Strategos: Island in the Storm

by Gordon Doherty

  Just then, a stiff northerly breeze picked up. It was at once cool and fiery, throwing up stinging particles of hot dust. A thick cloud of this dust billowed up and shot across the ground towards the ghazi line. The ghazi line, walking south but twisted in their saddles to look and loose north, were cloaked by this dust cloud. Their next volley faltered, arrows driven askew by the gust, pattering harmlessly into the ground. Most of the archers gagged and yelped at the stinging dust, wiping at their eyes, coughing and spluttering. A raucous cheer rose up from the Byzantine lines and the priests took to lifting the Campaign Cross and the Holy Virgin of Blachernae as if claiming responsibility for nature’s intervention.

  ‘Ah, dusk, dawn or on this fine afternoon,’ Alyates beamed. ‘What does it matter when God is with us?’

  Apion pulled a wry smile. ‘If God was with us, then he would have struck Tarchianotes down with some foul pox before this campaign set out. He would have sent Diabatenus’ horse tumbling into a gully. He would have torn the heart from Psellos when he was a child. Thank the men of our ranks, not God,’ he pointed to the infantry in the Byzantine centre. There, Sha led the Chaldians in continuing to scoop up dust in the bottom lips of their shields, tossing it in the air to be caught by the northerly bluster. The men of the other themata and the Armenian spearmen had followed suit. His lips played with a smile as he watched Sha rally them to continue. The Malian was a Strategos in all but name, he realised.

  But Alyates did not hear his words. ‘Look, they come to battle, at last!’ the Cappadocian Strategos cried.

  Apion followed Alyates’ gaze. Indeed, the ghazi riders were sending out packs of riders from their retreating line. Pockets of a few hundred wearing cloths and silks across their faces to protect them from the stinging dust. They swept towards the Byzantine lines, then veered out towards the flanks.

  ‘Outflankers, ready!’ Alyates bellowed to his kursores.

  ‘Harry them,’ Apion said to Alyates, buckling his veil in place again. ‘My kataphractoi will engage, but only if you can draw them close enough to our lines. We must not be drawn into the rocky tracts,’ he insisted, looking to the ever more jutting and jagged folds of land that surrounded each flank of the Byzantine march.

  The first pack of Seljuk riders darted for the Byzantine right like a flock of swallows, coming with light lances levelled as if to charge Alyates’ kursores riders, then, at the last, hurling their spears like javelins and wheeling away. These weighty lances punched a raft of the more lightly armoured kursores from the saddle and a few kataphractoi as well. Alyates led the kursores forward in pursuit, trying to corral the ghazis before they could slip away. The nimble Seljuk riders were swift though, especially with the strengthening wind at their backs.

  ‘Pull back!’ Alyates snarled after a few hundred paces as the ghazis swept up and over one fold of shrub and dust-strewn land to disappear into an unseen dip beyond. A few riders raced on oblivious, and Alyates roared at these. ‘I said pull back!’ he loosed an arrow that whizzed past one disobedient rider’s ear to reinforce the message. Soon, the kursores were back with the right flank.

  ‘They will not tolerate constant harassment, Strategos. And nor will I,’ Alyates growled, seeing the next pack of ghazis coming for them in the same formation. The sight was the same over on the left flank, where Bryennios’ men were being pulled from their lines by these small packs.

  ‘I know. I feel it too. But they must. If our cavalry flanks start disintegrating into these shallow valleys in pursuit of a few hundred riders, our centre will be exposed. And we don’t know what lies in those valleys.’

  Apion scoured the land ahead. Just a half mile onwards, the folds grew more severe and then the steep, green-sided valleys rose up, many of them already pooled with shade as the sun worked its way towards the western horizon. It was a confused and maze-like terrain. He glanced to the Byzantine centre, hoping Romanus would stay true to his plan of retreating instead of entering those valleys. The northerly gust from earlier had now picked up into something of a gale in these corridors of land, circling and sweeping around their legs, pulling on their shields, seeing their banners pulled horizontal, rapping in the squall. And the dust now stung every eye in the battle, Byzantine and Seljuk alike.

  The ghazis continued to retreat in their lines, sending out small packs to continue the harassment. Now Alyates began to lose his cool. The Cappadocian Strategos roared and waved his riders on after the next harrying ghazi pack, chasing sixty of them up to the brow of one gentle valley.

