TWINS by Jennifer Hor Page 1

TWINS

Many centuries ago in a small village in a distant principality, there were born

identical twin boys with matching birthmarks to a baker and his wife who named the

children after their grandfathers Arseni and Dmitri. Some gypsies happened to be

passing through the village at the time of the births and an elderly gypsy woman

offered to tell the boys’ fortune for free when she heard the news.

“They will achieve great status and wealth as soldiers and military

commanders,” she said to the amazement and joy of all, “and after their long careers

on the battlefield, they shall be buried together with great honour.”

As time passed and the babies progressed from crawling to walking, there

appeared rumours of war and invasion which spread throughout the village. One

peasant decided to take his family over the mountains to a neighbouring kingdom for

safety. He remembered a good deed the baker had once done for him. “There’s room

in my wagon to take one of your twin boys,” he told the baker, “but not enough for

both, otherwise I’ll not have room for all the supplies we need to take to sustain us on

the rough mountain trip.”

The baker and his wife agonized a day and a night as to which twin should go.

Finally the wife said, “Let our elder son Arseni go as he is a little stronger than Dmitri

and more likely to survive the mountain journey.” So Arseni was given to the peasant

and two days later, the peasant took his family and Arseni for the high country in the

west.

Several weeks after Arseni left, the villagers heard sounds of fierce fighting in

the distance: the screams of men and horses, the clang of swords and the booming

guns and cannons could be heard day and night. The noises gradually ceased and

news arrived that the villagers were now the subjects of a great Emperor in the east,
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whose army had destroyed the army of the now-deposed Prince. Not long after, the

Emperor and his soldiers arrived in the village and all the villagers had to line up for

inspection. The Emperor’s soldiers surveyed and counted the new subjects and their

lands and possessions, and scribes wrote down everything seen and described. The

Emperor then ordered his soldiers to take all male children under the age of ten years

as hostages to ensure the villagers’ loyalty. The baker and his wife wept as their son

Dmitri was bundled along with the other young boys in a cart and taken away.

The hostages were sent to the hinterlands of that vast Empire where the

summers were intensely hot and the winters brought heavy snows. The boys toiled for

great lords for many years, learning the ways and wisdom of their new Islamic

religion and forgetting their own language for Arabic. They grew up tough and strong.

Dmitri forgot his own name and answered to the new name of Haydar. At the age of

fifteen, he and all the other young hostages from his village began an arduous military

training that would ultimately lead them all into the Emperor’s elite bodyguard.

Arseni was taken over the mountains into a rich, flat kingdom famous for its

large wheat harvests and abundant fruit. The peasant’s family settled in an area ruled

by a landlord related to the kingdom’s royal family and the entire realm enjoyed peace

and prosperity for many years. Then a strange sleeping sickness swept through the

area and claimed many lives including the landlord’s wife and children and Arseni’s

adoptive family. The boy would have faced a life of homelessness and begging but the

landlord needed a male heir and adopted Arseni as his own son, baptizing him in the

Protestant faith as Matthias, the name of the original heir. When Arseni / Matthias

reached the age of nine, the landlord sent him to the King’s court to learn to be a

gentleman and a soldier. Many years later, the landlord himself died, having never
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really recovered from the sleeping sickness, and Matthias returned home to claim the

estates and the title of Count.

At about the same time, Haydar joined the Emperor’s elite bodyguard and

began to accompany his master on campaigns against nomadic infidel hordes and

armies to the north, south and east of the Empire. The young man distinguished

himself by his toughness and skill in hand-to-hand combat and was rewarded with

gifts of land, gold and slaves. He was eventually promoted to Commander of the

Emperor’s armies.

The Count Matthias fought in many wars against his King’s enemies and was

rewarded with gifts of lands wrenched from those he defeated. His ultimate reward

and honour was to lead the armies of the King and the King’s allies into battle.

Forty years passed since the twins went their separate ways.

Now the Emperor was aged and as his kismet drew near his dream of

conquering the Christian lands to the west revived. He called on Commander Haydar

to the lead the Imperial armies to capture these lands, in particular the glittering

capital and palace of the Emperor of these lands for the glory of the Empire and the

greater glory of Allah. The armies began their long march west.

News of a new Muslim attack after four decades of relative peace reached the

King of the Christian western lands and he called on all his allies to assist. He ordered

Count Matthias to lead an army of five thousand men to hold the Muslim armies at

bay until the King and his allies could raise a bigger army to assist.

