Лео Франковски - The Flying Warlord Страница 24

All along the lines, a hundred and twenty thousand pikers and axemen went up and over the shields and staged an impromptu infantry charge on three times their number of cavalry!

Interlude Five

Tom hit the STOP button.

"Yeah, that was me! I think I led the biggest infantry charge in history, right there!"

"To me it looked like a damn fool thing to do!" I said. "An infantry charge on cavalry? That's unheard of!"

"It was when I did it, but it happened another time maybe three hundred years later, during one of the wars between the English and the Scots, for about the same reason and with about the same outcome."

"You see, it was getting late in the day, and if the thing wasn't settled by sunset, those Mongols might have broken out. All those horsemen on both sides had been fighting for at least eight hours without a break, and the Mongols hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. And a horseman has it all over a footman, providing the horse can move! Once those pikers got them pushed back and jammed together, they were dog meat!"

"Hey, if you'd just gotten there, how did you have the time to figure all that out?"

"Well, I got there late. That was obvious, so I did a one day switchback so I could be involved in the whole battle. I was with Duke Boleslaw when he rode out that morning! I was there for the whole thing! Of course, I was taking stim pills to keep up with those youngsters, but that doesn't count. I am over eight hundred years old, after all. Then when Conrad went over the shield, I was back by his lines. I dismounted and led the charge."

"So you're pretty proud of yourself, huh?"

"I saved the day! There's only one thing wrong, though. The background scenery isn't right. That place doesn't look like Chmielnick at all. I know that area! That looks like it's about twenty miles west of Sandomierz, and the battle wasn't fought there!"

"Well, it was fought there now!" I hit the START button.

Chapter Twenty-four

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD

I stared in horror at the. men running past me. The Mongols still vastly outnumbered us, and what had started so well would now end in absolute disaster! All because of Duke Boleslaw's stupidity and that crazy foreigner, our army would be destroyed, our country overrun, and our families all murdered! I yelled, I shouted but no one paid any attention. With all the noise and every man shouting, I doubt if any of them heard me. There was nothing I could do, and again, I was helpless.

But there was something I could do for Lambert, so I did it. I went over to him.

In falling from his horse, he had rolled clear of the animal, but that was the most expensive roll in his life.

"Ah, Conrad. I see that you have your medical kit with you as always. It seems that I need it for a change. Damnable thing! The first time in ten years I get a chance to get into a fight and this has to happen!" Lambert gestured toward the spear in him.

"See? You should have left the fighting to me. I only got an arrow in the eye." I ripped open and laid aside his red-and-white surcoat, unlatched his breastplate, and pulled it off. The Mongol spear came with it, dripping with blood and gore. Then I opened his gambezon and shirt, and surveyed the mess. There was a gash in his stomach as wide as both my hands, and deep.

"What? That little hole in my armor and that mighty slash in my gut? How can that be?"

"It was when you fell, Lambert. The spear spun around in there. The edges on those damned things are sharp."

"Well, that's it, then, and a sad ending it is! Done in by my own horse and my own peasant!"

"My lord? How so? I know your horse was wounded. I saw it stagger."

"He wasn't wounded. He was drunk! A half hour ago, I went to our lines for a drink. One of my own peasants, only he's a knight now, came out and gave me a well needed beer. When I asked for some water for my horse, he said they had none, though they had plenty of beer. I hated to see Shadowfax suffering, for he had served me well this day. I was in too much of a hurry to take him down to the stream, so I bid the man give my horse some beer, and he did, using his own helmet as a horse bucket. It was strong beer, and that was my downfall."

"My lord, this wound..."

"I know. I can see it. There's shit mixed in with the blood, so my gut is cut open. It will fester and I'm a dead man. Still, it's not a bad way to die, on a battlefield. Better than growing feeble and blind and impotent with old age, and that's all I had to look forward to. It was getting so sometimes I could only take one wench a day, and the virgins were getting hard to service. No, this is for the best."

"Shall I find you a priest, my lord?"

"In a while, in a while. I have some time left. I can feel it. I'm glad you're here. There are some things I want to talk to you about. I was right about your origins, wasn't I? You really were sent here by Prester John to save us from the Mongol invasion, weren't you?"

What could I say? "Of course, my lord. You alone had it figured out from the beginning." I lied, but it was a good lie.

