Apion stared at the sultan, expressionless. ‘Do your bidding, spill our blood. But do not seek glory in the slaughter, for there is none to be found.’
‘Years ago, Haga, I longed to take your head,’ Alp Arslan raised a clenched fist, his eyes sparkling, ‘dreamt of a moment like this.’ He lowered his fist and shook his head. ‘But now that the moment is upon me, I feel no wish to spill Byzantine blood. It will happen – but not today. I have seen enough Fatimid blood in these last months to sicken myself of all things crimson.’ He nodded to the bloody soup staining the battlements and the bodies of slain citizens strewn through the streets. ‘But, fifteen thousand souls march with me. Food and fodder are paramount, and so your fine city had to be taken. You know as well as I that at times some bloodshed cannot be avoided. But it is over now.’ At this, he barked to the ghazis outside the gate. Mercifully, they lowered their bows. Gradually, and in disbelief at first, the cowering citizens there stood once more, then they wasted no time in fleeing northwards. The sultan then clapped his hands and issued orders to the swell of akhi, despatching them to the cisterns with orders to put out the flames that threatened to consume parts of the city.
He looked back to Apion. ‘I came here to settle a dispute.’ He clicked his fingers. A clutch of akhi led forward a bedraggled form who wore only a torn robe, his grey hair loose and matted in gore like his beard. Bey Afsin’s rebellion was over. Beside him was Nasir, shackled, one side of his face lined with the fresh and angry welt of melted flesh.
‘That it spilled into Byzantine lands was a regrettable occurrence,’ the sultan continued, snapping Apion’s gaze away from his old foe, ‘and one I could not allow to burgeon any further.’ He turned to Bey Afsin. ‘Why did you turn from me, my once most loyal Bey?’ Afsin could not meet the sultan’s gaze.
Then Alp Arslan turned to Nasir. Nasir looked his leader in the eye. ‘And you, noble Nasir. I fear you are an even greater loss to my ranks. My plan was to have you elevated to my side. At the helm of the finest riders of my army, controlling a ghulam wing. Yet you throw your loyalty behind Bey Afsin’s hot-headed scheme and charge to the west like a blinded bull?’ His eyes hung on the melted flesh dominating one side of Nasir’s face. ‘The scars you bear will surely serve to remind you of your folly. But for how long?’
At this, a pair of akhi stepped forward and drew their scimitars, resting the curved blades on Afsin and Nasir’s necks, looking to their sultan.
Apion and Nasir shared a lasting, stony gaze.
‘In my time I have had men put to excruciating torture,’ Alp Arslan continued, twisting to address the watching thousands. ‘There was one ambitious soul who thought the sultanate would be better steered by his hand and so he set his mind to plotting my assassination. He had plenty of time to rethink his ambitions when I had him staked onto the hot sand, his eyes dashed from his skull and ants set loose upon the bleeding sockets. It took him a day to die and by then, the ants had burrowed through and infested every space inside his head.’
At this, the hordes looking on cheered in bloodlust and anticipation. Afsin squirmed in the grip of the akhi. Nasir did not flinch.
Then Alp Arslan turned to the pair. ‘Your acts were criminal,’ he paused and all around murmured in expectation, ‘but they were not treasonous, and your motivation is noble. Patience is all that separates us,’ he looked to both of them in turn, then boomed so all could hear; ‘We all seek glory for Allah. We all seek the conquest of Byzantium and the peace that will come after that.’ The sultan lifted his arms up, palms outwards. ‘So let it be known here and now that you will not be put to torture or death. Instead you will be placed back in my ranks and given the opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty. For we are stronger together. That this mighty Byzantine city has capitulated is but a precursor of what could be. First, you will ride south with me and put an end to the ambitions of the proud, misguided Fatimids. Then, when the time is right, we will return to this land, and deliver glory to Allah together!’
The thick swathes of Alp Arslan’s horde packing the battlements and the city streets erupted in a colossal roar. Nasir did not blink as the blade was taken away from his neck. His gaze remained on Apion.
Then the sultan too looked to Apion. ‘Does this not serve to demonstrate the futility of Byzantium’s resistance? While your forces grow weaker every day, my armies simply grow.’
Apion stared back in silence.
