As Dust to the Wind Read online

  As Dust to the Wind

  Peter Darman

  Copyright © 2016 Pete Darman

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  Formatted by Jo Harrison

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  List of principal characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Historical notes

  List of principal characters

  Those marked with an asterisk * are known to history.

  Commanders in the Army of the Wolf

  Andres: Duke of Jerwen

  Hillar: Duke of Rotalia

  Riki: Duke of Harrien

  Tonis: Count of Fellin

  Englishmen

  Sir Richard Bruffingham: Duke of Saccalia

  Sir Paul: former squire to Sir Richard

  Estonians

  Kristjan: Ungannian, son of Kalju, an exile at Novgorod

  Kaja: Saccalian, wife of King Rameke

  Maarja: Ungannian, sister of Kristjan and resident of Odenpah

  Mikk: Ungannian, steward of Odenpah Castle

  Germans

  Adolfus Braune: Duke of Holstein

  *Andres von Felben: Teutonic Knight and Landmeister of Livonia

  *Dietrich von Grüningen: Teutonic Knight and Master of Livonia

  *Hermann: Bishop of Dorpat

  Gunter: deputy commander of the garrison of Riga

  Leatherface: commander of the Army of the Wolf’s crossbowmen

  Magnus Glueck: Duke of Riga, Higher Burgomaster of Riga and commander of the Livonian Militia

  Manfred Nordheim: commander of the garrison of Riga

  *Nicholas: Bishop of Riga

  Stefan: Archdeacon, Governor of Riga

  Italians

  Falcone: commander of Conrad’s Genoese crossbowmen

  *Gregory IX: Pope 1227–41

  *William of Modena: papal legate

  Lithuanians

  Aras: Selonian, general of Prince Vsevolod’s army

  Erdvilas: Duke of Semgallia

  Kitenis: Duke of Aukstaitija

  Kriviu Krivaitis: high priest of the Lithuanian pagans

  *Lamekins: King of the Kurs

  *Mindaugas: son-in-law of Prince Vsevolod

  Rasa: wife of Prince Vsevolod

  Torolf: ambassador of King Lamekins

  *Ykintas: Duke of Samogitia

  Livs

  *Rameke: king and brother-in-law of Conrad Wolff

  Oeselians

  Kalf: prince, brother of Sigurd

  Sigurd: King of Oesel

  Stark: prince, brother of Sigurd

  Order of Sword Brothers

  Arnold: Master of Lennewarden Castle

  Arri: brother knight at Odenpah

  Bertram: Master of Segewold Castle

  Conrad Wolff: Master of Odenpah Castle, commander of the Army of the Wolf and Marshal of Estonia

  Franz: Master of Narva Castle

  Friedhelm: Master of Uexkull Castle

  Godfrey: Master of Holm Castle

  Griswold: Master of Kokenhusen Castle

  Henke: brother knight at Wenden Castle

  Jaan: brother knight at Odenpah

  Jacob: Master of Gerzika Castle

  Lukas: Master of Reval Castle and Governor of Reval

  Mathias: Master of Kremon Castle

  Ortwin: Master of Mesoten Castle

  *Rudolf: Master of Wenden Castle and deputy commander of the Order of Sword Brothers

  Thaddeus: chief engineer at Wenden Castle and Quartermaster General of Livonia

  *Volquin: Grand Master of the Order of Sword Brothers

  Walter: Master of Dorpat Castle

  Russians

  *Alexander Nevsky: son of Yaroslav and Prince of Novgorod

  *Domash Tverdislavich: Mayor of Pskov

  Dmitriy Hoidja: business partner of Kristjan

  Gleb: Skomorokh and adviser to the Mayor of Pskov

  *Spyridon: Archbishop of Novgorod

  *Vsevolod: former ruler of Gerzika; ruler of Selonia and Nalsen, Lithuania

  *Yaroslav Nevsky: Thousandman of Novgorod

  Chapter 1

  Oesel, 1234

  The two battles at Reval, one outside the port, the other fought in the harbour, had been great victories for the Sword Brothers and the Army of the Wolf. Legate Baldwin’s army had been destroyed and the losses among its foot soldiers had been heavy. Among the horsemen who had surrendered to Grand Master Volquin and his knights, less so. Those professional Italian crossbowmen and spearmen that had survived Conrad’s rage after the death of Hans had been offered re-employment with the Sword Brothers to replace the great number of the order’s mercenaries killed fighting the Oeselians. Happily for Grand Master Volquin the capture of the legate’s camp had also yielded a large amount of money stored in chests, which paid for the hiring of the mercenaries.

