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When it came to the division of the spoils, there was so much that we didn't bother trying to set up a fair
system. I simply told everyone to take as much as they could carry. When I noticed some of my yeomen
coming back for thirds, I put a stop to it.
We had skinned and gutted the wolves, cats, and other normally inedible animals and hung them up
outside the gate. I said that if anybody kept dogs, they were welcome to come back and pick up the dog
meat.
But when a few knights came back with pack animals, the carcasses were gone. Some peasants must
have taken them for eating.
Until the time of the big hunt, the people at Three Walls had been eating a largely vegetarian diet, and
that mostly grains, with only a small amount of meat and fresh greens in it. But from then on, we
became meateaters, and over half of our caloric intake was in animal products. The children grew taller.
Later that fall we finally struck coal, and we found that we could make coke. This involved cleaning the
coal of any obvious incursions of clay and stone, then baking the impurities out of it.
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The beehive oven was a nine-yard dome that had a hole in the top through which the coal was loaded.
The rest of the oven was covered with dirt as an insulator, except for a doorway for extracting the coke.
The coal was leveled with long rakes through the doorway to the depth of a yard and a half. Then a fire
was started on top of the coal and the supply of air was restricted.
Soon the whole bed of coal was smoldering, and the dome of the oven reflected the heat downward. This
eventually melted the coal, and volatile material -sulfur, ammonia, hydrocarbons -was vaporized to rise
to the surface and be burned. It stank abominably.
The operator peeked through the small hole at the top of the doorway. When he saw that the volatiles
had been burned off, the coal was again a solid, and the top of the bed was glowing, he inserted a brass
spraying-apparatus through the top hole -and fed enough water through it to quench the fire without
unduly cooling the oven.
The coke, which was by then almost pure carbon, was shoveled out with very long-handed shovels. The
doorway was bricked over again and new coal was loaded from the top.
If the process was done properly, the oven was hot enough to restart the new batch of coal by itself,
saving a good deal of fuel. Once we got the oven working properly, we ran about one batch a day
through. By spring, we had eight ovens going.
The masons could build the new ones through the coldest weather, since each was built next to a
functioning oven, which kept the ground thawed, and the domes were built of dry laid sandstone. Mortar
would never have stood the heat.
Chapter Nineteen
But now it was a week before Christmas, and my stay of execution was over. I had to go and fight and
kill or maybe be killed to see if a hundred forty-two children had the right to live normal lives.
My orders were to bring the children to Okoitz, and there wasn't any way around it. But I wasn't going to
bring them in chained neck to neck as I'd found them. I was going to bring them as what they had
become. The Christian children of Polish Christian people.
If the kids had to go to Okoitz, then their adoptive parents would go with them. That meant just about
everybody at Three Walls, so we pretty much shut down the whole town, except for a skeleton crew who
kept the chickens fed, the fires going, and the pipes from freezing.
But it meant that if I lost the fight, the Crossmen would have to take Christian children from Christian
families, and I didn't think that even they could get away with that. Or maybe they could. But it was
worth a try.
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It meant a long, two-day walk for eight hundred people, but we were well fed and in good shape. It was
cold, but we were well clothed and had plenty of blankets.
We had a long string of pack mules for our baggage and Sir Miesko was expecting us.
My new armor was done, and I'd made Ilya polish it like a mirror. If I had to go out and defend truth,
justice, and the purity of childhood, I was damn well going to go as a knight in shining armor.
I had him polish my old helmet as well and was wearing it instead of the new one, which was hard to
take off. My new chest and back piece had a circular hole on top for my head. At this hole the metal
collar flanged up and then out. The new helmet was a clamshell affair that hinged on top, and it had a
ring around the bottom that fit into the collar flange on the suit below. Two hand-filed bolts held the
sides of the helmet together.
Once the new helmet was on, I could turn my head from side to side, but I couldn't tilt it. More
importantly, it couldn't be tilted. With my old helmet, a heavy sword blow could break my neck, With
the new one, a blow to the head was transmitted through the flange to my upper body.
But the damned thing was a nuisance to put on and take off. You needed a wrench and a helper.
Anna wore some armor as well. A face plate and a lobstertail guard for the top of her neck were all she
would accept, and I only got her to wear that by telling her it was pretty.
The hooks to hold the lance for her were built into both sides of her face plate, in the hopes that their use
wouldn't be obvious on something strange to people. We had them on both sides in case they threw a
lefty at us.
Having a hook on the saddle was fine when we only had to hit the hole on a quintain. Hitting a knight
required something sturdier.
I had a notch cut into the saddlebow of my warkak. I could set my lance in it with the handguard, or
vamplate, ahead of the notch. That put the force of the blow on the saddle and thus on Anna, without my
smaller muscles having to get involved. We had continued practicing every day and I figured that we
were as ready as we would ever be.
Besides the armor, which covered me from crown to fingertip to toe, the only other thing I wore was a,
huge wolfskin cloak. Anna and I must have looked pretty awesome. We got a lot of stares, anyway.
Sir Miesko was ready for us, and had a barn set up for the workers to sleep in. The booty taken from the
Cross men was already at Okoitz, cooking facilities and supplies of food were arranged. Good neighbors
are wonderful.
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Sir Vladimir, Sir Miesko, and myself, along with all our ladies, were sitting at supper.
But Sir Miesko and his wife were still convinced that I was soon to die, fancy armor or not. When
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