CHAPTER 26:
CHASING ALEXANDER
Kristaps began the morning with drills against three of the Danes—Thorvald and two others whose names he did not remember. The men of the north had a ferocity that he admired, and there was enough variation in each of the three’s techniques to adequately challenge him. For all the planning and marching and pillaging, there had been very little actual fighting, and he found himself longing for it when he woke in the morning. It was a sure sign that he was beginning to dull, and to do so in this frigid land, so far from Rome, where all the world was set against him would have been a failure equal to the mistakes of his predecessors. The Livonian Order would vanish into the folds of history as a farcical order of thick-fingered, ill-witted fools led by doltish commanders who did not understand the basic rule of martial conquest: keep your steel sharp and ready.
Kristaps would have preferred to train with steel, but the Danes were not as eager as he to test the edges of their blades, and they drilled that crisp morning with wooden trainers. Kristaps detested the wooden clatter of the blades as they struck one another. Each echoing thock was a reminder that their exercise was reinforcing habits that would work against them on the real field of battle. The wooden swords bounced off each other; there was no tug of a blade’s edge biting into the steel of another blade. The training master at Petraathen had laughed at Kristaps when he had complained one morning about using the wooden swords. You don’t train with steel until you are skilled enough to respect it, the old oplo had told him.
He respected it. It was the only thing beside God that he did hold in any esteem.
One of the Danes, a thick-necked man with red hair and beard, came at Kristaps with a strong two-handed attack. Kristaps blocked it smoothly, gritting his teeth as the blades make their thock! noise, and when the Dane’s blade rebounded off his, he struck back with a vicious strike of his own. His strike collapsed the Dane’s defense, and the man cried out as both blades came down on his shoulder. He stumbled and fell on his ass, and Kristaps poked him in the belly for good measure.
Thorvald held up his hands, pointing his sword at the sky, and took several steps back. His companion did likewise, and for a moment the training yard was silent—gone was the infernal racket of the wooden sticks!—and then the respite was punctured by groans coming from the man on the ground and the sound of a messenger calling out his name.
Kristaps tossed his practice sword at Thorvald. “We’re done for the day,” he said, and, gesturing for the messenger to walk with him, he stalked back to his tent.
“What news of Pskov?” he asked once he was inside his tent, the walls affording him a tiny modicum of privacy.
“No news, sir,” the messenger started. “There are other reports, from along Lake Peipus.”
“Where?” Kristaps demanded.
“Near Dorpat,” came another voice. Hermann stood behind the messenger, blocking the man’s retreat. “He’s attacking us.” Hermann pushed back the nervous messenger and went to the table, where he found the map he was looking for and spread it out. “He’s less than three days from Dorpat.”
“How can that be?” Kristaps snarled. This was all wrong. Alexander was supposed to be pursuing him. The prince was supposed to be rushing to the aid of Pskov, where Kristaps’s assassins would finish this war without the loss of any men from the Livonian Order. Instead, he was behind them, marching on Hermann’s city. “It’s impossible,” Kristaps said, glaring at the messenger. “Our last report was that his army was still at Novgorod. He could not have marched that far so quickly.” He stared at the map, his eyes moving frantically across the parchment, measuring distances. “You’re wrong!” he shouted at the messenger.
“There’s no report from Pskov,” the messenger repeated, visibly nervous about the response his words were going to elicit. “Other scouts have heard of an army marching along the western shore of Lake Peipus, burning villages as they go. They march under the banner of the House of Rurik.”
“Get out!” Kristaps barked at the messenger, who was quick to dart out of the tent. Kristaps dashed the map off the table and stormed about the tent, his fists clenching and unclenching.
“You’re a fool,” Hermann hissed, his face blazing with anger. “You burned his city and slew his people, and he has responded in kind. And where are we? Wandering north, in the woods, much like the prince in exile. We can’t stop him before he gets to Dorpat. He’ll win the war without having to fight our army. What sort of fool—”
Kristaps snatched up his sheathed sword with a roar, pulled the blade free, and leveled it at the Prince-Bishop, the point quivering less than a hand’s breath from Hermann’s throat.
“The messenger is wrong,” the First Sword of Fellin said with exaggerated care.
Hermann did not move, though his eyes blazed with an equal fury. “And what if he isn’t? You’ll have been outmaneuvered by a boy. You’ll have accomplished nothing and lost everything. This will be worse than—”
Kristaps’s sword touched the Prince-Bishop’s cheek and he fell silent.
“The messenger is wrong,” Kristaps repeated.
