Chapter 122: When Men Meet Women

After receiving the news of their release, only a few slaves wished to follow Hugh’s caravan back to the outside world. They were mostly older women who had lost their family members and children. Although the chances were slim and there was very little they could do, searching for their loved ones was almost the only meaning left in their remaining lives. Their wish was granted.

More people chose to stay, which came as no surprise to us. Years of continuous warfare had destroyed people’s peaceful lives, and many had died in the chaos of battle. The war had created a great number of lonely and helpless people — especially women. Neither the defeated Delanmaya nor the victorious Crete and Winston could protect these people who had lost their support. The women who had once been slaves preferred to stay on this backward land, because at least here they could obtain the most basic necessities of life and personal dignity.

It was plain to see that our young lads were overjoyed. Years of brutal fighting had almost made them forget that there was a magical creature called “woman” in this world — gentle, kind, attentive, considerate, and able to take good care of others. For a very long time, the only women they could see were Millia, Kelsey, and Eliot. Most of the time, they treated these three respectable women as inviolable superior officers. Even though they were all kind and good-hearted people, the soldiers didn’t even dare to smile easily in front of them, let alone joke around freely.

Ever since we got to know our native friends, Evlinna had been coming to our place frequently. The worst part was that she usually didn’t come alone, but brought her lovely female companions along to meet us new friends. This situation caused an obvious change in those overly energetic young men:

First, they became enthusiastic about bathing — even though it was early spring when the weather was still fluctuating between warm and cold, and the water in the Silver Star River was still bitingly cold. But whenever rest time came, there were always some physically strong young men soaking in it. Some fellows even soaked themselves in there every other day and didn’t want to come out. They would shriek from the cold while wishing they could just live in there forever, as if they were determined to soak their bones right out of their bodies. Their abnormal behavior caused the number of people catching colds in the army to surge, adding quite a burden to Millia.

Secondly, many people had small wounds on their faces, and some had quite a lot of them. This wasn’t hard to understand. Although the soldiers’ standard short swords seemed a bit thin in combat, if you used one to shave your beard, it was still too big.

“I hate these sissy fellows!” Dakla once complained to me. “Who do they think they are? Rich young masters from the Royal Capital?”

“Don’t get angry over meaningless things like this, my friend. You have to understand them,” I said soothingly. “Hand me that axe by your side. There. You see, some of the Heavy Infantry’s equipment is still pretty useful.” I raised the axe with my left hand, using the shiny blade as a mirror to check my chin. My skill wasn’t bad — the beard was shaved quite cleanly.

“You’re too soft on them, Jeff. Look at them — every single one looks like meat just scooped out of a pot, all white and clean, not looking like soldiers at all.” As Dakla spoke, he snatched the sword and battle axe from my hands and carefully began shaving his own beard.

Finally, all kinds of exercise activities and competitive games reached their peak in the camp. Often, many strapping young men with nothing better to do would gather in groups near the camp gate to wrestle, box, and do similar activities, while others nimbly leaped and tumbled up and down on some exercise equipment. No matter what they were doing, they were all bare-chested, deliberately showing off their well-built muscles one by one. When ladies came to visit, they all became especially spirited, shouting and hollering, each one displaying his bravest side, trying to outdo his companions and win admiring glances from others — of course, mainly from the visiting female guests. I guessed that at this moment, even if you told them to kill a lion with their bare hands, they could actually do it.

Just a few visiting girls from another tribe could get our soldiers this worked up. Now, suddenly over a thousand women had appeared in the camp — a full thousand or more! The total amount of meat chunks they had fished out of their food bowls over these past few years combined probably wasn’t even that many. You can imagine what a huge impact their arrival brought to us.

The excited soldiers immediately expanded their camp. They built many new wooden cabins in a sunny spot by the water for the newly arrived women to live in. Before the cabins were built, the soldiers voluntarily gave up — ah no, they competed with each other to give up their own cabins, willingly going to sleep in cold, damp tents instead. After the cabins were built, the beds that those women had slept on immediately soared in value.

New construction projects were proceeding at a speed I couldn’t have imagined. Sometimes when I went on my morning rounds, I would see a group of soldiers enthusiastically stacking up walls, and after lunch a decent-looking house would already appear before me. Apart from lacking a floor, this house lacked nothing. I suddenly felt that when we went into battle, we should have two hundred women watching from the sidelines. I believed that if that were the case, we wouldn’t need to do anything — those crazed (or rather, lovesick) warriors would trample flat every enemy in front of them without any effort, not even leaving their bone fragments behind.

At the same time, a great number of latrines sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain — before this, only the officers’ quarters had such things, mainly for the use of our only three ladies. As for the soldiers… most of the time they preferred to take care of their personal problems in a way that was closer to nature.

