Templar Traitor: read a free extract from the novel
Last year I published Templar Traitor, the first novel in my Mongol Knight trilogy. It tells the bizarre but true story of an Englishman who fought for Genghis Khan in the 13th century. Historians don’t know very much about this man, except that he was captured outside Vienna in July 1241 with a group of Mongol scouts, but this extract sets the scene for the rest of my fictionalised story. I hope it piques some of my readers’ interest.
Templar Traitor: Prologue – July 1241
Frederick, Duke of Austria, flicked irritably with a mail-covered mitten at the fly dancing around his horse’s neck. It was suffocatingly hot that noon-tide, even in the dappled shade under the elm trees. His lower back ached like the Devil, his padded linen undershirt was soggy with sweat, and he was regretting his decision to have his squire dress him in his full battle-gear that morning, a suit of iron-link mail that covered him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He had been sitting astride his destrier under these tall elms for the past hour and more, waiting, waiting and his famously short stock of patience was nearly at an end.
“Heinrich,” he snapped at the nearest rider, one of fifty knights and sergeants in a loose, murmuring pack all about him, “is there any fresh word from the scouts?”
The knight, an older man with lines of worry carved into his lean cheeks, shook his head. The duke grunted with frustration and peered out through the elm leaves, craning his head to get a better view of the valley below.
There, a little over a mile to the south, the slow, brown Danube spooled through the landscape. The great river turned south from its eastwards route at the hamlet of Korneuburg, to the duke’s left. The dust-hazed main road followed the river’s course, cutting through broken terrain on the north bank, expanses of boulders and gorse mixed with small fields of golden barley. The duke’s castle at Vienna was a mere hour’s ride in that direction, only a dozen miles as the eagle flies.
“And you are certain of this information, Heinrich?” the duke said.
Heinrich von Leitzdorf straightened his back, looked his liege in the eye.
“The son of one of my oldest tenants, a steady, pious boy, said he saw a company of Tartars at Zwettl last night, just before dusk. More than two score, he said, a scouting or foraging party. He watched them advance east then make their camp in a sheep pasture near his father’s cottage. Unless they have managed to cross the Danube, which seems unlikely, or have turned back towards the rest of their Satanic horde, which is north of here, up in the woods of Bohemia, these scouts will pass us on this road today. Unless they do not. I cannot see the future. It is in the hands of God.”
The young duke nodded sagely. He looked round at the mass of brightly coloured, murmuring Germanic horsemen gathered under the trees, then gestured for his squire to bring the wine flask.
He drank deeply and wiped his sweating face with his leather-covered palm. If his company departed now, he calculated, they could be back inside the walls of Vienna Castle by late afternoon – and he might even be able to take a cool dip in the Danube-fed castle moat before supper. That would be delightful, by Christ. Heinrich von Leitzdorf was right, only God knew where these swift-riding fiends were this hellishly day. Perhaps they had disappeared back into the Realm of Tartarus
A vast swarm of these creatures had recently erupted out of the East, everyone knew that. They had crushed the Russian dukedoms one after another. They had cowed the Kingdom of Hungary with their ferocity, and destroyed the knights of Poland in one great battle at Leignitz just three months ago. All eastern Europe now lay supine under the Tartar boot with only little Austria still standing against them. The princes of France, Germany and England whined and quarrelled – and did nothing. The Pope issued decrees but dispatched no soldiers. Only Frederic of Austria and his handful of knights defied the heathen army. They would strike a telling blow for Christ this day against this demonic foe. But where were they? Not on the Korneuburg road, that was certain. The duke made his decision; it was simply too hot. He opened his mouth to give the order, and stopped.
“Sire,” said Heinrich, pointing, “look yonder, by that little copse of ash trees.”
Duke Frederick looked westwards at a small cloud of dust moving along the road towards them. As the dust drew nearer – and, by God, they were moving at a blistering pace – he began to make out the hunched shapes of individual riders and their dull iron armour, round shields and pointed helms topped with flowing plumes.
“About four dozen of the Hell-spawn, would you say, Hen?” The duke grinned excitedly at his most loyal knight, the ageing constable of his castle. “Few enough for us to challenge, eh?”
