Well, they dang nearly killed me, but they didn't.
They shaved me naked and yelled and screamed and ran me up and down mountains and cliffs, and ropes, and all the while singing damn fool songs and blowing on horns and beating stupid drums. They got me up every day before dawn to swear the same dang oath, like I didn't remember it from the last two hundred mornings we'd said it, and then came at me with pikes and swords and axes, and they made me do the same to the others. They made me walk funny and talk funny and smile when they was shouting at me.
You see, one of the twelve things we was always to be was cheerful, and I think that was the hardest of the bunch. I finally figured out that if I squinted my eyes and gritted my teeth at them, I could usually make them think I was smiling.
Worst yet, they made me go the first six months of it without getting drunk or laid.
Sometimes, I think it was that last that kept me going, knowing that once 1 got out of this hell, all those pretty little girls would be waiting for Sir Tadaos to service them. I lived for that, and like I said, I nearly died for it.
A lot of men did die in that training, but not in my platoon. I guess I was lucky in that I was put in with the baron's managers for the first six months, and not many of them men washed out. I mean that they could all read and write already, and they was mostly pretty sensible. A few got hurt pretty bad on the cliffs, but even they graduated. I thought that I was going to graduate with them, but no, the day before the rest went through the firewalking ordeal and the vigil, they told me that I was scheduled for the whole year-long program. I went and talked to Sir Vladimir about that, since he ran the school and I knew him pretty well. Hell, once he let me use him for target practice, but that's another story.
Anyhow, he said that there was nothing he could do about it since the baron, he had put it in writing and that was that. But he did give me a pass to go to Three Walls for three days, so I could get proper drunk and visit the Widow Bromski. Seeing her again after spending six months dreaming about those sweet young things, well, it helped to get drunk first. I'd worn my armor coming in, but I guess I didn't fool anybody. Certainly not any of the girls. They must have some kind of secret code about that sort of thing. But at least I got good and blasted with the girls at the Pink Dragon Inn. Course, that's a look-but-don't touch sort of place, but I tell you it's well worth the looking.
So I went back to Hell, and this time they put me in with the baron's new knights, them what he got after little Piotr killed Baron Stefan and Conrad stepped into the old baron's shoes. They was pretty standoffish at first, but then one day Sir Vladimir called me "Squire Tadaos" in public, and those knights and squires loosened up some.
I guess I did learn something there. I got to be real good with a sword, one of those long skinny ones you wear over your left shoulder. I could hold my own with an axe or a pike, though I don't much like a pike, and I found out I was near as good a shot with one of them swivel guns as I was with my bow. I could outshoot anybody, the instructors included.
So at last came the day when we was to graduate. They made a big to-do about it, but me, I was just glad it was over. The others was worried about walking on fire, but not me. If Piotr and all them managers could do it, I knew I wouldn't have no trouble, and I didn't.
Look here. Every man in the world has snuffed a candle with his fingers without burning hisself, and walking on coals is just the same thing in a bigger way. Anyhow, I did burn myself a little, though I didn't feel nothing at the time.
Naturally, I had brains enough to go through it all with a straight face, not wanting to be dropped this late in the thing. I know when to keep my mouth shut.
After that, there was some hocus-pocus about sitting up all night and seeing if we had halos in the morning. I guess I never been much of a religious man, except once there, and that didn't last long. But I learned long ago that if you play the game and look nice, there's a whole lot less trouble. So we waited up all night and the sun come up and didn't none of us have a halo showing on the fog. There wasn't even no fog!
So this priest, he says that one of us must not be in a state of grace, and that we'd have to pray all day and try it again tomorrow. We was all pretty disappointed.
Them knights, they all took it real serious and did some real soul-searching, so naturally I had to look like I was doing the same. But any man with half the brains of a cow should be able to figure out that you can't see your shadow on the fog, halo or no halo, when there wasn't no fog in the first place!
So we stayed up the whole day in prayer, and the next night in vigil and again there wasn't no fog. I thought some of them knights was going to die right there from the humiliation of it. They figured God was rejecting them for their sins, and of course, I couldn't tell them no different.
So a third day and night went by without no sleep and in the middle of the night, Baron Conrad came by. He hadn't been there the other two nights, and I figured he knew when it'd be foggy. I always knew that man was smart.
So we finally got fog and saw our shadows in it. What they got so excited about was something I'd seen a hundred times before, only looking into green water instead of fog. Sort of these rays of light seem to come out of the head of your shadow. Every man on the river has seen it, them with brains enough to look down, and fog is just another kind of water, isn't it?
But it wasn't my place to say nothing, so I got in line with the others and was knighted and sworn in and became Sir Tadaos Kolpinski.
We slept in that day and threw a party that night with the help of some beautiful young girls from the cloth factory at Okoitz. The next day, they gave me a full purse of silver and lent me a horse, so I gave one of them girls a lift back, because Okoitz was the place I intended to spend my month's leave.
I had a month off, and after the first day, I just sent the horse back to the baron, cause I wasn't going nowheres else. That place is even better than the stories they tell about it! They not only had the prettiest and the eagerest girls in the world, they had two shifts of them! You could stand there smiling in your red-and-white dress uniform, with all your brass and boots polished, watching them as they paraded out after the end of their work day, and none of them wearing much of anything. Then when you saw one that suited you, you just smiled and asked her if she wanted to have a beer with you, and never one of them turned me down.
