‘Unless,’ Bracchus grinned, ‘he had another reason to see your parents die.’
Apion shook his head. ‘These will be your last words, Agente.’
Bracchus hefted his spathion in his hand, gripping his legs around the flanks of his mount. ‘He asked me if he could come that night, for he had sought vengeance for the death of his wife for years. He lusted after the blood of the man who led the cavalry charge that saw his wife slain. He longed to see your father dead.’
Apion’s body numbed from blood loss and realisation. His lips tingled in expectation of a retort but there was none. The truth had its claws in his soul. His grip on the scimitar fell slack and the blade dangled from his hand, his vision spotting over.
‘It started nineteen years ago, with your father’s misguided but welcome attack on Mansur’s caravan,’ Bracchus spoke evenly, eyeing his opponent’s lethargy, heeling his mount into a brisk trot to circle Apion, then he hefted his spathion back, eyes bulging, ‘and on my sword point, it ends now!’ He roared and swept the blade down.
Apion saw the blade coming, but his mind was in another place, stood in the dark doorway. He leapt for the flames with a roar. He barely saw Bracchus’ sword spin up and away from his lightning-fast parry. Time seemed to slow as he leapt to grapple the tourmarches by the throat, pulling him down from the saddle and throwing him prone. As Bracchus struggled to pull a dagger from his belt, Apion stamped on his gloved hand, the bones crunching under his boot, Bracchus’ screams distant. He lifted his scimitar to Bracchus’ chest, fixed his eyes on the master agente and then, with a guttural cry, he thrust down, pushing with all his might until the blade was dug deep into the ground below.
With that, he collapsed onto all fours, panting. He uncoiled his fist and stared at the chariot shatranj piece, still stained with Mansur’s blood.
Then a hand clutched at his collar. Bracchus glared at him, eyes bulging from their sockets, blood foaming from his lips. ‘Now you truly know darkness . . . ’ he hissed as the life left his body.
***
Every day I soar over the mountain town I see him, the lone figure standing on the battlements at the break of dawn, gazing east, looking for answers he will never find. Where once he saw beauty in daybreak, he now sees only pain. Having cast aside his god and purged the earth of the twisted soul Bracchus, he has shed what had kept him human. Now he lives in a netherworld where he is ever seeking outlet for his fury.
The Haga has risen, just as fate decreed.
Then, as I look to the rising sun, I can feel the rage of the Mountain Lion, marching west.
This land is on the cusp of a collision that will echo through the ages.
Glossary
Abbasid Caliphate: An Islamic Caliphate that controlled the lands of ancient Persia before the 10th Century AD. In the following years, much of this control was ceded to the Daylamids.
Akhi: Seljuk infantry armed with long anti-cavalry spears, scimitars, shields and sometimes armoured in lamellar.
Bey: Seljuk military commander, subordinate to an emir.
Ballista: Primarily anti-personnel missile artillery capable of throwing bolts vast distances. Utilised from fortified positions and on the battlefield.
Bandon: The basic battlefield unit of infantry in the Byzantine army. Literally meaning ‘banner’, a bandon typically consisted of between two hundred and four hundred men, usually skutatoi, who would line up in a square formation, presenting spears to their enemy from their front ranks and hurling rhiptarion from the ranks behind. Banda would form together on the battlefield to present something akin to the ancient phalanx.
Buccina: The ancestor of the trumpet and the trombone, this instrument was used for the announcement of night watches and various other purposes in the Byzantine forts and marching camps as well as to communicate battlefield manoeuvres.
Buccinator: A soldier who uses the buccina to perform acoustical signalling on the battlefield and in forts, camps and settlements.
Chi-Rho: The Chi-Rho is one of the earliest forms of Christogram, and was used in the early Christian Roman Empire through to the Byzantine high period as a symbol of piety and empire. It is formed by superimposing the first two letters in the Greek spelling of the word Christ, chi = ch and rho = r, in such a way to produce the following monogram:
Daylamid Dynasty: An Islamic Persian dynasty that originated in Daylaman in modern-day Iran and grew to take control of the Abbasid Caliphate. Also known as the Buyid Dynasty.
Dekarchos: A minor officer in charge of a kontoubernion of ten skutatoi who would be expected to fight in the front rank of his bandon. He would wear a red* sash to denote his rank.
