There was no horn to order a retreat, just his towering voice, and in any other fighting force — the Normans were, after all, pressing on their enemies — that command would have been questioned and quite possibly ignored. But the discipline that made them what they were held, and under the control of their conroy leaders they began to step backwards at not much more than the pace at which they had advanced. Bohemund’s height allowed him to direct those who had come from the original galley to withdraw, as well as to tell them why; his Norman French made sure the Venetians had no idea what he was saying.
Getting off the ship while also fighting would have been difficult but for those slave rowers who, now freed, came up screaming that the ship was sinking. At first that merely caused the kind of confusion that eased the withdrawal, but when the sense of what was being imparted got home to the Venetian crew their desire to keep fighting evaporated, creating a gap by which the Normans could disengage. Bohemund’s men piled aboard their galley, and the master, who had seen and appreciated the danger, got clear at ramming speed. As they drew off, the dromon on which they had been fighting began to settle in the water while those who had come to its rescue put aside any idea of pursuit and set to in order to try and keep it afloat. Dragging his eyes away from that sight, Bohemund could look around and what he saw did not cheer him; if he had scored a small victory, it was obvious by the wrecked galleys, added to one or two still burning, that the Apulian fleet had suffered badly.
At the masthead of the ducal galley that flag had changed; it was no longer a command to engage but the one that signalled the need to withdraw. It was, to his son, what it looked like: an admission of defeat.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
That the Venetians let them disengage without difficulty was the first surprise; the fighting and bloody withdrawal that the Guiscard had anticipated turned into an undisturbed retreat that took his ships back to the southern end of the bay, to where his transports had fled, while the enemy, having abandoned attempts to save the one dromon that had fallen to Bohemund’s axe, made for the waters outside Durazzo harbour to anchor and no doubt celebrate. That one Norman victory now sat on the sandy bottom and as the sun faded, day turning to night, only the top of its mast still was visible, with the archers’ boat hanging off of it; if that served as a consolation, it was a small one which soon disappeared into darkness.
The losses had been significant in both men and galleys and that took no account of the wounds, quite a number of them serious burns that rendered the victims so incapacitated that they were unlikely to survive. As they clung to life, the sounds they emitted, from mournful cries to outright other-worldly screams, acted as a melancholy backdrop to the deliberations taking place by the light of lanterns on one of the large transport vessels that had been designated as an infirmary. Robert had come aboard to visit the wounded and once that sad duty was done he went back aboard his own ship, having called together the men who led his warriors into such an unfamiliar battle, as well as those masters who by their laudable efforts had managed to avoid destruction, all of them exhausted by the day’s combat.
‘We fought well.’
These, the first words he uttered, were received as he expected, with cast-down eyes that told him agreement was mixed. Also the collective ‘we’ resonated with the man who employed it; Robert had taken no part in the fighting and if that could be understood on one plane, it sat ill with men who were accustomed to be led into combat by their duke, not observed and encouraged from afar. Geoffrey Ridel sensed the mood and felt the need to defend their leader from criticism.
‘Know this, that our liege lord desired to get into the fight and it was I who stopped him, I who refused to sail his galley towards the enemy, and with good reason. If he had gone down, we would not be assembled now to talk of what to do next; we might well be raising our anchors and heading for Brindisi.’
‘Not all of us,’ Bohemund growled.
‘What are we to do now?’ asked Reynard of Eu, after a long and significant silence, not one of the commanders present wanting to be the one to first speak.
Robert aimed a grim smile at his familia knight, well aware and grateful that his man had only spoken to relieve a tension that threatened to break into uncontrolled discord. He knew the difference between success and failure in battle, for, if he had enjoyed many more victories than defeats in his thirty years of warfare, he had tasted both. Winning brought harmony to a host; to lose, even on an element to which they were unaccustomed, could create dissension in any army and Normans were no exception. If anything they were worse; good fighting men and natural leaders were not sheep — they expected their opinions to be listened to and respected.
‘The choices are simple,’ Robert suggested, ‘we can renew the fight-’
Geoffrey Ridel’s interruption was delivered with acid certainty. ‘A contest we cannot win.’
Bohemund spoke up again. ‘We sank one of their dromons today.’
Now the Master of the Fleet was scathing. ‘We need to sink all twenty, not one.’
‘Or,’ Robert emphatically said, ‘we can disembark and lay siege to Durazzo.’
‘Lacking a blockade, My Lord?’
‘You say, Geoffrey, that we cannot fight their large ships with any hope of success. They — the one weapon we cannot overcome at sea — can do us little harm when we are on land.’
‘Or,’ Bohemund interjected, ‘we could find another route to Constantinople.’
Reynard shook his head slowly. ‘The landscape is not favourable, Bohemund.’
That caused a murmur of agreement, which matched the doubt in Reynard’s voice; Illyria was not blessed with many routes through the interior. It was mountainous, full of deep gorges and unbridged rivers, while at those points at which progress was possible Byzantium had built strong defensive castles, which could not be bypassed by any army in need of a sound line of communication. In addition, this was ancient Macedonia, the heartlands of Alexander the Great’s old kingdom, full of untamed and warlike tribes who not even the local Byzantine satraps sought to control; they were content to contain such folk in their mountain fastness with, when they raided too deeply into the civilised settlements, occasional bloody incursions to chastise them.
Bohemund was adamant. ‘We cannot withdraw.’
‘Nor will we,’ Robert sighed. He was well aware that such an avenue reflected the general mood. ‘But we are, to a man, weary. You all know me, and each of you is aware of what I have achieved. I expect you will believe me when I say that in the dark, when the day has gone badly, every difficulty becomes a steep hill to climb. Yet when the sun rises again it is often only a small and easy-to-overcome mound; so go back to your ships and reassure those you lead that we will prevail, as I hope I can reassure of such a thing come morning.’
Bohemund remained to ask the obvious question, one that was on the mind of everyone who had just departed. ‘Do you have a plan, Father?’
‘No, I do not, but I too must sleep and hope that God grants me in my dreams a way to overcome those Venetians, who, as of this moment, have me by the throat. If, tomorrow, they renew their attack, we must sail away from Durazzo as fast as our oars and sails can carry us.’
Sleep did not come easily to Robert de Hauteville; it never does when a problem is too thoroughly gnawed upon. Jaw tight, he tossed about for an age until he finally slipped into dreams just as troubled, so that a man who normally woke with the dawn was still in a deep slumber when the sun rose. Geoffrey Ridel woke him with a shake on his shoulder, holding a cup of warm and fresh goat’s milk to ease his morning throat.
‘My Lord Robert, the Venetians raised anchor at first light and are beginning to row north.’