Imperial Fire

II

No moon on the eve of battle. Nothing visible except the hazy glow of Norman campfires burning around the city. Only the chink of metal and creak of horse harness told Vallon that his squadron were drawn up around him. Hooves pummelled the ground ahead and then stopped. He heard an exchange of passwords and after a little while Conrad arrived at his side.

‘You were right, Count. The Normans have left the city and advanced onto the plain.’

‘Send word back to the Grand Domestic.’

Mist lay thick along the coast and daylight was slow to break through, tantalising shapes swimming out of the murk and then retreating until at last the sun rose above the hills behind and the vapours lifted, revealing the Norman army arrayed in formations spanning a mile of plain, drawn up in perfect stillness, their banners limp and their mail armour leaden in the dim light. Behind them Vallon could see the fleet of blockading Venetian and Byzantine ships anchored outside the bay south of Dyrrachium.

The spine-tingling tramp of thousands of feet and hooves announced the approach of the Byzantine army. In battle-proven tradition it was drawn up in three main formations, with the emperor in the centre and a regiment led by his brother-in-law to his right. On the left, nearest to Vallon, was the tagma commanded by the Grand Domestic, his troops clad in glittering iron cuirasses and greaves and helmets with mail aventails protecting their necks, their horses skirted with oxhide scale armour and helmed with iron masks, so that men and beasts looked more like machines than flesh and blood. Vallon’s own men wore plain mail or leather armour rusted and stained by long exposure to the elements.

The imperial army halted in line with Vallon’s position, less than a mile from the Norman front. The Grand Domestic had posted Vallon’s squadron out on the left flank, close to the coast. Vallon’s intervention the night before had marked him out as too unreliable to occupy a more central position. He wasn’t concerned. His men were coursers and skirmishers. Whether the battle went well or badly, he might not see any action today. As Beorn had said, the encounter would be decided by the heavy cavalry and infantry.

A stirring in the Byzantine rear heralded the Varangian Guard arriving on horseback, their two-handed axes winking in the sunlight. They dismounted and formed into a square a hundred yards in front of the emperor’s standard. Grooms led their mounts away and a squadron of light cavalry cantered into the gap between the Varangians and the imperial centre. They were Vardariots, elite horse archers recruited from Christianised Magyars in Macedonia.

Priests blessed the regiments, the incense from their censers drifting across the plain. Vallon’s squadron joined in the Trisagion, the Warriors’ hymn. ‘Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us’ — his Muslim and pagan troopers singing as fervently as their Christian comrades.

Now the low autumn sun flashed off the lines of Normans and illuminated the brilliant standards borne by the Byzantine units. Vallon glanced at his own banner, its five triangular pennants stirring in the morning breeze. A bugle note prickled his blood. Trumpets blared and drums pounded, the notes resonating in his chest. With a shout that raised the hairs on his neck, the Varangians began their advance. The Normans’ response drifted faint and eerie across the battlefield and above Vallon’s head a flock of swallows heading south hawked for insects.

The Varangians swung along in full stride, singing their battle anthem, huge axes slung across their left shoulders, the shields on their backs redundant. Vallon couldn’t suppress his admiration. Anxiety, too. How could infantry, however brave and skilled they might be, withstand a charge by mounted lancers? He pulled on his helmet, raised his hand and dropped it.

‘Advance.’

They rode at walking pace, keeping level with the Varangians. When the distance between the two armies had narrowed by half, a detachment of Norman cavalry peeled off from the centre and charged the Varangians head on. The Guard halted, closing ranks.

‘It’s a feint,’ said Vallon.

At a trumpet blast, the Varangian phalanx split in two, opening a corridor for the Vardariots. They galloped down it and when they reached the end they released their arrows at the cavalry before wheeling and riding back along the Varangians’ flanks.

The square closed up again and resumed its advance. The Norman cavalry circled and made another charge, the Varangians and Vardariots countering with the same move as before. The Normans made one more feint and this time the Vardariots rode around the Varangians, discharging their arrows into the cavalry from a range of no more than fifty yards. Vallon saw riders tumble and horses go down.

‘That stung them,’ said Conrad.

Directly opposite Vallon’s position, Guiscard’s right wing urged their horses forward, spurring the beasts into a trot, angling across the battlefield.

‘Now it comes,’ said Vallon. Tight of throat, he watched the formation charge at an extended canter and then a gallop aimed at the Varangians’ left flank. The horse archers’ arrows couldn’t stop them. Vallon winced as the mass of horses ploughed into the Varangian formation, clutched his head when he saw it buckle, leaned forward on his stirrups when he saw the cavalry slow and begin to mill. Across the dusty arena the tumult of war carried — the clash of iron, the meaty impact of heavy axes smashing into flesh and bone, blood-crazed yells, the shrieks of injured beasts and dying men.

