After that, Apion and the men of Chaldia had set off on the journey home, crossing the Halys and then heading north-east. It was a steady and quiet march as they dotted between rivers and wells, eating from their rations and trapping game. Now, some six months after they had left their farms and towns, they were finally within sight of their homeland once more.
Apion squinted into the morning sun and eyed the plain ahead; russet and gold stretches of dust dappled with beech thickets and studded with shrubs. He could not help but focus on the crunch of boots and hooves on the dirt track behind him. Far fewer than there should have been. Of the twelve hundred Chaldians summoned to Charsianon by Doux Fulco, less than four hundred men would be returning home to Chaldia. Two households in every three would know only grief in the months ahead.
‘Many widows we make of waiting wives, with so little thought we squander men’s lives,’ a baritone voice spoke as if reading his thoughts.
Apion turned to Sha. The tourmarches had drawn level on his grey stallion.
‘It’s a saying from back home, in the sands of Mali. It is not just this land that suffers the pox of bloodshed. But I doubt that offers you any comfort?’
Apion looked off into the distance. ‘Not a crumb, Sha, not a crumb. That more young men of these lands will step up to take their fathers’ places is a joy for a strategos and a tragedy for those families he leaves behind.’ He twisted in his saddle once more. His gaze fell upon the short rider behind him.
Dederic the Norman rode in his mail hauberk. His skin was the colour of cooked salmon under the sun’s glare, and he looked almost as agitated as big Blastares. The Norman was one of the few of Fulco’s tagma who had stayed to defend the city when many others had fled. He had also been eager to accept Apion’s offer to enlist with the thema. Apion was equally eager for his acceptance, as only twenty seven of the precious kataphractoi had survived the Charsianon campaign, and Dederic and his knights would help to cover those losses.
Sha followed his strategos’ gaze. ‘He’s a good rider, sir. Some of his comrades are a touch feisty. But at least now they act under your command.’
Apion smiled dryly. ‘For a time, perhaps. But it will not be long before the emperor sees fit to appoint another puppet doux in Fulco’s place. Only then can he have a tentacle in every thema of his empire. Was such greed for power rife in your homeland too?’
‘In Mali?’ Sha mused, then shook his head. ‘When I was a boy, our king would be sure to ride to the borders of his realm at least once every season. To see what threats lay outwith and, more importantly, within. He rode without luxury and slept little, and some say he was permanently callused from the exercise. My people loved him for this.’ Sha looked to Apion and extended a finger. ‘Emperor Doukas would only have to ride out here once to see what lies in store for Byzantium should he continue his policy of neglect and greed.’ He wagged his finger. ‘Only once.’
Apion grinned wryly at this. ‘Perhaps the emperor feels it would be beneath him. After all, rumour has it he considers himself divine.’
Sha cocked an eyebrow. ‘Sir?’
Apion shrugged. ‘I heard it from the last mule-post from the west. It may be true or it may be hearsay. A few years ago, the Oghuz tribes raided in the west – nearly half a million of them spilled across the River Istros and into the empire.’ He frowned. ‘I do not know those lands, but I know what half a million armed men must look like. At one point they had Doukas and his retinue of just a few hundred riders trapped near the Haemus Mountains. He was a dead man, and the Oghuz are well-known for putting their enemies to miserable deaths – slicing off arms and legs then hanging the moaning torso from a tree for the wolves and bears to tear at. One night, while camped in some miserable hilltop bog in the middle of a rainstorm, Doukas did not pray to God, instead he cursed God for having put him in so miserable a predicament. Then he went on to curse the Oghuz who would surely put him to an excruciating end in the next few days. Then, almost overnight, as if his word had been deific, the Oghuz raiders were stricken by a terrible plague. They fell in their hundreds of thousands. Those who survived were leaderless and panicked. Many fled back to the wastelands across the Istros, but many more surrendered to Doukas. At once the raid was over and tens of thousands of these Oghuz pleaded to serve Doukas as mercenaries. An immense victory – won by his words alone, or so he believed.’
Sha held out his palms. ‘Perhaps that is why he chooses to neglect his borders and the themata armies so?’
