Strategos: Island in the Storm

by Gordon Doherty

  Sha looked up, hesitating for only an instant before spinning round to bark at one cluster of tents. ‘Toxotai, form up!’ He saw the few hundred Chaldian archers come together. Too few – the other few hundred who should have been there were gone with Tarchianotes’ lot.

  ‘Blastares, Procopius, go to the other strategoi and muster their archers too,’ he barked. With a nod, they were off, lurching through the chaos.

  As bedlam reigned all around him, Apion stood still, his gaze fixed on the darkness west of the camp from where the last volley of arrows had come, his ears trained on the noise beyond the camp. He heard some muffled Seljuk cry, directing the riders. Then the thunder of hooves outside the southern gate, then the twanging of bows and hissing of the next volley. Then the noise moved on to the eastern gate.

  He closed his eyes to the gloom of night, and imagined their movements as if seeing the plain from above. An idea came to him.

  ***

  Taylan kicked his mount’s right flank and brought his ghazi wing wheeling round from the western gate. His eyes scoured the orange glow inside the Byzantine camp. They were in disarray. Men stumbled through burning tents, tripped on ropes and fell from their horses as they tried to cope with the deadly hail. They had been sweeping the camp like this for over an hour now – attacking the east gate, the south gate then the west gate in turn – and they each still had one of their four quivers to empty. He kicked his mount into a gentle jump over the pile of some two hundred dead Byzantine spearman lying on the plain. These fools had lost their discipline, bursting from the southern gate to try to snare his riders. They had been peppered with arrows in moments, and the southern gate had lain temptingly unguarded for but a trice.

  Tempting for a fool, perhaps, he grinned. His men had suffered only a few casualties from the arrows of the Oghuz they had surprised south of the camp. And it would stay that way, he mused, for these riders of his would be needed tomorrow . . .

  A thrum of another volley of arrows sounded, then the rhythmic thuds of them meeting their targets inside the western gate. Taylan punched the air, bringing his riders wheeling round. ‘On, to the southern gate once more,’ he cried over his shoulder.

  The men rode adjacent to the camp walls, heads and bodies turned to the palisade walls, almost entranced with their work, plucking arrows from their quivers, nocking, stretching, readying to loose. Taylan raised his sword, readying to chop it down as he gave the order; ‘Loo - ’

  Like a storm wind, something hammered into his back, from the blackness to the east. He flew from his saddle and rolled through the dust, winded. He clutched the arrow that was lodged in the scales of his vest, pulling it free to see it had not pierced flesh. He looked up, confused. All around him, the deadly rattle of arrows striking his men down rang out. Hundreds of his riders rolled through the dirt, shafts quivering in their flanks and backs, horses crumpled, thrashing and bloodied. He scoured the blackness of the plain behind them. Moments later, another volley came. He ducked down. Hundreds more fell. He was pinned to the ground as another two volleys came, felling many more of his riders.

  There was a brief hiatus. Then, from the blackness, he heard a chant. ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’

  The name curdled in his mind. He snarled, snatching his scimitar and leaping onto his horse once more, readying to charge into the darkness and slay the man who had foiled his sortie.

  ‘Bey Taylan!’ a fellow rider grappled his arm. ‘Do not! Remember what happened to Bey Soundaq when he lost his discipline?’

  ‘I must face him!’ Taylan snarled at the man. But he saw that many of his riders had taken to fleeing south, back across the plain towards Mount Tzipan. He threw up his shield arm to catch the worst of the next volley of arrows. As he wheeled his mount away and to the south with them, his mind spun.

  In the blackness, he was sure he heard an eagle crying. He glanced up once, twice and again, his teeth gritted. He saw nothing in the night sky. He remembered the crone from the mustering field at Khoi, felt her words pull at him, forcing him to challenge his every action.

  Slay the Haga and break your mother’s heart, or stow your blade and let go of this false vengeance.

  ‘You gave me a choice of poisons, old woman,’ he roared into the night.

