Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 137 Lieutenant Mason
After Castor's "unexpected visit," Winters went to Blackwater as agreed and met with Bard and Andrei.

This was the first time the three had reunited since they were banished. Having not seen each other for so long, they were incredibly warm and had so much to talk about.

Bard marveled, circling the red-maned horse to examine it closely, even lifting its four hooves to check them over, before giving his assessment: "This horse is quite good."

"Do you need to tell me?" Andrei retorted with a laugh.

Instead of spending the night in Blackwater, Winters and Bud changed into horses that Andrei had borrowed from Dusa Village in Blackwater, and the three of them immediately set off to meet the "senior" that Bud had mentioned.

"Which year is he from?" During a rest stop on the road, Andrei couldn't help but ask Bad, "Do we know each other?"

"You two definitely don't know each other, and neither do I. He's my class monitor's class monitor."

The smallest organizational unit at the Allied Army Officer School is the "platoon," and each platoon contains officers from the first, second, and third years of the academic year.

Therefore, an officer in a military academy can interact with students two years ahead and two years behind him.

Wolftown and Blackwater were too remote; a one-way trip by horse to the county seat, Zhevodan, would take three or four days. Zhevodan itself was also a frontier city, so Winters and Andrei had few visitors.

But Bard's residence, St. Christopher (hereinafter referred to as St. Christopher), is different. St. Christopher is very close to Gevordan and is easily accessible.

The hard-surfaced Guzhi Road runs through the town, and caravans and travelers often pass through Shengke Town.

Some of the senior students from Paratu whom Bad knew had come to visit him several times after hearing that their junior had been assigned to Paratu.

Therefore, Bader was better informed than Winters and Andrea, while Lieutenant Montagne and Lieutenant Cellini were completely unfamiliar with the area and knew nothing about it.

Bard learned from his "squad leader" who had mentored him during his freshman year that, apart from the officers stationed at the city of Jervodan, there were only four Army College graduates in the entire county.

It goes without saying who the three unlucky ones were. The other one was a senior student whose residence was located east of Xiaoshi Town, about forty kilometers away.

According to Bard's class monitor, that was the class monitor's class monitor. That is, the man was four years ahead of Winters, Bard, and Andrei, and had been serving in Palatour for five years.

Out of courtesy, Bud felt they should also pay a visit to this alumnus. Not to mention, having lived in isolation for so long, the lieutenants were desperately eager to learn more about the outside world.

So Bard sent a message to his two friends, arranging a time for them to go together.

After leaving Blackwater Town, they galloped along dirt roads through forests and wilderness. Because they had to travel back and forth on a single horse, they had to stop frequently to rest.

In the vast, sparsely populated newly reclaimed land, it was often a long time before villages and scattered farmhouses could be seen. There was no one else around, and food and drink consisted only of the dry rations and water carried by the horses.

But since the group rarely gets together, they don't find it tiring.

The journey was uneventful, but the closer they got to their destination, the more strange it felt to Winters and Andrei. It seemed they weren't heading towards a town, but rather in a more sparsely populated direction.

"Are you sure you're not mistaken?" During another rest stop, Andrei couldn't help but ask Bad. "There's nowhere to stay here, and we didn't bring any tents. If we're mistaken, it'll be a real problem."

Andrei had been estimating the distance and direction, and he was shocked to realize that his destination should be within a few kilometers. But the surroundings looked even more desolate than before, completely unlike what one would expect on the outskirts of a town.

“There shouldn’t be any mistake, and there aren’t any forks in the road.” Bud took a roll of paper out of his saddlebag. It had a rough map and route description drawn by his senior. “The key is that I don’t have a detailed map of the area around Little Rock either.”

“We should have brought a guide,” Winters said with a hint of regret. “We forgot we’re in Palatour.”

The three studied the map in their hands for a while, carefully recalling the way they came, and confirmed that they hadn't gone the wrong way. They had no choice but to bite the bullet and continue forward.

About half an hour later, wooden fences began to appear along the roadside. With signs of human activity, the three lieutenants' confidence soared.

Unexpectedly, at the end of the dirt road was a town even more rudimentary and dilapidated than Wolf Town.

Although Wolf Town is small, it still has two streets, one horizontal and one vertical, as well as a church, and it is full of life.

But the town in front of us was just a row of low wooden barracks by the roadside.

The reason they are called "barracks" is because the wooden houses are similar in style to the prefabricated houses in military camps, and they look very different from the houses in ordinary farmhouses.

Although farmers' houses are generally similar in materials and structure, they are full of the living atmosphere of the users in the details.

The wooden houses in front of us are all the same, as if they were clay figures poured out of a mold, full of a stereotypical feel.

