Strategos: Born in the Borderlands (24 page)

Apion felt his skin burn and he longed to be out of their gaze.

‘Do you want to take it up with the tourmarches?’ Sha shot back.

‘I think I’d rather shit a mace,’ Procopius chuckled under his breath.

Blastares also turned to Sha. ‘I’ve told you before, drop the officer babble. Being in charge of a kontoubernion means nothing; until you’re leading a bandon you’re just a grunt, like us. In any case, we’re all grunts to Bracchus.’ Then he cast a derisive glance back at Apion. ‘But he’s a cripple. No use to us.’

The third man leaned forward from the shadow of his bunk. Nepos was a slender, blue-eyed and angle-faced Slav and his expression was cold. He didn’t look at Apion as he spoke, instead continuing to carve splinters from a lump of wood. ‘You two just don’t see past the obvious. You’d try to make stew by forcing a live cow into boiling water.’

‘What’re you on about, you pointy-faced bugger?’ Blastares growled.

Nepos pulled a mocking, tight-lipped smile, then continued: ‘Well I wouldn’t complain if we had Achilles as the vanguard and Heracles watching our backs, but let’s face it; the army is patchwork, cobbled together from what is available. We’re lucky the Pecheneg Turks offer to serve alongside us, so we take what we can get and make the best of it. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes you’ve got to look past people’s limitations and seek out their strengths.’

Blank looks ensued from Blastares and Procopius. Nepos seemed to suppress a sigh and then continued. ‘Well look at him; he’s got a sword. I can tell from the shape of the sheath that it’s not a spathion, so he brought it in with him. His arms are muscular but lean – swordfighters arms. He’s got skill with the blade.’

Apion shuffled in embarrassment at the scrutiny.

‘Pah! No use if your enemy is more agile than you, can flit around you, stick his sword in your back.’ Blastares scratched at his crotch and cackled.

‘He’s got a sharp mind too,’ Nepos added quickly, his eyes hovering on the wooden shatranj box poking from Apion’s satchel.

‘Leave it out,’ Procopius snorted, ‘he’s lame! That’s the be-all and end-all!’

Sha stepped forward and ushered Apion to the spare bunk. ‘Well he’s in our unit. We live or die as a unit, remember?’

‘Aye, well he can watch your back,’ Blastares said to Sha, then flicked a thumb over his shoulder to Procopius as the pair stood to leave, ‘I’d rather have this old bastard watching mine, even if he’s daydreaming about catapults or whatever it is he spends half his life talking about.’

‘Watch it!’ Procopius shoved him in the side and the pair left, muttering.

Sha cut a frustrated figure, sighing, then turned to Apion ‘Welcome to the thema!’ He said, sardonically, then walked out as well.

Apion turned to Nepos. The Slav eyed him stonily, still carving the piece of wood that was slowly taking shape as a shatranj pawn piece. ‘You play?’ Apion tapped his satchel.

Nepos’ nodded. ‘I need the distraction, I came to this place to get away from a troubled home life, yet I found that I carried all those troubles here with me in my mind.’

Apion frowned. ‘So you didn’t come here because you wanted to?’

‘Few do, lad. It’s a long story, and maybe someday I will tell you of it. But right now you only need to know one thing: you’ve walked into a hornets’ nest here. War is coming this way and soon. You’re going to have to prove yourself. You know that, right?’ With that, the Slav slunk back into the shadow of his bunk.

All around them, the barracks seemed to shake with the thunderous banter of the other soldiers. Apion rubbed the
knots on his prayer rope
. He had never felt so lost.

14.
The Gathering of the Storm

The sun-baked city of Isfahan, the jewel in the centre of the Seljuk Empire, shimmered in the midday sun. In the centre of the city stood an ornately blue and white tiled palace that enclosed a courtyard. Inside the courtyard, cicadas trilled, birds chattered and a marble fountain babbled, all framed by the orange trees and grape vines hugging the tiles as if seeking to scale the walls.

Muhammud sat on the bench in the middle of the courtyard, dressed in just a silk robe, his battered armour resting for the day. He took a deep breath and looked up to the eggshell blue sky above. The years of peace and prosperity had faded his memories of the day the city had been taken. The flagstones and cobbles had long ago been washed clean of the gore and the families of the survivors conveniently enslaved and sent to the salt mines or scattered across the now vast Seljuk dominion. The screams of the prince who had died on the stake were but a memory. Bloody battle had packed the intervening years and he could no longer even guess the number of men who had died on his sword or on his orders. Yet it was the gaze of the slave he had murdered as a boy that haunted his dreams.

