Iron Powder and Spellcasters

   Chapter 104 Star Officer

   The shelling of the city walls has not stopped since the day the heavy artillery was deployed. Needless to say during the day, even at night, the eight artillery groups outside the city would fire a few shots at the city wall from time to time.

   This kind of bombardment day and night is not only to destroy the city walls, but also to drag down the spirit of the defenders and make the Tanilians unable to rest.

  The city wall is crumbling, and every shelling may be a signal of the general attack of the Veneta army. The uninterrupted shelling makes the spirit of both civilians and soldiers in the tower city highly tense.

   But this tactic also had a side effect: almost all of Veneta's caster officers had also been nerfed by night shelling.

  Since the brain is more active than normal, the caster is more sensitive to the environment. Poor sleep quality is not Winters' personal problem, all spellcasters sleep poorly.

  The sound of cannons sounding every other day at night made the spellcasters in the barracks miserable. It's easy to see which officers are spellcasters in the current Veneta Barracks, so look for those officers with black circles and bloodshot eyes.

   Only the commander of the gendarmerie, Moritz, was not affected by the shelling at all. Major Moritz van Nassau fixed spirits and herbs every night, and slept like a dead person, even if someone around him shot him.

When Antonio mentioned Moritz, he shook his head. What he said to Winters was: "If Van Nassau had stopped drinking, he would have been awarded the rank of lieutenant colonel. If he is, he will get the commander's baton in the future. It's not difficult... it's a pity that such a character is..."

   However, Moritz van Nassau is not Antonio's subordinate, he is an adult with full capacity, and Antonio has no reason and will not interfere with Moritz's chosen lifestyle.

The    uninterrupted shelling made Veneta spellcasters painful, and the defenders and civilians in the tower city suffered even more.

At the beginning of the    campaign, both the offensive and defensive sides retained a certain amount of virtue and grace. But those things have now dissipated, and the war is falling in the worst, bloodiest and most brutal direction.

   The night after the Montagnier Guards went out of the city to counterattack and were finally wiped out.

  William Kidd sent a messenger with a handwritten letter, hoping that a one-day truce would be like the previous one, and the two sides would send people to collect the bodies and bury the dead.

   But this time Antonio refused the defender's request, and he replied indifferently to the messenger: "If William Kidd really cares about the dignity of the dead, he can open the city to surrender, then you don't have to worry about this problem anymore."

The emissary of the    defenders left in dismay, while the siege continued.

   During the day, the Veneta bombarded the city walls, filled the city trenches, extended the tunnel fortifications all the way to the front of the trenches, and launched tentative attacks on the weakened positions.

  In the evening, William Kidd led the defenders to repair the broken walls: mortar was poured into the wall cracks, and stones, bushes, dirt - what was it - filled the small gaps in the wall.

   They imitated the Veneta people to move wooden barrels filled with soil one by one and place them on the front of the city to replace the battlements that had been blasted to pieces.

  The Veneta Army was not idle at night. Eight artillery groups would suddenly launch shelling on the city wall at night, mainly using light artillery to kill and injure those Tanirians who were desperately repairing the city wall.

Vauban also sent a small group of soldiers into the trench via the Triangle Fort, and used hook nets to recover the precious shells scattered around the trench and the base of the walls - the continuous shelling was rapidly depleting the ammunition reserves of the Veneta army, even the shells under the enemy's nose. must also be recovered.

   After nine consecutive nights of being awakened by the roar of heavy artillery while half asleep, Winters simply took the initiative to apply for the night guard duty of the artillery.

   He has no official commissions now, and is a "brick" officer in the regiment - where he needs to move, he is just right to do this kind of chores.

   So the day after the large-scale artillery bombardment began, Winters became the star officer of the "West-Four" artillery group.

The    Corps headquarters sent two ten-man teams to each artillery group as night guards. This was the front line, and it was impossible to keep too many people.

   But behind the old siege barrier 300 meters away, a full squadron was stationed, and if there were police, they could quickly support it. The main force in the camp can also arrive quickly.

The task of   Yegang is actually very simple: find the enemy, sound the alarm, wait for the troops behind to come up, and complete the task.

  Especially in the current battle situation, Yegang's task is extremely easy: the Triangle Fort is captured, and the Tanirians cannot quietly use the city gate to attack. If they insisted on going out of the city to fight back, it was the fate of the Montagnier Guards.

