The Seljuk preoccupation with the other side of the fortress enabled Derar to steal away when the moon was low. Heart thumping in his chest, he sped the arrow warning of the imminent attack. He heard with satisfaction the iron tip strike the side of the tower, the strange oath of the Armenian sentry and the scuff of booted feet on the ramparts.
The attack, launched the following night, was easily beaten off. Derar watched as the wounded and maimed streamed back into the camp. Standing there, his mind dealt with the calamitous choices with which he was faced. The Seljuks had welcomed him and afforded him every courtesy. They were aware of his quest to find his nephew and having respect for family affairs, did not press too heavily about the matter. Derar had told no one, apart from Farisa and Zaibullah, of the whereabouts of Zobeir al-Adin. Zaibullah knew of the imprisonment of his nephew but despite the Turk’s previous visit to Manzikert, nothing of Derar’s continuing contract with the Romans. Derar knew the moral pressures were already difficult and would get worse. The penalty for failure to maintain the pretence did not bear thinking of. Already he felt in the glances of the beaten men filing into the fire lit camp, accusations that logic told him were not there. With an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, he retired to his small campaign tent and allowed Farisa to undress him and start to work the tight muscles of his neck and back.
The Seljuk Camp, Manzikert,
Morning, 24th August 1054
Derar had just finished a meagre breakfast of bread and strong coffee when uproar broke out in the camp near the Sultan’s pavilion. Word soon spread that the Sultan, some advisors and a detachment of gulâmân-I suray had been taking a morning ride on the bridle track around the circuit walls, when a storm of arrows and darts from the fortress walls had engulfed them. There had been three rapid volleys, enough to transfix and wound men and maim many of their horses. The Sultan’s mount, not the gift horse but another, fell mortally pierced with darts, the guards slipping from their horses to cover Tughrul with their shields as they withdrew. People in the camp cited it as proof of the cowardly, perfidious ways of the Romans, as they shook their weapons and roared abuse at the walls.
Derar instinctively knew where the ambush had occurred, the rocky place where the track deviated towards the fortress, the outcrop making a perfect aiming mark. He reasoned it was a deliberately planned event, not a random opportunity by soldiers on the walls. This he mulled over in his mind as he walked through the strung out camp to the tent on the knoll where the Sultan conducted his councils. He entered and mingled with the group of about fifty crowded in the tent while another two hundred or so lesser chiefs waited outside. Those inside sat cross-legged on the ground, reclined on cushions or sat on overturned pails. Or like him, they stood.
There were the colourful tribal emirs, a few more ornately dressed in silk brocade coats than their rough-clad followers. Some were independent and troublesome enough to consistently test the Sultan’s patience and leadership. The black clad emirs Samuk, Kāfūr and Kijaziz, conversed easily together. Their followers numbered in the thousands of tents. Mighty Dinar kept his own counsel, glaring dourly, his hard eyes catching Derar’s so the Arab looked away. The paunchy, shifty-eyed Seljuk quartermaster, Erdal, with his weak smile kept close to the influential Samuk.
Many of the Sultan’s relatives were present. Ibrahim Inal was there, probably so the Sultan could keep an eye on his tempestuous half-brother and draw on the chieftain’s experience from the raid on Artsn. Tughrul Bey’s father in law, Osketsam, stood close by keeping a crafty ear on any conversation of Ibrahim Inal’s. No one seemed to know where Kutlumush was: still estranged Derar was told.
Close to those two close relatives of the Sultan, was the Emir Arsuban, who while attentive to them, maintained a paternal eye on his own son, a beautiful young man in his elegant armour, assigned to ride with the foolhardy religious zealot, Koupagan. Another minor prince of the royal line, who had participated in the raids of 1047 and 1048, gave unwanted advice to Isma’il, still smarting from his failure to capture Manzikert four days before. Isma’il could scarcely conceal his annoyance: for the Romans had destroyed, through the ruse of an apparently undefended camp, the earlier raid at Stragna River, killing Crown Prince Hasan in the process; and punished the subsequent raid at Kapetrou. Standing beside Isma’il, Hurr held, if her bemused expression was any guide, a similarly disdainful view of the vain young nobleman. She wore no sensuous silks now, her pleasing countenance made handsome by the armour and weapons she wore.
