As the scout rider set off, Apion twisted round to see the mounted, green-cloaked and green-plumed Cydones, mail veil across his face, flicking his attention across his lines from every angle, as if searching for something he had lost. This was the strategos’ real-life shatranj board.
‘Kataphractoi,’ Cydones roared, waving a hand to the left wing of the formation. He made a pushing motion and the rider by his side waved his banner towards the southern and northern sides of the square that would effectively be the Byzantine flanks. Like iron-scaled creatures, each of the two cavalry wings moved out, away from the centre of the square, to position themselves by the gaps among the banda on those sides.
Apion wondered at the strategos’ plans. The key would be to lure the Seljuks into making the first move, to make them present a weak spot in what looked like a wall of iron. They would only do so if the Byzantines themselves offered a weakness. Shatranj indeed.
Then he noticed the scout rider talking to the strategos. Cydones seemed to consider the message for a moment, then nodded and raised his sword. ‘Banda!’ He roared. ‘Lower every second standard then close the gaps between.’ A buccina keened a series of notes to reinforce the order.
Apion bristled with pride. The strategos had taken his advice. In the heat haze the Seljuks would doubtless be struggling to ascertain the exact number of Byzantine banda they faced. Thus lowering every second standard meant the Seljuks would be likely to count only half the true number of that stood in opposition to them. It was a glimmer of hope. The lure was set.
‘Engineers, mark our range!’ The strategos yelled back over his shoulder. The ground shuddered and a cracking of stone and grinding of dust rang out. The banda on the front of the square parted and ten clusters of siege engineers strained behind their ballistae, small wooden wagons with yawning timber bows mounted horizontally across them.
‘Come within three stadia and you’ll get a bolt through your chest,’ Procopius nudged Apion with an elbow. ‘Finely constructed aren’t they? Could do with a couple of trebuchets too, even just to scare the shit out of them, eh?’
Apion nodded at the old soldier’s words; the giant stone throwers, the city takers as they were called, were capable of hurling man-sized rocks over eight hundred feet. Almost four times the height of a man and with a throwing arm the same height again, they could shatter men and walls alike, but they were rarely brought out for a field battle given their monstrous weight, questionable accuracy and lack of manoeuvrability, even when deconstructed.
Then the ballistae fired, bolts whistling through the air and troughing into the ground between the Byzantine front lines and the Seljuks, sending puffs of dust from the earth where they landed.
‘Let’s see how brave they are now, eh?’ Blastares said.
‘Aye but let’s hope first they don’t have any long-range devices of their own,’ Procopius countered.
‘I suppose,’ Blastares grudgingly backed down, fleetingly eyeing the skyline for any sign of approaching missiles.
Apion offered a sly grin at Procopius; not many could shut Blastares up with one line. Then he noticed a group of some fifteen unarmoured men shuffling forward, each stooped under the weight of the iron cylinders they carried, flexible piping coiling from the tip of the cylinders to a handle on the side, some kind of pump for whatever was inside. Apion assumed they were some kind of devices to aid the ballistae. When the men carrying them forked out to stand not on the front of the square with the artillery, but on the flanks, one just to the side of his own bandon, he cocked an eyebrow.
‘You’ve never seen the Greek fire before?’ Procopius asked. ‘Because when you have seen it, you’ll never forget.’
The old soldier’s words were drowned out by the gallop of the Byzantine scout riders, who hared out into no-man’s land, unarmoured, bearing only a clutch of spears with strips of purple cloth tied to their base. One by one, the test missiles were located and marked by a spear.
‘How much do you reckon he’s holding back?’ Procopius squinted over at the strategos.
‘Holding back?’ Apion asked.
Procopius smirked wryly. ‘I reckon there’s another hundred, hundred and fifty feet in those devices if we get the right tension.’
‘I pray you’re right,’ Sha muttered, his attention taken by the sudden rippling on the Seljuk horizon. ‘They’re coming!’
