Conrad Starguard - The Radiant Warrior Part 6

Anna said that she'd be just fine outside, and there was plenty for her to eat.

Sleeping in plate mail isn't all that bad. It's sort of like laying down in a well-designed contour chair and twigs and stones on the ground don't bother you in the least. The only problem was that I'd closed my visor to keep my face warm, and there was half an inch of condensed frost inside my helmet when I woke up. I had to remove the helmet (no easy job) and sc.r.a.pe it out. Even then I'd missed enough so that when it warmed up the next day, I had water running down my neck.

In the morning, I found that Anna had eaten most of a medium sized hazel tree!

This surprised me, and we talked about it. It seems that she could eat anything organic. Given her choice, she preferred fresh green gra.s.s and, after that, grain, but in a pinch, wood was just fine. Hazel was better than pine, and fruit trees were downright tasty. She didn't like coal because she didn't like the taste of sulfur, but c.o.ke was okay. "Anna, you never fail to astound me. Can you do anything about helping me find where we should put the mine? We're looking for copper ore. It will be copper sulfide, which is a black, heavy stone."

She said that something was stinky around here and went off to look for it.

I finished off my food and had my gear packed by the time she came back. I saddled her up and we went off to look at what she'd found. They were heavy black stones, all right, and Anna said that they smelled like sulfur, not that I could smell anything. We spent the morning gathering up about six dozen pounds of the stuff, Anna pawing at the snow and me swinging my old camp hatchet to free them from the frozen ground. About noon, I loaded them into my backpack and told Anna to head -for Wroclaw.

She never has to backtrack. Once she's been somewhere, she always knows the direction between here and there.

We got there in time for me to take a bath before supper, and this time I didn't have to dance in armor. The duke was miffed because I'd forgotten to get permission to leave, but he cheered up when I showed him the ore we'd brought back. We signed and sealed both copies of our contract that night.

"One other thing, boy. I said I'd put up two hundred thousand pence, and you've said that you can't start until late spring. That's the thin time of the year for me. Most of my taxes come in right after the harvest, so I'm going to pay you the money now. You can pick it up from the exchequer when you leave."

"May I have permission to leave in the morning, your grace?"

"Granted. I'll come visit you during spring planting. Everyone else is too busy to talk to me then, anyway."

As ordered, the redhead was waiting in my room.

Chapter Six.

Even loaded down with the ore and all that money, Anna still got us to Three Walls by dusk, which was good because the last few miles were through a heavy snowstorm.

The snow didn't let up for three days, and by that time we were completely buried. It was six weeks before anyone could get in or out. Work went on as usual, of course, and we had plenty of supplies to last us, so it wasn't too bad. But there was no way that I could get to Okoitz to make my monthly visit to Count Lambert.

One day, after we'd been snowed in a month, I heard a commotion outside. I ran to the rear balcony to see what it was, and everybody was pointing up and back over my head. I had to run to the front balcony to see it.

Count Lambert was flying his balloon! It had red-and-white vertical stripes and a huge white Piast eagle on a red s.h.i.+eld sewn on its side. Only judging from the size of the basket, the balloon was much larger than it should have been.

I waved, and I think he waved back. But there was nothing else I could do.

Eventually, a merchant made it to Three Walls and told us that the snow was really deep for only about the last mile. Shamefaced, I went to see my liege lord. I found him in his chambers with a basketwork cast on his leg.

"Sir Conrad, where have you been?"

"I was snowed in, my lord. What happened to your leg?"

"A likely story. I broke my leg coming down out of the sky! Or rather when I was dragged along just after that. I tell you that I flew halfway to Kiev!"

"What happened, my lord? I thought that you were going to tether the balloon."

"I did, but it broke the tether rope as if it was a piece of thread. That was the second balloon, of course."

"The second balloon, my lord?"

"The first one wasn't quite strong enough to lift me with a decent supply of charcoal. With me alone, and the fire burning high, it couldn't quite get me off the ground. Well, you warned that this might happen, so I made a second balloon to your plans but twice as big."

"Twice as big, my lord? You mean twice the volume?"

"I suppose so. We just took every measurement you showed and doubled it. It took a deuced amount of cloth, but I had plenty."

"Yes, my lord. I expect that it took four times the cloth and had eight times the volume. It probably had a dozen times the lift of the first one."

"I think it might have. It just snapped the rope and up I went like a frightened bird! I think I headed south at first, at least I think that was Three Walls I saw. Things certainly look different from up there!"

"We saw you, my lord."

"How wonderful! You saw my proud Piast family device? Some of my ancestors doubtless bore it with more honor, but none of them ever carried it higher! I think a lot of other people must have seen it as well, because I think the winds s.h.i.+fted and I'm sure I saw Wawel Castle. That was another strange thing. I could see the wind blowing the trees, but I couldn't feel the wind myself! I was in a dead calm the whole way!

