Лео Франковски - The Flying Warlord

"What the Hell are you doing here?" I shouted.

The engine stopped and Count Lambert got out, wearing his gold-plated armor.

"Baron Vladimir, fortunately I couldn't hear that, but you must learn to speak more politely to your betters," he said.

"But my lord, you have landed right in the middle of an ambush! The Mongols could be coming in any time now!"

"No, it will be another half-hour at the least. We saw them fighting Duke Boleslaw's men three or four miles from here. But have your men move these planes if they are in the way. Don't worry about hurting them, they'll never fly again. Be careful of the engines. They're expensive and they can be salvaged."

All of this made no sense to me, but I galloped to our lines and gave the necessary orders to get those planes hidden. By the time I got back to the count, a squire had ridden out leading two dozen war horses, all saddled and ready for combat. This crazy stunt had been planned!

"My lord, what is all this about?" I said.

Lambert put on a red-and-white surcoat and swung into the saddle. "About? Well, you could hardly expect us to miss the final battle, could you? For over a week now, we've been in the air, watching you and Conrad garner all the glory while we could only look on! We have taken some heavy losses doing it, too! You see those twenty planes there? Well, there were forty-six of them to start!"

"That many? What happened to them?"

"Three crashed on landing at Eagle Nest. Two were seen flying too low over the enemy and were brought down by arrows. One flew into a thundercloud and we found the pieces later. The rest, we don't know. They just didn't come back."

"My God. I didn't realize it was that bad, my lord. But why leave the rest of them here? Surely you can't fly them out of here!"

"No, of course not. But don't you see? They're not needed anymore! They've done their job! The Mongols are all here. The army is here. The whole affair will be settled right here! If we are to get our share of the glory, we have to get it now! As to the planes, well, we have wood, glue, and cloth in abundance. We can build more later."

"But, but does Count Conrad know of this?"

"Who gives a damn about Conrad? Look, boy, Conrad is sworn to me, not me to him! But just now there's a battle to get to. The plan's still the same? Lead them through here, then come back in a bit for the kill?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Good!" He waved to his mounted aviators. "Let's go! To war!"

And they rode out of the valley.

Maybe the planes weren't needed, but as I saw it, things were still very much afloat. Who could tell what we would need and what we would not! I was almost glad that the radios weren't working. I would have hated to have to report this piece of insanity to Count Conrad!

We got the planes cleared away and hidden, and then it was wait and worry time again.

It was approaching noon, and I was wondering if I should feed the men when an outrider on one of the Big People came and reported that the battle was coming our way. I signaled "Ready" and "Hide," and could see the lines tighten up, the pikes drop, and the flag poles go down as soon as the message was relayed.

After a while, I could see our horsemen coming in exactly as planned, if a little late. They were in surprisingly good order, all things considered, and Duke Boleslaw himself was at their head, surrounded by his youthful group of friends. He was going a bit slower than a full frightened gallop, I suppose to insure that all of his men could keep up. A few Mongols had gotten out in front of him, but he wisely ignored them.

He came right down the middle of the valley, splashing over the little half-frozen creek twice just to keep going in a straight line. The kid was doing good! And after him came the vast horde of the enemy, which outnumbered Boleslaw's forces by at least twenty-to-one, galloping in a ragged mob and not noticing in the least the army waiting for them! It was working!

My station was at the mouth of the funnel, and as soon as the last of the Mongols went through, I advanced both our wings to seal it off. As soon as the duke's men were out of the trap at the other end, my second in command, Baron Gregor Banki, would close the small end and open fire, which would signal us to do the same, and the war would be nearly won!

The ends of the wings had more than a mile to go to close the gap, so this took a while. As I followed them in, another outrider reported that Count Conrad was arriving with what was left of the river battalion, forty-one war carts out of the two hundred sixteen he'd started with! I sent the man back with an invitation for Conrad to plug the gap in the center. After all that they had done, those men deserved the honor.

This delayed things a bit, but there wasn't an enemy in sight and I knew we could afford the time. I mounted Betty and rode around to my liege lord. I could safely leave my post because now there wasn't a single thing for me to do! When the shooting started, everybody would join in. I was no longer needed.

Count Conrad had a dirty bandage over his right eye and he looked horribly tired and old!

"My lord, it's good to see you! You look like you need this!" I threw him my wine skin. It wasn't exactly a regulation part of the uniform, but rank has a few privileges.

