Warriors

CHAPTER NINE

News of that siege naturally travelled east, but it was of no concern to either Arduin or William de Hauteville, except that it kept Guaimar and Rainulf busy. When word came of the approach of a Byzantine army, William was occupied, with the aid of his youngest brother, supervising the reconstruction of the walls of Lavello, which, on inspection, had proved be in a more sorry state than those of Venosa.

Michael Doukeianos knew of the occupation of Melfi by the Normans, knew of Arduin’s betrayal: he was heading their way to set matters right, the size of his army unknown. The messenger, a Lombard from Giovinazzo, had set out to warn of the intention, without waiting to assess numbers, but the fellow was certain the catapan could not be far behind: had he not moved like lightning the previous year to crush revolt?

Arduin was travelling throughout Benevento, well to the north, seeking Lombard volunteers, too far away to make any decisions affecting the urgent problem, leaving William to make them instead. He sent word at once to Drogo at Venosa, to Humphrey and Geoffrey still in Melfi, all three to join him while he despatched Mauger with a small party of horsemen to ride down the southern side of the River Ofanto, the route he suspected his enemy would take, to warn of their approach.

Instinctively, he wanted to meet the catapan in the open — the idea of being locked up in a fortress, however strong, was anathema. He also had to take a chance that Michael Doukeianos would not take the direct route from Bari across the high uplands, that he would hog the fertile coastal plain and the port cities, which would provide his troops with both ample sustenance and, if he had time to press into service the younger men, with recruits.

Drogo was with him the next day, bringing in the conroys who had been working with him, supervising the restoration of the Venosa defences; from Melfi came the garrison, excepting a skeleton force to hold it safe as a refuge to which they could fall back if need be. William had at his disposal all the men he could muster.

‘He can surely only assemble a small force,’ Drogo insisted, ‘and cannot field much in the way of trained bands. Moving as quickly as he has, he has not had time to raise fresh levies.’

That word ‘time’ hung in the air. Doukeianos had been expected to react but he should not have marched so soon. He had come to know of the Norman presence in Apulia long before he should; how had he found out mattered less than his being on the way: that had to be dealt with immediately.

‘That lack of trained bands applies to us even more,’ William replied. ‘We have none at all, and only a few Lombards who have volunteered as foot soldiers.’

None of his brothers, cogitating on that unpleasant fact, seemed willing to offer any ideas. It was William, looking over Drogo’s shoulder at the hundreds of labourers he had been supervising, who came up with a solution. They had been forced to the work and, apart from a couple of stonemasons, were the least skilled men in the town. That mattered less than their number; that they would certainly, without training, be near useless as soldiers, was even less important.

He knew there were weapons in the Lavello armoury — swords, shields and pikes. It was a requirement of any sizeable town in the Catapanate to act as an arsenal as well as a storehouse for any passing Byzantine army. The sight of men in such numbers, as long as he had no idea of their quality, might force Doukeianos to alter his tactics; it might even throw him off balance.

‘Drogo, get back to Venosa. I want all the labourers you have employed armed and marched to the east of here.’

‘Labourers?’

‘Bodies, brother. Let’s make our enemy think we have more force than he expects.’

The party from Melfi had brought with them the old Roman maps, and while certain place names had changed in the last five hundred years, the locations of the towns remained the same. Studying them, and working on his earlier assumptions, William surmised that Doukeianos would rest, regroup and recruit at Barletta, but he would not delay there long, given speed and surprise were his most potent weapons.

From Barletta the route to the interior would be through Canosa, large enough to be fortified, his next point to replenish his supplies. From there he would come on to Lavello, then Venosa, and for the same reason: to gather more men and to replenish his stocks of food and fodder before proceeding on to besiege Melfi. He could not yet be aware these towns were already in Norman hands.

If Doukeianos moved at the pace William thought — not slowing his march to forage — to confront him to the east of Canosa would be impossible. To reduce his options it was therefore best to let him advance from there to a point closer to Lavello, where whatever supplies he had garnered would be depleted, which would also hamper his options when faced with an enemy. Inglorious it might be, and when he suggested the thinking his immediate family certainly thought he was showing Byzantium too much respect, but William did not want to fight the catapan, he wanted to scare him into withdrawing: the time to engage him in battle would be when Arduin had created a properly equipped and trained Lombard army large enough to crush him.

