Strategos: Island in the Storm (20 page)

‘I am well. I have my home,’ he gestured to the hovel, then unwrapped the cloth parcel to reveal a round of cheese, a loaf of bread, dates, honey and a small amphora. ‘I have food in my belly and the sun on my skin,’ he looked up to the sky, then winced, looking away and clutching at his temples. ‘I need no physician.’

Igor and Apion shared a wary look, then bade the emperor farewell.

‘Perhaps tomorrow you will feel better,’ Apion said.

Romanus said nothing, remaining crouched, his eyes screwed tight shut with a hand on his forehead.

‘He is unwell, there is no doubt about it,’ Apion whispered to Igor as they made their way back down to their mounts.

‘What are we to do?’ Igor shrugged. ‘My men are guarding the tracks up here, so he is safe from attack, but the armies are becoming restless.’

Apion tucked his hair behind his ears and slid his helm back on. ‘If tomorrow, he still insists on dwelling in that ruin, then we must take matters into our own hands – have the archiatros see to him whether he likes it or not.’

Igor smoothed his moustache and shook his head. ‘I truly hope it does not come to that.’

***

Apion sat on a log under a clear and starry summer night sky at the heart of the camp where the emperor’s tent should have been. The fire before him was dulling. The cooks who had prepared food to be taken to the emperor cleared away their implements and stored their supplies. The other men of the emperor’s retinue sat alongside him, jabbering about what should be done.

He glanced around each of them. Alyates, the young, lean, Strategos of Cappadocia seemed a good sort if a little naïve – insisting that the emperor just needed time to come back to his senses. Doux Bryennios, on the other hand, seemed a shrewd and bullish character, keen to assert his authority in the emperor’s absence. Meanwhile, Doux Philaretos was eager to force the emperor to return to the camp. Doux Tarchianotes was the most aged and seemingly the most balanced individual; he listened to the arguments of the others while stroking his tidy beard, then countered their thoughts with his own. Each of them pitched their ideas as to how to deal with the emperor’s strangeness, each of them jabbing fingers up to the dark silhouette of the cliffs that loomed over the camp.

Only one other around the fire remained silent. Andronikos Doukas. The young man sat there, staring into the fire, one arm chained to a post and constantly under the glare of the two varangoi permanently assigned to watch him. The flames illuminated his broad, flat-boned face and betrayed a sadness in his eyes. Apion thought of the man’s cousins – Eudokia’s sons; young Michael Doukas and his younger brother, Konstantious. In his time in Constantinople, Apion had got to know them both; one a confused young man and the other an innocent and scared boy. Being a member of the Doukas family did not make Andronikos an enemy, but Apion felt a distinct discomfort at his presence in the camp.
No man is born evil,
he reminded himself, then countered;
nor into virtue
.

Suddenly, a scream rang out. The chatter ceased and all heads swung round. ‘Fire! Fire!’

Apion looked this way and that. There were no flames, no clouds of smoke.

‘God have mercy!’ Alyates gasped by his side, shooting to his feet and pointing to the cliff tops.

Apion followed his gaze. Up there, an inferno raged. The outline of the hovels were just visible in the blaze.

‘The emperor!’ Bryennios gasped.

‘Take water, form a chain!’ Tarchianotes cried.

Men rushed to and fro. A pack of varangoi hurried up the narrow dirt track that clung to the cliff side, focused on rescuing Romanus. Several banda of infantry formed a line from the river’s edge all the way up to the hill track, passing buckets of water hurriedly. ‘More, we need more!’ Alyates yelled, beckoning more men to the end of the chain which barely reached the lower slopes of the rocky hills.

The faint cry of the varangoi rang out from the cliff top. ‘We cannot find him!’

