Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 9 Night Duty
Swordsmanship class is held once a week, starting after lunch, and the duration depends on how late the sun sets.

Summer days are long, so swordplay classes are long. Winter days are short, so swordplay classes are short.

In principle, officers and cadets should be given one hour to eat before it gets completely dark.

This led to a problem: during the last hour of summer fencing class, everyone was starving.

Winters and Ike rushed to the school cafeteria to wolf down their food after returning their training armor in the equipment room, not even having time to change out of their regular clothes.

After they finished dinner and took a shower, the sun had already set when they returned to the student dormitory.

Oil lamps were lit in the dormitory, and the military academy students who were not from the provincial borders began packing their belongings, preparing to set off for home the next day.

Axel's home is in Guido, within walking distance, so he's not in a hurry at all.

He was about to wash his armor when he found Winters lying motionless on the bed.

"Going to sleep already?" Ike slapped Winters hard on the back. "Aren't you going to pack your bags?"

"We'll talk about it tomorrow." Winters was full and felt weak.

Exhaustion, pain, and drowsiness overwhelmed Winters; all he wanted to do was sleep.

"What are you going to do with your armor? If you don't wash it, it'll go bad by tomorrow," Ike asked, frowning.

Winters weighed the options of "getting up to do laundry" and "going back to sleep," and without any doubt chose to "go back to sleep."

"No, throw it away." He buried his head in the pillow. "Give it to whoever wants it."

“A good set of clothes, just thrown away like that. And he said he’d practice his swordsmanship diligently when he got home…” Axel muttered as he picked up his friend’s armor and tossed it into his laundry tub.

Winters could no longer hear what Ike was saying; his friend's voice went in one ear and out the other.

Just before losing consciousness, Winters suddenly remembered that he had things to do that evening.

He suddenly jumped out of bed, startling Ike into taking a big step back.

“I remember now,” Winters said, frowning. “I have to be on duty tonight.”

He took a deep breath and let out a mournful cry from the deepest part of his chest.

"Don't you just sleep when you're on duty?" Ike retorted, holding a washbasin.

Winters didn't have time to answer before grabbing his shirt and hurriedly running out of the dormitory.

The Army Officer Academy, located southeast of Guido, has three gates.

Two shifts per day for each subject. Six people per shift, two from each of the first, second, and third grades.

The Army Academy has three disciplines: Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery, with each discipline having between 55 and 60 students per year.

Therefore, on average, military cadets have to work one day shift and one night shift every month.

Winters ran all the way to the North Gate, where the officers and cadets on duty at the day post had not yet left, and the first-year and second-year cadets who came to change shifts were already waiting in advance.

"Good morning, class monitor." The lower-grade students saluted Winters as they saw him.

Calling senior students "class monitor" is a tradition at the Army Academy.

When new students enroll, second-year students will serve as their vice class leaders and third-year students will serve as their class leaders to lead the new students in training.

Therefore, at the Army Academy, junior officers and cadets call their seniors "squad leader" regardless of whether they know them or not.

Winters returned the greeting casually and hurried into the duty room. Another third-year officer on night duty was waiting for him.

“You’re here, Bud,” Winters greeted.

The officer cadet named "Bud" was a little over 1.7 meters tall, a sturdy young man with broad shoulders, large hands, a wide mouth, a broad nose, thick eyebrows, and big eyes.

In Winters' eyes, everything about the other person's appearance suggested that he was a gentle, simple, and tolerant person.

When Bard saw Winters approaching, he lightly punched Winters on the shoulder and grinned, revealing his upper and lower teeth.

Winters gasped in pain as he touched the bruises he had sustained during the fencing match earlier that day.

"What?" Bard didn't understand why Winters reacted so strongly to a light punch.

"I got a hard hit on the shoulder during swordsmanship class today, but it's nothing serious."

"Did the master do this?" Bard asked with a smile, understanding everything immediately.

Wentesla pulled up a chair, sat down with an air of authority, and said proudly, "You didn't see it, but I managed to score seventeen points against Ike today. Ike was really getting impatient with me, but unfortunately I was exhausted, otherwise I would have broken Ike's undefeated record today."