Drogo, having fought with his elder brother many times — and having seen the power of Byzantium in Sicily — took it best, sensing after only a moment’s thought that this was no time for glory; it was a time for prudence. He at least had discerned they were in Apulia for a campaign, probably an extended one, not some all-consuming battle. That would take time, effort and good fortune. Shouting to his men, he had them mounted and on their way as soon as he and William had agreed to rendezvous on the far bank of the Olivento, the closest north-to-south tributary of the River Ofanto.

‘Open the armoury, Geoffrey,’ William ordered, as soon as Drogo had departed, ‘and let’s get these labourers with pikes in their hands. Tell them we will march in the morning and if anyone even looks like refusing they have a choice: they can do as we wish, or hang from the walls they have been working on. Humphrey, take a party of three conroys ahead and ensure we have fodder for the horses and food for all.’

‘The peasants and landholders will resist,’ Humphrey insisted. ‘How do I treat them, brother?’

That was a shrewd question and one William appreciated, harking back as it did to his instructions regarding the inhabitants of Melfi, but this was no time for gentle measures.

‘Tell them they have a choice,’ William growled, ‘they can let us take their produce or the catapan and his army will grab it.’

‘No choice at all, then?’

‘None. Also send a messenger on to contact Mauger and tell him what we plan.’

There was only one act in the next hours that was not surrounded by chaos: the riding out of those thirty lances under Humphrey. Drumming into the locals what was required of them could not be done gently, it had to be carried out with a degree of brutality, given time was short. William took charge of the few Lombard volunteers, some of whom had seen service before, seeking to teach them a few basic commands and manoeuvres in Norman French — the language he would have to use with his own lances — to turn right or left or to advance; he did not even mention retreat, given it was an option men fighting on foot were prone to take too readily.

Geoffrey had the harder task with the unwilling citizenry: at least the Lombards were enthusiastic. Both brothers worked well into the night to ensure all was made ready, that at least their charges could move forward in relatively disciplined groups, and then when they had done as much as possible, they set guards to make certain none of their forced recruits slipped away in the dark.

Naturally the affair had to be blessed and the priests were summoned to the task before the need for torches had passed, intoning, since this was Byzantine territory, their consecrations in the Orthodox rite. The march began as soon as they had been fed, and William led them away, heading into the rising sun as a straggling line, to the wailing sound of the womenfolk, sure they were seeing the last of their men.

‘The catapan is north of the river.’ The messenger who, coming from Mauger on a seriously blown mount forced to run hard and long, had found him on the east bank of the Olivento, at the rendezvous he had arranged with Drogo. ‘Not south as you expected, and he is pushing his army hard.’

‘Horsemen?’

‘Few. His men are almost all on foot.’

‘Numbers?’

‘We were on the far side of the river and they were half a league from the bank. Also there was much dust, but it would take several thousand to kick up what they did.’

William, pacing up and down, tried to work out the ramifications of what he had just been told, and it was troubling: the young Byzantine general had outthought him. Michael Doukeianos had not acted as William thought he should, given what he suspected he had at his disposal. The numbers suggested he had pressed into service many recruits on the way, while their present location meant he must have moved north from Barletta and crossed the Ofanto where the shallow delta met the sea, and that could only be done by boats brought up the coast from the ports through which he had passed, which in turn pointed to much forethought.

That meant both he and Drogo, yet to join him, would be in very much the wrong place, and if he did not move with speed Doukeianos would have a clear route to Melfi and only a small garrison to face when he got there. The Normans could find themselves fighting just to try to relieve the fortress, and that would mean facing an army in prepared defensive positions — not good for cavalry at all.

There was one chance, but it would have to be taken at speed. From memory he knew there was a mapped river crossing just to the north: a place where the Ofanto, crossing a wide, low plain, was shown as fordable, certainly for mounted men — but not, he suspected, at this time of year and with a river flowing strongly, for those on foot. As of this moment he had no idea how far away Drogo was, and he had with him a sizeable number of the available lances. If he was to have any chance of stopping the catapan he would need every man he commanded.

