‘Majesty,’ said Dalassena, ‘we cannot postpone. The dispatches we have received by messenger pigeon from Thessalonica indicate preparations for an assault on the city. Once the Hun is invested in Thessalonica, our problems multiply a hundredfold. The Domestic has proposed an innovative and excellent strategy. He should learn to posit his theories with more conviction. And our dauntless Varangians, who cringe from nothing; surely we insult them with the suggestion that they would retreat before a foe as ephemeral as the rain.’
‘Hetairarch.’ The Emperor turned to Mar, who stood just to the side of his throne. ‘Can you execute this attack in the conditions described?’
Mar bowed. ‘Majesty, I have consulted with the minsoratores who have surveyed the terrain. I am convinced that the drainage is adequate to permit the Grand Hetairia to advance resolutely and without delay.’
‘Manglavite?’ The Emperor’s acute gaze identified Haraldr in the pack of junior officers. Haraldr was still puzzling over Mar’s comments about the terrain. Haraldr had also talked to the minsoratores - the army’s field surveyors - who had reported difficult footing in the event of rain. And Mar had discounted Haraldr’s suggestion about footwear suited to muddy conditions. Still, Haraldr was convinced that his own men, properly shod, could deal with the footing. ‘Majesty,’ said Haraldr, ‘the Middle Hetairia is also prepared to execute this attack.’
The Emperor placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward slightly. Then after suitable preliminaries, our initial assault will be conducted by the Grand and Middle Hetairia.’ The Emperor paused and looked around the room, his eyes so intense that it seemed as if he were personally addressing each man. ‘I will take direct command of, and participate in, the Varangian assault.’
Mar looked out over the lights of the Imperial encampment. It was as if a city had grown up in one evening on this empty plain north of Thessalonica. The fizzling, smoking torches and campfires outlined a broad cruciform shape, with the Emperor’s brocade-domed tent, a virtual portable palace, at the nexus. Around this orderly city was a ring of pack animals and wagons, dimly visible in the rain, forming a substantial portable wall. Mar stamped his boot in a puddle. The Romans usually frightened off their enemies with this sheer display of material. The Bulgars knew better; they had been under the Roman yoke long enough to have borrowed Roman equipment and tactics. The truth was, a good bit of this display had nothing to do with fighting capacity, but with maintaining the Emperor’s ceremonial magnificence out in the field; in many cases, particularly with commanders like Dalassena, the army seemed more intent on protecting the Imperial baggage train than on attacking the enemy. What fools. Two thousand Norsemen, their leader sleeping in his gear bag alongside his men, could best the entire Imperial Taghmata.
Mar looked for a tent on the northern wing of the temporary city’s cruciform, in a section allocated to junior officers of the Imperial Hyknatoi. An incredible affront to the Caesar, thought Mar; he had not believed the Emperor capable of such petty animosity and jealousy. But it was just as well, he realized; it would make what he must do that much easier. A single akrites stood outside the tent; apparently the Caesar was not even allowed a mandator to relay orders to him from the senior command.
‘Hetairarch!’ blurted Michael Kalaphates. The Caesar was, Mar reflected, almost as genuinely surprised and happy as a man learning of his release from the Numera. Odin favours this, Mar told himself. Let the pieces fall as they may.
Michael offered Mar a camp stool and a goblet of poor local wine; they are even begrudging him Imperial-quality drink, thought Mar. ‘Highness,’ said Mar, ‘I know you as a man who understands risks, and who has also seen a good bit of warfare in the bargain. Since our Father for some reason neglected to solicit your opinion on tomorrow’s enterprise, I have taken the initiative - and I hope I am not overly bold in this - of seeking out your advice.’
Michael didn’t believe the flattery for a moment but realized that it was an auspicious signal. Mar wanted something. At least somebody still had use for him. ‘I would be happy to help as eminent a warrior as yourself in any way I could, Hetairarch, but I must confess I know vastly more of the risks of wagering on charioteers than I do of the risks of battle. Perhaps I could offer you some other assistance.’
