Imperial Fire Read Online Free Page A

the haze, the Varangians were pursuing their enemy, streaming like hounds after their hated foe. Vallon recognised Beorn by his vermilion beard, leading the reckless charge. Vallon kicked his horse and galloped towards the Grand Domestic’s regiment, swinging his arm to signal that there was no time to lose. ‘Follow them up!’
    A few cavalrymen glanced at him before turning their attention back to the action, as if it were a drama staged for their benefit.
    Vallon spurred back to his formation. ‘After them!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t engage without my order.’
    His squadron clapped spurs to flanks and galloped after the fleeing Normans and the pursuing Varangians. Here and there pockets of cavalry had turned on their enemy and were surrounded and cut down.
    Conrad drew level. ‘It’s not a feint. It’s a rout.’
    Vallon pounded on. ‘For now it is.’
    And for a while it was. In the panic of war, the Norman right wing fled back to the sea. Some of them stripped off their armour and plunged in, trying to reach their ships. The rest milled along the shore, not knowing which way to turn. A detachment of Norman cavalry and crossbowmen cut between them and the Varangians, led by a figure with blonde hair spilling below her helmet. Back and forth she rode, smiting the cowards, exhorting the rabble to regroup and unite against the enemy.
    ‘It’s true,’ said Vallon. ‘That’s Sikelgaita, Guiscard’s wife.’
    Her intervention turned the tide. In ones and twos and then in tens and twenties, the cavalry regrouped and turned. The Varangians were scattered over half a mile of plain. They had fought a brutal battle and followed up in heavy armour to exterminate the old enemy. They were formationless and exhausted, unable to offer any concerted defence against the Norman counter-attack.
    Vallon watched the ensuing slaughter in furious disbelief. Time and time again, Beorn had told him how the Normans’ feigned retreat at Hastings had lured the English shield wall to their destruction. And now it was happening again.
    Conrad pranced alongside Vallon. ‘We could make the difference.’
    ‘No.’
    Some of the Varangians, including Nabites their commander, managed to escape back to the Byzantine lines. Others fought their way through the Normans, gathering other survivors, making for a tiny, isolated chapel not far from the sea. By the time they reached the building, they must have numbered about two hundred – a quarter of the strength that had stepped out so bravely less than an hour before.
    The chapel was too small to accommodate them and so many were forced to take refuge on its roof that the structure collapsed, casting them down among their comrades. Already the Normans were at work firing the building, piling brushwood around the walls and hurling burning brands over the eaves. Flames licked and then rose in smoky banners. Timbers crackled and Vallon heard the screams of men being consumed alive.
    The door burst open and a dozen Varangians crashed out, led by Beorn, his beard scorched to stubble and his forehead blistered and boiled. He sliced through one Norman with a stroke that folded him over like a hinge before ten men hacked him down, flailing at his body as if he were a rat driven out of a rick at harvest time.
    ‘Here comes Palaeologus,’ said Conrad.
    Out from the citadel rode its garrison. Almost immediately it met fierce opposition and the sally petered out.
    ‘Too little, too late,’ said Vallon.
    A chorus of war cries heralded a charge by Guiscard’s regiment at the emperor’s exposed centre.
    ‘Back!’ yelled Vallon.
    Led by Guiscard, the Norman cavalry bore down on the imperial standard, sweeping aside the Vardariot archers who contested their path. Clumsy in their layers of armour, the imperial force lumbered forward to meet the attack, the two sides colliding with a splintering crash.
    Swirling dust obscured the fighting. Vallon drove his horse towards the cloud, straining to make out the