"I knew it! But tell me, why did he only send one man?"

"Well, my lord, there was only the one invasion."

"What! Oh, ha-ha! Ooooh!" Suddenly his face went white. "Oh. It's like the old joke. It only hurts when I laugh. Well. Then there's my estate. I'm minded to give my daughter my lands in Hungary, which are twice as large as those in Poland, and richer, though not so well run, but I don't want you to be saddled with a liege lord who is whoever she marries. I haven't had time to pick the man! He might not treat my peasants properly or even service the girls at the cloth factory as they deserve, and that would be a shame and a waste! So I'm giving my Polish lands to you. Don't look so surprised or say anything. I've thought this out and that's the way that I want it. I've had it written all up and Duke Henryk himself has approved it."

"Thank you, my lord," Even though it didn't mean anything, it was a nice thought. I'd never inherit that land. As soon as the Mongols broke through our footmen, I'd die right here next to Lambert. Still, it was a nice thought.

"Just take good care of my vassals and my peasants, and see to it that the girls are well loved. They need that."

"We all do, my lord."

"That's God's truth! But do you swear it?"

"On my honor by all that is holy, my lord."

"Good. Well, be off with you, then. You've got a battle to fight. And if you see a priest, send him by. I'll spend my time getting my soul together. Be off now. No. Wait. You better take these. I won't be needing them anymore." He gave me back the binoculars I had given him on the first day we met. I took them. It would have been rude to do otherwise.

"Good-bye, my lord Count Lambert Piast, and may God bless you and love you."

I stood up, tears in my one eye, and looked out at the battlefield. The fight was a good ways away, more than a mile, and I started walking toward it. I heard a familiar whinny behind me and turned around.

"Anna?"

She nodded YES. She was looking at my wounded eye.

"Yes, I got hurt a bit, but it's all right. I'm glad you're here! But come on, girl, there's work to be done!"

I mounted and we rode to battle.

A half-mile later, I saw the strange, gold-clad knight back on his white horse, fighting two Mongol horsemen who had somehow slipped through the line of Polish footmen. I didn't know who or what he was, but he was wearing one of our surcoats now and he seemed to be on our side. I drew my sword and we galloped to his aid.

I was almost there when one of the Mongols threw one of those deadly spears at him. At a dozen yards, it flew straight through his eyeslit and the point punched its way out the back of his helmet!

I caught one Mongol unawares and chopped his head off before the other saw me. The second was just recovering from his deadly throw, and I got in a blow on his horse's neck. One does not have to fight fair with one's social inferiors.

He spilled on the ground and I took his right arm off at the shoulder on the next round. That was enough. Let the bastard bleed to death.

I dismounted near the strange knight. I was sure he was dead, but head wounds are sometimes surprising. People have recovered from the damndest things. I had to pull out the spear before I could remove his helmet and I had to put my foot on that helmet to pull the spear out.

There was no breathing, no pulse. The spear had made a ghastly hole where his left eye had been and I think it had severed the spinal column as well. He was dead. There was something familiar about the man, but I couldn't place him. The weird thing was his haircut. He was completely bald back to the top of his head. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone, yet there were little cut-off hairs laying loose all over his face.

The white horse was acting shocked and nervous. From down here, it was obvious that she was a mare. "Are you one of Anna's people, like this girl here?" I said. She didn't respond, but then I remembered her rider speaking English. I repeated my question in that language, and she nodded YES, exactly as Anna does.

"Then I think it would be best if you came along with us. Your friend here is dead. There is nothing we can do for him," I said in my rusty English.

She nodded YES.

Interlude Six

I hit the STOP button.

"Tom, are you all right?" I said. He was staring fixedly at the screen, his eyes bulging, and he was making gurgling sounds.

"What? No. I'm not all right, you idiot! I'm dead! Don't you realize that we just saw me die?"

"But you know that this is some kind of alternate reality. It's not exactly real."

"It's exactly as real as the reality around us! Is that some third me who died out there? Or am I going to go back there later, subjectively, and die there in my own future?"

"Damned if I know, but if I were you, I'd never go to thirteenth century Poland again!"

His hand was shaking as he pushed the COMM button and ordered a double martini. A naked serving wench brought it in instantly and he gulped it down. Then he sent her back for another, and she was out of the room and back in so fast that she must have passed herself in the hallway. Of course, that sort of thing happens all the time around here. I ordered a beer and she made a third trip.

