Lord Conrad’s Lady

by Leo Frankowski

  A panicky thought shook me. Had the bulk of them somehow escaped our trap? All my forces were facing Three Walls. Were the Mongols behind us, waiting to hit our unprotected rear?

  Anna came up to my side, carrying the protesting Captain Wladyclaw with her.

  “Captain Wladyclaw! I’m glad you’re here. Look, we aren’t finding enough Mongols in front of us! If they’re to our rear, we’re in big trouble. Get your scouts way behind us and get word back in a hurry if we’re walking into their trap instead of springing our own. Here,” I said, dismounting. “Take the white person. with you as well and put another man on her. I’ll ride in on the carts.”

  “Yes, sir, but Anna has stopped obeying me again.”

  “Anna, if you love me, go with Wladyclaw and help protect my back.” She hesitated a minute and then galloped back through our lines.

  Chapter Nine

  A while later we topped a rise, and I saw where the Missing Mongols had gone. They were pulling a dawn attack of their own. Lovely! If they were getting set to attack, their minds would be off defense. The war carts went ahead at a quick-step. We were still two miles from the main wall as the sun came up. We recited our morning oaths as we advanced.

  Except for one week of the year when we thinned our stock of wild animals, the lower portion of the killing field did duty as our parade ground and as pasture for our dairy herd. The evidence was that the Mongols had slaughtered our cows, but they’d soon pay for them in full. Fortunately, this was not our prize herd, or they would have made me mad!

  We were advancing over the very ground that many of my officers had practiced on for five years. We knew every hill and rock on it. What’s more, there is a certain psychological advantage to fighting on your own home turf.

  Three Walls was built where I had found a number of minerals in a boxed canyon. I’d given it its name because God had already built three of the city walls for us, and we only had to build the fourth. Since that time we had added a second wall made out of bricks that doubled as a housing unit outside the first wooden one. Eventually a third wall, concrete this time, was built outside the second, and now most people thought it was named for the three combination wall and apartment buildings we’d built there.

  We topped another rise, and I could see a commotion ripple through the Mongol ranks. They knew we were here, and they knew that they were caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place, with the walls of the city to their south, impenetrable hedges to their east and west, and seven ranks of armored men coming shoulder to shoulder at them from the north! Further, there were 3,600 guns pointing in their direction, and if they didn’t know what that meant, they were about to learn.

  The Mongols had built four huge catapults mounted on wheels, along with a wheeled siege tower that looked to be eight stories tall. The catapults were built fairly close to the ground, and were pulled along by men with ropes as well as pushed forward by men leaning into long poles, without needing much in the way of direction by the Mongol officers. The officers were there anyway, though, keeping all four catapults in a neat, straight line, a dozen yards behind the siege tower.

  The siege tower was being moved in much the same way, except that many long ropes were attached to the top of it as well. Directed by a wildly gesticulating officer at the top of the tower, men were pulling on these ropes to keep the ungainly structure from toppling over. The great wooden machines moved slowly toward the city wall as we advanced on the enemy.

  Our ladies manning the swivel guns on top of the wall were firing constantly at the enemy troops who were laboring to get the machines into position, and were killing them in droves-but as soon as a man fell, he was replaced by one of the seemingly inexhaustible Mongol reserves.

  Suddenly, the siege tower started to tilt forward, toward the wall. The men on the ropes behind the tower strained to keep it upright, while the officer at the top directed those pushing and pulling it forward to continue at their task. The effort was well coordinated, and the front two wheels were actually lifted slightly into the air, with all of the weight of the siege tower on the rear two wheels, as it continued inexorably forward.

  I could see what the officer in charge was trying to do. Some castles have big clay jars buried around the walls that will be crushed when any great weight rolls over them and will stop or tip over a siege engine. If the officer could get his machine past the hidden jars that had just been crushed by the front wheels, it would be in position to attack our walls. The only problem with his plan was that we didn’t have any such jars planted.

  I’d never really studied a modem sewage treatment plant back when I had the chance, but I had once helped to install a single-family septic system. Needing to do something with the sewage generated by the four thousand families living in my city, I had simply scaled up that single-family system by a factor of four thousand. Three Walls had a tile field that covered almost a square mile, which made the kitchen garden above it one of the most fertile in the world. There was also a bodacious septic tank that was as long as our outer wall. It went from hedge to hedge, and was thirty yards wide and ten deep. And the roof of the tank wasn’t any stronger than it had to be.

  Watching them through my binoculars, I could see that the Mongols were racing hundreds of men into the moving tower, all of them eager to be among the first to attack the women on our city wall. The Mongol officer looked supremely self-confident until the rear wheels of his siege tower encountered the holes that had been punched into the roof of the septic tank by the front wheels.

  With a certain calm deliberation, the huge siege tower dropped three stories into the dark grey muck below. Many of the men pulling from the front were dragged down with it, and those at the back, pushing on the long poles, were suddenly catapulted into the back of the tower, to slide helplessly down into the slime with the others. Then the tower started to tip sideways, and fell with apparent slowness onto the tightly packed horsemen who were escorting it forward. I saw the face of the officer in charge, looking vastly annoyed as he and they and it went through the roof and sank out of sight.

