Conrad walked with Kaja from Ilona’s hut where she had once more been housed to the training field, where brother knights practised jousting on horseback, sergeants shot crossbow bolts at straw targets and Brother Lukas stood in front of a dozen novices with a sword in his hand. Now in his forties, Lukas still had broad shoulders, thick arms and a powerful neck and looked exactly the same when a nervous young novice named Conrad Wolff had first stood before him with a wooden sword in his hand. Lukas saw the pair approaching.
‘So,’ he called, ‘come to sharpen your sword skills, Brother Conrad?’
Conrad told Kaja to stand by the novice on the right of the line as he stepped forward and offered his hand to Lukas.
‘They do not need sharpening, brother, for I had a master tutor who taught me everything a swordsman needs to know.’
Lukas smiled. ‘Apart from humility.’
‘Then with all humility I ask you for a favour, brother.’ Conrad turned and looked at Kaja. ‘I would ask that you teach this young woman how to use a sword.’
The novices heard his words and began grumbling among themselves.
‘Silence!’ spat Lukas.
‘I realise that my request is unusual,’ acknowledge Conrad, ‘but she saved my life in battle and wishes to learn how to use a sword. I believe that God sent her to me for a purpose.’
Lukas looked at Kaja and the frowning, unhappy novices beside her. ‘She has fought in battle? Is your army so deficient in men that you have to get women to fight for you?’
‘She insisted and at the time I needed every spear I could muster,’ said Conrad.
Lukas stroked his close-cropped blonde beard, nodding at the novices. ‘They will not like it. However, I think I can use the presence of a girl to make them more attentive. I assume she speaks little German.’
‘Almost none,’ said Conrad.
Lukas pointed at Kaja and spoke her language. ‘Girl, come here.’
Kaja scurried over to them.
‘This is Brother Lukas,’ Conrad told her, ‘and is willing to teach you how to use a sword properly. This is a great honour and you must promise to obey him at all times.’
‘Yes,
Susi
,’ beamed Kaja.
Lukas was perplexed. ‘
Susi
?’
‘The name of the ancient wolf that protected the forest in days when the gods walked the earth,’ she said. ‘
Susi
came to us when we were in peril and has saved us from the evil foreigners.’
Lukas raised an eyebrow. ‘Be that as it may, I will only teach you if you accept baptism into the Holy Church.’
Kaja grinned again. ‘Of course.’
‘Do you know what baptism is, Kaja?’ Conrad asked her.
‘No,
Susi
,’ she answered.
Lukas laughed. ‘Otto will be delighted that a convert shows such faith.’
Otto baptised her in the cold waters of the Gauja to cleanse her pagan soul, and so as the days passed and the temperatures dropped Kaja joined the novices receiving tuition from Lukas. Her eagerness to learn and her inability to understand the verbal barbs directed at her from the other students overcame the strained atmosphere that accompanied her first month. After a while the male novices accorded her a grudging respect as she showed herself a capable student who was willing to take knocks and falls without complaint.
In December the Gauja froze and the garrison of Wenden celebrated the birth of Christ. The stonemasons, their task largely complete now that the castle was all but finished, carved a headstone for Johann’s grave. It was set in place one sunny, freezing morning under a clear blue sky and a brilliant sun. Conrad stood with Anton and Hans as the simple dolostone tombstone was placed next to the earth mound. Walter and Rudolf stood opposite the three friends as Otto finished prayers, made the sign of the cross and then walked away.
‘What does it say?’ asked Conrad, looking at the carved stone.
‘Here lies Brother Johann, knight of the Order of the Sword Brothers, who died fighting for Christ and his angels.’
‘Basely killed by fellow Christians,’ insisted Conrad.
Rudolf heard him. ‘Do not worry, Conrad. In the new year we will be holding the Danes to account for their actions at the Pala. That I promise. But before then you must learn to read and write. It is unbecoming for the Marshal of Estonia to be illiterate.’
