"How is it? In the courtyard?" Delang, who had just led his people back to his lair, was asked about the situation by another bandit leader.
De Lang looked at half of his trusted subordinates, and was very reluctant to tell what happened just now, but after all, it was a matter of everyone's life, so he ordered a subordinate to give to his leader partner Tell me about what just happened.
And he himself, with a gloomy face, returned to his room.
In the house, his woman was trying to tease the child, but the whole cave was full of smoke, both she and the child were choking and coughing non-stop.
De Lang put down the weapon in his hand and sat casually on the floor of the wooden house.
His woman took a careful look at the blood on De Lang's axe, and handed the coughing child to De Lang.
The child coughed non-stop, stimulated by the choking smoke, his little face was flushed, and his eyes and eyebrows were full of pain.
"This won't work, the children are choking like this." De Lang lost his temper at the woman.
But his woman could only say aggrieved: "Master, what's going on? Everyone says we're all going to die? Huh, huh." As she spoke, she began to cry.
De Lang's complexion changed again and again, and finally he had no choice but to squeeze out a sentence from his teeth: "No matter what. I will let us survive."
After speaking, he instructed the woman to find two pieces of fine cloth, soak them in clean water, and hang them on his face, so as to slightly cover the smoke everywhere.
"How is it?" Delang asked gently, rubbing the child's hair carefully.
"En." The not-so-talkative child hugged Delang's fleshy head and face, and agreed heavily.
-
Keir returned to the entrance of the bandit's lair through a simple wooden ladder.
On the contrary, there were more and more flames and burning debris at the entrance of the cave. The militiamen threw all kinds of garbage and unwanted things into it, and the smoke and scalding air near the entrance of the cave were all sucked in. In the lair of bandits.
It was almost noon at this time, and Knight Crowe was arranging some of the remaining melee militiamen, preparing to use them to strengthen the peripheral search and patrol efforts. The lair of the bandits was already finished, and they had no other choice but to escape from the vertical patio at the back.
Knight Crowe didn't intend to block the bandits inside and then roast them all to death. He wanted to use a method that would not delay the time and cause very few casualties to finally deal with these bandits.
Kiel came to report on the situation just now, and the knight asked Kiel to lead people to release the defense at the vertical patio. After all, he had already described the internal scale of the bandit's lair. There is a smaller cave, which was set on fire when Kiel rescued people before, but now, it may be the last place where the bandits can hide.
The Cavaliers do not intend to give them a chance to unite and resist, but to give them one more possible choice that seems to be able to escape.
"I see. I'll take my men with me now. So where should we be prepared?" Keel asked.
Knight Crowe waved his hand: "I have already arranged all the other melee militiamen. You and your men can choose a place at will. It won't be long before those bandits hiding in the turtle shell don't want to die." You have to run away. You understand the specific situation and what to do, right?"
Kiel nodded. He knew that he had to let the bandits who wanted to run away, and then pass through steep cliffs and a large area of siege, and remotely kill those bandits who were physically and mentally exhausted in the wild.
The militiamen, on the other hand, can wait for work at leisure, waiting for the last bandit to run to run away, and then they can deal with the rest of the bandits who are still hiding.
Knight Crowe will deploy manpower to prevent the bandits coming out of the courtyard from affecting the fire at the entrance of the cave.
"Don't stop, the bandits are about to die! Look for something good to burn, can burn, and burn a lot of smoke, so get more." Knight Crowe walked among the militiamen, encouraging the militiamen to find more Combustible fumes.
And Keir once again used the simple wooden ladder to call the few militiamen who had been with him these days. They packed up and went down through the wooden ladder, and then first returned to the camp behind, each replenished their supplies, and then went to the base. Under the leadership of Er, he left here and sat down on a hillside where he could see the outside of the courtyard, waiting for the bandits to come out.
-
The robbers couldn't bear the thicker smoke, everyone was coughing, and everyone's eyes were red and bloodshot from irritation. But that's not the worst.
In the passageway at the entrance of the cave, hot air heated by flames is constantly pouring in. The air cannot be seen, but as long as you dare to take a breath there, the inside of your neck and lungs will be burned by the hot air.
The cave lair can't hold people anymore.
Therefore, the bandit leaders hurriedly let all the bandits and their families hide in the depths.
Some people think that there is an underground river in the water pool, the temperature cannot be very high, and it is a place with a slightly lower terrain, so they should be able to hide, so some people went there.
The other small part hid in the high cave where the previous material warehouse and prison training place were located.
Although the passage there is also the place where the smoke is discharged, as long as you run through the section under the vertical patio, the smoke after that is still there, but it is much less, and you can barely bear it.
Iron Arm chose the water pool, while another bandit leader who was usually calm and imposing led his people to choose the warehouse.
As for the decapitated Delang, he took a large number of remaining bandits and bandit families who didn't want to hide in their lair and waited to die, and wanted to go out from the vertical patio.
They all felt that only by escaping from this place of death would they have the possibility of being alive.
