Chapter 12
Some of Jan's men marched the remaining peasants back, taking the supply waggons as well, and the six boyars Kuryło had spared.
"You got lucky by bringing your sons," said Kuryło. "Our prince is sentimental like that, he having a little brother. Don't make trouble and nobody will make trouble for you."
"We're all younger sons, looking for lands," said the father of the two scared boys. "Have you killed our servants? They never did anyone any harm."
"You never know; keep your noses clean, and our king might yet be awarding you the lands of those in Moskwa plotting war," said Kuryło. "And for your care for your servants, I'll put in a word for you. I'll see if I can find them. We took most of the peasants prisoner, it not being their fault."
"Most?"
"Some of your men rode over the ones who failed to get out of the way," growled Kuryło. "It's one reason we killed all the filthy boyars. Men like that don't deserve to have control of a flea circus, never mind other men. What are your names?"
"I am Sergei Yevgenovitch Borodin; my sons, Maxim and Grigori."
They were sent on their way.
Meanwhile Jurko tied the prince and his adjutant to adjacent trees, their hands stretched above their heads.
"Name?" he said to the leader.
"I am Vladimir Vladimirivitch Dorogin, a Count of the Grand Duchy of Moscow!" cried Dorogin. "You cannot do this, you peasant!"
"Funny, I thought I was doing it," said Jurko. "You have more men with you than are needed to establish a forward base, I presume at Dorogobuż. What are your objectives, and how far behind you is the main war party?"
The prince raised a tired head. He was a handsome young man when not somewhat battered, with long golden hair and beard and blue eyes.
"There is no other war band as yet," he said.
"My prince, be silent," said Dorogin. "When there is no report, the tsar will send others looking for Prince Feodor Ivanovitch Kandinsky, who is a favourite at court."
"Really?" said Jurko, studying the prince. "No accounting for tastes. Well, you're the one who is really in charge, so how about I let you hang here in the cold as night draws deeper by the minute, until you tell me what I need to know? Your princeling knows nothing. A bit of a waste having kept him alive, but there you go." He smiled brightly at Dorogin, who was a stockier character than the willowy prince, with brown hair and beard, eyes like ice, and a rather snub nose. "At least he is more decorative than you; brought your nose from your peasant stock, did you?"
Dorogin howled in fury.
"You little bastard!" he screeched.
"Oh, but I came by my bastardy honestly; you have plainly worked to be one," said Jurko. "What, you think I take it as an insult that my parents weren't married? My father accepts me and so does my stepmother, so I would care why?"
"Who are you, exactly?" asked Kandinsky.
Jurko doffed and bowed down, Polish fashion. The bow was ironic, but neither seemed to realise this.
"Jurij Korybut Wiśniowiecki, also known as Bohun," he said.
"S... son of Jeremi Korybut Wiśniowiecki?" stuttered Kandinsky. "But you were digging!"
"Of course I was digging," said Jurko. "Men perform better if their commanders muck in with them. Besides, it helps to maintain my delectable and sexually irresistible Cossack body with firm muscles and not an inch of surplus flesh. I wouldn't want to be flabby like you two; my wife would get stroppy. And you know about my wife being stroppy, don't you, Feodor, my cherub?"
"That... that was your wife? Why do you bring your wife to war?"
"War? I didn't bring my wife to war. I brought her on an engineering project, the building of a road in the furtherance of trade. A great believer in trade, my father. But you believe in war... well, just yell out when you feel as if you want to tell my your tsar's war plan, or if you're about to die or anything. I wouldn't want you to die without the chance to watch you do so." He stalked away.
"God above, I can believe he is Jeremi's son," gasped Kandinsky. "I've met Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, he is a ruthless man. He'll leave us to die for sure; tell him that my cousin Alexei is not coming until rasputitsa is over unless we were able to seize Smoleńsk in a hurry. I don't want to freeze to death!"
"Surely he will not do such to a prince and a count!" said Dorogin.
"I wouldn't like to risk my life on it," sobbed the prince.
Kuryło, listening in the woods behind them, smiled grimly.
Leaving them panicking had done the trick.
He went to find Jurko.
"There isn't a rear guard; they were to come and see if they could take Smoleńsk, and if they could to send back word for Aleksej to hurry before rasputitsa, otherwise, he'll be coming in May."
