Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

by Gordon Doherty

  Except one small rider in a mail hauberk.

  Dederic’s mount flashed in front of the emperor at the last, and the bolt took the Norman high in the chest. His lifeblood burst over Romanus. Then he slid from the saddle and into the gore.

  Zenobius’ expressionless face cracked into a sneer of confusion and disgust. He had time to snatch up his spathion before a pair of varangoi axes swung down upon him, one cutting his chest open, the other slicing his sword arm off. Then Apion’s scimitar spun through the air and swiped his head from his shoulders.

  The varangoi and the men of the ranks cried out in confusion, swarming past Apion to surround the emperor. Apion felt his thoughts merge with blackness as he staggered to where Dederic lay.

  The Norman clutched at the solenarion shaft, sputtering blood from his lips, his eyes searching the sky above.

  Apion dropped to his knees, panting weakly. ‘How did you know?’ he croaked. ‘Even the varangoi were caught unawares.’ His vision was slipping away, and all he could see now were the Norman’s eyes, fixed on him.

  ‘Whatever it takes . . . ’ Dederic whispered. ‘They promised me gold, Apion – enough to free my family. I betrayed our every move.’

  Apion shook his head. ‘No!’ he whispered.

  ‘I made my choice.’ He clasped Apion’s forearm, his eyes bulging as another mouthful of blood burst from his lips. ‘But I pray that my choice at the last will define me. I pray that God will not let my family suffer.’

  With that, Dederic of Rouen shuddered in a death rattle and he was still.

  Apion’s heart turned as cold as the rest of his body. He gazed at Dederic’s dead eyes.

  All around him, the skutatoi chanted for the emperor. ‘Ba-si-le-us! Ba-si-le-us!’ and this chant became intermingled with that from the tattered remains of the Chaldian Thema; ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’

  At this, Apion’s head lolled round weakly and he glanced to the setting sun in confusion. Dusk was coming on faster than normal, he thought as his vision dimmed.

  ‘Strategos!’ he heard Romanus cry as if from a distant place. He felt hands grapple at him, men calling out in alarm. He heard the voices of Sha, Blastares and Procopius, pushing to the fore. But they were slipping away. And he was falling.

  As Apion toppled into the gore beside Dederic, the distant chanting changed to a solemn tone as the priests heralded the victory and bemoaned the lost, accompanied by a chorus of screeching carrion birds.

  ***

  Alp Arslan halted his retinue of seventy ghulam with a raised hand. Not a man spoke.

  Upon their approach, he had watched in disbelief as the small pockets of Byzantine cavalry had carved the emir’s army apart. Now his gaze hung upon the sight before him. Thousands of the emir’s men washing past, leaderless, weaponless, their eyes wide. The fleet of trebuchets, towers and catapults had been abandoned in the middle of the plain, their crews having fled. ‘Fleeing what?’ he said, eyeing the bloodied rabble that stood outside the western walls of Hierapolis. ‘I see only a tattered band of men.’

  ‘Including the two that matter,’ Nizam whispered, by his side.

  Despite the distance, Alp Arslan recognised the white and crimson form in the Byzantine heart as that of Romanus. Beside the emperor knelt a bloodied rider with a black eagle plumage, shoulders draped in a crimson cloak. It was the one who had slain the emir.

  ‘The Haga has shown honour today. He slew the emir, knowing it would end the battle swiftly,’ Nizam mused.

  ‘Honour or the ruthless nous of a man soaked in battle-blood?’ the sultan countered.

  ‘It matters little,’ Kilic cut in, grinning. The big bodyguard pointed to the crimson-cloaked form. ‘Look, he has fought his last.’

  Alp Arslan squinted, seeing the Haga collapse to the ground.

  He found no joy in the sight.

  ‘What now, Sultan?’ Kilic asked.

  Alp Arslan’s eyes never left the Haga’s body as he heeled his mount round to the south. ‘We are beaten today and so we return to our homes.’ His eyes glazed just a little as he added. ‘Tomorrow, and every day after, we will pursue victory. Fate is with us. Byzantium must fall.’

