Castellan

by Peter Darman

  The army with its dozens of carts and wagons managed to skirt the many bog ponds, freshwater springs and lakes on its journey, a vehicle occasionally sinking in the mud and either being hauled out or abandoned, its cargo distributed among the Estonians. From Varbola the army struck west to Matsalu Bay where the ships and boats despatched by Count Rolf from Reval were waiting. It had been suggested to Valdemar that it would be more convenient to take ship from Reval directly to Oesel but the king was insistent that his Estonian subjects should see him in all his pomp and glory as he travelled among them. No one riding with the king said anything as the army passed through a succession of deserted villages.

  It took two days to load the dozens of boats in the bay and two more days to ferry the army and its attendants to the northern coast of Oesel. The relief of the island is mostly flat though the coastline is strongly fragmented and so it took longer than anticipated to find a landing site. However, eventually the ships docked in a bay between two grass-covered peninsulas, where the water was deep enough to accommodate the cogs carrying the king, his chief advisers and commanders. The majority of the foot soldiers were shipped in shallow-draft oared vessels with a single sail that resembled Oeselian longships, but the latter were nowhere to be seen. Upon landing the Bishop of Roskilde held a service of thanksgiving on the beach and then the Danes set off inland.

  They did not go far, perhaps two miles before the quartermasters found a moraine plain of rocks and sediment on the edge of a great expanse of forest and near a large freshwater lake. They informed the king that the space between the plain and the trees – a meadow of tall grass – was an ideal site to construct a stone stronghold to provide a base for the subjugation of the Oeselians. The Estonians were immediately put to work collecting rocks for the construction of the fort as the engineers marked out the rectangular site of what would be the stronghold while the king’s servants erected the royal pavilion, around which a host of other pavilions and tents were pitched. Soon the space was filled with hundreds of smaller tents, horses, wagons, carts and cooking fires, with a steady stream of soldiers going to the forest and returning with firewood. Sentries were posted as the light began to fade but everyone forgot about the Oeselians who were obviously cowering in their hovels, a people waiting to be conquered.

  That night at the royal banquet Count Albert expressed his disappointment at not having to fight the pagans on the beach where the army had landed earlier. Valdemar reminded him that since God had sent him the holy standard his army had never been defeated. This being the case, the news that it accompanied his army had probably cast the Oeselians into the depth of despair.

  *****

  The king’s hall in Kuressaare was filled with Olaf’s earls: tall, powerful men with long hair and thick beards who wore mail armour and carried swords at their hips. The hall was a huge wooden building in the centre of Oesel’s largest settlement, its steeply pitched roof supported by two interior rows of massive oak posts. The doors were closed but the temperature inside the hall was pleasant enough, the spring mornings still cool though there was no need to light fires in the stone hearth in the centre of the floor. The earls lounged on the tiered benches positioned against the walls, listening intently to their king. Slaves went among them with trays holding tankards of honey mead.

  In the centre of the hall stood the squat, broad-shouldered king, his hair and beard now totally white, his skin leathery. Now in his early sixties, his eyes were still alert and his mind sharp. On the nearest bench sat his three sons: Sigurd, Stark and Kalf. The king threw his empty tankard for a slave to catch and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic.

  ‘The day we prayed that would never come is upon us. The Christians have landed on Oesel and are now in the north of our blessed island building a fort.’

  There was a stony silence among the earls. Olaf knew that many were desperate to be heard but they kept quiet out of respect for the king.

  ‘After conquering the Estonian tribes the Danish king has decided that we are next on his list of targets, to be reduced to slavery just as the Estonians have been. Some of you may be wondering why I have not raised an army and attacked the invaders.’

  The silence remained but many of the earls were having difficulty holding their tongues. The amount of treasure and quantity of estates they held and the number of warriors they could raise measured Oeselian earls. They captained the king’s longships and fought beside him in battle. They were fierce, proud and brave but now they were confused. Eventually one rose from his bench, a bear of a man who was older than Olaf but as hard as the iron helmet sitting on the bench beside him. The king nodded at his friend Swein.