Then in the morning, when you'd eaten and drunk and fornicated all night, you walked her back to the factory and there'd be the night shift coming off work, rubbing the limelights out of their pretty eyes and wondering what they'd do with themselves all the lonely day.
I'd just spent a year in Hell, but now I was in Heaven!
This went on for three weeks, when one night I was sitting in the inn with two of the prettiest girls in Okoitz. Good friends and roommates they was, and I'd had the both of them before, one at a time, and that night I couldn't decide between them so I took them both, and they said that sounded like fun.
They was both wearing about what the waitresses at the inn wear and, that's to say, nearly nothing. They said it was the new style at Wroclaw, and I sure didn't make no argument about their tits hanging out. Not that theirs really hung, you understand, being of the young, conical variety.
We was all laughing and talking when Baron Conrad comes up. I asked him if I could buy him a beer, or maybe a mead would be more fitting for one of his exalted rank. He said it had been a hot day, and if I was buying beer, he was drinking it. Course, he never had to pay for his drinks anyway, seeing as how he owned this Pink Dragon Inn and fifty others besides, but it felt good playing host to my liege lord. He downed it quick and bought the next round for the table, just like he was a normal man and all.
Then he got down to business. He said that I was going to have to cut my leave short. It seems that the first steamboat was all built ahead of schedule, and if I figured to be its captain, I'd better be in East Gate tomorrow by noon.
Course, I wouldn't of missed that boat for all the girls in Okoitz, now that I'd had three weeks of them. But I figured that it was worthwhile complaining about it, since the baron might sweeten the pot a bit to get me there. It's the squeaky oarlock that gets the oil.
So I said that it would be hard, tearing myself away from these poor girls, leaving them to God knew what sad fate.
So the baron, he says that if I was worried about their futures, why, I could marry them if I wanted to.
I said I couldn't marry them both and he said I could if I was of a mind to. Hadn't I read the manual and rules of the Radiant Warriors?
Well, they'd given me this little printed book just as I left, but I hadn't read nothing and I had to admit it. So the baron says that any knight in our order had the right to have a servant, with his wife's permission. And a servant of ours had all the rights of a wife, so it was the same thing, except for the church ceremony, of course.
Well, that sort of flabbergasted me, and I said I didn't know which one I should marry. I don't rightly know if he was serious or not, but he says that if I couldn't decide, I should let the girls do it. Let them flip a coin, he says.
Before I can blink twice, the girls are grinning and nodding at each other. One of them digs a silver penny out of my purse and flips it in the air. The other calls "crowns," and that was the way that I proposed to Alona. I never had a word to say about it.
Course, the girls were both jabbering now, working out the details. If I had to go to East Gate tomorrow, why, Alona's village was only a half mile off the new railroad. She could come with me and I could speak to her father and post banns at the village church, because that's where she wanted to be married. Then Petrushka would be her bridesmaid and right after the ceremony, she'd become the servant.
All this was fine by Petrushka, so the girls had it all settled while me and Baron Conrad never said a word.
Then the girls left in a hurry to tell all their friends and I was left staring at the baron. I think that if I hadn't been drinking and fornicating for three weeks, I might have had enough sense to shout "NO!" , but I had been and I didn't. The baron, he just seemed amused and said that under the circumstances I didn't have to get to East Gate until tomorrow night.
But looking back on it all, I tell you that if I had been sensible that night, I would have made the biggest mistake of my life. Them girls was everything a reasonable man could want, and we've been mostly happy together.
So the next morning, I rented us two horses, one with a sidesaddle since Alona didn't figure it was smart wearing the Wroclaw styles home, but had on a nice wool dress she'd made. We got there before noon and I talked to her old man and the priest and we settled everything real quick, since I didn't much care about the dowry and all, what with me making eight pennies a day now. Then I left her with her folks to visit for a day or two and got to East Gate before dark.
They had limelights up around the dock area, so I went out to look at my new boat right after supper, and she was a beauty! She was painted red and white, with gold and black trim, and a big white Piast eagle was painted on her side, just like the one on the back of the dress uniform. She looked more like a castle than a boat, what with her tall, flat armored sides, and there was crenellations all around the top and turrets at all four corners.
I swear I loved that boat more than the girls I was going to marry.
She was huge, fully three dozen yards long and ten wide. She was two and a half stories tall and armored with steel thick enough to stop any arrow but one of mine! She could carry sixty tons of cargo in six containers, and had fourteen cabins for passengers as well, plus five more for the crew. Yet the night guard told me that she only drew a half a yard of water with a full load!
I went down to the engine room and who do I find there but Baron Conrad hisself. I told him this boat of his was the finest looking thing I'd ever seen, both my girls included, and he said he was glad I thought so, but I better not let them hear that. Then he showed me all over that engine. It had a tubular boiler that ran at two dozen atmospheres, and a sealed condenser below the waterline so we got full power from it. It had a separate distillery run off waste heat, with its own condenser to make distilled water for the main boiler, so he didn't figure we'd ever have a fouling problem. It had two big double expansion cylinders that turned a paddle wheel that was two stories tall. There was a kitchen that could feed a whole company of men. There was even a bathroom with hot showers!
Then he got into the armament. We carried twelve swivel guns aboard, plus four steam-powered guns in the corner turrets he called peashooters. These fired ball bearings at the rate of three gross rounds a minute, one after another. And there was two steam projectors, Halmans, he called them, that could throw three pounds of death at the enemy. And during wartime, the boat was set up to carry a full company of men with all their equipment, including their war carts!
Then he told me I better get some sleep, because we was going to take her out in the morning.