   And Tacheng is a small city. Unlike a giant city like Constantinople, which has a large number of side gates, side gates, and secret gates, it only has this gate on the edge of the Triangle Fort.

  The Tanirians would have to be stupid enough to repeat the mistakes of the Montagnier Guard.

   Therefore, the night guard, who had no chance to make a contribution, was unanimously considered by the Veneta lieutenants to be the most difficult job. If you do well, you will not be considered meritorious, and if you make a mistake, you will have to go to a military court.

   Hearing that Winters offered to replace him, Lieutenant Charles, the former star officer of the West-Fourth Artillery Group, could not wait to pick up Winters and call him Dad, and happily completed the handover.

  Although it is hard work, but since it is here, it must be done well.

   Winters did three things when he arrived.

  The first thing is to distribute whistle to all the soldiers under his command. Whistles are generally only issued to officers, so giving soldiers a whistle can easily cause confusion on the battlefield.

   But Winters thought that the bell was too slow, and that when something happened, it was nowhere near as fast as the whistle.

   The second thing, enlarged the folded corners of the corridors on the left and right sides of the cannon so that it could accommodate two ten-man teams. Winters placed his two ten-man teams on the left and right instead of spreading them all over the corridor.

   This is the experience he got after several night raids. A single sentry is easy to touch, and multiple light and dark sentries must be arranged.

   The third thing, applied for six hard crossbows. In Winters' view, firing arquebuses at Night Watch sentries was pure idiot behavior, a bureaucratic model. It is impossible for the sentry to let the matchstick burn overnight. Even if the sentry is not afraid of death, there are not so many matches for them to squander.

   When he was attacked, he was in a hurry to fire the rope, so he might as well just use a crossbow and whistle when something happened.

  The efficiency of Veneta's army is extremely high. Winters went to the armory in the morning to get a crossbow and a whistle, and in the afternoon, the corridor was rebuilt. At night, Winters, armed with a gun and saber, returned to the night shift after a long absence from the military academy.

  At midnight, Winters on the post thought that he hated standing on the night watch the most, but now he had to apply for the night shift, and he couldn't help sighing.

   A sudden voice interrupted Winters' thoughts.

"Why are you sighing? Centurion?" The halberd-hander Bubba didn't know what was chewing in his mouth, he held the halberd and mumbled, "My mother said that sighing blew away the good luck. , so after sighing, I have to fan the good luck back with my hands."

After   , Bubba awkwardly reached out and slapped Winters twice in front of the nose.

   "Presumptuous! What are you doing?!" Elder Taylor was startled, and immediately scolded Bubba.

  Bubba timidly retracted his hand.

  Taylor, whose temples were a little frosty, pointed at his head and explained to Winters, "Sir, Bubba has a problem with his brain... please don't bother with him."

   Winters waved his hand, indicating that it was all right. He smiled and said to Bubba, "I'm not a centurion, Bubba. Do you know how many people are on the night watch here tonight?"

   "There are two ten-man teams." Bubba counted with his fingers for a long time: "Ten... sixteen people?"

   "Enough for a centurion?"

   "Not enough."

   "Then am I a centurion?"

   "That, isn't it..." Bubba said hesitantly: "...Then you are... the captain of the twentieth?"

  Bubba's answer made Winters laugh.

   "Bastard!" Sergeant Taylor kicked Babu's **** hard with his leg up in anger. After kicking, he raised his hand to hit again, so frightened Bubba hugged his head and shrank up.

   But old Taylor's raised arm didn't go down, because Winters reached out and grabbed his wrist.

   Sergeant Taylor was surprised to find that the warrant officer, who didn't look very strong, was unexpectedly strong. His arm was caught by him as if it was clamped by iron clamps, and he couldn't move.

   "I asked him to answer, he did nothing wrong, there is no need for corporal punishment." After speaking, Winters let go of his hand, and Taylor's right arm regained freedom.

   "Isn't he 'disrespectful'? According to military regulations, he has to eat three whips." Tyler glared at Bubba, lowered his head and said to Warrant Officer Montagne: "But it's fine if you don't care."

   "He's right, I'm indeed the 'Twenty Commander' now." Winters couldn't help laughing again.

   "Uh... can't say that..." Sergeant Taylor was at a loss for words.

  Winters patted Tyler's arm and smiled: "Montagne, Warrant Officer, Sir [Sir], whatever you think is convenient, I don't care."

