The Trip to Karakorum Begins
It took several days to get ready to move. Commissary had to pack their pots and pans, the wagons – thousands of them – had to be inventoried and reloaded. Everything got polished, repaired, sharpened, and packed. Two days before breakout, crews began to remove two large sections of our outer wall. The day before breakout the tents were removed from the soddies, cleaned, and packed away. The men would sleep under the stars that night and move out fast in the morning. The same day, the now useless medieval wagons and every scrap of paper and garbage was piled into a trash mountain that burned all night. Anything we weren’t taking was burned.
The R4 Wanderlust landed in the early morning and took the tanks of spare acid and iron filings aboard. We hadn’t needed them yet, but there was no reason to leave them behind. I had requested that Wanderlust fly observation for us until Zephyr arrived or until they ran low on hydrogen.
The next morning, a few minutes after our morning rituals, Wanderlust rose majestically into the air, leveled off at about four thousand feet, and led forty thousand men up the river.
The plan was simple. We were obviously under some observation unless the Mongols had lost all of their wits, and stealth was not a requirement. So, using Wanderlust to avoid traps, we would travel north up the river until we got to the northern branch of the Silk Road, then turn right and go to Karakorum, looking for a fight all the way. Within a few days, we would be in the foothills of the Altai Mountains, and the road was the best route through to the capitol.
Once we left the river, we should make the gross mile days that I expected on the last trip. Now we were lean, well equipped and should make the nine hundred miles to Karakorum in ten days.
It was fast. We traveled better than ten miles an hour in open country, ate lunch in the saddle, and stopped only for a few short rest breaks every day. We had saved the canned food for the trip and it was nice to taste mystery stew again.
Several times, we overran small groups of Mongol soldiers who had probably been told to shadow us from the front. When they couldn’t match our pace, they fell back into rifle range. We took neither prisoners nor casualties for three days.
About noon of the second day, we reached the road. As before, we paralleled the road to avoid traffic. There wasn’t much to avoid, the word was out that we were coming, and this time we moved within sight of the road.
The marching orders were simple: keep moving! By the second day, we were leaving the steppes and closing in on the Altai mountains. This area was populated much more heavily than the steppes. There was a major town about every hundred miles, villages about every twenty miles, and a lot of small settlements. We flowed through it all without stopping.
I knew that if there was going to be trouble, it would be in the foothills of the Altai. It was the first place the Mongols could hope to set up an ambush. Sure enough, in the afternoon of the third day, I received a radio call from the Wanderlust.
“Lord Conrad, you have friends preparing a welcoming party for you. They seem very anxious to make your acquaintance. About twenty miles ahead, you have hostiles on hidden ridges both sides of the road. We count eighty cannon with heavy supporting infantry. I would estimate two thousand hostiles, half cannon tenders and half infantry. Looks like they’ve been waiting for awhile.”
“Thank you, Wanderlust. Do you see any alternate routes? I hate to stop for a party.”
“No, lord. They obviously picked this spot because it’s the first bottleneck on the road. You’ll pass a good-sized village a few miles ahead of you and then follow a river eastward. The river will broaden out to a lake for a few miles and then narrow as you start into a valley. At that point, there are foothills on both sides of the route. Cannon are dug in just over the crest of the hills. The troops are camped between the foothills and the mountainside. You can identify the hills by the Chinese-style pagoda high on the right side.
“You might be able to get Big People around the back by skirting the mountainside, but they’d be single file sitting ducks. I should also warn you that the cannon are well dug in. They’re ready for a slug fest.”
“Thanks, we’ll take care if it.”
I wished that I did know how to take care of it. I was feeling the normal anger we all get when our enemies stubbornly fail to fulfill our expectations for their stupidity.
Since they hadn’t even made a probing attack all winter, I had assumed that the mission to kill their horses had been a success. I believed that, being short on horses to support an attack, they would hold up in their walled cities and wait for battle. Unfortunately, someone seems to have read the story about the Persians and three hundred stubborn Greeks.
I guessed that whatever mobile forces they had left were now in a reserve column ready to reinforce the ambush on whatever pass we took through the mountains. If we took a different pass, we’d probably run into a similar force whose job would be to hold us there until the reinforcements arrived.
It was a good plan. Too damned good. If we had stumbled into it, it could have seriously wounded us. Even knowing about it, we were going to have a hard time getting through. We had plenty of artillery shells now and we outranged the Mongol cannons, but Wanderlust told us that their cannon were well dug in. That means we would need almost direct hits on most of them to put them out of commission. That could take days, during which their reinforcements would arrive.
Our only chance for an easy passage was to move much faster than they expected. I called over one of my messengers. “Send a message out to the scouts. There is a valley about twenty miles ahead. They’ll see some hills with a pagoda on the right side. There are Mongols beyond those hills. They are to make a lot noise going through the valley and back but are not to find the Mongols. We want to convince them we’re too stupid to see them. Then report back to me as soon as we camp.”
I called over Sir Wladyclaw and asked, “How many night fighters do we have along?”
