"She said she was, and she sends you her love. I sent her yours, of course, but I didn't see any sense in waking you. So far, casualties at Three Walls have been almost nil. An arrow hasn't much force left by the time it gets to the top of a seven-story wall. The catapults are something else, however."
"Yeah. Especially if they're like the ones they used on us in the riverboats. We'd better hurry."
"We'll get there at a walk in time for an attack at gray dawn. There's no point in getting there sooner than that," Gregor said.
"Oh, I suppose you're right. Do the Mongols know we're coming?"
"Possibly not. Baron Ilya's Night Fighters did a pretty fair cleanup job while you slept. The Mongols seem to have a real general in charge. At least they left plenty of sentries and scouts out. 'Course, they still haven't learned not to do sentry duty sitting around a campfire, but the thought was there. The last bunch Ilya taught that lesson to weren't in any shape to pass on the education they got! He had the horses slaughtered as well as the men so that none of them would find their way back to the enemy camp and tip our hand. I think our scouts took out all of theirs. When a Big Person starts to sniffing on the trail of a Mongol, you just know there's going to be bloodshed, and those girls can really fight in the dark!"
"So Captain Wladyclaw gets another feather in his cap, and Ilya'll be harder to control than ever," I said. "What do you know about the enemy positions?"
"Best as we can tell, they're all camped on the killing ground, this side of the kitchen gardens, on the place we used to use for a parade ground. There's some wells down there, and they probably figure that the big hedge of Krystyana's roses offers them some protection. "
"Nice. Better wake all the men and get some food in them. "
"The cooks have been at it for an hour, sir. During the night I had all the cart wheels greased so they're real quiet."
"Good. Make sure that the men stay that way, too. Semaphores and hand signals only from now on."
"Right, sir."
"And give me my mount back!"
It was still dark as we approached the city. I was in front of our silent column to make sure that things were the way I thought they were. The double-tracked railroad went through a simple gate before it entered the killing ground.
This gate was never intended as a military defense; its main job was simply to keep animals in. Nonetheless, I was surprised to see that it was manned by our own Night Fighters. Baron Ilya was there waiting for me.
"I got maybe a company of my men just inside the gate in Mongol outfits, sir, so's they wouldn't know we was here. I just wanted you to know so's you wouldn't shoot them down."
"Okay. I'll signal you just before we start the attack, and you pull those men behind our lines in a hurry. Once things warm up, the gunners won't be too choosy."
"Right, sir. "
Baron Gregor had a man using hand signals to split off our troops, sending a column of war carts in each direction on our side of the rose hedge. Save for the snap of branches as the big carts were pulled through them, the columns were silent as snakes. We could hear the Mongols a dozen yards away from us on the other side of the hedge, but we didn't hear them give any alarm.
As each cart reached its assigned position, the men quietly took the big armored lid off the vehicle. This was slung on spare pikestaffs six yards to the side of the cart to act as a shield for the men pulling it. At the same time, the pins were pulled from the casters of the big wheels, the wheels were turned at right angles away from the line of march, and the wheels on the armored side were locked in that position. The carts were pulled sideways into battle.
Harnesses were attached to the armored side of the cart, and the pikemen tied them to the ring on their backplates with a slipknot. Gunners quietly mounted the pinions of their guns into the "oarlocks" built into the sides of the carts. They lit the ignition lamps in the base of each gun, loaded them, and set out their spare ammunition. Cookstoves and other nonessentials were set on the ground. Pikes and halberds were handed out, and men checked each other's arms and armor.
Having been practiced hundreds of times, the conversion from transport vehicle to war machine took only minutes, even in silence and nearly total darkness. Some of the halberdiers had to be reminded to get in front of their shields, since this wasn't their usual position, but Baron Gregor had briefed the captains on our plan of attack.
Six hundred carts take a long time to move two miles quietly in the dark and over unprepared terrain, even when everything is well coordinated. At any moment the Mongols could find us sneaking up on them, and a well-planned surprise attack could be turned into a bloody chaos. But despite my sins, God was still on our side.
At the first hint of dawn I saw my troops lined up and ready, stretching a mile on each side of me. I called to Ilya in a stage whisper, and a few hundred ersatz Mongols poured quickly through our line, heading back to where they had stowed their armor.
Still using hand signals, I gestured ADVANCE, and every captain passed it on.
The hedge was five yards high and thickly tangled with long, sharp thorns. The seed package had claimed that a hedge of these Japanese roses was proof against man and beast, and for once the seed company hadn't lied. I think it gave the Mongols a false sense of security. No man or animal smaller than an elephant and bigger than a mouse could possibly go through it, but good steel could!
Thirty-six hundred halberdiers started making toothpicks out of two miles of Krystyana's roses. The hedge had been only two yards thick when we'd planted it seven years earlier, but it had somehow spread to a dozen yards and more in some places. This surprised me, and perhaps it gave the enemy more time to get ready for us, but I think they wasted a fair amount of time trying to figure out what the strange noise was, so it all balanced out. We finally broke into the clear, and the gunners opened fire.
We went across the Mongol camp and trampled it flat in the process. It was huge. Judging from the size of the enemy camp near Sandomierz and the known number of men that had been in it, there must have been two hundred thousand Mongols here, yet at first the resistance was surprisingly light. No more than five thousand men came against us, and many of them were obviously wounded. They went down quickly, and I signaled CEASE FIRE.
A panicky thought shook me. Had the bulk of them somehow escaped our trap? All my forces were facing Three Walls. Were the Mongols behind us, waiting to hit our unprotected rear?
Anna came up to my side, carrying the protesting Captain Wladyclaw with her.
"Captain Wladyclaw! I'm glad you're here. Look, we aren't finding enough Mongols in front of us! If they're to our rear, we're in big trouble. Get your scouts way behind us and get word back in a hurry if we're walking into their trap instead of springing our own. Here," I said, dismounting. "Take the white person. with you as well and put another man on her. I'll ride in on the carts."
"Yes, sir, but Anna has stopped obeying me again."
"Anna, if you love me, go with Wladyclaw and help protect my back. " She hesitated a minute and then galloped back through our lines.
Chapter Nine
A while later we topped a rise, and I saw where the Missing Mongols had gone. They were pulling a dawn attack of their own. Lovely! If they were getting set to attack, their minds would be off defense. The war carts went ahead at a quick-step. We were still two miles from the main wall as the sun came up. We recited our morning oaths as we advanced.