Next I rode to the ducal palace to take possession of the place. I could have done everything from the inn, but that would have lacked class. Also, it would have cost me money in lost revenues, since while the rooms of the inn could be rented out, those of the palace couldn't. At least not now. In the future, once some more efficient government buildings were up, all the old palaces and castles around might make very charming hotels. An interesting thought, anyway.
The palatine of the ducal palace was a venerable gentle man who had been working there all his life. He showed me around, and it wasn't bad at all. I'd visited the place a few years before, but as a mere baron from a distant duchy, I hadn't gotten the grand tour. It was a smaller version of the castle on Wawel Hill, which I also owned now, — thinking about it. It was built of red glazed brick, and a fine collection of old weapons, furs, and tapestries gave it a certain barbaric splendor. There was indoor plumbing, though, and glass in the windows. Except for adding some radios, there wouldn't have to be much in the way of needed changes.
I made some, anyway. I had lunch and fired the cook. I think that if the last duke could stand the cooking at his palace, he must have gotten his taste buds chopped out in a tournament. I figured that anybody who could ruin roast mutton couldn't possibly be retrainable. He was replaced by the cook at the inn. In the same message to the innkeeper, I explained about Sonya and had her sent over along with my clothes and armor, and the barrel of nine-years-in-wood whiskey, which was declared to be my own private stock. All other innkeepers were to inventory their supply of the stuff and reserve it for my own exclusive use. RHIP. While I was thinking about it, I sent a message to Cieszyn, ordering the cook who had helped me make that first batch to run off another six thousand gallons of it and store it in oak casks. I promised to call for it in nine years.
Baron Wojciech was the first of the Banki brothers to arrive, since he had been in charge of the cleanup on the battlefield directly across the Vistula from Sandomierz. He came into my chambers at the palace with a cloth-wrapped package under his arm and looked admiringly at the tapestries, the furs, and the brightly painted wood carvings.
"You know," he said, "saving the country must pay pretty good. Someday I'm going to have to try that myself, sir! Or I guess I should call you your grace now."
"Sit down and have some mead," I said, pouring. "Wojciech, you can call me anything but an atheist, and you did your share in saving the country!"
"Thank you, your grace. I have a present for you, or at least a present I can give back to you." He unwrapped the package to display my pistol, the one I had lost during my fight at a pontoon bridge on the other side of the Vistula. It had been polished and cleaned and was only slightly rustpitted. It had my name engraved on it, since the smiths always seemed to do that sort of thing whenever they made anything for me, along with a note as to who had made it. Advertising, I suppose.
"Thank you. I see that you provided a new belt and holster. "
"I didn't know if you'd thrown the old ones away, your grace."
"Just as well. I left them on the Muddling Through, so I suppose they were burned when she was. I take it that you like this palace?"
"Of course! It's beautiful, your grace!"
"Good, because you have a present coming, too. This palace is going to be yours for the next two years. I want you to run the Sandomierz duchy for me as my deputy."
"Thank you, your grace! I'm honored. Yawalda is going to be thrilled! I know she will fall in love with this place."
"Well, don't get too attached to it. Remember, it's only temporary. "
"Yes, your grace. I'll be able to choose my own subordinates?"
"Within reason, yes. You'll have a battalion of regular army troops under you, but it's going to take some sorting out, since most of the warriors have farms or businesses to get back to. I want to keep three battalions of full-time fighting men together, though, in case we're attacked again. That's one here, one at Cracow, and one at Plock. Your brothers will have the other two. Baron Vladimir will command in time of war, and he'll have about a dozen battalions of part-time active reserve forces to back you up."
"Still, I don't think we'll be bothered for a while, and your main job will be to get every farmer who wants it seed, tools, and all the land he can farm. We can give them credit on supplies, and there should be more than enough land, what with all our losses to the Mongols."
"There were more losses than you know about, your grace. The Mongols took the city of Sieciechow, on the cast bank of the Vistula, and I don't think that they left a single man, woman, child, or domestic animal alive. They just murdered everybody, even the cripples and the priests. We even found somebody's pet dog nailed to a church door. And the young women. You don't want to hear about what they did to the young women. And there were worse things. You know those big Mongol catapults? Well, it looks like all the people that were pulling the ropes on them were Polish peasants! Many thousands of them were killed by our own guns, it looks like."
I put my face in my hands. "Oh, my God! I was there! We killed them ourselves! We thought that they were Mongols. Those catapults were destroying our riverboats! What else could we do?" I was crying. At the time, we'd been laughing at the way they died so easily, the way single bullets would take out whole rows of them. Would there be no end to my sins?
"You didn't know, your grace. You couldn't know. And even if you did, like you said, what else could you do?"
"Nothing, Wojciech! There wasn't a damn thing we could do. But I'll tell you this! Once we get things squared away around here, in a few years, we are going to go out east and get those filthy bastards. We are going to hunt them down and kill every Mongol in the world!"
"Good, your grace! I'll help you do it! I've seen the figures on the number of Big People that will be available in ten years, and with them we can chase the Mongols right off the edge of the world. "
"That we will! Or right into the sea of Japan, anyway!"
"Just don't forget me when the time comes. Don't forget that I was the one who had to bury those poor peasants."
"I won't. Tell me, what are things like in the east?"
"Empty, your grace. I think that there were three million Mongols who invaded us, and what they didn't eat, they fed to their horses, and what their horses didn't eat, they burned. You know, I think that's why they had to cross the Vistula so badly during the war. They had eaten everything on the east bank, and it was either cross over or starve! There are a few of the scouts who claim to have even found the remains of half-eaten humans, but you couldn't prove that by me. Just the same, folks are scarce over there. In the weeks that I've been on the east bank, I don't think I've seen over a thousand of our own people, except for the army. We put them all to work, you know, digging graves, mostly. We pay them, of course, and feed them, which is more important. But there are so few of them left!"
"A lot of people believed us when we told them to run to the west. Most of them will be returning. It's important that we repopulate that area. If we leave it empty, somebody else will move in. Maybe some of the warriors we'll be discharging will want land there. Write up an order for me to all commands, telling them that there is land east of the Vistula free for the farming. We can give them credit on tools, seed, and so on."
"Yes, your grace, but our people won't need credit. The booty hasn't been counted yet, but I can tell you we're all rich! I think there was more gold left on the banks of the Vistula than ever crossed it."
"Indeed? I would have thought that the Mongols would have looted their own dead."
"They did, your grace, but I think only on the sly, you know? I mean, there wasn't much to be found on the bodies on the tops of those piles, but there were dead men two dozen deep in some places! They never got to the ones at the bottom. "