Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

by Gordon Doherty

  Shaking the distraction from his thoughts, Nasir snatched a torch from the sapper who stood beside the tunnel’s entrance. Then he strode into its depths, the serpent of men diving underground with him. He marched past the collection of Persian workers, still fitting and making good the timber struts that held the tunnel in place. The tunnel descended sharply until the rock was damp and cool and the gloomy corridor rattled with the echo of iron and crunching boots. Then, when they reached one set of struts with a turquoise rag tied around each side, Nasir raised a hand. They were nearly under the walls of Kryapege.

  At once they slowed the pace of the march, cupping their weapons gingerly, padding forward in near silence. They continued like this for several hundred feet, noticing the tunnel rise again, towards ground level. Then, up ahead in the torchlight a wall of red earth and rubble appeared, marking the tunnel’s end. This section was heavily strutted, given the proximity to the surface. Nasir grinned; from here, his column could spill into the heart of the Byzantine town and seize the walls under cover of darkness.

  ‘How far?’ he whispered to the head sapper.

  The burly, moustachioed man wiped the sweat from his brow and squinted. ‘Seven feet,’ he replied, jabbing a finger upwards. ‘With my best men I can break through very soon.’

  Nasir gave him a cold nod. ‘Then you must begin at once.’

  Nasir turned to his waiting men, raising a clenched and shaking fist. ‘Let every swing of your blades stain the earth with Byzantine blood,’ he hissed through gritted teeth. Then he raised one finger. ‘But leave the Haga. For he is mine to slay!’

  ***

  Apion stood in near-darkness. Expressionless iron masks hovered all around him in the chill, a faint orange underglow betraying their unforgiving, empty-eyed stares. He thought again of the past. He thought of the few he had once loved, and then the countless number he had slain since those precious few were taken from him. A ghost of that past was coming for him now.

  Then the darkness and the silence were pierced by a dull, almost apologetic chink of iron upon rock, directly in front of him.

  It was time.

  At once, his gaze sharpened. He placed his helm on his head, the three black eagle feathers jutting from the crest and the cool, iron scale aventail slithering down his neck like an asp’s skin. He squared his shoulders, the iron plates of his klibanion rustling and his crimson cloak slipping back from his shoulders as he did so. He rested his palm on the ivory hilt of old Mansur’s scimitar and glared into the darkness. In the void, a vision formed of a dark, arched doorway, the orange glow behind it beckoning him forward, a sibilant voice beyond it taunting him. This image had plagued him even before his first days of war, the voice drawing him into the hell that lay behind the timbers. He knew for certain that he would walk in those flames today.

  ‘Ready?’ he hissed to the iron masks around him.

  The masks nodded in silence.

  Let the past come for me.

  ***

  The air was growing stale and thin in the tunnel, and Nasir’s breath came and went like fire in the gloom. His teeth grated as he watched the head sapper and his engineers chip carefully at the rock face. They were heartbeats from seizing victory. A breath from ending the Haga’s days, he enthused, his grimace bending into a rapacious grin. Then he frowned.

  The head sapper was stepping back from the tunnel end, confusion pinching his features.

  Nasir followed the man’s gaze; the centre of the rock face had crumbled away under the sapper’s chiselling. But instead of more rock as expected, a hole the size of a coin had appeared. Darkness lay beyond.

  ‘We should still have another six feet to go, should we not?’ one hunchbacked sapper asked his leader. ‘Did we misjudge our depth?’

  The head sapper shook his head, pushed his eye to the hole. Then he twisted round to Nasir, his face pale, his mouth agape and his pupils dilated in panic.

  The breath caught in Nasir’s lungs as an acrid tang curled into his nostrils from the opening. For just a heartbeat, the tunnel was deathly silent. Then his eyes bulged in realisation. He swept his hands up. ‘Back . . . BACK!’

  The roar had barely left his lips when an almighty crash shook the tunnel. At once, the tunnel end crumbled like a falling veil. The coin-sized hole became a gaping maw from which a clutch of demons glared out, a dull orange light dancing across their iron faces. Then the dust of the fallen rock swept over the Seljuks. Nasir staggered back, gagging and wiping at his eyes.