  Apion watched the kursores go. When they slipped over the brow and out of sight, the breath stilled in his lungs. No, you fool! A heartbeat later, the clash of steel and cries of men sounded from beyond that brow. Apion’s blood chilled. Moments later, the kursores reappeared, Alyates leading the retreat, a hundred or more of his riders missing, many more bloodied with gaping wounds. Pursuing them in a frantic gallop - instead of the sixty ghazis they had gone off after – were some fifteen hundred of these riders.

  ‘Ambush!’ one rider cried.

  Apion’s eyes widened, fixed on the lead ghazi. He saw the shaded features under the conical helm, the scale vest, the broad shoulders. Taylan? He mouthed, feeling all else drain from his thoughts. Then the lead ghazi held his head high and the dimming sunlight revealed the snarling, scarred features of an older warrior.

  ‘Riders, fall back!’ Apion cried, stirred from his trance. Alyates and his kursores joined the rest of the Byzantine right in flooding back from the ghazi charge. As one, they bent in behind the infantry centre as if to take shelter.

  ‘Refuse the flank!’ Apion bellowed as he passed the Chaldian infantry at the right of the Byzantine centre. Sha, Blastares and Procopius acted immediately, bringing the Chaldian front swinging back like a great arm to catch the ghazi charge. The ghazis were riding too hard to pull out of their pursuit, and hundreds of them ran onto Sha’s spear line and the volley of rhiptaria loosed from it. Blood shot up as man and mount were run through and screams rang out as riders were catapulted from the saddle.

  Those ghazis who had slowed in time hurried to turn and flee back to the main ghazi line. But as they swung their mounts round they saw only Apion and the cavalry of the Byzantine right sweeping back out from behind the infantry lines and arcing round, blocking their path back to the south.

  Apion focused on the bold Seljuk riders, trapped between Sha’s spear line and his own cavalry charge. Anvil and hammer! he mouthed through gritted teeth as the powerful gale seemed to help him on his way. He grappled his spear tightly and welcomed the flames of the dark door. Then his wedge smashed into the confused sprawl of Seljuk riders, driving them back onto the Chaldian spears, breaking them utterly. He lanced through one man, felt his mail veil being torn off by the hand of another, then felt the others melt away before him. In moments, the brave ghazi ambush of some fifteen hundred riders was little more than a third of that number. Those who could broke south in disarray, Byzantine missiles raining down all around them and Greek jeers ringing in their ears. But a chorus of laments rang out from the Byzantine left. Apion squinted through the dusty evening haze to see that a similar Seljuk ambush on Bryennios’ flankguard had been successful. They had gone too far in pursuit and had not managed to recover the situation. Hundreds of kataphractoi and kursores lay in broken heaps as the victorious ghazi band over there swept away to the south, whooping and punching the air in delight as they moved to re-join the main line of slowly retreating Seljuk riders.

  ‘We must turn around,’ Apion growled over the howling wind, wiping the gore from his face, seeing the sun sliding away.

  ‘Aye, the valleys are growing steep and the light is fading,’ Alyates agreed, his hair matted with blood, his arm torn badly from a Seljuk blade.

  ‘Let me speak with the emperor,’ he said.

  Alyates nodded. ‘Be swift, Strategos. You are needed here.’

  Apion nodded briskly, then kicked his mount into a gallop across the Byzantine front, heading fo
r the centre. The Chaldians, the Armenian spearmen and then the ranks of the other themata lofted then waved their spears and banners like wheat stalks in a breeze to salute him. ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’ they chanted.

  Apion heard nothing of them, focusing only on Romanus, ringed by the Varangoi, with Igor and Philaretos by his side. He barged through, the Rus axemen recognising him soon enough. ‘Basileus, we must end this pursuit.’

  ‘Yes we must,’ Romanus admitted, his cobalt eyes defiant, his flaxen locks whipping in the gale. ‘The sun is almost gone. Worse, I fear the ambuscades we have stumbled over so far are but a hint of what lies further south.’

  Apion followed the emperor’s gaze. The land ahead was treacherous, with tracts of volcanic rock jutting from the valley floor like waves in a foaming sea, churning in the squall. Overlooking this rough ground was a jutting outcrop of rock. A clutch of silhouetted figures watched from up there. One was crouched, wearing a Seljuk war helm and a white shroud, billowing in the wind. Alp Arslan. Beside him was another, broad shouldered, the setting sun’s halo dancing from his outline, shimmering on the scales of his familiar vest. Taylan?

