Strategos: Born in the Borderlands

by Gordon Doherty

  Apion turned to face the approaching figure. Something shivered deep within him. This officer wore no sash but instead a plume, a golden plume, an iron klibanion and leather gloves with iron studs on the knuckles. Two giant soldiers flanked him. Apion’s heart hammered.

  ‘Muster and recruitment will happen on my word. My word!’ Bracchus growled.

  ‘Leave this to me . . . ’ Sha whispered to Apion.

  ‘I gave an order. When I give an order you obey it as though it had been issued by the strategos himself.’

  ‘Tourmarches!’ Sha turned to salute, stamping one foot into the dust at the same time, his eyes shot for the horizon and remained fixed there. ‘He brings his own weapons. Given the low numbers of the garrison, sir, I . . . ’

  ‘You did as you pleased? Yes?’ Bracchus cut him off.

  Apion felt that terrible chill creep across his skin as Bracchus leaned forward, the sun falling on his face, the piercing blue eyes and razor nose fixed on Sha. Then he turned to Apion.

  ‘Well,’ he purred, ‘I thought I recognised that lame gait.’

  Apion’s skin shrivelled. His hand tensed, fingers itching to rip his scimitar free and plunge it into the cretin’s throat, right here, right now. Then he glanced at Bracchus’ guards, the bloodied sand and then Sha; he relaxed his hand. Then Bracchus’ lips wrinkled and Apion realised what was coming next. Go on; destroy me in front of them all. Shout to them and show them my withered leg. Then tell them all how I live with the enemy. Call me it again: a Seljuk loving whoreson!

  Bracchus’ eyes seemed to drill into Apion’s thoughts, his grin widening until suddenly, he stood tall and nodded. ‘Well, perhaps we make an exception for this one.’

  Apion’s eyes darted around the enclosure: most were the swarthy and dark haired so-called natives of the empire. Dotted amongst them there were a few northerners and westerners, distinctive like him by their red or pure blonde locks. Then there were a peppering of Africans, Syrians and even a yellow-skinned man with almond eyes. The people and soldiers of the empire were tolerant and open to other cultures. All except the Seljuks. Now all Bracchus had to do was announce that Apion came from a Seljuk household and he would be hated by a lethal majority of the garrison. What was the tourmarches up to?

  Bracchus fixed him with an ice-cold glare. ‘Vadim, provide our new garrison soldier with armour and weapons.’ He turned to the big Rus and nodded. Vadim beckoned Apion and marched for the officers’ quarters.

  Apion hesitated and shot a glance back to Sha. The African shook his head briskly. Apion felt an awful dread grip his stomach as he followed Vadim into the dim quarters. Inside, a candle flickered, illuminating the crumbling brick interior and a large square table covered in a mess of paper. A bald and corpulent man was buried behind the pile of documents, trying to copy information from the papers into a tattered leather-bound book and at the same time shield a block of six coin towers from the mess. He would then turn to count coins into purses and then stamp the papers with a lead seal. Apion guessed this was the protocancellarius, the man Father had spoken of as being responsible for carving up the soldiers’ pay. On the wall opposite the doorway, a set of map scrolls hung unfurled, outlining the border themata, the forts, towns and cities represented by solid dots, a red line scored across the disbanded Armenian themata. Vadim flitted through the pile of documents on the table, oblivious of the fat man’s scowl.

  ‘When you sign this form,’ Vadim muttered, still stooped, ‘you are owned by the tourmarches. You obey him without question.’

  Apion nodded silently. Only until I cut out his heart, the rasping voice replied inside his head.

  Vadim stopped and looked up. ‘You affirm every word from a superior’s mouth with a yes, sir! The tourmarches is not to be questioned.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Apion barked, sincere and aping Sha’s fixed gaze from moments ago.

  Vadim glared at Apion blankly for a moment, arms folded. Then his jutting brow and ginger-stubbled scalp wrinkled. He touched a hand to the scar running over his left eye and a dreadful grin crept over his features. ‘Your friend, the Seljuk with sling; I have yet to spill his blood. Remind him of this when next you meet. Now come with me and we will sort out your kit.’ He ducked under a low doorway into the adjoining warehouse.

