by Peter Darman
On arrival at Novgorod Kristjan and Hoidja had quickly discovered that money was to be made from processing the hundreds of thousands of pelts arriving at the city annually. Using some of Kristjan’s gold they purchased a building in the city that they converted into a fur-processing centre. After the first year they began to see a tidy profit but Kristjan was like a caged bear in Novgorod. He disliked the priests and buildings of the Orthodox Church and the German merchants that visited the city. Hoidja agreed that it was probably best if he left Novgorod to undertake his own trapping and hunting, sending the pelts to the fisherman where they could be processed. Not only would this increase their profits by cutting out the necessity of purchasing pelts from trappers, it would also remove the volatile Kristjan from Novgorod.
It was an arrangement that worked very well, built on the mutual respect and liking between Hoidja and Kristjan, who flourished in the wilds of Karelia, a land inhabited by pagans and free from the rule of Novgorod. Though not free from perils.
‘Crows, lord.’
Kristjan looked at the scout. ‘Where?’
Tracker pointed towards the forest. ‘Half a mile away, lord.’
‘How many?’
‘A score, perhaps more.’
Tracker was one of the miscreants, exiles, thieves, hunters, murderers and sadists that Kristjan had gathered around him for his trapping and hunting expeditions. They included a fair number of Ungannians, men who had fought with him against the Sword Brothers and were exiles in a foreign land. He looked at the men checking the strapped-down loads on the sleds. Over a thousand pelts would fetch a tidy price in Novgorod, which was exactly what the ‘crows’ intended. They were called so because like ravens they feasted on carrion: lying in wait to ambush trappers taking their pelts south to sell in Novgorod. The city’s officials and boyars could afford to hire guards to ensure the safe passage of pelts but lone trappers and the like were always in danger of losing their lives to ‘crows’.
Kristjan put his fingers to his mouth and whistled to his men. They stopped what they were doing and came to him, like him many wearing scars that they had picked up in battle or fights, some carrying branding marks to show the whole world that they were thieves. Kristjan nodded at Tracker.
‘He has discovered a nest of crows nearby, a score or more. I will take four while the rest get the sleds under way. I want to be well south of here before nightfall just in case there are more lurking about.’
They all volunteered but Kristjan selected only four, all tall and powerfully built like him, men who could overpower a superior number of ‘crows’. Tracker mounted his horse and the others did likewise, round shields dangling from their saddles. They bore the symbol of the golden eagle, the motif of Kristjan, known as Lord Murk in Novgorod, and his dead father Kalju. They all wore leather cuirasses, which were lighter than mail and did not rust in the cold and wet, though they had to be greased continually. And they all carried swords, daggers, axes and spears for armament. In this cold, unforgiving land a man soon learned that he could never have too many weapons.
Tracker was a miserable creature, a filthy, ill-mannered excuse for a man but one who knew how to hunt animals and people. He had amazing eyesight that spotted broken branches and disturbed terrain indicating the presence of animals and men, a useful skill allowing Kristjan to stay one step ahead of potential enemies. Tracker led his lord back through the trees to a spot beside a frozen pond where he held up his hand and dismounted.
‘The crows are around a hundred paces in that direction, lord,’ he told Kristjan, pointing towards the west. ‘I will stay here to guard the horses.’
Tracker was also a coward but he had done his job.
‘Do not leave without us,’ Kristjan warned him.
Tracker shook his head a few times. ‘Never, lord.’
Kristjan led the four through the trees, being careful not to trip on the undergrowth. The snow masked their approach and after a few minutes they heard voices and smelt the aroma of wood smoke. They slowed and gripped their spear shafts as they neared the camp. Kristjan touched the silver torc around his neck and crept forward. He expected no sentries because he knew that the ‘crows’ were lazy but still scanned the trees ahead for any guards. There were none.
Laughter came from the camp and the delicious odour of roasting meat. The ‘crows’ were obviously intent on stealing Kristjan’s pelts on a full stomach.
