The Radiant Warrior

Chapter Fourteen

The knights and squires broke up into groups as we headed home in our various directions. By late afternoon there was only myself, Sir Vladimir, and Sir Miesko. As we passed Sir Miesko's manor, Lady Richeza invited us in, but there was still time to get to Three Walls before dusk. When we got to the gates, the band was up on the balcony to welcome us home. I wouldn't have given permission for this waste of man-hours, since they must have been waiting up there for half a day, but I had to admit that it felt good. They were playing the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I announced at supper what had happened, that Baron Stefan was our new neighbor, and that the Great Hunt was on as scheduled.

Sir Miesko had set me up as the "Local Hunt Master," using the valley at Three Walls for our killing ground, just as we had last year. Only this year, it would cover not only my lands, but Sir Miesko's as well as those of Baron Stefan and two other knights.

As Master of the Hunt, I got the wolf skins and any aurochs captured on all of Count Lambert's lands. As Local Hunt Master, I got all the deer skins taken locally. As a landowner, I got a share, about one-fifth, of one-half of the meat taken. My workers would get about one-third of the one-quarter of the meat reserved for the beaters. And since I personally would be participating in the kill, I got a share of the one-quarter of the kill that was divided among the nobility present.

Complicated, but profitable, especially since the fashion of wearing wolf skin cloaks was taking hold. I had already sold the six hundred wolf skins we had taken last year at very nice prices, and I was looking forward to taking twenty times that number this year.

But Sir Miesko was in fact handling all of the detail work of a Local Hunt Master for me, except for the feasts, and that was Krystyana's problem.

My main worry was getting the Moslems' housing completed so we could get them out of Three Walls before more savory company started arriving. We almost made it, and I told them that they had to get out anyway. They could live in the nearly finished buildings until the hunt was over, and no, they couldn't act as beaters alongside Christians, although they were responsible for sweeping all the wild game out of their valley, and taking care of my herd of sheep, now three thousand strong, during the hunt.

The morning before the hunt, most of the workers walked out to the manors of the knights on the periphery of the hunting district, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to keep, the blast furnace fed and a few pregnant women to take care of the small children. To minimize friction, none of my people were sent to Baron Stefan's lands. My own station was at Sir Miesko's.

The plan was to have a line of peasants and workers backed up by a line of horsemen, mostly knights and squires, to take care of any emergencies, such as an irate bear.

Since Piotr Kulczynski was spending half of his life on horseback, I assumed that he would be one of the riders. Sir Miesko objected. "All the other horsemen will be of the nobility, their ladies or at least squires. Some might object at having a commoner in their number."

"But the east line is already low on horsemen," I said. "Pulling Piotr makes it worse."

"Better a thin line than offended neighbors," Sir Miesko said. "If you really want him on horseback, why not make him your squire? It's a simple formality."

I didn't see any reason why not. I was entitled to a squire or two, and Piotr was the sort who would get a kick out of that sort of thing. Being my squire needn't change his pay or duties.

I asked Piotr about it and he was absolutely delighted. No American kid getting his first car on his eighteenth birthday was ever happier.

The ceremony was a simple swearing in and we did it within the hour. Sir Miesko made Piotr the guest of honor at supper that night. Any reason for a celebration was always welcome.

The Banki brothers, three knights who were the special friends of three of my ladies, arrived at dusk. Had we known that they were coming, Piotr probably wouldn't have gotten his promotion, but there was no point in telling him that.

Natasha was managing a field kitchen at a manor where Sir Vladimir and Annastashia were stationed.

Thus, there were exactly as many men as women at Piotr's feast. Natalia, Yawalda, and Janina naturally paired off with Sir Gregor, Sir Wiktor, and Sir Wojciech Banki, I had Cilicia, and this naturally forced Krystyana on Piotr. He of course made no objection to this, but she took it with poor grace.

Having a partner at a formal feast required a fair amount of interaction. Among other things, you shared the same spoon, cup, and bowl. Krystyana stayed polite, but was formal and cold. And at the dance, later, she refused to do a waltz with him, new squire or no new squire.

Why Piotr was so determined to have this one lady was beyond me. There had to be a masochistic streak in the little fellow.

In the morning, the beaters were fed while it was still dark and were lined up in the dawn around the periphery of the hunting district, paralleling the group from the district to the east and meeting up with the beaters to the north. When all was ready, the signal to advance was given and the day's walk began. People swung sticks at the brush and made as much noise as possible. Wild animals are well fed in the late fall, and aren't particularly aggressive, so there were no real problems throughout the day.

By evening, the beaters were shoulder to shoulder and the valley at Three Walls was packed with animals. I had to station guards with torches around the blast furnace workers to keep the animals from bothering them. I swore that next year, I would build a killing ground outside the valley, perhaps surrounding the plain at the valley mouth with Japanese roses.