  ‘Forgive me, great king,’ he began. ‘But many wonder, myself among them, why we have not thrown these Danish barbarians back into the sea.’

  There were mooted mutterings from both sides of the hall.

  ‘A fair question, Swein,’ answered the king. ‘One that my son will answer.’

  Olaf nodded to Sigurd and sat down. His eldest son and heir, his long hair pure blonde and his face clean shaven, rose and took his position in the centre of the hall. Now in his mid-thirties, he had none of the arrogance and fire of his dead brother Eric. He had been the embodiment of what an Oeselian warrior should be: reckless, contemptuous of death and impossibly brave. But for all Eric’s fame and lust for glory he had achieved nothing except to lead an army to defeat at the hands of the Sword Brothers. It was a mistake that his brother was determined not to repeat.

  ‘My lords,’ Sigurd began, ‘for over twenty years we have fought the Christian crusaders. Both on the seas and on land. First in Livonia and then in Estonia. Many Oeselian warriors have given their lives in this fight, among them my own brother Eric. Now the Danes have landed on Oesel itself.’

  He began walking up and down the centre of the hall, nodding to those earls he knew.

  ‘I have seen the crusaders break shield walls on the battlefield, have seen the deadly power of their crossbows first hand, and felt the earth shake when their mailed horsemen charge. The Danish king comes to Oesel to fight us in battle.’

  ‘And we will give him a battle,’ came a voice from the assembled earls. The others cheered and stamped their feet in support.

  Sigurd let the hubbub die down.

  ‘We will not offer the enemy battle,’ he said slowly and firmly.

  Stark and Kalf looked at each other in confusion and then at their father. But Olaf stared ahead, a knowing look on his face. There were murmurs of dissent from the earls.

  ‘We will not offer battle because we will besiege the Danes,’ said Sigurd. ‘We will grind them down and starve them into submission. How will the Danes be able to march out against us when their warhorses are so weak and emaciated that they cannot carry a man? How will their foot soldiers fare against our warriors when they have not eaten anything in days?’

  A brawny man with a thick blond beard and long moustache rose from his bench. He bowed his head at his king and close friend.

  ‘Prince Sigurd,’ said Bothvar, ‘we have no machines with which to besiege the Danes.’

  Sigurd smiled. ‘Do we not, Earl Bothvar? In the next few days you will see that we too can build machines just as the crusaders do.’

  *****

  The scribes that Valdemar had brought with him from Reval called them paterells, which was a derivative of patera, meaning ‘dish’ or ‘cup’, but they were in fact a form of mangonel. Crude and smaller than the machines that the Sword Brothers and Danes used, Sigurd’s paterells were nonetheless effective. They could throw a stone weighing around ten pounds up to a range of three hundred yards, but before they were employed Sigurd unleashed a fleet of longships to blockade Reval. This ensured that the garrison would not be able to re-supply Valdemar or evacuate his army from Oesel. Sigurd then sent a flotilla of karvs – small, highly manoeuvrable longships with thirteen pairs of oars – to burn the ships at anchor that had brought the Danish army to Oesel.

 
Sigurd’s plan had worked perfectly.

  Valdemar was now isolated. Soon he would be under siege.

  *****

  The Army of the Wolf did not ride to Lehola but instead headed northwest towards Rotalia and the coastline of the Gulf of Riga. Hillar and his few men journeyed ahead to rally his army at the rendezvous point where the River Parnu flowed into the Gulf of Riga. The guides led the mounted force through a land of bogs, marshes and thick pine forests, eventually joining the coastline a day’s ride from the rendezvous point. The column trotted by the side of long sandy beaches and fishing villages dotted along the coast, some deserted and burnt. Every settlement had a crude hill fort, sometimes nothing more than four wooden walls with a single entrance to provide sanctuary from Oeselian raiders. But of late it had been Danish horsemen that had spread death and destruction.