  Apion followed him in. The warehouse was musty and dim, lit only by a pair of open shutters, its walls clad in shelving. Vadim dug around near a pile of klibania, and then turned back to him with a garment. Apion braced for the weight of the garment to pull on him. This would be the sleeveless lamellar vest of rectangular leather or iron plates strung together to form a tough armour. Instead, he grasped the bundle with ease as Vadim dropped it – a padded cotton vest.

  ‘I’m here to serve in the infantry as a skutatos, what’s this? This is an archer’s vest, is it not?’

  ‘Expecting scale or lamellar? Well you have to earn it in this shithole. Only the front ranks get good armour, and believe me, they need it!’ He held up one of the klibania, pointing to a spear-tip sized hole in the chest, surrounded by an encrusted dark-brown substance. Then Vadim rustled around on a shelf and turned to hand him a rusted conical helmet with a frayed and cracked leather aventail. ‘Think yourself lucky you’re getting that. The last unfortunate bugger to own it was knifed last week in a fight over a woman. Most of the runts get a felt hat at most, but this is much less comfortable, chews into the scalp,’ he grinned.

  Apion tried the helmet on. It rested like a cauldron on his head and only sat on his crown momentarily before sliding down over his eyes. When he pulled it up, Vadim stood before him with a pair of square-toed boots, sodden and mouldy. They were split above the knee at the sides so they could be folded down to the shin when marching and folded up to the thigh in battle. Then came the skutum, the teardrop shaped shield; battered and faintly etched with the Christian Chi-Rho on a faded crimson backdrop. He glanced to his prayer rope – his business here was anything but Godly.

  ‘What else is standard?’ Vadim scratched his scalp. ‘Ah, yes. You’re going to need a kontarion,’ Vadim lifted a broad-bladed spear, nearly twice Apion’s height, from the rack, ‘you really are.’ The giant may as well have issued him with a written threat. ‘You do not need a sword,’ Vadim glared at Apion’s sheath, ‘but you can have an axe and you can have a pair of rhiptariai too.’ Vadim gave him a small hand axe, which he clipped to his sword belt, and two shorter, lighter spears, for hurling at an advancing enemy.

  ‘All for the bargain price of half your first year’s pay!’ Vadim grinned. ‘Now, outside, the tourmarches will be ready for you.’

  Apion turned to leave and he could feel Vadim’s breath burn on his neck as he moved back through to the room with the desk. There stood Bracchus, flanked by his giants, stood over a leaf of paper.

  ‘Make your mark here,’ Bracchus jabbed a finger into the fresh document by the table.

  Apion picked up the quill and dunked it in the pot of ink. He could not write as such and could only faintly recall mother teaching him to print his name. As the quill scratched on the paper, he wondered at the significance. A contract for revenge. Then a stench of garlic hit him as Bracchus hissed over his shoulder.

  ‘In any fort or barracks in the empire the soldier usually signs his name, serves his time,’ the tourmarches’ nose and cool glare hovered just in Apion’s peripheral vision, ‘but it will be very different for you. Here I am king and the garrison are obedient to my rule and you will be especially so. You were fortunate my promotion took me from your filthy Seljuk master’s path, but now your luck is out, cripple. Now I own you. You obey my every word or you bleed your last into the dust,’ he jabbed a finger at the grey body of one of the dead combatants being carried past the door outside, ‘. . . you Seljuk loving whoreson!’

  ***

  The gloomy bunk area was functional at best and the other three of Sha’s depleted kontoubernion sat around on their bunks wearing expressions that matched the odour of the place, examining A
pion as he stood in their midst.

  The garrison at Argyroupolis comprised of a single bandon, the primary infantry unit, numbering nearly three hundred men when fully populated, plus a smattering of archers. Apion would be sharing a bunk block, rations, reward and punishment primarily with Sha and these three.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding?’ The biggest of them scoffed, glancing from Apion to Sha. Blastares was built and scarred like an oak and seemed to have the mood of a bear. He sported a broken nose that shuddered from between close-set eyes and his features were baked into a scowl. He shook his head and went back to sharpening his sword on a whetstone.

  ‘He’s lame, he can’t even stand straight. What’s the point of bringing in a cripple?’ Procopius, a prune-faced older legionary with a grey-flecked, cropped hair, added with a shrug of his narrow shoulders, jabbing a finger at the trembling limb. ‘He’ll slow us down, get us killed. We were better off as a four.’ With that, he went back to polishing what looked like an artillery torsion spring.

