Son of Blood

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘And lacking them Venice is, as a power, nothing?’

  Ridel nodded and the silence that followed was a long one, one in which the dromons shrank in size as the distance between them and the two men on the Apulian galley increased to a point where they were mere pinpricks on the horizon.

  ‘The question is, Geoffrey, will they return?’

  ‘Why would they? I have told you already, they think us crushed.’

  ‘Call everyone aboard at once.’

  The subsequent battle was a very different affair and the loss of it for the galleys defending Durazzo was caused by the same failure to understand the Normans, and especially Robert de Hauteville, as had afflicted every power on the Italian mainland; they did not readily accept defeat and were only given to licking their wounds for a period long enough to either recover or allow fate, as it had now and had done many times in the past, to take a hand. They waited until those dromons were well over the horizon before launching an attack, one in which they were evenly matched in terms of the size, weight and number of vessels; what mattered was when they closed and engaged, where Norman fighting prowess did the rest.

  As the sun began to set on the second day it was the Venetians who were obliged to cast an eye over their losses, many of them forced to do so from the shoreline onto which they had been driven by relentless Apulian pressure, there to watch their galleys break up in the surf. Out on the water they saw abundant wreckage where other vessels had been destroyed, or ships which had that morning been theirs, now in the hands of their enemies, with bodies floating around them of those who had been slain. For those that remained intact, all they could do was withdraw into the harbour and await what was bound to come, an assault coordinated with the advance on land, in which the possession of the harbour would be lost and the city they had sought to defend would be thus fully under siege.

  The dromons did return, a fast six-oar and single-sail sandalion being sent after them, but which took time to find the fleet, but it was to see the Apulian army camped around the city and the mouth of the harbour blocked in a way that made it dangerous to attack, while staying offshore ran the risks of destruction by tempest outlined by Geoffrey Ridel. Venice had to have an intact fleet, not only to be a power, but also to maintain and increase that to which they were committed: their trade and wealth. Nothing Byzantium could offer would compensate for the loss of that.

  Laying siege to a city was one thing, taking it another, and any lack of progress had as much to do with the man in command of the resistance as it had with the state of the walls and the cunning construction of the defences. Alexius had put his own brother-in-law in charge of holding Durazzo, but not because of a family connection; with George Palaeologus the reason was sheer ability. He was a brilliant soldier, an inspiring leader as well as a man not content to hide behind those stones, so the Apulian camp was on constant alert for the endless sorties in which he engaged. For all his own abilities, Robert de Hauteville was not slow to accord him the accolade of a worthy opponent. But there was another reason Durazzo held out and that had to do with the Guiscard’s tactics.

  ‘Yet you do not press home the assaults,’ said Sichelgaita, an observation that got a silent and furtive smile of agreement from her husband.

  It was Bohemund, now openly acknowledged as his father’s second in command, who replied. ‘To do so would entail great loss.’

  The sneer on the face of the Duchess of Apulia was undisguised; Bohemund’s elevation was the reason she had crossed from Brindisi. ‘I can accept you might fear to expose yourself, but not my husband.’

  ‘Peace, woman,’ Robert growled, the smile now gone to be replaced with a look of resignation. ‘I have none braver than Bohemund.’

  ‘And none so stuffed with ambition, husband,’ she snapped, her face going red with anger, ‘which you seem blind to.’

  That made Bohemund smile. He was always happy when Sichelgaita was upset and she was not a woman to let her emotion remain hidden – it was not just the skin colour, added to that was her expression and right now she looked as if she had swallowed a hornet. If he was privy to this exchange, Bohemund had not been to the berating his father had received when she arrived. Borsa, who to Sichelgaita’s mind should occupy the position Bohemund now held, had been left behind in Salerno, given no good would be done to his pride to be in the presence of his half-brother while forced to defer to him on anything of a military nature. Robert’s reaction had been to admit that his possessions were in good hands, but he refused to dismiss his bastard in favour of his heir for the very simple reason he was going to have a battle and it was one he wanted to win.

