The Sword Brothers (33 page)

‘He is requesting the
garrison’s surrender,’ said Thaddeus.

Rudolf finished
shouting and waited for an answer. It came when at least a dozen
warriors pulled down their leggings and showed their bare arses to
him, followed by jeers and catcalls as others pissed over the
battlements. Rudolf smiled, raised his sword to them and barked an
order. Seconds later the brother knights and sergeants standing
behind the prisoners thrust their swords into the captives’ backs
and threw their corpses into the moat. They then raced back to the
safety of the Christian lines as the garrison shot arrows at
them.

‘Negotiations have
failed, it seems,’ remarked Thaddeus dryly.

The Estonians began
singing another of their awful songs, which sounded to Conrad like
a constipated elk. It served only to add to the overall misery of
the morning. After ten minutes he heard a succession of thwacks and
thought he discerned one or two screams coming from the fort.

‘The crossbowmen have
begun to pick off the Estonians,’ said Thaddeus, turning to one of
his men at the trebuchet and nodding to him.

‘Stand back, please,’
he said to the boys.

They watched as a
stone was placed in the trebuchet’s leather sling. Conrad felt a
tingle of excitement as the machine was readied for use.

‘The trebuchet is a
simple machine,’ Thaddeus said to them, ‘but the key is in the
correct use of materials for its construction. For example, the
base and framework must be heavy enough to support the throwing arm
and counterweight. For this reason a heavier wood such as oak is
preferred for the framing whereas the throwing arm is made of a
lighter wood, fir in this case.’

The singing from the
fort had ceased abruptly when crossbow bolts had begun to strike
faces and shoulders and sent the Estonians scurrying for cover.
Thaddeus nodded to the man next to the machine who pulled back the
release pin to drop the hinged counterweight and throw the stone in
the sling towards the fort. Conrad was captivated as he saw it fly
through the air and strike the roof of one of the end towers,
sending tiles in all directions as it tore it off. Then the
mangonels commenced shooting, sending stones crashing against the
walls and towers, splintering wood and crushing the skulls of those
in the path of the missiles.

‘When does the assault
begin?’ asked Anton excitedly.

‘Not until the ditch
is filled in,’ said Thaddeus, ‘so that the siege tower can approach
the walls.’

The mangonels and
trebuchet maintained a steady rate of operation as the crossbowmen
on the fort’s southern side directed their shooting at any enemy
bowmen who showed themselves on the walls. Sir Frederick and his
knights grew restless when Master Berthold informed them that there
would be no assault this day, which would be given over to filling
the ditch with the tree trunks that had been felled the day before.
Mantlets were pushed closer to the moat as the spearmen left their
ranks to haul the logs that had been stacked to the rear of the
mangonels. The Estonians had few archers so the risk of being shot
by an arrow was small, even more so with the crossbowmen and stones
keeping their heads down.

They worked at a
frantic pace, bringing the logs forward and hurling them into the
moat. Conrad saw their efforts and felt helpless. A hundred
spearmen were using ropes to pull the logs to the moat.
Occasionally one would fall after being hit by an arrow, to be
either helped back to the surgeons’ tent or, if dead, placed on the
ground to be later buried.

‘Come on,’ he shouted
at the others, ‘we cut down some of those trees so we should help
to fill the moat.’

Hans looked at him.
‘I’m with you.’

‘Me too,’ said Anton.
Bruno and Johann nodded their agreement and so all five of them ran
over to the piles of logs. Sweating soldiers working in teams of
four picked up a log, two on each side, and then ran the short
distance to the moat, stones and crossbow bolts flying above them
against the fort’s timber wall.

Conrad and the others
stood over a trunk, bent down and lifted it up. They were surprised
by its weight and their legs almost buckled as they lifted it to
waist height.

‘Hold it!’ hissed
Anton.

They tried to run but
could only manage a brisk walk as they took the trunk towards the
moat. Conrad’s heart began to pound in his chest as he passed
crossbowmen crouching behind mantlets and saw an arrow slam into
the turf a few feet from him. He also saw leather face who grinned
and gave him the thumbs up. His breathing became heavier as they
neared the moat. They had to turn the log to roll it into the
depression on top of the others.

