Imperial Fire (2 page)

Almost shyly, Beorn drew a letter from under his cloak and passed it across the flames.

Vallon read it and smiled. ‘Poor Aiken. He’s learning how to dance, with my eldest daughter as partner.’

‘It’s all right, isn’t it – a warrior learning how to turn a fancy step?’

‘Of course it is. Life isn’t only about shearing the heads off your enemy. In any case, dancing isn’t all that he’s mastering. He writes a good Greek hand and says that his tutors are pleased with his progress in mathematics and logic.’

Beorn jabbed a finger. ‘But soldiering is his birth destiny. He turned sixteen last month. When you ride out on your next campaign, you’ll take Aiken with you.’

Vallon hesitated. ‘Not all youths of sixteen have hardened to the same degree.’

Beorn leaned forward. ‘And some don’t harden until they’re tempered by the heat of battle. Promise me you’ll take Aiken on your next campaign. I know you won’t expose him to serious hazard until he’s ready to face it.’

‘I’d like to talk to him first, hear what ambitions he harbours.’

Beorn waved aside this consideration. ‘There’s only one course for my son – the way of the oath-sworn warrior. Give me your pledge, Vallon. In two days we march into battle. I might be killed. I’ll face that fate serenely if I know that Aiken will follow my calling.’

Vallon grimaced. ‘In two days it might be me who lies dead and then it will be my lady calling on you for protection.’

Beorn’s features set in complicated lines. He stared into the flames. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this encounter. I still feel shame that I didn’t die with my king at Hastings. This time we crush Duke Robert or perish in the attempt.’

Vallon reached out and touched Beorn’s shoulder. ‘That isn’t the attitude that wins battles.’

Beorn looked up, his eyes red in the firelight. He laughed. ‘You’ve always been the foxy one who lives to fight another day.’ He shot out a hand. ‘If I die, swear that you’ll make a warrior of Aiken.’

Vallon extended his own hand. ‘I swear it.’

Beorn sprang up and thumped him on the back. ‘I’ve kept you too long from sleep. You aren’t anxious about the battle, are you?’

‘Not particularly.’

Beorn gave a booming laugh. ‘Good. Fate always spares the undoomed warrior.’

Vallon managed a weak grin. ‘My old friend Raul the German used to say the same.’

Beorn looked down, his brutish face gentled. ‘And he spoke the truth.’

At break of day, Vallon led his squadron down to the Byzantine camp. Banners and standards glimmered through the dust kicked up by thousands of horses. Centurion Conrad met him at the outer rampart and guided him through the controlled chaos to the headquarters of the Grand Domestic, the emperor’s field marshal. A Greek general received Vallon with ill-concealed suspicion.

‘You cut it fine. You should have received your marching orders at the beginning of September.’

‘They reached me only two weeks ago, and the Pechenegs were so sorry to see us leave that they chased us halfway to Nicopolis.’

The general narrowed his eyes in the face of Vallon’s subtle insubordination. ‘I trust that your squadron is in fit shape to fight.’

Vallon knew there was no point explaining that his men and horses were exhausted. ‘I’ll carry out my orders diligently.’

The general’s slow, wagging nod conveyed a lack of conviction.

Vallon cleared his throat. ‘I request permission to scout the enemy’s positions. My squadron will be more effective if we know the lie of the land.’

The general kept Vallon under dark review. Like most native Byzantine commanders, he resented the fact that the empire’s defenders were largely made up of foreign mercenaries. ‘Very well. Make sure you’re back well before dark. After sunset the camp will be sealed. No one leaves, no one enters.’

‘Hear that?’ said Conrad as they left. ‘It must mean the emperor intends to give battle tomorrow.’

Vallon took his three centurions and a squad of horse archers on the reconnaissance, riding to a low ridge about a mile from the city. From here he could see the breaches pounded in the citadel’s walls by the Norman trebuchets. He could also make out the marshy channel through which the emperor intended sending part of his army.

‘If Alexius has thought of that ploy, you can be sure Guiscard has done the same. Gentlemen, I think we could be in for some hot action.’

He lingered a long time, committing the particulars of the terrain to mind. The season had been dry and the Byzantines had torched the fields to deny the invaders food, leaving a bare undulating plain ideal for cavalry.

He returned to the camp in a honeyed light and was still dismounting when Beorn ran up and seized his arm. ‘Come. The emperor’s holding his final council of war.’

