Iron Powder and Spellcasters

   Chapter 12 External Admissions

  Bud is one of only three externally enrolled cadets in Winters' same class, and should be the most powerful of the three.

  Because most of the external admissions of the Army Officers Academy are from the Artillery Division who are exceptionally talented in mathematics.

   But Bard read cavalry, and the cavalry had no outside enrollees for six full years before Bard.

  When the Inter-Provincial Republic was still the Duchy of Piedmont, from the time of Bard's grandfather, their family relied on raising horses for Count Mennay's family.

   Raised from the time the old earl was alive until his grandson inherited the title.

  When he has time, Bud's grandfather will take his two sons to take care of the family's dozen acres of land. Although the days are hard, at least there is no need to worry about poor food and clothing.

   But Bud's grandfather never dreamed of the outbreak of the Sovereign War.

  In their eyes, life is peaceful and subsistence, and they never thought that this state would be broken.

  When the Galavens smashed the church everywhere, the Budd family had vaguely sensed that the storm was coming.

  However, the three generations of their family are all duty grooms who make a living by raising horses for the earl. They can't do anything except feed the earl's horses.

  When the first Guitu city rioted and the militias seized the city.

  The Budd family is feeding the earl's horses, and the earl doesn't move because he is not a royalist;

  When the first rebellion in Guitu was suppressed and the army of the governor appointed by the emperor marched into the city.

  The Budd family is feeding the earl's horses, and the earl doesn't move because he doesn't support the militia either;

  When the second Guitucheng riot, the militiamen broke through Guitucheng together and trapped the governor in the fortress.

  The Budd family was feeding the earl's horse, the earl continued to stand still, he chose to wait and see;

  When the second suppression of Guitu City failed, the Battle of the Golden Saddle ended, and the royalist nobles of the Piedmont Duchy were wiped out.

  The Budd family is feeding the earl's horses, but the earl is still standing still, he intends to continue to wait and see;

   Finally, the emperor released his vicious dog, the Duke of Arlean.

  The Duke of Arlean declares: All nobles who did not die in the Battle of the Golden Saddle are traitors.

  The Buds are feeding the earl... oh, no need to feed the horses this time.

  Because all the war horses were brought to fight by the Earl of Mennai, the garrison nobles of the Duchy of the Mountains could no longer stand on the sidelines.

  The Budd family changed jobs to feed cows, sheep, chickens and ducks to the Earl.

  The Duke of Arlean was defeated and committed suicide, and the Budd family thought that they could finally continue to feed the earl's horses.

   They didn't expect that the militia and the noble army of the fallen imperial faction, who were still fighting side by side yesterday, started fighting again today.

   Knights in helmets and thorns patrol the Royal Road, killing all suspicious passers-by without trial, just to intercept the messengers who are connecting the militias of the cities;

   Solitary swordsmen roamed the forest paths, carrying long swords and arquebuses wrapped in black cloth, waiting to assassinate any nobles they could find.

  The civil war ended with the victory of the militia, and no more dukes were elected, and the land was renamed the [United Republic of the Seventeen Provinces of the Piedmont Lands], referred to as the United Provinces Republic.

  Bard's family no longer has to worry about going back to feed the earl's horses, because the militia's knives are faster than those of the Duke of Arleans, and they are more ruthless than the Duke of Arlean.

   There is no Earl of Mennai anymore, and there is no one left in the Earl of Mennai's family.

  The Republic of the Provinces will no longer fall into the hands of the nobles, because there are no living nobles in the Provinces who dare to claim titles.

  The Budd family thought it would end like this: Although they could no longer feed the earl's horses, they could at least go back to manage the family's land.

  The Budd family did not expect that they were waiting for Richard IV's royal drive.

   And it is no longer just the republic of the United Provinces, the sea blue royal collar, the plateau duchy... The entire two mountains and the empire are involved in the whirlpool.

   Originally the Earl of Mennai—now Mennai Province, it was beaten to nothing.

  Immature crops were trampled and burned, and the defeated soldiers were more terrible than robbers.

  Bard's father lost his father, brother, sister and all his children in the war.

  The Budds are completely bankrupt, they have a small plot of land but no food.

   In desperation, Bud's father mortgaged the small plot of land in the family to the Green Heart Abbey near the village.

  The husband and wife took shelter in the protection of the monastery and became the monastery's tenant farmers.

The    Sovereign War ended completely, the emperor retreated, the Senas Alliance was formally established, and the couple gave birth to Bard.

   For Bud's parents, life as a sharecropper saw no way out.

   They could barely make ends meet, and they were destined to not be able to save enough money to redeem the land.

   So the only thing Bard's parents can count on is to let Bard enter the monastery, called a monk.

   But monks are registered priests, how can children from poor families become monks?

  The monastery will not accept a young man who has nothing, and if he wants to become a monk, he must bring a property to the monastery.

  The monastery only welcomes those "brothers" with land deeds and gold and silver.

  Bud has been a servant in the monastery for as long as he can remember. First, he was responsible for low-level chores such as cleaning toilets. He was diligent, careful, and taciturn.

   So he quickly got rid of the most low-level chores and turned into cleaning the manuscript room and library of Greenheart Abbey.

   A kind-hearted friar taught him literacy and the Old Language, and Bard taught himself the Old Language through the Old Language/Archaic Dictionary.

   Since being able to read, Bard spends all his free time in the library at Greenheart Abbey.

   He has read a large number of ancient books and materials preserved in monasteries, and taught himself the "Arithmetic", "Principles of Geometry" and the "Medical Classics" of the Fremen people.

At the same time, his status in the monastery continued to improve: he changed from cleaning the library to being responsible for cleaning precious sacred artifacts and relics of saints, and then he became the abbot's valet, responsible for helping the abbot do the accounting .

   But the more Bard learned about the monastery, the more desperate he became. Because he knew that he could never become a monk, he never wanted to spend his life as a tenant farmer and servant.

   By chance, Bud learned about the existence of the Army Officers Academy from the visitors of the monastery, and learned that the Army Officers Academy does not require tuition fees and does not have any application restrictions.

   So when Bud was sixteen years old, he decided to give it a try, starting from his hometown Gerald Village with the six small silver shields and three pieces of black bread he had saved, and walking 100 kilometers to Guitu City.

   With his ancestral horse-raising skills and outstanding test scores in cultural courses, Bud miraculously was admitted to the cavalry department of the Army Officers Academy, and he became the only cavalry department out-of-school student for six years.

   Bud and Winters met in a horse class.

  [Note: horse study and equestrianism are two courses]

   Compared with equestrianism, Bud is far inferior to Winters; but in terms of the ability to take care of horses, Winters is not as good as Bud.

   When they first met, Winters was just curious where did this unfamiliar young farmer learn how to trim hoofs?

  As they got to know each other for a long time, Winters increasingly found that Bud had some advantages that he did not have, such as being gentle, patient, and rarely losing his temper.

   Winters lacks these qualities, so he will unconsciously approach people who have them.

   And Winters' uncharitable friendship also made Bud comfortable.

   Over time, the two became very good friends.

   Every time I think of Bud, I get a pair of cross-eyed my cat's eyes on the reliable comrade KV-2.

   (end of this chapter)