The Sword Brothers

by Peter Darman

  ‘A few,’ replied the Oeselian.

  Lembit had cheered up somewhat, it having dawned on him that what he desired – open conflict between the bishop and Novgorod – had materialised, notwithstanding the bloody nose he and the others had been given.

  ‘The enemy’s crossbowmen are very effective,’ said Sigurd, ‘but they presumably do not have an inexhaustible supply of ammunition.’

  Domash looked up at the tent’s roof. ‘What do you suggest? We continue assaulting the walls in the hope that they run out of ammunition before we run out of men?’

  ‘I am suggesting, lord,’ replied Sigurd calmly, ‘that we build siege towers. There is an abundance of wood in the nearby forests and we have thousands of men who can construct them. The garrison of Odenpah is not going anywhere, we have assembled a large army here and so I suggest we make the most of our advantages.’

  ‘The Sword Brothers in the fort may be the vanguard of an army being assembled by the bishop in the south,’ said Jaak.

  ‘I will despatch horsemen south to ensure that we are not surprised again,’ said Domash. He looked at Sigurd. ‘We will try your strategy, Oeselian.’

  During the following three days the besiegers established their siege lines and felled hundreds of trees to provide the building materials for the siege towers. They were crude affairs hurriedly built, moved forward on wheels hewn from great oaks, men sweating and heaving in the base of the towers as they pushed them towards the fort. There were six of them – two earmarked to assault each wall – each one three storeys in height with a ramp attached to the top storey that would fall forward onto the top of the wall once they had reached the ramparts. To allow the towers to be pushed up against the walls the moat had to be filled so they could cross it, and the earth slope beneath the wall had be dug away.

  Domash ordered his commanders to attach overhanging log roofs to some of the wagons, members of the Voi pushing them forward to the moat and then filling the latter with logs carried on the wagons to build bridges for the towers to cross. It was difficult, dangerous work and dozens of Russians were killed by crossbowmen on the walls and in the towers. The Voi commanders pleaded with Domash to send archers forward to shoot at the crossbowmen but he refused. Poorly armed villagers were expendable; archers were not.

  *****

  The enemy worked not only in the day but also through the night, hammering nails into wood and cutting down trees by the light of torches and fires. Conrad stood in one of the inner perimeter’s towers and heard the sounds coming from the enemy camp.

  ‘They sound very close,’ said Eha beside him.

  ‘That is because sound travels further on a cold, clear night, lady,’ he said.

  It had been five days since the enemy’s attack and since then the garrison had largely stood and watched the siege towers being built around five hundred paces from the walls. Kalju had wanted to launch a raid against them but Master Thaddeus, who had assumed the role of de facto chief military adviser, was adamant that the enemy should not be disturbed.

  ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,’ he had told the chief.

  Sir Richard was all for riding out to destroy the siege towers but Bertram and Mathias concurred with Thaddeus and pointed out to him that the Russians had many horsemen in the saddle at all times. Any raiding party would be quickly cut off and surrounded and the garrison would lose some of its most effective members for no result. Sir Richard bridled at his enforced inactivity in close proximity to the enemy but Thaddeus said that if he showed patience he would be rewarded. And so the garrison watched as the towers took shape.

  Sir Richard did amuse himself by borrowing a crossbow and shooting at the poor wretches who were filling the moat and removing earth from the hill. He and his fellow knights and their squires looked upon it as great sport until Thaddeus prevailed upon Bertram and Mathias to persuade the knights not to waste precious ammunition. The culling of the enemy labourers was left to the expert marksmanship of the Sword Brothers’ crossbowmen.

  Eha, her handsome features highlighted by the torch that burned in its holder nearby, pointed at one of the towers being worked on.

  ‘When they have finished they will push them against the walls?’

  Conrad nodded.

  ‘And then their soldiers will flood into the fort.’

  ‘Not if Master Thaddeus can help it, lady. And even if they reach the wall they will not be able to take it.’

  She noticed that he was toying with a ring on a finger of his left hand.

