A little more than a month after the end of the border conflict, three major events took place in the valley.

The first major event was that the Dean family sent someone to Boulder Town half a month ago to deliver a ransom of 60,000 fenni and five fine war horses and horse harnesses, and Art fulfilled his promise and released the palace guard knight Dean who had been detained for more than half a month, and the conflict between Art and the Dean family was temporarily alleviated;

The second major event came from several trade guilds in the Northlands. At the beginning of August, the southern goods trade guilds of the two cities of Lucesin and Besançon in the north of Burgundy officially invited the "eastern caravan of Baron Galvin" to join the guild, the size of the caravan was fifteen carriages, and the caravan after becoming a member of the guild would enjoy the guild's southern goods sales market and promised to accept the constraints of the guild, and Art only needed to pay a membership fee of one thousand fennig, and Yate was officially based on the southern goods trade;

The third major event was the expansion of the army. From May this year to the beginning of the bandits to August when the border conflict completely subsided, the Yate army experienced several months of non-stop fighting, soldiers and armaments suffered great losses, in order to restore and expand the strength, Art in the Dean family after receiving the ransom of 60,000 Fenni sent a caravan out to buy a large number of weapons, armor and fine iron leather and other materials, after the armament was repaired and replenished, Art took Otto, Angus and others to carry out a new round of reorganization and expansion of the army.

The Legion is the main force of the battle as a standing {professional} soldier, and taking advantage of the relatively peaceful external situation in the valley during this time, Art transferred some veterans of the second and third squadrons to mix with the recruits, and restored the establishment of the first squadron, the first squadron is led by Colin as the squadron leader, a new young mercenary named Roger Mueller is the first squad leader, and the other squad leader is a veteran who survived the battle in Boulder Town; The 4th Squadron was also successfully formed because of Ron's return, with Ron as the squadron leader and Andrew and a recovering veteran as the squad leader. At this point, the number of infantry in the legion under Arter reached four squadrons of sixty men.

In addition, due to the arrival of Jafar and the five horses sent by the Dean family, Art expanded the size of the Sentinel Cavalry to eight horsemen, with Lusignan and Jafar as the captains and vice-captains respectively.

Jason's leg injury has mostly recovered after a few months of rest, and although he walks with a slight limp, it does not weaken the combat power of an archer, and Jason's gōng nǔ squad has eight gōng nǔ hands after his return.

After the baggage officer Spencer recovered from his injury, the baggage team was rebuilt, and now the baggage team is equipped with a rough and calculating officer and three "medical soldiers" who have been taught the art of healing by Thomas Fana.

In addition to the Legions, the Border Outposts, Border Patrols, and Valley Guards have all been expanded. The standing garrison of the border post was expanded to fifteen men, and fifteen additional places for conscripts were added to the border post, for a total of thirty people; The number of garrison {patrol team} in Boulder Town has been expanded to fifteen people, and if there are not enough patrol personnel, they can propose temporary dispatch to the valley; The Valley Guard was renamed the Valley Garrison Corps, which is currently just an empty shelf, consisting of the original Guard Standing Peasants, with Bass, who has been determined not to return to the Legion, as the commander of the Garrison Corps, and Scott and Lawrence are responsible for the training and recruitment of the Garrison Corps before he recovers from his injuries and can barely fight.

In total, the number of standing troops in Art's hands (including standing peasant soldiers) has exceeded 100, and the valley garrison corps can be expanded to more than 60 in wartime. Such strength has far exceeded the upper limit of a knight, and is even close to the power of a weak baron.

These were still the number of troops, because in the valley and forests southwest of Tignats, there was a "special army" of about fifty men that was under the control of Yat, and this "special army" had been much calmer lately, because last time they had looted a farm and harvested a lot of food and supplies.

In addition to these three major events, the valley and Boulder Town and the border outpost also have some significant things.

