Joaninna joined him, offering food, and water scented with lemon juice.
After a time, Jacques emerged without his armour. He was covered in dust and around his neck was a scarf that looked like it had been stuffed with cotton wadding to guard his mouth and nose against dust, toxic smoke and heat. The dirt on his elbows and knees indicated the tunnel was not high at the other end. He acknowledged Guy and accepted a little food from Joaninna.
Selth came in. Jacques moved closer to murmur, “They’re still digging, I can hear them.”
“Good,” uttered Selth in the harsh whispers of command. “It’ll soon be time. Don’t forget the Sultan’s own father-in-law is supposedly in their tunnel party. The cavalry are assembling now. Much depends on all of us this day.” He grasped Jacques on the shoulder.
Turning to Guy, Joaninna said, “Go and see them.”
He knew she meant the horsemen, so they should know he neither sulked from pique nor skulked from fright. He turned to Selth who nodded. Thus, Guy strode to the military stables as the horsemen assembled. The emotion in the air reminded him of the feeling before the cattle raid. How long ago that seemed. Yet now many more men were saddling up and finding their places, the distant-sounding clamour of church bells masking the noise of their movement. They had dressed with care this day. Proud plumes nodded on burnished helmets. Horses and equipment were similarly groomed. In the pre-dawn, torch-lit blackness, Guy found Bessas. “I’ve come to see you off and bid you good luck.”
Bessas, saddling dun Diomed, turned. “Thank you, Guy.” After a pause while the centarch inspected by feel some part of his horse’s equipment under the belly, he continued, “The tunnel is most important. Our object is to kill the miners and close the tunnel from Tughrul’s end while you take care of this end. The Kelts under Balazun will feint towards his pavilion, to draw the Seljuks off by making them think we mean to have their Sultan. Count Bryennius is in overall command. Lascaris leads the Sixth Schola to destroy the engineers’ camp and those in it, closing the tunnel as he does. I take three hundred irregulars and leave by the north gate to fire the enemy’s fodder and drive off their animals—to draw the enemy off while our men get back inside the walls.”
It all made sense to Guy—the meticulous watching to know when the tribes and their Sultan had returned, allowing them sufficient time to crowd the camp with distracted, unconcerned people—the garrison would strike hard when the Seljuks were least able to react effectively. It would be a bitter day for the Sultan if all went well. At once taken aback and admiring the audacity of the scheme, Guy asked, “Bessas, where is the count? I must wish him well also.”
Bessas pointed through the gloom. “He rides Zarrar this day.”
Guy pushed through the press of men and horses towards where he could see Bryennius. On the way he passed Reynaldus, giving emphatic instructions to Balazun, driving one fist into the other open hand to add force to his point. Balazun did not look happy.
Guy reached Bryennius, who was busy with a myriad of last minute details. The count wore heavier battle-armour: a polished horn lamellar cuirass over his mail hauberk. His helmet and boots gleamed from the attention Taticus Phocas had given them. Zarrar’s face was protected under the iron chamfron67 while an expensive, breathable, mail bard armoured his body. The horse was standing tall, looking this way and that in eager excitement. Guy noticed and wondered about the sleeve of a blue shirt under the count’s hauberk. He had never seen it before.
A cock crowed loudly from the loft of the main stable building. There was a sudden silence, followed by the urgent hiss of a tribune, “Form up. Form up. It’s time.”
Bryennius, surrounded by men pressing final questions, saw Guy and nodded to him. “Good luck, D’Agiles. Much depends on your end going well.”
The awful finality of the moment struck Guy. “When we’re done, I’ll watch you all and cheer from the walls.” He swallowed the unease within.
Bryennius grinned before mounting. “Don’t get in our way when we come back in. I rather fancy we will be in a hurry.”
“One thing,” Guy pressed on Bryennius. “Whatever orders you’ve given to Balazun, I’d restate them before you go. Reynaldus is in his ear as we speak.”
A worried look crossed Bryennius.
