This North Needs Reform (2)
Even with the kindest possible spin, the roads of the North were no place for galloping a horse.
No—outside of a scant few regions, there was nothing that even deserved to be called a road.
Snow fell thick and refused to melt, and under pressure that snow turned to ice, building a tangled, treacherous mess of conditions.
To drive a horse through country like this took skill and strength at once.
The skill to master a mount racing through snow where you could never tell from what height, or from which patch, the ice began—and the strength to crush down a horse that still, now and then, startled and bolted.
Naturally, even for the original owner of this body, Logwell Wintershield, that was a tall order—
And for the twenty-first-century wraith who had seized that body, it was impossible even if he died and came back to life.
So what choice did he have?
"I'll ride in the carriage."
"Yes, sir."
I boarded the prepared carriage.
Not an ordinary one, but a magic carriage inscribed with special enchantments.
It distributed the instantaneous shocks that struck the carriage over several stages, preventing it from overturning.
In other words, it only stopped the thing from flipping—and nothing more.
Clatter-clatter—
THUD THUD THUD!
"Young Master! Are you all right?!"
From the front seat, where he drove the two horses, came the shout of the skilled coachman and butler, old Max.
"Urgh!!! I-I'm fine, I think!"
"Thank goodness! Since you can endure it, I'll pick up the speed!"
"Wait, no— Urrrgh!!"
Fine? Hardly.
The magic inscribed on this carriage didn't perfectly absorb impacts so much as slowly distribute them.
In plain terms, it converted burst damage into sustained DPS.
Getting hit hard once versus getting moderately hurt over a long stretch—which is more painful? In total suffering, the latter is obviously worse.
You could ask whether it's fine as long as it doesn't overturn, but this is like being asked whether you'd rather do chemical-warfare training or a hundred-mile forced march.
Even using drinking CS gas ten years ago as the baseline, the former wins by a landslide.
But regretting it now wouldn't reverse a thing.
"Please hold on a little longer! Another six hours. If we run as far as we've already come, we'll reach a place where we can rest!"
Clatter-clatter.
THUD THUD THUD!
I had no choice but to endure through sheer grit and spite.
The mad dash only paused when the sun went down.
Saying we'd reach a place to rest after another six hours meant we wouldn't stop until the campsite.
When the carriage halted, I staggered outside, utterly spent, and collapsed in a heap. Old Max approached and burst into a hearty laugh.
"Haha, are you all right?"
"...Aside from the sensation that my five organs and six viscera have shifted slightly out of place, I'm fine."
"Then you're fine. When you get a hernia, you don't even feel that."
This old man...
His eyes looking at me were full of warmth and concern, but at base he was every bit the alpha-male Northerner by nature.
You could say his threshold for injury was high.
But I couldn't complain of weakness over this.
Unlike me, who had traveled in relative comfort by carriage, the other soldiers—each driving their own horses—were already scattered about preparing camp.
Still, my treatment was overwhelmingly better.
"Have some of this."
As I sat leaning against a carriage wheel, groaning, old Max produced a bowl of water from somewhere and handed it over.
I took the bowl with steam rising from it and gulped it down whole, and before long I felt my insides settle.
"Ahh, what is this? The effect is excellent."
"Dried mareng leaves. Outstanding for settling the stomach."
"There was such a thing? Huh. I don't think it even appeared in the books."
"Heh heh. An old man's wisdom."
With the smile of a decades-seasoned senior NCO, old Max rummaged out various other things and passed them over. A warmly heated blanket, biscuits to fill the stomach briefly before the meal, and the like. The blanket was coarse and the biscuits hard as rock, but I couldn't deny they were exactly what I needed most right now.
"Please wait a moment. I'll finish preparing the field camp and return."
Trotting off with light steps, old Max immediately joined the ranks of soldiers preparing camp. The soldiers worked with practiced coordination, hands moving in sync as if camp setup was second nature—but old Max showed a realm of mastery a cut above even that.
"Tsk tsk. Why are you dawdling like this? Step aside."
True to his past as a centurion, old Max instantly raised a multi-person tent using poles and canvas. The sight called to mind a veteran king of the ranks putting up a thirty-man military tent by himself.
No—thinking about it, wasn't this place the real masters of fieldcraft?
Having created a campsite in truly no time at all, old Max next directed the installation of a field kitchen. The soldiers, even with crude equipment, set up the makeshift kitchen with practiced ease, and there was no opening for me to step in.
And so, meal preparations were complete.
"Please eat, Young Master."
Old Max scooped a generous ladle of stew from a great pot boiling furiously and handed it over.
"Thank you."
I bowed my head, took it in both hands, and took a spoonful—
"Cough?!"
An enormously fishy taste filled my mouth.
"Heh heh heh. Not much of a taste, is it?"
I managed to swallow without spitting it out, but I'd already reeked of greenhorn from the start.
Old Max curled the corners of his mouth in an amused little smirk, as if he found me cute.
I read his intention at once and asked.
"...You did this on purpose."
"On purpose? This is what the soldiers always eat."
"Even so, you could have prepared better food, yet you chose the worst. You wanted to show me, didn't you? That while the Grand Ducal Castle in the North is a barren place, the Grand Duchy outside the walls is so much harsher it doesn't even compare."
Hmm.
Old Max wore a peculiar smile.
"Truly, you are every bit the clever Second Young Master. In that case, how about returning even now?"
"No. On the contrary, this is good."
Right in front of his eyes, I exaggeratedly scooped another spoonful of stew and gulped it down.