  Apion felt his skin burn and he longed to be out of their gaze.

  ‘Do you want to take it up with the tourmarches?’ Sha shot back.

  ‘I think I’d rather shit a mace,’ Procopius chuckled under his breath.

  Blastares also turned to Sha. ‘I’ve told you before, drop the officer babble. Being in charge of a kontoubernion means nothing; until you’re leading a bandon you’re just a grunt, like us. In any case, we’re all grunts to Bracchus.’ Then he cast a derisive glance back at Apion. ‘But he’s a cripple. No use to us.’

  The third man leaned forward from the shadow of his bunk. Nepos was a slender, blue-eyed and angle-faced Slav and his expression was cold. He didn’t look at Apion as he spoke, instead continuing to carve splinters from a lump of wood. ‘You two just don’t see past the obvious. You’d try to make stew by forcing a live cow into boiling water.’

  ‘What’re you on about, you pointy-faced bugger?’ Blastares growled.

  Nepos pulled a mocking, tight-lipped smile, then continued: ‘Well I wouldn’t complain if we had Achilles as the vanguard and Heracles watching our backs, but let’s face it; the army is patchwork, cobbled together from what is available. We’re lucky the Pecheneg Turks offer to serve alongside us, so we take what we can get and make the best of it. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes you’ve got to look past people’s limitations and seek out their strengths.’

  Blank looks ensued from Blastares and Procopius. Nepos seemed to suppress a sigh and then continued. ‘Well look at him; he’s got a sword. I can tell from the shape of the sheath that it’s not a spathion, so he brought it in with him. His arms are muscular but lean – swordfighters arms. He’s got skill with the blade.’

  Apion shuffled in embarrassment at the scrutiny.

  ‘Pah! No use if your enemy is more agile than you, can flit around you, stick his sword in your back.’ Blastares scratched at his crotch and cackled.

  ‘He’s got a sharp mind too,’ Nepos added quickly, his eyes hovering on the wooden shatranj box poking from Apion’s satchel.

  ‘Leave it out,’ Procopius snorted, ‘he’s lame! That’s the be-all and end-all!’

  Sha stepped forward and ushered Apion to the spare bunk. ‘Well he’s in our unit. We live or die as a unit, remember?’

  ‘Aye, well he can watch your back,’ Blastares said to Sha, then flicked a thumb over his shoulder to Procopius as the pair stood to leave, ‘I’d rather have this old bastard watching mine, even if he’s daydreaming about catapults or whatever it is he spends half his life talking about.’

  ‘Watch it!’ Procopius shoved him in the side and the pair left, muttering.

  Sha cut a frustrated figure, sighing, then turned to Apion ‘Welcome to the thema!’ He said, sardonically, then walked out as well.

  Apion turned to Nepos. The Slav eyed him stonily, still carving the piece of wood that was slowly taking shape as a shatranj pawn piece. ‘You play?’ Apion tapped his satchel.

  Nepos’ nodded. ‘I need the distraction, I came to this place to get away from a troubled home life, yet I found that I carried all those troubles here with me in my mind.’

  Apion frowned. ‘So you didn’t come here because you wanted to?’

  ‘Few do, lad. It’s a long story, and maybe someday I will tell you of it. But right now you only need to know one thing: you’ve walked into a hornets’ nest here. War is coming this way and soon. You’re going to have to prove yourself. You know that, right?’ With that, the Slav slunk back into the shadow of his bunk.

  All around them, the barracks seemed to shake with the thunderous banter of the other soldiers. Apion rubbed the knots on his prayer rope. He had never felt so lost.

  14. The Gathering of the Storm

  The sun-baked city of Isfahan, the jewel in the centre of the Seljuk Empire, shimmered in the midday sun. In the centre of the city stood an ornately blue and white tiled palace that enclosed a courtyard. Inside the courtyard, cicadas trilled, birds chattered and a marble fountain babbled, all framed by the orange trees and grape vines hugging the tiles as if seeking to scale the walls.

