The Sword Brothers (52 page)

‘Filthy scum.’

‘Good crowd today,’
said Gleb loudly.

They reached the
square that was heaving with people, a priest standing on the
scaffold in the company of four executioners who stood around a
wooden frame that occupied the centre of the scaffold. The crowd
were babbling excitedly but the executioners looked bored. A
viewing platform had been erected directly opposite the scaffold, a
row of seats arranged on the wooden planks. Domash ascended the
steps and took his place in the middle seat, the other chairs being
occupied by the city’s richest boyars and their wives. They rose
when he appeared, smiling and bowing their heads to Pskov’s ruler.
He acknowledged them but was still thinking about the purpose of
the prince’s visit when the ashen-faced prisoner was manhandled
onto the scaffold.

A ripple of
anticipation went through the crowd as he was stripped naked and
ropes fastened around each of his ankles, which were then thrown
over the wooden frame. The chattering and excitement among the
crowd grew louder as the priest began reciting prayers and two of
the executioners pulled on the ropes to hoist the condemned up by
his ankles. Now upside down, ropes were tied around his wrists that
were then secured to hooks on the bottom of the frame’s uprights.
The ropes around his ankles were wrapped around the crossbeam of
the frame so the prisoner was held firmly in place, upside down
with his legs apart.

The chief executioner
turned to look at Domash who nodded his assent. This was the signal
for one of his assistants to pick up a two-handed wood saw that had
been lying on the straw that had been scattered over the scaffold.
He lifted it up and passed it to a second assistant standing on the
other side of the prisoner. They each took a firm grip on the
handles and then began sawing through the condemned, the iron teeth
cutting through his genitals and groin with ease.

The prisoner screamed
loudly and thrashed around as the ghastly sentence was carried out,
blood gushing onto the executioners and priest, the shrieking
drowned out as the crowd erupted in wild cheering and applause. The
wooden frame shook as the prisoner was gripped by superhuman
strength as he tried to escape the awful punishment being visited
upon him. The executioners used measured strokes as they forced the
saw’s teeth through his belly and chest, each stroke ripping out
guts, bits of bone and vital organs as they cut down. Domash never
ceased to be amazed by how much blood a human body contained, most
of which now seemed to be on the fronts of the executioners and the
straw that had been sprayed crimson. The priest had retreated to a
safe distance down the steps that led from the scaffold, the crowd
pelting him with vegetables and snowballs for his cowardice. Then
the prisoner stopped moving as the saw’s teeth cut through his
spinal cord and his torment was over. The guests on the viewing
platform clapped politely as the executioners cut down the cadaver
and threw it on a waiting cart, which would take it to the city
rubbish dump beyond the walls.

A guard appeared
behind Domash and whispered in his ear.

‘He’s here?’

The guard nodded.
Domash rose from his chair and pointed at Gleb, who was flirting
with one of the boyar’s wives.

‘You are with me.’

The ruler of Pskov
left the platform just as a young woman on the scaffold was
stripped to the waist and had her wrists secured to the bloody
frame prior to being flogged, her eyes bulging in fear at her
debasement and the prospect of her back being cut open. Domash
walked briskly back to the palace, annoyed that his entertainment
had been so rudely interrupted. When he arrived at the throne room
he found Prince Mstislav sitting in his place, lamellar armour of
steel scales encompassing his great bulk. With his thick black hair
and bushy beard Mstislav looked like a bear, as befitting
Novgorod’s coat of arms of two black bears either side of a throne.
He may have been almost sixty but the prince looked every inch the
fierce warrior who had fought the Cumans, Bulgars and
Polovtsians.

Domash halted in front
of the throne and bowed his head. ‘Hail Mstislav, Prince of
Novgorod.’

Mstislav nodded. ‘I
trust my city of Pskov thrives,’ he growled.

Domash smiled.
‘Indeed, highness, and its people will be delighted to see their
prince within their walls.’

‘Though their mayor is
not delighted that someone else is sitting in his chair,’ added
Gleb mischievously from behind Domash.

