Chapter 26: The Lessons Learned from History

Van’er did not get the second egg.

The second standing session ran twice as long as the first. When someone’s knees finally buckled — a young man at the far end of the line who had been swaying for the last ten minutes before his legs simply decided — the prince called rest without comment, and any anger the line had toward the man dissolved the moment the food carts rolled out from town.

Four large barrels, carried on carts. Bowls and spoons stacked beside them. The smell hit the assembled militia like weather — warm and specific and suddenly the only important thing in the world.

Van’er moved toward the carts. So did everyone else.

The chief knight stepped into the path.

“Line up,” he said. “Four rows. Forward one at a time. Anyone who breaks the order goes to the end.”

The rows formed with considerable noise and several arguments about position. Van’er had good luck: front of the outer row. He watched with detached interest as the best street fighter in Border Town — a man locally known as Insane Fist — tried to muscle past a guardsman and found himself quickly and ungently relocated to the rear of the line. The guardsman had a sword. Insane Fist had his reputation. The sword won.

He really didn’t see that coming, Van’er thought.

When he reached the barrel, the porridge was hot, thick, flecked with something brown. Jerky. He stared at it. Actual meat, in the porridge. He had not eaten meat in longer than he wanted to calculate. He collected his bowl and his egg and walked to the grass and sat down and ate the whole thing in the time it would have taken a normal person to find a spoon.

His tongue blistered on the porridge. He didn’t particularly care. He licked the bottom of the bowl and then looked at the egg and decided the egg was too good to wolf down and ate it slowly instead, one small bite at a time, to make it last.

Around him the other men were doing variations on the same thing — bent over their bowls, quiet with the particular quiet of people eating the best thing they’ve had in weeks.

If every day is like this, Van’er thought, the demon beasts can have whatever they want.

He belched contentedly.

After the meal came a long rest, and then the chief knight appeared again, this time flanked by a man Van’er recognized: Iron Axe, the ranger, the best shot in Border Town and probably the best shot Van’er had ever seen. He was from the Sand Nation — a continent to the west, dry and distant. Van’er had always assumed he’d found his way here as a refugee or mercenary and stayed. Now, apparently, he worked for the prince.

The knight Carter did not look entirely comfortable about this.

“A Sand Nation man,” Carter said quietly, falling in step beside Roland as the afternoon exercises continued. “As captain?”

“Witches also don’t belong to Graycastle,” Roland said. “But they belong to Border Town. Iron Axe has demonstrated skill, judgment, and the ability to follow orders. That’s the qualification.”

“Your Highness, there is a—”

“You can promote your own captains. I’ll give you room for two more. We’ll be expanding eventually, and it’s better to train the talent now.” Roland reached into his coat and produced a rolled parchment. “More immediately, read this.”

Carter took the training regulations and began reading. He read them through to the end. His expression changed in several different directions over the course of it.

“Long distance running,” he said finally.

“Every afternoon after lunch.”

“Night alerts.”

“Whistles blown without warning. They assemble within two minutes or they lose the morning egg.”

Carter rolled the parchment up again, slowly, as if giving himself time to locate a reasonable response. “Your Highness. The final item. Cultural training. Karl’s school, every evening after dinner.”

“Reading and numbers. Karl’s curriculum will be adapted. I’ll brief him myself.”

“But — fighting the demon beasts does not require reading and writing.”

“An educated unit thinks better under pressure,” Roland said. “It understands orders. It doesn’t break when the chain of command is disrupted. It knows why it’s fighting, which means it doesn’t stop fighting when a knight isn’t standing directly behind it.” He looked at Carter. “Every army that ever lasted more than a decade understood this. It’s a lesson from history.”

Carter looked at the men on the field — Van’er and his fellow militia, lying in the grass in various states of recovery, eating their porridge, scratching their heads, some of them already dozing. Educated, he thought. The word seemed wrong in every direction.

He said: “Yes, Your Highness.”

Chapter 26 The Lessons learnt from History

“Your Highness, what is the meaning of this?” Before Carter only thought that the prince merely acted arbitrarily and alone, but now he thought he had become whimsical.

In the theory of how to train a soldier, the chief knight didn’t think that there was a way more professional than their own. His family had a complete set of traditional training methods, from the age of ten to fifteen years, there would be only five years to develop the body and master all kinds of weapon used by a soldier. If they were trained for more than five years, then they would become a top soldier, known as a Knight – of course, the trainees cannot have a civilian background.

Looking at the group of morons in front of him, who only had thoughts of eating eggs on their mind, Carter became angry! After all… eggs are expensive!

Roland spoke directly into his ear, “Take a good look and remember everything. This is the kind of training which should be performed in the next few days. Of course, some details will change. I will list them for you on a paper.”

In the age of cold weapons, were two or three months of training enough to train a group of good soldiers? Roland did not think about this question and neither did he need one of those Spartan warriors dressed in underpants who could rip apart wild animals with their bare hands. The individual combat strength of Roland’s people may not be strong but they must be well disciplined and execute every order without fail.

Most of the time the group’s strength is more important than the individual strength. So, he needed them to quickly form a unit. To accomplish this task quickly and move over to military training for improving the current situation

was the best choice. Out of his personal experience, he knew that one month would be enough to form a group of people from all over the country into a strong cohesive unit. Regardless of the process, the goal was clear.

And when this group of people learned to follow orders, Roland could start to implement the next step of his plan.

Van’er ultimately failed to get a second egg to eat.

This time, they had to stay double the amount of time of the previous round until someone’s legs went weak and he could no longer persevere.

