Army of the Wolf

by Peter Darman

  ‘I hope you have the good sense to turn and run, Conrad,’ leather face said to himself.

  ‘Shoot!’ he screamed.

  Rudolf smiled and then Wenden’s castellan lifted up his lance looked behind him at the sergeants in their kettle helmets and shouted.

  ‘God with us!’

  They and the brother knights of Wenden, Segewold and Kremon answered as one.

  There was a succession of thwacks as crossbowmen pulled their triggers and over a hundred bolts hissed through the air, followed by another volley fifteen seconds later. Before a minute had passed another two volleys had been shot at the Danes: over five hundred iron-tipped crossbow bolts hitting shields, arms, faces and shoulders. In their haste the crossbowmen would not have heard the shrieks and screams of men being pierced by quarrels.

  Kalju turned and raised his sword and shield in the air and ordered his men to follow him. The Ungannians rushed forward to smash into the spearmen on the extreme left of the Danish line.

  Kalju had ridden hard to get to Reval, his men travelling on ponies before dismounting a short distance from the great lake to the southeast of the settlement. He then led them north through the pines that populated this part of northern Estonia, using a local guide who followed an ancient track that hugged the eastern side of the outcrop that the Sword Brothers had used to anchor their flank. Exiting the trees Kalju had bellowed ‘boar’s snout’, his men forming behind him in a giant wedge formation with him at the tip.

  The three hundred Danish spearmen locked shields and levelled their weapons, wheeling left to meet the pagan warriors. Kalju shouted his war cry and raced forward, his men following, their momentum buckling the Danish line before they began hacking and thrusting with their spears and axes. The Danish sergeants deployed behind the foot knights should have reinforced the hard-pressed spearmen, but moments after the Ungannians had locked horns with the Danes the Sword Brothers and Sir Richard’s horsemen struck the foot knights.

  Leather face’s crossbowmen managed to shoot six volleys before the Sword Brothers and Sir Richard’s knights thundered through them. The horsemen did not break into a gallop because they could see that there was a ragged line of dead and wounded men among the front ranks of the enemy. Their great warhorses churned up the soft ground with their iron-shod hooves as they neared the Danes, then there was a great clattering sound as couched lances were thrust at enemy shields.

  The foot knights had no spears and so the horsemen could take their time choosing their targets. And it was fortunate that the quarter markings on the enemy shields provided excellent aiming points. Lance points went through the shields, pierced mail armour and padded gambesons and lodged themselves in flesh and bone. Then the horsemen ground their way into the enemy foot knights with their axes, swords and maces.

  ‘Stop them,’ Bishop Albert ordered Grand Master Volquin as he watched in horror as the Sword Brothers and Sir Richard’s knights rode forward.

  ‘It is too late, Albert,’ answered Bishop Bernhard for Volquin, ‘far too late.’

  Albert dug his spurs into his horse. ‘Then I will stop them.’

  But Volquin grabbed the reins of the bishop’s horse. ‘No, lord bishop. You will not be able stop what is unfolding and I cannot allow you to ride to your death.’

  The bishop glared at Volquin and Nordheim rode forward, drawing his sword to menace the grand master.

  Volquin released the reins and drew his own sword. ‘If you think you can, commander, then feel free.’

  Nordheim’s horsemen also advanced as Volquin prepared to sell his life dearly, his order’s spearmen moving to defend the grand master.

  ‘Enough. Enough I say,’ shouted Bishop Albert. ‘All of you put away your weapons or be condemned for your damnable acts.’

  Volquin bowed his head to Albert, sniffed contemptuously at Nordheim and slid his sword back in its scabbard. But the commander was not looking at the grand master; his attention was diverted by a mighty roar that erupted from the ranks of the Army of the Wolf as nearly a thousand Estonians raced forward.

  Conrad, mesmerised by Kalju’s appearance and then the charge of the Sword Brothers and Sir Richard’s men, had forgotten that he stood halfway between two thousand Livs and Estonians on one side and over two thousand Danish foot soldiers on the other. He was brought back to reality when his Estonians charged. They were led by Hans and Anton: two white-robed figures leading over nine hundred warriors in a mad rush to cover the open ground that separated them from the enemy and save their friend. Conrad thought about running but changed his mind when he saw several of the Danish archers lowering their bows to shoot at him. He threw himself on the ground as they released their bowstrings and arrows flew above his head.

