The Sword Brothers (35 page)

He heard footsteps in
the snow and turned to see his deputy approaching.

‘Where are the
dead?’

Rusticus looked
confused. ‘Dead, lord?’

‘The crusader dead.
Where have they been interred? Unless they suffered no losses, that
is.’

‘They took them back
south,’ said Rusticus.

Lembit laughed grimly.
‘So we are denied the pleasure of digging them up and burning them.
It appears I am to be denied any solace from this sorry
episode.’

Rusticus shovelled
snow with his boot. ‘We could pursue them, lord.’

Lembit rolled his eyes
in despair. ‘And add to our losses? I think not. No, we will have
to wait until the spring to exact payment for this outrage.’

Rusticus mumbled
something under his breath.

‘You have something to
say?’ Lembit said to him.

‘Apologies, lord, but
we could have attempted to relieve the fort. I was but a short
distance away.’

Lembit did not want to
reveal to his subordinate that he did not trust him with command of
an army. ‘It would not have been appropriate for you to lead the
army and not I. What would the other tribal chiefs have said if you
had relieved Fellin while I was away in Wierland?’

‘We will attack in the
spring?’ asked Rusticus.

Lembit smiled
savagely. ‘Yes, and this time we will not be alone. Time to see if
our new-found allies are prepared to back up their words with
warriors.’

Rusticus scraped at
the snow with his boot some more. ‘You trust the Oeselians,
lord?’

‘Trust has nothing to
do with it. The Oeselians want to use us and we want to use them,
but even the most simple-minded idiot knows that it is better to
stand together than fight the Christians separately.’ He glanced at
Rusticus. ‘Well, perhaps not all idiots.’

‘What do want to do
with the garrison?’ asked his deputy.

Now it was Lembit’s
turn to be confused. ‘The garrison?’

‘Do you want me to
organise their execution?’

‘Why should I desire
their execution?’

‘They surrendered
rather than fighting to the death,’ shrugged Rusticus. ‘And they
accepted Christian baptism.’ Rusticus spat to avert evil.

Lembit laughed. ‘You
want me to kill my own soldiers because some man in a woman’s
attire sprinkled them with water? No. Besides, if you kill them who
will rebuild the fort?’

Rusticus thought for a
moment. ‘We could execute them after they have rebuilt the fort,
lord.’

‘Do you ever think
about anything else other than killing?’

‘Lord?’

Lembit waved a hand at
him. ‘It doesn’t matter. We go back to Lehola to organise the
spring campaign with our Oeselian allies. Leave some men here to
assist with the fort’s repairs. And no killing anyone.’

*****

Conrad and the others
went back to their training upon their return to Wenden. It was now
February and the snow fell almost every day, blanketing the land
and making travel almost impossible. Inside the castle compound
people cleared paths and the track of snow and in the citadel
itself the courtyard was kept free of ice. But construction on the
towers and walls had come to a halt until the spring. The workers
and their families shivered in their huts, the peat blocks being
strictly rationed now that all the firewood had been used up.
Parties were sent into the forests to collect dead wood but that
was only enough to provide fuel for cooking, not heating. The more
so since the crusaders who had assaulted Fellin were also being
accommodated within the castle grounds.

Sir Frederick was
housed in Master Berthold’s quarters but his conditioned worsened.
Prayers were said for him daily in the chapel but it became
apparent that the hand of death was upon him. He insisted that
Conrad attended him on a daily basis, which the youth found irksome
at first. He would have preferred to be on the training field
instead of in the room of a dying man. But the knight insisted and
so did Lukas and so Conrad found himself feeding the lord hot
porridge and wiping his forehead when his body was wracked by
intense pain. The fire was heaped high and burned brightly but Sir
Frederick was still cold and so Conrad wrapped him in furs after
the surgeons had washed and dressed his stinking wound in fresh
bandages and Otto recited his prayers.

When he was conscious
the knight spent most of his time talking to Conrad, though not in
a manner that required the youth to answer him. Otto offered to be
his confessor but Sir Frederick gave him short shrift.

‘Get out, you
shaven-headed crow. Go and administer to someone who is prepared to
listen.’

