That lack of firm rule posed the next hindrance to the daily movements as the hill tribes, never wholly subdued by Byzantium, sought to alleviate the poverty of their miserable existence by a continual set of raids on the Apulian baggage train, but more persistently on the supplies provided by Byzantine storerooms and farms to which Bohemund had helped himself, despite protests, both those carried in carts and that on the hoof: grain, pulses and peas for the men, oats for the horses, and cattle to be slaughtered and provide occasional meat. Worse were the depredations on the herd of spare horses without which no mounted force could go into battle.
The raids were sharp affairs, short in duration, happening in daylight as well as in darkness, the sole object to swiftly steal what could be carried off in the time between launching an assault and the speed with which the nearest mounted party could react to chase the intruders off. That brought forth another difficulty — pursuit was dangerous to a small party of lances; to follow the tribesmen into their own mountain terrain left the Normans at great peril from ambush, while to mount a greater incursion just saw the raiders melt away to higher ground.
On the rare occasions when the tribesmen had been cornered they had proved they could fight; these people saw themselves as the descendants of the armies of Alexander the Great and it was from this high country that had come the men who, under his leadership, had conquered half the known world.
Many of the Apulian host, if asked, would not shrink to compare Bohemund to that military titan and it had nothing to do with his remarkable height and build; he was the son of Robert de Hauteville, acknowledged to be the greatest soldier of his time and known to the world, for his cunning and cleverness, as the Guiscard. The family from which Robert sprang, a string of brothers, having come from the depths of the Contentin in north-west Normandy, had risen from owning nothing but their weapons and their horses to become mighty warriors and the ruling line of Southern Italy and Sicily.
Bohemund’s half-brother now held a trio of ducal titles while his uncle, another Roger, was the Great Count of Sicily and master of that island, even if, in title, he was supposed to be a vassal of his namesake nephew. Originally fighting in tandem with the Guiscard, Count Roger had, with papal blessing and encouragement, completed the conquest of the island, defeating both the Saracens and Islam in what had come to be termed a “Crusade”, similar to that taking place in Spain against the Moors. More pleasing to the papacy was the way he had dealt with the Orthodox form of religion, to which the mass of the Greek population adhered.
They looked to Constantinople for spiritual guidance and Roger was working to replace that with worship in the Latin rite, rededicating churches, encouraging priests and monks from the north as well as setting up abbeys and monasteries into which they could move to spread the Creed as set out by Rome, so if anyone stood high in papal favour and personal power, it was he.
Added to that, the Great Count held the line between his two nephews, Borsa and Bohemund; the latter would have taken everything without his uncle’s intervention. That was another plus for the papacy, who found pious and malleable Borsa easier to deal with than the combative Count of Taranto.
All three had risen on the efforts of the men of their family that preceded them, first and foremost the eldest de Hauteville who had outmanoeuvred the slippery Lombards, a race that sought to use them only as military mercenaries, going on to outwit those fellow Normans who saw him as a subject not an equal. William had begun to carve out in south-east Italy what would become the Duchy of Apulia, aided by brothers Drogo, Humphrey, Godfrey, sometimes Mauger, then Robert and Roger.
Collectively they had wrested South Italy from Byzantium and stymied the King of the Germans, the so-called Western Emperor. The de Hautevilles had overawed and humbled a succession of popes and many times they had fought such enemies, Byzantium included, individually; more seriously they had been obliged to face them in varying combinations where luck and enemy dissension had played as much a part in victory as Norman fighting skill.
To the men Bohemund led it was as if all this ability had been distilled into one man. None could doubt his Norman heritage and not just because of his height and colouring. In single combat he had no peer and as a commander of men he cemented their allegiance by example and his selfless acts of individual bravery. If amongst his captains there were many who would dispute with him, for the Normans were by nature a fractious race, to the rank and file Bohemund of Taranto was the greatest of his tribe. On this day, with the light fading, he was preparing to embellish that reputation by undertaking a task many would have delegated to others.
‘Let me face an army in battle before much more of this.’
These words were uttered as he stripped off his top clothing to leave himself in dark-brown smock and breeches, an act that in these high mountains made the heat from the nearby fire welcome. Not that he could get too close, for he did not want to be seen, not that anyone trying to observe such a large encampment would have found such a thing easy. They were spread along the western shores of Lake Ohrid, where the old Roman road skirted the edge of a stretch of water so long the other end was invisible in daylight.
‘This is no task for you, Bohemund.’
Looking at his nephew Bohemund just grinned as he slipped a long dagger into a sheath in his belt. ‘I cannot bear to be so pricked by these people, Tancred, and do nothing.’
‘What you should do and I tire of saying it, is order others to undertake what you propose to do yourself. You risk the whole enterprise when you risk yourself.’
‘I have not swung my sword in anger since we left Amalfi, so it is time to see if it still performs as it should.’
‘Take it out on a tree trunk.’
‘I’d rather cut a human trunk in two and from neck joint to crutch.’
If that came with a smile, both men knew it to be possible. Tancred’s uncle carried an accumulation of muscle that over near forty years, since he could first wield a wooden sword as a mewling child, had become directed to the act of killing by either axe, mace or sword most of his Lombard levies would struggle to even swing. Added to that, Bohemund never ceased to hone his skills and neither did his confreres; even on the march a little time was set aside for the practice of the art of combat, the daily ritual of swordplay, lance work and mounted control that made the Normans the most formidable of warriors.
‘Your father would not do this.’
‘He might have done so, Tancred, when he was younger and less concerned with affairs of state, for he was ever mischievous.’
‘He was cunning and wise. This is neither.’
Others who had also stripped off their outer clothing, twenty lances in all, were making for a part of the shore where no fires burned and where the fishing boats Bohemund had ordered to be commandeered from the local lake dwellers, who had come to sell their catch, were assembled. Beyond that lay unlit black water, for the skies had clouded over for the first time in days to obscure both moon and stars, though there was a modicum of light that allowed to be made out the outline of the surrounding mountains.