Strategos: Island in the Storm (32 page)

A dark-skinned, moustachioed akhi spearman wearing a gold cape came at Apion with a howl, lancing forward with his spear. Apion jinked to one side and the spear tip ripped across the breast of his klibanion, dislodging one of the square iron plates. He grappled the spear shaft and used it to pivot his foe round on his own weapon, tossing the man like a child’s toy from the wall, down into the cramped interior of the fortress town. His shrill cry was cut short by the dull crunch of bones where he landed.

‘
Haga!
’ a familiar voice roared over the din.

He swung to see Blastares hurling a spear right at him. Reading the big man’s eyes, he ducked, then twisted round to see the akhi who had been rushing for his back, scimitar raised, now halted with Blastares’ spear lodged in his breast. A heartbeat later, the butt of another Seljuk spear shaft bashed Blastares’ head, dazing him momentarily, the towering, dark-bearded attacker swirling his spear overhead to bring the tip down for the big man’s neck. Apion lunged forward, striking down with his scimitar to deflect the blow, then hacking forward, driving the akhi back. The man ducked under Apion’s next swipe, then threw down his spear and tore out his own scimitar. Sparks flew as they clashed blades again and again. Then, with one swift and clean swipe, he cut through the wrist of his opponent. The man’s sword hand and blade spun through the air with a spurt of blood. The dark-bearded Seljuk crumpled to his knees, wailing, clutching the stump of his arm. Apion snarled again and hefted his blade overhead ready to swipe the cur’s head away, feeling the fire of battle sear his skin. A moment later he was unseeing of his foe. In his mind’s eye he saw a face in the blackness beyond the dark door. Taylan.

What would you do to find out the truth, Father?
the lad mouthed.

A hand clamped onto his shoulder, wrenching him from his dark reverie. ‘We have the walls, sir!’ Sha cried.

The blaze of battle dulled and then hissed in his mind, extinguished as swiftly as it had come on. His heartbeat slowed and reality trickled in once more. The dark door faded. He blinked, seeing the black-bearded akhi still crouching before him, cradling the spurting stump of his sword arm, roaring in agony. He lowered the blade, catching the beaten akhi’s eye furtively, fighting off the familiar sense of shame as he heard the warrior hurriedly offer prayer before he was slain. Apion tore off a strip of his tunic, tossed it to another beaten Seljuk nearby, then nodded to the humbled, bleeding akhi. ‘Tie this tightly around his arm or he will be dead in moments.’

He turned away from the gawping Seljuk pair and followed Sha’s sweeping hand.

‘But while we have the walls, they have that,’ the Malian’s finger stopped, pointing at the sturdy, tall but slender keep in the heart of the fortress. The last of the Seljuk akhi were rushing from the smattering of houses, timber stables and shacks around the fortress interior to get inside this stronghold. It had a small, crenelated roof and was taller than the fortress walls by a good ten feet. The thick oak, iron-strapped door at its foot slammed and the clunk of many iron bolts inside suggested it was to remain closed.

‘We’ll need new ladders,’ Blastares panted. ‘Or perhaps we could lay the ladders we have from the battlements across the gap? Heh, old Procopius’ constant prattle about siege theory seems to have rubbed off on me.’

‘Or perhaps we need to bring a ram up to break that door down – though it would take some doing,’ Sha mused.

‘No. The siege is over,’ Apion said, wiping the grime of battle from his face and beard. ‘These men are terrified, a few words will suffice to end this.’ He eyed the clutch who had spilled out onto the keep’s roof. They babbled, panicked. He made out their words.
We will die if we surrender. We will never see our families again.

Apion filled his lungs and shouted across in the Seljuk tongue. ‘Brave akhi, your fears are misplaced. If you surrender, you can set down your weapons and go free. If you resist, I will certainly see to it that, once we take your keep, each and every one of you is beheaded within these walls.’

The akhi atop the keep visibly blanched as they heard their own tongue being spoken by their attacker. The leader of them came to the lip of the keep roof, eyes wide, mouth agape. ‘It is the
Haga
,’ he muttered, his whisper carried in an echo around the fortress walls, ‘the slayer of men.’

Apion’s skin prickled with shame at this epithet, aware also that it was this blackened reputation that would carry his plan through.

They babbled amongst each other, then the leader came to the walls again, nodding hurriedly with no more words.