  ‘As of this moment, Alexius is marching towards us with a relief army and his brother-in-law has one task, which is to hold Durazzo until he can get here.’

  ‘He would still come if you held the city.’

  That riled Robert. ‘Allow that when it comes to fighting I know what I am about. I need to bring Comnenus to battle and I need to defeat him, and for that I cannot risk losing men to take a city that will fall to me anyway. What if I can repeat Manzikert, destroy his army and take him captive? The road to Constantinople will be mine, so when you think of our son, which you seem to do above all other things, think of him clad in imperial purple.’

  That got Bohemund another glare; he was sure, in her mind’s eye, she could see him dressed in such garb, towering over an empire of millions of subjects and her family, and it was not a vision to bring much comfort. She turned back to her husband, her voice now silky with irony.

  ‘I thought the intention was to restore your Michael Dukas to his throne?’

  ‘That booby,’ Robert spat, for he had long ago lost faith in his impostor monk; his appeal to the defenders of Durazzo had brought nothing but derision, none more than from his own renegades, Peter and Abelard, who had baited him from the safety of the city walls. ‘I would fain put him on a privy as a throne.’

  ‘Alexius is two days’ march away, My Lord, and he has in his army a strong Norman contingent.’

  That got Count Radulf, who was in the command tent with many of the other battaile commanders, a glare; these were the men he had been sent to Constantinople to recruit.

  ‘The imperial bodyguard?’ Robert asked.

  ‘They are with their master, as always, made up of the men of Rus as well as an even larger number of Saxons who fled from England and are eager to avenge themselves on you, since they cannot do so on King William.’

  ‘Remind me,’ Robert intoned, in a voice larded with irony, ‘to send my cousin my thanks for letting me fight his battles.’

  The messenger, sent from the cavalry screen he had put out to keep him informed, had seen the eyes of the Guiscard narrow at the mention of the men of Rus. Just as he had his familia knights, Alexius would have his faithful bodyguard, called Varangians even if they had ever been made up of many elements. The name referred to a body of warriors originally sent to the sitting Emperor decades previously as tribute by the ruler of Kiev Rus. Of Viking stock like the Normans, the men of Rus were a formidable enemy to fight: tall and sturdy axemen who never left a field of battle unless victorious.

  When faced with defeat they would die to a man rather than withdraw and in the process they always took with them enough men to outweigh their loss. It was a force that had been led, in William Iron Arm’s day, by the late King of Norway, Harald Hardrada, killed at Stamford Bridge in the same year that William of Normandy had conquered England, and it would not be lessened in either bravery or ability by the addition of the bitter Saxons who had fought at Senlac Field for Harold Godwinson.

  ‘It is more important, Father, that we find out what the Emperor intends. The composition of his army we cannot alter.’

  Sichelgaita, who was also present, nodded vigorously at that, which obliged Bohemund to acknowledge that she was no military ignoramus, quite the reverse. She knew, as well as he did, where the greater danger lay – in the notion that Alexius might refuse battle
and besiege the besiegers. To supply everything the Apulians needed from Italy, with winter approaching and the Adriatic, never predictable, even less so with seasonal storms, was to ask a great deal. Hitherto the Guiscard’s army had foraged the Illyrian interior at will to support the siege lines with food and timber on which to cook it. If Alexius cut them off from that source of sustenance, he might make life very difficult indeed.

  ‘If you can see into his mind, Bohemund,’ Robert said sharply, ‘then do so, for I cannot!’

  That pleased the Duchess, for if it was a mild rebuke, a way of telling Bohemund who was in command, it was enough of one for a woman who so rarely ever saw her husband check his bastard.

  ‘We will set out the bait of battle, while leaving open a way through to Durazzo as temptation. Let us hope he accepts it.’

  ‘If he gets in there, husband, you will never get him out.’

