CONRAD STARGARD:

THE RADIANT WARRIOR

LEO FRANKOWSKI

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

The Cross-Time Engineer copyright © 1986 by Leo Frankowski; The High-Tech Knight copyright © 1989 by Leo Frankowski; The Radiant Warrior copyright © 1989 by Leo Frankowski.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original Megabook

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-8863-6

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

First Megabook printing, December 2004

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frankowski, Leo, 1943-

Conrad Stargard : the radiant warrior / Leo Frankowski.

p. cm.

"A Baen Books original megabook."

ISBN 0-7434-8863-6 (hc)

1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Middle Ages—Fiction. 3. Mongols—Fiction.

4. Poland—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3556.R347C655 2004

813'.54—dc22

2004017093

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

BAEN BOOKS by LEO FRANKOWSKI

A Boy and His Tank

The War With Earth (with Dave Grossman)

Kren of the Mitchegai (with Dave Grossman)

The Two-Space War (with Dave Grossman)

The Fata Morgana

Conrad's Time Machine

Conrad Stargard: The Radiant Warrior

The Cross-Time Engineer

Prologue

Author's Note

Medieval Time

Monks got together eight times a day at approximately even intervals for prayer. Since they rang the bells at these times, everybody else got into the habit of using the same designations, even when there wasn't a monastery around.

Prime. The first hour. Daybreak.

Tierce. The third hour. Halfway between dawn and noon. About nine a.m.

Sext. The sixth hour. Noon.

None. The ninth hour. Halfway between noon and sunset. About three p.m. Actually, this is where the term noon came from, as a joke. There was once this monastery, the inmates of which, as a mark of their austerity, swore that they would not eat each day until the none bell struck. Well, since they were the ones who were in charge of ringing the bells, and since a guy gets awfully hungry sitting around and praying, the none bell sort of got to be rung a little earlier each day. The townspeople, noticing this, got to calling mid-day "none," to ridicule the monks, and the name stuck, eventually turning into "noon."

Vespers. Sunset.

Compline. Halfway between sunset and midnight. Around nine p.m.

Matins. Midnight. Actually, matins means "morning." A matinee was the morning show back in the days when theatrical performances were normally given in the afternoon. With the advent of artificial lighting, the main shows were moved to the evenings and the matinee was moved to the afternoon. Then recently, I was invited to an "evening matinee," and then somehow the performance got delayed until midnight. In the course of things, we have wandered entirely around the clock.

Lauds. Halfway between midnight and dawn. About three a.m.

Please note that the hours are not the same size, but change with the season. In a high latitude area like Poland, this meant that some hours could be three times longer than others.

"Damn it! I have five doctorates!" she shouted.

He looked up from the pile of Polish government forms on his desk and surveyed the dumpy, middle-aged waitress in front of him. Why me, Lord?

"So?" he said dryly. "It happens that, academically, you are below average at this installation. I have nine. I am also your boss, and you are screaming at me."

"But it isn't fair!"

"Right. But then nobody ever claimed that the Service was fair—or that the universe was either, for that matter. This is your first day here. If you have a problem, you may tell me about it. But if you raise your voice one more time, I will bounce you off three of these walls before you hit the floor. One of my doctorates is in martial arts. Clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, what precisely is your problem?" He leaned back, his fingertips touching to form an arch.

"Everything!" she shouted, and then remembered her situation and started again quietly. "This is all a mistake. I shouldn't be in twentieth-century Poland. My field is ancient Greece. And this fat forty-year-old body! Doctrine is that one should start out a tour of duty as a teenager! And having to tend tables at a bar! And—"

"Hold it and keep your voice down! Now, you say there's been a mistake. Let's check the record." He touched four nondescript spots on his battered wooden desk, and a display appeared in front of him, individual letters glowing white in the air.

"Hmmm . . . born in North America, 62,218 b.c. . . . approved for child rearing; eleven children . . . retired at forty-five, attended Museum University 62,219 b.c. to 62,192 b.c. . . . doctorates in medicine, Slavic languages, psychology, and Greek literature . . . accepted into the Historical Corps . . .

"First assignment, Periclean Athens! God, what luck! Do you realize that I have twice petitioned to vacation in Periclean Athens and have been turned down both times? More people want to visit than there are natives in the city. And you get it as a first assignment!"

"Well, sir, my usual body isn't this flabby mess. And if you know the right people—"

"Humph. Then I recommend a program of diet and exercise. In any event, your record there was less than outstanding . . . meddling in local politics, interfering with an assassination."

"But a hetaera was supposed to be interested in politics."

"Your examiners felt otherwise. Well, let's see . . . After forty-one years in Athens, you returned to the university and obtained a doctorate in ancient Egyptian languages . . . were turned down four times on assignments in the ninth through thirteenth dynasties, respectively . . . eleven other requests denied . . . eventually you volunteered for an open assignment and got twentieth-century Poland.

"Faced with this assignment, you requested the shortest possible tour of duty. It happens that your predecessor served twenty-seven years of a fifty-one-year tour, then quit."

"She quit? But that means—"

"Right. She was dismissed from the corps. What she does with the rest of her life is up to her. Most quitters end up drinking themselves to death out of boredom, although I hear the anthropology people are always looking for folks to track the migration patterns of Homo erectus."

"Living off the land in prehistoric Africa?" She shuddered.

"Right. Now, I don't see where you have a legitimate bitch. You volunteered for an open assignment and lucked out to the extent of indoor plumbing. You wanted a short assignment, and this one is only twenty-four years long. It obviously requires that your body match that of your predecessor, and the job fits nicely with your doctorate in Slavic languages."

"I got that when I was trying for a slot in the court of Casimir the Great."

He threw his hands up. "Damn it, young lady! Isn't it about time you grew up? We are out here writing the definitive history of mankind! The glory spots are few and far between. Most of it is plain, dirty grunt work, doing a mundane job well. And right now, your job involves serving drinks to a drunken tourist." He tapped a few places on his desk, and the display changed. "His drink is getting low. You'd better get back out there. I see that you haven't loaded the capsule yet."

"Loaded what capsule?"

"You didn't read your duty sheet? Damn, but you're inefficient! We are scheduled to ship nine tons of barley to the thirteenth century at 0227 tonight. You are to load it into the capsule."

"So now I'm a stevedore as well as a bar wench?"

"You think filling out government forms is a more pleasant occupation? Get out of here and get your ass to work!"

She stomped out, and he returned to his stack of forms. What on Earth do they do with all of these things? They can't possibly have time to read them all. What is the psychology of it? Hmm—'The Psychology of Governmental Forms in Twentieth-century Eastern Europe' . . . There's a paper in that! . . .

Chastised, the waitress went about her duties in a black humor. She swore bitterly as she manhandled sacks of grain onto a primitive lift truck, too angry to notice that the slots in the wooden skids under the sacks matched the forks on the truck. "Damn! Not even a bloody antigrav field! As if the primitives could understand it even if they could find this place!"

Working in that ineffective manner, with runs up two flights of steps every fifteen minutes to check on her lone customer, it took her two hours to complete the loading. By then her uniform was torn, her nylons were in shreds, and she'd broken the heel from one of her shoes.

"Ridiculous clothing!" she muttered as she stomped up to the main floor in her stocking feet. In her anger she turned off the lights behind her but forgot to close the doors.

Chapter One

The High Tatras are magnificent in the early fall. I had arranged to spend my yearly vacation backpacking in the mountains south of Cracow, and for the most part my timing had been excellent.

The weather had been perfect, the color change was at its peak, and—since it was just past the usual tourist season—I had whole mountains to myself. The farmers were getting in the harvest, and all the children were back in school. All the teachers were back in school, too, which was unfortunate. I usually scored pretty well with schoolteachers.

Vacationing, I generally ended up with some agreeable female companionship, but such had been sadly lacking this trip. I had been three weeks without, and frankly, my horns were showing.

Well. My allotted two-week holiday from the Katowice Machinery Works was almost up, and there was one small errand I had yet to perform. I lived with my mother, and she had read a magazine article about the Zakopane Agricultural and Horticultural Research Station. I was going to be near Zakopane, so it seemed reasonable to her that I should visit the station and buy her some seeds.

Just why seeds purchased at the ZAHRST should be any different from seeds purchased in Katowice was not explained. Neither was her sudden interest in gardening, although I suspect that she had visions of me in the backyard, hoeing up carrots, instead of being out with my friends. In any event, to keep peace in the family I had promised to buy some seeds.

The station was served by a hiking trail as well as a road. I took the trail because the pleasures of walking are degraded by road dust and noise and because I am not friendly with the fat, motorized tourist who says, "You mean you walked up here?"

The store was empty when I arrived. Empty, except for a few million seeds. It is incredible how many different kinds of plants there are. One rack had seeds for more than eighty different varieties of roses. Another had almost as many kinds of beets, lettuce, and strawberries.

The prices on everything were low—trivial, really—so the thought hit me: The old girl wants seeds? Well, she's going to get seeds! Thousands of them! Not that I'm going to stick any of them into the ground!

This slightly sadistic train of thought was interrupted as a magnificent pair of breasts came in from the back room. These breasts were followed by an equally magnificent young lady.

"Sorry. I didn't know anyone was out here. Can I help you?" Her eyes were a glorious pale green that floated in a field of red freckles. Her hair was that incredible natural red that you see maybe once in a decade, and, oh yes, dear God, she could help me in so many wonderful ways!

However, sad experience has taught me that pouncing on them tends to frighten them off. So I smiled, making sure that my mouth was closed and that I wasn't drooling.

"I expect so. My mother wanted me to buy her some seeds."

"Then you've gotten to the right place." She returned my smile. Glory! "Did your mummy give you a shopping list?" She was wearing a light print blouse and was definitely without a bra. Nothing in there but healthy Polish girl!

"Well, no. Actually, she was pretty vague about it. I was hoping to get some friendly expert advice."

"I think I qualify as a friendly expert. Where does she live?" She was still smiling, a good sign.

"We have a house just outside of Katowice."

"And what sort of soil do you have?"

"I don't know. It stays on the ground and is reasonably polite about it."

"No, silly! I mean is it sandy or clay or loam? What color is it? What's growing there now?"

"Well, it's sort of brownish. It doesn't stick to your shoes like clay, and we are presently harvesting great quantities of prizewinning crabgrass." I set my pack on the floor, using it as an excuse to edge a little closer, still smiling. She didn't retreat.

"Okay. That's something to go on. Now you have to decide on what you want."

I knew exactly what I wanted. But patience was still needed.

"I thought we might get a little of everything and let her do the choosing later."

"Sensible. Do you like strawberries?"

"I absolutely love strawberries." Strawberry blondes even more.

"Then these are definitely for you." She reached across to one of the stands and gently bumped me with her hip. First contact! And she had initiated it!

"Now, this variety is perfect for a home garden. The strawberries come in all during the growing season from early spring to frost, and it's a perennial." She wore the slightest hint of perfume.

"You've talked me into it."

"And these are great if she wants to do some canning—they all come in at once."

"Sold." She wore a skirt and nylons. None of this modern pants nonsense.

"And this is a new climbing variety."

"The wonders of modern science."

And so we went up and down rows, throwing seed packages into a brown paper bag. Following her was a pleasure. She was as perfect behind as she was in front.

"You're certainly enthusiastic about your job. Do you make a commission on all this?"

"Of course not, silly. This is a state-owned facility. But sales do count toward my efficiency rating."

"Well, we wouldn't want you to get a poor efficiency rating . . . uh, what is your name?"

"Anna."

"Anna. A lovely name."

"And yours?"

"Conrad."

"Hmm . . . Conrad has such a strong, masculine sound." She was still throwing seeds into the bag.

"Anna, what do people around here do when they're not selling seeds?"

"Not much, once the tourist season is over."

"But there must be some place where you folks hang out."

"Well, the group here at the station usually stops for a drink at the Red Gate Inn." She was still smiling.

"And where is this wonderful establishment?"

"Oh, it's not all that wonderful. But it is sort of quaint. It's been there for hundreds of years, and they've never even built a road to it."

"Then how do you get there?"

"You came in by the trail, didn't you? Then you must have come from the south; you would have passed it coming from the north."

"An inn on a hiking trail?"

"About half a kilometer down. You know, that trail is ancient. It shows up on the oldest maps. Once it was the only road through here. Caravans used to travel on it."

Caravans? Zakopane is surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the Carpathians. Unless you travel by the modern, dynamite-blasted road or you are a mountain climber or a helicopter pilot, there is only one way in or out—north. Within a hundred kilometers—to both the east and the west—there are ancient mountain passes into Czechoslovakia, but this area is one huge cul-de-sac. Nothing medieval would have traveled through here. The area's only natural resources are good hiking, great skiing, and magnificent scenery—none of which are particularly transportable by caravan mule.

However, I did not want to spoil her romantic notions. I wanted rather to encourage them.

"Amazing. I really must see this place. Is there any chance that you would be by there this evening?"

"There is an excellent chance." She winked. "I live just beyond the inn."

The world was wonderful. Anna was wonderful. And yes, I was wonderful, too, so my mood wasn't seriously dampened when she figured up the bill. It seems that while the price of a pack of seeds was trivial, 342 times trivial equals substantial. Actually, it took a fair bite out of a week's pay.

But I wasn't going to let that bother me. Not when there was an evening with Anna to look forward to.

The trail to the Red Gate Inn wound among pine forests below the High Tatras.

I had earned my engineering degree in Massachusetts, studying at the expense of a wealthy American relative. My summers had been free, and I had spent one of them hiking in the Appalachians. They were good mountains, but somehow they were never mine. These Tatras—this Poland—is my country, and I love it.

The Red Gate Inn was a surprisingly large place. Besides a restaurant and a taproom, it had rooms for rent and housing for its workers.

It was about four in the afternoon when I arrived, and I realized that I hadn't asked Anna about her quitting time. Well, she would get there when she got there.

The restaurant was tempting, but a meal with Anna was more tempting, so I went into the taproom, a lovely old cavern with huge oak beams and polished ancient furniture. Only the lighting and the taps themselves were modern.

They brewed their own beer, a rarity not to be passed up in these days of commercial fizziness. It was an excellent beer, and I was into my third stein by five-thirty. Also my tenth cigarette. I kept looking at the clock on the wall because I wasn't wearing my watch.

I owned an excellent watch, a solar-powered, solid-state, digital thing. It had a calculator with trig functions, and it played Chopin to wake me in the morning. But I was on vacation, and the whole idea of a vacation is to get away from things like clocks and timetables and delivery schedules and factories.

Not that I was complaining about my job. I worked for a healthy organization and had a decent, competent, understanding boss who generally let me do things sensibly, i.e., my way. Designers are all prima donnas.

We designed and built specialized industrial machinery, normally one-of-a-kind things to perform some industrial task—assembling carburetors, for example. My end of it involved designing the electronic and hydraulic controls for the machines, usually little more than specifying off-the-shelf components and programming a simple computer to run them. As a result, I rarely spent more than a few weeks on any one project, which kept things interesting. I got into all sorts of unusual processes. My job also involved a pleasant amount of business travel, finding out what the end-user really wanted and then making the machine work for him.

I asked the waitress about the workers at the station.

"Well, sir, it's hard telling. Those scientist people, they don't keep regular hours, you know. Another beer, sir?" Her Polish was quite bookish.

The restaurant was doing a surprisingly good business—I was checking it about every fifteen minutes—but only one other customer was in the taproom, another male hiker whom I certainly didn't want at my table when Anna came. If she came. I lit another cigarette.

Despite the considerable amount of beer I had drunk, I was getting irritated by seven o'clock. To give myself something to do, I decided to repack my knapsack and put all the seeds at the bottom. This got me to reading the labels on the envelopes.

For one thing, most of those seeds did not come from the Zakopane station. Half of them came from the Soviet Union, and at least a quarter of the envelopes read "Printed in U.S.A." That seed store was purely a commercial operation!

For another, I got to looking at what I'd spent half a week's pay on. Five kinds of strawberries, okay. Six kinds of lettuce, fine. Blueberries and raspberries, maybe. Seven kinds of potatoes? Perhaps. But that redheaded bitch had sold me six packages of wheat! Can you imagine my mother growing wheat in her tiny subdivision backyard? Not to mention rye, oats, barley, and four kinds of maize! And sugar beets. Bloody-be-damned sugar beets! And flowers. Fully a hundred varieties of flowers. One envelope read "Japanese Roses. Nature's fence. Absolutely impenetrable to man or beast. Grows to four meters in height and breadth. Caution: Do not plant on small properties." And trees. I had fifty kinds of trees! Next year I wouldn't have to come to Zakopane. I could plant my own damned forest!

The next time the waitress came by, I asked her again about the group from the station.

"Well, sir, it's going on eight o'clock, and I'd guess that if they're not here by now, they won't be getting here. They don't always come. Another beer, sir?"

"No. No more beer, please. Vodka. A large glass."

I repacked my knapsack, seeds and all, and settled down to a monumental drunk.

Eventually the waitress got fairly adamant about my leaving—we were the last ones up—so I settled the surprisingly large bill and walked for the door with my pack on my back. I then decided that another trip to the rest room was in order. The rest room was in the basement, and I had made the trip quite a few times that evening.

But this time there seemed to be a lot more steps than before, and the lights were out. I must have stumbled around for twenty minutes without finding either the rest room or a light switch. I sat down to rest.

For the past two weeks, I had been sleeping in meadows and on rock piles. I could be comfortable anywhere. I relaxed, laid down, and fell asleep.

Chapter Two

I awoke with fluorescent lights shining in my face. My back and arms were simultaneously sore and numb; I had fallen asleep wearing my knapsack. My forehead was trying to split just above my eyebrows to relieve internal pressure. My bladder was painfully full, and my teeth were rusty.

I had not the slightest idea where I was, and I had to slowly and painfully rehearse in my mind the events of the previous day. Ah. Yes. The magnificent bitch. The idiot seeds. The inn. I must be in the basement of the inn.

Slowly, I got to my feet, half wishing that my head would explode and be done with it. I had been sleeping on sacks of grain, probably barley. Oh, yes. They brewed their own beer. I must be in the storeroom.

My pack seemed undisturbed. I checked my wallet, and everything was in order, though yesterday's stupid spending had left me with barely enough cash to pay my bus fare home.

The double door out was weird—thick steel like a bank vault or like something you might find in a submarine. Old buildings sometimes collect strange features. Perhaps it had been a bomb shelter.

But I couldn't waste time puzzling that out. It had become urgent that I find a rest room.

Beyond the strange doors was a large room filled with boxes and bales; it was nothing like the hallway with the rest room. I found a staircase, which I climbed frantically. If I was in a basement, then up had to be out. I could always go in the bushes.

Through the doorway at the top of the stairs, I found myself in the familiar hallway, dimly lit with gray light from a high window. I must have been in a subbasement. As I rushed to the rest room, the door closed behind me with a solid click.

But there was no rest room, just another storage room filled with huge, foul-smelling crocks of sauerkraut.

My bladder could stand no more, and the room was dark. I walked behind the door and urinated on the wall.

Please understand that I was a civilized, educated, and profoundly housebroken young man. I felt extremely guilty about desecrating someone's storeroom. As my bladder deflated, other problems occurred to me. How was I to explain my presence in the basement? At best, the owners might demand of me the price of a night's lodging, which I didn't have. At worst, they might accuse me of being a thief, and no end of trouble would come of it all. Best to leave as quietly and quickly as possible.

I tiptoed to the ascending staircase that began directly in front of the door at the top of my previous climb. But the door that I had just come through had become a solid fieldstone wall without the slightest hint of a crack.

Well, I was severely hung over and probably still a bit drunk. I had never had hallucinations before, but I knew that such things were possible. But it was probable that I was in serious trouble. So, pack still on my back, I climbed the staircase, unbarred a door, and walked quickly down the trail without looking back.

I went at least a kilometer before I dared to stop, dig out my canteen, and drink it dry. As my fear of being caught lessened with each step, so did my mood become darker. Instead of returning from my vacation refreshed and eager for a new project, I was broke, sore, hung over, and horny. Hangovers always make me horny, and the "affair" with the redhead had not helped a bit. The weather had turned gray and cold, and I was not in a tolerant mood. Then a lunatic medievalist trotted toward me down the trail.

In retrospect and at a distance, he was not a bad sight. He rode a massive black stallion and wore a white surcoat with a huge black cross. His white shield also bore a black cross, which was repeated again by the eye-and-nose slit on his authentic-looking barrel of a helmet. He was sheathed in chain mail from his neck to his toes. A lance was at his back, a sword was at his waist, and various instruments of mayhem hung over his saddlebow.

As we approached each other, the idealized image faded and details became visible—The surcoat was shabby, and the shield was dirty. His chain mail was not of the fine rings seen in museums but of circles as big as a man's wedding ring and of iron that would have been better used for coat hangers. His helmet and weaponry were of poorly beaten wrought iron, and his horse was not well fed.

I must confess that Poland has its fair share of lunatics and more than its share of medievalists. Once a year, the whole city of Cracow is turned over to those strange people—mostly students—for a weekend. Actually, the Juvenalia is a pretty good party, but I was not in the mood in the Tatras.

Still, I needed to find a bus home, so I flagged him down.

"Hi there!" I waved as he drew up alongside.

He stopped abruptly, stiffened his back, and removed his dented helmet, which he balanced on top of the other ironmongery on his saddlebow. His hair, at least, was authentic. It was very long, very blond, and very greasy. His eyes were ice-blue, his nose had been broken, and scars crossed his forehead and cheek. I had the feeling that he was doing what he was doing because he could not afford a motorcycle.

He shouted at me in something that was probably German. My American was quite good, and I could speak a little English, but German was quite beyond me.

"That's very nice. You are very good at keeping in character, but would you please speak Polish?"

"I talk some Pole. What hell you want?"

"Okay, stay in character if your ego needs it, but I would like to know how far it is to the main highway to Cracow."

"You on road, Horse Ass."

"I'm on a trail, but I need to catch the bus to Cracow. Now, please cut out the nonsense."

"You need bashed head, you."

There comes a time when you must stop being polite to an idiot. I was a Polish Air Force Reserve Officer, and I spent some months in a basic training camp. There is a thing called a 'command voice.' It is very loud, very deep, and very penetrating. It is guaranteed to shake the socks off the average recruit. So: "Now listen up, you base-born moron! I have had quite enough of your archaic nonsense! I have asked you a simple, civil question: How far are we from the main road? Now, you will answer up, and smartly, or you will regret it! Do I make myself clear?" It is important that you never actually swear at an inferior, since this puts you down on his level. You can come close, however.

His eyes widened, and he started to draw his sword. Then he dropped it back into its sheath.

At the time I thought I had him buffaloed, but on more mature reflection I think that he simply didn't want to dirty his sword on me.

He searched among his ironmongery and pulled out a meter-long chain with a long stick at one end and a big iron star at the other. He swung this thing at me.

I was sufficiently startled that my reaction time was slow. I did manage to turn and start running, such that I caught the star mostly on my pack and only glancingly on the back of my skull. The impact was sufficient to knock me some ways from the trail and into a thorn bush. I decided to remain there until he went away.

He never looked at me again. He slung his gadget back over the saddlebow, put his helmet back on his head, and continued south.

God! He wasn't a lunatic so much as a bloody maniac!

I disentangled myself from the thorn bush and sorted through my pack for a clean cloth. The wound at the back of my head did not seem to be bleeding much, and I guessed that it would last until I could get to a hospital. Actually, it hurt less than the throbbing hangover in my forehead. I would live, but I would definitely report the homicidal moron to the police! Besides damage to my pride and person, he had punctured my tent, ripped my knapsack, dented my mess kit, and smashed my flashlight into three pieces! Damn it, I would sue the bastard!

I got everything back together, keeping the damaged equipment for evidence, and continued north.

The weather that had been bad turned absolutely foul. Overcast turned into fog and mist that turned into sleet and snow. I stopped and put on the long johns that my mother had insisted I take. I traded my tennis shoes for heavy hiking boots. Then I put on my nylon wind jacket and sweater over my sweat shirt. I soon covered this with a plastic poncho and was at last reduced to wrapping my sleeping bag about me under the poncho.

My hangover had not lessened a bit.

This was totally insane weather for mid-September.

According to my map, I should have crossed the highway hours ago. I supposed that I could be on the wrong trail, but only one was shown on the map. Nor had I seen another trail since leaving the inn. Perhaps I should have turned back to the inn and followed the gravel road down to the main highway, but there was always the chance that someone had seen me sneaking out. No. The likely solution was that, what with hangover and wounds, I was just slower than usual.

It was hard to tell, but I think it was about noon when my stomach began to protest. I was hungry.

I found a small stream forded by large rocks, which was strange; the Tourist Directorate usually bridges them. Not far from the trail was a cliff that sheltered some squaw wood from the sleet and snow. Squaw wood, for the benefit of you Polish city folk, is what my American friends called the dead, dry branches that stick out below the living branches of a tree. They are the best firewood in the forest, and taking them reduces the tree's burden, so no harm is done.

It didn't take much Sterno to get a fire going, and within a half hour I had a mixture of water and freeze-dried stew boiling in one aluminum pot and water for powdered coffee going in another.

The coffee went down well, but my stomach was still upset from the previous night's drinking. I was debating between (a) throwing away the uneaten half of the stew, (b) forcing it down anyway, since it was warm and I wasn't, and (c) trying to carry it along. I then met my second lunatic of the day, this one heading north, as I was.

I decided that some sort of festival was being held to pep up off-season business. At least this person was completely in character. He was wearing a great, thick, shabby brown monk's robe with a huge cowl pulled far over his head. He carried two large purses—rather like military musette bags—made of real leather. One was securely buckled, but the other was covered with a loose flap. The food I had eaten had cheered me some, and after my run-in with the maniac knight, I didn't want to irritate anyone.

"Hello, Brother!" I shouted. "You look cold. Join me by the fire!"

The fellow jumped at least a meter. His cowl had been pulled so far down that he had not only missed seeing me sitting by the cliff but had missed the fire and smoke as well.

"What? Oh! Bless you, my son! What did you say?" His accent was strange, but I could make out what he said.

"I said welcome to my fire! And welcome to some food as well!" By this time it was necessary to shout because a full blizzard was howling through the trees.

"Bless you, my son, bless you!" He hobbled over to my small cooking fire.

Good God! The man was barefoot! With the snow, he'd probably be frostbitten in an hour and dead of pneumonia within a day. Sitting alongside the fire I was warm enough that I really didn't need the sleeping bag wrapped around me. By the time he got to the fire, I had it spread on the ground. "Come on, Brother. Sit down right here."

"You would give me your own cloak to sit on?"

"It's not exactly a cloak. Please, sit down."

"You do me a great honor, my son." He bowed before he sat down.

"I do you no honor at all. I am merely trying to save your life." I started zipping up the bag around him.

"Jesus Christi! It grows together!"

"No, it just zips up. Here, see? Now, stop making a fuss and eat this stew." A mercenary redhead and two—count 'em, two!—raving lunatics in a single twenty-four-hour period. My mother said that I should have gone to the beach.

"You give me your dinner, besides?"

"No big thing. I cooked too much and was about to throw the leftovers away. Look—you don't mind, do you? I've only got the one spoon."

"Of course not, my son. You honor me again."

"Right." The high honors of a dirty spoon. I filled the coffeepot again with water from my canteen and went out in search of more squaw wood.

I returned with an armload of wood and heaped up the fire. The monk had finished the stew and had taken the trouble to wash out the pot with snow.

"This is the lightest silver that I have ever seen."

"No, Brother. It's aluminum, and of no great value."

There was certainly nothing halfway about his psychosis. Apparently he had studied hard to get there. I mixed up some instant coffee with the hot water and poured half of it into his pot.

"Drink up, Brother. It's good for you."

"This is some infusion of herbs?"

"A close approximation. Coffee. It will warm you up."

The next step was to see just how badly his feet were frostbitten. I dug out my spare socks and the pair of light tennis shoes I carry. Then I unzipped the bag from the bottom and got my next major shock.

His feet were huge! They were rough-red and incredibly wide—half again wider than my tennis shoes. The calluses were fully a centimeter thick! I didn't know what the disease was, but it was nothing like frostbite. I touched his feet, rubbed them. They were warmer than my hands!

"And you would wash my feet besides, my son?"

In fact, the snow was melting on my poncho and dribbling all over. Score one for him.

"And you would have given me your own sandals if my feet had not been too big. But this goes too far, and the day is passing. We must be on our way if we are to find shelter tonight. Come, my son. Take back your cloak and let us go. Cracow is still a long way off." With that, he got up and started for the road.

"Hey! Wait! That's stupid! You'll get lost in this blizzard! We should wait here for a rescue party!"

"Those who follow God are never lost, my son," he explained slowly, as if to a child. "In any event, our way from here is down, and even a blind man can find 'down.' As to this rescue you speak of, I suspect that God will not see fit to grant that to me for some years yet." And then he was gone.

Lunatic or not, I could hardly abandon the man to die in a snowstorm. I quickly repacked my equipment, even though most of it was wet, and threw the remainder of the wood onto the fire. There was no possibility of a forest fire in this storm, and our fire might attract some attention. I put on my pack and took off after the madman at a trot.

His short, quick stride had taken him a remarkable distance before I caught up, but there was no missing his footprints in the shin-deep snow. I stopped to stamp out an arrow to indicate our direction of travel.

"Ah, my son, and here I had assumed that you were a good Christian."

"What? Of course I'm a good Christian, Brother. And a better Catholic, for that matter. I used to be an altar boy. Why should I not be a good Christian?"

"Why, those pagan marks you are making."

"Pagan? Goodness no, Brother. I'm simply showing the direction of our travel to aid rescue teams. The Hiking Society will be out, as will the Forestry Service, the police, and, likely, the Air Force. There must be dozens of people caught in this storm. Darned freakish weather for mid-September."

"Well, if you are only leaving a sign to your friends, I suppose it's all right. And while I quite agree that this would be strange weather for September, I must point out that today is the twenty-fifth of November."

"Brother!" We walked down the trail. I was surprised at how short the man was. He barely came up to my armpit.

"That brings up another point. While I dislike to be continually correcting a benefactor, please allow me to mention that my title is not Brother. It happens that I am an ordained priest, and perhaps Father would be more appropriate."

"As you like, Father." I don't think that insanity and the priesthood are mutually exclusive sets, and in any event, it would do no harm to humor him. "How did you know that I was going to Cracow?"

"Did I say that? If I did, I should not have mentioned it, since I obtained the information in the confessional. However, before he confessed, a good Christian knight told me that he had killed you—at least I assume that he referred to you. There can't be that many giants wandering about, and you do have a slight head wound. He asked me to give you extreme unction, which I agreed to do, although that sacrament no longer seems appropriate."

Giant? I was fairly tall—190 centimeters—but hardly a giant.

I stopped to stamp out another arrow in the snow. "Good Christian knight! He's a bloody homicidal maniac! He wanders around trying to murder people! He makes an unprovoked assault on me and you send him on his way to say a few Ave Marias."

"Not true. It was six dozen Ave Marias and three dozen Pater Nosters. And he certainly felt that he was provoked. Whatever decided you to be rude to a Knight of the Cross?"

"Oh! Nine dozen prayers for an attempted murder!"

"Please calm yourself. You appear to have suffered no great harm, and I don't imagine that the prayers will do the knight's soul any damage, either. After all, it is the intent that really matters."

"The actuality made a considerable difference to me."

"Certainly, my son. Now as I understand it, you were alone, on foot, and completely without armor or weapons. Without an apology, a compliment, or even a bow, you stopped a member of the Teutonic Knights and demanded information of him. You did not even offer him your name. He then answered your question, even translating it with his limited Polish, because you spoke no German at all. You then became ruder and claimed—or at least implied—that he lied. He then gave you a fair warning, and you returned this with . . . let me see. What were his exact words? . . . 'A tone of voice that I would have found objectionable had it been spoken to me by my own Holy Commander.' He then struck you. Now, my son, are these substantially the facts?"

"They may be substantially the facts, but the telling of them is most biased, and in any event they do not in any way justify attempted murder!"

"True. Violence is rarely justifiable, and it was for this reason that I bade the knight do penance after confession."

Christ. I had almost been murdered, and now a man whose life I was trying to save was trying to convince me that it was my fault. Damn! What the hell was wrong with the Air Rescue? We should at least have heard a helicopter by this time. I fished around in my shirt pocket, under the sweater and poncho, and dug out my cigarettes and disposable lighter. Only one cigarette left. I was about to pitch the package, but one must not litter, not even in a snowstorm with a lunatic. I stuffed the empty pack in my pocket. I lit the cigarette, drew deeply, and put away the lighter.

The priest's eyes grew wide, but his step never faltered. "Remarkable. You mentioned that you were a true Christian. Would you like to tell me how long it has been since your last confession?"

"About three weeks, Father."

"That is a long time. Would you like to confess now?"

"What? Here?"

"To be sure, a quiet, dark spot in church would be preferable. Such things are good, but not necessary. It is what is in the heart that counts."

Recent events had troubled me considerably. To confess to a lunatic might be strange, but then, the whole last day or so had been pretty strange. There I was, walking along in September, through snow that was knee-deep in places, next to a mild-mannered barefoot man who showed not the slightest discomfort. The sane thing would be to stop, light a fire, pitch a tent, and wait for a rescue team. But there was such an incredible toughness about the man that I knew that I could stay with him, or leave him, but I could not possibly stop him, no matter how short he was. Confession seemed like a good idea, and—who knows?—maybe he really was a priest.

Perhaps not all of my eventual readers, if any, will be good Catholics, so I will try to explain the sacrament of confession. The times of confession are posted in the church, and usually a priest is available several times a day. When you feel the need to go, you go, often alone. Usually there are people in front of you, and you wait quietly in a pew, because confession is a private thing. The priest is in a tiny, screened room with screened confessionals on either side. Your turn comes, and you go inside and kneel. When the priest has finished with the person opposite, you hear the soundproof screen in front of you open, and you recite a short ritual that serves to "break the ice": "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned . . ."

And then you unburden your soul onto a very tough man who is absolutely forbidden to repeat anything that is said. You tell him what you have done, what you have thought. You answer his questions until the truth is obvious to both of you. He forgives you your sins and then tells you what your punishment, your penance, will be. This is usually to make a good act of contrition and to recite privately a certain number of prayers. But it can be whatever the priest feels is fitting. And you do it, because you need to do it, or you wouldn't have walked into the confessional in the first place.

In the Catholic church, there are seven sacraments. Some—baptism, confirmation, and extreme unction—are performed only once in a Catholic's life. Some are performed seldom, if at all—marriage and holy orders. Two are performed frequently—confession and communion. Of the seven, confession is not only the most frequent but, given the nature of the human condition, the most important.

So, after a bit, I said, "Yes, Father, I would like to confess. 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was three weeks ago, and since then . . .' " I told him what had happened, and I dwelled particularly on the last thirty-six hours or so.

It was certainly my strangest confession, wading through thigh-deep snow next to a barefoot priest, and it was undoubtedly my longest, for he asked innumerable questions about every minor point that I mentioned. The sky was noticeably darker when we finished.

Finally he said, "This is a most remarkable story, and I am not quite sure what to make of it. I see several possibilities. Is it possible that you would lie in confession?"

"What?" One does not lie in confession, in the same manner that one does not fornicate with one's mother.

"I thought not. Two other possibilities occur to me. One—perhaps the most likely—is that you have taken a blow to the head. Such things have been known to addle a man's wits, but this explanation does not account for your very remarkable equipment. The other possibility that I see is that God has seen fit to do something . . . unusual in your case. But that is not for someone as lowly as myself to say.

"As to your sins, they are minor ones. You have been angry with your mother, but that is not uncommon for a man who is unmarried at twenty-eight; and the fact is that, nonetheless, you did obey her. You coveted a maiden, had lust for her, but then again, you were both unmarried and you took no improper action. In your disappointment, you became drunk, wrongfully, but you paid your debts and harmed none. You trespassed on your host in your drunkenness, but you caused him no harm. You insulted a knight, but you did not know the proper forms of courtesy. And you thought ill of me; indeed, you are still convinced that it is my wits that are addled . . ."

"Father, please!"

"No, no. Please, let me finish." He took a breath. "And perhaps, considering the strange events that have transpired, you are justified in your belief. It is not for me to say. But I think, in spite of your strange tale, in spite of your giant's stature, and in spite of your mystic equipage, you are, within, a very good man. I absolve you of your sins. I want you to make a good act of contrition, and I think that we should now kneel and pray."

"Father, the snow will be above our waists."

"True. And the sky grows dark, and the cold grows more. My son, God will take us when He sees fit, and He will save us as He sees fit. All that we mortals can do, one minute at a time, is to do what appears best."

And with that, dear reader, I knelt down in snow up to my elbows and recited to myself the Apostles' Creed.

Some time later, we were walking again.

"Father, it's true what you said. I do believe that you are insane. But I have to say that in spite of your insanity, you are the most holy person I have ever met."

"Thank you, my son. But it is obvious that you have never met a truly saintly man. I have met Francis of Assisi, and he blessed me and took me into his order. You grow tired. Why don't you walk behind me?"

Saint Francis of Assisi! I had gone beyond being amazed at the man. I was wearing thermal underwear, sturdy blue jeans, two pairs of woolen socks, good hiking boots, a thick sweater, a windbreaker, and a poncho. I was cold. He was barefoot and in a monk's cassock! I was half again taller than he was, and he was suggesting that he should break snow for me to make my walking easier!

"No, thank you, Father. I can manage. What brings you into this neck of the woods?"

" 'This neck of the woods!' Another good turn of phrase! Well, the answer is simplicity itself. I was in Rome, and I received an appointment in Cracow. To get from A to B, one is obliged to traverse the points between."

"Well, if you are a true Euclidean, it would seem that the route would be far to the west, through France and Germany, or at least north by the Moravian Gate," I said.

"The way through Germany might be softer, but it is much longer. Do you know nothing of maps? Further, you should know that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire—which is not Roman, nor an Empire, nor particularly Holy—Nay! He is not even an emperor! At best he is somewhat acknowledged as the spokesman for a ragtag collection of German city-states pushing their unwanted existence into all parts of Christendom! He has inherited the Sicilies, gained dominance over Milan and Florence, and threatened his Holy Majesty Louis IX of France! Through the unbelievable stupidity of Duke Conrad of Mazovia, his German knights have been invited—invited, mind you—into the north of Poland itself! And these so-called Knights of the Cross are now murdering whole villages of poor, heathen Prussians!"

I had had the misfortune to hit his "hot button," and he went on like that for the better part of an hour. It seems that the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II—who was also King of the Sicilies, King of the Romans, and quite a few other things—owned most of Italy, and the Pope owned the rest. They had begun fighting, and the filthy German mercenaries in the pay of Frederick II had had the incredible effrontery to defeat the Pope's Just and Christian Warriors, who were also mercenaries, which is why there was an empty treasury and no funds to pay the way of a traveling priest. Furthermore, these Germans were insidiously, sometimes even openly, pushing their way into Poland, taking over its cities and founding monasteries that Poles were not even allowed to join!

I had an uncle who had survived being a partisan in the 1944 Warsaw insurrection. He hated Germans, but his hatred was like a dislike for cabbages compared with the hatred of the supremely mild man who walked beside me.

When we finally stopped to catch his breath, I said, "You are absolutely right. I completely agree with you. But tell me, please, why did you not go through the Moravian Gate?"

"Why, it had been my intention to come through the gate and avoid climbing the Beskids altogether. I walked across Italy and begged passage—working my way—on a ship that sailed the Adriatic Sea to Fiume, in Dalmatia. I then crossed the Dinaric Alps into Croatia, a mere twenty miles on the map but four days' walk. Then it was a matter of working on a riverboat down the Sava to the Danube, finding another boat, and then up the Danube. My intent had been to go upstream to the Morava, through the gate, then down the Odra, across to the Vistula, and so to Cracow. That is to say, the sensible way. However, the boat I was on was going up the Vah, not the Morava. It was late in the season, and I was not likely to find another boat. But by the maps I remember, it was but thirty miles from the headwaters of the Vah, across the Tatras, to the River Dunajec, which would also get me to Cracow before winter. This I did, although the crossing took six days. The Tatras are really not so bad as the Alps, but they are much farther north, and I crossed them two months later in the season."

It was now quite dark. The snow had stopped, and the cloud cover was breaking up. Any camper knows that a clear night is a cold night. Already the snow was crunching beneath my boots and his bare feet.

"You mean you crossed the Tatras alone? Barefoot? In this weather?"

The full moon broke through the clouds, and I could see on his face the expression I reserve for fat, motorized tourists. But what he said was, "You see, God provides us with light and therefore with hope. We will continue on."

I had rolled up and packed my sleeping bag when I left the fire at noon, and since then the exertion of keeping up with this short man had kept me warm enough. But now it was getting cold.

"Father, I'm going to break out my sleeping bag, that 'cloak' you saw earlier. Let me rip it in two and give you half."

"Do not destroy your property, my son, and do not even break your stride to undo your equipage. We shall soon find shelter. I can smell it."

I could smell nothing but snow and pine trees. "Father, how do you do it? How do you walk barefoot on crunching snow?"

"Well, I will tell you a secret that should not be a secret. When your heart is truly pure, you really do have the strength of ten. And further, while it is best to have your heart pure with God's love, pure anything will do. Pure honor or pure greed. Pure hate or even pure evil. It is only the contradictions and inner conflicts that weaken a man.

"But enough of this. We have forgotten something, and soon I will have to introduce you. My name is Father Ignacy Sierpinski."

"I am most pleased to meet you, Father Ignacy. My name is Conrad." And here I faced a problem. You must understand that I am Polish. All my grandparents were Polish. And all their parents, all the way back to Noah. But in some unexplained manner, my last name is Schwartz. After Father Ignacy's hourlong tirade about Germans, I did not want to tell him that.

"Just Conrad? Well, nothing to be ashamed of. Many people still use only one name. Tell me, where were you born?"

"In Stargard." Stargard is a small town in northwest Poland. The name came about when there was a warehouse on a trade route. A castle was built to protect the warehouse, and a town grew up around the castle. The castle was originally called Store Gard, and the name drifted with time.

"Then Conrad Stargard you are. And here we are. Hello, in there! May two Christian travelers ask for shelter?"

I did not realize that we were at a dwelling until I had almost stepped on it. Barely a meter high, it looked like a peaked mat of straw. We heard some fumbling sounds from within.

"They build their winter huts mostly below ground hereabouts; it is good protection from the cold."

A section of the straw opened up. "Aye, Father, be welcome, and your friend, too. But all I can offer is a place on the floor near the fire. No food, you understand."

"My good son, we understand. You would not be a good Christian if you did not see first to the feeding of your own family. Fear not for us; we are well provisioned. As you give us entrance, you give us life itself, for otherwise we would perish in the cold.

"I am Father Ignacy Sierpinski, and my friend is Conrad Stargard."

We felt our way down a crude ladder into a rectangular space that was lit by a small central campfire.

"I am Ivan Targ. My wife, Marie. My boys, Stashu and Wladyclaw. My baby, little Marie. Shoo! Shoo, you boys! Make a place for our guests."

The boys cleared a space maybe two meters square on one side of the fire. I spread my poncho out as a ground cover and rolled out my sleeping bag over it. The ceiling was high enough for the rest of them to stand upright, but I was nearly bent over double.

When we were seated, I whispered to the priest, "I know that we have not been offered supper. Do you think that we should offer something to them?"

"Oh, yes. That would be most polite. In fact, I was about to do so." He turned to our host. "Ivan, we thank you again for your courtesy and aid in our need. We would be honored if you would accept a very small token of our gratitude."

His words seemed to be a fixed ritual. He slowly opened one of his leather pouches, the one with the floppy cover, and drew from it a large, greasy sausage and a chunk of rather ripe cheese. Neither had been wrapped in aluminum foil or waxed paper. He drew his belt knife and cut each in two, returning half to his bag. The remainder of each he divided into seven equal pieces, giving one piece of sausage and one piece of cheese to each person present, himself included.

Everyone ate with relish and nods of thanks. Despite my misgivings at the lack of sanitary wrapping, I ate too. Ritual is ritual, and you do not offend the man who puts a roof over your head in the cold.

It was obviously my turn. I rummaged through my dwindling food supplies for something that could be divided, that wasn't freeze-dried. I came up with a big two-hundred gram bar of chocolate. I opened the package and found that the bar was conveniently divided into fourteen squares. Following the priest's ritual, I broke the bar in half, then a half into seven parts, which I passed around.

I gave a piece to the five-year-old boy, and he just looked up at me.

He didn't know what chocolate was.

In my world, there are madmen and there are saints. There are murderers and there are people who live in holes in the ground.

But there are no boys who don't know what chocolate is. Not in the twentieth century, anyway. The truth that I had been fighting off all day was forced in on me, and I could no longer defend myself against it.

"Father, you have told me that this is November twenty-fifth. Will you now, please, tell me what year it is?"

It seemed that he had been waiting for that question.

"It is, in the year of Our Lord, twelve thirty-one."

I drew my legs close to my chest and hugged them with my arms. I put my forehead on my knees. There were no policemen, no courts of law. There were no ambulances, no hospitals, and no doctors. There were no stores, no Hiking Society, and no Air Rescue teams. There was no rescue at all. There were only brutal knights, crazy saints, and Mongols.

In ten years the Mongols were coming, and they would kill everybody.

I fell asleep.

Interlude One

"Good lord! You mean that one of the Historical Corps teams screwed up that badly?" We were watching a documentary on the extremely unauthorized transportation of Conrad Schwartz. This had been pieced together, in part from his diary (which he wrote in English to keep it private) and from the readouts of a large number of insect-sized probes initially developed for police work.

When a crime has been reported, our police transport a cluster of probes to the time and scene of the crime. These record everything, which doesn't do the victims much good. Time is a single linear continuum, and you can't "make it didn't happen." If a dead body was found, a human being was dead, and there was nothing that could change that fact. But our methods did assure that criminals committed only one crime and were always caught. As a result, we had an extremely low crime rate and no professional criminals at all.

The probes were eagerly put to use by the Historical Corps, whose occupation was the writing of a truly definitive history of the human race. It was one of their teams that had screwed up.

"Not one team but two. There were ridiculous breaches of security at both the twentieth-century and thirteenth-century portals," Tom said. Tom had been a drinking buddy of mine in the U.S. Air Force long before we got involved with time travel. Much later, we were both surprised to discover that he was my father. There were also certain . . . problems concerning my mother, which I prefer not to discuss. Time travel is not entirely beneficial.

"Well, can't we send him back?" I asked. Anachronisms can be extremely disruptive, and we have no intention of adding to the sum of human misery.

"Impossible. He wasn't discovered, subjectively, until almost ten years later, when I was observing the Mongol invasion of Poland."

"Oh." If Conrad Schwartz had been observed in 1241, then that was an established fact, like the dead body I mentioned earlier. "So there's nothing we can do for the poor bastard."

"We can't bring him back until he has spent at least ten years there, but there are some things that could be done, and in fact, I have already done them.

"Decontamination, for example. The diseases of the thirteenth century are not the same as those of the twentieth century. Thirteenth-century Poland had neither syphilis nor gonorrhea nor acne, and I was not about to see them introduced by our drunken Conrad Schwartz.

"Then again, in the twentieth century smallpox has been eradicated, leprosy is very mild compared to the earlier strains, and the Black Death has become one of the varieties of the common cold.

"The 'fluorescent lights' he slept under in the Red Gate Inn did a lot more than light his way out of the transport capsule. They wiped out every foreign microorganism in him and gave him a complete immunization treatment as well."

One of the nice things about time travel is that it gives you the time to do things that are worth doing. I'd spent much of my life helping to build a technical civilization in the sixty-third millennium b.c. That civilization provides us with most of our personnel and some very high technology. It's also a fine place to live.

"Speaking of diseases, Tom, what was wrong with the priest?"

"Father Ignacy? Nothing. A fine man."

"But those huge, calloused feet!"

"That wasn't a disease. That's what normal human feet look like when they've spent a lifetime walking barefoot over broken rock and snow."

A smiling, nude serving wench announced lunch, and we took a break.

By one, we were back at the screen.

Chapter Three

"Up now, Conrad. Get up!" Father Ignacy was shaking my arm. I was in a dark, smelly, smoky hut. It had log walls, a dirt floor, and a straw roof. Memory came back. The barefoot saint. The snow. The thirteenth century.

"Yes. Yes, Father. I'm up. What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong. God has seen fit to grant us another day. As good Christians, we must not waste His gift. Come, we must be off."

"Oh. Yes. Certainly." I started putting my gear together. "The coals are still warm. Let's make breakfast and have some coffee before we go."

"What? Eating on waking? What a slothful habit! Come now. I have already bid our good host good-bye, and there is need of haste."

I find it hard to be assertive before breakfast, and soon we were walking north in the gray dawn. The snow grew thinner as we approached a river, the Dunajec. There we found a small wooden dock but no boat.

"What was the great hurry, Father? Has the boat left without us?"

"It has. Yesterday morning, in truth, and it was the last boat of the season. You should not have lost consciousness so early, Conrad."

"I fell asleep."

"To me, it appeared that you had fainted. Afterward, I heard the confessions of good Ivan and Marie and said a mass for the family. They told me of the boat."

"But what good does an absent boat do us?"

"Absent, yes. But with a crew of only two. The boatman and a wandering poet, a goliard—worthless sorts. Despite the recent snow and rain, the river level is still low, and six men would make a better crew than two. It might be God's will that we shall find them snagged on a sandbar and in need of our aid." We walked along the river path.

"If you say so. The truth is that I no longer have a pressing need to go to Cracow. It is no longer on my way home. I no longer have a home. Or a mother. Or a job." The reality of being stranded was hitting me again, and I was holding back sobs with difficulty.

"We shall pray for your mother, my son. But remember that she is not dead, she is merely elsewhere. As to your home, why, it is only a material encumbrance and can be replaced at need. As to your job, that too can be replaced. You are an educated, healthy young man—if overly large—and it should not prove difficult to find gainful employment. In fact, already an idea occurs to me.

"I have told you that I have an appointment in Cracow. That appointment is to take over the copying department at the Franciscan monastery. I am ordered to expand the number of copyists and to found a proper library.

"Now, you can read and write, and you have told me that you know something of the new Arabic system of numbers and of the arithmetic that is used to manipulate them. You have knowledge of Euclid and of the algebra, as well."

Not to mention analytic geometry, calculus, and computer programming, I thought. "You are suggesting that I work for you as a copyist?"

"And why not? You have told me that much of your previous work was at a drawing board, which you describe as similar to a proper copying table."

"Hmm." The idea of a steady job did have merit. I had grown up in the arms of a reasonably benevolent government that was founded on sensible socialist principles. While such a system discouraged the acquisition of fabulous wealth, it did ensure that all people were fairly well taken care of. But from what I remembered of my history courses, in the thirteenth century they actually allowed people—their own countrymen—to starve to death! "Your suggestion has merit, but I see some problems. For one thing, I do not think that I am ready to take Holy Orders."

"I agree with you, my son. You are not ready for so momentous a decision, nor need you be. You could be engaged as a lay brother, without any vows at all."

"The next problem is that I do not know if I would be competent as a copyist. It is different from what I have done."

"I don't know that either, my son, so my offer is tentative and temporary—for the winter at least."

"Then there is the question of remuneration, Father. What does the position pay?"

"I have no idea of what the rates are in Cracow. When demand is high and copyists are few, the pay can be excellent. But in any event, you are guaranteed a roof over your head and food in your belly."

"Very well, then, Father. It is agreed that I shall work for you for an indefinite time on nebulous terms." The snow was gone by then. The sky was a rich blue, and evergreens gave the landscape some color.

"Excellent! I'm glad that this is settled, for I was worried about you. Now then! I have several thousand questions to ask. Yesterday, as your confessor, I was obligated to concentrate on your sins. Today, as your fellow traveler and future employer, I have the right to ask questions to my own liking. Now, tell me if I am correct. You were born in the year of Our Lord, nineteen fifty-seven?"

"True, Father."

"The twentieth century! Tell me of the church, my son. Does the Pope still rule from Rome? Do the Germans dominate him?"

"The Pope is supreme in the Vatican; he is dominated by no secular power. The Germans have been pushed north of the Alps and west of the Odra."

"And the Pope himself—what of him?" The man was trembling with excitement.

"He is John Paul II, and—this you will love—he is as Polish as you are, and born Karol Wojtyla. A fine man and a great Pope."

"Oh, glory! My son, you make my heart rejoice!" That incredibly tough man, who could walk barefoot across the Alps and pray kneeling in chest-high snow, that man had stopped on the river path, and tears were streaking his windburned cheeks.

Some time passed before we started, once more, down the river road to Cracow. We were silent for a while. Then:

"And my own order, my son. Tell me of the followers of Francis of Assisi."

"Gladly, for this too is a happy thing. I know of him only as Saint Francis of Assisi. The Franciscans are alive and well in the twentieth century. I knew one personally and counted him a friend." He had been on my college fencing team and was a fine hand with a saber, though I could generally beat him with an épée.

Ignacy stopped, hugged me solidly, yanked my head down to his level, and kissed both my cheeks. I felt awkward about it. In the time of my birth, men were abandoning the ancient Slavic custom of kissing each other; perhaps it was because homosexuality was tolerated, if not socially acceptable, and healthy men did not want to be associated with anything that they did.

"I see that I have offended you, my son."

"Well, it's okay. But, you know, customs change."

"Forgive me. What else do you remember?"

"About the Franciscans? Wait. Yes, I remember reading an ancient copper plaque that told of a great church, a cathedral almost, that had been built by Henryk the Pious for the Franciscans in 1237. That church still stood in Cracow."

His arms went out again, but he did not touch me. Then he said quietly, "And of me? Do you know anything of me?"

"I'm sorry, Father, but no. Please, understand that I know as much about this age as you know of the fifth century. If you chance-met a man of that age, what could you tell him about himself?"

"You are quite right, my son. Please forgive my asking."

"It might be that you are well known to the historians and theologians of my time."

"And it might not. Again, forgive me. Tell me instead of the wondrous mechanisms that your age has wrought. You spoke of machines that can fly in the air, of ships that navigate without sails or oars, and of the varieties of mechanical land beasts, buses and trains."

So I answered his questions, and we talked out the morning. I answered all his questions truthfully but did not really tell him the whole truth. He never brought up the subject of the Protestant Reformation, so neither did I. And why should I want to mention the Inquisition to a living saint? Because Father Ignacy was a saint. He was also a powerful man, an intelligent man, and by the standards of his own age, a very well educated man.

By the standards of the twentieth century he was quite thoroughly out of his mind! He was concerned—actively worried—about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin! To him, that was a major theological dispute. He was worried about the exact anatomy of incubi and succubi, and he worried if it was proper to take communion on Friday since, by the unquestionable doctrine of transubstantiation, the baked wheat flour of the Host and the wine, after being taken, were transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. And was this not meat? And was not meat forbidden on Friday?

All I knew was that I was attracted to the man, although not at all in the same way as I had been attracted to the magnificent redheaded bitch of Zakopane.

It might have been ten o'clock when we started thinking about dinner.

"Conrad, how much food are you carrying?"

"Three, maybe four days' worth at normal rations, which is a lot more than I've had recently."

"And it is all of that cold-dried variety that keeps indefinitely?"

"Freeze-dried. Yes, most of it. Some candy, but it'll keep too."

"Ah, yes. I meant to ask you. What was that incredible confection you distributed last night?"

"It's called chocolate."

"Marvelous stuff. If you can make more, your fortune is made without recourse to being a copyist."

What an incredible thought! Conrad Schwartz, the capitalist confectioner! Maltreating the women and children slaving away in my chocolate factory! But still, one must eat. Chocolate is what? Mostly milk, sugar, and cocoa beans, isn't it? But cocoa beans came from South America. Or was it Indonesia? I would have to look it up.

No, I would not look it up, because I could not look it up, because I was in the thirteenth century, and a good library here consisted of a Bible, two prayer books, and a copy of Aristotle.

"No, Father. It's impossible. It needs a kind of bean that does not grow around here."

"A pity. Well, keep the rest of it; you may someday have to impress a princely patron. For today's dinner I suggest that we finish off my supplies of cheese and sausage and keep yours for an emergency." With that, he pulled out the remains of his sausage, which might have weighed a kilo. He was about to cut it in half but reconsidered and divided it in proportion to our heights, giving me the larger piece. Half an hour later he did the same with his cheese. He refused to stop for lunch, and we ate on the march.

Again I felt queasy about the unsanitary food, but I was living in the thirteenth century and would have to get used to it. He slapped his now-empty pouch. "The last of my Hungarian food."

"Then what do you keep in the other pack, Father? Spare underwear?"

That was the first time I heard his laugh, a good sound. "Ah, Conrad, I know that you have an exalted opinion of my abilities as a traveler, and I confess that I take an improper pride in them myself. But no, I would not carry anything superfluous over the High Tatras, let alone the Alps!

"No, this is my gift to my new abbot. I have in here a copy of Euclid, a complete Aristotle, and Ptolemy in Latin, my own translation into Polish of the Poem of the Cid, and letters. There are fully three dozen letters, one of them from His Holiness, Pope Gregory IX himself!

"So, you see that there can be no faltering along the way."

"You mean you have nothing at all but your cassock? It might take us weeks to walk to Cracow!"

"You worry overmuch about material things. We shall ride to Cracow and be there in five days, and we shall be well fed along the way. I can smell it."

I could smell nothing at all but more snow coming. I kept silent.

At perhaps two in the afternoon we heard the boat. A high-pitched voice was singing through the bushes:

* * *

Despite the recent rain and snow,

The river is still far too low!

This tub to Cracow will not go.

Let's plant the grain and watch it grow!

"How's that, brother boatman? It scans well, don't you think?"

"I think that if we don't get this boat off these rocks, we'll be iced in by morning and spend the winter here! My only pleasure will be in seeing you starve to death right next to me. Now pull on that rope, you foppish twit!"

"What? Starve while sitting on a hundred sacks of grain? That would take more ingenuity than a poet could muster. Let's see . . .

* * *

While starving on a mound of rye,

I saw a maiden floating by.

She said . . ."

* * *

"Shut your goddamn trap and pull!"

"Hello, friends," Father Ignacy shouted.

"Who goes there?"

"A good Christian priest and a good Christian knight, come to assist you!"

As we forced our way through the brush toward the river, I whispered, "What do you mean calling me a knight? We don't even have knighthood!"

"And you are doubtless better off without it. But you are an officer in your military, aren't you? And a king's man besides? Knighthood would seem to be the equivalent."

"We don't have kings! There's an elected body that—"

"An excellent system. Oh, yes, don't mention the future to these men. It might frighten them. If they ask, tell them that you're Spanish."

"With blond hair?"

"Why not? Many Spaniards have blond hair. Or better yet, tell them you are English. You could easily pass for an Englishman."

Before I could reply, we broke through the brush and were on a rocky beach. In the middle of the river, a boat was securely wedged between two large rocks. The boat was about eight meters long and three meters wide and was pointed at both ends. A brightly garbed slender youth, wet to the waist, was clambering on board. Another man, in a wet gray tunic, was standing at the stern and looking at us. He held a longbow in his left hand and had an arrow fitted. There was something odd about the way he held it.

"Put away your weapon, boatman! We mean you help, not harm!" Father Ignacy held his book pouch above his head and waded into the water.

I unslung my pack and belt, held them high, and followed. That water was cold! I would have been prepared to swear in a court of law that it was below -10°C, if there had been any courts. My legs were numb before we got to the boat. Father Ignacy put his pouches aboard and clambered on after them. I did the same.

"Good afternoon, good boatman. I am Father Ignacy Sierpinski, and this knight is Sir Conrad Stargard."

"Good afternoon, good father and good sir knight. I am Tadaos Kolpinski, and I am at your service."

"A pleasure, Tadaos Kolpinski. We are bound for Cracow. What is your destination?"

"The same as yours, Father. Down the Dunajec and up the Vistula. Always ready to take on paying passengers, that's my motto, sirs." He ignored the poet.

"Well, you must understand our means are limited." Father Ignacy sat on a sack of grain. "Sir Conrad, I believe we were talking about Saint Augustine. Now, in The City of God—"

"But Father," Tadaos said, "you understand that we are having this difficulty—"

"And you feel that we should work for you, to help you out of it. This is acceptable to us, and there is only a slight matter of agreement on our wages."

"Ah, Father, I am a benevolent man, and if you will both assist me on our way to Cracow, I will feed you as well as I feed myself and depend only on your generosity for my remuneration."

"But surely it is written that a workman deserves his wages, and we are hardworking men, but poor. Yet we can get to Cracow on foot without the burden of hauling your grain. Shall we say food and six silver pennies per day per man?"

Tadaos gagged. "Please understand, Father, that I too am a poor man and that I have a wife and five poor children to feed. Surely you would not want to take food from their mouths with winter coming on. But perhaps one penny."

The bargaining went on for better than twenty minutes, with the boat hung up on the rocks and all of us sitting down. I could see that it would be difficult to get the rational principles of socialism across to these people and, further, that if I wanted to survive, I had a lot to learn. In the meantime, I set my mind to the technical problem of freeing the boat.

Eventually they settled on the wages of food and three pennies a day. Much later, I discovered that this was an excellent wage for an experienced boatman, which I wasn't but which Father Ignacy was. He turned to me and said, "Now then, Sir Conrad, have you solved our problem?"

"No, but I know what to try. Do you have a block and tackle? No? Then the first thing to try is brute force. We all get into the water and try to pull it off the rocks."

This is what Tadaos had in mind, so there were no objections except from the poet. It was mutually agreed that his opinions didn't count, so we all went over the side. The poet—with assistance—went head first. I mean, Father Ignacy was already in the water when the kid, who was standing between the boatman and me, began to make some rhymed objection. The boatman looked at me, and I nodded. We picked up the poet and threw him in.

It was freezing. We tried lifting from the front, but the boat wouldn't budge. We tried pulling from the back, but no go. We rocked. We jerked, but it was no good. Stuck.

Shivering, we climbed back aboard.

"Well, that didn't work," I said to Tadaos. "How much rope do you have aboard? And do you have any grease?"

"I have some cooking lard and maybe a gross of yards of good rope."

"Okay. Give me the lard and tie this rope to the back of the boat."

"The stern."

Yachtsmen are the same everywhere. They've got to have their own idiot language. "The stern. I'll be back soon." I had picked out a rounded vertical rock perhaps fifty meters upstream of the boat. I went over the side and waded toward it. Damn, but the water was cold! Small bits of ice were floating in it! The rock was just what I wanted—rounded on the upstream side and slightly concave. I greased the surface liberally and pulled the rope around it. Then I greased about ten meters of the rope, from the rock toward the boat, keeping the rope taut.

The boatman jumped into the water and shouted, "Okay, here we go, you men!"

"What are you doing?" I yelled. "Get back into the boat!"

"What do you mean? We have to pull ourselves off!"

"Yes, but the place to pull from is inside the boat."

"That's stupid, sir knight! We'll add our weight to the boat and make it harder to pull!"

"True, but our weight is small compared to the weight of the boat and the grain. And if we're inside the boat, we double our leverage. Be reasonable. Do it my way."

"Okay! We try it your way, just to show how dumb you are!"

I handed the rope up to Father Ignacy, and we struggled aboard.

"What do you think we'll do when this doesn't work?" the boatman asked.

"If this fails, we unload the boat one sack at a time and carry it to the shore. Then we try this again, and if it works, we load the boat back up again."

"That would take days! We'd lose half of the grain by dropping it in the water!"

"I know. So we try this first. Line up, you men. Pull!"

The boat moved, a centimeter at first, then two, then ten. Once off the rocks, it moved easily. After ten meters, the boatman belayed the line around the sternpost and ran up to the bow. "She's not taking in any water!" Soon, the line cast off and hauled in, we were on our way.

I soon noticed that along with the normal oarlocks on the sides, the boat had additional locks on the bow and stern. Their function was explained when Tadaos set an oar in each. He took the stern oar and put Father Ignacy on the bow. They used these to paddle the boat sideways in order to avoid obstructions in the river. Once he was sure that all was well, the boatman motioned me over to him.

"The good father knows his job well, and as for you, sir knight, that was as fine a piece of boatmanship as I have ever seen. I hope you'll accept my apologies for the rudeness I showed to your knightship."

"No problem. We were all under stress. Your apologies are accepted, sir boatman."

"Well, hardly that, Sir Conrad, but I have had my share. Why, there was this girl from Sandomierz, a blonde she was, that . . . but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to find out why you think that we pulled twice as hard standing in the boat as we did standing on the bottom."

"I wish I had a pencil and paper."

"Huh?"

"Some way to draw pictures for you. It wasn't that we pulled twice as hard; we didn't. Look at it from the point of view of the boat. We were pulling the rope, right? So at the same time we were pushing on the boat with our feet. Right?"

"Okay."

"Also, the rope went around the rock and came back and pulled on the boat, right?"

"So, we pushed it and pulled it at the same time. We got twice as much for nothing!"

"No, we didn't. When we pulled that rope for one of your yards, the rope pulled the boat only one half a yard. We got more force but less distance."

"So we broke even."

"Less than that. We lost some power rubbing the rope against the rock. It would have been better if we could have had a wheel on the rock."

"Like a pulley, you mean?"

Now, how in hell can an apparently intelligent man know about rope and pulleys and not about mechanical advantage? "Yes, like a pulley. Would you mind if I got out of these clothes? I'm freezing."

"Do what you will, Sir Conrad." Water was running off his clothes onto the floorboards and freezing there.

I couldn't do anything to help his wet clothes, but it would have been stupid for me to be uncomfortable with no gain for the others. I went to my pack and dug out my tennis shoes, light trousers, spare socks, and underwear. I changed quickly and stretched my wet things out on the grain bags. Actually, most of my things were wet.

I took stock of my gear. A pair of lightweight 7 X 25 mm binoculars. A Swiss army knife. A small hatchet. A good Buck single-bladed jackknife in a leather belt pouch. A canteen. A dented cooking kit. A compass. A few days' food. A sleeping bag. A ripped knapsack. A sewing kit. A first-aid kit. A stub of a candle. A few coins that might be worth something. Some paper money that probably wasn't. A smashed flashlight that I pitched over the side. With these few things, my total worldly possessions, I was to face the brutal thirteenth century.

I laid all of it out to dry.

At the bottom of the pack, I found the idiot seeds. That incredible redhead! It seemed like years ago rather than only forty-eight hours.

Chapter Four

The river grew increasingly interesting as the afternoon wore on, and I was glad that we had our experienced men at the helm, fighting our way past rocks and rapids.

I crawled under my still-damp sleeping bag and watched the scenery, which was pretty spectacular. The River Dunajec cuts through the Pieniny Mountains, and it was one gorgeous vista after another, with white marble cliffs thrusting up through the pine forest and sudden meadows with sheep grazing.

A castle clung high up on the slopes of a three-peaked mountain. I fumbled for my binoculars.

"That's Pieniny Castle," the boatman shouted. Pieniny Castle! I had toured its ruins once. Now, "dunce caps" topped the towers and the drawbridge was intact. It was here—will be here?—that King Boleslaw the Bashful took refuge after he lost the Battle of Chmielnik to Batu Khan, and Poland was left open to the Mongol invaders. That was—will be—in the spring of 1241, nine and a half years from now.

"What is that thing you're holding in front of your face?" Tadaos asked.

"Binoculars. They make things look close. Here, take a look."

"Later, Sir Conrad. I've got my hands full."

And he did, steering that overladen boat through rapids and eddies. I was dreading my turn at those oars.

It was dusk when he finally said, "That's the worst of it. It'll be clear sailing until tomorrow afternoon. Good Father, give your oar to the poet. Sir Conrad, come take mine. Just keep her toward the middle and you'll have no problems."

It was dark half an hour later when we slid quietly past the castle town of Sacz. It was lightless, and we saw no people.

I was back into my heavy clothes, dried now to mere dampness, but the kid at the bow was still shivering. He had been silent since his dunking, and I felt sorry for him. I supposed that I was just prejudiced. I had never met a goliard poet before, but I knew the type. He was exactly the same as the Lost Generation and the hoboes and the beatniks and the hippies and—what was the current group?—punkers, I think. Every decade or so, they all adopt a stranger slang, put on a different uniform, and say that I am a conformist and that they are doing something wondrous and new!

Groups who change their names every ten years do it for a good reason. People have discovered that they are bums, and they need new camouflage. Now, I'm Slavic and proud of it. "Slav" comes from an old root meaning "glorious," but during the first millennium, Western Europeans enslaved so many of us that the word "slav" came to mean "slave" in their languages, which is about as derogatory as you can get. A people without a strong sense of self-worth, like the American Blacks, would have repeatedly changed their own name trying to erase the smudge, but of course we didn't. Try to get a Jew to call himself something different. Same thing.

Still, it probably wasn't the kid's fault that he was worthless. So when we were relieved to eat our supper—oatmeal and beer, but a lot of it—I sat down next to him.

"Look, kid, I'm sorry about throwing you into the river. It's just that there are times when you should not argue."

"That's okay, Sir Conrad. One gets used to insults following the muse."

"Yes . . . well. Look, are those the only clothes you have?"

"You see upon me all of my worldly possessions." He wore cheap red trousers and a thin yellow jacket with decorative buttons and worn-through elbows. He had a raggedy shirt that once might have been white. He had the tops of boots—the soles were almost completely gone—and a cap with a bent swan feather. He was as short as my other companions, but while they were thick, solid men, he was as skinny as a schoolgirl. He would have been an amusing sight if he had not been freezing to death.

"Well, maybe I can loan you something." I dug out my spare underwear and socks. Shirt and trousers. Tennis shoes and poncho.

"You'll probably swim in these, but they'll help keep you warm."

"I thank you, Sir Conrad. But don't talk of swimming, as I have done enough of that this year."

My clothes were a dozen sizes too big for him. He was awestruck by the elastic and zippers, and the buttonholes confused him.

I was boggled. His jackets had buttons all over, but he had never seen a buttonhole. How could you have buttons with no buttonholes? Was I really in the thirteenth century, or was I living a wacky dream?

My tennis shoes fit him perfectly. Did everybody back here have big feet?

When I had him dressed, he didn't look like a clown anymore. He looked like a war orphan.

We went back to our oars, and Tadaos said quietly to me, "Sir Conrad, you are too good for this world."

"Oh, he's just a kid."

"A kid who will rob you, given the chance."

"We'll see. How long is my watch?"

"Six hours; four hours to go. You have a full moon and a quiet river, so nothing much should happen; wake me if it does. Otherwise, wake me when the moon is high."

Food and warmth had cheered the kid up, and soon he launched into a monologue about himself and life. His name was Roman Makowski. He was fairly well educated for the times and had attended the University of Paris.

It seems that a student had been knifed and killed in a Paris alleyway and that the town council wouldn't do anything about it. The students, blaming the merchants, had rioted in protest and had apparently concentrated their attention on the wineshops and taverns. The town militia was called out, and the drinking and fighting spread. In the end, the king's guard had to enforce the peace. Two hundred students, including Roman, were jailed, and the university was shut down for a year.

Roman's father, who had been scrimping hard to pay for his son's education, was not amused. He paid Roman's way out of jail and then disinherited and threw him out of the house.

Roman was madly in love with three different girls without ever having touched one. He was wandering the world in search of Truth, and he hurt inside like a bag of broken glass. In short, he was a typical adolescent.

Eventually, the boatman told him to shut up.

Tadaos kept his bow and arrows in a rack near the stern oar. The bow was a huge thing, taller than the boatman and as big around as a golf ball. It took me a while to figure out what was odd about it.

Tadaos was right-handed, and the arrow rest was on the right side rather than the normal left. The arrows were well made and over a meter long. I was more than a head taller than he was, and I could only pull an 82-centimeter arrow.

The next morning I saw him use the bow while I was on watch again, waiting for dinner. Two meals a day seemed to be standard for the thirteenth century, and I was used to eating a heavy breakfast. The boatman had a fishing line over the side, and I hoped we weren't waiting for that.

"Quiet," Tadaos said in a stage whisper. He crept back to his bow while slipping a leather guard over his right thumb. He had the bow strung in an instant and fitted an arrow to the string.

But instead of drawing the bowstring in the normal way, with the first three fingers of the right hand, he used his thumb. This gave him a remarkably long draw. He elevated the bow to fully thirty degrees and let fly.

I had been so interested in his manner of shooting that it was a few seconds before I wondered what he was shooting at. We could be under attack! I looked out and saw nothing within reasonable range. Then suddenly a violent thrashing began in the bushes fully two hundred meters downstream by the water's edge.

Tadaos motioned to us, and we pulled for the bank.

"That's a remarkable bow," I said. "What kind is it?"

"Strange question coming from an Englishman," Tadaos said. "It's an English longbow. I bought it from a wool merchant."

After a little searching we found a ten-point buck with an arrow squarely in its skull. Incredible. I couldn't have made that shot with a rifle and telescopic sights!

"Well, gentlemen," the boatman said, "I can now offer better fare than oatmeal. Let's get it aboard! Quickly, now!"

Once we had manhandled the deer on board, I turned to Tadaos. "That was the finest shot that I have ever seen!"

"Thank you, Sir Conrad, but there was a lot of luck in it. Now, with a little more luck, we'll be in fine shape."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, the baron hereabouts is partial to his hunting. He hangs poachers when he can catch them."

"Does he hang accessories to the crime as well?"

"That depends on his mood." Tadaos's eyes were twinkling.

The kid fainted.

* * *

I think that these people's shortness must have had a lot to do with vitamin deficiencies. They all craved that deer's internal organs. In the next three days, they ate everything in the animal but the eyeballs and the contents of the large intestine. When I asked for a steak rather than broiled lung, they thought I was crazy, but took me up on it. I also passed up the brain for some cutlets.

That evening we came to the Vistula and tied up for the night. The trip so far had been all downstream, with little real work except at the rapids. But Cracow was upstream on the Vistula, and the next three days were drudgery. No mules were available although it seemed to me that Tadaos hadn't looked very hard.

So, we played Volga Boatmen. Three of us walked along the bank with ropes over our shoulders, while one stayed on the boat.

The work was grueling. At one point, the poet was on the boat, Tadaos was walking in front of me with his bow slung over his back, and the priest was in the rear.

"Tadaos," I said, "if you must work us like horses, you should at least provide us with horse collars."

"What do you mean?"

"You saw my backpack? Make something like that, with a strap across the chest. Tie the rope to the back and a man could at least rest his arms."

Tadaos pondered this for a while. "What if you had to let go in a hurry?"

"Tie the rope in a slipknot."

"Hmm. Not a bad thought, Sir Conrad. I'll make some up, next trip. Do you want to come along to see how they work?"

"No, thank you!"

It was late in the afternoon, and except for a tiny village at the juncture of the Dunajec and the Vistula, we hadn't seen a single habitation or another human being all day.

"I can't get over how empty this country is," I said.

"There are people," the boatman said, "but the river is too open, too dangerous. They live back in the woods in little fortified towns protected by a knight or two."

"What are they afraid of?"

"Bandits. Wolves. Mostly other knights."

"Why doesn't the government do something?"

"The government?" He spat. "Poland doesn't have a government! Poland has a dozen petty dukes who spend their time arguing with each other instead of defending the country. Poland is a land without a king!

"The last king of Poland died a hundred years ago, and he divided the country up among his five sons just so they'd each have their own little duchy to play with! And each of them divided it up still further, being nice to their children.

"Did any of them think about the land? No! They treated the country like it was a dead man's bag of gold to be divided up among the heirs."

"You paint too bleak a picture, master boatman," Father Ignacy said. "There is a strong movement afoot to unify the country. Henryk the Bearded now holds all of Silesia, along with western Pomerania, half of Great Poland, and most of Little Poland. He has the throne at Cracow, and mark my words, his son, young Henryk, will be our next king. I can smell it."

"You think Henryk's line can be kings? Does the Beard act like a king? When Conrad of Mazovia asked for aid against the Prussian raiders, did Henryk come to his aid? No! Henryk was too busy playing politics to help out another Polish duke, so Duke Conrad went and invited those damned Knights of the Cross in. They've taken as much Polish territory as they have Prussian! It was like inviting in the wolves to get rid of the foxes!"

"But politics is an essential part of unifying the country, Tadaos. At least the Polish dukes have never made war on one another the way they do in England or Italy or France."

"No, they prefer ambushes, poison, and an occasional knifing. There'll be war with those Knights of the Cross, you mark my words on that!"

There was no arguing with that statement, so the conversation died for a while.

After supper that night, I was sitting with Father Ignacy apart from the others. "You know, Father, it was the inn. It had to be the inn."

"What was what inn, my son?"

"The Red Gate Inn, on the trail near Zakopane. I must have come back in time when I slept in the inn. Those double steel doors on the storeroom—I had to have been in some kind of time machine."

"Do they make time machines in the twentieth century?"

"What? No. Of course not. But don't you see? If they had a time machine, they could be from any century."

"And you think that your being here is the result of some mechanism rather than an act of God?"

"Father, anything can be an act of God! God can do whatever He wants, but I have to deal with the world in the only way I know how, as an engineer. I think that I should turn back and go back to that inn. Maybe I can find the answer there."

"My son, in the first place, what you are speaking is very close to blasphemy. In the second, there is absolutely no possibility of your making it back up the Dunajec alive, not at this time of year. You could freeze to death before you were halfway there. I wouldn't try it myself except on orders from the Pope, and then I would go knowing that I was a martyr."

"Still, I must try."

"You may believe in machines, my son, but I believe in God. I think that you are here for a reason, and I think that you must find out what it is."

"But—"

"Then there is the fact that we have an agreement with the boatman to take his grain to Cracow. I'm not sure, but I think it likely that this boat of grain represents all of his worldly goods. If this boat gets frozen in, he is a ruined man."

We were silent for a while.

"Father, if you are so concerned about the boatman, why don't you worry about the kid? Tadaos is the sort who could survive almost anything. But from what Tadaos has said about Cracow, the poet isn't likely to live out the winter."

"My son, there is a vast difference between a reasonably honest workingman and a goliard poet. Don't you know anything about them? They glory in sin and drunkenness and debauchery. They mock the Church and ridicule the social order."

"Oh, he's just a lost kid. I think that if you'd give him a chance he'd turn out all right."

"Give him a chance? What do you mean?"

"Give him a job! He's fairly well educated. He's attended the University of Paris. He tells me that he's an artist as well as a poet. If you need copyists, he's a better choice than I am."

"You really think that I should let that into a monastery?"

"I know you should."

"Know? Is this something that you've read in your histories?"

"No, Father. Let's say that I can smell it!"

"Well, I'll think on it. But I make no promises. There is, however, a promise I want you to make, my son. A promise of silence. You must tell no one—and I mean absolutely no one!—that you are a visitor from the future. I give you absolution to invent some plausible lie and to tell it to any who questions you.

"The truth of this matter must be decided by the Holy Church, and until such time as a decision is made, you will be silent."

"But why, Father?"

"Why? Well, in the first place, because I am your confessor and I am telling you to. In the second, do you have any idea of what sort of controversy would be generated by your claims? Hundreds, maybe thousands of people would plague you, wanting to know their futures. Some lunatic would likely start claiming that you were a new messiah. Others would surely denounce you as a creature of the Devil and demand your execution. Do you really want to be at the center of that sort of thing?"

"Good God! No, Father, of course not!"

"Then you will make this vow?"

"Uh, yes, Father. But what does the Church have to do with this?"

"Why, everything! I must make a full and complete report on this matter to my superiors. I am fully confident that my report, with annotations by my superiors, will eventually reach the Vatican and the Pope himself. It is likely that he will appoint commissioners to look into the matter. They will report back, and a decision will eventually be made."

"Decision? On what?"

"On what? Can't you realize that you may be a direct instrument of God, sent by Him for some special purpose?"

"I do not feel like a direct instrument of God."

"Your feelings have nothing to do with it."

"Hmph. Just how long will this decision-making process take?" I asked.

"Maybe two years, maybe ten. But until it is completed, you will not discuss this. I want your vow of silence!"

"What, exactly, do you want me to do?"

"You will get on your knees, and you will repeat after me . . ."

I did as he asked and made a lengthy, legalistic vow. Father Ignacy had apparently been thinking about it for some time. I am keeping that vow, but there was nothing in it that forbade me from writing a private diary, in a language that no one in the thirteenth century could possibly read.

Just before I fell asleep, I said, "Father Ignacy? What if the Church decides that I am not an instrument of God? What if it decides that I am an instrument of the Devil?"

"In that unlikely event, my son, I would expect you, as a good Christian, to obey the dictates of the Church."

Getting to sleep that night was not easy.

Chapter Five

The next morning, we began pulling the boat as soon as it was possible to see. The path along the banks of the Vistula was not good. It went up and over countless ridges, down and into hundreds of muddy rivulets. Every few hours we had to get into the boat and row it upstream past a creek or swamp that we couldn't wade through.

Still, pulling was easier than rowing, so we slogged along with ropes over our shoulders.

Thinking about it, I didn't see how mules could possibly have done the job that we did.

"Well, in the summer the water's higher and most of the swamps are covered," Tadaos explained.

"But can't you do something about improving this trail? A few thousand man-hours of work, some small wooden bridges, would cut our labor in half."

"There's been some talk about a boatman's guild to get the landlords to do something in return for the tolls we have to pay, but nothing has come of it. Guilds can work in a city, where people are close to each other; but on the river, we're too spread out. Some men work short hauls, between two points. Some work long ones. Some, like me, pick up and deliver wherever they can get a contract or make a good bargain. How could a guild work over the entire Vistula River, with all of its tributaries? I've been on this river for eight years, and I don't know half of the men who own boats."

"But can't the government do something?"

"Damn it! I've told you that there is no government!"

I was quiet for a while. "What's all this about tolls? I haven't seen you pay any tolls."

"You were asleep when they caught us at Wojnicz, back on the Dunajec. I would have tried to slip by at night, like we did at Sacz, but this time of year there's so little traffic that they usually don't keep a guard boat out, and I was worried that if we wasted time, the river might freeze.

"Brzesko's around the next bend, and we've got to walk by it. They'll catch us, sure."

Brzesko had tall masonry walls topped with two mail-clad crossbowmen. It also had a pompous official, who haggled with our boatman for a quarter hour before they settled on a toll of twenty-one pence.

I'd never seen a functioning castle before. I wanted to explore, but Tadaos wouldn't stand for it.

"It's bad enough paying their tolls; we don't have to support their inn as well," he said as we proceeded. "Damned bastards on the wall with their crossbows. If there were only one of them, I could have gotten three arrows into him before he got the silly thing cocked."

"You'd kill a man for twenty-one pence?" Father Ignacy asked.

"No, Father. Just talking, and anyway, I have to come by here eight or ten times a year. If I killed them, I'd be caught for sure. Still and all, you've got to admit that it's a pleasant thought."

Soon it was my turn to ride on the boat, and I could relax and think.

Languages all change, but they change at vastly different rates, and I think that English must be the most changeable of all.

When I was first learning English, I was shocked to discover that an intelligent, educated, English-speaking person of the twentieth century was unable to read Chaucer in the original without taking special college courses. Think about it! A language changed to unintelligibility in six hundred years. No, less than that, because two hundred years later Shakespeare wrote his plays, and they are intelligible to the educated American.

On the other hand, any decently educated twentieth-century Spaniard can enjoy The Poem of the Cid without difficulty, and it was written in 1140.

The Slavic languages are among the world's most stable. The east and west Slavs—the Russians and the Poles—split off from each other around the middle of the first millennium. Yet, despite the fifteen hundred years of separate development, it is possible—by speaking slowly and listening carefully—for a Pole and a Russian to communicate.

So, despite my trouble, things could have had been much worse. Had I been dumped into thirteenth-century England, I would not have been able to make myself understood. As it was, people thought that I had a funny accent, but I could get by.

That night I was talking to Roman Makowski, the poet.

"What do you plan to do once we get to Cracow?" I asked.

"Plan? I have no plans other than to do what I have always done—follow the muse."

"But how is that going to keep you alive? Winter is coming on."

"Something will turn up. Who knows? Perhaps the keeper of a prosperous brothel will want seductive scenes painted on his walls for the encouragement of his patrons, and I shall be paid some of my fees in trade. The muse takes care of her own."

"The muse has not done well by you thus far."

"This must be admitted. Are you offering some suggestions?"

"One. Father Ignacy is in need of copyists, and you are qualified for this work. If you were to impress him with your character and ask him politely, you might be offered a job."

"Father Ignacy is already impressed with my character, though not favorably. I might better ask a job of the Devil; at least there would be a chance of acceptance. Furthermore, the prospect of working all winter in a monastery is frightening. Consider—a whole season of sobriety! Months without touching a woman! An eternity of waking up every three hours to pray! No, the Devil would make a better offer."

"Get serious, kid. A month from now you could be dead of cold or starvation! You'd best not ignore the only iron you have in the fire!"

"The only iron in the fire! What an excellent phrase! May I borrow it?"

"Yes, and stop changing the subject. Are you going to follow my suggestion?"

"Sir Conrad, what exactly do you think I should do?"

"To start with you should ask him to confess you, and after that you might try praying a little."

"Oh, very well. It certainly can't hurt, and it might help. That artistic whoremaster could still turn up!"

I shook my head. "Go to sleep, kid."

We got to Cracow so late the next day that we walked the last kilometer by torchlight.

As we tied up to the dock, Tadaos said, "Well, lads, we made it. You can sleep on the boat tonight—at no charge—or there's a passable inn up that street on your left."

"Thank you for the invitation, but I'll never sleep on a grain sack again," I said.

"I share Sir Conrad's feelings," Father Ignacy said. "But first there's the question of our remuneration."

"But of course. I'd almost forgotten." The boatman counted out fifteen pence each to the priest and me and six pence to the poet. I guess he hadn't bargained as well.

Father Ignacy and I started off. I called back, "Tadaos, aren't you coming?"

"And leave my grain for the thieves? I shall sleep well enough here. You go, and come back in the spring if you need work!"

"I just might do that." The poet was staring at us wistfully. "Come on, kid. I'll buy you a beer." He followed us like a puppy dog.

The inn was sleazy, and the beer was sour. The food wasn't good, and the service was surly. Nonetheless, it was the first roof over our heads in five days, and it felt good to sit on something that wasn't a grain sack.

Food and lodging were a penny each, which didn't seem bad until I discovered that we all had to share the same bed.

I don't know why it felt strange getting into bed with two other men—for the past five nights, we'd been snuggling together for warmth under my unzipped sleeping bag—but somehow it did.

Three in the bed wouldn't have been so bad, but we soon discovered that we had a few thousand uninvited guests. I spent half my time scratching fleas and the other half being shaken awake as my bunkmates scratched theirs.

By midnight I'd had it with the little bastards. Tadaos's boat might be cold and lumpy, but at least it was free of vermin. My invitation was doubtless still good, so I crept out of bed, put on my pack, and felt my way down the dark hallway and out into the street.

The street was as dark as the hallway of the inn. The night was cloudy, and there were no outdoor lights at all. I fumbled through my pack until I found the candle stub. I lit it with my cigarette lighter, redonned my pack, and headed for the river.

Most of my attention was focused on keeping the candle lit while watching where I put my feet. The boats on the river were the darkest of shadows, and I couldn't tell one from the other.

"Tadaos!" I shouted, "where are you? Tadaos! Wake up!"

"Eh? What? Damn!" his familiar voice yelled. I suddenly realized that there were four figures on his boat: Tadaos at the stern and three other men who were crawling toward him with naked daggers!

"Look out!" I shouted, but the boatman was already fiercely swinging his steering oar down at the head of one of his assailants. A loud crack told of both oar and skull breaking.

I was dumbfounded. If I put down the candle and aided Tadaos, we'd be fighting in the dark. The only thing I had approaching a decent weapon was my camp hatchet, but it was deep within my pack. I fumbled out my Buck knife and was worrying it open with one hand.

Tadaos showed no such hesitation. As the first thief collapsed at his feet, he threw the broken stub of the oar into the face of the second. Even as the thief raised his hands to ward off the sharp broken wood, Tadaos had his belt knife out. He was on his man in an instant, and with a single, brutal upthrust he put his long knife under the thief's ribs and into his heart.

The third thief, seeing Tadaos's deadly efficiency in front of him—and probably my size behind him—these were all very small people—broke and ran. He shoved past me before I had my jackknife open and ran for the cover of some trees.

Faster than I would have believed possible, the boatman had his bow out and bent. As the thief ran past the first of the trees, Tadaos let fly. The arrow caught the man in the throat, knocking him off his feet and nailing him to the tree.

All this had happened in a few seconds, in horrifying silence and to the dim flickering of a single candle.

I shined the light into the boat. Tadaos was unbending his bow, obviously unhurt. The forehead of the first thief was caved in, a bloody notch centimeters wide and centimeters deep running from his nose to the top of his head, obviously a death wound.

The second was on his back with a knife buried to the hilt in his solar plexus, the hilt pointing downward. His eyes were open, his features bore an expression of astonishment, and he wasn't breathing.

The last thief was struggling feebly at the tree. I finally got my jackknife open and went to him with some vague idea about cutting him down and administering first aid.

Tadaos brushed by me.

"Thanks, Sir Conrad, but it was me they were trying to kill, so the honors are mine." With no more concern than if he had been swatting a mosquito, the boatman put his bloody knife efficiently into the thief's jugular vein and then carefully slit the throat open to remove his arrow for reuse without damaging the fletching.

I was too shocked and horrified to do anything. "But shouldn't we call the police?"

"Police? You mean the Guard? Sir Conrad, are you absolutely out of your mind?" He searched the body and wiped his knife clean on the man's trousers "Damn, not a penny on him."

He sheathed his knife, slipped the arrow under his belt, and started dragging the corpse back toward his boat. "Would you mind getting his feet? Well, I guess you would mind, judging from your expression. Can't you understand that these cutthroats were about to rob and murder me?"

He dragged the body until he saw the knife the man had dropped. "Now that's a well-made thing," he said, handling it. "Tools of his trade, as it were. Worth thirty pence easily at either of the knife shops in Cracow. I'm tempted to keep it. Still, it might be recognized. Best to play it safe." He pitched it twenty meters into the river.

"Stop!" I said, too late. "You'll need that for evidence to prove that they came at you armed."

"Evidence? Are you still thinking about the Guard? Sir Conrad, the night must have fuddled your head. Consider our position! We are strangers here. These men are doubtless locals with dozens of friends and relatives who would swear to their honesty and good character. We'd both be in jail for six months even if they did find us innocent, which is unlikely. Personally, I have no intention of being hanged."

By this time he had the body into the river and was giving it a good shove into the current. The weapons and bodies of the other two men got the same watery grave.

My God! I had spent five days in the company of a cold-blooded murderer!

Tadaos washed his knife and arrow and said, "Well, time I got back to sleep. Thank you for calling out when you did. You probably saved my life. But what were you doing out at this time of the night?"

"Well, uh . . . there were fleas in the inn, and I couldn't sleep."

"You're welcome to sleep on the boat, Sir Conrad."

"Uh, no . . . no. I'll head back."

"As you like. Come to me in the spring if you need work."

Eventually I crawled back into bed with the priest and the poet and the fleas.

It was a long while before I fell asleep.

At first gray light, the priest announced his intention of finding a public bath; Roman and I followed him, scratching at our new boarders.

The bath was another penny, although we got our clothes laundered in the bargain. Two huge wooden tubs were sunk into the floor: a warm one for scrubbing with a foul-smelling brown soap and a hot one for rinsing and soaking. I'd been more than a week without a bath, and it was glorious.

The public bath was just that—there were a dozen other men in with us. I heard some feminine giggles, and I looked around in the smoky gloom. Everybody had moustaches.

I eventually realized that the room and the tubs had been built twice their apparent size and that a wooden room divider had been added later. The other side was for women. There were a few knotholes in the wood.

"A good thing, that wall," Father Ignacy said. "The Church had to threaten the bathhouse keepers with excommunication before they put them up."

"You mean that bathing used to be both sexes together?"

"Yes. A disgusting barbarism."

I kept my opinions to myself and turned my attention to shaving. In my mirror, I saw Roman wander with extreme casualness over to the partition and quickly peek through a knothole. Later, I sat down next to him in the hot tub.

"I saw you at the knothole," I whispered. "Father Ignacy might have seen you as well. Have you forgotten that you are trying to impress him with your good character so he'll give you a job?"

"No, sir, but temptation is a hard thing to resist."

"Agreed. Did you see anything worthwhile?"

"All I saw was another eye staring back at me."

When we left the bathhouse, the sun was bright and the church bells were ringing.

"Ah, tierce already," Father Ignacy said. "I must go and report to my new abbot. Sir Conrad, I suggest that you spend the day amusing yourself in the city and then visit me at the Franciscan monastery a little after none."

"Tierce?" I asked. "None?"

"When the sun is there," he said pointing to a midafternoon position, "and you hear the bells, it will be none." He left without mentioning Roman.

I said, "Well, we have some time to kill. Shall we start with some food?"

"Some food would be welcome, Sir Conrad, but then I must leave you and search for a way to make a living. I compute that my week's wages will be gone by tomorrow morning."

"I thought that we'd decided that you were going to work at the monastery."

"We have decided, but Father Ignacy has not."

* * *

The dock area was incredibly sleazy, with shabby wooden huts crowding an unpaved road. The road was ankle-deep in shit. Human shit, horse shit, dog shit, pig shit, cow shit, and doubtless other varieties that did not immediately impinge on my consciousness. I tried to maintain a stoic attitude as the foul, oily stuff squished and sucked at my boots.

"If we eat here, we'll likely pick up a new set of fleas," I said. "Let's go within the city walls to find our dinner; it must be cleaner there."

"It won't be cleaner, Sir Conrad, but it might be drier."

The city walls were brick. They were only four meters high and in poor repair. They could not be of any military use, but their purpose was evident when a sleepy guard demanded a toll of us.

After a few minutes of haggling, he let us both through for a penny.

It was no cleaner inside the city. People threw their garbage directly into the streets, and pigs ran loose, scavenging through it. Dogs fought each other for scraps, and chickens picked at the leavings. How people determined the ownership of the animals was beyond me.

Yet in juxtaposition to this unbelievable filth, men and women in gorgeous finery rode tall horses through the fetid mire, ignoring the shit as they ignored those of us on foot. I soon found myself ignoring those haughty, velvet-covered visions right back.

We found an inn that looked fairly clean, or at least cleaner than the first four we had looked into. After more dickering with the innkeeper, during which time he insisted on seeing our money, we settled on a halfpenny each for all we wanted of pork stew, bread, and ale.

As we sat down at the table, a female voice asked, "Would you like some company?"

She looked to be about twelve years old and underfed. Her dress was dirty and patched, and she was not clean. She was barefoot, and she was trying to smile and keep her eyes off the steaming bowl of stew in front of me.

"Why not?" I asked. "You look hungry. Would you like some dinner?"

"Well . . ."

"Innkeeper, bring a third meal to our table!"

"Yes, Sir Conrad!" he shouted from a back room. But when he arrived with a tray of food and drink, he saw the girl and said, "You again! How many times must I chase you out of here? Sir Conrad, surely you can't expect me to serve beggars and prostitutes."

"Surely I can expect you to show a bit of Christian charity! This is a little girl who is hungry. Now, put the food on the table."

"But you don't know what she is!"

"I know that she's hungry."

"But the cost—"

"I ordered it, and I'll pay for it. Now do as I say."

He left the tray on the table and walked off, grumbling. I stood and served the girl myself. "All of this haggling and argument is beginning to spoil my disposition."

"A thing to be guarded against," Roman said. "It spoils the digestion, and that can be ill afforded when good food is available in plenty."

"Yes, Sir Conrad. Please, sit down," the girl said.

So I sat. Introductions were made. Her name was Malenka. She was an orphan and had lived in Cracow for two years. Conversation drifted in the course of the meal, and it was soon obvious that she survived by renting her body to all comers.

"And what do you charge for this?" Roman asked.

She looked at me, trying to smile. "I was hoping you'd ask. A day and a night for only a penny."

I saw Roman fumbling among his dwindling supply of coins, and I thought it best to nip this in the bud. I took three pennies from my pocket and put them in front of her. "Do you go to church?"

"Yes, my lord. Every morning." Her eyes were downcast. "It's a good place to find customers."

"Well, next time I want you to do some praying."

"Yes, my lord. But I am yours for the next three days. Where shall we go?"

I had been a long time without a woman, and I confess that I was tempted. But this brutal century had not yet deprived me of my morals, and Conrad Schwartz was not a molester of children.

"I shall go to the Franciscan monastery, and you shall stay right here. It seems that you have offended the innkeeper somehow. You will make it up to him by working for him for three days."

"The innkeeper!" she cried.

"You will wash his dishes, sweep his floors, and sleep alone."

"What?" Roman exploded. "Sir Conrad, this is a foul jest! If you won't make use of her, then by the muse, I will!"

"By God, you will not! What will you tell Father Ignacy when you next confess to him? That you took an adolescent girl by force?"

"What force? She offered, and you paid!" Roman stood.

"She was forced by hunger and poverty, which are more persuasive than any sword or club. And a good deal more brutal! Now, sit down and finish your beer."

The innkeeper came over. "Forgive me, Sir Conrad, but I couldn't help overhearing much of what was said. What is it that you are planning?"

"I'm going to give you a servant for three days. Put her to honest work. If she's useful, you might consider some more permanent arrangement with her. Is this acceptable to you?"

"Well, yes. But why are you doing this?"

"Call it an act of faith. Look, here's the money for the meal. Come on, Roman. It's time to go."

Once out on the street, Roman said, "Sir Conrad, you are a very strange man."

We wandered through the city's mixture of squalor and barbaric splendor for several hours, stopping to pray at Saint Andrew's Church.

Despite its missing the familiar baroque towers, the church seemed somehow bigger than when I had visited it in the twentieth century. Perhaps it was the lack of more imposing structures around it. I looked up wistfully at the round towers of Royal Wawel Castle and the cathedral. But Roman shook his head.

"That's not for the likes of us, Sir Conrad."

"Surely they wouldn't turn away honest visitors," I said. "Anyway, I'm a knight."

"You are a knight without a horse, or armor, or even a sword. Try if you like. I'll wait for you down here."

"Perhaps you're right. Anyway, it's time we found the Franciscan monastery."

* * *

The monastery was austere, but it was at least clean, gloriously clean by comparison to the festering slime that surrounded it. A brown-robed monk led us to a room where we could spruce up, and I began to understand all the biblical references to the washing of feet. A few hours of walking in shit does amazing things to them.

When we were presented to Father Ignacy, he welcomed me profusely and told me that my appointment as a copyist had been confirmed, at four pence a day. He showed us around and asked me if my cell was acceptable.

"It's better than some quarters I've had in the military."

"Excellent. Supper is just after vespers, and I will see you then." He turned to leave.

"Father, what about Roman?"

"I'm sorry, Sir Conrad, but I feel that his employment here would be ill advised."

"But why not give him a chance, for a few days at least?"

"That would only give him time to spread his ungodly attitudes."

Father Ignacy left, and Roman looked wilted.

"Cheer up, kid. Come back tomorrow and ask him again. He'll soften up eventually."

"Tomorrow I shall be penniless."

"Not quite." I gave him the eight pence I had left. "I won't be needing this. You pay me back when you can."

"Thank you, Sir Conrad. And bless you. But he won't see me."

"Ask him to hear your confession. He can hardly deny you that. See me afterward."

The next day, the poet was still dejected.

"It's no use, Sir Conrad. He won't give in. I can't find any other work in town, either."

"All I can say is, try again tomorrow."

The next day he was again rejected, and broke as well. I'd earned a day's pay by then; I drew it from the Brother Purser and gave it to the kid.

This went on for four more days before Father Ignacy called me to him.

"What's this business of your drawing your pay daily and giving it to that goliard poet?"

"Well, Father, I can hardly let the kid starve, can I?"

"It's embarrassing. You're outdoing the Church with your charity!"

"There is an easy solution to your problem, Father."

"Yes?"

"Hire him. Show some Christian charity yourself."

"But . . ." You could see that he wanted to swear. "Very well! But if this goes wrong, I'll hold you responsible!"

"Thank you, Father."

Chapter Six

I was not cut out to be a copyist.

Some of the problems centered on my lack of skill. Please understand that I spent years at a drawing board. My technical drawing was good, and my engineering lettering was considered excellent. I had seventeen years of formal schooling and am quite literate.

But I was not literate in Latin. And engineering lettering on mylar with a Japanese mechanical pencil has nothing in common with doing Gothic "Black" lettering on parchment with a goose quill and ink.

Furthermore, parchment is a kind of leather and is hideously expensive. The only technique they had for erasing an error was to wait a week for the ink to dry and then sand it off with a stone.

They did accept my suggestion to use a T square and triangle to lay out pages. They were thankful for this. They also considered me to be a monumental klutz.

Then there were the working conditions. You sat on a bench in a cold, dark scriptorium. The only windows in the room were covered with oiled parchment and might as well have been bricked over. This light was supplemented by an oil lamp at your elbow that in fact burned pig fat, under protest.

Most of my fellow copyists didn't speak much Latin either, so the straw boss—excuse me—author—read it off one letter at a time. He said "A," and you wrote "A." He said "B," you wrote "B." He said "C" . . . This went on for two and a half hours, until it was time to go and pray again.

Four such sessions made for a ten-hour day, which was not so bad by itself. In the twentieth century, I often worked longer than that when we were behind schedule. But when added to the time spent praying, it became excessive.

I had always considered myself a religious man. Going to mass before work is not such a bad idea. But in addition, going to the chapel another eight times a day to pray is a bit much. Especially when those eight times are spread out at three-hour intervals—Compline at 9 p.m., Matins at midnight, Lauds at 3 a.m., and then up again at 4:30 to catch 5 a.m. mass . . .

I was not sufficiently sinful to need that much prayer. Oh, since I hadn't taken any vows, I wasn't required to do all this, but they liked to wake me up anyway, just in case I wanted to beef up my soul a little.

Actually, it had been seven weeks or so since I had touched a female human being, and I wanted to do a little sinning. I was making an allegedly excellent salary—four pence a day—but was unable to spend much of it because I only had Sunday afternoons off, when the inns were closed.

It did not help matters that the goliard poet kid was an excellent calligrapher. Working his way through the University of Paris, he'd made his living expenses copying books. In addition, in the two weeks that he'd been at the monastery, the kid had gotten religion. He'd taken vows as a novice so that he could continue doing precisely the same job as before, but without pay.

The overnight conversion from professed sinner to religious fanatic is a fairly common one, but I've never understood it.

In any event, when I was notified right after five o'clock mass that Father Ignacy wanted to speak to me privately, I knew that I was going to be fired. I deserved to be fired, and one part of me wanted to be fired.

Another part of me wanted to continue eating regularly.

"Good morning, Father. I know what you have to say, so do not agonize yourself. I know that I am incompetent as a copyist."

"You've shown much improvement, my son. You would, in time, become a competent copyist. But you would never be a happy copyist, so I have found you another position. I know a merchant who requires someone skilled in keeping ledgers of purchase, sales, profits, and that sort of thing. This man travels constantly all over Europe, and you would be his companion. Do you think that you would be qualified for such a position?"

I'd had a few basic accounting courses, double-entry bookkeeping, and so on. Seeing more of the world would be pleasant. Getting out of the monastery would be a joy. "For that I know I would be qualified."

"Excellent. He often carries large sums of cash, and part of your duties would be to defend him if necessary. But no man not a fool would attack a giant such as yourself, so I expect that this will be only a formality. Still acceptable?"

"Yes."

"Good. Your salary will be doubled, to eight silver pennies per day. You will be required to provide yourself with horse, arms, and armor, but he will advance you the price of this and deduct it from your pay."

"Armor! What do I need with armor?"

"Sir Conrad, I can travel freely and safely because I am protected by the Church and obviously penniless. You lack this protection and will be escorting a wealthy man. Enough said?"

"Oh, whatever you say, Father."

"Good. He's waiting in the next room. If he likes you, we'll consider the bargain sealed. His name is Boris Novacek, and he's eager to leave as quickly as possible."

Novacek looked me up and down, grunted, and said, "Well, he looks to be the type. Sir Conrad, I understand that you are an officer. How many men have you commanded?"

"At one time, Mr. Novacek? The most was a hundred and seven." I had been in charge of electronics maintenance at an airport, but why complicate matters?

"I see. And the terms are acceptable to you?"

"Eight cents a day, with you to advance my horse and armor. I assume that you will pay traveling expenses, food, and lodging?"

"Of course. But often lodging is not available, and half the time we sleep under a tree."

"Agreed, then." And we shook on it.

One of the glories of the thirteenth century is that there are no forms to fill out in triplicate.

Our first stop was at a used armor shop, since new armor was all custom-made, and that could take months. I quickly learned that "used armor" generally meant somebody had died in it, but I was losing my squeamishness.

The armory had a lot in common with a twentieth-century junkyard, and at first I despaired of finding things tall enough to fit me.

Except for helmets there was no plate armor at all, which was just as well because fit is not so important with chain mail. The stuff stretches better than double-knit. But you have to wear a heavily padded garment, a gambeson, under the mail, and they didn't have anything close to my size. I decided to trust my thermal underwear, sweater, blue jeans, and windbreaker to protect myself.

I found a mail shirt, a hauberk, that seemed to be of fair quality. It was of a good grade of wrought iron, and each individual link was riveted, not just bent in a circle. It was made for a man as wide as I was but a good deal shorter. The sleeves were intended to be full-length but went barely past my elbows, and the knee-length skirt barely covered my crotch.

Some long mailed gauntlets took care of my forearms, and I needed gloves anyway. The clerk scrounged up a sort of skirt that went from waist to knees. Some "full-length" leggings served as shin guards, greaves.

I rejected the full barrel-style helmet—you can't see out of the things—and found an open-faced casque that gave some neck protection without having more chain mail jingling around. Under the casque, one wore a thick rope skullcap.

It was a mismatched set, but I wasn't entering a beauty contest.

When the shopkeeper, a German, totaled up the bill, I felt my testicles tighten. For thirty pounds of wrought iron, this man was asking for two years' pay!

I said to my new boss, "Mr. Novacek, you are more familiar with shopkeepers than I am. Could I persuade you to see about arriving at a more equitable price?"

"With pleasure, Sir Conrad." He smiled with delight and then launched into the shopkeeper, who was obviously and hopelessly outclassed. I thought Father Ignacy was a good bargainer, but here I was seeing a genius practice his own special art form. He used an incredible mixture of politeness, bombast, pleading, and outright abuse. He criticized the armor I had selected until I was embarrassed for having picked it out. They started at fifty-five hundred pence. He had gotten the shopkeeper down to fifteen hundred pence when he suddenly screamed in anguish and stomped out of the shop. I had brains enough to follow.

"That was undoubtedly the finest display of commercial persuasion that I have ever encountered." His floweriness was wearing off on me.

"I thank you, Sir Conrad, and I compliment you on your good judgment in your choice of negotiators. But it's thirsty work, and a drop of beer is in order."

"An excellent idea, Mr. Novacek."

Drinking at 9 a.m. was not uncommon in the thirteenth century. I guess if you can't have coffee and a proper breakfast, beer is your next best bet. Some of the customers in the tavern were already in their cups.

The waitress was not pretty, but she was prompt, young, and eager.

"No time for that, Sir Conrad. Now that we have your armor selected, there is still the matter of getting you a horse with saddle and bridle, a sword, a lance, and a shield. You will also need a good, warm cloak."

"But Mr. Novacek, we don't have the armor. Surely you recall that you left the armor shop shouting at the shopkeeper, criticizing not only his father and mother but his mother's husband as well."

"I can see that you have much to learn about commercial negotiation. I shall be back in that shop twice more this afternoon, and the final price will be seven hundred and twenty pence."

He was wrong. I got that armor for seven hundred and eighteen pence.

"Incidentally, Sir Conrad, you have a good eye for steel. You really did pick the best he had, and I quite agree with you on those barrel helmets. They're fine for a massed battle, where junk is flying from every direction and there isn't much you can do about it. But in the sorts of fights we're likely to see, hearing and eyesight are important."

But of course, we weren't likely to encounter any violence.

I'd been on a horse perhaps two dozen times in my life, always at rental stables, riding calm, tame horses that here would be called palfreys. I liked horses, but I was by no means a horseman. My boss, however, insisted on going to the only stable in Cracow that sold Chargers, exclusively. Chargers are very large, very strong, and very mean. They had eight of the things. As I walked down the line of them, one bit me, two more tried to, and I just missed being kicked. Having to ride one of the brutes for the next few years was not a pleasant prospect.

In the back of the stable was a corral with a single horse, a big red mare as big as any of the stallions. I whistled to her, and damned if she didn't come. I stroked her nose. "What's the story on this one?"

"Surely you jest, Sir Conrad! A knight in my employ riding a mare? I'd be a laughingstock!"

"And so would I, Mr. Novacek. I only asked!"

"But an excellent mount, good sirs!" the stablemaster said. "That horse has been fully battle-trained and is most intelligent."

"Battle-trained? Who in his right mind would take a mare into battle? Haw! She'd likely go into heat halfway through the fight! Would you want our good Sir Conrad on her back when a real Charger tries to mount her?"

"But no, my lord. That mare is completely indifferent to stallions. She shuns them, sir."

"Hah! So she's not even good for a brood mare. Still, I have a friend who's a horse breeder, and he knows of the Spanish fly. That might get her tail up! Of course, it kills them more often than not. I might give you fifty pence."

The stablemaster insisted on twelve hundred and off we went for half an hour's shouting. Actually, twelve hundred didn't seem bad, considering that the worst of the stallions went for four thousand.

This time they did settle on a price, a hundred and sixty-five pence, or at least I thought it was settled.

"Done then, stablemaster, provided that Sir Conrad likes how she handles."

"Provided? But you said . . ."

"I said that I'd be taking her to my stock-breeding friend in Wroclaw, didn't I? And how else are we to get her there? We'll be back soon with saddle and bridle. Come, Sir Conrad."

Novacek seemed to need to follow every bargaining session with a quick beer and a recap of the discussion.

"We really had him there—a hundred and sixty-five pence for a war-horse! I've had to pay more for a mule, and an old one at that! But you see, once a horse has been battle-trained, it can't be used for anything else. Put it to a plow and it'll likely kill you. Not many knights would take a fancy to a mare, and he was faced with feeding her all winter. We'll know about her soon enough, once you ride her. The sword shop is on the way to the saddlery.

"Oh, if she does go into heat with a stallion around, jump!"

I knew little about horses and nothing about armor. But I knew quite a bit about swords. I took fencing all the way through college and was varsity for three years. Furthermore, I was the only man on the team who used both saber and rapier. Despite the fact that "saber" is a Polish word, I prefer the Spanish rapier.

The sword shop was a comedown. It was a collection of huge hunks of wrought iron that might have been useful for breaking bones, but not much else. They were mostly hand-and-a-half bastard affairs a meter or more long. I went down the rack, hefting them and not concealing my disgust. I was about to leave and search elsewhere, when something on a back shelf caught my eye. It was a scimitar. It had a loose brass hilt, with cheap glass "jewels" set into it. The sheath was battered, and when I drew the blade, a light powder of rust puffed out. The blade was fully a meter long, much longer and heavier than a fencing saber. There was only a slight curve in the blade so that the point could be used for thrusting. The balance was poor, blade-heavy.

I took it over to the light and rubbed the blade. It was watered steel! The best sword steel is made of thousands of thin layers of hard high-carbon steel welded between layers of flexible low-carbon steel. The high-carbon steel corrodes less quickly, and the result is a surface that looks like ripples on water, hence the name. This was the first good piece of metal I'd seen in the thirteenth century.

I tried not to show my excitement. It was like finding a Stradivarius violin in a junk shop!

"This is a curious thing," I said to the shopkeeper. "Saracen, isn't it?" Very few Polish knights went on crusade, since there were plenty of heathen to kill in the immediate neighborhood.

"Aye, sir. Brought back from the Holy Wars by a great knight, sir. A holy relic, that is."

"A holy relic made by an infidel! That great knight probably gave it to his girlfriend, being embarrassed to have it around the house. It's a piece of junk, and we both know it. It's too light to do any damage, and that's why I want it. I have a young nephew who's ready for his first toy sword. Something cheap that he can bash up and not hurt himself with. Shall we say five silver pennies?"

"Oh, sir, I couldn't sell that fine antique for less than fifty."

And so I went at it in the manner of my new boss, and in ten minutes we settled on fourteen, which I paid out of my own pocket.

As we left, I said, "Well, Mr. Novacek, am I learning my lessons?" Actually, they were damn strange lessons for a good socialist to be taking.

"A fair performance, for a beginner. I could have gotten him down to eleven. But what do you want with that silly thing?"

"You really don't know what I've got here? It's worth not eleven but eleven thousand! Would you lend me your knife even though I might damage it?" Everybody in the thirteenth century carried a knife.

He handed it to me. I drew my new sword and shaved a thin sliver from the edge of his knife. His eyes widened.

"That's test number one, that it can cut a lesser blade!"

"Lesser blade! This knife is first-quality steel!"

"It's good-quality wrought iron, which is about all I've seen around here. Test number two is that it can be bent, blade tip to pommel, without breaking or kinking." I put the tip to the ground and bowed the blade maybe ninety degrees, but after that I lost my nerve.

"There's a third test?"

"That'll have to wait until I sharpen it. It must be able to cut a silk scarf that's floating in the air. For now, though, do you know a smith who can tighten this hilt? And fifty grams of brass at the pommel end will improve the balance remarkably."

Saddles and bridles were sold by two different guilds, so there was no possibility that they would match. The only saddles that could fit a Charger were huge. The saddlebow and cantle came as high as my waist. An opponent could break your back, but he couldn't knock you out of that thing.

Getting into it was strange. I had to put my right foot in the left stirrup, hoist myself up, put my left foot into a special leather loop, go up higher, and then drop in without getting tangled or squashing my genitals. But I get ahead of myself.

I let Mr. Novacek pick out the saddle and bridle.

Aside from what I'd seen in the movies, I knew nothing of lances or shields. I really didn't want either of them, but the boss insisted. I picked both to be as light as possible.

"And what device on the shield, sir?" All the shields in the shop were white. Used shields were rarely resold, since they usually were destroyed just before their owners were.

"Is there time?" I looked at Novacek. What with our frequent beer stops, it was now past noon. A lot was left to be done, and he wanted to set out before first light.

"Have it done in an hour, sir, if it isn't too complicated."

Novacek nodded affirmatively.

Maybe it was the beer and no food, or maybe it was something deep inside me that yelled, "Do it!"

I said, "A white eagle on a red field. Put a crown on the eagle." The artist didn't react; I guessed the national insignia wasn't in common use yet.

"Is there a motto?"

"Poland is not yet dead." He didn't react to that, either, because it was the first line of the national anthem and wouldn't be written for five and a half centuries.

* * *

The saddle and harness had been delivered to the stable and installed on the horse.

I managed to clamber aboard without doing anything too embarrassing.

She was really an excellent horse: mild-mannered, obedient, not at all skittish. She was neck-trained and stirrup-trained; you could guide her with your feet alone. Of course, there was nothing at all of the fierce war-horse about her, but that was fine by me.

We hadn't bought spurs yet—still another guild—and it was obvious that I would not need them.

Eventually, I rode back to the inn by the monastery with my new boss walking beside me. I wore a helmet, a full suit of chain-mail armor, and a huge sheepskin-lined red cloak. I had a horse and a saddle, plus a sword and lance and an audacious shield. I would have made a truly splendid barbaric sight if my blue jeans had not been showing through my wrought-iron overalls. Also, I was in debt for more than a year's pay.

Chapter Seven

We were on the road an hour before gray dawn.

The last evening had been a frantic matter of wolfing down a meal, taking a last bath—it might be a while before the next—and collecting my gear.

Father Ignacy came to my cell to wish me good-bye and Godspeed. He gave me a letter of introduction and a list of Franciscan monasteries where I could scrounge a meal if I really got hard up. He also gave me a letter to be delivered to a Count Lambert at Okoitz.

"It's right on your way, and it will be worth at least a meal and a night's lodging to you. I carried it up from Hungary, but now you must complete its journey. God be with you, and know, my son, that you are always welcome here." He smiled. "All will be well with you, Sir Conrad. I can smell it."

The kid was waiting in the hallway with the clothes he'd borrowed. They were washed and folded. Some of them looked as if they'd been beaten between two bricks, but I didn't mention it. He also had a carefully counted pouch of silver pennies.

"I thank you for the loan, Sir Conrad, and return your property."

"Thanks, kid. Look, why don't you keep the tennis shoes. They fit you."

"Again, thank you, but they wouldn't go well with my cassock. Have you heard the news of the prostitute Malenka?"

"No, what happened?"

"She has found a most permanent position with the innkeeper."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. They've posted banns in the church and are to be married within the month."

"I'll be damned!"

"Never that, Sir Conrad. With three pence in the right place, I believe you have saved a soul. Go with God." There was something in the way he looked at me. Envy? Admiration? But that was impossible.

I reported to Boris Novacek at the inn, where he was still drinking.

In the morning he surprised me by showing up in full armor himself. We ate a cold breakfast and left, taking with us two horses and a mule. I was on my red mare—I'd named her Anna after my lady of Zakopane—with my backpack serving as one saddlebag and a sack of food as the other. My shield rode on top. My spear fit between a socket at my right toe and a clip on the saddlebow.

Boris—we'd gotten on a first-name basis when in private, over last night's beer—rode a gray gelding, with a pair of small but very heavy saddlebags behind him. He led a mule loaded with more supplies, a leather bag of beer, and some "luxury" goods, sugar and pepper, each worth about one-fifth of an equivalent weight of silver. Both had been transported up from the Indies.

We followed a trail just north of the Vistula River, heading west. Anna was walking surefootedly on a track I could hardly see. She didn't shy at strange noises or blowing leaves. A fine animal. The plan was to follow the path until the river turned south and pick up another trail heading west again to the Odra River, then south into Moravia. With luck, and pushing it, we hoped to reach the Moravian Gate, a low pass between the Carpathian and Sudeten mountains, on the evening of the fourth day, December 26.

After that it was to be an easy trip in warmer weather into Hungary, where we would buy 144 barrels of wine for delivery to the Bishop of Cracow in the spring. The purchase was for use in the mass and had nothing to do with the bishop's fondness for red Hungarian wines, of course.

The sun was fully up when we passed the Benedictine abbey at Tyniec, high on the white rocks across the river, but we saw not a single person from the time we left Cracow until ten o'clock in the morning.

With the sun up, Boris trotted up and rode beside me for a little conversation. Talking in the dark had been difficult because we couldn't see each other to gesticulate. He wanted to know about Arabic numbers, and I complied.

Boris caught on to the salient points quickly. He was amused by the idea of zero ("A special character that signifies nothing! Hah!"), but he soon saw its usefulness. I drew the numbers in the air in front of me as though it were a blackboard, and he memorized their shapes without difficulty. He considered the idea of positional notation to be a brilliant creation. The decimal point was still giving him trouble when we heard a rider galloping up from behind. We pulled off with me to the left side of the trail and Boris to the right to let the fellow through.

The man stopped abruptly between us and turned to my boss. He acted as if I wasn't there.

"You are Boris Novacek?"

"I am."

"You are a thief! You run out on your debts!" he said with a thick German accent.

"Who are you and why do you call me a thief?"

"I call you thief because you do not pay the twenty-two thousand pence that you owe Schweiburger the cloth merchant! And I am the man he sold the debt to!"

"I do not owe you anything, for I do not know you. As for Schweiburger, my debt is not due until Christmas, and today is only December twenty-third!"

The argument got more and more heated, and I became apprehensive. I was unsure of the legalities of the case, but it was obviously my duty to defend Boris if it came to that.

The man must have forgotten about me because while shaking one fist at my employer, he reached behind his back to draw his dagger.

I didn't want to use my sword and kill him, so I grabbed him by the back of the neck and the belt and heaved him out of his saddle. My intention was to throw him over my head and onto the ground. Then I could take my lance and stop any real violence.

But he was much heavier than I had expected. He bumped my lance free while he was airborne, and I tried to catch it with my right foot. But my high saddlebow and cantle had given me a false sense of security; it was quite possible to fall out sideways, which I did. I never claimed to be a horseman.

I was sliding off the right side of the saddle, but my hands were full of creditor so that I couldn't grab the pommel. My right foot was out of the stirrup, stopping my lance from falling. Trying desperately to find the stirrup, I let the lance go. Then there was nothing left to do but think, Oh shit, why Me? I hit the ground in a tangle of arms, legs, and instruments of violence.

The horses scattered, and we were untangled in an instant. He was on his feet and drawing his sword before I got up. Fortunately, his first blow was to my left, because I parried it before my sword was fully out of the sheath.

I got my sword out in time to parry a vicious chop at my head. "Hey! Stop! I don't have an argument with you!" I shouted as I blocked a blow at my right side.

"Bastard!" he yelled as he tried to bash my skull three more times.

"I'm not your enemy!" I parried a cut at my left leg. "I was only trying to stop you from committing a murder!"

Keeping him from hitting me required no great skill. A parry almost always requires less motion than an attack and so is inherently faster. Also, my opponent had little skill and no ability at subterfuge. He telegraphed every blow long before it landed.

"You ride with thieves, you!" He sent two more whacks at my right leg.

What the guy did have was a heavy sword and an ungodly amount of stamina and persistence.

"Look, I don't want to hurt you!" He was bashing at my head again. I was once the best man on campus with a saber, but I hadn't worked out in six years. Even then, I had been used to parrying a fencing saber, which weighs less than a tenth of what this guy was swinging.

"You are Polack thief and liar like everybody you know!" He kept on swinging.

"Can't we stop and talk about this? Don't you ever get tired?" My right arm was getting numb.

"Bastard!" he yelled, and started chopping faster. Had it been the twentieth century. I would have known that he was on some kind of dope.

Finally he got one by me, hitting my right shoulder. It broke neither skin nor bone, but it hurt. I knew that the defensive game could not go on forever. I had to disable him.

When next I got an opening, I beat his blade to the left. He overcompensated, and I doubled under his sword. Then, arm out, head and body vertical and in perfect fencing form, I thrust my blade into him.

In fencing, things happen too quickly to be controlled by rational thought. You practice for years so that the reflexes of your arms and legs do the right thing at the right time. That is how you score points.

That is also how I put my sword through the man's neck, severing his trachea and at least two arteries. He was probably dead before he hit the ground, but he continued bleeding. Oh, God, how he bled!

I stared at him, unable to believe what I had done.

"Well fought, Sir Conrad! But was that really necessary?"

"Huh?" I had never killed a man before.

"Why did you throw him out of the saddle?" Boris gathered up the horses and dismounted.

"You didn't see?" I said after a time. "He drew a knife behind his back. He meant to kill you."

"And here is the knife on the ground! My apologies, Sir Conrad. You have saved my life! I am in your debt, sir." He bent over the body and was searching it.

"Just earning my pay, and I am in your debt some three thousand pence." I was a murderer.

"Not anymore, Sir Conrad. Look here." He showed me a pouch he had removed from the body. It must have contained a kilo of gold.

"That amounts to eight thousand pence or I'm no judge. And look here! The man wears armor under his clothes! Had your sword struck elsewhere, it might have been stuck on his rings, and then he would have had your head!" Boris quickly stripped the body while I stood dumbly by. When he was done, the corpse was completely naked. "Haul that a long way off the road, will you? They get unsightly when they rot, and we wouldn't want to offend some good lady."

In his thirteenth-century way, he was telling me that one should not litter. I dragged it off. When I got back, a bundle was heaped on the stranger's horse. Boris was mounted.

"Sir Conrad, I estimate that I could sell this chance-found horse and equipment for four thousand pence. The gold is worth eight, for a total of twelve. We were together at the finding. You did the important work, but you were in my employ at the time. Therefore, I think that an even split would be equitable. Do you agree?"

"Whatever you say." Jesus Christ. I had just killed a man. Killed him and hid the body. Now I was joining in on robbing the dead.

Boris saw my expression. "Well, we can hardly leave this on the road for some thief to find! Now then, your half of twelve is six, but you owe me three, so here is your three thousand pence."

I put the money into my pouch. Added to the fifty I already had, it amounted to quite a bit. Two years' pay for killing a man.

"In addition, Sir Conrad, you saved my life. Please accept this thousand as a bonus."

I put it in my pouch and mounted up.

"One more thing," he said as we rode down the trail. "That man, whoever he was, did not have a deed of transfer on his person, and I think it probable that he was only an extortionist. But if he really bought the debt from Schweiburger and if he has no heirs, I would be forgiven the debt, saving twenty-two thousand. If these unlikely events transpire, you shall have earned an additional eleven thousand pence."

I was silent for a while. Then I said, "What is all this about your running out on your debts?"

"Well, I wasn't exactly running out on them, but it proved to be very convenient to . . . shall we say defer payment for a few months. You see, last summer I located some excellent Russian furs in Cracow. I knew a family in Pest that would be most interested in them. However, since I had already overinvested in amber, I could not afford to purchase the lot of furs and pay their way to Pest.

"Therefore, I left the amber with a German wool merchant of my acquaintance, and he lent me twenty-two thousand pence.

"My trading went well, and I returned to Poland with copper and samples of wine purchased near Pest."

"Wait a minute, Boris. You say you brought copper into Poland?" In the twentieth century, Poland is one of the world's largest copper exporters. Apparently, the mines near Legnica had yet to be discovered.

"Of course. There's a fair profit in copper, though nothing outstanding. You understand that I'm not wealthy enough to get involved in the really big commodities like cloth, so the best I can do is to connect individuals with diverse needs who are not aware of one another.

"This I did with a certain red Hungarian wine. It is not highly regarded in Hungary and is therefore inexpensive, but the Bishop of Cracow was quite taken with it. He ordered a huge amount at a price that will leave me well compensated for my services.

"The difficulty is that the amber market is now poor, and had I repaid Schweiburger, I would not be able to deliver the bishop's order. Discreet inquiries indicated that my lender was in no immediate need of cash, so I thought it best to delay paying him until spring. It was the profitable thing to do, even though I shall have to pay him damages."

"You mean extra interest on his money?"

"Interest? How can you say such a thing, Sir Conrad? Don't you know that the charging of interest is usury, a crime against the Church?"

"Oh. Then what did Schweiburger get for lending you the money in the first place?"

"Why, nothing. Of course, he was concerned about the safety of his money and insisted that some of his men carry it over to me. I had to agree to pay them for this work. These carrying charges amounted to twelve hundred pence, but the loan of the money was free."

"And you'll pay him no interest, but damages or other carrying charges when you pay him late."

"To the tune of one thousand to fifteen hundred pence, depending on just how late I am. It's the way things are done."

We rode in silence until noon, and then he said, "Sir Conrad, that blow you took to the shoulder, it isn't serious, is it?"

"No. I'll probably have a bruise as big as my face, but the arm works all right."

"Then why so glum? Two days in my employ and already you are a prosperous man."

"I hate killing."

"You are in a strange business to entertain that attitude."

"I seem to be good at it."

"Indeed you are! That blow you struck was remarkable. Your blade was suddenly on the other side of his sword. Then you didn't really strike him at all! You straightened your arm and sort of pushed into him, and your blade came out of the back of his neck!"

"That is called a beat with a double. You tap his sword, and as he moves to knock your blade away, you drop your blade under his and come up on the other side. Then I lunged, which uses the leg instead of the wrist. Much stronger." He wanted me to recap the fight the way he recapped his haggling sessions. I was surprised that he didn't order an ale.

"Next time we're afoot, you must show me how that's done. We've lost time, and we must pass through the Moravian Gate while the weather holds. Sext already. Sext and not a drink all morning!" He unslung his leather beer sack and drank deeply. He threw the sack at me, and I found that I needed it.

"The horses were resting during the fight, Sir Conrad. What say we eat in the saddle and push on?"

"You're the boss."

We trotted on. When you're in a hurry on horseback, you don't gallop all the time unless you want to kill your mount. You gallop for a while, walk for a while, trot for a while, gallop again. Just then we were trotting.

We passed the castle town of Oswiecim when it was still light.

"We could ford the river and spend the night there, Sir Conrad, but I fear the weather. If we get snowed in before we pass the gate, the good bishop will be late in getting his wine."

"Whatever you say, Boris, though the weather has been fair all day." I was not used to riding, and I was getting sore. My mount was excellent, but ten hours in the saddle is a lot.

"Right, and the ground is hard enough for good riding. All the same, it feels wrong and I worry."

So we pushed on until dark, fed and rested the horses, and rode on again with moonrise.

Three hours later, all the horses except Anna were stumbling, and it was time to stop. I pitched camp and got some dried venison and barley stew boiling while Boris tethered and unloaded the horses.

After we were both crammed into my dome tent, he said, "That arithmetic of the Arabs, it's interesting, and I can see that once you're used to it, it would be a lot simpler than the old Roman system. But it retains one of the disadvantages of the old system."

"Eh?" God, I was tired.

"It still goes by tens and hundreds. Most of what I buy and sell goes by dozens and grosses, and a dozen is a good number. I can split a dozen into two parts, or three, or four, or even six. With ten, you can split two ways, or five, but that's all."

"There's no reason why you couldn't develop an Arabic number system to the base twelve," I said. "Just add two more symbols for ten and eleven. You'd have to memorize new multiplication tables and so on, but you haven't learned the old ones yet. I'll show you in the morning."

That was probably one of the more useful things I did in my life. It was also one of the more painful.

"As you like. Oh, you did something sensible with your newfound wealth, didn't you?"

"Yes. I tied it to my ankle." I was in the thirteenth century now, surrounded by cutthroats and thieves. I knew, because I had become one of them.

Chapter Eight

The beer sack was empty and I was about talked out, when it started snowing. In the twentieth century this area would be all factories and apartment houses, but we had not seen a soul all morning. We had worked out—in our heads—the tables for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division required for base-twelve arithmetic. Boris had them all memorized and was doing long division by noon. It was an incredible display of intelligence.

In fact, almost all the people I had met in the thirteenth century were intelligent, way above average. They were ignorant, to be sure, but smart. Was intelligence a natural compensation for ignorance? Or was there something about modern education that destroys the mind? I had certainly been bored enough in school. Or were we just breeding for stupidity? You could see where the priesthood was encouraging that. The clergy was the only educated class here, and for a lot of peasant boys it was the only way up in the world. Making them celibate, as the new Gregorian reforms demanded, was biologically equivalent to killing them. The reforms had not been accepted in Poland yet, but they would be. The monasteries had been celibate for centuries.

The cities attracted the bright kids who didn't join the clergy. Filthy as the cities were, they had to be cauldrons of disease. Were seven hundred years enough to make a difference? Possibly.

I was pondering this while Anna was at her calm, steady walk. A horse is a lot like a bus in that you really don't have to pay attention to where you are going. I was thinking and sharpening my sword. Yesterday's fight had made the other guy's weapon look like a saw blade, but mine was uninjured.

The falling snow was muffling sound, and we proceeded in silence until I heard muted hoofbeats and the jingling of armor. Bemused, I looked up absently to see an armored knight galloping toward us. He rode a massive black horse that was plunging hard, its eyes wide and bloodshot. His surcoat was red with black trim. His barrel helm was polished and had an eye slit only two centimeters wide. His shield was red with a black double-headed eagle. His lance bore a red and black pennant.

And his shield was raised, and his lance was pointing directly at me!

Suddenly, Anna became completely uncontrollable. This was a game she had been taught well. She took off at a full gallop, directly at the attacking knight!

She might have known what to do, but I didn't. From what little I had seen of this type of fighting, I had to sheath my sword, get my shield out from in back, and level my lance at him. I was then to brace myself on the stirrups and prepare to take part in an imitation train wreck.

I dropped the sharpening stone and tried to put away my sword, wasting precious seconds; at a full gallop it is not possible to sheath a sword. The sword was the only weapon that I knew how to use, and I didn't want to drop it. I looked up, and the knight was entirely too close. No time for the shield!

With my left hand I reached across the saddle for my lance. It was riding point up with the butt in the right stirrup socket. As I swung it out, it naturally ended up with the butt forward, barely in time to beat the knight's lance away from my chest. His lance head ripped into the mail above my left elbow, but I barely felt it.

The eye slit of his helmet was the only obvious target, so I thrust at it with my sword, our left knees bashing as the horses passed to the right.

I felt the sword grate on bone and iron as my opponent flashed by, the blade was almost pulled out of my hand. I twisted, looking over my left shoulder, and saw his helmet turn fully 180 degrees before my sword was yanked out. By brute luck, I had stumbled onto a tactic for which the knight wasn't prepared.

Anna stopped and turned while the knight fell from his horse, red blood gushing on white snow as his helmet bounced off. The top of his skull with half of his brain skidded in yet another direction, leaving a third scarlet smear on the snow.

But Boris was in trouble. Two armored footmen were hacking at him with long halberds as he desperately defended himself with his sword. Without a signal from me, Anna charged to his aid.

Someone in blue ran from the forest and grabbed at my horse's reins. I slashed with my sword, dropping my lance in the process, but apparently I missed. I saw the flash of a knife swinging toward my left leg. I managed to lift my leg high while trying awkwardly to swing my sword again.

Then suddenly the blue bandit was gone, trampled beneath Anna's hind legs.

We continued toward Boris, but something felt very wrong. Still firmly in the saddle, I was slowly rotating off from the back of my horse.

The cinch strap was cut! As I tried to untangle myself from the oversized warkak, Anna turned sharply and was actually skidding sideways on the snow so that she wouldn't trample me as she had the bandit.

I came down hard and felt the saddle crack between my legs. For a moment I was stunned. I saw Anna pulling away the saddle with her teeth. I got to my feet, shaking a bit, as an axeman landed a blow on the top of Boris's gelding's neck. Blood sprayed, and the animal suddenly froze and then started to topple.

Sword in hand, I ran to my employer's aid. Anna, without saddle or baggage, was trotting at my left side. I blessed the man who had trained her. She acted as though she really cared about what happened to me and was staying close for my protection.

Boris was still in the saddle when his horse fell on its side. The axemen jumped away from the crash and then were on him.

Boris lost his sword in the fall and was pinned under his dying mount as one of the axemen prepared to deliver a death chop.

I shouted to attract the attention of the would-be murderer, and the man turned to face me, slipping slightly on the blood-stained snow. As I ran to meet him, he swung a three-meter-long halberd down at me.

