His dying word was, “Bastard!”
He crumpled to the snow, and the emotional reaction of all that had happened hit me. My hands and legs shook, I could barely stand, and all my sphincters let loose.
Somehow, I was still alive!
The crowds on both sides were cheering and shouting, but they didn’t seem important, and I ignored them.
With both hands on my helmet, I managed to twist it around so I could look forward. Standing on his shield, with both hands I was able to pull out my sword. It was tightly wedged, and I think that it wasn’t the cutting that stopped my blade from going all the way through, but the friction on the sides. When I had it out, I could see that I had not only cut through half the shield, I had cut through half his left arm as well. He couldn't have dropped that shield. Shield, sword, and arm were locked into a single unit.
I was pretty sure his neck was broken, but with so many children at stake I didn’t want to take any chances. I raised my sword and took his head off with a single blow. It didn't bleed much. I guess he was already dead.
My lance was lying shattered on the ground, and I reconstructed what happened. I had bought my lance a year ago, figuring it was a useless piece of paraphernalia. I bought the lightest one possible. Sir Vladimir favored a light spear, so he didn’t mention anything. But Sir Vladimir goes for targets like the eyeslit, and Anna had trouble reaching that high.
There was a gouge on his shield that must have been made by my lance. Anna had hit her target dead on, but on impact my spear shattered and his didn’t. I never had a chance to swing my sword; it was knocked out of my hand when I went flying. I wouldn't have thought it possible to be knocked over the top of the waist-high cantle of a warkak, but that's the way I went.
I went and decapitated his horse, which was still screaming.
The Polish crowd was cheering wildly, including, I suppose, even those who had bet against me. The Crossmen were shouting hoarsely in German, but I couldn’t' understand them, except for more shouts of “foul” and “witchcraft.”
All I knew was that it was over and that I had won.
Then the German crowd opened up and four armed and armored horsemen wearing black crosses on their white surcoats charged me with their lances lowered.
FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI
On the day of the trial, my fellow conspirators and I were all at our assigned positions. Tadaos was lying hidden on the roof of the windmill. Friar Roman was among the clergy, ready to cry out “An Act of God” and “A miracle” and such like. I was among the nobles ready to do the same.
Ilya was set to run out on the field and try to recover the gold-covered arrows, for we were sure that they could not stand close inspection. Surely God would use something better than gold leaf!
When the fight was on, Sir Conrad’s lance shattered at the first impact. I cursed myself for never making him get a new and stronger one!
He was unhorsed, and the Crossman started to come around to finish him off, but still Tadaos did not fire!
Talking to the bowman later, he said that he did, but he never saw where the arrow fell, as he had hid himself immediately after loosing his shaft. When he looked up, he was surprised that the Crossman was still alive, but Sir Conrad and his opponent were locked in such tight combat that he was afraid to shoot again for fear of hitting Sir Conrad.
My friend looked sure to lose, but then to the wonderment of all, he discarded his shield! A roar went up from the crowd, for we all knew then that Sir Conrad was merely toying with the Crossman, that he was so sure of victory that he could afford a jest!
In the end, he even left his sword stuck contemptuously in the Crossman’s shield and destroyed the man with his bare hands! And then gave the man the mercy blow with his opponent's own sword! The crowd was wild! No one had expected such prowess of Sir Conrad, although he had said all along that he was going to win. Shortly after Sir Conrad's victory, he gave mercy to the Crossman's horse, for that animal had been injured by Sir Conrad's amazing mount.
We thought that all was over when four more Crossmen, fully armed and armored, charged onto the field and at Sir Conrad.
Cries of “Foul!” went up, for this was a foul beyond all imagining! But the marshals had already ordered the crossbowmen to uncock their weapons, for fear of accidental discharge. They ordered the crossbowmen to shoot the transgressors, but it takes some time to wind up those ungainly weapons. Time that Sir Conrad did not have!
Far away on the roof of the windmill, Tadaos was more prepared. He loosed four shafts at the evil-doers, watched the arrows go through the low clouds and then come down exactly on target!
Every one of his golden shafts hit its man square in the heart! They crumbled as a group and their riderless horses ran on both sides of Sir Conrad, while he stood there unmoving:
“It is an Act of God!!” Friar Roman shouted, falling to his knees. “We have seen a miracle to the glory of God!”
I too was shouting, “A miracle! A miracle!” Soon everybody was doing it as Tadaos quickly descended from the windmill and hid his bow and remaining arrows.
As planned, Ilya was first on the field. But when he grasped an arrow to pull it from the dead man’s chest, it bent in his hand! The arrows were truly made of soft, pure gold!