"Well, I suppose we'd better keep them alive to take back so Aleksej knows whom to blame," said Jurko. "I'd like to impale Dorogin, but I expect Papa will want to question him further about the dispositions of the Moskale army. He'll pick up subtleties I'd miss. Have them brought in and defrosted."
oOoOo
Jan turned up the next day with half the peasants who had been sent back.
"They were so impressed with how well they were treated as prisoners they want to have our king rule Moskwa and have better conditions," he said. "They've come to fell trees."
"I don't turn that down," said Jurko. "Can you send someone back with cherub one and cherub two? I don't want to look at them all day, they could curdle water."
"Did you get what you wanted from them?"
"Yes, we have time to drive the road clear into the Kremlin," said Jurko. "Especially with extra hands to cut wood. I have a good feeling about this. And Aleksej thinks his pet cherub is sitting in a fortress playing soldiers, and is all warm and fuzzy inside about how he's going to have forward posts to come to. And then the winged hussars will arrive."
"Not the Cossacks?" the question came from one of the former hussars who had been eavesdropping.
"No, we aren't as pretty and we don't make the point as thoroughly," said Jurko. "The glory boys with their wings can do the fancy shit, and Papa will probably expect me to ride with him as well, but nothing crushes the enemy as beautifully as the magnificence of the hussars. And I do confess I've been in a few situations when I've been bloody glad to see them."
"Such as when?" asked the hussar.
Jan laughed.
"Oh, I'll tell this one, he'll hide in modesty. Such as the time when we had sat out a snowstorm under a bridge, and woke up to find that half the Swedish army had turned up, and Jurko stands on the bridge, scowls at seventeen thousand men, and says 'you shall not pass.' It was hilarious! We had their usurper king whom we had captured as our sole bargaining chip, but the sight of that tousled, unshaven, feral-looking apparition that he was after three days sitting out a blizzard, facing out a vicious general and his army as if he had the whole corps of angels at his back was marvellous. And then they did arrive, and we were mightily relieved, I can tell you!"
Jurko sniggered.
"We were glad of angels to mop up after the Potocki uprising as well. Seeing Papa's banner was a relief. That was when two hundred of us took out two thousand. We loosed the force of nature on them. But I don't know if we could have held a siege on that salient if the newcomers had been enemies not friends."
"So are we just going to continue on as far as Moskwa?"
"All things being equal, yes," said Jurko. "Michaś and Juryk will reach Warszawa in five days, Papa will be here in a week, and we'll be twenty staje further east by then. We could really do with distance signalling of some kind to send messages quicker."
"You use flags to send messages on ships," said Jan.
"Yes, the Duke of Kurland took the idea from English ships," said Jurko. "That... yes, it could work. But we need a good code book. I think we need to number each station with a number and letter, the letter for the canal, so it can signal which station is to take it up and the station which is the ultimate destination. And have masts all along the canals. Then if combinations stood always for a code phrase for example, like 'get your finger out' and 'frigate' they could also communicate with the shipping. And we could extend the very basic ship signalling we now have."
"How would you do it, though, to show different letters and numbers? You couldn't read them all the time," said Jan.
"Wouldn't need to," said Jurko. "If numbers, say, were blue, and the broad pattern told what it was, say three triangular, three square, which have one, two, three or four blocks of white on, as if on a flag with a cross, a white flag with a blue cross for zero, and a plain blue flag for nine, you have the numbers easy to read. Then if the vowels were red, to stand out, and the rest of the alphabet broken into blocks of eight with three colours, yellow, green and black, say, it would be easy. You could spell words, but having shortcuts seems sensible."
"FF for frigate, say," said Jan.
"Yes, because it means nothing else," said Jurko. "Are you going to stand about all day looking decorative or are you going to rid me of the cherubs so I can do some work?"
"Well, I like that, you big Cossack oaf," said Jan. "Back and forth I've been, while you spent yesterday hanging around leaning on your spade, hobnobbing with Moskale!"
The former hussar was about to protest, but Jurko laughed, the two men embraced each other, and Jan went to collect the prisoners.
oOoOo
The road was driven into Russian territory now. And through villages of terrified peasants. Some of whom joined them once they had spoken with the supposed prisoners. Jurko was now sending forward scouts ahead to check for any opposition.
