The High-Tech Knight aocs-2

by Leo Frankowski

  "You think you can? We'll try it girl! I'll have the saddler work up those hooks right now. I bet he can have it done by morning. Good night, Anna, and thanks for the idea."

  We were on the practice field half an hour before Sir Vladimir. We tried out Anna's idea, and it worked, every time. She was as deft with a lance as Sir Vladimir.

  Furthermore, her guiding the lance left my right hand free to do other things, like having my sword drawn and hidden by my shield. If Anna's lancework didn't get the bastard, I'd be there a half second later with my sword!

  We were practicing this double-hitter plan, striking the top of the post with the flat of my sword after Anna threaded the shield, as Sir Vladimir came out. He watched us dumbfounded.

  "Sir Conrad, I can scarcely believe that you are finally scoring on the quintain. Getting in a swordstroke besides is-is fabulous, How-?"

  So I explained Anna's idea to him. Sir Vladimir had taken Anna's spelling-out of words in stride, as if it was only to be expected. Any horse who could run the way she could had to be magic, and after that anything was possible, even probable. Furthermore, Annastashia had been teaching him to write. His spelling was about the same as Anna's, so it looked all right to him.

  He scratched his chin. "I don't think it's illegal, but I wouldn't brag about the tactics you plan to use."

  "Right. This is my secret weapon!"

  "Well, in all events you seem to have it down pat, so let's get into some of the fine points of the lance. ."

  The weeks drifted by. It was a brisk fall day and the carpenters were assembling the combination outer wall-apartment house.

  We had strung two hefty ropes from the tops of the cliffs on either side of the entrance to the valley. A framework was hung on wheels between the ropes and a system of ropes, pulleys, and winches allowed eight men aloft to use the framework like an overhead bridge crane. It gave us a "skyhook" over the entire construction area, and things were going up pretty fast. After months of preparation, when it seemed to the men that nothing was getting done, suddenly we had almost a quarter of our future home up in a single day. The happy mood was infectious.

  Count Lambert and a retinue of a dozen knights arrived in the late afternoon.

  "Count Lambert, welcome, my lord!" I was on the top of the building, seven stories above him. I signaled the crane operators, who quickly lowered me to the ground.

  "Hello, Sir Conrad. Dog's blood, but that looked like fun! May I try it?"

  "If you wish, my lord, I'll have them take us both to the top." Six men running in a huge hamster cage high above soon got us to the top. All of the foundations were visible from up there, and I pointed out where the church would go, and the inn and the icehouse, and the sauna.

  "You're making good progress, Sir Conrad. In another year or two, this will be a fine town."

  "Another year, my lord? These buildings will all be up in three weeks."

  "Impossible! Not even you could accomplish that."

  "Another wager, my lord? Say twenty muleloads of your cloth against forty loads of my bricks and mortar?" I'd never bet money with Lambert again, but somehow he saw goods and services in a different light.

  "Done! You'll be making bricks then?"

  "Yes. We found clay in the old mine, and we'll be building brick ovens as soon as we get our living arrangements set up. We've also found a seam of iron ore, and by spring I hope to be producing iron in decent quantities."

  "My boy, you won't be alive in the spring. You won't be alive on Christmas. Have you forgotten your trial?"

  "No, my lord. But I'm going to win."

  "Your faith is touching. What's that big round stone hole?"

  "That will be our icehouse, my lord. Actually, it will be three buildings, one inside another. The circular stone wall you see will be decked over and used as a dance floor. It will have a roof over it but no sides."

  "A second building, four yards smaller in diameter and three yards shorter will be built inside of it, completely underground. The space between them will be filled with sawdust and wood chips, a fair insulator."

  "The third building will be inside the second, and will be six yards smaller and six shorter than it. Here, the space between will be packed with snow this winter. I calculate that this much snow should take more than a year to melt. We'll have fresh vegetables well into the winter and cold beer all summer long."