"Thank you." He took a long pull. "Things go as planned?"

"Perfectly, my lord. We're only waiting for Gregor to close his end and start shooting. It should be any time now."

"Good. We're out of ammunition. Can you supply some?"

"Of course, my lord!"

I gave the orders and runners started coming in with crates of swivel gun rounds. As we waited, I told my liege about Baron Ilya's night raid, and about Duke Boleslaw's reaction to it.

"You did right," he said. "At least, that's what I would have done."

Then I had to tell the count about his air force, or rather his lack of one.

"Damn," he said, looking more weary than ever. "If we live through this, I swear either I'm going to get control of Eagle Nest, or I'm going to build another one."

When Conrad's forces were supplied, we still hadn't heard from the small end of the funnel. Then horsemen started coming at us, but they weren't all Mongols! There were Polish knights mixed in with them, and soon a vast, slashing and hacking free-for-all was going on fight before our eyes! Something had gone very, very wrong.

The signal flags started wagging, sending the same message to us around both sides of the ambush:

BOLESLAW HAS NOT LEFT THE TRAP, IT SAID. ONE OF HIS YOUNG FRIENDS FELL TO A MONGOL ARROW. BOLESLAW TURNED BACK AT THE LAST INSTANT AND WENT TO AID HIS FRIEND. THE DUKE'S HORSEMEN ALL FOLLOWED THEIR LIEGE BACK INTO THE MONGOL FORCES. THEY ARE NOW ALL MIXED TOGETHER. WE HAVE CLOSED THIS END BUT WE CANNOT SHOOT WITH OUT KILLING OUR OWN MEN. BULLETS GO RIGHT THROUGH ENEMY AND THEN CONTINUE THROUGH OUR MEN WHO ARE BEHIND THEM. WHAT SHOULD I DO?

GREGOR BANKI.

"That's a good question he asks, my lord. What should we do?" I said.

"I don't know. What can we do? Nothing, that's what! We just have to let those crazy knights get themselves killed."

"Do you want to take command, my lord?"

"Me? No. This is your show. You do what you think is best. I screwed things up enough on the river. Now it's your turn."

"But I had heard that you had killed vast numbers of the enemy," I said.

"Perhaps, but look around you. Of the men I led into battle, not one in five is still fit to march. How can that be called a victory? I made mistakes, many mistakes. You have command here, Vladimir. Try to do better than I did."

"Yes, sir."

I signaled "Defend Yourself,", "Give Aid," and "Stand By," which meant they should not let themselves be hurt, they should help out where they could, and then they should wait for further orders. What else could I tell them?

A half-hour later, I told them to break out lunch and eat in rotation, one lance per platoon at a time.

In front of us, like on a movie screen, the Polish nobility was slugging it out with the Mongol horsemen. Our men were hopelessly outnumbered, but they were giving a good account of themselves. They had some advantages.

They were generally bigger and stronger than their adversaries, and had much better arms and armor than the enemy. Most of them had been equipped out of my factories, and the poorest page had at least a full set of chain mail, doubtlessly a hand-me-down, but better than what many knights wore ten years ago. The Mongols, on the other hand, were wearing whatever they could steal or scavenge off of various battlefields, and many of them had no armor at all.

The Polish horses were considerably larger and more powerful than those of their adversaries, and in shock combat, this counted for a lot.

But mostly, the western knight was trained to fight as an individual, both on the tourney field and in battle. This was often to their disadvantage in combat with the more sophisticated easterners, but it wasn't that way today. The Mongols were showing none of their vaunted organization and discipline. If anything, they seemed more disorganized than we were. Perhaps Ilya's men really had fragged every Mongol officer.

Furthermore, our men could come to our lines when tired or thirsty or wounded. Any Mongol who got close enough to offer a clear shot was killed.

Our men had some advantages, but they weren't enough to offset a numerical disadvantage of twenty-to-one.

One by one, the pride of the Polish nobility was dying.

The slaughter in the cold rain went on for hours, and watching it and not being able to do anything to help was one of the most frustrating things that I have ever done. It was equally rough on the men of the army who were looking helplessly on.

A group of women came by driving mules that were pulling a standard army tank cart filled with beer. They filled all our cooking pots with it.

"Compliments of the Sandomierz Whoremasters Guild," one saucy wench said. "Just be sure and save half of it for them fine young knights out there doing all the fighting!"

"What is the Whoremasters Guild doing with an army tank cart?" I asked.

