This was exactly the sort of fight I had envisioned from the beginning, the sort we had armed and trained for. And it was working beautifully. The men were elated! After the huge losses we had suffered on the riverboats, after the helplessness the troops had felt watching the conventional knights being slaughtered west of Sandomierz, after the confusion of the battle at Cracow, after seeing the senseless slaughter at East Gate, and after all the mind-numbing running and pulling in between, finally, at last, something was working perfectly!
Naturally, somebody started to sing, and the troops along the entire line picked up the tune.
Poland is not yet dead!
Not while we yet live!
I could see that up on the wall, despite the fact that they were both pregnant, Cilicia and Francine were manning swivel guns right next to each other, firing down at the enemy. And I saw that two of Krystyana's sons — my own children! — were running ammunition to them. I waved, and they all waved back.
But you don't kill a quarter of a million men in a minute, and we kept advancing as best we could, but no longer at a full quickstep. Going over the fallen enemy and making sure they were really dead slowed us down. Our center was soon bowed back as the edges advanced more quickly, and we had them surrounded. I had to order the wings to slow down so we wouldn't be shooting through the enemy troops and back into our own.
About then Krystyana decided that it was time for the wall guns, and all nine dozen of them let loose at once. The effect astounded even me, and I'd designed the bloody things. Suddenly, everything within two gross yards of the wall was either very dead or trying very hard to get that way! Bits of shrapnel and dead Mongol were blown as far as our own troops. The enemy still standing were stunned and made easy marks for the swivel guns.
Then one knot of horsemen turned as their leader pointed directly at me. Suddenly, some three hundred men and horses wheeled and charged straight for my cart! Everything had been so beautiful, but suddenly things didn't look too good.
The gunners tore into them, and many riders went down. The Mongols knew that they were all dead men, but they wanted vengeance for their own deaths, vengeance in the form of my life! They kept coming, and as their ranks thinned, I saw in the center of them two faces I recognized. One was that of the Mongol ambassador, and the other was General Subotai Bahadur himself.
Standing in the center war cart, I drew my sword and waited. There was nothing else I could do.
"Thank you, our Lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, amen," one of the gunners on my cart said. I didn't know if he was being sacrilegious or just thanking God for the targets, so I kept my mouth shut. It was pretty dry just then, anyway.
The two older Mongols seemed to be leading charmed lives, or perhaps the gunners were reluctant to shoot a man with white hair and wrinkles when there were so many younger targets available, but in the end they were the last two left alive. Together, their horses jumped my cart's big shield and came down directly on top of the pikemen. As they leapt from their dying horses toward the cart, a wounded piker caught Subotai in the gut with a grounded pike. I don't know which of the three us was most surprised, but the old general was suddenly airborne. He actually pole-vaulted right over my head!
The ambassador landed in the cart between two startled gunners and swung his sword at me. I parried it and gave him a slash to the forearm. His hand and sword went flying.
He pulled a dagger with his left hand, and I took that one off as well.
He said, "Damn you, Conrad!" and slumped to the bottom of the cart.
I looked at him and decided that we could use a Polish speaking prisoner. I put tourniquets on his stumps.
The roar of gunfire slowed to a rattle and then to occasional pops. Slowly, it stopped completely. Troops looked wide-eyed over the smoke and the smell of the carnage, not quite ready to believe that it was finally over. Slowly, the truth dawned.
Victory! The tops of the walls and towers were covered with our women and children, cheering for us and for themselves. Baron Gregor had the men unleash themselves from the carts, and they walked to the wall, axes and pikes in hand so that they could chop up the fallen enemy and make sure that dead Mongols stayed that way. A brutal business, but a necessary one. There was no exchange of prisoners with the Mongols, and any who escaped would have to rob and murder their way home just to stay alive. Best to kill them clean here and now.
The prisoner I had taken was another matter. I had one of our medics sew up his stumps and left orders for him to be guarded.
Actually, our medics outnumbered our wounded, and we had less than a hundred killed. A remarkably one-sided victory.
I climbed down from my war cart and joined the others streaming toward the now open city gate. As I passed our wrecked septic tank, I saw a number of warriors around it, pikes in hand. Quite a few Mongol troops were floundering around in the wretched stench below us.
"Do you think they'll want some prisoners?" one of the warriors asked a friend.
"They didn't say nothing about wanting none," his friend answered. "Anyways, it 'ud be easier to catch them some fresh ones than it would be to clean these bastards off. " And with that, he reversed his pike and used it to hold one of the dog paddling Mongols under the stinking grey mud.
"I guess you're right," said the first, reversing his pike.
I just shook my head and walked on until I ran into my second in command.
"Give the men leave to enjoy themselves until tomorrow morning, " I told Baron Gregor, "except for two companies that you don't like. Somebody had better stay on guard. We'll be needing some radio operators as well."
"Right, sir."
"Try to get through to Baron Vladimir and tell him the news. Have him send half his men back to where we dumped all that booty and bring it here. The rest of his men should stop at East Gate and clean the place up. Send a scout to him if the radios aren't working. And I want the planes to fly over all of the country that they can and make sure that there isn't yet another Mongol army out there."
"Right, sir."
"Can you think of anything else we have to do?"
"Not offhand, sir, aside from spreading the word about this victory."
"Then after you get those messages out, go see your wives. I'm going to mine right now!"
I went back to my old apartment in the first wall through the cheering crowds of soldiers and their dependents. I smiled and waved back, trying to be the good politician, but my heart wasn't really in it. I had been going on my own adrenaline for weeks, and now at last it was leaching out of me. I felt incredibly tired, drained, and weak. I was sick of war and blood and dirt and saw nothing glorious about wallowing in them. What I really wanted to do was get out of this filthy, stinking, blood-soaked armor, take a long, hot bath, have a stiff drink, and kiss my wife, and not necessarily in that order.
I went up to my rooms and found both Francine and Cilicia waiting for me. Inwardly I groaned. The last thing I wanted now was more confrontation, and the Chinese symbol for an argument is two women under one roof.
They both smiled at me.
"We have decided," Francine said. "When we were shooting at the Mongols, we decided that we should share you. We both love you, and you love both of us, so we can make it work."
This statement surprised me as much as a new Mongol army. I sat down to take it all in. The horse really had learned how to sing!
The war was over, and now we'd have to get busy and build the peace.
Chapter Ten
FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNTESS FRANCINE