Decision made, the orders came out in a stream: the messenger to ride back to Mauger on a fresh horse, contacting Humphrey en route and telling them to retire west along the riverbank until they came to the piquet he would leave at the point at which he and his men had forded it, though it should be obvious from the evidence of hundreds of mounts preceding them. Another messenger was sent to tell Drogo to speed up: he must abandon anyone on foot and push his horses hard if he was to be of any use.

‘What about our foot soldiers?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘Find one of the Lombards who looks as if he has a brain. Tell them to march our labourers back to Lavello and close the gates. Then get our men mounted.’

This time the Normans were on the move quickly, watched by their bewildered conscripts, with William trying to calculate distances and how far he could push his mounts, a reckoning made on years of experience. Around seven leagues in any one day, with frequent halts, was held to be a good norm for horses; he needed to do more.

Like every Norman, he had grown up surrounded by several varieties of horses: those bred for battle, trotting alongside on a short rein, others more fleet, like the one he was now riding, another of the strain he was leading, his broad-backed packhorse. He had foaled them, whatever their type, watched them grow to yearlings, nursed them when sick and come to know each one as an individual: the shy, the biters and kickers, the cunning and the near human in their attitude; but all had common features.

Push any mount too hard with a weighty rider or panniers on its back, eschew the periodic walk, and they would tire very quickly. Put aside any thoughts of a complete break twice a day with water and at least some pasture and even those being led would be less effective if it came to an immediate battle. They required to be fed, as well, and each of his men had only one day’s supply of oats on his packhorse, that set against plentiful pasture; but cosset them and Doukeianos might outpace him and get between him and Melfi. What emerged had to be a compromise: he would work them harder than was prudent, but not so hard as to render them blown.

The stops they made were short, and always near some habitation, the numerous hamlets scattered throughout the land next to strips of cultivation, where small amounts of fodder and food for his men could be had; water was plentiful, it being springtime. No one resisted the demand for the last of their produce stored over the winter: no peasant would contest with armed men, especially these giants from the north, for if they had never in their life come across one, the reputation of the Normans was a folk tale well spread. They were sullen, certainly, but offered nothing more than black looks, which matched the increasing density of the clouds overhead.

Getting across the Ofanto at this time of year meant pushing the horses through a river that came up to their thighs, though thankfully the current was slowed by the spread of the flow over the flattish plain. No sooner had they crossed than it began to rain, a steadily increasing drizzle, then a downpour that soaked everyone to the marrow, despite their thick cloaks. William could only hope the same conditions were affecting Michael Doukeianos — nothing slowed foot soldiers more than wet weather: if rain made a horse drop its head, it destroyed much more quickly the spirits of men marching in mud.

They spent an uncomfortable night in the open, hobbling their mounts so that they could graze and sleep as they pleased, necessary with no hay to hand, and rose in the morning to an all-consuming mist that made getting dry impossible. It also prevented William from sending out patrols to scout ahead — not much point in that when they could see little — and it seriously hampered his desire to push on: without sunlight he had little idea of the direction in which to proceed, and it was mid-morning before the sun began to burn it off.

The extra time was good for the horses, and with no actual rain it was possible to groom them, not for beautification, but for their health. Brushing removed burrs, picked up riding through long grass and bushes, which, if left, could break easily into infected skin. The dust of the previous day had already been cleaned from their nostrils and dung residue from their behinds, but in the morning hooves required to be inspected for wear, and oiled to avoid splits that would render them lame, while backs needed to be checked for sores caused by wet saddlecloths.

Not all were in good enough condition to continue: on the march a loss of mounts was inevitable and this was no exception. When they headed out, two of his men were riding their packhorses, their regular mounts unsaddled, limping, and trying to stay with the herd. There was no time to light a fire, to kill and eat them: all William’s men had was some stale bread, and dried strips of beef on which to chew.

Those on the best and fittest-looking horses had been sent ahead, their task to look over every high point and ensure their confreres were not riding into a trap, while also looking to the east for any sign of marching men. Those scouts found a grass-covered hill that gave extensive views in all directions, all the way east to the silver ribbon of another river tributary, and stopped, William calling a halt for all as soon as he caught up. The ground on the slopes was dry, the grass at the base thick and green, and if an army had passed nearby he would be able to see evidence and there was none: he had got ahead of his foe. Across a rolling hilly landscape, he should be able to observe their line of march, as well as the early presence of Drogo and his lances coming from the south, allowing him to make whatever dispositions were needed.

