‘Why did you punch the horse?’ Drogo rasped, clearly unhappy.
‘Because I’m not sentimental about them, like you.’
That was an argument the brothers de Hauteville had not heard for an age, but one they had heard too often, for it was a subject on which these two had clashed many times at home. Humphrey had no time for horses; he needed them, yes, and he trained them to do as they were bidden, but affection for them was beyond him. Drogo was the opposite: he had an affinity with equines of all kinds down to the most stubborn donkey. The only thing he loved more than horseflesh was women, the difference being the former never got him into trouble, the latter always did.
‘I hope the bugger comes round and kicks you in the head.’
Humphrey spat on the recumbent animal, which had at least opened its eyes. ‘If it does I’ll fetch you the same clout I gave him.’
Drogo moved forward, shoulder hunched and threatening. ‘You and who else…?’
‘Enough!’ William barked, his hand pointing to the smoke still rising into the sky. ‘We have enough fighting on our hands over there.’
‘Are we going to fight?’ asked Mauger.
‘Let us say, brother, we are not going to withdraw. So whether we fight or not is up to the catapan.’
If the message returned by his envoy was not delivered with clarity, there was no doubting the sentiment, and it presented Michael Doukeianos with a real dilemma. What he had with him was not a force any general would choose to take into battle: few, if any of those he led, had served before and they were not suffused with enthusiasm. The rest were new levies, but to withdraw was impossible.
Even if he had known his enemies had possession of Venosa and Lavello, it would not have changed his dispositions: that was an action he would have undertaken had he been in the place of the Normans. Such thinking had been built into his plan to outflank them, to get between them and the fortress. It was Melfi he was after, yet without surprise or a properly trained army, taking it would be near impossible.
As he paced his tent, watched by the captains he had fetched with him — none of them with much experience — he was aware he had to act, yet he suspected outright victory to be beyond his grasp. Up against mounted men, if he prevailed, and he thought he could do that — he outnumbered them by ten men to one — he could not inflict on them the kind of defeat that would force them out of his territory.
It was more likely they would see he was too strong and retire slowly before his advance, taunting him for his inability to pursue at sufficient pace to crush them, drawing him towards Melfi while inflicting the kind of losses on his army that would make it too weak to invest the place. That would leave him at the mercy of a combined Lombard-Norman force, far from safety and short on supplies.
The proper military course of action, now that surprise was gone, was to withdraw to the coast, send out his conscripting parties, set up training for those recruited and those to come in, build an army too formidable for his enemies to withstand, then begin a proper campaign to take back territory piecemeal. Never mind that the Lombards would join the Normans: Byzantium had beaten them too many times in the past to fear them. The Normans would stay in Melfi only as long as they were paid; the trick was to isolate them so that such rewards would be cut off.
Just as he knew that was prudent, he also knew it was impossible: those very Normans were in front of him now and they needed to be overcome, given the reputation for near invincibility which preceded them. The morale of his own host was a major consideration but there were others. To retire before some kind of success had been achieved would lead to a loss of face too great to stomach and it would not go down well at an Imperial Court where he would already be in bad odour.
The solution came to him in time, a tactic that would preserve his reputation, keep up the spirits of his men, without risking any serious loss in their numbers.
‘Prepare your levies. We attack immediately.’
‘Dawn would be better, Catapan, with the sun behind us to blind the enemy.’
‘And let them get away?’
Doukeianos said those words with a jeer, just before he proceeded to outline a plan of attack that would bring about that very thing. Once he had chased the Normans from their positions he could safely say he had achieved all that was possible on this field of battle, that being mounted they were too fleet to pursue. What followed on from that would depend on many factors, but he could rightfully claim to lack the resources to carry on and besiege Melfi.
Watching from the high ground overlooking the Byzantine encampment, with his men mounted, lined up and ready, the shoe of what course to follow was now on the other foot. Prior to assembling they had knelt to pray, with William again deliberating, in between his devotions, on his lack of a priest from home. In Normandy, where clerics bore arms and fought alongside their flock, there would have been someone to bless the men and confess them, then go into battle by their side, ready to deliver the last rites to any who fell: no good son of the Holy Church wanted to go into battle and face death with sins unforgiven.
It looked uncomfortably as if that was about to happen. Even if his men were the best fighters in Christendom, to engage with the odds in numbers so massively against them hinted at folly, and it flew in the face of William’s original hopes: he had expected the catapan to do the sensible thing and withdraw, but there was no mistaking what he was observing, a host moving forward to engage in battle.
He could also see what Michael Doukeianos was going to attempt to do: by spreading his forces out to cover a broad front he was planning to envelop the numerically inferior Normans. If they stood to fight in a central position on their high ground they would be bypassed on both flanks, anathema to cavalry; if they sought to engage one flank, the other would wheel to take them in the rear. It was a very simple manoeuvre, which suited the forces the catapan had at his disposal. Sense dictated, in the face of such a tactic, the Normans retire.
Yet William could also see that, even with an uncomplicated design, the men in command were having trouble in arranging their levies in anything approaching reasonable order. As they advanced their line must be solid: if one body of men got out of step with another they would create a gap and that would be dangerous for those who had stepped out too forcibly. Could he bring about such a thing?
It was an axiom drummed into William from his earliest days to do that which your opponent least expected, whether in single combat, a small group action, or now on a proper field of battle. He also had one priceless asset: the men he was facing, from Michael Doukeianos down, even if they had faced cavalry, had never fought men like him before. The very least the catapan could hope for was that the Normans would wait till he came upon them to decide their course of action: engage or retire.
What he would least expect would be a Norman assault which would expose the fact that Michael Doukeianos had committed another blunder: he was bringing forward slow and inexperienced foot soldiers to fight men who had an inherent discipline, the ability to manoeuvre, as well as the speed to do so quickly without losing cohesion. Could William force him to compound such an error?
That speed was quickly evident: no sooner had William appraised his brothers of what he wanted to do than they were moving their conroys to execute the first part of his scheme. Fanning out to confront as much of the enemy host as they could they would appear to be spread too thin. Instead of a tight line there was a large gap between each rider, a perfect opportunity for foot soldiers, once the lines clashed, to surround each individual horseman and bring him down.
As soon as William was satisfied they had deployed as he wished he gave the order to sound the horn, dipped the blue and white de Hauteville banner, which was the standard of command, and set off the advance. It was done at a walk first, coming off their high ground and onto the flat valley below, then, at the sound of another blast, the Normans broke into a trot. William de Hauteville’s banner was the only one held aloft; those of his brothers were dipped.
Faced with this unexpected action, and sensing an opportunity, Michael Doukeianos reacted immediately. He could see before him exactly what William wanted him to see: a cavalry force weakened by its deployment, a chance to annihilate these Normans, not by seeking to envelop them, but by closing up his front to present and overcome them with overwhelming superiority. His horns were sounding, messengers were riding to the individual captains telling them what their general wanted, and soon the outer contingents began to trend inwards.
William, in the centre of his line, was watching that manoeuvre carefully, looking for the least sign of confusion. All it took was one eager captain to urge on his men with too much zeal and it would happen, but where
