King's Man (17 page)

But the Saracens did not wait for the operation of their sunken trap, if there ever was one. Even as Nikephorus and I stood on the half-built siege tower looking down on the suspect ground, a trumpet sounded the alarm. A sharp-eyed sentry had noticed the bronze gates of Syracuse were beginning to swing open. Moments later the gap was wide enough for a troop of Saracen cavalry to ride out. There were at least forty of them, and they must have hoped to catch the imperial troops by surprise with their sudden sortie. As they charged, they nearly succeeded.

There were more trumpet calls, each one more urgent, from the tagmata's lines. We heard shouts and orders from below us, and a squad of Greek heavy infantry came running towards the base of the tower. They were menaulatos, pikemen with long weapons specially designed to fend off a cavalry attack, and they must have been on standby for just such an emergency. They formed up around the base of the tower and lowered their pikes to make a defensive hedge, for it was now clear that the siege tower was the target of the Saracen sortie.

The raiders were led by a flamboyant figure. He wore a cloak of green and white patterns over his chain mail, and a scarf of the same colour wrapped around his helmet streamed out behind him as he galloped forward. The quality of his horse, a bay stallion, carried him well clear of his men, and he was shouting encouragement at them to follow him. Even the disciplined pikemen wavered in the face of such confidence. The rider swerved into a gap between the pikes. With a deft double swing of his scimitar, first forehand and then with a backward stroke, he hacked down two of our men before his horse spun round nimbly and carried him clear.

Seeing that the siege tower was now protected, the main raiding party changed the direction of their attack and rode towards the infantry lines, where lightly armoured troops were emerging from their tents, hastily pulling on their corselets and caps. The Saracens managed to get in among their victims long enough for them to cut down a dozen or so men before wheeling about and beginning to fall back towards the city gates.

Their entire sortie had been very quick. There had been no time for the imperial cavalry to respond, with the exception of just one man. As the Saracens were about to slip back through the city gates, a lone rider came out from the tagmata's lines. He was wearing mail and a helmet, and was mounted on a very ordinary horse which, even at a full gallop, would never have caught up with the retreating Saracens. He yelled defiance, and the green-clad leader must have heard his shout, for just as he was about to ride back in through the city gates, he glanced over his shoulder and turned his stallion. The Saracen then waited, motionless, facing his challenger. When he judged the distance to be right, he spurred his mount and the animal sprang forward.

Horse and rider were superb. The Saracen wore a small round shield on his left arm, and held his scimitar in his right hand.

Scorning the use of reins, he guided his mount with his knees and raced towards his opponent. At the last moment he bent forward in his saddle and leaned his body slightly to one side. The stallion responded by changing stride and flashed past the other horse, surprising the animal so that it checked and almost unseated its rider. At the same moment the Saracen slashed out with his scimitar at his enemy. Only by chance was the blow blocked by the long shield his opponent carried.

Belatedly I had made out that the Saracen's challenger was one of the Frankoi mercenaries. He appeared cumbersome and ungainly on his horse, and his weapon was a long iron sword instead of the heavy mace that an imperial cavalryman would have carried. Hardly had the Saracen ridden past his opponent than his agile stallion turned tightly and a moment later was galloping past the Frank, this time on the opposite side. Again the scimitar swept through the air, and it was all the Frank could do to raise his sword in time to deflect the blow.

By now the walls of Syracuse were lined with cheering spectators observing the unequal contest, while below them the troops of the tagmata stood watching and waiting for its inevitable outcome. The Saracen relished the audience. He played with the Frankish rider, galloping in, swerving, feinting with his scimitar, racing past, turning and coming again at a gallop. The heavily built Frank no longer attempted to urge his horse into action. All he could do was tug on the reins and try to turn his horse so that he faced the next attack.

Finally, it seemed that the Saracen had had enough of his amusement, and, riding a little further off than normal, he wheeled about and with a halloo of triumph came racing down on his victim. The scimitar was poised, ready to slice, when the Frank abruptly leaned back over the crupper of his horse. The Saracen's blow whipped through empty air, and at that moment the Frank swung his heavy sword. It was an ugly, inelegant blow. Delivered flat, and from a man almost lying on his horse's rump, it was an awkward scything motion requiring enormous strength of the arm. The long blade swept over the ears of the racing stallion and struck its rider full in the midriff, almost chopping the Saracen in half. The green and white striped cloak wrapped around the blade, the Saracen doubled forward even as he was swept out of the saddle by the force of the blow, and his corpse crashed to the ground and lay still. The helmet with its green and white scarf rolled off across the level ground.

For one moment there was a stunned silence, and then a great shout rose from the imperial lines. The stallion, puzzled by the sudden disappearance of his rider, whickered and turned to where his master's corpse lay, nuzzled the body for a moment, then trotted quietly back to the city gate, which was opened to let the creature in. The Frank ponderously rode back to the tagmata without a word or gesture.

He earned the name Iron Arm, Fer de Bras in his Frankish tongue, for his achievement. His adversary, we later learned, was a caid or nobleman of Syracuse. His defeat in single combat severely affected the morale of the city's defenders, while, on our side, the rank and file of the Greek army regarded the burly and taciturn mercenaries from Normannia with increased respect.

Maniakes's troops had
little time to celebrate. Word reached us that the Saracens were massing in the interior of Sicily, ready to march on Syracuse and relieve the siege. Their new army was commanded by another emir, and he was dangerous. Abdallah, son of the ruler of Kairouan on the Libyan coast, had brought several thousand seasoned warriors across the Great Sea, and our spies estimated that his force would soon increase to more than twenty thousand men, as more recruits were arriving every day.