Ilya fell to his knees and prayed.
Interlude Four
I hit the STOP button again.
“I don’t believe that shooting, and I'm too much of an agnostic to believe that you have a truly documented miracle here. Your fingerprints are all over this, Tom! What gives?”
“Well, of course I did it. I couldn’t trust Conrad's life to one medieval bowman, no matter how good he was. You don't think I could let those German bastards murder my own cousin, do you?”
“For a long time, I’ve had a section of engineers working on advanced weaponry, just in case we ever needed such a thing. We've never had to use it, which is good, but rather frustrating for the engineers. They were delighted when I gave them this assignment.”
“The golden arrows were the easy part. Just some thrusters on the arrowheads and some microelectronics to guide them, then a temporal circuit to get rid of the high-tech stuff afterward.”
“Getting rid of Tadaos’s arrows was the hard part. They had to do some weather-control work to get the low cloud-ceiling to hide our ship, then detect and take out some small, uncooperative targets. After that, well, would you believe thirty-caliber cruise missiles?”
“I thought that you were so sure that Conrad would be alive eight years later,” I said.
“There are so many unknowns floating around this mess that I just couldn’t take the chance. Maybe he could be both killed and stay alive. Is that any stranger than both saving and abandoning that child?”
“So you faked a miracle. It’s hard to believe that even from you!”
“Look, kid. One man’s miracle is another man's technology.”
He hit the START button.
Chapter Twenty-One
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ
I had gone into the fight knowing that my cause was just, and with the feeling that God was on my side. I had been scared, but somehow, I had won.
Then suddenly I was looking sure death in the face.
And then, just as suddenly it was over, and my mind couldn’t handle it all at once. Like that farmer in the High Tatras, I was just stunned by all that had happened. Miracles are something that happen to someone else, far away, and a long time ago. They don't happen here and now to one's self.
Long afterward, there were nagging doubts in my mind about what really happened. I knew what an advanced technology should be capable of. If someone could make a thing like Anna, faking a miracle would be easy for him. But I never really knew.
Father Ignacy said that perhaps it was both faked and real. That God works in His own ways, and sometimes He chooses to work through men. And if so, why not through men of a different time and place?
The duke went before the crowd of Crossmen and told them that their order had been cursed by God. He ordered them to disband and to disperse, for they were banished forever from Poland. Fully a third ripped off their uniform surcoats on the spot and rode off west, back to Germany. I heard one say that he’d wanted a bath, anyway. The balance, crasser and more worldly, packed up their gear and returned to their headquarters in Turon, Mazovia.
All told, the Crossmen lost about a quarter of their total force of men to desertion when this affair became well known. It was the more honorable and religious of them that left, of course; the worst bastards knew when they had a good thing going, and weren’t about to change.
Then the duke addressed the Polish crowd, and said that from that day forth, slavery was forever banned in Poland, that Poland was now the land of the free, and that any slave need only set foot on our soil to be free. The duke was a rough old SOB, but you had to love him.
Before they pulled out, a Crossman, the commander in his fancier surcoat, came and talked to me.
“Your witchcraft and trickery won’t stop us! Duke Henryk has nothing to say about what goes on in Mazovia and the Pruthenian forests. If we can't send our slaves through Silesia, we'll find another route!”
I stared at him for a moment, then said, “Then I’ll have to plug that route, too.”
“Do that and we’ll just stop taking prisoners!” Then he went away.
Across the field, I saw Sir Vladimir and his father. They were in each other’s arms, crying on each other's shoulders. Uncle Felix was standing nearby. A few hours later Baron Jan came to me and formally asked for the hand of my daughter for his son. Of course, I gave my blessings. No mention was made of a dowry, though I asked what he thought of Sir Vladimir swearing fealty to me. ,
Baron Jan said that if Vladimir wished it, and Count Lambert did not object, he would be willing to transfer the allegiance. Just before the wedding, it was done.
I checked on the wager I had made on myself, and discovered that the odds against me had gone back up to fourteen to one. I was two hundred thirty-eight thousand pence richer. It is not comfortable to be the only person in the world who believes something to be true, but it can be very profitable.
As they were weighing out my money, the herald of the Bishop of Wroclaw announced that the posting of bans for the marriage of Sir Vladimir and Annastashia had been shortened from six weeks to three days.
The duke awarded all of the booty won from the Crossmen to me, without even reserving the share normally due to Count Lambert. I gave Sir Vladimir half of it as a dowry.
We stayed on at Okoitz, and the day after Christmas there was a wedding. The bride I gave away was radiant.
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