  Robert emitted one of his great laughing whoops, as usual going from gloom to gaiety in a blink. ‘Sichelgaita, if he gets to Durazzo, it will be over my dead body.’

  The intake of breath was sharp, to indicate the tease had been taken at face value; she feared the loss of Robert for love of him, but also because, when he was gone, Sichelgaita would have to deal with Bohemund.

  It was not bait that obliged Alexius Comnenus to do battle, more that he had an army made of so many elements: Normans, Saxons, Pechenegs, a body under the command of the King of Serbia and even renegade Turks. He harboured severe doubts that such a disparate force could be held together through a winter siege and up against such a puissant enemy. If he had never fought Normans, he was a vastly experienced general and not ignorant of their tactics, for he had in his ranks men who had fought many times with the Guiscard. Disinclined in any case to accept Robert’s bait of an easy entry into Durazzo, the leader of his Normans advised that to present his flank on line of march to the Apulians was to invite disaster.

  Robert had drawn his arm back from and to the north of Durazzo and had lined it up facing the city with his right flank on the seashore, leaving a second tempting possibility that Alexius could expect support from the garrison if he could pin and hold the Apulian army, thus increasing his offensive power at a critical juncture. Split into three parts, with the Duke of Apulia holding the centre with half of his knights and the Sicilian Saracens, Bohemund on his left, inland, with the rest of the Norman lances and the Greek conscripts.

  Sichelgaita had demanded she be in command of the right wing, and if it was thought strange that a woman should hold high authority, no one in the Apulian army questioned it. That served too as a way of telling Bohemund that he faced more than her son should he prove to be too ambitious. Robert’s wife, fully armed and wearing chain mail, as well as a helmet from which protruded her flowing blonde locks, was as much a soldier as any, and besides, the men of whom she had been given charge were of her race; she was a Lombard princess and they would follow her with spirit, where they might not a Norman.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘That, autokrator, is the wing to attack. There you will face Lombards and they are not men to stand against your imperial bodyguard and nor is a woman in command, however large she is in body. If we can take and hold the shoreline, with George Palaeologus breaking out to help me attack the Norman left, then we may be able to force the Guiscard to run for his ships, for he will not risk destruction.’

  ‘This Bohemund, what do you know of him?’ the Emperor asked.

  ‘He’s a doughty fighter by repute, a paragon of chastity I am told, and a good head taller than any man with whom he serves. Should he appear, you will not mistake him.’

  ‘As good as his father?’

  ‘Better now his sire is an old man.’

  Alexius was looking at the map on his table, not wishing to share eye contact with the subordinate proffering this advice and information, lest he show that he had doubts about anything emitted from between those lips. Geoffrey de Roussel was Norman but he was also the least reliable of men, a charming rogue, silver-tongued yet also a stout fighter who seemed able to wriggle out of difficulties that would see other men drawn and quartered.

  He had left Italy under a cloud of an unknown nature and, having entered Byzantine service, he had betrayed that trust more than once, declining with the Normans he led to support an army of which he was part, then turning his coat to join the Turks they were fighting. That was an obligation likewise cast off; Roussel had cheated the Turks and set up as ruler in his own right. It had taken Alexius, at the time an imperial general, at the head of another Byzantine force, to catch him and drag him back to a Constantinople dungeon.

  Yet here he was in the field again and to Alexius he was a living, breathing and walking reminder of the way he had to scrape the imperial barrel to field an army with some chance of winning, while trusting him now was a case of balancing where Roussel’s interest lay; he had no love for the Guiscard, that was known, and he had only been released to lead a Norman contingent that would follow him where they might not another. Alexius had to presume that the man’s future fortune, at least his immediate aim, favoured loyalty to the Byzantine cause. Putting all that aside, what he was saying made sense, for it was a staple of good generalship to attack an enemy where they were weak, so as to create confusion where they were more steady.

