Si Deus Nobiscum: A Polish-Lithuanian Scion Quest

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Rolman said:
Heh, I mean if Rolman can come up with it, I figured the Renaissance noble who first started seeing military experience at like 15 (though combat only at like 22) should be able to too....
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To be fair, having a dozen+ people toss ideas into a hat results in things a single person might not've considered. Still, I like the characterization of Stan as someone capable of thinking creatively on the fly.
 
[X] to kill.

As adderandum we could start to be called "Blue Stanislaw" in honor of the place that are we fighting, ruthenia, and also following the theme of our brothers
 
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“Once More." Pt. II. August 28, 1575. The Zawadówka Battlefield.
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    • Your plan is working so well, you almost forgot you're in a state of utter dread. Oh, but you are. Again into the pit of gnashing teeth, screaming men, pouring blood, again into the jaws of an unholy dragon, a thing that chews up life and spits out death. Many will go to their Creator on this day, as many went just a few short weeks ago. There's the familiar gust of wind, the thundering under your seat, the subtle collisions between your cuirass and pauldron, cuirass and bevor, the shaking of your helmet. You spur hard as your ears are battered once more by your comrades' rising chorus of pistol fire.

    Focus on that mirza; it's the armored ones that are most dangerous, after all. You raise your pistol and dammit! Right as you squeeze the trigger a common horse archer, riding away from the fusillade emanating from the camp, takes the shot inadvertently for his master. You think you got him in the leg, and his horse's legs buckle and throw him off. You couch your lance and tense up every part of you that can be tensed up.

    Impact. The mirza reels back on his horse as your lance shatters, sending splinters flying blessedly past your face. "Yes!" you scream; in the split second before his horse rears up in fright, you catch a glimpse of the end of the shaft jutting out of him, perhaps below the nipple and close to the armpit. You stare down at him against your better judgment, and feel something sharp in your soul. It's a pathetic sight. He's hacking up blood, flat on his back, barely moving, and a horse kicks him in the head – no more. Christ. And there's no time to celebrate it.

    Pay attention! You're in the mix now, and you barely have room to draw your saber fully, thankfully due to the tight formation of your own men rather than a burgeoning melee. You look through the gaps in the wall of steel and horseflesh formed by the men in front of you: the Tatars are being heartily driven back as your line pushes forward, and the first desperate ones are beginning to try and ford the river on horseback.

    You hear several voices bellowing commands in their throaty tongue – they are loud, through your ringing ears and the clamor you can hear them – and the Tatars that are still able to begin to wheel around to your left. You make your presence known to the men with some shouting of your own, and they part ways to allow you to the front. The tail-turning Tatars are being cut down right off their horses, but they're pushing hard into the leftmost flank; you see elbows drawing back bowstrings to loose arrows at point-blank range, and you can hear the sounds of metal on metal as the heathens make a desperate bid at a breakout. Meanwhile, the ones plunging into the river are either arms sticking out of the water or nearly on the other side. Everyone around you is roaring with triumphant bloodlust. You're so taken aback by the one-sidedness of it all that you forget to bring your saber crashing down on more than a few helmetless Tatar heads.

    Like sand through a funnel, though, the surviving Tatars begin to pour desperately leftward, pounding their feet on their horses' flanks and whipping their reins with all their might. They've broken through. As your battle-line collapses inwards on theirs, though, very few make it out alive, but certainly some have managed to slip through the jaws of your hussars.

    You are standing on a heap of dead men and horses as you watch no more than twenty or thirty Tatars race into the fields from which they came, riderless horses running wildly in zigzags among them. They're just barely visible through the small gap in your lines. It looks like a wall collapse: a mass of steel and horsehair denote a handful of killed hussars. Pistols boom at them, but none fall. Across the river, around ten more Tatars flee for nowhere in particular.

    The gunsmoke from the musketeers and the cavalry charge wafts in from two directions, reminding you of fog rolling down from the Carpathians, casting the grim scene with an otherworldly haze.

    Your eyes sting and your nostrils burn; you clear your throat. You issue an order:

    [] Pursue the survivors.

    This is potentially (and commonly, the veterans tell you) a multi-day affair, and could reveal the location of another war-camp. Only the cavalry would be going.

    [] Return to camp.

    Maintain the defensive footing you've held so far. Besides, a living Tatar can tell tales of defeat once he gets home.
     
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    • [X] Return to camp.