Conrad stopped and
called behind him as a rock deflected off the top of the
battlements and crushed the face of an Estonian. The corpse was
flipped over the wall and thudded into the ground at the base of
the wall.

‘Turn the log!’
shouted Conrad, who felt as though every member of the garrison was
looking at him.

They tossed the log on
top of the others and then sprinted back out of range of enemy
arrows as more logs were carried forward in an unending relay. They
transported four more logs before an angry Lukas stopped their
activities and ordered them back to their tent. By the time night
had fallen a bridge of logs had been created in the moat on the
fort’s southern side. The cost had been five spearmen killed and a
further ten injured. Conrad and the others spent the night holding
torches and cutting down trees in the forest as a punishment for
disobeying orders. They were also denied an evening meal and
breakfast the next day. Hans was close to despair.

One bright spot amidst
their misery was that Walter the Penitent joined them in the forest
during the evening to share their punishment. He too denied himself
an evening meal and breakfast but appeared to be remarkably fresh
as the others stood shivering in the pre-dawn gloom, their eyes red
and puffy and their teeth chattering. Lukas came to collect them
for morning mass, inspecting their pile of logs before they
departed. Walter shook his hand and then marched off to don his
armour and weapons to partake in the coming day’s siege.

Lukas watched him go.
‘Piety and discipline. A powerful combination. You could all learn
a lot by studying Walter’s behaviour. He has turned his back on a
life of luxury and high living to fight in this wasteland against
the pagans. To be a warrior of Christ and live a life of poverty,
chastity and obedience.’

He turned to face
them, their young faces pale; their fingers cold and chapped.
‘Obedience. You need to learn the meaning of that word. All of you
have the makings of fine soldiers, and in time one or two of you
may even enter the ranks of the brother knights of the Sword
Brothers. But you will come to nothing if you do not learn to obey
orders. You disobey me again and you will be flogged. Now go and
report to the farrier. You can spend the day shovelling dung.’

They trooped off with
heads bowed to the stabling area as Thalibald and his warriors once
more headed north to form a defensive screen around the army and
keep watch for any relief force. As the Livs marched in a long file
armed with spears and swords and carrying large round shields,
Conrad looked at their painted shields bearing ancient Latvian
symbols. Most sported the Sign of the Moon, the symbol of warriors
that resembled the letter ‘c’. Other shields were decorated with
the Cross of Crosses, a combination of four pagan crosses, the Sign
of the Thunder God, the symbol of fire, thunder, health and
prosperity, or the Sign of Mara – a zigzag line. Rameke came over
to him as the boys trudged the other way, Conrad looking enviously
at the spear he clutched and the sword that hung at his left
hip.

‘You will take part in
the assault today?’ said Rameke, his long hair under his
helmet.

‘We are to spend the
day heaping dung into wheelbarrows,’ replied Conrad bitterly.

Rameke looked at him
with sympathy. ‘Almost as bad as patrolling empty forests.’

‘You have seen no
Estonians?’

Rameke shook his head.
‘We spend our time walking among trees, hoping to see the enemy,
but the only activity is the odd elk. Perhaps today will be
different.’ He looked at the line of spearmen heading out of camp.
‘I have to go.’

Conrad extended his
hand. ‘God go with you.’

Rameke smiled and
clasped his forearm. ‘You too, my friend.’

That morning the
besiegers moved a ‘cat’ – a protective shed on wheels with a
V-shaped roof – across the log bridge spanning the moat so that a
team of engineers equipped with picks and shovels could remove part
of the fort’s sloping rampart. In this way the siege tower could be
pushed up against the wall. Once more the crossbowmen behind their
mantlets shot at any Estonians who showed themselves on the
battlements and tried to throw spears or rocks down on the cat.

Thaddeus kept his
machines throwing stones against the towers and walls at a
desultory rate in order to conserve their ammunition. Sir Frederick
grew bored at waiting around for a second day and took out his
frustration on a squire, beating the poor lad senseless before
Master Berthold interceded. The lord’s humour was not improved when
he and his knights retired to his tent to eat a midday meal and was
informed that his own warhorse had died of exposure. By the end of
the day sufficient earth had been removed from the hillock to allow
the siege tower to be moved forward the next morning. Thalibald and
his men returned after dusk to report they had seen no
Estonians.