“Three companies. They aren’t operating as night fighters now, but they have been trained for it.”
“Tell them to get well rested as soon as we camp. They may be getting up very early tomorrow morning.”
We stopped in full daylight and camped by the lake about five miles short of the ambush pass. I hoped it was late enough in the day to seem natural to the spies watching from the mountainside ahead. The staff conference started almost immediately.
It was crowded with fifteen people around the two tables. Most of the barons, all of the counts, and two komanders made a group almost too big to work with. The cooks, realizing that this was a working meeting with no time or space for plates and manners, set up a sideboard with fresh bread and chunks of meat, vegetables, and onions that could be skewered one-handed. I told the two scouts that I was conferring with to get some food and opened the meeting.
“Most of you know that we stopped early because there is a Mongol ambush ahead. The Wanderlust tells us that the enemy has dug in about eighty cannon on both sides of a valley ahead. Of course, we could blast them out with our artillery or the Wolves could go up and kill them all, but an artillery duel would be long and expensive and even the Wolves would be foolish to charge up a hill with forty cannons and hundreds of rifles waiting at the top.
“Armor or not, it would be foolish to crest a hill in front of a cannon firing grapeshot.
“I’m certain that they have sent for reinforcements. We can, of course, kick the ass of any army that comes at us, but we want to avoid a nasty firefight in a narrow pass. We know that close up, they can still hurt us so we should clean up this mess before they get friends.
“I have a plan for an attack that should solve the problem, but it requires several steps, careful timing and lots of cooperation. I expect you all to work out the details before we retire.
“The moon will set just after midnight tonight, leaving us a lot of dark to work with and Baron Krol is leading three companies of trained night fighters. That gives us about seven hundred m
en to sneak up two hills in the middle of the night.
“The scouts over there at the sideboard report that the hills hiding the ambush are barely able to qualify as hills. They have a rather gentle slope: perhaps three hundred feet high and less than a half mile long on both sides of the valley. We know from Wanderlust that the cannon are spotted along the crests of the hills and the camps are further back near the mountainsides.
“So, here’s the plan. After moon sets, the night fighters and four other companies of Wolves ride out as quietly as possible to as near to the ambush as they can get without being heard. That should leave them about two miles out.
“The night fighters will wait until an hour before first light and then sneak up the hills and take out the sentries as quietly as possible. When the sentries are neutralized they will take out any soldiers sleeping near the cannon. That’ll require rifles and Sten guns and it’ll wake up everyone.
“When Baron Kowalski’s men hear the gunfire, they’ll start lobbing star shells over both enemy camps, and the Wolves will charge both hills. If you’re two miles away, they should crest the hills in less than four minutes. With the cannon neutralized, it should be a cake walk. Their job is to sweep the camps near the mountains. It’s a smash and bash. Fly through without stopping, shoot everything in sight, and then pull back to the infantry line.
“When the sun rises, we can finish off any survivors.”
The staff did come up with some improvements. The infantry commanders suggested that when the fighting started, three of their lances should take machine guns up each hill and set them up at the ridge to cover any retreat and add long-range firepower. The Wolves could sweep through the camp and back toward the ridge and be supported by the machine guns.
Then someone mentioned that having your own machine guns firing from behind you might place a severe burden on the widows and orphans fund, so the plan was revised to place the machine guns between the cannon emplacements and the Mongol camp and not use them unless the Wolves were in serious trouble or after the Wolves exited the camp.
Baron Kowalski pointed out lobbing star shells that far out would be inaccurate unless we moved the artillery up closer to the ambush site, so we decided to use illumination flares instead.
The night fighters pointed out that neutralizing the sentries on both hills was absolutely essential before either force infiltrated the cannon field. If either force jumped the gun it could sabotage the other, do they worked out a series of signals using lighters.
The session went on for almost two hours, but an operation like this often took days to plan, so it still felt rushed. If anyone thinks that we were overplanning, that we didn’t need to think so hard when we had the best guns, fastest mounts, and all of the machine guns, they should look up the Battle of Isandlwana where a Zulu army wiped out a modern British force using only spears against rifles. The Gods of War favor those with the mostest and the bestest, but only if they don’t act the stupidest.
Word had already been sent down to the troops to sleep soon. Even four hours of sleep can make the difference between a battle won and lost. The knights began waking their men an hour after midnight. A small scouting party had left half an hour before to mark the place where the Wolves would wait while they still had moonlight.
I was up before my bodyguards called me. I had not been sleeping well anyway. I am one of those lucky people who dream in full color and 3D and my dreams are endlessly entertaining. I spend every night slashing my enemies to death, rolling in fabulous wealth and bedding every woman I ever dreamed of. However, lately I sometimes found that when I slashed my dreamland enemy or touched my dreamy date, they would suddenly look up at me with big brown eyes and begin to scream in terror and then cry inconsolably.
I buckled on my armor and was leaving my tent when Sir Grzegorz approached me. “Going for a moonlight walk, your grace?”
“You could not have forgotten that we have a battle, kolomel.”
