Post by rvm45 on Aug 2, 2013 10:06:44 GMT -6
I know, I have a couple or three other irons in the fire.
I haven't deserted them, but neither am I particularly feeling them at the moment.
This introduces a Country built in a Mountainous Wilderness...
Part what the Cherokee and Scots-Irish might have made out of Southern Appalachia eventually...
A.} If there was much more territory;
AND,
B.} If they'd been completely shunned and left in peace by the Flat-Landers.
It begins, of practical necessity, as a Monarchy ruled a fellow who's Political Philosophy is Equal Parts Minarchist, Laissez Faire Capitalist and Anarcho-Syndicalist.
{Seriously:
A Monarchy can be thought of as a vast corporation owned by the King.
Whether the King actually has a Strong Ethical claim to ownership would depend upon that particular country's history...
And being rightful owner means nothing when one cannot defend his claim...}
At any rate—Does the country of Terror (that's its name) sound at all interesting?
****************** ****************** ***************
Terror
Chapter One
Colonel Spade used a piece of charred wood for a marker and his board was simply one of the bare concrete walls of the battalion headquarters.
God alone knew what purpose the building had served in days gone by. The window glass was long since shattered. The roof had caved in and anything that could be ruined by rain and neglect had been—but the concrete block walls were still relatively sound.
The soldiers had cleaned out all the internal debris, boarded the windows and slapped a roof of corrugated steel on top.
Then with the thoroughness of men who’d endured mortar attacks, they covered the roof with two layers of sandbags. A double course of sandbags stacked in the Flemish pattern shielded the walls and then a second double course reinforced the first, but only to the first five feet.
There were long tapering gangways of bags leading to both the buildings remaining entrances.
Though it was nippy outside, the kerosene heaters kept the headquarters comfortable and dry.
The Night Owl Battalion hadn’t had such a comfortable and roomy headquarters in a long time.
“Now, are there any questions?” Colonel Spade asked when he had finished.
“A minor point,” Captain Fear said, while partially raising one hand.
Several of the assembled men sighed.
All the company commanders were there, along with their second in commands and their company first sergeants. There was also a sprinkling of other senior NCOs, second lieutenants and warrant officers that were deemed necessary at the meeting for one obscure reason or another.
The Colonel was outlining the assault for the morrow; along with the general outline the push would take place over the next few days.
The next few days would be both exhausting and filled with casualties. The sooner the meeting ended, the sooner the men could see to their subordinates and try to snatch a few hours sleep.
Questions delayed the anticipated moment.
“Colonel, your projected casualties approach twenty percent,” Fear observed.
“Your point?” the colonel asked impatiently.
“Twenty percent casualties puts this operation in the category of a ‘suicide mission’. It is traditional in the Night Owl Battalion to let men opt out of a suicide mission,” Fear explained.
Like the other battalions, the Night Owls were semi-mercenary and each group had their own by-laws. The Night Owls even had Advocates similar to Union Stewards; though the longer the battalion fought the interminable war; the more the Advocates’ powers had diminished.
Asking who wanted to skip a dangerous mission was an old tradition with the Night Owls. The men were told that nothing bad would happen to them if they chose not to go on the mission.
That was true to a point. “Nothing bad” happened unless you counted being branded as a coward on one cheek with a liquid nitrogen brand and unceremoniously drummed out of the unit as “a bad thing”.
The Night Owls had been on the front for five years now though, and every one of the troopers would know the consequences of declining to “volunteer”.
“Do you believe that you have men in your company who’d choose the coward’s discharge?”
“I know with absolute certainty that I do,” Fear stated confidently.
“Who?” Colonel Spade demanded.
“Me,” Fear told him.
A couple of the captains laughed nervously. The rest grasped that Fear was in dead earnest.
“Have you lost your nerve?”
“Yes. Fear overwhelms me and I can no longer perform my duties reliably,” Fear said.
But he said it in such a flat and uninflected way that several of the men couldn’t help but laugh.
“I could have you charged with mutiny and inciting mutiny,” the colonel said.
“You could, but you’d lose. I haven’t shared my distaste for this war, this outfit and this whole situation until you asked.
“When you ask me my mind, I have the right to tell you exactly what’s in it,” Fear said.
“You deliberately manipulated me,” the colonel blustered.
“If being smarter than you was mutinous, every last man in the Night Owls would be indictable,” Fear said.