Good, thought Mar. I didn’t think Kalaphates was a fool. ‘Well, Highness, I did come to discuss a wager of sorts. Perhaps - to use a term familiar in commerce - a speculation.’ Mar spread out his huge, elegant hands as if displaying the sincerity of what he was about to say, or perhaps his ability to impose whatever he intended to declare, sincere or not. ‘Let us say that it concerns the price of a certain piece of jewellery.’ Michael’s eyes sparkled with interest. ‘The bauble that I am interested in is presently worthless, because although there was a brief flurry of speculation in this particular piece of jewellery, the prospective buyer - let us call this hypothetical buyer “uncle” - quite vanished when he discovered himself already in possession of a similar piece, which he had previously thought lost. This is a dreadful circumstance for the owner of this now worthless bauble, for it is virtually all he has of value, and without the income he had expected the sale to bring him, he might not be able to eat. He might even starve to death. So there he is, wandering the streets, alone, destitute, when a friend sees his plight and offers to do him a favour.’ Mar locked eyes with Kalaphates. ‘This friend offers to destroy the other piece of jewellery, immediately raising the value of the remaining item beyond reason.’ Mar continued his manic, glacial, almost mesmerising stare. ‘This friend asks scant reward for this incredible benefaction.’
‘For what scant reward would this friend ask, Hetairarch?’ Michael’s dark eyes were almost as crazed as Mar’s.
Mar stood up, his huge bulk seeming to fill the tent. His voice, in sinister contrast, was a whisper. ‘Your friend asks that once you receive payment from this “uncle” for this piece of jewellery and are assured that you will want for nothing for the rest of your life, that you permit your friend to kill this “uncle” and snatch the bauble back. You keep the money you have been paid for the bauble, and your friend now has the bauble.’
Michael looked up at Mar, his voice like a falling feather. ‘The money, as I see it, is my life, I keep that.’
Mar nodded. ‘The life of, let us envision, a Caesar of Rome, a well-respected, extremely well-protected Caesar, with his own personal treasury financed by a new land tax, an income he can enjoy free from the burden of attending to affairs of state.’
Michael’s eyes already savoured the vision. ‘And the bauble you receive, Hetairarch, is . . .’
‘The diadem, and the attendant office, of the Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of the Romans.’
The dawn was unexpectedly luminous, the cloud vault high overhead like pewter, the clean, steady rain almost like a glass that captured and intensified the light. To a hawk soaring high above, the armies of Rome would have seemed a broad, rectangular belt of gold, silver and scarlet spread out over a dull green plain.
The Emperor spurred his horse to the ranks of his senior aides, who were grouped in front of the standards of the Grand Hetairia and wore gold-tinted mail shirts and plumed golden helms of the Imperial retinue. The Emperor, armoured identically to his officers, differentiated only by his purple boots and cape, directed a command to his principal orderly. ‘Droungarios, the report of the Mandator General!’
The Mandator General rode forward and bowed; a stout, not particularly military-looking man who always wore a small enamel icon round his neck, he was responsible for the final summary of all intelligence gathered by the akrites whom he supervised, his spies in the enemy camp, and the local peasants. ‘Majesty, they are encamped roughly according to the Roman practice, though not without critical variation. In lieu of an earthwork perimeter and a cordon of caltrops, they have simply spread stakes. They may also have dug leg-breaking pits. They assume we will pursue a limited engagement today, striking at their flanks with light cavalr
y. As the ground is quite soggy at the Bulgar front, their deployment there will be light initially. However, the site is suitably graded to allow them to move reinforcements quickly.’
The Emperor wheeled his horse and studied the Bulgar line, visible as a jumbled mass of wagons, horses and mules. Behind this defence, the smoke from the morning camp-fires rose in thin tendrils that blurred, greyed and merged into a huge foggy column, finally disappearing among the high clouds. It was a strange portent, as if the sky had hung a vast ashen shroud round the Bulgar camp. ‘Let the priests go among the men,’ said the Emperor softly. The hundreds of priests began to circulate, the wisps from their smoking censers marking their passage through the ranks, their sonorous chants like a dirge.
When the priests had worked all the way to the rear guard, the Emperor removed his simple gold-and-pearl diadem, handed it to an attendant eunuch; a second eunuch brought him his engraved gold helm on a silk pillow. The Emperor placed the conical helmet on his head. His chest worked in slow heaves. ‘Grand Domestic,’ he said evenly, ‘begin your diversion.’
