To give you some idea of what it sounded like, in Pidgin, the Lord's Prayer started out, "Me Papa, Him big fella, Him alla time on top…"
It sounded strange at first, but the beauty of it was that it was extremely easy to learn. You could actually hold a meaningful conversation in it after studying it for only a few days. They claimed that a foreigner could learn it faster than a native speaker of Polish, since he didn't have anything to unlearn.
We were encouraged to use Pidgin among ourselves to increase our fluency in it, and that had the effect of giving the Explorer's Corps its own secret language. It was useful when you wanted to say something in mixed company, and you didn't want the girls to know about it, whereas the ladies had to go hand in hand to the pissatorium to accomplish the same thing.
The Wizards, the research and development people at Okoitz, had come up with a totally new sort of radio. It had at least five times the range of the old spark gap transmitters and much better sensitivity than coherers or even the newer cat's whisker receivers. It used radio tubes, and a super heterodyne receiver. It had rechargeable batteries, and it was one-sixth the weight of the old sets, even with the dynamocharger.
The explorers were the first people to be issued them, and of course we had to know how to operate, repair, and even rebuild them. All of us. Specialization was not encouraged in our corps, not when we would have to spend a year in possibly hostile circumstances, with no possibility of finding a replacement for anyone.
Geology was one of my worst subjects, and I was vastly relieved to learn that each explorer team would be taking along a compartmented box with well-labeled samples of a few hundred of the most useful minerals in it. Once I have something in each hand for comparison, I can usually figure out what is what.
I was very impressed with the quality of both my fellow classmates and my instructors. They were all remarkably intelligent, enthusiastic, and decent people. I'd often thought that one reason why my own lance was so close-knit was that everybody else in the world was so much duller than we were. When I first had that thought, years ago, I thought I was being shamefully boastful, and mentioned it to no one, but on more mature reflection, since I was now twenty-one, I have decided that it was nothing but the simple truth.
About halfway through the course, we had an eighth member added to our team, Father John. He was two years older than the rest of us, and had been an ordained priest before he went through (survived) the army's Warrior's School. Like all priests in the army, he was still officially a member of the Chaplain's Corps, and only on loan to the Explorer's Corps. He had a certain quiet strength to him, and always pulled more than his share of the load, never claiming any special privileges. He was easy to get along with and merged well with the rest of the group. Even our drinking and womanizing did not seem to bother him, or at least he never scolded us, the way so many other priests did, and he would often show up for at least the start of a drinking session. Also, he played a very fine violin, which made him particularly valuable when we made music. He eventually became the confessor of each one of us.
Yet he was not lacking in zeal, and whenever he spoke about the future, when he would have a chance to convert the heathen to Christ, you could see a certain light come on in his eyes. It was a beautiful light, but sometimes it was also a frightening one.
Toward the end of the course, almost as an afterthought, we were issued firearms of a new and interesting sort. The powder charge in the old, heavy swivel guns was ignited by a "firecracker" wick at the back of the cartridge that was lit by an alcohol flame. This was good enough when you knew a battle was coming, but it could be very awkward when unexpected things started to happen quickly.
The new guns were handheld rather than mounted, and were much lighter, about ten pounds for the rifle and three for the pistol. Ignition was by a piezoelectric crystal in the stock which, when struck by a small hammer, put an electric current through a spark plug at the back of each cartridge.
The pistol was a single-shot, break-action affair, while the rifle had a seven-shot, spring-fed clip and a bolt action. We were issued new knives with the rifles, called bayonets, which fastened to the end of the barrel, making the weapon usable as a short pike. All told, it was a remarkably well-thought-out weapon system, and we were proud to be the first unit to be issued it.
Graduation involved both written and oral examinations, and a number of practical tests as well. One of them involved being dumped naked and alone in a forest in the early spring, and being expected to build yourself suitable shelter, to make yourself suitable tools, clothing, and weapons, and to find or kill sufficient food to keep yourself alive for two weeks. They actually weighed you before and after the test, and you lost points if you lost weight!
In the end, everyone in my lance graduated, and most of the others did, too. We had a nice commencement ceremony with everyone in our eight-pounds-of-gold uniforms, and they handed out illuminated certificates to us with our friends and parents watching.
Well, parent, in my case, since my father refused to attend.
Most important for Sir Odon and all his loyal men was the fact that with graduation, our long-awaited promotions had at last come through. I was now Sir Josip, at eight pence a day, and Sir Odon was now a knight-banner, at twice that, with the right to use a triangular flag on his cavalry lance, if he ever got one, or, indeed, if he ever got a horse.
This made for some unusual ranks in our charts. The lowest rank in the Explorer's Corps was a knight, and the lance leaders were all now knight-banners. In theory, we were organized in the usual six lances to the platoon, but since each lance would be acting independently, there were no platoon leaders. Lance leaders reported directly to the company commander.
And our company commander was not the usual captain, but Baron Siemomysl himself.
Still, nobody ever said that the army had to be absolutely consistent. In the Wolves, who are made up entirely of members of the old nobility, the lowest rank is also the knight, and platoons are led by captains.
The next day, we were loaded into six chartered riverboats for the trip north. The reason for this seemingly lavish excess of transportation was that each explorer lance had an entire war cart filled with its supplies for our upcoming adventure. That was eighteen cubic yards, a ton and a half per man.
Besides our personal gear, which included everything from our armor and weapons to a year's supply of underwear and toothpaste, we had a wide variety of preserved food, enough to feed us all for three years. The trip home might be delayed, or we might have to feed a hungry tribe in the winter.
We also carried a wide variety of trade goods — tools, weapons, jewelry, cloth of many varieties, glassware, needles, fishhooks, books, even toys and games.
In a special strongbox, each lance was equipped with a large supply of money, a quarter of a million pence, equivalent to ten years' pay for every man in the lance. Some of it was in gold, some in silver, and some in the army's own zinc coinage. Sir Odon was responsible for accounting for every bit of it.
We made the trip north to Gdansk, where our new ship, the Baltic Challenger, was completing its first shakedown cruise. We drank and sang and partied the whole way and had about as much fun as an all-male group can possibly have.
At one point we got the riverboat's regular crew so drunk that they couldn't stand, much less operate the boat, and then my lance took the thing over and ran it until the next morning, when the regular crew woke up.
Through the night, we had sent out dozens of strange, rude, or downright obscene radio messages, and the next day the regular crew couldn't blame it on us without confessing to being drunk on duty. They were in a lovely pickle when we finally bid them good-bye.