But Heinrich von Leitzdorf merely grunted a noncommital response to his liege. The lord of Austria was now bouncing in his saddle with glee, all discomfort gone.
“Yes, by God. We shall take them on. Heinrich – you take my lord Stephen of Dalmatia and his Hungarians and ride west to cut off their retreat back up the road. We’ll wait for them to see you down there – then the rest of us will go straight in and fall on them. We’ll catch these heathens like a walnut between two rocks.”
The duke made a pinching movement with his left hand, like a crab closing its claw. “You understand me, Heinrich?”
“Indeed, sire.”
“Then, go. May God and all the Saints ride with you!”
A little while later, the duke led his men out of the cover of the trees into the open on to the crest of the hill. With loud cries of “For God and the Virgin!” and “Austria for ever!” The thirty-five noble Germanic knights couched their lances under right elbows, put back their spurs and clattered down the rock-strewn slope towards the road, in one long, raggedy battle line.
The Tartars were quick to respond. They had seen the Hungarians burst out on to the road behind them, and now they saw the onslaught of the duke’s knights coming straight down the hill. Despite being pinned against the river bank to the south, they scattered in almost all directions. Those furthest east, the half a dozen Tartars nearest the hamlet of Korneuburg, galloped on and escaped into the jumble of thatched huts and barns and kitchen gardens, whipping their ponies into an undignified scramble to escape the eagerly pursuing Christian knights.
Those furthest west turned to face Stephen of Dalmatia’s men, drawing short bows from scabbards on the horses’ withers and loosing shafts at the gallop as they urged their mounts against their oncoming foes. Those in the middle of the Tartar pack, split apart like a glass bowl dropped on a flag-stone floor, the dagger-like shards splintering out as the line of knights swept into them.
Duke Frederick found himself face to face with a scowling devil under a black-plumed iron helm, a flat, pale face with twin spots of scarlet on the cheek, gleaming, deep-sunken black eyes and a feather of moustache above a snarling, gap-toothed mouth. The warrior effortlessly drew his short bow and loosed – and the wicked shaft thwacked into the painted leather face of duke’s red-and-white shield, the iron point punching through and catching in the links of his mailed sleeve inside.
An instant later, the duke’s lance took the enemy rider high in the left shoulder and ripped him out of the saddle. The long spear snapped mid-strike and Frederick immediately lost his grip on the shaft. Fumbling at his left-hand side for his arming sword, he saw with horror one of his knights arch his back in pain as a passing Tartar smacked a shaft into his upper spine from three yards away.
Screaming, “For God and the Virgin”, the duke drew his sword and kneed his destrier towards the nearest living opponent.
A clash of steel, the sparks visible, a glimpse of a dirty, hate-twisted face under a shapeless fur hat, and the duke was past his ferocious opponent, and reining in on the banks of the Danube. He immediately turned his horse, dug in the spurs once more and rode back into the fray. Another hideous foe: an elegant curve of silver catching the sunshine, his own straight blade, up fast, parrying, catching the weight of the blow. Then the riposte, completely by instinct, the long arming sword battering past the smaller man’s defence and hacking into the side of his neck. Bubbling scarlet blood from his mouth, the Tartar slumping down in the saddle. Yet the warrior still had the strength to turn in the saddle and spit bloody defiance at the duke. Frederick closed in again, yelling, and finished him with a sweep of his sword that severed his ugly head from his squat body.
Gulping down air, his own blood fizzing from the heat of the action, Frederick looked about him, turning his head this way and that. His eye was drawn to one of the Tartars, a man taller than the rest, who was exchanging blows with three of the duke’s sergeants at the same time. The Tartar controlled the horse only with his knees and deftly fended off his three attackers with a small steel-plated shield and a slim curved sabre.
The man’s head was covered with a domed helmet, adorned with a jaunty red plume, marking him out from the rest of these hell-spawn riders with their black horsehair top-knots. He seemed a superior kind of warrior, an officer, perhaps. More skilled than the rest. As Frederick watched, catching his breath, the Tartar slid under a sword blow from one the sergeants, riposted with a lightning fast slice that ripped opened the Austrian’s throat to the spine. The poor sergeant slid from the saddle gargling blood. Yet this Tartar was still beset by two Christian enemies. He blocked a cut from one of them and forced the other back with a lunge, then chopped his iron shield down on the first sergeants thigh, the rim striking hard and snapping bone. The sergeant screamed, and the Tartar tried to force his horse past him and into open space. But now the last sergeant was clubbing at his back, a crunching mace blow that clanged dully against the Tartar’s iron-strip, lamellar armour making the man arch his spine in pain. The Tartar rounded on him, effortlessly turning his smaller horse and striking the last sergeant in a flurry of sword blows, almost too swift for the eye to see.
