"Get it!"
Winters gave each of Vashka, Samkin and another veteran Tamas an arrow.
The arrow has a numerical serial number engraved on it.
These three men were his chosen captains of ten.
Winters originally wanted to organize his staff according to their origins, but he realized that this would not be worth the effort.
So he broke up all the soldiers into formations and appointed veterans as captains of ten.
The other three people he trusted most: Pierre stayed with him as aide-de-camp; Angelou and Charles also stayed with him as orderlies and gendarmes.
"The arrow is your token. You are not allowed to break it. If it is broken, everyone will be whipped." Winters solemnly admonished the captains: "You are also not allowed to get separated. If one soldier gets separated, the rest of the soldiers will sit together!"
The three newly promoted ten-captains nodded solemnly.
At this moment, Winters' face did not have the usual gentle expression, only murderous look:
"No noise during marching and fighting! Violators will be whipped! Anyone who disturbs the enemy will be beheaded!"
"If an enemy breaks through your encirclement, you are not allowed to pursue them. Just continue to encircle them and drive the remaining enemies to the predetermined location."
"Try to live! Don't die!"
After stating the discipline, Winters took out four maps, three small and one large.
The small map was distributed to the captain of ten, and the large map was spread out in front of everyone.
Winters took out three more horse-head chess pieces and began to explain the route to the ten captains.
Vashka, Samutin and Tamas stared blankly, listening in a daze and nodding their heads.
Winters suddenly noticed something. He stared at the three of them and asked coldly: "Can you three... know how to read a map?"
Vashika continued to nod out of habit.
Winters raised his leg and gave him a kick. He was furious and said, "You are so stupid! You even held the map backwards!"
Vashika didn't dare to dodge, so he was hit hard by the boot, and hurriedly turned the map upside down.
Seeing his friend being dealt with, Angelou covered his mouth and snickered.
"Brother Red taught you the grammar and spelling rules." Winters looked at Angelou again: "How much do you remember?"
"Ah...ah?" Angelou stuttered and replied, "I almost forgot."
Winters groaned from the deepest part of his chest. He was in pain, just as Ned Smith had been in pain.
He slapped his forehead and then his thigh: "After dinner, all come to my place!"
"What... for?" Pierre asked cautiously.
"Attend class."
…
At dawn, the sun is about to appear
Vashika led his eleven soldiers through the forest, forming a loose line.
All of them were carrying pig-hunting spears, tapping the shafts of their spears against the tree trunks as they walked.
The length of the pig hunting spear is less than two meters and does not need to be used in formation. There are two side branches at the tip of the spear to prevent it from being pierced too deep at one time and unable to be pulled out.
The wild beasts in the forest heard the noise they made from a distance and fled.
In the distance, the same slapping sound could be vaguely heard.
Winters, Pierre and others were guarding the perimeter. They were so angry that they went crazy: "Where are Samkin and his team? Where did they go?!"
Pierre, Charles and Angelou didn't know either, and they waited anxiously.
Winters' troops are visibly degenerating from [farming and settlement mode] to [fishing and hunting mode].
Mainly because he had nothing to eat, Ellen Mitchell helped him raise some food, but it was far from enough.
Winters couldn't just sit back and reap the rewards; his troops had to be involved in the production.
Given the natural conditions of the newly cultivated land, the most immediate method of production was "hunting and gathering."
It's not that Winters wants to return to primitive society, he really has no choice.
Living in the Hart tribes for three months gave him a deeper understanding of different forms of social models.
As a branch of the Hed tribe, the Palatuan people gradually chose to make a living by farming. It’s not because farming is easy. On the contrary, farming is much more difficult than herding sheep.
Winters now has no choice but to take the easier path.
It was now July, the height of summer, not a particularly good hunting season.
Moreover, most of Winters' men were farmers in the past and had never made a living in hunting.
Fortunately, Winters and the veterans had accumulated some experience: during the Battle of Styx, Winters led his troops to hunt the beasts in the bridge forest.
Forget it, let's not mention it again. Winters' heart hurts when he mentions the Battle of Styx.
Now he misses the little hunter Bell very much.
If the little hunter was here, he could save a lot of trouble. But then he thought, if Bell came back, he would definitely bring the little guy back.
Winters now has a hard time feeding forty mouths, and the little guy's big mouth can easily eat him bankrupt.
He now only has forty people, so he cannot carry out large-scale hunting, but can only carry out small-scale hunting.
Therefore, he was very careful when selecting his target, and only aimed at a small group of horned deer in the forest northeast of Wolf Town.
