Iny Lorentz - The Marie Series 02 (5 page)

“My sentiments exactly, master.” With a pleased smile on his face, Timo walked back to his men anxiously awaiting his return, and they gave three cheers for their captain before lining up to collect their coins. Michel was relieved when he heard the cheers, as it meant that his disagreements with the knights had increased his standing with his people instead of lowering it. Now, the men would follow him anywhere.

When the sun stood low above the horizon, a stir went through the camp because the kaiser had come from Nuremberg to welcome the new arrivals, and soldiers came running to gaze at him. Riding at Sigismund’s side was Friedrich, the burgrave of Nuremberg, who had good reason for his loyalty since the kaiser had enfeoffed him with the Mark of Brandenburg. To the disappointment of the soldiers, however, none of the other important lords made an appearance. Michel was sorely let down because he’d expected to meet the count palatine here and, like the others, he had hoped to meet more of the powerful nobles here. Yet during the previous few years, many of those lords had under various pretexts refused to support the kaiser to force concessions from him, and it looked as though they were again playing that same game.

Michel was still deep in thought when a long shadow fell over him.

“I know you from somewhere!” Sigismund von Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, king of Hungary, Duke of Brabant, Duke of Silesia, margrave of Moravia, and kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, was standing in front of him and looking at him expectantly.

At first glance, Michel noticed that the kaiser had aged far more than the ten years since their last encounter. Reaching down to his chest, the kaiser’s long beard was now streaked with gray and appeared as disheveled and unkempt as the hair on his head. His face was more haggard, and expressions flitted quickly across his face, ranging from deep exhaustion, and even hopelessness, to boundless optimism, then back to a somber pensiveness. Grim lines around his mouth told of various disappointments, for many of which, Michel assumed, Sigismund had only himself to blame for his gruff demeanor and indecisiveness. On top of his light armor, the kaiser wore a red surcoat reaching almost to the ground, embroidered with black and golden eagles, lions, and other blazonries, as was appropriate for this important dignitary and ruler of many countries. Yet time had taken its toll even on the kaiser’s clothes, although they were still made from magnificent and finely worked cloth.

Michel quickly bent his knee. “Michel Adler at your service, Your Majesty. I was one of the palatine captains at the Council of Constance.”

“Oh yes, I remember. You’re the lad who married the merchant’s daughter who had been wrongly convicted.” The kaiser nodded with satisfaction, affably patted Michel’s shoulder, and followed him to the palatine pikemen. Some of the men were still in the women’s tents or at the taverns, but the kaiser liked what he saw.

“Lightly armored, flexible infantry is precisely what we need in the fight against the Hussites, Michel. If you’d brought a thousand of them, I’d make you a knight of the Reich and give you a nice fiefdom.”

“Unfortunately, it’s only a hundred and twenty, my lord.” Michel smiled in surprise at the kaiser’s exuberance.

“Very well,” the kaiser muttered, and took his leave with another friendly pat. Michel was rather bewildered. The odds must truly be against Sigismund’s cause if he was this excited by the arrival of a hundred foot soldiers and greeted their untitled leader like an old friend.

Michel’s eyes followed the kaiser, so he didn’t see the dark looks the palatine knights were sending his way from their camp farther downstream. Falko von Hettenheim would have given half of everything he owned for a single glance from the kaiser, and he was boiling with rage at the attention Sigismund had lavished on Michel.

Godewin von Berg stepped to Hettenheim’s side and shrugged. “I hope our attitude during the march won’t get us in trouble, since apparently Michel Adler has influential friends.”

The comment didn’t do much to soothe Falko’s anger. Turning away without saying a word, Falko walked over to Gunter von Losen, who despised the innkeeper’s son almost as much as he did.

6.

Sigismund had originally intended to wait until a sufficiently large army had gathered in Nuremberg, but just over a week after Michel’s arrival, messengers on horses covered in white froth raced into town, bearing terrible news. Several Hussite columns had attacked the Meissen district, Austria, and the Upper Palatinate, and one of their armies was headed straight for Nuremberg.

