Army of the Wolf

by Peter Darman

  Viesthard’s men had made camp in the woods five miles to the north of Mesoten, from where the duke had sent a rider to inform Butantas that he would be attacking the crusaders the next day. He had no idea if the rider, a local man well acquainted with the secret trails around Mesoten, reached his destination but it did not matter. He would launch a surprise attack on the invaders anyway. He could not let those in Mesoten die or become slaves of the crusaders without trying to save them. Semgallia was probably finished in any case. Better to die fighting than being starved into submission when the crusaders besieged his hill fort. But the rider did reach the Samogitian army and Duke Butantas launched his own attack as promised.

  The Samogitian duke led a thousand horsemen and five thousand warriors on foot against the Livs who were camped to the south of Mesoten. Butantas himself led the charge of his mounted soldiers, who formed a long line two ranks deep as they trotted towards the rapidly forming Liv shield wall. They broke into a canter and the gaps between each rider widened as they neared Fricis’ warriors, the iron-shod hooves kicking up great tufts of earth as they neared the Liv formation. The first rank hurled their spisas and then wheeled away, the second rank doing likewise: a thousand javelins, piercing wooden spears, thudding into mail armour and striking exposed necks and faces. Groans and screams came from the Liv ranks as the Lithuanian horsemen reformed and charged once more. Each rider carried two spisas and once again a thousand javelins were hurled at over three thousand warriors tightly packed in six ranks, and once more dozens were killed and wounded by the hail of missiles.

  A few horsemen were knocked from their saddles when they rode too close to the Liv shields and their horses were felled by spears, men rushing forward to hack the Lithuanians to death with their axes. But these horsemen contained the cream of Samogitia’s princes and chiefs, men who, like their Christian counterparts, were bred for war, and they retained their discipline and order, withdrawing and dividing left and right to allow the duke’s foot soldiers to assault the Livs. The latter had little time to dress their ranks and ferry the wounded to the rear before five thousand men on foot assaulted them. And to add to their discomfort many men had one or more javelins stuck in their shields, and they had little time to hack the points from the shafts with their axes before they found themselves fighting for their lives.

  The Samogitians did not form a shield wall; rather, their commanders organised them in a series of wedges designed to overpower the Livs by momentum and sheer weight of numbers. A kestrel flying above the two battle lines would have noted the Liv phalanx and the contrasting zigzag Samogitian formation that resembled the teeth of a giant saw, designed to literally cut the enemy to pieces. The Lithuanians gave a great cheer and raced at the Livs line. There was a great scraping noise as the Samogitian wedges smashed into the Livs. Fricis’ men buckled, momentarily held and were then inexorably forced back by the sheer power of the Lithuanian assault.

  In Mesoten itself the Semgallian warriors heard the trumpet blasts from the crusader camp and saw the looks of consternation on the faces of the Sword Brothers. They looked at each other and then at their discarded weapons and sealed their fate. Henke and Lukas made to leave the fort and rally to the chapel tent as they had been trained to do, but then the former noticed the furtive glances among the Semgallians and stopped.

  ‘Kill them!’ he shouted, running at a man who was bending down to pick up a spear, smashing the mace into the back of his skull.

  Instinctively the Sword Brothers began slashing and thrusting at unarmed men with swords and maces, the spearmen driving the points of their weapons through mail armour. Henke caught an axe blow on his shield prior to swinging his mace at the face of his assailant, the metal flanges crushing the man’s nose and cheekbone, causing him to collapse. Henke was on him in an instant, reducing his face to an unrecognisable pulp as he battered the life out of him. He chased after a Semgallian trying to escape from the fort, kicking at his heels so that he tripped and fell to the ground. Henke caved in the back of his skull with two blows of his mace with all his weight behind them.

