Strategos: Island in the Storm

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘I could have the archers up there in moments, sir,’ Sha said, reading his thoughts, ‘just give the word. They could have the Seljuks in a deadly crossfire.’

  Apion shook his head, suppressing a growl of frustration. ‘No, the rain will spoil their efforts and the Seljuks will spot them early.’ He looked all around the gorge for inspiration. Nothing. The rumbling now seemed to shake the land. He closed his eyes, imagining the Byzantine spear wall and the space before it as a shatranj board. He imagined the Seljuks flooding into the gorge floor as opposing pieces. Their strength was in their number, he realised. His brow dipped as he saw what he had to do.

  He swung to the spear wall and saw the two men there who carried with them canisters and siphons. These siphonarioi were Greek fire specialists, adept at shooting the blazing liquid across enemy ranks. But today, something different was needed. With a flick of the hand, he beckoned them forwards, a hundred paces in front of the blockade. ‘Open your canisters,’ he said, ‘empty the contents across the gorge.’ He drew out another line, wall to wall.

  The two looked at one another quizzically, then shrugged, uncorking them with trembling fingers. They poured the dark, viscous substance from the mouth, walking carefully in a line as they did so, making a thick stripe that stretched across the soaked floor of the gorge from edge to edge.

  Apion looked up, hearing whooping Seljuk war cries, echoing through the ravine as if coming from all around. The thunder of hooves grew rapidly until the Seljuk front rounded the kink and burst into view. They were ghazis, he realised. ‘Back!’ he cried, waving the two siphonarioi with him back to the Byzantine spear wall.

  He shot glances over his shoulder as he ran. Round and round the ghazis came like a deluge of steel. Upon reaching the spear line, he took up a spear and infantry shield then barged into place beside Sha to face the onrushing cavalry. Each and every one of the ghazis raised and nocked their bows. With an ominous and lasting thrum, they loosed.

  ‘Shields!’ Apion cried. Like an iron insect, the crimson shields shot up. Thwack! A handful of skutatoi fell as blood puffed into the air, but the majority of the Seljuk missiles were wayward, their flight affected by the drizzle. Another volley. Thrum . . . thwack! Again, only a few Byzantines fell and still the Seljuks raced forward, now only fifty or so paces from the spear line.

  ‘Stand firm!’ Apion called out, seeing two weak spots in his line where men had fallen.

  A komes by his side gasped; ‘But sir, our spear wall is thin and they number in their thousands . . . ’ the man’s words trailed off as the ghazis stowed their bows and drew their lances and scimitars – assured of an easy kill.

  ‘Allahu Akbar!’ the Seljuk riders roared in a booming chorus, breaking into a full charge.

  Apion’s gaze fixed on the blurred dark stripe on the gorge floor. The hooves of the first rider crossed it, then hundreds more. Soon, nearly half of the ghazi mass had crossed it and were but thirty paces from smashing into the Byzantine line.

  Apion shot a hand in the air. ‘Archers . . . ’

  From the rear of the spear wall, the hundred archers rose, bows nocked and stretched, each of them wrapped in strips of blazing cloth – the flames fighting valiantly against the rain. ‘Loose!’ Thrum. Apion watched as the volley arced up and over the foremost Seljuks.

  A heartbeat later, the thin cloud of blazing missiles dropped, punching into the stripe of viscous fluid underneath the middle of the Seljuk pack. As if a storm had been conjured, the gorge shook with a thunder that drowned out the ghazi battle cries as a broad, billowing curtain of orange fire – a lightning to the thunder – spewed upwards from the gorge floor. The wall of flame dissected the ghazi mass. It sent those to the rear flailing back, reining in their mounts. Those at the front found their charge waylaid by the terrible screams of their comrades behind them. They slowed, glancing back to see the few hundred men caught right in the roaring curtain of fire falling, man and horse ablaze. The charge, a moment ago a maw of levelled lances and scimitars, fell to pieces. Many of them swung their mounts round, seeing that they were trapped in this gorge, between the wall of flames and the nest of Byzantine spears.

