Conrad Starguard - The Radiant Warrior Part 13

"Sounds good, boy. You get it working and I'll want some for Piast Castle."

"I'm not sure that we'd want to put any of them inside a dwelling place, your grace. The gas I'll have to use will contain carbon monoxide, a poison until it's burned. But it should be safe enough in a factory where there's always somebody around to make sure that a lamp doesn't go out."

"Whatever you say, boy. You'll be staying with me at the inn, won't you? I always rent the top floor when I'm here."

"If you wish, your grace, although I have a bed set up in my office."

"No, you come with me. There's plenty of room. I take the whole floor so I don't have to have any strangers around. I have enemies and there's always the chance of a hired a.s.sa.s.sin. You and your lady join me and Lady Francine for dinner after you've had a chance to clean up."

One didn't argue with the duke. "Thank you, your grace. We are honored."

Cilicia and I got to the dining room before the duke and Lady Francine. I was in a beautifully embroidered outfit that I'd been given last Christmas, and Cilicia wore a lovely woolen gown.

The duke and Lady Francine arrived in a few minutes, She was wearing a sort of miniskirt, mesh stockings and high heels, and that was all. She was topless, as were the waitresses, and she was actually wearing slightly more than they were, but it was unusual and unexpected for a customer to compete with the help.

Introductions were made and the duke noticed me trying not to stare.

"I like it that way," was his only comment.

"A very attractive style, your grace. Count Lambert once told me that when a va.s.sal is on his lord's lands, he should punctiliously conform to his lord's customs. Since you are my lord's lord, it would seem that this obligation is on me doubly. Cilicia, would you please remove your dress to conform with Lady Francine's style?"

Cilicia stared at me for a moment. I suppose that I was being a little rough on her, since she'd grown up among people with a nudity taboo, and while she somehow felt that it was all right to dance naked, she was not used to walking around that way. But having only one of the ladies at the table bare-breasted would have been awkward for all concerned, especially for Lady Francine. Anyway, Cilicia had to learn our customs.

"Yes, master," she said as she stood and unlaced both sides of her dress.

"Master?" the duke said. "After the battle you fought last year to clear Poland of slavery, you own a slave?"

"No, your grace. It's just that she comes from a land east of the Caspian Sea, where slavery is common. Her father 'gave' her to me, mostly to keep her safe. She keeps on calling me 'master,' and I can't seem to break her of it."

"Cilicia, you are not my slave. Please stop calling me ,master.'"

"Yes, master." She pulled the dress over her head. folded it and set it on a stool.

"Dammit! Stop calling me that!"

"You say I am free, yes?"

"Yes!"

"Then I may do as I wish, yes?"

"That's what I've been saying, dammit!"

"Then I wish to call you 'master,' yes?"

Frustrating! How the h.e.l.l do you answer that one? "You see, your grace? What's a man to do?"

"Nothing, boy. When a woman gets an idea into her head, a man just has to live with it. Or he does if he wants to live with her, and this one looks like a keeper."

Cilicia removed her blouse and tucked up her slip so that it was as short as Lady Francine's. Seeing the duke's frankly admiring gaze, she struck a dancer's pose and waited until he'd filled his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Everyone else in the room was trying to act as though it was perfectly normal for a beautiful woman to undress at the table of an inn, for to anger the duke was not wise.

"Boy, you do seem to collect the beauties! You've near outdone me this time, but not quite!" He gave Lady Francine's hand a squeeze.

Lady Francine, who understood why I had done what I had done, quietly said, "Thank you, Sir Conrad.

Thank you for everything."

"Yes, it's a style I like," the duke said. "I may not be the rutty buck I once was, but I can still admire good girl flesh. I've half a mind to dress all the serving wenches at Piast Castle this way, just to improve the scenery. In fact, seeing these two ladies side by side, I've got all of a mind to do it!"

"It looks nice on truly beautiful women such as our ladies here, your grace, but it's not a style that would suit every woman."

"So what? If any of my wenches are - ugly or too droopy, I'll just replace them with girls who aren't!"

"Then, too, your grace, they keep the inn here warm because of the waitresses' costumes, or rather their lack of them. Your castle is pretty drafty. Wouldn't it be better to wait until spring?"

"Wait? Boy, I just turned seventy. I don't have time to wait! In fact, I'll do it right now. Sir Frederick!

Attend me!"

A knight in full armor set down his bowl of soup and came briskly over. "Your grace?"

"Ladies, stand up. Take a good look at these women, Sir Frederick, then go back to Piast Castle and tell the castellan that I want all the serving wenches at the castle looking the same way when I get back."

"Yes, your grace. I shall leave immediately. But ... these two ladies are the most beautiful that I have ever seen in my life! Where below heaven is the castellan going to find two hundred like them?"

