Iron Powder and Spellcasters

   Chapter 36 Home

   Later in the doctor's madness, Winters inexplicably took a small bag of jingling money from the smiling customs boss, and the boss pinned a third-class customs service medal on his chest.

   In the out-of-tune march played by the improvised orchestra, Winters and Budd carried Major Moritz on a stretcher and were taken out of the Anti-Smuggling Department prison.

   The heavy prison gate behind him slammed shut with a bang, and thirty-three warrant officers and a seriously wounded major were thrown at the gate of the prison.

  The matter is solved like this?

  Where are we going now?

What about Major General Layton?

   The apprentice officers stared at each other.

   "Anyway, go get some carriages first! Get the major back to the War Office." Winters raised his suggestion loudly. Ning Yisi goes in, Mo Yisi stops, it’s better to find a car than to stand stupidly. Can’t everyone take turns carrying the major back to the Army Headquarters?

   His contemporaries obviously felt that this statement made sense. If someone is willing to take the lead, things will be easy to handle. Immediately there were several strong men looking for the carriage.

   "Hey! I said why did the **** from customs give us money?" Andre slapped his thigh heavily: "Emotionally, this is the taxi money for us!"

The location of the    Anti-Smuggling Company is very remote, unlike the driver who is always waiting on the side of the pier. The warrant officers managed to stop two serious carriages, and from a nearby farm they obtained two carts pulled by mules and a donkey cart that pulled hay.

   But when allocating seats, no one wants to take a donkey cart. The mule cart has at least a small carriage. This donkey cart has two wheels on a wooden board, and there is no cover.

   Everyone is an officer anyway, so you can't take a warrant officer as a cadre, right? It's a shame to ride this little donkey cart.

   "Come on guys, don't linger." Winters said helplessly, "I'm taking the major in a donkey cart, and the carriage won't fit this stretcher anyway."

The warrant officers happily went to grab their seats. Major Moritz, who was still unconscious, was clearly arranged by Winters without knowing it. come up.

   "Follow you to take the carriage, this donkey carriage really loses your share." Deep down, Winters, like his contemporaries, also thought it was a shame to ride a donkey carriage.

   But who made him ask for a car just now? If you come out of this head, you have to suffer this hardship.

   "I'm from the United Province." Bud laughed: "This is not my hometown, and no one in Hailan City knows me."

   "Alas." Winters sighed: "But this is my hometown."

--Dividing line--

The guards outside the gate of the Veneta Army Headquarters watched the four big and one small five animal-drawn carts parked at the gate of the army headquarters. They were just about to step forward to reprimand these ignorant hillbilly coachmen when they saw a large group of people dressed in Young men in officer uniforms streamed out of the carriages like conjurers.

  In this era, things like epaulettes and armbands have not yet been invented. The way to identify soldiers and officers is to look at the shape of the clothes, while the way to identify officers and higher-ranking officers is to look at the materials and decorations of the clothes.

   Therefore, although the cadets of the army officer cadets are wearing summer cadets, they are also formal officers' uniforms.

   Several guards did not dare to neglect, and immediately assigned one person to report to the headquarters building.

The Army Headquarters was also rioted by these juniors who were suddenly released. At first, everyone vaguely felt that this matter could not be done well. In the end, I am afraid that there will be another big battle. Some fighters are already secretly preparing. Guys out.

  No one expected the customs to play so high, and it turned out to be put down. Seeing that the customs are so pragmatic that they don't even want to face, the army headquarters is quite shocked.

   But fortunately, the army officers were very efficient and dealt with this emergency quickly and properly.

Major    Moritz was taken over by paramedics.

   Warrant Officers were taken to complete the check-in process and registered.

   The warrant officers who reported in were divided into two groups. The warrant officers who did not live in Hailan City were taken to the officers’ club for placement, while the warrant officers from Hailan City completed the reporting process and went back to their respective homes to find their mothers.

   Winters and Bud were temporarily separated, and Bud went to live in the officers' club. At the fourth junction outside the gate of the Army Headquarters, he and Andre also said goodbye temporarily, and each set foot on their way home.

   Six years later, the city has changed a lot. The bumpy old streets are paved with new stone, and many of the shops and buildings he remembers have changed their signs, but there are always some things that have not changed that can be used as road signs.

   Winters followed the memory to find his way home.

   When he opened the courtyard gate and stood in front of the familiar, beautiful, single-story, two-story stone building, he suddenly felt a little panic for no reason.