The band signalled the attack with the characteristic blaring of trumpets and pounding of drums and cymbals. ‘The cross has conquered!’ bellowed the units of the Imperial Scholae - five ranks of mounted archers and lancers - as they lurched forward, picked up speed, and began their thundering charge on the Bulgar centre. The Scholae quickly reached bowshot of the Bulgar lines and the first volley rose like a dense flock into the air, then abruptly alighted; here, there, a horse went down. The Scholae stampeded the Bulgars’ outermost cordon of pack animals and wagons, then veered sharply towards the Bulgar flanks to divert the enemy’s attention away from the centre they had just left vulnerable. Soon the flanks were heavily engaged; Bulgar standards could be seen moving towards the left and right perimeters of their enormous encampment. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, hundreds of akrites rode from a small copse just beyond the Bulgars’ left flank, directly through the remnants of the Bulgars’ mule-and-wagon wall. Puffs of flame appeared as the akrites hurled clay shells filled with liquid fire into the wagons. The fire and smoke drove most of the remaining pack animals away. Visible behind the black pillars of smoke was the vast mass of the Bulgar army.
‘Domestic of the Hyknatoi!’ shouted the Emperor. The Imperial Hyknatoi charged off as the Scholae had before them. This time many horses and men went down as the charge hit the exposed centre of the Bulgar formation. After several volleys of arrows and spears the Hyknatoi retreated to join the flank attacks; in the wake of their assault, wounded and dying horses could be seen kicking the air like toppled clockwork miniatures. A mandator came galloping back towards the Roman ranks, his horse steaming in the cold rain and his face bright red. ‘Majesty, the flanks are fully engaged.’
‘Domestic of the Numeri!’ Haraldr felt fear, as if awakening to a knife in his ribs. The Numeri were the infantry division of the Taghmata; they would support the Varangian assault once -if- the breakthrough was made. ‘Hetairarch! Manglavite!’ Haraldr ordered his men to dismount; batmen circulated among the ranks of the Middle Hetairia and led the horses to the rear. Haraldr walked to the horses of the Emperor and his aides. Mar, also dismounted, came to his side. His ice-hard eyes already glimmered with Odin’s gift.
‘Proceed in ranks, Hetairarch.’ Before Mar could turn and give the order, the Emperor astonished everyone within seeing by arduously dismounting from his towering white Arabian. If he felt pain upon standing, he did not display it; there was only a furious resolution on his powerful features.
‘Majesty . . .’uttered the Droungarios helplessly.
‘Send my horse for me when our attack has been successful, Droungarios,’ said the Emperor. ‘These men fight on foot, and as I am joining them, so will I.’
Mar led the Grand Hetairia out in two relatively narrow ranks; the Middle Hetairia followed, also in two ranks of two hundred and fifty men abreast. The Emperor walked alongside Mar, beneath the dragon standard of the Grand Hetairia, his step heavy, purposeful. Fifty paces out of bowshot. Mar turned and shouted ‘Boar!’ The ranks of the Grand Hetairia folded like wings against the Middle Hetairia, creating a layered flesh-and-metal pyramid, with Mar’s men on the outside and Haraldr’s men forming a compact, solid inner wedge. The Emperor took his place just ahead of Haraldr at the snout of the boar-within-a-boar. Mar stood alone at the apex of the outer boar, his face twitching with fury.
The guttural cries of the Bulgars stilled as the Varangian formation, a huge lethal arrow, pointed directly at their centre. It was possible to hear a dying man wail ‘Theotokos’ over and over. The rain fell in large, clear drops. Mar raised his gilded axe. In unison the Varangians slammed their axe blades flat against the hard oak planks of their shields; the sound was like the breathing of some colossal beast. Again, again, mesmerizing, terrifying. The boar advanced to this deadly cadence.
The Bulgar arrows descended in buzzing swarms but largely clattered harmlessly off byrnnies, helms and shields. Shouts came back to watch for the rows of sharpened stakes, and the wedge rocked and surged as men manoeuvred round the crude barriers. Two Varangians in the first rank tumbled into a shallow, concealed pit; one scrambled up but the other screamed as he was impaled on a stake. The Bulgars became individual faces, stubbled chins, red noses, bad teeth.
