294 – Battle Area (1)
The soldiers, who were charging forward without any meager armor and holding only a spear, let out wild shouts and threw down their spears to forget their fear when the opposing soldier approached. He pushed forward.
“Wow!”
“aaah!”
The spears of the soldiers in front pierce the stomach, chest, arms, legs, or the air of the opposing soldiers.
Immediately after that, the soldiers in the back, unable to stop the momentum of the charge, fell and fell to the ground due to the force of their running.
The fallen soldiers were trampled by the feet of soldiers, both friendly and enemy, and the soldiers fought fiercely, stepping on the bodies of the fallen and dead soldiers.
There are people everywhere, and all you can see is the enemy’s body and the spears they are holding.
I didn’t have the energy to come to my senses. The new soldier continued to thrust his spear with only the desire to not die.
It didn’t matter whether the spear pierced the air or the enemy.
“Ugh! Ouch! Ahhh!”
There were no human words there. They attack by screaming recklessly, like animals growling and fighting.
Meanwhile, one of the enemy’s spears got stuck in the new soldier’s stomach.
“aaah!”
The new soldier with a spear stuck in his stomach fell down, but soon his fellow soldier charged at the enemy, trampling over the still alive new soldier.
What is happening here now is not a war involving the duke’s army.
As the war dragged on and supplies became scarce, the lords of the two fiefdoms waged war to take away food resources from the other side.
A clash between two armies that had joined forces not long ago. Since both sides were wearing similar clothing, it was impossible to tell whether the fallen body was that of an enemy or an ally.
There are many people in all directions.
If you don’t come to your senses, you could soon find yourself stabbing a spear from the enemy’s side toward your allies. Moreover, there were people who continued to stab their spears without even knowing that the enemy had changed.
Someone is holding a spear for their starving family, someone is sobbing why they have to fight, and someone is just screaming in the madness of war.
In the vicinity of such a fierce battlefield, a road that was no longer managed by the government and was a mess due to grass growing here and there and traces of roaming animals, a four-horse wagon was preparing for an early camping trip.
Riding on a rough road with an excessive load naturally caused a lot of fatigue in the horse’s legs, so the daily distance traveled was inevitably reduced.
Still, it was better to move along the road. Now that we have passed through the wide plain and entered a little inside the kingdom, traces of war scattered everywhere have caught our attention.
In some places, there was a large wall-like fence erected and there was no way back, so the fence had to be removed and the remains of the fence neatly organized so that the carriage could pass, and then moved on.
In some places, the war was so fierce that the green fields turned bright red, and the soil also turned into mud soaked with blood, holding us back and forcing us to return.
If you try to go down the path in the forest, you will be blocked because you cannot pass because of the size of the carriage, or even if you manage to get in, you will be stopped by traps set up in the forest that are clearly aimed at people.
In the end, we had no choice but to move around the road.
Since the road is a ‘clearly visible road’, it is a safe road in such a confusing situation as few people use it.
“It’s good because you can easily find flour and eggs!”
“Because to get eggs on the island, you had to target the nest on the cliff.”
“I never ate an egg until I finally left.”
Monia was not clumsily imitating the process like she did on the island, but she was making refreshments by confectionery, which she had properly acquired knowledge and skills during her travels.
What she was making now was a snack to eat at tea time after a meal.
Among the luxury items obtained from Jesper’s estate was a bottle of apples cut into cubes and preserved in honey.
She plans to use it to make apple pie.
Next to Monia, who was making apple pie, today’s cook, Chester, was making the dish.
Whether I developed an appetite or not, Chester’s cooking was the same as always. A mixed stew made by boiling all sorts of ingredients, including meat, vegetables, fruits, and spices.
If you look at the stew being boiled, it looked like the ‘eternal stew’ that inns often stock.
A dish that can be said to be the symbol of an inn, where additional water and ingredients are added whenever the quantity decreases, and the dish is continuously boiled without turning off the heat.
Just like an eternal stew that is boiled without stopping, the flavor of the ingredients naturally develops deeply and a certain level of taste is guaranteed no matter where you eat it, Chester’s chowder stew, which has been consistently made for several years, can also be said to be of quite a high standard.