Yet I was moving! Can you explain this strange thing?"

"Of course, my lord. You were traveling with the wind. You feel the wind only when it is moving at a different speed than you are."

"That doesn't make much sense, but if you're not worried about it then I won't be either. I tried to land at Wawel, but I couldn't make the balloon go down! I stopped feeding the fire, but the cathedral towers on Wawel Hill were gone before I started to get low. By then, I was over another forest and had to build my fire quickly. I tell you that I was touching the treetops before I started to go up again. And once started up, it continued to a vast height. And so I went, up and down until my charcoal was exhausted. Then I went down and stayed there. I came down hard as you can see." He gestured to his broken leg.

"Why didn't you throw out your sandbags at the last instant, my lord."

"Because I didn't have any. I know you said to carry them, but it seemed to me that I would be better off taking the same weight in charcoal. After all, I could always throw out the charcoal at the end, just as I could have the sand. And the charcoal could be used to take me higher, if that was necessary. But as it was, I could never find a big field to land in. Most of the world is forest. You don't realize that traveling on the roads, but it's true!"

"At least you're alive, my lord, and you've had an adventure that most men only dream of."

"More adventure than you know, Sir Conrad. Once I was down, and lying there helpless and alone, a crowd of d.a.m.n peasants wanted to b.u.m me for a witch! They were all jabbering in that half understandable Ruthenian tongue. If a n.o.bleman hadn't seen the Piast crest on my beautiful balloon, I think I might be dead now. As it was, he took me home, and three days later a dozen of my men finally caught up with me. But my lovely balloon is no more. The peasants ripped it to shreds. I'll bet that every peasant in Red Ruthenia has a red-and-white raincoat!"

"Small loss, my lord. Surely you wouldn't have used it again."

"And why not? I'll learn the way of it next time."

"Next time you might come down in the middle of the Baltic Sea!"

"Well, what of it? Why should any sane man want to die or old age? If you want to think of something frightening, think about being wrinkled and crippled and sick all the time! That's old age and I don't want it! The Baltic would be a glorious death, and would give me as much fame as falling in battle."

I tried a different tack. "In eight years, we have one of the biggest wars in history coming up. You don't want to miss out on that, do you?"

"You mean the Mongols? Of course not!"

"Well, you have to be alive, or they won't let you fight in it. It's a rule. What if you could render great service to your lord the duke in that war? What if you could be on high and see exactly where the enemy was, and be able to inform his grace of their every movement? Wouldn't that earn you undying fame?"

"By G.o.d it would! I must start on another balloon immediately!"

"Not a balloon, my lord. A balloon would drift away from the battlefield and leave you a laughingstock.

Some would even say you ran away."

"We could tether it."

"And what if the battle moved, as they sometimes do? Anyway, you saw what happened to your last tether."

"What are you suggesting then?" *

"Let's go the whole route and build aircraft! An airplane can be piloted up or down at will. You can fly them in any direction you want and you can outrace the wind!"

"But you said that aircraft were too complicated for us to build!"

"They will certainly not be easy. It will take us years, but think of the prize to be won. To fly like a bird!"

"If men can do it, Sir Conrad, we will! How do we start?"

"I think we will need to build a whole town dedicated to flight. We will need some of the best carpenters and seamstresses in Poland. And for our future pilots and designers, we should start with young boys. We will start with boys ten or twelve years old and have them build small model aircraft at first. We'll have to try a lot of things, and we can save time by building models first ' As the boys grow, so will their models, and in a few years they'll be making full-sized aircraft."

"But why boys? Why not adults?"

The truth was that keeping tabs on a hundred boys would keep Count Lambert busy and safe, but I couldn't tell him that. "Young people have free minds, my lord. There's more work to be done than you and I can do in our lifetimes. We'll need help. But from where? Can you imagine a bunch of peasants trying to learn how to fly? The merchants? The priests? It's ludicrous! And the n.o.bles are too involved with their own affairs to give it their full energies."

"But boys would, especially if we took them to a new town away from their parents and other distractions.

It might be best if we restricted them to the sons of the n.o.bility, because we'll need adults around to do the carpentry and so on, not to mention cooking and cleaning. It would be best if the boys had some authority over the common workers."

"You're right, Sir Conrad! What boy wouldn't jump at the chance to come?"

"I'll worry about designing the facilities. You should pick the land. We'll need about a square mile of it, most of it dead flat, but with one big hill on it. Do you have such a place on your lands?"

"Several. But I'm minded of the old tomb. At least they say it was a tomb, but it could be just a hill for all I know. You know Krak's tomb near Cracow? It's about the same, only it's bigger. It's also covered with trees, but we can make short work of that!"

"Excellent, my lord. Is it far from here?"

"About three miles. Have one of the other knights show it to you. Have your plans ready for just after the spring planting. I can get you a thousand workers then."