‘In these past years I have heard much of the Haga’s wit – sharper even than his blade, apparently. Yet I find you reluctant to utter but a word?’
Apion seared a glare at Alp Arslan. ‘I find that conversation held at spearpoint tends to be rather one-sided.’
Alp Arslan frowned. Then the sultan threw his head back and let loose a lungful of laughter that rang into the night. With that, he raised a hand to the spearmen behind Apion, who lowered their weapons.
‘Come then, Haga. Let us talk as simple men. Weaponless and alone.’
***
Dawn was approaching and the newly kindled fire cast the map room in an orange glow. Apion gazed into the flames. He wore a fresh, soft woollen robe. He had washed the worst of the grime from his face and beard, and wore his damp hair knotted atop his head. It was as if the events of the evening had been some kind of nightmare.
But then he looked up; where Doux Fulco had been sitting only hours ago, Sultan Alp Arslan now sat, supping the remains of the jug of wine left behind by the previous incumbent. On the table between them, a chequered shatranj board had been set up. The pieces had not yet been moved.
The sultan had shed his armour and now wore only a yalma, a green silk close-fitting robe trimmed with gold embroidery. His dark locks hung down his back, and his flowing moustache was tied back there too. Apart from the finery of his garment, the sultan looked very much like the many Seljuk traders and farmers Apion had encountered in his time. He did not look particularly like Mansur, yet, looking at the sultan across the shatranj board, Apion could not help but think of his old guardian; the man whose sword he carried to this day; a man whose memory he loved and loathed.
The sultan was flanked by two standing figures. One was a towering rock of a man named Kilic, the sultan’s bodyguard. Kilic wore a permanent scowl on his flat-boned face, and was dressed only in a sleeveless linen tunic that displayed his bulging, scarred arms. The other was Nizam, a small, stout, grey-bearded vizier wearing a blue silk cap. He had seen this pair watching in the distance when his and Alp Arslan’s armies had clashed in the past, and Apion guessed that they were to the sultan what Sha, Blastares and Procopius were to him. Just then, a slave hurried in to place a platter of bread and a pot of honey upon the table along with a fresh jug of wine. At this, Alp Arslan nodded to the two behind him.
‘Leave us, please.’
Nizam bowed and Kilic grunted, his eyes never leaving Apion as they departed.
‘Eat and drink, Strategos. There is no victory, moral or otherwise, in starving yourself after a battle.’ The sultan went at the bread and honey before him like a man who had not seen food in days. Then he washed it down with a mouthful of wine before reaching out to tap the board. ‘When I was a boy, I used to play this game with my Uncle Tugrul. You remember the Falcon?’ he asked, pushing a central pawn forward, looking up with a stony gaze.
Apion let the question hang in the air. He had never spoken with the previous sultan, but they had clashed in battle, over twelve years ago. He had led his men in a ferocious counter-charge that had broken Tugrul’s great horde and shattered the Falcon’s reputation terminally. Alp Arslan knew all of this and knew it well. Indeed, it had been the driving force for his subsequent battering of the Byzantine borderlands in the first few years afterwards. Back then, rumour had been rife that Alp Arslan lived only to crush the Byzantine armies and to see Apion’s head on a spike. Mercy had seldom marched with the Mountain Lion. He eyed the sultan’s blade, resting by the hearth, and wondered what had changed in the intervening years; he tore a p
iece of bread, dipped it in the honey and then chewed. Instantly it invigorated him and soothed his knotted stomach. He reached over to move one of his own pawns forward, opening a path to develop his war elephant. ‘I remember the Falcon. At least, I knew of the warrior whose hordes I faced in battle, but I did not know the man behind the armour.’
The sultan’s stony gaze faltered a little, growing distant. ‘They were one and the same, Strategos. Some men can never truly shed their armour. I realised this when I was very young. I used to be known as Muhammud back then,’ he said. ‘I was a happy boy. Yet I always longed to emulate the Falcon’s greatness. I coveted a battle name as if it would make me a man.’ The sultan mused over his next move, then plucked a knight and moved it ahead of the pawn line. ‘Tugrul once told me that many years ago, when my people dwelt upon the open steppe, they would go to the foot of Mount Otuken. The drums would rumble like thunder and the tribesmen would watch on as the khagan approached, adorned with yak tails and bright pennants and his skin laced with paint. Then he would bestow the er ati upon the bravest of warriors. That was how Tugrul gained his battle name. That was how the Falcon first spread his wings. From the moment Tugrul told me this, he put an elusive goal before me. For I could never earn my battle name in such a fashion. Our people left the steppe long ago and now Mount Otuken lies windswept and deserted, its glory reserved for the ghosts of the past alone.’ The sultan’s lips tightened. ‘He knew the fire this would stoke within me.’
