Assassins of Kantara

by James Boschert

  Reza grinned. “I had my reservations about whether this was going to work, Brother, but we have possession of a castle! It is hard to believe!”

  “Not just a castle, Reza. Also land to go with it that is fertile, even a mine! There is much to do, but it is a good beginning,” Talon said with a wan smile. He felt as if he had been holding his breath for twelve hours. “Let’s send for our friends, and then we can have a feast. I want to see Rostam, Jannat and Max safe up here. Tell Guy to come up if he can bear to leave his precious ships. Don’t forget old Simon. I leave that to you, Brother.”

  “I will send a party to the harbor to bring them to their new home at once,” Reza said. “Rav’an is right. You truly are a fox, my Brother.”

  Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory

  the splendor and the majesty.

  Yours, Lord, is the kingdom exalted over all.

  —Gibirol

  Chapter 15

  Emperor of Cyprus

  The news reached Emperor Isaac Komnenos as he was readying to leave Larnaca for Famagusta, a journey of several hours by horse. At first he refused to believe the information his secretary presented to him. Diocles, whose official title was First Minister, was an old man whose usefulness was just about over as far as Isaac was concerned, but he had served faithfully and knew all the ins and outs of the administration, so Isaac kept him on.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” the Emperor demanded, when he had finished reading for a second time the document from Famagusta. It had been sent by the governor of the city.

  “N... No, my Lord,” whispered Diocles, his face gray under his beard. His eyes were frightened and his hands, which he tried to conceal in his voluminous sleeves, were shaking.

  Isaac read it again a third time to make sure of what he had read.

  The news was unbelievable; the castle of Kantara had been taken without a fight! According to the governor, who confessed he didn’t have all the facts because Lord Doukas had recently taken ship and fled the island. The castle had fallen to one Talon de Gilles who had tricked his way in and then turfed the Lord out with his entire garrison, servants and all.

  By the time he read the last word, Isaac’s anger had heated his blood so much it mounted to his otherwise sallow face—not a pretty sight—and he shrieked with rage.

  Diocles and the other servants cowered at the storm of invective and howls of fury that followed. Isaac literally tore at his hair and gnashed his teeth he was so incensed, and all who could fled to hide until the storm abated. Those less fortunate, who had to stay and witness the terrifying display, quaked and shook. It was so bad that the aged Diocles feared he would faint. It was hours before Isaac was coherent enough to speak and to be understood.

  “We leave at once!” he shouted. “Bring my horse, I shall go now! Follow as quickly as you can.”

  There were frantic efforts to comply. By the time the palace tent was emptied, the emperor was gone, and with him his cavalry.

  As he rode, Isaac thought back on his visit to Paphos. He had arrived to find that, although the town was subdued and properly cowed, there had been an incident on the quayside. The sergeant of the squadron had reported that his commander and many others had been killed when they had tried to detain a merchant galley, one that had been leaving the city without permission. There were wild stories of ambush, and more particularly about a noisome explosion which had decimated the ranks of the cavalry. The sergeant was barely coherent as he stood in front of his emperor, trembling with fear.

  “It was like a bolt of fire from heaven, Your Eminence,” he stammered.

  “It was Greek fire?” one of Isaac’s officers offered.

  “No my Lord,” the poor man stuttered. “ It was more like a clap of thunder, and then fire, but it killed man and horse.”

  “Superstitious nonsense, my Lord,” sneered the senior officer. “The men are lying and they should be punished.”

  Isaac had agreed. Neither he nor his commanders had believed the soldier for an instant, and the protesting man had been executed for lying and cowardice.

  The rest of the squadron had been deprived of their horses and sentenced to slavery, but the rumors of a flash of light and a loud blast of noise like a single clap of thunder, followed by much smoke and destruction on the quayside, somehow persisted.