Apion looked up to see their tiny, silhouetted forms up there, arms waving. Then he heard a chorus of laments from the chain of men now winding up the steep dirt track. That and hooves thundering and a horrific, pained whinnying. Apion’s eyes locked on the dirt track just as the source of the commotion burst into view. The emperor’s white stallion charged down and around the track, its coat and saddle utterly ablaze. It shook and thrashed its mane, bucking and kicking, biting, knocking water-bearing soldiers from the dirt path and into the treacherous gullies. The beast’s struggle only intensified the flames. The stallion barged down onto the flat ground and raced into the camp. The stench of burning hair and flesh was rife, bringing memories of the dreadful Greek fire to Apion. Swathes of soldiers fell back and gawped at the sight of their emperor’s horse in flames. The tortured beast circled the camp, setting light to tents, then charged from the northern gate and into the imperial stables beside the fortress of Malagina. There it took to throwing itself against the stable pens, terrifying the other beasts in there and setting the timber structures ablaze too.

Apion saw from the sea of dumbstruck faces all around that somebody had to act. He ran for the gate, plucked a spear from the trembling hands of a skutatos on sentry duty, then rushed to the stables. The stallion charged for him, maddened. Apion braced, thinking of the many battles this brave creature had fought in with Romanus. Then he plunged the spear into the beast’s breast. At once, the stallion slumped, pulling the spear down with it. Apion crouched by the dead war horse, his eyes moistening. Moans and laments rang out all around.

‘Get water to these fires!’ Igor cried over the tumult.

A flurry of crunching boots, splashing water and shouting ensued. Apion felt distant from it all. He stared into the stallion’s burnt-out eyes and wondered if this was it. With Romanus burnt alive on the cliff top, the campaign was over. The enemies of the Golden Heart would seize the throne.

The next voice he heard spoke calmly. Oddly so, given the circumstances.

‘Ah,
Haga,
you made it at last!’

Apion looked up to see Romanus, soot-stained and dishevelled, his knees and elbows bloodied where he had somehow scrambled down the mountainside to escape the blaze up there. Yet he was smiling as though this was an ordinary night, his eyes sharp. ‘
Basileus?
’

Romanus looked around the camp, seeing the panting, gawping men of his army, the half-ruined stables, and then the corpse of his beloved war horse. ‘It seems we should move on from here?’ he said, showing little emotion. Then he nodded as if agreeing with some inner voice. ‘Yes, yes, we will move on tomorrow.’

***

After a sleepless night, Apion rose before dawn and set off on a run, barefoot. He jogged along the main way through the camp, where the dewy air was still spiced with the tang of charred wood and the burnt remnants of the stables and tents blackened his peripheral vision. When he slipped from the camp’s southern gate, he ran south, along the western banks of the Sangarios, on past the Zompos Bridge.

He had run some seven miles when the sun broached the horizon and cast a purple-pink light across the sky. Normally, a morning run would purge his mind of troubles. Today, though, the jabbering thoughts seemed eager to cling to him. Even when he pushed himself into a sprint, they followed like wolves chasing a bloodied deer. Frustrated, he slowed, panting, then waded into the shallows of the river, throwing off his tunic and ducking under the surface. When he rose, he swept his silver-amber locks back from his face and inhaled deeply. Here, at last, he felt his troubles fade. Here, he could see only the grassy hills and valleys, hear only the chattering cicada song. For the briefest of moments, a treasured memory came to him. He saw the valley of Mansur’s farm, imagined himself as a boy, leading the goat herd onto the hills, watching Maria as she went about her business, pretending she didn’t know he was watching her.

The first shafts of full daylight bathed him at that moment, and a smile stretched across his face. He splashed out of the river and tied his hair back in a ponytail, then threw on his tunic and dug out the lock of hair from the purse sewn onto his belt.

‘I don’t know anymore what terrifies me most, Maria; not finding you, or finding you,’ he whispered, settling on a fallen hazel tree by the riverbank. ‘For if I have to come face to face with Taylan again to learn of your whereabouts, I fear that only one of us will walk away.’

He listened to the sounds of nature, as if waiting for an answer. Instead, he heard something on the log beside him: the scratching talons and rustling feathers of some settling raptor. From the corner of his eye, he saw a metamorphosing shape, growing, changing. Finally it settled. The crone’s silvery locks lifted in the gentlest of breezes.

‘Yet if you do not face Taylan, he will pursue you evermore,’ she said.

‘I know this. I know we must meet,’ he sighed.