When Michel heard the news, he began to understand why the kingdom’s great men weren’t here. For the kaiser’s
son-in
-law
, Albrecht V of Austria, his own cities were more important than Sigismund’s Bohemian crown; likewise, the elector of Saxony also chose to defend his territory rather than leaving it exposed to the enemy. But because they were each putting their own interests first, the lords were dividing their forces instead of crushing the Bohemians with their combined power.

Michel had little time to worry about the muddled situation, however, because soldiers started assembling in the meadows along the Pegnitz over the following two days, indicating an imminent departure. As a result, he told Timo to keep his men away from wine and to prepare for a hasty decampment, which was just as well because the very next morning bugles and trumpets announced their departure, and the kaiser rode through the castle gates at the head of his men.

In contrast to his previous camp appearance, this time the kaiser was dressed in great splendor. His plate armor was a marvel and fitted him perfectly. The gold inlay on his arm and leg guards sparkled in the light of the morning sun, as did his helmet topped with a golden crown, and his coat displayed a large leaping lion that had been stitched underneath the Reich’s eagle in gold thread, indicating that Sigismund was marching first and foremost as king of Bohemia.

Burgrave Friedrich and the other nobles were also armored as if battle were nigh. But they didn’t seem to know whether to be glad the army was finally on the move, or regret the small number of soldiers accompanying them into war. Following the kaiser were just over five hundred armored knights and fifteen hundred horsemen and foot soldiers. Joining them was a baggage train of several dozen large oxcarts and their drivers, along with cooks, army surgeons, craftsmen, and hundreds of servants, camp prostitutes, and itinerant merchants, all of whom fell in line behind Michel’s troops.

The kaiser had made the Frankish knight Heribald von Seibelstorff captain of the foot soldiers. A thickset,
middle-aged
man with a round face framed by a red beard, he seemed a brave warrior with great experience in his plain but perfectly fitting black armor. So far, however, he’d only glanced at the kaiser’s mercenaries and the rest of the foot soldiers while uttering a few insulting remarks. To him, war was only war when it was a knightly combat of two armored forces; serfs and mercenaries had no place in it.

The knight continued to ignore the men. He hadn’t even bothered organizing a march formation, but instead let Provost Marshal Gisbert Pauer bring order to the ragtag infantry of which no more than a dozen came from the same place, except for Michel’s Palatinates. Pauer, too, gave few and brief orders to the often
self-proclaimed
leaders of the individual groups, then rode back to the head of the procession to be close to the kaiser. As a result, there was no officer keeping an eye on the people.

Timo, marching next to Michel’s horse, furiously twisted his hands around his pike and stared ahead in disbelief. Finally, he shook his head. “Please tell me, master, how is the kaiser planning on winning a war with this mob of chickens? They’ll make a run for it at the first Bohemian’s fart.”

“Now, now, Timo! This army isn’t that bad. I’m sure the ranks will tighten during the long march.”

His servant cleared his throat and spat on the side of the road. “Forgive me, master, but while in Nuremberg, I heard many stories about the Hussites, and apparently, those blasphemous bastards have won every battle thus far. Would you like me to list the skirmishes and battles in which they routed proud and noble knights?”

Michel waved dismissively, but Timo wasn’t to be stopped, showering his master in a stream of names; battles the Hussites won, cities pillaged and burned to the ground, and the knights from old,
well-known
houses who met an inglorious fate under the spears and spiked maces of the rebels.

“Just last year they flattened the town of Pretz in Austria and butchered everyone who couldn’t flee in time, and apparently hundreds of other towns throughout Austria, Bavaria, and Franconia have shared this fate.” Timo looked up at Michel as if expecting praise for his report, but his master only glared back at him angrily.

“Keep your old wives’ tales to yourself, man. Not a word to our people.” The guilty look on his servant’s face told him that these exaggerated rumors and horror stories were already on everyone’s lips. Though Timo was only repeating what others had said, the gossip flowing through the army was turning a breeze into a firestorm threatening to destroy the Reich.

