by Jack Ludlow
That was what Bohemund was about, not least because he had on his own deck now double the number of fighting men, a tempting target for an enemy dromon and their archers. Casting his gaze around for a way to occupy them, he saw a line of lances strung across an enemy deck, shield close to shield, with just enough room between for their broadswords to do their deadly work. Behind them stood another conroy with their teardrop shields laid flat to cover themselves and the heads of the men in front, nullifying the attempts of the archers to rain down arrows upon them. His arm, in which he now held a huge axe, shot out.
‘Master, steer for the tiller of that dromon.’
Even if he looked doubtful – the man wanted no more than to set his prow for safety and have his rowers bend their backs – he had long since reasoned that to question the orders of this Goliath was to invite a blow from that axe that would split him in two. As he issued his commands he could hear his giant doing likewise, making sure there were spare lances available, setting the grappling irons for use and arranging the ladders so they could be swiftly employed.
‘The stern is higher than the deck amidships,’ said Ligart, as they came close. ‘These ladders of your father’s will be too short.’
‘Archers,’ Bohemund replied calmly, causing both men to kneel and defend their bodies as he quietly answered that problem. ‘Hook two ladders together and they are more than enough.’
Coming under the high stern protected them from the archers but their approach had not gone unnoticed on deck; there was a large and vocal party of Venetians waiting to oppose their boarding. Their attempt to discourage Normans by leaning over the taffrail and shouting imprecations at them was not only useless; it proved, for many, to be fatal. On the command, Bohemund and his double quota of warriors dropped their shields, stood upright and, after a slight pause, slung their lances. It was a drill they carried out daily, in the same way they rehearsed fighting on foot and mounted, so there was little wastage. Each man, in that short time they took to aim, had picked a victim, fixed that person for an instant before casting their lance. So many of their weapons found some flesh it almost cleared the stern, while the remainder, those who avoided a lance point, were so in terror of the sight of those who suffered wounds that they fled.
‘Irons!’ Bohemund yelled.
The grappling irons snaked over the now near-empty stern and the sheer weight of the subsequent pull had the galley crunching into the decorative fretwork hard enough to smash it to kindling, this as whoever commanded the defenders rallied them to contest the boarding. The ladders followed the meeting of hulls and within a space of a few breaths, swords and axes swinging, the Normans swarmed up with enough vigour to get more than half of them on to the poop, where their actions cleared the way for the remainder.
Bohemund led the way and with his reach and chosen weapon proved the most deadly. The deck planking was stained already from those thrown lances but that was as nothing to what followed – great spouts of red blood and gore, which shot forth as flesh was rent asunder by his axe, this added to by swinging broadswords in powerful hands on the end of massively muscled arms, while in maintaining close contact they made it difficult for the archers to fire at them for fear of hitting their own.
That security diminished as, moving forward, half pace by half pace, they began to drive back their opposition, which necessitated shield cover again, their progress slowed as more of the enemy came to reinforce the defence. Bohemund could see above their heads and if he only had half an eye – the remainder of his vision too busy at his killing, the only result of an axe strike – it was obvious they were winning their fight, while the party of Normans he had come to help were driving from the bows towards the mainmast.
Less cheering was the sight of two Venetian dromons bearing down on them from the shoreside, a development that had Bohemund stop to let the line in which he was fighting go on, it closing automatically to cover for his absence. A thud obliged him to quickly raise his shield, for they were still at the mercy of those archers; one of their arrows had just missed him and was now quivering near his foot. The feeling of anger at what the Venetians had done with their false truce, which had been with him and no doubt every one of his confrères since the first alarm, boiled up, and he rushed to one side where a line of taut ropes lashed round cleats set into the ship’s bulwarks snaked upwards.
The swinging axe, honed and sharpened the day before in preparation for the coming battle, sliced through them like twine. He had no idea what his action would achieve, it being born out of frustration more than thought, but the yells from aloft indicated he had achieved an unexpected result, that confirmed when he spun round to see a body, one of the archers, his bow still in his hand, descend in flaying fall to slam into the deck. A glance aloft showed the boat in which they had been placed was now upended and hanging by one set of lines, not the many needed to keep it level, with other archers hanging on to anything they could get hold of and crying out for help.
That act alone doubled the number of his fighters, for now his men had no need of overhead cover, the result an increase in pressure that pushed back their enemies to a point where Bohemund found himself staring down a hatch, crowded at the bottom with unarmed men, who, when they moved fearfully away, set up a clanking sound. They had to be rower slaves, each one chained and thus no threat, so, calling to Ligart and two other lances, he shot down the companionway and into the gloom of the lower deck, where he sought another hatch cover which would, when lifted, take him below the waterline.
The stink of the bilge water stagnating the ballast rose to greet him and, breath held, he dropped down into what was a storage area for the things necessary to allow the ship to stay at sea, none of which was of interest; what he was looking for was a line of planks that, flat and affixed along the ship’s side, provided a way for the carpenter to inspect for leaks in the hull. It was guesswork to swing his axe at the timbers below, and given the ship had a double skin, both of a decent thickness, it took time to smash his way through. The blow that split the outer hull produced an immediate flow of water; ten more heavy swings of his axe turned that into a torrent that immediately began to flood the vessel.