  ‘Our riders will crush the sultan’s forces tomorrow, then,’ Romanus boomed, disguising well his doubts over how they would feed themselves tonight. ‘Bring up the banners, signal across the lines for an ordered retreat,’ he called to his signophoroi. ‘We are to return to the camp.’

  For the briefest of moments, Apion felt a wave of relief. Then, from high above, an eagle shrieked. A piercing, chilling shriek of warning.

  ***

  Alp Arslan watched the Byzantine manoeuvre studiously from the rocky outcrop, crouched on one knee, smoothing his moustache, the gale singing around him like an army of wraiths. In the broad, uneven land below, the purple imperial banner had been raised aloft, then turned to face northwards at the tune of three buccina blasts. Like a great silvery creature coming about, the Byzantines halted. Spears were raised, shields clattered and men turned about face as they readied to march back to Manzikert and their camp. In response, his ghazi line had now halted their slow retreat just under the jutting hill, their commanders looking up, waiting on some signal from him and his best men.

  And now I must choose, Alp Arslan mused. Retire for another day of battle tomorrow, or risk an attack upon the Byzantine retreat? He looked to the purple-pink dusk sky, streaked with scudding clouds, and wondered if it was woefully late to ask for Allah’s wisdom. Grain and fodder in the Seljuk column and in the granaries of Chliat was all but gone. A day of hesitation might be a death knell to them all. He thought of all that his rival, Yusuf, might do with news that he had failed in this long-awaited clash with the Byzantine Emperor.

  ‘Sultan, what should we do?’ Bey Gulten asked. ‘Why do they turn?’

  ‘It is just as it was at the Cilician Gates,’ Taylan said flatly. ‘The emperor turns because he fears the night.’

  ‘He turns,’ Alp Arslan growled, ‘because he is not a fool.’

  Taylan paced over to Alp Arslan and crouched by his side. ‘My riders are fresh, eager. Give the word, Sultan.’

  ‘You want to lead your riders into a spear wall?’ Alp Arslan gestured towards the men who would form the rear of the ordered Byzantine retreat – readying to pace backwards and present their spears and shields at any minded to attack. ‘You would lead your riders into a pit of fire just to strike him down, wouldn’t you?’

  Taylan balked at this, his dark locks whipping across his face. ‘I . . . I must face him. I am Taylan bin Nas-’

  ‘Bey Nasir once told me that he and the Haga were like brothers. They swore to die for one another.’

  Taylan looked away, scouring the slow turnaround of the Byzantine lines. The dusk light betrayed the tears building in his eyes. ‘I miss him. He loathed me but I miss him every day.’

  ‘Bey Nasir loved you. He loathed himself for being unable to show it. It destroyed him.’

  ‘No, the Haga destroyed him.’

  Alp Arslan grasped his shoulders. ‘His hatred is what destroyed him. In the end he ran onto the Haga’s blade, despite his old friend trying to spare him. Why do you waste your life, trying to repeat such folly?’

  Taylan’s eyes provided an answer before his lips moved. ‘Because Nasir was not my father.’

  Alp Arslan frowned. ‘Then who . . . ’ his words trailed off, the glint of dusk light in Taylan’s green eyes enough to piece it all together. Until now, he had thought Taylan to be just one of that rare breed with bright eyes that came about every so often amongst his people. ‘No!’

  Taylan nodded. ‘It is true.’

  Alp Arslan’s eyes widened, his very marrow chilling. ‘You are the Haga’s son?’

  ‘Aye,’ Taylan said, standing tall. ‘And now you know. I am the bastard who reminded Nasir each and every day of his shame.’

  The sultan searched for the right words to reply. The gale screamed around them. ‘Taylan, if there was one thing Bey Nasir would have wanted for you . . . it would be to unburden you of these troubles.’ He saw the confusion in the boy’s eyes, then grasped his shoulders. ‘Let go of the past, let go of . . . ’

  Just then, a shrill Greek voice cried out from the Byzantine lines, below; ‘The emperor has been slain!’