A row of wooden houses stands abruptly on the ground, surrounded by desolate meadows, looking quite lonely.

The strangest thing was—it took Winters a while to realize—that there were no women or children in the town.

“Is this the place?” Winters looked at Bard.

Bud was also puzzled: "It should be here, but something looks off."

The people outside the wooden house noticed the three officers by the roadside. A man carrying a bow and arrows, who looked like a guard, walked over and lazily asked, "Who are you gentlemen looking for?"

The man had a large, dark red birthmark on his left eye, which almost covered half of his face and was very noticeable.

“We’re here to see Lieutenant Mason,” Bud asked the man. “Is Lieutenant Mason in charge here?”

The man replied listlessly, "The lieutenant has taken some men to supervise the mowing. Gentlemen, please wait here for a moment while I send someone to fetch the lieutenant back."

He shouted in a thick Paratist accent, and a small man by the wooden house responded and ran towards the earthen slope not far away.

"Who are you here?" Andrei asked, his brows furrowed as he stared at the man.

"Me?" The other person smiled. "Replying to your question, sir, I'm the one responsible for watching over the others."

Winters sensed something was off: "Wait, is this a prison?"

"Of course not, sir." The bored guard didn't even lift his eyelids. "This is a ranch, a labor ranch."

……

……

"Haha, what rare guests! It's been so long since any alumni have visited me." Lieutenant Mason pushed open the door and warmly invited the three junior students inside. "I've been busy cutting hay for winter lately, and if I don't keep an eye on them, they all slack off... Oh, why am I saying all this! Please come in, don't be shy." The furnishings in the lieutenant's room were very simple: a bed, a wardrobe, two tables (one large and one small), a few stools, and a wooden clothes rack. That was all.

The other cabins on the labor ranch were shared by several people, but the lieutenant had a cabin all to himself—this was probably the only luxury in the house.

A simple wooden bed sat in the corner of the room, the bedding still in the way it was when the user left it, haphazardly rolled up into a ball.

The leftover food from breakfast was still on a plate on the small wooden table. The lieutenant startled two flies as he walked past it.

The entire room perfectly embodies the typical lifestyle of a single, solitary, and unattended young man.

What intrigued Winters most were the stacks of books and manuscripts covered with writing on the large wooden table.

"It's a bit messy." The lieutenant casually tossed the plates on the small table into the wooden barrel outside the door. "Don't mind, please have a seat."

He rummaged through the chest of drawers and took out a few cups. He crawled under the bed and found a half-empty bottle of liquor—and then found an unopened one.

"I haven't had a single customer in months," Lieutenant Mason said happily as he poured drinks for his juniors. "It's really rare to have someone visit me. Next time you come, give me a heads-up so I can prepare properly. My beef is especially delicious."

Upon hearing that guests had arrived, Lieutenant Mason immediately rushed back. His enthusiasm only grew stronger after learning that the guests were his fellow alumni.

Before Winters and the other two could even ask, Lieutenant Mason launched into a long-winded explanation. And it was like a dam bursting, completely out of control.

After downing a full glass of strong liquor, Lieutenant Mason began slamming his fist on the table and cursing, "You damn sheep!" His profanities were interspersed with phrases like, "I'm a professionally trained artillery officer," "You maggot-infested damn sheep, you made me raise pigs," and "I might as well go overseas."

At his most emotional moment, Lieutenant Mason grabbed Winters' hand, tears welling in his eyes, and said, "Take my advice, the sooner you leave, the sooner you get out of here. If you can take off your uniform, hurry back to the United Province. We United Province people can't expect to make a name for ourselves here..."

“Um… senior, I’m not from the United Provinces, I’m from Venetia.” Winters looked embarrassed, wanting to pull his hand away but too shy to do so.

"Huh?" Mason was dumbfounded, looking at Andrei: "So you're from the United Provinces?"

“I’m not, I’m also a Venetian.” Andrei quickly shook his head and pointed to Bad: “But he is.”

Mason's emotions gradually cooled down, and he asked in confusion, "Then how did you two Venetians end up here? Shouldn't you be going back to your homeland?"

Winters recounted in detail the undeserved misfortune suffered by this year's Venetta graduates.

When the mustachioed officer was mentioned as locking the Venetta graduate in a carriage without explanation, and then emerging at Kingsburg, Lieutenant Mason gave a disdainful sneer: "That's the kind of thing those bastards in the United Provinces Army would do."

When the conversation turned to the fact that the Paratul Army had forcibly dispersed Lieutenant Veneta and assigned him to various posts, Lieutenant Mason's contempt deepened: "I'm not surprised at all that a sheep-puller would do something like this."

