The Sword Brothers (111 page)

Conrad was finding it
difficult to breathe, pressed between dead Oeselians and live Sword
Brothers, and he could not move his arms. He tried to turn his
head, to no avail, but from his vision slits he saw that Hans was
still beside him.

‘Keep breathing,
Hans,’ he shouted at his friend. Hans did not move. Pray God he
still lived.

The quick-thinking
leather face located in the tower closest to the siege tower saved
the day. He and his men shot their bolts at the Oeselians filing
into the tower, loosing quarrels at a rate of four a minute, the
iron heads going straight through wooden shields. Soon there was a
great heap of Oeselian dead to the immediate rear of the tower,
making it difficult for reinforcements to join their comrades on
the battlements. The crossbowmen were shooting forty bolts a
minute, the great majority of which hit flesh and bone. Not even
the feared sea pirates of the Baltic could withstand such a deluge
and soon they were streaming back to camp, leaving their comrades
still fighting in the fort to their fate.

When the last
Oeselians had been cut down and thrown from the battlements Conrad
pulled off his helmet and sank to his knees, shoving the dead enemy
warrior away. He gulped in the icy air to fill his lungs. He raised
a hand to Hans who had likewise removed his headgear and looked
deathly pale. Anton slapped him on the back.

‘Still in one
piece?’

He was so exhausted
and short of breath that he could not answer, managing only a
forced smile as Anton hauled him to his feet and Johann pulled Hans
up. Conrad wiped his sword on his cloak and slid it back into its
scabbard as feeling slowly returned to his arms and hands. Hans was
leaning against the top of the wall, shaking his head.

‘I thought we would be
crushed to death. Another few minutes and I would have passed
out.’

‘Look lively!’

Conrad groaned as he
heard Henke’s voice and saw the brother knight picking up dead
Oeselians and throwing them off the walkway out of the fort.

‘Get this path cleared
before they come again,’ he barked.

Anton and Johann
stepped forward and began tossing dead men from the battlements,
assisted by a number of sergeants, as Conrad and Hans, still weak,
watched.

But the enemy did not
attack again that day. It began snowing as the dusk came, the wind
producing swirling patterns of snowflakes in the dim light. The men
on the battlements wrapped their cloaks around them as the
temperature dropped and they stamped their feet and rubbed their
hands to keep warm. Braziers were brought to the battlements and
towers to warm the garrison. Henke suggested setting alight the
siege tower that the Oeselians had used to enter the fort but Kalju
was worried that to do so would cause the timber wall to catch
fire, which Thaddeus thought unlikely. So that night Rudolf, Henke
and a dozen sergeants went across the ramp and smashed the ladders
and floorboards inside the tower. Finally they cut away the ramp
itself and hauled it into the fort for firewood.

The fort had been
assaulted by six siege towers in total, all of them now lying still
beyond the walls. Three had been struck several times by barrels of
burning pitch before they had reached the walls and had been
abandoned. One had managed to reach the western wall where the
Sword Brothers had managed to repel the attackers at minimum cost,
though the two assaulting the eastern wall had managed to escape
Master Thaddeus’ mangonels to reach the ramparts. Fierce fighting
had ensued as Sir Richard and Kalju fought desperately with their
men to prevent the battlements being taken. Once more crossbowmen
in the flanking towers had proved decisive and the Russians had
been destroyed, but not before Kalju had lost fifty men and Sir
Richard thirty knights and fifteen squires in the fighting.
Fortunately Wenden had lost none of its brother knights.

That night, as a light
snowfall covered the dozens of bodies in and around the moat and
behind the siege towers, the Ungannian women brought those freezing
on the battlements food. Eha cooked porridge over a brazier and
handed it out to Conrad and his fellow brother knights and the
sergeants.

‘How are the
children?’ he asked as she filled his bowl with another ladle of
thick porridge.

‘Frightened,’ she
said, trying to smile, her eyes full of concern.

‘The enemy threw their
entire strength at us today,’ he replied. ‘They will need time to
recover. Do not fear.’

‘For myself I have no
fear,’ she said defiantly, ‘but I could weep for the young mothers
who may not see their babies take their first steps.’

