I thought that he was somehow living in Heaven and in Hell at the same time. I knew that while he had both bullets and Mongols to shoot them at, I would get no help from Taurus.
Then Sir Odon saw my need and ran over to help me. Together we picked the wounded man up and carried him down the steps to the surgery.
Later, we found out that our gunner lived, and he was back at his gun the next day.
This sort of slaughter went on for days, and we were all amazed there were so many Mongols. One night I spoke briefly to Lord Conrad again, and he admitted to being as astounded by their numbers as everyone else was. His biggest worry was that we would run out of ammunition before Batu Khan ran out of warriors.
Then the Mongols started to get a little bit smart, or maybe, as some said, their engineers finally caught up with their frontline troops.
One of our planes, piloted by Count Lambert himself, someone said, dropped us a message telling us that the enemy was building a pontoon bridge along the riverbank, downstream of us.
We went there with another boat following us, and they ordered us to get ready to land and chop the thing up with our axes right after we gave them a pass with the guns.
All of us except the gunners poured out of the drawbridge in the front of the boat, with the fifth lance of each platoon taking up the rear, as usual. We had to be behind the other guys in order to see them when they got wounded, and get them back to safety. Not that we didn't do our share of the fighting, you understand.
The first lance, made up of the biggest men, always went in first with their halberds, and we went in last to pick up the pieces, whether we were with our pikes, towing a war cart behind us that was full of gunners, as in a field battle, or when we just went in with axes, like now.
The Mongols had broken and run away after our gunners had done their job on them, which made me figure that their engineers must be a lot smarter than the average run of the enemy — say, about up to the level of a flock of ducks.
There wasn't much for us to do, since the guys up front had already chopped up everything that looked like it might have been a part of a bridge, or a bit of a Mongol.
There were a lot of dead bodies lying around, hacked up and bloody and stinking worse than anything you could possibly imagine. It wasn't just the shit that had been shot out of the guts of so many of them.
During training, we'd been told that Mongols never bathed, that they put their new clothes on the outside and then let those on the inside just rot away, but we hadn't believed it, not until we had to walk through all those dead bodies.
By this time everybody had gotten used to seeing dead people, but the stench of that beach got at least a dozen of the guys heaving their breakfast out, and that was a very bad thing to do when you were wearing one of our helmets, which covered your whole face. Think about it, if you really want to.
We had one guy whose visor hinge got jammed, and he darned near drowned before Zbigniew got the thing freed up.
There was a lot of gold on that beach. Every dead body seemed to have a big pouch full of the stuff. I didn't dare touch any of it, since doctrine was that you had to win the battle first before you started to loot. And even then you couldn't keep what you picked up, since all of the booty had to be brought together and counted before it could be fairly shared out.
Still and all, the temptation certainly was there. One of the men yielded to it, picked up a Mongol pouch, and got yelled at by Captain Targ. Then Lord Conrad said we might as well pick up a few pouches, just to get an idea of how much loot there actually was, and the captain gave the job to my platoon.
So I had about fifty pounds of gold and silver in my arms when all hell burst loose over the top of the riverbank.
Chapter Four
From the Journal of Josip Sobieski
WRITTEN JANUARY 20, 1249, CONCERNING FEBRUARY 21, 1241
AT THAT point the river had a high bank, higher than the top of our boat, so the gunners and other people up there couldn't see over it to warn us about what was coming.
The other thing we had going against us was the fact that our helmets fastened to our breastplates and back armor with a rotary coupling that let you twist your head sideways but not up and down. It was a good system, most of the time, since a bash on the head wasn't likely to break your neck.
But in this instance, with the enemy suddenly above us, well, most of us didn't even know they were there until they shot us.
Actually, the Mongols did us a favor of sorts with that first volley, since it got our attention, and their arrows, like I said earlier, weren't usually all that deadly.
We soon found out that they had a spear with a long, thin point and sharp edges that was sheer murder.
Thrown at close range or carried at a run, that thing could punch right through our armor, and then right through the man who wore it, just about anywhere they put it. Once they had one of those spears in a man, they would jerk the spearsideways, and a little hole on the outside left a big, deep slash inside.
Had they just charged at us straight off, they could have killed most of us before we even knew there was a battle going on.
Even then, I was slow on the uptake, I am ashamed to say, because at first I had a hard time throwing away all that gold. I mean, here in my arms I had more money than my father could have made in twenty lifetimes of hard work, and while it was probably only a few moments before I threw it down and pulled my axe from its sheath, those were some long and important moments.
They came at us on foot, jumping down from the bluff, breaking their fall on the sloping sand and smashing into us. I had my axe out in time, but I didn't have a chance to swing it before this smelly individual knocked me over and ended up on top of me. He couldn't use his sword any more than I could use my axe, and he thought of his knife before I did.
I felt his knife hit my left side and bounce off my armor twice before I got my own knife out and did unto him as he was trying real hard to do unto me. He had armor, but it wasn't nearly as good as the stuff Lord Conrad's factories make. I had to stick him four times before he gave up and died.
I threw his body off me and tried to stand up, but before I was upright, some other Mongol ran into me and sent me skidding across a patch of ice and into the muddy water by the river.
What with the goose-down padding we wore under the armor, I hadn't much noticed the cold up until then, but when the water seeped in, it was ungodly cold. The Mongol next to me noticed it, too, or maybe he was just afraid of drowning, but he lost interest in me and tried to get back on dry land.
That was his big mistake, because I still had my knife in my hand. Still on my back, I caught him in the back of the knee, and he went down. I crawled over and got him in the neck before I stood again, picked up somebody's axe, and looked around, trying to figure out where I could be of the most use.
The gunners were blazing away, shooting those Mongols who were still on top of the bluff or just starting down, but they were afraid of shooting those in our midst for fear of killing their own men.
Down below we were outnumbered maybe two to one, and the Mongols, a whole lot more agile than we were, were swarming all over us. Our troops looked like clumsy bears being attacked by a fast and deadly pack of wolves.
It was our armor, you see, that made us slow and half blind.
It also made us almost indestructible, and I saw men take a dozen hits and keep on fighting as if they didn't notice them. In one case, I'm sure he didn't.
Taurus was swinging his axe like a madman, screaming insanely, running at the enemy and chopping down everything in front of him. I think he was seeing every Mongol as one of those who killed his family, and he was laughing at every throat he cut, every skull he smashed.