  Isaac had been informed that there was a man by the name of Sir Talon de Gilles, a very rich merchant, who had recently appeared in Paphos but had since disappeared. Isaac had planned to detain Sir Talon and relieve him of his wealth, then send him on his way. A single Frank was not worth cultivating in this current atmosphere of shifting alliances; his friend Salah Ed Din had little use for the Franks, either. It would have been a service to both of them to get rid of the man.

  Now this Sir Talon de Gilles had by all accounts stolen a castle from him! The sheer audacity of the act almost made him choke when he thought about it. The ride to Famagusta was normally several hours long, but it was less at the breakneck speed he now rode. Along the way he was able to think. He swore he would find Lord Doukas, no matter where he had fled and hang him and his entire family up by their heels for allowing such a thing to happen. Before the man died, he would tell all, because the torture he would be subjected to would be painful indeed. Doukas would be gibbering with agony before he died.

  The riders arrived at the gates of Famagusta by nightfall, and the gates were thrown open to cries of, “The Emperor! Long live the Emperor!” shouted from the towers. Trumpets blared to warn the inhabitants that their lord and master had returned. Just before he rode into the city, Isaac turned his head to stare at the ridge of the mountains to the North. He thought he could see the tiny speck that was the castle high on the mountain. Was it mocking him? He would take care of that. The humiliation was almost more than he could bear.

  It was too late to do much that evening, but before he retired Isaac called in his most trusted officer and gave him instructions to scour the city for anyone who had been at the castle during the takeover.

  “Find Lord Doukas,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “I don’t care if he is related, I want him dead! I want anyone, anyone at all, man, woman, or child, who was at the castle on that day to be found and brought to me. If they try to hide, dig them out like moles! And find out who was the ship’s captain who took Doukas off the island. I want his head!” This last was delivered in a high-pitched scream.

  General Bourtzes was a veteran of many wars and skirmishes, having served in the Byzantine army before he decided that banditry and the pay of a mercenary was preferable to that of the Imperial army. It certainly paid better in loot and women. He and his like-minded men had helped the emperor wrest the island from the former governor, whom they had summarily executed.

  Bourtzes gripped his sword, bowed his head, and left.

  Isaac slowly began to calm down. He felt hungry and thirsty. Calling for his steward, he gave him instructions. “Bring food, and wine—the very best, or you shall be flogged. And hurry! Then I shall bathe, after which you will bring me one of those girls we looked at last week. On second thought, make it two of them. Tell Tamara to make sure they are bathed before I see them; the last lot were smelly.”

  Tamara was his favorite concubine. The girls had been kidnapped from four of the formerly wealthy merchants on the island. Two were from Famagusta; the others had come from Episkopi and Paphos respectively. None of the girls was older than fourteen. The servant bowed, and then vanished.

  For his part, Bourtzes sent out his men to do the work required, and by dawn the next day there were a number of prisoners under guard. The emperor awoke late with a pounding head after a night of wine and girls. After a leisurely breakfast of roasted quail, fruit, and oil-dipped bread washed down by more wine, he called for Bourtzes.

  The general arrived, looking smart and businesslike in his burnished armor, to stand to attention in silence while the emperor finished off his meal.

  “Well,
did you find anyone?” Isaac demanded, as he wiped the grease off his mustache. He did not even deign to greet his senior officer, who put that down to the hangover.

  “Indeed, we have a couple of dozen men, some women, and four children who were there at the time of the er... takeover, your Majesty. We are still scouring the city for others,” Bourtzes stated, not looking at Isaac. Who knew what the emperor was capable of when he had not only a hangover but now this embarrassing issue to deal with?

  What Bourtzes didn’t add was that the city was seething with rumors. Some whispered that a magician had descended from the sky and chased the residents off with curses and threats. Others snorted and said that while there was certainly magic involved—how could there not be?—trickery and cunning were the main ingredients. Everyone was stunned by the sheer audacity of the entire business, and there were not a few who laughed under their sleeves at the emperor. He was decidedly unpopular and that was after less than a year of rule.

  “Where are they?” Isaac asked pleasantly.

