Chapter 497: Mercenaries 3

Chapter 497 – Mercenary 3
“Drip~drip~drip~”

The loud trumpet sound resounded throughout the camp, this sound signaled that it was time for the meal.

Doug and Patton took their lunch boxes made of wood and came to line up in front of the kitchen, there were already more than thirty people in front of them.

“Hey, Boss Doug!”

“Hey, Patton!”

Seeing the two arrive, people kept greeting them.

The mercenaries hadn’t been broken up and resettled, and all of them had been dumped in this labor camp that was right next to the coal mine in a brainwave.

The Austrians didn’t care if they still maintained the old order of the mercenary corps, the Austrians didn’t care if they still listened to the mercenary bosses, the Austrians only needed them to be able to complete their assigned tasks on time and in full.

In Horn Bay, mercenaries, especially those experienced in combat, were a precious resource of force, and after being captured, they would often be integrated into the army of their captors – these guys were not knights, and loyalty was not something they could relate to, whoever offered a good deal or promised to restore them to their free status after capture would be followed by whoever they wanted to hang out with.

But that doesn’t apply here in the Northwest Bay, where the lord who captured them has no intention of integrating them at all, and is simply using them as tools.

In the beginning, there were still people who wanted to make trouble, but after the leader – who was actually secretly encouraged by Doug and Ferguson, the head of another mercenary group – was tied up by the Aldo people and executed with a 12-pound cannon on the spot, the explosive scene scared the guts of the mercenaries, and they quickly fell silent. They soon came to their senses.

They finally realized that the Aldos really didn’t care what they thought about them, but simply regarded them as a bunch of tools that could move on their own, and if any of the tools went out of order, they were “discarded”.

After the original fantasy was crushed by the merciless reality, the mercenaries from Horn Bay quickly positioned themselves as the slaves of the Aldo people. The fact that their mentality could be changed so quickly had to do with the culture of Horn Bay that they had been familiar with since they were young, where there had been a tradition of treating the captives of the war as slaves.

Well, as long as you set your attitude right, you can live quite well in this labor camp.

After Doug finished his meal, he and Patton joined a group of people for a “potluck” dinner.

He dipped the bread in his hand into the soup – he would have knocked his teeth out if he hadn’t – and when he felt it was almost ready, he put it in his mouth and chewed hard on the next piece.

Today’s soup had a bit of a meaty flavor to it, which wasn’t bad.

“I say guys! Why haven’t we seen Ferguson and his people today.”

He asked as he looked around the shopper, chewing on his bread.

Ferguson was the leader of another mercenary group, they were hired together and captured together.

“Just now while still in line – before you and Patton arrived – I saw their regiment assembled and taken away by the guards.”

A young fellow, probably only sixteen or seventeen years old, replied.

Doug felt a pang of regret at the sight of the youngster who answered him; his life had just begun, and his whole life was to be accounted for in this hellhole.

“I saw that too.”

“Yes, the guard came over to Ferguson himself and told him to lead their regiment away.”

Many people gave Doug information.

What had happened?
Doug was a little bewildered that Ferguson and his men had been taken away by the Ordo?

Were they dragged off to …… execution?

Or …… released?

If the former, will the next batch be their turn and their own?
If the latter …… by what right? On what grounds?
Doug just grabbed the bread in a daze, even next to someone calling him did not hear.

“Boss Doug! Boss Doug!”

Paden tugged at Doug’s sleeve and shook it uncontrollably.

“Huh? What is it.”

Doug snapped out of his thoughts.

“The guards came over to call us.” “What?”

Was it going to be his turn?
Doug’s heart trembled as the unknown fate befell him.

“Everyone!”

The guard held up a megaphone and bellowed:
“Assemble outside in the clearing in fifteen minutes, immediately!”

Those present, almost as a reflex, got up and ran outside, not even caring about the uneaten meal.

The inmates had been trained to a certain degree of militarization in the manner of those in the Alda army – such as formation, housekeeping, and running drills once in the morning and once in the evening – and this was done initially only for the sake of administrative convenience.

After the assembly was complete, a man dressed in an Alda uniform approached and walked back and forth in front of the prisoners a few times, scrutinizing them.

Finally he nodded in satisfaction and asked in a neutral voice, “Which one is Ribeiro Dawg? Step forward!”

Doug hesitated for a moment, but realized he couldn’t hide after all.

So he shouted, “Present!”

He did as he did in his weekday running drills, placing both hands in fists at his right and left sides, raising them to a position above his waist, and jogging out of the formation to take his place in front of the Aldar soldier.

“Report! 2001 Ribeiro Doug reporting for duty!”

The soldier looked him over from top to bottom, making Doug feel as if he were in a livestock market, where he was a horse and the other man was the one buying it.

“Follow me! The rest of you, stand in that position for an hour!”

The “buyer” seemed to take a liking to his horse and tugged on the reins.

The rest of the people were puzzled, but they didn’t even dare to look at each other, did some asshole make some kind of mistake, and then all of them were sentenced to stand in a row.

Doug followed along uneasily until he entered the labor camp’s administration office.

“Ferguson?”

Doug was a little surprised to find another mercenary group leader, Beluso Ferguson, here upon entering.

Ferguson’s eyes also revealed surprise when he saw him, followed by a trace of panic, although he covered it up in a twinkling of an eye, this trace of panic was still captured by Doug.

“Hmph!” Ferguson’s two already large nostrils flared to an even larger size and he grunted heavily.

It was as if he was filled with fighting spirit all of a sudden.

“Lord Erwin! It’s enough to have our [Rhino] men, there’s absolutely no need to use the weaklings of [Black Dog]!”

Rhinoceros! Black Dog!

What nostalgic words, Doug’s heart fluttered, these two words were the names of Ferguson’s mercenary group and his mercenary group respectively.

But since being sent to a labor camp, those words had been dusted off into the depths of memory.

Now they resurfaced from his mind and awakened Doug’s habits from his time as a mercenary regiment leader.

“The [Rhino] scumbags! Who are you calling a weakling?”

Doug unceremoniously cursed back.

Although his mouth was nonchalant, Doug’s heart set off huge waves of joy.

Judging from Ferguson s flustered reaction to seeing him, and what he said to the soldier named Erwin, it seemed that the Aldoans …… were going to need them for something, and it wasn t a low end job like shoveling coal, or else Ferguson wouldn t have needed to be so eager–. Just now he looked as if he had some business to be taken away from him.

Is there …… hope of getting out of this, then?

(End of chapter)