A weapon that big is much slower than a sword, although it hits a whole lot harder. If I had tried to parry it, it would have just kept coming into me, so I chopped at it with all my might and managed to cut through the hickory shaft and its iron reinforcing strips.

The axe head glanced off my back as I skidded, trying to stop on the slippery snow.

I realize now that what I had accomplished was to cut my opponent's halberd down to a quarterstaff. As it turned out, he was very good with a quarterstaff.

He took a quick step backward, found solid footing on Boris's chest, and gave me a quick jab in the solar plexus, which knocked the wind out of me but didn't break my momentum.

Boris grabbed the man's leg as I was skidding. I slammed into them, knocking the man down and propelling myself over the motionless body of the gelding. From flat on my back, I caught a blurred image of the second axeman coming up to take me out.

Suddenly the sky darkened and Anna's hoofs came down centimeters from my face. She had jumped entirely over our struggling bodies to bowl over the second axeman.

I lurched to my feet to see Anna taking on the second axeman in single combat. She danced aside from his axe swipes and then delivered a kick to his left arm that I was sure broke it.

Then a whack on the side of my helmet knocked me down yet a third time. The first axeman had kicked his way free of Boris and was putting his newly made quarterstaff to use.

I was hit twice more, across the back and the ribs, before I regained my feet. My opponent swung his staff in a blur of figure eights and twice parried my lunges by slapping my sword aside.

I once read that the great Japanese swordsman Musashi fought sixty duels before he was thirty years old. In most of those fights to the death, his opponents used real swords while he used a wooden stick. I put it down as a fine example of Japanese embroidery. Or perhaps Musashi's real talent was in finding incompetent opponents.

That, of course, was before I encountered a man who really knew how to use a stick.

My opponent was grinning at me through the open face of his helmet. Blood was running freely from my slashed left arm, I was staggering, and he knew I was beaten.

Well, if I couldn't get at him past that quarterstaff, I could damn well chop it up. I made it my target, focused on it, and cut the damn thing in half.

The bastard was still grinning! Suddenly he had half the quarterstaff in each hand and was fighting with two single sticks—Florentine style, I think it's called.

Something inside me snapped. He had no bloody right to be grinning at me! I was absolutely enraged, and in my rage I forgot everything I had ever learned about fencing. I snarled like an animal and started swinging like a drunken sailor.

He must have hit me three or four more times; I neither felt the blows nor cared. In moments his single sticks were reduced to pungi sticks, so he reached for his dagger. I slashed his right hand off at the wrist.

Suddenly, all fight was gone from him. He plunked down to a sitting position on the snow, staring at the blood spurting from the stump of his right wrist. The look on his face was one of astonishment.

I kicked his shoulder, and he just rolled over onto his side, still staring at the bloody stump.

I looked up and saw that Anna had her man on the run. He was dodging between the trees, both arms dangling at his sides as if broken. He ducked behind a massive oak and then peeked out around the opposite side to see what had become of her.

She outguessed him. As he stuck his head out, she put a forehoof in his face. I could hear the crunching squish from fifty meters away.

Then she looked at the body, calmly stepped on its neck, and trotted back to me.

I was just standing there, breathing hard, feeling the rage drain out of me and exhaustion take its place. Anna stopped, observed that I was reasonably alive, and then looked at the first axeman. The man was so intent on staring at where his hand had been that I don't think he noticed as she stepped on his neck.

How do you train a horse to do such a thing? I thought about it and decided that I didn't want to know.

The Black Sea. I could have gone to a nice resort on the Black Sea with girls in bathing suits and been back at my comfortable chair in the Katowice Machinery Works. My mother told me I should have gone to the beach . . .

"Uh, Sir Conrad," Boris said. "If you have a moment . . ."

This brought me back to reality. I was beaten, bloody, and certainly not unbowed, but there was work to do. I went to help Boris, still pinned under his gray gelding. The axe chop to the neck had partially severed its spine; the body was completely motionless, but the head was writhing.

"Well fought, Sir Conrad! But not me, yet. Dispatch my horse first. He has been too good a servant to leave in pain."

I opened my Buck jackknife, put it to where I thought the arteries were, and said, "Here?"

"No, no. Up a bit. That's it. Good night, old friend."

We had to tie a rope around Anna's neck and drag the carcass from Boris's leg. Dead leaves and snow had cushioned his fall; his leg was stiff, but it worked.

My knee hurt, but I could walk. I hurt all over, but no bones were broken. My arm was another matter. The cut wasn't bad, but in a world without antibiotics, a scratch can kill. I dug out my first-aid kit to dress it as Boris began methodically stripping the dead.

Somehow, that fight didn't bother me as much as yesterday's killing had. Perhaps it was because the highwaymen had been so obviously in the wrong. Perhaps it was because my soul was scar tissue and I was becoming brutal.

My saddle was destroyed, but the dead knight's was about the same size and of considerably better quality. A beautiful thing; I wondered whom he had stolen it from.

I had just finished saddling Anna when I heard a cry. "Was that a child, Boris?"

"Sounded more like a cat in heat!"

"I'm going to check it out."

"As you wish, sir knight." He had mistaken my luck in battle for prowess and was willing to forgive my squeamishness afterward.

I mounted up and rode in the direction of the cry. It sounded a few more times before I found the deserted camp. Now much there. A few brush huts, a cooking pot over a dying fire, and this kid. It must have been less than a month old, though I was no judge of age. It was wrapped up in a collection of rags and furs, with a fur flap covering its face.

I yelled to see if the mother was around. I shouted that I was friendly, but no one answered.

I could hardly leave the kid out in the snow. I yelled out my name and said that I was taking the kid west. Still no answer. I remounted with the kid in one arm and rode back to the trail.

"Not a bad haul, Sir Conrad," Boris called as I approached. He had packed up our latest loot. "Horse, equipment, three sets of armor and clothing! Five thousand worth, I'll wager. What was that you were shouting about a child?"

"I found their camp. There was a baby in it."

"Ah! Such a poor child to be alone in this heartless world. Best baptize it and leave it with its mother, Sir Conrad."

"I tried. She must be hiding in the forest."

"You don't know? I didn't see it happen, being engaged at the time, but in your path as you came to my rescue there was a woman in a blue cloak. Trampled, she was, with a cut on her hand. Here, I'll show you."

The bodies were naked now, stripped even of their underwear. The knight's head was cut completely in two at eye level, yet his helmet was undamaged. My sword must have spun around in there like an apple slicer.

The woman might once have been pretty, but you couldn't tell. Her limbs were all broken, and there were puffy dents in her chest and stomach. Her face was a ghastly, flattened caricature. The fresh stretch marks on her belly told of recent birth.

"I didn't know," I sobbed. "I saw that you were in trouble, and I was coming to help. She grabbed my reins. I didn't know I killed a woman."

"Sir Conrad, again I am in your debt. Again you have saved my life. But you could not have done so if you had stopped for this woman. Another moment and I would have been dead."

"So she is dead instead."

"And what of it? She had a quick death, which was better than she deserved! Man, she was living with highwaymen, aiding and abetting their murders. Anyway, you didn't kill her. You only made that cut on her hand, and that's no mortal wound. It was an accident, her falling under your horse, or maybe a suicide.

"I'm going to look at that camp. You pull yourself together, man. And do what's right by that child. If you don't have water, melt a few drops of snow with your hand and see that it's baptized." He rode off on the horse that we had "found" the day before, dragging the naked axemen behind him.

In an emergency, any Catholic can perform the sacrament of baptism. I still had some water in my canteen, and I dribbled a few drops on the kid's forehead.

"I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. I name thee . . ." Whom should I name him after? Of course! "I name thee Ignacy!"

I had the bodies off the road when Boris returned.

"Their loot, Sir Conrad! We're both rich! They had more than a hundred thousand in silver and gold, robbed from travelers like us! Damned if you didn't step right over their chest!"

Somehow, I really didn't care. "I'm taking the kid with us."

"Sir Conrad, you are the damnedest combination of wisdom and ignorance that I have ever encountered. You are an absolutely deadly knight yet maudlin as a pubescent girl in a convent. But to torture a child is senseless! How do you plan to feed it? Are your male nipples going to spring forth with milk? How do you plan to keep it alive this very afternoon? It's getting colder, and the snow is deeper. It grows dark, and it's a long way to shelter."

He was right. I knew he was right. The kid would die. Why cause needless pain? And why bother with it? "I'm taking the kid."

"Sir Conrad, as your employer I order you to put that child with its mother! Oh, damn you! Give it here. I'll do it." He leaned forward.

"Boris, do you really want to fight me?"

He stopped. "Oh, all right! Keep the child if you wish. But now we must ride if any of us is to live."

That afternoon was horrible, but the evening was worse. The snow slashed into our faces, blown by a westerly gale. The trail was all but invisible, and without Anna's strength we would never have broken through the drifting snow. I was leading the knight's war-horse, our second strongest mount. Boris followed on his captured horse, leading the mule.

I wrapped the kid up with my cloak, at the expense of my legs. Hours later, I reached inside his bundling, and his body was as cold as my hand. This wouldn't do.

Working under my armor, I unzipped my close-fitting windbreaker, stretching out the mail, my sweater, and my underwear. I put the kid inside, next to my skin. He was cold. I packed his bundling around me as best I could and wrapped my cloak tight.

Shortly, he returned the favor by urinating on me. I guessed that meant that he was still alive.

We floundered on in the starless darkness. I couldn't even read my compass. To stop was death, and it was impossible to continue on. But we did go on. And on.

Interlude Two

The screen had gone from full color to black and white with poor definition, which indicated that the probes were using infrared and that the scene was in nearly total darkness. Yet the red mare was proceeding without difficulty.

I hit the pause button.

"Tom, that horse is impossible."

"What do you mean impossible? Do you think that we'd doctor a documentary?"

"I mean that that horse can see in the dark! It acts like it's got a compass in its head! And the way it killed those highwaymen! Something's wrong here."

"You mean something's right here. Yes, that's one of our horses. She's the result of many years of careful selective breeding, along with a bit of genetic engineering. She has an IQ of about sixty and understands Polish perfectly. And yes, she can see somewhat into the infrared, and she does have the same magnetic sense that a pigeon has."

"Then what was she doing for sale in Cracow?"

"She was there because I put her there, hoping that Conrad would have brains enough to buy her, which he did.

"Look, there are some other things about this that you should understand. You know that rich American relative who put Conrad through school? Well, I'm he. Conrad Schwartz is my third cousin, and while I've never tried to run anybody's life, I have tried to see that my relatives had a decent start in life.

"Of course, I've had to work within certain rules. Besides the physical limitations of causality, I have two partners in the time-travel business, and we have agreed on some very sensible regulations. Tampering with history is out—we don't play God. But we do permit the helping of blood relatives out to the fourth generation back and their descendants.

"I had nothing to do with getting Conrad dumped into the thirteenth century. That was a screw-up by the Historical Corps, which is under Ian's jurisdiction. But once Conrad was there, I had a perfect right to help a needy blood relative. Being without arms and money in the Middle Ages is serious!"

"You mean that you set him up to get into those fights and capture that booty?"

"Not quite. I learned about the fighting the same way you did, watching this documentary I had made. I wasn't worried about him, since I had met him ten years later, alive and healthy. But after the second fight, when he was bandaging his arm, I hit the pause button and ordered a pair of 'merchants' with a chest of gold to pass through there four days before. On being attacked by highwaymen, they abandoned their cargo and fled.

"This left Conrad with enough money to live comfortably for the ten years he'd have to spend in the Dark Ages."

"And the sword, was that your doing, too?"

"Sure, diamond edge and all. What's more, had he gone to the Polish armor shop instead of to that German, he would have found a good set of Turkish plate mail, exactly his size, that he could have picked up cheap."

"Huh. Well, I guess you can't win them all."

"No, you can't. But you can sure as hell try. Now, back to the blizzard."

Chapter Nine

The dead knight's stallion was the first to fall. I felt it, but I couldn't see it. It got up and went on for another half hour. It fell again and didn't get up. It was crying in pain.

"Leave the beast, Sir Conrad! That sounds like a broken leg. But if we dismount to dispatch it, we'll never find our horses again."

I was learning to love our horses, and the beast's screams hurt me. But Boris was right; I left the stallion to die in pain.

We went on until we saw a tiny light ahead. Soon a great log barricade was in front of us.

"Hello in the fort!" Boris yelled. "We are two good Christians, dying in the cold!"

It seemed forever before a voice answered. "Stand close to the light! Who goes there?"

"Boris Novacek and Sir Conrad Stargard. Is that you, Sir Miesko?"

"Yes, Master Novacek!" A small gate opened in front of us. "Best go straight to the castle. I'll take care of the mule. Hello, the castle! Visitors!"

Our horses were taken away by a sleepy groom, and we were led into a large, warm kitchen. Four young women sat there. From their expressions, we must have looked like zombies. I certainly felt like one.

"We are sorry to meet you in the kitchen, sir knight, but—"

"First things first," I said. I pulled the kid out from under my clothes. "Do any of you know what to do with one of these?"

This caused a flurry of motion and fast feminine conversation.

"Oh, my God! Is it dead?"

"No. No! The heart beats! When did it last eat?"

"This morning at the latest," I said.

"What happened to the mother?"

"Dead," I said.

"Who, then?" She looked at the others.

"Mrs. Malinski just lost hers!"

"I'll go get her!" One of the women threw on a cloak and ran out.

Another carefully took the kid near the fire. "Diapers! The darling hasn't been changed all day!" She glared at me.

Another of them ran upstairs, presumably after diapers. The two remaining were inspecting the baby. We mere males were forgotten. I could see that the kid was in good hands.

I tried to remove my outer clothes, but my chain mail was frozen to my windbreaker. Distracted by my efforts, one of the women turned. "Oh! You men must be frozen. Come, sit by the fire." In seconds, we were handed huge mugs of wine heated with pokers glowing from the fire. We drained them.

Our mugs were refilled as the diapers arrived. Soon the three women were clustered around the kitchen table, with the baby in the middle. They were rubbing and scrubbing and making silly noises. It made me wish I were a month old.

"I never thought we'd make it here alive," I told them, "so just to be safe, I baptized him. I named him Ignacy."

Conversation stopped dead. All three of them stared at me as if I were a heretic.

"What a terrible thing to do!" the tall blonde said.

"What do you mean terrible? If he died without baptism, he'd go to limbo," I said.

"Limbo? You mean hell."

"So why are you mad? I saved him."

"No, silly, the name!"

"I named him for a good friend. A holy father. A Franciscan. Ignacy is a fine name!"

"For a girl?" This from the redhead.

"Oh." I'd cursed the poor thing with a name she'd hate for the rest of her life. Boris was giggling but didn't want to get involved.

"Don't you know the difference?" the tall blonde asked.

"Damn it, woman, of course I know the difference! What? You think I should have taken her clothes off in that storm just to see what flavor she was? You wanted maybe a properly named corpse?"

They were silent for a minute, and then the fourth woman came back with a buxom, motherly type. The kid was fed on the spot.

By then, the ice on my armor had melted enough for me to peel the mail off my windbreaker. I hung it up to dry. Boris did the same. Then I stripped down to my long underwear. If they could nurse a baby, I could get dry. I confess I was annoyed.

Mrs. Malinski left with the kid, and the four young ones whispered to each other.

Then the tall blonde came over and formally apologized for ignoring us and being a bad hostess. Introductions were made. The tall blonde was Krystyana, and the others were Ilona, Janina, and Natalia.

The count was asleep and not to be disturbed.

Soon things were okay; the rift with our hostesses was smoothed over. The table was washed, and a cloth was spread. Food was put out, and our mugs were refilled. I said grace, and we ate.

I'd forgotten about my wounded arm. Rather than strip in a snowstorm, I'd patched it up through the hole ripped in my clothes and armor. But the blood had soaked my long underwear to the wrist. Krystyana insisted on tending it while I ate. I probably should have refused and done it myself with my first-aid kit, but the food and wine and feminine companionship were working on me.

In the course of that meal they got every bloody detail of the trip out of Boris, who delighted in blow-by-blow accounts.

Later we were escorted to separate rooms. If Boris didn't worry about his property, then neither would I. I stripped down to shorts, T-shirt, and socks and eased my battered body between the clean sheets of a huge bed. It was comfortable enough and covered with an enormously thick feather blanket.

I blew out the oil lamp. It was Christmas Eve, and the bed was a marvelous present.

I was dozing off when I heard the door open.

Krystyana came in.

"That was a beautiful thing you did, Sir Conrad, saving that little girl," She stripped off her single garment and slid into bed beside me. "We'll just have to think up a good nickname for her."

Chapter Ten

Late the next morning, I was lying on my back and Krystyana was lying on my stomach with her elbows on my shoulders.

She was intently studying my T-shirt. The night before, things had been urgent and necessary, and I was in too much of a hurry at first and too tired afterward to remove my undershirt. Actually, I was still wearing my socks. The morning had been one of calm and wondrous delight, and I hadn't felt the need to change anything.

I couldn't honestly call Krystyana beautiful, but she was certainly pretty. She had lovely long blond hair that was draped over my shoulders. It went well with her light-blue eyes and blond, almost unnoticeable eyebrows and lashes. Her nose was perhaps a little too long, her mouth was too wide, and her teeth were not good, but there was nothing ugly about her. I mentioned that she was tall, but only in comparison to the others. Now her head was at shoulder level and her stretched-out toes brushed my shins. Her body was slender and most acceptable. She looked younger than I had thought last night. Perhaps she was sixteen.

I found out later that she was fourteen, the usual age of marriage among the people of Okoitz.

"Sir Conrad, this is the most amazing knot work! Do you know how it's made?"

She was staring at my knitted cotton T-shirt. Knot work? I studied it, too. Yes, I suppose you could call those knots. And once you thought of them as being hand-tied knots, yes, it was amazing.

"I've never thought about it. I suppose I could figure it out."

"I wish you would. I'd love to do something like this. It's fantastic!"

"You really like my shirt?"

"Oh, yes! Last night I was awfully impressed with that sweater thing you wore, but this is unbelievable. Everything is so tiny!"

"Well, if you want it, it's yours. Merry Christmas."

"Whee! But you mustn't give our Christmas presents now, Sir Conrad. Christmas presents are for this evening."

"As you like. This evening, then. For now, why don't you knock off the sir stuff. My friends call me Conrad, or just Con."

"But that would be most improper, Sir Conrad! If I hailed you not as a knight but as an ordinary man, why, it would be as though I was sleeping with a man before marriage, and that would be a sin."

I was confused. "You aren't married, are you?"

"Of course not!" She was shocked.

"Our . . . customs seem to be different. Could you please explain to me—slowly, as you would to a child—just what it is that you are talking about?"

She gave me a "mere man" look but said, "You are a belted knight. I am an unmarried wench and not of the nobility. You have the right to take any such unmarried woman who attracts you. Therefore, I have an obligation to do as you please. If one is performing an obligation, one cannot possibly be sinning. But for me to wantonly copulate out of wedlock, that would be at least a venial sin." It was the most incredible series of rationalizations—based on the right to rape!—I had ever heard.

"I have the right to take any peasant girl I want?" Accepting the favors of a lady who climbs into one's bed is one thing. Forcibly taking any woman in the fields is quite another, and not for Conrad Schwartz, thank you!

"Not only a right, Sir Conrad, but a duty! 'Sir' means 'sire,' you know. Not one man in a hundred becomes a knight, and the realm needs the children of such heroes."

Charles Darwin in a wheelbarrow! Knighthood as a eugenic program to improve the species? "But it was you who came to me."

"Nonsense, Sir Conrad. I merely lay down for some sleep. It was you who took me. If I made myself more accessible, why, it was only to save some other wench who might be less inclined. Therefore, it doubles my virtue."

What an amazing ball of tangled justifications! Good, though. I leaned back to ponder it all. She leaned forward to get at the window and hit the sore spots on my arm and shoulder. I winced loudly.

"I'm sorry, Sir Conrad. I forgot your wounds." She jumped out of bed and opened an oil-covered parchment window that let in a little light but no sight. She really had an excellent body, willowy yet rounded. "It's a wonderful day! Clear blue sky with not a cloud. But it's late! We've missed mass, and on Christmas day! And look! That steam! They're already quenching the sauna. Hurry or we'll be late!"

I sat up in bed and started fumbling for my clothes. There was absolutely no heat in the room!

"No. No, silly." She kneeled at my feet, yanked off my socks, and threw them any which way. She pulled off my T-shirt; this she folded neatly and set aside. Then she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out the door and down the stairs. I was cold, naked, and embarrassed, but I followed her through the kitchen and out the back door to the end of a line of naked people running over cold whiteness. The snow on either side of us was more than a meter deep, but a path had been shoveled to the sauna.

Somehow, I had always thought of the sauna as a Scandinavian custom that had spread only in modern times, but there it was. Perhaps the problem is that I had always assumed that my ancestors were all stern, heroic types—and that my grandmother was a virgin.

This sauna was different from any I had seen before. It was a brick dome with walls well over a meter thick. A small hole vented smoke at the top, and a tiny door opened at the side. To heat it, a roaring pinewood fire was kept burning inside for four hours. Then the fire was quenched and after a few minutes for the smoke to clear, the customers ran in. Once heated, the sauna stayed hot all day.

I was handed a board by the attendant. I followed Krystyana's bottom through the door, except that she only had to stoop while I had to crawl through the tiny opening.

The door closed behind me, and the smoke hole was plugged. I was enveloped in heat and darkness. Someone took my arm and led me to a place to sit down. My butt touched the hot bricks, and I jerked upward, hitting my head on the low ceiling. Someone placed my board on the brick shelf and sat me on it. As my eyes adjusted, I made out an oil lamp.

Dim shapes took form around me. We were in a room shaped like an arena that could have seated fifty, if they were friendly, but I counted only eight plus myself. They were friendly anyway. A windburned man with dark blond hair sat across from me—last night's gateman, Sir Miesko. The other man I hadn't met. He was a handsome muscular sort about my own age. He was tall, as the locals went, and blond, much blonder than I. In the twentieth century I would have suspected him of bleaching his hair. Ilona and a woman I hadn't met were sitting on either side, cuddled under his powerful arms and happy. A third woman was rubbing the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

Krystyana and Janina were sitting next to me, and Natalia sat by Sir Miesko.

We were all nude. The sight of those healthy bodies was delightful, but there is nothing sexy about female skin in a sauna. At these high temperatures, the gallant reflex does not take place.

Following the blond man's example, I spread my arms, and the ladies snuggled close to me. I noticed that Sir Miesko still had his hands on his knees.

"Sir Conrad," he said, "you must realize that to have the right to do something is one thing. To be able to get away with it is quite another."

The blond man laughed. "Sir Miesko, you astound me with your valor in battle and your meekness in wedlock. You had best take the advice of the Holy Church and never strike your wife with a stick longer than the distance from your fingertip to your elbow, nor bigger around than your thumb. Then take my advice and never use anything less! And often, Sir Miesko, to ensure your bliss, marital and otherwise."

"Your advice is always welcome, my lord, though it may be that I will state certain facts at tonight's festival." He grinned.

"Hah! That my wife chooses to stay in Hungary and I support her there? Well met, Sir Miesko."

He turned to me. "And this must be the noble giant, Sir Conrad Stargard, who comes from a mysterious land not to be mentioned, decked with mystic equipment." His eyes twinkled, and he smiled. "A man who defeats bandits and highwaymen in droves and captures vast booty! A man who rescues maidens of the tenderest of ages, grabs them from the clutches of death and merchants, and at great personal peril transports them to safety! And a man who, exhausted from fighting the forces of evil and brute nature, still has sap enough in him to keep Krystyana here smiling all morning as she hasn't smiled in months." Krystyana threw a wet cedar branch at him, but he took no notice of it. "I trust that those wounds and bruises are the result of honest battle and were not received from the calm ministrations of our gentle Krystyana." A fistful of wet branches flew.

"Noble Sir Conrad, I am delighted to meet you and honored by your presence. Know that I am Count Lambert Piast and that I welcome you to Okoitz."

I started to rise. It was blindingly hot, and sweat cascaded off me. But on my first day in this century, I had been bashed on the head for not adhering to the proper forms of courtesy. I had determined to learn them all and follow them to the letter.

"Ah, ah. Please, do not bow. It is not that I have disrespect for formalities but that a bow implies getting up again, and I fear for the roof."

"I thank you, Count Lambert, and my skull thanks you as well," I said, trying to match his flippant yet perceptive conversation. "But I complain that your description of me far overshoots the facts."

"I know, but that really is the gist of the story that's been circulating. You're the first news in weeks, and these people need something to talk about. I know the story of the child is true because I have talked to the Malinski woman and seen to the girl's safety.

"Boris Novacek was being sensible, you know, in wanting to leave the child behind. It was only the purest luck that let you find Okoitz in that dark blizzard. A merchant can afford to be sensible, but a nobleman often cannot. A nobleman must think of justice and honor first, and damn the odds! You did well, Sir Conrad.

"Thirdhand information—that is, from reality to Boris to Ilona to me—has it that you killed five highwaymen on the trail. Is this true?"

"No, my lord, I killed only two. One may have been a thief, an extortionist, or only an irate creditor for all I know. He kept striking at me, and I could not dissuade him. I regret his death. The second was a knight I got with a lucky blow. Of the others—one of whom turned out to be a woman—I wounded two that my horse dispatched, and my horse struck down the last."

"Ah, yes. Your docile fighting mare. Your skinny sword and your strange tactics. But later with that. It's time to go out."

I was thankful, for my eyesight was blurring with the heat. One strange effect of the sauna is that once you are hot enough, cold doesn't bother you. I stood in knee-deep snow swishing myself down with a bundle of cedar branches, removing sweat and dirt. We were in a courtyard surrounded by buildings, but the people had absolutely no nudity taboo! Dozens of peasants were coming and going and paying no special attention to the nine of us nude in the snow. I'd never heard of such a custom in Poland, but then, it isn't the sort of thing monks put into history books, is it?

I was musing on that when I felt a sharp whack on the buttocks. I spun around.

Krystyana was standing, facing me, with a cedar switch in her hand. Her legs were wide, her fists were on her hips, and she was grinning, daring me to do something. I was unsure of just what, but I accepted her challenge and swatted her across the obvious protuberances.

She squealed and struck back, and soon the other five girls joined in on her side. I was surrounded and getting the worst of it.

"Fear not, Sir Conrad! I come to thine aid!" The count swatted his way into the circle. "Back to back, Sir Conrad!"

"For this timely aid, much thanks, my lord. Together we may yet be victorious!" I shouted back. A crowd was gathering and cheering us on, generally favoring their own sex.

Still, the count and I were losing. We were outnumbered and were pulling our punches, or rather our swats. The opposition wasn't.

"Sir Miesko!" the count shouted. "You would show the white feather to your liege lord on the field of battle? Defend me!"

"My lord, it's not the enemy I fear but my wife! In all events, things appear to be about to fall to your advantage."

Uh, yes. In the cold, the gallant reflex was no longer impossible. Had I the time, I would have been embarrassed. The fight had the same effect on the count. As uninhibited as these people were, I was afraid that I was about to be involved in a public orgy.

"Defend me, Sir Miesko!"

"My lord, I shall support you with mine trebuchets." Sir Miesko began pelting us indiscriminately with snowballs. Some minutes later, the count stopped one with his face.

"Fair ladies," he said, "I call a truce with you that we might first dispatch our common foe."

Krystyana was, as usual, the spokeswoman (and ringleader). "With pleasure, my lord. Ladies, demolish me that man!"

The eight of us turned instantly on Sir Miesko and buried him under our snowballs.

Seeing Sir Miesko being trounced, some of the spectators—there must have been a hundred by now—started pelting us with snowballs.

Suddenly the count stiffened and raised his hand. Instantly, all motion stopped. Snowballs in the air seemed to drop quickly, as if embarrassed.

"My good people!" the count intoned. There was suddenly nothing of the clown or wit about him. Here was a born commander, knowledgeable of his people, confident of their support.

"I know that this is Christmas day, but the festival does not begin for three hours. I am your liege lord, and I expect to be treated with respect." A smile flashed. "Until then."

He motioned us back into the sauna, and the crowd dispersed. A mother began to whack a boy who had thrown a snowball at us.

We went back to soaking up great quantities of heat. Once we were through, the commoners would get the sauna for the rest of the day.

* * *

For the two or three weeks after Christmas, work outside was impossible. Travel was also impossible, and so defense was unnecessary. Traditionally, on the afternoon of Christmas day, the whole countryside went on vacation.

Oh, they couldn't go anywhere, but they had fun anyway. Discipline was relaxed, almost to the point of non-existence. Food and drink were on the count, although everyone was supposed to pitch in on the preparations.

There were two days of gift giving. On Christmas night, December 25, you gave presents to the members of your own class. On the twelfth night, January 6, you gave to members of the opposite class. For purposes of gift giving, the ladies-in-waiting, Krystyana and company, were on the receiving end of both groups.

Properly warmed up, we went back to the castle. Count Lambert had "just under a gross" of knights, but these were all—save Sir Miesko—at their own manors, attending to their own festivities. Usually a half dozen or so were in attendance at Okoitz, with two dozen more guarding the trail.

With the word "castle," several pictures usually come to mind. One involves movie stars in plate armor making stately motions in a huge stone defensive complex like Malbork on the Nogat, near Gdansk. Another is the Viking longhouse, with barbaric warriors drinking mead around a long, open fire with meat roasting above it, then sleeping on the benches when they were drunk. A third has long, plastered halls tenanted by oil paintings and ladies with huge dresses and partially exposed breasts.

Okoitz was none of the above. It resembled, more than anything else, a log frontier fort in an American cowboy movie, roughly square with blockhouses at each corner. The walls were perhaps four meters high and two hundred meters long. Some two hundred peasants and an equal number of children lived in huts built against the outer wall, normally one family to a room. Half the wall was lined with stables.

Scattered in the enclosure—called a bailey—were special-purpose buildings: a smithy, a bakery, the sauna, two latrines, and a millhouse with a hand-turned stone. One of the blockhouses served as an inn. The others served as quarters for visiting knights when the castle was full.

In the center of the bailey were the castle proper and the church. Despite the fact that they formed a single, continuous building, they were always spoken of separately. Perhaps that was because the church was open to everyone but the castle was entered only by invitation.

The count could walk from his chambers directly to the choir loft and see the mass from there. He never did this, always taking a chair in the front row to set an example.

The church, castle, and almost everything else were made of logs. Sawn lumber was used only when it was absolutely necessary, as on floors and doors. Brick and stone work were used very sparingly and metal almost not at all, except for hinges.

There was a newness about the place. Some of the cut wood had not yet weathered. I guessed its age to be about three years.

* * *

My backpack had been delivered to my room, which had a basin and water, so I dug out my shaving kit, removed three days of stubble, and brushed my teeth. My pouch of gold seemed to be missing, but I was among friends. They must have put it in a safe place.

I put on my underwear and was thinking about getting my body back into my soiled clothes, when Janina came in. Most people knocked before entering, but apparently ladies-in-waiting didn't have to. Or maybe they just didn't want to. She was carrying a big bundle of clothes.

"Sir Conrad, we haven't had time to get your clothes cleaned, and you wouldn't want to wear armor to a feast, anyway. These were made for Count Lambert, but we made them overly large. He told me to bring them to you."

"Thank you, Janina. The count is generous." She seemed to be expecting something, but this crew was socially equivalent to nobility; one did not tip them. When genuine female nobility were around, they were treated as something just a cut above regular servants.

She spread the clothes out at the foot of the bed. This bed was huge. It was two and a half meters long and more than two meters wide. It had a framework over it, hung with curtains.

"I think that these will fit you properly." She held the tunic up to me and smoothed it over my body. She did quite a lot of smoothing, and it was soon obvious just what it was that she was expecting. However, my needs were not all that pressing, and this business of legalized rape troubled me.

"Yes," I said, "I'm sure you're right. The embroidery on this is excellent. Did you women do this yourselves?"

"Yes, Sir Conrad. But we made the sleeves too long, see? But they're just right for you.

"I always feel so hot after a sauna! You don't mind, do you?" Without waiting to see if I did mind, she stripped off her outer robe and stood in a long underdress, waiting.

"Not at all, feel free to be comfortable." I rooted among the clothes she had brought. "These stockings—pants?—these are new to me." They were of a woven cloth but were like a woman's nylons in that they covered the foot. They had strings at the top.

"Oh, you can't wear them with those shorts. You have to wear this kind, with a belt." She promptly pulled down my undershorts.

"Interesting. And these boots are odd." This game was becoming fun. It was highly unusual to be pursued instead of the pursuer!

"I think they'll fit you." She was down at my knees, making sure I got a good look past her loose, low bodice. "Oh, your feet are cold! We'll have to get them warm!"

The game continued, and sometime later I was trying to figure out a belt buckle and Janina was lying nude on the bed.

"Damn it, Sir Conrad, get over here!"

So I bowed to the inevitable and permitted my body to be abused, knowing full well that she would later claim that she had been forced. She was not as pretty as Krystyana, but youth and enthusiasm make up for a lot.

Janina was promised my last T-shirt.

Over the next few days, I was visited by the other four ladies. Apparently they believed in share and share alike. A sound socialist principle but astounding when applied to one's person! If peasant women really outnumbered knights by a hundred to one, I couldn't imagine any possibility of rape in the modern sense of the word. A man would be too worn out satisfying the volunteers.

I later found out that in addition to giving the girls a socially acceptable outlet for their youthful sexuality and permitting them to mingle with the upper crust, a knight was expected to do well by his "friends" in providing them with a proper dowry and a substantial husband. Since the women seemed enthusiastic, I could find no fault with the system.

You could see where the girl's parents would go along with it, too. It was socially acceptable, it connected them with the nobility, and it saved them the price of a dowry and a wedding.

I was being dressed in my new outfit. Belted linen undershorts were topped with a pullover linen shirt. The deep blue pants—they really were plural, two separate pieces—were tied to the belt on the shorts. They were joined in the middle by a kind of diaper called a codpiece. The arrangement made a lot of sense, considering the use of outdoor latrines in the winter. A gorgeously embroidered long-sleeved tunic of rich burgundy was pulled on next. Something like shoelaces closed the neck.

Soft, black glove-leather boots—without thick soles; they were more like leather stockings—were pulled on. For outdoors, there were thick felt overshoes. Attractive but inferior to my hiking boots.

Over it all, a rich blue cape, matching the pants, was fastened to the left shoulder.

My plain leather belt spoiled the ensemble, but etiquette required one to wear a sword and a knife. My sword sheath suddenly seemed shabby and my jackknife case plain.

Janina was fitting the last of this around me when there was a knock on the door.

"Enter!" she cried, despite the fact that she was still naked.

"Sir Conrad," Count Lambert said, ignoring the naked lady, "I was hoping to see the fabulous equipment that you—I must say that that outfit suits you and fits you quite well." The whole sauna party trailed in with him.

"Thank you, my lord. It's beautiful, and the embroidery is lovely."

"Yes, isn't it? My ladies made it for me last fall, as a surprise. They were all new then and didn't know my size. But it fits you, so please take it as a gift."

"Why . . . why, thank you, my lord." Months of work must have gone into the embroidery alone.

"Please don't think that I'm giving you my castoffs. I could never wear it, and the dears were most disappointed. They seem to have taken quite a liking to you, though." He gestured at Janina's nudity.

"But . . . please, my lord, I hope I haven't—"

"Not in the least, Sir Conrad. What's the use in having things if you can't share them with your friends? Just see that you don't take all of them with you as you ride away. Leave a few behind to train the next bunch. It's a bloody nuisance to have to do it yourself! Now, about your mystic equipage . . ."

So I got my pack and showed them how it was worn. I unrolled the sleeping bag, and Janina crawled in. The room was not heated, and she had to be freezing. The count played a long while with the zipper and eventually came to understand it.

"A wondrous device, Sir Conrad! Could you teach our smiths the way of this?"

"Perhaps, my lord, but not in the few weeks that I shall be here."

"I see. And this? This is your pavilion?"

"Yes, my lord. Oh, I almost forgot! I have a letter here for you. It was brought up from Hungary by Father Ignacy."

He glanced at the envelope and threw it to Janina. "Bring that to me sometime when I'm already in a bad mood. There's no point in spoiling a good one."

I set up the nylon dome tent on the wooden floor. It didn't require tent stakes. The count asked all sorts of questions about the tent and cloth and floor, the fiberglass poles, the snaps and zippers and mosquito netting.

"A veritable house! And so light!"

"Heavier than it should be, my lord. It's still wet. We'll leave it out."

We went through the rest of my things. The lightness of my canteen and mess kit surprised them, but otherwise there was no great impression made. They took a mild interest in the freeze-dried food, but I don't think they realized just how long those few grams would last. The Swiss army knife was considered an ingenious toy. They really didn't know what steel was.

My first-aid kit was treated with studied indifference by the count and Sir Miesko, at least. To worry about an injury was below their knightly dignity. The ladies showed some interest—Janina was still in my sleeping bag—but seemed to feel it best to remain silent.

"And these parchment packages, Sir Conrad?"

"Seeds. I bought them as a present for my mother."

Sir Miesko was greatly taken with my compass.

"So this needle always points to true north?"

"Not exactly. There is some error, to the west. But it always points in the same direction, and if you take it out on a clear night and orient the card with the pole star, you will know the amount. Also, the presence of iron will throw it off."

"Of course. Cold iron always confounds the devices of fairy."

"No, Sir Miesko! It was made by skillful men, knowledgeable in science. Science is the art of discovering the ways in which God made the world and has nothing to do with witchcraft."

"You swear this?"

"On my honor! Furthermore, if you like this compass, it is yours—my Christmas gift."

"Then on my honor, I accept, but keep it until this evening."

The sewing kit, especially the needles with their tiny holes, was met with great enthusiasm by the ladies. I knew what I would do about their four remaining presents.

I'd saved the binoculars for last. They caused quite a stir, with people taking them out of each others' hands. Finally, Count Lambert took them back from Janina.

"Girl, do you want to freeze to death? Get some clothes on!" He strode from the room, down the hall, and out onto a balcony, a part of the defenses. He spent some time adjusting the lenses and looking out upon his lands.

"Excuse me, Count," I said, "but I have not seen Boris Novacek all day. Do you know what has become of him?"

"He left at gray dawn with two of my grooms and five horses. It seems that you lost a horse and its baggage last night. They went out to find them." He swept the fields with my binoculars.

"And there they are, by God! Look! The snow is so deep that the men are forced to break through in front of the horses." He lowered the binoculars.

"No, by God! You can't look, can you? This is a wondrous device, Sir Conrad!" He raised them back to his eyes. "See! Two horses drag the dead war-horse behind them. On another, the baggage. Look—that shield! A black eagle on a red field! You got him, Sir Conrad!"

"I got who?"

"You killed Sir Rheinburg, a foul German renegade knight who has been looting and killing my merchants for more than a year. That black eagle has killed eight of my knights, slaughtered a gross of my commoners, and stolen God knows how many cattle! But you got the bastard, damn it, you got him!" Count Lambert was slapping my back with enthusiasm.

"At the time, it seemed a matter of simple necessity," I said.

"Ah, but now it's a matter of rejoicing! What's more, Sir Conrad, the bounty on him is yours—ten thousand pence, it stands at."

Richer and richer. Thinking about it, where was my pouch? But it would not have been polite to ask.

"You seem to appreciate my binoculars, my lord," I said.

"Appreciate them? They are things of wonder! What a difference these would make on a battlefield!"

"Then you have completed my Christmas list, my lord. Please take them as my gift." Actually, since I had left my home in Katowice, six weeks earlier, I had used my binoculars exactly once and the compass not at all. Certainly they were small gifts for favors received.

Chapter Eleven

With the count's leave, I left him gazing out across his lands. I wanted to check on some things, and anyway, dinner was being skipped to leave an appetite for the feast.

My horse, Anna, was happy to see me. She was in a good stall in a big, clean stable, and she had been carefully groomed. "Are they treating you okay, Anna?"

She nodded yes.

"Anything you need?"

She shook her head no.

"Right." I didn't want to believe this.

Uneaten oats lay in the trough in front of her. I patted her neck and went in search of the kid I'd brought in.

Everyone in the bailey seemed to be hurrying about, getting last things done before the feast. Many were still in the plain gray wool that was everyday wear for most people, but some were already in their Sunday best, dyed in bright colors, with a great deal of embroidery.

Everyone seemed to know who I was. Passersby greeted me with smiles and nods. I had always thought of peasants as being brutally downtrodden, forced to grovel before their masters. I'm sure that that must have happened somewhere, but I saw none of it at Okoitz.

I was passing the mill when a man stopped me. He had a basket of food in one hand and a pail of beer in the other. "Sir Conrad? Could it be that you are looking for the child you saved?"

"In fact, I am."

"Then I shall take you there. I am Mikhail Malinski, and the child is with my wife."

"Then I am in your debt, Mikhail."

"No, Sir Conrad. It is I who am in your debt. Understand that two nights ago our third child died at birth. My wife grieved horribly for a day and a half. I thought it would be the death of her. But she's happy now. You understand?"

"I understand. We are in each other's debt. Let's see them."

"In a moment, sir. I have but a quick errand." He went inside the millhouse, and I followed. I was shocked by what I found. Four men were chained to a heavy "hourglass" mill, grinding grain to flour. It was the first brutal thing I'd seen in Okoitz.

"What's all this?"

"Why, the mill, Sir Conrad. Oh! You mean the men. These two were caught last week drunk, disorderly, and annoying some married women. They'll be here until the end of Christmas.

"This one's my brother. I always warned him about his poaching. He got six months for it."

"I wasn't poaching! I shot that deer on my land and tracked him to where they found us!"

"Save your lies for someone who'll believe them, brother! They found you four miles from your land, and that deer had an arrow through its heart. It couldn't have gone four yards!"

"What about this last one?"

"Oh, he's a bad one, he is. They caught him stealing from a merchant. He's worked off maybe half of the five years he got." Mikhail put down the food. "Your Christmas feast, brother. Share it if you want."

As we left, I said, "Five years for theft seemed severe."

"Had he robbed another peasant, it would have been only six months. But merchants have to be protected, you know. If they aren't, they might stop coming, and who would we sell our grain and hides to?"

"I see. What if someone stole from a knight?"

"Why, I can't remember such a thing ever happening, Sir Conrad. I suppose, if the knight let him live, that it would be far more than five years."

I ceased to worry about the location of my gold.

"What do you do when there aren't any criminals?"

"Well, the grain has to be ground to flour, doesn't it? There's usually a spot or two open on the mill, and the rest of us men have to take turns at it. But we keep an eye out for lawbreakers."

"I can see where you would. You keep saying 'men.' What do you do about female criminals?"

"Well, that's rare, Sir Conrad. Women are more law-abiding. But there was a time, two years ago, when a girl—only twelve, she was—stole a silver-handled dagger from the count himself."

"What did the count do?"

"Got his dagger back and told the girl's father. He beat his daughter to within a thumb's width of her life! Then the count gave the father a month at the stone for not bringing up his daughter right! As I said, it doesn't happen too often."

"What if she'd been married?"

"At twelve? You shouldn't marry a girl off until she's at least budding!"

"No, no, Mikhail. I mean, what about an older woman?"

"Why, that'd be up to her husband, of course!" Mikhail walked up to his house.

In the twentieth century, it would have been called a shed. It was three meters wide and five deep, and it was one of a long row of similar log dwellings that stretched along the outer log wall. Next to the wall and above the sheds was a two-meter-wide wooden walkway, apparently a place for defenders to stand. The rest of the roof was straw.

"All this was by the count's own plans, it was. Houses next to each other keep each other warm and take less walls to build. The neighbors make noise, but that's not the count's fault." The door had no hinges but was picked up and moved aside. Mikhail went in without knocking, and I followed.

Apparently, the lack of a nudity taboo applied to married women as well. Judging by the flush of her skin, Mrs. Malinski was just back from the sauna. I guessed her to be around thirty but later found out that she was only nineteen. She was doing up her long hair and didn't bother getting up or even covering herself.

"Sir Conrad! I am sorry that I did not speak to you last night, but the baby . . . you know . . ."

"I quite understand, Mrs. Malinski." A campfire burned smokily at the center of the single room. Their few spare clothes were hung from pegs in the log walls, next to bags of food, bunches of garlic, and a single cooking pot. Bags of straw on the floor served as beds. Two small children were playing on the dirt floor. Yet Mikhail was obviously proud of his home! What had he been born in?

"We have real wooden floors going in next year, the count says," Mikhail told me.

"He is a good lord, isn't he?"

"The best! Why, he could get a dozen men for every man here if there was room for them."

I was pensive as I walked back past the latrines and the granary. These were good people, and there was so much that I could help them with. But I would have to leave as soon as the roads were clear.

One thing remained yet to do. There was a church, so there had to be a priest. I had killed—or at least caused the deaths of—five people. And there were two very young women that I had . . . had. Damn it! They were not rapes! I needed confession.

The church was full of commotion when I got there. The altar had been removed, along with the candlesticks, the relic—a lock of hair from Saint Adalbert, I found out later—and all of the appurtenances. The church was furnished with movable chairs instead of bolted-down pews; I half suspect that the use of pews was the result of a clerical rebellion to secular use of the church. The chairs were being rearranged, and long, collapsible trestle tables were being set up. The fact is that the church was the only room in Okoitz large enough to hold everybody.

Asking about, I learned that the priest, a Father John, and his wife (!) were in their chambers to the left of the altar.

I entered and discovered that the nudity taboo did apply to a priest's wife, at least to this priest's wife. From her accented shriek, I gathered that she was French. She was an attractive woman, better looking than any of the count's handmaidens. I turned to leave but was stopped by the priest.

"Please forgive her, Sir Conrad. She is new to Poland and not used to the local customs." His wife was still arranging a blanket around herself.

"Of course, Father. But still, I should leave."

"You may if you wish. But as a personal favor, I would prefer that you did not. You are from the west. Know that I met Francine when I was a student in Paris. She is the granddaughter of a bishop and was legitimate before the second Lateran Council forbade such marriages in the west. But these decrees were never ratified here in my native Poland, so here we are now, under God, man and wife."

He turned to his wife. "Francine, we cannot bring the word of God to these people unless we adhere to the local customs! There is no prohibition against nudity in the commandments, nor in the words of Christ. Remember the parable of the lilies of the field and care not about your raiment. Now, disrobe. Please."

She was embarrassed, probably as much as I was. The whole situation was awkward. There wasn't anything that I could say, but I tried to give her a confident smile and nod. She bit her lower lip, looked at me, and stood up. Then she slowly dropped her blanket. I think she did it slowly in order to pull it up if I disapproved rather than from a desire to entice.

She really was a beautiful woman, as fine as any you would see in modern Cracow. Her hair was black, the first black hair I had seen in the thirteenth century. Her waist was tiny, her hips were full, and her breasts were voluptuous orbs topped by tiny, coal-dark nipples.

"Thank you, love. Now, Christ also talked of the virtues of cleanliness, and the sauna grows cold," the priest said.

"Yes. Sir Conrad." She nodded to me and ran through the doorway.

"Thank you, Sir Conrad. I've been trying to get her to do that all day. She objected to their nudity, and they objected to her smell." The priest paused, and we heard a roar of applause from the crowd in the church. "Damn, but I wish they hadn't done that!"

This was a far stranger priest than Father Ignacy!

His next sermon was on the importance of being kind to people who were trying to fit in. Still, he seemed, for some unreasonable reason, to be a holy man.

"I took my sauna earlier, hoping that she would join me, but no such luck. But, Sir Conrad, you came here for a reason of your own. Can I help you?"

"Well, Father, I came here for a confession."

"Of course, my son, if you need it. The church is crowded now, but we are private enough here. Would this be adequate?"

I agreed, confessed, and told him about the people I had killed, the underaged girls I had copulated with, and lastly about coveting his wife!

He passed off the first two as not being sins at all but merely the things any sensible man would do. As for the last:

"You must learn to fight the results of your training. Had you seen her fully clothed, you might have thought her beautiful, but you would not have had these sensual thoughts. She was wearing what God gave her. The sin was in your eyes, Sir Conrad."

I thought about it, and he was right. I eventually got to know Francine as the unique and creative human being she really was. I learned that my initial impressions of her had been entirely wrong. She was not a shy and modest housewife. There was something of the whore in her and much of the bitch. But I get ahead of myself.

I went away with a penance of a single Pater Noster and three Ave Marias. I was somewhat surprised by that as I left the priest's chambers, but my surprise was increased when I saw Francine walking back, nude, through the crowded church. She smiled at me with her back straight. She strutted!

Her actions had much in common, I think, with the religious conversion of the goliard poet.

Half an hour later, we were seated behind a trestle table on the dais, near where the altar stood. There were five of us: Count Lambert, Sir Miesko, myself, Father John, and Francine. There were also six empty chairs that I found were for Krystyana's gang. They wouldn't actually be using them, since they were in charge of the banquet, but they had the right to sit at the head table even if they didn't have time for it.

Try to imagine six modern fourteen-year-olds being in charge of a sit-down banquet for two hundred people. Yet they did a fine job!

All the adult commoners were seated at long, narrow tables, sitting at only one side. A space was left between each pair of tables for the "servants" to walk. Actually, the servants were the peasant women. An elaborate schedule had been worked out such that each woman helped serve a certain course but most of the time played guest.

Everyone was there. The gate to Okoitz was not only left unguarded, it was left open! Had a known outlaw walked in, he would have been served along with the rest, until the festival was over. Afterward they might have hanged him.

The children were seated through the door in the count's hall. Part of the serving orchestration kept them fed, too. The babies were farther back, in the hallways and in some of the unused guest rooms. A stream of mothers flowed back and forth, but our six bright harem girls kept it all going and the food coming besides. Even the cooks took their turn at playing guest. The girls never did, the first night. But after, for the next two weeks, they were administrators, grand ladies!

Boris was down among the crowd with acceptable ladies seated on either side. He waved. I waved back, and the crowd applauded.

I had a normal place setting before me. There was a long tablecloth that doubled, I discovered, as a napkin. I had a spoon, a cup, a bowl, a large pitcher of wine—beer for the commons—and a salt shaker made of a hard wheat roll with a finger hole punched in the top.

We at the head table each had these to ourselves because of the six empty places. Among the commoners, each pair shared a setting, almost invariably a man and a woman. Not that there was a scarcity of place settings, it was just one of those things one did at a banquet. You shared a spoon, shared a cup, shared with your sister or your wife.

Musicians took turns playing—a recorder, a shawm, a pipe and tabor, a krummhorn, a bagpipe. Not the Scottish war pipes, of course, but the higher-pitched, more friendly Polish version. They had obviously practiced long for the occasion. Only when the banquet was over did they play in concert.

Father John said an elaborate grace.

The first course was a stew. Somebody's grandmother ladled it out to most of the people, but we at the head table were graced with Krystyana's service. I winked at her, and she winked back.

Stew was followed by broiled steaks. Janina placed before me a thick slab of bread directly on the tablecloth, and a girl named Yawalda, to whom I had not yet been introduced, put a juicy slice of meat on it. I found out much later that it was from the horse we had lost in last night's snowstorm. It wasn't bad.

Course followed course, usually a meat thing followed by a grain thing. There were no fresh vegetables at all.

On the final course, the count himself got up. He took a huge tray from Natalia and Janina and personally handed a small piece of cake to each person in the room, laughing and joking continuously. He got halfway through the church and then went into his "hall," where he personally gave a piece to each child. He went up and down the hallways, putting a small piece in each baby's hand, or at least on his bedclothes. Then he came back into the church and passed out cake to every commoner he had missed before.

He returned to the head table, where he placed a piece in front of each chair, including the vacant seats of the ladies-in-waiting. He stared as if aghast at the pieces left on the tray and then went up the table again, doubling the "nobles' " portions, to the applause of the crowd. Reaching the end, he put the five remaining cakes in his hand and pretended to count the crowd. Then he stuffed them into his own pouch, and the commons roared their approval.

I was so intent on this performance that I had not tasted the cakes. When Count Lambert sat down next to me—two empty chairs were between us—he said, "Well, eat up, Sir Conrad."

So I bowed and smiled and bit into one of them. It was good enough, but it was really only ordinary honey and nut cake. Nothing like the glories they make in modern Torun. I waved Krystyana over.

"This is excellent, my lord, but I too have something to contribute to the feast." When Krystyana got there, I said, "Now, quick like a bunny! I have a piece of brown stuff wrapped in silver and some brown paper. The last I saw of it, it was on my bed. Bring it here quickly!" She was off like an arrow.

"This is some cake of your own?" the count asked.

"Something like that. Chocolate."

As Krystyana came back, the other five girls were handing out bread rolls to the commons, without any helpers.

Seven pieces of chocolate were left. It was obvious that I couldn't share it with two hundred commoners and an equal number of children. There were five at the head table, plus six more who belonged there.

I broke each piece in two, got up, and started to put half a piece at each place.

The count stood up. "It's some foreign delicacy," he shouted. "It's only this big." He gesticulated. "So there's only enough for the head table, plus some for the king and queen!" This also met with shouted approval. Had there been elections just then, I think Genghis Khan could have been voted in.

So I went on, passing them out, not missing myself. When I sat down, three pieces were left.

"What is this business about a king and queen, my lord?"

He was tasting his chocolate and staring wide-eyed. "Why, we are about to select one of each, for the holidays at least. A king and a queen of misrule. See those small loaves they're handing out—wheat for the men and rye for the women? Well, in one of each sort of loaves there is a bean, and the two who get the beans shall be our king and queen for the festival. Further, you and I and the good Sir Miesko and Father John and wife shall become commoners!"

"You mean that the king would have the right to Francine?" I asked.

"She's married. Still, he might try; try and get away with it, perhaps, until the holiday was over. Then I'd cut the bastard's balls off! If I have no right to her, I'll be damned if any peasant can take her!"

"Uh. Yes. There are these three pieces left . . ."

"Well. One for the king and one for the queen. As to the last, well, rank hath its privileges." He started to put it in his pouch, and then he stopped. He waved Natalia over. "Give this to Pyotr Morocek's redheaded daughter." As she darted away, he looked at me and said, "It looks as though you are going to be robbing me of some of my ladies, Sir Conrad. I had better start restocking now!"

It evolved that Mrs. Malinski got the woman's bean and became queen. The blacksmith became king and ordered us "common swine" away from the head table. A side table had been prepared for us.

His first act was to order up his own six "ladies-in-waiting," namely, the six fattest women in the church. Mrs. Malinski demanded her right to some "boys-in-waiting," and called up three septuagenarians, who snuggled up to her. All this was greeted with great ribaldry from the crowd.

The king demanded that the count show more respect for blacksmiths and should henceforth act like one.

A leather apron was brought forth, and a hammer. Lambert put them on and went through a parody that I would have appreciated more had I known the blacksmith better.

Sir Miesko was charged with abandoning his wife, and another was named in her place. This huge matron was given a feather pillow, and he permitted her to beat him around the room, to the commons' delight. A great deal of beer was circulating.

My turn came up. The "king" said that since I was so adept at saving babies, I must be one of their breed. This had to be a setup, because all too soon three large women I had never met ran forward and pinned a huge diaper over my embroidered tunic and hose. I'd thought that the safety pin was a modern invention.

I was then forcibly presented with six large breasts to suck on, four of which were lactating. I survived. A television situation comedy would have contained higher, and considerably less coarse, humor.

Francine was then summoned. The "king" claimed that she had shown her wonders to but a few and that this was unfair. He commanded her to strip naked and walk among the crowd to show them what beauty was.

I tensed myself for a fight. I was quite willing to put up with the buffoonery with regard to the count, Sir Miesko, and myself. I would not permit them to humiliate a priest's wife, even though the whole concept of a priest having a wife confused me.

I never had a chance to draw my sword.

Francine stood up from her seat at the side and pulled herself out of her garments. The crowd cheered. I was awestruck. She strutted and wiggled her way up and down the tables of the commons, pinching a chin here, kissing a hairy peasant's lips there. The cheering rose to deafening levels, and she gloried in it! At last, she came to our side table. She gave Sir Miesko a peck on the cheek, which he accepted. The count demanded more and stroked her from armpit to knee.

At my turn, I wanted much more. I sat her on my knee and kissed her. She wiggled her body close.

"But this is all for the Church," she said with mock innocence. "One must mingle with the barbarians and follow their customs."

I didn't know if I wanted to beat her or rape her, so I handed her down to her husband. She stayed there the rest of the night, eventually permitting a cloak to be draped around her shoulders. The situation struck me as being more than slightly sick.

The priest and our six ladies were notably exempted from the hazing, as the king and queen turned on the commoners. All the musicians were playing in the hopes that they wouldn't be called out.

The various performances that the king and queen required of the commons were, if anything, even more crude than those required of the nobles. Most of them involved incomprehensible in-jokes that soon became boring. Boring to me, at least. Everyone else was having a marvelous time.

Eventually our royalty of misrule ran out of ideas and called for the dancing to start. Tables were moved out, chairs were moved back, and two barrels of beer were rolled in. The tops were removed from the barrels, and the beer was just dipped out.

Lambert, Sir Miesko, and I were required to join in the first dance. I was unsure of just what steps to try, but Krystyana dragged me out on the floor.

I'm not convinced that you could call it dancing. Okoitz had never heard of a polka or a mazurka, let alone a waltz, but people contented themselves with enthusiastically jumping up and down. They were not quite as bad as the modern punkers, but they came close.

That ordeal completed, I found myself standing at the sidelines next to the count. He tapped my shoulder and motioned for me to follow. He went to his chambers. A look of relief crossed his face as he closed the door. "I'm glad that we only have to do this once a year! Custom requires that I put on a party and play the clown, but I have as little liking for it as you do."

"It was a bit . . . raucous, my lord."

"Yes. I hope that you haven't gotten a bad opinion of us. Had you seen these people during harvest, your impression would have been different. We'll have to put in an appearance later, but for now, do you play chess? Oh, and do take off that stupid diaper."

I'm not a great player, but I'm competent. The game he played was identical to modern chess, except the pawns couldn't capture en passant. The count's game was good but extremely conservative; the strategy of play had evolved vastly in seven hundred years. That evening I won four games out of four.

"Sir Conrad, that brown cake you served—is there any more about?"

"I'm afraid not, nor is there any way of making more. I was surprised at that cake of yours."

"Good, yes?"

"Oh, yes. Delicious. But when all of that food and drink was flowing so generously, you were somewhat sparing with it."

"Of course. It had honey in it. I could have sold that honey for more than what the rest of the feast cost."

"Honey is that rare here? I'm surprised. It should be a natural product, easy to get."

"Easy enough to get, Sir Conrad, once you find a honey tree. A full-time honey hunter finds one, maybe two trees a year."

"Remarkable. What do you do then?"

"Why, you smoke the bees out and chop open the tree, of course."

"I begin to see your problem. You know, my lord, bees can't hollow out a tree themselves. They have to find a suitable place to build a hive. If you chop up every hollow tree, there isn't any place for them to live. No wonder honey is rare."

"I see. You're suggesting that we hollow out trees?"

"It doesn't have to be a whole tree. A simple wooden box will do. You know, bees are very remarkable creatures. I've read a few articles on them. Did you know that they have a language?"

"What! Insects talking?"

"Not exactly talking, but when a bee finds a field of flowers, she goes back to her hive and does a dance that tells the others where to go."

"Remarkable! You say 'she.' What of the male bees?"

So I prattled on for an hour about bees. Friends have accused me of having a garbage pit mind. Things fall in there and sort of stay around, fermenting. The upshot was that I agreed to instruct Lambert's carpenter on making beehives, a gross of them.

There would be nothing much to it, of course. Just a simple rectangular wooden box of about forty liters' capacity would do. You drilled a hole of four square centimeters near the bottom, facing south, and mounted them on a pole at least three meters in the air.

"It's been a pleasant and educational evening, Sir Conrad. Doubly so since you wouldn't wager any money on your chess playing. But now we must rejoin the buffoonery below."

The end point of the evening was the gift giving. Gift wrapping was unknown, but it wasn't missed. The only awkward moment occurred when the priest and his wife gave me a wooden crucifix and a carved rosary—the priest's own work—and I hadn't realized that they were on my Christmas list. The best return gift that I could think of on short notice was some rose seeds.

I also got a new sword belt from Sir Miesko. The harem didn't give; they just got. Well, maybe they did give. That night I was visited by Yawalda and Mary. They liked to work as a team.

Chapter Twelve

It was a relaxed afternoon.

I was giving Lambert and Sir Miesko fencing lessons. Over their strenuous objections and at my firm insistence, we were using wooden sticks instead of real swords. Boris Novacek soon joined us, praising my previous battles.

For men who lived by the sword, they had some odd attitudes. It was as if they didn't believe that a sword had a point! Their fencing was strictly hack and chop. They didn't see where the lunge had any use at all.

Finally, Boris said, "My lords, I have seen him use this thing! I saw him put that little sword entirely through a man's neck, and he killed the German knight with a single blow through the eye slit of his helmet."

"Well, I haven't seen him kill anything, Novacek," the count said. "Let's do some killing and prove this thing properly. Bring your sword, Sir Conrad."

I followed Lambert apprehensively out of the building, along with the rest of the crowd. He led us to a pen containing six pigs destined to be the next day's supper.

"Now then, Sir Conrad. You have allowed that the edge is useful on horseback but said that the point is stronger afoot. We shall see. I shall kill that boar with the edge of my sword, and you will take that sow with your point." Without further discussion, the count vaulted, sword in hand, into the pigpen.

The test was somewhat unfair in that the boar was mean. Lambert's first two-handed swing caught the pig a little in back of the "belt" line. This broke the boar's back without seriously cutting it. The boar was annoyed. Its hind legs were not functional, but it charged the count, dragging itself along on its front legs.

The pig is a very powerful animal, and its jaws can rip a man's leg off. All that meat is muscle.

Lambert was back-stepping furiously, and his second blow—to the shoulder—didn't slow down the boar at all. I was about to leap in when the count's sword crashed into the animal's skull and all motion stopped.

"You saw the power in that blow?" Lambert was actually proud of his performance. "Your turn, Sir Conrad."

I hated jumping into a pigsty with my embroidered tunic and leather stockings, but there was nothing else I could do. "That sow over there, my lord?"

The remaining pigs were all studying Lambert intently. I was trying to remember just how a pig's ribs went. I couldn't remember whether they angled back like a man's or not. I was obviously going to have to put all the power into my lunge that I could. Also, pigs being built the way they are, I was going to have to lunge downward.

This I did. Body upright, arm straight, blade out with the edge down.

The results surprised me. I had never actually stuck an animal before. My sword went entirely through the first pig and halfway through the one behind it. They both dropped dead without a squeal.

I got out of the pen and cleaned my sword in the snow. Then I started working on the pig shit on my boots, with Krystyana's help.

Sir Miesko said, "That was a great blow, Sir Conrad! But how real was the test? What if they were in armor?"

"An excellent idea!" the count said. "Krystyana, Boris brought in four sets of armor. Take Mary and bring us some hauberks. Pick two that match."

As the girls ran off, Sir Miesko shouted, "And the gambesons! Bring two equal gambesons!"

Boris's objections that we were about to chop up his armor were squelched by Count Lambert: "Fear not, our smith will repair it."

The pigs were not minded to volunteer for this experiment, but a large number of commoners had gathered and manpower was available. At my suggestion, we did it outside the pigsty.

Under great protest by the pigs, two of them were dressed in armor and strung upright between horizontal poles, forelegs up and hind legs down.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have been horrified, but we were going to eat the animals anyway, and I fail to see where my sword was any worse than a butcher's knife.

Actually, the count's sword was a good deal worse. The rule being that all blows had to strike armor, it took him five hacks before the pig quit screaming. It died of internal concussions. The armor was never cut.

My watered steel blade cut the wrought-iron rings easily, and again I found the heart.

I could see Lambert's emotions in conflict. On the one hand, here was a valuable new technique. On the other, I was refuting the experience of his lifetime. I began to worry. Had I offended my host?

"Your blade, Sir Conrad. May I see it?"

"Of course, my lord."

He grasped the cheap brass grip and swung it a few times. Then he jumped into the pen with its one remaining live pig. With a single, mighty one-handed swing, he took the pig's head entirely off. Then he smiled.

"Your techniques have merit, Sir Conrad, but your sword! Your sword is magic!"

"Hardly that. But it is good steel."

"Could you teach my smith the way of this?"

"I could tell him how it's done, but the actual doing of it is an art form that he'd have to work out for himself. I wouldn't expect results for a year or two."

"Sir Conrad, we must talk." But he seemed uncertain.

As we went back inside, Krystyana seemed glum. "What's the matter, pretty girl?" I asked. "I'm sorry if all that killing bothered you."

"No, it's not that. The second course of tomorrow's supper was to be blood pudding, and you men have just splattered the blood all over the courtyard!"

It's hard to keep everybody happy.

Before supper, the count and I were playing chess at one end of the hall, and the girls had set up a loom at the other.

It wasn't much of a loom. There was a pole on top with a few thousand woolen strings wrapped around it. A pole at the bottom was used to roll up the cloth they made. In between, two girls were laboriously moving a shuttle back and forth between the vertical threads and then tightening the horizontal thread down with something like a pocket comb. They hadn't made a centimeter of cloth in an hour.

"Is that something they do as a hobby?" I asked.

"Hobby? There's always need of cloth, and my ladies are instructed to keep busy."

"Then why don't you use a proper loom?"

"You know something of looms?" The game was forgotten.

"Well, I'm not a weaver, but I know the process—"

"I know, Sir Conrad. 'But not in the few weeks I'll be here!' Have you no idea of our economic situation with regard to cloth? Don't you know that the French and Italians are making vast profits in the trade? Why, at the Troyes Hot Fair alone, millions of pence change hands, much of it Polish silver going for French cloth."

"But why not bring some weavers here?"

"My liege lord, Henryk the Bearded, did that very thing. At huge cost, he imported three dozen Walloon weavers and set them up, at his expense, in Wroclaw. Yet to this day not one Pole—save Henryk—has ever been in their building! And the price of cloth has not dropped a penny! Why, the cloth in that very tunic you're wearing was woven in Flanders and dyed in Florence."

"I don't know anything about dyeing, but I'm sure that I could build a loom," I said.

"Then that cuts it! Sir Conrad, I must have you. I want you to stay here and instruct my workmen—and women—in the arts you've mentioned. In a scant two days, you've talked of honey and steel and cloth. You've shown me better swordsmanship, better dancing, and better chess playing than I would have thought possible. I say I want you. Now, what's your price?"

"My price? Well, I'm not sure that I need any money. I have half the booty I took, and—"

"Another thing—you have more than you think. This business of your splitting evenly with Novacek is nonsense! Despite the fact that he was your employer, you are a knight and he is a commoner; those spoils were taken entirely as the result of your sword arm. Oh, you might make him a gift of a twelfth of it, but any more than that would be absurd.

"There is the matter of booty being taken on my lands. By custom, I have the right to a tenth. But that is about the same amount as I gave you for killing that foul German, so we'll call it even."

"Be that as it may, Count Lambert, I still have an obligation to Boris. I agreed to accompany him, to keep his accounts, and to defend him, my lord."

"Novacek is traveling from here to Hungary for wine and then back. It happens that I must send a knight to Hungary. That letter you gave me was from my wife. She and our daughter stay with her relatives in Pest. She complains, as usual, about her need for money, so I must send it to her. Otherwise she will come back here to get it. If I must send a knight—who else could be trusted?—then that knight might as well accompany Boris and be paid by him.

"As to this accounting business, well, that's hardly a proper occupation for a belted knight."

"Uh . . . my lord, that hits on one more problem. You see, I'm not exactly a belted knight."

"What! You mean to say that you have been crossing swords with me, beating me at chess, and enjoying my ladies and that you are not a true belted knight? Sir Miesko! I need a witness! Attend me!"

"Coming, my lord!"

"But, Count Lambert, you see . . . in my country, we don't have knighthood exactly, but I was an officer—no! Am an officer, and the priest said that—"

"Silence! Kneel, Conrad Stargard!" He drew his sword.

Visions of the boar's crushed skull flashed through my mind, but still I knelt. "You see—"

"Quiet!" The flat of his sword came down hard on my bruised right shoulder. This was followed by an equally rough blow above my wounded left arm. Apparently, I was being knighted, and the count did not go along with those effeminate taps on the shoulders so common in the movies.

"I dub thee knight!" The last blow came against the side of my head, and I saw a strange, web-shaped visual display. I almost fell over but managed to stay on my knees.

"Arise, Sir Conrad."

The girls at the looms were looking, whispering, and giggling.

"You two!" the count said. "This was purely a formality to remove any doubts from Sir Conrad's mind. They use a different ceremony in his country. All the same, be silent on this matter. You as well, Sir Miesko."

I managed to get to my feet.

"Well, that's settled. Now then, Sir Conrad, do you see any other problems?"

"Problems? Well, no, my lord. But what exactly is it that you expect of me?"

"I expect you to build such mechanisms as you feel would be beneficial here, and I would expect you to swear your allegiance to me."

Hmm. Actually, it didn't sound that bad. Comfortable surroundings, friendly people who really needed me, and plenty of sex. Compared to my previous position—well, Boris Novacek had been decent enough. But in two days on the road with him, I had been involved in two murderous fights. While two is not a statistically significant number, it certainly is an indication! Luck alone had kept me from being a naked corpse in a snowy wood.

"Very well, my lord. I will expect you to settle with Boris Novacek, to his satisfaction. I would swear allegiance, but not forever. Say, perhaps for nine years." I was leaving myself a cowardly way out. At the Battle of Legnica, which was not far from here, thirty thousand Christians fought a much greater number of Mongols. The Mongols did not leave a single survivor. Not one single Polish witness to the battle lived to tell of it. I wanted the option not to be there.

"Done, Sir Conrad. And your remuneration? If not money, then lands perhaps? People of your own?"

"Uh, let's leave that undefined for a while. Perhaps at some later date we may agree on something. For now, I will be satisfied with my maintenance in your castle.

"You understand that I agree to defend you and the people on your land if attacked, but I will not be responsible for other military duties."

"Agreed. Boris told me of your ambivalent feelings with regard to killing, and I saw your face when you stuck those pigs. You are a strange man, Sir Conrad Stargard."

Chapter Thirteen

That night's feast was a more civilized affair than that of Christmas day. It was a sit-down dinner followed by dancing.

It seems that I was responsible for introducing the polka into Poland. My brief dancing with Krystyana had apparently impressed everyone, and that evening the count insisted on my demonstrating it again. I spent a few minutes with the musicians, humming the tune and slapping my thigh for rhythm, and they picked it up quickly. Having no written music, they all played by ear.

I shall make no attempt at describing the sound of three krummhorns, four recorders, a shawm, two drums, and a bagpipe playing the "Beer Barrel Polka."

The scheduling was less hectic, too. The common women were divided into six groups that took turns playing servant for a day; each of the groups of adults was directed by an adolescent handmaiden. Somehow, it worked.

The count seemed to feel that it was necessary and proper for a knight to have at least two young women within reach at all times. I think they were called "handmaidens" because they were always on hand. The term "maiden" was a euphemism, of course. When they got pregnant, he married them off and replaced them. I later discovered that this was not an ordinary state of affairs. Most of his knights, as well as his liege lord, envied his ability to get away with it.

I was playing chess in my room with Sir Miesko when Krystyana darted in. She waved at me to follow her in an urgent, secretive way. I excused myself and followed. We went to an empty room next to the count's chambers. She put her ear next to the wall and motioned for me to do likewise. Confused, I did this.

I was shocked! Lambert and Novacek were discussing me! I pulled my head away and started back to my room, horrified that I should invade someone's privacy in this way.

Krystyana was still listening as I entered the hallway and the count stepped out beside me.

"Ah, Sir Conrad. I wanted to speak to you."

"Yes, my lord. Do you realize that your servants eavesdrop on you?"

"What? Of course! My dear Sir Conrad, either you are very naive or the servants in your own land are of a different breed of humanity. Servants eavesdrop! You might as well say that fishes swim. You can have servants or you can have privacy. You can't have both!

"But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. Come into my chamber. I want to finalize our arrangements with Boris Novacek. Was I correct in assuming that you wished to gift Boris with a twelfth part of your captured booty?"

"Well, yes, at least—"

"Excellent, because that is precisely the amount that he decided to give me as my Christmas present."

Boris was turning purple. "My dear Count Lambert, surely—"

"No, not another word. You have already been too generous. Now, Sir Conrad, you recently purchased armor. I have decided to buy the armor that you captured. What did you pay for your armor?"

"Seven hundred and eighteen pence, my lord."

"So, then my price of one thousand pence per set is generous."

"But Count Lambert," Boris protested, "I could obtain far more than that in Hungary! And besides the armor, there were weapons, saddles, bridles—"

"Yes, but I have decided to pay four thousand pence for the lot."

"But my lord—"

"But I have decided! So, that's settled. There was a dead horse that you brought in, which I accept as your contribution to the feast. The other captured horse—well, you lost a horse on my lands, so take it as my gift, a replacement.

"Sir Conrad, I have an errand for you. Go to the strong room; Krystyana will show you the way—Krystyana! I know you're listening! Get in here! Good. Now, go to the strong room. You will find, in addition to my own valuables, Boris Novacek's saddlebags, Sir Conrad's and the creditor's pouches, and a chest that they took from the German's camp. Pour both pouches into the chest. Then take four thousand pence from my own coffer and add it to the lot. Take three thousand pence out and put it in Boris's saddlebags, to pay for Sir Conrad's equipment. Then take one twelfth of the contents of the chest and put it in my coffers. The chest will be Sir Conrad's, and I believe we'll be square."

All of this verbal, without a scrap of documentation. I doubt if the count knew how much he had in his coffers. I could see that one of my services was going to be setting up a double-entry bookkeeping system for him.

"Oh, yes," he continued. "Krystyana, have all of my newly purchased equipment sent to the proper workmen. I want it all repaired and properly stored as soon as the holiday is over. The arms to the blacksmith, the horse trappings to the saddler, the clothes . . . Oh, I forgot the clothes. Well, I'll pay six hundred pence for them. Make that four thousand, six hundred pence that you throw in from my coffers.

"Well, it's good that all is settled."

"But my lord—"

"What is your problem, Novacek? You entered my lands with a knight and a loaded mule. You will leave with the same possessions, since Sir Miesko has graciously agreed to accompany you to Hungary and back at the same pay that you would have paid Sir Conrad. You will have enjoyed a holiday at no expense to yourself. As to the rest, you have had some adventures to talk of in the taverns. Where is your complaint?"

Boris bowed to the inevitable. It was obvious that one did not try to bargain with Count Lambert. "Well, there was the Arabic arithmetic that he was to teach me."

"Hmm. Sir Conrad, would you object to instructing Mr. Novacek while he is here, at your convenience?"

"Not at all, my lord."

"Then that's settled. Well, Krystyana, Sir Conrad? You have your orders. Go, but come back while the sun is still high. There is the matter of your oath of fealty."

Krystyana and I went down to the basement strong room. An army would have had trouble getting in there if it was defended, but a thief could have walked in if it was not. Most of the time, it was not. I would have to do something about locks.

We followed the count's instructions, and I began counting money. Krystyana looked at me strangely. She got out a balance scale and weighed the money. It seems that the coinage was not all consistent.

When we were through, I found that I was the owner of 112,200 pence. Krystyana told me that this was enough to hire every commoner in the fort for over five years!

It was absurd that a single person should have such wealth, especially a good socialist! I was dazed as we went back up to the sunlight.

At that time, throughout most of Europe an oath of fealty was taken with the vassal on his knees. His hands were placed together as if in prayer, with his lord's hands around them. The lord was seated.

That was not how it was done in thirteenth-century Poland. Here, you walked outside on a sunny day, with the biggest possible crowd of witnesses. You raised your right hand to the sun and made your oath in a loud voice. This was doubtless a thing held over from pagan days, but I still think it a more fitting ceremony.

My oath was, "I, Sir Conrad Stargard, promise to come to the aid of my liege lord, Count Lambert Piast, if ever he or the people on his land are oppressed. I shall obey him for nine years. This I swear."

The count returned: "I, Count Lambert Piast, promise to defend my vassal, Sir Conrad Stargard, to the best of my ability. I shall see to his maintenance and will do such other things as are, from time to time, agreed. This I swear."

People applauded, and that was it. No forms in quadruplicate, no committees to be consulted. I was beginning to like the thirteenth century.

Chapter Fourteen

The holidays drifted by pleasantly. I often slept in, sometimes almost missing 10 a.m. dinner. The sauna was fired up daily during the Christmas season as opposed to the usual twice weekly. Commoners and nobility used it indiscriminately.

Afternoons I played instructor, teaching fencing, first aid, accounting, and arithmetic. I taught base-twelve arithmetic rather than the usual base-ten, in part because Boris Novacek insisted on it, in part because the people thought in terms of dozens and grosses rather than tens and hundreds, but mostly because they had convinced me that twelve is a more useful number than ten. Twelve has four factors; ten has only two. A circle can easily be divided into twelve parts, but it is almost impossible to divide it into ten without a protractor. Base-twelve is more condensed; you can state larger numbers with fewer digits.

In fact, the only advantage to the base-ten system is the unimportant biological fact that human beings happen to have ten fingers. I have heard that the American Maya Indians always went barefoot and so developed a base-twenty numbering system, counting on their toes as well as their fingers.

It was a simple matter to set up a base-twelve system. Zero and the numbers one through nine remained the same. Ten and eleven required new symbols; I picked the Greek letters delta and phi.

Counting went one, two three . . . nine, ten, eleven, twelve, oneteen, twoteen, thirteen . . . nineteen, tenteen, eleventeen, twenty, twenty-one . . . twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, thirty, and so on. Eleventy-ten was the equivalent of decimal one hundred forty-two. Obvious, right? Then it was a matter of constructing multiplication tables and so on; again, straightforward.

I was astounded at how quickly some people picked up all this. Twentieth-century schools take eight years to teach children arithmetic, yet I had some students learn it in two weeks! It was as if their minds were dry sponges, eager to suck things in.

Class size varied between four and fifty. It was agreed that after the holidays, classes would be continued on Sunday afternoons.

The learning procedure was entirely by lecture, backed up with chanting for memorization. I had part of one wall of the hall plastered and painted black for use as a blackboard. There were no books, no paper, no pencils, no tests beyond verbal questions.

Despite those handicaps, learning proceeded well. By the end of his stay, Boris had a parchment ledger book that he understood better than I, since I was never able to learn to think in base-twelve arithmetic. I could do it but not think in it.

Boris complained that carrying and using slow-drying ink would be awkward on the road, so I suggested using a sharpened piece of hard lead. That worked fairly well, and a few years later we were producing and selling lead pencils, made with real lead instead of the modern graphite and clay mixture.

On the feast of the twelfth night, I was expected to give gifts to the commoners, and by then I knew precisely what to give them. The people were obviously suffering from a number of vitamin deficiencies. The seeds I had with me could make a valuable contribution to their diet if handled properly.

I sorted carefully through the seed packages, dividing them into six piles.

The first pile consisted of those which could be eaten and the seeds saved: the pumpkins, the squashes, the melons, the luffas, the tomatoes, etc. Those, I could give to the peasants and be sure that there would be seeds for future crops. There were ninety-two packets of those, enough to give one to each farmer.

The second pile contained those plants of which one ate the seeds themselves. Those were the really important crops: the grains, the maize, the potatoes, the peas, and the beans. It would be best if those were planted and harvested strictly for seed, at least the first year, since my understanding was that the modern varieties were more productive than the ancient ones. Those were best grown on the count's own lands since a peasant might get hungry and eat the seeds next winter. After some thought, I put the biennials, where I knew how they reproduced—the onions and garlic—in with this group.

The third pile consisted of the long-term plants: fruit trees, berry bushes, sugar maples, asparagus, grapevines, and so on. Those too were for Lambert's lands, since he could afford a long-term investment and a peasant probably could not.

The fourth pile contained plants that were decorative but had no economic use: decorative trees, flowers, and so on. Roses were nice, but I wasn't going to worry if we lost a strain. Those I would give to the women of the fort.

It turned out that I was completely wrong about the usefulness of some of these. Goldenrods were an excellent insect repellent, and people ate some of the flowers. And roses were their major source of vitamin C. The Japanese roses grew into a huge, tangled mass that became an excellent military defense, vastly superior to barbed wire! They also kept cattle out of the crops.

Then, there were plants that wouldn't grow in Poland at all. I had two packages of rice, six kinds of citrus fruits, and a package of cotton seeds. I didn't know why that redheaded bitch had sold them to me, but she had, and they were useless in Okoitz.

But Boris was going into the warmer lands of Hungary. I knew that rice and oranges would grow there, and—who knows?—maybe cotton would, too. I felt guilty about Lambert's settlement with Novacek, and the gift of seeds was a way I could help make it up to him. If he played his cards right—and Boris was no fool—those plants could make him rich.

The cotton was especially important. Cotton is better than linen, and it takes much less labor to make it into thread. In this clothing-conscious age, cotton could make Boris the vast fortune he so much desired.

Now if there had only been some tobacco seeds . . .

The last pile was of plants about which I had no idea how they reproduced. These were mainly root crops: carrots, turnips, radishes, and beets, along with the cabbage and its sisters cauliflower, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi. The last six are all really the same species and can be interbred. The best I could do with that pile was to turn it over to the count, and we'd try our luck. I was troubled because the sugar beets were in the last pile. With the incredible prices paid for sweets, sugar beets could be a very valuable cash crop for the count, but I didn't know how to make them reproduce.

The party went off fairly well. The people were all willing to try something new, and the count was willing to invest a few hectares for seed production. The next spring, Father John and I, the only literate people in the fort, were kept busy reading and rereading seed packages for people.

It is annoying and time-consuming to be surrounded by illiterates. You can't leave a note for someone. You must find a messenger and trust his memory. You can't give written instructions. And somehow there's something wrong about illiteracy.

I found Father John working on a wood carving, a statue of a saint.

"Father, I think that we should start a school."

"Indeed? And teach what?"

"Why, reading and writing, of course."

"Now, what possible good would that do for my parish?"

"What possible good? These people are all illiterate! They can't write their own names, let alone read."

"And if I taught them to read, Sir Conrad, what then? What would they read?"

"Why, books, of course."

"The only books in Okoitz are a not particularly legible Bible and my own copy of Aristotle. These I can recite from memory. As for writing their names, where would they have need to sign them? On latrine walls?"

"But surely literacy is more important than a carving!"

"Indeed? Consider that the peasants tithe, but they give me only a tenth of what they sell to merchants, which is perhaps only a tenth of what they grow; they eat the rest. The count provides me with food and shelter but little else. I have a wife with . . . expectations. I can sell my carvings, and I cannot sell learning."

"Okay. I get your message, Father. How much do you earn by carving?"

"Five, six pence a week, sometimes."

"Very well. I will pay you—or, rather, donate to the Church—a penny a day for your teaching. Teach a dozen students, the bright ones, five days a week, from dinner until sundown during the winter. I especially want the Kulczynski boy, Piotr, taught. He has learned arithmetic in two weeks, and a mind like that must not be wasted."

"There will be expenses. Parchment, ink, wax tablets."

"Buy them. I'll give you a fund to pay for them. If you need other things, Father Ignacy of the Franciscan monastery in Cracow can provide them. He knows me."

"And I can still carve in the mornings?"

"Yes, damn it!"

"Then we are in agreement."

As I left Father John, I saw Count Lambert talking to a newly arrived knight. The fellow was very splendidly dressed in purple and gold. His armor was gold-washed and of very small links, the kind you see in museums. His embroidered velvet surcoat matched the velvet barding worn by his fine white charger, and the trim on his helmet and weapons looked to be solid gold.

I was just in blue jeans and sweater, but I went over to introduce myself.

"Ah, Sir Conrad," Lambert said. "I introduce you to Sir Stefan. Sir Conrad is my newest vassal; Sir Stefan is the son of my greatest vassal, Baron Jaroslav. The two of you will be serving together until Easter."

"I am honored, Sir Conrad," Sir Stefan said, somewhat taken aback by my size and strange clothing. "I had thought that I would be serving with Sir Miesko. Still, anyone who can do guard duty for the other half of a long winter's night is warmly welcome."

"Well, uh . . ." I stammered.

"Sir Miesko is on a mission for me in Hungary," Lambert said. "As for the rest, you touch upon a problem, Sir Stefan. You see, my arrangement with Sir Conrad is that he will have no military duties save in an actual emergency. I regret that this means that you will have to take the night guard by yourself."

"Dusk till dawn, seven nights a week in the winter, my lord? Surely that is excessive!"

I had to agree that he had a point. At Okoitz's latitude, there could be seventeen hours of darkness in the winter. Three months straight of night duty under those circumstances could make a man crazy and old before his time. I felt sorry for the young knight, but not enough to volunteer my time. It wasn't my job. I had my own work to do.

"Count Lambert," I said. "Can't you get another man to help him out?"

Lambert shook his head.

"For another knight to come, he would have to make arrangements with yet another warrior to look after his own estates; then that man would have to make similar arrangements, all of which would take time. It probably couldn't be done within three months, by which time it would no longer be needed. No. The lots were drawn last Michaelmas, and I won't upset the schedules for anything less than death or the threat of war."

"I resign myself," Stefan said. "But Sir Conrad, couldn't you occasionally help out?"

"Well, I'm sorry, but there are a lot of other projects I have to work on."

"Sir Conrad will have his own duties which only he can perform," Lambert said. "I am afraid that you are left with an arduous task, Sir Stefan."

"But alone, my lord?"

"Damn, man! I've explained it to you. Who else is there? The place must be guarded! I can't leave guard duty to a peasant. They'd start thinking that they were our equals. And surely you don't expect me to do it. It is more than sufficient that I must be awake during the day. I am your father's liege lord! Enough of this! It is settled!" I think Lambert felt as guilty as I did.

Sir Stefan glared at me as though it were all my fault and stalked off to the castle.

* * *

My first task was to get a gross of beehives built. There was really no hurry since bees don't swarm until June, but I wanted to establish a good working relationship with the carpenter before we started building a loom.

It was soon obvious that I was going to have difficulty with the man. Vitold had to be competent; he had supervised the construction of the entire fort. Yet when it came to sawing up some boards and building some simple boxes, he had a great deal of difficulty understanding what I wanted. I drew pictures on the snow, but three-view drawings were incomprehensible to him. He asked innumerable questions about bees and what it was that we were trying to accomplish. That went on for hours, and I was losing my temper by suppertime. We agreed to discuss it the next day. Admittedly, we were talking about a gross of the things and it would probably take a month or two to get them nailed together, but a box ought to be a simple thing.

The next morning, he caught me on my way to the blacksmith. If I couldn't get a box made, what was I going to do about the twenty-odd complicated steps involved in making watered steel?

"Sir Conrad?" Vitold asked. "Would it be all right with you if I just went ahead and built what I think you want? If you don't like them, we can always use 'em for firewood."

"That would be fine, Vitold." I figured that it would keep him out of my hair for a while, and once we had a sample, I could show him what he was doing wrong.

The blacksmith, Ilya, was the man who had been chosen king during the holidays. He had put me in diapers, and I did not have a favorable impression of his character.

"Ilya, the count wants me to tell you about steel."

"Well, since the count wants it, I'll listen. But I already know about steel."

He was working at his forge and didn't look up when he talked to me. This forge was a primitive affair about the size of an outdoor barbecue. It was a table-high rock pit with the back wall raised as a windscreen. A crude leather bellows forced air into one side. A roof without walls covered it and his anvil, his other major piece of equipment. A few pliers, punches, and hammers completed the smithy's small collection of tools. Charcoal in the forge burned yellow-hot.

"You know something about wrought iron. You know nothing about steel," I said.

"Huh." He still didn't look up. He was a short man, but he looked to be immensely strong. Even though we were outside in the snow, his sleeves were rolled up, revealing arms twice as thick as mine. He was repairing the armor that the pig had worn when I killed it a few weeks before. "Damned lucky work, here. You must have hit a couple of weak links."

"I did nothing of the sort! I killed that pig because my sword is good steel and that armor is cheap wrought iron!"

"Nothing wrong with this armor." He still didn't look up. He was beating an iron ring into the mail shirt draped over the anvil, working over the tip of the point.

"Damn it, look at me when I'm talking to you!"

He glanced up. "I see you." Then he went back to his work.

"Well, if you won't look at me, look at my sword!" I drew it to show him what watered steel looked like.

"Skinny little thing."

Obviously, I was going to have to get his attention. It occurred to me that chopping a hole through the mail he was working on might do the trick.

"Damn you, Ilya! You stand back or you're going to lose a hand!" I swung at the armor draped over the anvil and he got out of the way in time.

The results were surprising. Fortunately, Ilya was too busy staring at the anvil with his mouth open to notice my expression. I had cut three centimeters off the end of the anvil, and the armor was almost in two pieces, hanging by a shred. My sword was undamaged.

My experience as an officer had taught me to recover quickly. "Now fix that, Ilya," I growled. "Then you come to me after supper tonight and we'll talk." I walked off as though I knew what I was doing.

The carpenter was selecting logs from the firewood pile, about a meter long and half that thick, splitting them in half and laying the halves side by side on the snow.

I didn't want to ask.

I went back to the castle, thinking about a mug of beer. Maybe the count would want a game of chess. A noble wasn't allowed to play with commoners because he might lose.

Janina got my beer, and the girls pounced on me.

"Sir Conrad, you promised to show us how to make that wonderful knot work." Krystyana wasn't very good at playing the coquette. I think she was trying to imitate Francine, the priest's wife.

"Hmm. I don't remember promising anything, but I'll think on it." Thinking did me surprisingly little good. Understand that my mother knitted constantly. Unless she was cooking or sleeping, her needles and yarn were always out. My grandmother had done the same while she was alive.

And, you know? I had never really looked at what they were doing. I knew that there was a needle in each hand, with little loops of yarn that connected them to the fabric below. She did something complicated with them in the middle. I spent more than an hour trying to visualize what it was, and the girls drifted away, embarrassed.

Then a partial solution occurred to me. I didn't know what knitting was, but when I was seven, my grandmother had shown me how to crochet. I got some heavy slivers of wood from the carpenter, who was still splitting logs and laying them out.

Other groups were working. One bunch of men had piles of flax lying on the ground, and they were beating on them with large wooden mallets. Some women were shredding it into fiber. A few others were braiding a sort of rope. Some repair work was in progress on a straw roof. No one seemed to be in charge, but things were getting done.

I took my sticks back to my room, and in an hour I had whittled three usable crochet hooks. The lack of sandpaper was a nuisance, but if you take your time you can get things fairly smooth with just a knife. I borrowed a candle from the count's room and waxed them. I borrowed some yarn and shortly produced a pot holder that was as good as anything I had done when I was seven.

The girls were thrilled and picked it up without difficulty. Within a week I had two usable linen undershirts and Lambert was equally well equipped. The ladies were soon experimenting with variations, some of which were quite nice, and the peasant women were following their lead.

One surprising thing about technology is that very often the simplest processes and devices take the longest to develop, or perhaps I should say that it's surprising until you've been a designer. It is much easier, conceptually, to design a complicated thing than a refined simple mechanism. Those intricate machines that came out of twentieth-century Germany are really the results of lazy thinking.

Consider the evolution of the musket. The expensive and tricky wheel lock was produced for a hundred years before some nameless craftsman came up with the simple and dependable flintlock.

Or look at this crocheting business. It's hard to imagine a simpler tool than a crochet hook. It produces a useful cloth fairly quickly, yet I do not know of a single primitive tribe that uses it. Even nomads, who must carry all their belongings with them, haul along a simple loom to make cloth.

A designer can mull over complicated designs for months. Then suddenly the simple, elegant, beautiful solution occurs to him. When it happens to you, it feels as if God is talking! And maybe He is.

After supper, Mary escorted Ilya the blacksmith into my room. He was considerably less surly than he had been in the afternoon.

"Sir Conrad, please understand that when I have the forge going, I have to work! It takes me two or three days to make enough charcoal to feed the fire for a single afternoon."

"Okay, Ilya. I'll count that as an apology if you'll excuse my temper. Now, about steel."

The door was open, and Lambert walked in. "Yes, Sir Conrad, about steel! I want to listen in on this.

"You've had a productive day! All my ladies are busily tying balls of yarn into remarkable knots, and I hear that you have invented a new technique for obtaining Ilya's attention."

In a place so small, everybody seemed to know what everyone else was doing. "I'm sorry about losing my temper, my lord. I imagine that anvils are expensive."

"Yes, but Ilya fixed it and the mail as well." His eyes twinkled. "I've occasionally considered using a similar technique on his head, but I feared for my sword. Now, tell us about steel."

"Well, the first step is to convert the wrought iron into blister steel. Wrought iron is almost pure iron; steel is iron with a little bit of carbon in it. Charcoal is mostly carbon, so the trick is to mix them.

"You start by beating the iron until it's fairly thin, thinner than your little finger. Then you get a clay pot with a good clay lid. You put the iron in the pot and pack it all around tight with charcoal, crushed fine. You put the lid on and seal it with good clay. It's important that no air gets into the pot.

"Then you build a fire around it, slowly heat it up to a dull red, and keep the fire going for a week."

"What? A whole week?" Ilya interrupted.

"Yes. A wood fire is hot enough, though. Now, if you've done this right and the pot hasn't cracked and no air has gotten in, the iron will have little pimples on it, and it will now be steel. Not a good grade of steel but good for some things. What I've just described is called the cementation process.

"You don't know anything about heat-treating, do you? No, I guess you wouldn't. Wrought iron stays soft no matter what you do with it. Well, steel can be hardened. You heat it until it's bright red, almost yellow, and dunk it in water. This will make it hard, so it can keep a good edge. The trouble is, it breaks easily.

"Then there is tempering, which makes it tougher. After hardening, you heat it to almost red, then let it cool slowly."

"That's what there is to it?" Ilya asked.

"That's what there is to making a decent kitchen knife or an axe blade, but it won't be springy enough for a sword. It might break unless you made it as heavy as the count's."

"So let's have the rest of it."

"Hey, this is going to be a lot harder than it sounds," I said. "Just learning how to cook a pot that long without breaking it is going to take a lot of tries, and tempering is an art form."

"Well, I want to hear it anyway."

"Yes, Sir Conrad, tell us the whole process," Lambert said.

"Okay. I'll tell you how they do it in Damascus." Actually, I didn't know how they did it in Damascus, but I'd seen Jacob Bronowski's magnificent television series, and he had showed how they did it in Japan, which was probably similar. "You weld a piece of this cemented steel to a similar piece of good wrought iron. You know how to weld, don't you?"

"Does the Pope know how to pray?"

"I'll take that as an affirmative. You weld them together and beat it out until it's twice as long as it was. Then you bend it over and weld it again. Then you heat it up again, beat it out long again, bend it over again, and weld it again. You repeat this at least twelve and preferably fifteen times. This gives you a layered structure thousands of layers thick."

"That sounds impossible."

"No, but it is difficult. Look carefully at my sword. See those little lines? Those tiny waves? Those are layers of iron and steel. It's called watering, and it's the mark of the best blades."

"That's it, then?"

"Almost. Then you beat it until it looks like a sword. Once you start playing with hardening, you'll learn that the faster the steel cools, the harder it gets. You want the edge very hard but the shank springy. You coat the sword with clay, thin near the edge and thick at the shank. You heat it, clay and all, until it's the 'color of the rising sun' and quench it in water the same temperature as your hand. Then you temper it and polish it. Soaking it in vinegar will bring out the watering."

"That's a long-winded process," Ilya said.

"But worth it, I'll wager," the count said. "Ilya, you work on it—in addition to your other duties, of course. Good night, Ilya. A game of chess, Sir Conrad?"

Lambert won one of our games that night. By spring he was beating me two games out of three.

Chapter Fifteen

I awoke to find that the carpenter was burning all the logs he had split and laid out the day before. Not one big bonfire, you understand, but hundreds of little fires, one in each split log. Furthermore, he had recruited half a dozen of the children to help him at this task. Two of the older boys were splitting kindling, and the rest were tending the fires under his supervision.

I knew that I didn't want to get involved.

I scrounged up some splinters of about knitting-needle-size and retired to my room.

You see, it often happens with me that a problem that I have in the day gets solved in the middle of the night. I'd woken up in the dark with the answer, sitting bolt upright and startling Natalia.

It was obvious. I had a product sample, a sweater that my mother had knitted. All I had to do was figure out how to stick the knitting needles into it and then perform the operation backward! Taking it apart, I could tell how to put it together.

I had the needles ready by dinnertime, and I eagerly went at it as soon as the meal was over. It was not as easy as I had thought. I was not aided by the fact that my sweater was very fancy, with lots of embossing and special twists. Also, I did not know which end was up.

It was a long, frustrating afternoon. I learned little and lost a third of my only sweater.

Ladies wandered in and out, but I really didn't have time to be friendly.

The carpenter was still out there, burning his logs, with a new crew of helpers.

After supper, I was at it by the smoky light of an oil lamp when Count Lambert took the stuff out of my hands, handed it to Krystyana, and sat me down at the chess board.

"Time for recreation, Sir Conrad."

By the end of the third game, Krystyana had my sweater partially reassembled.

"You see, Sir Conrad," the count said, beaming. "Another eldritch art that you have taught my people."

"Uh . . . yes, my lord."

"By the way, do you have any idea as to just what Vitold is doing out there with all those fires?"

"In truth, my lord, he has been confusing me for the past two days."

"Now that is refreshing to hear. I hate to be the only one who doesn't know what is going on. Sometimes I think they play a game called confuse the count.

"Bedtime. Coming, Krystyana? Or is it someone else's turn?"

At noon the next day Vitold showed me the first sample beehive; by dusk he had completed the entire gross. In three days he had finished a job that I had assumed would take months.

It seems that boards were hard to make. They had to be sawed by hand out of tree trunks, using a poor saw. Nails were even harder. They had to be hammered one at a time out of very expensive iron.

But though a modern carpenter thinks in terms of boards and fasteners, Vitold thought in terms of taking trees and making things out of them.

As the firewood was already cut, splitting was a fairly simple job. He then burned out a hollow in each half log, carefully leaving about five centimeters untouched all the way around. An entrance hole was chopped in with an axe, and the two troughs were tied back together again with a sturdy, though crude, linen rope. To harvest, you untied the rope, removed the combs, and retied it.

Vitold's method was one of those brilliantly simple things that I was talking about earlier. There was a lot I had to teach the people of the thirteenth century. There was also a great deal that I had to learn.

* * *

I haven't talked much about children in this confession, perhaps because the subject is so painful. In modern Poland, children are cherished, as they are in all civilized countries. In the thirteenth century, this was not always true. Perhaps because so many of them died so young, you did not dare love them too much.

From puberty to menopause, if they lived that long, the women of Okoitz were almost continually pregnant. Most of them averaged twelve to fifteen births. There was no concept of birth control, no feeling that one should abstain from sex. In that small community of perhaps a hundred families, there were typically two births a week. There was also more than a weekly funeral, usually a tiny cloth-wrapped bundle without even a wooden coffin.

The adults, too, died young. Forty was considered old. The medical arts that can keep a sick person alive did not exist. You were healthy or you were dead!

And there was nothing I could do about it. I was completely ignorant of most medicine. Oh, I had taken all the standard first-aid courses. I could give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I could treat frostbite and heat stroke and shock. I could splint a fracture and tend a wound. But all that I had learned was learned for the purpose of knowing what to do until the doctor arrives.

I got into this sad subject because Krystyana's baby sister was dead. Her father had rolled on the baby while sleeping and smothered it. Because of the harsh winters and unheated houses, babies slept with their parents. It was the only way to keep them from freezing. And the father just—rolled over.

The look on the man's face—he couldn't have been much older than I was, but his face was lined and weathered, his hands were wrinkled, calloused claws, and his back was bent as if he were still carrying a grain sack—the look on that man's face was such that I couldn't stay through the all-too-brief church ceremony. I had to leave and I had to cry.

Everyone already knew that I was strange, and they left me alone.

I am not a doctor. I am an engineer. I did not know what most of those people were dying of. Hell, nobody here had cancer! People just got a bellyache and died! But I did know that a better diet, better sanitation, better clothing, better housing, and—damn it—a little heat would do wonders for them.

A sawmill for wooden floors and beds that got them off the floor. An icehouse to help preserve food. Looms for more and better cloth. A better stove for heating and cooking. Some kind of laundry—these people couldn't wash their clothes all winter!—a sewage system, and a water system.

These were things that I could do; these were things that I would do!

That and get ready to fight the Mongols.

* * *

It was just after Christmas that I started working on my master plan, or at least the first few glimpses of it started to come to me.

If we were going to accomplish anything with regard to the Mongols, we would need arms and armor on a scale unprecedented in thirteenth-century Poland. We would need iron, steel, and—if possible—gunpowder by the hundreds of tons.

That meant heavy industry, and heavy industry is equipment-intensive. A blast furnace can't be shut down for Sundays or holidays. It can't stop working for the planting or the harvest. Its workers have to be skilled specialists.

A steel works at Okoitz, or anywhere else in Poland's agricultural system, was simply an impossibility, yet the work could not be done in the existing cities, either. Not when dozens of powerful, tradition-minded guilds guarded their special privileges and were ready to fight anything new. Obviously, to have a free hand to introduce innovations, I would need my own land and my own people. Well, Lambert had said that was possible.

I would need to be able to feed my workers, and the local agricultural techniques produced very little surplus. Here the seeds I had packed in should help. Chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and better farm machinery were a ways off, but work on animal husbandry should be started immediately.

I'd already promised to get some light industry going—clothmaking and so on—which would improve my status with the powers that be as well as getting people more decent clothing.

Windmills. We could definitely use some windmills, and I hadn't seen one in this century.

I talked with Lambert about my plans for Okoitz, and while I don't think he grasped a third of what I had in mind, he gave me his blessings. "Yes, of course, Sir Conrad. These innovations are precisely what I wanted you to do. You are welcome to all the timber you can get cut and all the work you can get out of the peasants."

"Thank you, my lord."

"Just don't do anything silly like interfering with the planting or harvest."

"Of course not. Uh, you mentioned once that I could have lands of my own."

"Yes, I did, didn't I. But there's a slight difficulty there. You see, you are a foreigner—"

"I am not, my lord. I was born in Poland."

"Well, you talk funny, so it comes to the same thing. The law is that I can't assign you lands without my liege lord's permission. It's just a formality, really. I'm sure he'll grant it when next I see him, probably in the next year or two."

"The next year or two? That's quite a delay!"

"Oh, likely he'll be by in the spring or summer. What is your hurry? You have just outlined projects here at Okoitz that will take years to complete."

I talked for a while about Mongols, heavy industry, and blast furnaces.

"Oh, if you say so, Sir Conrad. If I must, I'll send a rider with a letter to find the duke, taking your word on faith.

"I must say that belief in a fire that is so intense that one dares not let it die—well, it stretches the mind more that transubstantiation!"

"But you'll send the letter?"

"After Easter, if necessary. You couldn't build anything on your land until the snow melts, anyway."

For the next few months, my time was divided, unevenly, four ways. One was animal husbandry. The people of Okoitz knew the basic principles of animal breeding. They produced outstanding war-horses, but somehow the techniques had not filtered down to the more mundane world of farm animals.

A modern hen produces more than an egg a day. The hens of Okoitz produced perhaps an egg a week. The sheep were small and scrawny; I doubted if there was a kilo of wool on any one of them. The milk cows looked likely to produce only a few liters a day, and then only in the spring and summer. Grown pigs were only a quarter of the size of the modern animal.

Much of the reason for this was economic. A farmer with a cow, two pigs, and six chickens was in no position to get involved with scientific breeding. Another part of the problem was that they tended to use farm animals as scavengers. Kept grossly underfed, pigs and chickens were allowed to run free and were expected to find much of their own food. That resulted in indiscriminate breeding and constant arguments about someone's pigs eating someone else's crops. It also spread shit over everything.

But the count had his own herds, and if we could improve the quality of those, the results would spread. For the most part, my program was a matter of dividing each species into a small A herd and a larger B herd. The A herd contained the best animals, most of them females. They got better food and the best available herdsman, who was expected to get to know them as individuals. They were kept strictly apart from the B herd, except when inferior animals were demoted. The B herd was for eating. There were two A herds for cattle, one for beef and one for dairy products, but it took some time to convince Lambert that it was useful to breed separately for two desired sets of qualities.

The same was done for chickens: one A flock for eggs and one for fast growth. I concentrated on chickens because they have a shorter life cycle, and selective breeding would give faster results.

Breeding for egg production requires accounting. You have to know which chicken is producing how many eggs. This involves an "egg factory," with each hen imprisoned in a tiny cell. It was labor-intensive in that food and water had to be brought to them. I had a small rack built by each cell. When the breeders took out an egg, they put a stone in the rack. Big egg, big stone; little egg, little stone.

Once a month, the hens were evaluated. The best hens got a rooster, and the worst were demoted to the shortlived B flock. The mediocre got to keep their jobs. I got a couple of the older women interested in the project, and egg production doubled in the first year.

As time went on, most of our best animal breeders were women. They seemed to understand the concepts better.

A half dozen holidays came and went. These annoyed me because they cut down on the man-hours I had available. The holidays came to a height in a weeklong carnival, a Polish Mardi Gras, from Lenten Thursday to Ash Wednesday. "Carnival" is Latin for "good-bye, meat." Lent was not so much the religious abstinence from meat eating as the formal acknowledgment that the village was actually out of animal products and that those animals left had to be kept for spring and summer breeding.

The second of my time-consuming jobs was lumbering. Understand that the people of Okoitz had felled a lot of trees. Okoitz was built almost completely of logs, and in the last four years a huge effort had gone into it.

But those logs were actually the by-product of land clearance. If you want to clear land for farming, you not only have to remove the tree, you have to remove the stump. The sensible way is not to chop the tree down; you dig around the tree, cut out the roots, and then pull the tree down. Since you can't dig in frozen ground, tree removal was a summer job.

Lumber cut in the winter is superior to that cut in the summer. It is drier. There was some nearby hilly ground that was not suitable for farming but could do well as orchards. Leaving the stumps in would delay erosion until the orchard was established.

Projects I had in mind for the next summer were going to require a lot of wood, and that all added up to winter lumbering.

The difficulty was that the peasants were not used to working hard in the winter. Except for spreading manure on the snow and basic housekeeping tasks, winter was when you went to bed early and slept late and spent the time in between enjoying yourself. It took a lot of persuasion to get things done.

Incidentally, my horse, Anna, was quite willing to wear a horse collar and drag logs, provided that one was polite to her. Several peasants with whips were bitten and one was seriously kicked before the message got across. Anna developed a friendship with an eight-year-old girl, one of Janina's sisters, and those two made a very productive team. Somewhat later, it was discovered that the count's best stallion was also willing to work, provided that he was allowed to work next to Anna. Such things gave people their first new subjects of conversation since my arrival.

I was watching this strange and amusing trio dragging a huge log down the snowy hill when another log being dragged by a team of oxen broke loose and started rolling.

There were screams and shouts and people scrambling. The oxen were knocked over and probably would have been killed if the rope around the log hadn't come loose. The log bounded downhill, bouncing off some tree stumps and smashing others to splinters.

Mikhail Malinski was downhill of the rolling log. He had been taking his dull axe down to the blacksmith's temporary forge to get the cutting edge sharpened. With the wrought-iron tools, the edge wasn't ground—that was wasteful of iron—it was heated up and the edge was beaten sharp.

Mikhail heard the shouting, looked up the hill, and saw the log coming at him. Dropping his axe, he ran diagonally away. When he saw that he was clear, he stopped to watch, leaning against a large tree stump to catch his breath. The log struck another stump and spun completely around, smashing Mikhail's left ankle against the stump he was leaning on; then it bounced off and continued downhill.

I was the first to get to Mikhail. His ankle was red mush, and his foot was almost off. Blood was spurting from the wound. He was screaming; he knew he was going to die. Without thinking, I stripped off my leather belt, wrapped it around his calf, and twisted it tightly until the squirting stopped.

This was reflexes, this was training, this was what one did until the doctor arrived.

Only, deep inside me, a panicky voice was yelling at me that I was it! There was no impersonal institution to take Mikhail away and tell us later if he lived or died. There was only me, and I was not competent.

But as always, when I am scared and don't know what to do, the actor surfaces. I say the phony words and adopt a phony posture and try to fake it.

"Easy, Mikhail, easy. Don't worry, we'll take care of you." A crowd was gathering. I pointed to a long-legged young man. "You! You run to the castle and tell Krystyana or whoever of the handmaidens is there that I want the kitchen table clean with a fresh cloth on it. I want a big kettle of water boiling, and I want all the clean napkins she's got. Have it ready for us! Now move!" He moved.

"You! Take my cloak off. Spread it on the ground over there." I still had one hand on the tourniquet. "Now, you eight men! Get around us. The rest of you, back! Now, pick him up. Easy, now! Put him on the cloak! That's it. Now, pick up the cloak! No! Face that way, dummy! Now, we carry him back to the castle."

I trailed behind him, still holding the tourniquet, trying to remember what to do next. There was nothing in my training to tell me. Except . . . except, once over a Christmas holiday in the dormitories, I spent two weeks improving my English by devouring Forester's Hornblower novels. There was one very graphic sequence where the excellent Mr. Bush lost a foot in combat and was tended by early nineteenth-century physicians. Oh God, I hoped that Forester knew what he was talking about and was not as great a phony as I was!

We got Mikhail on the kitchen table. "Okay. Now, lift him up and off my cloak; the cloak isn't clean enough. The first rule of tending a wound is to make it clean."

I started lecturing, acting as if this were a classroom demonstration, partly to reassure Mikhail, partly to rehearse to myself what I was to do, but mostly to shut out the reality of the bleeding man in front of me.

I had the count hold the tourniquet, and I cut away Mikhail's clothes with my jackknife. I washed my hands and the smashed foot, talking all the while about the importance of cleanliness. The foot felt like a bag of broken rocks. We got a few liters of wine into Mikhail, and I took a drink myself.

"One break or two could heal," I said. "This foot is going to have to come off." A stir went through the crowd. "That's not so bad. We can make him a new one later, out of wood." I washed my jackknife in wine and then in boiling water. I got a pair of scissors and cleaned them up. And a needle and thread, I remembered. I found the arteries by having Lambert loosen the tourniquet and seeing what squirted. I had to cut away flesh to find the things. Tying them off, I left long threads, as Forester mentioned. I trimmed the skin and pulled it up to the calf. It was "usual" to saw the bone, but not a saw in the town was up to it. I cleaned my sword and chopped the bone with a single hack. Then I sewed the wound almost shut. I left the strings from the arteries hanging out, as well as a twist of boiled linen. Forester had stressed the importance of draining.

Mikhail stood up to it fairly well, considering that the amputation and all was done with no other anesthetic than wine. Most of the time he didn't have to be held down. You see, he wanted to believe my acting job. He needed to believe in the firm words I mouthed, and so he did.

We put Mikhail in one of the spare rooms in the castle, and the crowd dispersed.

I met Sir Stefan as he went to do his nightly guard duty, heavily bundled against the wintery night. The long, lonely hours were telling on him. He looked tired and older than he had been a month before.

"Sir Conrad, what's this I hear about you chopping off a peasant's foot on the kitchen table? What did the man do to deserve that?"

I was blood-splattered and tired. "Deserve? He didn't deserve it at all. He was hurt, and I had to amputate to heal him."

"So your witchcraft includes blood rites?"

"Witchcraft? Damn it, I—"

"Oh, I'm sorry." He held his hand up. "I spoke out of turn. You must know how tired I am, standing guard from dusk to dawn every night without relief while you are bedded safe with a young wench."

"Yeah. I know you've got a rough job. But it's only for a couple more months."

"Two more months of this without a wench of nights, just so you can play peasant carpenter during the day?"

"Look, Sir Stefan. If I hadn't been out there today, Mikhail would have lost more than his foot. He would have lost his life."

"Well, what of it? What damn use is a crippled peasant?"

"You're disgusting."

"I'm disgusting? You've just drenched the kitchen table with human blood! I have to eat off that table while you sleep soundly!" He stomped out.

Mikhail was a model patient. The wound was never seriously inflamed and seemed to be healing well. I visited him several times a day. His wife was tending him, sleeping beside him. The children, including the kid I had brought in from the storm, had been farmed out except during Ignacy's feeding time.

We talked about his future. He was thinking about becoming a trader. Traders were mostly on horseback, weren't they? I promised to advance him money and introduce him to Boris Novacek.

Within a month, I carefully pulled out the long strings, removed the rotted ends of the arteries, and then closed the wound. All seemed well. In a few weeks, we were talking about moving him back to his home.

Then one night he got a fever and was dead in the morning.

I don't know why.

Two weeks after the funeral, Lambert decided that it would be good if Ilya the blacksmith married the widow; a month later there was an Easter wedding.

* * *

Lambert had eleven barons subordinate to him. These men held lands from the count. Each had his own fort or manor, and all of them but one had subordinate knights, often with manors of their own. The number of their knights varied from zero to twenty-six. In addition, fifteen knights, including myself, reported directly to the count.

The great majority of the noblemen held their positions on a hereditary basis, but it was still possible for an outstanding commoner to be elevated.

And, of course, the count ran things at Okoitz. A number of specialists—the smith, the carpenter, the baker, and so on—had specific areas of responsibility and worked directly under the count. The castle itself was run by a constantly changing group of adolescent handmaidens, but on closer observation I found that the cook exerted a strong, steadying influence on them.

The farmers worked through a half dozen foremen, who in turn took directions from Piotr Korzeniewski. These leaders were neither elected nor appointed but attained their positions and got things done by a system of consensus that I never fully understood. People just talked things over for a while and then, somehow, things were accomplished.

Piotr had no official standing or title. In theory, all the farmers worked directly for Lambert. I was at Okoitz for months before I realized that Piotr was really the chief executive of the whole town.

Knowledge of Okoitz's ghost structure was to prove very useful to me over the years. Most of the nobility were interested only in fighting, hunting, and playing status games with each other. When I wanted something of a manor—sanitation measures or workers for my factories—the quickest way to do things was to have one of my subordinates talk things over with the informal executive.

But I get ahead of myself.

Chapter Sixteen

My third endeavor was the loom. The count insisted that we set up the loom as a permanent fixture in his hall. The situation in the cloth industry annoyed him, and he wanted the loom as a showpiece for his summer guests. The concept of keeping a profitable trade secret was entirely foreign to him. I never saw him really concerned about money at all. What he wanted was the prestige of being the man who cracked the strangling cloth monopoly.

Understand that the hall was a large room. It could handle a hundred people at a sit-down dinner. It took up most of the ground floor of the castle, and the ceiling was fully four meters high.

In order to use as little floor space as possible, my loom design was more vertical than horizontal. A loom, in essence, is a simple device. It has a framework to support a few thousand spools of thread that go lengthwise through the cloth produced. Whether this was the warp or woof, I didn't know. I wasn't a weaver, and in fact I made up my own terminology as I went along. We didn't have a warp or a woof. We had long threads and short threads.

There are some frames that loop around the long threads to spread them apart in the proper order so that the short threads can be passed through. The simplest number of these spreaders would be two, but I wanted the loom to be able to produce more complicated weaves, like tweeds, so I built it with six spreaders, each of which connected with one-sixth of the long threads. There is a shuttle that holds the short thread as it gets tossed back and forth, and there is a thing that beats the short threads tightly together. Finally, there is a roll for the finished cloth.

I was sure that on modern looms there is a friction device that holds the long threads tight, yet lets them advance as cloth was made. However, I couldn't think up a simple way of doing it. It would have to be very simple, since we needed a thousand of them.

I solved the problem by bypassing it. The carpenter drilled an array of holes, thirty-six wide by forty-eight high, directly into the wooden wall of the count's hall. Into these he pounded 1,728 pegs to hold the long spools of thread. This was a convenient number, since it was twelve cubed—a thousand in our new base-twelve arithmetic.

From there, the threads were to loop up over a pole near the ceiling, down under a suspended pole that could be raised as the threads were consumed, and then up to the four-meter ceiling again and down through the spreaders, the beater, and the cloth bolt.

This arrangement let you make eight meters of cloth before you had to loosen each of the thousand spools and lower the suspended pole again.

A working solution if not a perfect one.

The finished loom took up about four square meters of floor space, eight if you counted the area for the two operators. It produced a band of cloth two meters wide.

Sir Stefan waddled in one sunset as I was talking to Vitold about the spreaders. Sir Stefan was in full armor and heavily bundled and cloaked against the cold. "Another piece of witchcraft, Sir Conrad?" His voice was weary.

Vitold crossed himself but remained silent.

"A loom for making cloth," I said. "I wish you would knock off this nonsense about witchcraft."

"Nonsense, is it? Then how do you explain that witch's familiar of a mare you own?"

"I bought Anna in Cracow not two months ago. She's nothing but a good, well-trained horse."

"Indeed? Do you know what I saw last night? I saw your familiar leave the stables, go to the latrines, and relieve herself there! I followed her back to her stall and saw her putting the bar back in place. That's no natural horse!" He was glaring at me.

"Yeah, the stable boy told me she didn't soil her stall, but so what? If a dog can be housebroken, why not a horse? I told you she was well trained."

"Well trained? She's some manner of demon! Conrad, know that my father is Baron Jaroslav, the greatest of Lambert's vassals and well known to Duke Henryk. I swear that they will hear of your warlock's tricks!" he shouted as he stomped out into the snow.

Vitold crossed himself again.

"Damn it, Vitold, don't you start believing that horseshit! You've been building this thing. You know there is nothing magic in it!"

"I can only do as my betters bid me." He returned to work, but you could tell that his heart wasn't in it.

We were a month getting the loom built, and then I asked for 1,728 spools of thread, each perhaps 500 meters long, to string it with.

I was looked on with horror. That amount of thread simply did not exist.

I said that I had to have it or I couldn't thread the loom. At least that much more would be needed for the short threads.

So the girls dug out their distaffs and went to work.

It was my turn to be horrified. The distaff was nothing more than a small wooden cross. You stretched some wool between the cross and your left hand, and then your right hand gave the cross a spin. This twisted the thread. Then you wrapped the half meter of thread around the cross, stretched some more wool, etc.

The truly labor-intensive part of clothmaking wasn't in the weaving at all. It was in the spinning. I had taken off on a project without first knowing what all the parameters were. You might expect this of a beginner but not of a seasoned engineer.

I told the girls to put away their distaffs and went to work on a spinning wheel.

We were five weeks getting a spinning wheel working, partially because I had to come up with a wood lathe first. Also, we lost a week because I didn't realize that you have to have two loops of string from the wheel to the spindle, one to turn the spool and one to turn the twister a little faster.

Our first spinning wheel looked a lot like what you would see in a modern museum, because that's what I modeled it on. There were a lot of design flaws that were cleared up on subsequent models. The bench seat was uncomfortable, and one couldn't wear a long dress while using it. Our ladies wore a floor-length dress or nothing. Calf-length dresses were for field workers. The foot pedal gave the operator leg cramps, and it was discovered that if one tied a string from one's big toe to the crank of the wheel, it worked a lot easier.

I had learned a long time ago that if the operators don't approve of your engineering, your machines don't work. If they wanted a string on their big toe, they got a string on their big toe.

It was a lot easier to work if the spindle faced the operator at about an arm's length rather than being placed horizontally under her breasts.

Our third model had places for six operators, who sat facing each other in a circle. The job was boring, and they liked to talk.

It took six spinsters to keep up with the loom. Lambert solved this problem by putting on a few more ladies-in-waiting.

Also, it took two men—one holding the chisel, one turning the crank—six weeks on our new wood lathe to make enough spools to put the thread on.

I subsequently found out that spinning and weaving are two of the seven production steps necessary in making the crudest of homespun cloth. To produce the best commercial cloth required some thirty production steps.

It was going to take a while.

"Look, Sir Conrad, you'll be able to get this going by Easter, won't you?" the count asked.

"Well, the spinning and weaving at least, my lord. I don't think that we have enough washed and carded wool to keep us going for long."

"I'm ahead of you there. I've already sent word to my knights to send me all of their wool, and all of it washed and carded. Also, they are to send me two-thirds of the wool from this spring's shearing, and the acreage in flax is to be doubled."

"Excellent, my lord. You realize that weaving linen takes a slightly different loom, don't you? It takes more threads, closer together, and only two spreaders."

"What of it? Vitold can build more now that you've shown him the way. We'll have a dozen looms going by next year! You just put your mind to the problems of washing and carding."

"The washing is simple enough, but I'm still not sure of the carding."

"You will solve it." I wasn't sure if he was expressing confidence in my abilities or giving me an order. Sheep's wool is much finer than human hair and a sheep goes all year without combing it. As a result, it is incredibly tangled, and untangling it is what carding is all about.

"Sir Conrad, thus far you have seen us only as a small agrarian community. You must realize that Okoitz is the capital of a fair-sized province. After Easter, all sorts of people will be coming through, my uncle and liege lord, Duke Henryk the Bearded, among them. It is essential that we make a good impression."

"Yes, my lord. You say that Henryk is your uncle?"

"Well, of sorts. Henryk's father was Boleslaw the Tall; my grandfather, Miesko the Stumbling, was Boleslaw's brother, both sired by Wladyslaw the Exile."

Western countries give their rulers numbers. We Poles prefer nicknames. It's friendlier.

"In addition, after our father's untimely death, Henryk raised my brother Herman and me until we came of age. Being the eldest, he got the established city of Cieszyn and its environs. I got the Vistula-Odra Road and perforce have had to build my own town."

Another difference between eastern and western Europe was that in the west, inheritance was by primogeniture. The oldest son inherited everything, and the rest were out of luck. They might get a good job with the Church or in the army, but they were commoners.

In Poland, the rule was to divide things fairly evenly between the sons, with a very substantial dowry for the daughters. This was a nicer system, but it had the disadvantage of shattering the country and weakening—often destroying—central authority. A hundred years before, Boleslaw the Wrymouth, the last king of Poland, had divided the country up among his five sons, giving only nominal authority to the eldest. That is all very well unless you are about to get invaded.

"Certainly an ambitious project, my lord."

"So it is. But we are midway on the road, and Okoitz has to grow. Now that you've had time to look it over, what do you think of it, Sir Conrad?"

The place to build cities is at the end of a road, where pack mules change cargoes with riverboats, but I thought it wise not to mention this. And as a military defense, wooden walls only four meters high were a sick joke. The Mongols could take it in hours. But for now, there was nothing I could do about it, and I saw no reason to irritate my liege lord. "In many ways excellent, my lord. This business of building cottages side by side, sharing a wall and built against the outer wall, saves materials and heat. But I worry about fire. A single fire could burn down all of Okoitz. I have seen places where they build every other dividing wall out of brick to serve as a fire-stop."

"I can see that you haven't priced bricks and mortar, Sir Conrad."

"No, my lord, I haven't. But the new mill should give some protection. It will have a water tank higher than the church. I plan on having a fire hose long enough to reach any part of Okoitz."

"Then see to it."

Dismissed, I went out to the bailey just as a strange procession was coming through the main gate. Sir Stefan was riding proudly in the lead, followed by a dozen peasants holding on to strong chains. Between the peasants, snarling, tugging, trying hard to get away, was a fair-sized brown bear chained around the neck.

"What on earth—" I said to Stefan.

"A bit of sport, Sir Conrad," he said, getting down from his horse. "We were a month trapping him and most of the day getting him chained and out of the pit. But he's a beauty, hey?"

"But what would you want with a live bear?"

"Why, to bait him, of course! Look you, Sir Conrad, what would you say to a gentlemanly wager? I'll bet you a thousand pence that that bear can kill six dogs before it's brought down. What say you?"

I heard someone behind me whisper, "That's a sucker bet. That bear is good for a dozen, easy." But I ignored it.

"What do you mean, bait him?" I asked.

"You don't know the sport? Well, we'll chain him to that post and turn the dogs on him. A good bear like this one can go for hours before he's ripped apart."

"That's horrible!" I said, meaning it. "What a disgusting, brutal, ugly thing to do."

"Well, damn! If you don't like it, don't look!"

"But you can't do this! There are children here!"

"What of it? They've seen bear baiting before. Anyway, how do you dare tell me what I can or cannot do with my property?"

"Then I'll buy it from you! What is a bear worth?" I poured some silver out of my pouch and into my hand. "Is a hundred pence enough?"

He swatted my hand aside, spraying my money onto the snow. None of the peasants dared touch it.

"It's not for sale, damn you! Anyway, what would you do with a bear? Make another warlock's familiar out of it?"

Actually, discounting the stupidity about familiar creatures, Stefan had posed a good question. What could I do with a bear? I couldn't possibly keep it—it might break loose and kill somebody. I couldn't let it go—as angry as it was, it would surely kill somebody.

By this time, the bear had been fastened to the post, and a large crowd had gathered in a wide circle around the animal. It was on its hind legs, straining at the chains, trying desperately for vengeance.

I walked into the circle. "Blood sports are cruel and wicked!" I shouted. I looked to the priest for support, but he just looked away. "If you won't think about the bear, think about the brutality to your dogs!"

"What else are the dogs for?" Stefan smirked. "Sir Conrad, you look as funny as the bear."

The peasants had sense enough to keep quiet, to not get involved. But they didn't want to miss the action, either.

"Laugh if you want to, but I won't let you do this."

"Just how do you plan to stop it?" Stefan had an ugly laugh.

Another good question. Once the bear was chained to the post, he couldn't be unchained without getting past him, and that bear was irate. The only thing I could do for the animal was to give it a clean death.

"Like this," I said. I drew my sword and stepped close to the beast. On his hind legs, he was taller than I and must have weighed three times as much, swatting at me with his massive paws.

I timed his swipes and swung at him when both his paws were down, catching him horizontally at the neck a centimeter above the chain.

The head flew clear in a spray of blood, and the suddenly freed body lunged at me, almost falling on top of me. As I leaped aside, it brushed my leg.

"All right!" I shouted, trying not to show the pity that was welling up in me. "I want that carcass skinned and the hide tanned. And I want the meat served up for tomorrow's supper."

As I turned to leave, sheathing my sword, Stefan shouted, "You bloody bastard! You filthy scum. You by-blow of an incestuous—"

"That's enough!" Count Lambert shouted, running up to us. "You two are supposed to be knights, not kitchen dogs fighting over garbage! We will speak of this in private! Come with me, both of you."

"Yes, my lord," I said, following him to the castle, trying to control my emotions.

"It's not over, Conrad!" Stefan shouted, but I didn't turn.

Something heavy hit me square in the back, knocking me flat on my stomach in the dirty snow. I looked up to see the bear's head bouncing down the path toward the castle. Rage enveloped me as I got up.

As I turned toward him, Stefan hit me square in the face, almost knocking me down again.

I was too angry to fight efficiently, but Stefan didn't know anything about unarmed combat in the first place. For a few seconds we swung at each other wildly, and I gave a lot more than I got.

Suddenly, a naked sword divided the space between us. Lambert's.

"I swear, the next one of you who strikes will get this in his guts," Lambert hissed. "My own sworn knights fighting in the dirt, in front of the peasants no less! Now, to my chambers, and this time both of you walk in front of me."

In his chambers, Lambert ordered us to sit on opposite sides of the room but was so angry that he couldn't sit down himself.

"Dog's blood! My own knights! Men who are supposed to enforce the peace, fighting each other like squalid beggars! You shame me, the both of you!

"First you, Sir Conrad! I saw you deliberately destroy the property and sport of a brother knight. I fine you two hundred pence for that and order you to pay Sir Stefan another fifty in damages."

"Yes, my lord."

"Is that all you have to say? Just why did you do such a despicable thing?"

"My lord, he was going to torture that animal, chain it to that post, and turn the dogs on it."

"So? Bears kill our people and our cattle. We have the right to vengeance! You don't like our sports? I know you don't like our holidays. Very well! You can sleep through them, doing night guard duty before every one of them from now till Easter."

I groaned. Lately one day in three had been a holiday of one sort or another. Stefan smiled.

"Wipe that damn smirk off your face, Sir Stefan," Lambert said. "Your sins are worse than his! On slight provocation, you struck a brother knight with a dishonorable weapon—a bloody bear's head—without proper challenge and in the back! You did it when I had specifically ordered you to follow me immediately! Some lords would have you hung for that, and were it not for your father I'd be sorely tempted. Instead, I'll be lenient. I fine you three months' additional guard duty, from Easter to midsummer, on the night shift.

"Now I want no more bad blood between you two. Knights of the same lord should be like brothers! Stand up and give each other the kiss of brotherhood, then get out of my sight!"

As I kissed the smelly bastard, he whispered, "It's not over!"

* * *

Standing guard duty for fourteen hours in the dark gives you a lot of time to think. My engineering work was seriously hampered for lack of a decent system of weights and measures. In the cities, the guilds used a hodgepodge of gills and pennyweights and yards, mostly unrelated except that a pint of milk was supposed to weigh a pound. Nobody cared if the specific gravity of milk varied by five percent, with richer milk being lighter.

Here in the country, things were even worse. The blacksmith and the baker did things until they felt about right. The saddler just cut and trimmed until it fit. The carpenter did a bit of measuring—in cubits and spans and finger widths—but he used his cubit, from his elbow to his fingertips.

We didn't even have a meter stick.

Of course, I could invent my own system of weights and measures easily enough, and it would at least have the advantage of consistency.

But I would lose a lot doing it. Every person, and certainly every engineer, knows hundreds of numbers. I knew the speed of light and the diameter of the earth and the distance from the earth to the sun. I knew the tensile strength of wrought iron and what could be expected of concrete and, well, all sorts of things.

But I knew all these values in terms of the metric system. Without a meter stick, I was stuck with guesswork. With one, I could derive all of the weights and measures and from there translate the data I remembered into any other system at all.

But none of my equipment contained a single reliable measurement. I had nothing that I knew was a definite length or weight.

At gray dawn, the answer hit me. I had my own body! My weight might not be reliable—I had put on muscle and lost some fat since arriving—but surely my height hadn't changed. I was precisely 190 centimeters tall. I had only to measure myself in stocking feet, divide by nineteen, multiply by ten, and I had my meter stick. With that, a cube of cold water ten centimeters to the side has a volume of a liter and a mass of a kilogram.

From there it was simple arithmetic to translate it into the base-twelve system that these people could use.

Dead tired, I got Krystyana out of bed and had her standing on a chest, marking my height on the wall with a piece of charcoal.

"Sir Conrad," Lambert said as he saw us. "Just what are you doing now?"

I tried to explain how I was developing a standard meter and about engineering constants. Some things I had to repeat three times, perhaps because I hadn't slept in twenty-four hours and Lambert was just out of bed and bleary-eyed.

"So by measuring yourself, you will somehow know the distance from earth to moon? My dear Sir Conrad, God may have spanned the universe to his own measure, but it is rank blasphemy and profound hubris for a mere mortal to do so. In all events, the standard of measure here is the Silesian yard, not this foreign meter thing. I won't have you changing it."

"Yes, my lord." After yesterday the last thing I wanted was to irritate Lambert. "Uh, how long is a Silesian yard?"

"I'll show you." Taking Krystyana's charcoal, he marked it on the wall. With his head turned left, it was the distance from his nose to his right fingertip.

"Thank you, my lord," I said, and he left.

Forever after, I used yards instead of meters rather than offend my liege lord. I soon knew the ratio of yards to meters and that was enough to save my data.

* * *

My fourth endeavor was engineering the mills.

Understand that I had no reference books, no instruments, and no measuring devices. I had no drawing equipment and darned little parchment. These last two wouldn't have done me much good anyway, because I didn't have anyone who could read a blueprint.

For the comparatively small items I'd had to build thus far, it was possible to give instructions like "We need a piece of wood that's this long, and it's got to have holes in it so it can fit into this thing and that thing."

This technique was not suitable for building a mill, and we needed two of them; I built one-twelfth scale working models, because the people had to see how things moved in order to understand them.

Okoitz didn't have a stream suitable for damming, so that left wind power. The problem with wind power is that it works only when the wind is blowing. This is not a great complication on something like a flour mill, because only one operator is required and he can work strange hours if the situation requires it. But a lot of processes—beating flax and sawing wood—are both energy- and labor-intensive. If a crew is working and the wind stops, twenty people are left standing around, which is blatantly inefficient. An intermediate energy shortage device is needed, and we had water.

The first windmill was a water pump and some storage tanks. Actually, it was two sets of water pumps. One set of four pumps pumped water from a new well to a tank near the top of the mill. We needed a new well anyway because the old well was entirely too close to the latrines. The top tank provided fresh water to the community and supplied the lower, working tanks. I used four small pumps because I did not know how much power the mill would produce. If we only had enough torque to operate two pumps, the other two could be disconnected and used as spares. Also, if one pump malfunctioned, it could be repaired while the others continued in operation.

This is called contingency planning, or in the colorful language of my American friends, "keeping your ass covered."

Four larger pumps operated between the lowest tank and the middle tank. These provided water power to several machines in a circular shed that ringed the base of the windmill.

The sawmill, for example, had a straight saw blade operating vertically between two ropes. These ropes were connected by a pulley system to two short, fat barrels mounted at the ends of long pivot arms. A barrel, reaching the top of its stroke, pushed open a weighted door that allowed water from the middle tank to fill it. Filled, it descended, pulling the saw blade and raising the other barrel. Reaching the bottom, a fixed peg pushed up another weighted door on the bottom of the barrel, which drained the water into the lowest tank. At the same time, the second barrel was filling and the process reversed itself.

This "wet mill" was a fairly big thing. The body of it was a truncated cone twenty-four yards across at the bottom and twelve at the turret. The walls were vertical logs flattened on two sides. The cone shape resulted from the natural taper of the logs. I was learning.

The foundations went a full story into the ground, and from the ground to the top of the highest blade the thing was as tall as a nine-story building.

A windmill must be kept facing the wind, so the turret has to rotate. Ours did this on ninety-six wooden ball bearings, each as big as a man's head. One of my college professors had shown us a device to accomplish this automatically. A second, much smaller windmill was built on the back of the large turret, with the blades at right angles to the main blades. This was geared down to rotate the turret if the small windmill wasn't parallel to the wind. He claimed it was the world's first negative feedback device.

I could have made the turret manually rotatable, but I wanted the mill to operate unattended at night.

One of the engineering problems I faced was that the weight of the water tanks, besides pushing downward, also pushed outward. Some crude calculations indicated that a wrought-iron band strong enough to hold the middle tank together would have weighed eight tons. I wasn't sure that there was that much iron available on the market, and in any event the cost would have been fabulous.

