A number of the elevated outcrops had a stone watchtower, built on the site of Roman predecessors and so rudimentary they could only be manned by very small parties of armed men, perhaps six or eight, with only half of them mounted, given there was scarce room to stable horses for more, which left them poorly equipped to defend the land around from banditry. That was not really their task outside petty transgressions; they were in place to overawe a less than contented Greek peasantry and also to ensure that a proper portion of what the farmers grew went to their overlord, and through him to their prince.
These watchtowers radiated out from a quartet of bigger bastions which they were careful to observe from afar, though none with a garrison above perhaps thirty to forty, while half of what they were tasked to protect lay outside the security of the walls: fenced-off pasture for horses and cattle, barns for storing grain and wines, these the very articles Bohemund and his party were intent on destroying. With great care, over three days, marks were annotated on his animal-skin map, working out a plan to both raid and fight; satisfied, the trio rode back into his father’s territory.
CHAPTER FIVE
The following dawn the whole party crossed into the lands of Capua and made for a large farm within long sight of the chosen target, one of the outlying watchtowers. Having turned out the occupants — the tenant and his extended family, who held their land direct from the local magnate and no doubt bore down hard on their peasantry — they rounded up those working in the fields and invited them to loot what goods were stored in the barns. Then they were required to create a pile of hay higher than two men around the buildings, which was soaked with oil and, when laced with tar, set alight, sending, once everything was ablaze, a long pall of black smoke into the air.
Leaving twenty of his men to keep it going, Bohemund, proudly wearing his family surcoat and under his father’s banner, led one conroy to a point at which he could cause the maximum fright to anyone coming from the watchtower to investigate, this a long and wide clearing, noted on his Roman-era maps, in which they would sight his men with enough time to turn and flee. It was close to a farce the way it played out; two slovenly horsemen in stained leather breastplates, armed only with short swords, rode out of the distant trees to see ahead of them a full conroy of ten Norman lances, who immediately dropped their points and began to trot forward, the sound of their battle horn piercing the air. For all the men from the watchtower were on low-grade mounts, they were animals more speedy than those of the men they faced, destriers bred for sturdiness in battle rather than being fleet of foot, rarely set above a fast canter.
Sure they had a good head start, Bohemund called a halt to let his other lances join him, they alerted by the very horns which had induced panic in the men who had fled, and together they rode, without haste, through the dense woods that surrounded the hill on which stood the target watchtower. The bulk of the force remained hidden while Bohemund took his single conroy on to the open ground before that less than formidable structure, there to dismount, remove their helmets and wait.
A quartet of swarthy, unshaven faces greeted their arrival, peering over the parapet, and sure that relief was on the way — if Bohemund had it right a mounted messenger would have gone to gather reinforcements — they were rudely defiant, with a couple balancing on the rim of the wall to show their bared arses. More importantly, one of the others, on sighting their approach, had immediately set light to a pre-prepared and smoky beacon, set in an iron brazier, that rose high above the parapet, the means by which they would alert their neighbouring towers that an enemy was at the door.
At a slow trot and bareheaded, Bohemund rode round the tower outside the range of a cast lance, as if looking for a point at which to attack, a foolhardy notion given the numbers on show. Since his lack of years was obvious at such close quarters he was subjected to many an insult regarding the need to be milk-fed and to have his arse wiped, jibes that were extended to his equally young band of warriors by men who knew they had little to fear. Not that he had any intention to initiate an assault on something an army would bypass; properly manned, even such gimcrack structures could take time to subdue, cost serious wounds and even lives in the taking, which could only be done with ladders or by undermining the walls.
The entrance to the main chamber was well above head height and the ramp that led to it had been withdrawn inside. From there a staircase rose to the fighting platform on top of the tower while an internal walkway led down to the stables and storerooms, probably with enough supplies to hold out for more than enough time to be reinforced. As if nonplussed about how to proceed, and to even louder mockery from the parapet, Bohemund withdrew his men into the woods until they too were out of sight, calling to his entire party to gather round him. Up till now he had not outlined his intentions even to Reynard — wise, given he had no idea if what he had calculated up till now would work. But the reaction so far had been what he had wished for; it was time to describe what he hoped would follow.
‘Why light that beacon?’ Bohemund asked, only to answer his own question. ‘There has to be a local plan of defence that is triggered by any attack on any tower and it is my intention to turn that against our foes.’
As their leader explained his proposal to his young compatriots, he did so with the odd look at Reynard of Eu to see how his words were being received in that quarter. The familia knight did not speak, did not rush to say what the titular leader should do. In that he was following his master’s instruction to give the boy his head unless he proposed something absolutely imprudent and likely to lead to disaster. Many would have accepted such an order and then disobeyed it, but the Guiscard had chosen his man well.
‘The other towers have been alerted by that lit beacon and will be at this moment arming themselves to come to the aid of these fellows yelling insults at us, perhaps with half their number, but they will not just charge to the rescue. When the messenger reaches the castle at Grottaminarda, which must be his destination, the fellow who holds that for Capua will detach a small force that will pick up numbers on the way, sure by the time they reach this point they will be strong enough to drive us off.’
‘Not if we give them battle,’ one of the youngsters cried, a fellow called Ligart with flaming red hair who had proved on the way from Calore to have a touchstone temper, which looked about to flare up as Bohemund shook his head.
‘Not here, Ligart — we will take them on the way, which is why so much time was spent scouting for the best site. This watchtower was not chosen at random; to get to it from the west any relief should pass through a deep-sided and heavily wooded valley and that is where they will meet us.’
‘Thinking we number but one conroy?’ Reynard asked, though in such a way that it was obvious he knew the answer; that was why Bohemund had only let that one group of ten lances be seen.
Bohemund just smiled, not wishing to say that if he was going to impress his father, then it was just as important to demonstrate tactical cunning as the ability to fight and win. ‘That is what they will see facing them, one conroy, but in the trees on both sides, hidden from view …’
The rest was left unsaid, for the reason that to speak it was unnecessary, but Reynard thought he spotted a flaw and it was he who raised it. ‘There must be a signal that tells the supporting towers the one we face is no longer threatened.’
‘I agree,’ Bohemund replied, ‘which is why our squires will stay close and let themselves be seen from time to time wearing mail and surcoats. At a distance they will not look younger than the knights those buffoons on the parapet observed earlier. When the sun goes down they keep lit enough fires just inside the trees to indicate we are still present.’