Part 20 (1/2)

It was a vastly hu at us to wash our bald heads and denuded bodies with the foulest s 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 froarments There were even soy 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 ly 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 hoas kept that clean, for

That is to say, s, 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 s, 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 coot an is stopped while atched the victi or running or ju other exercises After a week, ere 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 alreadyso when they were so tired In fact, more men were dismissed for runts actually went crazy under the strain of it One ot hi incoherently He was naked and smeared with his own shi+t

FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ

Getting the ar I've ever done

It wasn't the arh that was a lot of work The Bessemer converter to make cast iron into steel tookline 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 nu steel using the wootz process, so ers was straightforward, but still a lot of work

We had decent black powder and uns was not hard, once the production line for it was set up, but we hit a snag when it ca, 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 tiet it into ht the Mongols

Yet I dreaded going to so like a flintlock The rate of fire would be so slow that ould need twelve ties of breach-loading and preunpowder

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 shi+eld on the bolt covered the wick until the bolt was turned home, at which time the flame hit the wick, it sputtered for a few e Not the best syste the Hussite wars in fifteenth-century Boheuns 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 , four-wheeled cart, six yards long and tide The wheels were two yards high and mounted on castors such that the cart could be pulled either the long way, for transport, or sideways, for fighting There was no possibility of getting enough horses to pull the thousand carts that ould need, so thirty-six men aruns 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 ar six yards out to act as a yard and a half high shi+eld for theit It was armored, too

If the ols to attack us, or if we could so meat But there wasn't ol had several horses and, in a race, they could easily beat us

Communications can make up for speed, to a certain extent No e 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, ourso 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 h a wire and a sis a bell We had wiredrawing equipara line between Three Walls and Okoitz and never did get it up The price of copper was so high that seeing soon 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 ti up to take his place I finally had to give the project up and Sir Vladi 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 stea in the factories and paddle- wheel riverboats ithin our capabilities A fleet of arols dead, especially if the boats had radios

The rub was that the invasion would happen on March seventh, at which tiht 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, forhours of hard work for me and a few thousand otherthe army itself

In thirteenth-century Poland, there were no trained, professional fighting hts, 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 ht 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 eants left over fros had been fairly peaceful for years, despite the fact that the country was rapidly disintegrating because of duchies being divided up a the heirs of the previous duke Such wars as had been fought wereevents than serious coeants, anyway On the rare occasions when the peasants fought, they were given no training at all, and often no weapons except for such agricultural iht own

Once I knew that ould have the industrial ability to are lord, Count Laross of ht's estates, since eants were , but it seemed to me that most of them would not have done well in the civilian world To function well,structure that theh absolute hell The prograe 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 ain But I had to have leaders that were absolutely tough and reliable and I didn't have twenty years to nurture and train theh, we could loose 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 onderful

It was a month before I had the opportunity to speak privately to Sir Vladi in the woods

”How are you doing, Piotr?” he said, as though ere 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 er brother, but for the last month he had been as brutal as the others

”Thank you, Sir Vladi 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 aer a squire”

”Maybe, maybe not Myself, I think it likely that if you went to Sir Conrad and asked for theet them Sir Conrad was annoyed that you circumvented his wishes, but he is not an evil ize and ady 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 ht as well stick with it Eventually, all of Sir Conrad's et it over with”

”Then as Sir Conrad angry withto 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 willhis tih early”