Among the craftsmen Hugh had brought were several architects, and their arrival was a great help to us. It was clear that they were very excited to be able to do whatever they wanted on an empty piece of land; obviously, they had never had such an opportunity before. They were all quite outstanding professionals. In our eyes, the vast barren land was transformed ahead of time on their blueprints into a metropolis no inferior to any national Royal Capital in any country. Roads suitable for carriages, the locations of markets and residential areas, temples for worshipping the Deities, a central plaza large enough to hold over ten thousand people… When they placed the orderly blueprints before us, I couldn’t help but be deeply moved by this magnificent sight that might not come into being until who knows when. But I had to say, these master-level talents gathered by Hugh were a bit too professional. The span of their thinking was so wide that it was simply beyond comprehension. For example, do you think it made any great sense for us, in our current situation, to discuss which direction a national opera house should face and where the national library should be located?

In the end, they were all assigned to supervise the design and construction of the latrines.

I felt that this was truly putting people’s talents to their best possible use.

Fred tacitly approved of the soldiers’ impulses. He simply emphasized a few points of discipline to restrain the soldiers’ behavior, in order to avoid anything unpleasant happening. For example: no staying overnight in the women’s quarters without permission; no forced physical contact with women beyond what was considered courteous without the other party’s consent; no lewd, suggestive, or provocative language toward women… and so on. In my opinion, these rules were actually not entirely necessary. Military discipline still strongly restrained our excellent soldiers, and they were also keeping watch over each other. I knew of such an incident: a soldier accidentally touched a woman’s hand while helping her move furniture. That fellow clearly had no experience. When he came back, he was so excited that he spread the news everywhere, making the other soldiers in his barracks both envious and jealous. In the end, everyone tacitly agreed to give that lucky fellow a sound beating. I didn’t believe that under such circumstances, anyone would dare to do anything ill-intentioned toward those women.

What none of us had expected was that, long afterward, in the city built on the foundation of this camp, the rules Fred had written by his own hand would be preserved as important historical documents — a clear proof that the founding King of New Delanmaya advocated equality and promoted the status of women. Those who blindly worshipped heroes didn’t know how many jokes this rigid order had caused: once, a soldier saw a hole in a woman’s skirt that exposed a patch of flesh on her buttock. According to the common interpretation, controversial words like “under the skirt,” “buttocks,” and “exposed” were not allowed to be used in public, or one could very likely be regarded as violating the order. This good-hearted fellow was driven dizzy by the harsh rules, so he had no choice but to say to her seriously: “Miss, the floral cloth wrapped around the lower half of your body currently has quite a serious flaw in the direction it faces northeast, exposing a rather important issue. Please be sure to inspect it carefully.” That poor woman had no idea what major situation had occurred, and looked around in fright. The more flustered she became, the more solemn the soldier’s expression grew, and as her body turned, he kept saying: “Now it’s southwest, now it’s southeast, now it’s northwest, now it’s due north…”

In the end, that terrified woman threw down the basket full of clothes in her hands and ran off screaming, leaving behind our good-hearted soldier who had no idea what to do…

This incident was passed around as a joke among us at the time. The phrase “exposed an important issue” was frequently brought up, and every time it provoked a round of mischievous laughter without fail.

Many such incidents happened, all quite embarrassing. In the end, Fred finally cancelled this order and replaced it with more rigorous laws. Of course, that was a story for much later.

At first, those women still carried a sense of helplessness from being forced, and instinctively kept their distance from us. The experience of having been made slaves and sold had brought them great emotional wounds. No matter who it was, smoothing over these wounds was extremely difficult. Even after being declared released and granted the status of ordinary people, they still maintained a sensitive wariness toward our soldiers and were unwilling to get close to us. Although they were all commoners, under these circumstances we had to assign them some work, such as preparing the daily meals, washing clothes for the soldiers, and maintaining weapons and armor. They accepted our arrangements obediently and quietly, and they did the work very well. But I could see that there was still a great distance between us. When a group of women, far from their homeland, came to a strange, desolate highland and faced a group of men whose eyes went straight when they saw them, you couldn’t possibly expect them to accept this reality without any guard.