That winter was the hardest that Conrad had ever endured in Livonia. Not because of the harsh frosts and freezing temperatures that turned the rivers and streams into iron-hard winter roads, or the long patrols that numbed hands and faces and froze swords in scabbards. No, the hard, remorseless lessons under the stern eyes of Master Thaddeus held in his office were pure torture. Conrad would have preferred facing hundreds of pagans alone and with death a certainty rather than try to fathom the strange symbols on the parchments that were placed before him. As the settlers shivered in their huts and tossed peat blocks on their meagre fires in an attempt to keep warm, their children wrapped in furs, and Kaja wielded a wooden waster every day, enduring the sarcasm of the other novices, Conrad learned to read and write. Thaddeus was a patient and considerate teacher and after three months sitting in the engineer’s office on a daily basis he had achieved a modicum of literacy.
On a cold, miserable February day, with deep snow covering the land, Conrad stood alone in the cemetery and wiped away the tears as he read the words on the gravestone of his wife and child, saying the words aloud as he recited them again and again. He sank to his knees and thanked God for giving him this great gift of reading but he saved his most earnest and heartfelt prayer for Master Thaddeus, asking that the old, cantankerous engineer be rewarded with a place in heaven. And he also asked for victory in the coming war with the Danes, when he would avenge the death of Johann and send Count Henry to hell.
‘Semgallia?’
Conrad nearly dropped his cup of wine when Rudolf informed him where Wenden’s soldiers would be heading in the coming days.
‘The bishop gathers an army at Holm to cross the Dvina once more,’ replied Rudolf, indicating to Conrad to hold out his cup so the master could refill it.
‘There are a number of siege engines there that Master Thaddeus will play with when we recross the river. My question to you, Marshal of Estonia, is will your Estonian warriors be willing to accompany us in our war against the Semgallians? The bishop desires to gather as many men as possible so we may have a quick victory.’
During the winter there had been many courier pigeons flying to and from Riga and the castles of the Sword Brothers to alert the castellans of the bishop’s plans.
‘They are loyal, master,’ replied Conrad, ‘but they look to our order to liberate their lands.’
‘You can inform your warlords that once the Semgallians have been taught a lesson the bishop intends to march north and liberate Jerwen and Rotalia.’
‘An ambitious plan,’ remarked Conrad.
‘The bishop believes that the Semgallians must be punished,’ said Rudolf, ‘and I agree with him.’
‘And the Danes?’
Rudolf’s expression hardened. ‘They too will learn that it is unwise to incur the wrath of the Sword Brothers.’
Conrad told Andres, Hillar and Tonis of the bishop’s intentions immediately after the meeting with Master Rudolf. None of them knew where Semgallia was.
‘It is south of the River Dvina,’ Conrad told them as they all stood round the campfire in the Army of the Wolf’s camp.
‘We are to march south, not north?’ said Hillar.
‘For the first part of the campaign, yes,’ said Conrad. ‘But after the bishop has taken the great fort of the enemy he has promised to march north to free Rotalia and Jerwen.’
‘We are sworn to your service,
Susi
,’ stated Andres. ‘Where you go, we go.’
‘It is as my brothers says,’ added Tonis. ‘My wolf shields have taken an oath of loyalty to you,
Susi
.’
Andres and Hillar nodded in agreement.
‘You have my gratitude,’ said Conrad. ‘Soon, my friends, you will all be back in your homelands.’
He neglected to tell them that the price of freeing their homelands was the conversion of their people to the Holy Church. They probably knew that already, they were not fools, but Conrad comforted himself with the thought that the benign rule of the Bishop of Riga and the Sword Brothers was far better than the savagery of being under the heel of the Oeselians or enduring the tyranny of the Danes. After all, had not both terrorised and persecuted the inhabitants of the lands they had conquered? But in Livonia the indigenous Livs and Letts lived in harmony with the new German settlers under the protection of the Sword Brothers.
‘When do we leave,
Susi
?’ Hillar snapped him out of his daydreaming.
‘In seven days.’
