In the morning, he jumped neither light nor dawn and conducted the last revision of his property, remembering whether he had prepared everything, whether he had taken everything. With money, he smoothly began to have problems, since after repairing the crossbow, buying new bolts and fitting a smart harness with a hook under him, Erik had only fifteen denarii left. If this goes on, then very soon he will have nothing to eat. But a man with a gun will always feed himself, so that our hero has only to choose food in the teeth. So - in the way. He moved along the road to Reinfelden and further to Brag, it was in dangerous proximity to the castle, but other ways were too far taken away. Toward evening, he overtook a group of travelers. Ten people, all in armor, with clockwork horses with luggage, but the guys are clearly not military. We talked, met, it turned out that among them there was not a single nobleman. Strange and curious. So they rode a dozen miles and a half, until the fork came out from behind the turn, and it turned out that they did not go to Augsburg. Say goodbye and went our way. Eric drove off just a couple of miles from the intersection. After all, it is curious - where and why they go in armor and with weapons. It's huge money! Who and why would they trust their commoners? In general, his doubts did not last long. Unfolding the horse, our hero decided to follow them up to the night, of course - without getting in their eyes. How long, shortly, but after two hours it began to quickly darken, and an hour later the trail sharply took to the forest, where half a mile, on the edge of the forest crackled a fire, glowing bright star in the thick darkness. Fortunately, there was a coppice behind Eric, and his silhouette was hard to see against the backdrop of a black massif, so his appearance was not noticed. Carefully dismounting, the young baron tied his horse to a tree about a mile from the fire, just in the copse. And he, crawling, with weapons, trying not to rattle them, went to spend the night strange travelers. Alas, it was given to him this very hard, well at least the chain mail, tightly stretched on the aketon did not make unnecessary sounds. After spending about two hours on this guerrilla, Eric, still managed to occupy a comfortable position in the shade of a large oak tree, which stood a little further from the forest on a small hillock, about ten meters from the fire. On the part of vacationers, this mound was not visible at all and looked like a solid, blurred black spot. Sitting in the shadows, our hero carefully watched. Ten armed men against one though strong, but a teenager is not a joke. But, finally, they figured out the supper and went to bed. It was noteworthy how uncomfortable they all do. Kind of like experienced guys, but the camp was also broken in a strange, easily defensible place, and the horses were dragged along for a long time. Doubts were fumbling for the soul, and fingers were pulling at the bed of the crossbow, which had already been cocked and loaded, just in case. The decision was prompted by them, leaving only one hour to peck on the log with their faces facing the fire. Then they went carelessly into the arms of a sound and healthy sleep. Now it remains to choose the moment. Immediately to attack it is impossible, it is possible to frighten away dozing prey. It is better to wait for the shift of the sentry, everyone will fall asleep more firmly, and the time for changing the guard will be known. The hour of observation of the snoring men was affecting our freshly burgled robber. He miraculously did not fall asleep and only an active stir at the fire, the dream was swept away. For about five minutes he shook his changer, who was drilling something, kicking and absolutely not wanting to step onto the post. At the same time, the rest of the travelers did not even break the snore's melody, completely unresponsive to the similar noise at their side. Somehow the holy mystery still happened, and now the honorable log warmed his booty with a new character. Fortunately, he was too slow to nod and fight with sleep, and so, settling on his improvised throne, and warmed up, he performed an extremely important act - a tenth sip was introduced into the night choir, which, tearing, sang a hymn to Morpheus on the forest edge. After waiting a couple of minutes, Eric slowly pulled his crossbow to him, squatted, aimed and fired at the sentry's face. The bolt lay gently and gently straight into the eye socket. The light sound of the bowed string remained unnoticed by the others, and the sentry man emitted a grunting sound and lifted his head silently and knocked over the log silently. From the outside it looked as if he had fallen in a dream on his back, and so he fell asleep further. Seconds flowed slowly, as if lazily, and with each growing tension, and fingers painfully dig into the box of the crossbow. A minute