Suomir has a large territory.
The Aurora region alone is enough to compare with the entire Avenella, which was a vassal state of Sivalier a few years ago. And if you make a rough comparison of the entire country, it is almost equivalent to the total size of the Kingdom of Maximilian, the Kingdom of Sivalier, and the Kingdom of Avenella combined.
Just looking at it this way, Suomir looks like a country that is so developed that it can call itself an empire. But if you know more about it, you will understand that despite its huge land area, the population of this northern country is not very large.
The reason is naturally inseparable from the cold.
Although according to the impression of people on the west coast, the four northern islands and even the Northland area of Sivalier are considered to be severely cold, the four northern islands located at the mouth of the Mobigas Inland Sea are actually just on the same level as Nordic Laura. same latitude.
Further up from Nordic Rolla, as one gets closer to the pole, the population becomes increasingly sparse. When they entered the North Rica Sea, where the water seen from the coastline was already a deep blue-black color, they officially entered one-third of the territory of the Suomir Kingdom that was included in the polar circle.
This is an environment that is difficult for humans to survive. Even the Suomir people who know the cold winter very well rarely actually settle here.
Even the ubiquitous sharks are extinct here because they can't cope with the freezing water temperatures. In the ocean here are whales and large marine mammals with thick fat, as well as giant water dragons that feed on them. The same is true on land. There are countless news about snowmen two or three meters high and giants four or five meters high. Even the bravest swordsmen rarely go deep into the North Pole.
One-third of the country is in the Arctic, one-third of the country is near the North Pole, and the remaining one-third is the land that is relatively suitable for human survival in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. In addition, it is known as the "Land of Thousand Lakes". Fully one-tenth of the country is covered by lakes of various sizes, the largest and most famous of which is the Heinzwom Meteor Lake where the church is located.
The title "the land of fairy tales" is not exaggerated at all.
If you want to talk about beauty, this snow scene is naturally beautiful, but this beauty is also based on the premise that it is difficult for humans to extend their footprints.
The races of the four northern islands are very similar to the Suomir people. There are only slight differences in height and face. When the Suomir people and the Danlaso people stand together without weapons and without speaking, it makes you very happy. It's hard to tell one from the other, and there's a reason for that.
The legend of the origin of Sjing Saga records that the original Danlasso people settled further north in northern Aurora. They were once residents of the mainland, but after being unable to endure the bitter cold in the north and the intrusion of various terrifying creatures, the whole family migrated south.
However, the Suomi people have already occupied the relatively fertile southern land. After countless wars broke out between the two similar but different ethnic groups, the exhausted Danlaso people gave up the mainland and went to the sea to seek life. Finally, the four huge northern islands were found on the vast sea to the west of Aurora, and they were able to develop and prosper in another area.
Nowadays, the war has become a distant past. The two peoples, divided into east and west, separated by the vast sea, each went in a different direction, and eventually evolved into many different languages and cultures. The resumption of exchange and communication only occurred within the last few centuries. But no matter what, the fact that the population of Suomir is mainly concentrated in Aurora can already be known from these details.
It was a right decision to come to Suomir in late summer and early autumn. Although there is no snow to see at this time, the climate is relatively pleasant.
Starting from Porusaro, we passed through small villages and settlements of herdsmen. There are not many supplies to replenish here, so you must prepare yourself before setting off. But if you travel a little faster, it only takes a little more than a day to reach the first town in the Nordic Laura region.
From here on, it is truly within the territory of Suomir. What is somewhat surprising but also expected is that this small town named Poliyining is still full of traces of the Lamanites.
This is convenient for Henry and the three of them to a certain extent, because in a small town where businessmen and travelers often come and go, people will not pay too much unnecessary attention to outsiders like them. .
Suomir's current Queen is obsessed with the idea of reconciling with the Padrosi Empire. Wherever the naked eye can see, there is evidence everywhere.
The thoughts of the royal family turned into words, turned into orders, and finally turned into physical objects through power and wealth wherever they went.
This is the best example of the impact of the arbitrariness of the supreme power on the lives of the people below.
There are two road signs at the entrance of the town. The first one is a not-so-tall stone monument that looks like it has gone through a lot of time. On it, "Polyining" in Suomir language was written with stone chisels and red iron oxide paint.
Next to it, there is a newer and more dazzling black iron signboard that is more than two meters high and is obviously a contemporary creation. It reads "Rachuda-Valdi-Lago" in cursive Laman language - —It means "Town of Green Lake".
The town lives up to its name, and it is indeed not an exaggeration to call it Green Lake Town. Standing at the entrance and looking inward from the remaining foundations of the city wall, you can clearly see the huge lake sparkling in the midday sun. This is the first scene that all travelers going north will see. After crossing the forests and plains of Southern Europe, the first thing to greet them is this beautiful lakeside town.
This is the starting point of the Kingdom of Thousand Lakes. From here on up, there are countless cities and towns built on the lakeside.