My solution was exactly the same as that used by my contemporaries, the Gothic cathedral builders. These cathedrals have purely decorative internal stone arches that produce an outward thrust. I say purely decorative because the cathedrals were topped by wooden truss roofs that kept the rain out and didn't touch the arches. They actually built the outer walls and wooden roof first and then built those magnificent arches later, working indoors out of the rain.

I used the circular work shed as a flying buttress, leaning into the tower and squeezing it together.

Between the high-water level of the lowest tank and the bottom of the middle tank was a space of four yards. This was at ground level, but the area would be dark and wet, and I could think of no good use for it. I didn't bother putting a floor there.

This resulted in the lowest tank being used, over my protestations, as a swimming pool.

By the time I got the model of the wet mill done, the weather had broken. The bitter cold of winter was over, the snow had melted, and the first warm breezes kissed the land.

A mood of wondrous relief and joviality filled the community. It was so glorious that I had to rip my shirt off and stand in the warm sunshine, soaking up the vitamin D. I wasn't alone in doing this; Krystyana and Natalia were suddenly standing naked next to me.

This mood lasted for about a day, and then it was time for spring plowing and planting, an all-out effort for those people, who got up before dawn and performed fifteen or sixteen hours of grueling labor before collapsing exhausted, only to repeat the process the next day.

The count kept equal hours supervising, and the carpenter and the smith were kept busy repairing tools. There were only three or four weeks to complete the task, and if the planting didn't get done, next winter we would starve.

I seemed to be the only one at loose ends—as a knight, I was not allowed to work—so I wandered about observing things, seeing what improvements could be made. What they needed most was a good steel plow, and I saw no way of providing one.

Lambert owned more than half the land surrounding Okoitz. Well, actually, he owned two hundred times as much besides, but much of it was farmed out to his knights, most of whom ran manors similar to, but smaller than, his.

Peasants were expected to work three days a week on his land and had the balance of their time "free" to work their own. Special workers—the bakers, carpenters, etc.—had their own separate and often quite complicated arrangements, but in general it amounted to a fifty percent taxation, with the count being the entire government.

In return, the people got what amounted to police and military protection, much of their clothing, and a fixed number of feasts per year. In addition to the Christmas season, there were twenty-two days of feasting. I estimated that twenty-five percent of the food consumed by the commons was eaten at these feasts.

Also, and very important, the count made arrangements for the sick and needy. Since Lambert was an intelligent and decent person, it really wasn't a bad system. Under a stupid or greedy lord, you could see where it could be pure hell.

Chapter Seventeen

I wasn't accomplishing anything at Okoitz. No feast days fell during the planting season, church and state being practical about such matters. By the terms of my punishment, I didn't have to stand guard duty. I was told that right after planting and Easter there would be plenty of manpower available to start work on the mill.

There were some parts of the mill that we could not produce locally. I wanted the main rotor bearings to have brass or bronze collars riding on lead bushings. The lead we could cast in place, but the heavy collars troubled me until the count mentioned some bell casters at his brother's city of Cieszyn some thirty "miles" away to the south.

I was soon riding along the road to Cieszyn on a fine spring day. My equipment was much the same as that I had purchased in Cracow last fall, only now I wore conventional padded leather under my chain mail. I had a new scabbard for my sword, and its garish brass hilt had been replaced, a wrought-iron basket guard added. The shield and spear were as before. Anna had a new saddle and bridle of modern design, and she was happy to be traveling.

Riding a palfrey beside me, Krystyana was even happier. Three hours of her begging and pleading had persuaded Lambert to let her go along to "take care of me." He didn't mind her going, but he hated losing another horse during spring plowing.

She was wearing her best dress, covered with a large traveling cape, and had four others—borrowed—in her saddlebags. She was taking her first trip away from Okoitz since she had moved there with her family when she was ten years old.

Krystyana was a competent person and actually handled most of the day-to-day management of the castle. But she was trying to remain on top of an unfamiliar sidesaddle—I don't think I could have stayed on one of the silly things—while trying to play the part of a knight's lady.

She was ludicrous at it; I decided that much of her problem was that the only "ladies" she had ever seen were seen from a distance, when she was a peasant girl. What she needed was a good role model.

I carried letters from Lambert to his brother. These he had dictated to Father John because, for all his good qualities, the count was illiterate.

I also had instructions to see if Sir Miesko's wife and lands were well since his manor was on our route. It was six hours to Sir Miesko's manor, all of it at a walk, because Krystyana could never have stayed on at a gallop. As it was, the poor kid had leg cramps all night.

I was not looking forward to meeting Lady Richeza, Sir Miesko's wife. From the events at the Christmas party, where Sir Miesko had declined the favors of Count Lambert's ladies because he feared repercussions from his wife—permitting the king of fools to brand him as henpecked—I had formed an impression of a violent, shrewish woman. I was absolutely mistaken. After meeting Lady Richeza, I decided that Sir Miesko had declined all others simply because he loved his wife. Implying that he was henpecked was simply a ruse to avoid exposing his true feelings.

In her thirties, she was not a pretty woman. She was tall as the Poles of the thirteenth century went, and overly broad in the hip. Her hair was dark, curly, and shoulder length, and her face long and rectangular, with remarkably bushy eyebrows. She had dark blue eyes, and her features were otherwise unremarkable. Even in her first bloom, I doubt any man, on seeing her from a distance for the first time, could have honestly called her pretty.

Yet after meeting her and talking with her for a few hours, it dawned on me that I was being honored by the presence of one of the world's truly beautiful women.

But I get ahead of myself.

Sir Miesko's manor was not a fort. It was a comfortable-looking six-bedroom log house located a few hundred yards from a town of perhaps forty small cottages. A few barns and outbuildings were scattered about nearby, but they were located for convenience, not defense. What fences and walls there were had been built with animals, not enemies, in mind.

At first the place seemed too peaceful for such a brutal age, but then I noticed that all the peasants in the fields were armed. Some carried spears, others had axes, and a few possessed swords in addition to the ubiquitous belt knives. Half the women had bows. Sir Miesko apparently had his own theories on defense.

As we approached the manor, two boys who had been working at a kitchen garden laid down their hoes and came to greet us. "Welcome gentles," the older of the two said. I guessed his age at twelve. Despite the hard work they'd been doing, the boys had a fresh-scrubbed look. "Stash, go tell Mother we have company. I'll take care of the horses."

"We thank you for your courtesy." I dismounted and helped Krystyana down from her sidesaddle. The poor thing could barely stand. I kept an arm around her waist for more reasons than affection.

The boy looked up at me. "Sir, can it be that I am addressing the hero, Sir Conrad Stargard?"

I couldn't help smiling. "I don't think that I qualify as a hero, but I'm Conrad Stargard. This is my friend Krystyana."

"You are a hero here, Sir Conrad. Sir Rheinburg killed my best friend's father and four other men from the village. He stole half my father's cattle. You are the knight who defeated him."

I don't think the boy was intentionally snubbing Krystyana. He was just at an age where heroes are far more important than girls. He'd learn.

A woman came out to the porch. "We'll talk later, son. I must greet your mother."

"Welcome." The smiling woman looked at me calmly while drying her hands on a towel.

"I take it that you are Lady Richeza. I am Sir Conrad Stargard, and this is Krystyana."

"Welcome, Sir Conrad." She took both my hands and squeezed them. I knew she wanted a hug, so I gave her one. Understand that I did not and never have felt any sexual attraction for the woman. She was simply the warm sort of person who automatically steps into the role of a favorite aunt or cousin.

"And a very warm welcome to you, Krystyana." As she gave my girl a hug and a kiss, I saw Krystyana tighten up. She wasn't used to this sort of thing. Lady Richeza pretended not to notice but took her by the hand and led her inside. I followed.

The furnishings were sparse by modern standards but very comfortable by those of the Middle Ages. Large chests along the walls served as chairs, and each had a comfortable cushion, a thing lacking at Okoitz. The floor had a carpet of braided rags, the first rug I had seen in the thirteenth century. Most places made do with rushes scattered on the floor. But mostly, everything—including the two small children playing on the rug—was incredibly clean. My own mother's house was no cleaner, and she vacuumed daily.

One of Lady Richeza's daughters brought in some beer and bread. "Is beer acceptable? It seemed too warm a day for wine."

"A beer would be wonderful, Lady." I downed the mug. It was flat, of course; no pressure containers in the Middle Ages. One got used to it.

I had a very pleasant evening. The food was good, the surroundings pleasant, the conversation wonderful. I felt at home. The children—eight of them, five boys and three girls—were exactly what children are supposed to be but never are: inquisitive, bubbling with energy, yet clean and well mannered.

All of them over six could read and write. Sir Miesko had a library of twenty-two hand-lettered books, most of them copied by himself. That was another side of his personality that I hadn't seen at Okoitz. He had taught his wife, and she in turn had educated not only her own children but all those in the village as well.

After the kids were in bed, Lady Richeza and I spent a few hours talking over a school system, one that would spread to every village in Lambert's county. She had the potential teachers, and I could imagine nothing better to do with my money.

Throughout the evening Krystyana was unusually stiff and quiet despite our tries at getting her into the conversation. I put it down to feminine moods, augmented by the pain of the sidesaddle.

When we were in bed in the guest room, I said to Krystyana, "Our hostess is a truly fine lady. If you grew up to be like her, you'd make some very lucky man very happy."

"You ogled her all evening long."

"Ogled? Nonsense! I was just being polite to a very gracious lady."

"She isn't even a real lady."

"Krystyana, you are talking stupid."

"She isn't a lady, and Sir Miesko isn't really a knight. They were both born peasants. Miesko was twenty-five when the duke knighted him on the battlefield. He was a clerk before that."

"Remind me tomorrow to give you a spanking. You are saying horrible things. If Sir Miesko raised himself by his own efforts, he's a better man than if he was just born to the nobility. And Lady Richeza would be a great lady whether the duke said so or not!"

"It's not the same."

"No. It's better."

"But—"

"Shut up and go to sleep." We stayed celibate for the night, and Krystyana had leg cramps until dawn.

* * *

We got to Cieszyn that afternoon. It was a nice little town if you could ignore the lack of a sewage system. It had perhaps four thousand people, a great city by Krystyana's standards. At the city gate, a guard saluted us and waved us through. Apparently, a knight and his lady didn't have to bother with tolls. The outer walls were of brick, as were several charming little round brick chapels, two hundred years old.

The castle was brick as well and was exactly like what the movies told you to expect. Count Lambert had walked away from quite a bit.

Count Herman was in Cracow, along with most of his household knights, attending his liege lord, Henryk. Somehow, word of my "military" exploits had reached Cieszyn, and the ladies of the court gave me a warm welcome.

They were noticeably less cordial to Krystyana. Count Lambert's . . . uh . . . chosen life-style was not appreciated by those fine women, and Krystyana was available to take it out on. Conversation was somewhat strained that afternoon. I kept trying to get Krystyana into the discussion, and they kept cutting her off.

The situation became worse when we were called to supper. I was to be seated between two spreading middle-aged women, and no chair had been provided for Krystyana.

"But surely you understand," my hostess said.

"Oh, yes. I understand." I was doing a very good job of containing my temper, but I understood entirely too well. "Mistakes happen all the time, even in the best regulated of households. Page! Someone forgot a chair for Krystyana. Bring one and set it next to mine."

"But my lord . . ." The rumors that the page had heard spoke of my killing twelve men in a single fight, each with a single blow. Angry with a blacksmith, I supposedly had chopped an anvil entirely in half. He had also heard an exaggerated version of the way Lambert and I had slaughtered pigs.

"Another chair. Right here." I pointed. I'm sure that my mouth was smiling, but I don't think my eyes were. A chair rapidly appeared, and after some shuffling, Krystyana sat down.

My actions caused more problems than I had intended. At Okoitz, the "share the spoon, share the cup" thing was reserved for holidays. In the castle at Cieszyn, apparently, it was for every meal. Adding one more person meant that everyone downstream of us suddenly had to change partners and that the woman at the end was all alone.

Oh, well. To hell with them! If they could be rude, so could I. It was all very well to give people fancy titles, but that's no excuse for snubbing a perfectly decent fourteen-year-old girl, especially one who happened to be my date.

"Sir Conrad," my hostess eventually said, trying to smooth things over, "please tell us of your adventures."

"Adventures? Well, I'd be happy to tell you about what I've been working on lately." I launched into a discourse on the finer points of animal breeding. I must have rattled on for ten minutes and was stressing the importance of counting eggs when I felt my hostess's hand on my arm.

"That's most educational, Sir Conrad. Was it really you who defeated the renegade Black Eagle, Sir Rheinburg?"

"I killed the lunatic if that's what you mean."

"Was he really insane?"

"I suppose so. People who go around attacking armed men in public generally aren't too sensible."

"And you felled him with a single blow, cutting his head in two, though he wore a helmet?"

"Look, there wasn't much time. I gather you like gory stories. I'll tell you how Mikhail Malinski lost his foot." And I told them, every bloody bit of it. Slewing and slaying on a battlefield were great fun to them, but tying off an artery was entirely too graphic. More than one person excused herself before I was done.

My hostess was a little green below the ears. "And he died in a bed in Count Lambert's castle?"

"It was easier to take care of him there. Krystyana and her friends are great nurses. Oh, did I tell you about our looms and spinning wheels? Krystyana and seven of her friends can take wool and turn it into twenty of your yards of cloth in a single day."

"Seven of her friends. Oh, dear."

The only upshot of this was that one of the guest rooms at Okoitz became "the bed where the peasant died," with something stupid and supernatural attached to it. In a way, it was beneficial because when higher-ranking guests arrived, none of them were eager to take that room. I wasn't bumped to the blockhouses as otherwise would have happened. Anyway, if Mikhail Malinski ever had a ghost, it would have been a good ghost.

Much later, our hostess suggested that Krystyana would be much more comfortable in the servants' quarters. The bitch still hadn't learned, and I was out of teaching techniques.

"Madame, that is hardly necessary. I have delivered my liege lord's letters, and we have enjoyed an excellent Lenten supper. Regretfully, duty calls and we must be off."

"But I had hoped—"

"As I said, it's regrettable, but I have my duty." I led Krystyana off to the stables.

"Page, I want our horses saddled and our personal effects gathered. Now."

The page made quick finger motions, and four men scurried off. In minutes we were riding to the postern gate, led by the page with a torch.

"But Sir Conrad, it's so dark out now," he said.

"Then I shall need the loan of your torch." I took it.

"There are thieves out there! It's dangerous."

"You're right, kid. Go tell the thieves to be careful."

Krystyana had been holding her feelings in all afternoon and evening. Once outside the gate, she bawled like the schoolgirl she should have been. There wasn't much I could do but squeeze her hand and mumble about things getting better.

I asked at a few taverns and was eventually directed to a decent inn, the Battle Axe. The room was big and clean, and ten pence a day for food, lodging, and care of the horses didn't seem all that bad. The innkeeper was overjoyed. I had forgotten to haggle.

"You understand that I will expect excellent service, food, and drink. See that our horses are well taken care of and send a large pot of good wine to our room."

"Yes, my lord. Of course, my lord." I later discovered that we were his only guests. Business was not booming in Cieszyn, and many who were willing could not find work. That people in Okoitz should be working sixteen hours a day and people in Cieszyn should be idle—and ill fed—offended my socialist morality. This place needed organization.

As soon as we were alone in our room, Krystyana threw her arms around my neck and started crying again. "Sir Conrad, I love you!"

"I hope not, pretty girl. I'm not the marrying kind."

"No, I mean, you don't have to but, I mean, leaving all those countesses and baronesses and ladies because of me."

"Hold it. I didn't leave because of you. I left because I was offended by their rudeness. Also, I had no intention of bedding any one of those overaged, overweight, and profoundly married women. And certainly not when there is somebody as sexy as you around. Now have some wine and settle down."

Sometime later, she said, "I love you anyway, Sir Conrad."

The next morning I sent Krystyana out shopping with one of the innkeeper's servants to keep her safe and see that she didn't get gypped. I tipped the woman a penny a day, and she was overjoyed. I gave Krystyana a hundred pence and told her to buy presents for her family and friends. Also a wedding gift from me to Mrs. Malinski and something for the carpenter and the count.

"But what could Count Lambert possibly want?"

"Dye. Dye for cloth. And if you can find a good dyer out of work, the count would like that, too."

I was pleased to discover that the bell casters I had come to Cieszyn to see lived directly across from the inn.

The bell foundry was owned and operated by the three Krakowski brothers—Thom, Mikhail, and Wladyslaw. It had been their father's business and had been a thriving concern until a year before, when the bishop's nephew, a German, had opened up a bell foundry in Cracow. New orders to the Krakowski brothers had stopped, and their melting furnace had been cold for six months. But the information came out slowly, and I got some of it from the innkeeper. The brothers were trying to keep up appearances.

The Krakowski brothers and I spent the morning talking. I talked about the huge bushings I would need—the bore was to be a full yard, and the outside flange diameter of the blade-end bushing was to be two yards. They were each to be a yard long. Modern roller bearings would have been a tenth that size, but I had no illusions about the quality the Krakowskis could give me. In working with inferior materials, you must make things big.

They talked to me about bell casting. They used the lost wax method. This is not an ancient "lost" technology, even though I once met a twentieth-century museum tour guide who seemed to think so; it's still being used when intricate, one-of-a-kind castings are needed. To make a bell, the brothers Krakowski first dug a pit. In the pit, they fashioned by hand, from clay, a male form shaped like the inside of the bell. They then took beeswax and made a wax bell over the form, carving in wax all the exterior decorations and, being somewhat literate, the lettering. Clay was carefully molded over the wax, and the whole was left to dry for a week. Then they built a fire in the pit, small at first but growing.

In a few days the wax melted, ran out of prepared holes, and burned. A few days later, the mold was hot enough for the pour. Having carefully measured the amount of wax used, the casters knew exactly how much brass to melt. After the pour, they broke off the clay and spent a few months "tuning" the bell by chipping brass out of the inside to get it to sound right.

"That's the trick, Sir Conrad," the youngest brother said. "The mold has got to be as hot as the brass or she'll crack, or the bell will crack."

The other brothers looked at him as if he were divulging guild secrets, and maybe he was.

"I'm familiar with the process," I lied. It was now past noon, and they had not offered me dinner. I thought about that—they looked more underfed than Lent alone would account for. "This is interesting," I said. "But I grow hungry. I would like to invite you and your families to dinner. I'm staying at the Battle Axe. Could you send someone to tell the innkeeper how many are coming? Have him let us know when it's ready."

They eagerly accepted my offer, and soon we were at a sit-down dinner for fourteen. There were no babies; all three had died in the winter.

As it was Lent, the meal was meatless: bread and oatmeal, pease porridge, and small beer. Even the children drank beer. Water was unhealthy, and cows would not start producing milk for another month. My guests ate a great deal under the watchful gaze of the innkeeper, who was hovering at the back of the room to make sure everything went right. We were his biggest sale in months.

These men had skills that I needed, and they certainly needed me. They needed socialism, and I was going to socialize them—within the framework of their own society, of course. I'm not the banner-waving, gun-wielding revolutionary sort.

"Excuse me, sir knight," the oldest Krakowski brother finally said. "But are you the Sir Conrad Stargard? The man who killed Sir Rheinburg?"

That business again? "Yes."

"Then we owe you gratitude. That German murdered our cousin Yashu. Killed him on the road when he was weaponless and penniless."

"I'm sorry about your cousin. The German was a madman, but he's dead now."

"Still, we owe you."

"You don't owe me anything. All I did was to stop myself from joining your cousin."

The innkeeper intruded. "Excuse me, Sir Conrad, you realize that serving fourteen is more than we agreed on."

"Of course. Put the difference on my bill."

"Yes, sir. That would be twelve pence."

Small talk at the table stopped. A penny for each meatless meal!

"Innkeeper, that seems excessive. I do not like to haggle, but if I decide that you are cheating me, you will lose my business." I said this quietly and calmly but without smiling.

"Yes, Sir Conrad." Beads of sweat suddenly dotted the man's forehead. When I eventually settled the bill, four pence accounted for that meal.

Later that day, I got their price for my bushings. It came to thirty-one hundred pence. Each.

"That seems excessive," I said. "Let's go over your expenses, and mind you, I intend to check these prices myself in the market."

The copper would cost eight hundred pence, and calamine, a compound of zinc, was three hundred and fifty pence. We had agreed, from samples that they had on hand, on a hard brass of about thirty percent zinc. The clay they dug up themselves, and they chopped their own wood by arrangement with a landowner. With transportation costs, those two items came to a hundred and fifty pence. The eye opener was the wax. It was a rare commodity, like the honey that came with it. The wax would cost eleven hundred pence, almost as much as the metal. The remaining five hundred pence for their labor and equipment did not seem excessive. Still . . .

Still, there was no reason why the molds themselves could not be cast off wooden forms. Both bushings could be made the same so that only one set of forms would be needed. Also, I would need four bushings for the upcoming "dry mill" that would grind grain.

In addition, I had hoped that more mills would be wanted by other landowners. We might need a lot of bushings. A lot of parts that I had planned to make of wood could be made better—much better—in brass: some of the gearing and the pump cylinders and pulleys. I wanted some fire-heated tubs for a laundry and parts for a threshing machine, and, well, all sorts of things.

"Gentlemen." They looked up in surprise at my use of the term. "Your prices seem fair for what you propose to do, but it happens that I know some less-expensive techniques. Not for bells, you understand, but for the kind of things I have in mind." As it turned out, in two years they were selling bells again. You had to choose from three standard sizes and had no choice of inscriptions, but they were half the cost of the Cracow bells.

"Now, then," I continued. "It is obvious that you are suffering under a burden of debt. It is also obvious that you have no security at all and that your families are hungry. I propose to purchase your establishment and pay you all a decent salary. I also intend to pay for a number of improvements around here. What do you think?"

"Well, that sounds fine, but there are guild rules . . ." said Thom, the eldest.

"What? I thought you were the only bell casters in Cieszyn."

"Well, we are."

"Then who is the guild master?"

"I am, actually."

"And these are your guild members?"

"Uh . . . yes."

"Then to hell with your damned guild! You are three brothers, and I am talking about hiring you."

"Can't the guild vote to disband?" the youngest, Wladyslaw, asked.

"But there's nothing in the rules—"

"And to hell with your rules! I, Sir Conrad Stargard, by the power granted to me by my sword, do hereby proclaim your guild null and void. Questions?"

Thom checked with his brothers. "No, I guess not."

"So. I'm not sure of local property values, but for your house and furnace and lands, does two thousand pence sound fair?"

I got enthusiastic nods from the younger two. The eldest said, "We also have certain rights and privileges to clay and wood, and two thousand pence would not quite cover our debts."

"Let's make it twenty-five hundred, then," I said. "I would not want my vassals to be suffering from debt."

"Vassals? You would take an oath?"

"Of course, and I would expect you to, also. All of you and your wives, besides."

"Our wives?"

"An oath of honesty and fair work. Your wives help you, don't they?"

"Yes, but—"

"I do not touch other men's wives. Now, what would you say to six hundred pence per year each, with two hundred pence to each of your wives? When your children are old enough to help, we'll discuss it. Agreed?"

The eldest looked about. "I suppose so."

"Good. I will pay half of your first year's salary in advance, since it appears that you need some things around here. You need some clothes, but don't buy a lot. The price of common cloth is about to drop."

"How can you know?"

"Let's say that I can smell it. In addition, since I want you to apply yourselves diligently to this enterprise, once all expenses, improvements, materials, taxes, salaries, and so forth are paid, you will divide among yourselves one-twelfth of the surplus." "Profit" is not a nice word for a socialist.

Their mute agreement had turned to enthusiasm.

"Good. Now go discuss the matter with your wives. Come to me while the sun is still high, for I want your oaths. I shall be at the inn."

I was only halfway through my first beer when the six of them showed up, smiling.

"Innkeeper, I want your whole staff in the courtyard. There are oaths to be taken!"

So we had a deal, and it was in this manner that I—I can't say nationalized, since I'm not a nation, but, socialized the Krakowski Bros. Brass Works. In doing so, I was acting again, playing the role of the shrewd merchant and dirtying my good socialist soul in the process. The thing needed doing, and much of being a man is doing the things that must be done no matter how unnatural or painful they are. Surely this was a small evil compared with the naked corpses I had left in a snowy wood.

I bought the beer, called for an honest scale, and weighed out the money I owed. When I had left Okoitz, Count Lambert had been distracted with the planting and hadn't mentioned money, so I had brought along twenty thousand pence of my own. I wasn't worried; the count was honest. You see, you must either trust a person or not trust him. It is stupid to rely on oaths or marks on a piece of parchment because a thief will rob you no matter what is written down, and an honest man stays honest—within reason.

I weighed out thirty-seven hundred pence in gold—the exchange rate of silver to gold being 54 to 1—which I gave to Thom. Then I weighed out another four thousand and told him that I wanted him to buy copper and calamine at the best possible prices. We needed a wood-carver, and I told him to find one. The other two brothers were ordered to go out and bring in vast amounts of firewood and clay and start making charcoal.

There was some consternation, and then it was agreed that the innkeeper would safeguard the gold until morning, since he kept an armed guard at night.

Chapter Eighteen

The party was breaking up as Krystyana returned. She was excited about her day's shopping in the big city. As supper was served, she prattled on and on about pins and churches and ribbons and merchants and the outlandish price of dinner. I was in a good mood and said little. I heard every detail of every bargain, and sometimes feminine babble makes a pleasant background noise to relax in. Eventually she wound down.

"That's wonderful, pretty girl. Did you buy anything for yourself?"

"Well, no. I mean, you said . . ."

"Then here's fifty pence to spend tomorrow on things that you want." This was greeted by squeals. "Did you have any luck with dyes or a dyer?"

"I looked at them, but dyes are so complicated, Sir Conrad. A pound of this one can do something, but an ounce of that one can do more and—"

Pounds? Ounces? I'd forgotten the metric conversions. "I understand. Any word about a dyer?"

"I heard of one, but they called him a 'walker' because he walks on the cloth being dyed. People said that they had heard of him, but nobody knew him."

"Well, then you know what to do tomorrow. Keep the serving woman with you from now on. I want you to look into the price of raw woolen cloth, the kind that you make on the loom. See if you can't find a merchant willing to buy, say, a thousand yards at slightly less than the present wholesale price, for delivery next spring." If I had to play the merchant, I thought that I might as well make some gain from it. My hands were already dirty.

"I'll try, Sir Conrad."

"And I know that you'll do a wonderful job. It grows late. What do you say? One more cup of wine and then to bed?"

* * *

The next few days were busy. Thom had located a copper merchant who wanted to sell out his entire stock and move to a better—more profitable—place. We could buy copper at half price, along with some calamine, lead, and tin, if we bought his entire stock. I looked it over and paid an additional 3,250 pence. They found an out-of-work wood-carver. I looked at his work in a few churches and swore him in at five hundred pence a year. I told him that he was now a pattern maker.

Clay and wood were coming in slowly, so I told the brothers that they should hire twelve men temporarily and keep the best four on a permanent basis.

Krystyana found her walker, a Florentine who had come north to seek his fortune and had picked up a fair amount of Polish while starving in Cieszyn. He claimed to be a journeyman dyer, but on questioning him I discovered that he had never completed his apprenticeship. He had also been apprenticed as a wool sorter, a comber, a carder, and a warper. He had some experience with linen that he preferred not to discuss.

He was thirty years old and a perpetual misfit. Or maybe a diamond in the rough. I had mixed feelings about the man. "Okay, Angelo Muskarini. It is good that you have finally told me the truth. As my liege lord is about to enter the clothmaking business, it is possible that we can use you. Perhaps you know something that will help him. Look long and hard before you criticize my loom or spinning wheels! Aside from that, if you can improve the quality or quantity of his cloth, you will be very well rewarded. If you do not produce results, we shall transport you back to your garret here at Cieszyn. Understood?" It was.

I swore him in for two years at one hundred pence per year, plus food and lodging. Then I put him up at my expense at the back of the inn for two pence per day. I advanced him three months' pay for beer and such just to see how he'd do. As it turned out, he saved most of it, barring a little he spent for clothes. Sometimes when a man has spent enough time between the hammer and the anvil, he turns into good steel.

Besides explaining to the Krakowski brothers about building patterns for molds, I had to explain about grinding wheels and lathes. It is not enough to cast a bushing. It has to be perfectly round, and that is not possible with casting alone.

The wood-carver, Ivor Korenkov, found himself instructing his new employers, and the days wound on.

Krystyana made the right commercial connection. She found a cloth merchant eager to deal. It was already arranged that he would buy some two thousand square yards—Cieszyn measure—of raw wool cloth for seven-eighths of the current price, twenty-three pence per square yard. We swore the agreement before a notary, who produced three copies: one for each of us and one for himself. We left one thousand pence each with a Templar as surety, and the deal was closed.

Days later, I was still busy at the foundry, but Krystyana had nothing else to do. The story of her rebuffs at the castle had already spread, and she was embarrassed by it.

"Pretty girl, I have one more job for you. Take Angelo and the servant woman—whatever her name is—"

"Zelda."

"Zelda, then. The three of you should go and buy one thousand pence worth of dye or whatever Angelo needs. Then I want you and Angelo to go back toward Okoitz."

"But just he and I alone?"

"I'll be with you as far as Sir Miesko's manor, and that's as far as you're going. We can send Angelo alone to Okoitz."

"Why send him alone, Sir Conrad?"

"Because I'm not sure if I trust him. If I've hired a thief, I'd rather find out sooner than later."

"Why trust him at all? I mean, why take a chance with thousands of pence worth of dye and mules?"

"I have to be able to trust him because he knows things that I don't. He could pull the wool over my eyes, and I wouldn't know it."

"Pull the wool . . ." She couldn't sort that one out. "Then why are we going to Sir Miesko's?"

"Because I want you to stay with Richeza for a few weeks. Remember what I said about her being a truly fine woman? Remember her grace and charm and the way everyone feels comfortable around her? Now, compare her with those 'ladies' at Cieszyn Castle and ask yourself what you want to be like when you grow up." She thought a bit and was suddenly in tears. Her arms went around my neck. "It's okay, pretty girl."

Two days later, we set out at dawn. I was fully armed and on Anna, of course. Krystyana was sidesaddle on her palfrey. Angelo followed on a mule, leading a second mule loaded with roots, bark, herbs, and sea shells.

We arrived at noon. Richeza was charming as always, and if she was offended by my intention to leave in a few hours, she didn't show it. Gossip about our adventures at Cieszyn Castle had already reached her, and she had the insight to invite Krystyana to stay with her before I had a chance to broach the subject.

Still, courtesy forbade my immediate departure, and it was midafternoon before I was on the road again for Cieszyn. "Well, Anna, do you think we can make it before dark?"

Anna nodded her head. She'd always had the disconcerting habit of nodding or shaking her head to questions, as if she actually understood what was said. She probably picked up some clue from my body language, like the famous Clever Hans, but it was still interesting to talk to her.

"Then let's see how fast you can go, but don't strain yourself."

She took off at a full gallop and kept it up for the better part of an hour. Finally, I starting worrying; a good horse will run itself to death if you ask it. I reined her back to a walk. "Easy, girl! You'll hurt yourself."

She shook her head no, took the bit in her teeth, and galloped the rest of the way back to Cieszyn. I dismounted at the city gates to check Anna over. She wasn't even sweating! An amazing horse.

A week later, I got word that Angelo Muskarini had arrived safely at Okoitz with his charge. I was vindicated.

More remained to be done at the brass foundry than I had thought. This business of working in a pit and baking the molds with an open fire was obviously inefficient and wasteful of fuel. We built an oven of clay bricks for drying and baking the clay molds. Eventually we were to build five more.

The lathe had to be huge, and it needed bearings that had to be built before the bushings could be turned. We had to build a small lathe in order to build a big one. The big lathe was too large to be hand-powered, so we built a big barrel cage at the headstock. A man got in this cage and climbed continuously uphill, turning the cage and the part on the lathe.

I was enjoying myself, but it was five weeks before I felt confident enough of the Krakowski brothers to return to Okoitz.

During that time, though I had done the right thing by sending Krystyana to Richeza's "finishing school," I began to suffer for it. When one has had a continuous supply of sex, abstention becomes difficult. I soon discovered that my knightly right to the use of young women did not apply within city limits, and one more visit to Cieszyn Castle convinced me that I wanted nothing there.

Look. I was quite willing to tolerate honest ignorance. Most of the people I had met in the thirteenth century had been brutally poor; they'd had no chance to improve themselves. But those women of the castle had absolutely nothing to do and expended an incredible amount of effort in doing it. They were wrapped up in stupid mind games, courts of love, and "he said that she said that they said . . ." nonsense. They placed an absurdly high value on the virginity of unmarried women and none at all on the chastity of those who were married.

In short, they offended my moral code and were not worth the bother.

There were prostitutes in town, and I tried one. She spent the first half of the evening wheedling me for more money and the second half on the streets after I threw her out.

Mostly, in the evenings I drank a lot. The innkeeper, Tadeusz Wrolawski, became my regular drinking partner. The Krakowski brothers were fine people, you understand, but it is not a good idea to socialize too much with one's subordinates. The role change from drinking buddy to willing worker becomes difficult if one must do it too often. Also, they had their wives to keep content.

"Socialism, Tadeusz!" I explained drunkenly. "This country and this century are in horrible shape because of the lack of socialism!"

"You are absolutely right, Sir Conrad! What is socialism?"

"I am glad that you agree with me, my good friend Tadeusz. All of this business of no work in Cieszyn and too much work in Okoitz and not enough to eat and no sewers and little babies dying can all be cured with a little technology and some organization."

"This sounds marvelous! What is a sewer?"

"All we have to do is to get things organized and apply a little appropriate technology. We have everything else. We have the manpower, and we have the materials. Give us nine years and we'll have things running right and beat the Mongols, besides. Have her bring us some more wine."

"Outstanding! What is a Mongol?"

"Eh? Mongols are little greasy yellow bastards that are going to ride in out of the east and try to kill everybody. They won't do it, though, if we get organized. Blow hell out of them with cannons. Brass cannons, maybe."

"These Mongols are like Tartars?"

"Same bastards. Change their name a lot."

"I have heard some horrible tales from traders from the east. They speak of whole cities put to the sword! Every man, every child, every animal! Not even the women spared for ravishing!"

"Yeah. Those are the bastards. But it's not going to happen here. We'll stop them. It's just a matter of organization. Caring about people. Technology. Socialism."

"You say 'technology.' What is this technology?"

"Why, technology is what I have going at the brass works across the street. New lathes, new ovens, better production processes."

"They certainly are prosperous, Sir Conrad! A month ago they were nothing but three starving men and their families with nothing to do. Now they work from dawn to dusk. Their wives have bought pigs and chickens and new clothes. They have hired a dozen new men!"

"See? Technology triumphant and socialism in action! Another mug of wine?"

"And this technology, it can be applied anywhere? Say, to an inn?"

"Well, of a sort. Technology is mostly sensible thinking about the problems you face. Now, your inn here. You've got a good building. Your rooms are clean. Your food is good, and you make good beer. All you seem to lack are the customers."

"What you say, at least the last part, is true."

"Okay. We agree that the physical plant is adequate. Now, what is the purpose of an inn?"

"Why, to provide food and drink and—"

"Wrong. Your customers could buy wine from a wine seller much cheaper than you sell it. You must buy from the same wine seller and pay your overhead besides. The same goes for food. The markets must be cheaper."

"But for travelers—"

"Transient business is fine, but you are not on a main street. Local business is more important. You must serve the people. There are what? A thousand men of drinking age in town. Maybe another thousand in nearby villages. If you could get a tenth of them to come here regularly, your success would be assured. Once the town's people came here regularly, the travelers would come, too."

"Yes, yes! But how do we do that?"

"Let me think." I didn't know much about managing taverns, but I had been in a great number of them in Poland and America. Some were bad and empty. Some were good and empty. Some were crowded whether they were good or bad. The biggest single factor seemed to be that people went to a given place because people were already there. Getting the first ones there was a matter of advertising—which was impossible in a world without newspapers or radios—and providing something interesting. Something different. I thought of the two or three best places I had found in Massachusetts. A combination of those.

A controls designer lives in a four-dimensional world. When things finally come to me, they come as a working, moving, solid whole. Only later do I string them out in serial fashion.

A vision crystallized in my sodden mind.

"Tadeusz, I know how to do it. You know my arrangement with the Krakowski brothers? Would you like to be socialized as well?"

"That I should be paid thousands of pence and a regular salary besides? Oh, yes my lord!"

"OK. Same deal, but I think your building is worth more than theirs. Say, 3,000p.?"

"Agreed, my lord!"

"Six hundred pence for yourself, yearly, and a twelfth of the surplus, with two hundred pence to your wife?"

"With honor, my lord!"

"Good. We'll swear you in right now."

"But the sun is not up."

"True . . . But there is a full moon and that is more appropriate for an innkeeper. Agreed?"

So, under the moon, with a sleepy chamber maid and the night guard as witnesses, I swore in Tadeusz and his wife. I picked up another pot of wine and we went back to the table. The first order of business was to settle up my present bill, which I did. Then I gave Tadeusz 3,400p.

"Our first rule is that since I own the place, I shall lodge here free. Keep one room open for my own use.

"The second change is the name of the inn. 'The Battle Axe' is entirely too stern. People go to inns because they need to enjoy themselves. We need a light, amusing name. We'll call it the 'Pink Dragon.' I have a wood carver across the street; he'll make a new sign.

"Then, this room is too empty and cavernous. People like crowds. I want some curtains to divide the room in half, another set to divide the front half in half, and a third set so that only the front eighth is exposed. You are to open a set of curtains only when the space before it is so crowded that people are bumping into each other. Understood?"

"Yes, my lord."

"All your present people are to be retained. No firing except for dishonesty."

"Ah. There is the matter of certain salaries being in arrears."

"None of that under socialism. They must be paid. Figure up the amount tomorrow. Oh, yes. We'll need an accounting system. I'll send somebody to keep the books for here and the foundry. You'll think it's a nuisance, but I insist on it. What else? Your pricing! This business of having to haggle over everything has to go. We'll have to work out a reasonable set of prices for everything. Then we post those prices, and they are the same for everybody. No exceptions."

"But what if one is conspicuously wealthy and—"

"No exceptions, not up or down. Then, entertainment. From supper until late, I want some music in here. A single musician at a time will do, and hire them for only a week at a time. See what people like. And waitresses; we'll need half a dozen of them. They must be well paid, since we want the best. Say, four pence a week with another eight pence set aside for their dowries. We'll have a turnover problem. We want the six best-looking maidens available. They must be pretty."

"What! You would turn my inn into a brothel?"

"To the contrary. They must all be virgins and stay that way. See to it yourself."

"My wife would object."

"Then have your wife see to it. Part of her job will be to see to their morality. They must live here at the inn, in some of your back rooms. Customers may look but not touch. See that they are properly barricaded."

"Look?"

"Yes. They'll need some special costumes." With a fingertip and wine, I sketched out what I had in mind on the worn wooden table. "We'll have to get the wood-carver and a leather worker to do the high-heeled shoes. I can show somebody local how to do the stockings, but later they can come from Okoitz."

"You want them dressed as rabbits?"

"The people will like it. Then there is the matter of advertising. It seems that I have considerable notoriety in Cieszyn, or at least my name does. I've been busy at the brass works, and I haven't met very many people here. But in a week or two, once we get this set up, I want you to hire some old women. They are to wander around and tell about how Sir Conrad Stargard, the killer of the Black Eagle, left the ladies of the castle to move into a notorious inn where beautiful women are scantily clothed. That should get some action going."

"It will get good Christians at my door with pikes and torches!"

"Good. Let them in. Sell them some beer. If they are really organized, let the leaders verify the virginity of the waitresses. No problem."

"Uh . . . all this is going to cost money, my lord."

"Right. Here is two thousand pence to cover it. Keep a careful reckoning. Well, it grows late. I bid you good night." I took the half pot of wine to my room. The full moon was halfway to setting. God, it was late.

The next day I overslept dinner and caught a late, cold breakfast in the kitchen. My head hurt, and I had these horrible thoughts about what I had done.

People were cold, people were hungry, the Mongols were coming, and I was wasting valuable resources starting a thirteenth-century bunny club. Oh God, my head hurt.

Thinking drunkenly with my gonads instead of my frontal lobes, I had screwed up again. I tried to leave the inn quietly, hoping to avoid the innkeeper, but no such luck.

"Sir Conrad! At last you are up; I was growing worried! I have followed your orders; already the word is out that I search for the six most beautiful maidens in Cieszyn! I have explained our need to the wood carver, and he will be available tomorrow. But he wishes, of course, to discuss the matter with you."

"Uh . . . Yes . . . I'll talk with him. You realize that for various reasons—our advertising and my relationship with my liege lord—it would be best if my name is not connected with all of this."

"But we must say, in rumors, that you stay here, my lord." Tadeusz really liked having a lord protector.

"Of course. But don't tell anyone that I have any ownership in the place. Swear the witnesses to secrecy."

"As you wish, my lord."

"Hey, the rumor campaign won't work if they know that I own the Pink Dragon."

"As you wish. I have talked with a seamstress. She will have no difficulties with most of the costumes—think; it will be like a continual carnival!—but she wants help with the stockings."

I didn't accomplish much at the foundry that afternoon, and when I got back for supper, the inn was packed. Word had gotten out that the most beautiful maidens in the city would be there. Fully a hundred young males showed up to see what was happening, along with some thirty young hopefuls. I was embarrassed, and the innkeeper expected me to do the choosing.

Stalling for time, I said, "Are you sure that all of them are virgins? Have your wife check it." I ate a meal and drank a pot of wine at the small table that had been reserved for me. I had in mind that his wife should simply ask them, but she felt obligated to actually check for an intact hymen. She passed fourteen of them. How many left because they were embarrassed, I don't know. Apparently, room and board was good wages for a maid. Twelve pence a week on top of that was fabulous.

"And now will you choose the six, my lord?"

Well, one of them was attractive, up to Krystyana's standards. The rest of them were hopeless ducklings, and I felt sorry for them. "No. Let the crowd choose one of them. You talk to them. Have them choose the best five, then the best two, and then a final vote." It seemed the fairest way, and it didn't get me involved.

"But only one?"

"Just do it all again for five more days. Remember what I said about entertainment? Well, this is entertainment."

They took in four hundred pence that night, and afterwards the crowds got bigger.

A week later, as I ate dinner, I got a visit from a local priest, a Father Thomas. I offered him wine, but he refused and immediately got down to business.

"I am worried about your actions, my son, and about your soul."

"But why, Father?"

"You have been responsible for the hiring of young women—virtuous, Christian women from good families—and parading them half naked in a brothel."

"A brothel? By no means, Father! They are waitresses at a good inn, which is the farthest thing from a brothel. They live most virtuous lives, on threat of dismissal! There is no convent that protects its nuns better than we protect our waitresses.

"Aside from the morality of it—and both the innkeeper and I are moral men—aside from it, I say, running a common stews would be bad for business. There are a lot of them in your parish, and they aren't very profitable."

"That others sin is well known. They are not the subject of this conversation."

"But why don't you try to do something about the real fleshpots? Why come to an honest inn?"

"The fleshpots, as you appropriately call them, are sanctioned by their own guild and to a certain extent by the law, if not by the Church. What you are doing is new and is best nipped in the bud."

"Father, we do nothing more than serve food and drink. The waitresses are pretty, but that's the way God made them, and I, for one, appreciate His good work. We do offer lodging, but we do not offer bed partners."

"You dress them in a manner that encourages lechery."

"We dress them in an attractive manner that fully covers their breasts and privy members. Any man wanting to see more may simply go to the public baths, Father."

"The baths have their own guilds and sanctions. The Church will close them down in time. You evade my charge of lechery."

"Father, it is normal for men to appreciate the beauty of women. If looking at pretty girls is a sin, then every normal male in Poland is doomed to hell!

"Please go and inspect the waitresses' rooms. Talk to the girls. Prove to yourself that we are moral."

"I fully intend to make such an inspection," he said, and left.

I was just finishing my meal, washing down my cheese with beer, when the priest returned.

"Sir Conrad, I admit that the situation is much as you described it. If anything, the girls complain of the restrictions placed on them."

"The price of morality, Father." I made a mental note to see just how serious their complaints were. "While you are here, there is another matter that I would like to discuss. One of our waitresses has become fond of a local boy. I have talked with him. His intentions are honorable and his character good. Since she is employed by the inn, it seems fitting that the inn should pay her wedding expenses. Would it be possible for you to perform the ceremony?"

"Why, I suppose that this is quite possible. In fact, I would be delighted."

"Wonderful! I expect that most of our waitresses will soon be married. Virtuous and attractive young ladies don't stay single for long. Perhaps we should discuss group rates." In the next hour, I made an ally of Father Thomas.

As he left, I said, "Father, how did you know that I owned the inn?"

"The Church has its own sources of information, my son."

It was early afternoon, and only one waitress was on duty. Troubled about the waitresses' complaints to the priest, I went back to the girls' dorm, what had been "the ducal suite," even though the duke never slept there. Actually, almost no one had ever slept there since it was priced beyond the means of the usual guest. It made sense to convert it. If it was more magnificent than necessary, well, young girls like that sort of nonsense.

I had arranged inexpensive group rates at a local bathhouse—early afternoons only—for the inn's staff, at the inn's expense. Our people were encouraged to take a daily bath, and the waitresses were required to.

When I called on the girls, the five of them were in various stages of undress, with a preponderance of full nudity. They let me in without bothering to dress. Perhaps their status as untouchables, along with their recent adolescent discovery that men noticed them and that they liked it, was the cause of this display.

I didn't like it. On the one hand, I could hardly break my own rules with regard to their virginity, and, well, a really decent man simply doesn't take a virgin in a casual way. I think that half the world's frigid women are the results of a klutzy male on their first night. Properly done, it takes patience and warmth and a great deal of love. Back in the twentieth century, I'd had two virgins. They'd both left me as wonderful lovers. I was rather proud of my workmanship.

But just then I was horny as hell. I had been three weeks without, and the last thing I needed was five pairs of budding nipples staring at me.

"Put some clothes on, damn it! You'd think we were running a brothel here!" I shouted.

They scurried to cover themselves with towels and blankets. "We were just back from the baths," one of them said. "We were hot."

"Yeah, sure. Fourteen years old and hotter than hell. Now, what are these complaints you've been making about your jobs?"

"Complaints, Sir Conrad? We have no complaints. The pay is wonderful, and the work, I mean, it's like being at a party," the short redhead said.

"Then why were you complaining to the priest who was here today?"

"Oh, that," said a well-endowed blonde, managing to drop her blanket below her belly button. "We were just doing what Mrs. Wrolawski told us to do."

"Cover your breasts. Now, what exactly did the innkeeper's wife tell you to do?"

"She said that if we didn't act as pure as nuns in a convent, the Church would shut down the inn and we'd each be lacking our twelve silver pence per week."

"She also threatened to send us to a nunnery if we weren't convincing," the redhead added.

So Mrs. Wrolawski had eavesdropped on my conversation with the priest and had set things up. Well-a-day. All's well that ends well.

"Okay. But put some clothes on, damn it!"

Most of the waitresses found suitable husbands within six months. The inn paid the wedding expenses, and there was always a "new hiring" the day after. This happened at least once a month and often once a week. For most of our customers, it was their first experience with voting. In my own mind, I could never sort out the morality of it all.

I had no difficulty with the morality of a situation that occurred much later that evening. The inn had closed for the night, but I was up in my room, drinking and doodling with some ideas about a gear-cutting machine. I do much of my best thinking late at night over a bottle. Oh, in the sober light of dawn I throw out three-quarters of it, but the quarter that is left is often very creative.

My room was directly above that used by Tadeusz and his wife. The cooks lived out, the waitresses were fourteen-year-old girls, and it happened that at the time there were no overnight guests. The only men in the inn were Tadeusz, the guard, and myself when the innkeeper's wife screamed. I was shocked sober in an instant.

"Guard!" Tadeusz shouted.

"Shout all you want. Your aging guard has been detained," a sinister, gravelly voice said.

There were more shouts, accusations, and then screams as I flew for the doorway, down the hall, and down the steps. I was wearing the embroidered outfit given me by Count Lambert, and my glove-leather boots made my approach fairly quiet, at least compared with the commotion coming from the innkeeper's room.

A beefy stranger was guarding the doorway. He had a long misericord, and I belatedly realized that I had left my sword belt in my room.

I am not a master of the martial arts, but I had taken the standard military courses in unarmed combat. The important thing is to hit hard and fast. Hesitation can get you killed.

The thug came at me with a clumsy overhand swing. I blocked his dagger with my left forearm and kneed him hard in the groin. He bent over, presenting the back of his head to my clenched fists and his face to my knee.

I took advantage of this opportunity; his nose and teeth gave way with a crunching sound. He fell heavily to the floor, still gripping his knife. I don't like people who pull knives on me in dark hallways, so I stamped hard on his knife hand. Too hard. The bones smashed, and splinters of knuckle bones were driven through the thin soles of my boot, lacerating my foot. Pain shot up my leg.

I picked up the misericord and limped into the room, ducking my head to get through the doorway. "What the hell goes on here?" I inquired.

Two Mafia types were in the room beside the Wrolawskis. The leader of the pair grinned evilly and said, "Just a bit of guild business, stranger. Get out and you'll live longer."

Tadeusz was bleeding from the nose and mouth. His wife's dress was torn, exposing bruised, aging breasts.

"They're from the whoremasters guild!" Tadeusz said, contempt and fear in his voice.

"If your business was honest, you'd come in the daytime," I said. "Now I'm telling you! Get out fast and you'll live."

The leader signaled to his subordinate, and the man came at me with a wide-bladed dagger. He used the same stupid overhand attack as his associate in the hallway.

The misericord is a long, narrow, thrusting weapon designed to pierce chain mail. I blocked the thug's attack as before, but this time at the expense of a slash in the embroidery on my cuff. Gripping him by the shoulder with my left hand, I aimed a gutting thrust at the man's stomach. He pulled his body back, and my knife continued upward, catching him between the chin and neck. The thin blade went entirely through his brain, and a few centimeters of it stuck out from the top of his head.

Over the man's shoulder, I saw the leader hauling back to throw a knife at me. With my hands still on the shoulder and the grip of the knife, I yanked the body upward as a shield. The dead man was much lighter than I had expected, or perhaps the fury of combat increased my strength, but in all events I bashed the thug's head into a low roof beam. The misericord stuck in the wood, and the corpse hung there, the leader's knife in its back.

The leader came at me with his fists, but his sort of hoodlum lives more by fear than by fighting ability. Equally weaponless, I hit him twice, hard, in the stomach.

"Sir Conrad!" Tadeusz shouted.

Suddenly the Mafia type froze, rigid. I was too furious to stop; grabbing him by the shoulder, I chopped viciously with the edge of my right hand, once on each side of the neck, breaking both collar bones.

"Sir Conrad?" the man gasped, his arms hanging unnaturally low.

"Yeah." I was breathing hard.

"The noble knight that killed Sir Rheinburg with a single blow?"

"Among others." I was returning to normal.

"I knew him, sir."

"You look the type."

"We had heard rumors that you were associated with this inn, but the whoremasters guild felt—"

"Well, you felt wrong." The noise had awakened the waitresses, and they were clustered wide-eyed around the doorway. One had a blanket wrapped around her, but the rest were naked.

"Those girls are servants, not whores," I said. "We have nothing to do with the whoremasters guild."

"Yes, sir. That is obviously true, sir."

"So?" I said.

"I may live, sir? I may leave?"

I had to think for a minute. "Yeah. You can live. But you damn well owe us for damages."

"Of course, sir. We always pay our just debts."

"Tadeusz," I said. "What do they owe you for what they've done to your property, for the injury caused to you and your wife?"

"Who can say, Sir Conrad?" the innkeeper said. "But is this wise?"

"Name a number!"

"Perhaps five hundred pence?"

"Good," I said. "Okay, whoremaster. You owe us five hundred pence, not to mention the mess you've made on the floor and the fact that your thugs cut up and bled all over my best outfit. Get out!"

"As you command, Sir Conrad Stargard." He left with as much dignity as he could muster.

"Are you insane, Sir Conrad?" the innkeeper said. "Now they will come back!"

"I doubt it. That kind knows when it's licked."

"But they will! Girls! Quickly! Run to Sir Conrad's room. Bring back his weapons and armor!"

Six naked teenagers scurried off, the one with the blanket having dropped it in the blood pooling under the body that was still stuck to the beam.

"At least bring my wine!" I shouted. I dropped heavily into a chair. The action was over, and I was starting to get the shakes.

I got my wine, but shortly six pretty, nude girls, at Tadeusz's insistence, were stripping off my outer clothes and lacing me into padded leather and chain mail.

"This is stupid. They won't be back," I said, but I was wrong.

Once I was fully armed, we searched out and found the inn's guard. He had a huge knot on the side of his head and was bound, gagged, and furious. He smiled at the corpse stuck to the ceiling, and when the other thug started moaning, he took particular pleasure in tying the man up.

"Yes," the guard said, gripping his sword. "Let them come back."

"Hey," I said. "If you people are that worried, why not send for the count's guardsmen?"

"Certainly, Sir Conrad," the innkeeper said. "But who would dare go out into the night?"

"Oh, hell. I'll do it myself," I said. "And have these girls get some clothes on. They act like this really is a brothel!"

"And leave us defenseless?" one of the girls squealed.

"Shit." I sat down and took a long pull of wine. There was nothing for it but to wait until they all calmed down and went back to bed. Anyway, my injured foot was throbbing.

The girls were passing out knives from the kitchen, which was absolutely stupid. If you don't know how to use a weapon, you are much better off without it.

In their excitement, they had forgotten my instructions to get dressed. Or perhaps running around naked with knives seemed more adventurous to them. Mrs. Wrolawski, who usually kept them in check, was sitting, stunned, on her bed.

She hadn't even made an effort to cover her bruised breasts. Her husband was sitting in the other chair in a blue funk, blood still dripping from his nose. The guard was looking for an excuse to kill somebody, the girls were working out a set of heroic passwords, the body was still stuck to the ceiling, and my foot hurt.

Damn, what a lunatic night! My mother told me I should have gone to the beach.

There was a knock at the door.

Everyone in the room froze. Even the previously murderous guard was suddenly sweating.

"Never mind," I said. "I'll get it."

I limped down the hall to the main door. One more piece of insanity and I was going to scream. I did take the precaution of drawing my sword before opening the door.

"Ah. Sir Conrad Stargard, I believe," said the well-dressed gentleman before me. "Please note that we come unarmed and with goodwill. We wish to make amends for certain unpleasantries that occurred earlier this evening."

There were six of them, two men and four women. They presented Tadeusz with a purse containing five hundred pence, removed the dead and wounded men, and, with buckets of warm, soapy water that they had brought with them, cleaned up the blood on the floor.

"These, of course, are yours by right of combat," the gentleman said, presenting me with the newly cleaned misericord, the wide-bladed knife, and the leader's throwing knife. All three were sheathed. He must have brought the leader's sheath with him.

"Certain other amends will be made at the earliest opportunity. In the interim, I wish you a pleasant sleep and our assurances of our continued goodwill."

And they left.

"That's it, gang. Back to bed," I said, and took a long pull of wine.

A week later, a messenger delivered to me four complete outfits, all beautifully embroidered and one almost an exact duplicate of the one that had been damaged. He also brought a red velvet barding for Anna and a matching surcoat for me, both embroidered with gold thread.

All of it fit perfectly. I never found out how they got the sizes, but I was never again troubled by the underworld.

Chapter Nineteen

I needed quite a few brass castings for the wet mills.

There was the gearing between the small, compensating windmill and the turret. I had originally envisioned a collection of wooden cog wheels, but a brass worm gear was a lot simpler and more efficient.

A worm gear is simply a screw—the worm—with threads that fit into the teeth of a gear. The problem is that for them to mate properly, the shapes of both the worm and the gear get very complicated. They were well beyond our ability to machine; they were probably beyond my ability to describe mathematically.

I spent an evening drinking and pondering the problem in my room. The taproom below was always too crowded and noisy to think, and even in my room enough noise seeped up from below to be disturbing. I finally hired a krummhorn player to sit in the corner and play softly. Muzak.

The next morning, I had Mikhail Krakowski make up an oversized worm and gear out of clay. This was done crudely, by hand and by eye. The teeth were very deep, and the clay was built up around turned brass mandrels to assure concentric bearings. When dry, we fitted these together in an adjustable wooden frame. The fit was poor at first, but it was possible to turn the gear by turning the worm. We then put a man to cranking the worm gently and adjusting the teeth together as the unbaked clay wore away. In three days, they were much smaller and a perfect fit. We then fired the clay worm and gear, and these became our master patterns for brass castings. This gearing gave us a 48 to 1 reduction between the small windmill and a shaft that connected to the turret. The shaft turned a lantern gear that worked on pegs set into the fixed tower. As a result, the small windmill turned 1,152 times in the course of rotating the turret once. I hoped it would be enough.

One by one, problems were solved. The bushings had been cast, one with sockets to hold the windmill blades. These bushings were being turned laboriously on the big lathe. Two more smaller lathes were under construction. We were confident that all the parts necessary for the wet mill would be ready for delivery to Okoitz in a month.

I was getting ready to return to Count Lambert when I heard an awful squealing from the foundry. I rushed over and was stopped by Wladyslaw Krakowski.

"My brother! My own brother called me a lazy pig!"

"I called you a lazy pig because you are a lazy pig!" Mikhail explained. The squealing was still going on.

"All right! But I'm a tired lazy pig, and walking in that barrel on the lathe is no fit job for a man!"

They were still arguing when I pushed past them and went to the lathe. Thom was operating it. Inside the barrel an unhappy pig was trotting madly, trying to climb the rotating wall. A brass ring in the animal's nose was tied to a wooden stick such that if it stopped running, its nose was pulled.

I stared at this for a while. Using a pig as motive power was strange, but a pig is a strong animal, and its short legs let it work where no horse could possibly fit. Would our future machines be rated in pigpower the way Americans use horsepower?

I suppose it was hard on the pig, but I can think of nothing worse to do to an animal than killing and eating it, and I am not about to become a vegetarian like Adolf Hitler.

Thom moved the stick back so that the pig could stop. "The speed control," he said. "I think we'll have to switch pigs about three times an hour. It's cheaper than men, though."

I could see that it was time to go back to Okoitz.

I was in the saddle when the innkeeper brought me a stirrup cup and a pouch of gold. "Seven thousand pence, my lord. Your profits for the first month of the Pink Dragon," he said.

I thanked him and rode off. Seven thousand pence in a single month! That was twice what I paid for the place, back salaries and all! Well, it would keep the foundry going no matter what else happened. If I couldn't get land of my own, that foundry might be all that stood between us and the Mongols.

Anna seemed inordinately proud of her new red velvet barding. She held her head high with her neck arched and walked with a gait she'd never used before. It was a sort of hopping thing, with her left front and right rear hooves hitting the cobblestones at the same time. I guess it was impressive because a lot of people came out to watch.

But it was rough on my lower back, and as soon as we left the city gates, I urged her into a more comfortable gallop.

She ran the entire way to Sir Miesko's manor, again without working up a sweat.

Krystyana greeted me, but at first I almost didn't recognize her. Her actual appearance hadn't changed, except that she wore her hair differently. But something about her bearing, the way she held her shoulders back, the way she glided instead of clumping along like a gawky adolescent . . . But there was more, much more. Something that I couldn't quite define. Somehow, a pretty duckling had turned into a swan.

"Welcome, Sir Conrad. I've missed you." She had the same calm smile that made Lady Richeza so radiant.

I was home.

* * *

I hated to leave, but I was worried about my projects at Okoitz so we set out the next morning. Halfway to Okoitz, we met Sir Miesko on the road.

"Sir Miesko! It's delightful to see you again. We have just come from your manor, and all is well."

"That relieves my mind, Sir Conrad. In truth, I worried about Richeza all winter. For my own part, I have sent Boris Novacek on his way to Cracow with half a dozen mule skinners, seventy-five mules, and a gross of barrels of wine."

"And how are things going at Okoitz?"

"Amazing! Your loom and wheels are turning out cloth by the mile, and that huge mill of yours is half up!"

"Half up! I've stayed too long at Cieszyn."

"All seemed to be going well. But aren't you being rude, Sir Conrad? You haven't introduced me to your lady."

"But you already know her. Surely you haven't forgotten Krystyana."

"What? Damn, but you're right! But her bearing, her poise—"

"It's entirely your wife's doing, Sir Miesko. Krystyana visited her for a month, and you see the results. I didn't think to buy a present for Richeza, but if you want a loom and some spinning wheels, or even the fittings for a mill, you have only to ask."

"I might just take you up on that, for you have gained a prize of great value. But now I am anxious to see my wife again, so I bid you good-bye, Sir Conrad, and you, my Lady Krystyana."

As Sir Miesko rode away, Krystyana looked at me. "He called me a lady!"

"You'd rather be a gentleman?"

"Of course not! But surely I'm only a peasant girl."

"Well, you'll always be a pretty wench to me, Krystyana."

"He acted as though I was of the nobility!"

"So, noble is as noble acts. Come on, let's get going."

"But I'm not noble, am I?"

"Do you expect to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a sword? I don't know if there is a ceremony for elevating a common woman, but as far as I'm concerned, you can be whatever you want to be. Let's ride."

The mill was nothing like half done, but good progress was being made under Vitold's supervision. The "basement" for the lower tank had been dug, and the new well was in. Most of the upright logs had had their sides flattened, and some of them were already in place. All according to plan. The main shaft was finished, ready for the brass collars, but here there was a discrepancy. I had assumed that the cam would be a separate piece, but Vitold had cut the cam and shaft out of a single log more than two yards across! I had allowed an extra yard in diameter to provide room for clamping the cam to the shaft, but single-piece construction let him reduce the cam diameter from three to two yards while still giving a meter's travel on the follower wheel at the end of the A-frame.

This in turn permitted raising the top of the clean tank half a yard, increasing its volume by sixty tons of water. Also, the turret could be lowered by half a yard, saving materials and work. It was an excellent improvement. Now if I could only teach Vitold to read blueprints!

"You're doing a good job, Vitold."

"Thank you, Sir Conrad. We're way ahead of where I thought we'd be. It's these axes you showed Ilya how to make. The old axes needed sharpening every hour, but since he treated them, they last for days!"

"Hmm. Good. Tell Ilya to come to me the next time he's free."

"I'll tell him when he gets back, Sir Conrad. He's been gone for a week getting supplies."

The count's hall was humming with activity. Natalia and a girl I hadn't met were running the loom at a remarkable pace, and six other "handmaidens," most of them new, were spinning busily. Eleven huge bolts of cloth were proudly stacked in a corner, and the girls all seemed to be having fun.

Five of the count's knights were in attendance, but the count was out with a party making the rounds of his lands and the manors of his knights. The journey was partly social, visiting his subordinates; partly economic, to ensure that things were managed well; partly judicial.

The knights and barons had the right of low justice, that is, jurisdiction over offenses punishable by fines, flogging, and up to a year's forced labor, subject to the count's review. The count reserved for himself the right of high justice, and his word could have a man hanged. For eight months of the year, he was out riding circuit half the time.

Except for Sir Stefan, who was still making himself unpleasant on my behalf, the knights were essentially a decent lot, if somewhat extroverted. They tended to spend their afternoons in fighting practice, their evenings in heavy drinking, and their mornings sobering up.

I spent some of my afternoons with them, but they were slow to pick up on fencing, and I wasn't worth much with a lance and shield.

Evenings were like being back in the air force again. They were especially pleasant since Sir Stefan had the dusk to midnight guard shift. We sang songs, told stories, and swapped lies with boisterous good humor. Yet I always had to watch what I said so as not to violate my oath to Father Ignacy, and much of their conversation revolved around hunting and hawking, of which I was ignorant. Then, too, they were very heavy drinkers. While I like to drink, too much of it spoils lovemaking, and sex doesn't give you hangovers.

Following local custom, the knights had left their wives at home to manage things. There were now a dozen ladies-in-waiting, six of them new since Mary and Ilona had been pronounced pregnant and married off. This left us with plenty of variety, although Krystyana was still the best-looking of the bunch.

The other knights were courteous to Krystyana, but at bedtime they paired off with other girls. After a few nights, I got to sleeping with Krystyana regularly even though there were quite a few I hadn't sampled. I just didn't want her feelings hurt.

* * *

I looked up Angelo Muskarini, the Florentine walker.

"You have strange things going here, Sir Conrad."

"How so?"

"You told me not to criticize your loom and spinning wheels. Your loom looks crude, but it makes more cloth—and faster—than any that I have ever seen. And your spinning wheels are amazing! They make a hundred times the thread that a distaff can!"

"Better than the wheels in Florence?"

"There are no spinning wheels in Florence, nor any in Flanders, either. This is a new thing under the sun!"

Huh? I'd thought that they had spinning wheels in the thirteenth century. Oh, well. "I'm glad that you approve. So what's so strange about our goings-on?"

"Because, Sir Conrad, you are doing everything else entirely wrong! You have the finest methods for spinning and weaving that I have ever seen, but you aren't even sorting your wool! Your ideas of combing and carding are a joke, and no one here has ever heard of warping, or dyeing, or fulling!"

"Well, we're new at this. Talk to Vitold and Ilya about any special tools you'll need and figure out what you'll need in the way of dyeing vats and so on. The count wants a dozen looms going by winter, which means a dozen of our six-station spinning wheels. We'll need enough of the rest of this stuff to keep them fed. How are you doing for dyes and other chemicals?"

"I have plenty for now, but with a dozen looms—"

"Figure out what you'll need for a year and we'll place an order with Boris Novacek. I still owe him a favor."

I spent some of my time watching the mill go up, although Vitold really didn't need any help. Mostly I worked on the scale model of the dry mill.

The basement of that mill was to be eight yards deep and insulated with two yards of sawdust. It was to serve as an icehouse, a communal refrigerator. Come winter, two-thirds of its volume was to be packed with snow, the rest in storage shelves. According to my crude estimates, the snow should last at least twelve months. We would be able to store some of the vegetables and meat from the next harvest through the winter.

In external appearance, the dry mill looked like the wet mill, except the circular work shed was missing. The only attendant building was to house a threshing machine. The dry mill's construction was lighter, because it didn't have to support twenty-five hundred tons of water.

Internally, it was designed quite differently. The ground floor had a huge, three-yard grindstone, which was turned by a shaft connected to a ten-yard solid wheel just below the turret. Four circles of carefully placed vertical pegs rose from the wheel, and on the shaft above it were eight matching rows of radial pegs. The shaft was offset by a yard from the center line of the mill. Between these sets of pegs was a movable lantern gear with sliding concave brass rollers to mate with both sets of pegs. By moving the lantern gear, the miller could get four different speeds, both forward and reverse.

The space between the gears and the stone was mostly taken up by twelve grain hoppers. Each had a chute at the bottom to direct grain to the hole in the top of the stone. Outside, a system of pulleys and dump buckets filled the hoppers.

One of the knights, Sir Vladimir, seemed to have some mechanical ability. He got interested in the model and started helping me with it. After we had worked together for a few hours, I asked, "What's wrong between you guys and Krystyana?"

"Why, nothing. Everyone has been most polite to her."

"You've been polite, but you haven't taken her to bed. Do you think that I have some exclusive right to her?"

"No, it isn't that. It's just—oh, I don't know."

"But she's the prettiest one there."

"I know, but—well, it just wouldn't seem right. She doesn't act like a peasant girl. You don't just grab a lady and drag her to your room—"

"I've never seen a wench here who needed dragging. Anyway, you know she isn't noble. Her father is a peasant right here in Okoitz."

"I know, I know. But you've asked me and I've answered you, so let's let the matter drop," he said. "Now, explain again why it is necessary for the rollers on the lantern gear to be able to slip sideways."

After about a week of monogamy on my part, Krystyana sort of withdrew. I put this down to feminine moodiness and continued my sampling for a week.

Ilya the blacksmith returned with five men and fourteen pack mules loaded with hematite, a red iron oxide. A small placer mine some thirty miles away made a limited amount of bog ore available. Ilya had spent much of the winter preparing to make charcoal from the branches of the trees we had cut, but somehow I had never realized that he actually made his own iron out of ore and fuel.

To make charcoal, Ilya and his helpers cut and split wood, which he piled in a single huge stack. As soon as the weather broke and the ground thawed enough for digging, the stack was covered with a full yard of dirt. Only a small hole was left at the top and an even smaller one at the bottom. Then he lit the stack. Over the next few days, he dug sampling holes to see how the burning was progressing. When the wood was completely charred, he filled in all the holes, let the fire smother, and went off for iron ore.

"Got a hundred pairs of hinges that I promised people, Sir Conrad, plus I figure you'll need some iron for that thing." He gestured toward the half-completed mill.

"You're right, Ilya. Later on we'll talk about a saw blade. I saw those axes you made. Nice work. I'm amazed that you made so many of them in only five weeks."

"Five weeks? That didn't take me five days! Those are the same axe heads we used last winter, only I cemented them. Cementation didn't change the shape of the iron bars I made into steel, and the old axe heads already looked like axe heads. I took the handles off and put them in the count's last pickling crock with plenty of charcoal and heated it up. Didn't go a whole week, though. A kid I had keeping the fire going fell asleep the third night, and the crock was cold in the morning. I still haven't found the bastard; he's been hiding from me. But those axe heads hardened up all right, so I guess it's okay."

"Congratulations, Ilya. You have just invented case hardening. What you have is steel on the outside and iron on the inside. Not a bad thing for an axe."

"Heh. Thought it might be something like that. This saw you want, does it have to be steel?"

"It sure does."

"Then you better find me some more clay pots. There is not one left in Okoitz, and the cooks are not happy. Neither will be the count if he gets a taste for sauerkraut."

"I know just the place. There's a brass foundry in Cieszyn where they use a lot of fire clay. Some of the workers should be coming here in a few weeks to deliver fittings for the mill. I would have sent an accountant to them by now, but I think I need the count's permission to swear the kid in. Maybe you know him, Piotr Kulczynski."

"Know him! That's the bastard that let my fire go out. You're going to be shy one accountant if I find him!"

"Not a chance, Ilya. You hurt that kid and I'll hurt you. Like I said, I need him. Anyway, he taught you something about steel, so call it even."

"Well, seeing as how it's you asking, I'll let the kid off. I'll be busy making iron for a month, but after that I'll need those crocks."

Ilya actually made wrought iron in the same crude forge that he used for everything else. He layered charcoal on the bottom of his forge higher than the nozzle of his bellows. Then he carefully put lump ore on the side away from the bellows and more charcoal on the near side until the forge was heaped high.

He started a fire and worked the bellows gently for two hours, adding a mixture of fine ore and charcoal as the mass in the forge was consumed. Then he called for assistants, who worked the bellows hard. After three hours of this, constantly adding ore and charcoal, he dug into the burning mass with large pincers and pulled out a glowing spongy mass.

This was immediately placed on the anvil, and three burly men beat on it vigorously with sledgehammers. Ilya kept turning the mass so that it was shaped into a crude rod.

When the rod cooled, it was put back into the fire; another spongy lump was fished out, and then the process was repeated. Two men were still working the bellows and adding ore and charcoal.

Each rod was pulled and beaten and reheated four times before being set aside to cool. By the end of the day, six men working twelve hours had consumed forty kilos of ore and two hundred kilos of charcoal. But they had made less than ten kilos of wrought-iron bars.

"You know, Ilya, once we get the wet mill built, we'll have machines to work the bellows and a trip-hammer to beat your iron. We'll build you a bigger forge, and you'll be able to make ten times the iron working alone."

"Bellows that work themselves? Hammers that swing on their own accord? You might as well tell me that fishes can fly!"

"I know of one that does."

"Sir Conrad, if you hadn't been right about steel, I'd call you the greatest liar in Christendom. As it is, well, you tell me what you want and I'll make it. But I'll believe those hammers and bellows when I see them!"

* * *

Krystyana was still acting standoffish, so finally I asked her about it.

"Sir Conrad, it's not that I'm putting you off, it's just . . . oh, you'd call it a superstition."

"Try me, pretty girl."

"Well, it's something that Lady Richeza told me about."

"Yes?"

"Well, she said that if you count the days after your . . . your time and sleep alone from the end of the first week to the middle of the third, you won't get pregnant. I know it's silly, I know it's superstitious, but I don't want to get pregnant and I don't want to marry a peasant and I don't want to be old at twenty and dead at forty and—" She was in my arms, crying uncontrollably.

Once I got her calmed down, I said, "Don't worry, pretty girl. You don't have to be anything that you don't want to be. As to this abstention during certain times of the month, well, in my country it's called the rhythm method, and the Pope has approved it. It works most of the time."

She cried some more, and after that I settled down to a program of fifteen days a month with Krystyana and the rest of the time spreading myself around.

I had a model of the cloth factory built by the first of May. We were running out of room in the bailey, so I made it a three-story building, as high as the church.

The top floor, with a high, peaked roof, was filled with a dozen looms. The middle floor held the spinning wheels and the combing and carding equipment. The ground floor was for washing and dyeing, with additional space for storage. I added a treadmill-powered lift to carry materials up and down.

I wished that I could have done something about windows, but glass was hideously expensive. Even a few small glass windows would have cost more than the rest of the building put together. The lack of glass or decent artificial light was serious. It cut our available man-hours by a factor of three at least. Poland is at a high latitude. In the summer, it can be light for eighteen hours a day. But in the summer, except for two months after planting, most people had to spend most of their time in the fields.

In the winter, nothing could be done in the fields. There was often less than six hours of daylight, and that was useful only to those who worked outside or next to an open window. Oil lamps burning animal fat were hard to work by, smelly and expensive. The animals of the thirteenth century were skinny, and fat was scarce. In Cieszyn, a kilo of fat sold for twice the price of a kilo of lean meat.

Farming occupied six months out of the year. Two months in the late spring were available for other work, but without a good source of light the four winter months were largely useless.

Although electric lights were out of the question, kerosene lamps were possible. The world's first oil wells were drilled in Poland by Ignacy Lukasiewicz, who built the first petrochemical plant and invented the kerosene lamp. But I saw no possibility of getting our technology to that level in the next five years.

Beeswax candles? It would take thirty candles to light the factory poorly. I estimated that it would take six hundred beehives to produce enough wax to keep them burning all winter.

In short, I was designing a factory that could be operational only two months out of the year.

When I explained the problem to the count, he solved it in moments in his own typical way. He simply told each of his 140 knights to send him a peasant girl or two from just after Easter to just before Christmas. The girls were paid in cloth, and everybody was happy. But I get ahead of myself.

Chapter Twenty

Count Lambert returned on the morning of May 1, which was yet another holiday. With him were about thirty knights and a number of dignitaries, one of whom was Sir Stefan's father. I thought it best to leave Lambert with his guests until I was summoned.

In the early afternoon I was watching an archery competition; the peasants were shooting at targets about fifty yards away with a skill that was about equal to that of modern archers.

Suddenly, Count Lambert was standing beside me. "Well, Sir Conrad, are you going to teach us the proper way to shoot arrows?"

"Not I, my lord. But I know a man who could."

"Indeed? And who is this man?"

I told him the story of how Tadaos the boatman had shot the deer.

"A single arrow into a deer's head at two hundred yards from a moving boat? You saw this yourself?"

"Yes, my lord, and helped him eat the venison."

"Hmm. I could use such an archer to train others. Could you get him here?"

"I could write Father Ignacy and ask him to tell the boatman of your needs. Perhaps he will come."

"Do so. I will affix my seal to the letter. Now then, I have talked to this Florentine cloth worker you sent me. Does he really know his trade?"

"I think so, my lord, but we won't know until we see his cloth."

"Hmm. You swore him to yourself. Would you transfer his allegiance to me?"

"Gladly, my lord. I engaged him for you. But could I ask a favor in return?"

"Name it."

"There's a boy here, Piotr Kulczynski. I would like him to swear to me."

"Certainly, Sir Conrad, if the boy and his father are willing. In fact, as long as someone is not sworn to me, you really don't need my permission. Even sworn, a man always has a right of departure, provided his debts are paid. What do you want with him?"

"He's a bright kid, my lord, and has picked up accounting very quickly. I want him to keep an eye on some commercial interests I have in Cieszyn."

"Do these commercial interests include ownership of the Pink Dragon Inn?"

"Yes, my lord. Do you object?"

"Not in the least. It's just that some remarkable rumors have been circulating about your adventures in Cieszyn. Did you really seat one of my peasant girls at the head table in my brother's castle?"

"Yes, my lord. I'm sorry if I've offended you, but—"

"Sir Conrad, my only objection is that I wasn't able to see the expression on his wife's face." He laughed. "That bitch has always hated me.

"Well, come along. I want to introduce you to my liege lord, and I want you to explain your mills and the new cloth factory."

As we entered the castle, Sir Stefan was talking heatedly with his father. I couldn't hear them, but twice he pointed at me. As my American friends would have put it, the shit was about to hit the fan.

Duke Henryk the Bearded was one of the most remarkable men I had ever met. He was almost seventy years old, and his face was cracked and wrinkled like old timber, yet his back was straight and strong. His thick white hair brushed his shoulders, and his thick white beard was huge. It was wider than his chest and extended below his sword belt.

But more important than his appearance was his—I don't want to say aura, because that implies something mystical, and this was an immensely practical man—but a feeling of power was almost tangible about him, as if, had he decided to walk through a wall, the wall would have apologized and scrambled out of his way.

Even more impressive, though in a totally different way, was his son, who would eventually be called Henryk the Pious. Young Henryk was just over forty and approaching the height of his powers. He could read and write and did a lot of both—rare among the nobility. Whereas the father was a tough politician, the son was a prince, every centimeter of him. His bearing and his look and his tone of voice were a chant that said, "Duty, justice, order, and restraint; honor, vigor, and discipline."

We looked each other in the eye, and I knew that this was a man I would follow into hell, fully confident that he could lead me out again. I had found Poland's king and my own.

Henryk the Bearded looked at me and said, "So, you are Sir Conrad the Giant. I have heard much about you."

"I hope nothing too bad, my lord."

"Mixed. But all of it is impossible, so most of it is lies. Your loom works faster than anything the Walloons own. They brought nothing like your spinning wheels. Now, tell me about these mills you're building."

The mill tower was now up, the tank floors were in, and the circular shed was completed. Work was under way on the turret. With the five-story-tall structure and my two-meter models, I was able to explain what I was doing, yet their questions kept me hopping. Our two visitors might be statesmen and warriors by profession, but they were not stupid when it came to technical matters. They went over things point by point almost as thoroughly as Vitold did.

After the mills, we started on the cloth factory. The looms and spinning wheels were already understood, and I referred them to Angelo the Florentine when they asked about the dyeing vats and the combing and carding equipment. They jumped on me when it came to the washing line. After all, everybody understood washing.

"Why twelve tubs? Why not one big one?"

"A single big tub would have to be brass, with a fire under it. Using a dozen small tubs, only two tubs need to be heated. The rest can be of wood. Also, wool needs not only to be washed but to be rinsed several times. With a single tub, we would not only have to heat three tubs of water for each batch of wool, we would have to throw away a lot of cleanser with the rinse water."

"Explain that."

"We call this the reverse-flow system. The wool moves from north to south along the line of tubs. The water moves from south to north, overflowing from one tub to the next. The water comes in cold and clean and goes out cold and dirty. The wool comes in cold and dirty and goes out cold and clean."

I could see that I wasn't getting through.

"Let's follow some wool as it goes through the tubs. Dirty wool is dumped into the first wooden tub, and a worker stirs it with a wooden fork. The water is only warm, and it's dirty. Most of the cleanser has been consumed, but some dirt is easily removed. Excess water goes out this drain, and fresher water flows in through this pipe from the second tank.

"The wool is scooped up and into the second tub, and more raw wool is dumped into the first. In the second tub, the water is hotter and cleaner.

"This goes on until the sixth tub, which is made of brass. It is set in stone, and there is a fire beneath it. The water is very hot. Cleanser is added here.

"The seventh is the first rinse tub. The water is warm, and cleanser that is washed off the wool flows with the water into the sixth tub.

"Tubs eight, nine, and ten are additional, progressively hotter rinse tubs. The eleventh tub is also of brass and is heated boiling hot.

"The twelfth tub contains fresh, cold water. Its purpose is to cool the wool while warming the water before it flows into the boiling rinse tank.

"The washing line is followed by these draining and drying racks."

"Hmm. So the same water is used many times, and fuel is saved. Interesting."

The reverse flow is one of those beautifully simple things that were invented remarkably late. It was first applied to heat exchangers in the 1930s and was Albert Einstein's major contribution to engineering. Since then, it has been applied to hundreds of industrial processes.

"Sir Conrad, you keep saying cleanser. Aren't you using soap or wood ashes?"

"Soap is a boiled mixture of ashes and grease. The wool already has grease on it. It is what we are trying to remove. Raw ashes have a lot of solid particles that would make the wool dirty.

"Instead, we leach the ashes first. We put them in a barrel with a cloth bottom and run hot water through them. The water that drips out contains sodium hydroxide, lye, which is a stronger cleanser."

"So there is a worker at each tub?"

"Probably not, my lord. Working all day over the two boiling tubs would be arduous. We plan to have each worker follow a given batch of wool up the line."

This grilling went on for hours before Duke Henryk called for beer and I could slake my very dry throat. We were seated in the count's hall.

"Sir Conrad, as you have described the washing line, it seems to me that it can wash more wool than your wheels can spin."

"True, my lord. It will be free much of the time for other things. Washing clothes, for example."

"You have explained what you are doing but not why you are doing it."

"Why make cloth, my lord? So that people can wear it!"

"No. I mean, you are a foreigner among us. What do you want? Is it money?"

"I have plenty of money, my lord. More than I want for myself. And I am not a foreigner. I know that my accent is strange to you. I grew up in . . . another place. But all of my ancestors were Poles, and I am a Pole, and this is my country."

"Indeed. I am told that you may not discuss your place of birth, and I will not press you. But why are you doing what you are doing?"

"Because Poland is divided and backward and weak! Because our people are cold and hungry and illiterate! They die like snowflakes touching a river.

"And because the Mongols—the Tartars—are coming! They want to kill all our people and turn our fields into grazing lands for their war-horses!"

"Calm yourself, Sir Conrad. It is good that you are concerned with the lot of our people. These mills, these looms of yours, they are good things. I will see that their use is encouraged. But as to the Tartars, why, Genghis Khan died five years ago, so why worry about them?"

"Genghis had sons, and his sons have sons. They will come."

"When?"

"In nine years. A little less than that."

"Hmm. You know their plans so far in advance?"

"They will come, my lord."

"If you believe that, then why are you wasting your time on these peaceful pursuits? Why are you not building weapons of war?"

"I will build weapons, my lord. But who will use them? In Poland now it takes a hundred peasants and workers to support a single fighting man, a knight. When the Mongols come, they will come with every man in their tribes under arms. By numbers alone they will overwhelm us. My machines will give all the people the time and the weapons to train for war. Poland can survive only with a citizen army!"

"You would arm commoners? That would upset the social stability."

"You are right, my lord. But there is nothing as stable as a dead man. He just lies there and doesn't move at all."

"You are a strange man, Sir Conrad the Giant."

And so I was dismissed. As I walked away, I knew that I had blown it. I had gotten so wrapped up in technical details that I had forgotten what it was that I should have been trying to accomplish. I was like the engineer who became so involved in fighting alligators that he forgot that his job was to drain the swamp.

It didn't matter what the duke thought of my mills and factory. They were already being built, and he would not be likely to stop them, no matter what he thought.

The important thing I needed was his approval on a grant of land. Without my own land, everything I had done so far would be trivial.

And I had come across like a lunatic prophet of doom! I couldn't have done worse if I'd been carrying a sign proclaiming the end of the world.

I was in a black mood when I learned that the Krakowski brothers had arrived with a packtrain loaded with my brass mill fittings. City folk didn't pay much attention to most of the country holidays. When there was work to be had, they worked. The collars were so big that they had to be slung between two mules each, like sedan chairs.

I called Vitold, Ilya, and Angelo away from a sort of soccer game and introduced them to the Krakowski brothers. We discussed our mutual needs: the fittings for the dry mill, tubs for washing and dyeing, axles and bushings for wheelbarrows.

Fortunately, the Krakowski brothers understood my technical drawings, and I had a thick stack of parchment for them to take back.

It took Vitold a long time to grasp what a wheelbarrow was all about, but he agreed to make a gross as soon as the sawmill was done. They would help in getting in the harvest.

Then there were the clay crocks for Ilya's steelmaking. The brothers agreed to make them but insisted on understanding the cementation process. They already had the clay and the charcoal and the ovens. They were impressed by Ilya's axes and wanted to get into the cementation business themselves. I gave them my blessing.

They had the idea of casting brass into molded clay forms and a hint from me about stacking up small clay forms and casting many objects at once. They were already selling belt buckles and door hinges by the gross.

I called over Piotr Kulczynski and swore him to fealty before the group. It took a while to make the brothers understand that Piotr was not their boss—they could run their business as they saw fit—but they were expected to keep him informed on all financial transactions, and he would be reporting to me.

It was understood that Piotr was to live in my room at the inn and keep the inn's books as well. I gave him a letter to the innkeeper confirming this.

Finally, Thom Krakowski brought up a delicate subject. Despite the fact that they were working for me, I had agreed that they should get one-twelfth of the profits of their work. He therefore felt that I should buy the present fittings and the order I had just placed, just to get it on the books so that they could figure up their bonus. I would get much of this back as my profits for ownership.

I had to agree that this was fair but stipulated that they would be paid from the surplus from the inn. This was agreed on.

Their bill came to 19,500 pence.

It was growing dark, so I invited all present to a quick meal in the count's kitchen. We were halfway through the meal when Lambert came in.

"Sir Conrad! Where the devil have you been? There was a high place for you at supper that stood empty!"

"I'm sorry, my lord. I didn't know that I was invited. The brass mill fittings came in, and there was much to discuss."

"I saw the brass. I've never seen so much brass in one place in my life! You paid for all this?"

"Well, yes, my lord. When I left for Cieszyn, you were distracted with the planting, so I thought it best to take my own money along."

"But you agree that the mills are mine?"

"Of course, my lord."

"Then I owe you your expenses. What were they?"

"The present fittings, plus those for the dry mill, the tubs for the factory and the dye, the mules, and the Florentine came to . . . uh . . . about twenty-three thousand pence."

"Twenty-three . . . Come talk with me in my chambers, Sir Conrad."

When we got there, he said, "Twenty-three thousand pence is a huge amount of money, Sir Conrad."

"Yes, my lord."

"Hmm. You wouldn't wager on your chess playing. Would you wager on your mill? I would bet you that your wet mill doesn't work. Double or nothing. Do you agree?"

"If you wish, my lord. But I'm stealing your money. The mill will work."

"We shall see. For now, come to the hall. People want to meet you. I should mention that throughout supper Sir Stefan and his father, Baron Jaraslav, have been damning you to all and sundry for a warlock and a witch! I believe they've called you everything but a Christian."

"Sir Stefan? But why isn't he on guard duty?"

"One of his father's other knights is doing his stint so he can be there to blacken your name. I don't like my vassals acting this way. I know it's not your fault, except had you been there they wouldn't have been so blatant about it. What the duke thinks is anybody's guess."

As we entered, Lambert whispered, "Here we go. Keep your temper!"

As we walked into the hall, conversation was suddenly muted. People had been drinking and socializing after a feast. Now half of them were staring at me, and the rest were obviously trying not to.

Bluff it through! I thought, shouting to myself. You can do it, you can do it—I think I can, I think I can, I think I can . . . Head high, smiling, I swaggered in at Lambert's side, almost convincing myself that I wasn't scared.

Sir Vladimir saved me. Cutting through the crowd, he said, "Sir Conrad, what's this I hear about your attacking six thugs from the whoremasters guild and killing the lot of them?"

"Just lies, Sir Vladimir. There were only three of them, and I believe two lived."

A knight I hadn't met said, "You were completely unarmed when you attacked?"

"Well, yes. You see, there wasn't much time. A friend was in trouble, and had I gone back for my sword, well, who could tell what would have happened?"

"A friend of the whoremasters guild? Was she pretty?" a third knight said.

"Hardly. It was a he. The innkeeper of the Pink Dragon, although his wife was also being abused."

"But how was it possible for one unarmed man to defeat three with knives?" the second knight persisted. An interested crowd was gathering. Except for Lambert's ladies, this was an all-male group. They were all professional fighters, so by their standards anybody talking about bloodshed and mayhem had to be all right. I was winning! "It wasn't three at once," I said. "I was able to get them one at a time."

"But even one man is hard to believe."

"Okay. Hang up your cloak and I'll show you." As I've mentioned, I'm no black belt, but I did learn a few simple throws in the service. With the sheath on his knife, we went through a few judo throws in slow motion.

I didn't actually reenact my fight in the hall of the Pink Dragon. I wasn't sure how these knights would react to kneeing someone in the groin, and I wanted to play the good guy. The first time you find yourself lifted into the air in judo is a memorable event, and it looks impressive. Three or four of them lined up to try me. The others were watching and drinking. I was becoming socially acceptable.

"You see," I said to a fellow in blue who was lying at my feet. "Had I thrown you down hard, you would be momentarily stunned. I could do all sorts of things to you. I could stamp on your chest, for example."

"Try me," a voice said from behind me.

I turned to find myself facing Duke Henryk the Bearded. "My lord it . . . it doesn't seem fitting," I stammered. Good God. He was my boss's boss, and he looked to be seventy years old. Not your usual judo partner!

"Try me," he repeated, holding his knife high with his right hand.

"Yes, my lord." Taking it slow and watching carefully to see that I didn't hurt him, I started through the same throw that I'd shown the others.

"Hold!" he said. I froze.

I felt a sharp prick at my ribs. Looking down, I saw that the duke held a dagger in his left hand. Where it had come from, I didn't know.

"What do you think now, Sir Conrad?"

"My lord, I think that had I met you in that dark hallway, I would be a dead man."

The room exploded in laughter, but it was laughter of a friendly sort. It was no dishonor to be bested by one's superior.

Contented, the duke sheathed his knives—one in his boot—and walked away.

The evening went well, I thought. Sir Stefan stayed to one corner of the room with his father and a half dozen knights. Sir Vladimir told me that they were the baron's liegemen. No hope of support there! I avoided them and circulated.

Conversation that evening centered mostly on hunting and hawking, so I didn't have much to contribute. Krystyana was a perfect hostess, and a lot of her newfound poise was rubbing off on the other girls, especially Janina, Natalia, Annastashia, and Yawalda. They were treated cordially, but they got a lot of side glances.

Later I found myself standing with Lambert and the duke.

"It's an interesting thought you've brought up, Sir Conrad," the duke said. "That it is possible for an unarmed man to defeat one who is armed."

"My lord, please understand that I am not a master of unarmed combat. I'm hardly an apprentice. I certainly believe that in a fight one is much better off armed. It is just that a warrior should remain a warrior even if he's naked."

"Interesting. You say you believe the obvious. Is there anyone who doesn't?"

"I've met one, my lord. He insisted that weaponry was unimportant compared to mental attitude and training. He was a master of the martial arts, a black belt from Japan."

"Ah, yes. It is said that you have traveled widely."

"Yes, my lord. Perhaps more widely than you can imagine. But I made a vow—"

"I know, son, and I won't push you. Still, a man must think. You, Lambert. Where do you think our Sir Conrad has come from?"

"My lord, I had not intended to speak on this, but since you ask, I must answer. Know that I have been watching this man carefully since Christmas. I have pondered long as to his origins, and I am confident that my guess is the right one."

"Then what is it?" the duke asked.

"I think that he is an emissary from Prester John, the Christian king of that most distant and fabulous empire."

Naturally, I was astounded by this. I'm not sure that I kept my jaw from sagging. Prester John!

"Remarkable," the duke said.

"Think about it, my lord. We have here a deadly knight who is distressed by the sight of blood. A master of the technic arts who didn't know how a smith makes iron. A man who treats warriors and children just the same. Where else could he have come from but the most civilized empire in the world?"

"Sir Stefan would say that he came from the Devil," the duke noted.

"There has been bad blood between them, my lord. I have explained—"

"So you have. But why would Prester John send a man to us?"

"Perhaps because of the Mongols," Lambert said. "It is said that they have conquered half the world. Perhaps they press him and he is in need of aid."

"Then why didn't he send an emissary instead of an engineer?"

"Perhaps he did, my lord. Whatever Conrad's instructions were, well, I've explained the gist of his oath."

"So you have. Well, Sir Conrad. It grows late. We are hunting tomorrow. Will you join us?"

"I would be honored, my lord." I don't like blood sports, but hunting at least has the virtue of putting meat on the table. Anyway, when your boss's boss invites you, you go.

The duke and Lambert drifted away.

We were to hunt for wild boar and bison, the misnamed buffalo of my American friends. There were, of course, wild bison in thirteenth century Poland. They still exist in modern times on carefully tended game preserves.

I sent word to the Krakowski brothers to go home and take Piotr Kulczynski with them.

The next morning at dawn, I was on horseback with armor and spear, along with two dozen other knights. The duke sent me back to get my shield, since this was also part of the paraphernalia required.

As we rode out, young Henryk dropped back from the front column and rode at my side. "A remarkable coat of arms, Sir Conrad."

"Indeed, my lord?"

"A white eagle on a red field. That is very similar to the insignia of the dukes of Poland."

"Consider it a symbol of Poland, my lord."

"And the eagle wears a crown. Do you claim to be a king?"

"No, my lord. I'm saying that Poland needs a king."

"Hmm, 'Poland is not yet dead.' " He read my motto. "Are you saying that Poland is dying?"

"It's lying in a dozen pieces, my lord. That's a fair start."

"You know that my father and I are working to unite those pieces."

"I know, my lord. When you weld them back together, I will change my motto."

He laughed. "Done, Sir Conrad! In ten years I'll watch you paint out that motto yourself."

"Gladly, my lord. But do it in nine."

We stopped for an early dinner and then spread out at two-hundred-yard intervals to sweep through the forest, driving the animals toward the mountains. Lambert was on the far right, and my station was next to him, with Sir Vladimir to my left. They had deliberately put me between two experienced hunters, which was fine by me.

After a few hours I found myself facing a large bull bison a hundred yards away. Anna immediately broke into a gallop. Anna was trained to pass to the right of a charging knight so that one's spear went over the horse's neck at the knight to the left, but it was easier to use a spear on the right if one had to strike downward. I signaled her to pass on the left. The bison charged at us, not to slightly miss, as a knight would, but directly at us, to ram!

I was bracing for a crash when Anna abruptly sidestepped at the last instant. Surprised, I managed to get a slashing cut into the animal's shoulder. It was bleeding, but it was not mortally wounded.

The bison had had enough and took off at a dead run, angling in front of Lambert. Anna, of course, raced behind it.

"After it, Sir Conrad!" Lambert shouted, and blew a signal on his horn, which I didn't understand. I'd been given a hunting horn, but I didn't know how to use it.

Anna was faster than the wounded bison, but he was built lower to the ground than we were, and he knew it; he charged through the thickets and under low branches. We lost sight of him.

I found tracks along a game trail and followed them for half an hour. By now we were into mountainous country and the trail seemed to lead between two cliffs, about two hundred yards apart, into a valley beyond. The valley contained about a square kilometer of flat land and was devoid of bison, wounded or otherwise. We worked our way up the sloping walls toward the bald mountains above, but it was soon obvious that I had lost the animal.

I was tired, and Anna probably needed rest, although she didn't show it. I dismounted, took a long drink of water from my canteen, and gave the rest to her. I sat down and fell another yard into a hole.

It was not actually a hole but a cave, and the floor sloped downward at a forty-five-degree angle. I was sliding on my back, headfirst into the darkness. My shoulder hit an obstruction. I yelled and flipped over and skidded on my armored belly, feet first, for about twenty yards and then hit water. The cave was narrow, only about a yard across, and had I still been going headfirst, I might have ended my story right here, by drowning.

As it was, I was able to wedge myself between the walls and work myself out before I ran out of air. Climbing up in slippery armor was a miserable job, but I managed it. I looked around. It was not a natural cave at all but an abandoned mine!

When I finally got out to greet my anxious horse, I threw myself on the ground, exhausted.

Shortly, I heard a horn blowing from the entrance of the valley. I got up, managed to get a squeak out of the horn slung on Anna's saddle, and then sat down again, carefully avoiding the hole.

Count Lambert rode up. "Sir Conrad, what are you doing up here?"

"Trying my hand at drowning, my lord."

"Drowning on a mountainside with no water in sight? By God, you are all wet! Another of your arcane arts?"

"No, my lord. I simply fell down a mine shaft."

"Ah, yes! I remember that shaft. It was dug in my grandfather's time. They used to dig coal out of it and burned limestone from that outcropping to make mortar."

"The coal seam ran out?"

"No, there's plenty of coal down there. But when you have two men mining and thirty more passing water buckets, there's not much profit in it. That mine is full of water."

"I noticed, my lord."

"Well, we got your bison two miles to the east. You followed a day-old trail up here. I gather that you don't know much about hunting."

"No, my lord. I've never hunted before in my life."

"There are a lot of things that you don't know much about. Since we're alone, it's time we discussed them. I'm talking about Krystyana."

"What about her?"

"Understand that playing a joke on my sister-in-law is one thing. Encouraging a peasant girl to take on the airs of the nobility is quite another. Aside from the offense this gives my other vassals—yes, and my liege lord! Do you realize that Henryk asked me why I had a noblewoman working like a servant?—aside from that, have you thought about what's to become of her? Is she going to be content to settle down as a peasant's wife?"

"No, my lord. She wouldn't be."

"Do you plan to marry her yourself?"

"No, my lord."

"Then why have you encouraged her to rise so far above her station?"

"Well, she's a good girl, an intelligent girl who wanted to better herself, and I didn't think—"

"That's just it! You didn't think! What's more, it's spreading. Three or four of the others are starting to imitate her. You started this, Sir Conrad. What do you plan to do about it?"

"I don't know, my lord." He was right, of course. I'd set the poor kid up for a nasty fall. I'm good with technical stuff, but I am not a wizard when it comes to people problems. Best to change the subject. "You know, if there is still coal in this mine, I could build pumps to empty the water. We could make mortar here again."

"Ah! I see where you are leading. That would take you out of Okoitz, and you could take the girls with you. Well, why not? You've given my workmen projects that will take a year or two to complete, and it's time you had your own lands, anyway. What if I gave you this valley and the land for a mile around it?"

"A mile, my lord?" God! He was giving me some eighteen square kilometers of land!

"You are right, of course. This soil is rocky and poor. You'll need more. The top of that mountain is the boundary of my brother's land. We'll make that your southern boundary. We'll extend you to Sir Miesko's land on the east and to Baron Jaraslav's on the north and west. That will give you lands about six miles across. You should be able to eke out a decent living on it, in sheep if nothing else. In return, let's see. I'll want you to come to Okoitz for two days a month to oversee your improvements there. And if you get this mine working, I'll want a hundred mule loads of mortar a year. Agreed?"

"Yes, my lord. You are most generous!"

"Good, then it's settled. Leave tomorrow and take the girls with you. Now let's return to the hunting party."

"Will the duke approve your grant?"

"That is a very good question. I don't know."

I had taken first blood on the expedition, which was apparently some sort of honor even though Sir Vladimir had actually killed the bison. All told, the knights took four bison and six wild pigs.

The meal that night was braised pork—sort of a shish kebab—and bison stew.

Because of the first-blood thing, I was seated at the high table between Lambert and the duke. I was the only mere knight up there. All the rest were at least barons. Baron Jaraslav sat to the duke's left.

The high table was just that. It was a third of a yard higher than the rest of the collapsible trestle tables in the hall. We had a correspondingly higher bench to sit on.

Krystyana and company did the serving. Once the meal was well under way, Lambert announced that he was minded to grant me a fief but that it required the duke's consent to be binding. While Lambert spoke, Sir Stefan was in the crowd, talking angrily to the knights at either side. Apparently, he had again found a substitute for guard duty. Then Baron Jaraslav began muttering in the duke's ear.

Lambert outlined the proposed boundaries of the fief. As he finished, Stefan struck his stein on the table so hard that it shattered, spraying beer over a dozen knights. "You'd grant that black warlock lands adjoining ours? Damn you!" he shouted.

The room was suddenly totally quiet.

Lambert turned and struck Stefan with an icy stare. I'd seen many facets to Lambert's personality, but never before that of a cold, deadly killer. "You would raise your voice to your father's liege lord?" Lambert asked in the silence. There were swords in his voice.

"I—I spoke rashly, my lord."

"Yes, you did."

"I . . . apologize, my lord." Stefan knew he was in trouble. He came from his bench and walked stiffly to the front of Lambert's table. He went to his knees and made a full Slavic bow, with forehead touching the rushes on the floor. "I regret my words and beg forgiveness, my lord."

"Sir Stefan, this is the second time your temper has offended me. A true knight knows his place and his duty at all times. He does not give way to fits of temper. You need some cooling down. Perhaps some additional meditation in the evening air will help. I extend your tour of guard duty by an additional three months, from now until Michaelmas. On the night shift!

"Go now and stand your post."

Sir Stefan rose stiffly. "Yes, my lord." He left without a word. The room was silent after he left.

"Well," the duke said after a bit. "Returning to the matter of my consent of this grant, I must think on it. The thing is perhaps being pushed too quickly, but you will have my answer before morning. For now, Lambert, can you provide music?"

The peasant band had been waiting in the kitchen and was soon performing. The music didn't help me a bit. I've never been much good at waiting.

I couldn't help overhearing Baron Jaraslav's advice and comments to the duke.

"To allow evil into our own ranks . . . foreigners taking the lands of our fathers . . . worse than the Duke of Mazovia inviting in the Knights of the Cross . . ." The duke's replies were inaudible, but my stomach tightened and I wasn't able to eat much. I drank more than I should have, but I stayed on beer so as not to get too drunk.

When the meal ended and the tables were being taken down, Baron Jaraslav and the duke went to the duke's chambers.

"I think it doesn't look good," Lambert said to me. "Perchance I erred in punishing Sir Stefan, but, damn, a lord has to maintain discipline."

"I appreciate your aid, my lord. If this doesn't work out, perhaps we'll think of something else."

"I've thought on simply having you develop that mine on my own lands, just as you are building the mills. We could work out some informal arrangement. But it would border on my deliberately circumventing the wishes of my liege lord."

The knights who had been on guard duty at Okoitz had learned the waltz and polka and were demonstrating them, with the ladies' help, to our guests. They called me to join them, but I was too tight. It almost hurt to smile. During a lull in the music a page summoned me to the duke's chambers.

With a profoundly acid stomach and no Alka-Seltzer due for seven hundred years, I followed him up the steps.

On entering, I bowed low.

"Sit down, boy. I have things to ask you. First, I want to know more about this guise. Whom did you make this vow to and where can I find him?"

"He is Father Ignacy Sierpinski, at the Franciscan monastery in Cracow, my lord."

"I will talk to this Father Ignacy. My second question is, Why do you want this land? From what I've heard, you know as little of farming as you do of hunting."

"I want the land so I can build an industrial base."

"A what?"

"Hear me out, my lord. You have asked me why I wasn't building weapons. I intend to build them. I can make armor that no arrow can possibly penetrate. I can make swords as good as the one I carry. Have you seen what it can do?"

"I've heard stories. Go on."

"I can build weapons that roar like thunder, strike like lightning, and kill your enemies half a mile away.

"And I intend to make these arms and armor by the thousands. By the hundreds of thousands if I can."

"A hundred thousand suits of armor? Why, I doubt if there are fifty thousand knights in all of Poland."

"Not the knights, my lord, the peasants."

"And just how do you suppose that a peasant could afford armor?"

"Obviously they can't, my lord. The arms will have to be supplied to them."

"Do you expect me to pay for this?"

"Of course not, my lord. I will have to do that myself."

"I know that you are wealthy, Sir Conrad. But even your wealth could not equip a hundred men, much less a hundred thousand."

"I said I would make the weapons, not buy them. The money I have will get me started. After that, I will have to come up with salable products to meet expenses. Mortar and bricks, certainly. Perhaps pottery. Cookware, pots and pans. Maybe even glass. At this point I am not sure of specifics, but I know it can be done."

"Very well. If we assume that you really can build such arms and that the peasants will wear them, it is still useless. A mob of peasants, no matter how armed, is still a mob. Fighting men could cut them up regardless of weapons. Believe me. I've seen it too many times."

"Training is necessary, of course. But techniques exist that can turn a bunch of farmers into a fighting unit in four months' time. I've been through it myself, my lord."

"Indeed. What does all this have to do with my original question? Why do you want that land?"

"I need to have someplace to do these things. I can't do it in the cities. The guilds would never permit me the innovations that I will have to introduce."

"You did well enough with the guilds of Cieszyn. You abolished one and have another touting to you."

"My lord, that business with the whoremasters guild was simply stupidity on their part. I never wanted anything to do with them. As to the bell casters, they were only three brothers who were starving to death. I wouldn't have that kind of luck in Cracow.

"I can't do it here. These people are primarily farmers. I need full-time craftsmen."

"I see. You are dismissed, Sir Conrad."

Shaking slightly, I went back down to the party and drained two mugs of beer.

Shortly, I saw Lambert being escorted to the duke's chambers. A thorough man, the duke.

The party was breaking up. It must have been approaching midnight, because I saw Sir Vladimir stumble out to relieve Sir Stefan. He hadn't been at the feast, and from the looks of him he had slept in his armor.

The duke came down and looked at me. "There is more to gain than to lose. I'll be watching you, boy, but you can have it."

I came close to fainting.

Privately and somewhat curtly, the count informed five adolescent girls that they were leaving with me, the ones he thought were acting above their station in life. That night Krystyana was happy and excited about the coming adventure. She didn't realize that she was being thrown out.

I didn't regret my actions. I intended to raise a million bright kids "above their stations," and damn these Dark Age rules!

Yet personally, I was somewhat sad. I had been happy at Okoitz, but my job there was done. Good things must end, and perhaps the future would not be so bad.

For a penniless immigrant who had arrived only six months before, I had done fairly well. We now had the start of a decent school system, the beginnings of a textile industry, and the glimmerings of an industrial base.

If the seeds I'd brought worked out, we had the makings of an agricultural revolution.

We had steel, a fairly efficient brass works, and a profitable if embarrassing inn.

And now I had a hundred square kilometers of land to work with, land that would someday be the industrial heart of Poland.

It was a magnificent challenge, but still, leaving is a sad thing.

Interlude Three

Tom pressed the HOLD button.

"Enough for today. They're waiting the banquet on us, but I'd hate to make them hold the ballet."

"Okay," I said. "But first tell me what went wrong."

"Wrong with what?"

"With Conrad's plans. He seems to be an intelligent, competent engineer. He had the backing of the authorities. He had raw materials and a good work force. Where did he fail?"

"What makes you think he failed?"

"Well, he had to fail! He's trying to start the industrial revolution five centuries too early, which obviously didn't happen."

"Ah, the catch is in that word 'obviously.' Son, I've been showing you this record for a reason. You know that subjectively I'm over eight hundred years old. There are limits to what even our medics can accomplish. You are ninety now, and I think you're mature enough to get involved with the firm's decision-making processes.

"But decisions shouldn't be made without complete information, and for us there's never a reason for anything to be rushed. Time, after all, is our stock in trade. Let's go eat."

"But—"

"But nothing! You want to keep the dancers waiting?"

As we left for the banquet hall, Tom put his hand on my shoulder and said, "What tickles me is the way Conrad keeps on talking about building socialism while at the same time taking all of the actions a nineteenth-century capitalist would approve of. Buying businesses, making them profitable, reinvesting the money . . ."

The High-Tech Knight

Prologue

He unloaded the temporal canister, glanced quickly at his new subordinate, reloaded it with his previous superior, and hit the retrieve button. That had to be done quickly. Holding the canister in 2,548,950 b.c. was expensive.

He examined her frozen, nude body. It was just over four feet tall and skinny. The skin was dark brown, the hair black and tightly curled, the breasts small yet pendulous. An excellent imitation of a type twenty-seven protohuman. The biosculptors had done a good job.

He switched off her stasis field.

Her eyes opened, she stared shocked at the stalactites on the ceiling of the cave. She noticed the naked brown man bending over her, noticed her own nakedness and yelped, covering her breasts and groin.

"Yeah, the uniform here is a bit skimpy." He chuckled. "The protos haven't invented clothes yet, so what can we do? Hey. Don't look so shocked. I'm not going to rape you. You're not my adolescent fantasy any more than I'm yours."

"Damn it! I have five doctorates!"

"I'm sure your mother is very proud of you. Are any of them in finding carrion or grubbing for grubs? Anything else isn't very useful around here."

She glanced furtively at the cave's rock walls, at the torch that was its sole illumination.

"What is this place? When is it? And who are you?" She was still clutching her groin.

"You weren't briefed? This is anthropological research station fifty-seven. The time is half past two million b.c., and I am your charming host, Robert McDougall. I'd tip my hat, but you see the problem. The tribe here calls me 'Gack,' so you might as well, too. No point in being formal when you're naked. I'll be your boss for the next fifty years."

"Fifty years . . ."

"Right. Then I go home, a new chum arrives, and you get to be boss for fifty more."

The cave was cold and wet. She shivered. "This is all some horrible mistake!"

"How can there be a mistake? You replaced the asshole I used to work for. Not that I really had anything personal against her, but you'll understand that after fifty years with only one person to talk to, you just naturally start to hate each other's guts.

"Anyway, the computers don't make mistakes, so you're supposed to be here because you've arrived at the proper time and in a body properly tailored for our research."

"This body!" She bawled, "I used to be beautiful!"

"All part of the high price of science," he said. But she had pulled herself into a fetal position and was sobbing louder. "Hey, you're serious, aren't you? You actually didn't volunteer for this post?"

"No! I mean, yes I didn't volunteer. I was in twentieth-century Poland. I spent one day on my new assignment and the monitors came and I woke up here! I'm in the Historical Corps. I don't know anything about anthropology!"

"Why, those filthy bastards . . ."

"Yeah," she said, grateful for any sympathy.

" . . . sending me a totally untrained recruit! My God! That means . . ." He stooped down and found a sliver of bone on the cave floor. He grabbed her right hand.

"This doesn't hurt. You won't feel it at all." He slipped the bone under her index fingernail and moved it sideways. She stared openmouthed as he repeated the operation on her left hand.

"What . . ."

"They were both turned off, thank God. Look. You have some fairly powerful equipment built into that little body. Your right index finger contains a temporal sword. With it, you can cut a tree in half at six paces. Your left contains a fire-starter. They can save your life, but if you don't know how to use them, they can kill you. Or me!"

"There's more?"

"Some recorders, communicators, beacons, and so on. But that can wait. I want to find out what you're doing here." He squatted in front of a large flat rock by the cave wall. He pressed four nondescript spots on the rock. Glowing white letters appeared in the air before him.

READY

He started tapping the blank rock as though it was a typewriter keyboard.

INFO REQUEST PERSONNEL RECORD. HISTORICAL CORPS WORKER NO. . . .

"Hey. What's your number?" She told him, he loaded it and started reading. "Hmmm . . . born in North America, 62,218 b.c. . . . approved for child rearing; eleven children . . . at forty-five, attended Museum University 62,219 b.c. to 62,192 b.c. . . . doctorates in medicine, Slavic languages, psychology, and Greek literature . . . accepted into the Historical Corps . . . assigned to Periclean Athens, forty-one-year tour of duty. Performance unsatisfactory . . ."

"That wasn't fair!" she said.

"Fair? What's fair? If you want to talk about 'fair,' go talk to one of our protos after her kid's been eaten by a leopard!" he snapped. " . . . Returned to university and obtained a doctorate in ancient Egyptian languages . . . turned down on four assignment requests, ninth through thirteenth dynasties . . . assigned twentieth-century Poland . . . caused a situation which resulted in unauthorized transport of local citizen to the thirteenth century. Involuntarily assigned to anthropological section as disciplinary action . . .

"The bastards! Turning my station into a penal colony!"

"But all I did was leave a door open!"

"We'll see what you did." He backspaced a few lines and requested an information expansion. "Good Lord! You're her! They used to tell stories about you in school. You're the worst screw-up in our history! You're the one who sent the owner's own cousin back to the Polish Middle Ages, ten years before the Mongol invasions, when the guy didn't even know that time travel existed. They couldn't bring him back because he wasn't discovered there until the invasion was actually on. The owner himself found his own cousin on the battle lines, so they had to leave the guy there for the ten years or violate causality. When you make a mess, lady, you don't kid around!"

"But all I did was to forget to close a door!"

"You screw up here and I'll feed you to the leopards." He pulled up four more files and scanned them. "Well, if it's any consolation, your last boss was punished for failing to brief you properly. He'll be here in fifty years as my replacement and you get to break him in."

"I think I'll just quit and go back to North America."

"Fine. You'll get your chance to do that in a hundred years, subjective."

"But—"

"Lady, this far back we get one canister every fifty years. The last one just left and the next one is taking me out of this flea-bitten pest hole.

"So cheer up, kid, and make the best of it. Hungry? Come on, I'll show you where there's a good rotten log. Lots of grubs."

Chapter One

My name is Sir Vladimir Charnetski. I am a good Polish knight and a true son of the Holy Catholic Church. I was born in 1212, the third son of Baron Jan of Charnel.

I write because my instructress felt that I could improve my literacy by recording the events of my life, but on reflection I find that there is very little to say. I had an ordinary upbringing. At sports I was better than most, but not the best. I am good at arms, but there are some who can knock me out of the saddle. My chess is solid but uninspired.

Who would want to read the tale of so ordinary a knight? None but my mother and she already knows it.

But in my twentieth year, I met a most extraordinary nobleman and I think it fitting to write about him.

His name is Sir Conrad Stargard and I met him in the following manner. In the fall of 1231, word came from my father's liege lord, Count Lambert, that we should send a knight to Lambert's castle town to attend there on Easter and for the three months thereafter.

This was a duty that I eagerly sought for myself, for rumor had it that Okoitz was an excellent place for many reasons. Lambert's table was reputed to be one of the best in Silesia and his wine cellar the best stocked in Poland. Also, Lambert took his droit du seigneur in a most unusual and, it seemed to me, a most delightful way.

The lord of a manor naturally has the right to enjoy his peasant girls on the night before their wedding. My father is a vigorous man in most respects; but encouraged by my mother, he had long since declared himself too old for this duty and delegated the task to his sons.

My brothers and I diced for the responsibility and occasionally I won. Now, while the worst of copulations can fairly be described as excellent, these bouts were often less excellent than they could have been. While unmarried girls were presumed to be virgin, in fact they rarely were and a considerable number of them were obviously pregnant.

Then, too, they were often frightened and sometimes actually in love with their future husbands; circumstances which degraded their enthusiasm.

Oh, one could always encourage a wench to meet one in a secluded wood, but this entailed a certain amount of sneaking around, a thing I am loath to do.

My Lord Lambert's solution to the problem is as straightforward as he is. He picks the best-looking of his girls just as they are blossoming and persuades them to move into his castle as "ladies-in-waiting." The advantages he offers are such that scant persuasion is needed; indeed little more than a permission to come. He turns the management of his household over to the "ladies," and enjoys them at his leisure until such time as they are with child; he then procures for each an acceptable husband, provides a suitable dowry, and pays the wedding expenses.

Most importantly, Lambert, with his usual largesse, permits his attending knights full use of this harem, which often numbers a half dozen.

Lambert's custom is the envy of all the noblemen around and he gets away with it because his wife stays on her family's estates in Hungary. Or perhaps she stays there because of his custom. For my purposes it was inconsequential. I wanted to go.

As this pleasant obligation must, of necessity, fall to one of us three brothers, they suggested that we dice for it. I refused, saying that three months was a long time and that the matter ought to be discussed carefully over several days. My real reason was that, while I was a bachelor, my brothers were both married. I was sure that once their wives heard about the matter (and I saw to it), I would be given the task without the risk of the throw.

And so it was that my father informed me that I would go to Okoitz. My mother was in tears as I left, acting as if I were going off to war, or some less honorable way of finding death. My father and brothers were cordial and polite with the vague certainty that somehow I had cheated them.

It was an easy day's ride to Okoitz and, since the highwayman, Sir Rheinburg, had been killed, a safe one. It was Holy Saturday and the Truce of God was in effect, yet prudence and courtesy required that I be fully armed, covered head to toe with chain mail and astride my war-horse, Witchfire.

But there was no need to be grim, so I took the precaution of carrying a three-gallon sack of wine over my saddlebow, and had a plentiful supply of bread and cheese in my bags, this being the last day of Lent.

It was a pleasant spring morning and I found myself singing old songs. I aided Witchfire by lessening the weight of the burdensome wine sack and came to some assistance with regards to the saddlebags, as well.

Horses like you to sing to them and soon Witchfire was galloping for the sheer joy of a clear springtime morning. But while crossing a small wooden bridge he threw the shoe from his right rear hoof.

This was serious, both because of the high cost of steel and because a charger cannot possibly be ridden unshod without injury. I could not walk to Okoitz and get there by the morrow, and to not get there would stain my father's name.

I searched the bridge, the stream and its banks for hours without finding the lost shoe. At last I went down the road, walking in full armor and leading my horse, searching for a blacksmith.

I found a small side trail and followed it to a peasant's hut. The peasant's wife assured me that there was a village with a blacksmith two miles up the side trail.

In full armor, I trudged fully four miles to this village, only to find that the blacksmith was away, visiting his mother for Easter. But the filthy churls informed me that but three miles further on the trail there was another village and here the smith was sure to be home, as he was the brother of the local smith and it was their custom to alternate, year by year, visiting their mother on Easter and Christmas.

I walked more than eight miles without finding the next village. Witchfire was limping badly, the wine skin was nearly exhausted and night closed in on us. There was nothing for it but, like a hero in a fireside tale, to stretch out under a tree and sleep in armor.

I unsaddled Witchfire, rubbed him down as best I could with some weeds and hobbled him for the night.

I had my flint and steel with me, and by dint of a half an hour's puffing and cursing, I managed to get a decent fire going. I gathered a supply of wood, doffed my helmet and unlaced the coif at my throat. I took another pull of wine and dozed off.

At perhaps midnight, I woke to the sound of a wolf howling. It was shortly answered by another and yet another, and they were close!

The fire was down to a few dying coals and Witchfire was whinnying nervously. I went to him and tripped in the dark, which spooked him worse. I had to speak to him a bit before he'd let me come close enough to take the hobble off. A damned nuisance when time was precious, but no beast of mine will ever be taken without a chance to defend himself! I could hear the wolves, snuffling, gathering both their courage and their numbers.

I went back to the coals of the fire and found my helmet and sword. Then I threw what kindling and wood I had left onto the coals and said a silent prayer in thanks to Saint Christopher for the blessing of enough time to get ready.

The fire blazed up as I belatedly laced shut the chainmail coif at my throat and donned my helmet. I slipped on my shield and drew my sword, for this was not the place for the lance, though I love that weapon above all others. The wolves grew louder, and I could tell that they didn't like the fire. I could imagine some impudent young wolf complaining, "Sooner! We should have hit them sooner!" It's sure that I heard one of the animals yelp as though bitten!

Witchfire, trusty friend that he is, came into the circle of firelight to join me. He knew that this must needs be a fight afoot, but he none the less meant to get his share of it. I grinned at him and they rushed us.

A huge gray wolf burst out of the darkness and at my throat. It was skinny, gaunt and hungry, yet it was fully my own size and weight none the less. These murderous beasts must have traveled far for the pains of winter to still be on them!

My sword caught the huge gray brute fair on the side of the skull and I heard the bone crack. His body rammed me square on the shield with such force that I was nearly knocked over, and indeed would have been had not a second wolf hit me but a moment later in the back. A foul blow, that, but one I was glad of, for once down, it was not likely that I could defend myself with any alacrity!

The wolf at my back was trying to bite into my neck, but the armor my father bought at great price was proof against it. I swung my sword back hard as though preparing for a forward blow. It caught the beast on the back. Again, I heard bones crack and it was at my feet whining and snapping.

I had no time to give it mercy, for my war-horse was sore pressed. Three gray forms were snapping around him and he had a fourth in his teeth, shaking it as a small dog will shake a rat. He threw it high into the air. It came down on the fire, screamed, and lost all of its fighting spirit. It ran away, yelping, its coat burning merrily.

I waded into the beasts that were harassing my mount and broke two gray necks with as many blows. The third turned to charge me, but Witchfire dropped both front hooves on its back and it moved no more.

Suddenly, all was quiet. We'd killed five of the foul creatures, and the one who got away would think long before it again approached a human fire!

Witchfire seemed unhurt and I was unwounded. I gave each of the dead animals another blow to see to it that they stayed that way, then laid myself back down to sleep. I didn't bother hobbling my mount. He wouldn't be wandering far from the fire again this night!

Yes, I was unharmed, but only because I was armed and armored and with a trusty war-horse. One can well see why the peasants lock their doors at sunset and dare not leave until dawn. Even in daylight, many are killed when caught alone in the wilds. But what can be done about it?

I left the carcasses to rot on the ground. Wolf skins are worthless—even a peasant can afford better. And maybe the other wolves would get a meal off of their brothers instead of killing some hapless commoner.

The next morning I gave the coup de grace to the last of my wine, cheese, and bread and found the village not a quarter mile down the trail. I caught the smith and his family on their way to church.

"But, my dear sir knight! This is Easter morning, the holiest day of the year! Surely you can't expect me to work on this greatest offcast days!"

"Surely I can! Know that I am sworn to attend our liege lord, Count Lambert himself, on this very day at Okoitz. I cannot get there without my horse and my horse cannot travel without a shoe. You are the only blacksmith available and therefore you will do the job. Bid your family to church without you, and come with me."

"But to miss mass on Easter would be a great sin!"

I loosened my sword. "Not nearly so great a sin as committing suicide, which is your alternative."

His wife kissed him worriedly and hustled their children before her toward the church. Thus she made the decision for him, though I intended the man no harm. He started to call to her, but I took him by the upper arm and moved him to his shop.

"But I am in my best clothes! I must change."

"Very well. Do it quickly." He went into his house and I followed. It was well built, as peasant huts go, with a brick fireplace and a real wooden floor. He stopped and looked at me hesitantly, so I drew my sword and placed it before me, point down with my palms on the pommel. He changed clothes rapidly.

"But, sir knight . . ."

I ground the point of my sword into the floor, twisting it. He darted out to his shop. I followed.

Once he had a fire going in his forge, he said, "But I have forgotten! I have no more iron! I used the last of it Thursday and no more will come until tomorrow."

"No iron? Then we must find you some. Hmmm . . . the hinges on this door are iron. It's a start." I ripped the door from the frame and threw it at him. It's a pity to have to use such techniques on such a sniveling wretch, but he had exhausted my patience.

"But that's not nearly enough and hinges are so hard to make!"

There were plenty of iron tools about, but I hate to deprive a man of his livelihood. I stalked back to his house. "That crucifix is iron."

"But that was blessed by the priest! We can't . . ."

"No, I guess we can't. Those candlesticks . . . the two of them will make a shoe and nails and we can spare your hinges."

"But I made those for my wife!"

"If your wife demands gimcracks while you lack the wherewithal of your trade, she deserves a good beating! Take them!"

It was eight hours of welding and forging, filing and fitting before my horse was shod. While I waited, his wife returned. I sent her out for wine and meat. Lent was over and I had a craving for a thick slab of roast pork.

What I got was small beer and chicken, the best—she claimed—to be had in that festering dump.

Finally, it was past none when I saddled Witchfire.

The blacksmith ran up. "But sir knight, you owe me for the shoeing!"

"The last time I had a shoe put on, it cost me eight silver pennies, so that's what I'll pay. And here's another penny for the meal, though it wasn't worth it." I rose to the saddle.

"But the candlesticks alone were worth twice this!"

"Then next time be better prepared." I rode out of town. Actually, I'd paid him half the money I had. My father was not a wealthy man.

We were an hour getting back to the main trail and though we pushed on as fast as I dared, darkness overtook us many miles from our destination. I had failed.

There was no moon and perforce my charger and I spent yet another night under a tree.

The tierce bell was ringing as we rode into Okoitz. An old friend was at the gate; we embraced and exchanged the kiss of friendship.

"Sir Vladimir! You arrive late!"

"Aye, Sir Lestko. Witchfire threw a shoe and finding a smith on Easter . . . But I must apologize to Count Lambert. Where is he?

"Your apology will be delayed as well; Lambert left at gray dawn to make his spring rounds. He may not return for months."

"Damn! Damn and thrice damn!"

"Fear not at all. Lambert said that if you arrived today, all would be well; but if not, we should search for you on the morrow. He knows no son of your father would fail him."

"Sir Lestko, we serve the finest lord in Christendom."

"Agreed. But come. You have just time to wash off the road dust before dinner."

We entered the bailey where a vast tower was under construction. "What on Earth is that thing?"

"A device of Sir Conrad's planning. They say it will suck power from the winds and force it to do man's bidding."

"That smacks of witchcraft."

"Sir Conrad claims not, though by all accounts, he's as much warlock as warrior and a giant besides."

"Sir Conrad? Is he the man that killed the brigand, Sir Rheinburg?"

"Rheinburg and his entire band and each killed with a single blow of the sword!"

"Unbelievable!" I said.

"But true. That German bastard's arms are in the storeroom here without a mark on them. Sir Conrad caught him straight through the eyeslit and cut his skull in half without harming the helmet."

"Some might call that luck."

"Not when he killed all the others besides. I tell you he brought in four suits of armor and all of them intact save for bloodstains."

"What manner of man is he?"

"I haven't met him yet myself, having arrived only a day before you. They say he's in Cieszyn and will return in a week or two. I must watch the gate until sext, but you go up to the castle; the ladies will see to your comfort."

"Indeed!" I asked, "Is Lambert's board and bed all they say it is?"

"Better. He has eight of them now and there are only five of us knights to keep them pleasured."

"The poor things." I grinned. "Well, we can only do our best."

No one met me at the castle door, but a remarkable noise was coming from within. It sounded like a dozen mad drummers going at once, or like carpenters trying to be musicians. I followed the sound to the great hall and found there an incomprehensible flurry of activity.

There was a great table around which sat a half dozen pretty wenches. Each had a cartwheel in front of her that seemed to spin of its own accord. There were big balls of wool and complicated arrangements of thread and spools spinning with astounding speed.

Unconsciously, I made the sign of the cross.

Against one wall, two more ladies worked a great wooden machine of incredible complexity, with thousands of strings and levers and moving parts.

Against the wall opposite stood three huge bolts of cloth.

One of the girls at the spinning wheels noticed my entrance, stopped her work and greeted me.

"What . . . what is all this?" I asked.

"Lambert's loom and spinning wheels, of course. Our lord would have us make our own cloth and stop paying our silver to those awful Waloons. You must be Sir Vladimir. Let me show you to your room."

As she led me down a hallway I said, "These wheels and such. They are something this Sir Conrad has built?"

"Who else?"

"You know him then?"

"I don't exactly know him." She rolled her eyes and grinned. "I mean I was still only a peasant girl when he left, but I hear he's just marvelous!"

"But you've seen him?"

"Oh, yes. He's enormously tall and absolutely beautiful!"

"I fail to see how a man can be beautiful."

"Then you haven't seen Sir Conrad. This will be your room." She scurried about, seeing that the water pitcher was filled and the chamber pot was empty. The place was remarkably clean, with a huge bed, a stool, and a wash stand.

"This will do nicely. Uh, would you help me get out of this armor? This is my first chance to remove it in three days. Two nights sleeping in chain mail is entirely too much."

"Of course, Sir Vladimir . . . Oh. You need a good scrubbing, besides."

"That is a glorious thought." I sat on the stool and she gave me a thorough sponge bath. Very thorough.

Once dry, I sat on the bed and said, "I'll rest a bit. Take off your dress and join me."

"I thought you'd never ask."

Much later I said, "That was good, wench. Very good."

"Thank you, my lord. Ah. There's the dinner bell. We must dress."

"Right." I got into my tunic and hose. "Uh, what is your name?"

"Annastashia."

At dinner I met Sir Bodan, a friend of my father, and he introduced me to Sir Frederick and Sir Stefan. They each sat down with a woman by their sides, so I bid Annastashia join me.

"I believe I'm still senior here and so am in command," Sir Bodan said. "Sir Vladimir, I observe that you have arrived late. In punishment for this, you shall take the graveyard shift and watch the gate from matins to prime."

"This seems just, my lord." I downed a bowl of beer and motioned for it to be refilled.

"Well, somebody has to do it."

"I make no complaint. But tell me more of this Sir Conrad."

"He does seem to be the main subject of conversation hereabouts," Bodan said. "First off, he rides a mare."

I stifled a giggle. "A mare?"

"A mare. Furthermore, they tell as many stories about the horse as they do of the rider. She refuses to be shod and goes without horseshoes, yet she gallops over rocks without splaying her hoofs. She doesn't soil her stall, but removes the bar and goes out in the bailey like a house-broken dog. Then she returns to her stall and replaces the bar!"

"Incredible!"

"She is fully war-trained and Conrad claims that two of his kills were made by her alone. Yet she has no objection to wearing a horse collar and working with the peasants. And under her influence, Count Lambert's best stallion hauled logs last winter, two war-horses guided by a single little peasant girl. The commoners here claim the mare is so intelligent that she can talk!"

"What?"

"Oh, it's just a matter of shaking and nodding her head. Yet she does it in response to questions; myself, I think it just a carnival trick."

"But what of the man himself? Who are his people?"

"That's another mystery. It seems that some priest laid a geas on him, that he may not tell of his origins. Some say that he is a socialist, though it is not clear just what that means. It might refer to his country, his military order, or his religious sect. Myself, I think it must be a religious sect, for he is uncommonly gentle with children, peasants, and other animals.

"All we really know is that he came out of the east in the company of a merchant, Boris Novacek."

"Ah. I know the man."

"Then you know that Boris is no fool and that he wouldn't lie unless there was a profit in it."

"True."

"Well, Boris claims he took this true belted knight out of a monastery in Cracow, where he was engaged in writing books."

"A knight who can read and write? That's unmanly!"

"There's nothing unmanly about him, though he claims to have spent seventeen years as a student in schools."

"Indeed. How old is this Conrad?" The beef stew was excellent.

"He claims to be thirty, but he looks no older than you and there's not a scar on his body. Then there is his equipage. They say he has a pavilion light enough to hold in the palm of your hand; it's said to have the property of keeping out noxious insects. He has silver pots and plates, lighter than a cobweb. He has a knife with a dozen blades that fold to a size smaller than your finger. He has another instrument of the same size that produces fire at the touch of a lever and a sleeping cloak that grows shut to keep the cold out. He gave Sir Miesko a device with a needle that always points north, to guide him in the dark. That needle burns with a green fire but never is it consumed."

"I could have used that last night," I said. The beer was truly fine.

Sir Bodan ignored me. "He gave Lambert an object that makes far things look close. Some of the girls here can show you incredibly tiny needles they had of him. And the peasants! He gave hundreds of parchment packages of seeds to the peasants, each package with writing and a beautiful painting on it. Most of the seeds are sprouting and there are some damn strange shoots coming up in Okoitz!"

"He must be a man of great wealth."

"Fabulous wealth. He arrived here with a chest of gold and silver worth 120,000 silver pence!"

"Then . . . then why does he stay in a backwoods place like Silesia?" I asked around the bread in my mouth.

"Who knows why a wizard does what he does?"

"Ah, yes. I saw his wheels and loom. He's a mighty wizard."

"Yet there's no magic in those machines in the great hall. I've been over every inch of them and there's nought there but boards and thread. They're clever, mind you. Damned clever. But they're still just things of wool and wood."

"Indeed?" A wench refilled my bowl.

"Then there's Conrad's sword. It's a skinny thing with but a single edge, yet with it Count Lambert—in front of a hundred witnesses—took the head off a fully grown pig with a single blow; and when Conrad became angered with a blacksmith, he chopped the anvil in half."

"Well, I can sympathize with that," I said. "But you haven't told me much about the man himself."

"I was coming to that." Bodan took another pull of beer. "He is huge and must duck his head to walk through that doorway. His hair is a dark blond and he wears it very short, inches above his shoulders. He has a proper moustache, but he shaves the rest of his face every day with a strange knife that never goes dull. Mostly, he wears ordinary clothes, but sometimes he dons garments of a thin, eldritch cut, with hundreds of buttons, clasps, and closures. There's something odd about his boots, though I haven't heard a good description of them."

"You mean you haven't seen him yourself?"

"What? No. None of us have, except for Sir Stefan and the wenches. Looking forward to it, but all I've told you is hearsay. Oh, yes. Besides all else, Conrad's a surgeon, a mathematician, and a great chess player. He beat Count Lambert for the first two dozen games they played and no one but he has beaten Lambert since. Ah. I've talked until my food got cold. You, girl! Throw this back into the pot and bring me more that's goodly hot."

"Well, I know that foul warlock right well," Sir Stefan said. "Too well! I've served here since Christmas, almost every night from dusk to dawn without relief and I know the bastard for what he is."

"Dusk to dawn?" I said. "Long hours! Weren't you to serve with Sir Miesko?"

"Sir Miesko took Conrad's place in the service of a merchant, to do an errand for Count Lambert. Then Conrad bewitched Lambert with dreams of wealth and fame and spent his days building the warlock's gear that you see in the hall and bailey. I was forced to stand guard seven nights a week and they were long cold nights!"

Sir Bodan said, "I've already shown that there's no witchcraft in those looms."

"No witchcraft? Do you realize that Conrad used this very table we're now eating from and drenched it with human blood!"

"I was there," Annastashia said quietly. "One of the men from the village was hurt while cutting down trees. His foot was all smashed. Sir Conrad had to cut it off and sew him up to save him."

"And that peasant was dead within a month! The witch's rite didn't help much!" Stefan shouted.

"But, Sir Conrad was trying . . ."

"Shut up, wench!"

We were quiet for a bit, then Annastashia said softly, "I remember Sir Conrad at the funeral of a peasant child. He cried."

Chapter Two

Two weeks slid pleasantly by. The weather was lovely; supplies of food and drink seemed inexhaustible; my fellow knights were excellent comrades; and the ladies, ah the ladies. I'd sampled them all by that point, but in the end I found that the best was at the beginning. I spent most of my nights with Annastashia. Well, my evenings at least, the graveyard shift being what it was.