"It didn't really happen that way," he said, staring at a blank wall. "That spear only glanced off my helmet. I saw it coming and I ducked!"

"It looks like this time you forgot to duck. Tom, why weren't you better protected than that?"

"I was! I always am! I wear a bio-engineered fungus coating called a TufSkin."

I was familiar with the stuff. I wear it myself, like most people. It's not only a cheap insurance policy but it makes shaving a breeze.

The stuff isn't noticeable, but it has these billions of tiny interlocking plates made of crosslinked tubular graphite, the toughest substance known. If you are hit from the outside, on impact and in microseconds, tiny muscles interlock those plates and give you an armor equivalent to a quarter inch of tool steel. Of course, when it does that, it shears off your hair in the process, but that's a small price to pay!

Tom was still talking in a dazed sort of way. "The only place it can't cover is the eyes, but the helmet I was wearing should have sensed that spear coming and slammed shut the eyeslits! Or I could have blinked! I should have been completely safe!"

"I guess this time there was some sort of mechanical failure."

His face was still white as he said, "But there wasn't one! My God, is the whole universe shredding apart?"

He hit the START button.

Chapter Twenty-five

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI

Looking through my telescope, I saw a knight who I think was Count Lambert fall on the field, and another man who I am sure was Count Conrad run out to aid him. Surely there could be no other knight of his size!

But then I saw that Count Conrad was leading a charge against the Mongols, and doing it without my orders! He had, after all, left me in charge, and one of his first rules of leadership was unity of command! If he wished to take command, that was his prerogative, but he had no right to do so without notifying me!

And why in the name of all that is holy had he left the carts and gunners behind? It made absolutely no sense! Even if the pikers could encircle the Mongol horsemen, what could they do to harm them? They might skewer the first few ranks, but by that time, the enemy formation would be hundreds of yards thick! And completely unharmed! This was madness!

But there it was, and there was no way to call those men back now. If I countermanded his order, the results would be pure chaos! Some pikers would be out in the field and some of the carts would have no one but gunners to defend them. There would be gaps in our lines of footmen, and the Mongols could bypass them, cut through those unsupported gunners with ease and escape our trap. Already, I saw two Mongols riding behind our footmen, and a single conventional knight charging at both of them. My people have sometimes been called fools, but no one has ever dared question our courage.

There was nothing for it but to back my liege lord up, and hope that there was some reason for this insanity. I ordered "All Footmen Charge," and mounted Betty to follow them out.

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD

When I got to the battle lines, I was astounded! We weren't losing at all! Our lines had been six men deep when we started, but as we closed with the enemy, the circumference naturally got smaller, and since we had started out in a long thin oval, the ends were naturally thicker with men than the sides, which pushed the mass of horsemen inside into something of a circle.

As I got there, our men were twelve to eighteen ranks deep, and as pressed together as a Macedonian phalanx! I think that if it were not for their clamshell armor, many of our front rank men would have smothered to death. Certainly, most of the horses died that way. They were squeezed so hard together that they could not breathe.

The enemy horsemen were packed so closely together that they could not get out of the saddle! Their legs were pinned in! Who could have imagined such a thing!

There were men with halberds and short axes milling around the periphery, wanting to get at the Mongols, but not knowing how.

Then one man wearing a turban wrapped around his helmet and wielding a short axe screamed and ran right up the backs of the outside row of pikers! He climbed to the top of the men and then actually ran down on the tops of the packed rows of pikes at the enemy! Shouting a war cry that sounded like the howling of a wolf, he leaped to the back of a Mongol horse that was so penned in that it could not move.

"El Allah il Allah!" he screamed again, in vengeance fifteen years delayed.

He stretched high as if he was chopping firewood and hacked into the neck of the rider. He swung a second time, though it surely wasn't necessary, and the Mongol's head flew loose. Then he stepped to the haunch of the next horse and repeated the performance!

Seeing this told our men what to do! A human wave of axemen ran up on top of the pikers, then across their shoulders and heads to get at the enemy! A lot of pikers might have had bruised backs, but I never heard any complaints. In minutes, ten thousand axemen and swordsmen were running on top of five hundred thousand Mongol horsemen, butchering them without thought of mercy.