The Sword Brothers

by Peter Darman

  The Sword Brothers

  Peter Darman

  Copyright © 2013 Pete Darman

  Published by Peter Darman at Smashwords

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  Formatted by Jo Harrison

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  List of principal characters and maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  List of principal characters

  Those marked with an asterisk * are known to history.

  The Order of Sword Brothers

  Aldous: Master of Lennewarden Castle

  Anton: novice at Wenden Castle

  Berthold: Master of Wenden Castle*

  Bertram: Master of Segewold Castle

  Bruno: novice at Wenden Castle

  Conrad Wolff: novice at Wenden Castle

  Friedhelm: Master of Uexkull Castle

  Gerhard: Master of Holm Castle

  Griswold: Master of Kokenhusen Castle

  Hans: novice at Wenden Castle

  Henke: brother knight at Wenden Castle

  Jacob: Master of Gersika Castle

  Johann: novice at Wenden Castle

  Lukas: brother knight at Wenden Castle

  Mathias: Master of Kremon Castle

  Rudolf: brother knight at Wenden Castle and deputy to Master Berthold*

  Thaddeus: chief engineer at Wenden Castle

  Volquin: Grand Master of the Order of Sword Brothers*

  Walter: brother knight at Wenden Castle

  Livs

  Caupo: king of the Livs and ally of Bishop Albert*

  Daina: daughter of Thalibald

  Rameke: youngest son of Thalibald*

  Thalibald: Caupo’s chief warlord*

  Vetseke: prince, former ruler of Kokenhusen*

  Waribule: eldest son of Thalibald*

  Germans

  Albert: Bishop of Riga*

  Albert, Count: crusader*

  Helmold of Plesse: crusader*

  Stefan: archdeacon, Governor of Riga

  Theodoric: Bishop of Estonia*

  Estonians

  Alva: Chief of the Harrien

  Edvin: Chief of the Wierlanders

  Eha: wife of Kalju

  Jaak: Chief of the Jerwen

  Kalju: Chief of the Ungannians

  Lembit: Chief of the Saccalians, Grand Warlord of all Estonia*

  Nigul: Chief of the Rotalians

  Rusticus: Lembit’s deputy

  Russians

  Domash Tverdislavich: Mayor of Pskov*

  Gleb: Skomorokh, follower of the old religion

  Mstislav: Prince of Novgorod*

  Vsevolod: Prince of Gerzika*

  Lithuanians

  Arturus: Duke of the Northern Kurs

  Butantas: Duke of the Samogitians

  Daugerutis: Duke of the Selonians and Nalsen, grand duke of the Lithuanian tribes*

  Gedvilas: Duke of the Southern Kurs

  Kitenis: Duke of the Aukstaitijans

  Mindaugas: son of Prince Stecse*

  Rasa: daughter of Daugerutis and wife of Prince Vsevolod

  Stecse: prince, chief warlord of Duke Daugerutis*

  Ykintas: Duke of the Semgallians

  Maps

  The following maps relating to the lands and peoples described in ‘The Sword Brothers’:

  1) Livonia in 1210

  2) The Estonian tribal kingdoms

  3) The Lithuanian tribal kingdoms

  can all be found on the maps page on my website:

  www.peterdarman.com

  Chapter 1

  Lübeck, 1210.

  Now that it was spring the city seemed a much more agreeable place, the weather warmer, the streets less muddy and the people happier. Not that Conrad saw much of it or them each day, save for the customers who came into his father’s bakery to purchase his bread. It had been a hard winter but pray God the spring and summer would be better for him and his family. His father was reckoned one of the best bakers in Lübeck, not only among his customers who tasted his produce but also within the guild that controlled the city’s bakeries. But life for him and his family was still hard. For all of them the working day began before dawn and did not end until the evening. Hours spent making dough and baking bread to fill the bellies of the city’s increasing population, should have meant an increase in the family’s income. But Lübeck’s laws regarding the production of bread were numerous and strict, chief among them being that such a vital food source should not be over-priced. The price of flour was also strictly controlled, at least in theory, but the bakers’ guild was forever complaining that unscrupulous millers were always over-charging for their goods.

  ‘Conrad, make sure the mark is on every loaf.’

  Dietmar Wolff was pointing at a row of loaves in front of his son that had yet to be branded.

  Conrad smiled and shook his head. ‘Yes, father, of course.’

  His father was not smiling. ‘Make sure you do. I don’t want to pay any more fines for selling unmarked bread.’