Two days later, the imperial army had moved eastward from Nuremberg toward the Bohemian Forest, marching between long, densely wooded ridges. They weren’t moving even half as fast as Michel’s troops had traveled on their way to Nuremberg, due mostly to the awkwardness of the wagon train and shoddy materials. At least once every mile, there was an incident. Most often it was just a torn rope needing repair, but then a wheel would come off its axle, and twice they had to load the freight from one
broken-down
cart to another. On the third day, it became clear that the provisions wouldn’t last until they reached Bohemia, and Michel wondered how the kaiser planned to feed an army of around three thousand souls, including noblemen, soldiers, camp followers, and prostitutes. According to Timo’s stories, the Hussites were like locusts, leaving behind such devastation in their wake that not even the survivors of their massacres could find anything to eat.

Before long, Michel had cause to wonder whether Timo’s rumors really were as unfounded as he’d assumed. On the fourth day, the procession came to a standstill, and when Michel stopped his men and hurried to the front to find out the cause, his heart sank with pity at the sight of the miserable characters blocking the road. The horror was still fresh on the faces of the men, women, and children, none of whom was wearing more than a shirt, making their terrible injuries visible to all.

Pleading, they raised their arms. “The Hussites are right behind us! They’ve killed everyone else and burned down our villages. We’re the only ones who got away, thanks to God’s grace.”

This wasn’t entirely true, because the
slow-moving
procession soon came upon several more groups of fugitives, though their reports unsettled even the hardiest warriors. The Hussites had to be devils straight from hell, because they killed their captives in the cruelest ways possible but appeared to be invulnerable themselves through some kind of black magic.

In the early afternoon of the fifth day, smoke columns rose up in the air not far in front of them, most certainly coming from a village that had just been burned down by the Hussites. Shortly thereafter, more peasants came toward them, telling of new atrocities, and the kaiser promptly ordered his commanders to him. Among the men asked to the meeting were Michel and the leader of the Swiss mercenaries, Urs Sprüngli, who had entered the kaiser’s service with a good dozen of his men and was visibly apologetic about the lack of a substantial contingent of troops from his Appenzeller countrymen. Falko von Hettenheim and a few other knights who hadn’t been called rudely pushed past the others until they were right in front of the kaiser.

Sigismund kneaded the pommel of his long sword and repeatedly glanced at the refugees who’d settled down beside the road, considering themselves safe in the protection of the imperial army. “Men, we’ve reached our first destination. The enemy is busy pillaging a village less than an hour in front of us. With God’s help we can surprise these godless Bohemian heretics and destroy them. Let’s leave a small group to protect the wagons and go prepare for battle. We’ll advance as soon as possible.”

Most of the men looked as though they would have preferred to boast of their heroic wartime deeds against the Hussites from the safety of their castles rather than actually meeting them in battle, and so the cheers for the kaiser weren’t overly enthusiastic. Even Michel caught himself wishing he were back at Rheinsobern with his wife.

The army moved barely any faster without the wagons, and by the time they finally reached the village on the banks of a small river, every building was already burned down to its foundations. The Hussites, whose scouts must have been better than their own, had retreated to a flat, bare hilltop not far from the village where their wagons formed an almost impregnable defensive position. Several dozen carts, all of them smaller and more maneuverable than the kaiser’s, had been pushed together to form a barricade, and the rebels had even had time to stuff the gaps with twigs and thorny branches.

The hill’s flanks were too steep for horses in most places, and dense thickets provided the enemy with additional protection. The kaiser reined in his horse, glared at the enemy, and helplessly opened and closed his fists.

Forgetting he was wearing a helmet, Timo tried to scratch his head. “It doesn’t look good, master. We should surround them up there and besiege them, because if we try to take their wagon fort by storm, we’ll lose half of our men just on the way up.”

Michel nodded his agreement at first, then changed his mind. “We don’t have enough provisions, while the Hussites surely found plenty in the village. Also, we don’t have enough men to encircle the hill.”