He sat back in his saddle. ‘They’re holding their ground.’

‘Skirmishing on the right,’ said Conrad.

Vallon’s attention flicked across the Byzantine front before returning to the grisly contest in the centre. The attack on the Varangians’ left flank had ground to a halt. Those terrible axes had wreaked havoc, throwing up a wall of dead horses. The cavalry couldn’t find a way through and while they wheeled and reared, the Vardariots poured arrows into them from close range.

Conrad turned. ‘Why doesn’t Guiscard throw his centre forward?’

Vallon rasped a knuckle along his teeth. ‘I don’t know. That’s what worries me.’

Unable to break the Varangian square, defenceless against the archers, the Norman cavalry wrenched their horses round and began streaming away, at first in trickles and finally in a flood, kicking up dust that obscured the formations.

Vallon stood upright in his stirrups. ‘No!’

Dim in the haze, the Varangians were pursuing their enemy, streaming like hounds after their hated foe. Vallon recognised Beorn by his vermilion beard, leading the reckless charge. Vallon kicked his horse and galloped towards the Grand Domestic’s regiment, swinging his arm to signal that there was no time to lose. ‘Follow them up!’

A few cavalrymen glanced at him before turning their attention back to the action, as if it were a drama staged for their benefit.

Vallon spurred back to his formation. ‘After them!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t engage without my order.’

His squadron clapped spurs to flanks and galloped after the fleeing Normans and the pursuing Varangians. Here and there pockets of cavalry had turned on their enemy and were surrounded and cut down.

Conrad drew level. ‘It’s not a feint. It’s a rout.’

Vallon pounded on. ‘For now it is.’

And for a while it was. In the panic of war, the Norman right wing fled back to the sea. Some of them stripped off their armour and plunged in, trying to reach their ships. The rest milled along the shore, not knowing which way to turn. A detachment of Norman cavalry and crossbowmen cut between them and the Varangians, led by a figure with blonde hair spilling below her helmet. Back and forth she rode, smiting the cowards, exhorting the rabble to regroup and unite against the enemy.

‘It’s true,’ said Vallon. ‘That’s Sikelgaita, Guiscard’s wife.’

Her intervention turned the tide. In ones and twos and then in tens and twenties, the cavalry regrouped and turned. The Varangians were scattered over half a mile of plain. They had fought a brutal battle and followed up in heavy armour to exterminate the old enemy. They were formationless and exhausted, unable to offer any concerted defence against the Norman counter-attack.

Vallon watched the ensuing slaughter in furious disbelief. Time and time again, Beorn had told him how the Normans’ feigned retreat at Hastings had lured the English shield wall to their destruction. And now it was happening again.

Conrad pranced alongside Vallon. ‘We could make the difference.’

‘No.’

Some of the Varangians, including Nabites their commander, managed to escape back to the Byzantine lines. Others fought their way through the Normans, gathering other survivors, making for a tiny, isolated chapel not far from the sea. By the time they reached the building, they must have numbered about two hundred — a quarter of the strength that had stepped out so bravely less than an hour before.

The chapel was too small to accommodate them and so many were forced to take refuge on its roof that the structure collapsed, casting them down among their comrades. Already the Normans were at work firing the building, piling brushwood around the walls and hurling burning brands over the eaves. Flames licked and then rose in smoky banners. Timbers crackled and Vallon heard the screams of men being consumed alive.

The door burst open and a dozen Varangians crashed out, led by Beorn, his beard scorched to stubble and his forehead blistered and boiled. He sliced through one Norman with a stroke that folded him over like a hinge before ten men hacked him down, flailing at his body as if he were a rat driven out of a rick at harvest time.

‘Here comes Palaeologus,’ said Conrad.

Out from the citadel rode its garrison. Almost immediately it met fierce opposition and the sally petered out.

‘Too little, too late,’ said Vallon.

A chorus of war cries heralded a charge by Guiscard’s regiment at the emperor’s exposed centre.

‘Back!’ yelled Vallon.

Led by Guiscard, the Norman cavalry bore down on the imperial standard, sweeping aside the Vardariot archers who contested their path. Clumsy in their layers of armour, the imperial force lumbered forward to meet the attack, the two sides colliding with a splintering crash.

Swirling dust obscured the fighting. Vallon drove his horse towards the cloud, straining to make out the two sides.

