Conrad Starguard - The Radiant Warrior Part 20

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 st.u.r.dy, 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 st.u.r.dy 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 polis.h.i.+ng.

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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.srooms, 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 s.h.i.+t.

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 bra.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+eld 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.

One side of each cart had enough armor to stop an arrow, and the top of the cart could be slung six yards out to act as a yard and a half high s.h.i.+eld for the men pulling it. It was armored, too.

If the men were well trained, and if we could get the Mongols to attack us, or if we could somehow surround them, they were dog meat. But there wasn't much we could do about their mobility. The typical Mongol had several horses and, in a race, they could easily beat us.

Communications can make up for speed, to a certain extent. No matter how fast your troops are, you must get a message to them before they can move. If we had radios, our effective speed would be doubled. I didn't have a radio yet, and wasn't sure I could do it, our materials' technology being so low, but I set up a crew to learn Morse code over short telegraph lines. If we could make radios, the operators would be ready.

There isn't much to making a telegraph. Electricity goes through a wire and a simple coil of wire makes an electromagnet which clicks or rings a bell. We had wiredrawing equipment and almost any two metals in ajar of vinegar makes a battery. But years ago, I'd tried to string a line between Three Walls and Okoitz and never did get it up. The price of copper was so high that seeing so much of it hanging on the trees was too much for people. Thieves stole the wire faster than we could string it up! We couldn't guard it all, and every time we caught a thief, three more sprung up to take his place. I finally had to give the project up and Sir Vladimir said he'd told me so.

But we could string wire around inside Three Walls, and we did so, mostly to train operators but also for internal communications.

A better line of defense was the Vistula River. We had steam engines running in the factories and paddle- wheel riverboats were well within our capabilities. A fleet of armed and armored riverboats could stop the Mongols dead, especially if the boats had radios.

The rub was that the invasion would happen on March seventh, at which time the river might or might not be frozen over. With the river frozen, the boats would be useless, so we did not dare put all our hopes on them.

But all this was the easy part, for me at least. It just meant nine years of long hours of hard work for me and a few thousand other men and women.

The hard part was training the army itself.

In thirteenth-century Poland, there were no trained, professional fighting men except for the knights, whose concepts of honor and fair play made them fairly useless, except in the polite sort of conflicts that they were used to fighting. By their lights, it was more important to fight n.o.bly than to win, a nice rule for a playing field but not the thing to do when the Mongols were planning to murder every man, woman, child, and household pet in eastern Europe!

I had to train a modem army from absolute scratch. There were no old sergeants left over from the last war.

Things had been fairly peaceful for years, despite the fact that the country was rapidly disintegrating because of duchies being divided up among the heirs of the previous duke. Such wars as had been fought were more like sporting events than serious combat. And there wouldn't have been sergeants, anyway. On the rare occasions when the peasants fought, they were given no training at all, and often no weapons except for such agricultural implements as they might own.

Once I knew that we would have the industrial ability to arm an army of fifty to one hundred thousand men, I had my liege lord, Count Lambert, send me a gross of misfits and troublemakers from his other knight's estates, since my experience in the service had been that the best sergeants were misfits at heart. Maybe I was wrong, but it seemed to me that most of them would not have done well in the civilian world. To function well, most of them seemed to need the surrounding structure that the military provides. Anyway, n.o.body minded giving me their problem children.

We put them through absolute h.e.l.l. The program was designed to keep them on the very edge of physical exhaustion, near the ragged boundary of insanity. And a lot of them didn't make it.

I deliberately killed two dozen men in that first cla.s.s, and I don't think that my soul will ever be truly clean again. But I had to have leaders that were absolutely tough and reliable and I didn't have twenty years to nurture and train them. If they weren't good enough, we could loose thousands of men in battle, and maybe the whole country besides.

But it hurt. It hurt like h.e.l.l. And often, after a funeral service, I cried myself to sleep. Me, a supposedly mature man of thirty-six.

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI.

We were constantly under supervision, with never a moment to ourselves except on Sunday afternoons.

Then, one could walk away from the barracks and spend a little time absolutely alone, and it was wonderful.

It was a month before I had the opportunity to speak privately to Sir Vladimir, for I found him sitting alone on a log in the woods.

"How are you doing, Piotr?" he said, as though we were back in Sir Conrad's great hall.

"Very good, sir!" I said, involuntarily bracing.

"Relax. n.o.body can see us here."

I tried, but it was difficult to do so. For years, he had treated me like a younger brother, but for the last month he had been as brutal as the others.

"Thank you, Sir Vladimir." I sat down on the log next to him.

"You've surprised us, you know. None of us expected you to last a week, especially Sir Conrad."

"Indeed? But don't you see that I have to? If I fail here, I wouldn't have anywhere else to go. My position is gone and I am no longer a squire."

