Reminding him of our family ties seemed like a good idea. Actually, it was no big thing. I occasionally think that I must be related to everybody. Coming from a vast family helps, sometimes.
'You are the nephew of my Aunt Sophy? I haven't seen the old girl in years! How is she? And what of my Uncle Albert?'
'Just fine when I saw them last, a few months ago. They have thirteen children now, with another on the way.'
'Thirteen! How is that possible? Two years ago, they had only nine!'
'Twins, your grace. Two pairs of them.'
'No! That's amazing! And my Aunt Agnes?'
'Not so good, your grace. She's had a bad cough for almost a year now, and we're all worried about her.'
'I shall include her in my prayers. But look, things are rushed just now, Vladimir. What can I do for you?'
'I think it's more what I can do for you, your grace. I am Hetman of Count Conrad's army. I have a hundred and fifty thousand men coming to join your forces.'
'That was true, then? It wasn't some kind of silly joke? He really does have that many men?'
'Of course, your grace! Who could joke about such a thing? Anyway, they'll be here in a day and you can see for yourself.'
'Here in a day? That's disaster!'
'How can that be, your grace? We're on your side, after all.'
'It's disaster because I can't feed the men I've got now! The food merchants have not come! The cowards have all run away! Even the peasants have gone, and they've taken most of the food with them! I can't feed the twenty-five thousand men I have now! How am I going to feed a hundred fifty thousand more?'
'Oh, don't worry about that, your grace. We have food for a month with us, and all the grain we could ever need at the granaries in the Bledowska Desert. In fact, I can easily feed your entire army. I can have tons of grain here in a few days. Until then, we can feed your men and horses with what we have with us, but more food can be on its way here in an hour.'
'How is this possible?'
'Easy. I brought a radio and a radio operator with me. We can send a message in a few minutes to the granary. They have mules and carts there. Why, four dozen carts a day can feed all your men and animals well. It has to come by rail instead of by boat because the boats are busy right now.' I sent one of my men out to attend to it.
'Yes, I'd heard there was a battle going on at the Vistula. That's Conrad's riverboats, isn't it?'
'Yes, your grace, and Count Conrad is with them. They are slaughtering incredible numbers of the enemy, but it doesn't look as though they can hold out much longer. They say that tomorrow or the next day, the enemy will break through. Already, more than half of our men on the rivers are dead.'
'Half dead? And still they fight?'
'Yes, your grace. They'll fight until they are all gone, every last man of them. I know. I trained them.'
'On boats, perhaps. But what can footmen accomplish on a battlefield? Everybody knows that battles are won by men on horses! A footman can do nothing but get trampled.'
'Wrong, your grace. Horsemen can do nothing against a mass of trained men with pikes! A pike is six yards long and can knock a knight out of the saddle before his lance can touch the footman. Believe me! We've practiced the very thing many times in the last five years. Furthermore, I have more than twenty thousand guns coming with my troops, and they can kill an enemy at a mile! What I don't have is a force of horsemen, but you do. If we can work together, we cannot be beaten!'
'Vladimir, we'll have to talk more on this. For now, do you swear that food supplies will be here by this time tomorrow?'
'I swear it by all that's holy, your grace.'
'Then I'll believe that much at least. I must go and give orders that the last of the food reserves are to be handed out and eaten. That will give the men one good meal, and after that we are at your mercy.'
Chapter Twenty
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
Of all the mistakes I've made, the most serious was to set the number of riverboats at only three dozen. We needed six times that number!
Of course, at the time, I wasn't sure if we would be able to use them at all. The river might have been frozen over, the water level could have been too low to get by some of the rapids, or any one of a number of things could have gone wrong. I don't know. I needed sleep, and there wasn't much of that to be had.
There came a time when we were the only boat north of Sieciechow, on a sector that hadn't been patrolled in days, and we found that the Mongols had completed a bridge across the Vistula. Thousands of enemy troops were rushing across it.
'Baron Tadaos, we've got to take that bridge out.'
'Sir, we're out of Molotov cocktails and Halman bombs. We're out of peashooter balls. The flamethrower is exhausted. We have maybe a thousand rounds of swivel gun ammunition left and those troops outnumber ours by hundreds to one. How are we going to do it?'
'We're going to ram it. Captain Targ! Prepare to offload your men and your war carts!'
The captain gave a few orders that had his men scurrying, then ran up to me.
'We're going to attack that bridge, sir?'
'We are, but you are not. We're going to ram that bridge, and doing that will likely sink us. There is no point in your company going down with the boat. It would accomplish nothing, and you are needed elsewhere. You will get your men ashore and fight your way south to Sandomierz. Once there, you will join the garrison and help defend the city.'
He stared at me for a long minute.
'Yes, sir. What about my wounded?'
'Take the walking wounded with you. The others will have to be left behind. There's nothing else we can do.'
'Yes, sir.'
I could see that he wanted to say more, a lot more, but he turned and went to obey his orders.
'Tadaos, I can handle the helm alone, but I'll need one man in the engine room. See if you can find a volunteer, a good swimmer. Then get the rest of your men ready to join Captain Targ.'
He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Pig shit!'
Then he spat on my boots.
'Nine years I've been working for you and you don't know me any better than that? You might have taken command of this battle, and done some dumbshit things, but I am still master of this boat and baron of the whole damn River Battalion, or what's left of it anyway! Three-quarters of my men are dead now, and you expect me to turn around and run away? This is my damned boat and this is my damned duty station and I will damn well stay here until we've won or we're dead! And if you think that any man of mine feels any different, you can damn well ask them yourself!'
Then he turned his back to me and put a new string on his bow, his hand shaking with anger.
I stood there, not knowing what to do. Then I turned to the helmsman, a young kid who looked to be fourteen.
'Get out of here, boy.'
'No, sir.' His face shield was open and he was crying, tears running down his cheeks. 'No, sir,' he repeated
