Conrad's Last Campaign Read online

  Conrad’s Last Campaign

  Book Eight

  In the

  Adventures of Conrad Stargard

  By

  Leo Frankowski

  And

  Rodger Olsen

  Published by Great Authors Online

  Copyright 2014 by Rodger Olsen

  Cover Images From

  text: Knight's Spur, (c) 2005, frielp, CC BY 2.0

  text: Mongolian Steppe, (c) 2009, Marked Do, CC BY 3.0

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author. Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  The Reluctant Crusader

  Twenty Years Ago in China

  From the Secret Diary of Su Song

  Be Assured That Never Will I Try to Trick You

  From the Secret Journal of Su Song, Part Two

  “For God and Poland! We go to War!”

  A Prince Among Men

  Disaster in the Mountains

  Moving up the River

  We go Shopping

  From the Secret Journal of Su Song, Part Three

  Across the Sea of Grass

  Betrayal. Dirty, Rotten Betrayal

  The Second Betrayal

  From the Memoirs of Duke Osiol

  Wisdom from Conrad

  Letter home from Captain William Orbitz

  Conrad’s Diary Continues

  Su Song’s Fourth Entry

  Interlude in Uncle Tom’s Control Room

  The Trip to Karakorum Begins

  From the Secret Journal of Su Song, Part 5

  The War on the Tundra

  Karakorum at Last

  Captain Stanislaw’s Tale

  From the Secret Journal of Su Song, Part Six

  Visitors are Coming for Dinner

  Second Interlude in Uncle Toms Control Room

  The Battle of Karakorum

  Waiting for Our Visitors

  From the Secret Journal of Su Song, Part 7

  My Guests Arrive

  The Waiting Game.

  The End Game.

  Post Game Highlights

  Last from the Journals of Su Song

  The View from on High

  The Final Interlude in Uncle Tom’s Control Room

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all those friends who, at our age, are slipping away. Leo Frankowski became one of those friends on Christmas Day 2008.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the extensive help given by Chris Ciulla. He was a friend and help to Leo both before and after his death.

  His knowledge of the universe of Conrad Stargard is probably the best to be found anywhere.

  Other Books

  Mr. Frankowski’s estate has republished Lord Conrad’s Crusade and Copernick’s Rebellion. Both are available in hard copy or Kindle format at [Amazon.com] and in EPUB format at [www.barnesandnoble.com].

  Mr. Frankowski’s co-author, Rodger Olsen, has published an apocalyptic novel, The Empire of Texas. It is also available at [Amazon.com] and [www.barnesandnoble.com].

  Mr. Olsen’s style of writing is very similar to Mr. Frankowski, so if you enjoy Leo’s work, you may also enjoy the Empire of Texas.

  Foreword

  When Leo Frankowski returned from Russia in 2006, he considered the New Kashubia series to be finished and was willing to put it aside. He had published Lord Conrad’s Crusade during his last year in Russia, but felt that Conrad’s adventure was not resolved.

  He began working on the final chapter of Conrad’s life soon after his return to the States. His age and declining health made progress slow, but he was eventually able to complete the plot outline and write part of the final book.

  Leo and I had agreed that Conrad would grow and change a little in the last book and find a way to noble retirement or noble death. You will have to read the last chapter to know which path was chosen.

  Unfortunately, Leo died before finishing the text. On Christmas Morning 2008, he died suddenly and peacefully from the effects of various drugs that he was prescribed.

  I had been helping him with his writing for a number of years and had sat with him for many hours as he worked out the plot of the final book. At that point, virtually all of the writing had been done by Leo. At the time of his death, my only contribution was the opening prologue.

  However, the book was well started and the plot known and Leo wanted everyone to know what happened to Conrad. I was familiar with Leo’s writing style, having been coached by him to enable me to contribute to earlier writings, so I finished it.

  I hope you enjoy it.

  As those of you who have read the prior stories probably noticed, Leo was almighty careless in using his duodecimal system. The terms gross and dozen were used consistently, but Conrad often lapsed back into the base-ten numbers of his childhood. We were rarely certain if thousand was decimal 1,000 or 1,728 or whether fifty was 5*10 or 5*12. I have standardized the translations in this book. People using a base-twelve system would tend to think and build in gross and dozen and those terms have been preserved. All other numbers are now consistently base-ten, i.e. fifty is 5*10.

  Prologue

  It was still full dark when Megan whispered in my ear, “It is almost morning, your grace.” She and Terry were pressing their bodies against mine and gently massaging my muscles to wake me. Gradually, I became aware of the sounds of a camp waking up. Muffled voices, the sounds of clattering pots, and footsteps filtered into the tent.

  Soon they were dressing me in my armor. The golden armor gleamed this morning and under it my muscles were still hard and lean from the months I had spent in a slave pit. As my bodyguards dressed me, others were trying to feed me. I ate very little. A too-full belly can slow down a sword arm.

