by Peter Darman
The sunlight dazzled his eyes as he stepped outside into the bustle of the courtyard, Brother Walter and the quarry relief party were trotting from the cobbles over the drawbridge. Anton and Johann came from the armoury as Conrad slung his shield of wood covered in leather on his back using the leather guige, the strap that had a buckle that allowed its length to be adjusted. He ensured the strap wasn’t too tight so the shield could be removed from his back quickly and then placed his helmet on his head. Brother knights of the order may have been required to wear full-face helms but Conrad found the kettle helmet much more comfortable, especially when not in the saddle. Its wide brim gave adequate protection against blows from above and as the face was not covered it afforded much greater visibility.
‘Where’s Hans?’ said Anton.
‘Probably stuffing his face before he ventures far from the kitchens,’ remarked Johann.
They all laughed. One of the lasting legacies of Hans’ wretched childhood was his insatiable hunger.
‘This is no the time for mirth.’ The voice of Otto boomed across the courtyard.
Conrad rolled his eyes at the other two as Wenden’s resident priest came striding towards them. Dressed in a simple greyish-white habit of undyed wool, Otto was six inches taller than Conrad and infinitely uglier. All the brother knights had neatly trimmed beards and hair but Otto was bald and clean-shaven, his head covered in battle scars, the deepest of which was on his forehead above his right eye. With his disfigured head, severe countenance and black eyes Otto resembled a gargoyle and a thing of children’s nightmares rather than a priest.
They fell silent as he marched up to them. ‘I am coming with you.’
Conrad saw the sword belt strapped round Otto’s waist. ‘Expecting trouble, Father Otto?’
‘I thought priests were not allowed to shed blood,’ said Johann.
Otto glared at him. ‘Do not presume to lecture me on church law. The villagers are my flock and I shall protect them as I see fit.’
Hans came from the armoury adjusting his helmet straps.
‘Best we get to the village as quickly as possible,’ said Conrad, smiling at Otto. ‘Stay close, father.’
‘Stay close?’ Otto said derisively. ‘You think I cannot handle a few pagans?’
Conrad knew he could, having been a member of Rudolf’s mercenary band that had fought in Germany before venturing to Livonia to become members of the Sword Brothers. Rudolf had told Conrad that it had been a great surprise to everyone when Otto elected to become a Cistercian priest, turning his back on violence and warfare to tend to the spiritual needs of his companions and their souls and those of Wenden’s military and civilian personnel. That was the theory but Otto was not averse to strapping on a sword in emergencies, as he did now.
‘Blasphemers!’
Conrad and the others stopped as another voice bellowed at them.
‘Sinners! You are all going to die.’
Conrad turned and saw Abbot Hylas standing in the middle of the courtyard, oblivious to the frenetic activity around him as he spotted Conrad marching towards the drawbridge.
‘Conrad Wolff,’ bellowed Hylas, ‘Lembit has sent his devils to torment you. You are going to die, heretic.’
‘He’s started early,’ said Anton, holding up a hand to Hylas.
‘Lembit will kill you, Conrad Wolff,’ screamed Hylas, holding out his arms and spreading fear and alarm among the civilians who were being herded into the great dormitory that normally housed the brother knights, sergeants and castle workforce.
‘Lembit is dead, abbot,’ Conrad shouted back.
Hylas’ eyes bulged wide and then he threw back his head and laughed demonically, causing some of the children to burst into tears.
‘Someone should send him back to Germany,’ said Hans.
Abbot Hylas had travelled from Germany in the company of three Cistercian monks. They had inadvisably ventured into Saccalia to convert the heathen pagans when it was still under the lordship of Lembit. The Estonian leader had captured them all, had the three monks beheaded in front of Hylas, after which he had had the abbot tortured before sending him back to Livonia. Only the expert healing powers of Ilona had saved him from death, though she could do nothing to heal his mind. He was now quite mad.
‘God sent him back to us,’ Otto snapped at Hans, ‘and it would insult the Lord to turn away one of His servants.’
