by Jack Ludlow
Pope Urban, in receipt of lurid tales of how maltreated were pilgrims to Jerusalem, mocked, robbed and even forced to convert, called for a crusade to free the Holy Places of Palestine. This could only be accomplished in alliance with Byzantium, for they held the narrow water crossing from Europe to Asia, added to which no military force could invade or move south without their aid and support, both in terms of supply and cooperation.
Thus the two aims had coincided and set in motion these great armies. That the Emperor would want to control the enterprise was certain; what he would be willing to grant in terms of plunder and territorial possessions if successful was as yet unknown, for if it was faith that brought many to answer the crusading call, personal advancement added to both territorial gain would not be far behind.
These were the thoughts, made up of memory, experience and speculation, that filled the mind of Bohemund, the subject of conversations only with his nephew Tancred, the one person to whom he would occasionally show his innermost feelings. Yet there could be no conclusion; too much – personalities, the outcome of future battles – was open to speculation. That was not a situation that made the leader of the army anxious, it being that with which he had lived since he had first been old enough to reason and to fight.
Even if the Apulians had wanted to move swiftly a rapid advance was barely possible; the old Roman road, acceptable as a trade route for merchants and their goods-laden donkeys scarcely served for an army of thousands. It stood as an emblem of the polity that was supposed to keep it in good repair; everything was on the perish and that meant progress was naturally constrained. In places, like the high mountain passes, it had been part washed away by winter mudslides and was barely negotiable; even on level ground there were gaps where the polygon stones that were supposed to provide the pavé had been stolen to be put to other uses by locals well able to ignore the central imperial authority, leaving the road in places a quagmire after even a modicum of rainfall.
That lack of firm rule posed the next hindrance to the daily movements as the hill tribes, never wholly subdued by Byzantium, sought to alleviate the poverty of their miserable existence by a continual set of raids on the Apulian baggage train, but more persistently on the supplies provided by Byzantine storerooms and farms to which Bohemund had helped himself, despite protests, both those carried in carts and that on the hoof: grain, pulses and peas for the men, oats for the horses, and cattle to be slaughtered and provide occasional meat. Worse were the depredations on the herd of spare horses without which no mounted force could go into battle.
The raids were sharp affairs, short in duration, happening in daylight as well as in darkness, the sole object to swiftly steal what could be carried off in the time between launching an assault and the speed with which the nearest mounted party could react to chase the intruders off. That brought forth another difficulty – pursuit was dangerous to a small party of lances; to follow the tribesmen into their own mountain terrain left the Normans at great peril from ambush, while to mount a greater incursion just saw the raiders melt away to higher ground.
On the rare occasions when the tribesmen had been cornered they had proved they could fight; these people saw themselves as the descendants of the armies of Alexander the Great and it was from this high country that had come the men who, under his leadership, had conquered half the known world.
Many of the Apulian host, if asked, would not shrink to compare Bohemund to that military titan and it had nothing to do with his remarkable height and build; he was the son of Robert de Hauteville, acknowledged to be the greatest soldier of his time and known to the world, for his cunning and cleverness, as the Guiscard. The family from which Robert sprang, a string of brothers, having come from the depths of the Contentin in north-west Normandy, had risen from owning nothing but their weapons and their horses to become mighty warriors and the ruling line of Southern Italy and Sicily.
Bohemund’s half-brother now held a trio of ducal titles while his uncle, another Roger, was the Great Count of Sicily and master of that island, even if, in title, he was supposed to be a vassal of his namesake nephew. Originally fighting in tandem with the Guiscard, Count Roger had, with papal blessing and encouragement, completed the conquest of the island, defeating both the Saracens and Islam in what had come to be termed a “Crusade”, similar to that taking place in Spain against the Moors. More pleasing to the papacy was the way he had dealt with the Orthodox form of religion, to which the mass of the Greek population adhered.
