Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

"We've found out that the council took all the boats on the island away days ago, and now the peasants don't even have large planks of wood," Gold brought back the bad news.

The Vineta Remnants, having escaped the dragnet, transformed themselves into pirates, never stopping as they skirted the harbor and moved eastward, with Winters even sending Gold into Red Sulfur Harbor to risk his neck for a bit of money.

Most of the enemy were searching for Venetians in the southwest of the island, while Winters's group had already reached the east side. The situation was temporarily safe, but the next step was to figure out a way to get a small boat to sea. Stay connected with empire

Stroking the stubble on his chin, Bard mused, "As expected, the Red Sulfur Island council has gone to great lengths to prepare such a gift, they certainly didn't want to let any word slip out. Even if some islanders have hidden boats, they absolutely wouldn't hand them over."

"Can we trust this man? Wasn't he also a pirate before? And one that we captured at that?" Andre's focus was completely off the boat.

Winters, pouring over the map of Red Sulfur Island, responded without lifting his head, "I don't know why he decided to side with us, but if he wanted to betray us, we'd be dead by now, so I choose to trust him."

It was only after marching on the main road and then turning onto a smaller path for a while that Winters finally ordered a halt to rest.

The team stopped by a small stream where the taut nerves of the escaped Venetians just started to relax a bit; sleepiness immediately took them. Even the sentries were nodding off, while the others were snoring as soon as their backs hit the ground.

"Fourteen people still able to walk, plus a large cart," Winters mused while looking at his subordinates sleeping under the shade of the trees, "This is what's left of my hundred-man squad."

He tried not to think about what the outcome might have been if he had ordered "to turn back" instead of "charge forward."

But as the linchpin of these remnants, he couldn't afford to think about "what ifs" nor could he rest. Lieutenant Montaigne told himself, "You must find a way for these people to survive."

"You two, come look at the map," Winters called Bard and Andre over to his side, "This map's scale is 1:10000. I've been counting steps; after leaving Red Sulfur Harbor, we walked over four thousand four hundred steps on the main road and then another three thousand two hundred or so on the smaller path..."

The steps Winters referred to were marching steps, one with each foot alternately counting as one step, approximately one point two meters per step.

Bard quickly did the math, "So from noon until now we've walked almost nine kilometers, quite fast, almost at forced march speed."

"With not even a pot to eat from, how could we not be fast?" Andre rolled his eyes, turning to Winters, "It's no use, knowing how far we've walked doesn't help. Do you have a soft tape measure?"

"I didn't bring one, but I have this," Winters said with a cunning smile, pulling out a steel awl, "This awl is exactly fifteen centimeters long, neither more nor less."

The three lieutenants fiddled with the map for a while, picking up their past skills in mapping, and finally pinpointed their current location on the map based on their walking distance and the nearby streams and roads.

They had followed the road and were now nearing the eastern coast of Red Sulfur Island, with the straight-line distance on the map being only about three to four kilometers.

"We can't go blundering around like headless flies now," Winters put away the map, and said to the other two lieutenants, "The team will rest here for the time being, and Bard and I will scout to the east..."

"I want to go, too!" Andre immediately protested, not wanting to be left behind.

"You're not going anywhere," Winters pushed him back down, "If all three of us are gone, won't the rest think we've run off? You stay behind."

When the sun was sloping west, Winters who had returned to the resting place called a meeting for everyone.

The situation was quite special at the moment, with the team's composition being complex and his own authority uncertain, so he had to use this kind of military democracy to get the soldiers to follow orders more willingly.

"We're just behind the eastern hills at the coastline, less than four kilometers away," he didn't beat around the bush and looked directly at the few naval sailors in the group, "Do any of you know how to make a raft?"

"Sir, I'm afraid it won't work if you're thinking of making it to sea on a raft," one bold sailor spoke up to explain, "Rafts not only have poor load capacity but they also capsize at the slightest sign of wind and waves, and besides... we don't even have the tools to make one, do we?"

"What if we had tools?" Winters counter-asked.

The sailor counted on his fingers for a while before answering, "To carry all of us, we'd need to chop at least fifty logs, and we would also need plenty of rope, and preferably tar as well."

"Do you know anything about shipbuilding?" Winters asked again.

"I used to work in a shipyard," the sailor scratched his head.

"Everyone heard it, the enemy has scavenged all the boats, and it's going to be very difficult to make temporary rafts," Winters gazed into the soldiers' eyes and spoke up, "And both Lieutenant Bard and I have scouted toward the seaside, there are enemy sentries everywhere, it's absolutely impossible for us to chop wood and build boats under their watch."

The soldiers' eyes grew dim.

"However, there is still one way out," Winters's aim was not to demoralize, he firmly outlined his plan, "Colonel Kongtai'er's plan was to find a way to the seaside to look for a boat. But my plan is the opposite, we're not only not going to the seaside, we are going northwest, we are heading further inland on the island."