Apion eyed the sultan. He had dealt with many Seljuk emirs and beys in his time. Some wise, some haughty, some devious, some blunt. This man, the sultan who ruled above them all, was not what he had expected. ‘In these last years, your reputation has far outshone the Falcon’s,’ he said tersely, moving another pawn out to limit the knight’s movement, ‘and the name Alp Arslan is known across my empire and yours.’
The sultan nodded, moving a pawn forward to bring his vizier into play. ‘I first heard that name when I was saddled on my mount, soaked with blood. We had just subdued the last of the rebel Daylamid spearmen, high in the rugged mountains of Persia. A thousand men around me lauded the slaughter I had led, a thousand more lifeless faces gazed up at me from the blood-sodden earth. Alp Arslan! they chanted all around me. As a boy, I had expected to feel pride at that moment, but when it came, I felt only emptiness.’ The fire dimmed a little more as the sultan swirled his wine cup, his hawk-like eyes peering into the past. ‘The glory of Mount Otuken will forever evade me, but the cursed fire Tugrul stoked within me will never die. Sometimes I find myself pining for those days when I used to be known simply as Muhammud.’
The sultan’s words were like an echo of Apion’s thoughts. ‘Any moniker earned by the spilling of a man’s blood is a curse rather than a boon. Indeed, every time they chant Haga after a battle, I find myself awakening as if from some awful dream, surrounded by death. Yet I find myself drawn back to that numb netherworld, time and again.’ He lifted his war elephant out to counter the threat of the sultan’s vizier piece. ‘I detest my battle name,’ he leaned back in his chair with a dry, mirthless laugh, one finger absently tracing the white band of skin on his wrist, ‘yet when I think back to the days when I was known simply as Apion, I have no wish to return there.’
The sultan lifted his war elephant and sent it across almost to the edge of the board, lining up to strike Apion’s pawn line. ‘A riotous mixture of my ambitions and my uncle’s ambitions for me spawned the creature I have become. I have watched my family tear at each other, murdering and plotting against one another in their lust for power. Now I find myself as sultan, does that make me at once the best and the worst of them? Regardless, it is what I am. The boy Muhammud is gone, and my destiny is set in stone. There will be many more bloody battlefields.’ Alp Arslan looked into the crackling flames for a moment. Then he leaned forward, his expression earnest. ‘I have faced curs, cowards, mindless butchers and men who would slaughter their children for a purse of gold. But I have faced few like you, Haga; your tenacity is unparalleled. After twelve years, still you resist my armies. What happened to you to make you this way?’
Apion’s gaze drifted as the question hung in the air. Then he reached down to lift Mansur’s bloodied shatranj piece from his purse, his eyes examining its worn surface. Then he took up an empty cup, filled it with wine and took a deep gulp. A long silence passed, broken only by the spitting of the fire. Then he looked the sultan in the eye and, without thinking, he slipped into the Seljuk tongue; ‘Everyone I have ever loved has been slain.’ His words echoed around the map room as he lifted a pawn out to block the sultan’s chariot and present a lure to the nearby knight.
Alp Arslan’s eyes narrowed and he replied in his native tongue; ‘Then this is the source of your hatred of my people?’
Apion shook his head almost imperceptibly. ‘Of those lost to me, there were my Byzantine birth parents, slain by Seljuk scimitars. Then there were my Seljuk guardians, butchered by Byzantine spathions. So, no, I do not hate your people, Sultan. I judge men on their merits and not their origins. Quite simply, I hate what this land has become.’
‘There will always be a borderland, Strategos,’ the sultan said as lifted his vizier forward. ‘Were people not suffering here, then they certainly would be, elsewhere.’
