Chapter LXXIX – We the soldiers. (Patreon)

(Title card, where art thou?)

57th of Summer, 5859
Some field right outside of town where there’s currently a lot of people, Azdavay/Casamonu

Ayomide wanted to tear her gambeson off.

The endless rain had ended in Casamonu, only for the sun to rear its ugly head once the clouds dispersed. Now it was pure heat and no moisture, the sun unimpeded to rain on her parade. Even the ground itself felt like it could cook Ayomide’s feet, yet wearing boots was only mildly more pleasant than the alternative. The mountain was cool, chill, scenic… Ayomide concluded that coming down the mountain was the worst decision in John Brown’s career. Why couldn’t the old man cool his balding head off and chill in the mountains?

Regardless of her thoughts on the weather, Captain Ayomide had a job to do. The slaver lords in Casamonu were certainly not waiting for fair weather like she rather would, and the weather certainly would be the last of Ayomide’s concerns if she were to be returned to slavery. Ayomide would rather not bother with being enslaved again, that was for sure, so she’d have to bother with the troops.

“Halt!”

The soldiers did as ordered by Ayomide, forming a line of spears that was two ranks deep. These soldiers were the crème de la crème of Libertycave, which didn’t amount to too much compared to a career soldier like a knight. Their equipment didn’t inspire too much confidence either. Some of the soldiers had gotten an upgrade through weaponry seized from Azdavay’s garrison, mostly semi-rusted iron junk, but the rest had to make do with copper spears. The situation was dreadful in the other companies, some men having to fashion weapons out of brooms and pitchforks due to their suddenly swelling ranks from the freed slaves. Ayomide truly wondered whether Brown had lost his mind and forgot that even divine intervention from the Aunt of God or whatever wouldn’t help them win a siege if all some had were pitchforks and hopes and dreams.

“Square up!”

Once again, as they had done countless times before, the men rushed themselves into a square. They took less than a minute now, and the amount of people injured by someone else’s spear bumping into them had been reduced to negligible amounts. Not to mention that the square was more square-like; Ayomide had to squint only a little bit to see the perfect square of her dreams appear. It was a beautiful sight to see after all the effort she and the men had put in. Maybe with beautiful squares like these they could successfully siege down Casamonu… or not as Ayomide quickly realized that beautiful squares couldn’t bring down city walls.

“…what’s the old man going to pull out his pants this time?” wondered Ayomide while looking at the square. Squares, shapes, circles, donuts… Ayomide was getting quite hungry after running around all day. “You’re dismissed for now. Make sure to assemble once more before lunch!” With her command the lovely square dissolved into two hundred and fifty people, which caused a modicum of chaos as they tried to find their way around. There were men from other units as well who were either training or cooking who were affected by the dissolution of this great mass until things settled down and all was calm.

Ayomide suddenly felt someone poke her from behind. She was about to utterly obliterate whoever it was until she noticed that it was Shinasi. “Shinasi?!”

“Sorry for the poke, I was calling out to you for a while. I guess you were enamored with the squares.” Shinasi handed Ayomide a hearty chunk of fresh hardtack. “I was wondering if you were hungry.”

“I was. I very much was.” Ayomide received the hardtack and bit on it. It was hard as its name suggested, but it was all that they’d have for when they’d be on the road. Their cooking friend had been left behind to serve the people in Libertycave. “Thank you.” Still, hardtack as a free woman felt better than anything she could have back in the maid café.

“It feels odd to see Azdavay from outside, doesn’t it?” Shinasi took a bite out of his own portion “I’ve been using this place as a base for adventuring, but… Well, let’s say that I never expected to be here.”

“Me neither. I was dreaming of one day escaping to Zon’guldac at best. Becoming part of a slave rebellion never occurred even in my wildest of fever dreams.”

“Your fever dreams must have been tame then. I’ve become the Hero, slain a couple dragons, saved a handful of princesses and saved the world just in one dream alone.” said Shinasi in a proud tone that suggested he was boasting about his achievements in dreamland.

Ayomide didn’t look too impressed. The last piece of her hardtack crumpled in her mouth. “Good job, o’ almighty Hero. Those dream dragons must have been terrifying. Lady Orange shall give you a fitting plot of land to cultivate and declare you her knight.”

“Hey, ambition is the first step to success. You cannot begin slaying dragons without dreaming of slaying them in the first place, which means that I’m on the first step to slaying a dragon!” Shinasi, the potential dragon slayer and world saver, handed another bunch of hardtack to Ayomide. “Would you like some more?”

“You should be a bit careful with all this food, you know. We might have a lot in stock, but it’d be quite troublesome if we outgrew these clothes.” Nevertheless, Ayomide accepted the offer of more food even if she was feeling full. She’d be a fool to reject free stuff.