  As the dust settled, he saw the reality of what stood inside the countermine – men in iron masks, conical helms and klibania. A pair at either side held miniature battering rams, still caked in the dust of the thin partition they had just demolished. The band of them in the centre carried iron canisters under one arm and held leather-bound iron siphons in the other, gentle flames licking from the ends.

  Siphonarioi. The dreaded Greek fire throwers.

  In their midst stood an amber-bearded warrior with three black eagle feathers on his helmet, his deep-set eyes shaded under a dipped brow.

  The Haga raised one hand, and it was enough to send the Seljuk warriors scrambling backwards, toppling over one another.

  ‘At them!’ Nasir screamed, ripping his blade from its sheath to rally his men.

  But his words were drowned out by a thunderous roar as the Haga dropped his hand and the siphonarioi unleashed their fury. The tunnel was filled with wrathful orange plumes and an acerbic black smoke. The akhi warriors fled in panic, screaming, many ablaze from head to toe as the fire clung to them like wet clay. In moments, blackened bodies fell to their knees and then toppled to the dust.

  Nasir pressed up against the tunnel-side behind one strut. His skin was tormented by the searing heat but he was untouched by the spouting flames. Cutting out the glare of the blaze through narrowed eyes, he saw the Haga watching the destruction like a scavenger waiting for the predator to finish its meal. Then at last the siphons fell silent, leaving a carpet of fire and thrashing men. With a roar, Nasir leapt out from the strut and charged over the flames. He pushed past the screaming inferno that was the chief sapper and leapt for the Haga, scimitar raised over his left shoulder.

  In a flash of iron, the Haga spun to him, ripping his own blade from its scabbard. They clashed at the edge of the carpet of fire. The flames licked at their boots. Their swords met in a screech of iron, sparks dancing and adding to the fiery hell all around them. For the briefest of moments, the pair’s faces were inches apart, grimacing as they fought for supremacy, each pushing their blade towards the other. Nasir’s lips trembled with rage as he saw the Haga’s features illuminated in the firelight; the callous emerald eyes that had haunted his every thought. At last, Nasir slid his blade from the contest and ducked back. As the Haga stumbled forward under his own momentum, Nasir ripped his scimitar up, the tip scoring across his foe’s face. The Haga staggered back from the blow, but he was unblinking, his face set like stone despite the blood that washed from the bridge of his nose and his cheek. Then Nasir lunged forward, the tip of his blade plunging towards his enemy’s heart.

  At the last, the Haga swept his scimitar up and parried, then he drove forward, deftly and fiercely, swiping his blade in a flurry of silver. Nasir felt the force of each blow and could only parry. In moments, he had been driven back into the carpet of fire and then he tripped over the smoking corpse of the head sapper. He flailed, toppling into the blaze.

  The flames enveloped the right side of his face, clinging to his flesh. Unearthly pain gripped him. He scrambled back from the blaze to the strut behind which he had sheltered. There he beat at the flames until at last his skin was free of them. Over his own screaming, he heard a lone voice.

  ‘It doesn’t have to end like this, Nasir. Leave, while you still can,’ the Haga spoke.

  Nasir winced at the stinging agony and the pungent stench of melted flesh on his face. He looked up across the carpet of flames, dipped his brow and pinned his nemesis with a gim
let stare. Then he gripped his scimitar, readying to strike again. At this, the Haga shook his head in resignation, then turned and nodded to the men carrying the battering rams.

  With a crash, they battered at the nearest struts of the Seljuk tunnel. The wooden posts cracked and bent and a shower of earth and rock rained down around Nasir in a grim portent. Through the tumbling rocks, Nasir fixed the Haga with his glare, raising his scimitar point like an accusing finger. Then he turned, just as the battering rams shattered the struts completely. This time the tunnel capitulated. Nasir leapt back from the rockfall and fled back through the tunnel, leaping over the charred corpses of his men, hearing the abruptly severed screams of the stricken that were caught under the collapsing earth.

