The simple fact that he referred openly to Jozef himself as his nephew was but one of many illustrations of Koniecpolski's character. Jozef was a bastard, born of a dalliance by Stanislaw Koniecpolski's younger brother Przedbor. After Przedbor died at the siege of Smolensk during the Dymitriad wars with Muscovy, the hetman had taken in the boy and his mother and raised him in his own household at the great family estate in Koniecpol.

"I wouldn't presume to judge, uncle."

Koniecpolski laughed. "Always the diplomat! Well, nephew, I will explain to you the truth, in the hopes that you might see it where stubborn young Opalinski here sees only a pointless melancholy for things past."

He stumbled over the word "melancholy" a bit. The hetman suffered from a speech impediment, and had since he was a boy. He usually avoided long words, in fact, since he tended to stutter on them. That habit of speaking in plain and simple words led some people to assume Koniecpolski was dull-witted, an assumption which was very far from the truth.

Using his bare hands, the hetman mimicked an archer drawing his bow. He twisted sideways in the saddle as he did so, as if aiming at a target off to his left. "Notice, youngster, how the innate demands of using a bow properly while in a saddle almost force the archer to fire to his side, or even"-here he twisted still further in the saddle, imitating a man aiming behind him-"to his rear. In the nature of the thing, it is very difficult to fire a bow straight ahead while sitting in a saddle-and impossible to do it well, even for an excellent archer."

Jozef nodded. "Yes, I can see that."

The hetman beamed. "Well, then! You now understand-should, at least-what somehow still remains a puzzle to young Lukasz. The reason to practice mounted archery is to ingrain intelligent tactics in a soldier. The pike, the musket, the sword-pfah!" His pronounced mustachios wiggled with the sneer. "These teach a man to be stupid. Straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead."