"05 - Lord Conrad's Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

The duke has invited many foreign knights to aid us against the Tartars, and he bade all the fighting men in Poland to rally to him near Legnica, where provision has been made to support so large an army. The dukes of Sandomierz and Mazovia have refused to do this, as it would involve abandoning their own lands and peoples to the Mongols and :hen having to reconquer them again. Further, the nobles of Little Poland were also loath to abandon their estates and start the war by retreating hundreds of miles to the west. They left Duke Henryk as a group and swore to serve under Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia, despite the fact that they had once sworn fealty to Henryk.
And Conrad, with the biggest and finest army of all, though none will credit it, felt that he could not follow Duke Henryk either, since much of his force was with the riverboats on the Vistula River, and these could hardly go west overland to Legnica. There were flying machines that flew from Eagle Nest, near Okoitz, but they could not fly from
Legnica, needing the catapult to launch them. Further, Conrad's huge land army needs the railroads that have been built for the purpose along the Vistula. They cannot fight efficiently in the west. And lastly, Conrad was loath to abandon his factories and cities to the enemy. My love therefore felt obligated to disobey Duke Henryk and rather go to the aid of young Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia, who was leading the Polish forces of the east.
But Duke Boleslaw is a boy of fourteen who has heard too many tales of knightly prowess and sees no need of saddling himself with "a lot of peasant infantry."
If ever there was a blood-soaked need for some adept political maneuvering, this is the time! Further, I seem to be the only person about with the political skills necessary to unite the military forces of this confused and barbarous land.
Yet Conrad is so naive and helpless at all things political that he does not even realize how stupid he is! I could not persuade him to let me smooth his path. He treats me like a pretty child who needs protection rather than as the one person who could solve at least some of his obvious problems. A few weeks ago it got so bad that he even had a guard posted at my door "for my protection," he said, but in fact to keep me from going to Duke Henryk and Duke Boleslaw and bringing them together as the old duke certainly would have done.
Three weeks ago my love marched out with the largest and finest army in Christendom to seek the Mongol foe. I stayed behind, almost as a prisoner, when I should have been aiding our efforts. Being six months pregnant didn't help, either.
And two days ago the Mongols found us! We beat off their first two attacks with our swivel guns and our grenades, and the field below is dark with their bodies. Now they are camped beyond the range of our guns, more of them than we can count with our telescopes, and they are building huge siege machines to close with us.
Conrad has not come, and we know not whether he is alive or dead. But if he be alive, he must come soon, for if he is late, it is we who will be dead, and our children with us.
Chapter Three
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
Two hundred miles from my home the weather was still foul, the lightning and thunder went on without rest, and the cold drizzle had been replaced with sleet. The troops were nearing exhaustion, but three days after our battle with the Mongols, the cleanup was just about completed. By actual count, 216,692 of the enemy had been killed, and that was in our base-twelve numbers. In the base-ten numbers that I had grown up with, we had done in more than half a million of the bastards here. Their bodies had been stripped and buried twelve deep in long trenches, but their heads were set on stakes and lances in neat squares, a gross skulls to the side. There were more than two dozen of these squares stretching across the battlefield, quite a monument to Polish arms.
A ghastly sight-I'd had it done so that no one could ever doubt what we had accomplished here, so that no one could ever say that we had exaggerated.
The booty taken was equally vast. Each of the enemy had carried an average of five and a half pounds of gold and silver, three years worth of plunder in the Russias. There were no commercial banks available to looting Mongols, so they had to carry their spoils along with them. It was easy to see why most medieval troops were so eager to break ranks and loot. That much gold and silver was easily six years' pay. My troops, of course, were better disciplined We would share out the loot in an equitable manner once it was taken home and counted.
Just how I was going to do that in such a manner that my entire army didn't quit and retire was a problem I hadn't solved yet. There was so much money suddenly available that it could ruin the economy with inflation, the way Spain was ruined after the conquest of the Americas. I'd have to think of something.
Since our supplies of food and ammunition were partially exhausted, each of our war carts could carry about an additional five tons, yet it took two gross of the things to haul the gold and silver alone. Another six gross carts were needed to carry the captured weapons and other gear that looked worth saving for trophies if nothing else. Each of these carts would go back toward Three Walls with a platoon of forty-three men to pull and guard it.
Most of the enemy horses had been killed in the battle and in Ilya's night raid ;he evening before. Baron Vladimir had felt that a half million horsehides was a prize well worth taking, and he had had the animals skinned before the carcasses were buried. Salting them down would have to wait, since we'd have to get the salt mines working again first. For now the skins were just stacked on the field, with a prayer that the cold weather would hold and they wouldn't rot. Near those stacks was a huge pile labeled "scrap iron," junk arms and armor that nobody would want to hang on a wall. The forges could always use scrap. We'd be back for it eventually.
There were perhaps sixty thousand horses still alive, mostly Mongol ponies but also some of the war-horses used by the conventional Christian knights who had been massacred on the field while we had stood by helpless. After I had discussed the matter with some of my officers, it was decided to simply let them all go free. Untrained for the job, they wouldn't have been much use as cart horses even if suitable harnesses had been available. The truth was that they would only slow us down. There was no way for us to take care of them and still get the rest of our work done. When the peasants returned, they'd find a use for the Mongol ponies. Most of the Polish war-horses were either branded or had had their ears punched with identifying marks, so they could eventually be returned to the families of their owners.
Each fallen conventional knight's arms and armor were carefully bundled along with his jewelry and personal effects, and one of his dog tags served as a label for its eventual return to his heirs. Each Christian body was properly buried with the other dog tag on a lance to mark the grave, but nothing of value was actually buried with the body. This was standard army policy, for history shows that the bejeweled dead are never allowed to rest in peace. Someday we would set up proper tombstones. Someday.
For now there was still a much bigger cleanup job to do. Far more Mongols had been killed on the eastern bank of the Vistula than had ever crossed it, perhaps as many as five or six times as many. There was probably a far greater booty to be taken, and certainly a far bigger mess to be cleaned up before the weather turned warm and rot and disease started to spread. But at least there we wouldn't have to do the sad job of burying our own people. Our casualties had all been on the riverboats, and most of them, those who hadn't gone down with their boats, had already been taken to the army city of East Gate.
I sent Baron Vladimir east to the Vistula with two-thirds of our men, there to get over to the east bank and take care of the cleanup there. That was about a hundred thousand men, eleven of our "battalions." I'd once read that God was on the side with the biggest battalions, so I'd made ours almost as large as a modem division just to be safe.
Just how Vladimir was to contact the boats to cross the river was a bit problematic, since the weather was still foul and the radios still were not working. Our spark-gap transmitters and coherer-type receivers were very sensitive to atmospheric disturbances. We'd been out of touch with the rest of the world for almost a week.
I left with the other third of our land forces, which included all our industrial workers. It was important to get our factories going again as soon as possible, since we had lost most of our riverboats and were out of some kinds of ammunition. We were taking back to Three Walls our booty, along with fifteen aircraft engines. Nine reasonably intact planes had already been sent ahead to the boys at Eagle Nest.
The pilots of our entire air force had deliberately crashlanded along with my former liege lord, Count Lambert, in order to take part in the final battle with the Mongols. They had taken part, all right, and had died to a man, along with most of the other valiant but undisciplined conventional knights. They had vainly spent their lives and accomplished nothing. idiots, the lot of them!
One should not think badly of the dead, but by God I wish those planes were still flying! They could have kept our communications intact. As it was, what with the weather making our radios useless, I didn't know what was happening in the rest of the country. I had sent couriers to Cracow, Three Walls, and Legnica, but so far none of them had returned. Was Duke Henryk still waiting at Legnica for the rest of the foreign troops to arrive? Had the Hungarians been invaded at the same time we were? How bad was the destruction on the east bank of the Vistula? Was my wife, Francine, alive and well? I had no way of knowing.
Baron Vladimir pulled out at dawn, and I left with my own troops shortly afterward, leaving two companies behind to care for our pitifully few wounded.
I was riding the new white Big Person I'd found on the battlefield. Anna, my usual mount, wasn't at all happy about this, but the new bioengineered horse understood only English, and so I was the only person in this century who could use her properly. Big People were too valuable to waste, so I lent Anna to one of the scouts who was screening our force. There were few enough Big People to do the job. I had only ten out of our total of thirty-three, and that's a thin screen for a force of over fifty thousand men, especially when there were who knows how many Mongol stragglers around. We'd spotted a few. The job couldn't be done with men on ordinary horses, since once we got on the railroad, our men could pull a war cart six dozen miles a day at a walk, far faster than any war-horse could travel.
I wished that the white mount's rider was still alive. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask that man. In the few moments that I'd been able to talk to him, he had spoken with an American English accent! Further, if he was riding a bioengineered horse, he must have had something to do with whoever it was that had built the time machine that had brought me to this century. He had to be some kind of observer at the battle, or even a tourist, but he had been killed by a Mongol spear before I had had time to get some answers out of him. I'd like to know just why I was dumped into this brutal century! There can't be that many time travelers around. Would I ever get another chance to talk to one?