  It had been a cause of great celebration when Dietmar Wolff had first been issued with his own baker’s mark by the city authorities, for it meant that his bakery was considered to be one of Lübeck’s finest. The mark itself was a simple wooden die that was used to stamp the underside of loaves before they were cooked, Dietmar’s bearing the letter ‘W’ for Wolff to indicate where the loaf came from. Marks were also used to identify bakers who sold underweight loaves or those made from inferior flour, but those bearing Dietmar’s brand were fast becoming known for their taste and quality, something that he was keen to encourage. Loaves bearing no mark were not only lost opportunities to advertise his talents as a baker, they also incurred fines imposed by the authorities. It was no exaggeration to state that the wooden die was the family’s most prized possession.

  Conrad had served his father for nearly seven years as an apprentice and regarded himself as a talented baker in the making, notwithstanding that he sometimes forgot to mark the loaves before they were placed in the oven.

  His mother stopped kneading dough on the table in front of her.

  ‘Leave him alone, Dietmar. This summer will be a good one, I can sense it.’

  Dietmar ran a hand over his balding crown. ‘It needs to be. T
he price of flour keeps going up and I cannot pass on the increase to my customers because of the ridiculous city laws.’

  Conrad began pressing the die into the underside of each loaf. ‘Your brand is becoming well known in the city, father. Soon we will be able to move to a larger house in the west of the city.’

  His mother smiled at him but his father’s forehead creased into a frown.

  ‘A larger house? Four mouths to feed, increasing flour prices, not allowed to work on a Sunday and a further fifty saints’ days each year? I think not.’

  ‘It is important to give thanks to God for our good fortune,’ his wife rebuked him.

  Dietmar ran a hand over his head once more and went back to his work. He did not need to go to church to thank God for giving him such a wife, and the truth was that he praised the Lord each and every day for blessing him with his wife. Eight years his junior, Agnete Wolff was a beautiful woman who should have been married to a rich merchant or perhaps even a richer knight. That she had somehow ended up marrying a stocky baker shorter than she was a mystery that he had never been able to fathom.

  Agnete’s father was a miller who supplied Dietmar with flour and that is how he had first met his bride, the tall, slender beauty who trapped him with her blue eyes and soft smile. He had fallen in love with her on sight but it had taken a while for Agnete to reciprocate the sentiment. But over time she came to respect the hard-working, stubborn baker who presented a stony exterior to the world but who underneath was kind and loyal. And so they married and Agnete bore him two children – Conrad and Marie – and never complained about the days of unceasing toil that filled their lives. God was good and would ensure that their piety and hard work would be rewarded, of that she was certain.

  Their home was a small two-storey half-timbered house with a thatched roof in the eastern side of the city: one of a myriad of tiny abodes positioned either side of the warren of narrow streets that made up the poorer quarter of the city, a home to Lübeck’s small traders and artisans. They all slept in one room above the ground-floor shop where the oven was located, to the rear of which was a dirt patch where the pigs were kept. Many kept pigs. They were released in the daylight hours to consume the rubbish that was thrown into the streets by householders – human and animal excrement, animal entrails and rotting food. That was the theory at least. The reality was that the earth streets were always full of filth that a traveller had to pick a path through. The pigs just added to the general noise and unpleasantness of the streets, which today were more crowded than usual.

  The city authorities sometimes attempted to clean the streets, hiring muck-rakers to clear away the filth, especially when the cankerous smell reached the rich houses in the city’s western quarter. But hiring muck-rakers meant expenditure and Lübeck’s city fathers were notoriously parsimonious. And so as the temperature rose the stench increased so that by high summer everyone was praying for the cooler air of autumn.

  But today the smell was hardly noticeable as the bakery that fronted the shop was filled to bursting as Conrad and his father toiled to produce the loaves that everyone wanted to buy. Agnete served the customers with a smile as Marie ferried fresh loaves from the oven. Two years younger than Conrad, she had inherited her father’s frame. A happy-go-lucky, cheerful child, her round face always wore a smile, especially when she was rounding up her beloved pigs at the end of the day, to be confined in the pen that she called their home.

  Conrad often thought that he could produce bread in his sleep so adept had he become at it. He could create all the varieties produced in his father’s bakery – white bread, brown bread, black bread and horse – with ease, and in their two main types: trenchers and table bread. The former were long, flat loaves turned over and over in the oven until hard, flat crusts were formed on both sides. They were usually cut horizontally and filled with cooked meat whose juices soaked into the bread, a delicacy largely denied to Conrad and his family who could rarely afford meat – save if Dietmar slaughtered one of Marie’s beloved pigs. The most common type of loaf consumed by Conrad’s family and indeed most of the city was table bread: a simple round loaf.

  Conrad loved his parents and looked forward to the day when he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a master baker, producing white bread for the rich, brown bread that was sold for half the price of white, black bread that was cheaper still, though hopefully not horse bread, made from the lowest quality flour and not fit for human consumption, though it was eaten by the poor when times were hard. This then was his life: working from dawn till dusk to help his father feed his family with the expectation, God permitting, that he would eventually work in his own bakery to feed his own family. Every working day was the same, year in, year out.

