On the fourth day of November in the tenth year of Wanli, the sky was unclear.

Yuan Zizhang, the commander of the Ming army's detachment, led the headquarters, the deputy Qianhu guerrilla general Wang Youliang and the Beiyang Banner Army of 1,800 people, and the Baishan battalion general Kangguru Horse Team of 600 people, and led the army to pull out the camp.

Huang Hee, a Korean officer of the Baishan Battalion, who was the forerunner, set off half an hour ago, and the Spanish donkey dragged the prefabricated wooden squares unloaded from the boat and quickly completed the bridge building operation in the late autumn by means of mortise and tenon in the underwater river.

Shrouded in cold fog, the French scout in the damp earthen pit bunker of the shrubs by the riverside was awakened by the vibration of the cavalry's horse's hooves on the ground, he picked up the crossbow he kept in his hand, and trembled involuntarily, his left arm was curled up all night until he was paralyzed, and he kept pulling the old thick linen blanket so that his right arm was frozen, and the stimulation of cold and fright made him sleepy, but his clear mind was belated due to hypothermia, and he could only look sluggishly into the dense fog where the horse's hooves and kicking movements came out.

For a minute or less, the sound of solid drums and military music was heard in that direction, and the scouts were ordered to turn around and run at this point, and quickly convey the news to their camps, the confrontation on the Dordogne River had been going on for half a year between the Catholic royal army and the Huguenots, and the raids and skirmishes were going on two or three times a month, and those who survived were veterans of life and death.

But this was the first engagement of the winter.

He had never been trained in winter scouting, and the weather had been getting colder and colder in recent years, and there had even been a light snowfall on the banks of the Seine last year, and he was sure that the wetlands on the banks of the Dordogne must have formed thin ice sometime before dawn, otherwise it should not have been so cold.

People are lucky, the last guy who was on the same task gave him a half-new armed suit before he set off, although it was not a high-end product lined with iron armor, it could be pierced with a long sword, but I heard that it was stuffed with cotton, and it must be very warm.

Although the Europeans were finally able to take control of cotton production after the Crusades and experimented with spinning threads in Milan, Venice and other places, the farmer still had no connection with such things, and people adhered to the ancient and mysterious concept of 300 years ago, that the ancient and mysterious cotton grew on the cotton trees of animal and plant hybrids, and that the sheep hanging at the end of the branches of the trees grew quietly during the day, and the branches hung down to the water's edge at night, and the sheep in the calyx could sip water.

Of course, after being called into battle, the scout will be suspicious of this, when he told his companion that the Ming Kingdom must have planted many sheep trees, and was ridiculed by everyone, a well-informed veteran who had been to the New World said that cotton was a low plant that grew in the field, and the Spaniards planted it, and as long as they planted one piece, they could grow a lot - that was a seasoned swordsman, and in his early years he was a well-known blacksmith in the village, and he was a well-informed and great man, and he must know more than himself.

As for the knight's servant? He had not had a chance to talk to such a noble man, and the noblest people he had ever seen in his life were only the priests of the village and the knights of the barons.

Because the previous unlucky ghost could not tolerate the cold, even though he was wearing an armed suit stuffed with cotton, he lit a bonfire to keep warm on the third night, and was shot through the head with a bow by the Ming knight who slipped over on the bank of the river to graze his horses, and when he was found, he was left with nothing but the terrible blood hole on his face, and he was thrown to the ground naked, like a dead sheep whose skin had been removed.

The Baron was not as close as he had been assigned, but rode over with a few knights and levies, holding a delicate silk scarf from a distance, which was so bright that it was a little reflective, and looked at the corpse in the distance with disgust, and left without saying a word.

The knight who was left behind hated to open his mouth and nostrils to tell him, 'Dispose of it, you are the new scout', and without armor or funeral, the scout who was left here dragged the body to the river alone and found an easier place to hide.

He never lit a fire, even if he went to the river in the middle of the night to get water in the dark, he would wear his shoes backwards, a few pieces of black bread and two handfuls of beans, and he would live for nine days.

Although he had a fever and had a stomach stub for three days, he was still strong enough to live like a wild dog.

It was much better than being nailed to the face by the Ming knights with their terrifying arrows that could spread out on their horses, approach four or five paces before releasing their bows, and had a three-edged edge, very long arrowhead.

It was cold, and the scout felt like he knew everything.

He knew that everyone had their own grievances, and it was understandable that there was no food to reach the front in this period of general winter truces in previous years' wars; Before the war began, no one expected that the confrontation would last so long, and it was understandable that he was too poor, not like a knight, who had military training, and did not have armed clothing.

The footsteps gradually became clear with the drumbeat and the unique military music of the Ming army, and memories flooded into my heart like a tide.

The scouts had heard such military music three months earlier, when the Baron had led a levy army, led by forty knights of the royal order, to bridge over the Doldonia River, and on the green slopes of the hills, the feared Spanish mercenary phalanx of the Ming army spread out over the endless field.

The two sides could not engage each other directly, the scouts and many untrained levies like him gathered together, and the noble officers tried their best to beat their batons to instruct the soldiers to take the same position as the other side, only to collapse when the first shell landed on the edge of the formation.

The Scout remembers well that he and his comrades had fled across the Doddogne, and that military music was always in their ears.

The encounter did not result in any casualties among the baron's men, but more than thirty of them died of fever in the next half month.

When his thoughts retracted, his gaze shifted beyond the moth-eaten crossbow and the pile of dead branches and hay that were obscuring him, and the sound of heavy horses' hooves was close in the direction of the thick arrowhead, which made the Scout's teeth tremble.

A spear pointed diagonally to the sky was the first to pierce the mist, the hanging triangular dragon flag was soaked and drooped downward, and the officer holding the flag also had the same small flag in his helmet, and stopped with his spear, he was wearing a thick blue cotton armor with iron nails, and a yellow heart shield on his chest, his clothes were bulging and frighteningly burly, the gap in the armor skirt with dragon patterns revealed red cotton pants and black fat boots, a slightly curved scabbard hung from his waist, and he carried a tanned brown leather backpack, and there were several leather goods wrapped around various leather boxes that the scouts did not know the purpose of.

Behind him were a total of ten Ming infantry in the front and back rows of men dressed in close proximity to each other, their muskets with sharp straight knives, each of them looking so healthy and energetic, as if the weather that could freeze the French to death was as warm as spring to them.

A few knights with their spears or bows and reins swept briskly past the infantry, riding on the finest horses of Spanish and French breeds, armed with full plate armor from Milan or Paris, except for their high-crowned helmets, revealing half of their grim faces, carefully surveying the heavy mist, and trodding a safe path with their horses' hooves.

The Scout thought to himself, he understood that everyone had their own problems.

Perhaps, others will understand his decision to become a deserter.

Right now, right now.