They headed towards the double-headed eagle standard flying above the imperial headquarters, a large silk pavilion surrounded by guards three lines deep. Another wall of guards sealed off a crowd of officers pressing around the inner cordon.

One of the guards held up his hand to stop Vallon.

‘The count’s with me,’ said Beorn, the wall of soldiers giving way before his bulk.

Vallon followed him through the scrum of officers, ignoring their black looks, until he had a clear view of the emperor. Alexius I Comnenus stood on a platform engaged in discussion with his senior commanders. Not at first sight a particularly imposing figure – pale face almost eclipsed by a bristling black beard, a chest like a pouter pigeon. Strip him of his crown and parade uniform – a corselet of gilt lamellar armour over a purple and gold tunic – and no one would guess his exalted rank and title.

Vallon recognised a few of the generals. The blond man wearing a tunic of madder red and a cloak fastened by a jewelled fibula at one shoulder was Nabites, the ‘Corpse Biter’, the Swedish commander of the Varangians. The portly man to his right was the Grand Domestic. One of the generals, lean, haggard and serious, seemed to be arguing with the emperor.

Vallon nudged Beorn. ‘That’s Palaeologus, commander of the citadel.’

‘Yes. He sneaked out of Dyrrachium when the emperor arrived and will make his way back tonight so that he can coordinate his attack on the Normans.’ Beorn rubbed his hands. ‘Everything’s running in our favour.’

Vallon saw Palaeologus step back and shake his head in vexation. ‘He doesn’t share your optimism.’

Alexius turned and looked out over the crowd, his piercing blue gaze transforming Vallon’s impression of the man. He raised a hand to command a hush, timing his delivery to perfection.

‘The talking is over, our tactics agreed. Rest well tonight, for tomorrow we drive the invaders into the sea.’ He smiled a disarming smile. ‘Unless any of you have something to add that might sway my decision.’

Gusty sighs of relief or anxiety gave way to a heavy silence.

Vallon didn’t know he was going to speak until the words left his mouth. ‘I see no compelling reason to risk battle.’

Beorn gripped his arm. Faces spun with expressions of disbelief. A general pushed out of the crowd, his face puce with anger. ‘Who the hell are you to question His Imperial Majesty?’

‘It wasn’t a question,’ said Vallon.

‘The emperor’s not interested in the opinion of some lily-livered mercenary.’

Alexius raised his jewelled baton. ‘Let him speak,’ he said in refined Attic Greek. He leaned forward, black brows arched in polite enquiry. ‘And you are?’

‘Count Vallon, commander of the Outlander squadron.’ He spoke in clumsy demotic and heard men utter the word
ethnikos
, ‘foreigner’, seasoned with a selection of insulting epithets.

Alexius leaned further. ‘Explain the reason for your timidity.’ He wafted his baton to still the angry jostle around Vallon. ‘No, please. I would like to hear the Frank’s answer.’

‘It’s not cowardice that compels me to speak,’ Vallon said. He could see a scribe recording his words. He dragged in breath. ‘Winter approaches. In a month the Normans won’t be able to advance even if they capture the city. Nor can they retire to Italy. They’ve already suffered serious setbacks – the destruction of their fleet, the ravages of plague. Most of their army are unwilling conscripts. Leave them to wither on the vine.’

Palaeologus was nodding and Alexius glanced round to intercept the meaningful glances of other commanders before turning back to Vallon. He gave every impression of a man open to argument. ‘Some of my generals share your opinion.’ His expression hardened, his voice rose and his blue gaze seared the audience. ‘I’ll tell you – all of you – what I told them.’ He allowed a strained hush to settle before breaking it. ‘It’s true that the Normans have suffered reverses. If we withdraw, it’s quite possible that they’ll try to return to Italy for the winter. But next spring they’ll be back, with a larger navy and army and the whole campaigning season in which to make gains. As for us, we’ve already withdrawn the armies from our remaining holdings in Anatolia, leaving them exposed to attack by the Seljuks. No, now is when we’re at our strongest. Now is the time to attack.’

Hundreds of fists punched the air around Vallon. The roar of salutations to the emperor spread until the Normans four miles away could have had no doubt that the order to battle had been given.

Beorn dragged Vallon away, sweeping aside an officer who clawed at the Frank and spat in his face. When Beorn was clear of the crush, he swung Vallon round. ‘What the devil possessed you to fly in the face of the emperor? You just ended your career and ruined my chances of promotion to commander of the Varangians.’