Often Annastashia would come to me when I was on duty; sometimes we would talk and sometimes we simply held hands and watched the stars wheel by. I was quite taken by her, although of course nothing could come of it. For all her absurd status as a "lady-in-waiting," she was a peasant and I was a knight and my parents were very . . . traditional in their outlook. Yet . . . yet I tried not to think about my departure from Okoitz.

I looked forward to meeting Sir Conrad with a mixture of joy at the arrival of a hero and of fear at the coming of a warlock; yet when I finally met him and got used to his astounding size, I found him to be the most courteous and pleasant knight that could possibly be.

He had a fine voice and he knew thousands of songs; except on request, I don't think that he ever repeated himself. He could dance and recite poetry for hours. The ladies insisted that we learn his polka and mazurka and waltz. Sometimes Conrad would hire a few peasant musicians and we danced and laughed into the night.

The warlocks of legend are all taciturn and secretive. Sir Conrad was eager to teach his skills to all comers, peasant and noble alike; I found his mechanic arts to be fascinating and in time I came to appreciate his reasons in the machines he planned, and even hoped that one day I would be able to imitate them.

Yet in some ways he was decidedly odd. The peasants had stopped cock-fighting because "Conrad doesn't like it." The winter before, when Sir Stefan had brought in a bear for baiting—that is, to be tied to a stake and be ripped apart by the castle dogs for sport—Conrad attempted to purchase the bear, slew it with a single stroke of his remarkable sword and ordered the hide to be tanned and the meat served for supper. He did not do this in sport. As he killed, they say, there was a look of great sadness on that noble face.

Then there was his attitude toward children. Now, a normal man leaves children to the women until they are old enough to be human, but Conrad took great pleasure in their company, sometimes preferring it to that of his fellow knights. He always took time to explain what he was doing and never lost his temper with them as he often did with adults. He paid the priest to teach them their letters and taught mathematics himself. Moreover, he made them toys and taught them new games and sports.

Conrad was an absolute master of the sword and soon he was teaching us regularly every afternoon. He disdained to use a shield, trusting only to his blade for blocking. Indeed, he had a low regard for the usefulness of armor! Yet he was absolutely ignorant of the use of the lance and was remarkably clumsy with one on horseback. Nor was he good with a bow, yet somehow these things only increased our affection for him; it was a joy to find that I was better than him at something.

Lastly, there was Krystyana. She was a wench from Okoitz who had traveled to Cieszyn with Conrad. It was obvious that she was hopelessly in love with him; and somehow, much of his charm and courtesy had rubbed off on her, but in a most feminine way. She had the bearing and grace of a fine noblewoman to such an extent that none of the knights could treat her as a peasant girl, but accorded her the courtesies due to one of high rank.

Soon, some of the other "ladies-in-waiting" began to imitate her, my Annastashia among them. I found this charming—indeed, I found everything that Annastashia did to be charming!—but the other knights often reacted oddly. To tumble a village wench was one thing. To have intercourse with a noblewoman was something else!

Eventually Count Lambert returned, and with almost royal company, for with him rode his liege lord, Duke Henryk the Bearded, and that lord's son, young Prince Henryk, called the Pious. I was not privy to their conversations, but they stayed closeted with Sir Conrad for much of the afternoon.

The day after, there was to be a hunt and Count Lambert invited me to go. I am famed for my ability as a huntsman and perhaps Lambert had heard of this. Perhaps also he did not know that I stood daily guard from matins to prime, but when your father's liege lord invites you to hunt with his liege lord, you go!

So after duty, I went hunting rather than to bed. It was a good hunt and as Fortuna would have it, Sir Conrad took first blood on a winset. Being inept with the lance, he botched the job, only wounding the bison on the shoulder. Then he lost its trail entirely and even lost himself. In the end, I finished the animal and Count Lambert retrieved our crestfallen Sir Conrad.

I missed the feast that night, falling asleep in bed still in my armor, but I was up before matins and at my post at the proper time.

But within an hour, Sir Bodan relieved me and instructed me to attend Duke Henryk in his chamber.

I had never before had conversation with so high a personage and I was nervous as I knocked on his door.

"Come in, boy. Sit down and share a cup of wine with me." The duke was an ancient man, fully seventy years old. His face was lined and cracked and sunburned, his thick white hair brushed his wide shoulders and his huge white beard hung to below his finely tooled swordbelt. He was dressed all in purple velvet, heavily embroidered with fine gold wire.

Yet there was nothing foppish or feeble about him. His bearing was robust, his arms still powerful and his eyes . . . his eyes knew all things.

"Thank you, your grace." I made a full Slavic bow to him, on my knees with my forehead to the floor.

"Up! Up child! No need for that nonsense when we're alone. I told you to sit."

I sat and he filled a huge golden wine cup from a silver pitcher. He drank deeply and handed the cup to me. I took a pull as great as his and set the cup down empty.

"Good! You drink as well as your father. If you're half the man he is, I'll expect great things from you." He refilled the cup.

"I try, your grace."

"You try right well. I know it's a hard thing to live up to, being the son of a great father. I remember him at the Battle of Fulnek. The Moravians had us outnumbered two to one, but Sir Jan led a charge that broke their line in half. It seems like yesterday . . . He took their first knight with his lance, splitting shield, armor, and breast bone. He rode on with the Moravian's shield still threaded on his lance and broke that lance on a second knight moments later, bashing him from the saddle to be trampled beneath our Polish chargers. Then he drew sword and cleared a swath through them as wide as he could reach, and his men behind him widened it. He broke their impetus and gave the rest of us time to regroup and charge the breach he'd made. We caught them on the flank, rolled them up like an old map, and the day was ours!"

"I heard he was sore wounded in that fight."

"Yes. It was before you were born, wasn't it? I saw a filthy peasant put a spear under his byrnie and into his gut. For a long time I feared for Sir Jan's life, but stamina and your mother's nursing carried him through. You know, I marked that peasant and when he turned up among the prisoners, I let all the others go, but him I hung for his impudence!

"Ah, you look so much like your father that you could almost pass for his twin, barring age. You have much of his skill—I missed your kill today but I saw the carcass. A single thrust, straight to the heart, on an animal maddened by Sir Conrad's clumsy blow."

"Your grace, I heard that Sir Conrad had never before been on a hunt."

"As did I—and that's odd, isn't it? A knight who could slay that almost invincible brigand, Sir Rheinburg, and singlehandedly wipe out his entire band; yet who never hunted an animal! Tell me, what do you think of him?"

"That's hard to say, your grace. He's such a mixture of things. Half hero and half child; half craftsman and half poet; half warlock and half saint! All I can say is that I like the man and that I trust him."

"Tell me, would you stay with him if you could?"

"Well . . . yes, your grace, were it consistent with my duty and honor."

"So. You missed tonight's feast . . ." I started to explain but he held up his hands. "I know you did right. It was your duty to be alert and on guard tonight; missing the festivities was the honorable thing to do. But know that during them, Count Lambert settled lands upon Sir Conrad. He leaves for them at dawn and I want you to go with him."

"But, your grace . . . My duty here . . ." Dammit, I couldn't tell him about Annastashia!

"Do not concern yourself. I will square matters with Lambert and your father."

"But what is it that you would have me do?"

"In truth, boy, I don't know. I, too, am uncertain about Sir Conrad. He could be the greatest good that has ever happened to Poland, or he could be the greatest evil. I only know that I would feel better if he had a trustworthy knight beside him, to protect him from harm and . . . and to let me know anything that you think I should know."

"Then your desire is my command, your grace. I shall do my duty unto the death, if need be."

"I know you will, my son. The blood of your father runs strong in you. Mind you, this is a privy conversation. Not one word of it to anyone save your father. Now to sleep with you. There's a long ride waiting at dawn."

So my stay at Okoitz was to be cut short and when next I saw Annastashia, she'd likely be a peasant's wife with dirty children crawling around a smoky fire.

I did not go straight to my room, but stopped in the great hall. The remains of the feast had not yet been cleaned up. I found a nearly full pitcher of wine, a cup, and a joint of cold meat. It suited my mood to eat and drink alone. Endings are such sad things.

The lauds bell struck as I stumbled into my room and dumped my armor on the floor. I got into bed and found Annastashia already there. In an instant we were crying in each other's arms.

"Sir Vladimir," she bawled, "I don't want to leave you."

So much for Duke Henryk's secrecy, I thought. The girls always knew everything that was happening.

"And I don't want to leave you, my love."

"Your love? You never called me your love."

"Perhaps because until this hour, I never realized how much I truly do love you."

"Oooowww! Don't you see that that only makes it worse! I mean, why do we have to do what everybody else says? It isn't fair! Why do I have to leave because Lambert says so? I don't want to go anyplace else!"

"Wait a moment, love. It is I who must leave and you who must stay."

"But no! Lambert says that I must go with Sir Conrad."

I am sure that my laugh woke half the castle.

"And I shall accompany him as well!"

Our joy was such that we got no sleep that night. At dawn we were packed and ready in the bailey before Sir Conrad got there. When he arrived, he was in the company of Krystyana and three other ladies besides. Indeed, it seemed that he had picked those who were most gracious of manner.

"Well, Sir Conrad. It seems that our lord sends you out well provisioned."

"Indeed. He is most generous. But why are you saddled up?"

"I hoped to accompany you and help you guard these treasures."

"More treasures than you know, Sir Vladimir." Conrad slung a pair of small, heavy saddlebags over his horse and lashed them stoutly to the cantle. "Your presence is needed, and I hope you'll come as my guest. It looks like I'm not the only one who needs you." He winked at Annastashia, for of course he knew of our relationship.

The girls felt obligated to cry at leaving their families and homes, and Annastashia joined them in this even though her parents had been dead for a year. But in an hour their tears were dry and the joy of adventure was on them.

Our company made a rich appearance on that clear morning. Conrad and I were in full armor on our chargers, our ladies well dressed on fine palfreys and we had three good mules loaded with provisions and clothing. Conrad took the lead with Krystyana at his side, so perforce Annastashia and I rode rear guard with the others between.

After a few hours, I said, "Annastashia, do you know where we are going?"

"Why, to Sir Conrad's lands."

"But where are those?"

"Well, I suppose in that direction." She pointed forward.

I found this location to be inadequate, and questioned my love more closely. I was amazed to learn that not only had she not the slightest concept of geography, but that this was the first time since early childhood that she had been out of sight of Okoitz. Her blind faith in me and Sir Conrad was touching, but I feel best when I know what I'm about.

Our trail had been winding through a dense forest and the dangers of being taken unawares was such that I dared not leave my rear-guard post. But when we found ourselves among plowed fields, I spurred Witchfire to the head of the column.

"Sir Conrad, I would speak with you."

"You've picked a fine day for it. How can I help you?"

"You know that I missed the feast and did not hear Lambert's settlement on you. Where are we going?"

"That's a very good question. When we started, I didn't know myself. I've been worrying about it all morning. You see, I've been given a huge tract in the mountains south of here. There's an old coal mine on it that I hope to reopen. But there's not a building there, not so much as a shed, and we can hardly dump these girls in the middle of a forest."

"Lambert gave you lands but no people? How odd. Perhaps my father could supply a few dozen peasants."

"Well, thank you, but I'd hate to impose on a man I've never met. Anyway, there are plenty of people out of work in Cieszyn. I think our best bet would be to go there and put together a construction crew before going to Three Walls."

"Three Walls?"

"I've decided on the name because the valley we'll build in is boxed on three sides by high mountains. God has built three of our walls. We need only build the fourth."

"A nice thought. Hmm . . . at this speed we'll not make Cieszyn by nightfall."

"Right. The girls couldn't stay in the saddle that long anyway. I think we'll call on Sir Miesko and Lady Richeza for the night. There's a stream and a meadow an hour ahead. We'll break there for dinner."

Sir Conrad's language was always colorful. At the meadow, we helped the ladies off their palfreys, unsaddled the mounts, unloaded the mules and hobbled all the animals save Conrad's Anna, who refused it. Conrad treated Anna as an indulgent father treats a favorite daughter, permitting her to race about the woods around the meadow. Only after she had completely circled the meadow twice, once near and once far, did she come in to drink and crop grass. It was just exuberance on her part, I know, but I had the uncanny feeling that she was searching for possible ambushers.

I turned from these musings expecting to find the ladies preparing dinner, but the fact was that they could barely walk. Conrad himself was busily chopping wood and in a remarkably short time he had a merry fire going. He seemed to be enjoying himself, proud of his woodcraft, and made no suggestion that any should aid him.

Yet seeing him indulge in this woman's work embarrassed the girls such that they limped up and took over the preparation of food from him, which left him free to join me lying on the grass.

He was silent for a while, so I said, "Share your thoughts, my friend."

"Well, I'm thinking about that coal mine. It's filled with water and we'll need some sort of pump to empty it."

"Another of your windmills?"

"I don't think so. The valley is surrounded by fairly tall mountains with only a small entrance between the two cliffs. There won't be much wind there."

"It sounds easily defended."

"There is that advantage. But pumping that mine is going to be a problem. Wind power is out. There is no stream, so water power is impossible. Animal power? The area is heavily forested and it will be years before we're self-sufficient in food. Importing animal feed would be expensive. But, if we have coal, I wonder if we couldn't come up with a crude steam engine. Pistons, cylinders, and high-pressure boilers are well beyond us, but perhaps a condensing steam engine . . ."

"Sir Conrad, you have lost me again. Please explain how it were possible to raise water with vapors."

"Let's see . . . I've explained that matter exists in three phases—solid, liquid, and gas. If you heat a solid enough, it melts. If you heat a liquid enough, it boils."

"That much is obvious."

"Okay. Now ordinarily the gas phase is much larger than the liquid phase. A given amount of material takes up much more room."

"I'll take that on faith."

"You don't have to take it on faith. You have observed it! You've watched a pot boiling. Look there, where the girls are cooking. Steam is going out of the pot, overflowing it. Further, that steam was once water, as is proved by the way the water level in the pot gets lower as more steam goes out."

"I said I believe you!" I sat bolt upright.

"You said you had faith! What I tell you about science should never be taken on faith! Each and every step should be proved by direct observation. I am trying to teach you how to understand and manipulate the physical universe. I am not trying to teach you a religion! That's not my job!"

"I'm sorry, Sir Conrad. Please continue." He has such a temper! I think he doesn't drink enough wine.

"No, I owe the apology, Sir Vladimir, and in fact there is a certain religious aspect to science. You see, God made all beings, all things, the whole of existence. He is the Grand Planner, the Master Designer, the Chief Engineer. When we study the world around us, we are studying His works, His thoughts. It's almost blasphemy to ignore that and have faith in the words of a mere man."

I lay back down. "Now, that is a remarkable thought! That it were possible to study the mind of God by observing His works—in the same manner that I have studied your mind by observing your mills and looms. Incredible! . . . I think that it will take me a long time to absorb it."

We were silent for a while and then our ladies called us to dinner. They were still walking stiffly and were not at all cheerful.

"Why such downcast faces?" I asked.

"My love, it is not my face which is troubling me," Annastashia replied.

"Well, cheer up! We shall be at Sir Miesko's in four more hours."

"Four more hours!" came five simultaneous feminine cries.

"Well, I'm sorry," I said. "But there's nothing for it. The fault is all in those sidesaddles you persist in using. With the possible exception of teats on a stallion, they are the stupidest things imaginable. There is nothing to keep the rider in place but the horse's good intentions, an untrustworthy thing at best. Look at that rig! The rider must sling her right knee over a knob designed to numb her leg, put her left foot into an inadequate stirrup and then put her right toe under the back of her left knee to obliterate sensation in that member as well. Its sole purpose seems to be to permit a woman to ride while wearing a dress and destroying her body."

"Well . . . what are we supposed to do about it?"

"Don't ask me, my love. I am taxed to my abilities being a fighter and a lover. Sir Conrad is our master of technical devices."

Five pairs of eyes turned on Conrad.

"It's obvious. Put on pants and ride on a man's saddle."

"That's scandalous!" Krystyana said. "The very thought that a lady would be seen in a man's clothing . . ."

"Then there's the key word, pretty girl, 'seen.' Make an outfit that looks like a woman's dress but functions like a man's pants."

"Uh . . . I don't follow you."

"Take one of your dresses. Slit it hem to crotch in front and behind. Sew in a fold of cloth between them. If you're careful about it, you can make it look acceptable but still be able to fork a horse."

The girls looked at each other anxiously and then grew a communal grin.

Suddenly, Krystyana said, "But how would you get into it?"

"Well . . . you could make it in two pieces, top and bottom, blouse and skirt; or you could slit it down the front and button it up like one of my shirts."

The grins returned.

"But that's not going to get us to Sir Miesko's. You girls clean and pack the gear while we saddle the horses."

The sun was still high when we arrived. Sir Miesko was out inspecting his fences, but Lady Richeza greeted us well. She is easily the most courteous and gracious woman in Christendom. She was common-born, like my Annastashia, and seeing her well-run household gave me visions of my own domestic bliss. But Sir Miesko was base-born as well, and knighted on the battlefield for valor. He was not faced with a heroic father and twenty generations of nobility.

Sir Conrad was talking intently with Lady Richeza.

"Yes, Sir Conrad, Gretch arrived safely and the girl's a wonder! This new mathematics of yours is a fascinating thing. I have no doubt that we'll have a dozen good instructresses by Christmas."

"And how about the schools?"

"It goes well. Eight villages are fully committed, and by winter I think that the problem will be the lack of educated teachers."

"A dozen the first year is better than we had hoped. Textbooks?"

"We've made a start, buying supplies out of Cieszyn. But at the rate it's going, we won't have four dozen sets in time."

"That's skinny. Haven't you heard from Father Ignacy?"

"Not yet. But there was a delay in finding a merchant going to Cracow."

"Well, if you don't hear from him in a few weeks, inquire about professional copyists in Cieszyn."

"But that's expensive, Sir Conrad, and we're already close to your budget."

"Well, going over budget is not as bad as blowing the whole project. We need the books."

"Excuse me, Sir Conrad," I interrupted. "What is all this about?"

"Lady Richeza and I are organizing a school system. We'll have a dozen schools going next winter, from Christmas to spring planting."

"Schools? To teach what? To whom? By whom?"

"Schools! Reading, writing, and arithmetic, for starters. For Lambert's people. By Lady Richeza's gallant ladies."

"For the peasants! With some peasant women teaching them?"

"Sir Vladimir. May I point out that you show all the signs of being in love with a lowly peasant? That you are under the roof of a man who was born among these unfortunate people? And, while I am at it, that in the long run, the truly important thing is that women bear children and raise them properly—which includes education—and that the best that we males can do is to support them in that function? Now start apologizing and start with Lady Richeza."

Damn! Damn and thrice damn! But I had sworn to protect the man. Fighting him was out of the question and there was nothing for it but to apologize.

I had only begun when Sir Miesko came in and Conrad called to him.

"Sir Miesko! Say hello to your new neighbor!"

"What? You, Sir Conrad? What is this?"

"Count Lambert has granted me lands adjoining yours."

"Congratulations! But . . . that can only be in the hill country. There's not much good farming land up that way."

"True. But I plan to make mortar from limestone and coal, do some lumbering, and perhaps raise some sheep."

"Well, it might work. But how are you going to feed your people?"

"Obviously, I'll have to buy food, which is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I hope to be your best customer."

"Well, I'd rather sell to you than a Hungarian merchant, but this wants talking. I have a new vat of beer in need of breaching. Let us retire to my chamber."

Lady Richeza was in rapt conversation with Krystyana, with most of the others gathering around. Soon they moved off to the kitchen. I thought I was abandoned, but, no. I had my Annastashia.

Chapter Three

The next day, on the road to Cieszyn, I said, "Sir Conrad, you were speaking of a machine with vapors . . ."

"A condensing steam engine. Yes?"

"Tell me the way of it. This is something that you've seen before?"

"Well, I've seen a walking-beam engine in a museum, but what I've seen won't work in our situation. You see, there is an existing mine shaft that slopes down at about a forty-five degree angle." Observing my facial expression, he gesticulated, drawing the angle in the air so that I understood. "I don't know how far the shaft is straight, but I think that I have an even simpler mechanism that should work."

"Indeed. I have seen a walking-beam and to my eyes it was no simple thing."

"Have you! Where?"

"At the salt mines near Cracow."

"Sir Vladimir, we are going to have to visit that place. But back to my engine. Imagine a barrel with two holes in the bottom and one in the top. One of the bottom holes is fitted with a valve that will let water in but not out. It has a long pipe on it that leads down into the water. The other bottom hole has another long pipe on it—say about eight yards long—that leads up to another barrel with another valve on the bottom that lets water in but not out. These valves can be simple pieces of leather that loosely cover a hole."

"I can imagine that."

"Okay. Into the top of each barrel, we run a pipe from a boiler, a big kettle with a good lid. Between the kettle and each barrel we have a valve that is open and shut by hand. Still following me?"

"Yes."

"Right. Now we open the steam valve which fills the lower barrel with steam. Air in the barrel is forced out into the upper barrel."

"Uh . . . oh. You have a fire under the kettle."

"Of course. Now we close the steam valve. Steam in the lower barrel cools, condensing back to water which takes up much less space than the steam. The valve in the upper barrel will not let air back in so water is sucked up the pipe to fill the lower barrel."

"Uh . . ."

"Have you ever drunk through a straw?"

"A straw? No, but once when I was ill my mother had me drink hot beer through the shaft of a heron's feather."

"Same thing. As the lower barrel is filling, we purge the top barrel of air as we did the lower barrel. Once the lower barrel is full, we open the bottom steam valve again and close the top one. Thinking about it, these two steam valves could both be worked with the same handle. The water runs out the lower barrel and up to the top one, having been lifted sixteen yards. Closing the steam valve repeats the process.

"Now, I don't know how deep that mine is, but I'm sure it's more than sixteen yards. Still, I see no reason why we can't cascade any number of barrels, each feeding the one above it. We'd only need two steam lines, one for odd barrels and one for even."

"Why, that sounds wondrous, Sir Conrad." We rode a while in silence as I tried to digest it all. Then I said, "But why would you need many barrels? Why not just put a longer pipe on the first one?"

"Well, there's a limit on how hard you can suck. Actually, I've said 'suck' because it's easier to visualize. In truth, you can't pull on water. Fluids lack tensile strength. What we're really doing is lowering the pressure in the barrel and letting atmospheric pressure push the water up."

"Atmospheric pressure . . . ?"

"Yes. Consider that we live at the bottom of an ocean of air . . ."

"At the bottom of an ocean!" There are times when Conrad pushes too far!

"Of air. Come on now, Vladimir. Can you really doubt that you are surrounded by air? What do you think wind is, but the motion of air? What do you think you're breathing?"

"Well . . . yes. But I've never thought of it in those terms."

"Okay. Now air has weight and . . ."

"There! You are doing it again! If air has weight, why doesn't it fall down?"

"Huh?" Conrad said.

"It's up in the air, isn't it? . . . or maybe I can't say that, but it's up there, isn't it? If it weighs something it should fall down!"

"But . . . it has fallen down. It's on Earth, isn't it? It hasn't drifted off to the Moon, has it?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Well, it hasn't. If you go to the Moon, you must take your air with you."

"If I go to the bloody damn Moon! Dammit, Sir Conrad, I am trying to engage in a simple, civil conversation. We are talking about accomplishing the mundane task of getting water out of a flooded mine. I may not have your education, but I am no idiot child to be fobbed off with tales of fairies and dragons and trips to the Moon!"

The girls had dropped back as our argument heated up. We rode in silence for a bit, letting our tempers cool down. Then Conrad said, "Okay. I'm sorry, I didn't intend to insult you. Now, we were discussing atmospheric pressure. Let's suppose that you were walking at the bottom of a lake—No! Let me take that back. Suppose that a turtle was walking on the bottom of a lake."

"Very well," I said.

"Now, the turtle can look up and see the water above him, right? But you know that water has weight, always flows downhill, and settles in the lowest spot possible. Right?"

"I see. So if I could stand like an angel above the world, I might see you riding at the bottom of an ocean of air."

"Well put, Sir Vladimir. Now, air weighs very little, but it is many miles deep. The weight of it over a single square yard is something like ten tons. Hey, don't fly off the handle again!"

I said with some resignation, "My back must be half of a square yard. Please explain how it is that I can carry five tons of air on it with ease, when one ton of stone would squash me flat?"

Sir Conrad rubbed his neck with his fingertips, grimaced at the dirt of them and muttered, "Two weeks without a bath," then said, "A fluid pushes equally in all directions. While it is pushing down on top of you, it is also pushing up from the bottom. Those two areas must be the same, so they cancel out. The push down equals the push up and you don't feel anything."

"I have tons pushing down and tons pushing up and doubtless tons pushing at all sides! Were that true, I would surely be squashed!"

"Without the air pressure on you, you would quickly die. You might say that you are already squashed, that you are used to being squashed."

"My mother would not be delighted to hear it."

And so it was that we talked out the morning.

Conversation with Conrad can numb the mind more than all the wine of Hungary! My one moment of glory was when Conrad thought that a "walking beam" was a log that somehow had a walking motion, whereas in truth a walking beam is a beam that a man walks on. A small victory, but something to hang the pride on.

The none bells were ringing as we entered the gates of Cieszyn. I started heading for the castle, as was my custom, but Conrad directed us to the Pink Dragon Inn.

"You and I would be welcome at the fort," he whispered. "The girls would not."

I saw the wisdom in this. I had heard that Conrad owned the Pink Dragon Inn, and I suppose that I expected it to be filled with more of his mechanical contrivances. What I found surprised me. The place had a large carved wooden sign, as brightly painted as a statue in church. It had a large and fat pink dragon, beer mug in hand, staring with great lechery at a small and remarkably feminine pink rabbit. This strangely proportioned rodent was grinning back at the dragon.

We were met at the door by Tadeusz, the innkeeper. He was a huge man, as round as a ball, with a full beard and a clean white apron, yet for all his size he moved with remarkable speed.

"Sir Conrad! Welcome, my lord! It is joyous to see you again!"

"Nice to see you, too, Tadeusz."

"This noble lord and these fine ladies, they are your guests, my lord?"

"Oh, yes. They lodge at the inn's expense."

I was relieved to hear this. You see, while my father is hardly a pauper, his expenses in recent years have been high. Not only had he provided three sons with horse, arms, and armor, but he had provided a total of seven large dowries in the course of getting my six sisters married. (It happened that one prospective brother-in-law had the effrontery to drop his dowry into the Odra River while on a ferryboat. To his credit, he did try to retrieve the sack, but was unfortunately wearing full armor at the time. Or perhaps fortunately, for had he not drowned, my father would surely have dealt the fellow a less honorable death. I suppose every family has a skeleton or two about.)

Be that as it may, my father does not see fit to provide lavishly for a son who has remained a bachelor. My services to Lambert had been in discharge of feudal duty, so of course I had not been paid. The duke had not mentioned money, so I could hardly broach so mundane a subject to so high a personage.

The result was that I had in my possession a total of nine pence, enough perhaps for a meal and lodging for a night. After that, well, I would always be welcome at Cieszyn Castle, Count Herman's wife being my mother's second cousin. Also, since my father is one of eleven living children and my mother one of seventeen, there was always a relative nearby who would be happy of company. In fact, I once computed that it would be possible to spend four and a half years visiting them all without spending a pence, without overstaying a welcome, and without imposing on the same relative twice. My family may not be wealthy, nor high in the nobility, but we are prolific.

The duke, however, had charged me to stay with Conrad and this would have proved difficult had not Conrad himself paid my way.

Conrad and I dismounted and helped the girls down. A half dozen stable boys scurried out and took away our horses.

"Curry them down and feed them of the best!" Tadeusz shouted. "The very best, mind you!"

Conrad stopped the boy who was leading off his horse, removed his small, heavy saddlebags and draped them over the innkeeper's shoulder, which visibly sagged under the weight.

"See that these are put in a safe place, Tadeusz, and have something sensible done with our baggage."

Conrad introduced his party, but the innkeeper became increasingly fretful.

"But you did not let me know that you were coming, my lord."

"Well, it's not like I could phone ahead."

The innkeeper paused to let that strange statement pass, being perhaps more used to Conrad than I was.

"Business has been extremely good, my lord. The inn is full."

"That's wonderful!"

"It is wonderful that I cannot provide my liege lord and each of his noble guests with rooms?"

"It's wonderful that our inn is doing well." At the time, I was shocked by Conrad's use of the royal plural, but on getting to know him better I found that he thought of the inn as belonging to both himself and the innkeeper. Conrad owned it legally and Tadeusz managed it, so it was "theirs." He actually thought that way.

"We don't all need separate rooms," Conrad said, rubbing at the dirt on his neck. "What about the room that you were supposed to keep reserved for me?"

"Why, your accountant, Piotr, uses that, my lord. I know! Those merchants from Prague! I shall evict them. I never liked Bohemians anyway!"

"Hey, none of that! If we've rented them rooms, the rooms are theirs. Look, for tonight, put Piotr up with the stable boys, find a second bed and put it up in the room for Sir Vladimir and Annastashia. Three of our ladies can sleep with the waitresses."

"Ah, my lord. Some of these maidens wish to be waitresses?"

"I'm afraid that they don't qualify. For now I want a tall beer and a warm bath before supper."

I later found that to be a waitress at the Pink Dragon Inn, a maiden must needs be a true intact virgin; a thing my Annastashia had ceased at months ago.

Although the sun was still high, the common room of the inn was full of customers. At a whispered word from our host, a party of young men quickly smiled, bowed and vacated a table for us. It seems that they worked at the brass foundry, which Conrad also owned.

A pair of fast-moving waitresses quickly cleaned the table and brought us pitchers of cool beer from the cellars. They were maids of exceptional beauty and most immodestly clad.

To start from the bottom, they wore shoes with extremely high heels; two or three fingers high. They wore no dress, but a tight fitting cloth that barely covered their breasts and privy members. The back of this skimpy garment had an absurd puff of fur, like a rabbit's tail. Their legs were covered with tight hose of a material suitable for netting small fish. There were bands of cloth at their necks and wrists—suggestive of shackles—and a strange sort of hat, reminiscent of a rabbit's ears. And that was all.

I found myself staring at these lovely apparitions until Annastashia kicked me, quite painfully, in the shin.

Conrad didn't bother to sit as cool beer was placed before us. He simply downed his mug with a single pull, said, "To the showers!" and went out the inn's backdoor.

"Can he do something to make it rain?" Natalia asked between gulps of beer.

"No," Krystyana said. "He just means that we should follow him to the bathhouse."

"Oh, good! I've always wanted to take a bath!"

Count Lambert's castle town had a sauna for use in the winter and there was a nearby stream with a swimming hole for use in the summer. But there was no bathhouse. The girls had heard Krystyana's descriptions of the glories of soaking in a hot tub and they scurried eagerly after Conrad.

I, perforce, mounted rear guard and showed admirable foresight in securing a pitcher of beer from the table to take with us. The bathhouse was an establishment separate from the inn, but adjoining it. Conrad did not own the place, but had made special arrangements with it for the convenience of the inn's servants and guests. A brass token from the inn paid our fare.

The baths were of the traditional sort, with men and maids bathing together. There is a fad, prevalent in some of the larger cities, that separates the sexes. An annoying modernism, it spoils the scenery; and how is a man to get his back clean?

As I entered the changing room, Sir Conrad was already walking out, having left his clothes and armor scattered on the floor.

"A wise thought, that," he said, noticing my pitcher. "Boy! Run to the inn and bring back a few more pitchers of beer! And mugs!" He stumbled into the darkened bathroom.

The girls, having seen Conrad scatter his clothing and equipment about the room, naturally assumed that this was the proper way to do things. Soon stockings and embroidered petticoats were scattered atop chain mail and leather.

Now, my arms and armor were worth three hundred times the money in my purse. To treat them in this careless manner was painful to me but I did it, to keep up appearances. As I finished stripping, an old female attendant came in, shook her gray head at the mess, and started folding things. I wanted to tell her to take special care with my armor, but didn't, fearing that she would expect a gratuity.

The bathroom proper had no windows; it was lit by but two oil lamps and one must needs feel one's way in until the eyes became accustomed.

"Well now," said a voice that I almost recognized. "They seem to let anyone come in here."

"You'd think the place was a common stews," said another almost familiar voice.

"But then, again, it is a common stews," said a third voice. "That is to say, it is common and we are all here up to our necks stewing."

"True," said the first. "And he doesn't seem a truly bad sort."

"Indeed, he comes in the company of five of the truly good sort."

"Unclad ladies must always be considered socially acceptable," agreed the first. "In fact, I move that we make a guild ordinance to that effect."

"Moved, seconded, and passed by general acclaim."

It was still too dark to see who was talking. Straining to see them, I bumped my shin on the rim of one of the two huge half-sunken tubs.

"Tsk. Such a clumsy sort. And his mother was so proud of him. Twenty years of careful upbringing gone to waste."

"Mothers all feel that way. It comes with the fief. But see. He has had the foresight to bring potables. If this wisdom is matched by generosity, he might prove a valued member of our company."

The girls were giggling at the exchange, but I have found that it is not wise to act belligerent when naked. Had I been in armor, my response might have been different, but I attempted humor.

"I brought the pitcher from the table lest it be abandoned. This very night, little Moslem children will be going to bed thirsty, so it's a sin to be wasteful."

"You know," Conrad spoke for the first time. "My mother used to use a similar argument to try to get me to eat my vegetables."

"Mine as well, though she never used it on beer," said a voice. "I always told her to send them to the poor infidels, but she took no heed."

"I did precisely the same," said Conrad. "Do all mothers read the same books?"

"My mother can't read at all. Nonetheless, it was wise of Vladimir to bring the beer. Why, it might have fallen into the hands of some intemperate inebriate and thus contributed to all manner of venial sins."

"As well as a few carnal ones."

"Just who are you men?" I shouted.

"He doesn't recognize us. I'm crushed. It must be eyestrain."

"Doubtless brought on by staring at these lovely ladies."

"Dammit!" I said.

"We're the Upper Selesian Drinking and Fighting Men's Guild."

"Dragons slain, treasures liberated, maidens put in distress, and promptly rescued."

"All services performed by true belted knights."

"I never heard of it," I said.

"Reasonable. We only just formed it this afternoon. After all, if the commons can have guilds with all sorts of special privileges, why can't we?"

"Right. We have, for example, declared a guild monopoly on rescuing fair maidens in distress. Now you, young lady, you look to be in need of rescuing."

"But I'm not in distress!" Natalia said.

"Easily arranged. Gregor here can do it."

"Gregor!" I shouted. "You are my cousin Gregor!"

"A slow lad, but he comes through in the end."

"And that's second cousin. You must allow us some dregs of pride," his brother Wiktor said.

"Nonetheless, we are family, Vladimir," my cousin Wojciech added. "So get in the tub, share out the beer, and introduce us to your attractive friends."

I got in. The room had lightened enough for me to see reasonably well. "Have some beer, if you need it badly enough to beg. Unfortunately, I can not introduce you three to my friends. You see, they must maintain their standards, which would be irretrievably lowered by social contact with the less fortunate members of—"

"Come off it, Vladimir. They played a good joke on you. Don't rub it back on them. Gentlemen, I am Sir Conrad Stargard."

"And I am Sir Gregor Banki. These are my brothers Sir Wiktor and Sir Wojciech."

"Sir Wojciech! What fool finally knighted you?" I asked, but was ignored.

"You are the Sir Conrad Stargard? I should have known by your size," Wiktor said.

"You are the warrior who singlehandedly destroyed Sir Rheinburg's outlaws? The warlock who is doing all those strange things in Okoitz?"

"Gentlemen, if you want to stay friends, I'll ask you to forget that word 'warlock.' I've built a textile factory at Okoitz and I have a few windmills going up. As to the rest, well, it just sort of happened," Conrad said.

A waitress from the inn brought a tray of beer and mugs. Despite the fact that we had five lovely and nude young ladies in the tub with us, all male eyes followed her around the room as she served.

As she left, Wiktor said, "Sir Conrad, how do you go about training them to walk that way? I mean, the way her, uh, derrière moves . . ."

"It's not training. It's the shoes. Walking on high heels requires more hip action."

"I've got to get one of those outfits!" Yawalda whispered.

Conrad laughed. "Gentlemen, let me complete the introductions. These are Lady Krystyana, Lady Annastashia, Lady Natalia, Lady Yawalda, and Lady Janina."

"We are honored, ladies," Gregor said. "You must forgive me. I had assumed that since Sir Conrad just came from Okoitz, you must be some of Count Lambert's famous ladies-in-waiting."

"Well, they are," Conrad said. "Or were. But since I seem to be their guardian, I've just promoted them to the nobility."

"Can you do that?" Wiktor asked.

"Are you saying that I can't?" Conrad said.

"Sir Conrad, considering the stories that we've heard of your sword, I'd say that you can do just about anything you want." Gregor laughed.

"Then it's settled," Conrad said. "I think I've soaked enough to loosen the dirt. Krystyana, if you'd get a brush and some soap going on my back, I'll return the favor shortly."

As soon as Krystyana went to work, Annastashia claimed proprietorship of my own back. After a few moments of reciprocal grinning between my cousins and the other girls, there was shortly a great deal of scrubbing going on. A very great deal. In fact, the waitress returned to freshen our mugs and was hardly noticed.

Things became increasingly boisterous, which was just as well. The mood of the company was such that things had to fall out either to sport or to sex and I wouldn't like my aunts to hear that I was involved in a public orgy!

Soon people were bumping into people, Natalia splashed Gregor, he retaliated, and in moments the room exploded with soapy water as everyone joined in.

As the water settled, Conrad vaulted from the tub and went to the clean-water tub for a hot soak. The old bath attendant, having finished with our clothes, came in, shook her tired gray head and picked up a mop. She dried the floor, muttering under her breath. The waitress returned with fresh mugs of beer, as the old ones were half filled with soapy water.

The others followed Conrad to the clean tub, but Annastashia motioned for me to stay behind with her.

"What Sir Conrad said," she whispered, "about how we were all ladies, now. Is that real? I mean, would your parents . . ."

I shook my head. "It means that you will be treated with great courtesies at the inn and on Sir Conrad's lands. But my parents, especially my mother—she'd look down on anyone whose great-grandfather was a commoner."

After the bath, my cousins accepted Sir Conrad's invitation to supper. We returned to the inn to find the table ready for us and fairly groaning with food and drink. We did justice to a slab of smoked sheatfish, a joint of lamb, and an entire goose. Gallons of wine and buckets of beer washed down mounds of bread and cheese. I think only my Uncle Felix sets a better table than Conrad's innkeeper.

Further, we did not have to go to the market to purchase these things so that the inn could prepare them, as is the usual arrangement with inns, but the inn provided the service, not only to us but to all as a matter of custom. The innkeeper told me that this innovation of Sir Conrad's was partly responsible for the profitability of the inn, for by buying in vast quantities he was able to get the best at very low prices.

"Further," Tadeusz continued, "I need only prepare a half dozen items a day to satisfy my guests, saving the cooks much effort."

"But how do you know how much to cook?" Krystyana asked.

"My lady, we know about how much of what our guests will eat. True, sometimes the pigs are fed better than they deserve, but not often. Also, our waitresses have become adept at persuading our customers to purchase that which we have in excess."

I laughed. "I think those girls could have a man eating dog meat without his noticing!"

"Hmm . . . an interesting suggestion, my lord. But I'm afraid that Sir Conrad would not approve."

"No, Sir Conrad would not approve," Sir Conrad said. "And you're feeding surplus food to the pigs? That's not good. Tomorrow, talk to Father Thomas and see what can be done about giving it to the deserving poor. Don't give them anything you wouldn't eat yourself, but, well, there are hungry people out there."

I drifted off in private words with Annastashia and so lost the thread of the conversation. When I returned, Sir Conrad was reading from a list.

" . . . two dozen carpenter's hammers, two dozen mason's hammers, three dozen wood chisels, assorted, one dozen wheelbarrows, two dozen . . ."

"Sir Conrad," I said, "what are you talking about? And what is a wheelbarrow?"

"A wheelbarrow is a sort of pushcart with only one wheel."

"One wheel? Then why doesn't it fall over?"

"It would, except that a man holds it up."

"That makes no sense at all."

"When you see one you'll understand. Come take a look at this list of tools I need to buy. Tell me if I've forgotten anything."

"Tools? Why buy tools?" I asked. "If you hire workmen, they'll have their own tools."

"Really? I didn't know that."

"Then there is perhaps another thing you don't know, Sir Conrad," my cousin Gregor said. "And that's that a workman with tools costs half again more than one without. If you project work of any size . . ."

"We have a town to build, with a wall and a mine to redig, and—"

"Then you will save by providing the tools yourself. Also, your tools would doubtless be made hard by this cementation process of yours that we have been hearing about."

"Of course."

"Then they will be better tools than any a workman would have. Times have not been good in Cieszyn. In the last year, not a workman in the city has spent a penny on anything but food, and little enough on that."

"That rough, huh?"

"It saddens a man to look at them, the men ragged and hungry, the women worse."

"And the children?" Conrad asked.

"The children? There aren't many of them. Mostly they die very young. But what can one do? My own peasants are well enough fed and we support our own poor but that is all. I have no great store of wealth with which to feed all the wretches in the city."

"But surely something can be done."

"If you would be a benefactor, Sir Conrad, hire more men than you need. You'll get them cheap enough. And build on a lavish scale."

"A good thought, Sir Gregor. I'll act on it."

Chapter Four

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

It soon became obvious that I couldn't simply hire a construction company and go to Three Walls. I would have to hire individuals and form them into a unit myself.

Furthermore, most workmen didn't have their own tools. They had sold them to feed their families. What few tools were in the men's hands were in very poor shape and were often poorly designed in the first place.

Nor could I go to a store and buy tools, not in the quantities I required. I had to contract to have them made and if I was going to do that, I might as well see that they were designed properly. I set up my drawing board and went to work.

I started drawing pliers and was astounded to discover that I knew the designs for more than ninety sorts of pliers. I spent two days drawing them and then realized that most of them would be useless in construction work.

I had to stop and think out exactly what we would need, because if we later discovered some lack, we'd be hard-pressed to supply it.

I only had to put up some buildings fourteen miles away, yet my situation was almost like that of a nineteenth-century explorer going into the jungle. If we didn't bring it, we wouldn't have it.

The usefulness of many tools often depends on subtle properties. At first glance, you normally wouldn't notice much or any difference between a crosscut saw and a ripsaw, but in use the difference is huge. One cuts much better against the grain of the wood and the other with it. The difference has to do with the angle of the teeth and it took some experimentation to get it right.

When I was sure of a design and the quantities required, I put it up for bids by nailing a notice to the church door. I know that sounds sacrilegious, but that's how these people posted a public notice.

Bidding for work was not the usual way of doing things and many blacksmiths objected. It was contrary to guild rules. They were working men, not merchants. It was unheard of.

I listened to their objections and then told them that if they wanted my work they would have to bid on it. In the end, they did it my way and for a reasonable price, but it is sad that a good socialist would have to do such things.

All of this took time, and two whole months went by before we could leave for Three Walls.

One morning, I was having dinner with the Banki brothers, and mentioned that I had run into a German knight on the trail in the High Tatras Mountains who had given me a bash on the head. And a month after that, I'd been attacked on Count Lambert's trail by another German. And the day after that I was attacked by a whole band of Germans!

"It's like there was an invasion of damned Germans!" I said.

"You must be careful with that sort of talk," Sir Gregor said. "Did you know, for example, that Duke Henryk's paternal grandmother was a German princess? That his mother was a German princess? That his wife was a German princess? And that young Henryk's wife is a German princess?"

"No I didn't. Why on Earth did they all marry Germans?"

"I couldn't say exactly, of course, but I suppose the fact that a German princess often comes with a dowry that is ten times what any Pole could pay for his daughter has a lot to do with it. So many of their young men go wandering off and getting themselves killed that there's always a surplus of young women. Then, too, in Germany only the oldest son inherits the father's lands and title. The younger sons, with scant prospects in life, aren't the most sought after of marriage partners."

"Then there are the German skilled workmen," Wiktor added. "They know many things that our own people don't. Many of them come to Poland to improve their position and it is the duke's policy to welcome them."

"Well, peaceful or not, it still seems like an invasion to me," I said.

Sir Wojciech said, "Oh, that I should have a hundred skilled workmen and a beautiful German princess and a full sack of gold to go with her! Invade me! Invade me!"

I took a pull of beer from a new pitcher and it was foul. I called Tadeusz over.

"Try that and tell me if it's the beer or only my mood that's bad."

He did and he blanched white. "Forgive me, Sir Conrad. This must be from the new batch. The whole barrel must be bad. We can't serve this to our customers. A pity, but the barrel must be dumped and sulfur burned in it, then filled with boiling water, and soaked before it can be used again."

"So you're saying that you have a bad strain of yeast going. How much beer are we talking about?"

"This was the big barrel, my lord. More than six thousand gallons."

"Ouch! That's a lot of beer. Look—don't dump the barrel. There's something we can do with that beer. It tastes bad, but it still has alcohol in it. There's a process called distillation that will let us save the alcohol."

"This alcohol, my lord. What is it good for?"

"Drinking, mostly, but it has other uses. It's good on cuts and wounds and helps keep them from festering. It's useful in making other things like perfumes and medicines. It's a good preservative and keeps things from rotting. But mostly it's for drinking."

"This sounds wondrous, my lord. And we could do this distillation here at the inn?"

"Here or at the brass works. I'll go over there and see what I can come up with in the way of a still."

We had two big brass kettles that were made for washing wool at Count Lambert's cloth factory, but not yet delivered to him. They each had a tight-fitting lid.

For distillation, you need a container to simmer the mash, or in this case the beer. You contain the vapors and cool them down so that they can liquify. This is traditionally done with a coil of copper tubing, which we didn't have. But the only important thing is to have enough surface area to provide cooling.

I took one of the kettles and set it up over an outdoor fireplace in the inn's courtyard. I found a hefty length of cast brass pipe intended for the washline that was as long as I was tall. I set the second kettle in a washtub that distance from the first. Then I got a smith from the brass works to solder the pipe between the two kettles, near the top.

This involved punching holes in my liege lord's new kettles, but he probably wouldn't notice. If he did, I could probably think up a good reason why I put the holes there on purpose. Engineers all develop a certain skill at snow jobs.

I also had the smith put a hole in each of the lids so we could check the liquid level in the kettles with a stick. Some thick leather made a good enough gasket for the lids. Sandbags held them down tight and wooden plugs took care of the holes in the lids.

By midafternoon, we had a still that any moonshiner would be proud of.

With the help of one of the cooks, I put forty gallons of bad beer in the boiler kettle and got a fire going under it. We filled the washtub around the condenser kettle with cool water and sat back to watch it work. By dark the level in the boiler had gone down about ten percent and I figured that we'd gotten all that we were going to get.

Sure enough, there were about four gallons of clear liquid in the bottom of the condenser. I took a pitcher of it into the inn and told the cook to put the rest into a barrel someplace. What was left in the boiler could be fed to the pigs.

Tadeusz was eagerly awaiting the results of our efforts. The thought of a new drink fascinated him.

You see, there were very few things to drink in the Middle Ages. There was wine that had to be imported. There was beer that was flat for lack of any container that could hold pressure. There was water that often wasn't safe to drink. There was milk that was only available in the spring and summer. And that was all. Nothing else existed with which a person could quench his thirst.

He looked with great anticipation at the pitcher in my hand, and broke out his two best (and only) glass goblets. Glass was rare and fabulously expensive. They were the only bits of glass at the inn, reserved for the bride and groom at wedding feasts. The other guests at the head table had to make do with silver.

I poured two fingers worth into each glass and we drank.

It was raw and rough and rugged. Wicked stuff. I once tried the product of an Appalachian moonshiner and while my results weren't quite as bad as his, I came close.

Tadeusz was literally cross-eyed. I'd heard of people having that reaction, but I'd never seen anyone actually do it before. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and his breathing had stopped. I had to pat him on the back to get it going again.

Once he was something like normal again, he wheezed, "Sir Conrad. Do your people actually drink that?"

"Well, something like it. I think it needs aging."

"God in heaven, but yours must be a tough people."

"Not really," I said. I held the lip of my goblet to the lamp on the table. The dregs burned vigorously and that meant that it was over fifty percent alcohol.

Tadeusz stared aghast at the burning drink, shook his head and walked away.

It took the cook over a month to process the entire six thousand gallons of bad beer. In the end, we had six hundred gallons of white lightning (I couldn't in justice call this stuff whiskey), which was stored in oak barrels in the inn's basement. On rare occasions, some adventurous buck would ask for a mug of it, but I don't think anybody asked twice. I kept a bottle for use as an antiseptic for my medical kit.

* * *

Part of my deal with my liege lord Count Lambert was that I was to return to Okoitz once a month to oversee the construction we had going on there. The first month was up and I had to go.

The problem was that the girls naturally wanted to go along and pay a visit to their families and friends. The count had given me the girls, and probably my lands as well, because they had started imitating the manners of the nobility rather than acting like dumb peasants. He felt that it was all my fault and maybe it was.

But he wanted them out of Okoitz before everybody started acting uppity. To bring the girls back would not have been wise. But the girls didn't know that they had been thrown out of their home and I didn't have the heart to tell them.

To make matters worse, Sir Vladimir insisted on coming with me. I had no right to tell him what he could do or not do, and I didn't want to offend the guy. I liked him and I could see where he could be very useful in the future.

Finally, Sir Gregor came to my rescue by suggesting that he and his brothers take the girls on a hunt on my new land before I "ruined" it with a lot of buildings. It only took an hour to talk the girls into it. I mean, I might be the girls' protector, but I wasn't their chaperon. They knew the score. It wasn't as if they were virgins.

* * *

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI

Sir Conrad and I arrived at Okoitz to find Vitold, Count Lambert's carpenter, installing the sails on the windmill that was being constructed in the bailey.

This windmill was a huge affair and the top of the turret was higher than the roof of the church. The blades went much higher and the topmost of the twelve was so tall that I think one could stack ten peasant huts one above another and not reach the height of it.

The windmill was surrounded by a circular workshed and it was on the roof of this that the carpenter worked. Count Lambert and six of his knights were also on the roof watching. Perforce, we climbed up to join them.

"Greetings, Sir Conrad," Count Lambert said. "I see that you have brought the excellent Sir Vladimir with you. You see? It's nearly done."

"There's been more progress than I had expected, my lord," Sir Conrad said.

"My people have worked at little else since they finished spring planting. I'll wager that you think better of them now than you did at the Christmas party."

"No bet, my lord. Not on that subject anyway."

"Yes, there is our wager as to whether or not this mill will work, isn't there? Twenty-three thousand pence, wasn't it? It seems you're gaining on me."

"We'll know soon, my lord. The mill looks about done," Sir Conrad said.

"Only on the outside, my lords," Vitold said. "I don't have the pumps and cams all hooked up yet inside and she's got to be way out of balance."

The last of the sails was on and the great wheel started turning slowly in the breeze.

"You haven't painted the sails with linseed oil the way you were supposed to," Sir Conrad said. "The sails will draw much better if they're not porous."

"We've ordered some linseed oil out of Wroclaw, Sir Conrad, but it hasn't come yet. I just wanted to see how the axle shaft turned before I got to work on the pumps."

"Then I guess you've learned what you wanted to know. It seems to turn easily enough. Like you said, the balance is way off, but you'll have to wait until the pumps are on before you can work on that. Also, I think that the set of the sails could be improved, but that's the last thing you'll want to play with. I guess you can stop it now."

"Now that's something I wanted to talk to you about, Sir Conrad. I understand how to make it go, but you never said anything about how to make it stop."

"What? To stop it?" Count Lambert said. "There's naught to that! Watch!"

I fear that my Count Lambert had scant experience with the vast power of that huge wheel. He put his arm around the next blade as it came slowly by and attempted to bring it to a halt. The vast wheel heeded his efforts not at all, but continued around.

The count, unused to any disobedience, clung on and was soon swept off the roof of the shed.

Still clutching the windmill blade as it began to rise, he shouted, "You men! Help! Attend me!"

Sir Bodan said, "Right, my lord!" and grabbed onto the next blade as it went by.

Sir Stefan took the blade after and what was I to do? My father's liege lord had bid my attendance in time of his peril. And peril it was indeed, for Count Lambert had now risen halfway to the top and was as high as the church roof with naught but air between him and the ground. Could I show the white feather at such a time?

For the honor of my family, I grabbed the next blade.

With a force that could not have been matched by a team of eight oxen, the great blade lifted me off the roof. I soon found that I could stand on the ropes that held the bottom of the sails and so for a short while was not greatly discomfited.

The other four knights followed those already on the wheel, leaving only Sir Conrad and Vitold on the roof of the shed. By this time, I had risen more than halfway up and my head was lower than my feet. Count Lambert was at the top, completely upside down, saving his life by clutching the blade with arms and legs. I imitated his posture.

Perhaps due to the weight of the men on one side, the wheel was slowing noticeably. As luck would have it, it stopped just when I was hanging upside down at the top.

I did not like it.

I could hear and see everything with that crystal clarity which comes with great danger. Far below, I could hear Sir Conrad and Vitold talking.

"The sails were supposed to be held on with slip knots, like you use on shoelaces," Sir Conrad said. "Then you could stop the mill by pulling the cords as the blades went by."

"I must've missed that part. We didn't use no slip knots," Vitold replied. "I know! We can cut the ropes!"

"It's a little late for that. We have to get these men down. It would probably be best to push it all the way around. That will get Count Lambert off quickest. Get those men up here on the roof."

The whole population of Okoitz had gathered to watch the first turning of the mill, and I heard them shouting to us. Some were praying to God in heaven for our deliverance and some offered bad advice as what would be the best thing to do. No few of them were making wagers on which of us would fall first. The odds of my survival were the lowest of the lot.

But they were all on the ground and it took some time to get them on the roof.

Time was just what I could not spare, for my case was worse than that of the other knights. Not only was I the most vertically oriented, but they were dressed in ordinary clothes where I was just in from the trail and was perforce still in chain mail.

My helmet slipped from my head and fell for a horribly long time before bouncing off the roof of the shed, narrowly missing Sir Conrad. I'd almost killed the man I'd sworn to protect.

Worse, the blade I was clutching was of fresh pine and smoothly planed. I began slipping downward, head first. Count Lambert saw me and called to me to hold tight, but I was already holding with all my might and there was nothing more that I could do to obey him. I continued downward.

At first this frightened me, but I soon reasoned that down was precisely the direction that I wanted to go, could I but do it slowly enough.

Eventually reaching the hub of the wheel, I was able, with considerable difficulty, to remove myself from the blade and stand on the axle.

I was still a great distance in the air, but at least I was now upright and had something beneath my feet. I paused a moment to catch my breath.

By then, Sir Conrad had fifty peasants on the roof and together they were able to turn the stalled wheel. But the first motion took me unawares and I started to fall from the huge axle.

I saved myself by grabbing on to another blade of the wheel, this time to the one Sir Lestko was on. He was the last man in line, so perforce I was carried again higher, but now with my feet toward the hub.

They turned the wheel sufficiently for Count Lambert to step off, but by this time the force of the wind and the weight of the men was such that the wheel again turned of its own accord. The other knights were able to remove themselves without difficulty as they each came to the bottom, but I was halfway between rim and hub and thus continued around.

Sir Conrad saw my predicament.

"You must slide toward the rim!" he shouted. "If I cut loose the sails now, there's no telling where it will stop. You might end up on top again. Slide down when you are on the bottom half of the cycle and hold tight when you're at the top!"

I could see the wisdom of his suggestion, but the doing of it was no small task. In all, I went around nine times before Sir Conrad and Count Lambert could pick my weary body off the wheel and set me upright.

"Sir Conrad," Sir Stefan said, "your liege lord bid you attend him and you did not! I call you coward!"

There had long been bad blood between Sir Conrad and Sir Stefan. Sir Conrad stared at him for a moment, then shook his head.

"My liege lord asked for help and I gave him help! I got him and the rest of you fools out of the stupid predicament you'd gotten yourselves into. The first rule of safety is that you never touch a piece of moving machinery!"

"That's enough, gentles," Count Lambert said. "Sir Conrad, we thank you for your timely aid.

"Well! That worked up an appetite! Shall we retire to dinner?"

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

On returning to Cieszyn, I continued the work of getting my expedition ready.

I wanted seasoned hickory for the handles of the tools, but I didn't get it. Seasoned wood didn't exist and the idea of using old wood struck the carpenters as being absurd. When they needed wood, they went out and cut down a tree. That's the way that it had always been done and if I wanted it any different, I could wait five years for the wood to season.

You couldn't just buy a wheelbarrow. Nobody had ever heard of a wheelbarrow. You had to design a wheelbarrow and design all the metal parts in a wheelbarrow. Then you had to contract out the metal work, check all the work when it finally got done, and generally reject half of it because the blacksmith had ignored your drawings and instructions. Then you had to get the parts over to the brass works for heat-treating, and once that was done you had to get them to the carpenters who by that time had forgotten what you wanted in the first place.

And once completed, once they got it right, they'd stand around and ask why you wanted such a silly thing in the first place.

I tell you, if the workers hadn't needed work so badly that they were starving, I wouldn't have gotten anything done at all. But the combination of money and hunger is a powerful incentive.

As it was, I ended up spending a quarter of my considerable wealth on a few tons of hand tools.

Then there was the problem of hiring the men who would use the tools to build my facilities at Three Walls.

One of the carpenters, Yashoo, could read and write and was good at following instructions. Furthermore, he was about the only one who picked up reading technical drawings without difficulty. I made him my carpentry foreman and together we picked out his crew.

Many of these people were his close friends and relatives and I suppose that this was nepotism, but in a small medieval city, everybody in a given trade knew each other and many of them were related. Had I made a no-relatives rule, I don't think that there would have been enough carpenters left to fill my table of organization.

Then there were the masons to hire, and the miners. Well, there weren't that many miners available and I hired every one of them. All five.

Then we needed a blacksmith for repairs and a brewer and a baker and leather workers and all sorts of specialists.

I wouldn't bargain on pay. I offered every man a penny a day plus food, take it or leave it. Every man took it.

At long last it all started to come together, but by then it was time to make my monthly visit to Okoitz.

I had asked Count Lambert about the girls. He said that they could visit, but only if they came each in the company of a knight. That way they would be a cut above the peasants, and their upper-class manners wouldn't be so offensive. The Banki brothers were more than willing to visit Okoitz, although after that they had to get back to their estate, their summer holiday over.

So it was a two-day trip for a party of ten to Okoitz, with a stop at Sir Miesko's. A waste of time, but when a bunch of young girls is giving you everything they've got, every night, it's hard to say no.

The mill was working just fine when we finally got there. All of the peripheral equipment wasn't going yet, but a crew was sawing wood in the sawmill and another was pounding flax with the trip hammer. I left my sword with one of the workers, climbed up to the turret of the mill and went to a small turbine in the back.

Well, it was small only by comparison with the thirty-yard diameter of the main wheel. In fact, it was four yards across and was set at right angles to the big one. It was connected with reduction gearing to the turret such that if the big wheel wasn't facing directly into the wind, the small wheel started spinning and turned the turret to face the wind's new direction. It seemed to be working perfectly.

I went into the turret and found that all the pumps were in operation. There were two sets of pumps. One pumped fresh water from a well to a tank at the top of the tower. This was used only for emergencies at present, with a fire hose at the base of the mill. Eventually, I hoped to install pipes for running water throughout the whole complex.

The second set of pumps took water from a tank below ground level up to a tank halfway up the tower. Water running down from this middle tank was working the sawmill down below. This arrangement let work go on even if the wind stopped.

There was only a gentle breeze blowing, but all of the pumps were going full blast. I had seriously underestimated the amount of torque a windmill of this size could generate. Well, better that than having overestimated it. The next model, if there was one, would have bigger pumps.

As I left the turret, I heard a delighted shriek from above. I looked up and saw Sir Wiktor, hanging upside down from the top of the highest turning blade. It seems that he had heard of Sir Vladimir's adventures on the windmill and had to try it out himself.

In time, this became the standard thing to do for every young buck who visited Okoitz, a regular rite of passage. I had invented the ferris wheel.

Vitold was at work constructing the cloth factory, which surprised me. I'd expected him to be working at the second windmill, the one for threshing and grinding grain.

"It was Count Lambert who told me to build this factory first," Vitold said. "You'll have to talk to him if you want it done different."

I found Lambert out in the fields.

"Sir Conrad, you really must learn to report to a castle's lord as soon as you arrive. Courtesy requires it, and I saw you come in hours ago."

"Yes, my lord." Lambert had his moods and in this one it was best to speak when spoken to.

"Those are some strange plants you gave me. What are these things here?"

"Maize, my lord. Sometimes just called corn. I gave you several varieties and I'm not sure which this is."

"It's growing as high as my chest! What do you do with it?"

"It'll grow taller, my lord. It grows an ear, there's one there, that contains a sort of grain. Some kinds make good animal feed, some are good for human consumption. One kind pops and makes a good snack. It goes well with beer."

"Pops? What do you mean?"

"That's a bit hard to explain, my lord. I'll have to wait and show you in the fall."

"And what's this thing here?"

So I spent the whole afternoon lecturing from my meager knowledge of agriculture.

Before supper, Lambert led our party, his knights, and his current twelve "ladies-in-waiting" for a dip in his new swimming pool, the bottom tank of the new mill.

The bathing suit was thought up by the sick minds of the late Victorian era and of course hadn't been invented yet. It wasn't missed since the nudity taboo hadn't been invented yet, either.

Some of Lambert's ladies were remarkably attractive and skilled at frolicking. Indeed, I frolicked with two of them that night, Krystyana being indisposed.

Yet I was angry at this use of the tank. It was adjacent to the new well and seepage from the tank would get into the well water. We weren't using that well for drinking yet, but I'd planned to.

But all I could get out of Lambert was, "Sir Conrad, you take things too seriously."

Count Lambert never mentioned paying me for having won our wager over the mill, and his mood was such that I thought it best not to bring the subject up.

It was a relief to return to Cieszyn.

Chapter Five

"Krystyana, go back to the inn and tell Tadeusz to send out a breakfast for six hundred people. Tell him I know it's impossible, but I want him to do his best. This mess will take hours to sort out."

It was dawn and I almost despaired as I looked over the mob scene outside of Cieszyn's north gate. The three dozen pack mules I had bought were there and the Krakowskis had them loaded with tons of tools fresh from heat-treating, along with all the other supplies I had bought. Sir Vladimir was in full armor and the girls were ready.

And the hundred and forty-odd men I had hired were there, dirty, ragged, and skinny. But they had their wives and children with them, who were equally dirty and ragged, and even skinnier. I hadn't counted on being responsible for so many people.

"Darn it, Yashoo," I said to the carpentry foreman, "I never said that you could bring your families!"

"But what else can we do with them?"

"How should I know? But don't you realize that we are going out into the middle of the woods, where there isn't a single building for miles?"

"It's early summer, Sir Conrad, and these people are tougher than they look. We have the protection of you two good knights. It will work out."

"It will work out, will it? Just what do you plan to feed them? Pine needles? Because that's all you'll find in that valley!"

"Merchants will come. They always do."

"And I suppose you expect that I will pay them."

"Well, my lord, you did agree to feed us while we worked for you."

"You, yes. But not four-hundred-and-fifty extra people. No, the whole thing's impossible. They'll just have to stay here with relatives or something."

"My lord, look at us. Do we look like the kind of men who would have relatives rich enough to feed our loved ones? If we leave them behind, they will die."

It went on for hours, with the other foremen and Vladimir getting words in. I was being conned and I knew I was being conned. In the end, I gave in, knowing full well that I would end up footing the bill for all the food that six hundred people ate all summer long.

I mean, otherwise I would be sitting there trying to eat my breakfast with starving children staring at me.

But I didn't like it.

By then, Tadeusz's food started arriving and we ate. It looked as if he had scraped the cellar of every inn and bakery in the city, but what the food lacked in quality was compensated for in quantity. There was actually some left over, even after the poor wretches had come back for second and third helpings.

"The best I could do, Sir Conrad," Tadeusz said. "I did it, but I don't know what to charge for it."

"Why don't you just bill me for anything you spent and put the rest down to charity."

"That might be the easiest thing to do." The innkeeper surveyed the crowd. "It would surely be the truth. The charity, I mean. A sad group of wastrels."

It was almost noon before we finally got moving. The going was slow. Some of the people were sick, many of them were unused to traveling, and most of them were lethargic after having eaten their first decent meal in some time.

The girls soon lent their palfreys to some of the worst cases and were walking alongside their horses. I would have done the same, but Sir Vladimir absolutely forbade it.

It seems that we were on guard duty and to be off our horses would be failing in our duty. I had to agree with him, but it felt funny, riding while some poor woman limped along beside me.

Finally, I had two small children riding on Anna's rump, with the understanding that they had to jump off if any trouble happened.

It was dusk when we finally got to Three Walls. Everyone was so tired that they just collapsed where they were on the forest floor. I managed to get my little dome tent set up, the first time I'd used it since the previous fall.

While some of the men were getting horses and mules unloaded, Sir Vladimir came with a sack of flour over his shoulder.

"A good idea, that pavilion. It might rain and some of this food has to be protected from the wet."

Again, I had to agree and in minutes my tiny tent was packed solid with flour and grain and hams. There was nothing for it but sleeping in the open. I opened out my bedroll, stripped off my armor and was lying down under the stars with Krystyana when Vladimir came over again.

"What now?"

"I was wondering if you would start a fire for us. That 'lighter' thing of yours is faster than flint and steel."

"Yeah, okay."

That chore done, I went back to find Krystyana already asleep, which was just as well. It had been a long day.

It was a long night, too. It rained.

We spent the night half dozing in the darkness with the sleeping bag over us and with cold water trickling down all over. You would just be falling asleep when you would become aware that there had been some part of your anatomy which had been dry, but had now been discovered by some minor river. And it was cold.

Not an auspicious beginning.

I woke in the gray dawn to find Sir Vladimir still awake and still in his armor, sitting by a smoking fire with Annastashia asleep by his side.

"Did you stay awake the whole night?" I asked.

"Someone had to do it. There are wolves in these hills and wild boars. And worse things. I thought you'd have a hard day's work set for you, getting these peasants busy. I wouldn't be much help there."

"Well, thank you." I was embarrassed. I hadn't even considered security.

The woods of twentieth-century Poland are mostly friendly places, and nature itself is regarded as charming. Most people see nature through their television tubes, with cute little animals doing cute little things while a narrator tries to make them seem as anthropomorphic as possible. They do this as they sit in their air-conditioned houses, without a wolf or a bear or a poisonous snake within hundreds of miles. They walk through carefully manicured gardens and tell each other that nature is wonderful! Or they go out and really rough it, staying at a public "wilderness park" at nicely prepared campsites, with park rangers to stop anything rude from occurring.

Oh, they all say that they love nature, but they would sing a different tune if hungry wolves stalked their front yards!

In the thirteenth century, nature was the enemy.

Nature was wolves, wild boars, and bears that would kill you and eat you if ever they got the chance. Nature was the cold wind that froze you solid in the winter, the blinding heat that fried you in the summer, the poisonous plants and snakes that would quickly end your life if you were not vigilant. Nature was hunger and thirst that could only be fought back by the endless toil of mankind. It was the domain of the devil.

"Your thanks are accepted. Have someone wake me when food is cooked." And with that Vladimir lay back and was asleep in seconds, still in his armor.

Shouting, I got the mob awake and busy. I put Janina and Natalia in charge of issuing tools.

"These are my tools," I shouted, "and they are going to stay my tools. But I'm going to issue them to some of you, and you're going to be responsible for them. If you lose them, it comes out of your pay! You got that?" They looked like they took me seriously.

Then I assigned tasks. Some I sent to bring water from the old mine shaft. Some I sent for firewood and four more to digging latrines. I put Krystyana in charge of the kitchen and Yashoo in charge of building some temporary shelters, the understanding being that if there weren't enough up by nightfall, the carpenters would sleep outside again.

The masons went to work on an oven for cooking bread and I said that if it wasn't big enough, they wouldn't eat. In short order, everybody was running around, looking busy.

I found a comfortable spot and sat back. About every ten seconds, somebody would run up with a question that he should have figured out himself, but I suppose that that is what management is all about.

I sometimes chose at random between alternative answers. The truth is that when a subordinate comes to you for a decision, he has already debated the pros and cons of the matter and they are pretty much equal. If one way or the other was obviously better, he would have felt justified in making the decision by himself. Since one way has as much chance of being right as the other, a random guess is as good as anything else, and it gets things moving. Thus do they call you wise.

What with Lambert's changeable moods, I'd decided not to risk sending him the big kettles I'd damaged to make that still. I'd brought them along and ordered new ones made for the cloth factory.

Krystyana put the old ones to use for cooking. By ten, some food was actually ready. Just kasha, a boiled, cracked-grain dish, but filling and plentiful. And only water to drink. I made a mental note to buy some milk cows and told the carpenters that after the shelters were up, they should start on a brewhouse. No argument on that one.

I forgot to send some food to Vladimir, but of course Annastashia didn't. He just got up, ate and sacked out again. An earthy fellow, but a decent and useful one, within his limitations.

Another meal was served at six, just kasha again, with mushrooms and wild vegetables thrown in. Nobody complained about the poor fare, which was good. Despite my considerable wealth, I was worried about my ability to feed six hundred people. If I had to maintain the standards of Lambert's table, I never would have made it.

It was weeks before I discovered that the people thought that the food was wonderful! They actually got enough to eat!

Keeping track of so many people was beyond my ability, so at supper I called Natalia aside. She had very good handwriting and was one of those compulsively neat people who make good secretaries and clerks.

"Natalia, I have a special job for you. I want records kept on everybody here. I want a separate sheet of parchment for every man. Put down his name and the names of his parents and his grandparents and as far back as he knows. Put down his wife's name and her ancestor's names and their children's names. I want to know everybody's age, when and where they were born and married and when we hired them. And write small, because we'll be adding things later."

"All that! Why do you want to write such things down? If you need to know, why not ask them yourself?"

"Because I don't have time to, and I couldn't remember it all anyway."

"Why should anybody have to remember all that?"

"Pay records, for one thing. How can I remember how much I owe each man?"

"Pay them every night or every week and then you don't have to remember it."

"That would be very time-consuming. Everyone would have to stand in line for an hour every day. I am talking about permanent records. It is important that we know everything about our people."

"We can't know everything. Only God in heaven knows everything."

I tried two or three other lines of argument, and always ran up against the same unshakable logic. But there are more ways than logic to get your way.

"Natalia, would you please do this for me as a favor?"

"Why, of course, Sir Conrad! You know I'd do anything for you."

So Natalia became our records-keeper and eventually my secretary, but she still thought records were a silly waste of parchment. But these would be permanent records and records are important. Aren't they?

By nightfall, the camp had some semblance of order. I had a hut of my own, thatched with pine boughs. There was one for Vladimir and a third for our spare ladies. I'd told them to make two latrines and they'd assumed that I meant one for nobility and one for commoners, rather than one for men and one for women. But there was no point in arguing about it.

Everyone else had at least room under a roof. All told, I was pleased with our accomplishments, considering that we had started out with nothing but a mob of wretched, underfed people without enough sleep.

In the morning, I left with Yawalda and one of the men for Sir Miesko's manor to buy food. I bought grain, eggs, and veggies and made arrangements for my man to come by three times a week for more supplies. I also bought a milk cow, the only one available, which was a mistake.

It was dark before we got the silly animal back to camp and we had to stop and squirt the milk on the ground because we didn't have a bucket with us and I refused to lend my helmet for the purpose. At that, we were lucky, since Yawalda knew how to milk a cow and neither of us men did. I didn't even know why it was bawling and refusing to move. The joys of the pastoral life.

By the end of the next day, they had built a complete, if rustic village. The blacksmith was set up and making barrel hoops for the brewery and the masons were cutting a huge millstone that would be turned by two mules. Carpenters were at work making a gross of beehives. There was a hut for every family and all the outbuildings we needed for storage, cooking, and eating. We even had tables and benches, made from split logs, under the dining pavilion and enough new bowls, trenchers (a sort of board you ate off of), and spoons to go around. It is amazing how much six hundred people can accomplish when they're motivated.

There were splinters in everything, of course, and enough wood chips to pave the place, which was exactly what we used them for.

The next day was Sunday, and that afternoon Sir Miesko's village priest showed up and said mass under the dining pavilion.

Anna watched the mass intently and came closer to listen to the sermon. Thereafter, each week she became more interested and was soon kneeling, sitting, and standing with the faithful.

The priest was obviously disconcerted, but didn't know how to bring up the subject of a church-going horse.

Just as well, because I didn't have any answers.

Interlude One

I hit the STOP button.

"Tom, that horse is one of your critters, isn't it?"

"She's an intelligent bioengineered creation of my labs, if that's what you mean."

"Then what's an old atheist like you doing designing religious animals?"

"In the first place, Anna's not an animal in the sense you're using the word. She's intelligent. In the second, I didn't design her. That sort of thing takes a big staff a long time to do. And in the third place, it was as big a surprise to me as it was to you."

"It was?"

"Those horses are very literal-minded. They will always take every word that an authority figure says as the absolute truth. Nobody ever thought that one of them would be told deliberate lies."

"Tom, you're an old heathen!"

"I'm also your boss and your father. Now shut up."

He hit the START button.

Chapter Six

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

I hadn't thought to pay anybody, so none of the people had any money. The collection basket came back empty. To cover the embarrassment, I paid the priest. This set another precedent. Conrad pays the priest.

Now we could get down to real work, building permanent housing and getting the valley productive. I put the masons and the miners to enlarging the old mine shaft. Medieval miners cut shafts that were barely crawl-spaces. I wanted the shaft big enough for a man to work in and there had to be room for a steam suction pump.

Thus far, I'd let the carpenters build whatever they liked, since it was all only temporary. But I had some definite ideas about what I wanted for the permanent buildings.

The valley had about a square kilometer of flat land and was surrounded by a sloping wall that eventually became quite steep. The only entrance was between two cliffs about two hundred yards apart. The obvious structure to build was a combination apartment house and defensive wall between them, about six stories tall. It would have to be of wood, of course, good enough against animals and thieves but worthless against Mongols. But the cliffs were more than two hundred meters long and the land sloped down considerably as the cliffs fanned out. We could build now at the narrowest point and later build another wall, or several walls, that were taller and made of masonry.

I knew we had coal and limestone and that meant that we could make mortar with existing technology. I was confident that with clay and sand and much higher temperatures, we could make cement and with that we had concrete!

Enough concrete will stop anybody.

The valley was filled with huge trees. Oh, nothing like what you would find on the west cost of America, but hundreds of them were well over two yards thick at the base. Poland had many such trees at the time and for a very good reason.

It was extremely difficult to fell a really big tree with only axes. Once you did have it down, without machinery it was very hard to move. For the small groups of woodcutters common at the time, it was impossible.

And then, what could you do with it? Medieval Poles made boards by splitting logs and then planing the wood smooth. That doesn't work on a log that is as big around as you are tall.

For many centuries, they left the big trees alone and took only the small ones.

I'd had a dozen steel crosscut saws and ripsaws made, some of them four yards long. We had big timber, and fasteners were very expensive. The price of nails was absurd. But the bigger the parts, the fewer the fasteners. My plans called for the floors, doors, and shutters to be made with wood slabs a yard wide and the outer walls of boards a yard wide and a half-yard thick with the bark left on. It would be good insulation and indestructible except by fire.

Eventually I was to regret this plan. With no civil engineering experience, I had no idea how much a big piece of green wood can shrink. Every winter, a crew had to caulk the walls; I don't think that a single door ever fit right. It would have helped if I had laid the outside slabs sideways, in the manner of a traditional log cabin. But, no, I had to put them all vertically because it looked better structurally.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter how well your walls are insulated if you have to open a window to the wind when you want to see. In the winter, without artificial lights or window glass either you are cold or you are blind. I began to see why architects are such a conservative bunch. But I get ahead of myself.

The carpenters objected and were vocal about it. But not one of them mentioned the shrinkage problem and I chalked up their complaints to stick-in-the-mud conservatism. I paid the bills and got my way. As the old capitalist saw goes, "Him what pays, says."

It's remarkable, some of the things you have to do to build socialism.

They objected even more to the climbing spikes. These are the things that strap to a man's legs and feet and let him, with a sturdy leather belt, quickly climb a tree to cut the top off. A big tree has to be topped, otherwise it will shatter when it falls.

But my people were lumberjacks who had never left the ground. They thought being fifty yards off the ground was scary.

Of course, they were right. Hanging fifteen stories up while trying to saw through the tree you're hanging from is scary. But I couldn't let them think that, or we'd never get the place built.

When the first of the teams flatly refused to climb more than ten yards up a tree, I called them down.

"Come on down, you cowards!" I shouted, tossing my sword to a bystander. "Yashoo, let's show these little boys how to do their job."

The foreman came to me and whispered, "My lord, I've never, I mean I can't! I've never done anything like this before!"

"I'll let you in on a secret," I whispered back. "I haven't either."

"Then how—"

"If these people can't do the job, I'll have to send the lot of you back to Cieszyn and find another batch. But if you do it and I do it then they'll have to do it. Now, what say we both go up there and pretend like we have more courage than brains?"

He thought a few seconds. "If I die, you'll take care of my wife?"

With the rig we were using, if one of us came down, the other would come with him. But Yashoo needed assurance, not logic.

"On my honor."

"Then let's go."

It was a huge tree and even fifty yards up it would take two men to pull a saw through it.

With a two-man rig, each has spikes strapped to his legs and feet. Each has a hefty belt around his waist, and a long, thick belt goes across each back, around both men and the tree. The long belt fastens to each personal belt twice, with sturdy loops. It's really two shorter belts end-to-end, with a buckle by each right hand. The big belt has to be shortened periodically as the tree is climbed.

Technology is not a single thing. It's a lot of little things that add up. Things as simple as a new way to climb a tree, something we've been doing since before we were human.

I'd watched men topping trees at a lumberjacks' festival and I'd thought out how it had to go. The men had to work as a close team, taking two steps in unison and hitching the big belt up together.

To make matters worse, they had to be on opposite sides of the tree, where they couldn't see one another. If either moved without the other, they'd come down. Maybe not the whole way, since you shorten the belt as you go up. If the belt is too short to let you slide all way down the tapering trunk to the ground, you just might get to live.

But the least you got was a faceful of bark and a bellyful of slivers.

Seeing something and thinking about it is a far cry from actually having done it. Having to do something dangerous the first time in front of an audience doesn't help much either.

As we strapped on our gear, with the thick new leather squeaking about us, we rehearsed our moves and discussed each step. Yashoo's hand was shaking, but I figured he'd steady down once he was actually up the tree.

"I'm frightened, Sir Conrad," he said desperately, as we passed the belt around the tree.

"Of course you're frightened. Only a fool wouldn't be. But a man does his job for all of that." I took a few steps up. It wasn't bad. Sort of like climbing a ladder.

Yashoo made an elaborate sign of the cross, which ruined the effect I was trying to create, started up, and then seemed to slow down.

"Come on, Yashoo! Just like a dance! Stomp your spikes right into the tree. Left foot, right foot, raise the belt! Left foot, right foot, raise the belt!"

"But I can't dance either, my lord!"

"What 'either'? You're climbing! And I bet Krystyana could teach you how to dance." We were maybe ten yards up. "Maybe I could ask her. What do you think about throwing a dance Saturday night? Do we have any musicians?"

"Please don't talk about dancing. I fell down on a dance floor, too." He talked like a coward, but he was keeping right up with me.

"Cut that out! We're almost there."

The saw was tied to my belt by a measured length of rope. When it started lifting, we were high enough. I leaned around to where I could see my partner. He was white, bone white.

"Yashoo, I think there's enough of a breeze blowing so we won't have to take a wedge out. We'll do a back cut on my left first."

Yashoo didn't answer, but I could hear him praying. He took his end of the saw and did his part. We worked in silence, getting the feel of each other's rhythm. After the blade started binding, we cut from the other side.

When we were most of the way through, the tree parted with an explosive crack! It leaned way over as the top came crashing past us, then snapped back like a released bow.

It was like being on the end of a whip half the length of a football field that was snapping back and forth fifteen stories in the air. The trunk now came only to our waist and I could see Yashoo digging his white fingertips into the bark. Mine were pretty white, too.

My mother told me I should have gone to the beach.

"Well, Yashoo, what do you think? Should we walk down, or shall we have the men saw down the tree so we can ride?"

He stared at me but didn't answer.

After we got down he said, "Do I have to do that again?"

"Not today. Go back to supervising. I'm going to see how the masons are doing." I swaggered away, stopped at a latrine and vomited my guts out.

Eventually, we had four good topmen. They considered themselves to be something of an elite, strutting around and wearing their spikes constantly, even to church.

Chapter Seven

After the first few days, I put myself on a schedule which I have tried to stick to ever since. Mornings, I played manager and was available to anyone with a problem. Afternoons, I was a designer and your troubles had to be serious before I was bothered. Natalia did a good job keeping me from interruptions.

I had my drawing board set up in my hut and went through parchment by the bundle, drawing the buildings and making detail drawings of every sort of board in them, a job made easier because I used a lot of standard parts. That is to say, many parts were identical and the same design could be used over and over.

I had a few dozen sticks cut to exactly the same length and as long as I remembered Lambert's yard to be. These became our standard of measurement. A lot of the men had difficulty with the concept of standards. They were used to cutting each piece to fit as they went along and all this measuring and looking at plans struck them as a stupid waste of time.

As the weeks went on, there was a growing pile of finished parts, but that was not as satisfying as watching the buildings going up.

I delayed assembly of the buildings for a good reason. Wood set directly on the ground rots and I wanted our buildings to have masonry foundations and basements. We couldn't do masonry construction without mortar and we couldn't make mortar without coal.

There was coal in the mine, but the mine was still full of water. Parts for the steam pump were arriving regularly from the Krakowski brothers, and the pump functioned well enough after some reworking, or TLC as the Americans call it, but it all took time.

Oh, we could have used charcoal to make mortar, but that would have been time-consuming, too, and the coal would be there soon.

Getting my way was rarely an easy task. I had to talk and persuade and cajole. I shouted and screamed and pretended to throw temper tantrums. But what helped most was when I dug out my bible and read them the description of the building of Solomon's Temple. It put God on my side, which generally helps.

Piotr Kulczynski, my accountant, was commuting regularly between Cieszyn and Three Walls, keeping the books on our operations here as well as on the Pink Dragon Inn and the Krakowski Bros. Brass Works. He was a very efficient young fellow except when he was looking wistfully at Krystyana, which, it seemed, was most of the time.

The poor kid was obviously smitten, and just as obviously, she wouldn't have anything to do with him. It wasn't any of my business. I just don't like to see anybody in that much pain. They were both about fifteen, and that can be a very rough time of life.

I supposed that a certain amount of opposition to my plans from the workers was inevitable, but I never expected Vladimir and Piotr to be against my building plans. I had my drawings unrolled before us.

"I tell you that these indoor garderobes are a bad idea," Vladimir said. "I've seen them in some of the big stone castles. They make sense if you have to stand a siege. But that's the only time they use them, during a siege when you can't do anything else. The rest of the time, they use an outdoor privy just like everybody else.

"Shit stinks and you don't want it in your house! In the second place, wood buildings can't stand a siege. They're too easy to burn down. So there's no sense in putting in a garderobe in the first place."

"I agree with everything you've said, but you've never seen indoor plumbing. It's completely clean and sanitary. No smells at all. And this will be more than a garderobe. Besides the flush toilets, there's a washroom and a shower room. We'll be able to clean ourselves and our clothes even in the wintertime. We'll have hot water, too. There's a big hot-water heater built above the kitchen stove. I tell you that a hot shower on a cold winter morning is a glorious thing."

"What happens to the shit?"

"It's flushed down these brass pipes until it leaves the building. Then it goes by clay pipes to these septic tanks and finally to this tile field."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Vladimir said.

"Sir Conrad, what troubles me is the expense of all this," Piotr said. "I have calculated that for what you are spending on cast brass pipes and all these pottery toilets and washbowls and the valves and all, you could hire twenty chambermaids for fifty years!"

"That's a pretty ugly job, isn't it? Hauling away someone else's chamber pots?"

"There are many who would take it, sir, and be thankful."

"I'll allow that it'll be pretty impressive, if it works," Vladimir said. "But if you must have these gimcracks, why share them with the peasants? Put in a smaller bunch of fixtures for yourself and your high-born guests."

"Someday, everybody is going to have indoor plumbing. We might as well start here. I'm not going to deprive my people of something that basic."

"Your people would be far happier if you took what this cost and divided the money among them."

"Probably. But I'm still going to put in the indoor plumbing."

"It's your castle," Vladimir sighed. "These firewalls take a vast amount of stone and mortar. If you used that amount of material on the outside wall, it could be entirely of masonry, adding greatly to your defenses."

"I'm more worried about a fire than a war, at least in the next few years. We have over six hundred people here and the next settlement is eight miles away. If this building burns down entirely next winter, we might not survive it. With the firewalls where they are, it's likely that we wouldn't lose more than a fifth of our housing and we could live through that."

"You are lord here," Vladimir said. "Another problem with this plan is the gate. It's too big. Six knights could ride abreast through that thing. Reduce it by half, at least. It'll be a lot easier to defend."

"At this point, I'm not worried about defending against anything but thieves and wild animals. As you said, a wooden building can't stand a siege anyway. In later years, we'll build other walls, farther out, of bricks or stone. But even they'll need big gates. Remind me to tell you about railroads."

"Now what in hell is a railroad?"

The days rolled by. We set up a saw pit, an arrangement whereby a log was rolled over a deep pit; then one man stood in the hole and another on top of the log, working a saw between them. It was a miserable job, with the man below eating sawdust and the man above breaking his back. They often traded jobs, but never decided which was worse.

And it was slow. I did some time studies and calculated that, even with all of our ripsaws going constantly, the snow would be flying before the place was half done.

Something Vladimir once said gave me an idea and we built a walking-beam sawmill. We made a huge teeter-totter out of a halved log that was fifty yards long. At each end, ropes and pulleys connected it to a long ripsaw, each two of our longest welded together. Wooden troughs, running downhill, guided a huge log into each blade.

A railing ran around the teeter-totter's edges, and sixty men walked back and forth, working the thing. You walked uphill until the high end came down, then you turned around and walked uphill again until the high end came down, then . . .

Not exactly intellectually stimulating, but then very few of these people were intellectuals. It cut wood.

What's more, the strange, Rube Goldberg monster worked right the first time we tried it, and it was fast enough. The only problem was that sixty men was half our workforce.

But why did they have to be men? A man's arms are stronger than a woman's, but this machine was worked by the legs, walking. A woman's legs are as strong as a man's. Why not?

I put it to the women one night, during supper and got a lot of cold stares. Finally, I asked why. One woman got up and talked on and on about her hardships for the longest time until it dawned on me that she was assuming that I was not going to pay for this extra work.

When I shut her up and said that I planned to pay for what I got, she turned right around and gushed so enthusiastically that I had to shut her up again.

It was the men who were against it. They'd been starving when I'd hired them and now they didn't want their wives earning extra money. Ridiculous! Finally, I got together with the foremen and we worked out a deal.

The women would each work a half day, some before noon and some after. (A half day at this time of year was almost eight hours.) They would receive half pay and their money would be paid to their husbands. Stupid, but that's the way they wanted it. And some of the bigger children could work if they wanted to, being paid by the pound.

Loading the logs into the sawmill was a job for all our men and horses, despite all the ropes and pulleys we had going. But this could usually be done in a few minutes first thing in the morning and again just after dinner. After that the ladies could work without assistance for half a day.

It had been an exhausting day, and I hoped whoever I found in my hut wasn't expecting much. Except for Annastashia, who was regarded as Vladimir's property (or vice-versa), the ladies-in-waiting had apparently decided to share me equally, with Krystyana somehow being more equal than the other three. I never had anything to do with it and I never knew who I'd be sleeping with that night. But I never asked questions because when you're in pig heaven, you don't want to make waves in the mud.

* * *

A few mornings later, there was a lot of shouting by the trail, so I went down to see.

Sir Vladimir, in full armor, was on his horse and leading two others that I recognized as being my own pack animals. Loaded on them were a lot of my steel tools and two dead bodies, former workers of mine.

I ran over to his left side. "Vladimir! What happened?"

"They stole your horses and property. I went to get them," he said in a quiet, strained way.

I was suddenly furious. "God damn you for a murderous bastard! You killed two men over a couple of lousy tools?"

He stared at me, his face white and strained.

"No. I killed them for putting an axe into my side. Now help me down."

He leaned toward me and I caught him around the waist. My hand was bloody and there was blood running down his right leg, filling his boot.

I eased him down on the ground and started shouting at people. "You! Run and get my medical kit. One of the ladies can show you where it is.

"You! I need a bucket of clean water.

"You! Get Krystyana. Tell her to bring all her clean napkins."

"Stupid of me," Vladimir said. "I didn't realize that there were two of them. I had the one at swordpoint when the other struck me down before I knew he was there. He struck me from behind, the bastard, but then I suppose you can't expect honor among thieves."

"We're going to have to get that armor off you. I think I should cut it off."

"Cut my armor? Not bloody likely! It's worth a fortune! My father had to save to buy it. Here! You peasants! Sit me up."

We had to pull his hauberk off over his head and lifting his right arm must have caused him a lot of pain. I saw his eyes bulge and his jaws tighten, but he never cried out, or even publicly acknowledged the agony.

The leather gambeson laced up the front and was easier to remove. Under it was a remarkably feminine-looking embroidered shirt.

"Annastashia's work. A pretty thing. I'm afraid I've ruined it," he said, referring to the blood.

The medical kit arrived and I went to work, washing down both the wound and my hands. It contained a bottle of white lightning, my only antiseptic.

"This is going to hurt a bit, Vlad. Would you like a shot of this stuff before I pour it on the wound? It might dull the pain a bit."

"Do what you must, Sir Conrad. As to drinking that devil's brew of yours, well, I tried it once and I would prefer the pain of the wound to the pain of the medicine."

The crowd was getting bigger and pushing in on us. "Yashoo, get these people out of here. And do something about that," I said, gesturing toward the horses, tools, and dead bodies.

I had the wound clean by the time Krystyana got there. Annastashia was with her, almost hysterical but keeping it in.

"Krystyana, your sewing is better than mine. Why don't you stitch him up? Two of his floating ribs are broken and the wound is pretty deep, but it didn't cut an artery and I don't think it penetrated to the stomach cavity.

"Annastashia, why don't you hold his head up? He looks uncomfortable."

So our gallant ladies took over, and I stood back.

After sewing him up, Krystyana put a hefty pad of peat-bog moss over the wound. The girls swore the stuff had antiseptic properties, and their mothers agreed with them. I'd long since used up everything in my original first-aid kit, so falling back on folk medicine was the only thing I could do. I suppose there was some truth to their beliefs, since we rarely had problems with infections.

This was not the brown peat moss that is sold in modern garden supply shops, but the green plant itself, cut while alive and dried. Peat-bog moss was remarkably absorbent, more so than a paper towel, and it absorbed odors as well as moisture. Besides using it to bandage wounds, the ladies used it as a disposable diaper as well as for menstrual pads.

Thinking about it, peat-bog moss doesn't rot. That's why you get peat bogs in the first place. The new generations just grow on top of the old. Maybe killing off decay organisms with some natural antiseptic leaves more nutrients available to the young. Anyway, it worked.

Yashoo came up.

"The horses are taken care of, the tools are in the shed, and Sir Vladimir's property is back in his hut except for his byrnie. I took that to the blacksmith for repair. But what do I do with two dead bodies?"

"Bury them, I suppose. I guess we should get the priest."

"For a couple of thieves who tried to murder good Sir Vladimir? Why, no priest would let them be buried on hallowed ground, even if there was any around here."

"What about their families?" I asked.

"Those two were bachelors. Never heard them mention any kin."

"Then get twelve men, take the bodies far into the woods and bury them. Best do it now."

"Yes, sir. We won't mark the graves either."

That evening, I was still feeling guilty about shouting at Sir Vladimir when he was wounded. When I visited him, all of the ladies were tending him in a style that Count Lambert would have envied.

"Sir Conrad, have you set a guard for the night?"

"Yes, there will be two men with axes awake all night. Look, about what I said when you rode in this morning—"

"Think nothing of it, Sir Conrad. You had a perfect right to be angry."

"I did?"

"Of course. Not only had I killed two of your men without your permission, but in so doing, to a certain extent I had usurped your right to justice. In truth, I only defended myself, but you couldn't know that at the time."

"Well, thank you for forgiving me."

"I said it's nothing. But if you want to do something in return, I ask a favor."

"Name it."

"Listen to my advice and heed it. I haven't said anything so far because these are your lands and you are lord here. Your ways are strange and eldritch, but that's your business. But what you've been doing with these peasants is so stupid that I just have to speak out!"

"But—what have I done to the workers?"

"Nothing! That's the problem! It is one thing to hire work done in a city or on another lord's lands. That's common and proper. But you have taken whole families onto your lands and worked them and promised them nothing but money!

"Can you wonder why those two men this morning felt no loyalty toward you? You'd given them no place here! You treated them like lackeys to be hired for a job and then to be cast off.

"All these buildings you are putting up. Who is going to live in them?"

"Well, I figured I'd hire—"

"You'd hire. What's wrong with the men you've already got?"

"Well, nothing. But what should I do?"

"Do? Why, swear them to you, of course!"

"To me? You think they would?" I was flustered.

"They'd be damn fools not to. Your other subjects at your inn and your brass works are all becoming rich and these people know it. That and they know you're a soft hand. Why, you haven't whipped a man since we got here!"

"You think I should swear in everybody here?"

"Well, I can't swear to you, of course. I'm already sworn to my father. But everyone else, yes."

"Very well, Sir Vladimir. I'll bring it up with them at tomorrow's dinner."

"You'll do that only if you swear these ladies to secrecy! Without that, every man in the valley will be crowding you at first daylight."

And that's just the way it happened. At dawn, Yashoo came to me and asked if he might swear to me and be my man. Tomas, the masonry foreman, was on his heels with the same request. Within minutes, the whole population was crowding around me. It really touched me and I had trouble keeping the tears back.

One at a time, they raised their arms to the sun as I did by their side. They swore to serve me honestly for the rest of their lives and I swore to protect them for the rest of mine. Once all the men were sworn in, I surprised them by asking their wives if they wanted to swear as well.

Every one of them did. It meant that I would be responsible for them even in the event of their husband's death.

Krystyana was staring at me earnestly.

"Sir Conrad, do you think—I mean could we—"

"You ladies want to swear as well?"

"Oh, yes!" came all five voices at once.

"Then we'll do it."

There wasn't a dry eye in the place.

Dinner was two hours late, but somehow they got a lot more done than on any day before. Now they were on their own land, building their own homes. It showed in the way they worked and in the way they walked.

Chapter Eight

I made my monthly trip to Okoitz alone. Anna can run like the wind and it took less than an hour, whereas with the girls and their slow, docile palfreys, the trip would take all day.

The count was still being taciturn with me, and still wouldn't mention our wager. One of the knights told me that he suspected that Count Lambert was having some sort of financial problems with his wife in Hungary. I supposed that could be the reason for both the count's tightness with money and his unusually rude behavior. But I could do nothing but try to live with it.

Vitold the carpenter and Angelo the dyer had everything going smoothly. The factory was almost finished and a hundred wheelbarrows had been built to speed the harvest. Mostly, I spent my two days talking with the farmers about the new plants I'd given them.

Most were growing well enough, but how did you harvest them? Could this sort last through the winter? How do you cook this thing? And most often, what part of it do you eat?

The flowers were doing beautifully, and everybody was astounded at the size and numbers of the blossoms. Particularly popular were the sunflowers, which were three yards tall and had flowers that moved in the course of the day so as to always face the sun.

There was a wedding that day, and the bride proudly carried a single sunflower as her bridal bouquet. I was getting ready to object to this, since that bouquet cost one-twelfth of the world's known supply of sunflower seeds. But I couldn't interrupt the ceremony, so I waited.

When it came time to throw the bouquet to the bride's maids, the bride gave it a healthy toss over her shoulder. The sunflower, which must have weighed three pounds, caught one of the girls in the face, knocking her to the ground and giving her a fat lip.

I walked away. Nobody was going to waste another sunflower. Not that way, at least.

I left at dusk of the second day, and we made the run home in the night. I swear Anna can see in the dark.

Vladimir was up and around in a week, so tough was his constitution. And a week after that, he took to spending his mornings hunting with Annastashia. She turned out to be a good bowman, nothing like my old friend Tadaos the boatman, but good enough to bag her share.

I was delighted, since it put meat in the pot. Our diet was too heavy on grains and way too light on everything else.

One morning, they came back with a woebegone individual walking in front of them.

"What have we here, Sir Vladimir."

"A squatter on your lands, Sir Conrad. It didn't seem right to kill him out of hand, so I brought him to you."

"I'm glad you didn't kill him. What do you mean, a squatter?"

"He has a hut hidden on your property. He's been farming your land and hunting your forest."

"Nothing to get upset about," I said. "Well, fellow. Would you like to leave peacefully, or would you like to swear to me and stay on your land?"

"I could stay?"

"Certainly. You'd have to give me a share of your produce, of course. Say, one-fourth of what your fields yield and one-half of any game you bag."

"I could even hunt? Oh, yes my lord!"

So I swore him in and had Natalia open up a file on him. After he left, Vladimir was looking grumbly. I asked him why.

"First, that man was probably an outlaw."

"Well, I can't condemn a man on a 'probably.' Anyway, maybe he's ready to rejoin society."

"Then there is the fact that the usual terms would be half his produce and he wouldn't be allowed to hunt."

"I know, but I didn't want to lean on him too hard. As for hunting, well, there's plenty of game out there and there's no point in letting it go to waste. Half of something is better than all of nothing. Look, he won't cost us anything, and if he works out, well, we have a lot of mouths to feed around here."

"The decision is yours, Sir Conrad, but the other lords won't love you for charging less than they do."

The squatter came back two days later with six deer, a wild boar, and a bison. He had with him his wife, three children, and eight of his friends, squatters who also wanted to swear to me.

They were rough, sturdy-looking fellows and each carried an axe in addition to his belt knife. The axe was a Slavic peasant's universal tool. With it he would build his house, slaughter his pig, and defend his land. It was just the right length to double as a cane, and the single-bladed axe head was shaped to be a convenient handle. They carried them everywhere, even on dress occasions. They even danced with them, at least in some of the men-only dances. It made a formidable weapon.

Once, in a museum, I saw an ancient Egyptian axe of almost exactly the same design. Oh, the Egyptian one was made for a prince, and was covered with gold decoration, but the basic shape was identical. Some things are hard to improve on.

By the end of the month, a total of twenty-six squatters were turned into yeomen. I never stopped buying food, but they sure helped.

Of course, my relationship with the yeomen wasn't all one way. I invited them regularly to Three Walls for holidays and less formal social events. There weren't any serious problems in the first few years, but if there had been, I would have had to do something about it. The only time-consuming thing I had to do was visit them all once a year. That took an entire week.

Vladimir said that I ought to have a bailiff or foreman for so many men, and thinking about it, he was right. I contacted one of the yeomen and told him to get together with his friends and elect a leader. The yeomen were delighted with my faith in them. Vladimir was scandalized.

By this time the miners and masons enlarging the old mine were down to the water level. The pumps were working around the clock, but the rock around the shaft was porous and completely soaked. We not only had to pump out the mine, we had to pump out the mountain as well. We were gaining on it, but the miners alone could not keep up with our progress.

I put six of the masons to cutting grindstones from a nearby sandstone outcropping. We'd been sending our supply mules back empty, so transportation out was essentially free. There wasn't much profit in grindstones, but there was some.

The rest of the masons went to work cutting limestone blocks for the foundations, basements, and firewalls of our main building. Limestone isn't the best material to use for a firewall. Fire will eventually ruin it. But it will hold for a while and that was all we needed. Anyway, we had a lot of limestone and we were short on sandstone, which would be needed for the blast furnaces.

Things were settling down and starting to run smoothly. Even the brewery was doing well. With little else to drink, people in the Middle Ages drank an awesome amount of beer. Per capita consumption at Three Walls was over a gallon a day, and that's counting women and small children as well as the men. We went through three huge thousand-gallon barrels a week. Oh, it was weak and flat, but the volumes involved were still frightening.

Nothing I could do about it, though. These people wouldn't mind if I whipped them, and giving me free use of their daughters was just the expected thing. But if I had reduced their beer supply, I would have had a revolution on my hands. I'm just glad that I didn't have to pay a liquor tax on what we made.

Next Sunday evening, I announced that we would be throwing a dance on the following Saturday night. We'd be inviting the yeomen, and anyone who could play a musical instrument could take an hour off each evening for practice.

I soon had to retract that last offer. Over half of the people there could play some sort of instrument. After a lot of haggling and argument, we eventually settled on a band master. He was to choose twelve people and they could have the hour off, but I couldn't have half the workforce gone every afternoon.

They mostly had to make their own instruments, and I noticed some of my old parchment drawings turn up as drumheads. At first the band was pretty heavy on percussion and woodwinds, but in time they became a fairly professional outfit.

I held my first formal court just before the dance, since the yeomen were there and Sir Vladimir had been after me to do it for some time. He wasn't happy with my usual informal ways of doing things, and I suppose that there is something in the human animal that wants formality since we act that way so often.

We moved a few tables together under the dining pavilion and put a chair on top of them. My throne.

I got into one of my best outfits, asked Natalia to bring her records and take notes, and asked Sir Vladimir to run the show, since he knew the procedure.

He showed up in full armor, and carried a lance in lieu of a halberd, as though he was a royal guard. He shouted in fine theatrical style.

"Oyez! Oyez! The honorable court of your liege lord, Sir Conrad Stargard, Lord of Three Walls, is now in session. Any who have need of his advice or consent should now come forward!"

Two of the yeomen had an argument over a pig, which they brought along as evidence. They both had a pig run away on the same day, and only one pig had been caught, which they both claimed as theirs. I let them both go on for quite a while, since much of the reason for a court of law is to provide a place where social tensions can be drained off.

As they droned on, I noticed that Natalia was sitting at the table below me, which gave me a pleasant shot down the front of her dress. I didn't know why that should be interesting when I'd seen her naked a thousand times, but somehow it was.

It was soon obvious to me and to everyone else that both men thought they were right, and that one pig looks much like another.

I said that the facts were now clear and that I had reached my decision. I told the first man that the pig was his, and that he could take it home. Then I told the other guy that the pig was his, and he could take it home. Then I charged them each a half a pig as court costs, and said that they should do the butchering away from camp. This way they could each take home half a pig.

One of the men asked how would I get my court costs. I said that both of my halves were running around in the woods some place, and should he see them, he should return them to me. I thought I was telling a joke.

He nodded very seriously and said, "Of course, my lord."

Two weeks later, the yeomen showed up again, each carrying half a pig, which they had found wandering about in the woods, still stuck together. They returned my property to me and both thought that my justice was excellent.

It takes all kinds. My father told me that.

The only other item on the agenda was the formal request of two of my subjects to be married.

As lord, I had the right to demand that the bride spend a night with me before she went to her husband, or to accept a bribe from the groom to not touch her. I didn't like the custom. Either the girl was in love with her prospective husband, in which case she wouldn't want me, or she was pregnant, in which case I'd worry about harming the child, or both.

I always waived my rights to the bride. Heck, I had trouble enough satisfying the volunteers.

Naturally, I always gave my permission to marry, but they liked me to go through a certain amount of rigmarole. I asked the father of the bride if he gave his blessings on the proposed marriage. He did. Did the father of the groom bless this marriage? He did. Did anyone present see any reason why these two should not be married? Nobody said anything. I nodded to Sir Vladimir.

"Know you that the proposed wedding between Maria Sklodowska, daughter of Tomas Sklodowski, and Mikolaj Kopernik, son of . . ."

I nearly fell off my chair on the table. Maria Sklodowska was the maiden name of a woman scientist known as Madam Curie, after she married a Frenchman. And Mikolaj Kopernik was better known by his Latinized name, Copernicus. He was responsible for starting the entire modern scientific revolution!

And they were getting married?

It was a moment before my historical sense caught up with me. Copernicus was born in the fifteenth century, Madam Curie was born in the nineteenth century, and I was stuck in the thirteenth century. The names were obviously just a coincidence.

Obviously.

But I had Natalia make a note in the file that I should get yearly progress reports on any kids they had. There might be a genius coming along.

The dance went off pretty well. Krystyana and I showed them the polka and the mazurka, which instantly became popular. Perhaps it was the fact that here was a way that you could hold a woman who wasn't your wife, and do it in public in a socially acceptable way.

The yeomen did a vigorous, all-male number that involved huge leaps and clashing their axes together. It was something between a dance, a contest, and a military training exercise. It was vaguely reminiscent of a group of karate students running through a kata. Not as polished as the National Ballet, but impressive for all of that.

During a break in the dancing, I had a wooden framework I'd had made brought out. This had two small upright logs about two yards long set up so that we could adjust the distance between them.

I announced a contest. I would give six silver pennies to the man who could squirm through the smallest crack.

This was an unusual contest, but six pence was a whole week's pay. The competition was spirited. Little Piotr Kulczynski won, but Krystyana wasn't impressed.

"Good," I announced, "I was worried about a thief being able to crawl into our new building. Now I know how wide to make the windows!"

It was a successful event, and we agreed to throw a dance every two weeks from then on. Eventually, we even got a wooden dance floor.

I was getting ready to make the trip to Okoitz one more time when there was a commotion on the trail.

Friar Roman Makowski came in riding a mule with his cassock up almost to his waist. As he dismounted, I could see that the insides of his thighs were worn raw. Overexcited and limping, he rushed over to Sir Vladimir and me.

"Sir Conrad! Thank God I've found you!"

"Slow down, kid. What's the problem?"

"It's Tadaos, the boatman! They're going to kill him!"

"You'd better start from the beginning."

"You remember the boatman we rode with on our way to Cracow? Well, this spring you wrote him a letter bearing Count Lambert's seal that was sent through my monastery. Since I knew the man, I delivered it to him. He had to leave for Sacz immediately, but he said that he would reply on his return to Cracow.

"You remember the deer he shot by the River Dunajec last fall? Well, he shot another one in the very same place two weeks ago.

"Except this time it wasn't a real deer, but only a dummy. As he got out of his boat to get his kill, the baron's men arrested him for poaching. They would have hanged him forthwith save that he had the letter from Lambert with him and the baron was loath to offend so great a lord as your liege.

"He threw Tadaos into the donjon and wrote Lambert that unless a fine was paid, Tadaos would be hanged in six weeks! Again the letter came through my monastery and I obtained permission to deliver it directly to Lambert.

"Lambert told me that it was none of his affair, but that you could do as you saw fit. So I came here and had the awfullest time finding you."

"Then there's a month to go before they hang him. We don't have to panic yet," I said. "You have the baron's letter?"

The kid handed it to me and I read it. Medieval letters were just folded and only sealed shut if the matter was private. The seal on this one dangled from the bottom on a ribbon. They didn't use envelopes, but parchment is pretty tough stuff.

"Baron Przemysl wants four thousand pence? For one lousy deer?" I gagged.

"And not a real deer, at that," Vladimir said. "I've heard of this Tadaos and his poaching is notorious. But Cousin Przemysl is being even more greedy than usual."

"You're related to him?" I asked.

"He's a third cousin, actually. Doesn't like to eat anything but fresh-killed game."

"I hope he gets the gout."

"In fact he is so afflicted. How did you know?"

"A pure meat-and-fat diet can do that to you. I guess I have to go to Sacz right after I do my duty at Okoitz."

"But no, Sir Conrad," Friar Roman said. "Count Lambert said that you could be excused this time if you wished to save Tadaos."

"Sir Conrad! Do you mean to tell me that you actually intend to pay this fabulous sum to save the life of one criminal?" Vladimir said. "Why, knights have been talked into marriage with that as a dowry!"

"I guess I have to. I mean, I know the man, and once I was hungry and he shot a deer and I helped eat it. It's not as if poaching was a mortal sin."

"Mortal enough in this case. But if you mean to go, let's make a lark of it. Let's take Annastashia and perhaps Krystyana and combine duty with pleasure. It's the best time of the year for traveling and I could show you all the sights.

"I know most of the important people in that part of the country and we'd be invited in everywhere. Why, the whole trip shouldn't cost a penny, except you could buy salt at the mines where it's cheap. And I could show Annastashia to my parents."

As soon as Krystyana heard of this one, I'd have no peace until I went along with it. Best to bow to the inevitable as soon as possible. Anyway, things were going smoothly here and I was ready for a vacation. I'd been working hard for almost a year and it was time.

"You talked me into it. We'll leave in the morning. Friar Roman, do you want to come along?"

"With your permission, I have done certain damage to my privy members and—"

"And you'd better have them rubbed down with goose grease or some such and rest up here for a few days. Riding a hairy mule bareback while wearing nothing but a cassock was a dumb thing to do."

"Yes, my lord. Also, I won't be returning to Cracow for some time. My abbot has asked me to go to Okoitz to learn about your cloth works there. He wants looms of his own at the monastery."

Chapter Nine

We got a very early start, with the sun still far below the mountains as we rode out. The girls were on their palfreys and each led two of our sturdiest pack mules. Our baggage wasn't all that much, but I wanted to bring back a ton of salt from the mines near Cracow for the winter. Salting was about the only way we had of preserving meat and I had a big hunt in mind come fall. The ladies did the leading, as Vladimir insisted that a knight must not be encumbered, in case of emergency. He and I were in armor and on our war-horses, and Anna seemed to be delighted to be traveling, instead of hauling logs.

Krystyana had insisted that I wear the gaudy gold-and-red velvet surcoat given me after my run-in with the whoremasters guild in Cieszyn and I found Anna in the matching barding. I was surprised to find Krystyana in a matching dress with barding for her own horse. Furthermore, Vladimir and Annastashia were similarly decked out, but in Vladimir's family colors, silver and blue. We even had pennons for our lances, which meant that I had to take a lance along, even though I'm not much good with one.

The girls had to have planned this weeks ago and must have bought the cloth in Cieszyn. I supposed that they had a lot of fun, sneaking around getting it made and that the others had similar garb. I'm sure I had paid for it somehow, but I was on vacation and wasn't going to let little things bother me.

So we made quite a pageant leaving Three Walls and despite the early hour, most of the people came to see us off.

I'd been mostly wearing my grubbies for the last few months and I hadn't much noticed how shabbily my people were dressed. Now, the difference in our dress was so extreme that I started having guilt pangs and I vowed to buy a few dozen huge bolts of cloth next time I was in Okoitz.

* * *

We got to Sir Miesko's manor just in time for dinner and by noon were on the road again under a clear blue sky. In a few hours we were on Lambert's trail, heading east and hoping to make Vladimir's home by nightfall.

We were laughing and singing all the way, acting for all the world like a bunch of drunks although none of us had downed more than a few beers in a row in the last month.

We met a caravan coming west, dozens of pack mules and a few guards in the somber garb of the German Teutonic Knights. They were friendly enough and saluted us as we got off the trail to let them by.

After the mules came a long line of prisoners and something hit me as being terribly, horribly wrong. There were maybe six dozen boys chained neck to neck. They were all naked, or nearly so. Their feet were bleeding and there were whip marks on their backs.

Behind them was a line of girls in the same pitiful shape. None of the children had much body hair. They were all adolescent or even younger.

"What—what is all this?" I asked the black-and-white clad knight at my side.

"Why, that's a prime lot of slaves, heathens every one of 'em. My order saves the best ones when we takes a Pruthenian village. We sell 'em to merchants in Constantinople, Jews mostly, who sell 'em to the Moslems far south of there.

"I know they look pretty rough now, but give 'em a bath and a few days to heal, and them Saracen buggers'll snap 'em up. Them girls'll all do harem duty and half the boys'll be castrated, 'cause them buggers're like that."

"But none of those children is old enough to be a criminal." I was flabbergasted.

"Well, who said anything about criminals? There's no money in criminals! Who'd want to buy one? These are prime slaves we're taking to Constantinople."

"You can't do that!"

"Yeah? Who says?"

"I do! These children don't deserve what you have planned for them!"

"And just what do you intend to do about it?"

"I'll show you!" I drew my sword.

* * *

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI

We were in a merry mood, my love and friends and I, as we moved toward my father's manor. Sir Conrad knows a thousand songs and stories and I know a few myself. What with our ladies' jokes and songs, it was truly pastime with good company.

We stopped to let a caravan of goods and slaves go by. I was joking with the ladies as Sir Conrad chatted with one of the Teutonic Knights of Saint Mary's Hospital at Jerusalem, known as the Crossmen, or the Knights of the Cross, from the huge black crosses they all wear on their white surcoats. They were guarding the caravan and owned the slaves.

They are the largest body of fighting men in Poland and are not to be trifled with.

Suddenly, to the surprise of all, Sir Conrad drew his sword and rode down the line of slaves cutting their chains. So incredible is that skinny sword of his that the iron chains parted while hardly jerking the necks of the slaves. They, and everyone else, stood stark still staring at him.

Then one of the knights came to life, shouted a battle cry, and charged with his sword held high. So intent was Sir Conrad that I don't think he noticed.

His horse, so remarkable in other ways, saw the Crossman coming, but perhaps in fear that if she reared up she would spoil Sir Conrad's aim and so injure a slave; she kicked out sideways, breaking the man's thigh. I know that what I say is impossible, that a horse can't kick high sideways, but I tell you I saw it.

Sir Conrad turned as if seeing the man for the first time. The Crossman's sword was still high and Conrad took his hand off between wrist and elbow. The sword went flying with a hand and part of an arm still clutched to it. The armor was still on the arm, for that blade cares nothing for steel or leather or bone.

The six other Crossmen attacked Conrad and I was faced with a moral dilemma, with no time to think it out!

You see, I was vassal to my father who was vassal to Count Lambert who was vassal to Duke Henryk the Bearded. Count Lambert had all of his vassals swear to defend the trail so that it might be safe for merchants. My duty to my father thus required that I aid the Crossmen in subduing Sir Conrad. But the duke had me swear to defend Sir Conrad and by that oath, I was bound to attack the Crossmen in Sir Conrad's aid.

Now, did my oath to the duke, who after all was neither my liege nor my father's, take precedent over my father's oath to Lambert? Or did the fact that the duke was Lambert's liege mean than an oath to him was more important than an oath to his vassal? I could not resolve it in the time I had.

In truth, I have not resolved it yet.

All I could think was that if there were no survivors, no one would hear of Sir Conrad's indiscretions. The matter would never come before any of the liege lords involved and so my dilemma would not require resolution.

I lowered my lance and charged the Crossmen.

"For God and Poland!" I shouted, out of habit. In part, a battle cry is made to warn an opponent that you are coming, so that you won't dishonorably take him unawares. But now the niceties of civilized combat were less important than the fact that all the Crossmen must die. After that, the baggage-tenders and other peasants would be the work of a few moments.

They didn't notice me coming, probably because of those barrel helmets they wear. There were so many of them trying to get at Sir Conrad that they couldn't all fit around him.

One man was hanging back watching the fight as I went by. I caught him square in the throat with a quick side jab of my lance. I saw the blood squirt and the Crossman start to topple. Then I was onto the main crowd of them and my lance tip caught one in the back of the neck just below the helm line. He fell beneath Witchfire's hoofs as we went by, and I knew he was dead.

On my next pass, a Crossman turned to me as I came. I changed targets at the last instant and caught him in the eye slit. A difficult blow, but it went right in!

All the stories always talk about flashing swords and singing swords and every other kind of swords, but I tell you it's good lancework that wins battles.

I was feeling glorious, unbeatable, as I turned again, to see Sir Conrad's sword trailing flecks of blood and a Crossman's body sitting headless on its horse.

The remaining two Crossmen, seeing five of their number dead without injury to Sir Conrad or myself, promptly turned and fled. I raced after them. We ran a mile or so, with Witchfire glorying in the race as much as I did in the fighting. Then they stopped and saw that the two of them were being ignominiously chased by a lone knight. Their pride got the best of them.

They turned and they charged.

They came at me together and passed one at either side of me. I managed to parry both their lances at the same time with my shield—no easy feat! Try it in your next battle!—but my lance got only a glancing blow off the helm of the Crossman to my left.

We all three of us turned and went at it again. Something Sir Conrad once said occurred to me, that when faced with a problem, one should be wary of thinking in ruts.

Knights always pass on the right because they carry their shields on their left arms and their lances in their right hand. So they're used to striking another knight on their left, as I had done on the last pass.

This time I started out as usual, but switched opponents at the last instant and skewered my man right fair in the gut! He hadn't thought to cover his belly on that side. More, my brilliant tactic so startled both of them that they both missed me entirely.

I turned to see the last Crossman riding for the horizon. Watching all six of his comrades die was just too much for him. We chased after him but to no avail. After two miles he was still drawing ahead of us. In hindsight, I blame this on the barding Witchfire wore. It was a warm day and I think it overheated him.

I turned back with an enviable fighting record, but having ultimately failed. That Crossman didn't look likely to stop this side of Torun and once he was there all the forces of hell would break loose.

But we are all in the hands of God. A man can only do what is right and hope for the best.

For myself, why, I had killed four full knights in a single afternoon. Crossmen who are less than noble wear a "T" on their surcoats rather than a cross and none of these had done so.

My God! That meant that I had won four full sets of arms and armor! And four war-horses besides! For the first time in my life, I was rich! I could buy things and have spending money and—I wondered if Sir Conrad would sell me a plot of land where I could build a small manor for Annastashia, so even if my father didn't bless our union—but no. She deserved a true husband and an honorable marriage.

Then there was the rest of the caravan. All those mules and their cargo. Did I have a share of that? It had to be valuable to be worth sending all the way to Constantinople. And the slaves, what was a slave worth? Whatever it was, a gross of them must be worth a great sum.

So my thoughts were pleasant as I came to the Crossman I had gutted. The poor wretch was still alive, but with a stomach wound, a man is dead even if it takes a week. I had nothing against him, even if he had charged me two against one.

"Well, sir, with that wound you know you're as good as dead and a festering belly is a bad thing to die of. Would you like a bit of mercy?" I drew my misericord, the usual instrument for such things.

He answered me in German, a language I don't speak. I pantomimed his stomach blowing up and he nodded yes, he understood. I gestured at cutting his throat, but he shook his head and repeatedly made the sign of the cross.

He wanted to be shrived and I nodded yes and loaded him up on his horse, tying him into the saddle. Conrad insists on using a silly low saddle, but a waist-high warkak has its advantages. The high bow and cantle can keep a man in place even if he's unconscious.

With his weapons slung over my saddle bow, we went slowly back to the others. Four victories and not a spot on my new outfit!

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

Looking back, I'm sure that I handled the whole thing wrong, but at the same time, I don't know what I could have done differently. I couldn't have possibly let those children be abused any longer. No decent man could. My admittedly harebrained idea was that if I could free enough of the kids, the guards might chase after them, rather than coming after me. Once I had all of them running loose, the guards could never catch but a few of them and those few might be rescued later. I never for a moment thought I could take on all seven of the guards and win, even with Vladimir's help. And he can be unpredictable.

As it was, the boys had been too stunned to run away! The guards had all piled on me before I could cut more than three of the slaves loose and the kids had just stood there. If Vladimir hadn't joined in, I know they would have killed me. His absolutely murderous charges killed three of the guards and chased off two more. I wounded one man and had to kill another, but we were alive and a hundred forty-two children were safe and that's the way I wanted it.

Yet as soon as the fight was over, Vladimir rode off down the trail like a madman! I swore I'd never figure the fellow out.

After the fight, I looked over the mess we'd made. Four men were dead, but the man I had quite literally disarmed was still alive. He was the same one I had been talking with earlier. I got a tourniquet on the stump of his forearm and called for my medical kit.

I was getting quite good at this sort of thing and had the arteries tied off and the stump sewn mostly up, leaving it open enough to drain, by the time the man regained consciousness. Besides being thirsty, the fellow was surprised that he was alive and that I was patching him up.

"It won't help you none, you know. After what you've done, the Order will get you even if you do fix me up."

"I'm not doing it to win any gratitude. I wouldn't want gratitude from the likes of you, or your kind. You enslaved children! You brutalized them. You were selling them into an absolutely ugly life. Why should I want your friendship?" I finished bandaging his arm.

"Then why're you doing this?"

"I don't really know. Maybe it's just that there's no real reason for you to die right now. I'm not your judge. Maybe it's just Christian charity."

"You're a strange man."

"I've been told that. Let's move you back into the shade." He cried out when I started to drag him away. I soon discovered that his leg was broken.

"How in the world did you do that to yourself? Well, let's get your pants off and a splint on it."

An hour after the battle, I had the group into some sort of order. Anna had taken it onto herself to round up all the stray horses, mules, and ex-slaves, plus the dozen-odd mule skinners who had accompanied the caravan.

I put the men to cleaning up the mess, stowing the bodies on their horses and making a litter for the surviving guard.

The Pruthenian children spoke a language that was just beyond the edge of intelligibility. It was a little like the Kashubian tongue spoken by a minority group in modern Poland. But not quite.

Two knights approached. "Sir Vladimir!" I shouted. "Welcome back. Where have you been?"

"I was trying to get the last two, but I only bagged one, and he needs a priest. You are ready? I think we should go back to Sir Miesko's manor."

The guard next to Vladimir was in the saddle but unconscious. His stomach had been ripped open and the contents of his small intestine were dribbling down his leg, mixed with blood. There was nothing I could do for the poor bastard. Even with a competent doctor and a modern hospital, it would be touch and go.

"Yes, Sir Miesko's would be best. Mount up! We're going west!" I cried.

We left the gutted guard in the saddle, since taking him down would be doing him no favor. He needed speed, for there was no comfort. The girls had been silent, frightened since the fight started. As we went slowly back, they stationed themselves on either side of the gutted guard, keeping him upright and soiling their dresses with his blood.

I went to Vladimir's side. "You saved my life, Sir Vladimir. I'm grateful."

"Think nothing of it. But tell me, all these arms and armor and goods. Do we own that now?"

"I don't know. Maybe. We'll ask Sir Miesko. He was once a clerk and knows something of the law.

"Please don't think that I'm criticizing, but why did you go after those last two guards? They were running away and wouldn't have hurt us."

"Why? To kill them, of course! Had I gotten the last one, perhaps no one would hear of this bit of work. We could have dispatched the peasants and taken the caravan to Constantinople ourselves, with no one the wiser. As matters stand, if Count Lambert doesn't hang us, the Knights of the Cross will.

"Incidentally, why didn't you come to my aid with those last two Crossmen? Your horse can outrace a windstorm. We could have gotten the last one and wouldn't be outlaws. But perhaps we can sell much of this loot quickly and go to France. I've heard lovely things about France.

"And another point. Whatever prompted you to loot this caravan? Aren't you wealthy enough already?"

This whole line of thinking was absolutely foreign to me.

"Wait a minute. I'm not an outlaw. I haven't done anything wrong!"

"You haven't done anything wrong? Attacking a caravan on your liege lord's land wasn't wrong? Killing a half dozen peaceful guards wasn't wrong? Putting me into this awkward situation wasn't wrong?"

"I'm sorry I got you into this and I'd be dead without your help, but the fact is that I never asked for it. You charged in of your own free will. I'm glad that you did, but I'm not responsible.

"As to the caravan and guards, they were abusing innocent children, whom we rescued. I am not ashamed of doing that."

"Children? You mean the slaves?"

"Ex-slaves," I said. "And I am not going to run off to France or any place else."

"You mean to stay? After breaking your oath to Count Lambert?"

"I never broke my oath! I swore to protect the people on Lambert's lands. Well, those children are people. They are on Lambert's land and they certainly needed protection. I did what was right."

He stared down and shook his head. "Oh, my. The cat's been at the yarn with this one!"

That evening at supper, we talked of the day's adventures with Sir Miesko and his wife.

When we finished, Lady Richeza had tears in her eyes.

"Sir Conrad, we were so close! In another few years, the schools would all be running and . . ." She got up and ran out of the room.

Sir Miesko was shaking his head.

"Sir Conrad, if ever a man fell down an open garderobe, you've done it. You have affronted your liege lord, attacked the merchants, and declared personal war on the most powerful military force within a thousand miles. While you were at it, why didn't you pee on the Pope? Then you'd have everybody at your hanging!"

"No, I think we did a thorough job of it," Sir Vladimir said. "After all, the Crossmen are a religious order with a papal sanction."

I ignored him.

"I still say that Sir Vladimir and I did no wrong."

"In Sir Vladimir's case, you're probably right. He's likely in the clear, unless the Crossmen decide to get really vindictive, which they always might.

"It's the doctrine of implied vassalage. See here. None of us present is liege to one another. But you are eating at my table and under my roof. If I were attacked at this moment, you would be obligated to come to my aid as though you were my vassals.

"Furthermore, as my vassals, you would not be responsible for any of my actions. Now, as I understand it, Sir Vladimir has been traveling with you for some months, at your expense, so I would suppose that implied vassalage would apply."

"This implied vassalage is new to me," Vladimir said, "but it takes a weight off my mind. Tell me, does an implied vassal have a share of any booty?"

"Yes," Miesko replied, "he does. But in this case there may or may not be booty. Sir Conrad argues that the Crossmen were performing a criminal act, abusing children. In that case, the property of the criminals would be his, subject to his liege lord's share.

"But the Crossmen will claim that Sir Conrad is the criminal, a highwayman who attacked a caravan, in which case a thief has no right to the property he stole.

"While you were washing up, I looked over that caravan, since it's in my barns. The mules belong to the farriers, and don't enter into this, but the cargo belongs to the Crossmen and it's rich. There are fourteen mule-loads of prime northern furs and three of amber. Those slaves are worth six hundred pence each, and the arms, armor, and war-horses are all of the first quality. All told, it could easily be worth more than the booty Sir Conrad won last fall."

"Be that as it may," I said, "I didn't do it for the money. I did it to save those children and I'm not sure what is to become of them. Can they be sent home?"

"Impossible. They no longer have homes or families. When the Crossmen take a heathen village, they kill every man, woman, and child, except for those few that might have value as slaves."

"Brutal bastards. They remind me of another bunch of Germans I can think of. If I can't send the kids home, I guess I'll just have to take care of them myself. Sir Miesko, can you make arrangements for them to be sent to Three Walls?"

"Gladly. I wasn't looking forward to feeding them. You understand that they are not to leave your lands until the whole matter is settled, though. You had best write a letter of explanation to your intendant, explaining matters."

"Yes," I said. "I'll have to write one to Lambert as well."

"What? You're not going to him directly?"

"If I did that, he might throw me in jail. Then who will go and get Tadaos out of that donjon?"

"Please understand that Lambert is my liege as well. I can't let you leave without some surety."

"Lambert already has surety from me. Most of my money is in his vault."

"Hmmm. True. Well, go then and come back quickly."

"First thing in the morning. One last item. Can you recommend a good lawyer?"

"Lawyer? You don't need a lawyer. Your case will never come before any court. Any human court, anyway."

"What? Then what was all that legal talk about a while ago?"

"Oh, that was just my old clerkish training coming out again. See here, if you and I had a dispute, we could gather our arguments and take them before Count Lambert for settlement.

"Likewise, a dispute between Lambert and his brother could be taken before the duke. But Duke Henryk is vassal to no man and the Crossmen are not vassal to him. So there is no human court before which this dispute can come. It must be settled before God."

"You mean an ecclesiastical court?"

"Of course not! I mean a trial by combat. The Crossmen will send their best champion against you, and I'm afraid that you don't have the slightest chance of winning."

Wonderful.

Much later, I sat alone by a smoky oil lamp with a sharpened goose-quill pen, a ram's horn of ink, and some sheepskin parchment.

Dear Yashoo,

This letter should be delivered to you along with the children that Sir Vladimir and I rescued today.

These poor victims of misfortune have been very badly treated. Their homes have been destroyed, their families murdered, and themselves enslaved by a band of foreigners called the Crossmen. They have been whipped and marched for hundreds of miles, with bleeding feet and bloody backs. They were to be sold far to the south to satisfy the unnatural lusts of the infidel Moslems, the same heathens who now hold the Holy Lands against all true Christians.

It is our Christian duty to care for these poor unfortunates. It will not be easy. They do not speak Polish, and have never had the chance to learn of Christ's pure teaching. We must adopt them, bring them into our homes, and give them the benefit of our religion and our love.

I ask each family to adopt at least one of these children, and treat them just as if they were their own flesh and blood.

They are to eat, with everyone else, at my expense.

They need clothing. I am writing my liege lord, Count Lambert, for cloth sufficient to clothe not only the children, but every man, woman, and child at Three Walls. This too will be at my own cost. There should be enough for two complete sets of clothes for everyone, one of linen and one of wool, for the winter. When it arrives, see that it is distributed free to the ladies and put any surpluses in storage.

Read this letter to all the people at supper every evening for three days. I know that I can count on the good Christians of Three Walls to do their duty.

I give you all my love,

Conrad

* * *

P.S. The affair with the Crossmen is not over. There may be some legal tricks that they may try, but don't worry. We cannot fail because God is on our side.

* * *

I read the letter over. It appealed to duty, family, and pity, as well as to religion and greed. If my ploy didn't work, I'd demand my money back from that course in persuasive writing I once took. Next chance I got.

* * *

On to my Liege Lord Lambert, Count of Okoitz, on this Second day of August, 1232

* * *

My Lord, Know that on this date I found one hundred forty-two very young people being severely oppressed on your lands.

They were chained neck to neck, whipped, and marched barefoot and naked for hundreds of miles by foreigners. Out of Christian pity and my oath to you, whereby I vowed to protect all the people on your lands, I rescued these oppressed people with Sir Vladimir's valiant aid.

Polish arms were victorious, for God was on our side. We two of your vassals dispatched four of the foreign knights, wounded two more, perhaps unto death and sent a seventh knight fleeing for the horizon.

Vast booty was taken, which Sir Miesko estimates to be as large as that taken last fall, when by the grace of God I cleaned your lands of the brigand, Sir Rheinburg. This booty is now at Sir Miesko's manor, awaiting future division, including your rightful share.

The people rescued will be sent to my lands, to be cared for at my expense and, once healed of their sad wounds, to be put to some useful work, if they will it.

They are all quite young and most of the ladies are not yet budding, but they were all carefully selected to serve the lechery of Moorish princes and are remarkably comely. I think perhaps that in a year or two you might find dalliance at Three Walls to be profitable. Or perhaps some might want employment in the cloth mill, which I am building for you.

They were all naked when rescued, or nearly so and thus I have need of cloth for them, as well as for the other people on my lands. As a favor to me, could you please send wool cloth sufficient to clothe eight hundred people, and a like amount of linen, to Three Walls? Take whatever amount you deem fair for the cloth and transport from my coffer that is in your vault.

I wish that I could come to you at this time but a friend is in danger in Sacz and will die if I do not go immediately to his aid.

Sir Miesko says that there will be some legal problems as a result of my actions, but I hold that slavery is an offense against God and that I did no wrong this day. I shall return to you in a few weeks and place all my wealth as surety for that return.

I remain your loyal and trusting vassal,

Conrad

* * *

P.S. By this time, the beehives I showed your carpenter the way of making should have attracted some bees. You might want to have your beekeeper survey all the hives and count those hives that are populated, to see how well I have served you in this manner. Please give my regards to all the fair ladies at the mill.

Conrad

* * *

On rereading the letter, I could see that I was troweling it on pretty thick, but then Lambert wasn't all that sophisticated. I'd put myself in the best possible light without actually telling a lie, I had reminded him of all my past services and appealed to his pride in arms (considerable), his greed (such of it that there was), his lechery (vast, but of a friendly sort), and even his sweet tooth.

Asking him to set his own price for the cloth was more flattery and was in fact the best way to get a low price out of him.

If words could get me out of this one, this letter should do it. I just might get myself out of the mess without a fight.

Yet I wasn't really worried, though I didn't know why. Maybe it was because the whole thing was so unreal. In the twentieth century, if I had rescued a hundred forty-two children, I'd be a big hero! I'd be in all the papers and on television and the president would pin a medal on me. Here, they were going to try and kill me. I just couldn't take the whole thing seriously.

But I was tired when I finally stumbled off to bed.

Chapter Ten

Early the next morning, I read my letters to my party and to Sir Miesko's family, since it was important that our stories were reasonably consistent.

Vladimir felt that I should add a bit more about his victories, so I added a few paragraphs in the margins praising his lancework and horsemanship to the skies. Let him take all the glory. He deserved it and it didn't mean much to me. All I cared about was getting the kids off safely.

Lambert couldn't read, but Sir Miesko promised to read my letter to him before explaining the other side of the story.

Sir Miesko said, "I've been thinking about this and I've had another look at those children. If somebody did that to my kids, well, they'd have to kill me first.

"Thinking about it, their fathers are all dead, aren't they. Conrad, know that I'm behind you in this mess you've made."

He turned to his horse, but then turned back quickly.

"But don't expect too much! I've got my own family to think of!"

So Sir Miesko left for Okoitz, the children were sent with some trusted men to Three Walls and my original party resumed its journey to Sacz. By noon, we approached the turnoff to Vladimir's folks' place.

"I know I invited you all to my father's manor, but I wonder now if that would be wise at this time," Sir Vladimir said. "In another hour we could be at Oswiecim, and if we push on till dusk we should arrive at the monastery of Tyniec. I think the monastery might be best."

"Why a monastery?" I asked. "They'd have us sleep with the other men and the girls would be lonely."

"True. But the monastery gives us the protection of the Church, which might be needful. We still don't know how the matter sits with Count Lambert, or what the Crossmen are going to do. Tyniec puts us beyond Lambert's territory and the Crossmen would never violate Church property."

"Never?"

"Of course not. After all, they are a religious order."

"A religious order? You call that bunch of murderers, who massacre villages, enslave children, and trade with the Moslems a religious order?"

"It does seem odd, doesn't it? But they are sanctioned by the Pope and follow the Order of Saint Benedict, except for the fighting, of course, and the merchandising."

"Painting a wolf brown doesn't make it a cow. They're a bunch of damn murderers even if they do wear crosses on their shirts.

"I still don't see why you don't want to visit your parents. We were all looking forward to it, especially Annastashia. Surely we'd be safe enough there," I said.

