The Dark Lord

by Thomas Harlan

  "Perhaps. But why? They have the upper hand here—Shahr-Baraz could tusk his way into Greece with ease. Even with the boy-king's touted Goths, I wonder if we could stop a determined attack. Where is the wisdom in letting a wounded enemy live?"

  Jusuf raised an eyebrow and tried to keep from laughing, but mostly failed. "You're not smitten with our young comes and his battle wisdom, are you? You call him a boy—yet he's older than you! What sets you on edge about him?"

  Dahvos' expression contorted into a grimace and then a snarl. The subject of Alexandros did not lie easy with him. He failed to note the mischief in his half-brother's eyes. "I don't know, but I dislike this Alexandros as much as any man I've ever met. He is ill luck for us, Jusuf. He is a bent arrow."

  "Hmm. Well, with the pace of foraging and scouting, I'd say he intends to march against the Persians within the month."

  "Yes." Dahvos' expression grew ever more sour. "The comes desires to see the mettle of the Persians for himself—to foray up the Imperial highway to Selymbria or beyond—to see if the enemy will come out of his camps at Constantinople. This—with only his own troops, untried and untested in battle, with these Easterners, whose spirits are as low as a grave, and as muddy, with our own horse—by which, he tells me, he sets great store."

  "We have given a good account of ourselves," Jusuf said quietly. "But we will suffer if the enemy has kept his heavy horse in Thrace. Our arms, our armor, the weight of our horses, are not a match for the Persian diquans. But our men are game for the chase—they will not shy away from battle."

  "No, they will not! Not when the memory of defeat is so fresh!" Dahvos turned away from the port, eyes glittering in anger. "But the Eastern cataphracts have been ground up and spit out already and our men are the only ones with the nuts to match the Persians—so we will pay a heavy price to reclaim lost honor."

  "What about the Gothic spear wall?" Jusuf raised his chin in challenge, then turned and motioned out beyond the roofs of the town, towards the outer wall and the camps covering the countryside above the port. "Lord Alexandros never fails to express confidence they can stand against any cavalry charge in the world."

  "Have you seen them stand in battle?" Dahvos walked along the wall, cloak thrown behind him. The day was cloudy and a constant wet haze lay over the rumpled green hills and the flat, dark waters of the narrow sea. With summer far advanced, it was far too hot. The eastern horizon was a gray line marking the shore of Chalcedon. "I have puzzled through the old books—Hieronomyus of Cardia's Historia and Polybius—and once upon a time the Greek phalanx could withstand any cavalry charge, and break it, drenching the field with blood. Now? Those Goths can barely find a privy pit to piss in... much less march in order and keep those pig-stickers straight."

  "They are getting better." Jusuf tried to keep his tone level. "Their skill improves daily and even the Eastern troops are starting to regain their color. I doubt the Eastern foot has been drilled so fiercely in generations!"

  "Fine." Dahvos made a sharp motion with his hand. He was still very angry. "What about their cataphracts? Do they drill? No—they mope about the camps, drinking until they fall down, cursing the gods—as if the lord of heaven had anything to do with Great Prince Theodore's idiocy on the Plain of Mars—and acting the lackwit. Listen to me, Jusuf, if we meet the Persians again in full battle, those Eastern knights will break like a rotten trace and spill us all on the cold ground."

  Jusuf rubbed his long nose in response, and tapped his chin with his knuckles. "Do you think that the next battle will be decided by the actions of cataphract and clibanarus?"

  "Yes," Dahvos snapped, "how else?"

  Jusuf shrugged, then leaned an elbow on the battlement again. "I wonder... I think our new commander, this same comes Alexandros you dislike so much, smells the wind changing. The heavy horseman with lance, mace or striking sword in hand, girded in armor from head to tail, his horse likewise barded all about with heavy padding or even iron, has ruled the Eastern battlefield for what? Three centuries?"

  "Since Emperor Valens bled out like a trussed pig at Adrianopolis," Dahvos grunted, scowling. "A little less than three hundred years..."