It took all our men to haul the carts over the half-frozen fields, but we got to the railroad track south of Sandomierz around noon, and once on it we could go much more quickly. Further, riding on iron tracks, it takes only a dozen and a half men to pull one of our big war carts, and they can pull it easily even with the rest of the men riding on or under the cart, slung on hammocks, sleeping. This let us travel day and night without stopping. The men all had full plate armor, although it was common practice to leave the helmets and leg armor in the carts while pulling.
Cookstoves were slung from the rear of each cart, with the cooks walking behind as they did their work, and dinner was being prepared when a wounded rider on one of our Big People came galloping up to me. I recognized him as being one of the couriers I had sent out, the one who had gone to Legnica. His right side and leg were drenched with blood, and he didn't waste time conveying any message to me from my liege lord, Duke Henryk.
"Lord Conrad, Cracow is burning!" he said before he fell unconscious from the saddle.
Chapter Four
I STOPPED the five-mile-long column that I was leading, turned to the captain of the leading company, and shouted, "Dump the booty on the ground! Dump it, I say! We have to lighten the load and go as fast as we can. Dump it and then get your men going at double time. Cracow is burning!"
He looked at me aghast, and it was a moment before he could comprehend what I was saying. Dump an unimaginable fortune on the ground? Victory had been turned into defeat? How was that possible? But discipline and training took over. He turned and obeyed orders. Men scurried off the carts, the big lids were taken off the six carts that the captain commanded, and thirty tons of gold and silver were dumped on both sides of the double track.
A banner had the wounded courier hauled onto a cart, and a medic bent over him. A new man was appointed scout and, with the Big Person, was added to our screen. Actually, it wasn't necessary to make a new scout. We had twice as many scouts as we had mounts for them, a fact that made sense once you realize that Big People didn't need sleep, but us Little People did. But there wasn't another scout present, so I let the man have his promotion.
As the new scout started to ride out, I called to him and had him come back. Instead of joining the screen, I had him ride back toward Sandomierz and tell Baron Vladimir about the attack on Cracow. This action turned out to be one of my major tactical errors.
"Get the pullers moving!" I shouted. "They can run while the other half of the men dump the load. Throw out everything but weapons, ammunition, and four days' food. Double time!"
The men on the carts behind were staring in unbelief at what the first company was doing, and I realized that this was an order that I would have to give personally to each officer. They wouldn't have believed it otherwise! I signaled DOUBLE TIME, PASS THE WORD and rode down the long line of troops and carts, shouting orders.
After a bit, one of my captains asked, "The radios, too, sir? And how about these airplane engines?"
"Hell, yes! They're not doing us any good now, are they?" There were a dozen radios with the companies farther up the line, enough in case the weather cleared.
"Just figured I should ask, sir."
I was already on my way as the expensive set went flying to smash on the siding of the railroad.
It took an hour to get the job done, and the carts were more strung out than I would have wished, but fourteen hundred tons of gold and silver were scattered out beside four miles of track, along with three times that weight of fancy swords, decorated armor, and other booty. Four hundred tons of surplus food were dumped as well, but we were running to Cracow.
I ordered the last company in my column to stay there and guard what we had abandoned. They didn't like it, but they did it.
Running at double time, the men pulling have to be changed every quarter hour, but the carts don't stop. Everything happens at a run, and each man is relieved when his replacement catches up with him. There were ladders on both sides of each cart to let a man climb up even when it was moving, but the warriors rarely used them. Once you knew the trick, you could step between the spokes of one of the huge wheels, let it carry you up, and then step from the top of the wheel to the top of the cart. Pity the man who trips and falls, but don't stop for him!
In practice sessions we'd been able to keep this up for an entire day and a night with fresh troops. These men were far from fresh, having started out nearly exhausted, but they did it, anyway.
We ran nonstop for the rest of the day and ate two meals literally on the run. As dusk fell, the lanterns were set out at the ends of the carts, and we pushed on into the night. I ordered a midnight breakfast since, as the Eskimos say, food replaces sleep.
I sent three of our scouts forward to find out anything that they could. I desperately wanted to go myself, but I couldn't. My place was with my troops.
The pace was deadening, mind-numbing , absolutely exhausting, but to drop back to a walk would delay our arrival in Cracow by a day. How many of our countrymen could be killed by a Mongol horde in a day? Thousands? Tens of thousands? We had to push on, no matter what the cost, for the price of anything else was more than I dared pay.
And it was costing us, how much I didn't know. Most of my men had had only four months' training, and many of them couldn't keep up the pace. Men dropped and lay where they fell, and more than once I felt my mount jump an obstacle on the path beside the track. I could only hope that we didn't trample anyone. As men began to fall and not get up, officers at the rear of the column started abandoning carts and moving the men forward to replace our losses. These abandoned carts would make Baron Vladimir's job of reaching us that much harder, but there was nothing else we could do.