Strategos: Born in the Borderlands

by Gordon Doherty

  Apion was now still.

  ‘What you playin’ at?’ Another one roared.

  Apion jogged back and crouched by Blastares.

  ‘Get on with it, you nippy bugger!’ The big soldier growled at him, the veins in his forehead bulging like worms.

  ‘Nobody’s losing today,’ Apion wrapped an arm around Blastares’ shoulders and hoisted the big man’s weight.

  ‘Eh? No way, put me down, I’m no bloody crip . . . ’ his words tailed off. ‘Sorry.’

  Together, they walked to the finishing post. Half the crowd looked relieved, the other half frustrated. ‘We’ll race again one day soon.’ Apion said to them. ‘I don’t want to win because the big man here took an injury.’ He saw they needed more than that. ‘Take your bets back. You’ll need them. We’ll double the stakes next time! Who’s up for it?’

  Procopius shrugged and then pumped a fist in the air. ‘Right, I’m doing the book, who’s in?’ At once the crowd erupted into a babble, surrounding the old soldier, coins in hand.

  Blastares’ resolve crumbled and he issued a hoarse cackle in between gasps for breath. ‘Next time, you don’t get half a year to prepare!’

  ‘Next time, you don’t get a head start!’ Apion grinned. The big man had the temper of a bear and the heart of a lion. Maybe not a tactician but a man he would always be heartened to have by his side in battle.

  Sha and Nepos joined them as they made their way into the village, Procopius hurried after them, tipping his takings for the next race into his helmet, while the crowd of soldiers began to pick up their weapons, ready for the walk back to the barracks, and the villagers headed back to their homes, goats and laughing children trailing in their wake.

  Nepos clasped a hand to his shoulder and gave him a firm nod. ‘You did it,’ he said with a grin. Apion gave the Slav a knowing look. Nepos was a thinker, shrewd and quick-witted, and had supported Apion since his first days in the garrison, the pair often playing shatranj in the evening.

  Sha laughed like a drain. ‘I never thought it possible, Apion, now you are the strong one!’ Apion nodded his thanks. The African had also been there to guide Apion in his early days in the garrison and his shortcomings as a domineering officer were more than made up for by his knack for diplomacy and tact; he had seen the man diffuse many a potentially abrasive situation. Perhaps that was why he had initially been put in charge of Blastares, Apion mused.

  Procopius slapped both Blastares and Apion on the back. The old soldier’s fleet-footed fighting days were probably in the past but the man was obsessed with siege equipment and artillery. Apion knew that a man doing a job he loved for free was worth ten men loathing a job they were paid for. He wondered why the old soldier hadn’t been put in charge of the ballista squads.

  He beheld the four and wondered how he had ever found them so cold, so distant, like that first day in the barracks. He took his scimitar and satchel from Sha, then rummaged in the satchel to pull two skins clear. ‘Before we head back, let us rest for a while . . . with a drink.’

  ‘You brought wine?’ Blastares’ eyes grew wide.

  ‘I like this lad more every day,’ Procopius chuckled, ‘give me a swig!’ He reached out to grasp a skin but he froze, his eyes bulging.

  ‘Procopius?’ Sha’s brow wrinkled. Then the village bell pealed rapidly.

  Apion spun around, following Procopius’ stare to the plateau edge – the second dust plume. A rumbling of hooves caused the plateau to quiver.

  ‘Get into the village!’ He roared, waving at the pack of off-duty skutatoi and toxotai who wandered lazily to the other descending path. They realised what was happening, but they were too late; a pack of some fifty ghazi riders burst onto the plateau and thundered straight for them. The Byzantine soldiers who had brought their weapons and armour had no time to lace up their klibania or padded vests, throwing them to one side, fumbling on their helmets and pulling bows, shields and swords to the ready with shaking hands in a poorly constructed line with no officer in their number to organise them properly. Heavily outnumbered by cavalry, they stood little chance.

  Apion glanced to the terrified villagers who stood by the gates, readying to slam them closed. ‘Keep the gates open!’ He jabbed an accusing finger at the man with his hands on the locking bar, who gulped and nodded hurriedly. Then he turned to the four; Sha was searching for the right words, the other three were itching to act.

