and there'd be the night shift coming off work, rubbing the limelights out of their pretty eyes and wondering what they'd do with themselves all the lonely day.
I'd just spent a year in Hell, but now I was in Heaven!
This went on for three weeks, when one night I was sitting in the inn with two of the prettiest girls in Okoitz. Good friends and roommates they was, and I'd had the both of them before, one at a time, and that night I couldn't decide between them so I took them both, and they said that sounded like fun.
They was both wearing about what the waitresses at the inn wear and, that's to say, nearly nothing. They said it was the new style at Wroclaw, and I sure didn't make no argument about their tits hanging out. Not that theirs really hung, you understand, being of the young, conical variety.
We was all laughing and talking when Baron Conrad comes up. I asked him if I could buy him a beer, or maybe a mead would be more fitting for one of his exalted rank. He said it had been a hot day, and if I was buying beer, he was drinking it. Course, he never had to pay for his drinks anyway, seeing as how he owned this Pink Dragon Inn and fifty others besides, but it felt good playing host to my liege lord. He downed it quick and bought the next round for the table, just like he was a normal man and all.
Then he got down to business. He said that I was going to have to cut my leave short. It seems that the first steamboat was all built ahead of schedule, and if I figured to be its captain, I'd better be in East Gate tomorrow by noon.
Course, I wouldn't of missed that boat for all the girls in Okoitz, now that I'd had three weeks of them. But I figured that it was worthwhile complaining about it, since the baron might sweeten the pot a bit to get me there. It's the squeaky oarlock that gets the oil.
So I said that it would be hard, tearing myself away from these poor girls, leaving them to God knew what sad fate.
So the baron, he says that if I was worried about their futures, why, I could marry them if I wanted to.
I said I couldn't marry them both and he said I could if I was of a mind to. Hadn't I read the manual and rules of the Radiant Warriors?
Well, they'd given me this little printed book just as I left, but I hadn't read nothing and I had to admit it. So the baron says that any knight in our order had the right to have a servant, with his wife's permission. And a servant of ours had all the rights of a wife, so it was the same thing, except for the church ceremony, of course.
Well, that sort of flabbergasted me, and I said I didn't know which one I should marry. I don't rightly know if he was serious or not, but he says that if I couldn't decide, I should let the girls do it. Let them flip a coin, he says.
Before I can blink twice, the girls are grinning and nodding at each other. One of them digs a silver penny out of my purse and flips it in the air. The other calls 'crowns,' and that was the way that I proposed to Alona. I never had a word to say about it.
Course, the girls were both jabbering now, working oat the details. If I had to go to East Gate tomorrow, why, Alona's village was only a half mile off the new railroad. She could come with me and I could speak to her father and post banns at the village church, because that's where she wanted to be married. Then Petrushka would be her bridesmaid and right after the ceremony, she'd become the servant.
All this was fine by Petrushka, so the girls had it all settled while me and Baron Conrad never said a word.
Then the girls left in a hurry to tell all their friends and I was left staring at the baron. I think that if I hadn't been drinking and fornicating for three weeks, I might have had enough sense to shout 'NO!', but I had been and I didn't. The baron, he just seemed amused and said that under the circumstances I didn't have to get to East Gate until tomorrow night.
But looking back on it all, I tell you that if I had been sensible that night, I would have made the biggest mistake of my life. Them girls was everything a reasonable man could want, and we've been mostly happy together.
So the next morning, I rented us two horses, one with a sidesaddle since Alona didn't figure it was smart wearing the Wroclaw styles home, but had on a nice wool dress she'd made. We got there before noon and I talked to her old man and the priest and we settled everything real quick, since I didn't much care about the dowry and all, what with me making eight pennies a day now. Then I left her with her folks to visit for a day or two and got to East Gate before dark.
They had limelights up around the dock area, so I went out to look at my new boat right after supper, and she was a beauty! She was painted red and white, with gold and black trim, and a big white Piast eagle was painted on her side, just like the one on the back of the dress uniform. She looked more like a castle than a boat, what with her tall, flat armored sides, and there was crenelations all around the top and turrets at all four comers.
I swear I loved that boat more than the girls I was going to marry.
She was huge, fully three dozen yards long and ten wide. She was two and a half stories tall and armored with steel thick enough to stop any arrow but one of mine! She could carry sixty tons of cargo in six containers, and had fourteen cabins for passengers as well, plus five more for the crew. Yet the night guard told me that she only drew a half a yard of water with a full load!
I went down to the engine room and who do I find there but Baron Conrad hisself. I told him this boat of his was the finest looking thing I'd ever seen, both my girls included, and he said he was glad I thought so, but I better not let them hear that. Then he showed me all over that engine. It had a tubular boiler that ran at two dozen atmospheres, and a sealed condenser below the waterline so we got full power from it. It had a separate distillery run off waste heat, with its own condenser to make distilled water for the main boiler, so he didn't figure we'd ever have a fouling problem. It had two big double expansion cylinders that turned a paddle wheel that was two stories tall. There was a kitchen that could feed a whole company of men. There was even a bathroom with hot showers!
Then he got into the armament. We carried twelve swivel guns aboard, plus four steam-powered guns in the comer turrets he called peashooters. These fired ban bearings at the rate of three gross rounds a minute, one after another. And there was two steam projectors, Halmans, he called them, that could throw three pounds of death at the enemy. And during wartime, the boat was set up to carry a full company of men with all their equipment, including their war carts!
Then he told me I better get some sleep, because we was going to take her out in the morning.
Chapter Five
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
We took the steamboat out with a skeleton crew: an engine operator, a fireman, Tadaos and myself, plus a dozen of the carpenters and machinists who had helped build her. And of course I brought Anna along, since she didn't like being far from me, and her senses were better than a human's. There was always the chance that she would spot something wrong before the rest of us did.
One of the watertight compartments below deck leaked a bit, but that was not serious. There were two dozen of them, and it could have been holed without endangering the boat. There were no other hitches, except for Tadaos' problems with the steering wheel. Once, when he wasn't sure if the water ahead was deep enough, we sent a man out ahead of the boat, walking. As long as the water stayed above the guy's knees, we were safe!
I'd planned to just take her a few miles downriver and return, but with things going so well, we went all the way to Cracow. We took up half the dock and drew quite a crowd, so I told Tadaos to speak with the riverboat men and try to talk them into joining the army. We were advertising in the magazine, but most of these men couldn't read.
I rode Anna up to Wawel Castle to pay my respects to the duke and see if he wanted a ride. Duke Henryk the Bearded was even more important to me than Count Lambert, and without the duke's support, I couldn't have