It was the first time
Conrad had seen the fierce Otto lost for words as the priest
stormed from the room and slammed the door.

‘Halfwit,’ spat Sir
Frederick. ‘Don’t become like him, Conrad.’

‘I hope to be a
sergeant, lord, not a priest.’

‘I have butchered men,
women and children and was told afterwards by priests that I was
doing God’s work. Thrown innocents onto great pyres and heard their
screams as the flames consumed them. Is that God’s work? I
sometimes wonder. Do you think I should leave my lands and gold to
the church, Conrad?’

‘I do not know,
lord.’

Sir Frederick looked
at him with his sunken eyes. ‘Give me an answer, boy. I command
you.’

‘I think so, lord,
yes,’ he answered falteringly.

‘So I can be assured
of my place in heaven?’

Conrad nodded.

Sir Frederick laughed
sardonically. ‘So be it, then. At the very least I will be able to
go before God and ask Him why he sent a plague that killed my wife
and children.’

Conrad was alarmed by
the knight’s blasphemy. Sir Frederick saw his expression.

‘You think my words
are impious?’

‘It is not for me to
say, lord.’

Sir Frederick cackled,
then shook as the pain gripped him once more. Conrad held him until
the spasm had passed and then the knight slipped into
unconsciousness.

The next day, as he
and the other youths, together with all the sergeants, were
sweeping the courtyard in a vain attempt to keep it clear of the
snow that was falling heavily, Otto stood at the entrance to the
master’s quarters and bellowed at Conrad to attend him. He turned
and ran over to the tall priest.

‘Sir Frederick wants
to see you before he dies.’

Conrad went inside the
hall and walked to Master Berthold’s bedroom. The smell of decaying
flesh met his nostrils before he entered the chamber where he found
crusaders and Sword Brothers gathered around Sir Frederick. Another
priest was reciting prayers and a scribe was recording the will of
the dying man, observed by Master Berthold and two crusaders.
Rudolf stood at the foot of the bed and he beckoned Conrad
over.

‘Sir Frederick wishes
to speak to you. Be quick, his time on earth is nearly over.’

Though he had been
attending Sir Frederick for many days Conrad suddenly felt nervous
around him. The atmosphere in the room had changed now that the
knight was close to death. He felt as though God himself was now
watching the scene. Would He punish the knight for all the
sacrilegious things he had said?

The knight saw Conrad
and weakly lifted his hand to wave him over. The priest was
administering the last rights and those around the bed had their
heads bowed in reverence to a servant of the church. Conrad leaned
over to hear Sir Frederick’s words.

‘I have something for
you,’ his voice was weak and faltering.

One of his knights
held out a sword in a scabbard to Conrad, who looked at it in
surprise.

‘It is my sword,’ said
Sir Frederick, ‘and I bequeath it to you, young Conrad. Learn to
use it well and then hopefully God will let you kill that bastard
who murdered your family. Take it.’

Conrad stepped back
and took the sword offered to him. Sir Frederick smiled weakly and
then closed his eyes. He cradled the sword in his arms as the
knight breathed his last and everyone brought their hands together
to join the priest in prayer. Rudolf moved to Conrad’s side and
told him he was excused. He left the room and walked through the
hall back into the courtyard. The snow had stopped and the sweepers
were winning their battle to clear the courtyard.

Hans and the others
saw Conrad reappear with the sword and gathered around him.

‘Where did you get
that?’ enquired Anton enviously.

‘Sir Frederick gave it
to me. It was his sword,’ answered Conrad.

‘Let us see it,’ said
Hans.

It was in a simple
scabbard of wood covered with black leather but when Conrad pulled
the sword from it they all could see that it was a magnificent
weapon, a lord’s weapon. The birch grip was wrapped with black
leather, topped by a disc-shaped pommel in which a unicorn’s head
had been etched on each side. Each of the steel arms of the
cross-guard was ‘waisted’, flaring back to their original width at
the ends. It had a broad and evenly tapering blade, the point
curving gradually to a sharp point. The blade itself was just over
thirty inches long with fullers along three-quarters of its length.
It was surprisingly light and had excellent handling
characteristics.

The boys stood in
silence, admiring the sword, and did not see Lukas approaching.

