FORTY-ONE
Nitra’s Last Stand
22 January 1374 – 2 October 1376
I.
22 January 1374 – 1 June 1375
‘In antiquity,’ the herald from Trenčín read aloud the missive from the
Kňažná of Nitra in a quavering voice, ‘the crown of Veľká Morava was lawfully held by the family of Mojmír, in particular by the God-fearing sovereign Rastislav. The ancestor of the Rychnovský family, Bohodar, often called
Slovoľubec, against the God-given right of the Mojmírovci and against the will of God himself, rebelled against the lawful authority of his rightful
Kráľovná and took authority wrongfully into his own hands. Thereupon his incestuous son, even more mired in infamy and perversion against the law of truth, by an act of brutal warfare destroyed the power of the rightful ruling house.’
Here the herald paused, his voice failing him as he gulped. He knew that what he was speaking here was treason. But he had been bidden upon pain of death to deliver it to the
Kráľ. That death might well be upon him anyway, after he had said his piece here in the
Zhromaždenie.
‘Go on,’ Radomír bade him calmly.
The herald collected his courage. ‘The Mojmírovci—to wit, their cadet branch of Mikulčický—now holds the sway of the bulk of the traditional lands of Veľká Morava. The ability to right this grievous wrong has lain outside the grasp of Mojmír’s descendants for over four centuries. No longer: her Serene Highness
Kráľovná Ctislava now assumes the familial duty to which God has enjoined her, and shall take her rightful place as ruler of these lands. She demands that you relinquish your crown peaceably to its lawful owner. If not, she stands ready to take it from your head by force.’
A grim smile flickered across the King’s face as he heard this ultimatum. A letter which eloquently spoke to a certain set of historical truths while carefully skirting around others. Radomír, to whom the family history was rather important, had already been making mental notes on some of these. Ctislava had mentioned Rastislav, but not his daughter Bratromila. Thus, she had also failed to mention
Slovoľubec’s faithful protection of Bratromila, Bratromila’s flagrant adultery with one of her men-at-arms, and later her base betrayal and defilement of the grave of his son and Radomír’s namesake, Radomír
Polunemec. History could be a tricky thing, and dangerous in the wrong hands.
On the other hand, Radomír couldn’t help but admire Ctislava’s gumption. Clearly
Knieža Bystrík 2.’s daughter had determined goals ranging far beyond her inheritance. And clearly she was making good use of the formidable war chest her late father had bequeathed to her, as well as the considerable manpower of her vast holdings, which did indeed stretch all the way from Malopolska into Višehrad, and which also included the traditional lands that had belonged to the Bijelahrvatskići before their extinction in the male line. By this time, the
Zhromaždenie were all looking to their
Kráľ Radomír 4. for an answer to this open and blatant treason.
‘Well, well,’ Radomír spoke at last. ‘It seems Ctislava possesses a long—if rather selective—familial memory. But the girl has some spunk; I’ll credit her that. Not that this shall stop me from doing what God demands me to do in response. Guards!’
The messenger visibly recoiled as two of the
zbrojnoši stepped forward, one on either side of him. But his fears were without grounds.
Radomír made a small gesture with his hand. ‘When I give the word, see this person safely back to Trenčín. Grant him safe passage with my personal guarantee. I permit no man to touch a single hair on his head while he remains in our territory.’
To the messenger he added: ‘Give your mistress back this reply from me. The Rychnovských have ruled Moravia in a single uninterrupted line for over four hundred and fifty years. The claim by which she grabs for the crown upon my head is
centuries past having crumbled to dust. And in the name of Jesus Christ, I shall
by no means permit another Bratromila Mojmírová, given to the same sins of the heart and of the flesh, to exercise overlordship of the lands which He has entrusted to my care. If she wishes to make war for this crown…
she is welcome to try.’
‘Please tell me you have some good news,’ Radomír sighed.
Kňažná Praksida spoke in a low voice to her brother-in-law. ‘I do, but I’m afraid it will cost you. Rogvolod is a countryman of mine… an Uhro-Rusin of the Carpathian lands. He has served as a
varjag in Byzantium for most of his youth, and now serves at the head of a free company. Most of them are little better than bandits and
opriški, but Rogvolod is after his own fashion a man of honour. I think he can be convinced to lend you the axes of his men… for a price. It may be as much as a thousand
denárov.’
‘We can pay it. Was there anything else?’
‘I’m able to muster thirty thousand men from the crown levies,’ Praksida answered him. ‘We will gather at the vanes by Kroměříž, Přerov and Hodonín for a speedy attack on Nitra.’
‘How does that compare to what Ctislava can send into the field?’
‘In terms of numbers, the advantage is ours—but too near odds-on for my taste,’ Praksida told the
Kráľ grimly. ‘I understand that there wasn’t much you personally could have done, given your grandfather’s loss of power after the English War, but this rebellion wasn’t just Ctislava’s idea. It appears her father had also been massing his forces and cash reserves for just such an occasion. Our one advantage is that we can attack Nitra from two fronts—from my lands in Podkarpatská as well as from yours in Moravia.’
