‘Why did you say that you would supply these Kurs, these pagans, with grain, Magnus? It will cost you dearly.’

  Glueck puffed out his cheeks. ‘You are right, Stefan, and if Volquin had been anyone else then I would have given him short shrift, but he is not just any man. His order possesses five castles along the Dvina, for one thing, and the Sword Brothers have in the past interfered with trade along the river. Neither my fellow burgomasters nor I wish to see them do so again. Nor do I want Grand Master Volquin causing trouble between the city’s merchants and the Pope in Rome.

  ‘Finally, Stefan, he is right that it is better to have the Kurs as friends than as enemies. If this pagan duke converts to the Holy Church then both sides of the Dvina are safeguarded all the way to the Russian interior.’

  He saw Stefan looking downcast.

  ‘Besides, at the moment we are making much money trading with the Russians and it is important that it is not disrupted before winter closes the Dvina.’

  Duke Lamekins was baptised in Riga Cathedral on a bitterly cold November morning. In attendance were his warlords, Lord Torolf, the members of the city council, the Sword Brothers and hundreds of curious Rigans who wanted to catch sight of the Kur leader. Bishop Hermann himself, who had been persuaded by Volquin to travel to Riga, conducted the ceremony. Everyone was surprised by Lamekins’ politeness and ability to converse in German. Archdeacon Stefan was eager that the Kur leader and his lieutenants should not stay in the city and so Volquin and an escort of Sword Brothers travelled with them to Holm where they were given hospitality. There he and Lamekins signed a document pledging the allegiance of the Sword Brothers to the Kur leader and Volquin’s order recognising that Lamekins was now King of the Kurs.

  Chapter 9

  It had been a hard winter, made worse by the shortages of food that affected pagan and Christian alike from the Lithuanian kingdoms north into Livonia, Estonia and east into Russia. Those who lived in villages went to collect red bilberries growing in pine woods beneath the snow and could be eaten, or fir and pine cones that when held over a fire opened to reveal nourishing seeds. They cut holes in the ice covering lakes to catch the fish below and set traps to ensnare wild animals. But such measures merely staved off hunger for a while; they did not banish it. And working in the freezing cold required high levels of energy many did not have as a result of a lack of food. The very old and the very young died first, followed by those who were weak and afflicted by disease and illness. But those living in villages were blessed when compared to the predicament of the population of Novgorod.

  The prosperous city, made rich on the back of the fur trade, had a growing population to service the needs of that trade. But the city, surrounded by swamps and lakes, did not produce enough food even when the harvests were good. Grain had to be imported from Riga and Reval; indeed, famine could only be averted by importing food. The early frosts and heavy rains had destroyed all the crops before the harvest, which meant that the people of Novgorod began to starve.

  Kristjan sniffed the air and screwed up his face. He looked at Boar, his powerfully built deputy.

  ‘You smell it too, lord?’

  Kristjan nodded and wore a disgusted expression as the aroma of death got stuck in the back of his throat. Those behind also caught the stench and began spitting. He turned to look at a grubby individual riding on a fine horse behind him.

  ‘Tracker, ride ahead and find out who has died?’

  The miserable Tracker was a coward, liar and a poor excuse for a man but he was also the best scout in all the northern kingdoms and that ensured he remained a member of Kristjan’s band. Actually a small army would be a more accurate description. It had been nearly seven years since he had fled Dorpat to escape the Sword Brothers and since that time he and Dmitriy Hoidja had become very successful. Kristjan went north of Novgorod with his men in the late autumn and spent the winter collecting pelts in Karelia. He had taken a Karelian girl, Hella, as his wife and enlisted her tribe and others in his enterprise. In return he helped they rid the land around their settlements of ‘crows’, the bandits infesting the Karelian forests. He killed most of them, occasionally recruiting the odd one or two who were useful and proved their loyalty. His influence and numbers of men under his command grew and every spring he returned to Novgorod with many hundreds of squirrel pelts to be processed in Hoidja’s workshops before their sale to German merchants.

  Tracker appeared reluctant to leave the column of riders and carts loaded with pelts.