“Strip his weapons, brand him with fire and throw him out!” the colonel shouted.
The colonel never saw Fear draw. He just knew that the barrel of one of Fear’s .357 revolvers was pointing directly at his left eye. Fear pointed his other revolver in the general direction of the other men.
Fear had never expected his XO and his first sergeant to back his play, but both stood holding the others at gunpoint.
“I came into this cluster-bump with my own weapons and string of horses and I mean to leave the same way—and the regulations call for cold brand, not hot,” Fear said.
“Fear, I don’t have to follow the tradition. I’ll just be sure to send your company into the thickest of the fighting and it will be mutiny if you refuse to go,” the colonel said.
“That is a poor solution,” Major Barnes, Spade’s second in command, said. “All the company commanders have heard Fear’s declaration.
“Would any of you trust Fear’s company to guard your flanks or rear after hearing Fear’s declaration?” Major Barnes asked.
There was a roomful of muttered nay saying.
“Since the disloyalty may have infected the men in Fear’s squad, we need to poll them and see how many would choose to follow Fear into exile,” the major said.
“I give my word that you and however many of your men chose to go can leave with their weapons and a double combat load of ammunition,” the colonel said. “We might as well get rid of all the bad apples at one time.
“Put your guns away.”
“A word Colonel,” the Advocate said.
“What now!” the colonel raged.
“If you poll Fear’s company, then by the articles you have to poll the other companies,” the Advocate pointed out. “If you don’t, you’re liable to have full-scale mutiny on your hands.”
Actually, many of the men had scant knowledge of the articles and there might not have been a problem at all if the Advocate hadn’t brought the subject up where his words were certain to be spread far and wide.
But the Advocate was shrewd enough to follow Fear’s lead.
****************** **************** **************
The other mercenary units weren’t at all dismayed that the impending meat-grinding push had to be cancelled while The Night Owls had an all-thing.
The border skirmish had been going on for over three decades. The disputed land wasn’t worth a tiny fraction of the waste the dispute had cost. In truth, neither side really cared much about the land anyway.
The rationale for continuing the war would have appeared arcane and obtuse to anyone but a politician.
Some said that the war drained the most violent and discontented men from society. Some asserted that the war was some sort of ploy to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
But others argued that the war created more violent men than it killed and no one could diagram how the supposed transfer of wealth took place.
The temperate and relatively industrialized south fought the war largely with mercenary groups like the Night Owls, and the vast majority of the southern men were Caucasians.
Although the mercenary armies were largely autonomous, the state pursued deserters relentlessly. In many small villages, hanging, impaling or roasting a deserter at the stake—the exact method varied with the village—was a welcome respite from hard work and an excuse for a holiday of sorts.
The custom was not only hard on deserters, but also killed more than a few innocent drifters.
The north was semi-tropical, less industrialized and still organized around feudal lords and peasant farmers—mostly rice farmers. The north was almost entirely Oriental.
The north raised large armies by conscription and they made up for inferior weaponry and less training by fielding far more men than the south.
It would have been sheer futility for deserters from either side to try crossing the border, since they could never pass for natives.
So as it happened, the northern commanders were not at all averse to negotiating a six-week cease-fire to let the mercenary companies have elections.
They had spies enough to know that the upshot of the meetings would be that many of the mercenaries would opt to go home.
Anyway, spring was just arriving and it would be pleasant not to have to fight for a while—however brief the respite.
Tall oaks result from tiny acorns though.
Many of the northern soldiers wondered why they too couldn’t opt out of the never-ending conflict.
So the upshot was that instead of Fear being able to go home again—for the “coward’s brand” on the left cheek was proof and immunity against further punishment, although it carried a certain stigma—he ended up as a brigadier general in charge of four mercenary battalions—all having voted to opt out of the war and to follow Fear.
Over six thousand men were in his train. They left barely enough mercenaries to fill two battalions—and that rather sketchily.
That might have led to the north quickly winning the pointless war…
But the mercenary armies hadn’t traveled a half-day’s march before they were greeted by over ten thousand northern infantry led by a man bearing a flag of truce.
When Fear’s interpreters asked what they wanted, they stated their firm intention was to join Fear’s group.
A single man with the brand might eventually come to be tolerated in a southern community.