Just at this time, the 4th prince allowed everyone to get some rest and then he ordered his attendants to serve lunch. This successfully transferred the anger from the weakling to the anticipation of eating. At this point, Van’er started to suspect that His Highness probably had never intended to let them get a second egg.

The lunch was packed in four huge barrels, which were carried by carriages out of town. In addition to the food, the carriages also contained many bowls and spoons.

Van’er licked his lips, ready to jump on the carriages. But he along with everyone else was stopped by the chief knight, who stood in front of them.

His Royal Highness the Prince ordered everyone to line up in four rows and to come forward one by one to pick up their cutlery. Whoever disturbed the order would be forced to step back to the end of the line and get their food last.

The rows were very noisy as everyone squeezed in to get a good position. Van’er had very good luck, he stood in the forefront of the outermost row. Of course, some people expressed their intense resentment. So within the ranks, the sounds of people fighting with words and movements could be heard. Soon the knights and several guards rushed into the crowd picking out the rioters to be sent to the back of the line.

Fool, thought Van’er when he saw the man at the forefront of the rioters. He recognized him. He was the best street fighter in the town, also known as ‘Insane Fist’. He usually relied on brute force to stir up trouble everywhere.

Now, only barehanded against knights and guards armed with swords, he gave of a pitiful picture. Look at his poor appearance now!

He felt that he had already grasped His Highness’s preference.

That was to become a unit.

Standing straight, side by side, the team had to form lines. Everyone had to line up to get something to eat, always keeping order, never stepping out… Van’er had previously heard from a knowledgeable businessman that some of the nobility had a strange hobby. And that was that everything had to be arranged in order, everything which stood out would be forced back into place.

In Van’er’s opinion, this kind of person was simply bored and had nothing better to do. So they would even deliberately find some trouble to occupy themselves.

He had not expected that His Royal Highness would be such a person.

When the lids of the barrels were opened, Van’er could smell the strong aroma of the food.

When the aroma scattered, he almost lost himself to temptation. The crowd also became restless, but simultaneously a roar to be quiet came from the chief knight. Van’er thought that they probably had to line up again.

Sure enough, the 4th prince had everyone get their cutlery first and then line up again to receive the food.

Despite that, all of them had to swallow their saliva and hold back their stomachs which were growling. Given Insane Fist’s example, they all stood quietly, waiting patiently for the food.

The barrels were filled with hot wheat porridge. To Van’er’s surprise, he found that the porridge even contained jerky! While it was only a small piece of jerky, even then it was still meat! After he got his share of the porridge, he also got his wish – his egg.

Van’er almost wolfed down his food. It looked like he hadn’t eaten for days, as he licked the bottom of his bowl again and again after finishing his food. He didn’t even have the time to bite the egg, as he swallowed it whole, directly sending it into his stomach. Since he ate too fast and wasn’t careful, his tongue developed blisters.

After putting the empty bowl down, Van’er patted his belly and happily belched. He hadn’t enjoyed such a delicious meal in a long time. And even more incredible was that he actually felt a sense of satiety. Eating wheat porridge with black bread, even if compared to Heaven, it couldn’t be better. If he could eat like this every day, even fighting in the front lines against the demonic beasts would be worth it, right?

After dinner, they all got a long period of time to rest. During this time everyone was brought back within the city walls, walking all the way to the camp of the town’s patrol. A burly man with the rank of a Ranger came out and began to teach them how to set up tents.

Van’er knew him – there was no one in town who did not know Iron Axe. His superb skill in archery left even the town’s most experienced hunter thinking that it was at the acme of perfection. Wait a minute, since when did Iron Axe work for the 4th prince? It seemed that he had seen him staying at the side of the knights before. Van’er frowned. In the end, what was His Royal Highness planning? He was a former citizen of the Sand Nation.

“Do you really intend to appoint a man of the Sand Nation as captain?” Carter was holding this same question, “He does not belong to Graycastle. He is not even a person from our continent.”

“Witches also do not belong to Graycastle,” Roland disagreed, “but they all belong to Border Town. Besides, don’t you see what’s happening?”

“But, Your Highness…”

“Do not worry,” Roland patted the knight’s shoulder, “In Border Town, we do not care about the origin of any person. As long as there is no violation of the law of the Kingdom, they will all be my beloved subjects. You really don’t have to worry. You can also pick two captains. Anyway, in the future, we will expand the number of teams, so it would not be bad to cultivate some promising talents now. Oh, that’s right! I have already written down the training regulations. Compared to the people of the Sand Nation, I think you should be more concerned about this.”

Carter took the parchment from Roland’s hands. Sweeping through its contents from the beginning to the end, he suddenly felt dizzy. The training content was simply unheard of – for example, in the afternoon everyone had to run laps around Border Town after eating lunch until the sun set. The regulations even emphasized that everyone had to do this and that they were allowed to help each other on the way. If they persevered without giving up until the end, they would all get an additional egg for dinner. Another example was when at night the wolf whistles were blown, everyone had to report immediately. With these kinds of training exercises, he was afraid that most of them would toss from one side to the other side during the night.

If the first few exercises were already hard to understand, then the last one, left Carter feeling thoroughly confused.

“Every day after dinner, they all have to go to Mr. Karl’s college to receive cultural training.”

“Your Highness… What is the meaning of cultural training? Do they have to learn how to read and write?”

“I would hope so, but the time is too short. Karl can only teach them a few simple words and numbers. This part, I will personally explain to Karl. You just need to send them over.”

“But, why do you want to do this? Learning how to read and write will not be helpful for fighting the demonic beasts!”

“Who said that?” Roland had to yawn, “A good unit must also be well educated. This is a lesson learnt from history.”