    The whole idea is to just sit and smash unready chambuls trying to rejoin their war-camp no? While going out and hunting for more war camps might ultimately net more chambuls and put down more Tatar raiders, what Stanislaw can do here seems pretty sufficient already, as everyone waits for negotiations to come through, with the near guarantee of similarly lop-sided results. Plus the Lipkas are returning home, a long pursuit of the Crimean forces is exactly the situation they need to maybe pull something together to take back the momentum and put the Samaritans on the back foot.
     
    [X] Return to camp.

    Shouldn't be too active in moving around whilst we have members of the party detached from the army. Namely our Lipka Negotiators who're trying to settle a peace... We smashed 2 hosts of Tatar Raiders, and the last time we took a camp it was costly. I'm unsure going after more camps, as glorious as it would be and work to spread our fame, would be the wise decision here.
     
    [X] Return to camp.
    When do we return to the elections plotline? We jolted to Ukraine to protect our allies from a sudden attack of a large force, and we did, but we don't really need to mastermind every single encounter with each chambul, or do we?
     
    XXVIII. August 28, 1575-October 3, 1575. Bracław Voivodeship to Warszawa.
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    • "Let them go!" you yell. "Let them go." Dead men can't say what happened to them. Let the survivors spread panic amongst their ranks. Let them tell their savage brothers that Saadet Mirza's camp is no more, and that a mighty host of righteous Christians nearly ground them into dust. The smell of sulfur hangs heavy in the air; they say that that's what demons smell like, that it pours out of the possessed in their sweat. You feel close to the Adversary at the moment, surrounded by mortal sin. But Mother Maria is the Lady of Victory, too; the heathens who drowned by the thousands at Lepanto four years ago, probably pulling each other down by the leg as they breathed in water, had to die. Yes? That is truth, yes?

    For your horse is ankle-deep in fresh-dead flesh. A handful of unhorsed mirzas stand or kneel with their hands in the air, your men disarming them, stripping their armor, and frisking them for loot. Hussars lance the dying, as the rajtaria cut throats or simply chop at the squirming ones with their messers like they're tall grass. The Tatars' saddlebags and knapsacks are laden with pilfered goods, and men pick up sabers and bows by the handful. The musketeers have run up and admire chalices and silver crucifixes and bolts of cloth, Orthodox icons framed in brass or gold, as others begin to divide coinpurses of grosze amongst themselves. To the laughter of his comrades, one of them tries on a blood-splattered Tatar hat. You grimace; there's money to be made here, that's for sure, and at least you can perhaps lower the cash payouts to the men on account of their ever-growing pile of loot. Between these fresh captives, the ones back at camp, and Saadet… They ought to fetch a small fortune, or maybe even a fortune-fortune! It's strange to think of money when the air smells like metal, too.

    Once the dead are picked clean of valuables and the Tatar horses rounded up, the usual rituals begin: Christian dead are separated from heathens, lined up in a row in a deep ditch dug by the peasant musketeers, blessed by the various clerics, and covered up: the cartwrights fashion crosses from spare parts. Requiem Aeternam and Vichnaya Pamyat and the twenty-third Psalm; Bogurodzica is sung again. As for the Tatars and dead horses, they're piled up and burned. Poorly, of course – another heap of charred bodies and bones to adorn this field. The acrid smell of burning fabric and hair adds itself to the cacophony of smells. You wonder if this batch of Tatars saw the scene that would've been on their right-hand side, the burial mounds and black-red-white piles, but were too late to turn back before they came under fire. When the serfs return home to their Zawadówka, perhaps these blood and ash-soaked fields will allow the rye and barley and buckwheat to grow tall. Perhaps some life and nourishment can spring from all this. You can only hope. But you catch yourself, you stem the melancholia: we must kill so that the little people may live and the great ones rule over them in peace and prosperity. We are making the world right again.

    You look down. Blood is seeping through the fabric of your trousers on your right thigh, and as your breathing steadies and the sweat feels colder you realize that that stinging means you've opened your sutures in the fight. You Cross yourself; this is very bad air to be in for an open wound.

    You lay with your leg propped up in your command tent as the surgeon gets to work, naked from the waist down. Marszowski stands there with his arms crossed, looking at your wound.

    "I'm a little worried about the battlefield miasma," you say, dividing eye contact between him and the surgeon.

    "And rightly so," says the medicus. "Such proximity to death is very bad for a healing injury. The good news is that it was already half-closed – Your Serene Highness would have been due to get the stitches out in a week were it not for this."

