Chapter LXXXIII – As we march towards those who trespass against us. (Patreon)

62nd of Summer, 5859
Some field right outside of town that still has a lot of people camping on it, Azdavay

The day had come. One week had passed, and everything was ready… or so John Brown hoped. “Good morning, men of the League!” His voice went out to the field, where he was in the middle of a thousand brave men (and women, but Brown was using “men” to refer to all of humankind).

This group wasn’t in the usual semi-donut that they found themselves in. No, donut formations were unsuitable for military applications as it turns out. They were in somewhat orderly squares, the kind that’d not allow cavalry to penetrate it. Let the noblemen have their fancy armor and burly horses, for the freemen could stand in a square long enough that their horses would drop from the exhaustion. That was what they hoped for anyways, and there wasn’t much but hopes and dreams to go off of in the League when all they had was copper spears as weapons and bowls as helmets. Still, it was much more hopeful compared to the times when all they had were a dozen men and some spear-throwers. They’d have more than a million men by the next season if they kept at it in this pace, though Rabanowicz would mutter something about this odd thing called “statistics” if anyone said anything like that.

Never mind the aforementioned however, for Brown saw that his men were eager for action. Atop his horse he was flanked by the captains, Tubman, Ayomide, Shinasi, and Watanabe and he reached his hand out to the sky as he spoke. “Men! I implore you to gaze upon the beauty of Creation. The sky, the trees, and of course, each other! Take note of how the rising sun shines equally on each of us. The Lord doesn’t make the sun shine any brighter for the lords sitting in their thrones, no, neither does he make it shine any brighter depending on the brightness of skin! We are all equally the children of our Heavenly Father, all equally important and precious in His realm, and it’d be a crime of upmost barbarity to deny anyone the right to stand equally amongst their sisters and brothers. Now!” He drew the sword, the one he had taken from Watanabe Generico and carried all the way down the mountain, and pointed it in the general direction of Casamonu. “Are you willing to march on and make history? Those who are not are free to stay where they are and make themselves comfortable. Those who are ready follow me and get to action, en marché!” His speech ended with jubilee from the crowd, who were eager to get going and do something other than stand around and train.

The captains around Brown dissolved as they made way for their own companies, and a minor round of cacophony occurred as everyone prepared to march. The squares wobbled a bit, some elbows were accidentally dug into other people, and it took a good minute or two for the formation to reassemble from a square into a column for marching. Each company had designated themselves a banner to identify themselves: John Brown had a replica Star-Spangled Banner with 33 stars, Ayomide had simply picked a plain orange banner, Shinasi had a yellow clover on a white banner while Watanabe had simply written “ランダム旗” on a rag and called it a day. It’s not like the others could read his lousy attempt at a banner anyways. Tubman had gone for a blue-white design with a white broken chain in a blue background.

Brown turned his head around to take a look. A semi-orderly march in column, standardized equipment for the men, even banners for different companies… He couldn’t help but mutter “Praise the Lord!” when he saw such a scene. The people who had come to watch the army leave seemed to be impressed as well. There was a procession of newly freed slaves bidding farewell with flowers, fresh food and flowing tears, with many blessings and prayers being exchanged. Vaiz himself had enlisted a team of chaplains to give an optimal number of blessings, referred to him as “buffs”, to the departing men. On the other side was a smaller group, that consisting of the native denizens of Azdavay. They were a whole lot more reserved, with some of them betting on whether or not the “army of savages” would come back alive. This was not a metaphorical sort of betting either – one opportunistic gambler had set up a table to bet actual money on the prospects of the League. A majority of the money was on the League dissolving before they even made it to Casamonu; a very small minority of gamblers would win quite the fortune if the League managed to topple the Empire (and Shinasi was among these potential big-winners as he had sneaked to the table to bet in favor of himself). At the tail end of this mass of people were pack animals and the people carrying supplies, who were flanked by a few adventurers escorting them. They had received good money for their labor, more than some of them had ever seen in their entire life, and therefore were carrying enormous loads of goods with smiles on their faces.

Slowly the walls of Azdavay disappeared, and so did the crowds around the army who had things to do other than gawk at departing armies. There was a sudden quiet, only the whistle of wind and the hush of leaves accompanying the march of a thousand boots. Occasionally there was a sneeze or a snippet of chatter breaking the silence, other than that the march was surprisingly quiet: nobody really wanted to have a chat while they had hours of marching ahead. It was as if the men of the League were an arrow shot from a bow: released with lots of force packed, silent in flight, and (hopefully) deadly on impact. Quick, quiet, efficient, as Brown liked it. “An arrow shot to the heart of slavery!” he suddenly shouted upon thinking of the metaphor, prompting the people around him to stare in confusion. They quickly turned back to look forward on the road, having been long used to the eccentricities of their commander-in-chief.

Meanwhile, unnoticed by a Brown deep in thought, Ayomide had rode forward to meet him. Unlike the old man, she was wobbling around on her horse. Her shaking hands showed how comfortable she was with the prospect of riding atop an animal. “Captain, excuse me if I interrupt your clearly very deep thought session, but…” she looked around her “…okay, excuse me for the stupid question, but are we really doing it? Like, for real?”

“Oh, young lady, always with the questions…” Brown had gotten this question many times, and he had answered it many times. Why were they not staying up the mountains, staying safe? Why were they causing a ruckus instead of letting the Empire forget about their existence? “Tell me, why haven’t you left and made your way to Zon’guldac? You’ve had plenty of time, and there’s nobody stopping you.”

Ayomide was a bit surprised by the sudden questioning from old Brown. “Umm…”

Brown smiled, with his eyes half-closed. “Don’t hesitate to tell the truth now. Lying is much worse than telling an uncomfortable truth, young lady.”

“…well, I don’t know either.” Truth be told, Ayomide had thought of it many times before. She had often dreamed of holding Shinasi by the hand and escaping to Zon’guldac to lead their lives there without fighting further.

“Then let me tell you young lady, from the perspective of an old man who has lived three times your entire life.” Brown looked forward, as if he wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular. “I’m John Brown, from Torrington, Connecticut. Owen Brown, he was a good father and a faithful Christian, may God bless him. My mother Ruth passed away in my youth, I pray that she has reunited with the rest of the family in Heaven. Our family had a tannery, and the Lord had granted us with more than sufficient wealth for a family living in the frontier. Back when I was eleven or twelve, somewhere around that years old, I was herding cattle for a local man, he had an African boy as his slave. Of course, I was little back then, knowing little of the world. I knew little of the reason why the man beat the boy halfway to death with a shovel back then. So, why care?”

Brown turned around back to Ayomide. “‘Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets’” he paused here to take a breath “‘because he who loves his neighbor must consequently love Love itself above all things; but God is Love; therefore, he loves God above all things.”

Ayomide wasn’t sure where Brown’s usual evangelism was going. “Yeah, I already know the ‘why’ for you… I thought you were going to tell the why for me.”

Brown couldn’t help but laugh at the question. “I’m not you, young lady, neither am I capable of commanding or reading your thoughts. I don’t get to decide why you’re here, only our Heavenly Father does.”

Ayomide could only let out an annoyed grumble in response to the all-knowing smirk that only a wise old man could produce. Worst of all, Brown had prompted her to think, and the old man tended to make one think a bit too deeply along with him. The abolitionist catgirl wizard closed her eyes, and shook her head to shoo away the thoughts.

As the old man had said, if she was still here, then she clearly had some purpose even if she hadn’t found it. They all had some reason so…

“Got it, old man. I’ll be marching on.”