Apion thought of Alp Arslan’s threat without airing it, ‘well he may well find that one day soon that those borders are pushed back until they encroach upon Constantinople’s walls. I fear that his words will offer little providence then. Hope is hard to conjure when such a prospect looms.’ He sighed and squinted into the sun. ‘What keeps you here, Sha, when the empire you serve shrivels in upon itself? Do you never pine for a return to Mali?’
‘Hope comes when we least expect it, sir. I remember that always, ever since I was a slave in the Seljuk heartlands. One day I hobbled back to the slave quarters, my back was more blood than flesh. I wept, knowing I could not sleep due to the pain. That night, I took a piece of root from under my pillow. I had been given it by an old slave months before as he lay dying. He said it would turn my blood to fire and I would suffer for only moments, and then I would be free.’ Sha’s eyes grew glassy and he paused for a moment. ‘I held the root in my hand for what seemed like an eternity, preparing to die. It was at the last moment that I realised that I had not heard the usual scuffle and chatter of the guards outside, nor the door to my filthy quarters being locked. When I opened the door and saw that the guards were indeed absent, I had my freedom.’ Sha frowned as he spoke. ‘On the cusp of death, hope presented itself.’
Sha sat up straight on his saddle, blinking the glassiness from his eyes and forcing a smile. ‘And as for returning to Mali?’ he shook his head. ‘I don’t think so – that king was an arsehole,’ he said and then roared with baritone laughter.
Apion chuckled too as Sha fell back to marshal the column.
They rode on across the plain and through the valleys. At dusk on the third day they reached the south banks of the River Lykos and made camp there, each kontoubernion of ten men setting to work on erecting their tent and lighting a campfire. The following morning the sun rose and grew fierce once more. The men of the thema were settled in the lacy shade offered by the beech trees, bantering as they waited on a passing vessel to transport them across the water. They kindled fires, boiled river water in their pots and then added balls of dried yoghurt, almonds and sesame oil, which blended with the water to form a thick and nutritious porridge. Their banter dropped to a lull as they filled their bellies with this, supplemented it with hard tack biscuit and smoked fish then washed it all down with well-watered wine.
To one side of the camp, Apion sat alone, his limbs still supple from his morning run and his hair still damp from bathing. He ate a meal of bread, cheese and dried berries, washing it down with cool river water. Then he settled down to cook a small pot of salep over his fire, the orchid root and cinnamon blending with the milk and releasing a delightfully sweet fragrance. The smell triggered many memories.
As did the sight a few hundred paces along the riverbank.
There, the charred foundations of a hut were embedded by the ruins of a simple ferry dock – little more than a few posts of timber driven into the silt of the shallows. On the opposite riverbank another post stood, with a frayed tether hanging from its tip where once a horn had hung. Once, years ago, the old ferryman Petzeas and his boys had run this crossing. In those days before Apion had enlisted with the thema, he had spent many hours chatting with the old goat as he crossed the river on his travels between the market towns dotted across the land. But then, five years ago, war had devoured the old man’s simple life. Apion had been too slow to meet the Seljuk incursion that ravaged these southern tracts of Chaldia. The ghazi warbands had razed, plundered and murdered
everything in their path. Peaceable Seljuk settlers and Byzantine citizens alike were slaughtered like animals. Old Petzeas had been trampled to death and his home set to the torch. His sons, Isaac and Maro, had joined the thema ranks, embittered and thinking only of revenge. Apion had felt compelled to talk them out of this, but had found he could offer no rationale, no reasoning that would seem fair or fitting. He himself had joined the ranks intent on revenge, and knew that some fires in the soul could not be doused. So Isaac and Maro had fought like lions in Blastares’ tourma, only to be cut down in a Seljuk ambush in Southern Armenia. An entire family gone, consumed by the treacherous borderlands.
He was stirred from his thoughts as, at last, a small, well-weathered pamphylos drifted downriver. The bowl-shaped transport vessel had sun-bleached sails, desiccated timbers and an equally well-weathered crew. Sha hailed it, summoning its captain to the vessel side. The captain reluctantly agreed to ferry the men of the thema across to the north banks, forty men at a time. Apion waited until the end to cross, and his eyes rarely left the sad, blackened stumps of old Petzeas’ home.
