I'd arranged for a dozen guides to take the bulk of the visitors around, but I wanted to escort the VIPs myself. It was not only necessary to build the finest army in the world, it was also necessary for the powers that be to know that it was as good as I said it was.
We stopped at the first major obstacle, a huge log suspended fifteen stories up between two big denuded pine trees. Four ropes went from the ground, up and over the log and then back down to the ground.
"They're not going to climb that thing, are they?" Count Lambert asked, proudly wearing his new gold armor.
"They'll climb it in full armor using their arms only, my lord. They'll go over the top and then back down the other side," I said.
"Have you done this yourself?" Prince Henryk asked.
"Of course, my lord. I've often led them through the course."
"I wonder if I could do that," Count Lambert said.
"I'm sure you could, my lord, if you had taken this training. But for today, I must ask you to observe only, and not participate."
"That verges on impertinence!" Count Lambert said.
"Perhaps, my lord, but we all know your abilities. This demonstration is to show you what the men can do."
Count Lambert started to make further objection, but Prince Henryk put his hand on the count's armored forearm.
"It shall be as you say, Baron Conrad," the prince said, and that ended the matter.
The troops came running in step up the trail, their armor clanging loudly. They were four files wide and ten ranks long, and singing the army song.
"That song sounds familiar," Prince Henryk said.
"The tune is an old Russian folk song called 'Meadowlands,' my lord. The words are by an English poet named Rudyard Kipling. I translated them and fit the two together."
The first rank went immediately to the four front ropes and went quickly up, their arms moving in unison and their legs hanging stiff below them. The troops behind did jumping jacks until the first four were halfway up, at which time the next four men started up as the others continued exercising.
"One of the rules of the course is that the men never stop moving. When they are waiting their turn, or waiting for the others to finish, they exercise in place," I said.
Abbot Ignacy made the sign of the cross as they scaled the dizzying height.
"That man on the left, near the top," Prince Henryk said. "That's Sir Vladimir, isn't it?"
"Yes, my lord. He and the three Banki brothers beside him have been largely responsible for the training."
"And that little one at the end who's jumping up and down, is that your accountant, Piotr Kulczynski?"
"Yes, my lord, only he isn't my accountant any longer. Once his training is over, I have another job for him."
"And what might that be?"
"I'm setting up a section of mapmakers, my lord, and Piotr will head it. By the time the Mongols invade, we'll have accurate maps of all of southern Poland."
"That will be of great use to my pilots!" Count Lambert said. "If I can ever get you to get to work on that engine you promised."
"I promised to work on an aircraft engine once your people built a two-man glider that could stay up for hours, my lord."
"Then you'd best be thinking about it, because we're close, Baron Conrad, damn close!"
"Very good, my lord. For now, we'd best go to the next obstacle." I'd gone along with helping out with Eagle Nest, Count Lambert's flying school, because it looked to be a good way to set up an engineering institute at Count Lambert's expense. I never for a minute believed that those kids could build functioning aircraft in under twenty years. They were starting to build some decent gliders, though.
We got to an almost vertical cliff face fully thirty stories high only slightly ahead of the troops, who came clanking up behind us, still running in step. The first four started climbing immediately while the others did pushups.
"They move up like ants after ajar of honey!" Count Lambert said.
"Very deadly ants, my lord."
"But how is such a thing possible?" Abbot Ignacy asked.
"Training, Father, plus the fact that they have climbed this particular cliff so often that they know where most of the handholds are."
Soon, all of the men were on the cliff face and the front rank was nearing the top. Off to the right, a long slack rope went from a pole on the top of the cliff to another four hundred yards away on the ground. The arrangement was such that it was necessary to jump from the cliff in order to catch the rope. The first man up, Sir Vladimir, I was pleased to note, ran immediately toward the rope and flung himself off the edge as the crowd gasped in horror. But he caught the rope and slid down to the ground to be followed by the others.
"Doesn't that bum their hands?" Prince Henryk asked.
"No, my lord. If you'll notice, they're not holding it with their hands, but have caught the rope with the cuffs of their gauntlets. The rope is waxed and things don't get too warm."
"But what if they should slip and fall?"
"They generally die, my lord."
And so it went, as the men swung on ropes, ran across long bridges that were as narrow as your arm, climbed log piles, walked tightropes and everything else nasty that I could think up.
"When they're in full armor, we usually bypass the swimming events, since it takes a few days to dry out their gambezons," I said. "But rest assured that each of these men can swim a half mile in full armor-and six miles naked."
Despite the fact that we were on horseback, the men beat us back to the mess hall. The VIPs were invited inside and the rest of the crowd was fed outside.
Each of the men was doing in a breakfast that started with six eggs, a loaf of bread, and a slab of ham as thick as your finger, and went on from there. My own meal was almost as big.
"You certainly feed them well," Abbot Ignacy said.
"True, Father, but we bum it off them quickly enough. You won't find much fat on any of these men."