Apion descended the stone steps into the fortress interior where the Chaldian ranks were assembling round the base of the keep. When he, Sha and Blastares came to the main door, the iron bolts within clunked once more. The door creaked open and the lead akhi was revealed. The weaponless man beheld Apion, then walked from the keep, doing his best to hold his head high, leading his men with him. Each of them paled under the gaze of their enemy as they filed out of the fortress. At the last, just two moustachioed akhi remained inside, standing in the shadow of the doorway. They wore stiff and defiant looks, their eyes ablaze, their jaws squared and lips pursed, spears clasped firmly, levelled at Apion and his men.

The taller of the two spoke first; ‘My brothers may have chosen foolishly. To throw down their weapons and turn their backs on the scourge of the borderlands is folly. We will fight you to the last. So come, take our heads, but we will cut many of you down before you better us!’ he panted, his chest rising and falling rapidly, as if expecting to be set upon by Apion and the mass of Byzantine soldiers.

Apion looked to Blastares, and they shared a tacit nod of affirmation. Like leaping cats, they plunged into the doorway. Apion ducked under the spear thrust of the tall one and then brought one hand up to grasp the spearshaft, the other coming round in a right hook to crash into the man’s jaw. The akhi stumbled backwards, dazed and dropping his spear. Likewise, Blastares sent the other akhi spinning with a jab and then took the man’s weapon.

The tall one came too, stood gingerly, then flopped to his knees in resignation. ‘Very well,’ he said, extending his neck, ‘take your prize, you godless dog.’

Apion took up his scimitar, swirled it in his grasp then brought it swinging round to bash the flat against the back of the man’s head. The man blinked and yelped, then looked up, confused.

‘Get up, both of you. Go and join your brothers on their journey home. I have no wish to take your heads, you fools.’

By the time sunset came, crimson banners fluttered from Manzikert’s keep and corner towers and two hundred skutatoi now manned the battlements. Apion led the rest of the Chaldian ranks as they crunched down the hillside from the fortress to re-join the campaign army. The thick ring of over twenty thousand Byzantine soldiers awaiting them there cried out in exultation. Emperor Romanus hoisted the purple campaign banner and yanked on his mount’s reins, coaxing it up onto its hind legs, cajoling his ranks. ‘Nobiscum Deus!’ he roared. ‘
Nobiscum Deus!
They thundered in reply. Even the rabble of the magnate armies cheered along with the imperial soldiers.

Apion led the Chaldians to Romanus. ‘It is done,
Basileus
. Manzikert is ours once again. One half of the Gateway to Anatolia is under our control.’

Romanus grinned, sliding from his stallion to clasp a hand to Apion’s shoulder. ‘Aye. Tomorrow, we will rest. And the day after, the two halves of the army will be reunited. Then . . . Chliat will be taken! These fortresses will be enlarged and bolstered into impregnable strongholds. The eastern passes will be secured for the first time in so many years. Anatolia will flourish once more, safe from invasion.’ The emperor said this with tears gathering in his eyes.

A roar from the men shook the land and Apion could not help but cry out with them. All he had fought for since those dark days of his childhood lay before him. But something did not feel right. The emperor’s broad smile faltered as soon as he turned away from his men and headed for his tent, flanked by Igor and another varangos.

‘
Basileus?
’
he whispered, walking alongside. ‘Something is wrong?’

‘You can read me like you can read a battlefield, Strategos.’ Romanus’ eyes shot furtively to see who was within earshot, but the men nearby had broken into prayer and song, some indulging in wine to celebrate the relatively bloodless taking of the fortress. ‘Our supplies are almost gone, and Doux Tarchianotes has yet to send back the first of the grain and fodder from the fields near Chliat. Indeed, we have had no word from him at all since the army was divided.’

‘We will make contact with him tomorrow, hopefully?’ Igor tried to assuage the emperor’s doubts.

‘I pray to God we do, Komes,’ Romanus muttered. ‘I pray to God we do.’

Apion frowned as the emperor headed inside his tent. Suddenly, like an eerie applause, a nest of bats scattered from the top of Manzikert’s keep to dart across the dusk sky. Apion followed their flight, and found that it drew his gaze south, across the flatland, to the darkening outline of the Lake Van mountains far to the south. The navy blue and pink streaked sky betrayed nothing of those lands. Nothing at all. A cool night breeze searched under his armour and chilled his skin.