There were over five thousand people at Three Walls that night, and for the four days thereafter. Somehow, we got them all fed and bedded down, with wall-to-wall people everywhere, even in the church.

Baron Stefan, in his gold-washed armor and gold-trimmed helmet and sword, was at least trying to stay polite, but he and his knights were somewhat standoffish. He had brought his own servants and had them serve him when everybody else ate cafeteria-style, but I made no objection. It was enough that he was no longer swearing at me on every possible occasion. I gave them my living room to bunk down in and that seemed to satisfy them.

In the morning the slaughter began and it went on for four days. We were better prepared to process the meat this year than last. More smokehouses had been built and we had vast quantities of barrels and salt, enough to sell to anyone who wanted them, which was almost everybody. A dozen sausage machines worked around the clock, and everyone ate liver and kidneys, the most desirable parts of the animal by medieval standards, until they couldn't hold any more.

Piotr and Sir Miesko kept a careful accounting of everything and I heard no objections to the final sharing out.

The one sour point happened when one of the duke's men, Sir Frederick, came over and told me that the duke had liked the wolf skin cloak I'd given him so much that he had decreed that none but a true belted knight might wear one.

Wonderful. That cut my potential market for wolf skins by a factor of a hundred. My profits were going right down the toilet, but there was nothing I could do about it. One did not argue with the duke.

I probably had twelve thousand wolf skins coming in and nothing to do with them. Maybe I could dye them another color and pass them off as from some other animal.

Much later, it turned out that I needn't have worried. Saying that none but a nobleman might wear a wolf skin cloak was almost the same as saying that a nobleman must wear one, at least to the fashion-conscious Polish nobility. The demand for wolf skins went way up and the price of wolf skins tripled by midwinter! And who do you think had the biggest stock of wolf skins in the world? My God, how the money rolled in!

One evening, the Banki brothers came to my office, which adjoined my bedroom.

"We have come to formally request the hands of three of your wards, Natalia, Yawalda, and Janina, in honorable matrimony," Sir Gregor said.

This took me completely by surprise. I'd known for a year that the three couples had a thing going, but matrimony just hadn't occurred to me. "Well. This needs some talking," I said. "Sit down and have some mead. Do the girls know that you are here?"

"It was them that put us up to it," Sir Wiktor said.

"That's usually the way of it," I said. "First off, I want to say that I like you three. I think that you would make fine husbands, but, well, I'm not their father. I suppose that I can speak for Janina, since her parents are dead, but Natalia's father is alive and well at Okoitz, as are both of Yawalda's parents. It is from them that you must ask the hands of those girls, not me."

"True," Sir Gregor said. "Yet our loves would do nothing without your permission, and it is not likely that a peasant would object to his daughter marrying a true belted knight."

"I suppose so," I said. "There is the fact that these three girls all have responsible positions here, and they all earn very good money. I'm really not thrilled about losing them. Then too, I don't know anything about your own financial positions. Can you afford to support them properly?"

"You touch on a delicate point," Sir Gregor said.

"Our parents have both been dead for years, and while their lands were ample to support one knight, they don't do the best job at supporting four. You see, there is a fourth brother that you haven't met. Stanislaw is probably the best farmer in Poland-I swear that he could grow wheat on a stone! — but he's very much of a stay-at-home. We aren't by any means wealthy, but if the dowries were adequate, we could easily support our ladies."

That took me back a bit. "So you think that I should not only give you three lovely ladies, three of my best managers, but that I should also pay you to take them from me? Women who aren't even my own daughters? Isn't that a bit much?"

"Well, a bride usually comes with a dowry," Sir Wojciech said, before Sir Gregor hushed him up.

"We have talked these very things over with our ladies, Sir Conrad, and the truth is that while they are eager for marriage with us, they do not want to leave their positions at Three Walls. Your adopted daughter, Annastashia, has stayed here after her marriage with Sir Vladimir. He gets no pay other than his maintenance and the dowry you gave him. Why can't we do the same? Surely the presence of three good fighting men would be useful to you, what with all the caravans you have going in and out of here. Don't they need guards?"

"First off, I can hardly adopt the girls in the same way that I adopted Annastashia. Quite frankly, I've slept often with all three of them, and it would feel like incest if they became my daughters! And the 'dowry' that I gave Sir Vladimir was in fact half the booty that we took together in that fight with the Crossmen last year. The duke awarded it all to me, and making part of it a dowry was just a way of giving Sir Vladimir his share without insulting the duke. Count Lambert never pays more than five hundred pence to marry off one of his ladies-in-waiting, and then only when they're pregnant, generally by him."