The three groups separated into the forest an hour before sunrise, gathered and frightened the herd from three directions, and drove the antlered deer herd toward Winters' location.
The trap where Winters is located has been dug in advance, and Plato's most "brutal" spellcaster officer is personally in charge.
As long as the herd is in place, nothing will go wrong.
Unexpectedly, something went wrong - Samujin's group disappeared.
Winters was so angry that he didn't care about hiding, and shouted: "Angelou!"
"Yes!" the ponyboy responded reflexively.
"Go find Samujin! Tell him! If he doesn't come overdue again, let the deer go, and I will tie his entire team to a tree and whip him!"
"Yes!" Angelou jumped on the horse and galloped towards the direction where Samkin should appear.
The originally peaceful forest is now in turmoil.
Regardless of deer, deer, rabbit, or fox, the wild animals fled in panic and screamed one after another.
Angelou couldn't bear it, and he suddenly thought that before humans appeared in this forest, these animals had probably been living here for hundreds of thousands of years.
Just like this group of antlered deer, they have settled here much longer than humans.
But now that humans - including Angelo - have arrived, the deer herds are about to face their annihilation.
Angelou thought as he rode, feeling a surge of sadness in his heart.
"Is this the right thing to do?" he thought to himself.
…
"It tastes so good!" Angelou munched on the roasted deer ribs, with only one thought in his mind: "It tastes so good!"
The soldiers ate the poorer meat from the deer, such as offal.
The best meat, such as deer legs and belly, was traded with villagers for food.
The villagers didn't want the ribs, because they thought the meat was too little and it was cheap.
Samutin's group looked at the others eating and drinking with envy. They only got half of the meat from the other two groups, and it was all the worst meat.
Because they failed to arrive at the scheduled location on time, nearly half of the deer escaped from the gap in the encirclement.
Samkin was also very unlucky - they actually encountered a black bear halfway.
Not only did they only have half a portion of meat, they also had five whips written on each of them to see the effects.
A small campfire was boiling a pot of broth, and Winters and Pierre were making a "post-war" summary.
"What should I do with the leather?" Pierre held a small notebook and acted as a temporary scribe.
"Exchange it for food." Winters took a sip of venison soup.
"Where's the horn?"
"Keep it for now and see if you can take it to Gevaudan to sell it."
"Where's the deer blood?"
"Feed the dogs?" Winters suddenly remembered something and asked Pierre: "Didn't your father have four best terriers? Where are they?"
"I run wild and only come home occasionally."
"Find a way to re-tether it, maybe it will come in handy."
"good."
Adhering to the idea of wasting nothing, even deer bones Winters found a place to go:
There is an old man in Nanxin Village who can use bones to make glue. He is willing to give two "Malt" wheat in exchange for all the deer bones - Malte is an old-fashioned method and weighs about 13 kilograms.
Winters happily agreed, and the old man was also very happy.
Do the people of Wolf Town have any food? The answer is "yes".
People in Langzhen who had no food had already nailed their doors and windows and fled.
But it cannot be collected, or the cost of collection is too high.
Winters learned a story in a military school history class. During the War of Sovereignty, the Mad Emperor Richard IV ordered that farmers were strictly prohibited from feeding rye to pigs.
Crazy Richard may have thought that in this way he could stabilize the price of rye and thus purchase more grain.
But farmers still feed rye to pigs, secretly.
They would rather feed the pigs than have their grain taken away by the emperor's tax collectors.
The history teacher believes that this incident shows that the empire's economy is on the verge of collapse and that Madman Richard is destined to fail.
After being prompted by the old master, Winters had another perspective on the matter - the cost of forced taxation was too high, and the gain outweighed the loss.
Farmers hid grain in pig pens and under firewood piles, and the expropriation team rummaged through boxes and cabinets to find it. This is the current situation of newly cultivated land.
It’s not that farmers have no food, nor are they unwilling to provide food. What they want is exchange, equal exchange.
Maybe it's not just farmers, but everyone - Winters thought.
"I remember Mrs. Mitchell making sausages?" Winters asked Pierre, sipping venison soup.
Pierre was immersed in accounting: "Yes, my mother can do it."
"Can deer intestines be used to make sausage?" Winters asked curiously, and the Veneta people's business talent was shining: "If it can, those deer offal will have a place to go. Sausage is always more valuable than pure meat, right?" "
"This... I don't know." Pierre scratched his head: "I'll go back and ask my mother."
"good."