Hermann would have nodded, but he didn’t dare move his head with Kristaps’s blade pressed against his cheek. Instead, he merely stared at Kristaps, waiting to see what would happen next.
Kristaps struggled to keep his anger in check. Without moving his sword, he glanced at the table for the map, and only then remembered that he had swept it to the floor. It was lying next to the wall of his tent, half folded on itself, its back to him. Just like the messenger, he thought furiously, telling me nothing.
Lake Peipus was north of Pskov, a natural barrier between Rus and the bishopric of Dorpat, and it would take them nearly a week to march around the lake in order to return to Dorpat. They had not left the city of Dorpat defenseless and the main citadel could withstand a siege for at least a week. What was Alexander doing? He couldn’t hope to take Dorpat before the Teutonic army caught up with him.
It was a daring move, and it fit with the stories he’d heard of the battle of Neva, where the prince had been victorious against Birgir, the Swedish jarl. The prince’s swift assault had caught the jarl off guard, and the day had belonged to the prince. But Neva had been a single battle, one that had settled the conflict, and marching on Dorpat would not have the same result. All that Alexander could hope for was to stir the Prince-Bishop’s anger. It was a bold move, but it was also one that seemed ill-planned, almost like… “Revenge,” Kristaps said, lowering his sword.
“What?” Hermann asked.
“There are no messengers from Pskov because Pskov is not ours,” Kristaps said. “Marching into Dorpat is an act of revenge against what he found in Pskov.”
“The assassins?”
“They have failed,” Kristaps said with a smile. “But they angered him, and he reacted without thinking.” He put his sword back in its sheath and gathered up the map from the floor and spread it out on the table again. “This is the action of a man who is driven by vengeance. It is said he is a peerless leader of men, and I know the allies upon whom he has come to rely, but he’s also young, and has never once lost a battle. He is smart, and capable, but he lacks experience. He enjoys the invulnerability granted to him by a sense of audacity that hasn’t run up against failure. All we have to do is bloody him once and he will be ours.”
“But we have to find him in order to bloody him, and all I hear is that he is not where we expect him to be,” Hermann snapped. “This gambit of yours, hoping to draw Alexander north, is suddenly looking like the work of a fool. If the prince is allowed to take Dorpat, you will find yourself with very few friends here in the north.”
Kristaps smiled grimly at the Prince-Bishop, showing his teeth. “I am in no need of friends,” he said.
Hermann let loose a sharp bark of laughter. “No?” he said. “Only a fool or a madman is eager to make such a claim.” He shook his head and wandered away from Kristaps, pausing near the flaps of the tent. “You are far from home, Kristaps of Fellin. My fortunes are tied to yours, and if you fail, I will fail with you. The stain of your foolishness will last a long time.” He laughed again. “I dislike you, that much is certain, but it matters not, for you and I are allies, and you need not fear my loyalty. I have no desire to betray those in Rome who sent you and my faith is as strong as any man’s, but I do wonder if you know whom you truly serve?”
“I serve God and am here to do His work,” Kristaps snapped. “It is clear to me what Alexander is trying to accomplish, and you seek to muddy it with too many questions. However, in order to calm your mind and spirit, I will take a company of the Danes and ride ahead of our army. I will verify, personally, what our scouts claim to have seen in Dorpat.”
“And if you see what they see?”
“Then I will attack the prince’s army myself. I will stop him from taking Dorpat, and I will not fail.”
Hermann started to reply and then stopped, his face slackening as he grew thoughtful. “Your patron in Rome has great faith in you,” he said after a considerable silence. “Either that or you are being groomed for an extraordinary fall from grace.”
“The only one who is going to fall is Alexander,” Kristaps said. “Bring the army around the northern edge of the lake. March quickly, and don’t worry about the supply wagons. They can catch up. There is still time to take advantage of this mistake.”
Kristaps and the Danes rode west, pushing their horses across the snow-dappled landscape like the Devil himself nipped at their heels. When they reached the frozen shores of Lake Peipus, Svend urged him to turn south instead of north. While the army would march around the top of the lake, he told Kristaps, they could cross at the middle. On the maps, Lake Peipus resembled a misshapen hourglass: two vessels pinched together. During the winter, it was possible to cross the frozen lake at the pinch point.
Kristaps ordered the men to increase the distance between each rider as they followed him across the ice-covered lake, but as he galloped across the frozen water, he realized his concern was baseless. The ice was so thick that the entire Teutonic army could have marched across without mishap.