  "Yet," Jusuf interjected smoothly, hooking a thumb down at the busy chaos in the harbor, "in the West, Rome has ridden out shock after shock, losing whole provinces and then wresting them back from the barbarians. Where are their clouds of horsemen, their cohorts of knights? They have kept their traditional Legions—oh, supplemented by barbarian horse, surely—but the core of their armies, which have been victorious for more than seven hundred years, remains the foot soldier with his shield, his stabbing sword, his weighted javelins."

  "What does this have to do with Alexandros and his Goths?" Dahvos winced, hearing a surly whine creeping into his voice. "He's brought a mishmash of men on foot, men that ride then fight afoot, archers, that bastardized outdated phalanx, lancers..."

  "More than that," Jusuf said, laughing, bending close. "Did you know Alexandros has appropriated all those loose horses we gathered up during the retreat from Constantinople? His quartermaster levied every wagon he can find in Thrace. He even stole all the mules that should be going with those Western troops—said they didn't have enough hulls to carry them away."

  Dahvos' scowl faded, slowly replaced by a considering look. "How many horses and mules does he need?"

  "Enough," Jusuf said, grinning at the audacity, "to put every man in his army on horseback, and all their biscuit, gear and arrows on mule or wagon. He marched down here from Magna Gothica with half his men on horseback and it took them two months. I was breaking bread with that big moose tarkhan of his—Clothar Shortbeard—and he guesses they could make the return trip in half the time."

  "Huh." Dahvos' eyelid twitched. He did not seem impressed. "But can they... no, can he fight?"

  "He can." Jusuf seemed very sure. "If that is your worry, set it aside."

  "You're so sure? Why?"

  "You'll see." Jusuf was still grinning. "You will see."

  Dahvos didn't see how his half-brother could be so sure, but Jusuf was so confident he let the matter drop. The kagan had enough work of his own to do, getting his own troops ready to take the field. Jusuf, on the other hand, seemed to be looking forward to a battle.

  —|—

  Jusuf was letting his mare trot along at an easy pace, enjoying clear blue skies and a warm summer day, when battle presented itself. Five weeks had passed since the conversation on the town wall, and true to his word, Alexandros marched his army—ready or not—out of their camps at Perinthus and up the northeast highway towards Constantinople. The Goths and Khazars broke camp with admirable efficiency and got underway the first morning. The Eastern troops struggled manfully for most of the day, finally being forced to march by torchlight into late evening to catch up with the rest of the army. Jusuf had been out watching with the picket when they straggled into the main camp. As he expected, the Eastern infantry arrived in good order, wagons packed, gear stowed and kit in fighting trim. The cavalry had not, in fact, arrived until the next day, heads low and banners furled.

  Alexandros had not been pleased, but despite everyone's expectation, he did not punish the cavalry officers. Instead, the army had been roused the following day by horns and bucina-call before dawn and they marched for three straight days at what amounted to breakneck speed for the legionaries. Forced to keep up with everyone else, the Eastern horse shrugged off their ill-humor. Faced with obvious loss of face to some mud-footed infantry, the cataphracts rose to the occasion. The Khazars, laughing behind their hands, tried not to jeer the Eastern horsemen, but it was difficult. The Eastern legionaries and Gothic foot had shown no such restraint.

  This morning, Alexandros had deployed the Khazar light horse under Jusuf's command in a wide-ranging screen in front of his main advance. Everyone expected to reach the large town of Selymbria today, through which they had fled in such haste four months before. Jusuf's memory of the place was poor—rain, exhaustion and a wago
n hanging from the road, wheels spinning uselessly in the mud. He remembered straining, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with a dozen other men, pushing it back onto the road while rain bit his eyes and his boots slurped into clinging black mud.

  A shout of alarm and the peculiar whistling sound of arrows plunging from a high shot roused Jusuf from his memories. His riders were turning, swinging away from the road and into a field of wheat stubble. Other men—in darker clothing, with tubular, trailing dragon banners—appeared across the lot, pouring out of two lanes cutting through thatch-roofed houses. Jusuf clucked at the mare and she picked up the pace, high-stepping down the bank. Black arrows flickered in the air and one of them struck the road a wagon's length away, then sprang back up, flipping end for end, before rattling onto the paving stones.

  "Avars!" Shouted one of Jusuf's men, wheeling his horse around to face the tarkhan.

