Instinctively, he wanted to meet the catapan in the open — the idea of being locked up in a fortress, however strong, was anathema. He also had to take a chance that Michael Doukeianos would not take the direct route from Bari across the high uplands, that he would hog the fertile coastal plain and the port cities, which would provide his troops with both ample sustenance and, if he had time to press into service the younger men, with recruits.
Drogo was with him the next day, bringing in the conroys who had been working with him, supervising the restoration of the Venosa defences; from Melfi came the garrison, excepting a skeleton force to hold it safe as a refuge to which they could fall back if need be. William had at his disposal all the men he could muster.
‘He can surely only assemble a small force,’ Drogo insisted, ‘and cannot field much in the way of trained bands. Moving as quickly as he has, he has not had time to raise fresh levies.’
That word ‘time’ hung in the air. Doukeianos had been expected to react but he should not have marched so soon. He had come to know of the Norman presence in Apulia long before he should; how had he found out mattered less than his being on the way: that had to be dealt with immediately.
‘That lack of trained bands applies to us even more,’ William replied. ‘We have none at all, and only a few Lombards who have volunteered as foot soldiers.’
None of his brothers, cogitating on that unpleasant fact, seemed willing to offer any ideas. It was William, looking over Drogo’s shoulder at the hundreds of labourers he had been supervising, who came up with a solution. They had been forced to the work and, apart from a couple of stonemasons, were the least skilled men in the town. That mattered less than their number; that they would certainly, without training, be near useless as soldiers, was even less important.
He knew there were weapons in the Lavello armoury — swords, shields and pikes. It was a requirement of any sizeable town in the Catapanate to act as an arsenal as well as a storehouse for any passing Byzantine army. The sight of men in such numbers, as long as he had no idea of their quality, might force Doukeianos to alter his tactics; it might even throw him off balance.
‘Drogo, get back to Venosa. I want all the labourers you have employed armed and marched to the east of here.’
‘Labourers?’
‘Bodies, brother. Let’s make our enemy think we have more force than he expects.’
The party from Melfi had brought with them the old Roman maps, and while certain place names had changed in the last five hundred years, the locations of the towns remained the same. Studying them, and working on his earlier assumptions, William surmised that Doukeianos would rest, regroup and recruit at Barletta, but he would not delay there long, given speed and surprise were his most potent weapons.
From Barletta the route to the interior would be through Canosa, large enough to be fortified, his next point to replenish his supplies. From there he would come on to Lavello, then Venosa, and for the same reason: to gather more men and to replenish his stocks of food and fodder before proceeding on to besiege Melfi. He could not yet be aware these towns were already in Norman hands.
If Doukeianos moved at the pace William thought — not slowing his march to forage — to confront him to the east of Canosa would be impossible. To reduce his options it was therefore best to let him advance from there to a point closer to Lavello, where whatever supplies he had garnered would be depleted, which would also hamper his options when faced with an enemy. Inglorious it might be, and when he suggested the thinking his immediate family certainly thought he was showing Byzantium too much respect, but William did not want to fight the catapan, he wanted to scare him into withdrawing: the time to engage him in battle would be when Arduin had created a properly equipped and trained Lombard army large enough to crush him.
Drogo, having fought with his elder brother many times — and having seen the power of Byzantium in Sicily — took it best, sensing after only a moment’s thought that this was no time for glory; it was a time for prudence. He at least had discerned they were in Apulia for a campaign, probably an extended one, not some all-consuming battle. That would take time, effort and good fortune. Shouting to his men, he had them mounted and on their way as soon as he and William had agreed to rendezvous on the far bank of the Olivento, the closest north-to-south tributary of the River Ofanto.
‘Open the armoury, Geoffrey,’ William ordered, as soon as Drogo had departed, ‘and let’s get these labourers with pikes in their hands. Tell them we will march in the morning and if anyone even looks like refusing they have a choice: they can do as we wish, or hang from the walls they have been working on. Humphrey, take a party of three conroys ahead and ensure we have fodder for the horses and food for all.’
‘The peasants and landholders will resist,’ Humphrey insisted. ‘How do I treat them, brother?’
That was a shrewd question and one William appreciated, harking back as it did to his instructions regarding the inhabitants of Melfi, but this was no time for gentle measures.
‘Tell them they have a choice,’ William growled, ‘they can let us take their produce or the catapan and his army will grab it.’
‘No choice at all, then?’
‘None. Also send a messenger on to contact Mauger and tell him what we plan.’
There was only one act in the next hours that was not surrounded by chaos: the riding out of those thirty lances under Humphrey. Drumming into the locals what was required of them could not be done gently, it had to be carried out with a degree of brutality, given time was short. William took charge of the few Lombard volunteers, some of whom had seen service before, seeking to teach them a few basic commands and manoeuvres in Norman French — the language he would have to use with his own lances — to turn right or left or to advance; he did not even mention retreat, given it was an option men fighting on foot were prone to take too readily.
Geoffrey had the harder task with the unwilling citizenry: at least the Lombards were enthusiastic. Both brothers worked well into the night to ensure all was made ready, that at least their charges could move forward in relatively disciplined groups, and then when they had done as much as possible, they set guards to make certain none of their forced recruits slipped away in the dark.
Naturally the affair had to be blessed and the priests were summoned to the task before the need for torches had passed, intoning, since this was Byzantine territory, their consecrations in the Orthodox rite. The march began as soon as they had been fed, and William led them away, heading into the rising sun as a straggling line, to the wailing sound of the womenfolk, sure they were seeing the last of their men.
‘The catapan is north of the river.’ The messenger who, coming from Mauger on a seriously blown mount forced to run hard and long, had found him on the east bank of the Olivento, at the rendezvous he had arranged with Drogo. ‘Not south as you expected, and he is pushing his army hard.’
‘Horsemen?’
‘Few. His men are almost all on foot.’
‘Numbers?’
‘We were on the far side of the river and they were half a league from the bank. Also there was much dust, but it would take several thousand to kick up what they did.’
William, pacing up and down, tried to work out the ramifications of what he had just been told, and it was troubling: the young Byzantine general had outthought him. Michael Doukeianos had not acted as William thought he should, given what he suspected he had at his disposal. The numbers suggested he had pressed into service many recruits on the way, while their present location meant he must have moved north from Barletta and crossed the Ofanto where the shallow delta met the sea, and that could only be done by boats brought up the coast from the ports through which he had passed, which in turn pointed to much forethought.