  ***

  Taylan’s roar still rang in the air as Apion stood tall from the spot in the gorse bushes where he and his seven hundred archers had hidden. He looked to the black sky and thanked the waxing moon for staying veiled in cloud and allowing his archers to sneak out here, awaiting the next Seljuk sweep past the southern gate. The ghazi leader had been too predictable with his movements. West, south, east, south then west again – like a dead man swinging on a noose – allowing them to sneak out here while the ghazi arrows rained down at the western gate.

  What he had not expected was that it would be his own son leading those riders. He looked again at the composite bow with which he had loosed the first arrow. In the flitting shafts of moonlight, he had only realised it was Taylan after the shaft had left his bow. He had watched, silenced, as the boy had fallen from his mount then righted himself. A swirl of emotions had overcome him as the toxotai had then emptied their quivers and driven the ghazis off. So his estranged son lived on. Might Fate see to it that they could parley in this far-flung plain in the coming days? He allowed himself to imagine talking with the boy, assuaging his anger. He even allowed himself to imagine Taylan speaking of his mother, telling Apion where in the vastness of the Seljuk realm she now dwelt.

  Then, as if to rubbish his sliver of hope, he heard Taylan’s words from that fraught encounter in northern Persia;

  In every dream, in every waking moment, with every step you take on the battlefield, you should beware. I will be coming for you, Haga. I will not stop. And my mother’s whereabouts? Never!

  One of the archers with him coughed nervously. Apion blinked, then dismissed the men back to the camp. ‘Do what you can to stamp out the rest of the fires and repair any damage, then be sure to get what sleep you can.’

  The men flooded past him towards the camp, while he turned to face south, the darkness and the flatland. Dawn was barely an hour away. The new day was sure to bring the two great armies face to face.

  His eyes fell to the moonlit dust before him and his thoughts spun. A lone eagle’s cry pulled his gaze up to the northern hills, behind the camp. A single shaft of moonlight shone on a lone tamarisk tree there. The eagle cry sounded again, from somewhere up there. Apion strode for his Thessalian.

  18. Into the Fray

  Dawn on Friday 26th August 1071 threw a pinkish-orange light across the plain. One of the sentries walking Manzikert’s battlements was bleary-eyed after the hour or so of sleep he had managed following the chaos of the night raid. He inhaled a lungful of fresh morning air and gazed into the rising sun in an attempt to waken himself, then swept his gaze across the southern flatland, empty bar the dark red stain surrounding the abandoned Armenian trade carts a quarter of a mile outside the camp’s south gate. The last shadows of night still clung to the folds of land further south and . . . he rubbed his eyes once, twice and again, his eyes widening. The shadows were moving. Then the dawn light threw off these last patches of shade and at once he saw what was out there . . . out there and coming for the Byzantine camp. His face paled and he immediately lifted his buccina to his lips with trembling fingers.

  Down in the camp, Sha stumbled from his tent at the first blasts of the horn. His mind was still foggy from the snatched hour or so of sleep as he looked this way and that: thousands more drawn, weary comrades were spilling from their blackened, still-smoking tents, looking around likewise. His first instinct was to locate Apion.

  ‘What the?’ Blastares grunted hoarsely, storming from his tent with the look of a bear that had drained a vat of bad wine.

  ‘An army approaches,’ Procopius croaked, stomping back from the camp gates, throwing a cloak around his shoulders and buckling on his swordbelt.

  ‘Tarchianot
es has returned?’ one skutatos cried out in hope.

  Procopius’ stony features and ensuing silence answered the question.

  Sha hurried to the southern gate with Blastares. There, from the slight elevation of the camp’s walls, he could see it. An army indeed. Like a silvery morning mist, rolling towards the camp from the south. Twenty thousand men if not more. A vast bullhorn of Seljuk riders. A golden bow banner fluttered at their heart. This was not the few thousand who had harassed the camp the previous night. This was the army of the Seljuk Sultan.

  ‘I’d best get my sword then?’ Blastares said flatly, his cheek twitching.

  Realisation swept over the rest of the camp at that moment. Panicked wails broke out; ‘The sultan is here!’ they cried. These laments were only tempered by the barking of commanders and the rattle of weapons and armour being gathered up. A multitude of buccinas keened and men hurried to and fro, all the while the Seljuk line rumbled ever closer. At last, the Byzantine infantrymen and cavalry began to spill out of the camp’s southern gate and onto the plain to form up in a line, readying to face the coming foe. When the Seljuk advance came within half a mile of the Byzantine camp, they slowed and stopped. The shimmering bullhorn formation of their army flattened into a wide line. Waiting, watching.

