The Sword Brothers

by Peter Darman

  The brute came at Conrad with a succession of axe strikes that forced him back, slicing open the leather covering of his shield and chipping the wood underneath. He screamed as he swung the axe at Conrad’s head, the youth ducking and jabbing the point of his sword forward to cut into the Estonian’s upper arm. He growled with malice that this boy had dared to wound him but as far as Conrad could tell it had no effect on him. Was he a man or a devil?

  Two other Estonians came to the big man’s side and for the first time Conrad felt afraid. They closed on him but then one pitched forward and collapsed on the ground, a quarrel lodged in his back. The other two looked round and another was hit in the belly by a quarrel as leather face and another crossbowman advanced towards them. The big man pointed his axe at Conrad.

  ‘This is not over, boy.’

  Then he sprinted away to a standing pony and leaped into the saddle. Conrad saw him screaming some words, heard a horn being sounded and then the Estonians began to disengage and ride north behind their leader. Lukas, still on his horse, his sword and mantle splattered with blood, began riding up and down. He took off his helmet.

  ‘Let them go, let them go.’

  Conrad raised his sword in the air and gave a roar of triumph, then remembered why they had come. Daina!

  He saw Fricis riding towards the rear of what had been the Estonian column and ran after him, past dead and wounded ponies groaning in pain, jumped over corpses and saw Lukas sheathing his sword. He was suddenly filled with fear that she and the other women had been wounded or even killed. But then he saw her and his heart leapt.

  ‘Daina,’ he shouted. She turned and her green eyes lit up when she saw him. She cried and laughed as Conrad replaced his sword in its scabbard and ran up her.

  ‘My gallant knight,’ she cried, throwing her arms around him and hugging him. He held her close, smelling her hair and feeling her arms around him. So this was how it felt to be a hero.

  ‘Put her down, Conrad.’ The words of Lukas broke his dream.

  He could barely contain his joy and he reluctantly stepped back and looked into the eyes of the most beautiful creature he had ever met.

  ‘I take it from your demeanour that you are unhurt,’ queried the brother knight.

  ‘Yes, Brother Lukas,’ said Conrad, not taking his eyes off Daina’s. Her face was a little pale but she seemed none the worse for her ordeal.

  ‘And you, young princess,’ Lukas asked her, ‘are you hurt?’

  She smiled at him. ‘I am very well, Lukas, thank you.’

  Lukas frowned as she reached out to take Conrad’s hands and gave her champion a dazzling smile.

  ‘Brother Lukas.’

  Conrad heard Hans’ voice and knew something was wrong. ‘I must go,’ he told Daina and followed Lukas to where a group was gathered round something. Lukas dismounted as the men parted to allow him access. Conrad followed and saw with horror the body of Bruno lying on the ground. Lukas knelt beside it as Hans, Anton and Johann looked on with anguished faces.

  ‘He is dead,’ said Lukas. ‘He is in God’s keeping now.’

  Conrad could not believe it and stood in stunned silence. Their comrade had been killed by a stab to the stomach that had gone through his gambeson, which was now stained with blood. Lukas began to pray over the body of Bruno and Conrad and the other boys went down on their knees and joined him in worship, tears coming to their eyes.

  They wrapped Bruno in a sheet and took him back to Wenden strapped on the back of a pony. The women captives were given ponies to ride back to their villages, Conrad walking beside the ones carrying Daina and her mother. The Liv dead – seven men – were likewise taken back to their villages. The score of dead Estonians was left to the wolves. Conrad walked in silence, thinking of his dead friend. He would never see him again and though he had not known him for long, the year they had spent at Wenden had created a special bond between them. He had done well in his first real battle, had helped to rescue his beautiful Daina and should have felt the happiest young man in Christendom. But he was utterly miserable.