The new day dawned
bright and frosty, the siege tower finally moving forward towards
the fort. The defenders swelled the ramparts and placed all their
few archers on the southern wall to shoot at the great wooden
monster as it inched its way towards them. Lukas ordered the boys
to stay with Master Thaddeus at the trebuchet as Sir Frederick and
his knights stood on the top platform of the tower. Conrad saw
Master Berthold and the brother knights standing to his left,
together with the order’s sergeants, the latter holding scaling
ladders at the ready. He felt a tingle of excitement ripple through
him. If only he could be allowed to join them.

The crossbowmen behind
their mantlets were once again directing their bolts against the
defenders, who had nailed planks to the top of the battlements in
an effort to provide additional cover for their warriors. The
defenders now knew that the main assault would be directed against
the southern wall and so had lined the western wall with only a few
men. But it was from that direction that the mangonels began
shooting new projectiles – barrels of burning tar. Conrad saw
pillars of black smoke billowing up into the ice-blue sky from
within the fort. He looked at Thaddeus in confusion.

‘Barrels of burning
tar shot into the fort to set fire to the buildings,’ said
Thaddeus. ‘The defenders will have to take men from the walls to
extinguish them. Either that or let them burn.’

The mangonels facing
the fort’s south side were still shooting rocks at what was left of
the towers, which had all lost their roofs and had their timber
supports smashed and splintered. The trebuchet had stopped shooting
as the siege tower was now between it and the fort. The closed
drawbridge at the front of its top platform meant that Sir
Frederick and his men were safe from enemy missiles as the tower
was pushed forward by fifty spearmen in and behind its base. Conrad
watched admiringly as the tower creaked and groaned as it
approached the moat at an agonisingly slow pace. More knights stood
on the climbing frame at the rear of the tower, shields strapped on
their backs and armed with a variety of swords, short axes and
maces.

The black smoke coming
from within the fort increased as more flaming barrels found their
targets. But the number of defenders on the southern wall showed no
signs of lessening. The tower was now across the log bridge and
against the wall, and suddenly the drawbridge crashed down onto the
timber palisade and Sir Frederick led the charge on to the
ramparts. Cries and screams carried across the battlefield as a
bloody mêlée took place on the battlements. Then there was a cry of
‘God with us!’ and the Sword Brothers raced forward.

Conrad thought that
the Estonians would be crushed with ease as a white tide of brother
knights and sergeants flooded forward, swept down into the ditch
and then placed their assault ladders against the timber walls. He
and the other boys began cheering as the order’s soldiers scaled
the ladders and began hacking at the warriors above with their
swords. Crossbow bolts picked off defenders and Conrad saw knights
ascending the rungs at the back of the tower as those ahead of them
reached the platform and reinforced Sir Frederick fighting on the
walls. The fort was falling!

The quartermaster
appeared by the side of Thaddeus, a huge fat man with an
ill-fitting gambeson, bushy white beard and a ruddy complexion.

‘I need these boys to
carry spare quivers to the crossbowmen,’ he said
unceremoniously.

‘Brother Lukas left me
in charge of them,’ said Thaddeus, somewhat flustered. ‘I don’t
think he wants them placed in danger.’

The quartermaster spat
on the ground. ‘If the fort doesn’t fall soon we will all be in
danger.’ He pointed at the boys. ‘You all follow me.’

Conrad did nothing. He
looked at Thaddeus, who merely shrugged.

‘Now!’ bellowed the
quartermaster. ‘I will take full responsibility,’ he said to
Thaddeus.

For such a large man
he moved remarkably sprightly as he led the boys to a sleigh fifty
paces to the rear of the trebuchet. He pulled back the canvas cover
behind the driver’s seat to reveal neatly packed rows of quivers
holding quarrels. He pointed at the crossbowmen behind the
mantlets, most of whom were no longer shooting but were looking
expectantly at where the boys were standing.