  "Still, that's a vast hole."

  "Sixteen yards deep, my lord, and thirty-six across."

  When we got down, I had Krystyana scurry off to the kitchens and see what could be done about something special for supper, and I told Natalia to spread the word among all the young ladies that if any of them wanted to spend the night with a real count or one of his knights, now was the time to get fancied up for a dance. She certainly knew his tastes.

  As we went to supper Count Lambert said, "All the tables are the same height. Which is for us?"

  "They're a convenient height for eating, my lord. It is my custom here that all should eat the same food, and off the same tables. It's handy. I often tell my men at dinner what they will be doing the next day. I find that they work better if they've had time to think it out. As to where you should eat, well, eat wherever the lion sleeps."

  "And where does the lion sleep?"

  "Anywhere he wants to, my lord. Who would argue with a lion?"

  That got a laugh, and Count Lambert settled into a side table. One of the joys of the thirteenth century was that the oldest, tiredest jokes were fresh leg-slappers.

  The usual thirteenth-century dinner table was wide enough for only one person. People sat on one side and the servants walked on the other. My tables were the twentieth century norm, and there were no servants at Three Walls.

  Krystyana hadn't thought to assign anyone to pretend they were servants, and Natalia's band of hopefuls was out scrubbing down and making themselves presentable.

  We normally ate cafeteria- style, with attendants at the meat, beer, and anything-expensive counters, and help yourself at everything else. Now the workers were going through the line and some were eating, while my liege lord was waiting to be served.

  I didn't know how to solve the problem, so I asked my boss. "My lord, may I ask you to clear up a point of courtesy? If the customs of a vassal are different from the customs of his liege lord, whose customs should be followed?"

  "That depends on where they are, Sir Conrad. At the liege lord's manor, the vassal should punctiliously follow the customs of his lord. When on the vassal's estates, the liege lord should follow his vassal's customs unless these are offensive to him. In that case, the lord should so inform the vassal, and the vassal should in courtesy do as his liege lord wishes, at least while the liege lord is around."

  "Thank you, my lord. You see, in my land we do not have servants except at an inn. I am not used to having personal servants, and prefer to do without them. What I am trying to say is that I don't have anybody trained to serve you properly. Would you be offended if I asked you to get your own food, as I normally do? Or shall I ask some of the ladies to serve us, even though they'll probably botch the job — "

  "I was wondering when you were going to offer us something to eat! I can't see where a walk across the room will hurt me or mine in the least." We took cuts at the head of the chow line, of course. Rank hath some privileges, even at Three Walls.

  Back at the table, Count Lambert said, "So you always eat the same food as your peasants?"

  "That is my custom, my lord."

  "Remarkable. And you always feed them this good?"

  "I'm afraid not. We usually have one meat dish at supper, and none at dinner. It is unusual for us to have ham, venison, and bison at the same meal. Krystyana is in charge of our kitchen and I suspect that, in your honor, she cooked all the meat we had."

  "We're not at all self-sufficient in food here, and about the only meat we get is what the hunters bring in. I plan to bring sheep to these hills, but that's a long-term project."
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br />   "You'll find ewes to be very cheap. To increase my supply of raw wool for my mills, I have forbidden the slaughter of any ewe less than ten years old, or the selling of them outside my lands. Many are complaining that they cannot possibly feed them through the winter, but I'm not going to relent. If they have to find a way, they will."

  "Perhaps I can help, my lord. For three months, I've had a small flock of sheep eating nothing but fresh pine needles. It's not their favorite food, but none of them have starved."

  "Interesting, but it must be a great deal of work, cutting that many branches."

  "Less than you'd think, my lord. You have to cut the tops off trees to fell the really big ones. I plan to keep my four topmen going all winter, and I calculate that they should be able to keep a thousand sheep alive."

  "You must show me your ways at cutting trees."

  "First thing in the morning, my lord. In about a month, I'm planning to have a big Mongol-style hunt. Perhaps you and your knights would like to join us."