"I don't know what we're going to do about Pokłonnaja Hill when we get there," said Jurko. "I've read about it, and it's supposed to be more than five hundred stopy high, which is higher than a lot of cathedral towers. Now, if we put a road up it, it's a grand charge for the hussars going down it. But it tires the nags. My engineer's instincts want to either level it, or drive a tunnel through it."
"You won't drive a tunnel through it quietly," said Jan. "Why not put a road over it, because I wager it would be a fine vista. You can always drive a tunnel through it when we have a peace with the Moskale."
"Good point," said Jurko. "I shan't have to conserve gunpowder for artillery then."
oOoOo
Michaś almost threw himself into his father's arms when they arrived, and then said,
"Oh, bollocks, I wasn't going to do that!" He drew himself upright and saluted. "I have the honour to report, my lord king that the Moskale have invaded Rzeczpospolita territory unexpectedly, and... and the forward engineers were h... holding them off with shovels."
"Jurij?" gasped Jeremi.
"Yes, and Helena, and they told me to bring message," said Michaś, and sobbed, suddenly.
"Your brother is resourceful and more than that, he is lucky and audacious," said Jeremi. "Oh, my son, you and Juryk are men now, I see. And useful to use as messengers."
"You will permit us to go back with you, won't you, Papa?" said Michaś.
"Of course," said Jeremi. "We can sail in two days. And if we go north and by sea, and enter the Dźwina river to go to the Great Canal, I believe we should get there quicker, all things being equal."
"I am sure you have studied it with Jurij, Papa," said Michaś. "Should I have come that way?"
"No, you were more sensible to come the way you could guarantee a river boat," said Jeremi. "If there had been a seaworthy craft ready at Ryga able to bring you to Warszawa, it would have been potentially quicker, but then, too, storms might have disrupted your course. We'll be going before the wind all the way."
"So we shall," said Michaś.
It was the boys' first sea journey, and with the wild January winds, frankly terrifying.
"I wasn't really scared," said Michaś to Juryk when they entered Ryga.
"I wasn't any more scared than you were," said Juryk. They exchanged looks.
"We don't admit to it ever," said Michaś.
Back on the river and canal, their equanimity returned, and it was not long before they were in Smoleńsk. Michaś shuddered as they came to the camp outside the city.
Juryk slipped an arm in his.
"Anything I should know?" asked Jeremi, sharply.
"Jurij sorted it out," said Michaś. And then the tale spilled out. Jeremi frowned.
"I suppose he had to maintain the inter-unit harmony by punishing you both," he said. "You're as mouthy as Jurij... and me. I am proud you comported yourself well." He embraced them both.
oOoOo
Jurko had not expected his father to arrive for at least another four days, and consequently ran to embrace him when the king clattered over the new logs, as yet uncovered with brush and earth.
"Papa!" said Jurko. "Did you bother to question those idiots at all?"
"No, son, I came right on to see you, and assure myself, and your brother, that you survived, because reports were not enough," said Jeremi.
And then Michaś and Juryk had to embrace him as well.
"We brought Róża back," said Michaś. "And Uncle Onufry Zagłoba."
"That should improve the entertainment value of the evenings," said Jurko. "Though I must say, it's also entertaining watching Longin Podbipięta trying to be stoic in the face of ruthlessly applied femininity from Jadwiga."
Jeremi chuckled.
"Oh, he wants her; he confessed as much to me and begged my pardon for his improper feelings towards one who stood as my daughter and was too young to know her own mind. I told him I had no objection if she remained of the same mind, and he looked more hunted than ever. Do you really hope to be in Moskwa by Easter?"
"A month before, all being well," said Jurko. "Though when the Moskale have Easter beats me; they start their year in September, which is October for the rest of us, count the year from when they have calculated God made the earth, and their months are a good three weeks out for the rest of us. How was the Sejm?"
"Oh, once Michał... I beg his pardon, Michaś... blurted out how the Moskale had a huge raiding party which they used violate our borders when Jurij had not reached them with the road, they were happy to keep raiding parties subdued," said Jeremi.
"And now we can do war?" Jurko brightened.
"Now we can do war," said Jeremi.