All around packhorses had been stripped of their loads, but now, unlike the previous night, the contents they carried were laid out in the sunshine: no fires could be allowed as that would alert the enemy to their presence, although William had a great deal of timber gathered and brought in for later, piling up the wood along the crest of the mount.

Spare leather jerkins and woollen breeches had been donned to allow the ones they had worn previously to dry, and footwear had been removed for the same purpose. Still-wet cloaks covered the grass and they lay alongside chain mail, hauberks and gloves, which if left damp would rust. The men cleaned those when they were dry and their weapons, swords and lance tips, using the same oil as they had previously applied to hooves. William waited till all was done and his men were back to being ready for battle, then, having put out a piquet on the nearest hill to the east, he allowed those who wished to some sleep.

That was not a luxury he could allow himself: looking out over the surrounding landscape, barren and deserted except for the dots of grazing sheep and goats, he searched for a suitable field of battle, the best place to confront Doukeianos, wondering if he would be granted the right to choose it. Given his force was cavalry that should be the case: horsemen could manoeuvre with much more ease than milities, however well trained they were. But this catapan had outfoxed him once and he was too wise to think all the choices would remain his, a point he made to his younger brother.

‘All I can say for sure is that we got ahead of them.’

‘Can we stop them?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘That I do not know until I see their numbers.’

‘And if they are too numerous?’

‘We fall back on Melfi and prepare for a siege. At least we know we can outrun them.’

‘Not Venosa or Lavello?’

William smiled, aware his brother was asking these things out of ignorance; yet he had experienced battle, having, like William, ridden alongside their father under the banner of Duke Robert. But then so had Drogo, and though he was a mighty fighter he deferred to William when it came to tactics; Humphrey and Mauger would likely do the same. All four were formidable in battle; even if it had only been in mock combat he had contested with them and knew their prowess. That they could not best him meant less than the fact that they could beat most of the men he led.

Yet they were limited when it came to command; excellent at following instructions — also, certainly in Drogo’s case, good at close battlefield control — but none of them could plan what he had in his mind, which was a great deal more than just stopping this approaching catapan and his army. Sometimes William tired of responsibility, and often, at home in the Contentin, he had wearied of his status as elder brother, but that was useless: if it was a burden it was one that could not be put down, and in truth, he would not want to.

‘No. If we sought to retire on those, I think this Michael Doukeianos would just bypass us. Melfi is the prize.’

‘He will not capture it. The castle is too strong.’

‘He does not need to take it, Geoffrey, he needs to deny us the use of it, and the ability to sally forth at will. He also needs to let the Lombards Arduin is busy recruiting know that they do not have Melfi as a safe refuge. Doukeianos has little in the way of strength and a long time to wait before any reinforcements can arrive, and even if he had those he cannot hold Apulia if the entire population rises against him. Doubt of outcome in this is his greatest asset. News that he is besieging Melfi will make many minds cautious, will serve to divide those keen to rebel, and that will do. Byzantium rules by the fear of what its armies might do, not what they can actually accomplish.’

‘Better to fight him, then?’

‘I will if I can, but that will depend on many things, and not just the size of the force he brings against us.’

‘Such as?’

‘The quality. You can tell much about an enemy host by the way it deploys. If it is smooth and disciplined then they are likely to be steady under assault; if it is ragged and muddled they will not stand against our lances, and once broken they will not stop but flee the field. The ground too will have a bearing. Following that heavy rain we rode through, it would not be wise for us to fight in a valley until the ground dries out and ceases to be soft.’

Geoffrey acknowledged that: mud would slow the horses, impede any attack and make manoeuvre challenging.

‘And since Doukeianos knows this as well as anyone he will seek to draw us into such ground.’

‘How do you intend to deal with that?’

‘By talking, brother.’ Seeing Geoffrey’s questioning look, he added, ‘For I think the catapan, before he seeks battle, will try to do what Byzantium does best, and buy us off.’

The cry from a sentinel had them both looking south, to a long ragged line of horsemen approaching. Within a glass of sand William was greeting three more of his brothers, but most importantly, for they were weary and damp, he would now be, once they had rested, at maximum strength.