"Safe, yes, but the timing isn't right. May I speak frankly? You know that I wish to persuade them to permit my marriage to Annastashia. I want them to be in a good mood when I broach the subject. But just now, I'm under something of a cloud."

"I don't understand that."

"Well, you see, my father is also my liege lord. He swore to keep the trail safe for merchants. By aiding you yesterday, I violated his oath. I dishonored him. He would be well within his rights to have me hanged! Oh, my mother would never let him do it, but he certainly won't be in any mood to grant favors. In fact, I think it best to avoid him entirely until this matter is settled and we are either proved innocent or are dead."

"If you don't want to visit relatives, fine, but the monastery is out. There must be an inn nearby."

"Not a clean one."

I'd been without fleas for months and I suppose the monastery would be an interesting experience for the girls.

* * *

As we rode into Cracow the next morning, the guards at the gate stiffened up and saluted. The last time I was there, they had haggled with me and charged me a toll to get in. Obvious wealth and rank have their privileges.

The girls were thrilled. The big city at last! Hundreds of colorful things to see and do. Huge cathedrals, massive stone castles on Wawel Hill, more shops than anything imaginable!

To me, well, take a few dozen historically interesting buildings, put them on a hill with a fine view and populate it with a few hundred gaudily dressed nobles and you have all that was attractive to the eye.

Then surround this with a squalid town of ten thousand uneducated and underfed people and cover it all with a half yard of shit and you have the reality of the situation. With plumbing, sewers, and street cleaners, it would have made a fine tourist trap.

As it was, I preferred the forests.

But the girls deserved a treat after all they'd been through lately. They had done a fine lot of work at Three Walls and they'd seen their first bloody combat, which shook them up a lot more than they wanted to admit. And they were a lot more worried than I was about the upcoming trial, so I worked at keeping them cheered up.

The girls wanted to go shopping and sightseeing and Vladimir felt that it was important to report in at Wawel Castle as soon as possible. I wanted to go see Father Ignacy at the Franciscan monastery. He was the only friend I had in this century who knew that I was from the future. He was my confessor, and I was in need of his services. And there was a certain matter of a Church inquisition into whether I was an instrument of God or an instrument of the devil.

So we compromised. I gave the girls each a handful of silver (their back pay really, but they didn't look at it that way. They were thrilled), had Vladimir take them shopping, and agreed to meet them at the monastery at noon. Then we'd go to the castle.

A monk who had considered me a klutz when I worked here now greeted me effusively, like a combination great lord and long lost friend. The outfit, again. Father Ignacy met me in his cell and he, at least, was unchanged.

"Welcome, Conrad."

"Thank you. Father, you said that you would file a report on me with the proper authorities in the Church. How is that going?"

"Quite well, my son. I wrote my report even within the time you were still here last December, and delivered it to my abbot. He delayed it hardly at all, but dispatched it within the month to the Bishop of Cracow.

"His Excellency acted with surprising speed and tact and within two months sent the letter back to my abbot, suggesting that it would perhaps be better to go through the regular arm of the Church, rather than through the secular one. That is to say, he felt it should go, not through his office, but through the Franciscan home monastery in Italy.

"We were able to find a messenger going to Italy in much less time than you'd think, and by June the report was speeding its way to Italy."

So nine months had gone by and the report hadn't even been delivered. And I'd thought the Russians were screwed up.

"Thank you, Father. A great deal has happened to me since we last met."

"You wish to confess? How long has it been since your last confession?"

"Only about a week, Father. But—I suppose it's wrong to say this, but my confessions since I last saw you haven't felt right. It's almost as though I didn't really confess at all."

"This might be caused by the promise of silence I required of you. You could never tell the whole truth."

"That might be it, Father."

"Well, the reasons for that promise are still valid, so you must live with it. But now I want you to confess since our last meeting."

And so I did. I told him of all the things I'd built, the women I'd had, and the men I'd killed. Confession with Father Ignacy is never the rote affair it is with some priests. He digs into things for hours if need be, but always arrives at the truth of a situation. Once we were through, he looked down and shook his head.

After scolding me about Krystyana and the other ladies-in-waiting, he said, "All this fighting! I hope you realize that I never thought that you would be in such danger when I found you that position with the merchant, Novacek."

"I've never found fault with you, Father."

"You are generous, my son. So. You attained wealth, lands, and power of a scope that most men can only dream about and it seems that two days ago you threw it all away.

"What is this problem you have with the Knights of the Cross? On your first day in this century, you insulted one of them and got your head bashed in the bargain. Now you have attacked one of their caravans and caused the death of five or six of their number. You should know that very few men are truly evil, and certainly there could not be an entire order of them. The Crossmen do valuable service to our country, keeping the Mazovian borders free from invasion."

"They do it by murdering entire villages."

"Then we both know that such an event was probably in retaliation for some atrocity by the Pruthenians."

"Father, I know nothing of the sort."

"Do you think that the northern barbarians are innocent, peaceful dwellers of the forests? They are heathens and worship barbarous gods."

"There must be better ways to convert them."

"One would think so. Many missionaries have tried it over the past three hundred years, but to no avail. Many have died, martyrs to Christ.

"It's not some simple matter of putting a new image in their church. Those people practice human sacrifice! And cannibalism! Those 'innocent children' you 'rescued' have every one of them eaten human flesh!"

"Now that's news to me, Father. But I'll make Christians out of them. And no matter what the heathens have done, it doesn't excuse what the Crossmen have done. You don't know their whole history."

"Perhaps you should tell me about them."

"Well, you know that their organization was formed forty years ago in Jerusalem, a German imitation of the Knights Templar. They soon lost interest in the Holy Lands, I suppose because there wasn't much profit in it.

"They tried to set up in Hungary, but King Andrew found out the truth about them in time and threw them out. Duke Conrad of Mazovia wasn't that intelligent. He invited them in—what?—seven years ago?—to guard his northern borders. Their way of doing that has been to murder every non-Christian in sight and to take as much Polish soil as they do Prussian.

"In the future, they will do nothing but grow and many of the most murderous battles of the medieval period—"

"The what?"

"Forgive me, Father, but that is what this current period of history will eventually be called. The middle period between the ancient world of the Romans and the Renaissance, or awakening, that led to the modern world."

"Now that is a shock. I'd always thought of this as being the modern world."

"Hmm. Then again, I don't know what generations future to mine will call my own civilization. Perhaps they won't be as polite."

"Some time you must teach me more of your history. But for now, return to your story of the Crossmen."

"Yes, Father. Eventually their murderous ways became so notorious that they were censured by the Pope. This didn't bother them a bit. They simply became a secular order and went on doing as they had been. Many long wars and bloody battles were fought by the kings of Poland against them."

"Then Poland will again have a king?"

"Of course, Father. We're but a century from the time of King Casimir the Great!"

"Praise God! But continue your story."

"Eventually, they were defeated at the Battle of Grunwald or Tannenberg, it's sometimes called. This was—will be—the bloodiest battle fought by Christians in the Middle Ages.

"The surviving Crossmen became vassals of the Polish Crown, as the Duchy of Prussia. By that time they had completely eradicated the Slavic tribe of Prussians, or Pruthenians as they are sometimes called, and had taken that name for themselves, the way a barbaric warrior takes the clothing of his victim.

"But despite their vassalage, they never became Polish. Six hundred years from now, they were instrumental in organizing and dominating all the German states.

"Their spirit was that of another German group, the Nazis, which conquered Poland as well as most of the rest of Europe. Their crimes were so horrible as to be unimaginable. Not far from where we sit, they built a death camp called Auschwitz where they systematically killed four and a half million people. That is half again as many people as there are in all of present-day Poland.

"This was not a matter of the sack and slaughter of a city, done in the heat of passion. This was a matter of Germans going to work each day for four years and killing their quota of men, women, and children.

"And that was not the only camp, and the camps were not the only atrocity. In the end, more than fifty million people died in six years. That's twice as many people as lived in the entire Roman Empire at its peak."

Father Ignacy was silent for a while. "I cannot comprehend the numbers of people you speak of, but I have never known you to lie. You are saying then that this is a great evil that must be fought?"

"Yes, I guess so, Father."

"I take it then that you are not intending to run away, as many men would."

"I don't see how I can. If I did, they'd probably take those children back and sell them to the Moslems. I can't have that on my conscience."

"No, I don't suppose you can. But you are only one man, and they are many thousands."

"I know that I can't lick them alone," I said, my eyes blurring with tears. "But I intend to do everything that one man can. If I die, well, I die. Father, you once told me that I might be an instrument of God, and I didn't believe you. Well, in this matter, I know that I have God on my side." I think I was crying a little.

"Very well, my son. For what small worth it might be, know that in this matter you have me on your side as well. Go with God, my son. I give you no penance for your sins, for I think that you will soon be punished more than you deserve, and more than you can bear."

I had to stop a while in the vestibule to compose myself before I joined the others. It doesn't do to be tear-streaked when your friends are worried about you.

But the others were in a merry mood when I joined them in front of the monastery, and the girls were prattling about all the wondrous sights they'd seen. I leaned back on Anna and soaked up their gaiety. I needed it.

Vladimir informed us that the dinner hour at Wawel Castle would be over by then, and we hadn't eaten lately. I suggested an inn that I had stopped at last fall.

A healthy-looking, well-filled-out young woman took our order, then did a double take at me.

"Oh my God! You're Sir Conrad!"

"Guilty. Then you must be Malenka."

"Oh my God! Zygmunt! Zygmunt! Quickly! Look who's here!"

She ran out of the room to get her husband.

"What was that all about?" asked Annastashia.

"Oh, once I played matchmaker," I said.

The innkeeper came back with his wife, wiping his hands on his apron and smiling. Introductions were made and he announced that the meal was on the house and so were the next five, if we'd come back.

Soon, their other duties called them away and we could eat.

"They certainly were happy with you," Krystyana said. "How did you happen to bring them together?"

"Well, I hired her."

"Hired her?"

"Hired her."

"There's more to the story than you're telling."

"You are right. But that's all of it that you're going to hear. A man deserves some secrets."

They complained, but I wouldn't say another word. Actually, Malenka had been a prostitute and I'd hired her just to keep her from being used by a young friend of mine; it wouldn't have been good for him just then.

She was very young and hungry-looking at the time, and I had to report to a new job. So I told her that she had to do honest work for the innkeeper for the three days that I had hired her. The upshot was that she married the innkeeper, my friend became a monk, and all three of them are very happy. Pretty fair mileage out of three silver pennies.

But to talk about it would only embarrass Malenka, so I kept silent.

"They must have a lot of knights to guard all these walls," Annastashia said, as we rode again through the city.

"Not really, love," Sir Vladimir replied. "Down here in the city proper, they don't use knights at all. The castle and Wawel Hill are guarded by the nobility, but in an emergency the outer walls, gates, and towers are all guarded by the commoners."

"They do that?" Krystyana was scandalized.

"Most assuredly. That tower over there would be defended by the haberdashers guild, and the gate we came in through was the responsibility of the butchers guild."

"You mean the man that saluted us when we came in was a butcher?" Annastashia asked.

"No, no. I said 'in an emergency.' That fellow was hired by the city council to guard the gate. He and a few dozen others do that for a living. But he wasn't a knight, either. At least I don't think he was. Just a man at arms."

"I thought you had to be a knight to have armor and guard things," Krystyana said.

"Not at all," Sir Vladimir said. "Anyone who can afford it can have it, in Poland anyway. I've heard that in Germany and France it's a little different, but that's the way it is here. That only nobility may stand guard is one of Count Lambert's rules, which only apply at Okoitz. He says that it keeps his knights from getting lazy and supports their rights to all their special privileges."

"What special privileges?" Krystyana asked.

"Like not having to do manual labor," I said. There wasn't much point in telling Krystyana that she was a special privilege.

"How about that tower over there?" Annastashia asked.

"The brewers guild, I think. Every guild has its tower or section of wall, except for the surgeons and the armorers. They'd have other duties if the city was attacked," Sir Vladimir said.

"But who could possibly attack a city this huge?" Krystyana said.

"Well, nobody for hundreds of years has tried it. But that's because it's ready for war," Sir Vladimir said.

"Not ready enough," I said. "In eight and a half years, the Mongols will come and will burn this city to the ground."

They all looked at me aghast.

"Sir Conrad! Don't say things like that!" Krystyana said.

"Yes, Sir Conrad. That's hardly a thing to joke about!" Sir Vladimir added.

"I wish I were joking. But there's nothing we can do about it right now.

"I'm sure Sir Vladimir knows the tale, but have you ladies heard the story about King Krak, who killed the dragon and founded this city?"

"I'd heard it was a monster, but not necessarily a dragon," Sir Vladimir said.

"Then tell it your way."

"I shall."

He launched into a windy telling of the tale that almost got us to the castle gates.

"And it's all true?" Krystyana said. "There really was a King Krak?"

"I could show you his burial mound. They named the city after him. What other proof can you need?" He said with a twinkle in his eye. He gave me a quick wink.

There are these two huge prehistoric mounds in the area, but nobody ever found anything buried under them. The best guess is that they were used as defensive structures. Poland and the rest of the north European plain have been inhabited, off and on, for at least a hundred eighty thousand years. A lot can happen in that time.

"And Princess Wanda really drowned herself in the river rather than marry the German prince?" Annastashia asked.

"I could show you her mound as well."

"And the monster's cave is still under Wawel Hill?" Krystyana asked.

"It is. But the mouth of it was covered over hundreds of years ago and no one remembers where it's at."

"Do you believe the story, Sir Conrad?" Annastashia asked.

"The way I heard it, Wanda turned Prince Rytygier down. He then got mad and invaded her country. Her armies defeated his, and in thanksgiving, she sacrificed herself to the gods. But far be it from me to contradict Sir Vladimir."

"God wouldn't want anybody to do that!" Annastashia said.

"This was hundreds of years ago. We were pagans then. Pagan gods want a lot."

"Thank God we're Christians," Krystyana said.

The last time I was in Cracow, they wouldn't let me on Wawel Hill. This time the guards saluted us as we entered. The uniform gets them every time.

As we dismounted, a page ran up to me.

"Sir Conrad? The duke is expecting you. Please come with me."

This startled me, but I followed the kid. The castle had little in common with the one I remembered from the twentieth century. A lot would be torn down in the next seven hundred years and a whole lot more built. But every now and then I'd get the déjà vu feeling and realize I was seeing a familiar landmark from a formerly impossible angle.

Duke Henryk's chambers were straight out of a movie set, and his bearing and beard were as formidable as ever. I bowed low.

"Oh, stand up, boy! I'm too old to waste time on that nonsense. In private, anyway. They still make me do it in public. Better still, sit down. Now what's this about your chopping up a Crossmen caravan?"

"They were abusing over a hundred children, your grace."

"They were transporting a consignment of Pruthenian slaves to the Greeks so the Greeks could sell them to the Moors. Go on."

I was trying not to sweat. "Yes, your grace. I tried to free the kids and the guards attacked me. Sir Vladimir came to my aid and we won."

"Two of you kicked shit out of seven of them. I like that! How did Sir Vladimir do?"

"He killed three and wounded one more to the death, your grace."

"Ha! I knew that kid had his father's blood in him! Four men in a fair fight!"

"More than fair, your grace. In the end, he was charged twice by two knights at the same time and he still killed one of them."

"What! Two on one? The bastard Crossman never told me about that! Yeah, I've talked to him. He came through yesterday, still scared. Ha! You could smell the shit on his britches. He said you'd killed all six of his comrades. What happened to the last one?"

"He lost his right arm, your grace, but I think I got to him in time. He'll likely live. He's at Sir Miesko's now."

"Ah, Miesko. He used to be my clerk before I knighted him—Well. Damn good fight, boy. But it's still going to be the death of you.

"If the Pruthenians were on my border, I'd make peasants out of them damn quick, but that sluggard the Duke of Mazovia couldn't handle them, so the damn fool invited in those Crossmen. He invited in the wolves to keep down the foxes!

"Well, I don't like them, but I'm not strong enough to beat them. And that's what it would take for me to get you out of this mess you've made. A war. I can't afford it and I couldn't win it. So I've got to stand back and let them kill you. You hear me, boy? You'll get no real help from me! The best I can do is to delay your trial a few months."

"I'd appreciate that, your grace. Maybe the horse will sing."

"Eh?"

"One of the Aesop's fables, your grace. A man condemned to death asked the king not to kill him because he was the only man in the world who could teach a horse to sing. The king was skeptical, but gave the man a horse and a year to teach it. The man's friends asked him why he had done such a foolish thing. Nobody could teach a horse to sing! The man answered, 'True. But a lot can happen in a year. The king may die. I may die. And maybe the horse will sing.' "

"I wish I had an education. Damn. A man comes to us from the far future and we go and kill him."

I was shocked. No one was supposed to know about that!

"You know, your grace?"

"Yeah. I worked it out of your priest. Don't be hard on him, though. I can be very persuasive."

"I can believe that, your grace."

"You'd better. Even so, he had a time convincing me. What finally turned me was when he showed me that parchment you gave him and I realized the wealth of your people."

"Parchment, your grace? You mean the paper money I gave him for a souvenir?"

"No, not the miniature paintings, although that was pretty impressive, too. Any people who would use works of art for their currency instead of silver must be truly cultured! But no, I mean the parchment arsewipes you gave him."

Once, when we were walking north from Zakopane, Father Ignacy had gestured that he was going off to the bushes, presumably to relieve himself. I'd given him some toilet paper and he'd taken it without comment. I hadn't thought of it since. It appears that rather than using it, he'd kept it as a treasure from the future.

"The toilet paper?"

"That's what he called it. People who can afford parchment to wipe their butts are richer than anyone in this century!

"Your priest told me why he swore you to secrecy, and I have to agree with most of his reasons. You can count on me to keep my mouth shut.

"Look, boy, you don't have much life left, so you get along and enjoy yourself. Tell the guard to send in the castellan. I'll have him fix your party up with the best rooms available."

I bowed and the duke waved me out.

Whew! At first I thought the duke himself was going to kill me! And toilet paper is the most impressive artifact of modern civilization?

Chapter Eleven

I returned to the courtyard to find that Sir Vladimir was having problems with the palace grooms. They didn't know how we were to be treated.

"Relax, boys," I said to them, "the duke is giving us the red-carpet treatment."

"Sir? Do you mean red with blood?"

"I mean that he is giving us the best rooms in the palace, and you may assume that he means our mounts to be very well cared for as well.

"Ladies, Sir Vladimir, let's tour a castle."

Sir Vladimir was thrilled that the duke had complimented his prowess and had me recite much of what was said word for word. Then he had me do it again in front of a dozen witnesses.

I played along with it. For a man like Sir Vladimir, peer approval is the most important thing in the world, what money is to Boris Novacek, or the Church is to Father Ignacy. I owed Sir Vladimir my life and a few moments of lip service was a small price to pay.

We were treated with considerable deference by everyone. Even those who outranked us crowded around. Barons and counts seemed eager to make our acquaintance. Word of the duke's approval traveled quickly, and stories about me had been circulating for months. But I think that much of it was the morbid curiosity people have about a condemned man. Finally, one knight simply offered his quite sincere condolences and said that if there was anything he could do for me before the end, or even after it, he would be most happy to oblige.

"Thank you, sir," I said. "But why is everyone so convinced that I'm going to die? We're talking about a trial by combat, not an execution! It's going to be a fair fight in front of witnesses. I've been in three fights in the last year—four, if you count that nonsense with the whoremasters' guild in Cieszyn. Most of them were against odds, yet I've hardly been wounded. I'm going to win this trial, I tell you."

The knight looked awkward, but Sir Vladimir said, "Sir Conrad, I'm afraid that you don't seem to understand what you're up against. You'll be fighting a champion! A man who does little else but train for this sort of thing. The Crossmen have two of them, and each has killed more than thirty men in public trials and duels.

"Even so, I'd say you had a chance if the fight were strictly swords. But the rules are 'arm yourself' and he'll come at you with a lance. Sword against lance, you'd have no chance against even a poor lanceman. Lance against lance—Sir Conrad, I've seen your lancework and a plowman could do better. I'm afraid you have no hope at all."

"It's as bad as that?"

"It's worse than that, but I lack the skill to state it more strongly."

* * *

Meals were all served formally at Wawel Castle, with every lord seated by his lady in strict order of precedence. This put us pretty far down the line, but not quite at the bottom.

The food was well served and decorative enough, but not at all to my taste, mostly overprepared, overcooked, and overspiced. It was like something done by home-economics students who were trying too hard.

But Sir Vladimir and the girls were happy.

At supper, the duke publicly praised Sir Vladimir's battle skills and insisted on hearing a blow-by-blow account from him. Sir Vladimir gave it in a very animated fashion, shouting battle cries, waving his arms, and praising himself in a way that would have been in very poor taste in the twentieth century.

Here it was the proper thing to do, I suppose.

At any rate, Sir Vladimir was the man of the hour and Annastashia gloried in it.

There was a dance after dinner, and I discovered that the steps I'd shown people in Okoitz last winter had reached Cracow before me. Only the dances had become Conrad's polka and Conrad's mazurka and Conrad's waltz.

My rather embarrassing thirteenth century bunny club, bought and set up one night when I was drunk, had become known as Conrad's Inn, and six different men asked me if I wouldn't set one up in Cracow.

The girls' riding outfits had full-length skirts with that sewn-in panel that I had suggested so that they could ride a man's saddle while maintaining feminine decorum. The very next day after the ladies of Wawel Hill saw the things, fully a dozen women were sporting them. How many seamstresses lost a night's sleep over that, I couldn't tell you. The new-style dresses were called "Conrads."

But the serious work I'd done and was rightly proud of? The windmill I'd designed and the looms and spinning wheels I'd designed and the factory I'd designed? Oh, they were Lambert's mill and Lambert's looms and Lambert's wheels. There is very little justice in this world.

The rooms we got were fabulous by medieval standards, suitable for visiting royalty. That is to say, about up to the level of an American Holiday Inn, except that the furniture wasn't as comfortable.

We also got a servant apiece, which was awkward. I'd never had a personal servant before, and I really didn't like it. Krystyana was thrilled, though, so I put up with it until bedtime.

Then I found that the servants expected to sleep in the same room as us. It seems that one of the reasons for the drapes hanging around the bed was to give us what medieval Poles considered to be sufficient privacy, so that the servants could sleep on the trundle bed next to us, in case we wanted anything in the middle of the night.

Now, I'd spent the night before celibate in a monastery and I had no intention of staying that way again. But I could hardly make love to my girl with a couple of strangers not a yard away. I tried to send them out, but they didn't want to go. They said that if they went back to the servants' quarters, everybody would think that we'd found fault with them.

The final compromise was that they would sleep in Sir Vladimir and Annastashia's room next door, but they made us promise to beat on the wall if we needed anything in the middle of the night. Exasperating.

With Sir Vladimir a hero and the girls being treated like human beings (Krystyana had taken a terrible snubbing at Cieszyn Castle last spring), leaving the next morning as I had planned was out of the question. In fact we stayed the next three days, with everybody but me having a marvelous time. There were dances and games and a hunt that I managed to duck out of by asking another knight to take Krystyana.

When the others were out hunting, I stayed alone in my room, and it felt marvelous. It was the first time I'd been alone since I'd stood guard duty last winter. Being alone gave me time to think, to order the strange things that fester up in my garbage-pit mind.

When I use the word "socialism," I mean a political system in which the social rights are held to be more important than, say, property rights or rights of inheritance. I mean a system in which every person is born with the same basic rights.

The right to live comes first, and included in that is the right to the minimal food, clothing, and shelter, without which life is impossible. I don't mean luxury, but I do mean enough to keep body and soul together.

I mean the right to an education, paid for by the community, to the extent of the individual's ability.

I mean the right to start out even with everybody else. I think that inherited wealth is a bad idea and is harmful to both the individual and to society.

I believe that democracy is the best possible system for a nation with an educated, concerned, and reasonable population.

It is not that the people are particularly wise. They aren't. And the larger the number of people involved in a decision, the poorer the decision is likely to be. To find the IQ of a group, take the average IQ of the people involved and divide by the number of people in the group. Anyone who has ever marched troops can verify that a hundred men have the collective intelligence of a centipede. Worse. A centipede doesn't step on its own feet.

No. Democracy is a good system because it is an extremely stable system.

In many parts of South America and Africa, when an individual becomes truly disgruntled, he gets together with six hundred friends, three hundred rifles, and maybe a hundred bullets and starts a revolution. This practice is socially disruptive and results in lost work-time, destroyed property, and dead bodies.

In America, such an individual does not go off to the hills with a gun. He becomes a political candidate. Of course, he knows that, to be effective, he must start at the bottom—say, sewer commissioner.

So he runs against six other social misfits for that office.

If he loses, at least he feels that he has done his best to straighten things out, that if the people don't appreciate him, they don't deserve him. Anyway, an election is so exhausting, physically, financially, and emotionally, that he is likely to be over his initial anger.

If he wins, well, he can't really do much harm. There are engineers to make sure that shit flows downhill. And who knows? Maybe he will turn out to be a good sewer commissioner.

In any case, society is the winner. Seven potential troublemakers have been defused, only one of them has to be paid, and they just might get some useful work out of that one.

The eastern bloc nations do not enjoy this social advantage. A single political party approves all candidates for office, assuring their loyalty, but also screening out the obvious mental defectives, at least on the lower levels. In so doing, they increase the amount of social frustration, which causes a lack of the very stability that the approval process was designed to ensure. Still, it's a better system than having the sons of kings warring to see who will be the next king.

Democracy doesn't work well unless the proper level of education and the proper institutions both exist. Those things won't happen in thirteenth century Poland for at least one generation and possibly three, no matter what I do.

Capitalism, as practiced in the twentieth century, has some definite advantages. For one thing, companies are allowed to fail and so cease to exist. The physical assets are redistributed, the workers find new jobs, and the poor management which generally caused the problem is put out to pasture.

In a centrally-controlled economy, it is extremely embarrassing or politically impossible for such powers that be to eliminate inefficient managers.

In large organizations, it is hard to be noticed, so it is very difficult to do something that is demonstratively right. It therefore becomes critically important to your career that you never do anything that is demonstratively wrong. Fools may not be fired, but they are rarely promoted, either. To downgrade a subordinate manager seems to imply that one didn't know what one was doing when one promoted him in the first place. Best to leave him alone and hope that nobody notices. It takes something fairly obvious, an exploding atomic power plant for example, to get anything changed. But generally, things just go on as usual.

This results in the same fools making the same mistakes forever. People become demoralized, especially the best, most energetic workers. Useful work slows or even comes to a halt. I don't mean that the workers stop working. They are all furiously active, looking busy. They worry all day long and go home tired. But they are not doing anything useful.

Nor is this problem limited to the centrally controlled economies of eastern Europe. In major American corporations, poor managers are sometimes given "lateral promotions," perhaps to "company historian," but they are rarely removed.

Another advantage to capitalism is that small companies can do astounding things without the matter becoming political. And I mean both astoundingly good and astoundingly stupid. If enough people try enough new things and if there is some mechanism for dumb ideas to be eliminated, better processes will develop and society will benefit.

People will shake their heads or laugh at someone doing something silly with his own money, but they won't try to vote their congressman out of office because of it. But if it is the government's money being spent, they rightly think it's their money being wasted and the matter becomes political. Consider the way one blown gasket stopped the entire American space program for years.

Progress is impossible without trying new things. New things often don't work. Since large organizations do not permit failure, virtually all progress results from the work of small private companies.

Yet capitalism has a number of serious problems that seem to be intrinsic to it. Private companies are generally founded by productive people, often engineers. But when the founder retires, somehow the accountants always seem to take over, and a button-counter is rarely a good decision-maker. Or, the founder's widow or son-in-law tries to run the company and things are worse.

Such foolishness would be unthinkable in eastern Europe. There, managers are almost always trained engineers. Many are not brilliant but most are competent.

Oh, the worst faults of capitalism, the ones Marx was concerned with, have been patched over with governmental institutions and regulations, at least in America. Monopolies are forbidden or regulated. Surplus workers are not allowed to starve. Vast profits are largely taxed away, although there is still a huge class of people who do nothing productive but are very wealthy.

Yet this very patchwork has problems of its own. In Poland, if your teeth are bad, you go to a dentist and he fixes them. No matter who you are, even if you are not a citizen, if you are human, you have a right to good teeth. Paperwork is minimal.

In America, some people have this right and some don't. Most people don't, so they have a vast number of office workers filling out forms that try to prove that only those with special rights get these special privileges.

I am convinced that it should be possible to design an economic and political system that has the advantages of both capitalism and socialism with the problems of neither. If I can figure it out, thirteenth century Poland is going to be a fine place to live.

By the time Krystyana and the others returned from the hunt, I was feeling much better, having thought a lot of things out of my system. We dressed for another boring supper.

I simply didn't have much in common with the nobles of Wawel Hill. There wasn't much of anything I could say to them and I was eager to get on with our errand and return to Three Walls.

Eventually, by repeatedly painting a sad picture of poor Tadaos in a donjon, not knowing if help was on the way or not, contemplating suicide perhaps, I finally got my party to agree to leave.

Chapter Twelve

Our party was in sumptuous attire as we went to the riverfront at Cracow the next morning. Clothing equated with rank in the thirteenth century, and rank equated with services. If you wanted to be treated good, you had to dress good.

At the river landing, we engaged a ferryboat to take us to the northern bank of the Vistula River. This boat—a raft, really—was made of a dozen huge logs that had been split and burned out hollow, then shaped and smoothed on the outside. These half-round dugout canoes were laid lengthwise side by side to let the river flow past easily. Rough planks decked it over and tied the dugouts together.

A dozen men were required to pole and paddle the massive raft across the river. No fare was waiting on the north bank, so the boatmaster sat down to wait.

"You know," I said to him, "I can't help thinking that you are wasting the efforts of all your men."

"What do you mean, my lord?"

"Well, you see that big tree growing upstream there on the south bank?"

"Yes."

"If you tied one end of a long rope around that tree and the other end of it to the left side of your boat, near the bow, the force of the water would push your boat back to the other side. And once you were there, if you tied the rope to the right side of your boat, the river would push you right back to here again."

He thought a while. "Would that really work?"

"Prove it for yourself. Get a small boat and a small rope and try it."

"Hmm. I just might, my lord. I just might."

Sir Vladimir and the ladies were eager to push on so that they could get back to Wawel Castle again, since I had promised a second visit on our return journey. Vladimir planned to take us on a short cut that skirted the Wysoki Beskid Mountains, a part of the Carpathians. That would get us to Sacz in two easy days of travel.

We traveled across the Vistula flood plain with Annastashia and Krystyana chattering constantly about all the wonders they had seen in Cracow. When we started climbing the foothills in the afternoon, the previously perfect weather began to cloud over. In a few hours it began to sprinkle on our expensive clothes.

"I'd thought that we could make it to my Uncle Felix's manor today," Sir Vladimir said. "But we haven't come as far as I'd hoped and I'm loath to get wet in a rainstorm the new finery our ladies made. I know of caves in these hills. I played in them when I was a boy. What would you think of making for one of them?"

"Fine by me," I said. "We have my old backpack with us. I can treat you all to some freeze-dried stew."

Sir Vladimir found a cave in short order. There were bat droppings near the mouth. Bats are common throughout the Carpathian Mountains. They're all harmless insectivores and there are so many of them that you can go for weeks without swatting a bug.

It was a four-yard climb to the cavemouth, but over easy rock, almost a stepladder. We couldn't get the horses inside, but a summer shower wouldn't hurt them. I set up the dome tent and stowed our baggage in it while Sir Vladimir unloaded and hobbled the horses. Anna wouldn't tolerate hobbling, but she was so loyal that there was never any worry about her wandering off.

Annastashia and Krystyana collected a night's supply of firewood and soon we were sitting in a semicircle around the fire, facing outward, waiting for the stew to start bubbling in my aluminum cooking kit. Krystyana was on my left and Annastashia and Sir Vladimir were to my right.

We were settled just in time, for soon lightning and thunder were crashing and rain was coming down in sheets. I've always loved thunderstorms when I don't have to be in them, and the view from our mountain cave was spectacular. But soon the show was over and the rain almost ended.

We started telling stories, a great art form in the Middle Ages but one that has been almost lost in modern times. Krystyana told a hilarious tale about how her uncle bought a pig, but came home with a cow. I rambled on for an hour about nine-fingered Frodo. A modern man may lack storytelling skills, but he sure knows a lot of plotlines.

With dusk the bats rushed out in a clicking, squeaking swirl. The girls, unfamiliar with the harmless creatures, started screaming.

Sir Vladimir took this as the cue for his story, which was about a vampire. His basic story line, that of a man who was of the living dead, who hated sunlight and water, who drank human blood and made his victims into creatures like himself, was much like a modern movie plot.

Vladimir's flashy storytelling style, with many gesticulations and facial expressions, added a lot to the natural setting, for Count Dracula had lived in these same Carpathian Mountains, only farther south.

What's more, Sir Vladimir adamantly claimed that every word of his tale was true and his eye didn't have the wink and twinkle it had when he was fibbing. He actually believed it and had the girls doing so. While I, of course, am above such things, I confess he had my heart thumping.

As he was approaching the climax of the story, he suddenly stopped and looked behind me. The expression on his face was one of pure horror and I remember thinking that in the twentieth century he would have gone to Hollywood.

There was a shuffling noise and I wondered briefly how he had arranged the sound effects. Then I saw that the girls too were horror-stricken and actresses they weren't.

I looked over my right shoulder and made what was perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

A man was coming toward me, totally naked with skin as white as bone china. Spittle and foam were dribbling from his mouth, his throat was convulsing and his chest was quivering. He was reaching toward me!

I was horrified and frightened. With no rational thought in my head, I drew my sword and with one motion slashed at him.

I cut him entirely in half at the belt line. The two pieces fell to the ground at a crazy angle, the throat twitched a few more times and stopped.

Instantly, a new horror struck me. I had just murdered a man, a crazy hermit perhaps but a fellow human being, for no other reason than that I was scared. I had become so callous in this brutal century that killing had become a reflex.

Sir Vladimir was the first to come to life. He grabbed a piece of firewood, sharpened it frantically with his belt knife and began beating it into the chest of the dead body with a rock.

This desecration of the dead brought me back to my senses.

"For the love of God, Sir Vladimir, stop that!"

"It must be done, Sir Conrad! It's still alive! It still can kill us!" There was more than a hint of panic in his voice.

There was no obvious way of stopping him short of violence. Sir Vladimir was swinging the rock with all his strength but forcing a wooden stick through a human rib-cage—especially one that is open at the bottom—is no easy feat. The intestines and liver were squirted out onto the cave floor, and all of us were splattered with blood.

I stared at the man I had murdered. Slowly something dawned on me. The foam at the mouth. The white skin. The convulsions. "Rabies," I said. "RABIES! Sir Vladimir, get away from that body! That stuff is infected! It's contagious! We could all end up like that poor bastard!"

"Not any more, Sir Conrad. I've done it." He stood up from his grisly work, a stump of wood projecting brutally below the corpse's left nipple.

"Trust me on this! If ever in your life you take me on faith, do it now! That's a virus, a disease, like leprosy or the plague. We must clean this blood and dirt off of us!"

"Just what would you have us do?"

"We've got to get out of here! We've got to get ourselves clean!" I started shoving them toward the cavemouth.

"Sir Conrad!" Krystyana said, "It's raining out there! Our clothes!"

"Damn your clothes! This rain is a Godsend! Get out there or I'll throw you out! You too, Annastashia! Move!"

They scurried out, but Sir Vladimir stood staring at me.

"Sir Vladimir, please!"

He paused a moment, then said, "Right."

I tossed our possessions over the edge and followed them down to the ground. The rain was coming in buckets again and the lightning was flashing. Both were welcome, by me at least. In total darkness and without water, the task would have been impossible. Anna heard the commotion and came running up.

"Back, girl! Rabies!"

She nodded her head and backed off.

"The rest of you, strip!" I shouted above the storm. "Hang your clothes over the bushes where they'll get rinsed out. Wash yourselves. Krystyana, break out my soap!"

I bullied them into sudsing down twice in the bone-chilling rain. Finally, we gave the girls the tent and Sir Vladimir and I hunkered down as best we could under a tree.

"Sir Conrad, was this really necessary?"

"Yes."

"It's some sort of superstition among your people?"

"It's not a superstition. I've told you before, most diseases are caused by germs, tiny animals, smaller than you can see. That poor bastard in the cave was infested with them."

"Sir Conrad, you've also taught me the scientific method, and told me never to believe anything that I could not prove with my own senses. With my own eyes I just saw a vampire. I touched it. I felt it. I smelled it. Can you doubt that this is true?"

"You certainly saw something, but what you saw was the victim of a disease."

"As to these germs, well, to be scientific about it, I've never seen one. If you ever build that microscope that once you talked of, perhaps I will. For now, I know what I saw, I know what I did.

"As to this chilly midnight bathing party, well, you are a stranger here and I was only being polite and going along with your customs as you have so often gone along with ours."

"Okay. Have it your way. Your scientific deductions were satisfied by pounding a stake into the vampire's heart and my superstitions required that we ritually bathe off the devil-viruses.

"That's not what's bothering me.

"What bothers me, Sir Conrad, is sitting here wet and naked in the cold rain, with only male company, when but a short time ago I was most comfortably situated with my love at my side."

"Well, I'm sitting right next to you."

"More's the pity."

We were silent a long while. Then I said, "I think we were both right about the man in the cave. Most legends have some basis in fact. The symptoms of rabies are a lot like the way you described a vampire. The fear of light and water. The white skin. And if one bites you, you'll certainly become one. I think your vampire is my rabies victim. Two names for the same thing."

"If you say so. How long does your ritual require before we can go back to the cave?"

"It's not a ritual and we don't go back, ever."

"Right. It is not a superstition. The cave is merely permanently defiled and unclean."

It was a long night and I spent it soul searching. I suppose I did the man a favor, giving him a quick death. Rabies is a rough way to die. Maybe he would have bitten one of us and maybe I saved one of the others from joining his sad fate. There was nothing I could do to cure the disease.

But this was all rationalization after the fact. In truth, I had murdered a man because he frightened me.

* * *

The lands we rode through the next morning were cheerful, despite the depressed mood of our party. The fields were well tended and soon to give a good harvest, the peasant cottages were big and well built and most had brightly painted trim. The people were well fed, half of them were fat, and all were fairly well clothed. And everybody bustled, as if whatever they were doing right then was the most important thing in the world.

That sort of attitude is contagious and we had cheered up some by the time we entered Uncle Felix's manor in our second-best clothes. I had to call him that even though he was Sir Vladimir's uncle and not mine. He was the kind of man who is everybody's uncle. Big, bluff, crude, and wholesome, he radiated good cheer and good wishes.

"That you, Vlad boy? You big enough for girls already? Pretty ones, too! And a giant! You must be Stargard! Welcome! Mama! Go kill a fat calf for supper! We got company! Iwo! Iwo you lazy peasant! Come take care of the horses! Well, you people? Get down!"

A little intimidating at first, but you couldn't help liking him. Soon dozens of people were rushing about, our horses unloaded and put in a barn, and our baggage opened out. Some women tsk-tsked at our wet finery and took it away, while the four of us were treated to an impromptu dinner for twelve.

Uncle Felix had already eaten, but sat down to join us and ate enough for six men just to be sociable.

"So, boys. You are out adventuring? Have you killed any dragons?"

"No dragons, Uncle Felix," Sir Vladimir said. "But we killed five Crossmen in an open fight and we dispatched a vampire last night."

"Another vampire in my hills, eh? That's the second one this year. I'll have to warn the peasants. Tell me about the Crossmen."

Sir Vladimir launched into his tale, which grew better each time he told it. He never exactly lied, you understand, but the embroidery around the edges got constantly brighter.

"Whew! The duke may like it, but the duke is not your liege lord." He waved a chubby finger at Sir Vladimir. "You know, your papa is not going to be happy about this!"

"I know. I was wondering if you could intercede for me."

"Maybe. But it's too close to harvest for me to leave now. After that, well, maybe the trial will settle everything. But if he's still mad at you at Christmastime, I'll go talk to him.

"Now you, big fellow—I've heard so many things about you that I don't believe that I'm thinking I should have believed some of them after all. Tell me what you know."

"That's quite an order, Uncle Felix—excuse me, I mean Sir Felix."

"Uncle Felix is okay. Everybody calls me that. Never could figure out why. I heard that when you came here, you were walking through the woods with nothing but what you could carry on your back. With no weapons and no armor and living wherever you stopped for the night. And you did this just for sport. That true?"

"Well, yes."

"Then you're either a very brave man or a damn fool."

"I don't think I'm either of those. It's a common sport where I come from. We're mostly city dwellers and you need to get back to nature every now and then. The equipment we use is very lightweight. You can actually carry everything you need."

"But no weapons?"

"Uh . . . weapons are frowned upon. But they're really not needed. Most animals will leave you alone if you don't frighten them."

"Animals, maybe. What about men?"

"What about them? I wasn't looking for any trouble."

"Trouble finds you in the woods. What about thieves?"

"There aren't that many of them. Look, I shouldn't be talking about this. I made a vow."

"As you wish, Stargard. What about all these fights you been in?"

"Well, four times I've been attacked by crazy people on the road. I defended myself. What more is there to say?"

There was no question of our proceeding that day. Uncle Felix wouldn't have stood for it. It was raining again and anyway, Sacz was a full day's ride away. It was best to leave in the morning.

I never quite left the table that afternoon. With dinner completed, more beer was brought, with a few snacks: sausages, cheeses, breads, cold pies, preserved meats, smoked fish, puddings, spreads, pickled fish, pickled cabbages, pickled pickles, and a vast pile of et ceteras.

It was Tuesday, but somehow a holiday had been declared. Maybe it was the rain and maybe it was the fact of our visit. Or maybe these people always acted that way.

Chessboards and checker sets were broken out, as well as a half dozen board games I'd never seen before. There was Nine Man Morris, which had elements of tic-tac-toe and Chinese checkers. There was Fox and Geese, a chase-and-capture game, and Cows and Leopards, a vastly more complicated variant. There was Goose, a race game.

Furthermore, every game seemed to have a skill variant and a chancy gambling variant. Uncle Felix got me into a game of Byzantine chess, which was played with normal chesspieces but on a circular board. He further insisted that we play it with dice. You had to roll a one to move a pawn, a two to move a knight, and so on.

If none of the moves permitted by the dice was possible by the rules of chess, you lost your turn; if you were in check, you had to roll the right dice to get yourself out of check or you lost your turn. Then your opponent had to roll the right dice to take your king to win. This resulted in some very strange games and I'm glad I wouldn't bet him. Anyway, I think his dice were loaded.

Sitting and playing board games suited my mood, but Sir Vladimir was feeling far more energetic. He had Krystyana, Annastashia, and a half dozen or so of Uncle Felix's ladies playing something called The Last Couple in Hell. I never quite figured out the rules, but it involved a lot of running around and screaming.

People wandered in and out, bringing things, eating things, and taking things. At least three conversations were going on at any one time and the noise never stopped. Children and dogs wandered through and were petted, spanked, or ignored as the case required. Uncle Felix almost never used a proper name. He just pointed and yelled, and things happened.

I never figured out who were family and who were servants; perhaps they weren't too clear about it themselves. When Uncle Felix yelled, people jumped, but not always the same people who jumped last time. The girl who brought in a steaming plate of braised meat promptly sat down with us to help us eat it. Later, Uncle Felix pinched her butt; up till then I'd been sure that he'd been patting his daughters and pinching the servants.

Try to imagine a friendly, loosely organized madhouse with sound effects. Intimidating, but you grew to like it.

After six hours of continuous eating and drinking, Uncle Felix got up, belched, and announced that supper was served.

They really had killed a fatted calf and two men brought it in on a spit. Having already done a full day of heroic trencher duty, the best I could do was dawdle at my food. Uncle Felix looked at me, genuinely hurt.

"There's something wrong with the food?"

* * *

We were back in our best clothes, only slightly the worse for wear, the next morning. The sky was gray and we were all still logy from too much to eat and drink the day before, so we were mostly silent on the way to Sacz.

The land and climate around Sacz were identical to Uncle Felix's, but the living was far worse. The leader sets the tone of an organization, and the tone of Sacz was bad. Half the fields were unplanted and I don't just mean those lying fallow. The forests were encroaching on the farmland. Those fields that had been planted were rank with weeds.

The cottages were hovels and the people were listless, lackadaisical, uncaring. You had the feeling that they thought that nothing they could do would improve things, that nothing really mattered. Most of them looked underfed.

In Poland, every man, even a sworn peasant, had the Right of Departure. If things got bad, he could sell out or abandon whatever property he owned and move elsewhere. It was a little like the bankruptcy laws of modern times. Well, around Sacz, anyone with any gumption had already left.

I decided that hunting was so important to Baron Przemysl because he was such a poor manager his lands and people would not produce enough to support him; wild game was the only thing that he had to eat, so he was hard on poachers.

Baron Przemysl was a grimy, gouty, disagreeable person. He produced a Tadaos much whiter and thinner than I remembered. Tadaos was speechless while the baron carefully, publicly counted the ransom money. He shook his head, blinked at the sunlight and rubbed the scabs where the shackles had been on his wrists. Having lived in his own filth for almost a month, he stank monumentally. I stayed upwind of him, but the baron didn't seem to notice the smell.

Once the baron had finished his long, slow count, he turned and limped away without so much as a thank-you or an invitation to supper, and it was late in the day. I decided not to tell him how to cure his gout.

"You came! By God in Heaven, you came!" Tadaos yelled suddenly.

"Yes, I came. Now get on one of the mules and let's get out of this pig's sty."

But once mounted up, he said, "My bow, Sir Conrad, do you think I could get my bow?"

Tadaos's bow was an English longbow and pretty special. He was a fantastic shot with it, and I didn't know how much of that was the man and how much was the equipment. The guard at the gate was a graybeard in rusty armor. After some argument, haggling, and suggestions of violence, he produced bow, quiver, and arrows for eight pence. A bargain, except that the equipment was Tadaos's in the first place.

"And my boat. Sir Conrad, do you suppose that there is any chance of getting back my boat?"

On this point the oldster was adamant. None. The boat had been confiscated along with the cargo, and both had been sold.

"Then I am a boatman without a boat. What is to become of me?"

"I can tell you that," I said. "You're coming along with me. I'm not going to charge you for my traveling expenses and I'm not going to hold you responsible for all the trouble I've gotten into on this trip. But I just shelled out four thousand pence to save your neck and I'm going to get it back, somehow. You once hired me at three pence a day plus food. That's what I'll pay you until you work off your debt."

"You're a hard man, Sir Conrad."

"Huh. That's the first time anyone's ever said that. Well, come along, gang. There's one more stop to be made before we head home."

I had been transported to the thirteenth century while sleeping in the basement of the Red Gate Inn. I didn't know how that was accomplished but the answer just might be in that inn. In all events, I meant to go there.

Chapter Thirteen

We were fortunate to find a decent-enough inn that evening. They wouldn't let Tadaos in until he had taken a bath, which I considered to be a good recommendation for the place.

The innkeeper set up a wooden tub in the courtyard, checking the wind with a wet thumb to be sure that Tadaos stayed downwind of the dining room. It was filled with hot water and Tadaos was tossed a bar of brown soap from beyond flea-jumping range.

He was ordered to strip and get in. A servant picked up his old clothes with a long stick and carried them off, the stick pointing carefully downwind, to be burnt. They changed the water three times before poor Tadaos passed muster and was permitted to rejoin humanity. Even then, he was probably aided by the fact that it was getting dark.

I also got a bill for washing down the mule Tadaos rode in on.

One of my outfits fitted Tadaos fairly well, with the cuffs and sleeves rolled up, but I wouldn't let him cut it down permanently, not one of my nifty embroidered outfits!

"It's just as well that Cousin Przemysl didn't invite us in for supper," Sir Vladimir said. "His table is terrible."

I inquired of the innkeeper about the Red Gate Inn and was told that I shouldn't go there. It had been struck by lightning and was inhabited by devils.

Slighting the competition a little was one thing, but that was ridiculous. When I pressed him further, he assured me that I could get there by staying on the trail we had arrived on. I couldn't possibly miss the place, if I was fool enough to go there.

I couldn't tell my friends why the trip was necessary, and Sir Vladimir was not happy with this extension to our vacation. He wanted to go back and play hero some more at Wawel Castle. Krystyana and Annastashia were solidly on his team. It got to be a nagging contest, three against one.

"Okay. Then don't go to the Red Gate Inn. I'm not sure I wanted you along anyway. Stay right here tomorrow with the girls. I'll take Anna and run up to the Red Gate Inn in the morning. She's fast enough to make it there and back in a single day, where the whole party would take two days easy. Anyway, Anna has been acting like she wants a good run, and we can't do that with you guys along."

Sir Vladimir and the girls gave their grudging approval to the plan, and we called it a night.

The next morning I was saddling Anna when Sir Vladimir came over. "Sir Conrad, I spoke rashly last night. Let me accompany you today."

"Thank you. Apology accepted. But if you go, the girls will insist on going and then with those stupid palfreys, we'd have to move at a crawl. Anyway, we can hardly leave them here unprotected. Anna and I won't have any problems."

"Still, I'd feel better if I went along. And let's bring the ladies. There's no need for undue haste."

"Maybe I need a little time to myself. Anyway, I'm going alone. Don't bother following, you know you can't keep up."

I'd left the horse barding and fancy clothes behind. This was a fact-finding mission and the less attention I attracted, the better.

* * *

Anna went like the wind. She could travel as fast with a big armored man on her back as a thoroughbred racehorse can with a little jockey aboard. And she could keep up that speed all day, not for just a single mile.

It was an exhilarating joy to ride her across flat land and on mountainous trails it was stunt-flying and motorcycling and a carnival ride all in one. More than those, because we were closer to the ground than any stunt plane ever flew for long and no motorcycle could have maintained our speed over these trails. And on a carnival ride, deep down inside you really know that you are safe. This was reality!

We went for about an hour without passing anyone on the trail. Then we came to a pleasant brook with a nice bit of pasture and we stopped for a while. The cook at the inn had packed me a lunch. In the Middle Ages, it was customary to get up at dawn but eat your first meal at ten in the morning. Dawn, I could take, since without decent lights there wasn't much sense to staying up late. But I've always eaten a big breakfast, and a year in this barbarous time still hadn't changed my desire for that.

We ate. Anna was cropping the lush grass and keeping a sharp lookout.

"Anna, would you come over here, please?"

She trotted over.

"Anna, what's two plus two? Tap it out with your foot."

She tapped her foot four times.

There was once a famous German showhorse called Clever Hans that had everyone, including his trainer, convinced that he could do simple arithmetic. It wasn't until many years later that a psychologist proved that Hans was reading the body language of the person asking him the question. He would start tapping his foot and as he started approaching the right answer, his questioner would involuntarily stiffen up a bit. When he got to the right answer, the trainer would relax a little and Hans would stop tapping his foot.

I had to know if Anna's nodding and shaking her head in response to questions was the Clever Hans sort of thing, or if she really was an intelligent being in the guise of a horse.

"Okay. Now give me three minus one."

She tapped twice.

"Now the square root of nine."

She looked at me inquisitively, sort of tilting her head sideways, the way a dog does.

"Do you know what a square root is?"

She shook her head no.

That tore it. I knew what a square root was and if this was the Clever Hans thing, she would have tapped out three. Down deep, I'd been expecting it all along. Anna was an outstanding creature. She was physically, mentally, and morally superior to anything a horse had a right to be.

"Anna, are you really a horse?"

She stared at me for a second, then shook her head no.

"Are you a human being?"

She shook her head.

"Some kind of machine, then?"

No.

"Some sort of alien? From some other planet?"

No and no.

"Are you naturally born? Some sort of mutant?"

Yes and no.

"You were born naturally and are not a mutant?"

Yes.

"Anna, I came to this country in some kind of a time machine, I think. At least it was a strange vault in the subbasement of an old inn. Do you know about time machines?"

Yes and no.

"Let me try again. Are you in any way connected with any individual or group that has anything to do with a time machine?"

Yes.

"Do you know how such a device works?"

No.

"Well, at least that tells me that you're somehow connected with some pretty high technology. Are you the result of some high technology? Bioengineering?"

Yes and yes.

"But you were born naturally . . . oh, of course. Your ancestors were bioengineered."

Yes.

"You're from the future then?"

No.

"The past?"

Yes.

"There was some kind of lost civilization in the distant past?"

Yes and no.

That stumped me for a bit. How could it be there and not there? Technology requires a civilization. Doesn't it?

"You were the product of a civilization?"

Yes.

"Was that civilization in the distant past?"

Yes.

"Then why—okay, it was there but it was not lost."

Yes.

"I guess that figures. If you've got a time machine, there's no way for anything to get lost. Back to you. You're an intelligent bioengineered creation."

Yes and no.

"You're doing that to me again. You, or at least your ancestors, were bioengineered."

Yes.

"And you're intelligent."

Yes and no.

"You're intelligent but not as smart as me?"

Yes.

"If that's true, you're not far behind me. I haven't seen you do anything dumb yet and God knows that I've pulled some boners lately. Anna, you obviously understand Polish. Can you read it?"

Yes.

"Can you write?"

No.

"Anna, if I made up a big sign with all the letters and numbers on it, could you point to them one after the other and spell things out?"

Yes and no.

"You could try but your spelling isn't very good."

Yes.

"Good enough. We're going to have that sign made up as soon as we get back to Three Walls.

"Anna, you're too intelligent to be treated as an animal. As far as I'm concerned, you are people. I don't own you, but I'd like to stay your friend. Is that okay with you?"

Yes.

"Would you like to work for me, doing just what you have been doing all along?"

Yes.

"I pay most of the men back at Three Walls a penny a day. Is that all right with you?"

Yes.

"Fine. We'll make it retroactive to the time I met you in Cracow. That means that you have about three hundred pence in back pay coming. I might as well hold your money for you, but if there's anything you want to buy, let me know. Okay?"

Yes.

"Would you like to swear to me, just like all the other people have?"

Yes, vigorously.

"Then we'll do it. But to do it right, we ought to have witnesses, so I suppose we should wait until we get back to Three Walls. Okay?"

Yes.

That was one of the best moves I ever made.

Getting ready to go again, I said, "Anna, we need more words than just yes and no. How about if shaking your tail means you don't care one way or the other and that yes-no thing you've been doing means that I haven't asked the right question?"

Yes-no.

"I guess I deserved that. Are the above two communication symbols acceptable to you?"

Yes.

She was as literal-minded as a computer. "Eventually, we're going to have some long talks, but for now, is there anything that you are unhappy with that I can do something about?"

Yes.

It took another round of "twenty questions," but I found out what it was. She thought the food was fine and she didn't mind the work. People treated her well enough and she liked traveling. She didn't mind a saddle but the bridle annoyed the hell out of her. Would I please take the damn thing off?

"Happy to, my friend. Of course, you never paid much attention to it anyway."

We continued south, and higher into the High Tatras, a part of the Carpathians. Some purists claim that Tatras are part of the Beskids and the Beskids are part of the Carpathians, but call them what you will, they're half again higher than anything in New England. To me, they are the most beautiful mountains in the world, and I have loved them ever since my father took me up there when I was a little boy.

It was a bright day with clear mountain skies and clean highland air. Anna was making good speed and many Slavic songs were written to be sung on horseback, to the rhythm of the horse's hooves. I was singing "The Polish Patrol" and in a fine mood when I came across the most dejected-looking man I'd ever seen. He was sitting by the road with his arms on his knees and his head on his arms.

I brought Anna to a halt. Actually, I just thought about stopping, and Anna picked it up from the way I must have changed my body position on her back.

"I know you, don't I?" I said.

He looked up at me, but no hint of recollection lit in his eyes.

"Of course I know you," I said as I dismounted. "You are Ivan Targ. You let me in your home last winter when I was lost in the cold."

"Yes, now I remember. You were the giant with the priest." His head dropped back down to his arms.

"Tell me, my friend, why do you look so sad? What is this terrible thing that has happened?" I sat down beside him.

"That." He pointed to a field. It took me a moment to realize what was wrong with it. It was common to plant two types of grain in the same field at the same time, in that case wheat and rye. If the weather conditions weren't right for wheat, maybe the rye would do well, and vice versa. Most Polish breads are made from mixed-grain flour, so there was never any need to separate the grains after harvest. But in his field, every stalk of grain had been flattened to the ground.

"The rains did that?" I asked.

"Hail. Last night we had a hailstorm."

"A pity. That will cost you a great deal of money."

"That will cost me my life. Mine and my family's."

"Surely your other fields will carry you through."

"That is my only field. That is all the land we have been able to clear in two years' hard work. This crop was all I had. If it had ripened, I could have fed my family through the winter and had extra to sell to the merchants. Now, I have nothing, my family has nothing."

"This is a disaster, but it doesn't have to cost your life. Surely your lord will help you through the winter."

"I have no lord! Don't you see! I came to these mountains to be done with lords! I was sick of paying half of what I grew just to keep a fat man in his big house from having to work! I came here to be free, and now I will die for it."

He was serious. This was not the wailing of a businessman over lost profits. This was a man who was looking death in the face.

"Once you let me in from the cold, and gave me a spot by your family's fire. Without you, I might have frozen to death." I got out my pouch and poured about five hundred pence into my hand. It was a trifling amount for me, but enough to feed him and his family until spring. "You didn't know it at the time, but you were throwing bread onto the waters."

Ivan stared at the money, then he stared at me. He was literally speechless. In a single morning, he had gone out expecting to find his field ripening, his plans prospering. He had found instead absolute disaster. And then, just as he had accepted the ultimate tragedy, a man he barely knew had come along and saved everything. His mind was not up to handling it all, and I had the feeling that he would continue sitting there for hours.

"It is not a big thing," I said, "I've been lucky this last year. If you ever want to pay me back, I am Sir Conrad Stargard, and I live at Three Walls, near Cieszyn. If you ever decide that you want a lord again, you can come see me about that, too."

He nodded dumbly. I mounted up and rode off, feeling good inside. One of the nicest things about wealth is that sometimes you can do some good in the world.

In under an hour, we were approaching the inn, or at least where I had remembered the inn to be. What I found was a hole in the ground. A blast crater more than two hundred yards across. I was dumbfounded as we climbed the rim and looked down into it. Anna stirred uneasily.

There was the clean smell of a thundershower in the air, and this was a sunny day. The not-unpleasant smell of sparking relay contacts. Ozone.

"Ozone! Radiation! Anna, get us out of here! This place has been hit with an atomic bomb!"

Interlude Two

I hit the red STOP button. Movement on the screen froze in mid-action.

"Oh Jesus Christ, Tom! You nuked the inn?" I said. "For the love of God, why?"

"Sit down, son. I didn't bomb that place, and neither did anybody else. It was an accident."

"An accidental nuclear explosion in the thirteenth century?"

"It wasn't all nuclear. More than half the energy in that blast was kinetic, and most of the rest was chemical."

"Even so—"

"You know how our temporal transporters work. A canister arriving from another time has to arrive in a precisely defined volume of hard vacuum. If there's anything at all in that volume, you have two sets of atoms coexisting in the same space. A small percentage of the nuclei will be close enough to fuse, giving you some damn strange isotopes. Some of those are radioactive, and that caused the ionizing radiation that caused the ozone that my cousin smelled. I got quite a dose myself, once, in the early days when we were first working on time travel.

"Many of the electrons interact with the electrons of other atoms, producing a lot of strange chemicals. Some of those chemicals are explosive. Some are poisonous. All of the atoms repel each other vigorously, and that caused the bulk of the explosion, sixty-nine percent of it, anyway.

"A canister arriving at the inn three months after Conrad's first visit apparently emerged into solid rock, over eighteen feet out of registration."

"Wow. Some sort of failure in the controls?"

"I wish it had been that simple. We knew the explosion occurred, and site investigation showed a typical reemergence explosion. You know we use the reemergence effect under controlled conditions to generate all of our power and most of our basic materials. We understand the process completely, so there couldn't be any doubt about what happened.

"The only trouble was that none of our canisters was missing.

"Weirder things started happening. The investigation team we sent from Hungary came back twice. Two identical teams of men returned, one a few days after the other. And the men in each team claimed that those in the other were imposters.

"Also at that point, I had just returned from 1241, and had met Conrad at the Battle of Chmielnick, which, contrary to written history, the Poles won."

"But that can't be—time is a single linear continuum. Our people have made millions of temporal transfers, and we know that it's all in one straight line. There are no branches. The same battle can't have been both won and lost."

"I'm glad you're so positive of that. Because you're wrong. The correct statement is that everybody knew that branching is impossible. They don't know it anymore. Cousin Conrad, damn his soul, has done the impossible and kicked the underpinnings out from under everything just when I was getting ready to retire."

"But how—?"

"How, I don't know. The theory people have been in conniptions for months. No telling when they'll settle down. Maybe never.

"But we have the where and the when down pat. The split didn't start when Conrad first got to the Middle Ages. It happened a month after that, when Conrad had to make a difficult decision. For good and sufficient reasons, his employer ordered him to abandon a baby in a snowstorm. Conrad both saved and abandoned that child.

"In our timeline, he obeyed orders. On arriving at Okoitz, however, Count Lambert's ladies didn't treat him like a hero. By their lights, anybody who would allow a kid to freeze to death was a bum, and unworthy of their services. Those are my feelings as well.

"Their influence on Lambert was such that he was not much impressed with Conrad, either. Conrad left Okoitz with his employer, but soon argued with him. They split up and Conrad continued, alone, westward to Wroclaw.

"There he was promptly robbed of his booty, and had a rough time of it for many years. He eventually got involved in copper mining but never really amounted to much. When we tracked him down, he jumped at the chance to return to the twentieth century."

I was still trying to absorb just what a split in the timeline meant.

"Everything was doubled? Where did it all come from? What about the conservation of mass and energy?"

"It's right out the window! Along with just about every other law of physics. When Conrad kicked out the supports, he didn't mess around!"

I was so flustered that I didn't notice the naked wench who announced lunch. Tom took me by the hand and led me from the screening room.

In an hour we were back at the documentary.

Chapter Fourteen

Without stopping we rode to the inn we had left in the morning. The innkeeper gave me an artificial smile. "Did you find the Red Gate Inn, Sir Conrad?"

"You know what I found. A hole in the ground."

"Is that what's there? The merchants who reported it to me were very unclear. Does it have devils?"

"Worse devils than you'll ever imagine. You're a bastard for not telling me about it, but keep on warning people away from that hole. People can die just from looking at it."

My party was eager to head back to Cracow, and it was still early in the afternoon, but Sir Vladimir talked us out of leaving until the next morning. It seems that there wasn't another decent inn within six hours; if we left then, we'd have to camp out again, and considering our last experience with camping, we weren't eager. Leaving in the morning, we could easily reach Uncle Felix's by the afternoon.

* * *

Uncle Felix didn't have time to kill another fatted calf, so he had to make do with a slab of beef, three geese, a suckling pig, and a whole lamb, plus the usual tons of extras.

He protested vigorously when I insisted on leaving first thing in the morning, but I wanted to get to the salt mines at Wieliczka as early as possible. We got there that afternoon, with Tadaos complaining the whole way about having to ride an unsaddled mule.

In the twentieth century, the salt mines are a tourist attraction par excellence: fifty generations of miners have cut nine hundred miles of tunnels, passageways, galleries, and chambers. And what does a salt miner do on his day off? He mines salt, of course. Only he gets artistic about it. Down there the miners have hollowed out two churches plus a "chapel" as big as a cathedral, each encrusted with statuary and carvings ranging in style from the romanesque to the modern. The annual miner's ball takes place on a dance floor that can accommodate thousands. Tennis tournaments are held in a chamber more than forty stories underground.

There are natural wonders besides. There is a briny lake down there, and the "growths" in the Crystal Grotto are a natural phenomenon without equal anywhere else in the world.

There are even species of plants and animals that have adapted themselves to living underground. They have a museum to show it all to you.

In the thirteenth century, they had a ways to go, but even then the miners had been at work for at least three hundred years; the caverns were already pretty impressive.

Not that Annastashia and Krystyana were all that impressed. They wanted to get to Cracow, and Sir Vladimir had been to the mines before. But it was my vacation and I was footing the bills.

We were watching a walking-beam pump, a device similar to that which we built at Three Walls to saw wood. But for pumping water, my condensing steam engine was far more efficient. I called the works manager over and started to explain my pump to him.

He cut me off with, "What? You're a miner?"

"Well, not exactly, but—"

"Well I am. And my father was a miner, and his father before him. We've been miners for over four hundred years."

"That's very nice, but about my pump—"

"I know everything there is to know about mining. I don't need to know about your foolish ideas."

"But it's not just some pipe dream! I have one running at Three Walls!"

"Three Walls? I never heard of a mine at any Three Walls." And he turned and walked away. Arrogant bastard.

The price of salt was about equal to the cost of chopping it out and hauling it to the surface, pretty cheap. By loading down the mules, slinging sacks across the backs of all four horses, and letting Tadaos walk, we were able to take a ton and a half back with us—about two kilos per capita, probably enough to last us until spring. These people ate a lot of salt, maybe because of all the beer they drank.

We had been gone from Cracow for less than a week, but there was a major change in the Vistula waterfront. The ferrymaster had taken my suggestion about using river power to move his ferryboat. A long sturdy rope ran from his boat to the tree I'd suggested, and he'd come up with an efficient block-and-tackle system that let him effectively move the rope from one side of the boat to the other with only the power of his own arms.

He let us ride it free, in thanks for my suggestion, but he was still getting full fare from everyone else. Business had been better than ever, with many people riding it just for the novelty of moving in a boat without oarsmen.

He no longer had to pay a dozen men, and eventually someone would see his vast profits, go into competition with him and drive his fares down. But just then he was in heaven.

I, too, was very pleased. Think of it. Because of an idea of mine and the few minutes it had taken to explain it, twelve men were released from the drudgery of paddling that boat back and forth across the river. Twelve men had been given their whole lives to do more productive, more enjoyable work.

Actually, it was far more than twelve, for there must be many ferryboats operating on the Vistula. Word of the improvement would get around quickly. And there were many other rivers. And it wasn't just those men, but their children and grandchildren had also been set free.

As we rode toward the city gates, I was patting myself on the back for a job well done. Then a rock the size of my fist slammed into the side of my helmet. I was stunned, tried briefly to stay in the saddle, then fell to the ground.

I wasn't quite unconscious, and could hear the shouting around me. Krystyana and Annastashia were holding my head up, and vision was starting to return. Tadaos had strung his bow and had shot two men through the arm, pinning them to a tree. Sir Vladimir and Anna were out rounding up the rest of our assailants. It was all over by the time I had regained my feet.

"Sir Vladimir, what was that all about?"

"Those are the men who once worked the ferryboat. They say that they did you no harm, but that you have deprived them of their livelihoods, and now they will starve, along with their families. I think they might have justice on their side, though perhaps their anger might better have been directed at the boatmaster, for you only talked about harming them, but the boatmaster actually carried the deed out."

"I didn't hurt anybody. I just—oh hell. Bring them here."

Sir Vladimir herded over a very bashed group of men. Most were bleeding from wounds or contusions.

"You were sort of rough on them," I said.

"I killed none and thought myself lenient," Sir Vladimir said.

"I suppose you did. You men! Why did you attack us?"

One of them was nudged forward by the others. "You was the one what told the boatmaster to build that thing! Now no one will ever hire a ferryboat man. Not ever again!"

"That's only to be expected," I said. "Technology often causes slight social and economic readjustments. But the net results will be very beneficial for this city and for our country."

"Whatever you said, I still don't have no food in the house! Before you opened your mouth, things were going good for me, and for these men here!" There were nods and gestures of agreement from the other men.

"Then find some other line of work. There must be hundreds of things that need doing in Cracow."

"There is if you have an uncle who's a master in a guild! But there ain't no guilds on the river, and there's no way they'll let us work in Cracow."

"Are you telling me that you have all tried to get honest work in the city and you've all been rejected?"

"Not all of us. Some of us are smart enough to know what'd happen. But a lot of us have tried, for all the good it's done us."

"All right, then. There's plenty of work to be done at Three Walls. It's about two days walk west of here. Take Count Lambert's trail to Sir Miesko's manor. He'll give you directions from there. Tell Yashoo that I said that ferryboat men are to be hired at the usual rate."

They still looked disgruntled, but the crowd broke up. Before the end of the year, I ended up hiring twenty-six ferryboat men. Or men who said that they were ferryboat men. It wasn't as though there were any records that I could check. More mouths to feed.

Sir Vladimir wanted to proceed directly to Wawel Castle and I told him to take the girls there. I'd be along later. I had to go see Father Ignacy at the Franciscan monastery. There was a little matter of my confession concerning the man I had murdered in the cave in the Beskids.

* * *

Four days went by before I could get our party back on the road. At that, it took a direct summons from Count Lambert to get them moving. I suppose that I could have been more assertive, but I wasn't looking forward to facing my liege lord.

Sir Vladimir insisted on taking an alternate trail back, one that was slightly longer, but had the advantage that the Crossmen rarely used it. Until the judicial combat was agreed upon, there was no telling just what they might do. It was best to avoid them.

This route took us by one of the strangest terrain features in Poland. In the midst of the wet, north European Plain, there is a desert.

The Bledowska Desert is about twenty square miles of shifting, windblown sand, and blistering hot in the summer. Fortunately, our route only skirted one corner of it, but even so it was a trial.

"What makes it like this?" Annastashia said.

"Some trick of the winds, I suppose, my love. Sir Conrad, do you know anything of it?" Sir Vladimir said.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe something about the way the hills around here are shaped. This area gets very little rainfall."

"They say it never rains here at all!"

"I can believe it."

"Why would God make such a horrid place?" Krystyana asked.

"How should I know why God does anything? Even so, this area could be useful. It would make a good place to store grain," I said.

"I think it's a waste of space," Krystyana answered.

That evening, we stayed at the manor of Sir Vladimir's cousin Sir Augustyn, and his wife. They were a quiet, phlegmatic couple who talked little and went to bed early. A relief after Cracow.

The next day we were in Okoitz.

Count Lambert wasn't as angry as I had expected him to be. His reaction was more of the "my child, how could you have gone so wrong" sort of thing, which was even harder to take.

"You know that by your actions, you have killed yourself. All the things we'd planned together will come to nothing. All these mills and factories will halt without your guiding hand. And the mission that brought you to Poland at the bequest of Prester John, that too must end in failure."

Count Lambert had become convinced that I was an emissary from the mythical king Prester John. My oath to Father Ignacy was such that I couldn't talk about my origins, so I couldn't set him straight.

"It's not as bad as all that, my lord. Even if I do get killed, what we've started here will continue to grow. Vitold understands the mill as well as I do, and the Florentine knows more about cloth than me."

"Perhaps, Sir Conrad, but you are the fire behind all of them. Even if we do prosper without you, it won't last. If you're right about the Mongols' coming, and you've been right about everything else, this town and the rest of Poland will be burned to the ground in eight years. With all the people dead, what use are factories and mills?"

"The Mongols are a problem, my lord, but at least now you have been warned. Something can still be done—Anyway, I'm not going to lose the trial with the Crossman. I'm going to win. I've won every fight I've been through in this land, and I see no reason why I should stop doing that."

"Your confidence only exposes your ignorance, Sir Conrad. Killing highwaymen and unsuspecting guards is one thing. Going up against a professional killer is quite another. Truth is, you won't even make a good showing. I've seen your inept lancework.

"You've never seen a champion in action, and perhaps you should. A trial by combat is to be held on the first of next month at Bytom, a day north of here. It's just over an inheritance, so it won't be to the death, but it'll give you an idea of what you're up against."

"Very well, my lord, I'll go."

"Good. Sometimes you can get one of the champions to give you some lessons, for a price. Speaking of which, I have some new orders for you. Sir Vladimir seems to have attached himself to you, and he's one of the best lancemen in Little Poland. From today onward, until your trial, you will work out with him every day for at least three hours. That's on horseback and with the lance. You'll never become good enough to win, but at least you won't die in quite so embarrassing a manner."

Little Poland is the hilly area around Cracow, as opposed to Big Poland, the plains area farther north and west.

"As you wish, my lord. I'd intended to practice for the fight. But tell me, was the cloth I requested sent to Three Walls?"

"It was, and I haven't taken payment for it yet. I wanted to discuss the matter with you. We made a wager on whether or not your windmill would work. Well, you won. And you weren't interested in betting double or nothing on your second windmill."

"My lord, would you want Duke Henryk to be owing you a vast sum of money?"

"Hmmm. I can see your point. It would be awkward, wouldn't it. Very well. What say you to taking that cloth as payment for my debt?"

"If you think the price is fair, it's fine by me, my lord."

"Hmmm. Well. Then how if I threw in twelve more bolts?"

The bolts of cloth were huge, a yard high and two yards wide. And cloth was very expensive in the thirteenth century. "I would think that you were being very generous, my lord."

"Then we'll call the matter settled. Pick out the cloth you want and have it sent to your lands on my mules. And perhaps I'm not really being so generous. After all, I am your liege lord and you have no heir. Once you're dead, all of your property escheats to me. Then too, even though I've sent my vassals their half of the fabric in return for their wool and flax, I have more cloth than I can sell, now that your factory is working."

"Haven't merchants been coming around to buy it, my lord?"

"Not as many as I had hoped. Many come looking to buy wool and go away with their mules unloaded. But few come to buy cloth."

"Perhaps you should consider setting up a sales organization."

"A what? Well, no matter. We can discuss it in the evening. For now, I want to tour the factory with you."

Count Lambert had about a hundred fifty knights, most of whom had manors of their own. To "man" his factory, he had asked each of his knights to send him a peasant girl or two, and each of the girls was to be paid for her work in cloth, giving her a full hope chest.

The knights, knowing their lord's preferences with regards to attractive young ladies, had each sent the loveliest women available, usually the prettiest unmarried girl in a whole village. For a girl to be unmarried in that culture, she had to be in her very early teens.

And rather than risk embarrassment for the lady and annoyance for their liege lord, they had all explained the customs of Okoitz to the girls to be sent, so that any not so inclined could bow out gracefully and another sent in her place.

It was a hot day and there was no nudity taboo in thirteenth-century Poland. Many of the girls were scantily clothed and no few of them were completely nude. That factory was like a scene from an Italian science fiction movie.

It was hard to keep my mind on the machinery. It was hard to keep my mind at all, let alone even notice the machinery.

Count Lambert was wallowing in all the beauty like a pig in mud. He wandered around, patting a butt here, pinching a tit there and smiling and flirting all the while. The girls seemed thrilled by all the attention from so high a personage, and many were actually competing for their share of caresses.

Once Count Lambert made it known that I was the favored vassal responsible for the factory and mill, I got my share of the attention, too. Distracting, but vastly enjoyable!

There were a dozen looms on the factory's third floor. Each was set up to make a different sort of cloth, from heavy tweed to a very fine linen. Vitold had outdone himself with the fine-linen loom, taking wooden machinery farther than I would have thought possible.

It was sort of the way the printing done by Gutenberg was some of the best ever done, and the way the machining on a prototype is often so much better than that on a production item. When a craftsman knows that he is breaking new ground, he puts his soul into his work. And it shows.

The cloth that loom turned out was pretty impressive as well. It was strong and light and looked like thin nylon even though it was really linen.

"This stuff is incredible!" I said. The naked operators stopped their work and crowded around. It was hot on the third floor, but I suspect that the real reason for their nudity was that they got more petting that way. I couldn't resist putting an arm around a redhead.

"It is good, isn't it," Count Lambert said with a girl in each arm and a young breast in each hand.

"Good? It's so sheer that you could make a kite out of it!"

"And what might a kite be?"

"A kite, my lord? Well, it's a thing made out of sticks and, I suppose, this cloth. It flies."

Count Lambert suddenly lost all interest in the ladies he'd been fondling. The sparkle faded from their eyes. "You mean that it were possible for a man to build a thing that flies?"

"Of course, my lord. I could make you a kite this very afternoon. I simply never thought that you would want such a thing. And there are many things that fly. Aircraft, balloons, helicopters, rockets, dirigibles, and what not."

"These others we must discuss, but later. For now I want you to immediately build me this kite thing."

"Yes, my lord. Uh, there is the matter of the fighting practice you ordered."

"Forget about that for now. After all, you're going to die anyway, and I want as many of your devices saved as possible."

So on that cheery note, I went out and flew a kite.

Vitold was pulled from supervising the construction of the second windmill to give me "every possible assistance." I told him to lend me a junior carpenter and sent him back to work.

I took a yard of the fine linen cloth and put Krystyana and Annastashia, good seamstresses both, to work cutting and sewing. It was done in an hour, and we gave it a thin coating of linseed oil. We set the finished kite up in the sun to polymerize the oil, then had a few rounds of beer.

It was a simple, traditional diamond-shaped kite, and there was enough of a breeze to fly it right out of the bailey. I no sooner had it airborne than Count Lambert was there. By the time twenty yards of string was out, he'd taken it out of my hands like an impetuous child, and was playing with it himself.

"That a man could build a thing that could fly!"

"Of course, my lord. You saw us make it. It's a simple enough thing. This is probably the simplest design, though there are many others."

"Then I must have them! Sir Conrad, could you stay on a bit past your usual two days?"

"If you wish, my lord.

"Earlier today, you mentioned the cloth I was to have. Do you suppose that I could have a few tons of thread and yarn as well? I'd like my people to have knitted underwear as well as decent top clothes."

"What?" The count was clearly distracted. "Oh, yes. Those marvelous knots you showed my ladies last winter. Take six tons, a dozen tons if you want it."

I took it. In fact, I sent it along with the cloth to Three Walls within the hour. This forced the muleteers to camp out that night, but that was better than to give Count Lambert the chance to regret his generosity.

In making and flying that kite, it was as though I had created the wonder of the world. People who had been indifferent to my mills and factories were astounded by a simple child's toy. In the course of the next week, I made box kites, Rondalero kites, French war kites, and even a monstrous Chinese dragon kite.

Kite-flying became the big game on campus, and grown men, professional warriors and leaders, were soon ignoring their hawks and hunts and flying kites. The fad spread across Poland—within a year across Europe—and the mill couldn't keep up with the demand for Count Lambert's Finest. Prices on that linen cloth soared, and merchants who came to buy it often bought other varieties of fabric as well. By spring, the factory was selling every yard it could make, all because of a silly kite-flying fad.

At least they didn't name it after me.

That night at dinner, Count Lambert was glorying in a thick slice of watermelon. I was sure that watermelon didn't come from the New World, but somehow no one from Poland had ever heard of it. "And to think, Sir Conrad, you gave this marvelous stuff to a peasant!"

"Yes, my lord. Just be sure and save the seeds, and next year there'll be more than enough for everybody."

"To be sure, to be sure. You've explained over and over again that there is no reason why all these different sorts of melons you brought can't soon be enjoyed by everyone. It simply seems that they are too good to waste on a peasant! Still, nothing's to be done for it, I suppose."

I'd given the count all those types of plants whose seeds might be eaten, since I was worried that a hungry peasant might eat, say, our entire supply of hybrid wheat the first winter. Actually, I almost had that problem with him. I'd decided it was good PR to show the cook what to do with sweet corn, and, to get enough acreage the next year to plant all the seed we'd grown, sacrificed one ear out of the twenty-seven that were growing so the count could try it.

The count fell in love with sweet corn. I think that if I hadn't physically stopped him, he would have gone out and personally picked and eaten the entire crop that evening. And there were no more seeds to be had in the century, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

Count Lambert was generous with his vast new supply of young ladies. He had even asked them to see that I was well taken care of. Krystyana found herself sort of whisked aside, and two most attractive young women joined me in bed that night. It would have been a great erotic fantasy come true, except that after an hour of fondling and fumbling, they both admitted that they didn't know what to do. The count, thinking to do me a huge favor, had sent in two virgins.

Now, one virgin is a monumental undertaking, if you're going to do it right. But a clumsy man can turn what could have been a fine lover into a frigid bitch. Two at the same time, when I hardly knew either one of them, seemed impossible. Yet the ladies were there and expecting something wonderful to happen. It turned into something of an all-night tutorial session.

In the end, I did the job reasonably well, and I think the girls were pleased. The truth is that I really preferred an experienced bed partner. This business of two virgins a night was ridiculous, and moderation was in order.

Say, one a week.

Chapter Fifteen

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI

When finally we left Okoitz, it was with a certain relief to all our party. Sir Conrad seemed almost haggard from his overindulgence in Count Lambert's vast supply of ladies, and Krystyana was not amused. Both Annastashia and Krystyana were not pleased with the change in character of what was, after all, their home town.

For mine own self, I had stayed true to my love, though it was a strain. The ladies of the mill were eager for the services of any true belted knight. Indeed, some would do almost anything to get a new belt in their notch.

Upon our arrival, we found the people at Three Walls far better dressed than before. Every person seemed to sport at least one new article of clothing, and the former slaves were properly clothed. I could see that in a few months, the women would have everyone in fully embroidered peasant garb.

On arriving, Sir Conrad did a very strange thing. He called his people about him and announced to them that his horse, Anna, was human, or close to it. She had been created by some band of wizards from the distant past, or perhaps she had been transmuted into the form of a horse. Sir Conrad's explanation was not at all clear to me.

In all events, he had freed her from his ownership of her and proposed to swear her to him in the exact same manner as he had sworn the rest of them.

All of Sir Conrad's people loved him and most also felt a little fear in his regard. Certainly, none objected to this latest strange thing. We had all heard fireside stories about Persian princes who acted oddly with regards to their horses, even keeping them in their houses and tents. Some later speculated that Sir Conrad had come from Persia.

He also swore Tadaos the former boatman, now called the bowman, and eight men, some with wives and children, who had been ferrymen on the Vistula. Then he made a speech, saying that all these people were now full citizens of Three Walls, and could enjoy our entertainments and our church as well as anyone, thus giving official sanction to Anna's church-going habits.

The next day, after our morning's fighting practice, Sir Conrad left for Cieszyn, saying that he wished to discuss some expansion of the Pink Dragon Inn with the innkeeper. Frenchizing, I think he called it, though it involved building a second inn in Cracow, and not at all in France.

He began to make many such quick side trips, and though I was loath to let him go unprotected, due to my oath to the duke, the truth was that I simply couldn't keep up with him. That horse of his was magic.

And my oath required me not only to protect Sir Conrad, but to spy upon him as well, a thing I was loath to think of. It weighed on my mind and dirtied my soul. I was left to look after things, an easy task since Yashoo was well trained in his duties, and Tadaos stood the night guard.

Not long after his departure, some small boys raised a commotion. It seems that they had been playing in the bushes below the mineshaft, and had found another mine or cave. Being young boys, they had of course explored it, and had come out very frightened. One said that the Ghost of the Mines had stolen his belt knife and the other said that the rocks were "sticky," in some frightening manner.

There is in the countryside about Count Lambert's domain an old legend about a Ghost of the Mines. His name is said to have been Skarbnik, once a rich miser who must forever do penance for his sins. They say that he is the guardian of mineshafts, underground treasures, and even the souls of dead miners. He is wicked and mischievous and often wreaks misfortune on those underground.

Usually he appears as a white-bearded old man, but sometimes as a mouse or a black cat, and when he does, it is a sign that fire will break out underground.

And Skarbnik hates noise.

I, of course, am a civilized, modern man and don't believe in such old wives' tales. The tasks of a true knight are many and varied, but the protection of the people is always high on the list. There might be some harmful animal in there, or even a thief, so there was nothing for it but to investigate the cave myself.

The mouth of the tunnel was very small. I had to leave my sword outside—there would have been no room to swing it in any event—and crawled into the cave. So tight was it that my mail-clad shoulders brushed the walls and my helmet scraped the ceiling. I pushed a small oil lamp before me and had my dagger in my hand.

I hope you will not think me unmanly when I say that I do not like small confined places, with their stale airs and dank smells. The thought of the many tons of rock above me was oppressive in the extreme. Yet I pressed on, for a knight must do his duty even if his forehead may sweat and his hand may shake.

I came to the end of the tunnel and could see that I was alone. No real dangers were obvious. Then I saw the boy's knife against the end wall and thought to return it to him, for his father would doubtless beat him for losing so valuable a tool. But as I approached it, my own dagger leaped from my hand of its own accord and fastened itself to the black rock on the end wall of the tunnel. It was not stuck in the rock, mind you, but laying on it as though it were on a table. Only it was laying on a wall! Hanging, with nothing to support it!

Then I was also being drawn to that infernal wall, or at least my chain mail was. And my helmet was pulled from my head, joining my knife on the wall.

At that point, the lamp went out, extinguished perhaps by a drop of sweat, or maybe I bumped it. Or maybe whoever or whatever was pulling at my arms and armor saw fit to do his further work in darkness.

I did not cry out, for a true knight never calls out save as a battle cry. My silence had nothing to do with that silly old legend.

In all events, I could see no use to my remaining. I could accomplish nothing, and whatever was attacking me, its surcease was beyond the abilities of a mere knight. Let some wizard handle it, or perhaps Sir Conrad.

I crawled quickly, and perforce backward, out of the tunnel.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

Tadeusz the innkeeper was enthused with the idea of opening another inn in Cracow. Several times in the past, he had asked me for permission to enlarge the present inn, since it was so profitable. I always turned him down because we already had most of the business in Cieszyn. The other inns in town handled little but our overflow. When you are already satisfying your entire market, there is no point in investing in further plant and equipment.

But Cracow had three or four times the population of Cieszyn, and a much larger Pink Dragon Inn there would make sense. To Tadeusz, going to Cracow was like a modern ballerina's going to the Bolshoi. The big time!

Tadeusz had six sons working for him, most of them adults. Our plan was to leave the oldest boy in charge of the inn in Cieszyn. Tadeusz would take the rest of his family and, later, one half of his staff and go to Cracow.

There they would buy—if necessary build—a suitable building. The guilds in Cracow wouldn't allow me to handle any construction work, which was just as well. I had my hands full as it was. Tadeusz had definite ideas about what he wanted—something similar to our present facilities only larger and plusher.

After that, I wanted a small inn at Three Walls, and if the Cracow inn was a success, we might expand to Wroclaw and Sandomierz. After that, who knew? Perhaps each of his sons would be an innkeeper.

Tadeusz, his wife, and five of their sons left for Cracow the next morning as I was leaving for Three Walls. But of course they couldn't keep up with Anna.

A mile from Three Walls, I overtook Boris Novacek and a knight heading in the same direction that I was. For a few days last fall, I had worked for the man, and most of my wealth had been gained while in his employ. He had been treated rather shabbily by Count Lambert, to my profit, and I had always felt guilty about it.

"Boris! I haven't seen you since last Christmas. Are your ventures profiting you?" I said as the horses walked slowly down the trail.

"As well as can be expected, Sir Conrad. I thought I would visit your new lands and see what wonders you were working there. This is my new companion, Sir Kazimierz, who now has your old job."

"A pleasure, Sir Kazimierz. I hope you last longer at it than I did." I turned back to my old boss. "You'll always be welcome at my table, Boris. But the truth is that there isn't much to see yet at Three Walls. We're just getting it built. I'm pretty proud of the mill and factory I designed at Okoitz, though. You should visit there."

"I've thought on it, but I fear that Count Lambert would decide that I wanted to gift him with all I own as a birthday present, so I have avoided the place."

"He was pretty rough on you last winter. Nonetheless, he now has a cloth factory and more cloth than he can sell. You once said that you wanted to get into the cloth trade. You might strike a good bargain there.

"Another thing. I now own a brassworks in Cieszyn. They've been selling all the brass they can pour, and are having a hard time getting enough copper. The price of copper in Cieszyn has doubled since last spring."

"An interesting thought, Sir Conrad. To buy cloth at Okoitz, sell it in Hungary, and return with copper for Cieszyn. I think that would be profitable. The truth is that I have no goods just now but plenty of money.

"Quite a bit of money, in fact. You remember that German who attacked us on the road just out of Cracow last winter? Not Sir Rheinburg, the other German the day before."

How could I forget? He was the first man I had ever killed. "Yes."

"Then you will recall that I mentioned that if he had really purchased my debt from Schweiburger the cloth merchant, and if he had no heirs, I would be forgiven that debt of twenty-two thousand pence.

"Well, that very thing has come to pass, and I am now richer because of it. I never had to pay the debt and I even recovered my amber from Schweiburger."

"You mean that man was an honest creditor?"

"A creditor, yes. Honest? Do honest men pull knives on others on the highway? He tried to kill me, and then you as well. Anyway, my debt was not in arrears at the time. He had no right to accost us like that."

"Still, it troubles me."

"Well, it shouldn't. You did no wrong, and now there is a bit of gold for you with which to salve your conscience."

"What do you mean, Boris?"

"I mean that I said at the time that if he really had a deed of transfer, you would get half of my profits. I've never gone back on my word yet, and I won't start now. Eleven thousand pence in those sacks is for you."

"You have traveled three days to pay me a huge sum of money that I would never have known about if you hadn't told me?"

"Yes, Sir Conrad. I suppose that's a true statement."

"I've never heard of such honesty. Especially after Count Lambert took the much larger booty we won from Sir Rheinburg and gave most of it to me, even though you actually found the treasure in Rheinburg's camp. I was so concerned about that baby that I stepped right over the treasure chest without noticing it. I hate to speak ill of my liege lord, but I've always thought that you were robbed."

"I wasn't pleased with Count Lambert either. But his actions as regards the second booty have nothing to do with my word as regards the first."

"Boris, you still amaze me. But there's no way that I can accept that money. It simply wouldn't be fair. If Count Lambert hears about the business, well, it was all a legal matter in Cracow, and so is none of his business. If he doesn't hear about it, so much the better."

"Now it is my turn to be amazed, Sir Conrad. No other knight in Christendom would have forgiven me this debt."

"Let's just say that we're two honest crazy people who like each other."

"Done. But tell me, is there something that you need? Something that I can do for you?"

"You know, maybe there is. You travel all over eastern Europe. You meet a lot of different people. I want to hire a special kind of a man.

"The truth is that I know very little about practical chemistry. I know quite a bit about theoretical chemistry, but all of it was using packaged and bottled chemicals that were bought from a supply house. Such places aren't available in this land, and I wouldn't know bauxite from phosphate rock. But there must be somebody who knows how to take rocks and sulfur and what not and make acids and bases and salts out of them. I think you would call such a man an alchemist."

"I don't understand much of what you said, but I have heard of alchemists. I will spread the word that you want one. But most of those men are frauds and liars. How could I possibly know a good one from an imposter?"

"I recall that the Moslems had—have—better alchemists than we do, so he might be a Moor. And if he knows how to make the three strong acids, if he can show you a liquid that can dissolve gold, aqua regia it's called, then he's my man."

"I will search for you, Sir Conrad. I cannot promise what I'll find."

"Thank you, Boris. Tell me, what became of the amber you recovered from Schweiburger?"

"I sold it at a good price to a caravan of Crossmen."

* * *

On arriving at Three Walls, I had to spend a few hours playing manager. The mining foreman reported that they had found a seam of clay in the mine. This was expected, since clay is usually found in association with coal. Still it was good news, for now we knew that we could manufacture bricks and clay pipes efficiently.

Then a rather shamefaced Sir Vladimir told me about the second tunnel and "sticky rocks." I had to hear his jumbled tale twice before I could figure out what he was talking about. Then I felt a very pleasant glow.

I changed into my work clothes and went to the boys' tunnel. A crowd of people gathered who should have been working, but I decided that they should be in on this one, since it would affect all of their lives.

I crawled in almost on my belly, so tiny was that shaft. From the position of the shaft and the way it angled upward, it was obvious that it had been dug with the intention of draining the mineshaft above. If I could accurately measure the angles and distances involved, I should be able to compute the distance we would have to pump to reach the coal.

But more important was what stopped the old miners from their digging. Once I reached it, there could be no doubt. The knives and Sir Vladimir's helmet were held magnetically to the ore seam. There's only one magnetic rock that I know of, and that's magnetite, sometimes called lodestone. It's one of the best iron ores.

The old miners had dug that far and had then been scared off by something that they couldn't comprehend. It was probably why the valley had been abandoned fifty years ago.

I really had to yank to get the knives and helmet away from the ore seam, but it seemed important that I do so. Sir Vladimir was glad at the return of his equipment, but from that day on his helmet was magnetized and collected iron filings the way a boy collects dirt.

"Did you find the Ghost of the Mines?" a dirty boy asked me as I returned his knife.

"No, but I found a treasure he was guarding!"

This caused a lot of mumbling in the crowd, so I climbed a bit up the hill so they could all hear me.

"There is a kind of magnetic ore called magnetite that has the property of sticking to iron and steel. We have a seam of it in that shaft. It's perfectly natural and nothing to be afraid of. It's a good ore, and with it we can make iron and steel.

"Do you realize that in this one small valley, God has seen fit to give us every major mineral that we need? We have coal and iron ore and clay and limestone! With that we can make mortar and bricks and concrete! We can make iron and steel! We even have sandstone to line our furnaces and to make grinding wheels! I tell you that whatever else happens, the success of this valley is assured!"

That got a cheer out of them, even though they didn't realize all the work that would be involved.

Interlude Three

I hit the STOP button.

"Tom, I can't believe that many minerals all in one spot. Was that your doing?"

"It was not. Except for the limestone, which is a common mineral throughout the Carpathians, those were all small deposits. None of them would have been commercially exploitable in the twentieth century, when volumes were large and transportation cheap. Small deposits like that are common in Europe. Conrad just lucked out, having them all so close together.

"Anyway, stop interrupting."

He pressed the START button.

Chapter Sixteen

Sir Vladimir and I had just spent another grueling three-hour session of fighting practice, trying to teach me how to put a lance through a quintain, an old plywood shield with a small hole in the center of it. The glues used were inferior to the modern ones, and the thin strips of wood had started to delaminate. It wasn't quite like modern plywood. The plies were at sixty-degree angles rather than ninety.

The shield was fixed to one end of a crossbar that was mounted to a swiveling post. At the other end of the crossbar hung a hefty sandbag. You charged the thing at a full gallop and tried to put your lance through the hole. If you missed the hole, as I usually did, you hit the shield, spun the post around, and the sandbag hit you in the back of the head. This generally knocked you off your horse.

Sir Vladimir considered even that arrangement to be rather effeminate. He wanted to replace the sandbag with a rock.

I simply couldn't master it. After two weeks of steady bruising, I was just as bad at it as when I started.

"I'm beginning to lose faith, Sir Conrad. I fear you'll never be a lanceman. But see here, it isn't all that bad. Death must come to all men eventually, and at least yours will be in the glory of combat, with your friends looking on. We'll give you a beautiful funeral, and I'll light a candle in the church for you every Christmas and Easter." He really meant it.

It didn't help at all that Sir Vladimir never missed with a lance. He was supposed to be instructing me, but in fact he didn't see how it was possible for anybody to miss so easy a target. He could hit the hole sideways! I mean that he could set the quintain at right angles to its normal position, charge it at a full gallop, and while passing three yards from it thrust his lance out to the side and skewer the hole every time.

It was becoming obvious that if I was going to win the coming trial, I was going to need special weapons, or tactics, or help. Preferably all three. "Sir Vladimir, let's go over the rules again. You said the code was 'arm yourself.' What if I brought in a cannon?"

"What is a cannon, Sir Conrad?"

"That's sort of hard to explain. What if I was a bowman like Tadaos?"

"A bow is hardly a knightly weapon. No true belted knight would use one in honorable combat. The bow is for peasants and women."

"Why is that? It seems a strange prejudice."

"Well, if everybody used them in a battle, who would know who killed whom? Where would be the glory in just going out and getting shot? The best men would fall as easily as the worst! What a horrible situation! No. A true knight would never use a bow or fire a trébuchet or anything of the sort."

"So projectile weapons are out?"

"Of course, Sir Conrad."

"I guess that scuttles my cannon idea. I probably couldn't develop gunpowder in the time available, anyway. How about armor? I noticed that you knights never armor your horses."

"There would be no point to it. Striking another knight's mount would be a foul. At your trial, four crossbowmen will be at the ready to kill the man that does a foul deed."

"I didn't realize that. How about weapons? I can use my own sword, can't I, and not one of the heavy choppers you guys use?"

"Your own sword is legal, as are any daggers, maces, axes, mauls, war hammers, or anything else that is not thrown. A weapon must stay in your hand."

"How about body armor? Do I have to wear chain mail?"

"No, but you'd be a damn fool not to. You ought to have a coat of plates made as well."

"A coat of plates?"

"Yes. I should have mentioned it sooner, but there's still plenty of time. It's sort of a leather vest with iron plates sewn inside. You wear it either over or under your mail.

"You might want to get a great helm as well. They fit over your regular helmet, and you wear them for the first few charges, until the lances are broken. After that, if it comes to swordwork, you can take it off, to see better."

"So anything I come up with in the way of armor is fair?"

"Anything at all. But I hope you don't plan something stupidly heavy. Anything that slows you down will earn you a blade in the eye slit."

"What I'm going to build is going to be as light as chain mail."

The blacksmith I'd hired was good enough to handle general repair work, but I needed a real master. The best man I knew was Count Lambert's blacksmith, Ilya. The man was rude, crude, and obstreperous, but he had the skill.

I left for Okoitz within the hour.

Ilya was willing, indeed eager to come to Three Walls. It seems that he wasn't getting along well with the wife Count Lambert saddled him with.

"You understand that this is only temporary," I said. "I won't be a part of permanently separating a man from his family."

"You don't have four kids screaming in the room when you're trying to relax. Somebody else's kids at that."

"If you didn't want the woman and her children, you shouldn't have married her."

"Count Lambert wanted me to. You go argue with him if you want to."

"It's not my problem."

Count Lambert was willing to lend me Ilya providing I found a replacement. The harvest season was in full swing and it was vital to have someone who could repair broken tools.

I loaded Ilya behind me on Anna's rump, and we made it to Cieszyn before dark. I gave Ilya a sack of money and told him to hire four assistants, plus one more man for Count Lambert.

He was to buy his weight in iron bars and whatever tools he might need, and bring them to Three Walls in two days, along with a ton of charcoal.

I introduced him to the innkeeper and to the Krakowski brothers, and told them to give him every possible assistance.

Then I was back at Three Walls in the early dawn for more fighting practice. After that I limped back to my hut and started cutting out little pieces of parchment.

It took the girls and me three days to get it right, but we made a full suit of articulated plate armor, the kind you've seen in museums. We made it out of parchment, with buttons sewn on where the rivets had to go.

By the time Ilya had his forge set up, we had a complete set of patterns for him to work from. He thought it was crazy, but he thought everything I did was crazy. I let him bitch, just so long as my armor got built.

When you think about it, a blade is an energy-concentrating device. A sword takes all the force in your arm and concentrates it on the tiny area of the sharp edge. That's why a sharp blade cuts better. It has a smaller area.

And a sword not only concentrates energy in space, it also concentrates it in time. It might take a few seconds to swing a sword, but the whole energy of the swing is delivered in milliseconds at impact, multiplying the instantaneous force by a factor of hundreds. This is why it's easier to down a tree by swinging the axe, rather than just by pushing it at the tree.

Armor is an energy-distributing device. The padding under the steel compresses, delivering the energy of the blow over a longer period of time. The thicker the padding, the longer the time, the lower the force felt by the wearer.

And armor distributes the energy of a blow in space. If the blade can't cut the steel, it must push it forward. The bigger the plate of armor, the wider the area, the lower the force felt by the wearer. With chain mail, the area under each link is small and while it's a big improvement over bare skin, it can't compare with a solid metal plate.

Of course, there are practical limitations on how thick the padding can be and how big you can make the plates. You have to be able to move in the stuff.

But what I was going to wear would be two hundred years more advanced than what my opponent would have, and that just might make the difference. In combat, high technology means higher than your opponent's.

And while all the practice and armor-making was going on, work continued at Three Walls. In addition to the wall–apartment house, the church, the inn, the barn, the icehouse, the smokehouse (which was to double as a sauna), and the factory, we now needed a coke oven and a blast furnace.

The blast furnace would have to wait a bit, but I had to know if our coal could be turned into coke. Not all types of coal can be made into coke in an old-style beehive oven. Building a modern coke oven was well beyond our capabilities.

The boys' cave had to be enlarged and the iron ore extracted using bronze picks and shovels that I was having made up.

And we still hadn't struck coal yet. The masons finally got sufficiently frustrated that they built a big wood fire and threw on all the limestone rubble that they had been generating in the course of making blocks. They kept adding wood and limestone for a week, and when the fire was out, they had quick lime, calcium oxide. Adding water and sand to it made mortar.

When I asked them why they hadn't told me that you could make lime with a wood fire, they said I hadn't asked. That night at supper, I made a speech about how it was important to keep me informed about that sort of thing, but I don't think that it sank in very deep. One of the men said that they saw me doing so many crazy things that if they told me about every one of them, they wouldn't have any time left to work.

Someday, I'd make believers out of them.

Soon, foundations were being laid and people could see signs of progress. I think they had been starting to worry about being stuck in the woods for the winter with only our temporary shelters, because the laying of the foundations made them all look more confident.

The Pruthenian children had mostly fit right in. Looking at them, you couldn't tell the difference between them and the Polish children we had of the same age. Their accents were thick as a millstone, but even there progress was being made. At least we could understand them. To give them religious instruction, the priest had begun staying over until Monday afternoons, and many of them were already baptized. Most of them were starting to learn the trades of their adopted parents. But sometimes, when they thought you weren't looking at them, you could see written on their faces the horror of all that they had been through. That increased my resolve; those children were not going to go back into slavery.

Then there was Anna. I'd kept my promises to her and made a big sign with all the letters on it so she could spell things out. She was still attending church regularly, and the priest was growing increasingly scandalized. He finally broached the subject.

I'd known that it was coming, and had my response ready. I said that Anna was a full citizen of Three Walls, she was smarter than half my workers, and if she wanted to live a moral, Christian life, I certainly wasn't going to stop her. I said it in a straight, deadpan way. Father Stanislaw just shook his head and walked away. And Anna continued to go to church.

Vladimir was growing increasingly depressed as winter approached. For one thing, his brother visited him and said that their father was still violently angry with him, and his family meant a lot to Vladimir. I think there was even more to his depression than that, but I couldn't find out what it was. He wasn't pleasant company anymore, and I found myself looking forward to my trips alone.

I timed my next visit to Okoitz so that I could see the trial by combat at Bytom before returning to Three Walls.

The harvest was in full swing at Okoitz.

In a medieval farming community, the harvest was the busiest time of the year. They had six or eight weeks to bring in all the food they would eat throughout the year, and everything else done in the year was mere preparation for this event. And despite the cloth factory and other improvements I'd made, Okoitz was still predominately a farming community.

Everyone got up with the first, false dawn and worked almost nonstop until it was too dark to see, often falling asleep still in their work clothes. Working eighteen hours a day, these people consumed a huge amount of food, more than six loaves of bread per capita per diem, plus other food.

I think that much of the Slavic temperament must be the result of a long-term adaptation to the weather and farming conditions of the north European plain. When the need arises, we are capable of working for months on end with only a little sleep, doing incredible amounts of work, three or four times what people from gentler climates could do. Incredible, that is, to any outsider. To us, it seems only normal.

But when the need is not there, as happens during the long northern winter, we become lethargic, food consumption drops, and spending twenty hours a day in bed seems like a pleasant thing. Having someone to help you keep warm is nice, too, and that also is a part of the Slavic temperament.

In a desert country, the cutting edge of nature is that there is sometimes not enough water. When it is in short supply, and there is not enough for everyone, every man becomes the competitor, the natural enemy of every other man. That is reflected in the temperament of the desert peoples, and by Polish standards they become harsh, ruthless, and cruel.

But when the great killer is not the lack of food or water, but the cold of a five-month winter, every person about you is one more source of heat! The more your friends, the larger your family, the greater your chances of surviving the winter. Good interpersonal skills, concern for others, and love have high survival value. So does a strong sense of group loyalty.

During the long winter, there is little to do much of the time but talk, and any subject of conversation is welcome. Things are debated at length, and there is time for everyone to have his say. Decisions are made by eventual consensus.

But when it's time to work, there is no more time for talk. Things must be done, and soon, or winter will close in again without enough food stored up. At such times, we Slavs work well as a group, without argument, and with a solidarity that an Arab couldn't conceive of.

A hundred wheelbarrows had been made to my specifications, and they stayed in steady use. Split logs had been laid along the paths to make pushing them easier.

Everyone was friendly, but busy, so I was left to look things over myself. The seeds I had brought in were doing fairly well. There were small patches of corn, beans, winter squash, and pumpkins that could be left until the more critical crops—the grains—were in. The tiny patches of hybrid grains had been harvested and carefully been kept separate from the standard crops. In fact, Count Lambert had them stored in his own bedroom, to make sure that they wouldn't be eaten by mistake. He showed them to me that night.

"Look at this, Sir Conrad!" He held open a sack with a few pounds of rye in it. "All that grew from the one tiny handful of seed you brought!"

It looked normal enough. "What of it, my lord?"

"What of it? Why, that must be a return of fifty to one! Don't you realize that five to one is considered excellent, and three to one is normal?"

"No, my lord, I guess I didn't. You mean that each year, you people have to take one-third of your grain and replant it, just to get next year's harvest?"

"That's exactly what I mean. Do you mean to tell me that returns of fifty to one are considered normal among your people?"

"I'm not sure, my lord. I wasn't a farmer. But my impression was that the amount of seed required was small. Usually, a farmer didn't replant his own grain. He bought seed from someone who specialized in producing it."

"Those specialists did damn well! I only hope we can do as good. Be assured that every seed of these grains will be carefully hoarded and planted next spring. Now, with most of your crops, the seeds are obvious, but what do we do about the root crops?"

"The important ones are the potatoes and the sugar beets, my lord. The potatoes, I know how to grow. It's unusual to grow them from seeds, as we did this year. Normally, you cut the potato so that each piece has one of the eyes on it and plant the pieces. The sugar beets worry me. I don't know how to make them go to seed."

"Well, if they're like any other beet, they seed in the second year. Some kinds you just leave in the ground. Some you bury in a deep hole, then replant in the spring. Some you store in a basement."

"I think it might be best to try all three, my lord. One way might work."

"We'll do that. Think! A beet that's as big as a man's head!"

"It's not just the size, my lord. Those beets are about one-sixth sugar. Once we have enough of them, I'll work on the manufacturing processes to extract that sugar, and you will have a very valuable cash crop."

"Well, we can but try. But it is late, and I'm minded to retire. Good night, Sir Conrad."

I'd taken the precaution of renewing my friendship with one of the girls from the cloth factory, so it was indeed a good night.

The next day I had a talk with Krystyana's father. This might have been an awkward confrontation, since I was sleeping with his daughter but didn't intend to marry her. It wasn't. He treated the relationship as one only to be expected. He was more concerned about the rose bushes.

Last Christmas, I'd given Krystyana a package of seeds for Japanese roses, and she had planted them in front of her parents' home. They were doing entirely too well, and already they were inconveniently large. He wanted me to ask her if he could uproot them. Of course, as her father, he didn't need her permission to do anything, but the wise man keeps peace in his household.

I asked that instead of tearing the bushes out, he simply prune them, and plant the cuttings to see if they wouldn't grow roots. Japanese roses might be too big for his front yard, but they would make a very good fence in the fields. He liked the idea and agreed to try it right after the harvest was in. If they didn't take, he'd try again in the spring, and if the bushes wouldn't grow from cuttings, they'd certainly grow from seed.

This was the second good year in a row, and last year he hadn't been able to get the last of his barley in before the fall rains ruined it. This year, he had a wheelbarrow, and that had made all the difference. With it, he could carry three times as much in a day, and he was actually ahead of schedule. Now he was worried that he might not be able to store it all. I guess a farmer has to worry about something.

The next morning, I was with Anna, making the run north to Bytom. We arrived hours before noon, and I was soon talking to a junior herald who didn't seem to have much else to do.

"Less than a hundred people," he said. "Usually the crowd is much larger."

"I suppose having it during the middle of the harvest keeps most people away," I said.

"True, my lord, but it had to be fought now since it will determine the ownership of the harvest of these fields. Also keeping down the crowd is the fact that the trial is not to the death. Only an inheritance is at issue. There is no truly injured party, so it need be fought only to first blood."

"What's the fight about?"

"It's simple enough. A man died without male issue. His wife and daughter would have inherited, but a male cousin of the deceased claimed that they would not be able to do the military duty due on the land, and so claimed that he was honor-bound to challenge the ownership of it. Many women would have compromised with him, yielding a portion of the property in return for the cousin's doing the military duty.

"But Lady Maria is made of tougher stuff. She's hired a champion to defend her, and now the cousin is doubtless regretting his earlier greed. He has no choice but to go through with it, and he hasn't a chance of winning. Rumor has it that he has bribed the champion, Sir Boleslaw, to go easy on him, though the truth of that isn't for me to say."

"So the outcome is preordained and probably fixed. No wonder it hasn't drawn much of a crowd," I said. "I've heard that it's possible to get a fighting lesson or two from a champion. How do I go about doing that?"

"You talk to one of his squires, my lord. They're the ones over there in the gray-and-brown livery, good heraldic colors in Poland, though they aren't used in western Europe. You'll have to pay six or twelve pence for the privilege of a lesson, of course. By definition, a professional is one who does it for money."

I took his advice, talked to the squire, and found that the price was twelve pence the lesson. Twelve pence was two weeks pay for a workingman, but a bargain if I could learn something that might save my life. The lesson was to be held right after the combat. Certainly the squire had no doubts about whether his master would be in shape to teach after fighting.

At high noon or thereabouts, a trumpeter played something to get everyone's attention, a priest said a prayer, and the challenger and champion waited with their helmets off before the crowd. The champion was a quiet man in his thirties. The challenger was much younger, with a smile and flashing eyes. He had very smooth and regular features, was handsome almost to the point of being effeminate, and someone told me that his nickname was Pretty Johnnie.

A herald read two proclamations, one from each party in the dispute, which said what they were fighting about. Some peasants had set up benches, and I paid for a seat right on the fifty-yard line, with Anna watching over my shoulder.

Two armored men charged each other from opposite ends of the field, the champion somberly dressed in gray and brown. The challenger was more gaily clad in yellow and blue, his family colors.

As they met, the champion raised his heavy lance, and at first I thought he meant to give the first round to his opponent. Pretty Johnnie's lance slid off the champion's shield, and Sir Boleslaw brought his lance straight down, like a club, on the helmet of the challenger passing by.

I could hear the bonk from the sidelines.

The crowd gave a polite round of applause as the challenger slumped in his saddle and then fell from his horse. The champion waved to the crowd to acknowledge the cheer, then dismounted to see if the challenger would get up.

He did, so the champion unsheathed his sword and walked over to him. He politely waited a few minutes until the challenger stopped staggering, then said, "Defend yourself!"

The challenger tried to do that, but made a poor showing. After a few swipes that the champion contemptuously brushed aside, the champion gave him a backhanded blow that caved in the front of his barrel-style helmet. He fell in a heap.

The champion took off his own helmet, raised his sword, and proclaimed that God had upheld the right, and that henceforth Lady Maria's right and title of her lands would go unquestioned. He then bowed and returned to his tent.

Several people came out to tend the unfortunate challenger and found that they could not remove his helmet. It was bashed in so badly that they had to pick the man up and carry him over to the blacksmith's anvil. Getting that helmet off attracted more interest than the fight itself had, and a crowd gathered to watch the smith go at it with crowbars and hammers. Somebody shouted that they should heat the helmet in the forge to make it easier to bend, and everybody but the challenger laughed.

When they finally got his headgear off, the challenger's face was a red ruin. His nose was smashed flat and all of his front teeth were knocked out. Medieval dentistry being nonexistent, he was maimed for life. Pretty Johnnie wasn't pretty anymore.

Chapter Seventeen

As arranged, I went for my lesson to the champion's pavilion, a large circular tent, big enough for a man to ride through on horseback. He used it at tournaments, where it was considered classy not to show yourself until ready to fight.

"You'll forgive me if I don't rise," the champion said. "Sometimes an old knee injury of mine acts up. I take it that you're the fellow my squire talked to. From your height, I'd guess you are the Sir Conrad Stargard everybody's been talking about."

"Guilty," I said. "That was quite a beating you gave Pretty Johnnie. I thought you were supposed to go easy on him, Sir Boleslaw."

"You heard about that, huh? Well, before you go thinking ill of me, just remember that I do this sort of thing for a living, my expenses are high, and the widow couldn't afford to pay me much. What she paid me didn't cover my overhead and expenses getting here. But it is the off-season, her cause was just, and my overhead would have gone on anyway, so I took the job. Can you really blame me for taking almost three times as much from the challenger, not to throw the fight—I wouldn't have done that for any money—but just to not hurt him badly?"

"But you maimed him for life!"

"True. My employer hated him and wanted it that way. A professional often has to walk a thin line to try to satisfy everybody. As I set it up, my employer is satisfied, and the challenger has no legitimate complaint. After all, he could have stayed knocked out after that blow I gave him to the head, the fight would have been declared over, and he wouldn't have been seriously hurt."

"Then why did he get up and fight? He must have known that he couldn't win."

"He got up because he was too angry to think straight. You saw what I did to him. A Florentine Flick to brush off his lance, and then I took him down with the Club of Hercules. I wouldn't have dared try those on another pro, and by using them on him, I showed him up for the buffoon that he is. Yet I can always claim that my attack was designed to not injure him, which it didn't. As to the subsequent face injury, why that was a single blow, and who is to say how well his helmet was made?"

"So you set it up to satisfy all parties and keep your own nose clean."

"Of course, Sir Conrad. There's more to this business than meets the eye. Anyway, that dog turd was trying to throw a widow and child off their lands. He got less than he deserved. But that's not what you came to see me about. You're worried about meeting Sir Adolf next Christmas."

"Who? And when?" I said.

"They haven't told you yet? I guess that's only to be expected. The concerned party is always the last to know. It's been bandied around the circuit for weeks, so I'll tell you about it. Just act surprised when you hear about it officially, since the heralds like to think that what they do is important. The short of it is that on the third day before Christmas, you will meet on the field at Okoitz with the Crossman Champion, Sir Adolf, in a fight to the death, with no quarter allowed. He's going to kill you, so your best bet is to sell what you can and run away. That's my advice and it's well worth the twelve pence you're going to pay me."

"If I run away, a hundred forty-two children will be sold into slavery. I can't allow that."

"Those poor bastards are going to be sold in Constantinople whether you're a live coward or a dead hero. You don't look to be a starry-eyed fool, of the sort who memorizes the 'Song of Roland' and bores people with it at parties. You're a sensible man. Do the sensible thing and run."

"Sir Boleslaw, I tell you I can't. But look here. If this Sir Adolf is so good, why can't I hire a champion as well? I'm not a poor widow. I can afford the best!"

"No, you can't, because the best will be fighting against you. All the rest of us are inferior to Sir Adolf, and we know it. This is a rough business. A fool doesn't survive long in it, and neither do the suicidal. There's not enough money in Christendom to pay me or anyone else to go up against him in a fight to the death. What good would money do me in hell? Because that's exactly where suicides go, and fighting Sir Adolf is straightforward self-destruction! Run away."

"Okay. Thank you for the advice. But I didn't come here for advice, I came here for a fighting lesson."

"As you will, Sir Conrad. But it's a waste of time."

He picked up a pair of wooden practice swords and we went outside. We were both already in armor, and that was all the athletic equipment required.

"I trust that fighting afoot will satisfy you, Sir Conrad, since my charger is being rubbed down and won't be ready for hours."

I said that this would be fine. We sparred around for a while, and I could tell that he was pulling his blows, as one would do with an amateur, and all the while pointing out various shortcomings in my style. But despite the pulled blows, I was still receiving a serious bruising while I don't think I got a good one in on him.

"Your swordwork isn't bad, if a bit slow," he said at last.

"I'm used to a lighter sword."

"More the fool, you. But your real problem is in your shieldwork. The shield is even more important than the sword, since you can make a mistake with the sword and live. That doesn't often happen with the shield. We'll work on it a bit."

I received a further bruising while he kept yelling about how slow I was. I got to anticipating his blows, but that didn't satisfy him either.

"No, stupid! You're covering your eyes too soon! You don't even know what I could be doing!"

"So what else could you do?" I yelled back.

"I could do this!"

* * *

I awoke some hours later, still stretched out on the ground. My helmet had been removed and a pillow put under my head. A horse blanket was stretched over me. I groaned.

One of Sir Boleslaw's squires got up from the stool where he'd been waiting.

"Sir Boleslaw told me that he still feels that your most sensible route is to run away, but that if you must fight, your only hope is to defeat Sir Adolf with your lance, since you have no hope with sword and shield.

"He also asked me to remind you that you owe him twelve pence."

I got up, paid the kid, and rode back to Three Walls in the afternoon.

* * *

A Herald from Duke Henryk arrived. The Trial with the Crossmen had been Arranged. I was to be In Arms on the Field of Honor at Okoitz at Noon, Three Days Before Christmas. I was to have All Property Seized in the Affray with me, including The Slaves.

The guy was actually able to talk with capital letters. He even kept it up when he was off-duty, all the way through supper. The girls were not impressed. We gave him one of the spare huts for the night, but I'm pretty sure he slept alone.

Still, the duke had gotten me a longer stay of execution than I had expected.

I'd been trying to spend at least an hour a day talking to Anna, though often I couldn't spare that much time. It was fascinating to talk to a member of an alien species.

She was very fuzzy about her ancestry. She was definitely of the seventh generation since the creation of her species, yet she always talked about her ancestors in the first person, as though she had been the first one created. She was perfectly capable of using second and third person with regard to everyone except her direct ancestors. Furthermore, she always used the feminine forms on them, never the masculine. I couldn't figure it out.

In most ways she was simple, down to Earth. She had no interest in philosophy, nor could she see why anyone would. Mathematics beyond simple arithmetic, theology beyond the simplest moral rules, scientific theory or anything else the least bit cerebral were completely uninteresting and totally beyond her.

Yet she was by no means stupid. Given a practical problem, she never failed to come up with a practical solution. A case in point:

U KENT PUT LENS EN HOL, she spelled out. Her spelling was as atrocious as she had warned it would be. Furthermore, it never improved.

"I can't put the lance in the hole," I agreed. "Yes, that about sums up the main problem."

I KEN.

"You can skewer the quintain? Anna, you don't have hands. How could you hold a lance?"

PUT HUK EN SADL. PUT HUK EN BRYDL. PUT BRYDL EN ME. PUT LENS EN 2 HUK. I PUT LENS EN HOL.

"You think you can? We'll try it girl! I'll have the saddler work up those hooks right now. I bet he can have it done by morning. Good night, Anna, and thanks for the idea."

We were on the practice field half an hour before Sir Vladimir. We tried out Anna's idea, and it worked, every time. She was as deft with a lance as Sir Vladimir.

Furthermore, her guiding the lance left my right hand free to do other things, like having my sword drawn and hidden by my shield. If Anna's lancework didn't get the bastard, I'd be there a half second later with my sword!

We were practicing this double-hitter plan, striking the top of the post with the flat of my sword after Anna threaded the shield, as Sir Vladimir came out. He watched us dumbfounded.

"Sir Conrad, I can scarcely believe that you are finally scoring on the quintain. Getting in a swordstroke besides is—is fabulous! How—?"

So I explained Anna's idea to him. Sir Vladimir had taken Anna's spelling-out of words in stride, as if it was only to be expected. Any horse who could run the way she could had to be magic, and after that anything was possible, even probable. Furthermore, Annastashia had been teaching him to write. His spelling was about the same as Anna's, so it looked all right to him.

He scratched his chin. "I don't think it's illegal, but I wouldn't brag about the tactics you plan to use."

"Right. This is my secret weapon!"

"Well, in all events you seem to have it down pat, so let's get into some of the fine points of the lance . . ."

* * *

The weeks drifted by. It was a brisk fall day and the carpenters were assembling the combination outer wall–apartment house.

We had strung two hefty ropes from the tops of the cliffs on either side of the entrance to the valley. A framework was hung on wheels between the ropes and a system of ropes, pulleys, and winches allowed eight men aloft to use the framework like an overhead bridge crane. It gave us a "skyhook" over the entire construction area, and things were going up pretty fast. After months of preparation, when it seemed to the men that nothing was getting done, suddenly we had almost a quarter of our future home up in a single day. The happy mood was infectious.

Count Lambert and a retinue of a dozen knights arrived in the late afternoon.

"Count Lambert, welcome, my lord!" I was on the top of the building, seven stories above him. I signaled the crane operators, who quickly lowered me to the ground.

"Hello, Sir Conrad. Dog's blood, but that looked like fun! May I try it?"

"If you wish, my lord, I'll have them take us both to the top." Six men running in a huge hamster cage high above soon got us to the top. All of the foundations were visible from up there, and I pointed out where the church would go, and the inn and the icehouse, and the sauna.

"You're making good progress, Sir Conrad. In another year or two, this will be a fine town."

"Another year, my lord? These buildings will all be up in three weeks."

"Impossible! Not even you could accomplish that."

"Another wager, my lord? Say twenty muleloads of your cloth against forty loads of my bricks and mortar?" I'd never bet money with Lambert again, but somehow he saw goods and services in a different light.

"Done! You'll be making bricks then?"

"Yes. We found clay in the old mine, and we'll be building brick ovens as soon as we get our living arrangements set up. We've also found a seam of iron ore, and by spring I hope to be producing iron in decent quantities."

"My boy, you won't be alive in the spring. You won't be alive on Christmas. Have you forgotten your trial?"

"No, my lord. But I'm going to win."

"Your faith is touching. What's that big round stone hole?"

"That will be our icehouse, my lord. Actually, it will be three buildings, one inside another. The circular stone wall you see will be decked over and used as a dance floor. It will have a roof over it but no sides.

"A second building, four yards smaller in diameter and three yards shorter will be built inside of it, completely underground. The space between them will be filled with sawdust and wood chips, a fair insulator.

"The third building will be inside the second, and will be six yards smaller and six shorter than it. Here, the space between will be packed with snow this winter. I calculate that this much snow should take more than a year to melt. We'll have fresh vegetables well into the winter and cold beer all summer long."

"Still, that's a vast hole."

"Sixteen yards deep, my lord, and thirty-six across."

When we got down, I had Krystyana scurry off to the kitchens and see what could be done about something special for supper, and I told Natalia to spread the word among all the young ladies that if any of them wanted to spend the night with a real count or one of his knights, now was the time to get fancied up for a dance. She certainly knew his tastes.

As we went to supper Count Lambert said, "All the tables are the same height. Which is for us?"

"They're a convenient height for eating, my lord. It is my custom here that all should eat the same food, and off the same tables. It's handy. I often tell my men at dinner what they will be doing the next day. I find that they work better if they've had time to think it out. As to where you should eat, well, eat wherever the lion sleeps."

"And where does the lion sleep?"

"Anywhere he wants to, my lord. Who would argue with a lion?"

That got a laugh, and Count Lambert settled into a side table. One of the joys of the thirteenth century was that the oldest, tiredest jokes were fresh leg-slappers.

The usual thirteenth-century dinner table was wide enough for only one person. People sat on one side and the servants walked on the other. My tables were the twentieth century norm, and there were no servants at Three Walls.

Krystyana hadn't thought to assign anyone to pretend they were servants, and Natalia's band of hopefuls was out scrubbing down and making themselves presentable.

We normally ate cafeteria-style, with attendants at the meat, beer, and anything-expensive counters, and help yourself at everything else. Now the workers were going through the line and some were eating, while my liege lord was waiting to be served.

I didn't know how to solve the problem, so I asked my boss. "My lord, may I ask you to clear up a point of courtesy? If the customs of a vassal are different from the customs of his liege lord, whose customs should be followed?"

"That depends on where they are, Sir Conrad. At the liege lord's manor, the vassal should punctiliously follow the customs of his lord. When on the vassal's estates, the liege lord should follow his vassal's customs unless these are offensive to him. In that case, the lord should so inform the vassal, and the vassal should in courtesy do as his liege lord wishes, at least while the liege lord is around."

"Thank you, my lord. You see, in my land we do not have servants except at an inn. I am not used to having personal servants, and prefer to do without them. What I am trying to say is that I don't have anybody trained to serve you properly. Would you be offended if I asked you to get your own food, as I normally do? Or shall I ask some of the ladies to serve us, even though they'll probably botch the job."

"I was wondering when you were going to offer us something to eat! I can't see where a walk across the room will hurt me or mine in the least." We took cuts at the head of the chow line, of course. Rank hath some privileges, even at Three Walls.

Back at the table, Count Lambert said, "So you always eat the same food as your peasants?"

"That is my custom, my lord."

"Remarkable. And you always feed them this good?"

"I'm afraid not. We usually have one meat dish at supper, and none at dinner. It is unusual for us to have ham, venison, and bison at the same meal. Krystyana is in charge of our kitchen and I suspect that, in your honor, she cooked all the meat we had.

"We're not at all self-sufficient in food here, and about the only meat we get is what the hunters bring in. I plan to bring sheep to these hills, but that's a long-term project."

"You'll find ewes to be very cheap. To increase my supply of raw wool for my mills, I have forbidden the slaughter of any ewe less than ten years old, or the selling of them outside my lands. Many are complaining that they cannot possibly feed them through the winter, but I'm not going to relent. If they have to find a way, they will."

"Perhaps I can help, my lord. For three months, I've had a small flock of sheep eating nothing but fresh pine needles. It's not their favorite food, but none of them have starved."

"Interesting, but it must be a great deal of work, cutting that many branches."

"Less than you'd think, my lord. You have to cut the tops off trees to fell the really big ones. I plan to keep my four topmen going all winter, and I calculate that they should be able to keep a thousand sheep alive."

"You must show me your ways at cutting trees."

"First thing in the morning, my lord. In about a month, I'm planning to have a big Mongol-style hunt. Perhaps you and your knights would like to join us."

"A Mongol hunt? I thought you hated Mongols."

"I do. But that doesn't mean that I can't learn from them."

"Indeed. How do the Mongols hunt?"

"They surround the biggest area they can with all their men, and since that can be as many as a million, the area can be as big as all Poland. Then they beat the bushes, working inward, being careful to let no animal out, but not killing any either. They might spend weeks driving all of the beasts to a central enclosure. Then, under the eyes of their leader, their Kakhan, they slaughter every single animal in what amounts to a major battle.

"I don't plan anything so big or so thorough. We'll release all the female deer, bison, and other large herbivores, as well as the young and one-sixth of the males. We have to make sure that there will be game next year.

"Dangerous animals—wolves, bears, wild boar, and so on—will all be killed. I don't want them in my woods, hurting my people. The smaller animals—rabbits, birds, and the like, well, we'll miss so many of those in the round up that I don't think we have to worry about future generations."

"I like it. I'll come. You'll build this enclosure large enough for the kill to be sporting?"

"I'm building it right now. I plan to run them right through the main gates of Three Walls. All the area beyond will be our killing ground. My thought was to distribute one-sixth of the meat to the noblemen who participated, a twelfth to any peasants not living at Three Walls, and to keep the rest to feed my people here. Do you think that would be fair?"

"Very. I think most knights might have more than they could carry back, unless they brought pack mules, and that would be impolite. You'd be expected to provide a feast before and after the hunt, of course. You mention other peasants. Whose?"

"Well, there are Sir Miesko's people and my own yeomen, my lord, and—"

"That's something I wanted to talk to you about. Were there really twenty-seven squatters on my land when I gave it to you?"

"It appears so, my lord."

"Dog's blood!" he swore. "There must be hundreds on my other lands! How the devil am I going to flush them all out?"

"Why not do what I did, my lord? Turn a liability into an asset. Swear them in as yeomen, take less from them than you would from a peasant, and give them less as well. You'll get something where you got nothing before, and they get the peace of mind of knowing that they are legitimate and have certain legal protections."

"An interesting thought. I'll think on it. But how the devil do I contact them to make my offer?"

"I'm not sure, my lord, but my experience has been that people of a certain type usually all know one another. If you wish, I'll have my bailiff see what can be done. He'll never admit to anything, but I'd bet that he can get your message across."

"Good, though one wager a day is sufficient. Have him come with us tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, my lord?"

"Yes. There is a certain ceremony that we have not yet done. The beating of your bounds. We must ride the boundaries of your lands so that all may know where they are and there will be no future disagreements. Sir Miesko and Baron Jaraslav will meet us at their borders at the proper times tomorrow. But for now, I am sated. Krystyana makes a good meal. Did you have any entertainment planned, Sir Conrad?"

"A dance, my lord. With any luck, you might find a lady that you find suitable for the evening."

"Excellent, but you really must get into the habit of telling the peasants what to do, rather than just asking them."

Chapter Eighteen

The lumbermen had gotten to playing a rough game. The topmen would start to climb a tree to cut the top off, and two of the tree fellers would immediately start to cut down that same tree. The idea of the game was to see if the topmen could finish before the fellers cut the tree down under them. I told them not to do that, but they didn't pay much attention to me. I probably wasn't assertive enough. The topmen were getting pretty insufferable, strutting around, wearing their spikes everywhere. Maybe, deep down inside, really I wanted to see them lose.

Count Lambert was impressed with the game, as well as the speed with which my people could bring down a huge tree. Part of his philosophy, or perhaps character, was that if anybody else did anything that looked dangerous, he had to do it, too.

"You've done this, haven't you, Sir Conrad?"

"Yes, my lord, I had to show them how to do it."

"Good! Then you can show me as well. You peasants, strip off that equipment and lend it to us."

The topmen weren't happy about being called peasants, and they liked lending out "their" equipment even less. There had been a rash of jokes going around about topmen taking baths with their spikes on, as well as making love with the same gear that they climbed trees with.

But there wasn't much they could do but comply, which they did.

The count always picked up everything quickly, and we were soon at the top sawing through the tree. He worked so fast that keeping up with him, I didn't have time to get scared.

When the top came down and we were whipping back and forth fifteen stories up, Count Lambert looked down and said, "What? No one is cutting the tree off below us!"

"My lord, would you dare cut a tree when the duke was up it?"

"I see your point, but dog's blood! I think we would have won!"

We soon left to beat the bounds. Count Lambert had decreed that it should be a festive occasion, so besides all the knights present, Krystyana and her ladies came along, as well as the girls Lambert and his knights had slept with the night before, in borrowed finery, and some of them on pack mules since we had a limited supply of palfreys.

My bailiff was with us, at Lambert's request, and Piotr Kulczynski came along, since he had nothing better to do and it gave him further opportunity to gaze at Krystyana from afar. The idea was to have as many witnesses as possible, and preferably young people, who would be around longer to remember things.

Sir Miesko and Lady Richeza met us at their lands and the party went its way along our mutual border, with Count Lambert pointing out the landmarks to all and sundry. In the days before accurate surveying, this was the accepted way to record boundaries.

Baron Jaraslav and Sir Stefan did not meet us at the appointed time and place. We stopped and unpacked lunch while we waited for them, but even after a leisurely dinner, we were still waiting. Count Lambert was getting angry. "Sir Daniel! You did go to them yesterday, didn't you? You told them to meet us here and now?"

"Of course, my lord."

"Well, damn them!"

"There have been hard feelings between them and me, my lord," I said.

"They can hate you all they want, but they can't disobey their liege! Mount up! We'll go without them! Sir Miesko, stay with us as a witness."

So we finished my borders without Sir Stefan being along. In later days, I sometimes wondered if Lambert didn't assign me some of the baron's lands just to spite him. One day that border would cause me a good deal of grief.

On the trip back to Three Walls, we fanned out in hunting array and with luck took a wild boar and a bison. This was good because I had no meat in my larder with which to feed my guests, and the nearest supermarket was seven hundred years away.

It was dusk when we got back, and Yashoo had the apartment building half up. After all, it was a simple matter of assembling precut pieces, like putting together a huge tinker-toy set. I had checked every piece myself, so of course they fit right together.

Count Lambert was awestruck. "They did this much without your being here? I might as well concede our bet right now. I'll ship your twenty loads of cloth as soon as I return to Okoitz."

"I'll take it in medium-grade linen, my lord."

That gave us curtains and a spare set of sheets.

* * *

In the summer, everyone including me went barefoot, but with cold weather coming on, the workers started making shoes for their families. The usual peasant footwear was made of birch bark. You wrapped your feet in rags and laced on soles of bark with leather thongs. The soles lasted a week or two and then you needed new ones.

At first, I was saddened that this was all they had, but then I did some time studies on what was required to tan leather and what was required to cut new soles out of birch bark. A man could cut a set of bark shoes for his entire family in less than an hour. Tanning a hide with medieval methods took months, and leather soles didn't last out the season.

It was over fifty times cheaper to wear birch bark. I suspect that leather shoes became popular only when birch trees became rare. But birch trees were not that common on my lands. I had some birch groves planted, but for a few years we were buying birch bark. I found that it was useful for writing paper as well as shoes, and far cheaper than parchment.

By the time the first snows were flying, our basic living quarters had been completed. Well, we never stopped building, but the apartment house was up and the plumbing was in. I suppose I should describe it.

The building was a hundred ninety yards long, reaching from cliff face to cliff face, and was eighteen yards wide. Structurally, it was really five buildings, with firewalls between each.

The basement, with thick wooden fire doors, eventually to be sheathed in iron, stretched the full length. Because of the slope of the land, it was mostly exposed on the outer side, but it had no windows. From outside the valley, it was a solid masonry first floor. The basement was mostly in dry-food storage, except that the brewery was relocated there from its temporary building. A short tunnel sloped downward from the basement to the icehouse.

The first floor contained the passageway to the main (and only) gate, and off this passageway was a ramp down to the basement. Incoming food supplies could go directly into storage. Next to the gate was the main bathroom, which had showers, sinks, a hot tub, and a dozen flush toilets.

Then came the laundry room, mostly more sinks and draining racks. I'd had some wooden scrub boards made, a major improvement over the local practice of beating dirty clothes between two rocks. After all the trouble I'd had wheedling cloth out of Count Lambert, I had no desire to see it beaten to shreds by some ignorant women.

After that was the kitchen, where the stoves also heated the water for the other plumbing facilities. More porcelain sinks were dedicated to the business of washing dishes.

Our only source of water was the mine. We split small logs, burned them hollow, then tied them together to form a pipe. A trench was dug following the contour of the land, gently sloping from the mine to the apartment house. The wooden pipes were carefully fitted together in it and packed in clay to slow leakage.

