Right about here, the Writer's Club blew up. While we existed, teaching each other how to write, we were remarkably successful. More successful that any other club that I've ever heard of. While lots of people sort of came and went, we only had eight serious 'core' members. Ted Reynolds wrote his first book, and Pete Rogan did, too. Our delightful retired Polish Librarian, working under a pseudonym, published a string of Teen Age Romances. A few of the girls got short stories published, I did okay, and Bob Brazo said that he had two cowboy books about to be published. Bob lied a lot. I never saw any of them on the shelf, and the last I heard of Bob was that he was driving a garbage truck, so go figure.

But, nothing lasts for ever. Explosions happen.

Back to Conrad, the Mongols are on the move, and problems are showing up all over.

The Duke of Silesia has been doing a lot international politicking, and has a lot of help coming slowly in. He insists that the armies of Poland must get together in Western Poland, and then advance together on the enemy. The Duke of Mazovia refuses to go along with any plan that starts out with abandoning his ancestral lands and people to the enemy before the battle even starts.

And Conrad's forces are equiped with armored riverboats on the Vistula, in Eastern Poland, and with warcarts than can only work well on the railroads that he has built there.

The forces of Poland are broken into three pieces, before a single arrow has been shot!

Also, Conrad's liege lord has decided that our hero will drop everything and marry his Hungarian daughter, who speaks no Polish, and whom Conrad has never met.
And, after nine years of dithering, the Catholic Church has sent a delegation from Rome to determine if Conrad is a Gift of God, to be lauded, or an Instrument of the Devil, to be burned.

There were interesting times...