‘William,’ Arduin insisted, ‘Boioannes cannot just leave us there.’
‘No, my friend, he cannot.’
He did not often use such a term with Arduin, but he did now. There should be nothing in the way of the Lombard seeing what was possible, and that was a place he got to with commendable speed.
‘So once more we bring him to battle at a field of our choosing.’
Normans were used to moving at short notice, less so the Lombard levies that had remained, but all were long gone, accompanied by the locals, by the time the catapan’s banners were sighted from the battlements. Given the constraints he had laboured under, the losses suffered by his predecessor and the difficulties of recruitment, he had assembled an impressive host, and it was soon obvious he had brought along not just fighting men but artisans skilled in the construction of ballista and the like, who immediately set to work, so that the sound of hammering and sawing floated up to the stout walls.
Left in command at Melfi, with a stiffening of Normans, but mainly a garrison of Lombards, it fell to Humphrey and Mauger, standing on the curtain wall which overlooked the narrow entry bridge, to refuse to accept terms. They listened in silence as the normal threats regarding no quarter were shouted up at them, restraining the men they commanded from any overt displays of either jocularity — showing their bare arses — or expletive-loaded insults, merely acknowledging the message and telling the Byzantines to do their worst.
By the time the party sent to present those terms had returned with the expected refusal, Basil Boioannes knew that his enemy had flown the coop. The men he feared most were outside those walls, not inside, and he was also committed, far from his base at Bari, with a set of shrinking options, the least palatable of which, given the fate of Michael Doukeianos, was withdrawal.
The next morning, he issued instructions that his artisans should keep toiling, with enough men to keep them safe staying behind. Then, once his host had been fed and blessed, he marched them away from Melfi, heading north, knowing that his approach would be observed. So be it: let them stand or flee, but the Normans had to be beaten or driven away.
That his enemies had come so quickly threw Arduin off balance: he had worked on the assumption that Boioannes would at least make some kind of assault on Melfi before seeking to cancel out the external threat. William was less unnerved: again their young opponent was showing sound judgement, his deduction that the peril would only increase with time, not diminish. Also, when he came face to face with his foes, below the great mound of Monte Siricolo, he did not make the same mistake as Doukeianos: he did not attack, he stood on the defensive and set his men to digging a ditch before the line on which he intended to fight, to slow down, and perhaps kill off, any Norman cavalry assault.
But he did not control the high ground, and could not, therefore, see what his enemies were up to. He tried, sending strong assaulting parties through the low forests and up above the treeline to the barren slopes of Monte Siricolo, but they were beaten back by the same kind of boulders which had so nearly done for William. Because he could not capture those, he did not know that Arduin had sent most of the foot soldiers he had through two high passes on either side of the field of confrontation, to come down on the Byzantine rear.
William’s task was simple, and this once it was the Normans who aided the Lombards, not the other way round. They attacked Boioannes, but only to fix him in front, using the crossbowmen to inflict casualties, serious enough, but not sufficient to break the line, while the enemy crossbows were brought forward to counter them, thus removing them from where they would be needed. The Norman cavalry, in lines, under Drogo and Geoffrey, rode forward as far as that freshly dug ditch several times, cast lances, then retired to jeers from their enemies, with William’s eye firmly fixed on the piquet sitting atop Monte Siricolo.
The signal that Arduin was advancing came as a column of smoke, made black by throwing pitch on it, and William took command of his men, with his brothers alongside him. They were in one tight line now and they began to walk forward, as the first yells echoed off the hillsides, the shouts from the rear of the Byzantine host that there was an attack coming from that quarter.
If these Apulian levies that Boioannes led were not the same men who had been at Cannae and Masseria, they were well aware of the defeats that had occurred there. Added to that, it takes little to break the spirit of a force bent on defence when they discover that there is an enemy behind their lines, while before them, coming on like a tide of death, are the mailed knights of Normandy.
Arduin lacked force, but he had the option of retiring to the fortress of Melfi, because he had strength in abundance to brush aside anyone who tried to stop him. Thus his men had nothing to fear as they charged through the Byzantine baggage to attack confused troops who were not yet fully prepared for battle, and the cries they sent up, first of alarm and then of betrayal, totally destroyed the unity of the men facing the Normans. They were more concerned with what was happening behind them than in front and numbers began to move backwards in confused groups.
Where that happened the ditch no longer protected them; odd that those who stood their ground had a better chance of survival, because for once, the approaching horsemen were not intent on maintaining a solid line, they were intent on exploitation. Before the opening gaps the lances spurred their mounts. Where Boioannes’s men stood, the threat before them trended left or right to bypass them. It took no time at all for those stalwarts to realise that staying still would see them eventually surrounded and slaughtered, and just as the first lances struck home, practically the whole Byzantine line broke and fled, compacting back on a rear already in chaos, which had men spilling up the surrounding hills to seek safety.
Boioannes, with those men who attended him personally and nowhere to go, stood firm, prepared to sell their lives dearly, and it was an indication of how comprehensive the collapse of his army had been that they were so quickly surrounded. William halted his men and stood off till Arduin arrived and called upon his opposite number to surrender. There really was not much choice, except death, and the catapan called upon his companions to put up their weapons, then came forward holding out his sword.
To the disgust of William and his brothers, Arduin stepped aside and let that idiot Atenulf accept it in the name of the Lombard revolt.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Within a week the whole of Apulia learnt young Basil Boioannes was a prisoner and Byzantium had suffered total defeat, so that leading Lombard and Italian citizens of the great port cities, in conclave and with their Greek inhabitants overawed or frightened, decided that backing the revolt was a more promising policy than standing aside. Messages of support flooded into Melfi, but were seen for what they were: precautionary olive branches to the now dominant power in the land.
The news of what had happened at Monte Siricolo, and the consequences, also travelled like a brush fire to Campania, there to reach the ears of Prince Guaimar, now back in the Castello di Arechi, and he hastily sent for Rainulf Drengot. Was it time for the Count of Aversa to call upon those mercenaries of whom he was the titular leader, to assert his rights? If it was, his suzerain intended to accompany him. Was there about to be a division of the spoils? Not to be there might be foolish.
Guaimar’s regular meeting with Kasa Ephraim allowed him, before Drengot arrived, to test out how he should act towards William de Hauteville and an ambitious Arduin of Fassano; there would also be the puffed-up brother of his fellow ruler of Benevento to be taken into consideration. The Jew had been dealing with the Normans throughout their campaign using a travelling agent, but like everyone Ephraim employed, the fellow had an acute eye, so his master knew more of what was happening in and around Melfi than the ruler of Salerno.