CHAPTER 32:
THE BATTLE ON THE ICE
Kristaps reined in his horse at the edge of the frozen lake, and the animal snorted with impatience. He had ridden a palfrey for the past few days to save his warhorse for battle, and now his destrier was eager for the charge. Behind Kristaps, the bulk of the army assembled—Hermann’s Teutonics, his Livonians, the Danes, and the ragtag militia gathered from Dorpat. His scouts had tracked the fleeing Novgorodian marauders to the lake, and he knew that they had crossed the ice at the same place that he had a week prior.
He knew this would be the place where Nevsky would meet him in battle.
Hermann had argued that they should have crossed during the night. The moon had been out and the sky had been clear, making it easy to see well enough to guide the army across the lake, but Kristaps had dismissed the idea. This was Ruthenian land, and they knew it better than he and his men. The army had been marching hard for more than a week; they were tired and worn down. A night’s rest—even though he knew most of the men would sleep uneasily knowing they would probably march into battle in the morning—would be more beneficial than an attempted sneak attack. Just as it was bright enough from the moonlight for the Teutonics to pick their way across the lake, so too could the Novgorodians see them coming.
Kristaps stared at the empty expanse of the ice, considering the plan of attack, as other riders came up beside him—the Prince-Bishop and the Danish sons of Eric Ploughpenny.
“They have better ground,” Hermann said sourly. “We will have to march out to meet them.”
Kristaps grunted. The Prince-Bishop’s commentary needed some response but he didn’t care to offer anything more than mere acknowledgement of the Prince-Bishop’s astute observation.
Svend was less polite. “Are your feet getting cold, Dorpat?” the Danish prince asked. “The ice is thick here, and we have ridden across it before. It will not swallow us.”
“Their infantry will be Novgorod militia,” Illugi pointed out. “Like those we faced in Dorpat.” He leaned over and spat into the snow. “A charge of heavy horse will break them and send them running.”
“Are you volunteering to lead that charge?” Hermann snapped. There was little love between the sons of Ploughpenny and the Prince-Bishop, and after weeks of marching back and forth across winter terrain with little opportunity for plunder, the Danes were getting restless. They were testing the mettle of the man they served, and Kristaps knew they were wondering if there was a different opportunity than the one offered them by the Prince-Bishop. For his own part, Kristaps did not care if the Danes turned on Dorpat as long as they did so after defeating Nevsky and the Novgorodian army.
“We will all charge together,” Kristaps said. “Straight across the lake. We will smash their infantry and gain the high ground. Once there, the rest will be easy. God is on our side, and fortune favors the righteous.”
He had not intended to make such a zealous claim, but his words put a decisive end to the bickering. Hermann echoed his sentiment, crossing himself, and the Danish princes had the presence to bow their heads and repeat the words as well. Allow us to kill them all, Kristaps prayed silently.
A shout echoed from behind him, and then another and another. At first Kristaps thought the army was taking up his prayer, but then he realized the noise was coming from the massed group of infantry, the peasants who had been conscripted to fight for the Prince-Bishop. They were shouting and pointing, and Kristaps turned his gaze back across the lake. On the far side, men were massing along the shore, which in itself was not cause for alarm, but then he spotted the banners: the colors of Novgorod and the House of Rurik, and, in the center, a pair of banners that sported the red rose.
The Shield-Brethren.
What happened next filled Kristaps with apoplectic rage as the first of the Estonian peasants, screaming, turned and fled despite the shouts of the mounted cavalry to remain fast. The panic started as a trickle and then rapidly became a flood until a majority of the peasant infantry had quit the field, running into the forest as if the Devil himself snapped at their heels.
“Hold the line,” Kristaps shouted, and his voice was commanding enough that some men hesitated. Kristaps pulled his horse around and cantered back to the scattered rank of infantry. “The next man who presumes to run at the sight of the enemy will be cut down before he reaches the tree line,” he snapped, glaring down at the frightened peasants.
