by Jack Ludlow
Immediately his men kicked their mounts into motion, and it was obvious that some reacted quicker than others. Already there were gaps in his line and that only increased as the pace of their charge did likewise. William knew he had no need even to canter; let them come to him, because their line was disorganised and his was not. On his flanks, the men who had taken station to the rear began to move back up the hillsides. They would not need to be told what to do.
His lance went down when they were a hundred paces distant in a gap that was closing at speed. His opponents were up on their stirrups, swords ready to swipe down and render useless those lance points, and while he knew what they were doing was foolish – based on the notion that in the face of such a furious charge the line must melt – he had to admire their courage. The problem they had was simple: they had never met Normans.
Their leader was the first to die on a lance point: thrown by the way as he slashed at the metal tip, it was quickly withdrawn then jammed forward again once his weapon was past the arc of being useful. The point took him in the chest and lifted him bodily off his saddle, his momentum driving it through to come out his back and lifting him bodily off a now rearing horse seeking to avoid a collision.
The forward motion of the Norman line was only what was needed, enough to ensure that when horse met horse, as they were bound to, their mounts could hold their ground, so many Saracens died as had their leader. Others sought to engage the men no longer holding lances, only to find that their opponents, in the main taller than they, could raise their swords higher and bring them down with terrible force on man and metal, might enough to cut through the mail they wore under their black garments.
Then the men on the Norman flanks began to press in from the sloping hillsides, so that many Saracens were now trying and failing to fight two foes. It could not last, for William’s line was pressing forward, lances jabbing, swords swinging and in some cases knives slashing. The enemy broke, as they must, in ones and twos to begin with, then in greater numbers and, as they fled, had they looked over their shoulder, they would have seen the same firm line of shields they had charged against.
The near dead were despatched, any ambulant enemy taken prisoner; they would provide information and all the horses not so wounded they needed their throats cut gathered in as booty. William saw to his wounded – only four of his knights had perished, and they were set across their saddles to be taken back for a Christian burial. The enemy dead were left in the fields for the carrion to consume.
They rode back into the siege lines to cheers from men who were bored with their dull duty, many an eye drawn to the colours that still graced William’s lance, and as he rode, he was thinking how proud his father would be to see that blue and white chequer aloft in such a setting.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The next night, hogging the coast in a small boat with half a dozen armed companions, Drogo included, William sailed north towards the ships blockading the mouth of the port, at home in such a vessel; he and his brothers had fished often off the Normandy shore and had once sailed to the Norman Islands to chastise the pirates who raided the Contentin coastline. In the Messina Straits the current was a problem, impeding his passage, but he could see the ships strung out in a line, beating to and fro to hold their station, his destination being the vessel on the outer rim of the great hook which formed the eastern shore of Sicily.
He needed, he knew, to be near that shore, for those Sicilian boatmen he had questioned had told him so, and he also knew that it was the vessel closest inshore, a Ragusan galley of shallow draught, which controlled the section just above the outer siege work built south of the city by George Maniakes. The moon shone on the water, illuminating several vessels, which appeared like black shadows, but William steered for the one showing a red lantern and, once within range, shouted the Greek words he had been told to use.
It was obvious that those aboard were waiting for an approach, they were too alert for a time of day when even sailors slept, and as he came close the reply, also in Greek, was half whispered to him. Even although his knowledge of the language was limited, it was quite simply a demand to be told what he was carrying.
‘Grain,’ he replied, unsheathing his sword.
That had his companions doing likewise. As they bumped alongside, beneath a row of shaded lanterns, hands reached out in the gloom to pull them in. William grasped one using the security that provided to leap for the low bulwark. He got one leg over immediately, to be greeted by a surprised cry, but that turned to something else when the light from a lantern now unshaded showed, not a Sicilian fisherman on the deck, but a mailed Norman knight wielding a sword.
That surprise lasted long enough to get his companions on to the deck, by which time William was shouting his head off and cutting a swathe with his blade that had the sailors diving for anywhere that offered protection. Behind him he heard the splash as some went overboard, either because of their own fear or because his men had tossed them, it made no odds; all he wanted was what he was shouting for, the man who commanded the vessel.
They found him in a tiny cabin under the low poop, cowering on the deck, shaking like a leaf, pleading useless innocence. Below decks were the chained men who rowed this galley, bonded slaves to this cringing parasite. The rest of the small crew, at least those who had not gone overboard, had run for the forepeak, and were now seeking to ward off the point of Drogo’s sword.
Daylight saw them ashore, the galley beached as near to the pavilion of George Maniakes as possible, William dragging the ship’s owner in chains behind him, the rest of his freemen crew shuffling along with Norman blades beating their buttocks.
‘We need to make an example of them,’ William said, after he had explained to the general what he had discovered. ‘I doubt this toad is the only one.’