‘Back on deck, Ligart,’ he shouted as he eased himself out of that torrent and back on to the rowing deck. ‘Pass the word to the conroy leaders to prepare to retreat – we have to get our men back into their galleys.’
Bohemund’s axe was employed again as he made his way back to the companionway, smashing at those timbers that held the ring bolts to free the oarsmen. They were likely to die from drowning anyway, but his action at least gave them a chance to cling to what would soon be wreckage, for if all went well this dromon was going to sink; there was not a carpenter born who could fill the hole he had created. The cries of gratitude were drowned out by chains being drawn through rings, but he would have ignored them anyway, given he needed to be back up on deck to make sure his command was being obeyed.
The need that it should be, and quickly, was looming close; soon the Norman boarders would be in range of arrows fired from the approaching dromons, and if they remained fighting, the crews of those two vessels would get aboard and might overwhelm them. Even more worrying was that water now pouring into the hull, with Bohemund having no idea how long it would take to affect the trim of the ship; for all he knew it could cant over and capsize.
There was no horn to order a retreat, just his towering voice, and in any other fighting force – the Normans were, after all, pressing on their enemies – that command would have been questioned and quite possibly ignored. But the discipline that made them what they were held, and under the control of their conroy leaders they began to step backwards at not much more than the pace at which they had advanced. Bohemund’s height allowed him to direct those who had come from the original galley to withdraw, as well as to tell them why; his Norman French made sure the Venetians had no idea what he was saying.
Getting off the ship while also fighting would have
been difficult but for those slave rowers who, now freed, came up screaming that the ship was sinking. At first that merely caused the kind of confusion that eased the withdrawal, but when the sense of what was being imparted got home to the Venetian crew their desire to keep fighting evaporated, creating a gap by which the Normans could disengage. Bohemund’s men piled aboard their galley, and the master, who had seen and appreciated the danger, got clear at ramming speed. As they drew off, the dromon on which they had been fighting began to settle in the water while those who had come to its rescue put aside any idea of pursuit and set to in order to try and keep it afloat. Dragging his eyes away from that sight, Bohemund could look around and what he saw did not cheer him; if he had scored a small victory, it was obvious by the wrecked galleys, added to one or two still burning, that the Apulian fleet had suffered badly.
At the masthead of the ducal galley that flag had changed; it was no longer a command to engage but the one that signalled the need to withdraw. It was, to his son, what it looked like: an admission of defeat.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
That the Venetians let them disengage without difficulty was the first surprise; the fighting and bloody withdrawal that the Guiscard had anticipated turned into an undisturbed retreat that took his ships back to the southern end of the bay, to where his transports had fled, while the enemy, having abandoned attempts to save the one dromon that had fallen to Bohemund’s axe, made for the waters outside Durazzo harbour to anchor and no doubt celebrate. That one Norman victory now sat on the sandy bottom and as the sun faded, day turning to night, only the top of its mast still was visible, with the archers’ boat hanging off of it; if that served as a consolation, it was a small one which soon disappeared into darkness.
The losses had been significant in both men and galleys and that took no account of the wounds, quite a number of them serious burns that rendered the victims so incapacitated that they were unlikely to survive. As they clung to life, the sounds they emitted, from mournful cries to outright other-worldly screams, acted as a melancholy backdrop to the deliberations taking place by the light of lanterns on one of the large transport vessels that had been designated as an infirmary. Robert had come aboard to visit the wounded and once that sad duty was done he went back aboard his own ship, having called together the men who led his warriors into such an unfamiliar battle, as well as those masters who by their laudable efforts had managed to avoid destruction, all of them exhausted by the day’s combat.
‘We fought well.’
These, the first words he uttered, were received as he expected, with cast-down eyes that told him agreement was mixed. Also the collective ‘we’ resonated with the man who employed it; Robert had taken no part in the fighting and if that could be understood on one plane, it sat ill with men who were accustomed to be led into combat by their duke, not observed and encouraged from afar. Geoffrey Ridel sensed the mood and felt the need to defend their leader from criticism.
‘Know this, that our liege lord desired to get into the fight and it was I who stopped him, I who refused to sail his galley towards the enemy, and with good reason. If he had gone down, we would not be assembled now to talk of what to do next; we might well be raising our anchors and heading for Brindisi.’
‘Not all of us,’ Bohemund growled.
‘What are we to do now?’ asked Reynard of Eu, after a long and significant silence, not one of the commanders present wanting to be the one to first speak.
Robert aimed a grim smile at his familia knight, well aware and grateful that his man had only spoken to relieve a tension that threatened to break into uncontrolled discord. He knew the difference between success and failure in battle, for, if he had enjoyed many more victories than defeats in his thirty years of warfare, he had tasted both. Winning brought harmony to a host; to lose, even on an element to which they were unaccustomed, could create dissension in any army and Normans were no exception. If anything they were worse; good fighting men and natural leaders were not sheep – they expected their opinions to be listened to and respected.
