Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

by Gordon Doherty

  His smile faded instantly.

  Three gawping, grey heads rested on stakes atop the gatehouse, gazing out to the east. Veins and strings of congealed blood hung from their necks. Shame snaked through his thoughts once more.

  It was the three Seljuk akhi he had brought to the walls to be slain. He had ended their lives. That, he could justify. He had justified it to the man whose throat he had cut. But what he had done after the battle, when Nasir’s arrow wound was still fresh, when he had stood in the fire beyond the dark door . . . that, he could not justify.

  He could still remember the sound of his own half-panting, half-growling as he had stormed back into the town, hobbled up to the battlements where the bodies lay, drawn his scimitar and desecrated the corpses.

  He turned his gaze from the heads and held up the dagger blade, gazing at the creature that stared back at him.

  An eagle cried out from high above the town.

  Apion saw the silver-haired crone in the dagger blade. She sat silently by his side. Her milky, sightless eyes were fixed on him, unblinking. ‘It has been some time since we last spoke,’ he nodded faintly to her.

  ‘You sought revenge, Apion. You drank the bitter foulness from its cup,’ she said. ‘You thought you could do so and then purge it from your life. Yet you found that once you have bathed in blood, the urge to spill it follows you forever more. It is a cycle I have long since grown weary of watching. It draws the worst from good men.’ She extended a bony finger to the three impaled heads. ‘Those men should have been buried, their bodies intact.’

  ‘I know this,’ Apion said stoically, spinning his dagger on its tip. ‘Why do you remind me of my lot?’

  Her sightless eyes seemed to search his face. ‘I could remind you of much more. It has been twelve years since we last spoke. I have watched over you in that time. I have seen the grim deeds you have carried out or that have been performed by others at your behest. There have been noble exploits at times,’ she nodded in concession, ‘but always, your anger and hatred have brought shame upon you with your actions.’

  ‘So you come to chide me?’ Apion turned to her, frowning.

  ‘No, not to chide you. I thought the darkness had consumed you entirely but I see that a chink of light remains. I come to offer you hope.’

  ‘Hope? Hope is not a word to be used carelessly,’ Apion offered her a mirthless half-grin. He swept a hand out across the surrounding countryside. ‘With every passing day, hope dies in men’s hearts all across these lands. Our borders are guarded by mercenaries who care little for those they protect,’ then he cast a half-scowl over his shoulder to the west, ‘and our emperor sponsors this. All the people of these lands have left is their God.’ He ground his dagger into the mortar between two pieces of stone. ‘So tell me, what hope can you offer?’

  She paused, her expression falling stony. ‘I have seen a future where this land can be free of struggle, for you and for all. But once again, Fate toys with me, showing me only what might be, dangling half-truths and allusions before me.’

  ‘You have offered me wise words in the past, old lady. But you trouble me with riddles today. And today I have enough troubles and my mind is already awash with riddles. Please, if you have been blessed with the knowledge of what is to be, then tell me.’

  The crone cackled shrilly, her eyes bulging, her lips rolling back to reveal worn and yellowed teeth. ‘Ah, to hear a man speak of foresight as if it is a boon – that is rich indeed. If you were plagued with the knowledge of what might be then, truly, your life would be troubled indeed, and your mind would never be free from torment.’ She tapped her temple with a bony finger. ‘Believe me, I speak from experience.’

  Apion sighed. ‘But you have something to tell me, else you would not have come to me?’

  She nodded, then turned to the east. ‘I see a future where a great conquest has taken place. A battlefield by a vast lake lies soaked in blood. A great leader has fallen. This land is no longer in torment.’

  Apion’s eyes widened and he searched the crone’s face, waiting on some bitter twist. But there was none. ‘The conflict can end?’

  She nodded in silence.

  He mused over her words again and frowned. ‘But you do not say who the victor is?’

  She gazed through him. ‘It is not the victor that matters, Apion, but the outcome. A time of peace across Anatolia. A chance for this land to know summer after winter, free of bloodshed.’