"Maybe, maybe not. Myself, I think it likely that if you went to Sir Conrad and asked for them back, you would get them. Sir Conrad was annoyed that you circ.u.mvented his wishes, but he is not an evil man. I think you need only apologize and admit your failure here."

"The apology is his, had I but a chance to give it. But I have not failed this school. Not yet, anyway."

"Well, if you can take it, you might as well stick with it. Eventually, all of Sir Conrad's men will be attending this school, so you might as well get it over with."

"Then why was Sir Conrad angry with me for wanting to attend it now?"

"Because this is not the regular course! This first cla.s.s is intended to teach the teachers. The later cla.s.ses will not be as difficult as this one. We are hoping that one-quarter of you will survive this training. We must have first-rate instructors to train the others. After this, at least half will make it through. Sir Conrad was annoyed at you wasting his time by going through early."

"That's some relief, anyway. When do you think we will be knighted?"

"Knighted? Who told you that? There are no plans to knight anybody! In fact, it is my private thought that Sir Conrad would eliminate knighthood if he thought he could get away with it! I know that the separation of n.o.bility and commoners displeases him, and that it doesn't exist in his native land."

"Then all that I have done has been for nothing, Sir Vladimir. I'd hoped that if I could be knighted, then Krystyana would look differently on me."

"So that's what it was all about' I was curious what it was that made you disobey your lord's wishes. May I speak frankly? Piotr, you and Krystyana are two crazy people! She wouldn't accept you if you were a duke!

She wants Sir Conrad, even though she knows that she'll never get him. And you keep chasing after her even though she kicks you in the teeth every chance she gets! There are plenty of pretty girls out there, and you'd have a good chance with any one of a hundred of them."

"Many girls, but only one Krystyana."

"Piotr, you are digging a hole for yourself, and if you insist that you be buried in it, there's nothing I can do.

It's time we were getting back. You go ahead. I don't want the others to think that I have been doing you any special favors, even though I suppose I have, or at least I've tried to."

I often thought of dropping the school, but I could never bring myself to fail or to publicly admit failure. I stuck it out.

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ.

There is more to an army than weapons and training. Even more important than these two is spirit, the elusive esprit de corps. The men must believe in themselves and in their organization, and they must believe it in a deeply emotional way, rather than in a coldly logical manner.

You see, war is an absolutely irrational phenomenon. There is not and never was any sane reason to risk your only life attacking someone for some possible material or emotional benefit. Even if one was absolutely immoral, the plain fact is that you have everything to lose and d.a.m.n little to gain.

It only makes sense to fight when someone else is attacking you, and even then there is a large element of the irrational in it.

Any individual man in a battle line can improve his chances of survival by running away. If he runs and everyone else stands and fights, odds are that he will live, while a certain percentage of those that fight will die. Yet if everyone runs, that army will take far higher casualties than if everyone stands and fights. The vast majority of casualties endured by a defeated army happen after the battle, during the mop-up operation after the battle line has faded.

So as irrational as it sounds, on the average your odds of survival are better if you stand and fight, even though as an individual your odds are better if you run away.

It is irrational. It's crazy! And therefore a winning army must be a special kind of crazy. The people in it must be insane enough to be willing to die so that the army may win. That special kind of insanity is called spirit.

You build spirit in many strange and irrational ways. One is that you stage special ceremonies, and our "Sunrise Service" was our most important one.

I wanted an oath of allegiance that would have emotional impact and be understandable to young and uneducated people. I carefully studied all the oaths that I could remember, but most of them were either too legalistic, like the military swearing-in ceremony, or they really didn't say much, like the American pledge to the flag. By far the best of the lot was the Boy Scout pledge and the Scout law. I modified it slightly to suit our circ.u.mstances, but every day of a trooper's life started out with this service.

They woke at dawn to the sound of bugles and were out on the parade grounds before the sun peaked over the horizon. At the first sliver of sunlight, a very short ma.s.s was said, less than eight minutes and without a sermon, though it took work to get the priest to do this at first.

I had a small band, some bra.s.s and percussion, play Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man." Then we raised our right arms to the sun and recited: "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to G.o.d and to the Army. I will obey the Warrior's code, and I will keep myself physically fit, mentally awake, and morally straight."

"The Warrior's code:"

"A Warrior is: Trustworthy, Loyal, and Reverent; Courteous, Kind, and Fatherly; Obedient, Cheerful, and Efficient; Brave, Clean, and Deadly."

This was followed by the orders of the day, where the men were told what they'd be doing for the rest of the day.

The whole ceremony took less than twelve minutes, but it was done every day of a warrior's life. Forever.

Other things were done to build spirit. You wear the same kind of clothing, so you all look the same and start to think that you all really are the same. You march together, walking in exactly the same way. You sing together, sounding the same way. And you do great and impossible things together. You run difficult obstacle courses and eventually you win battles.