He knew George Maniakes had a terrible temper; he also knew he was a man of uncommon strength, but he did not appreciate what happened, thinking it a waste of an opportunity to discourage other shipowners from allowing through smugglers. The general picked up the squirming owner in one hand, and literally squeezed the life out of him, blood eventually bursting from his tongue and his ears, and his eyes nearly popping from his head as he expired in agony.
The positive for William was he had proved his point. Not only had he destroyed a base for smuggling, he had fought and beaten the Saracens who rimmed the area and obviously constituted a threat. From now on the Normans would not be bogged down in the siege, they would be free to roam wherever William de Hauteville thought they could do the most damage to the enemy. It was a happy Drogo who led out the next hundred lances, the de Hauteville pennant now fluttering over his head.
It was hard to tell what impact the cutting of that lifeline had on the Messina garrison; their sudden offer to surrender surprised everyone, but they had probably pinned their hopes on Abdullah. The rumours of his gathering an army continued, but as yet no sign of it had come. George Maniakes took possession of the city, shipped off the fighting men to eastern slavery, then collected his army together to march on Rometta, the great fortress that controlled the road to the capital Palermo, a vital link if the whole island was to be subdued. Surprisingly, that too fell in only a month but not without heavy fighting that saw the Normans and the Varangians attacking a breach in the wall and only carrying the day by sheer tenacity.
Both William and Drogo had never fought so hard for so long, slipping on rubble and the blood from dead bodies, as well as the cadavers themselves. The Saracens fought like demons, selling their lives for every footstep, falling under axe and sword, only to be replaced by even more fanatical defenders who took their place and they had to be driven back into the city, then winkled out of alleys, buildings and even cellars.
Many of William’s men died in that breach, as did those of Hardrada; no one came away from the assault without a wound and it was galling to find out, once the city had been taken, that their main opponent, the North African Emir Abdullah al Zirid,
had got away with a sizeable force and still represented a threat.
George Maniakes now had open the road to Palermo, but he was well aware of the history of Sicily: going back to Phoenician times it had always been the case that the key to the holding of the island was the great port and city of Syracuse, on the south-eastern side. It was a hard lesson learnt by Athens, Carthage, the Romans, the Vandals and the Saracens themselves: leave it in another’s hands and you were always at risk.
It also had a special significance for the Byzantines – when their greatest ever general, Belisarius, had evicted the Vandals from Sicily in 533 AD, Syracuse had been made their capital. It wounded them that the great cathedral they had built had been turned into a mosque; that inside the city there were hidden relics of saints and martyrs dear to Orthodox hearts. It was the general’s decision, and he made it: the army marched for Syracuse and besieged it, while the dull Stephen brought his ships from Messina to blockade the great bight of a bay.
Syracuse was, by its very nature, a tougher challenge than either Messina or Rometta. The land access was constricted, the main part of the city located on the island of Ortygia, that part of a peninsula but with a wide channel separating it from the mainland. The defenders held stout defences on the landward side of that but could, at any time, retire behind the water barrier. The walls of the old city had first been constructed in ancient times, then added to, and were formidable, surrounding the whole island and making any attack across water fraught with peril.
The approach from the sea was to a wide bay full of fighting ships which would emerge from the fortified harbour, and on the seaward side a long coastline on an unpredictable stretch of sea made close blockade awkward. History abounded with sieges that had lasted for years: it took the Romans three years and they only succeeded because of treachery. Syracuse, unless betrayed, or some stroke of luck intervened, could only be starved into submission.
George Maniakes was not a patient man, and a dozen attacks were launched, none of which even dented the defences. He tried attacking across the bay only to find the vessels he was employing destroyed by fire ships, watching as they were consumed and the men who had manned them either frying in the flames or drowning in the sea as they leapt overboard from fear of a more painful death. He tried to attack at night, only to find his foes waiting for him with boiling oil and flaming balls of tarred hay, and while all this was happening, his shock troops, the Varangian Guard, stood idle.
Over six months the Normans ranged far and wide in the interior, in companies of a hundred lances, all the way up to the mountains which cut Syracuse off from the interior hinterland, yet that too was frustrating. No army of relief appeared, in fact no enemy fighters showed at all; it was as if they had decided that the ancient capital of Sicily must fend for itself. Just as exasperating was the way the Saracens had stripped the countryside of anything valuable. There was no need for Normans to destroy olive groves and vineyards, fields of sugar beet and wheat. That had been done for them.
Returning from another fruitless sortie, William joined up with the company led by Drogo and together they rode into the siege lines, sharing their irritation. That their men were dissatisfied they knew: pay was a thing which became the norm and was not inspiring; booty of the kind they had acquired from Messina and Rometta was what elevated their spirits and there was none of that unless the city fell, and it was clear from far off that nothing much had changed since they last rode out.
