Temple Sword

Chapter 209 The End of a Story
1323, St. Michael's Month (September)
Skradin, Croatia

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A beautiful, slender young girl stands in front of an expensive Venetian glass mirror where she can see herself from head to toe, the only full-length mirror in the entire city.

She looked with satisfaction at her healthy, sun-tanned skin, her waist-length jet-black hair, with its fragrant oily shine.

Then she came closer and began to study her face, and for a long time she could not find a wrinkle in it.

Only then did she smile at herself in the mirror, take a step back, turn sideways, and caress her yellow velvet dress, which fits like the sun's rays on her perfect body.

Sofia is an attractive girl, young and full of life, with burning eyes, a long waist and a large bust.Even if she wasn't the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in town, even if she didn't carry a dowry worth a fortune, her suitors would be most of Skradin's unmarried men.

However, Sophia already has a husband, he is a personable and tasteful gentleman, and they held a gorgeous wedding more than a year ago, so that the young people in the city have to recognize the reality and start looking for a new life. Object.

Mikolaj was rich and educated, so when he proposed to Sofia, the girl's father had no objection.

The young couple lived well enough to have nothing to worry about, living a life of luxury that no one else could even dream of.

Over time, the old businessman no longer complained that his son-in-law lived in his own home instead of owning a piece of land and a house of his own. Anyway, at least he had a middle-aged man with outstanding housekeeping skills in his family.

There is only one thing missing in the life of the newlyweds and that is a child.No matter how hard they tried to reproduce, Mikolaj's seeds never germinated in Sofia's soil.

Today, she also observed her belly in front of the Venetian mirror for this purpose. Is it bulging?Is there already a new life inside?
However, no matter how she turned, or how she smoothed her yellow velvet dress, she found nothing different from before.

She had been anxiously waiting for her husband to come home all day, and since they were married, she had been seriously counting the days since her last menstrual period, and she believed it was time to try again with Mikolaj.

She prepared clean sheets according to Old Nan's advice, asked the servants to prepare the bathtub, and then walked to the altar at home, praying to God repeatedly for the coming of a new life.

But when Mikolaj arrived home in the late afternoon, he didn't look sexual.

Sofia had never seen him look like that before, and Mikolaj's face was pale, confused and nervous.After he came back from the market, as if he had seen a ghost, he hurriedly closed the doors and windows on the first floor, and then irritatedly ordered the guards at home to guard the house more vigilantly than usual, not only on duty during the day, but also at night. .

Mikolaj's abnormal anxiety did not subside after that, and his behavior during dinner was also very strange. He would raise his head every time he heard a smile, and his speech was also neurotic.

"For God's sake, I have no problems!" he yelled at his wife before bed, which he had never done before, "Stop asking questions, blame your mother, she was at dinner The nonsense I said before gave me a bit of a headache..."

"Don't be angry, my dear husband," said Sophia, clinging to him like a cat, "take me for yourself."

"Don't bother me, let me be alone!" Mikolai pushed her away, "I said I have a headache, you lecherous woman, your mind is full of lewd things!"

"Slutty?" Sophia's sexy lips curved down, "Don't you want to be a father?"

"Of course I want to," Mikolaj turned around and hugged the beautiful woman in his arms, "but I've worked hard all day and I'm tired, please forgive me. I don't have the energy to do anything, I just want to sleep, Let's come back tomorrow, shall we?"

"Okay," his wife said reluctantly, then broke free from the man's arms and lay on the bed with her back to him, "Good night."

Mikolai could see the resentment on her face, but at this moment, he didn't care about Sophia and her thoughts at all, he cared more about his own fate.

He saw a ghost in the market this afternoon, and he hoped it was just a hallucination, that his senses had tricked him, or he was in serious danger to his life.

At that time, he was negotiating prices with traders in the fish market when he suddenly felt that he was being watched from somewhere.

He turned quickly and looked around, seeing nothing at first, but in the next heartbeat, he swore he saw Antal Bator in the crowd, standing there, motionless.

But in the blink of an eye, the former master that Mikolai had betrayed in a despicable way disappeared again.

"I'm just exhausted," he said to himself when Sophia and everyone else in Wuli had fallen asleep, "I've done too much these days, I'm too tired, it's all my fault. A hallucination of the imagination."

Finally, he convinced himself with difficulty, and slowly fell asleep.

"They'll protect me," he murmured half-awakely before falling asleep, "no one can hurt me, I'm safe..."
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End of 1323
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While Miklos Gutclair was heading south with the royal army, Charles Anjou was fighting on another, more intricate battlefield.

Charles learned that relations between Johann Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, and Holy Roman Emperor Louis Wittelsbach had soured, with the former even developing a grudge against the latter.

John felt cheated because after helping Louis win the crucial Battle of Mühldorf, he didn't get Brandenburg or any of the Imperial lands he claimed.

Charles also took this opportunity to take advantage of Johann Luxemburg's grievances, playing the role of mediator, in the month of St. Michael (September) to promote co-government between the King of Bohemia and the still fighting for the freedom of his brothers Austria reconciled with Duke of Styria, Leopold Habsburg, while Johann turned against the Wittelsbachs.

Quietly, the balance of power in this land began to change again, and the Hungarian king, who had been stabilizing domestic affairs, gradually became more and more interested in this power game board.

Meanwhile, Miklos Guttekled's march was like a parade around the Adriatic.With the defeat of Janos Babonik, no place in the south dared to oppose the new governor's exercise of his powers.

In autumn, the army passed through Slavonia, then Croatia, and finally entered Split in the Christmas month.There, Miklos was like the greatest triumphant general of the empire. He swept away Charlie's enemies, rose from a small count to governor of three provinces, and pushed all the way to the southernmost tip of Hungary.

More than 20 years ago, a boy from Naples landed here, and then changed the history of the entire kingdom.

This winter, the march of Miklos Gutkled and the royal army marked the end of a whole era of civil strife.Twenty-three years of war and infighting came to an end with the fall of Janos Babonik, and now it seems that nothing can stop the birth of a golden age of peaceful construction and prosperity.

Beneath the new governor's victory, however, was a small flaw.

In early autumn, the house of the richest merchant in Skradin was set on fire. Fortunately, the family living inside did not seem to be injured. The merchant, his wife, his daughter and servants were locked in the cellar of the yard. , someone had apparently moved them there before the fire was lit.

The merchant's new son-in-law was not in the cellar, though.

The doors and windows of the house were boarded up, and although the house was in the very center of the city, many people rushed to put out the fire, but the single heartbreaking scream inside did not stop until the building was completely engulfed by the fire. stop.

No one knows who the murderer was or why he did what he did.

Rumors soon spread that the merchant's son-in-law had been Janos Babonik's servant and that the new governor wanted to kill him because he knew too much.

It is also said that the murderer was one of the many suitors of the merchant's daughter, who brutally burned her husband to death because he was jealous of her marriage.

Others said that on that terrible night they saw a foreign soldier outside the city, sitting motionless on his horse as the last scream died away, watching as the house burned to the ground.

Then, without saying anything, he turned around and disappeared into the darkness.

(End of the fifth volume)
(End of this chapter)