The Sword Brothers (68 page)

*****

The air was still cool
and there was frost in the mornings when Grand Duke Daugerutis
invaded Livonia. He knew that in the spring the bishop would arrive
back from Germany accompanied by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
crusaders with their warhorses and crossbowmen. But he would return
to a blackened wasteland where there were no crusaders or pliant
Livs, just a mighty Lithuania that straddled the Dvina like a
colossus. His army – twenty thousand men – crossed the river just
below the Castle of Kokenhusen, his men building a bridge of boats
on the icy water so that the Christians could see his warriors
cross. At dawn he and Stecse had boarded a small riverboat that had
been rowed near to the opposite bank where the Sword Brother castle
stood. He had brandished a spear and shouted up at the battlements
that the hour of their doom had come, before hurling the spear into
the black waters to signal that he was at war with the
Christians.

It took all morning to
build the bridge of boats, the grand duke sending over a thousand
men in boats to secure the northern riverbank and ensure the
crusaders at Kokenhusen did not interfere with his arrangements.
The southern bank of the river was filled with men and horses that
quickly turned the ground to mud as they waited to cross. Everyone
was wrapped in cloaks for the morning was overcast and the air
dank, an easterly wind pinching flesh and watering eyes.

When the bridge had
been completed and planks nailed in place to allow men and beasts
to cross, the austere and severe
Kriviu Krivaitis
walked
across followed by the
Vaidilutes
, the virgins who guarded
the sacred Eternal Flame. The high priest’s face was white from the
cold and his eyes red from the wind as he strode across the bridge,
but the young women who followed him must have been numb with cold
in their flimsy long white dresses, bare arms and light shoes. The
grand duke had arranged for them to be wrapped in furs and given
hot mead when they reached the northern riverbank, but the
symbolism of their presence was immense as they carried lighted
torches that had been lit by the Sacred Flame over the river to
plant in Christian territory. The thousands of men watched in
silence as the tall, white-clothed priest and his virgins walked
across the river, a scene also observed by the Sword Brothers and
crusaders on Kokenhusen’s battlements, before cheering wildly as
the torches were taken from the frozen virgins and used to light
great bonfires on the far bank. Then the army crossed.

The other dukes,
seduced by the lure of more gold and easy conquest, had brought
their men and they now rode across the Dvina in the company of
Daugerutis. In the biting wind their colourful banners fluttered
behind the huge red banner sporting a black bear. There was the
iron wolf of Duke Ykintas, the elk antlers of Duke Butantas, the
black axe of Duke Kitenis and the golden eagle of Duke Gedvilas.
And behind them came rank upon rank of horsemen in armour, cloaks
wrapped around them and helmeted heads covered in hoods. Each rider
carried two
spisas
in addition to his pavise-like shield,
sword and axe, occasionally a mace.

The largest contingent
was the grand duke’s: four thousand horsemen and eight thousand
foot. Of the other dukes, Ykintas brought five hundred horsemen and
fifteen hundred warriors on foot. Butantas mustered a thousand
horsemen and the same number of foot soldiers, while six hundred
horsemen and fourteen hundred foot accompanied Kitenis. Duke
Gedvilas, being the ruler of the poorest kingdom, brought only two
hundred horsemen along with eighteen hundred foot.

Daugerutis could have
mustered twenty thousand warriors on his own but he wanted the
other dukes to be a part of his war, not least because if they were
creating havoc in Livonia it meant that his own borders were
secure. As he and they stood watching the unending line of horsemen
file across the river he looked behind him at the white walls of
Kokenhusen in the distance. How accommodating of their bishop to
give him the funds that had allowed him to bribe them. Perkunas was
surely smiling on him and his venture.

He looked at the young
man with a long face sitting beside Stecse.

‘You are a lucky boy,
Mindaugas,’ he said to him. ‘To be alive at this auspicious
time.’

‘Yes, lord. Thank
you,’ replied Mindaugas nervously. He was overawed at being in the
company of Lithuania’s great warlords. For their part they were
bored and cold.

‘I need one of those
virgins to warm me up,’ remarked Kitenis irreverently.

Gedvilas laughed.
‘They are sacred, you old goat. You will have to settle for a Liv
slave to keep the cold away from your old bones.’