Mar’s oath could be heard, curiously muted, above the almost deafening din. He pounded the canvas-clad infantrymen at the Bulgar front with huge, bludgeoning strokes, so relentlessly that it seemed his foes were ritualistically kneeling before him, except that these supplicants had been anointed with brilliant blood as Mar split their skulls and hacked off their arms. Mar stepped over his writhing, butchered victims, and before he had killed half a dozen men the Bulgars fell back without even offering him resistance, shoving and trampling their own in an effort to escape the Varangian scythe. The rest of the boar followed Mar into the frantic, scrambling Bulgar retreat, moving almost as steadily as it had when unopposed.
In the middle of the boar, Haraldr and his men had little more to do than protect themselves against arrows and step over the grotesque, akimbo corpses, most of them with gaping axe wounds. At first the bodies lay in only a few inches of dark, watery muck, but soon the dead and dying were virtually submerged in the clinging ooze. Both the Varangian advance and the Bulgar retreat slowed inexorably. The hail of arrows and spears became heavy and steady. Now Varangians fell into the mud. The boar stopped. Haraldr stood on a dead man’s back and looked ahead. Mar was immobilized in muck up to his knees, crouched behind his shield as the archers and javelin throwers pelted him. Mar’s men surged up to protect
him, but many of them were forced back by spear-thrusting phalanxes of Bulgar infantry. Haraldr quickly ascertained that the men of the Grand Hetairia, hindered by their clumsy boots, could no longer advance. He relayed the commands back through Ulfr and Halldor: the Middle Hetairia will now move to the front. Haraldr shouted his plan to the Emperor, who fearlessly joined him in slogging to the mired snout.
‘I’m taking the snout!’ Haraldr yelled in Mar’s ear. ‘When we have passed, your men will have time to take off their boots and can come in behind us.’ Mar nodded drunkenly. He is deep in the spirit world, Haraldr thought. ‘Did you hear me!’ screamed Haraldr.
‘Yes! We will fall in behind!’
Haraldr strapped his axe to his back and unsheathed his sword. The Rage seized him like an angry wolf. He leapt out at a short, stout Bulgar infantryman in a metal-studded leather jerkin and slashed him across his torso, severing an arm and crumpling his chest. The dead man’s comrades fell back at the appearance of this new Norse titan, and Haraldr lifted his knees high to keep moving, to keep pressing them. His Varangians stayed tightly behind him. The Bulgars made a brief stand with long spears, but Haraldr and his men fended off the metal-tipped shafts with their shields, then with swords and axes made the Bulgars pay for their resistance.
Haraldr looked back across the corpse-strewn bog to make certain th
at Mar’s men were following. Alarm swept through him in a nauseating wave. Mar had not advanced a step and clearly had no intention to; he had drawn his men into a tight, circular shield fort. They were waiting for the Numeri to rescue them. In an instant Haraldr knew what had happened, though he probably would be unable to convince anyone who did not share Odin’s gift: Mar was deliberately abandoning Haraldr and the men of the Middle Hetairia. And if Odin gives me another day, Haraldr vowed, I will kill him for that betrayal.
The Valkyrja hovered, preparing to snatch away that day. Bulgar infantry by the many hundreds, the vanguard of thousands, were now trudging into the muck that separated the two Varangian forces, intending to encircle them both. They were armed with long spears and good steel helms and metal-plated canvas byrnnies. Haraldr knew that if his men were stopped and forced to form a shield fort, the Numeri would never reach them. The Middle Hetairia would dwindle to a pile of twitching corpses over a long, desperate afternoon. There was only one escape: to continue relentlessly forward, to the very heart of the Bulgar army, and pierce it with Hunland steel.
Haraldr fought forward with a renewed frenzy and a solid front of Bulgars, spears set, panicked and ran. Their retreat exposed a muddy little creek running perpendicular to Har-aldr’s advance. And behind the creek was a wall of wide-eyed, jittery horses, crowded flank to flank, their chests covered with quilted batting. The riders wore mail byrnnies and heavy steel greaves. This was the vaunted Bulgar heavy cavalry.
What had Maria said? The king beyond the creek. But the creek was not safety. In her dream he had died before he reached the creek. As he would here. But if he could cross that creek, could he defeat that fate? He screamed at Ulfr and Halldor. ‘Those men are not afraid, but their horses are! We must let them know the axe and push beyond the creek!’ And for some reason he could not fathom, he added, ‘The Bulgar Khan is just beyond it!’
Byzantium - A Novel Page 59
