In the harsh winter of 1208, Bokeny son of Saul paced the battlements of castle Varad, his thick fur collar proving inadequate to the task of protecting him from the bitter wind which whistled and screeched around the black stone ramparts and sent icy droplets of sleet pelting into his face where they froze and lodged in his thick black beard and eyebrows, giving him the aspect of a wild man frozen alive in the icy tundra.

Stopping at a lookout post he gazed down upon the camp of the besiegers far below, huddled in their tents behind their circumvallation of logs under the leaden skies in which ominous black clouds gathered.

Squinting against the gale he tried to make out, among the pools of orange light cast by struggling torches and feeble campfires, the tent bearing the standard of his cousin Pozsony, son of Mate. How had it come to this? Years of bitter civil war between men who had been brothers in arms, the bloodlust and rancor amplifying by the day, by the month, by the season until finally here they were, set against one another in a standoff which showed no signs of relenting even as God himself assailed them with storm, with pestilence and with famine in a desperate attempt to bring their feud to an end.

Curse the fat and indolent wife of Sandor who bore him no children and in her barren womb conceived this war-child as a curse on the Magyar for a generation after his death.

Curse the pride of his father Saul who could not let it lie and hounded Mate to his early death through wood and vale as they struggled for Sandor’s vacant throne.

A pox on the greedy, self-centred nobles who grasped for increments of additional power and wealth and egged the two rivals on to their doom!

And the greatest curse of all on the fickle whims of fate which cast Pozsony and he as successors to the blood feud, bound by duty, honour and the promises of their fathers to fight for the crown to the bitter end, here at Varad where the abominable throne lay vacant, waiting for its blood tithe to be delivered once more.

He remembered their childhood together here, in happier times when the Magyar were at peace and the harvests were bounteous, when all men of Hungary, even the lowest serf, had a full belly and naively believed they would die before their children. How the two boys had plotted mischief together, overlooked at the busy court of Sandor as they rode far and wide without leave across hill and dale, hunting and fishing, stealing fruit from the orchards of red-faced yeomen who shook their fists at the scamps as they fled laughing.

How gloriously foolish they had been, with not a worry between them and nothing ahead but the promise of a life filled with adventure and camaraderie, set to inherit large estates and be troubled by nothing more than the petty disputes of their tenants and the seasonal worries of farmers.

It was widely believed that Pozsony had been responsible for the death of Saul; a mysterious poison which had left his body racked with convulsions and tinged blue at the extremities had claimed his life in the spring of this year and with it any hope of settling the civil war which at that stage looked to be resolving itself in his favour.

Bokeny himself did not know what to believe – true, it would have been in Pozsony’s interest to murder his father but that only placed him in a group of several dozen men of rank who would stand to benefit by the destabilizing effect of decapitating his tenuous regime.

Then, of course, with the inevitability of such events the treasonous and disloyal among his ranks had switched sides, breathing new life into Pozsony’s resistance and leading to a counter-campaign which had pushed back Saul’s armies, now with Bokeny newly at their head and struggling to come to grips with his leading role, back to the very spawning ground of the conflict, here at the capital Varad.

So here they were, deadlocked in the blizzard, the supplies within Varad dwindling, belts tightened, morale dropping and sickness beginning to spread its tendrils through the ranks of the defenders. Outside in the besiegers’ camp the situation was hardly better. Pozsony had begun to suffer desertion and his own supply lines were assailed by guerilla actions by partisans encamped in the forests and still loyal to Saul.

Something had to give. Bokeny could see it clearly – desperation would drive Pozsony to assault the castle and one thing was certain: it would be bloody and the best and brightest of the Magyar would be slain in the carnage which would result. Meanwhile, the enemies of Hungary: the bestial Cuman, the cynical Byzantine, the calculating Venetian, the accursed Reich – all would descend like carrion crows to pick at the remains. Already news of armies massing on the borders was trickling through to him. He knew Pozsony would be hearing the same tidings which would only increase his desperate need to bring the siege to an abrupt end, whatever the cost.

Suddenly from out of the whirling snow a giant boulder appeared and interrupted his reverie. Hurled by one of the stone throwers below it smashed into the black stone wall below him, causing barely a scratch on the granite surface. A desultory gesture which seemed to underline the futility of it all.

Clearing his throat, he spat the yellow phlegm out over the ramparts and into the snowy void below.