“Then we’ll need God’s help.”

“In that case, all we can do now is pray and hope for the best!” Michel patted his faithful friend’s shoulder and looked uphill again. Men had come out from behind the wagon fort and were hurling mockery and abuse at the imperial army to provoke them. Though their Czech words were incomprehensible, their gestures were unmistakable, and the few who spoke German yelled down in strong language what they thought of the king and his followers.

Godewin von Berg angrily turned to his peers. “My horse can manage this hill, and if just a hundred of you follow me, we’ll rout this dirty pack.” Without waiting for an answer, he spurred his stallion up the hill. The heavy animal stumbled and struggled with every step, groaning pitifully, but fought its way higher and higher without slipping back. Reaching the wagon fort a short time later, Godewin rode along its side, poking his lance at the men standing on their wagons, waving their pikes and morning stars and staring at him in surprise.

For a few moments, it seemed that the knight’s courage had paralyzed the Bohemians. But then a good dozen of them jumped down and surrounded the attacker. Morning stars crushed the horse’s legs, toppling it, while Godewin was dragged out of the saddle with several hooked pikes and thrown to the ground. Then, ringing sounds echoed down the hill, as if giants were banging sticks against an iron cauldron. The kaiser’s men heard Godewin’s screams, which stopped shortly afterward, and they saw the warhorse rolling on the ground, neighing pathetically. Wild cries for revenge filled the air, and the knights and some of their horsemen stormed ahead without paying heed to the rest of the troops or the shouted orders of their commanders. At first, the horses made good progress, but as it got steeper, the weaker ones soon slowed down, fell, or tumbled backward. Many rolled on top of their riders and took the people following down with them.

Staying behind with his people, Michel could hardly believe his eyes. Couldn’t the noble lords see that their mindless attacks only helped their enemy? By his estimate, there were five Bohemians for each of the attacking knights. The Hussites weren’t wearing any heavy, obstructive armor and were just waiting to beat the helpless knights to death with their
armor-piercing
clubs and morning stars. The kaiser, who had initially hung back, was now moving uphill as well, and behind him, Heribald von Seibelstorff, who was supposed to be commanding the foot soldiers, was forcing his stallion up the steep hillside so as not to be the last knight to meet the enemy.

Michel could easily foretell the coming catastrophe. Jumping off his horse, he drew his sword and pointed its blade at the enemy. “Soldiers, follow me!” He started to run and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that not only his palatine soldiers, but also a large number of the other foot soldiers began to advance. To his right, Urs Sprüngli nodded, swung his
two-handed
sword, and gave a guttural battle cry.

In the following minutes, Michel barely had time to see what was happening above, as he was occupied with trying to climb up the loose, steep hillside, dodging fallen horses that were madly thrashing around, and spurring on his men with wild battle cries. When a loud explosion shook the ground, he looked up in shock and saw a thin cloud of smoke drifting away from one of the wagons. At the same time, he heard the screams of injured men and the horrible sounds of dying horses.

“The filthy pigs have cannons!” Timo shouted next to him. Michel shook his head in disbelief. Cannons were heavy pipes of wrought iron, difficult to transport, capable of breaching castle walls, but unsuited for battle in an open field.

“It must have been thunder!” he shouted back at Timo, then turned to his men, who had stopped in their tracks with fright. “Come on, men! Or do you want to camp here for the night?”

His soldiers followed close on his heels. A minute later there was another bang, and this time Michel saw the piece of artillery. It was attached to one of the wagons and looked almost like a toy compared to the cannons he knew, but its effect was devastating. It appeared the enemies weren’t firing balls of stone, but small pieces of metal that were ripping open large gaps in the German ranks. The line of armored knights had long been broken, and the cannons were scattering the groups still trying to attack. Some of those in front began turning around their exhausted horses and heading back downhill to escape the withering cannon fire. But this only made the confusion worse, and dancing on their wagons, the Hussites waved their weapons in the air.