Strategos: Born in the Borderlands

by Gordon Doherty

  Home.

  He traced his forefinger back and forth over the knotted prayer rope on his wrist, remembering the day mother had tied it there, but the words of the Prayer of the Heart would not come to him. His sorrow swirled into anger and at once the image that plagued his nights shot to the fore: an arched door, floating in darkness. A harmless scene, he had reasoned a thousand times, yet he could not work out why it chilled him with foreboding. With a grunt, he forced the image from his mind. The wagon slowed momentarily.

  The gravel voice called again from the front. ‘You need to stop to do your business or something?’

  Apion stared at the timber slats separating him from the driver. He could make out only the outline of Mansur’s portly figure. Why he could not respond, Apion was not sure. How many words had he spoken since that awful night, then throughout the following year at the slave market and then the filthy inn? A handful at most. Perhaps it was the fear of breaking some spell, perhaps speaking would mean it was all real?

  ‘Just rap on the front if you want to stop, you hear?’ Mansur waited again for a few breaths before the wagon accelerated.

  Apion did not reply, instead tracing the knots on his prayer rope once more, eyes on the sliver of skyline visible through the roof.

  After some time, the sun had turned a darker orange and the wagon slowed again. This time there were voices. Foreign voices.

  ‘Halt!’ one called in a jagged Rus accent.

  ‘Bracchus . . . ’ Mansur grunted, his words tapering off with a growl. ‘Stay quiet back there, lad, you hear? You’ve got to keep out of sight, okay? I’ll deal with this.’

  ‘Ah, it’s Mansur,’ another voice cut in, baritone and abrupt.

  With a frown, Apion leaned forward to the gap in the slats. He saw two figures stood by the driver’s bench; Byzantine kataphractoi, armed and armoured well. One was young, with ginger eyebrows and stubble, standing by his mount tall and broad and wearing a battered iron helmet; the other remained mounted and had a pointed face and was tall and lean, probably in his mid-twenties, his garb made distinctive by the helmet with a tuft of golden plumage and the leather gloves with iron studs on the knuckles.

  ‘Bracchus? We have no business together, so why do you stop me?’ Mansur addressed the plumed soldier, his gravel voice dry. ‘You want to examine my wagon, check for trading papers like a good officer?’

  Bracchus shot a leaden glare at Mansur. Apion felt his mouth dry as the rider then reached to drum his fingers on his spathion hilt, his razor of a nose bending over a sharp grin.

  ‘You know very well why you have been stopped. Hand over your coins, they will be used for a . . . higher purpose,’ Bracchus beckoned with his free hand.

  A moment of silence hung in the air before a purple purse slapped into the dust by the big Rus soldier’s feet with the thick clunk.

  ‘I’ll be going now,’ Mansur spat.

  ‘And you’ll be thankful your throat is not opened,’ Bracchus snarled, weighing the purse in his hand, eyes fixed on Mansur as the wagon moved off, ‘Remember your place in this land, Seljuk scum!’

  Apion shuddered as Bracchus’ words cut through the air and he stared at the man’s expression. Anger crackled in those eyes.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, lad. That one rears his head every so often, but I know how to handle him,’ he spoke over the rumble of the road, but despite Mansur’s words, the old man’s tone suggested he had been rattled by the encounter with the rogue kataphractoi. ‘Anyway, we’re nearly there,’ Mansur added. ‘At my house you can eat, you can sleep and you will be safe. I promise you.’

  Apion could only stare at the back of Mansur’s head. Promises were cheap.

  They travelled south for some time until the land was cast in a rich orange glow and striped with shadows as the sun dipped into the western hills. Eventually, they entered a wide valley, the ubiquitous terracotta and green valley sides arcing out to frame a wide and sheltered oval of flatland, the Piksidis flowing broad and calm at its centre. The wagon slowed to cross a stone bridge before wheeling round at a canter through a pair of gateless posts. The nutty scent of barley and the bleating of goats filled the air, then a farm building rolled into sight.