Pierre asked again: "There are still six deer alive, what should we do?"
"Keep it first? Can it be raised?" This is Winters' knowledge blind spot.
"I don't know." Pierre was also confused. He thought for a while and asked: "Why has no one raised me before?"
Winters pondered: "The Hurd people said that further west there is a tribe of Hurd savages who make a living by herding deer. They should be able to raise them, right? It would be a pity to kill them for meat. It would be nice if they could be raised in captivity."
"Shall I find someone to try?"
"good."
Winters was drinking venison soup when he suddenly felt something was wrong, and the Veneta people's "killer instinct" was frantically calling the police.
He jumped up and shouted at the other three campfires: "Who's cooking the barbecue?"
"I..." Angelou stood up at a loss, still holding the roasted deer rib in his hand.
"No roasting! Give me boiled food!" Winters warned bitterly: "After roasting a pound of meat, there will be seven taels left in the day! I even eat boiled noodles, but you dare to be extravagant enough to eat barbecue! You're against me !”
The soldiers burst into laughter.
Angelou ran over with a low eyebrow, bringing two roasted deer ribs: "These are for you."
Winters couldn't help but take a sip and shed tears: "It smells so good."
…
When Winters sent three arrows to the captain again, everyone knew that they were about to attack again.
This has invisibly become an established rule. Before the "battle", arrows are given to the captain as a token, and the arrows are taken away after the battle.
"Centurion, a group of people, a pot of people sounds too ugly." Vashika took the arrow and said with a playful smile: "Can you change it to something better?"
Winters took out the map board and raised his eyebrows slightly: "What do you want to change?"
"How about calling Yizhenren?"
Winters almost choked to death on his saliva. He couldn't help but sigh: "Vasya, you are really smart."
"Really?" Vashika smiled broadly, with joy on her face.
"That's a fart!" Pierre gave Vasya a slap on the back of the head and suggested: "How about calling it an arrow? A group of people, a pot of people is not good."
Winters thought for a moment, an arrow sounded good, and nodded.
"Now we have raised our banner!" Seeing that the proposal was adopted, Vashika wanted to keep up the good work: "Do we also want to have a resounding name? One that sounds powerful at first sight?"
Everyone looked at each other, they really had no names at the moment.
Strictly speaking, they are still called the "Xinkendi Langtun Town Militia".
Vashika stretched out his muscles for a while and proudly revealed the answer: "I suggest calling it the Blood Wolf Gang! Oh, no, the Blood Wolf Army! Isn't it very powerful?"
"A bloody [expletive] wolf." Winters kicked Vasya's butt hard with his boot: "You are hoping that Gevaudan will send troops to fight us, right?"
It's a good thing no one mentioned it, but Winters got very angry when he heard the nickname.
Taking a deep breath to calm down, Winters explained to his subordinates: "We robbed the food collection team, and Gévaudin will not let it go. Otherwise, why would we pretend to be bandits? The last thing we need now is a false reputation." The less Wodan notices us, the better. And we are originally the Langtun Town Militia, why should we change our name?"
Pierre nodded thoughtfully, while the others were still a little confused.
"Okay, let's look at the map." Winters spread the map on the table and reiterated the discipline:
"No noise during marching and fighting! Violators will be whipped! Anyone who disturbs the enemy will be beheaded!
If an enemy breaks through your encirclement, do not pursue them. Just continue to encircle them and drive the remaining enemies to the predetermined location. "
Try to stay alive! Don't die! "
Finally, he warned the three captains in the sternest tone: "If anyone dares to miss the deadline this time, we will not be lenient!"
…
It's still the same time - dawn, the sun shows a little light.
Vashika led eleven soldiers carrying pig hunting spears and formed a loose straight line in the forest.
Only this time, instead of banging on the tree trunks, they marched silently.
They walked to the predetermined location and laid an ambush.
Vashika waited patiently.
Suddenly, the shrill sound of bugles tore through the night.
The birds in the forest flew into the sky with a roar, and the wild beasts fled in all directions in terror.
The order to attack has been given.
"Kill!" Vashika jumped up with a spear and shouted at the top of his lungs: "Follow me!"
Three arrows shot towards the bandit camp in the forest from all directions.
A gang of more than 20 people was captured in the blink of an eye.
The bandits who dared to resist were stabbed to death with spears, while the surviving bandits knelt on the ground and were gathered together like sheep.
Not a single bandit escaped.
"Centurion!" Angelou came to report to Winters excitedly: "This is much easier than hunting!"
