by Jack Ludlow
Warriors
( Conquest - 2 )
Jack Ludlow
Jack Ludlow
Warriors
PROLOGUE
Apulia was in turmoil and the Eastern Empire had only itself to blame: all the way up the Adriatic coast, with a few exceptions, the Byzantine possessions in Southern Italy were in open rebellion, the strife extending from the great trading ports to the rich agricultural lands that ran west to the high mountain barrier of the Apennines. Seeking to take advantage of a division between the Saracen emirs of the island of Sicily, Constantinople had decided to invade and reconquer that valuable possession, but in doing so, in order to find the soldiers necessary for the task, harsh methods of recruitment had been employed in their nearby Italian fiefs and the results of that had come home to roost.
Like the Roman Empire of antiquity, the Byzantine Empire was rarely free from trouble in its distant possessions; it could be no other way with borders that ran for a thousand leagues from the toe of Italy, through the mountainous Balkans, over the narrow neck of the Bosphorus and on into the wilds of Anatolia where it faced the newly emergent Turks. Apulia, as a province, was more febrile than most, containing within it a sizeable population of Greek rulers at permanent loggerheads with the indigenous Italians.
But there was a third, numerous and more seditious group to contend with: the Lombards, heirs of a northern tribe who had invaded five hundred years previously to conquer the whole of Italy. Rapacious as rulers, fractious by nature and unwilling to assimilate, they had never been popular and had, in their turn, succumbed to the combined might of the Emperor Charlemagne and overwhelming Byzantine force, hanging on as subject overlords only to the dukedoms and principalities of Campania and Benevento.
As a race they had never forgotten they once also ruled in fertile Apulia and were thus ever ready to fan the flames of an insurgency. Added to that they had, on both the western and northern borders, powerful Lombard magnates to whom they could appeal for aid, given they all shared a dream of one day creating an independent kingdom which would embrace all of Italy south of the Papal States.
The Eastern Empire had several assets to counterbalance that dream: a kingdom required a sovereign lord and no Lombard ever fully trusted or was willing to serve under another. In the past they had quarrelled amongst themselves and engaged in betrayal with more purpose than they ever brought to a common enemy, and Constantinople had long been expert, using streams of gold as well as brute force, at the tactic of divide and rule, both within and without its external borders.
Constantinople also enjoyed a steady supply of enterprising generals — men who knew how to pacify revolt — and young Michael Doukeianos, newly appointed as the Catapan of Apulia, was no exception. The one port still utterly unaffected — being the largest, and ruthlessly governed by Greeks — was Bari, and from there, with few trained men and even less in the way of resources, Doukeianos set out to pacify the region known to his imperial masters as the Catapanate.
Speed of movement, paid-for betrayal, allied to that lack of cohesion amongst those he sought to overcome, were his most potent assets, giving him the ability to arrive outside a rebellious town or city before those inside were aware he was even approaching. Ill prepared to withstand his sudden assaults, with defences more often than not in an unready state, poorly led and bereft of external support, they fell one by one and the rebellion began to falter and die out.
Retaking imperial possessions was one thing; continuing to hold them with limited forces another. Every town and city in the Catapanate was partly or wholly fortified, most badly, a few formidably so: ports like Bari and Brindisi had stout walls and fortified harbours so strong that in the past they had withstood attempts to capture them lasting over a year. If inland towns had walls in different states of repair, they also had populations in a state of discontent, while to the north and west protection was needed from the Principality of Benevento and, on the eastern side of the Apennines, from the powerful Lombard fiefs of Campania: Salerno, Capua and Naples.
High in the mountains to guard against this lay a pair of immense forts, Troia and Melfi, strong enough to repel even the mighty forces of the heirs of Charlemagne. The danger for Doukeianos was simple: help from beyond those borders might still come and that would encourage those who had just rebelled in his bailiwick to rise up again. He did not have the troops to hold the vital Adriatic coastline, pacify the inland littoral and simultaneously man the mountain passes through which danger would come.