‘How soon can you be ready?’
‘I can ride out with you, Radomír, whenever you’re ready. Make sure you say your good-byes to my sister, and keep yourself safe for her sake. She needs you more than you know.’
Radomír spent the night together with his wife. They tried every position that they knew and that their aging, wrinkling bodies could manage… but they favoured the traditional way. That was so Katarína could hold him tightly, wrap her thighs and calves around his flanks, and dig her fingers into the flesh of his back. She wanted to make the absolute most of this last time together, and she wanted to drown her fears of the upcoming civil war in the oblivion of carnal rapture.
~~~
‘Husband,’ Taimi spoke to Kulin the following morning, ‘before you go, there’s something you should know.’
‘What is it,
mu kallis?’ Kulin asked her.
Taimi drew Kulin’s hand down to her abdomen and beamed happily at her husband.
‘
Neljane,’ she told him.
Kulin kissed his wife fervently. ‘Will you be alright here on your own?’
‘I shall have to be,’ Taimi answered him. ‘You have your duty; I shall not keep you from it. I will only ask that you take care of yourself, and come back to me.’
‘The same goes for you,’ Kulin told her gently, touching her full-cheeked round face.
Among the couples of the generation of Radomír’s children, Kulin and Taimi were perhaps the happiest, and absolutely the closest. Taimi had been nothing but supportive, sweet, understanding and kind to her husband since the day they married. And, even though Kulin could get a bit wild when it came to the defence of her honour and good name, she had still had a marked influence on him. Kulin had softened noticeably from when he was a child.
But Kulin’s and Taimi’s was not the only parting taking place. Just up the hall, as he was getting into his gear, Radomír was approached by whom he considered the least likely to see him off and wish him well—his estranged eldest half-sister Svietlana, who had spent so long under house arrest for some crime which he had long forgotten. It was owing to the intercession of his devout friend Evstafii that she had been released. The son of Lodovica da Ponte and the daughter of Alexandrinē Komnenē regarded each other for one long, hard, icy moment before she spoke.
‘Brother,’ Svietlana told him frankly, ‘I hear you are off to war.’
‘You hear correctly.’
Svietlana opened her mouth, closed it again, considered, and then spoke bluntly: ‘You may not come back from this one. You could very well be killed.’
‘That is true in any war,’ answered Radomír brusquely.
‘In that case, I’d rather you didn’t die before I can make a clean breast of things with you. I know we two have never been close. And as my mother was—well… let’s just say that she and I were alike in more ways than one. I suppose I resented all my younger half-siblings.’
‘Whatever your sins, you’ve long since paid for them,’ Radomír told her honestly. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t release you far earlier. It’s to my shame that it was left to Evstafii to recall my conscience to me.’
‘And I regret, deeply, the wicked and petty things that I have said and done to you since. It wasn’t fair to have blamed you or resented you for my own mistakes, or for Father’s correction of me.’
Radomír inclined his head to her. ‘
Čo bolo, bolo. If you’re willing to forgive me, I’m more than happy to forgive you, sister.’
Svietlana and Radomír embraced. ‘Go with God, then, brother. And be safe.’
Kráľ Radomír and
Kňažná Praksida, together with the
zbrojnoši and
družinniki of Olomouc, assembled in the courtyard, examined arms, and rode out to join the First Army at Hodonín. The train of riders, armigers, archers and
bombardy with their crews snaked their way along the road southward to the border with Nitra… with them went the two sons of Radomír who were still in the world, Kulin and Ostromír, as well as the cream of the loyal Moravian nobility. Riding close by Radomír were his son-in-law and
šafár Ruslav Rychnovský, as well as the burgomaster Radislav of Telč whom he had saved from the wild boar some months before.
They were joined on the road by the rough hirelings of the Carpathians. Praksida was right—these men were none too prepossessing. Most of them had mismatching arms and armour, of the sort which bespoke their status as bandits and irregulars. They spoke in an Uhro-Rusin dialect which Radomír easily recognised, although their lingo was crude—they spoke almost entirely in
mastnoe laťa, the obscene slang common to the Russian lower classes. However, their leader, Rogvolod, was a well-educated man versant in Greek and Moravian, and the respect and loyalty of his ragtag band had been hard-earned on his part, by being a fair settler of disputes and a generous divider of their spoils.
The first target for Ctislava’s rebellion was the fastness at Zvolen, overlooking the right bank of the Hron. Zvolen, although surrounded on all sides by lands belonging to Ctislava, in fact swore fealty not to her but instead to the Rychnovský-Nisa lords of Silesia. The rebels took up their positions around the castle and set up their own bombards. However, none of them were under any illusions that they would be there long enough to starve the garrison out. Ctislava would know as well as anyone that the hammer would fall from the west long before then.