  Alp Arslan and Taylan were torn from their exchange, both men’s eyes shooting to the source of the cry.

  His retinue hurried to crane over the edge of the jutting outcrop with them, gawping, their eyes disbelieving at the sight of the Byzantine lines – in chaos, the neat rear-facing spear line of moments ago disintegrating. And the cry sounded again by many others;

  ‘The emperor has fallen! God has deserted us!’

  Nobody there spoke for some time, until Taylan broke the spell;

  ‘Now, Sultan, you must give the word. Set my White Falcons loose.’

  ***

  Palladius the toxotes tilted the wide brim of his hat up and squinted up at the front-centre of the Byzantine line, the wind stinging his eyes. He saw the furiously flapping imperial standard turning round and heard the buccina blasts. An ordered retreat? This was unexpected. A tense hiatus was followed by concerned murmuring. It seemed that none had expected this.

  Men pushed and shoved all around him, eager to get into their positions. This would see the majority of the army turn to face north, while the current front ranks would remain south facing, but march backwards to present shields and spears against any attack from the rear. It required composure, discipline and perfect timing to execute.

  He saw that many of the men were craning their necks to catch sight of the emperor, keen to see him confirm this order. He heard the men nearby rally their ranks with cries of; ‘About-face! Ordered retreat!’

  Here at the back ranks of the Colonean Thema, Palladius had seen little of the battle so far, merely watching the front ranks of the infantry centre suffer the constant barrage of Seljuk arrows. He had been paid a fine campaign purse just to do this. Now, however, he saw an opportunity to make a far larger purse– a sum that would see him able to afford a villa in the Bithynian countryside and leave behind the squalor of his Colonean shack. He heard the continuing concerned babble from the ranks and filled his lungs. Then he let loose a cry that echoed above all others and above the gale;

  ‘The emperor has been slain!’

  There was a momentary silence, then chaos broke out all around him. Men echoed the cry and laments broke out. He smiled and pulled the rim of his archer’s cap down to hide his face. He had always had a strong voice. Now he could use it to call upon his slaves in his new villa.

  ***

  Apion swung round at the cry, his blood turning to ice, sure he had misheard over the squall. Then it was repeated, once, twice and then again, spreading like a wildfire through a dry forest.

  ‘The emperor has fallen! The Seljuks have his head!’ In moments, the ordered retreat had descended into panic. Skutatoi who had already turned to face north believed the cries and – fearing that some Se
ljuk attack had penetrated into the men behind them and slain their glorious leader, broke for the north. As soon as the first few did this, panic grasped the others. Men trampled over men, shouting, cursing. Some fell, snapping their lances, spraining their ankles, being trampled by their comrades. In moments, the tidy, ordered centre had disintegrated into a swarm of fleeing men, breaking around those who stood firm. Even the men marching in reverse to cover the rear seemed shaken by the cries, some fleeing too despite seeing that the emperor was in fact nearby, alive and well amidst his ring of varangoi.

  Apion spun to meet Romanus’ disbelieving gaze. ‘Raise the banner, call to them, show them you are well!’ he cried. Romanus was already waving the purple banner frantically, having snatched it from the signophoroi to perform the duty himself.

  But still riders and archers continued to flee for the north, blind to the truth and fuelled by panic. Of the centre, only the Varangoi, the Chaldian Thema and the Armenians with them held their fragmented lines, though many were on the verge of panic, seeing the chaos that had erupted right next to them.

  ‘Sir!’ Sha cried over the thunder of boots and laments and the howling wind. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Maintain the retreat, Tourmarches. Blastares, Procopius – keep the men at a steady retreat and bring them together to close the gaps!’ Apion yelled.

  But beyond the Chaldians, he saw Alyates crying out to his riders. The kursores had seen the centre crumble and break for the north and they too had set off in panic – many hundreds of them – and this left a glaring gap between the remaining outflankers and the infantry centre. He flicked his gaze to the Byzantine left; Bryennios’ western tagmata riders had kept their discipline and were holding their lines, but for how long?

  ‘Basileus, we can still retreat well if we form a narrower line and pull our remaining men together. The left is good, but the right is about to break.’ He glanced this way and that. In these few panicked moments, the Byzantine front line had thinned drastically to just seven thousand men – more than six thousand having broken into flight. ‘If we can stabilise this retreat, we can rally the deserters back to us.’