‘And we’re waiting,’ Apion spoke evenly. Then the Seljuk war horns moaned like an army of lost spirits. Apion’s skin rippled and the ground started to shake as if a thousand titans were coming for them. The ethereal blur on the horizon sharpened and the closer the mass came, the more ferocious it appeared. He glanced along his ranks: the skutatoi were braced, faces etched with doubt. A murmur of fear rippled through the air. This would be his first full-scale battle and as an officer too. Doubt surfaced in his mind and his tongue shrivelled in his mouth. At the same time he tried to resist squirming as his bladder seemed to have swollen suddenly, pressing, demanding to be relieved.
‘Ha, not so funny now, is it?’ Blastares whispered, leaning in to him. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. By the time you’ve got blades swinging in your face, it’ll be the least of your worries. Besides, one of their lot might be kind enough to open your bladder for you.’
He turned to Blastares and saw the grin of nervous excitement and determination on the big soldier’s face. Hearing words of encouragement being shouted by komes’ up and down the front line, he realised that the rest of his bandon needed to feel ready like Blastares. He turned to them and to a man, their eyes were fixed on him, expectant. He gulped back the terror that tried to catch his tongue, took a breath deep in his lungs and drew his eyes across their number, then bellowed. ‘Stay strong in your hearts, men. The Falcon of the proud Seljuks comes to show us his power, but we have our mighty strategos,’ he stabbed his scimitar towards Cydones, ‘the legend of Chaldia!’
Blastares gripped his shoulder and punched a fist into the air. ‘And we have the Haga! The ferocious two-headed eagle flies with us!’
Apion’s bandon erupted in a cheer, rousing and far louder than the surrounding units. Then the banda flanking his also erupted in a cheer. ‘Stra-te-gos, Stra-te-gos!’ Was mixed with chants of ‘Ha-ga!’
‘Just remember,’ Blastares added with a wink to Apion on one side and Sha on the other, ‘I’ve got your flanks covered. You cover mine, eh?’
Apion flashed a grin in return but the burly soldier’s words were drowned out by the Seljuk advance, as the war horns died the trilling battle cry of the Seljuk infantry filled in with an even greater noise. The Seljuks were still within a fair distance of the outer artillery range markers when another buccina wail came from Cydones’ cavalry wing. At once the artillery units buzzed around their devices and, like an angry snake, the line of ballistae recoiled across the square front. To a man, the Byzantine square held their breath. Then the Seljuk infantry centre was riven with a series of troughs, the dust thrown up tinged with crimson and the air filled with screaming.
‘And again!’ Procopius yelled, bashing his sword hilt on his shield. The rest of the ranks around them joined in the chorus of celebration. But when Apion glanced to Procopius, the old soldier’s face had returned to its usual puckered expression.
‘Procopius?’
The old soldier leaned into his ear. ‘We’ll take encouragement where we can get it, but Tugrul isn’t that stupid. They’re testing our true range at the expense of a few hundred cheap infantrymen.’
Apion squinted until he could see the battered Seljuk front ranks: barely armed men, similar to the Byzantine light infantry. Some clutched daggers, some were empty handed. Behind them, the glimmering ranks of iron-clad soldiers were untouched and safely out of range.
‘How can they fight for their leader when he treats them like that?’ Apion barked through the dust cloud that whipped back over the thema ranks.
‘They’ve got no choice. Beggars, brigands and the like,’ Sha said
. ‘They run forward, they may live. They run back, they will die. Tugrul demands, they obey.’ Volley after volley of ballista bolts pummelled the wretches and the sun was dulled momentarily by the dust thrown up. The thick ranks of Seljuk light infantry were already in chaos. Those who chose to continue forward slowed as their fleeing colleagues hared past them in the opposite direction. At the same time, the Seljuk archers loosed volley after volley of arrows into the deserters. Chaos reigned.
‘Bastards!’ Blastares spat. ‘A few less mouths to feed, that’s all they were brought here for.’