  The image of the dark door throbbed in Apion’s mind, flames roaring beyond it. Before him, the burning gorge was a vile reflection of that haunting image. A wall of thick, acrid, black smoke wafted across him. The siphonarioi cheered out in delight. Apion smelt the overly-familiar stench of charred flesh, gazed through the carnage and mouthed into the ether; forgive me. To whom the plea was made, he did not know.

  The rallying cry of the Seljuk leader saw those trapped on the near side of the fiery wall form into a cluster again, once more ready to attempt a charge on the spear wall. At least now it would be an even fight, Apion thought. They rumbled forward, a madness in their eyes, faces twisted with rage and fear.

  ‘Hold!’ Apion cried, seeing the nearest lance tip trained on him. Sha and the komes either side of him pushed a little closer. He felt their heartbeats thud with his own.

  ‘Stay together!’ He heard big Blastares roar near the other end of the line.

  With a rasp of lance and sword, a clatter of shields and the screaming of man and beast, the ghazis surged into the Byzantine spear line. Apion was driven back several feet as two lances punctured his shield. Blood showered his face as he jabbed out at his attackers with a visceral rhythm. Sparks flew as blades clashed and danced off of armour. All around him, clouds of crimson puffed in the air as steel flashed relentlessly. His spear arm juddered numbly as he scored the gut of one of these hardy steppe riders, the man’s yellow-toothed snarl widening into a cry of agony as he toppled from his saddle, trying in vain to close his breached ribcage. Apion saw his Chaldians fall around him, chests run through by Seljuk scimitars or heads crushed under the weight of enemy war hammers. The ghazis were fighting for their lives. There was no route of escape. And nor could he offer them one, he realised. If they broke to the north, then they would fall upon Sebastae. And the south was still a wall of impassable flame. Every Seljuk in this pass had to die, he affirmed numbly, jabbing and swiping with his spear at those who came at him. The Byzantine line bulged at the centre, pushed back by the weight of the mounted pack. Some ghazi riders took to leaping over the spear line, only for their mounts to be pierced in the gut. Apion felt one such animal’s entrails spatter down on his shoulder as he hefted his quivering spear arm, looking for his next foe. But there was none. Just a sea of his comrades faces, tear-streaked, blood stained and trembling. The gorge was painted crimson and carpeted with ghazi corpses. With absurd timing, the drizzle at last faded and the sun came out, bathing them all in its warmth.

  ‘It’s over, sir,’ Blastares panted, beside him.

  He glanced over the gawping, lifeless faces of the dead. He saw them at last as men, and did not try to fight the shame that overcame him. Then, like a brand to his heart, he wondered; what if Taylan had been within this pack? Lost beyond the dark door, might he have slain his own son? No, the chances that Taylan was even part of this raid were slim, surely.

  He tried as best as he could to stow the dark thought away, unclipping his mail veil and wiping the blood and grime from his face.

  ‘Sir, what do we do with this one?’ a voice called out.

  A Seljuk rider had been found amongst the bodies, cowering, hoping not to be discovered. The skutatoi who had found him held his spathion at the man’s neck.

  Apion dismounted and strode to the man. The man looked up, jutting his jaw in defiance but his eyes aflame with fear. Crows had begun to gather on the sides of the gorge, delighted at this feast of war. They cawed as Apion beheld the man.

  ‘At ease,’ he said in the Seljuk tongue. ‘You are one man. You will not be harmed. If your comrades had thrown down their lances and bows, they might have been spared too.’

  The Seljuk’s defiance faded, then he frowned, confused.

  Apion hesitated with the next words that came to his lips, but he had to ask; ‘Was there a bo
y rider amongst your ranks. Taylan, son of Nasir?’

