Conrad, and I had not seen her traverse the space between the two points!
Lord Conrad turned and looked up at her, apparently as surprised by her action as I was.
'Are you going to be all right up there?' he asked.
'Yes, your grace.'
He was about to object further, but then he just shook his head, lifted his binoculars, and looked back at the battle.
I tried to put her strange actions out of my mind. My instincts told me to protect her, to keep her from all danger, and yet Maude seemed completely relaxed and totally confident. There wasn't anything I could do to change anything, so I didn't try.
I looked at the battle going on up ahead. Or perhaps I should call it a slaughter. The enemy cavalry had been advancing up the road in a column two men wide, and our men had come at them, also two men wide.
Our opponents had apparently dropped their lances to charge, but hadn't gotten very far, since our men pulled out their submachine guns and began spraying bullets at the Germans. I say spraying because I don't believe they could possibly have been aiming and shooting properly, not at a full gallop, with a submachine gun in each hand. I noticed that the Big People had the sense to drop their heads down low while this procedure was going on.
The pair of warriors at the head of our column were perforce doing more shooting than the rest, and when their guns were emptied, they dropped off to the side of the road to let those behind them pass while they reloaded. Those men who passed them soon dropped out in turn, with the result that we quickly had a column of two charging at a gallop between rows of men who were reloading.
When the balance of the first platoon, some forty-three men or so, had passed, the first pair took a position at the end of our column. It was a sort of continuously recycling action.
When the two columns met, the front ranks of the enemy were dead, many times over, and our troops continued onward, on both sides of them, pushing the zone of slaughter ever backward, almost as fast as the incredibly swift Big People could run. Any fallen enemy who showed signs of life was soon shot again by the troops racing past him.
The other platoons were catching up to the first, and they joined in on the recirculating battle.
Lord Conrad motioned for us to reenter our column, near the end, and we went forward to get a closer view of what was happening. For the longest while it was just a matter of riding with the flag in my left hand and a pistol in my right, beside a long line of dead men and horses, none of them ours.
I often glanced over at Maude, anxious for her safety, but she was standing on the rump of a galloping Big Person, looking as calm as if she were standing in line at the mess hall.
The great majority of the fallen were wearing plate armor, of the sort the army sold to anyone who could afford it. They had worn it in the same fashion as our traditional Polish nobility did, brightly polished and on the outside.
Everything in the center of the road was perforated and bloody. Everything toward the sides was trampled into blood pudding. Even the weapons and armor were so badly mangled that few of them would make good trophies to hang on a wall.
Eventually, we ran out of dead men and dead horses. Now it was just dead men. We had come up on their infantry, pikers, most of them — just as I had once been — with the second most popular weapon being a huge, two-handed broadsword. They were still all on the road, still mostly in ranks of four.
They hadn't tried to run away, but I think it was not due to any great courage on their part. I think what was happening to them was all too strange and had happened all too quickly for anyof them to react to it. Indeed, most of the swords I saw were still in their sheaths.
The shooting was going on ahead of us throughout all of this, and troops who were reloading and waiting for their turn again lined the side of the road. When we were about twenty men from the front of the line, the shooting slowed, then almost stopped.
Soon we were passing the baggage train, horse-drawn wagons, hundreds of them, with men, women, and even some children in the drivers' seats, or on top of the baggage. They were all holding their hands up high above their heads, wide-eyed and frightened, but still alive. I was glad to see that our men had the decency and good sense to spare the noncombatants.
But riding past the prisoners without shooting meant that none of our men were stopping to reload, which had the unexpected effect of leaving behind live enemies — the only prisoners we had — completely unguarded!
I was about to mention this to Lord Conrad when he noticed the problem himself.
'Damn!' he shouted. 'Nothing ever works out right the first time! Halt!' He stopped about fifty men to guard the baggage train, and had them shouting to those who passed by that living enemies had to be guarded. He sent the rest on to continue the destruction.
Getting this sorted out put us at the back of the line again, and by the time we got to the front, some two dozen of our men were surrounding a very ornate carriage. We had captured the Margrave of Brandenburg, himself!
Again Lord Conrad took charge, while most of our people, some one hundred men or so, went on to murder the enemy's rear guard. The remaining two hundred were doing guard duty back up the road.
The margrave was a great, obese man who was dressed in a heavy blue and burgundy velvet doublet that I thought must be very warm for the weather, and indeed he was sweating profusely. Between his massive gold necklace and the gold on his belt and weapons, he might have been wearing as much wealth as the average soldier in our army did, or at least one who had fought against the Mongols.
He'd had three ladies with him in his oversized carriage. They were all attractive young women, if overdressed, but none of them gave Maude the slightest competition.
Maude, incidentally, was still standing on Silver's rump, still smiling, and still wearing nothing but a part of a tablecloth about her hips. She had ridden there, standing up, throughout the entire fight!
As chance would have it, none of the troops guarding the margrave at the moment spoke any German, and neither did Lord Conrad. A call for someone bilingual in German went out, but the problem was soon solved by one of the men riding in a slightly less ornate carriage, just behind the first one.
This rather pompous person introduced himself thusly:
'I am the King of Heralds at Brandenburg, and I offer my considerable services in translating for you.'
'Thank you. Your 'considerable services' are needed. I am Duke Conrad of Mazovia, Sandomierz, and Little Poland, Hetman of the Christian Army. I take it that this man is the Margrave of Brandenburg, and that these other men are notables on his staff?' Lord Conrad said, without bothering get down from Silver, and with Maude's bare breasts bobbing above his head.
'Quite so, your grace. May we offer you our parole and our promise of our good conduct, until such time as we can pay our ransoms?'
'You may offer, but I will not accept. You men are all under arrest. The charges are rape, murder, arson, assault, battery, breaking and entering, robbery, disorderly conduct, and such other crimes as I may later think up. Komander Wladyclaw! Strip-search these men, and once they're naked, tie their hands behind their backs and march them, under strict guard, back to Lubusz for trial.'
While the herald was busily translating to the increasingly horrified margrave, Komander Wladyclaw said, 'Yes, sir. What about these ladies, here?'
'Put them with the other noncombatants. Tell all those people that we are going to let them live, providing they obey orders, and that we will release them after they have done their Christian duty to their own dead. Then put that whole crowd to work, cleaning up this mess. Have them strip and bury the dead men and horses along the side of the road.'
'Do you want the heads up on pikes, sir?'
'What I want really doesn't matter here, I'm afraid. This army was Christian, and the Church would have a fit if we decapitated them all. But see to it that every grave has a big cross over it. That should have a sufficient psychological effect. Oh, and send a rider back to Lubusz with the news, and have them send up the infantry as soon as possible to help out here. Send other riders with spare Big People to the villages that were burned by the Germans. Try to bring some witnesses to Lubusz.'
'Yes, sir. What would you think of putting the dead warhorses' heads up on pikes?'