  The Danish archers soon forgot about him as the green and brown tide surged towards them. They raised their bows and loosed a single volley, the arrows felling at least fifty Estonians, before rapidly retreating through the ranks of the axe men. As did the Count of Schwerin’s crossbowmen that had been engaged in a brief but deadly duel with their counterparts in the Duke of Saxony’s contingent.

  The blizzard of bolts that had flown between the two sets of missile troops had resulted in over a hundred deaths before the Liv horde swept through the Duke of Saxony’s crossbowmen and brought their shooting to a halt. The Count of Schwerin’s men could have stood and shot at the Livs as they advanced but they had more important matters to attend to. Their officers ordered them to join the count’s spearmen who would provide cover for the count’s horsemen on the right wing, who were about to retire.

  Gunzelin had one hundred and twenty horsemen under his command, veteran soldiers from the wars in Germany, and he had no intention of sacrificing them to the vanity of King Valdemar. He also had no intention of fighting the hundreds of horsemen opposite that served the Duke of Saxony. The flurry of trumpets blasts from the latter’s ranks merely increased his haste as he ordered his men to retire back to the town. His brother’s spearmen and crossbowmen would cover his retreat. He heard a great tumult and turned to see the Bishop of Riga’s foot soldiers smash into Valdemar’s axe men.

  Conrad jumped to his feet as Hans and Anton reached him, dozens of men sweeping past them to cover the final two hundred paces of ground to get to grips with the Danes.

  ‘I need a sword,’ Conrad said to his friends.

  ‘No time for that,’ replied Hans, his voice muffled by his helmet, ‘get yourself back out of harm’s way.’

  ‘Pity you gave away your sword,’ said Anton. He raised his own weapon and raced forward, as did Hans. Warriors flooded past, grinning at him and shouting his name. He should have felt relieved but instead he growled in frustration.

  ‘Susi, take this.’

  He turned to see a pair of blue eyes beneath an oversized helmet and a slender arm holding out his sword belt and scabbard.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Kaja grinned. ‘Fighting my enemies.’

  She carried a spear, her lower leggings were wrapped in gaiters and a padded gambeson covered her torso. Her round shield bearing a leering wolf looked very large against her body.

  ‘Get back. This no place for you.’

  She said nothing as she spun on her heels and raced towards the Danes.

  ‘Kaja,’ he called after her. He shook his head. ‘Give me strength.’

  He ran forward, bare headed and shieldless. A warrior slumped to the ground in front of him, an arrow in his neck. He knelt down and turned the man over. Glazed eyes looked up at him as blood spurted from the arrow wound. He took the man’s helmet, put it on his head and also relieved the corpse of its shield. He drew his sword and raced forward, catching sight of blond hair from beneath a helmet cascading over a white gambeson.

  He heard the frantic thuds of metal on wood and knew that the mêlée had begun. It was not a clash of two shield walls and tightly packed, ordered ranks. Rather, it was a free-for-all where individuals battled each other oblivious to what was happ
ening outside the confines of their personal duels. There was no leadership, no overall command, just a feral bloodlust that had to be sated.

  The Danes looked larger close up: broad-shouldered, hard-bitten men recruited from the wild regions of Valdemar’s kingdom that had wielded axes since they had been boys. Their blonde beards and blue eyes indicated their race but there was no pity in the latter as they went about their work with their hatchets.

  Kaja was a few paces ahead, lunging forward with her spear before leaping back when her burly opponent swung his axe at her. Both held their shields in front of them, clutching the hand guards behind the iron bosses. Kaja was very agile, changing the weight between her right and left feet as she frustrated the Dane’s attempt to split her skull. He swung and missed; she jabbed her spear forward and drove the point into his right forearm.

  ‘Ha!’ she shouted in triumph.

  But the Dane ignored the wound and hacked down with his axe, not at her head or body as she expected, moving her shield to deflect the blow, but at her exposed spear. With a deft strike he lopped off the iron head and left her with a stick to fight him. Conrad raced forward and drove the point of his sword over the top of the Dane’s shield and into his lower neck. He pulled the blade back and stood beside Kaja as the Dane dropped his axe and shield, tried to stem the fountain of blood with his hand and then collapsed on the ground.

