Imperial Fire Read Online Free

archers recruited from Christianised Magyars in Macedonia.
    Priests blessed the regiments, the incense from their censers drifting across the plain. Vallon’s squadron joined in the Trisagion, the Warriors’ hymn. ‘Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us’ – his Muslim and pagan troopers singing as fervently as their Christian comrades.
    Now the low autumn sun flashed off the lines of Normans and illuminated the brilliant standards borne by the Byzantine units. Vallon glanced at his own banner, its five triangular pennants stirring in the morning breeze. A bugle note prickled his blood. Trumpets blared and drums pounded, the notes resonating in his chest. With a shout that raised the hairs on his neck, the Varangians began their advance. The Normans’ response drifted faint and eerie across the battlefield and above Vallon’s head a flock of swallows heading south hawked for insects.
    The Varangians swung along in full stride, singing their battle anthem, huge axes slung across their left shoulders, the shields on their backs redundant. Vallon couldn’t suppress his admiration. Anxiety, too. How could infantry, however brave and skilled they might be, withstand a charge by mounted lancers? He pulled on his helmet, raised his hand and dropped it.
    ‘Advance.’
    They rode at walking pace, keeping level with the Varangians. When the distance between the two armies had narrowed by half, a detachment of Norman cavalry peeled off from the centre and charged the Varangians head on. The Guard halted, closing ranks.
    ‘It’s a feint,’ said Vallon.
    At a trumpet blast, the Varangian phalanx split in two, opening a corridor for the Vardariots. They galloped down it and when they reached the end they released their arrows at the cavalry before wheeling and riding back along the Varangians’ flanks.
    The square closed up again and resumed its advance. The Norman cavalry circled and made another charge, the Varangians and Vardariots countering with the same move as before. The Normans made one more feint and this time the Vardariots rode around the Varangians, discharging their arrows into the cavalry from a range of no more than fifty yards. Vallon saw riders tumble and horses go down.
    ‘That stung them,’ said Conrad.
    Directly opposite Vallon’s position, Guiscard’s right wing urged their horses forward, spurring the beasts into a trot, angling across the battlefield.
    ‘Now it comes,’ said Vallon. Tight of throat, he watched the formation charge at an extended canter and then a gallop aimed at the Varangians’ left flank. The horse archers’ arrows couldn’t stop them. Vallon winced as the mass of horses ploughed into the Varangian formation, clutched his head when he saw it buckle, leaned forward on his stirrups when he saw the cavalry slow and begin to mill. Across the dusty arena the tumult of war carried – the clash of iron, the meaty impact of heavy axes smashing into flesh and bone, blood-crazed yells, the shrieks of injured beasts and dying men.
    He sat back in his saddle. ‘They’re holding their ground.’
    ‘Skirmishing on the right,’ said Conrad.
    Vallon’s attention flicked across the Byzantine front before returning to the grisly contest in the centre. The attack on the Varangians’ left flank had ground to a halt. Those terrible axes had wreaked havoc, throwing up a wall of dead horses. The cavalry couldn’t find a way through and while they wheeled and reared, the Vardariots poured arrows into them from close range.
    Conrad turned. ‘Why doesn’t Guiscard throw his centre forward?’
    Vallon rasped a knuckle along his teeth. ‘I don’t know. That’s what worries me.’
    Unable to break the Varangian square, defenceless against the archers, the Norman cavalry wrenched their horses round and began streaming away, at first in trickles and finally in a flood, kicking up dust that obscured the formations.
    Vallon stood upright in his stirrups. ‘No!’
    Dim in