‘I spoke the truth as I saw it. As Palaeologus knows it from months of experience.’

Beorn’s jaw jutted. His breath came in gusts. ‘Fool. The truth is whatever the emperor wants it to be.’

Still panting in disbelief, he disappeared into the crowd, leaving Vallon isolated. A Byzantine officer barged into him and others leaned in with muttered remarks about his craven character. Face set, hand on sword, he set out to rejoin his squadron, unaware that fate had settled its indifferent glance on Beorn and that he would not speak to him again.

No moon on the eve of battle. Nothing visible except the hazy glow of Norman campfires burning around the city. Only the chink of metal and creak of horse harness told Vallon that his squadron were drawn up around him. Hooves pummelled the ground ahead and then stopped. He heard an exchange of passwords and after a little while Conrad arrived at his side.

‘You were right, Count. The Normans have left the city and advanced onto the plain.’

‘Send word back to the Grand Domestic.’

Mist lay thick along the coast and daylight was slow to break through, tantalising shapes swimming out of the murk and then retreating until at last the sun rose above the hills behind and the vapours lifted, revealing the Norman army arrayed in formations spanning a mile of plain, drawn up in perfect stillness, their banners limp and their mail armour leaden in the dim light. Behind them Vallon could see the fleet of blockading Venetian and Byzantine ships anchored outside the bay south of Dyrrachium.

The spine-tingling tramp of thousands of feet and hooves announced the approach of the Byzantine army. In battle-proven tradition it was drawn up in three main formations, with the emperor in the centre and a regiment led by his brother-in-law to his right. On the left, nearest to Vallon, was the
tagma
commanded by the Grand Domestic, his troops clad in glittering iron cuirasses and greaves and helmets with mail aventails protecting their necks, their horses skirted with oxhide scale armour and helmed with iron masks, so that men and beasts looked more like machines than flesh and blood. Vallon’s own men wore plain mail or leather armour rusted and stained by long exposure to the elements.

The imperial army halted in line with Vallon’s position, less than a mile from the Norman front. The Grand Domestic had posted Vallon’s squadron out on the left flank, close to the coast. Vallon’s intervention the night before had marked him out as too unreliable to occupy a more central position. He wasn’t concerned. His men were coursers and skirmishers. Whether the battle went well or badly, he might not see any action today. As Beorn had said, the encounter would be decided by the heavy cavalry and infantry.

A stirring in the Byzantine rear heralded the Varangian Guard arriving on horseback, their two-handed axes winking in the sunlight. They dismounted and formed into a square a hundred yards in front of the emperor’s standard. Grooms led their mounts away and a squadron of light cavalry cantered into the gap between the Varangians and the imperial centre. They were Vardariots, elite horse archers recruited from Christianised Magyars in Macedonia.

Priests blessed the regiments, the incense from their censers drifting across the plain. Vallon’s squadron joined in the Trisagion, the Warriors’ hymn. ‘Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us’ – his Muslim and pagan troopers singing as fervently as their Christian comrades.

Now the low autumn sun flashed off the lines of Normans and illuminated the brilliant standards borne by the Byzantine units. Vallon glanced at his own banner, its five triangular pennants stirring in the morning breeze. A bugle note prickled his blood. Trumpets blared and drums pounded, the notes resonating in his chest. With a shout that raised the hairs on his neck, the Varangians began their advance. The Normans’ response drifted faint and eerie across the battlefield and above Vallon’s head a flock of swallows heading south hawked for insects.

The Varangians swung along in full stride, singing their battle anthem, huge axes slung across their left shoulders, the shields on their backs redundant. Vallon couldn’t suppress his admiration. Anxiety, too. How could infantry, however brave and skilled they might be, withstand a charge by mounted lancers? He pulled on his helmet, raised his hand and dropped it.

‘Advance.’

They rode at walking pace, keeping level with the Varangians. When the distance between the two armies had narrowed by half, a detachment of Norman cavalry peeled off from the centre and charged the Varangians head on. The Guard halted, closing ranks.

‘It’s a feint,’ said Vallon.

At a trumpet blast, the Varangian phalanx split in two, opening a corridor for the Vardariots. They galloped down it and when they reached the end they released their arrows at the cavalry before wheeling and riding back along the Varangians’ flanks.