  ‘You speak of a dream I have lived only in my early years,’ Apion spoke absently, then his frown returned and he shook his head. ‘But you must also see the victor, surely? What use is the knowledge that one runner will win a race, or that a dice will yield a number?’

  The crone sighed and nodded in resignation, her features lengthening. Then she fixed Apion with her milky glare. ‘I see a battlefield by an azure lake flanked by two mighty pillars. Walking that battlefield is Alp Arslan. The mighty Mountain Lion is . . . dressed in a shroud.’

  Apion’s eyes widened and darted.

  ‘Be wary of what you take from my words,’ she added quickly. ‘Many men have met their end by reading good from ill-omens. Many more have thrown their lives away by sensing wickedness from the mildest of portents.’

  ‘That is the lot of any man. I accept this,’ Apion said. ‘But that you have come to me tells me that you have also seen my part in this future?’

  ‘Aye,’ she nodded, ‘since the first time we spoke, and all throughout the dark years of war, I knew you would be part of it.’

  ‘Part of what?’ Apion leaned closer to her.

  She grasped his wrist. ‘Stay strong, Haga, for the Golden Heart will rise in the west. At dawn, he will wear the guise of a lion hunter. At noon, he will march to the east as if to counter the sun itself . . . ’

  Apion shuffled, his lips readying to speak.

  The crone held up a finger, silencing his coming words. ‘ . . . at dusk you will stand with him in the final battle, like an island in the storm.’

  Apion’s eyes became shaded under a frown. ‘What does it mean?’ he sighed.

  ‘I can offer you no more than this,’ she said with candour, ‘for this is all that Fate dangles before me.’

  ‘But where should I go to find this . . . Golden Heart?’ he asked.

  ‘Go where you feel you must, Apion. If it is meant to be, then you will meet him.’ Her face grew sullen. ‘It seems that to defy Fate you must also submit to his whims.’

  Apion made to protest, then caught the words in his throat and nodded with a sigh. ‘I think I am beginning to understand your torment, old lady. Very well,’ he prodded his dagger to the east. ‘Tomorrow, once my men are rested, we will make haste to Caesarea. Many citizens and men of my ranks are trapped within Bey Afsin’s siege lines.’ Then he sighed and added through gritted teeth. ‘As is Doux Fulco.’

  ‘He is as good as dead, Apion,’ she spoke gravely. ‘This is no vision. This is a fact. His craven heart has led him inside the city’s walls. He would have been as well sealing himself in his own grave. He and the people inside cannot be saved.’

  Apion nodded. ‘But I must try.’

  Her puckered face at last creased into a smile. ‘And that is what makes you what you are, under all those layers of bitterness, a flicker of light in the darkness. That is why I know you can be saved. That,’ she placed a hand over her heart, ‘is why I know you can defy Fate.’

  Apion felt warmth in his own heart at this, as if she had placed her hand there. He looked coyly down to his dagger blade once more, surprised to see a smile in his reflection. ‘By all accounts my path will be long and arduous. But tell me, old woman, was there ever a future for me where war did not hold sway?’ In his heart, he imagined Maria, alive and in his arms. The sweet scent of her skin, the warmth of her touch. Their children playing around them. His eyes moistened.

  The crone’s lips moved as if to speak, but then she hesitated. ‘We will talk again, Apion,’ she said at last, ‘when the ti
me is right.’

  He looked up with a frown, but the crone was gone.

  The deep-red sky yielded nothing but the distant screech of an eagle.

  ***

  The Seljuk-held city of Hierapolis dominated the arid plain of northern Syria. Its old, Byzantine walls were lined with an akhi garrison, and the vividly tiled minarets and the dome of the great mosque glistened in the rich sunset. High on the acropolis mount, the mighty limestone citadel stretched for the heavens, topped by the fluttering golden bow banners of the sultanate.