  ‘At them, sir, we must! Or they’re all dead!’ Apion insisted. ‘They need a leader!’

  Sha frowned and then shook his head. ‘We can’t beat fifty cavalry on open ground, Apion; we must get inside the village, the others will have to fight for themselves!’

  ‘Then what? Defend the place, just the five of us, against those same fifty?’

  ‘Either way, we’re done for,’ Sha’s eyes darted, panic setting in.

  ‘No, we make a fighting retreat into the town, save as many of those men as we can!’ Apion protested.

  Sha looked up, face wrinkled in indecision.

  ‘Then we may have the number to hold out inside the town palisade,’ Apion gasped, his eyes on the closing gap between the ghazi riders and the Byzantine soldiers. The toxotai managed to loose a handful of arrows, but their haste meant only one found its target, taking a rider in the chest and punching him from his horse.

  Then the ghazi detachment smashed into the trickle of Byzantine soldiers. ‘Come on!’ Blastares roared to Sha.

  Apion grasped his arm and leant into the African’s ear. ‘Sir, make this your call, give the order. I will fight like a lion beside you, we all will.’

  Sha’s eyes widened at the burning expression on Apion’s face. He nodded, then filled his lungs. ‘Forward!’ The African roared.

  At once the five rushed into the skirmish, running for the flank of the riders. Apion felt fury wash through his veins as he ran, and the dark door was punched open by the scarred and knotted arm, its flames rushing out like a serpent’s tongue. He hefted his scimitar and leapt, swiping it past a Seljuk rider’s neck, taking arterial wall with it and soaking him and the soldiers nearby in a shower of blood. With that, Apion was pitched into the midst of the fray. He spun on one heel and then another, flashing the curved blade round and up to parry a spear jab and then stab home into a rider’s chest. With his legs now equal in strength, he was catlike in his movements. Another rider fell, cleaved from shoulder to heart, then another, belly sliced open, guts slapping onto the ground before the body. He heard a grunt and spun to right himself for a parry from the ghazi whose sword was arcing down on him. Their blades clashed and Apion shouldered into the man’s thigh then wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling him from his horse. They fell in a tangle past other bloodied corpses and screaming wounded. Then Apion grappled the man by the throat, fumbled for his dagger and punched the blade into the ghazi’s abdomen. Yet the man fought on, pulling a small axe from his belt and swiping, despite the black blood pumping from his wound. Apion leapt back and finally the man’s eyes rolled in his head and he was still.

  Turning, he saw that the ghazi charge had been absorbed; many riders had been pulled from their mounts. This battle was starting to look winnable, but then he saw another dust cloud coming uphill. Seljuk reinforcements; they had an instant to cheat death.

  ‘Pull back!’ He roared. ‘Get inside the gates!’

  The Byzantines staggered back and the ghazis regrouped and remounted.

  ‘Move!’ Apion bellowed. Like a herd of wounded cattle, the Byzantines ran, hobbled and crawled for the sliver of a gap in the palisade gates, the ghazis racing after them.

  Then the source of the second dust cloud was revealed as a party of some fifty Seljuk spearmen.

  ‘By God,’ Sha stammered as they tumbled inside the gate, pulling in the handful of stragglers who had survived the chase, ‘infantry, this far east? Tugrul must be nearby!’

  ‘We can worry about that tomorrow, should we see tomorrow, yes?’ Apion bawled over the thunder of hooves. Wit
h the shoulders of all those who had made it inside, the gate was slammed shut and the locking bar was clunked into place. Apion took stock of their number: there was Sha, Nepos, Blastares and Procopius, plus eight skutatoi and three toxotai. He glanced over the rudimentary gatehouse, his eyes hung for an instant on its flat roof and he yelled at the archers. ‘Toxotai, get up onto that roof!’ Then he stopped one of them. ‘You, go up there,’ he jabbed a finger at a thatch roof on the opposite side of the gate.

