Conquest

by Jack Ludlow

  Expecting they would seek time to talk amongst themselves, Roger was surprised by the speed and the brusque nature of the response, which was in Greek, immediate and negative from a greybeard, probably an elder of the city, who first stated that he knew of the Normans and their habits of rapine and plunder, insisted he did not believe what he was being told, then concluded with the words, ‘Do your worst.’

  ‘You have no notion of what my worst is.’

  ‘Hear this, barbarian,’ the old man called. ‘Many have tried to take our city and have left their blood in the dust of the fields around it. You will do the same, for you do not have the means to stay outside our walls for the time it will take to starve us into submission, a thing even an ignorant like you must know requires a fleet of ships that would block our access to the sea.’

  ‘I will send for those, never fear.’

  The old man just laughed, which induced the same in those who stood with him. Such a response made Roger’s blood boil. His bluff was being called and in the most insulting way possible, which could not but diminish him in the eyes of the men he led. If he was noted for his sound common sense, this was one occasion when that gift deserted him: his bloodline was the stronger.

  ‘Then defend your walls.’

  As a force to mount such an assault, Roger had pitifully few men, less than four hundred in total after the losses, albeit they were small, in his recent battle. Added to such constraint was the lack of enthusiasm from anyone other than his own nephew as to the chances of success. Hurriedly made scaling ladders were all they could manage to assault stout walls and Roger’s assertion of little in the way of defence was met amongst his fellow Normans with ill-disguised scepticism. Yet no man refused, their leader might be right and the Calabrian levies, fired with anti-Sicilian bloodlust, were too ignorant to make sense of what they faced.

  The attack, launched at dawn the next day, was not a fiasco because of poor execution, it was rendered foolhardy by the sheer tenacity of the defenders who, if they were untrained, had fire in their bellies. Time and again the Normans got their ladders against the walls, with hardy fighters clambering to the top, and just as often the task of those seeking to follow was to break the fall of the repulsed warriors in the hope of saving their bones.

  Roger did at least manage to get his feet on the parapet, only to find himself assailed by dozens of frenzied citizens, who seemed to care little how many of them died to force him to withdraw, lucky to get a foothold on his ladder and keep enough distance between himself and those trying to kill him to allow an ignominious retreat. The Calabrians fared even worse, leaving scores of their number twitching and dying at the base of the walls and forcing the man in command to call off the assault.

  For Roger the humiliation of this reverse was total and there was no one close to him, seeing his mood, who had the temerity to tell him the attack should never have been launched in the first place: the thunderous look and the mood that went with it indicated to advance such an opinion was a sure way to die. Before him, as he stood out of crossbow range, he surveyed a scene of tangled bodies and smashed scaling ladders, this while horns blew from the parapets to crow the victory of those within the walls.

  His request that he be allowed to collect his wounded was denied: they could expire where they lay and if they did not then the city had knives in plenty to slit their gizzards, adding they would not be buried and no prayers would be said for their souls. Let the vultures and the carrion crows cleanse their bones, for there they would lie to warn any other invader of the fate that awaited them. Roger raised his sword before his eyes, as a makeshift cross, then uttered a promise that sounded very like a curse.

  ‘One day, Messina, I will make your women keen for the death of their men and their boy children, and that before I send every one of those wailing creatures to the slave markets of Africa.’

  Sheathing his weapon he gave the orders that would take them back to Cape Faro, a journey made with none of the joy and anticipation of the outward leg, and it was a mood not cheered by the sight of the shore and the angry waters off the cape. They still could not load the ships.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The gloom of such a reverse was bad enough; what followed was worse. The citizens of Messina, fired by their success and in their thousands, issued from their walls to pursue their foes, and it was only a lack of coordination that prevented them from sweeping what remained of Roger’s band into the sea. It took every lance he had to bring their attack to a halt and that was only made possible by the narrow neck of land that lay between Lake Faro and the sea.

  ‘They do not know how to fight.’ Serlo insisted, now with even more wounds than hitherto.

  Roger, bruised himself, was reluctant to answer his nephew, for to do so would only underline the depth of his miscalculation. If he had ever questioned the sense of the word ‘hubris’ he knew what it meant now. He had allowed his own ambitions to cloud his judgement and the men he led were being called to account for his folly.

  ‘Think on their numbers, Serlo,’ he replied, indicating a landscape full of humanity. ‘And our losses.’

  ‘Leaders?’

  ‘At times such as these, men of the right kind come to the fore.’

  ‘Then they will pay a high price for their hopes.’

  Every city, if it wished to stay unconquered, made sure its citizens had access to arms, swords and pikes, as well as some ability to use them. He had massacred the trained soldiers who had abandoned the protection of their walls but this he faced now was of a different order. They lacked the skill of the Normans but skill would not overcome odds of a hundred to one. Roger had lost half his strength, not all killed, but enough so wounded as to be unfit for battle, while everyone else was carrying injuries and that took no account of their shattered morale.

