The White Dove Valley swayed slightly on the sea.

At this time, the whole ship was dark, except for a dim oil lamp in one of the stern compartments. This room was the captain's office of the White Dove Valley, now Ho. Arcadio II is used to doing business in this place.

At the beginning of the ship, Arcadio II often felt that the whole ship was tilting heavily to one side while he was writing, but after getting used to it, he was able to continue his business even when the wine in the bottle had already appeared at an alarming inclination. In fact, the documents to be signed for this kind of work are very simple, nothing more than the boatswain's list of fresh water and food purchases that need to be purchased when the next landing; a leave of absence from a sick sailor given by a doctor; Cesar's list of accounts.

The people on board used net beds, and they sewed nets out of sturdy ropes, which hung at both ends on the walls of the cabin, on which they could rest. It was invented by the sailors of Salander, who, at first, spat and swore that they did not want to sleep on such a strange thing, but the doctors, for hygienic reasons, actively supported the captain in promoting such a net bed. It turned out that in the past, sailors used to rest in bed with a lot of materials and a lot of trouble to maintain, but a cheap and sturdy net replaced a mattress, a sheet, and a pillow. This is a great deal for a modern boat that keeps everything simple in terms of consumables.

Cesar liked to write his logbook while lying on a mesh bed that swayed from side to side, and my father often wondered why the font would float to the right of Cesar's journal, as if it were deliberately written by a noble lady. Cesar shrugged his shoulders and said, "The net bed is not big enough, my arms can't be opened."

Kim often "took care" of the White Dove Valley during this time, and whenever the White Dove Valley entered the predetermined dock, it would welcome people sent by Kim. Kim either sent a prosecutor on board to check the ship's hygiene, or a military doctor came on board to visit the crew. Many of the crew members had already been dismissed from the ship because they had been diagnosed with illnesses, and my father didn't understand it at first, but soon a group of sailors contacted my father.

They told my father that they were sent by the Army and would be on Captain Arcadio's side at a critical moment.

The father asked, "What is the moment of truth?" ”

The sailor who came to report said, "Your Excellency, you may not know that the situation on board is dangerous. During this period of time, our people were constantly being dismissed from the ship, and we did not have an advantage in numbers, and now we are even more stretched. In fact, you also know that as a captain, you are still too small to even suppress some of the sailors on this ship. Do you know why, so far, everything is going well? It's because of us. Because of your personal relationship with an adult, we support you unconditionally. But you should also come out to protect us, and once we are completely outcast, then you may be overshadowed as a captain, and you will face endless trouble. ”

His father did not believe much in the sailor, but when Cesar, who was in attendance, approached his father to discuss it, he tried to get him to accept this view. Now the situation is surging, my father is caught between the two factions, and since he can't mobilize the two factions to serve him at the same time, he can only encircle one of them and use their strength to fight against the other side.

Cesar and his father knew that it would be bad for them to eradicate any of them. Because this will allow one of the factions to dominate, and an overly strong and united subordinate is not good for the superior.

There's no better way to do that than to stay as you are and develop something that's absolutely your own.

Then, when it came time to disembark, the dock doctor found that it was no longer as easy to take someone from the ship as it used to be, and that the captain of the ship had become wiser than before. The news was reported layer by layer, and in the end, when General Enor learned the news, he just said lightly: "I know."

At first, the voyage time was not long, and it usually took a week to two weeks to leave the port, and the ship branch only did some simple escort tasks, or simply went to sea to familiarize himself with the ship's nature, which Cesar called "slipping". Whenever he landed, Cesar would go to the port authority to register and enter the port and process various documents. His father allowed the sailors to take turns to go to the city to have fun, and when Cesar returned to the ship, he would take a dinghy and let one of the sailors row to the quay tavern on the shore.

The Dock Tavern is the most well-informed place on the mainland. Here he knew that King Nord was building several great new ports, one of which was in the Swadian style and advanced lighthouses for the dispatch of arrivals and departures; In the past few years, Vekia has absorbed more and more immigrants from outside the mountains to develop their uninhabited interior. In the last year, Vecchia's discriminatory ethnic policy was lifted, and Vikia no longer expelled even a single Swadian immigrant, but treated them as its own nationals; Salander suddenly saw a spike in wheat imports, and it was speculated that Salander was either suffering from famine or was stockpiling grain with ulterior motives; Of course, my father's main concern was the situation in Swadia and Kugit.

