Conrad Starguard - Flying Warlord Part 4

When I arrived before him, the duke looked up from a stack of parchment. We were producing some decent paper now, but everything official was still being handwritten on real sheepskin parchment, when it wasn't on the even more expensive calfskin vellum.

"Ah, Baron Conrad. Riders have been sent out to every n.o.ble in Little Poland, telling of my father's death and my requirement that they all swear allegiance to me. It will be a few days before they start getting here, so I have time to inspect that boat of yours. Also, the marshal tells me that there are now five 'Annas' in the stables, but I suppose you know about that."

"I do, your grace. The children felt that you should choose among them."

"Then let's do it."

At the stables, the duke said, "By G.o.d, they are identical. How do you tell them apart?"

"I have to ask them who is who, your grace. Anna, ,.Please come here by me, and the rest of you get into alphabetical order, so I can introduce you properly."

There was always a crowd around the duke, but this drew a bigger crowd than usual. I noticed Count Lambert's sister-in-law, who was trying to flirt with me as always. Both she and her husband, Count Herman, were of the opinion that people should be respected on the basis of their rank, and only on that basis. To her mind, this made her infinitely desirable, despite the fact that she was ignorant, supercilious, intolerant, married, and shaped like a pear. I ignored her, as was my custom.

I introduced Anna's children, and each bowed properly to Henryk. Everyone was familiar enough with Anna not to be too astounded.

"They're all perfect, and I don't see how one could possibly choose between them. I'd be forced to choose a horse by its saddle. But they're not really horses, are they?"

"No, your grace."

"Well, we must call them something. You keep calling them 'people,' but they're not really like ordinary people either, are they? What say we call them 'Big People'?"

"Well girls, what do you say?"

They all nodded YES, that was fine by them.

"We all seem to think it an excellent term, your grace."

"It's all settled, then. Well, Big People, am I correct in a.s.suming that you all would like to serve me?"

The four sisters nodded YES.

"I see, and I thank you. Baron Conrad, you have offered me the loan of one of these lovely ladies. But what if I was attacked on the road by a superior force? I might then have to run for it, wouldn't I? But I would hate to run if I had to leave my wife or sons behind. In fact, I likely wouldn't do it. Could I prevail upon you? I know you have others like these growing up. Could I have all four?"

"You are a hard man to refuse, your grace. Of course. Since the Big People are willing, you may have the loan of all four."

"And that's another point. Why do you keep saying 'loan'? Many would simply make it a gift."

"Three reasons, your grace. One is the fact that they really are people, which you are already forgetting. I can't give them away because I don't own them. They are sworn to me and I pay them a regular salary, so I can loan out their services. The second is that I want to keep very careful control over who has them. I don't want them abused, and I wouldn't want an enemy to have them. The third is that I want all their fillies returned to me, again so that I can take proper care of them, and keep control over who has them."

"You seem adamant on these points, Baron Conrad."

"I am, your grace. Surely you can see my reasoning."

"I suppose I can. Perhaps I was being greedy. But what if there were enough for all my retainers? For all my knights! Such an army would be unbeatable!"

"Perhaps in time that will be possible, your grace. They reproduce rapidly. Indeed, all five that you see here are expecting, and each will have four fillies. In twenty or thirty years, they could outnumber people, if they wanted to. I a.s.sure you, we'll discuss such a mounted force when the time comes. For now, I suggest that we go for a ride. You notice that none of them has a bridle. They don't need them. Also, I'd thank you if you took off your spurs."

"What? Oh, yes. I'd forgotten that."

Two of his knights bent down to remove the duke's spurs, and I noticed Lady Francine join the crowd.

"Baron Conrad, may I join your group?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, my lady, but I believe the duke already has his party chosen."

"But there would be room for me if you put that thing behind your saddle on Anna."

"That thing" was the sidesaddle I'd had made to fit behind a regular saddle so a pa.s.senger, Cilicia for the last few years, could sit comfortably. It was sort of a pillion with a foot rest. Kotcha had given each of Anna's children one of my saddles, every single spare one that I kept for my own personal use, and I had the feeling that it would be awkward getting them back. This way, I could at least save the sidesaddle. I gestured to a groom to switch the thing.

"Then I would be delighted to have you riding apillion, my lady."

The duke mounted up along with three of his armed guards. They each carried an oversized s.h.i.+eld and they'd had brains enough to remove their spurs.

"We'll go out by way of the Carpenter's Gate, then take the outer road to the docks," the duke announced. "That should let us give the Big People a good run."