‘Is there any more?’
said Hans, holding out his empty bowl.

Eha looked guilty. ‘We
have to ration the food, Master Thaddeus’ orders.’

Hans looked at his
empty bowl.

‘Here,’ said Conrad,
handing him his, ‘can’t have you starving to death.’

Hans’ eyes lit up.
‘Your reward will be in heaven, my friend.’

‘That’s his third
bowl,’ said Anton. ‘I think we should send Hans to raid the enemy’s
food supplies. He could eat them all up by himself.’

No one said anything
more about food supplies, though the hundreds of men, women and
children crammed into the fort would be consuming them at an
alarming rate, especially as the freezing conditions increased the
pangs of hunger.

After evening prayers
Conrad returned to his place on the wall. He placed his blanket on
the boards and wrapped himself in his cloak and attempted to sleep
while Hans stood guard. It was still snowing lightly and the wind
was still blowing from the east, an icy blast that made the eyes
water. He was tired, though, and when he closed his eyes he
instantly fell asleep. He slept for four hours, though when Anton’s
foot nudged him awake it seemed like he had been in slumber for a
matter of seconds. He rose slowly, his neck aching from the cold.
He immediately felt the cold blast of the wind on his face as he
slowly rose to his feet.

‘The wind’s picked
up.’

Anton, a thick
fur-lined cap on his head, nodded. ‘At least it’s stopped
snowing.’

It was two hours
before dawn when Conrad began his watch. He tied the flaps of his
own cap under his chin and began pacing up and down to try to keep
warm, clutching his cloak around him. The walkway was filled with
sleeping brother knights and sergeants, with others standing guard
like him. After twenty minutes or so he felt snowflakes striking
his face as the wind increased, rattling the shingle roofs of the
watchtowers. The air suddenly filled with thick flakes as the wind
began howling and he could see no more than ten paces in front of
him. He put his chin to his chest and his back to the wind to avoid
getting frostbite, for prolonged exposure of the skin in such
conditions could lead to the loss of a nose. Fortunately he still
wore his mail mittens and Rudolf had ordered that everyone wear a
pair of felt boots to prevent their toes freezing. But he was still
cold.

The time passed
slowly. He stamped his feet, moved his arms around to maintain his
circulation and squinted as he peered ahead into the whiteout
beyond the fort. Nothing. Snowflakes went into his beard and eyes
and he considered putting on his helmet when he spotted something
out of the corner of his eye: movement on top of the wall. He
rubbed his eyes. He was still tired and the blizzard made it almost
impossible to see anything. He stared at the top of the seasoned
timber, his eyes trying to focus as a multitude of snowflakes
swirled in front of him. He could see the ends of two poles
sticking up. How odd. Then his feelings of cold disappeared as his
stomach churned in horror. A scaling ladder!

He gripped the handle
of his sword and tried to pull it as he stepped forward. The sword
was frozen solid in its scabbard!

‘Get up!’ he shouted
at the figures of his three friends huddled in their capes against
the wall. ‘We are under attack! Get up!’

He kicked at the
figures before taking his axe from his belt and peering over the
wall where the scaling ladder was resting. He held up his shield to
ward off the snow flurries and saw the top of a helmet, then a
bearded face staring up at him. Then he split the man’s skull with
his axe. There was a scream and the enemy fell off the ladder into
the snow-filled blackness. Another figure appeared, thrusting a
spear up at him as he clutched a rung with his left hand. The point
narrowly missed Conrad’s face as he pulled back to avoid the blow,
just as Hans and Johann pushed the top of the ladder away from the
wall to send it collapsing to the ground.

Using the cover of the
blizzard the enemy had mounted an audacious assault on the fort, on
every side placing scaling ladders against the walls to capture
Odenpah. The Oeselians walked across the frozen lake to scale the
previously unmolested northern ramparts, as the Estonians once
again threw themselves against the western wall and the Russians
stepped over their own dead to try to storm the southern and
eastern ramparts. There was renewed fighting all along the fort’s
outer wall, though the conditions that had allowed the attackers to
approach the fort undetected also worked against them. Several
parties of Oeselians got lost in the blizzard during their trek
across the frozen lake and never reached the fort, twenty men
freezing to death as they wandered around on the ice and never left
the lake. Hundreds of
Voi
waited at the bottom of ladders as
their comrades battled on the ramparts above, many, weakened from
inadequate rations and deficient clothing, collapsing from exposure
before they even climbed the ladders.