Fear came from a mountain community that was far back in the boondocks and very parochial. He didn’t think anyone back home would care very much.
He thought that his father and mother would simply be glad that he’d come home alive.
Six thousand and more mercenaries—none off them branded—could neither be absorbed nor ignored. With the units dissolved, they’d be easy prey. Together, the powers that be would feel compelled to squash them.
Adding almost ten thousand northern infantry to his tail only made him seem that much more threatening—if that were possible.
When the mercenaries voted to leave the war and made Fear their leader, they closed the door on him ever going home again.
********************** ***************** **********
The world was wide though. A month’s travel to the east—most of it through Mussulman territory—there were steep mountains interspersed with narrow valleys almost without end.
The flatlanders considered the land next to worthless, but Fear came from a mountain community and he knew how the hills could be made prosperous.
He largely kept his own council and he kept a tight hold on most of the gold he’d expropriated from the paymasters. He simply told his men that if they chose to follow him, that he’d build a home for them.
The Mussulmen were notorious for their slave trade. Many were enslaved because they refused to convert—those were mostly Christians and Jews, though there was an occasional Buddhist or Hindu.
Others lost their freedom for being in debt or simply because their mothers were slaves when they bore them.
Many of the slaves were Blacks from the far west.
Fear bought many slaves with his soldiers’ gold, without consulting any of them first. He paid for the entire population of gaolhouses too. He argued that men with a hand or foot cut off would be fit for nothing but to beg and clog the city streets. Better to sell them to him and get something for them, he argued.
But when the city fathers would agree in principle to sell, Fear got very stingy with his gold.
He bought wagons and oxen and myriad livestock. He bought many anvils. He bought whole wagonloads of scrap metal. Many and obscure were the tools he bought.
Finally they passed into the wilderness and after a few days more, Fear found a valley that suited him.
By then some of his men were ready to mutiny once again.
****************** **************** ****************
“It is time to share my plans with you my brothers,” Fear began.
“This valley is relatively flat and rather large as these mountain valleys go.
“I’ve studied history. People like us settle in a valley like this one, because it is flat—a good place to grow crops.
“But if we prosper, our numbers will increase. One day most of this valley will be a great city. What will the people do for cropland then?
“They will go cultivating the sides of the mountains. That works for a while—but then all the earth starts to gradually wash down the mountains and to clog the valley. Famine stalks the land.
“Only a small remnant would remain and over the generations they would forget our city. Then in a few centuries, someone marvels at the ruins and wonders what become of our bygone civilization.
“Erosion has killed more civilizations on Old Earth than all the drought, wars and plagues combined.
“I come from the mountains though. Folks call us ‘Hillbillies’. But we know how to take a position that we can hold,” he concluded.
He told them some of his plans. Terraces would stop erosion and maximize the absorption of rain. Some slopes were too steep to be plowed, but they could support orchards or serve as pasture for goats and sheep.
Fear intended to start terracing mountainsides from the very beginning rather than waiting until it was necessary. As the terraces wrapped around the slopes in a decade or two they would reach other small flat valleys where other modest cities could be built.
None of the cities would grow as large as they theoretically could, but at least half the fertile flatland would be set aside for agriculture.
“Why did you bring slaves to help build your grand civilization,” one of the troopers shouted.
Fear turned to the folk he’d bought in wholesale lots with the companies’ gold.
“Are any of y’all slaves?” he asked them. “Did I not tell you that I’d bought your freedom?
“Sure, you were constrained to follow me. If you’d stayed in the Mussulmen territory, more than likely, they’d have slapped you back into chains on one pretext or another.
“Some of you certainly doubted my word, but you chose to follow along anyway. Now you’re here and I state in the presence of everyone that you’re free,” Fear said.
“But what are they for?” the trooper insisted.
“How many carpenters do I have among the former slaves? How many coopers and wainwrights? Blacksmiths? Butchers? Bakers? Bricklayers? Brick makers?
“How many miners?
“There is iron and copper, tin and zinc in those hills. There’s lead, even gold, silver and platinum—but someone needs to know how to get it out,” Fear said.
“Some of your slaves are old and worn out,” someone observed.
“I told you, they’re not slaves. If they’re old then I got them cheaply. Nonetheless, make haste to learn from them before the opportunity is forever lost,” Fear said.
“What are all the women for?” someone shouted.
