The Flying Warlord

Chapter Sixteen

I saw my error as soon as it happened. The riverbank being taller than the boat, our gunners couldn't see over it. They didn't see the horde that was coming until it was on top of us. I should have put observers up there. To add to our problems, while our helmets offered excellent protection, you couldn't tilt your head back in them. The helmet and beaver clamped into a ring around the collar of the breast and back plates. The helmet could turn sideways, but not up and down. The only way to look up was to tilt your whole body. Most people rarely look up in any event.

I think the reason that we weren't all killed was that the Mongols stopped at the top of the embankment to let off a flight of arrows. This got our attention.

It also got me an arrow in the eye.

I staggered back, scattering the gold and silver I'd picked up, tripping over the wreckage of the pontoon bridge and falling into the freezing mud. For a moment, I couldn't figure out what happened, except that I couldn't see out of my right eye, and my left was blurry. The pain came a bit later.

I struggled to get up, but kept falling back into the slippery wreckage. I could hear the shouting and fighting around me, the peashooters and the swivel guns firing, but I couldn't seem to get untangled. I broke off the damn arrow and could see with my left eye, I guess it was only that the shaft was in the way.

I was on my left side, and suddenly I was surrounded by legs and boots. But those weren't army uniforms! I tried again to get up and something unseen bashed into me, knocking me down again into deeper water and mud. I fumbled for my pistol, brought it up and aimed at a huge gold belt buckle a yard away. The gun fired, but what with the slippery mud and all, it flew from my hand. There wasn't time to reload it anyway.

Someone slammed into my side and we went down in a heap. I managed to get hold of my sword, which was still tied to my wrist, rolled over onto my knees and jabbed someone with red pants in the groin. He went down, but I got another bash on the back of the head from somewhere. But while that helmet restricted visibility, it sure protected you! I don't know how many times that ring around my collar saved my life.

Then I heard an army rallying cry! I saw three pairs of red pants go down as a group and then suddenly I was being lifted up into the air by strong arms under each of my armpits.

"Can you walk, sir?" It was Captain Targ.

"I think so. How goes the battle?"

"Time for a strategic withdrawal, sir. Or in nonmilitary parlance, let's run away!"

"Okay. But don't leave any of our men behind! Not even if you know they're dead!"

"Right sir. Standard doctrine. Fall back to the boat! Don't leave our own men! Pick up our dead! Pass the word!"

The gunners above us were keeping most of the enemy from getting to us, but there wasn't anything they could do about those already on top of us. We were hard-pressed to keep up any sort of line, and in that damned mud, a saber had the advantage over a rapier. You couldn't get enough traction to lunge!

Fortunately, most of our men had axes and I had my sword. It was only the captain and his knights who had serious problems.

With only one eye, I still did my share. I think I must have killed a half dozen of the bastards, taking a dozen hits that would have killed me had I been wearing lesser armor. The stuff got in the way, but it was worth it.

In minutes, we weren't fighting in the mud anymore. We were fighting on top of the enemy dead, and that's treacherous footing. The Mongol sabers bounced off our armor, but many of them were armed with a spear that had a long, thin, triangular point, and that thing was a killer! Carried by a man on the run, or thrown at short range, they could punch right through our armor, and most of our serious casualties were caused by them.

Yet discipline and training held true for us. Our lines tightened up, our dead and wounded were put aboard and soon we were safe. I was next to the last man off the shore, and I would have been the last, except for the captain.

"My honors, sir. This is my company, and I'll be the last man off!"

He'd earned it, so I clambered aboard and let him follow me.

As Tadaos pulled the boat away from the shore, a medic took me inside and I was the last man to be hustled up to sick bay, even though I wanted to see what was going on topside. Medics have no respect for the wishes of a wounded man. They're all mother hens who are convinced that they know best.

He got my helmet off and tsk-tsked at my right eye.

"Have I lost it?" I said.

"No, sir, it missed the eyeball. But it stuck in the bone just to the right of it. You're going to have a scar, I'm afraid, but you'll see again. You were lucky."

"I would have been a damn sight luckier if the arrow had missed!"

"There is that, sir."

"Well, open that surgeon's kit' Get the arrowhead out, clean the wound, and sew it up! Didn't they teach you anything in medic's school?"