De Lang handed over the women and children to his confidants to protect them, and he was the first to take the lead in getting ready to climb up.
The previous fiasco made him very angry, so only by defeating the enemy with his own hands and cutting off the enemy's head can he regain his dignity.
"Get ready and climb up with me, it's up to us whether it's life or death!" Before starting to climb, he yelled a little to raise the aura of the bandit who was willing to walk this road with him.
"oh!"
"superior!"
At this time, the bandits no longer distinguished who their former subordinates were, and disaster was imminent, and it seemed that the leaders could not defeat the militiamen, so the bandits followed their own choices and followed the bandits they thought would survive the most Leader, find a way out together.
De Lang was so strong that he carried his weapon directly on his back, with a large coil of rope and a well-made wooden shield behind him.
As the first person at the head, he also wore a set of metal ring armor on the upper body that was looped together with large iron rings.
Different from the formally made metal mail armor, his body weight is seriously overweight, and the defensive effect is not very good. It can only defend against some slashing knives and axes.
But at least, it was much better than ordinary bandits with no defense.
The bandits had a bad status, and it was difficult to find armor craftsmen who were valued everywhere, and those craftsmen rarely went out to do business or move around, so it was impossible for them to rob even one.
So he specially asked his men to go to various remote villages to find those rural blacksmiths who were not skilled enough, and each made some iron rings, and finally brought them back, and put them together in the bandit's lair to piece together a crude metal half-body. ring armor.
De Lang put on his gloves and looked for the largest rock crevice to climb up. He followed another bandit closely at his feet. They all wrapped their mouths with moist muslin to ensure that they would not be caught by the hot and choking smoke around them. Gas to influence.
But it is impossible not to be affected. When Delang was climbing up, two bandits fell from the climb because of a continuous cough.
Fortunately, they didn't climb high, and the bottom was full of people, who were caught and then climbed up again.
De Lang moved quickly, but when he reached the top of the patio, he paused, grasping the rock crack with one hand, and took his double-edged ax from behind with the other hand.
The right hand only held the last section of the axe, then swung it upwards, and swung it along the edge of the patio a few times.
Nothing was hit, which made De Lang puzzled. He guessed, and estimated that the militiamen should be not far away at this time, holding their bows and crossbows and waiting for people to come up.
When he was leaping, he took off the specially prepared fine wooden shield from behind, and stood in the middle of his body in mid-air, protecting his main torso from being shot by the crossbow arrows.
But after he fell to the ground next to the courtyard, Delang opened his eyes and saw that there was no militiaman setting up a killing array around the vertical courtyard, waiting for them, the bandits.
Although this made him extremely puzzled, he still took off the rope behind his back first, and then hung down into the patio.
One of the robbers who was crawling behind him felt the rope hit him, so he caught him immediately and let Delang pull him up.
In this way, seven or eight bandits soon gathered above.
After the bandits at the bottom confirmed that the top was occupied by them, they immediately connected a large wooden barrel to the hanging rope, allowing their respective women and children to get in one by one.
The bandits who had originally decided to hide in the high caves at the side saw them going up, and more than half of them ran over, scrambling to join the ranks of leaving together.
The calm bandit leader and his cronies didn't go there. If they really went to run with De Lang at this time, if everyone survived, they would probably be killed by De Lang, who was more trusted by the bandits.
And hiding here may not be able to survive to the end. After all, there are so many people following De Lang, and the militiamen will definitely put most of their energy on them.
And here, maybe it is the place where I can really live.
-
Standing on the edge of the patio, De Lang tore off the fine cloth covering his mouth and nose, and then took a deep breath of cold air. He has never felt that just breathing such a breath of air is so wonderful.
Although I don't know why those insidious militiamen were evacuated, but since a large number of bandits have come out, those militiamen can only deal with them through hard power.
De Lang directed the bandits who joined him to bring up the people below. Unfortunately, because they gathered in the main channel for the smoke, many weak women and children passed out and suffocated to death. The bandits who were injured in the day-to-day battle were also roasted to death by the high temperature and heat wave in the lair because no one paid attention to them.
Half of the remaining people stubbornly hid in the corner of the cave with the other two bandit leaders, believing that they could barely survive there.
De Lang shook his head, not thinking that if he stuck there, he would survive in the end.
He immediately let the clever bandits scout around the top of the mountain.
But soon, all the bandits heading towards the entrance of the cave were shot to death by a wave of crossbow arrows. There was not a single tree here, and there was nowhere to hide.
But De Lang knew that there was no other place to go here.
Soon, two careless bandits were lost, and they found a steep mountain road that could barely go down.
There are a lot of climbing and walking footprints on the mountain road, probably left by the bandits who fled here before.
With nothing else to say, De Lang immediately sent someone down to investigate.
In the end, there were more than a hundred people who escaped with him, and half of them were women and children who were robbed by the bandits. Some cold-blooded and ruthless bandits didn't care about their family members staying in their lair, they just ran for their own lives, but after all, the bandits were just a little bit more brutal, and they also had what ordinary people should have. The women and children were brought out.