  The squat structure was ramshackle at best, baked brickwork subsiding, crumbling and unpainted, the roof missing almost as many tiles as it possessed. Nature had kindly done her best to disguise the state of disrepair with clematis and ivy tendrils hugging the walls and framing the shutters. Crop fields lay behind the house and stretched for a good quarter of a mile up to the slope of the valley. In front of the house there was a yard with an axe and a pile of chopped logs lying in the centre. The yard was framed on one side by a small, rectangular storehouse adjoined to the main house and a simple timber goat pen hemming in some thirty woad-marked animals, and on the other side by a little chicken coop built on the end of a small stable shed packed out with hay. As the portly figure of Mansur leapt to the ground to untether the horses, Apion eyed the place for some clue of what this next chapter of life was to hold, fear and doubt stabbing at his gut. He traced the barley and hay strewn path up to a cracked oak door, lying ajar. Then a rattle of footsteps filled the porch inside and a delicate, fawn hand, smaller even than Apion’s, wrapped around the edge of the door, low down, to pull it open.

  ‘Father!’ the girl squealed. ‘You’re late! I was worried, even the goats were worried!’ the words tumbled from her, trilling as she skipped forward to throw herself into Mansur’s arms.

  Apion squinted: she was probably his age. All he could make out from the distance was a toothy grin framed with tousled charcoal locks, her knees black with dirt and her hemp robe frayed as though the goats had been chewing at the hem.

  ‘Maria, you worry when you shouldn’t. I said I would return before sunset, and here I am, you silly girl!’ Mansur squatted to be level with her, taking off his felt cap to wipe the sweat from his brow.

  ‘But it is sunset! Well . . . nearly,’ she protested. ‘I’ve had food on the table for ages; I’ve made salad and stew and I’ve gathered fresh eggs and I’ve opened a cheese!’

  Mansur nodded, a wide grin lifting his moustache as he stood and ran a hand down the mane of each of his horses, muttering words of comfort to them as they munched from their troughs. He turned back to the ever-less patient girl, now grimacing, hands pressed into her hips. ‘Sounds delicious and my belly’s roaring already . . . but before we sit down to eat, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

  The girl pursed her lips and frowned, then stared at the wagon. She couldn’t see Apion but he returned her gaze through the slats.

  ‘A boy.’

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘Same age as you, I reckon. He’s not well and,’ Mansur paused, ‘he needs looking after. He’ll stay with us. Our house will be his home.’

  Home. Apion thought of the sorry heap of rubble downriver. Somewhere I can never return to.

  Mansur flicked his head toward the wagon. ‘Come, I’ll introduce you.’

  Apion’s heart hammered, his mouth drained of moisture and anxiety needled his skin. Reality beckoned.

  He braced himself as the wagon door swung open with a groan and the dying evening sunlight fell upon him. His eyes narrowed and he pulled a hand over them, peering through the cracks.

  ‘He’s a Byzantine,’ she uttered almost accusingly, taking a step back.

  Apion bristled, proud of Mother’s Rus ancestry, proud of Father fighting for the empire. A retort formed in his mind but the words lodged in his throat.

  ‘He’s a boy who needs a family,’ Mansur sighed, placing his hands on her shoulders.

  Apion’s eyesight tuned into the brightness at last and Maria’s face was the first thing he set eyes upon. She was boyish, her eyebrows fuzzy and unkempt, her nose broad and her chin rounded like her father’s.

  ‘Well his hair’s a funny colour - like the sunset,’ she wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips, her head tilting to one side as she beheld him a
nd then the sun as it slipped behind the hillside.

  Apion felt a surge of self-consciousness, reaching to brush his locks from his brow, sitting up straight on the wagon bench.

  ‘Aye and he might think you’re a bit different too, madam,’ Mansur added with a chuckle. ‘Maria, I’d like you to meet Apion. Apion, Maria.’

  Maria continued to eye him in a petulant standoff.