"But these girls are hardly peasants anymore, and we would not require anything like the amount that you gave to our cousin Sir Vladimir. Say, three thousand pence each. In return, we will swear fealty to you and serve you daily for four years, asking only our maintenance."

I did some quick mental calculating. Eight pence a day and maintenance was fairly standard pay for a knight and his horse. That came to just less than three thousand pence a year. The brothers were offering me quite a deal, about seventy-five percent off. They must have wanted my ladies pretty bad. Anyway, I hadn't slept with any of them since I'd met Cilicia, and it was a shame to let them go to waste.

"Okay, I think we have a deal, providing that the girls continue on as my managers, and providing that you get their parents' permission, post proper banns at the church, and so on. If you're to swear to me, well, you're sworn through Count Lambert's brother, Count Herman, aren't you? I think we need the permission of both counts before I can swear you in. All that will probably take three or four months, so I suppose we'll have the wedding around Easter."

The brothers were delighted and went off to tell their prospective brides, who were waiting out in the hallway, probably with their ears pressed to the door, if I knew that crew, and I did.

When the slaughter was over, and the female deer, elk and bison were driven out of the valley, along with the young and a sixth of the males, and all the catch was carefully divided according to schedule, we held a last feast and a dance. The morning after, our guests departed happy and heavily laden.

The icehouse and storerooms and smokehouses at Three Walls were filled, we had a gross of deer to provide fresh meat during the winter, and there were huge piles of salted down deer and wolf skins. It was time we set up a tannery.

I couldn't properly announce the engagements to all the hunters present, since the parents had not yet given their permission, but the day after the crowds left, we threw a. party in celebration anyway, just a small one for my household.

Anna had stayed in the barn during the time that Baron Stefan was visiting us, since I didn't want to give him anything to start ranting about. But with him gone, she just naturally came up to join the party. The Banki brothers had heard a lot of stories about Anna, of course, but I don't think that they really believed any of them until she came up to the living room and sat down. I introduced them and explained about her speech difficulty, and they were most surprised to find themselves in a conversation with a being who looked like a horse!

I was a little surprised when Piotr came uninvited to the party, which was for my household only, but Sir Vladimir explained that as my squire, Piotr was most certainly a member of the household. I guess I just hadn't thought it out properly. But there was nothing for it but to invite him out of the bachelors' quarters and give him one of the spare rooms in my apartment.

Piotr was delighted with this move upward, but Krystyana was scowling about it. In fact she had been doing a great deal of scowling lately, and I began to think that having a talk with her was in order. It hurts to be hated.

I thought about her as the evening went on, and some of her troubles were obvious. Since I'd met Cilicia, I hadn't had very many other women. Krystyana had always been willing to share me with the others, but now she was having to give me up all together. Then too, she had left Okoitz in the company of four other girls almost two years ago. Now one was married to Sir Vladimir and the other three were engaged, or nearly so, to the Banki brothers. She had always been the leader of that group, and now she was the one left behind. Only Natasha remained unattached besides her, and Natasha was a relative newcomer.

I was looking at Krystyana when I was thinking this out, and I noticed a slight bulge in her tummy. I wasn't sure, but I thought I might have hit on Krystyana's big problem.

As soon as I could, I called Natasha aside and asked her about it.

"Of course, my lord. You didn't know? Krystyana is heavy with your child."

"My child? You're sure of that?"

"She has touched no other man but you since first leaving Okoitz, my lord. Whose else can it be?"

Now that's as big a fist in the stomach as a man can get! I dismissed Natasha and sat back to ponder it all. I was going to be a father! Cute, bouncing little Krystyana was going to be a mother! It was only when I asked myself if the kid's father and mother were going to be married that I suddenly got cold chills.

In the first place, I'm just not the marrying kind. Maybe it was because my parents' marriage hadn't been all that happy, or maybe it was something in my genes, but that's just the way I am.

In the second place, Krystyana and I didn't have anything in common but a certain sexual attraction, the sort of thing any normal man feels for a healthy fourteen year old, and even that was already fading, at least my half of it,

And in the third place, the whole idea of marriage scares me shitless!

I procrastinated for a few days, hoping that some solution would come to me. The only obvious one, a marriage between Piotr and Krystyana, was shot down because of her obvious hatred for the boy. He was willing to take her in any shape or condition.

I finally decided that my procrastination was sheer cowardice, and called Krystyana into my office. I simply laid it on the line to her. I said that I liked her like a sister, but I wasn't going to marry her. If she wanted to stay single, that was okay by me. I would always see to it that she and her child were well taken care of and I hoped that whatever happened, she would want to stay on as the kitchen manager, since she was doing such a good job there. But I strongly recommended that she marry, if not Piotr, who loved her, then someone else. I would be happy to provide a suitable dowry.

She didn't answer. She just left, crying.

Some days you just can't win.