His horse, sensing his incandescent fury, pawed the ground heavily, spooking the men who stood nearest the angry destrier. Kristaps drew his sword and raised it high. “We outnumber them,” he shouted. “We have more knights than they do. We have Danish marauders who feel no fear. You are better armed and armored than the ragged fools who claim to represent the people of Novgorod. Why do you flee in fear from an assured victory? God watches over us. God is standing right beside you, and when you strike with your weapon, He will be guiding your arm.”
He waved his sword and turned his horse toward the lake. “We shall cross the ice together and smash their center apart,” he shouted. “We shall rip into their formations like tusks ripping into soft flesh. We shall taste their fear and the blood, and having done so, we shall carve out the heart of their commander. And then nothing with stop us as we march on to Novgorod!”
A cheer rose up from the men around him—tentative at first, but growing in volume until he was certain it made the ice tremble. He brought his sword down, point directed at the banners on the far shore. “The Boar’s Snout,” he cried. “Let us march to victory.”
His army recovered, the infantry falling into formation behind him, the mounted knights lining up on either side. He kneed his horse and it trotted eagerly toward the lake. Behind him, the morning air rippled with the sound of marching feet, of rattling spears and armor, and of the hooves of cavalry against the ice.
They stood arrayed, weapons at the ready, faces staring across the water at the flying banners of the enemy, and from where he sat in the saddle, Illarion could feel their fear. It was hard to forget, after all that he had seen, that most of the men here were not warriors by trade. He had heard them talking around the camp fires, or between the tents, or in the midst of their drills. It was an army made up of bakers’ sons and drovers, fur traders and merchants’ children, carpenters and shepherds called to arms by an oath of service to Novgorod’s militia.
The Druzhina were split into two groups, one on the north flank of the gathered infantry and the other—consisting mainly of horse archers—standing ready at the southern edge of the army. Illarion was surrounded by the prince’s personal guard, and behind him were Raphael and Feronantus. In front, standing behind a line of shields with spears resting butt-first against the ground, were the Skjalddis—the front line of their defense.
“The Boar’s Snout,” Alexander noted as the enemy began to march onto the ice. He didn’t sound surprised, and Illarion suspected the prince would have done the same if the situation had been reversed. “It can be broken,” the prince said, his voice heavy with awareness of what was coming, “but at a heavy price.”
The Shield-Maidens, Illarion thought, first to fight, first to fall. He nodded grimly at the prince, knowing Nika and Vera and others would not have it any other way.
The Novgorodian army had cheered when the pair of banners provided by the Shield-Maidens had been unfurled, and their delight had increased when the enemy’s infantry had started to flee. For a brief and tenuous moment, Illarion had hoped that the whole of the enemy’s host would collapse, but his wish was not granted. He saw a man wearing the red sword and cross of the Livonian order riding back and forth, and he knew that was Kristaps, exhorting the men to stand fast.
The Boar’s Snout was a costly maneuver, but Kristaps still had the numbers.
The ranks of knights and infantry across the ice slowly fell into a wedge formation, fanning out from a quartet of riders at the front. A shout echoed across the lake, too far away for the words to be discerned, but not so the tone: mocking, challenging, defiant.
The prince answered the challenge. He let his horse walk carefully down to the ice, where he could be seen by both the enemy and the ranks of his men, and he drew his sword and held it aloft. “You are not welcome in Rus,” he shouted. His words were picked up by the men of Novgorod, by the Druzhina, and by the Shield-Maidens. Illarion added his voice to the roar that was sent across the ice. Go home!
The prince kept his sword upraised, the blade shining in the morning sunlight, until the roaring chant of his army finally died. “It is time, men and women of Novgorod,” he shouted, his head turning back and forth to look upon his army. “It is time to stand your ground for home and hearth. It is time to stand for Rus, for friends, for family, for Holy God who watches over us. Our enemy thinks he can break us as readily as a log might be split by an ax, but he is mistaken. He thinks he might be strong enough to shatter our ranks, but we will show him the error of his ways.” Alexander turned his horse so that his back was to the lake and the enemy. “He thinks he can walk across this frozen lake and take this embankment. He thinks we will suffer his foot upon our land, upon Rus. What do we say to this fool, sons and daughters of Rus? We will tell him that he cannot cross this ground. He cannot have Rus!”