I gave Lady Francine a lift into the rear saddle. She was a lot fles.h.i.+er than Cilicia, but in fact she was lighter, not having the dense, muscular dancer's body that Cilicia has.

Once we were out of the city, I told Anna to go at her best speed, to show the duke what running was.

We were soon going at a solid run, doing about the speed that a modern thoroughbred can run, but where an ordinary horse might match our speed with a tiny jockey aboard and for a mile, Anna and her kin could do it with two full-sized people on their backs, and keep it up all day!

Nonetheless, Anna was carrying double and her daughters pulled ahead of her. They were two-gross yards ahead of us when the attack occurred.

Suddenly, an armored man stood up in the bushes a gross yards from the road. He leveled a crossbow at the duke and let fly. The guard to the duke's right, a left-hander who carried his s.h.i.+eld on his right arm, had remarkably good reflexes. He raised his s.h.i.+eld in time to deflect the bolt high into the air.

But at the same time, two other crossbowmen were raising on the left, hoping to catch the duke's party off guard. They didn't. Those guards were on the ball, and Anna's daughters weren't being slouches, either. They had the duke surrounded, and the guards were holding their s.h.i.+elds, not to cover themselves, but to cover the duke! It was as though they considered their own bodies as extensions of their s.h.i.+elds.

The next two bolts were stopped, one by a s.h.i.+eld and one by a guard's arm.

The duke's party continued down the road, not knowing how many a.s.sa.s.sins they faced. But from my vantage point, I was sure that there were only the three of them. Sad experience had taught me that speed was more important than planning. When in doubt, charge straight in! I signaled Anna to attack the two on the left.

They were franticly trying to rewind their crossbows, hoping to get off a second shot. I don't think they saw us coming. Anna can run very quietly when she wants to, although she says that it's a lot more work.

We were only a few dozen yards away when they noticed us. I had my sword out, but I wasn't wearing armor or carrying a s.h.i.+eld. Heck, I'd started out dressed for a boatride. A knight is always supposed to be ready for emergencies, but that's often hard to do!

Anna pa.s.sed to the left of the first man, and I found that he had stuck his sword in the dirt so as to have it near if he needed it in a hurry. He dropped his crossbow and swung his sword at me. I wanted to take prisoners, since these men probably had something to do with the old duke's a.s.sa.s.sination, but all I could do under the circ.u.mstances was to chop down at his sword as hard as I could. My sword went right through the crossbowman's blade, and through his helmet and head as well.

Before I could recover from the blow, Anna was already onto the second man. She just went right over him, trampling him flat. She turned and I saw that there were four hoofprints in the a.s.sa.s.sin's chest. He had squirted out of his armor like toothpaste from a tube hit by a sledgehammer.

We turned to see the last a.s.sa.s.sin mounting his horse and leaving.

"Catch him, Anna!" I shouted, but she was already on the way.

"This is so exciting!" Lady Francine shouted.

This shocked me. Would you believe that I had actually forgotten that I had a beautiful woman riding at my back? Worse yet, that I had gone into combat without even considering that I was risking her life!

"My lady!" I yelled, and Anna picked up from my body language that I wanted to stop.

"NO, NO!" Lady Francine shouted. "We must catch him! He must know who had the duke murdered!"

She was right, of course. Her safety and mine were unimportant compared to insuring the young duke's safety. The mystery had to be solved.

Anna picked up speed as she felt my new resolve. The a.s.sa.s.sin had quite a lead on us, but we caught up with him within half a mile. He ducked into a woods, trying to shake us, but it did him no good.

"We need a prisoner, Anna!" I shouted, as we approached him from the rear. She nodded okay. My thought was to hack off one of the horse's hind legs and then deal with the rider at our leisure. I never had a chance to, since Anna had similar ideas. She broke both of that animal's rear legs with her forehoofs.

The horse went down in a heap. The rider flew over its head and stopped abruptly against a big tree trunk.

We dismounted in a hurry. The horse was still alive but the rider was not. He had both a caved-in forehead and a broken neck. One hundred percent overkill.

"d.a.m.n! Not a single prisoner."

"Your sword, Conrad! It went right through that knight's sword, and his helm and head as well!"

"Yes, it's quite a blade. I wish I knew how it was made." I bent to search the dead knight, hoping to find some clue to who he was.

Interlude Two I hit the STOP b.u.t.ton.

"Hey, Tom, how was that sword made?"

