Conrad's Last Campaign (2 page)

Polymaths, geniuses in multiple fields, are rare in history, but
China in the tenth and thirteenth centuries and the Ottoman Empire for a few centuries afterward produced more than their share. In a few rare lifetimes, more than one existed simultaneously. Su Song was a polymath working for the great khan.

In his younger days, Su Song had written an extensive book on pharmacology, cataloging hundreds of medicinal compounds and herbs. As with other polymaths, he also wrote books on engineering, metallurgy, military strategy, mineralogy, chemistry, and diplomacy. His most famous achievement was a forty-foot high clock built for the Song emperor. It was water powered, chain driven, regulated by an escapement four hundred years ahead of its time. In Conrad’s home time line, it was famous a thousand years in the future.

As with most Chinese polymaths, he rose to prominence during the civil service exams and spent most of his life in Imperial posts. It was his diplomatic expertise and knowledge of history that caused him to end up in Mongol Imperial Service.

He was on a diplomatic mission to the Jin dynasty in 1237 when the city he was in came under Mongol attack. The city held out for two months, until captured Chinese sappers exploded nearly two tons of black powder under the city walls.

Because the city had resisted, the Mongols imposed the usual penalty; death to all inhabitants. However, the khan had learned by now that some people were as valuable as horses and land. The engineers who had sapped the walls and the gunpowder they used were, after all, Chinese engineers and a Chinese invention.

In spite of his fame, Su Song was kneeling in front of a raised sword when he was recognized and saved. It was an even closer call for his wife.

It has been five years now since I entered the service of the great khan. For the last three years, I have served the new khan, Ogedei, by improving siege machines, trebuchets, and gunpowder weapons and planning supply chains for his military campaigns, but today things became much more interesting.

Early in the morning, two palace messengers summoned me to a meeting with the khan himself.

I remember that my wife fussed with my collar unnecessarily, her fingers lingering when they brushed the skin of my neck. I knew what she was thinking. When one was summoned by the great khan, one could return showered with wealth or wrapped in a shroud.

I tried to reassure her, “My dear, you have been fussing over my clothes for the past ten minutes. I’m more likely to be executed for keeping the great khan waiting than for wrinkled clothes”. I immediately regretted the jest as her eyes teared over. Like most husbands, I am better at reading the stars than I am in reading my wife’s mind.

Several of my assistants were waiting at the heavily guarded door to one of the grand halls.

Of course we dropped to our knees and began the ceremonial crawl to the throne. We had not gotten more than a few
chi
[^1] when the khan announced loudly, “Su Song, you and your men will have to stand to see what we have to show you. We have important business to attend to.”

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.”

“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.

Much of our profits supported a free school system that covered all of Europe now, from elementary schools to universities. We had a growing system of clinics, medical centers, and hospitals as well.

But for now, I had a serious problem. I had a major portion of our military might up here in the south on this
Crusade
, when they were soon to be badly needed thousands of miles down north of here!

For good and sufficient reasons, our maps had south at the top. Polack jokes are not permitted.

I went up to my office, telling my chief bodyguard, Terry, to have a cup of coffee sent to me ASAP, and whole pots of the stuff sent in at quarter-hour intervals.

“Yes, wake all the girls up. We have an emergency going on! The Mongol Horde is going to attack
Europe in three months time, and we’re all up here in the Middle East and Africa! Damn the pope and his silly Crusade!”

There wasn’t any need for secrecy. The enemy already knew what they were going to do, and I wanted all of my men to know about it, too. A very old joke had it that there were three ways to spread the news quickly. Telegraph, telephone, and tell-a-woman. The last was the most efficient. Gossip travels faster than radio waves, I swear it!

I started writing up tentative orders.

All non-army fighting men were encouraged to leave for
Eastern Europe. The army would pay for their travel expenses.

All garrison troops would be reduced by half, or down to one twelfth of the population of the city that they were guarding, whichever required fewer men. The rest of our warriors had to get to
Eastern Europe to bolster our defenses there.

Work on army construction projects, including bridges, the railroads, the
Suez project, and the Kuwait installation were to continue at the best possible speed.

Supplies were to be inventoried and reduced down to a reasonable minimum. The rest were to be sent back down north to
Eastern Europe.

We would not have sufficient shipping to get everyone to the probable Mongol attack point in time. Therefore, many troops would have to take the North African and
Middle East railroads as far as the Straits of the Dardanelles. The railroad should be completed to there within a few weeks. Ships, lighters and barges would be made available to ferry our forces across, from which point they could travel overland to their destinations.

