Wolf Sca
Trying to get to A
d
near okles face, look into his eyes, but he just fell from his perch to A
d
okles shoulders. Fortunately, A
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Okles' hand caught him quickly without being pierced by the needle in his hand. The fairy gave him a horrified look with her palm.
"I can't leave the princess!" She is my best friend! protested the fairy.
"You have to come with me. You have no choice and I will explain why later. Once you hear it, you will agree with me. Do you understand? No more arguing now." Androx said sternly. Wolfsca
He nodded, a little scared, but not convinced.
A woman in the crowd weakly protested: "You can't do that to him!"
He gave the woman a stern look. "I can do whatever I want with my possessions. Do you think all of you together can stop me?" He dropped his nearly complete robe and grabbed the spear at his side threateningly. She avoided it, as did several others. After a moment of silence, he put down the spear again, put the fairy on his shoulders, and continued sewing.
"Friends, you don't have to be afraid of me, but don't interfere in my business. This little girl is in desperate need of a home. Maybe she will get better and she will be a joy to the family. Please consider taking her away from me."
Still no one came forward. A
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Okles sighed. This didn't go as well as he had hoped. Why hadn't ten people rushed to attend to her after his request? He knew they had noticed his story and heard her role in it. Do these savages have no concept of honor at all?
The innkeeper walked up to Androl and said, "I have a gift for the girl, if you will accept it." She took out a beautiful silver net and showed it to the crowd. "Can I put this in her hair?"
He gestured to the girl and said: "Thank you, Gotzo
e master. I am honored to receive your gift. "
The woman deftly placed the net over the girl's hair and tied her braids into a bun. Gabby didn't react. A
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Okles thought it looked good, so he dressed up more beautifully. Wolf Sca
Said: "She looks more like a princess now! I think she really is a princess." Androx couldn't argue with it. It made him wish she hadn't broken down.
"Veteran, I'd love to hear your story. Can you please share it? Maybe I can get you some more wine to make your voice sound better," Gotzo
e said, waving gently with the same elegant arms.
Androx knew what she was going to do. The longer everyone stays, the more goods they buy. Maybe someone would get drunk and swear to him to take good care of the girl.
"I have a lot of stories, if anyone would listen. Wine really relaxes my voice and helps me tell the truth, or beer, if you have it, I prefer beer," he responded. "But, fairy, would you like to try on your robe first?"
"Yes!"
shouted, eager to jump onto the table. A
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Okles caught him before he could hurt himself, then put him down and showed him the robe. It has a square cut out of the back to make the wings, and the edges are sewn together rather than tied together, but that's not bad.
The fairy raised his arm, and Ankerix draped it over him. Of course, since he had already measured it, it was just right. Androcles showed the fairy how to tie the little girdle, and then watched with interest as he danced.
Wolf Sca
After focusing for a moment, he suddenly revealed his wings. Some in the crowd gasped, others clapped. However, wolfsca
Ignoring them, he had another goal in mind. He flew directly to the spearhead and looked at himself in its reflection. He turned around and looked at himself from every angle.
He smiled with satisfaction before flying right up to Androx's face and giving him an awkward hug on the nose. He then quickly walked over to Gabi and tried to catch her eye. She didn't respond, even when he tapped her nose. "Look what I'm wearing! "Look, Princess! Look what I'm wearing," he said. Many people in the crowd gave him sympathetic looks, and Androcles heard some whispers and thought, What would the fairy do if he knew she would never come back.
Now that Scar the Wolf can fly again, he can't stay quiet and has to fly around the room, looking at everyone. He politely answered about 50 greetings and even shook hands a few times. When Anchorex saw several scruffier-looking people contemplating how to get out of the front door as quickly as possible, he called the fairy back and asked her to sit nearby.
A servant placed a pitcher of beer on the table, and Ankerix licked his lips and rubbed his hands together. “Now it gets me talking,” he said. He wanted to talk about his children, or rather the children of Agnar, and how he had rescued them, and the six bandits and six wolves he had killed to protect them, but He decided to save that for another night - which, after the story of the Cyclops, seemed almost unbelievable.
Instead, he began: "The first time I went to war was when I was fifteen. Most soldiers don't train until they are eighteen before they can fight in a real war, but by the time I was fifteen, I was already older than anyone in the army." Everyone is tall and strong. My mentor Diokles vouched for me, so they let me go.