  On the Saccalian border Conrad had collected Hillar’s three hundred Rotalian warriors, all of them mounted on hardy ponies allowing the army to cover at least twenty miles a day. The land was predominantly flat and very fertile, rye growing in the fields around inland villages and herds of cattle grazing in lush meadows flanking rivers. They also provided good pasture for the ponies that had transported the Army of the Wolf to Rotalia and which now made camp two miles south of the Parnu River.

  The three Sword Brothers slept in a simple pagan tent comprising a rectangle of felt draped over a ridgepole with two vertical poles at each end, the fabric staked to the ground by means of wooden pegs. There were hundreds of such tents, all arranged in circles around tribal chiefs. The shields and banners of the Estonians bore ancient pagan symbols, such as the sun cross, pentagram, plaited lattice designs, elk antlers, eight-pointed star and cornflower. There were also the symbols of the chiefs, now dead, who had once fought the Sword Brothers, the leering red wolf, the bear and stag. As Kaja threw more wood on the fire to heat the stew in the cooking pot, Hans looked around at the dozens of other fires that were helping to mist the dusk.

  ‘Not much of a Christian army, is it?’

  ‘It fights for God,’ said Conrad, ‘it does not matter what symbols men carry on their shields.’

  ‘They fight for you, Conrad,’ said Anton, sniffing the air as the pleasing aroma of the stew entered his nostrils.

  ‘What do you say, Kaja?’ asked Hans. ‘Does this army fight for the Christian God or for Brother Conrad?’

  ‘For Susi, of course,’ she replied.

  ‘Just think,’ continued Hans, ‘the Bishop of Riga has a pagan army under his command. I wonder what the Pope would say?’

  ‘And now a pagan army goes to rescue a Christian king who has got himself trapped on Oesel by pagans,’ complained Conrad. ‘It makes no sense.’

  Kaja stirred the stew. ‘You would prefer that the king was killed by the Oeselians, Susi?’

  ‘I would,’ stated Conrad. ‘After all, Valdemar desired my death. It is only common courtesy that I should reciprocate the sentiment.’

  He looked at the groups of warriors gathered round fires, eating and chatting, stacks of spears and shields nearby.

  ‘It grieves me that many of these men will die saving the neck of that wretched king.’

  Hans laughed. ‘Who would have thought it, a beggar and a baker’s son from Lübeck having a say in the fate of a king?’

  ‘What about me?’ said Anton.

  ‘You don’t count,’ his friend told him, ‘on account of you being from a rich family.’

  ‘Hillar told me that the Danes have been hard on his people,’ remarked Anton. ‘There are many destroyed villages north of the Parnu River.’

  Conrad nodded. ‘All the more reason to leave Valdemar to his fate.’

  ‘That is not very charitable, Susi,’ said Kaja, stirring the stew. ‘Father Otto says that we are all obligated to perform acts of charity if we want to enter heaven.’

  Conrad looked at her and smiled. When he had first met her she had been a half-starved wretch who had lost all her family. But now she was known and respected throughout the Army of the Wolf as a good fighter and a lucky mascot. He glanced at the fine Danish sword in its scabbard strapped to her waist.

  ‘What else does he say?’ enquired Conrad.

  She stopped stirring and looked at him with her piercing blue eyes.

  ‘That men are brothers and members of the same family.’

  ‘A splendid theory, I have to agree,’ said Anton.

  ‘The thing is, Kaja,’ said Hans, ‘you will find that there is a great difference between what men say and what they do.’

  ‘Even if they are priests, Brother Hans?’

  Hans gave her an ironic smile. ‘Especially if they are priests.’

  She looked at Conrad. ‘So you do not love the Danish king like a brother, Susi?’

  ‘No, Kaja.’

  She started to ladle stew into wooden bowls as the brother knights sat on the ground near the fire. As usual Hans insisted on being served first on account that he was deprived of food as a child and had a lot of catching up to do. She too sat on the ground with a bowl after she had served them.

  ‘Clever how you employed Ilona to persuade Master Rudolf to let you come with us, Kaja,’ said Anton casually.

  ‘In truth it was easy,’ she said. ‘He did not need much persuading. I was delighted.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ muttered Conrad.

