"Dig up latrine pits to make the smoke powder?"
"Sounds strange, doesn't it?" Andrew replied. "But it's the truth."
"Could it be that when one thunders into the latrine, it stays there till you dig it up and that's what makes the guns roar?"
The room exploded into laughter, and Kal, not taking offense, laughed as well.
Andrew, grateful for the relaxing of tension, let the men trade rude jokes for a moment and then shifted the topic back to the needs at hand.
"What about sulfur?" Andrew asked, looking around the table.
"You know, I heard some of the boyars and nobles here went to a hot spring for baths several miles north of town," Emil said. "I never went up there, but supposedly the water really stinks. Might be a high sulfur content in it, and if so there are bound to be deposits."
"You know what the stuff looks like?" Andrew asked.
"I don't hold with it as a medicine like others, but I've got a good idea what it looks like in a raw state."
"Go up there immediately and check it out."
Andrew looked back at
Ferguson.
"Let me ask for a miracle here. Among all your other knowledge, can you make powder as well?"
"Well, sir," Chuck Ferguson began slowly, "I know the ratio of parts, I remember reading about it in
Scientific American,
and how they mix it up and wet the mixture down, then roll it into cakes, and finally grind it to the grade you want. But it'll take some experimenting to get it right.
"It'll be awful tricky, sir. A single spark and the place
gets
blown apart. This will take some thinking and experimenting."
"If we get the powder we'll still need lead," Mina interjected.
Andrew looked to Kal and his companions, who stared blank-faced.
Ferguson
explained the property of the metal to them, and he was met with confused silence.
"We'll need to prospect this one out," Mina finally said dejectedly.
"Start with the people here in town. Search through everything—there's got to be something of lead in this town.
Once located we'll track the source down.
"Now, John, what else do we need for armament?"
"If we get everything organized we'll still need cartridge paper for the muskets, bayonets, wheels and carriages for artillery, gun flints, cartridge boxes, shoes, and supplies."
Andrew nodded as John checked off his list.
"Everything you say means an extra job for you, John. Delegate it out as you see fit."
"All right, sir," the major said while furiously scribbling down notes.
"Now the question of supply," Andrew said. "Fletcher, since you showed some skill getting that grain mill started and you're the quartermaster for the regiment, I'm giving you the job of supplying an army and all of Suzdal once the war starts."
"I was afraid of that," Fletcher said, trying to smile.
"I'm expecting that before this is done, we'll have a siege on our hands. You'll have to stockpile enough to see everyone through that, for however long it takes."
"That's pretty damn open-ended, sir," Fletcher said. "I need something more specific to calculate on."
"Bob, I can't give you anything more than that. Now tell me what would have to be done."
"Kal, I understand the boyars were already stockpiling grain for the arrival of the Tugars," Fletcher said hopefully.
"Since the Tugars were thought to be three winters away, we had only laid aside a small portion of what was needed."
Fletcher shook his head sadly.
"I think the first problem will simply be that of labor," Fletcher stated.
"How's that?"
Andrew asked, "
we've
got hundreds of thousands to do that."
"That's not the point," Bob replied. "These people farm the way folks did five hundred years ago. They need seven or eight in the fields to feed ten. You start pulling off tens of thousands to build dams and mills and make an army, and we'll all starve to death next winter, with or without the Tugars."
Andrew felt as if he were caught up in some sort of balancing act.
"So how the hell do we solve it?"
"Well have to change how they farm, and damn quick."
"How so?"
"If we had one of them McCormick reapers to start with," Fletcher replied, "that'd do the work of twenty-five men come harvest time."
Andrew looked hopefully at
Ferguson as if the new captain could work miracles.
"That's a tall one, sir," Jim replied.
"There's got to be a farmer in the ranks who had one," Andrew said hopefully.
"If we were an
Illinois
or
Iowa
regiment we'd have dozens of them," Fletcher replied, "but you don't see many of them new-fangled things up in
Maine
."
"I'll run through the roster later and we'll ask if any of the men knows anything about machine reapers. Now what else would you need to do, Bob?"
"Well sir, besides reapers, we should turn out some good iron plows, tillers, and narrowing machines."
"And I suppose that'll come out of my metal supply," Mina snapped.
"There's no place else," Andrew said quietly. "All right, we won't need those machines till spring planting starts.
John, you and Fletcher figure out the allocation of metal and a forge to work on the tools."
"If you could do that, sir, we might have a shot at it," Fletcher replied. "These people have bottles—a good glass works could give us one hell of a lot of bottles for canning food with."
Andrew looked back to Kal.
"
There's
five or six glassmakers here in the city," Kal replied.
"Good. Send them to Captain Fletcher—they're working for him now.
"What else, Bob?"
"A mill for grinding, and I mean a big one. I'd also want bakeries, and smokehouses for meat. If we can get in plenty of extra salt it'd help for laying up beef and pork, even dried fish. I suggest before the Tugars come we slaughter nearly everything and lay it up. I'd even suggest sending gangs of hunters into the woods to bring in whatever can be found."
"It's
all your
job, Bob. Again, go to Kal for what you need. I expect a report from you in two weeks' time, with estimates of how many people we'll be able to feed from the Tugar arrival on through the winter, and if need be into next spring."
