The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [50]
That brought an explosion all right.
“You can't do that!” Josiah Marner shrilled. “They are our property!”
“Stop me,” Oglethorpe said, and he said it so coldly and quietly that it actually brought the furor to an end. They sat or stood, mouths agape, as he continued. “We need the slaves free so they will fight for us, not against us. Freemen will fight in their own best interests, and that interest is in defeating the Pretender.”
“Errant nonsense!”
“Right now my men are collecting a levy of slaves to put under arms. They are being informed of their freedom and the freedom of their families.”
“They'll run away!”
“Some will, some won't. The smart ones won't, because there's no place to go, really. But they won't stay here. When the redcoats come to burn you out of your plantations, they won't find slaves here to conscript.”
“But you just said we're going to fight.”
“Not here, not at Fort Montgomery.” He paused significantly. “Not in Azilia. This very day, we start a retreat through Apalachee territory, where we will find lodging for the women and children. Soldiers under Governor Nairne will march on to New Paris. I have another mission.”
“But what of Montgomery?”
“I'm going to burn it. And each of you, in turn, should burn your plantations. I've already destroyed mine.”
“Burn Montgomery?” Prescotte shrieked. “This exceeds your authority, Oglethorpe, all of it. All of it!”
“Authority? These are martial times. My authority is in my scabbard. Will you test that, sir?”
Prescotte withered beneath the stare. “But—burn our homes, free our slaves—I'll be ruined!”
“You are already ruined, you babbling fool,” Oglethorpe snapped. “You were ruined the day that army of devils set foot on this shore. We're going to fight them until they are gone or until there is no breath left in us. And what I cannot save, I will burn, for they will not have it. Now, gentlemen—I do not ask you to love me, or even to believe that God does. But you must follow me. You must follow me or perish. Your childhood is past. Be men. Be men, or God damn you.”
And with that he rose and left the shadowy hall.
Parmenter found Oglethorpe on the bluff, looking down at the river.
“They're with you, sir. You won.”
“All of them?”
“It don't matter about Prescotte and his like, does it? Some vowed to stay. But the whole commons was with you, sir. Few of them hold slaves, and the rest resent them that do. And the army is behind you, and ‘most all of the folk. They love you, sir.”
Oglethorpe looked at him in genuine surprise. “They do?”
“Of course they do. You hardly seem human to ‘em. How many times have you stood up for them—against Howe, the bloody Spanish, Carolina? Each time you come out with a victory for them. If it weren't for you, there wouldn't be no margravate, and only a fat-assed fool wouldn't know that.”
“After today, there won't be a margravate.”
“Sir, wherever you go, there the margravate will be.”
Oglethorpe nodded, then exclaimed in surprise.
“Sir?”
“The first good news we've had in a long while, Captain Parmenter. Look there.”
Across the river, just becoming visible from the forest, stood an army.
And they did not wear red coats.
“I'll be damned,” Parmenter swore. “It's Martin, from North Carolina. And, if I make no mistake, those are Cherokee with him.”
“No mistake, Mr. Parmenter. No mistake.”
“How did they know to come here, with the aether-schreiber messages taken and all?”
“I do not know, but I am grateful for it.” He frowned. “And cautious. Find me a boat, so we can go talk to him.”
“Sir, that's hardly cautious.”
“A boat.”
Martin, it seemed, had been a few days behind him for almost a month.
“I pressed ahead faster than I thought possible, and hoped to meet you on the upper Oconee, where our Cherokee friends heard tell of a battle. We got there late and found a lot of red-coated corpses and fallen demon