The Count and his men garrisoned themselves in a castle on a hill to keep

watch on the eastern horizon. They waited and waited until at last a messenger on

horseback sent by the Imperial armies arrived. The messenger read out his message,
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first in Arabic and then in Latin, the latter which the Count understood. At hearing the

message ordering him and his army to surrender immediately, the Count, standing at

the parapet, laughed and spat on the messenger. “So this Commander Haydar bids us

to lay down our weapons and surrender to the will of his infidel Emperor and God,

does he?” he yelled back in Latin, “well, tell your Commander we might consider

doing that once we tire of wiping our swords clean of Muslim blood a thousand times

over!” And he spat again on the messenger as the castle walls echoed with soldiers’

laughter and jeers.

The messenger rode back to Commander Haydar and told him of the Count’s

reaction. The Commander remarked, “If this Count speaks of wiping his sword a

thousand times over with our blood, he’d better be prepared to choke first on his own

Christian blood more than a thousand times!” He gave the order to continue the

advance to the castle on the hill.

While the Imperial armies were advancing, the Count was anxiously awaiting

news that his King would be sending the armies and fresh supplies promised. The

Count had already sent his own messenger to the capital with instructions to return

only when reinforcements were ready and coming to assist; several weeks had already

passed since the messenger left and still there was no sign on the western horizon that

he was coming back.

One day the guards in the watch-towers scanned the eastern horizons and saw

the Imperial armies rapidly approaching the castle. They sent for the Count and when

he saw the massed soldiers, his heart sank. “They must have at least ten times the

number of men here!” he groaned, “and at the rate they are moving, they’ll be here

before we’ll even see the messenger return!” He ordered the gunners to take up their

positions and ready the cannons. As the enemy infantry drew near, the gunners began
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to pick them off, forcing the Imperial armies to slow down and eventually to stop.

Then the Count’s infantry went running out of the castle down the hill, their swords,

halberds and maces ready, while the gunners continued to harry the enemy. The

enemy’s artillery arrived and the two sides exchanged cannon-fire while the foot

soldiers clashed and fought desperately. Commander Haydar, surveying the fighting,

ordered his generals to split the infantry into several groups to attack the castle from

all sides. Count Matthias shouted and urged his men to fight harder and redistributed

his gunners about the parapets to defend the castle better.

The battle continued day after day, stopping only when night fell to allow

soldiers to collect their dead and wounded, and the rival leaders to ponder the next

day’s plans. The Count’s messenger still hadn’t appeared. The castle’s supplies of

food, water and ammunition were running low. As the days went by, the Count’s men

began to grumble and complain; as the weeks dragged on and the castle walls shook

constantly with noise and pounding of the enemy’s cannon-fire, the men began to

panic.

“The fate of Christendom lies on our shoulders!” the Count had to shout to the

men over and over. “It’s our sacred duty as well as our military duty to prevent the

infidels from advancing to the capital and taking the King prisoner – that is surely the

infidels’ immediate goal! We must pray to God to grant us the strength and faith to

hold off these devils until the King’s allies arrive!”

Still, neither the King’s allies nor the Count’s messenger came while the

castle’s supplies continued to shrink. The gunners ran out of cannon so the Count

ordered his men to cut up the putrefying bodies of their dead comrades and to use the

heads, which they stuffed with metal shards and wood splinters, as cannon-balls. The

Count ordered a search for any weapons in the castle that could be of use and the men,
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searching thoroughly, found harquebuses, crossbows, bows and arrows, and even

slings. “Anything we can use is a weapon!” was the Count’s cry.

In the meantime, Commander Haydar was exasperated that the Imperial

armies were unable to overcome the castle defenders who numbered a meagre five

thousand. “We know they have little ammunition and still they fight on!” he roared to

his generals, “they must surrender! Keep pounding them!” He ordered his gunners to

keep firing their cannons and the infantry to fall back so as not to lose any more men

unnecessarily. And so the siege wore on.

The day arrived when the castle defenders’ food and water had gone, there

were no more horses or dogs left to kill for food and all the arrows and other things

that could be used as projectiles were gone as well. The only weapons left were

swords and shields. Count Matthias’s messenger still hadn’t returned. The Count’s

men, numbering less than half of what it had been originally, were in turmoil.

“What are we to do?” they wailed, “we have been forsaken by God! Death

from starvation and from the infidels now awaits us! What are we to do?”

The Count, himself desperate, thought long and hard as the castle walls

continued to shake under the impact of cannon-fire.