"I never sewed up an eye before, sir. In fact, I've never sewn up anything but dead animals in training."

"Well, boy, now's your chance to learn! First, wash your hands in white lightning, and then wash around the wound as best you can."

"Yes, sir."

After a bit, I said, "You got that done? Then get the pliers out of your kit and pull the arrowhead out. Better get somebody to hold my head still. It'll hurt, and I might flinch."

"You, sir? Never!"

"I said get somebody to hold my head and stop acting like I'm God! That's an order!"

"Yes, sir, You're not God. Hey, Lezek! Give me a hand! Hold his head!"

"Now the pliers," I said.

I don't know if I yelled or not, but I saw the most incredible visual display and I think I might have blacked out for a few moments.

"It's out, sir," he said, holding the bloody thing so I could see it with my good eye. The right one still wasn't working, somehow.

"Good. Throw it away. That kind of souvenir I don't need. Now get a pair of tweezers and feel around in the wound for any bits of broken bone or any foreign matter."

This time, I know I screamed. Having somebody feeling around inside of your head without anesthetics is no fun at all!

But he took his time at it and seemed to take out a few chunks of something. I wanted to tell him to leave some of the skull behind, but I thought better of it. I couldn't see what was happening and so I had to trust to the kid's judgment.

"I think that's all of it, sir."

"Thank God! Now, clean it all out again with white lightning. Pour it right in."

By now, the area was getting numb, and I didn't scream. I wanted to, you understand, but I could- hold it in.

"Okay. Now get out your sterile needle and thread and sew it up. Use nice neat little stitches, because if my wife doesn't like the job you did, she will make your life not worth living. Believe me. I know the woman."

"Yes, sir. Try not to wince so much. It makes it hard to line the edges up."

"I'll try."

He put nine stitches in there. I counted,

"That's it, sir."

"Well, bandage it up then, with some peat-bog moss next to the wound!"

"Yes, sir."

Without adhesive tape, the thing had to be held on by wrapping gauze around my head and under my chin.

When he was done, I sat up.

"Well. Good job, I hope. Thank you, but now you better get around to the other men who were wounded."

He looked around the room. "No sir, I think the surgeons have taken care of everybody."

"The surgeons!" I yelled. "Then what the hell are you?"

"Me, sir? I'm an assistant corpsman."

"Then what the hell were you doing operating on my head?"

"But, you ordered me to, sir! It was a direct order from my commanding officer! What was I supposed to do? Disobey you?"

"Then what were you doing with a surgeon's kit?"

"Oh, they had extra of those at the warehouse, sir, so they handed them out to some of the corpsmen, just in case."

"They just handed it to you?"

"Yes, sir. It's nice to know what some of these things are for."

I found I couldn't wear my arming hat over the bandage, but I could get the helmet on.

Before I could leave the sick bay, the chief surgeon came up to me, his armor hacked in a dozen places. I could see by the insignia and the fact that he carried a mace rather than a sword that the equally battered man standing next to the chief surgeon was the company chaplain. In any modem army, both of these positions would have been given noncombatant status, but in ours, every man was a warrior. This Sir Majinski was banner of the orange platoon, besides his medical duties.

"The butcher's bill, sir," he said.

I looked at it. Eleven dead. Twenty-ten seriously wounded, and I wasn't on that list. Fifty-one with minor wounds. Had I done it Tadaos's way, with flamethrowers, these men would all be alive and sound.

"Sorry about the incident with the corpsman, sir. I kept an eye on him while he was working on you, but I had a man with a sucking chest wound on my table, and I thought I might be able to save him. But the corpsman meant well, and he did a fair job."

"Well, give the corpsman my apologies. The man with the chest wound, could you save him?"

"No."

I checked in with Tartar Control. The battle near Brzesko was up to three boats now, and the battle across from Sandomierz was still raging, with a dozen boats still butchering Mongols. But it wasn't the same dozen. That group, out of ammunition, was heading back upstream to East Gate to rearm. I knew the supplies we had there and it wasn't going to be enough.

In the history books I read when I was a boy, some said that the Mongols had invaded with a million men. Others said that this was impossible, that the logistics of the time couldn't have supported more than fifty thousand. But if the estimates that I'd made and those I was getting from the other boats were anything like correct, we had killed more than a half a million Mongols in the first morning of the attack! Furthermore, they showed no signs of thinning out! In any event, the numbers involved were so much higher than I had expected that I had vastly underestimated the ammunition requirements.