  It took less than five minutes for the Sword Brothers to butcher two hundred Semgallians, the screams of the latter being drowned out by the loud roaring of the flames that were now consuming all the buildings inside the fort. Henke looked around to ensure all the enemy warriors were dead and then gestured to the others to leave the fort. They sprinted out the entrance and down the track to the order’s camp. The women and children scattered like a flock of frightened sheep when they saw the soldiers with blood on their white surcoats and gore on their weapons running towards them. Henke could see the tents of the Sword Brothers and the bishop, the great trebuchet, the stabling area and the waggon park that filled the area to the north of the fort. And beyond them was a grey mass of enemy warriors advancing from the woods that the besiegers had used as a source of firewood and timber to construct platforms for the siege engines.

  There was no time to saddle the horses before the enemy arrived so when his castellans arrived at the chapel tent, fully armed brother knights waiting outside, Volquin ordered a battle line to be established north of the tents to stop the enemy overrunning the camp. The horses, mules and oxen were stabled to the west of the tents, and beyond them were the wagons and carts.

  ‘We leave the wagons and animals to their fate,’ Volquin told his castellans. ‘We defend the bishops. God with us.’

  ‘God with us!’ shouted the castellans.

  The grand master walked from the canvas chapel and made his way through the tents to the bishop’s pavilion a short distance away. The soldiers of his order followed, the men of each garrison rallying to their castellan. At Bishop Albert’s pavilion Commander Nordheim, having left Henke and the others, had quickly formed his men into a cordon around the bishop’s tent.

  ‘Trouble evacuating the fort?’ Rudolf asked Henke, glancing at the blood on his surcoat and the offal on his mace.

  ‘Nothing I could not handle,’ replied Henke dismissively.

  ‘Did you leave anyone alive?’

  ‘No,’ said Henke before placing his helm on his head.

  Viesthard’s men had five hundred yards of open ground to cover before they reached the tents of the Sword Brothers. If his horsemen had galloped forward they would have been in the enemy camp before the crusaders had had time to react. But that would have meant separating his horsemen from the warriors on foot and Viesthard was too able a commander to allow that to happen. Besides, he had two hundred crossbowmen he wished to use against the enemy, the same crossbowmen that Nordheim and his men had spent many months training. And so the Semgallians advanced across the open plain towards the enemy camp with fifty horsemen on each flank and foot soldiers in the middle. Viesthard rode up and down the line, shouting encouragement and calling for his men to exact vengeance on the foreign invaders. The frontage of his army was wide to accommodate his crossbowmen behind the front-rank warriors. He knew they could shoot up to four bolts a minute. He rode forward and observed the Christians deploying into line immediately north of their camp. He also saw the great columns of black smoke billowing into the sky from the burning fort and realised that he had come too late.

  His warriors moved forward and then halted around three hundred paces from the crusader line that was a mixture of white-clad Sword Brothers and red-attired soldiers of the garrison of Riga. In the middle of the Christian block were the banners of Riga and the grand master of the Sword Brothers. Where were the men of iron on their great warhorses? He raised his hand and then galloped to the left wing of his army. Moments later his crossbowmen began shooting at the Christians: two hundred quarrels every fifteen seconds.

  Unfortunately for the Semgallians the Sword Brothers and garrison of Riga could muster nearly five hundred crossbowmen between them. Seconds after the pagan crossbows had began shooting more than twice their number began loosing bolts back at the Semgallians. The soldiers from Riga and the orders’ mercenary crossbowmen sheltere
d behind their spearmen as they shot, reloaded and shot again, hundreds of bolts criss-crossing each other in no-man’s land like angry hornets. The Christian shields were almond-shaped and afforded more cover than the round shields of the pagans and soon the Semgallians were suffering casualties all along their line. Viesthard knew that the enemy had more missiles soldiers than he possessed. He did not know how Duke Butantas was faring to the south but he realised that if his men stood where they were they would be shot to pieces. Then he heard fresh horn blasts and looked to the left to see warriors approaching the bridge that the crusaders had constructed.

  A new army had come to Mesoten.

  The Army of the Wolf had been five miles from Mesoten when Conrad had first seen a thin pillar of smoke rising into the western sky. He had given the order to increase the rate of advance and arrived at the bridge across the Lielupe half an hour later. There were no guards on either side of the structure and as he sat on his horse with his commanders at the midway point on the bridge he saw the approaching Semgallian relief force. After a speedy council of war tactics were decided: the crossbowmen would be in the vanguard to shoot any enemy warriors that ventured onto the bridge. It took around ten minutes to dismount the warriors, organise one in ten to remain with the ponies and for leather face to array his crossbowmen in widely spaced ranks, much to the frustration of Conrad.