Djinn: Islamic demon.
Droungarios: A Byzantine officer in charge of two banda, who would wear a silver* sash to denote his rank.
Emir: Seljuk military leader, equivalent to the Byzantine strategos.
Fatimid Caliphate: Arab Islamic caliphate that dominated modern-day Tunisia and Egypt in the middle ages.
Follis: A large bronze coin of small value.
Foulkon: The Byzantine heir to the famous Roman testudo or ‘tortoise’ formation.
Ghulam: The Seljuk heavy cavalry, equivalent to the Byzantine kataphractos. Armoured well in scale vest or lamellar, with a distinctive pointed helmet with nose guard, carrying a bow, scimitar and spear.
Ghazi: The Seljuk light cavalry, whose primary purpose was to raid enemy lands and disrupt defensive systems and supply chains.
Ghaznavid Empire: A Persian Muslim dynasty of Turkic origin who ruled much of Persia, Transoxania and Northern India prior to the rise of the Seljuks.
Haga: A ferocious two-headed eagle from ancient Hittite mythology. Also the basis for what would become the emblem of both the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Empire.
Kampidoktores: The drill master in charge of training Byzantine soldiers.
Kataphractos: Byzantine heavy cavalry and the main offensive force in the thema and tagma armies. The riders and horses would wear iron lamellar and mail armour, leaving little vulnerability to attack. The riders would use their kontarion for lancing, spathion for skirmishing or their bow for harrying.
Kentarches: A Byzantine officer in charge of one hundred Byzantine soldiers. A descendant of the Roman centurion.
Kentarchia: A notional unit of one hundred Byzantine soldiers, commanded by a Kentarches.
Klibanion: The characteristic Byzantine lamellar cuirass made of leather, horn or iron squares, usually sleeveless, though sometimes with leather strips hanging from the waist and shoulders.
Komes: An officer in charge of a bandon who would wear a white* sash to denote his rank.
Kontarion: A spear between two and three metres long, the kontarion was designed for Byzantine infantry to hold off enemy cavalry.
Kontoubernion: A grouping of ten Byzantine infantry who would eat together, patrol together, share sleeping quarters or a pavilion tent while on campaign and would be rewarded or punished as a single unit.
Mangonel: Catapult-style seige engine that shot heavy projectiles from a bowl-shaped bucket at the end of the arm. Used for both anti-personnel and anti-fortification purposes.
Nomisma: A gold coin that could be debased by various degrees to set its value.
Protocancellarius: Chief clerk in charge of Byzantine military thema administration.
Protomandator: The chief of heralds in a thema, responsible for despatching messengers and relaying communication.
Rhiptarion: A short throwing spear. Skutatoi carried two or three of these each.
Salep: A hot drink made with orchid root, cinnamon and milk.
Shatranj: A precursor to modern-day chess.
Skutatos: The Byzantine infantryman, based on the ancient hoplite. He was armed with an iron helmet, a spathion, a skutum, a kontarion, two or more rhiptariai and possibly a dagger and an axe. He would wear a lamellar klibanion if positioned to the front of his bandon, or a padded jacket or felt vest if he was closer to the rear. Tagma s
kutatoi may well all have been afforded iron lamellar armour.
Skutum: The Byzantine infantry shield that gives the skutatoi their name. Usually teardrop-shaped and painted identically within a bandon.
Spathion: The Byzantine infantry sword, derived from the Roman spatha. Up to a metre long, this straight blade was primarily for stabbing, but allowed slashing and hacking as well.
Strategos: Literally ‘army leader’. The themata armies of Byzantium were organised and led by such a man. The strategos was also responsible for governance of his thema.
Tagma: The tagmata were the professional standing armies of the Byzantine Empire, traditionally clustered around Constantinople. These armies were formed to provide a central reserve, to meet enemy encroachment that could not be dealt with by the themata, and also to cow the potentially revolutionary power of those themata. They were well armoured, armed, paid and fed. Each tagma held around five thousand men and was composed of exclusively cavalry or infantry.