   "I'm all confused... Should I still call you sir?" Bubba, who caused this little disturbance, didn't feel the slightest bit of self-consciousness, and said with a smirk while touching the back of his head.

   Ten Commander Tyler gave Bubba a furious look, and Bubba lowered his head again when he saw Tyler's eyes.

   "The food is here! The food is here!" Excited shouts approached from a distance, and there were crackling footsteps in the corridor.

   Private Dan ran out of the corridor with a small iron pot in both hands and three cloth bags hanging around his neck.

   The night guards guarding the cannons have to keep watch from just dark until dawn, with a time span of nearly twelve hours. I have to rest during the day and can't eat lunch, so I eat an extra meal at night.

  The seven hungry soldiers in the ten-man team quickly took the iron pot from Dan's hand.

   Lift the lid of the pot, and there is hot soup inside.

  Bubba, whose stomach was growling, reached into the bag impatiently without waiting for Dan to take the cloth bag off his neck.

   "Wait! Don't touch it! Don't take it wrong!" Dan tightly protected the cloth bag and pushed Bubba away. After opening the sacks and identifying them carefully for a while, he handed two of the sacks to Bubba: "These are our breads."

  Bubba grabbed the cloth bag, pulled out a face-sized brown bread, and hurriedly broke off a piece and stuffed it into his mouth to chew.

   This "pie-shaped" bread, weighing almost a pound, was a staple of Veneta's soldiers. Unlike the dishes and soups made by the soldiers themselves, the bread is uniformly baked by bakers in the Corps Logistics Office and placed on a per-head basis.

  The main ingredients of military ration bread are equal proportions of wheat, barley and rye, and the auxiliary ingredients are salt and water.

   Winters had tasted the ration bread and it was a little sour. But in fact, because wheat flour accounts for one-third, it is already a very good meal, and only the self-employed farmers and above can afford it.

  Many boys from poor families tasted this bread [Maslin] for the first time when they became soldiers.

  The other soldiers also shared a piece of bread each, scooped some soup into their own cups, and ate the soup one bite at a time.

  Dan handed the last bag to Winters: "Sir, this is yours."

   "Oh, thank you." Winters took the bag and, like the soldiers around him, found a stone and sat down.

   As soon as he sat down, the soldiers of Taylor's Ten did not speak.

   Not only did the officers in the Veneta army eat differently from the soldiers, in fact the officers would not eat with the soldiers at all. There are no officers and soldiers here, only officers and soldiers are different.

   So seeing Warrant Officer Montagne sitting next to him, the soldiers of the Taylor Ten were dumbfounded. They looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

   "Eat? Why don't you eat?" Winters felt very strange when he saw that everyone was not moving.

  The soldiers all looked at Ten Commander Taylor. Old Taylor said to Winters embarrassedly: "Uh, you... shouldn't you go to the officers' club for dinner?"

   "The officers' clubhouse?" Winters said with tears in his eyes. "There are cannons on the side and the city wall in front. Where is the officers' clubhouse?"

   "Then you shouldn't sit and eat with the soldiers." Tyler didn't know what to say: "This...this...this is not good."

   "What's not good?"

   "Anyway... it's not good anyway."

  The meaningless answer gave Winters a headache, and he asked bluntly: "Come on, tell me, where did the officer in charge of the night watch dine?"

   "Centurion Charles returned to the camp for dinner." Sergeant Taylor answered honestly.

   "What? Back to the barracks? It's almost two kilometers each time..." Winters frowned and asked: "The star officer goes back to eat, what should I do here?"

   "Anyway, Lieutenant Charles is going back to the main camp for dinner." Taylor replied as a matter of course: "Just leave it to us here."

   Winters understood what was going on, and murmured a few words in his heart. Charles might have dared to go AWOL, but Winters had no intention of learning.

He stretched out his hand to take out his own food, and said in a relaxed tone: "Lieutenant Charles is diligent, I'm lazy. It's too far to go back, I'm too lazy to go back, so I ate here. You eat and drink normally, if you feel uncomfortable, just treat me as non-existent. All right."

  Since the star duty officer said so, Sergeant Taylor didn't say anything more.

   He saluted, sat back in his seat, and began to break the hard bread into his mouth.

   The other soldiers saw the Ten Commander start and continued to chew, they were already too hungry.

   Winters has two paper packets in his bag. He unwrapped the paper bag, and one had beef in it—a lot of cows died of "tiredness" while moving the cannon.

