The villagers walked out of their damaged homes one after another, looking at the whole village with black smoke. There was no sadness on their faces.
There is only a kind of unspeakable numbness, confusion and even despair.
Old Hans, looking at everything in front of him, tears streaming down his face, he knelt down weakly and beat the hard earth with his fists.
Everything he had was taken away by robbers.
A villager sat slumped at the door of his house, his eyes empty, and he repeatedly muttered, "Nothing... nothing... nothing."
"They said." A young man's voice broke the dead silence, with uncontrollable trembling. "They said they would come back next time..."
People looked at him, but no one said a word. Fear enveloped everyone's hearts, but even faster was despair, because everything from them had been taken away, and they might not even be able to survive the next time.
"All the food in my house has been taken away!!!"
"What should we do? We will starve to death!!"
"We can go find Master Suleiman! He will definitely help us because of his kindness!!!"
The sounds of quarreling, crying, and desperate tears were mixed together, and these poor people could not see a way out.
"Ta! Ta! Ta!" The sound of horse hooves came from outside the village.
The crowd was suddenly awakened by a burst of sound, everyone showed a look of fear, and every sound of horse hooves seemed to step on people's hanging hearts.
But when the team of riders appeared in sight, the villagers' fear dissipated. They seemed to have found their backbone. People rushed forward with tears. It was the lord's army!
The leader is a strong middle-aged man, riding on a tall war horse, wearing leather armor and a leather helmet. His weather-beaten face is now full of fortitude. He is Lushen.
Lushen reined in his horse and looked at the countless villagers approaching. Thinking of Master Suleiman's instructions, the muscles on his face tensed instantly. His eyes swept across the village covered in scars and black smoke, and his eyes became deeply red.
"It's too late!!!!" A roar burst out from Lushen's mouth, full of undisguised rage, "Fuck these bastards!"
"Wait until I catch them! I'm going to bury them all alive!!!"
Lushen turned over and dismounted, his movements were crisp and clean, his boots made a reassuring sound when he stepped on the ground, and he strode to the villagers.
"Cough... cough... I... I am Lushen, an officer trained by Master Suleiman." Although Lushen's voice was loud, it was a bit shaky. "Tell me!!!! Are those bandits here?!!!"
Although the villagers felt a little strange about this adult's nervousness, they still knelt down deeply in front of the dozen riders.
Crying bitterly.
The crowd's lips were trembling, their tones were confused, and they couldn't utter a complete sentence for a long time. They kept pointing at the smashed door, the burned hut, and the livestock pen, and then they just cried.
Lushen walked to a charred roof beam, stretched out his leather-gloved hand, and touched it gently. He turned around and looked at the painful villagers.
Lushen's fist hit the charred wooden pile hard, sawdust flew everywhere, and the ruined building fell instantly.
Lushen took a deep breath to add courage to himself and increase appeal for subsequent performances. His performance just now was a bit of a failure.
"We are still a step too late!!!" He lowered his head in regret and growled, his voice full of remorse and anger. "Damn it!!! Damn it!!!"
This punch seemed to hit the hearts of all the villagers. All their doubts, uneasiness, fear, and despair disappeared with the loud noise and the arrival of these riders.
The lord's officers, like them, were outraged by the disaster and the mob.
"Everyone dismount!" Lushen ordered to the soldiers behind him, "Help the villagers, check the wounded, and put out all the damn flames!"
The fear that had been suppressed all night was finally released. People cried loudly, finally found someone who could help them, and finally found someone to cry to.
"Sir! Those bandits stole all our food! All our livestock!"
"Everything we have is gone! We are starving to death! Please! Talk to Master Suleiman! Help us!"
"Sir! They said they would come back!"
"Save us! We can't just wait to die!"
"Please, my lord!"
"Save us!"
Cries and pleas came one after another.
Lushen stood there quietly, patiently listening to everyone's cries, his face tensed and his brows furrowed more and more tightly.
When the crying subsided slightly, he sighed heavily, "Hey, this wandering bandit has not only looted your village."
"Don't worry, several other villages have received supplies from Master Suleiman!"
"The kind master Suleiman will not abandon your seeds, grain, and livestock, even more than you have before!
The villagers were stunned or shocked. People shed tears, followed by countless words of thanks. People prayed to Old and New Gods. They had never seen such a kind lord.
"But..." Lushen's words made everyone's hearts pick up in their throats again.
Old Hans asked in a trembling voice, "But what, sir?"
Lushen's eyes swept over everyone's desperate faces. He was about to start reciting the lines he had memorized for several days. He raised his finger and pointed in the direction of the Suleiman temporary castle in the distance, and then pointed at the land under his feet.
"Master Suleiman's land is too big, and your villages are too far away and scattered." There was a deep sense of powerlessness in his voice. "Those damn bandits are like wolves in the wilderness, so cunning that they attack lone travelers every time."
"We are defending here today, and they will attack other villages tomorrow.
"Our manpower is simply not enough."
Lushen seemed to be talking to himself or explaining to everyone:
"I can leave five people here, or ten people."
"But there are more than twenty people on the other side! I can't let my brothers die in vain with you!"
Lushen's words were like a basin of ice water, dousing the villagers' newly ignited fire of hope.
He was right. Master Suleiman's territory was so large, with so many villages. Their small village was like sand and gravel in the desert, and it had little value. How could Master Suleiman protect them all the time? The hope that had just risen instantly turned into a deeper despair.
"Then what should we do?" There was a cry in the voice of a villager in the crowd. "Is there really no way out? Can we just wait to be slaughtered like pigs by those robbers and beasts?"
His crying and despair infected everyone, and in the dead silence, people began to sob again.
Lushen looked at the villagers and was silent for a long time, paving the way for what he would say next. Just when the villagers' hearts gradually sank to the bottom, he just spoke:
"There may be a way."
"Master Suleiman, he has actually foreseen all this."