  ‘Get behind me,’ he shouted at her as another Dane jumped over his dead comrade and made a diagonal swing with his axe at Conrad’s torso.

  The Sword Brother dodged the blow, ducked low and whipped his sword blade against the man’s left calf. The resulting wound was not deep but it was enough to make the Dane wince and slow him down. He was retarded further when Conrad lunged at him, locking their shields together and then bringing his sword up and driving one end of the cross-guard into his eye. The Dane screamed in pain and staggered back, his screams stopping suddenly when Kaja ran forward and drove the blade of the sword she was holding into his belly.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ he asked.

  ‘I found it lying on the ground, Susi.’

  By now dozens of Danish and Estonian corpses were also lying on the ground, together with many more wounded either staggering away from the fighting, their limbs torn and their bones broken, or crawling on all fours with ghastly stomach wounds.

  The clatter and thuds of blades striking shields and other weapons filled the air as the Livs and Estonians continued to battle the axe men. Behind the latter the Danish archers were loosing arrows high into the sky, to fall among the enemy warriors, or so they hoped. But in the swirling chaos of the huge mêlée that erupted in front of Reval’s gates many hit their own men.

  Conrad dropped on one knee, held his shield above his head and thrust his sword upwards into a man’s groin, the hideous scream emitted by his victim signalling he had skewered the Dane’s genitals. He was about to stand as the man collapsed but he heard two sharp thuds and saw arrowheads protruding from the wood on the inside of his shield. He looked behind him in alarm to see Kaja unhurt.

  ‘Arrows,’ he called to her. ‘Crouch down under your shield.’

  She looked at him quizzically then changed her stance as a Dane came charging at her. He was bigger and broader than her but she did not panic, holding out her shield towards him and drawing back her sword arm. She prepared to dodge his axe as he drew it back but then he tripped and fell, the axe falling from his hand. Quick as a flash she sprang forward and rammed the point of her sword into his back before he could rise. But he was already dead, an arrow embedded in the back of his neck.

  Conrad ran over to her and held his shield above his own and her head as arrows began falling around them.

  ‘Sound withdrawal,’ he shouted in a forlorn hope that someone would hear him.

  But someone did. A warrior with a horn hanging around his neck recognised Susi and began blowing his instrument. The warriors around them, all Saccalians, slowly disengaged from the enemy as more signallers took up the call. Slowly the two sides disentangled from each other as the rain of arrows continued, hitting Dane and Estonian alike.

  Conrad hauled Kaja back as she held up her shield and hurled abuse at the enemy, laughing maniacally as she did so. He frowned at her. She seemed to be totally at ease among the gore of a battlefield.

  ‘Don’t waste your energy on hurling insults,’ he told her.

  ‘It is a common custom among my people.’

  ‘It is a waste of time and effort,’ he shot back as dozens of warriors closed around them and began to lock their shields together as a defence against the Danish arrows. ‘You will not see Sword Brothers adopting such tactics. Let your weapons do the talking.’

  There was now a cacophony of horn blasts as the Livs also pulled back to form a shield wall around two hundred paces from the tattered ranks of the axe men. Valdemar’s soldiers had been mauled but they had stood firm; more, they had forced the pagans back, albeit with the aid of their archers.

  *****

  Valdemar pulled his sword from its scabbard.

  ‘Ready,’ he called to his bodyguard.

  But Count Henry laid a hand on his saddle’s pommel.

  ‘No, majesty, you must retire inside the town. The day is lost.’

  ‘How dare you,’ seethed the king, who jabbed his sword in the direction of his right flank where Gunzelin was overseeing a superb withdrawal of his horsemen under the cover of the crossbowmen.

  ‘You brother shows his cowardice, count, withdrawing without even fighting the enemy.’

  The count struggled hard to maintain his composure.

  ‘He faces the Duke of Saxony, majesty,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘who musters hundreds of horsemen. If my brother engages him then your right flank will be destroyed, just as your left has been.’