Norman mercenaries held the northern fortress of Troia, facing a papal fief, the Principality of Benevento, men who had been in the pay of Constantinople for nearly two decades. But further south stood the now ungarrisoned bastion of Melfi, which controlled the route into Campania. Here an ally had to be found or bribed and he could only come from the indigenous population, including Lombards, not all of whom were adverse to Byzantine hegemony; that race contained amongst its number men who had often served the empire faithfully as paid retainers.
Arduin of Fassano was one such, and his record in that regard was exemplary. He had just returned from the faltering reconquest of Sicily, where he had led a contingent of Apulian pikemen in the Byzantine service, until he fell out with the irascible general in command, an arrogant giant called George Maniakes. Called upon by his fellow Lombards, on his return, to join in the revolt, he had declined to take part and cast his lot with the catapan. As an envoy he had gone some way to brokering reconciliation with many rebel strongholds on behalf of Doukeianos, thus avoiding bloodshed.
If he was seen as helpful to Byzantium he possessed one other quality, equally important: the assurance he could engage reliable men to man the border, suggesting the Normans of Campania, warriors he had fought alongside in the Sicilian campaign. The fiercest, most disciplined fighting troops in Christendom, and mercenaries, Normans could be relied on to oppose the enemies of whoever paid them. Scattered throughout the southern fiefs of Italy, these men from the Atlantic seaboard had, in the last twenty years, become numerous, so much so that in many places they provided an essential tool for anyone wishing to gain or hold on to power.
Arduin’s argument for employing them was also telling: having returned from Sicily — they too had fallen foul of the same arrogant Byzantine general — they were at present unemployed; if Doukeianos did not pay them someone else might, possibly causing him more trouble than the revolt he had just crushed.
‘The Normans are bred for war, Catapan, and they live off it. They will not sit idle and just polish their weapons. Better they are in your service than they be employed by another, or left free to raid and plunder.’
‘The men you encountered in Sicily are loyal to Guaimar of Salerno.’
‘They are loyal to his purse, Catapan, and I think, now they have returned, the Prince of Salerno, who has been troubled by their presence before, would welcome the notion they be engaged elsewhere.’
The Lombard held his breath: how much did this young and inexperienced catapan know of the Normans of Campania and the bubbling stew of Lombard politics? He would know the Norman leader was Rainulf Drengot, of advancing years now, but a man who had, as a young knight, taken part in a previous Lombard revolt in Apulia, one eventually crushed by another great Byzantine soldier called Basil Boioannes.
Beaten to the east of the Apennines, Rainulf and the men he led had prospered in the west through a combination of brute force, outright banditry and utter unreliability. Drengot had made himself militarily indispensable to one warring Lombard magnate in Campania, the late Duke of Salerno, only to later betray him by giving his support to his rival, the Prince of Capua. But Rainulf had gone one step further: thanks to another switch of allegiance, and by deserting Capua, he had been elevated to the
title of the Imperial Count of Aversa, granted his gonfalon by no less a suzerain than the Emperor Conrad Augustus, heir to mighty Charlemagne.
‘Would they serve?’
‘They will if Constantinople will pay them.’
‘It is I who will pay you, Arduin. I have no wish to deal with them directly.’
At least the catapan knew that much: the Normans were difficult people with whom to do business — demanding, quick to see weakness, sharp when it came to their own advantage and careful of what they perceived to be their honour.
‘As long as I have the means I am sure they will serve me, but you must tell me what it is you require.’
‘The key to protecting the border with Campania is the fortress at Melfi. As long as that is in my hands no force of invaders from there can hope to sustain itself in Apulia.’ Arduin knew the truth of what was being said, but he was also holding his breath for what he hoped was coming next. ‘And I am offering to you the post of topoterites of Melfi, if you can secure the services of enough Normans to hold it secure. I do not have the forces, myself, to garrison it properly and control the rest of the Catapanate.’