On the surface, it looks like they just roughly throw in everything and boil it roughly, but they subconsciously adjust the balance of ingredients to find the exquisite taste.
Even Monia, who had complained about the chowder stew itself in the past, liked the chowder stew that Chester made. It wasn’t because it was cooked by someone I loved, it was just purely delicious.
Bread that became a little dry and hard from the chowder stew that Chester cooked. It was today’s lunch.
“It seems like the horse’s legs are getting tired faster and faster.”
Normally, I would have been able to move a little longer. It seemed like pulling a heavy wagon on a rough road every day was taking a toll on the horses.
“Would it be better to get some proper rest?”
“But I can’t recommend staying in one place for a long time.”
“Let’s go to the nearby forest. A place where there were many traps before. “We could make a shelter there to hide the carriage and allow the horses to rest.”
At those words, Urgo, who was eating torn bread rolled into stew in one go, looked at the road he had passed and asked.
“Are we going back?”
“Yes. “There won’t be any large forests for a while after this, so if you’re going to hide the carriage, it’s best to go back.”
Urgo nodded his understanding and took a sip of the stew.
“But…… “It’s good to go back, but if you’re going to do it, it’s better to be a little intentional and go back a long way.”
“Why?”
“Chester, can’t you hear?”
“Sounds of war? I can hear it. Do you think it will spread to here? “It’s quite far away.”
“War is like fire. “It’s like not knowing how far a fire burning in a corner of a dry grassland will spread.”
After hearing Urgo’s words, Monia looked at Chester.
“Chester. “Where does the sound come from?”
Monia nodded her head as Chester pointed in her direction.
“If it was in that direction, the two territories would definitely be close together. It was originally one large fiefdom, but it got caught up in several disputes and each person had the rights to the fiefdom, and eventually it was split into two.”
“We have separate rights?”
Urgo, Senna, and Lorwan pondered what Monia said with expressions of incomprehension.
To them, a fiefdom was a kind of small kingdom where one noble ruled everything.
Dividing the rights of such a territory was an incomprehensible concept to those who did not know much about the world of nobles.
“Yes. For example, what was initially divided was the biggest right, the right to tax. It is the right to collect taxes. What was divided next was obviously jurisdiction? The right to hold trials within the territory and punish crimes. In addition, a family with tax rights arose, and in order to make money, they divided the tax rights by tax type and sold them here and there. Then, a dispute broke out within the family that was protecting the ownership of the territory until the end, and a civil war broke out over ownership, and the families with this right and that right. They support the civil war…… Then it split in two, I guess?”
After hearing the secret story of a territory where a war was going on nearby, Sena spoke with a mysterious expression.
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“At that level, even if the dukes had not started a war, they would have started a war among themselves one day and perished.”
“The nobles even secretly paid for it.”
“… ….”
When Sena lost her words after hearing the inexplicable behavior of the nobles, Monia burst into laughter.
“Why, even in the village, power is shared? For example, in the town of Chester, hunters had a lot of power. It did?”
“Hmm. “Not many merchants came and the land was rough, so it was difficult to produce a lot of food, so my father, who was a skilled hunter, was close to being a powerful person.”
“Right? “If you look at the village on a larger scale, there are no nobles or fiefdoms.”
Senna, who thought that things in the world would not be so simple, looked like she wanted to say something, and Monia, who noticed it, added.
“Of course, if you dig into detail, the territory and nobles will be more complicated, but it’s best to look at the world simply, right? “If you look at it complicatedly, you can’t live with a headache.”
As Monia said this, she put the finished apple pie in a cast iron pot and put it on the fire.
“If you do this, it will bake as if you put it in the oven!”
“Is that so?”
“Even if it’s not, it will still be baked.”
She finished the apple pie, and only then did she start eating the chowder stew. After taking a bite of the stew, Monia said,
“It’s difficult to live too thoughtlessly like Jordi or Tiara.”
After her meal, Monia’s apple pie, baked better than she expected, was delicious.