But my army wasn't going to have a chance to win any battles, not until the Mongols arrived. This wouldn't be like a modem war that lasts for five years and gives you a chance to blood your troops before the final conflict. The war with the Mongols would be won in two months if it was going to be won at all.

I needed something else to give the troops that magic feeling of invincibility, and I had two ideas. One was that notion of fire-walking.

Various primitive tribes and the crazy people in California practice fire-walking, or at least walking on a hot bed of coals. If I could show them that they could now walk naked through fire, they would believe that they were unstoppable. And no one will run if he truly believes that he will win.

The other is a curious optical phenomenon, called the glory. If you are on a high place early on a clear morning, and the valley below is very foggy, if everything is right, when you look at your shadow on the fog below, you see around your head beams of light radiating outward. It only shows up around your head and no one else's, at least from your perspective. They, of course, see it only around their own heads. I read about this in Scientific American, but their explanation for it was unconvincing.

Yet one morning, when I was running the troops through the obstacle course, looking down to my left I saw this very same phenomenon. It was spooky, as though I was wearing some sort of halo!

If I could show the men that they wore halos, that they were individually blessed by G.o.d, they would be true believers, absolute fanatics, the kind of crazy people who win wars.

I changed the course of the morning run and made that spot off-limits, saying it was a holy place. Yet I went back there other mornings and three-quarters of the time I could see the same strange effect. I would definitely make it a part of the graduation ceremony!

Chapter Twenty.

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI.

After three months, there were less than half of us left. Eleven men had died, a dozen more were crippled for life, and others simply could not stand the strain of the training, but I was still there.

Lady Richeza started teaching a course on Sat.u.r.day afternoons. She taught courtesy, and dancing on Sat.u.r.day nights. Young ladies were brought in to a.s.sist her and it was all very carefully supervised. It was astounding to see female human beings again. Three months with none but male company does strange things to a young man's thoughts. Yet when the ladies were introduced, we grunts were all remarkably shy, and had to be ordered to a.s.sociate with them! I never have understood my own feelings here.

The next three months were equally rough, and we lost almost two dozen more grunts, but after that the drop-out rate fell off, and the only losses we had were due to injuries. It wasn't that the course became any easier. It didn't. But those of us who were left were the sort who could survive anything. Climbing a rope higher than a church steeple didn't bother us in the least. We did it every day before breakfast! Going up or down a cliff twice that high was child's play, and we got to enjoying it. Half a day with double-weight weapons? We could do it!

Soon, we were issued plate armor of the sort that Sir Conrad wore, and we learned to do all our exercises while wearing it, no easy thing at first! We lost a few men on the cliffs when they misjudged their balance or the strength of rocks, but the rest of us learned the necessary reflexes.

Then we got our first guns. Sir Conrad said that guns could be made of any size, but that the larger ones were useful only to attack cities and castles. Our opponents would all be hors.e.m.e.n, and our guns were therefore fairly small. He called them swivel guns, for they were mounted on swivels that enabled them to be easily pointed in any direction. They were as long as I was tall and had a bore that was bigger than my thumb. They could shoot six times farther than a crossbow, and one of the bullets could go through four pigs and four sets of armor. I know, for I did the shooting and helped to eat the pigs afterward.

Six of these guns were mounted on a war cart that carried, besides the guns and ammunition, the weapons and supplies needed by forty-three men. That is to say, six squads of six men each, plus six squad leaders and a cart commander. The carts were large, six yards long, two wide and a yard and a half high, in addition to being a yard and a half off the ground. There were four huge wheels, and these were mounted on casters that could be locked in any of four positions. In transport, the wheels were locked so that they faced forward and back, and then pulled the long way. In combat, the casters were locked sideways, and the cart was pulled sideways so that all six guns could face the enemy.

In combat, the lid of the cart was supported far off to the side on three pike shafts, providing a big s.h.i.+eld for the thirty-six men who pulled it. Our armor had a ring in the back, near the waist, for attaching a rope, which was tied with a slip knot. This left the hands of the first rank free to work their halberds, and those of the next five to hold their pikes.

I had been a good shot with a bow, and it evolved that I was one of the best with a swivel gun as well. Part of the joy of being a gunner was being able to ride while the others pulled you along. You were high above them, and could sneer at them because they had to face forward and couldn't see you do it.

In truth, my small size also had something to do with me being a gunner, for the less weight in the cart, the better. The strongest men were all made first rank axemen, and those best at first aid were in the sixth rank, where they could see any man fall.

The plan was to have thousands of these carts, with the pikers protecting the guns, and the guns covering the pikers, shooting the enemy over the footmen's heads.

Except for our eyeslits, our armor was proof against arrows, and it was difficult to imagine an enemy defeating us. It was hard to imagine anyone fool enough to fight us!