Wolf's Cross (3 page)

“Everyone, the river!” yelled one of the stable hands from the pasture.

North and west of the fortress, the river Narew flowed, separating the fortress from the last wooded frontiers of Masovia. Across the river were dense woodlands, and eventually Prussia—the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights. Even after the Polish king Casimir had found peace with the Teutonic Order, very little had come from that direction except the occasional messenger headed south, toward Poland. Masovia itself was still an
independent duchy. Even under the rule of Casimir’s brother, it had yet to rejoin the Polish union, leaving it an uneasy buffer between Poland and the Order.

The black cross standard of the Teutonic Order fluttered above a score of horsemen as they drove their mounts across a ford in the river. The sight sent a shiver of terror through Maria’s chest. She grabbed her cross through her chemise as she watched the invading knights: men and horses, moving as if the hand of God itself was whipping their backs.

Behind her, the alarm bells tolled within the fortress.

“We’re under attack,” Lukasz said, standing rooted on the path while his fellow stable hands ran off to retrieve the horses from the pasture.

Maria stared at the men as they crossed the river and said, “No, we’re not.” Then she vaulted the stone fence and began running across the pasture toward the river.

What she had realized, after the initial shock of seeing the Teutonic Knights in Masovia, was that their tabards were smeared with gore, half their men were draped across the backs of horses like so many sacks of grain, and even the horses showed wounds leaking blood down their flanks.

The carnage was worse the closer she came. Even the men who rode upright had bloody rips in their armor, arms held limp at their sides, bandages tight against heads and arms and legs. Several of the horses were riderless, splashing through the water next to their mounted fellows.

She ran, thinking little of where these men had come from or whose colors they wore. She had seen the wounded knights and the wounded horses, and she knew that these men needed assistance.

Ahead of her, the German knights had made it across the ford in the Narew and were drawing up into a ragged group on the
southeastern shore, in the shadow of the Masovian fortress. The alarm bells still tolled in Gród Narew, and Maria heard the main gates open. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw a hasty party of horsemen erupt from the fortress. Four mounted men, less than a quarter of the strength of the German party, bearing the threefold cross of the clan Bojcza, the emblem for Wojewoda Bolesław, lord of Gród Narew.

Maria noted immediately from the dress and the armor that only the man in the lead was a noble of the szlachta. The trio with him, while armed, were mere footmen. They accompanied their lord as a show of authority, not as a fighting force. As they rode out of the gate, Lukasz and the other stable hands scrambled to bring the grazing horses back from the pasture.

Maria was halfway down the slope of the pasture, heading toward the river, by the time Bolesław’s men passed in front of her, following the broad path from the fortress gate down to the river’s shore. The Germans, seeing the men approach, drew themselves up in such a ragged line as they could. A man bearing the tabard of the Teutonic Order dismounted and took a few steps forward.

He stood tall and removed his helmet, revealing a creased face adorned with a sharp silver beard. The man held his helmet in the crook of his arm and waited for the horsemen to approach. Despite his calm attitude of command, he had not escaped whatever evil had befallen his men. A single trail of blood wept from a wound under his graying hair, which curved across his cheek to stain dark a spot on the left side of his beard.

Maria slowed her approach. While it was obvious that many of these men needed assistance, Maria forced herself to temper that impulse. These men, on both sides, needed to satisfy the will of Masovia and the Teutonic State before mere human needs would be considered.

She came to a stop as Bolesław’s men rode up to face the
Germans. The distress of the German knights became stark in the contrast between the two groups. The men from Gród Narew were clean and well-rested, and rode fresh horses. Maria recognized the man in the lead as Rycerz Telek, Lord Bolesław’s oldest nephew—a man as broad as the German leader was tall. When he dismounted, it was with a lightness that belied his girth, and he walked forward with a smile more good-humored than the situation warranted.

The tall German, by contrast, had an expression that never wavered from a stern seriousness. Behind him, his men sat on exhausted mounts that seemed on the verge of collapse. Their horses snorted from foamy lips, and their flanks were drenched with a foul mixture of sweat, gore, and river water.

Telek walked up, smiling, and said, “My uncle, the Wojewoda Bolesław, extends his greetings and wonders if you have perhaps lost your way?”

German muttering broke through the ranks of the Order, until the tall man snapped something that silenced his men.

Telek began to repeat himself, but the tall man said, “I speak your tongue well enough, sir.”

“Then,” Telek responded, “perhaps you might like a guide to assist you finding your way back to your own demesne?”

“On behalf of His Holiness the pope and Hochmeister Ludolf König von Weizau, I humbly request assistance from Wojewoda Bolesław. I have many injured men who would not fare well on any journey.”

“This much I see. And who is it that requests aid from my uncle in the name of the pope and the Teutonic Order?”

“I am Komtur Heinrich von Kerpen, and these men are brothers in my convent and knights serving the Order.”

“And how come you to be within the borders of Masovia?”

“We serve our duty to God and the pope.”

“We all do, Brother Heinrich. What enemy did you face to be so ill-treated?”

“We are not permitted to say.”

Telek paced in front of the line of Heinrich’s men. “These are not your lands, Brother Heinrich, and we aren’t some Prussian serfs subject to your authority. My uncle has the right and the duty, granted by the Duke of Masovia, to dispatch any invading forces as he sees fit. As yet he has no quarrel with you, but blood has been shed here. How? And with whom?”

“I can only say that it was an enemy of God and the Church—”

“You try my uncle’s patience. We’re quite aware that whomever the Order decides to raise a sword against is an enemy of God and the Church. I suggest that you answer my question, lest you find yourself an enemy of Wojewoda Bolesław and the Duchy of Masovia.”