At this time, seeing that there were no people who were willing to come out, De Lang thought for a while and asked his subordinates to take back the ropes.
"Since you like to stay here, just stay here honestly." He left a sentence towards the courtyard that was still spouting thick smoke, then spat again, and then began to lead people out of here.
The bandits carried all sorts of miscellaneous things, most of which were valuables they had saved during the robbery, while women with or without children carried large bags of food and furs as they escaped. Survival supplies here.
Many people who hadn't climbed the steep mountain fell off the cliff when they went down. Fortunately, they escaped here in the afternoon at this time, unlike the previous bandits who fled secretly in the dark.
The bandits only cared about hiding in the night, but they didn't realize how difficult the downhill road was with a lot of snow accumulated in the night. At least half of them died on this downhill path that usually didn't attract the attention of the bandits.
After losing more than ten people, the bandits finally came down with lingering fear.
When they got down, they looked at the corpses of the bandits who fell to death around them, and they were terrified to death. They asked to leave here quickly, because they didn't know when the militiamen would find their traces and follow them.
After several days of fighting, the bandits at least had a clear understanding. They knew that they were in a normal battle, and they couldn't beat those farmers who had only heard of training for half a month.
This kind of understanding has brought a major psychological blow to these usually brutal bandits.
It turned out that they had dealt with the caravan migrants from all walks of life not because they could fight, but simply because they had a large number of people.
Facing a militia that was twice as numerous as them and whose combat capability was far superior to theirs, these bandits had lost the confidence and courage to dare to fight head-on.
Facing the demands of the bandits, De Lang felt that they should all get together, and then headed towards the forest where the bandits had been staying for the winter. Not to mention settling down and rooting there, it is not impossible for everyone to break up and join other bandit gangs.
However, once the bandits are no longer threatened by their lives, and Delang, who did not perform well in the battle with the militia before, lost the trust and prestige of the bandits, the bandits who escaped immediately gathered into a few scattered small groups.
Those iron-armed subordinates were still beyond Delang's command, and the subordinates of other bandit leaders quickly gathered together, and immediately walked towards the surrounding forest before Delang could react. No matter how they shouted, they never looked back.
"Don't care about them! Let's go this way!" De Lang felt that their escape process was surprisingly smooth, which was not the same as the militiamen who had been clouded in the courtyard before. He couldn't help feeling a bad feeling in his heart, looking at the quiet mountains and forests around him, and the large expanses of pure white snow on the ground.
He swallowed dry spit, bent down to collect some snowballs, ate small bites, and after thinking about it for a while, decided to take a route that no one else thought of at all.
"Let's go! Go to the east, the mountain ridge in the corpse pit." The order was issued, but the bandits under him couldn't figure out why their boss was going in the opposite direction to the bandits' winter forest.
"Boss, why did we go that way? Did we go the wrong way?" One of the confidants asked after hesitating for a while.
Knowing that it is impossible to use force to subdue these guys like before, after all, these people who are willing to come here with him are all cronies who have really passed various tests of trust.
"The situation is not good. Will those militiamen with large numbers expect us to escape?"
A bandit immediately said: "Even if they didn't expect it, they would send people to guard nearby. Are we being targeted? Boss?" At the end of the statement, the bandit's expression seemed a little broken.
De Lang knew that he couldn't say anything too scary, otherwise these guys who had repeatedly failed against the militias would probably lose their will to fight against the militia in the end: "Maybe. But just now those guys separated from us, and we are going in a direction that is not easy to chase. Let’s go, those militiamen will definitely deal with other guys who have escaped. UU Reading www.uukanshu.com haha, so I’m going to go east abnormally, just to separate from those people who are all going north and west.”
What De Lang said, with the comparison, these subordinates feel that it is very beneficial to go with the experienced bandit leader.
"Also, there is a corpse pit to the east. I don't know if those militiamen know where we usually dispose of corpses. I don't know if it's best. If they know, they probably won't send people there because of fear and fear."
"If the militiamen catch up, we will get rid of the militiamen's pursuit there!" De Lang finally said.
"The boss is actually the smartest of all the bosses!"
"We all think so."
While talking in low voices, their team of less than fifty people stared at the gloomy sky, walked on the edge of the forest, and walked slowly towards the east.
-
"Did you see that guy? This guy is one of the leaders of the gang of bandits, so let's deal with him, plus the more than 20 bandits under him, it's worth a lot of money." Keel gave a few spears to the people around him. said the militiamen.
"Keir, can we do it with just a few of us? I don't think it's possible at all, after all, it's not the very powerful terrain before." Some militiamen questioned it.
Kiel nodded and continued: "Of course not, one-on-two is impossible. However, the bandits are still carrying women and children, and their movement speed is slow. Let's take a quick step and invite a group of melee militiamen from the east direction to deal with this Bandits. After dealing with these people, the gang of bandits will stop fighting."
"Then let's go!"
"Let's go!" Kiel took the lead. They quickly passed Delang's bandit team from the forest, and went to look for the melee militiamen who were patrolling the periphery.