"What are those things?" Tadaos said, as we cruised by the fighting near Sandomierz. What with the restrictions on ammunition, we were shooting now only on the closer, downstream leg of the circuit. We had ammunition left for one pass, so we wanted to spend it well.

"Darned if I know," I said. There were four of them, and they looked sort of like big door frames without the doors or the walls, either. They were maybe three stories tall, and had a sort of teeter-totter mounted on the cross beam. Ropes seemed to be coming from where each seat should have been.

"Maybe they make a playground for giants," Captain Targ joked.

We got our answer shortly when fully two gross men picked up ropes that were hanging from the near end of one of the teeter-totters and pulled, all at once. A rock bigger than a man flew in an incredibly high arc, and landed a few dozen yards upstream of us, kicking up a cold, drenching spray.

"It's some kind of Mongol trebuchet," the captain said.

"They could be big trouble if they get the range right," Tadaos said.

"True," I said. "Captain, have your men target on those catapults, once we get in close."

"Right, sir."

Another rock came flying, and another. The rate of fire on those catapults was remarkable. They were shooting as fast as they could drag up rocks!

They were set up on a hill for better elevation, and they were shooting at us from three gross yards away without difficulty. I had the feeling that their ultimate range might be a good deal more.

A second one got into action as we turned in to make our run.

Then a huge rock crashed into RB4 The River Belle, directly in front of us. Three more fell into the beach area right on top of the Mongol troops, but that didn't slow their rate of fire. It was as though they didn't care if they took casualties!

Tadaos and I were on the foredeck as I watched through my telescope. He was out of Halman bombs, and there wasn't a good target for his Molotov cocktails, so he had his bow out. He'd scrounged hundreds of Mongol arrows and was politely returning them to their rightful owners.

Our troops opened fire on the catapults about the time that the other boats started to take them seriously. The Mongols had to be close together to pull simultaneously, and bunched up like that they were dog meat for the swivel guns. Chunks of wood went flying from the uprights as well.

"It looks like it was a paper tiger," I said.

"Yeah, until they get brains enough to mount them things on the other side of the hill," Tadaos said. "Oh, shit."

"What?" I said, still looking through my telescope.

There was a huge crash and the deck bounced under me, throwing me off balance, tumbling me to the deck. I looked to my left and there was a yard-wide hole in the deck fight next to me, right where Tadaos had been standing.

"Tadaos!" I shouted.

"Yes, sir?" he said from my right.

"My God! I thought you were dead."

"I saw it coming in time."

"Then why didn't you warn me?"

"There wasn't much time, and you was safe enough where you was. Could of been trouble if you moved."

Then a grappling hook with a leather rope attached came flying at me. It caught on the parapet, between two merlons. I got my sword out in time to lean over and slash open the face of a man who was climbing up the side of the boat.

"Captain! Get all your men on deck!"

"They're learning," Tadaos shouted as he drew his sword from over his left shoulder. "They're maybe a little slow, but they're learning."

Four platoons of troops ran up on deck and fended off what turned out to be a concerted boarding attempt. Once, the Mongols actually made it on deck, and had to be expelled with a pike charge. Things were interesting for a while, but then Tadaos came to me.

"We can handle things up here, sir, but I'm worried about that hole in the bottom. That rock went right through, you know."

"Well, I guess I am the best man for that job," I said. After all, I'd designed these boats. Who better to fix one? So I changed hats from battle commander to steamboat repairman.

That rock had gone through the top deck, through a double bunk on the middle deck, through the middle deck, through the cargo deck and through the bottom a half yard below that! I had the feeling that if it had hit me on the way, I wouldn't even have slowed it down!

The most serious damage was to the bottom, of course, and even that wasn't catastrophic. The volume between the cargo deck and the bottom was cut into dozens of watertight compartments, and only one of them was flooded. It would have been a different story had we been hit in the paddle wheel or the boiler. But there was no way to armor against two-ton rocks, so there was no point in worrying about it.

