Conrad Starguard - Lord Conrad's Lady Part 4

Chapter Eight.

My second in command was shaking me awake. "It'll be dawn in half an hour, sir. "

Sleeping in well-fitted plate mail is fairly comfortable, sort of like relaxing in a good contour chair. I threw off my old wolfskin cloak and shook my head to clear it. "What's been happening, Baron Gregor?"

I sat up on the moving cart, and Gregor, riding beside me on the white Big Person, put a bowl of soup in one of my hands and a mug of beer in the other. Not quite what I needed. G.o.d, but I wished that something was available with caffeine in it.

"We're about three miles from the hedge at Three Walls, sir. The rain stopped just after you started snoring, and a while later the radios started working after a fashion. Duke Henryk still has not pulled out of Legnica. Baron Vladimir has arrived at Cracow and is advancing on us. The transmission was pretty poor, and that's all we have been able to find out about him."

"The duke's conventional knights wouldn't be of much use to us, anyway. Look at the fiasco they caused at Sandomierz. I can't see waiting for Baron Vladimir. He'll be days getting here, What about the rest of our installations?"

"Okoitz, Coaltown, Eagle Nest, and Copper City are all safe and sound. They haven't been bothered.

The boys at Eagle Nest say that they have one aircraft rebuilt and ready to fly. A second should be ready later this morning, sir."

"Good. Tell them that I want that plane flying over Three Walls as soon as possible. We need all the surveillance we can get."

"Yes, sir. The granary in the Bledowska desert was taken by the Mongols-we only had a platoon guarding it, and it was never meant to be seriously defended-but the Mongols left it intact. They probably considered it useful booty, to be used later. Sir Miesko's manor was. .h.i.t, but the attack was squashed by a hundred lady schoolteachers under Lady Richeza. Our ladies at Three Walls have beaten off two serious attacks, and the Mongols have laid siege to the place. Your wife tells me that a siege tower and some wheeled catapults are being built just out of swivel gun range. "

"Francine is well, then?" I finished the beer and started in on the soup. It had a lot of meat in it, but very little grain and no vegetables. It was Lent, but the men fighting to defend their country had been given dispensation to eat meat by the Bishop of Wroclaw. When we had thrown out some of our supplies to lighten the load, the troops had kept the foods they craved the most, and two weeks on a high-protein diet had not made up for the lack of meat in the weeks before that.

"She said she was, and she sends you her love. I sent her yours, of course, but I didn't see any sense in waking you. So far, casualties at Three Walls have been almost nil. An arrow hasn't much force left by the time it gets to the top of a seven-story wall. The catapults are something else, however."

"Yeah. Especially if they're like the ones they used on us in the riverboats. We'd better hurry."

"We'll get there at a walk in time for an attack at gray dawn. There's no point in getting there sooner than that," Gregor said.

"Oh, I suppose you're right. Do the Mongols know we're coming?"

"Possibly not. Baron Ilya's Night Fighters did a pretty fair cleanup job while you slept. The Mongols seem to have a real general in charge. At least they left plenty of sentries and scouts out. 'Course, they still haven't learned not to do sentry duty sitting around a campfire, but the thought was there. The last bunch Ilya taught that lesson to weren't in any shape to pa.s.s on the education they got! He had the horses slaughtered as well as the men so that none of them would find their way back to the enemy camp and tip our hand. I think our scouts took out all of theirs. When a Big Person starts to sniffing on the trail of a Mongol, you just know there's going to be bloodshed, and those girls can really fight in the dark!"

"So Captain Wladyclaw gets another feather in his cap, and Ilya'll be harder to control than ever," I said.

"What do you know about the enemy positions?"

"Best as we can tell, they're all camped on the killing ground, this side of the kitchen gardens, on the place we used to use for a parade ground. There's some wells down there, and they probably figure that the big hedge of Krystyana's roses offers them some protection. "

"Nice. Better wake all the men and get some food in them. "

"The cooks have been at it for an hour, sir. During the night I had all the cart wheels greased so they're real quiet."

"Good. Make sure that the men stay that way, too. Semaph.o.r.es and hand signals only from now on."

"Right, sir."

"And give me my mount back!"

It was still dark as we approached the city. I was in front of our silent column to make sure that things were the way I thought they were. The double-tracked railroad went through a simple gate before it entered the killing ground.

This gate was never intended as a military defense; its main job was simply to keep animals in.

Nonetheless, I was surprised to see that it was manned by our own Night Fighters. Baron Ilya was there waiting for me.

"I got maybe a company of my men just inside the gate in Mongol outfits, sir, so's they wouldn't know we was here. I just wanted you to know so's you wouldn't shoot them down."