‘Lembit comes!’ screamed Hylas, clutching the four wooden crucifixes that hung around his neck. When he had murdered Hylas’ monks Lembit had placed their crucifixes around the abbot’s neck in mockery. Ever since that dreadful day Hylas had always worn them.
Ilona, the raven-haired beauty who had saved Rudolf from the flames of Holm all those years ago, walked over to Hylas and smiled at him. The abbot froze, bowed his head and then appeared to visibly shrink as Ilona led him by the arm to the chapel where he would not bother anyone.
‘Thank God for Ilona,’ remarked Anton as they reached the half-finished gatehouse and walked between the towers that led to the drawbridge.
They moved quickly over the bridge then down the track leading to the perimeter gates. Only if the enemy broke through the outer ramparts would the drawbridge be raised, though to date no enemy had breached Wenden’s defences. Conrad cast a glance to his left as they descended the slope from the drawbridge, the smoke columns still visible in the east.
The gates had been closed after the mounted party had left, crossbowmen standing on the towers that flanked them and all along the perimeter. Two spearmen descended a ladder that gave access to the first storey of one of the towers as Conrad and the others approached the gates. There was a small door in the right-hand gate that he pointed to.
‘Open it up.’
One of the spearmen nodded and unlocked the door, then swung it inwards.
‘Going for a stroll, Brother Conrad?’
Conrad looked up and saw ‘leather face’, the grizzled old mercenary crossbowman who had been at Wenden since it had first been taken by the order. He wore a tattered gambeson beneath his mail armour and a simple iron helmet on his head. He grinned to reveal a mouth of discoloured, rotting teeth. He looked like a thief but was one of the finest crossbowmen in all Livonia.
‘If the enemy turns up we won’t be able to open the gates,’ he shouted at Conrad.
‘In which case we will rely on your shooting to keep us safe,’ replied Conrad, holding up a hand to the mercenary.
‘You boys keep yourselves safe,’ called leather face.
Wenden’s mercenaries had been recruited from northern Germany and were an irreverent, coarse lot but they knew their business and that business was war.
Conrad stepped through the gap in the gate and raced across the wooden bridge spanning the wide, deep dry moat that surrounded the outer perimeter wall and then turned left. The others followed, no one talking as they kept up the pace to follow the ditch as it curved around the outer ramparts. They left the ditch when it continued to curve to the left and then raced across the meadow at the foot of the steep slope rising up to the stone wall of the castle’s eastern side high above. As they progressed the slope got steeper until it became vertical on the castle’s northern side. They had arrived at the village. The smell of pigs and goats housed in pens greeted their nostrils as Otto pushed past Conrad to speak to the villagers who had assembled in the open space in the middle of the settlement: sixty frightened men, women and children who had heard the castle’s alarm bell.
Otto raised his arms. ‘Calm yourself, my children. There is nothing to worry about. You must all make your way to the castle.’
Mothers clutched their babies and children to them and men looked beyond the huts, barns and animal pens to the forest beyond the fields.
‘You must come quickly,’ shouted Conrad, which did nothing to calm the villagers’ alarm.
They began to babble and chatter excitedly and some of the infants began crying.
Otto raised his arms again. ‘Silence! You must
all follow me now.’
He turned on his heels and began retracing his steps. The villagers followed him, instinctively huddling together and glancing in all directions to see an enemy that thus far loomed large only in their imaginations.
‘What about our animals?’ asked one of the farmers.
‘There is no time to collect them,’ snapped Otto.
He increased his pace as the group left the village and began walking towards the castle. Conrad and his fellow brother knights kept to the rear of the civilians but no sooner had they moved fifty paces than Hans shouted at Conrad.
‘In the trees, look!’
Conrad, Anton and Johann turned and saw riders emerge from the trees to the north of the fields that ringed the village. Some of the villagers also saw them and the women began screaming. All of the civilians stopped and clustered together. Otto turned and also saw the dozen or so riders had left the trees and had halt
‘They will see us soon us,’ said Conrad.
‘They don’t look like Estonians,’ mused Johann.