These people would tear him apart if they knew of Derar’s double game. He did not particularly consider it treachery, that being the province of those who would assist the nomads in their impending conquest of the caliphate. These Seljuks with their almond eyes and Asian complexions, stood strong as the rising power of the Muslim world from the Oxus to Aleppo. They knew it. All knew it.
Persian courtiers, Arab mercenaries and others who dealt with the planning and administration of the army, gathered near the Sultan’s chair. The Persian scribe, Ames, busied himself self-importantly over papers while Prince Alkan, the commander of the Sultan’s troops from Chorasmia, carried on a self-consciously earnest conversation with the prince of the Daylami infantry. Both were resplendent in expensive armour as if they knew history would remember them, Derar found himself thinking.
Looking on were the senior officers of the Sultan’s professional army: youthful palace guards, Gulâmân-I sunray; lavishly equipped imperial guards, Hassa ordusa; landed knights, Sipahiyan, and Gaziyân raiders. Others commanded specialist siege engineers and fire troops as well as the myriad of others pressed into service or hired to equip, feed and doctor the army in the field. Many were Turks recruited as child soldiers by the Abbasids who rose through merit. Now, reading the wind, they had thrown in their lot with Tughrul Bey.
To Derar’s surprise, a small number of Franks, already far from home when serving the Romans, had travelled ideologically and geographically still further, by allying themselves with the nomads. They were universally despised and mistrusted as opportunistic land-grabbers, but temporarily useful ones.
Less surprising, a handful of Georgian and Armenian renegades had joined with the Seljuks and largely adopted the dress of the nomads who crowded on the borders of their ancient lands. With these was the Roman officer who had turned traitor to his kind at Archēsh.
This man Derar approached. “Theodore Ankhialou,” he greeted in Greek. “The hospitality of the army is to your liking?”
Ankhialou merely looked at him, the hint of sly insolence still in him.
Despite neither liking nor trusting Ankhialou, Derar sympathised with him: seemingly trapped by closing doors, he had taken the only one that appeared open to him. It was widely known that the Roman-Armenian woman, who had escaped from Archēsh with an unknown Frank on a stolen mare, had been Ankhialou’s special interest. Both were generally supposed to be now in Manzikert.
Derar thought back to the fight at the wadi, the Kelt on a captured Seljuk mare and Bryennius’ questions about a missing beauty. The tale of a knight riding into the jaws of death to rescue a maiden from a doomed city appealed to his romanticism, and Farisa’s, for she had commented on what love it must be.
Ankhialou’s special interest or not, it was also commonly held, especially by those who had a vested interest in the Sultan siring a male heir, that the woman retained her virtue and was thus a suitable bride for a caliph. Others argued that, between Ankhialou and the Frank, chastity was impossible, especially amongst unbelievers. How anyone could claim certainty was beyond Derar, but it crossed his mind that Ankhialou would want to preclude any interest from other claimants to the woman, by hinting at his carnal prowess.
Ankhialou grunted that the hospitality was as one would expect.
“How long will the city hold out?” Derar asked.
“Not long. They’re divided and the governor doesn’t have many soldiers.”
/>
Derar regarded Ankhialou keenly. His knowledge of the city’s layout and Roman habits was potentially useful. “You want it done quickly?”
“It should’ve happened this morning. I told Isma’il what to do,” Ankhialou snapped as he looked more closely at Derar. “I’ll take her back. And I will kill the Kelt.”
Derar was surprised at the emotion displayed. “A commendable intent, but you mistake my interest. I am no voyeur and have my own reasons for wanting Manzikert to fall.” Secretly, he was happy for the gossip about Ankhialou and the woman to continue, for it distracted any idle curiosity away from Zobeir al-Adin in Manzikert’s dungeons. He concluded Ankhialou was too emotionally unreliable and sought a way to finish the conversation, “It is jihad and must be finished qui …”
All fell silent as the Sultan entered. Tughrul Bey made light of the attempt on his life that morning, but Derar was judge enough of men to know the Sultan was livid at the simple cunning of the plan and how narrow had been his escape. After sitting, with a show of calm openness towards ideas, Tughrul invited comment on the best means of reducing Manzikert.