The latter spun round
and glared at him but Gleb just smiled and Mstislav chuckled. He
knew all about the
Skomorokhs
and although his bishops did
not approve of them he knew they had enormous influence among the
common people. The prince raised himself up.

‘Then let us withdraw
and leave the throne to your jester,’ said the prince, smiling at
Gleb.

He and Domash retired
to a small dining hall adjacent to the throne room where slaves
brought hot broth and large cups filled with
kvass
. Mstislav
ate heartily, tearing great chunks from the loaves placed before
him and dipping the pieces in the broth.

‘Your reports
concerning the Estonian tribes have been most illuminating,’ he
said to Domash.

‘They have united
under a single leader to fight the crusaders, highness.’

Mstislav emptied his
bowl of broth and held it out for a slave to take and refill. ‘My
army is but a short distance away.’

Domash was surprised.
‘Your army, highness?’

‘When it arrives you
and your garrison will join me. We go to make war on this Lembit
and his tribes.’

This was most
unexpected. As long as the river routes to the Baltic and Gulf of
Finland remained open most Russian princes showed little interest
in what was happening among the pagan tribes living on their
western borders. The prince saw the look of surprise on Domash’s
face.

‘The world is
changing. The Catholic crusaders carve out a kingdom on my western
borders and threaten my interests.

‘The Bishop of Riga
has threatened you, highness?’

Mstislav took a great
gulp of his
kvass
. ‘No. But soon he will have conquered the
Estonians just as he crushed the Livs. After that he and his
crusaders will turn their gaze towards the lands on their eastern
borders. This Lembit is already finished, though he may not know
it. Therefore I will strike west into Ungannia to demonstrate the
strength of Novgorod and send a signal to the Bishop of Riga that a
great power lies to the east of his kingdom.’

The prince’s army
arrived at Pskov the next day. It numbered thirteen thousand foot
and horse and was accompanied by a huge number of large wagons
filled with supplies. It had taken twenty days to cover the one
hundred and twenty miles between Novgorod and Pskov, a large
vanguard of men with shovels clearing the route of snow and ice
ahead of the army. The élite of the prince’s host was the
Druzhina
, his standing army of mounted boyars and their
relatives and bodyguards. They wore short-sleeved mail hauberks
beneath lamellar armour, open-faced helmets with aventail and
shields similar in shape to the ones carried by the Sword Brothers.
Their weapons included lance, sword, dagger and axe and they almost
always fought on horseback, never engaging in siege warfare. Their
shields carried the images of religious icons, bears, lynxes,
eagles and Orthodox crosses, the banner of Novgorod being carried
at the head of their column. It was a sign of the city’s wealth
that Mstislav was able to muster fifteen hundred of these
well-equipped and trained horsemen.

Next came Novgorod’s
urban militia, men who had been equipped by the city authorities
and included archers as well as spearmen. Most of the latter had
helmets and mail armour and they numbered two thousand men. Last in
terms of quality and equipment were the
Voi
, the levies
recruited from the villages around Novgorod. Almost entirely devoid
of any body or head armour, they were armed with an assortment of
spears and axes and numbered nine thousand in total.

It took three days to
organise the troops from Pskov who would accompany the prince on
his expedition. Domash had five hundred soldiers of his own
Druzhina
, a mixture of men he had brought with him from
Novgorod and boyars from Pskov. The latter all sported the emblem
of the city on their shields: a golden snow leopard on a blue
background, the same design on the banner that fluttered at the
head of the fifteen hundred men of the city militia, a hundred
crossbowmen within their ranks as well as fifty horsemen.

Domash marched at the
head of Pskov’s troops from the city square to the gates in the
southern wall. Pskov was a strong fortress sited on a promontory of
two rivers – the Pskova and Velikaya – and was surrounded by an
earthen rampart topped with a wooden palisade. On the vulnerable,
southern side was a moat that connected the two rivers and thus
surrounded all four sides of the city with water, making it
virtually impregnable.

But as he trotted
across the wide wooden bridge spanning the moat Domash wondered
what an army of fifteen thousand men would achieve if not to
conquer territory. He himself had taken part in raids designed to
capture slaves, cattle and supplies many times, but the raiding
parties were invariably small and mounted. Estonian villagers would
be able to avoid a slow-moving army easily enough.

