Strategos: Born in the Borderlands (38 page)

‘That they may,’ Cydones countered, halting the soldiers with his words, ‘yet we have won fine victories against greater number before, and we will win many more.’

‘But while you’re out there, who’ll be left to defend the cities?’

Cydones paused before replying and the citizen seemed to shrink back into the crowd in the ensuing silence. A smart technique, Apion noted. ‘A garrison will remain in each of the population centres. Should Tugrul fall upon one of our cities or towns, then this army you see before you will fall upon him, dashing his army against the walls. He and his horde will not be allowed to roam freely in our lands!’

The crowd murmured, unconvinced. They all knew that a skeleton garrison, fewer than half of the normal number at barely two hundred men – half a bandon of infantry and a handful of archers – would be remaining while the thema army moved out. ‘The emperor must send more forces! We need the tagmata!’

‘The emperor knows well of our situation, the tagmata are being readied.’

‘Bullshit,’ Nepos muttered under his breath. ‘All of it. The tagmata aren’t even mobilised from what I’ve heard. The emperor sits in Constantinople scratching his arse and letting us take a battering from the Sultanate. The Armenians, fifty thousand men, would have been marching with us but for the purple-blooded fool’s ridiculous decree.’

Apion tilted his head back a little to direct his words to Nepos. ‘Cydones’ hands are tied though, are they not? He has to feed these people with hope or the battle is lost before it has begun.’

‘Aye, this is true. I wish it were not,’ Nepos concluded. ‘Yet I fear even the strategos cannot stir victory from the number he has mustered.’

‘Have faith. He won’t engage unless he knows he can win,’ Apion replied.

‘May God above march at the head of our ranks!’ Cydones roared, beating his spathion against his shield, freshly painted with the Chi-Rho. Two priests walked to flank the strategos and together they raised an enlarged, crimson standard, decorated with the image of the Virgin Mary, rippling as the cloth caught the wind. At last the populace cried out in fervent support.

Procopius sighed from behind as the fervour died, then there was a rhythmic patter of urine hitting the dust. ‘Bloody ale!’ The old soldier grumbled.

Blastares groaned and Nepos grimaced. Apion tried to ignore the warm spray showering his boots, noting the kataphractoi readying for the signal to move out. ‘Bandon!’ He roared, nodding to the standard-bearing skutatos. ‘Prepare to move out!’

Apion sucked in a breath, pulled on his helmet then hoisted his pack, kontarion, rhiptariai and skutum. The men of the bandon rustled into readiness and he stood to one side as they marched forward past him
. Then a hand landed on his shoulder.

‘Not so fast. You’ve got more business to take care of,’ Vadim sneered, then leaned in to his ear. ‘
Bloody
business.’

***

The thema had set out in good spirits, marching to the war drums, priests flanking the strategos, chanting and raising the Chi-Rho and Virgin Mary
standards
to cheers from the bristling column in their wake. Over seven thousand fighting men followed the strategos and the symbols of God: three and a half thousand skutatoi, one thousand toxotai, two thousand light infantry, five hundred kataphractoi, five hundred Pecheneg horse archers and then the massive train of mules, siege engineers and the detritus of traders and merchants who clung to the mobilised army like pilot fish.

As feared, Tugrul’s forces had skirted the towns and cities of Chaldia and turned back, drawing the thema army from its homeland and into the south-eastern reaches of the defenceless Colonea Thema
.
Then they marched east for three days, into southern Armenia, the familiar mountain ranges tapering into an arid
brushland
. Rumours swept round that Cydones had expected to meet a contingent of one hundred mercenary Frankish heavy cavalrymen – the kataphractoi of the west – but they were never sighted. Nerves were frayed as soldiers worried about their own lives and those left behind. Somewhere here Tugrul’s army was camped, but it was another kind of army they came across; the decaying remains of the Colonea Thema.

Carrion birds formed a dark cloud above the never-ending heap of bones, flesh and putrefying guts. So Cydones ordered the dead be buried, an enormous and morale-sapping task, but one that not a single soldier griped at. After a day, the deed was done and the priests had blessed the graves. When they set off again, the arid ground and burning sun sapped the bluster of the thema and even rallying calls and shows of the Virgin Mary standard from Cydones and his officers had seemed to lose their gravitas.

At the end of the most brutally hot day yet, they stopped to set up camp on a yawning plain, dangerously exposed but utterly necessary given condition and morale. While the kataphractoi and the Pechenegs patrolled the area, the banda set to work on the standard marching camp. The exterior ditch and rampart was dug, then the palisade wall and four gates were erected, then caltrops, roped together, were sown into the dust outside the walls.

Before the sun dropped the weary infantry were finally relieved. Then the thema had gathered as usual to sing the hymn to the Trinity before settling in their respective tents with their wooden cups and bowls to eat an evening meal of millet porridge and hard tack bread, washed down with a sparing amount of their water ration, then nuts and honey to replenish the energy lost in the day’s march.

Now, the sun was dropping, illuminating the dusty plain and painting the camp in a lazy orange. Apion and his trusted four were sitting in silence inside his pavilion tent, and he and Nepos were locked in a game of shatranj. The tent was one in a sea of hundreds, with the standard ten sets of quilted bedding laid out, feet around the centre pole, spears dug into the ground by the head of each set of bedding, shield and armour balanced alongside it. As officers, the four no longer shared a bunk section or a kontoubernion tent and would soon have to disperse to their own tents, shared with the men they each led. Yet every night so far they had congregated like this.

‘Ah!’ Nepos broke the silence.

Apion looked up; the Slav was lifting the war chariot piece to hold it over a square for a moment, then he looked up with a wry grin. ‘Hmmm . . . nice try,’ he said, replacing the piece.

