Army of the Wolf (8 page)

‘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.’