“That wasn’t true,” I said. “Count Lambert paid for the fort, but I was to see to the manning of it. He wouldn’t have changed that without talking to me about it. I can’t believe that he would ever have given anything to the countess. He hated her! Not that we’ll ever know for sure. Count Lambert died days ago on the battlefield west of Sandomierz.”
“Yes, sir, but she got the captainette to believing her, anyway. They went into the fort. Then an awful lot more nobility kept coming, and the countess turned every commoner out the fort to make room for them. Some of them went on to Hell, or the Warrior’s School, I mean, and some went up to the hills to take their chances up there.”
“And this happened three days ago?” I asked, trying not to vent my anger at the captainette. It was really all my fault for appointing that woman to so important a post in the first place. I’d had a bad feeling about her, but I’d done nothing about replacing her.
“I think four, sir. Then about noon yesterday, I was outside taking a breather, and I saw about a hundred oldstyle knights ride up in chain mail and all. I thought it was kind of funny because they were all riding little horses, but their leader spoke real good Polish to the sentry, and their shields were all painted with Polish arms. Anyway, the leader said that they had word from Cracow, and I heard the countess yell that they should be admitted. I saw the gates go up and the drawbridge go down, but then my break was over and I had to get back to tending the wounded. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I guess I should have. That must have been how the Mongols tricked their way into the fort.”
“Then, about a half hour later, one of our men came up shouting that the place was crawling with Mongols, that they were streaming in on us from the south. We all armed ourselves, but my captain said I was to take care of the wounded, since some of those men were badly hurt. I was the only corpsman left behind. I didn’t like it, but orders were orders. I could hear screams from the castle and shouts from the fighting down below. All the wounded who could move had gone down to join the fight, even some guys with only one arm, but there were still more than two dozen of them up there that were helpless.”
“A while after that, one of my patients started shouting that the building was on fire, that we all had to get out somehow. From the smoke and the smell, I could see he was right, but there were so many of them and only one of me! I picked up one of the men who was near the stairway and carried him down to the ground floor and outside., but the fighting was so bad out there that he was killed by a Mongol arrow before I got out the door.”
“I went back up, and the fire had gotten real bad. Men were crying to me, begging me to not let them die by burning to death. One man, a captain with his legs both messed up, he grabbed me by the arm. ‘You know what you’ve got to do!” he says, and I said that I didn’t. He says, ’You can’t let all these men die by fire! That’s the worst possible way to go. It’s so painful that any man doing it would die with a curse on his lips, and then what happens to his soul? You’ve got that axe, boy. Use it! And use it on me first!‘
“Then he starts singing ‘Te Deum,’ sir, real loud, and the rest of the men starts singing with him, those who were conscious. I’d armed myself when everybody else had, and my axe was sharp and new in its sheath. I’d never used it, not till then, anyway.”
“Sir, I chopped that captain straight across the neck, and it took his head almost off. Then I went down the line of wounded men and did the same to almost every one of them. They kept on singing until I was done. Some of those men I killed were already unconscious. Some of the others gritted their teeth as I came up to them, and a few nodded to me that it was okay, what I was doing, but only one of them said I shouldn’t do it. He was Robby Prajinski, and I knew him because he was from my own village. He screamed and begged me not to hurt him, so I didn’t. I just went to the next man. I guess the fire was real bad, because I couldn’t see so good. Maybe it was the smoke, or maybe I was just crying, but I hit every one of those poor men square, sir, even the last one where the floor burned out under us. He was singing until I hit him. I guess that’s where I got these burns.”
“I lost my axe in the fall, and I could hear Robby screaming somewhere, but I couldn’t find him in the fire. I got outside somehow, and all of our men out there were dead. I was thinking I should go back in to try to find Robby, but my clothes outside my armor were burning. It was like the Mongols didn’t see me somehow, because I made it into the river, and that put the fire out. I drifted downstream for a while, and I was kind of surprised that I floated in my armor. Maybe it’s the goose-down in the gambesons. Anyway, I crawled out, and I guess I mostly slept until the sentries found me.”