Feeling a sense of shared fate, Mason looked at his three junior classmates with great sympathy after hearing Winters' story: "The fact that the Federation sent you here is not only a provocation to Veneta, but also to Palatour. Of course, the Sheep-Man won't give you a friendly look. The struggles of the big shots always sacrifice us, sigh!"

The lieutenant sighed, then offered words of comfort: "But don't worry, you're better off than me. The plateau people won't hold you hostage forever; just hold on until they send you back. Someone like me, I'm stuck here for life. Feeding pigs, horses, and prisoners, day after day, helplessly wasting my time. Just thinking about it makes me despair..."

The topic was too heavy, and Mason's expression grew increasingly somber.

Andrei quickly changed the subject, "Senior, are all the people under your command prisoners?"

Mason paused for a moment, then replied, "Everyone except the guards... but most of the guards here were prisoners themselves."

“But aren’t your security measures a bit… lax?” Winters immediately joined the conversation: “It seems like escaping wouldn’t be difficult at all?”

“Run? Where to run? There are only desolate meadows all around.” The lieutenant’s expression was half-smile as he patiently explained, “Besides, the people who come here are all minor offenders. They can go home after working for a few months. If they run away, they’ll be wanted for life. I’d rather see a few people run away occasionally, so I can have some fun.”

"Do the Paratists use forced labor instead of imprisonment?" Bad asked.

“The Sheep-Eating Guy is incredibly stingy, how could he tolerate going to jail and eating for free?” Mason always looked dissatisfied when talking about the Parat people: “But stealing a chicken to work for two months is better than having your hand chopped off, right?”

“That’s true,” several people echoed.

“But the Japanese have one good point: they don’t interfere much. As long as you hand over enough livestock, they don’t care about anything else. I’m doing quite well here. The harvests have been good these past few years, and I can even pay the prisoners some wages and give them some meat. Some of the homeless prisoners don’t even want to leave in the end.” Mason’s face lit up again: “I’ve been working on improving the breeding stock. Once I find a way to get rid of this uniform, I’ll buy a small ranch in Palatour…”

The three lieutenants exchanged glances, realizing that although their senior was verbally dissatisfied with being assigned to pig farming, he had clearly devoted himself wholeheartedly to the business.

"Senior, have you heard about the recent conscription?" Winters asked the lieutenant.

Winters and his group visited Lieutenant Mason, partly with the intention of finding out about the outside world.

But it seemed that Mason's place was even more isolated than their own, which surprised them.

Winters also told two friends about what Lieutenant Colonel Custer meant by "drawing a needle," and after discussing it, the three of them concluded that Custer had no reason to lie to Winters.

However, the three of them had no idea why they were being "extracted" from the palace, or even what the word "extracted" meant in Palatine's eyes.

Although the lieutenant didn't seem like a well-informed person, Winters still casually mentioned it.

To everyone's surprise, Mason replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "Of course I know, probably after the autumn harvest."

"You've received the news too?" Winters was stunned.

“No, no one would give me any information.” Lieutenant Mason pulled out a few sheets of paper from the large table. “Although no one gave me any information, after reading the official gazette delivered by the Army Postman, I can guess what the Japanese are up to.”

Official gazette? Winters had never received one.

After Mason explained, the three lieutenants learned that the Palatine Army's mailman only visited once a quarter, delivering salaries and newspapers to officers stationed in various locations.

In the sparsely populated Republic of Palatine, the settlements are far apart, making communication difficult. To alleviate this problem, the military and administrative authorities distribute gazettes to various regions every quarter to ensure the most basic flow of information.

Winters and his companions took the last quarter's official gazette and read it carefully, but they couldn't find anything about "conscripting men after the autumn harvest" or the word "conscripting men."

“The army has been hyping this up for a while now, they’re practically saying it outright.” Lieutenant Mason said calmly, “Judging from this, they’ll probably conscript men after the autumn harvest and start the war in the winter. They might even conscript prisoners, which is why I’m rushing to cut hay. Once the prisoners are all gone, I won’t have enough manpower.”

"Think about it yourselves," the lieutenant said with a sneer. "Why did the United Provinces choose this time to deal with Paratul? It's because they're sure the Japanese will be patient."

Thank you to all the readers who voted for the book before;
Thank you to the following readers for their recommendation votes: 20190814200242704, Unknown Name, Justice and Purity is Koala, behere370, Jiang Xue Diao Weng, Pants are a Little Tight, The Most in Your Life, Yellow Rabbit from the Flower Country, Calm Gray, Nothing is Xiao Gao, 20191007064305842, Sky Lens, Ami, and Yuexi Yao. Thank you everyone.

(End of this chapter)