   He took a deep breath and knocked on the clasp on the door.

   "Who is it?" A crisp female voice came from far away from the room.

  Although the voice changed, Winters still recognized the voice, and a smile appeared on his face: "It's me."

  The door was opened a crack, a small head stuck out, and a pair of big eyes that looked like Uncle Winters blinked at him: "Brother! You're back!"

   The door was slammed open, and the girl rushed out and hung it on Winters' neck. She turned back and shouted into the room, "Mom! My brother is back!"

   Winters was again frightened by this sudden intimacy, and he didn't know how to respond awkwardly, so he gently rubbed the girl's hair.

"Oh, let go, let your brother in." A dignified and generous 30th-generation woman with a high nose and deep eyes, black hair and phoenix eyebrows, hurried out and pulled the girl from Winters' neck. pulled down.

   But she couldn't help shedding tears, stretched out her arms and hugged her precious nephew tightly.

   She grabbed Winters by the shoulders, pushed him away, and spent two seconds scrutinizing Winters carefully. He drew Wintes closer and kissed Wintes on the cheek. The more she cried, the more fierce she became. She couldn't even speak clearly, and she couldn't stop muttering: "But I'm back, I'm back."

  Winters now feels like a girl's rag doll, being manipulated like a puppet, he replied with a grin, "Auntie, I'm back."

   For normal people, family is a vague gender existence, and people rarely use beauty and ugliness to describe family members. Handsome men and women walking down the road may attract attention, but people rarely look closely at the faces of their family members.

   Even because he is with his family all day and night, it is too familiar and too unfamiliar. The faces of the family members are in their minds, but many people cannot accurately describe them.

   Therefore, Winters will not look at these two women in terms of beauty and ugliness. Although he feels at a loss now, this is just a normal reaction of adults being treated as children. He only feels at ease around them.

   "Mom, let go and let my brother in." The girl pulled her mother's arm in dissatisfaction, saving Winters from her aunt's naked strangulation of death.

   "Yes, yes, look at me like this." Aunt Winters wiped her tears and smiled to help Winters carry her luggage.

   Winters certainly couldn't ask a woman to help him carry things, and the aunt did not force her to lead Winters into the door. The girl grabbed Winters' left arm and hung it on Winters.

   This older woman is Kesha Serbiati, Winters' aunt. The teenage girl was Winters' cousin, Elizabeth Serbia, whose uncle and aunt named their daughter after Winters' mother.

   After entering the house, Winters saw a sturdy **** cat coming out of the living room.

   Ocean blue has a warm climate, so cats are petite in order to dissipate heat. However, this orange cat has a well-developed bone mass, high shoulders and thick legs, and a short stature, but it looks different from the local cats.

The big cat's tail stood upright, and the tip of its tail was bent into a hook. It walked slowly from the room to Winters' feet in a spirited manner, rubbing its cheeks against Winters' trouser legs recklessly and purring. snoring sound.

"General!" Winters scratched the top of the cat's skull, and then brushed the fur on the cat's back. Just when he was about to reach out to touch the fat on the big cat's stomach again, the big cat shook his head indifferently and walked again. Walking away in eight-character steps.

   "The general still recognizes me." Winters said happily to his aunt and cousin without the slightest sense of being despised by the cat.

   "How could I not recognize you?"

   "Where's the little general?"

   Enter the door, walk through a short corridor, turn right and you will find the living room. Speaking of the devil, the devil is here, just as Winters arrived in the living room and sat down, a civet cat that was smaller than a big **** cat ran out screaming "baabaa".

   "Little General!"

The raccoon cat jumped directly onto Winters with a kick on its hind legs. The claws pierced through the clothes, causing Winters to take a breath of cold air. Winters hurriedly hugged the little general with his right hand, otherwise the raccoon cat would definitely die if he tried harder. Scratched out a few bloodstains.

   The little general blew and rubbed his cheek against Winters' collar, licked Winters' chin, and scratched Winters with his barbed tongue.

   "Haha, why is the little general so enthusiastic?" Winters looked at his aunt helplessly: "But the claws should be cut."

   "I miss you so much." Auntie replied lovingly.

   "Go away, you." The girl unceremoniously grabbed the tanuki by the back of the neck and lifted it up, and put the tanuki on the ground.

  The raccoon cat refused to give up, and kept circling around Winters' feet, barking endlessly, like a chatterbox. Instead of "meowing" like other cats, it makes short "baa" sounds.