I buried my face in my hands, unsure whether I was crying as much as the young corpsman was.
“You did what you had to do, son. Fate put a horrible job in front of you, but you did your duty, and you did it well. May God bless and forgive you,” I said. After a bit I added, “You did fight, son, but maybe you’d better go to confession. There are a number of chaplains around here somewhere. ”
“Yes, sir.” The boy got up to leave, and Tadaos put some more food in his blistered hands before showing him out.
“Take care of him, won’t you,” I said to Tadaos.
“Will do, sir. Now, before you leave, do you have any spare ammunition? We’d stripped most of the ammo from the fort for the fight on the river, and it seems like the Mongols burned all the rest of it they could find.”
“We can give-you a few dozen cases. You’re going to see what you can do about patrolling the river?”
“There’s nothing much else I can do, sir. That, and there are still three of my boats unaccounted for, and I mean to find them. Baron Piotr’s getting downright antsy about it.”
“Piotr still lives, then?”
“Yeah, he was one of the, lucky ones.”
“I’m glad. Well, good hunting.” I stood to leave.
“You too, sir.”
It was now late in the afternoon, and if we left within the hour, well, there were a dozen targets for the Mongols within two dozen miles of here. We’d probably get wherever we were going before dawn. I ordered that all of our Night Fighter companies be re-formed and put in the front of the column, that all of the relatively fresh men who had come in by riverboat be put on the line behind them, and had the two companies in the worst shape left behind to man this installation and start cleaning it up. While I had been talking to Tadaos, eight more companies had come up from Cracow. The city was now secure, even if most of the wooden buildings in the lower city were totally burned down. At least there were no Mongols about, or rather, no live ones.
But there was no word from Baron Vladimir. Two-thirds of our army might as well have vanished from the earth for all I knew.
Baron Gregor just about had things reorganized when Captain Wladyclaw galloped up.
“It’s definite,” he said. “The entire Mongol force somehow regathered into a single body, and then it went east. There was some fighting at Sir Miesko’s manor, but it did not fall to the enemy, or at least it hadn’t when one of my scouts saw it through a telescope an hour ago. He said that a bunch of crazy old ladies were up in the towers there with swivel guns and a few gross Mongols were lying dead around them, while the other living enemy troops were keeping at a respectable distance. But he said that the bulk of the Tartars had turned south and are heading for Three Walls, sir.”
Three Walls! My wife, my children, and most of my ex-mistresses were at Three Walls. My first impulse was to take my entire force there at a double time, but Baron Gregor talked me out of it. Or rather, he shouted me out of it.
“Sir, these troops are simply not physically capable of running all night long three nights in a row! Nobody could possibly do that. Furthermore, at a quick march, where the men can get at least some sleep, our forces can get to Three Walls by dawn. Getting there sooner won’t accomplish anything except telling the enemy that he is about to be attacked! It m
akes sense to send Baron Ilya ahead with his Night Fighters to see what they can accomplish, but the rest of our men are best off being fresh to fight at dawn.”
“Three Walls is even stronger than Fast Gate here was, and Baroness Krystyana’s in charge there. You know that girl even better than I do, and you know she wouldn’t fall for a Mongol ruse the way that silly twit of a countess did here! ”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Gregor.” I swung into the saddle.
“And another thing, sir! Every man here has gotten at least some sleep in the last four days except you. Have you gone crazy? Do you think you can direct a battle with half your brain not working? Do you think we’d trust our lives to someone who was about ready to keel over? Now, you get off that goddamn superhorse and stretch out on one of the war carts! Go to sleep! We’ll get you to the war on time, never you fear.”