Guy raced back to the chapel as it grew light, his breathing laboured from the weight of weapons, armour and emotion. He entered to see Jacques, grim faced and intent, enter the tunnel with six others, all wearing felt hats, rude masks and jerkins against the likely flames. Guy marvelled how men could go into the earth like that. Then he took his spear and stood guard at the tunnel entrance and would not have budged had the devil incarnate emerged.
Guy did not know how long he remained there. The sky outside was slightly paler now: deep blue instead of black. Suddenly there were muffled shrieks and shouting from the depths of the tunnel. Taking his helmet off and moving closer to the entrance to hear better, he felt a rush of hot air brush his cheek.
The other tunnel guards and Joaninna exchanged anxious glances.
Selth burst from the entrance like a madman. His hair was singed. His jacket reeked of burnt wool, sulphur, resin and smoke. Blindly feeling his way to the cool air, Selth ripped the makeshift mask from his face. By an extraordinary effort he forced his singed eyelids open and stumbled to the door. “Now! Now!” he cried. “Fire the signal arrow.”
A Varangian in the chapel yard dipped a naphtha-soaked clothbound arrowhead into a small brazier and shot the flaming shaft against the western main gate tower. An answering signal arrow immediately streaked low inside the fortress, as the sun touched the eastern horizon.
“They’ve prisoners in the hole,” Selth choked. “There may be others, but we filled their tunnel with fire and toxic smoke, pumping it their way with the bellows. Surely no man could live in it. Jacques and the others will be coming back now.” The stocky Byzantine engineer swallowed water and tipped the rest of the pail over himself. Wiping his grubby face with his shirtsleeve, he replaced the mask over his nose and mouth and darted back into the awful hole, from whence hot air, dust and reeking smoke now issued so that the tunnel guards themselves coughed and covered their faces.
Guy made to follow him. A Varangian and Joaninna both stopped him by grabbing at the sleeves of his byrnie. “Don’t,” she said. “They know what they are doing and do not need to fall over you or go back in for you.”
After a seeming eternity, they emerged dragging prisoners with them. All were hot to touch and reeked of fire and sulphur, with their hair and eyelids singed. Quick hands grabbed three bearded prisoners, forcing them to their knees where they begged for mercy in a strange tongue.
With racking coughs bending him double, Selth, utterly spent, eventually got his breath back and lay supine on a dusty pew. One grimy forearm covered his eyes. Guy looked at him anxiously, wondering whether the engineer was all right. “The Horse-archer,” Selth coughed, “has some good ideas, but this time he’s nearly killed me.” He thought for a while, then asked Jacques, “Did you manage to collapse the mine?”
“Some. They were still tunnelling and had not yet dug a cavern under the fortifications.” He was sitting with Joaninna carefully sponging his face with cool water: his face and hand blistered from heat and his hat blackened and smelling foul.
“Jacques nearly didn’t get out for doing it,” said one.
“We got most of the gear out,” spoke another.
“When it clears, we’ll go back in and collapse it properly,” Selth said to his grimy band.
Guy saw they were now bound by the private, closed hell they had created underground. This extended, it was plainly evident, to their prisoners.
“I wonder which one is Osketsam,” Selth mused aloud.
One prisoner moved his head slightly lower at the sound of the name. They assumed he was the one.
Selth coughed again and then
wheezed, “Come on. The strategos wished to see Osketsam as soon as we caught him.”
* * *
67Chamfron—defensive armour for a warhorse’s head.
Chapter Fourteen
The Dance Under Arms
Manzikert, Before first light,
4th September 1054
As the fight in the tunnels raged, a thousand horsemen waited behind the gates of Manzikert.
As he swung into his saddle, Leo Bryennius was perturbed by what Guy d’ Agiles had just told him about Balazun and Reynaldus. He adjusted this helmet, feeling the light mail coif into place over his shoulders and lacing the face-cover into place leaving only his eyes exposed. Leaning forward, he stroked Zarrar’s neck through the protective bard. “Good luck this day, old man,” he said to the horse.