Kugit has not extended its territory to the sea, so little is known about Kugit here. The situation at the front is largely speculated on by the actions of Swadia in the country. Now that it is autumn, it has been more than half a year since the Kugit crossed the border, and according to the best guesses, the war should have ended. But now the news is becoming less and less optimistic. It is said that in the capital, Parabun, groups of troops were recruited and then driven out; The taverns in the harbor are filled with young men who are ready to go out for merry every day; In Suno, farmers were asked to bag grain, carry it to the grain collection point on the side of the official road, and transport it away in a wide-canopy wagon. The entire Suno Plain is in a kind of unorganized busyness than the spring planting and autumn harvest. The grain trucks on the official road face each other for thousands of miles, continuously; The craftsmen of Uxhall began to work all night, which made the Rhodoks across the river strange: the lazy Swadians suddenly began to work like the Rhodocs?

But the situation in Dehrim is not ideal, and the city known as the "East Earthen Barrier" of Swadia is already surrounded by dark clouds of war. It is believed that Kugit's scouts reached the city of Dehrim by the end of the summer at the latest, Fort Rendei had fallen, and now Dehrim had lost its barrier to the south, where the city of Dehrim had given Kugit a soft belly. Tyrkburg and Dégerosburg have lost contact with Dehrem, and the last report was a month and a half ago, when the two forts reported the same: "Request for help".

To the shame of the Swadians, Fort Rendei fell after being besieged by Kugit for just seven days. At that time, there were more than a thousand soldiers and enough food to feed them for two years, and people could not understand why Fort Rendee was so weak, like a fragile egg. There was news that Fort Rendey had not fallen, but surrendered, and that cowardly middle-aged officer was frightened by the bronzed skin of the steppe people, the desolate beard under the moon, and the galloping array of horses. After hundreds of casualties, the man wept and sent messengers to offer the keys to the city.

While everything is going wrong in the eastern fortress of the Empire, there is one place where unusual news has been coming all the time. That was the flashpoint of the whole war, Fort Lundia.

Father listened to the sailors with fluttering brows as they recounted what they had heard in Paraven a few weeks earlier.

He was very concerned about the news from Fort Lundia. For a long time, there was no news from Fort Lundia as if not a single bird could fly, and after the fall of Fort Rendia, people were ready to wait for the fall of Fort Rendia. But this bad news has never been loudly conveyed by the messenger on the official road, and no bad news is good news.

Messages from the ports of Nord or Vekia even claim that King Kugit was shot in the left shoulder while working on the Lundia front, but the Nords and Vecchians prefer to believe that this is a false message invented by the Swadia Propaganda Ministry. One thing seems certain, however, is that Fort Lundia has not fallen to this day.

On the Eastern Front, Fort Lundia was not as well fortified as Fort Rendi; There were not as many soldiers as Tyreburg; Not unlike Dekiosburg, which can receive a steady stream of aid from Dehrim, it is not known why Lendiaburg has survived the long-term attacks of the Kujits. Now sailors love to bet on when Fort Lundia will fall to the steppemen. You see, at Fort Rende, even with little resistance, the Kugits robbed the inhabitants of the fortress and the farmers who had taken refuge, and sold a considerable number of them into slavery. Now the Rhodoks are even beginning to find Swadian slaves in the cities of the Salanders, mostly from the plain settlements of Fort Rendiburg and the eastern lowlands of Dehrim.

In the affirmative, it was said that once Fort Lundia was captured, "massacres were inevitable, and in the eyes of the Kujits, Fort Lundia set a very bad example".

Fort Lundia, father thinks about this fortress, thinks about two letters about this fortress. In one letter, Wright told his father that Dimitri was doing well with him and that everything would get better; In another letter, Su Ge'er was angry that her father didn't know the right direction, but at the same time told her father to stay at sea and echo the Fort of Lundia.

What exactly is so weird about this Lentia Fort? What's going on inside? As time passed, my father's heart became more and more nervous, and whenever he heard that Fort Lentia was okay for the time being, my father would calm down a little, but then, all kinds of worries pushed my father into an unbreakable cycle, and once again fell into the fear of the unknown.