A roar of five thousand voices echoed in response, rising up from the chest of every man and woman.
Across the lake, the wedge started to move faster, the leading edge of horses galloping across the frozen lake.
Kristaps’s horse found its footing on the ice and its hesitant canter evened out. He urged the beast on, its breath a cloud that swept past his helmeted head with every breath. His spear was in his hand, his sword loose in his scabbard. He’d done this hundred times before, ridden the fury of the torrent forward like a man drunk on sensation. Everything sparkled with perfect clarity, and he slowly urged his mount faster towards the opposite shore. Not yet, not yet a gallop. They would need that surge of strength for the final push to smash through the enemy lines. He saw the Danes beginning to outdistance them and fought the urge to increase his pace. The fools make themselves targets, he thought fleetingly, and as if summoned by his thought, he saw a rank of horse archers separate from the eastern shore. They flowed like a flock of birds, not unlike the Mongols in their approach, and it was a beautiful display of precision riding. Unfortunately the majesty was marred by the torrent of arrows they unleashed. He saw the first few Danes fall and their charge weakened. Illugi shouted an order that was lost amid the thunder of hooves and the screams of the men who had fallen on the ice, and the Danish riders changed direction. Kristaps swore loudly as he watched the horse archers split effortlessly around the Danish charge, feathering around the riders like pairs of wings, all the while loosing arrow after arrow.
Kristaps lashed his horse, spurring it to a full gallop. The sons of Ploughpenny had chosen their own fate, but if their foolish charge managed to distract Nevsky’s horse archers long enough for Kristaps’s Livonian knights to reach the far shore, then the Danish sacrifice had not been entirely stupid.
Memories burned through his mind, humiliating beyond imagining, of struggles over a year ago beneath Pescherk Lavra in Kiev, where a handful of experienced Shield-Brethren and Skjalddis had defeated a force nearly three times their size. He had been forced to flee on a stolen horse through the wilderness like a common bandit. He could see the Skjalddis, standing shield to shield in the front rank of Nevsky’s infantry.
The wind was rising behind him, as if in benediction of his course, and he could feel the fury of his brothers at his back as they urged their horses onward like tormented men.
The Shield-Maidens would bear the brunt of his charge. Kristaps smiled beneath his helm. It was a sure sign that God was with the Livonians.
One of the leading horses stumbled and then tried to stop, which only resulted in a collision with the horse and rider behind it. A second horse felt the bite of the ice against its leg and turned, no longer charging directly at the Skjalddis shield-wall. Alexander gave the archers leave to loose arrows, and a flight of arrows arced toward the crumbling Livonian charge. Men screamed and tumbled from their horses, leaving the animals riderless and confused. The Livonian charge came on, but Illarion could tell that it had been slowed. The Boar’s Snout was no longer as solid a wedge as it had been, and in response to a shout from Vera, the Skjalddis lowered their spears and readied themselves to meet the charge.
Illarion looked away as the horses collided with the spears and shields of the Skjalddis wall, but he could not block out the screams and the calamitous sound of metal and flesh and wood slamming against one another. His heart was pounding in his chest, vibrating his entire body, and his head and neck were slick with sweat.
The wall bent under the initial charge, but it did not break, and as Illarion groaned with frustration at not being able to assist his friends, the prince’s infantry massed around the bulge and helped hold the line. Swords flashed and spears darted. By and by, the enemy was driven down the bank and back onto the ice.
Clumps of Livonian infantry reached the rear of the struggling knights and entered the melee, and the surviving stragglers of the Danish cavalry plunged into the mass of swarming bodies as well. Still Alexander held back, watching the battle unfold with a stoic expression on his face. The Kynaz sat etched like an effigy of a stone saint, eyes locked on the battle as it played out before his eyes, waiting for something that did not yet show itself. The horses around him snorted and pawed the earth, and the men murmured as others died in their stead on the edge of the lake. Still, he waited.
Then, as the Livonian men at arms finished their crossing and the bulk of the enemy pushed against the line of Skjalddis and Novgorodian infantry, Alexander Nevsky drew his sword, signaling to the Druzhina of his brother on the other side of the beach. “For Novgorod!” he cried, and the roar that rose behind him was deafening.
