We got on the radios and had all boats report their positions and headings. If they bunched up, that meant long stretches of the river weren't being patrolled. It also meant that boats might be so far apart that radio messages between them might not be received, and that could cut our communication lines in half. We put markers on a map and started getting things organized. By midnight, we had schedules for all of them, where they should be at what time, assuming they weren't involved with refugees or Mongols. Even then, they were supposed to try to make up the time, since the schedule had them moving at only half speed.
At dawn, the RB9 Lady of Cracow reported a heavy enemy concentration across the river from Sandomierz. I told them to make a three-mile switchback, letting them hit the concentration three times. They complained vigorously when I ordered them to continue the patrol, but the RB20 Wastrel would be on station in minutes to take over the load.
The next four boats by there did the same, while we saw only scattered patrols. I wasn't going to let a bunch of boatmasters, excited at their first contact with the enemy, upset our schedules! As long as we could keep the bastards on the west side of the river, we'd get them all eventually.
But when we got near Sandomierz, I saw that they hadn't been exaggerating a bit. Through my telescope, I could see the Mongols had troops thirty deep along the shoreline. More importantly, at the shoreline men and horses were piled five and six high, and dead! There must have been twenty thousand dead along that sector of river, but they kept on coming. The riverboats were earning their pay!
Chapter Fifteen
I ran below decks and told Piotr to order the closest dozen boats to join the fun. We could just cruise up and down, raking them with everything we had except the flamethrowers, which had to be reserved for bridges.
That done, I opened the hatch to go back up on deck. A dozen Mongol arrows flew in at me! Four stuck in my armor and by the time I had them pulled out, I had been hit two more times. But I wasn't hurt. That armor really worked! So I ignored the arrows and pressed on.
On deck, the men looked like pincushions and were laughing about it. The deck itself was so filled with arrows that you couldn't take a single step without breaking some. Tadaos had the boat running a few dozen yards from shore, letting them hit us but making sure that we couldn't miss!
I saw a warrior go down with an arrow in his eyeslit; and another man take his place at the gun before the first had hit the floor. But the medics were right there and there wasn't anything I could do. Men running up ammunition moved with a skating motion that broke off the arrows so they wouldn't have to step on them.
The noise was deafening. Both starboard peashooters were firing without letup, throwing six hundred rounds a minute into an almost solid mass of Mongol troops. Those iron balls had about the ballistics of a carbine bullet. When they hit a man, he was wounded or dead, armor or no armor. Shooting into that tangled mass, I don't see how any of them could possibly have missed.
The sides of the boat were two and a half stories high, with smooth surfaces so they couldn't be climbed. But I saw a Mongol try to get in by grabbing on to the paddle wheel. I got my sword out, but before I could swing, the man was killed by one of the arrows flying at us. His body continued around and back into the water. I sent a runner to get a dozen men with pikes to guard the rear railing, and watched it until they arrived.
The Halmans were chunking away, and Tadaos was aiming one himself, laughing and shouting with every round that exploded above the mass. It was good shooting and better loading, because the loader had to time the fuse so that it exploded just above the heads of the enemy. Too high or too low and much of the effect was lost. The millions of rounds expended in training were paying dividends. Mongols were dying in droves.
The gunners from our boat's company of troops had their three dozen swivel guns set up on deck, adding joyfully to the carnage. Their rounds were far more powerful than those of the peashooters. You could see rows of three and four horsemen go down, all killed by the same bullet!
I'd heard that in modem battles, a quarter-million rounds are fired for every enemy killed. We were averaging considerably better! In fact, I never saw anybody miss!
And everything we were doing was soon multiplied by twelve, since the men in the other boats weren't acting like old maids either!
Any sane army would have run away from us, but these people weren't that sane. A modem army might have dug in. but that hadn't occurred to these horsemen, and with luck, it never would.
I could imagine Mongol commanders in the rear hearing about the slaughter and not believing it! I could imagine them sending observer after observer forward and not having any come back. Or better yet, going forward to see for themselves what the racket was and doing a bit of dying of their own!
It was likely, since our gunners always went after anyone who wore a fancy outfit or looked like he was giving orders. Besides a loader, each gunner had an observer whose job it was to point out good targets, and a boat gunner's helmet had "ears" on it pointing backward so he could hear what was being shouted at him.
After a few miles of this, we started running out of Mongols, so Tadaos had the boat turned around and we went upstream for some more gleeful mayhem. The troops quickly remounted their swivel guns on the port railing and reloaded. There were so many arrows stuck to the inside of the port parapet that they had to get out their axes and clear away the gun ports before they could mount their weapons! The men on the port peashooters, who had been dying of frustration up to this point, got ready to get their inning in.
The RB7 Invincible was coming downstream at us, followed closely by the RB12 Insufferable, so we had to stay a little farther out in the channel and try not to shoot holes in them.
The sun was well up now, and shining in our eyes, but we didn't need accurate shooting at this point, we just needed shooting! Even at a gross yards, we could hardly miss that mass of enemy troops.
I went to the starboard side and looked over. Since it was only sheet metal over wood, there were thousands of arrows stuck in the ship's armor. But I guess we had judged the metal gauge right, since none of them penetrated all the way.
On the opposite shore, people on the walls of Sandomierz were waving at us, cheering us on. But sightseeing, I wasn't doing my job. I turned to go back down to the control room when a plane flew over. One of the oversized message arrows thunked into the deck. I picked it up myself and waved at the pilot. He wagged his wings and flew off.
Downstairs, I read the message.
"Praty gud!" it read. "Bot they mak a bridge 7 mil downstream of U. Lambert." So Count Lambert was finally learning how to read and write! A pity about his spelling, though.
I checked the situation board and found that we had no boats between Sieciechow and Sandomierz. There should have been, but nobody nearby wanted to miss out on the action here. I sent a message to Tadaos to turn downstream again and radioed RB17 The Ghost of St. Joseph to follow us.
The RB21 Calypso reported that another concentration of Mongols west of Brzesko had been spotted by a plane, and wanted to turn back and investigate. With the planes flying, we really didn't have to keep up a steady watch for breakthroughs from the boats. Permission granted.
As we proceeded downriver, it was soon obvious what Lambert had seen. Along the shore, a long line of small boats was being lashed together, gunwale to gunwale, and ropes and logs were being fastened on top of them to form a roadway. All the boats on the west bank were supposed to have been destroyed, but I guess that hadn't happened. Once completed, they would swing that pontoon bridge into the current and fasten it to the opposite shore. At least that looked to be their plan.
I called for Captain Targ, who commanded the company of troops we had on board.