"Look, look, he's really a big boy." Kesha sat on the right of Winters, holding Winters' right hand in both hands and said sentimentally: "This eyebrow really has the shadow of your mother, see Elizabeth (referring to Winters' mother) will be delighted that you are an adult."

   This is the second time Winters has heard his elders say who he is like when he comes home, and his feelings are the same?

   Winters was not as sentimental as his aunt. He smiled and said to her aunt, "Really? The lieutenant colonel also said that I was like my father."

"Humph!" Kesha stared and raised her eyebrows: "How come? Look at your nose, hair color, eyes, this is the bloodline of the Granach family. I'll find you a portrait of your grandfather, You look exactly like your grandfather was when he was young. The lieutenant colonel is just talking! I'll have to take care of him when he comes back in the evening."

Lieutenant Colonel    is the name of Major General Antonio Seretti at home, because he retorted aggrievedly when he was arguing with his aunt, "I'm also a lieutenant colonel anyway, you have to give me some face".

   Since then, Kesha has called her husband as Lieutenant Colonel, and forced her nephew and daughter to follow suit, so that Winters subconsciously called out "Lieutenant Colonel" when she saw her uncle in the customs prison.

"Ella, you go take your brother to put down the luggage first." Kesha remembered that Winters had just returned home, and asked with concern: "Are you hungry? There must be nothing to eat at the customs, right? I'm going to cook for you."

   After saying that, she stood up and walked to the kitchen.

   "No, Auntie." Winters quickly stopped Auntie: "I'm not hungry, I'm just a little tired now and want to sleep for a while."

   "How can you not eat? I'll make some snacks, soon." Kesha ignored Winters' advice and walked to the kitchen.

In the military school, Winters was the third-grade squad leader; in front of the troopers and civilians, he was an officer; in the Skua, he was a warrior who dared to jump gang; in this same period of Veneta, he was vaguely a little bit. The meaning of the leader.

   But at home, his family status is still a child, slightly higher than his sister and the little general, and far lower than the big general. So he could only watch helplessly as his aunt walked through the door to the kitchen.

"Brother, I'll take you back to your room." The girl dragged Winters up from the soft chair in the reception room: "After you left, my mother asked the servants to clean it every day, which is cleaner than when you didn't go to school. "

   Leaving the living room, walked through another corridor, went up the stairs to the second floor, Elizabeth smiled and pushed open the familiar door, and the dusty memory was opened along with the door.

   There is a carbonized mark on the wooden floor, where Winters played with fire as a child to burn in the black. The wooden swords, one large and one small, that he and his uncle used to learn swordsmanship, were still leaning against the corner, with a dart board hanging above. The bed was covered with a clean white cloth, the desk was wiped clean,

   "Right? It's cleaner than when you were here, right? It's me who is in charge of checking every day." Elizabeth took the credit proudly, but Winters was so engrossed in her memories that she heard nothing.

   Winters stroked the familiar old objects and finally opened the wardrobe.

   He just opened it casually, wanting to see if the clothes he wore before were still there. Unexpectedly, there are five or six new clothes hanging neatly in the closet, and they are all adult sizes.

"Your aunt did it for you." Elizabeth's voice came from behind, and she complained to Winters: "Your aunt asked you to measure the size and write it back and you wouldn't, so she had to do it herself. I estimated the size and made it. After you leave, I will make it every year, and throw it away every year. After I finish it, I dare not send it to you, so I just put it here, saying that I am afraid that you will have no clothes to wear when you go home. "

"I can only wear cadet uniforms in the military school, and it is useless to write back the size. Three sets of cadet uniforms are enough." Winters felt a warm current in his heart, and he gently closed the wardrobe door, he smiled. He said to his sister, "It's you, do you still have a tutor at home?"

   The girl shook her hair: "I've long passed the age of having a tutor to teach. I'm now studying painting with Mrs. Anguissola."

   "Learn to draw?"

   "Yes. Well, the lieutenant colonel just couldn't see that I was idle anyway, so he must find something to do for me. Mom is now sighing and thinking about how to marry me every day."

   Winters laughed when he heard the words: "After all, you are also a big girl."

   "But I'm not worried." Elizabeth rolled her eyes a few times and snickered: "Anyway, with you on, as long as you're not married, it's not me who is the most stressed."

   The girl's sharp counterattack made Winters dumbfounded. He shyly put the luggage on the table and took out the things one by one.

