The Radiant Warrior

Chapter Nine

Anna found the mine site without difficulty, and we went to work. We had temporary shelters up in a few days, and then the carpenters started felling trees, the masons collecting stones, the miners digging for ore.

The mules were sent back to Three Walls to get lime for mortar, the sawmill was set up, and word was sent to the surrounding towns and villages that we were hiring workers temporarily for the summer. If they did well, they might be sworn in permanently.

There was no lack of applicants, since word had spread quickly about how well my people lived. The winter before, I'd made up some blocks and puzzles of the sort that modem psychologists use, and tried to get some idea of the men's intelligence. I tried to hire the bright ones, because there was no hiring all the applicants. Thousands came and there was only room in the budget for three gross on a permanent basis and a thousand more temporarily. I hated to send so many of them away, but what could I do?

The ore was right on the surface, so tunneling wasn't necessary. We could dig it out of an open pit, which was much safer and cheaper.

The duke had sent six knights to take care of security, so that was one headache I didn't have to worry about.

In a week, things were progressing well enough for me to leave for Eagle Nest. I left Yashoo, my carpentry foreman, in general charge, and only nominally subordinate to the duke's knight, Sir Stanislaw. I took Natasha along, since she was handy to have around, and Anna hardly noticed her weight. By evening, Anna had us at Eagle Nest.

Vitold, Count Lambert's carpenter, was in charge there and things were going well. There were probably more men available than could be efficiently administered, but they were mostly logging and digging, which doesn't take much supervision.

Count Lambert had left the day before, and the setup was his idea, so I didn't change anything. We left for Okoitz that afternoon and got there in time for supper.

One of my miners was getting the coal mine dug without problems, and the cloth factory, with its two hundred attractive and available young ladies, was going full blast.

Count Lambert rather proudly offered me a cold beer. "You were right again, Sir Conrad. A cold beer is a wonderful thing on a hot day! I'm glad you talked me into finishing the icehouse below the grain mill."

The next morning, I was at Three Walls and found that Sir Vladimir and Annastashia were the proud parents of a healthy boy.

Trivial matters delayed me a few days, and then I headed to Copper City again, this time with Yawalda riding Anna's rump.

The whole summer went that way, with me constantly racing from Three Walls to Copper City to Eagle Nest to Okoitz and back to Three Walls, the whole circuit taking us a week to run. Since many of my workers were separated from their families, and since they could read and write now, I was playing postman as well as roving supervisor. It was fun and exciting at first, but it got very old after a while.

By fall, things were settled down to the point that Copper City only needed to be visited once a month, and I tried to keep my traveling down to two weeks a month, staying at Three Walls as much as possible.

We had another good harvest in 1233, the third in a row. Everyone gorged on sweet corn and watermelon, honeydews and zucchini, pumpkins and muskmelon. The beehives were a great success, and the price of honey and beeswax dropped by a factor of twelve on the open market.

The grains, potatoes, and legumes I'd brought with me had done well, and I computed that in two years we would be eating them rather than keeping it all for seed as we had been. And glory be to God, we had sugar beet seeds, over a hundred pounds of them! Next fall, I'd have to worry about refining sugar.

The new plants were almost untouched by insects, which cut heavily into most crops since insecticides weren't available. Most insects are very specialized in their eating habits, and the local ones couldn't cope with the crops that I'd brought in. They'd catch up with us eventually, but for the time being we were getting a free ride.

In fact, the only sour point was the squashes. I hadn't realized that they could interbreed, and they had been planted too close to each other. The bees, or whatever pollinated them, had made a mess of things. We got veggies that were half butternut and half spaghetti squash, and every other combination possible. Lambert and I set up a breeding program at six widely separated manors to try to breed back to the original forms, but that would take time. I moved six varieties of beans to those same six manors just to be on the safe side.

Most of Lambert's knights and barons were quickly taking up his new crops and other improvements, running only a year behind him. And everyone was using wheelbarrows now, and the entire harvest was gotten in early, almost without loss.

Piotr was doing a lot more traveling than I was. He had to make a monthly visit to the inns at Cracow, Cieszyn, and Wroclaw, besides the installations at Three Walls, Copper City, Eagle Nest, where we were taking care of the bookkeeping, paying all expenses and charging Count Lambert in cloth for it, and Okoitz, where we had built a small Pink Dragon Inn at Count Lambert's request. If the duke had one at Wroclaw, Count Lambert had to have one at Okoitz.

That summer, I'd formalized the mail service, setting up a post office at every one of our inns. Besides serving our own people, we carried the mail of anybody who asked, and charged for it. It became a profitable sideline.

We never carried money or valuables, since Piotr had to travel alone and I didn't want to make him a target for thieves, but I did set up a system of postal money orders.

By spring, volume had grown to the point that I had to put on a full-time letter carrier, who made the round on about a weekly basis on a fast horse. As more inns were added, the number of letters sent increased as a cube function. In a few years, letters left each inn daily, and a letter could get to any major city in Poland in a week, for a price.

And like a modem post office, we were absolutely scrupulous about respecting people's privacy and about getting the mail through.

By late fall, the smelters at Copper City were in full production and the other facilities were just about complete. I sold the Krakowski Bros. Brass Works at a very healthy profit to Count Lambert's brother, Count Herman. I did this with the clear written understanding that I was taking the best of my workers with me to Legnica, and that we would be producing products there much like those that were made in Cieszyn.

I don't think the guy understood that people are as important as things when it comes to getting something done. It takes both the tools and the man who knows how to use them to accomplish anything, but many would-be industrialists don't realize that. He got all the buildings, machinery, and facilities, as well as two years worth of back orders and my blessings. But deep inside, I didn't think he'd be successful.

Most of the people from the brass works were moved to Copper City and formally sworn to me. They hadn't been up to that time, except for the Krakowski brothers themselves and their wives, and I wanted all the workers to be treated the same. I also swore in those workers hired that spring that had received the approval of the foremen, most of them, actually.

Thom Krakowski was put in charge of the smelting and mining operations, and being the eldest was also overseer of the whole city. His brothers had charge of the casting and machining sections. In fact they were used to working as a committee, and that's the way I set it up. Oh, they were always arguing like a bunch of kids over a game, and sometimes it got pretty loud. But somehow inside they were a smooth team. It takes all kinds.

My ladies had each spent months at the city and at Eagle Nest duplicating their own bailiwicks there. Krystyana got the kitchens going well; Yawalda had the barns running efficiently. The stores and offices were set up, and all the girls had chosen to come back to Three Walls. I was flattered, but they explained that if they stayed out in "the woods," as they described it, they might be stuck there. But things were always happening when I was around, even if I wouldn't marry them.

Tadeusz had put his youngest son in charge of running the inn at Copper City. He was worried. He was now out of sons. How could we expand further? So we worked out a training program for innkeepers, with each of his sons training a man, and with promotions to larger inns if a man did well. There was also a bonus system for the trainer.

Piotr had junior accountants at each of our installations by then so that he only had to check their work rather than doing it all himself. There just wasn't time.

The priest from Italy finally arrived, and I nearly fell off my chair when he announced his name. It was Thomas of Aquinas!

Saint Thomas Aquinas was the greatest theologian and logician of the Middle Ages, perhaps of all time! And here he was, a young man of twenty-two, running my church and school system. I tried to treat him the same as any other priest, but secretly I was in awe of him. I told him what I wanted to accomplish, but generally I let him do as he felt best, offering advice only when asked.