    "Nearly lost a hand once," says Marszowski, before realization crosses his face. "Not to – not to bring that up, my lord. But it was a nearly: the thing turned all pus-filled and purple and started making its way up my arm, but I suppose the Lord let this sinner go for now." He rolls up his sleeve and shows a nasty, keloidal scar just above his left wrist.

    "You continued to talk about it," you smile. "I'm not sure if I've ever seen that before."

    "Oh, believe me," he says, removing his delia and beginning to unbutton his żupan.

    Your attention turns to the surgeon. "Ready, Your Serene Highness?" He's holding a bottle of gorzała.

    You nod. Ouch. Your leg twitches involuntarily as you hiss at the sting of it poured over your wound. "The good thing," says the surgeon, almost absent-mindedly, as he produces his bloodletting knife, "is that it's rather shallow. Your Serene Highness, I'll be making some small incisions around the injury just to be safe."

    "Very well," you say.

    "Look, Your Serene Highness," says Marszowski, holding up his shirt. He's criss-crossed with a spiderweb of scars. "And I survived them all."

    But there's something else on his torso, too. All pink and splotchy. "What's the rash?" you ask, suddenly filled with apprehension.

    The surgeon looks up, and you wince as he cuts you just a little too deep. "Oh, Christ," he says.

    "What is it?" asks Marszowski.

    "My lord, that's… That looks like French Pox."

    "What?" says Marszowski. You've never seen the man without poise, but his mouth his open, his neck craned toward the surgeon. It's a very jarring sight to see the man rendered nervous. "I had a rash that came and went on back for a year or two, but – I thought these were flea bites, or…" You vaguely recall him bringing that up once; he told you it was nothing.

    The surgeon rises from his stool and leans in. "No, that is certainly French Pox. You frequent certain ladies, if I may ask, my lord?"

    "I do, I'm not ashamed of that," he says. You feel he's trying to hide a tone of urgency.

    "Well, the good news is that the Pox has lessened in severity since the turn of this century – it used to kill in months," explains the surgeon. "Now? Years. But this is very grave indeed. I must ask you to leave, my lord, for there is a chance the rash may leak at any moment and give off bad air."

    "What… what is to be done?" By God, Andrzej Marszowski is scared. Your nose starts burning, and so do your eyes. No, no…

    "Thankfully, I have liquid mercury with me, as well as powder of a certain New World wood. This is a soldier's disease, of course, and so I came prepared."

    That's good, at least. It allows you to swallow the lump in your throat. Marszowski is heading for the door. "Very good. Come to me next, please, master surgeon." He looks to you. "I'm sorry, Your Serene Highness."

    You can't say anything, but you nod. The surgeon tells you that he's going to re-suture your wound, but you can hardly listen. He's not even fifty; keep him for at least five or ten years more, Lord. Please.

    As the days go on, no Tatars are spotted. But there's another enemy: your leg oozes dark blood and aches. Medical spirits are applied daily, and an expensive and rare powder applied to your bandages, made from ginger, sage, thyme, and a bright yellow plant from India called curcuma. More and more of you begins to be bloodlet: above the thigh, behind the knee, even your scrotum. The wound refuses to close. Damn that gunsmoke! Damn that blood, that rot, that sour smoke from the pyres!

    Meanwhile, Marszowski's rash goes down with the application of vapor of mercury and the Indian wood, you're told, but he's in great pain and losing a bit of hair. The surgeon says this is to be expected, but you wish you could see him. You can't imagine the man being afraid, but you saw his face, heard his voice. And you're afraid for yourself, too. The latrines are dug further from camp, but some of the men are starting to expel the sanguine humor from their rear ends, and more and more are reporting fever and sweats. A few of the Tatar mirzas, weakened by their poor rations and melancholia, give up the ghost.

    The Lipkas return with a wagon laden with gold, silver, and even gemstones. Apparently, there was a major communication barrier – for their Tatar speech is different from the Crimean kind – and they had to work through Ruthenian slave-translators, whom the Lipkas themselves had trouble understanding. Therefore, peace talks could not be efficiently opened, but akcha is altyn is zoloto is money, gold, to be precise. But, according to the delegation, things must be dying down anyway with the coming of the Fall: the serfs and lordlings are beginning to return to their homes, the Jews to their inns, and the priests to their parishes. No hostile Tatars were spotted in the Wild Fields, only roving Zaporozhian counter-raiders and the nomads trying to avoid them. The Tatar mirzas are provided with horses, some bread, and are told to get going. They shall return home emaciated and ashamed, praise be to God, however much you cringe at this spike of sadism in your breast. Perhaps they got off easy.

