by David Capel
It was difficult to guess what Erkan had been doing in the vicinity, and I cursed my naivety for not making a plan to capture some of the Turks alive. Certainly they were encumbered with no great booty, and if their mission had been reconnaissance, they had been singularly slack in their methods.
I guessed that these were all Turks who had lately served the Empire. The last time I had seen Erkan he had been part of a smaller group, but perhaps he had joined his mercenaries to a larger band. But whether he or they were part of the Sultan’s army it was hard to judge. The Turks seemed notably fragmented in their hierarchy, and this may well have been an independent band, joining in the general excitement of the big conflict, but hoping to profit from a little freebooting on their own behalf. The dead men certainly carried no insignia or tokens of allegiance, not that that meant much necessarily. I looked at their twisted, sallow faces and ragged leather garments and shivered in disgust. The only possessions worth taking from them aside from the horses were the powerful horn bows that the Turks favoured. There were about a dozen of these, and I decided to grant them to a section of older men as our missile troop.
One reason for my attack was the hope of capturing some horses, and in this we had achieved spectacular success. But to my surprise hardly any of the men of the Seventh Taron could ride competently. Certainly none of us were proficient enough to handle weapons from horseback, so my little army would have to go without a cavalry arm. And it struck me that, whether in advance or in flight, twenty horses could not move a hundred, so my unit’s mobility was hardly improved. Nonetheless, I kept a horse for myself and gave mounts to four of the scouts who could ride.
The others I granted to the wounded men. Most could no longer accompany us, but the horses would give them some chance of survival. I sent them back to the quartermaster with instructions for him to hasten towards us. He was to exchange his mules for some of the horses, so at least our equipment train, such as it was, would be a little faster.
The main benefit of our skirmish was the enormous lift to morale it gave the men. They were jubilant at our victory, and their mood reached a happy serenity once I had sent the wounded away. This was an inspired move on my part. At first I thought this was because it demonstrated my concern for the men, and there may have been something to justify my conceit. But I later reflected that soldiers would hate to have the wounded among them because it reminds them of the reality of their own predicament. A man in any unpleasant or risky situation – on campaign, in prison, or on a ship – survives by deluding himself. Take the evidence away from his eyes and it leaves his mind.
Most of the men were peasant farmers who had never seen combat before. Their experience of victory was hugely reassuring to them. I knew the feeling myself. An unknown terror becomes familiar, and the enemy are rendered mortal. There is a great sense of exultation in surviving danger (particularly if others were not so lucky), as well as pride in victory.
So when Stethatos sensibly urged us to march on and sent word for the quartermaster to follow us, the soldiers took to the path happily enough, in a hubbub of conversation. I walked with them, gauging their mood, and relinquishing my steed to burden it with a bundle of spears. The growing heat of the day gradually silenced the soldiers, and at noon I called a halt and gave them a full three hours of rest. Many of them lay down and fell into an instant sleep.
I did not share their exultation, and had no urge to sleep, despite my weariness. Erkan’s presence and escape had begun to unnerve me again. I cursed my foolishness in racing towards him, for he had certainly recognised me. This made it more likely that he would seek out some of his fellows and try to come back for us. I scanned the hot horizon for signs of the enemy, and roused my scouts and sent them on in every direction, urging extra vigilance upon them.
That afternoon we marched on steadily enough, but the walking pace now frustrated me. So I mounted my horse once more, leaving Stethatos in charge, and joined the reconnaissance ahead.
Our scouts had nothing to report. Silence stalked the land, except for the whistle of the kites hovering on the sun-warmed breezes high above. I went forward with two of the mounted men, and we nosed our way among the rocks and thickets of this scrubby high land, dismounting as we approached ridges and peering through stony clefts into the flat little valleys beyond. Occasionally we would come across an empty cottage or shieling, some of which appeared to have suffered from fire damage. The country was deserted. In the distance to the East, mountains rose up out of the haze, some with streaks of snow clinging to their summits. There was no sign of Erkan or anyone else, and the silence started to creep into our bones.
As dusk approached I gathered a group of scouts and headed back towards the main force, leaving one man at intervals of a quarter mile or so along our chosen route of march. In that way I kept the column moving into the night, guided by the scouts from one point to the next. A sense of urgency filled me, as if the world was holding its breath for something, and I felt that we must hurry if we were to make our appointment with fate.
ξ
It was dawn on a late August morning when I received my first inkling of the drama that was to engulf us. One of the piquet sentries shook me awake and I stared where he pointed at the lightening eastern sky. What at first glance seemed to be a cloud then grew until it towered like a great pillar of smoke on the horizon, seemingly flecked with fire from the rising sun. I shouted for Stethatos and we roused the men. After a few minutes we were marching towards the apparition like the Children of Israel being guided in the desert.
With the column under way I took to my horse and galloped forward with the centurion. For a short time we seemed to get no closer to the smoke, which slowly spread out until it was a haze that darkened the sun. But a few miles on we were climbing through a thicket of scrubby trees to a low rise, with Stethatos, who was in the lead drew in his horse and I nearly collided with him.