  "Quite a number of them," Jusuf said, shading his eyes with a hand. The crowd of Avar horsemen was growing bigger. Now some had appeared on the main road and they spilled out into line on either side of the highway. A few of the stronger Avar archers were shooting high, hoping for a lucky hit. Jusuf nudged his horse to the side. She whickered at him questioningly, then skipped away as a black-fletched shaft sank into the earth inches from her fetlocks. "Ride back and find Alexandros," he said, watching the Avars pour around the farm buildings like water from an opened sluice. "Tell him we've found about, oh, six thousand Avars—mostly light horse, but a goodly proportion of their knights."

  The man rode off in haste, kicking up a cloud of dust. Jusuf moved himself under the shade of a big willow standing beside the road above a culvert. He was pleased to see his riders spread out into a skirmish line, loosing long shots from their bows when they spied an interesting target. Three couriers found him under the tree, riding up with their young horses streaked with sweat.

  The Avars continued to arrive. Now Jusuf spied tall horse tail banners and golden horns and a thick cluster of men in bulkier armor. He whistled, standing in his stirrups, peering at the enemy.

  "Avi, you ride back and find comes Alexandros and tell him the Avar khagan—or at least his household guard—is on the road in front of us."

  The boy bolted off, like a good courier, and Jusuf called to his signaller to blow retreat in good order, which produced the skirling wail peculiar to Khazar horns. More arrows lofted into the air, the sun glittering from their points and Jusuf and his command cantered away, back towards the line of trees on the southern side of the stubbled field. The Roman army will arrive soon, he thought.

  Behind the retreating Khazars, the Avar columns continued to spread out, slowly forming a solid body across the road, and two heavy wings stretching across the fields. Despite the poor quality of their Slavic allies—well, subjects really; a motley aggregation of Croats, Moravians and Sklavenoi—the Avar officers were excellent and they did not brook disobedience from their vassals.

  Despite Alexandros' eagerness to test himself against the Persians, Jusuf spent the rest of the day falling back field by field, keeping the Avars busy while waiting for the Roman army to arrive. The skirmishing was desultory, since the Khazars easily kept at long bowshot, save when they fell back through an orchard or woodlot. All of the land around Selymbria was heavily built up, filled with farmhouses and fieldstone walls. By nightfall, Jusuf had lost only a dozen men, and at least two of those might have gotten lost in the maze of tracks and lanes. As soon as the sun dipped behind the western hills, the Avars halted their advance.

  Jusuf told off his men to keep a picket line across the main road and through the trees and brambles on either side. He let his horse rest, browsing on thin yellow grass under the olives. His courier riders squatted down among the gnarled trees and ate some legion biscuit—a hard, flat bread like a meal cake and as solid as old leather—and washed it down with wine they had appropriated from one of the farmhouses. Jusuf had been surprised, as the long day unwound, at the absence of any farmers, or stock, or even chickens. He wondered how the locals knew to flee. The absence of men among such signs of their industry—for these Romans were industrious, if nothing else, and Jusuf felt a little trapped to be in such a close, cluttered landscape—lent everything an ominous air.

  "Ho! Tarkhan!" Jusuf looked up and his guards relaxed a little, lowering their bows. One of the courier riders assigned to Dahvos rode up, ducking his head under low-lying branches. His horse seemed rested and filled with mischief—it bit at Jusuf's mare, earning a wall-eyed glare in return. "Comes Alexandros wishes to speak with you."

  "Fine." Jusuf levered himself from the ground, grunting, and took one of the fresh horses. "If anything happens, send two riders to find me and don't lose track of the enemy," he said to the men still squatting under the trees. "Otherwise, I will be back before dawn."

  —|—

  It was full dark by the time Jusuf passed through a picket of legionaries on the road and reached the main camp. The comes followed standard Eastern practice, choosing a big triangular section of waste ground filled with brambles and Scythian thistle between a road junction and two fields filled with ripening melons. Despite the irregular space, the Easterners were busy, digging a long ditch first facing the road, crossed by two earthen ramps, and then around the other two sides of the camp. As was customary, the army engineers marked the boundaries with ropes strung on stakes. The ditch lay on one side of the boundary rope and a palisade of sharpened stakes and cut logs on the other. Where there had been insufficient time to build the fence, army wagons were lined up to close the gaps.