Apion wondered at the men of the light infantry in the Byzantine ranks, currently tucked inside the skutatoi outer wall. On another day would they not have been committed to death in the same fashion? Mansur’s words echoed in his mind. These are the choices of the strategos.
There was then a lull until the dust cloud swept past them. The cream of the Seljuk ranks stood, still cupped in a crescent like a viper’s jaws around the rough crater of the longest lying ballista strikes. The Byzantine cheers fell flat and the plain was still and silent. Then, suddenly, the silence was shattered with the terrible wail of the war horns and raucous jeering of the Seljuk ranks. The Byzantine buccinators filled their lungs and blasted a howling response from their instruments. The Chi-Rho banner bearing the image of the Virgin Mary was hoisted high in the air and, to a man, the thema cried out in defiance.
‘Clever buggers,’ Procopius roared over the cacophony.
Apion assumed Procopius was talking of the Seljuk’s wise decision to keep their best men out of ballista range, but then he followed the old soldier’s gaze; his eyes were still narrowed on the artillery squads, who had remained at their machinery, knuckles white. Added to this, Cydones was poised, one hand gripping the reins of his mount, the other ready to be raised to give an order, eyes darting along the enemy lines as the Seljuk cavalry filed into a high flanking position, ready for the kill.
The Seljuk flags for the advance were being hoisted, war horns being brought to mouths.
Then the strategos’ cry rent the air. ‘Again! Loose!’
The air was filled with the coordinated twang and pained creaking of the ballistae as all of the devices shot their missiles, this time exploiting absolute maximum range and the extra fraction of tension that Cydones had secretly asked them to withhold in the last barrage. The effect was devastating. On the front foot, the Seljuk ranks were caught cold by the hail and despite their fine armour, the first ten ranks of densely packed heavy infantry were shattered like toys, men were sprayed into the air and officers skewered. There was no let-up; as the Seljuk infantry curled around to flee, they stumbled over the dead, fell to the dust and blocked those behind. Then the artillery barked once more and another wave of desolation ruptured the Seljuk lines.
‘Double bluff,’ Apion whispered as he eyed the strategos, sat motionless in the saddle, plume flitting in the breeze.
‘Led them right into it,’ Procopius was grinning like a shark.
To a man, the thema roared. ‘Stra-te-gos! Stra-te-gos! Stra-te-gos!’
Cydones wheeled round on his mount and pumped a fist in the air. The words tumbled from Apion’s chest too. ‘Stra-te-gos! Stra-te-gos!’
The ballistae hail slowed, leaving a carpet of gore across the plain. Apion wondered how many they had taken from the Seljuk number. At least a quarter of the infantry, he hoped. But the ballistae had fallen silent, and were now being rolled back inside the square.
At this, the shimmering band of Seljuks rippled, units reorganising and repositioning, no doubt lifting their dead back from their lines. Then they were still again, a dense wall. Many of their number had fallen but many more still stood. Too many.
‘This is it,’ Apion said.
‘By your side, sir!’ Sha replied, steadying himself, pressing his shoulder against Apion’s, just as they had practiced. Procopius and Blastares bunched up likewise and the whole bandon followed suit, as did the rest of the outer square.
Then the war horns cried again. The trilling Seljuk war cry filled the air again and at once, the akhi infantry poured towards the front of the square and the ghulam wings rushed for the flanks.
As the ground shook, Apion heard the strategos’ cry over the din of thundering hooves. ‘Kataphractoi, break!’ Cydones bellowed. The order was reaffirmed by a buccina blast and at once the two wings of cavalry burst from the flanks of the square, the Pechenegs following Ferro’s wing. They sped out beyond the pincers of the closing Seljuk arc.
‘Where d’they think they’re going?’ A soldier yelped from behind Apion.