  22. The Grey Land

  The cawing of the birds faded and was replaced with the skirl of an angry wind. It roared and roared until he could bear it no more, and so he opened his eyes. At once, the roaring wind stopped and there was utter silence.

  He was in no pain. All around was a grey and lifeless world. Mountains tapered up to jagged peaks that pierced a curious sky. It was as dim as twilight, but the sun was present, yet shrouded by a dark veil that seemed to withhold its brilliance. And it was cold. So very cold.

  He looked down to see that his faded red tunic seemed to be draining of colour, turning as grey as the dust. At the same time, he felt his thoughts fall away like dead leaves from a bloom in the first frost of autumn.

  ‘I feared I would meet you here, Apion,’ a distant voice spoke.

  He turned to see the crone. She shuffled across the still land towards him with the aid of a cane, her off-white robes betraying bony knees as she moved. Behind her and stretching off as far as he could see was her trail of footprints in the grey dust, as if she had journeyed far to be here. Her puckered features were etched with sadness. Then, as she came closer, she lifted the cane and held it out to him.

  Apion eyed the walking aid. At once, his heart seemed to spark with fondness as he recognised old Cydones’ palm prints, worn into the top. For a moment, the fading memories and greying of his thoughts slowed.

  ‘Where am I?’ he asked.

  ‘A place that every man visits eventually. A place that I have long grown weary of,’ the crone replied, looking up to the veiled sun, her sightless eyes slitted as if she could see and the sun was blinding.

  ‘I cannot remember how I came to be here. All I feel is a terrible pang in my heart – as painful as any wound I have suffered. Is it . . . betrayal?’

  The crone avoided his question. ‘This place soothes a man’s soul and takes away many things . . . including some things best forgotten.’

  Apion’s eyes darted as fleeting images of the battle pierced the numbness. ‘Am I dead? I must be, for the battle is over and I find myself on this lifeless plain.’ He thought of the frantic last moments of the fray, Romanus’ sword swinging alongside his own, seizing victory from the flames. Then the crone’s words danced across his thoughts.

  At dusk you will stand with him in the final battle . . .

  ‘ . . . like an island in the storm,’ he finished. Then he looked up at her. ‘This last part of your vision has come to pass?’

  She shook her head. ‘Today was but a grim portent. The final battle and the island in the storm have still to come.’

  ‘But I surely will not be there to stand by his side?’ Apion said, looking to the skin on his forearms – the white band where the prayer rope had once been tied was gone. Then the Haga stigma started to fade until it too was gone. Now the network of scarring on the skin was disappearing before his eyes, leaving grey, smooth flesh in its place. ‘This place seems eager to draw the life from me, to drain me of those things that make me what I am.’

  She reached forward, clutching at his wrist with her talon-like fingers. ‘Then fight it, before it gnaws into your heart – the one place that truly defines you.’ She raised a bony finger and pointed to the pair of grey, fang-like mountains, dappled with shadows. ‘Look, what do you see?’

  ‘I see a wasteland. What of it?’ he said, then turned his gaze once more upon his disappearing scars.

  She stared at him, her eyes weary. Then she reached over, placing Mansur’s bloodied shatranj piece in his left palm, and Cydones’ cane in the other, before closing his greying fingers over these two items. She placed a hand on his breastbone and pointed to the jagged mountains again. ‘Let the iron melt from your heart, Apion, then look again.’

  Apion frowned, shaking his head. ‘Then I must be dead inside and out, for I see
only . . . ’ he started. But he felt the hand holding the cane growing warmer. The draining of his thoughts slowed and then stopped. He thought of Cydones and the many days he had spent with his mentor, supping wine, playing shatranj, and with both men recalling the happy times in their lives. Like Apion, Cydones would speak little of the many years that spliced these precious and happy times. The old man had no family, and his life was entwined with the war. In Cydones, Apion had found a reflection of himself. These memories were rich and vivid. Their colour did not fade.

  Before him, the shadows seemed to fade from the grey mountains and they turned a warm russet-gold. Then the veil fell from the sun, bathing the land in warmth and light. When he frowned at this, the crone pressed his fingers over the shatranj piece in his other palm.

