place him. The weird thing was his haircut. He was completely bald back to the top of his head. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone, yet there were little cut-off hairs laying loose all over his face.
The white horse was acting shocked and nervous. From down here, it was obvious that she was a mare. 'Are you one of Anna's people, like this girl here?' I said. She didn't respond, but then I remembered her rider speaking English. I repeated my question in that language, and she nodded YES, exactly as Anna does.
'Then I think it would be best if you came along with us. Your friend here is dead. There is nothing we can do for him,' I said in my rusty English.
She nodded YES.
Interlude Six
I hit the STOP button.
'Tom, are you all right?' I said. He was staring fixedly at the screen, his eyes bulging, and he was making gurgling sounds.
'What? No. I'm not all right, you idiot! I'm dead! Don't you realize that we just saw me die?'
'But you know that this is some kind of alternate reality. It's not exactly real.'
'It's exactly as real as the reality around us! Is that some third me who died out there? Or am I going to go back there later, subjectively, and die there in my own future?'
'Damned if I know, but if I were you, I'd never go to thirteenth century Poland again!'
His hand was shaking as he pushed the COMM button and ordered a double martini. A naked serving wench brought it in instantly and he gulped it down. Then he sent her back for another, and she was out of the room and back in so fast that she must have passed herself in the hallway. Of course, that sort of thing happens all the time around here. I ordered a beer and she made a third trip.
'It didn't really happen that way,' he said, staring at a blank wall. 'That spear only glanced off my helmet. I saw it coming and I ducked!'
'It looks like this time you forgot to duck. Tom, why weren't you better protected than that?'
'I was! I always am! I wear a bio-engineered fungus coating called a TufSkin.'
I was familiar with the stuff. I wear it myself, like most people. It's not only a cheap insurance policy but it makes shaving a breeze.
The stuff isn't noticeable, but it has these billions of tiny interlocking plates made of crosslinked tubular graphite, the toughest substance known. If you are hit from the outside, on impact and in microseconds, tiny muscles interlock those plates and give you an armor equivalent to a quarter inch of tool steel. Of course, when it does that, it shears off your hair in the process, but that's a small price to pay!
Tom was still talking in a dazed sort of way. 'The only place it can't cover is the eyes, but the helmet I was wearing should have sensed that spear coming and slammed shut the eyeslits! Or I could have blinked! I should have been completely safe!'
'I guess this time there was some sort of mechanical failure.'
His face was still white as he said, 'But there wasn't one! My God, is the whole universe shredding apart?'
He hit the START button.
Chapter Twenty-five
FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI
Looking through my telescope, I saw a knight who I think was Count Lambert fall on the field, and another man who I am sure was Count Conrad run out to aid him. Surely there could be no other knight of his size!
But then I saw that Count Conrad was leading a charge against the Mongols, and doing it without my orders! He had, after all, left me in charge, and one of his first rules of leadership was unity of command! If he wished to take command, that was his prerogative, but he had no right to do so without notifying me!
And why in the name of all that is holy had he left the carts and gunners behind? It made absolutely no sense! Even if the pikers could encircle the Mongol horsemen, what could they do to harm them? They might skewer the first few ranks, but by that time, the enemy formation would be hundreds of yards thick! And completely unharmed! This was madness!
But there it was, and there was no way to call those men back now. If I countermanded his order, the results would be pure chaos! Some pikers would be out in the field and some of the carts would have no one but gunners to defend them. There would be gaps in our lines of footmen, and the Mongols could bypass them, cut through those unsupported gunners with ease and escape our trap. Already, I saw two Mongols riding behind our footmen, and a single conventional knight charging at both of them. My people have sometimes been called fools, but no one has ever dared question our courage.
There was nothing for it but to back my liege lord up, and hope that there was some reason for this insanity. I ordered 'All Footmen Charge,' and mounted Betty to follow them out.
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
When I got to the battle lines, I was astounded! We weren't losing at all! Our lines had been six men deep when we started, but as we closed with the enemy, the circumference naturally got smaller, and since we had started out in a long thin oval, the ends were naturally thicker with men than the sides, which pushed the mass of horsemen inside into something of a circle.
As I got there, our men were twelve to eighteen ranks deep, and as pressed together as a Macedonian phalanx! I think that if it were not for their clamshell armor, many of our front rank men would have smothered to death. Certainly, most of the horses died that way. They were squeezed so hard together that they could not breathe.
The enemy horsemen were packed so closely together that they could not get out of the saddle! Their legs were pinned in! Who could have imagined such a thing!
There were men with halberds and short axes milling around the periphery, wanting to get at the Mongols, but not knowing how.
Then one man wearing a turban wrapped around his helmet and wielding a short axe screamed and ran right up the backs of the outside row of pikers! He climbed to the top of the men and then actually ran down on the tops of the packed rows of pikes at the enemy! Shouting a war cry that sounded like the howling of a wolf, he leaped to the back of a Mongol horse that was so penned in that it could not move.
'El Allah il Allah!' he screamed again, in vengeance fifteen years delayed.
He stretched high as if he was chopping firewood and hacked into the neck of the rider. He swung a second time, though it surely wasn't necessary, and the Mongol's head flew loose. Then he stepped to the haunch of the next horse and repeated the performance!
Seeing this told our men what to do! A human wave of axemen ran up on top of the pikers, then across their shoulders and heads to get at the enemy! A lot of pikers might have had bruised backs, but I never heard any complaints. In minutes, ten thousand axemen and swordsmen were running on top of five hundred thousand Mongol