They looked to Constantinople for spiritual guidance and Roger was working to replace that with worship in the Latin rite, rededicating churches, encouraging priests and monks from the north as well as setting up abbeys and monasteries into which they could move to spread the Creed as set out by Rome, so if anyone stood high in papal favour and personal power, it was he.
Added to that, the Great Count held the line between his two nephews, Borsa and Bohemund; the latter would have taken everything without his uncle’s intervention. That was another plus for the papacy, who found pious and malleable Borsa easier to deal with than the combative Count of Taranto.
All three had risen on the efforts of the men of their family that preceded them, first and foremost the eldest de Hauteville who had outmanoeuvred the slippery Lombards, a race that sought to use them only as military mercenaries, going on to outwit those fellow Normans who saw him as a subject not an equal. William had begun to carve out in south-east Italy what would become the Duchy of Apulia, aided by brothers Drogo, Humphrey, Godfrey, sometimes Mauger, then Robert and Roger.
Collectively they had wrested South Italy from Byzantium and stymied the King of the Germans, the so-called Western Emperor. The de Hautevilles had overawed and humbled a succession of popes and many times they had fought such enemies, Byzantium included, individually; more seriously they had been obliged to face them in varying combinations where luck and enemy dissension had played as much a part in victory as Norman fighting skill.
To the men Bohemund led it was as if all this ability had been distilled into one man. None could doubt his Norman heritage and not just because of his height and colouring. In single combat he had no peer and as a commander of men he cemented their allegiance by example and his selfless acts of individual bravery. If amongst his captains there were many who would dispute with him, for the Normans were by nature a fractious race, to the rank and file Bohemund of Taranto was the greatest of his tribe. On this day, with the light fading, he was preparing to embellish that reputation by undertaking a task many would have delegated to others.
‘Let me face an army in battle before much more of this.’
These words were uttered as he stripped off his top clothing to leave himself in dark-brown smock and breeches, an act that in these high mountains made the heat from the nearby fire welcome. Not that he could get too close, for he did not want to be seen, not that anyone trying to observe such a large encampment would have found such a thing easy. They were spread along the western shores of Lake Ohrid, where the old Roman road skirted the edge of a stretch of water so long the other end was invisible in daylight.
‘This is no task for you, Bohemund.’
Looking at his nephew Bohemund just grinned as he slipped a long dagger into a sheath in his belt. ‘I cannot bear to be so pricked by these people, Tancred, and do nothing.’
‘What you should do and I tire of saying it, is order others to undertake what you propose to do yourself. You risk the whole enterprise when you risk yourself.’
‘I have not swung my sword in anger since we left Amalfi, so it is time to see if it still performs as it should.’
‘Take it out on a tree trunk.’
‘I’d rather cut a human trunk in two and from neck joint to crutch.’
If that came with a smile, both men knew it to be possible. Tancred’s uncle carried an accumulation of muscle that over near forty years, since he could first wield a wooden sword as a mewling child, had become directed to the act o
f killing by either axe, mace or sword most of his Lombard levies would struggle to even swing. Added to that, Bohemund never ceased to hone his skills and neither did his confrères; even on the march a little time was set aside for the practice of the art of combat, the daily ritual of swordplay, lance work and mounted control that made the Normans the most formidable of warriors.
‘Your father would not do this.’
‘He might have done so, Tancred, when he was younger and less concerned with affairs of state, for he was ever mischievous.’
‘He was cunning and wise. This is neither.’
Others who had also stripped off their outer clothing, twenty lances in all, were making for a part of the shore where no fires burned and where the fishing boats Bohemund had ordered to be commandeered from the local lake dwellers, who had come to sell their catch, were assembled. Beyond that lay unlit black water, for the skies had clouded over for the first time in days to obscure both moon and stars, though there was a modicum of light that allowed to be made out the outline of the surrounding mountains.
‘My father was ever keen to surprise his enemies and in that I am no different.’
‘I think you flatter these hill tribesmen when you term them enemies. They are a rabble not a host.’
