Лео Франковски - Conrad's Last Campaign

I looked up to an amazing sight. Ten crossbowmen stood on each side of the emperor. In all his years as emperor, the khan had strictly forbidden any deadly weapons in his presence He carried the only sword allowed in the audience chamber. Even his personal guard was not armed in the audience chambers or offices. Something momentous was going to happen, and I hoped that it would not involve the execution of several scientists.

The khan’s moods always had to be judged carefully. Sometimes he was the regal Emperor of China who ruled wisely but would have you shortened for bowing too little. Sometimes he was the barbarian ruler who would drink and carouse with his men but kill them personally for disagreeing with him. Today, he was the working technocrat who would probably not have you killed for disagreement so long as it was said politely and backed up with facts.

We settled for bowing several times and walking with our heads down.

“Su Song”, he said, “Look around you. I have brought you some very expensive presents. Please look and tell me what you think of them. ”

At his gesture, servants removed the canvas coverings from three huge wagons and several tables around the room. The wagons were about four bu by about two bu wide. Two of the wagons had iron wheels and were mounted on some sort of iron strips. The third wagon was obviously some sort of war wagon with shield walls, similar to the Korean battle wagons, but with some sort of metal weapon mounted in place of the usual crossbows. The other wagons seemed to be primarily cargo carriers, but they also mounted weapons and on the front of one was a nozzle that looked like a fire lance.

If the weapons were functional, that would explain the crossbowmen in the room. The khan would never take a chance that someone would use them on him.

Since the khan was looking at us expectedly, we wandered around the wagons and tables inspecting the contents briefly; very briefly as the khan’s patience was famous for its absence. The cargo wagon held wooden forms covered with doped cloth, apparently some sort of war kite and a mechanism with a large propeller attached.

There were tin bottles and brass tubes in most of the wagons along with miscellaneous parts that looked like so much junk.

Sitting alone was a large mechanism as tall as a man and wider than it was tall that seemed to be driven by a rather inefficient looking water wheel. I had my doubts that the mechanism would actually work. Even though the water wheel had linkages that matched the bigger mechanism, I couldn’t see how it could produce enough power to be useful.

The water wheel could be a paddlewheel from a warship, but those were normally powered by a treadmill and the linkage still didn’t make any sense.

The most interesting thing was the track system that two of the wagons stood on. The track was several times the length of each wagon, so I signaled two of my assistants to join me at one end of a wagon. As I suspected, the three of us could rather easily roll the cart forward in spite of its heavy load.

I spent several minutes inspecting the wheels and bearings and, more importantly, the iron strips they sat on. Their design was impressive. Wide flat tops and bottoms with a thinner vertical member gave them stability without using excess material. Somebody smart designed this system.

The khan’s patience ended at the same time as the wine in his cup, “Well, Su Song, give your first impressions of what you see here.”

“Your Imperial Majesty, it seems as if you have conquered yet another enemy and brought the spoils to us. What we can recognize is war material. The war cart reminds me of the war cart used by the Koreans. The weapons are some sort of fire lance, but I would have to experiment to know their power .

“The rail and wagon system is impressive and shows signs of long development. Such a system would cut the cost of bringing building material and supplies to the Celestial Palace by ninety percent or more. For now, we are limited to destinations on or near a very expensive canal. This would cost less than one percent of what a canal would cost, and could go anywhere.

“The engineer has also solved the problem of theft of the rails. They are made of the most cheaply manufactured cast iron, useless to blacksmiths, and each has a cast figure of a man in a noose. Apparently a warning to would be thieves.

“We will not know what the brass tubes are for until we open them and the water powered machine or paddlewheel will require work to understand. They do apparently use battle kites, as the Jin Dynasty did, to carry observers over the battlefield.” I decided not to mention the incongruity of several large tree trunks stacked in a corner of the room.

The emperor looked pleased, “You did well for only having a few minutes of inspection. Batu, tell them what they missed.”

An expensively dressed Mongol stepped out of the shadows and gestured to the items in the room. “Unfortunately, these are not the booty of victory. These items were dragged at great expense from a small country west of the Rus’. They are much more powerful than they first appear. With weapons and systems like these an army of farmers destroyed a million Mongol and Chinese warriors. The emperor himself has chosen to demonstrate the weapons.”

With that, His Imperial Majesty descended the throne and walked over to a heavy table with one of the metal weapons mounted on it. On closer inspection, it looked somewhat like a crossbow stock lacking the crossbow and, strangely, carrying a small lit lamp on the side. The emperor pointed the weapon at the tree trunks and pulled the trigger. It sounded like a grenade going off. Then he pulled a lever back and forth and fired again, and again. Before he stopped, he had splintered several tree trunks in less than a minute.

Eventually, he turned to us with his hand still resting on the weapon. “If we are not to be conquered by a nation of dirt grubbing farmers, we will need some of these. You will be moved immediately to a new facility about twenty li outside the city. Whatever you need in men and materials are yours for the asking. Use these weapons to strengthen our army or be killed by theirs.”

Be Assured That Never Will I Try to Trick You

“Damn,” I swore. “I knew that they would attack us eventually, but it sure could have happened at a better time! You are absolutely positive about your information?”

“I have had three independent reports come in during the last two days. I’m as certain as I can be, your grace.”

“Holy shit! I’ll see what I can do, but right now, half of our power is in the wrong place! Boris, get your people out of there! Tell them to try to find somewhere safe to hide! That goes for you, too!”

“I have already told them that, and I am safe enough. Good luck, your grace!”

“You, too, and keep in touch!”

I signed off. When I first got to this bloody century, I’d worked for Boris for a while, and I liked the man. A year later, he’d run into bandits on my land. He’d had his bodyguard killed, his fortune stolen, and both of his hands cut off. We’d saved him, and killed all of the bandits, but we had never found where they had hidden his treasure.

Boris soon married his nurse, a very patient young woman who didn’t mind waiting on him hand and foot; services which he really needed. Without hands, he couldn’t button his clothes, put on his shoes, or go to the toilet without help. But that man could sell sand to an Arab!

Since he was without his working capital, he couldn’t continue as a merchant. Therefore, he had started to work for me as my commercial representative. He was very successful at this. Eventually, he had agents all over Christendom, profitably distributing our commercial products. Their reports often contained information about various political and military items, as well as commercial news. This function soon expanded into a spy network that had become one of the best in the world. We were selling our products, from hardware, plumbing, and farming equipment on up to and including whole factories, over a huge area now. Our salesmen, many of them, were also our spies.