Except for the ones in the bow, the watertight compartments were all identical. The boat's dining room had three trestle tables that were just the right size to fit in the bottom of these. One of my better ideas. I got together a couple of crewmen and we lifted the floorboards, sank a table, and nailed it in place with all of us standing in the knee-deep water to hold down the table.

We put a portable pump down there and one man was left working it. It leaked some, but he could keep up with it. We stopped a moment to admire a job well done, when another rock came crashing through not four yards away, taking the comer off a war cart before it went through the bottom. Blood dripped through the ragged hole from the deck above.

"Do you remember what we did here," I said to the man next to me. He said he did.

"Well, do it again over there."

I went up to Tartar Control and discovered that we had a third killing ground going north of Czersk. Four boats were on it and the one near Brzesko now had six. All the rest were in transit to or from East Gate, to get more coal and ammunition.

The Mongols were completely inexperienced in dealing with us and our weapons, and paid heavily for the lessons they learned. Yet it was equally true that we were inexperienced with them. But with the radios, we could pass fighting tips around, while fighting in three separate groups; the Mongols had to go through each learning experience three times. And we charged full tuition to each and every one of them.

I got back on deck just in time to see the RB10 Not For Hire take a rock square on her paddle wheel. She was dead ahead of us and even as she slowed, Tadaos was getting a towing line ready. Using one of the Mongol grapnels as a monkey's fist, a line was tossed to her by one of the experienced boatmen in the crew just as we stopped alongside. Within a minute, Tadaos was calling for full-speed ahead and we resumed our way to East Gate. As we towed her home, I caught glimpses of the Hire's crew dismantling the wreckage, preparing to rebuild. We were taking casualties, but we weren't giving the bastards any trophies.

RB1 TO ALL RIVER UNITS. THE ENEMY RAS A CATA

PULT THAT LOOKS LIKE A TEETER-TOTTER MADE FOR

GIANTS. IT CAN THROW A HUGE ROCK FOUR GROSS

YARDS, WHICH CAN DAMAGE A BOAT. IF YOU SEE ONE,

DO NOT ATTACK UNTIL YOU HAVE TWO OTHER BOATS

TO BACK YOU UP. THEY NEED A LARGE NUMBER OF

MEN WORKING CLOSE TOGETHER TO OPERATE THEM,

SO THEY ARE EASILY SLAUGHTERED BY OUR SWIVEL

GUNS WHEN THEY ARE MOUNTED ON A HILL. THE

PROBLEM IS THAT THEY ARE WILLING TO REPLACE MEN

AS FAST AS WE BUTCHER THEM. IF THEY GET SMART

ENOUGH TO MOUNT THEM ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A

HILL, WE WILL BE ABLE TO REACH THEM ONLY WITH

HALMAN BOMBS AND RIFLE GRENADES. ANY OTHER

USE OF BOMBS IS NOW FORBIDDEN, TO SAVE AMMUNI

TION. IF THEY ARE HIDDEN BY A HILL, THEY MUST

HAVE SOMEONE ON TOP OF THE HILL TO AIM THE

CATAPULT. TARGET THIS MAN. CONRAD. OUT.

Of course, I wasn't the only one handing out advice, not by a long shot. Some ideas were brilliant, some were dumb. But a cumulative learning process was taking place,

Darkness fell as we passed Cracow, still safe on the west bank of the Vistula. Piotr's crew was radioing the boats, reminding them that we had now lost our air cover, and we would have to go back to patrolling until dawn. Fortunately, the Mongols seemed to have had enough for one day and were breaking contact. We couldn't follow them, so it was a quiet night.

There was only a platoon of boatwrights at East Gate, but they were our best boatwrights, and they had plenty of eager if unskilled help. Because we had called ahead, an entire paddlewheel assembly was waiting for the Hire, and a crane swung it into position even as the troops were running on more ammo, food, and coal.

The patches in the bottom of the Muddling Through were inspected and secured with lag bolts. Linen caulking was pounded in the cracks and we were pronounced good enough. They gave us some boards and nails, and we were told to patch the upper decks on our way back to the fighting. Just then the boatwrights had better things to do.