"Okay. I'll signal you just before we start the attack, and you pull those men behind our lines in a hurry.

Once things warm up, the gunners won't be too choosy."

"Right, sir. "

Baron Gregor had a man using hand signals to split off our troops, sending a column of war carts in each direction on our side of the rose hedge. Save for the snap of branches as the big carts were pulled through them, the columns were silent as snakes. We could hear the Mongols a dozen yards away from us on the other side of the hedge, but we didn't hear them give any alarm.

As each cart reached its a.s.signed position, the men quietly took the big armored lid off the vehicle. This was slung on spare pikestaffs six yards to the side of the cart to act as a shield for the men pulling it. At the same time, the pins were pulled from the casters of the big wheels, the wheels were turned at right angles away from the line of march, and the wheels on the armored side were locked in that position. The carts were pulled sideways into battle.

Harnesses were attached to the armored side of the cart, and the pikemen tied them to the ring on their backplates with a slipknot. Gunners quietly mounted the pinions of their guns into the "oarlocks" built into the sides of the carts. They lit the ignition lamps in the base of each gun, loaded them, and set out their spare ammunition. Cookstoves and other nonessentials were set on the ground. Pikes and halberds were handed out, and men checked each other's arms and armor.

Having been practiced hundreds of times, the conversion from transport vehicle to war machine took only minutes, even in silence and nearly total darkness. Some of the halberdiers had to be reminded to get in front of their shields, since this wasn't their usual position, but Baron Gregor had briefed the captains on our plan of attack.

Six hundred carts take a long time to move two miles quietly in the dark and over unprepared terrain, even when everything is well coordinated. At any moment the Mongols could find us sneaking up on them, and a well-planned surprise attack could be turned into a b.l.o.o.d.y chaos. But despite my sins, G.o.d was still on our side.

At the first hint of dawn I saw my troops lined up and ready, stretching a mile on each side of me. I called to Ilya in a stage whisper, and a few hundred ersatz Mongols poured quickly through our line, heading back to where they had stowed their armor.

Still using hand signals, I gestured ADVANCE, and every captain pa.s.sed it on.

The hedge was five yards high and thickly tangled with long, sharp thorns. The seed package had claimed that a hedge of these j.a.panese roses was proof against man and beast, and for once the seed company hadn't lied. I think it gave the Mongols a false sense of security. No man or animal smaller than an elephant and bigger than a mouse could possibly go through it, but good steel could!

Thirty-six hundred halberdiers started making toothpicks out of two miles of Krystyana's roses. The hedge had been only two yards thick when we'd planted it seven years earlier, but it had somehow spread to a dozen yards and more in some places. This surprised me, and perhaps it gave the enemy more time to get ready for us, but I think they wasted a fair amount of time trying to figure out what the strange noise was, so it all balanced out. We finally broke into the clear, and the gunners opened fire.

We went across the Mongol camp and trampled it flat in the process. It was huge. Judging from the size of the enemy camp near Sandomierz and the known number of men that had been in it, there must have been two hundred thousand Mongols here, yet at first the resistance was surprisingly light. No more than five thousand men came against us, and many of them were obviously wounded. They went down quickly, and I signaled CEASE FIRE.

A panicky thought shook me. Had the bulk of them somehow escaped our trap? All my forces were facing Three Walls. Were the Mongols behind us, waiting to hit our unprotected rear?

Anna came up to my side, carrying the protesting Captain Wladyclaw with her.

"Captain Wladyclaw! I'm glad you're here. Look, we aren't finding enough Mongols in front of us! If they're to our rear, we're in big trouble. Get your scouts way behind us and get word back in a hurry if we're walking into their trap instead of springing our own. Here," I said, dismounting. "Take the white person. with you as well and put another man on her. I'll ride in on the carts."

"Yes, sir, but Anna has stopped obeying me again."

"Anna, if you love me, go with Wladyclaw and help protect my back. " She hesitated a minute and then galloped back through our lines.

Chapter Nine.

A while later we topped a rise, and I saw where the Missing Mongols had gone. They were pulling a dawn attack of their own. Lovely! If they were getting set to attack, their minds would be off defense.

The war carts went ahead at a quick-step. We were still two miles from the main wall as the sun came up. We recited our morning oaths as we advanced.

Except for one week of the year when we thinned our stock of wild animals, the lower portion of the killing field did duty as our parade ground and as pasture for our dairy herd. The evidence was that the Mongols had slaughtered our cows, but they'd soon pay for them in full. Fortunately, this was not our prize herd, or they would have made me mad!

