Strategos: Island in the Storm

by Gordon Doherty

  He swept his gaze across the rippling heat haze around the fortress, but saw nothing. No movement bar a few lone trade wagons. Then he saw a glint of silver atop the battlements. Come out, you cur!

  Crispin and his Norman lancers had been pillaging the imperial tax and grain wagons and terrorising local villages with little reprisal since winter. They had come to these lands as allies, taking the emperor’s coin and his grant of the nigh-on impregnable fortress in exchange for their service in the border tagmata. They had behaved well and fought nobly at first. Then Crispin had decided to carve out his own little empire.

  Stifling a sigh, Apion descended the pine to a chorus of cracking twigs, then thudded to the clearing floor below. Here, a bandon of his thematic ranks tried to keep themselves busy. The sounds of chattering and the chopping and hewing of wood echoed around him, while the scent of millet stew and roasting mutton spiced the air. He had led these hundred and seven men from his homeland of Chaldia a week ago, marching from the northern coastal city of Trebizond. They had marched at haste and without complaint, leaving the lush greenery of northern Chaldia behind, ascending into the dryer, hotter highlands of the central Anatolian plateau before crossing into this neighbouring thema.

  ‘Nothing?’ a baritone voice asked. He twisted to see Sha, the coal-skinned Malian tourmarches who had been his second in command ever since he had attained the position as the Strategos of Chaldia. At thirty-nine, Sha was five years Apion’s senior. His shorn scalp had grown in enough on this march to betray patches of grey and the corners of his eyes were well-lined.

  Apion shook his head, brushing the pine needles from his tunic and flicking them from his boots. ‘Crispin has grown wary since he was last caught on the field with his men.’

  ‘Not that he came to any harm!’ Sha snorted as they strolled amongst the men.

  Indeed, the small army sent to tackle Crispin some months ago had caught the Norman and his full force of some six hundred lancers, camped on the flatlands to the north. The imperial army had attempted to sneak upon the camp at dawn while Crispin and his men still slept, hoping for a rout. Then disaster had struck, as – part-blinded by the gloom – the imperial soldiers had tripped on tent pegs and fallen on hidden caltrops, before the Normans rose from their tents and came at them, swords flashing. It had been a rout indeed. Despite seeing off that force, Crispin had since been careful to ride out with just small, swift packs of riders – never more than seventy or so – striking the tax wagons and villages and sweeping back into his formidable stronghold to tally his plunder.

  ‘We can only keep a constant vigil, Sha. Crispin will tire of inactivity soon enough.’

  ‘Just how much plunder does a man need?’ Sha scowled.

  Apion stopped by the well at the centre of the clearing and drew himself a cup of water from the bucket hanging there. ‘Plunder might have been his purpose at first, Sha, but you saw that grain caravan.’ His mind flashed with images of the gory stain that remained of the wagon drivers. The grain itself had been left untouched. ‘He has come to crave the lustre of blood.’

  The pair sat down by the well and fell silent. Sha pulled out a tattered map, plucking a stalk of wheat and twisting it between his teeth as he studied it. Apion fished out a well-read letter from his purse. He read it over once more and frowned. Lady Eudokia’s handwriting threatened time and again to drag his mind back to that brief and passionate moment they had shared, just before she had wed the emperor, Romanus Diogenes. Indeed, that she had dabbed her sweet-scented lotions upon it was more distracting still. Focus, man, he scolded himself, taking a sip of water from his cup and reading;

  Stay vigilant, Apion, for Psellos seems to know of the emperor’s every move. You must march to the Black Fortress in the lands of Colonea, where the foul advisor’s coins have bought the venal hearts of our border forces. Then I beg you to muster every man you can and hasten to my husband’s side on his campaign to Lake Van. Only there can you shield him from Psellos’ further ruses . . .

  He looked up at the cloudless morning sky and thought of the black-hearted Psellos and the Doukas family back in Constantinople, of their seemingly bottomless vaults of gold, of their insatiable desire to depose Emperor Romanus and take the throne for themselves, heedless to the toll of lives. Doukas was a swine indeed, but Psellos? Psellos was the jackal-god, so blinded by his quest for power that he would happily set the empire to flame just to be master of its blackened corpse. And Crispin was just the latest in a line of many who had taken Psellos’ gold. So I’m chasing the tail of the snake when the head bears the fangs?

