Baron Vladimir pulled out at dawn, and I left with my own troops shortly afterward, leaving two companies behind to care for our pitifully few wounded.
I was riding the new white Big Person I'd found on the battlefield. Anna, my usual mount, wasn't at all happy about this, but the new bioengineered horse understood only English, and so I was the only person in this century who could use her properly. Big People were too valuable to waste, so I lent Anna to one of the scouts who was screening our force. There were few enough Big People to do the job. I had only ten out of our total of thirty-three, and that's a thin screen for a force of over fifty thousand men, especially when there were who knows how many Mongol stragglers around. We'd spotted a few. The job couldn't be done with men on ordinary horses, since once we got on the railroad, our men could pull a war cart six dozen miles a day at a walk, far faster than any war-horse could travel.
I wished that the white mount's rider was still alive. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask that man. In the few moments that I'd been able to talk to him, he had spoken with an American English accent! Further, if he was riding a bioengineered horse, he must have had something to do with whoever it was that had built the time machine that had brought me to this century. He had to be some kind of observer at the battle, or even a tourist, but he had been killed by a Mongol spear before I had had time to get some answers out of him. I'd like to know just why I was dumped into this brutal century! There can't be that many time travelers around. Would I ever get another chance to talk to one?
It took all our men to haul the carts over the half-frozen fields, but we got to the railroad track south of Sandomierz around noon, and once on it we could go much more quickly. Further, riding on iron tracks, it takes only a dozen and a half men to pull one of our big war carts, and they can pull it easily even with the rest of the men riding on or under the cart, slung on hammocks, sleeping. This let us travel day and night without stopping. The men all had full plate armor, although it was common practice to leave the helmets and leg armor in the carts while pulling.
Cookstoves were slung from the rear of each cart, with the cooks walking behind as they did their work, and dinner was being prepared when a wounded rider on one of our Big People came galloping up to me. I recognized him as being one of the couriers I had sent out, the one who had gone to Legnica. His right side and leg were drenched with blood, and he didn't waste time conveying any message to me from my liege lord, Duke Henryk.
"Lord Conrad, Cracow is burning!" he said before he fell unconscious from the saddle.
Chapter Four
I STOPPED the five-mile-long column that I was leading, turned to the captain of the leading company, and shouted, "Dump the booty on the ground! Dump it, I say! We have to lighten the load and go as fast as we can. Dump it and then get your men going at double time. Cracow is burning!"
He looked at me aghast, and it was a moment before he could comprehend what I was saying. Dump an unimaginable fortune on the ground? Victory had been turned into defeat? How was that possible? But discipline and training took over. He turned and obeyed orders. Men scurried off the carts, the big lids were taken off the six carts that the captain commanded, and thirty tons of gold and silver were dumped on both sides of the double track.
A banner had the wounded courier hauled onto a cart, and a medic bent over him. A new man was appointed scout and, with the Big Person, was added to our screen. Actually, it wasn't necessary to make a new scout. We had twice as many scouts as we had mounts for them, a fact that made sense once you realize that Big People didn't need sleep, but us Little People did. But there wasn't another scout present, so I let the man have his promotion.
As the new scout started to ride out, I called to him and had him come back. Instead of joining the screen, I had him ride back toward Sandomierz and tell Baron Vladimir about the attack on Cracow. This action turned out to be one of my major tactical errors.
"Get the pullers moving!" I shouted. "They can run while the other half of the men dump the load. Throw out everything but weapons, ammunition, and four days' food. Double time!"
The men on the carts behind were staring in unbelief at what the first company was doing, and I realized that this was an order that I would have to give personally to each officer. They wouldn't have believed it otherwise! I signaled DOUBLE TIME, PASS THE WORD and rode down the long line of troops and carts, shouting orders.
After a bit, one of my captains asked, "The radios, too, sir? And how about these airplane engines?"
"Hell, yes! They're not doing us any good now, are they?" There were a dozen radios with the companies farther up the line, enough in case the weather cleared.
"Just figured I should ask, sir."
I was already on my way as the expensive set went flying to smash on the siding of the railroad.
It took an hour to get the job done, and the carts were more strung out than I would have wished, but fourteen hundred tons of gold and silver were scattered out beside four miles of track, along with three times that weight of fancy swords, decorated armor, and other booty. Four hundred tons of surplus food were dumped as well, but we were running to Cracow.
I ordered the last company in my column to stay there and guard what we had abandoned. They didn't like it, but they did it.
Running at double time, the men pulling have to be changed every quarter hour, but the carts don't stop. Everything happens at a run, and each man is relieved when his replacement catches up with him. There were ladders on both sides of each cart to let a man climb up even when it was moving, but the warriors rarely used them. Once you knew the trick, you could step between the spokes of one of the huge wheels, let it carry you up, and then step from the top of the wheel to the top of the cart. Pity the man who trips and falls, but don't stop for him!
In practice sessions we'd been able to keep this up for an entire day and a night with fresh troops. These men were far from fresh, having started out nearly exhausted, but they did it, anyway.
We ran nonstop for the rest of the day and ate two meals literally on the run. As dusk fell, the lanterns were set out at the ends of the carts, and we pushed on into the night. I ordered a midnight breakfast since, as the Eskimos say, food replaces sleep.
I sent three of our scouts forward to find out anything that they could. I desperately wanted to go myself, but I couldn't. My place was with my troops.
The pace was deadening, mind-numbing, absolutely exhausting, but to drop back to a walk would delay our arrival in Cracow by a day. How many of our countrymen could be killed by a Mongol horde in a day? Thousands? Tens of thousands? We had to push on, no matter what the cost, for the price of anything else was more than I dared pay.
And it was costing us, how much I didn't know. Most of my men had had only four months' training, and many of them couldn't keep up the pace. Men dropped and lay where they fell, and more than once I felt my mount jump an obstacle on the path beside the track. I could only hope that we didn't trample anyone. As men began to fall and not get up, officers at the rear of the column started abandoning carts and moving the men forward to replace our losses. These abandoned carts would make Baron Vladimir's job of reaching us that much harder, but there was nothing else we could do.
The Night Fighters used a smaller war cart than did the rest of the troops, pulled by a seven-man lance rather than a forty-three-man platoon. With only four men pulling, they were having a hard time keeping up with the other, more efficient full-sized carts. Over Baron Ilya's protests, the Night Fighter Battalion was disbanded, the carts put off the road, and the men distributed to the other five battalions as replacements.