  I had said my morning prayers, recited my oath and was ready to leave when the false dawn glowed outside. By the time full dawn came, I and my personal lance were approaching the battle lines.

  I thought that I would be the first there, since the attack was not scheduled until almost an hour past dawn, but three companies of my men awaited my arrival.

  The Africa Corps spread out on my left. They were battle-tested, but some of them were only months away from having been slaves in a medieval world. They were outfitted with our standard armor, but some had doffed their helmets, preferring to wear their brightly colored Mohawks into battle. Most held rifles or pistols, but some had drawn their swords instead and a few even preferred lances.

  The Christian knights formed the right wing, the “place of honor.” Most held modern weapons, but the profusion of armor styles, helmet plumes, and heraldry meant that they would never be mistaken for a modern army. We kept them as a favor to the pope. Actually, with their lousy training and poor discipline, they were the most useless part of the army. All you could do with them was to yell, “The enemy is that way: charge,” then get out of the way. They had demanded and been granted the honor of leading the charge today.

  A company of Wolves formed the center. Like the knights, they were noblemen trained from birth to be warriors. Unlike the knights, they went on to be trained as professional soldiers. They sat relaxed on their Big People and surveyed the battleground. Each of them held his shield close in front of him and rested his Sten gun or his sword on his pommel.

  I didn’t really want to attack Jerusalem, but they left me no choice when they had decided to fight rather than surrender. You would think they would have learned by now that everybody conquers Jerusalem. David took it from Canaanites and slaughtered the inhabitants. Then came the Egypt
ian pharaohs, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Saladin, and a bunch of others along the way.

  Want to be a Boy Scout? Earn some merit badges. Want to be a scholar? Read some books. Want to be a conqueror? Sack Jerusalem. For extra points, send the inhabitants into exile for a few hundred years. It’s tradition, and now it’s my turn.

  I had instructed the artillery to concentrate on the city walls only. If we damaged holy sites like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Temple Mount, it would make it harder to govern the city later.

  When the smoke from the last artillery barrage cleared, the knights would start the charge. However, Silver and I would be first through the wall, flanked by the Wolves. I reached down, clipped my Sten gun to my saddle, and drew my sword. This would be a historic battle, and history deserved to be written with a blade.

  It was the early fall of 1263 AD. I was the Duke of Sandomierz, the Duke of Cracow, the Duke of Mazovia, the Hetman of the Christian Army, a Crusader, and a damned long way from home.

  The Reluctant Crusader

  Compared to the slave pit I had been chained if for the past year, my new home was a palace. In fact it was the Royal Palace of Jerusalem. It had become available when the old owner died suddenly and unexpectedly while charging a Christian Army line.

  It had gilded furniture, rich drapes, grand halls, marbled floors, hot and cold running servants, and every luxury a man could want, except for a working toilet and clean running water. The Roman sewers hadn’t been well maintained since the Byzantines left a few hundred years ago.

  My office was on the third floor. From my balcony, I could see the Wailing Wall off to my left and, if I craned my neck to the right, I could see a little piece of the city walls between the buildings. For a second, I wondered if I was looking at the original city wall, the Roman city wall or the Crusader wall. There were lots of walls.

  In the distance, work was proceeding on the twelve hexagonal snowflake forts that would ring Jerusalem. Each would be manned by a company of men, with their families. The pope, my old friend Father Ignacy, had wanted these very badly, to defend the Holy City. Five of them would be manned by our Jewish troops. That he didn’t want.

  The pope was becoming more conservative by the day. He was unhappy with my decision to allow everyone access to Jerusalem. He had expected the Muslim and Jews to be barred from the city or, better yet, killed. As I do not lead a Mongol army, I had declined the suggestion for mass murder. I guess I just don’t have the proper attitude to be a crusader in this century.

  I found myself staring down at the hand holding my whiskey. My right hand looked just like my left, but you could tell it was less grizzled and calloused. It took me a year to re-grow it after the slavers cut it off. Thanks to Uncle Tom’s modifications, the hand grew back and my scars were gone, at least the visible ones were.

  I had spent months as the engine of a piece of machinery, a water pump. How bad was it? The height of toilet protocol for pump slaves was to piss to the side so you didn’t splash your fellow pumpmates. Your excrement you stepped over or walked in. That bad.

  It’s one thing to know slavery is an abomination and quite another to experience being sold naked at auction - at a discount, no less, because some Tuareg bastard had lopped off my right hand! The bastard who did it didn’t know it would grow back and couldn’t care less.

  It wasn’t the best time I’ve had in this century and for the first time in years, I felt homesick.

  Home was my headquarters and palace at Okoitz, where my two formal wives lived.

  Home used to be in 20th century Poland, but I once brilliantly managed to fall asleep, drunk, in a time machine. I woke up in the 13th century. It had been an interesting twenty years since then.

  Now I was leading a Crusade. Not my idea. When Pope John Paul, formerly known as my friend Father Ignacy, ordered me to go on Crusade I had skipped town to avoid attacking innocent Muslims. That’s how the damned slavers got me.

