Chapter 9

Things rocked along until March when I received official notice that the Knights Templar punative troop was headed toward Silano. It amazed me that two different sections of the Church bureaucracy in Rome did not know that I was the same person who led both the city of Silano and the People’s Army. Obviously, there was no interoffice communication going on.

Of course I didn’t complain or point out the error to either section. I just laughed and got ready to act upon the free information. I did make sure that all of my people knew of the foolish mistake, and Mentor and I shared a laugh over it when I talked to him that night. The only thing that bothered me about the approach of the Knights Templar was that they were bringing mostly infantry and artillery with them. There was a token detachment of cavalry, but that was only 20 men. I wasn’t sure what they had in mind for those people to do. Maybe they were to be messengers to and from Rome.

Okay, now that artillery was coming into play, this whole thing was getting very serious from our point of view. I had appointed Lt. Jamin as my replacement within Fort Mentor when I took the job of temporary acting duke. I had asked Mentor for a copying machine disguised as a special in-box. I used that to make copies of the correspondence that I thought he needed to know about, and I sent him a copy of this latest notice.

Lt. Jamin, Martino, Mentor, and I held a meeting within Fort Mentor to discuss the implications of this message. Obviously, it meant that the Knights Templar planned to batter us into submission with the artillery. To do that, they had to have planned on a fairly long siege, and a long siege required a source of food and water for the troops.

The usual procedure for obtaining food in the field was to steal it from the peasants. Oh, they would receive a piece of paper which they could submit to the office in Rome to be reimbursed. The problem from the peasant’s point of view was that he would have to travel to Rome, submit his claim, and wait around to be paid. All of that was something that a farmer could not spare the time for, so he was effectively denied payment for the food taken by the army.

Okay, I had a plan to keep that from happening. I immediately sent out messengers to spread the word around Silano that an army was on its way from Rome, and they would be foraging for food starting in April and lasting indefinitely. That was all the message had to say, because there was not a farmer alive anywhere who did not know that was the warning to hide all of his food where the soldiers could not find it.

My excuse for this “blunder” was my inexperience and a desire to let the farmers know that they should be prepared to sell their excess food to the soldiers when they came around to collect it. The fact that the previous year had been a terrible one for crop yield, or so the farmers could claim, could be the reason they gave for not having anything for the soldiers to take. I figured that we could get away with that excuse because this was not a very productive location for agricultural products, and that was well known all over this section of Italy.

Of course, that did not solve the problem of how to feed the soldiers, but I had an answer for that. Mentor could supply the food we needed for the soldiers. I proposed to store the food in a city-owned warehouse, and the Knights Templar could buy the food from the city of Silano. That somewhat convouluted trail should be enough to conceal where the food was actually coming from.

Probably, the Knights Templar would figure that I was running some sort of scam and was making a lot of money from the deal, but they would not care because it would be very convenient for them, and they were used to dealing with scams all of the time. To support this idea, I was going to overcharge for the food and back off to a reasonable price during negotiations. The advantage to me was that I really did not care whether I got paid or not, since the food did not cost me anything.

Everybody thought this scheme was hilarious and congratulated me for dreaming it up. The meeting broke up on that happy note. I planned to use any money collected from this scheme to pay for the cleanup that would be required when the Knights Templar finally left, hopefully with their tails between their legs.

The Knights Templar soldiers showed up only eight days later than expected, but that was near enough to the projected date to be classified as on time, considering how things were usually done in this era. They moved into the designated area and set up their camp. The officers paid what amounted to a courtesy call on me in the palace and were uniformly polite and courteous.

I pointed out how meager were the crops this past year, so they could not expect to get much, if any thing from the peasants. The look on their faces became pretty grim, but I saved the day by saying that I had been able to build up a ready supply of food that I was able to sell to the Knights Templar at a reasonable price. Ah, that relieved the tension in the room and we settled into a bargaining session. To my surprise, I was able to get more money for the food than I expected, and the meeting broke up with happiness all around.

That afternoon, wagons loaded with provisions for the troops left for the camp and a wagon loaded with gold showed up at the palace. I could not complain about the way the Knights Templar paid their bills. Mentor picked up the gold as soon as it was counted and whisked it away to the future. That saved me a lot of bother.