The Tartar was magnificent. Hell-spawn or not, Frederick thought, he fought like a lion, with a chilly ferocity, a merciless precision that was simply astonishing.
The Duke of Austria collected himself. He put back his spurs and his destrier leapt forward. “For God and Saint Mary!” he yelled, as he closed on the Tartar and the overmatched sergeant, who was battling for his life. The duke swung his sword hard at the Tartar’s lamellar neck armour, and was aware that, even as he made his cut, the Tartar officer was hacking across the space between him and the sergeant and into the Austrian man’s unguarded side. The Tartar’s lateral blow landed an instant before Frederick’s own powerful strike – which clanged against the back of the tall man’s scarlet plumed helmet just above the neck rim at the level of his right ear.
Frederick saw the Tartar’s head jerk back from the impact of the sword blow but, remarkably, he did not fall. In an extraordinary feat of horsemanship, he turned his nimble pony on a nail-head and came barrelling back directly at the duke. As he came on, one of the dismounted, wounded sergeants hacked wildly at the Tartar’s passing leg – missed and the sword thwacked into the man’s saddle flap, severing various straps.
The Tartar stood tall in the saddle to hammer a sword blow at the duke’s head, and as he stood, his right stirrup strap snapped with a loud crack, and the tall man was dumped back against his high cantle. As the duke struck his own blow, desperately blocked by the off-balance man’s small round iron shield, the Tartar was hurled from the saddle by the impact of the young Austrian’s strike and his awkward stirrup-less seat. The duke’s enemy spilled untidily from his saddle and thumped down hard into the dust of the road – and lay there in a crumpled heap, stunned and still.
Frederick left the man to his dismounted sergeants, to kill or capture. He turned his own destrier and looked for more mounted enemies to slay. Yet by now the fight was clearly over. The Christians were victorious – that was clear from their noisy exultations. His Germans were scattered all over the road, most of them with bloody swords in their hands. The Tartars had been vanquished – the enemy saddles were all empty, the riders now lying prone in the dust, or fleeing for their lives on their swift little ponies. One of the fiends was gamely trying to swim his frightened horse across half a mile of swift brown river.
Frederick’s breathing became calmer, he felt the hot glow of victory in his belly, and a slight feeling of nausea at the necessary carnage. The duke saw his constable Heinrich, trotting along the road towards him. He seemed to be unharmed but he had a short black arrow tangled in his cloak-hem which he seemed not to have noticed.
“We did it, old friend. We did it. We struck a telling blow for Christ today,” he said.
“Yes, sire. We did indeed.” But Heinrich seemed to be a little distracted; he was looking beyond his liege. A knot of bloody captives was kneeling in the dirt, hands held up high in surrender, with dismounted German knights and sergeants herding them into a line, with swords lofted, ready to strike down any who refused to obey.
“I regret to say, sire, that Otto von Lichtenberg has fallen,” the constable said. “He is with God and the angels. Count Siegfried, too, is wounded – an arrow shaft in the ribs.”
“Still, it was a noble victory, eh, Hen?”
“Indeed, sire. We must have dispatched two dozen of the devils between us.”
“Austria has stemmed the tide of evil, Hen. We can be truly proud of our arms today.”
“Hmm, if you say so, my lord. If you say so. But what, may I ask, sire, do you intend to do with them?” He pointed over at the forlorn line of kneeling prisoners.
The duke turned to look. “Them? No idea. Hang them all without delay, I suppose. As a fitting punishment and warning to the rest of their Hell-born breed.”
“Perhaps it might be wise to put them to the question first, sire. To gain a little intelligence. If we can find a good Christian who can speak their accursed tongue.”
“You take charge, Hen, will you? There’s a good fellow. They are all yours. Do what you will. Hang them, question them, chop out their black hearts and roast them. I care not.”