Our badly wounded and dead were taken to an improvised hospital and morgue in the boat factory. I should have had something better planned, but I hadn't expected such heavy losses. I'd thought that our boats would be invincible!

We were almost ready to leave when I saw a Big People come galloping in hauling a cart full of swivel gun ammo and four terrified troops. The carts were three yards tall and lacked brakes, springs, and a suspension system; they were never intended to move at the speeds that a Big Person was capable of. But she stopped it in time and gave me a "Hi there!" posture.

"Hi there, yourself!" I said. "Are you Anna?"

She said YES, so I gave her a big hug.

"You see? I told you they needed you! But I've got to run, love. See you in a few days. Don't scare these boys too badly!" I ran to my boat and went back to the war. I hoped she hadn't noticed my wounded eye.

I sent a message to Duke Henryk that night, telling him that we were holding the Mongols at the Vistula, but we could not do it forever. I begged him to advance now with whatever forces he had. He did not answer.

 

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI

Count Conrad's instructions had been quite clear. Duke Henryk was at Legnica with his own men, including my father and brothers. Count Conrad had sent him a written apology for not being there, along with six crews of radio operators who worked out of those little sevenman Night-Fighter carts. Duke Henryk was not pleased with us.

Duke Boleslaw was a fifteen-year-old knight who had resolved to defend eastern Poland. He was not on good terms with our liege lord Henryk.

If we dropped back to Legnica, as Duke Henryk wanted, we would be abandoning all of our factories and forts to the enemy. Our women would have to try to save themselves without our help, and the Mongols had long experience taking cities that were defended by both men and women. With women alone, well, I had to side with Count Conrad.

Yet if we fought alone, we would be a third separate force defending Poland. It was necessary that we make contact with Duke Boleslaw and join forces with him. But it was also necessary that we do so in such a manner that he supported our efforts as well as we supported his.

A combined strategy was necessary, and the young fool had rebuffed our earlier attempts at diplomacy. He had heard too many stories about knightly prowess and heroic deeds, and he could see no advantage in saddling himself with a "band of peasant footmen," no matter how large.

Myself, I think Conrad a fool for not using Countess Francine as his emissary, at least on the second try. That woman could talk a hungry dog away from a dead pig. But a young husband is often a fool when it comes to his new wife.

As it was, I left Hell with the biggest Christian army in all of history at my command, and I didn't know where I was going. All I knew was that Duke Boleslaw was somewhere between Plock and Sandomierz, and that somehow I had to join forces with him and work out some sort of strategy.

I had over two dozen of Anna's daughters, and I put a dozen of them with good riders to search for Boleslaw, men who were scions of the old nobility, men who Duke Boleslaw would not dare scoff at.

The other Big People were needed to run messages along my sixteen-mile-long train, and to lightly screen our flanks. We went on without stopping, and normal horses could never have kept up with us. My old Witchfire, now long in the tooth, was safely in the barns at Three Walls, and my love Annastashia was with our children not far away from him.

I had pulled a few strings and seen to it, that my mother, my sisters, and sisters-in-law, along with all our peasants, were also at Three Walls, since I judged it to be our strongest fortification. Rank has its privileges, and I meant my family to be as safe as they could be.

We had practiced this business of continual motion last winter with six dozen carts, and had continued in circles for a month without mishap. Of course, that was with better trained men, men that had been winnowed out to remove the weak and the stupid. With this last class, well, they had been given only four months' training and we hadn't washed out anybody, except for those who had died . Still, their officers had been well trained, and we'd hoped that this would be enough.

Supplies of wood had been waiting for us along the roads since last summer with remarkably little pilferage. Supplies of water were provided. Crews of greasers went down the lines of moving carts, greasing the ball bearings in the wheels. The rails were new, the bridges intact, and we made six dozmiles a day on foot.

Some of the men had a hard time sleeping on the move, but experience had taught us that when they got tired enough , they would sleep.

By dawn of the second day we had passed Cracow, and still I had no word of Boleslaw.