  ‘That is a marriage ring, is it not?’

  ‘It is, lady,’ he replied.

  ‘My husband told me that the Sword Brothers are not allowed to marry.’

  ‘That is correct. I was married before I became a brother knight. My wife and child are dead.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  He stared at the enemy siege towers. ‘It is no concern if I am killed here because I know that I will join them in the next life.’

  ‘I will pray that it is not so,’ she said.

  ‘How are the other women and children?’

  She sighed. ‘Fearful that they will be raped and taken as slaves after seeing their husbands butchered. My children will not suffer such a fate and neither will I.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She smiled, a cunning glint in her eye. ‘I have enough poison to ensure we are all dead before the enemy violates our bodies.’

  ‘My religion holds that it is a sin to take your own life.’

  ‘Then I am fortunate,’ she said, ‘that I do not follow your god.’

  They heard laughter coming from the enemy camp.

  ‘It will not be long now,’ said Conrad.

  In fact it was the following morning when the enemy at last moved the siege towers forward. The alarm was sounded in the fort and the Ungannians and Christians calmly went to their positions. Conrad stood beside Hans, axe in hand, as his friend chewed on some biscuits. The crossbowmen had been redeployed in the towers so they could direct their bolts against the sides and rear of the towers, behind which were long columns of soldiers holding their shields above their heads.

  Two towers approached the southern wall, two the eastern wall and the last two, operated by Estonians and Oeselians, were directed towards the western wall held by the men of Wenden and Segewold. Despite their heavy losses the Russian levies had filled the moat in six places and removed the soil from the earth slope so that the towers could be pushed against the walls. Then the ramps would be lowered and men would pour into the fort. The top platform of each tower held twenty men, with dozens more waiting on the ladders and platforms below. The front and sides of each tower were covered with thick logs to stop crossbow bolts and arrows, thus negating the defenders’ most effective weaponry.

  On each wall was one of Thaddeus’ engineers who watched the approach of the siege towers carefully. When he was satisfied that the towers were at the correct distance he gave the signal to his comrades below. Seconds later barrels of burning pitch shot by the mangonels were arching into the grey sky.

  ‘Supplies are running low,’ remarked Hans as the first barrels landed on top of the tower directly ahead of him and Conrad with a muffled bang. Then flames shot into the air and hideous screams came from the tower as the warriors on the top level were covered with hot pitch. The Sword Brothers cheered but their acclamations were drowned out by the high-pitched yells of men engulfed in flames. Some threw themselves off the tower in desperation and fell to their deaths in the snow below as another barrel struck the tower, this time its front, to engulf the logs in flames. The tower came to a grinding halt as those pushing it forward heard the grisly screams of men above them and heard the calls of alarm from the warriors packed on the ladders at higher levels. A third barrel was shot by the mangonel and landed where the first had struck, setting the top of the tower alight and causing panic inside it.

  The Sword Brothers cheered again and raised their shields and weapons as men b
egan to flee from the tower, causing panic among the column of Saccalians behind them, the crossbowmen to the left of where Conrad was standing shooting at the warriors behind the siege tower and adding to their misery. The tower had been stopped less than a hundred paces from the wall.

  Unfortunately the second siege tower, the one being propelled forward by the Oeselians, was still trundling forward. The mangonel allocated to stop it had malfunctioned, its skein having lost its torsion. A new one had been hurriedly fitted but by the time it had shot its first barrel the tower was too close to the wall and so the projectile landed among the column of warriors following it.

  ‘God with us!’ shouted Rudolf as the tower’s ramp crashed down on the top of the wall and Oeselian warriors raced across it. Two sergeants standing in the path of the warriors killed four of them with their swords before they were literally barged aside by sheer weight of numbers, falling from the walkway to their deaths.

  The walkway was two paces wide, which meant that the Sword Brothers could not be outflanked. But as Rudolf and Henke stood side by side, killing Oeselians with mace and sword, they were gradually forced back by weight of numbers, back towards the fort’s tower behind them.