We were advancing over the very ground that many of my officers had practiced on for five years. We knew every hill and rock on it. What's more, there is a certain psychological advantage to fighting on your own home turf.

Three Walls was built where I had found a number of minerals in a boxed canyon. I'd given it its name because G.o.d had already built three of the city walls for us, and we only had to build the fourth. Since that time we had added a second wall made out of bricks that doubled as a housing unit outside the first wooden one. Eventually a third wall, concrete this time, was built outside the second, and now most people thought it was named for the three combination wall and apartment buildings we'd built there.

We topped another rise, and I could see a commotion ripple through the Mongol ranks. They knew we were here, and they knew that they were caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place, with the walls of the city to their south, impenetrable hedges to their east and west, and seven ranks of armored men coming shoulder to shoulder at them from the north! Further, there were 3,600 guns pointing in their direction, and if they didn't know what that meant, they were about to learn.

The Mongols had built four huge catapults mounted on wheels, along with a wheeled siege tower that looked to be eight stories tall. The catapults were built fairly close to the ground, and were pulled along by men with ropes as well as pushed forward by men leaning into long poles, without needing much in the way of direction by the Mongol officers. The officers were there anyway, though, keeping all four catapults in a neat, straight line, a dozen yards behind the siege tower.

The siege tower was being moved in much the same way, except that many long ropes were attached to the top of it as well. Directed by a wildly gesticulating officer at the top of the tower, men were pulling on these ropes to keep the ungainly structure from toppling over. The great wooden machines moved slowly toward the city wall as we advanced on the enemy.

Our ladies manning the swivel guns on top of the wall were firing constantly at the enemy troops who were laboring to get the machines into position, and were killing them in droves-but as soon as a man fell, he was replaced by one of the seemingly inexhaustible Mongol reserves.

Suddenly, the siege tower started to tilt forward, toward the wall. The men on the ropes behind the tower strained to keep it upright, while the officer at the top directed those pushing and pulling it forward to continue at their task. The effort was well coordinated, and the front two wheels were actually lifted slightly into the air, with all of the weight of the siege tower on the rear two wheels, as it continued inexorably forward.

I could see what the officer in charge was trying to do. Some castles have big clay jars buried around the walls that will be crushed when any great weight rolls over them and will stop or tip over a siege engine.

If the officer could get his machine past the hidden jars that had just been crushed by the front wheels, it would be in position to attack our walls. The only problem with his plan was that we didn't have any such jars planted.

I'd never really studied a modem sewage treatment plant back when I had the chance, but I had once helped to install a single-family septic system. Needing to do something with the sewage generated by the four thousand families living in my city, I had simply scaled up that single-family system by a factor of four thousand. Three Walls had a tile field that covered almost a square mile, which made the kitchen garden above it one of the most fertile in the world. There was also a bodacious septic tank that was as long as our outer wall. It went from hedge to hedge, and was thirty yards wide and ten deep. And the roof of the tank wasn't any stronger than it had to be.

Watching them through my binoculars, I could see that the Mongols were racing hundreds of men into the moving tower, all of them eager to be among the first to attack the women on our city wall. The Mongol officer looked supremely self-confident until the rear wheels of his siege tower encountered the holes that had been punched into the roof of the septic tank by the front wheels.

With a certain calm deliberation, the huge siege tower dropped three stories into the dark grey muck below. Many of the men pulling from the front were dragged down with it, and those at the back, pushing on the long poles, were suddenly catapulted into the back of the tower, to slide helplessly down into the slime with the others. Then the tower started to tip sideways, and fell with apparent slowness onto the tightly packed hors.e.m.e.n who were escorting it forward. I saw the face of the officer in charge, looking vastly annoyed as he and they and it went through the roof and sank out of sight.

Smelly grey muck splashed over the catapults and those propelling them forward, but with a stoic lack of imagination, they all continued their advance, thinking perhaps that it can't happen here.

It could. Simultaneously, with military precision, all four catapults broke through the roof of the septic tank and sank out of sight, along with most of the men propelling them.

A cheer went up from our ranks, and from our ladies guarding the city wall.

"A. rough way to die." One of the pikers laughed. "Drowning in sewage!"

"Laugh all you want to," another said. "Odds are we're the ones that are going to have to fish out and bury them smelly farts."

"Would you do it for five pounds of gold and silver? That's what every one of them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds carry! I tell you I would!" a third trooper shouted .

"I believe you! 'Course, in your case, n.o.body could smell the difference!" a fourth yelled.