  When the Bishop of Riga and his men had appeared there had ben nine hundred soldiers deployed on the king’s left wing. Half were now dead or wounded after being assaulted in the flank by Kalju’s Ungannians, shot at by the Sword Brothers’ crossbowmen and charged by the order’s and Sir Richard’s horsemen. The foot knights still stood defiantly, their numbers being whittled down by lances, maces and axes. Kalju’s boar’s snout had cut the spearmen to pieces and was now grinding its way into what was left of the formation of Danish sergeants.

  ‘Majesty,’ implored the count, ‘you must get as many of your men inside the town as quickly as possible. If we die here then the Sword Brothers will take Reval.’

  Those words seemed to disperse the hysteria that had gripped Valdemar and the king’s cool and calculating demeanour returned. He brushed away Henry’s arm from his pommel and turned to the knight behind him.

  ‘Ride forward and give the order to retire.’

  The king and his bodyguard stayed until the end, his archers and the count’s crossbowmen providing cover for the retreat of the axe men and Gunzelin’s horsemen into the town. Count Henry dismounted and stood with his brother among his mercenary spearmen and crossbowmen with swords drawn as a great mass of horsemen rode by the foot of Toompea Hill and threatened to cut off the Danes’ retreat. But the Duke of Saxony was far too wily and experienced to allow his knights to be shot down in a futile attempt to break a formation of veteran spearmen and crossbowmen. So the only contingent of Duke Albert’s crusaders to have taken part in the battle were his crossbowmen, who now walked from behind the locked shields of Fricis’ warriors to once again deploy in front of the Livs.

  *****

  Rudolf called to leather face who was nonchalantly chatting to some of his men. The caparison of the horse of Wenden’s castellan was splattered with blood and the beast was panting hard after the exertion of battle. The brother knights and sergeants were similarly exhausted after what seemed like an eternity hacking at Danish foot soldiers with their close-quarter weapons. They and Sir Richard’s men had been finally forced to retire when a ring of Danish corpses that had become a wall of dead flesh rose up to crea
te a barrier between them and the remnants of the enemy.

  The mercenary strolled over as the brother knights and sergeants removed their helmets and took great gulps of air. Some drank greedily from their water bottles, only to be rebuked by Walter.

  ‘Take sips or you’ll get stomach cramps. Remember your training for the love of Christ.’

  ‘Take your men and destroy those remaining Danes,’ Rudolf instructed leather face.

  The mercenary turned and looked at Kalju’s warriors grouped in a compact mass on the other side of the circle of enemy survivors.

  ‘What about the pagans, perhaps they would like the honour?’

  ‘Walter,’ said Rudolf, ‘I must ask you to ride to Kalju, present my compliments to him and ask what his intentions are.’

  ‘Judging by the piles of enemy dead I would have thought that was obvious,’ remarked leather face.

  Rudolf waved him away. ‘Just go and earn your pay.’

  ‘You are not of a mind to see if they want to surrender themselves, then?’ enquired the mercenary, grinning.

  Rudolf shook his head as Walter cantered away. ‘No.’

  As Walter left Sir Richard arrived with his squire in tow. The English lord pointed towards where two shield walls faced bodies of mailed soldiers withdrawing towards the town gates.

  ‘The enemy retreats, Rudolf. The bishop has won a great victory.’

  ‘I doubt he will see it that way,’ said Rudolf bleakly.

  Kalju gave a warm welcome to Walter and immediately asked where Conrad was. Wenden’s deputy commander pointed vaguely towards the Estonian shield wall and said he hoped he was there.

  ‘He is not among your horsemen?’

  ‘Alas, lord,’ replied Walter, ‘he was on the verge of surrendering himself to the Danish king when you arrived. Praise God.’

  Kalju took off his helmet and stroked his beard. ‘I had better go and make sure he still lives, then.’

  A succession of sharp thuds erupted behind Walter as leather face and his men began shooting at the fifty or so Danes huddled in a circle in the midst of their dead comrades. The crossbowmen had closed to less that fifty paces and commenced a murderous volley against the enemy. Walter crossed himself as the screams and groans of the Danes subsided after four volleys – five hundred and sixty crossbow bolts – had been shot at them. Kalju raised a hand to Walter and took half a dozen men with him as the rest leaned their shields against their legs, took off their helmets and wiped their sweaty brows.