tents for the leaders, and since the few houses and fishermen’s hovels that had existed in the vicinity had been burnt down the day they landed, Roger and his captains would, like their men, sleep under brushwood cover, as would a still-disgruntled Ibn-al-Tinnah.
Before that he had to boat out to Geoffrey Ridel and get some assessment of how long the weather would remain foul. A rowed boat on an angry sea presented nothing unusual for Roger: as a boy he had fished and swum off the Normandy coast, and when it came to white and disturbed water nothing he was experiencing now could compare with the kind of waves which broke on that shore. Likewise he was comfortable on the bucking and dipping deck.
‘If we are to be here long I will have to forage for feed. The sheep and cattle need it, as do our mounts.’
‘If you are asking me to tell you how long this will last,’ Ridel replied, ‘you may guess, for that is all I can do. It could abate tomorrow or it could be a week.’
‘The ships’ captains must have some notion of the time of year.’
‘This might be the inland sea, Roger, but it is no different to what we knew as boys and young men, subject to any number of winds, north, south, east and west, and they change in a blink of your eye. We may get a tempest from Africa or the Levant just as bad, and in this narrow channel it becomes ten times worse. Be patient and wait for a good wind to take us back across the straits.’
The morning brought no respite, obliging Roger to send out parties to forage, more as a precaution against continued bad weather than a pressing need. A cautious commander, he also sent out individual scouts to ensure that no force was approaching of a size that could pose a threat; the opinion of an impatient al-Tinnah, that such a thing was unnecessary, he politely squashed.
‘Al-Hawas must know what we have been doing. Protecting his own land might be of more importance to him than ravaging yours.’
The emir made a gesture meant to imply that no Norman could comprehend the true situation. ‘It is my body he wants, my severed head on a pike. He thinks me still in Catania and nothing will tempt him away from that prize.’
‘Unless he knows you are with us.’
That was said to end the discussion, not because Roger thought it true and, since it was one of the emir’s times for prayers, he suggested he ask Allah to grant him a calm sea. This again raised in the eyes of his ally a frown of disapproval of the tactics being employed, which, in his opinion, leant more towards mere banditry than a proper pursuit of any long-term aim.
You cannot hide several hundred men for very long, especially when many are mounted, before the smell they create begins to carry on the wind: not a farmyard stench, but one with its own particular composition of human and animal waste mixed with wood smoke and cooked food. It was a stink with which every Norman lance was familiar, so when one of Roger’s scouting pairs picked up a faint trace they first checked their own position to that of their confreres camped at Cape Faro. A wetted, held-up finger indicated it was not from that source: the wind was from the wrong direction.
It took a sharp appreciation to then dismount and hide the mounts in a copse, with only one of the pair, careful to use what cover he could, heading unarmed and on foot, in the direction from which he thought it came, in the end climbing a tree to get sight of the mass of soldiers encamped behind the nearest set of hills close to the shore. Seeing they were making no attempt to move, the man stayed where he was until dusk and the point at which they knelt to perform their evening prayers, carefully seeking to establish their number before creeping back to join his companion. Getting back to their own camp presented little difficulty: the light from the Norman fires was reflected on the clouds.
‘Some seven hundred, I would say, only a third of that mounted. They doused their fires before dark to stay hidden but I saw no sign they were preparing to move.’
Roger, looking out at the still-angry sea, was troubled that such a force, greater in numbers than his own, had appeared and he had no idea from where. They had also got so close that they could attack at will, but why had they not done so? Had they tracked him from Rometta? Had they come from the south, sent by al-Hawas? Were they an advance guard or the whole threat? Whatever the answer was made no difference, they were clearly enemies and they had to be dealt with.
‘Serlo, gather half of the lances and get ready to leave before first light.’
In the glow from the fire around which he and his captains stood it was possible to see a stiffening among them: this was nothing but family partiality — was not this nephew too young and inexperienced to be preferred over the more tried and tested? Roger ignored it: there was not a man present who would not have favoured one of his own if the circumstances allowed — it was the Norman way, and one from which he had benefited from the moment he had arrived in Italy. Serlo was a de Hauteville; here was a chance for him to win his spurs.
‘No stars, so you will have to use the wind to guide you till the sun begins to rise. I want you to the west of this threat and prepared for battle. Find some high ground and look out for the rest of us, for we will break camp to move against them at grey dawn. Attack as soon as you see our pennants and seek to get behind them. With luck they will be surprised and panic.’
Suspecting his own camp to be under scrutiny, the preparations for the morrow had to be made with subtlety: Serlo had his party form up under the trees, conroy by conroy, weapons and harness hidden out of sight, with no trace of haste, before the horses were led to where they could be saddled out of view. Finally the whole force marched away from the camp on foot, the horses led to lessen the noise of their hooves.
The rest of Roger’s lances quietly made their preparations, checking weapons and ensuring that all that was needed was close to where it was required for a quick departure. This showed another part of that endless Norman training, the ability to harness their mounts, arm themselves and move out at speed, a set of actions which, when executed, clearly impressed Ibn-al-Tinnah, a fellow somewhat subdued since his own appreciation of the situation had been shown to be false. The foot soldiers, camped apart from the mounted men, were the last to be alerted, not being trusted to avoid showing their activities as they scuttled around the campfires.
Serlo was in position by the time Roger broke camp and he had the enemy in view, so was thus able to see the hurried way in which they readied to confront the approaching threat. Again a tree was employed to give height to a lookout, eyes peeled for the first fluttering pennant. The increasing light allowed Serlo to assess the ground before him, the entrance to the valley in which the enemy camp was situated. He had his instructions, but he also was well aware of the trust placed in him: he was expected to act as he saw fit. Thus, he led his men out to where they would be in plain view prior to the time agreed, gratified to see what had been hasty but ordered preparation for battle turn into alarm.
Nor did he delay in his attack, trusting those under his command to form up on the move, so what the enemy first saw as a ragged assemblage of horsemen coming towards them at a fast canter soon turned into a regular formation, the points of their lowered lances dull under the still-scudding clouds. The blowing of the horn, the way that line turned south, told whoever was in command that this attack was aiming for the rear of his position. He had been busy forming up his soldiers to face the oncoming assault coming from Cape Faro.
Nothing collapses more quickly in confusion than discipline, and the troubles of the enemy general were confounded by the need to take the crest of the northern hill before it was barred to him by Roger’s cavalry, while at the same time seeking to direct enough of his men to cover the flank exposed by Serlo; in the end he achieved neither, and before he had properly deployed he was under attack from the front, with an echelon of disciplined horsemen threatening his rear.
Roger’s lances, having heard Serlo’s horn, sped to the hill crest, arriving just before their opponents, not to halt but to use the slope to increase the effect of contact, their lance points slicing into the opposing cavalry and stopping dead their uphill advance. Lances embedded, their swords were out and employed, the Normans using the gaps created by the shock of their initial charge to get amongst their opponents, great blades flashing down on weak human flesh in a battle arena where the greater height and weight of their Viking heritage, added to their professional ability, counted — doubly so since most of those who opposed them lacked much in the way of fighting skill.
Serlo was driving his lances into the softer flank and rear, if anything killing more than Roger’s men. His uncle, surrounded by his personal knights, was made visible both by his size and the damage he was meting out to anyone who came within range of his weapon, on this occasion an axe, which spurred his nephew on to prove himself equal. That nearly led to his undoing as he found himself surrounded and fighting for his life, lacking a