The ‘crows’ were gathered around the roasting elk carcass, shoving and pushing each other in anticipation of a hearty meal. They were well wrapped against the cold with felt boots, warm leggings and thick woollen shirts and tunics. All ‘crows’ wore their hair long and their beards wild and unkempt to add to their intimidating appearance.
Kristjan and his men calmly walked into their camp, the first to die being the ‘crows’ who noticed their arrival and tried to raise the alarm. The javelins flew through the air, their narrow blades penetrating the padded tunics with ease. Then Kristjan and his men charged with swords drawn into the midst of the enemy. They killed quickly, thrusting their blades into men desperately trying to reach for their shields and spears. They had slain eight before the enemy had a chance to respond. Then the ‘crows’ rallied and fought back.
Kristjan loved these moments when he was outnumbered by the enemy in the middle of a wilderness with no hope of survival if he faltered. He loved the long odds, the chance to prove himself to Taara, his god of war, but most of all he loved the killing. Four ‘crows’ surrounded him, leering at the prospect of slicing him into pieces. But he moved like a polecat, avoiding wild axe blows to cut hamstrings and thighs with his sword. He caught an axe on his shield, the blade embedding itself in the wood. He yanked the shield down, jabbed his sword over the top of it to pierce an eye of the attacker. As he whipped his blade back the ‘crow’ dropped his axe and clutched his face, screaming as blood came from the empty eye socket. Kristjan threw aside his shield, pulled his dagger with his left hand, spun and hurled it at the one remaining uninjured ‘crow’, hitting him in the chest. The dagger did not pierce his layers of clothing but it made him shy away for a moment, and in that moment Kristjan was on him, bludgeoning him to death with his axe that he had pulled from his belt.
Two of the ‘crows’ were limping away with leg wounds but he did not concern himself with them. He ran to help one of his men who himself had been wounded and was about to be killed by a bare-headed ‘crow’ armed with a spear. Kristjan picked up his dagger and hurled it at the ugly brute, the point going through his cheek. He yelped and fell to his knees and seconds later Kristjan was on him, caving in the side of his skull with his axe. He extracted the dagger from the ghastly red mush and smashed bone, wiped it on the dead ‘crow’s’ clothing and slipped it back into its sheath. He hauled his man to his feet.
The fight was over. Another of his men had been wounded, in the arm, though the injury was light. A few ‘crows’ had fled into the trees but they were of no concern. The majority had been killed and so the convoy of pelts was safe. A man brought Kristjan a slice of roasted elf meat, the juices dripping on his hand as he tucked into it.
‘What about them, lord?’ asked the man, nodding at the two limping ‘crows’ that Kristjan had wounded.
‘I will see to them after I have finished eating.’
The ‘crow’ with the badly cut hamstring was crawling along the ground, unable to even hobble. Something suddenly sprang at him. Kristjan dropped his meat in surprise as what looked like a collection of rags piled at the bottom of a tree sprang to life.
‘What in the name of the gods?’ said the man beside him.
The rags suddenly sprang a pair of arms that began beating the ‘crow’ furiously around the head, shrieking as they did so. Long hair tumbled from the grubby cloth covering the assailant’s head and the men began laughing as they saw that it was a girl who was venting her fury on the ‘crow’.
‘Silence,’ Kristjan ordered.
He walked over to the scuff
le and pulled the ‘crow’ away from the girl whose legs were tied at the ankles to the tree trunk. He pulled his dagger once more and slit the ‘crow’s’ throat, blood sheeting on to the snow in front of the girl, who retreated out of its way.
‘Kill the other one,’ he ordered, ‘and someone go and tell Tracker to bring the horses here.’
The other wounded ‘crow’ was killed as Kristjan once again cleaned his dagger’s blade before slipping it back in its sheath. He looked at the girl whose expression was one of smouldering resentment. Her blue eyes looked up at him defiantly. He had a passing knowledge of the Karelian tongue due to some of men being from the region.