The debates ranged to and fro. Some pressed for the city to be invested by a stay-behind force while the main army ravaged wider Armenia. The second group countered, equally eloquently, that the fortress was too powerful and the garrison too aggressive to be left intact, threatening the lines of the invading columns. The latter voices argued that the Romans were fully capable of giving battle to the withdrawing Seljuks when they were most vulnerable, laden with booty and prisoners. “Remember,” one said, “the raid by Ibrahim Inal and Kutlumush wasn’t the ride-around they would have us all believe. They, we, were lucky. Artsn was rich and unwalled, but we barely escaped entrapment and destruction at Kapetrou.” Angry murmurs of agreement and dissent followed.
Tughrul saw his chance. “Which is why I am here!”
A hush came down like a mist. Derar watched as Ibrahim Inal’s features remained unmoved, but he guessed the emir was piqued at this public slight.
Samuk had been silent during this quarrelling but now he stood. The Sultan gestured him to speak and all listened. “Remember we overpowered Berkri and Archēsh in days,” he began, pacing the tent, eyes flashing, white teeth gleaming in his beard, a straight sword in its fine scabbard swinging against his booted leg. “But the Romans here have gathered or fired the grass for leagues around. Thus there is little fodder and we cannot all stay indefinitely. The fortress is so powerful, and the garrison too warlike, we now see, to leave only a small force. The siege train with the infantry and more supplies will arrive within days. We here might annoy the Romans, for a few more days until our siege engines and infantry arrive. Then we could leave the infantry here, with some cavalry support, and engineers of course, to reduce the walls.”
Derar al-Adin saw the knowing glances between Tughrul Bey, Bughra Dumrul and Isma’il.
“As they do that,” Samuk continued, looking around at the intent faces, “we despatch the light troops to ravage the countryside. There’re rich pickings to be had. Strike terror into their hearts, destroy their will to resist, provoke their armies into the open so we can confuse them with our speed and destroy them with our numbers at the right time and place. We’ll exploit the weak and vulnerable places, then return and deal with Manzikert at leisure. Above all, we must capture the key frontier fortresses and empty these lands so our people and their herds can settle here.”
Emren Dirse sidled up alongside Derar, muttering under his breath in the Persian tongue, just loud enough for the Arab to hear, “Samuk feels the call of lovelies and loot, and wants to be free of old Tughrul’s iron hand while he pillages and kills, but he speaks a cruel logic.”
Derar tried not to show his astonishment at the direct criticism, of what they were about to do, from this high-born Seljuk warrior.
The Sultan stifled further debate. “Leave us. I will pronounce what is to be done.”
Derar made to go but Tughrul motioned him to stay. It was soon clear that the Sultan had determined on the plan already: Tughrul wished to spy out frontier country himself, drive off any Roman relief force and conquer a sizeable slice of the Byzantine Empire’s territory, thus earning for himself the renown Ibrahim Inal and Kutlumush boasted. Samuk had simply acted out the part of informed general consent to lull the emirs into thinking they had a voice in decisions. Another method for this, Derar was learning, was for the Sultan to commit the tribes to assaulting the walls. In the bloody repulses they learned a harsh lesson: that without Tughrul Bey’s genius for organisation and collecting the materiel resources for war, the tribes were incapable of defeating the Romans.
The following morning, marauders were despatched in their tens of thousands across the land to destroy, rob and kill as many of the unbelievers—those unworthy of enslavement—as could be found.
Koupagan led the northern, right-flank column. With that group, Arsuban’s son led his father’s tents, while the father remained with the Sultan’s council. The huge raid, comprising many thousands of Seljuk and Kurdish light horse, rode north. Detachments of these widespread right-flank columns would feel their way north-eastward to destroy the Christian settlements towards the Caucasus. Koupagan Bey’s main raid would move north of Kars and ravage the country from Vanard westward to Baberd, finding a way to the fabled Roman cities of Caesarea and Trebizond.
Dinar led the left-flank column along the Arsanias to the west, seeking to awe the Marwanid Kurds, pillage Taron Theme and sack Mush, then explore the route through to the rich Byzantine city of Melitene. Throughout they would fan out and pillage.