‘Will the emperor not send you more men?’
‘The Emperor Michael has no more men to send. He has serious trouble in Anatolia with the Turks and his armies are committed there. Do you accept my offer of Melfi?’
‘A great responsibility, Catapan,’ Arduin replied. ‘You do me great honour.’
‘I am sure you are worthy of it.’
Michael Doukeianos looked into a smiling, eager face. Had he been able to see behind that smile, as well as the dark brown eyes and the round, pallid face of the man before him, he would have been unsettled. Arduin of Fassano was a good soldier and had proved his worth to Byzantium both in Sicily and in the recent rebellion. To give a man of his experience the captaincy of such an important fortress was, on the face of it, sound policy, but Doukeianos should have remembered he was dealing with a Lombard, and they were a race much given to duplicity.
Arduin had not joined the revolt just crushed for one very good reason: with an experienced military eye he had seen it was doomed to failure, but that did nothing to dent his feelings for Lombard aspirations. Yes, he had served Byzantium; he was a soldier and had gone to where there was a war to fight with pay and plunder to be gained, and once there had done his very best and earned the plaudits of his peers and superiors by turning unwilling Apulian conscripts into effective soldiers, but in his breast the flame of independence had never dimmed.
His father had been a soldier in the great uprising of twenty years past, led by the late and revered Lombard hero, Melus of Bari. This was the very same revolt which had seen engaged the likes of Rainulf Drengot — and Arduin’s father had died fighting Basil Boioannes. As a lad he had been fired by parental ideas, and those he had never lost. It had been drummed into him that the time must come when Byzantium would be weak, when they could not find the forces to hold on to Apulia, told that would be the moment for the Lombards, under a competent leader, to strike and take back the power they had once held. Never mind that Melus of Bari had failed; was now the time and was he the man?
As he replied, he was aware of his rapidly beating heart, just as he was aware of the need to keep his voice, as well as his excitement, under control. ‘Before I accept, Catapan, I must be sure that I can do as you ask. I must go to Aversa, and parley with the Normans.’
‘Go to Melfi first, and see what needs to be done. Make sure the locals are loyal, and if they are not, do what is required to get them on your side. Hang or bribe the leading citizens, that I leave to you, then you can go to your Normans.’
‘If I am to bribe and recruit, both require funds and any Norman worth his salt will want to see coin before they commit themselves.’
‘Never fear, Arduin,’ said Michael Doukeianos, grinning. ‘If Byzantium is short of fighting men, it is never, ever, short of the means to pay for support.’
CHAPTER ONE
Any gathering of the sons of Tancred de Hauteville was bound to end up in reminiscence and this, taking place in the vestry of an Italian cathedral, given there were five of his offspring present, was no exception: they recollected the memories of growing up in the unruly Normandy region of the Contentin, of escapades, past quarrels, fights they had engaged in with each other, but more importantly with their neighbours, as well as raiders from the islands that lay off the Norman coast. And they talked of their father, sometimes in awe, sometimes with gales of laughter, but mostly with wry affection.
Tancred de Hauteville had been a noted warrior, as well as a man who bred sturdy and numerous sons — there were another seven brothers still at home, the product of two wives — and he had raised them to be puissant warriors like himself; their rank as the offspring of a petty Norman baron required no less. From their very first-taken steps they had been tutored in the use of weapons, toy wooden swords and shields, replaced by metal as soon as they could handle the weight, growing strong by constant practice, gifted on land and in water, swimming in the river that ran through the family fields and then in the crashing waves of the nearby great ocean.
The time came when they could mount first a pony and then a horse; they had been taught to ride and use a lance so that one day they could, if fortune favoured them as it had their father, serve in battle under their liege lord, the Duke of Normandy, as part of a mounted fighting force greatly feared throughout Europe. Well fed on the produce of Tancred’s fertile demesne, the sons came eventually to match and even tower over a parent whose own great height was often remarked upon.
