"Frankowski, Leo - Stargard 5 - Lord Conrad's Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)
Another band took the roof off my highest tower and mounted there a small windmill and a huge water tank with a new well below it. Yet others dug pits and trenches in the kitchen garden and buried clay pipes and even a small stone room. My kitchens were rebuilt with a big copper stove and sinks with running water, but my favorite was the bathroom, with hot running water and a huge porcelain tub large enough for two! We used it often together, Baron Conrad and I. For years I spent much of my life waiting for his return.
Then, just prior to last Christmas, Count Lambert did a remarkably stupid thing. His wife, whom he had not seen in twelve years, died in Hungary, and his daughter, a girl of fourteen summers, came north to live with him. The count decided that Baron Conrad would be the perfect match for the girl and ordered Conrad to marry her. This at a time when Conrad was making final preparations to defend the land from the Mongol invaders! Conrad refused, saying that he had never met the girl, and anyway, they didnТt even speak the same language. Count Lambert became incensed and ordered Conrad off his lands. Conrad, disgusted, packed his saddlebags with gold and headed west like a knighterrant in a story, without so much as a change of underwear.
Fortunately, he stopped at my manor on his way, and I was able to talk. some sense into my poor little dumpling. Count Lambert wanted him to marry his daughter, and to be sure, young Duke Henryk wanted Conrad to marry somebody and to stop living in sin with a Mohammedan. I suggested that he marry Cilicia, knowing full well that it was impossible. This made Conrad say that he could never become her sort of heathen and that he had been a failure at trying to convert her to the true religion. Therefore, no priest of either persuasion would ever marry them, nor a Jew either, for that matter.
I then suggested that he marry me. This would satisfy the duke, and Count Lambert would no longer force the issue if it could not possibly bear fruit. Conrad decided that a small wedding would be all that was needed and that things could go on pretty much as before, with nothing changed but one small ceremony. I, of course, knew all the players in the game, and I knew that nothing of the kind would take place. But a wise woman always knows when to keep her mouth shut!
In the morning he, asked me to be his wife, and I consented with all my heart. His proposal was particularly welcome since I had twice missed my time and knew that I was heavy with his child.
We rode to Cracow to talk to the duke, who, after all, was my legal guardian, and he gave us his blessings, along with a promise to have a serious talk with Count Lambert. Conrad was enlarged to count, since a mere baron could hardly marry a countess. We had a beautiful wedding in Wawel Cathedral, and all the nobility of Poland attended it. Indeed, there were so many that the heralds could find room in the cathedral only for barons and above, and my husbandТs party was almost excluded for being mere knights! He solved this problem by enlarging his entire party to baronies.
Our marriage has had no time to be blissful, for my husband has spent the months since our wedding almost exclusively in preparation for war with the invading Mongols. Conrad is facing grave political difficulties as well as military ones, yet despite the fact that I am far more adept than he at anything concerning people, he will not let me help him with politics.
The duke has invited many foreign knights to aid us against the Tartars, and he bade all the fighting men in Poland to rally to him near Legnica, where provision has been made to support so large an army. The dukes of Sandomierz and Mazovia have refused to do this, as it would involve abandoning their own lands and peoples to the Mongols and :hen having to reconquer them again. Further, the nobles of Little Poland were also loath to abandon their estates and start the war by retreating hundreds of miles to the west. They left Duke Henryk as a group and swore to serve under Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia, despite the fact that they had once sworn fealty to Henryk.
And Conrad, with the biggest and finest army of all, though none will credit it, felt that he could not follow Duke Henryk either, since much of his force was with the riverboats on the Vistula River, and these could hardly go west overland to Legnica. There were flying machines that flew from Eagle Nest, near Okoitz, but they could not fly from Legnica, needing the catapult to launch them. Further, ConradТs huge land army needs the railroads that have been built for the purpose along the Vistula. They cannot fight efficiently in the west. And lastly, Conrad was loath to abandon his factories and cities to the enemy. My love therefore felt obligated to disobey Duke Henryk and rather go to the aid of young Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia, who was leading the Polish forces of the east.
But Duke Boleslaw is a boy of fourteen who has heard too many tales of knightly prowess and sees no need of saddling himself with Уa lot of peasant infantry.Ф
If ever there was a blood-soaked need for some adept political maneuvering, this is the time! Further, I seem to be the only person about with the political skills necessary to unite the military forces of this confused and barbarous land.
Yet Conrad is so naive and helpless at all things political that he does not even realize how stupid he is! I could not persuade him to let me smooth his path. He treats me like a pretty child who needs protection rather than as the one person who could solve at least some of his obvious problems. A few weeks ago it got so bad that he even had a guard posted at my door Уfor my protection,Ф he said, but in fact to keep me from going to Duke Henryk and Duke Boleslaw and bringing them together as the old duke certainly would have done.
And two days ago the Mongols found us! We beat off their first two attacks with our swivel guns and our grenades, and the field below is dark with their bodies. Now they are camped beyond the range of our guns, more of them than we can count with our telescopes, and they are building huge siege machines to close with us.
Conrad has not come, and we know not whether he is alive or dead. But if he be alive, he must come soon, for if he is late, it is we who will be dead, and our children with us.
Chapter Three
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
Two hundred miles from my home the weather was still foul, the lightning and thunder went on without rest, and the cold drizzle had been replaced with sleet. The troops were nearing exhaustion, but three days after our battle with the Mongols, the cleanup was just about completed. By actual count, 216,692 of the enemy had been killed, and that was in our base-twelve numbers. In the base-ten numbers that I had grown up with, we had done in more than half a million of the bastards here. Their bodies had been stripped and buried twelve deep in long trenches, but their heads were set on stakes and lances in neat squares, a gross skulls to the side. There were more than two dozen of these squares stretching across the battlefield, quite a monument to Polish arms.
A ghastly sight-IТd had it done so that no one could ever doubt what we had accomplished here, so that no one could ever say that we had exaggerated.
The booty taken was equally vast. Each of the enemy had carried an average of five and a half pounds of gold and silver, three years worth of plunder in the Russias. There were no commercial banks available to looting Mongols, so they had to carry their spoils along with them. It was easy to see why most medieval troops were so eager to break ranks and loot. That much gold and silver was easily six yearsТ pay. My troops, of course, were better disciplined We would share out the loot in an equitable manner once it was taken home and counted.
Just how I was going to do that in such a manner that my entire army didnТt quit and retire was a problem I hadnТt solved yet. There was so much money suddenly available that it could ruin the economy with inflation, the way Spain was ruined after the conquest of the Americas. IТd have to think of something.
Since our supplies of food and ammunition were partially exhausted, each of our war carts could carry about an additional five tons, yet it took two gross of the things to haul the gold and silver alone. Another six gross carts were needed to carry the captured weapons and other gear that looked worth saving for trophies if nothing else. Each of these carts would go back toward Three Walls with a platoon of forty-three men to pull and guard it.
Most of the enemy horses had been killed in the battle and in IlyaТs night raid ;he evening before. Baron Vladimir had felt that a half million horsehides was a prize well worth taking, and he had had the animals skinned before the carcasses were buried. Salting them down would have to wait, since weТd have to get the salt mines working again first. For now the skins were just stacked on the field, with a prayer that the cold weather would hold and they wouldnТt rot. Near those stacks was a huge pile labeled Уscrap iron,Ф junk arms and armor that nobody would want to hang on a wall. The forges could always use scrap. WeТd be back for it eventually.
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