The residents of Fordburg have not experienced war for a long time. The last time they heard the long war horn was when Baron Quinnier attacked two years ago.
I don’t know why Simon’s outpost next to the main road on the southern border didn’t set off a smoke warning in advance. Maybe these pagans came across unguarded woods and grasslands. Everything seemed very sudden, and it was very consistent with these elusive guys. Consistent style.
"Don't panic, don't panic! Sons of a bitch, have you forgotten how you usually train?" Sergeant Hann cursed impatiently at the two hurried soldiers next to him while wearing a chainmail turban.
After a while, more soldiers and village militiamen ran to the armory, began to put on equipment and distribute weapons.
"Ding Dong, Ding Dong..."
A rapid alarm sounded at the south gate of the wooden wall of the village of Fordeburg. The farmers who were working in the fields outside the wooden wall had to abandon their farm tools and run towards the village gate. Some of them ran away with their straw hats and shoes, but without exception, no one stopped and looked back.
"My merciful Lord, save us!" some farmers chanted a prayer, praying that they could enter the village before the gate closed.
Father James opened the door of the chapel, and frightened villagers and businessmen filed in, quickly filling the stone chapel.
Most of the buildings in the entire castle are made of wood, so when these villagers encounter danger, they will instinctively flee into this small church made of solid strips of stone. They think this will give them a strong sense of security. and God’s blessing.
In fact, when the wooden walls of the village outside were breached, the safest place was not this chapel but Simon's castle on the hill.
The ground began to shake slightly, and the sound of dull soil being trampled by horse hooves became louder and louder. The village security militiamen who were ready in armed uniforms and Simon's private soldiers in mail armor walked up the simple wooden stairs to the wooden city wall of the village. .
There was a tense atmosphere spreading on the wooden village wall. Some militiamen were hurriedly stringing longbows on the curved ends, and several strong men who were building houses for the village were urgently summoned by the village chief. They started from the ordnance. More arrows were brought from the storehouse, and the quivers scattered all over the fort wall were filled in turn.
"Get aboard and leave your damn cargo alone!"
At the ferry pier not far from Fort Verde, when the tax collector and the clerk boarded the ferry carrying small boxes containing money and a large armful of parchment with records, two anxious businessmen were still working with a group of porters. The workers moved boxes filled with goods one after another to the small ferry. At this time, the soldiers in charge of guarding the ferry were already impatient, especially after hearing the sound of horse hooves getting louder and louder.
"You don't understand, this is all my money, and I won't leave it to those pagan bandits!" The merchant moved the goods faster, and his white and fat hands didn't even have calluses. , obviously he has never done any menial work, but now he is sweating profusely for his property.
"Is the useless cargo more important, or is your life more important? If you don't get on the ship, I will leave you on the shore to be slaughtered by the infidels!" The soldier untied the ropes that fixed the ship to the dock. Let the boatmen pick up the oars and prepare to leave.
"No, no, no!" The businessman's expression twisted in pain as if he had been stabbed on the back, "I won't move anymore, let's go, let's go!"
After the porters and merchants abandoned the remaining goods on the dock and boarded the ship, the ferry slowly left the ferry dock amidst a splash of water and ripples. At this time, the sound of horse hooves was deafening, and everyone felt numbness in their chests, as if there was a war drum beating continuously in their hearts.
Two soldiers lit a fire with dry wood in the small square in the middle of the village, and then covered it with fresh green branches. After a while, raging smoke shot straight into the cloudless blue sky, warning the entire territory of the enemy attack.
"Close the gate of the village!" Sergeant Han En could already see a large number of black figures riding horses at the junction of the forest and the plain in the distance. At this moment, the last serf farming outside had also passed through the gate, and he could see at a glance , the road leading directly to the village gate was empty, with only abandoned farm tools, shoes and hats. So he decisively ordered the door to be closed.
At the same time, the Magyars also charged.
Sergeant Hann observed these Magyar bandits from a distance. None of them looked as strange as the two goat horns on their foreheads described in the tavern rumors. They were not devils, but a group of evil-doing people who did not believe in our Lord Jesus. Just people.
During the battle against the Vikings, Simon planted a seed of self-confidence in the hearts of every Fuldian - even if they are as strong as the North Sea pirates, their flesh will still bleed when cut, and they will still bleed after being shot by bows and arrows. They would fall to the ground and howl, and everyone was no different at least physically.
Therefore, when the merchants and caravan guards passing by wanted to tell scary stories about the pagans to the ignorant local farmers, they were surprised to find that these people did not seem to be as easy to scare as they thought.
Secondly, the appearance of these Magyars is not much different from them. Their skin is fairer and their facial features are relatively three-dimensional.
However, most of their eyes and hair are black and brown, and many of them have arrogant and unruly beards, or have their beards braided into thin and small braids. Some people wore ponytails, some had shaved heads, and some also had their hair braided into small braids, which looked very nomadic.
Han En had never seen a Magyar before, but there was a Cuman wearing an oriental robe in a caravan that passed by Fort Feld. Everything about these Magyars was very similar to that Cuman.
The Magyar bandits were as described in Ludwig's intelligence. A small number of them wore light leather armor, and most of them simply had no armor on their bodies. This meant that the archers on the fortress wall harvested Their lives would be simpler than those of farmers cutting wheat in the fields in the fall, but the difficulty is that they move at high speed.