They skirted the
southern shore of the frozen Lake Pskov, the great inland waterway
that was covered in ice for six months of the year, and then struck
northwest into Ungannia. The army managed to march a paltry six
miles a day, the prince and his bodyguard riding out each morning
wrapped in fur hats, wolfskin cloaks and high, padded boots to
frighten the local populace and plunder their villages. But as
Domash had feared the locals were alerted to the army’s presence
long before it reached them and fled north into the Estonian
heartland.

When the sun dipped on
the snow-blanketed western horizon the prince rode into camp
boasting of how he had fired villages but the lack of any captives
indicated that the settlements had been abandoned long before his
arrival. The scouts located a number of hill forts where villagers
had taken refuge but the lack of siege equipment meant they could
not be assaulted. The large size of the prince’s army made starving
them into submission impossible for it would starve first. After
two weeks of fruitless campaigning, in which a thousand
Voi
had died of exposure, Mstislav gave the order to return to Pskov.
After a week he got bored and departed with his
Druzhina
,
leaving Domash in command of the remaining horsemen, the city
militias and the rapidly diminishing
Voi
.

‘I will be waiting for
you at Pskov,’ said Mstislav. ‘I grow tired of Estonia.’

It was a crystal clear
day when the prince and his fifteen hundred horsemen departed, but
as the days passed the sky became heaped with dark grey clouds that
threatened snowfall. The threat turned into a reality on the third
day after the prince had left the army as snow flakes began to
fall, a few at first but as the day wore on visibility dropped as
the fall became heavier. That night camp was made near the western
shore of Lake Pskov. Domash called together the senior officers to
his tent and announced that to save time and lives, rather than
skirting the lake the army would march across its frozen
surface.

It snowed all through
the night and showed no signs of letting up as the men trudged
along with heads bowed after striking camp, the horsemen leading
their animals on foot. The archers had unstrung their bows and
placed the bowstrings under their fur hats to keep them dry, the
crossbowmen carrying their weapons slung on their backs, but
stashed them under covers on the wagons when it snowed. The ice was
thick enough to allow fully loaded wagons to be pulled across its
surface, many of them now filled with
Voi
suffering from
exposure and frostbite.

By mid-morning a
northerly wind had begun to blow, blasting snowflakes into men’s
faces. Soldiers who had them pulled hoods over their heads to
shield them from the ice particles. Domash halted and looked behind
at the bedraggled column of men and horses fading in the blizzard.
If the snow let up he and the army would be back in Pskov in three
days, longer if they were forced to make camp and wait until the
storm blew itself out. If that happened he wondered how many
Russian corpses would be littering the frozen surface of Lake
Pskov.

*****

Kalju’s hard features
were even more rock-like as he stared into the snow, dozens of his
warriors gathered around him. He and they were wrapped in furs and
wore skis on their feet: strips of pine six and a half feet long
and secured to the wearer’s feet by means of a leather strap
attached to the top of the ski. When he had heard about the Russian
invasion he had given orders that his people must leave their
villages and take refuge in the nearest hill fort. The settlements
had been laid to waste by the Russians but at least his Ungannians
had escaped being enslaved. He had mustered five hundred warriors
and they had shadowed the invaders as they advanced and then
suddenly turned around and retreated. His scouts had reported that
the banner of the Prince of Novgorod had been seen fluttering at
the head of a great number of horsemen who had left the main
Russian force some days ago, thus reducing the strength of the
invaders.

‘Mstislav flees back
to his city,’ remarked Lembit who had come to Kalju’s side.

Though crusader
raiding parties had assaulted his own territory, Lembit judged it
prudent to march to aid the Ungannians to demonstrate solidarity
with his fellow Estonian chief. In this way he hoped Kalju would
support him when it came to his re-election as Estonia’s grand
warlord. He had brought two hundred of his wolf shields to fight
alongside the Ungannians, all of them wearing skis on their feet
and armed with one-handed axes and swords. They all wore helmets
and mail shirts beneath their fur-lined cloaks.