   First, some daily gadgets. Then came the more expensive parts: his spellbooks, some spellcasting materials he smuggled out of spell classes, his military academy manuscripts, class notes, and several actual printed books.

   As a digression, it has been more than ten years since the printing press was introduced to Veneta, but Winters in the military school, like the clergy in the past missionary schools, mainly used manuscripts and copied books by himself. Because even the books made by the printing process are very expensive, and they are mainly used for things like printed books that are not worry about to sell.

   However, this is a big step forward compared to the past years, because the progress of papermaking has improved the quality of paper and lowered the price. In the past, theologians used to rent books page by page. Note that they rented books, not bought them. The price of a book was worth a craftsman’s annual income. So not only is it expensive to be a priest, it is even more expensive for a priest to go to seminary.

  It was the improvement of papermaking and the introduction of printing technology that allowed the Alliance Army to imitate the structure of the seminary at a lower cost and establish a school without tuition to train officers. It is precisely because the Army Military Academy does not charge tuition fees that it has a strong attraction to a large number of aspiring young people from poor backgrounds.

   After the digression is over, let’s go back to Winters.

   After taking out all the other small items, Winters finally took out his satchel from the deepest part.

   "Brother, is there blood on this cloth bag?" Elizabeth covered her mouth and exclaimed.

   "No." Winters replied calmly, "It's red wine."

   This satchel was the satchel used by Winters for the night shift when he encountered the female thief. After encountering the female thief, Winters was led to put out the fire, and then lost consciousness and was carried on the Skull.

   So this satchel has never been washed, and it is covered with blood from Winters, which was splashed when fighting and rubbed when holding a whistle.

   "Really?" The girl was skeptical, she wasn't stupid. But his brother's tone was not flustered, not like a fake.

   Winters opened the bag and carefully took out the dagger from the female thief. After the gang, he put the dagger back in the bag.

   Elizabeth's eyes lit up, and she reached for the dagger: "What is this? It's so beautiful."

  Winters was taken aback, raised the dagger high, and held it out of his sister's reach: "You can be careful, it's a knife."

  Winters is tall and has long arms, so the girl couldn't reach the dagger, so she simply hugged her brother's left arm and acted like a spoiled child: "Just show it to me. I'll just see, I don't want it, okay?"

   "Okay." Winters was helpless: "I'll show it to you, be careful, it's sharp."

   This dagger was either stuffed into the bag by Winters before, or was found and used to stab people, so this was the first time Winters had carefully examined the captured weapon.

  The blade of this dagger is about twenty centimeters long and **** wide. It looks like a dagger, but it has no guards or a sword grid, and it goes straight up and down.

The    sword might originally have patterns, but because it was used by Winters to release the Lighting Technique, the blade turned red and black, and any patterns were covered.

   But because of this, the red and black sword body has a strange beauty.

The hilt of the dagger also has no decoration. A certain kind of leather wraps the wooden hilt, and three strands of a thin wire made of silver metal are twisted into one strand, and are wrapped around the dagger hilt at a finger interval. The end of the dagger hilt is a rounded Weighted ball.

   Winters speculated in his heart that the metal wire on the dagger's handle might be silver, and even if it wasn't silver, just looking at the drawing technique behind the winding of these three strands of metal wire was not something that ordinary craftsmen could do.

  Although the blade can't be seen now, when he stabs someone on the boat, the dagger enters the human body as smoothly as a hot knife cuts butter, and the steel mouth should be the same.

   Judging from all kinds of evidence, this should be a pretty good dagger. I can’t think that this female thief is very interested in the guy who eats.

   "This knife is so beautiful." Taking advantage of her brother's fascination, Elizabeth took the dagger and gestured in the air.

  Winters watched his sister clumsily wield the sharp weapon, and felt terrified. He was afraid that she would make a hole in himself, and said repeatedly: "Ella! Be careful, this dagger is very fast."

   Actually, it's better that Winters didn't say it. The more he said that the dagger was sharp, the more Elizabeth wanted it.

  Winters did not realize from a male perspective that this dagger was originally used by women. Although the style is simple, it is better than it is small and exquisite and exquisite workmanship, which naturally attracts the attention of girls. Winters "colored" it again with Illumination, and Elizabeth couldn't put it down even more.

   Elizabeth stopped when she heard the words, she blinked her eyes, and obediently returned the dagger to her brother.

   Then she picked up Winters' left arm and began to cheat: "Brother, can you give me this knife? Okay? The security in Hailan City is very bad recently, so give me self-defense?"