  ‘Well, you two are welcome to stand out here till it gets dark,’ Mansur sighed, ‘but I’m going in for supper . . . as ordered! Join me if you wish,’ Mansur fixed his cap back on his head and strolled towards the farmhouse, whistling. He pushed open the door, revealing a simple hearth room with three cobbled chairs around an oak table bedecked with Maria’s feast. He glanced back at Maria, who remained fixed to the spot, scrutinising Apion, then he groaned and went inside.

  Apion held Maria’s glare with a mix of terror and defiance until, with a dismissive sigh, she turned, following her father’s steps with exaggerated strides and made for the farmhouse too. He watched her matted hair swing behind her all the way to the door, which she slammed behind her with gusto. He stared at the farmhouse, mind awash. A gust rattled the wagon, bringing with it the first bite of night chill, then he glanced up as a lone bat rapped across the sky, black against the coming twilight. A shiver danced across his skin.

  Suddenly, the farmhouse door was pulled open again and an exaggerated sigh pierced the air. Apion blinked: Maria stood in the doorway, arms folded, face creased with impatience.

  ‘Well are you coming in or not?’ She scowled. ‘It’s extremely rude not to eat what someone has cooked for you!’

  3. The Strategos

  The Seljuk ghulam dipped to the right of his saddle as his mount thundered forward through the melee, then he pulled his scimitar to one side and let loose a guttural roar.

  Time slowed for Cydones. Grounded, his mount crippled and whinnying in terror in the slop of blood, flesh and bone underfoot, the ageing strategos felt the moment pass where long ago his nerves would have shuddered. The ghulam had it all: armour, high ground, momentum and morale. For Cydones, klibanion torn and hanging from one shoulder, spathion bent and shield lost in the fray, his years of bitter experience were all he had to counter the attack. He pushed to his feet and braced.

  ‘Allahu Akbar!’ The ghulam cried.

  Cydones stood firm, squinting in the sunshine until he could see the red wetness at the back of the rider’s throat, neck muscles clenched, scimitar held aloft and ready to lop off the strategos’ head. The split instant flashed before him: the ghulam’s blade scything for his neck but both mount and rider’s flank lay wide open and undefended. Cydones shot his twisted spathion straight up in a two-handed grip to catch the scimitar blow. His shoulder jarred, a spray of sparks stung his face and his ears numbed at the metallic din as the two swords screamed at one another. The blow parried, he pirouetted and lunged to punch his blade into the gelding’s chest. In a high pitched whinny, the beast threw the ghulam rider forward then splattered down into the gore, thrashing in the foam of its own blood. Cydones stalked over to the rider, lying motionless in the bloody swamp. The Seljuk lay with his face pale and his eyes closed. Cydones made to turn for the next man to fight, when the ghulam’s face burst back into life in a fervent rage as he whipped a dagger from his boot, thrusting up at Cydones’ thigh.

  The pain barely registered. A sharp blade it must have been and on the classic weak spot of the armoured body of a kataphractos. Hot blood flooded over his thigh and his limbs trembled but he held firm to turn his spathion over, blade down, to thrust it through the ghulam’s throat with a crunch of vertebrae and sinew. Then he crumpled to his knees, eyes fixed on the ghulam’s final gaze. Together, their blood pumped into the scarlet mire that had only this morning been a verdant plain.

  The battle was won and Byzantine victory cries rang out over the atrocious scene. Cydones felt his mind wander and his vision dull.

  ‘The strategos!’ One voice called out. ‘The strategos has fallen!’

  ‘No,’ Cydones croaked, raising a hand. He had felt the tearing near-certainty of an arterial death blow before, the angry welt of scar under his thick forked beard a testament. This was a bad wound but not one that would kill him. Heart thundering, a chill sweat bathing his skin, he shivered and rose to stand. The handful left from the hundred he had led out that morning stood, panting, exhausted, some throwing up into the bilious swamp as the battle frenzy drained from their limbs, the Christian Chi-Rho on their battered crimson kite shields spattered in blood. They had fought for their emperor and for God. Now they looked to their strategos to vindicate them for the lives they had taken today. Cydones acknowledged this all too familiar numbness in his heart but he raised a fist and mustered all his strength to roar the holy victory cry.

