Conrad Starguard - Flying Warlord Part 14

"Well, bandage it up then, with some peat-bog moss next to the wound!"

"Yes, sir."

Without adhesive tape, the thing had to be held on by wrapping gauze around my head and under my chin.

When he was done, I sat up.

"Well. Good job, I hope. Thank you, but now you better get around to the other men who were wounded."

He looked around the room. "No sir, I think the surgeons have taken care of everybody."

"The surgeons!" I yelled. "Then what the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Me, sir? I'm an a.s.sistant corpsman."

"Then what the h.e.l.l were you doing operating on my head?"

"But, you ordered me to, sir! It was a direct order from my commanding officer! What was I supposed to do? Disobey you?"

"Then what were you doing with a surgeon's kit?"

"Oh, they had extra of those at the warehouse, sir, so they handed them out to some of the corpsmen, just in case."

"They just handed it to you?"

"Yes, sir. It's nice to know what some of these things are for."

I found I couldn't wear my arming hat over the bandage, but I could get the helmet on.

Before I could leave the sick bay, the chief surgeon came up to me, his armor hacked in a dozen places.

I could see by the insignia and the fact that he carried a mace rather than a sword that the equally battered man standing next to the chief surgeon was the company chaplain. In any modem army, both of these positions would have been given noncombatant status, but in ours, every man was a warrior. This Sir Majinski was banner of the orange platoon, besides his medical duties.

"The butcher's bill, sir," he said.

I looked at it. Eleven dead. Twenty-ten seriously wounded, and I wasn't on that list. Fifty-one with minor wounds. Had I done it Tadaos's way, with flamethrowers, these men would all be alive and sound.

"Sorry about the incident with the corpsman, sir. I kept an eye on him while he was working on you, but I had a man with a sucking chest wound on my table, and I thought I might be able to save him. But the corpsman meant well, and he did a fair job."

"Well, give the corpsman my apologies. The man with the chest wound, could you save him?"

"No."

I checked in with Tartar Control. The battle near Brzesko was up to three boats now, and the battle across from Sandomierz was still raging, with a dozen boats still butchering Mongols. But it wasn't the same dozen. That group, out of ammunition, was heading back upstream to East Gate to rearm. I knew the supplies we had there and it wasn't going to be enough.

In the history books I read when I was a boy, some said that the Mongols had invaded with a million men. Others said that this was impossible, that the logistics of the time couldn't have supported more than fifty thousand. But if the estimates that I'd made and those I was getting from the other boats were anything like correct, we had killed more than a half a million Mongols in the first morning of the attack!

Furthermore, they showed no signs of thinning out! In any event, the numbers involved were so much higher than I had expected that I had vastly underestimated the ammunition requirements.

On the other hand, they were showing absolutely none of the tactical brilliance that they were supposedly famous for and that I had feared. So far, they were easier to kill than dumb animals. Not that they could be expected to stay that dumb.

Then too, some of my actions had been pretty dumb as well, and it was my duty to see that my last set of stupid mistakes was not repeated.

RB1 TO ALL UNITS. WE HAVE ENGAGED THE ENEMY.

IN HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT AND LEARNED THE FOLLOWING:.

1. WHEN PATROLLING A RIVERSh.o.r.e ON FOOT,.

PLACE MEN AS OBSERVERS ON TOP OF THE RIVERBANK.

TO WATCH FOR ENEMY COUNTERATTACKS.

2. ENEMY HAND WEAPONS ARE LARGELY INEFFECTIVE.

EXCEPT FOR A SPEAR WITH A LONG, THIN, TRIANGULAR.

POINT. THIS WEAPON IS CAPABLE OF PENETRATING OUR.

ARMOR WHEN CARRIED AT A RUN OR THROWN.

3. WHEN FIGHTING ON RIVER MUD, THE RAPIER IS.

NOT EFFECTIVE DUE TO THE LACK OF TRACTION DURING.

A LUNGE. OFFICERS ARE ADVISED TO ARM THEMSELVES.

WITH AXES UNDER THESE CIRc.u.mSTANCES.

4. WHEN TAKING OUT A PONTOON BRIDGE BEING.

CONSTRUCTED ON A RIVERSh.o.r.e, FLAMETHROWERS.

ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN AXES.

GOOD HUNTING--CONRAD.

OUT.

Was that worth the deaths of eleven men? Or the maiming of dozens others? I swear that I was never meant to be a battle commander.

But something had to be done about the ammunition situation, and there was only one place to get more ammo. Our other units. We sent out radio messages ordering all units to send one-sixth of their swivel gun ammunition to East Gate, and for the Odra boats to send three-quarters of their peashooter and Halman ammunition in addition to this. I hated to strip the other units, but as the captain said, the ammunition couldn't possibly be spent better than it was right here.

I also ordered that all reloading equipment and supplies be transported from Three Walls to East Gate, along with any ladies who knew how to operate it.

I went back up on deck. We were heading upstream again to the fighting at Sandomierz.

"How did the battle go, Baron Tadaos?"

