Chapter 12

Whatever that grain was, it made a tasty bread! It tasted a bit like rye, but not completely. I guess it was something that went extinct, a real shame. Oh, well, we can enjoy it now. The women were all after me to grow a hell of a lot more next season; I hoped they realized that they were the ones who were going to have to reap it.

The whole garden was a hit: the women liked the convenience and the men liked the produce. It looked like agriculture was a winner all around. We will need a lot more acreage next season. Hopefully, there will be enough rain so that we don't have to irrigate. I think I'll put my wives to finding some people to put in charge of the farming ventures, they did such a good job with finding the diplomats/traders. Wolfton now has over 500 people and 40 dogs. We must be the largest community in all of Europe in this era.

Animal husbandry will be another story. We are doing fine with rabbits, in fact, we are already running a surplus. However, we will have to import sheep and goats from a great distance. On the other hand, I plan to start domesticating aurochs, an ancestor of the cattle I knew at home. The current aurochs are too big and ornery to be easily handled, but I hope to breed for a smaller size and a gentler disposition. This will be another project which must run for years before it will be completed.

Next season, I plan to send my diplomats into the Ruhr to look for people making iron. I don't expect them to find any, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel! If there is already a source of iron, I had rather trade for it than try to make my own. I know that iron smelting originated in the Middle East and east of there in my original time line, but I may be lucky here. The ETs did say that this was a different time line from mine, so history could run in my favor; it's certainly possible. If history doesn't run in my favor, Alice and I will just have to make a trip to Germany to see what we can stir up.

Horse just got back with another load of copper ore. He ran into trouble on the way out. It was a good thing he took along so many men this time, with what we thought was an ample supply of crossbows and bolts. Just one day this side of the copper mine, his convoy of 8 wagons and 24 men ran into a large body of the invaders we had trouble with over a year before. Horse never knew how many invaders he faced, because the battle took place in dense woods, but he had a chance to count the live ones once the battle was over.

The only path through the woods was the one he had cut as a shortcut between the mine and Wolfton. The encounter resulted when he, in the lead wagon, met the vanguard of the invaders marching toward him. Horse immediately recognized the bows used by the other side and knew that he was in for a fight. The path was only wide enough for a single wagon, so he had no way he could bunch his wagons for defense, nor was there room to turn around. Horse had a simple decision to make: fight or run?

Horse was no coward, but he was not stupid, either. He shouted for his men to abandon the wagons and take their weapons into the woods. They should prepare to fight in small groups, since there was no place to form a battle line. Luckily, they split more or less evenly into the two groups on either side of the road. They melted into the forest and prepared to fight.

The invaders had shot arrows at Horse as soon as they had seen him, so there was no question of whether or not there would be a fight. Horse was still sitting in his driver's seat when he fired his first shot at the enemy. His was, admittedly, a lucky shot, because it killed one of the enemy officers. He was able to get off one more shot before he had to run for the trees, but he couldn't tell if he had hit anyone with that one.

By this time, the enemy soldiers were shooting at random into the woods. A few bolts had found their mark, and the archers had panicked. There was so much yelling that the few officers who had kept their heads couldn't be heard over the general din, so they had no control over their men.

Contrary to their opponents, Horse's men were keeping themselves under control and sniping at the archers on the road only when they had a clear shot. The trees provided good cover for Horse's men, but the men on the road had no cover at all. It was a shooting gallery for the men with the crossbows, a totally "unfair" fight. In other words, it was exactly what you want for your side!

The enemy were so tightly packed together that there was no retreat back down the road; Horse estimated that it was blocked for at least a mile by men who were sure that they were doomed, but didn't know which way to run. They couldn't run toward the wagons without getting a shower of bolts fired at them, and they couldn't run the other way because of the number of men packed on the road. (I can't help wondering how the enemy could have been so stupid as to try to march their whole army down the narrow road without sending out adequate scouting parties ahead of the main group. Maybe they were too arrogant for their own good!)

Once it was clear to Horse that he was going to win, but that he could wind up killing a lot of men to no good purpose, he shouted to the enemy to surrender. He said that they would not be killed if they threw down their weapons and gave up. A few of the men did as Horse said, and they were struck down by officers. These officers didn't last much longer—they were filled with arrows. Shortly after that, the battle was over and Horse had about 250 prisoners that he really wasn't equipped to handle.

Horse found a few noncoms he could talk to, and they worked out terms of surrender. These men were all conscripts, so they had no love for their masters. The men were controlled by threats to their families. Horse suggested that they help him get his load of copper ore and return with him to Wolfton. Horse would present their case to me and hope that I could come up with some useful ideas.

Horse explained to me what had happened and why he had brought about 250 "visitors" with him to Wolfton. It turned out that this was a repeat of the attack on us, and we could expect to continue getting these attacks until we took positive measures to stop them by putting the other guys out of business. I told Horse that I would commune with the gods on this problem and would get back to him as soon as I could.

Alice and I talked this over and decided that we would never get a better opportunity to rid ourselves of the continued danger from these paranoid sociopaths. We decided to combine our forces with the prisoners and the merged force would march on the crazies and clean them out. If we got full cooperation from the prisoners and our people, we could be ready to leave within 4 weeks.

We decided that we had to trust the prisoners enough to issue them crossbows. We had enough crossbows for training, and we could make up a full complement of them, along with enough bolts, by the time we were ready to go. The prisoners, now our allies, were delighted to learn that we would issue them crossbows and train them to use their new weapons. A little head-knocking was needed to get our allies to take orders and instruction from Alice, but she finally got through to them. She started the instruction as soon as we could get organized, and she was satisfied with the results after only two weeks of training.

We organized into 4 companies of 100 men in each. Allies and our own people were mixed within the companies, but all of the officers came from Wolfton. We allocated all of the wagons and carts that were available, 26 in all, to serve as supply and logistics vehicles. Alice did her usual superb job of organizing the supply train, and I figured that we could march all the way to our target without having to live off the land. Our trip back might be a different story, but we would worry about that when the time came.

Actually, neither Alice nor I expected much of a fight, once we reached the enemy stronghold. This was based on the fact that over half of their potential fighters were now our allies, and we should present such a formidable force that they would be cowed into submission. The enemy rulers were concentrated in a small locale, but the area they controlled was quite large and diffuse, so it should be easy for us to break their hold on most of their territory. And, if worse came to worst, I could always light up a cigarette and blow smoke at them!

My main interest on this trip was simply to kill the bastards who were causing all the trouble. If they had quit pestering us after that first encounter, I probably would have let them alone, but I have always had a short fuse with bullies, which I consider these idiots to be. Anyway, they have worn out their welcome on this version of Earth, and I intended to punch their ticket. I intended to wipe out what I laughingly called their "command and control center" and mop up any details from there.

We arrived at the cave in question after about a week of easy travel. We set out what I hoped was an impenetrable wall of troops around the cave vicinity just out of bow shot range, but inside crossbow range. Since I didn't trust the bastards as far as I could throw Mont Blanc, I sent Alice in with my ultimatum: surrender or die! She delivered the message and was dismissed.