Chapter 7 The Army's Desire
"My lord, look what I found. There are at least 300 gold coins." Thun Starr secretly dragged Du Yu into the black tent in the middle and upper left of the camp with excitement
Thun Starr, who used to be a squire, knew that many armies liked to store valuable things in the upper left corner of the biggest tent in the middle of the camp. Because this location was close to the middle, it was heavily guarded, but it also wouldn't attract too much attention.
Especially on the mountain just now, Thun Starr had carefully observed it. The several tents in the middle had no lights inside, but there were guards guarding outside. It all proved that something inside those tents was important, so as soon as the battle was over, he immediately ran into those weird tents.
With the light of the torch, Du Yu saw several opened red wooden boxes filled with all kinds of shiny things. Du Yu felt that these boxes should be the loot that the Marquis Caistor took from villages.
"Get a few more people to carry these boxes to the center of the camp." Du Yu closed the few boxes, and what he said surprised the excited Thun Starr.
Thun Starr didn't know what this strange lord was thinking. According to the usual practice, these found spoils all belonged to the lord.
The hunters were busy catching dozens of war horses that had fled from the start, and the peasant soldiers took off the armours and weapons from their enemy's corpses. Although these were not worth a lot of money, they were still their own trophies.
Although in this raid, they had defeated the enemy easily, they still lost three peasant soldiers and eight people were injured in varying degrees. Four of them were stabbed by their own people during the initial shield wall formation.
Seeing the dead companions and the wounded soldiers groaning in pain, everyone was dispirited. Suddenly everyone saw their lord commanding a few peasant soldiers carrying a few large wooden boxes and striding to the center of the camp. They all stopped what they were doing and gathered around.
Du Yu looked at the soldiers who had gathered around him. Under everyone's suspicious gaze, He suddenly kicked one of the big boxes. The box was instantly broken.
The content inside rolled and bounced on the ground, crowding each other and making waves of metal colliding sounds. The shining things that had spilled out made everyone's eyes wide open.
"I am very satisfied with your performance today. As I promised, these belongings belong to you real warriors! All people can receive a gold coin, and those who were killed and wounded can get one more gold coin!”
Du Yu’s words made the entire camp cheered completely. A gold coin was almost a farmer’s income for twenty years. Under the high exploitation of the lord and landlord, many farmers had never seen a gold coin in their entire lives.
These peasant soldiers did not expect to receive a gold coin as their reward tonight. The low morale was immediately boosted to an unprecedented height, and everyone shouted in excitement, "my lord, you are the most generous person in the entire kingdom!"
One wounded soldier even covered his face and wept. The wounded soldier originally thought that he would not receive a high reward tonight, and he would have to return to the village with the wound.
But now, with the lord’s generosity, he could even marry the richest man's daughter in his village. He could even buy a large piece of land, become a little landlord, and live a comfortable life for the rest of his life.
"As long as you are willing to follow me, I promise that you will get more than you can get tonight!"
Du Yu was satisfied with the excitement shown by the peasant soldiers. An army should be like a bloodthirsty wolf. Not only must they have sharp claws and teeth, but they also must have a desire for food. He wanted to make these ordinary farmers become real warriors who were eager to fight.
He believed that if an enemy appeared in front of these peasant soldiers now, these peasant soldiers would definitely pounce viciously and bite the enemy into pieces.
And tomorrow, he would lead this eager army to tear the Marquis Caistor's remaining army into pieces.
Lord Lato Cato’s castle was not very far away from the Caistor army's camp. When the sky just turned bright, Du Yu could already see the low stone fort belonging to Lord Lato Cato in the morning mist in the distance.
The entire small castle was built on the low hilly soil slope behind the village. The outer wall of the castle was actually just some stones of various sizes collected from the surrounding mountains piling up into a wall about thirty meters wide and two meters high.
The outer defense of the castle was simple and there was no moat, but a deep ditch was dug along the wall outside the castle. There was only one wooden watchtower installed at the gate behind. A wide long plank was hung above the deep ditch as a suspension bridge.
On the top of the castle was a long swallow-tail flag with no family emblem. This was because Lord was not in the ranks of the nobility of the kingdom, but the title granted by nobles to his subordinates or relatives, so naturally, he was not qualified to embroider the special emblem on the flag.
"My lord, the white tents on the right side of the castle should be the camp of the Marquis Caistor. I heard that there is a large sheep farm in the territory of the Marquis Caistor. These tents are made of sheepskin. Even during the rainy days, the tent made with this kind of sheepskin won’t leak. It is a very good thing. One of these kinds of tents is worth three gold coins on the black market.”
Hunter chief Crow Sartre excitedly pointed to a dozen tents made of white sheepskin surrounded by a circle outside the small stone castle. The expression he had when looking at those tents was like looking at gold.
Last night’s battle allowed the hunters to get a gold coin each. They made so much money in one night so easily that it made the hunters eager to fight for their lord again. They just needed to fight a few more times, then they would have enough money to return to their women and children and live comfortably during the winter.
Crow Sartre, the hunter chief, was not optimistic about his lord’s night attack in the beginning, but he did not expect that the result would be this surprising. His lord could easily defeat the war vulture of Marquis Caistor by relying on two hundred farmers who had just trained for a month.
Moreover, when counting the spoils after the war, his lord not only gave the property looted from the village by Marquis Caistor to the soldiers, but he also allowed the dead and wounded soldiers to have one more additional gold coin.
Thes sound of the horn came from the small castle in the distance. It seemed that Lord Lato Cato’s plan of seeking a peaceful negotiation had fallen through. Dozens of soldiers sparsely ran out of the white tent in front of the castle and gathered behind the tent with the flag of vulture fluttering on top. Like ants moving house, they slowly moved out a lot of wood planks and started to build something.
“Small siege catapult! I did not expect them to also bring this with them!” As the thing that they were building gradually revealed its outline, Thun Starr let out a surprised shout in a low voice.
The words of Thun Starr made Du Yu realize what happened, ‘it turns out that this cunning Marquis Caistor did not plan to negotiate from the beginning. With a small siege catapult, his intention was very clear.
Poor lord Lato Cato did not even have an official noble title, if his land was taken by this cunning Marquis Caistor, he would have nowhere to complain to.
With the squeaky noise, a stone from a nearby slope was thrown in an arc by the small catapult that had just been assembled, and it landed on the castle's wall, smashing the wall.
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