Black Iron's Glory

Claude looked at Myjack with a perplexed gaze. That kid had become his brother-in-law so easily just like that, and his pretty and obedient sister became the brat’s wife out of nowhere. His only thought was how the brat lucked out. He was just in the right — or wrong from Myjack’s point of view — place at the right time. Perhaps it was just good karma. Myjack had tried to save her life and Angelina happened to leave home because her mother was pressuring her to marry, and somehow, he was now one of the Ferds.

Bloweyk on the other hand was elated. He was greatly amused when he saw Angelina ordering Myjack around like a dog instead of her doing so to him. So, he wasn’t against Myjack marrying his sister. He thought that if Myjack married her, his life would be doomed and he would definitely be worked to the point of suffering bronchitis at the very least.

Had Angelina not been a magus, Myjack would definitely think that the marriage was perfect. He had never imagined becoming Claude’s brother-in-law and hadn’t even fathomed the thought of getting together with Angelina, a haughty young lady. Perhaps it was due to his inferiority complex he developed since his childhood days on the streets. He had never considered himself the equal of someone like Claude and didn’t think he would eventually become a proper commissioned second lieutenant of the kingdom.

Myjack instead saw Claude like his master. It was Claude who took the helpless him in back during his cadet training and taught him how to survive and develop. He had learned how to read and write, all sorts of skills a soldier would need, became a distinguished officer and CLaude’s trusted assistant. He had completely devoted his loyalty to CLaude.

When Myjack was young, he had begged in town with a crippled, old vagabond. When he heard the vagabond chat with some tavern-goers about magi, they intentionally tried to frighten him by telling him that magi loved turning people into frogs or sheep or some other kinds of monster, which left him with a trauma. So, when he found that Angelina was a magus, he balled up with his arms over his head in fear, wondering what he would be turned into.

However, he wasn’t turned into a frog or some monster. Instead, Angelina was to become his wife, something which he had never ever dreamed of. Apart from some slight fear for CLaude’s anger, Myjack felt surprisingly delighted. All of a sudden, his fear for magi lessened. As long as he could take Angelina as his wife, he couldn’t give a damn whether magi were evil or not.

In times of war, decisions were made swiftly. Since Angelina insisted on marrying Myjack, Claude didn’t have the right to decide on the matter. However, it wasn’t too fitting to hold a marriage ceremony now, so seven days later, Claude brought some good friends from camp to the capital of Anfiston, Grinosburg, for the simple marriage ceremony between Myjack and Angelina at the moon shrine.

As they were at war, Myjack wasn’t given any honeymoon break. It could only happen after Ranger wiped out Pancry and Krado and reclaimed all the lost land. Angelina would have to stay in Lanu for the moment and could only return home with her husband to appease her mother after the war.

On the 11th of the 5th month, Ranger approached Pancry’s camsite. As Pancry’s scouts had been suppressed by Tribe 131, Ranger was able to make it to five kilometres away from Pancry’s camp without being discovered. Miselk resolutely ordered all men to get mounted and play the role of light cavalry to launch a surprise raid on Pancry’s camp.

During that time, Pancry was split into two. One unit was left to defend the campsite and the other was launching attacks on Port Patres. The defenders at the camp weren’t able to resist the swarms of light cavalry at all and were soon overwhelmed. The campsite fell into Ranger’s hands.

Without their supplies and support from camp, the rest of the trapped Pancry soldiers raised the white flag after holding on for three long days. Ranger only suffered light casualties from the battle and Miselk quickly led Ranger and one of the folks of the new colony corps for Krado in Balingana.

The enemy had heard about Pancry’s fall and Krado retreated their troops besieging Brikaman immediately to set up three defence lines around Jinkle. But as their might, equipment and morale were far lower than the Auerans’, Krado wasn’t able to weather their attacks at all. After three days of defending, Ranger broke through their defences to enter Jinkle and split the enemy up into two before wiping them out.

As Claude was the chief strategist for the battle, he absorbed the lesson he learned from his failure to attack Jinkle with his tribe and led the cannoneers of the folk to destroy all buildings of the front row first, successfully allowing the rest of the attackers to split the enemy into two before turning back for a pincer attack to force the enemy out of their own fortifications directly into another wave of attackers helplessly. They were shot down one after another.

The attack lasted a whole week and Krado lost most of its men. The ones that remained surrendered after using up their supplies and ammunition. Claude really wanted to look for the commanding officer of the cannoneers, but questioning the captives revealed that the strategist in charge of positioning Krado’s cannons had been buried on the second day when Ranger’s cannons demolished the buildings. By the time they got him out, his body had stiffened.

In a short month and a half, they managed to eliminate two enemy corps and caused their reputation to soar. After that, Ranger openly repaired the floating bridges at the crossing point while secretly setting up three heavy cannon formations near the river bank.

As Miselk had predicted, the Aueran navy’s Nubissian chapter made their move and sent seven warships and eleven armed merchant vessels down Dorinibla River to the crossing point in Balingana with the intent of destroying the floating bridge and bombard Ranger’s campsite, only to fall for the trap Miselk set. The three hidden heavy cannon formations opened fire at the enemy ships which had nowhere to run.

The battle lasted for an hour and a half and the enemy managed to slip away after leaving four warships and eight armed merchant vessels behind. However, that didn’t mean they were able to return safely to Port Vebator where they set out from. Port Patres had long set up 12 heavy cannons to lock down the waterway leading from the ocean to Dorinibla River. The reason they didn’t fire when the enemy sailed into the river was to lure them in first.