Making their way to the general’s pavilion to report, they could hear the raised voices from a hundred paces, or rather one, that of George Maniakes. Added to that, many of the senior commanders, including Harald Hardrada, were gathered outside with glum looks on their faces, and the brothers soon learnt the reason. If Syracuse was to be starved into submission then it was paramount the naval blockade was rigorous; nothing should get through. Still under the dense Admiral Stephen, it had failed: a convoy of grain ships had broken through his line of galleys to bring in relief supplies. What they were hearing was the verbal drubbing Stephen was getting from George Maniakes.
He was the son of a whore, his wife no better, which, unsaid, meant that Emperor Michael was from the same grubby stable. His fitness to do anything other than shovel shit from a pit was questioned, and it was clear that half the looks of worry on the faces of those around William and Drogo were caused by the fact that their general was going too far. Stephen might be an idiot, but he was the emperor’s brother-in-law and in a hothouse court like Constantinople the words Maniakes was using, reported into those ears, would not be taken lightly.
‘He needs to be stopped,’ said William, ‘for his own good.’
‘Physically?’ Harald Hardrada, who had posed the question, grinned and looked at the two de Hauteville brothers; he was as big and as broad as they, and a doughty fighter, yet he knew that George Maniakes was bigger and stronger. ‘After you.’
‘I think,’ Drogo murmured, ‘it might take all three of us.’
That was when they heard the gasping sound. Maniakes was still shouting but his words had become near incomprehensible, and it took no great foresight to deduce that the general had laid hands on the admiral. In William’s mind was the way he had strangled that smuggling ship’s captain. If he did that to his admiral the consequences would be incalculable.
All three leaders rushed into the pavilion to find Stephen, off his feet, held in the great mitt of Maniakes, and he was clearly in distress, already fighting just to breathe. William jumped on the giant’s back, Drogo and Harald got hold of one upper arm each and struggled to get him to release his victim, all to no avail. It was only when William got his ear between his teeth and bit hard, threatening with his jerking head to tear it off, that Maniakes let go, and that was with a bellow.
It was William who was now in trouble, with Maniakes swinging his body to get at him, his only hope to stay glued to his back, while Harald and Drogo tried to subdue him from the front. Stephen had fled, screaming that he had been near to murdered. It was Drogo who solved the problem, because he burst out laughing. He was still trying to assist his brother, but the sight was too much for him, and soon Harald Hardrada was laughing too, which meant his efforts were rendered feeble.
‘Stop giggling you two and help me.’
That only made things worse for Drogo. He was laughing so much he had to let go of Maniakes, still bellowing like a blinded Cyclops, and Hardrada was soon reduced to the same. It was the sight of that, two fierce warriors in fits, which stopped the general trying to dislodge William. He was breathing heavily from his exertions, but soon he was laughing too, his body heaving. William slid off his back and made sure he was out of arm’s reach. All he could manage was a nervous smile because he could see the blood dripping from the general’s ear.
‘Here he comes again,’ said Drogo as a fanfare of trumpets blew, words addressed to his brother and the Varangian commander, Harald Hardrada.
The city gates opened in what had become a daily ritual. The Emir of Syracuse, Rashid al Farza, would ride out in all his finery to goad the attackers, calling out to them in Greek his challenge to George Maniakes to come and fight him. It was a telling challenge for he was not far off the same size and everybody in the camp knew he had a fearsome reputation as a fighter. It was said he had personally killed over a hundred men in single combat and, while all took that with a pinch of salt, there was no doubt he was a formidable opponent.
Maniakes declined to accept, not from fear, but because a victory over this Saracen would not bring about the surrender of his city, while a defeat might severely damage the prospects of that, which was the only thing that mattered: the Byzantine host was here to subdue Sicily; personal insults its general-in-command could live with.
‘He’s beginning to annoy me,’ William replied, shading his eyes from the low sun to take in the emir.
‘Perhaps,’ Hardrada suggested, ‘I should take out my axe and chop off his arrogant head.’
Back and forth R
ashid rode on a beautiful horse, just as beautifully caparisoned in fine-coloured silk. He wore a plumed helm and an old Roman cuirass designed to demonstrate that his chest beneath was just as muscled, greaves with fine silver decoration and the lance he carried had a long fluttering pennant. From time to time he would jam that into the ground as a challenge then haul out a great sword and wave it about his head, straight bladed instead of arced like the normal Saracen weapon, with one serrated edge which would cut through mail with ease.
The words that floated towards the siege lines left no insult unspoken, and eventually the soldiers would be goaded into yelling insults back at him, which he seemed to enjoy mightily as proof he was succeeding. After half a glass of this farrago he turned his horse, and since he had taught it to prance, it danced its way back into the defences, its tail stiff and high as if to apply equal denigration.
Both the de Hauteville brothers were itching for activity: it had become plain that with nothing to raid and no one to fight there was little use in their sorties, and they had been stuck in camp since the incident in which they had subdued Maniakes. The general laughingly jested that William owed him an ear, and one day he was going to collect his due. William did not laugh; he had seen too often the way the man lost control.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Drogo the next morning, when he saw his elder brother mounted and mailed and bearing his lance and with it the de Hauteville blue and white pennant.