‘Perhaps the Bishop of
Riga will buy them back a second time,’ remarked Butantas.

‘There will be no
Livonia,’ stated Daugerutis. ‘We are here to stay.’

To bring his plan to
fruition he had prepared the campaign carefully and had stationed
an additional three thousand men to the south of the river, in his
own territory, to safeguard the crossing point over the Dvina. He
knew that he and the other dukes had no siege equipment with which
to take the castles of the crusaders. But he gambled that he could
besiege those along the Dvina with foot soldiers while his horsemen
ravaged the countryside. With the bishop in Germany and with no
hope of relief, they would have no alternative but to
surrender.

When the six thousand,
three hundred horsemen had passed over and were led by the grand
duke towards Kokenhusen to begin the investment of that place, the
other dukes in attendance, Stecse remained at the river to oversee
the crossing of over thirteen and half thousand foot soldiers. They
wore fur-lined leather caps for both warmth and protection and
kaftans over long tunics. The bottoms of their leggings were
secured by leather thongs, their feet already soaked due to hours
of trudging through mud. The lucky ones, those who could afford
them, wore leather boots and mail armour and might even have a
sword. But the vast majority of these warrior farmers were armed
only with a spear and an axe tucked in their belts. A small number,
professional huntsmen, carried bows and quivers full of arrows and
others shouldered clubs and maces, including a variety of the
latter named
kistien
: a ball-and-chain weapon that without
training could be just as lethal to its owner as well as an
opponent.

The army camped around
Kokenhusen the first night, Daugerutis and the other dukes taking
shelter in the village nearest the castle, the inhabitants having
fled to the fortress upon hearing of the approach of the
Lithuanians. The grand duke was pleased. The more Livs who flocked
to the castles of the Sword Brother the quicker their food supplies
would be exhausted.

The next day, after
leaving five hundred of his own men to besiege Kokenhusen, under
strict orders not to launch an assault, the grand duke rode west
with the other dukes to besiege the other Christian castles long
the Dvina: Lennewarden, Uexkull and Holm. Seven days after crossing
the river he had those places and Kokenhusen besieged and led the
other dukes and his horsemen for an attack north against Caupo.

*****

The Lithuanian
invasion had produced a flurry of messages between the castles of
the Sword Brothers and Riga. Archdeacon Stefan ordered the
immediate closing of the town gates, much to the alarm of those
German settlers and Livs who lived beyond Riga’s walls.

Soon there was a great
crowd clamouring to be let into the town, mothers holding up
weeping infants, imploring the bishop’s guards on the walls to at
least save their children. It was a pitiful spectacle that moved
even the hardest hearts but Stefan would not relent and so the
crowd increased in size and the wailing below them moved the guards
to tears. In the end Grand Master Volquin stormed from his office
in the castle and gave the order to open the gates, an action that
earned him an immediate summons to the bishop’s palace.

Stefan was in an
agitated state as he paced up and down in front of the grand master
in the audience chamber of the bishop’s residence, fidgeting
nervously with his pectoral cross. Volquin stood before him with
his arms folded. He noticed that the archdeacon’s pectoral cross
was now solid gold, as was the chain. Stefan had no time for the
virtue of poverty, it seemed.

‘You should not have
opened the gates, grand master, not at all.’

Volquin raised an
eyebrow. ‘The Lithuanians are not upon us yet, archdeacon, so there
was no danger.’

Stefan’s eyes opened
wide. ‘No danger? May I remind you that the town’s food supplies
are low after the winter and can hardly support the influx of a
great number of civilians.’

‘They have brought
what food they had with them,’ stated Volquin.

Stefan walked back to
his chair and began fidgeting with the silk-covered arms. ‘Food
that will be consumed soon enough.’

Volquin moved closer
to him. ‘Archdeacon, it would be bad for morale if, when, the
Lithuanians arrive the garrison was forced to watch civilians being
butchered by them. You have to remember that people who live in
Riga have relatives beyond the walls. We cannot abandon them.’

‘And where are the
heathen Lithuanians?’

‘They encircled
Kokenhusen a week ago, Lennewarden three days later and arrived
before Uexkull yesterday. They will be here in four or five
days.’