  Unhappily for the Oeselians they could not make good their losses. The peace brokered between Master Conrad and King Sigurd was a now a distant memory. Sigurd’s brother Stark had agitated for a renewal of hostilities against the Sword Brothers and had got his wish. In the ensuing conflict Sigurd had been killed, Stark had been made king to lead the disastrous attack on Reval. Hundreds of his warriors had been killed in the harbour, losses that would take years to make good. But the Oeselians did not have years before the Sword Brothers visited war upon them.

  Conrad watched the rock being placed in the long sling attached to the end of the trebuchet’s throwing arm. Its crew, men of Master Thaddeus’ engineering office, worked slowly in the summer heat. They stepped back from the machine’s groove accommodating the sling as one of their number knocked out the release pin with a mallet. The huge counterweight dropped, the other end of the beam rose and the sling was dragged along the groove and then up to throw the rock towards the target – the great settlement of Kuressaare, the capital of Oesel. The rock left the sling and arched into the blue sky before falling into the town.

  Leatherface, sitting on a barrel nearby, sighed loudly.

  ‘Two weeks we’ve been here and at this rate it’ll take two years to batter that heathen town into submission. Give the order to fire the place so we can all go home.’

  Conrad nodded at the commander of the trebuchet and turned to the irascible crossbowman.

  ‘We, which includes you, are under strict orders not to burn the town. They won’t be able to hold out much longer.’

  The mercenary scratched his beard. ‘If we were besieging a stone castle then I would agree with your strategy, but as that heathen hole is protected by a timber wall and contains dozens of timber buildings we should set it alight. Wood burns easily, Master Conrad, in case you didn’t know.’

  ‘Those who are financing this campaign do not wish for Oesel to become a burnt out husk,’ replied Conrad.

  The defeat of the Oeselians had prompted Grand Master Volquin to settle the question of the sea pirates once and for all. He received enthusiastic support from Bishop Hermann, who wanted an end to the nest of pagans, the Duke of Riga, Riga’s city council and also Bishop Nicholas of Riga. Indeed such w
as the eagerness of the Duke of Riga Magnus Glueck, for the Oeselians to be conquered that he had offered to finance the campaign out of his own purse. It was a generous offer and one readily accepted by the grand master. Furthermore Magnus Glueck provided a fleet of ships to transport the Sword Brothers to the island with Master Lukas at Reval providing more boats to transport the Army of the Wolf to Oesel. Nearly seven thousand troops landed on the island’s east coast and marched overland towards Kuressaare. Stark attacked the invaders of course, but this was summer, not the depth of winter and the invaders brought with them six hundred crossbowmen and nearly the same number of horsemen to inflict heavy losses on the Oeselians. Stark retreated west, abandoned his capital, left a large garrison in Kuressaare and fled to the western half of his island to rally his earls and muster another army. Grand Master Volquin, all his horsemen and the order’s foot soldiers pursued him. The Army of the Wolf was left behind to besiege Kuressaare.

  Conrad’s men spent most of their time chopping down trees to surround the town with a timber wall, and erecting another to protect the besieging army as a defence against Oeselian raiding parties that might land further up the coast and assault the besiegers’ camp. Oeselian longships in the town’s harbour had free reign to sail up and down the coast but did not do so. Those of their crews that were not manning Kuressaare’s defences were rallying to their king in the forlorn hope that they could throw the defenders back into the sea.

  ‘The Duke of Riga has designs on this island,’ Conrad told Leatherface. ‘When it has been subdued it will be divided between him, the Sword Brothers and the church.’

