Strategos: Island in the Storm

by Gordon Doherty

‘You are outnumbered and you are disarmed,’ Apion insisted, then threw down his own scimitar tip-first so it quivered in the dust and held out his hands, palms open. ‘The fight is over. Now please, talk with me.’

  Taylan shook his head, eyes burning. ‘Never,’ he hissed as he backed towards his mount. His gaze never left Apion as he swung up and onto the saddle. Then he pointed a finger at Apion as if it was a dagger.

  ‘In every dream, in every waking moment, with every step you take on the battlefield, you should beware. I will be coming for you, Haga. I will not stop until I have avenged my true father. And my mother’s whereabouts? Never!’ With that, he swung his mare round and galloped off, back to the east.

  Apion slumped to his knees. No words, actions or emotions came to him. He could only stare numbly at Taylan’s fading dust plume.

  A crash of iron beside him pulled him from his trance. He blinked, seeing Kaspax had fallen onto his back. The young rider’s face was pale, grey even. Blood spidered from his lips and it was only then that Apion saw the bone-deep thigh wound the other Seljuk had inflicted on him. He shuffled over to lift Kaspax’s head and shoulders.

  ‘Sir, I’ll need to be getting back home.’ The young rider’s words were badly slurred and his pupils were dilating. ‘Vilyam will be . . . Vilyam will . . . ’ Kaspax’s words trailed off with a sigh. At last, emotion came to Apion in a ruthless tide. He tried to stifle the tears as best he could. ‘Vilyam will be fine. And you’d better rest, for it will be a long journey,’ he said, sweeping his hand over the dead rider’s face to close his eyes.

  He laid Kaspax down and turned to face the east once more. He had heard much talk of fate and destiny in his time. Much of it he had scoffed at. But at that moment, he knew he had to face Taylan again.

  ***

  White silk veils billowed in the gentle breeze that trickled in through the tall, arched windows of the hospital on Mosul’s citadel hill. Maria closed her eyes and let the pleasant air bathe her, taking the fire from her skin and cooling her in her bed. This was as fine a pleasure as any she had experienced. Up here the air was fresh and – apart from some ruckus in the silk market this afternoon – the racket from the streets was barely discernable too. That was why the sultan’s vizier, Nizam, had chosen to build this grand hospital here. The wards were spacious and finely ornamented with marble floors, beautifully tiled walls and fine silks – more akin to a palace than a place where the sick were sent to convalesce. Her train of thought ended at this, and she touched a hand to her abdomen. The hard swelling in there seemed more tender today than it had a few months ago when she had been admitted to the hospital, and her skin seemed more tautly stretched across it. At least now she knew what her future held, she thought, remembering her discussion with the physician that morning.

  Just then, that same physician shuffled in wearing a white cap and robes. An old man with a face wrinkled like the skin of a prune, his shoulders rounded and his expression serene. She had often wondered at the strength of those who lived only to care for others in this place. Day after day faced with mortality and locked away from the vibrancy of life elsewhere. The physician carried with him a steaming urn of broth. The elderly lady nearby barely had the strength to refuse the meal, but the man ignored her pleas, instead sitting on her bedside, speaking to her in gentle tones as he filled her bowl then lifted it to her lips. She drank, and as she did so, a tear snaked down her cheek. In all the months Maria had been in here, nobody had visited the lady. The old woman’s husband had died and left her a wealthy woman. Wealthy but alone. Now, in her final days, she found conversation only with Maria and a few other patients.

  Maria had only one who came to visit her. Her son, Taylan. And every time he came to her he seemed ever more consumed by a burning hatred. That fire had been kindled over a year ago when her husband, Nasir, the man Taylan had long thought to be his father, had been slain. Slain by his true father. She had never regretted telling Taylan the truth about Apion, but she constantly feared what the boy might do with this knowledge. Without the bitter Nasir to scold him and put him down, Taylan had grown strong in this last year, in physical stature and in arrogance. His stock had risen swiftly in the military ranks too. She remembered that day he had come to her after his first battle. In his excitement, he had neglected to wash his fingernails, still clogged with dried blood. His eyes had shone like beacons as he had recounted to her his victory. How he had slain so many Byzantine spearmen that he had lost count. He had not understood why she wept at this. So now he told her little, and they largely sat in silence for the duration of his visits. But she still heard the tales of his exploits from passing orderlies and the occasional soldier sent into these wards. It seemed that Taylan was now leading riders into battle at barely fifteen years of age, and this had even brought him to the sultan’s attention. It seemed that Alp Arslan was to teach him the art of war.

