Chapter 158： Residents' settlements

The weather is getting cold.

When the giant sky is volley, the clouds appear sly and illusory. More and more gray-yellow markings appear in the sky when the day and night alternate. The stars are cold and bright. There are indications that this will be a bit colder than in previous years. Winter.

It is difficult for people who are homeless to survive this winter.

"Red Nose Tom" holds a bundle of dry wood that is not easy to collect, limping on the way back to the settlement, the cold wind of the frosty month blowing from the north, rolling around the sparse forests and low hillsides Blow on the face and pour it into the collar, so that he seems to be soaked in a basin of chilled cold water.

He is a young man who is only 17 years old. According to Ansu's law, he is an adult. However, long-term malnutrition makes him as thin and short as most of his peers. He looks like a minor, only the rough hair. The black face and the numb eyes can reveal his true age and reveal his harsh living environment.

He can already see the settlement, which is said to be a settlement. In fact, it is a small camp in the southern forest. Even the camp is very stubborn: some low-trunken tents and piles of stones gather here. With a circle of equally broken fences and thorns, a little bit of the veins that the Tanzanite mine extended to the southeast formed a low barrier here, barely providing the most basic shelter for the poor people hiding here. The cold wind, let the winter come later, let the people here live a little longer.

Tom walked into the camp with dry firewood and saw a pair of indifferent eyes. There were twenty-six and one hundred and two people gathered here, but the number was one hundred and nines a few days ago. Most people are refugees who have escaped from the vultures. A flood there has left these people homeless. The rest are from the viscounts of the South. They lost their land and lost their shelter for various reasons. poor.

They wandered between cities or villages, were driven, plundered, killed by local lords or local beasts, or died of cold and hunger, and the south was barren, and most of the land was difficult to support more people. For those nobles who only know how to scrape blood and sweat from the land and serfs, any refugee who wanders into their own territory is a disgusting mouth that needs to be eaten, so the displaced people can only choose to be in the wilderness. settle down".

Tom found his place to settle. It was a tattered little tent. This is a very good situation, because not every family has tents. Many people have lost almost all their belongings in exile. They only Can sleep in a tree root or a stone nest, wrapped in tattered clothes or a pile of weeds, and Tom can still have a small tent sheltering from the wind, completely because of his machete and bow with his sister. Still on the body.

The fire in front of the tent had been extinguished, but it was not yet in the night, so Tom took the firewood into the tent and waited for the eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. He saw a pair of bright eyes looking at himself in the dark.

"Sister," Tom looked at the dark-haired girl. "I didn't find the mushroom, I only found these firewood."

The dark-haired girl just snorted and suddenly said a few seconds later: "The two children of the Pom family are starving."

"...oh," Tom whispered, sitting down in the darkness, and whispered after a few seconds. "Today...do you eat?"

The brunette girl started to stay again, and Tom couldn’t help but feel a little ominous premonition, but after a short while, the brunette girl suddenly moved halfway and figured out that the same thing was lost.

It was a small pheasant with a fresh **** smell, but in a tent filled with all kinds of odors, Tom was completely unaware of its existence.

A thin pheasant is not enough to fill the stomachs of the two brothers and sisters, especially if they can only eat this meal every day, but this still makes Tom feel refreshed: compared to roasted mushrooms and roasted moss Meat can help people stay longer in this colder weather. He is delighted: "You hit something?! We don't have to be hungry today!"

"When you go out and give the chicken a hair loss, bring the hunting knife," the brunette girl said faintly. "There is a conspicuous place."

"Yeah!" Tom nodded hard, but as he became more comfortable with the darkness in the tent, he finally noticed the abnormality in his sister. She always lie in the corner in a weird posture, and the power of speaking is obviously not as normal. Tom took the ominous premonition and went forward. He finally saw the blood around his sister's shoulder and the arm that could not hang on his side. "Sister, are you injured?!"

"Bound by a wild dog, hurt the ribs," the voice of the brunette girl finally trembled. "I can't hunt."

As if a bucket of ice water poured from the head, Tom couldn't take the knife from the head to the sole of the foot for a moment, and couldn't pull the bow. The injury of the arm meant that the only sister who could go hunting in the forest lost the ability to get food, and this also It means that they are both dead...