As the Danes crossed, he split off teams of three and told them to ride ahead, seeking sign of Alexander’s army. “Do not engage them,” he instructed the scouts. “The prince has cavalry who will pursue you, given the opportunity. Do not let them see you. Just find them. And if you find any scouts of theirs, kill them.”
The scouting parties liked his last order, and they eagerly rode off to find the enemy. The rest of the company rode into Dorpat like shadows crawling across the land, given speed as if energized by the hunt, horses moving with the eagerness of warriors who could smell battle in the lands ahead. They rode over rock and crag, through dips in the land and under snow-laden trees, outriders sweeping out ahead of them.
But their quarry remained elusive.
At the end of the second day of riding, they camped on a rise that afforded a clear view of the surrounding forest and waited for the remaining scouts to return.
Inactivity did not suit Kristaps, now or in the days before. Waiting was a necessity of warfare, but it did not come easily to him, and he did not enjoy it. He paced about his tent for awhile, and eventually left to hike the short distance to the top of the hill. He did not expect to look out over the forest and see signs of the Ruthenian army, but the view was more expansive than staring at the walls of his tent.
Dorpat lay to the north—he raised his arm and pointed—and Pskov was in the other direction. Somewhere in between, he thought, gazing at the forest encompassed by his open arms, is the prince and his army. Where are you hiding, Nevsky?
“Men who stand too still in the wind and the cold have a tendency to turn to stone.”
Kristaps dropped his arms and glanced over his shoulder. The Danish prince, Illugi, had joined him. Illugi was not the most handsome of the brothers, but he had a brutal sort of directness to his carriage, and when he looked out over the world at their feet, it seemed that he saw what was ripe for the taking.
“I wonder if that fate has befallen the prince’s army,” Kristaps said. “Perhaps that is why our scouts have not been able to find them. We are looking for flesh and blood men and they are all gone.”
“We’ll find them,” Illugi said. He had a stick of dried meat in his hands, and he tore a chunk off and held it out to Kristaps. “They know we’re coming. The prince is either a fool or a fox. If he is the latter, he wants you to chase him. To be chased, you have to be seen. Sooner or later, our outriders will find them.”
“And if he is a fool?” Kristaps asked as he took the offered piece of meat.
Illugi raised his broad shoulders. “Then he is camped outside Dorpat, waiting for us to crush him against the walls of the city. But I do not think he is a fool.”
“Nor do I,” Kristaps said. He bit off a piece of the dried meat and began to chew it. “How many times have you fought the men of Rus, Illugi?” he asked around the mouthful of meat.
“Thrice,” Illugi said. “But never as openly as this.” He held up his hand, lifting one finger after another as he enumerated his previous encounters. “Once we came for women, once for plunder, once to avenge the honor of my father.” He closed his raised hand into a fist. “When blood is spilled, nothing but more blood will suffice to answer for it,” he explained.
Kristaps grunted in response. He liked the simplicity of the Danish world view. “What do you know of the men of Novgorod?” he asked.
“They do not train for war like we do,” Illugi said, “but they are not unskilled in the martial ways. Their soldiers are peasants, mostly, but not like the raw recruits called up by the levies in Christendom. The men of Novgorod rule themselves like the heathen Romans of old, and all men of age are required to take up spear, shield, or bow in the service of their prince when he calls them to war. They are not as practiced as the Druzhina of the House of Rurik, but they are not weak.” He smiled. “They will give you a good fight.”
“Have you fought these Druzhina before?” Kristaps asked.
“I have not, but I have heard stories about Neva. They are professional soldiers, Heermeister. Like your knights, but not so…” He trailed off with a shrug as if the detail were not that important. “Some are the sons of boyars,” he continued, “but most are mercenaries who serve because they get paid. All are capable riders and able swordsmen. Like your knights, they will dominate against infantry unless they can be pulled from their horses and stabbed to death.” He shrugged again. “Their armor is not as good as yours. The metal in the north isn’t as strong as the iron and steel from Germany. There will be archers amongst them, able to shoot from horseback, but not at great ranges, and quick to maneuver. You must drive through their heart and shatter them before they can pick us off.”
“And Alexander?” Kristaps asked. “What do you know of him?”
“Little,” Illugi replied. “Neither my brother nor I have met or seen his face, but we’ve heard of his exploits. Who hasn’t? But I think that few men are equal to the legends told of them. Every man will eventually meet his match, whether it is a battle, a place, a time, or another man. Inevitably, we will face a foe we cannot defeat.”
Kristaps arched an eyebrow and looked sideways at Illugi as the latter stared out across the snowy landscape. It was an oddly deep thought for one who seemed to know no greater joy than destroying his enemies. “That seems a thought made to comfort the heart after failure.”