    With mid-September approaching and the miasma worsening to the point that graves are dug daily, you and the Ostrogski princes – Zamoyski communicates by messenger, for he too is struck with dysentery – make a decision to conclude the campaign, return the men to their homes, and head for the Convocation Sejm. The men are given their back pay and the remainder split between the three houses composing the army. Horses and sabers and sets of armor – all sorts of things, really – are sold by common soldier and officer alike on the road to Warszawa, as settlement grows denser. A bit of it trickles up to you.

    It's a very good sum of money, perhaps thirty or forty thousand złoty in cash value. What to do with it?

    [] send it to Wilno; it shall be the family's.

    Ingratiate yourself to Father and your brothers, show off some fine spoils. Besides, you'll get a cut of it someday.

    [] Keep it for yourself.

    Begin to set up a coffer for yourself. Perhaps you can invest it with some Danziger merchants and bankers?

    [] Keep it for yourself… to bribe the lordlings.

    Ugh. Such skullduggery, it'll certainly need to be brought up at Confession. But Prince Batory and Zamoyski have promised *two hundred thousand* złoty in bribes for the lesser nobles, and the least you can do is grease the wheels yourself.

    Zamoyski isn't speaking with you anymore – go figure. The alliance was temporary, but you can admire his soldiering, and hopefully he can admire yours. Better to be friendly rivals than proper enemies; it wards off duels and espionage and other unsavory things. And, if the Archduke Maciej is defeated, perhaps you'll find yourself with a new title despite it all.

    Meanwhile, your leg holds steady. Not great, not terrible, and treated everyday. You're encouraged to walk unaided despite the pain because it squeezes out bad blood.

    You were greeted as heroes in folwark house and in towns' lanes all the while on your way back from Ruthenia, but it's only in Warszawa that you feel truly triumphant, arriving with a few days to spare before the 3rd. The nobles of the Sejm camp – which already formed well over a week ago – lines the streets waving caps and drawing swords in salute, as the townsfolk cheer and the women throw flowers and garlands. You smile broadly as you ride up toward the castle. It's a genuine smile, but a cynical one, too, just a bit: the men will tell of your taking charge, of how you made Zamoyski your subordinate, how Zawadówka – and apparently the news preceded your coming – was all yours to claim. Stanisław Radziwiłł, the victorious Prince, equal to his father the Red, the victor of Czaśniki, grandson of Jerzy "Herkules," hero of Orsza, brother to the mighty knight Krzysztof. At last! At last! Apparently a young poet by the name of Długoraj is calling you Ajax. You wonder if that'll catch on.

    Mariana and her ladies are at Warszawa's Wawel-replica to see you! A pleasant surprise; you thought she'd still be at Kodeń. She's gorgeous, decked out in Western garb with a lightly-powdered face. You hobble-run up to her in the great hall, ignoring the stabbing pain in your leg and stiffness of the tightly-wrapped bandage to give her a thoroughly indecorous hug and a heart-leaping kiss – you'll be damned if you're bowing and hand-kissing after such a cruel and deadly summer. Her ladies-in-waiting holler with scandalized delight.

    She smiles broadly and flicks your ear. "Kept the ear and a half I see, my lord! My hero!" but her eyes flicker downward. "But your leg…"

    "A Tatar knifed me," you say, trying to sound unbothered. "It's a little angry, but I have it treated by a good surgeon everyday." You lean back and take a look at her, trying to ignore that low collar, that little glimpse of chest. Reminds you of France.

    "Alright," she says, sounding a little unsure before brightening up once more. "I'm just glad God kept you."

    "And may He keep me yet," you reply. "Hopefully we can go hunting or falconing again soon, I just need to be careful with it. I didn't expect you to be here! And what's with the garb?"

    "The Austrian style, thank you very much – in solidarity with our candidate," she feigns haughtiness. "And, well, I figured you'd need all the support you can get – these are very interesting times, after all," she says, before lowering her voice and leaning into your ear. Her cheek brushes against yours. God, it's been so long since you've been around a woman, it gives you goosebumps! Even when all she says is: "and you know how wives talk to wives."

    "You'll be my spy, eh?" you say with a lowered voice. "Very good, Mariana, you fox, you." She giggles girlishly in your ear. By the Lord she can make your heart pound.

    "I've secured us a chamber to share," she says, withdrawing. Her gaze softens. "I'm glad you're home, my lord."