  ‘Now!’ shouted Kristjan, prompting his son to begin wailing.

  ‘You have upset the little lord, idiot,’ snarled Tusk riding next to Hella.

  Tracker gave the giant brute a sneer, dug his spurs into the sides of his horse and cantered forward. Hella spoke soft words to her new infant, named Kalju after his dead grandfather. The baby was being carried in a padded sling over his mother’s shoulder. Her soothing words soon quietened the ‘little lord’. He had been born in his grandfather’s goahti, a wooden tent-like structure indigenous to Karelia.

  The column trotted on, over a hundred heavily armed men dressed in black and brown hues following a pagan lord who never sported a beard and who wore a silver torc around his neck, a piece of jewellery gifted him by the gods.

  Less than half a mile from Novgorod’s northern gates Tracker returned with a cloth covering the lower half of his scrawny face. Kristjan halted the column.

  Tracker pulled down the cloth. ‘Mass grave, lord. The Russians are burying hundreds of the city’s residents.’

  ‘Dmitriy?' Kristjan heard the concern in Hella’s voice. He turned to give her a kindly smile.

  ‘The poor always die in winters, it is the way of things.’

  ‘Not this winter, lord,’ said Tracker. ‘One of the guards told me that the city is wracked by starvation.’

  Hella looked even more worried.

  ‘You are not helping the situation,’ growled Tusk, appointed by Kristjan to keep an eye on his wife and child, a duty he undertook with a fierce dedication.

  ‘We will enter the city by another gate,’ declared Kristjan, ‘we should not expose ourselves to a pestilential air.’

  Tracker was mortified. ‘What about me, I have already been exposed?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tracker,’ said Boar, ‘no self-respecting pestilence would come near you.’

  Those within earshot laughed but before the scout could respond Kristjan ordered him to reconnoitre the city’s eastern entrance. He galloped away muttering to himself, returning in a more jovial mood to report that the eastern gates were safe to enter. The deceased may have been interred outside Novgorod’s walls but inside the city Kristjan was met by an army of the walking dead; gaunt faces with sunken cheeks and emaciated bodies. People with grey complexions stared at the riders with listless expressions, barely having the strength to lift their legs as they shuffled along.

  ‘Keep tight to Hella, Tusk,’ ordered Kristjan as he and the others drew their swords and Mongrel nocked an arrow in his bowstring. Every man in the column pulled his sword from its scabbard because starving people can become desperate if they see well-fed, healthy riders leading packhorses loaded with supplies. But they reached the mansion of Dmitriy Hoidja without incident and were glad to see the gates closed behind them. The large main building and surrounding stables, storerooms, workshops and huts were all constructed of wood and were surrounded by a timber wall. The mansion itself was forty or fifty years old but the buildings around it were all new and had been built by the wealth that Kristjan and Hoidja had accumulated during their time in Novgorod, as had been the timber wall guarding that wealth.

  Kristjan was shocked when he saw his friend Hoidja. His normally kindly face was drawn and creased with worry lines. He also looked too thin and older than his fifty years.

  ‘Are you ill?’ asked a worried Kristjan after they had embraced.

  ‘Hungry, actually, along with the rest of the city.’

  The former fisherman looked at the packhorses loaded with pelts being taken to the stables.

  ‘I see you have had a good winter.’

  ‘The gods smiled on us,’ smiled Kristjan.

  Hella was distraught at the physical appearance of the man she had come to regard as a second father. But the Russian at least was able to smile when she passed him the rosy cheeked Kalju. The infant looked up at the thick beard of the Russian with eyes full of wonder.

  ‘I thank God that you and he are safe, Hella,’ said Hoidja sternly, ‘but you should leave the city.’

  ‘We have just got back, my friend,’ Kristjan told him. ‘Besides, we have coin enough to fill our bellies, do we not?’

  The story of Novgorod’s famine was relayed to Kristjan that night as he and Hella sat with a deeply unhappy Hoidja in his mansion. The Russian ate sparingly as he picked at the cooked pork before him.

  ‘Since the crops failed people have been reduced to eating lime tree leaves, birch bark, and wood pulp mixed with husks and straw.’