  "A Mongol hunt? I thought you hated Mongols."

  "I do. But that doesn't mean that I can't learn from them."

  "Indeed. How do the Mongols hunt?"

  "They surround the biggest area they can with all their men, and since that can be as many as a million, the area can be as big as all Poland. Then they beat the bushes, working inward, being careful to let no animal out, but not killing any either. They might spend weeks driving all of the beasts to a' central enclosure. Then, under the eyes of their leader, their Kakhan, they slaughter every single animal in what amounts to a major battle."

  "I don't plan anything so big or so thorough. We'll release all the female deer, bison, and other large herbivores, as well as the young and one-sixth of the males. We have to make sure that there will be game next year."

  "Dangerous animals-wolves, bears, wild boar, and so on-will all be killed. I don't want them in my woods, hurting my people. The smaller animals — rabbits, birds, and the like, well, we'll miss so many of those in the round up that I don't think we have to worry about future generations."

  "I like it. I'll come. You'll build this enclosure large enough for the kill to be sporting?"

  "I'm building it right now. I plan to run them right through & main gates of Three Walls. All the area beyond will be our killing ground. My thought was to distribute one-sixth of the meat to the noblemen who participated, a twelfth to any peasants not living at Three Walls, and to keep the rest to feed my people here. Do you think that would be fair?"

  "Very. I think most knights might have more than they could carry back, unless they brought pack mules and I a that would be impolite. You'd be expected to provide a feast before and after the hunt, of course. You mention other peasants. Whose?"

  "Well, there are Sir Miesko's people and my own yeomen, my lord, and-"

  "That's something I wanted to talk to you about. Were there really twenty-seven squatters on my land when I gave it to you?"

  "It appears so, my lord."

  "Dog's blood!" he swore. "There must be hundreds on my other lands! How the devil am I going to flush them all out?"

  "Why not do what I did, my lord? Turn a liability into an asset. Swear them in as yeomen, take less from them than you would from a peasant, and give them less as well. You'll get something where you got nothing before, and they get the peace of mind of knowing that they am legitimate and have certain legal protections."

  "An interesting thought. I'll think on it. But how the devil do I contact them to make my offer?"

  "I'm not sure, my lord, but my experience has been that people of a certain type usually all know one another. If you wish, I'll have my bailiff see what can be done. He'll never admit to anything, but I'd bet that he can get your message across."

  "Good, though one wager a day is sufficient. Have him come with us tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow, my lord?"

  "Yes. There is a certain ceremony that we have not yet done. The beating of your bounds. We must ride the boundaries of your lands so that all may know where they are and there will be no future disagreements. Sir Miesko and Baron Jaraslav will meet us at their borders at the proper times tomorrow. But for now, I am sated. Krystyana makes a good meal. Did you have any entertainment planned, Sir Conrad?"

  "A dance, my lord. With any luck, you might find a lady that you find suitable for the evening."

  "Excellent, but you really must get into the habit of telling the peasants what to do, rather than just asking them."

  Chapter Eighteen

  The lumbermen had gotten to playing a rough game. The topmen would start to climb a tree to cut the top off, and two of the tree fellers would immediately start to cut down that same tree. The idea of the game was to see if the topmen could finish before the fellers cut the tree down under them. I told them not to do that, but they didn't pay much attention to me. I probably wasn't assertive enough. The topmen were getting pretty insufferable, strutting around, wearing their spikes everywhere. Maybe, deep down inside, really I wanted to see them lose.

  Count Lambert was impressed with the game, as well as the speed with which my people could bring down a huge tree. Part of his philosophy, or perhaps character, was that if anybody else did anything that looked dangerous, he had to do it, too.

  "You've done this, haven't you, Sir Conrad?"

  "Yes, my lord, I had to show them how to do it."

  "Good! Then you can show me as well. You peasants, strip off that equipment and lend it to us."