It was a start, but it wasn’t enough. I looked at the pot of coffee to my right and the girl waiting on me.

“Melissa, run down and get me a glass and a pitcher of that Shangri-La brandy I brought up from Africa. And Terry, go wake up Sir Wladyclaw and Sir Vladimir, and tell them that I want them both here in a quarter of an hour. Somebody have some hot coffee ready for them. Vanessa, go to the radio room, and have them get Baron Piotr out of bed. I want to talk to him soonest.”

The three of them scampered out, leaving me alone except for the other five nude girls up there.

I took a drink of brandy and pondered the problem. We needed more time. If we could somehow delay the Mongols, it would be a Godsend.

Slowly, a plan started to emerge in my head. The Mongols had to travel on horseback. The average Mongol needed at least two spare horses, and some took along a string of six or eight. If we could kill enough of their horses, they wouldn’t be able to attack
Europe. Maybe not for years.

I didn’t like the idea of killing all of those dumb animals, but it was better than having the Mongols kill millions of Christians.

We needed to organize a raid, a large, fast-moving group all mounted on Big People, with an awful lot of small arms ammunition along. We’d have to carry all of our food along with us, too, and we’d be living off of iron rations for several months, because we wouldn’t have time to waste on cooking.

Carrying all of these supplies might need all of the pneumatic tired carts the army had, and about as many Big People pulling them as we had human troops along.

I would take the remainder of my African Corps with me. They were not mixing well with the rest of the army, but they were very good fighters and fiercely loyal to me. The Jews would want to stay here in Jerusalem, and the Blacks were already well on their way back to Timbuktu, but the rest of them, Christians and a few Arabs, were almost a battalion strong. We’d fill in with warriors from the regular Mobile Infantry.

A battalion of Wolves was needed, as was a battalion of mounted infantry. Add to that three komands of artillery, because we wouldn’t have time to be delayed by obstacles in our path. We’d have to just blow them out of the way.

And that meant more Big People to haul the cannons and ammo along.

And six companies of engineers would be a very good thing to have along, along with plenty of bridging equipment. From what I’d heard, many of the roads down there were passable by caravans only. Taking our carts through would be a challenge.

Word came that Baron Piotr was waiting for me.

In the radio room, I said, “Piotr, what I was afraid of will soon come to pass. The Mongol Horde will attack
Europe in about three months. We have to get much of our supplies and more than half of our warriors back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, sir. Has the pope been informed?”

“No one has been informed yet, except you. Don’t keep this a secret. Let everybody in on the news,” I said. “I’ll let you inform the pope and King Henryk. I might be rude to them at this point.”

I could hear the grimace in his voice when he said, “Oh, thank you, sir.”

“Hey! This Crusade was not my idea!”

Then I read my tentative orders to him.

Sir Piotr said, “Very good, sir. I’ll have all of our ships at sea return to Europe by the quickest routes, unload their passengers and cargo, and head to Africa as fast as possible under ballast.”

I said, “I still want the construction machinery and supplies to get here. I want work on the railroads and the
Suez project to continue at full speed.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll get it sorted out. How good do you think your chances are of delaying the Mongols with this raid of yours?”

“I have no idea. All I can say is that we’ll try our best. You should proceed with defending Europe as if I had no chance of accomplishing anything at all, and that they will be hitting you with all of their forces. If I can’t stop the Mongols, I’ll be following behind them, harassing their rear.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have all of the land-based aircraft brought back home, too.”

“Good. And until the enemy actually attacks, I want those planes disarmed. We need them for observation, with the longest range possible. If they have guns, they won’t be able to resist making a few strafing runs, and they will get pin cushioned with arrows.”

“The Eagles won’t like that, sir.”

“To hell with what they’d like. There’s a war on. Conrad out.”

I got back to my office to find Sir Vladimir and Sir Wladyclaw waiting for me.

Sir Vladimir was one of my oldest friends, and been with me for eight years before we defeated the Mongols the first time. For many years, he had been in command of our Reserve Forces, until we had time to build enough snowflake forts to house them all in. About the same time, we finally had enough Big People to mount them all. Sir Vladimir now commanded the Mounted Infantry, the biggest unit in the Christian Army.

Sir Wladyclaw was the son of my old friend Sir Miesko, and his wife, Lady Richeza. He had once taken two reductions in rank so that he could take command the Wolves, a cavalry unit made up of the scions of the old nobility. These men were too proud to do honest work, so they had become one of our few full-time fighting units. Most of our warriors spent most of their time being productive. But that political move on Sir Wladyclaw’s part had made him one of the most powerful men in my army.

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.”