“Are you that stupid? How many camp followers do we have? We have more than two hundred—probably more than three—certainly not more than four hundred.
“There are four hundred women and over six thousand of you. That ain’t gonna work. About thirty percent of the northerners are women, because they conscript men and women alike—but even they are short of women.
“You really can’t start a country without breeding aged women,” Fear said.
“Not only are most of your women Black, but most of them are well over six foot tall,” a trooper complained.
“That’s all to the good. They can work hard and they’ll bear big strong children for you.
“Any of you who live to see your grand children, or even your great grandchildren will perceive that we have become a race as well as a nation apart,” Fear said.
“You have gold Fear, but there is nothing for many days march to spend it on. How do you propose to get your men to labor for you?” the Advocate asked.
Fear’s face did not reveal that the question was planted.
“As we build the terraces, we will assign the first farms by lot, but eventually a man can build for three years and earn himself a farm.
“How many of y’all ever expected to be land owners? And how many years of hard labor would it take to buy land?” Fear replied.
Many gasps went up among the men.
“And your skilled tradesmen?” the Advocate asked.
“A city is a vast machine that pours cash into many pockets—but those who expect to milk the cow must first invest in a calf and diligently nurture it to adulthood.
“I shall see that a number of trade guilds are organized and we will mutually determine how much each group invest in our cash cow, and what share they receive when it has matured.”
******************* *************** **************
Fear sat quietly for a long time and though about what he was committed to.
The guilds would act as worker-managed and owned corporations at first—that was all to the good.
In time many of the head stewards would become as effete and corrupt as those they were elected to oppose. Take a good hard working man and give him a desk job and eventually he’ll start to think like a desk jockey.
He should be able to delay that from happening in his lifetime though.
By the time some of the guilds became corrupt, his grandchildren could balance them with the army, the ever-growing number of landowners and independent entrepreneurs.
It was like being a king. He was a king.
He would have traded his kingdom in a heartbeat, if he could only go back home once more. But when his friends looked to him for leadership, his geas was to rule over people stupid enough to want to be ruled.
It was also his geas to mourn the mountain home that he’d never see again in this life.
Since he’d left home of his own free will to seek his fortune among the mercenaries, his followers weren’t the only stupid ones, Fear reflected.
.....RVM45
I haven't deserted them, but neither am I particularly feeling them at the moment.
This introduces a Country built in a Mountainous Wilderness...
Part what the Cherokee and Scots-Irish might have made out of Southern Appalachia eventually...
A.} If there was much more territory;
AND,
B.} If they'd been completely shunned and left in peace by the Flat-Landers.
It begins, of practical necessity, as a Monarchy ruled a fellow who's Political Philosophy is Equal Parts Minarchist, Laissez Faire Capitalist and Anarcho-Syndicalist.
{Seriously:
A Monarchy can be thought of as a vast corporation owned by the King.
Whether the King actually has a Strong Ethical claim to ownership would depend upon that particular country's history...
And being rightful owner means nothing when one cannot defend his claim...}
At any rate—Does the country of Terror (that's its name) sound at all interesting?
****************** ****************** ***************
Terror
Chapter One
Colonel Spade used a piece of charred wood for a marker and his board was simply one of the bare concrete walls of the battalion headquarters.
God alone knew what purpose the building had served in days gone by. The window glass was long since shattered. The roof had caved in and anything that could be ruined by rain and neglect had been—but the concrete block walls were still relatively sound.
The soldiers had cleaned out all the internal debris, boarded the windows and slapped a roof of corrugated steel on top.
Then with the thoroughness of men who’d endured mortar attacks, they covered the roof with two layers of sandbags. A double course of sandbags stacked in the Flemish pattern shielded the walls and then a second double course reinforced the first, but only to the first five feet.
There were long tapering gangways of bags leading to both the buildings remaining entrances.
Though it was nippy outside, the kerosene heaters kept the headquarters comfortable and dry.
The Night Owl Battalion hadn’t had such a comfortable and roomy headquarters in a long time.
“Now, are there any questions?” Colonel Spade asked when he had finished.
“A minor point,” Captain Fear said, while partially raising one hand.
Several of the assembled men sighed.
All the company commanders were there, along with their second in commands and their company first sergeants. There was also a sprinkling of other senior NCOs, second lieutenants and warrant officers that were deemed necessary at the meeting for one obscure reason or another.
