Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

by Gordon Doherty

The jug shattered across the dying fire and the crash echoed through the chamber. He looked up to his mercenary captains, his pointed features and stark black brow wrinkling as he eyed them. Only the fire crackling in the hearth broke the silence and a cloying scent of woodsmoke crept from the dying flames.

  ‘There’s definitely no word of a relief column?’ Fulco rasped.

  The biggest of them, a Rus warrior, looked on with a blank expression. ‘We were the relief column,’ he replied in a jagged accent.

  ‘Watch your tongue, Rus!’ Fulco growled, then dropped his head into his hands once more. Fifteen hundred men made up his tagma. Barely enough to man the southern and eastern walls, where the Seljuk blockade was thickest. There were the nine hundred he had commandeered from the Chaldian ranks – yet all he heard from them was mutterings of discontent at being separated from their strategos. Fulco’s top lip curled at this. Apart from that, the garrison in the city was paltry; three hundred skutatoi and fifty toxotai. At the outset of the siege and despite the truth of his Rus captain’s words, he had sent riders to the north, calling for a relief force from the Colonea Thema. The following dawn, the riders’ heads had thudded onto the flagstoned streets, fired from Seljuk trebuchets. Since the blockade had been put in place, there was little hope of getting word out. They were alone against Afsin’s horde.

  He stood up from the table and strode to the open shutters, hands behind his back as he looked across the night skyline, illuminated by torchlight. The broad and sturdy imperial mint towered high, rivalled only by the stilts of the aqueduct and the Monastery of St Basil. Mighty Caesarea, the jewel at the heart of Byzantine Anatolia, would fall. That was almost a certainty. His brief had been to defend the city and prevent its fall, thus he would be seen as a failure. But the cold terror at the prospect of a violent death troubled him far more than the fate of this place or his reputation. His top lip curled as he scanned the ant-like populace scurrying to and fro in the streets below. When it comes to it, the dogs that dwell here can keep the Seljuk blades busy whilst I escape.

  Then one figure stepped forward, clearing his throat. ‘If I may interject, sir?’

  Fulco’s neck snapped round to glare at the figure. It was Dederic the Norman rider, distinguished from the Rus and his own comrades by his diminutive stature – only shoulder-high to the rest. He was younger than most of them too – only in his twenty-third year. His head was shaved to the scalp at the back and sides with a dark mop of hair on top. As if to compensate for his size, his jaw was broad as was his nose, and his eyes were a piercing gold. Like the rest of the Normans, he wore a mail hauberk, the hood lowered and gathered around his shoulders. ‘Speak,’ Fulco grunted.

  ‘There is still time to call upon the Strategos of Chaldia, sir. Under cover of night, we at least have a chance of getting a rider or even a runner through the blockade.’

  Fulco’s blood heated at the mention of the man. Despite his imperially bestowed authority over the north-eastern themata, the men of the local militias there still spoke only of one name. The Haga. He shook his head, his teeth gritting.

  ‘There is a weak spot to the north of the city,’ Dederic continued. ‘If the strategos attacked from his side and we sally at the same point, then perhaps we could break through there – at least see the citizens clear of the walls and into the northern hills? The banks of the Halys are thick with fishing vessels that could transport . . . ’

  ‘Enough!’ Fulco bawled. Put my life at risk to save these wretches? He wracked his mind for stirring words to mask his true motive. ‘Not a soul will leave this city. This is a city of God, and God’s people will not flee like rats under the Seljuk glare. Honour is at stake, soldier. Honour!’ Fulco lifted the purse from his belt and shook it. ‘A concept you may not be familiar with. For you are here only to accrue gold, are you not?’

  Dederic’s nose wrinkled at this. Fulco willed him to speak, his fingers curling into a fist inside his iron-plated glove.

  But it was another voice that spoke.

  ‘If we stay here then we will die. There is no honour in dying needlessly, though I doubt that is your true motive in any case.’

  Fulco spun on the spot, to the arched doorway. A silhouetted figure strode into the room. His blood iced. He clapped his hands together and two Rus leapt forward, pulling their axes from their belts.

  But, in a flash of iron, another figure leapt through the doorway and ripped a spathion from his belt, countering the Rus. A flicker of firelight betrayed this second stranger’s coal-dark skin.