On the other hand, they were showing absolutely none of the tactical brilliance that they were supposedly famous for and that I had feared. So far, they were easier to kill than dumb animals. Not that they could be expected to stay that dumb.

Then too, some of my actions had been pretty dumb as well, and it was my duty to see that my last set of stupid mistakes was not repeated.

RB1 TO ALL UNITS. WE HAVE ENGAGED THE ENEMY

IN HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT AND LEARNED THE FOLLOWING:

1. WHEN PATROLLING A RIVERSHORE ON FOOT,

PLACE MEN AS OBSERVERS ON TOP OF THE RIVERBANK

TO WATCH FOR ENEMY COUNTERATTACKS.

2. ENEMY HAND WEAPONS ARE LARGELY INEFFECTIVE

EXCEPT FOR A SPEAR WITH A LONG, THIN, TRIANGULAR

POINT. THIS WEAPON IS CAPABLE OF PENETRATING OUR

ARMOR WHEN CARRIED AT A RUN OR THROWN.

3. WHEN FIGHTING ON RIVER MUD, THE RAPIER IS

NOT EFFECTIVE DUE TO THE LACK OF TRACTION DURING

A LUNGE. OFFICERS ARE ADVISED TO ARM THEMSELVES

WITH AXES UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES.

4. WHEN TAKING OUT A PONTOON BRIDGE BEING

CONSTRUCTED ON A RIVERSHORE, FLAMETHROWERS

ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN AXES.

GOOD HUNTING--CONRAD.

OUT.

Was that worth the deaths of eleven men? Or the maiming of dozens others? I swear that I was never meant to be a battle commander.

But something had to be done about the ammunition situation, and there was only one place to get more ammo. Our other units. We sent out radio messages ordering all units to send one-sixth of their swivel gun ammunition to East Gate, and for the Odra boats to send three-quarters of their peashooter and Halman ammunition in addition to this. I hated to strip the other units, but as the captain said, the ammunition couldn't possibly be spent better than it was right here.

I also ordered that all reloading equipment and supplies be transported from Three Walls to East Gate, along with any ladies who knew how to operate it.

I went back up on deck. We were heading upstream again to the fighting at Sandomierz.

"How did the battle go, Baron Tadaos?"

"Well, sir, since we was out to destroy the bridge, I guess you have to say we won. It's gone."

"We got the whole thing chopped up?"

"The Ghost did all right, but it wasn't attacked. We only got about half of our half done. But after we pulled out, the Ghost took out the last quarter with a flamethrower. That bridge burned real good. So did the Mongols."

Captain Targ came up. "It was quite a show, sir. Mongols don't like burning to death. A lot of them jumped into the water and drowned in preference to it."

"A good thing to know. Captain Targ, you saved my life today. If you hadn't killed the Mongols around me and pulled me out of that wreckage, I'd be a dead man. I owe you."

"No sir, you don't. I was just paying an old debt."

"Debt? What debt? Should I know you from somewhere?"

"I didn't expect you to recognize me, sir. You only saw me once and that was in the dark, plus I was only ten years old at the time. But I'd hoped you would remember my name."

"I'm sorry, but I still draw a blank."

"My father told me that if I could do you some personal service, I should tell you that once you threw bread on the waters, and that it has come back to you tenfold. Well, it isn't really tenfold. If I've saved your life, well, you once saved the lives of my entire family."

"I remember now. When I first got to this country, I was lost in a snowstorm, and your father let me in to the warmth of his fire. Doing that saved my life, I think."

"Perhaps, sir. But the next summer, my father's fields were flattened by a hailstorm. We would have starved to death that next winter except you came by and gave him a purse of silver. So now perhaps that debt is paid."

"In full, with compound interest, Captain. There were two of you boys, weren't there?"

"Yes, sir. Wladyclaw is a banner with the elevendythird."

"And the rest of your family. Are they well?"

"Yes, sir, or at least they were as of a month ago. But my father wouldn't evacuate and that region is probably overrun by the Mongols now. There's no telling what's happened."

"I'll pray for them." It was all I could say.