The indicators of Seljuk engineering and the information from Derar al-Adin had convinced the strategos that the greatest threat was Tughrul’s ability to tunnel under the walls. Seljuk stone throwers had been relatively ineffective, due to their limited size and range, but their tunnel posed an immediate threat.
Days before, Leo had sent Togol and Maniakh to scout the Seljuk encampment and verify the information he received from Derar. They had wandered unchallenged through the enemy camp, returning two nights later to inform him of the precise location of the tunnel entrance and overconfidence amongst the Sultan’s followers. A tight group within Basil’s council had planned the coming battle to destroy Tughrul’s capability to undermine the walls, so that lack of sustenance and grumbling amongst the tribes would sap his army’s resolve. Derar had informed them when The Falcon would strike. Apocapes was now pre-empting the Sultan by a day.
After the scouts returned, Togol had confided to Leo that Maniakh had spoken with the dancer, Hurr, in the Seljuk camp and wished to escape with the woman.
After the first explosion of anger, Leo had asked, “Will he go over to the enemy?”
“No. It’s love.”
“Love? What the hell does he mean by that?”
Togol grinned. “Love? Everyone is their own—how do you say—sage. Hurr and Maniakh both risk everything—Isma’il and Dumrul will hunt them to the ends of the earth. I suppose they know what they are doing!”
Although dismayed at the loss, Leo had caved in. “Maniakh has my blessing, but must see me before he goes—the Emperor owes him a little back pay. And,” Leo had grumbled, “tell him to take the Sultan’s damned horses, not mine.” At that, Togol had laughed and clapped Leo on the shoulder.
A thousand horsemen awaited their fate with almost unbearable unknowing. The priests moved among them, “Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us, come to the aid of we Christians and make us worthy to fight to the death for our faith and our brothers, strengthen our souls and our hearts and our whole body, the mighty Lord of Battles, through the intercession of the immaculate Mother of God, Thy Mother, and all of the saints, Amen.”
Leo leaned towards Bessas. “Are Kamyates and Cydones taken care of?” he asked. The two bureaucrats were too powerful and too untrustworthy to be allowed any latitude before such a critical undertaking.
“I beg to report,” Bessas replied, “that Maniakh, deploring their calling him an unlettered barbarian—which they did—has in a drunken binge kidnapped Kamyates and Cydones both, and now holds them at spear point in a cellar somewhere. David Varaz plays the role of bumbling rescuer, who can only save their lives if they do exactly as they are told. Serena is the lookout.”
“Maniakh does not drink,” Leo observed dryly, glad the conversation was distracting him from the fear lurking under the surface.
“No plan is perfect,” Bessas shrugged. “I told Maniakh to let them go as the attack starts. It’ll be too late for them to alter its course by then and the longer we delay their release, the more difficult it will be to make it look like one of life’s silly little things.”
“Like betraying your country. As for plans …” Leo knew how many things could go wrong this day, but they had few options to defeat the grinding Seljuk attacks.
He saw Balazun look his way and beckoned him over. The Norman reined in his black Castilian horse, Charles Bertrum with him. Lascaris moved his horse a few steps forward to join them. They had been over the plan before.
“Any questions?” Leo asked.
Balazun shook his head, his helmet gleaming gently in the first light. “I leave with my four hundred, straight out the main gate and ride directly for the Sultan’s tent. I’m not to press the attack, but draw off the ghulams and anyone else, to buy you and Lascaris enough time to kill the engineers and destroy the tunnel. If I happen on the Sultan and can kill him without jeopardising the plan—I do so. Your Bessas Phocas will feint against their transport lines to cover our withdrawal.”
Balazun had the facts all right, but Leo doubted something in his manner and was still concerned about whatever Reynaldus had said to him. With sudden doubts gnawing, Leo emphasised the plan. “For the Seljuks, the flow of the battle should be thus. First they should be surprised, and it will take them some time to react to you, Robert, which they will do by swarming to stop you reaching the Sultan. When the Sixth Schola hit the engineers at almost the same time, many of Tughrul’s men should leave you and come against us. Some disorder should set in on them. By this time, your Franks should be disengaging. That, Bessas, is just when you should hit them to draw them away from us. You should be so far to our right that you ought to be able to withdraw before they bring any real weight against you.”
