54th of Spring 5860
Nondescript hills, State of Karabush
“Who are they, young man?” Brown was doing his best to keep his horse calm, but, the panic around him had spread even to his steed.
“I don’t know, captain!” replied the other soldier, before being dragged off by a comrade to prepare a defense.
Brown watched the chaos unfold in front of him, letting out an exasperated “O’ Lord, help us…” He truly had no context and information as to what was happening in front of him, other than the sounds of metal clashing against metal and flintlocks firing. There was a vast ocean of blue uniforms making waves around him, trying its best to flow against the enemy.
On the other side…
Mayor Gabriel had wanted one thing out of life: to not be ambushed by a military force greater than his. For the first several decades of his life, this wish of his had been granted. There wasn’t much fighting going on between massed military forces in Gemeinplatz nowadays, and the Empire had been at peace.
“Who are they?!” Gabriel was trotting around, his horse seemingly moving around like a headless chicken.
“I don’t know, sir!” replied Ted, the ever-faithful servant, whose horse seemed to be undergoing the same fate. All the men around them were running in panic too, horses stuck in this traffic jam of medieval proportions. There was a battle going on somewhere, at least a skirmish, judging from the gunfire followed by the screams of dying men.
Where was it? Why? Who? When? How?
One of Gabriel’s retainers were waving his banner around, trying to regroup the men who were only listening to their base survival instinct at this point. Finally, as panic quieted down, the men began gathering around Mayor Gabriel’s banner. So did Mayor Gabriel set himself in the middle of this puddle of men, who were beginning to form up with their shields and spears to make a wall, with firearms interspersed between the shields.
A whole load of dust had been kicked up by the ruckus, which didn’t help at all with seeing at night. “We were supposed to just slip out… damn It.” Gabriel could only listen, as the night seemed to settle down. No footsteps, no clashing, no gunfire, peace.
Peace.
Peace for only a brief moment, a brief tense moment, as chatter and footsteps approach their position. Shadowy figures hidden behind the dust and night; the tip of their pikes lightened up by the moon.
“What do we do, Ted? Our plan to take back Bolipoli seems to not have worked.” Not that Gabriel hadn’t made up his mind a few minutes ago, he just wanted guidance for guidance sake.
“Fight to the death, sir, reclaim our-”
“Oh, shut up you fool. We were retreating already.” Gabriel took a handkerchief out of his pocket and pierced it with the tip of his sword to use it as a makeshift flagpole. He raised the sword up and began swinging it around while shouting “Do not shoot or attack! We surrender, we surrender!”
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55th of Spring 5860
Outskirts of Karabush, State of Karabush
“Here it is, the moment of truth, young man and lady.”
John Brown, Ayomide… and Shinasi. He had been here all this time, off doing his own thing.
Behind them, five thousand of the Republic’s finest men… not that the Republic had any other men in battle-capable state. The only ones not here were the National Guards of the various states and the men of Tubman who…
“Are they still alive?” wondered Ayomide.
From so far away, the whole town was just a reddish-gray blur in the distance. A reddish-gray blur surrounded by a multicolored slurry of tents, banners and men. Twenty thousand, as far as General Tubman had reported. Not that any of them could tell from such a distance. Perhaps they had received reinforcements during that time, perhaps disease had spread through the camp and killed a lot of them. Perhaps everything was just about the same, except for the departure of one of its leaders and his forces. Brown had only briefly asked their new mayoral prisoner a few questions, and other than confirming that there were indeed a lot of men, there wasn’t anything interesting coming from him.
Shinasi shrugged and told what he thought in a straightforward manner: “If they are, barely.”
“No time for speculation, young man.” What to do, at that moment, was a simple question to answer for Brown: “Now it’s time to do war.”
How to do war, now that was the million-dollar question with an answer that could cost them their lives. Brown began speaking to both Ayomide and Shinasi, a long speech that had the calm, edificative tone of a father giving his children a lesson.
“The terrain is flat around the town, which is where they have set up camp. On the farmlands, where there is space cleared up from the forest covering the area. Now, they surely have spotted us long ago by now, or at least anticipated our arrival. Their camp must be fortified. They have a number’s advantage, and their camp is fortified. Now, young man and lady. What shouldn’t we do?”
Ayomide gave the very much obvious answer: “Attack them head-on?”
Shinasi nodded “Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a good idea...”
Brown gave one clap, with a smile. “Indeed, you have learnt the basics at least. If Providence was to be merciful, the enemy troops may die from laughter before we reach them, but I doubt the likelihood of such an absurd miracle happening. Ahem! So, what should we do?”
Shinasi and Ayomide spared the matter thought, for a few minutes. Ayomide had an idea first “Blast their fortifications away with my canon, and then attack them?”
Shinasi went second “It’s still a superior force, though… Us adventurers have a technique, called ‘kiting’, where we bait monsters from place to place. If we could just kite this army away from their fortifications, up into a hill… up into a hill where we have earthworks set up.”
At an impasse. Brown raised a question “What would you do if you were the enemy?”
“I wouldn’t be an idiot and charge us. I wanna take the town. I take the town, and then eliminate the idiots standing right outside the walls.” Thus was Ayomide’s prognosis.
“So, what if we gave the enemy a reason to want to attack us? As I said, kiting.”
“Shinasi… you know, old man, we’re wasting time here, the old woman in that fort must be starving there!”
Brown shook his head “No, I don’t believe we are wasting time. Now, now I have an idea. It should work, if Providence wills it so. A little combination, a dish made from the ingredients you’ve provided, to be served to the folk down below.”
55th of Spring 5860
Right outside the walls of Karabush, State of Karabush
Fweom-BOOM!
A terrifying noise cuts through the camp, a noise that no other cannon shot would. Whistling in the wind, followed by an explosion. A deadly whistle that releases a deadly cloud of smoke and shrapnel, tearing through the unlucky bastards who happened to be right next to it.
In the central tent, a high priest of the temple, and a furious mayor. The Mayor of Changra, the last remaining secular ally of this coalition besieging Karabush. “They’re targeting our men! We’ve tried moving camp, even to an angle where they shouldn’t be able to see… but they keep moving their damned-”
“Language, sir. Do not use such words in front of a man of the Divine.”
The mayor growled and groaned but… he couldn’t exactly go against a man of the cloth in this regard. What he could do was…
“Me and my men are not happy about this. I’ll have to retreat, or else I’ll incur losses too great. I still have fugitive slaves to put down in my own county, and I’ll need my men to be alive to do that. So…”
The mayor got up, with an indignant look on his face.
“…either you join us in charging up to their camp to disable their canon, or we’ll take our leave just like Sir Gabriel did.”