The rest of skutatoi around Apion murmured in concern and this grew into a panicked squabble as the jaws of the Seljuk arc raced ever closer. He blocked out his own creeping doubt and pictured himself as an eagle soaring, seeing the field from high above. Clarity soothed his doubts. ‘They’re positioning to counter the Seljuk charge. It’s just as we’ve trained for since the mustering, but this is for real.’ He barked back to the dissenting voices. This seemed to ease their concern a little. ‘We pin the enemy on our spears, then the strategos and his riders will hit them in the flanks and from the rear, cut them to pieces!’ His tone sounded firm and assured, but inside he knew it was all too simple to speak of how things should work. Added to that, the bulk of the men who stood in the ranks had been farming in the five years since the last campaign and had only had a handful of sessions of training since being rounded up by Cydones. The men of the garrison – those in the front ranks – would be critical, he realised.
Perched at the corner of the square, Apion’s eyes were fixed on the riders thundering for them, but he was all too aware of the dark mass of infantry growing in his peripheral vision. The Falcon’s claws were closing around them. The banda at the front of the square opened to allow the light infantry to rush out, ready to meet the Seljuk infantry advance with their axes, slings, bows and javelins. Meanwhile, the toxotai spread themselves thinly around the inside of the square, giving scant but welcome archer cover to all sides. Apion then glanced to the closing gap at the pincers of the Seljuk arc, spotting Cydones’ standard shrinking as the cavalry wings burst clear of the noose just in time.
‘He’s drawing them out,’ Blastares growled. ‘Less for us to bloody our swords on!’
Apion craned to Blastares’ height to see. The back ranks of the Seljuk ghulam cavalry had indeed peeled off to meet the threat, but the dense front ranks of the riders were only a handful of paces away. Thousands of them, spears lowered, hurtling forward to smash the square. A sea of taut bows rippled up from the rear of the ghulam charge and then at once the twang of a thousand bows filled the air.
‘Shields!’ Apion cried, glancing up just in time to see the dark storm cloud of arrows that hurtled for them. He wrenched his shield up and three iron tips hammered into its surface an instant later. His heart thundered, hearing the choking cries of the stricken; if the ghulam wished they could wheel back and forth from the Byzantine square, firing upon the banda until their quivers were empty, thinning the skutatoi at their leisure. The hail slowed and he looked up, eyes widening at the snarling wall of riders, spears lowered for the charge. No, the ghulam were not for waiting, he realised with a swirl of terror and hubris, they were coming for the kill. The dark door rushed for him, the knotted arm punched forward to knock it from its hinges, the fire engulfed him.
‘Rhiptariai ready, loose! Front ranks, brace!’ He roared. The front two ranks rippled, kontarion spears jutting forward like a porcupine. At the same time, the ranks behind coiled and then hurled their throwing spears like a dark cloud and these were joined by the arrow hail from the toxotai.
The rhiptariai hammered home, punching Seljuk riders from their mounts, smashing through bone and sending jets of crimson into the air, stopping many a man and beast in their tracks, terrible whinnying and screaming ringing out. Then the hail slowed until it was only the thin spray of archer fire: the Seljuk riders were thinned, but only a little.
/> The ghulam wall hurtled forward and Apion grappled his kontarion and braced for the impact; a conical-helmed and scale-clad giant of a rider on a frothing stallion, demonic behind an iron-plate mask, hooves rapping like hammers on the earth, burst a few strides ahead of the charge and made to leap the spear wall and plunge into the bandon. With a roar, Apion and the men of the front line punched their spears forward. The impact was colossal, Apion felt his entire body jar and he was thrown back as the mount was punctured through the chest by the spear thrusts, some of the shafts snapping, and the rider was thrown into the bandon where he was butchered in an instant.
Apion staggered to his feet and his heart froze; the front line of the bandon was broken and the rest of the ghulam charge was only strides away. He lunged forward to rip an unbroken kontarion from the convulsing stallion, then pressed up against the next nearest skutatos, others bunching up on his other side.
‘Come on then, you whoresons!’ He roared with all the breath in his lungs.
With that, the Seljuk charge smashed home and the land turned red.
Strategos: Born in the Borderlands Page 33