  What art is there in war? How many crimson scenes must a man paint to grow tired of battle? She scoffed, her lips curling and her nose wrinkling, thinking of all that was absent from her life. Those lost days when she and Father had lived a simple but happy life in the clement and pleasant valleys of Byzantine Chaldia. Neither Seljuk nor Byzantine, just a farming family. In those days, Apion and Nasir had lived almost as brothers, neither yet sullied by the conflict. But all had been swept up in the ensuing war, all now no more than dust. All except Apion, a legend known across the borderlands, or so she had heard. The Haga, one of the few whom the sultan’s armies feared. Some tales labelled him the bringer of death, the burner of souls; others spoke of him as a valiant soul, fighting on in hope of peace.

  What have you become, dear Apion? She wondered, thinking of how war and hatred had twisted Nasir into a rancorous and lonely individual. And what is to become of our boy?

  She sensed him coming at that moment, hearing the clatter of iron armour that rarely echoed in this sanctuary. He came to her, sat by her bedside as usual. The faint beginnings of a beard were now taking shape. His lips were fixed thin and straight. His eyes betrayed some fresh anger, gazing through her.

  ‘Son,’ she said, reaching out to touch his hand. This seemed to break the spell and he looked at her now as a son should. But only for a moment. Swiftly, his eyes filled with pity. Maria said nothing. She knew her hair greyed with every passing day, and her once rounded, healthy figure was wasting away. They had to talk today, she thought, placing a hand on the tender lump on her abdomen again. He had to know.

  ‘Come closer, son.’

  6. The Lion’s Pride

  Muhammud strode through a strange land, his bare feet crunching across a scree of broken bones. A cloudy veil seemed to mask the heavens, with just a watery and weak sun and a featureless sky offering a twilight to illuminate his path. He knew he was on a journey, but he had forgotten its purpose, it seemed. He had no burden, no companions . . . no reason to be here. The only thing that gave meaning to this trek was the one feature in the landscape up ahead; a jagged mountain, impossibly tall and sheer. Mount Otuken, he realised, recognising it as an exaggerated memory of the mount that marked the heart of the ancient Seljuk tribal homelands on the steppes. But without the long grass, the fresh breeze of the plain and the pleasant heat of the sun on his skin that his ancestors had so often told him of, this seemed hollow, meaningless. Yet still he found himself drawn to it like a moth to a flame, for this represented all that it was to be a noble and legendary Seljuk warrior. Here the khagan would adorn himself in yak tails and bright fabrics, then mark a brave man’s face with ox blood and bestow him with his battle name, war drums thundering in the background as all the tribesmen hailed their new heroes. Yet here there was nothing, no sound but the crunching of his feet on the bones, and the mountain seemed to draw no closer no matter how fast he trod.

  He stopped, panting. ‘I am Alp Arslan!’ he bellowed to the lonely mountain. His words died with the faintest of echoes. A silence followed and was then pierced by a cackle. He saw a solitary, white-bearded fig
ure on the mountain’s lower slopes. Uncle Tugrul. The Falcon. The sultan before him.

  ‘Ah, you are tired and weak, Muhammud!’ Tugrul boomed haughtily. ‘I always suspected you would not be strong enough.’

  Muhammud shuddered at this and at the wave of self-loathing the words brought. Then anger took over. ‘I have excelled where you failed, Uncle Tugrul. I have swollen our lands and multiplied our armies many times over!’

  ‘Ah, yes, and now the people call you the Mountain Lion, Alp Arslan. When they stand before you, at least . . . but what does Yusuf call you?’

  Muhammud could hear the mocking edge to his dead uncle’s voice. Yusuf was one of many who coveted his throne and spread poisoned words about his rule.

  ‘And tell me this, Mountain Lion; why is it that I stand up here on the mountain of legend and you dwell down there?’

  Muhammud, enraged, broke into a run. He sucked in breath after breath and soon his muscles burned and his skin was laced with sweat. At last he came to the foot of the mountain. But when he tried to run up its lower slopes, he slipped and slid back down into the bony scree.

  ‘Come now, nephew. Did I not teach you how to climb the mountain?’ Tugrul laughed.