The water seemed pure enough all summer, but I knew that would change once we hit coal. We had plenty of water head, so we built three big filters, each twelve yards high, one of gravel, one of crushed limestone and one of sand. Our water had to flow through all three before it got to us. The filtration system was probably overkill, but I had no way of testing the purity of the water, and an epidemic could wipe us out.

Below the filters was a big stone reservoir, and like everything else in the water system, it was covered with at least a yard of dirt as an insulator. A frozen waterline would have been a major nuisance.

The biggest room in the building was the dining room. It was two stories tall and could seat a thousand people. It stretched across two of the separate structures, right through the firewall and had a huge stone arch in the middle of it. I worried about this breach in our fire defenses, but it seemed important to me that we should all eat together. I salved my conscience by installing two fire hoses near the archway. A balcony ran around the second floor, connecting to the staircases going up.

The second floor went between the two-story gate passage and the dining room. It contained the nursery, the schoolrooms, and our library, once we had enough books for it to deserve that title. It also contained the store. There you could buy all of the sundries and small luxuries that most people wanted.

That was a major innovation, since except in the larger cities, you could only buy things when a peddler happened by. Sometimes housewives went for months without being able to buy pins or needles, so they tried to keep a small supply of money for buying such things whenever they were available. They called this fund their "pin money."

Since we bought in quantity and our markup was only a hundred percent, instead of the usual three hundred, our prices were generally much less than a backpacking peddler could sell for. Yet it was profitable, since one sales girl, Janina, ran the place, and volume was decent. Prices were marked and that's what things sold for. No haggling allowed.

We treated our vendors the same way. We requested bids, specifically stating the quantities and qualities desired. We always bought from the lowest bidder, and if it turned out later that the product was substandard, we didn't ask him to bid next time. These business methods were denounced from all quarters, but since it was profitable to do business with us, our suppliers eventually came around.

Before long, where the town guilds let us get away with it, each of the Pink Dragon Inns had a similar store. Where they didn't, we often set up a store just outside the city limits, and ran it on a break-even basis. We busted more than one guild that way, but in so doing we drastically raised the standard of living.

Above the gate were my own quarters, with a small restroom, two toilets and two sinks.

Sir Vladimir stayed at my apartments, as did Krystyana, her four main ladies and a varying number of other girls.

With Krystyana managing a kitchen that fed eight hundred people, Yawalda taking care of the animals and coordinating all our transport, Janina handling the store and our stores—both buying and selling—Natalia acting as my executive secretary and records keeper, and Annastashia managing my personal household, I could hardly expect the girls to keep the place clean besides.

To do that, we brought in a half-dozen of the workers' daughters. My handmaidens had handmaidens.

But I got the use of them. Krystyana believed that fair was fair.

My apartment was larger and more sumptuous than I had originally planned, but Sir Vladimir convinced me that it was politically necessary to impress noble guests.

Anna had her own stall in the barn, which she used mostly for eating, since she preferred the usual fare of horses to that of humans. But she usually stayed with us. This meant that the stairways had to be bigger, the floors stronger, and the door handles had to be designed so she could work them, since she liked sitting in on the conversations.

Everybody was already convinced that I was insane, so what the heck. Anyway, I was lord, and rank hath its privileges. Anna was good people.

Over the rest of the buildings were apartments, four stories of them. The typical apartment was nine yards long and three yards wide, although they varied somewhat in size, according to the size of a man's family.

Bachelors usually bunked four to a room, as did bachelorettes. As time went on, and the ladies discovered that it was possible to be single and survive without social stigma, more and more of them stayed single longer. Some of them even held out until they were eighteen, but I get ahead of myself.

On each floor, apartments were arranged in clusters of five, around a stairway that zigzagged between floors. On the second of the four floors, the hallway was much smaller and there was a restroom. Two toilets and sinks for twenty families.

By the standards of the twentieth century, it was a crowded, substandard slum dwelling. By the standards of the thirteenth century, it was fabulous luxury, and everybody, including the people who lived there, thought I was crazy to build so lavishly.

The Pink Dragon Inn Number Three was running under the command of Tadeusz's second son, Zygmunt Wrolawski. This was a smaller version of the inn at Cieszyn, and at about the same level of plushness. It had stables for animals and thirty rooms for rent, mostly for merchants.

But the inn was essentially a workingman's bar, for a man needs to get away from his family occasionally, and to fraternize with other men. The costumes of the waitresses encouraged that and eventually the place went topless. One waitress tried it on her own and without any encouragement from me. She made more in tips than all the others put together. In a week, they were all doing it.

Somehow, despite the lack of a nudity taboo, and despite the fact that we only had the one shower room and men and women used it together, and despite the fact that beer was far cheaper in the dining room not two hundred yards away, the men still preferred to have their beer brought to them by a pretty bare-breasted girl.

The topless fad spread to all the other Pink Dragon Inns, and when it did, profits increased remarkably.

The men paid for their pleasures. The inn recaptured over forty percent of what I paid out in salaries, and the store took in another thirty-five. Most of the rest was saved. That is to say, they could leave their salaries uncollected and draw interest on it, although we had to resort to certain subterfuges to get around the Church's silly usury laws. The workers claimed damages against me to the tune of eight percent a year for not paying them on time, which was, of course, at their option. It's not like I ever missed a payroll.

As things turned out, salaries were only a small part of my net outgo. I soon yielded to pressure for better pay for foremen and general foremen. It really didn't cost much at all. I got most of it back through the inn, the store, and the savings bank.

Then there was a barn for our eight horses, thirty-six pack mules, and fourteen milk cows. Yawalda was in charge of the animals and transportation.

I had insisted that all of our animals be well fed, not for any economic reason, but because of basic decency. I refused to allow any animal of mine to be mistreated. That was contrary to the usual medieval custom of using animals as scavengers, and keeping them underfed so they'd keep at it. So people said that I was crazy; when they noticed that the milk cows continued to give milk all winter long, instead of drying up for lack of food, they claimed it was magic on my part, but they still thought I was crazy.

We also kept two hundred chickens, which lived mostly on table scraps and kitchen waste. Krystyana was a tight-fisted little manager. I am partial to fresh eggs in the morning, and had breakfast served at dawn. More and more people started joining me at it, especially when I moved the dinner hour from ten to noon.

Besides being what I was brought up to be used to, the three-meals-a-day system has certain advantages. Most of the ladies worked half a day. The ten o'clock dinner hour came in the middle of the morning shift. During the winter, many of the men were working at logging operations too far away to come back for a hot lunch. At least we could give them a hot breakfast.

What's more, I liked it that way and I was lord.

I suppose I went a little overboard on the design of the church, but we had all these huge logs and it seemed a shame not to do something that pushed them to their structural limits.

And though our population was still well under a thousand, it would continue growing. Building more apartment houses was to be expected, but a community ought to have one church. If you have two churches, you have two communities.

So we built a church that sat four thousand.

I thought a long while before I decided on a name for the place. I called it the Church of Christ the Carpenter.

Imagine two big A-frame buildings, each as long and as high as it is wide, crossing in the middle, and you have the shape of it. Four massive masonry pillars went down to bedrock, and supported the structure, one at each corner.

The four huge triangular walls, each eighteen stories high, would eventually be in stained glass, but for now they had to be boarded over. Even without the glass, it was impressive, as a church should be. No fancy statues or bright paint, just huge rough logs high in the hills.

Without a traveling crane, getting those logs in place was a problem. We deliberately left several big trees standing right within the construction site. Those trees became the masts to which we attached ropes and pulleys to haul up the biggest structural components.

Once the central pyramid of our four biggest logs and a massive wooden central hub was up, and could be used as a support to haul up the rest of the parts, we carefully cut down the original trees. There were some tight moments when they were felled, for if they came down wrong, they could wreck the structure, and we would not be able to set it up again. But I guess that God didn't want his church to fall over. It worked.

We built the church pretty much from the top down. The roof went up first, then the walls, finally the floor. I don't think that the carpenters ever stopped shaking their heads over that one, even after it went up on schedule.

I had the pews, altar, and communion rail permanently installed, as opposed to the usual medieval practice of making them movable. Nobody was going to use my church for a beer bust, as happened elsewhere.

* * *

A month after Lambert's visit, the Mongol hunt went off very well, I thought. Over forty knights accepted my invitation, including the Banki brothers, which Janina, Yawalda, and Natalia appreciated. And Friar Roman had come from Okoitz to observe.

With all of my people and Sir Miesko's, with men, women, and older children going at it, we had over seven hundred people beating the bushes, backed up by the knights in case of trouble.

Starting out almost a hundred yards apart in the morning, they were shoulder to shoulder at sunset, and the valley was full of animals. Bison and wolves and bears. There were so many that during the night I had to give orders that no one was allowed out of the building. Not that anybody much cared. They were all too busy playing in the bathroom.

The showers were the biggest hit of all, with people standing under them back to back and belly to belly and using up hot water by the ton. The kitchen stoves were going full blast and nonstop, but they were still hard-pressed to keep the water warm.

I suppose it's harder to get enthused about a flush toilet, but they caused considerable wonderment. One knight complained that he washed his small clothes in one of the low sinks, pressed the little lever and they disappeared!

Natalia had counted the animals as they ran over the drawbridge and through the gate, and toward the end she had a different person counting each species.

We had over four thousand deer, eleven hundred wild boar, four hundred bison, six hundred wolves, two hundred elk (or moose, as the Americans call them), one hundred forty bears, plus lynx, wildcats, wood grouse, heathcocks, rabbits and other small game. And eight of the biggest cows Natalia had ever seen.

People couldn't believe her when she read the list, but after all, these were all the animals living on forty square miles of rich land.

They believed her in the morning when the killing began. The knights rampaged for two days, exhausting themselves physically before their bloodlust was sated. The commoners had to scurry to drag in all the bodies, and gut and skin them.

Tadaos the bowman begged permission to join in the slaughter, and I told him that he could bag a few, but I didn't want to spoil the nobles' fun. He strung his bow in an instant and fired off four arrows in as many seconds. Each came to rest in the head of an animal: three bucks and a wild boar. Every one of them was more than two hundred yards away. His shooting was still as good as it had been last fall. Then he unstrung his bow, and with a look of contentment on his face, recovered his arrows before he went back to help out with the skinning and gutting.

I had reserved all of the hides for myself, since we needed leather for a lot of things, and we exhausted all of my salt just salting down the skins. I had to buy three more tons out of Cieszyn before it was all over.

Five of our huge beer barrels were pressed into service holding salted meat. For a few weeks, we were back to having only water to drink, until more barrels were made.

The sauna/smokehouse was a nine-yard stone dome, and was packed almost solid.

The beehive coke oven had just been completed, and hadn't yet been used for coal. It was the same size as the sauna, since they had used the same centering on both. It too was used as a smokehouse, and the woodcutters were hard-pressed to find enough hickory to keep both fires smoldering.

In the Middle Ages, the most highly prized meat was not the muscle tissue but the internal organs. Everyone gorged themselves on liver and hearts and kidneys.

The kitchens turned out headcheese by the ton and I resolved that next year we'd have some sausage-making machinery. This year, there just wasn't time.

But to me, the most interesting things were the aurochs. There were eight of them, a bull, four cows, and three calves. These were huge wild cattle that are extinct in the twentieth century. The last of the species was killed in Poland in the sixteenth.

They were black with a white stripe down the back, from head to tail, and they were huge. While I was sitting on Anna, who was bigger than the average war-horse, the bull could raise his head and his eyes were higher than my own.

"He's mine!" Sir Vladimir shouted, lowered his lance and would have charged if I hadn't stopped him.

"Remember the rules," I told him. "At least one-sixth of the males must be kept for breeding, and he's the only one. Anyway, I'm going to domesticate him. Think of the meat on that animal! There must be three tons of it!"

"You'll never domesticate that beast, Sir Conrad."

"I can try."

With a lot of work and one serious injury, we managed to herd the aurochs into another valley, then cut down a few strategically placed trees at the entrance to barricade them in. Eventually, we had a good-sized herd of them, but I get ahead of myself.

Six dozen bucks were saved to provide fresh meat for us through the winter and there were no complaints when I had the female half of our catch released along with the young and a sixth of the males. We had more fresh meat than anybody had ever seen before.

Friar Roman had come from Okoitz, where he had been studying clothmaking, at the behest of his abbot.

At supper, he presented me with a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the deed to my property. It was as colorful as a church altar and radiant with gold foil.

"It's wonderful!" I said. "But where did you get all the paints and gold leaf?"

"Oh, I have quite a painting box now. It was given to me by a wealthy widow as a pious act for the Church. Actually, my vow of poverty has made me much better off than I was. Soon, my vow of obedience is going to give me command of a cloth factory at Cracow. I think perhaps I shouldn't discuss my vow of chastity, but Okoitz is a marvelous place."

It was agreed by all that we would do the hunt again next year, and people were courteous enough not to remind me that I wasn't going to be here next year.

Sir Miesko said that next time we should sweep his lands as well, and Count Lambert was seriously thinking of staging a Mongol hunt covering his entire territory.

"Think of it," he said. "We might rid all my lands of wolves and bears! Do you realize how many of my people they kill every year? It must be dozens! And the food we'd gather!"

Someone pointed out that the beaters would have to be in the field for weeks. How would they be fed and housed? How could they keep the wolves from sneaking out of the ring in the dark?

No one knew, but everyone agreed to think on it.

When it came to the division of the spoils, there was so much that we didn't bother trying to set up a fair system. I simply told everyone to take as much as they could carry. When I noticed some of my yeomen coming back for thirds, I put a stop to it.

We had skinned and gutted the wolves, cats, and other normally inedible animals and hung them up outside the gate. I said that if anybody kept dogs, they were welcome to come back and pick up the dog meat.

But when a few knights came back with pack animals, the carcasses were gone. Some peasants must have taken them for eating.

Until the time of the big hunt, the people at Three Walls had been eating a largely vegetarian diet, and that mostly grains, with only a small amount of meat and fresh greens in it. But from then on, we became meat-eaters, and over half of our caloric intake was in animal products. The children grew taller.

* * *

Later that fall we finally struck coal, and we found that we could make coke. This involved cleaning the coal of any obvious incursions of clay and stone, then baking the impurities out of it.

The beehive oven was a nine-yard dome that had a hole in the top through which the coal was loaded.

The rest of the oven was covered with dirt as an insulator, except for a doorway for extracting the coke. The coal was leveled with long rakes through the doorway to the depth of a yard and a half. Then a fire was started on top of the coal and the supply of air was restricted.

Soon the whole bed of coal was smoldering, and the dome of the oven reflected the heat downward. This eventually melted the coal, and volatile material—sulfur, ammonia, hydrocarbons—was vaporized to rise to the surface and be burned. It stank abominably.

The operator peeked through the small hole at the top of the doorway. When he saw that the volatiles had been burned off, the coal was again a solid, and the top of the bed was glowing, he inserted a brass spraying-apparatus through the top hole and fed enough water through it to quench the fire without unduly cooling the oven.

The coke, which was by then almost pure carbon, was shoveled out with very long-handled shovels. The doorway was bricked over again and new coal was loaded from the top.

If the process was done properly, the oven was hot enough to restart the new batch of coal by itself, saving a good deal of fuel. Once we got the oven working properly, we ran about one batch a day through. By spring, we had eight ovens going.

The masons could build the new ones through the coldest weather, since each was built next to a functioning oven, which kept the ground thawed, and the domes were built of dry laid sandstone. Mortar would never have stood the heat.

Chapter Nineteen

But now it was a week before Christmas, and my stay of execution was over. I had to go and fight and kill or maybe be killed to see if a hundred forty-two children had the right to live normal lives.

My orders were to bring the children to Okoitz, and there wasn't any way around it. But I wasn't going to bring them in chained neck to neck as I'd found them. I was going to bring them as what they had become. The Christian children of Polish Christian people.

If the kids had to go to Okoitz, then their adoptive parents would go with them. That meant just about everybody at Three Walls, so we pretty much shut down the whole town, except for a skeleton crew who kept the chickens fed, the fires going, and the pipes from freezing.

But it meant that if I lost the fight, the Crossmen would have to take Christian children from Christian families, and I didn't think that even they could get away with that. Or maybe they could. But it was worth a try.

It meant a long, two-day walk for eight hundred people, but we were well fed and in good shape. It was cold, but we were well clothed and had plenty of blankets.

We had a long string of pack mules for our baggage and Sir Miesko was expecting us.

My new armor was done, and I'd made Ilya polish it like a mirror. If I had to go out and defend truth, justice, and the purity of childhood, I was damn well going to go as a knight in shining armor.

I had him polish my old helmet as well and was wearing it instead of the new one, which was hard to take off. My new chest and back piece had a circular hole on top for my head. At this hole the metal collar flanged up and then out. The new helmet was a clamshell affair that hinged on top, and it had a ring around the bottom that fit into the collar flange on the suit below. Two hand-filed bolts held the sides of the helmet together.

Once the new helmet was on, I could turn my head from side to side, but I couldn't tilt it. More importantly, it couldn't be tilted. With my old helmet, a heavy sword blow could break my neck. With the new one, a blow to the head was transmitted through the flange to my upper body.

But the damned thing was a nuisance to put on and take off. You needed a wrench and a helper.

Anna wore some armor as well. A face plate and a lobstertail guard for the top of her neck were all she would accept, and I only got her to wear that by telling her it was pretty.

The hooks to hold the lance for her were built into both sides of her face plate, in the hopes that their use wouldn't be obvious on something strange to people. We had them on both sides in case they threw a lefty at us.

Having a hook on the saddle was fine when we only had to hit the hole on a quintain. Hitting a knight required something sturdier.

I had a notch cut into the saddlebow of my warkak. I could set my lance in it with the handguard, or vamplate, ahead of the notch. That put the force of the blow on the saddle and thus on Anna, without my smaller muscles having to get involved. We had continued practicing every day and I figured that we were as ready as we would ever be.

Besides the armor, which covered me from crown to fingertip to toe, the only other thing I wore was a huge wolfskin cloak. Anna and I must have looked pretty awesome. We got a lot of stares, anyway.

Sir Miesko was ready for us, and had a barn set up for the workers to sleep in. The booty taken from the Crossmen was already at Okoitz, cooking facilities and supplies of food were arranged. Good neighbors are wonderful.

Sir Vladimir, Sir Miesko, and myself, along with all our ladies, were sitting at supper.

But Sir Miesko and his wife were still convinced that I was soon to die, fancy armor or not. When everybody who knows anything is of the same opinion, you can't help but start to believe them. For five months, everybody I met was certain that I was going to get killed. It was getting to me, and it was hard to stay cheerful. "Okay," I said. "I admit that there is some danger. I could die in a few days. So what do we do about it?"

"Have you given thought to your projects and your plans?" Sir Miesko asked.

"Well, everything goes back to Count Lambert, doesn't it?"

"It does if you make no other provisions for it."

"You're suggesting that I make out a will?"

"A will may or may not be honored. Tell me, is Count Lambert the man you would want to run your estate at Three Walls?" Sir Miesko asked.

"He might do a better job than most. Actually, I think that Sir Vladimir here would be about the best person for it. Can I make him my heir?"

Sir Vladimir looked shocked. "Me? But I'm no master of the technical arts!"

"No, you're not. But you have brains enough to listen to those who know more than you. You're a natural leader, and you care about people. Furthermore, you're an unimpeachable member of the old nobility. I couldn't leave it to Yashoo, for example. The nobles would never stand for it. No, Sir Vladimir, I think you're stuck with it."

Sir Vladimir started to say something, but Sir Miesko cut him off. "Now that that's agreed upon, the question is how best to accomplish it. I've mentioned that a will may or may not stand up. It depends on the duke's mood, which is, in truth, a fickle thing. Still, we should try it, for it costs us only a sheet of parchment.

"But I think that neither the duke nor any other of the nobility would dare to interfere with, say, your daughter's inheritance. After all, their own wealth and position depend on this point of law."

"But I don't have a daughter!" I said.

"But you could. It's obvious that Sir Vladimir and Annastashia have been in love for quite a long time. Even an old man like me can see that. They want to get married but they can't, because Baron Jan would never stand for one of his sons marrying a peasant. His wife is worse."

Vladimir rose in indignation, but Sir Miesko shut him down. "Sit down, Sir Vladimir. I've known your folks for twenty years. They wouldn't even come to my wedding, despite the fact that I'd been knighted only weeks before, because my lady was still a commoner."

"Sir Miesko, you are talking about my father and my liege lord!" Sir Vladimir said.

"I'm talking about an old acquaintance, and every word of it is true. You want to marry the girl, don't you?"

"Yes! Of course."

"And you, Annastashia. You want to marry this impetuous young knight, don't you?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Then keep him shut up while we work out how that can be accomplished."

"But she's not my daughter!" I said.

"She can be. Her parents are both dead. You can adopt her. Once she's your daughter and heir, even Baron Jan isn't going to stop his son from marrying the wealthiest heiress in the duchy.

"Oh, I know that your funds are low now, but I've seen what you've accomplished in a few months at Three Walls. In a year, you would have been the richest man in Poland. Even without you, what you've started there will get fabulous wealth. Any man with brains can see it.

"So Annastashia gets the man she wants, Sir Vladimir gets a wife of his choice and more wealth than he's ever dreamed of, and you, Sir Conrad, get an heir who can carry out your plans."

There was no arguing with his reasoning, so Sir Miesko got out parchment, pen and ink, and drafted both a letter of adoption for Annastashia, and a will for me, in which I specifically gave my blessing on the marriage of my daughter to Sir Vladimir.

"You really should get yourself a seal," Sir Miesko said. "A bit late now, though."

Everybody present signed everything, and Sir Miesko affixed his own seal and promised to get the duke's seal on both instruments the next day.

As the party was breaking up, I announced that I had some presents to distribute. I gave Sir Miesko and Sir Vladimir wolfskin capes like my own. "I've had a dozen of these made up," I said. "I'll be giving them to the highest-ranking people who show up at the fight. It takes six wolves to make one of these. I figure that if I can make wearing wolfskin popular, it will give people more incentive to exterminate the wolves.

"Actually, wolfskin is a very sturdy and warm material. It has two different kinds of hair in it. There are the long, stiff hairs you see on the outside and there are shorter, finer hairs, much like wool, next to the skin. A wolf really does have sheep's clothing, underneath.

"Lady Richeza, I couldn't bring your present with me. Indeed, you won't get it until spring. But I've left the design of a complete home water-and-septic system at Three Walls, along with written orders to build one for you.

"You'll have hot, running water in your kitchen as well as a new stove, a complete bathroom, and a small, windmill-operated water tower." She was speechless. Actually, I'd owed her something nice for a long while. That, and I needed somewhere to set up a showplace for our plumbing products, and nobody missed stopping at her house when they were in the area. I was a socialist becoming a miserable capitalist.

"As to you girls, I know what you want." I gave Krystyana, Yawalda, Janina, and Natalia each a purse of silver. They each poured it out on the table and squealed their appreciation.

I kept the purse intended for Annastashia in my hand. "As for you, daughter, you've been sleeping with a man before wedlock, and you'll get nothing more out of me until you mend your sinful ways!"

* * *

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI

For weeks my soul had been troubled. All things for me were reaching a climax, great forces were moving about me, yet there was nothing I could do to affect their resolution.

My friend Sir Conrad was going to his death, and in his dying I would be failing in my oath to the duke to protect him with my life.

My brother Jan had visited me at Three Walls, informing me that my father's anger was even greater than I had feared. Months after the battle with the Crossmen, he was still shouting for my damnation. Never would he bless my marriage to Annastashia or to anyone else.

And lastly, my love was with child. Our child, perhaps my son, was growing in her, and unless I soon took bold action and defied my father, my son would be born a bastard, to be scorned all of his life, and my love would be labeled a strumpet.

I could not stay and marry her in defiance of my liege lord, nor could I go to some foreign country, either. The sum of my wealth was the nine silver pence that I had carried from my home last Easter. Not a penny had I spent since leaving that blacksmith. And nine pence might buy us a single night's lodging on the road. If we left, we would starve within the week.

If I asked it, I knew Sir Conrad would lend me money—rather give it to me—for once he was dead, there would be no way to repay him.

But part of my oath to the Duke Henryk was to report to him anything needful of Sir Conrad's doings. While I had seen the need to report nothing, I was in fact spying on my friend. How then could I with honor accept his money?

Then in but an hour at Sir Miesko's table, all was resolved. Sir Miesko's wisdom and clerkish knowledge and Sir Conrad's goodness days before his own death had resolved my impossible difficulties. I was in something of a shock, and perhaps did not behave quite properly. Even after it was all over, they had to raise me up to put Sir Conrad's death-gift fur cloak on my shoulders.

I had thought Sir Conrad's withholding of the purse from Annastashia to be a mere jest, and in fact he told me later that it was. He wanted to assure Krystyana and the rest that they were not being dropped from favor.

But when I put my arm around my love to lead her to our room, she became quite stiff. She removed my arm and told me that I was acting in unseemly fashion. Then she went off and slept with Yawalda.

We arrived at Okoitz the next day as the sun was setting.

* * *

The town was vastly overcrowded, and had not arrangements been made in advance for the housing of the peasants, they would have had to stay outside and freeze.

The entire membership of the Franciscan monastery from Cracow was there, along with many other citizens from that city.

Perhaps a third of the nobility of the entire duchy had arrived or had said that they would come. The Bishop of Cracow had come, and it was said that the Bishop of Wroclaw would soon be arriving.

And of course, merchants of every stripe and product had come sniffing after the profit to be made. Every one of Count Lambert's noblemen was there or would arrive on the morrow, and most brought their wives. This host included my father and mother, but thanks be to God in heaven my Uncle Felix was with them.

"Greetings, my father and my liege," I said to my father formally.

"Vladimir. So you've come to watch the mess you've made," he said coldly.

"Father, the duke—"

"I've talked to the duke, as well as to the count! Somehow you've gotten them both on your side. But to think that my own son would make an oathbreaker of me, it's—"

He suddenly turned and walked away. My mother looked quickly back and forth between us, then fled after my father without saying a word.

Uncle Felix looked at me and said, "I'll talk to you later, boy. Keep your nose up." He went after them.

Sadly, I stared in the direction they had gone. Perhaps I had underestimated my father's anger and intransigence.

I had left Sir Conrad's party to speak with my parents, and in that incredible crowd I did not soon find them.

I know that most of the people had come to see God's will done, that is to say, for a serious purpose. But when old friends meet after months or years, the meeting must needs grow jovial, and the place had the feeling of a carnival wherein I was the only stranger.

As I passed a niche between the church and the castle, where Count Lambert had set some benches, I heard familiar voices speaking. I kept to the shadows and listened.

"I tell you, the man saved my life three different times. Remember when my boat was on the rocks on the Dunajec River, kid? If Sir Conrad hadn't come along our bones would still be there!

"And a few days later at Cracow, the night I paid you off, he was there with a candle and woke me just as three thieves were about to cut my throat and steal my goods!"

"I hadn't heard about that, Tadaos," Friar Roman said.

"Just like him not to say anything about it. I tell you, Sir Conrad is a saint."

"Well, that's for the Church to say. But there's no doubt that this whole mess would never have occurred if he hadn't heeded my pleadings and gone to Sacz to get you out of Przemysl's donjon," Friar Roman said. "He led me to God! I was a sinner before I met him! I was a Goliard poet who sneered at the Church and all that is holy. But his goodness was the example that turned me from my old ways. And his generosity! Do you realize that every day for a week he took every penny he earned working at a job that did not suit him, and gave it to me so that I could eat and have shelter at night? And in return, I brought him the message that will result in his death."

"He never saved my life," Ilya the blacksmith said. "Fact is that one time he almost ended it, when he took off the end of the anvil I was working on with one swipe of that skinny sword of his."

"Did that really happen? I thought it was only a story," Tadaos said.

"It happened. But I'll tell you, Sir Conrad has taught me more about the craft than my father ever did, and my father was a master. I tell you he's too good a man to let die!"

"He's not going to die, not while I can draw a longbow. You've all seen me shoot. There's no man better at it in the world than me. It's a gift, I tell you. A gift from God. And now I know why God gave it to me.

"I mean to be at the top of that windmill of his on the day of the fight. From there I can hit any man on the tourney field, though none of the Crossmen would believe that an arrow would fly that far, let alone kill a man."

"I've got arrow heads that can punch through any armor," Ilya said. "Even that fancy new stuff I made for Sir Conrad. You're welcome to them."

"I'll take them."

"It won't work, Tadaos. Too many people have heard of your shooting, besides those who have seen it. You haven't exactly kept it a secret!" Friar Roman said. "They'd find you and hang you, and it wouldn't do Sir Conrad a bit of good. Worse, they'd probably call foul on Sir Conrad, and kill him because of your doings."

"There's got to be a way."

The three conspirators were silent for a bit. Then the friar spoke. "If the Crossman was killed by a man, they'd catch him sure. But if it was an Act of God . . ."

"What do you mean?"

"What if golden arrows were to come down from the sky, killing the evil-doers? Isn't that what this trial is all about? To determine the will of God?"

"But I don't have any golden arrows," Tadaos said.

"You will have." Friar Roman opened his painting kit. "I think I have enough gold leaf left to cover about eight of them."

I stepped out of the shadows. "I have heard enough. You varlets are planning a mockery of all that the trial by combat stands for."

"It stands for grown men fighting because they don't have brains enough to settle their differences peacefully!" Ilya said and stood. The muscles rippled huge in the blacksmith's bare arms.

"And it stands for killing the finest man in Christendom because he had balls enough to free those poor children from the Crossmen," Tadaos added. He joined Ilya.

"You filthy peasants! You would speak like this to a true belted knight?"

The little friar stood up between us three big men. "Brothers! Christians, remember you are all brothers under God!" The little man's courage impressed us all, and the two big peasants backed off.

"You, too, Sir Vladimir," he said. "Come, join us. We need your help."

"I should join with peasants to besmear the knightly order?"

"You, too, are in Sir Conrad's debt. Word has it that he has arranged for you to marry his adopted daughter, and thus become his heir. Are you the kind of man who would wish a good friend's death so that you could collect his gold?"

"Of course not, dammit! But—"

"Then sit down and join us. We need your aid, and so does he."

"Just what do you expect me to do?"

Friar Roman said, "Now, here's my plan . . ."

* * *

So thus it was that I found myself riding across the tourney field in the cold of a winter's dawn, waiting to be shot.

The frivolities at Okoitz had lasted well into the night, and the field was completely deserted.

Tadaos had been sure that the weight of the thin gold would throw off his aim, and wanted some practice shots.

Since all was for naught if he missed, Friar Roman had spent the night carefully covering four arrows, and I was up with my shield hung on my lancetip, prancing around on Witchfire to give him a moving target. It is remarkable, the things a true knight finds in the path of duty.

The first arrow fell two yards too low, and I began to wonder if I would die out there. An arrow two yards to the right would pierce my heart.

I tapped my shield four times to the ground in the signal to tell the bowman how low he had shot. He was so far away that he could not see his arrows.

The second just missed the bottom of the shield. Good. It seems Tadaos's problems were in range rather than direction. I might survive. I tapped the ground once.

The third struck my shield fair on, and I raised my arm to the bowman. The fourth struck a finger's width from the third, despite the fact that I had Witchfire at the gallop.

I dismounted to recover the arrows, for we had agreed on at least three practice rounds.

But as I recovered the last, I saw Sir Lestko riding out to me. I could tell it was he by the armorial device on his shield, though I could not have done this with most knights. In the West, it is the custom for a knight to wear his personal device on his shield and elsewhere. In Poland, one wore the device of one's family, and these must be awarded by the duke, or the king, when there was one. In all of Poland, there were less than a hundred of them. But Sir Lestko's people were from the Gniezno area, far to the north, and he is the only one of his family in the duchy.

I hid the arrows behind my shield.

"Sir Vladimir! You're up early! What, has your lovely intended thrown you out into the cold?"

"You might as well know, Sir Lestko. Word of the foolishness will be out soon enough. When she was a peasant girl she was easy, warm, and willing. Now that she is Sir Conrad's daughter, she is altogether too proper, and won't even hold my hand until the wedding! And my father has not yet approved our marriage! I tell you there is very little justice in the world."

Sir Lestko laughed, as I intended him to do. "You poor bastard! Still, what she's doing is right, you know. As Sir Conrad's daughter, she must act with decorum for his honor and yours. And you, my friend, should do what every proper son of the nobility has always done."

"And what is that?"

"Salve your pains with another wench! Come along! There are skads of them available in Okoitz! Indeed, I have a spare to lend you. When it's raining soup, the wise man puts out his bowl!"

I promised to join him shortly, and we rode together toward the town. Dozens of people were out by then, and further archery practice was impossible.

It was agreed that Tadaos would shoot only when Sir Conrad was in trouble, likely though that event was. Perhaps there was still some shred of hope.

Chapter Twenty

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

I'd withheld the purse from Annastashia mostly as a joke, since I was trying to lighten up the party. The others were treating it like a wake, and my own at that.

Also, whenever I gave one of the girls something, the others always wanted the same thing, and I was not about to have Krystyana, Janina, Natalia, and Yawalda falling into the role of daughters. They were too good as bed partners.

Thank God I'd never had Annastashia. She was already involved with Sir Vladimir before I met her. Otherwise I'd have incest on my conscience along with everything else.

Nonetheless, Annastashia took her role as my daughter seriously, which was probably for the best. Much of what I was doing in this century was flying in the face of convention, but it would not be wise to affront the institutions of the Church and the family. It made things a little rough on Sir Vladimir's lovelife, but he could stand it. Too much else was at stake.

Okoitz was more crowded than the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and much of the same attitude seemed to infect the crowd. I had the feeling that I was the sacrificial lamb that everybody had come to see slaughtered.

Oh, everybody was polite, vastly polite, entirely too polite. Every person in that crowd was convinced that I was going to be dead in a day and a half, and they all tried to make my last few hours as sticky sweet as possible.

It took an hour to get my people settled in with the peasants at Okoitz, even with the advance arrangements I'd made. The best we could get was a roof over everybody's head and minimal space on a dirt floor. People had to lie spoon fashion, back to belly, to all lie down at the same time. At least nobody was going to freeze. That much body heat could melt a snowdrift.

Then I looked up Count Lambert to report in. He was with the duke.

"Well, boy. Quite a crowd you've attracted," Duke Henryk said.

"Yes, your grace. I suppose I should feel flattered."

"I wouldn't be. Most of them are here to see the blood fly, and they don't much care whose. What on Earth is that you're wearing?"

"Your grace, I once told you that I would show your people how to make better armor. Well, this is an example of it."

"It's pretty enough. I'm sure the ladies will be impressed. The question is whether it can stop the Crossman from making an impression on you."

"I suppose we'll know that in a few days, your grace."

"I suppose we will. You brought the kids with you?"

"Yes, your grace."

"Where do you have them chained?"

"I don't, your grace. I mean they're not chained. They are with their families."

"Their families are dead. Crossmen don't leave survivors."

"Their new families, your grace. Every one of them was adopted by a family of my workers at Three Walls. I said that I'd make Christians out of them, and I have. Every one of them has voluntarily accepted Baptism. They are now Christians, and members of Christian Polish families."

"You said that you would make the horse sing, and by God you have!" The duke laughed. "So when you're dead, the Crossmen will have to face the bishop to get them back! That's rich! You intend to keep fighting even after you're dead! Yours must be a deadly people, Sir Conrad."

"That depends on how you mean that, your grace. The people here seem to consider war a sport, to be played with sporting rules. They enjoy it. Mine hate war. We hate fighting. We haven't started a war in five hundred years. But when we must fight, we fight in a serious, deadly way. I don't mean that we fight well. We don't. Our children don't grow up dreaming of performing valorous deeds on the battlefield. Our maidens don't compete hard for the favors of fighting men. Our young men don't spend all their spare time discussing strategy and tactics.

"So when war comes to us, we fight poorly, inefficiently. But we go into it willing to take casualties, willing to die. We fight long wars, and we win."

"And how long are these wars?"

"Once we fought for a hundred thirty years, when the very name of our country was erased from the map. And we won."

That silenced the conversation for a bit. Then Count Lambert said, "You say your maidens don't get excited about military men. Who then do they chase?"

"The answer will surprise you, my lord. Many of them scream and run after musicians."

"You're right, Sir Conrad. I'm dumbfounded. Musicians?"

The duke said, "Ah. There's his excellency, the bishop. I must inform him about your Christianizing of the Pruthenians. It'll be fun to watch him squirm!"

With the duke gone, I thought I'd be able to slip out, but Count Lambert wouldn't hear of it. He dragged me around half the night, introducing me to people. I went into stimulus saturation in about five minutes, and so have no idea who the last hundred people were that I was introduced to.

I was surprised that despite the crowd, I was given a room to myself. Part of it was my status as a sacrificial lamb, but I think that at least some of the reason was that this was the room where Mikhail Malinski had died, and people had attached something stupid and superstitious to it.

Janina, Yawalda, and Natalia were off somewhere with the Banki brothers, so Krystyana and I had some peace and quiet to ourselves.

I met Father Ignacy the next morning and invited him back to my room as the only quiet place in Okoitz. After hearing my confession, he said, "That was quite a feat you accomplished, converting those Pruthenians."

"There wasn't much to it, Father. They were homeless children. We gave them warmth and love. The religious instruction and conversion came naturally."

"Nonetheless, it is the first success the Church has had with the Pruthenians in three hundred years! As a stratagem to keeping the children free, it just might be successful. The Bishops of Cracow and Wroclaw are both convinced that the Church must retain this victory. They have asked my abbot that my brothers arm ourselves with staves, that we might defend the children with force if necessary!"

"Then if that's so, do you think that they might talk to the Crossmen, and maybe stop this fight? I'll gladly give back their furs, amber, and other goods. I don't want to kill anybody, and I certainly don't want to be killed. I can't let them have the children, but if the Church is going to protect them even if I lose, what is there to fight about?"

"A worthy thought, Sir Conrad. I'll present it to their excellencies." He got up to leave.

"One last thing, Father. Is there any news of the Church's inquisition of me?"

"I'm surprised that you concern yourself with that at this time, but yes, there is news. I told you that at the request of the bishop, the report was sent to the home monastery in Italy. Well, the home monastery has returned it, saying that no, the proper channel for such a report would be through the secular Church hierarchy. So with great promptness, my abbot sent it to the Bishop of Cracow, who sent it to the Bishop of Wroclaw, as your lands are in Silesia and thus in the diocese of Wroclaw."

"You mean that it was in Italy, but rather than send it to Rome, it came back to Poland? Incredible!"

"Isn't it though! Who would have thought that a letter could have traveled all the way to Italy and back to Poland in only a single summer and fall? You can almost see the hand of God speeding it along! But I must go now and request audience with their excellencies, to inform them of your offer."

So the Church bureaucracy was as screwed up as anything the stupid Russians had ever dreamed up.

* * *

The Crossmen arrived about noon. There must have been a thousand of them, all in battle armor and on war-horses. Their baggage train stretched for miles, and you would have thought that they were on a campaign in enemy territory rather than come to witness a trial.

They set up a city of tents outside Okoitz, on the other side of the tourney field. It wasn't the usual medieval hodgepodge, but as neatly laid out as any modern camp, or Ancient Roman one, for that matter.

Unfortunately, their camp was upwind of our town, and occasionally a vast stench wafted in from them. On asking about it, I was told that as a mark of their austerity, it was a rule of the order that the Crossmen neither shaved nor bathed. Ever. No wonder they were so mean.

I saw the two bishops with their entourages go out to the camp. Apparently my offer was being delivered. I also saw my old enemy, Sir Stefan, and his father ride out there. At least all my enemies were in the same camp.

The afternoon went slowly, annoyingly, with too many cloying well-wishers wanting to speak sadly to me.

Some bastard of a merchant had set up a pari-mutuel gambling stall, betting on the outcome of the fight. The odds were running thirty-eight to one against me. He had two parchment lists, recording who had made each bet and the amount, and two open-top barrels where the money was thrown for all to see. When the fight was over, the merchant would take a twelfth of the whole and the pot would be divided among the winners in accordance to the size of their bets. Two armed guards watched the barrels. The barrel containing bets on me was very low. I still had twenty-six thousand pence in Count Lambert's strongroom, so I went and bet it all on myself.

I'm really not a gambler, but there are some bets that you really can't lose. My wager changed the odds to eight to one, but what the heck. If I lost, I'd never miss it, since I'd be dead.

Finally, I went back to my room and stationed Natalia at the door to keep me from being bothered. The girl was a genius at it.

Why was everybody so damn convinced that I was going to die? I was going to win, dammit!

I kept telling myself that.

At supper, the Bishop of Wroclaw informed me that the Crossmen had flatly turned down my offer. They felt that they had to avenge the blood I'd spilt, Sir Stefan had convinced them that I was a warlock, and anyway, their champion was undefeated.

"Of course their champion is undefeated, your excellency. Every champion is undefeated. These are fights to the death. The only champion not undefeated is dead!"

Everybody thought I was making a joke and laughed.

"Be that as it may, my son, your conversion of the Pruthenians was a wonderful deed for the glory of God. But it places the Church in an awkward position. I shall have to defend those children, possibly against the Knights of the Cross, who are after all another branch of the Church! It would help matters considerably if you could see fit to win tomorrow."

"I shall make every effort to satisfy your wishes, your excellency." I bowed and thought, What a pompous ass!

"Thank you, my son."

During the meal, I gave out the remaining wolfskin capes to the duke, his son, and to seven counts, including Lambert. I explained why wolfskin was such a suitable material, and why, if they became popular, it would reduce the wolf population. They seemed to accept the gifts in memory of me, but I tried.

After supper, I went out to the stables and gave Anna a very thorough currying. I spent a few hours with her. She was the only person that wasn't convinced that I was soon to die. She knew that we were going to win!

It was a bad night, with Krystyana bawling most of the time. I had to threaten to throw her out in order to get some sleep. I even suggested that she go find Piotr Kulczynski. That shut her up.

In the morning, I said confession again and went to church. The place was half filled with Crossmen, with them on one side of the center aisle and the duke's nobles on the other. Just like a wedding, except for the stench.

When it was time for communion, the ushers brought only me and one Crossman to the communion rail. He apparently was the man I was to fight at noon.

We looked at each other and we each recognized the other at the same time. He had ice blue eyes and his nose had been broken. There were scars on his forehead and cheek and his very long, very blond hair was still greasy.

On my very first day in the thirteenth century, I had been bashed on the head by a Crossman. This was the very same bastard!

The protocol of communion did not permit us to speak, which was probably just as well. After the mass, the Crossmen immediately left in a body, so I had no chance to talk to my opponent. I wouldn't have known what to say anyway.

At noon, we were ready. The weather was cold and overcast, with very low-flying clouds. Good weather for a fight. The sun wouldn't be in my eyes and there was no danger of overheating.

The tourney field was a square about three hundred yards to the side, and marked out with little flags on sticks. A few centimeters of snow had fallen the night before, and the field was a flat, pristine white. It was hard to realize that three months before, the field had been gold with grain. Now we would fertilize it with blood.

The Crossmen lined the two sides of the field closest to their camp, and the Poles lined the other two. Nobles sat on benches in front, and at the duke's request, none of them was armed except for the ubiquitous swords. He was afraid of a fight starting. One that he would lose.

The commoners stood behind the nobles. The clergy was in a group around the two bishops.

A crossbowman was stationed at each corner of the square, two from the duke's guard and two from the Crossmen. Their job was to kill the man who committed a foul.

Heralds had been scurrying around for days getting things organized, and I suppose that they had done a fair job. Not that I would have known a good job from a poor one.

The sext bell was rung, a trumpeter played something stirring, and the two head heralds came out with parchment scrolls. I had spent quite a bit of time writing my proclamation, since it had to state what I thought the fight was about. Protocol had it that the Crossman declaration was to be read first, and the duke's herald, the one who talked in capital letters, read them both, since the Crossmen's herald didn't speak Polish.

"Know all You Present, that on the Second day of August, in the Year of Our Lord 1232, the Notorious Brigand, Sir Conrad Stargard did Feloniously and with Malice Aforethought Attack a Caravan of Goods, the Property of the Teutonic Knights of Saint Mary's Hospital at Jerusalem.

"In this Evil Attack, he Murdered Five of the Members of our Holy Order, and Maimed a Sixth Member for Life, while these Honorable Men were Peacefully Attending to the Business of Our Order.

"We Pray to God that He may Strengthen Our Champion's Arm, that he might Smite the Brigand Sir Conrad, and Recover for Our Order All our Property, Including the Heathen Slaves.

"May God Uphold the Right."

I knew about their proclamation, of course, having read a copy of it the day before. Part of the deal the duke made was that Sir Vladimir was not to be mentioned. I think the reason that the Crossmen went along with this was the size of his extended family. Having a feud with that many people would have been awkward even for the Crossmen.

That last business about the heathen slaves was new, however. They weren't backing down a bit.

Then the same herald read my proclamation.

"Know all of you present that on the Second day of August, in the Year of Our Lord 1232, I, Sir Conrad Stargard, Came upon Seven Crossmen engaged in the Criminal Act of Abusing Children, having One Hundred Forty-Two of them Chained by the Neck, with Bleeding Feet and Whip-Scarred Backs. I Attempted to Free the Children, as was My Christian Duty as well as My Duty to my Liege Lord.

"I was Attacked by the Crossmen, Seven against One. But God was On My Side, and I was Victorious.

"I saw to it that The Children were Adopted into Good Christian Families and Received Proper Religious Instruction. They are now All Christians and may not be Returned to their Previous State of Illegal Slavery.

"I Hold that the Crossmen are an Evil Order Masquerading under the Trappings of Piety.

"I Hold that they Trade with the Infidel Mohammedans, the Very People who now Hold the Holy Lands against All True Christians, and that Their Order was Supposed to Fight.

"I Hold that they are Invading the Pruthenians for No Other Reason than Greed. They make No Attempt at the Religious Conversion of these People, but Instead Murder Them, Man, Woman, and Child.

"I Hold that This Evil Order of Crossmen must be Disbanded, and its Former Members Banished from Poland. Further, I Hold that Slavery is an Offense Against God, for Man was Made in God's Image, and God's Image Must Not Be Degraded!

"May God Uphold the Right."

The duke had said that I was stupid for not mentioning the booty, and that there wasn't a chance in hell of the Crossmen being disbanded or banished. Not in the Duchy of Mazovia, anyway. He liked the precedent it might set for him in his own territory, but it only had effect in the unlikely event that I won.

The bishop had said that my theology was questionable, but let it go at that.

I wrote it and I liked it. Mentioning the furs and amber would have lent a note of crassness to my proclamation, and anyway, my possession of them was understood.

The heralds went to the other side of the field to read the proclamations to the Crossmen in German, with the duke's herald reading mine in German. He might be a blowhard, but he spoke nine languages. You could see ripples go through the crowd of Crossmen as my proclamation was read. Good. Consternation to the enemy!

The bishops each gave a short sermon, a prayer was said, and at long last we could get on with it.

I wasn't eager to either fight or die, but this waiting was getting me in the gut. Still, a blast of raw fear hit me as I realized that in minutes I would likely be dead.

Another trumpet blast, the heralds left the field and the marshals shouted, "Lay on!"

I flipped down my visor, lowered my lance and we were off. Do it by the numbers! It's just like practice! I shouted silently to myself, trying to convince myself that I wasn't scared shitless.

As Anna and I thundered toward our opponent, I laid the lance in Anna's hook and the notch of the saddle, as we'd done a thousand times in practice. Then I drew my sword as stealthily as possible and prepared to give the bastard the double-hitter we'd practiced so often.

Anna's aim was perfect as always. She hit his shield dead center and then all hell broke loose.

My only reaction was one of total surprise. I couldn't figure out what happened, but somehow I was flying through the air! The impact with the frozen ground was brutal, armor or no armor. I lay there, stunned for a moment, until I got my wits back.

I got up, shaken. The snow wasn't thick enough to break my fall, but it was enough to hide my sword! I ran back to where the train wreck had occurred, but I couldn't find my sword. My lance was shattered. I had no weapon except for the dagger I had taken from a thug in Cieszyn last spring.

Looking up, I saw my opponent had turned his horse and was coming back at me with his lance lowered. I drew my dagger and waited for him. There was nothing else I could do.

Anna circled around and saw my predicament. She raced back and attacked, not the Crossman, but his horse.

In seconds, she ripped a major hunk of flesh from his rump with her teeth and broke both of the stallion's rear legs with her forehoofs.

My opponent went down in a sad heap. The crowd of Crossmen started yelling "Foul!" and "Witchcraft."

Apparently, Sir Stefan had done a lot of talking with them. I half expected a crossbow bolt in the back, but the marshals decided that I wasn't responsible for my horse when I was dismounted, dumb animals being what they thought they were.

Anna ran back toward me and in passing she kicked my sword up out of the snow. It popped up like a golf ball hit by a nine iron and flew toward me handle first. I had to drop my dagger to catch it, but I didn't need the dagger any more. At least I thought I wouldn't.

Then she stood back and watched, supremely confident that I would win.

The Crossman was out of the wreckage in a hurry. His horse was screaming in pain, but he didn't bother giving it an easy death. He came running at me.

"Take care of your horse!" I shouted at him. "I'll wait here while you do!"

"I do that later! First I make sure I kill you dead this time!"

There was nothing I could do but meet him.

The bastard was good. He would have made an Olympic-grade fencer easily. Even swinging a heavy hand-and-a-half bastard sword, he was faster than I was with my light watered-steel blade. What's more, he knew how to use a shield much better than I did.

He got one past my guard and slammed a blow into the left side of my head. It might have killed me had I been wearing my old helmet. As it was, it spun my helmet to the right about ninety degrees and bent the collar ring such that the helmet was jammed in that position. I couldn't turn my head! Looking forward, I was blind! I could only see by looking over my right shoulder!

I discarded my shield and fought him fencing-style. It was all I could do. You have to be able to look straight ahead to fight with sword and shield. A roar went up from the Polish side of the crowd, but I had no time to think about that.

He got blow after blow past my defenses, but Ilya had made me a fine suit of armor. Most of the time I barely felt them.

"Die, you hell-spawn bastard! What do it take to kill you? Wood stick in heart?"

I didn't have the breath to spare to answer him.

It was his shieldwork that was stopping me from hitting him back. Every time I got a chance to strike at him, that damn shield was there. My sword had amazing cutting power, but it couldn't do much when the whole edge was hitting the flat of that leather-covered plywood shield of his.

Okay, I told myself. Go for the shield! Chop that sucker to kindling! Focusing on the shield, and catching it on the edge, I took a few major chunks out of it.

Then I got the chance to swing a big one right down the middle. I took it. My sword went down through the center of his shield, then stopped halfway. And stuck.

I tried to pull my sword free, but it was stuck fast and he wasn't about to let go of his shield.

To make matters worse for me, my sword was the only thing I had to block his sword. He wrenched his shield and my sword from my hand and swung his sword at me.

There was nothing I could do but step inside his swing and try to handle the problem karate-fashion.

There is a karate blow that is demonstrated slowly, but never practiced. You twist your opponent's right arm with your left hand so that his arm is straight and his elbow is downward, then you strike upward with the palm of your right hand. Done properly, this breaks his right elbow. This wouldn't have worked on me because the hinges on my elbow caps wouldn't bend that way. But he was in chain mail.

For all his mastery of the sword and the lance, the Crossman had never considered the possibility of unarmed combat. It worked. His elbow gave way with a satisfying pop.

He dropped his sword and I quickly picked it up. He made no attempt to run away, as many men would. He just stood there.

I didn't want to kill him, but this fight was to the death. No quarter was to be asked or given. If I didn't snuff him, the freedom of a hundred forty-two children would still be in question.

I took his sword and swung it with all my might sideways at his neck. He didn't try to stop me.

His dying word was, "Bastard!"

He crumpled to the snow, and the emotional reaction of all that had happened hit me. My hands and legs shook, I could barely stand, and all my sphincters let loose.

Somehow, I was still alive!

The crowds on both sides were cheering and shouting, but they didn't seem important, and I ignored them.

With both hands on my helmet, I managed to twist it around so I could look forward. Standing on his shield, with both hands I was able to pull out my sword. It was tightly wedged, and I think that it wasn't the cutting that stopped my blade from going all the way through, but the friction on the sides. When I had it out, I could see that I had not only cut through half the shield, I had cut through half his left arm as well. He couldn't have dropped that shield. Shield, sword, and arm were locked into a single unit.

I was pretty sure his neck was broken, but with so many children at stake I didn't want to take any chances. I raised my sword and took his head off with a single blow. It didn't bleed much. I guess he was already dead.

My lance was lying shattered on the ground, and I reconstructed what happened. I had bought my lance a year ago, figuring it was a useless piece of paraphernalia. I bought the lightest one possible. Sir Vladimir favored a light spear, so he didn't mention anything. But Sir Vladimir goes for targets like the eyeslit, and Anna had trouble reaching that high.

There was a gouge on his shield that must have been made by my lance. Anna had hit her target dead on, but on impact my spear shattered and his didn't. I never had a chance to swing my sword; it was knocked out of my hand when I went flying. I wouldn't have thought it possible to be knocked over the top of the waist-high cantle of a warkak, but that's the way I went.

I went and decapitated his horse, which was still screaming.

The Polish crowd was cheering wildly, including, I suppose, even those who had bet against me. The Crossmen were shouting hoarsely in German, but I couldn't understand them, except for more shouts of "foul" and "witchcraft."

All I knew was that it was over and that I had won.

Then the German crowd opened up and four armed and armored horsemen wearing black crosses on their white surcoats charged me with their lances lowered.

* * *

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI

On the day of the trial, my fellow conspirators and I were all at our assigned positions. Tadaos was lying hidden on the roof of the windmill. Friar Roman was among the clergy, ready to cry out "An Act of God" and "A miracle" and such like. I was among the nobles ready to do the same.

Ilya was set to run out on the field and try to recover the gold-covered arrows, for we were sure that they could not stand close inspection. Surely God would use something better than gold leaf!

When the fight was on, Sir Conrad's lance shattered at the first impact. I cursed myself for never making him get a new and stronger one!

He was unhorsed, and the Crossman started to come around to finish him off, but still Tadaos did not fire!

Talking to the bowman later, he said that he did, but he never saw where the arrow fell, as he had hid himself immediately after loosing his shaft. When he looked up, he was surprised that the Crossman was still alive, but Sir Conrad and his opponent were locked in such tight combat that he was afraid to shoot again for fear of hitting Sir Conrad.

My friend looked sure to lose, but then to the wonderment of all, he discarded his shield! A roar went up from the crowd, for we all knew then that Sir Conrad was merely toying with the Crossman, that he was so sure of victory that he could afford a jest!

In the end, he even left his sword stuck contemptuously in the Crossman's shield and destroyed the man with his bare hands! And then gave the man the mercy blow with his opponent's own sword!

The crowd was wild! No one had expected such prowess of Sir Conrad, although he had said all along that he was going to win. Shortly after Sir Conrad's victory, he gave mercy to the Crossman's horse, for that animal had been injured by Sir Conrad's amazing mount.

We thought that all was over when four more Crossmen, fully armed and armored, charged onto the field and at Sir Conrad.

Cries of "Foul!" went up, for this was a foul beyond all imagining! But the marshals had already ordered the crossbowmen to uncock their weapons, for fear of accidental discharge. They ordered the crossbowmen to shoot the transgressors, but it takes some time to wind up those ungainly weapons. Time that Sir Conrad did not have!

Far away on the roof of the windmill, Tadaos was more prepared. He loosed four shafts at the evil-doers, watched the arrows go through the low clouds and then come down exactly on target!

Every one of his golden shafts hit its man square in the heart! They crumbled as a group and their riderless horses ran on both sides of Sir Conrad, while he stood there unmoving.

"It is an Act of God!!" Friar Roman shouted, falling to his knees. "We have seen a miracle to the glory of God!"

I too was shouting, "A miracle! A miracle!" Soon everybody was doing it as Tadaos quickly descended from the windmill and hid his bow and remaining arrows.

As planned, Ilya was first on the field. But when he grasped an arrow to pull it from the dead man's chest, it bent in his hand! The arrows were truly made of soft, pure gold!

Ilya fell to his knees and prayed.

Interlude Four

I hit the STOP button again.

"I don't believe that shooting, and I'm too much of an agnostic to believe that you have a truly documented miracle here. Your fingerprints are all over this, Tom! What gives?"

"Well, of course I did it. I couldn't trust Conrad's life to one medieval bowman, no matter how good he was. You don't think I could let those German bastards murder my own cousin, do you?

"For a long time, I've had a section of engineers working on advanced weaponry, just in case we ever needed such a thing. We've never had to use it, which is good, but rather frustrating for the engineers. They were delighted when I gave them this assignment.

"The golden arrows were the easy part. Just some thrusters on the arrowheads and some microelectronics to guide them, then a temporal circuit to get rid of the high-tech stuff afterward.

"Getting rid of Tadaos's arrows was the hard part. They had to do some weather-control work to get the low cloud ceiling to hide our ship, then detect and take out some small, uncooperative targets. After that, well, would you believe thirty-caliber cruise missiles?"

"I thought that you were so sure that Conrad would be alive eight years later," I said.

"There are so many unknowns floating around this mess that I just couldn't take the chance. Maybe he could be both killed and stay alive. Is that any stranger than both saving and abandoning that child?"

"So you faked a miracle. It's hard to believe that even from you!"

"Look, kid. One man's miracle is another man's technology."

He hit the START button.

Chapter Twenty-One

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

I had gone into the fight knowing that my cause was just, and with the feeling that God was on my side. I had been scared, but somehow, I had won.

Then suddenly I was looking sure death in the face.

And then, just as suddenly it was over, and my mind couldn't handle it all at once. Like that farmer in the High Tatras, I was just stunned by all that had happened. Miracles are something that happen to someone else, far away, and a long time ago. They don't happen here and now to one's self.

Long afterward, there were nagging doubts in my mind about what really happened. I knew what an advanced technology should be capable of. If someone could make a thing like Anna, faking a miracle would be easy for him. But I never really knew.

Father Ignacy said that perhaps it was both faked and real. That God works in His own ways, and sometimes He chooses to work through men. And if so, why not through men of a different time and place?

Most of the people of the thirteenth century had no such doubts. They knew that God was talking to them. From the sidelines, there was much praying and wailing, but I just stood there on the snow, my mind strangely blank.

The bishops came out and claimed the gold arrows for the Church. After some little debate as to whether the four dead Crossmen should be treated as holy, for they had been the object of an Act of God, it was decided that they had been cursed by God, and were hauled off to be buried on unhallowed ground without Extreme Unction, though their arms and armor were claimed by the Church.

The duke went before the crowd of Crossmen and told them that their order had been cursed by God. He ordered them to disband and to disperse, for they were banished forever from Poland. Fully a third ripped off their uniform surcoats on the spot and rode off west, back to Germany. I heard one say that he'd wanted a bath, anyway. The balance, crasser and more worldly, packed up their gear and returned to their headquarters in Turon, Mazovia.

All told, the Crossmen lost about a quarter of their total force of men to desertion when this affair became well known. It was the more honorable and religious of them that left, of course; the worst bastards knew when they had a good thing going, and weren't about to change.

Then the duke addressed the Polish crowd, and said that from that day forth, slavery was forever banned in Poland, that Poland was now the land of the free, and that any slave need only set foot on our soil to be free. The duke was a rough old SOB, but you had to love him.

Before they pulled out, a Crossman, the commander in his fancier surcoat, came and talked to me.

"Your witchcraft and trickery won't stop us! Duke Henryk has nothing to say about what goes on in Mazovia and the Pruthenian forests. If we can't send our slaves through Silesia, we'll find another route!"

I stared at him for a moment, then said, "Then I'll have to plug that route, too."

"Do that and we'll just stop taking prisoners!" Then he went away.

Across the field, I saw Sir Vladimir and his father. They were in each other's arms, crying on each other's shoulders. Uncle Felix was standing nearby. A few hours later Baron Jan came to me and formally asked for the hand of my daughter for his son. Of course, I gave my blessings. No mention was made of a dowry, though I asked what he thought of Sir Vladimir swearing fealty to me.

Baron Jan said that if Vladimir wished it, and Count Lambert did not object, he would be willing to transfer the allegiance. Just before the wedding, it was done.

I checked on the wager I had made on myself, and discovered that the odds against me had gone back up to fourteen to one. I was two hundred thirty-eight thousand pence richer. It is not comfortable to be the only person in the world who believes something to be true, but it can be very profitable.

As they were weighing out my money, the herald of the Bishop of Wroclaw announced that the posting of bans for the marriage of Sir Vladimir and Annastashia had been shortened from six weeks to three days.

The duke awarded all of the booty won from the Crossmen to me, without even reserving the share normally due to Count Lambert. I gave Sir Vladimir half of it as a dowry.

We stayed on at Okoitz, and the day after Christmas there was a wedding. The bride I gave away was radiant.

The Radiant Warrior

Prologue

She unloaded the temporal canister, glanced quickly at her new subordinate, loaded it with her last superior, and sent it two and a half million years uptime. One contact every fifty years and that for only a few seconds. Life this far back was a bitch.

The new arrival was biosculpted into a male version of herself, a type twenty-seven protohuman. He was barely four feet tall, skinny and with dark brown skin. He was also naked, since clothing wouldn't be invented for millions of years.

She switched off his stasis field.

He looked up at the stalactites hanging above him from the cave roof. Confused, he looked over at her.

"Surprise! You son of a bitch!" she shouted. "Welcome to two and a half million b.c.! Welcome to a hundred years of dodging leopards and eating grubs and shivering up in a tree all night, you bastard, because it's all your fault!"

"What? Where am I?"

"The where is eastern Africa, you lucky boy, but the fun part is the when! You're in the Anthropological Corps now and you get to do the exciting work of tracking protohuman migration patterns!"

"This must be some sort of a joke! And you are the rudest and the ugliest woman I've ever seen!"

"Watch your language, buster! I'm your boss and will be for the next fifty years. And if you think I'm ugly, just wait until you see yourself in a mirror, not that we have one."

"What is going on here? None of this makes sense! I was in twentieth-century Poland, doing my paperwork, when the monitors came in and I woke up here. And I look like you?"

"Yeah, minus the floppy tits, ugly."

"But . . . why?"

"Your file says it's a punishment detail for gross incompetence. You completely failed to brief a new subordinate on security procedures! She left the wrong door open. And the Owner's own cousin, who had never heard of time travel, got transported back to Poland's thirteenth century, ten years before the Mongol invasions. Then the Owner himself found his cousin in the battle lines during the invasion. The man had been there for ten years before he was discovered! There was nothing they could do about it without violating causality. When you screw up, you don't fart around!"

"But . . . without notification, without trial?"

"You mess with the Owner's family, you're in deep shit, boy!"

"Well . . . what are you doing here, then?"

"You don't recognize me? I suppose I should be crushed, you bastard, but I'm not. I'm the woman that you failed to brief, you shithead! I've been in this lousy pest hole for fifty years because of you, and now I've got fifty more to get you back for it!"

"Surely, madam, there's no reason to be vindictive about it. After all, if we're both in the same boat—"

"A boat wouldn't be this bad, bastard! We are in the middle of a bloody wilderness with nothing to eat but carrion and grubs! There's nothing to do but wander around after a tribe with less brains than a bunch of morons, and nobody to talk to that has a vocabulary of over forty words except each other.

"Hell yes, I'm vindictive! And I'm going to stay that way for the next fifty years!"

He rolled over and groaned.

She looked at him. "Well, in fifty years, my replacement will be the dolt at the thirteenth-century portal who should have caught your screw-up. Then you get to be his boss. It gives you something to look forward to."

He groaned again.

Chapter One

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

My name is Piotr Kulczynski. I am an accountant. I was taught my craft by the lord I serve, Sir Conrad Stargard.

He is a good lord, and well loved by his people, for he is a giant in mind, body, and soul.

His learning is renowned above that of all other men, and scarce half a day passes when he does not create some useful device or demonstrate some new technique or sing some new song. He has built great mills and efficient factories for his lord Count Lambert and on his own lands, gifted to him by that count, he has thrown up huge buildings in but a few months. Our Church of Christ the Carpenter at Three Walls is reputed to be the biggest in Poland. Sir Conrad says that soon we will be making iron and steel in vast quantities, as well as a sort of mortar called cement.

He is vastly tall, and must bend his head to pass through any normal doorway. For his buildings at Three Walls, he decreed that the doors be tall enough to let him pass with his helmet on. He claims that the next generation of children will be, some of them, as tall as he, because they will be eating properly. The carpenters built as he required, but they laughed that any children of his size must be of his get.

His prowess in battle is above that of all others, and but three days agone he defeated one of the greatest champions in Poland, the Crossman Sir Adolf, in Trial by Combat. He not only destroyed that Knight of the Cross easily, he actually played with the man while he did it, first throwing away his shield and then his sword, winning the fight with his bare hands to show that God was truly on his side.

And he is a saintly man, kind to those in need and always ready to help the poor, the aged, the oppressed. The very Trial I mentioned was caused when, out of pity for a gross of Pruthenian slaves, he beat seven Crossmen in fair combat, killing five and wounding a sixth almost to the death, then saving that man's life with his surgical skill. He met that caravan of slaves when he was traveling a great distance to ransom a casual acquaintance with a vast sum, to keep that man from being hung.

And he has been blessed by God. At the Trial, after he had defeated his opponent so easily, he was foully attacked by four other Crossmen. With my own eyes, I saw four golden arrows fall from the sky, killing the men who would have harmed the Lord's Anointed.

Yet he is my enemy.

Never would I do harm to my lord, nor even think evil of him, for evil is far from all his words and deeds. But since I was a small child I have loved Krystyana.

Before I dared profess my love to her, she was chosen by Count Lambert to be one of his ladies-in-waiting. I could do nothing while she warmed Count Lambert's bed, and those of his knights, for she went to this task willingly. Yet I was consoled, for it is the custom of that lord, once one of his ladies was with child, to marry her to one of the commoners of his village. My father promised to talk to Count Lambert and to Krystyana's parents when the time was right, and I thought that one day within the year I would have my love by my side.

But then Sir Conrad came to Okoitz. He came from someplace to the east, though from exactly where is a mystery, for a priest laid a geas on him that he may not speak of his origins.

I was among those to whom he taught mathematics, and he paid the priest to teach us our letters. He gave me a responsible position, keeping the books of his inn, his brass works, and now the city he was building at Three Walls. This made me a man of some substance, which bolstered my claim to Krystyana's hand.

Then Count Lambert sent my love, along with four others, with Sir Conrad to the vast lands awarded him.

Sir Conrad gave all five ladies positions of considerable importance, and it is his custom that no woman may be forced into marriage, nor even strongly encouraged, but that each may marry the man of her own choosing, or even not marry at all.

My love Krystyana has never looked kindly on me. Even when our positions force us to work together—for she manages the kitchens that feed Sir Conrad's nine hundred people, and I must account for every penny spent—she treats me coldly.

Long have I been convinced that could she but lay by my side for a single night, her love would come to me. Yet I see no way that this could happen.

Today at Count Lambert's town of Okoitz, Annastashia—one of Sir Conrad's five ladies—was married to that fine young knight Sir Vladimir. It was a beautiful ceremony, with Sir Conrad giving the bride away and all the ladies crying. But Krystyana's thoughts were plain on her face, and I knew that she would not be content to marry anyone less than a true belted knight, and that knight, Sir Conrad.

So I wait while hope dwindles.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

The evening after my Trial by Combat, I was annoyed to discover that my loyal carpenters were so convinced that I would lose and be killed that they had made a beautiful coffin for me, and that my loving masons had cut me a fine tombstone. Now they wanted me to tell them what to do with the damn things! I ranted for a while about their lack of faith. Then I rejected my first three thoughts about where these things should be stuffed, deciding that the man who had lost the fight didn't deserve any special favors from me.

The coffin was really a nicely carved rectangular chest, without anything overtly morbid about it, so I told them to carry it back to Three Walls. I'd use it for storing clothes.

We threw away the stone, and much later I found it used as an outdoor table, with my name still carved on it. I should have smashed the damn thing.

I was also miffed to discover that most of my workers had bet against me when I fought Sir Adolf. One of them explained that it was the sensible thing to do. After all, if I won, they knew that their futures were secure, but if I lost, they would each need every penny just to survive! It still left a bad taste in my mouth.

I was able to talk to the Bishop of Wroclaw just before he returned to his cathedral. He was actually in the saddle when he granted me an audience.

"Your excellency, I now have a city of over nine hundred souls without a full-time priest. But I don't want just any priest. I want a man who is capable of running an entire school system. Is it possible for me to get such a scholar?"

"That's interesting, my son, for not three days ago I got a letter from an excellent young scholar looking for just such a position. I shall write him immediately on my return to Wroclaw. Yes. It will be nice having an intelligent Italian in the diocese."

He gave me his ring to kiss, and rode off before I could reply. I had to wait for someone to come all the way from Italy? That could take a year!

Sir Stefan and his father, the baron, were leaving at the same time. There was a lot of bad blood between us, starting last winter over a disagreement about working hours. Since then, a number of other things had caused friction between us, and the man had become my avowed enemy. Everything I did seemed to fan his hatred, and I had just about given up trying to get him off my back. As he left, he bit his thumb at me in insult.

"It's not over, Conrad!" he shouted.

* * *

Christmas at Okoitz was as raucous as it had been the year before. With my people there as well as Count Lambert's and the workers from the cloth mill, the church was no longer big enough to hold us all. They cleared the dyeing vats, washing tubs, and other equipment out of the first floor of the cloth factory, and we held the affair there.

Along with Count Lambert and myself, Sir Vladimir, his two brothers, two of his sisters and all of their husbands and wives, plus his parents sat at the high table along with the priest and the priest's beautiful wife. Added to these were my four remaining ladies and Count Lambert's current six (he was trying to cut down). Thus twenty-four nobles were available for the peasants and workers to take out a year's aggressions on. You'd think that the pranks would have been spread around a bit more, but Count Lambert and I still caught the brunt of it.

At least this year I knew what to expect, and could psych myself up to play the clown before I had to do it. They selected a King of Misrule by passing out bread rolls with a bean in one of them. As luck would have it, the bean came to one of my topmen, the men who climbed to the tops of the huge trees to cut them off so that the trees could be felled. The topmen were all extroverted Yahoos, and I had not been polite to them lately.

The Queen of Misrule fell to one of the clothworkers, a remarkably attractive young woman who at least looked the part.

I won't bore you with the buffoonery that went on. Count Lambert and I left as soon as possible and retired to his chambers.

"Gad! I swear it gets worse every year!" Count Lambert said as he took off the yard-long codpiece he had been forced to wear. He filled two silver goblets from the silver pitcher on the sideboard and handed one to me.

"I can't see how next year could possibly get rowdier, my lord." I took off the pointed wizard's hat I'd been given and took a long pull. The drink was what I needed, though in fact it was wretched stuff. The lack of glass bottles and decent corks ruined medieval wine pretty quick. Most of it was drunk in the year after the grapes were squeezed, and nobody ever considered recording the vintage; wine didn't last long enough to age.

"Just wait. On some matters a peasant can be very creative. But there's nothing to be done. Custom is custom." He sat down on a chest next to a table and motioned me to the one opposite. A chessboard was already set up.

"Still, my lord, it marks the end of quite a year." I picked up a pawn from each side, shook them in my cupped hands and concealed one in each fist, offering them to him.

"It has been that. Think! A year ago today was the first time I'd met you. One might say it's our anniversary. A year ago yesterday you killed that brigand, Sir Rheinburg, who had been infesting my lands and killing my people. And three days ago you killed Sir Adolf right here on my tourney field. Counting your battle with the Crossmen on my trail, that makes three fights in one year!" He had chosen black and was moving his pieces out in the Dragon variation that I had made the mistake of showing him.

"More than that, my lord, depending on what you call a fight. By the time I got here, I had been involved in four separate acts of violence." There wasn't much I could do about his opening but make the standard replies.

Seeing his eyebrow raise at "four," I said, "There was my first run-in with Sir Adolf where he bashed me in the head. Then one night on the river at Cracow, Tadaos the boatman killed three thieves who were trying to murder him. You know about the irate creditor on your trail, and the fight with Sir Rheinburg's band of hoodlums. The fight with the whoremasters' guild in Cieszyn took out three of the thugs, and against those child molesters, Sir Vladimir and I killed or maimed six out of the seven Crossmen.

"I guess I can't count the incident at the ferry at Cracow last summer, since it started when I got a rock on the side of my head and it was over before I got my wits back. The rabies victim wasn't a fight. He had me so scared that I killed him out of fright. It was simple murder." The opening was over, and Count Lambert was moving from a Sicilian defense into a strong center position.

"That last thing you mentioned, this 'rabies victim,' was a vampire. They must be killed. You did right, Sir Conrad. But think, in about a year you have been in what?—say ten bits of action. You forgot your brawl with Sir Stefan. Do you realize that I haven't had the chance to draw my sword in earnest in four years? And I must spend a third of my time on the road."

"True, my lord, but you always travel in the company of a dozen armored knights." Now what the devil was I going to do about that damn bishop?

"Dog's blood, but you're right! From now on I'll travel in simple garb and I'll travel alone! Let the rest follow an hour behind! That ought to get some action going."

"My lord, I was just talking idly, trying to get your mind off your chess. I never meant to get you killed!" I was being forced into the corners where I couldn't maneuver.

"Well, damn the chess! I know! I'll fill two saddlebags with silver, and try to hide the fact. Word will spread like a covey of scared rabbits!" He took my queen's bishop.

"Please, my lord. Your life is important to me." I slaughtered his knight in return.

"Well, thank you. A touching sentiment. But a man must keep his hand in, mustn't he?" He took my knight with his pawn! Now why the hell? . . . Oh no!

It was best not to let this run too long. "You never told me how your beehives were doing, my lord." I castled, but I knew it was too late.

"What? Oh, wonderful! Twenty-nine of your hives caught themselves bees. We only harvested six of them, but think! From what you said, that means there must be twenty-nine wild hives out there. Add that to the twenty-three I left, and that means fifty-two new hives next year, for a total of seventy-five! And every man of mine will have at least a gross of hives next summer! In a few years, we'll have honey pouring out of our noses!" He continued his merciless attack.

That last simile bothered me because like most engineers, my mental imagery is entirely too graphic. I see things while people are talking. The image formed was of honey coming out of Count Lambert's nose and being licked up as soon as it filtered through his thick moustache. Sometimes I wish I was a dull person.

"I wish my own had done as well. By the time I got to my lands last summer, it was a bit late in the season. My gross of beehives only got me eight colonies." I made a try at forking his king and rook, but he saw it and blocked.

"A pity! Shall I harvest one more of mine and send it to you?" He pushed an innocent-looking pawn.

"Thank you, my lord, but no. You know my customs. I always eat the same as my workers. Split between nine hundred people, the harvest of one hive would come to about one honey cake each. In a few years, we'll have enough to make mead." I was forced to trade a bishop for two pawns.

"Mead! I've heard of that. My grandfather was said to have loved it. But who could afford to drink it now, honey being as rare as it is? I doubt if anyone still knows the way of making it. Do you know?" He took my queen's rook, hardly glancing at the board.

"It happens that I've made several barrels of the stuff. It's simple enough, and in truth, my lord, it was better than what we're drinking. I'll show your people how when the time comes."

In modern Poland, the making of alcohol in any form is illegal without a state license. In America, where I went to college, any adult may make wine or beer, up to two hundred gallons a year, which is a lot. One of my dorm brothers was over twenty-one, and—purely in the interest of studying ancient technology—we had produced seven plastic garbage containers of the stuff, mead being the cheapest palatable drink that is easily made. I recall that it was under two dollars a gallon, buying honey wholesale and making mead of twelve percent alcohol.

"Sir Conrad, I know that I have said this too many times before, and that you have always proved me wrong. But what if you should die? What if no one else remembers how to make it?"

My position was untenable. I saw a forced mate in five moves, and Count Lambert would probably see a shorter one. I tipped my king over, acknowledging defeat. Count Lambert started to reset the board for another game, turning the board so that I would play black.

"As you wish, my lord. You dilute the honey with water at the ratio of three-to-one if you want a sweet wine, or from four-to-one even to six-to-one if you want a dry wine for hot summer afternoons. Boil it for a little while and skim off the foam that comes up.

"Add spices if you want to. You might have some fun playing with them. Lemons are good, but I don't think you can get them here. You might try substituting a few handfuls of rose hips. Or try apples. In fact, substituting apple juice for the water, and using less honey makes a fine drink. All of that is to your own taste. Making any wine is an art form.

"The only important point is to use wine yeast, not beer yeast. That is to say, have a merchant bring you some very new wine up from Hungary. Tell him you want it still bubbling when it gets here. Put a little of the dregs into the mead after it has cooled.

"It's fit to drink in a few weeks, and it will last a long time if you keep the air away from it. After that, always save some of the dregs from the last batch to start the new one. Start out with new barrels, and keep it far away from a beer brewery or a bakery."

Once I had a glass works going, I could make a vapor lock easily enough. These people didn't have a decent cork, anyway. The nearest cork trees were in Spain, and I doubt if the Spaniards knew what to do with them. A siphon? The nearest rubber tree was in the Amazon valley!

"That's all? Not nearly as hard as the way you told us of making steel! You've taught us so much. Your mills, the factories, your excellent hunt! Did I tell you that I have thought on a way to do one of your 'Mongol hunts' on all of my lands, and thus clear them of the wolves and bears that have been killing my people?"

"No, my lord, you hadn't." Count Lambert had gotten entirely too good at the modern far-flung sort of chess-style. This time I threw an old-fashioned Stonewall attack at him.

"Well, you remember that the problems were that my lands are many days' walk across, and if the peasants acting as beaters had to be out more than one day, we would have difficulty sheltering them at night, for the hunt must take place in the late fall, when the game is the fattest and the furs are good.

"Also, no one knew how we could keep the wolves from sneaking out in the dark.

"The solution is simple. Not one big hunt, but a lot of smaller ones! I shall divide my lands into many smaller 'hunting districts.' Each of these will be of such a size that a man can walk from the border to the center in less than a day." He replied to the Stonewall in the standard manner. He hadn't forgotten a thing!

"Interesting, my lord, but what stops the animals from crossing from one district to another between hunts? You could have one district cleaned out, and then have it reinfested before you cleared out the next." I fianchettoed my queen's bishop.

"Not if we do all of them on the same day! I think I have peasants enough to do it, and if the nobles tire of the sport, why, the commoners can help with the killing as well. Also, I think that many knights from the surrounding counties might well come if invited." He was pushing in at my center again.

"It sounds good to me, my lord. You can count on my support." I castled king's side.

"More than that, Sir Conrad. I was counting on your leadership. I want you to organize the thing."

"Well, if you wish, my lord. But are you sure that I'm the best man for the job? I really don't know much about hunting. I don't know the borders of your lands at all. And I don't know which of your knights and barons own which sections of your lands. I don't even know who the surrounding counts are, except for your brother."

"It could be a very remunerative position, Sir Conrad. As Master of the Hunt, you could claim a certain portion of the take for yourself. All the deer skins, for example."

"Thank you, my lord. But I repeat, I'll do it if you want me to, but I don't think I'm the best man for it."

"I've already said that I want you to!"

I sighed. When Count Lambert wants something, he gets it. Best to bow to the inevitable. "As you wish, my lord, and thank you. Would you object if I appointed a deputy to assist me?"

"Not in the least. Who did you have in mind?"

"I think I'll ask Sir Miesko first. If he's not interested, then perhaps Sir Vladimir."

"Excellent. Let me know when everything's settled. No hurry on anything. Work all winter if you need to."

"Thank you, my lord. On another subject, the second mill, the one that is to thresh and grind grain. I can't help noticing that work is slowing down. Do you know why that is?" I was being smashed back into the corners again.

"In fact I do. I ordered it slowed down because I haven't figured out yet what to do with my lawbreakers if there is no grain to grind. As it is, if there are no lawbreakers, my peasants must take turns at the hand-operated mill. After all, the grain must be ground and everybody knows it. This keeps them all on the lookout for any infraction. It also gives me a form of punishment that everyone knows is not cruel, but simply tedious. Few men would turn in a neighbor for a whipping, but for a few days at the stone? Why, that's treated with humor.

"As a result, I have very little real crime and my people all love me. But without their having to grind grain, what am I to do?"

"I see, my lord. So you need a job that is unpleasant but necessary, and must be done year around by a few men."

"Yes. You have a thought?"

"Perhaps, my lord. Did you know that right here, we are sitting on top of one of the world's major coal deposits?"

"Coal? Right here?"

"Many layers of coal, my lord. They stretch almost all the way from Cracow to Wroclaw. I don't know how far down the first big seam is around here, but it's one of the thickest in the world, more than two dozen yards thick in most places. I would guess that it's at least eight dozen yards down. But most farmers would find working in a mine to be unpleasant."

"Yes, I can see it! It might work! Slaving all day in the cold and dark and wet! They are cold, wet, and dark, aren't they?"

"Most assuredly, my lord."

"Yes, that would solve the problem nicely. Only, what would we do with all the coal?"

"Well, heat your houses with it, for starters! Later on, I'll show you lots of things you can do with it."

"Now, Sir Conrad, I know that won't work. I know a man who tried to burn coal in his firepit. It stank up his house so badly that they all had to run out into the snow! That house stank for years!"

"In an open firepit, you're right my lord. It takes a special kind of a stove. I hope to be making potbellied stoves by next summer, at a price that a peasant can afford. They'll burn anything."

"Excellent! It's getting to be a long walk for firewood, and the peasants will see the need for coal. You will be able to show my people the way of digging this mine?" He took my rook and knight in rapid succession. All I got out of it was his bishop.

"Of course, my lord."

"Then it's settled. I'll have work speeded up on the grain mill. It should be done by spring, so have your plans ready right after spring planting.

"Another thing I wanted to discuss with you. I like that blacksmith you sent me. I don't think he's as good as Ilya, but he doesn't make me mad enough to kill twice a day. What say I trade you, Ilya for the new man?" I lost my queen.

"Fine by me, my lord, if both men are willing."

"They are. It was them that brought the matter up to me. They also both wanted to leave Ilya's wife here, but I don't see how we can allow that. The Church would not be pleased, and it's never been too happy with me."

"The Church is not pleased because you are separated from your wife, my lord. Why can't you grant the same privilege to Ilya?"

"Why? Because I'm a nobleman and he's a commoner, that's why! The commons don't have the brains or the ability to regulate their own lives properly. That's why they serve us, and why we serve them. I may not be the pillar of marital fidelity, but my wife has not taken another husband and I have not taken another wife. What these smiths are proposing is nothing less than that the one should step into the bed of the other! That is clearly against the laws of the Church. Without the influence of the Church and Christian morality, we'd have nothing but chaos on our hands! The Church must be maintained and its laws enforced!"

"I suppose you're right, my lord. Well, what's a few more mouths to feed?" I lost my last knight and my position was terrible. I knocked over my king. I had lost two out of two. Damn. When we first started playing, a year ago, I'd won the first two dozen games.

"Good. Then shall we go make an appearance at the festivities?"

They started the gift-giving when we returned. The gambling pot I'd won in the course of surviving my Trial by Combat had a fair amount of jewelry in it, which made gift-giving pretty simple. I started with those nobles least important to me, Sir Vladimir's sister and her husband who had come down from Gneizno. I'd never met them before and would likely never see them again, so a small gift was appropriate. I took out a sack of my least valuable jewelry, poured it on a tray and asked each to choose what he or she wanted. They were delighted.

As I went up my guest list, I periodically noted when the pile was growing small and added another sack of jewels, a step up from the first batch, but nobody knew that but me. My own ladies were near the end, and after Annastashia took her choice, I added to it the purse of silver I had denied her a few days before.

"I hear you've been acting properly, daughter!" I said, and the crowd cheered. The rumor was out that she had thrown Sir Vladimir out of her bed once I'd adopted her and she was no longer a peasant wench.

I'd saved Count Lambert's priest, Father John, and his magnificent French wife until the end. Lady Francine was easily the most beautiful woman I had seen in this century. She chose a heavy gold pendant and chain with some sort of green stone in it. It might have been an emerald, but who could tell? It was polished smooth and glassy, since the cutting of facets hadn't been invented yet.

"Father John, last year I was ignorant of local customs and didn't realize that I owed you a gift, so the best I could do at the time was a poor one. This year, I notice that your altar furnishings could use some improvement. Would this be acceptable?"

I held up one of the stranger things I'd found in my booty from the Crossmen, a large and ornate glass goblet. The crowd's reaction surprised me. Gold and silver jewelry they had taken in their stride, but a piece of glass got a chorus of "oohs" and "aahs."

Father John stood up. "Last year I gave you some of my carvings. This Christmas I hadn't expected to see you alive! The truth is that I have nothing to give you in return!" The crowd laughed.

"Well, you won't get off that light!" I said. "We've just built a big church at Three Walls that is bare of all carving. I'll take it out in trade!" The crowd was in a good mood.

The other nobles distributed their gifts. I collected quite a lot of nicely embroidered garments, and Sir Vladimir and his brothers had clubbed up to buy me a magnificent gold-handled dagger, with all sorts of stone and inlay work.

Count Lambert's gift to me was to publicly appoint me his Master of the Hunt, a job that I didn't want. I tried to take it with good grace.

After most of the gift-giving was over, I stood up again. "I'm going back to Three Walls after the wedding. I won't be here for Twelfth Night, when one gifts the members of the opposite class, so I have to give my gifts to the residents of Okoitz early. Bring it in!" Four men rolled in two heavy barrels.

"Last year, Ilya promised to make each of you a set of door hinges. Then I kept him busy all year long working on my projects, and now I'm stealing him from you!" Ilya looked surprised. This was the first he'd heard of my approval of his permanent move to Three Walls. "In those barrels is a set of brass hinges and a brass door latch for every commoner's door in Okoitz—no longer will you close your doors by lifting them into place!" That brought down the house!

When the noise stopped, I said, "What's more, I'm going to be rude enough to hint at what I want for my present! You remember all those seeds I gave you last Christmas? Well, I want them back!

"If you can't do that, then give me about a quarter of your new seeds! And I'd like you to loan me the packages they came in, so I'll know what's what!" They all laughed and cheered again, so I expected that we'd have watermelon next year.

As things were winding down and I was leaving, Count Lambert half jokingly said, "You gave the priest that magnificent goblet and I only got this gold chain?"

I was dumbstruck. That chain weighed half a kilo! It was probably worth eight thousand American dollars!

"I didn't realize that you wanted the goblet, my lord. But I'll make you a promise. In four years, I'll gift you with a hundred glass goblets, and enough glassware so that every man below you, commoners and all, can toast you with it!"

It was his turn to be dumbstruck.

Chapter Two

The next day we had a beautiful wedding. Everything went off nicely, the church was packed and I gave the bride to a beaming Sir Vladimir.

As father of the bride, I paid for the wedding feast, which also was held in the cloth factory for lack of anything else large enough. Lambert gave me a good price on the food and drink, since if it wasn't for the wedding, he would have had to put on a feast that day anyway. It was the Christmas season.

The honeymoon trip wasn't then a local custom, so the next morning we went back toward Three Walls, Sir Vladimir and his new wife included. We got as far as Sir Miesko's, where they were ready for us.

After the workers were settled into the copious hay of Sir Miesko's biggest barn, we sat down to dinner in the manor. At his suggestion, since seven more places were available once Sir Miesko's family and my party were seated, I invited in my bailiff, my two foremen and their wives, and my accountant, Piotr.

These people were awestruck at the honor done them, and scarcely said a word as supper started, although Piotr kept glancing at Krystyana, who was sitting across from him. The poor kid was still smitten.

I told Sir Miesko about Count Lambert's plan for the Great Hunt. I also told him that I really didn't want to get much involved with it, but that Count Lambert had insisted. "What I'm building up to is that I would like you to do the job for me. Would you like to be my deputy? Count Lambert said that we could take as our portion pretty much whatever we wanted. Do you think you might be interested?"

"I might. Even a small share of the take from all of Count Lambert's lands would be vast! Consider what was harvested from your lands alone! But there are details to be considered . . ."

We were soon into a deep conversation, with Lady Richeza and Krystyana sitting between us. These two fine and understanding women looked at each other, got up, and sat back down once Sir Miesko and I had scooted close together. The conversation never broke and not a word was said about the new table arrangement.

The deal we made was that Sir Miesko would take complete charge of the project in all but name. He would divide the county into eight or nine hunting districts, and appoint a district master for each. The district masters would be responsible for building an enclosure if something suitable wasn't already available, seeing that everything was properly arranged and feeding the people participating. In return for this they would get all the deer skins taken in their district.

Peasants participating would divide one-quarter of the meat between them, and the nobles there would get another quarter. The landowners would get half the meat, proportioned according to their areas. Sir Miesko would get all the furs taken, except for the wolf skins, which were to be mine. I also got any aurochs captured, to be delivered live to me. They were an endangered species and I meant to domesticate them.

"Sir Conrad, you're taking the short end of the stick!" Sir Miesko said. It's interesting that he used an expression that has lasted to modern times. The local custom among these largely illiterate people was to account for debts by cutting notches into a stick. If I lent you three pigs, we would cut three notches into a stick of wood. Then we would split the stick about in half, down the middle of the notches, so we each had a record. When the sticks were put back together again, it would be obvious if either of us had done further whittling! Wood never splits evenly, and as the lender, the creditor, I got the larger stick of wood and became the stockholder. You, as the borrower, got the short end of the stick.

"I'm satisfied with the deal as it stands."

"Be that as it may, Sir Conrad, wolf skins aren't worth much. Half the time they're burned along with the rest of the animal! The other furs will be worth a thousand times as much."

"Fine. You'll be doing all the work and bearing all the expenses. I'm happy just to get the whole project off my shoulders. Just remember to stress that all the females and young of useful species, along with one-sixth of the males, are to be spared."

"That much is obvious, once you've explained it. But you've been given a gift and I've taken it from you."

"I said I was happy. Just try not to get me in trouble, okay?"

"Rest assured of that. But I don't think my trouble or expenses will be large. I need only write a few dozen letters. It will cost me nothing to send them since every landowner in the county, or at least their men, comes by here monthly to deliver food for your city at Three Walls."

"What? I thought that you were providing our food."

"I am. You asked me to keep you supplied and we agreed on prices. Surely you don't think that the hundred farmers I have here could feed the almost thousand folk you have in your valley! I mentioned your needs and your prices to my fellow noblemen, and they have delivered their surplus grains here, for pickup by your people.

"I have paid the others precisely what I have charged you, so I have made no immoral profit. I have charged them reasonable rates for fodder for their pack animals and storage in my barns, but surely you can't complain about that."

I was surprised, but I didn't have a legitimate bitch. I was getting what I had agreed on.

"No, no, Sir Miesko, I have no complaint. I simply had never thought it out. I owe you thanks for supplying my needs without bothering me with details. I hope this will be a precedent for the Great Hunt."

While we were talking, the party went on around us. Sir Miesko's wife, Lady Richeza, is the most gracious woman imaginable. Warm and caring, she was working my awkward subordinates into the conversation. By the time I was back into it, they were all talking boisterously about recent events. Soon she summoned her musicians and we were all dancing.

I noticed that little Piotr Kulczynski asked Krystyana to dance a waltz, and she turned him down. He soon went outside, and Lady Richeza followed. As things were breaking up, she came to me. "That poor boy truly loves Krystyana."

"I know. It hurts me to see his pain. But she won't even look at him! That little kid is brilliant! With a proper education he'd be a Nobel prize winner."

"And what is that?"

"Where I come from, there is a yearly set of prizes given to those who are judged to have made the greatest contributions to an understanding of the world around us, and the greatest contributions to literature, medicine, and peace. To win one of these is a greater honor than to, say, be the chief administrator of the United Nations. It also pays well. With training, I think Piotr could win the prize in mathematics."

"Yours must be a wondrous land."

"There is much good about it, but also much bad. This land has much to be said for it."

"Yet you came here."

"It wasn't exactly voluntary. Still, I can't say that I regret it. I think I've found a home here."

"A home with Krystyana?"

"No. Please understand that I like Krystyana. She's a fine girl, an intelligent girl and competent at whatever she sets her mind to. And—I hope you aren't offended by my saying this—she's a wonderful bed partner. But, dammit, she's fifteen and I'm thirty-one! I've had seventeen years of formal schooling and she's had about three months! There's too big a gap between us to consider marriage. Marriage should be a thing between equals. Krystyana and Piotr and I would all be better off if they would get together."

"Do they know your feelings about this?"

"I think so. I've tried to be obvious about it."

"But you haven't actually talked with them about it," she said.

"No, I guess I haven't. Sometimes it's hard . . ."

"Would you object if I talked to them?"

"Object? I'd be forever grateful!"

"Then I will see what I can do."

She tried, but nothing came of it.

* * *

The next day we were back in Three Walls, and the day after was a normal working day. The country folk knocked off work for two weeks around Christmas, but the people at Three Walls had mostly been recruited from a city. City folk worked whenever work was available, and there was plenty for us to do.

Winter is the best time of the year for logging, the wood is drier and the logs are easier to move around on the snow. Also, the tops of the fir trees were about the only fodder the outdoor animals were going to get. Besides the six dozen bucks left over from the fall's hunt, we had a thousand sheep in the valley. All of them ewes.

I got a lot of ribbing about that, the gist of which was that I didn't know that rams were needed to make little sheep, but I didn't care. I happened to remember that sheep have a five-month gestation period. Any ewe you buy in December is pregnant if she's going to be. And sheep are sexually mature in six months. Next year we'd have plenty of rams. I think.

Well, I had one ram in another, much smaller herd. If he fell over dead from exhaustion next breeding season, I'd have to buy some more in a hurry.

We kept the sawmill going all winter, with sixty women walking back and forth on that huge teeter-totter. The main wooden buildings were up, but we needed lumber for furnishings, shipping containers, barrels, and so on.

Some construction went on as well. The coke ovens were dry-laid sandstone, so there wasn't any worry about mortar freezing. But putting in foundations was difficult.

The big problem was the lack of decent artificial light. By Christmas, we were down to about six hours of daylight. Most Americans don't realize just how far north Europe is. Southern Poland is farther north than Lake Superior, and our seacoast is farther north than the shores of Hudson Bay. A high latitude means a large yearly variation in the length of the day.

Mining went on continuously, of course: it was always dark down there. It was also fairly warm in the mine, and coal mining came to be the job everybody was trying to get. I hoped that Count Lambert wouldn't hear about it.

But even when the weather was good, which wasn't all that often, we were lucky to spend seven hours a day working.

Well, if you can't spend, invest!

I set up a school for the adults. A school for the children was already being taught by two of Lady Richeza's women, so once the children's school was out, the adults took over. Most of my people couldn't read, write, or do simple arithmetic.

By spring they could. That's not quite the accomplishment that it sounds, because Polish is an easier language to learn than English. Polish is absolutely phonetic in its spelling, rather than nearly random as English is. Every letter has a distinct sound, and there are no silent letters. You spell it exactly as you speak it. Learning to spell in English gave me nightmares.

Many Americans who write use spellchecking programs in their personal computers, since the English-speaking peoples can rarely spell their own language. When I got back to Poland after my college days, none of my Polish friends would believe me when I told them this. They thought that I was telling an ethnic joke!

But we had enough people around who could teach arithmetic and reading. Aside from monitoring things, teaching a course in first aid, and tutoring Piotr in math, I had a fair amount of time to myself, which was wonderful.

I could close the door of my new office, sit down on my new armchair, put my feet up on my nice new desk and do some serious thinking. Mostly about standards. The weights and measures of the Middle Ages were a vast agglomeration of random events. Length was measured in feet, yards, cubits, spans, hands, fingers, miles, and days. Not only was there no agreed-on relationship between those units, but the size of the unit varied from place to place. A Cieszyn yard was not equal to a Cracow yard which was not equal to a Wroclaw yard.

It even varied from commodity to commodity. Fine velvets, for example, were sold by the Troy yard, which was shorter than all of the above. And these weren't minor differences of a few percent. The Wroclaw yard was half again longer than the Cracow yard.

Weights were in even worse shape. Cheese, wheat, and oats were all sold by the quarter, for example. A quarter of what, you ask? Why a quarter of cheese, wheat, or oats! There was no "whole" or "half." But a quarter of wheat was more than five times larger than a quarter of cheese, which was maybe a hundred kilos. And a quarter of oats was bigger than both of the others put together. And of course a quarter in one city was not equal to a quarter anyplace else.

Well, a pint of milk weighed a pound, but milk is the stupidest standard possible. The specific gravity of milk varies by at least five percent, with the richest milk being the lightest. It spoils quickly, so there is no possibility of having a standard jar of milk somewhere. Yet this didn't seem to bother anybody but me. Of course, if a merchant sold short weight, he might get hung, but you never got any complaints out of him after that.

The Church had been working on calendar reform for a century, and things in Poland were not really absurd. At least we all agreed on which day was Sunday and what year it was. From what a merchant friend, Boris Novacek, tells me, in Italy it is possible to leave Venice in 1232, get to Florence in 1233, then go to Milan in 1231.

Some people started the new year on Christmas, some a week later, and some on March first. For them, December really was the tenth month.

Well, we had a standard yard. Given my own choice, I would have preferred to use a meter, but my liege lord had specifically ordered me to use his yard, the distance from his fingertip to his turned-away nose. This was shorter than a meter and slightly longer than the American yard.

And we had a base-twelve numbering system. This was something that was sort of done to me at first, but I soon saw the advantages of the duodecimal system. Since twelve has more factors than ten, you run into infinitely repeating decimals less often. It often takes fewer digits to express large numbers and math just becomes easier to do.

Since last winter, I had been carefully copying down every constant I could remember, and already I had several pages of them. The distance from the Earth to the Moon and to the Sun. The specific gravity of aluminum and how many centimeters to the American yard and all sorts of things. An engineer needs thousands of numbers, and much of what I did not remember, I could interpolate.

Playing with numbers and all the constants, I was delighted to discover that a thousand (that is to say, 1728 in base ten) of our yards was almost exactly equal to an American mile! The American mile is almost equal to the old Roman mile, which was still somewhat in use.

So, a dozen yards was a dozyard. Twelve dozyards was a twelmile and twelve of these was a mile.

Going down, one twelfth of a yard was a twelyard. Divide that by twelve and you had a dozmil, and a mil was about half a millimeter.

Another nice accident that happened was that a cubic yard of cold water weighed slightly under an American ton, and a thousandth of that, or one cubic twelyard, weighed just over an American pound. This gave us a standard of weight and volume. We had a ton, a pound, and a pint, which was the volume of a pound of cold water.

In a few days, I came up with a complete set of weights and measures, all based either on our yard, or in the case of my electrical standards, on Avogadro's number. Our amp was actually related to the number of electrons flowing.

The medieval day was divided into twelve hours, as was the night. But the day was measured from sunrise to sunset. This meant that an hour on Midsummer's day was three times longer than an hour on Christmas day. This made paying people by the hour a little silly. In fact, most men were hired by the day, and were paid half as much in the winter as they were in the summer.

We obviously needed a clock, but when I set out to build one, I was annoyed to discover that I couldn't remember how an escapement worked.

A grandfather clock has a weight which drives a series of gears that turn the hands. The speed of this turning is controlled, slowed down, by a pendulum. The escapement connects the pendulum to the gear train. It must also impart a little energy to the pendulum to make up for friction losses. I couldn't sketch one that I could convince myself would work.

I was hard to live with for three days and then designed a new one. On the fast end of the gear train, I put a large drum with a zigzag groove running around it. A small wheel attached to the pendulum ran back and forth in the groove.

The gears facing the way they have to, this meant that our pendulum didn't swing from side to side. It swung forward and back. Also, it didn't go tic-toc-tic. It went fump-fump-fump. But nobody here had ever seen a grandfather clock, so I didn't hear any Polack jokes.

I also came up with a new system of time. Staying with the base-twelve standard, we had a twelve-hour day, rather than the usual twenty-four hour day. The clock was reset occasionally so that zero happened at dawn. This was at the nine o'clock position of a modern clock. At the equinoxes, three was at noon, with the fat hand pointing up, and six was at sunset. Midnight was nine, with the fat hand pointing down.

There were four hands on the face, each moving twelve times faster than the one before. After the fat hand, which showed hours, there was a longer arrow for dozminutes, a wiggly hand that showed minutes, and a thin straight hand for twelminutes. Or, you could say that the fat hand went around once a day and the skinny hand went around once a minute. Just remember that our hour was a hundred-twenty modern minutes long, and our minute was as long as fifty modern seconds.

When I got it built, using parts I had made at the brass works, I assembled them in the coffin the carpenters had made for me. I hadn't bothered trying to make anything small, and that coffin was a nice piece of furniture, even though I got sick of looking at it in my bedroom. I had a built in closet and a chest of drawers, anyway.

It took about a week of TLC ("Tender, Loving Care" in the colorful slang of American engineers) to get it working reasonably well, and it never was accurate to more than one percent, but it was good enough. It had to be oiled daily (goose grease seemed to work best) and the weight raised just as often, but what the heck.

I set the clock up by the south wall of the dining room, so the fat hand, which had a little sun on it, moved about with the position of the sun. People seemed to have very little difficulty reading it, or picking up the concept of standard time. I simply said that we would start work when the fat hand was here, eat dinner when it was there, and stop work when it was over there. Krystyana made sure that the kitchen staff served our meals according to the clock, and that was that. There are advantages to being a medieval lord. No committees!

Our system of measuring angles naturally followed from this clock. Imagining a horizontal line drawn through the axle of the hands, you called out an angle as though it was a time of day as shown by the fat hand. A three o'clock angle was a right angle, and all angles were measured clockwise rather than counterclockwise, as is the modern way of doing it.

I also designed a calendar, with four thirteen-week quarters and no months at all. New Year's Day happened on the winter solstice, and wasn't a day of the week. That is to say, it went Saturday, New Year's Day, Sunday. On leap years, there were two New Year's Days. This meant that the calendar for every year was the same, and should reduce confusion considerably. But I tabled it because I decided that I couldn't get away with it.

I could get away with designing a system of weights and measures because there were so many of them that one more didn't make much difference. I could design a new clock because nobody had ever seen a clock before, not in Poland, anyway. But the Church had spent centuries fumbling with the calendar and it would take someone with a lot more weight than I had to push a new system through. Maybe once I beat the Mongols.

Toward the end of January, I made my monthly visit to Okoitz. It was part of my contract with Count Lambert.

I got there early in the morning, since my mount, Anna, can travel farther in half an hour than a peasant family can walk in two days.

There was a commotion in the bailey when I got there, and Count Lambert waved me over to one of the peasant's rooms on the outer wall. "Some trouble here, Sir Conrad. Perhaps you should look at it."

An entire family was lying in the bailey on the usual straw mattresses. They were all dead, with not a mark on them. A man, his wife, and four children lay peacefully as if asleep, their bodies cold and stiff. A fire had burned itself out, but these huts had straw roofs and the walls weren't all that well-sealed. I didn't see how it would be possible to asphyxiate in there. It hadn't been particularly cold, so I doubt they had all frozen to death.

Food poisoning? I'd seen a woman get ptomaine once, and there had been nothing peaceful about it. There had been vomit all over the place!

Some disease? That had to be it, but I'd never heard of a disease where the person didn't even know he was dying.

I came out and said, "I'm mystified, my lord. All I can imagine is some disease. Once these people are taken care of, have sulfur burned in there. Burn all their food stores, on the off chance that they somehow poisoned themselves. In fact, I'd suggest that you have all their belongings burned.

"And fire up your sauna. After they're buried, and get that done today, everyone who has touched the bodies should clean themselves thoroughly. But all that is simply a precaution. I really don't know what killed them." Since I had touched the corpses, I stooped and washed my hands with snow.

"It shall be as you say, Sir Conrad." Count Lambert nodded to one of his men, who went off to make arrangements. "There has been a lot of talk about witchcraft lately. Do you think . . . ?"

"No, my lord, I don't. Any so-called 'witches' around are just a bunch of crazy old ladies. If they would eat properly, most of them wouldn't be senile."

"But everyone knows about witches!"

"Tell me, my lord, why is it that every witch you hear about is a poor miserable old hag? If they really had magical powers, wouldn't they make themselves into beautiful wealthy young women?"

"You have a point there. I'll keep an eye out for beautiful young grandmothers who are rich."

"Do that, my lord. Who were these people?"

"You don't recognize them? That's Janina's family."

Janina was one of the girls that I took with me to Three Walls from Okoitz. She was running the store there and was a close friend.

"My God. It'll be rough telling her. Her whole family."

"Not quite. Her little sister—Kotcha, I think she's called—had supper and spent the night with one of the other families. The poor child is in a very bad state."

I remembered the kid now. Last winter she had become a good friend of Anna's, and together they had hauled logs in the snow. "Perhaps she should come back with me to Three Walls, my lord. She could live with Janina."

"A good thought. We will ask the child about it after the funeral."

I never did find out what killed those people.

Interlude One

I hit the STOP button.

"So what killed them, Tom?"

"I don't know. I can check it out if you wish."

He turned on a keyboard and began typing.

"With all our technology, why hasn't somebody developed some decent artificial-intelligence programs? It can't be all that difficult. Then you wouldn't have to use that silly keyboard," I said.

"Such programs have been developed. I've just forbidden their use. Machine intelligence is dehumanizing to the people that use it. I like people and I want to live in a human world."

"Aren't you exaggerating a bit?"

"I don't think so. The ballet they put on last night. Did you enjoy it?"

"Sure. It was great. What does that have to do with computers?"

"Everything. That whole show could have been simulated by a computer and displayed in one of our tanks to a degree of accuracy such that you couldn't tell if it was real or not. Would it have been the same?"

"Hmm . . . No, somehow I don't think so, but I'm not sure why."

"Well I am. What makes ballet or any other art form worthwhile is the fact that it is done by people. When you watched the dancers, you were putting yourself in their place, imagining what they were thinking and feeling. A recording or transmission of that performance would not have been as good, because you would have been farther removed from the people doing it. A mere computer display of the same show would have been absolutely worthless."

"But if you didn't know—"

"Maybe you could have been fooled. But you would have been angry when you found out. Back to that dead family. It was an onion mold got them. Toxin 8771 from mold 15395, extinct in 1462. The really deadly ones don't last very long. Killing your host, or the people who cultivate your host, is bad ecology and not good for your own survival."

He hit the START button.

Chapter Three

My monthly two-day visits to Okoitz were used to supervise the construction there, but just then there wasn't much to do. The cloth factory was shut down until spring. Without glass or a decent light, the only way you could work indoors was next to an open window, a little rough in this weather. At that, you could only get in six hours a day in good weather.

I checked out the wet mill that sawed wood, worked hammers, and did all sorts of work. There were thousands of tons of water in there, and if it froze, the mill would be wrecked. I checked each of the tanks, but everything was still liquid. The walls of the mill were a half a yard thick at the thinnest, and that much wood is a good insulator even if it is wet. The windmill kept turning even when it wasn't in use, and my calculations had shown that the energy imparted should keep the water warm enough even in the worst weather. But theoretical calculations are often a long ways from reality! I was relieved.

Work was progressing on the grain mill, but it was simpler than the wet mill we'd built last summer, and Vitold, the carpenter, needed no help from me.

Quite a bit of logging was going on, mostly to clear land for pasturing more sheep. Count Lambert had been buying wool to keep his mill running, and he thought that this was stupid. They were using the steel saws I'd shown the smiths in Cieszyn how to make, but they didn't need my help.

So I took a sauna to make sure that I wasn't carrying anything communicable, and then looked up Kotcha.

I sort of fell into the position of Janina's sister's foster parent. Janina was living in my household, and in fact I slept with her some of the time, so I suppose that the relationship was a natural one. Kotcha was silent through the mass and funeral ceremony. The world can be very brutal when you're nine years old. After her family was in the ground, she wanted to talk to Anna.

My mount was not an ordinary horse. She was a bioengineered creation from some advanced civilization somewhere. Or maybe I should say somewhen, because Anna said they were in the distant past and they used time machines, which she didn't understand. She couldn't talk, of course, but she could spell things out. She was intelligent in an odd sort of way, and she was a full member of my household. She even got paid like everybody else, not that she spends much of it. Most adults wouldn't believe any of this, but a nine-year-old girl has no such difficulty. They were good friends.

"Kotcha, do you think that you would like to come to Three Walls with Anna and me?"

"Where would I live?"

"Why, in my household, with your sister and me and Anna."

"Anna lives in your house?"

"Some of the time, and it's more of an apartment than a house. Anna has a stall in the barn, too, but most of the time she sleeps in the living room."

"Could I sleep with Anna?"

"If you want to. Or you could sleep with your sister or even have a room of your own, except when we have company over. I bet you'd take good care of Anna. She gets a good grooming in the barn, but I've always felt that she deserves special care."

Anna nodded her head, Yes. Then she tapped her right forehoof and scratched the ground with her left. We had this code worked out.

"You want something that you want to pay for," I said to Anna. "You mean you want to hire Kotcha?"

Yes.

"Well, what do you think, Kotcha? Do you want the job?"

"Yes!"

"Good. Does a penny a week sound all right to both of you?"

Yes and "Yes."

"Then the two of you have a deal, and you might as well start now. Give Anna a good rubdown. If you need anything, I'll be at the castle. Remember that you're in my household now, Kotcha. You can always come to me with problems."

Giving her something to do was probably the best thing for the kid. Physical activity is usually the best therapy for someone whose problems have no real solution. Nothing in the world could bring her family back, and the best thing to do was to forget.

At the same time, it was sort of funny. Lord! It was strange enough when my handmaids got handmaids. Now my mount had a private rubdown girl!

* * *

Back at the castle, I asked Count Lambert if I could take off early, since there wasn't much for me to do.

He had other ideas. He handed me a cup of wine and sat me down. "Sir Conrad, last summer you talked of various flying machines, and how most of them were too complicated for us to assay to build. But my mind has been turning over that 'hot air balloon' you mentioned. I see no reason why we couldn't make one.

"I have bolts of good linen cloth, plenty of rope, and most of that barrel of linseed oil left. There is a pile of wicker for the basket you mentioned, and I've a big, light brass serving-tray that would do to hold the fire. My wife bought it but I never use it. What say you?"

Lord. Another fad coming up. I could see it. Now that every knight in Poland was flying kites, Count Lambert had to upstage them all with a hot air balloon. But kites at least were safe. There's no telling where a balloon will come down. A man could drown, if he didn't fall out.

"My lord, this sort of thing is dangerous. You can't control a hot air balloon. You go wherever the winds blow you, and the winds up there can be pretty fierce! You could end up in the Baltic Sea!"

"Well, what of it? You're the one who's been taking all the chances lately. Didn't we decide that last month?"

"Count Lambert, your support has meant everything to me and my projects. Without it, I might never get things going well enough to fight the Mongols in eight years."

"That's touching but no longer true. It might have been, a year ago, but now you have the support of Duke Henryk. I suspect that if I died, he just might give all my lands to you, and let my wife go hang in our lands in Hungary. Isn't it enough for me to say that I want this balloon?"

I exhaled. When Count Lambert wanted something, he got it. To try going against him was pissing into the wind. "As you wish, my lord. You want me to design a hot air balloon?"

"Of course! What have I been saying? Just a small one, enough to take me alone high above the hills and trees!"

"Even that will be quite large, my lord."

"What of it? You'll find I've had a drawing board of the sort you favor built and set up in your old room, along with a supply of parchment, pens, lamps, and that sort of thing. I'll send a wench to call you to supper. Pick one to your liking for tonight, but you might want to try out Natasha. She's nicely skilled. Well? Be off with you!"

I went to my room and got to work. I obviously wouldn't be allowed to leave Okoitz until I had completed a set of drawings.

I spent a few hours doing arithmetic and decided that if I could heat a sphere of air fourteen yards in diameter to fifty degrees warmer than ambient, I could lift about five hundred pounds. Was it reasonable to expect a warming of fifty degrees Celsius? Would Count Lambert plus an undefined balloon made with unspecified and unweighed materials weigh less than five hundred pounds? I hadn't the foggiest idea. I wasn't even certain about the specific gravity of air. Nobody had ever asked me to design a balloon before.

All I could do was to make a number of reasonable-sounding engineering approximations, which my colorful American friends called WAGs: Wild Ass Guesses.

I was called to supper by an attractive and cheerful young lady who announced that she was Natasha. Again bowing to the inevitable, I asked her to join me for supper.

Once seated with Count Lambert and another lady, I was told that Kotcha was in the kitchen, and what did I want done with her?

I told Count Lambert that she was joining my household, and it seemed right that she should eat at the same table as I did. He nodded benignly. Perhaps he was glad to be getting out of having to provide for her, which he would have done if I hadn't wanted to take her, or perhaps he realized that I was quite capable of making an issue of not hurting a girl's feelings.

But in any event the ragged little nine-year-old was soon sitting wide-eyed between me and Count Lambert. He soon had his arm around her. People in the thirteenth century touched a lot more than those in the twentieth. It was a fatherly caress—Count Lambert wasn't interested in a lady sexually until she was filled out.

It was a pleasant meal. Even though there were only five of us at the table, four wenches were serving and three musicians playing. Almost everything in medieval Poland was expensive except for people. You could have as many servants as you could afford to feed. A peasant considered getting a job as a servant to be a wonderful thing. The work was easy and they fed and clothed you well, for almost no nobleman wanted ragged or starving people around.

Count Lambert got his maids by exercising a variant of his droit du seigneur. Separated from his wife, he asked the prettiest girls in his town to be handmaidens. This was a euphemism, since they were usually pregnant in six months. He then found each of them an acceptable husband, paid for the wedding expenses and a small dowry, and went to church regularly, with everybody happy with him.

Musicians didn't have the high status they enjoy in the modern world. They were playing quietly in the background, ignored while the conversation went on: Muzak. I was talking. "You understand that I've never designed a hot air balloon before, my lord? I can't promise that the first one will work. We'll have to build one and see how it goes."

"Reasonable, Sir Conrad. But you've had a chance to think on it. Tell me what the first one will be like."

"It's a cloth bag, made of the same thin material that we made kites from. It's like a ball on the top and a cone on the bottom," I said, gesticulating. "It is the custom of my people to make them brightly colored, but that's up to you. It should be fourteen yards across at the widest and twenty yards high. It must be strongly made, but kept as light as possible.

"To launch it, I think if you found three big trees in your forest that grew in a triangle, and cut the tops off, they could serve to support the balloon until the air inside is warm. It should be launched only in a dead calm, the sort that often happens in the gray dawn."

"That seems easy enough. I'll have it done. You will have drawings of this before you leave, won't you?"

"Yes, my lord. Would it be too much to ask if you tethered the balloon for safety? Tied it to a tree with a long rope?"

"Well at first, of course. After that, we'll see."

"Count Lambert, I say again that there is no controlling these things. You don't know where you'll come down. Do you really want to fall into Frederick the Second's outhouse?"

"Ha! That would stuper his mundi, wouldn't it!"

I gritted my teeth, but there was nothing else that I could do.

I had Kotcha put up with a couple of Count Lambert's ladies—they were only five years older than her—and intended to get in an hour of drawing before I sacked out. Such things "gang aft agley" at Okoitz. Natasha was all she was cracked up to be. Lord, what an enthusiastic young lady! We went to bed early and I really didn't get much sleep. Good, though.

I started drawing the next morning, but to make an accurate drawing, with dimensions, of a single panel required an awful lot of math. And it all had to be done long hand, without a calculator of tables or anything but my skull and a goose quill pen.

Halfway through, I found that I was doing everything in decimal rather than the duodecimal arithmetic that I had taught everybody else. I have always had the darndest time thinking in duodecimal, and going over this diary, sometimes I'm not sure myself when I was talking in base-twelve and when in base-ten. So far as the balloon was concerned, I completed the calculations in base-ten and then translated the whole thing into base-twelve.

And there were all the detail drawings. How to do a tent stitch, how to fasten the ropes to the basket, the importance of carrying sandbags. I wasn't done until noon the next day.

Natasha stayed with me, eager to run errands but happy if ignored. I began to realize that there was a good mind in that pretty little head.

After dinner, I explained my drawings to Count Lambert, because he couldn't read.

"Excellent, Sir Conrad! I think we can make short work of it. You seem to have taken a fancy to my Natasha. Would you believe that not a week ago, she sported a maidenhead?"

"That's hard to believe, my lord. She's remarkably . . . adept."

"Isn't she though. But I can certify it since I relieved her of that liability myself. She has a pure natural talent. See here. I've kept you half a day past our agreed time. What say I give her to you in compensation?"

"You're going to give her to me?"

"If you wish. As I said, she's only been here a week. There's months and months of use in her yet."

She'd probably be a lot happier and healthier at Three Walls than at Okoitz, anyway. "I'll take her, my lord."

So I headed back to Three Walls with Kotcha riding in front of me, Natasha riding sidesaddle at my back, and my huge wolf skin cape thrown around all three of us. Anna didn't even notice the extra weight.

Once home at Three Walls, I had the unpleasant job of telling Janina about the death of her family. That cast a pall over the household for several days. But life continues and these people were used to death. They saw so much of it.

Kotcha took her job as Anna's servant quite seriously, and sometimes it was hard to get her out of the stables and into school.

Natasha, well, Natasha was remarkable. Natalia was my secretary, but handling our records, the bank, and the payroll took up most of her time. Natasha became my personal assistant, not that I'd realized that I needed any such person.

But she was quite capable of sitting for hours, sewing or knitting, without making a sound or intruding on what was going on. Then if I needed an errand run, which was fairly often in these telephoneless times, she was eager to drop everything and run it. And she always did a competent job. There was nothing stupid about her. Just absolutely . . . compliant.

It was so easy to take her for granted that sometimes I even forgot she was in the room. I occasionally neglected to dismiss her for the night. In fact, once I was in bed with Yawalda and actually in the middle of the sex act when I realized that there was another person in the room, at which point there was nothing to do but invite her in.

All told, a strange, interesting, and remarkably comfortable young woman.

And a far cry from Krystyana, who was getting increasingly feisty.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

Sir Conrad had drawn up a table of organization for his people at Three Walls. This was a chart showing who worked for who, which made it child's play to know who to go to for a given thing. This chart was mounted on the wall in the dining room, where all could see it. Further, the name of every adult in the city was written on little pieces of wood that could be moved around on the chart. It took a while for us to grasp the significance of this. Here was a place where a man could rise! Another of his gifts to us.

It also defined the status and pay of each person, and I was surprised to discover myself near the top, directly below Sir Conrad himself, and an equal to the foremen and my love Krystyana. I was now paid three pence a day, an excellent sum, since my food, my lodging, my work clothes, my horse and expenses were all paid in addition to this. My net was easily five times what my father made, and I had naught to spend it at but the inn, which I did.

The Pink Dragon Inn was a remarkable place and all of Sir Conrad's planning. The common room was bright and clean and always full of good cheer, with good beer at reasonable prices. The waitresses were all very pretty and immodestly clad, with tall heeled shoes and fishnet stockings. They wore a hat with rabbit ears and a sort of loincloth with a rabbit's tail. And that was all. When it was cold outside, the innkeeper kept the fires high in the two big fireplaces to keep the waitresses warm but unclothed. Their bodies and breasts were bare. This had the effect of attracting the men, though most of the ladies stayed away, for fear of the competition.

Most of the people at Three Walls were from Cieszyn, except for the Pruthenians, and they were still children. The people of Sir Conrad's household were mainly from Okoitz, my hometown, but they rarely came to the inn. I usually drank with Ilya, the blacksmith foreman.

"Aren't you supposed to be with your family, Ilya?" It is pleasant to talk as an equal with someone you once worked for. It gives a real feeling of progress. "I distinctly remember that you promised to spend half an hour a day with them when Sir Conrad allowed you space in the bachelors' quarters."

"I spent all night with her Sunday last. That's four of these new hours, so I'm good for the week. If you don't like it, I'll stuff one of your ledger books up your arse."

"But my wishes hardly matter. What if your wife doesn't like it?"

"Then I'll stuff one of them up her arse! Look. I never wanted to get married, but Count Lambert told me to do it. You know the man! Could you argue with him?"

"That's hardly the question. It's—"

"Count Lambert doesn't like his wife, so she stays in Hungary and he beds down half the girls in Silesia! But me? All I ever wanted was to be left alone! So I get saddled with a silly woman and a clutch of bawling brats! Sir Conrad doesn't want to marry, so does anybody force him to the altar with that snip of a girl you want? He's a bigshot nobleman, so of course not!"

"And I pray that never happens."

"More the fool, you! You have a silly little boy's attitude about things! You think you can marry your princess and live happily ever after! That happens in fireside stories, but it doesn't happen in life. In the first place, she'll never have you. She's set on getting herself a full belted knight, just like her friend Annastashia did. In the second, if you did get her, she'd make your life miserable, the same way every woman has made every man miserable since Adam was stupid enough to want an afternoon snack."

"There can be true love, my friend. Consider . . ." But I saw that he was no longer listening. He was staring over my right shoulder. I turned to see what it was about, and was shocked. No one else in the place would know her except Ilya and me, for we were the only ones here from Okoitz. But the absolutely beautiful and nearly naked serving wench tending the table behind us was Francine, the wife of the priest, Father John, at Okoitz!

"What do we do?" I whispered to Ilya. It was hard taking my eyes off her.

"I don't think we do anything, except maybe change tables so she waits on us!" He whispered back, not even looking at me. "It's none of our business. What she does and what the priest does are up to them."

"But what would Sir Conrad say?"

"What he says is up to him. Would you want her blood on your hands? This could come to that!"

She was back at the bar now, but I said, "Doesn't the inn require that every waitress be a true intact virgin? But she's been married for years!"

"I know nothing. I see nothing. I hear nothing," Ilya chanted.

Soon our waitress went off-duty for the night, so Francine tended our table. I didn't know what to say, and so was silent. Ilya pretended that he had never seen her before, and slipped a few silver pence into her loincloth. She acted as though she didn't recognize him, although of course she must have. They had lived in the same village for years! She gave him a hug in thank you, while he sat there, her magnificent breasts on either side of his hairy cheeks. I was dumbstruck.

She gave me a squeeze as well, even though I had not tipped her, and then went to her other tables.

Ilya refused to discuss the subject.

We stayed until closing, and then both came back the next night, to find Francine again tending our table. I'm sure that neither one of us mentioned anything to anybody, but I think somebody must have, for there was an air of foreboding about the inn that night, like a storm about to break or a battle about to be joined.

She was calling herself Mary now, but there was no mistaking her or her thick French accent. It was near closing when Francine's husband hurried into the inn.

He was in his usual clerical garb, but it was covered with snow, for it was a foul night. He was bare-headed and must have been long without his hat, for his hair and eyebrows were thick with rime.

His eyes were red, as with madness or as with one who has not slept for many days. A frightening sight! It was hard to believe that he was the quiet man who had taught me my letters.

Ilya and I froze, but the other twenty or so patrons paid little mind, at first.

"Woman, come home!"

"No!"

"You are my wife!" Father John grabbed her by the hand. She pulled herself away.

"Get away from me! I'm not your wife!"

I saw Father John draw a knife. "Woman!"

By this time, every man in the place was on his feet, and would have gone to her aid, had there been but time. But it all happened so quickly!

Being much smaller than the others, and behind many of them, I could not see what happened. I only heard the scream, the crash, and the dull sound of the body falling to the floor.

Chapter Four

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

Krystyana and the innkeeper's wife were shaking me awake. There was trouble at the inn.

I called for Sir Vladimir, Tadaos, and Anna. Whatever was wrong, I wanted some force behind me. As Sir Vladimir was just changing guard with Tadaos, they were both up and in armor, so I didn't bother with mine. They were ready before I was, and the four of us, followed by a crowd of gawkers, went across the snow to the inn, with Krystyana and Annastashia guarding the closed gate.

The innkeeper had let no one else leave and had touched nothing. Francine was crumpled in a corner, nearly naked. I was shocked to see her. I hadn't known that she had left Okoitz. And how could a married woman get a job as a waitress at the inn? Yet she was in that uniform, what there was of it. She stared at me, but I couldn't read her eyes.

The body was stretched out on the floor, facedown. The clerical garb was obvious, as was the trickle of blood pooling beneath the head. I turned to the innkeeper. "What the hell happened?"

"Well, my lord, the short of it was that he came in, there was some shouting, and she tried to get away. He pulled a knife and she hit him on the head with a stool. I was surprised that it killed him, but it did. I would have smashed him one myself, only I never had the chance."

I nodded, and turned the body over. The forehead was caved in and the face was streaked with blood. It was a few moments before I recognized Count Lambert's priest.

I sat down at a table, still not quite awake. Being lord also meant that you had to be the cop, as well as the judge, the jury, and sometimes even the executioner. I noticed that Natalia had come along.

"Natalia, get everyone's name and then send them home. Lady Francine, come over here. We must talk. Somebody get us some beer." Coffee would have been more welcome, but there wasn't anything available with caffeine in it.

The place was soon cleared and the body was taken to the church. It was closing time anyway. Francine walked unsteadily over. Her long black hair was disheveled and her face was streaked with tears. They were running down her cheeks and falling to her bare breasts.

"My lady, what is this all about?" I asked.

At my gesture Natalia started taking notes on birch bark. Later, if it was needed, she would make a good copy on parchment, which was expensive.

"About? I suppose it's about my being a murderer." She spoke with a thick French accent. Her huge eyes were still gushing tears. Her tiny nipples were wet and dripping. I gave her my handkerchief.

"Murder? I'm not sure of that. They say that you tried to get away and he drew a weapon. That's not murder. That's manslaughter at the worse. I'm still not convinced that a crime has been committed.

"For starters, what are you doing here? And what are you doing as a waitress?"

She tried to dry her tears, but they kept coming. She even wiped her chin and chest.

"I came here to earn money. It takes money to travel and France is a long ways away. It is well known that a woman can make more as one of your waitresses than at any other trade, even the most sordid." Even in her emotional state, she was still rational. There was good metal under that lovely exterior.

"But a waitress must be a virgin. The innkeeper's wife should have checked it."

"She did. I qualify." She was somehow half proud and half ashamed at saying this. She was starting to get herself under control.

"But you've been married for years!"

"Have I been? Some would not say so!" You could see the anger that had been locked inside.

"You mean you never . . . ?"

"I mean he couldn't!" The tears started again.

What a horrible situation! I tried to imagine what it must have been like for them, him with a stunningly beautiful woman by his side every night for years, and physically unable to satisfy her yearnings. Her knowing always that any of a thousand men would be eager to take her, but being a public figure in a small town, unable to act freely.

And all the while the act, the hypocrisy of pretending to be stalwart pillars of the community. It would have driven a stronger man than me to madness. "So you left him. Did you tell him where you were going?"

"We fought."

"You fought. Did he hit you?"

"We shouted and screamed. He wasn't man enough to hit me. I said that I was going back to France, and I am. But the only merchant caravan was going east. They stopped at Sir Miesko's, and I ended up here."

My decision was obvious. "I'm afraid that you will be staying here for a while. I don't think that a crime has been committed. You merely defended yourself, and I don't think that blow was meant to kill. I don't think that Father John had the right to force you back, because I don't think that he was your husband. A marriage must be consummated.

"On the other hand, a man is dead and Count Lambert has the right to high justice. I'll inform him of how matters stand and see what he says. Frankly, I can't imagine him harming you. It isn't in his character. But until I have his decision, you must stay at Three Walls. You will not be restrained, but you may not go beyond the gate either."

"May I continue working?"

"If you want to. Or I could find room for you somewhere. You could join my household if you liked."

There was no jail at Three Walls. In fact there were very few jails in medieval Poland. Jailing someone was not considered punishment, since many would enjoy the chance to sit around, not have to work, and still be fed. A person might be restrained when a trial could not be held immediately and the person might be dangerous or try to run away. I couldn't see either of those situations happening here.

"I'll work. In a few months I'll have passage money home."

"As you wish. You go to sleep now. I'll go to Okoitz tomorrow. I'll inform you of Count Lambert's decision as soon as possible." Waitresses bunked together at our inns. She wouldn't be alone.

"Thank you, my lord."

She got up and walked away. She was still a bit unsteady, but her bare back was straight.

I liked the way she said "my lord."

* * *

The next morning, I called in each of the witnesses and got essentially the same story from every one of them. The innkeeper had told the simple truth. Natasha kept notes, and while her handwriting was not as attractive as Natalia's, there was no problem with accuracy or legibility. I kicked her up from level one to level two in status and pay. It was still a notch below the other main girls, but the differential left her something to work for.

Before noon, I got to Okoitz, where I found out that the main floor of the cloth factory had been turned into a balloon factory.

Count Lambert was lord of over a hundred knights, but most of them were home for the winter. He had more than that number of young, female clothworkers for his factory, but they were gone also, and would be replaced in the spring with a mostly fresh batch. But besides these, he had eight dozen peasant families locally, which were pressed into service to make his balloon.

When I got there, the wicker basket had been completed and the brass platter was installed. This had been a beautifully embossed tray two yards across, the sort of thing that might be used to bring out some fancy dish at a big feast. Now it had a thousand holes punched in it, to let the air flow through the fire better.

Had I known how attractive the platter was, I would have had another fire grid made, and taken that one in trade. But such is life, with its many lost opportunities.

Inside, three dozen ladies of all ages were sewing the long cloth panels together. They sat in a great circle of trestle tables, with the finished top of the balloon crumpled in the center. Count Lambert had elected to have his balloon colored red-and-white, the colors of the Piast family and later those of Poland.

I found Count Lambert in the castle.

"Sir Conrad, you are here early this month. I hadn't expected you for another week at least."

"There's been some trouble, my lord. Your priest is dead."

"Dog's blood! What happened?"

I told him the story. "So you see, my lord, I don't think a crime has been committed, but the right of high justice is yours."

"Ordinarily, I'd agree with you, and I don't think that I could bring myself to hang so lovely a woman even if she were guilty. But you're missing the point here. A priest was killed, and a priest's wife killed him. Well, maybe she wasn't a wife as you say, but it's not for us to decide. We don't have jurisdiction. This is a canon-law matter, not civil law. The matter must come before an ecclesiastical court."

Oh no. If the Church was as inept at settling this thing as it was at handling my inquisition, poor Francine might be a long time getting to France. "What should I do, my lord?"

"Well, you're here now, so you might as well spend a day or two looking over the work being done. When you return to Three Walls, you must write up the particulars of the case and send them to the Bishop of Wroclaw. Get Sir Miesko's advice on the proper form. He used to be a clerk.

"Don't bother coming back here until the matter is delivered. The last thing I need is more trouble with the Church! Oh, yes. And while you're here, write up a request from me to the bishop for another priest. Father John used to do that sort of thing for me. No one else but you can do it now."

"Happy to, my lord. But, for after I'm gone, isn't one of Lady Richeza's schoolteachers here at Okoitz?"

"Yes, but I'd forgotten about her. One doesn't think of using a woman for that sort of thing, but I suppose she'll do in a pinch. Not that I'd want to pinch that old hag.

"So Lady Francine is one of your waitresses now! That might be worth a trip to Three Walls to see!"

The next morning, I stopped to see Sir Miesko. He was surprised that the death had occurred. He hadn't even known that Lady Francine had stopped at his manor with the caravan. After some discussion, it was decided that he should return with me to Three Walls to write up the matter himself.

Lady Richeza came with us, and brought her four youngest children. "The oldest boy is twelve now," she said. "It's time he had a try at running the manor himself." In another two years the kid could be married. The history of the Middle Ages is largely the history of children.

Sir Miesko worked three days and made up separate affidavits from each of the witnesses, the innkeeper, the innkeeper's wife, the priest who eventually examined the body, myself and, of course, Lady Francine.

"If you want the matter to move swiftly, it's best to give them all the information possible on as many separate sheets of parchment as possible," Sir Miesko said.

Just like modern times. Flood 'em with paperwork!

It was Lady Richeza's first trip to Three Walls, and she was quite impressed with the plumbing, kitchen, and bathrooms. She was less favorably impressed with the inn, though of course she didn't stay there, but in my noble guest quarters.

Lady Richeza and Lady Francine spent a lot of time together, talking.

When the parchment work was completed, I thought it best to deliver it myself. For one thing, Anna could make it to Wroclaw in a day, where it might take a week to go by caravan, and a month could go by before one was going in the right direction at this time of the year.

For another, we were spending huge amounts of money to keep the brass works supplied with Hungarian copper. In the twentieth century, Poland is one of the world's largest exporters of copper, and I had a pretty good idea of where the mines would be, a halfday west of Wroclaw, near Legnica. I wanted to scout out the area and see who owned the land. Maybe I could buy it on the cheap.

Then, too, I'd never been to medieval Wroclaw, and I was having a minor case of cabin fever. Over everyone's objections, I went alone.

Anna can run like the wind, and leaving at earliest dawn she ran all day almost nonstop until we got to Wroclaw at dusk.

The city had the usual squalid suburbs, but its center was built on an island, Ostrow Tumski, in the middle of the Odra River. This was well fortified with a sturdy brick wall, as much against floodwaters as against any invader. Above it rose the towers of the centuries' old cathedral and the solider bulk of Piast Castle.

The guard at the bridge snapped to and saluted as I rode up. He had probably never seen plate armor before, but he recognized the wolf skin cloak I wore, since I'd given identical ones to Duke Henryk the Bearded and his son Prince Henryk the Pious. Wroclaw was the center of Henryk's power, and had been the family seat for centuries.

In a rather thick German accent, the guard gave me directions to the bishop's residence. The duke had many Germans on his staff, in part because the German laws of primogeniture left a lot of German younger sons landless and thus available for foreign service, and because the duke's wife, mother, and paternal grandmother had all been German. The German princes had as many princesses to dispose of as they did younger sons, and with the concentration of wealth that primogeniture always results in, they could afford whopping big dowries. It was a strange sort of invasion, but an invasion nonetheless.

The porter at the door of the bishop's residence let me in and called forth the chamberlain. This worthy heard that it was a legal matter and delivered me to the bishop's clerk. "Ah, the illustrious Sir Conrad Stargard! Please be welcome. The bishop is indisposed, but I can doubtless arrange an audience in a week or two."

I had the distinct feeling that an honorarium paid to the clerk could get me in to the bishop immediately, but fortunately I didn't want to see the old blowhard at all. "That's unfortunate, as I was looking forward to paying my respects to his excellency. Kindly give him this package. It concerns the death of one of his priests."

"It what?"

