"How did you get that armor? Why are you wearing a monk's cassock instead of your bishop's robes? And why are you down here instead of up in your cathedral?" My head was buzzing.
"We got the armor by going to Three Walls and paying for it. The Church is not poor, after all. I am in the lower city because I judged that Wawel Hill would hold but that I would be needed down here. As to the cassock, well, the ladies often spend years embroidering a single one of my formal robes, and it would be rude to ruin one. Is anything else troubling you, my son?" he said patiently, standing in the rain.
"No, Father. "
"Then you had best get about your business. This day's work isn't done yet. Go with God, my son!"
We mounted up and rode out.
Captain Wladyclaw and I rode through the town, taking out the enemy as we found them until we got to the Butcher's Gate by the waterfront. Quite a few enemy horsemen had apparently had their fill of fighting real warriors and were streaming out of the city.
"There's the place for us," Captain Wladyclaw shouted, pointing with his saber. "Every one of them that gets out now is one more that we'll have to catch later on!"
"Right you are! For God and Poland!"
We hacked our way to the gate and then turned to defend it, not against an aggressor from the outside, as is usual with city gates, but against aggressors from the inside who were trying to escape. The gate was a tunnel a dozen yards long and just wide enough to allow two men on horseback to fight while guarding it. A convenient killing ground.
The first Mongol to follow us through plunged out of the rain and into the relative darkness of the gate without realizing that we were there. Captain Wladyclaw got a lance into his horse about the time I split his greasy head open with my sword. Our eyes were accustomed to the darkness, while those of the enemy weren't. The second enemy's horse tripped over the remains of the first, but the end results were similar. The Mongols weren't expecting anyone to be trying to stop them from leaving, and in that dark tunnel a fair number went down without getting a chance to draw their swords.
A proper Christian knight would have been horrified at what we were doing, but my forces didn't believe in fighting fair. You were either out there to kill the bastards or you shouldn't be fighting in the first place. Anyway, I kept seeing in my mind that mother nailed to the door frame of her house, and I didn't feel very merciful.
Soon, however, the dead men and horses in front of us were warning enough for all but the absolutely stupid, and things started to slow down. In a few dozen minutes, my sword arm was getting sore and the dead before us were piled up saddle high. Mongols had taken to dismounting in order to climb the pile of their dead, and a Mongol on foot is dog meat to a warrior mounted on a Big Person. Nonetheless, we were being slowly pushed back out of the city gate for no other reason than that we couldn't climb the dead bodies, either. Eventually we were out in the rain again.
During a lull I said, "You know, Captain Wladyclaw, that gate is so packed that it will be hours before they can get a horse through it, and a Mongol on foot isn't much to worry about. What say we see how the other gates are doing?"
"Whatever you say, my lord. You're the commander." Anna smashed in the skull of another Mongol footman, and such had become our casualness with killing that it didn't break our conversation.
"Have you seen me command anything lately? The fight in the city is so scattered that no one could possibly keep track of it, let alone give any sensible orders. But as your brother in arms, I suggest we try the next gate east."
"Done, my lord, or brother in arms, as you would have it!" he said with a smile.
At the next gate we found two of my other scouts with exactly the same idea that we had, and with much the same results. We wished them well and continued on around the city. We found a lance of our own foot troops guarding the third gate we came to.
"Sir, our captain said we was to guard this gate, but there ain't nothing happening here. Any chance we could go back in and join in on the fighting?" the knight in charge said.
"Sorry, but you're needed fight where you are. The Mongols have been trying to break out of a lot of the other gates, and we've been bottling them in. If they try it here, you'll have your hands full."
"But there ain't no Mongols hereabouts, sir!"
"Your job is here. Do it!" Captain Wladyclaw and I rode through the gate and back into the fight.
Soon we were in another free-for-all, a bloody chaos of swinging and stabbing with the city still burning around us, despite the rain.
The only water available was in a few wells, enough to provide some not particularly safe drinking water but totally insufficient for fire fighting. In the quieter areas civilians were trying to save their homes, but they didn't have much chance of success. Aside from the churches, most of the buildings in the lower city were made of wood and had roofs made of straw. What's more, they were built right next to each other with no space in between, and the upper stories overhung the narrow streets below so that the fires could easily leap the narrow gap between two city blocks. The rain helped a lot to slow things down, but the place was still a firetrap. I didn't see how anything could stop the fires but running out of fuel. That's to say, running out of city.
In one burned-out area I was pleased to note that my Pink Dragon Inn was still standing. My chief innkeeper, Tadeusz, had spent some of our fabulous profits giving the inns in the more important cities brick walls and tile roofs. I suppose he had done this more for reasons of prestige than for fireproofing, but the result was the same. Since the inn was so big that it took up an entire city block, it was isolated from the flames that had burned all around it.
I dismounted and beat on the door.
"We're closed for the duration of the battle," came a muffled voice from within.
"You're not closed to me! I own the place!" I shouted back.
A peephole slid open, and then the door was unbarred. The rotund shape of Tadeusz himself filled the doorway.
"My, lord Conrad! I didn't know it was you' " He was shocked by our appearance, a reasonable thing since we were both drenched with human blood,
"Very little of the blood is our own," I assured him. "Can you spare us a quick meal? We haven't eaten since daybreak. "
"Of course, my lord, of course. I'll get it myself, since the waitresses and cooks have all been sent to shelter on Wawel Hill. There's none here but the bartenders and a few old guards, and they're all on the top floor with crossbows. Come in, come in, my lords, and you'd best bring your mounts in with you. They'll be wanting food and drink, too, yes, of course." He barred the door behind us.
"We're not particular about what we get so long as we get it fast," I said, leading the group into the kitchen. I put a bushel of fairly fresh bread in front of each of the Big People, and Captain Wladyclaw set out two buckets of clean water for them. We sat at the cook's worktable, which Tadeusz proceeded to cover with fifty kinds of preserved foods, most of them of the rare and expensive variety. We didn't give it the attention it deserved but just wolfed down the calories as fast as we could. We both passed up the wines that were set out for some big glasses of small beer. Fighting is thirsty work, and the job wasn't done yet.
The innkeeper was still setting out food when we got up to leave.
"You're leaving so soon, my lord'?"