Pike practice came next, and the VIPs were treated to being charged by forty pikemen. At the last possible instant, Sir Vladimir shouted "Halt!" and they stopped with the sharp points a finger's breadth from our chests. Seeing that I didn't move, neither Count Lambert nor Prince Henryk flinched, but most of the others had moved back quickly.
"My lords, I'm sure that you felt the emotional impact of that charge. I ask you to imagine what it would be like if six thousand men charged you in that manner."
"Emotional impact? I was more worried about the physical one!" Count Lambert said.
"And 1, too," Prince Henryk said. "But I see your point. That an enemy can be defeated without even touching him."
"That would be ideal, my lord. Once the enemy has broken, you usually lose very few men in the mop-up."
"The mop-up! You have a good turn for words, Baron Conrad," Count Lambert said.
Then the men were put to work on the dummies. These were full-weight straw figures of men on horseback, with a real lance held in place. They rolled down a long ramp and once they got to the level section they were going as fast as a horse can charge. In single practice, the object was to skewer the horse with a grounded pike without being run over or hit by the lance. When a single dummy was attacking a group of men, only the men in the center went for the horse. The others went after the rider.
"That's dastardly!" Prince Henryk said.
"What is, my lord?"
"They're deliberately trying to kill the horse!"
"Yes, my lord."
"That's unfair!"
"True, my lord. But was a horseman ever known to be fair with a footman?"
"Fair to a footman? I doubt if it ever crossed anyone's mind."
"Then why should a footman fight 'fair' with a horseman? If the horseman wanted to fight fair, he would get off his horse, at which time there would be no point in harming the animal. These men are not trained to fight fair, my lord, they're trained to win!"
"Well, I don't like it," Prince Henryk said.
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"Will you like it when the Mongols start butchering your women and children, my lord?"
"Be damned, Baron Conrad."
"I think I will be, my lord."
Abbot Ignacy made the sign of the cross.
Count Lambert was worried about this altercation between his greatest vassal and his future liege lord, and tried to change the subject.
"Baron Conrad, this is all fine and well when practicing on dummies, but what of the real thing?"
"We've done it, my lord, at least to the extent of using live horses. We've never tried going for the rider of such a horse, for lack of a volunteer, but I myself have ridden an old horse into a mass of pikers."
"What happened?"
"I came down hard, my lord."
"And your horse?" Prince Henryk said.
"Dead, of course."
"You killed a dumb animal?" Prince Henryk asked.
"My lord, we eat dumb animals. I have lost two dozen men in the course of this training. What difference does a few animals make? This afternoon we'll be shooting four pigs to show you what our guns can do."
"At least you'll eat the pigs."
"My lord, we ate the dead horse, too."
The rest of the day went like that, half awestruck praise and half condemnation because I had no intention of losing men in order to conform with their ideas of a fair fight. Dammit, there is no such thing as a fair fight! You are either out there to kill the bastard or you shouldn't be fighting at all!
On the other hand, the reaction of the commoners was uniformly positive. They liked the idea of their enemies being dead and their own families being alive. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't going to get much help from the conventional knights. We were going to have to beat the Mongols on our own.
After the abbreviated day of training, the troops went back to the barracks to rest and we threw an afternoon party for our guests, with music and plenty of food, beer and mead. The commoners were all buzzing about what they'd seen, and the girls from the cloth factory were literally jumping up and down, some of them, but the nobility was considerably more subdued.
Those knights who had come were mostly of the more progressive faction of Count Lambert's knights, and if they had reservations about what I was doing, I hated to think about the more reactionary knights. I suppose that I should have expected their reaction, but I really hadn't.
Most of them were eager to plant the new seeds and buy or make the new farm machinery. Quite a few had installed indoor plumbing in their manors, and many were setting up light industrial plants, with our help, to keep their peasants busy during the off-seasons. But they seemed to look on the army as a threat to their whole existence. By their lights, they were better than the commoners and had special privileges because they protected the land. It didn't take much in the way of brains for them to realize that my warriors were better fighters than they were. They felt they were being undercut, and I suppose they were.
I began to realize that the open house was a big mistake I knew I'd never do it again, at least not with the nobility there, but there was nothing I could do now but brazen it out.
Chapter Twenty-three
It was getting dark when I called the crowd together and led them to a bowl in the hills that formed sort of an amphitheater. Once they were settled in, the troops marched up, barefoot and wearing tan linen fatigues and winter cloaks. An area in front, twelve yards to the side, was piled a yard deep with kindling wood, all carefully selected to be dry wood and free of knots.
There was a small brick wall, about two yards square, in front of it, with a few torches around. I stepped up to the front.
"You have seen these men traverse various obstacles in full armor. You have seen them prove their proficiency with various weapons, and today you have seen the first public demonstration of our guns. These men have the finest arms and armor in the world, but weapons are unimportant compared to the men wielding them. A true warrior is always deadly, even when he is alone and naked."
"Sir Vladimir, a demonstration, please."