‘They are like an itch I cannot scratch and I mean to end what they are about, for the losses we are sustaining are not to be borne, especially with horses.’
‘Alexius Comnenus will provide replacements from the imperial stud when we get to Constantinople.’
‘Trained destriers?’
‘Horseflesh as good as.’
‘No, Tancred, even an emperor cannot do that. They do not breed in Byzantium the kind of mounts on which we rely. Horses to ride, yes, pack animals in abundance, I am sure, but those that can face an unbroken line of enemy lances with horns blowing, shields clashing and not flinch?’
‘Then let us hope you succeed, for if you do not we could lose more tonight than we have had stolen on the march so far.’
They were the bait, mounts the tribes knew were the most valuable to the Normans, now at pasture in an area where they looked to be a target for theft, animals just as valued by the raiders but for different reasons. A horse able to carry a fully mailed and equipped Norman knight into battle, men of some stature who were also heavy in their equipment, were the very kind of creatures to cope easily with the routes between high hills and deep valleys of the Macedonian uplands. Destriers were bred and trained to be fearless and they were not high in the shoulder either, another benefit to clansmen who tended to be short in the leg.
In so persistently questioning what Bohemund proposed to do, Tancred knew he was close to exceeding his standing and openly acknowledged it now; he might be second in command but there was a serious age difference of seventeen years. He had served by Bohemund’s side for a long time, first as a squire and then as he grew to manhood, as his right-hand shield. Even so, care had to be exercised when questioning the actions of any commander and he feared what he was saying was close to insubordinate.
That got him a huge hand on his shoulder and a squeeze. ‘Never fear to question me, you of all people, Tancred, for your bloodline more than permits you the right. Your mother is as much of the Guiscard’s blood as I and, I think, had Emma been of our sex she would have made a formidable soldier.’
Tancred grinned, the firelight picking up white teeth in a weather-darkened face that took the sun like his Lombard father; if he had loved and esteemed the man known as the Good Marquis of Monteroni he was doubly proud of being the grandson of Robert, Duke of Apulia.
‘You may live to regret saying that.’
‘You’ll know when I do, for I’ll fetch you a buffet round the ears as I was obliged to do when you were younger. Now make sure once we are departed that those tribesfolk do not surprise us by employing boats too. Guard the shore and guard it well and make sure the men near the grazing fields know what to do when they hear my shout.’
Bohemund grabbed his sword and strode down to where his men, equally armed, were gathered, stooping at the water’s edge to scoop up some mud, which he rubbed vigorously into his skin. Seeing this, the men he was leading did likewise and with a minimal amount of residual light they manned the boats and cast off, rowing in a wide and Stygian arc to a pre-chosen landing spot, arrived at by using those faintly silhouetted mountain tops. As ever, at the prospect of action, blood seemed to course faster than normal through Bohemund’s veins, and using a route he had studied so hard it was imprinted in his mind, marked by the shapes of bushes and trees, he led his men to where he thought he could spring his trap.
First the party had each to find an individual spot in which they could comfortably stay, somewhere whereby their stillness would allow any wildlife to become accustomed to and begin to ignore their presence, with either a bush or a tree to protect their backs and sat so each would be alone with their own thoughts, for there could be no talking and being elevated in terms of rank made no difference – Bohemund was as privy to such meanderings as any man alive, in his case a stream of memories of battles, sieges, raids carried out on fast-riding horses, not destriers, of friendships made and promises broken in a world where allegiances shifted with the wind. What it did not do was interfere with the acuity of his hearing.
Even the most skilled intruder moving over a night-time landscape will make a noise – the snap of a branch, even a twig, the rustling of dead leaves and in some cases, though not this one, a quiet curse to acknowledge the pain of kneeling on a stone or cracking an elbow against something unseen. These hill tribesmen were children of the country in which they lived, who had started out playing as a game what they were now undertaking with serious intent. Had the wind not been coming off the lake and over the horse lines they would have picked up the strong scent of their adversaries, a blend of human odours added to a mixture of ingrained horse sweat and leather.