My men were outnumbered at least eight to one, and they were on foot while their enemies were mostly mounted. Yet not a man of them seemed to have even considered the obvious possibility that they might lose! Considering their spirit, I thought that it was an unlikely possibility, too!

An airplane came and circled overhead. He didn't drop any messages, so everything must have looked okay to the pilot.

A few squadrons of Mongol horse archers rode past our line and let fly at us. I ignored them. Best we save our ammunition until we were firing at point-blank range into crowds of them. Their arrows couldn't do us much damage anyway.

Through my binoculars I could see the occasional puff of smoke from the swivel guns atop the wall, but I could also see that Krystyana hadn't fired her wall guns yet. Smart girl! She was saving her best for the last.

The wall guns were cast into the two yards of reinforced concrete that made up the first story of the wall.

Imagine a shotgun with a bore you could stick your leg into or a primitive sort of breech-loading claymore mine. The muzzles were still covered over with their thin coating of plaster, a surprise that was yet to be presented at the party.

The field narrowed as we marched south, and the carts on the ends had to drop out and follow behind.

This caused no confusion because we'd practiced on this very field so many times before.

A half mile from the wall the Mongol general must have decided that a breakout was in order, for at least half their hors.e.m.e.n formed up and charged our line. It was time. I ordered FIRE AT WILL, and the bugles played it along our whole line.

Our swivel guns let loose, and noise and smoke covered the field. Through patches of clarity, you could see where single bullets had plowed rows through the Mongol ranks, killing three or four of them at a time. Very few of that first wave got through to hit the pikers and axemen, and I don't think any horseman who got into our pikes lived to try it again.

This was exactly the sort of fight I had envisioned from the beginning, the sort we had armed and trained for. And it was working beautifully. The men were elated! After the huge losses we had suffered on the riverboats, after the helplessness the troops had felt watching the conventional knights being slaughtered west of Sandomierz, after the confusion of the battle at Cracow, after seeing the senseless slaughter at East Gate, and after all the mind-numbing running and pulling in between, finally, at last, something was working perfectly!

Naturally, somebody started to sing, and the troops along the entire line picked up the tune.

Poland is not yet dead!

Not while we yet live!

I could see that up on the wall, despite the fact that they were both pregnant, Cilicia and Francine were manning swivel guns right next to each other, firing down at the enemy. And I saw that two of Krystyana's sons - my own children! - were running ammunition to them. I waved, and they all waved back.

But you don't kill a quarter of a million men in a minute, and we kept advancing as best we could, but no longer at a full quickstep. Going over the fallen enemy and making sure they were really dead slowed us down. Our center was soon bowed back as the edges advanced more quickly, and we had them surrounded. I had to order the wings to slow down so we wouldn't be shooting through the enemy troops and back into our own.

About then Krystyana decided that it was time for the wall guns, and all nine dozen of them let loose at once. The effect astounded even me, and I'd designed the b.l.o.o.d.y things. Suddenly, everything within two gross yards of the wall was either very dead or trying very hard to get that way! Bits of shrapnel and dead Mongol were blown as far as our own troops. The enemy still standing were stunned and made easy marks for the swivel guns.

Then one knot of hors.e.m.e.n turned as their leader pointed directly at me. Suddenly, some three hundred men and horses wheeled and charged straight for my cart! Everything had been so beautiful, but suddenly things didn't look too good.

The gunners tore into them, and many riders went down. The Mongols knew that they were all dead men, but they wanted vengeance for their own deaths, vengeance in the form of my life! They kept coming, and as their ranks thinned, I saw in the center of them two faces I recognized. One was that of the Mongol amba.s.sador, and the other was General Subotai Bahadur himself.

Standing in the center war cart, I drew my sword and waited. There was nothing else I could do.

"Thank you, our Lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, amen," one of the gunners on my cart said. I didn't know if he was being sacrilegious or just thanking G.o.d for the targets, so I kept my mouth shut. It was pretty dry just then, anyway.

The two older Mongols seemed to be leading charmed lives, or perhaps the gunners were reluctant to shoot a man with white hair and wrinkles when there were so many younger targets available, but in the end they were the last two left alive. Together, their horses jumped my cart's big shield and came down directly on top of the pikemen. As they leapt from their dying horses toward the cart, a wounded piker caught Subotai in the gut with a grounded pike. I don't know which of the three us was most surprised, but the old general was suddenly airborne. He actually pole-vaulted right over my head!

The amba.s.sador landed in the cart between two startled gunners and swung his sword at me. I parried it and gave him a slash to the forearm. His hand and sword went flying.

He pulled a dagger with his left hand, and I took that one off as well.

He said, "d.a.m.n you, Conrad!" and slumped to the bottom of the cart.