Illarion drew his sword and dug in his heels, the horse surging beneath him as Alexander and Andrei’s riders drove down the bank of the beach towards the water, coming at the enemy flanks from the left and right. Stones, snow, and frozen grass gave way to ice as they thundered at their foes, and whether by the grace of Holy God himself, or because of the narrow range of vision provided by the helms of the Livonian Crusaders, the enemy never saw them coming, and Illarion was suddenly in a sea of horsemen. He rode beside the Kynaz, cutting through the lines like a sweeping blade. Across the ice, Andrei rode towards them, butchering his way through horses and men.
The strategy of battle was a matter of careful finesse and planning, of understanding the ebb and flow of struggling men, and of timing commands to perfectly match when the enemy was weak and you were strong, but beneath the planning and the careful tactics was the truth that inches and ground were won in the crucible with straightforward knife-work, and now was the time for the Druzhina and the Shield-Brethren to prove their worth.
Men at arms swept around him as he rode across the shoreline. The infantry, galvanized by their prince’s charge, now rushed forward even as the Livonians reeled from the attack to their flanks. Illarion turned his steed, cutting down footmen and shattering the ribs of another knight beneath his armor. He pulled a spear from a dead man and drove it into a Livonian’s chest with the fury of a gallop behind him, dropping him to the earth, where he had a moment’s glimpse of infantry bearing down on him, festooned with clubs, axes, and long wicked knives.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of red and white, and when he turned his head, he saw the mad leader of the Livonian order.
Kristaps.
Kristaps put his spear through a young man in a half-helm and patched maille, the spear-point taking him through the throat and drawing an explosion of blood from his mouth. His horse’s hooves crunched flesh and bone as some men gave way in terror and others fell beneath the force of his charger. He released the spear and drew his Great Sword of War. Although normally wielded with both hands while on foot, it was possible to wield the weapon one-handed from horseback, and the great cleaving blows with which he laid about served him well. His sword rose and fell, sweeping through bodies and trailing lines of blood as he severed heads and smashed faces. It was this for which God had made him, and he reveled in it.
He caught sight of an armored foot soldier, more slender than most, driving a man off his horse with a single thrust of a spear. The technique was familiar, and judging by the size of the soldier, it was one of the Shield-Maidens. He jerked his horse’s head in that direction, and the animal forced its way through the melee. But she was gone by the time he reached the riderless horse, lost among the chaotic mass of men and horses around him.
A Novgorodian footman was charging his mount, screaming and waving his pike as if he were trying to shoo birds out of his vegetable garden. Kristaps turned his horse and beat aside the man’s clumsy thrust. He brought his sword down heavily on the man’s leather helmet, splitting his skull, and his horse snorted and side-stepped away from the dying man.
Kristaps looked toward the shore and saw that the line still held. Their wedge had failed to shatter the shield-wall, and his knights were slowly being forced back onto the ice.
“Rally to me,” Kristaps cried as he raised his blood-stained sword in the air like a standard. The knights began to move, flowing as one, though not with the strength of their initial charge. The line surged after them, and Kristaps found himself forced to give ground. The line left corpses of their own on the shore and they were losing some of their cohesion as they moved forward, but they were moving, forcing the Livonians and Teutonics back across the ice.
A Skjalddis came at him, thrusting her spear up at his horse. She moved much more adroitly than the last man—perhaps she was even the woman he had seen earlier. He twisted in his saddle, avoiding her thrust, but the tip of her spear raked through his surcoat, grinding across his maille. He seized the shaft with his left hand and chopped down with the sword in his right.
She let go of her spear, avoiding his cut, and while he was dealing with the weapon, she drew her arming sword and unslung her shield from her back. “I am Zaria!” she challenged him, making her voice heard over the din of the surrounding battle. “This is for Kiev!”
