"That is a generous offer, Conrad."
"I'm just trying to save my soul, Father. Those siege cannons aren't the most deadly weapons that I have. Anyway, I'll be getting most of it back as booty once I win the battle. "
"Very well, Conrad, I'll see what I can do, and I'll get the archbishop involved in this as well. However, I notice that you are again calling your weapons of war 'canons.' A canon is a law of the Church, and while your strange use of the term was funny at first, the joke has gone stale. I want you to stop it. "
"Yes, Father."
"On another matter, you have not been living with your wife. This is not good. You were joined together by God, after all."
"Father, she is still angry because I did not make her the Queen of Poland. I didn't do that and I won't do that, because I don't want to be the king. Henryk is far better qualified than I am, and anybody sane can see it! I've asked her to come back and told her that there will always be a place for her. What more can I do?"
"You could be a bit more vigorous in your invitation, my son. "
"You're saying that I should use force?"
"The Church allows it, within reason."
"The Church allows it, but God doesn't demand it! I'm not going to beat her or shackle her to the kitchen stove. Good men didn't do that sort of thing in my time."
"Well, think on it, my son. Meanwhile, I shall see what can be done with the Teutonic Knights."
The bishop returned to me the next day with word that the Crossmen had accepted my offer and he had worked out with them a system where there wouldn't be much cheating. They also offered me their war-horses on the same terms at a thousand pence a head, with the understanding that they could get them back at any time by repaying the money should the battle prove to be protracted. I went along with that. There was no point killing dumb animals, I'd be getting the money back, and we could probably train most of those chargers to pull railroad cars. From the Crossmen's point of view, the Church would be taking care of their horses at my expense until they were needed, but let them have their dreams.
The time was dragging slowly, and the troops were getting antsy. Finally, I talked to my partner about it.
"Henryk, I don't want to rush you, but it's been more than three weeks now. Do you realize that I am paying the salaries of over fifty thousand men while many of them sit idle every day?"
"Yes, Conrad, and I well know how you hate waste. But this is not time wasted. Prince Swientopelk is starting to come around. The Baltic seacoast could be ours! What would you think of having not one but two seaports, one at the mouth of the Vistula and one at the Odra?"
"It would be fine, and I've often dreamed of building oceangoing steamships. We could buy and sell abroad, explore the world, and spread the faith. We could even find coffee and rubber! But we could not start doing it for years yet. We have commitments that will take us years to fulfill. We are too overextended now to even consider further expansion at this time. You know that."
"But the iron is hot now, Conrad, and it might grow cold in five years. We need not promise to do much until then. Just some little show of support might be enough. Your reputation alone could do it. Have I ever told you that putting those Mongol heads up on pikes was a stroke of genius?"
"Not in so many words, and thank you. But what can I tell my men? When can we start the battle?"
"A week, Conrad. Can you give me another week?"
"A week. Very well, I'll hold them back until then. But a week from this morning I'm opening fire!"
Chapter Thirty-two
The next week was simultaneously hectic and boring. A few dozen people tried to put their mark on history by playing the peacemaker. They ran back and forth between me and the Crossmen and Henryk, carrying absurd peace offers. None of us took these fools seriously, but none of us wished to appear to be unreasonable warmongers, either. My best offer to them was that if the Crossmen would go back to the Holy Land, where they'd started from, and never come back, I'd call the whole thing off, let them march out with their weapons and treasure, and let them all live, besides. Their best offer to me was less polite.
Bishop Ignacy did a good job getting the noncombatants out of Turon. There were over 500 of them, servants, stable boys, and prostitutes, mostly. He also got us 1,900 horses, all of them in very good shape. It turned out that the Crossmen had sent most of their chargers away before we got there and had kept only the best, because of a lack of hay to feed all of them during a protracted siege. There were a remarkable number of dogs, cats, and caged birds that I paid for, but I drew the line at "pet" rats and mice. They figured that it had been worth a try.
At just before noon on the scheduled day we opened up on them with our swivel guns, shooting just enough to teach them to keep under cover. Half our guns were available for targets of opportunity, but each one of the other half had its own assigned target: a window, a doorway, a space between two merlons on the wall. They were bore-sighted and packed between sandbags, and in the course of the day, by trial and error, they got their targets down pat. This was to teach the Crossmen the art of not being seen. All through the next night the sandbagged guns fired occasionally at random, teaching the same lesson at night: Stay down! The few slit windows in the outer walls were soon plugged up tight with timbers by the defenders, nicely sealing the entire structure, which was the purpose of the exercise. This stopped the bullets, because this year we were firing cartridges with far less gunpowder than last year's. Six inches of pine could stop our rounds cold. I didn't want to put holes in anything. Quite the opposite.
The random firing continued the next day, except when the gunners actually had a target, an increasingly rare event. Around noon we took a few trial shots with the mortars, using dummy rounds loaded with sand. They did very little damage, but they let us know that our aim was good enough. Small-arms fire continued into the second night, and I was sure that by then the garrison was very low on sleep. An hour before midnight the small-arms fire slackened off.
It was a sultry night and almost completely calm. It would work tonight if it was going to work at all. I had the smallarms fire stop completely and allowed the Crossmen a quarter hour to get to sleep.
Then we opened up with the mortars, firing as fast as their crews could load them, one round a minute each. This continued for only twelve minutes and then stopped. They were out of ammunition, which relieved me. Having that stuff sit around for weeks in the sun and in public made me nervous.
The mortar rounds were a yard in diameter and two yards high. They were made of a thin iron shell with a blown-in glass lining. When the shell struck, the glass broke and the pressurized liquid chlorine inside was released. If the lining broke in the course of being fired, it didn't matter, for the metal shell kept it together long enough to-get the poison into the sleeping city.
The delegates were encouraged to watch the shelling, and when it was over, I told them that I thought that we had just won the battle. When they asked me how that was possible, I told them that wars were ugly things and it was best to get them over as soon as possible. Then I suggested that they all go to sleep. Nothing else should happen until morning.
The army troops couldn't sleep, however. At first they stood to their guns with slow flares lit in front of them in case the Crossmen came pouring out of the city. Then they were all standing on top of their war carts in case something far more deadly than enemy troops came pouring out. More of the deadly gas might have leaked out than I had calculated. Chlorine is heavy stuff, almost three times heavier than air. I figured that it should fill the city up to the top of the walls, like soup in a bowl, and hug the ground until it was absorbed by the dew.