  Bonfires burned cheerfully at each gate and along the avenues leading into the camp. Some men were awake, either on guard duty, or just sitting in front of their tents, as Jusuf rode through to the praetorium at the center of the encampment. Everyone else seemed to be asleep, or at least pretending to sleep. Jusuf had heard many soldiers boast of being able to doze anywhere, but most men, he knew, would be praying, or thinking of home. There would be battle soon and only the lord of heaven knew who might live and who might die.

  Grooms ran out to take his horse as Jusuf dismounted and he smelled stew bubbling on the fire and lamb and mutton roasting. The air was filled with the soft sound of thousands of horses munching oats and grass. All the stable tie-lines were set at the center of the camp, within a protective shield of infantry cohorts. Alexandros was still awake, which came as little surprise to the Khazar. When did the general ever sleep? He ducked into the tent.

  "Tarkhan Jusuf, welcome." Alexandros was sitting on a backless, tripodal chair. A large rug covered the floor of the tent, and the other commanders—Chlothar Shortbeard, Dahvos, an Easterner named Valentinius who commanded the Roman foot, and lord Demetrios, who was responsible for the rabble of Eastern cataphracts—were arrayed on either side. Jusuf nodded to them, then hooked over a camp stool and sat down.

  "Comes Alexandros," he said in greeting.

  Alexandros smiled, brushing a long lock of hair out of his face. It was a habit and Jusuf saw the Macedonian was in good humor. "I received your messages by rider, Jusuf, as to the advance of the enemy and their encampment for the night. Is there anything else? Have you seen any Persian troops afield, or only Avars?"

  "No, comes," Jusuf answered, seeing that a fuller report was expected. "We've seen a large number of Avar horse—both light horse-archer and knights—as well as, late in the day, a quantity of Slavic foot on the main road. They were bringing up wagons at dusk and laagering—as the Goths would say—about a mile from our positions. With the addition of the Slavs, there must be at least twelve thousand men. I saw the khagan's banners and his guardsmen, though I did not set eyes upon Bayan himself."

  "You know him by sight?" Alexandros leaned forward, quite interested.

  "Yes," Jusuf said. "As a youth I was sent to the Avar court as a hostage. I know the khagan Bayan well."

  "Excellent." Alexandros slapped his knee. "Tell me about him. What kind of man is he? Does he favor one hand over the other?"<
br />
  Jusuf paused, marshalling his thoughts. His time among the Avars now seemed quite distant, though less than a decade had passed since he'd been sent to live among them. There had been talk of an alliance then, between peak-roofed Itil and the hring—the triple-walled Avar capital at Serdica in Moesia—but nothing came of the matter. In the old days, the T'u-chüeh would have forbidden such an alliance—they despised the Avars and called them slaves—but the T'u-chüeh empire had lately fallen into disrepair.

  "My lord," Jusuf said at last, having summoned up old memories and arranged them to his liking, "this khagan is named Bayan, after his grandfather. Unlike his father Jubudei, he is neither patient nor wise; he is reckless and given to bold maneuvers. Bayan is stout, shorter than most of his kind. He hides his right arm—an arrow cut the elbow in a border skirmish, making the limb weak. So he fights with his left hand. When he was a young man, he won many victories over the Gepids in the west, over the Bulgars and the Slavs. Even the Blue Huns pay him tribute."

  "Do you think he will lead in battle himself?"

  "No, comes, not with a weak arm. He will stay back, and let his umen commanders handle the line of battle."

  "Good." Alexandros' curiosity was satisfied. "Tomorrow we may fight, if the enemy has the stomach for battle. All of you have seen the ground—very poor for horses, filled with streams and fields and orchards. If we fight here, matters will be decided by our infantry in close quarters."

  The Macedonian smiled broadly and stood, filled with nervous energy. He paced the circumference of the tent, harsh voice ringing. "I cannot think of a better place to fight this enemy. Our men, on foot, are the match for two, three, even four times their number in these barbarians. It may be the Avar khagan has tired of sitting at Constantinople and has taken the field to loot, to pillage, to forage for his men. Therefore, we will rise up before dawn and attack, straight up the road. My Goths will lead, and your men, Valentinius, will follow close behind. When we come upon the Avars, you shall deploy on either flank."