He shook his head of the morose thoughts and sipped his cup of iced water. The summer had been intense and even now, in the shade, his skin still prickled and his muscles ached from the ride from the city of Tus that morning. He smoothed his moustache and wondered with a grin if, at the age of twenty six, this was the onset of old age. He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the fountain, scattering a pair of parakeets. The ripples reflected the sunlight over his face and he wondered what his future held. He was truly his uncle’s boy. His father had meekly accepted this just as he had meekly accepted his own peripheral role in Tugrul’s empire.

But as Muhammud had grown, he had found the maintenance of the empire dull and unrewarding; it was poring over the maps and debating the expansion of the Sultanate that gripped him. Tugrul’s trusted men always bowed before the Sultan’s opinion, but now they even deferred to Muhammud, unable to counter his sharp-eyed assessments of tactics and strategy. Those activities were bettered only by the thrill of riding at the head of the hordes, chasing glory for Allah, and his appetite for the chase was now insatiable, like a parasite in the mind. Now they would look to the west; ancient Byzantium would be next to fall. Since Tugrul had been held to a stalemate five years ago, forced into a humiliating truce, his uncle had talked of nothing but putting Byzantium to flames. At this, something twinged in his heart; he had long ago buried the doubts over this glory under the carapace of the warrior and leader he had become, but he still felt the echo of those doubts, somewhere deep down in his being.

‘Enjoying the shade, Master Muhammud?’

Startled, Muhammud twisted round on his chair, then he relaxed with a smile as he saw the vizier, Nizam, shuffling into the courtyard. ‘Nizam, care to join me?’ He lifted the jug of iced water and nodded to the empty cup and space on the bench.

‘I fear I will not be able to stand again if I do.’ Nizam mopped the sweat from his brow then glanced to the palace rooftop.

Muhhamud chuckled. ‘My uncle is itching to get back on his horse, I presume?’

‘He is already planning the route for tomorrow,’ Nizam nodded to the open veranda above with a glint in his eye.

Muhammud felt a surge of invigoration, keen to go and investigate his uncle’s plans. It was at these times that he had felt a longing to be in control of the strategies and formations of the Seljuk ranks. On the field he shown an innate mastery in the command of the ghulam divisions; like a master emir, Tugrul had enthused. The ranks of the vast Seljuk army loved him for his leadership, bestowing him with an honorary name: Alp Arslan, the
Mountain Lion
. He smiled, remembering how they had chanted it, beating their shields as he rode in front of them before the battle on the plains to the south, just a fortnight previous. The show had weakened the resolve of the massive Fatimid rebellion that had dared to challenge Seljuk supremacy, and victory had been decisive and crushing. Yet despite Tugrul’s advancing years, his uncle would still not let Muhammud lead the armies absolutely. Tugrul’s reasoning was absurdly simple: Muhammud had yet to beat him at shatranj.

He sighed and looked to the vizier. While Tugrul had swept the lands into Seljuk rule and brought the shining glory of Allah upon their people, Nizam had quietly followed the trail of conquest, setting in place a system of government in the oft-chaotic aftermath of a change of rule. He had overseen the establishment of schools, libraries and universities and now the Seljuk people were evolving into master thinkers and artisans in architecture, literature, politics and governance. A legacy that would last, and all he asked for in reward was to be allowed to continue in his role. Added to this, the dusty cities they had taken over had been embellished under Nizam’s guidance to their current ornate beauty, with cavernous baths, immense mosques, grandiose fountains, flamboyant gardens and fine sculpture commonplace. ‘To have you, Nizam, is a blessing from Allah indeed,’ Muhammud stood to stretch, ‘With your wits and organisational skills, Uncle and I can be what we are supreme at.’

‘Your father is equally adept at consolidating,’ Nizam replied, ‘and I think he would be a fine ruler – in times of peace, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps,’ Muhammud mused, ‘but peace is a long way off, Nizam. Times of peace must be won with years of war.’

‘I know better than to debate that with you, Muhammud,’ Nizam smiled. ‘So Byzantium is ripe for Tugrul’s sword?’

‘We move west after tomorrow, and we will be gone for some time,’ Muhammud nodded, ‘we will probe their borders and strike at the weakest point.’