The riders were some way off but were dressed in a mixture of blue and red tunics rather than the brown and green hues favoured by the Livs and Estonians. Otto ran over.
‘We must get to the castle.’
Conrad pointed at the riders that were now moving towards them.
‘They will cut us down in the open. We should get back to the village.’
Johann turned and looked up at the castle’s northern wall. ‘The garrison will send help, father.’
The riders were now cantering towards them.
‘Time to move, father,’ insisted Conrad.
Otto ran back to the villagers and ordered them to get back to their settlement as quickly as possible. He picked up one of the infants and ran back towards the huts. The others followed him, women dragging their children along by the arm as they sprinted for their homes. The dozen riders were now galloping towards them, widely spaced and some levelling spears in anticipation of an easy kill. Others were pulling bows from what appeared to be cases attached to their saddles.
‘Keep them together,’ Conrad shouted to Otto as the villagers reached the settlement.
Otto began barking orders that the civilians were to seek refuge in a large barn near the centre of the village as Conrad and the others walked backwards in their wake. He could see no more riders, which meant they were outnumbered three-to-one.
‘Watch those bows,’ he said to the others as the attackers rode towards them, shouting in a strange tongue as they neared the Sword Brothers standing in a line at the entrance to the village. Conrad glanced behind to see the doors of the barn being shut.
‘Break,’ he shouted.
He and Hans darted left as Anton and Johann sprinted in the opposite direction to take cover behind a hut as two arrows came hissing through the air to strike the cabin.
Conrad sheltered against the wall of the hut as the riders thundered into the village. They slowed their horses as they realised that the settlement appeared empty, the last of them slackened his horse to a walk as the others looked left and right, searching for targets. Conrad and Hans threw their spears and then charged, screaming as the weapons struck two riders in the back, the points going through their calf-length coats and mail shirts worn underneath. They grunted and slid from their saddles as Conrad pulled his axe from his belt. But in an instant another rider swung in his saddle and loosed an arrow at him. He raised his shield just in time as the missile struck it. The man shouted in a strange tongue and the other archers also shot arrows at him and Hans as the others turned their horses.
Anton and Johann had also hurled their spears, killing one of the attackers and felling another’s horse. These strange individuals with long moustaches and shaven chins vaulted from their horses and came at the brother knights armed with curved swords. Conrad threw his axe that spun in the air before its blade slammed into the face of the first raider. He fell to the ground, clutching his face, as Conrad leapt over him to attack the man following, drawing his sword and stabbing the point over the small round shield carried by his opponent and driving it into the man’s mouth, shattering teeth and bone as he forced it through the neck. He shouted in triumph as his dead enemy crumpled to the ground, only to see two archers still on horseback take aim at him. He crouched low and raised his shield as the missiles struck the leather and wood. He peered round the edge of his shield to see the archers stringing more arrows. He looked right to see Hans finish off an opponent with his sword as another arrow embedded itself in his shield and a second glanced off his helmet.
‘Hans,’ he called. ‘Those archers have the measure of me.’
His friend raised his sword in acknowledgement and darted between a hut and an animal pen full of squealing pigs. He tried to make himself as small a target as possible by lying behind the dead raider and keeping his shield high, but he knew that if he stayed where he was he would be dead. He heard grunts and cries to his left and knew that Johann and Anton were battling the attackers, though whether they were both still alive he did not know. Another arrow glanced off his helmet.
He was debating whether to make a dash for the hut on his right when he heard a high-pitched scream and then Hans’ voice.
‘Move, Conrad!’
He jumped up and was going to run to the side of the hut but saw that his friend had killed one of the archers but was being shot at by the second. He retrieved his axe from the face of the man it had struck and hurled it at the archer’s horse. It hit the beast in the chest, the force enough to cause it to rear up in pain and throw its rider. Conrad raced forward as Hans ran the prostrate archer through with his sword.
They turned to see Anton kill a man with a pointed helmet and Johann running after the last two living raiders who were galloping from the village.
‘Let them go,’ Conrad called after him.
He nodded at Hans and Anton and walked to the barn doors. He banged on them with his sword.