    "As am I. I can tell some war stories, if you'd like."

    "Oh, so you like war now?" she teases. "What happened to the peaceable Benedictine?"

    "I like winning, my lady, and getting my men home safe. I did that and I'm proud of it. As for the monk, he's gone for now," you chuckle. "As you've surely noticed: he's gotten a grip of himself that doesn't involve fasting or head-shaving."

    "And my husband remains a pious man yet!" she returns a laugh. She looks back to her ladies, placing her hands on her hips and lifting her chin. What a performer. "Not a mistress in sight!" she jokes, to their too-loud cackling.

    You want to show the ladies-in-waiting you're no wet blanket. "For I have everything I need right here!" Mariana blushes through her powder.

    Ooooooooo! go the ladies.

    "I will never live that down," she rolls her eyes. "You have my thanks."

    Flirting like the day you two met! Ah, it makes a man feel alive, it makes a man feel drunk! It's a fine lady you've married, politics be damned! You don't need an Ostrogski princess or some Italian courtesan when you've got a wife like this.

    The rest of the day is a happy blur, and the night happier still: you wake up beside Mariana the following morning to a ransacked chamber – you think there may have been a pillow fight? – and there's a pitcher of wine tipped over on the floor.

    You reach out and run a hand over her soft body, feeling the dip of her waist rise into hip; she hums in her sleep, and lazily opens her eyes, sweeping a strand of that honey-colored hair off her face. She plops a hand on your chest and laughs sleepily. "Such fights, Stanisław, we used to get in such fights… This was a good one."

    "I'll do battle with you every night," you say.

    "That is horrendous," she groans, smiling. "Never use that one again."

    "Fine, fine…" you feel something warm on your right leg. "What is that?" you ask, knowing full well what it is.

    Your hand comes back quite bloody, rust-flecks and fresh liquid alike. You lower the sheets to find a little pool beside you. "Oh, God damn it…" you say. You move your leg gingerly, and it hurts more than before. "That's not good."

    Mariana bolts upright. "I'm sorry," she says.

    You wave her off. "It isn't anybody's fault."

    She strokes your hair with worry. This bliss was momentary.

    A German physician takes a look at it later that day. "I believe you no longer should rely on sutures," he says in Latin, "but rather the iron."

    You exhale. That'll hurt. In the end, you bit down on your belt as his surgeon did it, and take in the puncture-slash looking worse than before: it's pink and oozing clear fluid. But you're assured that this is the most sanitary way of doing things, that it forms the best seal against bad air and, in conjunction with a good bandage and herbal powders similar to the ones the field surgeon applied, you should be healed up in no time.

    But the area around the injury grows redder and redder in a few more days, and you begin to feel chills. Now, you're given a compress for your forehead, and are bloodlet in your armpits, ankles, below the nipples, your flanks, your nethers and your temples. Everything hurts. You can walk with a crutch.

    The 3rd comes around and the church bells ring. This is not good. You're stable but certainly unwell.

    You'll have to…

    [] attend the Convocation and all further meetings.

    At the end of the day, God will either keep you or He won't, and there's no telling how Zamoyski could twist the narrative down there, and that's only the tip of it. The Ostrogski Princes won't be listened to on account of your youth, and there's only so much the rumor mill of soldiers and ladies and poets can cook up in your favor. Besides, showing up illness-stricken from a war wound? That's honorable and brave.

    [] Work from bed.

    Better safe than sorry – you're on physician's orders to rest. You'll have to work via letter, holding audiences with those willing to come see you, and through the intelligence reports of Marszowski and Mariana. People won't think any less of you for this, but if you're not there, you're not there.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • [X] send it to Wilno; it shall be the family's.
    Considering recent conversations we had with our father after Austria I think it's wise to send a clear signal that we have the best intentions of the family in mind. Besides we'll see some of that money come back into our hands in time (probably)

    [X] Work from bed.
    Not ideal but an infection is nothing to underestimate, I'd rather not lose a leg. Besides there's a certain theatric virtue to being bed ridden from our war wounds and sending letters. It makes people unable to forgot our efforts even if we aren't there.
     
    [X] send it to Wilno; it shall be the family's.
    I agree.

    We prove to be a dutiful son and surely a good portion of that money will return to us. Especially since we did dip into our family finances to hire our forces in the first place.

    [X] attend the Convocation and all further meetings.

    We have to be present in person to influence the events. Stanisław doesn't have to go full Cato again. Like many magnates, he can let his subordinates do the talking.
     
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