  ‘At ease,’ the first figure spoke, gently pushing the axes and blades down and walking into the light. His battered features and amber hair were soot and earth-blackened. But the murmur of recognition rang around the room instantly.

  ‘Haga!’

  Fulco frowned. ‘Strategos? The blockade is breached?’ A flutter of blessed relief touched his heart – was his life to be spared?

  ‘No,’ Apion spoke in a stolid tone. Then he strode forward and rested his palms on the table to cast his gaze across the litter of papers. ‘Sha,’ he beckoned his companion, ‘what do you make of the city plan? Are the streets broad enough for a clean evacuation?’

  The brief notion of reprieve snatched away, Fulco’s blood bubbled with fury at the man’s ease – flicking through the maps as if his superior was not present. ‘Then you will give me a full report, Strategos. How did you enter the city and what forces do you bring?’

  Apion turned to him with a slight frown at the interruption. ‘There are five of us. Your guards opened the gate hatch to let us in.’

  Fulco slammed a fist on the table. ‘And the blockade?’

  ‘It is as tight as ever, Doux, we were lucky to slip through.’ Apion offered him a weary look. ‘It will not be broken by force.’

  Fulco rubbed at his temples, wishing he had resisted that last jug of wine whilst eyeing the next. ‘Then what do you bring to us – five extra men to defend the walls?’

  ‘No, I bring a slim chance for some of the people of this city to slip through the blockade and escape the fate that awaits them.’

  Fulco knew he could not air his thoughts on their deserved fate. Instead he decided to call the Haga’s bluff. ‘The Seljuk blockade – the same blockade that cannot be broken?’

  ‘I said it could not be broken by force, but it can be broken.’ Apion stood back from the table and turned to Dederic. The little Norman straightened up under the Haga’s gaze. ‘And if it is to break, then your captain has already identified the area to the north of the blockade as the most suitable point for the citizens to flee.’

  At this, Dederic offered a faint nod of gratitude.

  This riled Fulco even more. ‘Your riddles will save nobody, Strategos,’ he scoffed, ‘we need clear plans.’

  Apion addressed Fulco and the rest of the room. ‘Think about it, we cannot fight our way through Afsin’s lines, but what if his men are compelled to abandon those lines, albeit temporarily?’ The watching mercenary captains frowned at this.

  ‘What would bring them to this action?’ Dederic asked.

  Apion tapped a finger to his temple. ‘The thing that Afsin and his ranks out there fear more than anything else.’

  The Norman’s gaze fell to the flagstoned floor and darted this way and that. ‘Alp Arslan . . . ’

  Apion nodded. ‘It has been rumoured since this invasion began that the sultan would come to tame his renegade bey. Afsin’s ranks quake at the very thought of the Mountain Lion’s wrath.’

  Fulco’s eyes widened as a babble of murmuring broke out among the captains. His chest tightened as he felt his authority diminish like the dying fire in the hearth.

  Apion addressed the captains. ‘Afsin will pay dearly for acting against the sultan’s orders, and his men already look over their shoulders in fear.’ Then he turned to Fulco. ‘So if we play on that fear, then maybe, just maybe, the chance to escape this walled grave will present itself.’

  The image of the city as a to
mb chilled Fulco to his core. He held the strategos’ gaze with a firm and cold glare. ‘Your plan will see the ranks to safety also?’ he asked meekly, gulping, his eyes darting to those watching.

  Apion’s face remained stony. ‘Every soldier will have a role to play in seeing the citizens to safety. But I will not lie to you – your blades will taste blood tonight and many of you will not see tomorrow.’

  Fulco felt his gut curdle at this. Suddenly the strategos’ plan seemed significantly less agreeable. ‘Bey Afsin will surely not fall for any such ruse,’ he said, trying to disguise the tremor in his voice.

  Apion nodded at this. ‘But if we do not try, then every one of us will die.’

  ‘Aye,’ Fulco’s face streamed with a cold sweat, his gaze growing distant.

  ‘Give the word, sir,’ Apion said. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper; ‘Seize this chance and you might live to fight another day.’

  Fulco looked into his eyes in silence, then nodded faintly.