Apion leant back with a sigh, wiping the sweat from his brow; this shatranj game had become an epic. Six nights of this had seen them play alternately cagily and aggressively, but still no outcome. Now as the sun slipped into the horizon it was the same again. Staying engaged with Nepos like this was both a tonic and a pox on his mind. Since Vadim had given him his latest order, Apion had a third, darker concern.

For by the sunrise, the Slav was to die.

Bracchus had found out Nepos’ dark secret: back in his home thema, the Slav had led a mob in the beating of what Bracchus called ‘one of his chosen men’, which Apion took as a euphemism for an agente. So the Slav had fled east, seeking refuge in the border garrisons, unaware that the master agente himself ran the very barracks he had run to. Bracchus’ diatribe rang in his thoughts.
Once again, the truth comes to me late, but it always comes to me. It seems that your Slav friend dared to stand against one of my . . . chosen men. As the years passed, Nepos may have thought he was to go unpunished for his crime. Not so. I will spare him the fate I have laid out for you, though, and instead grant him a swift death. So he will die tonight. Open Nepos’ throat before sunrise or your whore and her father are as good as dead. Riders in the camp will take word back west and it will be done.

He tried to focus on the shatranj board but his stomach turned over again at the order. Surely there had to be some way to get past Bracchus, get word to Cydones, to end this cycle. Yet in his heart he knew Bracchus’ men were all over the land, ingrained like a tumour. Nepos would have to die, Apion concluded with a swimming nausea. He glanced around the tent for something, anything to distract him from what lay ahead.

Sat at the other side of the tent was Blastares. Roaring drunk only a short while ago, he seemed to have blunted his inebriation with tomorrow’s ration of bread. The big soldier had watched the shatranj game, but with glassy eyes, no doubt his mind was replaying some rutting session. Procopius was snoring violently and Sha buffed his armour by the tent flap, eyes narrowed as he gazed into the setting sun.

‘What do you see on the horizon tonight, Sha?’ Apion asked with a smile, but his words sounded terse.

‘A very red sunset.’ The dekarchos replied. ‘I see us sleeping tonight, waking tomorrow, filling our bellies, and then I sense bloodshed.’

Apion’s skin crawled and he darted his gaze to the floor when Sha looked to him.

‘But with a pair of master tacticians like you two in our ranks,’ he grinned, nodding to the shatranj board, ‘the blood will surely be shed on our swords.’

Nepos chuckled throatily, studying the shatranj board with a wrinkled brow. ‘Don’t listen to a word I say; this bugger is the cunning one. Like a fox, he is. Looks like this game will have to continue over into tomorrow night.’

Apion felt unable to keep his composure. ‘Agreed. I say we get our heads down early, keep our minds sharp. Tonight might be the last opportunity for a good sleep for some time.’

Blastares lent weight to the order, his head already lolling forward, a crust of bread hanging from his lips and a grating snore filling the gaps of silence in between Procopius’ chorus.

Nepos yawned then tapped the board. ‘Wake that pair and we can all get back to our own tents. Tomorrow we will finish this once and for all, eh?’

Apion nodded with a weak smile. ‘Until tomorrow.’

***

The air was fresh under the clear sky and despite the waning moon, the myriad stars helped Apion pick his way through the shadows and web-like ropes between the tightly packed pavilion tents. He settled by the edge of one of the blocks and fixed his eyes on Nepos’ tent. Coughing and snoring came from the tent sentries and sleeping soldiers, and all around the palisades and temporary timber platforms serving as watchtowers, crackling fires outlined the double-strength camp perimeter sentries. There was no evidence that there would be a night attack, but nobody seemed to know where the Seljuk horde lay and anyone doing anything other than visiting the latrine would be challenged for being out of their tents.

He waited for what seemed like an eternity, crouching, watching as man after man sauntered from their tents, bleary-eyed, across the wide crossroads that divided the camp, over to the latrine pits by the eastern side. But still Nepos’ tent remained closed, the nominated sentry for the kontoubernion was stood by the tent entrance, shivering, eyes fixed on his boots. Then the tent flap opened. Apion crouched into the shadows and clutched at the dagger handle in his boot for reassurance. The Slav emerged, pulling his locks back from his face, shivering, his breath clouding in the air as he grunted to the sentry. The Slav wore only a tunic as he shuffled for the latrines. Apion shut out his thoughts and scuttled after him.

He moved quickly, closing in on Nepos across the wide walkway. He flicked a glance one way and then the other. The starlight seemed to shine on him accusingly, following his every step. The Slav wandered behind the mound of earth that had been piled conveniently to shield the latrine pits and Apion stopped for a moment by the last of the tents. He was by the middle of the camp’s western edge and the customary walkway dissecting the camp west to east lay between him and the latrines like a chasm. He glanced up the walkway to the centre, where the larger tents were pitched. The officers. The strategos. Bracchus
.

He hesitated for a moment. To go after Nepos, to make for Cydones and tell all or to drive his dagger into Bracchus’ black heart while he slept. The image of the last option lingered in his thoughts. But Bracchus’ men all across Chaldia would know of the order that hung like an axe over Mansur and Maria and would carry it out on hearing of his death. He had no choice. He had to go after Nepos. He would have to be stealthy, to sneak up on the Slav before he could make a noise. It would be easier that way. He pulled the dagger from his boot, stood up and stalked into the latrines. He summoned the image of the dark door.

In the starlight, he could make out Nepos hiking his tunic back down. Only a few moments to spare. He blocked out the foul stench of the pits and rushed for his friend. Only at the last instant did the Slav turn, eyes bulging, hands clasping for his missing sword belt. Apion wrapped an arm around his throat, his own strength surprising him as Nepos struggled in vain.