***

High up on a lofty shard of rock that jutted from the side of Mount Tzipan, Alp Arslan wrapped the thick bear pelt tighter around his shoulders as the stiff mountain night wind grew and swirled around him. The fur ruffled like his hair and moustache, hanging loose. He absently crunched on the handful of nuts that would be his evening meal, and scoured the north, across the flatland. From this height, he could make out the dull glimmer of torchlight that pinpointed the fortress of Manzikert. His eyes narrowed.

A scraping of boots on rock disturbed him from his thoughts. Bey Taylan and his son, Malik, came to him, flanked by a pair of dismounted ghulam. ‘Father, you should come down to the camp,’ Malik chattered, glancing up to the snowy cap of the mountain, only a few hundred feet further up from this promontory. ‘I have heard that the night chill grows ferocious up here.’

Alp Arslan swigged on his skin of neat wine. ‘I will be warm enough,’ he muttered darkly.

‘They have taken Manzikert, Sultan,’ Taylan offered.

‘I know,’ Alp Arslan grunted. ‘And now we must react. It seems that the plains that lie ahead thirst for blood.’

As he looked down to the darkened plain, he sensed Taylan gazing with him. The boy’s eyes were lost in thought.

17.
The Lion Circles

Apion loped down from the northern hills, bathed in sweat and dawn light. He had hoped his morning run along that range might give him a glimpse of some activity in the lands far to the south. But he had seen nothing. Just the majestic Mount Tzipan, still and silent, and the bright, sparkling band beyond that was Lake Van. No sign of Tarchianotes’ half of the army. No sign of the foraging parties sent south across the plain a few hours before dawn. These kursores had been sent out with a brief to try to make contact with Tarchianotes and to gather up what forage and fodder could be found to tide the Manzikert half of the army over in the meantime.
Ride swiftly,
he thought as he ran onto the flatland and past the walls of Manzikert – the garrison Chaldians cheering him from the battlements.

The siege lines had been deconstructed and transformed into a standard marching camp, straddling the south edge of the fortress mount and enclosing the small brook. Inside, he stopped by a barrel of water and lashed a handful over his sweat-soaked skin. All around, the men were waking for morning roll-call, many nibbling unenthusiastically on their second to last chunk of hard tack biscuit. His belly groaned for his usual breakfast of a hunk of bread and a portion of honey, but the last of the bread had been eaten two days past, and the honey had been finished more than a week ago. He dug out the last morsel from his rations – half a ball of dried yoghurt, almonds and sesame seeds, dropping it in a pot with some water and resting it over the small campfire Sha had kindled at the heart of the Chaldian section of the camp. The yoghurt ball and water blended together to form a thick and nutritious – if scant – portion of stew. He ate slowly, hoping the meal would be enough to see him through the day.

It was then that a shout came from the camp’s southern gate. Apion shot to standing, hearing the tone of the sentry’s voice. He shaded his eyes from the sun: over the sea of pavilion tents and fluttering banners he saw the returning cluster of foraging kursores. It looked like all of the seventy sent out were present, but some were bloodied. He set down his pot and rushed to the gate.

‘Seljuk riders came at us in the lower hills and showered us with arrows,’ the lead rider panted, his klibanion damaged where arrows had struck. ‘We did not meet with Doux Tarchianotes, but we did manage to gather some food,’ the man threw down a few sacks of berries and nuts, others dropping gathered fodder and others had poles draped with shot or trapped rabbits.

‘How many?’ Apion asked, ignoring the fare.

‘The riders? Two to every one of us – maybe a hundred and fifty.’

Apion swung round to see that Igor, Alyates, Philaretos and Bryennios had come to the gate also. Behind them, Romanus strode, ringed by Rus axemen.

‘A band of skirmishers?’ Igor suggested.

‘Perhaps the garrison of Chliat?’ Philaretos growled, clearly dismayed by the meagre food gathered by the riders.

‘Perhaps,’ Apion looked to the south. Still, silent and empty.

‘Take a few regiments of your western tagmata, Doux,’ the emperor nodded to Bryennios. Then he looked to Apion. ‘You should go too. Lead the wing of Norman lancers. Drive off these dogs.’

The emperor leaned in close to Apion, lowering his voice. ‘And bring back what food you can, Strategos. This fare will provide each man with barely a mouthful of food.’

‘Yes,
Basileus.
’

He hurried back to his tent, throwing on his armour – just his klibanion and helm – foregoing greaves and face veil to aid swiftness. He vaulted onto his saddled gelding, then urged it into a walk to join Bryennios. The Norman riders were assembling nearby, coated from scalp to knee in their mail hauberks, just their pale features visible under the rims and nose guards of their helms. Each man held a tall and lethal lance.

