Chapter CXL – For these be the days of vengeance.

27th of Spring 5860
Castle Casamonu, Casamonu

It was a cramped day in John Brown’s office in Castle Casamonu. Rabanowicz and Watanabe had moved in temporarily, to do their job in crunching numbers. Rabanowicz was reading through the tablebooks full of data, while Watanabe had borrowed the big writing slate from the school to write his calculations on. Constantly the chalk scratched on the slate, creating quite the grating noise. Today however, something different happened: Watanabe stopped. Their job was done. It was only a rough calculation, based on the number of households rather than counting individual people, but it was accurate enough for the time being.

The errant otherworlder slowly read out what was on the board, proud of a job well-done “Nineteen thousand people in the State of Casamonu. One and a half thousand in Libertycave, plus five hundred dwarven refugees, five hundred in Casamonu. Twelve thousand people in the State of Karabush. Six hundred of them in the urban center of Karabush. Huh. I could have sworn Libertycave had more people the last time we checked. Did we count something wrong?”

Rabanowicz immediately had an answer “Most of the people in Libertycave moved to the countryside, that’s the reason. I don’t think maintaining three thousand in one place would have been possible.” The Homesteading Act had certainly helped people find a reason to want to move out from the cramped mountaintop.

“I knew that the towns here looked small, but, wow. The office building I worked at probably had more people than Casamonu and Karabush.” Certainly, taking a look at the view from outside the window, Watanabe could see the end of Casamonu’s borders pretty easily. Granted, most buildings being one or two stories tall did add some width, but it still felt miniscule to his modern urban environment. He could see one or two buildings which had already crumbled, and many more which looked abandoned. Casamonu felt like it had died. “Maybe we should ask the old man to set up office in Libertycave instead. This place creeps me out. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are ghosts lurking around.”

“Ghosts of the past, perhaps.” Rabanowicz jokingly knocked on the door to the office. “Are you there?”

The door opened.

“What the f-” Watanabe stopped himself from swearing upon noticing that it was John Brown. He wasn’t willing to withstand another long lecture about common decency. “G-good morning, captain.”

“Good morning, Mister Brown.”

“Good morning to you, Mister Watanabe and Doctor Rabanowicz… why are you so pale? You two look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“We… haven’t.” Watanabe took a deep breath, calmed down, and patted his slate board. “The numbers. Libertycave is way larger than Casamonu, so we should probably move your office back there now that the war with Karabush has concluded. It seems most people didn’t return to here. The Homesteading Act was a success, considering that most of the population has returned to the countryside.” Watanabe felt awkward giving a presentation without a pointer and remote in his hand. He had to hold himself from stating “next slide” as he finished talking about all that was on the slate.

Brown nodded “We don’t have much to move to Libertycave anyways, so we can set off back to Libertycave today. I’ll let the newly-elected mayor of Casamonu take over the office here.”

28th of Spring 5860
Libertycave, Libertycave

News had spread: “The captain is coming!”

An impromptu procession had gathered around Brown. He wasn’t all too pleased; large processions weren’t the sort of thing that he thought democratic leaders ought to do. He shooed away his admirers as politely as he could, shouting “Ladies, gentlemen, please get back to your day-to-day!” while riding his horse through the crowd. Sure, being appreciated and admired felt nice, but Brown also knew that self-conceit to be a sin that could easily lead to a man’s downfall. He thought of it better to be a Washington than a Caesar, and even then, he himself would rather not do something as arrogant as compare himself to either of those great men.

Not getting any grandiose gestures of rulership from the old man, the crowd eventually got bored and disappeared. Brown took a deep sigh of relief, thinking of himself free from the fancifulness of monarchs. However, when he approached the door of his cozy cave office, the liberty cave of Libertycave, he found a small contingent parked right next to his office. Emphasis on small – it was the dwarves, who looked much more militarized. A dwarf in the front carried the banner of the Republic, holding it as high as it could (which wasn’t too high). Their weapons looked to be mostly hand-me-down copper spears, along with a few who carried warhammers. Their uniforms were the blue of the Republic, and outside of a difference in height, they looked the part.

“Commander-in-chief!” Whitebeard saluted Brown “We’re ready to take back Zon’guldac on your command!”

There couldn’t have been more than one or two hundred dwarves gathered. That was far from a regiment. Nor did Brown exactly have a plan for how to utilize dwarves in the military. He’d get some ideas from the dwarves… if the dwarves knew anything about military affairs. Brown had tried to consult them when they first arrived, but the dwarves hadn’t seen war since time unknown. It was a mythological, hypothetical matter to them, not a matter of life and death, tactics and strategy, luck and sheer luck.

Whitebeard approached Brown. Her warhammer was positioned just right to smash Brown’s kneecap in if she wanted to. “I gathered whoever was able and willing to fight, captain.”

Kneecaps… Kneecaps… “Kneecaps!” shouted Brown suddenly. “You’re perfect for the pike line!”

“E-excuse me?”

Brown already had the idea. Dwarves to walk under the line of pikes, attacking the enemy. “I’ll get the other captains to distribute you amongst our regiments… There should be some space open once we collect a regiment in Karabush and transfer some veterans from other regiments there.

“W-what about Aroghlie and Zon’guldac?”

Brown opened the door and shouted “I have plans!” before shutting the door down with a bang.