   "I'm afraid you will hurt yourself."

   "I have used the knife in the kitchen, I have also used the paper cutter, and I have never hurt myself." Elizabeth was articulate and quick-witted, and Winters could not argue with her since she was a child.

   "The design purpose is different, this dagger is really dangerous, you won't hurt yourself easily with it." Could it be dangerous? Winters calculated it in his heart. This dagger took three lives in his own hands, let alone in the hands of its previous owner. The most murderous thing in this house may be the gadgets.

   "Then you can teach me how to use it."

  Winters was at a loss for words. He only loved his sister. He couldn't say something like "Why do girls learn this stuff?".

   He sighed, and finally was defeated: "Okay, here it is. But this dagger has no scabbard right now. I'll give it to you when I make a scabbard, okay?"

   "Isn't that the scabbard? I'll find a piece of leather and sew one out." Elizabeth cheered, her goal has been achieved.

   "Alright then, you've made the scabbard, come and get it from me, okay?"

   "You're the best!" Elizabeth slapped Winters on her cheek, and rushed to her room to sew her scabbard.

  Winters shook his head, the younger sister in his memory was still dragging her nose to fight with him, the little brat who cried and cried at every turn. I don't know when it became like this...

sharp? Not quite right.

  Empathetic? Not quite right either.

   Very good at persuading people? Not quite right.

   Anyway, it’s different, it’s really the eighteen changes of the female university.

   As he emptied his satchel, a small white silk package fell out. Winters took the small package and thought about it for a while before he remembered that it was also the stuff of the thief.

   But Winters was very tired now and didn't feel in the mood to care about what was inside, so he threw the small package back on the table, turned around and tore off the white cloth covering the bed, and fell onto the bed as if he had lost all his strength.

  Close your eyes.

sleep.

  …

  …

  Can't sleep yet!

   Curiosity triumphed over sleepiness, and he still wanted to know what was inside this little package.

   Winters abruptly got up, walked to the desk, and unwrapped the white silk wrap.

The contents of    are exposed, like a small notebook?

  The front and back of the notebook leather is yellow, it feels like some kind of leather, maybe cowhide?

   There is a buckle on the side.

   Winters unbuckled and opened the notebook expectantly…

  …

  …

What? ?

Blank?

   He turned the notebook over and over again, only to find a small letter L in the lower left corner of the last page.

  L?

What the **** is   L?

Winters threw the notebook back on the desk with a self-deprecating thought, "Warrant Officer Montagne, what are you expecting? A treasure map? A big secret? Some kind of indescribable novel? The thief. Maybe you don't even know the words."

   He sighed and fell back on the bed.

   He hasn't had a good rest for two days.

  After the spirit was relaxed, tiredness came to the door.

   On this familiar bed, all the pain in his body was healed.

   Drowsiness struck him.

   He fell asleep.

  …

   Author's Note:

  While it is quite normal to marry a cousin in this day and age, I promise there will be no orthopedic content in this article. I wanted to write independent, intelligent, self-respecting, and respectable female characters, but it was essentially a man's story, a story of steel, gunpowder, and magic.

  Elisabeth Serti is the younger sister of Winters Montagne. They grew up together. Although they are cousins, they are better than compatriots. They only have family love, and there will never be any affection between men and women.

   [Thanks to Social Justice Pharaoh and book friends 20181013204343295 for their recommendation tickets

   】

   [Before there was no papermaking and printing, the price of books was astonishingly expensive, ordinary people had almost no need to read, and the main consumers and copyists of books were clergy]

   According to Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, Christopher Dyer, Cambridge University Press, 1989 this paper

   [In 1397 Oxford University bought 126 books with an average of 77 pages costing 113 pounds, where the pound refers to a pound of 92.5% pure silver. The average price of a book is about 0.830 pounds of silver, and the quality represented by a pound has not changed much since then, roughly 376.482 grams of silver in today’s definition of a pound. ]

   [Converted at the current silver price, a book is close to RMB 1,500. Considering the purchasing power of the precious metal at the time, that was a huge sum.

   The low price of silver today is due to the fact that silver has almost become an industrial raw material due to large-scale mining, losing its currency properties]

   [Even when movable type was introduced in Europe, the price of books remained high because the audience was too small. As I said before, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many master swordsmen went bankrupt for printing sword manuals, and even embezzled and hanged for printing books]

   (end of this chapter)