   If it wasn't for the need for livestock to move the cannons away in the future, the officers would be able to "tired" all the remaining cattle to death at the rate of two a day.

   Another paper bag contained bread, not the coarse bread the soldiers ate, but white bread.

  Remove the outer bran of the wheat, and then go through a fine grinding and sieving more than three times to obtain refined white flour.

  Wheat itself is the best and most expensive grain, and the refining process loses a lot of quality, so not only does white bread taste better, it has a very strong symbolic meaning in itself.

   The movements in Bubba's hands and mouth, who were gobbling up, suddenly stopped. He stared at the beef and white bread in Warrant Officer Montagne's hands, his Adam's apple turned up and down, and he swallowed hard.

  Other soldiers saw the beef and white bread in the hands of Warrant Officer Montagne. They just took a deep look, then quickly looked away, silently bowing their heads and chewing the grits in their mouths harder.

   "Look at what! Eat your own!" Ten Commander Taylor scolded with a sullen face.

  Bubba hurriedly lowered his head when he heard the words, swallowed again, broke a large piece of the flatbread in his hand and stuffed it into his mouth.

   Seeing the scene in front of him, Winters had a little bit of understanding why Lieutenant Charles wanted to go back to the main camp for dinner.

   Thirty-one years ago, the combined forces of the provinces attacked and killed Count Arlean the "Butcher", and the provinces became republics.

   Twenty-six years ago, the Allied Forces of the Republics repelled Richard the "madman", and the Cenas Alliance was established.

The sages proudly declared, "We have to be independent because of the self-evident truth that no part should be superior to another in terms of rights as 'humans'. If one considers himself more than some Noble, then he agrees that he is inferior to other people."

   At least that's what Winters learned in history class, and Winters is also willing to believe that the martyrs ended the emperor's rule for this noble goal.

   But Bubba, who was smirking just now, buried his head deeply in his shoulders. The originally pleasant meal time has also become silent and restrained.

   Looking at all this, Winters suddenly felt that the food in his hand was a little hard to swallow.

  Bubba ate while secretly looking up at the fine bread and meat in the hands of Warrant Officer Montagne. Take a look at the fine bread and take a bite of the coarse bread, as if eating the coarse bread in your hand as fine bread.

   Winters directly reached out and took Bubba's grits over, and Bubba was startled and froze in place.

"Is it so delicious? Seeing that you eat so deliciously makes me want to try it too." Winters broke half of Bubba's rough bread, and broke most of his own bread and gave it back to Bubba. Ba: "Don't say I stole your bread! I'm changing it with you, not robbing it."

   It wasn't until Winters shoved the bread into Bubba's hand that he came to his senses. But he was still stunned, giggling all the time. But he didn't move his mouth, just looked at the bread in his hand, and then at Ten Commander Taylor.

   Sergeant Taylor nodded sullenly.

  Bubba hurriedly stuffed the white bread into his mouth like a treasure, chewing with joy on his face.

   He was too greedy, he stuffed too much bread into his mouth in one breath, and was choked up and coughed, but he was still smirking when he coughed.

  The rough bread that has been sitting for a few days in the mouth **** all the moisture in the mouth at once. Winters smiled wryly. "Any extra cups? Get me some soup."

   "Use mine." Sergeant Taylor turned out his cup with a blank expression, wiped it with a clean handkerchief, filled a cup of hot soup and handed it to Winters.

   "You don't have the soup for free, I'll replace it with the side dishes." Winters vigorously crushed the cooked beef shank in the other paper bag and added it to the soup.

   The other soldiers in the ten-man team were also stunned, looking at the pot, but no one touched the spoon.

   Old Taylor sighed and nodded again.

  The other soldiers couldn't wait to get the soup and scrambled to get the beef in the pot.

Private Dan and Winters, who were in charge of cooking tonight, said: "I have long thought that the rumors were false. I have delivered meals so many times, but you have never said 'thank you' to me. You can see that Get along well."

  Winters originally thought that Dan was just here to flatter, but the more he thought about it, the more wrong: "Huh? Wait, what rumors are you talking about..."

   "Nothing, nothing." Dan San smiled and walked away.

Bubba drank a big mouthful of broth and said happily: "I have fine bread to eat and broth to drink. I haven't eaten so well for a long time. How good is Montagne, sir, why did you before? To scare me?"

   noticed another breakthrough, and Winters immediately asked Bubba: "What are you scaring you about? You and me talk about it carefully."

