Free Army of the Wolf by Peter Darman

gallows by a church court that decided he would be better fighting the godless pagans in Livonia than dangling at the end of a rope. Now twenty-one years of age, he was no longer the gaunt, haunted figure that Conrad had first encountered on Lübeck’s docks all those years ago, though he was still slim. But no matter how much food he shovelled into his mouth Hans was always hungry, a legacy of a childhood spent starving.
    ‘All that chiselling and hammering is giving me a headache,’ complained Hans as he finished his apple and tossed the core over the battlements.
    Ever since their arrival at Wenden the castle had been in a constant state of construction, carpenters, masons and blacksmiths hired from Germany working on its towers, walls and buildings. Built on an escarpment, the northern and western sides of which were sheer, Wenden could only be assaulted from the east and south. The slope beyond the castle’s eastern walls was steep, which meant that an attacker could only realistically approach from the more gently sloping southern side. However, the Sword Brothers had erected an outer perimeter wall to encompass this southern slope. This circuitous defence comprised an earth rampart with a stake-filled ditch in front of it. The timber wall sat on top of the rampart and formed a great loop to the immediate south of the castle. Within the outer perimeter were located the huts that housed the civilian workers and their families, more huts to accommodate Wenden’s mercenary soldiers of the garrison, their training fields and the cemetery.
    The entrance to the castle itself was via a drawbridge over a deep dry moat. The bridge led to a track winding its way down to the two gates positioned in the south of the outer perimeter defences.
    ‘It will take a few more years to complete the building work,’ said Conrad.
    ‘More’s the pity,’ grumbled Hans.
    They stood on the battlements of the three-story northern tower – the first to be completed. The castle’s southeast tower had also been completed but the one in the northwest corner had as yet only one story and the gatehouse was in the same state of completion. Building castles was a slow business.
    It was a beautiful summer’s day, with white puffy clouds in the sky and a slight easterly breeze that prevented it being too hot. Conrad turned away from the masons siting stones and carpenters planing wood to stare once more beyond the battlements. He looked down at the village located immediately north of the escarpment and the fields that ringed it and smiled. Wenden was surrounded by villages populated by Livs, the indigenous people of this land, but the twenty huts of varying sizes located to the north of the castle were filled with settlers: men and women who had been lured to Livonia by the promise of land to farm. The late Master Berthold had high hopes of the settlement, believing that it would grow into a flourishing town. At the moment it was a small village surrounded by fields and pasture literally forged with saws and axes as the forest had been cleared to make way for livestock and huts. Its population had increased slowly over the years and now numbered sixty men, women and children. To the west, east and south were Liv villages, settlements that had existed for centuries, though none to the north. The north was the region that had delineated the frontier between Liv and Estonian where many battles had been fought before the time of the Sword Brothers. Conrad turned to look east and saw columns of smoke on the horizon. A chill ran down his spine.
    ‘Hans, look.’
    He pointed at the thin shafts of smoke in the distance and reached for the leather strap attached to the clapper of the alarm bell that hung from a wooden frame on top of the tower. He began ringing the bell frantically, which was answered by the alarm bell at the fledgling gatehouse and then by another bell positioned above the gates in the outer perimeter wall. As Conrad kept ringing the