‘Ready, Strategos?’ Bryennios cocked an eyebrow.

Apion offered him a wry grin by way of reply.

They rode at a gallop southwards across the plain as the sun rose and grew fierce. Here the grass of the northern hills became sparse, replaced by burnt-gold, dry and dusty ground. Bryennios had summoned a thousand of his western riders; kursores, in effect – light and swift skirmish cavalry garbed in iron plated klibania and helms, carrying spears and small shields. Apion ‘led’ the Norman five hundred – in fact they seemed intent on riding ahead of Apion and the rest, barking out in their jagged western tongue.

‘Let them win whatever race they think they are running,’ Apion snorted, seeing the disgusted look on Bryennios’ face. ‘If it assures them of their prowess, then what harm is there in it?’

The hills before Mount Tzipan had been but barely visible bumps from the hillsides around Manzikert. Now, as the riders approached, they seemed to grow into mini-mountains.

‘It was here, in these first valleys,’ the nearest kursoris said, tilting the rim of his conical helm, his face whitening a fraction. This rider had been one of those ambushed at dawn.

Apion looked ahead to the precipitous, green-gold hillsides that sprouted up to present a saddle of land, cast in shade. ‘Slow!’ he called out.

Bryennios nodded his assent. The Norman riders slowed grudgingly, muttering to one another. They trotted into the rugged valley, seeing nothing but poppies and grass quivering in the breeze, hearing nothing but the echo of their own hooves. They moved about a mile into the valley. Then there was a faint noise.

Apion, Sha and Bryennios shared a wide-eyed look.

‘Still!’ Bryennios raised a hand.

The Normans’ muttering died away and they heard nothing but the whistling breeze and the chattering of the cicadas. Then came again – the distant whinnying of a horse, quickly stifled. The ghostly babble of voices, there and not there at once.

‘They’re nearby,’ Bryennios whispered.

‘Aye, listen,’ Apion said, lifting his helmet off and covering one ear and then the other. ‘It is stronger to the left. They must be there, beyond the fork,’ he pointed to the leftmost of two routes at the end of the valley.

Suddenly, the babble ceased.

Bryennios nodded. ‘Forward, at a walk,’ he hissed.

The left fork led directly east. The late morning sun blinded them as they rode. Apion squinted and shaded his eyes, desperately trying to discern the path ahead. ‘Stop,’ he uttered flatly.

‘Strategos?’ Bryennios frowned and his riders halted with him. Unsurprisingly, the Normans continued on ahead, heedless of the order.

‘This is a perfect ambush point,’ Apion whispered, careful not to let the other riders hear. ‘The sun blinds us. And see how the valley narrows up ahead? We should turn around and - ’

A whinnying cut him off. He twisted in his saddle to see a dark pack of horsemen spill into the western end of the valley behind them. Seljuk ghazis, more than a thousand of them, rumbling forward at a trot, then breaking into a gallop. Then a roar from up ahead. He twisted to face forward again; another mass of riders washed from the eastern end of the valley.

He set eyes upon the one leading this ambush. An aged Seljuk ghazi. No, he was too finely garbed. Not a mere ghazi, a bey. He glowered at Apion like an angered bear, his brow dipped, his wispy white locks flapping across his face as he lay flat in the saddle and led his men into a charge.

Soundaq?

Apion’s mind raced back to his early days in the ranks, to that Seljuk Bey he had faced on the hilltop town of Bizye. The proud warrior and his warband had thought to strike the townsfolk down and take what plunder he could, but Apion and his trusted three had seen him off with a fierce mixture of tenacity and cunning. Soundaq’s face was creased in fury, mouth agape in a battle-cry shared with the riders he led. ‘
Allahu Akbar!
’

All around him, the mounts of the Normans and the western tagmata reared and whinnied in panic, their riders bawled in horror, drawing swords and levelling spears. Bryennios hastened to bark them to order. ‘Divide the tourma, form a front to the east and to the west!’ he roared.

‘No!’ Apion cried. ‘This valley is a snare. We must break free.’ He swept his spear up to the steep valley side. ‘Break for the hilltop!’