  He burst from the end of the tunnel, only paces ahead of the collapse, then toppled to his knees, panting. Rubble and dust shot out of the tunnel behind him and then the entrance collapsed too. All around him were the few of his tunnelling party that had escaped. They lay blackened and groaning like shards of a shattered blade.

  Nasir struggled to his feet, batting away the helping hands of his men, some bringing balms and bandages. He lifted his scimitar and looked upon his reflection. The skin was gone from his jaw and cheek, and the sinew and muscle underneath was blistered and angry, while the white of one eye was blood-red and bulging. A voice barged into his thoughts uninvited. The ghosts of his past have all but destroyed him . . . when you next look upon a mirror, think upon those words. He shook the crone’s musings from his mind with a low growl. The pain and the disfigurement were a fine price to pay if it meant the Haga would be slain today.

  Then he heard a faint chanting rise from within the walls of Kryapege.

  ‘Nobiscum Deus!’ mixed with ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’

  He turned his searing gaze upon the town.

  ***

  Apion and two skutatoi bundled the trio of captured Seljuk akhi from the countermine, then on through the lower town and towards the eastern gate. The Chaldian soldiers and the native garrison alike chanted and cheered as he passed, their breath clouding in the dawn chill. Even the townsfolk joined in, roused from doubtless fitful sleeps, hope sparkling in their eyes at last.

  Stow your hopes and be ready to fight for your lives, he thought as he marched through them. His body still trembled with shock from the clash with Nasir, and the dark door lay ajar in his thoughts. Today was far from over.

  The skutatoi shoved the three captured akhi up the stairs onto the battlements and Apion followed. There, he looked to the east. The first orange of dawn licked at the horizon, framing the plume of dust that stretched from the mouth of the collapsed Seljuk tunnel. He saw that Nasir’s men were in disarray. For the briefest of moments, he considered the possibility that these three prisoners could live beyond today. Then the chanting behind him fell to silence, and the dry cackle from behind the dark door rattled through his thoughts as if mocking him for his naiveté.

  He felt all eyes upon him: the soldiers of the thema, looking to their strategos; the people of the town, desperate for a show of authority. Apion looked over his shoulder and shared a glance with his tourmarchai. Sha, Blastares and Procopius offered him stony looks, knowing what had to come next. Without ceremony, Apion drew the dagger from his belt and wrapped a forearm around the chest of the middle of the three akhi, while the two skutatoi did likewise with the remaining pair.

  Apion composed himself. The Seljuk prisoner had been stripped of his weapons and his skin was black with soot, his eyes wide with terror. He could feel the man’s heart thundering through his horn vest. Apion felt pity pawing at his chest for an instant, then shook the emotion clear and steeled himself.

  As the sun slowly breached the horizon, he felt its warmth on his face. He leaned in to whisper in the man’s ear, speaking in the Seljuk tongue. ‘It was a brave act to march into that tunnel, and I commend you for that. But I cannot release you, for my people would strip the flesh from your bones before you even reached the gates. And I cannot send you into slavery, for I know only too well the horrors a man can suffer at the hands of a Byzantine master.’ With that, he pressed the dagger against the man’s throat. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Your god will never forgive you,’ the Seljuk croaked as the two skutatoi either side despatched their prisoners swiftly.

  Apion hesitated for but a moment, his eyes falling to the white band of skin around his wrist. At once, his heart hardened. ‘Tell me,’ he whispered into the akhi’s ear. ‘Who is my god?’

  With a swift wrench of his wrist, it was over. The Seljuk’s hot blood flooded across his arm and he caught the man’s weight, lowering his body to the battlements. He crouched there for a moment, shame creeping over his heart. Then he looked out to the enemy lines, already being marshalled into position for a frontal assault on the eastern walls. As the Seljuk war horns wailed out, he sought out the figure of Nasir, standing in their midst.

  What choice did you give me?

  ***

  All along the Seljuk lines, laments rang out at seeing their comrades executed. Eyes turned this way and that, then, almost universally, they looked to Nasir. They looked at his mutilated features with a mixture of horror and expectation.