"Palapara! (Stop, stop)" A soldier speaking Suomir-style Lamani stopped the three of them. Obviously there are the same weapons control laws here as in Porusaro, but the soldiers' clothes are very different from those in a town only twenty kilometers away. Although there are still similarities on the breastplates, the matching blouses and helmets are also Weapons are quite different.
White armor, that is, a design without a burqa, is popular in the central region of the Padrosi Empire and in many places in the southern city-state alliance. However, in the Kingdom of Suomir, where the weather is colder, it has been common practice since ancient times to add a blouse on top of armor to keep warm, so the fashion trend here is more similar to that on the west coast.
The soldiers' summer smocks are relatively light and breathable, with ventilation holes in many places such as the armpits. When standing guard for a long time, wearing smocks can also prevent the armor from being overheated in the sun. When the three people observed it, the defenders' soldiers He came over with his halberd in hand.
As someone who is also familiar with fighting, the Luoan girl easily noticed the vigilance of these people - the way they carried their long pole weapons was to hold the bottom of the halberd with their palms instead of grabbing the middle of the pole. It was made to take advantage of the maximum attack range of the halberd and form a defensive formation—in other words, it was not a normal weapon-carrying posture, but a battle-ready posture.
There is another point that proves this. The halberdier of the Suomir garrison stopped about two meters in front of the two people and did not continue to get closer. At the position and distance where he stood, if the sage and the girl from Luoan who were not holding lances tried to attack, they would be hit by the halberd he lowered before drawing their swords and charging.
This man is not a weak hand, and he is definitely not a second-rate defender with nothing to lose. His movements are understated and do not show any special alertness, which prevents the opponent from noticing the sudden outbreak. However, he is vigilant in every detail and can enter the battle at any time. In the formation.
Such a natural approach can only be displayed by a very well-trained person, and it can also be seen from his more gorgeous equipment. The person who called them to stop and came forward should be one of the soldiers guarding the door. The squad leader - he opened his mouth and asked the sage:
"Wei-Puhua-Suomi? (Do you speak Suomi)"
The squad leader said this, this was obviously another trap he played. He asked if he could speak Suomir, but this sentence was asked in Suomir. If Henry shook his head subconsciously here to show that he couldn't speak it, then he either really could only understand it. And I don’t know how to tell it, or I know it clearly but deliberately conceal it.
Without raising the opponent's vigilance, the question is asked as if it were a common conversation. At this time, people's reactions are often the most natural, unthinking, and most reliable.
No matter whether the sage nods or shakes his head, he will be more or less noticed by the other party, so the best choice here is to be like our white-haired girl on the side——
He acted like he was confused and had no idea what the other person was talking about.
Henry looked at the squad leader with obvious doubts on his face, and there was almost a question mark on his head.
"Nothing, nothing." The captain waved his hand and said in Laman language, then looked at Mira and Galeva standing behind him, and finally let go of his right hand and let the halberd slide down until the bottom was in contact with Ground contact.
"Come up and check." He grabbed the middle part of the halberd's shaft and turned around and shouted twice. Two defenders came forward in response, but their postures were much weaker than that of the squad leader. They looked completely the same. A look of untrained relaxation.
Another privilege of being a registered mercenary, Henry and Mira were finally lucky enough to experience it after becoming officially registered mercenaries for a long time.
As an orange-level mercenary and wearing a mithril mercenary group badge, after the team leader confirmed that there was nothing suspicious, the defenders didn't bother them much. They just looked at the badge and simply registered. Let them go immediately. Galeva, an ordinary person who was traveling with him, was not so lucky. He was searched and inspected. The dagger on his waist was even pulled out and looked at. Then the soldier who was inspecting looked at the young man mockingly. The porter returned the dagger to him.
"What's your attitude?" The eldest son of the hotel family was obviously aggrieved at being treated as a follower of the two, but he was also somewhat self-aware, and he didn't murmur until he was far away from the soldiers.
Because the three of them were traveling together, Galeva was also used to communicating in Lamani, and the grunt he made this time was the same, making the white-haired Roan girl laugh again.
After an uneventful episode, the group of people entered the town directly.
I won’t go into details about the clichéd process arrangement. A small hotel with stables is a standard feature of every small town built on the avenue. Only this time, they walked for a long time, but some hotels on the roadside were always full.
From a distance, almost all the horses crowded in the stables are tall and strong. These horses are obviously native to Suomir. Their average height is more than two meters and their weight is basically more than 800 kilograms. Some can even reach one ton, but they are not excellent war horses.
The best war horses on the east coast are produced in Padrosi. This is one of the reasons why the Suomir people are most famous not as knights but as swordsmen who are better at fighting on foot.