Glumly Bob nodded.
"Dr.
Weiss,"
and Andrew turned to fix Emil with his gaze, "I have two concerns you have to prepare for. The first is an epidemic breaking out either before the Tugars arrive or once battle has been joined. We can train the best army this world has ever seen, but it'll be wiped out in no time if present conditions continue to exist."
"Just my worry exactly, Andrew," Weiss said excitedly. "This place is a disaster waiting to happen."
Andrew turned to face Casmar.
"Your holiness, we have ways of preventing disease from striking the people. I realize many of the things we have brought with us are strange. But Dr. Weiss could help your people to live more healthily. Dr. Weiss knows many things that will prevent pestilence and plague from striking us and making us so weak that the Tugars will win. I give you my solemn pledge that his arts are good. I'm asking you to work with him on this task. Some things he'll do might seem strange, but please trust him."
Casmar looked at Weiss and smiled.
"His skills made my feet and hands feel better," the prelate said. "And I must say I never did like the bleedings our healers would have given to me."
"Barbarians," Weiss grumbled, and would have said more except for Andrew's gaze.
"I have also heard," Casmar continued, sidestepping Emil's comment, "how he and the woman healer have worked for two days without sleep to help our injured from the battle."
It was the first time since marching out of the camp that Andrew had spared a thought for Kathleen, so engrossed had he been with the affairs of setting up a state and planning for this meeting. He knew Kathleen would rise to the task, but he dreaded the thought of what she must be going through right now. How he wanted to see her! But that would have to wait.
"Your holiness, if anything he says and does
troubles
you, please see me right away, and I shall be glad to listen to your concerns."
Casmar smiled good-naturedly at Andrew, who again breathed an inner sigh of relief that Rasnar was dead. The
last thing he needed was having the church stop Weiss from instituting his practices.
"The next thing, doctor, will be preparing for the siege. We'll need hospitals, medications, and a staff trained by you to meet the needs for this city."
Weiss shook his head.
"Andrew, it'll take years to train these people."
"You have a year," Andrew said forcefully.
Wearily, Emil nodded his head.
"All right, then, the final point of today's meeting.
Military preparation.
I'm taking personal responsibility for that. We know precious little about how the Tugars fight, and till we do the question of tactics on the field is an open one.
"Sergeant Major Schuder will be assigned the responsibility of training a modern field army of at least ten thousand infantry to fight the same way we do. Sergeant, you are hereby appointed to the rank of brevet major general of the Suzdalian army."
Caught totally off guard, the old sergeant looked at Andrew in amazement.
"Me, a goddam officer?"
Hans asked, his look of stunned disbelief causing the gathering to chuckle.
Andrew smiled and nodded at his old teacher.
"Colonel, sir, couldn't we just keep it as sergeant major and forget this officer foolishness?"
"You'll still be a sergeant in the 35th," Andrew said, "but for this job, anything less than general simply won't do."
"Make
yourself
the general," Hans argued.
"I'm keeping my rank," Andrew replied, "and anyhow, I couldn't hold with giving myself a promotion. But at least I can do it for others. You'll still answer to me, though, if that makes you feel better."
Not at all amused, Hans settled back in his chair.
"Come on, sergeant," Mina said cheerfully, "you'll do a damn sight better than some of those poppinjays like General Pope or Burnside."
"Or Grant," Fletcher mumbled, and there was a chorus of agreements, for the regiment was still bitter about how their old commander had slaughtered tens of thousands of their comrades with futile frontal assaults during the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns.
Hans mumbled darkly under his breath but offered no further resistance.
"You'll also be responsible for the militia," Andrew continued, "which will be under Kal once the battle starts. Every able-bodied man who is not part of the modern army will be organized and trained nevertheless. Any of the men at arms that come over to our side will be assigned to them as instructors and leaders in battle.
"Tomorrow I'll have the town criers announce the call for volunteers for the modern infantry and artillery regiments. Those men from our command not assigned to various tasks by Mina,
Ferguson, or Fletcher will be assigned the task of instruction. When battle is finally joined a fair number of our men will be attached directly to the Suzdalian army, but the core of the regiment will be maintained to serve directly under my command as an independent unit.
"Some of you will find yourselves promoted to field command and staff positions for the Suzdalian divisions, brigades, batteries, and regiments."
The men looked excitedly at each other, the envy some felt for Hans disappearing with this new prospect.
"Just remember Napoleon," Andrew said, smiling at their excitement over such heady positions, "when he said there might be a marshal's baton in a private's knapsack.
"Now, as we prepare a field army, we'll also be working on defense. We have a year to fortify this position, and when it's done I plan to make the rebel works around
Petersburg look like a child's sandbox sculpting. The Tugars are going to pay one hell of a price in blood before we're finished.
"Do we all understand what has to be done?" Andrew asked.
The men looked around at each other, still rather stunned by the enormous task before them, but he could see that hope had started to form in the face of the challenge, and as soldiers the prospect of high command would spur them on as well.
"Well, gentlemen, it sounds like there is one hell of a celebration going on out there," and for the first time since the meeting had started the men noticed the distant sound of merrymaking that filled the square.
"Tomorrow the celebrating ends and the work
begins
. Form back up with your men at sundown, but take the rest of the day for your enjoyment."