  Until today.

  During the preceding weeks a regular visitor to the bakery had been a scullion, a lowly servant who worked in the home of one of Lübeck’s richest merchants. In an effort to ingratiate himself with Conrad’s mother he never failed to mention this fact, along with leering at her every time he purchased a white loaf. Dietmar disliked him and bristled with anger every time the man looked at his wife in an inappropriate way. Agnete brushed aside the man’s ogling, though always maintaining a polite disposition as she relieved him of his master’s money. The scullion may have looked like a beggar but his master’s coins were a valuable addition to the Wolffs’ income, as Agnete always reminded Dietmar.

  For his part the scullion rarely saw his master, Adolfus Braune, though he talked incessantly about the beautiful woman who worked in a bakery in eastern Lübeck. Eventually word reached Braune of this woman and he became curious and decided to pay her a visit to see if the rumours were true. If they proved false he would have the scullion’s tongue bored. Being the richest merchant in Lübeck meant he could dispense justice almost at will. What use was power if it could not be wielded?

  It was late afternoon when he left his three-storey brick building sited near his harbour-front warehouses. As usual he took his entourage with him – half a dozen burly thugs he had recruited in the aftermath of his father’s death a year earlier. It was his father who had built up the Braune fortune, establishing a trading network throughout the Baltic region, only to be stabbed to death on the island of Gotland by a creditor with a grievance. So at the age of thirty-five Adolfus inherited his father’s fortune and his fleet of trading vessels, which at a stroke made him one of Lübeck’s wealthiest citizens. His mother had died of a pestilence during his early years and his father had largely ignored him, leaving the young Adolfus to develop a sly, manipulative character spiced with a high degree of resentment against first his father and then the world in general. Being overweight, prematurely bald and unattractive meant he preferred the company of sycophants and lackeys to polite society and equals, which would not have mattered had not his father been murdered. His father’s demise at a stroke made him both rich and powerful and thrust him into Lübeck’s highest echelons.

  His guards had been recruited from harbour workers: brutish, uneducated men who would obey commands unquestioningly as long as they were paid. Adolfus never went anywhere without them, not least because he feared suffering the same fate as his father.

  The crowds were insufferable, a sea of stinking bodies, disfigured faces and raucous individuals, and after a while Adolfus was beginning to regret leaving his spacious, elegant and sweet-smelling house. His temper began to fray as his progress to the eastern quarter was slowed by simple-minded idiots who barred his path rather than bowing and getting out of the way. He ordered his men to clear a path, which they did by shoving aside anyone in their way. Adolfus recoiled in horror when a beggar extended his grubby, calloused hand to him, earning the poor unfortunate a heavy thwack on the arm with a baton carried by one of his men.

  Eventually they reached the street of bakers, which also contained shops selling pies and vegetables. The air was filled with different accents for Lübeck was a rich trading city that attracted people from all
over Germany, as well as from Denmark, whose king also ruled Lübeck, Norway and Sweden.

  ‘This is the place, lord,’ remarked one of the bodyguards.

  Adolfus, who had been paying careful attention to where he placed his feet in an effort to avoid stepping in a pile of rotting vegetables or pig dung, stopped and looked up at a sign hanging over an open-fronted shop from where the pleasant aroma of freshly baked bread was emanating. The sign displayed a poorly painted loaf of bread on a red background.

  Adolfus screwed up his face. ‘This had better be worth it. I fear I may catch some sort of pestilence just breathing the same air as these people.’

  Just then a squealing pig raced past him, pursued by a young girl in a russet dress.

  ‘Quite intolerable,’ sniffed Adolfus, who waved his men forward into the shop.

  The early morning bustle, the busiest time of the day, was long gone and now the bakery’s shelves and counter were largely empty. However, Agnete always kept a loaf of table bread for a regular customer who always visited the bakery late in the afternoon. Roger the Putrid knew he stank, his neighbours knew he stank and so did anyone unfortunate enough to pass by him in the street. As a fuller he spent most of his days walking up and down on wool in huge vats of urine. Wool was essential to the lives of rich and poor alike but no one wanted to wear clothes that were itchy and stiff. Therefore the wool was soaked in stinking, stale urine to draw out the grease in the material and pounded by feet to interlock the fibres. The end result was wool that was kind to skin thanks to Roger and his fellow fullers. Everyone knew that fullers were crucial to the manufacture of clothing; they just did not want them anywhere near them.

  Roger earned a good living but his was a solitary life. That is why he looked forward to his daily visit to the Wolffs’ bakery. In truth he was a little in love with Agnete, though he would never admit it. But who wouldn’t be entranced by the angelic beauty with the soft voice who always had a kind word for him? It was the same today as he passed her the money for his loaf.