Kristaps pulled his horse away from her as she cut at his destrier’s legs, and he rained a heavy blow down on her shield. He had the advantage of position and strength, but she took the hit on her shield without crumpling. Chips of wood scattered from the painted surface of the shield like dead rose petals tossed into the wind. Fighting a man on horseback from the position on the ground put any warrior at an extreme disadvantage, and Kristaps gave her grudging credit for the courage necessary to try, but the line between courage and foolishness was thin, and he did not have the time or the patience to indulge a fighter whose tenacity amused him.
As she lowered her shield to thrust up at him again, he lashed out with his foot. He caught the edge of her shield, driving the round surface back at her head. Instinctively she got her head out of the way, which only exposed it to his sword. He brought his blade down, and she got her sword up in time, but the smaller arming sword only managed to deflect some of the strike from the more powerful greatsword. He felt the impact of metal against metal travel up his arm, and though he had not split her helm, he knew he had stunned her. She took two steps to the side, her sword and shield drooping, and when he raised his sword for another blow, she was only dimly aware of what was coming. She was still able to get her shield up as his sword came down again, but it was a futile effort, for his blow shattered her shield. She screamed, presumably since he had broken her arm as well. Her wailing cry was cut short by his next strike, which split her helm and her skull beneath.
As he flicked his blade to rid it of blood, he assessed the battlefield once more. Nevsky’s line had reached the edge of the ice, and his cavalry foundered on the ice. The massed infantry of his army had arrived and he raised his sword once more, shouting for the men to rally around him. They still had superior numbers and they could break the Novgorodian line that was still wavering. He swept his sword down, screaming for the men to take the shore.
As the enemy surged toward the shore again, the prince finally gave the command for his riders to charge, and the shield-wall splintered. Nika had seen Kristaps slay Zaria and as soon as she heard the command to make way for the prince’s charge, she stormed out onto the ice. Horses thundered past her, and she knew they would reach the enemy first, but she was going to be right behind them, her sisters and the Novgorodian infantry at her back.
She put her spear through the face of Danish marauder, twisted the point free, and then drove the butt into the stomach of the man next to him. She shifted her grip, and jabbed the spear to her left, catching a third man in the shoulder. He was wearing leather instead of maille, and the point slid through the boiled leather as if it were silk. The man howled in pain, and because his open mouth was such an inviting target, she jabbed her point there too.
She felt a tremor in the ice behind her and ducked. An axe blade sailed over her head and she thrust backward with the butt of her spear, hitting something that gave way. She spun, keeping her spear ready, and faced her opponent—another Dane, the son of someone important judging by the quality of his armor. He slashed with his axe again and she darted to her left, but he twisted his weapon and the blade of the axe sheared through the wood of her spear. He grinned, thinking she was disarmed, but she saw his next attack coming before he finished reveling in what he thought was going to happen. She grabbed the haft of her spear in both hands, stepped in, and slammed it against his axe, below the broad head. She felt the blade bounce off her helm, but the main power of his stroke had been blocked by the wood in her hand. He snarled at her, showing his teeth, and she shoved up and back as she stepped in again, putting him in range for her knee to slam into his groin.
A funny expression crossed the Dane’s face, and his grip slackened on his axe. She yanked back, catching the curved head of the axe with her spear and pulling the weapon out of the Dane’s hands. She jabbed him in the face with the end that he had cut, knocking his head back. His helmet spilled off his head, and she whirled the pole around to collapse the side of his now-bare head.
“Svend!”
Unlike Svend, who was now dead on the ice, the newcomer was still on his horse and his shout warned her of his approach. She ducked under a sweeping blow from his rune-etched sword and thrust her spear between the horse’s legs as it galloped by. The pole was wrenched from her hands as the horse tripped over the shaft. It screamed and collapsed on the ice, and Nika felt a brief flicker of remorse for having injured the horse so badly. She had time to draw her sword as the rider jumped clear of the thrashing beast and slipped on the ice as he tried to orient to her.
“That was my brother, you f*cking bitch,” the Dane shouted.
“Come join him,” she snarled. She couldn’t help but think of Zaria, and of her other sisters who would undoubtedly fall today. How many had fallen since the Mongols had come west? How few were left?
If this is the end, she thought, then let this battle be a monument to every one of my sisters who has ever died. Let my sword carve a legacy on this frozen lake that history will never forget.
The Dane charged.