The defenceless enemy ships once more came under cannon bombardment. It only lasted around half an hour and only one heavily damaged merchant vessel escaped to the open seas. The Shiksan navy chapter at Port Vebator was completely devastated after having lost seven of their warships in Dorinibla River.

With the threat from sea out of the way, Dorinibla River could no longer be used by the enemy troops. Ranger crossed the river during the middle of the 6th month and reclaimed the lost towns. By the end of the 7th month, they had entered the last remaining fallen Aueran colony, Cromwell, and fought their way to the capital, Wickhamsburg during the middle of the 8th month, and reconquered it. Ranger had successfully reclaimed all lost territory on Nubissia.

“General, why didn’t we attack the enemy’s colony, Port Vebator and stayed at the border instead? The enemy would lose a port if we did and wouldn’t be able to send more reinforcements here. The rest of the Shiksan colonies will fall in our hands.”

Port Vebator used to be a Nasrian colony which had been given to Shiks to repay their debt, giving Shiks the benefits of a good port which allowed them to transport supplies and troops to suppress the native revolts in their own colony.

After Cromwell was reclaimed, Ranger was stationed at the border between the two colonies without marching for Port Vebator. The high ranking officers of Ranger brought up the matter during a meeting. Most of them believed they should ride the wave and conquer Port Vebator to cut off enemy reinforcements from Freia so that the rest of their colonies would be claimed by Aueras.

General Miselk smiled bitterly and explained, “Gentlemen, Ranger has reclaimed all lost territory and eliminated Pancry, Krado and all other occupying enemy forces, not to mention the Nubissian chapter of the enemy navy. Our captives now number more than 250 thousand men. This is already a heavy blow for Shiks as they’ve lost two-thirds of their forces here.

“Personally, I wish we could march for Port Vebator as well to make sure all Shiksan colonies fall in the kingdom’s hands. But that won’t pass, as High Command had strictly forbidden us from attacking the enemy colonies. Ranger had been sent here to give Shiks a stern lesson, not to enrage them, the hegemon of Northern Freia, and spur them into an all-out war with us.

“If we conquer all their colonies on Nubissia, the most likely scenario is that Shiks would ally with Canas and Nasri to start another war in Eastern Freia. To our kingdom, that is only just beginning to recover from the war years ago, this is an absolute disaster. Nobody can tell whether our kingdom will be able to win the next war.

“Currently, our ambassador should be on his way to Shiks. Ideally, Shiks would accept this admonishment and sign a peace treaty with our kingdom so that peace comes to Nubissia again. If Shiks isn’t willing to do so and wants to continue to fight, letting them keep Port Vebator will cause them to send troops to Nubissia instead of starting a war on our home continent.

“Since we can already defeat the enemy once, we can still continue to do the same no matter how much reinforcements they send until the enemy suffered enough losses to yield. Are you confident you can achieve that, gentlemen?”

“Yes!” the officers all loudly replied.

Miselk was satisfied with his speech’s results. Next, he would delegate missions to the other officers, mostly concerning the training of more colonial corps and the maintenance and repairs of various fortifications, recruiting more troops from the colonies, basically doing their best to prepare for the worst case scenario.

Claude’s mission was rather simple. He would go to Anfiston to expand Tribe 131 into a line. He could pick the recruits from commoner youths of fitting age and make the line combat ready in half a year.

During the battles to eliminate Pancry, Krado, and to reclaim the lost colonies, Tribe 131 only played the role of scouts and largely didn’t suffer casualties. Sevict said that since the tribe had the chance to shine before the main force arrived and gained many merits for their achievements, it was time for the rest to get a share of that and the tribe shouldn’t fight them for the merit.

At the end of the 10th month, Tribe 131 returned to their camp in Lanu within Anfiston. The expansion would occur there. Suitable youths would be recruited from the colonies in the rear and training would begin. The subordinate tribes would have to be established. Things got really busy, but what Claude was most concerned about was sending Angelina and Myjack back home to resolve his mother’s worries.

Myjack finally got half a year of family break. One of the months was actually a replacement for his marriage break and another month was given for travel. The night before they set off, Claude brought Bloweyk to Angelina’s wooden house and showed them two designs.

Claude told Angelina strictly that those were weapon designs he came up with. He hoped that Angelina would work on researching them using the array. Myjack was to help answer any questions she had with his knowledge of military equipment and weapons. Though Claude wanted to be part of the project as well, it wasn’t convenient for him to be involved from the camp, so he could only leave it to his sister.

The first design was one of a long-handled grenade, a stielhandgranate. It was a rather simple one and the only difficult part was configuring the fuze and the delay element to time the explosion. The second design was one of a revolver, and the hardest part about it would be designing the bullets, cartridge, and firing mechanism.

Claude had given up hope on developing flintlocks and decided to skip straight to revolvers. He had seen some western flicks before in which the protagonist used his own tools to make lead-tipped metal-jacket bullets, complete with a charge, gunpowder, and bullet cap.

Even though the firing range of revolver handguns wasn’t far, Claude believed that if his sister could develop actual bullets to replace rounds, the days of the matchlock would be limited. Regardless of whether she could actually research it, one thing was for certain: they had to keep it an absolute secret and never let it be discovered.