“Watch it…” I started, but he held up his hand and exclaimed: “Christ in Heaven!”
I drew up along side him, and there we stood for several minutes in awed silence, with our horses panting and blowing under us, staring at a sight that stunned the imagination.
The land suddenly gave way before us into a wide, shallow plain, ringed with low hills that were framed by the mountains beyond. It was apparent that for the last day or so of our journey we had been slowly climbing up to the lip of this high plateau, and we could now see for miles across it.
Among a group of broken crags that lay isolated a few miles to the North of where we sat was a small fortress rising from a group of scattered dwellings. I learnt its uncouth name later that day: Manzikert. We could clearly see the banner fluttering bravely from its battlements in the morning air, though which emblem it bore was impossible to discern at that distance.
But it was not the castle that held our gaze. It was what lay around it.
For spread around like a teeming, moving carpet of living things was the greatest assembly of men that I had ever seen. It moved and shifted, kicking up the dust noiselessly, and the sunlight glittered on thousands of lances so that the scene below us looked like a shimmering, smoking lake.
“The Roman Army,” said Stethatos in a low voice.
There was no doubting him. We saw the massed ranks of infantry, drilling slowly into line and column, the axes of Varangian guardsmen, and the huge chargers of Norman mercenaries, all taking their place as order gradually imposed itself on the scene below. At the centre of the host stood a vast pavilion, its edges shining gold, a temporary palace for the Emperor himself.
Slowly the mass of men took shape, and as if using the castle as a base point, began subtly to spread its wings and shuffle eastwards, leaving the detritus of their camp behind. I peered into the haze in the direction of that movement, and there saw a smudge of grey and dun in the landscape. For a moment I stared at it and then made out distinct shapes – the movement of horses, tents and the swift glimmer of weaponry.
“Look!
” I said, pointing. “The enemy. Battle is joined. We are not a moment too soon. We must hasten to join the Emperor.”
I turned my horse and we clattered back down the slope towards our men, who had made good progress, marching in their open formation. I dismounted, lending my horse to another, and sent him to take word to the outlying scouts to assemble near the head of the column.
There I walked, fretting, with Stethatos at my side.
“Sir,” he said, and I think it was the first time he had called me anything other than by the rank due to me, “you must give instruction to the men. This will be no sudden skirmish. The sections must close together into a dense line when we approach the main host, and you must stay behind them, at least until the onset. It will not be like anything most of them have experience before.”
“I also,” I replied, and we went down the column, I describing the scene ahead and the task that confronted them, and the centurion explaining to the section leaders what would be expected of the men.
A hubbub of excited chatter rose from the ranks, and before long we reached the low rise and skirted the thickets where Stethatos and I had first beheld the scene below. One by one the sections of the Seventh Taron breasted the rise and as they did so they fell silent at the sight that met them.
In our brief absence the army had deployed into three distinct divisions, with a fourth apparently held back as reserve near the castle. The nearest to us, the right wing of the army, we could see as clearly as toy soldiers laid out by a child, but these were real, and they moved like ants, and then I heard that strange noise for the first time, the buzzing, dim roar of thousands of men on the move.
“Close up!” shouted Stethatos as the column started to descend to the plain.
The scouts had mostly rejoined us by now, so I took my horse back and cantered to the front of the column and peered at the hazy, shimmering scene below me. Pride and a fierce lust for battle suddenly filled me and I stood up in my stirrups and shouted, pointing my spear down the slope.
“Men of the Seventh,” I shouted, “Behold the Imperial host! Who can stand against the might of the Romans? Join them, and fight for your lands, your families and your Emperor! Advance, and by this day’s end glory and riches will be yours!”
Absurd it may sound, but I had read my classics and thought that a military leader should seek to inspire his men before the fight. Besides, I was overcome with the excitement of battle and the sheer magnificence of the scene displayed before me. I was a young man presented with the ultimate challenge of glory and death. And though my words were snatched away in the hot breeze, the men nearest to me cheered their taxiarch, and the shouts and hurrahs rippled back down the column.
They were good men, the Seventh Taron, honest and strong, the backbone of the Empire, of the kind of farming stock that makes fine soldiers. So we marched down the hill to battle, my heart brimming with pride and exhilaration, and Stethatos dressed the Seventh as best he good into a tight little column of infantry, bristling with spears and shields, and with a few swords and bows mixed in too.
As we approached the right hand side of the army I saw two horsemen break out and gallop towards us. Here was my chance to make contact with the Imperial command to warn them of the plot, so I spurred my own mount and went to meet them.
They were already covered in dust, but I could see that they were officers, and we halted together half way between my small column and the great mass of the Imperial right wing. They eyed me up and down, taking in my unorthodox mix of weapons and clothing.
“Tarchaneiotes?” asked one of them. “You’re from Tarchaneiotes? The van?”
I gaped at him in incomprehension.
“Come on, man, where is the rest of the force? Have you come from Tarchaneiotes?”
“What? I don’t know who you mean. We’re the seventh regiment from the Taron Theme. Here to meet with the main army near Lake Van. And I have an urgent message for the Emperor himself. There has been a plot to betray the army.”
