Some of them had been training for this day for years, and now there was nothing they could do! We had over twenty thousand swivel guns pointed at the enemy, and they were useless! A bullet fired would go right through the Mongol it was aimed at, and kill some Christian who happened to be fighting behind him! It was all my fault, too. I made those guns too powerful! I"d had visions of Mongols charging at us six ranks deep, and our guns ploughing furrows through them. I never imagined anything like this!
One of my men looked up at me from the ranks in front of my cart and shouted, "Dammit! Do something!"
He was as insubordinate as h.e.l.l, yet he had expressed the common feeling, and I had to answer him.
"Do what? What can we do? If we advance, we"d only squeeze them closer together, and our knights need room to fight in! If we shoot, we kill our own men as well as the enemy!"
"They"re dying anyway!" another man yelled.
"Then better they should die at Mongol hands and not ours! If the knights would just get out of there, we could end this in minutes! This is their decision! There"s nothing we can do!"
That didn"t satisfy anybody, but there was nothing they could answer. I looked away from the slaughter and saw a strange thing.
A knight rode along the backs of our carts, not in the trap at all. He wore gold-washed chain mail of good quality but of the old-style. His barrel-type helmet was goldwashed as well, with trim that looked to be solid gold.
He was staring at the war carts and guns like a country peasant visiting the city for the first time. But what really caught my notice was his horse. It was pure white, but aside from that, it was absolutely identical to my mount Anna! The same gait, the same facial features, the same everything!
I had my face plate open when I said, "Can I help you, sir?"
He looked at me and I thought for a moment that he was going to fall off his horse! After a bit, he said in very broken Polish, "What... what this all is? Guns and plate armor! Here? Now! How?"
Now it was my turn to be startled, for he spoke with a strong American English accent!
"Just who are you?" I asked.
"I am Sir Manuel la Falla," he said.
"In a pig"s eye!" I said to him in Modem English.
He almost fell over again, but a commotion out on the battlefield distracted me from talking further with the man.
Count Lambert was coming toward me with the battle behind him. There was a Mongol spear in his gut, one of those sharp, thin, triangular things that could pierce our armor. He was swaying in the saddle, and his horse was staggering as well. As I watched, horse and man collapsed to the ground not a hundred yards in front of me.
I jumped down from the war cart and pushed my way through the pikers. Tapping two of the front-rank axemen and motioning them to follow me, I vaulted over the big shield and ran to Lambert"s aid.
I swear that my only intention was to drag my liege lord back to safety. I never meant to cause what happened. But that strange, crazy foreign knight, whatever he was, ran out after me, waving at the lines to advance and shouting in English!
"Come on you apes! Over the top! Up and at "em! Chaaaarrrrrge!"
Somehow, the man had gotten one of our red-and-white surcoats. I suppose they thought he was obeying my orders, for I was out in front of him " They couldn"t have understood a word of what he said, but his meaning was clear and it was what they all had wanted to do for hours!
From a hundred thousand voices came a roar!
"FOR G.o.d AND POLAND!".
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 b.u.t.ton.
"Yeah, that was me! I think I led the biggest infantry charge in history, right there!"
"To me it looked like a d.a.m.n 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 b.u.t.ton.
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. d.a.m.nable 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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.h.i.t 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 va.s.sals and my peasants, and see to it that the girls are well loved. They need that."
"We all do, my lord."
"That"s G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 d.a.m.ndest 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 b.u.t.ton.
"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?"
"d.a.m.ned 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 b.u.t.ton 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, is the whole universe shredding apart?"
He hit the START b.u.t.ton.