  He rubbed his temples as if trying to massage the thoughts away, then looked over to Sha. The Malian scoured the map intently, but every so often he would pause in his thoughts, trace a finger over the leather bracelet he wore on his wrist and let a faint smile touch his lips. Apion found the smile infectious. Sha had just a year ago been presented with a gift of slaves – a mother and two children – from a trader the Malian had rescued from brigands. Sha had freed the slaves that same day, offering them his home if they would tend to his farm while he was away. Months later, there was no doubting that Sha had found love with the mother, and fulfilment with her children. This threw his thoughts back to the emptiness that awaited him in his own home – the silent, empty keep on Trebizond’s citadel hill. He folded up the letter. Memories of his dalliance with Eudokia were but a spark to reignite those of his true, lost love.

  Maria.

  With his mother and father long ago slain and no children to call his own, he was alone. Even Mansur, the old Seljuk farmer who took him in as a boy, had been snatched from him at the end of a blade. And until last winter, he had long thought Mansur’s daughter, Maria, walked with them in the land of the dead. Until the crone had come to him.

  You told me she lives, he mouthed into the ether as if addressing the absent crone, one finger sliding into his purse, stroking the lock of sleek, dark hair in there. But you cannot tell me where, and this world is vast. That, old woman, is a tortuous gaol for a man’s mind.

  His gaze grew distant, trawling all that had happened since the crone’s revelation. He had sent messengers and hired scouts to scour the borderlands in search of her. Some had searched the eastern themata, others had ventured far into Seljuk lands. All had come back with nothing. He sighed and tried to turn his thoughts back to his next move, thinking of where Crispin might strike next.

  A panicked honk-honk tore him from his thoughts. He looked up to see two toxotai – who had been diligently shooting their composite bows at a nearby tree trunk – now loosing skywards in an attempt to fell the skein of geese that flew overhead. When a fully deserved shower of goose droppings spattered down on their faces and tunics, they stumbled away, cursing, one of them spitting the oily filth from his lips and the other hurrying to put on his wide-brimmed archer’s hat to shield him from the onslaught.

  ‘The men are getting restless, it seems,’ Sha cocked an eyebrow, folding up his map. ‘Perhaps we should move on? Keeping them on the march keeps their minds focused.’

  ‘Move on?’ Apion replied. ‘If we had an enemy to pursue, Sha, I would have us on the march right now. But until Crispin breaks cover from his fort, we must wait.’

  The pair looked around for some form of distraction, both picking up on a conversation between Blastares and Procopius, wandering amongst the men. Blastares was a bull of a man, Sha’s age, with a broken nose shuddering between his eyes and a shaven scalp. Procopius was a wiry, puckered officer in his fiftieth year with a pure-white, close crop of hair and a face like a dried prune. Apion had known this pair since his first days in the ranks. Now each of them was a tourmarches like Sha, leading a Chaldian tourma under his command. Each of them, like Sha, he trusted with his life. And together, this mismatched pair could provide some moments of light relief.

  ‘I hear you’ve taken on an apprentice artilleryman?’ Blastares grunted as he strolled alongside Procopius. The big man curled his bottom lip as if w
eighing his next words, then a mischievous glint appeared in his eye. ‘Good idea. An old fellow like you should be making plans for his dotage.’

  ‘Dotage? I . . . ’ Procopius’ nose wrinkled as he looked up at his hulking friend, then his eyes grew hooded. ‘You know what I say to the lad when I’m training him on ballista marksmanship?’

  ‘Nope. Don’t care either,’ Blastares feigned indifference, pretending to examine the treeline studiously.

  ‘I tell him to imagine that you’re standing at the target, bollocks out, dangling over the centre,’ Procopius walked a little taller as he said this, his age lines multiplied by his growing smile. ‘Hits the centre nearly every time.’

  Blastares’ grin fell away, as if stolen by Procopius. ‘Aye? Well at least . . . at least . . . ’ Blastares stammered, his eyes darting as he tried to invent some riposte.

  But a cry cut the pair off; ‘He rides!’

  Apion looked over to the base of the tall pine. The toxotes who had been keeping watch up there thumped down onto the ground. ‘Crispin rides from the fort,’ the man repeated, taking up his bow and quiver. ‘He is headed into the forest, roughly a mile to the south.’

  The words were like a whetstone to Apion’s senses. He shot to standing. All eyes looked to him, all eager to act at last. His riders had a chance of engaging Crispin before the Norman swept back inside the Black Fortress again, but his infantry would be too slow to traverse the forest floor. Still, he needed their numbers. His mind raced until he imagined the pawn line on a shatranj board. A crooked smile pulled at one edge of his mouth.