  Conrad and Hans likewise stood together as a tide of Oeselians rushed them. He heard Lukas’ words in his head but there was no room to manoeuvre and so he and his friend used enemy bodies as shields. The Oeselians carried one-handed axes that they swung over their shields in an attempt to split the Sword Brothers’ helmets, but the blows were too clumsy and Conrad raised his shield and thrust his sword below the first Oeselian’s shield and upwards, driving the point into his belly. The man groaned and his body went limp but Conrad pressed his shield forward to stop him from collapsing as other warriors behind the dying man pressed their shields into his back. Hans had also killed his man and the two brother knights kept the corpses in front of them upright, pushing forward to create a press of men on the walkway.

  ‘Anton, Johann,’ screamed Conrad, ‘use your swords.’

  He felt a weight on his shoulders as Anton barged his shield into his back and lurched up and forward, jabbing his sword over Conrad’s head, over the dead Oeselian and into the eye socket of the warrior desperately trying to get the dead man in front of him out of the way so he could get to grips with Conrad.

  On it went, Johann and Anton jumping up and lunging forward with their weapons to try and strike living Oeselians. But after a few minutes neither side could get at each other because there were at least three ranks of dead men between the living. Sergeants and brother knights gathered behind Johann and Anton and pressed forward.

  Conrad was finding it difficult to breathe, pressed between dead Oeselians and live Sword Brothers, and he could not move his arms. He tried to turn his head, to no avail, but from his vision slits he saw that Hans was still beside him.

  ‘Keep breathing, Hans,’ he shouted at his friend. Hans did not move. Pray God he still lived.

  The quick-thinking leather face located in the tower closest to the siege tower saved the day. He and his men shot their bolts at the Oeselians filing into the tower, loosing quarrels at a rate of four a minute, the iron heads going straight through wooden shields. Soon there was a great heap of Oeselian dead to the immediate rear of the tower, making it difficult for reinforcements to join their comrades on the battlements. The crossbowmen were shooting forty bolts a minute, the great majority of which hit flesh and bone. Not even the feared sea pirates of the Baltic could withstand such a deluge and soon they were streaming back to camp, leaving their comrades still fighting in the fort to their fate.

  When the last Oeselians had been cut down and thrown from the battlements Conrad pulled off his helmet and sank to his knees, shoving the dead enemy warrior away. He gulped in the icy air to fill his lungs. He raised a hand to Hans who had likewise removed his headgear and looked deathly pale. Anton slapped him on the back.

  ‘Still in one piece?’

  He was so exhausted and short of breath that he could not answer, managing only a forced smile as Anton hauled him to his feet and Johann pulled Hans up. Conrad wiped his sword on his cloak and slid it back into its scabbard as feeling slowly returned to his arms and hands. Hans was leaning against the top of the wall, shaking his head.

  ‘I thought we would be crushed to death. Another few minutes and I would have passed out.’

  ‘Look lively!’

  Conrad groaned as he heard Henke’s voice and saw the brother knight picking up dead Oeselians and throwing them off the walkway out of the fort.

  ‘Get this path cleared before they come again,’ he barked.

  Anton and Johann stepped forward and began tossing dead men from the battlements, assisted by a number of sergeants, as Conrad and Hans, still weak, watched.

  But the enemy did not attack again that day. It began snowing as the dusk came, the wind producing swirling patterns of snowflakes in the dim light. The men on the battlements wrapped their cloaks around them as the temperature dropped and they stamped their feet and rubbed their hands to keep warm. Braziers were brought to the battlements and towers to warm the garrison. Henke suggested setting alight the siege tower that the Oeselians had used to enter the fort but Kalju was worried that to do so would cause the timber wall to catch fire, which Thaddeus thought unlikely. So that night Rudolf, Henke and a dozen sergeants went across the ramp and smashed the ladders and floorboards inside the tower. Finally they cut away the ramp itself and hauled it into the fort for firewood.