  *****

  Treiden hill fort was a great sprawling timber structure built upon a great earth mound a third of a mile inland from the River Gauja. The stronghold of Caupo, King of the Livs, it was surrounded by dozens of wooden huts of varying size interspersed with animals pens containing pigs and goats, with fenced-off fields further out holding cattle and oxen. In these dwellings lived Caupo’s subjects: men, women and children who farmed the land, hunted in the forests and caught fish on the river. For the past twenty years they had, like their lord, worshipped the Christian God and counted the Bishop of Riga as their friend. It was to this god that they now prayed as the Oeselians flooded ashore from their riverboats, butchering all in their path.

  Eric heard the horns of the enemy and the screams of their women as he ran across the sandy strip his boat had run aground on to head inland. The forest had been cleared from this area long ago to provide the building materials for Caupo’s stronghold and the huts of his people. He could see the hill fort on the hill ahead and below it the settlement. He ran past small fishing boats that littered the sandy beach and earth riverbank, slashing at fleeing men and boys who had watched in stunned silence as the Oeselian fleet had appeared on the river. Then they ran for their lives when the boats disgorged hundreds of heavily armed warriors.

  A fisherman attempted to skewer Eric with a spear but a shield brushed his clumsy thrust aside and then the Oeselian chief swung his sword that chopped into the side of the man’s skull, knocking him unconscious. Eric sprinted forward, ducking an axe swing from a Liv warrior before thrusting his sword into the man’s belly. He was at the settlement now, running along dirt paths between huts to reach the stronghold.

  His men were under strict orders not to indulge in rape and plunder until they had taken the stronghold. A man ran from a hut with a spear levelled at his belly. Eric saw him, moved his shield around to deflect the blow and then swung his sword down on top of the man’s bare head. A woman came from the same hut, screaming in despair at seeing her man on the ground with his head split open. Magnus stabbed her with his sword and ran after his chief, who seemed determined to capture Treiden single-handedly.

  ‘On, on!’ screamed Eric as his men smashed down fences and cut down women and children as they advanced towards the fort. Dozens of women and wailing children were running up the hill to the fort’s entrance: twin wooden gates that led to the compound that held the king’s warehouses, armoury, barracks and stables, while in front of the fort a ragged line of warriors was forming up to meet the invaders. Some of the people headed towards a wooden church that had been built by Caupo when he had returned from Rome eight years previously. So impressed had Pope Innocent III been by this former pagan’s piety that he had given him a bible to take back to his homeland. Caupo had laid a hand on this book moments before rushing from his hall to lead the fight against the pagan invaders.

  His bodyguard – a hundred men in mail armour, helmets and armed with spears and swords – grouped round him as he raced from the compound, through the gates, across the bridge spanning the moat and joined the warriors forming up a hundred yards down the hill. His people were still desperately attempting to reach refuge in the fort but now a great swarm of Oeselians was emerging from the settlement.

  Eric halted and looked right and left. He had failed to take the fort by surprise, the defenders now forming a line to bar his entry. He raised his hand to signal a stop. He saw men, women and children running into the trees or attempting to scale the hill around the fort.

  ‘Send men to bring those wretches to me,’ he ordered Magnus.

  From behind he heard the sound of some sort of dreadful singing, mournful and imploring. His men were now forming a great shield wall behind him, around two hundred paces from the Liv warriors further up the hill. He called forward one of his men.

  ‘What is that noise?’

  The bearded warrior looked behind at th
e church with its slanted roof and single bell hanging over the entrance, a cross mounted above it.

  ‘Some sort of church, lord. Christian, I think.’

  ‘Take ten men and burn it and all inside. I do not want to hear Christian singing. It offends my ears.’

  The warrior grinned and paced away.

  The Oeselian shield wall was now formed – a great phalanx of mail-clad warriors in five ranks, their large round shields overlapping in a defensive posture to await their lord’s orders. Magnus returned with two score of men dragging sobbing and frightened women and children, striking them across the face when they tried to resist their captors. The terrified Livs were shoved in front of the Oeselian ranks.

  Magnus stood beside Eric. ‘Boar’s head?’

  Eric nodded. Magnus turned and screamed his order. ‘Boar’s head!’

  A boar’s head was a wedge-shaped formation that concentrated the shock impact of an assault on a small frontage aimed at smashing through an enemy line. The Oeselians began hurling abuse and jeering at the three hundred or so Livs standing in their own shield wall, archers lining the walls of the fort behind them.