Gulp... O-okay... I managed to swallow it faster this time.
At that thoroughly deliberate action, old Max paused for a moment.
I used the opening to speak.
"The fishy taste is strong. You froze the meat whole, hung it by the saddle, then threw it straight into the pot and boiled it into stew—that's why. The blood never fully drained, so of course the gamey stench won't go away, and you mixed in herbs to balance the nutrients, which makes it obvious taste was never a consideration at all."
"My word... Did the books also cover field cooking?"
Of course not.
This was knowledge the original owner of this body could never have gotten from the books he read. The kind of thing you only hear from people who've experienced it firsthand or lived through similar situations.
Which was why the next question followed on the same line.
"Why settle meals with fare this bleak? A proper meal is a critical factor that directly connects to combat power. It wouldn't even take much—just thaw it moderately and drain the blood, and it wouldn't be this foul."
"You truly... are interested in the soldiers' meals. Wasn't visiting Ashville Village the priority?"
"If there's a subject worth examining while we're at it, we should resolve it. And as I said, meals directly connect to combat power. Isn't that a problem a young master of the Grand Duchy ought to know?"
"Haha... You are quite right. Yes—to answer, it is because firewood is scarce."
"Firewood? Ah."
What you need to thaw meat and wash out the blood is heat and water.
Water you can obtain by melting and boiling the snow scattered about, but heat is another matter.
More precisely, the firewood needed to produce that heat is the problem.
Fundamentally, on a march in the North, minimizing baggage is critical. Moving through deep snowfields burns enormous calories, and the more baggage you carry, the greater the burden. The method of transporting meat for food isn't storing it elsewhere—it's freezing it solid and hanging it from the saddle for the same reason.
Firewood is both heavy and bulky. Large quantities can't be easily transported, making it a precious resource—and you can't afford to burn it long for cooking. Especially in a place where a blizzard could strand you at any time, heat is a lifeline, so the habit of always minimizing its use is drilled in deep.
This is a problem worth genuinely thinking about.
Combat rations were something the U.S. military always treated as critical for maintaining combat power. These days, with considerable advances in science and technology, they may not taste great but they're at least somewhat edible—but I hear in the old days they were truly unfit for human consumption.
Come to think of it...
A thought struck me, and I asked.
"The biscuits you gave me earlier. Are those also standard issue like the rest of the supplies?"
"Ah, that was my mistake. Of course not. What ordinary soldiers eat is something like this."
Old Max pulled a brick from his coat and handed it to me. Yes—its true identity was literally a brick. Even the biscuits I'd received earlier were so hard I'd had to soak them in mareng-leaf water for ages to soften them enough to eat, and this was on a completely different level.
"...This is edible, right? Does it even dissolve?"
"That's why few among the soldiers have intact teeth. Some even use them as improvised weapons in a pinch."
Insane.
The combat-ration brick wasn't an exaggeration—it was truly that bad.
Is this the difference between science and magic?
Unlike the modern world, this other world has developed magic instead of science. And while science is universally scattered among the masses as a boon of civilization, magic is concentrated exclusively among the privileged few. The soldiers of this barren land enjoy none of those benefits whatsoever.
"Well, these are emergency rations, after all. In practice, when we take the field we don't eat these—we solve it through hunting. We Northerners are all outstanding hunters, aren't we? Speak of the devil—here they come."
At the tip of old Max's pointing finger, soldiers who had succeeded in their hunt through the snowy night fields could be seen returning with a massive reindeer slung over their shoulders.
Whoa, what is that?
What kind of reindeer is the size of a Matiz?
Truly, the mysteries of another world.
Laughing heartily as if this entire thing had been a surprise party, old Max instantly put on a reindeer-butchering show with the soldiers, added a bit of seasoning they'd brought, and held out a large cut of leg meat.
It wasn't exactly a fine taste either, but it was far more edible than the gamey stew.
"How is it?"
"Better than before. Much better."
Perhaps thanks to the extreme before-and-after comparison moments ago, this almost felt like a real feast.
The soldiers gathered in small groups and finished their meals, and a few set night watches and soon dispersed.
As I remained with old Max, who stayed to guard me, quietly watching the scene—
"I really do think it was a good decision to come out here."
"Huh. Even after all that suffering? I'll tell you in advance—we still have three more days of travel by carriage. Same for the return trip."
"I know. That's exactly why I feel all the more rewarded. Hardship felt only through writing and hardship felt vividly in the field are different things."
Isn't that how it all stacks up into data?
"...Magnificent."
Old Max let out a genuine murmur of admiration, and I took in the soldiers' figures one by one.
Right now there's nothing I can do for them. But if I remember how they look now, someday I'll be able to think of things that will actually be useful.
That's just how the military is.
Stifling and rigid, so slow-moving you might not even notice it's rolling—and then somehow you look up and go, "Huh?" and it's already changed.
It's characteristic of those who've actually served to curse the military as the most conservative organization there is—and equally characteristic of veterans to chorus, "In my day it wasn't like this," and go on about how soft the military has gotten these days.
Behind that progress there must surely be the efforts of people who, even in places unseen, tried to move toward a better future.
Watching the soldiers, I made my own resolution.
I'm the same. It may be slow, but I'll change this place step by step into a unit worth living in.
But—
A question suddenly rose.
"I have a question."
"Please speak."
"If—just if—the hunt fails, what happens?"
"Then it becomes an emergency situation."
That could be tomorrow, or the day after.
"...Ah."
...Maybe I should try changing things a little faster?