would that be treason to the duke? My oath to him requires that I send him so many knights in the time of his need. I shall do so, and then some, for I now have more men than my oath requires, despite the loss of those knights that once served Baron Jaraslav and now serve you. In truth, since you are arming all of my knights and squires and my barons, and I need only provide training and a horse, in the last six years we have been able to more than double the number of knights that serve me. I was wise to accept your offer, you see.'
'And while my oath does not require it, I have told him that we shall be watching the enemy from above, and reporting their movements to him, and this, too, I shall do. If we also tell your boats what we tell the duke, how is that treason? It's just the sensible thing to do. We're all fighting the same enemy, after all!'
'You have relieved my mind, Lambert.'
'If you say so. Myself, I can't imagine how you thought I could have done otherwise! Now then, shall we see to my defenses? And afterward, you shall have supper here with me and my daughter, and you shall see what you missed out on!'
FROM THE DIARY OF TADAOS KOLPINKSI
In the last week of February, the ice on the Vistula was breaking up some, but it wasn't gone. Like usual, it'd drift downstream and jam up at some turn, then more ice would pile on top, then that night, sure as Hell for a Heathen, it would turn cold again and the whole damn thing would freeze solid.
I had three boats on the river and we was loaded with bombs, something new we wasn't sure would work. They was big iron barrels filled with gunpowder and weighted so's they'd just barely sink. There was a slow fuse in a bottle in one side, and the idea was when you came to a jam, you lit one, screwed down the cap, and got it over the side before it blew up in your face. It was supposed to drift with the current under the jam while you was paddling backward under full steam.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it drifted too far or not far enough. Once it blew and took the whole damn boat with it.
At least I think that was what happened. Nobody from The Pride of Bytom lived to tell about it. We just heard the blast around the bend, and when my own Muddling Through got there, well, there wasn't much left. Every barrel in her must have blown with the first one.
But we was pushing the ice downriver, and not that much was coming from upstream behind us. Once we got past Cracow, I ordered the other boats out, so's we could at least patrol what was clear. They went down their ways without a hitch and each loaded up with six war carts and a full company of warriors.
We continued north with the Hotspur, blowing ice and sometimes getting a shot at a Mongol patrol, until we got to the River Bug. It was froze solid and there was nothing we could do about it. We was out of bombs then, and there wasn't no way we could work upstream, anyhow. I'd hoped to save maybe three dozen of them bombs for another project I had in mind, but there was no way to do it, what with the loss of The Pride of Bytom and all. We couldn't get up the Dunajec either, so all of Poland west of the Vistula was left open to the enemy.
But we did what we could, damn it! What else can a man do?
The other boats was running into bigger patrols and we turned back to pick up our troops at East Gate. It took a while. Doctrine was to give refugees a lift across the river when we weren't actually in a fight, and we had to stop and ferry God knows how many thousands of people across.
The planes was up and flying whenever the weather was decent, and they'd tell us about refugees and Mongol patrols. They had these big arrows with a long red ribbon on them that they'd drop right on your deck. They'd stick tight in the wood and it was amazing they never killed nobody. But there'd be a message in the arrowhead that wasn't hardly ever wrong. Them flyboys was okay.
In two places we found river ferries that we put into service and to hell with their owners. They was both of the long rope kind that Count Conrad invented years ago. In both places I put two of my men ashore to work them, since a civilian couldn't be trusted not to run. Not one of those four men lived. They stuck to their jobs till they was all killed. Let me tell you their names. They were Ivan Torunski and his brother Wladyclaw, and John Sobinski and Vlad Tchernic. Good men, every one of them.
That was all we could do for them refugees, though. Lift them across and give them a map showing where they was and where the safe forts was. Maybe some of them made it alive.
We'd been telling people for years that noncombatants should evacuate by the first of February, handed out leaflets and wrote magazine articles, but the fools wouldn't move until they was burned out and half of them was dead. But you can't let a kid die just 'cause his folks are dumb!
Then half the idiots would want to ferry their cow across, too, when there wasn't hardly room for the people! But doctrine was to leave the animals for the Mongols to eat, cause if they couldn't get animals, them bastards would eat humans!
Our own people was out of there long before that. The inns and depots was long closed down except for the radios. The baron had called for volunteers to man the forward radios so we would know where the enemy was. Almost all of those people, half of them women, stayed at their posts. Sometimes there was some last words, sometimes not. Usually we found out that a site had been taken when the radio went off the air.
When we got to East Gate, Count Conrad was waiting for us.
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
On the last day of February, we seemed to be ready. We had to be, for we were moving out at dawn. The new troops hadn't been given the graduation ceremony that all the other classes had gotten. There was simply no way that we could have scheduled that many men to do the hillside vigil. The halo effect didn't happen that often in the wintertime, and anyway, these men weren't being knighted. With only four months of training, and all of it physical training, they just weren't ready for it.
But every one of them was armored and armed, and they knew how to use those arms. Their equipment had been inspected hundreds of times, as had the contents of their war carts. They had spares, bedding, food for a month, and a ton of ammunition in each cart.
That afternoon, people were running to me with scores of last minute problems, things that should have been done earlier, or things that should have been done without my knowledge. I think that everyone else's nerves were about as shot as mine, and they all wanted stroking. Well, I wanted it too, and I wasn't getting it either. I was growling at people.
At this point I got a surprise visit by two priests. They spoke Italian and Latin. I spoke Polish and Modem English. I don't even understand how they got in to see me, but I had them sit in the outer office and had a runner find Father Thomas Aquinas. Maybe he could figure out what they wanted.
Fifteen trivial problems later I was getting ready to start chewing holes in my desk. At this point Father Thomas came in.
'It's the Inquisition,' he said. 'Was there an inquisition being held concerning you')'
Good God in Heaven! Nine and a half years had gone by since the thing had started, and they had to pick today of all days to show up.
'Yes,' I said, 'but it concerns something that happened long ago. Ask them what I can do for them.'
They talked a while in hesitant Latin, their arms stiffly at their sides. Then they seemed to discover that they all spoke Italian and the conversation speeded up considerably, and their arms started waving. They brought out a thick sheaf of parchment, but wouldn't let Father Thomas see it. They handed it to me. I looked it over. It was all in Latin.
'They want you to read this and say if it is the truth,' the Father said.
'Tell them that I'm sorry, but I don't speak Latin. I don't read it or write it, either.'
They looked sheepishly at each other as Father Thomas translated what I had said. There was more conversation, and I finally got the idea that they weren't allowed to tell Father Thomas what the case was about. They couldn't tell it to the interpreter and they couldn't speak my language. And it hadn't occurred to the silly twits