  Eric and Magnus would fight at the tip of the wedge, their best men immediately behind them gripping axes with which they would hack their way through the Livs. Eric walked forward directly towards the figure of Caupo in his gilded helmet standing in the middle of the enemy line. The hostages were herded forward as the archers began shooting at the Oeselians, their arrows striking raised shields but also the women and children. The Livs groaned and cried in anguish as the last of hostages were felled and trampled upon by the Oeselian warriors. Then Eric and his men charged.

  Even though the Oeselians were charging uphill the force of their assault buckled and then shattered the outnumbered Liv line. Eric failed to reach Caupo, who was bundled to the rear by his bodyguard as Oeselian axes and swords hacked and slashed at them. Eric barged his shield into a warrior directly in front of him, the force of the impact knocking him off balance and leaving him helpless as Eric drove the sword into his belly. There was a plethora of sickening thuds as Oeselian axes and swords hacked into the Liv line, which had now been splintered into dozens of individual mêlées, men yelping and groaning as blades inflicted horrendous injuries on their bodies. Eric was consumed by bloodlust as he cut down anyone in his path, but screamed in rage when he saw the gates of the fort being slammed shut.

  He began hacking with his sword at a dead Liv at his feet, reducing the head to a bloody pulp as he vented his frustration. Magnus grasped his arm.

  ‘We must withdraw immediately, lord.’

  Eric snarled at him but then regained his senses as the fighting platforms on the walls above began to fill with Liv soldiers.

  ‘Back, back!’ screamed Magnus, retaining the grip on his lord’s sleeve as he hauled him back, as a deluge of spears and arrows fell among the Oeselians.

  Eric was unharmed as he and Magnus withdrew down the hill, their warriors forming a shield wall once more, holding their shields above their heads as they shuffled back. A tideline of over two hundred dead marked the spot where the battle had taken place. The screams of those being incinerated inside the church had stopped by the time Magnus had organised patrols to scour the countryside for Livs, the rounding up of livestock to feed the raiders and the allocation of huts to house warriors. Siege lines were also established around the base of the hill upon which the fort was built, not that they had any siege engines. Two days later Lembit and his Estonians arrived at Treiden. But unknown to either him or Eric a crusader army was already approaching their position.

  Chapter 9

  The Oeselian boats had been spotted as soon as they had entered the Gauja estuary, the news being conveyed immediately to the bishop’s palace in Riga and the office of Grand Master Volquin in the town’s castle. With the bishop still away in Germany the threat to the crusader kingdom was severe, especially as the garrisons along the Dvina could not be stripped out of fear that the uneasy peace with the Lithuanians might not hold. Nevertheless, Volquin decided that the brother knights and sergeants from the castle of Holm must be sent north to join the relief force being assembled at Segewold that would attempt to save Treiden. If the stronghold fell and Caupo was killed such a calamity might spark a general revolt of the whole Liv people, with catastrophic consequences for Livonia.

  Volquin tried to impress the gravity of the situation upon Archdeacon Stefan, to no avail. He stubbornly refused to release any soldiers for the relief of Treiden, declaring that Riga itself was in peril. He kept babbling on about the Kurs returning and said that the knights, sergeants, spearmen and crossbowmen must remain to defend the town. But he was also most insistent that the native warriors who lived in and around the town should go with Volquin as he suspected their loyalty, the more so if Caupo was killed. Volquin despised the archdeacon but as long as he held the favour of the bishop there was nothing to be done. So Volquin called for a muster at Segewold of the brother knights and sergeants from Wenden, Segewold itself and Holm, together with their respective foot soldiers. In this way he hoped to raise thirty brother knights, over a hundred mounted sergeants and two hundred foot soldiers. He hoped this would be enough to raise the siege of Treiden.

  Two things raised the grand master’s spirits as he prepared to ride to Segewold, which came as a welcome relief following the news that the small castle of Kremon was also under siege. The first was a visit from the stern Theodoric, who declared that he was coming with Volquin to Segewold rather than sitting in his monastery waiting for news. The second was the arrival at Riga of two ships carrying a contingent of crusaders.