They reformed on the opposite bank and then continued northwards. Apion sensed his men’s weariness and fell back to offer them words of encouragement, slipping from his saddle to lead his Thessalian on foot for a while. It was then that the Norman, Dederic dropped back also.
‘It’s not often you see a strategos or a doux deigning to forego the relative comfort of the saddle and tread the land,’ he said.
Apion shot a glare up at him and saw the little rider’s nervous grin fade. It was then he realised he was scowling. He sighed and chuckled. ‘At ease, Dederic. I sometimes forget that my troubles are etched on my face.’ Then he looked down at the dusty track. ‘And now that you mention it, by now my feet are probably just as callused as my arse.’ He slipped one foot into a stirrup and hauled himself up and into the saddle, relieved to hear Dederic laughing. He winced at the rawness of the little rider’s sunburnt skin once more and frowned. ‘So, tell me, where in the west do you hail from?’
‘Rouen,’ Dederic broke into a broad grin, his gaze growing distant, ‘a dear and green land. The soil is rich, the air is crisp in the winter and hot in the summer,’ his grin dropped for a moment, ‘but not this hot.’
Apion frowned. ‘Then what brings you east?’ Apion knew the usual motives of mercenaries were plunder, titles and lust for bloody adventure. But he could not pin one of these on Dederic with any certainty.
Dederic’s features darkened just a fraction. ‘I had little choice but to leave my home, Strategos. I came this way two years ago, and I can still taste the tears that stained my face on the day I left my family behind. We have a small landholding on the outskirts of Rouen. A patch of farmland by a fresh brook, ringed by oaks that look like they have grown there for a thousand years or more. It is where I grew up – where my father and his father lived out their lives in relative peace. I took on the working of that land to feed my wife, Emelin, my three girls and my boy. But had I remained there, they would have ended up in poverty, homeless and starving,’ he frowned, ‘or worse.’
Apion recognised the little Norman’s expression only too well.
‘My father died heavily indebted to the lord of the land – a fat and uncompromising whoreson who insisted we had inherited the debt. Then the harvests were scant for four years, and we could not hope to pay our dues let alone put gruel on the table for the children. I promised the fat lord the arrears we owed, if only he would wait on my return from these lands. So I set off in the service of a neighbouring lord, seeking out the coin that would spare my family a grim future.’
Apion frowned, seeing that Dederic’s hands were typical of a landworker; the skin mottled with scars and his fingers were short and stumpy. ‘You worked the soil, yet you are a rider?’ he gestured to Dederic’s fine iron garb and well-kept fawn stallion, usually only owned by the rich lords and knights of the west – those who reigned over the serfs.
Dederic nodded, then shot a furtive glance behind. ‘All of my men and I were serfs before we came east, sir. We served as squires, pikemen and light infantry, the first to be thrown into the fray while the lancers waited for us to break the enemy or be broken before they would enter battle on their fine steeds.’
‘So how . . . ’ Apion begun.
‘Slain, sir. Every last one of them. The Seljuks surrounded them near Ikonium and butchered them. Cut off their heads before the city walls. Their riches did little to protect them at the last,’ Dederic laughed mirthlessly and shook his head. ‘The bitter irony is that while the Seljuks slaughtered the lancers, they ignored the fleeing serfs, seeing us as little threat. Later that night, we crept from our hiding places in the rocks, we reined in the panicked horses, we gathered the armour . . . we buried the corpses. Then we fought on in place of the dead lords.’ He stared straight ahead, his gaze flinty. ‘We fought on, because we had to.’ He patted his purse. ‘I need many more coins, but one day I will be able to return home. My family will be freed from the bonds of the fat lord.’
Apion felt a glow in his breast at the little rider’s conviction. ‘You fight for your family. I have heard only a few noble motives from the mercenaries that pour into our lands, Dederic. Today I have heard one more.’