  ‘You should bunch up your men more,’ he told the mercenary leader.

  Leather face cleared his throat and spat into the river. ‘Do I give you advice when you are sat all high and mighty on you warhorse? No.’

  He pointed at his men filing onto the bridge. ‘That bridge is narrow and my boys need room to shoot and retire so the man behind can shoot, and so forth and so on.’

  ‘Well get across quickly,’ snapped Conrad.

  Leather face bowed deeply to him. ‘Yes, your majesty.’

  The crossbowmen advanced across the bridge with Conrad, Hans, Tonis, Rameke, Andres and Hillar directly behind them, hundreds of Estonian warriors following. As soon as they reached the western side of the river leather face organised his men into a screen while the warriors flooded onto the grass and deployed into four groups of Rotalians, Livs, Jerwen and Saccalians. Conrad stood with Hans and Anton in the centre of the line and raised his sword in the air to signal the advance towards the enemy. But he then gave the signal to halt when he realised that the enemy was retreating, their few horsemen forming a defensive screen as the warriors on foot withdrew.

  Conrad saw the Semgallian retreat and ordered the horses, ponies and carts to be brought across the bridge. In the meantime the Semgallians were rapidly disappearing to the north. Conrad sheathed his sword and removed his helmet. He smiled and slapped Hans on the arm.

  ‘Looks like the battle is over.’

  But he was wrong. Unbeknown to him or Grand Master Volquin a crisis was developing to the south.

  The Samogitians were slowly but inexorably pushing back the Livs, supported by their horsemen who launched darting attacks against Fricis’ flanks. As they had done in their initial charge they threw their spisas and then withdrew, riding to the rear to acquire new missiles from the carts. Butantas saw that for some reason there appeared to be no crusader horsemen and so committed his own riders to the battle against the Livs rather than holding them back as a reserve. And so the Livs, despite retaining their discipline and formation, were shoved back as the Samogitian warriors on foot hacked and slashed with their axes and spears and the horsemen on the flanks whittled down the enemy with javelins. Fricis, battling in the centre of the front rank, was aware that his men were being forced back but could do nothing to stop the approaching rout. His helmet was dented and his shield was splintered as he traded blows with enemy warriors in front of him. Above the din he would not have heard the mass trumpet blasts coming from behind what remained of his right wing, much less seen the great black lion banner that flew among the hundreds of crusaders who were racing to his relief.

  Albert, Duke of Saxony, Angria and Westphalia, Lord of Nordalbingia and prince-elector and arch-marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, had been in the great stabling area of the crusader camp explaining to a groom that his warhorse needed a fresh shoe on his left foreleg when he heard the alarm being sounded. He immediately left his horse to the care of his groom and ran to his pavilion where his lords and their squires were gathering. He was dressed in plain leggings and a gambeson, his sword in its scabbard at his hip, and waved away his squire who came from his great pavilion carrying his mail armour and helmet.

  ‘There’s not time for that,’ he said. ‘Fetch your sword and follow me.’

  He had heard the trumpets being sounded to the north where the Sword Brothers were camped and the shrill sound of horns coming from the south where the Livs were based. As dozens of knights and squires gathered in front of his pavilion, many without armour or helmets but all wearing swords and clutching shields, maces and axes, he had a decision to make: the besiegers were being assaulted from two directions so should he lead his men north or south?

  His squire reappeared from the pavilion strapping on his sword and carrying the duke’s shield, which he handed to his lord. Albert looked at the burning fort and the expectant faces of his knights, their eyes wide with the relish of coming battle. He caught sight of a large bird, probably a black stork, flying south. He took it as an omen but also reasoned that the Sword Brothers, viewed as the finest soldiers in all Christendom, and the garrison of Riga could muster nearly fifteen hundred highly trained and superbly equipped soldiers between them. More than enough to stave off a pagan army until he came to their relief. But in the south were the Livs, former pagans converted to the Holy Church who swore loyalty to the Bishop of Riga. But they possessed no crossbowmen or mailed knights on horseback. And they comprised nearly half the crusader army. If they were destroyed the pagans may emerge victorious. He had no desire to be chased from this land a second time.