The Colonel was outlining the assault for the morrow; along with the general outline the push would take place over the next few days.
The next few days would be both exhausting and filled with casualties. The sooner the meeting ended, the sooner the men could see to their subordinates and try to snatch a few hours sleep.
Questions delayed the anticipated moment.
“Colonel, your projected casualties approach twenty percent,” Fear observed.
“Your point?” the colonel asked impatiently.
“Twenty percent casualties puts this operation in the category of a ‘suicide mission’. It is traditional in the Night Owl Battalion to let men opt out of a suicide mission,” Fear explained.
Like the other battalions, the Night Owls were semi-mercenary and each group had their own by-laws. The Night Owls even had Advocates similar to Union Stewards; though the longer the battalion fought the interminable war; the more the Advocates’ powers had diminished.
Asking who wanted to skip a dangerous mission was an old tradition with the Night Owls. The men were told that nothing bad would happen to them if they chose not to go on the mission.
That was true to a point. “Nothing bad” happened unless you counted being branded as a coward on one cheek with a liquid nitrogen brand and unceremoniously drummed out of the unit as “a bad thing”.
The Night Owls had been on the front for five years now though, and every one of the troopers would know the consequences of declining to “volunteer”.
“Do you believe that you have men in your company who’d choose the coward’s discharge?”
“I know with absolute certainty that I do,” Fear stated confidently.
“Who?” Colonel Spade demanded.
“Me,” Fear told him.
A couple of the captains laughed nervously. The rest grasped that Fear was in dead earnest.
“Have you lost your nerve?”
“Yes. Fear overwhelms me and I can no longer perform my duties reliably,” Fear said.
But he said it in such a flat and uninflected way that several of the men couldn’t help but laugh.
“I could have you charged with mutiny and inciting mutiny,” the colonel said.
“You could, but you’d lose. I haven’t shared my distaste for this war, this outfit and this whole situation until you asked.
“When you ask me my mind, I have the right to tell you exactly what’s in it,” Fear said.
“You deliberately manipulated me,” the colonel blustered.
“If being smarter than you was mutinous, every last man in the Night Owls would be indictable,” Fear said.
“Strip his weapons, brand him with fire and throw him out!” the colonel shouted.
The colonel never saw Fear draw. He just knew that the barrel of one of Fear’s .357 revolvers was pointing directly at his left eye. Fear pointed his other revolver in the general direction of the other men.
Fear had never expected his XO and his first sergeant to back his play, but both stood holding the others at gunpoint.
“I came into this cluster-bump with my own weapons and string of horses and I mean to leave the same way—and the regulations call for cold brand, not hot,” Fear said.
“Fear, I don’t have to follow the tradition. I’ll just be sure to send your company into the thickest of the fighting and it will be mutiny if you refuse to go,” the colonel said.
“That is a poor solution,” Major Barnes, Spade’s second in command, said. “All the company commanders have heard Fear’s declaration.
“Would any of you trust Fear’s company to guard your flanks or rear after hearing Fear’s declaration?” Major Barnes asked.
There was a roomful of muttered nay saying.
“Since the disloyalty may have infected the men in Fear’s squad, we need to poll them and see how many would choose to follow Fear into exile,” the major said.
“I give my word that you and however many of your men chose to go can leave with their weapons and a double combat load of ammunition,” the colonel said. “We might as well get rid of all the bad apples at one time.
“Put your guns away.”
“A word Colonel,” the Advocate said.
“What now!” the colonel raged.
“If you poll Fear’s company, then by the articles you have to poll the other companies,” the Advocate pointed out. “If you don’t, you’re liable to have full-scale mutiny on your hands.”
Actually, many of the men had scant knowledge of the articles and there might not have been a problem at all if the Advocate hadn’t brought the subject up where his words were certain to be spread far and wide.
But the Advocate was shrewd enough to follow Fear’s lead.
****************** **************** **************
The other mercenary units weren’t at all dismayed that the impending meat-grinding push had to be cancelled while The Night Owls had an all-thing.
The border skirmish had been going on for over three decades. The disputed land wasn’t worth a tiny fraction of the waste the dispute had cost. In truth, neither side really cared much about the land anyway.
The rationale for continuing the war would have appeared arcane and obtuse to anyone but a politician.