It sounded absurd, coming from me in this dusty spot. The two men looked at each other.
“Taron? You’re meant to be with the Southern Army. Have you been with them? Are they coming? Are they destroyed?”
“We haven’t encountered any other Roman force. We destroyed an enemy patrol two days ago. But that is by the way. Did you not hear me?” I spoke with growing urgency and frustration. “There is a plot. Against the army. I must speak to the Emperor!”
“You’d better come with us to see the general. And it’s ‘Sir’ to you.”
And with that they wheeled their horses around and spurred back to the main army.
I shouted to Stethatos to join our men up with the right wing as best he could, and followed the two officers. They lead me through the dusty ranks of half marching, half stumbling men, until we reached a knot of mounted officers at their centre.
My two guides led me up to a lugubrious looking man with a drooping moustache, whom I did not recognise.
“General Alyates, this is the man commanding the small force we observed approaching from the East.”
The general looked at me with sad, watery eyes. His white hands trembled slightly on the reins of his horse, which shifted nervously as the legions tramped past us.
“Taxiarch Lascaris,” I announced, saluting. “Lately of General Comnenus’ staff. I come with grave news. There is a plot against the army, against the Emperor himself. I must warn him.”
“And you are with what regiment, did you say?”
I wanted to shake him, to shake them all, but I knew that the credibility of my story depended on remaining calm. I tried to speak patiently.
“I attached myself to the Seventh Taron theme regiment on its way to join the main Imperial army at Lake Van.”
“And now you say you command the regiment?” he asked in his ponderous voice.
“Yes, General. This detachment anyway. The commanding officer sent me on ahead with the swiftest troops. Look, sir, I really must see the Emperor, or the Imperial staff at least. There is some urgency…”
“I command here,” he interrupted. “I am the Imperial staff. You speak of a plot. Involving whom? When? There has been no betrayal.”
“Sir, it involves Ducas. Andronicus Ducas. And Bryennius. They plan to desert during the battle, to lead their men away…”
“Bryennius?” He barked incredulously. “Bryennius leads the left flank, as I do the right. He distinguished himself yesterday, winning a notable action against the foe. Betrayal? There is none more loyal! How absurd. And you come from the South, you say? What word from there, before I lose any faith in you, Taxiarch? Have you come across General Tarchaneiotes and his men?”
I gaped at him in disbelief, before muttering “No Sir, we have come across no Roman troops for at least a week, though we did chance upon a Turkish…”
“Then they are too late,” Alyates interjected sonorously. Turning to a richly dressed man to this left he continued “I fear the worst,” and his staff shifted uncomfortably in their seats. “As for you…” he started, turning back to me, but at that moment there was a cry from ahead, and then that distinctive whirring, buzzing noise, followed by a loud, crunching thud. For a second nothing happened, and then I saw the man who Alyates had just addressed slump forward and then sideways. His horse started, colliding with the general’s, and the stricken officer groaned and reached out for his commander, and his head came into view and I saw the arrow shaft protruding from his mouth amidst a ghastly, pumping mass of blood.
The man clutched the general’s leg and saddle, and somehow gargled the words “Help me, I am struck!”
“Good God,” said Alyates, struggling to get free, and the blood sprayed over him, dripping slick on the leather of his saddle pommel.
“Get him off me!” he shouted, but the other men were shouting in fear and trying to avoid the arrows, and the group descended into chaos as two foot soldiers were struck and a horse ran amok, and some soldiers started
to run backwards, but were beaten forward by others.
I was thrust away from the scene, and decided that my audience was probably over. I could scarcely credit what I had just heard – Bryennius, in a position of command, but fighting well? In a daze of confusion I fought my way back through the struggling men, using the weight of my horse to force a path to the right hand edge of the army where I guessed the Seventh might be. But the shape of the ranks had all changed, and the dust and arrows made it hard to tell order from chaos. The edge of the army’s wing had no clear definition. There was no cavalry that I could see, and groups of men scattered across the plain, some not moving at all.
Eventually I spotted some familiar figures, Stethatos among them, and I spurred up to him.
“I’ve got to get to the Emperor,” I yelled to him, as a roar of voices rose around me, like that of the crowd at a chariot race back home.
“Too late!” He shouted. “Battle is joined!” and then as I sat there in indecision, “Dismount! You’ll just make yourself a target! Raise your shield!”
I did as I was told, and then wondered what to do with my horse.
“Just let it go,” he said. “You won’t need it today, and we may find it later if all goes well.”
“Are all the men here?” I shouted, looking around. I recognised many of those around me, but others looked strange, with different weapons. Some were Armenians and there even appeared to be a few Turks among us.
“No idea!” cried Stethatos. “And we have no standard for them to rally to! Imagine that, a regiment with no standard!” and he laughed, throwing back his head in hilarity, until the dust choked him and he coughed.
“Men of the Seventh! Hold together!” I shouted, but my words were lost in the din of shouts and screams that surrounded me.
“Come on,” I yelled to Stethatos, “Let’s get to the front.”
“No need,” he replied, and pointed.