Sir Vladimir was our best man at empty-handed fighting, much better than I was. Together, we had put together a decent system of self-defense, based on what little I knew about karate and a lot of trial-and-error. He put on a good demonstration, shouting as he smashed up boards and bricks with his bare hands and feet. Of course, the bricks maybe weren't baked all that well and the boards were light pine that splits easily along the grain, but the crowd oohed and aahed at all the proper times.
"It is said that a true warrior can walk through walls, and in a sense, that's true. We have here a solid brick wall. Perhaps many of you looked at it as you came in," I said. "Sir Vladimir, walk through that wall."
Perhaps some of them expected him to do something magical, but what he did was give it a side thrust kick and it smashed nicely. Then he walked through the rubble. Okay, that wall had only been laid the day before and the mortar wasn't well set. Indeed, the mortar had been made with a dozen parts of sand to only one part of lime, but I hadn't made any promises.
"Any of these men could have done that. It's just that since we only had the one wall, and since Sir Vladimir is in charge of this installation, well, rank hath its privileges."
That got a small titter out of the crowd.
"A warrior can also walk through fire. More than that, he can walk over a bed of glowing coals, which as you know is much hotter. They are going to walk through this." I pointed at the big mat of wood. On cue, Sir Vladimir and the Banki brothers took the four torches to the four comers of the wood pile and simultaneously lit it afire. It went up with a huge whoosh! In moments, the fire was five stories high. The torches were thrown into the fire.
"There was nothing magic about that," I said. "We put some oil under the wood along with some of the black powder that we use in the guns. It also fights fires., I just wanted it all to start at once so that the whole fire would be burning evenly."
I then invited my noble guests to stand near the fire and had the cooks bring out some long skewers with thin slices of meat threaded on them. As the fire burned down to coals, the cooks set the meat over the fire and it soon broiled. This was offered to the nobles and what was left was given to the commoners, to show everybody that it really was hot. Mainly, it gave us something to do while the fire burned down to coals. During this time, there was no other light in the valley but the fire, and the human eye can acclimatize without a person's noticing it. Actually, the coals were becoming quite dim.
I asked the nobles to step back and we marched the troops up so that a dozen men were lined up in back and on each side of the fire. Sir Vladimir and the other instructors were in front of it, along with me. A few workers with long-handled rakes stirred the coals evenly, incidentally kicking up some spectacular sparks.
"You will observe that I am barefoot, as are all of my men. I'll be doing this first," I said. "As my liege lord Count Lambert is fond of proving, a leader must be able to do everything that his men can do. But while a warrior can walk through fire, often his clothes cannot."
I was wearing the same simple linen tunic and pants that my men were. I took off the tunic and threw it onto the bed of coals. It smoldered for a moment and then burst into a satisfying flame. Then I stripped off my pants and set them aside. I stood naked in front of the crowd. This was no big thing, because these people had never heard of a nudity tabu. Then I faced the fire.
Rationally, I was sure that this was safe.
It is the amount of heat that bums you, not just the temperature of the fire. If you touch a metal pot on a hot oven, you will be burned. If you merely put your hand in the air of a hot oven, you will not be hurt. The air in the oven is just as hot as the pot in it. Hotter, maybe, since the air heated the pot up. But air is a very poor conductor of heat compared to metal, and not enough heat gets into your hand to burn it. Charcoal is light, porous stuff, and quite a good insulator. Even when it's glowing hot, it takes a while to get enough heat
into you to do any damage. For a few seconds, it won't hurt you at all. Of course, this doesn't apply to burning knots and hot rocks, but I had been as careful as possible to exclude such things. I hoped.
But all that was theory, and I'd never done it. I could feel the heat of those coals roasting my chest, but there was nothing for it.
"For God and Poland!" I cried and marched into the coals at a normal military quick-step. I was through in a few seconds, and I'd hardly felt a thing, but the cool, wet grass at the edge of the fire was refreshing.
When the crowd was finished oohing at me, I asked the instructors if they were in a state of grace. They all nodded yes.
"Then strip, but please don't throw your tunics into the fire. One demonstration was enough."
This sent a titter through the crowd. I was known to be a cheapskate about some things. When the men were ready, I nodded to them and they shouted the same war cry that I had. Originally, it was Sir Vladimir's, but I stole from everywhere.
"Forward, march!" And they did. And they did it without knowing the scientific reason making it safe to do. They went because they were warriors and their commander had ordered it.
FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI
The demonstrations that day were nothing much out of the ordinary. Indeed, we had run the obstacle course slower than usual, to give the crowd a chance to keep up with us. We had all practiced empty-handed fighting and had seen Sir Vladimir practicing his demonstration, so that was nothing special, either.
What was special was that I saw my love Krystyana in the crowd. She smiled and waved at me and though I did not dare to wave back, I risked a smile and a nod. How wonderful it was to show my prowess to my future bride!
But this walking on fire business was new, and we were all shocked by it. Shocked and frightened, for Baron Conrad had said that we would be doing it ourselves and never had he spoken an untruth to any of us.
We stood aghast as he walked naked through the burning coals. He walked calmly, even though that fire was hot enough to broil meat. Almost magically, you could see his footprints as he passed, black against the fiery red!
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