The square closed up again and resumed its advance. The Norman cavalry circled and made another charge, the Varangians and Vardariots countering with the same move as before. The Normans made one more feint and this time the Vardariots rode around the Varangians, discharging their arrows into the cavalry from a range of no more than fifty yards. Vallon saw riders tumble and horses go down.

‘That stung them,’ said Conrad.

Directly opposite Vallon’s position, Guiscard’s right wing urged their horses forward, spurring the beasts into a trot, angling across the battlefield.

‘Now it comes,’ said Vallon. Tight of throat, he watched the formation charge at an extended canter and then a gallop aimed at the Varangians’ left flank. The horse archers’ arrows couldn’t stop them. Vallon winced as the mass of horses ploughed into the Varangian formation, clutched his head when he saw it buckle, leaned forward on his stirrups when he saw the cavalry slow and begin to mill. Across the dusty arena the tumult of war carried – the clash of iron, the meaty impact of heavy axes smashing into flesh and bone, blood-crazed yells, the shrieks of injured beasts and dying men.

He sat back in his saddle. ‘They’re holding their ground.’

‘Skirmishing on the right,’ said Conrad.

Vallon’s attention flicked across the Byzantine front before returning to the grisly contest in the centre. The attack on the Varangians’ left flank had ground to a halt. Those terrible axes had wreaked havoc, throwing up a wall of dead horses. The cavalry couldn’t find a way through and while they wheeled and reared, the Vardariots poured arrows into them from close range.

Conrad turned. ‘Why doesn’t Guiscard throw his centre forward?’

Vallon rasped a knuckle along his teeth. ‘I don’t know. That’s what worries me.’

Unable to break the Varangian square, defenceless against the archers, the Norman cavalry wrenched their horses round and began streaming away, at first in trickles and finally in a flood, kicking up dust that obscured the formations.

Vallon stood upright in his stirrups. ‘No!’

Dim in the haze, the Varangians were pursuing their enemy, streaming like hounds after their hated foe. Vallon recognised Beorn by his vermilion beard, leading the reckless charge. Vallon kicked his horse and galloped towards the Grand Domestic’s regiment, swinging his arm to signal that there was no time to lose. ‘Follow them up!’

A few cavalrymen glanced at him before turning their attention back to the action, as if it were a drama staged for their benefit.

Vallon spurred back to his formation. ‘After them!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t engage without my order.’

His squadron clapped spurs to flanks and galloped after the fleeing Normans and the pursuing Varangians. Here and there pockets of cavalry had turned on their enemy and were surrounded and cut down.

Conrad drew level. ‘It’s not a feint. It’s a rout.’

Vallon pounded on. ‘For now it is.’

And for a while it was. In the panic of war, the Norman right wing fled back to the sea. Some of them stripped off their armour and plunged in, trying to reach their ships. The rest milled along the shore, not knowing which way to turn. A detachment of Norman cavalry and crossbowmen cut between them and the Varangians, led by a figure with blonde hair spilling below her helmet. Back and forth she rode, smiting the cowards, exhorting the rabble to regroup and unite against the enemy.

‘It’s true,’ said Vallon. ‘That’s Sikelgaita, Guiscard’s wife.’

Her intervention turned the tide. In ones and twos and then in tens and twenties, the cavalry regrouped and turned. The Varangians were scattered over half a mile of plain. They had fought a brutal battle and followed up in heavy armour to exterminate the old enemy. They were formationless and exhausted, unable to offer any concerted defence against the Norman counter-attack.

Vallon watched the ensuing slaughter in furious disbelief. Time and time again, Beorn had told him how the Normans’ feigned retreat at Hastings had lured the English shield wall to their destruction. And now it was happening again.

Conrad pranced alongside Vallon. ‘We could make the difference.’

‘No.’

Some of the Varangians, including Nabites their commander, managed to escape back to the Byzantine lines. Others fought their way through the Normans, gathering other survivors, making for a tiny, isolated chapel not far from the sea. By the time they reached the building, they must have numbered about two hundred – a quarter of the strength that had stepped out so bravely less than an hour before.

The chapel was too small to accommodate them and so many were forced to take refuge on its roof that the structure collapsed, casting them down among their comrades. Already the Normans were at work firing the building, piling brushwood around the walls and hurling burning brands over the eaves. Flames licked and then rose in smoky banners. Timbers crackled and Vallon heard the screams of men being consumed alive.