Illugi gave a snort. “Dying is seldom comforting, Heermeister.”
“All the more reason it should happen to someone else.”
Illugi smiled at Kristaps, but it was a hollow smile. The amusement did not reach Illugi’s eyes.
During the night, a group of scouts returned with news of having spotted the prince’s army. Kristaps ordered the company to mobilize before first light and as the morning fog was beginning to lift, they had moved into position within the forest.
The scout had reported that the war-party was marching toward Dorpat, following an old trade path that ran between the forest and a narrow stream. The stream was not so deep that it couldn’t be forded, but it provided a natural barrier. Coupled with the forest, the path was a narrow route that would make for a good ambush.
The Danish company waited in the trees. The sun was masked by gray clouds and fog still drifted along the surface of the icy stream. Kristaps sat impatiently in the saddle of his stallion, watching his own breath mingle with that of the beast.
Troubadours tended to make over battles into laborious affairs, but what entertained the masses was never good battlefield tactics. It was best to strike quickly, with overwhelming force, and so break your opponents utterly. As he breathed in the frigid air, Kristaps promised himself that this day would not end with a desperate crawl through the blood-soaked mud and undergrowth as his fallen brothers were run through by scavengers picking over the bones of the dead.
He looked sideways, caught a glimpse of the Danish princes among their own men. Svend and Illugi wore half-helms and worn mail less fine than his own, and their swords were of an older make. Spears were in their hands, and many of their men carried bearded axes. Kristaps’s own men wore maille, some with solid steel plates upon their shoulders, fine swords forged of southern steel, and oaken shields painted with crosses. As Kristaps turned his eyes once more towards the open space beyond the edge of the wood, he flexed the fingers of his sword-hand beneath his mailled gloves.
It would all be over soon enough.
He heard them before he spotted them, the rhythmic sound of boots and hooves against the ground. His horse stirred, eager to run. Kristaps slid his hand down to the hilt of his sword, acutely aware of the rounded edges of the grip through the leather and fur that separated his fingers from its surface. His lessons from long ago flooded through his mind as he opened himself up to the flow of the world between himself and the sounds of his enemies, breathing in energy and turning it to fiercely burning hate. He felt his eyes widen as he quietly slid his weapon free from its sheath and raised it into the air, where it could be seen by his assembled forces. There would be no shouts, no commands to alert their enemies. They would charge in silence, taking their enemy unawares before they had the chance to understand what was happening to them. The quiet sound of clinking mail to his right told him that the Danes were taking his cue and raising their own weapons. Lance-tips rose from the earth to level off where they would take men through the hearts.
Through the trees and the snow, Kristaps caught the glint of half-helms and heavy cloaks. He saw them coming, marching with an order rare to see among peasant levies, though not so perfect as free mercenaries such as were to be found in Germany or Northern Italy. He snapped his sword tip forward as he dug his spurs into his horse’s flank.
The order was given, and the First Sword of Fellin was leading the charge.
Trees whipped past him, undergrowth groaned beneath the pounding of hooves and snow and earth flared upwards in a wild spray as the war horse carried him forward. The sound seemed to swell as he moved, echoing in the thunder of hundreds of others, rippling outward before them in a wave their enemy was becoming aware of too late. They burst from the edge of the trees in a panoply of furious steel, driving up the ground before them as the ordered line of Novgorod’s citizen soldiers desperately tried to turn to meet the coming wave. One of the Danish riders had outdistanced Kristaps by the body-length of his horse, and he caught a glimpse of the rider driving his grey-tipped spear through the face of the foremost man, a flash of blood seeming to whip past before Kristaps himself was among them like a whirlwind. Faces swirled around him like a river of flesh and bone and stupefied surprise.
He killed his first man before the soldier had managed to raise his weapon. The second died beneath the hooves of his horse. He hewed a man’s arm from his shoulder and opened the face of another, cleaving his head in half and catching only a flash of the explosion of flesh as he whipped past like an avenging angel.
He wheeled his horse about as the charge spent itself, and surveyed the scene of blood-drenched chaos. The gambit had worked, the initial charge ripping what order had existed of the Novgorodians into bloody shreds. On the entire stretch of space their forces had occupied, the snow was stained with blotches of red where bodies had fallen, and across the mass of moving humans, men fought with desperate, chaotic abandon. It appeared that he had lost only a handful in the initial assault, and now his knights and the Danes rode back and forth through the chaos, hacking heads and running men through as a handful of Ruthenian men on horseback desperately tried to rally them. Druzhina. Turning his horse towards one of them, Kristaps flicked his sword to free it of excess blood and charged.