‘I will take
that.’

Conrad looked at the
sword, then at the Sword Brother and his heart sank.

‘It was a gift from
Sir Frederick,’ he said quietly, sliding the sword back into the
scabbard.

Lukas held out his
hand. ‘I know that. A noble gesture from a true knight and servant
of the church. When you learn how to use it properly you can have
it back. Until then it will be stored in the armoury.’

Conrad handed the
sword to Lukas.

‘No one will use it
but you,’ said the brother knight, ‘that I promise.’

And so Conrad went
back to using a waster, training every day with the others as the
snow lay thick on the ground. He and they helped to hack at the
cold earth to dig Sir Frederick’s grave, the first in the area to
the south of the moat designated to be Wenden’s cemetery. As
February ended snow still blanketed the ground but the temperature
rose slightly and the hours of daylight increased. In the middle of
the month it stopped freezing and the ice on the Gauja began to
break up, great floes floating downstream to make any sort of
travel on the river treacherous. By the end of March the ice had
gone and so had the crusaders and the bishop’s soldiers from Riga,
marching south across a sodden land. The surviving siege engines
were left at Wenden.

It had been nearly a
year since Conrad and the others had arrived at the castle and in
that time their bodies had grown stronger and fitter. They knew how
to ride, wield a sword, shield and spear, had survived being under
siege and had taken part in their first campaign. As Conrad reached
his fifteenth birthday he wondered how his sister was faring in the
convent in Lübeck. He also wondered when he would be given his
sword.

*****

Vetseke stood in the
cavernous interior of Polotsk’s St Sophia’s Cathedral, one of only
three stone cathedrals in all Russia, the other two being at
Novgorod and Kiev. He had endured a thoroughly miserable journey to
reach the city, travelling in an open sleigh wrapped in furs and
being lashed by biting winds. Prince Vsevolod had provided him with
a small escort of a dozen soldiers, who had spent the entire
journey complaining and cursing about their lot and he was glad to
see the back of them. Now he stood alone, a landless prince seeking
aid from the very principality he had treated with contempt not so
long ago. But that had been when Kokenhusen had been a principality
in its own right, an independent kingdom that answered to no one.
But now Kokenhusen was under the control of the Sword Brothers and
he was a vagrant in all but name.

He looked around the
imposing structure. The cathedral had magnificent apses and its
eastern façade contained a multitude of vaults where the former
rulers of Polotsk were interred. Located on the Dvina where the
small River Palata flows into it, over a hundred miles southeast of
Gerzika, the city had formerly received tribute from smaller
principalities along the Dvina all the way to the Baltic coast.
Polotsk had first been a settlement seven hundred years ago.
Originally under the control of the larger city of Kiev to the
south, it broke free of Kiev’s rule over a hundred years ago under
its greatest leader, Prince Vseslav the Sorcerer, so-called because
he had the ability to supposedly turn himself into a wolf. It was
he who ordered the construction of this cathedral in which Vetseke
stood, a lasting symbol of Polotsk’s independence and grandeur. But
since then even the mighty power of the principality had waned.

He heard footsteps
approaching. A mail-clad guard saluted him.

‘The council will see
you now, highness.’

He followed the
soldier through the aisle to a door leading to a room that received
foreign ambassadors. Indeed, the interior of the cathedral also
contained a library, archive, treasury and a magistrate’s office.
The guard opened the door, bowed his head and then closed it when
Vetseke entered the room.

Inside the members of
the town council sat at a long table, a row of severe-looking
middle-aged men with black beards dressed in rich, light-coloured
dalmaticas. In the centre sat Prince Vladimir, the man elected by
the council to rule over the principality. Now in his sixties, he
rose and extended an arm to a chair positioned in front of the
table.

‘Prince Vetseke,
welcome. Please be seated.’

He bowed his head to
Vladimir and took his seat.

Vladimir smiled at
him. ‘How can we be of assistance to you?’

Vetseke looked at the
six other faces in the room. These men were the real power in the
town: individuals who were elected by a vote of free adult males to
decide who should be Polotsk’s ruler and decree on matters of war
and peace. Their hard faces told him that it would be useless to
try flattery.