Jack Ludlow - Mercenaries

Abdullah was no fool: he stood his ground for some time and organised his forces to press home an attack towards Syracuse, ignoring the now stationary Normans lined up across the plain. Finally trumpets blew and Abdullah and his men charged off their hill towards the line of foot soldiers, this at the same time as William dipped his banner and began to move forward his convoys, lances half lowered.

They could not see, because of the hill before them, the way George Maniakes merely moved his unreliable levies right and left to form two horns of a trap, then brought forward the Varangians to fill the centre. They were in place by the time William crested the rise, but not yet engaged. That was when the Normans spurred their mounts into that deadly canter, driving before them the Saracen soldiers on to swinging axes that took off limbs and heads, and soaked the ground before the Varangian line in a deep pool of blood too great for the ground to absorb.

Those at the rear expired from Norman lances as well as swords and soon, as the horns closed in from left and right, it was an army utterly destroyed, a stunning and complete victory. There was no time to celebrate. Once the dead had been stripped and the baggage train plundered Maniakes was off at the head of his troops, to get them back to besieging Syracuse, the swiftest of them, the Normans, right on his heels.

Syracuse surrendered because the spirit of the Saracens was broken, not because of battle or starvation. The Sicilian inhabitants went wild when the gates were opened, as though they had not fought alongside their lords and masters, treating George Maniakes as a liberator rather than a conqueror, and from that stemmed all the trouble that followed, for he accepted the accolade of the mob as his due. The locals were less impressed when he immediately stripped out the religious relics they had kept hidden for decades, the bones of saints, and sent them off to Constantinople.

The general took over the palace of the emir, shipped all the remaining Saracens off to slavery, and then engaged in a raft of ceremonies which rededicated the churches of Syracuse back from being mosques to the Christian faith. The other thing he did was to bar from entry, into the city, his Norman and Varangian troops, yet he could not keep their leaders, who stood before him now in angry conclave.

‘Recompense?’

‘We have been denied our right to plunder,’ said William.

The giant stood up and glared at him. ‘You would treat Syracuse as a city like any other?’

‘I would, and you should treat Syracuse as we treated Messina and Rometta.’

‘They are not the same, you know that! This was once our capital, the churches our churches, this palace the home of the Sicilian Catapan.’

‘No we do not,’ insisted Harald Hardrada. ‘You have decided that we must respect Syracuse, no one else.’

‘And since I command,’ Maniakes growled, ‘respect it you will.’

‘Then pay us some of the gold you found in the vaults.’

‘That belongs to the emperor, not to me, not to you.’

‘Then I am forced to ask what you expect us to do,’ William snapped. ‘Some of my men died to take this place…’

‘Very few.’

That set Drogo off. ‘You are generous with Norman blood.’

‘I am generous with the blood of anyone my emperor employs. You are well paid, remember, and you got to plunder Abdullah’s baggage.’

‘General Maniakes,’ William insisted. ‘You must make a gesture to my men and the Varangians too.’

‘Must, must!’ Maniakes yelled coming close to tower over William, his spittle flying. ‘Who in hell’s name do you think you are addressing? No one tells me must.’

‘Pay them some gold, keep them loyal.’

‘No.’

Was it victory that had made him like this, William wondered, or the way the mob had kissed his feet and praised him as an angel sent from heaven to rescue them from the Infidel? It made no odds, Maniakes had changed, his head was swollen and instead of seeking advice he was denying the men who had won his prize what they were due.

‘Then, I regret to tell you, general, that neither I or my men will continue to serve Byzantium.’

‘There are other places,’ Maniakes replied.

‘Which you also may decide we cannot plunder. The Syracusans who so laud you fought you first. They stood on the wall while I engaged in single combat with Rashid and cheered him on to kill me. They were offered terms and refused, slamming their gates in your face, so they deserve everything which comes to a city that refuses terms from a conqueror. These are the laws of warfare and you choose to flout them for a few flower petals strewn in your path.’

George Maniakes just shrugged and went back to his chair, sitting down and staring on the papers before him. ‘This discussion is closed. Tomorrow we will begin the march back to Rometta, then on to Palermo. Perhaps there you can fill your boots.’

‘No!’ That made the general look up sharply at William, his broad, flat nose twitching angrily and his flat forehead creased. ‘We will not march to Rometta, but to Messina and take ship for Italy. I am obliged to remind you of your obligation to see us shipped back to the mainland and provisioned till we reach Salerno.’

Drogo was looking hard at his brother; was he bluffing?

‘And I,’ said Harald Hardrada, ‘will take my men back to Constantinople.’

That made the giant’s head jerk. ‘You serve the emperor!’

‘At the behest of the Prince of Kiev Rus. It is to him I owe my loyalty.’

The four men looked at each other in angry silence for half a minute, a long time in which no one even blinked. Finally Maniakes spoke, bowing his head to the work on his desk. ‘So be it. Now that I have Syracuse, and the forces I can muster locally, I doubt I need either of you.’

William suspected George Maniakes was bluffing, and he also suspected the general thought he and Hardrada were doing the same, but neither got to find out; the way he had nearly throttled Admiral Stephen and the words he had used regarding the imperial house came back to bite him. A message arrived relieving him of command and ordering him to return to Constantinople. That news caught up with the Normans between Syracuse and Messina, and added to it was the name of the new commander, a eunuch none of them had ever heard of, though it was soon established his appointment came through court intrigue, not military skill; it seemed he had never fought a battle.

Naturally, as their leader, William put it to the men, but the air in Sicily had begun to stink of impending failure. Only the personal magnetism of George Maniakes had held tight a disparate army and that had been destroyed by his refusal to treat Syracuse as a conquered city. Few of the Apulian and Calabrian levies had fought with great will, neither had the Bulgars, and if they lacked a strong general would fight with even less, while Sicilian troops now being conscripted into the imperial army had not saved the Saracens.

They would achieve nothing without mercenaries and they would not fight for paltry rewards. It was time to return to that place from which they had come.

It was a weary force that rode into Rainulf Drengot’s encampment a month later, to be greeted by women who had aged at the same pace as their bastards, some of whom, Drogo’s included, had formed liaisons with the knights who had stayed behind, which promised much trouble. But there was recompense: they were greeted by three of their brothers, Humphrey, Geoffrey and Mauger. Matters had become more settled in the Contentin: a revolt by local barons had been crushed, so they were, at last, able to come south.

They brought news of home, of Tancred who had steered clear of that upheaval, fit and well, but still verbally embroiled with his more powerful neighbours in various disputes; of their cousin of Montbray, who had used his clever brain to become a power at the ducal court, which protected the family from interference more effectively than their father’s squabbles. Other brothers had grown to manhood and fired with the tales of William and Drogo’s exploits were also planning to join them.