"It was a bloody death by violence, done by a member of the man's own family. But perhaps I shouldn't talk about it, for fear of causing embarrassment to the Church."

The man was looking at the seals on the package of documents. Sir Miesko had insisted on sealing it with his own seal, the personal seal ring that I'd had made for myself and my seal as Master of the Hunt, which I'd given to him as token of his authority. If a dozen other seals had been available, he would have used them as well, just to make the thing look more important. He also had written the bishop's full name and titles on the outside, along with "personal" and "confidential" in bold letters under it. I'd suggested "For His Excellency's Eyes Only," and Sir Miesko had written that too, liking the phrase.

All this meant that the clerk didn't dare open it, and he didn't dare delay the matter in the hope of squeezing a little graft out of me.

"But surely you can tell me! I hold the bishop's every confidence."

"I'm sure you do. It's all written down in these documents. I believe that his excellency will want to see them without delay."

"Well, perhaps I could arrange some interview."

"No, no. I wouldn't think of disturbing his excellency when he is indisposed. I shall pray for his speedy return to health." I got up to leave.

"But surely—"

"Not another word. I couldn't possibly disturb so great a Churchman as your master. Once he is feeling better, if I can serve his excellency, I shall be at Piast Castle."

And I left, chuckling to myself. Hit me up for a bribe, would he? Now let him die of curiosity until the bishop felt like informing him of the matter. What's more, I was sure that clerk would push the package right through just to satisfy his own curiosity.

Chapter Five

Dinner was being served at the castle when I arrived. I was ushered to a seat at one of the lower tables, but the duke noticed me and invited me up next to him at the high table, which was quite literally a half yard higher than the others. About the height of a standup bar.

He had to bump down a baron to do it, who bumped a knight at a lower table, who bumped someone's squire farther down. Furthermore, each of these worthies took his wife or lady friend down with him, but nobody seemed to mind. Apparently, it happened all the time.

"Well, boy. What brings you to Wroclaw in this weather?"

"Two matters, your grace. There was a priest killed on my land, and the bishop had to be informed."

The duke wanted to hear more, so I gave him a brief synopsis of the death of Father John.

"Ha! That'll set the bishop down a peg. Now tell me the whole story the long way, and tell it loud enough for everyone to hear!"

One didn't argue with the duke. Direct orders are direct orders, and Lady Francine was going back to France soon, so she wouldn't be embarrassed by the publicity.

The crowd was suddenly quiet, so I said in a loud voice, "You know, your grace, that Lady Francine was the granddaughter of a bishop in France. She was brought up in a proper household and had every expectation of making a good marriage, being one of the most stunningly beautiful women I've ever seen. But when the Church's Gregorian reforms were put into effect there, forbidding the marriage of the clergy, the barbarous laws of that foreign land decreed that she was suddenly illegitimate! The best that she could do was to marry a poor young priest from Poland, where the Gregorian reforms have not been approved. If there was a dowry, I've never heard of it.

"That is to say, they went through the legal and holy ceremonies of marriage, but whether it was truly a marriage or not remains to be seen. Lady Francine and Father John came to Poland and lived for several years as man and wife as far as anyone could see, but there was a problem.

"To put it as simply as possible, Father John was not physically capable of making proper love to a woman. He, ah, couldn't get it up.

"They lived with this horrible situation for years, but eventually they quarreled. She knew that she wasn't really married, for a marriage must be consummated to exist. She left him and came to work at my inn at Three Walls to earn passage money back to France. Many of you know that a woman must be a true intact virgin to work there as a waitress. I operate inns, not houses of prostitution. The innkeeper's wife physically checks for the presence of a hymen. Lady Francine qualified.

"Father John found her, tried to drag her back to Okoitz, and pulled a knife when she refused. She hit him with a stool in defense, for the uniform she wore was nearly nothing at all and she carried no weapon with which to defend herself.

"To the surprise of all, this blow killed him. I came to Wroclaw to deliver proof of all that I've said to the bishop."

The crowd's reaction was mixed. Some, headed by Prince Henryk, were shocked and more were feeling sorry for Lady Francine, but half of them shared the duke's contempt for the clergy and thought the tale hilarious.

"That's rich, boy! So now the priest's wife is tending commoners at an inn, and doing it near naked besides!"

"That was her choice, your grace. Are you familiar with the Pink Dragon Inns?"

"Yeah, stopped at the one in Cracow. Had to pull rank just to get in, it was so crowded! When are you going to build one for us here at Wroclaw?"

"This spring, your grace, with your permission."

"Permission? Boy, you have orders! Just pick a site and I'll see that you get it. What sort of taxes are you paying at Cracow?"

"Between the town council and the Bishop of Cracow, about one-sixth of profits, your grace."

"Well, I run this city, and that's what you'll pay to me. If the bishop's men give you any trouble, you send them to me."

"Yes, your grace."

"You going to send us Lady Francine when you get this inn built?"

"If you wish, your grace, I'll tell her that you requested her presence here. You understand that she's not sworn to me and I can hardly order her to come. But until the legal matter is solved, I've forbidden her to leave Three Walls."

"Well, don't worry about that, boy. I'll be responsible for her. The bishop can hardly object if you follow my orders. Was this inn the second matter you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No, your grace. The second matter concerns something far more profitable. But I think it's best talked about in private."

"As you wish, boy. See me tonight after the festivities."

After a seven-course meal that was a little overspiced for my taste, a company of clowns and jugglers entertained us for an hour, but the routines were a bit too coarse for me. The highlight of their act was a two-man "horse" routine which ended with the horse shitting on the polished stone floor in front of the duke's table. He thought it was marvelous, and tipped them well. The man who had to clean up the real horse turds looked less amused.

The clowns were followed by some dancing, mostly waltzes and mazurkas, a craze which I had inadvertently started myself. At least it was better than the half punker-style stuff they were doing before. I was demonstrating a polka, still in my plate armor, when I saw the duke leave. I bowed out shortly after that and was directed to the duke's chamber.

I stayed at the doorway and said, "Your grace, were you serious last time about not wanting formal courtesies in private?"

"What? Of course not! I want you to grovel so that I can act magnanimous and tell you not to. Now bow and get it over with!"

"Yes, your grace." I gave him my deepest bow.

"Smart-aleck kid. What's this you wanted to talk to me about, and sit down, dammit."

"Yes, your grace." I sat and he pushed his gold wine cup toward me. It was the same one that he was drinking out of. In offering it he was doing me a considerable honor, local customs being what they were. I took a long pull from it. To not do so would be an insult to the duke. I just hoped that he hadn't spit in it.

"Now, what's this you wanted to talk about?"

"You know that I come from the future, your grace."

"Of course. I told you that I worked that out of your priest. So?"

"So in the twentieth century, Poland is one of the world's largest copper exporters, whereas right now, what with all the copper my brass works has been buying out of Hungary, we might be one of the world's largest copper importers. A lot of Polish money is going into Hungary, and making King Andrew rich."

"Huh. Andrew has been less than polite to me lately. So where is this ore at?"

"Maybe fifteen miles outside of Legnica. I'll have to find the exact location and find out who owns the land."

"You've already done the second, boy. The lands for forty miles around Legnica have been in my family for centuries. So I own copper. What do you want out of it?"

"Well, if I could lease the land, your grace, what if I paid you a sixth of the profits in taxes?"

"A sixth, hell! I should get only one-sixth of what I already own? I'll give you a third for finding it and getting a smelting operation going."

"But your grace, the cost of setting up an efficient mine, factories, and other buildings will be very large. It will take hundreds of thousands of pence. If I'm to pay that . . ."

"So who says that you are? We'll do it on my lands and they'll be my factories and mines. I just want you to run them for me, the way you built those clothmills for Count Lambert. He's making a fortune off them, or he would if his Hungarian wife didn't get half the cash he rakes in."

"Interesting, your grace. I'd often wondered why Count Lambert was always so eager to bargain or bet with cloth, but not with money."

"Well, now you know. Well, do we have a deal?"

"Do I have complete control of the whole operation?"

"Hell, yes. Do you think I'd want to dirty my hands with commerce? You do things your way, and I'll leave you alone, just so you turn in a good profit after the first year."

"The workers would be as well taken care of as those at Three Walls? And they would all be sworn to me?"

"It's a waste of money, but yes to the first question. And you wouldn't get much out of them if they were sworn to somebody else, so yes to the second. Anything else you want to steal from an old man?"

"Tariffs, your grace. There will be a lot of transportation going on. We'll be taking coke from Three Walls, hauling it by mule and barge and mule again to the mine, smelting the copper there, then hauling the copper back to Cieszyn. There are eleven toll booths along that route. Can anything be done about it?"

"Plenty. That'll be my coke and my copper. You tell that to any petty baron who tries to tax them. If he gives you any trouble after that, bring me his head! You can throw away the rest. I wouldn't want anybody that dumb in my service."

"Thank you, your grace. I believe we have an agreement."

"Done. You write this up and bring it to me tomorrow. I won't be around all that much longer, and I want this binding on both sides. Of course, the way you keep getting into fights, I just might outlive you. That was some of your judo stuff you used to break that Crossman's arm at your trial, wasn't it?"

"Similar to that, your grace. It's called karate. I didn't have any choice. He was really a better fighter than I was. My sword was stuck in his shield and I couldn't get it out. I had nothing but my bare hands to fight with!"

"Haw! Here I thought you were just playing with him! Then why did you throw away your shield?"

"Again, your grace, I had to. That first blow to the head he gave me would have killed me without this new plate armor. As it was, it twisted the helmet around and jammed it. I could only look over my right shoulder. I couldn't use my shield at all. I couldn't even see it! Fortunately, I once learned a style of sword-fighting that doesn't use a shield, but only a sword. It's a sport in my era called fencing, because in the interests of safety, the combatants originally fought on different sides of a fence. I used that on him."

"Hah! And you beat him with new tactics!"

"Not really, your grace. He was still better than me. I beat him mainly because his ten or twelve killing blows didn't hurt me. This armor I'm wearing defeated Sir Adolf."

"Interesting. Could you make similar armor for my men?"

"I intend to, your grace. But this armor cost me eleven thousand pence, a dozen times what chain mail would cost. In a few years, I'll have machines such that I can sell it for five hundred pence, and I'll be making suits by the thousand."

"Good. I'd like a suit of it myself, and one for my son."

"Well, your grace, there's no reason why we can't make a few more suits by hand. I'll have two suits made for you and the prince, as a gift, but please understand that they must be exactly fitted to your body. Plate doesn't stretch the way chain mail does. You'd each have to spend some time at Three Walls while they were being made."

"I wanted to visit you anyway, as much to see what new wonders you'd come up with as to get a good look at Lady Francine's tits! I'll be there in the spring."

"Wonderful, your grace. We'll all be looking forward to your visit. Be sure to bring your armorer along so that we can show him how to maintain it properly."

I left his chambers glowing. If I was right, Lady Francine had a near royal protector, so she needn't worry about any legal problems. The duke was the law. If he liked her, she was safe, Church court or no Church court. An old man is the ideal protector for a young woman. He has the wealth and power to keep her well, and lacks the ability to get her pregnant. Not many modern girls realize this, but their ancestors were wiser.

More importantly to me, the duke was going to finance the whole copper works! Oh, I'd have to make sure that he got a fair return on his money, but if things got tight, the duke had no idea what a modern engineer can do with creative accounting. After all, I trained my accountant myself!

I went to the pleasant room assigned to me by the castellan and told the servant they gave me that I wanted a table, four lamps, parchment, ink, and pens. Once that was delivered, I told him that I wanted a pretty young girl for the night and after that he was free to go away.

It seemed that a lady would cost extra, unless I wanted one of the noblewomen who had bribed him to suggest themselves to me. He was completely open about it, and on questioning him I found that he had heard that I was a wizard who knew everything, anyway. He knew he couldn't get away with a lie, so he figured that his best chance of survival was to tell the absolute barefaced truth.

There are certain advantages to having a strange reputation.

There hadn't been anyone at dinner that I found attractive enough to be worth the hassle, and none of the ladies mentioned was single. The last thing I needed was an irate husband challenging me to a duel. On inquiring about other ladies available, I was told that the cost was a penny or two. I gave him four and told him that I wanted someone young, pretty, enthusiastic, and obedient. I wanted her in an hour, and if she wasn't up to snuff, I'd take it out of his hide. I guess I was in sort of a manic mood. Ordinarily, I wouldn't say things like that, but when everything is going right, you get sort of wild.

He said that he would do what he could, and what did I want told to the ladies who had bribed him?

"Just say that I have killed sixteen men in the last year, and I don't want any jealous husbands on my soul."

"That should do nicely, my lord." And he left.

I was close to completing the duke's contract when the servant returned with two young ladies.

"I wasn't sure of your tastes, my lord."

I glanced up and said, "The redhead will do." I gave the blonde a penny for her trouble and dismissed her along with the servant. I told the redhead to undress and get in bed, and went back to writing the contract. Once I was through, I blew out three of the lamps, undressed and joined her.

I was beginning to think that Count Lambert was right. The easiest way to treat subordinates was to give orders and expect them to be obeyed.

In the morning, the duke read the contract, said it was what we had agreed on, and gave it to a clerk to have some fair copies made.

I grabbed a bite in the castle kitchens, packed a lunch big enough for six and was pleased to see that the servant had Anna ready.

"There was no bridle, my lord, and you aren't wearing spurs!" he said, handing me my hefty new lance and shield.

"Anna doesn't like bridles and spurs. Tell the duke's servant that I may or may not be back tonight."

I took the south bridge from the island so as to be on the west bank of the Odra River. It was frozen over, but river ice can be treacherous, especially on horseback. Anna can do some amazing things, but I didn't want to risk drowning for no good reason.

An hour's run took us to Legnica. From there we headed northeast until we hit the river, then followed it upstream until it made a wide bend to the east.

I'd toured the mines once, and they were just off the river, I think at this bend. Of course, that was in the twentieth century, when most of the forests were gone, and this was—would be—a built-up industrial area. And rivers change course.

It was dusk when I thought I might be at the right spot. We hadn't seen any sign of human habitation for hours and Anna said that she couldn't smell anybody. Fortunately, I had brought my old backpack along and I had some experience with winter camping.

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 scrape 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 grass 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 coke 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 shield 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 shifted 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 damn peasants wanted to burn me for a witch! They were all jabbering in that half understandable Ruthenian tongue. If a nobleman 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 of 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 God 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 nobles 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 nobility, 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 hell 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 brass 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 brass 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. Nobody was going to object strongly about being bumped 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 brass 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 brass 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. No problem!

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 lose 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!

I had the new buildings drawn up in four days, largely because of Sir Vladimir's help. He was becoming a good draftsman, and I'd make an engineer out of him yet.

But looking at the amount of wood that had to be sawn in a few months, it would take three of our walking-beam sawmills to do the job at each of the new installations.

The quality of the work turned out by the brass works had been steadily increasing. It was time to try our hands at a steam-powered sawmill.

We were casting pipes. A tubular boiler wouldn't be difficult. We were machining bearings and bushings. Cylinders, pistons, and rods wouldn't be that much harder. We were making high-pressure water valves. Steam valves should be possible.

The only hang-up was how to fasten the end-caps to the cylinders. I didn't see any way to do that except with steel machine screws. The few screws we had made so far had been filed by hand, which was expensive and not nearly accurate enough.

I needed an engine lathe to accurately cut screws and to make good taps and dies. And an engine lathe needs accurate screws to feed the tool along the stock. I had to have a screw to make a screw!

I laid the problem aside, hoping my subconscious would come up with something, and worked on the rest of the engine. We had to cut huge logs, two and three yards thick, so a circular saw would have had to be six yards across. This was beyond our capabilities. We could probably make a big bandsaw blade, but such a blade has to be very flexible, and I doubted the quality of our steel. I sketched up a big enough bandsaw and it was huge, difficult to move, hard to make, and expensive. KISS.

Then I took one of our four-yard ripsaws and sketched a three-yard-long cylinder at each end of it. By alternately pressurizing the rod ends of the cylinders, they would pull the saw blade back and forth. I set the cylinders horizontally, so the machine wouldn't have to be built in a pit. A manually operated screw pulled the log into the blade, and a mechanism for holding the log at the proper angle was straightforward.

A tubular boiler, a pressure gauge, and a safety relief valve came off my board within a day, and finally I put the whole thing on wheels. It might take a dozen mules to move it, but at least we wouldn't have to disassemble it to move it. In five days flat I had a complete set of drawings.

The world's first steam engine!

But I still hadn't figured out how to make a good screw. Finally, I just drew up a simple engine lathe, even though I didn't see how we could possibly build one. By this time, we had pretty much duplicated the machinery from the brass works at Three Walls, complete with pigs in huge hamster cages turning the lathes, so I gave the drawings to Ilya and told him to make me one.

Ilya was a good man at a forge, but he didn't have the machining experience of the Krakowski brothers. I gave this difficult project to him because the Krakowski brothers were reasonable enough to ask questions until they understood something, and I didn't have the answers to match their questions.

Ilya, on the other hand, was never reasonable. His ego was such that he would never admit that there was anything that he didn't quite grasp. He was belligerent, intolerant, and bullheaded, but he wasn't stupid.

The engine lathe would be the most complicated piece of equipment we owned, but I gave the project to him as casually as if I was asking for an axe head. I simply explained what it did and why, and asked to have it done as soon as possible. He stared at the drawings for a few moments and then said that if I wanted the silly thing, he'd build it.

For the next five weeks, it was hard to get anything else out of the blacksmiths, and repair work was done only grudgingly. I finally had to step in and split the section into a forging group and a machining group, just to keep the carpenters and masons in tools.

At one point I was walking through the plant and saw Ilya carefully wrapping a woman's bright red ribbon around a smooth brass rod, and carefully scribing on the brass where the top of the ribbon came to as he went along. I didn't say a word.

Another time I saw him deliberately pouring fine sand on a set of running gears, while on another machine one of his assistants was running an iron nut back and forth on a long brass screw. The nut was in two halves and clamped back together, and it too was dusted with fine sand. The assistant said that he had been doing this boring work for two weeks, but I didn't want to get involved. If Ilya somehow did the job, great. If he fell on his ass, the humiliating experience might make him easier to live with.

But Ilya did it. The engine lathe worked better than I had expected, and Ilya's ego was so monstrous that he wouldn't even accept praise for it. He pretended that he could do that sort of thing every day. So I put him in charge of making the steam-powered sawmills, and told him not to take so long this time.

Most modern factories are built on flat, level land. My material-handling equipment was limited to men with wheelbarrows, and the coal came out of the mountain several hundred yards above the valley floor. I used the slope of the valley walls to help out.

From the tunnel mouth, loads of coal were dumped in a pile almost at the door. Below that was a cleaning and sorting area and the tops of the coke ovens were lower still. I built the top of the blast furnace lower than the bottom of the coke oven, about level with the entrance to the boys' cave, where the iron ore came out.

It was still wheelbarrow work, but at least we didn't have to push stuff uphill.

Ilya was vastly skeptical about using anything but charcoal to make iron, but I bullied him into it and with our coke and our iron ore, he eventually turned out decent wrought iron. He insisted that charcoal was better than coke, especially for the cementation process of making steel, but that last took very little charcoal.

As soon as the weather broke, the masons were busy assembling the blast furnace. They had been cutting sandstone blocks for it all winter long, and we had good supplies of coke and iron ore.

After five days of steady burning, we made our first pour, knocking in the clay plug with a long iron rod, and getting out of the way as a long stream of molten iron sprayed out. After that we tapped it four times a day.

Chemical engineers often refer to themselves as "bucket chemists," as opposed to the "test tube chemists" who work in laboratories, because they often do their experiments with large quantities of chemicals. Reaction rates and sometimes even the end products can vary depending on the quantities used, so these people mix things by the bucketful.

I was a bucket chemist of vast proportions. I got the blast furnace going by building a full-size blast furnace and experimenting for months with the quantities of coke, ore, and limestone required. What little iron we turned out in those first months was simply tossed into a pile for later refining, because it wasn't worth much in its present state.

It was simply that there was no way of doing things on a smaller scale, not without some way of measuring temperatures. Brute force had to substitute for finesse.

Did we need more air in the furnace? We didn't know. Build more bellows, put more people to pumping them and see what happens!

At first, all we could do with the pig iron was to cast it in long troughs formed in the sand, but we could always melt it down later by throwing it back into the furnace. I had Mikhail Krakowski come down and set up our casting operation for us. He used the system he knew, pouring into hot clay molds rather than the sandcasting used in modern foundries. But it worked, and I saw no need to change things. If anything, he got a much better surface finish using clay than I had ever seen using sand.

So the stench and dirt of a blast furnace was added to the stink of the coke ovens.

The bloomery we built next to the blast furnace was less experimental. It produced wrought iron the same way Ilya had back at Okoitz, only on a far larger scale. One of the first steam-powered machines built after the steam saws was a steam hammer to beat the wrought iron blooms, taken from the furnace, into iron rods. It worked on waste heat from the furnace itself, a tubular boiler having been built in the chimney.

Ilya was proud of that bloomery, and worked it at a fine peak of efficiency. But he hated the blast furnace. He could see little use for cast iron, which was made at much higher temperatures, had vastly more impurities and was so brittle that it had to be cast into its final shape, because you couldn't bend it without breaking it. What use was a piece of iron if you couldn't beat on it?

I finally had to put another man in charge of the blast furnace, since Ilya considered it a waste of good ore and coke.

But cast iron is a useful material. Before too long, we were producing a line of consumer goods from it, potbellied stoves, pots and pans, and large kitchen ranges that my great grandmother would have been proud of. And cast iron is the best material for making large machine bases. It is rigid, dimensionally stable, and the fibrous crystalline structure absorbs vibrations. If you look at cast iron under a microscope, it looks like a pile of needles—not that we had a microscope.

Furthermore, cast iron is the starting material for making large quantities of steel, and it was going to take large quantities to beat the Mongols.

But try convincing Ilya of that!

Chapter Seven

In the twentieth century, there are many racial stereotypes, and most of them are derogatory. You know the sort I mean—Englishmen are all stiff, formal, and supercilious. Frenchmen are all drunkards and hung up on illicit sex. Germans are all warmongers who spend their off time making ridiculously complicated toys. Blacks are all lazy criminals. Americans are all loud, boorish, and rich. Jews are all sneaky shysters. Poles always do everything backward.

Everybody knows that these statements are mostly nonsense. The people of any group are diversified. Some of them are good and wise, some are bad and stupid, and most are indifferent.

Yet there is a grain of truth in many of the stereotypes. The British are more formal than most people. The French per capita consumption of wine is frightening, enough so that any person from another country who drank what they average would be considered an alcoholic. And historically, the Germans have started an awful lot of wars, losing most of them.

While I am not going to admit that Poles do everything backward, I will admit that we are very good at looking at things from a different angle than most other peoples. The typical Pole has no difficulty dealing with a concept like the square root of a negative one, for example, a thing that can make a tightly logical Englishman catatonic.

That particular concept is regularly used in electrical design, and in America, where there has been a tendency for different nationalities to gravitate into specific trades, perhaps half the electrical engineers claim Polish descent. In the same manner, many of the architects and construction workers are Italian, and the Arabs have started to dominate the mercantile trades.

It's not that any of these nationalities forces the others out of their bailiwick. It's that an individual tends to work at what he can do best. What I am trying to lead up to is why I built a mile-high smokestack, sideways.

I suppose that I could claim that structural limitations in the materials available and the absence of certain types of machinery necessitated building the stack against the side of the mountain, but that's not the way it happened.

Besides setting up to produce cast iron, wrought iron, and lime for mortar, I wanted to produce bricks, tiles, and clay pipes. I'd once read about an ancient Chinese invention called a dragon furnace, a long kiln built up the side of a mountain. You filled the kiln with unfired products and started a fire at the bottom. The rest of the kiln functioned as a chimney, and the bricks farther up were at least warmed up and dried out as those on the bottom were being fired.

Then you started another fire farther up in the furnace. Air coming up the furnace was heated by the hot bricks near the bottom, so it took less fuel to bake the bricks farther up. As time went on, you kept starting new fires farther and farther up, letting the old ones die out. It took a week to fire all the bricks in the furnace, at which time you took out all the baked bricks and put in green ones. The system had a lot in common with the modern reverse-flow system.

We soon added a second furnace along side the first so that we could keep working continuously.

One of the coke oven workers was being ragged by his wife because of the stench he spent all day generating. He came to me with a proposal for a set of flues to take the coke oven fumes to the dragon furnaces and so get them out of the valley. He even had a well-thought-out set of drawings showing how this could be done. With only minor changes, we tried it and it worked. The stench was reduced and the valley became a good deal more livable.

Furthermore, the fumes contained a fair amount of unburnt gases which were ignited in the hot dragon furnace, and fuel consumption in the dragon furnaces went down. As time went on, we made the dragon furnaces longer and longer until they reached the top of the highest mountain there. Then we built a smokestack at the top, and everything noxious went up it.

I made the man the guest of honor at the next Saturday night dance, publicly gave him three hundred pence as a bonus, and promoted him as soon as possible after that.

This got me the damndest collection of weird suggestions you could ever imagine. I'd wanted to encourage thinking on the part of the workers, but I hadn't expected to be inundated by dumb ideas. I finally had to set up a review system, where suggestions had to filter up through channels, and pay additional bonuses to workers' bosses so that they wouldn't squash everything.

But the system worked. Not only did it result in a lot of useful devices, but it singled out workers who could benefit from further engineering training. As the years went on, I had to do less and less of the design work myself. This was good, because management work was taking up more and more of my time.

Eventually we got notice that the duke would be arriving the next morning, so I had the band ready. They had collected or had made seven brass instruments, mostly trumpets, and I had taught them a few fanfares. That is to say, I whistled the tunes and they figured out how to make them come out of a horn. Their wives had improvised some gaudy band uniforms, and they made a fairly impressive display, along with their drummers, playing the Star Wars theme from the balcony as the duke rode in.

Duke Henryk arrived with his son, his armorer, and twenty men. Since I'd promised them two complete suits of plate armor, I put the girls to making each of them a suit of parchment armor, as they had done for me.

A few months before, at my Trial by Combat, my helmet had been bashed around and jammed at a right angle from where it should have been, so I could only look over my right shoulder. It darned nearly was the death of me. Naturally, I had redesigned the helmet. Instead of a clamshell affair that split down the middle and required a helper to put on, the new version looked sort of like a "Darth Vader" helmet with the bottom edge fitting into the ring around my collar. A separate piece, called a beaver, fit into the front half of the ring and covered the bottom of my face. Two easily removed pins fastened the beaver to the rest of the helmet, and a visor could be flipped down to protect the eyes at the price of decent visibility. The big advantage was that you could put it on and take it off by yourself, even if it was bent.

Naturally, his grace and the prince got the new model helmets.

I'd also had the smiths do a lot of preparatory work, making up each of the pieces in advance, but oversized, so that they need only be trimmed down, finished, and assembled. Even this took the whole crew ten days to do, and I didn't let them off for Sunday, for fear of boring our highborn guests.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried, for the duke stayed two days longer than he had to. He was vastly impressed with the plumbing in our bathrooms. He demanded that I duplicate the system at both Piast Castle in Wroclaw and Wawel Castle in Cracow. I told him that it would be expensive, but he didn't seem to care. He wanted it, so he got it. He even paid the bill without complaining.

I showed him my plans for what I'd started calling Copper City, and he seemed pleased. "Just so it works, boy!"

We were lucky in that Ilya had just completed the first steam sawmill, or I don't think I could have gotten him to work on armor, duke and prince or no duke and prince. The walking-beam sawmill was still in use, however, so I showed that to my guests first. They watched sixty women walking back and forth and the huge logs being cut into boards for half an hour. They were suitably impressed. Then we demonstrated the new steam mill, which cut more than twice as fast as as the walking-beam mill, and required only a single operator. They were astounded.

"Damn, boy! That thing has the power of two hundred women!" The name of the unit stuck. At one time I had been worried that we would use "pig power" the way the Americans use "horse power," much of our early machinery being powered by pigs in huge hamster cages. But after the duke's statement, all our steam engines got rated in woman power, and operators talked about how many women they tended. I tried to stop it, but I couldn't. The best I could do was to redefine it so that it would fit into our system of weights and measures.

I'd had some of the girls trained to act as food servers, in case the duke demanded it. Fortunately he thought that eating cafeteria-style was an interesting innovation. This was good because after that, if any noble visiting us commented on our strange ways of eating, we had only to say that the duke liked it and that ended the matter. I saw no point in paying for servants.

Actually, the duke took most of his meals at the inn.

I showed them a blast furnace pour at night, when the splashing white hot iron is most impressive.

The duke ordered twenty clocks, and two of our huge kitchen stoves, but he spent most of his time at the Pink Dragon Inn. After the first night, he demanded, and of course got, the exclusive waitressing of Lady Francine. The innkeeper was no fool, and if anybody objected to losing the most beautiful waitress in Poland, he had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

The best time of day to take a shower was just after breakfast, when most of the men were at work and the water was hot from the breakfast cooking. The place was nearly empty except for some of the women on the afternoon shift, and they tended to be younger than those working mornings. I was debating whether to invite a certain blonde to join my household when Prince Henryk walked in.

"Good morning, my lord." I bowed. It was the first time that I had seen the prince naked and I couldn't help noticing that there was something strange about his left foot. It was a moment before I realized that on that foot, he had six toes.

"Strange looking thing, isn't it, Sir Conrad?" He wiggled his left toes. "Runs in the family. My grandfather had the same thing. You needn't look so awkward. I've had it all my life."

"Yes, my lord. Forgive me for staring." I took some soft, locally made lye soap and smeared it on a luffa.

"Nothing to forgive. These hot showers of yours are marvelous things, but what do they have to do with defeating the Tartars you said were going to invade us?"

"Directly, my lord, almost nothing. Indirectly, quite a bit. These showers and the sewage system and better food and clothing are all part of a program to keep my workers healthy. I don't want to spend years training a man only to have him die of something that could be easily prevented. Then, too, it is going to take a lot of money to train and equip an army big enough to beat the Mongols. By selling plumbing parts and other consumer goods, I can generate that money. I could never sell it without showing people what it does, and where better to demonstrate it than here?"

"Interesting. That armor you're making for my father and me looks to be effective, but it's taking all your smiths weeks just to make the two sets."

"It's worse than that, my lord. They spent a lot of time doing preparatory work. But in a few years, I'll have sheetmetal rolling mills, stamping presses, and dies by the dozens. We'll be able to turn out armor fast and cheap."

"And the copper mines you'll be opening for my father?"

"Copper is needed for more things than windmills and plumbing, my lord. These things earn money for now, but the same lathe that bores out the center of a bushing can bore out a cannon."

"And what might a canon be, aside from the law of the church?"

"It's a device of war, my lord. One smaller than a man can kill a dozen men at a time. I hope to start working on them by next year."

"That sounds dishonorable and horrible. It's hardly the thing to use in civilized combat."

"True, my lord. They are horrible and I pray that they will never be used on Christians. But you and the rest of the nobility must learn that the Mongols are neither civilized nor honorable. They lie, they cheat, and they steal. They will do anything at all so long as it brings victory. One of their favorite tactics is to take enemy prisoners, especially women, children, and the aged, and put them in the front lines to shield their own men. Facing that, you must decide between letting them advance without hindrance, or murdering your own subjects. Against an enemy like this, there can be no question of fighting them as if they were an honorable enemy. You must exterminate them in whatever way is possible."

"It is hard to believe that any people could be so vile."

"You must believe it if you want to survive, my lord. They are vile. They will eat anything at all, including rats, dogs, and their own prisoners. I know of one occasion when they ran short of supplies, so they ate their own allies. They also never bathe. It is their custom to put on new clothes on the outside and let them rot away from within."

"Yes, Sir Conrad, I'd heard that you can smell them miles away. I suppose that you will have to build these cannons and doubtless other devilish devices. But you can't expect me to like it.

"On the other hand, this new church you've built is wonderful! How did you ever get such huge logs set up like that?"

"It was quite a job, my lord. You see . . ."

* * *

Duke Henryk and Lady Francine hit it off very well together, and it was because of her that he stayed two days longer than he absolutely had to.

She left with his party, and rumor had it that he paid her two dozen pence a day for her services, whatever they were. That was six times what my top people were paid, but nobody demanded a raise because of it.

As soon as the duke left, however, I got hit with a major protest meeting from the women at Three Walls. They had all seen the tryouts on the steam sawmill, and they were against it. Last summer, they had objected vigorously to having to saw wood. Now they were even more against losing their jobs. And their husbands were with them.

I listened to them go on and on about how they couldn't possibly make it without the half pay they'd been earning for their half day's work, just to let them get it out of their systems. Then I stood up and cut off the last woman, who had been repeating herself. "All right, ladies. I've listened to what you've had to say. Now you'll listen to me.

"You've said that you can't possibly survive without the half pay you've been making sawing wood. I say that's dog's blood! You and your husbands can survive quite well without any pay at all!

"You were all starving in Cieszyn before I brought you here, and if you left, or if I threw you out, you would go right back to starving there! I could stop paying you all and you would keep on working here. You'd do it because it's the best thing that's ever happened to you!

"Who pays for all the food you eat, that some of you are getting too fat on? I do! Who got the cloth you're wearing? I did! Who puts the roof over your head? I do! Who built the church you go to? I did! I even pay the priest!

"And what do I get for this? Do I get your loyalty? No! All I get is complaints! What would Count Lambert do if his people met like this and complained to him? He'd have half of you flogged, and you know it! What would the duke do? You'd all be hung!

"But you think that because I've been good to you, you can get away with being bad to me. Well, you can't!

"You complain that you will be losing your jobs because of the new steam sawmill. Well, you'll lose your jobs when I tell you to lose them, and not before.

"Is there anyone here who actually likes to walk back and forth on that walking mill? Because if you do, you might as well leave now; you're too dumb to make it around here!

"We are building three steam mills. The first will go to Count Lambert's Eagle Nest. The second will go to the duke's new Copper City. And the third will be set up right here at Three Walls. And when it's working, we'll tear down the walking mill and saw it up for lumber.

"I took an oath to take care of you, and I have, even though you have as much as accused me of being an oathbreaker. And seeing your disloyalty, I am half tempted to throw out the lot of you!

"But I won't. I take our oaths seriously, even if you don't. Things are going to go on just as they have been. Women with children will work half a day for half a day's pay. Those without children will go on working a full day for full pay.

"You will work when and where I or my managers tell you to work. You will continue working until I tell you that you have lost your jobs. If you want to change jobs, come to us as individuals and maybe we can work something out. Or maybe not!

"But the next time you organize a protest meeting against me, I'll throw the leaders out and have the rest of you working without pay for a month!"

I stomped out, pretending to be madder than I really was. Had the matter been about food or housing, I would have been easier on them. But I couldn't tolerate protests over every new machine I introduced. Those were going to start coming in fast and furious.

But Count Lambert is right. You can't use reason on a mob. You have to tell them what to do and expect to have it done.

Chapter Eight

I was taking a group of seventy-nine men, fifty-six mules, and eight women to Legnica to build Copper City.

Another crew of about the same size was already at Eagle Nest where, their spring planting done, Count Lambert's peasants were starting to arrive. The Krakowski Brass Works and Three Walls were running with skeleton crews leading a bunch of rookies.

Annastashia was due for her child, so I'd assigned Sir Vladimir to take care of Three Walls. He'd have his hands full, since Ilya was the only real foreman left there.

We were taking it in easy stages, averaging about two dozen miles a day, or about a tenth of what Anna could run in the same time. Despite my precautions, we'd had to take the steam saw in two parts, since the roads were worse than I had imagined. Between them, the pieces occupied half our mules.

On noon of the third day, we were near the boundaries of Count Lambert's county when one of his knights, Sir Lestko, his horse lathered with sweat, overtook us.

"Sir Conrad, thank God in Heaven I've found somebody! You must come quickly and bring all your men! Something terrible is happening in Toszek!"

"What do you mean? What's happening?" I said.

"I'm not sure! But there are soldiers there and they are killing people! They are some kind of foreigners, and they are burning people alive at the stake!"

Toszek was about a mile up the road. The village where the trouble was happening was about a quarter-mile from a wooden castle sitting prominently on a hill. I detailed two men and all the women to watch the mules and baggage, and led the rest, mostly armed with axes, picks, and hammers, to the town. I'd tried to leave Piotr with the baggage, since he had too good a brain to lose, and he was too small to be of much use in a fight, anyway. But he wouldn't stand for it. He was still trying to prove something to himself, or maybe to Krystyana, who was with us. There was no time to argue with him.

We surrounded the place, a process that, for lack of training, took a quarter hour. A modern man has at least seen enough war movies to have a vague idea as to what to do; these men had no such background, and I almost had to tell them individually what I expected of them.

Dirty smoke was rising above Toszek, and we could hear screams and shouts. I knew that people were dying while we blundered around. Yet if we went in like a mob, trained soldiers could cut us to rags!

When the men were all in position and understood that they were to advance when called, keeping the men on either side in sight, Sir Lestko, Tadaos the bowman, and I went into the town. I'd brought Tadaos along to help provide meat for the camp, but I had other uses for him now.

A few dozen peasants were standing some distance away, cowed and frightened. In the middle of the square, eight stakes had been set in a line, and tied to them, slumping, were the burnt bodies of eight women. Three dozen soldiers and some priests stood around them.

The clothes and hair are the first things to burn, and I think that some of the thrill these filthy bastards got was watching the clothes burn off the women.

Tadaos rode his mule to the side of a shed, stood up on its back and climbed to the roof, where he could cover the square with his longbow.

Sir Lestko and I were actually in the square before the soldiers noticed us. Soldiers? The assholes didn't even have sentries out! Women had died because I had overestimated the opposition. I made a solemn vow to myself that next time there was trouble, I was going to just charge straight in and let the chips fly any way they would.

"You people are all under arrest!" I shouted. "You are outnumbered five to one and we have you surrounded! Drop your weapons and raise your hands!"

The soldiers and priests looked at each other, confused. They started babbling to one another in something that might have been Spanish, but which I didn't understand.

"Don't any of you bastards speak Polish? Speak up or we'll shoot you down!"

"I speak a little, knight. What is it you want?" An older priest said in very broken Polish.

"Want? I want you to drop your weapons and raise your hands! Tell them that in whatever tongue you speak, or I'll have the lot of you killed right now for resisting arrest!"

He hesitated a bit and then announced something to the crowd. One of the soldiers shouted something and drew his sword. He got one step closer to me before a steel tipped arrow tore through his throat. Tadaos was on the ball.

"That's one, you old fart! Anybody else want to play target practice? Tell them to drop their weapons!"

There was some more shouting that I couldn't understand. These murderers acted as though they were doing the most natural thing in the whole world, and that I was a strange person for intruding on them!

"You're taking too long, old man! I said that you are under arrest! You men surrounding the town! Advance slowly with your axes high!"

My men came up between the houses and barns, looking less sure of themselves than I would have wished.

"Last chance, old man! Surrender or die!"

There was still more unintelligible shouting. Then two soldiers dropped their swords, but three more drew theirs and charged me. Two went down quickly with arrows in their throats, but the third arrow missed, to bury itself in the chest of a priest standing behind. I had been so overconfident of Tadaos's shooting that I hadn't even drawn my own sword. The soldier was only a pace from me as my blade cleared its scabbard, but I needn't have worried.

Anna kicked the man in the face with a forehoof. There was a satisfying crunch and he crumbled into the dirt.

I tried to act as though I'd expected that. Pointing with my sword, as if that was the reason I'd drawn it, I said, "Form them into a line along there. Search them carefully for weapons!"

Of course, the enemy had still not surrendered, but I was using what a capitalist salesman calls an "assumed close." Pretend that your opponents will do what you want them to do, and maybe they'll do it.

They didn't.

Another soldier drew his sword, one of the plumbers took a clumsy chop at him with a pickaxe, and missed. A second soldier stabbed the plumber in the arm and was struck by a carpenter's axe.

A general melee broke out. They had swords and armor, but we outnumbered them two to one and were not much more disorganized. We had two men mounted while they were all on foot. And we had Tadaos.

His last dozen arrows streaked into the center of their mass, hollowing it out. I saw Sir Lestko take out three soldiers, and Anna and I hopped around, looking busy.

At one point a group of soldiers threw down their weapons, but my workers didn't have brains enough to accept their surrender. Or maybe they didn't understand what was happening. In any event, two unarmed soldiers were cut down with axes before I could disengage and get over there. The rest of the soldiers naturally picked up their swords again and the fight went on, costing me two of my own men that didn't have to die.

Then suddenly it was over. In front of the eight smoldering bodies lay those of four priests, nineteen soldiers, three masons, two carpenters, and a blacksmith, besides numerous wounded.

Piotr was standing nearby with a strange smile on his face and blood on his axe. He had killed his man, which is the other major rite of passage in this world.

I had the surviving enemy stripped naked for fear of hidden weapons, then had them tied up and put in one of the barns under guard. Other men were assigned to guard the battlefield, because the peasants might loot it before we could properly share out the booty.

I'd had the presence of mind to bring my medical kit with me, and naturally I took care of my own people before I bothered with the Castilians, for that's what they turned out to be.

I had seven people in tourniquets and was sewing up an eighth, the man's leg laying on my lap, when Count Lambert rode up with a dozen knights. Sir Stefan was with them.

"More of your witch's work, Sir Conrad?" Sir Stefan shouted.

I ignored him and addressed Count Lambert. "Good afternoon, my lord. You'll forgive me if I don't stand."

The dead still lay where they had fallen, and the burnt women were still tied to their stakes. Clothes, weapons, and blood lay thick about the village square.

"Sir Conrad, what the hell goes on here?"

"Well, my lord, the short of it was that Sir Lestko came to me and said that a bunch of foreigners were burning people to death. I came here and found it was true. I put them under arrest, but they resisted, with the result you see. The survivors are in that barn."

"Dog's blood! Sir Conrad, you have the damndest talent for finding trouble! What was Baron Mieczyslaw doing while this was going on?"

"Who, my lord?"

"Baron Mieczyslaw. These are his lands. That's his castle over there. Where is he?"

"I'm afraid I've never met the gentleman, my lord. I've only been here an hour myself."

"Sir Lestko! Go with my men to the castle and see how matters stand there. Come back as soon as you may. I want to talk to the prisoners."

Count Lambert went to the barn and I went back to my doctoring. I was an amateur, but I was the best available.

Tadaos came back from helping secure the prisoners and started retrieving his arrows. "There's a lot of stuff laying around here, my lord," he said, gesturing to the booty scattered about.

"You'll get your share. We'll sort it out once things settle down. That was some pretty good shooting. You probably saved my life."

"I still owe you a few, my lord."

"Except for that fourth shot, of course. Missing a man clean at only a hundred yards. I'm surprised at you." I tried to say it in a humorous way.

Tadaos looked genuinely hurt. "That was an old arrow, my lord. A feather came loose as I let fly. The glue must have gone bad."

"I was only joking. Those things happen. Look, when you finish up with that, count the bodies, get the men together, and dig some graves. But leave things here as they are for a while. Count Lambert might want another look."

I was finishing up with the last of our men when Count Lambert came back. "Sir Conrad, do you realize that some of those prisoners are priests?"

"I know that some of them were wearing priest's robes and have their heads shaved, my lord. I believe they are impostors. Real priests don't fight and real priests don't commit murder."

"That's true enough. Still, you can't be too careful. What do you advise we do?"

"Well, I suppose we ought to hold a trial, my lord. We have to find out what these people were doing here, and why they seemed to think they could get away with committing murder in broad daylight and in public. For all we know, there could be other bands like this around."

"Yes. We'll do it in the morning, once we've all had a chance to think." He was walking up the line of burnt bodies. "These were all old women."

"Except for the one on the end, my lord. She might have been sixteen, but it's pretty hard to tell."

"Dog's blood. How could anybody do something so . . . so . . ."

"Evil, my lord?"

"I think that's the word I wanted, but it doesn't seem bad enough. Well. Have your men clean up the mess here, and distribute the spoils as you see fit. I don't want any of it. It seems unclean."

Sir Lestko came up with six knights.

"Count Lambert, the castle was empty save for Baron Mieczyslaw. All of the servants seem to have run off. I left half your men there to secure the place."

"Good. You other knights, go to that barn and relieve the peasants securing the prisoners. Sir Maciej will be in charge. Sir Lestko, what of the baron?"

"My lord, the baron is in a very bad way. He cannot speak. He is bedridden and cannot move half his body. It is very strange. It's as though a line were drawn from head to navel, right down the middle of his face. All that is to the left of that line is cold and insensitive. It's as if he were half dead."

"Dog's blood! That smacks of witchcraft!"

"No, my lord, that smacks of a stroke," I said. "It's a common enough malady among the very aged. Is the baron very old?"

"Very. He served my grandfather," Count Lambert said.

"That explains it, then. You probably don't see much of it around here because you all die so young of other things first. It's all too common where I come from."

"I see. Can anything be done for him?"

"Not really, my lord. In time, he may regain some of his faculties, but until then he must be tended like a baby. There are a few women back with my baggage. I'll send two of them up to the castle to tend him until someone permanent can be found. But beyond that, there isn't much that I can do."

I had the baggage train brought up and sent two mature women to tend the baron. Taking care of a stroke victim is hardly a job to dump on a squeamish young girl.

Our field kitchen was set up, and Krystyana got a meal going. Some of the carpenters dismantled a shed to make coffins for our dead and the burnt women. The Castilians were simply thrown naked into a pit, the general consensus being that they didn't deserve any better.

When we tried to find the village priest to hold the funeral services, we discovered that his was among the dead bodies in the pit. Somehow, he had gone over to the enemy. We had to send a man to the next village to get someone to do the burial services.

Sir Lestko said that he didn't want any part of the booty either, so I told my people that those who had killed an enemy would get first pick of souvenirs.

"Just weapons, now. Any money and jewels will be divided up evenly later. Tadaos, you did yeoman service today. You get first pick. Piotr, I saw your axe bloody. You go next. The rest of you, well, you know who you are. Get in line. The others will keep you honest."

Piotr took a handsome sword with silver mountings and a matching dagger, while Tadaos found a pair of weapons that had plain steel mountings but very good quality blades. The differences in their characters, I suppose.

I saw Piotr looking proudly at Krystyana, but she just looked away.

After they were through, I had the others, including those who had stayed with the baggage, take their choice, and had to be reminded about the women tending the baron. Their husbands chose for them.

As for the rest, I kept the armor for myself, not being as proud as certain others, and we added their horses and mules to our own. They had a surprising amount of money with them, surprising until you realize that there were no banks or travelers' checks in this world. If you were traveling, you had to carry all your money with you in cash, which made for a highwayman's heaven.

Every one of my people got almost three month's pay.

But the real surprise was the church vestments and altar furnishings in their luggage. I began to worry that maybe these really were priests. But even if they were, they were still murderers, so I earmarked the religious things for our church at Three Walls.

Who knows? Maybe they looted a church.

By dusk, there was some semblance of order in the village and the villagers were starting to filter back in. Some of them had been in the woods for days.

Krystyana, Natalia, Natasha, and I were invited to the castle for supper, only to discover that they were down to field rations up there. Dried meat and dry bread and not much of that. When the servants had run off, they stripped the larder.

There was plenty of extra food down at our field kitchen, many of the men not being hungry after their first experience with combat. I sent down for some, and none of the nobility complained about eating the leftovers of the commoners. None, that is, except for Sir Stefan. But after insulting the food, he ate his share. I got to ignoring him as just a bad noise.

Count Lambert was unusually taciturn that evening, and that put something of a damper on things. Questioning him, I found that he'd been notified by a boy from the village. A twelve-year-old kid had run from Toszek to Okoitz, a distance of four dozen miles, in a single afternoon and night, getting to Count Lambert at dawn. He had come immediately.

"In my land, that kid would get a medal," I said.

"And what might that be?" Sir Bodan said.

"It's sort of like a very large coin that is hung from a ribbon pinned to the tunic over the heart, or hung around the neck. It's given as an honor to those that have done some exceptional deed for the good of the community or state. They are of bronze or silver or even of gold, depending on the degree of the honor. Each branch of our military has several of these, ranging from mere participation in a campaign to one for outstanding valor."

"Interesting. So in your land a man may not dress as he chooses?" Sir Lestko said.

"Not at all. A person's clothing is up to him, except that certain professions and the military wear uniform clothing when on duty. It's just that someone wearing a medal that he had not earned would be a laughingstock when he was found out."

"You said, 'each branch of the service,' " Count Lambert said. "You have more than one kind of fighting man?"

"There are three, my lord. An army for fighting on land, a navy for fighting on the seas, and an air force."

"So you fight in the skies as well! Which was your branch?"

"I am an officer in the air force, my lord."

"Then you fought in the skies!"

"No, my lord. My duty was to oversee the maintenance of certain equipment, and during my four years of active duty, we were not at war. Not one man in a hundred was actually on flying duty."

"That must have been frustrating."

"The job had to be done. 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' "

"Well. There is the question of Baron Mieczyslaw. Sir Conrad says that it will be long before he can again perform his duties, if ever.

"My grandfather raised the baron to his rank for valor, but the fact was that his lands were not enough to support any subordinate knights. And while outstanding in combat, the baron drank and gambled to such an excess that it was never felt wise to enlarge his lands. He would only have wasted them.

"Further, he never took a wife, and has neither child nor near relative. His lands therefore escheat to me, yet I would not have him deposed, for as I said, he served my grandfather well. Therefore, someone must act as caretaker here, to be lord in all but in name.

"Sir Lestko, you have been in my county for four years, yet you have not actually sworn to me or mine, but have merely attached yourself to Baron Casimir."

"Ah, my lord. In truth, I am more attached to Baron Casimir's daughter," Sir Lestko said.

"So I had heard. Being lord of a barony might improve your suit. If you would swear to me, I would put you in charge of the lands and castle here. Baron Mieczyslaw will be lord in name until his death. Should he die, you will be invested with his lands, but will not be made baron. That title was in a way only honorary here, and dies with the man.

"Should the baron live and again be able to do his duties, I will see to it that you are rewarded with greater lands elsewhere. What say you?"

"I will do it gladly, my lord."

"Good. We'll swear you in tomorrow as soon as the sun is high. Do not be kind to the villagers here, for they have allowed harm to be done to their lord and to their fellows. The castle servants have robbed and abandoned their lord in time of his dire need. The least of them deserves a severe whipping, and you have my permission to hang those you see fit.

"Sir Conrad, you once talked of the manner of your people concerning trials. I would see how it is done. You will be in charge of tomorrow's trial. I shall be judge and these noblemen shall be jury. The other offices you shall appoint yourself. Have it ready by midmorning.

"For now, I am tired, and I wish you all good night. Sir Bodan will set up the guard schedule."

Later, I saw Natasha going to Count Lambert's room. The girls seemed to think that it would be most improper—and a waste—for him to have to sleep alone.

The next morning, after Sir Lestko was sworn in, I explained the duties of prosecutor and defender, and appointed Sir Bodan to be the defending attorney, since he was articulate and seemed to be the most sympathetic toward the prisoners. I removed Sir Lestko from the jury, since he was a witness, and found bailiffs among my own people. Natalia acted as court recorder.

I took the role of prosecutor myself, and Sir Bodan and I spent the morning interviewing witnesses, until Count Lambert sent down and told us to get on with it. In the Middle Ages, trials were often over in minutes, and justice suffered.

We held it in the church, that being the only building big enough to seat everybody.

I arranged the seating like that of the usual modern courtroom, and we were under way by noon. I started by explaining what we were doing, and that each witness could only say what he had actually seen with his own eyes. Hearsay was not admissible, which surprised people. They felt that they should say what "everybody knew."

One by one, the accused were interviewed through an interpreter, and the witnesses were heard. I could see Count Lambert getting increasingly bored and fidgety, but I kept on with it. It was almost dark when the last had been heard, and some of the witnesses had to be excused to get supper going.

The story that came out was this. The prisoners said that they had been charged by the Inquisition to go and to root out witchcraft wherever it was found. They had performed this office through Spain, through France, and then through Germany over the last year, burning, by their own admission, over a hundred people. They had no written authorization from the church, and they did not feel that it was necessary to consult with local temporal or ecclesiastical authorities.

On coming to Toszek they found the baron stricken in a manner that was certain proof of witchcraft. On questioning the villagers, they found that seven old women lived in a cluster of huts apart from the others, proof that they were up to no good. One young woman had taken on the duty of supplying them with food, and so was obviously of their number. Performing their duty, they had cleansed the world of them.

Then they had been murderously attacked without provocation by Sir Lestko, myself, and my people. They demanded justice.

The villagers said that a year ago, there had been an argument between some old widowed women and their families. To smooth things out, Baron Mieczyslaw had ordered that some huts for them be built apart from the others, and had appointed one girl, the granddaughter of two of the women, to collect food and to take it to them. Some measure of peace had resulted from this arrangement.

Sir Lestko's story told what I have said above, and each of my workers confirmed it.

We met again after supper, and Sir Bodan and I made our closing statements. He said that the prisoners were only doing their duty as they saw it, and they should be released with all their property returned.

I think I showed that the women burned were innocent of any wrong doing, and that the girl's only faults were obeying her lord and simple Christian charity.

I said that the accused had no proof that they were working at the behest of the church, and even if they did once have such proof, they had no right to take any such action without the permission of the local authorities. The Bishop of Wroclaw was never consulted, nor was Duke Henryk. Only Count Lambert had the right of high justice here, and to kill, other than in self-defense, without his permission was murder.

I demanded that they all be hanged. I then suggested that the jury members discuss the matter among themselves, and tell us their decision in the morning. Count Lambert, bored to tears, heartily agreed.

That evening, he said, "Damn but this goes slow! Did you have to bring forth every peasant to tell the story that the one before him had told?"

"Yes, my lord, I did. What if one had said that all the others were liars? What if the truth was something different from what we had been told? The lives of twenty-three men are at stake, as well as who knows how many so-called 'witches,' if they are allowed to leave unmolested."

"It would have been simpler to kill them all out of hand."

"True, my lord. But would it have been more just?"

In the morning, Count Lambert's instructions to the jury were, "Are any of you fool enough to think these bastards had the right to usurp my justice?"

Sir Stefan started to say something, but Count Lambert glared at him and he shut up.

The foreman stood and said, "No, my lord. Hang them."

Not quite proper procedure, but an improvement over the usual way of doing things. At least the accused were allowed to have their say in court.

One of the peasants in the town had been a hangman in Wroclaw, so he was given the job.

The prisoners were permitted to say confession to their own priests while ropes were slung over the branches of a huge old oak tree. Most of the condemned swore at us, and the priest who spoke Polish swore that he'd see me in hell.

"Damn foreigners," the hangman muttered. "You hang them with a new rope and still they complain!"

The sight of the Castilians being hung wasn't pretty. They weren't dropped, so as to break their necks, but were hauled up so as to strangle. Criminals were hung naked, their clothes going to the hangman as his fee.

It was an ugly sight. Most of the murderers urinated and defecated, and over half had an ejaculation, which I thought curious. Some actually died with a smile on their lips. Perhaps hanging really is a merciful way to kill somebody.

It was brutal, yet it was necessary. People cannot be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Anyway, burning eight women wasn't pretty either.

We left them hanging as we rode out about our duties. I suppose that somebody buried them.

I expected to get a lot of flak from the Church over the thing, but there wasn't a word. And in later years, when the insanity of witch-hunts was all the rage in western Europe, there were none in Poland.

The buck stopped here.

Chapter Nine

Anna found the mine site without difficulty, and we went to work. We had temporary shelters up in a few days, and then the carpenters started felling trees, the masons collecting stones, the miners digging for ore.

The mules were sent back to Three Walls to get lime for mortar, the sawmill was set up, and word was sent to the surrounding towns and villages that we were hiring workers temporarily for the summer. If they did well, they might be sworn in permanently.

There was no lack of applicants, since word had spread quickly about how well my people lived. The winter before, I'd made up some blocks and puzzles of the sort that modern psychologists use, and tried to get some idea of the men's intelligence. I tried to hire the bright ones, because there was no hiring all the applicants. Thousands came and there was only room in the budget for three gross on a permanent basis and a thousand more temporarily. I hated to send so many of them away, but what could I do?

The ore was right on the surface, so tunneling wasn't necessary. We could dig it out of an open pit, which was much safer and cheaper.

The duke had sent six knights to take care of security, so that was one headache I didn't have to worry about.

In a week, things were progressing well enough for me to leave for Eagle Nest. I left Yashoo, my carpentry foreman, in general charge, and only nominally subordinate to the duke's knight, Sir Stanislaw. I took Natasha along, since she was handy to have around, and Anna hardly noticed her weight. By evening, Anna had us at Eagle Nest.

Vitold, Count Lambert's carpenter, was in charge there and things were going well. There were probably more men available than could be efficiently administered, but they were mostly logging and digging, which doesn't take much supervision.

Count Lambert had left the day before, and the setup was his idea, so I didn't change anything. We left for Okoitz that afternoon and got there in time for supper.

One of my miners was getting the coal mine dug without problems, and the cloth factory, with its two hundred attractive and available young ladies, was going full blast.

Count Lambert rather proudly offered me a cold beer. "You were right again, Sir Conrad. A cold beer is a wonderful thing on a hot day! I'm glad you talked me into finishing the icehouse below the grain mill."

The next morning, I was at Three Walls and found that Sir Vladimir and Annastashia were the proud parents of a healthy boy.

Trivial matters delayed me a few days, and then I headed to Copper City again, this time with Yawalda riding Anna's rump.

The whole summer went that way, with me constantly racing from Three Walls to Copper City to Eagle Nest to Okoitz and back to Three Walls, the whole circuit taking us a week to run. Since many of my workers were separated from their families, and since they could read and write now, I was playing postman as well as roving supervisor. It was fun and exciting at first, but it got very old after a while.

By fall, things were settled down to the point that Copper City only needed to be visited once a month, and I tried to keep my traveling down to two weeks a month, staying at Three Walls as much as possible.

We had another good harvest in 1233, the third in a row. Everyone gorged on sweet corn and watermelon, honeydews and zucchini, pumpkins and muskmelon. The beehives were a great success, and the price of honey and beeswax dropped by a factor of twelve on the open market.

The grains, potatoes, and legumes I'd brought with me had done well, and I computed that in two years we would be eating them rather than keeping it all for seed as we had been. And glory be to God, we had sugar beet seeds, over a hundred pounds of them! Next fall, I'd have to worry about refining sugar.

The new plants were almost untouched by insects, which cut heavily into most crops since insecticides weren't available. Most insects are very specialized in their eating habits, and the local ones couldn't cope with the crops that I'd brought in. They'd catch up with us eventually, but for the time being we were getting a free ride.

In fact, the only sour point was the squashes. I hadn't realized that they could interbreed, and they had been planted too close to each other. The bees, or whatever pollinated them, had made a mess of things. We got veggies that were half butternut and half spaghetti squash, and every other combination possible. Lambert and I set up a breeding program at six widely separated manors to try to breed back to the original forms, but that would take time. I moved six varieties of beans to those same six manors just to be on the safe side.

Most of Lambert's knights and barons were quickly taking up his new crops and other improvements, running only a year behind him. And everyone was using wheelbarrows now, and the entire harvest was gotten in early, almost without loss.

Piotr was doing a lot more traveling than I was. He had to make a monthly visit to the inns at Cracow, Cieszyn, and Wroclaw, besides the installations at Three Walls, Copper City, Eagle Nest, where we were taking care of the bookkeeping, paying all expenses and charging Count Lambert in cloth for it, and Okoitz, where we had built a small Pink Dragon Inn at Count Lambert's request. If the duke had one at Wroclaw, Count Lambert had to have one at Okoitz.

That summer, I'd formalized the mail service, setting up a post office at every one of our inns. Besides serving our own people, we carried the mail of anybody who asked, and charged for it. It became a profitable sideline.

We never carried money or valuables, since Piotr had to travel alone and I didn't want to make him a target for thieves, but I did set up a system of postal money orders.

By spring, volume had grown to the point that I had to put on a full-time letter carrier, who made the round on about a weekly basis on a fast horse. As more inns were added, the number of letters sent increased as a cube function. In a few years, letters left each inn daily, and a letter could get to any major city in Poland in a week, for a price.

And like a modern post office, we were absolutely scrupulous about respecting people's privacy and about getting the mail through.

By late fall, the smelters at Copper City were in full production and the other facilities were just about complete. I sold the Krakowski Bros. Brass Works at a very healthy profit to Count Lambert's brother, Count Herman. I did this with the clear written understanding that I was taking the best of my workers with me to Legnica, and that we would be producing products there much like those that were made in Cieszyn.

I don't think the guy understood that people are as important as things when it comes to getting something done. It takes both the tools and the man who knows how to use them to accomplish anything, but many would-be industrialists don't realize that. He got all the buildings, machinery, and facilities, as well as two years worth of back orders and my blessings. But deep inside, I didn't think he'd be successful.

Most of the people from the brass works were moved to Copper City and formally sworn to me. They hadn't been up to that time, except for the Krakowski brothers themselves and their wives, and I wanted all the workers to be treated the same. I also swore in those workers hired that spring that had received the approval of the foremen, most of them, actually.

Thom Krakowski was put in charge of the smelting and mining operations, and being the eldest was also overseer of the whole city. His brothers had charge of the casting and machining sections. In fact they were used to working as a committee, and that's the way I set it up. Oh, they were always arguing like a bunch of kids over a game, and sometimes it got pretty loud. But somehow inside they were a smooth team. It takes all kinds.

My ladies had each spent months at the city and at Eagle Nest duplicating their own bailiwicks there. Krystyana got the kitchens going well; Yawalda had the barns running efficiently. The stores and offices were set up, and all the girls had chosen to come back to Three Walls. I was flattered, but they explained that if they stayed out in "the woods," as they described it, they might be stuck there. But things were always happening when I was around, even if I wouldn't marry them.

Tadeusz had put his youngest son in charge of running the inn at Copper City. He was worried. He was now out of sons. How could we expand further? So we worked out a training program for innkeepers, with each of his sons training a man, and with promotions to larger inns if a man did well. There was also a bonus system for the trainer.

Piotr had junior accountants at each of our installations by then so that he only had to check their work rather than doing it all himself. There just wasn't time.

The priest from Italy finally arrived, and I nearly fell off my chair when he announced his name. It was Thomas of Aquinas!

Saint Thomas Aquinas was the greatest theologian and logician of the Middle Ages, perhaps of all time! And here he was, a young man of twenty-two, running my church and school system. I tried to treat him the same as any other priest, but secretly I was in awe of him. I told him what I wanted to accomplish, but generally I let him do as he felt best, offering advice only when asked.

Interlude Two

I hit the STOP button.

"He really had Thomas Aquinas working for him?"

"Yes and no. The man's name was Thomas and he really was from the Italian town of Aquinas. But the Thomas Aquinas you're both thinking of was seven years old at the time, and no relation to Conrad's schoolteacher. Conrad's history was about as accurate as yours.

"Summa Theologica still got written in Conrad's branch."

He hit the START button.

Chapter Ten

We had just finished installing our first rotary steam engine, our first double expansion device. It turned an overhead shaft that had leather belts driving the lathes, grinders, and other machines we had lined up below it. Wicker baskets covered the belts, a safety feature.

I was getting ready to go to Eagle Nest to greet the first batch of four dozen boys when there was a commotion at the gate of Three Walls.

In front of the drawbridge was a ragged mob of some sort of foreigners, and Sir Vladimir was not about to let them in without my permission. There were over a hundred of them.

They had darker complexions than we did. Their hair was black and their eyes brown, sometimes green. They were of medium stature and had the thin, wiry bodies one associates with Armenians, or even Arabs. Yet they weren't quite exactly like either of those peoples.

Their leader, who was about as ragged as the rest, spoke only a smattering of Polish, and the others spoke none at all. It took me several hours to find out what they wanted, and I would have given up on them if I hadn't caught the words "Novacek" and "alchemist."

A year before, I had asked a merchant friend, Boris Novacek, to send me a chemist, if he ever ran across one, since I was weak in practical chemistry. Apparently, this man was the thirteenth-century equivalent of a chemist. He had with him three pottery jars of what smelled like acids, and intimated with gestures that he had made them.

Well, I badly needed a chemist. We were throwing away all sorts of things that could be useful if treated properly. Coal tar, for example, is a sticky guck that is a mixture of thousands of chemicals, some of which can be very useful. I knew that it contained aspirin and dyes and wood preservatives, to name but a few. But I hadn't the foggiest idea of how to go about purifying the stuff. But I needed one chemist, or maybe a few. I didn't need a hundred!

I tried to get this idea across, but it was slow going.

The lunch bell rang, and I was getting hungry. Looking at the crowd of refugees, for that's what they turned out to be, I realized that they hadn't eaten in days, and had had damn little in the months before. We had plenty of food, and there was no reason to be uncharitable. I invited them in for lunch, trying to communicate with gestures that this was a temporary invitation only, and that I was not permanently hiring them.

Problems started almost at once. Where I come from, when you're a guest, you eat what's put in front of you, and at least pretend that you're enjoying it. But they wouldn't touch our beer, insisting on drinking only water. Many Poles feel that you can't trust a man who won't drink with you, and to refuse a man's generosity is an insult.

The leader questioned me at length about the kind of meat we were serving, and I finally had to draw him a picture of a pig to get the idea across to him. He acted like I was trying to feed him human flesh, and on finding out it was pork he said something to his followers such that they contented themselves with bread and kasha. At least they were cheap to feed, even though they ate three times what my own people did.

In the course of the afternoon, either his Polish improved or I got better at gesticulating. It seems that his name was Zoltan Varanian, although I wasn't sure whether "zoltan" was a name or a title. In any event, I got the idea across that he and his people were welcome to stay for two weeks, but after that they would have to leave.

I also insisted that they take a bath before we put them up for the night, which caused other problems. My people didn't have a nudity taboo, and his did. Men and women didn't bathe together.

This caused all sorts of screaming every time one of my workers of the wrong sex walked into the shower room at the wrong time. Their men even screamed when a pretty girl went in to join them. Culture shock all over the floor.

Their clothes were in shreds and we had cloth coming out of our ears. Lambert had been paying for all the work at Eagle Nest in cloth, and I hadn't gotten around to disposing of it profitably yet. I had Janina issue them enough cloth to make a set of clothes for each of them.

Supper that night featured lamb, and that they'd eat. We put them up in the lowest two floors of the noble guest quarters, since there wasn't room for them anywhere else. They were stacked in like firewood, but even so, if the duke paid an unexpected visit, I didn't know what we'd do. Put them up in the barns, maybe.

The next morning, I really had to get to Eagle Nest, being a day late already. I assigned Natasha to Zoltan, with the understanding that she was supposed to do what she could about teaching him some Polish. I said that I didn't expect her to sleep with him. There are limits to hospitality.

Natasha took the job with the same cheerful acceptance that she did everything else. I never decided whether she was odd for being so compliant, or all the rest of the women in the world were strange for not being exactly like her. Any man who wouldn't marry the girl was a damn fool, including myself. Of course, I got her without having to get married.

Four dozen boys were waiting for me at Eagle Nest, bright young kids about ten or twelve years old, the scions of the local nobility.

Most of them had a servant or two along, and these people expected to have the cushy job of waiting on one small person. I put a stop to that, assigning most of the servants to housekeeping, cooking, and cleaning, which freed up many of my own people for more productive work elsewhere.

The boys were assigned six to the room, and one responsible servant was put in with them, mostly to keep the kids in line. There was room for eight times the number of people we had, and each of the boys could have had a room to himself, but boys of that age are tribal in their outlook. I wanted to get them to form long-lasting friendships and a sense of teamwork. For the first few days, I let them switch roommates as they liked, but after that room assignments became fairly permanent.

Count Lambert had picked the headmaster, and I liked the man. He would be teaching two classes of two dozen each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. He was to teach the standard subjects, reading, writing, and arithmetic. When not in school, the boys were under the supervision of one of my carpenters, a man who was good with kids.

This system gave us a morning team and an afternoon team, which was intended to create friendly rivalry. A good amount of time was spent on team sports, and competitions were set between the shifts on weekends.

I started the boys out with kites, and had them build their own. And not just ordinary kites, but controllable kites with two and three strings. By the end of the week, I told them about gluing sand to the strings, so that you could cut another kite's strings.

Competition got fierce! And hopefully the boys learned something.

Returning to Three Walls, I got to thinking that a uniform might help with the feeling of solidarity I was trying to build among the boys. Count Lambert's factory turned out quite a nice red wool cloth, and Copper City could turn out brass buttons and military doodads by the ton.

I decided on white trousers and a white turtleneck sweater, with a red open-collar jacket. The trousers and jacket would have pockets in the modern fashion, since carrying everything in belt pouches is a nuisance. Black leather boots, belt, and gloves. Brass buttons, buckles, insignia, and epaulets. And either a red or a white peaked hat, depending on which shift they were on.

At the end of the year, I'd let the boys design a class dagger, and none but them would carry one of that design. Each class would have its own, just as many schools have a class ring.

Instructors would wear a similar outfit, except they would have a black hat. Other workers would have the same, but with much less braid on their outfits.

I debated with myself on whether or not the kids should be required to sew their own uniforms, since skill at sewing was needed to make canvas-covered aircraft. I decided against it because boys of that age grow quickly. If the kid had made it himself, he wouldn't feel right about handing it down once he'd outgrown it, and the obvious economy of hand-me-downs was standard in this century, even among the highest nobility.

Natasha and Zoltan made a remarkable amount of progress in the week I was gone. It was actually possible to communicate with the man. Some of this was Natasha's patience, but mostly it was because Zoltan was a very accomplished linguist with eleven other languages. Oh, he still had the vocabulary of a five-year-old, and much of our time together was spent discussing the meanings of various words, but he was able to tell his story.

He and his people were originally from thousands of miles east of Three Walls, east of the Caspian Sea. They had been from the city of Urgench, a part of the Khoresmian Empire, which stretched from the Arabian Ocean to north of the Aral Sea, and from beyond the Hindu Kush to the shores of the Caspian. To hear Zoltan talk of it, it was next door to Eden, with skies that were never cloudy and the waters ever abundant in the great Amu River that washed down from the never-failing snow-fields of the Himalayas.

Ponds and orchards and fields of grain went on forever, all irrigated by the mighty Amu. Dozens of cities rose white and glorious in the sun, each with populations of more than half a million, for the empire was densely populated. Yet such was the abundance of the land that there was plenty for all.

Then the Mongols had come from out of the mountains to the northeast, and had killed the Shah and taken Samarkand and the capital city of Bokhara. The cities were destroyed, and their entire populations murdered. With their armies completely obliterated, with their Shah dead, or some said hunted beyond the shores of the Caspian Sea, with no hope left at all, the Prince of Urgench submitted to Genghis Khan. In return for a ruinous tribute paid to the conqueror, he bought some measure of peace for a few years.

But the tribute demanded increased yearly, and to it was added the demand that all the healthy men must enlist in the armies of the Khan, to fight in foreign wars. Already the required tribute in grain and gold and slaves meant starvation stalked the land. Without the aid of the healthy men, the tribute could not be met. The women, children, and aged might be able to support themselves, if poorly, but there would be no surplus. Without the tribute, the Khan's armies would return, and there would be none to defend against them.

The Prince of Urgench joined with other princes in rebellion against the Mongols, and Urgench was the last city to be destroyed. The surrounding countryside was desecrated in days, and every town, village, and farmhouse was put to the torch. The orchards and vineyards were chopped down for no other reason than the pleasure of their destruction. Women were raped within sight of the city walls, and then their throats were cut when the rapist was done. Whole families were lined up just beyond bowshot, and slaughtered.

Urgench held out for five months against the Mongol horde, until all the arrows had been exhausted, all the food was gone, and even the rats had all been captured and eaten. Then the Mongols had proposed a truce. They said that if the prince would surrender himself, they would let all others in the city live, for only the prince had rebelled against his masters, the others were but dupes who had followed him. The Mongols swore this to Allah, and to their own pagan gods.

The prince took counsel with his nobles, and then voluntarily surrendered himself. As arranged, the prince went out the city gate, and Mongol soldiers took charge of that gate. They beheaded the prince within sight of his subjects, and marched their army within the walls.

Then they said that all must leave the city, for they had sworn to leave the people with their lives, but the city itself was to be destroyed. The people could take what they could carry, but that was all.

As the citizens went through the gate, they were searched, and all weapons were taken from them. They were then sorted into groups, according to their occupations. Each group was separately guarded.

Military officers were the first to be murdered. They were bound hand and foot in sight of their families and then some were strangled and others slashed to death. Their families were soon butchered as well, except for a few hundred attractive young women, who were stripped, chained, and set aside.

Other groups followed, and the systematic killing went on for days. When the people complained to the Mongols that they were not keeping their oath to their gods, the Khan answered that he had promised not to kill those within the city, but that they were now outside its walls.

When none were left but a hundred of the city's best craftsmen with their families in one group, two thousand young women in another, and eighty thousand healthy men in a third, the killing stopped for a time.

While the butchering had been going on, and all the heads of the murdered stacked in neat pyramids, others of the horde had been systematically looting the city, although in fact most of the portable wealth had been in the baggage of the refugees.

The city was then burned, and the captive men were put to tearing down every wall, every palace, every mosque, and every hovel. When that was done, it still was not enough to satisfy the Khan. The captives were forced to dig a canal and then to dam the mighty Amu so that the river cut a new channel right through where the city had been. This destroyed the irrigation system, and without irrigation, the fields dried up and the very soil was blown away. Nothing was left of once beautiful Urgench that once held half a million people. The eighty thousand workers were then slaughtered and their heads added to the pyramids of skulls.

The Mongols made Hitler look like a piker, and Stalin look like small change.

Zoltan had been master alchemist of the city, and his family had been spared so that the Mongols might have something to threaten him with. This was also the case of the others in his small group.

The young women were taken off separately and never seen again. Zoltan's group was led off in the direction of Karakorum, the Mongol capital, with a guard of twenty men.

The prisoners were forced to cook for the guards, and Zoltan was as knowledgeable of vegetation as he was of minerals. He concocted a poison from the roots of certain desert plants, and slipping it into their food, used it to kill all the guards.

He then led his people west, and for seven years they had wandered in search of a home, constantly thrown out of Christian lands because they were Moslems, thrown out of Moslem lands because they were considered heretics and deathly afraid of going near the lands of the Khan.

Once there had been over five hundred of them, but four out of five had been lost along the way. A hundred were all that were left from a city of half a million.

It was a pitiful story, and I felt sorry for these people. But darn it, I had problems of my own! I had to make sure that what happened to Urgench didn't happen to Cracow! To do that, I needed the continued support of the Church, of the state, and of my own people. Having this crowd of refugees around wasn't going to help.

They were Moslems, of a sort, but as best as I could tell, they were all members of some heretical sect. Or at least Zoltan said that all the other Moslems were heretics, so I guess it amounted to the same thing. That was the last thing that I needed. Members of small religious sects tend to be fanatics eagerly searching for converts. The Church was already conducting an inquisition concerning me, and if they found out that I was harboring and encouraging Moslems, and heretical Moslems at that, it could go bad for me. And if the refugees started making converts out of good Christians—well, I didn't want to think about it.

I got very firm on the point that his people were not to try to talk my people into joining his Church, or whatever one does to become a heretical Moslem.

He said that this was not a problem, and went into a long theological argument which I could not follow but that apparently proved to his satisfaction that we could never qualify to join his sect, and therefore no attempt would be made to save us.

This ticked me off even more! Where the hell did he get off telling me that I wasn't good enough to join his damned sect? I was good enough to join anything, not that I'd wanted to. By that point, it was pretty late, and I felt it best to call it a night. Much longer and I would have decked the bastard, and that's not how you're supposed to treat a guest.

I spent the next morning catching up on things. Come spring, I planned to build a second housing unit (or defensive wall, depending on how you wanted to look at it), a dozen yards outside our first one. The new one would be made of brick, with a tile roof. Also, I planned a sawmill and cabinetry shop to be built outside the town proper, down where a small stream would make it easier to transport logs. Our valley was as logged over as it was going to be, the trees left being kept for decoration. Hauling huge logs uphill to our existing sawmill was silly.

And there were the hundreds of trivial things that have to be done when you play manager.

It was midafternoon before I could get back to Zoltan, but I was resolved to throw him and his people out at the end of the week. I felt sorry for them, but there was too big a cultural difference between us for it to ever work out. We absorbed a group of Pruthenians last year without much difficulty, but those were children whose families had been murdered by the Knights of the Cross. They'd needed new families pretty badly, and were fairly malleable. These Moslems, or whatever they were, were a tightly knit community. Such a group can maintain its culture indefinitely. They had to go.

I know that sounds cruel, but they were cruel times. There was a limit to what I could do, and if I took responsibility for this band of a hundred foreigners, it meant that there were a hundred Poles somewhere who could otherwise have been helped, but weren't. My own people were dying every winter, and I owed more to them than I did to someone from a country I'd never heard of before.

But while they were around, and I was footing the bill, I wanted to pick Zoltan's brain for everything I could concerning practical chemistry. This proved difficult. Part of the problem was the lack of a mutual vocabulary. Zoltan learned the Polish word for "door" when Natasha pointed at the door and said "door." A bit of discussion might be needed to make sure she wasn't talking about the door knob or the door frame, but it didn't take much time. But how the hell do you get across the concept of potassium nitrate? I couldn't say that it was the major constituent of gunpowder. He didn't know what gunpowder was. It's a white crystal? So are table salt, sand, and a million other things!

I tried to start with the simplest atom, hydrogen. After an hour talking about atoms, Zoltan allowed that he had read an old Greek text about atoms, but was sure that the concept was silly. It didn't fit into his system of moist substances as opposed to dry substances, hot versus cold, and the whole earth, air, water, and fire cosmos that he not only believed in, but that he unshakably knew was true. A thousand times he had used the theories he had been taught by his master and had gotten good results. How could anyone doubt it?

It was late when we finally called it a day with little progress made. The next four days were about as bad, although Zoltan's Polish was improving astoundingly.

The truth was that I had a good background in theoretical chemistry, with little practical knowledge. Oh, I'd had the usual college lab courses, but they all involved taking prepackaged chemicals and mixing them according to a formula. For all the practical knowledge I gained, I might as well have been in a home economics class. It was worse than cookbooking. I hadn't the faintest idea of how most chemicals appeared in nature. A housewife at least knows what a chicken looks like!

And Zoltan knew quite a bit about practical chemistry. He had jars of hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acid with him. He proved it by dissolving a bit of gold. He was also convinced that he could transmute lead into gold, once he got good enough at it. He just hadn't found the right procedure yet.

We had no common ground between us.

And my people didn't get along with his. There had already been two knockdown fistfights, and another incident where knives had been drawn before the men involved were pulled apart. And it wasn't all a matter of the rich settlers molesting the poor refugees. That damn raghead had no business grabbing a married woman, even if she did walk into the shower room naked at the wrong time of the day!

If this went on, somebody was going to get killed.

On the morning before their scheduled departure, Zoltan approached me with the idea of his people feasting some of mine. His Moslems would cook the food and provide the entertainment for, say, forty of my best men. It seems that among his people, a proper feast was for the men only. Women and children ate later from the table scraps.

Well, okay. It was my food they would be serving, but I could see where it was intended to be a goodwill gesture.

If there was to be entertainment, fine. Aside from rare bands of minstrels and clowns, in the Middle Ages, entertainment was what you did on your own. Variety would be welcome.

I said we would hold it that evening in the living room of my apartment.

Chapter Eleven

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

When I returned to Three Walls, I found strange things there. A band of foreigners had been invited temporarily within, and a notice had been posted restricting the baths to them during certain hours of the day.

I discussed this with Yawalda, whose friendship I had been cultivating in part because of her friendship with my love Krystyana. Also, she is in charge of the stables, and takes very good care of my horse. It seemed that the men all wrapped their heads in towels, and were embarrassed if any saw them without such strange garb. The women always kept their faces covered, even around other women. They had been invited in because Sir Conrad had taken pity on them, but they would soon be forced to leave.

But Yawalda had another far more interesting piece of news, and she swore me to secrecy before she would talk of it. They weren't sure yet, but it looked as if Krystyana was with child!

Sir Conrad's ladies had long been using a method of preventing this taught them by Lady Richeza and known as the rhythm method. Yet it appears that not all of God's children have this rhythm, for Krystyana had missed her time. This excited me, for now she would have to be married or be called strumpet! If Sir Conrad would not have her, and he had often said that he would not, then perhaps at last my suit would be considered! I might yet win out and marry my love!

I was thus in a wild mood when word came to me that I was invited to Sir Conrad's apartment in an hour's time for an evening's entertainment! But my first hopes were soon shattered, as it was to be given by the foreigners and was to be a men-only affair.

I came dressed in my best, which was quite good now that I could afford such things, and of course I wore the beautiful sword and dagger I had won in combating the Castilians.

I soon found myself sitting uncomfortably on a cushion, with Sir Conrad to my right and Ilya to my left in Sir Conrad's great hall, or living room, as he insists on calling it. This large room takes up the entire top floor of the place, is fully eighteen yards to the side and is above any other room in the whole building, the floor being higher than the adjacent rooftops.

The ceiling is more than twice that which is usual at Three Walls, which is tall in itself. There are no velvets or tapestries hanging, yet the room has a certain rude splendor to it. I know for a fact that Sir Conrad had originally planned something far more modest, for I was there when Sir Vladimir insisted that it was occasionally necessary to impress a noble guest and Sir Conrad went along with him.

The west wall is done in rude limestone blocks, and those of the north and south are in rough timber, the slabs of wood each a yard wide. The ceiling is supported by other huge logs and the east wall is the raw natural face of a limestone cliff. Into this solid rock is cut a fireplace big enough for twenty men to stand, had the fire been out. Now it was roaring high. Yet for all its roughness, the hall had a certain vibrant strength about it that suited Sir Conrad's character.

Three foreigners were playing musical instruments that I recognized as coming from our own band, but their manner of playing was extremely odd. They were far out of tune, and the music had a strange sliding quality that I disliked at first, but eventually started to enjoy.

The leader of the foreigners, their zoltan, introduced each of his men to Sir Conrad and the rest of us. Their names were all so strange to me that I could not remember a single one of them, but he gave their titles in Polish as well. This one was a master tanner and that was a master goldsmith. There were swordsmiths, pottery-makers, armorers, jewelers, leatherworkers, astrologers, bootmakers, glassblowers, and dozens of other trades mentioned, as well as some that had no word for them in Polish. And all of these men claimed to be masters of their crafts, which I took with a bit of mustard, as the saying goes. If I was in a strange land, I might claim to be a master as well, for who could catch me at it?

Sir Conrad followed suit, introducing all of his men present. Since I was by his side, he introduced me first, and the zoltan translated this into whatever language they spoke. I felt obliged to stand, as one would at a Christian banquet, but in so doing I nearly fell over. After sitting in such an unnatural position, all sensation had left my legs!

Sir Conrad said that the rest should remain seated, and continued around to Sir Vladimir, who should by rights have been first, being the only other nobleman present, but Sir Conrad often puts the last first and vice versa. Myself, I think it part of his philosophy.

Food was served after the introductions were finished, with men doing the serving rather than women, and while I knew that all of it had come from our larders here at Three Walls, much about it was strange. There were noodles that were as tiny as grains of wheat, and a sauce on the mutton that was like nothing I had ever tasted before. I thought that it might have been some foreign spicing, yet Yawalda had said that these people had come to us with absolutely nothing but the rags on their bodies. It remains a mystery to me.

We ate with brass spoons and the forks that Sir Conrad had shown us the use of, but the foreigners, being of course uncivilized, ate with their hands, and only with their right hands, I noticed. I heard later that this was because they wiped their privy parts with their left hands, not having learned the use of hay balls, or apparently, wash stands.

The zoltan stood and made a speech in his barely understandable Polish. He said that he was thankful for our generosity to his people, and thanked Sir Conrad publicly for the food and clothing he had given so freely. Our lord would be remembered in their prayers, even if we did call God by a different name than they did.

Sir Conrad made a speech in return, but I thought he wasn't very sincere about it. He said that he regretted the necessity of their departure, but that each might take with him as much food as he could carry, and there would be a parting gift of a hundred sheep, which he asked that they not slaughter until they had left Count Lambert's lands, because of that lord's laws regarding ewes.

The zoltan then announced that as part of the entertainment, his daughter would dance for us.

The music was stately at first, or as stately as that slippery foreign stuff ever gets.

A woman came up the steps wearing one of the huge garments favored by these people. Word was they dressed that way to cheat Sir Conrad out of more cloth, for I'm sure that clothing them took six times what he had expected. She was covered from head to foot, and even her face was heavily veiled.

After a time, the music became quicker, and she threw off her face veil, revealing a lovely face and huge green eyes. She tossed the veil at Sir Conrad's feet, for he like the rest of us had stretched out to relieve the cramps in his legs.

At my side, Ilya said, "I know that girl! Been talking with her for two weeks. Met her in the dining room."

"Why does she bother with you?" I asked.

"Because she's very discriminating! Also because I'm mature enough to talk without pawing her body every chance I get like a young buck would."

"How were you talking then? I thought that none of these people could speak Polish."

"That's mostly what we've been doing. Teaching her how to talk. I think there's a fellow from the night shift that's been helping her during the day."

"So the relationship has been purely platonic?"

"Naw, we didn't talk no philosophy. Just what words mean."

The tempo of the music increased again, and the speed of the dance with it. The girl took off her outer garment, revealing a more form-fitting one underneath. Her long black hair was flowing free.

"Not a bad body," Ilya said. "If I'd have known what was under that tent two weeks ago, maybe I would have done some pawing."

I nodded, but was too interested in the dance to speak.

Again the tempo quickened and again the dance became faster. Her blouse was thrown to Sir Conrad's feet, revealing a thing of straps that covered her breasts. She was a remarkable beauty, far more attractive than any that I have ever seen in my life, and I tour the Pink Dragon Inns monthly as part of my job. Those inns are reputed to have the most beautiful waitresses in the world!

Again it became faster, and she was stripped to the belly, wearing only a long thin skirt that had many slashes from hem to belt. Not an eye in the room was on anything else but this incredible apparition. At least I can't imagine that anyone was looking anyplace else, though I didn't waste the time to check! She was moving her hips in an incredibly rapid fashion that sent ripples down her skirt. I wouldn't have thought it possible for a woman to move so, yet there it was.

And again the music became impossibly faster, and somehow the dance quickened with it. She was totally nude now, and there was not a hair on her body below the neck. Her privy parts were as smooth as a baby's.

"See how smooth she's shaven!" Ilya said. "These people must make some damn fine steel!"

I didn't bother even to nod, so entranced was I with her dance. Then suddenly the music stopped, and the girl was lying at Sir Conrad's feet, the sweat glistening on her body.

The room was silent for a moment, for we were all dumbstruck. Then the room erupted with applause that vibrated the walls and must have been heard halfway to Sir Miesko's. But the girl never moved.

The cheering went on for a long while, but finally the zoltan stood with his arms up and his palms out, and it became quiet.

"You like, yes?" he said.

Again there was great applause until it was stopped.

"And you, noble Sir Conrad. You like it also?"

"I liked it very much, Zoltan."

"This girl she is name Cilicia. She is my only daughter. She is my only family that is alive. But so great are your gifts to us, that we must give in return. I give her to you. She is your slave. Take her!"

Sir Conrad rocked unsteadily on his cushion. He paused before he said, "Zoltan, I thank you for this incredible intended generosity, but I can't accept a slave. Slavery is illegal in Poland. Last year I fought a battle to make it so!"

"Nonetheless, noble Sir Conrad, it is so. This is a most obedient woman, and always she has done what I say. Now I tell her obey only you, and she will obey me in that, though it be my last word to her."

"I'm sorry, but I may not break the law. I cannot accept a slave."

The zoltan came close to Sir Conrad, bent over and spoke privately. Since I was sitting at my lord's side, I think that I was the only other man to hear what was said.

"Please, Sir Conrad. We are now in the far north and winter is soon. We have no place to live and soon we will all be dead. I do not blame you for this. You have done us much good and you have no obligation to support a band of homeless wanderers. But you were our absolute last hope, and now we must die. But please, as a father I beg you. Let my little girl live."

Sir Conrad paused a while. "Put that way, yes. I'll take care of her."

"Thank you, my lord."

The zoltan stood and announced to the crowd, "The noble lord accepts my gift!"

The crowd cheered, but myself, I think that the zoltan didn't want his followers to know the real reason for his generosity.

As the festivities broke up, I saw Sir Conrad return to his chamber, or bedroom he called it, with the girl under his arm. She was still naked.

The next morning at breakfast, the extra meal Sir Conrad insisted on serving, the talk was about nothing but the dance Cilicia had done the night before, and those of us who had been there were the center of attraction. The ladies were all envious, and Yawalda said she'd trade next year's pay to have people talk about her as they did the foreigner.

"Cilicia will be staying with us," I said. "Get her to give you dancing lessons."

"I tell you in front of God that I will ask her!" she said.

"Good. I'd like to see all you women doing it. Myself, I think it was some kind of fertility dance, to induce a man to marriage. It's certain that no woman pregnant could do it, or if she was, she wouldn't be for long. Maybe that's the idea behind it, to show that a man's getting unsullied goods."

"Unsullied!" Natalia shrieked in mock anger, and Yawalda threw a piece of bread at me.

I picked up the bread and kissed it, as is only proper, but also to reprove Yawalda for throwing it, for bread is in a way sacred. Then I put it back on the table and she, of course, ate it.

"Well, the nobles seem to want that sort of thing. A commoner must be content with what he can get."

I might have gotten more playful abuse, but Sir Conrad came in and signaled that he meant to speak to us all, so the room fell silent.

"A year ago I asked my merchant friend Boris Novacek to send me an alchemist, for we have need of a man with such skills here at Three Walls."

"Two weeks ago, Zoltan's people arrived on that invitation. My thought at the time was that while we needed an alchemist, we did not need a hundred of them. Therefore I told them that they were welcome to stay for a while to rest from their journey, but after that they would have to leave.

"I did not then realize that all of the other men with him were masters at one craft or another. Many of them have skills that we do not. There is a glassblower in the group. If we can get him the proper tools and supplies, we could all soon be drinking our beer out of real glass vessels! We could have real glass in our windows and the church could have stained glass walls!

"They have a papermaker. You probably don't know what paper is. It is used as a sort of parchment, but it is a thousand times cheaper to make!

"They have a porcelain-maker. Porcelain is like pottery, but much finer, and with many more colors than we now have.

"There are many other skills besides. I have talked with their leader Zoltan, and he has agreed to stay here with his people. Each of his masters will be taking on at least one young Polish apprentice. A list of the positions available will be posted in a few days, and young men interested in possibly rapid promotion and pay are encouraged to make application through Natalia.

"Applicants must be approved by myself, Zoltan, and the master involved, but there will be at least three dozen of them now, and perhaps more later.

"These people are from a different culture than ours, and they have a different religion. They worship the same God we do, but they do it in a different way. While I pray that someday they will come to Christ's pure light, I have little hope of that happening soon. Until such time that it does, the discussion of religion with them is absolutely forbidden. If you want to be outlawed, all you have to do is get into a theological argument with one of Zoltan's people. I hope I don't have to prove to you how serious I am about this. Converting them is a matter for the clergy, not for you!

"Still, both Zoltan and I recognize the differences and frictions existing between our peoples. Because of this, we will be moving them out of Three Walls as soon as possible. Some of you know of the small valley just a half hour's walk east of ours. It has a small stream, and should be suitable for a group of the size of Zoltan's.

"If the weather holds, we will be able to build them suitable housing there before the ground freezes, and we will be transferring a few hundred sheep to them.

"Until that time, I shall be very rough on anyone who breaks the peace with them! With luck, we should have them out of here by Christmas. Cilicia will be staying with my household, to see if it is possible to convert one of them to Christianity."

Ilya choked down a laugh at the mention of Cilicia. Sir Conrad pointed a finger at him. "That snigger just cost you a week's pay, Ilya! Natalia, make a note of it.

"That's about it. Carpentry and masonry managers, from foremen up, will report to my office at zero six to discuss scheduling changes. Thank you."

Chapter Twelve

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

Cilicia was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life, movie stars and the National Ballet included. In the twentieth century, a woman who could dance that way would be in Hollywood if the Bolshoi didn't kidnap her first.

Understand that the Polish girls around were mostly pretty, but then those that were available were all about fourteen years old, and at that age, they're all pretty. It's nature's way of getting them married off. But the two truly outstanding women I'd met here were both foreigners, and I have a theory about that.

In a civilized country, people pick their mates for fairly impractical reasons. Is he witty? Do her hobbies and interests agree with mine? Does he dance well? And most important, is she pretty? Will my friends envy me because he's so tall and handsome?

In all cultures, some people never marry, and often those who don't meet the local standards of desirability are the ones who stay single. Over many centuries, this results in a selective breeding pressure toward people who are attractive and socially adept, but not necessarily intelligent, resourceful, or tough.

In a primitive culture, people have to be more practical in their choice of lifetime partners. Can he provide me and my children with enough food for us to survive? Can she cook and sew and butcher an animal properly? Is he a good enough fighter to save us from our enemies? Is she tough enough to defend our hut when I'm gone?

These aren't matters of personal preference or social prestige, this is survival. If you pick wrong, it could hasten your death. It's so important that in many cultures, the people directly involved aren't allowed to choose for themselves. Older and supposedly wiser heads do that for them, and marriages are arranged by the parents.

This results in a selective-breeding pressure quite different from that of more civilized peoples. People might be more tough and self-reliant, but they are not more attractive. In fact, I suspect that you could take a good guess at how cultured a person's ancestors were simply by seeing if he or she is attractive.

In the thirteenth century, Poland was only two centuries away from a primitive, tribal culture. It would take many more centuries to transform them into a more attractive if less tough people.

But France and the Middle East had been civilized much longer, and that's precisely where Lady Francine and Cilicia came from.

I'm not saying that this is Ultimate Truth, but I'd argue it over a beer.

Cilicia's talents in bed were as outstanding as her abilities on the dance floor, and I'm glad that I didn't have to take her as a slave because I certainly wanted to take her.

She was bright, too. In two short weeks, she'd picked up enough Polish to communicate, and her accent wasn't as thick as her father's. I admit that she talked me into letting her people stay, despite all the problems that we both knew would occur.

Her technique was to examine things and tell me the name of the man in her group who could show us how to do it better. She examined the blade of the fancy dagger that Sir Vladimir and his brothers had given me last Christmas and pronounced the steel to be inferior. My sword met with her admiration, and when she asked if we could do such work, I had to admit that we couldn't. But one of her people could.

She talked about pottery and cloth and glass, but I think that it was the papermaker that finally convinced me. To really spread knowledge, you have to have plentiful books. There simply was no possibility of producing enough parchment to do that, even if I could automate the process of producing it. It takes the skin of a whole sheep to make a single large sheet of parchment, and there is a limit to how many sheep you can grow. But if we had paper, I knew I could build a printing press.

So that night, between bouts of Mil. Spec. lovemaking, we planned how our peoples could work together without killing each other. Essentially, the program was to keep them as separated as possible, with contacts only for professional purposes. I would give them some land and keep my people out of it, except for apprentices, who wouldn't be allowed to spend the night. Except for Zoltan, her people would leave their land only with my permission.

My people would build hers some minimal housing, enough to get them through the winter, and we would provide food for the first year, after which they would be on their own. One half their man-hours would be spent teaching my apprentices and in R&D work. We shook on it, a novel custom for her, and in the morning her father was delighted with the deal.

Cilicia, of course, would be staying with me. My father didn't raise anybody that dumb!

So my carpenters and masons stopped what they were doing and started putting up a housing unit. No indoor plumbing, no defensive features, and the kitchens would be detached. It wouldn't be as nice as Three Walls, because we were up against a time limit.

Not only was winter closing in, but I wanted them out of Three Walls before the Great Hunt. I didn't want fifty noble guests, a few of whom had fought Moslems in the Crusades, rubbing shoulders with guests who weren't even Christians! That was asking for trouble.

But after two weeks at Three Walls, I had to make my rounds of the other installations again. I was getting ready to leave when Kotcha, my mount's rubdown girl, all fifty pounds of excited nine-year-old, ran breathless into my bedroom.

"Anna's had puppies!" she shouted.

This announcement left me momentarily stunned. "Kotcha, horses don't have puppies. They have foals. And Anna's not expecting. You can tell on a horse. The body gets bigger and the breasts fill with milk. This is the wrong time of the year for that, anyway."

Children in the Middle Ages didn't have to be told about the birds and the bees. It was normal for the entire family, parents, children, and various relatives, to live and sleep in a single room. Sex was something normal that had happened around them all their lives. And if that wasn't enough, they were mostly farmers, and watched animals doing it as farm children have always done. Making sex a secret is a modern perversion.

"Anna's not a horse! And they look like puppies!"

"The first part is true enough."

"Maybe you'd better come and look. My lord."

"Maybe I'd better."

A crowd had gathered around Anna's stall, and I pushed my way through it.

What I saw turned my stomach. If ever there was a bunch of prematurely born foals, this was it. They really did look like oversized puppies, with tiny spindly legs they could barely crawl on. Born in November, for God's sake, and there were four of them. No wonder they had aborted. It was incredible that they were still alive. There was only one decent thing to do. Put the poor things out of their misery. I got out my good Buck jackknife.

"You people get the hell out of here!" I shouted at the crowd, which evaporated.

"Kotcha, you'd better go, too. You don't want to see this."

"What are you going to do?"

I crouched down to her level. "I know that this will be hard for you to understand, Kotcha, but sometimes things aren't born right. Sometimes, well, something goes wrong, and when it does, the only nice thing to do is to make them not hurt anymore."

"But what are you going to do?"

"These foals, these 'puppies,' won't be able to grow up right. Look, Anna's breasts haven't even started to swell yet. She won't be able to feed them. They'll starve."

"They eat hay, just like Anna does."

"They're too young to eat hay. Small mammals have to have milk, and Anna doesn't have any."

"I saw them eating hay!"

"Kotcha, I've tried to explain, but I'm just out of explanations. It's something that has to be done. Now please go away."

"You're going to kill them!"

"Yes, Kotcha. I have to."

"NO!" She ran to the back of the stall, grabbed a pitchfork, and stood in front of the colts pointing it at me. Fifty pounds of sheer courage and no brains at all.

"Damn. Anna, would you talk to her. You know that this is necessary, don't you?"

Anna shook her head No, and stood beside Kotcha.

If I had to, I could always disarm Kotcha and lock her in her room. But if Anna was against me, it wasn't so straightforward. She could whip me easily in a fight.

"Anna . . . damn. There's nothing in our sign language that covers this. Let's go over to the letterboard and talk this over. Kotcha, you can stay right here and watch the babies."

I'd made up the letterboard more than a year ago when I learned that Anna was intelligent. She couldn't talk but she could spell things out by pointing at the letters. If you could call it spelling.

She went over to it and spelled out KEDS OK.

"Kids okay? You're telling me that those are normal?"

She nodded yes.

"They always look like that?"

Yes.

I sat down on the ground. "Oh my God! I nearly murdered them! But what are they going to eat? You don't have any milk."

ET HAY ET GRAN ET ENEDING.

"They can eat anything, the same as you do?"

Yes.

"Your species always has them four at a time?"

Yes.

"Who . . . who was the father?"

NO FADER.

"No father? Then how . . . Anna, some fishes and lizards reproduce asexually, parthenogenetically. Do your people do that?"

Yes.

"Huh. But this isn't a sensible time of the year for a herbivore to reproduce. Anna, what triggers it? Why did you have them now and not some other time?"

SHE ASK.

"She? You mean Kotcha?"

Yes.

"And all she had to do was ask? You reproduce voluntarily?"

Yes and yes.

"I'll be damned. How long does it take them to grow up?"

She tapped her hoof four times.

"Four years, huh? Anna, do you like having children?"

Yes and yes.

"Well, having more people like you around would sure be helpful. You keep on having them until further notice. Is that sufficient?"

Yes.

"Good. I hope you accept my apology for the stupid scene I just made. I guess I'd better talk to Kotcha now. How long before you're ready to travel?"

She gave me the "ready" signal.

"The morning after childbirth? Well, if you say so. We leave in an hour. I'm through trying to second-guess you. From now on I'm going to ask."

Yes.

I apologized to Kotcha, but she stayed mad at me, the way a kid will. It was months before we were friends again.

Actually, I was pretty disgusted with myself. I had reacted emotionally and had almost made a horrible mistake because I hadn't stopped to think. I'd known for years that Anna was a member of a different species than a horse. Just because the adults of her species looked like horses was no reason to think that the juveniles would. And since when do you do mercy killing on people? Because Anna was people, and I had gotten into the bad habit of forgetting it.

I'd had the saddler make a sort of second saddle that attached to the back of Anna's regular saddle. This let a passenger ride sidesaddle behind me and have someplace to brace her feet. I took Cilicia along to show her some more of the country, to give her a chance to show off some of her new western-style outfits, and for sex, of course. There was no point in messing around with strange ladies when I had perfection at home.

It took us two days to get to Copper City. Anna could make it in one during the summer, but winter was closing in and the days were much shorter. The lack of a decent artificial light cut into travel time as much as it did into industrial production.

My experiments in trying to distill a decent lamp fuel from coal tar had met with a pretty dismal failure. The stuff had so much sulfur and ammonia in it that it cleared the room of people when I lit the lamp. It smoked badly, too.

I was toying with the idea of trying to drill for oil so that we could have kerosene lamps, but the only oil fields nearby were at Przemysl, a city that was originally Polish, and would be again, but had been in the hands of the Ukrainian Duchy of Halicz Ruthenia for fifty years. Getting permission to set up an installation there would probably take a major diplomatic effort.

I was stumped.

When I got to Copper City, the duke was just arriving. He had Lady Francine with him, and two dozen armed men.

"Damn, boy! Do you always run a horse like that? You'll kill her!"

"Not Anna, your grace. She likes a good run."

"People say that whenever they see you on the road, you're always at a dead gallop and never seem to have time to talk."

"It's just that between your projects, Count Lambert's, and my own, there isn't much time, your grace. I hope I haven't been rude."

"No, but it keeps them talking about you."

"I suppose it does keep me in the limelight, your grace," I said as I got out of the saddle and helped Cilicia down. She was short and slender but surprisingly heavy for her build. A dancer's body is all smooth, hidden muscle, and remarkably dense.

She bowed to the duke, who nodded back, but she stayed out of the conversation until invited in, as a good woman should. In the twentieth century, the ladies would have monopolized the conversation for hours, talking about nothing. The thirteenth was less decadent.

"What the hell is a limelight?"

"It's . . ." Daylight dawned in the swamp. "It's what I've been trying to think of for two years, your grace. It's a very bright artificial light made by burning a gas under lime, and it's what will double the production in our factories."

"Double the production? I don't follow you, boy."

"It might even triple it. As things are, we can only work during the daytime, your grace, and then only during good weather in the wintertime. Our expensive machinery is idle almost two-thirds of the time. With a good artificial light, we can shutter up the windows and run things day and night!"

"How're you going to get that much work out of the peasants? Three days of it and they'd fall over dead!"

"Well, you don't work the same men continuously, your grace. You work them in two shifts, one working days and one working nights. We're already doing that with the smelters and the blast furnaces, where we can't stop at night, but the animal fat lamps we use are expensive to operate and don't give off much light. The accident rate at night is three times that of the day shift, and a lot of that is caused by poor lighting. But limelights are as bright as day!"

"But you'd still have to double up on the housing, and that's what most of the buildings around here are, unless you figure to run their beds on two shifts too."

"That would cause more trouble than it would be worth, your grace. Every family needs its own apartment. But the expensive things are not the sleeping rooms. What costs is the bathrooms and the kitchens, and there is no reason why both shifts can't use those same facilities."

"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 assassin. 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 vassal 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 hell 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 eyeballs.

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 tits!

"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 vassal 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 bastard, 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 pushing 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 bumper 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 vassals, 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 ship 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, pushing a button, 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 shit. 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 counterweighted 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 massive harem to stay there all winter. He was less enthusiastic about putting in a second shift. As it was, the girls not currently being used slept on cots in the factory itself. Putting in a second shift 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 sexual desirability and keep the best ones on the day shift, 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 bypass 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 vassals 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 niggardly 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."

"Do so." And I was dismissed.

Cilicia was not at all pleased at being lent out "like horse for rent," as she put it. I said that this was a custom of Okoitz, and one must conform to local customs, but she wasn't convinced. I finally had to say that she could obey me or she could go back to her father. She obeyed, and I picked up one of Count Lambert's ladies for the night.

Neither Cilicia nor Count Lambert ever mentioned what went on that night, but he never asked for her services again.

Sir Miesko was appalled that Count Lambert was considering war against Baron Jaraslav. He sent a letter, carried by his oldest son, to the baron urging him to make immediate apology to their liege and so forestall any violence, but he had scant hope that the irascible baron would do so. "I wish I could understand their hatred for you, Sir Conrad, but it's there. Now it seems that blood must flow because of it. A sad thing, and a waste. Nonetheless, our lord calls and we must go. Wear your brightest surcoat to this, Sir Conrad. We'll want to make the best and most intimidating show possible. There's scant hope, but we may yet forestall a senseless war."

I went back to Three Walls in a glum mood.

Sir Vladimir was also amazed at being called up. "Count Lambert is going to fight a battle over so trifling a matter as a hunt?"

"No, Sir Vladimir. He's going to threaten battle because one of his vassals has repeatedly disobeyed him. Remember that the baron failed to come when Count Lambert called him to beat the bounds between his lands and mine."

"I know, and since then he has been claiming that you stole lands belonging to him, and he just might be right. Count Lambert was in a foul mood that day, and it would have been like him to move the boundary in revenge for the baron's slight. And of course, Sir Stefan has been making an ass of himself for years, even before you arrived. But none of that is reason enough for war between knights of the same lord!"

"I agree," I said, "but we have been called and we will go."

I spent the week designing the limelight system.

The limelights in the old theaters used a hydrogen flame under a ball of lime, calcium oxide. The hydrogen was generated by pouring acid on a metal, okay for a theater but way too expensive for a factory. A far cheaper way of making hydrogen was the water/gas method that was used for generating cooking gas before natural gas, methane, became commercially available.

This involves getting a deep bed of coal burning in a closed furnace. Once it's all glowing, the air supply is shut off and water is forced under the coal. The chimney is then closed off and the fumes are directed to a holding tank for eventual distribution. The chemical reaction involves the oxygen in the water combining with the glowing carbon, and the hydrogen leaving as a gas.

The only problem was that for each molecule of hydrogen generated, you also make a molecule of carbon monoxide, which can kill you dead. The carbon monoxide is also a fuel, and is safe enough once it's burned to carbon dioxide, but a leaky pipe or a flame that's gone out is dangerous. The safety problem didn't bother the Victorians who used the system. They simply weren't concerned. If someone was dumb enough to kill himself, that was his problem.

I, however, am not a Victorian. The system I put together was as safe as I could make it. First off, I kept it out of private areas, where kids could get at it. It was restricted to workplaces, large public rooms, and outdoor lighting. Each installation had a full-time safety inspector, who was also responsible for lighting the lights. Ventilation was carefully checked at each location. And each lamp had a valve that anyone could turn off, but required a key to turn on. This last involved designing a lock, which turned out to be one of our most profitable products.

Oh, I knew that somebody would still find a way to kill himself with it, but I tried.

* * *

On the appointed day, Sir Vladimir and I rode out in full armor, in our brightest surcoats and with pennons flying. The bandsmen had wanted to play for us as we left, but that seemed to me to be in poor taste. I felt rotten that things should come to this head. We needed to be preparing to be fighting Mongols, not fellow Christians, even if they were a couple of bastards.

We met Sir Miesko at the proper time, and went on to Okoitz.

"Any response from Baron Jaraslav?" I asked.

"None to my letter," Sir Miesko said. "But he has called his own knights to arms, which is response enough. He has thirty-five, you know, and is Count Lambert's greatest vassal. If vassal he be and not oath-breaker."

"Damn."

More than a hundred knights came to Count Lambert's call, even those not required to do so. We filled the hall, and the squires had to make do in the kitchen. Supper was a major feast, but a somber one. Everyone was in full armor, as tradition required on the night before battle, I suppose so that the lord could check his men's equipment. Not that Count Lambert checked anything. A knight was always supposed to be ready, and if he wasn't, it was his own neck that suffered.

Sir Miesko stood and spoke to Count Lambert. "My liege, you know that I have been your willing vassal since first I was knighted. Always have I obeyed you, and always will I continue to do so. But my duty to you is not only to fight at your side. I am also obligated to give you my best counsel.

"It is true that Baron Jaraslav has repeatedly disobeyed you. But it is also true that he is a very old man and the minds of the aged sometimes grow feeble. I counsel you, I beg you to go slowly in this matter. You will not gain in glory or in honor if you shed Christian blood, Polish blood, because of the aberrant wanderings of a senile mind."

Sir Miesko sat down and Count Lambert said, "It is your duty to speak and my duty to listen, but the reverse is also true. I say that without obedience to our superiors, everything that we are falls apart! If I do not obey the duke, and my vassals do not obey me, then why should the peasants obey us? If we let one major crack form in the structure, the whole thing could shatter! Don't you see that we must be together? Because if we're not, it won't be the Tartars who destroy us, we'll do it ourselves! Then the damn Mazovians or some other petty power will come in and pick up the shredded pieces."

I stood. "My lord, Sir Miesko has spoken my mind as well as his own, though he has been more eloquent than I could be. I have heard that some of the problem is caused by Baron Jaraslav's belief that I was deeded lands that are properly his. Rather than see Pole fight Pole, I would willingly give up whatever lands the baron claims.

"Just now tempers have grown too hot. You mentioned the duke. He knows Baron Jaraslav well. Why not ask him to talk to the baron. Surely no man is more persuasive than Duke Henryk."

"Sir Conrad, your lands are your own, and I'll not have you make any sacrifice because of another's malice. As to the duke, it would be proper to go to him if I had a problem with one of my own station. To bring him a problem with one of my vassals would be to admit my own incompetence. If I did so, he might be inclined to remove me, and properly. I'll handle the matter on my own."

"Then may I echo Sir Miesko and beg you to go slowly?" I said.

"You may beg all you damn well please, Sir Conrad, just so you obey when the lances drop to charge! Do the rest of you have counsel for me as well?"

Knight after knight attested to his willingness to obey any lawful order, but begged Count Lambert to refrain from pushing matters too quickly to a head.

Count Lambert's mood got darker and quieter until he abruptly got up and left his hall, his meal unfinished.

We were all silent for a bit.

Baron Jan, Sir Vladimir's father, said, "We can but do our duty and pray that we need not shed the blood of our brothers." Then he led us all in deeply felt prayer.

Count Lambert's new priest held an evening mass. We all went and took Communion since tomorrow some of us could be dead.

It was crowded at Okoitz, and I shared a room with Sir Miesko, Sir Vladimir, and one of his brothers. The girls from the cloth factory were probably as willing as ever, but none of us were in the mood. Judging from the sounds, few of the other knights were either. I don't recall hearing a single feminine squeal all night, a rare thing at Okoitz even when it's half empty.

More than half the knights had squires, almost inevitably a younger relative, since the Polish nobility was very family-oriented. Well over a gross of fighting men lined up outside of Okoitz in the gray dawn, as well as two heralds that Count Lambert must have borrowed from someone. The kitchen help hurriedly handed out packages of field rations, a bag containing a loaf of bread, some cheese, and dried meat. There was little chance of the baron inviting us in for a meal.

I thought that Count Lambert would make a speech to encourage his men, but he didn't. He just rode to the head of the column and shouted, "Advance!"

At a walk, we went to Baron Jaraslav's manor.

The roads were mere trails and we had to go in single file, so there was little chance for light conversation, not that there was much inclination toward it.

"Shouldn't we have some point men and flankers out?" I called to Sir Miesko, riding behind me.

"To what purpose, Sir Conrad? No bandit would attack a party as large as ours, and Baron Jaraslav might disobey his liege, but he is not so wholly dishonorable as to attack without warning. Flankers would only slow us down."

Sir Miesko and Count Lambert were probably right, but my own military training made me feel uncomfortable about it.

The baron's castle was a large and venerable building made mostly of brick, with some of the cornices made of limestone. It had a moat and a drawbridge and was not the sort of place that men without siege equipment could easily take.

Count Lambert made no attempt to surround the thing. He simply lined us up in front out of crossbow range and sent the heralds forward. Sir Vladimir was at my left, as a vassal should be, and Sir Miesko was at my right. The heralds rode up to the gate, played a fanfare on their long trumpets, and announced that Count Lambert wished to speak to his vassal, Baron Jaraslav.

They had to have been waiting for us, for within a few minutes, the drawbridge was lowered and thirty-five armed and armored men rode out. Perhaps another twenty men were on the walls with crossbows, the squires, probably, since a full belted knight wouldn't use one. It made me wish that I'd brought Tadaos along, but I hadn't been asked to and I hadn't wanted to risk any more people than necessary.

The knights lined up facing us, a few hundred yards away. We outnumbered them four to one, but they looked prepared to let us know that we'd been in a fight.

One of the heralds stayed with the baron and the other rode back to Count Lambert. With six of his barons, the count rode to the center of the field, to be met by Baron Jaraslav, Sir Stefan, and five other knights.

I relaxed a bit. At least they were going to talk instead of immediately slugging it out.

I couldn't hear what Count Lambert said, but Baron Jaraslav was shouting at the top of his lungs, so what came through was half a conversation, or less, since I couldn't hear Sir Stefan either.

"My ancestors were here for hundreds of years before anybody ever heard of a Piast!"

Count Lambert said something I couldn't hear.

"I don't owe fealty to a man whose wits are not his own! Your mind has been addled by that warlock you took in two years ago! Yours and the duke's, too!"

Baron Jaraslav's face got redder as his blood pressure went up. I could feel my own face flushing as well.

"It's bad enough, your swiving every wench in the county, turning them into a herd of whores! Now you want to ruin the hunting like you've ruined the women!

"I was a baron when you were still sucking your mother's tits!"

The baron's face and hands were as dark red as dried blood. I'd never seen such a thing before, but I'd heard about it. Not good in an old man.

"That warlock wants to turn the whole duchy into a stinking, dirty factory! I won't stand for it! Better to die fighting than to fall sickened by his poisons!"

The baron became increasingly incoherent. His hands started shaking, he began gasping and suddenly he toppled from his horse.

I didn't know if this was a heart attack or a stroke, but it looked to me that he was in bad need of CPR.

"I'd better go see what I can do for him," I said as I signaled Anna forward.

"Stay back here you fool!" Sir Miesko shouted, but I ignored him.

Besides basic humanitarian considerations, my thought was that if I could do Baron Jaraslav a real service, like saving his life, maybe he and Sir Stefan might not hate me as much. Okay, so it was a dumb idea.

We sprinted to where the baron had fallen. I pulled my gauntlets off as I leaped to the ground and told Anna to go back to the line. I didn't want her to interpret some movement by the baron as an attack on me.

I tilted the baron's head back, cleared the tongue and checked his breathing. There wasn't any! I started giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as I checked frantically for a pulse. A lot of shouting was going on but I ignored it. I couldn't find a pulse but that didn't mean much, since I couldn't get at most of him what with his armor and all. I started pumping his heart, to be on the safe side, a thing that would have been impossible in my plate armor, but was easy enough with the baron's gold-washed chain mail.

Then I took a blow to the side of the head that might have killed me if it hadn't been for my new helmet. It didn't much hurt me, but the force of it, transmitted through my collar ring to my chest and back plates, was enough to send me sprawling.

"Stay away from my father, you filthy witch!" Sir Stefan shouted, sword in hand.

"You Stupid John!" I swore at him. "He's having a heart attack! Without CPR he's going to die!"

I started to move back to the baron. Sir Stefan swung again, only to have his blade parried by Count Lambert's.

"STOP! Both of you!" Count Lambert shouted. "Dog's blood! You have both dishonored yourselves! Sir Conrad, I told you to stay in the line! Get back there, damn you! Sir Stefan, you have drawn steel during a peace parley, a hanging offense anywhere!"

"My lord," I said, "his heart and breathing have stopped! If I don't—"

"If his heart's stopped, then he's dead! Get back to the line or I'll put this sword in your face!"

I could see that Count Lambert meant it, and the baron was probably really dead by this time anyway. I retrieved my gauntlets.

"Yes, my lord."

As I walked back to the line, Count Lambert gave Sir Stefan a chewing out the likes of which I hadn't heard since boot camp.

Maybe I should have just left things alone, but then Sir Stefan would probably have blamed his father's death on my "witchcraft" in any event. It was worth a try, I suppose. I certainly shouldn't have called him a Stupid John. The swear words in one language often don't translate well into another, but that particular phrase is a deadly insult and fighting words in Polish.

"You're a damn fool," Sir Miesko said as I got back and mounted Anna. "If ever a man's foul words stuck in his throat and killed him, it was Baron Jaraslav's. It looked like a sure Act of God! But when you ran out there, you took everybody's mind off of what had just happened. This sorry mess could have ended right there, but now it's still bobbing afloat. It could still end with fifty good men dead!"

"Yeah, I guess I screwed it up," I said.

But the parley went on for another half hour, and we couldn't hear a thing of what was said. Then something happened. Count Lambert and Sir Stefan turned and faced the sun, raised their right arms to it and Sir Stefan swore fealty to Count Lambert.

Count Lambert and his barons came back to us and he addressed those of us in the line.

"This matter is ended! Baron Jaraslav is dead! Baron Stefan has sworn fealty to me and will obey me as all of you have done this day! I thank you all for coming as was your duty, but now you may disperse and go home! I will see many of you in a week at the Great Hunt. For the rest of you, good hunting!"

And so we left, and soon there was no one left on the field but the dead baron and Baron Stefan, standing over his father's body.

It all worked out as best as could be expected. Having Stefan instead of his father for a neighbor wasn't much of an improvement, but Count Lambert could hardly have interfered with the right of inheritance. His own lofty position was based on that very same right.

Chapter Fourteen

The knights and squires broke up into groups as we headed home in our various directions. By late afternoon there was only myself, Sir Vladimir, and Sir Miesko. As we passed Sir Miesko's manor, Lady Richeza invited us in, but there was still time to get to Three Walls before dusk. When we got to the gates, the band was up on the balcony to welcome us home. I wouldn't have given permission for this waste of man-hours, since they must have been waiting up there for half a day, but I had to admit that it felt good. They were playing the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I announced at supper what had happened, that Baron Stefan was our new neighbor, and that the Great Hunt was on as scheduled.

Sir Miesko had set me up as the "Local Hunt Master," using the valley at Three Walls for our killing ground, just as we had last year. Only this year, it would cover not only my lands, but Sir Miesko's as well as those of Baron Stefan and two other knights.

As Master of the Hunt, I got the wolf skins and any aurochs captured on all of Count Lambert's lands. As Local Hunt Master, I got all the deer skins taken locally. As a landowner, I got a share, about one-fifth, of one-half of the meat taken. My workers would get about one-third of the one-quarter of the meat reserved for the beaters. And since I personally would be participating in the kill, I got a share of the one-quarter of the kill that was divided among the nobility present.

Complicated, but profitable, especially since the fashion of wearing wolf skin cloaks was taking hold. I had already sold the six hundred wolf skins we had taken last year at very nice prices, and I was looking forward to taking twenty times that number this year.

But Sir Miesko was in fact handling all of the detail work of a Local Hunt Master for me, except for the feasts, and that was Krystyana's problem.

My main worry was getting the Moslems' housing completed so we could get them out of Three Walls before more savory company started arriving. We almost made it, and I told them that they had to get out anyway. They could live in the nearly finished buildings until the hunt was over, and no, they couldn't act as beaters alongside Christians, although they were responsible for sweeping all the wild game out of their valley, and taking care of my herd of sheep, now three thousand strong, during the hunt.

The morning before the hunt, most of the workers walked out to the manors of the knights on the periphery of the hunting district, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to keep the blast furnace fed and a few pregnant women to take care of the small children. To minimize friction, none of my people were sent to Baron Stefan's lands. My own station was at Sir Miesko's.

The plan was to have a line of peasants and workers backed up by a line of horsemen, mostly knights and squires, to take care of any emergencies, such as an irate bear.

Since Piotr Kulczynski was spending half of his life on horseback, I assumed that he would be one of the riders. Sir Miesko objected. "All the other horsemen will be of the nobility, their ladies or at least squires. Some might object at having a commoner in their number."

"But the east line is already low on horsemen," I said. "Pulling Piotr makes it worse."

"Better a thin line than offended neighbors," Sir Miesko said. "If you really want him on horseback, why not make him your squire? It's a simple formality."

I didn't see any reason why not. I was entitled to a squire or two, and Piotr was the sort who would get a kick out of that sort of thing. Being my squire needn't change his pay or duties.

I asked Piotr about it and he was absolutely delighted. No American kid getting his first car on his eighteenth birthday was ever happier.

The ceremony was a simple swearing in and we did it within the hour. Sir Miesko made Piotr the guest of honor at supper that night. Any reason for a celebration was always welcome.

The Banki brothers, three knights who were the special friends of three of my ladies, arrived at dusk. Had we known that they were coming, Piotr probably wouldn't have gotten his promotion, but there was no point in telling him that.

Natasha was managing a field kitchen at a manor where Sir Vladimir and Annastashia were stationed.

Thus, there were exactly as many men as women at Piotr's feast. Natalia, Yawalda, and Janina naturally paired off with Sir Gregor, Sir Wiktor, and Sir Wojciech Banki, I had Cilicia, and this naturally forced Krystyana on Piotr. He of course made no objection to this, but she took it with poor grace.

Having a partner at a formal feast required a fair amount of interaction. Among other things, you shared the same spoon, cup, and bowl. Krystyana stayed polite, but was formal and cold. And at the dance, later, she refused to do a waltz with him, new squire or no new squire.

Why Piotr was so determined to have this one lady was beyond me. There had to be a masochistic streak in the little fellow.

In the morning, the beaters were fed while it was still dark and were lined up in the dawn around the periphery of the hunting district, paralleling the group from the district to the east and meeting up with the beaters to the north. When all was ready, the signal to advance was given and the day's walk began. People swung sticks at the brush and made as much noise as possible. Wild animals are well fed in the late fall, and aren't particularly aggressive, so there were no real problems throughout the day.

By evening, the beaters were shoulder to shoulder and the valley at Three Walls was packed with animals. I had to station guards with torches around the blast furnace workers to keep the animals from bothering them. I swore that next year, I would build a killing ground outside the valley, perhaps surrounding the plain at the valley mouth with Japanese roses.

There were over five thousand people at Three Walls that night, and for the four days thereafter. Somehow, we got them all fed and bedded down, with wall-to-wall people everywhere, even in the church.

Baron Stefan, in his gold-washed armor and gold-trimmed helmet and sword, was at least trying to stay polite, but he and his knights were somewhat standoffish. He had brought his own servants and had them serve him when everybody else ate cafeteria-style, but I made no objection. It was enough that he was no longer swearing at me on every possible occasion. I gave them my living room to bunk down in and that seemed to satisfy them.

In the morning the slaughter began and it went on for four days. We were better prepared to process the meat this year than last. More smokehouses had been built and we had vast quantities of barrels and salt, enough to sell to anyone who wanted them, which was almost everybody. A dozen sausage machines worked around the clock, and everyone ate liver and kidneys, the most desirable parts of the animal by medieval standards, until they couldn't hold any more.

Piotr and Sir Miesko kept a careful accounting of everything and I heard no objections to the final sharing out.

The one sour point happened when one of the duke's men, Sir Frederick, came over and told me that the duke had liked the wolf skin cloak I'd given him so much that he had decreed that none but a true belted knight might wear one.

Wonderful. That cut my potential market for wolf skins by a factor of a hundred. My profits were going right down the toilet, but there was nothing I could do about it. One did not argue with the duke.

I probably had twelve thousand wolf skins coming in and nothing to do with them. Maybe I could dye them another color and pass them off as from some other animal.

Much later, it turned out that I needn't have worried. Saying that none but a nobleman might wear a wolf skin cloak was almost the same as saying that a nobleman must wear one, at least to the fashion-conscious Polish nobility. The demand for wolf skins went way up and the price of wolf skins tripled by midwinter! And who do you think had the biggest stock of wolf skins in the world? My God, how the money rolled in!

One evening, the Banki brothers came to my office, which adjoined my bedroom.

"We have come to formally request the hands of three of your wards, Natalia, Yawalda, and Janina, in honorable matrimony," Sir Gregor said.

This took me completely by surprise. I'd known for a year that the three couples had a thing going, but matrimony just hadn't occurred to me. "Well. This needs some talking," I said. "Sit down and have some mead. Do the girls know that you are here?"

"It was them that put us up to it," Sir Wiktor said.

"That's usually the way of it," I said. "First off, I want to say that I like you three. I think that you would make fine husbands, but, well, I'm not their father. I suppose that I can speak for Janina, since her parents are dead, but Natalia's father is alive and well at Okoitz, as are both of Yawalda's parents. It is from them that you must ask the hands of those girls, not me."

"True," Sir Gregor said. "Yet our loves would do nothing without your permission, and it is not likely that a peasant would object to his daughter marrying a true belted knight."

"I suppose so," I said. "There is the fact that these three girls all have responsible positions here, and they all earn very good money. I'm really not thrilled about losing them. Then too, I don't know anything about your own financial positions. Can you afford to support them properly?"

"You touch on a delicate point," Sir Gregor said. "Our parents have both been dead for years, and while their lands were ample to support one knight, they don't do the best job at supporting four. You see, there is a fourth brother that you haven't met. Stanislaw is probably the best farmer in Poland—I swear that he could grow wheat on a stone!—but he's very much of a stay-at-home. We aren't by any means wealthy, but if the dowries were adequate, we could easily support our ladies."

That took me back a bit. "So you think that I should not only give you three lovely ladies, three of my best managers, but that I should also pay you to take them from me? Women who aren't even my own daughters? Isn't that a bit much?"

"Well, a bride usually comes with a dowry," Sir Wojciech said, before Sir Gregor hushed him up.

"We have talked these very things over with our ladies, Sir Conrad, and the truth is that while they are eager for marriage with us, they do not want to leave their positions at Three Walls. Your adopted daughter, Annastashia, has stayed here after her marriage with Sir Vladimir. He gets no pay other than his maintenance and the dowry you gave him. Why can't we do the same? Surely the presence of three good fighting men would be useful to you, what with all the caravans you have going in and out of here. Don't they need guards?"

"First off, I can hardly adopt the girls in the same way that I adopted Annastashia. Quite frankly, I've slept often with all three of them, and it would feel like incest if they became my daughters! And the 'dowry' that I gave Sir Vladimir was in fact half the booty that we took together in that fight with the Crossmen last year. The duke awarded it all to me, and making part of it a dowry was just a way of giving Sir Vladimir his share without insulting the duke. Count Lambert never pays more than five hundred pence to marry off one of his ladies-in-waiting, and then only when they're pregnant, generally by him."

"But these girls are hardly peasants anymore, and we would not require anything like the amount that you gave to our cousin Sir Vladimir. Say, three thousand pence each. In return, we will swear fealty to you and serve you daily for four years, asking only our maintenance."

I did some quick mental calculating. Eight pence a day and maintenance was fairly standard pay for a knight and his horse. That came to just less than three thousand pence a year. The brothers were offering me quite a deal, about seventy-five percent off. They must have wanted my ladies pretty bad. Anyway, I hadn't slept with any of them since I'd met Cilicia, and it was a shame to let them go to waste.

"Okay, I think we have a deal, providing that the girls continue on as my managers, and providing that you get their parents' permission, post proper banns at the church, and so on. If you're to swear to me, well, you're sworn through Count Lambert's brother, Count Herman, aren't you? I think we need the permission of both counts before I can swear you in. All that will probably take three or four months, so I suppose we'll have the wedding around Easter."

The brothers were delighted and went off to tell their prospective brides, who were waiting out in the hallway, probably with their ears pressed to the door, if I knew that crew, and I did.

When the slaughter was over, and the female deer, elk and bison were driven out of the valley, along with the young and a sixth of the males, and all the catch was carefully divided according to schedule, we held a last feast and a dance. The morning after, our guests departed happy and heavily laden.

The icehouse and storerooms and smokehouses at Three Walls were filled, we had a gross of deer to provide fresh meat during the winter, and there were huge piles of salted down deer and wolf skins. It was time we set up a tannery.

I couldn't properly announce the engagements to all the hunters present, since the parents had not yet given their permission, but the day after the crowds left, we threw a party in celebration anyway, just a small one for my household.

Anna had stayed in the barn during the time that Baron Stefan was visiting us, since I didn't want to give him anything to start ranting about. But with him gone, she just naturally came up to join the party. The Banki brothers had heard a lot of stories about Anna, of course, but I don't think that they really believed any of them until she came up to the living room and sat down. I introduced them and explained about her speech difficulty, and they were most surprised to find themselves in a conversation with a being who looked like a horse!

I was a little surprised when Piotr came uninvited to the party, which was for my household only, but Sir Vladimir explained that as my squire, Piotr was most certainly a member of the household. I guess I just hadn't thought it out properly. But there was nothing for it but to invite him out of the bachelors' quarters and give him one of the spare rooms in my apartment.

Piotr was delighted with this move upward, but Krystyana was scowling about it. In fact she had been doing a great deal of scowling lately, and I began to think that having a talk with her was in order. It hurts to be hated.

I thought about her as the evening went on, and some of her troubles were obvious. Since I'd met Cilicia, I hadn't had very many other women. Krystyana had always been willing to share me with the others, but now she was having to give me up all together. Then too, she had left Okoitz in the company of four other girls almost two years ago. Now one was married to Sir Vladimir and the other three were engaged, or nearly so, to the Banki brothers. She had always been the leader of that group, and now she was the one left behind. Only Natasha remained unattached besides her, and Natasha was a relative newcomer.

I was looking at Krystyana when I was thinking this out, and I noticed a slight bulge in her tummy. I wasn't sure, but I thought I might have hit on Krystyana's big problem.

As soon as I could, I called Natasha aside and asked her about it.

"Of course, my lord. You didn't know? Krystyana is heavy with your child."

"My child? You're sure of that?"

"She has touched no other man but you since first leaving Okoitz, my lord. Whose else can it be?"

Now that's as big a fist in the stomach as a man can get! I dismissed Natasha and sat back to ponder it all. I was going to be a father! Cute, bouncing little Krystyana was going to be a mother! It was only when I asked myself if the kid's father and mother were going to be married that I suddenly got cold chills.

In the first place, I'm just not the marrying kind. Maybe it was because my parents' marriage hadn't been all that happy, or maybe it was something in my genes, but that's just the way I am.

In the second place, Krystyana and I didn't have anything in common but a certain sexual attraction, the sort of thing any normal man feels for a healthy fourteen-year-old, and even that was already fading, at least my half of it.

And in the third place, the whole idea of marriage scares me shitless!

I procrastinated for a few days, hoping that some solution would come to me. The only obvious one, a marriage between Piotr and Krystyana, was shot down because of her obvious hatred for the boy. He was willing to take her in any shape or condition.

I finally decided that my procrastination was sheer cowardice, and called Krystyana into my office. I simply laid it on the line to her. I said that I liked her like a sister, but I wasn't going to marry her. If she wanted to stay single, that was okay by me. I would always see to it that she and her child were well taken care of and I hoped that whatever happened, she would want to stay on as the kitchen manager, since she was doing such a good job there. But I strongly recommended that she marry, if not Piotr, who loved her, then someone else. I would be happy to provide a suitable dowry.

She didn't answer. She just left, crying.

Some days you just can't win.

Chapter Fifteen

The duke was impressed by the stories he heard about Count Lambert's Great Hunt, and decided that we should do it on all of the lands subject to him, about half the land that would one day make up modern Poland. I was appointed his Master of the Hunt, and delegated all the work to Sir Miesko. He was delighted to do it, since the hunt on Lambert's lands alone had made him a wealthy man. He spent almost six months on the road getting the thing organized, and I didn't much get involved. That suited me just fine, since I wanted to work on the limelights.

Getting the limelights going was another job of bucket chemistry. I had some iron grids cast that would fit in the bottom of one of our beehive coke ovens, to raise the coal off the bottom so we could run water underneath. While that was being done, work was started on the gas tower, a circular water tank in which floated a vast close-fitting, copper-lined, straight-sided barrel. Not that a straight-sided barrel was unusual. They were the only kind in use until I introduced the potbellied variety and proved that they leaked less.

Pipes went under the tank and up to just above the waterline. When gas was produced, the barrel rose, to settle again as the gas was consumed.

How big a gas tower did we need? How much gas was needed to keep a limelight going? Was one coke oven enough? Too much? I hadn't the slightest idea. I just made things big and hoped for the best.

Then, too, I'd never even seen a limelight, I'd only heard about them. As I understood it, it was a hydrogen flame under a lump of lime. I didn't know what sort of a burner was used, so I used a bunsen burner.

Six weeks and eighteen thousand man-hours later, seventy-five tons of coal was loaded into the converted beehive coke oven and lit on fire. It was necessary to have the grid completely covered with coal so that the steam would be forced through the coals rather than around them.

The system worked to the extent of generating a flammable gas, and filling the gas tower, but the faint blue flame produced was hot enough to heat the lime only to a dull red. Not a very efficient light, which was the purpose of the exercise.

I could think of only two ways to get a hotter flame. One was to use pure oxygen instead of air, since the nitrogen in the air cools a fire considerably. The trouble with that was that I didn't have a good source of oxygen, and we weren't quite up to building an air liquefaction plant.

Oh, I could have heated mercury, a remarkably cheap substance in the Middle Ages. It was an industrial waste product from the manufacture of sulfur. At moderate temperatures, mercury absorbs oxygen and at higher temperatures, gives it off. But having that much mercury vapor around was scary. At least with carbon monoxide you know when you're being poisoned. I'd save the mercury scheme for a last resort, if then.

The other way was to preheat the air and gas before they were burned. I spent a few frustrating weeks getting a burner of this sort going. The trick turned out to be to mix clay with slaked lime and mold the heat exchangers into the lamp itself, then run it through the brick kiln to harden it. A few months later it was discovered that a fire clay lamp painted with slaked lime was stronger and brighter. One problem with this scheme was that it required pressurized air, and thus a second set of pipes running to each lamp. But at least it didn't need a second fancy locked valve at each installation.