  ‘Apion?’ Sha looked desperate, glancing from Apion to Blastares, who was already barking orders to the skutatoi, ushering them into a line.

  ‘They’re only staying outside of the gate for so long. If we’re to make any kind of stand then you need crossfire to cover our flanks.’ As he spoke, the whole palisade shuddered as the Seljuk infantry crashed against it, pushing at its fragile frame. Then ropes were lassoed around the carved points of the palisade gates. The ropes tightened and the gates groaned, bending outwards.

  ‘But we’re hugely outnumbered,’ Sha countered, ‘surely we need every man we have to face them if, when they break through?’

  Nepos cut in. ‘Apion’s right, sir. All sixteen of us versus that lot outside in a straight pitched fight – we’re dead any which way you choose to cut it.’

  Apion waited until Sha gave him the nod, then he grasped Procopius’ shoulder. ‘Procopius, we don’t have artillery, but is there anything we could use to slow them when they break through?’

  The Seljuk war cry was now dreadfully close, iron hacking into timber like a premonition of what was to come. Then a spear punched through the barrier. Then another and another.

  ‘Eh? Well a ballista would be lovely but,’ he shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘There must be something,’ Apion glanced around the village for inspiration, but only terrified villagers, pigs, bales of hay and mud presented themselves.

  ‘Hold on,’ Procopius purred, ‘We can’t fire bolts at them but if they’re so desperate to get in here then they can kindly run onto our spears.’ He dug his heel into the mud and then pushed the butt of his spear in until it stuck, the broad blade pointing accusingly at the now collapsing gate. He looked to Apion. Apion nodded feverishly and Procopius turned to the rest. ‘Right, lads, get your spears in the dirt, just like this.’ Then the old soldier turned back to Apion. ‘Now, those hay bales could also be our friend . . . if we had some pitch and some rope.’

  ‘You sort it out, Procopius – you’re the expert in this kind of thing!’ Apion clasped a hand on Procopius’ shoulder.

  Then he turned back to Sha. ‘This spear wall will buy us precious time,’ he yelled over the din of the Seljuk roars, ‘pin them down, might even thin them a little but we need to scatter them or we’re done for.’ A pig squealed as a Seljuk forced his bow through a hole in the collapsing gate and let an arrow loose that skimmed the beast’s back. Apion’s eyes narrowed: the squeal conjured up the image of that day at Cheriana, when the pigs ran loose, terrifying the wagon horses.

  ‘That’s it! The pigs!’ Apion cried. A pair of villagers struggled to hold their pen gate in place such was the terror of the animals, running, leaping over one another. ‘Release them from the pen when I say, then drive them to the gate,’ he roared at them and the villagers nodded, faces white with terror. ‘You do understand? They must run for the gate.’ With that, Apion turned and added himself to the line of skutatoi. Then, with a crash, the gate was ripped down by the lassos and some eighty Seljuks, riders and spearmen poured through the narrow opening. They flooded towards the spears, hacking at them, expecting to be able to brush a path between them, but they remained stuck fast in the mud. A cry of panic rose up from the Seljuks to the front as they realised, just too late, what was happening. The ghazi riders to the back pushed on, forcing their own men, screaming, onto the broad blades. Bones popped, blood bursting down the shafts and the screaming was swiftly ended.

  ‘They’re pinned, fire at will,’ Apion roared, but the toxotai on the gatehouse roof and the opposite thatched roof were already loosing shaft after shaft into the crush, while the thin line of skutatoi stabbed through the spear wall, felling the Seljuks who were compressed against the blades.

  In the moment when the Seljuks lost momentum, Procopius batted a hand against the shoulder of another skutatos and the pair broke off to lift a hay bale with a length of rope wrapped under it. The hay bale was dripping with pitch, as Procopius had ordered, and when one of the villagers touched his torch to it, the bale ignited. With a grunt, the pair heaved the flaming mass over the spear wall and into the Seljuk crush. The bale disintegrated on contact, showering burning pitch over the Seljuk warriors. Men screamed, pulling back from the fray, skin bubbling. But as quickly as the bale had been ignited, the flames died and the Seljuks rallied.