‘The Normans have broken the centre,’ he shouted.

They had split the Byzantine formation, driving a deep wedge into it.

Vallon checked that his squadron was with him and pulled his horse to the left. ‘Closer! Keep formation!’

He aimed for the imperial standard, the only fixed point on the battlefield. But then he realised it wasn’t fixed. It had been reversed and was withdrawing. And over on the right flank another Byzantine formation was streaming away.

‘Treachery!’ Conrad shouted. ‘The Serbians are deserting.’

Nor were they the only ones. Behind the heavy Byzantine cavalry, the Seljuks — all ten thousand of them — turned tail and fled before they’d struck a single blow.

‘Calamity,’ Vallon groaned. ‘Complete disaster.’

‘Look out behind!’ Conrad yelled, hauling his horse round.

Vallon spun to see a squadron of Norman lancers plunging out of the dust, hauberks flapping about their legs, lances couched.

‘Stand and engage,’ he yelled. ‘Archers!’

With their first volley, they toppled more than ten of the enemy, the powerful compound bows driving arrows through plate and mail.

Vallon drew a mace. ‘Javelins!’

Scores of missiles arced towards the pounding cavalry. Few reached their target. And then the enemy was on them. Vallon singled out an individual riding pell-mell towards him. His attacker jounced in the saddle, only his lance held steady. Waiting until the last moment, Vallon swerved away from the point and, leaning out with his weight on his right stirrup, smashed his mace into the Norman’s mailed head with a force that sent him somersaulting backwards over his horse’s tail.

Blood and brain spattered Vallon’s hand. Eyes darting right and left, he weighed up the situation. Some of the Normans had charged right through his squadron and were disappearing into the dust. Others had drawn their swords to engage at close quarters. While most of the squadron fought hand to hand, the horse archers circled the fray, shooting at targets as they presented themselves. The assault by sword and dart was more than the Normans could deal with and they broke off, one of them wrenching his horse around so violently that it lost its footing and collapsed, toppling on the rider with a force that broke his leg and made him scream. Falling, his helmet toppled off and his coif slid down his neck. One eye clenched in agony, he registered Vallon’s approach and his own execution.

Vallon leaned down and shattered his skull. ‘Mercy on your soul.’

Short as it was, the skirmish had left him disoriented. The billowing dust made it impossible to make sense of what was happening. The only thing he knew for certain was that the Byzantines had lost the day. If the emperor was dead, they might have lost an empire.

He brandished his mace. ‘Follow me!’

Less than half his squadron responded, the rest unsighted by the dust or scattered by the skirmish. Vallon didn’t catch up with the main Norman force until they’d overrun the imperial camp, riding roughshod over the place where only last night Alexius had promised victory.

Giving the Normans a wide berth, Vallon’s force outpaced the enemy. A distraught Byzantine cavalryman fleeing from the fray cut across his path.

‘Where’s Alexius? Is he alive?’

‘I don’t know.’

Vallon must have ridden a mile further before he came upon the Byzantine rearguard engaged in a desperate struggle to stem the Norman pursuit. The task was beyond them. Their role was to bear down on the enemy in close formation and crush them by weight of arms and armour. In retreat, that beautifully crafted material — the plated corselets, greaves, arm- and shoulder-bands — weighed twice as much as Norman mail, reducing them to lumbering targets.

Vallon rode through them and at last overtook a group of stragglers from the Imperial Guard. He drew level with an officer.

‘Does the emperor live?’

The officer pointed ahead and Vallon spurred on, overtaking friend and foe alike. The Normans were so desperate to catch Alexius that they barely registered the Frank’s passing until one of them, strappingly built, mounted on a particularly fine horse and wearing the sash of a senior commander, heard Vallon shout an order in French and steered towards him.

‘You’re a Frank. You must be regretting this day’s employment.’

Vallon dug in his spurs. ‘Fortunes of war.’

The knight couldn’t match his pace. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Vallon.’

‘Not so fast, sir.’

Vallon cocked an eye back to see the man raise his helmet, revealing a handsome, ruddy face.

‘I’m Bohemund. If you survive the slaughter, apply to me for a position. You’ll find me in the palace at Constantinople.’