  “Er... they are in the palace courtyard under guard, Sire.” The prisoners had been brought up from the dungeons, where they had spent the night, to stand in the burning sun since dawn. It was now almost noon, and some had fainted from thirst and the heat. The children were grizzling and the women weeping.

  “What did they have to say for themselves?”

  “They all told the same story, Sire. They woke up to find the castle in other hands. The Lord and his lady were sent away by this man Sir Talon de Gilles and his men. There was no fighting at all. The garrison soldiers were smoked out of their barracks before they could do anything and were disarmed. Then they, too, were sent packing,” Bourtzes stated respectfully. He was fully aware of the enormous humiliation to his leader and knew there would be terrible reprisals. He looked up at Isaac. “My Lord?”

  “Yes, what is it?” Isaac was munching on a pomegranate. Someone had once old him they gave him vigor at night.

  “With your permission, I would be honored to take an army and capture the castle from this usurper and bring his head to you.”

  “We’ll deal with that later. First you will take the prisoners and hang every one of them just outside of the gates of the city. I shall have them punished as an example to all who would betray me!”

  Bourtzes almost gaped with surprise but hesitated only a moment. “The women and children also, My Lord?”

  “Are there any beauties among that lot?”

  Bourtzes shook his head.

  “There are too many to feed to the leopards, so hang them all and be done.” Isaac turned away to admire the garden with its Arabic fountain and took a sip of wine that had been cooled with snow brought all the way from the top of Trudos Mountain.

  Bourtzes bowed low and left to carry out the sentence. It took some hours to find a suitable place, but he borrowed an idea from Isaac’s uncle, Andronikos Komnenos, who had recently hung over two hundred suspected traitors in a vineyard in Brusa, not far from Constantinople. It would take too long to build scaffolding for dozens of prisoners, but the tall, stout frames of a vineyard would do nicely.

  Impervious to the wails, the screams and desperate pleas for mercy from the victims, he had his hardened mercenaries carried out the awful deed. The bodies were left to hang, and the horrified but gawking populace was forbidden to cut them down.

  After a cursory examination of the still twitching corpses, Bourtzes reported back to Isaac and again asked permission to lead the expedition to take back the castle.

  Isaac may have been a cruel and sadistic man, but he was not a fool. “You do realize why I had it fortified, don’t you?” he demanded.

  “Indeed, Sire. It is now almost impregnable,” stated Bourtzes. “But, my Lord, I am sure my men are a match for any bunch of adventurer Franks who think they can—” he closed his mouth with a snap. He had nearly said, “make a fool of you.” Fortunately, Isaac appeared not to notice.

  “I have a mind to lead the expedition myself,” he said. “I shall take much pleasure in feeding this upstart to the hunting leopards.”

  “With great respect, Sire,” Bourtzes said politely, “would it not be best if you were here to keep an eye on any possibility of treachery in the city? I shall leave sufficient men behind to ensure your safety.”

  Isaac, however, was a Komnenos and not lacking in courage, despite his other failings.

  “No, you will lead the men, but I shall be in overall command. This is a nut that I wish personally to crack.” Isaac’s large, dark eyes under their heavy lids swiveled to look directly at Bourtzes, giving warning that his mind was made up. “I shall take one of the leopards, Akropol. The other will stay here to guard the grounds while I am away.”

  The leopards were his hunting prizes, won with the rest of the island booty from his predecessor. They were fierce beasts that required tight control, as they were known to turn on their handlers and maul them. Isaac loved them, for they terrified his palace staff, and the mere threat to feed someone to them was enough to ensure their subservience.

  Bourtzes sighed inwardly and bowed his acquiescence. “Yes, my Lord.” He had the uneasy feeling that this man on the mountain top was not going to be an easy nut to crack, and he would have preferred that the emperor was out of harm’s way. But if the fool wanted to get himself killed, that was his problem. Bourtzes’ loyalty, such as it was, only went so far.

