The northernmost city wall in Taizhou is built on the plateau, where the only way to reach the plain is like a throat.
The overland mountain road that starts from Qingzhi Town and goes all the way to the southwest, after passing through high mountains and wetlands, the terrain gradually begins to go down and becomes flat. And at the end of this road leading to the plain area of Yongchuan River Basin, there is It is the existence of Taizhou.
The word "Tai" in Taizhou is taken from the ancient saying of the Kingdom of the Moon, which means "the country is peaceful and the people are safe", which means resisting foreign enemies and protecting national peace. The naming of the northernmost prefecture under the jurisdiction of Xinjing was obviously intended to warn the northern feudal lord to a certain extent.
The Padrosi Empire's translation of the Moon Kingdom's geography directly refers to Taizhou as the "Shield of New Capital", which more or less shows the importance of this area, and the fact that the long-lasting peace within the Moon Kingdom is actually quite complex. for complex situations.
Just a cursory glance at the appearance shows that the city walls in Taizhou are roughly similar to the castles often found in Rigar. After all, practical things always have similar elements: the stone walls are about three or four meters high, and are made of large shaped stones. Stacked. But if you look carefully, you will find many differences from the Rigal-style city walls.
Looking up from the bottom of the city wall, it is different from the usual open-air design of the Rigar people. The Taizhou city wall has a mud wall added to the stone base, and is covered with Moon Country-style eaves. The soldiers on guard took shelter from the wind and rain.
There is a square hole slightly larger than a human head on the top of the wall. The cross-section of these holes is trapezoidal, with a large inside and a small outside. This allows archers who shoot from the inside to the outside to freely change their left and right directions without being easily exposed to enemy bows and arrows.
The same trapezoidal design also has a stone base. Kazuto called this part a stone wall, which actually means it is just a stone wall.
But what really makes it different from the Rigal-style city wall is that you have to go to the side to see it:
Taizhou's city walls are extremely thick.
Unlike the Rigal-style city walls, which were built vertically from the plains and resembled an inverted T-shape in relation to the ground, the mountainous Crescent Continent was therefore used to its fullest advantage when Kazuto built the city wall. There are many undulations in the mountains, and cliffs and other terrains with different heights can be seen everywhere. The castles built on this kind of landform, so-called stone walls, are actually made of processed cliffs and reinforced with rocks.
The originally gentle uphill slope was artificially excavated and turned into a vertical barrier. After filling and digging holes to create a height difference between the inside and outside, stones were then built around the periphery of the earth cliff.
The biggest difference between this kind of city wall and the vertical city wall made of stones by the Rigal people is that there is solid soil behind it. Therefore, if you want to capture a castle in the Kingdom of the Moon, the Rigal people usually use trebuchets and the like. Most of the siege equipment will not be put to use.
Because it is not a single layer of stone barrier, even if the stone wall is damaged, there will still be thick soil behind the cliff. The defenders can still take advantage of the high ground and attack with arrows and stone throws from a high position.
With such a unique city wall design, coupled with the mountainous and rugged terrain that makes it difficult to set up heavy siege equipment, Xinjing will be so confident in Taizhou that Kazuto even directly calls it a "hard-to-attack city" It can be imagined.
Returning to the original point, the people walking towards the inside of Taizhou City Gate began to walk on an uphill road due to the unique terrain. After the guards guarding the city noticed their extremely conspicuous team, they naturally came forward to interrogate them. However, the subordinate ashigaru, the leader of the guards, was reserved and cautious when facing the senior samurai, and there was no hint of interrogation at all. , it’s better to say it’s like saying hello.
Narumi did not embarrass these routine soldiers. After handing in the customs clearance documents stamped with the Aota family's seal, the group waited under the bright sun for the Ashigaru to submit a report to their superiors.
Although there are shaded eaves near the city gate, they are not enough to accommodate their group of a hundred people. In addition, the samurai's horses were already higher than the eaves, so they could only withstand the direct sunlight.
The scorching sun is scorching the armor of the warriors. Compared with the polished plate armor that the people of Rigar prefer, the painted armor of the Moon Kingdom is not so easy to turn into a hot steel plate, but it has been since 9 o'clock in the morning until now. None of them had taken off their armor, and the samurai and ashigaru were already soaked to the skin.
They had now taken off the Jinhaori, which was originally used to keep warm. In order to increase breathability, many warriors also took off their shoulder armor. This way, there is less obstruction and some heat can be dissipated through the armpits.
Despite this, wearing a metal helmet restricts the head, which accounts for about 30% of the body's heat dissipation, and the whole body still feels like being trapped in a steamer.
This is why adventurers who go on long-distance trips often don’t like to wear helmets.
The head is a vital part of the human body. Even if Rigar's militiamen cannot afford iron body armor, they will try their best to find a helmet when they go to the battlefield to avoid being shot in the head by a stray arrow and die inexplicably.
However, in the circle of adventurers who do not take the initiative to participate in large-scale battles and perform more escort missions in small groups, helmets are a less popular component.
On the one hand, weight, heat, and obstruction to vision and breathing are all on the one hand. If a little discomfort and life are put on the balance, anyone will choose to endure the discomfort.
The real reason is that it is still not necessary: because adventurer battles in small groups are more limited to street fighting, lacking the chaotic and dangerous intensive firefights on the frontal battlefield, personal martial arts are enough to make up for the lack of armor. On the contrary, if you are dressed neatly, your physical strength will be exhausted early due to the weight and fatigue, leaving you unable to fight in a real battle.
Whether it's weapons or armors, in the final analysis, you still need to choose based on the situation you face.