But by the time the new lamps were ready, the weather had closed in and the water under the gas tower froze. In normal operation, this wouldn't happen because the gases themselves would be hot enough to keep the water liquid in the worst weather, but we had shut the system down while I worked on the lamp. We drained the water, covered the tower with straw and circulated hot coke oven gas through it until the crust of ice was melted. Then we started over.

This time the lamp got to a fairly bright orange after an hour or so, and I declared that to be good enough.

Other things were going on while I was playing with lights. Zoltan's people started doing us some good. Their pottery man came up with five colors of glazes made from local materials, and we went into production making tableware, at first for ourselves, but then for sale as well.

Their papermaker was in limited production turning our old linens into very nice rag paper.

And their sword-maker was screaming at the top of his lungs at Ilya, who was naturally screaming back at him, both men being of the opinion that sufficient volume could make up for their lack of a mutual vocabulary. The workers had a betting pool going on which one would kill the other first, and at what time of the day this happy event would take place.

The two smiths went on screaming for over a month with nothing accomplished, so I had to step in and demand that the sword-maker demonstrate to us his methods. They surprised me, being nothing like the Japanese method I'd told Ilya about two years before.

He collected up a pile of wrought iron and beat and cut it into small pieces, about the size of a ten zloty piece, or an American quarter. He put a measured amount of this iron into each of a dozen round bottom clay flasks and packed them full with raw wool. Then he sealed the flasks and took them up into the hills where it was quiet. He built a fire around the flasks and after a day of burning he started gently shaking the flasks and listening carefully. When the metal inside "sounded wet," he let the fire go out. On breaking open the flasks, there was a fused blob of steel inside he called "wootz." This he worked at relatively low temperatures—never red hot—until it was shaped like a sword or knife. Then he hardened and tempered it in the usual manner. The result was watered steel that looked just like the steel in my sword, and kept a fine edge.

It wasn't quite as good as my sword, however. I pared the edge off one of his knives with my blade, which had the swordsmith staring goggle-eyed. None the less, it was better than anything Ilya had done using the method I'd told him about, so we went into production using the wootz method.

The glassmaker started to make glass out of sand, lime, and wood ashes. After having him make a very fancy drinking glass as a Christmas present for Count Lambert, I had him make a chimney for the gas lamp, to conduct the fumes away. The chimney made a great improvement in light output, and it took me a while to figure out that the glass was transparent to visible light, but opaque to infrared, which was reflected back to the lime, making it hotter.

All of which shows that it isn't necessary to know what you're doing in order to be able to accomplish something. It's only necessary to be sufficiently persistent. Sort of like the infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of word processors who wrote everything in existence.

Anyway, we now had good light source, and I gave orders to plumb the factories and furnace areas, and had two gross of the lamps made. By spring, we had light as long as we wanted it, by which time there were eighteen hours a day of sunlight, and we didn't much need the lights.

But next winter . . .

* * *

The shops weren't idle either. We made a rolling mill to make sheet brass, and some small punch presses to use the sheetmetal. I designed some simple door locks and padlocks, and they looked to be a profitable line.

Our reinvestment rate was over ninety percent. That is to say, most of the things we made were for use in our factory system. But we still needed to buy a fair amount of stuff from the outside, and additional cash was always welcome.

Transportation costs were very high in the Middle Ages, especially for land transport. The best mules can only carry a quarter of a ton, can only go thirty miles a day, and must be loaded and unloaded by hand twice a day. Expensive.

This meant that the most profitable products would be small, light, and valuable. Locks, glassware, pottery, cast-iron kitchen products, plumbing parts, and clocks were all being made by spring, as well as our older brass works' lines of church bells, windmill parts, hinges, and other hardware. I wanted to add paper, printed books, and cigarette lighters in the near future.

We expanded the paperworks from a two-man outfit to one where a dozen men worked, and added power machinery to cut and mash the linen rags to pulp. Within the year we added a papermaking machine, which was a major undertaking but not a major headache. I'd at least seen a papermaking machine.

For a printing press, I decided to bypass the evolutionary step of the flatbed press and go directly to a simple rotary press, and to cast the type in a solid line, rather than bothering with movable type. I drew up what I thought were some very simple designs, but they took a team of our best machinists along with the Moslem goldsmith over a year to make them work.

And the cigarette lighter took the longest damn time. We actually spent three times as many man-hours developing it than we did on our first steam engine. It had seemed so easy in the beginning.

We had flint, steel, and white lightning for fuel. I drew up a simple Zippo-type lighter, except that I made it cylindrical instead of flat to simplify the machining, and with a pull-off cap because we didn't have a decent steel spring to hold the usual flip-top in place. It was bulkier than the modern equivalent, but these people used pouches instead of pockets, so that wasn't a problem.

The problem was in generating a spark. Flint was harder than any steel we could make. The spark wheel wore away before the flint was touched, and all without a spark. I even sacrificed the disposable butane lighter I'd had with me from the twentieth century. We took it apart but didn't learn much, since the flint was about gone.

But flint gouged up the modern spark wheel as well, which told us that the flint in a lighter wasn't like the flint we were using. This got us to collecting flint from every source we could find, but all of it seemed to be the same.

I finally dropped back and punted. Some of the more expensive modern lighters used a quartz crystal that was struck by a tiny hammer to generate a spark electrically.

I found some quartz crystals in a shop in Wroclaw, and had our jeweler cut several pieces at different angles of the crystal. Within a week, we had a working lighter! After that, it was just a matter of tooling up for a very profitable line.

It can take a half hour to start a fire with flint and steel, but it only took moments with one of our lighters. You just took off the cap, raised the little weight on its slider, let it drop and presto! Fire! We sold them by the thousands! It also gave us a nice market for lighter fluid, which was wood alcohol, after a while.

By then, spring was on us and it was time to get back into the construction business. Transporting coke by pack mule from Three Walls to the boat landing on the Odra River was extremely expensive. After that, transport costs by riverboat weren't nearly so bad, about one-twelfth the cost per ton mile.

Many of Count Lambert's knights had followed his lead in digging coal mines for fuel, now that potbellied stoves were available. Questioning them and going down most of the shafts, I was able to map out the coalfield fairly well.

All indications were that I could dig for coal right on the riverbank. All through the winter, I'd had six men digging a pilot shaft there on some of Count Lambert's land, and they'd struck coal five dozen yards down.

It made all kinds of sense to build a mining-and-coking operation there, so I made a deal with Count Lambert for half a square mile of land and as soon as the weather broke, I got ready to head there with a construction crew.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

It was early morning, and we were mounted up in caravan fashion to go to the new lands sold to Sir Conrad by Count Lambert near the River Odra. There we would open mines for coal and build coke ovens of a new design.

Sir Conrad rode up the line of loaded mules and three gross men, seeing that all was ready. I was stationed near the front, next to Sir Vladimir. The three Banki brothers were away making final arrangements for their upcoming weddings, which we were all looking forward to.

There was a great commotion at the gate, and I looked to see the merchant Boris Novacek, a friend of my lord Sir Conrad, crawling through the wood gate on his knees and elbows, for he had no hands!

Sir Vladimir shouted for Sir Conrad, and we both rode to Novacek's aid. Yet Sir Conrad passed us and was there first.

"Boris! What happened?" Sir Conrad shouted as he dug out his medical kit.

"What happened?" Boris said, half dazed. "Why, they cut my hands off."

"Who did this?"

"I don't know. We were never properly introduced." Novacek tried to laugh, but tears came out. "Do you have any water?"

Sir Conrad threw his canteen to Sir Vladimir, who sat Novacek up and held that strange metal bottle to his lips.

"You!" Sir Conrad shouted, looking at a young man in the crowd that was gathering, "Run and get Krystyana!

"You! Run and get a stretcher! You! Have the men stand down. We leave at three!" Sir Conrad ordered while he opened his kit and examined Novacek's stumps.

"What happened to your guard, Sir Kazimierz?" Sir Vladimir asked.

"Sir Kazimierz? He's dead, poor lad. The good Sir Kazimierz is dead. He took an arrow in the eye and I think he did not see it fly at him."

"You were ambushed?" Sir Conrad said.

"Yes, my friend. My lord. Cut down on the road. There's nothing to buy now in Hungary. I sell your cloth and metalwork there, but they have nothing to give for it but silver. Even all the wine they can spare has already been brought here. I carried nothing but silver and gold, all my silver and gold. We had no caravan to protect us, you see, so they chopped my hands off." Novacek spoke as one falling pleasantly to sleep after hard work and many beers.

"He's lost a lot of blood," Sir Conrad said to my love Krystyana, who had just arrived, walking as fast as she could, for she was heavy with child. Of course she would not look on me. He tied off the arteries in the left stump, and left it for Krystyana to sew up, going around the merchant to tend the right one.

"Boris, who put on these tourniquets for you?" Sir Conrad asked.

"The tourniquets? Why, I put on the right one myself, after the fight. The highwaymen put on the other."

"But how could you have tied it without any hands?"

"I still had my left hand then. It was hard, but one can do things when motivated sufficiently." Novacek seemed not to notice the trimming and sewing they were doing to the stumps of his wrists, and I think the tourniquets must have had them completely numb.

"Then how did you lose the left one?"

"They cut off my right hand in the battle, and my sword with it. They cut off my left one that night, in sport. At least they thought it great sport. I wasn't asked." Boris giggled.

I could see a terrible fury building up on Sir Conrad's face.

"So this happened yesterday?"

"Could it have been only yesterday? It seems much longer. But it must have been yesterday afternoon, for I planned to make Three Walls by sunset."

"And where did it happen, Boris? Can you remember where?"

"It was on the trail from Sir Miesko's. A ways down the trail. About half a night's crawl." He giggled again.

"Anna, can you smell out Boris's path back to the outlaws?" Sir Conrad asked his mount, as he finished tying off and cleaning up the right stump. Annastashia was there, washing her hands with white lightning, ready to sew it up.

Anna nodded Yes, a thing I had gotten used to.

Sir Vladimir was standing between Sir Conrad and me, but I was sure that Sir Conrad was looking directly at me.

"Then mount up! There's work to be done!" The look in Sir Conrad's eyes left no room for argument, or even comment. I mounted my horse, checked my sword, bow and arrows, and followed Sir Conrad and Sir Vladimir out the gate at a gallop.

I heard Novacek yell, "Stop! There are sixteen of them!"

Sir Vladimir turned and said, "What of it? We have God on our side!"

But I don't think Sir Conrad heard him.

Anna had her head to the ground as she ran, sniffing like a hound, which slowed her down some. We would never have stayed with her otherwise, and even so Sir Vladimir and I were hard-pressed to meet her pace.

Sir Conrad never turned around to see that we were following. Sir Vladimir turned once, saw me following and smiled. Then he turned again to the trail ahead, for our pace was wild.

I unsheathed my bow and strung it at a full gallop, as I'd often practiced before. Tadaos the bowman had taught me much of shooting, and there is none better than he at a standing-shot. But Tadaos will not shoot from a horse. In fact, I think that it is not possible to pull his mighty bow from any but a standing position. Myself, I can scarcely bend it even then! But I had taught myself horse archery, riding past the butts and letting fly for many a Sunday afternoon. A good thing to do when your love will not look at you.

Thus I had an arrow nocked and ready in my left hand when Anna suddenly left the trail and charged through the brush.

Sir Conrad was in his plate armor and seemed not to notice the branches whipping by, and Sir Vladimir, in chain mail, would hold it dishonorable not to be able to follow where his liege lord led. Myself, I was in but ordinary clothes and while they had broken off the larger branches in my path, I was still sore pressed to stay with them, and must needs protect my face with my arms and clutch tightly to my bow lest I lose it.

Nonetheless, I got first blood in the fight, for as we went through a meadow at break-neck speed, I saw a sentry in a tree stare at us and nock an arrow.

I let fly and saw that my shot was true. He dropped his bow half pulled, clutched his chest and fell.

Sir Vladimir saw this and lowered his lance.

"For God and Poland!" he shouted.

Sir Conrad's sword had been out since we had left the trail.

The bandit camp was in a clearing, and I think that they must have had such confidence in their numbers that they had not moved it after committing yesterday's crime, even though their prisoner had escaped. Immediately and without hesitation, Sir Conrad charged into their midst, covering himself completely with glory. I saw heads and arms fly as he cleared a swath through them. Sir Vladimir was right behind, and I saw two men fall to his lance on his first pass.

Being unarmored, I dared not follow, but stopped at the edge of the clearing. The brigands were slow to act, stunned by the fury of the attack. I let fly at those at the edges and killed three while they stood there. Then suddenly all were in motion, and I killed but one more with my last eight arrows, though I wounded two besides.

The surviving bandits put all their efforts at Sir Conrad and Sir Vladimir, and I think that they scarce noticed me if they saw me at all. I prayed thanks to God in heaven for this favor, but when my arrows were exhausted, I felt obligated to sheath my bow, draw my sword, and join the others.

I had no chance to bloody it, for it was suddenly over. Bodies and pieces of bodies were scattered about the meadow, many sporting the bright red feathers for which I had paid extra to fletch my arrows.

Not a man among them was left alive. Sir Conrad was looking at them.

"I think we got carried away, Sir Vladimir. We should have taken a few of them alive."

"To what purpose, Sir Conrad? To hang them later? What good would that do? To show people that they shouldn't be brigands? They already know that!"

"We haven't even proven that these were the men who attacked Boris. We have only Anna's word for it."

"Well, there's proof for you. Look there. That's Sir Kazimierz's stallion. I'd recognize it anywhere. And I'll wager we'll find his armor when we sort the booty."

"What of the sentry?" I said. "He might still be alive."

"Sentry?" Sir Conrad said. "Piotr, what are you doing here?"

I was astounded. "Why, I am your squire and you told me to come, my lord!"

"I told you? I certainly did not!"

"Wait, Sir Conrad," Sir Vladimir said. "He was standing just behind me when you ordered me to follow you. I, too, thought you meant him to come with us."

"Well, I didn't."

"A bit late to say that now, my lord. Look about you. Those arrows are his. He killed at least as many of the enemy as did you or I. If this were my grandfather's time, and any knight could knight another, I'd dub him right now, for he saved my liege lord—you! You didn't even see the sentry he skewered from a treetop. That man was aiming at you when he did it."

All this was not precisely true. That sentry hadn't had time to aim at anybody. But I blessed Sir Vladimir for saying it.

"Oh," Sir Conrad said. "Piotr, I guess I owe you an apology, as well as my thanks. Let's see if that sentry is still alive."

He wasn't. Not only had my arrow pierced his heart, but he had broken his neck in the fall.

"It looks like you wasted an arrow, Piotr!" Sir Vladimir laughed. "The fall alone was fatal!"

It was an old joke, but we all laughed at it. These noble knights were treating me as an equal!

We looked through the camp. There were horses and mules belonging to Novacek, and armor belonging to him and to Sir Kazimierz was found and identified. There was also a third suit of chain mail, doubtless the property of some earlier victim. It was small and made for a person of slender stature.

"There's really not much here in the way of booty," Sir Vladimir said. "Novacek's property must be returned to him, and Sir Kazimierz had a younger brother who would appreciate having his horse and armor. They aren't wealthy, and I would feel best if they were given to him."

"Agreed," Sir Conrad said. "I'll see that it gets to the kid."

"That leaves this last set of mail. It's of Piotr's size and I'm minded that he should have it. Traveling as much as he does, he needs it, and he truly earned it this day."

Sir Conrad looked at me and smiled. "Agreed. Piotr, you are now the proud possessor of a set of armor, with helmet and gambeson. Wear it in good health!

"The rest of these tools and weapons are mostly junk. We'll give anything that looks decent to Count Lambert as his share, throw the rest into Ilya's scrap bin, and that settles the problem of the distribution of the spoils, except for one major item.

"Boris was half delirious, but he distinctly said that he had all his wealth with him when he was attacked. As well as he's been doing these past few years, that was probably several hundred thousand pence. Where is it?"

We spent much of the morning looking for the treasure, but without luck. Finally, we loaded the animals for the trip back to Three Walls, and I took a few moments to try on my new armor. It was a remarkably good fit, and even the open-faced helmet sat well, so I made a brave appearance reentering the city.

Naturally, we were the center of attention, and everyone was looking at us. I caught Krystyana's eye, but she quickly glanced away.

Sir Conrad announced that the journey to the Odra River would be delayed a few days, and said that in the afternoon, right after lunch, every available person in Three Walls would go to the bandits' campsite to search for Novacek's treasure.

At dinner, bold in my new armor, I came and sat by my love's side in the dining room. I tried to make polite conversation, but she stopped and stared directly at me.

"It takes more than armor to make a knight, Squire Piotr!"

Then she left, her food uneaten.

* * *

That afternoon and the whole of the following day, almost a thousand people searched for the treasure. Sir Conrad had Anna try to smell out where they hid it, but all she found was their latrine. There was shit there, and Novacek's left hand, but no treasure. We threw the bandits' bodies on top of their own filth and piled dirt over them.

Sir Conrad lined the people up fingertip to fingertip and marched them for miles from north to south and then from east to west. Every square yard of land for miles around was searched again and again. We found Sir Kazimierz's body, and Novacek's other hand, but no treasure.

One yeoman's cottage was taken apart and the ground under it dug up, for no other reason than he lived a mile from the camp. Then a crew rebuilt it for him.

Countless trees were climbed and no few hollow ones were chopped down, but to no avail.

Novacek affirmed that he had lost just under four hundred thousand pence, and not a penny of it was ever found. The reward on the treasure was never claimed.

Eventually, it became a normal pastime, a thing to do on one's day off, to head into the woods with a shovel, and many young couples claimed that this was what they were doing in the woods as well. It became a standing joke to ask how you dug a hole with a blanket.

Yet it was a game my love would not play.

Interlude Three

I hit the STOP button.

"So what happened to the treasure?" I asked.

"It was right where Anna said it was. The outlaws hid it under their latrine, or rather they used the hole as a latrine after they buried the treasure, figuring that nobody would look through somebody else's shit. They were right, and the effect was doubled once there were sixteen dead bodies over it."

"Oh," I said. "Another thing, why didn't flint work in Conrad's lighter?"

"Lighter 'flints' aren't flint, kid. They're made of misch metal, an alloy of rare earth elements. Anything else troubling you?"

He hit the START button.

Chapter Sixteen

It was another summer spent running around on Anna, usually with Cilicia riding behind me. I had originally intended to put her on the payroll like everybody else, but at first I didn't get around to it. Then she started teaching dancing to the women at Three Walls, charging a penny for six lessons a week. All winter long she had more than sixty women in two classes, and was making more than twice what anyone else at Three Walls was making, so there was no point in paying her on top of that.

I was even considering charging her rent on my living room, where the classes were held, but then found out that she was giving most of the money to her father. My deal with Zoltan hadn't included giving him any cash. I could see where land, clothes, and food weren't quite enough, so I let it ride. It was years later that I discovered that she was charging him fifty percent a year on his loans.

Had a Polish girl done that, I would have spanked her ass, but these were a different people, with different morals.

Different strokes for different folks.

Cilicia wasn't really eager to spend half her time traveling with me, but she wasn't happy about letting me out of her sight, either. She came, despite the money she was losing by not teaching school. But she made up for it by dancing for the men at each of my installations, and then teaching dancing to the women when she was there. After six months, she had enough girls well trained to act as instructors, and she built an organization that paralleled my own, teaching dancing for all the traffic would bear. About the same time, dancers became standard fare at the Pink Dragon Inns. Oh God, how the money rolled in.

Cilicia's people were survivors. They had to be, after all they'd been through.

Zoltan worked out a sideline of his own, making and selling perfumes and cosmetics. I wasn't all that happy with it, since it seemed a waste of resources, and a girl who can blush doesn't need makeup. But he found a ready market for his products, and there was nothing I could do about it anyway, so I didn't try.

* * *

Visiting the duke's castle at Wroclaw, we found that not only were the serving girls topless, but most of the other women were doing it, too. The serving wenches were dutifully clad in miniskirts and mesh stockings, and were clumping around inexpertly in high heels. The noblewomen were wearing clothes reminiscent of something worn by snake goddesses in ancient Crete. But not all of them.

There were two factions. The largest felt that if the duke wanted it, he should get it. But a substantial minority noticed that the duke's son, Prince Henryk, was a lot more straight-laced than his father, and that the prince's wife wasn't going along with the new fad. Figuring that the prince was the wave of the future, these ladies were dressing like Queen Victoria.

* * *

The first thing we built at Coaltown, the installation on the Odra, was a brickworks. It was cheaper to manufacture bricks on-site than to haul them in on mules from Three Walls, and we needed an awful lot of bricks.

The previous fall, I'd put Zoltan to work seeing what he could do with coal tar. He'd come up with ammonia and a wood preservative. Further, he knew of a process of combining salt, ammonia, and carbon dioxide to make sodium bicarbonate and ammonium chloride. We tried the ammonium chloride out as a fertilizer. Sodium bicarbonate has lots of uses, but the big one is to melt it down with sand and lime, both of which are plentiful, to make a good quality glass. I wanted plentiful glass more than I wanted steady sex!

Of course, I might not have said that a few years ago.

A beehive coke oven isn't very efficient at producing by-products, so the ovens at Coaltown had to be of the complicated modern design, with brick heat regenerators, chemical separators, and tall brick chimneys.

* * *

Okoitz started to get a major face-lifting that summer. During the winter, Count Lambert had repeatedly enlarged my plans for the workers' dormitories until they were bigger than the rest of the town! He not only had room for three gross of young ladies, but moved his own quarters there as well. There were six dozen guest rooms, a huge dining hall, a big new church, and an indoor swimming pool. And plumbing, sewage disposal, limelights in the public rooms, and steam heat.

As an afterthought, he let me add a wing for the peasants as well.

I made the place look like a proper castle, with machinations, crenelated walls, and dunce caps on the towers. There was even a drawbridge over a moat that doubled as a swimming pool in warm weather.

His old castle became an addition to the cloth factory and the peasants' housing was turned into stables.

To build it, he contracted with me to take all the surplus bricks and mortar we could produce for three years, and gave us all the surplus cloth his factory could make for the next five. Essentially, we became his sales force.

I'd long felt sorry about the poor living conditions at Okoitz, even though they were no different than those throughout most of Europe in the Middle Ages. It was just that when I first came to medieval Poland, these people took me in and made me feel at home. This was the first chance that I had to do something really nice for them, and I spent a lot of time on the designs of that building. It was going to be nice!

As to the financial arrangements, well, as long as I could meet my payroll and keep food on the tables, I really didn't much care who owned what. I was doing my job, I was having fun, and I wasn't missing any meals. Why should any rational man want anything else?

* * *

I'd appointed Natasha to take care of Boris Novacek, since without hands he wasn't capable of doing anything for himself, and she had the patience to wait on him literally hand and foot. They hit it off pretty well together and he recovered fairly quickly under her care.

Yet even after he'd reconciled himself to the loss of his hands, he was still in the dumps. His fortune was gone and he saw no way of supporting himself.

So I offered him a job, salary plus commission, as my sales manager. We had not only the products of my factories to unload, but the duke's copper works and Count Lambert's cloth works as well.

At first, he seemed to lack confidence in himself, but within a month he was in the full swing of it and enjoying himself. He was a past master at dealing with other merchants, and I think he used his disfigurement to his own advantage. Gesticulating at his opponents with his hand-less arms seemed to intimidate them. In half a year, we were not only selling everything that we wanted to sell, we were getting thirty percent more for it.

The money was important because it permitted us to expand faster. I no longer had to worry about whether I could feed a man's family when I hired him. If he looked to be the sort we wanted, I swore him in and found a place for him later.

But I think that Boris's greatest triumph was when he invented the Tupperware party. You see, one of my major expenses was maintaining over a hundred schools in Lambert's county. Our kitchenware line wasn't selling very well, largely because women didn't know how to use them. We made very good cast-iron frying pans, for example, but frying was an unusual way to prepare food in the Middle Ages, probably due to the lack of a decent frying pan!

So that summer, Boris invited two dozen of the schoolteachers to Three Walls for a week, and saw to it that they learned how to use every utensil we made. I even found myself showing them how to make pancakes!

Then he set up a system whereby the schools bought things from Three Walls at below wholesale prices, and the teachers demonstrated and sold the utensils to the other women in their towns at normal retail prices. Everybody knew that half the money spent went to the local school, and that the teachers were making a commission on the sales in addition to their salaries. By fall, we were in danger of making a profit on the schools, which was a bit much. So we used the surplus money to put up school buildings.

Up till then, school had been taught in the church, somebody's house, or even in a barn. Now there were schoolhouses, and each one of them had a store attached. We expanded the product line available to the schools to include everything we made, and the smallest town now had a general store. If they didn't stock it, they could get it.

Every school had a post office, too. This was usually just a drawer in the store, but you could send and receive mail.

Most of the towns were small farming communities, with only a few dozen families, so most of the schools had to be small, one- or two-room affairs. But they all had hot running water, in part to demonstrate our plumbing products.

If most of our teachers only had a year or two of schooling themselves, well, it was the best we could do and the quality of teacher education went up in time.

I refused to allow any money to be made off the schools, so there was nothing to do but expand the system. In three years, we covered the entire duchy, and in six, all of Poland.

Just in time for the Mongols.

By late fall, Boris knew that he had found a new niche in life, and he and Natasha came to me during one of my regular biweekly court sessions. They wanted to be married, and had already gotten her parents' written permission to do so. I gave them my blessings, and told him that he was a very lucky man, which he was. A fine lady!

* * *

Construction never stopped at Three Walls. That summer we added a second housing unit, made of brick, outside of our existing building. It tripled the living space available to the workers. Yet because everyone was on different shifts, our existing kitchen, dining room, recreation facilities and church were still adequate, not to mention the factories. A considerable savings.

We also finished the sawmill and carpentry shop that had been stopped last fall in order to build housing for the Moslems. Besides cutting logs into rough lumber, there was a drying kiln, and power-operated planers, joiners, and routers.

Surprisingly, medieval carpenters didn't know much about cabinet-making. Despite the lack of inexpensive fasteners, they had never heard of a dado or a rabbet or a dovetail joint. Their methods of fastening were limited to butting two boards against each other and doweling them together. If more strength was needed, they had iron straps made up. I had to teach myself cabinet-making just so I could teach it to my own carpenters.

Then there was the whole problem of getting mass production going. They were used to making things one at a time. If somebody needed a chair, a carpenter made one. If somebody wanted three, he made one and one and one. This was an emotionally satisfying way to work, but it wasn't very productive. Equipping one of our dining rooms took a thousand chairs, and mass production was in order.

We needed barrels, chests, and other shipping containers by the tens of thousands. Standardization was necessary, unless we wanted to haggle over the price of every barrel of lime shipped. It took a lot of work and a few temper tantrums, but I made believers out of them.

* * *

By midsummer, I had over two thousand men sworn to me and on my payroll, and that's not counting their families.

The place was crawling with kids! Almost every woman continued having a baby a year, but now, with better nutrition, sanitation, and housing, they weren't dying off as fast as they were born. Our infant mortality rate was fast approaching modern levels.

Modern doctors and other medical-types like to take all the credit for the vast improvements in public health, but the fact is that it is the lowly sewer inspector and the despised customs inspector and the humble sanitation engineer who really keep people healthy!

So we had a population explosion on our hands, but it didn't bother me. At least these kids were going to grow up clean, well fed, and well educated! We could afford to feed all the extra mouths, and the population of the country wasn't a twelfth of that of modern Poland, which isn't all that crowded.

In the long run? Well, historically, a high standard of living inevitably results in a lowered birth rate. And if that wasn't good enough, there was a whole empty world out there to repopulate.

Everywhere the Mongols had gone.

* * *

I was spending more time than I was actually required to at Eagle Nest, mostly because I liked working with the kids. They were the most eager, enthusiastic, friendly, and earnest bunch of people I'd ever met. They were so absolutely convinced that they were going to conquer the skies that they damn near had me believing it.

In the course of the winter, they'd each built several model gliders, and many of them were as good as those done by modern boys, despite their lack of balsa wood, silk paper, and quick-setting glues. In the spring, they were back at kites again, and getting innovative about it. The winner of one combat contest was really a section of aircraft wing, with three strings controlling it.

But toward summer, I could see that they were getting a little bored, so I told them about hang gliders, and they built a dozen of them.

A hang glider is controlled by the pilot moving his body to shift the center of gravity of the craft, rather than by the more conventional use of control surfaces. What can make them deadly is that in a downdraft, the plane and pilot can experience zero G. At this point, the pilot has absolutely no control over his plane. Shifting the center of gravity has no effect when there is no gravity! Coming out of the downdraft, the glider can be in any orientation, even upside down or backward, and a fatal crash is likely.

Downdrafts can't happen close to the ground, and for this reason I forbade them to go more than a dozen yards in the air, under penalty of being grounded for a month. By late fall, most of the boys had been grounded at least once. I even caught Count Lambert flying too high, but I couldn't do much except admonish him for it. The joy of flying was too much for him.

We had our first fatality that year. One of the boys broke a dozen regulations by taking a glider to the top of the big conical hill alone during a windstorm. A shepherd tried to stop him, but the kid was airborne by the time the old fellow got there. They say he was high out of sight before he got into trouble.

His body was sent back to his parents and three other boys were pulled from the school.

But two weeks after that, the new class arrived, twice as large as the first one, and things went on, twelve-dozen boys strong.

* * *

Krystyana had a fine healthy boy that summer, and pretended that she didn't notice what anybody said about her lack of a husband. I got to sleeping with her occasionally, mostly because I felt sorry for her, and by Christmas she was pregnant again.

* * *

The harvest was again good that year, and the new crops were starting to be plentiful enough to make a serious contribution to the food supply. I had new grain towers built at all our installations, each with a windmill to circulate the grain and keep it in good shape. If grain is just left to sit there, it soon becomes infested with insects, fungi, and rats. But if you regularly pump it to the top with an Archimedes' screw on dry days, any bugs and rats are killed and the grain stays dry enough to retard fungus. This is still the method used in the twentieth century.

We had tons and tons of sugar beets at Okoitz, and I had to figure out how to convert them into sugar. Sugar is a major industry in modern Poland, and entire sugar refineries are regularly sold to other countries. But the more important an industry is, the more specialized it becomes. There are engineers who spend their entire lives working on nothing but sugar refineries, with the result that a generalist like myself simply didn't get involved. I didn't even know the basic process!

Zoltan came to my rescue. He'd never heard of a sugar beet, but he had heard about the process for refining sugar cane, which grew on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This was wonderful, because by myself, I don't think that I ever would have thought of adding lime, the caustic stuff that mortar is made out of, to the beet juice to make it crystallize. But between Zoltan's chemistry and my machinery, we got a working plant installed at Okoitz before Christmas. It made a nice "winter industry" for the peasants, something to keep them busy between the harvest and spring planting.

Free popcorn became a regular feature of the Pink Dragon Inns. We had twenty-two of them now.

* * *

Every few months, I visited Father Ignacy at the Franciscan monastery in Cracow. He was my confessor, my confidant, the one person in this world that I could be honest and comfortable with.

This time, I found that the old abbot had died, and that Father Ignacy had been elected to take his place.

"Congratulations on your promotion, Abbot Ignacy," I said.

"Thank you, my son, although it was probably more your doing than my own."

"Mine? What do you mean?"

"It was mostly those looms and spinning wheels of your design that did it. I encouraged my brothers that we should do our own weaving, and the project has been a huge success. Somehow, I received most of the credit for it."

"But I thought that Friar Roman did most of the work there."

"He did, but there is very little justice in the world. However, I'm sure that you would rather talk about the inquisition that the Church is conducting on you. At least you always ask about it," Abbot Ignacy said.

"I take it that there is news?"

The Church was holding that inquisition to determine whether I was an instrument of God, to be eventually sainted, I suppose, or if I was an instrument of the devil, to be burned at the stake. Yes, I was most interested in what they decided!

"There is. You will recall that I wrote up my report promptly within months of your arrival in this century. My abbot acted briskly, and within a few months sent the report, with annotations, to the bishop here in Cracow, but his excellency felt that perhaps this sort of report should go through the regular branch of the Church, rather than the secular one. That is to say, through the home monastery rather than through his office, so that summer the report was sent to the home monastery in Italy. But the home monastery felt that no, this was a proper matter for the secular branch to handle, and sent it back here.

"The report was therefore sent, with further annotations, to the Bishop of Cracow again. However, by this time you had established yourself in the Diocese of Wroclaw, so the Bishop of Cracow found a traveler going to Wroclaw and sent the report to the bishop there."

"Wait a minute, father. I was there when that report came in. It was at my Trial by Combat, and both bishops were in attendance. So were you, for that matter. Why didn't the Bishop of Cracow just hand your report to the Bishop of Wroclaw?"

"How should I know that, my son? Perhaps he hadn't had the opportunity to annotate it properly.

"In any event, the report was sent to the Archbishop of Gniezno, in northern Poland, who in turn sent it on to Rome.

"The report has now returned, through the proper channels, with a request that the Abbot of the Franciscan monastery at Cracow investigate the matter thoroughly, and report back. It happens that I am now that personage, so I have written a complete report and am currently looking for someone who is going to Wroclaw. Actually, writing it was an easy matter for me, since I had all the facts at my fingertips, having written the original report myself.

"So, you can see that the matter is proceeding smoothly, and as fast as can be expected."

All I could see was that after three years all that had happened was that Father Ignacy had written a letter in reply to his own letter! I became convinced that the bureaucracy of the medieval Church was as screwed up as that of the stupid Russians!

"Father, we now have a postal service that covers every major city in Poland. Why don't you just mail the report to the archbishop?"

"And bypass his excellency the Bishop of Wroclaw? Heaven forbid! You wouldn't happen to be going to Wroclaw, would you?"

"Not directly. Just mail it to him. It only costs a penny, and it will be there in less than a week."

"An interesting suggestion, Conrad. I'll have to mention it to my superiors."

"Through channels, of course."

"Of course!"

* * *

The Great Hunt went off very well, and our new killing ground was ready in time for it, so we didn't have thousands of wild animals running through what had become a substantial city. There were many fewer wild boars and wolves than before, at least locally, and many more deer, elk, and bison. But since I was now getting a rake-off from all the lands owing allegiance to the duke, the total number of wolf skins delivered to me was huge. I had a problem storing and curing all of them. But the price stayed up and it was vastly profitable. My aurochs herd was up to eight dozen animals, and we started culling some of the bulls for eating.

The wilderness was being pushed back, the land converted to farming and pasture, and large stockpiles of lumber were building up. On Lambert's lands, the rule was that any tree that gave an edible fruit or nut should be left standing, and except for certain areas preserved as forests—about thirty percent of the total—all else should be cut for more pasture area.

And so 1234 wound around.

Chapter Seventeen

The next year saw our first printed books, our first poured concrete, and our first mass production of glass. It also saw our first cannon.

There are some big advantages to doing something the first time. You can set your own standards.

When it came to printing, there were a lot of simplifications I could introduce, for no other reason than because no one had ever seen anything different. All the characters were the same width, as on an old-style typewriter. The use of lowercase letters was not common in the Middle Ages, so we didn't have any.

The width of a column was standardized at twenty-four characters, and our rule was that any word could be hyphenated anyplace, so all lines were the same width and no space was wasted. All books were printed on paper that was a third of a yard high and a quarter yard wide, since that was the width that our papermaking machine made. And there were three columns on each page. Always.

Once you were used to it, it was easy enough to read, and almost everybody was used to it because all the schoolbooks were printed that way. It was the way you learned in the first place. For those who learned by reading handwritten manuscripts, there was no difficulty in learning something new. Up until then, every book had been in a different format.

This made for great simplifications in our type-casting machine. It was a carefully machined iron trough with two dozen long iron sticks in it, set up so the sticks could be slid back and forth. The top of the sticks were square cut to look like a castle wall, and on top of each merlon was stamped a letter, number or punctuation mark.

The operator slid these sticks until the line he wanted was under the casting apparatus. A second operator slid a mold on top of the line of sticks and poured a molten lead alloy into the mold and over the row of stamped letters.

A third operator trimmed the wedge-shaped bars of type and fit them into a drum that went to the printer, once the drum had been turned on a lathe to make sure that all the characters were of exactly the same height.

The printing press was also a simple affair. There was a cast-iron pressure roll on the bottom, then the type roll, and finally some leather-covered inking rolls on the top. There was no paper feed required since we worked only from large continuous rolls of paper, and always the same kind of paper.

Printing the other side of the paper required a good deal of skill on the part of the printer, keeping the paper tension proper, so that the back of the sheet matched up with the front. Paper stretches with moisture, and sometimes print runs were delayed because it was necessary to print the second side on a day with the same relative humidity as when the first side was printed. But it couldn't be the same day because our ink took a day to dry.

But despite the above, a twelve-man crew could print and bind six thousand copies of a fair-sized book in less than a week, whereas hand-copying a single book could take a month, or six months in the case of a bible.

What took a year of development time were all the details. Getting the ink right and finding the right lead alloy that would cast properly and always shrink in exactly the same way, and so on.

The leather ink rollers were a problem because the crack where the leather was sewn together showed up on the printed page, no matter how carefully it was made. They solved this one by using a tubular piece of leather, made from the covering of a bull's penis! Privately, they called the rollers "Lamberts," but I don't think he ever heard about it.

* * *

Making concrete required far less finesse and a lot more brute force. Mortar is made from calcium hydroxide. It hardens by absorbing carbon dioxide out of the air and turning itself back into calcium carbonate, the limestone it was made of. Concrete is made of a mixture of things, but mostly calcium silicates. It hardens by polymerization. With concrete, you have real chemical bonds holding things together, which is what makes it so strong.

To make it, you heat a finely ground mixture of coal, limestone, clay, sand, and blast furnace slag in a rotary kiln until it melts together into clinkers. Then you grind it up again. The machinery to accomplish these small tasks took over fourteen thousand tons of cast iron, because we were only making a small one.

The limestone went through a pair of crushing wheels as wide as a man is tall, and three times that diameter. Then the chips went through three sets of progressively finer ball mills. If you can imagine a huge cement mixer filled with cannon balls and limestone, you understand a ball mill.

The rotary kiln was a cast-iron tube two yards across and three dozen yards long, lined with sandstone bricks and turning once a minute.

I loved it, but then engineers love to make big things. It gives you a godlike feeling of power! Mere money doesn't come close!

* * *

Once you have the materials, making plate glass is pretty easy if you know the trick, and I did. You just pour the glass onto a pool of molten tin and slowly draw off window glass. This won't work with glass made of wood ashes and sand because the melting temperature of that mixture is too high—you vaporize the tin, I found out the hard way. But with our soda glass, it worked just fine. Our rig was fairly narrow, since none of our outside windows was more than a quarter yard wide.

Within three months, we made enough glass to glaze every window in every building we'd put up in four years, except for the churches. Learning how to make stained glass took a few months longer, and then only because I was able to hire a French glassmaker to show us how it was done.

He knew two methods of doing it. One involved adding dyes to the molten glass and then piecing bits of this together in a lead frame, but it was the second method that we used, for then we could use standard rectangular cast-iron frames.

This involved little more than painting the colors and designs wanted on the glass, then baking it until the glass softened enough to absorb the colors. Easy enough once you know how to make the paints, and this guy did.

But while he was a good enough craftsman, he wasn't much of an artist. He did one window for the church at Coaltown, and I didn't like it. It was trite, and I wanted something glorious.

So I got the services of an artist friend of mine, Friar Roman, from Abbot Ignacy by giving him a thousand prayer books and offering him his very own printing press. Actually, I'd wanted to give the printing outfit to him anyway, since I didn't want to get into the publishing business.

The deal we made had my people training his, and we sold them paper and ink at cost. They could print anything over my requirements that they wanted, sell it as they saw fit and keep the money, but they had to acknowledge that money as my donation to the Church. My work, mostly schoolbooks, was to be done at the cost of materials.

Actually, much of their other work turned out to be my work as well, since we made it a practice to buy a copy of every single book published for every single one of the schools, to build the libraries. We got those at cost, too.

And there were two other strings attached. The first was that everything printed must be in Polish. I wanted to establish the Polish language and Polish culture as a leader in Europe, and having the only printing presses in existence gave us a big edge. In the twentieth century, a Polish boy has to learn English or Russian if he wants to stay at the forefront of engineering and most sciences and German besides if he wants to keep up with chemistry.

That wasn't going to happen in the world I was building. I'd make everybody else learn our language! That can be done by making yourself culturally and technically ahead of everyone else. What's more, once you're ahead, you tend to stay ahead, because while your kids are studying science, their kids are studying your language.

Not one person in a hundred in America speaks a foreign language. They don't have to! But everybody else has to speak English just to keep up with them.

Anyway, the Polish alphabet is slightly different from that used in the rest of western Europe, so it wouldn't have been easy to do foreign stuff in the first place.

The second string was that I wanted him to turn out a monthly magazine, a general purpose family-oriented thing that would have sections on current events, household hints, agriculture, medicine, and construction. There would be a sermon written by Abbot Ignacy and there would be something each month for the children. In addition, we would be accepting commercial announcements, for a price.

The abbot was astounded at the idea of writing a book every month, and even more so at my suggestion that an initial print run of six thousand copies would be appropriate. But once we discussed how each of a dozen people would be writing only a few pages a month each, he came around, although I think that it was the thought that six thousand families would be reading his sermons that made him take on the task.

As it turned out, I had to write half of the first few issues myself, until we got enough regular contributors to fill it out. I had to write a manual of style, to keep things consistent, and I had to talk Abbot Ignacy into assigning four friars to the task of writing a dictionary.

The first three issues had only ads from my own companies, but in time I was able to largely disengage myself from the project, except for the occasional article.

The long-term effect of the magazine was astounding. Up until then, the only source of news anybody had was hearsay and gossip. Now they had a source of information about what the duke said in Wroclaw, and how the Palatine of Cracow answered him.

Within two years, we had correspondents in most of the major cities of Europe, and were the first news service. And the magazine was a great way to tell my story on sanitation, housing, and food supplies.

So it was a profitable trip, but I'd ridden to Cracow to get an artist.

Friar Roman had never made a church window, but that didn't matter. We had craftsmen who could do the actual construction. What I wanted was the artwork.

An engineer is probably not the person to choose as an art critic, but I was also the boss and I had definite ideas about what I wanted. I wanted to make a religious statement, and I didn't dare do it in words.

The Church in the Middle Ages depended far too much on fear to get its message across. When I go to pray, I don't want to be surrounded with representations of tortured human bodies.

To me, Christ's message was a message of love. Love for God and love for one another. I read nothing in the Sermon on the Mount about mutilating people for the glory of God!

For the Church of Christ the Carpenter, our church at Three Walls, I wanted a simple naturalistic scene of a young Christ helping Saint Joseph in his carpentry shop. On another wall, I wanted Christ with the little children. The third was to have Christ with the lilies of the fields and the last was to be Christ with the money-changers in the temple, because Christ wasn't a wimp.

So I put Roman on the payroll and set him up with a nice room at Coaltown, where the glass works was located. It had big windows on the north side, a drawing board, and a big stack of paper. I told him what I wanted and let him alone for a few weeks. Then I told him what I didn't like about what he'd done, and had him try it again.

It was four months before he started doing what I wanted, and I had to teach him about perspective drawing in the process. But eight months after I'd shanghaied him, we had the glass hung at Three Walls. Then I got him going on my other four churches.

It was not only important to save Poland from the Mongols, it was also important that I help make it worth saving!

* * *

There was a bad harvest in 1235. The fall rains had come much earlier than usual, and much heavier. Yet we barely felt the effects of it.

For years, Count Lambert had been selling the new varieties of grains as seed and by the pound at high prices. The result was that most of the farmers in Silesia and Little Poland were growing at least some of it.

The modern grains were shorter and had thicker stems than the older varieties, so they stood up to a heavy rain better. Most towns had at least one McCormick-style reaper, and they were able to get in most of the crop on the few dry days that we had.

Many farmers were able to sell their grains to harder hit areas, and made great profits doing it. At least, the sale of single-family plumbing packages skyrocketed, which is some sort of indicator.

My factories didn't buy any grain at all that year, since we had stockpiled enough the year before.

* * *

Anna's children were all healthy, and she had another batch of four every six months. The oldest bunch looked like horses now, but they grew slower than regular horses, and Anna said that they took four years to become adults. We had twenty of them, but it would be a few more years before the first bunch would be ready to join the team.

Anna spent very little time with them, only looking in on them every day or three to see that they didn't need anything. It wasn't that she was a bad mother, it was just that she was supremely confident that if they had enough to eat, they would grow up okay.

They were good little survivors. When they got cold, they burrowed into the hay, and if that wasn't enough, they burrowed into the ground below the hay. And they would eat anything. If they ran out of hay and grain, they would start eating the stall they were in, so you had to watch them. In fact, I think half of Anna's looking out for them was to protect the world from them, and not vice versa.

Krystyana was productive as well. After the birth of her second child, I promised myself that enough was enough. I wasn't doing anybody any good by producing illegitimate children. I stuck with that vow, except for once when she was crying and making love seemed the best thing to do.

Once was enough. By late fall, it was obvious that she was pregnant again.

* * *

The previous fall, I'd put Zoltan on the problem of making gunpowder, or rather the problem of making saltpeter—potassium nitrate—since once we had that, I knew the formula for gunpowder. It's seventy-five percent saltpeter, fifteen percent charcoal, and ten percent sulfur.

But all I knew about saltpeter was that it was made out of manure, or sometimes old mortar, and that it was a white crystal. Oh, I could give you the molecular weight and even sketch up a molecule of it, but that wasn't going to help Zoltan any.

He'd gamely gone at it, and had gone through seven frustrating months smelling like shit, as did his young Polish apprentices. The boys were all having trouble with their love lives until I ordered them to bathe after work and had them issued extra clothing to wear when not on the job.

Then one day Zoltan came in with his clothes in tatters, his hair gone, and his beard burned off. His face was covered with blisters but through them shown a great happy smile.

"I think we have done it, my lord!"

So I gave him the small brass cannon I'd had made up along with a supply of cannon balls. I told him about wetting the mixture down, drying it, and grinding it to turn serpentine powder, which was what he had, into black powder, which was what I wanted.

I explained how to load and fire a cannon and told him that I wanted him to play with slightly different mixtures to see which one could make the ball go farthest, always using the same small amount of powder.

I also made him, his apprentices and everyone around them swear to keep the process for making the powder a secret. I didn't want anybody to know how to make it but a few of his people and his apprentices. They realized the seriousness of having somebody else shooting cannons at them, and the promise was kept until well after the Mongol invasion.

Chapter Eighteen

By Christmas of 1235 I could see that it was all going to come together. There was an awful lot left to do, but I think the seeds of an industrial base sufficient to supply a reasonably modern army were there and well planted.

Getting the army was another matter. I had four knights sworn to me and that's where I had to start.

Actually, it was sort of strange for one knight to be sworn to another, but there was nothing in the rules against it. I had more knights than some of Count Lambert's barons, but all the lack of a baronage meant was that I sat farther down the table at a formal banquet and I wasn't permitted to knight anybody. But I avoided formal banquets whenever possible and hadn't wanted to knight anybody anyway.

The truth is that I am of a naturally egalitarian disposition. I didn't like this separation of people into hereditary cases, this silly business of noble and commoner. If I had my way, I'd scrap the whole unhappy system! But I didn't have my way and giving up my own knighthood would drastically reduce my own efficiency, as well as wrecking my lovelife. But someday I'd have the power to do something about it.

I called my knights together after dinner one day, along with their wives.

"Gentlemen, we are starting to get it together," I said. "We now have most of the raw materials that we need. We now have the beginning of a factory system that can take those raw materials and turn them into useful products. We now have workmen trained to use those factories and the tools in them.

"We also have the biggest, best trained and best-led army in the world coming at us in five years.

"What we don't have is an army of our own! At present, we have no way to save our country from absolute destruction. You've all heard Cilicia's story about the obliteration of her native city. That could happen here!

"It will happen here, unless we do something about it!

"Our factories can easily be converted from making civilian products to war production. They were designed with that thought in mind. We can turn out arms and armor at a rate that will astound you. Better armor than the world has ever seen, and weapons of awesome power will be ours when we need them.

"But the weapons are worthless without the men who will use them! I can promise you that we will be better equipped than the Mongols, but if we are to win, we must be better trained and better led as well. That's not going to be easy!

"The Mongols have been diligently practicing the art of mass murder and total destruction for over fifty years, and so far they have never been defeated!

"But they are going to be beaten here and we are going to train and lead the army that will do it! You four gentlemen are going to do most of it, since I'll have to spend half my time on production.

"It won't be the kind of training that you have been used to, because this won't be the kind of war that you have been used to. You have become accustomed to treat war like a game, where polite, Christian gentlemen settle their disputes according to well-defined rules.

"Well, the only rules the Mongols know are 'obey orders' and 'win the war.' They are not Christian nor are they gentlemen. They are greasy, smelly little bastards who can fight like all the demons of hell! They are hard and tough and cruel. The only way that we are going to beat them is by being harder and tougher and crueler than they are!

"You are used to a kind of warfare where only the nobility fights. That too must come to an end. The Mongols will come to us with every single man of theirs under arms. To meet them, we must do the same. Our factories will be able to equip every adult male in Silesia and Little Poland. We must be able to train that number of men. It will be difficult, but not impossible. I can show you techniques that can turn a farmer into a fighting man in six months. Training leaders will take longer, and training the men to train them will take longer yet.

"In the spring, we will be building a training base in the northwest corner of my lands. We have already fenced off a dozen square miles of land there, using Krystyana's roses, so we'll have plenty of privacy. I've asked Count Lambert to send me a gross of volunteers right after the spring planting. Those peanuts will be our first class.

"The training period will be eleven months and we will be working at training not warriors, but trainers of warriors. I'll be happy if three dozen of them survive the education we give them.

"After that, you gentlemen will be administrators, and they will be doing all the grunt work. But for the next year and a half, you will all be going through hell yourselves! That's why I invited your wives to this meeting, to explain to them that you won't be seeing much of them for a while, that you will be working for me and not playing around with Count Lambert's harem at Okoitz.

"I know that you are all in fairly good, strong physical shape. You should be, living the healthy, outdoor lives that you do.

"But you are not 'run twelve miles before breakfast' healthy and you're not 'do two hundred push-ups' strong. We will be working on that this winter, and it won't be fun. All I can promise you is that I will be going through the same pain that you will.

"We start physical training tomorrow morning, and we will also be spending two hours a day here in my office doing skull work. Any questions?"

"Too many to remember them all, my lord," Sir Vladimir said. "But the one that sticks in my mind is 'what is a push-up'?"

"You'll learn, my friend. I promise you, you'll learn."

"This running and other physical training you mentioned," Sir Gregor said. "I don't understand the need for that."

"We will be training an infantry force, and some artillery, which I'll explain later. There is no possibility of getting enough war-horses to equip our army. That many horses don't exist! Also, Poland already has a sizable force of cavalry in the conventional knights. I'd estimate that we have thirty thousand of them, plus we should get some help from France and the Holy Empire when the time comes."

"What of the Russians and the Hungarians?" Sir Gregor said.

"The Russians, or rather the Ukrainians, will be largely wiped out in the next three or four years. I don't think that we will find it possible to give them any significant amount of help in that time. As to the Hungarians, well, they'll be attacked at the same time that we are, and will have their hands full with their own problems. It is more likely that we will be able to aid them than the opposite happening."

"This land that you have set aside for training," Sir Wiktor said. "A dozen square miles seems like a lot. And what is this need for privacy? Much of the reason for having a strong military force is to make an enemy think twice before attacking you. Why try to hide it?"

"The Mongols are coming whether we're ready or not," I said. "They won't believe what infantry can do until we show them on the battlefield. There are two reasons for the seclusion of our training grounds. The first is that I don't want our training techniques on public display. They are one of our major secret weapons.

"The second reason is more important, and more subtle. In the course of training, we will be doing two things to our soldiers. The obvious one is that we will be building up their bodies and teaching them how to use weapons. The other is psychological. We will be tearing their minds apart and then putting them back together in a newer, stronger way. It helps to have them in an isolated, alien environment."

"How does one tear apart the mind of another?" Sir Vladimir asked.

"That too is something that I'm going to have to show you, and you won't like it. I trust that you gentlemen know that I have the highest regard for you as individuals and as my vassals. I won't like being rude to you, especially when it's not deserved. But in order to teach you how to train others, I'm going to have to treat you the way you'll be treating the peasants you'll be training. I won't be polite. In fact, I'm going to be as rude as possible. I don't know why this helps to make men absolutely obedient, but it does.

"If there are no further questions, I'll see you all at the gate tomorrow at dawn. Be in full armor with good shoes. We'll start off with a three mile run and then I'll teach you about marching."

It was snowing, but they were standing out there at dawn, and with them was Piotr Kulczynski.

"Piotr, what the hell are you doing here?" I said.

"My lord? I am your squire and when you called out all your knights, I thought—"

"Well, you thought wrong! I need you as an accountant. I don't need you as a training instructor! Now get the hell out of here!"

Piotr left, almost in tears.

"Aren't you being a little rough on him, my lord?" Sir Vladimir said.

"Shut your face, Vladimir! When I want your opinions, I'll tell them to you!"

That set the tone of our training. Such rudeness wasn't needed with my knights, and certainly not with Piotr, but it would be with the peasants and workers we had to train.

Sir Vladimir had repeatedly followed me into battle and fought like a hellion. I had no doubts about the three Banki brothers, either, and I thought that Piotr would walk through fire if I asked him to.

Which gave me an idea. I had once read an article on fire-walking in The Skeptical Inquirer, an American magazine organized for the purpose of debunking strange cult practices that abound in that country. Americans take their right to personal freedom to extremes, and permit all sorts of flying-saucer worshipers, Scientologists, and other crazies to abound.

The magazine explained quite carefully how it was possible to walk on a bed of glowing coals, and under what circumstances it was safe to do so.

If anything could convince an army that they were unbeatable, walking through fire should do it! Perhaps as part of the graduation exercises. Yes . . .

So we ran three miles in full armor, and I made sure that I stayed ahead of them even though my lungs were hurting and I could tell that my legs would be sore for a week. The muscles needed for riding on horseback are quite different from those needed for running! This was followed with an hour of calisthenics in the snow, and then some marching. The dinner bell rang, but I ignored it and kept them marching until they could at least stay in step.

"Your other left, Vladimir!"

We ate leftovers for lunch and were silent while doing it. Some of the workers noticed, but were smart enough to say nothing.

After lunch, we met again in my office.

"You may speak freely now, gentlemen," I said. "Part of the reason for these afternoon meetings will be to explain and to hash over what we did in the morning."

"Very well, my lord, since you invite it," Sir Gregor said. "I would like to know why you felt it necessary to speak so rudely to us. Had I not been sworn to you, I swear that I would have challenged you to a duel for some of the things you said."

"Well, I warned you that I was going to do it, but you didn't take me seriously enough. Was it necessary to talk to you in the manner that I did? The answer is no, it wasn't. You four have spent most of your lives training for combat. You are eager for it. Your whole system of self-worth depends on you following your liege lord into battle and fighting there honorably.

"But it will be necessary for you to know how to deal with people whose previous life aim was simply to get enough food to feed their families and to maybe lay a little money aside in case of bad times. That is to say, the great majority of people in this world. You must impress them with the importance of instant obedience to a direct order, even when the order makes absolutely no sense to them. I'm not sure why, but somehow shouting at people seems to accomplish this.

"Tell me, Sir Vladimir, what were your feelings when I shouted at you for defending Piotr this morning?"

Sir Vladimir thought for a moment. "Anger, at first, my lord. Then shame. Shame for myself for offending my liege and shame for you for so debasing yourself."

"Exactly," I said. "Anger and shame. But the anger goes more quickly than the shame. I think it would be very unlikely for you to speak up like that again in the same circumstances. Now you are no longer angry at me, in part because of this discussion and in part because we have known each other for a long time.

"The men you will be training will not have the benefit of your previous acquaintance with your drill instructor, nor will they have the benefit of these meetings. They will learn to hate you, and that is a necessary part of the training. Years after it's over, most of them will look back and see you with a certain amount of respect, but that is a very hollow sort of reward. In fact, being a drill instructor is one of the roughest jobs I know of.

"It might help if you tell yourself that this is a necessary thing to save your country, because it is."

They were silent for a bit.

"This funny kind of walking, this marching. Does that have some reason for it?" Sir Wojciech said.

"There are two reasons, one practical and one psychological. Tomorrow, I'll be showing you a weapon called the pike. It's like a lance, but it's six yards long. With one, if it's used properly, foot soldiers can destroy cavalry. But carrying something that long, you must walk in step or your pike gets tangled up with everybody else's pike.

"There are two parts to the psychological side. From the standpoint of the soldier, it gives a strong feeling of group belonging. It gives a feeling of power, a feeling that your unit can't be stopped. And if enough of the men really believe that, they truly can't be stopped.

"From the standpoint of the enemy, it results in fear. Seeing a thousand men coming at you, all wearing the same clothes and all walking in exactly the same way, their feet hitting the ground at exactly the same time, makes you think that you are not fighting mere men who can be killed. You think that you are up against an unstoppable machine.

"Once our men and their men both believe that we are unstoppable, the battle is more than half won."

The grueling training went on all winter long. Besides the pike, I introduced the rapier, a footman's sword that has no edge to speak of but only a point.

At first we wore the rapiers in the normal way, but this got in the way of calisthenics. Sir Vladimir was the first one to wear one over his left shoulder. He had the tip of the blade stuck into a long dagger sheath at his belt and the rest of the sword covered with a thin leather tube attached to a strap that went over his left shoulder. He could get it out in a hurry, although getting it back in was a bother. Still, it was a lot more convenient wearing it his way than getting it tangled around your feet. Wearing the sword high became one of our trademarks. That, and our funny haircuts.

You see, I believe that every elite military organization known to man has had a funny haircut. The Normans who conquered England wore one that looked as though they put on a beret, cocked it a bit, and then shaved off everything that wasn't covered. The Cossacks shaved their heads except for a pony tail hanging on the left side. The Mongols shaved a big square on the top of their heads, leaving a curl in the middle of their foreheads, in front of their ears, and a thick fringe around the back.

I don't understand the psychology of this brand of nonsense, but obviously, we had to have a funny haircut too. For a while there, I was toying with going to a Mohawk, but then I decided that the modern military crew cut was as weird as any of them, and took a lot less maintenance to keep up.

We also spent a lot of time on unarmed combat, for a warrior must stay a warrior even if he's unarmed and naked.

But after two weeks, I had to leave and go the rounds of the other factories. There were always technical problems where a few words from me could save hundreds of man-hours, and managerial problems that only the boss could resolve.

I put Sir Vladimir in charge when I was gone, and I gave him a daily schedule of what was to be done. He followed it as best he could. For my own part, I tried to stay with the physical training program even when I was on the road, but it was hard to do.

I especially didn't want to stint the boys at Eagle Nest. Those kids were so earnest that I felt a moral commitment to give them all the help I could. It didn't faze them in the least that one of their members had already died in the air. They fully expected to take further casualties and, in typically Polish fashion, were willing to pay the price. It wasn't the ignorant feeling of 'it can't happen to me.' They knew that it could happen to them! They just felt that the prize was worth the price, and they went on. This from twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys! If only NASA had such heroes!

What could I do but love them and help them in every way that I could? For now, I got them into sailplanes, and designed a launching device that would be built on top of the big conical hill near there. There was plenty of coal tar stockpiled at Coaltown, so we scheduled an asphalt runway on the plain below the hill. In time, other runways were added so that they could land no matter which way the wind was blowing, and eventually an entire half square mile was paved over. This not only permitted landing in any wind, but on sunny days it caused a lovely up-draft that went up for miles!

Wing struts proved to be a problem. The most efficient sailplane wings are very long and thin, and we had to support them without the benefit of aircraft aluminum. What we came up with was a sort of synthetic bamboo. I had a huge lathe built that could turn an eight-yard-long spruce log. We bored a conical hole down the middle of it, inserted a long iron cone in the hole and turned the outside of the log so that the thickness of the wall was half that of your little finger. Then the iron cone was removed and wooden discs were glued inside every half yard. This assembly had an astounding strength-to-weight ratio. Two of them fastened together end to end at the fuselage ran down the center of the wings. It held.

Count Lambert was often at Eagle Nest when I was there. He complained that they were making great progress with the aircraft themselves, but that I had once described to him an engine that could power an aircraft, and I was doing nothing about developing one.

The problem was that there were a lot of things higher on my priority list than a glorified lawnmower engine. There was the tooling to mass produce armor, a rapid-fire breech-loading cannon to develop, and we needed to be able to mass produce shells, bullets, gunpowder, sword blades, boots, and all sorts of things. I didn't even have a dependable source of lead and zinc yet, let alone sulfur!

But Count Lambert and the boys teamed up on me and extracted a promise. I would start working on an engine once they could build a two-man glider that could stay up for an hour. Knowing the problems involved, I didn't think that my promise would seriously upset my schedules.

There were two major sour points in early 1236, and they both hit me within the same week. I was being sued, twice. One lawsuit was by Count Lambert's brother Herman. He was no longer pleased with the brass works that I'd sold him. Rather than making him money, it was costing him money, due, I was sure, to his poor management. He felt that it was all my fault, and he was a count whereas I was a mere knight, which proved it to his satisfaction. He wanted his money back.

The other one was from Baron Stefan. He had decided that I was still on the land that Lambert had wrongly given me, land which had been in his family for more than three hundred years, he said. He wanted the land back and for me to pay damages for the trees I'd cut down and the fences I'd put up.

They gave me a few months of needless worry until the duke was passing through one snowy day and threw both cases out of court. Or rather, he dismissed both suits because he was the court.

Count Herman's suit was dismissed because I had delivered the property agreed upon and had never promised that it would be profitable. He gave the count a fatherly lecture about trusting to the workingman rather than to the man's tools and nobody mentioned the fact that the duke himself owned the factory that had run the count's factory out of business.

The duke became angry when he found that Baron Stefan had failed to come at Count Lambert's summons to beat the bounds between our properties. He said that if the baron lost land because of that, he deserved it, and a horse whipping besides for disobeying his liege lord.

It helps to have friends in high places.

* * *

Also that winter, Anna and I scouted out the Malapolska Hills, north of Cracow, where I knew there were deposits of zinc, lead, iron, and coal. She said that winter was the best time for smelling out this sort of thing, since there were fewer other smells around.

We found deposits of zinc and lead fairly close together, or at least there were two different ores and Anna said that they both stank like sulfur and I knew that both ores here were sulfides. Lead and iron had been smelted here for thousands of years, and some archaeologists believe that it was here that iron was first made.

But zinc was unknown as a separate metal. It was used as an alloying element with copper to make brass, but the ores were mixed before smelting to make brass directly, or zinc ore was mixed with copper before casting and copper was actually used to reduce the zinc!

Late that summer, I found out why.

The fact is I wouldn't have gotten zinc at all if I hadn't added some pollution-control equipment to the blast furnace there. There wasn't even a real need to control pollution, since our facilities were tiny by modern standards and didn't seriously effect the environment. But the problem would grow unless we started off doing things right, so I was adding dust collectors where possible.

When we tried to smelt the zinc ore, after roasting it to convert the sulfide to the oxide, all we got was slag. No metal at all came out. It was only when we cleaned out the dust collector that we found drops of zinc there.

The zinc had left the furnace as a gas! Small wonder the ancients never found it. They weren't worried about pollution at all!

By the next winter, we were producing zinc in quantity, but I get ahead of myself.

Work started on the training base as soon as the ground thawed. I'd chosen the land because of the varied terrain, with both mountains and plains on it, and because it was the least populated area of my lands. I only had to pay seven yeomen to move their families off it.

Eventually, the main barracks would be a square castle a mile to the side and six stories tall, but it was modest enough to start out. It had bunk-bed space for sixteen dozen men and a dining hall that doubled as a church, both made of concrete blocks. There was a big concrete parade around and a twelve-mile long obstacle course that was rougher than anything that I'd ever heard of.

On schedule, over a gross of peasants arrived from Count Lambert, or rather one from each of his knights. I had specifically asked for rough, disobedient characters. Peasants who were "too smart for their own good."

They certainly looked the part. If ever there were a bunch of men who looked like they should be hung on general principles, this was the gang. With one exception.

Piotr Kulczynski was with them.

Chapter Nineteen

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

I had spent much of the winter in preparation to attend Sir Conrad's warrior school. I had trained one of my subordinates, Jozef Kulisiewicz, to take over my position for a year, taking him twice on my rounds of Sir Conrad's factories and inns, and saw to it that his replacement was well trained.

I had artfully observed all the exercises that Sir Conrad and his knights were doing, and diligently practiced them myself. And I had worked on Count Lambert very carefully, and eventually got him to appoint me to the school. This was not easy, for while my father was one of the count's peasants, I was not, being sworn to Sir Conrad. But I persisted with the count, and came up with many reasons why I should go. At last, I irritated him sufficiently.

"Dog's blood! If you were sworn to me, I'd have you whipped! Piotr, you are too damn smart for your own good!"

"Yes, my lord. But isn't that precisely what Sir Conrad asked for? Men who were too smart?"

"By God it was, and I'm going to send you there just to get you out of my mustache! I know what Sir Conrad has planned at that school, and I think you'll be dead in three days if you go!"

"Thank you, my lord."

"You can thank me after he kills you! Now get out of here and get out of town, too!"

My plan accomplished, I left quickly. For I thought it was absolutely necessary that I attend the warrior school. My position as chief accountant gave me an excellent income, pleasant working conditions, and considerable prestige, but it did not give me what I really wanted. It did not give me Krystyana.

She was intent on marrying a true belted knight, or not marrying at all. Although nothing had been said of it, I was sure that those who survived the warrior school would soon be knighted. What other purpose could the school have?

So thus it was that I was standing in line with a gross of the grossest peasants I'd ever seen. It seemed that they had been picked for ugliness rather than for any other reason. They were all huge and hairy and smelled bad. I began to think that I had made a big mistake, a serious error in my career development plan.

"Piotr, what the hell are you doing here?" Sir Conrad shouted.

"Count Lambert sent me here, my lord. He said that I was rude and insubordinate and that if I were sworn to him, he'd have me whipped."

"Count Lambert could have you hung, sworn to him or not! Who is taking over your job?"

"Jozef Kulisiewicz, my lord. He's quite competent."

"I'll bet he is! After this stunt, he just might keep your job! You conniving little runt! You planned this, didn't you? Well, you planned wrong! You wanted to come here? Okay! You'll stay here! You're not my squire any more, Piotr. You're just another grunt in this line!"

I was so shocked that I barely heard the things that he said to the others in the line, though he was loud enough to make a snake listen. My position gone? And I was no longer a squire? What had I done to myself? Surely no one would knight this bunch of ruffians! I was ruined!

They gave me little time to bemoan my fate. We were marched off to the showers, for Sir Conrad said that we stank too badly for him to stand before us.

They had us strip naked and throw our clothes into a pile, to be burned, they said. Burning was probably the right thing to do with the rags that the others were wearing, but I had been spending much of my pay on nice clothing! My red hose and purple tunic were thrown into the pile of rags, along with my blue hat, my green cloak, and my beautiful Cracow shoes with the longest pointed toes in Silesia! I could only thank God that I hadn't worn my sword and armor, reasoning that none of the others would have such finery.

We were each given a small bag with our name on it for our valuables. We were told that these would be returned to us if we survived the year out, or sent to our families in the more likely event that we did not.

Four old women were waiting for us with sheep clippers, another of Sir Conrad's inventions.

We were each clipped of all hair, from head to foot and all in between, with the old women laughing at the small sizes of our privy members or occasionally pretending to be astounded at the size of others.

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 sturdy, 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 sturdy 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 polishing. 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 mass 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 classrooms, 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 shit.

* * *

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 breech-loading, bolt-action, clip-feeding gun with brass 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 mass 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 breech-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 shield 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 casters 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 shield 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 wire-drawing equipment and almost any two metals in a jar 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 nobly 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 modern 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, nobody minded giving me their problem children.

We put them through absolute hell. 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 class, 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 lose thousands of men in battle, and maybe the whole country besides.

But it hurt. It hurt like hell. 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. Nobody 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 circumvented 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 class is intended to teach the teachers. The later classes 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 nobility 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 damn 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 failed.

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 ran 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 circumstances, 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 peeked over the horizon. At the first sliver of sunlight, a very short mass 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 brass 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 God 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 modern 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 God, 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 Saturday afternoons. She taught courtesy and dancing on Saturday nights. Young ladies were brought in to assist 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 associate 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 horsemen, 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 shield 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!

* * *

It was in the ninth month of my military training that the worst trouble occurred.

My class was down to three dozen men then, from the gross we had started with, since Josep Karpenski had died the night before.

It was a cold morning, with a bit of frost on the ground, so naturally Sir Conrad led us on the twelve mile run before breakfast completely naked. If the afternoon was hot, you may be assured that we would be working out in full winter armor, for he never missed an opportunity to make things as difficult as possible.

We speculated why this was so, over our hurried meals and in the few brief moments a day that we had to ourselves. At least I speculated, for the others were convinced that Sir Conrad treated us thus out of pure cruelty. Myself, I was not convinced of that, for I alone had known the man before this form of hell began, and I knew that he never caused needless pain.

That there was some method behind this apparent wastage of time and men was obvious to me, for it was not the stupid brutality of a dumb peasant whipping a dumber beast. It had more in common with the raw pain caused when white lightning was poured on an open wound to cleanse it, before the ragged edges were trimmed away and the wound sewn shut.

That is to say, it was a precise, accurate sort of cruelty that was always on the very edge of the intolerable, but could still be survived somehow.

I think this knowledge of my liege lord helped me in some spiritual way, and gave me some advantage over the others to help compensate for my physical shortcomings.

The morning run was an everyday affair, and always done over the same course in one direction or the other.

We were running in step, four abreast and singing one of the songs Sir Conrad wrote for us, as we rounded a curve and found ourselves surrounded by Baron Stefan's men. They were all on horseback and in full armor, and there must have been fifty of them, counting the squires as well as the knights.

Baron Stefan, wearing his golden chain mail, his gold-trimmed helmet and gold-hilted sword, announced that we were on his land, that we were all trespassers and that since Sir Conrad had bewitched the duke as well as Count Lambert, it was time to take the law into his own hands and demonstrate by combat that this land was his.

Sir Conrad said that this was ridiculous. It was against all law for two knights of the same lord to fight. Trial by Combat was not legal under these circumstances, and certainly not when he and his men were naked and the baron's were in full armor.

The baron said that he was not going to fight Sir Conrad, but only make a demonstration by killing one of his peasants, and not even a very valuable one. He would only take the runt of the litter, and he pointed toward me!

Both Sir Conrad and Sir Vladimir, who was also with us that morning, tried to talk and shame him out of it, but the baron was like one out of his mind. He said that I was marked for death!

I thought about running, but on foot it was not likely that I could outrun a rested war-horse. I would be caught when I was exhausted and would have to fight with my strength gone. Further, if I must die, I would rather do it in as honorable a manner as possible. At least I had gone to mass and communion less than an hour before, so my soul was fit for death. I stood at attention and waited, trying to recite to myself a good act of contrition.

Sir Conrad continued trying to reason with the mad baron, but the fact was that the baron's men could kill us all if he ordered it. Sir Conrad ridiculed the baron into vowing that he would fight me alone, and had the baron's men vow that they would stay out of the fight. Then he talked the baron into at least letting me have a stick to defend myself with. A tree was pointed out, and it was agreed that I should have the use of it.

Sir Vladimir talked to one of his cousins who was sworn to the baron, and got me the temporary use of a war axe. Sir Conrad looked at me and softly said, "A pike and a quarterstaff."

The tree was a young pine, tall and straight and as big around as my wrist. I made quick work of it, leaving the bark on to better the grip. Perforce, I returned the axe and went to the center of the meadow. I threw the quarterstaff I'd made to the ground a few yards away and stood with my pike raised and at the parade rest position, with my feet wide apart, my left hand behind my straight back and my pike vertical and at arm's length from me.

I felt a bit silly, standing thus naked, but if anything was going to save my life, it would be the training I'd gotten in the last nine months. This was not the time to forget it! I found myself silently reciting every prayer I knew.

Baron Stefan had his men arrayed to the north and Sir Conrad had his to the south, almost as if this were a legitimate Trial by Combat.

Sir Conrad again made protest at the illegality of the procedure, and vowed vengeance if I was killed. I continued praying, and saluted him when he was done.

The baron went to the edge of the meadow, put on his great helm, lowered his lance and charged. The crowd was silent as that huge black horse thundered toward me. Inside, I was terrified, but I think that I didn't show it, for the habits of the last months had been beaten deep into me. Doctrine was that a knight will seldom fight fairly with a man afoot, and that a Mongol doesn't know what fair means. Therefore, a footman is under no obligation to fight back in a manner that a horseman would call fair. When you were alone and with a pike against a horseman, go for the horse! If you can kill it, you might stand a chance against the knight. But if he's up there and you're down below, the odds are way against you.

You don't always do this if there are more of you than there are horsemen. In that case, only the pikers in the middle go for the horse. Those on the outside go for the rider. If you can mob him, so much the better!

I kept my pike high until the last instant, so as to give the baron as little warning as possible as to my intentions. Then I stepped forward to a crouch with my pike grounded behind me and had the point lowered just in time to skewer his war-horse at the base of the throat.

And it went right in, just like a real pike does into the practice dummies! I threw myself to the side away from his lance, just like I was in a drill. The baron and his horse fell in a woeful heap right where I had been standing! The pike had gone in a full two yards before it had shattered, and the horse moved not at all.

Doctrine was to hit the downed horseman as quickly as possible, but I thought he wouldn't get up and I didn't want the baron's men calling foul on me. I picked up the quarterstaff from where I had tossed it and stood, waiting to see what the baron would do.

He tried to stand, but I could see that his leg had been broken in the fall, just above the knee. I relaxed, foolishly thinking that I had already won.

The baron was struggling to get to his feet, despite his obviously broken leg.

"Sir Conrad!" I shouted. "The baron's leg is broken! What should I do?"

"Ask him if he yields to you! If he does, or if he's dead or unconscious, the fight is over! Otherwise it's still on, so watch yourself!"

I turned to my opponent. "Baron Stefan, do you yield to me?"

"Yield to you, you filthy peasant! You've killed my best war-horse and he was worth fifty of you! You're going to die for that!" Then he somehow got up with only one good leg, drew his sword and swung it at me. I was so astounded at his toughness that I almost didn't get out of the way in time. The tip of his sword flashed by just grazing my throat. I actually felt it touch, though it didn't break the skin.

I leaped backward and fell in the process. I scrambled to my feet to find that the baron was hopping after me on one leg! I left my quarterstaff on the ground and backed off. I couldn't figure out how this was possible! Did the man feel no pain at all? Or was he really so insane that he had the impossible strength that you hear of berserkers having?

I didn't know, but I continued backing up, staying out of his way. Surely he couldn't keep this up for long! Yet he was attacking me at a remarkable speed, and had the advantage of being able to see where he was stepping, or rather hopping. I was keeping my eyes on the madman, and in the process I tripped over a tree root, again falling down. He swung at me and gave me a bad cut in the right calf. It hurt, but I didn't have much time to consider the pain. If I didn't fight him, he was going to kill me!

I had to run back and circle around the baron to get my quarterstaff, and the baron's men jeered me as I did it. Well, let them! They weren't trying to fight an armed and armored madman while they were completely defenseless and naked!

I got my staff and turned to find the baron only a few yards away. He had lost his great helm when his horse went down, and like most knights he wore an open-faced helmet under it. His face was red, his forehead was beaded with sweat and his eyes—there was no sanity in them!

He swung at me, but I slapped his sword aside with my quarterstaff. This is necessary, because you dare not use a wooden stick to fend off a steel edge. Rather you must slap the side of his blade and still make it go somewhere that you are not! No easy thing, but my life depended on it.

Before he could recover, I gave him a stop thrust to the solar plexus. I caught him square and hard, but it didn't stop him! I think it stopped his breathing, but the man didn't even bend over! He swung again, and again I was able to knock the blade aside. But this time, I was in position to swing a strong blow straight down on his head. It staggered him, and I could see blood run down his forehead where the edge of his helmet cut his skin, yet he was still on his feet, or rather his foot, for one was all that he had to stand on.

I waited a moment, surprised that I hadn't knocked him cold. Then his sword arm started to move, so I hit him again with all my might, this time a side blow to the neck.

He crumbled at my feet. I stood there, breathing hard, absolutely expecting him to get up and fight again.

Then a cheer went up from my fellow grunts, and Sir Conrad and Sir Vladimir were cheering with them! Soon the applause spread even to the baron's men, whether because they did not like him or because they truly admired my performance, I did not know.

But it felt good, and it felt better yet to be alive!

Sir Conrad and one of the baron's knights came out on the field and examined the baron. He was dead. My last blow had broken his neck.

"A very good fight," Sir Conrad said, getting out the medical kit he always carried. "Let's take care of that leg."

Can you believe that I had actually forgotten that I was wounded? There was a trail of my own blood from where I was cut to where I stood, yet I had forgotten about it!

It took fifteen stitches to close my wound, by which time the knights had loaded the baron, without his armor or surcoat, onto the back of one of the squire's horses. All present felt that the baron's arms and armor were mine by right of combat.

I never used them and I never sold them either, though once a merchant offered me twenty-seven thousand pence for the set, mostly because of the solid gold fittings on the sword and helmet, and the spurs were solid gold, in the French style. It seems that the gold wash on the chain mail wasn't all that expensive at all, a mere five hundred pence, although it had to be renewed every year because it wore off.

No, I kept that armor and one day hung it on my wall, as a decoration and a memento of this day and all that happened because of it.

Sir Conrad asked two of Baron Stefan's senior knights to go with him to Okoitz, as witnesses as to what had taken place. Count Lambert's most powerful vassal had been killed, and a party would have to go and make explanation to him.

"Sir Conrad," I said, "am I in trouble for what I did this day?"

"Not as much as you were in a few minutes ago." He laughed. "But the fact remains that you have killed a man who vastly outranked you, and I'm not sure what Count Lambert will do. The duke would probably kill you on general principles, but I doubt if Count Lambert will. He never liked the baron, or his father either. Furthermore, the baron had no living relatives that I know of. He was the last of an old line. There will be no one powerful after your blood. I don't think that even his own vassals had much love for him, so it's likely that you're safe."

"Likely" is not a comforting word when the subject is one's own life.

Sir Conrad decided that it would be just as fast to complete the run as to go back, so soon the others left running. I returned with Sir Vladimir and the two of the baron's men who stayed behind. One of them, a Sir Xawery, was kind enough to lend me his horse, so that I didn't have to walk on my wounded leg. He led it by the bridle, so I had no difficulty with the animal. Baron Stefan's arms and armor were loaded on the back, and Sir Vladimir promised to send someone out later for the saddle and lance.

Five of us went to Okoitz that day, Sir Vladimir, Sir Conrad, the baron's two knights, and myself. We were all in armor and I was riding Sir Gregor's war-horse, for my own had been given to Jozef Kulisiewicz almost a year ago. It was the first time that I had ridden a real charger, and the truth was that he scared me almost as much as the baron had that morning. A truly ferocious animal!

We stopped at Sir Miesko's on the way and he joined us, for all felt that it would be useful to have someone along who was versed in the law. Sir Miesko spent some time talking with Sir Xawery and then told me that I had little to worry about. I had been on my lord's lands and fought at his bidding, so I had done no wrong.

This relieved me considerably, and I was in a light-hearted mood as we rode past the new construction and into Okoitz.

Count Lambert was in the bailey, talking to his master carpenter, Vitold, when he saw us.

"Sir Conrad, don't tell me that you've gotten into more trouble!"

"Not I, my lord, but perhaps my squire has. Baron Stefan is dead."

I was thrilled that Sir Conrad had acknowledged me as his squire!

"Dog's blood! Next you're going to tell me that little Piotr has killed him!"

"I'm afraid so, my lord."

"Him! What did he use, poison?"

"No, my lord, he fought the baron at that man's insistence when he was naked and had only a stick, while the baron was fully armed, armored, and on horseback. These knights can all attest to that, for they were all witnesses."

"Dog's blood! They'd better, because right now I don't believe it! Gentlemen, this is best discussed in my chamber."

Some grooms came up and attended to our horses, and we were led to the count's chamber. A pretty wench served us the count's mead, of which he was inordinately proud, and in real glasses, the gift of Sir Conrad. It was remarkably good and had a flavor of rose hips.

Sir Xawery gave an accurate account of what happened and the three other knights attested to the truth of his statements. Sir Miesko discussed the legal aspects of the thing, most of which I could not follow, but the gist of which was that I was not at fault.

Count Lambert thought for a few moments.

"Well. It seems that Baron Stefan was crass enough to challenge a defenseless peasant and inept enough to lose the fight! Damn! And I'd always thought of him as one of the best fighters I had!"

"Crass he might have been, my lord, but my late lord was a great fighter! I tell you that he fought for a long while standing on one foot with a broken leg!" Sir Xawery said.

Count Lambert sighed. "As you will. But it doesn't solve what I am to do now! If a naked peasant can defeat one of my best knights, what am I to do? Some would say that Piotr should be hung as a public menace! Yet I must agree that he did no wrong if I am to believe you four, and how can I call four such honorable knights liars? Yet we can't have peasants killing full belted knights, can we? The whole social order would suffer!

"Much as it galls me to reward a man, especially this smart aleck, for killing one of my own vassals, I don't see anything for it but to knight the bastard!

"Piotr, kneel before me!"

I could scarcely believe my ears! Count Lambert himself was about to grant my fondest wish! Me! Sir Piotr! I quickly knelt before him as the count drew his sword.

"Wait, my lord," Sir Conrad said. "Piotr is my vassal and a student at my warrior school. The truth is that Baron Stefan picked him from among three dozen others because he looked to be the worst fighter of the bunch. And the baron picked right! Any one of the others could have done a better job than he did, and finished the matter quicker. I don't like the idea of one of my students being rewarded for dumb luck!"

My heart fell back into my knees. I was so close, yet I was being shot down by my own lord, whom I'd thought was my friend!

"Maybe they could have, Sir Conrad, but 'maybe' isn't doing it! You forget that I am your liege and I'll knight whom I damn well please! As to the others, knight them yourself if you want."

Count Lambert gave me the three traditional blows with the flat of his sword, the last of which nearly knocked me over. Thank God in Heaven that I was still in full armor, for I think the ring around my collar saved my life!

"I dub thee knight. Arise, Sir Piotr," Count Lambert said.

I did so and all the knights rushed over to congratulate me, and welcome me to their order. Yet Sir Conrad was somewhat distant.

"Count Lambert," Sir Conrad said. "What did you mean by saying that I should knight the others myself? I didn't think that a mere knight could do that."

"A mere knight can't. But there is a second matter created by today's doings. Baron Stefan had no heir, nor any relatives at all that I am aware of. Even his mother was an only child with both her parents dead. Therefore, all his property escheats to me. The bunch of you have seen fit to award his arms and armor to Sir Piotr, and I'll not dispute that, but all the rest is now mine.

"I'm minded to give it to you, Sir Conrad, and the baronage that goes with it, but we'll discuss the terms in private."

Sir Conrad was genuinely surprised. "Thank you, my lord. I don't know what else to say."

"Then don't say it. For now, supper will be served soon and I think Sir Piotr would like to tell his parents of his good fortune, or his 'dumb luck,' as you called it. Sir Piotr, be sure to be back in time for supper. I'll try to work some knightly courtesy into you!"

"Be assured that I shall always be the most courteous of all your knights, my lord!" I said, for I truly meant it. At last, through the oddest of chances, I had attained my goal!

Chapter Twenty-one

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

I don't know which startled me more, Piotr being knighted or my being granted Baron Stefan's lands. That barony was huge and contained some of the best farmland in Silesia. It was hopelessly backward now, since the baron and his father had refused to allow any of the new seeds or methods to be used, but I could have it in shape in a year or two. With that land, I could easily feed all my workers and wouldn't have to buy food anymore. I could expand the school system into the area and do a lot for the people who were living there. As to the baron's knights and squires, well, if they wanted to swear to me, they'd have to go through the Warrior school!

About Piotr getting knighted, well, I was happy for the kid, but it caused a fistful of problems. For one thing, an army can only hold together if it is essentially fair. If Piotr was knighted, I'd have to knight the rest of his class, probably at the graduation ceremony. I'd expected to have to knight my officers eventually, but these men were at the level of sergeants.

One of my long-term goals was to eliminate the gap that existed between the commoners and the nobility. At the base, it's an ugly thing. All men should be born equal. Now I was going to have to enlarge the nobility, rather than reducing it.

But maybe that was the way to remove the gap! If everybody was a knight, or could at least become one by dint of hard work, then there wouldn't be any nobility, at least in the old sense of the word. What's more, it was politically feasible. My knights would be the toughest fighters in the world and no one could doubt their right to the honor. I could knight any man who was good enough, whereas it would be just about impossible to "unknight" someone who was already knighted. He'd fight before he let that happen!

Maybe it would all work out for the best.

"Sir Conrad, just what was your objection to my knighting Piotr," Count Lambert said, once the others had gone.

"It will cause some problems, my lord. If Piotr is a knight, I'll have to knight the others in his class, and those who graduate from the Warrior's school in the future."

"I don't see the need for that, but if they're all as good at fighting as Piotr apparently is, why not? A good fighter ought to be knighted, and if you're right about the upcoming Mongol invasion, we'll need all the fighters we can get!"

"True, my lord, but I don't see how it will be possible to grant them all the privileges that your present knights enjoy. I don't think that they should have the right to peasant girls the way your present knights do."

"What?! Sir Conrad, rank hath its privileges! The right to dalliance with unmarried women is one of the biggest ones, and I won't let it be interfered with! Anyway, there are always plenty of eager wenches about."

"My lord, there are plenty of wenches about because at present not one man in a hundred is a knight. If my plans work out, I'll have every man in this part of the country in my army, at least on a temporary or standby basis. If we are going to knight them at the sergeant level, that will mean that one man in seven will be knighted. They'll be knights for the rest of their lives, whereas wenches stay unmarried for at most two years. If you do the arithmetic, you'll realize that knights will outnumber wenches by at least two to one!"

As matters sat, while a knight had the legal right to force a young woman to have sex with him, in fact rape in the usual sense almost never happened. There were more volunteers than an ordinary man could handle! But with knights outnumbering unmarried wenches, the situation could get ugly.

"Sir Conrad, I don't feel like doing any arithmetic and I don't believe that even you can have every man in the country under arms. Anyway, if that many men are out there making the beast with two backs, there'll be a new crop of wenches coming out shortly."

"But my lord . . ."

"No 'buts' about it! I tell you that I won't have the privilege removed!"

"Yes, my lord. What would you think if I formed a special order of knighthood, for my own knights only. Then I could have certain rules of the order that would help alleviate the problem."

"Just what rules did you have in mind?"

"Well, for one, I would restrict the rights to wenches to those knights who are already married. That way they could get most of their sex from their wives and the wives would stop most serious abuses from occurring."

"I suppose that I could go along with that. Married men make better fighters, anyway. They're steadier."

"And I don't like this business of getting girls pregnant and then pawning them off on the peasants. I don't think it's fair to the girls. I think that the relationship should be a fairly permanent one, and with the wife's permission."

"That smacks of bigamy, Sir Conrad."

"Maybe so, my lord, but I think it would be far less cruel than the present system."

"Perhaps. Well, I won't bother forbidding it because the Church will do that for me. Set your order up any way you will, Sir Conrad. What I want to talk about is our arrangements on your new barony. I have been buying materials from you to build my new castle, and I am now considerably in your debt. I want that debt canceled."

"Done, my lord."

"And I want all future materials needed for it and for Eagle Nest to be given me free of charge."

"Very well, my lord."

"And that armor you're wearing. You gave the duke and his son each a set and now I even see Piotr wearing it. I want some for myself."

"You shall have it, my lord. Two sets, now that we have it in mass production. We can even make one set gold-plated if you want."

"Gold-plated? What's that?"

"My jeweler and I have come up with a method of putting a thin layer of gold over good steel, my lord. It looks like solid gold but it's as strong as steel. It doesn't rust, either."

"Then I'll take it! Lastly, my old arrangement with Baron Stefan had it that he was to provide me with twenty knights a year, each for three months. You should do the same."

"If you wish, my lord. But I had hoped to use those knights otherwise, at the Warrior's school. What say that in place of that service, I equip each of your knights with a set of plate armor. And in a year, we'll be set up to produce horse armor, and I'll give each of them a set of that as well."

"That seems generous, Sir Conrad. Throw in two sets of this horse armor for me, and one of them in this plate gold, and we'll call it done."

"Then done it is, my lord."

"Good. We'll swear our oaths at sunrise tomorrow. For now, I think supper should be ready."

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

My father was astounded at my good fortune, and soon took me around to all his friends in the town to show me off. My old playmates looked at me with awe, and two of the town bullies, who had once made my young life miserable now fairly groveled before me.

My mother, however, was much less than pleased. She much preferred me as an accountant than as a knight and cried for a long while as though I was going off immediately to die in battle. This got my parents into an argument and I was happy to have the excuse of the count's supper to get out of there. Already I was beginning to realize that these good people were now far below me.

Supper was served formally at the castle, with attractive wenches bringing our food and drink to us. Fortunately, this situation was well covered in the lessons that Lady Richeza taught us, so I committed no gaucherie.

All of the wenches, or more properly, "ladies-in-waiting" were anxious for my attention, all smiling and winking at me. Perhaps I should have expected this, for I had heard many stories of the vast privileges of one of Count Lambert's knights, yet I had somehow never dared dream of myself being the recipient of these feminine favors.

In truth, I didn't know how one went about accepting their offers, for it was a topic that Lady Richeza had never mentioned! But I had heard that when in doubt, it was always wise to ask direction from one's liege lord, so I asked Sir Conrad.

"Well, personally, I've always let the girls decide that for themselves, and so far I've never been disappointed. But if there's one that you particularly favor, you have but to ask her. In fact, you have the right to order any unmarried peasant woman in Count Lambert's domains to your bed, but I wouldn't do that sort of thing too often. It might cause hard feelings. You won't have to do any ordering, because you'll be hard enough pressed just taking care of the volunteers!"

I had of course been studying the serving girls who waited on us, and there was one blond girl who strongly resembled my love Krystyana. When next she came by, I softly said, "Tonight?"

"Thank you, Sir Piotr! I'd love to!"

From that point on, the meal went both too fast and too slow. On the one hand, I was most eager for the favors of my intended bed partner. On the other, well, the truth was that I was a virgin. I had only the foggiest of notions as to what precisely I was to do with the girl. Such was my love for Krystyana that I had never thought to pursue any other woman, and, of course, most of the women that I had met were either friends of hers or were waitresses at my lord's inns, who must needs retain their own virginity or lose their jobs.

I pondered the problem through the three removes of the feast, and decided that honesty was the only answer. I would confess my ignorance to the lady and trust to her courtesy to educate me as to what I should do.

With the meal over, another of the wenches showed me the way to the room given me for my own use. I sat down on a chest, suddenly very nervous. Was I supposed to go for her? Should I have brought a gift? Minutes seemed like hours, but in fact in what was really a very short time, she came.

"My lady, you see, I've never . . . I mean . . ."

She smiled and said calmly, "I know, my lord. They told me. There's nothing to worry about."

"But what should I do? I mean . . ."

"Well, you might start by kissing me. Just put your arms around me . . . that's better . . . relax! Soften your lips, like this. That's better, mmmm . . . much better. Now we have to get all this armor off you . . ."

She was wonderful, as beautiful in mind as she was in body. Slowly, careful of my easily shattered confidence, she led me through a night of marvelous pleasure and wondrous delight. Her skin was so incredibly smooth and soft and yielding, yet there was a strength about her that seemed equal to my own. She was at once my earnest teacher and my willing slave.

I shall be forever grateful to that lady, yet after she kissed me good-bye in the gray dawn and had left, I realized that I had committed the greatest of wrongs to her. I had never asked her name.

When I joined the others, I was vastly tired, having gotten little sleep the night before. Yet there were oaths to be taken, Baron Conrad's to Count Lambert and my own as a knight to Baron Conrad. Then we had to return to Baron Conrad's lands, for much needed doing. Yet I asked my lord if I might have three days leave, on account of my wound, and he granted it, winking at me, for he knew my thoughts.

"Go to her, boy!"

At Three Walls, I spoke first to Yawalda at the stables, explaining to her my new knighthood and how I meant to use it. She agreed to take care of Krystyana's three children while I went to Krystyana!

Learning that she was in her room, I simply walked inside, delivered her children to Yawalda's waiting arms and barred the door behind us. Krystyana was so shocked by my behavior that it was a moment before she could speak.

"Piotr! What are you doing here? Get out of my room!" my love said to me.

"No, my love. I have a perfect right to be in your room. I am now a true belted knight, made so by Count Lambert himself only yesterday. You are an unmarried wench and not of the nobility. I have the right to take any such unmarried woman who attracts me. You attract me, you always will and you always have. Therefore, you now have the obligation to do as I please."

"Piotr! I am not your love and you will get out of here or I will scream!"

"Scream away, my love. It happens that just now I am the only true belted knight at Three Walls. There is no one here that would stop me from doing my duty." I strode forward and put my arms around her.

"Duty! Damn you, Piotr Kulczynski! Let go of me!"

"Never, my love."

Krystyana let out a scream that could have curled the toenails on a war-horse. Yawalda must have gathered a crowd outside the door, because as soon as Krystyana ran out of breath we heard a round of applause from the hallway.

"Damn you! Damn you all! Is everyone against me?"

"No, my love. Everyone is for you. Every one of your friends want only what is best for you and so do I. And the thing that is best for you is me."

"God in heaven will damn you to hell forever!"

"God will do what he thinks best, and so will I, my love. Come, let's get this apron off you."

And so it went for hours. My courtesy, my gentle firmness and my love for her fell, it seemed, on barren soil. Yet I continued, for there was naught else I could do. I told her of the events of the past year, and she sneered at me. I told her of my fight with Baron Stefan and my victory over that valiant knight, and she called me a brute for harming a wounded man. I told her of my meeting with Count Lambert and of his knighting me, and she said that a pig with a crown was still a pig.

And every time she screamed, the applause from the hall got louder. Indeed, I found out later that there were more than three dozen well-wishers out there, and that they had sent to the kitchens for beer and popcorn to ease them while they waited us out. Even Father Thomas, the priest, had joined them.

By dint of the strength and dexterity I had gained in my warrior training, I eventually managed to get her undressed and abed. This brought on further complaints.

"Your armor is cold and scratchy, you oaf!"

"True, my love, but the fault is at least partly your own, for since my arrival here you have kept my hands so busy that I have not had the chance to doff it."

"You could always leave."

"Never, my love. But could I trust you to stay quiet while I remove it?"

"You might."

"Then I shall do so."

She was still while I took off sword and dagger, gauntlets and greaves, elbow cops and tasses. It was only as I was doffing my helm that she broke for the door. Of course, I was ready for that, caught her below the breasts with one arm and set her again on the bed.

"Be nice," I said.

"You bastard! Sir Conrad would never force a woman!"

"True, my love. But then he wouldn't marry one, either. Further, it's Baron Conrad now and if I'm truly a bastard, my mother would be surprised to hear of it. Can't you give my suit even a little thoughtful consideration?"

She was still struggling, and I found it best to simply sit on her while I removed the rest of my armor, padding and small clothes. She screamed some more and the crowd cheered some more. Eventually, she desisted. I threw my weapons to the far corner of the room, for my love was in a truly feisty mood and I feared she would be tempted to sin with them, and in so sinning, add to my wounds. In truth, my leg wound had opened a bit in the struggle, but what's a little blood on the sheets on your first night with a woman? Well, admittedly, it was the wrong person's blood, but one can't have everything.

It was a long night, and the second in a row without sleep. Nor was it nearly as pleasant as the one before, for my love was not working at my pleasure as I was at hers. Yet in the end I was successful, for in the early dawn, I looked at my love and she looked back. And smiled.

And that day we went to the priest and posted our banns of matrimony.

And then I got some sleep.

Chapter Twenty-two

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

The big day had arrived. The first class of the Warrior's school was about to graduate. The three dozen men would be the training instructors who would forge the army that would beat the Mongol horde, God willing.

Eleven months ago, there had been twelve dozen of them. Since that time, I had put them through the roughest program of basic training that I could imagine. Now two dozen of that original number were dead, killed on the training ground and on the obstacle course. Others were crippled for life and at least six men had been driven insane. But the core of the army was ready!

I'd invited a few dignitaries to observe the last day of training and the graduation ceremonies. Count Lambert, my liege lord, was there. His liege, Duke Henryk the Bearded, could not make it, but he had sent his son, Prince Henryk the Pious, to observe for him. Abbot Ignacy of the Franciscan monastery in Cracow had come at my invitation, as had some of his monks, including Friar Roman. Sir Miesko and Lady Richeza were of course in attendance, as were a few dozen of Count Lambert's other knights, mostly members of the more progressive faction.

There were a thousand others besides, because for this day only, the school was thrown open to the public. Many were there from Three Walls because word was out that all the men working for me would be going through the school, and they wanted to see what was in store for them.

And about four dozen young ladies from Count Lambert's cloth factory came, having heard that there would soon be three dozen new knights and most of them bachelors. It seemed that everyone but the men themselves knew that they would be knighted, but that's the way things usually go. I wanted to keep it from them so that they would get a greater emotional impact from the graduation ceremonies.

At dawn, a bugle sounded reveille and in a few minutes the men fell in on the concrete parade ground. A priest said a very short mass, without a sermon, and the band played Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man." Then the thirty-six men, the four knights that had trained them and I recited the Warrior's Oath and the Warrior's Code before the assembled guests.

I announced the orders of the day myself.

"Gentlemen," I said, and got some smiles. Usually I was much less polite. "This will be your last day of training. You notice that we have visitors today. They are here to observe our training methods. Please go about the routines in the normal manner and as though no one was watching you, since I'd hate to have to wash you out at this point in the game. We'll make the morning run in full armor. After breakfast, we'll have an hour of pike-training and an hour of swords. After dinner there will be an hour of wagon-and-gunnery practice.

"You will then have the rest of the afternoon off, but be sure to go to Confession. You'll have to be in a state of grace to make it through this evening's ceremony. You see, gentlemen, tonight you are going to walk on fire. After that we will be up all night long, performing a vigil, so get some rest this afternoon. Be back here in a quarter hour in full armor. Fall out!"

That was more time than they usually got, our "hour" being twice as long as the modern one, but I wanted our visitors to have time to string themselves out along the obstacle course.

Count Lambert came up and said, "It's hard to believe that those men are the same ruffians I sent you a year ago."

"Yes, my lord, but it's true."

"That oath was touching," Prince Henryk said, "but what does this standing in neat lines have to do with defeating the Mongols."

"That's difficult to explain, my lord. It's all part of a program that makes these men the finest foot soldiers in the world. I've invited you here today to show you what these men can do. For now, let's mount up and find a good spot on the obstacle course."

I'd arranged for a dozen guides to take the bulk of the visitors around, but I wanted to escort the VIPs myself. It was not only necessary to build the finest army in the world, it was also necessary for the powers that be to know that it was as good as I said it was.

We stopped at the first major obstacle, a huge log suspended fifteen stories up between two big denuded pine trees. Four ropes went from the ground, up and over the log and then back down to the ground.

"They're not going to climb that thing, are they?" Count Lambert asked, proudly wearing his new gold armor.

"They'll climb it in full armor using their arms only, my lord. They'll go over the top and then back down the other side," I said.

"Have you done this yourself?" Prince Henryk asked.

"Of course, my lord. I've often led them through the course."

"I wonder if I could do that," Count Lambert said.

"I'm sure you could, my lord, if you had taken this training. But for today, I must ask you to observe only, and not participate."

"That verges on impertinence!" Count Lambert said.

"Perhaps, my lord, but we all know your abilities. This demonstration is to show you what the men can do."

Count Lambert started to make further objection, but Prince Henryk put his hand on the count's armored forearm.

"It shall be as you say, Baron Conrad," the prince said, and that ended the matter.

The troops came running in step up the trail, their armor clanging loudly. They were four files wide and ten ranks long, and singing the army song.

"That song sounds familiar," Prince Henryk said.

"The tune is an old Russian folk song called 'Meadowlands,' my lord. The words are by an English poet named Rudyard Kipling. I translated them and fit the two together."

The first rank went immediately to the four front ropes and went quickly up, their arms moving in unison and their legs hanging stiff below them. The troops behind did jumping jacks until the first four were halfway up, at which time the next four men started up as the others continued exercising.

"One of the rules of the course is that the men never stop moving. When they are waiting their turn, or waiting for the others to finish, they exercise in place," I said.

Abbot Ignacy made the sign of the cross as they scaled the dizzying height.

"That man on the left, near the top," Prince Henryk said. "That's Sir Vladimir, isn't it?"

"Yes, my lord. He and the three Banki brothers beside him have been largely responsible for the training."

"And that little one at the end who's jumping up and down, is that your accountant, Piotr Kulczynski?"

"Yes, my lord, only he isn't my accountant any longer. Once his training is over, I have another job for him."

"And what might that be?"

"I'm setting up a section of mapmakers, my lord, and Piotr will head it. By the time the Mongols invade, we'll have accurate maps of all of southern Poland."

"That will be of great use to my pilots!" Count Lambert said. "If I can ever get you to get to work on that engine you promised."

"I promised to work on an aircraft engine once your people built a two-man glider that could stay up for hours, my lord."

"Then you'd best be thinking about it, because we're close, Baron Conrad, damn close!"

"Very good, my lord. For now, we'd best go to the next obstacle." I'd gone along with helping out with Eagle Nest, Count Lambert's flying school, because it looked to be a good way to set up an engineering institute at Count Lambert's expense. I never for a minute believed that those kids could build functioning aircraft in under twenty years. They were starting to build some decent gliders, though.

We got to an almost vertical cliff face fully thirty stories high only slightly ahead of the troops, who came clanking up behind us, still running in step. The first four started climbing immediately while the others did pushups.

"They move up like ants after a jar of honey!" Count Lambert said.

"Very deadly ants, my lord."

"But how is such a thing possible?" Abbot Ignacy asked.

"Training, Father, plus the fact that they have climbed this particular cliff so often that they know where most of the handholds are."

Soon, all of the men were on the cliff face and the front rank was nearing the top. Off to the right, a long slack rope went from a pole on the top of the cliff to another four hundred yards away on the ground. The arrangement was such that it was necessary to jump from the cliff in order to catch the rope. The first man up, Sir Vladimir, I was pleased to note, ran immediately toward the rope and flung himself off the edge as the crowd gasped in horror. But he caught the rope and slid down to the ground to be followed by the others.

"Doesn't that burn their hands?" Prince Henryk asked.

"No, my lord. If you'll notice, they're not holding it with their hands, but have caught the rope with the cuffs of their gauntlets. The rope is waxed and things don't get too warm."

"But what if they should slip and fall?"

"They generally die, my lord."

And so it went, as the men swung on ropes, ran across long bridges that were as narrow as your arm, climbed log piles, walked tightropes and everything else nasty that I could think up.

"When they're in full armor, we usually bypass the swimming events, since it takes a few days to dry out their gambesons," I said. "But rest assured that each of these men can swim a half mile in full armor—and six miles naked."

Despite the fact that we were on horseback, the men beat us back to the mess hall. The VIPs were invited inside and the rest of the crowd was fed outside.

Each of the men was doing in a breakfast that started with six eggs, a loaf of bread, and a slab of ham as thick as your finger, and went on from there. My own meal was almost as big.

"You certainly feed them well," Abbot Ignacy said.

"True, Father, but we burn it off them quickly enough. You won't find much fat on any of these men."

Pike practice came next, and the VIPs were treated to being charged by forty pikemen. At the last possible instant, Sir Vladimir shouted "Halt!" and they stopped with the sharp points a finger's breadth from our chests. Seeing that I didn't move, neither Count Lambert nor Prince Henryk flinched, but most of the others had moved back quickly.

"My lords, I'm sure that you felt the emotional impact of that charge. I ask you to imagine what it would be like if six thousand men charged you in that manner."

"Emotional impact? I was more worried about the physical one!" Count Lambert said.

"And I, too," Prince Henryk said. "But I see your point. That an enemy can be defeated without even touching him."

"That would be ideal, my lord. Once the enemy has broken, you usually lose very few men in the mop-up."

"The mop-up! You have a good turn for words, Baron Conrad," Count Lambert said.

Then the men were put to work on the dummies. These were full-weight straw figures of men on horseback, with a real lance held in place. They rolled down a long ramp and once they got to the level section they were going as fast as a horse can charge. In single practice, the object was to skewer the horse with a grounded pike without being run over or hit by the lance. When a single dummy was attacking a group of men, only the men in the center went for the horse. The others went after the rider.

"That's dastardly!" Prince Henryk said.

"What is, my lord?"

"They're deliberately trying to kill the horse!"

"Yes, my lord."

"That's unfair!"

"True, my lord. But was a horseman ever known to be fair with a footman?"

"Fair to a footman? I doubt if it ever crossed anyone's mind."

"Then why should a footman fight 'fair' with a horseman? If the horseman wanted to fight fair, he would get off his horse, at which time there would be no point in harming the animal. These men are not trained to fight fair, my lord, they're trained to win!"

"Well, I don't like it," Prince Henryk said.

"Will you like it when the Mongols start butchering your women and children, my lord?"

"Be damned, Baron Conrad."

"I think I will be, my lord."

Abbot Ignacy made the sign of the cross.

Count Lambert was worried about this altercation between his greatest vassal and his future liege lord, and tried to change the subject.

"Baron Conrad, this is all fine and well when practicing on dummies, but what of the real thing?"

"We've done it, my lord, at least to the extent of using live horses. We've never tried going for the rider of such a horse, for lack of a volunteer, but I myself have ridden an old horse into a mass of pikers."

"What happened?"

"I came down hard, my lord."

"And your horse?" Prince Henryk said.

"Dead, of course."

"You killed a dumb animal?" Prince Henryk asked.

"My lord, we eat dumb animals. I have lost two dozen men in the course of this training. What difference does a few animals make? This afternoon we'll be shooting four pigs to show you what our guns can do."

"At least you'll eat the pigs."

"My lord, we ate the dead horse, too."

The rest of the day went like that, half awestruck praise and half condemnation because I had no intention of losing men in order to conform with their ideas of a fair fight. Dammit, there is no such thing as a fair fight! You are either out there to kill the bastard or you shouldn't be fighting at all!

On the other hand, the reaction of the commoners was uniformly positive. They liked the idea of their enemies being dead and their own families being alive. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't going to get much help from the conventional knights. We were going to have to beat the Mongols on our own.

After the abbreviated day of training, the troops went back to the barracks to rest and we threw an afternoon party for our guests, with music and plenty of food, beer, and mead. The commoners were all buzzing about what they'd seen, and the girls from the cloth factory were literally jumping up and down, some of them, but the nobility was considerably more subdued.

Those knights who had come were mostly of the more progressive faction of Count Lambert's knights, and if they had reservations about what I was doing, I hated to think about the more reactionary knights. I suppose that I should have expected their reaction, but I really hadn't.

Most of them were eager to plant the new seeds and buy or make the new farm machinery. Quite a few had installed indoor plumbing in their manors, and many were setting up light industrial plants, with our help, to keep their peasants busy during the off-seasons. But they seemed to look on the army as a threat to their whole existence. By their lights, they were better than the commoners and had special privileges because they protected the land. It didn't take much in the way of brains for them to realize that my warriors were better fighters than they were. They felt they were being undercut, and I suppose they were.

I began to realize that the open house was a big mistake. I knew I'd never do it again, at least not with the nobility there, but there was nothing I could do now but brazen it out.

Chapter Twenty-three

It was getting dark when I called the crowd together and led them to a bowl in the hills that formed sort of an amphitheater. Once they were settled in, the troops marched up, barefoot and wearing tan linen fatigues and winter cloaks. An area in front, twelve yards to the side, was piled a yard deep with kindling wood, all carefully selected to be dry wood and free of knots.

There was a small brick wall, about two yards square, in front of it, with a few torches around. I stepped up to the front.

"You have seen these men traverse various obstacles in full armor. You have seen them prove their proficiency with various weapons, and today you have seen the first public demonstration of our guns. These men have the finest arms and armor in the world, but weapons are unimportant compared to the men wielding them. A true warrior is always deadly, even when he is alone and naked.

"Sir Vladimir, a demonstration, please."

Sir Vladimir was our best man at empty-handed fighting, much better than I was. Together, we had put together a decent system of self-defense, based on what little I knew about karate and a lot of trial-and-error. He put on a good demonstration, shouting as he smashed up boards and bricks with his bare hands and feet. Of course, the bricks maybe weren't baked all that well and the boards were light pine that splits easily along the grain, but the crowd oohed and aahed at all the proper times.

"It is said that a true warrior can walk through walls, and in a sense, that's true. We have here a solid brick wall. Perhaps many of you looked at it as you came in," I said. "Sir Vladimir, walk through that wall."

Perhaps some of them expected him to do something magical, but what he did was give it a side thrust kick and it smashed nicely. Then he walked through the rubble. Okay, that wall had only been laid the day before and the mortar wasn't well set. Indeed, the mortar had been made with a dozen parts of sand to only one part of lime, but I hadn't made any promises.

"Any of these men could have done that. It's just that since we only had the one wall, and since Sir Vladimir is in charge of this installation, well, rank hath its privileges."

That got a small titter out of the crowd.

"A warrior can also walk through fire. More than that, he can walk over a bed of glowing coals, which as you know is much hotter. They are going to walk through this." I pointed at the big mat of wood. On cue, Sir Vladimir and the Banki brothers took the four torches to the four corners of the wood pile and simultaneously lit it afire. It went up with a huge whoosh! In moments, the fire was five stories high. The torches were thrown into the fire.

"There was nothing magic about that," I said. "We put some oil under the wood along with some of the black powder that we use in the guns. It also lights fires. I just wanted it all to start at once so that the whole fire would be burning evenly."

I then invited my noble guests to stand near the fire and had the cooks bring out some long skewers with thin slices of meat threaded on them. As the fire burned down to coals, the cooks set the meat over the fire and it soon broiled. This was offered to the nobles and what was left was given to the commoners, to show everybody that it really was hot. Mainly, it gave us something to do while the fire burned down to coals. During this time, there was no other light in the valley but the fire, and the human eye can acclimatize without a person's noticing it. Actually, the coals were becoming quite dim.

I asked the nobles to step back and we marched the troops up so that a dozen men were lined up in back and on each side of the fire. Sir Vladimir and the other instructors were in front of it, along with me. A few workers with long-handled rakes stirred the coals evenly, incidentally kicking up some spectacular sparks.

"You will observe that I am barefoot, as are all of my men. I'll be doing this first," I said. "As my liege lord Count Lambert is fond of proving, a leader must be able to do everything that his men can do. But while a warrior can walk through fire, often his clothes cannot."

I was wearing the same simple linen tunic and pants that my men were. I took off the tunic and threw it onto the bed of coals. It smoldered for a moment and then burst into a satisfying flame. Then I stripped off my pants and set them aside. I stood naked in front of the crowd. This was no big thing, because these people had never heard of a nudity taboo. Then I faced the fire.

Rationally, I was sure that this was safe.

It is the amount of heat that burns you, not just the temperature of the fire. If you touch a metal pot on a hot oven, you will be burned. If you merely put your hand in the air of a hot oven, you will not be hurt. The air in the oven is just as hot as the pot in it. Hotter, maybe, since the air heated the pot up. But air is a very poor conductor of heat compared to metal, and not enough heat gets into your hand to burn it. Charcoal is light, porous stuff, and quite a good insulator. Even when it's glowing hot, it takes a while to get enough heat into you to do any damage. For a few seconds, it won't hurt you at all. Of course, this doesn't apply to burning knots and hot rocks, but I had been as careful as possible to exclude such things. I hoped.

But all that was theory, and I'd never done it. I could feel the heat of those coals roasting my chest, but there was nothing for it.

"For God and Poland!" I cried and marched into the coals at a normal military quick-step. I was through in a few seconds, and I'd hardly felt a thing, but the cool, wet grass at the edge of the fire was refreshing.

When the crowd was finished oohing at me, I asked the instructors if they were in a state of grace. They all nodded yes.

"Then strip, but please don't throw your tunics into the fire. One demonstration was enough."

This sent a titter through the crowd. I was known to be a cheapskate about some things. When the men were ready, I nodded to them and they shouted the same war cry that I had. Originally, it was Sir Vladimir's, but I stole from everywhere.

"Forward, march!" And they did. And they did it without knowing the scientific reason making it safe to do. They went because they were warriors and their commander had ordered it.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

The demonstrations that day were nothing much out of the ordinary. Indeed, we had run the obstacle course slower than usual, to give the crowd a chance to keep up with us. We had all practiced empty-handed fighting and had seen Sir Vladimir practicing his demonstration, so that was nothing special, either.

What was special was that I saw my love Krystyana in the crowd. She smiled and waved at me and though I did not dare to wave back, I risked a smile and a nod. How wonderful it was to show my prowess to my future bride!

But this walking on fire business was new, and we were all shocked by it. Shocked and frightened, for Baron Conrad had said that we would be doing it ourselves and never had he spoken an untruth to any of us.

We stood aghast as he walked naked through the burning coals. He walked calmly, even though that fire was hot enough to broil meat. Almost magically, you could see his footprints as he passed, black against the fiery red!

Then our instructors did it as well, with not a hint of fear or hesitation, and we knew we were next!

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and . . ." I heard the man beside me praying, trying not to move his lips or change his expression. In my mind, I prayed along with him.

My dozen was called to go first, and although we were all frightened, not one of us dared to flinch. We folded our clothes, gave our war cry and stepped as boldly as we could into what looked like certain death.

Yet God's hand was on us, and we were saved from the fire. Myself, I think it must have been that He cooled the fire below our feet, for after I had crossed and turned to face the fire again, I could see my own darkened footprints along with the others.

It was only with great difficulty that I did not fall to my knees and pray.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

I went through the same routine with the troops on each of the three sides of the fire and not a single man of them showed any fear at all. The crowd was awestruck, and so were the men who had just walked on fire.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Count Lambert doffing his cloak and looking determinedly at the bed of coals.

"My lord Count Lambert, are you truly in a state of grace? Have you said Confession and had Communion in the last few hours?"

"No, but—"

"Then I must forbid you to do this, for without God's help, you would surely be going to your death!"

"You forbid your own liege?"

"I am sworn to protect you, my liege."

This might have gotten nasty. If Count Lambert walked those coals, without having gone through the training school, it would take away much of the mystique that I was trying to build. Fortunately, Prince Henryk came to my rescue and restrained him. I addressed the crowd.

"That concludes the public portion of this ceremony. These men and I will be standing vigil tonight, and that is a private thing. My servants will escort you back to the barracks area, and provisions have been made for your comfort, or at least the best that we can do. The training school has already been expanded to take on the next, much larger class and there should be room for everyone."

I bowed and started to dress when Abbot Ignacy came to me.

"My son, that was an amazing demonstration. It reminded me of Shadrack in the furnace."

"Father, remember how I once asked you how it was possible for you to walk barefoot through the snow, and you told me that when your heart was truly pure, you really did have the strength of ten?" I asked.

"That was on the first day that we met. I remember it quite well. Perhaps fire has much in common with ice, my son. But you seem as troubled now as you were then. Would you allow me to stand this vigil with you?"

There was no way that I could refuse Abbot Ignacy, my confessor.

"Of course, Father."

"I too would like to stand this vigil," Prince Henryk said.

"As you wish, my lord. I will have some heavy cloaks sent up for the two of you."

Count Lambert and the other guests were already going back, so with the prince and the abbot, we went up to the hills.

It was near the summer solstice, and at these latitudes, the night is short. By the time we got to the ridge I had picked out, the night was more than half over. It was moonless and clear, and the stars were radiant. A good night for a vigil.

So far, the weather had been perfect for the graduation ceremony, but for a while I was worried that the valley below us would not be foggy enough for the optical effect that I wanted. At last it filled with fog while we were still in clear air. Perfect.

We spent the remainder of the night sitting or kneeling quietly on the dew-wet grass, our cloaks wrapped around us, each with his own private thoughts and prayers. As we waited, the full weight of my hypocrisy lowered onto me. The men about me all believed in me, had faith in me and what I was doing. In return, I was giving them lies and scientific stage tricks, and it rode heavy on my soul. Yet I had to make them believe that they were invincible, that they were capable of taking on the most disciplined, tough and deadly army the world had ever seen. Taking it on and beating it!

The Mongols had fifty years of uninterrupted victories behind them. They had regularly fought and beaten armies many times their size. They knew that their combination of tactics, strategy and speed had always won and would win again. They had conquered half the known world, more land and more people than Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon put together.

One of their main weapons was terror. By building pyramids of the skulls of the people they murdered, by killing every man, woman, child, animal, and bird in the cities they hit, they created such a fear that it was said that men allowed themselves to be killed rather than annoy their own butchers! Stories circulated of whole companies of soldiers being killed by a single Mongol, dying without lifting a finger to help themselves.

My vassal Zoltan Varanian had spoken to a merchant who was stopped, along with the rest of his small caravan, by a single Mongol soldier. The Mongol had ordered all fourteen men in the caravan to dismount. Fearful of angering him, they immediately complied. He then ordered them to line up before him, to get on their knees and bow to him, and again they did as he ordered. Then he drew his sword and beheaded the first man in line. The other merchants made no move, and the Mongol proceeded to take the heads off three more men, for no reason except perhaps to practice his sword swing.

"This is crazy!" the narrator of the tale had said to his fellow merchants, "We outnumber him! We have weapons! No matter how good he is, he can't kill us all!"

"Quiet!" the man next to him said. "Do you want to make him mad?"

Yet another merchant was beheaded, and the narrator said, "Fools! He is already killing us! What more can he do?"

Shouting the name of Allah, he drew his sword and attacked the Mongol. They traded a dozen blows before the other merchants got their wits back. Seeing that it was an even fight and that the Mongol was not invincible, the other merchants drew their swords and joined in the affray. The Mongol was soon dead. Then they hastily buried the bodies of the dead along with the Mongol pony and all its equipage. And they fled from the lands of the Khan. Yet the fact remains that thirteen out of the fourteen armed men would have preferred to die rather than disobey the single murderer who was butchering them.

How do you defeat that kind of terror? The only way I could imagine was to build a counter mystique to fight it. And to do that, I had to lie to and hoodwink the very men who trusted me most, and to dirty my immortal soul in the process. I think that it never will be clean again. The thing had to be done, but in doing it, I have earned my place in Hell!

Dawn came up and with the sunrise, we recited our sunrise service, with the prince and the abbot standing silent.

I then arranged the men along the ridge where their shadows would soon be cast on the fog below us. I asked them to pray to God, to ask Him for some sign that what we were doing was right and just. We waited silently.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

I think that I have never prayed as I prayed that night. God's hand had been upon me as I walked through the fire and it felt as though It stayed there through the night. I think that I was not alone in this, for many about me were on their knees, even my lord Conrad. It was hard to tell in the starlight, but I think I saw tears run down those noble cheeks.

The dawn came and we recited our vows. Then we were bid to continue our vigil, this time lined up and facing the foggy valley below. We prayed for a sign from God, to know that he blessed our efforts.

The sun rose slowly at our backs and the shadows came toward us from the hill beyond. Looking down, I saw my own shadow among the others on the fog below. But mine was different from the others.

Mine was surrounded by a holy halo! I stared, unable to believe what my eyes were seeing. I raised my hand and waved it to prove to myself that it was my own head that was so mystically adorned, and it was true!

Beyond all possible doubt, I had been personally, individually and radiantly blessed by God!

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

Conditions were right. I looked down and saw beams of light radiating from the shadow of my own head. I waited a bit to be sure that the others had time to discover their own halos.

"Yes, brothers, it is real," I said. "Each of you has been given a halo that only you can see. When Moses went to the mountain and was given by God the Ten Commandments, he saw 'horns of light' coming from his head. What was given to him then is given to you now. Each of you has been blessed by God. Each of you has been made radiant. Our mission and our duty is clear. As a band of brothers, we must train the army that will rid God's world of the plague of Mongols that infests it.

"Will you stand with me, brothers? Will you join me in this great work? Shall we form the Invincible Order of Radiant Knights to accomplish this God-given task?"

They were stunned, shocked. Miracles were something that happened to someone else, long ago and far away. But these men had seen themselves walk through fire unharmed, and now they saw halos about their own heads.

Sir Vladimir was the first to recover.

"I will stand by you, my lord," he said, taking his place at my left side.

"And I," said Sir Piotr, his face streaked with tears.

All the others were soon with us, and there wasn't a dry eye among us, for even I was overwhelmed by the emotion of this thing that I myself had conjured up.

"Then so it shall be, brothers," I said. "On this holy ground, we shall form our order, and I shall knight you all on this spot."

I knighted the thirty-five students who had not been knighted before, and then Sir Piotr came up.

"My lord, I think it would be fitting if you knighted me this day."

"Perhaps it would be, Sir Piotr." I performed the simple ceremony on him. Sir Vladimir and the Banki brothers came up as well, with the same request. They, too, were reknighted.

Prince Henryk was standing back, undecided. Then suddenly he was on his knees before me.

"Is it possible, Baron Conrad? Am I worthy to join your order?" he asked as the tears streaked his face.

"Worthy, my lord? But it is I who serve you!"

"In status, yes, and that may not change. But you have been blessed by God, and this day so have I. If you think me worthy, I too would join your order, though my duties will never permit me to go through your school. Tell me, am I worthy?"

"My lord, you are the most worthy man I have ever met," I said, and I meant it. And so it was that I knighted my own prince.

"Would that I could join you, too," said Abbot Ignacy, "but my duties and my oath to the Church must forbid it. Yet I would do all in my power to aid you in God's work."

"This army will need chaplains, Father. Ordained priests who would go through our school, fight at our sides and pray for our souls. If you wished, you could find us such men."

"I will do so, my son and my lord. Somehow, I will do so."

Chapter Twenty-four

We were silent as we headed back, but as we got to the barracks, I called them together and said, "Brothers, our order need not always be a solemn one. Tonight, we will be celebrating your graduation and quite a number of young ladies have accepted my invitation to help us do it. Get some rest now, and fall back in at six o'clock in full-dress uniform. Dismissed!"

We only had a few spare dress uniforms, but one of them was the right size to fit the prince, and he generally wore one from that time on, as did I. These were a lot like the uniform worn by the boys at Eagle Nest, except that the colors were reversed. The boys wore white pants and shirt, with a red jacket; we wore red pants and shirt with a white jacket. The brass buttons and epaulets were the same.

At six, I said, "Brothers! There are a few matters of business to be attended to before we can join the ladies.

"You have each almost a year's back pay coming. Those of you who were students were paid at a rate of a penny a day, so you will each draw over three hundred pence. As knights, your pay from this day on will be eight pence a day, paid monthly. The instructors will draw their back pay at this rate. From this day on, the Banki brothers will be promoted to knight bannerett, at sixteen pence per day, and Sir Vladimir will be your captain at thirty-two.

"After the festivities, you will have three weeks leave. I've arranged for each of you to have a horse during your vacation. Please take good care of it. Go home and enjoy yourselves! And when you come back, try to bring a dozen new recruits with you! We'll need them for the next class.

"One last item! You are all invited to Sir Piotr's wedding tomorrow at Okoitz, so don't get too drunk tonight! Fall out!"

It was a good party, and I had the feeling that most of my new knights would be married in the near future, or they would if the girls had anything to say about it, and they generally do.

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

My love was at my side as the party got under way. I was introducing her to my classmates and in the process saying good-bye to them. Baron Conrad was assigning me to head up a section of mapmakers while they would be back here training new troops. We would meet again, but not soon and not often. It was hard, for we had gone through Hell and Heaven together, and in the doing of it, we had become close.

I had attended to half of them when a surprise occurred. Coming toward us through the crowd was the lady I had had on the night of my knighting! Suddenly, I felt very awkward, for how does one introduce a lady that one has taken in pleasure to another lady that one is about to marry? Worse yet, I couldn't introduce them, for I still did not know the first lady's name!

Yet again, she saved me, for she was a gem of courtesy.

"Piotr Kulczynski, surely you remember little Mary Ponanski that used to live four doors from your father in Okoitz!"

So at last I knew her name! "Of course I remember the little girl that we used to chase away from the big boys' games! But can it be that that skinny little girl is the charming lady I see before me? Oh ho! A duckling has turned into a swan! But then you must know Krystyana, my bride to be," I said, introducing them.

We chatted for a while and Mary pouted a bit because she had recognized me and I had not returned the favor.

"But you are not fair," I said. "Girls change more than boys do, and more pleasantly. But why are you wasting your time with someone who is almost an old married man, when there are so many eligible young knights around?"

"To find out which one I should be chasing, of course! You know all of these men, Piotr. Tell me, which one is the best?"

"The best? Well, that's a complicated question! If you mean 'Who is the best mathematician?' you are out of luck, because that's me and I'm already taken. If you mean 'Who has the best taste in women?' well, that's me, too, since I'm getting Krystyana and they are not! But the best man for you? Let me think. Maybe August Poinowski over there. What do you think, Krystyana? Is August handsome enough for our little Mary? I can testify to his character, but it takes a woman to tell if he is good to look at."

My love said that he was a fine-looking man, so we made the introductions. And you know? Not three weeks went by before Mary and August posted banns to marry in the church!

It was in this manner that I returned to Mary Ponanski the great favor that she had done for me!

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

Sir Piotr's wedding was well attended, and the weather was so fine that they held the reception outside. While talking to Count Lambert, he suggested that I look up at the sky. I looked. A large, two-place sailplane was circling overhead. The pilot must have found a good thermal above the town, because he kept on circling for hours. So now, in addition to everything else, I had to build an aircraft engine!

* * *

FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI

And so it was that on a beautiful spring day in the year 1237 I married my love Krystyana, and we lived happily ever after, or reasonably so.

Interlude Four

The tape wound to a stop.

"Good God, what a training program!" I said. "Conrad should have been a practical psychologist instead of being an engineer! And that graduation ceremony! I can't help wondering why armies in the twentieth century didn't use the same techniques."

"It wouldn't have worked," Tom said. "You must bear in mind that Conrad was working with some very uneducated and naive troops. With a modern education, it takes a pretty weak mind to fall for things like that fire-walking stunt. A good modern soldier is a very well educated and superbly well-trained specialist. You don't want stupid troops, not when they have to operate some remarkably sophisticated equipment. But given his situation, cousin Conrad did the right thing. I'm proud of the boy."

"Another thing is that weights and measures system he came up with. I got to working it out during some of the slow parts on the tape."

"Yeah, I saw you playing with the calculator. Did it myself, the first time I sat through the thing."

"Well, it's flat amazing how many numbers work out right! The way his mile works out at 1728 of his yards, and his pound comes out at one 1728th of a ton, and even his volt and his pint come out right! All at accuracies better than could be measured with medieval instruments! That's almost too many 'gosh numbers' to believe."

"Well, it wasn't all luck. Conrad was using a base twelve numbering system. It's one of the three natural systems, along with base eight and base sixteen. The ancient Indo-Europeans, our ancestors, used that same base twelve system for many thousands of years, and used it for their own systems of measurements, until some dull person started to count on his fingers and invented the decimal system in the process. A lot of what Conrad was doing was just setting things back to the old, sensible way of doing things.

"But enough of this. Supper is getting cold, and the girls tell me that they have something special planned for tonight's entertainment. Let's close it up!"

Weights and Measures

ARMY ARITHMETIC IS BASED ON A

DUODECIMAL SYSTEM,

I.E., BASE 12.

ALL ARMY WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

ARE BASE 12.

CONVENTIONAL UNITS ARE IN BASE 10.

TIME

ARMY UNITS

CONVENTIONAL UNITS

Day

Day

Hour

120 minutes

Dozminute

10 minutes

Minute

50 seconds

Twelminute

4.167 seconds

Dozsecond

0.347 seconds

Second

0.0289 seconds

Twelsecond

2.41 milliseconds

Notes

Local time starts at day break, zero being when the sun is a half circle on the horizon.

Navigation time is set with the third hour Minute 50 seconds happening at high noon at Three Walls.

If the clock below were set to navigational time, the time would be 6:23:33 a.m.

Army Clock

THE TIME IS: 0248

* * *

Weights and Measures

DISTANCE

ARMY UNIT

ENGLISH EQUIV — METRIC EQUIV.

Mile

Mile — 1.61 kilometers

Twelmile

440 ft. — 134.0 meters

Dozyard

36.7 ft. — 11.2 meters

Yard

36.7 in. — 931 meter

Twelyard

3.06 in. — 7.76 cm.

Dozmil

0.255 in. — 6.47 mm.

Mil

0.0212 in. — .539 mm.

Notes

Purely by accident, 1728 army yards is almost exactly equal to the English (or ancient Roman) mile.

When larger or meters smaller units than those listed were required, a series of prefixes was used identical to those of the metric system, except that kilo- meant 1728 rather than 1000, etc.

Weights and Measures

AREA

ARMY UNIT

ENGLISH EQUIV — METRIC EQUIV.

Sq. Mile

Sq. mile — 2.59 sq. km.

Sq. Twelmile

4.44 acres — 1.80 hectares

Sq. Dozyard

1344 sq. ft. — 124.9 sq. meters

Sq. Yard

9.34 sq. ft. .867 sq. — meters

Sq. Twelyard

9.34 sq. in. — 60.2 sq. cm.

Sq. Dozmil

.065 sq. in. — .418 sq. cm.

Sq. Mil

.0005 sq. in. — .290 sq.mm.

Notes

Rarely used.

Weights and Measures

WEIGHTS

ARMY UNIT

ENGLISH EQUIV — METRIC EQUIV.

Ton

1780.9 pounds — 807.8 kilograms

Twelton

148.4 pounds — 67.3 kilograms

Dozpound

12.37 pounds — 5.61 kilograms

Pound

1.031 pounds — 0.467 kilograms

Twelpound

1.37 ounces — 38.96 grams

Dozcarat

0.115 ounces — 3.25 grams

Carat

0.0095 ounces — 0.2705 grams

Notes

The "ton" is a cubic yard of cold (4°C.) water. It should be noted that these "weights" are units of mass (as in the metric system) and not units of force (as in the English system). It should also be noted that everyone except scientists and engineers uses units of force and mass interchangeably, and that even the above two groups confuse them more often than not.

Weights and Measures

VOLUMES

ARMY UNIT

ENGLISH EQUIV — METRIC EQUIV.

Volton

1.057 cu. yd. — .808 cu. meters

Twelvolton

17.78 gallons — 67.32 liters

Dozpint

1.48 gallons — 5.61 liters

Pint

0.988 pint — .467 liters

Twelpint

1.317 fl. Oz. — 38.96 cu. cm.

Dozdram

0.1098 fl. oz. — 3.25 cu. cm.

Dram

0.0091 fl. oz. — .271 cu. cm.

Weights and Measures

ANGULAR MEASUREMENT

ARMY UNIT

CONVENTIONAL UNIT

Angday

360°

Anghour

30°

Angdozmin

2.5°

Angmin

12.5 min.

Angtwelmin

1.04 min.

Notes

Angular measurements are based on the army-clock shown on the "time" chart. Angles are read clockwise from the horizontal as opposed to the conventional counterclockwise. In practice, the names of angular units are rarely used. An army engineer would read an angle of 45 degrees as "ang one six oh oh."

NAVIGATION

Army navigators state their longitude in accordance with the time of day (Three Walls time) that the sun is at high noon. The longitude of Three Walls is therefore 3000.

Latitude is also based on the army clock. The latitude of the equator is 6000. The south pole is at 3000; the north pole at 9000. The left side of the clock is not used.

South, of course, is at the top of an army map.

Weights and Measures

TEMPERATURE

The army thermometer was an absolute scale, like the modern kelvin and rankine scales. Zero was at absolute zero, 459.67 degrees below zero fahrenheit. The melting point of water was set at 1000 (base 12, or 1728 base 10). Thus, the degree used was about a quarter of the size of the fahrenheit degree and a sixth that of the celsius degree. In practice, though, most people ignored the thousand numbers it took to get to the freezing point of water and would call a pleasant room temperature "eleventy one degrees."

Listed below are some commonly encountered temperatures for comparison.

ARMY

FAHRENHEIT — CELSIUS — NOTES

6753°

2795° — 1535° — Melting point of iron

196Ø°

425° — 218° — Baking point of pizza

1449°

212° — 100° — Boiling point of water

10Ø1°

70° — 21° — Pleasant room temperature

1000°

32° — 0° — Freezing point of water

24Δ°

-361° — -218° — Boiling point of oxygen

0°

-459.67° — -273.15° — Absolute zero

N.B. In the duodecimal numbers listed, Δ is used for ten and Ø is used for eleven.

Weights and Measures

ELECTRICAL UNITS

ARMY UNIT

CONVENTIONAL UNIT

Woman- power

147.9 watts or .198 hp

Defined as that power required to raise one pound one yard in one second, all in army units, of course. Used in rating motors, etc.

Watt

0.0856 watts

That power required to raise one carat one yard in one second. Used in electrical work.

Coulomb

0.0854 coulomb

Defined as twelve to the fifteenth power electrons. Also as that amount of electricity required to plate out .000353 carats of silver. This unit is almost never used except to define other units.

Ampere

0.08541 amps

Defined as an electrical flow of one coulomb for one second.

Volt

1.0022 volts

That electrical pressure required to push one ampere through one ohm, generating one watt of power.

Ohm

11.734 ohms

See above.

Farad

0.002463 farads

That capacitance that will hold one coulomb at one volt.

Much of Conrad's training and experience had been in electronics, and like many electronics engineers, he felt that while the units he used produced a rational system, the values had been determined by committee long before anyone had any practical experience with electronics. The farad, a unit of capacitance, for example, was absurdly large. Commercial capacitors of a hundredth of that value were rarely made. The ohm was entirely too small and the watt too large.

Of course, had his experience been in power generation or electrochemical works, his opinions would have been different. And, as luck would have it, these were the technologies he had to develop first. It was precisely where he knew the most that he failed the worst.

THE END

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Conrad Starguard-The Radiant Warrior

Table of Contents

The Cross-Time Engineer

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

The High-Tech Knight

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

The Radiant Warrior

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Weights and Measures