Tancred never let them forget their Viking heritage, or that the five elder boys, through their mother, were half-blood relations to the ducal house. They came from a race and a lineage bred for combat: it was not for them but for others to cut timber, grow food, to sow and reap crops, to work the family salt pans and exploit the fishing rights which provided the means by which they could be armed.
Each had been provided with the weapons and equipment necessary for the tasks that lay ahead: the horses needed to carry them and their equipment to war, as well as a destrier to ride in battle, a sharptipped lance, a heavy, double-edged sword, a shield framed in metal, covered with hard wood and leather and painted in the de Hauteville colours of blue and white. Most expensive of all, but vital, each had been gifted a set of protective armour: a chain mail hauberk, gloves and a helmet.
The duty of vassalage obliged Tancred to provide to his duke ten lances, and that he had done — a task made so much easier as his elder sons, one by one and a year apart, grew to match then surpass his fighting ability. They also aided him mightily in his endemic disputes with neighbours, usually over land, water, or rights to the produce of the Atlantic shoreline, and given their talent for combat the name de Hauteville had soon become one to be respected in the Contentin.
Yet that very number of sons brought with it a greater problem: the petty barony of Hauteville-la-Guichard could feed them as they grew to manhood, could arm and mount them to be warriors, but it was too small a demesne to satisfy their needs as adults. They required land of their own on which to raise families and to provide for them the revenues which supported a fighting knight.
Tancred had sought to get them placed as personal knights, part of the familia of his liege lord, the son of the man he himself had served so faithfully. That suzerain, Duke Robert of Normandy, had ignored written requests more than once, and had then rebuffed the same appeal in a face-to-face meeting. For men bred to war, with no hope of advancement in their homeland, the brothers de Hauteville, first William and Drogo, and now joined by Humphrey, Geoffrey and half-brother Mauger, had taken the well-worn route to Italy and mercenary service, where the martial prowess of the Normans was highly prized and well rewarded.
‘Enough,’ William insisted, as Drogo continued to relate those amatory adventures he had indulged in at home, quite forgetting the trouble his activities had caused: he was the father of mor
e bastards than could be counted on the fingers of his hands. ‘Home is far off in time and distance. We must turn our thoughts to that which concerns us here.’
Drogo frowned more from habit than irritation; William might be the oldest and Tancred’s heir, but too often in their growing years he had assumed near-parental powers.
Yet he deferred to him, not just as an older sibling but also as a chief; Rainulf Drengot commanded the Normans of Campania, but William was his senior captain and had led the mercenary contingent in the recent invasion of Sicily. A measure of his stature, gained in that conflict, was his soubriquet: he was now more commonly referred to by those he led as Bras de Fer, a title bestowed on him by his confreres after a single-combat encounter outside the walls of Syracuse. William Iron Arm had fought and defeated the ruling Saracen emir, a giant of a man who claimed to have on his belt the notches of a hundred skulls.
Humphrey, his beetle brow furrowed, stood suddenly, and went to the door that led from the vestry to the chancel of the cathedral, opening it to ensure no one was listening.
‘Suspicious as ever,’ said Mauger.
‘The only people I trust are in this room,’ Humphrey insisted, before sweeping the assembly with a glare on a face that, with its large overbite and close-set eyes, lacked beauty, ‘and that is not wholehearted.’
‘You sleep with your purse between your legs,’ scoffed Drogo, Humphrey’s parsimony and mistrustful nature being a family joke.
‘He would when you are around, brother,’ crowed Geoffrey.
Drogo laughed. ‘He has not got between his legs anything else to tempt me.’
‘I cannot think why you bother, Humphrey,’ William said with a weary air, looking at the now closed door. ‘Who would want to overhear this foolishness?’
‘You should slacken sometimes, Gill,’ Drogo insisted. ‘A little foolishness would do your soul good.’