"There aren't two hundred like them in the world! I didn't mean that they had to be this pretty, you ninny! I meant that they should dress this way! I want to see their t.i.ts!"

"And don't leave now. It's dark out there. Go back to your supper and leave first thing in the morning."

I thought that Count Lambert got away with a lot, but the duke could do anything that didn't offend the majority of his major supporters. If the servants didn't like the change in outfits, tough. Their vote wasn't taken.

"Yes, your grace." The knight beat a speedy retreat.

"Sit down, girls," the duke said. "You see what I have to work with, Sir Conrad?"

"He seemed a most courteous and obedient va.s.sal to me, your grace." This was as close as I dared come to criticizing the duke.

"Yeah, but he's stupid. Men like you are rare."

"Your grace, I think that any difference between Sir Frederick and me has more to do with education than with basic ability."

"That makes it rarer, boy. There aren't any schools here like the ones you went to, but I hear that you're working on it."

"Yes, your grace. We now have nine dozen primary schools operating in Count Lambert's county. There is one in almost every town and village."

"Almost? Why not all?"

"Your grace, you must remember that I am a mere knight. I can only try to persuade a baron to do things my way. If he's against me, what can I do?"

"You're talking about Baron Jaraslav, Sir Stefan's father, aren't you."

"Yes, your grace."

"He's a hard-nosed b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but he's served me well on the battlefield. "

"I'm not speaking against the man, but in this case he's wrong. Education is important! It's not as though those schools will cost him anything. I'm putting them in at my own expense, with the help of the peasants."

"Boy, I don't see why you're pus.h.i.+ng this reading and writing business so hard. What good is that going to do a peasant?"

"As things stand, very little, your grace. But things aren't going to stay as they are for much longer. Right now, most people are spending most of their time simply doing grunt work, generating power with human muscles. But you saw that steam-powered sawmill of mine. You said it had the power of two hundred women. Well, the women who used to walk back and forth on the walking-beam sawmill aren't doing that anymore. They're all doing other work now, more skilled work."

"That's just a start. Tomorrow, I'll show you the steam engines we're installing to turn the machines in the shop here, and the others to knead the clay for the mold shop and pump the bellows of the smelter."

"Every time one of those machines goes in, we need fewer dumb peasants and more skilled men. What's more, the skills needed are changing too quickly for men to get by simply by learning the trades of their fathers. They'll have to learn them in schools and out of books. They have to be able to read."

"I'll grant you're right when it comes to factories, boy, but most commoners are farmers. It has to be that way if we're all going to eat!"

"True, your grace, but only so long as we stay with current farming methods. I've already started to change things. There was another b.u.mper harvest at Okoitz this year, but this time they got the entire harvest in, despite more rainy days than usual. The difference was as simple a thing as a wheelbarrow. They have a thresher attachment on their windmill, and they were able to store the entire harvest in their existing storage bins threshed. Had it still been in the shucks, as is usual, half of it would be on the ground. In the next few years I'll be introducing new plows, reapers, and other harvesting machines. The era of the dumb peasant is over!"

"Interesting. But how far can this go?"

"Quite a ways, your grace. I once spent four years in a country called America. That nation was the greatest seller of agricultural products in the world, and its people are among the best fed, Yet only one man in fifty was a farmer! Most of the rest worked at trades that are unknown in this country. There aren't even words for them."

"Yet somehow all this troubles me, Sir Conrad. I keep asking myself if it's all really worth it."

"They seemed to think so, your grace, Tell me, would you like to live in a home that was warm in the coldest weather, that was as cool as you wanted it on the hottest day? Would you like to have fresh fruits and vegetables available at any time, no matter what the season? Would you like to have an instrument called a telephone that would let you speak to any of your va.s.sals, though they were a hundred miles away?

To any duke or king in Christendom? Would you like to have doctors so skilled that they could keep you healthy for many years to come? Would you like to be able to walk on board a great silver s.h.i.+p that could fly you to China in an afternoon, while a pretty waitress brings you drinks as you look down on the clouds below? And would you like to have these things not only for yourself, but for the least of your subjects?"

"Tell me, your grace, are these things worth it?"

"Maybe, boy. Maybe. But your priest has told me of the terrible wars your people have, of weapons so mighty that one man, pus.h.i.+ng a b.u.t.ton, could destroy whole cities. Of hatreds, and of famines when there was no need for famines. What do you say to that?"

"I say that I'm an engineer, your grace. I can build machines that can heat your home, harvest your crops, and flush your s.h.i.+t. It's not fair to expect me to make you love your fellow man as well. That's not my job!"

Chapter Thirteen.