Bryennios took just a moment to concur, seeing yet more ghazis flood into the valley behind Soundaq. An instant later, he had barked out to his men and had them scrambling up the uneven hillside, making for the brow of the valley. Apion was near the rear of the fleeing Byzantine pack. The going was treacherous and many horses stumbled, man and rider rolling back down onto the valley floor where they lay, bones broken, only for the two packs of ghazi to converge from east and west and hack at them. Within a breath, Soundaq and his ghazis then turned their bows upon the scrambling Byzantine uphill retreat. Arrows thumped into the grass and rocks around Apion and the hooves of his Thessalian. Men fell back with cries all around him and the air took on the coppery stench of blood. They were nearly at the brow, he realised. From there they could break from these hills and back onto the flatland. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The majority of the ghazis were content to shoot at them from the valley floor, but a small wedge had broken ahead. Soundaq led them. His eyes were still trained on Apion as if nobody else existed in that valley. His face was set in a chilling rictus as his sturdy mare saw him bound up the hillside, drawing closer to Apion’s Thessalian with every passing, frenzied heartbeat.

‘I’ll have your blood today,
Haga,
’ he panted, drawing his scimitar as they crested the valley side and he came to within an arm’s length of Apion. ‘I’ll have what I should have taken all those years ago!’

Apion tore out his own blade just in time to parry, struggling to guide his mount on across the short stretch of plateau as they rode side by side. ‘You were once a noble foe. What has happened to you in the years since we last clashed?’ he snarled as their blades scraped against one another, each man vying for supremacy.

Without hesitation, Soundaq spat back; ‘Nothing,
Haga . . . nothing!
’ His face grew crimson with ire as he pushed on his blade, fixed on forcing Apion’s blade from his hand or knocking him from his horse. At that moment, the bey employed the strength of a bear. A moment later, the force was gone, the man’s face paling. He dropped his sword, clutched a hand to his chest and toppled to the grass, struggling to his knees, gasping for breath. Apion glanced back only to see Soundaq’s body slump, his heart ruptured with anger, it seemed. But he gawped at this only for an instant, as the rest of the riders following Soundaq rushed up onto the flat at the top of the valley too. Apion dropped flat in his saddle and kicked his Thessalian into a frenzied gallop down the other side of the hill, on after the rest of the Byzantines, racing for the flatland.

The thunder of pursuing hooves faded, only to be replaced by the shudder of bending bows. He swung his shield round onto his back, knowing he would be their primary target, then heeled the mount again and again, bringing it to a frantic charge as soon as he reached the plain. Arrows thwacked down on his shield, glanced from his helm and ricocheted from the mount’s scale apron. Many more thudded down in the dust around him. He looked up, seeing that he was catching Bryennios, the western tagma riders and the Normans.

Bryennios turned to urge him on faster, then cried out as two arrows thudded home, finding gaps in the iron squares of his klibanion, also knocking down a clutch of the kursores racing by his side. The next volley of arrows sailed down upon the Normans’ hauberks, punching through the mail and felling at least sixty of the western riders.

‘Get your heads down, lie flat on the saddle! Shields on your backs!’ Apion screamed at the panicked Normans over the rushing wind as they hared north, back across the plain towards Manzikert. Only then did the arrow hail thin.

‘They’re not following?’ Bryennios gasped, blood pouring from the wound on his back where two arrows quivered. ‘I’ll be damned if they were a small raiding party . . . or the garrison of Chliat!’

Apion twisted to look back, up to the top of the hill they had just descended. It was now glimmering with silver riders. At the heart of this glittering horizon, a figure stood under the Seljuk golden bow banner. The figure was but a speck in the distance. But even from here, he knew exactly who it was.

Sultan Alp Arslan, the Mountain Lion.

‘No, Doux. It seems the Sultan has come to the field of battle.’

Bryennios’ silence spoke a thousand words. Likewise, Apion’s skin danced in a cold shiver. If the sultan had come to these plains to face the imperial army, then it was a certainty that another had followed.

Taylan
, he mouthed, twisting once more and scanning the gathering, thickening crowds of riders up there.

***

Nearing sunset, Apion, Romanus and a clutch of twenty varangoi climbed to the tallest of the northern hills, a safe distance from their camp where they could enjoy a good vantage point across the great plain to view the southern ranges, Mount Tzipan and Lake Van. The only good news to be shared since they returned from the scouting sortie to the south was the discovery of forty barrels of grain inside the cellar of Manzikert’s keep. Thus, the men would eat fresh bread tonight. But it was scant solace given Apion and the other scout riders’ discovery of what lay only a handful of miles to the south.