  Smelly grey muck splashed over the catapults and those propelling them forward, but with a stoic lack of imagination, they all continued their advance, thinking perhaps that it can’t happen here.

  It could. Simultaneously, with military precision, all four catapults broke through the roof of the septic tank and sank out of sight, along with most of the men propelling them.

  A cheer went up from our ranks, and from our ladies guarding the city wall.

  “A. rough way to die.” One of the pikers laughed. “Drowning in sewage!”

  “Laugh all you want to,” another said. “Odds are we’re the ones that are going to have to fish out and bury them smelly farts.”

  “Would you do it for five pounds of gold and silver? That’s what every one of them bastards carry! I tell you I would!” a third trooper shouted .

  “I believe you! ‘Course, in your case, nobody could smell the difference!” a fourth yelled.

  My men were outnumbered at least eight to one, and they were on foot while their enemies were mostly mounted. Yet not a man of them seemed to have even considered the obvious possibility that they might lose! Considering their spirit, I thought that it was an unlikely possibility, too!

  An airplane came and circled overhead. He didn’t drop any messages, so everything must have looked okay to the pilot.

  A few squadrons of Mongol horse archers rode past our line and let fly at us. I ignored them. Best we save our ammunition until we were firing at point-blank range into crowds of them. Their arrows couldn’t do us much damage anyway.

  Through my binoculars I could see the occasional puff of smoke from the swivel guns atop the wall, but I could also see that Krystyana hadn’t fired her wall guns yet. Smart girl! She was saving her best for the last.

  The wall guns were cast into the two yards of reinforced concrete that made up the first story of the wall. Imagine a shotgun with a bore yo
u could stick your leg into or a primitive sort of breech-loading claymore mine. The muzzles were still covered over with their thin coating of plaster, a surprise that was yet to be presented at the party.

  The field narrowed as we marched south, and the carts on the ends had to drop out and follow behind. This caused no confusion because we’d practiced on this very field so many times before.

  A half mile from the wall the Mongol general must have decided that a breakout was in order, for at least half their horsemen formed up and charged our line. It was time. I ordered FIRE AT WILL, and the bugles played it along our whole line.

  Our swivel guns let loose, and noise and smoke covered the field. Through patches of clarity, you could see where single bullets had plowed rows through the Mongol ranks, killing three or four of them at a time. Very few of that first wave got through to hit the pikers and axemen, and I don’t think any horseman who got into our pikes lived to try it again.

  This was exactly the sort of fight I had envisioned from the beginning, the sort we had armed and trained for. And it was working beautifully. The men were elated! After the huge losses we had suffered on the riverboats, after the helplessness the troops had felt watching the conventional knights being slaughtered west of Sandomierz, after the confusion of the battle at Cracow, after seeing the senseless slaughter at East Gate, and after all the mind-numbing running and pulling in between, finally, at last, something was working perfectly!

  Naturally, somebody started to sing, and the troops along the entire line picked up the tune.

  Poland is not yet dead!

  Not while we yet live!

  I could see that up on the wall, despite the fact that they were both pregnant, Cilicia and Francine were manning swivel guns right next to each other, firing down at the enemy. And I saw that two of Krystyana’s sons - my own children! - were running ammunition to them. I waved, and they all waved back.

  But you don’t kill a quarter of a million men in a minute, and we kept advancing as best we could, but no longer at a full quickstep. Going over the fallen enemy and making sure they were really dead slowed us down. Our center was soon bowed back as the edges advanced more quickly, and we had them surrounded. I had to order the wings to slow down so we wouldn’t be shooting through the enemy troops and back into our own.

  About then Krystyana decided that it was time for the wall guns, and all nine dozen of them let loose at once. The effect astounded even me, and I’d designed the bloody things. Suddenly, everything within two gross yards of the wall was either very dead or trying very hard to get that way! Bits of shrapnel and dead Mongol were blown as far as our own troops. The enemy still standing were stunned and made easy marks for the swivel guns.

  Then one knot of horsemen turned as their leader pointed directly at me. Suddenly, some three hundred men and horses wheeled and charged straight for my cart! Everything had been so beautiful, but suddenly things didn’t look too good.

  The gunners tore into them, and many riders went down. The Mongols knew that they were all dead men, but they wanted vengeance for their own deaths, vengeance in the form of my life! They kept coming, and as their ranks thinned, I saw in the center of them two faces I recognized. One was that of the Mongol ambassador, and the other was General Subotai Bahadur himself.

  Standing in the center war cart, I drew my sword and waited. There was nothing else I could do.

  “Thank you, our Lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, amen,” one of the gunners on my cart said. I didn’t know if he was being sacrilegious or just thanking God for the targets, so I kept my mouth shut. It was pretty dry just then, anyway.