  Muhammud sat on the bench in the middle of the courtyard, dressed in just a silk robe, his battered armour resting for the day. He took a deep breath and looked up to the eggshell blue sky above. The years of peace and prosperity had faded his memories of the day the city had been taken. The flagstones and cobbles had long ago been washed clean of the gore and the families of the survivors conveniently enslaved and sent to the salt mines or scattered across the now vast Seljuk dominion. The screams of the prince who had died on the stake were but a memory. Bloody battle had packed the intervening years and he could no longer even guess the number of men who had died on his sword or on his orders. Yet it was the gaze of the slave he had murdered as a boy that haunted his dreams.

  He shook his head of the morose thoughts and sipped his cup of iced water. The summer had been intense and even now, in the shade, his skin still prickled and his muscles ached from the ride from the city of Tus that morning. He smoothed his moustache and wondered with a grin if, at the age of twenty six, this was the onset of old age. He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the fountain, scattering a pair of parakeets. The ripples reflected the sunlight over his face and he wondered what his future held. He was truly his uncle’s boy. His father had meekly accepted this just as he had meekly accepted his own peripheral role in Tugrul’s empire.

  But as Muhammud had grown, he had found the maintenance of the empire dull and unrewarding; it was poring over the maps and debating the expansion of the Sultanate that gripped him. Tugrul’s trusted men always bowed before the Sultan’s opinion, but now they even deferred to Muhammud, unable to counter his sharp-eyed assessments of tactics and strategy. Those activities were bettered only by the thrill of riding at the head of the hordes, chasing glory for Allah, and his appetite for the chase was now insatiable, like a parasite in the mind. Now they would look to the west; ancient Byzantium would be next to fall. Since Tugrul had been held to a stalemate five years ago, forced into a humiliating truce, his uncle had talked of nothing but putting Byzantium to flames. At this, something twinged in his heart; he had long ago buried the doubts over this glory under the carapace of the warrior and leader he had become, but he still felt the echo of those doubts, somewhere deep down in his being.

  ‘Enjoying the shade, Master Muhammud?’

  Startled, Muhammud twisted round on his chair, then he relaxed with a smile as he saw the vizier, Nizam, shuffling into the courtyard. ‘Nizam, care to join me?’ He lifted the jug of iced water and nodded to the empty cup and space on the bench.

  ‘I fear I will not be able to stand again if I do.’ Nizam mopped the sweat from his brow then glanced to the palace rooftop.

  Muhhamud chuckled. ‘My uncle is itching to get back on his horse, I presume?’

  ‘He is already planning the route for tomorrow,’ Nizam nodded to the open veranda above with a glint in his eye.


  Muhammud felt a surge of invigoration, keen to go and investigate his uncle’s plans. It was at these times that he had felt a longing to be in control of the strategies and formations of the Seljuk ranks. On the field he shown an innate mastery in the command of the ghulam divisions; like a master emir, Tugrul had enthused. The ranks of the vast Seljuk army loved him for his leadership, bestowing him with an honorary name: Alp Arslan, the Mountain Lion. He smiled, remembering how they had chanted it, beating their shields as he rode in front of them before the battle on the plains to the south, just a fortnight previous. The show had weakened the resolve of the massive Fatimid rebellion that had dared to challenge Seljuk supremacy, and victory had been decisive and crushing. Yet despite Tugrul’s advancing years, his uncle would still not let Muhammud lead the armies absolutely. Tugrul’s reasoning was absurdly simple: Muhammud had yet to beat him at shatranj.

  He sighed and looked to the vizier. While Tugrul had swept the lands into Seljuk rule and brought the shining glory of Allah upon their people, Nizam had quietly followed the trail of conquest, setting in place a system of government in the oft-chaotic aftermath of a change of rule. He had overseen the establishment of schools, libraries and universities and now the Seljuk people were evolving into master thinkers and artisans in architecture, literature, politics and governance. A legacy that would last, and all he asked for in reward was to be allowed to continue in his role. Added to this, the dusty cities they had taken over had been embellished under Nizam’s guidance to their current ornate beauty, with cavernous baths, immense mosques, grandiose fountains, flamboyant gardens and fine sculpture commonplace. ‘To have you, Nizam, is a blessing from Allah indeed,’ Muhammud stood to stretch, ‘With your wits and organisational skills, Uncle and I can be what we are supreme at.’