  ‘Skutatoi!’ he yelled to the eighty spearmen as they gathered in a square of rustling iron. Each of them hoisted their spears and crimson kite shields, pulled on their helms and wrapped their iron or leather lamellar klibania around their torsos, then strapped on their swordbelts holding their lengthy spathion blades. ‘Line the southern edge of the clearing,’ he jabbed a finger at the treeline, where a handful of pines had been felled and lay together. ‘Be ready.’

  ‘Yes, Strategos!’ Peleus, the short komes at the head of the bandon cried, hoisting the crimson banner of Chaldia.

  ‘And Komes,’ Apion added, jabbing a finger at the woodcutting area. ‘Take those too.’

  Komes Peleus glanced to the pile of freshly-hewn sapling poplar trunks – eleven feet in length – then grinned in realisation. ‘The menavlion? Yes, sir!’

  ‘Toxotai,’ he then barked to the eighteen archers – including the two dappled with goose-droppings. ‘Wait on the flanks of our spearmen. Have your bows nocked and ready.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ the archers replied in unison.

  Apion turned to Sha, Blastares, Procopius and the nine Chaldian kataphractoi horsemen – already sliding on their iron klibania jackets and greaves, hoisting their lengthy lances. ‘Come. We ride ahead,’ he said as he swept his crimson cloak across his shoulders and slid his helm on, the black-eagle feather plume juddering.

  He cast one last look back at the skutatoi forming up in a line by the fallen pines and swept his spearpoint across them. ‘Stand firm. You are my anvil.’

  ‘Yes, Haga!’ the spearmen replied with a roar as Apion and the twelve riders broke into a gallop and vanished into the southern forest.

  ***

  Crispin crouched in the undergrowth, looking through the trees to a small village in the clearing beyond. A tavern, a kiln, a tannery and a timber grain silo stood at the centre of the settlement with just a few dwellings around them. No walls, no sentries. A hundred or so people milled to and fro, going about their daily business. A peaceful Seljuk settlement within Byzantine lands.

  Crispin turned away from the sight and met the gaze of his seventy men, crouched behind him. He fished in his purse and drew out a gold nomisma claimed from one of the tax wagons. He bit into it, then threw the coin to the forest floor, the tooth marks clearly visible in the much-debased coinage. ‘Pah! Nearly every imperial coin we take is but scrap metal. In there,’ he jabbed a finger at the settlement, ‘we will find fine Seljuk coin – silver dirhams and gold dinars.’

  Just then, the sound of hooves from behind stirred him. He twisted round looking past his riders. It was a freckle-faced, red-haired rider from the garrison he had left back at the Black Fortress. ‘Sir,’ he panted, his face pale, his brow knitted. ‘One of our scouts came in just after you left; he sighted a detachment of Byzantine soldiers just a few days ago. They were headed south, towards these woods.’

  ‘How many?’ Crispin’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘A hundred or so, maybe. A thematic levy.’

  ‘A hundred thematic wretches – and I will call them farmers, for they are not soldiers – are sent to oppose us, and you shit your robes about it?’

  All Crispin’s riders jostled in laughter.

  ‘Perhaps they will tangle themselves in our tent ropes and fall upon our caltrops again – like the last lot!’ Crispin added. His men struggled to control their laughter now.

  Reddening with anger and embarrassment, the rider snapped in reply; ‘They are no rabble of ordinary soldiers. They are Chaldians, led by the Haga.’

  The laughter faded.

  Crispin’s top lip twitched and he cast a sour glare around his riders. He had heard much of this stubborn strategos. Heard much, yet seen nothing. ‘So the mention of a man’s name is enough to silence you, is it?’ He drew out a small purse on his belt and shook it. ‘Then perhaps the rattle of good coin will be enough to bring the colour back to your cheeks?’ He produced a pure-gold nomisma from the purse – shining with a lustre unlike the robbed tax money. ‘Remember what our true paymaster said? Throw the borderlands into chaos. Let them know poverty, famine and fear in equal measure. And if you come by the Haga, slay him, and you will never want for gold again.’

  A grumble of agreement sounded around his riders, each patting the similar small purses they carried.

  ‘But we can turn our attentions to these Chaldians later,’ Crispin said, lifting his conical helm onto his head, the nose guard sliding into place between his ice-cold eyes. He glanced up through the canopy of leaves to the clear, sapphire sky. ‘This fine day is wearing on and I am tired of sitting in the shade. What say you we whet our blades on Seljuk bone before lunch?’ He flexed his fingers on his longsword hilt as he said this.