And so she kept the bulk of her men mobile and prepared to move on a moment’s notice. On the advice of her
maršál, no doubt, she made the first move, hoping that picking her field of battle would afford her some advantage. She gave up the siege of Zvolen when it became clear that Radomír’s army was approaching, crossed them over to the left bank of the Hron, and marched them downriver fifty miles to the village of Tekov.
Tekov was attractive to Ctislava as a choice of battlefield for several reasons. For one thing, and this was a natural benefit to a defending army along any river, it would force the king’s men to ford the Hron before attacking. Secondly, the area around Tekov was thickly wooded. Ctislava’s army depended more heavily on archers and crossbowmen than did Radomír’s, and positioning those men in the woods aiming along the river would afford them a crucial advantage. And thirdly and most importantly: Tekov’s villagers and woodsmen were of unquestionable loyalty—to her personally, and not to the Crown. The army could move among them in secrecy without any need to fear their troop movements being leaked to the
Kráľ.
They were positioned at Tekov for only three months. They spent May, June and July there, and the king’s troops arrived at last in August. There was sound reason for the delay: at that hot time of year, the river was running low. Fording it would not be nearly the costly obstacle that it would have been even in June. Even so, the battle would be a grim and terrible one—there was no escaping the fact.
Father and sons—
Kráľ Radomír, Kulin and Ostromír—were very much alike in this: they did not ask anything of their troops that they were not willing to do themselves. With loud cries, and weapons raised, the king and his sons led the bold charge across the Hron. They had no thought for their own safety, but were more jealous of their honour.
Flights of arrows and crossbow quarrels flew in swarms out of the woods on the left bank. The
Kráľ was the first to be struck—a crossbow bolt hit him in the shoulder, and very nearly unhorsed him. Ostromír was the next one to be hit. An arrow fell when he was halfway across, and embedded itself in his leg just above the knee. This wound was a grievous one: only by God’s grace did the arrow miss the artery in his leg. And then Kulin—another crossbow bolt struck him in the left arm before they reached the left bank. None of the men of the royal line left that battlefield unscathed.
Alongside them, one of the better-heeled
varjagi, a man by the name of Ingvar Vogák, was fighting boldly, his axe flashing left and right and drawing long sprays of blood where it swept. But Ingvar too took a heavy blow: he was struck by the ord of a spear, and he fell in the shallows of the river. Thankfully, the
opriški came to his side and dragged him to safety. Even among such foul-mouthed bandits as these, it seemed, there was a strong sense of brotherhood.
The battle dragged on through the afternoon, ebbing and flowing in a long, painful wave, without either side decisively turning that tide. The Hron, which flowed clear upstream of the battle, darkened to the colour of wine as it ran toward the Danube. And Tekov claimed yet more from Radomír.
Radislav of Telč, a man who would have shied away from even a mouse in any other setting, found himself cornered. He tried to fight his way out of the ring with a boldness beyond his reach. But it was in vain—the burgomaster fell beneath a hail of crossbow quarrels, and lay face-down in the mud of the Hron. He did not get up again. And Ruslav Rychnovský, the king’s
šafár and son-in-law, likewise met his end at Tekov. He had the misfortune of fighting on foot in the front line opposite a contingent of well-armed Nitran
zbrojnoši, one of whose keen-edged blades found his neck. Once he fell there was no hope of saving him.
But the king did have a slight advantage of numbers, and with this the tide of battle was turned, inch by hard-fought inch, in the king’s favour. In the end, Ctislava was forced to withdraw, and the king’s men carried the field.
Ctislava moved off to the east and lay siege to Šariš—likewise a lonely and isolated outpost of loyalty to the Rychnovských completely surrounded by lands holding to the Mojmírovci. With no immediate threat to his troops in the open field, Radomír split his own armies and sent them to beset a number of different towns in western Slovakia, including the all-important capital at Nitra.
And Nitra did fall… but not before Ctislava, who had the advantages of a single army at siege and of a head start, carried the vane from off the walls of Šariš.
As the King’s army entered Nitra, a single messenger from Olomouc followed them within the walls and came to the castle.
‘What word from home?’ asked Radomír.
‘This word is for milord your son, Highness,’ said the messenger. ‘And it is an ill word.’
Kulin came forward. The look of dread on his pained face was clear enough. It seemed he feared what was coming before the herald spoke it to him.
‘Lord Kulin, I am grieved beyond measure to be the one to bear you these tidings. You have a new daughter, who is living and well. But Lady Taimi… I am sorry to say…’
Kulin blanched. His lips formed the single soundless word ‘
nie’, before he staggered to the nearest chair and sank heavily in it. After all the death that had come at Tekov, it was this one that had happened afar off in Olomouc which had truly pierced and wounded him to the heart.