Maria felt the tension even from where she stood on the hillside. The air between Brother Heinrich and Rycerz Telek seemed so charged that she felt as if the sod between their feet were in danger of bursting into flame.

Brother Heinrich lowered his head and said, “I am bound by my vows.”

“As are we.” Rycerz Telek placed a hand on the pommel of his sword, and Maria felt her breath catch in her throat. It had been almost ten years since the end of open war between the Poles and the Order, and she was about to see it start all over again.

“But,” Brother Heinrich said so quietly that Maria barely made out the word.

Telek lowered his hand and repeated, “But?”

“Grant us a bishop for our confessor, and he can give us leave to speak of what we fight.”

“A bishop?” Telek raised an eyebrow. “Not a cardinal? Or the pope himself?”

“Any of those could release our vow not to speak of our mission. However, a bishop will suffice.”

Telek gestured and his men dismounted. Two came forward and walked up to the Germans while Telek said, “Then if you’re to grant us the honor of accepting the hospitality of Gród Narew, I expect you to surrender your arms to us for safekeeping.”

R
ycerz Telek Rydz herbu Bojcza watched his men relieve the Teutonic invaders of their weaponry. With each sword taken, a small weight was lifted off him, though he exercised as much restraint in hiding his relief as he had earlier in hiding his apprehension. Despite the forced joviality he projected, he knew that no good thing could come from the presence of the Order’s knights in Masovia. Christ only knew what carnage they had wrought on the far side of the river, or to what end.

But the last thing he wanted—the last thing his uncle wanted, and, for that matter, the last thing Duke Siemowit III wanted—would be a convent of dead knights giving the Order a pretext to resume the hostilities that had ended a decade ago, breaking a peace that had only just been ratified by a treaty between the Order and the Duke’s brother, Casimir.

Whatever horror these knights had wrought across the river from Gród Narew, he couldn’t help but think that the men he saw had fared worse than their opponent. The stench of defeat hung upon them like a shroud, and the fact that Brother Heinrich had come here and surrendered was testament to how badly things had gone.

Without direct confirmation from Brother Heinrich—and
Telek supposed he would have to wait for a bishop to receive that—he estimated Heinrich’s original party as numbering at least a score of mounted knights. If Brother Heinrich had originally had a full convent of warrior monks with him, that would have accounted for about twelve of that number. The rest would be either probationary members who had not yet taken their final vows as monks, or more secular knights looking to buy a way to Heaven with the tip of a sword—though those were more often seen in the Order’s periodic crusades against the pagan Lithuanians.

The survivors looked to be either knights of the Order or probationary members. The tabards were all white and black, and if Telek remembered his German heraldry correctly, the men who wore an incomplete cross were probationary monks who hadn’t taken their final vows. What he didn’t recognize was the wolf’s head that marked the upper left quadrant of Brother Heinrich’s tabard.

Telek guessed it was some obscure signifier of the monk’s rank in the Order. Either that, or the Order had given up the one thing it shared with the Poles: a distaste for the chaos of personal devices that seemed to plague the German nobility. A black cross on a white field was good enough for all the members of the Order, just as the triple cross was good for all the families of clan Bojcza.

When his men had retrieved all the swords and crossbows, Telek raised his arm and gestured a circle above his head. The watch up on the fortress wall would let his uncle know that things had concluded peacefully. He turned to one of his men and said, “Ride back. Send down stable hands to take charge of these horses and a party to help tend to the wounded here, with a cart to carry them back up the hill.” He glanced up and saw one of the servingwomen from the fortress standing on the hillside, watching them. He pointed to her. “You, woman: come down and assist us with the wounded.”

N
egotiating the transfer of fourteen knights from the riverside up into the fortress consumed the bulk of the morning hours. Telek supervised every detail, from the washing and binding of wounds, to walking the Germans’ horses into a walled pasture, to loading the wounded into a hay cart.

By the time his uncle’s guardsmen led the last of the knights back to Gród Narew, he was left by the river with sixteen swords, a half dozen crossbows, and a pile of random armor—damaged, gore-stained, and already attracting a host of flies.

He also had two corpses, men who had died in the Order’s retreat from—

“From what?” Telek said.

“Sir?” one of his men said from behind him. Telek turned around and saw that the man had just finished loading the Order’s weapons into another cart.

“What were those men fighting?” Telek asked.

“I don’t care to know, sir. Deadly evil business it is.” The man spat and gestured to ward off the evil the Order’s men had brought with them.

“They’ll only bare their souls to a bishop.” Telek looked back at the bodies and the damaged armor. “Perhaps they rode through Hell itself.”

“Sir, should you jest about that?”

Telek laughed. “Son, you sound like one of those monks.”

“But their wounds. They’re more like bites, claw marks …”

“They likely ran afoul of a mountain cat.” Telek thought of the odd addition to Brother Heinrich’s tabard. “Or a pack of wolves.”

“Have you looked at these weapons?”

Telek shook his head and walked up to the back of the cart. With the swords and crossbows were a pile of daggers. He picked
one up and drew it from its scabbard. The sunlight glinted from a wicked blade, ornately engraved with German script that Telek could barely read. He snorted. “A little ostentatious for someone who’s taken a vow of poverty.”

“Look at the metal, sir.”

Telek squinted at it and frowned. “Silver?”

“And this.” The man held up a quarrel for one of the crossbows. Telek sheathed the dagger and took the quarrel, looking at the head of the weapon.

It was silver as well.

“Is the Order so wealthy that they tip their bolts with precious metal?” He placed the quarrel and the sheathed dagger down in the bed of the cart and picked up one of the knights’ long swords. He gripped the scabbard tightly and paused before taking the handle, suddenly feeling some of the apprehension that his man was showing.