‘It is a choice, Apion. Likewise, young Taylan has a decision to make. Together, your choices might still confirm or confound my nemesis, Fate.’

‘Fate has ploughed a crimson furrow through my life,’ Apion said flatly. ‘I spit in Fate’s eye.’

She placed a gnarled hand on his forearm. ‘And that is why I always return to you.’

‘I am but one man. Your faith in me is misplaced.’

She shook her head. ‘The deeds of one man can inspire the hearts of others. You know this.’

Apion looked north, downriver to the horizon in the direction of the camp. ‘Ha! Then I will need to perform many deeds to right things. Thousands of men wait back there – confused, angry . . . ’ his words trailed off with a sigh. He looked to her, seeing her milky eyes fixed on the rippling waters of the river, now sparkling and illuminated in a rich teal. ‘I should know better than to ask you for answers, old woman, but tell me: are these omens that have riddled my emperor’s campaign mere coincidence?’

‘Cah!’ she swept a hand through the air then broke down in a wheezing cackle. ‘Omens help weak men make poor choices.’ She extended a bony finger, pointing to a calm spot amongst the reeds. ‘See how the sunlight bathes the shallows on the far bank?’ While the morning shadows had yet to retract from the rest of the eastern banks, a wedge of morning sunlight had, indeed, conspired to shine through two eastern hills, casting a shaft of rich yellow-orange on this part of the bank. Tiny rainbow trout leapt from the surface, biting at the clouds of mayfly gathered there, and the light betrayed larger, silvery carp darting under the surface. ‘Bountiful, is it not?’ the crone said.

Apion resisted the temptation to answer, noticing a crane stalking over to the reeds, attracted by the sunlight and the leaping fish.

‘A good omen if ever there was one?’ she continued, eyeing Apion in search of an answer.

Apion remained tight-lipped.

The curious crane plucked a trout from the water at will, stopping every so often to look this way and that, somewhat disbelieving its luck. Then the bushes nearby shuddered and a leopard leapt from the undergrowth, clamping its ferocious jaws around the crane’s neck and snapping it like a dry reed.

‘I take your point,’ Apion replied.

‘Then take my next words with you as well. Not omens, but two things I have foreseen. They will not help you find your woman or confront your son, but they are vital.’

Apion looked to her; ‘I may not always comprehend your words, old woman, but I will always listen to you.’

She smiled, her age-lines fading, her whole being exuding warmth. ‘When you come by the boy on the dead man’s horse, choose your words well.’

Apion frowned, nodding.

Then, like a cloud masking the sun, her demeanour changed, her face fell grave, her gaze glacial; ‘And then beware. Beware the serpent with the amethyst eyes!’ she hissed.

Apion frowned. ‘The serpent with . . . ’

Suddenly, a shrill cry rang out from the far riverbank. Another leopard, far larger than the first, had arrived to challenge the kill. Apion looked to the confrontation then back to the crone. But she was gone, the log beside him was empty. The angered keening of an eagle rang out above, and this seemed to scare the fighting leopards into flight. Apion glanced up and all around the morning sky. Unblemished. Empty.

He set off back to the camp, enjoying the cooling dew of the pasturelands on his bare feet as he jogged. His thoughts began to gather like clouds as he tried to work out how to approach the emperor when he got back.

The camp was still a few miles distant when he noticed movement on the western track. A lone rider, emerging from the heat haze. An eerily familiar-looking military man with long, dark locks, tanned skin and a hooked nose, his fine bronze klibanion vest sparkling in the sunlight. And the grey stallion with a distinctive white blaze on its face – he had seen that fine steed once before, at the Euphrates and on the march through Mesopotamia two years previously.

Manuel Komnenos?
Apion mouthed in disbelief.

He slowed to a walk, peering into the sunlight, knowing it could not be true. For Komnenos had perished – the reports had come to Apion only in the last month or so, but they had been clear; a vicious, malignant growth inside one ear had claimed the emperor’s man, and this had saddened Apion greatly. He squinted, seeing the rider behold him too. Shades had long plagued his dreams, were they now haunting his waking hours also?