My father anxiously stayed at sea, doing the same things every day, writing the same reports, balancing between two groups of people with different agendas. The father became more and more silent, the work at sea was tedious and heavy, and the father was noticeably thinner, with sunken eyes, tightened facial muscles, and skin carved out of dense marble. Cesar occasionally felt that Ho. Arcadio II was silent, and his gloomy expression seemed very mature, as if this was no longer the kid who fought at will, made trouble, fell down ladders, and cheated on exams.

Cesar could feel: attention to family and friends; worries about the homeland; The hesitation of having nothing to do with himself makes Huo. Arcadio was in a state of great pressure and ordeal for the second time, and in the process, Ho. Arcadio II is growing very fast. The environment of the isolated world at sea ferments this lonely atmosphere to the extreme, and a man is the most able to surpass himself and sublimate himself when he is lonely.

Recently the naval fleet received a new task: the fight against piracy.

In the past, Rhodok didn't ask too much about pirates, because pirates didn't cause much damage to a land nation, and at most they would only turn some unowned desert islands into hiding places, which frightened some passing fishermen. But now it was different, and Rhodok decided to open several sea routes to connect it with the ports of the rest of the continent, and for this reason, the pirates that were rampant around the routes had to be eradicated.

Another reason why the Navy decided to take action against pirates was the recent cargo of the pirates, which was not ordinary smuggled goods, but living people. The pirates, through their associates on shore, bought a large number of war slaves from the slave market in Salander, some of whom were blacks taken by the Salanders, and some of whom were captives of the Salander tribes during the wars, but what Rhodok could not tolerate was that among these captives were a large number of Swadians.

Rhodok as a country may be cautious of Swadia.

But if a Rhodok man watched the Swadian aliens wantonly humiliate, then the mild Rhodoks would definitely not do any worse than they had done more than a decade ago. No matter how much the two regimes try to smear each other's faces, the Rhodoks know in the deepest part of their hearts that they will not sit idly by and watch what happened to Swadia.

Two months ago, a pirate ship sank near Pavron, and the next day, many bodies and wreckage were found on the shore, and in this hellish sight, a Swadia woman sat on the ground and wept. From the mouth of this woman, it became known that she was a commoner around Fort Rende, and after the captivity of the family, God forbid, they were always together, and together they were taken away by the steppe people, tied to a rope.

On the way, her two-year-old daughter died of illness along the way, but fortunately, she also had her two sons and husband;

In Halma, her eldest son was bought by a prairie rancher, but fortunately, she still has her younger son and husband;

When a drunken soldier came to harass her while crossing the pass, he killed her husband, who had come forward, and fortunately, she had her little son, the lovely wheat-haired, blue-eyed trickster;

She took her young son with her, and was taken to Shariz and eventually sold to pirates. But ah, a storm had swallowed up her little son the night before, and now she sat alone on the beach and wept, alone in the world to weep. When she was found, she searched for the beach cold and hungry for most of the day, but she did not find the body of her youngest son. When the woman was found, she was already crazy, she counted her fingers, "five, four, three, two, one", and with each count, she pressed one of her fingers, and finally she raised her bare fist and smiled at the people and said, "There is no one, only me."

It took a great deal to appease the woman, and the story she learned from her mouth shocked the Rhodocs. The Svadians have already suffered such a great sin? Even the most disgusted Rhodok militants in Swadia couldn't help but be horrified when they learned what had happened to this "Reyndi woman".

There are strong demands for the authorities to do their best. Some even donated money to entrust the government to other countries to try to buy back Swadia slaves.

In this atmosphere, the Admiralty ordered the new fleet to clear the bandits. On the one hand, it stabilizes the people's hearts, on the other hand, it cleans up the route, and at the same time, it is also a good opportunity to train new soldiers, killing three birds with one stone.

On this day, as my father sat in the captain's quarters, with his hands around his nose and his elbows propped up on the table, silently thinking. Outside there was the sound of trumpets and faint shouting. Immediately, Cesar knocked at the door and entered. The father stood up, "What's wrong?" ”

"Spotting pirates, southwest direction, I have ordered to prepare for pursuit. Please go out and command, my captain. ”