  Sir Helmold was a quarrelsome, fearsome lord from Saxony, a man who had devoted his life to war and fathering sons. Now in his fifties, he had managed to sire four strapping sons who had followed their father into the martial life, sallying forth from Sir Helmold’s great castle at Plesse to raid neighbouring towns and districts. He loved nothing more than engaging in battle with anyone who dared to cross him, taking particular delight in hanging priests who berated him for his bloodthirsty ways. Feared and loathed in equal measure, Sir Helmold of Plesse was totally unrepentant of his ways. Until his wife was taken ill.

  In descending order Sir Helmold loved his wife, Agnes, his pack of hunting dogs, his falcon and his sons. So when the pestilence visited Saxony and his wife was stricken he was distraught. He railed against God and offered his own life in exchange for that of his true love. But God did not listen and Agnes became more sick and frail by the day. Physicians and old hags who supposedly had healing talents came to the castle and failed in their attempts to cure her and Sir Helmold, bereft of hope, resigned himself to his wife’s death, vowing to kill himself the moment she closed her eyes for the last time, though this was a sin in the church’s eyes.

  It so happened that a young Cistercian monk came to Plesse soon after, from where no one knew. He said he had heard of the plight of Lady Agnes and asked that he be allowed to pray at the foot of her bed. Such was the despair of Sir Helmold that he agreed to the request of this pale, white-attired young man who walked in sandals and had no belongings, even though it was the depth of winter. And then a miracle happened, for Lady Agnes recovered. Sir Helmold was joyous and promised the young monk that he would build a Cistercian monastery at the foot of the hill on which his castle stood, but the young brother told him that if he really wanted to thank God he should take the cross and fight the pagans. And so the lord took his sons, fifteen other knights and twenty squires and set off for Lübeck. Eager to get to grips with the heathens Sir Helmold had demurred to wait for other crusaders and had taken ship almost immediately, arriving at Riga three days before Grand Master Volquin was to march to Segewold.

  Sir Helmold’s men carried Saxon heraldic banners – Plesse’s golden lion on a red background, a boar’s head on a black background over green and yellow – but their lord wore no insignia on his shield or on his horse’s caparison save a red cross on a whi
te background. He placed himself and his men under the absolute command of Grand Master Volquin when informed that Livonia was under threat. When the soldiers from Holm arrived at Riga the Sword Brothers marched to the relief of Treiden.

  It was May now and fortunately the spring mud had gone. The tracks were still rutted, which slowed the rate of advance and halted it altogether when some of the wagons lost their wheels, but at least the army could march overland directly to Segewold. Not that it was much of an army. Volquin had called for volunteers from among the German settlers in and around Riga, which had mustered seventy men, mostly spearmen who had to be issued with shields and helmets from the town’s castle, but also twenty-five crossbowmen. Added to the foot soldiers from the office of the grand master in Riga and Holm this gave a total of seventy-five crossbowmen and eighty-five spearmen. The number of Liv warriors who had been mustered from around Riga and Holm numbered two hundred, with an equal number of men to attend to the ponies and wagons that carried weapons, ammunition, food and tents for the army. They pushed their beasts hard to reach Segewold – thirty miles to the northeast – in three days.

  Segewold had formerly been a pagan hill fort a short distance south of the Gauja. Unlike at Wenden the garrison had not commenced replacing the timber walls and towers with stone, and so the only indication that it was no longer a pagan citadel was the banner of the Sword Brothers hanging above the main entrance. The relief army camped around the ramparts as Sir Helmold and the brother knights were lodged in the fort’s main hall. To the south of the castle were camped the Livs from the areas around Wenden and Segewold, all under the leadership of Thalibald – two hundred men – giving a total of five hundred Liv warriors to support the crusaders. Already at Segewold were the dozen brother knights, twenty sergeants and thirty mercenaries of the garrison, plus the twelve brother knights, twenty sergeants and forty mercenaries from Wenden. Thus did the army mustered to relief Treiden number just over eight hundred and fifty men.