  “We will bring him back alive and make an example of him to everyone on the island. I shall teach these pathetic people that it is I who am in charge, no one else,” Isaac said, pursing his fleshy lips and spitting out an olive stone. It landed with an audible plop in a bowl of water nearby.

  The army that Bourtzes assembled mustered in front of the city of Famagusta three weeks later. Diocles had arrived soon after the hangings and had been so dismayed that he’d allowed himself to complain to Bourtzes. “How on earth does the emperor hope to keep the loyalty of his subjects if he keeps plundering his own kingdom and hanging innocent peasants?” he’d wailed to the general when they were alone.

  Bourtzes was sensible enough not to say anything, but his look warned Diocles not to continue in this vein. Diocles realized that he had committed a dangerous blunder and began to tremble. He was a frail old man with no wish to do harm; lately he had been so stressed he was considering asking for retirement. His big worry was whether the emperor saw retirement in the same light as he.

  Bourtzes knew how valuable Diocles was at organization, although he despised him for his craven attitude towards the vicissitudes of life. He said nothing but filed away the incident for future use.

  “We have spread ourselves very thin on the island, what with all the garrisons we now provide,” Bourtzes said, referring to the mercenaries distributed around the major cities of the island. “We will have to conscript men from Famagusta and Larnaca, and use my men to give them a backbone. It should be a short campaign, as the castle is within a day’s ride, and since even carts can cover the distance in two days, we should be able to provide for the men without difficulty.”

  Diocles nodded his head. “I shall see to the provisions and provide whatever siege machines are available,” he said.

  “We shall need scaling ladders most of all. I don’t want to waste time tossing rocks at the fort. That’ll take weeks, as it is well built. No, a full frontal attack is about all we will need, so make sure we have plenty of the ladders,” Bourtzes replied.

  Now Bourtzes sat on his horse and stared at the listless looking conscripts and wondered. “These Greeks of the island have not had to fight for anything for so long they have forgotten how!” he said to himself. There was a contemptuous curl to his lips as he watched his mercenaries shoving the five hundred conscripts into line prior to departure. Most of them had little or no armor; they carried short, badly made spears or rusty swords and knives. Their shields were a joke: one slash of his sword and he could cut one in half—including the arm that held it.

  The emp
eror, seated on a pure white horse adorned with silver trappings from head to croup, appeared not to notice the pathetic state of his army and set out ahead of them, determined, it seemed, to lead them to glory and revenge. His extensive retinue included many servants and accoutrements designed to ensure his comfort. The hunting dogs, straining at their leashes and baying with excitement, agitated the leopard within its iron cage; it crouched, snarling. The animal handlers cast appreciative glances at the mountains looming in the distance. This was going to be an exciting expedition.

  Bourtzes shouted at one of his mercenaries to keep the men moving at a brisk pace. It was already high noon; the emperor had kept the men waiting since dawn. Now he expected them to arrive at the base of the mountain before sunset. Bourtzes doubted that they would have covered five miles by then. He shook his head and cantered past the single trebuchet that was being hauled along by fourteen oxen.

  It was a huge, unwieldy apparatus that ground its way along the pot-holed track that passed for a road, covering only one league in the hour; it was unlikely to arrive in three days, he surmised with a sour look at the huge engine. It was singularly unsuited for a steep mountain track, but the emperor had, as usual, dismissed the obvious and insisted. So here it was, on its way.

  He came alongside the emperor’s entourage before long and marveled at the extravagance. Isaac certainly liked his creature comforts. The baggage train for him alone consisted of twelve donkeys carrying everything from tents to foodstuffs to a huge, brightly polished pot that could fit a man. Bourtzes could only assume that it was a bath. He shook his head with disgust. They were not on one of the emperors’ plundering tours of the island! They were going to besiege a castle, for God’s sake!

  However, he had learned long ago not to touch on this kind of subject, as Isaac didn’t like it. His eyes would bulge, his lower lip would push forward, and the corners of his mouth turn down, then he would scream invectives at whomsoever had incurred his wrath.