The Republic of New Carthage

CHAPTER ONE

The spring of 1920 smelled of possibility and gunpowder, and if you stood on the right hill overlooking the Free Irish Community just outside Dublin, you could almost imagine that the two were the same thing. Almost.

Declan O'Sullivan watched the sunrise from a ruined farmhouse that had once belonged to an English landlord whose name Declan could never quite remember and had long since stopped trying. The name didn't matter now. None of their names mattered. What mattered was the coffee brewing on the fire, the rifles leaning against the walls, and the conversation that would either make or break everything.

"Seamus says we have two more companies moving through Kildare," said a voice from the doorway. Seán Collins leaned against the frame, his face still boyish even at thirty-two, his eyes already old. "He says they're British regulars. Not reserves."

Declan turned from the window and looked at his oldest friend—the man who had shared his first kiss with him behind the church in 1908, who had shared a cell in Kilmainham in 1916, who had shared a bottle of whiskey and a plan to change the world three nights ago and had not slept since. "Two companies?" Declan said. "That's two hundred men. Maybe more."

"Maybe," Seán said. He came to stand beside him at the window, looking out over the pale green fields that had been Irish for a thousand years and English for two hundred and and then Irish again for a month or so. "Seamus also says they're looking for us. Specifically looking."

Declan nodded slowly. The plan had been bold—perhaps too bold, perhaps exactly what was needed. The Free Irish Community was declared, a government in exile operating from the hills of Wicklow, and everyone knew that the British army was coming to put it down. The question was not whether but when, and whether when it came, they would be ready.

"We'll be ready," Declan said, though he wasn't sure he believed it himself.

Seán looked at him for a long moment, and in that look was every conversation they'd ever had, every argument, every moment of doubt and determination and fierce, stubborn hope. "You keep saying that," Seán said quietly. "But I'm starting to wonder if you know what ready means."

Before Declan could answer, the coffee was ready. They drank it black and bitter and perfect, and when the cup was empty, they went out to face whatever the day would bring.

The day brought an army.

CHAPTER TWO

The British arrived at noon, not with the fanfare of conquest but with the methodical precision of men who had done this before and knew exactly how it was supposed to go. Two hundred regulars, maybe more, moving through the hills in perfect formation, their red coats already faded to the color of dried blood, their faces hard with the knowledge that they were here to kill Irishmen.

Declan watched them from the ridge, his binoculars steady in his hands. He had never liked the red coats—had never liked anything about the British military tradition, from their precise marching to their ridiculous pom-poms to their absurd belief that order imposed from the outside was the same thing as order born from within.

"How many?" Seán asked.

"One hundred and eighty-seven," Declan said. "Maybe a few more hidden in the treeline."

"And arms?"

"Rifles. Machine guns on the flanks. No artillery." He lowered the binoculars and looked at Seán. "We can do this. But we can only do it once."

Seán nodded. He was already counting heads, calculating odds, thinking three moves ahead the way only a man who had spent his entire life being one step behind could learn to do. "We draw them into the valley. Narrow ground, they can't use the machine guns effectively. We hit them from above."

"Casualties will be—"

"High," Seán said. He didn't argue. He didn't flinch. "I know."

They moved the men into position with the quiet efficiency of people who had been planning this since Easter Week, since before Easter Week, since the day they were born and felt, in some deep and unnameable way, that they were born into the wrong country.

As the men moved, Declan walked among them, shaking hands, saying names, remembering faces. Seamus was there, solid as ever, his Irish face set in the grim expression of a man who had nothing left to lose and everything to fight for. There was a boy of nineteen named Patrick who reminded Declan of himself at that age—eager, terrified, and absolutely convinced that his cause was righteous enough to protect him from bullets.

It wasn't. None of it was.

"Patrick," Declan said, stopping beside the boy who was cleaning his rifle for the third time in as many minutes. "You ever been in a fight before?"

Patrick looked up, startled. "No, sir."

"Then listen to me carefully. When the shooting starts, you don't think. You don't reason. You move, you shoot, you move again. Think after. Understand?"

Patrick nodded eagerly. "Yes, sir."

Declan smiled faintly. God help them all.

CHAPTER THREE

The valley battle was over in forty minutes. Forty minutes of noise and smoke and terror that would echo in every survivor's memory for the rest of their lives.

Declan fought from the ridge, directing fire, calling targets, watching men fall on both sides with the cold, efficient cruelty of a man who had learned long ago that sentimentality got you killed and hesitation got your men killed.

The British came up the valley in formation—terrible, beautiful, suicidal formation—and met fire from three sides. They tried to advance. They tried to return fire. They tried, with the disciplined courage of soldiers doing what they had been trained to do, to push forward against an enemy that refused to stand still and fight like civilized people.

It wasn't enough.

By the end of forty minutes, forty-three British soldiers lay dead in the valley, their red coats staining the green grass with a color that had nothing to do with Ireland and everything to do with England's long and merciless history of imposing its will on others.

On the Irish side, seventeen dead. Forty wounded. Patrick was among the wounded—a bullet had caught him in the leg, and he was sitting against a rock, pale but conscious, trying to smile through the pain.

Declan knelt beside him, pressing a bandage to the wound with hands that were steady despite the roaring in his ears. "Stupid boy," he said gently. "You should have been thinking, not smiling."

Patrick managed it anyway—a weak, watery smile that contained more courage than any battle cry. "Did we win, Mr. O'Sullivan?"

Declan looked at the valley, at the dead on both sides, at the men who were alive because of choices he had helped make and would have to live with for the rest of his days. "We held," he said carefully. "That's not the same as winning."

But Patrick was already drifting into unconsciousness, and Declan let him sleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

That night, around a fire that burned lower and lower as the hours passed, Declan sat with Seán and the surviving officers and tried to figure out what came next.

"We've bought ourselves time," Seamus said, his face illuminated by the firelight, his eyes bright with a mixture of triumph and terror. "But they'll come back. Bigger. Harder."

"Obviously," Declan said. He was staring into the fire, watching the flames consume what was left of the day's accumulated wood. "But we've shown them something. We've shown them that we won't just go quietly."

"At what cost?" Seán asked quietly. It was not an accusation. It was a question that he had been asking himself since 1916, since before 1916, since the moment he drew breath and understood that he was Irish in a world that had decided he shouldn't be.

Declan didn't answer. He couldn't. The cost was written in the valley below, in the forty-three red coats and the seventeen green ones, in Patrick's bandaged leg and Seamus's steady hands and his own aching heart.

The cost was everything.

And it would always be everything.

He stood up, walked to the edge of the camp, and looked out over the hills. The sunrise had been beautiful this morning—golden light spreading across the green landscape, the kind of beauty that made you believe, for one perfect and fleeting moment, that the world was worth fighting for.

Now, in the darkness, it was just hills and shadow and the long, uncertain road ahead.

"What is freedom?" Declan asked the darkness. It was the question that had driven him since Easter Week, since before Easter Week, since the day he was born and felt, in some deep and unnameable way, that he was born into the wrong country.

The darkness did not answer. It never did.

But somewhere, in a cell in Kilmainham or a trench in France or a farmhouse in Wicklow, other Irishmen were asking the same question, and their answers—fragile, defiant, absolutely human answers—were enough.

Not everything. But enough.

For now, it had to be enough.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) and his beloved father.
The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED （BRN74685111） all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement.
Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication.
To contact author， please email to datatorent@yeah.net

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) and his beloved father.
The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED （BRN74685111） all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement.
Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication.
To contact author， please email to datatorent@yeah.net