Лео Франковски - Conrad's Last Campaign

Sir Wladyclaw said, “The Mongols will be attacking Europe in three months time? What is your source of information on this?”

I said. “As to your second question, you don’t have a need to know, except that I can assure you that the source of the information is reliable.”

“I imagine that we must abandon this war in the south, and all get back to Europe,” Sir Vladimir said .

“I don’t think that we have to go quite that far. For one thing, I don’t think that we have the transportation available to move everyone back to Eastern Europe fast enough. Many of our people must remain here, although more than half of our troops will be heading north. We will be leaving small garrison forces in the cities we’ve taken, and I want our construction projects, particularly the Suez installation, to be completed as soon as possible. No matter how it turns out, our war with the Mongols is likely to be a short one. I think that we will win it, and after that, we will still have the Muslims to contend with.”

“If our garrison forces in the cities we’ve taken up here are too small, the Arabs will be tempted to revolt against us,” Sir Vladimir said.

“Our garrison commanders will be instructed to use all available force against any possible revolts. They will have to be brutal. They won’t have any alternative, being under strength,” I said.

Sir Wladyclaw said, “Yes sir. Will you be going to Poland, or staying here?”

“Neither. Sir Piotr will command in Europe, Sir Vladimir will command our forces here, and you, Sir Wladyclaw, will be coming with me, into Mongolia. I’ll need a reliable second in command and you can take charge of the Mounted Infantry.”

They both just stared at me, so I continued.

“The Mongols can’t attack Europe without a sufficient number of horses and other draft animals. I plan to lead a raid into Mongol territory, the purpose of which is primarily to slaughter animals. I’ll be taking my battalion of the African Corps with me. They haven’t been blending in with the rest of the army as well as I’d hoped.”

“Well, what did you expect? They don’t speak proper Polish, and they all wear those weird haircuts like yours,” Sir Wladyclaw gestured toward my mohawk hairdo.

That had happened one night in Timbuktu, when I had fallen asleep with an inexperienced barber cutting my hair. She’d seen an Arabic travel guide that showed a Polish nobleman wearing a mohawk, so that’s what she gave me. It started a fad among my men, and when they were all copying me, I’d felt obligated to continue with the style myself. It was good for unit morale, and I’d gotten to like the looks of it. I had the feeling that it scared people, and sometimes, that was useful.

The regular Christian Army already had their own weird haircut, similar to a modern military crew cut. At least it was weird for the 13 th century. They had felt no inclination to adopt a new one.

Every good army seems to need a strange haircut. The Mongols shaved a rectangular area on the top of their heads, for reasons best known to them .

I said, “Be that as it may. I’m also taking along a battalion of Wolves, a battalion of Mounted Infantry, some artillery, some engineers, and a whole lot of Big People hauling ammunition, bridging equipment, and canned food.”

Sir Wladyclaw said, “Let’s make it two battalions of Wolves. I have them available in this city, and this is the sort of mission that the Wolves were made for. They’re good fighters, but they aren’t very good as garrison troops, you know.”

“Very well, two battalions of Wolves it is, and we’ll take Sir Grzegorz to command them. I’ll still need the Mounted Infantry, and everyone else I mentioned. We’re also going to need some guides who know the way to Mongolia.”

Sir Vladimir said, “I met an Arab looking for just such a position a few days ago. He said that he has sixty men working for him. But I’m not sure if I’d trust him enough to put him in charge of anything. It’s nothing that I can prove, you understand. I just had a strange feeling about the man.”

“Get him. We don’t have much time. I want to leave in two days, in the early morning.”

Sir Wladyclaw said, “Two days! That’s rushing things, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. We must get going soonest, and then we’ll have to push very hard for many months.”

We soon got down to the details of exactly who would go, and what we had to take with us. Then we had to figure out where we could get all of that stuff, and how we could get it all here in time.

After a while, Sir Wladyclaw glanced out the window, and said, “Whoops! Sunrise.”

The three of us went out onto the balcony that faced east. We raised our right hands to the rising sun, and recited the Army Oath:

“On my honor, I will do my duty to God, and to the army. I will obey the Warrior’s Code, and I will keep myself physically fit, mentally awake, and morally straight.

“The Warrior’s Code:

“A Warrior is: Trustworthy, Loyal, and Reverent. Courteous, Kind, and Fatherly. Obedient, Cheerful, and Efficient. Brave, Clean, and Deadly.”

Every warrior in the Christian Army recited that oath every morning of his life. Around and below us, we could hear thousands of other warriors reciting the same oath.

Then we went back to work.

By noon, we had a staff of over two hundred people working on our problems. I ordered for some food to be sent up to them, and then I broke for lunch, or rather breakfast, come to think of it. I took my two main men with me .

We were well into a decent meal when Terry, one of my eight bodyguards, announced that I had a visitor.

My bodyguards had much in common with the Big People. They were both bioengineered creations that had been produced in the same labs, owned by my Uncle Tom, the time traveler. But while the Big People were designed to look like horses, Terry and her ancestor Maude were designed to be bodyguards, dancers, housekeepers and child care workers. They looked like very innocent young women, school girls, with small breasts and thin flanks.

But they weren’t! They were in fact unbelievably strong and fast. They had been trained to be absolutely deadly, when the situation required it.

Reproducing by voluntary parthenogenesis, they had a sort of racial memory that emerged when they were four years old. At that point, they remembered everything that their mother knew up to the time of conception. They had all of her deadly knowledge of the martial arts, and all of her nice ones, like singing, dancing, taking care of children, and making marvelous love.

They had their quirks. The most obvious of these was their refusal to wear clothing, except for the smoothest and loosest of silk dresses, and then only under protest. They said that clothes were confining, scratchy, and made them itch. And every one of them always carried a small, hiltless sheath knife, very thin and sharp, resembling a kitchen knife.

“He said that he is Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Maimed, but that we should just call him Ahmed,” Terry said.

I said, “That’s some relief, anyway.”

Sir Vladimir said, “He’s the guide I told you about.”

“Well, send him in.”

A swarthy fellow came in and bowed very low. His clothing had once been expensive, but it was showing a lot of wear. A bath and a haircut wouldn’t have hurt matters either. He was working very hard at pretending not to notice the twenty-two stunningly beautiful naked ladies around him. The four men in the room were fully clothed, of course, since I wasn’t one of the sort who takes equality too far.

I think that he tried to say that he was honored to be in my august presence, but his Polish was atrocious.

“Perhaps it would be more convenient to speak in Aramaic,” I said in Aramaic.