“As agreed,” Leo continued, “I will signal the strategos in the western main gate towers when the engineers are dealt with. He’ll have trumpets sounded. That is the signal to withdraw. There will be a lot of dust, smoke and noise, but that should work mostly for us. The plan will unravel if anyone misses a signal, or goes flat-footed and gets caught out there. Remember, Lascaris this day commands the Sixth and the assault on the engineers’ camp. I am in overall command and will have a small escort and standard-bearers with me.”
They murmured understanding and obedience and turned to join their troops.
Waiting for the signal to attack, Leo thought of Martina, missing her but at the same time glad she had left Manzikert before destiny closed upon it. He reached down and touched Zarrar’s neck for comfort before a flaming arrow struck low against the main gate towers and was answered by another as the gates swung open. Leo shortened the reins with his shield hand and grasping his spear tighter in his right, cantered out of the gates and swung sharp right into the space between the walls. As he rode by, he noticed townspeople jog to their places on the ramparts to support them, as the infantry reserve assembled between the walls.
Leo and Zarrar passed through the dark cavern of the fore-wall gate towers, over the wooden bridge and into the lonely plain. Like a rumble of iron thunder, the dense column of Franks followed him. Leo eased Zarrar to a halt and pointed with his spear in the direction Balazun was to charge. The Sultan’s pavilion was about a mile away with its banner just visible on a low knoll by the river. At a glance, nothing seemed unusual in the Seljuk camp.
There was a minute’s delay on the flat as the Franks formed into two flying wedges; one behind the other, one hundred and forty men in each. With the still bells still masking the sound of their manoeuvre, they halted for a moment as the riders braced themselves for what was to come. Then, with Robert Balazun three horse-lengths to their front, they set out trotting silently through the dawn, withholding their great Latin shout until they were seen.
Behind the Franks, the Sixth Schola trotted out the gate and over the bridge. Some horses broke into an agitated canter in the ranks, tossing their heads and fighting the bits. Lascaris ordered, as though on parade in the shadow of the imperial palace, “Sixth Schola, right wheel,” and three hundred horsemen, spears vertical, trotted parallel to the ditch. On command, they halted their excited mounts. “Into
line, left turn!”
Followed by his escort, Leo galloped to Lascaris and pointed with his spear to their objective. “Ride with, you?” he asked courteously.
“Of course,” Lascaris replied, proud of his command of the regiment in battle this day and grateful for Leo’s acknowledgement of it before the front rank.
Leo’s escort, commanded by Aspietes, fell in around them. To a man, the cataphracts braced themselves for the furlong charge at the camp of the engineers, where alarm was spreading with the Sultan’s men taking up their arms and looking uncertainly toward the horsemen forming by the fortress.
Lascaris said sideways to Leo, “Well, they now know we are coming.” Then the centarch lowered his spear point to the horizontal tierce point. On command, from the right in the front ranks, one man after the next snapped his spear down to tierce point; creating that parade ground rippling fan-of-spears. A terrible exhilaration ran through men and horses.
In Manzikert, the bells fell silent.
Lascaris, waving his spear, started forward. Two hundred of the front ranks, led by Sebēos, leapt into a hand-gallop behind him. After them, a knot of twelve men carried clay grenades of naphtha while others nursed in their saddles the torches and fire arrows that would be used to ignite the incendiaries.
Behind Lascaris’ front ranks, he kept another hundred cataphracts: the tight wedge of the reserve squadron, Bessas’ men, commanded this day by Tribune Joshua Balsamon, riding in his first battle. The youth was clean-shaven and wore a pointed iron helmet, richly inlaid with silver, a trophy taken by a barely remembered forbear from an unknown Muslim prince in some long-forgotten fight. Balsamon’s reserve squadron moved forward at a walk, dressing their ranks, spears upright, the horses stepping short with high heads, wanting to gallop joyfully forward with their fellows.
A Dowry for the Sultan Page 48