First of all, a new round of outcasts began in the two knightly fiefs of the valley and the border outpost. Because the bandits in the county were curbed and the grain production in the south was reduced due to the war, the hungry homeless people bypassed the interception of the Provençal army and began to flee to the north in large numbers, and the border post became a camp for the homeless to rest, Simon and Benjamin began to recruit a large number of young and strong homeless people after receiving a batch of grain purchased through the caravan, some of these homeless people were left on the border to become lords, and most of the rest were sent to the valley knights to become farmers, and the number of lords in the two knight estates in Yat reached more than 160 households, More than 540 people {not including armies, artisans, and war slaves}, the border and Boulder Town are still recruiting outcasts, and caravans are constantly buying food supplies from the Northland and sending them to various territories to support the expansion of Art.

The letter from Tinets questioned the court guard knight Art Wood Wells's efforts to expand his power beyond the number of knights' lordial army, but now that the court struggle was becoming more and more fierce, there was no time to take care of a small lord in the remote south, and Art ignored it.

The second village was built three miles south of the village of the Valley Knights, called Kutim {meaning riverside land}, the valley village could only accommodate fifty farmers because of the topography, and the newly built village was relatively flat, and the civil magistrate Cooper and the construction steward Lawrence led a group of people to carve out a large piece of land on a riverbank that was not easy to cultivate, built a fence, and more than 80 farmers separated from the valley built grass huts and wooden houses in the fence themselves. Most of the peasant households here are newly recruited displaced people who have just been allocated land and have not yet been able to produce their own grain, and their food and supporting farm tools and livestock are temporarily supplied by the civil administration.

The last thing was that the overgrown land that Arte had put Simon in order to tidy up when he was inspecting the border outposts at the beginning of the year had harvested nearly twice the grain that the barren land should have yielded. When the grain was harvested, Art himself took the parish priest Hamish to the border post to harvest the grain from the small plot of land and grind it into flour and make delicious bread in front of everyone.

Hamish knew what Art meant by taking him to the border, so after eating the bread made from the grain produced in that land, Hamish was greatly impressed by God's miracle and reported it to the diocese of Tiniez. The diocese of Tignets was noncommittal, and after acquiescing in this, Yat began to experiment with manure in the valley, starting from the land that Cooper had cultivated in the south of the wooden fort, and when a few farmers covered their noses and dumped the manure of people and animals that had been piled up in the barrels into the ground, the twenty or so farmers who had been selected to watch and study showed strange expressions, and it was evident that they could not accept such a thing for a while, but it was a good start......

............

By the time these things were done, the time had been pushed to mid-August.

In this valley in southern Central Europe, the heat is still shrouded.

In the Valley Wooden Fort Academy, the third squadron leader Bangeda had layers of sweat on his forehead, not only because of the scorching heat, but also because the lines and symbols drawn by Father Hamish on the wooden board in the school were too complex to be recognized.

Bangada had already crushed the charcoal rod in his hand, tilted his head and asked Klaus, who kept writhing his body beside him, "Klaus, do you remember what those words mean?" ”

Klaus wiped the sweat from his forehead and replied with grinning, "If I had known what these crooked things meant, I wouldn't have been paid for a week." ”

Bangada blinked, moved his gaze from Klaus's face to Andrew, the first squad leader of the new Fourth Squadron, and muttered, "Why do you say Andrew is so powerful?" He was able to write down the words taught by the priest every day. ”

Klaus was also a little incredulous, "Do you think he is the woodcutter's son or not?" Should he not hide his identity, perhaps he was the second son of some nobleman or a monk who had been kicked out of the Church Academy? ”

"No way, when we were guarding Tarburg in the east, there were conscripted peasants from the same village who came with him, and everyone called him Andrew the Woodcutter."

"Well, God has given us the same strong body, but he has also given him a brilliant mind."

"Okay, after dinner, let's go and invite him to drink a few glasses of fruit wine, so that he can tell us what he has learned today, or he will be fined and confiscated when he tests the text tomorrow morning. What do you say about this, how can there be any language for civilians to learn every day, do you still want us to praise the Bible~" Klaus complained slightly in his tone.

"This is an order from an adult, do you dare not listen to it? You're not alone in being forced to sit here, even a few peasant captains of the guard are sitting here. Bangada looked around at the people sitting in the school hall with hot sweat and sad faces.