  Muhammud frowned, then looked around the bones littering the flat ground. Ribs, skulls, femurs and spines, all jumbled together underfoot. Some skulls still wore Seljuk helms, some limbs were clad in rags of Byzantine armour, others in the robes and armour of the enemies he had long ago trampled into the dust; the Ghaznavids, the Daylamids, the Fatimids and the countless hill tribes and desert federations that once ruled the various lands of the now unified Seljuk Sultanate. He looked up at Tugrul, then began piling the bones up to make a ramp. On and on he fetched up the bones until, at last, the ramp was complete, leading right up to where Tugrul waited. He ascended, fixing his uncle with a stern gaze. Yet Tugrul was unperturbed. ‘And what else did I teach you, nephew?’ he crowed.

  Muhammud frowned, slowing, just a few steps from stepping onto the mountainside. Spots of rain pattered down around him. No, not rain: thick, dark rivulets of blood. Soon it was a rattling downpour, and a coppery stink permeated the air.

  ‘What else did I teach you?’ Tugrul repeated, his eyes widening, pointing over Muhammud’s shoulder.

  Muhammud froze, hearing a foreign clacking noise over the rattling blood-rain, right behind him. He swung round to see that some bones from the ramp had gathered to form a grinning skeleton, its arm raised and wielding a dagger.

  Muhammud gasped and fell, the skeleton falling on top of him and the dagger hacking down for his throat.

  His eyes shot open and the nightmarish image faded . . . only to be replaced by another, this time all too real.

  A foreign face hovered over his. A leathery-skinned, bearded man, clasping a blade. The stranger’s eyes widened and he plunged the blade down. Instinct took over, and Alp Arslan rolled clear of the blow, the blade piercing the pillow. Ostrich feathers filled the air and the assassin wailed in terror, realising he had missed his chance.

  ‘You dog!’ the sultan snarled. ‘You rabid son of a whore!’ he roared, leaping across the bed and onto the assassin. The pair fell to the floor and he grasped at the man’s wrist, twisting at the dagger-hand with all his strength. The brute who had come to slay him was strong, but his fear seemed to beat him. The dagger blade turned until the tip pointed for the assassin’s chest. Alp Arslan held his gaze, pushing the blade lower, lower, lower. Then the man gasped as the blade ground through his breastbone and sunk into his heart.

  Alp Arslan staggered back from the dark pool of blood that spread out under the assassin’s corpse, staining one of the pair of silk carpets on the floor of his fine bedchamber here in the palace at Isfahan. As his breathing began to calm, feathers settled all around him. His long, dark hair was lashed round his neck, stuck there like a noose, and the dangling tails of his moustache were plastered to his face with sweat. Just then, a cluster of guards barged in, spears levelled, switching them this way and that in search of the threat.

  ‘The danger is gone, you fools!’ he cried at them. They lowered their weapons and averted their eyes. It was then that another figure hobbled in, wincing, clutching at an egg-sized lump on his scarred, shaven scalp.

  ‘He took me by surprise, my lord,’ Kilic said, dropping to one knee and placing his scimitar against his breast. ‘I have failed you. Give the word and I shall fall upon my sword.’

  ‘I would, but your blood would sully my silk carpet, and one has already been ruined today. Now put your sword away, you fool,’ Alp Arslan fumed, waving his loyal bodyguard up.

  The rather sheepish Kilic rose to his feet, then looked at the body of the assassin.

  ‘Yusuf’s man?’

  ‘Doubtless,’ Alp Arslan replied, his nose wrinkling at the thought of the rival who coveted the Seljuk throne. ‘And I am equally certain we will have no trail that leads back to that cur.’

  ‘But this is not the first time he has tried to - ’

  ‘For now, we need his armies,’ Alp Arslan cut Kilic off. ‘I will deal with him when the time is right. Now take the body, throw it in the river. I have business to attend to.’

  He closed his eyes. In moments, the slithering sound of the bloodied corpse being dragged away faded, and he heard only the squawking of a parakeet from outside. His head thudded mercilessly and he clutched at his temples, turning his bloodshot, foul glare upon the jug of rich red Syrian wine by his bedside. It had been tart and invigorating when he started it the previous evening, washing away the headaches of many hours of planning. But it had become tasteless before long, and it numbed his mind as quickly as it had numbed his tongue. If those nightmares were the outcome of such indulgence, he seethed, then he would avoid it in future. He contemplated the notion for a moment before rubbishing it, knowing it was the only way he could rid his mind of troubles.