Stefan crossed
himself. ‘The Lord save us.’

Volquin sighed. ‘The
walls of Riga are thick enough to deter an assault, archdeacon. In
any case the last despatch I had from Kokenhusen indicated that the
Lithuanian strategy is to sit outside the walls and starve the
occupants into surrender.

Stefan went pale. ‘The
last despatch from Kokenhusen? Has the castle fallen?’

Volquin wanted to
laugh at this absurd little man whom the bishop had made
governor.

‘No, archdeacon, it
has not fallen. Nor will it. And that is the same for all the other
castles of my order that are surrounded by the Lithuanians. My
castellans are men of iron, not rotten wood. But the Lithuanians
will ensure that no messages leave the garrisons or enter. They use
hawks to kill the courier pigeons.’

Stefan tightened his
lips. ‘Barbarians. They must be made to pay for their
treachery.’

He looked at Volquin.
‘You will be organising a relief force, I assume?’

‘Relief force?’

Stefan frowned at him.
‘To save our castles along the Dvina.’

Volquin shook his
head. ‘I have too few men, archdeacon, even counting those knights
who remained here during the winter. Master Griswold at Kokenhusen
reported that thousands of Lithuanians crossed the river. That is
why they can lay siege to each castle.’

‘Then what is your
plan, grand master?’

‘I have sent letters
to King Caupo to bring his warriors to Riga. Combined with our own
forces we will have enough to defeat the Lithuanians. After that
those enemy soldiers besieging our castles will disappear as
quickly as snow in spring.’

Stefan was not
convinced. ‘Caupo? We leave the safety of the whole of Livonia in
the hands of a pagan?’

‘
King
Caupo,’
said Volquin firmly, ‘is a friend and ally of the bishop. I have
fought by his side and he is a good man. I trust him
implicitly.’

Stefan rose from his
chair once more to recommence his pacing. ‘You would be well
advised not to trust anyone in this land, grand master. I trusted
Prince Vsevolod and look where that has got me. The bishop has made
a peace with the heathen Lembit but will he honour it? I think not.
The only thing we can trust in this land is our own kind and God’s
mercy.’

‘Our own kind?’
queried Volquin.

Stefan waved a hand in
the air. ‘Christians from Germany and other godly lands, of course.
They will supplant the natives and then we will have a truly
god-fearing kingdom, free from Livs, Estonians and Lithuanians and
all the other dross that we currently have to endure.’

Volquin raised an
eyebrow. ‘That is the bishop’s view?’

‘The bishop’s time is
devoted to enlisting knights and funds for his holy crusade in
Livonia. He leaves the day-to-day running of the kingdom to
me.’

‘How fortunate he is,’
remarked Volquin dryly.

Stefan, who stopped
pacing, noted his tone. ‘That being the case, I would prefer that
it was a Christian army that defeated the Lithuanians, not one
filled with Livs.’

‘King Caupo and his
men are Christians, archdeacon.’

‘That is a matter open
to debate,’ sneered Stefan.

But whatever Stefan
may have thought of Caupo and his Livs he and they did not want for
courage. Upon hearing of the Lithuanian invasion the king gathered
his chiefs and marched south to do battle with Grand Duke
Daugerutis. The castellans of Segewold, Kremon and Wenden were
ordered to fortify their strongholds and await reinforcements.
Ideally Volquin would have liked to have ordered Caupo to do
likewise but he had no authority over the Liv king, and in any case
he understood that Caupo could not stand by idly while the
Lithuanians were overrunning his people. And so he marched from
Treiden at the head of three thousand men, including Thalibald and
his eldest son Waribule, and met Daugerutis in battle by the shore
of Lake Inesis, some sixty miles east of Riga. The king and his men
fought well but at the end of the day the lake and its western
shore were filled with Liv dead. Daugerutis brought four thousand
horse and eight thousand foot soldiers to the battlefield and Caupo
and his men were simply overwhelmed by a Lithuanian tide. The king
was resigned to die fighting among the remnants of his army but
Thalibald physically put him on a horse and ordered what remained
of Caupo’s bodyguard to take their king back to Treiden. Caupo was
in tears as he looked back to see the banner of Thalibald fall
beneath a mass of Lithuanians.