"Well, sir, since we was out to destroy the bridge, I guess you have to say we won. It's gone."

"We got the whole thing chopped up?"

"The Ghost did all right, but it wasn't attacked. We only got about half of our half done. But after we pulled out, the Ghost took out the last quarter with a flamethrower. That bridge burned real good. So did the Mongols."

Captain Targ came up. "It was quite a show, sir. Mongols don't like burning to death. A lot of them jumped into the water and drowned in preference to it."

"A good thing to know. Captain Targ, you saved my life today. If you hadn't killed the Mongols around me and pulled me out of that wreckage, I'd be a dead man. I owe you."

"No sir, you don't. I was just paying an old debt."

"Debt? What debt? Should I know you from somewhere?"

"I didn't expect you to recognize me, sir. You only saw me once and that was in the dark, plus I was only ten years old at the time. But I'd hoped you would remember my name."

"I'm sorry, but I still draw a blank."

"My father told me that if I could do you some personal service, I should tell you that once you threw bread on the waters, and that it has come back to you tenfold. Well, it isn't really tenfold. If I've saved your life, well, you once saved the lives of my entire family."

"I remember now. When I first got to this country, I was lost in a snowstorm, and your father let me in to the warmth of his fire. Doing that saved my life, I think."

"Perhaps, sir. But the next summer, my father's fields were flattened by a hailstorm. We would have starved to death that next winter except you came by and gave him a purse of silver. So now perhaps that debt is paid."

"In full, with compound interest, Captain. There were two of you boys, weren't there?"

"Yes, sir. Wladyclaw is a banner with the elevendythird."

"And the rest of your family. Are they well?"

"Yes, sir, or at least they were as of a month ago. But my father wouldn't evacuate and that region is probably overrun by the Mongols now. There's no telling what's happened."

"I'll pray for them." It was all I could say.

Chapter Seventeen.

"What are those things?" Tadaos said, as we cruised by the fighting near Sandomierz. What with the restrictions on ammunition, we were shooting now only on the closer, downstream leg of the circuit. We had ammunition left for one pa.s.s, so we wanted to spend it well.

"Darned if I know," I said. There were four of them, and they looked sort of like big door frames without the doors or the walls, either. They were maybe three stories tall, and had a sort of teeter-totter mounted on the cross beam. Ropes seemed to be coming from where each seat should have been.

"Maybe they make a playground for giants," Captain Targ joked.

We got our answer shortly when fully two gross men picked up ropes that were hanging from the near end of one of the teeter-totters and pulled, all at once. A rock bigger than a man flew in an incredibly high arc, and landed a few dozen yards upstream of us, kicking up a cold, drenching spray.

"It's some kind of Mongol trebuchet," the captain said.

"They could be big trouble if they get the range right," Tadaos said.

"True," I said. "Captain, have your men target on those catapults, once we get in close."

"Right, sir."

Another rock came flying, and another. The rate of fire on those catapults was remarkable. They were shooting as fast as they could drag up rocks!

They were set up on a hill for better elevation, and they were shooting at us from three gross yards away without difficulty. I had the feeling that their ultimate range might be a good deal more.

A second one got into action as we turned in to make our run.

Then a huge rock crashed into RB4 The River Belle, directly in front of us. Three more fell into the beach area right on top of the Mongol troops, but that didn't slow their rate of fire. It was as though they didn't care if they took casualties!

Tadaos and I were on the foredeck as I watched through my telescope. He was out of Halman bombs, and there wasn't a good target for his Molotov c.o.c.ktails, so he had his bow out. He'd scrounged hundreds of Mongol arrows and was politely returning them to their rightful owners.

Our troops opened fire on the catapults about the time that the other boats started to take them seriously.

The Mongols had to be close together to pull simultaneously, and bunched up like that they were dog meat for the swivel guns. Chunks of wood went flying from the uprights as well.

"It looks like it was a paper tiger," I said.

"Yeah, until they get brains enough to mount them things on the other side of the hill," Tadaos said. "Oh, s.h.i.t."

"What?" I said, still looking through my telescope.

There was a huge crash and the deck bounced under me, throwing me off balance, tumbling me to the deck. I looked to my left and there was a yard-wide hole in the deck fight next to me, right where Tadaos had been standing.

"Tadaos!" I shouted.

"Yes, sir?" he said from my right.

"My G.o.d! I thought you were dead."

"I saw it coming in time."

"Then why didn't you warn me?"

"There wasn't much time, and you was safe enough where you was. Could of been trouble if you moved."

Then a grappling hook with a leather rope attached came flying at me. It caught on the parapet, between two merlons. I got my sword out in time to lean over and slash open the face of a man who was climbing up the side of the boat.

"Captain! Get all your men on deck!"

"They're learning," Tadaos shouted as he drew his sword from over his left shoulder. "They're maybe a little slow, but they're learning."

Four platoons of troops ran up on deck and fended off what turned out to be a concerted boarding attempt. Once, the Mongols actually made it on deck, and had to be expelled with a pike charge. Things were interesting for a while, but then Tadaos came to me.