  He knotted his hair upon the nape of his neck and slipped on a green yalma, the garment absorbing the moisture from his skin, then he strode out of the arched end of the bedchamber and rested his palms on the balcony edge. Grape and ivy vines snaked across the enclosed, vividly tiled courtyard, baking in the March noon sun. He breathed deeply and enjoyed the warmth on his skin, then glanced down to the babbling marble fountain in the centre of the courtyard, nestling in the shade of a cluster of orange trees. The noisy parakeets chattered away in the branches, as if in debate with the incessant cicadas. Suddenly, they scattered when a raptor cried from above. He squinted up and held his arm out for his pet hunting falcon to land. The bird settled on his wrist, its claws sharp on the sultan’s skin. He smoothed the creature’s feathers with the back of one finger, then moved his hand to let it hop onto the perch on the balcony. ‘Ah, Tugrul,’ he mouthed into the ether with a desert-dry grin as he thought of his formidable uncle, ‘if only I could have tamed you so.’

  He heard the courtyard gate creak open, and saw that it was Malik, his son, and young Taylan. Both had travelled here in preparation for what was to come. The pair were of the same age, and firm friends. He watched as they chattered by the fountain, recalling how only a few years ago they had played together with carved wooden toys. Now they talked of war and commanded wings of riders. A wistful smile arose at this.

  He thought of those days, many years ago, after his Uncle Tugrul had taken this city from the Daylamids, when he would sit by that very fountain, looking up here and envying his Uncle’s lot. He looked to the shatranj board sitting by the balcony edge. It had remained untouched since that game he had begun with the Haga nearly two years ago in Caesarea. That day, he had sworn to the noble border warrior that the end would have to come for Byzantium. Hubris had fuelled those last words, and he regretted them – or rather, he regretted the truth of them. Like him, the Byzantine emperor was compelled to cement his place on the throne with military success. And so a great battle was coming. The two great empires would have to clash, and the wheels were already in motion.

  The skeletal glare
s and blood-rain of his nightmare refused to let him be.

  ***

  The mustering field outside Isfahan was awash with activity. Every spare patch of dusty land outside the beetling southern walls was packed with soldiers. Artisans and engineers stretched and tested ever-more powerful stone throwers and jabbered about the art of building war towers. Regiments of akhi spearmen clashed in practice bouts, their shields and wooden poles clack-clacking and their skin glistening with sweat under the searing mid-afternoon sun. Bowyers worked in the shade of their tent awnings, hewing, boiling and gluing strips of maple wood, then fitting them to horn grips to fashion new composite bows. Thick packs of ghazi riders swept around timber poles, loosing arrow after arrow at great speed, before sweeping for the beleaguered, arrow-riddled posts, drawing their swords and hacking at them as they sped past. At a cry from their lead rider, they would swarm like a pack of darting swallows, only to reform moments later in a pack or a line. The ghulam lancers practiced galloping in wedges, spears levelled, man and mount encased in iron. When their lances hit the hay-stuffed sacks they used as targets, little remained bar puffs of straw and scraps of hemp.

  Alp Arslan walked to the edge of this field. His aged and wise Vizier, Nizam, walked with him. As always, his great, scarred bodyguard, Kilic, followed just a pace or two behind. And today, the two young men from the courtyard walked with him as well. Malik was eager to point out to Taylan the infantry he had already led into battle against the last traces of Fatimid resistance in southern Syria. Taylan seemed oddly quiet – he had been since arriving. Maturity, maybe, or some dark cloud on his mind, perhaps. Very reminiscent of his father, Alp Arslan mused, thinking of Bey Nasir.

  ‘The secret to holding our hard-won empire is in the blend of those we choose to defend it, Sultan,’ Nizam said. ‘The old lands of Persia provide our heavy cavalry and our siege technology,’ he gestured over to the ghulam and the men working on the stone throwers. ‘The hill peoples of the north and east serve as hardy infantry,’ he nodded to the vast ranks of akhi spearmen. ‘And those of the true Seljuk blood, from the steppes of the north, furnish us with our swift and nimble ghazi cavalry. No one of the factions we have subsumed has too dominant a position in our ranks. That is a mistake that has been made in generations past, when armies have marched against their masters.’