  If he wished to hold here he would be required to split them in two, sending an equal number to the north of Lake Faro where another neck of land lay between fresh water and the shore, this while his opponents, once they had fully deployed, would have the power of decision about from which area to launch an assault. Time was against him: contained on this exposed cape, if he had ample food for his men he did not have enough for his horses. Without horses he could not launch the counterattacks that would keep these people at bay, and on foot he lacked the numbers, especially given his split force, to form enough of a defence to secure the integrity of his encampment.

  No one else was backing Serlo in his bellicosity; they were silent and that included a miserable Ibn-al-Tinnah: this was a time when a leader needed to make a decision. If Roger sought advice it would do more to diminish him than raise him in the eyes of those he led. What remained of his Italian levies – not many for they had, numerically, suffered most at the walls of Messina – would do as they were told. His lances, if he so commanded, would die where they stood rather than retreat and he would fall with them, being too proud of their reputation to lay down their arms, asking only that they be shriven before the end to facilitate their entry into paradise.

  ‘We might pay a higher price, and for what?’ Roger smiled, indicating it was not a question requiring an answer.

  ‘We cannot run away,’ his nephew insisted.

  ‘That is a fine sentiment in a lad your age, but if you look you will see it is not one many of your confrères share.’ Roger turned to the man he trusted most, who would take over command if he fell. ‘Ralph?’

  ‘We must run, with our tails between our legs, Roger, you know that as I do. A bloody end is the only other outcome.’

  ‘Which you would face?’

  ‘If I must.’

  ‘Ibn-al-Tinnah?’

  ‘I love Allah as much as you, Lord Roger, but I am in no rush to meet him.’

  If they were going to depart, it would need to be near empty-handed. Occupied with fending off attacks, they could not load their plunder, even if the sea were akin to a millpond, and they would never get their horses away. Added to that they would
have to sacrifice the narrowness of the approaches to the north and south and seek to defend themselves on an open beach, possibly a recipe for disaster.

  ‘Send word to Ridel to bring in every boat he has and get the remaining Calabrian levies aboard first. In the meantime they must be put to slaughtering the livestock. The horses we will leave till last. Ralph, I want a sentinel at the northern approach, I need to know if the enemy get there in strength. Tell him to look out for a beacon of smoke as a sign to rejoin us and advise him to be swift when he does so.’ Looking around the assembled faces, he added, ‘We are not going to get away easily. Some of us are going to leave our bones on the beach. I suggest it would be a good time to make your peace with God.’

  Fatalism is an essential quality in a warrior: the more he has been exposed to death the less he will consider it. Every lance Roger led knew the words he spoke to be the truth but it interfered not at all in what they now did, the only point of disagreement being that some of his knights would have left the Calabrians to die or used them to gain Norman time. Roger would not abandon them, his Christian soul would not permit it, but he also thought like a ruler: leave those men and he would struggle to raise more when the time came to return to Sicily as well as the gates of Messina. That was a vow he had not made lightly!

  Stopping those levies panicking proved difficult and, an added difficulty, many were landsmen and feared the sea, happy to board a ship from a jetty but terrified of doing so from an open boat. Further trouble came from the open nature of his actions – it could not be hidden from his foes and they did what he anticipated, launched an immediate attack on his too-thin lines. He lost a dozen knights in driving them back, albeit with much slaughter, during what had to be his last use of his horses.

  Having achieved a breathing space, he broke off the battle and retired to the beach through a landscape saturated with the blood of sheep, cows, donkeys and the packhorses, ground which was also littered with that which the latter had carried, fighting to keep his own mount’s head in the right direction as it was spooked by the overpowering smell of blood. On the sand, his knights dismounted and each man saw to his own animal, before forming a tight arc behind their carcasses, weapons at the ready for the inevitable assault, the only positive being that the wind had finally begun to ease, the sea state calming with it.

  Their enemies came on buoyed by their fury and the Norman retreat, while to the rear of the defenders the boats plied back and forth with their human cargo. To the pile of equine corpses was added a multitude of the human variety as the menfolk of Messina, many fired up by an excess of drink, flung themselves at the gorespattered Norman line. Weary arms could not be allowed respite and swords were swung with deadly effect, Roger losing track of the number of men he had decapitated.

  While fighting he had to oversee the collapse of the defence, shrinking his perimeter as boats came in to take off his knights in parties of twenty. The concomitant of that was obvious: those remaining, already massively outnumbered, faced an increased threat, yet if anything aided them it was too much desperation on the part of those attacking: each mad-eyed assailant wanted a kill, wanted to be able to say they had, by their own hand, slain a Norman barbarian. Also, in such close-quarter fighting their lack of professional skill was most exposed, frenzy in a fight not always being an asset; it can be a liability.

  The second-to-last withdrawal did not make for the ships: taking advantage of the less-troubled water they took station in the shallows, with men over the side to seaward to keep them level so the remainder could stand to aid the final evacuation. Roger, at the head of his own personal conroy, was now up to his knees in water, the waves coming in bubbling white caps to run up the beach, before hissing back down suffused with a deep red colour. At his command, instead of backing away, Roger called for a swift advance, summoning from both himself and his men their last vestiges of strength.