‘What is your story?’
‘Free me,’ she demanded.
‘Are there no manners in Karelia? It is at least polite to thank those who have saved you.’
She regarded him coolly. ‘That depends on what you intend to do with me.’
He whipped out his dagger, causing her to flinch, and severed the ropes around her ankles.
‘I intend to do nothing except return to my pelts.’
He re-sheathed his dagger, turned and walked away.
‘I was captured when these devils raided my people,’ she told him. ‘That was two days ago. My father would reward you well if you took me back to him.’
He turned to look at her as the forest echoed with the voice of one of his men calling on Tracker to bring the horses. She was dressed like a beggar in lice-ridden rags but she had fire in her eyes, a pretty face and a proud nature. He decided he liked her.
‘What is your name?’ he asked her.
‘Hella,’ she replied.
‘Well, Hella, today is your lucky day.’
They took anything of value from the ‘crow’ camp, which included their ponies, weapons and several hundred pelts they had managed to accumulate, either through trapping and hunting or more likely theft. They found Hella some new clothes and after she and the others had eaten copious amounts of cooked elk she rode behind Kristjan back to the convoy, the newly acquired ponies carrying the spoils of war accompanying them.
Karelia contained no villages as such only collections of people who lived in wooden tent-like structures called goahtis that were dismantled and moved according to the season. Hella’s ‘village’ was one such settlement, a collection of goahtis nestled beside a great pine forest. When Kristjan and his convoy appeared the men of the settlement gathered in a line armed with spears and shields, ready to repulse an attack. Kristjan and his men looked like ‘crows’ but Hella slid off the back of his horse and shouted to the Finns that she had been rescued. They gave a great cheer and one walked forward to embrace her. Her father Kristjan presumed.
With skin like old leather, piercing blue eyes and hair that was as white as the snow that covered the land, he embraced Kristjan, invited him into his abode but told the young hunter that his men would have to camp well away from the village.
‘We are wary of strangers,’ he said.
Kristjan ordered his men to make camp a few hundred feet from the settlement and went to sit with Hella’s family. The sun was dropping fast along with the temperature, the moon already present in the sky to herald a still, freezing night. Inside the goahti it was surprisingly warm, a fire burning in a brazier around which the family sat. The structure itself comprised a frame of birch poles covered with wood, reindeer skins on the ground, over which were laid woven wool rugs.
Hella’s brothers, both younger than her but already as tall as their sibling, looked at Kristjan with barely concealed contempt but her mother and father made him feel welcome. Her mother served a delicious Karelian stew made from a recently killed wild boar.
‘You are a Russian?’ her father asked him.
Kristjan told them his story, about how he was from Estonia, a land far to the south that had been conquered by heathen foreigners called the Sword Brothers. He told them of his family, his rebellion and the Bishop of Riga but although they listened politely he might as well have been talking of a mythical land because they had no knowledge of the world beyond Karelia. He told them of his journey to Novgorod with Hoidja and his desire to be away from the city.
‘Alas many come from the south to steal our children and women,’ said the father. ‘We have come to know much about Novgorod, though not with any affection.’
Kristjan knew that there was a brisk business at Novgorod with regard to the slave trade, specifically the sale of fair-skinned children and women for shipment south to the slave markets of Constantinople. He told them that he detested the trade because his own people had suffered the same fate, including his aunt.
‘Taken by the Sword Brothers. I come only to collect pelts.’
‘The Russians come to take slaves and pelts,’ said the father, ‘and we also have the bandits that prey on us. They steal our pelts and children.’
‘To sell to the Russians,’ said Kristjan.
‘We do not mind sharing our pelts,’ said the father, ‘they are so abundant that it matters not if foreigners trap and hunt them. But our children and women are not prey to be hunted and we will fight those who seek to take them.’
‘I admire your spirit, sir,’ said Kristjan.
