Extreme Cold Era: Shelter Don't Keep Waste
Chapter 68 Special Warhorses

Chapter 68: Chapter 68 Special Warhorses

The so-called special war horses are an effort made by the Empire’s conservative military nobility in the late Age of Knights to enhance the knights’ combat capability.

After all, anyone with keen insight could see that with the advent of the Steam Age, traditional knights indeed could no longer meet the battlefield’s combat needs, so conservative military noblemen began to try enhancing the knights’ combat capability in other ways to maintain their status.

For an Extraordinary Knight, the main factors influencing their combat capability are threefold: personal quality, weaponry, and mount.

The focus on weaponry needs no mention; it has always been a key concern for knights, even more so than the enhancement of their personal qualities.

Since the establishment of the feudal system, powerful nobles with fiefs have been gathering excellent alchemists and craftsmen to create the finest equipment for their knights.

And when the concept of modern nation-states formed and the former feudal system began to disintegrate, the research into advanced equipment was taken over by the state and the Royal Family.

Therefore, today’s Empire Knight Orders mostly have switched to standardized equipment, because the development of productivity now allows craftsmen to produce in batches weapons or armor that previously only top craftsmen could make through extensive labor.

This is the meaning of technological advancement, turning the production of equipment from what was once akin to a lottery into a guarantee.

As for the improvement in armor quality brought about by technological progress, it wasn’t so pronounced in the Steam Age. Though the quality improved significantly, it didn’t result in a fundamental change, merely upgrading from chain armor to plate armor.

After all, many scientific theories of this era were still nascent, mostly summarizing experiences, organizing scattered knowledge and experiences into systematic knowledge.

While armor could be mass-produced, and its quality improved remarkably, the same wasn’t true for mounts.

Breeding a horse still had to follow natural laws — waiting for two horses to mate, gestate, and give birth, and then spending two to three years waiting for the foal to mature before it could be ridden as a qualified adult horse.

Among this process, breeding war horses was particularly troublesome.

Besides selecting the breed, the foal needs training shortly after birth, including desensitivity to humans, adaptation to battlefield environments, and, most importantly, combat skills training, all requiring a significant investment of time and effort.

Therefore, saying an excellent war horse is more precious than ten soldiers is not a joke.

In fact, the cost of maintaining the combat capability of one excellent war horse is almost comparable to ensuring ten soldiers.

Because his family is a knightly family and raises war horses, Perfikot had some understanding of this.

Taking a 500-kilogram war horse as an example, it eats four meals a day, each about at least five kilograms of grain or fodder, meaning a horse consumes about twenty kilograms of food a day.

Even if some of this is fodder, the grain portion is enough to feed a person for almost half a month.

Just with some simple calculations, it’s easy to know that the land used to raise a horse could feed about twenty-five people if used to grow grain.

This is why knights require fiefs, because without them, they truly cannot afford to raise horses.

Yet the Empire’s military noblemen of that time were not satisfied, establishing a special war horse breeding plan.

They selected all available horse breeds and extracted the excellent qualities of different breeds using alchemy methods, combining them to artificially breed a new breed embodying speed, endurance, intelligence, and various excellent traits.

If it were just this, it would be nothing, but they truly began the breeding of special war horses after acquiring the new breed.

Initially, by using alchemy and magic methods to interfere in the foal’s development, feeding special feed mixed with alchemical agents to promote foal growth, and inscribing some special strengthening magic on the foal.

Even though Mages’ power in this world is not particularly strong, and in terms of numbers, alchemists who can create various magical items and potions are more plentiful, Mages are rare, but not nonexistent.

Moreover, they have some special techniques aside from just Fireball Technique.

In short, under the cooperation of at least one alchemist and one mage, it takes three years to breed a special war horse, which can practically be said to be piled up with gold.

But then, the Empire benefited from the era’s development, and those military nobles indeed had the money to burn.

So, after burning money for seven years and spending millions of gold pounds, the special war horse in their minds was indeed bred.

This breed boasts a shoulder height approaching two meters, a tall and robust physique, and simply seeing them conveys a sense of their power.

With strengthening through alchemy and magic methods, the special war horses’ sprint speed is at least 50% faster than the best thoroughbred horses.

Additionally, their endurance is excellent, able to run at maximum speed for half an hour, and after just a short rest and replenishing sufficient fodder, they can recover.

Besides, their load capacity is also very strong, with the Empire’s official data stating a maximum load capacity of one ton, while according to what Perfikot heard from Foster, these horses can pull twelve hundred kilograms of weight.

As for the accuracy of this statement... Perfikot’s grandfather owned a special war horse, and Brandelis Manor still has some second-generation special war horses.

But Perfikot was uninterested in this, and instructed the old steward to only keep a limited few for riding, selling the rest.

After all, the maintenance cost of such war horses is exceedingly high; merely in terms of food intake, one special war horse can consume five times the food of a regular war horse.

According to steward Foster’s explanation, one special war horse eats seven meals a day, consisting of three grain meals and four fodder meals, primarily consisting of corn, oats, carrots, apples, honey, and eggs, and at least one meal a day requires the addition of powdered shells to supplement calcium.

It’s imaginable how expensive such a horse is, and undeniably, it is a top luxurious item that only nobles can afford.

Thus, even with the current size of the Victor Empire, only the Imperial Guard Knight Order is fully equipped with such top-notch war horses, while the Sword and Rose Knight Order under the Eldest Princess can only be equipped with second-generation hybrids.

And the hybridized second-generation special war horses are much inferior, with shoulder height regressing to 1.8 meters, and endurance, load capacity, and speed all decline by 20%-50%, relatively speaking, they are merely somewhat excellent war horses.