“That season, the River People revolted against the Great King of the Pessarian Empire, who had ruled them for twenty years. We call them River People because they lived in large cities along a great river that was bigger than any other river in the world. All were wider and richer. Their civilization was ancient, much older than ours. They worshiped many of the same gods we do, they just called them different names.
"Every year, the river floods its banks, leaving new soil, dark and fertile, where the best wheat in the world grows, in incredible quantities. This is where I learned to appreciate beer," he said . Then he stopped, took a swig of beer, and heard a few cheers from the local drunks. Wolf Sca
He flew up and looked into the jar, as if he wanted to take a sip, but A
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okles drove him away.
He continued, "When I say civilization is ancient, I mean it. They have huge, ancient temples and monuments that they have forgotten how they were built. I have personally stood next to stone pillars a hundred feet high, from Engraved from top to bottom were the stories of fifty different kings. Once, I was offering sacrifices in front of a statue that was so tall that I only reached his ankles. Their old building was too big to be painted, so Most of the stone is bare.
"I said they lived by a big river, and the reason they didn't spread out was because there was endless sand on both sides. In the desert, you could ride for days without stepping on a stone. It was always hot there, even In the winter. The river people didn't know it would snow.
"Well, the King of the River People got tired of giving so much food to the Great King, so he called all his soldiers and killed all of the Great King's men. They also sank all his ships and fortified them all best ports and prepared for war.
"At that time, none of the cities of Rafelia were occupied by the great king; we won them all back in a great battle 15 years ago. The great king knew that we were not his friends and knew that he could not defeat us. So he sent envoys to the Hall of Glory with gold and excellent slaves. Each city sent its own elected representatives to listen to their opinions and we made an agreement. We would help them suppress the River People and they would give us three a hundred talents, and a peace treaty with us for fifteen years.
"We rode across the sea in our triremes and landed a few days' journey from the river, carrying enough supplies to cross the desert. The river people were excellent sailors and they knew we were coming, but they didn't have enough. The ships came to prevent us from crossing the river. But because they feared our army more than they feared the army of the great king, they used all their strength to prevent us. They gathered an army of fifty thousand men to meet our twenty thousand men, and we first Fight them near their walled harbor.”
Androcks paused for another beer and some bread, deliberately unhurried, while the crowd waited in anticipation to hear what was going on. He suspected they had never seen such a large army, and probably half thought he was exaggerating. He is not.
He jokingly said, Gotzo
e sells ridiculous amounts of everything. She had servants running around the room, placing food and wine in front of everyone, and almost no one refused. If they keep drinking at the same rate, the room will probably get very, very happy soon. He realized that he was starting to feel happy too. Then he frowned, remembering the beer in the basket. This pot doesn't look that strong, but what if it was?
He continued: "I was sitting in the sixth row from the front, and my mentor Diokles was sitting in the first row, right in front of me. The fighting started just after dawn. They sent their cavalry in a direct charge, which was an amateur Stupid mistake. The cavalry circled the rear or harassed the flanks instead of attacking the center. All we had to do was get out our lances and half the horses were right there turned around. Any horse that didn't turn around would be skewered. We Eleven hundred horses were killed in the first charge, and another four hundred in the second.
"After the cavalry charged for the third time, they still had not broken through the defense line, but I had moved to the fourth row and the battle had not even really started. The generals did not issue an order to retreat ten steps, and we retreated just enough that they had to step over themselves It took a lot of horses to get to us, and many of those horses didn't die. When their infantry finally attacked us, they were a mess. Their rear ranks were pushing too hard, and the front ranks kept falling, being trampled, and the pressure was too much , our first two rows had to put down their spears and put up their shields.
"But that's what we train for. Third and fourth platoons, that's me, remember, poking our fellows in the head with our spears, and if they don't have enough armor, they're going to be like last year Dropping like grapes. That's what it was. They wore helmets, but their shields weren't big enough for such close combat, and we slaughtered them.
"I killed the first guy that day. I was tall enough to reach him, so it was easy for me. Killed my ex-husband, stabbed him in the neck. The second shot was in the eye. A third shot in the chest, just below the collarbone. I forget the rest, but I remember I killed eight people. Diokles was keeping notes for me.