  Surprised, the citizens of Messina fell back. Roger next shouted a command to break off fighting and run, which, given they were soon in deep water, was more a hope than an actuality. There was no elegance in boarding those boats either: it was dive in bodily and hope that those who had stayed to aid them could keep at bay those rushing to achieve their kill. Nor were those manning the oars willing to die; the sailors had their oars biting the water in desperation, so the last seeming part of Roger’s Sicilian adventure ended with him as a humiliated heap in the bottom of the boat, lying on the sword and shield he had thrown in before him, with water dripping off his body where he had spent a few moments submerged, spitting salt water out of his mouth.

  Some of the attackers were foolish enough to follow too far: it is hard to fight on land, impossible with water lapping your chest, and they faced Normans who had been gifted time to recover their breath. So much of their blood was expended that the waves going ashore were as red as those receding; others, with nothing but death facing them, resorted to yelling imprecations, while wiser heads looked for lances to throw after the retreating boats.

  Struggling to his knees, Roger looked at the bodies on the beach as well as those floating in the pink spume, saddened to see how many more of his own men he had lost, until, within a short time, he was being hauled up onto the deck of Ridel’s ship, a hive of furious activity as men pulled on ropes to hoist the great square sail while every warrior brought aboard had been sent to the windlass to get the ship over its anchor. Roger felt relieved to be off that shore, though he was wondering why, instead of looking pleased, Ridel was looking grim. A finger pointed to the south, to the great hook of the bay that housed the harbour of Messina, showed him the reason.

  ‘Galleys,’ Ridel growled.

  The long, low ships, ten in number, with huge sweeping oars dipping and rising rhythmically, were heading straight for Roger’s little fleet, come out because the weather had moderated enough for them to be employed. Even if he could not see, Roger knew the decks would be crowded with the seafarers of Messina, bound just by their trade to be hardy individuals and, in waters much affected by piracy, probably more accustomed to fighting than those he had already faced.

  ‘Can we outrun them?’

  ‘No, Roger, we cannot. We are going to have to engage them just to get on a course to Scilla.’

  That destination soon changed with the wind, which swung into the north, bringing blue skies for the first time in a week, making a southerly course the best point of sailing for Ridel’s ships, obliging him, taking account of both wind and current, to head for Reggio, which had the advantage of a properly defended harbour as opposed to just a jetty. Ridel’s primary task was to get his little fleet into some kind of order, a defensive huddle around his own vessel that, even untidy, would make it difficult for any galley to single one of them out, which did little to allay the threat; it took time and such a delay allowed their opponents to close the gap to a dangerous degree.

  Now fully under way, with their enemies swinging to pursue, it was possible to calculate the odds and they were not favourable. The current was moving in the same direction as the wind was driving the sails but that mattered little, given it favoured the galleys as well, making rowing that much easier. Soon the first crossbow bolts were hissing across the intervening water, many dropping short but others thudding into shields under which the Normans sheltered; the Calabrians had taken to hiding behind the thick bulwarks.

  If such salvoes lessened as the supply of bolts diminished, it was not a cue for a respite as the galleys manoeuvred round the sailing ships in an attempt to ram them. Close to, it was obvious they were crowded with eager enemies, and if curses and shaken fists had been thunderbolts they would have been doomed there and then. Time and again the galleys used their greater manoeuvrability to suddenly swing round, their reinforced prows aiming straight for the side of one of the huddled fleet.

  Fortunately the sailors who manned Roger’s vessels were as well versed in avoiding pirates as those in pursuit. Time after time, with a swift shift of the single great sail, or by l
etting it fly, often accompanied by a heave on the stern sweep, the masters avoided a crunching, disabling collision, yet proximity exposed the fighting men on deck to thrown lances, something else they could not reply to: their lances were embedded in the human remains that lined the shore of Cape Faro.

  ‘They cannot keep rowing at this pace,’ shouted Geoffrey de Ridel. ‘They must cease soon.’

  ‘Now would be soon enough.’

  Roger’s reply was given as he tried to extract an embedded lance from his shield. All around his men were gathering up like weapons, which they would need to repel more attacks.

  ‘Damn them,’ Ridel shouted a second time, ‘they are changing to sail.’

  The reason required little explanation: with mountains on both sides of the straits acting like a funnel the wind was increasing in strength, which allowed the sleek galleys to ship their oars. That alone added to the danger: the projecting oars had kept the enemy away from the actual side of the fleeing vessels. That would no longer be the case: now they would range right alongside and seek, by their greater numbers, to board.

  ‘Get those weasels on their feet,’ Roger yelled, knowing no one would need to be told of whom he was speaking. Newly acquired lances were used to poke the cowering Calabrians and get them into order, this while spare sailors produced knives and axes with which to cut away any grappling hooks that attached to the ship’s side; that they would come they had no doubt. At the same time Roger was conscious of the need to watch out for what was happening on the other vessels and it was soon apparent one was falling behind.

  What happened then, albeit slowly, reminded Roger of the activities of a pack of wolves, animals who lived off weakened prey. The galley sails began to flap, allowing the vessels to fall away for a moment until the mass of the Norman fleet was past them, only to immediately make their canvas taut again, their great steering sweeps employed to bring round their bows to aim for the straggler, the sail being clewed up and oars reappearing so they could close in.