Son of Blood Read Free

had a hand in raising his wife’s younger sibling he knew the boy to have a serious nature; indeed he was not much given to jesting, which Ademar saw as a pity – young men should carouse, jape about and get up to mischief. But then Bohemund had the burden of being his father’s son as well as a family background that he seemed viscerally determined to live up to, for if the Normans had created much in Italy, the de Hauteville brothers had created the most. Bohemund’s aim, never stated but obvious to a man who had watched him grow, was to be the greatest of that name, to outshinenot only his father but every one of his numerous uncles.
    ‘Our friends within those walls—’
    The interruption was abrupt. ‘They are not our friends, Ademar!’
    ‘Whatever they are, they sit above deep wells that will keep them supplied with water and I daresay they will have butchered and salted enough meat to keep them for a year, and that takes no account of what they have still on the hoof. Their storehouses will be bursting with grain and oats, while their stock of arrows will run into the thousands, given they have been untroubled for months and have had endless time to prepare. I fear even with the full might your father can bring to bear we will be here and looking at those walls for some time.’
    ‘Can we at least make a start on constructing ladders?’
    ‘I have a better suggestion, given we too have to eat. Let us, you and I, go and hunt, for the forests round here are bursting with game. I’ll wager you a skin of wine my lance finds flesh before your own.’
     
    Robert de Hauteville, by papal investiture Duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, known to all as the Guiscard , came in sight of Corato and the firepits of Ademar’s encampment two days later, with the newly risen sun still low at his back. Close behind him rode the body of familia knights, his personal followers, men who would stay close to their duke in battle and, if called upon, sacrifice their own bodies to keep safe his – no easy task given their master was a dedicated warrior who relished combat and always led from the very front whether he was mounted or on foot. No man would employ his lance more aggressively or wield a broadsword with more effect, just as none of his followers would ever enter the breach in an enemy wall ahead of their leader.
    For all his prowess in battle – and he was famed throughout Christendom for his string of stunning successes, often against seemingly overwhelming odds – Robert de Hauteville was best known for his tactical cunning; he was just as quick to deceive his foes into forfeiting victory as to beat them down by main force and the fighting superiority of his knights. Hence his soubriquet, which, to those who admired him, meant he had an abundance of guile; those who did not hold him in high esteem clung to the other interpretation of the appellation Guiscard , which could also mean that the man who carried it was a weasel.
    Behind him, strung out over a line several leagues in length, came the rest of his force: first the Norman lances, then the Lombard and Greek levies on foot, each one conscripted to fight but usually content to be fed and paid, then finally in terms of warriors, the cohort of crossbowmen. The approach of the host was announced well in advance by the great cloud of dust that their marching raised above the tops of the trees through which they had progressed. To their rear would come the sutlers, the men who looked after hundreds of spare horses, the sturdy fighting destriers and broad-backed pack animals, for each mounted Norman required those as well as a cavalry horse, while their lord was obliged to provide replacements for any lost in battle while in his service.
    The host travelled farriers, armourers, leatherworkers to see to saddles and harness, carpenters skilled in making siege towers, lesser woodcutters to erect shelters of framed animal skins, labourers who would dig the latrine pits,