"A thousand, my lord?"

"Two thousand, if you can use them. I'll have each of my knights send me a dozen peasants for two months.

I can pay them in cloth. That should be enough to get us started, anyway. We'll call the town Eagle Nest!"

"Yes, my lord."

Going back to Three Walls, the more I thought about the project, the more I liked it. Of course we wouldn't get decent aircraft in the foreseeable future, but having a bunch of bright kids in what amounted to an engineering school could be great! Those were my future engineers!

Furthermore, it would give Lambert something to spend all his spare energy on. Keeping up with a few dozen youngsters will wear down any man!

On the other hand, it meant one h.e.l.l of a busy spring and summer. I had two major installations to put together at the same time, when peasant manpower was available between the planting and the first hay harvest.

When things get hairy, the magic word is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Do what you've done before.

Actually, the structures needed first were housing, just as at Three Walls.

I'd start by ordering the same tools I'd had made last summer, with only minor changes where experience had shown a better way. Only now I'd order two sets, one in Count Lambert's name and one in the duke's.

I'd go to the same craftsmen as before and demand the same prices.

The apartment buildings would be the same as at Three Walls, except I'd bend them into hollow squares instead of a straight line as at Three Walls, because they would stand in the open instead of closing off a box canyon. But the hard parts, the kitchen and bathrooms, had all been designed. What's more, my people already had experience making and installing them.

I would put together two teams of experienced carpenters and masons and have them be my leaders during the construction phase, with peasants hired temporarily to do the grunt work.

I was tempted to go straight to Cieszyn and start ordering stuff, but all my drawings and notes were back at Three Walls. My head was bubbling with my new plans and I didn't stay long. At dawn the next day I was on the road again and in an hour I was talking to the Krakowski brothers.

A year had made quite a difference in both them and the bra.s.s works. Twelve months earlier they had been literally starving to death, and each had lost a child during the winter. Now they were solid, prosperous citizens. They and their families were healthy and each had added a new member, with more already on the way.

Their factory was booming, with over fifty workers and twelve pouring ovens. They had back orders for the bra.s.s parts for twenty-three windmills as well as a lot of other things.

I told them that they now had four more windmills on order, and these took precedence over other work.- Also, I needed all the plumbing we'd used at Three Walls duplicated twice, and had some other things besides.

They got upset at having to delay their other customers, but when I told them that half of the stuff was for Count Lambert and the rest was for Duke Henryk himself, they quieted down. n.o.body was going to object strongly about being b.u.mped by the duke. It wasn't healthy!

Finally, I told them about the copper mine I'd discovered. That got their interest! They were all angry about the prices they'd been paying and the idea of digging and smelting their own copper appealed to them.

Thom said that when he was a journeyman he worked at a smelter for a year, so I asked him to supervise the works the next summer. It meant leaving his wife behind for a few months until the housing was up, but that didn't bother anyone. It wasn't as though they were newlyweds. And I hinted that if the Legnica installation worked out well, we'd move the bra.s.s works from Cieszyn to there to cut down on transportation costs.

We talked a bit about having an entire city devoted to the mining, smelting, casting, and machining of bra.s.s and copper and I could see the lights going on in their eyes.

I gave Thom half of the ore I'd brought back, and he was suddenly depressed. It wasn't any kind of copper ore he'd ever seen. The ore he was used to was red-colored, and a little heavier. I told him that it had to be roasted over an open fire before it could be smelted, and he said that he would try it. But I could see that he had grave doubts about the project.

I'd make a believer of him. I hoped.

I was lucky in that Tadeusz was back in Cieszyn from successfully starting a Pink Dragon Inn in Cracow. It had already paid for its construction cost and was generating healthy profits.

He was absolutely delighted that the duke himself had requested a Pink Dragon Inn in Wroclaw, and vowed that within the week he would leave for that city no matter what the weather was like. I gave him a letter of introduction to the duke, sealing it with my big seal ring. I also told him about needing another small inn at the copper mine near Legnica by the end of the summer.

Then I spent two days haggling with blacksmiths and carpenters to get the tools I needed. The duke's name impressed everybody, and I got done in two days what had taken me two months last summer.

I also looked up the cloth merchant that I'd contracted with last summer. We made arrangements for delivering the two thousand yards of cloth agreed upon. He wasn't happy about the deal, because the price of cloth had dropped since we had agreed on the price, and he would loose money by honoring the agreement. I wouldn't let him off, though. I never told him to be a capitalist!

Then back to Three Walls where people still weren't too clear about what had happened. It took a full day with my foremen to settle out who would be going where to do what.

And besides all of the above, work was going on at Three Walls, and we had to agree on a schedule to keep things going even though we were losing two-thirds of our best men and having to hire a bunch of rookies.

Most of those going to Eagle Nest would be coming back, but the transfers to Copper City would be permanent.

I was having a wonderful time!