   "Nothing, nothing." The other soldiers quickly stopped between Winters and Bubba, and Old Taylor took a piece of bread and stuffed it into Bubba's mouth.

   was obviously not a good word, but Winters wanted to hear it even more. He reached out and grabbed Sergeant Taylor: "Don't gag him, you let him speak."

"...Yeah? Why didn't you let me say it?" Everyone went to cover Bubba's mouth, but he dodged right and left just to speak: "Sir Montagne... They say you are especially cruel and like to behead your head. , call you a 'headhunter'... and call you a 'blood man', say you know the black magic of wizards..."

  The other soldiers were in a hurry and tried their best to stop Bubba's mouth.

  Bubba struggled to say "…and, and something else…"

   "Okay! Stop it!" Winters shouted angrily.

The soldiers of the   Taylor Ten Team were frightened and dared not move.

   "Let him finish." Winters looked at Bubba: "Tell me anything else."

Bubba said with a smirk: "They said that you were especially deadly in the war, and the last centurion you brought with you ended up with only four living people... They were all lying to me, they all thought I was stupid, but I can tell the difference. Who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.

   You are so good, how could you? "

   Winters felt a tightness in his chest, and it took more than ten seconds to calm down. He was too lazy to explain, and did not want to explain to these people in front of him.

   "Sir, that's not what we meant..." Old Taylor hurried out to round up the scene.

Winters looked at Sergeant Taylor, then at the other soldiers, and said calmly, "The rumors are true. My centurion only survived four, I've chopped off the heads of my enemies, and I do know wizards. of black magic."

  The atmosphere dropped to freezing point.

   "How could it be? I don't believe it." Bubba said naively: "You are a good person."

   "Maybe, maybe not. War only needs soldiers who obey orders, good people and bad people are irrelevant." Winters was a little lonely, but quickly returned to his usual demeanor: "Continue to eat, the soup is almost cold."

   Everyone silently sat back to their original places to eat.

   After finishing this "dinner", Winters arranged the night patrol shift for the ten-man team, then left the post and went to another ten-man team.

   But Winters thinks it's best to check the siren in front of the gun emplacement before going there.

   The position on the east side, dozens of meters away, flickered with fire from time to time, that is, the "Xi-1" artillery group was firing at night.

In the darkness in front of   , the city walls of the tower city are looming.

  Wandering under the night sky, staring at the stars, Winters' pace became light. The cool breeze took away the heat of the day, and for the first time since he landed on Scarlet Sulphur Island, he felt a little at ease.

   The first thought that jumped into his mind was "I don't know what Anna is doing now? Are you looking at this starry sky like me? What are Kesha and Ella doing?"

The    siren was placed not far from the gun emplacement, and Winters arrived soon.

   It is said to be a siren, but it is actually just a simple trap composed of thin wires and bells. Simple, but effective, as long as you accidentally touch it, it will make a sound.

   However, Winters searched for a long time and couldn't find the location of the tripwire. He almost thought he was going to the wrong place, but after comparing the markers, he confirmed that he was not going wrong.

   Winters' breathing began to accelerate involuntarily.

   He fell to the ground, took out a copper rod, and concentrated on using the copper rod as the casting material to activate the light spell. Instead of casting spells at full strength, he maintains a minimal but uninterrupted mana output.

  The cold green light radiated from the copper rod, and through the dim light, Winters carefully searched for clues.

   Finally, he found the tripwire—the tripwire that was broken.

   followed by the second and third broken tripwires.

  Winters methodically collected the copper rod and drew his pistol.

   It took thirteen hours since I wrote more than one o'clock yesterday, and I originally wanted to write down and finish the events of the night. But I really want to sleep, and now I have the same feeling of severe hypoxia and fatigue that I used to cross the plateau, causing tinnitus, sluggish brain operation, and time speeding up (probably I think it’s only been a minute). , in fact, it has been a minute and a half) So just break the chapter at 6642 words.

   And I guess the typos in this chapter will be record-breaking, because people can't see the typos even when they are tired, but I have tried my best to check...

Thanks to the book friends who have voted for the recommendation before, thank you book friends, please call me Pleasant Goat, black computer accessories, writersblock, black computer accessories, Ami, Dawn in a Dream, Tianshui has a beautiful woman, Yuan Hongjian, the same week as the world, sky lens recommendation ticket. Thank you for the monthly pass of Shuyoutian Lens, thank you all.

   (end of this chapter)