Everyone is hungry, there can be no one to help their younger siblings. For those who have lost everything, even a small injury on the hands and feet and a short period of loss of labor are fatal. Threat!

What's more, people who are bitten by wild dogs are extremely susceptible to infection, and in this case, once infected, it is impossible to save them.

"I..." Tom bit his teeth and made up his mind, "I will bring a bow and arrow tomorrow..."

"Don't go," said the brunette girl with a strong tone. Her eyes fell on Tom's feet. "If you go, you can't come back. Going to the woods to hunt can be different from the firewood nearby!"

Tom is not a natural scorpion. His leg was interrupted by the knight of the lord's house, because the knight went to church to listen to the sermon. The priest of the blood sect said that only the hand of a man was interrupted to make martial arts and Courage broke through the bottleneck, so the Cavaliers did not hesitate to interrupt Tom's leg and compensated for the half-pocket wheat.

"I will put a trap," Tom insisted. "I remember how to tell the traces of bears and wolves, and will circumvent..."

"But if you die outside, I will definitely die," the brunette girl stared at Tom's eyes. "Go to the forest and pick up the mushrooms. Look for the trees and fruits under the roots. It's not good..."

What can I do if I can't do it? She doesn't know either.

Tom bit his lip, thinking hard, and finally said the long-awaited idea: "We can... find the lord here..."

"You forgot how everyone was driven out of Carroll's collar?" said the black-haired girl. "It's a frosty month, no longer farming, it's hard to hunt. The nobles will not allow more land on this land. Even a mouth!"

"That..." Tom thought again, hesitantly said, "There may be a big mine in the mine where the slaves of the town of Tanzan need a slave. Even if it is frosty, the mine needs slave labor..."

"Can you go to work as a slave?" The black-haired girl stared at Tom's leg. "I can't work now, you can't do it, even if they want a slave, they won't want us!"

"Would you go south again? I heard that the south side of Baishui River is the newly developed territory of the Cecil family. In the place of pioneering, there should be no shortage of people to work... I will at least make leather."

"Don't think about it," the brunette girl finally sighed, her eyes leaning back against the already moldy haystack. "The nobles... are all the same..."

The whistling wind once again blows from the north and rolls through this bleak and poor camp.

Hunger and cold caused people to stop the only activities of the day, and everyone huddled into their tents or haystacks, in this way to minimize the loss of physical strength and heat, and in the process, the camp gradually quieted down.

But outside the camp, in the slightly dense woods, some swaying shadows are gathering.

They were armed with a variety of specials, and they were all exceptionally well-armed. They did not have any uniform logo. They gathered in groups in the mountains, staring at the small settlements through the trees and the night.

Like a hyena watching the prey in the dark, full of greed and hunger.

......

In the lord's tent of Cecil, Gao Wen received a report from Philip.

“A gathering place for refugees? In the northern part of the Baishui River, in the forest on the east side of the Tanzanite Mine?”

"Yes, adults," the young knight nodded. "It was supposed to be reported by the Byron Knight, but he was exploring the remains of the mountains and the news turned to me."

Gao Wen put down the dip pen in his hand: "How big is it? Has it been sent to people?"

At the same time, his heart was excited: After getting through the news channels, the investigators finally began to discover the hidden settlements of the displaced people!

"The scale is not big, about a hundred people, but through them they may contact other refugee settlements," Philip Knight said. "But our people have not touched them... because it is a bit of a hassle."

"Trouble?" Gao Wen brows.

"Some armed men of unknown origin are moving around the settlement. I am afraid that the mercenary 'slayers' waiting for the start," Philip’s face showed a trace of disgust. "According to the news, the people were very armed. Sophisticated, there are certain extraordinary professions, and maybe even one or two casters sit down, but the level is unknown."

“A lot of extraordinary people are sitting in town?” Gao Wen was a little surprised. “The strength of this mercenary team is ok.”

Philip Knight nodded: "Adult, how to deal with it?"

"Of course... to bring back the people who should be sheltered by the Cecil family," Gao Wen smiled. "East to the east of the Tanzanite, the mountains, plains, jungles and rivers south of the nobles are The land of nowhere, in this part of the south, as long as there is no owner, it is the Cecil family!" 8)