Of course, a lot of the girls had all sorts of questions ' and they had no qualms about shoving the peasants aside and putting their scantily clad young bodies out in front. After a while I tried to get away and pleaded fatigue, but four of them sort of invited themselves to talk further with me in Lambert's old chambers. They were all pretty. A plain girl wouldn't have dared to be that pushy, fearing rejection.
There is a limit to how many times a man can say no, and I passed it. I was bleary-eyed the next morning and told myself that I was getting too old for this sort of thing.
I met Muskarini for breakfast and told him about the rest of my planned changes. Lambert had been running the entire factory on a barter system. Wool and flax were provided by his vassals, and like the workers, they received a portion of the finished cloth in return. The problem was that wool comes in various grades, of different values. The long wool from the sides of the animal is far more valuable than are the short hairs that grow on the legs. And some sheep grow much finer wool than others do. The workers had various skill levels in different crafts, and we produced hundreds of grades and types of cloth, again worth all different amounts. The accounting required by all of this was so ridiculously complicated that I doubt if anybody really knew what was going on.
There was a very good reason why Lambert had done things in this strange way. By the terms of his separation with his wife, he had to send her one-half of all the money that he took in. Not half of his net income but half of the cash that he grossed. When he had made this agreement, it had been reasonable enough, since most of what little money Lambert got he received from selling his surplus agricultural products, what was left over after he and his peasants had eaten most of it. His old castle had been built for him by his people out of local materials. His smiths made many of the things that he needed. Cash money was just something with which to buy occasional luxury goods from the merchants, not something that was needed for life itself. Also, Lambert's wife had very extensive estates of her own in Hungary to support herself with, so she wasn't hurting.
But all this changed when I built him a productive factory. He could hardly pay her one-half of the gross cash worth of the products of his factory, since the cost of materials and labor was well over half the sale price. Running the clothworks with a conventional accounting system would have put him quickly out of business. Indeed, for several months, until he came up with the barter solution to his problem, he was very difficult to work with!
I was under no such liability, and I wanted to know what was happening financially, so I ordered the factory changed over to a sensible money system. We would buy our wool and flax with money, pay the workers with money, and sell all our output for money. Well, we'd offer special discounts to our workers and vendors to keep them happy, but it would now be an accountable system.
Muskarini was not at all pleased with my changes and came up with all sorts of ridiculous reasons why we couldn't convert to a cash system. This made me suspect that he had his hand in the till somehow. After two hours of arguing with the man, I told him that he would do it my way or I would send him back to the garret that I had found him in nine years before. That quieted him down some. On leaving him, I went to the inn and sent a message ordering a team of accountants and time-study men to descend on this place, ASAP!
I saddled Silver to get to my next stop, Eagle Nest, before lunch. The medieval world had no great collection of restaurants available to travelers, and you generally had to time your trips around the hours when food was served at the manors and factories if you didn't want to miss a lot of meals.
As I was leaving, one of the girls who had spent the night with me was waiting by the drawbridge. She smiled and reminded me that Eagle Nest was an all-male institution, and didn't I really want some companionship tonight? I decided that if I didn't give her a lift, she'd probably hitchhike there, putting herself into all sorts of danger. At least that was how I rationalized it to myself. I pulled her aboard and set her on the saddle bow. She was the prettiest of last night's group, with incredibly soft skin for so slender a person and the longest legs I've seen this side of a Hollywood musical. Her name was Zenya.
I found that I rather liked having a girl sitting in front of me, where we could talk easily, as opposed to having her behind, riding apillion. I resolved to have a saddle made up with a more comfortable seat for a woman up front.
The boys at Eagle Nest were always enthusiastic, bustling about wherever they went, and their mood was infectious. They had eight planes flying now, and many more were being built. Their eagerbeaver attitude toward whatever they were doing was a joy to watch. It was such a pity that I was going to have to slam them down hard!
On being told that all the aircraft were brand-new, except for the engines, I said, "But there are the nine planes that were still intact after crash-landing on the battlefield at Sandomierz. They were sent here immediately after the battle. What happened to them?"
We asked around, but no one had any knowledge of them. They had received the thirteen engines that we had hauled back with the booty, but whole planes? No, sir!
What bothered me worse than losing the planes was the fact that each of those planes had been strapped to the top of a war cart that had been manned by a full platoon of warriors. Where were all those men?
I sent a dozen messages out, trying to locate them, but had no luck. A company and a half of men had simply disappeared! We never did find them, their equipment, or the airplanes, either. It remains a mystery that is told late at night around the fires, and the story grows a bit with each retelling.
Interlude Three
I hit the STOP button and started fumbling with the keyboard, trying to call up the Historical Corps records on just what had happened to all those men and all that equipment. I wasn't that used to the system, and it took me quite a while to get what I wanted.
The naked girl at my side looked on without saying anything, so I explained to her what I was after. She just said, "Yes, sir."
She was a cuddly little thing and seemed to enjoy my light petting, but she didn't have a lot to say. I mean, she didn't actually encourage my roving hands, but she didn't object any, either.
Eventually I dug out what I was looking for.
"Those men were caught in a Mongol ambush," I told her. "They were going without a cavalry screen, and those planes on their war carts made it hard to get their weapons out. They were killed to a man. Then the Mongol commander had their armor and equipment sent straight back to the east, and the bodies hidden. If the Mongol craftsmen can figure out the guns and planes, Conrad is going to have some serious problems on his hands!"
"Yes, sir," she said.
I hit the START button.
Chapter Twenty-five
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
Since the war was over, the boys were back at their usual two shifts, going to school in either the mornings or the afternoons and working in the shops or flying on the opposite shift. I couldn't address them all until after the evening meal.
"Gentlemen. First off, I want to thank you for your dedicated service in the war that together we have just won. While a final head count is not yet in, I think that I am safe in saying that over two million Mongols were killed on the banks of the Vistula by our riverboats, and those boats could not have done half that job without your accurate scouting and reporting of enemy positions. I think that it is fair to say that a million of the enemy owe their timely deaths to your own very good work! That's more than were killed by the regulars at Sandomierz, Cracow, and Three Walls combined!"