  But the city was merely a speck on the western horizon for the Seljuk women of Hierapolis, washing their garments in the shallows of the River Euphrates at this hour when the sun was less fierce. Most gossiped as they worked, laughing or, more commonly, lamenting their absent husbands. One woman worked alone.

  She wore a fine, dark-red silk robe. Her slave girl had laid this out for her in the morning. The girl had insisted on washing these garments, but her mistress had said no, insisting the slave should remain in their modest villa to rest, eat and build up the strength she so clearly lacked since they had bought her. So the woman had come here alone, ignoring the glances fired at her from the various cliques of jabbering wives and slaves. The wife of a bey, deigning to dip her fine hands in the river?

  When she had finished washing each piece, she wrung the river water from it before bashing it against the rock. She reached out and lifted the next robe, humming a tune her father had once taught her – this helped block out the jabbering and whispering around her. The melody conjured up memories of the days when she would sit on Father’s knee and the goat kids would skip nearby as they sung it together. A smile spread across her face at this. Then a meadow brown butterfly fluttered down to rest on the tip of a reed in the shallows before her. For a moment, she stopped washing, admiring the creature.

  When she caught sight of her reflection in the momentarily still shallows, a tinge of sadness stung behind her nose. She saw the lines to the sides of her eyes and the few strands of silver in her charcoal hair. She was not her father’s little girl anymore. Worse was the thought that she could no longer remember what her father had looked like. A coldness set around her heart as she remembered the last time she had seen him. The blood seeping from his awful wounds, the life slipping from him. She blinked away the thoughts before they could materialise and set about scrubbing at the robe vigorously and in silence. The butterfly fled in fright.

  Then a distant wail echoed across the plain from the west. She shivered at the noise, then turned to see a party of ghazi riders race out from Hierapolis’ gates. They were little more than a blur of hooves, speartips and dust cloud as they thundered across the plain towards the north-west. The Antitaurus Mountains loomed there, silhouetted by the sunset. Beyond them were the borderlands with Byzantium. Out there, somewhere far over the horizon, her husband roamed with his warband, eager to spill Byzantine blood.

  Bey Afsin is the true leader of the Seljuk people – where Alp Arslan hesitates, Afsin is ready and willing to strike down our enemies!

  She turned back to her washing, shaking her head at the memory of her husband’s rant. Such a thinly veiled guise for his true motives. The playful boy she had grown up with, the young man she had once loved, had been consumed by bitterness.

  I have brought you wealth and a fine home, have I not? Is that not enough? he would say.

  ‘When we were young and in love, we had nothing,’ she muttered, her gaze lost in the waters of the Euphrates.

  Love. The words lingered in her thoughts. Once again, the sorrow stung at her eyes and her mind drifted to the past. She saw a face from those lost days. A face she thought of like this every day. The Byzantine boy father had brought to the farm. They had lived together for a few years. First she had loved him like a brother, then they had been lovers. Despite all that had happened since those days, he was never far from her thoughts.

  She heard a laboured sighing behind her. Turning, she saw a portly old woman – one of the few less inclined to gossiping about her presence at the river – struggling to carry her washing on the long trek back to the city before darkness fell. She gathered up her things and rushed over, taking some of the old woman’s burden. ‘Allow me.’

  The old woman smiled warmly. ‘Thank you, Maria.’

  ***

  That night, the grizzled and hulking Komes Stypiotes was on sentry duty atop the eastern gate, nearby the three staked heads.

  Each komes had been assigned one wall and the eastern wall was his. But while his thirty men up and down the battlements stood rigidly to attention, Stypiotes felt tiredness overcome him. The wine he had supped before his shift had been unwatered and he had emptied most of the skin, and his belly was heavy with mutton and fish. He let out a serrated and smoky-tasting belch. He had definitely eaten far too much of the carp, he asserted, not for the first time tonight.

