Black Iron's Glory Chapter 201

"Chief, I really can't take it anymore . . . They didn't send me soldier material at all! I can't teach them anything no matter how hard I try! It's been a whole week and they still can't get in a straight line! I haven't even started teaching them to turn left or right! Every time I shout the order, at least two or three of them will bump into each other . . . " Berklin said after he barged into the hut, removed his army cap and smashed it against the ground .

Yet another month had passed . Claude could move about some now, but Perunt had forbidden him strenuous exercise . His recovery had gone much faster than the man had predicted, or even thought possible . He had thought Claude would be in bed for at least another month . He envied the boy's constitution .

Claude didn't mention the incident to Maria . He focused instead on how well his training had gone, that he would soon be a sergeant-major, and his posting .

Since all his letters were inspected, his superiors knew exactly what he'd written -- and they were quite happy . On the day the training ended itself, the still-bedridden Claude received the shoulder mark of a sergeant-major . That meant that he had officially become an officer in Bluefeather . His four minions were also promoted .

With their training at an end, the tents were taken down . The other seven master-sergeant tentmates sent Claude and his minions their personal belongings which they had left behind . Each was now going his own direction, to their new posts .

Since Claude had been ordered to form a keeper and a stretcher tent required for the infirmary, he claimed two of the wooden huts near the infirmary . Perunt was quite happy to have Claude and his people close by, and gave him the job of assembling a new healer tent for him as well .

When Perunt gave him the list of his new men, Claude felt like quitting . He'd gotten all the bad apples . Each tribe usually had a tent of healers . But in wartime, the demand skyrocketed . In peacetime, each tribe had to have a minimum of one apothecary and six healers . But Perunt was the only apothecary for that infirmary and he only had four healers to help him out .

"I can't be bothered to bargain with the upper brass . While I can still hold on with the number of people I have, I will be overwhelmed when it gets busy . I have been able to take care of the cases in the base, for now, so I didn't bother to ask for more men," Perunt said with a shrug, "Now that you can already move about, you have more than enough time . Write a few reports to the upper brass and pull some strings for me . I need more apothecaries and healers here, sharp and capable ones, mind you . Don't get me any of those slackers who don't even keep their hands and feet clean . "

Perunt's request was rather hard to fulfil . Where would healers that could match up to his specifications be found? There would be war in a few more months and not a single tribesman would be willing to give away their own apothecaries and healers . Claude had written a few reports but received no response . In the end, he wrote a report in the name of Perunt to request for more apothecaries and healers from whom he could pick . Only then did the report go through .

Claude gave the stamped report to Perunt and had him pick the men he wanted . As for his own keeper tent and stretcher tent, he had no right to pick recruits and had to wait for the top to assign them to him .

Each tent had twelve men and two tents made 24 . Claude had himself and the four nobles in his unit, so he believed that the top would send 19 recruits to him to fill up the ranks . What he didn't think was that they would assign him 27 people . He thought he was seeing things and asked a corporal who brought over the recruits what was up, but the corporal only said that he was doing what the top wanted and knew nothing else .

Having no other choice, he had Berklin look for Second Lieutenant Chirp of the enlistment department . Berklin returned and told Claude that everything was fine and those recruits would be given to Claude to manage and train for now . If there were any that were unfit, they could be disqualified later .

He guessed they should gather everyone . Claude had the fully-recovered Berklin go to the logistics department to get him some tents and other supplies . He planned to set them up at the piece of land behind the infirmary . That was the place they used to dry herbs and bandages and it was wide enough to train some recruits .

After that, Claude read the files of the recruits and found that those 27 didn't just join the camp . They were already there for a month or so and were disqualified during cadet training . The instructors believed them to be unfit for duty in Bluefeather, but since they were able-bodied, they were sent to the logistics department for hard labour .

So they saw it as a landfill . . . Words like 'retarded', 'slow', 'inept' and even 'idiot' were used to describe those recruits . Claude now knew what kind of role he was given . It was no wonder the upper brass was so generous in the number of people they gave . Chirp even said that it would be fine to disqualify some, so he definitely knew what was going on .

Claude isolated two of the 27 files that stood out to him . One of the files described the recruit as being lazy, confrontational when forced into doing something, slow-reacting and slow-witted . He got Berklin to bring the recruit to him .