People's weight-bearing capacity and physical capacity are both limited. If they often participate in battles and often face life-threatening dangers, they will naturally try to wear as much as possible. But in a relatively peaceful environment where you may not encounter foreign enemies during a long journey for ten days and a half, and carrying a full armor weighing twenty to thirty kilograms, it means that you have to give up various more useful supplies on the road. supplies.
And in the final analysis, if you are at a disadvantage in terms of numbers and other aspects, even if you are well-dressed and the battle situation is against you, the opponent will still find ways to kill you.
Even if he possesses full plate armor, which is the pinnacle of human individual armor, if the Knight of Rigar encounters a professional war mercenary who is good at fighting against others when he is alone, he will give priority to avoiding them rather than fighting them. The combined equipment of a group of professional war mercenaries may be equivalent to a pair of full-body plate armor and vests of a knight, but because of their excellent coordination, they can beat the elite plate knights to a bloody pulp.
The person holding the super long spear, which is longer than the lance and is more than 4 meters long, will first limit the knight's charge; then the person holding the halberd of more than two meters will step forward and knock the knight off his horse; but with the protection of plate armor and well-trained A knight would not be knocked down by such a blow. Most of the knights who fell off their horses would get up and continue fighting. At this time, another two to three halberd or sickle hookers will come forward in conjunction with the sword and shield hand. They will use long pole weapons to hook the knight's ankles or the inside of his knees to bring him down. The three of them will work together to suppress the hands and feet. Use a half-sword or dagger to poke under the armpit, pry open the gap in the neck armor, or pierce through the viewing opening of the face armor.
Of course, if the number of people were equal and the heavy knights, also composed of 4 people, charged with guns, these mercenaries would definitely be defeated and killed. So in the final analysis, no matter how brave an individual is, no matter how complete his armor and weapons are, if the battle situation is against the wind, and the enemy is experienced and understands the weaknesses of his armor, it is best not to rush forward like a fool and die.
——The words return to their original place.
"Take off your helmet." Under the unbearable heat caused by the direct sunlight, Narumi finally gave this order.
Although the Kazuto samurai saw many such hardships and fatigues as a test of his will, he would only become a laughing stock if he managed to reach Taizhou and caused several of his party to collapse from heatstroke in an effort to show off his strength.
The removed helmets were placed in the empty wooden box together with the previous shoulder armors. After the sun-shielding helmets were removed, the warriors inside still wore aristocratic hats made of black gauze. .
This type of hat, called a black hat, has a long top design that is very unique to foreigners such as Henry and Mira. Through the mouths of Narumi and the showoff Yajiro, they also learned something about Yue. Things that are closely related to the country's long history.
There is a round hole on the top of Kazuto's helmet, called the "Tian no Cave". This seemingly weak point is because the samurai armor is light and flexible, so it is not easy for the enemy to touch and stab him. And although the round hole is retained on today's helmets just for production style reasons, it had a real function in the past.
Kazuto samurai began to grow long hair when they were young. Due to their pampering, nobles mostly had fair and delicate skin. If an underage male from the Wu family lets his hair down without braiding into a man bun and wears female clothes, it may be difficult for outsiders to tell whether he is a boy or a girl. Some of the older samurai had a semi-bald hairstyle that seemed incomprehensible to outsiders, but they still had enough hair on the sides and back of the head to be braided.
After the long hair is tied into braids and a black hat is placed on the top of the head, the hat and hair are pulled out from the round hole on the top of the helmet, and the helmet is fixed with the black hat using one's own hair. This is how the Moon Kingdom did not have linings thousands of years ago. The classical helmet fixation method.
This fixation method, which sounds numb to the scalp, is actually quite stable, because the helmets of that era were made smaller and fit the skull better, so it was suitable. Only later, because it directly attached to the scalp and lacked cushioning against blunt force blows, Kazuto's helmet gradually began to be similar to Rigar and started with a lining made of fabric on the inside.
Although the traditions of round holes, black hats and long hair have no practical effect, they are still preserved as part of the long history of the warrior class.
For our Luoan girl, who was born in a small country like the short-lived Kingdom of Avenella on the west coast of the Rigal continent and prefers pragmatism, she felt filled with emotion when hearing all this.
The warrior class, who are well aware of their own historical origins, retain details on their armor and weapons that have no practical effect today and serve only as witnesses to thousands of years of history.
This kind of not only civil servants, but also the military servant class has a long historical and cultural accumulation that has never been broken or lost. It can only be seen in the Moon Kingdom, which has been peaceful for thousands of years. The equipment of the Rigar people is changing rapidly and the competition is fierce. Even the knight class is different from decade to decade. The armor is always based on the most popular fashion and the most practical cutting-edge design today, and lacks such details. In the same vein.
It is meaningless to argue about which of the two is better or worse. Because they are all things born under a specific environmental background and are closely related to the culture and historical origins of the region where they are located. To isolate them for comparison is an act that only ignorant people would do.
The time in the sweltering heat felt like it was passing extremely slowly even if I used random thoughts to distract my attention. Although it only took ten minutes for the gatekeeper Ashigaru to report to his superiors and press the seal, the group of people felt that they had spent a longer journey than the previous one.
When the wooden rice paper customs clearance text printed with the Taizhou Castle Pass red seal was finally handed back to Narumi through the hands of the respectful Ashigaru-kutsu leader, almost everyone in the hundred-man brigade felt that they had been waiting for a century.
"Let's go, have a good rest and replenish supplies." When the samurai leader finally said this, his voice was like the cold mountain spring water in summer.
Refreshing.
. m.
