'Well. Good job, I hope. Thank you, but now you better get around to the other men who were wounded.'
He looked around the room. 'No sir, I think the surgeons have taken care of everybody.'
'The surgeons!' I yelled. 'Then what the hell are you?'
'Me, sir? I'm an assistant corpsman.'
'Then what the hell were you doing operating on my head?'
'But, you ordered me to, sir! It was a direct order from my commanding officer! What was I supposed to do? Disobey you?'
'Then what were you doing with a surgeon's kit?'
'Oh, they had extra of those at the warehouse, sir, so they handed them out to some of the corpsmen, just in case.'
'They just handed it to you?'
'Yes, sir. It's nice to know what some of these things are for.'
I found I couldn't wear my arming hat over the bandage, but I could get the helmet on.
Before I could leave the sick bay, the chief surgeon came up to me, his armor hacked in a dozen places. I could see by the insignia and the fact that he carried a mace rather than a sword that the equally battered man standing next to the chief surgeon was the company chaplain. In any modem army, both of these positions would have been given noncombatant status, but in ours, every man was a warrior. This Sir Majinski was banner of the orange platoon, besides his medical duties.
'The butcher's bill, sir,' he said.
I looked at it. Eleven dead. Twenty-ten seriously wounded, and I wasn't on that list. Fifty-one with minor wounds. Had I done it Tadaos's way, with flamethrowers, these men would all be alive and sound.
'Sorry about the incident with the corpsman, sir. I kept an eye on him while he was working on you, but I had a man with a sucking chest wound on my table, and I thought I might be able to save him. But the corpsman meant well, and he did a fair job.'
'Well, give the corpsman my apologies. The man with the chest wound, could you save him?'
'No.'
I checked in with Tartar Control. The battle near Brzesko was up to three boats now, and the battle across from Sandomierz was still raging, with a dozen boats still butchering Mongols. But it wasn't the same dozen. That group, out of ammunition, was heading back upstream to East Gate to rearm. I knew the supplies we had there and it wasn't going to be enough.
In the history books I read when I was a boy, some said that the Mongols had invaded with a million men. Others said that this was impossible, that the logistics of the time couldn't have supported more than fifty thousand. But if the estimates that I'd made and those I was getting from the other boats were anything like correct, we had killed more than a half a million Mongols in the first morning of the attack! Furthermore, they showed no signs of thinning out! In any event, the numbers involved were so much higher than I had expected that I had vastly underestimated the ammunition requirements.
On the other hand, they were showing absolutely none of the tactical brilliance that they were supposedly famous for and that I had feared. So far, they were easier to kill than dumb animals. Not that they could be expected to stay that dumb.
Then too, some of my actions had been pretty dumb as well, and it was my duty to see that my last set of stupid mistakes was not repeated.
RB1 TO ALL UNITS. WE HAVE ENGAGED THE ENEMY
IN HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT AND LEARNED THE FOLLOWING:
1. WHEN PATROLLING A RIVERSHORE ON FOOT,
PLACE MEN AS OBSERVERS ON TOP OF THE RIVERBANK
TO WATCH FOR ENEMY COUNTERATTACKS.
2. ENEMY HAND WEAPONS ARE LARGELY INEFFECTIVE
EXCEPT FOR A SPEAR WITH A LONG, THIN, TRIANGULAR
POINT. THIS WEAPON IS CAPABLE OF PENETRATING OUR
ARMOR WHEN CARRIED AT A RUN OR THROWN.
3. WHEN FIGHTING ON RIVER MUD, THE RAPIER IS
NOT EFFECTIVE DUE TO THE LACK OF TRACTION DURING
A LUNGE. OFFICERS ARE ADVISED TO ARM THEMSELVES
WITH AXES UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES.
4. WHEN TAKING OUT A PONTOON BRIDGE BEING
CONSTRUCTED ON A RIVERSHORE, FLAMETHROWERS
ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN AXES.
GOOD HUNTING--CONRAD.
OUT.
Was that worth the deaths of eleven men? Or the maiming of dozens others? I swear that I was never meant to be a battle commander.
But something had to be done about the ammunition situation, and there was only one place to get more ammo. Our other units. We sent out radio messages ordering all units to send one-sixth of their swivel gun ammunition to East Gate, and for the Odra boats to send three-quarters of their peashooter and Halman ammunition in addition to this. I hated to strip the other units, but as the captain said, the ammunition couldn't possibly be spent better than it was right here.
I also ordered that all reloading equipment and supplies be transported from Three Walls to East Gate, along with any ladies who knew how to operate it.
I went back up on deck. We were heading upstream again to the fighting at Sandomierz.
'How did the battle go, Baron Tadaos?'
'Well, sir, since we was out to destroy the bridge, I guess you have to say we won. It's gone.'
'We got the whole thing chopped up?'
'The Ghost did all right, but it wasn't attacked. We only got about half of our half done. But after we pulled out, the Ghost took out the last quarter with a flamethrower. That bridge burned real good. So did the Mongols.'
Captain Targ came up. 'It was quite a show, sir. Mongols don't like burning to death. A lot of them jumped into the water and drowned in preference to it.'
'A good thing to know. Captain Targ, you saved my life today. If you hadn't killed the Mongols around me and pulled me out of that wreckage, I'd be a dead man. I owe you.'
'No sir, you don't. I was just paying an old debt.'
'Debt? What debt? Should I know you from somewhere?'
'I didn't expect you to recognize me, sir. You only saw me once and that was in the dark, plus I was only ten years old at the time. But I'd hoped you would remember my name.'
'I'm sorry, but I still draw a blank.'
'My father told me that if I could do you some personal service, I should tell you that once you threw bread on the waters, and that it has come back to you tenfold. Well, it isn't really tenfold. If I've saved your life, well, you once saved the lives of my entire family.'
'I remember now. When I first got to this country, I was lost in a snowstorm, and your father let me in to the warmth of his fire. Doing that saved my life, I think.'
'Perhaps, sir. But the next summer, my father's fields were flattened by a hailstorm. We would have starved to death that next winter except you came by and gave him a purse of silver. So now perhaps that debt is paid.'
'In full, with compound interest, Captain. There were two of you boys, weren't there?'
'Yes, sir. Wladyclaw is a banner with the elevendythird.'
'And the rest of your family. Are they well?'
'Yes, sir, or at least they were as of a month ago. But my father wouldn't evacuate and that region is probably overrun by the Mongols now. There's no telling what's happened.'
'I'll pray for them.' It was all I could say.