  He shuddered. ‘Did either of you see any cats and dogs on the way here?’

  They both shook their heads.

  ‘That’s because they have all been eaten, along with many horses and other, far worse, things.’

  Kristjan slurped his beer. ‘What things?’

  ‘I have heard rumours of cannibalism, Kristjan,’ said Hoidja quietly, ‘though I pray God they are untrue.’

  Hella was appalled. ‘How can such a great city as Novgorod have no food?’

  Hoidja gripped his cup tightly. ‘There is plenty of bread, meat and fish here, if you can afford it. The rich live well while the poor starve.’

  Kristjan finished his beer and refilled his cup. ‘What is the prince of the city doing about it?’

  Hoidja laughed, the first time he had done so in an age. ‘Prince Rostislav sits in his palace in the Kremlin and does nothing. He could be a benevolent prince and open some of the granaries that are full of food. There is one but a short distance from here, an island of food surrounded by an ocean of hungry misery. It is an outrage.’

  Arriving in Novgorod after a winter collecting pelts Kristjan’s men usually visited the city’s brothels and inns to get any pent-up frustrations out of their system. But this time there was no opportunity to relax and indulge themselves. Most of the inns were closed and the whores had either died or moved out of the city. So they sat and brooded, as did Kristjan whose anger finally erupted around midday. He called together his commanders, sent Tracker to scout the granary that Hoidja had talked of and, when he had returned and made his report, set off with a dozen of his best men. He told Hella and Hoidja that he was going to speak with a German merchant about the price of pelts. Hoidja thought this odd as he handled all business matters and Kristjan disliked Germans but gave it little further thought.

  The granary was near the Volkhov, the great waterway cutting Novgorod in half. Across the river, on the western riverbank, stood the Kremlin, the mighty wooden-walled stronghold where Prince Rostislav lived in his palace. Among the eighteen churches also occupying the Kremlin was Saint Sophia’s Cathedral. Kristjan stared at its five silver bulbous domes surrounding the golden helmet dome.

  ‘These Christians,’ he muttered dismissively.

  He and his men had walked through the narrow, filth-strewn streets that at least were covered with logs. Normally in spring they would have been filled with people, noise, rats, flies, raw sewage and the odour produced by human waste. But they were almost empty of people apart from a few slender figures avoiding the group of armed men.

  ‘No rats.’

  Kristjan looked at Boar. ‘What?’

  ‘No rats, lord. They must have all been eaten.’

  The reason the streets were empty of people was because those commoners who could still walk had made their way to the nearest granary to beg for food, a crowd of starving humanity pathetic to behold. The granary itself comprised a collection of square log timber structures mounted on staddle stones as a precaution against vermin and damp. They had plank floors, shutters for ventilation and contained grain bins where the precious commodity was stored. Alongside the granaries were barns, stables and cart sheds, the whole surrounded by a timber wall. The barns had become barracks to guard the grain from rebellious commoners, though the people of Novgorod no longer had the energy to be angry; just a desperate need to end the hunger gnawing at their bodies.

  Outside the gates a group of soldiers stood with spears levelled as the listless crowd shuffled forward to gather round them, knowing that it was at this time that grain deliveries were made across the river. The Kremlin had its own granaries, of course, as did the homes of the city’s richest boyars and merchants. But extra deliveries were made when a feast was being held in the palace, which was often during the rule of Prince Rostislav.

  ‘Get back you worthless vermin,’ shouted the squat commander of the guards.

  Kristjan shoved his way through the throng with his men behind him.

  The commander was threatening a poor wretch whose skin was hanging off his bones.

  ‘I’ve told you once, I will not tell you again.’

  ‘I just wish to feed my family,’ the man pleaded with a faint voice.

  ‘Then go to the office and purchase some grain,’ smiled the commander, relishing his power over the powerless. His smile disappeared when Kristjan loomed over him.

  ‘Like I’ve told this wretch,’ said the commander, shoving the starving man back, ‘we don’t give charity here. You should try the church down the street.’

  ‘These people need feeding,’ said Kristjan in a low voice.