A wolf shield speared
a sergeant who collapsed to the floor and then toppled from the
walkway. Conrad swung his axe and smashed the man’s jawbone,
jumping forward to barge his shield into the legs of another of
Lembit’s warriors standing on the top of the parapet. The blow
toppled him backwards over the wall and to his death as Conrad
waited for the next wolf shield to appear, who was promptly
skewered by Henke’s spear. Conrad nodded to him and they both
grabbed the top of the ladder and pushed it away from the wall.

Conrad turned to the
man with the bloody jaw and began raining axe blows on the back of
his neck – one, two, six, a dozen. He severed it from the torso and
kicked it into the fort below. He saw the insignia on the shield,
spat on it and tossed it over the battlements.

The fighting was over
now, brother knights and sergeants standing resting on their
shields and talking to each other. The wind had dropped markedly
though it was still snowing heavily. The dawn broke cold and
overcast, the dark grey clouds overhead ready to unload yet more
snow on the earth. Visibility was once again reduced as the snow
fell uninterrupted and once more men stood to arms on the
battlements.

‘For Lembit to send
his best warriors against us can mean only one thing,’ Rudolf said
to Conrad as they stood looking out into the snowfall. ‘His losses
must be high.’

He looked round at the
exhausted figures in their ripped surcoats and torn mail. ‘Though
he is not alone in suffering casualties.’

That morning a council
of war was held in Kalju’s hall. Conrad was ordered to attend and
he noticed that the men who sat round the table in the smoky room
all looked drained and listless. Sir Richard had thick stubble on
his dirty cheeks, Rudolf had black rings round his eyes, Bertram
had a hacking cough and Mathias a heavily bandaged left arm. For
the first time since he had arrived at Odenpah, Thaddeus looked
uncertain. Conrad acted as his translator as he listed the dire
state of the fort’s food supplies, which would last no more than
two weeks.

‘After that.’ He
spread his hands to indicate he knew not what would happen.

Kalju said that he
would order the slaughter of the pigs, goats and ponies.

‘I have already taken
that into account, sir,’ said Thaddeus.

‘What about arrows and
bolts?’ asked Rudolf.

‘We are down to twenty
bolts for each crossbowman,’ reported Thaddeus.

‘That few?’ said a
startled Mathias.

‘Repelling the siege
towers expended a great deal of ammunition,’ replied Thaddeus
flatly. He looked at Kalju.

‘Those of my archers
still alive are in a worse condition.’

‘We have enough men
and ammunition to defeat one more enemy assault, then,’ said Sir
Richard.

No one spoke for a few
seconds. Conrad looked around at the women, children and elderly
who filled the hall: tired expressions, the look of fear in their
eyes, like caged animals that know there is no escape.

Kalju looked at the
Christians. ‘I know that you came here because I asked you to, but
I cannot ask you to stay and die if there is no hope. This is our
home but it is not yours.’

Bertram looked kindly
at him. ‘You appealed for help, lord, and the Sword Brothers
answered that call. We will not abandon an ally in his hour of
need.’

‘I’ve never run away
from a fight in my life,’ announced Sir Richard, ‘and I don’t
intend to start now.’

Kalju’s hard face
cracked a smile. ‘I thank you all. Let us get some rest before the
next enemy attack.’

*****

‘There will be no more
attacks,’ sniffed Domash as he sat huddled in his tent, drinking
warmed ale, ‘or at least no more Russian attacks.’

He cast Sigurd, Jaak
and Lembit glances. ‘You three may go your own way. I have lost too
many men.’

‘That is because you
have more men to lose,’ said Sigurd. ‘One more assault and the fort
will fall.’

Domash laughed. ‘One
more attack and I will have lost half my men.’

‘We have all lost
men,’ said Lembit.

‘We will starve them
out,’ hissed Domash. ‘Not even the Sword Brothers can live without
food.’