Robert Lyndon - Imperial Fire

Less than half his squadron responded, the rest unsighted by the dust or scattered by the skirmish. Vallon didn’t catch up with the main Norman force until they’d overrun the imperial camp, riding roughshod over the place where only last night Alexius had promised victory.

Giving the Normans a wide berth, Vallon’s force outpaced the enemy. A distraught Byzantine cavalryman fleeing from the fray cut across his path.

‘Where’s Alexius? Is he alive?’

‘I don’t know.’

Vallon must have ridden a mile further before he came upon the Byzantine rearguard engaged in a desperate struggle to stem the Norman pursuit. The task was beyond them. Their role was to bear down on the enemy in close formation and crush them by weight of arms and armour. In retreat, that beautifully crafted material — the plated corselets, greaves, arm- and shoulder-bands — weighed twice as much as Norman mail, reducing them to lumbering targets.

Vallon rode through them and at last overtook a group of stragglers from the Imperial Guard. He drew level with an officer.

‘Does the emperor live?’

The officer pointed ahead and Vallon spurred on, overtaking friend and foe alike. The Normans were so desperate to catch Alexius that they barely registered the Frank’s passing until one of them, strappingly built, mounted on a particularly fine horse and wearing the sash of a senior commander, heard Vallon shout an order in French and steered towards him.

‘You’re a Frank. You must be regretting this day’s employment.’

Vallon dug in his spurs. ‘Fortunes of war.’

The knight couldn’t match his pace. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Vallon.’

‘Not so fast, sir.’

Vallon cocked an eye back to see the man raise his helmet, revealing a handsome, ruddy face.

‘I’m Bohemund. If you survive the slaughter, apply to me for a position. You’ll find me in the palace at Constantinople.’

Vallon booted his horse on. The mob of horsemen ahead of him thinned to reveal a core of the Imperial Guard bunched around a horseman accoutred in splendid armour and quilted silk. About fifty Norman cavalry were trying to force their way through the cordon. Vallon galloped up behind them, slung his shield over his back, holstered his mace and drew both his swords — the beautiful Toledo blade he’d taken off a Moorish captain in Spain, the sabre-like paramerion slung at his left hip. The exultant and single-minded Normans never expected to be attacked from behind and didn’t see him coming. Trained since childhood to wield weapons either-handed, he rode between two of the trailing Normans, dropped his reins and cut down first one and then the other in the space of a heartbeat.

The audacious attack unbalanced him. He had to discard the paramerion in order to recover his seat and reins. He was no longer a limber youth and he wouldn’t be trying that move again.

A Norman officer signalled with violent gestures and a dozen mailed horsemen converged on Vallon. He glanced back to see how many of his squadron were still with him. Not more than twenty.

‘Hold them up,’ Vallon shouted. His eye fell on Gorka, a Basque commander of five. ‘You. Stay close.’

Now the ground ahead was almost clear and Vallon could see that the Normans had broken through the emperor’s defensive screen. Three of them attacked the emperor simultaneously from the right. Alexius, mounted on the finest horse gold could buy, couldn’t avoid their weapons. One of the Normans planted his lance in the horse’s leather-shielded flank. The other two drove their weapons into the emperor’s side, the force of the impact pitching him to the left at an angle impossible to sustain.

Fifty yards adrift, helpless to intervene, Vallon waited for the emperor to fall. So ends the empire .

But Alexius didn’t fall. His right foot had become entangled in the stirrup and somehow he managed to cling on. Two more Normans charged in from the left to deliver the killing strike. They aimed with deliberation, both lances taking Alexius in the left side of his ribcage.

If Vallon hadn’t seen it himself, he wouldn’t have believed it. Like the previous attack, the points didn’t penetrate the armour. Instead, the force of the blows jolted the emperor back into the saddle and he rode on, three lance shafts dangling from man and mount, the iron heads trapped between the lamellar plates.

Vallon didn’t see the final attempt on the emperor’s life until it was too late. A Norman angled across him, spiked mace held high, determined to win glory. Lashing his horse into greater effort, Vallon strove to catch up. The emperor turned his bloody face as the Norman drew back his mace to crush it.

Gorka shot past with sword angled behind his shoulder. ‘He’s mine,’ he shouted, and sent the Norman’s head bouncing over the plain with one mighty swipe.

Vallon had outstripped the enemy and the river was less than a quarter of a mile away. He drew alongside the emperor. Blood flowed from a wound in Alexius’s forehead.

‘Cross the river and you’ll be safe.’

Alexius raised a hand in acknowledgement and Vallon pressed close to the emperor. Together they crashed into the river and forged through the current. On the other side a Byzantine force large enough to repel the Norman pursuit coalesced around the emperor. Men who just a short time ago had thought only of their own lives lifted Alexius to the ground, exulting at his deliverance. Surgeons hurried forward to treat him. A piece of his forehead hung in a bloody flap. Vallon dismounted and stood back while the surgeons did their work.

An officer hurried past and clapped him on the back. ‘Praise the Lord. The emperor will live.’

Vallon recognised the man who’d spat in his face the night before. After the hideous events of the day, reason snapped. He shot out an arm, seized the man and yanked him round. ‘No thanks to you,’ he said. And then, swamped by emotion, he slapped the man to the ground and stood over him, sword poised. ‘Easy to prate about courage and honour in camp. Not so easy to convert words into action in the face of battle-hardened warriors who don’t give a shit about your noble lineage.’

The officer struggled to his feet, drawing his sword. Vallon swatted it aside and crashed his shield against the officer’s head, knocking him down again.

‘Get up if you dare.’

Hands seized Vallon and dragged him away. A Greek soldier drew back his sword to strike.

‘Stop this,’ a voice shouted. ‘Unhand that man.’

Into Vallon’s view rode a Byzantine general, casting his gaze around. ‘One of the mercenary captains assisted the emperor in his escape. Let him step forward.’

Vallon smiled at the officer he’d assaulted and shoved his sword back into the scabbard. ‘I think he means me.’

When Vallon approached, Alexius raised his blanched face and laughed. ‘I might have known it. It seems that you only came to my aid to tell me your judgement was vindicated.’

Vallon bowed. ‘Not so. Your tactics would have worked if the Varangians hadn’t suffered a rush of blood. I give thanks to God for sparing your life, and I pledge to continue serving in defence of the empire.’

Alexius pinned him with his disconcerting blue gaze, then allowed the surgeons to lower him back onto his cushions. He rotated one hand and closed his eyes. ‘Vallon the Frank. Make a note of that name and strike everything else from the record.’

Vallon left his squadron at its winter quarters in Hebdomon, seven miles south of Constantinople, and set off alone for the ride home. He entered the city’s triple line of defences through the Golden Gate, passing under a triumphal arch bristling with statues of emperors, sculptural reliefs and a chariot pulled by four colossal elephants. His route took him along the Mese, the wide marble-paved thoroughfare used by emperors embarking on or returning from campaigns. Snow had fallen and Vallon had the road almost to himself, the city muted and melancholy under a gloomy November sky. He jogged through empty plazas, horse and rider dwarfed by the lofty statues of dead emperors whose triumphant attitudes only made the defeat at Dyrrachium more humiliating. At the Forum of Constantine he turned left and made his way down to Prosphorion Harbour on the south side of the Golden Horn. Here he caught a ferry to the north shore, remounted his horse and rode up into the suburb of Galata.