Sword Brethren
By Jon Byrne
By Jon Byrne
1242. After being wounded in the Battle on the Ice, Richard Fitz Simon becomes a prisoner of Prince Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod. Alexander, intrigued by his captive’s story, instructs his scholar to assist Richard in writing about his life.
Richard’s chronicle begins in 1203, when his training to be a knight is disrupted by treachery. He is forced to flee England for Lübeck, where he begins work for a greedy salt merchant. After an illicit love affair, his new life is thrown into turmoil, and he joins the Livonian Brothers of the Sword as they embark on imposing the will of God on the pagans of the eastern Baltic. Here, he must reconcile with his new life of prayer, danger and duty – despite his own religious doubts, with as many enemies within the fortified commandery as the wilderness outside. However, when their small outpost in Riga is threatened by a large pagan army, Richard is compelled to make a crucial decision and fight like never before.
Excerpt
We moved slowly into the village, following Sighard, pushing through the cluster of wooden huts and outhouses. The Lett auxiliaries were in the village as well, and I saw one pulling a cow by a rope while another herded two terrified sheep away. A building was burning to our left and the flames were vivid in the grey half-light of the morning. On the ground lay the corpse of a man. I paused for a moment looking at him, strangely both repulsed and attracted by the scene. My view was interrupted as three Letts stalked past, heading towards a thatched hut behind another house. They had drawn swords and at least one had blood on his blade, arousing my curiosity, and I watched them kick in the door of the hut and disappear inside.
The rest of my comrades had passed further into the village, apart from Otto who waited with a quizzical look on his face. ‘Why are you so slow, Richard?’ he called to me. Behind him, I saw that Gerhard had stopped as well.
A moment later, I heard a scream coming from the same hut and I dashed towards the sound, drawing my sword. I burst through the doorway and saw the three Letts standing over a woman who was sprawled on the earthen floor, whilst a small boy stood crying in the corner. It was obvious what the three men intended. I shouted and shoved the nearest man away, knocking him to the ground, before swinging my sword in an arc to drive the other two back. The man I had knocked to the ground came to his feet brandishing his own sword and he snarled something in his language before pausing as Otto appeared in the hut’s doorway with Gerhard just behind.
‘Get out!’ I screamed at the men pointing to the door. Whether they understood my words I don’t know, but they understood my gesture. They pushed past Otto and Gerhard and disappeared back outside.
‘Are you hurt?’ I said to the woman, but of course she couldn’t understand. She looked at me with eyes filled with terror. The small boy, probably no more than five or six, ran to her and she swept him up in her arms, clutching him tightly to her chest. What more could I say? I shrugged and headed for the door, followed by my two comrades. I would like to have stayed longer to guarantee her protection, but there was no chance of that. We would be missed.
‘What happened?’ Gerhard asked. ‘Who were those men?’
‘Bad men.’ I strode down the road to return to the other sergeants. Thoughts of watching Henkel rape the shepherd girl on the way back from Lüneburg came into my mind and when I looked at Otto, I could see he was thinking the same.
In the open space in the middle of the village, our forces were gathering. Wenno was directing groups of brothers and he dispatched Rudolf with a dozen other mounted knights to finish securing the village. This time we had caught the enemy unawares and there were prisoners; a group of approximately twenty, mainly old men, women and children, knelt in a huddle guarded by several sergeants.
One of Theodoric’s priests berated them for their sins, but I doubted any of them understood a word. Most of the other sergeants in our group were listening to the Master’s instructions.
‘When we attack the fort, I want the sergeants with crossbows to sweep their ramparts with bolts. It is not necessary to kill everyone, but keep their heads down so we can assault the walls. The Letts have ladders to get over the stockade. Kill only those that put up any resistance. Remember we want souls to convert to God’s will.’
We pushed through the rest of the village towards the river, through a stand of linden to the open ground that had been cleared of trees around the enemy’s fort. The stockade was on a shallow hill. Though it wasn’t much higher than a man, it would still be a challenge to assault, with arrows, spears and rocks raining down. It was also surrounded by a flooded ditch, with a rickety-looking wooden bridge leading to the entrance overlooked by a timber gatehouse with a fighting platform above. We lined up, unshouldering our crossbows, but I could already see the Livs in disarray and the gates to the fort were not even closed yet. Streams of people were still fleeing the village for the dubious security of the fort, but there were armed men behind the parapet and a few arrows whistled past our ears.
Leading the majority of the mounted knights, Wenno saw his opportunity in the chaos and charged forward. We loaded our crossbows and began firing bolts at the defenders on the walls. In front of the gates everything was in pandemonium as the knights rode across the bridge through the people still seeking safety. Three Livs were desperately trying to push the gate shut, but they weren’t quick enough and the first knights, Wenno among them, were already in the entrance, slashing at the defenders in their path.
‘Stop watching the gate and keep firing!’ Sighard shouted.
A Liv defender leaned out from the top of the fighting platform above the gatehouse and threw a spear that hit one of the knight-brothers in the back, toppling him from his saddle. I pointed my crossbow at him and pulled the trigger, but the bolt missed, hitting the wood-shingle roof that protected the defenders. The gateway was narrow and the fighting was intense and, although I couldn’t see from where I stood, I assumed the defenders were rushing men to repel our incursion. More knights were stuck on the wooden bridge, unable to get past and join the battle and making easy targets for the Livs in the gatehouse and on the walls. Wenno and the men with him were in trouble. Their momentum had been checked. The Master blocked an axe with his shield, stabbing his sword into the chest of his attacker, but there were too many people in the gateway and the knights couldn’t punch through. Another knight-brother was struck by a spear and fell from his horse.
Reconstruction of a small Livonian fort.
We carried on firing our crossbows but there were only a couple of Livs still behind the parapet. A group of Letts ran forward with two ladders, and Sighard drew his sword, shouting at us to follow him. I dropped my crossbow and picked up my shield, drawing my own sword and charging after Sighard, who was already running towards the ditch and the ladders that were being thrust against the palisade.
By the time I had crossed the flooded ditch and clambered up the hill to the base of the stockade, I was breathing heavily, my lungs burning. Behind me, the other sergeants were splashing through the water, but Sighard had already reached the bottom of one ladder. He said something to the Letts, elbowing them out of the way as he began climbing, closely followed by me and Uli, the sly boy who shared my tent in Riga. No missiles were aimed at us and a few seconds later we were over the top.
To my surprise, the walkway was empty of any enemy, only one corpse with a crossbow bolt protruding from his forehead. The interior of the fort was a jumble of wooden buildings around a yard and I looked down at the melee in the gateway, where most of the Livs were fighting. I heard a shout from the gatehouse and an arrow thudded into the wood crenellation next to me.
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Jon Byrne
Jon Byrne, originally from London, now lives with his German family by a lake in Bavaria with stunning views of the Alps. As well as writing, he works as a translator for a local IT company and occasionally as a lumberjack.
He has always been fascinated by history and has studied the Medieval world for over twenty years, building up a comprehensive library of books. In his research, he has travelled to all of the locations mentioned in the book (East Anglia, Bremen, Lübeck, Latvia, etc).
Sword Brethren (formerly Brothers of the Sword) made it to the shortlist of the Yeovil Literary Prize 2022 and the longlist of the prestigious Grindstone International Novel Prize 2022. It is the first book in The Northern Crusader Chronicles.