The long-haired horsemen of the left flank raid rode south, seeking the places the Armenian captives called Sim Mountain. Tughrul, in the centre, would leave troops to invest Manzikert, then advance on the key Roman fortress-city of Karin and attempt to capture it with the main body of the army.
The silent watchers on the walls of Manzikert would understand from the breadth and movement of the dust clouds that the entire land was being subjected to awful depredations and know their own fate when the columns returned.
That night the church bells started to toll. Sound and shadow covered the stealthy figure of Derar, as he stole to the fortress wall and released another message-bearing shaft into the fortress. At first light a messenger dove rose from the ramparts of the citadel and winged northwest towards Karin.
The Seljuk Camp near Manzikert,
Morning, 26th August 1054
Derar awoke before his fifth dawn outside the walls of Manzikert and quickly pulled on his unwashed shirt and dusty boots. He had voiced a preference to stay with the besieging troops at Manzikert, but the Sultan had ordered him to accompany his own centre-column. Thus Farisa and he rose and saddled their horses, leaving Zaibullah to guard their camp and attempt, should the fortress fall, to rescue Zobeir al-Adin. The church bells still tolled in the fortress as Derar and Farisa prepared themselves for the ride.
They overheard the Sultan ride by with Dumrul and Isma’il. “What is that unceasing, frightful clamour?” the Sultan asked.
The Seljuk spymaster looked dismissively towards the fortress. “The unbelievers at their prayers. It shows how terrified they are.”
Tughrul glanced contemptuously at Dumrul. “So terrified that they’ve driven us off, several times!” He turned to Isma’il. “Get this place into order while I’m away. Clear away the bodies lest we all die of the foul vapours and pestilence that comes with them. Prepare for mining and an all-out assault, soon, within days, of my return. Be quick. I’ll not be gone long.”
Derar al-Adin chose his black mare, Zanab, while Farisa rode her mare and led chestnut Qurmul as their spare. With their cloaks, water skins and rations firmly strapped on and their weapons about them, they mounted and rode with Emren Dirse, a bowshot behind the Sultan’s standards.
Derar and Emren Dirse had been brought closer together by the
fate of their relatives. Trotting northwest out of the valley, they paused on the high ground and looked back towards Manzikert to see the blackened hills around, the plain turning to brown dust by the hooves and the fortress defiant amongst a sea of black tents.
“Look,” exclaimed Emren, pointing to the eastern steppe leading to Archēsh, “the siege train and infantry are starting to arrive. That’ll finish the unbelievers.” He turned in his saddle and flashed a smile at Derar. “I hope they don’t break in before we return. For the Romans of Manzikert will be weaker by then, and I want my father’s horse and the head of the man who stole her—after he tells me how he came by her and where the old man is.”
They cantered forward to the lead of Emren’s two hundred tents. Derar could see the Sultan and his party ahead: seven horsetail standards amongst them, a camel with the Sultan’s tall personal banner as a rallying point and kettledrummers mounted on mules to relay battle orders. Far beyond the Sultan was the screen, well-spaced out on a broad front, killing, raping and plundering as they went. Derar could see the smoke from the fired peasants’ huts and the cultivated fields trampled beneath the hooves. Their horses shying at the grotesque forms, they rode over the outraged bodies of people who had thought themselves out of the way of the warring armies,
Late in the afternoon, they descended from the higher ground with its craggy places, to the streamside settlement of Dvaradzo-Daph. From the smoke and screaming as they rode into the outlying areas, Derar knew how ghastly it would be. “Stay close,” he warned Farisa.
They camped that night, amid the spitted old people and children cut down amongst their burnt houses, sheds and enclosures. With the air thick from the smoke, the nomads gathered around fires, roasting sheep and goats and drinking the wine they found for the taking. For firewood, they laid beams across the doorways of the little houses and hitching teams of oxen or horses to the heavy timber, simply pulled the dwellings apart to loud cries of applause. The gold and silver found was started back to Tabriz on baggage camels and captured horses. Hacks, saddles and what little arms and armour were found, were claimed by those who happened on them. Then the brutalised survivors were herded together. Through that long night of tears and anguish, the women were raped in front of their men, who except for a few kept as slaves, were then killed with swords.
A Dowry for the Sultan Page 43