"Oh, they was just sitting around, going to waste, when all them handsome knights was thirsty," she said. "We figured we'd do us a public service, being in that business, you know. Servicing the public, that's our job!"

"They? How many of my tank carts did you take?"

"Oh, there was maybe two dozen of them, and the mules wasn't being used either. But your carts? Then you must be that Count Conrad they talk about. You're the size they tell. Say, you ain't mad about this beer, are you? I mean, it ain't like we stole it to sell or something."

"No, I guess I'm not mad, and I suppose the men need a drink. But look, once you share out the beer, come back with that thing filled with water, all right?"

"Right-o, your lordship. Say, why don't we never see you around any? A man your size would be a fun one!"

"I'm happily married. But by the same token, what are you doing being a prostitute? You know the army is always hiring women as well as men. You could get a good job and maybe find a real knight of your own."

"What? Leave the guild? Say, my master'd whup me for even thinking about it!"

"You don't have to put up with that sort of thing! No whoremaster ever dared beat a member of the army!"

"What? Not whup me? Then how'd I know he still cared about me? Whoops! The cart's four places down already! Got to run, your lordship! Ta-taaa!"

And with that, she waved and ran away. I don't think I'll ever understand some people.

Well, at least I could understand the men around me. They wanted to go out there and kill somebody! Some of them had been training for this day for years, and now there was nothing they could do! We had over twenty thousand swivel guns pointed at the enemy, and they were useless! A bullet fired would go right through the Mongol it was aimed at, and kill some Christian who happened to be fighting behind him! It was all my fault, too. I made those guns too powerful! I'd had visions of Mongols charging at us six ranks deep, and our guns ploughing furrows through them. I never imagined anything like this!

One of my men looked up at me from the ranks in front of my cart and shouted, "Dammit! Do something!"

He was as insubordinate as hell, yet he had expressed the common feeling, and I had to answer him.

"Do what? What can we do? If we advance, we'd only squeeze them closer together, and our knights need room to fight in! If we shoot, we kill our own men as well as the enemy!"

"They're dying anyway!" another man yelled.

"Then better they should die at Mongol hands and not ours! If the knights would just get out of there, we could end this in minutes! This is their decision! There's nothing we can do!"

That didn't satisfy anybody, but there was nothing they could answer. I looked away from the slaughter and saw a strange thing.

A knight rode along the backs of our carts, not in the trap at all. He wore gold-washed chain mail of good quality but of the old-style. His barrel-type helmet was goldwashed as well, with trim that looked to be solid gold.

He was staring at the war carts and guns like a country peasant visiting the city for the first time. But what really caught my notice was his horse. It was pure white, but aside from that, it was absolutely identical to my mount Anna! The same gait, the same facial features, the same everything!

I had my face plate open when I said, "Can I help you, sir?"

He looked at me and I thought for a moment that he was going to fall off his horse! After a bit, he said in very broken Polish, "What ... what this all is? Guns and plate armor! Here? Now! How?"

Now it was my turn to be startled, for he spoke with a strong American English accent!

"Just who are you?" I asked.

"I am Sir Manuel la Falla," he said.

"In a pig's eye!" I said to him in Modem English.

He almost fell over again, but a commotion out on the battlefield distracted me from talking further with the man.

Count Lambert was coming toward me with the battle behind him. There was a Mongol spear in his gut, one of those sharp, thin, triangular things that could pierce our armor. He was swaying in the saddle, and his horse was staggering as well. As I watched, horse and man collapsed to the ground not a hundred yards in front of me.

I jumped down from the war cart and pushed my way through the pikers. Tapping two of the front-rank axemen and motioning them to follow me, I vaulted over the big shield and ran to Lambert's aid.

I swear that my only intention was to drag my liege lord back to safety. I never meant to cause what happened. But that strange, crazy foreign knight, whatever he was, ran out after me, waving at the lines to advance and shouting in English!

"Come on you apes! Over the top! Up and at 'em! Chaaaarrrrrge!"

Somehow, the man had gotten one of our red-and-white surcoats. I suppose they thought he was obeying my orders, for I was out in front of him ' They couldn't have understood a word of what he said, but his meaning was clear and it was what they all had wanted to do for hours!

From a hundred thousand voices came a roar!

"FOR GOD AND POLAND!"

All along the lines, a hundred and twenty thousand pikers and axemen went up and over the shields and staged an impromptu infantry charge on three times their number of cavalry!