  The tourmarches, Sha, saw this and left the room, his footsteps pattering up to the roof of the citadel.

  ‘Where do we start?’ Fulco asked.

  Apion pointed through the shutters.

  Fulco turned to see a single, fiery arrow arc into the sky from the citadel rooftop and then drop silently. His skin crawled. To the south, far beyond the Seljuk blockade, the lower slopes of Mount Argaeus gradually illuminated with the glow of first a handful, then hundreds of torches.

  He spun back to Apion, sensing control spiralling from his grasp. ‘What have you done?’

  ***

  Blastares dropped his torch as the flame died then stood back, panting. The lower slopes of the great mountain were speckled with some five hundred resin-soaked stakes, his men scurrying to light the remaining few. ‘That’s it,’ he barked, ‘get ‘em all ablaze!’

  Then Procopius hobbled past, marshalling his men likewise, his craggy features black with soot. ‘Watch you don’t set yourself alight, you old bastard!’ he cackled.

  For once, Procopius didn’t have time for a riposte.

  ‘It’s working – look!’ the sharp-featured Komes Peleus cried out.

  Blastares spun to peer at the band of orange torchlight wrapped around the city, then saw that it was peeling away like a layer of skin. The faint moan of Seljuk war horns carried on the night breeze as Afsin’s men hurried to form a line, facing south.

  ‘Ha! Let’s hear it for Blastares’ army!’ he barked, patting one stake as if in congratulation. Then he nodded to the lip of the vast bowl that encircled Caesarea. ‘Now form up – we have a quick march ahead of us, to the north to help with the evacuation.’

  The men scurried into formation. All but Komes Stypiotes, whose face had paled, his mouth agape, gazing south.

  ‘Komes?’ Blastares frowned, then turned away from the city to follow Stypiotes’ gaze. There, where there had previously been pure, unbroken darkness. Another orange glow emerged around the southern base of Mount Argaeus.

  More torches. Hundreds of them, spilling into view. Then thousands, like some mocking reflection of the illusion they had set up right here. But these torches bobbed and flickered as they grew closer, and they came with the rumble of hooves and boots. Then a Seljuk war horn moaned.

  Blastares’ skin prickled as he discerned the first of the banners in this approaching army. The golden bow emblem was unmistakable.

  Alp Arslan had arrived to tame his bey.

  ***

  Apion feared he had made a terrible mistake. He was hoarse from barking and marshalling the citizens towards the northern gate. Every time he looked down a street or alley there were more and more citizens pouring from the tenements, clutching their possessions, stumbling and falling before others. But they were not moving fast enough, many clustering around the skutatoi, begging for information, demanding to know why they had been flushed from their homes in the dead of night. Added to this, many of Fulco’s Norman riders were breaking from their positions to ride clear of the city with the citizens, then he saw some of the Rus axemen doing likewise, saving their own necks. One even swung his axe at a Chaldian skutatos who tried to stop him. Only a handful of Fulco’s riders remained where Apion had placed them – a group of thirty or so Norman riders led by Dederic, who had hopped from his saddle to help usher a family from the alleys and towards safety. By his reckoning they had a few short hours at best before Afsin would uncover the ruse, wrap his forces around the walls once more and surely ensnare and slay any Byzantines caught in the open ground.

  ‘Make haste – you will be safe to the north,’ he said as he helped one woman from her knees and bundled her towards the gate. Peering through the gateway, he was heartened to see the first streams of evacuees reaching the northern hills. From there it would be a short journey to the banks of the River Halys. If his riders had carried out their job, then the local fishing fleets and trade vessels would be clustered there.

  But then panicked cries rang out from the south of the city.

  ‘The Seljuks have breached the walls!’

  He looked down the broad street to see fighting on the southern battlements. Skutatoi were tumbling into the streets below, impaled on akhi spears and peppered with arrows. Surely Bey Afsin has not uncovered our ruse already? Then he heard a thunderous cry spill around the walls from outside the city;

  Alp Ars-lan! Allahu Akbar!

  No! He stumbled back, eyes wide, as ladders clattered into place all along the battlements. In every direction he looked akhi spilled onto the walls and then swamped and cut down the skutatoi there.

