"There's work to do. Look, move all this stuff and as much else as you need to the front door. Thinking about it, I have fifty thousand hungry troops out there, so you'd better get some help and empty out your entire cellar. When any of my men comes by, feed them near the door. Don't let them stay in or you might have problems getting them out. They're all so tired that they'll fall asleep if they sit down. And give them only one jack of beer each. I don't want them drunk!"
We headed back to the war.
Two blocks down we hadn't found any Mongols, but I ran into Baron Gregor, my second in command. "So how goes the battle?" I asked.
"We seem to be winning, sir, and I think that our casualties have been light. I wish I could be more definite than that, but this is the most chaotic battle I've ever heard of. I don't even know where most of our units are!"
"I don't think anybody does. I've seen a lot of Mongols escaping out the city gates. You might try and get some of our men to guard each one of them."
"I'll see to it, sir. A few men on the walls wouldn't be amiss, either. You know, this is a situation where the radios would really have come in handy."
"Yeah, if the damn things worked," I said. "You go east along the walls, and we'll go west. When the gates are all guarded, we'll meet somewhere along the wall at the other side of the city. Oh, yes. You can stop at the Pink Dragon Inn. for a quick bite to eat. Pass the word on that one."
"Right, sir. "
We headed back to the gate through which we had last entered. Captain Wladyclaw came with me, since he was still on Anna and she wasn't about to leave my side. Had a human acted that way, I would have busted him for insubordination, but with Anna, well, what could I do?
We got to the gate with a platoon of troops we had picked up on the way. Enemy troops were streaming into the portal, and we had to fight our way to it for the last gross yards. We got there to find the bodies of the lance of men I had met on our way in. AH seven of them had died where I had left them. I should have reinforced them at the time. Another sin on my already blackened soul.
The platoon seemed to be holding pretty well, so I went on to the next gate, sending the next platoon I came across back to reinforce the first. This went on for one of our long, double-sized hours before I again met Baron Gregor. I sent him to continue his way around, inspecting and manning the walls while Captain Wladyclaw and I went outside the city to see how things were going there. It was dusk when we got to the dock area to find that one of our riverboats, the RB29 Enterprise, was just pulling in. I saw Baron Tadaos on the bridge.
"Baron Tadaos! What happened to your Muddling Through?" I shouted.
"Burned, sir!" he shouted in the darkening gloom. "Burned along with four-other boats and the whole damned city of East Gate. I came here looking for help!"
Chapter Six
Good god in heaven! A third Mongol army?
"Tadaos! We have a third of the land forces in the city now, You collect up as many troops as you can hold and take them to East Gate. I'll follow as fast as I can with the rest!" I shouted.
"I'm low on fuel, sir!"
"Then tear down these docks if you have to, and those buildings, too, if you need more wood. But get there!"
"Yes, sir!"
The nearest city gate was the one Captain Wladyclaw and I had left stuffed with Mongol corpses, so we had to race on to the next. Damn! I should have had brains enough to mount a signalman on one of the Big People and keep him with me, but I simply hadn't thought of it. When the men were concentrated in war carts, there was always a signalman handy in every sixth cart, so there was no point wasting a Big Person on one. Now the situation had changed, and I hadn't been bright enough to change with it. My stupidity was wasting precious time!
Once in the city, I soon found a bugler and had him sound BREAK OFF FIGHTING, MAN THE WAR CARTS, and EAST GATE IS BURNING. The first two were standard signal tunes that most of the men knew, or at least the officers did, and they could inform the others. The last required the use of a special code that the signalmen had worked out. Our bugles could play only seven notes, but if one played two or three notes in rapid succession, there were enough combinations to cover each letter of the alphabet as well as the numbers and punctuation marks. Messages were spelled out in a sort of code. It took a man with perfect pitch to play and understand the code, and many of the signalmen couldn't do it. Fortunately, the man I'd found was one who could, and there were enough others like him to get the message passed around.
Soon bugles all over the city were repeating my orders. Men were scurrying to find dropped weapons — many had abandoned their pikes as being unmanageable in the narrow, crooked city streets — and making their way to the Carpenter's Gate. We raced across town to get to the carts ahead of them, but it occurred to me that I'd better tell the people still on Wawel Hill what was going on.
I went to the Inner Gate and shouted to the guards, "East Gate is burning! The army is going to have to pull out of here and go to their aid. I think we've killed most of the Mongols in the city, but you people will have to do the final mop-up yourselves. Do you hear me?"
A gray-bearded man in ancient armor stuck his head out of a small window and looked down at me. "We hear you, Count Conrad, but you must realize that there are few here save women, children, and the aged. The noble knights all went off to fight the enemy in the field! Their ladies all just went off somewhere, I think to find a safer place to weather the invasion. Most of the young guildsmen fell defending the outer walls, those that did not leave, months ago to join your army. Many of those that were able to get here after the lower city fell have died defending Wawel Hill. Women have been manning catapults and crossbows, and children have been bringing ammunition to them. We have nothing left to 'mop up' with!"
"You'll just have to do the best you can," I shouted back. "Good-bye and good luck!"
I heard him swearing at me as we left, but what else could I do?
We went through the city, out the Carpenter's Gate, and back to the war carts. Few of the troops had gotten there yet, and most of the cart guards were asleep. They'd decided that one man awake out of six was sufficient, and I really couldn't fault them. A minor attack had been beaten off earlier in the day, but aside from that it had been quiet. I let them sleep, since it would be good to have at least a few men who were well rested.
More of our men were arriving all the time, though most of them were staggering badly in the rain and gloom. Few of them were actually wounded, but running and fighting for two days straight is about all any normal man can take.
I waited in the rain and dark for an entire hour and then decided that we had to go.
"But only half the men have gotten here yet, sir!" Baron Gregor objected. "There's only about two dozen men to a cart, and that many could never pull nonstop to East Gate. They wouldn't have anyone to relieve them. "
"You're right, of course. Well, move the men up to the first carts. Get a full platoon on each cart and have them move out at a quickstep. As more men straggle in, we'll fill more carts and have them catch up with the rest at double time. You'd best stay here and see that the job gets done. "
"Sir, that'll make a mess of the whole command structure! Nobody will know who's in charge."
"Structure be damned! East Gate is burning! Just make sure that there are six knights and a knight bannerette for each cart, and a captain for every six of them. The field grade officers can sort things out among themselves as we're moving. It's not as though anybody can get lost on a railroad!"
"Yes, sir. What about the wounded?"
"Send the walking wounded back into the city to help out there. Set up a camp for those badly hurt right here."