  He drew his sword and raised it in the air. ‘To victory!’

  His standard bearer came to his side as he pushed through the throng and made his way towards the noise of battle in the south. His lords closed in around him, and behind and either side of them came the squires and lesser knights – a thousand men following their lord into battle. The crossbowmen, militiamen and spearmen who had accompanied him from Germany followed, marshalled by their sergeants and commanders into their companies. Among their ranks fluttered the banners of Arnsberg, Dortmund, Minden and Münster, a sea of red, blue, yellow and red flags and uniforms advancing to save a phalanx of drab greens and browns.

  Butantas saw the crusaders approaching on foot and recalled his horsemen. His great banner displaying elk antlers flew behind him as he led his horsemen against the crusaders. Unlike the Livs these men from overseas did not form a shield wall on the battlefield. It was so now as they marched across the plain. Butantas was emboldened by the absence of any crusader horsemen and believed he could scatter these men with ease.

  As they had done at the start of the battle the Samogitian horsemen deployed into a long line of two ranks, each rider carrying spisas to hurl at the enemy. The duke rode out in front as his men broke into a canter, the two sides around six hundred paces apart. But the easy victory he had anticipated was cruelly snatched from him as crossbowmen suddenly ran in from the wings to form a line of missile troops in front of the foot soldiers. He heard a succession of sharp thwacks and then his horse pitched forward, throwing him to the ground. He sprang up and saw that his mount was dead, two crossbow bolts lodge in it neck. Other riders had been felled, and some killed, as the Duke of Saxony’s seven hundred crossbowmen began their shooting.

  Butantas frantically waved his arms to indicate that his horsemen should fall back as a second volley culled more men from his front rank that had now halted in confusion at seeing their lord’s horse fall. His standard bearer rode up and the duke hauled himself up behind him. He screamed at the man to ride out of range as the crossbowmen reloaded t
heir weapons.

  The Samogitians galloped away but not before another fifty had been killed by crusader missiles. The Duke of Saxony’s men gave a great cheer and Albert raced forward through the standing crossbowmen, nearly knocking one over as he gave the man a congratulatory barge with his shield. The crusader horde was now heading for the left flank of the Samogitians fighting on foot and Butantas realised that his men risked being enveloped and then destroyed unless he took action. One of his princes gave up his horse to allow the duke to ride to the rear of his advancing foot soldiers and order the signallers to sound withdrawal.

  His horsemen reformed and trotted towards the advancing crusaders, forcing them to halt for a second time. But once again the crossbowmen came forward and deployed just beyond the front ranks. The Samogitians halted and withdrew and the Duke of Saxony’s men recommenced their advance. But the delay had been enough to allow Butantas to extricate his foot soldiers from their battle against the Livs. Their chiefs and elders bellowed at them to speedily fall back and the warriors cursed them and their duke who sat on his horse and watched them trek past him. They believed he had robbed them of a great victory but he knew he had saved them from a catastrophic defeat.

  Three hundred Livs were dead and a further five hundred wounded when the fighting stopped. The rest were physically exhausted and many removed their helmets and sank to the ground, gulping in great lungfuls of air. Others fell to their knees and thanked God for their deliverance, while Fricis, blood running down his face from a cut to his brow, grinned and heaved a huge sigh of relief.

  As the Semgallians disappeared back into the woods where they had appeared from and the Samogitians conducted an orderly withdrawal south, Conrad, Hans and Anton rode to where the Sword Brothers and Rigan troops stood in their ranks, many of the brother knights and sergeants sitting helmetless on the ground or standing idly chatting to each other. Conrad found Bishop Albert just behind the centre of the line, in the company of Bernhard, Nordheim, Volquin and Rudolf. He dismounted and bowed his head to Albert.