made of old lances, in neat squares a gross heads to the side, for easy counting. Good. I wanted to make sure that no one ever doubted what we had accomplished here. Those heads were a fitting monument to this battle.
In a day or two, the cleanup would be done, and we could go home. Well, some of us. A contingent would have to be sent to loot and clean up the mess we'd made on the east bank of the Vistula. Likely, Baron Tadaos was starting that already. If only the weather would clear up so we could use the radios again. But the thunder and lightning went on and showed no signs of stopping. It seemed unfitting, somehow. Victories should happen in fine weather.
Finally, we found Baron Vladimir.
'Good morning, my lord. The sleep seems to have done you good. You're looking better. Have you had a medic examine your eye lately?'
'No, but I suppose I should, at least to change the bandage.'
'Most of them are down at the field hospital, at our old campsite, my lord.'
'I'll go there next. But for now, I want you to set up a meeting for me with the troops, captains and above, for late this afternoon, at six. There are some things I have to tell them.'
'Done, my lord.'
'Is anything coming through on the radios, yet?'
'I'm afraid not, my lord.'
'Then perhaps you should put a dozen men on Big People and have them spread the word of our victory. Our wives are doubtless worried and Duke Henryk should be informed. Tell the duke that I advise sending at least his foreign troops south to King Bela.'
'I'll see to it, my lord.'
'Good. Then I'll see you at six, if not before.'
The medic said that my wound was healing well, and it looked like the eye was uninjured. The only problem was that when he removed the bandage, I couldn't tell the difference. My right eye was blind.
Perhaps it's odd, but somehow it didn't bother me.
After all the death I had seen and caused, well, maybe losing the eye was some sort of penance.
The day wound on and it was time for my talk.
I stepped up on the makeshift podium in front of my captains, komanders, and barons.
'Brothers!' I said. 'I wish that I could address the entire army, and not just the officers, but you all know that it would be impossible. Talking to the almost eight hundred of you is about all my lungs can handle. I am therefore going to ask you captains to each give a similar talk to your men, so I'll thank you to take notes.'
Notebooks and real lead pencils dutifully came out.
'Thank you. First, I want you all to know that riders have been sent to tell your families that you are safe, so they can stop worrying about you.'
'Next, I want to praise you all for the magnificent victory you have won. For the first time in all of history, the Mongols have been beaten. In the last fifty years, those murdering bastards have defeated over fifty armies, and most of those armies outnumbered the Mongol invaders. But we went at them outnumbered twenty to one, and we killed them to a man!'
'Over a hundred major cities in China, Asia, and Russia have fallen to their rape, murder, and plunder, but not one major city in Poland has been lost, and all because of you men! The slaughter you worked has saved the lives of millions of your countrymen, and millions of other Christians, besides, for had we lost, the Mongols would not have stopped with Poland. They would have gone on to take Germany, France, and even England, Spain, and Italy. By stopping the Mongols here, you have saved all of Christendom! Your children and grandchildren and their descendants will be singing your praises for a thousand years!'
'To honor you for this mighty deed, we are changing the name of our organization. No longer will we be simply 'the army.' From this day onward, we will be known as the 'Christian Army,' the defenders of all Christendom!'
'The Mongol plan was to hit King Beta of Hungary at the same time as they invaded us. We don't know yet if they planned to take the Hungarians from the east, or from the north through Poland. If the second, you have saved Hungary along with Poland. If the first, if the Mongols actually had enough men to make both invasions at the same time, we have at least saved the many thousands of Christian Knights who are still with my liege lord Duke Henryk at Legnica. I have this day sent a message to my liege urging him to release those fighters to help King- Beta. It may yet be that a victory to the south will happen, and part of the credit for that victory will be due to you.'
'Then there is the matter of the booty you have earned. You all know that it is fabulous! Though it will be awhile before it can all be properly accounted and a fair distribution made, I think I'm safe in promising every man below the rank of knight at least a thousand pence! The knights will get twice that, and captains eight times that amount! So you are all rich!'
'But you won't get a chance to start spending it immediately. There's still work to be done. The River Battalion killed far more of the enemy than were killed here on this plain, and there are too few of them left to do the looting, let alone the cleanup. But there at least we won't have the sad job of burying our own men!'
'And now I want to talk a bit about the future.'
'We have won a great victory here, but don't think for a minute that the Mongols have gone away forever. These marauders that we have killed had descendants, and if we don't do something about it, in twenty years our own children will have to try and repeat what we have done here. And next time maybe the Mongols won't act as stupidly as they have in the last few weeks.'
'Yes, I said that we have defeated a stupid enemy! They lined themselves up on the east bank of the Vistula and let us cut them down like a farmer cuts down hay I They set up a stupid night guard on their camp, and let Baron Ilya's battalion of Night Fighters go in and kill fifty thousand of them, including most of their officers' And without those officers, the Mongol troops rode stupidly into a trap that got the rest of them slaughtered.'
'Well, next time, they won't be so stupid! Next time, they will have learned something from the hard lesson we gave them, and next time they might win!'
'Next time, we have to be far stronger than we were here. Next time we must have more troops, better weapons, and better defenses!'
'So don't think that you can retire from the army and go back to whatever it was that you were doing before the Mongols and I came along. You can't! There's work to be done!'
'I have bought up most of the land for five miles on both banks of the Vistula. We are going to build a fort like the one at East Gate every five miles along the river, all the way down to the Baltic, and on both sides! And after that, we'll build them up the Bug as well! Every one of those forts will be manned by a company of our men, so the army will not be disbanding. We will continue to grow, and you all can continue to look forward to promotions, for not only will we have to build and man the forts, we will have to vastly expand our manufacturing facilities to equip them.'
'The Christian Army that we all belong to will be a permanent organization. In the same manner that the Church defends the souls of all Christians, we will defend their bodies. We will do our work in the realm of the physical just as the Church does its work in the realm of the spiritual. We will be doing God's work, and every one of you will be needed.'
'Yet no man will be forced to stay in the army. Once we have finished with the cleanup, any man who wishes to leave may do so. I simply promise any man who leaves that he will regret it later, when he is a peasant and his old friends are knights and barons!'
'In times to come, we will not only be defending Christendom, but we will eventually be able to take the war to the enemy. Millions of souls in the Russias and elsewhere are now living under the Mongol's brutal tread. We are going to go out there and free them, and make proper Christians out of them besides!'
'I promise you all interesting times!'
'That's about it. Have a talk with your men and then get a good night's sleep. Like I said, there's work to do!'
Interlude Seven