  The fort had been assaulted by six siege towers in total, all of them now lying still beyond the walls. Three had been struck several times by barrels of burning pitch before they had reached the walls and had been abandoned. One had managed to reach the western wall where the Sword Brothers had managed to repel the attackers at minimum cost, though the two assaulting the eastern wall had managed to escape Master Thaddeus’ mangonels to reach the ramparts. Fierce fighting had ensued as Sir Richard and Kalju fought desperately with their men to prevent the battlements being taken. Once more crossbowmen in the flanking towers had proved decisive and the Russians had been destroyed, but not before Kalju had lost fifty men and Sir Richard thirty knights and fifteen squires in the fighting. Fortunately Wenden had lost none of its brother knights.

  That night, as a light snowfall covered the dozens of bodies in and around the moat and behind the siege towers, the Ungannian women brought those freezing on the battlements food. Eha cooked porridge over a brazier and handed it out to Conrad and his fellow brother knights and the sergeants.

  ‘How are the children?’ he asked as she filled his bowl with another ladle of thick porridge.

  ‘Frightened,’ she said, trying to smile, her eyes full of concern.

  ‘The enemy threw their entire strength at us today,’ he replied. ‘They will need time to recover. Do not fear.’

  ‘For myself I have no fear,’ she said defiantly, ‘but I could weep for the young mothers who may not see their babies take their first steps.’

  ‘Is there any more?’ said Hans, holding out his empty bowl.

  Eha looked guilty. ‘We have to ration the food, Master Thaddeus’ orders.’

  Hans looked at his empty bowl.

  ‘Here,’ said Conrad, handing him his, ‘can’t have you starving to death.’

  Hans’ eyes lit up. ‘Your reward will be in heaven, my friend.’

  ‘That’s his third bowl,’ said Anton. ‘I think we should send Hans to raid the enemy’s food supplies. He could eat them all up by himself.’

  No one said anything more about food supplies, though the hundreds of men, women and children crammed into the fort would be consuming them at an alarming rate, especially as the freezing conditions increased the pangs of hunger.

  After evening prayers Conrad returned to his place on the wall. He placed his blanket on the boards and wrapped himself in his cloak and attempted to sleep while Hans stood guard. It was still snowing lightly and the wind was still blowing fr
om the east, an icy blast that made the eyes water. He was tired, though, and when he closed his eyes he instantly fell asleep. He slept for four hours, though when Anton’s foot nudged him awake it seemed like he had been in slumber for a matter of seconds. He rose slowly, his neck aching from the cold. He immediately felt the cold blast of the wind on his face as he slowly rose to his feet.

  ‘The wind’s picked up.’

  Anton, a thick fur-lined cap on his head, nodded. ‘At least it’s stopped snowing.’

  It was two hours before dawn when Conrad began his watch. He tied the flaps of his own cap under his chin and began pacing up and down to try to keep warm, clutching his cloak around him. The walkway was filled with sleeping brother knights and sergeants, with others standing guard like him. After twenty minutes or so he felt snowflakes striking his face as the wind increased, rattling the shingle roofs of the watchtowers. The air suddenly filled with thick flakes as the wind began howling and he could see no more than ten paces in front of him. He put his chin to his chest and his back to the wind to avoid getting frostbite, for prolonged exposure of the skin in such conditions could lead to the loss of a nose. Fortunately he still wore his mail mittens and Rudolf had ordered that everyone wear a pair of felt boots to prevent their toes freezing. But he was still cold.

  The time passed slowly. He stamped his feet, moved his arms around to maintain his circulation and squinted as he peered ahead into the whiteout beyond the fort. Nothing. Snowflakes went into his beard and eyes and he considered putting on his helmet when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye: movement on top of the wall. He rubbed his eyes. He was still tired and the blizzard made it almost impossible to see anything. He stared at the top of the seasoned timber, his eyes trying to focus as a multitude of snowflakes swirled in front of him. He could see the ends of two poles sticking up. How odd. Then his feelings of cold disappeared as his stomach churned in horror. A scaling ladder!

  He gripped the handle of his sword and tried to pull it as he stepped forward. The sword was frozen solid in its scabbard!