However, after more than a month of living together, they discovered that their situation was vastly different from before: these soldiers, who looked rough and impetuous, genuinely respected them from the bottom of their hearts, cared for them, and didn’t want them to suffer any harm. These people did everything they could for them. They joyfully built houses for them, took care of their daily lives, and stood guard for them when night fell, to protect them from wild beasts. The respect and esteem they received here were far more than what they would have gotten as ordinary residents in other cities. Moreover, apart from being a bit quiet and remote, having inconvenient transportation, and wild beasts roaming around from time to time, the scenery here was beautiful and the products of the land were abundant — it really was a fine place. I believed that if you spent enough time with our soldiers, you would definitely come to like them. They were brave and simple, carrying all the fine qualities any man would wish to have. Moreover, most of them were genuinely handsome and very manly…

People began to learn to understand each other and accept each other. On one side were the emotionally wounded women; on the other were the stiff and restrained soldiers. They gave more of their time to silence, which made the process of communication slow and sluggish. But even if you said nothing at all, some things would still change in the silence, especially when you had no other choice. As expected, the women began to approach the soldiers. Some took the initiative to chat with them and joke around with them. Sometimes a woman would suddenly think of her tragic life story and her deceased family members, and couldn’t help being overcome with grief. At such times, there would always be a few soldiers who would kindly and clumsily comfort her, trying hard to cheer her up. Gradually, some women began to focus on washing clothes for one specific soldier or a few soldiers, carefully scrubbing them clean, smoothing them flat, drying them in the sun, and then looking forward to handing them over personally. All of this was quietly changing in silence, and the people caught up in it could hardly feel these changes taking place. They happened very suddenly, yet they were so natural and logical, as if everything was simply meant to be this way from the very beginning — when men meet women…

Although the arrival of the women brought us some delightful changes, some troublesome things were also happening behind the scenes. Some private fights quietly arose. These conflicts caused by women had not yet escalated to the point of using weapons, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t develop into that. This trend grew stronger and stronger. Walking through the camp, you could often see two or three soldiers with black eyes and swollen faces passing by each other with hostile glares. We were very worried that this momentum would destroy the unity of the army. In the end, Fred had to personally step forward and issue an order banning private fights, and then assigned Roll as the camp’s law enforcement officer. Roll’s deterrence played a considerable role. A few days later, these “competitive matches” that had nothing to do with sportsmanship gradually faded away. I had to say, I deserved a lot of the credit for this. When Roll was leading people on patrol around the camp, I would always privately tell those soldiers who were dejected for lack of opportunities: as long as our friend Hugh was around, women would keep coming in an endless stream. Most of the soldiers who heard my words gave up the foolish idea of breaking discipline for that reason. Instead, they caught another kind of habit — outside of training, whenever they had any free time, they would climb up to high places and gaze into the distance, looking to see whether Hugh’s caravan had arrived…

Three days ago, Fred sent another letter to Hugh. In addition to listing some needed supplies, he had added a postscript at the very end: “Get me some more women.” Fred wrote this line with great difficulty. He wrote halfway through, then grabbed the sheet of paper and crumpled it, wanting to throw it away. But in the end, he smoothed it out again, laid it on the table, and hastily finished writing that sentence.

“What a difficult request,” Fred said to me awkwardly.

“We all have to do things we don’t want to do. If you really care about your soldiers, then go ahead and do what must be done.” I smiled mischievously as I read the letter. “But this sentence is too blunt, isn’t it? Don’t you want to express it in a more roundabout way?”

“No need…” My friend covered his face with both hands, rubbing his tired facial muscles. “If this is the request I have to make, then there’s no point in hiding anything anymore. Damn it, all the military manuals teach us how to march, how to form battle arrays, how to train, how to fight. They even write clearly about how to run away when defeated, but no one ever mentions that a General has to find women for his soldiers. If I ever write a book, Jeff, I will definitely not forget to include this item. It’s too important.”

“So what you’re saying is, those brave Generals and commanders aren’t much different from those disgusting pimps on the street corner,” I said sharply to Fred.

Fred laughed and cursed as he hurled his helmet at me, putting a stop to my disrespectful remarks.

“Actually… it’s about the same.” I threw the helmet back to Fred. He placed it back on the table, let out a soft sigh, and said with some helplessness, “A pimp satisfies a client’s desires and gets money from the client; a commander satisfies the soldiers’ desires, and the soldiers bring the commander victory. It’s just that the higher your demands, the greater the desires you need to satisfy in others.”

My friend tilted his head back, leaned his entire back against the chair, and tried hard to relax his weary body. Then, suddenly, completely losing his dignity, he shouted: “I need women! I need a lot of women…”

At that moment, the door was pushed open, and Millia walked in carrying a cup of hot water, her face cold and indifferent. Although she tried her best to maintain an elegant bearing and a calm expression, as she walked past me, I seemed to hear the sound of her teeth grinding tightly together.

I hastily took my leave, then ran back to my cabin clutching my cramping stomach, imagining what methods my poor friend would use to defend himself and calm the indignation in his beautiful follower’s heart.

A warm breeze carrying the rich fragrance of flowers rushed into my nose. Outside the window, the long-missed melodious chirping of birds suddenly awakened my ears. Subconsciously, I looked out the window. The river water was clear and bright, mist drifted over the distant mountains, and the spring scenery was radiant all around.

Tomorrow would be the day of sowing. We would break open the first field here on this highland, plant the first seeds, and welcome our unknown future with a spring full of hope.