Anna screamed a warning, but Conrad was far ahead of us when the fight started. She raced to his aid, but before she got there, it was all over, The first Mongol threw one of those deadly spears at Conrad, the sort that all the warriors I had met complained of. At close range, those spears could puncture even our best armor.
Conrad turned in the saddle and slashed the spear in half as it flew at him! His second blow came downward at the spearman's neck, and head and arm came off the rest of the body in a single piece. He then wheeled his mount and charged at the second Mongol, who was shooting arrows at him. Two of the missiles struck my love in the chest and stuck there, but he paid them no attention. He simply charged straight in and knocked them over, man and horse! As the enemy started to get up, dazed, a last blow of that amazing sword chopped through both helmet and skull, and suddenly all was quiet.
"Well done, your grace!" Sir Wiktor shouted as our carriage coasted to a stop. "I have heard of your prowess often enough, but that's the first time I've ever had the chance to see it."
It was the second time I'd seen my love in battle, and it affected me this time just as it had before. I wanted nothing more than to take him into the bushes and love him on the spot, the child in my womb notwithstanding! A glance at the maids told me that the effect was universal, and the new blonde was chanting, "Yes. Yes. Yes," with a silly grin on her face.
Duke Conrad dismounted and called to Baron Wiktor, "Come help me round up their horses! The people behind us were worried about spare mounts. Now we can leave them some. Francine, get out your writing kit and write them a note that we can leave behind."
There wasn't much time lost in getting the enemy horses, since Anna and Silver cooperated nicely in rounding them up. Soon Conrad came to the carriage with two large purses filled mainly with gold. He looked at the arrows stuck in his golden breastplate as if he had noticed them for the first time, and pulled them out.
"Well, there's a mess for the jeweler to worry about. And here's some booty that we won't have to share with the whole army! What do you say to an eight-way split, for Anna and Silver deserve a share as well."
And that's just what he did. The maids were ecstatic! They each got four years' pay.
The horses were tied to the track along with my letter to Baron Gregor, the dead Mongols were left for the others to dispose of, and we were back on our way to Cracow in minutes. And still I wasn't sure. Was he that lucky or simply that good?
Finally I asked him about it as he rode along by my side. He said with an almost perfectly straight face, "My strength is as the strength of ten, for my heart is pure."
So I still didn't know! He wouldn't tell me pure what!
At Cracow the carriage was taken from the track at the station, and Anna pushed it slowly through the burned-out cottages of the suburbs. It was a sorry sight, yet the first greenery of spring was on the land, promising the healing of old wounds. At the city gate, Conrad left us to go to the bishop's palace on Wawel Hill, and we followed slowly afterward, for to push the carriage over a plain road without iron rails made Anna's task more difficult.
The guard at the inner gate at Wawel Hill gave us a joyful greeting, saying that Conrad had gone before and that Duke Henryk was here as well. Baron Wiktor and I were more than a little apprehensive as we went to Wawel Castle, for confronting the duke was a thing that neither of us looked forward to. Yet it had to be done, and it was better that we should do it before Conrad was through with Bishop Ignacy. There was no telling what my love would do if the situation was left to him alone.
As we entered the ducal chamber, Duke Henryk was sitting behind the desk that he had used so many times before, that he himself had once ordered made in imitation of the one Conrad had given to the bishop. But it was a chamber that had been promised to Baron Wiktor by my husband, in a castle that no longer belonged to Henryk!
"Welcome to Wawel Castle, your grace," Baron Wiktor said.
"You bid me welcome, Wiktor? To my own castle?"
"Yours no longer, your grace. The seyms have elected Conrad duke of Little Poland, and of Sandomierz and Mazovia as well."
"The nobles of Cracow all swore fealty to me," Henryk said. I could see that this would go as badly as I had feared.
"True, your grace," Baron Wiktor said, "but since that time, you abandoned the city to the Mongols, and the men who swore to you have been killed almost to a man. The nobles and burghers who are left would never obey one whom they think has betrayed them, and Conrad is now duke.",
"So I have been told by the churlish louts, may their souls be damned! I never abandoned Poland!"
"Yet you were not here when the city was attacked, your grace. Duke Conrad was."
"He was here in disobedience of my orders! I told him to come to me in Legnica!"
"He could not obey you, your grace. Your battle plan was foolish, and he had to obey a higher power."
"What higher power? I was his liege lord!"
"Your grace, can you possibly have forgotten the night five years ago when you and he and 1, along with three dozen others, stood vigil in the mountains? Can you have forgotten that morning when God Himself put a holy halo about each of our heads and blessed the work that we were going to do? Can you have forgotten that you yourself knelt before Conrad and were knighted by him into our Holy Order of the Radiant Warriors?"
Duke Henryk was cringing before the baron's onslaught. I was surprised to see Baron Wiktor standing up to the duke so forcefully, so masterfully. There was more to the man than I had suspected, and he wasn't through with the duke yet!
"You must have forgotten, for when the time came for us to do the work that God had ordained, you went and came up with a silly battle plan without even consulting with the man who headed your own order. You had a fine time writing and consulting with every king and duke in Christendom, but you had never a word for the man with the finest army in the world! The man whom God chose to do the job! So you sat and hid in Legnica while Conrad fought the war without you, and now you have the gall to sit in his castle as if the spoils of that war were yours to take!"
"There was sickness in our camp. The foreign troops were slow in arriving. We could not advance," the duke said weakly.
"The sickness could have been avoided had you heeded Conrad's book on camp sanitation. We had no sickness! And to hell with the foreign troops! We didn't need them!"
"Well, the foreign knights have now been sent to Hungary to aid our allies in accordance with my agreement with King Bela. More than half of my own men went with them as well."
"Good, your grace. We no longer need them. What remains to be seen is whether or not we need you any longer, either! "
"You threaten me, Baron Wiktor?"
"No, your grace. I merely suggest that when you meet with my liege lord, Duke Conrad, you assume a properly grateful attitude. He, not you, saved the country, and he, not you, commands here. Remember that he now controls half of Poland, and he could take the other half by force at any time if he was minded to!"
"I… I will bear your words in mind, Baron Wiktor. If you'll excuse me, Duchess." And with that, Duke Henryk left the chamber, his back bent.
"Baron, you were magnificent," I said as soon as the door closed. I couldn't resist throwing my arms around him!
"I merely spoke the truth," Wiktor said as he disengaged himself and sat behind the desk. "Duke Conrad has made me his deputy here, and I would have failed him if I had let someone else usurp that power. Please be seated, my duchess. Our lord can't be too much longer with his confessor."