  The topmen weren't happy about being called peasants, and they liked lending out "their" equipment even less. There had been a rash of jokes going around about topmen taking baths with their spikes on, as well as making love with the same gear that they climbed trees with.

  But there wasn't much they could do but comply, which they did.

  The count always picked up everything quickly, and we were soon at the top sawing through the tree. He worked so fast that keeping up with him, I didn't have time to get scared.

  When the top came down and we were whipping back and forth fifteen stories up, Count Lambert looked down and said, "What? No one is cutting the tree off below us!"

  "My lord, would you dare cut a tree when the duke was up it?"

  "I see your point, but dog's blood' I think we would have won!"

  We soon left to beat the bounds. Count Lambert had decreed that it should be a festive occasion, so besides all the knights present, Krystyana and her ladies came along, as well as the girls Lambert and his knights had slept with the night before, in borrowed finery, and some of them on pack mules since we had a limited supply of palfreys.

  My bailiff was with us, at Lambert's request'. and Piotr Kulczynski came along, since he had nothing better to do and it gave him further opportunity to gaze at Krystyana from afar. The idea was to have as many witnesses as possible, and preferably young people, who would be around longer to remember things.

  Sir Miesko and Lady Richeza met us at their lands and the party went its way along our mutual border, with Count Lambert pointing out the landmarks to all and sundry. In the days before accurate surveying, this was the accepted way to record boundaries.

  Baron Jaraslav and Sit Stefan did not meet us at the appointed time and place. We stopped and unpacked lunch while we waited for them, but even after a leisurely dinner, we were still waiting. Count Lambert was getting angry. "Sir Daniel! You did go to them yesterday, didn't you? You told them to meet us here and now?"

  "Of course, my lord."

  "Well, damn them!"

  "There have been hard feelings between them and me, my lord," I said.

  "They can hate you all they want, but they can't disobey their liege! Mount up! We'll go without them! Sir Miesko, stay with us as a witness."

  So we finished my borders without Sir Stefan being along. In later days, I sometimes wondered if Lambert didn't assign me some of the baron's lands just to spite him. One day that border would cause me a good deal of grief.

  On the tr
ip back to Three Walls, we fanned out in hunting array and with luck took a wild boar and a bison. This was good because I had no meat in my larder with which to feed my guests, and the nearest supermarket was seven hundred years away.

  It was dusk when we got back, and Yashoo had the apartment building half up. After all, it was a simple matter of assembling precut pieces, like putting together a huge tinker-toy set. I had checked every piece myself, so of course they fit right together.

  Count Lambert was awestruck. "They did this much without your being here? I might as well concede our bet right now. I'll ship your twenty loads of cloth as soon as I return to Okoitz."

  "I'll take it in medium-grade linen, my lord."

  That gave us curtains and a spare set of sheets.

  In the summer, everyone including me went barefoot, but with cold weather coming on, the workers started making shoes for their families. The usual peasant footwear was made of birch bark. You wrapped your feet in rags and laced on soles of bark with leather thongs. The soles lasted a week or two and then you needed new ones.

  At first, I was saddened that this was all they had, but then I did some time studies on what was required to tan leather and what was required to cut new soles out of birch bark. A man could cut a set of bark shoes for his entire family in less than an hour. Tanning a hide with medieval methods took months, and leather soles didn't last out the season.

  It was over fifty times cheaper to wear birch bark. I suspect that leather shoes became popular only when birch trees became rare. But birch trees were not that common on my lands. I had some birch groves planted, but for a few years we were buying birch bark. I found that it was useful for writing paper as well as shoes, and far cheaper than parchment.

  By the time the first snows were flying, our basic living quarters had been completed. Well, we never stopped building, but the apartment house was up and the plumbing was in. I suppose I should describe it.

  The building was a hundred ninety yards long, reaching from cliff face to cliff face, and was eighteen yards wide. Structurally, it was really five buildings, with firewalls between each.