"That's dastardly!" Prince Henryk said.
"What is, my lord?"
"They're deliberately trying to kill the horse!"
"Yes, my lord."
"That's unfair!"
"True, my lord. But was a horseman ever known to be fair with a footman?"
"Fair to a footman? I doubt if it ever crossed anyone's mind."
"Then why should a footman fight 'fair' with a horseman? If the horseman wanted to fight fair, he would get off his horse, at which time there would be no point in harming the animal. These men are not trained to fight fair, my lord, they're trained to win!"
"Well, I don't like it," Prince Henryk said.
"Will you like it when the Mongols start butchering your women and children, my lord?"
"Be damned, Baron Conrad."
"I think I will be, my lord."
Abbot Ignacy made the sign of the cross.
Count Lambert was worried about this altercation between his greatest vassal and his future liege lord, and tried to change the subject.
"Baron Conrad, this is all fine and well when practicing on dummies, but what of the real thing?"
"We've done it, my lord, at least to the extent of using live horses. We've never tried going for the rider of such a horse, for lack of a volunteer, but I myself have ridden an old horse into a mass of pikers."
"What happened?"
"I came down hard, my lord."
"And your horse?" Prince Henryk said.
"Dead, of course."
"You killed a dumb animal?" Prince Henryk asked.
"My lord, we eat dumb animals. I have lost two dozen men in the course of this training. What difference does a few animals make? This afternoon we'll be shooting four pigs to show you what our guns can do."
"At least you'll eat the pigs."
"My lord, we ate the dead horse, too."
The rest of the day went like that, half awestruck praise and half condemnation because I had no intention of losing men in order to conform with their ideas of a fair fight. Dammit, there is no such thing as a fair fight! You are either out there to kill the bastard or you shouldn't be fighting at all!
On the other hand, the reaction of the commoners was uniformly positive. They liked the idea of their enemies being dead and their own families being alive. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't going to get much help from the conventional knights. We were going to have to beat the Mongols on our own.
After the abbreviated day of training, the troops went back to the barracks to rest and we threw an afternoon party for our guests, with music and plenty of food, beer and mead. The commoners were all buzzing about what they'd seen, and the girls from the cloth factory were literally jumping up and down, some of them, but the nobility was considerably more subdued.
Those knights who had come were mostly of the more progressive faction of Count Lambert's knights, and if they had reservations about what I was doing, I hated to think about the more reactionary knights. I suppose that I should have expected their reaction, but I really hadn't.
Most of them were eager to plant the new seeds and buy or make the new farm machinery. Quite a few had installed indoor plumbing in their manors, and many were setting up light industrial plants, with our help, to keep their peasants busy during the off-seasons. But they seemed to look on the army as a threat to their whole existence. By their lights, they were better than the commoners and had special privileges because they protected the land. It didn't take much in the way of brains for them to realize that my warriors were better fighters than they were. They felt they were being undercut, and I suppose they were.
I began to realize that the open house was a big mistake I knew I'd never do it again, at least not with the nobility there, but there was nothing I could do now but brazen it out.
Chapter Twenty-three
It was getting dark when I called the crowd together and led them to a bowl in the hills that formed sort of an amphitheater. Once they were settled in, the troops marched up, barefoot and wearing tan linen fatigues and winter cloaks. An area in front, twelve yards to the side, was piled a yard deep with kindling wood, all carefully selected to be dry wood and free of knots.
There was a small brick wall, about two yards square, in front of it, with a few torches around. I stepped up to the front.
"You have seen these men traverse various obstacles in full armor. You have seen them prove their proficiency with various weapons, and today you have seen the first public demonstration of our guns. These men have the finest arms and armor in the world, but weapons are unimportant compared to the men wielding them. A true warrior is always deadly, even when he is alone and naked."
"Sir Vladimir, a demonstration, please."
Sir Vladimir was our best man at empty-handed fighting, much better than I was. Together, we had put together a decent system of self-defense, based on what little I knew about karate and a lot of trial-and-error. He put on a good demonstration, shouting as he smashed up boards and bricks with his bare hands and feet. Of course, the bricks maybe weren't baked all that well and the boards were light pine that splits easily along the grain, but the crowd oohed and aahed at all the proper times.
"It is said that a true warrior can walk through walls, and in a sense, that's true. We have here a solid brick wall. Perhaps many of you looked at it as you came in," I said. "Sir Vladimir, walk through that wall."
Perhaps some of them expected him to do something magical, but what he did was give it a side thrust kick and it smashed nicely. Then he walked through the rubble. Okay, that wall had only been laid the day before and the mortar wasn't well set. Indeed, the mortar had been made with a dozen parts of sand to only one part of lime, but I hadn't made any promises.
"Any of these men could have done that. It's just that since we only had the one wall, and since Sir Vladimir is in charge of this installation, well, rank hath its privileges."
That got a small titter out of the crowd.
"A warrior can also walk through fire. More than that, he can walk over a bed of glowing coals, which as you know is much hotter. They are going to walk through this." I pointed at the big mat of wood. On cue, Sir Vladimir and the Banki brothers took the four torches to the four comers of the wood pile and simultaneously lit it afire. It went up with a huge whoosh! In moments, the fire was five stories high. The torches were thrown into the fire.
"There was nothing magic about that," I said. "We put some oil under the wood along with some of the black powder that we use in the guns. It also fights fires., I just wanted it all to start at once so that the whole fire would be burning evenly."
I then invited my noble guests to stand near the fire and had the cooks bring out some long skewers with thin slices of meat threaded on them. As the fire burned down to coals, the cooks set the meat over the fire and it soon broiled. This was offered to the nobles and what was left was given to the commoners, to show everybody that it really was hot. Mainly, it gave us something to do while the fire burned down to coals. During this time, there was no other light in the valley but the fire, and the human eye can acclimatize without a person's noticing it. Actually, the coals were becoming quite dim.
I asked the nobles to step back and we marched the troops up so that a dozen men were lined up in back and on each side of the fire. Sir Vladimir and the other instructors were in front of it, along with me. A few workers with long-handled rakes stirred the coals evenly, incidentally kicking up some spectacular sparks.
"You will observe that I am barefoot, as are all of my men. I'll be doing this first," I said. "As my liege lord Count Lambert is fond of proving, a leader must be able to do everything that his men can do. But while a warrior can walk through fire, often his clothes cannot."