‘The choices are simple,’ Robert suggested, ‘we can renew the fight—’
Geoffrey Ridel’s interruption was delivered with acid certainty. ‘A contest we cannot win.’
Bohemund spoke up again. ‘We sank one of their dromons today.’
Now the Master of the Fleet was scathing. ‘We need to sink all twenty, not one.’
‘Or,’ Robert emphatically said, ‘we can disembark and lay siege to Durazzo.’
‘Lacking a blockade, My Lord?’
‘You say, Geoffrey, that we cannot fight their large ships with any hope of success. They – the one weapon we cannot overcome at sea – can do us little harm when we are on land.’
‘Or,’ Bohemund interjected, ‘we could find another route to Constantinople.’
Reynard shook his head slowly. ‘The landscape is not favourable, Bohemund.’
That caused a murmur of agreement, which matched the doubt in Reynard’s voice; Illyria was not blessed with many routes through the interior. It was mountainous, full of deep gorges and unbridged rivers, while at those points at which progress was possible Byzantium had built strong defensive castles, which could not be bypassed by any army in need of a sound line of communication. In addition, this was ancient Macedonia, the heartlands of Alexander the Great’s old kingdom, full of untamed and warlike tribes who not even the local Byzantine satraps sought to control; they were content to contain such folk in their mountain fastness with, when they raided too deeply into the civilised settlements, occasional bloody incursions to chastise them.
Bohemund was adamant. ‘We cannot withdraw.’
‘Nor will we,’ Robert sighed. He was well aware that such an avenue reflected the general mood. ‘But we are, to a man, weary. You all know me, and each of you is aware of what I have achieved. I expect you will believe me when I say that in the dark, when the day has gone badly, every difficulty becomes a steep hill to climb. Yet when the sun rises again it is often only a small and easy-to-overcome mound; so go back to your ships and reassure those you lead that we will prevail, as I hope I can reassure of such a thing come morning.’
Bohemund remained to ask the obvious question, one that was on the mind of everyone who had just departed. ‘Do you have a plan, Father?’
‘No, I do not, but I too must sleep and hope that God grants me in my dreams a way to overcome those Venetians, who, as of this moment, have me by the throat. If, tomorrow, they renew their attack, we must sail away from Durazzo as fast as our oars and sails can carry us.’
Sleep did not come easily to Robert de Hauteville; it never does when a problem is too thoroughly gnawed upon. Jaw tight, he tossed about for an age until he finally slipped into dreams just as troubled, so that a man who normally woke with the dawn was still in a deep slumber when the sun rose. Geoffrey Ridel woke him with a shake on his shoulder, holding a cup of warm and fresh goat’s milk to ease his morning throat.
‘My Lord Robert, the Venetians raised anchor at first light and are beginning to row north.’
‘The whole fleet?’
‘No, just the dromons, they have left their smaller galleys to mask the harbour and keep us out.’
Rudely awakened, Robert was slow to ask the obvious question, sinking his milk first. ‘Why, Geoffrey? Is it some kind of Trojan trick?’
‘I do not know.’
The Guiscard was off his cot and heading for the deck when he next spoke, Ridel on his heels. ‘I expect you to tell me. You are Master of the Fleet, not I.’
Both men made their way to the poop, where the truth of what Ridel had imparted was clear. The dromons were stern-on and their gently stroking oars were taking them further away, while a line of smaller galleys had taken station across the harbour mouth, a scene that held them for several moments before Ridel responded, trying to ease things with a joke.
‘I was not aware that anyone told you anything.’
The reply was a bar
k. ‘Don’t jest with me, Ridel, give me reasons as to why, when they have us in their palm, the Venetians should withdraw a weapon we cannot overcome. And why did they let us off so lightly yesterday, come to that?’
‘They think us utterly beaten?’
‘That is not enough.’ Seeing Ridel was seeking a proper answer, Robert had the good grace not to interrupt his thoughts; for a man who was a slave to impatience that was a struggle.
‘It may be they cannot enter the harbour,’ Ridel said eventually, with a slow and deliberate tone.
‘Why not?’
‘They draw too much water under the keel perhaps, but I think it is that they fear to be blocked in there.’
‘Who can do that, for God knows we can’t?’
‘Size, My Lord!’ the sailor responded, not hiding his ire at being pressed when he wanted to weigh his words. ‘Even if there is depth enough, the access is narrow, so once inside they can only emerge singly …’
‘Which means we could lock them up there?’
‘Let us say it would seriously disadvantage them to the point where they might lose a vessel in driving us off, as they did yesterday in the fighting, which I would hazard shocked them. It was not in their mind to see one of their dromons sunk. By the same token, there is no security in anchoring in the outer roads for an extended time.’ About to speak, Robert was stopped by a glare. ‘Understand, My Lord Robert, that just as your lances are vital to you and your ambitions—’
‘Those large fighting ships are vital to Venice!’
‘They cannot afford to risk them on an open shore, for if a tempest arose of the kind we suffered on the way from Corfu, they could be driven onto land and wrecked. Such an event risks the major and most effective part of their fleet.’
