To canter half a league, on a destrier carrying a mailed knight, exceeded that for which they had been trained; these sturdy animals were designed for short rides into a fierce battle and if Radulf wondered how fit they would be on contact it was a concern that quickly faded. Horses like to run — they do not have to be taught how do so, only when — and his mounts seemed, as he looked along the front line, to be enjoying themselves, heads up and jerking, nostrils flaring and hooves pounding rhythmically, with no sign of impending fatigue. The time came to put them into a faster pace, which he calculated as the point where those foot soldiers would hear the noise of hooves over that of their own numerous feet.
The blowing of the horns did not come as a surprise; what did was the way these men, who had to be barely trained, spun as one and took up a position to defend themselves, shields up and lance points at the ready in an unbroken line. Being committed, Radulf could not let this deter him and he made no attempt to stop his men, which he could have done with a horn blast of his own. Thus the first line hit the shield wall, then on the requisite command split left and right so the second wave could engage, with Radulf now taking up a position from which he could direct matters.
He was not downhearted; the men he was hoping to meet were behind that shield wall and so solid was it they had no chance of breaking through unless the milities opened up to let them pass in file, in which case he would have the fight he wanted: his solid conroys on horses trained to fight, against men yet to form up and very likely on skittish and fearful cavalry mounts. That Bohemund’s foot soldiers held their line began to make Radulf curious and then to frustrate him to the point where he began to curse their stupidity; they could not beat his conroys, just delay them, and so, instead of beating against them for his original purpose, he ordered his lances to break their line, for if they did, Bohemund would be obliged to then commit what he was obviously holding back, his own knights, who, even if they had remounted, he knew he outnumbered.
The milities having ceased to march, the dust they had been sending up was now settling and the corresponding amount produced by his horses was much less. Because of that the air began to clear, and if it was a ghostly chimera at first, it rapidly began to take form, which led Count Radulf, not an especially religious man, to wonder if God had decided to send his celestial legions to participate in the fight. All along the shoreline, several ranks deep, with some lances up to their thighs in seawater, the first rank on the sand, sat outlines of the disciplined ranks of Bohemund de Hauteville’s conroys, all on short and solid destriers, their teardrop shields and lance points catching the sun.
It was their horns that blew now, their destriers that came forward at a proper canter, and they hit his men as they sought to wheel to face them, yet unable to do so in the required orderly way. Count Radulf had the battle he had envisaged, except that the positions were reversed and his numbers counted for less, very obviously so when his lances began to go down to sword and axe blows, more to couched lances which unseated them. Worse, those stubborn foot soldiers now rushed forward to employ their lances on what was now a flank, then to use sharp blades on the throats of the fallen. He watched as their helmets were pulled back hard to expose soft flesh, and he could even see the founts of bright blood that erupted and rose half the height of a man into the air.
He had ordered the horns to blow the retreat and they soared above the cacophony of noise that came from thousands of men fighting, only to find he faced another predicament: his horses had run a long way, and if they were not blown they were tired, too much so to outrun the fresh mounts now chasing his conroys. They had broken up, there was no discipline, and knowing that he was about to be in receipt of a defeat that might be so total few of his lances would survive, Count Radulf spun his horse round to face his enemies, lowered his own lance and charged with utter disregard into the midst of them.
They found his much-punctured body when the fighting died down, while the milities were going around cutting the throats of men not yet dead, as well as horses that would never be fit to use all four legs again. There were some of the enemy still breathing and when questioned they readily told Bohemund that Count Radulf had denuded Brindisi to make up the force that had just been utterly destroyed. With no time to waste, Bohemund set off north at a forced-march pace and that brought the result he desired. With too few men to defend its walls, the captain of the castle of Brindisi surrendered as soon as he was sure his honour had been satisfied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
While Borsa had the support of his mother, he also had the backing of the latest pope, none other than the Abbot Desiderius, who had, after much wavering and indecision, and under relentless pressure from his fellow divines, taken up holy office as Victor III. Not that he was going to enjoy a comfortable pontificate, for the imperial antipope Clement was still alive and contesting Victor’s right to the Lateran, albeit from a distance. Rome itself was split, which meant Victor was not in possession of much more than the Castel St Angelo and the Vatican Hill, so much of his rule was carried out from his monastery at Monte Cassino. He was better off than Clement: the Romans had chased him out of the city altogether and that sent him north to Milan.
So, thunderous bolts pronouncing anathema sped south with every advance Bohemund made, papal demands that he desist from his actions and bow the knee to his half-brother. The backing of Borsa had many strands, which dovetailed into papal policy. When Victor was appealed to — and he was almost weekly — he supported Borsa, first of all because he was his vassal and the legitimate heir to the Guiscard; secondly, he was known to be pious and, lacking his father’s strong personality, would be less inclined to question what edicts were handed down to him from on high.
More importantly the papacy still needed a strong Norman bulwark against imperial pretensions and Jordan was, for Pope Victor, too unreliable, blowing supportive one minute then flirting with Henry IV the next, while Bohemund represented a return to the old days of the Guiscard, the man who had sacked and burnt Rome when he had supposedly come to rescue it. Yet even with all of his threats of excommunication the one-time Abbot of Monte Cassino was a peacemaker by nature, and pleading letters also came to Bohemund with threats of excommunication, begging him to desist, for his actions could do naught but destroy the fertile lands of Apulia.
Despite his best efforts it was not papal intervention that brought an uneasy peace to Apulia, but the pleas to the Great Count of Sicily to intervene on behalf of his titular suzerain — requests which long went unanswered, given he was occupied in finally securing Syracuse. After Palermo and Messina it was the most important seat of Saracen power on the island, and more than that to many; it had been said since the time of Ancient Greece that he who held Syracuse held Sicily. Despite Bohemund’s continued success over the space of a year — he had advanced past Brindisi to take the hilltop town of Ostuni, then ejected his own two cousins from Conversano and was about to target the rich prize of Bari — Roger would not depart until his goal had been secured.
Being asked to act as mediator between these two warring half-brothers, he had much to consider, not that Borsa was doing much in the way of fighting; every time his forces — and he declined to lead them personally — came up against Bohemund’s men they were soundly beaten and forced into an ignominious retreat. The only brake on Bohemund’s advance and his eventual takeover of the duchy was the disinclination of many of Borsa’s vassals to switch their support to him — they were tardy in support for their liege lord also — added to the weathervane actions of Jordan of Capua, who could withdraw his knights at will and did so if his aggressive cousin seemed to be doing too well, too quickly.