"Ah!"
It was the autumn harvest in October, yet the fields outside the desolate Moorish village were choked with tall weeds, steeped in a barren, deathly silence. Blue tits perched boldly on the eaves, only to startle and take wing when a shrill scream rang out. One circled above the ruined village and looked down, seeing only the ring of jeering crusader cavalry, and at the center of the crowd, a Moorish captive collapsed on the ground, his voice hoarse.
"Haaha! Che coglione! What a useless fool! From the look on his face just now, I thought we'd run into a heathen who'd rather die than yield!"
The young crusader cavalrymen roared with laughter, looking at the Moorish noble twitching on the ground, his face covered in blood, as though they were watching some amusing monkey show. There was no mercy in their eyes, because in traditional understanding, torturing and killing a heathen was not only no crime, but a pious virtue instead.
"Ha! How dull!"
The older crusader knights, meanwhile, looked utterly indifferent. They had seen far too many such spectacles of tormenting heathens. To them, the most important matter at hand was still feeding their warhorses properly with hunger-resistant beans.
At this moment, they were at the front line of the battlefield and could encounter the enemy at any time. At such a time, keeping the warhorses fed at all times, preserving the strength for galloping and charging, was a knight's foremost duty! As for turning horses loose to graze, it took too much time and did not stave off hunger well; that was something one could only do when safe and relaxed.
Old knight Lorenzo smiled as he cut off one of the Moorish captive's ears and one of his little fingers. Then he used a sharp