passed, but, alas, these strange people did not jump up, but shamelessly and brazenly snored. Our hero did not try to test fate anymore, it's not enough that the bolt will not lie so gently and tingle about some metallic object. So he put down the crossbow and very slowly began to creep up to the travelers, crouching and clutching a knife in his hand. The people at the fire lay in the bag, but either on their sides or on their stomachs. Therefore, not especially inventing, Eric slowly and gently walked from person to person and the chorus slowly lost its force. His knife neatly entered from the back of the head to the base of the skull at such an angle that the blade would go to the side of the brain, where the part that was responsible for breathing and palpitation was struck. Therefore, comrades died almost instantly . . Quiet and neat strokes that did not cause any screams or noise. Only a slight crunch of cartilage served as an indicator of a successful outcome. When he had finished, he sat down near the fire and clasped his knees. The whole body was chilling, and his throat was vomited - it was his first corpses. That's what the place of the night found - the ten corpses and one guy sitting motionless and looking with bulging eyes somewhere into the void. It's easy to say - ten corpses, and even their own hands. Of course, before breaking the level of the hero from the infamous novel Dostoevsky was very far away, but in the soul of this guy was rotten. How much blood has already spilled. First his family, and now these people too. And how much more will be spilled? Is the road to the place under the sun going along such a bloody path? From the trance Eric led a ray of sunlight, which reflected from the helmet, hit him in the eye. A little blinking and examining the clearing, he ran after the crossbow, and then to his horse. Returning to the parking lot, he busily began to deal with the property that he inherited from the accidentally deceased fellow travelers.

By noon the first results from the catch were summed up. It turned out not everything is as rosy as he supposed. The fact is that from under the cottages, with which they were covered, it was visible only the individual parts of the armor. However, the overall picture was not visible. The bodies were undressed and stacked neatly by the trees, twenty paces from the remnants of the fire. And before the cooled coals there was a bunch of various junk that Eric was trying to sort and evaluate. It was clear that it did not make any sense to take everything, and it was not possible to carry it off, because for a night the horseshoe horses fled, having felt the blood and greatly frightened. So he could only rely on his horse and the two that he could find in the ravine, from where they could not get out. Out of the armor he received a dozen helmets of the spangelhelm type in good condition, six rivet mail in a condition close to slippage, three aketons and two coifs from riveted rings. Of the weapons were six copies with leaf-shaped tips and eight axes. All the rest was in a terrible state, so it took a lot of time to remove the metal from these, completely killed things. For example, it was very tedious to cut off the sewn pieces of chain mail to the old, torn aketon. Spears and axes, by the way, were removed from the shaft and stacked in a bag, so that they did not take up much space. It was decided not to take clothes, as it was stained with blood, and, in general, could cause trouble. The money was not too thick, only sixteen denarii and a handful of obols. One of the deceased was found a letter to some Italian, which set out trading information with names, names, prices and some recommendations. Comparing the information from the letter with the property, Eric came to the conclusion that the guys were hired people, who was contracted by some trading house, he also equiped. One thing was strange - why did the mercenaries behave so carelessly? Is it possible that at night the bandits do not attack? Or were they just inexperienced? In bags on horse-drawn horses they carried food for a rather long journey. From the foodstuffs, jerky, salt and bread were taken for a week's journey, on which the sorting of the property was completed, and it was time to cover up the tracks. The young baron approached the corpses and began to look around. In fifteen steps, behind the trees, he saw a small ravine, quite deep, to accommodate both comrades and their possessions. At the bottom, he laid the corpses, put all their belongings on top, which he did not take with them. Above he planted leaves and branches. The desire to burn them, he dismissed quite quickly, since the smoke and stench of burnt meat, can attract other people. When he had finished his work in the parking lot, he packed the khabar with clockwork horses and, tying them with bridles, behind the saddle in front of him, again drove towards Augsburg.