“But…”
“But nothing! Shut up and soldier!”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Chapter Eight
My second in command was shaking me awake. “It’ll be dawn in half an hour, sir. ”
Sleeping in well-fitted plate mail is fairly comfortable, sort of like relaxing in a good contour chair. I threw off my old wolfskin cloak and shook my head to clear it. “What’s been happening, Baron Gregor?”
I sat up on the moving cart, and Gregor, riding beside me on the white Big Person, put a bowl of soup in one of my hands and a mug of beer in the other. Not quite what I needed. God, but I wished that something was available with caffeine in it.
“We’re about three miles from the hedge at Three Walls, sir. The rain stopped just after you started snoring, and a while later the radios started working after a fashion. Duke Henryk still has not pulled out of Legnica. Baron Vladimir has arrived at Cracow and is advancing on us. The transmission was pretty poor, and that’s all we have been able to find out about him.”
“The duke’s conventional knights wouldn’t be of much use to us, anyway. Look at the fiasco they caused at Sandomierz. I can’t see waiting for Baron Vladimir. He’ll be days getting here, What about the rest of our installations?”
“Okoitz, Coaltown, Eagle Nest, and Copper City are all safe and sound. They haven’t been bothered. The boys at Eagle Nest say that they have one aircraft rebuilt and ready to fly. A second should be ready later this morning, sir.”
“Good. Tell them that I want that plane flying over Three Walls as soon as possible. We need all the surveillance we can get.”
“Yes, sir. The granary in the Bledowska desert was taken by the Mongols-we only had a platoon guarding it, and it was never meant to be seriously defended-but the Mongols left it intact. They probably considered it useful booty, to be used later. Sir Miesko’s manor was hit, but the attack was squashed by a hundred lady schoolteachers under Lady Richeza. Our ladies at Three Walls have beaten off two serious attacks, and the Mongols have laid siege to the place. Your wife tells me that a siege tower and some wheeled catapults are being built just out of swivel gun range. ”
“Francine is well, then?” I finished the beer and started in on the soup. It had a lot of meat in it, but very little grain and no vegetables. It was Lent, but the men fighting to defend their country had been given dispensation to eat meat by the Bishop of Wroclaw. When we had thrown out some of our supplies to lighten the load, the troops had kept the foods they craved the most, and two weeks on a high-protein diet had not made up for the lack of meat in the weeks before that.
“She said she was, and she sends you her love. I sent her yours, of course, but I didn’t see any sense in waking you. So far, casualties at Three Walls have been almost nil. An arrow hasn’t much force left by the time it gets to the top of a seven-story wall. The catapults are something else, however.”
“Yeah. Especially if they’re like the ones they used on us in the riverboats. We’d better hurry.”
“We’ll get there at a walk in time for an attack at gray dawn. There’s no point in getting there sooner than that,” Gregor said.
“Oh, I suppose you’re right. Do the Mongols know we’re coming?”
“Possibly not. Baron Ilya’s Night Fighters did a pretty fair cleanup job while you slept. The Mongols seem to have a real general in charge. At least they left plenty of sentries and scouts out. ‘Course, they still haven’t learned not to do sentry duty sitting around a campfire, but the thought was there. The last bunch Ilya taught that lesson to weren’t in any shape to pass on the education they got! He had the horses slaughtered as well as the men so that none of them would find their way back to the enemy camp and tip our hand. I think our scouts took out all of theirs. When a Big Person starts to sniffing on the trail of a Mongol, you just know there’s going to be bloodshed, and those girls can really fight in the dark!”
“So Captain Wladyclaw gets another feather in his cap, and Ilya’ll be harder to control than ever,” I said. “What do you know about the enemy positions?”
“Best as we can tell, they’re all camped on the killing ground, this side of the kitchen gardens, on the place we used to use for a parade ground. There’s some wells down there, and they probably figure that the big hedge of Krystyana’s roses offers them some protection. ”
“Nice. Better wake all the men and get some food in them. ”
“The cooks have been at it for an hour, sir. During the night I had all the cart wheels greased so they’re real quiet.”