"It happens that I am well informed on that subject, seeing as how I invented the process and made that particular sword myself," he said smugly. "First you get a good quality Damascus steel blade, which, by the way, were mostly made in India. Damascus was nothing more than a distribution point. You split the blade in half the hard way, right down the middle, through the edge."

"How do you do that?"

"Simple. You line up a nonlinear temporal field just right, then send one half of the blade a few minutes farther forward in time than the other. This gives you perfectly smooth surfaces, and since you're working in a vacuum, those surfaces are pretty reactive, chemically. Then you put a thin slice of diamond between them, about a hundred angstroms thick. You get that by slicing it off a larger block, using the same temporal cutting technique as you used on the blade. Then you clamp this sandwich together at four thousand PSI for two hundred years in a hard vacuum at room temperature. This welds the pieces together without harming the crystalline structure of the steel. You end up with as perfect a sword as is possible, with a pure diamond edge."

"Uh-huh. Where did you get a block of diamond that big?"

"Simple. You just put a block of graphite somewhere at thirty million PSI and two thousand degrees for twenty thousand years. It's not as though you need a flawless, single crystal."

"Oh. Is that all. I should have known." I hit the START b.u.t.ton.

Chapter Seven.

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD.

Lady Francine was flushed. "That was very... exciting, my lord."

"The first time you've seen combat? Well, try not to let it upset you." I was checking the dead man's pouch. Of course, n.o.body carried any ID in this age, but there might be something identifiable.

"I am not upset, I am... excited. Take me, my lord. Please. "

"What? My lady, you don't know what you're saying. Look. Violence excites a lot of people s.e.xually. It doesn't get me that way, but it's not uncommon. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but don't lose your head."

I went over to dispatch the wounded horse, not looking at her.

"I know exactly what I am saying. Take me. Now."

"Here? Lady, besides the violence, you were just bouncing your b.u.t.t on Anna's hindquarters * That can get you h.o.r.n.y, too, but for physical rather than psychological reasons. Anyway, you're a virgin and--" I was still avoiding looking at her. I took out the wounded horse by cutting its head off. Then I checked its saddlebags. Nothing.

"I am a twenty-six-year old virgin and I know exactly what I am doing. Look at me. Please?"

I looked at her. She had stripped down to her slip, and was naked to the waist. Lord, what a magnificent body. I went over to her.

"You know I'm not the marrying kind. I can't promise-"

She put her arms around me. "Do not promise any thing, do not say anything, just take me. Do it now."

Well, the woods were fairly secluded and there is a limit as to how many times a normal man can say "no" to a beautiful woman. And if the violence and bouncing had turned her on, well, I have my hot b.u.t.tons, too. One of my major ones involves holding a beautiful, pa.s.sionate and nearly naked woman in my arms.

If she wasn't totally rational, well, neither was I. I pushed my own future regrets aside and took her, with a dead horse on one side of us and a dead man on the other. But the taking of a virgin is a time-consuming affair, if one is not to be a total klutz about it, and it was over an hour before we sat up on the woodland moss.

I noticed a knight in the duke's colors sitting a hundred yards from us with his back turned.

Embarra.s.sing as h.e.l.l. Once we were dressed, I shouted, "Okay! You can turn around now! What are you doing here?"

"My lord, I was sent with others by the duke to see to your safety and come to your aid, though when we found you we thought our a.s.sistance might not be welcome. We have reported your safety to the duke, and have your other rewards of combat, that is to say, your booty, packed and ready for transport." His left arm was bandaged, but it didn't seem to bother him.

"Thank you, I suppose. Did you report what we were doing to the duke?"

"It was needful, my lord, since he asked about the delay."

Great. The rumormongers would be going for months over this one. Yet Lady Francine didn't look the least bit embarra.s.sed. She looked as if there were canary feathers on her mouth.

"I take it that the duke is at my boat?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Then we'll be going there now. Clean up the rest of this mess," I said, gesturing to the dead knight and horse. "And then bring it all to the boat. The duke will want to examine it."

"And after that, my lord?"

"After that, you can keep it. Divide the booty up among your fellow guards."

"Thank you, my lord, you are most generous! But then, you have taken a far greater reward for yourself."

"Shut your d.a.m.n mouth!"

At the boat, the duke was smiling. "Well, Baron Conrad, they tell me that you killed all three would-be a.s.sa.s.sins, and with a lovely lady at your back, besides I"

"I killed one, your grace. Anna got two, and one of those was an accident. We were trying for a prisoner, but he was killed when his horse went down."