was in the gold rank in Gerdos City, to increase the enlistment of the people in his territory. It was an intuition that made Count Corbili feel uneasy. The bandits in front of him had changed their habit of leaving after taking some money, and they even learned to resist Count Corbili's bandit suppression troops by building camps. What made these bandits so confident? Count Corbili seemed to feel that the battle of suppressing bandits that he had expected had a great change. Maybe this battle would be very difficult to fight.
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The lancer squad that was returning to the city to deliver the letter was heavily surrounded by Laurist. First, a few lancers at the front were tripped by a rope that suddenly appeared on the road, and then they were attacked by the Terman Knight squad. When they wanted to turn back, Laurist's more than thirty javelins took the lives of more than thirty lancers. A few lucky lancers managed to break out of the encirclement of hundreds of infantrymen with great difficulty, but they were shot dead by Josk, who was patrolling the perimeter. The remaining twenty or so Lancers dismounted their horses and surrendered, saving their own lives.
Looking at the order letter that Count Corbili sent to Gerdost City in satisfaction, Laurist said with a smile, "With this letter, Gerdost City is already ours."
Tim was also wearing a full suit of chainmail. He complimented, "Baron Norton, you're really meticulous. You even guessed that Count Corbili would send a messenger back to the city and asked us to set an ambush here. I thought that we would bypass Count Corbili's army and directly attack Gerdost City. "
"Hehe, it's simple. After Count Corbili's army set off, our scouts found that he didn't bring many carriages to transport supplies. Also, we asked him to delay in Mount Moz for a few days, so his supplies must be running low. What else can he do if he doesn't send someone back to the city to transport supplies? With this letter, we can swagger to the city gate of Gerdost City. "
"Alright, everyone, put on the clothes and equipment of lancers and guards. Now, let's go to Gerdost City. Ell, take care of the captives of these lancers. Watch them closely. Kill any who try to escape, "Laurist ordered.
This time, Laurist brought Ell and two squads of guards from the main camp, Terman's squad of knights, Yuri and two squads of light cavalry scouts, Tim and his eight hundred soldiers with big bags, and Jost, the sharpshooter. Together, they formed the team to sneak attack Gerdost City.
When Count Corbili led the bandit suppression team to attack the first camp, Laurist had spent two days with this sneak attack team, carefully bypassing Count Corbili's army, and ambushing him in the rear. After waiting for a day and a night, the squad of Lancers finally arrived.
In the evening, a squad of lancers and a squadron of guards appeared in front of the city gate of Gerdost City. The captain of the guards at the city gate did not suspect anything. When he learned that the lancers and guards were escorting the provisions back to the city under the order of the count, he quickly lowered the drawbridge and opened the city gate. Then, the captain of the squad of lancers came in and asked where the illegitimate son of the count who was in charge of Gerdos City was. After that, he waved his hands and the guards behind him swarmed up and tied up the captain of the squad as well as a dozen of his subordinates. Their mouths were also stuffed with a rag that smelled of blood, which made the captain of the squad so disgusted that he almost threw up.
Laurist ordered, "Yuri, Ell, you two go and control the other three city gates. Leave a squad of guards at each gate. Terman, take the squad of knights and follow me to the Duke's Mansion in the center of the city. Jost, you come too. Mr. Tim, restrain your soldiers. When we control the whole city, it will be our harvest. Don't lose the bigger picture, understand? "
"My lord, please rest assured. We won't let you down." Said Tim.
Perhaps because Count Corbili, who had always been strict, had gone out to suppress the bandits, the illegitimate son of the gold level in Gerdost City was no longer restrained. He was having an open meeting with dozens of men and women in a side hall of the Duke's Mansion. Hearing the report from the guard that the count had sent someone to deliver a letter, the illegitimate son was already a bit drunk. He climbed up from his white and tender body, shook his head, and without putting on any clothes, he picked up a glass of wine and continued to pour more wine into it. At the same time, he ordered the messenger to come in.
Laurist and Jost entered the side hall, and the responsible guard's neck was broken by Terman outside.
Looking at the foul atmosphere in the side hall, the naked men and women entangled with each other, and even two pairs of men and women, Laurist and Jost were both stunned.
The burly man in front of them was naked, holding a silver wine glass and laughing with his drunken eyes. "Are you dumbfounded? Bring me the letter that my, my father gave me. You can also take off your clothes and have fun together. It's okay, we're all on the same side. You can find, find a man or a woman …"
Laurist and Jost looked at each other. Instead of taking out the letter, they drew out their swords at the same time …
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