Лео Франковски - The Flying Warlord

Around Christmas, Sir Piotr brought me copies of his first maps, the first accurate maps ever done of my own lands. He was an amazingly good mathematician, and after some years of tutoring on my part, he was starting to pull ahead of me. Certainly, his books on arithmetic, algebra, and trigonometry were better than mine, and we published his instead of what I'd done. He himself, with the help of the accountants that used to work with him, had written a book of trig tables, and had worked out the techniques necessary for accurate mapmaking. Those got into print as well, and we paid decent royalties.

There was a compass rose on the map, so naturally I turned it so that the arrow pointed up and I could read the words. I stared at the representation of the land that I had been riding over for years and I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"Sir Piotr,- there's something very wrong here. This isn't my land."

"But of course it is, my lord. I could hardly make a mistake like surveying the wrong property."

"But ... you've got Sir Miesko's manor south of Three Walls. It's north of us!"

"Right, my lord. It's north of us."

"Then why do you have it at the bottom of the map?"

"Because I put south at the top of the map, my lord."

"You put south at the top of a map?"

"Yes, my lord. I worried a bit about that, since of course it's traditional to put east at the top--"

"East, for God's sake?"

"Of course, my lord. But I knew you'd want things done in a sensible and rational manner, so naturally south goes at the top."

"Naturally. Would you please go over your reasons for that conclusion?" I'm not sure whether it was caused by graduating from the Warrior's-School, being knighted, or marrying Krystyana, but Piotr just didn't get intimidated anymore.

"Happy to, my lord. Your prime referent has always been your clock. All of our angles are measured as though they were the time of day it is when the fat hand is at that angle. At least that was the system you taught me. The fat hand corresponds to the position of the sun when the clock is south of the viewer, and all of your clocks are always mounted on a south wall for that reason. Therefore, all of the angles shown on the map correspond to the normal clock if the map is placed up next to the clock. Since the map corresponds to the land, and the land, looking south, has the more southerly portions appearing to be higher, this just naturally puts south at the top of the map. In addition, everybody knows that the mountains are to the south of us, and the plains and the sea are to the north. The mountains are higher, so naturally they go at the top."

I had to stare at it for a while and think about it, but in the end I had to admit that his way was more consistent.

It was more consistent to read our angles clockwise rather than counterclockwise, as it is done in the modern world, so we did it that way.

In the modern world, electricity flows from negative to positive. It happened that way because Ben Franklin knew that something was flowing, but he guessed wrong about the direction. Since I was starting out fresh, I corrected Ben's error. Our electrons were positive.

The controls on the aircraft worked the opposite of those on twentieth-century planes, because the boys started out flying hang gliders. With the usual control stick, if you want to go down, you push the lever away from you, but on a hang glider, which steers by the shift in body weight, to go down you must pull on the stick to pull your body forward. So when they started making gliders with control surfaces, it was natural for them to make it so that you pulled the stick to go down. Exactly the same thing happened with turning left and right. Sensible, but the opposite of what I was used to.

And on the riverboats, the same damn thing happened. I'd installed a conventional ship's wheel, but Tadaos had insisted on reworking the steering apparatus so it would be more "natural" for him. He was used to steering with a tiller bar, where to go to the fight, you push the bar to the left. "Natural" for him was to move the top of the wheel to the left to make the boat go to the right. I had to do it his way or fire him, and just then I didn't have a replacement.

Yes, I know we were all Polish, but is that any reason why everything has to come out backward?

Well, they dang nearly killed me, but they didn't.

They shaved me naked and yelled and screamed and ran me up and down mountains and cliffs, and ropes, and all the while singing damn fool songs and blowing on horns and beating stupid drums. They got me up every day before dawn to swear the same dang; oath, like I didn't remember it from the last two hundred mornings we'd said it, and then came at me with pikes and swords and axes, and they made me do the same to the others. They made me walk funny and talk funny and smile when they was shouting at me.

You see, one of the twelve things we was always to be was cheerful, and I think that was the hardest of the bunch. I finally figured out that if I squinted my eyes and gritted my teeth at them, I could usually make them think I was smiling.

Worst yet, they made me go the first six months of it without getting drunk or laid.

Sometimes, I think it was that last that kept me going, knowing that once I got out of this hell, a those pretty little girls would be waiting for Sir Tadaos to service them. I lived for that, and like I said, I nearly died for it.

A lot of men did die in that training, but not in my platoon. I guess I was lucky in that I was put in with the baron's managers for the first six months, and not many of them men washed out. I mean that they could all read and write already, and they was mostly pretty sensible. A few got hurt pretty bad on the cliffs, but even they graduated. I thought that I was going to graduate with them, but no, the day before the rest went through the firewalking ordeal and the vigil, they told me that I was scheduled for the whole year-long program. I went and talked to Sir Vladimir about that, since he ran the school and I knew him pretty well. Hell, once he let me use him for target practice, but that's another story.

Anyhow, he said that there was nothing he could do about it since the baron, he had put it in writing and that was that. But he did give me a pass to go to Three Walls for three days, so I could get proper drunk and visit the Widow Bromski. Seeing her again after spending six months dreaming about those sweet young things, well, it helped to get drunk first. I'd worn my armor coming in, but I guess I didn't fool anybody. Certainly not any of the girls. They must have some kind of secret code about that sort of thing. But at least I got good and blasted with the girls at the Pink Dragon Inn. Course, that's a look-but-don't touch sort of place, but I tell you it's well worth the looking.

So I went back to Hell, and this time they put me in with the baron's new knights, them what he got after little Piotr killed Baron Stefan and Conrad stepped into the old baron's shoes. They was pretty standoffish at first, but then one day Sir Vladimir called me "Squire Tadaos" in public, and those knights and squires loosened up some.

I guess I did learn something there. I got to be real good with a sword, one of those long skinny ones you wear over your left shoulder. I could hold my own with an axe or a pike, though I don't much like a pike, and I found out I was near as good a shot with one of them swivel guns as I was with my bow. I could outshoot anybody, the instructors included.

So at last came the day when we was to graduate. They made a big to-do about it, but me, I was just glad it was over. The others was worried about walking on fire, but not me. If Piotr and all them managers could do it, I knew I wouldn't have no trouble, and I didn't.