  At once, his thoughts were filled with old Mansur’s laughter. Memories of the years they had spent together danced in his mind’s eye. Orphaned, Apion had found a Seljuk father in the old man. Then his lips grew taut as he remembered the bitter truth that had followed. But the anger faded as a tear danced across his cheeks. Without Mansur’s mistakes, would the old man have grown to become the fatherly figure he was in his latter years? Without Mansur, would he ever have had those precious few years with Maria?

  As his thoughts swirled, the mountains before him altered likewise. The jagged peaks relaxed into the rounded, gentle sloping hills of a valley. Beeches grew from seedling to sapling to verdant thickets in heartbeats. Then a babbling of running water filled the air and a gentle river spilled through the valley, in between the two hills. The ground below him rose up, lifting him to the top of another modest hill. Cicadas sang, goats bleated and the heat was like elixir on his skin.

  ‘I know this place,’ Apion spoke as he twisted to look around him.

  ‘And you must never forget it,’ the crone spoke.

  Then he heard the lowing of oxen in the distance behind him. He spun round and looked down into the valley, and the sight wrenched at his heart. The weary farmhouse with the bowed roof. The goats. The ageing grey mare tucked into a patch of shade, munching on hay. Then, in the heart of the valley, a short stroll from the farmhouse, he saw a portly figure driving a pair of oxen along a square of flat ground, ploughing the soil. Mansur? His heart hammered under his ribs. Then it seemed to stop dead. Beside the farmer, a young woman stood in a frayed, red robe. Her hair was dark and sleek. ‘Maria?’

  He glanced to the crone. ‘What is this?’

  ‘From darkness, you can find strength,’ she replied. ‘Many mourn what they have lost. The strongest use it to drive them onwards. That is what makes you what you are, Apion. That is why I came here. You must not give up.’

  ‘But this is not real.’

  ‘No, most of the things you see here live on only within your heart.’ The crone stared at him, then reached out to offer him something else. A lock of sleek, dark hair, bound together by a fine golden thread. ‘But not all.’

  He took it, then lifted it to his nose and inhaled Maria’s sweet scent. He looked up to the crone, his eyes widening.

  A smile had spread across the crone’s face. ‘Your old friend, Nasir, left it with me when he passed through here only a short while ago. At the last, he wanted you to know the truth.’

  Apion gawped at the lock of hair and then at the figure down in the valley. ‘She is . . . no, I saw her blood. She was . . . ’ he looked back to the crone. She was gone. In her place a swirl of grey dust rose and then dissipated.

  He set off at a sprint downhill as an eagle screeched out above him. The wind rushed past his ears and he slid down the scree at the foot of the valley, tumbling over, kicking up dust as he scrambled towards them. Maria turned to him. She was frowning. She looked older than he remembered. He held out a hand to her, stretching his fingers out as he ran to her. But then she started to slip away. He tried to cry out to her but found his voice was simply not there.

  Then all around him the verdant valley crumbled like a fading dream.

  Blackness overcame him.

  23. The Few

  Winter had gripped the lands of the Sebastae Thema like a predator’s claws. A winding track snaked across the land, still, empty and frozen hard with sparkling frost. A dark-red sun dipped towards the western horizon, retreating from the blanket of chill darkness encroaching from the east.

  Then a steady crunching of boots and clopping of hooves stirred the icy stillness. From the horizon on the south-east, a weary column of men bearing tattered banners and a smoke-stained campaign Cross marched into view, their breath clouding above them as if to compensate for the lack of a dust plume. The priests carrying the Cross chanted as they marched, lamenting the fallen.

  Some way back from the head of the column, Tourmarches Sha rode solemnly, flanked by Blastares and Procopius. He stared dead ahead when the thud of another man falling to the ground sounded from not far behind him. Of the sixteen hundred wretches that had survived the Syrian campaign, nearly a third had died on this march home, succumbing to their injuries and the cold. As such, the path behind them was littered with dead men and mules. Hierapolis had been secured and with it, the beginnings of a new, more defensible borderland in the southeast. But at what cost, he mused, thinking of the six thousand men who would never return home.