The village militiamen holding longbows had already strung and nocked arrows, and Simon's private soldiers holding crossbows had also set up their crossbows and were on standby. As long as these Magyars dare to enter their shooting range, they will inevitably end up dead.
"Look over there!"
The soldiers on standby on the trebuchet turret pointed to the distant ferry and the direction of the Rhine River. Sure enough, shortly after the smoke rose in the village of Verde, the smoke also rose from Ludwig's manor in the village of Keosse. This brought great encouragement to all the soldiers, and it meant that Lord Simon's rescue would be coming soon.
"Drive, drive!"
"Ta da, da da, da da, da da..."
One after another, the Magyars galloped through the vast pastures and cultivated fields outside the village of Verde. These damn guys didn't care at all about the well-growing wheat in the cultivated fields. The short prairie horses would be mixed with the fertile soil of farmyard manure and the green and yellow wheat seedlings. It was stepped on and splashed everywhere.
Of course, they soon paid the price for their recklessness. Every Magyar who rode into the farmland was more or less covered with the feces of the villagers of Verde Village.
A Magyar who was wearing leather armor and seemed to have some status seemed to want to show off his shiny and extremely sharp prairie saber. He rode a horse to the big oak cross next to the Holy Pit. Before he could slash the cross with his knife, God played a trick on him - his horse's front hooves suddenly fell into a pit full of fermented excrement, causing him to fall into it while his center of gravity was unstable.
When he turned into a living "dung man" and crawled out of the sacred pit with a burst of retching, a burst of joyous ridicule broke out from the village wall. However, this Magyar man did nothing but roar incompetently and furiously. Nothing can be done.
Other Magyars skirted the wooden village walls of Fort Verde, always staying out of range of the archers and crossbowmen.
Obviously, they had someone come to investigate in advance. Their goal was clear, heading straight to the undefended ferry on the Rhine River, where a large amount of goods were piled, and a small room belonging to the tax collector and clerk, where the river crossing fees and taxes on the goods were stored.
The Magyar who rushed at the front saw the goods that had not been moved away in time at the ferry pier. He grinned and whipped the poor pony under his crotch hard with his riding crop. The latter neighed and quickened the pace, and soon he was The dock stopped.
The first Magyar to arrive saw the ferry full of people and cargo. At this time, the ferry had left the dock nearly thirty meters away. Seeing the big fish slipping away from his eyes, the Magyar cursed angrily in his bird language that no one could understand. Then he picked up his steppe recurve bow and shot an arrow at the ferry. This vents his dissatisfaction.
"Get down quickly!"
The soldiers who had been observing the situation on the shore quickly pressed down on the merchant's back. An arrow passed their position almost at the same time, and was inserted into the mast with a "dong", saving this poor man's life. The businessman turned pale with fright.
"Pile the goods to the stern of the ship to block the arrows!" the soldier said as he and the boatman stacked the wooden boxes filled with goods by the merchants to the stern of the ship. The two fat businessmen with big bellies were together with the tax officials, clerks and porters. Go to the bow to balance the weight.
"Look, in the end you are going to have to rely on my property to save your lives?" The businessman complained softly to the soldiers with a pained look on his face.
"You'd better shut your mouth, or I'll throw you, a fat, fleshy pig, to the stern of the boat to block our arrows!" Just as the soldier glared at him, the timid fat businessman lowered his head and moved away. Out of sight.
When more Magyars rushed to the dock and shot arrows at the ferry, almost all of the arrows were blocked by the merchant's wooden boxes of goods. Seeing that there was no point in archery, the Magyar raiders no longer wasted arrows. They began to pry open the wooden boxes on the dock, take out the goods inside, and stuff them into their big cloths. In the pocket.
………………………
"What the hell, Sergeant, can we just watch these infidels looting property and do nothing!?" The soldier on the corner tower anxiously asked Sergeant Hann who came up.
"The western wall of our village is nearly 1,200 feet (about 350 meters) away from the ferry dock. Neither longbows nor crossbows can harm them."
"These infidels deserve to go to hell!" The soldier angrily hammered the wooden walls of the turret with his fist.
There were about eighty Magyars. If Ludwig's information was correct, the remaining twenty Magyars either died on the way or before they were guarded in the camp in the forest. The spoils of plunder.
This is easy to judge. When these Magyars attacked, there was nothing on the backs of the horses. At the same time, the big cloth bags on their waists were all empty and deflated. It was obvious that they had replaced the previous ones. The plundered loot was unloaded in the camp, and then the weight was reduced and more loot was brought back.
At this time, Sergeant Hann's decision to stick to the village wall of Fort Verde was also the safest.
There are not many of them. The total number of militia archers, private crossbowmen, spear-wielding militiamen and private infantry is only sixty. If they are gathered to fight at the ferry dock at this time, these Magyar light cavalry They can engulf them with a single charge on a flat and empty gentle slope, and then the light cavalry archers will harvest the lives of the defeated soldiers one after another.
The only way to inflict heavy damage on these Magyars is to quickly find and attack their camps in the forest.
The terrain in the forest is complex and there are many trees. In addition to providing good concealment for the Magyar camp, it also makes their cavalry useless. At this time, the spear-wielding infantry is the natural nemesis of these cavalry. . Of course, if those Magyars choose to dismount and fight, they will be no match for Simon's armored infantry.
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