Chapter 3: Capital City, Recruitment and Training Camp
Next morning Jizhong woke up feeling refreshed from the fatigue due to constant traveling on the bullock cart. After having breakfast he discreetly started inquiring about the situation in the city and to get information on the recruitment.
He roamed around a bit listening onto conversations in order to get a better hold of the happenings of the city. Although the outer part of the city mostly consisted of markets filled with commoners and merchants , one could still get a good amount of information about the inner city as many people often frequented it due to various reasons.
Jizhong came to know that there are many recruitments happening for the personal armies of various nobles. Among these, the one under Changwunjun and Ji Shi's factions are the most noticeable. After inquiring some more he was able to get the location for the recruitment in Changwenjun army.
The recruitment was being held at the north east end of the city close to an open field of near 15 hectares which was being used as a base camp and training ground for the soldiers. This process of mass recruitment will go on for another week after which the official training of the recruits will begun.
The training will mostly be centered on transforming the ensemble of recruits into an organised army, along with some physical training, weapons training etc.
There will be some special recruitments later on but that would mostly be open for those who had already transcribed in some campaigns earlier and had some experience of an army and war.
When Jizhong arrived at the designated place he saw a big registration booth in front of the supposed base camp where some soliders were frequenting around. There was a relatively small line near the registration booth probably due to the time being this early in the morning.
Finally Jizhong's turn arrived , so he expressed his intention of joining the army , he was asked his name and some basic background information like occupation , home-place ,age etc. He was also asked whether he was familiar with handling some weapon for which he informed he was able to use the bow.
Although Jizhong was around sixteen and a half he was already around five feet ten inches in height and he had a lean but sturdy build. Moreover people of this era were usually considered adults when they reached the age of fifteen so his age constituted no problem in registering for the camp .
He was asked to return after the noon as they will be conducting some basic physical tests before being considered for the next round of recruitment. This test is mostly to weed out those people who don't even have a basic level of physical fitness and endurance that was considered acceptable.
For the remaining time Jizhong was left to explore the city. He noticed that there was already hustle and bustle in the markets of the outer city. No one will be able to guess that their will be a bloody rebellion going on in a few months time from this. May be it is due to the fact that the daily life of commoners who are the dominant population here won't be effected directly due to the happening of the royal palace.
He observed that there are two massive gates at the south and south east ends of the city and some smaller gates in other directions. These two major gates are the ones that have heavy traffic flow in and out of the city. The smaller gates had very less traffic if any with an occasional carriage or two passing them. He guessed that the smaller gates may be special gates to be mostly used by prominent people to avoid the heavy traffic of the city or may be for them to move unnoticed.
In this way time passed and it was again time to return to the base camp for the physical fitness test. Jizhong can see that there were almost three hundred people who have registered for the camp. These recruits were arranged in thirty rows and ten files.
Each row was asked to run laps around the field separately while the officers were taking notes of the performance. This went on for about two hours. Some people were not able to continue running after the first hour due to heat stoke and various other reasons.
Still more than two hundred people were able to pass this first test. After some rest the recruits were given some other tests like weight test etc. and a special weapons test was conducted for those who have expressed their familiarity with handling some weapon earlier. Jizhong's bow test went well as he was able to hit bull's eye nine out of the ten time he shot with the first one missing by a very small margin as the bow given to him was different from the one he has practiced with.
The recruits were asked to return in the evening of the next day for the selection results. The next day the results were out and around two hundred people were selected for the base camp including Jizhong.
The selected recruits were informed that the training will start next week after few more people are recruited. As Jizhong was free for the next week he started searching for a part time job which he eventually found with a carpenter shop. The pay was not very good but with the savings he had it was enough to sustain him easily for the week here.
Jizhong continued to practice with the bow in the morning and evening. The in between time was spent with the part time job and roaming around exploring the majestic city, although he was not able to explore the inner city properly due to the many restrictions in place for entering the various areas.
The week passed this way and today is the day when the training camp begins. After gathering his belongings and saying good bye to the inn keeper , Jizhong started towards the training camp. When at the base camp he was directed to a resting tent where he would be longing from now on with two other people.
He arranged his belongings in the tent and went towards the training field where the recruits were asked to gather.
At the training field...
Vice Captain Bi: "Congratulations for being selected in this training camp. I expect everyone to give their all in these three months of training. The people with the best performance at the end of this camp will have the chance to join Lord Changwenjun's personal army. So good luck to all. "
With this the training started. For the first month the trainees were driven through basic physical exercises and were taught marching in various formations. The weapons training will start from the next month.
Jizhong performed well in the first month's physical training and drill. He wasn't the absolute best but was good enough to be noticed by the instructors, he learned and adapted to various formations and paid attention to the details of when and how these different formations were used on the battlefield.
Although these were some of the most fundamental formations and didn't involve complex maneuvering of the soilders but they were useful in many situations nonetheless. With the beginning of the second month the trainees were asked to choose there primary weapon in which they will receive some basic training for the remaining time of the camp.
When Jizhong showcased his skill with the bow he was exempted from joining the basic weapons class for the bow and was allowed to attend a secondary weapon class of his choosing.
He chose to learn spear as his secondary weapon and started attending its training session. He choose a relatively medium weight spear which can be handled one handed if need be. It was confusing to learn at the beginning as he had no experience in handling the spear but he started getting a hang of it after some training. Moreover the level of spear training was only aimed at teaching basic mastery over the weapon.
So from the second month of the training camp the daily schedule of the recruits consisted of morning drills , afternoon to evening weapons class after which they were free for the day. The items of daily necessity were provided in the camp with an additional five silver coins as a salary each month. This was enough to sustain an average family for around three months away from the capital.
The three months of training camp thus ended. Vice Captain Bi delivered the closing speech and specially congratulated the ones selected for the special training camp of Lord Changwenjun's personal army.
Jizhong was quite sure that he would get selected as his performance was in the top hundred in the training camp and he was noticed by the instructors for this and his skills with the bow. He also had a clear background and there was no chance of him being a spy. This was important as he guessed that they would have verified the background information of these selected people to make sure there were no spys in them.
As he expected , he was among the seven hundred men that were selected for Lord Changwenjun's army special camp and their further reporting and training will take place near the capital in Lord Changwenjun's personal territory.
Jizhong collected his belongings from the camp along with the token he was given for his identification and moved to the new camp with the other seven hundred people. There they rested for the day after having some dinner.
All the new recruits were very excited for joining the personal army and were looking forward to what tomorrow will bring.
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