  Then a spear snapped and a handful of Seljuk infantry tumbled through the gap. The next spear began to bend and the Seljuk cavalry were pushing to come through as well. Apion’s eyes narrowed and he roared to the two villagers by the pig pen. ‘Let them out!’

  The two stepped away from the pen gate and at once the pigs burst free, some thirty animals, racing as a pack, snorting, squealing, trotters sliding over one another.

  ‘The gate!’ Apion roared. ‘Herd them to the gate!’

  The villagers had already taken care of it, a woman and a small girl brought crackling torches to them. The two men then each took to jostling a side of the herd, thrashing a torch at any animal that tried to make a break and head back towards the centre of the village. The animals’ terror seemed to swell at this and they raced, splitting through the skutatoi, through the spear wall and in between the legs of the Seljuk horses. The mounts whinnied, rose on their hind legs, bucked and leapt at this and the riders were hurled from their saddles, falling on their heads, snapping bones or being pierced on the spear wall.

  The skutatoi roared at this, then pushed to close the gap on the sprawling mass of Seljuks. As Apion joined the swell, he could see the ghazi commander beat his sword into his shield, rallying his riders as the pigs fled off across the plateau. The Seljuks were wavering, their number halved, but their leader was rallying them. Apion was overcome by a now familiar certainty: he had to live through this while Bracchus still walked the earth. He hoisted himself onto a riderless ghazi stallion, then heeled the beast to turn. He held out his scimitar and galloped for the ghazi commander. He wondered at the guttural and alien roar that burst from his lungs and saw everything ahead with a tinge of crimson, the dark door open, flames licking out. He mustered all his strength as he swiped his sword down onto the commander’s shield. For a moment, their eyes locked, wide, whites bulging. It was him, Bey Soundaq, from the pass.

  Soundaq butted his shield out. Apion pulled back and then swiped with his blade, shattering the man’s shield, then again, this time the two scimitars clashing with a rasp of iron. He drove the man back from the gates with each hack. He barely noticed the rumble of hooves as the other ghazis fled, leaving only Soundaq. With another strike, the Seljuk’s scimitar snapped and he backed up, hands aloft as Apion’s blade hovered at his throat.

  ‘Gut ‘im,’ one toxotes called. Apion blinked, looking round at the blood-spattered remnant of the Byzantines. All eyes were upon him. His heart warmed to see Sha, Nepos, Blastares and Procopius standing. Then he heard the familiar wail of the buccina from below the edge of the mountaintop plateau, the reason for the sudden Seljuk retreat.

  ‘Riders, ours! Not a moment too soon!’ One of the skutatoi yelled.

  He turned to Soundaq. ‘If your men had not fled just now, I would already have this blade in your throat. Yet the last time we met, you said you had seen enough blood?’

  ‘That was then. Since that day I returned to my village, on the edge of the Colonea Thema. I found my village in ruin, burned by Byzantine torches, my family slain.’

  Apion felt the fury inside him temper.

  ‘So you’ve got your victory, Byzantine,’ Soundaq grimaced, ‘now end it wit
h my blood.’ He tilted his neck to the point of the blade.

  Apion lowered his sword. ‘Ride,’ he pointed to the opposite mountain path where the rest of the Seljuk party had fled, ‘and ride fast.’

  Soundaq’s eyes widened a little; he nodded and made to ride off, but turned back. ‘I say again what I said to you that day: Byzantium’s time is over.’ With that, he heeled his mount and galloped off.

  Apion spun round at the sound of a stretching bowstring, his eyes falling on an opportunistic toxotes. ‘Loose that arrow and you’ll be sorry!’ The toxotes glared at him momentarily, hesitating, then dropped his gaze to the ground and relaxed his bow.

  Nepos wandered over, tucking his sword away. ‘A fine act, Apion. He was the ghazi from the pass, no?’

  Apion looked down at the Slav and relaxed the tense scowl on his face. ‘He was dead. I was ready to tear his heart from his chest until I realised it was him.’

  Nepos frowned, then took a deep breath. ‘It’s over, Apion.’