the ferryboats, but it wasn't mine.
We spent two days doing the dirtiest jobs imaginable, stripping, decapitating, and burying the Mongol dead. Once we had carried away the top layer of them, we discovered that the dead bodies below were packed so tightly they were stuck together!
We had to get a rope around each man and each horse, and then twenty men would drag the dead body out for another group to process while we went back for another corpse. Ugly work.
Then we got shocking news.
Cracow was burning!
We dropped what we were doing and recrossed the Vistula as fast as we could. Since we all had to use the same ferryboats, it was like trying to empty too big a bottle through too small a neck.
We worked quickly, but everything took so much time!
Troops were sent south on the railroad in company-sized units, rather than waiting until we could move together.
Days before, when the first half of the army was heading south, they had lightened their loads when they heard about the Mongol attack on Cracow. They had thrown out everything they didn't absolutely need to fight with and took off at a run to save the city.
Scattered by the side of the road were tons of food, clothing, and even radios, but more important, tons and tons of booty. Fabulous amounts of gold and silver coins and precious jewelry were lying all about, and the last company in line had been left to guard it.
Every platoon had to take its cart with it, and these carts were difficult to remove from the railroad tracks. So when the troops from across the Vistula finally came along, the guard company, now rested, had left in their van, and the last company in each group had taken over the guard duty for a bit, until they in turn were relieved.
And since we were the people who were operating the ferries, my company was the very last one to head south.
So we were the ones who got stuck with guarding I don't know how many tons of useless gold. We completely missed the Battle of Cracow, the Slaughter of East Gate, and the Battle of Three Walls!
The world is sometimes most unfair!
It was weeks before we were sent enough men and carts to move all of the booty to Three Walls. We were allowed but one night there to have a beer and hear about everything we had missed before we were ordered back across the Vistula to finish up with the dirty cleanup job that had been interrupted.
Eighty thousand other soldiers were there with us doing the same dirty job, but that didn't make us feel any better about it!
The worst of it was when we got to those Mongol catapults, and saw all the bodies around them. Back when we were killing them, we had wondered at the way the Mongols didn't seem to care if we killed them or not, and at the way the catapult crews fell so easily, as though they had no armor at all.
Now we found the reason for it. The people pulling those catapults weren't Mongols at all. They were Polish peasants who had been captured and forced to help the enemy! Those had been our own people we were forced to kill!
And all we could do was bury them.
I don't think that I ever felt guilty about killing the enemy, but up until that time, I didn't really hate them, either. Now I learned to hate the Mongols, and hate them I still do.
After a week spent cleaning up the killing fields where the riverboats had wreaked such havoc, we split into smaller groups, back into the countryside, to bury the dead who had not taken the army's advice about evacuating the area.
The horror was not to be believed.
Not just the dead bodies of weaponless men, women, children, and even household pets, but the deliberate torture and then desecration of those people was what got to you.
I could almost understand an invading soldier raping an attractive woman. I could not forgive it, of course, but I could understand why a man might do such a thing.
But why would someone then tie the feet of that naked woman to a large tripod and start a small fire under her head?
What reason could a man have for nailing a small dog to a church door, and leaving it there in pain until it died of thirst?
Why would they cut out an old man's eyes and tongue, and then leave him in his home, when they had killed everyone else in the village and left them where they had fallen, so that by touch he would find those he loved, one by one, dead and cold?
We had given that old man water and food, and made him as comfortable as possible, but that night while we slept, he took Fritz's belt knife and plunged it into his own heart.
We buried him with the rest of the villagers and never told the priest that he was a suicide. To do so would have meant that the old man would not have been buried in the churchyard with the family he loved.
If God wants to punish us for that, He is free to do so.
But all things end, even the worst of them. At the end of April, Sir Odon, who was again our lance leader, told us he had wonderful news.
The River Battalion was being given preferential treatment for processing through the Warrior's School. While most of the army was being temporarily disbanded, and converted into reserve forces, we would be able to enroll in a month! Thus, we would be assured of being able to stay in the regular Christian Army indefinitely!
He was very excited about it, and soon got the others enthused as well. For myself, well, I was not sure what I wanted to do.
Anyone could leave the Christian Army anytime he wanted, except in an actual combat situation. My military experiences had, on the whole, not been pleasant, but they had not been boring, either, and surely the worst of the warfare was over.
They say that the only thing Lord Conrad ever promised anyone was that he would see interesting times, and Lord Conrad has always kept his promise.
But there was more than my wants to be considered. I still had not found my father, but I was sure he was still alive, somewhere.
I knew full well what his desires would be. He would go back to his bakery, and he would demand that I go back there with him.
I had never even thought of disobeying my father. Not before then.
Chapter Eight
From the Journal of Josip Sobieski
WRITTEN JANUARY 24, 1249, CONCERNING MAY 2, 1241
SIR ODON would not hear of my resignation from the army, not then, anyway. He said we had a month's leave coming— with pay — and after I had spent the time thinking it over, he would listen to me then.
For now, he was signing me up for the last eight months of the Warrior's School, and that was that.
We left our war carts at Sandomierz for the battalion that was forming up there to protect the duchy and heard the news.
Count Conrad was now Duke Conrad, and furthermore, he was a duke three times over! He was Duke of Mazovia, Duke of Sandomierz, and Duke of Little Poland, the area around Cracow.
It seems that most of the noblemen of those duchies had been killed in battle, and most of their dependents had been slaughtered by the Mongols who had tricked their way into East Gate, where they were sheltering.
There wasn't anybody else left to rule half of Poland, so now it was Lord Conrad's, and therefore, the army's, we supposed.
The people of Sandomierz were well-disposed toward the men of the army, and we spent a week there before we headed southward again, for home.