The Druzhina spotted him at the last possible second and managed to block Kristaps’s strike, but was nearly unhorsed in the process. Laughing, Kristaps wheeled his horse about and cut low with a backhanded flick of his blade. The Druzhina screamed as the blade sliced across his thigh. As Kristaps came at him again, he got his sword up and thrust it at Kristaps’s face. Kristaps turned the point aside and jabbed his blade low again. The man was too slow with his shield, and Kristaps felt his blade grate against maille and then penetrate something softer. The metal of the north isn’t as strong…His sword came away with a heavy sheen of blood.
To his credit, the young Ruthenian did not give up. He launched a desperate strike at Kristaps’s horse, hoping to down the Livonian’s steed. Snarling, Kristaps beat his blade aside with the back edge and pulled his mount closer to the other man’s horse. Before the man could get his shield in between them, Kristaps drove his sword through the Druzhina’s armpit, where the inferior maille would be weakest. The sword pierced the armor, cut through the padded gambeson beneath, and pushed up through the man’s flesh until the point came out again near his neck. The Druzhina jerked back violently, his helmet falling off his head, and Kristaps saw the face of a man less than twenty years old, his beard still spotty on his cheeks and chin. The Druzhina dropped his shield and grasped Kristaps by the shoulder in a dying effort to pull the Livonian out of the saddle with him. He dropped his sword as well and steel glinted in his hand as he tried to stab Kristaps with a short-bladed knife.
Kristaps released his reins and hammered his fist down on the other man’s wrist, trapping the arm against his thigh. The man wiggled, desperately trying to get the knife turned so that he could stab Kristaps, and Kristaps grabbed his wrist. He rotated his arm up, twisting the Druzhina’s arm violently, and the knife spilled out of the man’s grasp. Still holding the man’s arm, Kristaps jerked his sword free of the Druzhina’s armpit and, reversing the weapon, hammered the man in the face with the pommel. At the same time, he shoved with his left hand, and the bloodied and dying man fell out of his saddle.
There were no other combatants around him and, somewhat surprised, Kristaps assessed the battle. The path was littered with dead and the few remaining Ruthenians were attempting to flee, and as he watched the Danes ride down the scattered remnants of the Novgorodian force, Kristaps finally spotted the trampled banner of the prince lying in the mud beside the stream.
One banner.
This was nothing more than a raiding party. They had not found the main force.
The sun set over a carpet of dead, clouds parting long enough to let the yellow-red glow of evening color the killing ground the hue of bloodstained gold. Kristaps sat atop a rock near the stream, watching as the Danes stripped the bodies of the dead of anything of value, and those who were not yet dead were hastened on their way with a swift thrust through the heart or a hastily cut throat. The singers could weave their beautiful melodies about glory and honor, but ultimately every battle came down to the brutal task of glorified knife-work.
Kristaps had taken no wounds, and he cared little for the taking of plunder—none of the men dead before him on this field had anything that he might have wanted. What spoils there were would make the Danes happy. What Kristaps sought had not been present.
They had decimated a raiding party. If his scouts had stayed long enough to investigate the numbers of the men they had spotted, they would have realized the prince’s army was not large enough to constitute any real threat to Dorpat. He did not believe that the prince would have sent only one raiding party into Tartu, and as he watched the Danes pillage the dead, he realized the prince’s clever ploy.
The prince wasn’t in Dorpat. All that was needed were a few men, a handful of mounted Druzhina, and a banner flying the prince’s colors. Nevsky could scatter a dozen such raiding parties across Dorpat and the reports that would get back to Hermann and Kristaps would be conflated into the alarming news that the entirety of the bishopric was under attack. It was bait, and he and Hermann had fallen for it. The Teutonic army was rushing back to defend Dorpat, which was not under any true threat.
“I’ve never seen a man look so dour after a victory,” Svend said as he knelt by the stream to clean the gore from his sword.
“Commoners with axes are not much of a victory when you are hunting a prince,” Kristaps replied.
“Ah, but they are his people. We have pricked him, and we shall see how he bleeds. That is something.”
“Aye,” Kristaps said. “We’ve bloodied him.”
“And now he must answer,” Svend said happily. “Blood calls out for blood. He will come.”
Kristaps looked along the path in the direction from which the ambushed party had come. Would the prince come? he wondered, though he privately thought the prince would not. He’s a fox, he thought, recalling Illugi’s words. Having been seen, he wants to be chased.
Kristaps would oblige him.