“That’d just mean there’s more of you, right? That wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe I should get some more?” Shinasi teasingly poked at the waist of his close comrade.

“Dear Shinasi, with all sincerity, you have to learn how to selectively think about what to release from that brain of yours to the outside world.” Ayomide briefly paused to think. “Anyways, if you really want me to get me food, find some donuts.”

“…what are ‘donuts’?”

Ayomide shrugged. “You have to find out.” She still didn’t exactly know either.

“Ah, a quest! I’m good at doing those.” Shinasi drew his spear and donned his spear. “I’ll see you after I find out what a ‘donut’ is!” He ran off to the distance, leaving her alone while he ventured on his grand quest.

Now being in solitude, Ayomide took a look around her. The field where their army had setup was quite large as it was an abandoned set of farming plots. Housing, if it could be called that, had already been erected, consisting of stacks of hay protected by leaves and cloth held up by sticks. In the middle was the command center, which was an actual tent where the captains and officers could meet up and stand around a table looted from the mayor’s office.

Men were training near the command tent, the new recruits being thought on simple matters of using a spear and throwing it aided by the veterans. Thankfully doing both weren’t hard tasks to comprehend and be proficient enough in, especially since individual martial skill wasn’t all that important when troops were ordered in a formation. Training was a success as long as they could stand in a line, hold up their shields and skewer the enemy when the time came. Thus training how to operate in a formation was given way more importance and time in the camp.

Outside of the training and resting men, there was a group that caught Ayomide’s eyes. They were an unarmed group who were doing something that she didn’t even understand how to describe in the first place, with Rabanowicz rambling something while Watanabe drew on the ground with a stick. There were also a few freemen watching out of curiosity, and Ayomide was about to join that crowd.

“Monsieur! You’re doing it wrong, ‘diameter’ and ‘radius’ are two different things!” Rabanowicz snatched the drawing stick from Watanabe’s hand. She drew a circle on the ground divided in half by a line going through it. She etched a dot in the middle of the circle. “The diameter is this straight line passing through the dot in the center of the circle, from one perimeter to the other on the farthest end. The radius is half of this line, the segment starting from the center to the perimeter. Simple, isn’t it? I don’t get how you can confuse this when you’re able to calculate everything else.”

“Doctor, I haven’t done geometry since high school.” replied Watanabe, who was the second most proficient person in the area in terms of mathematics. “I can barely even remember these calculations for physics. Mattaku mou…”

“Kvetch not and work! Ye’vay, ye’vay!”

Rabanowicz reviewed Watanabe’s work as he scribbled some numbers on the newly dried earth. Some numbers were big, some were small, and all were incomprehensible to almost everyone on Gemeinplatz. After a couple long minutes, Watanabe had found a number that he read out loud, “Three hundred half-feet… How long is that?”

“That’d be around…” Rabanowicz looked around her for a suitable landmark. He pointed at a solitary tree that looked smaller than a match from where they were. “That far away. Maybe not in the final design; we’ll definitely need to make some compromises if we only have copper to work with.”

“I see. That’s still a very long range for such a heavy projectile, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Rabanowicz adjusted her spectacles, which were barely of any use due to how dirty they had become from dust. “Not like I can see that black blur in the distance properly, but I assume that’s far away enough.”

Watanabe heaved a sigh heavier than the mass he had calculated. “I miss meters and kilos...”

“There are none of these so-called ‘meters’ here, so you better get used to it monsieur.” Rabanowicz dusted herself off after a job well-done. Drawing on earth tended to raise a lot of dust that stuck on her gambeson. “Madame Ayomide? That is you, right?”

“Yes, I’m me, Doctor Rabanowicz.” Ayomide wondered whether it was a mistake to intrude on the work of these number-crunchers.

Rabanowicz’s eyes lit up once she recognized Ayomide’s voice. “Great! I was about to go searching for you, but I see that the One Above has sent you here just in time.” She took hold of Ayomide’s hand not to lose her. “I have some experiments that I’d like to conduct with your aeromancy.”

“My whatamancy?”

“Aeromancy, or ‘wind magic’ as you people prefer to refer to it in a simpler manner. Monsieur Watanabe, fetch the water clock!” Watanabe ran off to fetch their “water clock”, which were two pieces of pottery where one of them slowly dripped water and collected in the other to measure the time. “I’d like to know how much energy your wind can generate per second so that we can determine whether or not it’s powerful enough for the machine that we intend on building.”

Ayomide didn’t exactly get what Rabanowicz was saying, but she vaguely understood that it might be beneficial if she were to helpful. “O-Okay?”

“Great! We shall start once Monsieur Watanabe returns with the water clock.”