"Really?" Bard laughed. No one has yet been able to defeat the swordsmanship master Axel, and very few can score 17 points against Ike.

Winters said confidently, "How could I possibly be bragging? There were so many people watching in class."

Bard switched to Winters' other shoulder and punched him hard: "Seventeen points! Great! Too bad!"

A head peeked in through the door; it was a first-year student.

The junior student raised his hand in salute and whispered, "Class monitor, the duty instructor is here."

Winters and his companion tidied themselves up and left the trainee duty room.

The night shift is different from the day shift. The day shift has no patrol duties. Six people work a full day, and a group of people work four hours.

Arrive at your post before your shift starts, and you can leave once your shift is over.

However, the night shift is more complicated, as it also involves patrol duties. Therefore, the night shift's duty schedule is that each group stands guard for four hours, patrols for four hours, and sleeps for four hours. This ensures that at any given time, one group is patrolling, one group is on guard duty, and the remaining group is sleeping.

Those on night shift cannot return to their dormitories to sleep, so two small brick houses were built next to the gate and inside the wall, serving as a duty room for trainees and a duty room for teachers, for those on night shift to rest.

The guards resting in the duty room can also serve as a "support force in case of emergencies".

Why is there a teachers' lounge? Because teachers also take turns working night shifts. The school believes that night shift situations are complex, and having only trainees is not enough. In case of an emergency, it is essential to have an active-duty military officer present for safety.

In theory, from the principal to the lecturers, all teachers are obligated to work night shifts.

But in reality, only poor young teachers need to work the night shift. They all have the following characteristics: "newly hired, low-ranking, living in staff dormitories, and single."

However, the teachers do not need to stand guard; they can simply sleep in the teachers' lounge.

The person who arrived was a short weapons instructor with rosy cheeks, and his shirt was unbuttoned up to the third button below the collar, clearly indicating that he had been drinking.

The two people still on the day shift and the six people on the night shift, a total of eight people, stood in a line under Winters' leadership.

Everyone stood at attention, while the teacher on duty nodded expressionlessly—people on night shifts are never in a good mood—and began taking attendance from the duty roster.

"Winters Montagne!"

"To!"

"Gerald's Bard!"

"To!"

Bad's name is strange because Bad has no surname.

Gerrard is his hometown, and he is called "Bard of Gerrard" to distinguish him from other "Bards".

Who knows, one day Bud might adopt Gerald as his surname. But for now, he's called Bud, or Gerald's Bud in formal settings.

Afterwards, the teacher took attendance, dipped a quill pen in his tongue, and ticked off a name tag in the notebook.

"Have you checked the weapons?" he asked again.

Winters was so engrossed in chatting with Bard that he didn't bother to count the weapons.

But Bud gently nudged Winters, who immediately understood—Bud had already ordered.

Winters then answered loudly, "Six halberds, six muskets, the count is correct."

"Alright, dismissed! Call me if you need anything." The teacher on duty nodded again and went into the teachers' duty room to sleep.

The two junior students who were on duty said goodbye and hurried back to their dormitories.

Winters and Bud began their last night shift.

Surnames are a very interesting thing. In China, surname, clan name, and given name are three independent things. Before the Qin and Han dynasties, commoners had given names but no clan names. After surnames and clan names were merged in the Qin and Han dynasties, commoners valued their surnames far more than their given names.

The Roma also had a strict naming system of given name, clan name, and family name. However, the "barbarians" who replaced the Sirom did not follow this system. For a long time, they had given names but no surnames, and used nicknames to distinguish those with the same name.

In other places, a naming convention combining father and son names is also used, i.e., given name followed by the father's name. This naming method means "son of A, son of B." Because the society is relatively small, simply saying "son of a hero's father" is enough for everyone to understand; for example, Odin's son means Odin's son. Iceland still retains this naming convention.

Later, the title "son of so-and-so" was directly used as a surname.

Other regions also have naming conventions such as given name, father's name, and family name, as well as given name, multiple ancestral names, and family name.

Simply put, compared to the greater sense of heritage inherent in Eastern surnames, Western European surnames are a product of pragmatism, and their widespread use was only achieved through population censuses.

(End of this chapter)