Maniakes reacted with typical decisiveness. He ordered the tagmata to prepare to march, but not strike camp. Each unit was to leave behind a few men who would give the impression that the siege was still in place. They were to remain as visible as possible, keep the cooking fires burning, mount patrols and follow the normal routines. At the same time the engineers and heavy weapons units were to discourage further sorties from the city by keeping up a regular discharge of missiles, and the Frankish mercenaries from Normannia were to stay behind in case of emergencies. Our harbour flotilla was stripped of men. Skeleton crews, changing from one vessel to the next, would make it look as if the blockade was still operative. Harald gave command of this minimal force to Halldor, and then he and I, with about two
hundred fellow Varangians, joi
ned the flying column that Mani
akes led inland, leaving quietly by night.

A week of forced marches across a dry and dusty landscape brought us to the west of a mountain whose subterranean fires reminded me of my days in Iceland, where the Gods in anger similarly cause hot rock to flow. Here the emir had established and fortified his base camp. He must have had warning of our approach, because when the tagmata arrived, the Saracens had already withdrawn within their defences and shut the gates.

Abdallah had chosen his position well. Behind the emir's camp, and on both sides, was broken terrain unsuitable for any direct assault against the fortifications. In front, open ground led down to a small stream shallow enough to be crossed on foot. On the opposite bank the land rose gently upward again to the low ridge where Maniakes set up his own headquarters, facing across to the Saracens. And here I watched how Maniakes's military genius turned Abdallah's apparent advantage against him.

Nikephorus explained to me what was going on. I had been perplexed to find the engineer included in the flying column because his heavy equipment was much too ponderous to be brought along. When I said as much, Nikephorus had grinned at me and said cheerfully, 'We'll find something on the spot to make up what is needed.' Now, as I waited near Maniakes's command post, I saw the engineer busy by a table and went over to see what he was doing. He had prepared a model of Abdallah's camp and its surrounding terrain set in a bed of soft clay.

'Hello, Thorgils,' he greeted me. 'As you can see, I don't always knock things down. I can also build them, but usually in miniature. This is where the strategos will fight his battle.'

'You and Trdat are just the same,' I said. 'In the Holy Land Trdat spent more time examining a model of the Golden Dome than looking at the real thing.'

'No, no, I mean it. Victory on the battlefield often depends on observation and timing, particularly when the enemy is so obliging as to shut himself up and let us take the initiative. See these little
coloured markers? They represent the tagmata's forces. The grey markers are light infantry, orange for the archers and slingers, yellow for the heavy infantry, and red for the kataphractos, our armoured cavalry. Note that I've placed half of the red markers in that dip behind this ridge where they're out of sight of the Saracen lookouts. Later I'll add markers for the Saracen forces when I know more about them.'

'How's that possible? The Saracen forces are hidden behind their defences.'

Nikephorus winked at me. 'Not for long. That's just a wooden palisade, not a high city wall. Look behind you.'

I turned round to see an extraordinary structure rising from the ground. It was like the mast of a ship, but far, far taller than any I could have imagined. It was being hauled upright by a complex web of ropes and angled poles. 'It's a bit makeshift,' admitted Nikephorus, 'You can see the joints where my men have had to lash the sections together. But it will do. Think of it as a giant fishing rod, and that we're fishing for information.'

'What do you call it?' I asked.

'A spy pole,' he said, 'and that's only the lower section. We'll hoist an upper section later, and then steady it with guy ropes of twisted horsehair. There'll be a pulley at the top, and we'll use it to haul our observer into position. He'll not be the heaviest man in the army, of course. But he'll know his signal book, and after he's had a good look over into the Saracen camp, he'll signal down the information. Our scouts have already told us that Abdallah is expecting a frontal attack. His men have sewn the ground in front of their main gate with spikes, intending to lame our cavalry. They know that the kataphract is our main weapon.'

We spent the next four days waiting in front of the Saracen camp while Nikephorus and his assistants added to the coloured markers on the sand table according to the information from the lookouts. Each time they did so, Maniakes and his staff would come across to review their own tactics. They shifted the markers back and forth, discussed various possible manoeuvres, and heard additional reports from the scouts. Twice a day the officers of the tagmata were told the latest assessment of the enemy strength, and as I watched them cluster around the table I soon differentiated between them. Infantry men wore knee-length quilted cotton coats and greaves of iron to protect their shins, while the cavalry dressed in chain-mail body armour or the jacket they called a thorax, which was made of small iron plates stitched to a leather backing. Rank was denoted by a metal band of gold, silver or copper worn on each arm. The imperial troops were recruited from a dozen different countries and spoke at least as many languages, but all had been trained to the same army standard. They observed closely the little counters as they were moved about, and it was clear that every officer was learning precisely what was expected of him. I realised how chaotic and ill disciplined our Norse contingent must have seemed by comparison, and I understood why Harald and his men had been assigned a position where we would be directly under the eye of our general.

Abdallah brought us to batde on the fifth day. Perhaps he thought his advantage in numbers was overwhelming, or maybe he was still relying on the crippling effect of the iron spikes sewn on the battlefield. He did not know that our scouts had been picking up the iron spikes under cover of darkness, and that half of Maniakes's heavy cavalry had always remained hidden behind the ridge, where the army farriers had reshod all the cavalry horses with flat iron plates to protect their hooves. Nor had the emir any benefit of surprise. Hours before the Saracen army began to emerge from its defences, our observer on the spy pole had flagged a warning, and the imperial light cavalry were poised to disrupt the Saracens from forming ranks.