I spent the morning giving the duke and his party a tour of the facilities at Copper City. He seemed most impressed with the eight steam engines we were installing, two of which were already operational. They were all single expansion units, and not very efficient thermally, but I had a use for the waste heat. All the buildings had steam radiators in every room, which condensed the steam back to water to be pumped into the tubular boilers again. Cogeneration. Come spring, we'd be installing a leather tannery to use that excess heat in the summertime.

That evening, we again dined with the duke, and Cilicia told the story of how her native city was destroyed by the Mongols. Everyone in the inn's dining room was listening. She told the same story that her father had told to me, but the way she told it got everyone in the room in the gut. I don't think that there was a dry eye in the place, and even the crusty old duke was in tears.

He promised me his continued support, as did every man in the room. Cilicia became my best propaganda device to generate support for the upcoming war, and she was to tell that story a hundred times over the next few years.

I spent three more days at Copper City after the duke left, mostly handling technical problems since the Krakowski Brothers were good managers and didn't need much help in that direction.

We made the run to Eagle Nest in one day, leaving before dawn and arriving after dusk. The instructors were in uniform, but only about half of the boys' outfits were completed so they were all still in civilian clothing.

It was getting beyond kite-flying weather and the hangar was big enough to fly model airplanes in. When we were building the installation we had so much manpower and timber available that I figured that we might as well build it big enough in the first place. The hangar was six dozen yards wide and twelve dozen long, big enough to accommodate any aircraft I could imagine building out of wood and canvas. It was rather like the church we had built at Three Walls, only two of them set side by side, though not as tall and with a dirt floor. Two huge counter-weighted doors faced the eventual runway.

But now we used it for model airplanes.

I spent three days, including Sunday afternoon, talking about aircraft, about lift and drag and the other forces on a plane. The type I got them going on was a high-winged glider, halfway between a sailplane and a piper cub. Sort of an observation plane without an engine.

The steam saw was put to work cutting very thin strips of wood, and I headed for Okoitz.

Count Lambert was enthusiastic about my idea for limelights in his cloth factory, mostly because it would permit his ma.s.sive harem to stay there all winter. He was less enthusiastic about putting in a second s.h.i.+ft.

As it was, the girls not currently being used slept on cots in the factory itself. Putting in a second s.h.i.+ft involved building housing for all of them, and if I was going to do that, I insisted that we put in plumbing and kitchens of the sort we had at Three Walls.

What finally sold him was the thought that he could sort the workers according to s.e.xual desirability and keep the best ones on the day s.h.i.+ft, thus improving the quality of his already beautiful ladies.

If that's what it took to get better sanitation at Okoitz, then so be it. Our infant mortality rate at Three Walls was one-eighth of what it was at Okoitz. If saving thirty-five children a year meant hurting the feelings of a hundred girls, then let their feelings be hurt!

And yes, I would accept cloth instead of cash for all the plumbing fixtures, and yes, I would design and supervise the construction of the new buildings as part of my feudal duty to him.

That settled, Count Lambert wanted to talk about the Great Hunt. Sir Miesko had done a competent job organizing the thing. Everything was ready. The local hunt masters all knew their duties, invitations to all the knights in the duchy had been sent, and the enclosures for the killing grounds had been sent and enclosures for the killing grounds had been built. The only problem was Baron Jaraslav and his son, Sir Stefan. They were adamantly refusing to have anything to do with anything that I was involved with. I was hoping that Count Lambert would talk to them.

"What!" Count Lambert said. "They refuse? Do they know that I want this thing done?"

"They do, my lord. Sir Miesko has been very adamant on that point, and they still won't have anything to do with it. If we bypa.s.s them, we've left behind a breeding ground for wolves, bears, and wild boar. They know it but don't care."

"Well, I'll settle with Baron Jaraslav! I've had enough out of those two! I'll visit them within the week with fifty knights at my back, and they'll obey their liege lord or pay for it!"

"Yes, my lord. Was there anything else you wanted of me?"

"Dog's blood! There is! You and Sir Vladimir will attend me here in one week. Sir Miesko is on your way, so tell him and any others you meet to come here as well."

"Yes, my lord. You are expecting battle?"

"I'm expecting my va.s.sals to obey me. All of them!"

"Yes, my lord." When he was in this mood, it wasn't smart to argue.

Count Lambert had five knights in attendance, and he gave four of them exacting verbal instructions to ride out in the morning, contact certain specific barons and knights, and have them report to Okoitz. Verbal, because Count Lambert still couldn't read or write.

It was an hour before he calmed down. Then he started hinting strongly that he'd rather like to try out the wench I'd brought along.

I wasn't happy about lending out Cilicia, but Count Lambert's current mood still wasn't anything that I wanted to trifle with. Anyway, he had always been so generous with me in this regard that it would have been n.i.g.g.ardly of me to refuse him.

"Of course, my lord. But remember that she is a foreigner, and the customs of her people are different from ours. I'd best talk to her first."