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even!"
"Sorry, Lambert. Just habit, I suppose."
"Good! Now, what was this other matter?"
"Treason."
"Dog's blood! Whose?"
"Mine. Maybe yours as well."
"What the devil are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the duke's battle plan. You were at the council of war. You saw what happened, and
you heard what I had to say. It still goes. If I follow the duke's plan, everything I've done here is wasted.
Poland will fall and most of us, the duke included, will likely be killed. I'm going to have to disobey him."
"I see. But you've always had an obligation to a Higher Power."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Prester John, of course! I figured out who sent you here long ago. The greatest Christian king of all,
Prester John."
Good lord! Lambert told me about this fantasy of his nine years ago, but he hadn't mentioned it since, so
I'd hoped he'd forgotten about it. Yet my oath to Father Ignacy still stood, and I couldn't tell him the truth
of the matter.
"You are silent," Lambert continued. "Well, I understand your problem and your oath of silence. But to
answer your implied question, I'd say that your duty to your king takes precedence over your later oath
to the duke, so you are safe on moral grounds. As to the practical considerations, well, if your strategy is
fight and the duke's is wrong, then you will be a hero and there won't be much he can do to you. If the
duke's strategy is right and yours is wrong, then you are likely to die on the battlefield, and again there
won't be anything he can do to you. Offhand, I'd say that your treason is a safe one."
As safe as a tomb, I thought.
"Thank you. but I didn't come here for your moral support. I came here for your physical support. My
boats are going to need your aircraft to show them where the enemy is concentrating. Can I count on
your help here, though it be treason on your part?"
"You can count on my help and that of the boys from Eagle Nest. We'll be up there, you may be sure!
But how would that be treason to the duke? My oath to him requires that I send him so many knights in
the time of his need. I shall do so, and then some, for I now have more men than my oath requires,
despite the loss of those knights that once served Baron Jaraslav and now serve you. In truth, since you
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are arming all of my knights and squires and my barons, and I need only provide training and a horse, in
the last six years we have been able to more than double the number of knights that serve me. I was wise
to accept your offer, you see."
"And while my oath does not require it, I have told him that we shall be watching the enemy from above,
and reporting their movements to him, and this, too, I shall do. If we also tell your boats what we tell the
duke, how is that treason? It's just the sensible thing to do. We're all fighting the same enemy, after all!"
"You have relieved my mind, Lambert."
"If you say so. Myself, I can't imagine how you thought I could have done otherwise! Now then, shall we
see to my defenses? And afterward, you shall have supper here with me and my daughter, and you shall
see what you missed out on!"
FROM THE DIARY OF TADAOS KOLPINKSI
In the last week of February, the ice on the Vistula was breaking up some, but it wasn't gone. Like usual,
it'd drift downstream and jam up at some turn, then more ice would pile on top, then that night, sure as
Hell for a Heathen, it would turn cold again and the whole damn thing would freeze solid.
I had three boats on the river and we was loaded with bombs, something new we wasn't sure would
work. They was big iron barrels filled with gunpowder and weighted so's they'd just barely sink. There
was a slow fuse in a bottle in one side, and the idea was when you came to a jam, you lit one, screwed
down the cap, and got it over the side before it blew up in your face. It was supposed to drift with the
current under the jam while you was paddling backward under full steam.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it drifted too far or not far enough. Once it blew and took the whole
damn boat with it.
At least I think that was what happened. Nobody from The Pride of Bytom lived to tell about it. We just
heard the blast around the bend, and when my own Muddling Through got there, well, there wasn't much
left. Every barrel in her must have blown with the first one.
But we was pushing the ice downriver, and not that much was coming from upstream behind us. Once
we got past Cracow, I ordered the other boats out, so's we could at least patrol what was clear. They
went down their ways without a hitch and each loaded up with six war carts and a full company of
warriors.
We continued north with the Hotspur, blowing ice and sometimes getting a shot at a Mongol patrol, until
we got to the River Bug. It was froze solid and there was nothing we could do about it. We was out of
bombs then, and there wasn't no way we could work upstream, anyhow. I'd hoped to save maybe three
dozen of them bombs for another project I had in mind, but there was no way to do it, what with the loss
of The Pride of Bytom and all. We couldn't get up the Dunajec either, so all of Poland west of the Vistula
was left open to the enemy.
But we did what we could, damn it! What else can a man do?
The other boats was running into bigger patrols and we turned back to pick up our troops at East Gate.
It took a while. Doctrine was to give refugees a lift across the river when we weren't actually in a fight,
and we had to stop and ferry God knows how many thousands of people across.
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The planes was up and flying whenever the weather was decent, and they'd tell us about refugees and
Mongol patrols. They had these big arrows with a long red ribbon on them that they'd drop right on your
deck. They'd stick tight in the wood and it was amazing they never killed nobody. But there'd be a
message in the arrowhead that wasn't hardly ever wrong. Them flyboys was okay.
In two places we found river ferries that we put into service and to hell with their owners. They was both
of the long rope kind that Count Conrad invented years ago. In both places I put two of my men ashore
to work them, since a civilian couldn't be trusted not to run. Not one of those four men lived. They stuck
to their jobs till they was all killed. Let me tell you their names. They were Ivan Torunski and his brother
Wladyclaw, and John Sobinski and Vlad Tchernic. Good men, every one of them.
That was all we could do for them refugees, though. Lift them across and give them a map showing
where they was and where the safe forts was. Maybe some of them made it alive.
We'd been telling people for years that noncombatants should evacuate by the first of February, handed
out leaflets and wrote magazine articles, but the fools wouldn't move until they was burned out and half of
them was dead. But you can't let a kid die just 'cause his folks are dumb!
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