By noon, half of their casualties were lost as they retreated. For half the people, it only took half a day. We lost less than a thousand men, and another two thousand survived wounded. Our light troops pursued them and prevented them from regrouping, and our cavalry cut them off at their gates. When they saw that their escape was blocked, all thinking for themselves, they dropped everything and fled. We captured that city without any difficulty, and from there every battle became worse and worse for them, until we reached the city of their king and forced their surrender.
"When the generals heard that I performed well, they put me in the third platoon, and I fought there for 16 years. They asked the people in front to block the road, and I was responsible for assassinating. Half the time, the people in front of me were People were dying, and I was going to finish the fight on the front lines. That's where I got these scars," he said, lowering his voice a little to sound threatening.
He watched as people looked at him again, this time considering how many scars he had, raising their eyebrows or showing other signs of surprise and awareness. He took another swig of beer and almost finished the pot. He raised his hand to show he wasn't done yet, then finished his story with a few more bites of bread and delicious spiced vegetables.
"We conquered a people as big as theirs but didn't get as much loot as we deserved. The great king said that all the gold in their temples belonged to him and not to the river people, so we just left it alone. He also just We were allowed one day in each city to rob and capture slaves so that the river people would not be harmed too much to sustain food production. We took sixteen talents of gold, forty talents of silver, and seven thousand Men are slaves. We would have taken more, but we have no ships to carry them back across the sea, and the great king will not let us use his ships.
"The return trip by sea was bad. Priests warned of bad omens in the weather, and the generals sacrificed ten cows, but it was not enough. On the way back a storm hit us, a bad storm. We lost Two triremes and a host of smaller ships, most of which had our slaves on board. I survived, and so did Diokles. We took with us sixteen thousand of our twenty thousand soldiers and seven thousand slaves Four of them came back. All the treasure was made.
"Ten years later, the great king died and the new king broke his promise, but that's another story," he concluded. After a pause to make sure he had finished speaking, the Keltals applauded. However, it seemed subdued; he suspected it was because they either didn't believe his numbers or were intimidated by them. To put the size of this "big city" into perspective, if you include all the surrounding farmland, it probably only has 30,000 to 50,000 people. There were probably no more than 100,000 Keltars anywhere. He could see the wheels turning in their minds as they imagined what it would be like to face twenty thousand Lafayettes.
He stood up and said: "Friends, it's getting late. Come back tomorrow and bring your sons. I'm going to teach them a thing or two about honor. I have many more stories to tell. Think about you again Would you like to take this girl home, if only to commemorate my killing of the Cyclops.”
Androx scares the wolf
From where he sat Ga
The area on bi's legs was pulled up and placed on his shoulders again. Then he took Galbi's hand and followed a servant out of the common room and up a wide flight of stairs. Several locals tried to get his attention, but he ignored them. Let them stay up one night and come back after seeing the reason clearly.
Gotzo
e is A
d
The room okles chose was at the end of the corridor, behind a door carved with orderly geometric figures. Opening the door, Anchorex was startled by the size of the room; 20 or more people could sleep on the floor without bumping into each other. A sturdy, waist-high bed, the largest he had ever seen, stood against the wall next to the window. The intricately carved table legs and headboard completely dominate the room with their luxurious elegance. Androx stood there almost in awe, seeing the cost of it all. Even discounting the cost of the bed itself, the cost of transportation from the Glory must have been enormous. However, he realized that the Keltars might be better at using wood than he thought.
There was a bowl of fruit and a jug of wine on the table next to the bed, and a large jug of water and a basin placed under the window against the wall. The walls were decorated with a series of amateurish, but not terrible, murals, and no fewer than six bright vertical lamps were placed in the room. At the foot of the bed stood a small but ornate wooden chest, complete with key and lock, in which Androcles kept his coin purse.
True to his word, the owner of the hotel found a doll-sized bed somewhere and placed it on a table next to a regular bed. The overall impression this room gives is one of neatness, orderliness and luxury. Andrew had to smile; Gotzo
e's taste and servants are very good.
As he looked out the small window to take in his surroundings, the innkeeper knocked on the door frame. She walked into the room and said, "Mr. Androcks," she said, "we have to talk."