‘Time to go, Father Otto.’
Second later the doors opened and the scarred head of Otto peered out. He disappeared and re-emerged seconds later with the villagers in tow. The sight of dead men among their homes did nothing to calm their already shredded nerves but Conrad and his friends realised that time was of the essence. There might be more attackers nearby and the two that got away would definitely bring more of their comrades when they reached the main body.
The ten minutes it took to shepherd the villagers from their homes to the perimeter gates seemed to last for hours and it was a relieved Conrad that reported to Master Rudolf in his office when he had seen that the villagers had been housed in the dormitory.
‘They looked the same as the men we fought at Dorpat,’ said Conrad.
Rudolf frowned. ‘Cumans. And they would not venture this far west unless they had the support and encouragement of the Russians.’
‘I must send a courier pigeon to Riga to alert the grand master before the main enemy army arrives.’
Conrad raised an eyebrow. ‘We are at war with Novgorod?’
Rudolf leaned back in his chair. ‘So it would seem. Mstislav strikes at a most opportune time. With the bishop away and no crusader army to speak of in Livonia our resources are stretched thin. It would seem that all our good work on St Matthew’s Day is being undone.’
The Battle of St Matthew’s Day was where Lembit had been defeated and killed and Estonian power broken, seemingly forever. Afterwards the men of the order and the Bishop of Riga had expected the Estonian tribes to submit to the rule of the church and thus Livonia would extend from the River Dvina to the Gulf of the Finns. But events had turned out differently. Rudolf, clearly disappointed, dismissed Conrad with a wave of his hand.
The brother knight made to go but then stopped himself. ‘What are you going to do about Abbot Hylas, master?’
Rudolf looked confused. ‘Abbot Hylas?’
‘He is clearly deranged, master.’
Rudolf opened his hands.
‘He is. So?’
‘Do you think Wenden is an appropriate place for him? His outbursts alarm people.’
Rudolf placed his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his clenched hands. ‘He is harmless enough and I would not want to see him reduced to begging on the streets of Riga. Just because he annoys you is not enough reason to throw him out of here. Besides, many believe him to be favoured by God.’
Conrad was astounded. ‘Really?’
‘They view his return from the pagans as a minor miracle, especially with regard to the tortures that were inflicted on him.’
‘The only miracle I saw was the healing arts of Ilona who brought him back from the dead,’ scoffed Conrad.
Rudolf examined the young brother knight for a moment. ‘Otto would say that God worked through Ilona to bring Hylas back to the land of the living and I would not disagree with him on that view.’
‘The abbot still upsets people.’
‘You mean he upsets you,’ said Rudolf. ‘Have you thought that you might upset him? He seems calm enough until he spots you. Perhaps it is you I should eject from Wenden, Brother Conrad. Perhaps a spell on garrison duty along the Dvina might be in order.’
Conrad was appalled. ‘Leave Wenden, master?’
Rudolf pointed at him. ‘If you, who have all your faculties, are alarmed at the prospect of being forced to leave Wenden, then think of the terror that will engulf Abbot Hylas if I eject him from the place that has been his home. I will not do such base a thing, Conrad.’
‘No, master,’ said Conrad sheepishly.
He bowed his head and walked to the door to the office.
‘And, Conrad,’ Rudolf called after him.
‘Master?’
‘Remember, Conrad, we are a religious order dedicated to defending Christians and Christian lands. A brother knight should have charity within his heart, Conrad. Remember that.’
The mounted party returned from the quarry with the workers and guards, having encountered no enemy parties. The Livs who were hired to work in the quarry could not be persuaded to seek sanctuary within the castle, preferring to go back to their villages nearby and there seek refuge in the ancient sanctuaries deep in the forest that had been their traditional hiding places when raiders approached. Master Rudolf was frustrated that he could not provide soldiers to reinforce the warriors of each village nearby, but realised that to do so would reduce Wenden’s garrison to a dangerously low level. And an hour after the quarry relief party had returned it became evident that the garrison would need every man who could carry a weapon when the Cuman horde appeared.