Some said that the war drained the most violent and discontented men from society. Some asserted that the war was some sort of ploy to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
But others argued that the war created more violent men than it killed and no one could diagram how the supposed transfer of wealth took place.
The temperate and relatively industrialized south fought the war largely with mercenary groups like the Night Owls, and the vast majority of the southern men were Caucasians.
Although the mercenary armies were largely autonomous, the state pursued deserters relentlessly. In many small villages, hanging, impaling or roasting a deserter at the stake—the exact method varied with the village—was a welcome respite from hard work and an excuse for a holiday of sorts.
The custom was not only hard on deserters, but also killed more than a few innocent drifters.
The north was semi-tropical, less industrialized and still organized around feudal lords and peasant farmers—mostly rice farmers. The north was almost entirely Oriental.
The north raised large armies by conscription and they made up for inferior weaponry and less training by fielding far more men than the south.
It would have been sheer futility for deserters from either side to try crossing the border, since they could never pass for natives.
So as it happened, the northern commanders were not at all averse to negotiating a six-week cease-fire to let the mercenary companies have elections.
They had spies enough to know that the upshot of the meetings would be that many of the mercenaries would opt to go home.
Anyway, spring was just arriving and it would be pleasant not to have to fight for a while—however brief the respite.
Tall oaks result from tiny acorns though.
Many of the northern soldiers wondered why they too couldn’t opt out of the never-ending conflict.
So the upshot was that instead of Fear being able to go home again—for the “coward’s brand” on the left cheek was proof and immunity against further punishment, although it carried a certain stigma—he ended up as a brigadier general in charge of four mercenary battalions—all having voted to opt out of the war and to follow Fear.
Over six thousand men were in his train. They left barely enough mercenaries to fill two battalions—and that rather sketchily.
That might have led to the north quickly winning the pointless war…
But the mercenary armies hadn’t traveled a half-day’s march before they were greeted by over ten thousand northern infantry led by a man bearing a flag of truce.
When Fear’s interpreters asked what they wanted, they stated their firm intention was to join Fear’s group.
A single man with the brand might eventually come to be tolerated in a southern community.
Fear came from a mountain community that was far back in the boondocks and very parochial. He didn’t think anyone back home would care very much.
He thought that his father and mother would simply be glad that he’d come home alive.
Six thousand and more mercenaries—none off them branded—could neither be absorbed nor ignored. With the units dissolved, they’d be easy prey. Together, the powers that be would feel compelled to squash them.
Adding almost ten thousand northern infantry to his tail only made him seem that much more threatening—if that were possible.
When the mercenaries voted to leave the war and made Fear their leader, they closed the door on him ever going home again.
********************** ***************** **********
The world was wide though. A month’s travel to the east—most of it through Mussulman territory—there were steep mountains interspersed with narrow valleys almost without end.
The flatlanders considered the land next to worthless, but Fear came from a mountain community and he knew how the hills could be made prosperous.
He largely kept his own council and he kept a tight hold on most of the gold he’d expropriated from the paymasters. He simply told his men that if they chose to follow him, that he’d build a home for them.
The Mussulmen were notorious for their slave trade. Many were enslaved because they refused to convert—those were mostly Christians and Jews, though there was an occasional Buddhist or Hindu.
Others lost their freedom for being in debt or simply because their mothers were slaves when they bore them.
Many of the slaves were Blacks from the far west.
Fear bought many slaves with his soldiers’ gold, without consulting any of them first. He paid for the entire population of gaolhouses too. He argued that men with a hand or foot cut off would be fit for nothing but to beg and clog the city streets. Better to sell them to him and get something for them, he argued.
But when the city fathers would agree in principle to sell, Fear got very stingy with his gold.
He bought wagons and oxen and myriad livestock. He bought many anvils. He bought whole wagonloads of scrap metal. Many and obscure were the tools he bought.
Finally they passed into the wilderness and after a few days more, Fear found a valley that suited him.
By then some of his men were ready to mutiny once again.
****************** **************** ****************
“It is time to share my plans with you my brothers,” Fear began.
“This valley is relatively flat and rather large as these mountain valleys go.
“I’ve studied history. People like us settle in a valley like this one, because it is flat—a good place to grow crops.
“But if we prosper, our numbers will increase. One day most of this valley will be a great city. What will the people do for cropland then?