  ‘The master said that I was a lucky talisman,’ she continued, ‘and should carry the army’s banner. Master Rudolf is a kind-hearted man.’

  They burst out laughing. Rudolf was many things: callous, brave, loyal and steadfast. But what he was not was kind hearted. Which made his not only agreeing to but encouraging Kaja to accompany the army north all the more baffling. It was most strange and made Conrad more anxious concerning the mission to Oesel. He was also burdened with the knowledge that Kaja and his brother Rameke were very fond of each other and had exchanged messages during the past eighteen months. Indeed he expected Rameke to make her his wife. If anything happened to her he would never forgive himself. Worse, Rameke would never forgive him.

  Sir Richard arrived two days later at the head of over three hundred men, all mounted on either horses or ponies. As ever he was accompanied by the dour Squire Paul, whom Conrad reckoned the eldest squire in Christendom. The Duke of Saccalia rode at the head of forty heavily armed and armoured knights. Each man wore a full-face helm, mail armour and surcoat emblazoned with the coat of arms of their family. Some of the heavy horsemen had journeyed to Livonia with Sir Richard as squires but had been elevated by him to knightly status in a ceremony that was the same the length and breadth of Europe. After a mass the other knights fixed gilded spurs to the aspirant, who was given the belt that was an important emblem of knighthood. Then Sir Richard handed him a sword, kissed him and tapped him on the shoulder. It was a curious thing that despite the religious nature of knighthood, the rank was bestowed not by churchmen but by men who were knights and who had proved themselves in battle.

  Sir Richard had made his home in Saccalia, as had those men who had elected to stay with him in the land of forests and lakes. But many among the forty squires who rode with him into camp were native Saccalians who had been baptized and were learning how to fight as ‘men of iron’, as the locals called the mounted Christian knights. Thus, slowly, did the notion of knighthood and the Christian faith spread throughout Saccalia.

  Sir Richard also brought fifty lesser knights, men who had enough money to buy a horse and armour but not enough to purchase an expensive destrier. And certainly not enough to maintain a squire and servants. But like those original knights and squires that had accompanied Sir Richard they had elected to stay in Saccalia to make a new life for themselves.

  Lastly the Duke of Saccalia brought two hundred Saccalian levies, young men drawn from the villages around Lehola who could ride and fight in a shield wall. Conrad was amazed to see that not only were they all riding hardy ponies but also that each man was equipped with a helmet, mail or lamellar
armour – either leather or iron – and shield. Every man was also well equipped when it came to weapons, carrying one or two spears, a light hand axe, dagger and sword. Conrad had never seen native soldiers, either Livs or Estonians, so well-armed and armoured.

  ‘Lehola’s armoury is filled with the weapons and armour we took off the Cumans and Russians when you relieved the fortress,’ Sir Richard told Conrad as he chewed on a piece of over-cooked boar. ‘Not to mention the weapons the Danes left on the field when they fled back to Reval after hostilities broke out.’

  The three Sword Brothers and the other leaders in the Army of the Wolf had been invited to dine with him and his commanders the first night they had arrived in camp. Sir Richard had been asked to travel light so as to reach Oesel quickly, but he and his knights had still loaded their pavilions on the backs of ponies. Indeed, there must have been at least a hundred of the beasts weighed down with food, tents, clothes, weapons and armour.

  Squire Paul, his face a mask of indifference as usual, stood behind his lord and served him beer and food. Sir Richard spat out a mouthful of meat.

  ‘It’s like eating charcoal, Paul. Too long over a fire.’

  ‘Better than not cooked enough,’ sighed Paul. ‘At least you won’t be writhing around with gut rot tomorrow.’

  Sir Richard rolled his eyes. ‘No, I will just be faint from starvation. Get me something I can eat, damn you.’

  Paul exhaled loudly and sauntered from the tent.

  ‘Paul is still truculent, your grace?’ smiled Conrad.

  ‘Truculent? He gets worse by the year,’ complained Sir Richard. ‘I don’t know why I tolerate him.’