We had a remarkable time. We had not received any of our pay yet, much less our share of the booty, but the lack of money didn't seem to matter. Everything seemed to be free to members of the victorious army, and from the first, we got uproariously drunk.
I had been drinking beer all of my life, of course, and I'd often been a bit tipsy, but this was my first experience with drinking so much that I couldn't dance upright, or crawl a straight line, or even see the same thing with both eyes!
It was my first experience with another thing as well, and pretty little Maria was a wonderful instructor.
It was the first time I had ever felt, in a loving way, the incredible softness of a woman's breast, or the unbelievably welcoming smoothness of her lower parts.
Sometimes, lying abed in the late morning, we fantasized about a wonderful life together. She was recently widowed, she was fairly wealthy, and she owned what had been a thriving tailor's shop.
The laws were such that a woman alone found it hard to run a business. She needed a husband, but she needed more than just an agreeable young man
She needed someone who could take over her property and manage it profitably, and I knew nothing about tailoring. I think that if my father had been a tailor, or if her dead husband had been a baker, I would have married Maria. We might have spent the rest of our days happy in Sandomierz, but such was not to be. After five delightful days together, the reality of our situations finally came home to us.
We parted the best of friends, and we have written each other ever since, although not often for she soon found a tailor from the first platoon of my own company who satisfied all of her needs.
She writes that they are still very happy.
I found the others of my lance just before they left without me, and we were lucky enough to get a ride back to East Gate on a riverboat, one of only three left on the Vistula. From there, the railroad mule carts from East Gate to Coaltown were operating again.
We went as far as Three Walls to collect our pay and a hefty advance on our share of the booty. They were handing out a thousand pence — three years' pay! — to any soldier who would sign for it. They still hadn't figured up how much we each had coming, since more loot was still trickling in.
While we were there, we stopped at a special army warehouse to select our share of souvenirs. I got a yak- tailed banner, two heavily decorated swords, and some jewelry that I planned to give to my mother and sisters. As things turned out, the fine young ladies of the cloth factory ended up with almost half of it.
Finally, I put my armor and weapons in storage, signed for two sets of class A uniforms, and caught a mule cart for Okoitz.
I had been writing my mother regularly, although for the last two months I hadn't been in one place long enough to have a return address. Without one, she couldn't write back to me, but at least they knew I was alive and well, and that I was coming home. Someday, the army would solve its problems with regard to the mail, but it hadn't done so yet.
My father and brother had been home for weeks, as were most of the other men from Okoitz. Things were almost back to normal, but they gave me a big welcome home party anyway. More men than I could remember came up to shake my hand, and I was kissed and hugged by hundreds of women, and some of them were pretty.
When all of this was added to more drinking, eating, and drinking than was prudent, or even sane, well, it was the afternoon of the next day before I finally had a chance to talk with my father and my brother.
It seems that they were trained in a company near the northeast corner of the Warrior's School (my father never called it 'Hell'), while the River Battalion was at the southwest corner. We were a mile and a half apart from one another, separated by what was actually, at the time, the biggest city in all of Christendom. It was little wonder that our paths had never crossed.
The same was true at the Battle of Sandomierz, where we had all fought, but were stationed five miles apart.
They were impressed by the fact that I had served in the River Battalion, for the stories about what we had done were told again and again throughout the rest of the army.
For my part, I was eager to hear once more about what had happened at Cracow and at the Battle of Three Walls, where my father and brother fought, side by side, and had taken part in the annihilation of the second Mongol army. In truth, I envied my brother for being able to serve with his own father by his side, and I told him so.
Late in the afternoon, my father suggested that I might want to take a few days off, to rest, before I resumed my job at the bakery.
At that point I had to tell them about how the River Battalion was being sent through the rest of the course at the Warrior's School, and how I was signed up to start there in three weeks.
My father's reaction was about what I had expected, or perhaps I should say, what I had feared. He became angry, and told me I was being a fool.
'You have the right to leave the army, and that is exactly what you should do. It is what you
I had to tell him I could not answer his questions, and that I wasn't really sure what I should do.
He said, 'If you are not sure, well then, I am! You should obey me, as a good boy should always obey his parents.'
He walked away then, which was just as well. I didn't want to confront him, but I didn't want to lie to him, either.
My brother just told me to take some time and think it all over carefully. Together, we went over to the Pink Dragon Inn, got roaring drunk, and tipped the lovely waitresses there more than they were used to, since he had as much surplus cash as I did.
Later, we found two willing girls from the cloth factory, and eventually spent the night with them in their room in the castle. In the arms of a lovely woman, I went to sleep that night thinking that being a baker at Okoitz might not be such a bad life after all.
After spending two weeks working in the bakery, I was no longer sure. In truth, doing again and again the same dull things that I had done for most of my life, I was bored, bored almost to death.
When I thought on the things I had done in the war, the friends I had known, and the things I had seen, there seemed to me to have been a certain… greatness about them. It seemed that somehow the army and the war had lifted me up to a higher level of being. That I had, for a short while, been like one of the heroes they told about in the old fireside tales or even like one of the ancient pagan gods!
When I thought of the friends I had made in those few months, I was amazed at the closeness I felt for them, and how much I truly missed them all, even Taurus's craziness and Kiejstut's sullen quietness.
I stood there, my face and hair dusted with rye and wheat flour, my arms buried up to the elbows in sticky bread dough, trying to be polite to Mrs. Galinski, an annoying lady customer.
Was this the way I wanted to spend the rest of my entire life? The only life God would ever give me?
No.
Better to live the full life for a year and have it end with my breast pierced through by a Mongol spear, than to have it slowly ground away to nothingness by the bitchy Mrs. Galinski!
I would not be a baker. I would go to the Warrior's School and see where life would lead me.
And perhaps my father would forgive me.
I talked it over first with my brother. He said if this was truly my wish, then he would do everything in his power to smooth the way for me with the family, and especially with our father.
He also said he was not being entirely altruistic in all of this, because it would probably mean that he would one day inherit the bakery alone, rather than having to share it with me.
I said that if he stayed here, working in the bakery, then he would have earned his inheritance, and he should enjoy it with my blessings. Furthermore, if he ever needed help taking care of our parents once they got old, he should feel free to call on me to help out with the expenses. We shook hands on it, and I've never regretted the decision we made that night.
I told my mother about our agreement, and I could see we had made her very sad. She left for a while and
