harleyscars Chapter 169 The Villagers' Request
Chapter 169 The Villagers' Request
In just a few dozen steps, he pounded on the door again. This simple action made the old village chief gasp for breath.
Clearly, while the entire village was starving, the old village chief did not use his privileges to give himself special treatment, but instead endured hunger alongside the ordinary villagers.
"Eghur, you're so weak, can't you have your little Arian come over for something?" A few muttered voices came from inside the house, and someone slowly moved to the door and opened it.
This isn't about stalling for time, but rather about minimizing your activity level and making your movements more gentle to conserve energy and food.
When the door opened, inside was a one-eyed middle-aged man with a limp, walking with a stagger—his left leg was bandaged, clearly from when the noble caravan came to collect supplies a few days ago.
"Rumir, there seems to be something wrong with this knight's warhorse. Could you take a look?" Egül pointed to the two warhorses that Loon was leading.
"Sir Knight"—just those four words made Rumir realize that the knight before him was a rather upright knight.
Otherwise, Egül would not have addressed him as Mr. Knight, but as Lord Knight.
"The problem is with the warhorses," Rumir muttered, limping around Loon and looking at the tails and hooves of the two warhorses, then at their teeth and eyes.
"Respected Knight, both warhorses are fine horses, and there's nothing wrong with them."
"The tender grass they were eating during this period was quite damp, which caused them to catch a cold."
"There's a kind of white clay by the river. After drying it, grind it into powder and mix it into the hay for him to eat."
After reviewing the issue of the warhorse, Rumir breathed a sigh of relief.
What he feared most was the problem with the two warhorses in front of him—a major problem that he couldn't solve.
"Sir Knight, I have some treated white clay here. If you need it, I can give it all to you."
"Even if there is no hay later, you can prevent them from getting cold by sprinkling some white clay on the hay they eat."
As he spoke, Rumir turned and walked into the house.
A moment later, he came out dragging a bag of something that looked like flour. For a normal person, such a thing was of no use and was not difficult to obtain, so the robbers did not take the bag of white clay powder.
"Mr. Rumir, thank you so much." Loen took the bag of white clay powder, opened it, and felt it.
Its quality is extremely fine. Obviously, after Lumiel dug it out of the river, dried it, ground it into powder, and then sifted it again.
Immediately, Luo Ang grabbed two handfuls of white clay from the bag and fed them to the mouths of the two warhorses. The two warhorses cooperated perfectly and ate the two handfuls of white clay.
"Mr. Rumir, and Mayor Egur, you have done me a great favor. How can I possibly thank you?"
After the two warhorses finished eating the white clay, Luo Ang tied up the bag of white clay and hung it on the back of the other warhorse.
"It's just a useless thing anyway, and it would only take up space in the village. It's enough that it can help you, Sir Knight. There's no need for thanks." After Rumir glanced at Eghur, Eghur spoke up for Rumir.
"How can that be?" Luo Ang said solemnly. "You helped me, so I must repay you."
"This is the way of the world."
"Otherwise, if everyone believes in helping others without expecting anything in return, who will be willing to help others in the future?"
In any case, Luo Ang intends to take charge of the affairs of Red Sand Village.
Right now, winter is not over yet, and it is the time when resources on the ground are at their lowest. At this time, what difference is there between a group of nobles looting all the food in a village and killing them?
"Respected Knight, if you really want to do something..." Eghur seemed to have seen through Loen's thoughts.
—The farmers in the village always have some strange places to hide things.
Even if they were completely looted, they could still find a tiny bit of food if they wanted to—but it would be almost impossible to use that tiny bit of food to get through the next predicament.
So, after discussing it, the village decided to take a gamble and organize a hunting team to try their luck in the forest.
If they could hunt down some large wild animals, the meat, along with wild herbs and other food, would allow the villagers to survive for a while longer and give them time to come up with more solutions.
If they can't defeat them, the village will fall apart, and the villagers will have to take their belongings and fend for themselves.
"Yesterday, our hunting party found a hibernating bear in the forest."
"The bear is a unique kind of monarch, both clumsy and agile."
"Although the bear is hibernating, if the cries of any animal in the vicinity are heard, it will surely be startled and awakened."
"A hungry bear awakened from hibernation is an extremely dangerous species; the power it unleashes can even tear apart steel."
"Even a knight would face some danger when facing him."
"The hunting teams in our village are just ordinary people, and they don't have enough armor and weapons to hunt this bear—if we wake it up, we don't know how many members of the hunting team will be injured or killed."
"Originally, the villagers had decided to abandon that area and go deeper into the forest to hunt."
"But now we've met Mr. Knight."
"If you, sir, are willing to help, perhaps we can try to hunt that cave bear."
"If we succeed in the hunt, the pelts alone will be enough to trade for some emergency supplies from the mountains," Eghur said, inadvertently revealing a piece of information that shouldn't have been disclosed.
In every place near the mountains and forests, there are always some mountain people or barbarians who are dissatisfied with the nobles. They hide in remote places and do not communicate with the outside world, or they maintain extremely cautious communication with the outside world.
Even the nobles in the territory could not be sure whether these barbarians, who were like ghosts, actually existed or not.
Therefore, when the nobles plundered villages, they would naturally skip the mountain settlements hidden deep in the mountains and forests. Of course, the nobles may have abandoned these mountain settlements because the places where the mountain people lived were inconvenient to travel to, and the cost of plundering them was far higher than the benefits of plundering them.
Clearly, Eghur was telling Loon that he had just established some contact with a mountain tribe settlement.