"Okay. But don't leave any of our men behind! Not even if you know they're dead!"
"Right sir. Standard doctrine. Fall back to the boat! Don't leave our own men! Pick up our dead! Pass the word!"
The gunners above us were keeping most of the enemy from getting to us, but there wasn't anything they could do about those already on top of us. We were hard-pressed to keep up any sort of line, and in that damned mud, a saber had the advantage over a rapier. You couldn't get enough traction to lunge!
Fortunately, most of our men had axes and I had my sword. It was only the captain and his knights who had serious problems.
With only one eye, I still did my share. I think I must have killed a half dozen of the bastards, taking a dozen hits that would have killed me had I been wearing lesser armor. The stuff got in the way, but it was worth it.
In minutes, we weren't fighting in the mud anymore. We were fighting on top of the enemy dead, and that's treacherous footing. The Mongol sabers bounced off our armor, but many of them were armed with a spear that had a long, thin, triangular point, and that thing was a killer! Carried by a man on the run, or thrown at short range, they could punch right through our armor, and most of our serious casualties were caused by them.
Yet discipline and training held true for us. Our lines tightened up, our dead and wounded were put aboard and soon we were safe. I was next to the last man off the shore, and I would have been the last, except for the captain.
"My honors, sir. This is my company, and I'll be the last man off!"
He'd earned it, so I clambered aboard and let him follow me.
As Tadaos pulled the boat away from the shore, a medic took me inside and I was the last man to be hustled up to sick bay, even though I wanted to see what was going on topside. Medics have no respect for the wishes of a wounded man. They're all mother hens who are convinced that they know best.
He got my helmet off and tsk-tsked at my right eye.
"Have I lost it?" I said.
"No, sir, it missed the eyeball. But it stuck in the bone just to the right of it. You're going to have a scar, I'm afraid, but you'll see again. You were lucky."
"I would have been a damn sight luckier if the arrow had missed!"
"There is that, sir."
"Well, open that surgeon's kit' Get the arrowhead out, clean the wound, and sew it up! Didn't they teach you anything in medic's school?"
"I never sewed up an eye before, sir. In fact, I've never sewn up anything but dead animals in training."
"Well, boy, now's your chance to learn! First, wash your hands in white lightning, and then wash around the wound as best you can."
"Yes, sir."
After a bit, I said, "You got that done? Then get the pliers out of your kit and pull the arrowhead out. Better get somebody to hold my head still. It'll hurt, and I might flinch."
"You, sir? Never!"
"I said get somebody to hold my head and stop acting like I'm God! That's an order!"
"Yes, sir, You're not God. Hey, Lezek! Give me a hand! Hold his head!"
"Now the pliers," I said.
I don't know if I yelled or not, but I saw the most incredible visual display and I think I might have blacked out for a few moments.
"It's out, sir," he said, holding the bloody thing so I could see it with my good eye. The right one still wasn't working, somehow.
"Good. Throw it away. That kind of souvenir I don't need. Now get a pair of tweezers and feel around in the wound for any bits of broken bone or any foreign matter."
This time, I know I screamed. Having somebody feeling around inside of your head without anesthetics is no fun at all!
But he took his time at it and seemed to take out a few chunks of something. I wanted to tell him to leave some of the skull behind, but I thought better of it. I couldn't see what was happening and so I had to trust to the kid's judgment.
"I think that's all of it, sir."
"Thank God! Now, clean it all out again with white lightning. Pour it right in."
By now, the area was getting numb, and I didn't scream. I wanted to, you understand, but I could- hold it in.
"Okay. Now get out your sterile needle and thread and sew it up. Use nice neat little stitches, because if my wife doesn't like the job you did, she will make your life not worth living. Believe me. I know the woman."
"Yes, sir. Try not to wince so much. It makes it hard to line the edges up."
"I'll try."
He put nine stitches in there. I counted,
"That's it, sir."
"Well, bandage it up then, with some peat-bog moss next to the wound!"
"Yes, sir."
Without adhesive tape, the thing had to be held on by wrapping gauze around my head and under my chin.
When he was done, I sat up.
"Well. Good job, I hope. Thank you, but now you better get around to the other men who were wounded."
He looked around the room. "No sir, I think the surgeons have taken care of everybody."
"The surgeons!" I yelled. "Then what the hell are you?"
"Me, sir? I'm an assistant corpsman."
"Then what the hell were you doing operating on my head?"
"But, you ordered me to, sir! It was a direct order from my commanding officer! What was I supposed to do? Disobey you?"
"Then what were you doing with a surgeon's kit?"
"Oh, they had extra of those at the warehouse, sir, so they handed them out to some of the corpsmen, just in case."
"They just handed it to you?"
"Yes, sir. It's nice to know what some of these things are for."
I found I couldn't wear my arming hat over the bandage, but I could get the helmet on.
Before I could leave the sick bay, the chief surgeon came up to me, his armor hacked in a dozen places. I could see by the insignia and the fact that he carried a mace rather than a sword that the equally battered man standing next to the chief surgeon was the company chaplain. In any modem army, both of these positions would have been given noncombatant status, but in ours, every man was a warrior. This Sir Majinski was banner of the orange platoon, besides his medical duties.
"The butcher's bill, sir," he said.
I looked at it. Eleven dead. Twenty-ten seriously wounded, and I wasn't on that list. Fifty-one with minor wounds. Had I done it Tadaos's way, with flamethrowers, these men would all be alive and sound.
"Sorry about the incident with the corpsman, sir. I kept an eye on him while he was working on you, but I had a man with a sucking chest wound on my table, and I thought I might be able to save him. But the corpsman meant well, and he did a fair job."
"Well, give the corpsman my apologies. The man with the chest wound, could you save him?"
"No."
I checked in with Tartar Control. The battle near Brzesko was up to three boats now, and the battle across from Sandomierz was still raging, with a dozen boats still butchering Mongols. But it wasn't the same dozen. That group, out of ammunition, was heading back upstream to East Gate to rearm. I knew the supplies we had there and it wasn't going to be enough.
In the history books I read when I was a boy, some said that the Mongols had invaded with a million men. Others said that this was impossible, that the logistics of the time couldn't have supported more than fifty thousand. But if the estimates that I'd made and those I was getting from the other boats were anything like correct, we had killed more than a half a million Mongols in the first morning of the attack! Furthermore, they showed no signs of thinning out! In any event, the numbers involved were so much higher than I had expected that I had vastly underestimated the ammunition requirements.
On the other hand, they were showing absolutely none of the tactical brilliance that they were supposedly famous for and that I had feared. So far, they were easier to kill than dumb animals. Not that they could be expected to stay that dumb.
Then too, some of my actions had been pretty dumb as well, and it was my duty to see that my last set of stupid mistakes was not repeated.
RB1 TO ALL UNITS. WE HAVE ENGAGED THE ENEMY