The Kramer itself is a multi-purpose weapon. When dealing with infantry phalanxes, it can split spears and create opportunities for subsequent troops to break through and escape or defeat the opponent. When encountering a knight, this kind of sword will become a horse-killing weapon, using the danger of wandering on the blade to gain life. After escaping from the deadly lance, it can kill the horse and then deal with the knight. .
There are no excellent riding horses in Suomir. The taller and heavier the horse for knights, the better. Most knight horses, including those on the west coast, are only about 1.7 to 1.8 meters tall, and the heaviest weight is only about half a ton. Only in this way can they ensure sufficient ability to run and charge for a long time.
In contrast, these Suomir's heavy horses are more used as draft horses.
They cultivate the land and carry cargo. Their amazing strength cannot charge at high speed, but they can pull more cargo and heavier tools.
——Extending from this detail, it is easy to guess who are the people occupying the hotel.
Henry gently pulled on the reins to slow down the horse underneath him so that he could carefully observe the stables.
Mira noticed this and pulled the reins, while Galeva shook his head in confusion and almost bumped into them. Fortunately, the smart little unicorn used the reins to hold him.
The three of them were alone on the way here, and there were no carriages or riders on the road they were traveling with. But the hotel in Green Lake Town showed another scene. So since these merchants who used heavy-drawn carts to carry goods did not come north to sell goods, they only had two purposes.
First, this trip is in the opposite direction, transporting supplies for sale from north to south. This is a reasonable judgment and the first thought that pops into most people’s minds.
In addition to producing wool, Suomir also has quite good mineral resources. The reason why weapons like Kramer, which require precision forging, were born here is inseparable from the high-quality minerals.
But that was not what they carried on their carriages.
It is obviously a reasonable behavior for merchants who belong to the same chamber of commerce to regularly transport large quantities of the same kind of goods, such as large quantities of wool or minerals and other resources, to Padrosi in the south for sale. In contrast, individual small businessmen would choose to load a carriage with all kinds of miscellaneous small items, thinking of turning themselves into a grocer.
But small merchants usually did not choose such heavy draft horses to carry goods. Although they were stronger, they also ate more. Unlike wholesale sellers who have partnerships with chambers of commerce, small grocers will not have someone to pick them up when they go to a new location. In other words, there is no guarantee that the goods will be sold out.
As a result, most of them chose smaller packhorses, or even mules and donkeys, so that they could still feed their livestock when they couldn't sell the goods and had to continue selling at the next stop.
Large carriages pulled by heavy horses did have a larger cargo capacity, but if they could not be sold out, they would be a huge expense just to maintain.
Therefore, only large chambers of commerce that often have large transactions would choose draft horses. This condition, combined with the fact that the carriage was placed separately from the draft horses, appears to be very similar in style and detail and was clearly made by the same carpenter's workshop.
The identity can basically be determined to be the convoy of a large chamber of commerce, but in this case, the goods they carry are very strange.
There were a few box carriages and a few that were wrapped in tarpaulins. Although the open carriages were covered with black cloth, it was still possible to see from the gaps that there were some large and small boxes and daily necessities.
The loss-making business of transporting daily necessities that can be bought locally over thousands of miles is not what merchants do. In addition, they also dispatched special personnel to stand guard with long sticks. If you look carefully, there are still weapons under the carriage. The gleaming weighted ball obviously fixed the one-handed sword-type weapon underneath.
Adequate precautions were taken without violating the town's laws - not only in terms of equipment, but also in attitude. The moment Henry's eyes intersected with one of the guards, the other guard glared at the sage fiercely and shook his head. The long stick in his hand was obviously warning him, the mercenary, not to hit them randomly.
The sage turned his head as if he was resigned, and the Luoan girl, who followed his example and made some observations, could already draw a conclusion based on these details.
"On the surface it is an ordinary commercial transportation, but in fact it is an asset transfer for the entire family?" Mira frowned her pretty eyebrows and whispered in Avenela.
"Well, before a disaster strikes, rats are always the first to disappear." Henry nodded, his tone calm and his eyes moved to the left.
The right side of the avenue is densely packed with houses, while the left side is sparse in comparison. From here, you can directly see the huge green lake from which the town is named.
The turquoise lake sparkled in the midday sun, and the white-painted boats on the lakeside were neatly placed next to the trestle, gently swaying under the ripples of the breeze. At this time, most people had gone to have lunch, so there was only a solitary boat floating on the lake. If you have a good eye, you can clearly see that the lingering romantic is a young man dressed as a Lamanite nobleman and a black-haired woman under the sufficient light and even at such a distance. Their laughter was not seen, but their joy could be seen from their movements.
"Human beings have been slow since ancient times. They don't react until disaster strikes, but there is nothing else to do except cry and cry." The sage half-squinted his eyes, looked at the two people on the lake, and then glanced at the two people on the lake. A glimpse of where the caravan is.
Under the calm green lake, the fish gathered together formed a huge black shadow and flashed past.
The young couple above had no idea about this.
Just keep laughing.