“Good. Make sure that the men stay that way, too. Semaphores and hand signals only from now on.”
“Right, sir.”
“And give me my mount back!”
It was still dark as we approached the city. I was in front of our silent column to make sure that things were the way I thought they were. The double-tracked railroad went through a simple gate before it entered the killing ground.
This gate was never intended as a military defense; its main job was simply to keep animals in. Nonetheless, I was surprised to see that it was manned by our own Night Fighters. Baron Ilya was there waiting for me.
“I got maybe a company of my men just inside the gate in Mongol outfits, sir, so’s they wouldn’t know we was here. I just wanted you to know so’s you wouldn’t shoot them down.”
“Okay. I’ll signal you just before we start the attack, and you pull those men behind our lines in a hurry. Once things warm up, the gunners won’t be too choosy.”
“Right, sir. ”
Baron Gregor had a man using hand signals to split off our troops, sending a column of war carts in each direction on our side of the rose hedge. Save for the snap of branches as the big carts were pulled through them, the columns were silent as snakes. We could hear the Mongols a dozen yards away from us on the other side of the hedge, but we didn’t hear them give any alarm.
As each cart reached its assigned position, the men quietly took the big armored lid off the vehicle. This was slung on spare pikestaffs six yards to the side of the cart to act as a shield for the men pulling it. At the same time, the pins were pulled from the casters of the big wheels, the wheels were turned at right angles away from the line of march, and the wheels on the armored side were locked in that position. The carts were pulled sideways into battle.
Harnesses were attached to the armored side of the cart, and the pikemen tied them to the ring on their backplates with a slipknot. Gunners quietly mounted the pinions of their guns into the “oarlocks” built into the sides of the carts. They lit the ignition lamps in the base of each gun, loaded them, and set out their spare ammunition. Cookstoves and other nonessentials were set on the ground. Pikes and halberds were handed out, and men checked each other’s arms and armor.
Having been practiced hundreds of times, the conversion from transport vehicle to war machine took only minutes, even in silence and nearly total darkness. Some of the halberdiers had to be reminded to get in front of their shields, since this wasn’t their usual position, but Baron Gregor had briefed the captains on our plan of attack.
Six
hundred carts take a long time to move two miles quietly in the dark and over unprepared terrain, even when everything is well coordinated. At any moment the Mongols could find us sneaking up on them, and a well-planned surprise attack could be turned into a bloody chaos. But despite my sins, God was still on our side.
At the first hint of dawn I saw my troops lined up and ready, stretching a mile on each side of me. I called to Ilya in a stage whisper, and a few hundred ersatz Mongols poured quickly through our line, heading back to where they had stowed their armor.
Still using hand signals, I gestured ADVANCE, and every captain passed it on.
The hedge was five yards high and thickly tangled with long, sharp thorns. The seed package had claimed that a hedge of these Japanese roses was proof against man and beast, and for once the seed company hadn’t lied. I think it gave the Mongols a false sense of security. No man or animal smaller than an elephant and bigger than a mouse could possibly go through it, but good steel could!
Thirty-six hundred halberdiers started making toothpicks out of two miles of Krystyana’s roses. The hedge had been only two yards thick when we’d planted it seven years earlier, but it had somehow spread to a dozen yards and more in some places. This surprised me, and perhaps it gave the enemy more time to get ready for us, but I think they wasted a fair amount of time trying to figure out what the strange noise was, so it all balanced out. We finally broke into the clear, and the gunners opened fire.
We went across the Mongol camp and trampled it flat in the process. It was huge. Judging from the size of the enemy camp near Sandomierz and the known number of men that had been in it, there must have been two hundred thousand Mongols here, yet at first the resistance was surprisingly light. No more than five thousand men came against us, and many of them were obviously wounded. They went down quickly, and I signaled CEASE FIRE.
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