  ‘Nobiscum Deus!’

  ***

  A torch burst into life on the short timber platform the men had erected on the hilltop plateau and the two men on the first guard shift watched the pitch black countryside manfully. A roll call had been taken and it had been worryingly swift: three kataphractoi and twenty one skutatoi were all that was left of the hundred that had marched from the barracks at Argyroupolis that morning. A score had fled when the Seljuks had attacked but the rest were cold and dead. The truth was, Cydones mused grimly, the remaining and spent handful were also as good as dead if another Seljuk raiding party decided to investigate the firelight. The imperial maps might say otherwise, but this far east it was definitely borderland. Thanks be to God for the loyalty of the Armenian princes, he thought, without their subjects, the borders would be threadbare of manpower.

  He ran a filthy hand over his bald scalp and pulled at his forked beard, swigged water from his skin and then let his thoughts drift. He thought back to his old stamping ground, Constantinople: the tales of the rise and fall of emperors, often in inglorious circumstance, reached these outlying themata all too frequently. He still shivered at the report of the last emperor’s demise: the feckless Michael the Fifth had been pulled from his horse as he tried to flee the city, his pleas for mercy going unheard as the populace pinned him to the street and prised his eyes from his sockets. Emperor Constantine Monomachus now sat at the pinnacle of Byzantium and so far he had proved only how short-sighted a leader could be, disbanding garrisons all across the land in order to line the bare imperial treasury with a few pounds of gold.

  All the turmoil at the heart of empire meant that the border themata were left to fend for themselves, Cydones himself juggling the scant funds raised from the lands of Chaldia to mount an increasingly threadbare defence against the ever more frequent Seljuk incursions.

  You’re getting too old for this, a voice whispered in his mind. At forty-six years old he couldn’t disagree; the crudely bandaged thigh wound snarled rhythmically, every bone was racked with pain and his muscles seared even now, a half-day after the battle. Despite the fire, heaped high with kindling and brush, he felt the night chill more than ever. He had passed out shortly after the victory cry but fortunately Ferro had been on hand to grasp an arm and disguise the fall. The men had gathered the bodies of their comrades in an exhausted silence and then dug grave after grave. Cydones had narrated the Christian rites as his men buried each body.

  ‘Eat up, sir, there’s plenty spare,’ Ferro spoke hoarsely as he sidled over, easing his athletic frame down onto the earth to rest his back on a rock, pushing fingers through his dark curls. He threw a chunk of salt beef to his commander.

  Cydones examined the stringy strip of meat with disdain. Some wretched animal had died to provide this, but rations were plentiful only because so many men had died in this defensive sortie, men who would not be returning to their farmlands or their wives, mothers and children. ‘Aye,’ he smoothed his beard, ‘I’ve never felt so hungry and yet not, Ferro.’ He handed the beef back; a week with no meat or wine was his usual act of penance after so bloody an encounter.

  Ferro nodded gently, gazing around the c
amp fires dotting the plateau, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. ‘I’m dog tired, sir, but I’d prise out my own teeth to see the sunrise right now and to be headed for safe ground. Training and gathering supplies for the warehouse would be a pleasant task, for once.’

  Cydones grinned wryly. Ferro was his touchstone to reality. If the tourmarches was feeling the grind of being on a sortie then they truly were in a bad way. Ferro relished every chance to muster and set out with his infantry, temporarily freeing himself from the mire of tourma district administration that came with the role. He and the other tourmarchai were vital in allowing Cydones to run the Chaldian Thema as a whole. His mind chattered with the legal and taxation wranglings he had left neglected back in Trebizond and worse, the tense diplomatic meetings with the neighbouring themata. Not quite the ideals he had once strived for, he mused, touching the dull bronze Chi-Rho on his neckchain.