But Heinrich was already stepping down from his horse, oblivious of his lord.
He walked towards the nearest Tartar prisoner, and stopped before him, standing over the kneeling man and looking intently into his upturned face.
“Take off your helmet,” he said, in his native German.
The Tartar prisoner looked up at the German knight out of eyes the blue of cornflowers. He was a man of about fifty years of age, square jawed, lean, strong-looking. He looked slightly dazed. His head swayed on his neck and he blinked several times. Then he reached up and began to untie the leather straps that secured his helm. The steel helmet, with a short brim and cheek and neck flaps, was adorned with a scarlet plume, the only badge of its kind in that line of Tartar wretches.
“You understand me? My tongue?” Heinrich could barely hide his astonishment.
The man pulled the pointed iron helmet off his head to release a mass of long, grey-streaked, sweat-matted hair, which had clearly once been bright blond.
The kneeling prisoner replied slowly: “I do . . . my lord,” in that same language. “Also French, Italian, Latin, Turkish, Arabic, Persian and several other tongues besides . . .”
“Sire!” called Heinrich. “Come here, I beg you – come look at this one. Sire!”
The constable felt the presence of his young liege lord looming at his shoulder.
“God’s blood,” spluttered the duke. “I saw this one fight. He took on three of our sergeants – a veritable Trojan with a blade – three men defeated, before I felled him myself. But he is no Tartar. Surely not. Look at his eyes, Hen – at his hair. Who are you? Tell me this instant, man. Be you foul heathen dog or good honest Christian? Speak up!”
“Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour,” said the man, making the sign of the cross with his hand, forehead to heart, left shoulder to right. “God chose me as his servant. I have never denied my Faith – and I never shall, even unto Death itself.”
“Why then do you ride with these fiends from Satan’s realm?” asked Heinrich.
The prisoner shook his head very slightly, winced and said no more.
“Why do you keep company with the Devil’s horsemen?” said the duke, shoving the kneeling man’s shoulder hard. “Tell me, man!”
One of the other prisoners spoke then, the words harsh, as alien as the barking of a hound to the duke’s ears. To his surprise, the once-blond man answered him in that same hideous tongue. He appeared to be commanding the other prisoner to remain silent.
“Speak like a proper Christian – and answer me. Why are you with them?” The duke was growing impatient. The prisoner simply shook his grey-blond head again.
“Heinrich, seize that fellow!” The duke pointed at the kneeling Tartar who had just spoken with the strange captive. The older knight moved smartly to obey.
“Tell me,” said the duke, “or I shall order your comrade’s throat to be opened.”
“We are your prisoners – we have yielded to you. If you kill us, it runs contrary to all the laws of God and Man. It would be nothing less than murder.”
The duke stared at the prisoner. He felt the stirrings of anger. He was not used to being gainsaid. “Answer my question, then,” the duke growled. “Why do you – who claim to be a Christian – ride with these Devil-spawn fiends from the bowels of Tartarus?”
The strange blue-eyed Tartar merely closed his eyes and began to mumble something, the familiar Latin words: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum . . .”
“Talk to me – or I shall end your friend’s existence this instant!” The duke could feel the hot fury rising in him, like a cook-pot coming up to the boil on the campfire.
“Kill him, Heinrich.” The duke nodded at the old knight, who immediately ripped his dagger across the Tartar’s throat.
The blond man ignored the sputtering blood and continued with his prayer.
“Speak up – or you are next,” said the duke through his gritted teeth.
The kneeling man shook his head again. The familiar Latin prayer droned on.
“Heinrich!”
“Wait, sire! Look again at his face. I know this man. I have seen him before.”
The duke stared at the prisoner. He frowned. “What? What do you mean . . .”
“In Pest, in the court of King Béla. In the spring. With the Tartar ambassador.”
“God’s blood, you’re right, Hen. He was with their ambassador; he was the English translator with the Tartars when they demanded the submission of Hungary.”
Frederick seized the prisoner by the chin and forced his face upwards.
“You are the Englishman,” he said. “You are the traitor to Christendom!”
Ends
Templar Traitor is available as an eBook, paperback and audio book from Amazon and all good bookshops. Templar Assassin, the second book in the Mongol Knight trilogy, will be out in August 2026
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