The door burst open and a dozen Varangians crashed out, led by Beorn, his beard scorched to stubble and his forehead blistered and boiled. He sliced through one Norman with a stroke that folded him over like a hinge before ten men hacked him down, flailing at his body as if he were a rat driven out of a rick at harvest time.

‘Here comes Palaeologus,’ said Conrad.

Out from the citadel rode its garrison. Almost immediately it met fierce opposition and the sally petered out.

‘Too little, too late,’ said Vallon.

A chorus of war cries heralded a charge by Guiscard’s regiment at the emperor’s exposed centre.

‘Back!’ yelled Vallon.

Led by Guiscard, the Norman cavalry bore down on the imperial standard, sweeping aside the Vardariot archers who contested their path. Clumsy in their layers of armour, the imperial force lumbered forward to meet the attack, the two sides colliding with a splintering crash.

Swirling dust obscured the fighting. Vallon drove his horse towards the cloud, straining to make out the two sides.

‘The Normans have broken the centre,’ he shouted.

They had split the Byzantine formation, driving a deep wedge into it.

Vallon checked that his squadron was with him and pulled his horse to the left. ‘Closer! Keep formation!’

He aimed for the imperial standard, the only fixed point on the battlefield. But then he realised it wasn’t fixed. It had been reversed and was withdrawing. And over on the right flank another Byzantine formation was streaming away.

‘Treachery!’ Conrad shouted. ‘The Serbians are deserting.’

Nor were they the only ones. Behind the heavy Byzantine cavalry, the Seljuks – all ten thousand of them – turned tail and fled before they’d struck a single blow.

‘Calamity,’ Vallon groaned. ‘Complete disaster.’

‘Look out behind!’ Conrad yelled, hauling his horse round.

Vallon spun to see a squadron of Norman lancers plunging out of the dust, hauberks flapping about their legs, lances couched.

‘Stand and engage,’ he yelled. ‘Archers!’

With their first volley, they toppled more than ten of the enemy, the powerful compound bows driving arrows through plate and mail.

Vallon drew a mace. ‘Javelins!’

Scores of missiles arced towards the pounding cavalry. Few reached their target. And then the enemy was on them. Vallon singled out an individual riding pell-mell towards him. His attacker jounced in the saddle, only his lance held steady. Waiting until the last moment, Vallon swerved away from the point and, leaning out with his weight on his right stirrup, smashed his mace into the Norman’s mailed head with a force that sent him somersaulting backwards over his horse’s tail.

Blood and brain spattered Vallon’s hand. Eyes darting right and left, he weighed up the situation. Some of the Normans had charged right through his squadron and were disappearing into the dust. Others had drawn their swords to engage at close quarters. While most of the squadron fought hand to hand, the horse archers circled the fray, shooting at targets as they presented themselves. The assault by sword and dart was more than the Normans could deal with and they broke off, one of them wrenching his horse around so violently that it lost its footing and collapsed, toppling on the rider with a force that broke his leg and made him scream. Falling, his helmet toppled off and his coif slid down his neck. One eye clenched in agony, he registered Vallon’s approach and his own execution.

Vallon leaned down and shattered his skull. ‘Mercy on your soul.’

Short as it was, the skirmish had left him disoriented. The billowing dust made it impossible to make sense of what was happening. The only thing he knew for certain was that the Byzantines had lost the day. If the emperor was dead, they might have lost an empire.

He brandished his mace. ‘Follow me!’

Less than half his squadron responded, the rest unsighted by the dust or scattered by the skirmish. Vallon didn’t catch up with the main Norman force until they’d overrun the imperial camp, riding roughshod over the place where only last night Alexius had promised victory.

Giving the Normans a wide berth, Vallon’s force outpaced the enemy. A distraught Byzantine cavalryman fleeing from the fray cut across his path.

‘Where’s Alexius? Is he alive?’

‘I don’t know.’

Vallon must have ridden a mile further before he came upon the Byzantine rearguard engaged in a desperate struggle to stem the Norman pursuit. The task was beyond them. Their role was to bear down on the enemy in close formation and crush them by weight of arms and armour. In retreat, that beautifully crafted material – the plated corselets, greaves, arm- and shoulder-bands – weighed twice as much as Norman mail, reducing them to lumbering targets.

Vallon rode through them and at last overtook a group of stragglers from the Imperial Guard. He drew level with an officer.