Bohemund had his sword raised before his face, the cold steel of the blade touching his nose, in his other hand a small stone he had gathered, now as warm as his flesh, aware that there were intruders crawling by, probably within touching distance though not in sight. It is easy for imagination to provide clues to what is not there but having soldiered since he was barely breeched he had enough experience to discern the difference between the real and the illusory. Now it was time for his nose to twitch at the rank smell of an unwashed body tinged with a smoky tang that spoke of a man who spent too much time near a wood fire in a place where there was the lack of a decent chimney.
To move so slowly in the dark required great discipline and Bohemund was seeing in his mind’s eye what the tribesman he could smell was doing. First a sweep must be made of the ground in front, a slow arc of movement to identify potential obstacles or objects to be circumvented or, if it were a high growing weed or rushes, flattened. The next advance would be no more than the distance that arm could reach and then the exercise would need to be repeated. Touch a tree by its bark and the crawler would have to decide to go right or left, seeking, from the memory of a long day’s observation of this very terrain, the best alternative; make no noise on the way to your quarry, knowing you can make as much as you like in reverse.
Whoever had been close to Bohemund was past him now, his nostrils full of the mixed odours of disturbed plant life as well as the munching destriers and he had to calculate how long to wait. Like his knights the intruders would be spread out in a long line; concentration in numbers was too dangerous, for the exposure of one meant the rest would be required to either withdraw quietly or flee noisily. In the end it was the lack of sound that decided him, the certainty that a decent gap had been opened up between those silently waiting and the crawling raiders.
Cautiously he stood, making no sound until he was fully upright. The single loud ping of the stone on his sword blade enough to alert his men and if it would bring to a halt those they were intent on foiling he hoped it would make them pause for only a second, to wait for a
repeat. Lacking such a thing should induce them to carry on for Bohemund wanted them close to the horse lines and their eyes as strained as their thoughts before he took any action.
He was blessed with a voice that matched his size and weight, so when he shouted it carried far enough to seem to bounce off the walls of the surrounding mountains. In an instant the ground in front, some fifty paces distant, seemed to explode as the oil with which the ground had been soaked burst into flame. There was no darkness now and the intruders who stood up in shock were silhouetted against the blazing brushwood that had been laid as soon as the light faded. Behind those flames stood a line of mailed Norman knights, the swords reflecting now bright red to orange from the conflagration.
Those who had got to their feet had no option but to try to flee and thus they provided easy kills for the line of men they could now see standing between them and safety. But the real problem lay with those not prone to panic, for as Bohemund closed the distance between himself and that line of fire, he knew that in the undergrowth were hidden men with sharp knives and little hope. Again his voice boomed out, telling his men to employ their blades like scythes to root out those in hiding, who had only one hope: that they could wound then move so swiftly when discovered as to get past those seeking to cut them down.
With senses heightened to the level needed to stay alive in battle, Bohemund picked up the flash of a knife blade as it swept towards his lower leg, the aim to so maim him that he would be unable to easily control his weapons and certainly with his ankle tendons sliced be unable to run in pursuit. Swiftly moving his leg out of the way he swung at what was no more than an outline on the ground, aware as soon as his sword struck flesh that he had done so, not just for the cry that came up to his ears but for the way the contact between steel and bone jarred his forearm.
All around him his men were doing the same, either flushing out their quarry and cutting them down as they sought to flee or skewering them as they lay still on the ground. There was no mercy given and none received, for two of his men took knives in the vital parts of their guts from men desperate to escape. As the flames died down the men on the Lake Ohrid side of the fires pushed their way through to add to the depth of slaughter until it seemed there was no one left to kill. Yet Bohemund doubted that to be the case; it was dark, one or two of the tribesmen would manage to escape. So be it, they would pass back that raiding the lines of the Norman host was a game too deadly to play.