Dederic nodded, his gaze sullen and his lips pursed.
There was much more Apion wanted to say to the little rider, but the steel around his heart would not allow him to do so. Perhaps there would come a day when he could share his past with this man. He offered an earnest nod, then rode ahead to the front of the column.
By late afternoon they entered the valleys of the River Piksidis and the foothills of the Parhar Mountains. Here the pale gold landscape gave way to a lighter terracotta earth, with thicker patches of green shrub that dotting the ground and the gentle hillsides. The cicada song echoed through these valleys and the heat was only just beginning to ease as the sun dropped to the western horizon.
Apion was all too aware of the babbling Piksidis, only a short ride away. Nestled on its banks was a place he had not visited for twelve years. The ruins of old Mansur’s farm. After witnessing the grim remains of Petzeas’ home, he knew he could not afford to set his eyes upon the place. He had tried to come here once before, alone, and found that he could not face it. Now, with his men in tow, he could not trust himself to retain his iron veneer. It was not far from here, and its presence pulled at his heart. They passed by the far side of the cluster of gentle hills that marked Apion’s old stamping ground, and he kept his head bowed as they did so. From the corner of his eye, he could not help but see the outline of the beech thicket atop one hill, and the rock in its midst. A reminiscence of his precious few moments alone with Maria up there danced through his mind. Her scent, her soft skin, her sweet voice.
‘Sir!’
Apion snapped from his thoughts and twisted in his saddle. Procopius sat bolt upright on his mount, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun, the other pointing to the north. Up ahead, a lone rider galloped towards them, a red dust plume billowing in his wake.
It was a kursoris, a thematic scout rider wearing an off-white linen tunic, riding boots and a dark-blue felt cap, armed only with a spathion and a bow. He was dipped in the saddle and his dappled grey rode at full gallop. At this haste, Apion’s heart steeled and his shoulders tensed.
The rider reined in his mount, paces from Apion.
‘Strategos!’ the man saluted.
Apion nodded. ‘Rider?’
The man pulled off his cap and mopped the sweat from his brow. ‘I thought we might never find you,’ he panted. ‘You must make haste, to Trebizond.’
‘The capital is in danger?’ At this, Sha, Blastares and Procopius gathered round, Dederic joining them with his clutch of Normans.
The rider shook his head. ‘No, Strategos. The capital is safe. But Cydones requests your presence with the utmost urgency.’
Apion’s gaze shot to the northern horizon, behind the rider. His eyes
narrowed. Cydones, his old mentor in the ranks, would never create a commotion without good cause.
He raised a hand and circled it overhead. ‘Infantry, proceed to Trebizond at quick march.’ Then he pinned his gaze on two figures near the head of the first two banda of infantry. ‘Komes Stypiotes, Komes Peleus, you have the lead.’
‘Aye, sir!’ the pair saluted in reply.
Then Apion beckoned to the kataphractoi and the Norman knights.
‘Riders, with me – we leave for the capital at full gallop!’
***
They rode through the night. While the riders grew cold as the chill rushed over them, their mounts glistened with sweat, a lather of saliva gathering at their iron bits.
Then, as dawn broke, they neared the northern coastline of Chaldia. Overnight it seemed that the land had transformed around them. The arid rock and patchy shrubs were gone and in their place were verdant grasses and forests that hugged the cliffs and hillsides. Striped birds chirruped and squawked, flitting from tree to tree in celebration of their victory over the ubiquitous cicada song. The air had changed too, growing fresher and spiced with the tang of sea salt.
Then, when the sun had fully risen, the snaking track broadened, becoming a speckling of ancient flagstones and then a full stone road. Up ahead, the sun-bleached and well-walled city of Trebizond rose into view, capped by the citadel perched on the city’s acropolis and framed by the azure sky and the sparkling waters of the Pontus Euxinus.
The riders slowed as they entered the stream of trade wagons, camels, oxen and mules ambling to and from the city gates. At the rumble of hooves, some turned and moved aside, others seemed less than enamoured by the inconvenience. Until they heard the cry from Sha, who rode out ahead.
Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart Page 9