Hella said nothing but gave the tall, imposing young man with a scarred cheek opposite admiring glances. She was drawn to his courage, his wisdom and his brooding menace. He slept among his own men that evening and in the morning told them that they would head back to Novgorod to hand over the pelts to Hoidja.
‘And then you will be paid well for your services,’ he told them.
They nodded contentedly. It had been a hard winter and they had done well to stay alive. They deserved their reward.
‘And you, lord, will you purchase a great house in Novgorod?’ asked Tracker.
‘I would rather share a tent with you, Tracker,’ he replied.
‘And that is saying something,’ said one of his Ungannians. The others laughed.
‘I hope you will all consider serving with me again later in the year,’ Kristjan said to them, ‘after you have finished your drinking and whoring.
They gave a great cheer and went back to checking the sleds and ponies. They used Russian panje ponies to pull the sleds, a beast of burden that was even hardier then the Estonian pony. Kristjan placed a foot in the stirrup and was about to haul himself into the saddle when he heard a voice.
‘Take me with you.’
He stopped and saw Hella standing in front of him. She presented a very different spectacle from the feral, dirty wretch he had rescued. Her long groomed hair shone in the sun and her eyes sparkled with excitement.
‘What?’
‘Before you came,’ she said, ‘I prayed to Mielikki, Mistress of the Forest, that she would save me and she sent you. It is the will of the gods that I should be with you, Kristjan.’
He wanted to laugh but something stopped him. Since the death of his parents he had been consumed by a raging hate; hate for the Sword Brothers, for the Ungannians who had abandoned him and for the whole world. There was no place in his heart for love. He should have dismissed her, told her that she was a fool for thinking she could be with him but he did not. Instead he found himself touching the torc around his neck. He looked into the blue pools of her eyes and wondered if Taara himself had sent this child of the wilderness to him.
‘You will have to ask your father,’ he said.
The price her father demanded for his daughter was four hundred squirrel pelts, which he informed Kristjan he would sell to the next Russian traders he encountered. He saw no irony in de facto selling his daughter and her being previously taken by ‘crows’. Hella was delighted, her brothers angry and her mother distraught. But after negotiations had been concluded the wild Finnish beauty was seated in a ‘crow’ saddle riding next to Kristjan at the head of a long column of sleds and riders journeying south.
*****
At last the snows melted, the ice on the rivers and lakes cracked, slowly disappearing w
hile signs of life gradually returned to the land. The harshest winter in living memory had taken its toll on people and wildlife alike, thousands of animals being buried in the snow and either freezing or starving to death. Farmers on both sides of the Dvina spent many days collecting the emaciated corpses of sheep when the snow had gone. As usual the cold had carried off the weak, frail, very old and very young, death visiting pagans and Christians without preference. The Holy Church’s flock gathered in churches to thank God for delivering them from such an ordeal and pagans likewise thronged to sacred groves to pay homage to their gods. But though they were grateful all were exhausted and hungry and daily life was slow to return to normal.
Fresh misery was heaped on the people when the spring rains began to fall, turning the land green and lush but flooding meadows as rivers already in spate broke their banks. The land was waterlogged. Even the floor of the pine forests resembled a wet, brown carpet made up of the deciduous leaves and pine needles that had fallen the previous autumn. But at least it was warmer and when the rains eased and April arrived the ploughing began and the spring crops were sowed: barley oats, peas, beans and vetches. The lush pastures meant that the cows could feed on them rather than subsisting on sparse winter fodder. This meant that after calving they once more began producing milk, which in turn could be used to make cheese and butter.
Arturus looked down on the courtyard of Talsi hill fort, workers, soldiers, craftsmen and their families and slaves going about their business. Red-hot horseshoes were being hammered on anvils, armourers were mending helmets and weapons and stable hands were saddling horses. After the desolation of the winter just past the duke was glad to see his stronghold returning to life. Banners showing the duke’s motif of the black seagull fluttered from its towers and beyond the fort’s moat the nearby town was hosting a large market, the first of the year.
‘Today is the first day I have actually felt warm,’ said Arturus.