“Indeed, I remember it. In fact I am leading the right hand column of Wolves and Baron Krol is leading the left hand column. Which of us do you expect to be incompetent? Or do you plan the lead the charge up the middle?”
“Do I need to remind you, kolomel, that I am in command of this army and I lead them?”
“You are my commander and greatly respected. However, with all due respect, a general does not need to lead every patrol. You have competent officers and, again with respect, I suggest that you might let them do their jobs. In any case, that bright golden armor of yours might not be the best thing to wear during a sneak attack.”
That’s when I noticed that his armor was covered with a black poncho. I fumed anyway. First, they make dirigibles and airplanes and machine guns I didn’t order, win wars I didn’t start, and now they wanted to fight without me! But he had a point. My getting killed on a minor raid would end this campaign and my presence at the head of the troops would undermine the other commanders.
“Alright, I’ll take my personal troops and accompany you as far as the waiting area. We’ll wait there as a ready reserve. I’m sure as hell not going to sit in my tent waiting to hear if we won a battle!”
Shortly after moonset, the entire group moved out as quietly as possible. It was very dark and slow. With the moon gone, we moved by starlight. It would have been impossible without the superior vision of the Big People. We never saw the advance party waiting crouched in the darkness, but the Big People let us know when it was time to stop. In a world without machines, noise carries a long way, so we stopped well over two miles from the ambush site. I didn’t even see the night fighters dismount and walk into the night, led by two Big People with better vision. There was a rustle, the sound of padded hooves for a few seconds and then silence -– and darkness.
In the darkness, time is eternal. The only light was the stars overhead and the only measure of time was their slow movement across the sky. The silence stretched on forever. Like everyone else, I dozed in my saddle and waited, resisting an overwhelming urge to strike a light and look at my clock. I must have slept for an hour because I looked up to see the slightest hint of false dawn in the Eastern sky. It was the ideal time to strike and still we heard nothing.
Suddenly, there was the sound of Sten guns. Bright flares arced up from both hilltops. Moments later, the first illumination flares jumped up from the valley floor. The battle was on. Beside me, two companies of Wolves galloped off to battle. They would crest the hills in less than four minutes and be in battle in less than five, while I had to steady Silver and sit and wait.
I waited until I could hear that the battle was much more intense on the right side hill before I told Silver to charge. Screw the feelings of the other commanders. I was the boss and I wasn’t going to miss this.
The flares were giving us enough light to charge up the hill at full gallop. When we went over the top I saw that the Wolves had penetrated to the main camp and were in heavy fighting. Between me and the edge of the cannon emplacements, there were a few individual fights going on, but they didn’t need help. The Mounted Infantry had set up their machine guns, one on each flank and at the center, but they couldn’t use them because the Wolves were still mixed in with the Mongols.
As we galloped past the machine guns, I could see that Sir Grzegorz was going sword to sword with a Mongol standing on the ground. That’s when I realized that I was holding my own sword, and quickly changed to my Sten. I blasted two Mongol troops on the way to Sir Grzegorz and shouted at him, “The machine guns are in place! It’s time to go! Get out and let them work!”
“Bullshit! We’ve got ’em on the run!”
“Get the hell out and let the machine guns run them into their graves!”
For a minute, I thought he was going to refuse the order, but he gave me a disgusted look and signaled follow me and led his men back. Two Big People picked up their fallen riders by their belts and carried them back in their mouths. One Big Person was down and probably dead and her rider was picked up b
y another trooper. As we passed the machine gun line, they opened up on the remaining Mongols.
The bullets tore through every standing tent, smashed the supply wagons, and dimpled every inch of the campgrounds. Big People delivered more ammo twice. As Sir Grzegorz and I watched the battle from our saddles, we had a few minutes to talk. He told me, “The commander was better than most. He had a second line of lookouts around the camp. By the time we charged, he already had his men in a skirmish line. We lucked out because they fired too soon and we were still out of range. By the time they reloaded, we were in among them. A few of them got off second shots, and those damned guns are dangerous close up. Lost a few men…”
I told him, “When the machine guns have killed everything moving, take your men in a finish them off.” I turned to leave, and then turned back again, “I know that you are an honorable and brave warrior, but this is not a game. There are no extra points for nobility and the rewards for doing things the hard way are written on tombstones. If we are going to win this campaign, we must all remember that.” Then I rode over to the other side of the valley without saying what was really on my mind, what I really wanted to say, “You disobey my orders one more damned time and I’ll bust you to dishwasher!” I held my temper instead.
On the other hill, things had gone closer to plan. The Mongols were more careless there, and the Wolves were able to make an easy pass through the camp, killing anyone in sight and keeping them busy while the machine guns were set up.
As soon as the guns were set up, Krol split his men into two columns and rode back at full speed through the firing line. They hadn’t lost a single man in the charge and had only two Big People wounded. He left one column to reinforce the machine gun line and sent the other column back into the cannon emplacements to help the night fighters.
I never saw any of his men draw a blade that night. He was more in tune with the future that either myself or Sir Grzegorz.
Conrad's Last Campaign Page 22