  The crackling of the torch nearby grew rhythmic and soothing. Soon, his eyelids drooped and his mind turned to some fleeting whimsy, where a buxom lady was leading him by the hand to her bed. She slipped off her robe and lay down before him, beckoning him forward with a coiling finger wedged between her full breasts. A weak smile spread across his face at this and his head nodded forward as if accepting the invitation. Then, as quickly as the buxom lady had appeared in his dream, she transformed into a gruesome creature, oddly reminiscent of a giant carp, silver-scaled and with fangs like sabres. Before he could gather breath to scream, the creature leapt up from the bed to sink its fangs into his shoulder and a wet, sucking of ripping meat belched out.

  With a yelp, Stypiotes jolted awake, his face pale and his eyes wide. ‘Oh for . . . ’ he muttered as he realised he had been dreaming. ‘Bloody carp!’ He spat, then cast a sour glare at the nearest of his skutatoi, who was stifling a snigger.

  He squared his jaw, facing forward again, taking some comfort from the fact that his embarrassment would keep him awake for some time. Then something caught his attention, from the corner of his eye. Something was missing. He turned to his left.

  The three stakes, some twenty paces away, were shorn of the severed Seljuk heads. They had definitely been there moments ago. He had certainly not imagined their gruesome presence. Frowning, he levelled his spear and stalked over to the blood-tipped stakes, looking around. But the battlements were still and empty apart from the few sentries. He looked down the steps and into the town, but all was dark and silent, the celebrations having long since ended. Then he turned to the blackness outside the town, and froze.

  A single dot of orange candlelight illuminated the night, near the graves of the fallen. Stypiotes peered at it, then discerned a lone figure, back turned. The figure carried a spade and a hemp sack. His lungs filled to raise the alarm, when he recognised the amber locks and crimson cloak. He watched as the strategos then proceeded to bury three fleshy masses in the grave.

  Then, the footsteps of the nearest skutatos rattled up by his side. ‘Sir?’ The youngster gasped in panic, pointing to the candlelit figure.

  ‘At ease, soldier. There’s a man doing what he must do. Nothing more.’

  Stypiotes looked on as the burial was finished. Then the figure crouched on one knee, head bowed.

  The strategos’ shoulders shuddered silently.

  5. Death of an Emperor

  Eudokia gripped the edge of the balcony. Her ivory skin and fine-boned features were expressionless. Her silver-flecked, blonde locks were tied up in a swirl as she drew her bloodshot gaze over the eastern gardens of the Imperial Palace.

  Here, the incessant babble of Constantinople was little more than a dull murmur. The morning sun bathed the vast and verdant space, edged with a marble colonnade and studded with ornate carvings and fountains. A web of paved footpaths picked their way through pockets of exotic blooms that lent their honeyed scents to the air. There were orange trees studded with fruit, palms that stretched high overhead, a family of parakeets flitting between them, and jasmine and wisteria that
yawned across the marble walls.

  A slave boy and a girl of similar age, thinking themselves unobserved, took a moment to rest in the shade under one orange tree. Eudokia saw them smile as they chatted. Their bodies bore the bruises of their master’s wrath, and their lot was meagre. Yet still they found time to sit together and smile, taking turns to offer seed to a mother parakeet, which would peck at the seed then swoop back up to her nest and feed her three screeching hatchlings. Eudokia looked to her hands, creased with age, and remembered the lost days of her childhood when she had last known such companionship. Her gaze was fond momentarily, then it turned stony as she remembered how that had played out.

  She turned away from the balcony edge and faced the black silk curtain that separated her from the bedchamber. She steeled herself as she stepped towards it. For while outside was verdant, vibrant and abound with life, inside was rife with the stench of death.

  She brushed through the curtain, the silk cool on her skin. Instantly, the baritone chanting of priests met her ears and echoed around the cavernous and ornate bedchamber. The gilt frescoes tried in vain to spice the room with vitality. The fine sculptures in brass, porphyry and veined marble portrayed muscular men in the prime of their youth and health, as if mocking the shrivelled figure on the bed at the centre of the chamber.