  Sha, Blastares and Procopius shot anxious glances at this as they barked the Chaldians into order, readying them to leave the camp and join the forming Byzantine lines outside. Sha eyed his depleted tourma – just two banda of skutatoi and a smattering of toxotai, five hundred men altogether. But they were ready. Likewise, Blastares and Procopius had their regiments in order, helms and armour on, shields and spears clutched, bows and quivers ready. But something was missing.

  ‘Where is the Strategos?’ he asked his comrades. Glancing up at the Fortress of Manzikert, he could see Romanus, Philaretos, Alyates and Bryennios on the southern battlements, pointing to maps, hurriedly discussing the makeup of the enemy force. No Apion.

  ‘He didn’t return to his tent last night after seeing off the Seljuk raiders,’ Procopius replied. ‘Took to his horse and rode up into the northern hills,’ the old tourmarches nodded to the gentle green range behind the camp and the fortress. ‘Said he had to talk with someone.’

  Sha gazed into those hills. One distant knoll sported a lone tamarisk tree and fluttering tall grass on its crest. Apart from that the range was bare and deserted. Sha felt an emptiness welling inside him as he pieced together Apion’s thoughts. Perhaps he had chosen not to face his son in battle. And damn any man who condemns you for it, he mouthed, fending off sadness. He turned slowly away from the scene, when a silvery flash from up there caught his eye. On the slopes below the tamarisk tree, a lone rider galloped downhill towards the camp. He could not yet discern the identity of the rider. He did not need to. His face broke out in a broad smile.

  ‘Stand tall, men. Your strategos comes to lead you into battle!’

  ***

  Apion guided his mount down from the hillside, the morning sun prickling his skin and the crone’s words swimming in his thoughts.

  The storm is upon us, Haga. The answers you seek dance within its wrath . . .

  From his vantage point in the hills he had heard the shock that erupted over the Byzantine camp when first light had revealed the Sultan’s dawn move, but he had not shared it. Today had to happen. The two great powers of Byzantium and the Seljuk Sultanate had been on course for this clash for years.

  As he rode past Manzikert’s walls he saw that the beleaguered camp pitched just outside the fortress was nearly empty – the last regiments of the army were spilling out of the south gate to join the broad and deep Byzantine line facing the sultan’s ranks, orchestrated by the keening buccinas and waving imperial standards. The emperor, Philaretos, Igor and a bodyguard of thirty or so Varangoi rode to take their place near a silk command tent that had been erected behind the battle line. Three sections made up the Byzantine line; the centre was composed of the massed ranks of themata spearmen – skutatoi from Cappadocia, Colonea and his own Chaldia – spears bristling, shields interlocked. Prince Vardan and his Armenian spearmen stood with them. The few hundred toxotai were nestled in behind this infantry wall, quivers full, bows strung and ready. The mounted, white-armoured Varangoi and a tourma of Scholae riders milled just behind this serried infantry formation. All in, the centre numbered some seven thousand men. And it was bookended by two tight cavalry wings. Doux Bryennios would command the flankguard on the left. He was mounted at the head of his five thousand western horsemen. Alyates, Strategos of Cappadocia, was to lead the outflankers on the right. There were four thousand riders here. A thousand of them were thematic kataphractoi – armed with lance, blade and mace and wrapped in iron like him, with helms, klibania, greaves and their mounts equally well clad in plate facemasks and scale or baked leather aprons. Two and a half thousand of them were the swifter and more lightly-equipped kursores – carrying shields, light lances, spathions, bows and wearing just leather klibania and helms, their horses free of armour. The mail-clad Norman lancers – four hundred strong – made up the right.

  Behind this fearsome front line and behind even Romanus’ command tent, the mass of the magnate armies were gathering in something more akin to a horde formation than ordered battle lines, infantry standing amongst cavalry, oblivious to the folly of this stance. These private militias had lost several hundred in the arrow storm the previous night, but well over six thousand remained and would form a reserve, Apion realised. They would march some quarter of a mile behind the front line. To be kept back and used as the blunt instrument they are when the time is right, he wondered, or to keep them from disrupting the manoeuvres of the well-drilled imperial troops?