  Wordlessly, his seventy men rose with him like a pit of snakes readying to strike. With a rustle of iron, they hoisted themselves onto their nearby mounts and gathered into a rough wedge formation. Crispin took his place at the head of the wedge, then kicked his mount into a trot. When the trees grew thinner, they clustered closer together and sped into a gallop, levelling their spears. When they burst into the settlement clearing, they unleashed a guttural roar that shook the forest.

  Crispin set his eyes on the nearest of the villagers; a man, frozen in shock, his arms clutching at his two young sons. ‘Ya!’ he roared as his spear punched into the man’s chest and trampled the two boys while the other riders spilled past him and swept around the settlement like raptors, spearing down terrified Seljuk families who tried to flee, hacking down with their longswords at those cowering in hope of mercy. In moments, the air was alive with screaming and a song of iron. Acrid black smoke billowed from the houses as his men put them to the torch.

  ‘Bring me all they have!’ Crispin cried out, tasting the bloodspray on his lips.

  Just then, a dismounted Norman lancer emerged from the largest home in the village – a two-storey stone farmhouse. The man’s face was spattered red and he tucked his tunic back over his groin as he stepped over a broken, semi-naked and lifeless form in the doorway – the Seljuk woman he had just defiled. In the other arm, he carried a small wooden chest. ‘Good coins, sir!’ he cried to Crispin, biting one, before taking a blazing torch from a comrade and hurling it into the farmhouse as an afterthought. ‘Hundreds of them - ’

  His words ended in an animal grunt as two arrows thumped into his throat. He gawped at Crispin, then crumpled to his knees
, the coin chest toppling and the contents spilling across the earth.

  Crispin swung in his saddle, following the flight of the arrows. Thirteen imperial riders had emerged from the northern treeline. The central one – crimson-cloaked with a black eagle feather plume and a beard as grey as his iron armour – was still scowling behind his quivering bow, one eye shut tight, the open one emerald green. First, cold fear grabbed him as he recognised their kataphractoi garb. For a moment, he imagined the forests to be full of these ironclad Byzantine lancers. But he quickly saw that the woods were empty bar these thirteen. His fear melted and his rapacious grin returned.

  ‘Riders!’ he bellowed, summoning his seventy from the razing of the village. ‘At them!’

  His men reformed into a wedge behind him and the earth shuddered as they charged for the treeline. The black-plumed Byzantine bowman and his twelve seemed frozen for a few heartbeats, then they turned and fled, some throwing down their weapons in terror. The Norman cavalry charge, Crispin enthused, levelling his lance and training it on the back of the lead rider, not a soul can stand against it!

  The going underfoot became uneven as they raced into the forest, branches thwacked on his helm and his armour, but the wedge remained together. He saw the lead Byzantine rider glance back at him again and again as the gap closed. The glinting emerald eyes were sharp, but lacking something, he realised. No fear? A shaft of sunlight blinded him momentarily and he realised the forest was thinning. Another clearing lay just ahead. At once, the Byzantine thirteen leapt over a fallen pine and into this glade. Crispin heeled his mount into a jump too, then he heard the lead rider cry out.

  ‘Rise!’

  From behind the fallen pine rose a wall of imperial skutatoi. Their faces were twisted in fury as they roared and hoisted up spears, the like of which he had never seen before – long and thick. Myrtle, ash and poplar saplings, carved to jagged tips. Crispin gawped helplessly as his stallion plunged onto the colossal lance before him, the tip piercing the beast’s breast armour, flesh and heart, the lance barely moving such was its weight and so firmly was it grounded in the soil at the butt-end. Sky and earth changed places as Crispin was catapulted from the saddle. He heard his stallion’s dying whinny and many more of his comrades and their mounts. Then, with a crunch of iron that shook him to his core, he thumped down onto the dust, rolling over and over. His soldier’s instinct had him instantly grasping for his longsword and struggling to his feet. But he halted as a maw of Byzantine blades and speartips shot for his throat and hovered there. He glanced at each of their faces, pitiless, furious, then locked eyes with the black-plumed, emerald-eyed one with the iron-grey beard who approached on horseback. He walked his mount in a circle around Crispin, hand hovering above the ivory hilt of the Seljuk scimitar he wore on his swordbelt.