  The commander looked bemused at the clean-shaven man before him with a scarred cheek and a curious accent. He turned to his men and grinned.

  ‘We’ve got an odd one here.’

  His men laughed, a couple striking members of the crowd with their spear hafts, knocking them to the floor.

  ‘Where I come from,’ continued Kristjan, ‘lords feed their people in times of hardship.’

  His blue eyes bored into the commander’s. ‘You are a bully and a thief.’

  The right hand of the commander instantly went to the hilt of his sword, his men moving menacingly towards Kristjan.

  ‘If you don’t bugger off sharp I will…’

  The commander looked surprised as Kristjan thrust the point of his dagger into his throat, blood sheeting over the blade as Kristjan let go of the handle, drew his sword and whipped its edge across the throat of the soldier standing beside his commander. The move was so quick and deft that the man did not feel a thing before blackness took hold of him and he crumpled to the ground.

  The listless crowd suddenly came alive and scattered, moving away from Kristjan and his men as they attacked the guards. Skinner was more slender than his lord and though Kristjan’s reflexes were fast they paled beside his own. Skinner ducked low, grabbed the spear shaft of the soldier in front of him, pulled his blade, yanked on the haft to propel its owner forward and at the same time thrust his sword forward. The move was perfectly executed, exquisite even, and in the blink of an eye Skinner’s sword was embedded in the man’s belly. He groaned and tried to free himself from the steel skewering him, to no avail. Skinner laughed as he whipped his sword back and watched the man stagger and fall to the ground.

  The other guards had been speedily killed, the last to fall being their commander who, holding a hand to his throat in a forlorn effort to staunch the fountain of blood, suddenly collapsed face down on the ground. Kristjan spotted two guards at the gates of the compound frantically trying to shut them.

  ‘Mongrel,’ he called.

  Handsome and witty, Mongrel had been with Kristjan for three years, suddenly appearing at his camp in Karelia one night to offer his services. He was an accomplished archer, the best that Kristjan had seen, and his easy going manner and cheerful disposition endeared him to the Ungannian and his followers alike. His ludicrous claim to be the descendent of a Viking lord earned him his nickname, as the men believed that no one wandering the wastes of Karelia could be of noble stock.

  Mongrel knelt, drew back the bowstring and let it slip from his fingers, the arrow hissing through the air to hit one of the soldiers in the side. He doubled up in pain as Mongrel nocked and shot a second arrow that struck the second soldier in the leg. As he dropped to one knee Kristjan and the others sprinted forward, Skinner slitting his throat and Boar killing the other man. Mongrel calmly nocked another arrow in his bowstring and followed his comrades. Inside the compound more guards came from the makeshift barracks once a barn, these men carrying teardrop-shaped shields bearing the black eagle of Chernigov. Had Kristjan bothered to enquire he would have discovered that they were called the ‘black guards’ on account of the insignia they carried on their shields, that and the fact they were servants of the black-hearted Prince Rostislav. But there were only half a dozen of them. They were outnumbered and quickly outfought by the followers of the fair-haired wild man who spent half the year living among the barbarian Karelians.

  A ‘black guard’ came at Kristjan with a drawn sword and shield tucked closely to his body. But he dropped his sword and gave a high-pitched yelp as an arrow went into his eye socket. Kristjan turned and raised his sword in salute at Mongrel who was pulling an arrow from his quiver. Behind him, at a safe distance from the violence, stood Tracker, his eyes darting left and right to ensure that no guards were still alive to threaten him.

  Then there was silence. Kristjan walked to one of the granaries standing on staddle stones and went inside. He paced to one of the grain bins, opened the lid and saw the rye.

  ‘The compound is secure, lord,’ reported Boar.

  ‘Who has the loudest voice?’

  ‘Lord?’

  Kristjan turned and gave his deputy a wicked smile.

  ‘Chose someone to inform those who live nearby the granary is open to all and sundry, free of charge.’

  The booming voice of Tusk echoed through the tight-packed timber homes and soon a large and excitable crowd gathered in front of the granary, curious eyes peering at the bodies on the ground and the open gates beyond. Kristjan spotted the man who had earlier been pleading for food for his family.