Soon, a huge brute towering over two meters was brought to him . Good lord! He ought to be 2 . 3 metres tall! Even taller than the basketball players Claude had seen on Earth! Claude had to look up to see the fellow .

"So you're called Gleimyte Opus, aged 21?"

"I don't know," the brute wheezed, "The people back in the city called me Gum or brute . This was the name the soldiers wrote for me when I enlisted . I can't read and I don't know what they wrote . "

"Alright, then . I'll call you Gum too . Why did you come to enlist? Did you receive a conscription letter?"

The big fellow scratched his head . "What's a conscription order? I don't know . . . Sir Bejik in the city told me that if I join the army, I would be able to eat my fill . That's why I applied . I didn't think he would lie to me . When I went to get food, they didn't let me and said that everyone only had a set amount and that I couldn't eat more . . . So I got more food from others and beat up anyone who didn't give me theirs . "

"You joined the army just for food? What about your home? What did you use to be?"

"Home? I don't have one . I lift stuff for people in the city in exchange for some bed and sleep in the stables of taverns and feed their horses . I'm always hungry . . . I never have enough food . So when they said I could eat my fill, I came here . . . "

Claude looked at his training records and saw a few instances of solitary confinement which stemmed from his robbing of other people's food in the mess hall . After confinement, he grew even more savage with the food robbing . He always moved slowly during training and wasn't willing to join the rest . Even after disciplining, he wasn't willing to cooperate and he was subsequently disqualified .

However, the comments about him being lazy and responding slowly was odd . He managed to reply to Claude coherently . Claude pointed at the file and asked, "To what are these comments about you being slow and lazy and refusing to move referring?"

"They didn't let me eat until I was full, so I didn't want to train with them . That would just make me hungrier faster . When I didn't have work in the city, I always lied down without moving so that I don't get hungry fast," said the brute .

Claude finally understood . "Alright, from now on, you will always be able to eat till you're full . But you must listen to my orders, or you won't be fed . You may leave now . "

"Really? Can I really do that? What if they don't let me eat?" The brute gave Claude a look of elation mixed with some suspicion .

"You can, it's fine . I will pay for your food no matter how much you eat . Don't worry . " How much could the food in the mess hall cost anyway? Sometimes, he believed that it didn't cost a single riyas to feed a tent of soldiers . It wasn't like the big man could eat that much anyway . At worst, he could just pay for the extra expense with his sergeant-major allowance . It wasn't like he was poor .

After one was dealt with, the other was a piece of cake to deal with . That new recruit wasn't even an adult . He was a 16-year-old wandering orphan . As the enlistment quota of the zone he resided in hadn't been met, he was dragged into it . Nobody stood up for his sake and he was sent to the base just like that . He flopped during training and had loitered in the base ever since before he was sent to Claude .

As he wasn't even an adult and hadn't had enough nutrition he required, his puberty still wasn't over . He was even shorter than a gun and it wasn't surprising that he didn't make the cut . He supposed the kid could do as his errand boy . After calling the youth called Myjack over for a talk, he found him to be rather honest and decided to give him the role of orderman .

During the night, Berklin took the recruits to dinner . When he returned, he looked at Claude with a frown and said, "Chief, your salary's gone . That big fellow called Gum ate enough for eight people alone and said that he was only seven parts full . . . I don't know where all the food disappeared to . He's a literal rice bucket . [1]"

As Claude still hadn't recovered his full range of motion, he could only count on Berklin for the training . After a week or so, Berklin turned from excited instructor to a sullen teacher who complained nonstop every day .

In his words, he described the recruits as apart from appearing normal while eating and sleeping, they all turned into idiots during training . He believed that training a bunch of pigs would be easier than training those fellows . Pigs could at least know which direction to run in .

Claude, however, was rather calm . "No worries . I'll observe them in the following days . I have an inkling on how to train them . Bear with it for a few more days . I will soon be able to move about again and I'll teach you how to whip them into shape . "

[1] Rice bucket in Chinese means idiot or useless . It refers to how such a person is useless for any other purpose than storing (eating) food, and it also alludes to Gum's slow wit .

Chapter end