Thema: In the 7th century AD, as a result of the crisis caused by the Muslim conquests, the Byzantine military and administrative system was reformed: the old late Roman division between military and civil administration was abandoned, and the remains of the Eastern Roman Empire’s field armies were settled in great districts, the themata, that were named after those armies. The men of the themata would work their state-leased military lands in times of peace and then don their armour and weapons when summoned by the strategos to defend their thema or to set out on campaign alone or with the tagmata. When mustered, each thema could field around ten thousand men, primarily infantry.
Tourmarches: A Byzantine officer in charge of the military forces and administration of a tourma.
Toxotes: The Byzantine archer, lightly armoured with a felt jacket and armed with a composite bow and a dagger.
Tourma: A subdivision of a Byzantine thema, commanded by a tourmarches and comprised of some two thousand soldiers of the thema army and encompassing a geographical subset of the thema lands.
*The use of a sash to denote rank is backed up by historical texts, but the sash colours stated are speculative.
Author’s Note
First of all, I would like to thank you warmly for reading my book and I hope it was enjoyable for you. The following is intended for those interested in the history, to shed a little light on some of the thinking and choices I made over how to present certain elements of the period in which the story is set.
In researching this book I soon came to the conclusion that Byzantium simply refuses to be defined. I quickly realised that this probably sums up why I find the empire so intriguing, in that you can look at any aspect of its history time and again, and each time come away with new meanings or ideas. This isn’t the easiest basis for writing historical fiction, but I found it fascinating nonetheless, trying to envisage how the devout Christians of the empire would have seen the world they lived in, pursuing the ideals of old Rome without the means or circumstance to uphold them.
In my anachronistic use of the terms ‘Byzantine’ and the ‘Byzantine Empire’ (first coined by modern historians), my aim was to steer the reader away from any preconception or imagery that may have been conjured by the terms that the Greek-speaking inhabitants of the empire would have used to refer to themselves, namely Romans or Romaioi. Although Byzantium was absolutely and seamlessly the heir to the Roman Empire, it also became very, very different and far removed from the position of might and power of the high principate and the classical Caesars.
The Byzantine military underwent numerous reforms in its long history, starting as something akin to the classical Roman legions and ending up as a desperate handful of medieval militia fighting on the walls of Constantinople at the dusk of the empire. Thus, when I write of the armies of the themata, I am aware that there are many definitions of exactly how these armies were composed, based on time-period and information source. In putting shape to this shifting world I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Dr Timothy Dawson, whose knowledge of the period is quite simply astounding. In this aspect I have used the bandon as the standard battlefield infantry unit of the time, despite some evidence that suggests that by the 11th century AD, the thousand-strong chiliarchy may have been preferred to, or used in conjunction with the bandon following the reforms of Nikephoros Phokas and Nikephoros Ouranos in the 10th century AD. I preferred the bandon for the simple reason that the structure seemed more mature and aligned to the historical reference materials detailing the period in which the story is set.
For my use of the shadowy wing of imperial agents known as the Agentes, I admit a hearty dose of speculation, though not without foundation: in the classical Roman Empire, the Frumentarii served as a secret service for the Caesars, spying, informing, sowing dissent and assassinating on the emperor’s command. They grew to be hated by the populace of the empire and its armies until they were disbanded by Diocletian in the 3rd century AD. How substantial this disbandment was is questionable though, as Diocletian almost immediately went on to form the Agentes in Rebus, a group thought by some to have been personal messengers for the emperor, and by others to have been a rebranded and far more effectively organised version of the Frumentarii. Both theories have their merits, but that their title means ‘those who are active in matters’ tells me all I need to know. The Agentes in Rebus remained in existence as Rome fell, and served the Byzantine Emperors until they were officially abolished in the 9th century AD. However, given that subterfuge had been inherent in Rome and Byzantium for over a millennia, and the word ‘duplicitous’ had become synonymous with the word ‘Byzantine’, I find it hard to believe that an organisation like the Agentes of this book were not still in existence in some form.
At this point I would once again like to thank you for reading. If you could spare five minutes to review my book online, it would be greatly appreciated as reviews are extremely valuable to independent authors.
Apion will return, and I hope that you will join me for the next instalment of his story. Until then, please feel free to visit my website where you can find out more about me and my writing.
Yours faithfully,
Gordon Doherty
www.gordopolis.com/writing
Strategos: Born in the Borderlands Page 38