This is a microcosm of Yat's training of his subordinate officers. Since the completion of the reorganization and expansion, Art has supervised the training of the Legion soldiers by the officers, and at the same time has taken Angus and Otto to personally conduct individual training for the officers above the Legion squad leader. On weekdays, Art led the army to train in physical endurance, personal combat skills, and military formation coordination in the wasteland outside the Beiguan Military Fort, and on Sundays, when the soldiers were repaired, Art would take the officers back to the parish school in the valley wooden fort to be taught by Father Hamish, and of course, he would also take the time to teach the officers some commonly used tactical vocabulary.

This particular training was too difficult for officers who had never had the opportunity to read and write, and with some deep-seated ideas, many officers were not very well aware. Fortunately, Art had already begun to try to teach them the language, and with the means of confiscation of military salaries, naming and criticizing, and restrictions on promotion, the officers had to sit in the cramped school and listen to the priest's boring symbols, while thinking about whether to go to the tavern in the wooden castle in the evening and pay for a few glasses of fruit wine......

.............

In the official room of the Lord's Mansion in the Wooden Fort of the Valley, Art was talking to the son of the bandit leader Redogan, "Matthew, this is something that your father entrusted to you, and I guess your mother should have sewn it for you herself. Art handed a welcoming, quilted liner to the half-size man across the table.

Matthew took the clothes and held them in his hands for a long time without speaking.

"Say, why don't you want to stay in the parish school?" Art sat in his chair and stared at the guy opposite.

Matthew took a breath and mustered up the courage to reply, "Master~ I don't want to be with those children in the school, I want to go out to fight with you." ”

Art laughed, "Kid? They are not children, those fellows will be the commanders of our army and the stewards of the territory in the future, if you can concentrate on studying and training as hard as they do, I will also make you an officer or a steward of the territory in the future. ”

Matthew's face turned red, "Master, I~ I can't sit still, I am imprisoned in the house every day listening to the priest's nagging, I feel like I'm going crazy." ”

"So you're going to fight with the guys in the academy and get me to get you removed from the academy in this way?"

"I~~" Matthew didn't continue, it was a tacit acquiescence.

"Do you know how happy your parents were when they learned that you had the opportunity to learn the written language with a priest and be trained as a knight's squire? Your father was an honest farmer who became a robber in order to keep you alive, do you want to continue to be a robber in the future? Your mother will come to live in the valley next month, what are you going to tell her then? Art raised her voice.

Matthew was a little excited when he heard this, and retorted: "Master, I don't plan to continue to be a bandit, I just want to enter your army as a soldier." Anyway, Father Hamish also said that I am not suitable to stay in the school at all~"

Art couldn't laugh or cry when he heard this, the son of the bandit leader was born with a belligerent seed, and dared to break into the camp alone when he was a bandit, and now he was admitted to the parish school, and he had to fight with the apprentices every day, so that the apprentices of the school were very afraid of this "barbarian", this guy was very fond of combat skills training, but every time he was taught words, he was restless, and several stewards of the parish school were helpless against him.

Art thought for a moment, then took out a list of words that officers needed to learn from the table, handed it to Matthew, and said, "This is a list of words that officers need to learn, a total of fifty words, if you can learn all of them within a month, I will make an exception to include you in the legion and follow me as a personal guard." I don't require you to stay in the academy for this month, you can learn these words in any way, and come to me after a month. ”

Matthew stood up and took a piece of parchment densely covered with words in Art's hand, frowned for a moment, and then looked up at Art firmly, "Master, don't forget what you said in a month's time." ”

Art put his fist in his heart, "I guarantee the honor of a knight. ”

"Okay, sir, I believe you."

………………

In the tavern of Emma's house in the valley wooden castle, it is bustling with activity today.

Almost all the regimental officers and soldiers who had money to spare returned to the valley, and these people could afford to enjoy the expensive drinks and food.

In the grass shed of the tavern, Colin was drinking with a few veterans of the First Squadron and Roger, the new squad leader.

"Roger, are you really the miller's son?" Colin asked.

"It used to be, but my family's mill for three generations was replaced with wine by my drunken father."

"So you went to work as a mercenary?"

"Yes~ I also worked as a caravan guard, this time I was going to hide my identity and follow Captain Gehr to be a caravan guard, but I was unexpectedly selected to stay at the outpost not long after I joined, and at that time the outpost was about to be captured by those mercenaries, and I had to ...... in order to survive"

…………