30th of Spring 5860 Karabush, State of Karabush

Today was a quiet morning in Karabush. Following the brief yet chaotic and gruesome battle, the silence was a welcome change. The sun rose up over the walls of the town, sunlight seeping through the curtains of the citizenry. Another quiet day was about begin-

BANG-BANG-BANG! TRA-RA-RAP-RAP, BANG!

Or, a procession of men would enter through the gates of the city. The men in the front were uniformed with the blue of the Army of the Republic, and one of them were holding a flag of the Republic. The blue-white-green had quickly become familiar to the citizens of Karabush, though nobody was quite willing to fly it themselves yet. The flag raised on the mayor's building, the original that had been raised there during the Battle Karabush, had a third star crudely tailored on it to denote the newly-admitted state of Zon'guldac.

BANG-BANG-BANG! TRA-RA-RAP-RAP, BANG!

The professional troops were followed by a much larger procession of peasants, who had been newly recruited from the villages of Karabush. Today they were to find a place in the abandoned barracks of Karabush, and wait for uniforms and arms to arrive from the capital in Casamonu. Most of them would be recruited into the newly-formed 5th Infantry Regiment (of Karabush), while the rest would be used to form a National Guard unit in Karabush to garrison the state and undertake infrastructure projects (like upgrading the Imperial Highway between Casamonu and Karabush to macadam).

BANG-BANG-BANG! TRA-RA-RAP-RAP, BANG.

The regiment stopped in the town square, where an official proceeded to lead the peasants to their new home in the town's barracks. There certainly wasn't enough space in the town to house a regiment of a thousand people, that was double the population of Karabush, but it was enough as a temporary place to stay before a suitable castle near Karabush could be captured for military housing purposes. The soldiers left behind in the town square got to work setting up a stand to promote recruitment for the national guard. They were aided by propaganda posters, printed by the printworks in Libertycave, which had illustrations of a vague Imperial miasma descending upon the idyllic Republic alongside other similar depictions soliciting enlistment from the citizens.

The National Guard was quite the lucrative offer – regular payment for work when mobilized, with the members only being obliged to join drills when not mobilized. For the peasantry it was a good way to make money in the off-season when their agricultural work was done, for the citizens it wasn't much different from the city garrisons that they had been part of. Similarly, for the army, it wasn't as rigid as a modern professional army. The peasantry were allowed to return home to tend to their fields once their basic training was done, in exchange for receiving lesser pay during their absence. The Commander-in-Chief Brown wasn't exactly fond of career soldiers, he had first encountered soldiery in his youth during the War of 1812 and found them to be crude and immoral. The pay for the Army of the Republic wasn't too high, only enough to cover the basic needs of its soldiers, to avoid it being lucrative as a profession. Most of its members were composed of freed slaves who wanted to fight to not get captured again by the Empire, or peasants who had gotten land from the Homesteading Act who wanted to make sure that the Empire wouldn't come back to feudalize their land. The National Guard was basically a glorified state-employed construction company with arms, so Brown saw no problem in giving them pay for their non-combat labor. Ideally, when the war against slavery was done, the Army of the Republic would demobilize while the National Guard would be expanded to take over the defense of the states. For now however, Brown needed overwhelming offense rather than defense.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

As the sun set once more on Karabush, the National Guard had four dozen new members from the town, and the Fifth Infantry Regiment had set up camp for the night. Tomorrow they'd get to learning how to march in formation, taking their first step forward defending the Republic and defeating the Empire.

31st of Spring 5860 Libertycave, State of Casamonu

While the Fifth Infantry Regiment in Karabush started their drill, the dwarf-made Fourth Infantry Regiment (ostensibly of Zon'guldac) had started its own. Libertycave had its own town square now, constructed in front of the cave that was at the center of the town, and it was also suitable flat ground for army drills.

Brown and Ayomide were supervising their miniscule comrades-in-arms, though in actuality the majority of the regiment had been filled in by human peasants and freemen from Casamonu. Human pikemen, relatively tall by themselves, looked even more tall and intimidating with the weapon they held. Right under the line of pikes were the dwarves who, with their warhammers, were ready to sneak under the line of pikes and be deployed to smash the enemy's kneecaps. The difficulty in this formation came from the humans trying not to trip on the dwarves, which'd be quite disruptive to a tight pike formation.

"March!"

The pikemen deployed into long columns each three men wide, with the dwarves being in the middle of the column. For a normal pike formation, it'd be three-people wide sans dwarves.

"Ready!"

The marching column dissolved itself into a pike square 30 men deep, with dwarves dispersed between the men for deployment. In the middle of this rectangle were their officers, flag bearer and drummers helping keep the square organized. It was pretty hard to march with so many men in front of each other, which is why they marched "Forward!" at a slug's pace despite their training. Despite the sluggishness however, an organized pike square simply could not be beat by melee infantry and cavalry. Things could get ugly if somebody managed to land a cannon shot through such a deep formation though, which Brown relied on the abysmal accuracy of the primitive Gemeinplatzish artillery to not let that happen.

Ayomide, quite impressed with the performance, had a question for the Commander-in-Chief when she took a break from commanding the troops "So, when are we marching on to Zon'guldac?"

"Patience, young lady. We'll set off when the training of the regiment over in Karabush is complete. I would not be surprised if the lords east and west of Karabush were getting ready to attack us. There are two big towns which Karabush sits in between: Changra and Bolipoli. Even if they are not planning an attack right now, they'll most likely make a move when our attention and resources are focus towards Zon'guldac."

"So, the guys over at Karabush will be there to delay them and force them into a siege."

"Exactly, young lady. From Zon'guldac we'll go further east to capture the seat of the elven chief in Periligoul. That's pretty close to Bolipoli, and they'll either have to break the siege in Karabush to defend it, or they'll be caught unaware and we'll capture Bolipoli in no time. Either is a good outcome… as long as we act swiftly. Tubman says that the elves do not have any sort of allies stationed around their settlements, but their domain is close to the Imperial capital. The Imperials would be able to send reinforcements quickly if they felt themselves threatened by our approach, therefore, we shouldn't give them any time to even consider sending anything before we are done."

Ayomide watched the regiment resting in the town square, the locals offering them refreshments. One regiment; a thousand people. Only recently had she gotten used to seeing so many people gathered, and the Republic had four more of such regiments. Soon she would be marching along four thousand. Four thousand. "We have a lot of people, don't we."

Brown laughed "Believe me, your jaw would drop if you saw the armies of Britain or France."

Ayomide could guess that he just said the names of otherworldly polities "How large were their armies?"

"Hundreds of thousands. Perhaps even a million."

"A… how big is a 'million'?" Ayomide thought that the old man must be messing with her now.

"A thousand thousands." Brown extended his arms out in an attempt to explain such multitudes. Ayomide stared back, being unable to imagine such great numbers of people in one place, but she still looked impressed with her mouth remaining open in amazement. Brown relaxed his arms and returned to looking like a sane person "But, truth be told, those numbers don't mean anything, do they? We have four thousand men here, and they have committed countless times more good than the British army will ever commit."

"Uh, yeah. We're the best, old man."

"The Lord above will judge what we are. Hopefully we'll be judged better than the British."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.