Omake set in alternate history universe of the Korybut chronicles
Jurij Korybut Wiśniowiecki Bohun
hitched one buttock onto the high stool of the teaching lectern at the new
Korybut Knights’ School.
“You’ve been told that making a
decision, any decision is better than procrastinating; that an officer has to
be able to make a rapid decision, and that a good officer makes the best
decision more often than not and usually makes a good decision. You don’t need
me to tell you that. What I am going to tell you is that every officer will,
sooner or later, encounter an underling who drives him to gibbering
incoherence, and brings him close to the unforgiveable sin of wringing the
fellow’s neck. I see a few superior
smiles; my temper is legendary, I know. What you don’t know is that I learned
to control it by the time I was
five-and-twenty, and most of my supposed temper is a well-orchestrated
act. However, let me tell you about... let us call him Towarzysz Rojewski, who,
as his name implies, is as irritating as a swarm of hornets. You will all, one
day, meet your own Rojewski, who may be a towarzysz, or an enlisted man, or,
God and his mother help you, a specialist. Rojewski is a man who cannot be
trusted to stay sober. Someone wants him for his expertise; or his wife comes
to ask if he’s on punishment duty as he hasn’t been near her all day. You check
the punishment rosters; no. You pass the word for him; he is not found. You
send a signal to see if another unit has arrested him, or if he is injured. No.
Typically you find him between
twenty-four and seventy-two hours later, still bladdered, and half the time he
has been in unsanctioned possession of a horse or a vehicle, or worse, a barge,
which he has... borrowed. Usually he has done something like swap the horse for
a donkey – with or without a bride – or wrapped the cart around some obstacle,
or run the barge aground by trying to tack up Bridge Street in it. Son?”
“Aren’t you exaggerating, your
highness?” asked a serious looking youth.
“Son, I wish I was,” said Jurko.
“The ‘and bride’ happened to me when I was your age, and my drunkard returned
home after three days hard carousing, married, and riding a donkey backwards,
having swapped it for his horse. Fortunately, the bride sorted him out and I
haven’t had any trouble since. But I
have had two pocztowy trying to sail a barge up Bridge Street, because they had
a bet on with their equally drunken friend that they could do so faster than he
could drive the hay wain of which he was equally illegally in possession.
Rojewski is an ingenious fellow in his own way, because he manages to invent
casuistries as to why he is doing what he is doing which would take a committee
of fifty drunken madmen to come up with. I have known one Rojewski who thought
it was a good idea to jam a barrel into a gun barrel – a loaded gun barrel –
and, holding on to the barrel, have the gun fired so that the cannon ball would
project his barrel and its rider into flight. I hope all of you have noticed
the logical inconsistency in his endeavours? Yes, you at the end?”
“Wouldn’t the ball go right
through the ends of the barrel?”
“Exactly. He was lucky not to
lose his hands. That was one of the half the time when a vehicle is not
involved; but constituting the quarter of the time when some other engine or
piece of equipment is being put to inebriated misuse. When this involves
fireworks there is some risk of fire. I think the one which baffled me the most
was the man who thought that riding the sails of a windmill was a good idea.
Too drunk to fear the height, giggling wildly, and singing a song your mothers
would have me impaled for even mentioning in front of you.”
“Sir, how did you handle it?”
“I paid off the miller for the
loss of wind and had him move the sails out of the wind so they would stop
rotating, and as much by luck as judgement, managed to get them stopped when he
was at the bottom. He called me ‘Darling’ and tried to kiss me,” said Jurko. “I
know I have a perfect Cossack body, and irresistible allure, but I have my
standards. He informed me solemnly that all five of me were rotating.”
“What about the other quarter of
the time?” asked another youth.
“Usually discovered sleeping it
off somewhere inappropriate, like the middle of a busy street,” sighed Jurko.
“And once, dressed in a silk gown, dancing and exposing himself in the Rynek.”
“Don’t you have... well, rules,
about drunkenness?” said one, disapprovingly.
“Son, you can ban things until
you’re black in the face and your own Rojewski will find a way round your
prohibitions,” said Jurko. “My task here today is to present you with the
realities of life in the military, and the insanities of the determinedly
drunken soldier. And to explain that
sometimes the only thing you can do is to sentence him to be chained up at his
post like a dancing bear until the job is done. Not something to order lightly,
but if you have an inveterate drunk, his illicit spree and not being at his
post – say manning a cannon – can be the life or the death of his comrades. And
then, you have to judge how much alcohol to allow him as he is sobering up so
that he’s able to function without going into delirium tremens. He’s no good to
the military, really, if he does it as a regular matter, but plenty of soldiers
will do something like that once; and if the one who is a repeat offender is
the only man who can work a particular piece of engineering kit, all you can do
is to get him quietly dried out completely and hope he realises that he doesn’t
want to go through that again by setting himself off again. It’s an illness,
and some men react worse to alcohol than others. Take my friend, Onufry
Zagłoba, who was drinking himself to death before he got married; but it took a
good gallon of mead to make him half-cut. Other people are asleep after a pint
of mead. But it is a problem to watch for, lads, and one to take seriously.
Drunkenness can kill. And it usually kills a drunkard’s friends, not him. One
more thing. The drunken officer is a serious menace and if he can’t be cured
should be cashiered. I hope none of you will ever find yourselves taking a
glass of wine to help you make decisions, or to steady your nerves before
battle. That’s what happened to ‘Bearpaws’ Potocki, and you know your history
well enough to know that he died a traitor because he was so afraid of having
his failures shown up that he tried to cause a Cossack rebellion. If any of you
ever feel an urge to take a glass to steady your nerves, look into the mirror
and tell yourself, ‘I am better than Potocki.’ Because it doesn’t calm the
nerves, it dulls the intellect. And one glass soon is not enough... then two...
and then you are going into battle, drunk as an Englishman, and getting your
men killed. Right; I made you laugh with
the stories of Rojewski, but I hope you take away a real lesson with you.”