  The blood pounded in Nasir’s ears. He looked along his readied lines as the rising sun bathed his ranks from behind. The gentle heat stung like fire on the melted flesh of his face.

  ‘Ready the artillery, ready the men. This town will be razed into the dust by noon!’

  At this, a raucous cheer filled the air.

  Nasir raised his left hand.

  ‘Catapults, ready!’

  At this, the crew around the six bulky timber frames groaned, taking the strain, bending the stone-throwing arms back.

  ‘Ready!’ they cried.

  Then Nasir raised his right hand.

  ‘Trebuchets, ready!’

  ‘Ready!’ The crews around the two hulking devices responded, fifteen pairs of men straining at the end of the ropes, holding the giant timber throwing arms almost at their full stretch.

  Nasir’s brow dipped and he threw both hands forward, towards the walls of Kryapege.

  ‘Destroy them!’

  A deafening cheer filled the plain as the two sets of crews pulled down on their devices to gain every last morsel of extra power before letting loose their load of rocks.

  This was the fatal mistake.

  All along the lines of the Seljuk artillery, sharp cracking rang out as the tensed ropes split. The ropes whipped up from the devices and the throwing arms spluttered, dropping their payload or hurling it weakly or wildly askew. One crew was struck with the lashing ropes of their device, the lead crewman’s eyes dashed out by the ferocity of the thrashing tether. Another could only gawp in terror as the massive boulder on his catapult hopped up just a few feet before coming down upon him, crushing him like an egg.

  Only one crew’s device remained intact – having been a fraction slower than their comrades. The lead crewman examined the ropes, then spun to his leader. ‘The ropes have been half sawn!’

  Nasir’s eyes bulged as he looked across his line of siege engines, hanging limply like snapped branches after a storm. Then he yelled back at the men of the last trebuchet; ‘Loose your weapon!’

  ‘It will fall short of the battlements,’ the man started.

  ‘Do it!’ Nasir bellowed.

  The man nodded, then barked his crew into loosing at less than full stretch. The timber arm swung round and hurled a jagged limestone block towards the walls. The distant Byzantines on the battlements to the right of the eastern gate watched in silence, only scattering moments before the missile smashed into the base of the walls below them. Dry and in extreme disrepair, this section of wall shuddered and crumbled. The few sentries too slow to disperse toppled with the stone and were crushed, their screams drowned out by the thunderous collapse. As the dust cleared, the lower town of Kryapege was revealed through the gaping fissure – wider than any other on the decrepit walls
.

  At this, a roar erupted from the watching Seljuk ranks.

  Nasir drew his scimitar and raised it overhead. ‘Forward!’

  The akhi burst into life, their boots drumming on the dust, spears levelled, eyes peering over shield rims. The camel archers followed closely, forming a thin line behind the infantry. Screening the rear, seven hundred strong, were the ghazi riders who heeled their mounts into a gentle canter, their faces etched with anticipation as they picked arrows from their full quivers and nocked them to their bows. Nearly two thousand men washed towards Kryapege’s walls.

  Nasir leapt onto his mare and raced to the head of the ghazis. ‘With me!’ he cried to a group of forty of the riders, waving them to the front. ‘Put your bows away, today you will use your swords and lances as we drive the Byzantines onto the spears of our akhi.’ He twisted to the rest of the riders. ‘The rest of you, stay to the rear and let the Byzantines feel the pain of an arrow storm!’ he roared, punching the air.

  ‘Allahu Akbar!’ the Seljuk ranks cried out in reply, then burst into a chorus of ululating battle cries.

  Nasir led his forty riders to the fore. He scanned the battlements and was pleased with what he saw. There were even fewer Byzantine soldiers than he had anticipated. The precious kataphractoi riders were penned inside the town now and could not use their might on the open plain to threaten his army. There were barely fifty men stretched across the walls – all toxotai. Then, for the second time that morning, doubt gripped his gut like an iron fist. The Byzantines were few indeed – too few. One toxotes atop the gatehouse seemed to be watching their advance intently, and he was gripping something – a red rag. Then the man held it in the air and swiftly swiped it from side to side.