When they had arrived this morning, Muhammud had never seen an army like the one amassed on the plains outside the city. It took them near a half-morning to negotiate a path through the camps to reach the city gates. Hundreds of ghazi raiding parties had been sent off to the west to weaken and reconnoitre the borders of Anatolia before the invasion. Yet thousands of Seljuks already lived in the Anatolian farmland, and he wondered what their perception of the invasion might be.

‘They say that Byzantium holds the favour of the Christian God,’ he muttered, turning back to Nizam.

Nizam cocked his head to one side as if to half-agree. ‘They do, but then that God is Allah, is he not?’

Muhammud smiled. The vizier was a man of logic and he was playing with him. He nodded, his face falling stern.

‘Only time will tell.’

***

‘You will be weaker for it, Uncle,’ Muhammud grimaced at the irritation in his own tone but he could not preserve a veneer of cool over this humiliation.

‘No, we will be stronger,’ Tugrul fixed him with a tunnelling glare. His uncle was sixty two now, the locks of pure white hair hanging loose from his turban a testament to this, but age only served to etch his features with an even more pronounced scowl of determination and his posture was upright and broad, like a proud, young man. The
Falcon
was still strong. Perhaps not as agile as he once was, but still the first to plough into an enemy line, hacking and stabbing from his stallion.

‘I am like an extra limb for you in battle, you said that yourself!’

‘You are a fine leader of men, Muhammud, but do not become a blinkered one.’ Tugrul swept the jumble of shatranj pieces along the strategy map, their shadows long in the orange of the dipping sun on the veranda. ‘I alone must go west. My reputation, my pride was dented when the Byzantines contained the last advance. Allah challenges me to take the glory for him.’

Muhammud glared at the map. Each of the twelve pieces represented two thousand men: ghulam heavy cavalry, ghazi light cavalry, camel archers and the masses of akhi spearmen and swordsmen. This was but a fraction of the number the Sultanate could muster, but Tugrul had insisted this force was perfectly sized and composed for the job of breaking Byzantium’s borders. All would be seeking the glory of Allah. All except Muhammud.

Tugrul’s voice was laced with irritation now. ‘This is our heartland,’ he stabbed a finger into the table, ‘and it is yet young, formative. I will be gone for some time. I hope to return victorious but in that time I cannot risk losing what has been accomplished so far.’ His uncle paced to the edge of the colonnaded veranda. ‘Usurpers watch my every move, Muhammud, and I need my extra limb here, to crush them should they try to undermine my position.’

‘I am not my father! You will not keep me chained back here like a mule as you did with him! He and Nizam can maintain the state, I have told you that!’

‘Nizam is what he is but he is never a ruler, Muhammud . . . and you know the same is true of your father,’ Tugrul spat.

Muhammud sought a change of tack. ‘You taught me to strive for honour and the glory of Allah, Uncle.’ He felt a stinging self-pity as he spoke the words. ‘How can I find that whilst sat here while my brothers spill their blood for the cause a thousand miles to the west?’

‘I taught you well, Muhammud.’ Tugrul said. ‘When Byzantium’s borders are shattered and we are established to the west, then I will call for you. The army you see outside these walls is but a fraction of what we can raise against our enemy. I will spearhead this invasion, but it is a massive vanguard, Muhammud. You will lead the main force when I have broken the borders. I have always seen greatness in you.’ He clutched his nephew’s wrist. ‘It must be you who leads the final conquest, for you are to be the successor to the Seljuk Empire, Muhammud.’

Muhammud’s heart thundered with pride as his uncle embraced him. Over Tugrul’s shoulder he noticed the shatranj board; set up with the game they had been playing for some weeks now. His eyes honed onto the piece that was his uncle’s king; beside it sat his chariot and below was his war elephant, both seemingly blocked by Tugrul’s pawns. Then it flashed before his eyes: he could sacrifice a pawn, and then within three moves Tugrul’s king would be exposed and trapped. He saw victory. He pulled back from his uncle, knowing in his heart he was ready and all because of Tugrul’s tutelage. ‘Seek out that glory and honour, Uncle. Break the doubters to the west on your blade and shield boss and then call for me. My heart and my prayers travel with you.’

‘I will, my heir. When my armies are far from here and doubt strikes their hearts, your legend will inspire my men: Alp Arslan, the
Mountain Lion
is readying to come west and hammer home our advantage!’

‘For inspiration, they need only remember that they march with the
Falcon
, Uncle. Crush Byzantium, take your glory!’