  ‘The new world order,’ scoffed Leatherface, ‘there will soon be no place in it for the Sword Brothers.’

  ‘Only if war itself has been abolished.’

  Behind them there was a sliding noise and a thud as another rock was hurled into the town. The siege had become desultory and monotonous and the Army of the Wolf wanted to storm Kuressaare and put everyone in it to the sword to alleviate its boredom. But the Duke of Riga and the church wanted its inhabitants to live if possible, Magnus Glueck so they could become his chattels and the church so they could be converted. That was to be the fate of the Oeselians: to be owned physically and spiritually.

  Leatherface hauled himself to his feet. ‘Reckon I’ll go and see if I can shoot any heathens.’

  ‘No,’ said Conrad, ‘you are not to go to the siege lines. That is an order.’

  Between the town’s timber wall and the palisade of the besiegers was a space of around a hundred paces and to relieve their boredom, taking shots at any of the defenders had become a favourite pastime of the crossbowmen of ‘The Bastards’. But to do so was to risk being shot by an Oeselian archer. Ever since the death of Hans, Conrad had done his utmost to protect the commander of his crossbowmen, a man he had known for years and had no intention of losing.

  ‘Organise a hunting party instead,’ suggested Conrad, ‘but make sure you have a proper escort.’

  ‘Animals don’t shoot back, there’s no fun in that.’

  ‘We’re not here for fun.’

  While Conrad kept the population of Kuressaare penned in like sheep Grand Master Volquin, Sir Richard and Sir Paul kept watch on Stark who was gathering his warriors in the northwest of the island. Kuressaare was the only sizeable settlement on Oesel but the island was littered with farmsteads and villages, testimony to the mild climate and rich soil that made growing crops and rearing cattle so easy. Not for nothing was it called the Blessed Isle. Normally the grand master and his brother knights would have despoiled and burnt any farms and villages they came across, but the grand master had given strict orders that they were not to be molested, though his knights did round up any cattle left behind by their Oeselian owners.

  Two weeks after the Army of the Wolf had surrounded Kuressaare Rameke arrived at the head of twelve hundred warriors. A great throng gathered around the Liv king and his bodyguard when word spread that he had brought his queen with him. Kaja, all long blonde locks and fierce blue eyes, had borne Rameke two healthy sons to secure his line and in doing so had become a firm favourite with the Liv people. But she was a Saccalian by birth and had always been considered by the Army of the Wolf one of its own. It gathered round her now, the warriors raising their weapons and chanting ‘Kaja, Kaja’ as she slid off her horse and accepted their acclaim with a broad grin. Conrad had heard the tumult and made his way to the outskirts of the camp on receiving word of the arrival of King Rameke’s army.

  Gone were the days when the bodyguard of the Liv king marched on foot and fought in a shield wall. The two hundred horsemen guarding Rameke and Kaja were armed and equipped in the same manner as crusader knights. They all wore full-face helms, chainmail and carried shields with flat tops and shortened teardrop shapes. A keen observer would have noticed certain anomalies indicative of their pagan heritage, such as the hand axes tucked in their belts in addition to the swords dangling at their left sides. The sign of the moon decorating their shields, was an image favoured by pagan Liv warriors long before any Christian set foot on their land.

  Sticking to protocol Conrad bowed his head to the king and queen and then embraced them both, to huge cheers. Rameke, shorter than Conrad and stockier, was just shy of his fortieth year, though his long brown hair was still thick and free of any trace of grey. His standard bearer held the great banner showing a red cross that had accompanied Caupo and Fricis on their campaigns and now followed the man who had taken a Saccalian for a wife.

  ‘Welcome, my brother,’ Conrad beamed, ‘this is an unexpected pleasure.’

  Kaja, attired in boots, leggings and leather jerkin over her blue tunic, laughed.

  ‘Unexpected, Susi? The Oeselians have always been enemies of the people who live on the mainland and we had no intention of remaining idle while others won all the glory.’

  She drew her sword and held it aloft. ‘Death to the Oeselians!’

  Wild cheering was followed by more chants of ‘Kaja, Kaja’.

