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on the St George’s Gate was Roger de Barneville, one of Bohemund’s most experienced captains, a man of high reputation andone the Apulian leaders trusted to show good sense. That seemed initially to be well placed, for his furious charge, along with fifteen other knights, had the more lightly armed Turks, in their hundreds, wheel away and retire in seeming panic.
    De Barneville should have then called a halt; close to Antioch he could count on support, the further off he rode the less effective that could be until, at distance, it became impossible to provide succour. Still in plain but faint view from the battlements, the Turks, who had sensed this, wheeled to attack and on faster, smaller mounts they soon closed with their pursuit. Those watching saw their men enveloped by numbers that would have taken many more lances to contain.
    That Roger and his men would fight valiantly was never in doubt; he was famous for his valour throughout the whole host, but the next sight was of those fifteen knights in full retreat, seeking sanctuary as a hail of arrows followed in their wake. Roger’s banner marked him out as the man in command and that attracted the most attention, which at least allowed half of his men to escape unscathed or with wounds so light as to not threaten their lives.
    He was pierced several times, his horse too, and that slowed him enough to make the rest of the arrow flights, fired at very close quarters, deadly enough to negate the protection afforded by his chain mail. In slow and unfolding horror those watching saw him slide sideways on his saddle, his mount slowing, until both were overtaken. Knocked to the ground the still living but grievously wounded knight was hauled closer to the walls by the triumphant Turks who threw him to his knees and, to a wail from those watching, promptly cut off his head before sticking it on his own captured lance.
    An even greater blow followed quickly: that Turkish party was naught but a precursor of a multitude yet to arrive, and as Godfreyde Bouillon had predicted and Bohemund had seconded, the party of men Vermandois had left to hold the Iron Bridge could not do so against such overwhelming numbers.
    Their fate, to be massacred, was no secret: the local Armenians passed on to the Crusaders everything that happened in the countryside. Only the man in command had survived to occupy the oft-flooded dungeon, no doubt to be offered for a ransom that would not be forthcoming.
    Yet having crossed the river Kerbogha halted and began to form up his camp.
     
    ‘Why does he not come on?’
    Bohemund asked this as he stood looking out from one of the towers of the St Paul’s Gate, which faced the direction by which the Atabeg must march, really a question to himself rather than any of his nearby knights. He had expected to see Kerbogha’s banners closing in on the city walls, yet there was no sign of anything other than more light forces skirmishing ahead of the main body, many swirling around the La Mahomerie siege fort, though not actually attacking.
    ‘Perhaps he fears us,’ suggested Robert of Salerno with a braying laugh, making an inappropriate jest for what was a very serious situation.
    He was a man much given to what he called his humour and others saw as mockery, which many put down to his bloodline. Robert was the grandson of Gisulf, the one-time prince of the wealthy city state of Salerno. He had been a tyrannical fool, a military incompetent and an endemic conspirator until Bohemund’s father, Robert de Hauteville, the first Duke of Apulia and the prince’s brother-in-law, had unceremoniously deposed him.
    The possession of Salerno had devolved to the man who had a claim to be Robert’s heir, Roger
Borsa
, the present Duke of Apulia, a man with whom Bohemund was in permanent dispute, given he was his father’s firstborn and had only been deprived of his inheritance by a marital annulment made for the sole purpose of political gain, an act which had rendered