‘Perhaps. But now you have your answer. I can never relent until I am cut down, or until conflict is driven from this land.’
Alp Arslan supped his wine as if considering his next words carefully. ‘Your empire is putrefying at its heart. Your emperor is blinkered and your armies are in decay. Your empire fights the same battle as mine. But we fight the winning battle, Strategos. You will lose this struggle. You must know this.’
Apion felt the steel wrap around his heart once more. ‘I know little of assured futures, Sultan.’ He thought over the crone’s words. 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. ‘Indeed, I have been told that destiny is for the strongest to define.’
Alp Arslan held his gaze. A log snapped in the hearth. ‘Men fight on either side of this conflict, and that is all we are. Men. Beating hearts, red blood and sharpened steel. I ask you this as a man, and I will not repeat the offer.’ The sultan’s eyes sparkled. ‘You seek an end to the war, Strategos. Perhaps you could find a swifter end to it . . . by my side.’
Apion’s breath stilled. He held the sultan’s gaze. He thought of the many valourous and the many more bloody deeds committed by those who fought under the imperial banner. The Seljuk armies had shown him a similar mix of virtue and vice in his time. It seemed that an age had passed before he replied. ‘There is more to it than that, Sultan. Some men are little more than blood, bone and blade. But others have something that sets them apart. A touch of charm in their blood, coursing through their hearts. A light that will never dim. I have little doubt that you are one such,’ he prodded a finger into the table top gently, ‘but there are a precious few more who fight for the empire’s cause. Now that all else has been taken from me, my purpose is to fight for those few. And if I die for them and the cause is lost, then I know at least I have stayed true to my heart.’
Alp Arslan smiled wearily at this, leaning back from Apion and then standing as the first rays of dawn spilled through the map room. ‘So be it, Haga. Tonight, no more blood will be spilled. Tomorrow, you, your men and the rest of your people are free to leave this city under amnesty. You will travel safely to your farms and barracks. My men and I will remain here until the next moon. Then we will return to Seljuk territory.’ Then his expression darkened. ‘But know this; the next time we meet, there will be no amnesty. The actions of Bey Afsin illustrate the will of my people.’ He clasped a hand over his heart. ‘The conquest of Byzantium is coming, and I will not relent.’
‘Likewise, you must know I will never yield.’ Apion tapped the shatranj board. ‘I hope that one day we will finish this game. But if not, then we wi
ll make our final moves on the battlefield.’
Alp Arslan nodded wistfully, then turned to leave.
Apion was alone. The fire crackled and spat as it died to nothing.
7. Return to Chaldia
The journey home for the weary men of the Chaldian Thema was long and troublesome, and it had taken some months to finally set eyes on their homeland.
They had stalled at first on the banks of the River Halys. In the stifling summer heat, Apion found himself charged with the care of tens of thousands of displaced citizens and farmers. While Caesarea lay in Seljuk hands, there would be no return home for these people. Alp Arslan’s show of magnanimity had been shrewd, for allowing the populace safe passage from their homes had effectively tied up the remaining forces of the mustered themata in organising and policing the homeless rabble. Gaunt and filthy, they lived for weeks in makeshift tents and timber lean-tos under the welcome shade of the beech groves lining the banks of the Halys. It was fortunate that the river was abundant with fish and the surrounding lands rich with game. For without such bounty, thousands would have perished.
Still, the days were long and troublesome. Theft, rape and brawling were rife and the atmosphere suffocating. So, Apion took to waking each morning just before dawn, then setting out to run along the banks of the river, barefoot and dressed only in a light linen tunic. He found the chill air and the babble of the river cleansing to the mind, and he would only stop when the sun was fully past the eastern horizon. After stopping he would stretch his muscles and wash in the shallows. Then he would eat his usual breakfast of bread and honey, washing it down with river water. His mind fresh, he would then return to face the latest troubles of the refugees.
As the weeks passed, imperial trade cogs and the occasional galley docked by the camp and transported some of the refugees to the more westerly themata and gradually the camp shrank. By the ides of August, the camp held only a few thousand souls. It was then that Apion saw fit to delegate his command of the site to the newly appointed strategos of the Charsianon Thema – a young man who had previously been a tourmarches, one of the few who had survived the initial incursions of Bey Afsin.
Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart Page 8