  ‘I see motherhood has not blunted Kaja’s love of conflict,’ Conrad said softly to Rameke.

  The queen insisted on inspecting the defence works and seeing for herself the enemy’s ramparts. Conrad worried that she might wander within range of enemy arrows, so her entourage included Leatherface, Hillar, Andres, Riki and Tonis, the warlords having nothing else to do, much to their chagrin. Bored crossbowmen, members of ‘The Bastards’, manning mantlets near the enemy wall, stood and grinned like mischievous boys when they spotted the group approaching, Conrad, Rameke and Kaja at its head. She stopped and talked to them, swapping battle stories, Conrad watching the sky for any enemy arrows that might suddenly appear.

  ‘We should not tarry,’ he said, urging Kaja and Rameke on.

  Kaja frowned as she looked at the inactivity on the enemy wall.

  ‘The Oeselians are nowhere to be seen.’

  But sure enough, a brace of arrows appeared in the sky, arching up and then down towards where they were standing.

  ‘Shields!’ shouted Conrad, pulling Kaja down to the ground and holding his shield over her.

  In a split second the shields of her husband and the other warlords had formed a roof of wood and leather over her as the arrows fell short hitting the ground at least twenty paces away from them.

  ‘Watch for targets,’ shouted Leatherface to his crossbowmen behind mantlets nearby and those closer to the walls. Seconds later there was a rapid succession of cracks as the crossbowmen shot quarrels at the few guards on the walls, who rapidly dropped behind the safety of their timber rampart. Silence followed. It was a typical incident during the monotony of siege warfare.

  ‘We should go,’ said Conrad, standing as Rameke hauled his wife to her feet.

  They made their way back to camp where the king’s servants were erecting his pavilion and his men were pitching their tents to add to the hundreds that already encircled Kuressaare. The Army of the Wolf had left most of its ponies on the mainland, br
inging enough to haul its carts carrying supplies and tents.

  ‘Where are Sir Richard and Sir Paul?’ asked Rameke, noticing the absence of his friends.

  ‘Keeping an eye on Stark,’ Conrad told him, ‘we defeated him after we had first landed but did not destroy him. He fled to the north of the island where he rallies what is left of his army. He will have to march south to attempt to relieve his capital, which is when we will finally end the Oeselian threat.’

  ‘Good,’ said Hillar, ‘there is more sport to be had playing with my children than doing nothing here.’

  ‘The hardest battle is yet to come, my friend,’ Conrad told him, ‘of that I have no doubt.’

  *****

  Before the age of man, giants had inhabited the islands of Oesel, Muhu and Hilu, a sparsely populated, low-lying island to the north of the Blessed Isle. They lived in families, tilled the land and fished the sea, wading into the water to cast their nets instead of having to use boats like those who came after them. Giants could pull up trees from the earth with ease and move lakes with little effort. The Christians laughed at such tales but anyone with a brain knew them to be true. After all, the boulders littering the islands were proof that giants had once inhabited the homelands of the Oeselians because the strongest ones had used them for recreation, tossing them around to pass the time.

  Stark watched the boats beaching on the soft sand below and wished that the giants would return to the world when the Blessed Isle was in danger, just as the ancient legends foretold. He had prayed to the gods to send him Leiger, the giant who had once lived on Hilu and could make the earth shake when he stamped his feet. But all they sent him were boats filled with young boys and old men. The best and the bravest were dead, cut down fighting the crusaders in Estonia, Livonia and now on Oesel itself. Year after year the crusaders had come from across the sea to pollute the land with their religion and year after year Oeselian warriors had fallen trying to defeat them. His brother Eric had been killed fighting in Livonia, his father was cut down in Estonia where his brother Sigurd had met the same fate. He himself had nearly been killed in Reval harbour fighting the Sword Brothers. And in every battle and campaign many warriors had fallen. The crusaders had also suffered losses but unlike the men of iron the Oeselians did not have an inexhaustible supply of young men to replace the fallen. And now half his earls were dead and he had only enough men to crew half his fleet of longships. His race was slowly being bled to death.