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"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 modem 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 bum, 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
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