“They will go cultivating the sides of the mountains. That works for a while—but then all the earth starts to gradually wash down the mountains and to clog the valley. Famine stalks the land.
“Only a small remnant would remain and over the generations they would forget our city. Then in a few centuries, someone marvels at the ruins and wonders what become of our bygone civilization.
“Erosion has killed more civilizations on Old Earth than all the drought, wars and plagues combined.
“I come from the mountains though. Folks call us ‘Hillbillies’. But we know how to take a position that we can hold,” he concluded.
He told them some of his plans. Terraces would stop erosion and maximize the absorption of rain. Some slopes were too steep to be plowed, but they could support orchards or serve as pasture for goats and sheep.
Fear intended to start terracing mountainsides from the very beginning rather than waiting until it was necessary. As the terraces wrapped around the slopes in a decade or two they would reach other small flat valleys where other modest cities could be built.
None of the cities would grow as large as they theoretically could, but at least half the fertile flatland would be set aside for agriculture.
“Why did you bring slaves to help build your grand civilization,” one of the troopers shouted.
Fear turned to the folk he’d bought in wholesale lots with the companies’ gold.
“Are any of y’all slaves?” he asked them. “Did I not tell you that I’d bought your freedom?
“Sure, you were constrained to follow me. If you’d stayed in the Mussulmen territory, more than likely, they’d have slapped you back into chains on one pretext or another.
“Some of you certainly doubted my word, but you chose to follow along anyway. Now you’re here and I state in the presence of everyone that you’re free,” Fear said.
“But what are they for?” the trooper insisted.
“How many carpenters do I have among the former slaves? How many coopers and wainwrights? Blacksmiths? Butchers? Bakers? Bricklayers? Brick makers?
“How many miners?
“There is iron and copper, tin and zinc in those hills. There’s lead, even gold, silver and platinum—but someone needs to know how to get it out,” Fear said.
“Some of your slaves are old and worn out,” someone observed.
“I told you, they’re not slaves. If they’re old then I got them cheaply. Nonetheless, make haste to learn from them before the opportunity is forever lost,” Fear said.
“What are all the women for?” someone shouted.
“Are you that stupid? How many camp followers do we have? We have more than two hundred—probably more than three—certainly not more than four hundred.
“There are four hundred women and over six thousand of you. That ain’t gonna work. About thirty percent of the northerners are women, because they conscript men and women alike—but even they are short of women.
“You really can’t start a country without breeding aged women,” Fear said.
“Not only are most of your women Black, but most of them are well over six foot tall,” a trooper complained.
“That’s all to the good. They can work hard and they’ll bear big strong children for you.
“Any of you who live to see your grand children, or even your great grandchildren will perceive that we have become a race as well as a nation apart,” Fear said.
“You have gold Fear, but there is nothing for many days march to spend it on. How do you propose to get your men to labor for you?” the Advocate asked.
Fear’s face did not reveal that the question was planted.
“As we build the terraces, we will assign the first farms by lot, but eventually a man can build for three years and earn himself a farm.
“How many of y’all ever expected to be land owners? And how many years of hard labor would it take to buy land?” Fear replied.
Many gasps went up among the men.
“And your skilled tradesmen?” the Advocate asked.
“A city is a vast machine that pours cash into many pockets—but those who expect to milk the cow must first invest in a calf and diligently nurture it to adulthood.
“I shall see that a number of trade guilds are organized and we will mutually determine how much each group invest in our cash cow, and what share they receive when it has matured.”
******************* *************** **************
Fear sat quietly for a long time and though about what he was committed to.
The guilds would act as worker-managed and owned corporations at first—that was all to the good.
In time many of the head stewards would become as effete and corrupt as those they were elected to oppose. Take a good hard working man and give him a desk job and eventually he’ll start to think like a desk jockey.
He should be able to delay that from happening in his lifetime though.
By the time some of the guilds became corrupt, his grandchildren could balance them with the army, the ever-growing number of landowners and independent entrepreneurs.
It was like being a king. He was a king.
He would have traded his kingdom in a heartbeat, if he could only go back home once more. But when his friends looked to him for leadership, his geas was to rule over people stupid enough to want to be ruled.
It was also his geas to mourn the mountain home that he’d never see again in this life.
Since he’d left home of his own free will to seek his fortune among the mercenaries, his followers weren’t the only stupid ones, Fear reflected.
.....RVM45