  The Mountain Lion had come after all.

  From the southern, eastern and western walls, the first parties of akhi descended the stairs then spilled into the streets, slicing through the terrified citizens in their path. Within moments, the granary and a sweeping row of tenements were ablaze and the streets sparkled with spilled blood. Panicked horses bolted from the nearby stables, adding to the chaos. Then he spun to the sound of crashing stone from the east of the city. A great cry rang out of the Monastery of St Basil, and akhi spilled from its doors, carrying shattered chunks of marble from the saint’s tomb like trophies. At the same time, the southern gates crashed open, shattered by an iron-tipped ram. A sea of ghazis spilled into the streets and headed straight for the citadel. The stronghold was barely manned and it fell in a heartbeat.

  The walls were gone and Caesarea was on the brink.

  Apion shepherded an elderly man carrying two babies to the north gate, denying the sense of futility in his heart. Then looked up to the north walls – the last high ground still in Byzantine hands. There he saw Doux Fulco, framed by the waning moon. He was fleeing from the advancing akhi, making his way towards the nearest stairs, barging the few hundred Chaldian skutatoi who still fought out of the way. Then the doux stumbled in his haste, pitching headlong from the battlements. His cry was as shrill as a vulture’s, and Apion saw the man’s eyes bulging, his arms flailing. Finally, the cry was cut short; his skull shattered against the flagstones, a soup of blood and grey matter bursting across the street, his body crumpling on top of it. At the last, it was Fulco’s craven nature and not a Seljuk blade that killed him.

  But Apion spared only a heartbeat of thought for the man’s fate. For he realised he had sent the citizens out onto the open plain where thousands of Seljuk blades would now be converging on them. The mocking voice from behind the dark door rasped in a dry laughter as he looked to the open northern gate. Outside, the flood of women, elderly, children and babies screamed as, from either side, a horde of ghazi riders closed in on them, arrows nocked to bows. The cowering citizens halted their flight and the riders waited on the order to fire.

  ‘Sir!’ Sha emerged from the chaos and backed up to him, his eyes bulging. The pair lifted their blades and turned; every direction offered only blazing fires, pockets of bloodied and cowering citizens and retreating skutatoi. Closing in on them was a wall of Seljuk spearmen. They were spilling through the ga
tes, filling the streets, swarming over the walls. ‘Is this the end?’ the Malian panted.

  Apion could offer him no answer.

  Then a Seljuk war horn sounded three times. Gradually, the war cries of the akhi tumbled into silence. They slowed their advance and then halted, forming a spearwall in an arc around the last clutches of Byzantine defenders before disarming them. The skutatoi atop the northern gatehouse finally laid down their weapons as they saw that defeat was inevitable. A line of Seljuk archers hurried to kick the discarded weapons away, before nocking arrows to their bows and herding the Byzantine soldiers from the walls.

  Apion looked all around, seeing only bloodstained Seljuk warriors grimacing back at him. Then, three riders trotted in through the northern gate and the noise seemed to fall away.

  A pair of ironclad ghulam riders carried banners bearing a golden bow emblem. They flanked the broad-shouldered central rider, saddled upon a sturdy dappled steppe pony. He wore a gilded conical helmet with an ornate nose-guard and an iron plated vest that hung to his knees. He carried a scimitar and a finely crafted composite bow. His skin was sallow, his expression stony and gaunt and his nose long and narrow. His dark brown eyes were sharp like a hawk’s. He sported a thick and long moustache, the ends looping round the back of his neck where they were tied together. A pair of akhi hurried to surround Apion and Sha, pushing spearpoints into the flesh of their necks as this rider approached to within a few feet.

  Apion threw down his scimitar and Sha followed suit.

  ‘Have I finally captured the legend of the Byzantine borderlands?’ Alp Arslan spoke stonily. ‘I know it is you,’ the sultan eyed him, examining his blackened, unarmoured form then gazing into his eyes. ‘We have clashed many times, Haga. All I have seen of you behind the iron veil you wear on the battlefield is those eyes and . . . ’ he dismounted and strode forward, lifting the sleeve of Apion’s woollen robe, revealing the red ink stigma. ‘Aye, Haga, it is you,’ he nodded.