  He saw that Andronikos Doukas sat saddled near Scleros at the head of the magnate army, his hands bound in chains and his head bowed. And he noticed the Oghuz riders who had chosen not to flee during the night were flanking the magnate mass in two wings of five hundred. Perhaps to aid them, or perhaps to police them. Including this reserve, some twenty two thousand men were ready to face the sultan’s horde.

  He rode onto the plain and wheeled along the Byzantine front, headed for the right-centre, his gaze fixed on his Chaldians there. The sharp edge of the anvil. They erupted into a cheer at the sight of their leader. ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’

  He slowed, walking his mount back and forth in front of them, and beheld each of them with flinty eyes. ‘Someone told me the Chaldians had come to battle today?’ he offered them a wry grin. The men cheered at this, pumping the crimson Chaldian banners aloft. ‘They said our ranks were thin and ill-prepared?’ The cheers changed into mocking jeers. ‘But I see before me nearly two thousand whoresons encased in iron, standing like giants, with the eyes of eagles . . . ’ he smashed his fist against his chest, ‘ . . . and the hearts of lions!’

  At this, the ranks exploded in unison. ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’ The roar brought stunned looks from the themata nearby, and stirred the other strategoi and doukes into attempting similar homilies.

  ‘Sir!’ Sha, Blastares and Procopius barked in unison, mounted at the head of their ranks of spearmen and archers. His trusted three trotted over to converge on him. Sha handed him his greaves and mail veil along with iron garb for his horse. ‘I reckoned you’d be in need of these today – I hear you’ll be with the riders on the right?’ The Malian nodded to the three wedges of kataphractoi on Alyates cavalry wing.

  Apion nodded, seeing his fifty Chaldian riders amongst that number. ‘Aye, yet it will feel odd to ride to battle without you three by my side,’ he said as he knelt, looking each of them in the eye as he buckled on his greaves. ‘This will be more fraught than any encounter we have faced together in the past. While we match the Seljuk number, we have never faced as wily an opponent as the sultan in a pitched battle before. He is no ordinary foe.’ He glanced over the shimmering Seljuk lines across the plain. Some twenty thousand glistening warriors, speartips and fluttering banners slipping in and ou
t of the morning heat haze. ‘See how their lines are in three sections,’ he nodded to the enemy. ‘They match us in shape, but not in composition.’

  ‘True,’ Blastares squinted, his bottom lip curling in distaste. ‘Not a single infantryman amongst them.

  ‘Nearly all ghazis. Their mobility will be their strength,’ Sha added, sweeping a finger over the light, nimble and deadly cavalry. They wore helms, lamellar, mail or felt coats, carried vividly painted shields, short lances, scimitars and some bore war hammers or axes. To a man they wore the deadly composite bow and several quivers strapped to their backs.

  ‘I see the sultan’s banner, but I do not see him?’ Procopius said, shielding his eyes from the now fully-risen sun to scour the enemy ranks around the great golden banner.

  ‘There, the sultan will be watching on from the shade, I am sure,’ Apion pointed to a small hummock in the plain a distance behind the Seljuk lines. Atop it, what looked like a silk awning had been set up. Around the base of the hummock, two lustrous rings of soldiers formed a human palisade of sorts. ‘Ghulam riders, the shock cavalry of the sultanate, and no doubt a regiment of akhi spearmen,’ he guessed, pointing at the upper and lower rings. He wondered at what words were being shared under that awning right now, and thought of the shatranj game he had played with Alp Arslan some years ago. He imagined the two opposing armies again like the pieces on the board, he and the sultan looking on, looking for weaknesses. A stiff tension settled over the Chaldian ranks as they noticed their leader’s silence.

  Blastares broke the silence; ‘You know they found a vat of wine in the cellars of Manzikert last night?’

  Sha, Procopius and Apion looked at him with frowns.

  Blastares’ face was granite-serious. Then a craggy grin split it and a sparkle grew in his eye. ‘So tonight, when we’re back here, united, victory had, let’s get utterly shit-faced on it, eh?’