“There is but one thing we can do,” he said slowly, “if God indeed has

forsaken us and we are to go to Hell … then let us all charge into Hell together and

take all these Muslim dogs with us!”

The men gaped at the Count’s words.

“Very well,” the Count said, “die like feeble old women if you want but I’m

going out to face these Muslims alone. You can all lie down like dogs and let the
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whole of Christendom fall under these Muslim dogs’ emperor. Any of you curs wish

to accompany me?”

Slowly the men began to rally around the Count. They put on their helmets

and armour and took up their swords and shields. The Count instructed them on what

they were to do and bade them kneel and pray to God for guidance, strength, courage

and endurance in what they were about to do.

Some hours passed and the castle’s drawbridge was let down. The Imperial

armies stopped its cannon-fire, expecting to see the Christians come out with their

appeal for surrender. Instead a ragtag crowd of soldiers came screaming and charging

down the hill, slashing with their swords wildly as the overpowered the foot soldiers

and gunners before they could act. Turbaned heads flew through the air trailing red

streams behind them and bodies nearly cleft in two lay all over the ground. Some of

the Count’s men fanned out to the left and right of the main body of mad Christians,

hacking at all before and around them, while the Count himself ran through the

confused enemy ranks, right towards Commander Haydar.

The Commander put on his helmet and took up his sword. “If this is what the

infidel Count means by dipping his sword in Muslim blood,” he cried, “by Allah, I’ll

match him with a hundred Christian lives for every Muslim life he takes!” And the

Commander led his best soldiers running towards the Count.

A mighty clang of metal rang out as the Count’s men met the Commander’s

men and Christian and Muslim heads alike were tumbling along the ground and the

grass turned dark with running blood. None fought harder than the two rival leaders as

they battled the other’s best soldiers and then each other. The Count’s men, brave as
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they were, fell around the Count as they were overwhelmed by the Commander’s men

through sheer force of numbers until only the Count remained standing.

The Commander’s troops, having dispatched all the Christian defenders,

marveled at the Count’s determination as he fought off lesser swordsmen and was still

able to hold his own against the Commander who matched him in endurance and skill

in battle. So perfectly matched were they that neither was able to gain an advantage

over the other. A young slave loyal to the Commander was filled with dread.

“This Count must be a demon, that he is able to slay so many and fight my

master unceasingly!” he cried and he picked up a sword, ran up behind the Count and

stabbed him in the leg to the horror of onlookers.

The Count roared, turned around and swiped at the slave, severing the boy’s

head cleanly from his torso. The Commander saw his chance and ran his sword

through the Count. Filled with fury, the Count lashed out at the Commander and

struck him hard on the side of the head with the flat part of his sword before he

crumpled up and fell to the ground dead.

The dazed Commander, staggering badly, took off his helmet and called for his

generals.

“Lift up this Count’s helmet!” he gasped when they arrived, “lift it up so I may

see the face of a worthy adversary. This man is the best swordsman I have ever fought

in my life. Lift up the helmet!”

The generals did as they were told. When the Commander beheld the face of

the Count and saw his likeness in death, he uttered a long unearthly and desolate

scream and fell senseless to the ground. The generals and soldiers looked at their

Commander first and then the Count and back again in horror. They stared for so long
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at the two men that when someone thought to revive the Commander, the man had

been dead for some time.

The Commander’s deputy ordered the two leaders’ bodies to be prepared for

burial. When the soldiers undressed the bodies of washing, they saw the matching

birthmarks on both bodies and murmured to each other, “A cruel fate has surely

separated these twin brothers and made them mortal enemies to each other.”

Commander Haydar and Count Matthias were buried side by side under the

very spot where they had fallen. Their graves were marked by a joint headstone

proclaiming them brothers in courage, martial skill and leadership as well as in blood.

The Imperial armies, having lost more than half their men during the several

weeks of the siege and the final battle, gave up the campaign to capture the King’s

capital and returned home. The siege had taken up too much valuable time and

resources and the armies had to hurry back home before the long cold winter set in.

The Commander’s generals reported what they had seen to the old Emperor who was

much astounded and saddened to hear of the loss of the Commander and the Christian

leader he had fought who turned out to be his brother.

Several days after the Imperial armies had withdrawn, the Count’s messenger

returned to the now-abandoned castle with news that the King’s allies would soon be

sending fresh troops and supplies if the Count and his men could wait and defend the

castle for another two weeks.

THE END