raknovel Chapter 38: Not as Smooth as Expected
Chapter 38: Not as Smooth as Expected
Before setting off, Alex asked Thorne a question.
How many people will they need to kill to rescue Leicester this time?
Thorne's answer was quite straightforward: he would not kill anyone except the slave trader and his guards. Moreover, if his guards were thinking of running away, there was no need to make a fuss; he would just let them go.
But when they actually spent a whole day traveling and, under the cover of night, made their way to the slums south of the outer city of Autumnwind Town, they discovered that nothing in the world could be as smooth sailing as Thorne had imagined.
They had only just arrived when they could hear a chaotic buzzing sound coming from inside the slave warehouse. Now that the guards who had come to their aid were there, should they kill them?
He was killed.
Some gang members wanted to take advantage of the situation to rob something, which would cause a lot of trouble. Should we kill them? Yes, we killed them.
If the former two can be considered accomplices of slave traders in some sense, they are a malignant tumor that exists in every city.
So, at this moment, should the patrol team surrounding the slave warehouse, who wants to make the slaves who have successfully rebelled retreat and continue to be slaves obediently, be killed?
They are not accomplices, nor are they a cancer. On the contrary, they are an indispensable part of the city, standing on the side of justice. They have done nothing wrong, but their position at this moment is somewhat awkward.
Thorne hesitated for only a moment before deciding to attack them, and the knot in his heart was untied in a logically consistent way.
Is it wrong for slaves to overthrow their masters and regain their freedom? Of course not, it is right. And if, at this moment, the patrol is to clash with the "right" slaves, then they must be wrong.
Even if these patrols are mostly right elsewhere, at this moment, in this infuriatingly awkward location, they are undoubtedly wrong.
The one who made the mistake was his own enemy, and he needed to be eliminated. So Thorne pulled out an arrow from his pocket, which he had made by plucking the poor chicken's buttocks clean, nocked it, and shot it, accurately piercing the head of one of the patrolmen.
The other patrol members were clearly aware of the third party's involvement, but fortunately, they outnumbered the others. Some of the patrol members at the back immediately turned their guns and attacked the third party.
Luo Ya was one of them. When he turned around and instinctively thrust his spear forward, he heard a thud that made his head hurt.
Looking up, I saw a thick wall made of shields, each shield the size of a door.
The spear, made of steel by himself, was stuck on it without leaving a mark. It slid straight to the side and was then firmly caught by the iron edge of the shield.
Just as he was about to pull back his spear and thrust it a second time, a gap suddenly appeared in the shield wall in front of him.
Then, a long, angular, bluish-gray spear pierced straight out of the gap. What was that phrase called again?
Oh! You've opened your heart!
Roya usually enjoyed listening to bards boast in taverns, so his final inner monologue before his death had a uniquely romantic quality.
The other patrol members, however, mostly went to the tavern and just frantically gulped down all sorts of alcoholic beverages, so they were much more pragmatic.
Damn it, those barbarians on the border of the Kingdom of Targon have finally launched a full-scale attack!
As another patrolman turned around and thrust out his spear, it was blocked solidly by the shield, while the spear thrust out from the opposite side pierced through his own chest without any obstruction.
One patrol member after another was killed by spears protruding from the gaps in the shields. Almost all the patrol members who turned to defend against the attackers who suddenly joined the battle were already dead.
The patrol of dozens of men was almost instantly killed by a battle formation of spears and shields, with six men killed in a single encounter. Then came the second wave, with another six men killed.
With the bodies of more than a dozen patrolmen lying on the ground, this was definitely a significant loss for the patrolmen recruited from such a medieval town.
It's fair to say that if they weren't caught between the slaves and the villagers Thorne brought, they probably would have already disappeared. Of course, in fact, they are currently on the run, but not at a very fast pace.
As the once densely packed patrol of dozens of men dwindled to a mere handful in the blink of an eye, eventually dropping their spears and fleeing to various strange and unusual corners to play hide-and-seek, Thorne, standing in the center of the battle formation with a shield in one hand and a spear in the other, couldn't help but wink at Lester, who was in the center of the slaves.
The latter also saw Thorne in this dim environment, and immediately cheered for himself in a very small voice, then ran and jumped straight towards the shield formation.
As he drew closer, he snapped out of his relief and joy at surviving the ordeal and suddenly felt a strange sense of embarrassment and self-reproach. He quickly scratched the back of his head and said, "My lord, I had originally bought a batch of livestock and a lot of iron..."
"It's alright, we can do it next time. Anyway, the village's cloth doesn't cost anything." Thorne patted Lester on the shoulder nonchalantly, and added, "It's good that he's alright."
After saying that, he looked at Lester and asked, "How many slaves were there in total? What about that slave trader? Did you kill him?"
"There were over fifty at first, then some died, leaving forty-one. That merchant should still be alive, right?" Lester recalled that he had only struck Baron's chin from below with the axe, not in a vital area like his neck or head.
"Is that so? Kill him. Keeping him alive is just asking for trouble. Besides, slave traders like him who don't have big businesses usually carry all their belongings with them. You can go and touch the corpse while you're at it."
Before Lester could even process what Thorne meant or how Thorne knew, his body had already acted on his own.
He pulled an axe from his waist and jogged back to the warehouse. There he saw that Baron, who had been knocked unconscious, had slowly woken up and was crawling slowly toward the warehouse.
Lester walked over without a word, picked up his axe, and began to finish off Baron. He then searched Baron's body for a while and found a small money bag. When he opened it, he found about a dozen gold coins and the rest were silver coins, almost filling the entire bag.
Lester immediately presented the money bag to Thorne as if it were a treasure, and the latter nodded. With this money, the merchant caravan might be able to buy more things next time, provided that the guard team was organized first.
Oh, right, there's something even more important: how to lure these forty-odd slaves to the village.