The next few days were spent by the Knights Templar artillery men spening the time mapping out where they were going to place their siege machines, and we did not disturb them. With the political situation that we had to face, we wanted to make sure that we faced the Knights Templar at their best. We did not want to give them any room for excuses that we did not give them a chance to prepare properly.

The fact that their preparations destroyed expensive and valuable property belonging to private citizens was going to be an important factor on our side. We really needed to make the Knights Templar the villains in the story in order to get enough popular support for the People’s Army. Again, out of courtesy, they gave me a map of where they were going to place their machines and which buildings would be demolished in the process.

I didn’t say anything to any of the people involved because I was going to use their high-handed tactics to inflame opinion against the Knights Templar. Once the fighting was over and the Knights Templar had retreated, the victims of this chaos would be reimbursed by the city. Of course, the gold for that would come from the future via Mentor.

On the third day, the engineers and construction crews showed up and began knocking down buildings. Of course, this caused a furor among the townspeople, especially the people who owned and/or lived in the buildings. They came to me with cries for help in stopping the destruction, but I pointed out that I had no legal recourse except an appeal to the Pope. However, the major damage was done before my messenger could get an audience with the proper people. Thus, I could show that I had done the right thing, but the damage was done before my plea could be heard. So far, I was getting away with my maneuvering within the overall plan.

Though the men worked diligently, it still took until the middle of May before the assault on Fort Mentor was started. Of course, we were well aware of what was going on, and Lt. Jamin was ready when the first shot was fired. The first shot was from an oversized onager (a kind of catapult) at the building adjacent to the back of Fort Mentor. This was a ranging shot that fell short; nevertheless, it was enough to allow Lt. Jamin to react. Unfortunately, an innocent mother and her son were killed by the errant shot.

He knew when and where the first shot was to be fired because I was able to tell him that. He had sent his son Aaron out with a six-man detail, four men and two women, to eliminate the onager crew as soon as they fired their first shot. This particular detail was in very little danger because they had been training for this kind of assignment for a month, and the Knights Templar were blissfully unaware of what we could do.

Furthermore, we had been depending on the reluctance of the townsfolk to tattle on us if any of the detail had been spotted. There had been four crewmen for the onager and two officers looking on when the detail fired their crossbows at the six men. The range was too short to allow for any misses, so it was six bolts fired and six dead members of the Knights Templar army.

The decision had been made that no effort would be made to recover the bolts so that there would be no doubt who had shot the men. We wanted it to be known just who their enemy was, and there was no fear of the vaunted Knights Templar.

Aaron and his detail hung around to see what would happen when the bodies were discovered. Only about 15 minutes later a squad leader showed up to find out why no more missiles had been fired from the onager. As soon as he saw the bodies, he rushed away to report what he had found. This guy seemed to have more on the ball than the average NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer).

Anyway, about half an hour later a whole gang showed up. There appeared to be several officers, engineers, and protective troops in the group. The interesting point from Aaron’s point of view was that all of the guards were only equipped with swords, and there were no missile weapons. He wondered if they really expected to be able to defend against crossbows without missile weapons? Perhaps there were just no archers available on such short notice. How long was it going to take to remedy that goof?

After about an hour of fiddling around, the officers disappeared and the bodies were removed. Shortly thereafter, a new crew showed up to man the onager. They, too, were mowed down, along with the guards, before another shot could be fired.

This could have been a disaster for Aaron’s detail had it not been for them shooting at the guards first. It was easy to tell from which direction their bolts were coming, so the guards knew which direction to charge toward. Aaron was lucky that they were able to eliminate the guards before any reached his people. These soldiers were very tough, and Aaron’s people were not in their class when it came to close in fighting. We could fight hand-to-hand against any street tough, but we were not yet up to the standard of battle hardened soldiers.

One of the onager’s crew did manage to escape with only a minor wound in his arm, but the word would now get back to the command structure of the kind of opposition that they were facing. Our victories would probably not be so easy from that point on.

Aaron hung around for about an hour longer, but no more Knights Templar people showed up, so he returned to Fort Mentor. His report was the basis for what you have just read. A pair of observers were sent to keep an eye on the onager site, but the only thing that happened for the rest of the day was that a detail under heavy guard showed up to pick up the bodies. Okay, but that was going to be the last time that we let them do that. From now on, Mentor was going to pick up any of the enemy bodies and dispose of them. We had to get serious about this war, and I had to stop treating it like a video game.