  Then his eyes fell upon the crimson cloak, tied up to form a parcel and balanced on the front of his saddle. It contained an ivory-hilted scimitar, a battered helmet plumed with black eagle feathers and a folded iron klibanion scarred with a russet, blood-encrusted tear near the midriff.

  ‘Many widows we make of waiting wives, with so little thought we squander men’s lives,’ Sha spoke gently, his breath clouding before him.

  ‘Aye,’ Procopius nodded, his aged features creasing as he squinted into the sunset. ‘For an old bastard like me to ride home unscathed while so many boys and young men lie buried back in that dusty plain is strange indeed.’ He pointed upwards furtively. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  Blastares frowned. ‘Eh?’

  Procopius glanced this way and that, eyes wide. ‘If God has chosen those who live and those who die, then on a day like today, you have to question his judgement.’

  ‘You shouldn’t question him,’ Blastares replied flatly, clutching the Chi-Rho amulet dangling around his neck. A troubled frown wrinkled the big tourmarches’ features.

  ‘The strategos gave up on God a long time ago,’ Sha said, looking to the parcel of armour he carried. ‘What that tells us, I don’t know.’ He looked up to the sky with the other two as if searching the coming gloom for an answer.

  A chill wind whistled around them.

  ‘Tourmarchai of Chaldia,’ a hoarse voice called out from behind.

  They turned to the voice. The gaunt and pale, amber-bearded rider was saddled on a scarred chestnut Thessalian, shivering under a pair of thick woollen blankets. He held one hand to his ribs and his face was wrinkled in pain.

  ‘Strategos!’ Sha gasped, dropping back to ride level with Apion.

  ‘Ah, so you have my armour, I’ve been all along the touldon looking for that,’ Apion said as if Sha hadn’t spoken. He reached out to lift the crimson bundle from the Malian, poorly disguising another wince of pain as he did so.

  ‘Sir?’ Sha searched Apion’s battered features. His eyes were open for the first time in weeks. Only that morning, the strategos had been strapped to a stretcher, wrapped in blankets. He was muttering and feverish. ‘The skribones insisted you would be confined to the stretcher for the rest of the journey,’ Sha frowned. ‘Even then, they were sure you were . . . ‘

  ‘Aye, well, they were wrong,’ Apion replied, his eyes avoiding Sha’s, a bead of cold sweat dancing down his forehead.

  Sha’s brow furrowed. ‘Sir, for the last two weeks, you have been near-lifeless, face tinged with blue.’

  ‘True, I feel well rested,’ he started to chuckle and then stopped, flinching and clutching his ribs. ‘The skribones have done their job. My wound is already heali
ng well.’

  ‘Then perhaps that old hag should join the skribones?’ Procopius added with a dry snort.

  Apion’s gaze snapped round on the white-haired officer. ‘Tourmarches?’

  Procopius jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘About a week ago, after we came back through the mountains, she started walking with the column. She was bare-footed and withered like a dried berry. The men grew tired of heckling her after a few days and then she started walking alongside you. The skribones saw no harm in this, until they caught her smoothing some foul-smelling paste into your wound.’

  ‘I was there,’ Blastares cut in. ‘The open flesh had absorbed most of it by the time they hauled her away and cast her out of the column. We feared she had poisoned you, but that evening, the colour returned to your face and you started to show signs of life once more. But still it was not pleasant; you were feverish, moaning, crying out in pain. You really should be at rest, sir.’

  ‘I’ll journey as I see fit,’ Apion grunted, scowling, then failing to disguise another shudder of agony. ‘Besides, the skribones fed me a pot of warm stew and bread – I am in fine fettle.’ Sha, Blastares and Procopius stared at him, their brows knitted in frowns.

  ‘What’s wrong – do I command no respect without my armour?’ Apion barked, patting the parcel then pinning each of them with a flinty glare. The three gawped back at him until at last his features melted into a weak smile; ‘Or does the mighty Haga look more like a wounded sparrow in his current state?’

  The three could not stop laughter tumbling from their lungs at this, rousing the attention of those nearby.

  Apion nodded back down the column. ‘Now fall back and ready the men. For we will soon depart for Chaldia. We’re going home.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Sha grinned in reply.

  ***