The Flying Warlord Read online

  “But you won’t get a chance to start spending it immediately. There's still work to be done. The River Battalion killed far more of the enemy than were killed here on this plain, and there are too few of them left to do the looting, let alone the cleanup. But there at least we won't have the sad job of burying our own men!”

  “And now I want to talk a bit about the future.”

  “We have won a great victory here, but don’t think for a minute that the Mongols have gone away forever. These marauders that we have killed had descendants, and if we don't do something about it, in twenty years our own children will have to try and repeat what we have done here. And next time maybe the Mongols won't act as stupidly as they have in the last few weeks.”

  “Yes, I said that we have defeated a stupid enemy! They lined themselves up on the east bank of the Vistula and let us cut them down like a farmer cuts down hay I They set up a stupid night guard on their camp, and let Baron Ilya’s battalion of Night Fighters go in and kill fifty thousand of them, including most of their officers' And without those officers, the Mongol troops rode stupidly into a trap that got the rest of them slaughtered.”

  “Well, next time, they won’t be so stupid! Next time, they will have learned something from the hard lesson we gave them, and next time they might win!”

  “Next time, we have to be far stronger than we were here. Next time we must have more troops, better weapons, and better defenses!”

  “So don’t think that you can retire from the army and go back to whatever it was that you were doing before the Mongols and I came along. You can't! There's work to be done!”

  “I have bought up most of the land for five miles on both banks of the Vistula. We are going to build a fort like the one at East Gate every five miles along the river, all the way down to the Baltic, and on both sides! And after that, we’ll build them up the Bug as well! Every one of those forts will be manned by a company of our men, so the army will not be disbanding. We will continue to grow, and you all can continue to look forward to promotions, for not only will we have to build and man the forts, we will have to vastly expand our manufacturing facilities to equip them.”

  “The Christian Army that we all belong to will be a permanent organization. In the same manner that the Church defends the souls of all Christians, we will defend their bodies. We will do our work in the realm of the physical just as the Church does its work in the realm of the spiritual. We will be doing God’s work, and every one of you will be needed.”

  “Yet no man will be forced to stay in the army. Once we have finished with the cleanup, any man who wishes to leave may do so. I simply promise any man who leaves that he will regret it later, when he is a peasant and his old friends are knights and barons!”

  “In times to come, we will not only be defending Christendom, but we will eventually be able to take the war to the enemy. Millions of souls in the Russias and elsewhere are now living under the Mongol’s brutal tread. We are going to go out there and free them, and make proper Christians out of them besides!”

  “I promise you all interesting times!”

  “That’s about it. Have a talk with your men and then get a good night's sleep. Like I said, there's work to do!”

  Interlude Seven

  The tape wound to a stop.

  “That’s it? There?” Tom said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “But it didn’t end there! Not when I was alive!”

  “Tom, I know that this thing has been quite a shock to you. You need to unwind, to relax for a while. Then things will be clearer for you. Look, let’s have a few more drinks, then take a steambath and maybe invite in a few of the wenches. After that a good rubdown and some more girls and I know you'll feel better.”

  “You think I’m crazy, don't you? I'm not! Something Conrad has done, or something about him has shattered the temporal continuity of all creation! Can't you understand that I built the first time machine and I don't understand what is happening!”

  “Tom, I don’t understand what's happening either, but I do know that a drink and a wench never hurt anybody. Come on.” I took him by the hand and led him out of the room.