  Fortunately, on my way home I met up with a crusading Christian Army. They were headed for the holy land and, since they were headed in my direction, I decided I might as well lead the Crusade as follow.

  Before I even joined them, This Christian Army had conquered southern Spain and most of Northern Africa without much trouble. Since then, we had since taken the Holy Land, and were now working our way north on the Mediterranean coast on our way to the Christian city of Constantinople. Mostly, we were just stringing the old Crusader States back together again. By accident, we were also protecting the Roman Empire and giving them an opportunity to reclaim a lot of lost land.

  For now, I had time to relax and get back to being an engineer. For the first time since I broke out of Timbuktu I didn’t have to fight anyone tomorrow and I was thoroughly happy sitting at a desk with papers scattered in front of me.

  We were waiting for supplies and more manpower from Poland. We could probably finish off the Muslim states without it, since we had airplanes and machine guns and rifled cannon up against their swords, pikes and occasional muzzle-loading cannon, but there was no point in rushing to get men killed. War was exciting, but I preferred building to destroying and we were going to need a lot of building if we were going to hold the Middle East.

  I was also secretly hoping that, given a little time to see how prosperous the former Muslim states got from being part of Europe, the Muslims might not fight so hard or at least would have armies full of men who saw an advantage in having railroads and light bulbs and access to European markets.

  So, part of our war was building railroads. To take the region, we’d need to travel through some very difficult terrain. We’d have to build railroads as we went to move our troops and supplies. We were already laying tracks along the north coast of Africa, from Marrakech through Cairo to Jerusalem. From there, plans were to go north and west to Constantinople, and perhaps give those people a hand against their enemies.

  To keep the territory we’d taken, we had to show the Arabs that they could prosper under our rule, and nothing contributes more to that than good transportation, although the lack of tariffs and low taxation helps, too. Shipping costs on one of our railroads were a tenth of what they were on a camel caravan.

  To keep the prosperity rolling, I had just approved plans for the building of two Liner-class harbors, with housing, storage, and repair facilities, on the north and south sides of the Suez peninsula. A double railroad track would stretch between them, one going north and one south. They would transport troops, supplies, and eventually our trade goods. Our ships would still have to travel around the Cape of Good Hope, but they would only have to do it once!

  After that, the crews would be rotated, but the ships themselves would stay in the Indian Ocean for the rest of their working lives, probably.

  Working on the future also kept my mind off my pope problem. It was getting harder to maintain a relationship with a pope who was getting more fanatic by the day. Now he was pushing the concept of baptism by sword. He wanted the people we conquered to be baptized at the point of a sword or dispatched with the blade of one. It was only under discussion so far and I was hoping it would never come down as an order. I’m as good a Christian as anyone, but I won’t kill a man for praying in the wrong church.

  It also kept my mind of that nagging thought that kept bothering me. I’d always had a concern about the Mongols returning to Poland. We had barely beaten them twenty years ago, by dint of some modern organization and technology, nine years of hard work, and a little help from my time traveling Uncle Tom.

  But what with all the slave girls they’d captured in their invasions, the average Mongol now had a half-dozen wives, and nobody there had ever heard of birth control. During a cold winter, sex just about was the only amusement available. If you assume four children from each wife, and half of them being boys, the next time, they might be able to hit us with a dozen times as many men as they did last time.

  And all the
lands they had taken gave them room enough to graze a sufficient number of animals to feed all of those people.

  They were also more dangerous. The first time they came to Poland, they bypassed most of the fortified towns because you can’t get much siege equipment on a horse. Places like Tver and Moscow held out if they kept their wits about them and kept the gates tightly closed. Of course, the Mongols still ruled the countryside and killed everyone not behind walls.

  Now they would have Chinese engineers in the baggage train. They would probably have cannon and rifles too. They had captured an entire supply train of mine during the last battle, and they were well-known for developing any technology they came across.

  In my own timeline they had come back about every twenty years and as we approached the twenty year mark I found my self thinking about them more often.

  I walked down to the radio room, and had them get in contact with Sir Piotr, my “viceroy” in Okoitz, which was the Christian Army headquarters, and also my personal palace. Sir Piotr spent a quarter hour filling me in on various things.

  Then I made my obligatory call to my main wives, Francine and Cilicia, and they later put me on to talk with some of my former harem girls who were living at the palace. It was a bit boring, but you have to talk to them to keep them happy.

  It had been a long day, and I was getting hungry. I went downstairs, where my harem girls, fourteen of them just now, had a hot bath ready for me. Three of them were soon in the big tub with me, as nude as I was, scrubbing, shampooing, and shaving me.

  I’d maintained a decent harem ever since we’d conquered Timbuktu. This tends to be a short-term occupation for the girls when you are traveling in wartime. You can’t very well take a pregnant woman into battle. I’d made a practice of sending expectant mothers back to my palace in Poland, where they would get the best of care.