Courier pigeons flew from Riga to each of the order’s castles with Grand Master Volquin’s desire that each garrison provide a certain number of soldiers for the forthcoming campaign: twelve brother knights, thirty sergeants, forty crossbowmen and the same number of spearmen, together with enough supplies to sustain a two-month campaign. So Wenden’s park of carts and wagons, located in the west of the outer perimeter grounds, was emptied as the transports were loaded with food, tents, tools, spare weapons, ammunition and Master Thaddeus’ siege engines.
The old quartermaster general was in an excitable state as his engineers supervised the loading of the constituent parts of the two trebuchets on to four-wheeled wagons. Conrad had been observing Kaja and the novices being put through their paces by Lukas and saw the distinctive lean features of Thaddeus overseeing the loading of wagons in the distance. He left the trainees and walked over to him. The old man’s wispy white beard was almost the same colour as his skin and Conrad wondered how his apparently frail constitution survived Livonia’s winters.
Thaddeus spied him approaching. ‘Ah, Conrad, is your army ready to march?’
‘My warriors travel light, sir. They can be on the move in a matter of hours.’
Thaddeus nodded thoughtfully. ‘Lightly armed pagans can move like a leaf on the wind but we are forced to travel at the speed of an oxen. Logistics is a millstone that we have to endure.’
‘Your machines are not easy to transport over the rutted tracks of this land,’ said Conrad.
Thaddeus pointed at the wagons. ‘These trebuchets are being taken to the Gauja where they will be transported down the river before being unloaded and moved to Riga and then Holm.’
‘The bishop means to batter Mesoten into submission.’
Thaddeus rubbed his hands. ‘These two machines pale into insignificance when compared to the trebuchet that currently resides at Holm. I sent Master Godfrey detailed specifications regarding its construction and the grand master despatched engineers from Riga to carry out its assembly. I based the design on the trebuchet employed at Acre all those years ago. That was a mighty siege.’
‘No mangonels?’ asked Conrad.
Thaddeus rolled his eyes. ‘They are also being assembled at Holm. They are simple machines and easy to build. I just hope that Master Godfrey has remembered to stockpile suitable ammunition. There is no point in having siege engines if they do not have any ammunition. I think I will write a missive that a pigeon can take to Riga. It is just the sort of thing that gets overlooked amidst the chaos that surrounds preparing for a campaign.’
He nodded and went to walk away.
‘I wanted to thank you sir,’ said Conrad.
Thaddeus stopped and looked at him. ‘Thank me, for what?’
‘For teaching me to read and write.’
Thaddeus raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You know the rudiments, that is all, Brother Conrad. You must practise if you are to become proficient.’
‘Even so,’ said Conrad, ‘what I learned from you allowed me to read the words on the headstone of my wife’s and son’s grave. And for that I am in your eternal debt.’
Thaddeus looked kindly at him. ‘Well, I am glad to have been a part of such an important quest.’ He raised an eyebrow again. ‘Even if you were a difficult student. Now if you will excuse me.’
He turned and walked in the direction of the castle as his engineers continued to load the various parts of the trebuchets on the wagons.
Conrad thought of Daina and Dietmar as his Estonians and the garrison of Wenden struggled south towards Holm trying to traverse flooded meadows and pass through the damp undergrowth of forests of oak, spruce, elm and maple. The bog forests of pine were avoided altogether as men, animals and wagons could sink without trace in the dark, stinking pools that filled them. Liv guides led the way, tracing a meandering path through a land that was drenched but also bursting into life after the frozen desolation of winter. The meadows were filled with buttercups, the forest floor covered with bilberries and cowberries and fungi sprouted around the lower reaches of tree trunks.
Nature was stirring and as well as the profusion of growing flowers and plants the forest was filled with the grunts of wild boar, the bleats of elk and the tapping of white-backed woodpeckers. The skies were filled with black storks, lesser-spotted eagles, black grouse, corncrakes and great snipe. The mornings were mostly sunny but cool, the afternoons often cloudy and wet. The rivers were at their peak, filled with meltwater, moving rapidly over effervescent rapids and providing the army with cool, fresh drinking water. However, though water was in abundance it was also a major hindrance, and after two days of achieving a miserable daily rate of advance of four miles, Master Rudolf called a meeting in his tent following vespers and supper.