  The question that had troubled him was Roussel’s suggestion, the early commitment of his Varangians; such a fearsome unit would normally be held back until Alexis saw a point in the battle where to insert them was to break the enemy resistance, for they had the ability to smash through any defence, added to the power to destroy everything around it once it was rendered disorganised. Against that, he was facing Robert de Hauteville and that required him to be bold and enterprising, given he was such a canny opponent.

  ‘And you would wish still to mask this Bohemund, Roussel?’

  ‘I would wish to pit Norman lances against the same. There can be no catching me unawares when I know every horn call of command and you are right to see my task as to hold them, not defeat them, to keep them away from the main arena where the day will be decided – that is until I receive support from Durazzo, by which time I may be able to be a decisive element in the contest.’

  An experienced warrior as well as a commander, Alexius knew that the first act of any battle brought on a fluidity that could not be planned for in advance and that applied to his enemies as much as it did to him. The last thing the Duke of Apulia would expect would be his Varangians to be committed to an initial attack, and being aware of their worth, such a tactic might throw him off balance. Added to that, once they had dealt with the Lombards they would hopefully face the flank of the Norman centre and be eager to attack it, their natural valour underpinned by a deep Saxon loathing of their opponents.

  ‘Even this giant of yours, if he knows of them, will fear my axemen. When they have finished with the Lombards let us hope they will run to kill the same kind of men who made them exiles.’

  Watching as the Byzantine army marched into position, Robert de Hauteville knew he was going to get the battle he desired, but just as Alexius Comnenus had knowledge of the hazards involved in battle, so did he. Thus offshore and behind him sat his fleet of broad-bottomed transport ships, while the waters in between were full of their boats. The requirement to tempt Alexius meant accepting a position with certain disadvantages but that did not mean throwing caution to the winds, so a line of retreat was essential. With a keen eye, added to what he had already gleaned from his cavalry screen, he knew that in numbers they were evenly matched. He also accepted that he was facing a general who could match him in skill, for he had questioned anyone who knew anything of Alexius’s previous campaigns and what he had heard was impressive.

  In essence the Apulian position was defensive, which left the initiative to his enemies; the Guiscard commanded an army just as heterogeneous as that he faced, albeit better trained. He wanted them to come on to him, working on the assumption that having been hurr
iedly raised they would lack the kind of cohesion necessary to launch and press home an assault, which would open up opportunities. A good general may be surprised and often is, but the art of command is not to allow that to induce alarm, so when Robert saw the Varangians moving along the rear of the Byzantine army, from their place in the centre around the imperial standard, to their left where they would face the Lombards, he reckoned it a feint to get him to move his lances to assist Sichelgaita and that would be followed by an attack through his weakened centre.

  He was disabused of that when they filtered through the contingent that had occupied the left wing and began to come forward at a fast, disciplined jog that did nothing to rupture their tight formation. Opposite Robert the drums began to beat out an aggressive tattoo and the trumpets began to blow, with much movement of men, which only served to reinforce his view that the Varangians would stop rather than engage Sichelgaita and her Lombards and that he was about to be attacked by the forces now manoeuvring before his own position.

  ‘Count Radulf,’ he said quietly, as the Varangians broke into a run, screaming like banshees and, even at a distance, frightening with their horned helmets and huge gleaming axes. ‘Go to Bohemund and tell him what is happening here, so that he may know his lances might be required. I will send word if they are and he must come with haste whatever he faces on his front.’

  From the angle at which he was observing matters unfold Robert had a good view of the way the Varangians hit the line of Lombard milities, their great two-handed axes swinging to first smash the bucklers held up by the defenders, followed by great swipes aimed to sweep aside or decapitate their lances. Their weapons were then raised high to shatter into heads or shoulders left unprotected, this made more dangerous by the fact of the Lombards being generally small; they looked like dwarves when set against those they were fighting, for the Saxons had the height of Normans and the men of Rus had the dimensions, as well as the appearance, of their Viking forbears.