  The two older Mongols seemed to be leading charmed lives, or perhaps the gunners were reluctant to shoot a man with white hair and wrinkles when there were so many younger targets available, but in the end they were the last two left alive. Together, their horses jumped my cart’s big shield and came down directly on top of the pikemen. As they leapt from their dying horses toward the cart, a wounded piker caught Subotai in the gut with a grounded pike. I don’t know which of the three us was most surprised, but the old general was suddenly airborne. He actually pole-vaulted right over my head!

  The ambassador landed in the cart between two startled gunners and swung his sword at me. I parried it and gave him a slash to the forearm. His hand and sword went flying.

  He pulled a dagger with his left hand, and I took that one off as well.

  He said, “Damn you, Conrad!” and slumped to the bottom of the cart.

  I looked at him and decided that we could use a Polish speaking prisoner. I put tourniquets on his stumps.

  The roar of gunfire slowed to a rattle and then to occasional pops. Slowly, it stopped completely. Troops looked wide-eyed over the smoke and the smell of the carnage, not quite ready to believe that it was finally over. Slowly, the truth dawned.

  Victory! The tops of the walls and towers were covered with our women and children, cheering for us and for themselves. Baron Gregor had the men unleash themselves from the carts, and they walked to the wall, axes and pikes in hand so that they could chop up the fallen enemy and make sure that dead Mongols stayed that way. A brutal business, but a necessary one. There was no exchange of prisoners with the Mongols, and any who escaped would have to rob and murder their way home just to stay alive. Best to kill them clean here and now.

  The prisoner I had taken was another matter. I had one of our medics sew up his stumps and left orders for him to be guarded.

  Actually, our medics outnumbered our wounded, and we had less than a hundred killed. A remarkably one-sided victory.

  I climbed down from my war cart and joined the others streaming toward the now open city gate. As I passed our wrecked septic tank, I saw a number of warriors around it, pikes in hand. Quite a few Mongol troops were floundering around in the wretched stench below us.

  “Do you think they’ll want some prisoners?” one of the warriors asked a friend.

  “They didn’t say nothing about wanting none,” his friend answered. “Anyways, it ‘ud be easier to catch them some fresh ones than it would be to clean these bastards off.” And with that, he reversed his pike and used it to hold one of the dog paddling Mongols under the stinking grey mud.

  “I guess you’re right,” said the first, reversing his pike.

  I just shook my head and walked on until I ran into my second in command.

  “Give the men leave to enjoy themselves until tomorrow morning,” I told Baron Gregor, “except for two companies that you don’t like. Somebody had better stay on guard. We’ll be needing some radio operators as well.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Try to get through to Baron Vladimir and tell him the news. Have him send half his men back to where we dumped all that booty and bring it here. The rest of his men should stop at East Gate and clean the place up. Send a scout to him if the radios aren’t working. And I want the planes to fly over all of the country that they can and make sure that there isn’t yet another Mongol army out there.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Can you think of anything else we have to do?”

  “Not offhand, sir, aside from spreading the word about this victory.”

  “Then after you get those messages out, go see your wives. I’m going to mine right now!”

  I went back to my old apartment in the first wall through the cheering crowds of soldiers and their dependents. I smiled and waved back, trying to be the good politician, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I had been going on my own adrenaline for weeks, and now at last it was leaching out of me. I felt incredibly tired, drained, and weak. I was sick of war and blood and dirt and saw nothing glorious about wallowing in them. What I really wanted to do was get out of this filthy, stinking, blood-soaked armor, take a long, hot bath, have a stiff drink, and kiss my wife, and not necessarily in that order.

  I went up to my rooms and found both Francine and Cilicia waitin
g for me. Inwardly I groaned. The last thing I wanted now was more confrontation, and the Chinese symbol for an argument is two women under one roof.

  They both smiled at me.

  “We have decided,” Francine said. “When we were shooting at the Mongols, we decided that we should share you. We both love you, and you love both of us, so we can make it work.”

  This statement surprised me as much as a new Mongol army. I sat down to take it all in. The horse really had learned how to sing!

  The war was over, and now we’d have to get busy and build the peace.

  Chapter Ten

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNTESS FRANCINE

  Once I heard that our men were coming, I was no longer afraid. I knew that Conrad would never let us be harmed. Captainette Krystyana allowed me to operate one of the swivel guns, even though there were other women who were better at it than I. She said that seeing me in battle would encourage Count Conrad. I suppose that it was for the same reason that she put Lady Cilicia at the gun next to mine.

  There is something about fighting in the company of others that gives one a strong sense of camaraderie, and I wonder if this isn’t the reason why men like to do it so much. Certainly I could no longer hate Cilicia when she was shooting at the same murderers that I was.

  “He loves both of us,” she said to me during a lull in the fighting. “And we both love him.”

  “What you say is true. We can’t help ourselves. Truly good men are hard to find,” I said.

  “Many of the women here share a man. Couldn’t we do the same?” she said.

  And so it was that after Conrad had rescued us from the Mongol horde, we both gave him a warm welcome. Knowing him well, we had a warm tub of water waiting for him, and together we stripped off his filthy, blood-drenched armor and clothes.