It was Bohemund that got to the still-open gate first, and that same sword which pressed into the narrowing gap to prevent the double iron-studded doors from slamming shut, as those inside, sacrificing the fighters who had failed to make it in time, sought to secure themselves against what must surely come if they failed: outright massacre. Alone for only a few grains of hourglass sand, the young warrior had to fend off attempts to kill him with only his long dagger and a mailed fist, but soon he had Normans by his side, their backs to the gate to force the surrender of those who were trapped outside their city walls.
As the Lombards dropped to their knees and begged in vain to be spared, Bohemund was joined by a mass of men pushing to open that narrow gap, enough to allow their compatriots to jab and hack at those seeking to keep them at bay. It would have needed a stout heart, strong confidence and great faith to get those gates closed, but that, so prevalent only a short while before, had now gone out of the rebels. Like those who had fought on the ground before the city they were concerned to save themselves as well as their families, a foolish notion given their leaders had refused the terms of surrender offered by the Normans, and thus by the laws of war had laid them open to rapine and sack without quarter given.
Pressure saw the fissure in the gate widen; fear of the consequence made those who knew they could not hold break and run. Soon the small force of Normans, with Bohemund to the fore, were doing execution in the cart-wide streets of the city, the blood from the slain flowing downhill on the cobbles of the roadway to that now wide-open gate — killing that would go on as the sun dipped and the light faded to darkness, so that torches were required, which lent a satanic hue to the continued butchery. If women and children were spared, and often they were not, it was only so they could be sold into slavery.
With seemingly no one left to fight, Bohemund could at last remove his helmet and ease his mailed hauberk off his sweat-soaked head and allow it to rest on his broad shoulders. To those with whom he had fought and killed, the sight, had they still eyes to see, would not have eased their souls into the afterlife, for they had not fallen to the sword of a scarred and experienced warrior. The fellow who stood in the central square of Noci was a youth of unblemished face, his blond hair cut short and his jaw showing little sign of the ability to yet grow even a trace of a beard.
It was there the man who had led the successful Norman attack found him; indeed it was his brother-in-law Ademar who had shouted that accolade in the midst of battle, for he had taken care that his relative by marriage should have by his side a warrior of long experience to ensure he survived his first real battle — too many young fools met their end early from an excess of zeal. It was only when Bohemund looked at Ademar’s blood-drenched surcoat that he realised his own blue and white de Hauteville colours must now be hidden by the deep-red gore of those he had slain. Removing a glove, he lifted it and examined the cloth in the torchlight, sorry to see it was true, for he valued the right to wear these colours above all other things.
‘Your father himself could not have done greater execution this day and I will tell him so.’
The reply was made doubly gloomy by exhaustion. ‘Will my father care about any deed of mine?’
The hearty slap on the back would have moved a normal man; the recipient this time did not even notice. ‘You will soon find out, Bohemund. Word has come that Trani fell four days ago and the rest of the towns in revolt have surrendered, all except Corato. Tomorrow we ride to join him there. Take that fortress and this rebellion against his title will be spent.’
CHAPTER ONE
Compared to the numerous towns and cities the Duke of Apulia had already either captured or forced to surrender, Corato was a pinprick of a place, a series of curtain walls joined to the four towers that formed the defensive whole, a construction that could be ridden around, even at longbow shot, in less time than it took to fill a quarter of an hourglass. Those dwellings that lay beyond the walls and the deep ditch which surrounded them, the kind that grew up around any citadel, had been razed to the ground in anticipation of a siege, the inhabitants now inside the walls with their animals, wine and portable possessions, some of them able to fight and support the knights who made up the garrison.
Ademar, Marquis of Monteroni and son-in-law to the Duke, knew that with the force he had at his disposal he could not hope to take the place even if, like at Noci, the defenders came out to do battle on the slopes before the main gate. Given that many of those inside were Normans, better able to hold their ground than Lombards, added to the fact that he had been required to leave part of his force behind to secure and garrison Noci, while others had been detached to escort the slave survivors to Bari, the outcome of any fight was too uncertain to risk. His force now numbered no more than fifty knights, possibly less than the figure now sheltering in Corato.
‘They might be tempted,’ Bohemund said, looking back to where the men who had come with them from Noci were making camp, ‘given our small numbers.’
‘No, word travels faster than a man can ride, though only the evil spirits know how that can be. They will have heard that Noci has fallen and also have been informed, as were we, that your father is on his way from Trani with his whole army. If they decide to sortie out, Bohemund, it will be because they reckon defeat impossible, and since I am inclined to agree, we must spur our mounts and get away as soon as the gates open.’
‘Run?’
Ademar smiled at the underlying disgust in the young man’s response; that was only to be expected from one of his years. Added to his bloodline he had been raised to believe that he and his kind were near to invincible and his confidence was not misplaced; the Normans, no more than a few thousand lances, having arrived in this part of the world in dribs and drabs as mercenaries, now ruled over a population of Lombards and Greeks required to be counted in the millions, while their confreres back home in Normandy had not only held in check the King of the Franks and his Angevin allies who sought to occupy the duchy, but had recently crossed the narrow sea to invade and conquer Saxon England.
Bohemund de Hauteville belonged to a family, as well as a class of warriors, that when they were not engaged in actual fighting trained for combat on every day bar the Sabbath. Ever since he could wield a wooden toy sword and carry a straw buckler — and he had come to that at a tender age, being taller than boys who shared his years — Bohemund had been taught how to fight both on foot and mounted, to employ a lance, his shield, a broadsword and an axe. He had been instructed in the discipline and tactics of the ten-man conroys that ensured, acting in concert, and even outnumbered — they usually were — that the Normans had become the most feared warriors in Christendom.
‘It is wise to run when the occasion demands it, Bohemund. There is no glory in a useless death.’
‘We could try an assault under cover of darkness.’
‘No.’
‘There are those who would follow me.’
‘And in doing so disobey me, their commander?’ Ademar demanded, his voice hardening. ‘When I say “no” that is what I mean.’
The glowering response that engendered, a youthful pout that spoilt a handsome countenance, nearly made Ademar hoot out loud and it was only regard for his brother-in-law’s feelings that held that in check. Having had a hand in raising his wife’s younger sibling he knew the boy to have a serious nature; indeed he was not much given to jesting, which Ademar saw as a pity — young men should carouse, jape about and get up to mischief. But then Bohemund had the burden of being his father’s son as well as a family background that he seemed viscerally determined to live up to, for if the Normans had created much in Italy, the de Hauteville brothers had created the most. Bohemund’s aim, never stated but obvious to a man who had watched him grow, was to be the greatest of that name, to outshine not only his father but every one of his numerous uncles.