She was intent on marrying a true belted knight, or not marrying at all. Although nothing had been said of it, I was sure that those who survived the warrior school would soon be knighted. What other purpose could the school have?
So thus it was that I was standing in line with a gross of the grossest peasants I'd ever seen. It seemed that they had been picked for ugliness rather than for any other reason. They were all huge and hairy and smelled bad. I began to think that I had made a big mistake, a serious error in my career development plan.
"Piotr, what the hell are you doing here?" Sir Conrad shouted.
"Count Lambert sent me here, my lord. He said that I was rude and insubordinate and that if I were sworn to him, he'd have me whipped."
"Count Lambert could have you hung, sworn to him or not! Who is taking over your job?"
"Jozef Kulisiewicz, my lord. He's quite competent."
"I'll bet he is! After this stunt, he just might keep your job! You conniving little runt! You planned this, didn't you? Well, you planned wrong! You wanted to come here? Okay! You'll stay here! You're not my squire any more, Piotr. You're just another grunt in this line!"
I was so shocked that I barely heard the things that he said to the others in the line, though he was loud enough to make a snake listen. My position gone? And I was no longer a squire? What had I done to myself?. Surely no one would knight this bunch of ruffians! I was ruined!
They gave me little time to bemoan my fate. We were marched off to the showers, for Sir Conrad said that we stank too badly for him to stand before us.
They had us strip naked and throw our clothes into a pile, to be burned, they said. Burning was probably the right thing to do with the rags that the others were wearing, but I had been spending much of my pay on nice clothing! My red hose and purple tunic were thrown into the pile of rags, along with my blue hat, my green cloak, and my beautiful Cracow shoes with the longest pointed toes in Silesia! I could only thank God that I hadn't worn my sword and armor, reasoning that none of the others would have such finery.
We were each given a small bag with our name on it for our valuables. We were told that these would be returned to us if we survived the year out, or sent to our families in the more likely event that we did not.
Four old women were waiting for us with sheep clippers, another of Sir Conrad's inventions.
We were each clipped of all hair, from head to foot and all in between, with the old women laughing at the small sizes of our privy members or occasionally pretending to be astounded at the size of others.
It was a vastly humiliating experience, and followed by the knights shouting at us to wash our bald heads and denuded bodies with the foulest smelling soap I've ever encountered.
We were each inspected for fleas before they let us out to air dry in the cold spring wind.
We were issued clothing from stacks of ready-made garments. There were even some that fit me tolerably well, but it was all of the baggy peasant cut that doesn't have to be well-fitted. The boots were sturdy, and of the cut of Sir Conrad's hiking boots, with blunt toes and no style at all.
The other grunts-for that is what they called us-were surprised at the quality of the clothing, but for myself, I thought it ugly. The cloth was sturdy linen, undyed and without any embroidery. The others liked the food as well, for it was like that normally served at Sir Conrad's installations, but it was no new thing for me.
The barracks were of blocks of artificial stone and we must needs sleep in bunks three decks tall, with four dozen men to the room, but all was remarkably clean and orderly.
We soon found out how it was kept that clean, for much of our time was spent in cleaning and polishing. That is to say, much of our time that was not spent doing other things, for they kept us inordinately busy. We were up every day before dawn, to wash in cold water and stand in neat lines before breakfast, to say mass and recite our oath at sunrise, always followed by a run that started at three miles but was eventually extended to twelve. Nor was this a simple run on flat land. It went up and down hills, over obstacles made of huge logs, over chasms hand over hand on ropes, and up and down cliffs. Many of the grunts were injured and no few killed in the process, for great fatigue and dangerous heights are a deadly combination. Whenever someone was hurt, we always got an impromptu first aid lesson, and all things stopped while we watched the victim being sewn back together again. We were constantly marching or running or jumping up and down and doing other exercises. After a week, we were issued weapons, first a pike, then a sword and dagger, and lastly a halberd. Fully a quarter of our day was spent working with these weapons, or the quarterstaff, or learning to fight without any weapons at all.
Another quarter of our day was spent in the classrooms, for it was decreed that all must learn to do arithmetic, and to be able to read and write. As I had already mastered these subjects, I was put to tutoring some of the others, though most had difficulty learning when they were so tired. In fact, more men were dismissed for mental reasons than for physical ones.
Some of the grunts actually went crazy under the strain of it. One man locked himself in a supply closet and when we finally got him out, he was babbling incoherently. He was naked and smeared with his own shit.
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ
Getting the army going was the hardest thing I've ever done.
It wasn't the arms or armor although that was a lot of work. The Bessemer converter to make cast iron into steel took many thousands of man-hours, as did the rolling mill that made sheetmetal and the stamping line that pressed out helmets, breast plates, shoulder cops, and the other twenty-seven pieces it took to cover a man. And every piece had to be made in at least four different sizes, so the total number of dies required was huge.
We were making steel using the wootz process, so making good pike heads, halberds, swords, and daggers was straightforward, but still a lot of work.
We had decent black powder and making the swivel guns was not hard, once the production line for it was set up, but we hit a snag when it came to the primers. I wanted a breach-loading, bolt-action, clip-feeding gun with brass cartridges and lead bullets, but after two years of trying to come up with a dependable primer, I had to set the project on a back burner. There just wasn't time, not if we were going to get it into mass production in time to train the men to use them to fight the Mongols.
Yet I dreaded going to something like a flintlock. The rate of fire would be so slow that we would need twelve times the guns to do the same job. The advantages of breach-loading and premade cartridges were obvious. The problem was lighting the gunpowder.
I finally hit on the idea of putting a firecracker wick on the back of each cartridge and an alcohol burner in the base of each gun. A shield on the bolt covered the wick until the bolt was turned home, at which time the flame hit the wick, it sputtered for a few moments and then fired the cartridge. Not the best system in the world, but it worked.
During the Hussite wars in fifteenth-century Bohemia, war carts proved to be decisive in many battles. Our guns were fairly heavy, about six dozen pounds each, and the weight of the ammunition alone was more than a man could be expected to carry, not to mention the other arms and armor.
I came up with a big, four-wheeled cart, six yards long and two wide. The wheels were two yards high and mounted on castors such that the cart could be pulled either the long way, for transport, or sideways, for fighting. There was no possibility of getting enough horses to pull the thousand carts that we would need, so thirty-six men armed with pikes and halberds would have to do the job. Six guns and gunners in the cart could be pulled along with the pikers protecting the guns and the guns firing over the heads of the pikers.