Vallon booted his horse on. The mob of horsemen ahead of him thinned to reveal a core of the Imperial Guard bunched around a horseman accoutred in splendid armour and quilted silk. About fifty Norman cavalry were trying to force their way through the cordon. Vallon galloped up behind them, slung his shield over his back, holstered his mace and drew both his swords — the beautiful Toledo blade he’d taken off a Moorish captain in Spain, the sabre-like paramerion slung at his left hip. The exultant and single-minded Normans never expected to be attacked from behind and didn’t see him coming. Trained since childhood to wield weapons either-handed, he rode between two of the trailing Normans, dropped his reins and cut down first one and then the other in the space of a heartbeat.

The audacious attack unbalanced him. He had to discard the paramerion in order to recover his seat and reins. He was no longer a limber youth and he wouldn’t be trying that move again.

A Norman officer signalled with violent gestures and a dozen mailed horsemen converged on Vallon. He glanced back to see how many of his squadron were still with him. Not more than twenty.

‘Hold them up,’ Vallon shouted. His eye fell on Gorka, a Basque commander of five. ‘You. Stay close.’

Now the ground ahead was almost clear and Vallon could see that the Normans had broken through the emperor’s defensive screen. Three of them attacked the emperor simultaneously from the right. Alexius, mounted on the finest horse gold could buy, couldn’t avoid their weapons. One of the Normans planted his lance in the horse’s leather-shielded flank. The other two drove their weapons into the emperor’s side, the force of the impact pitching him to the left at an angle impossible to sustain.

Fifty yards adrift, helpless to intervene, Vallon waited for the emperor to fall. So ends the empire.

But Alexius didn’t fall. His right foot had become entangled in the stirrup and somehow he managed to cling on. Two more Normans charged in from the left to deliver the killing strike. They aimed with deliberation, both lances taking Alexius in the left side of his ribcage.

If Vallon hadn’t seen it himself, he wouldn’t have believed it. Like the previous attack, the points didn’t penetrate the armour. Instead, the force of the blows jolted the emperor back into the saddle and he rode on, three lance shafts dangling from man and mount, the iron heads trapped between the lamellar plates.

Vallon didn’t see the final attempt on the emperor’s life until it was too late. A Norman angled across him, spiked mace held high, determined to win glory. Lashing his horse into greater effort, Vallon strove to catch up. The emperor turned his bloody face as the Norman drew back his mace to crush it.

Gorka shot past with sword angled behind his shoulder. ‘He’s mine,’ he shouted, and sent the Norman’s head bouncing over the plain with one mighty swipe.

Vallon had outstripped the enemy and the river was less than a quarter of a mile away. He drew alongside the emperor. Blood flowed from a wound in Alexius’s forehead.

‘Cross the river and you’ll be safe.’

Alexius raised a hand in acknowledgement and Vallon pressed close to the emperor. Together they crashed into the river and forged through the current. On the other side a Byzantine force large enough to repel the Norman pursuit coalesced around the emperor. Men who just a short time ago had thought only of their own lives lifted Alexius to the ground, exulting at his deliverance. Surgeons hurried forward to treat him. A piece of his forehead hung in a bloody flap. Vallon dismounted and stood back while the surgeons did their work.

An officer hurried past and clapped him on the back. ‘Praise the Lord. The emperor will live.’

Vallon recognised the man who’d spat in his face the night before. After the hideous events of the day, reason snapped. He shot out an arm, seized the man and yanked him round. ‘No thanks to you,’ he said. And then, swamped by emotion, he slapped the man to the ground and stood over him, sword poised. ‘Easy to prate about courage and honour in camp. Not so easy to convert words into action in the face of battle-hardened warriors who don’t give a shit about your noble lineage.’

The officer struggled to his feet, drawing his sword. Vallon swatted it aside and crashed his shield against the officer’s head, knocking him down again.

‘Get up if you dare.’

Hands seized Vallon and dragged him away. A Greek soldier drew back his sword to strike.

‘Stop this,’ a voice shouted. ‘Unhand that man.’

Into Vallon’s view rode a Byzantine general, casting his gaze around. ‘One of the mercenary captains assisted the emperor in his escape. Let him step forward.’

Vallon smiled at the officer he’d assaulted and shoved his sword back into the scabbard. ‘I think he means me.’

When Vallon approached, Alexius raised his blanched face and laughed. ‘I might have known it. It seems that you only came to my aid to tell me your judgement was vindicated.’

Vallon bowed. ‘Not so. Your tactics would have worked if the Varangians hadn’t suffered a rush of blood. I give thanks to God for sparing your life, and I pledge to continue serving in defence of the empire.’

Alexius pinned him with his disconcerting blue gaze, then allowed the surgeons to lower him back onto his cushions. He rotated one hand and closed his eyes. ‘Vallon the Frank. Make a note of that name and strike everything else from the record.’