  None of the other soldiers paid any attention to his words, but Sha, Blastares and Procopius did, glancing over to the conversation. Only his trusted three knew what he had found in his journey deep into Seljuk lands.

  ‘Taylan bin Nasir?’ The man’s brow knitted. ‘He would not ride with a mere vanguard!’

  Apion’s thoughts spun as the Seljuk was roped at the wrists. ‘A vanguard?’ he said, glancing round the many fallen riders they had fought.

  Now the Seljuk’s eyes lit up and laughter toppled from his lips. ‘Aye, you fought well today. But you have repelled merely a fraction of the army I ride with.’

  Apion’s eyes locked onto the Seljuk’s. ‘Taylan is with them?’ His gaze darted up and around the horizon. The southern skyline was still masked by the wall of flames.

  The Seljuk snorted. ‘Bey Taylan leads them!’

  ‘Bey Taylan?’

  ‘Aye. He comes to ruin these Byzantine lands and claim the head of some foul border lord . . . the Haga.’

  Apion closed his eyes, his heart sinking. When one skutatos lifted his spathion above the prisoner and looked to Apion for permission, Apion shook his head and turned away. The curtain of flames was dying now and he could see that the ghazi riders who had been shut off behind the wall of flame had fled southeast – going by their tracks.

  When he looked to the horizon, he felt the breath catch in his lungs. Sha, Blastares and Procopius picked their way through the carnage to stand beside him, gawping southwards too. The clearing noon sky ended there, instead thick with a swirling black mass. A storm cloud? He wondered. But when dark shapes swooped and darted from it, he realised it was no cloud. Carrion birds. Innumerable flocks of them gliding through the southern sky, some swooping down onto the unseen ground beyond a ridge. They looked to each other, all thinking the same thing.

  Sha said it first; ‘Is that not where we were to rendezvous with Manuel Komnenos’ army?’

  ***

  Bey Taylan sheathed his scimitar as he led his horde from the plain behind the jagged ridge and out of the shade cast by the storm cloud of crows. As they galloped south, he wiped the coppery blood from his lips, then looked to the cluster of White Falcons riding alongside him. These few had served him well today, and had set a fine example to the many thousands riding behind him.

  ‘Bey Taylan,’ one of his Falcons said, ‘the vanguard have not reported back yet.’

  Taylan’s eyes narrowed, then he shook his head. ‘I told them to range as far and wide as they felt necessary. There is little danger to us in these lands now.’

  He heard men behind chanting in his praise, and wondered what his battle name might be. Then he thought of the scroll in his purse – the paper given to him by that mysterious, dark-cloaked Byzantine rider just a week ago. It had told him all he needed to know. Where the Byzantine army would be and when. It irked him that the victory wasn’t his and his alone, and so he took out the scroll, ripped it into pieces and tossed it to the wind. Still, he thought, amongst the many he had slain today, he had not found the one he sought. The scroll had said nothing of the Haga’s whereabouts. The cur lived on.

  Anger and confusion tore at him until he hefted his lance into the air and bellowed; ‘Onwards, until Byzantium is in flames!’

  Behind him, his ten thousand roared in unison.

  ***

  Apion rode south at haste with his trusted three and a handful of his Chaldian kataphractoi. In the open ground, the thick stench of death from the gorge fell away, only the gore plastered to their armour reminding them of it. But when they came to the southern ridge, the reek returned stronger than ever before. The metallic stink curled round the patchy grass here, and the foul odour of spilled guts came and went in thick waves. They could see nothing but the ridge top, and heard nothing but the now deafening cawing of the crows and vultures circling the plain beyond. One of these creatures swooped overhead, an eyeball dangling from its beak by a tendon.

  In silence, they dismounted near the ridge, then crept up it until the southern plain came into view. The foremost rider took one look then clasped a hand to his mouth, failing to catch a spurt of vomit. Laments broke out from the others. Apion stared at the scene before him. The plain might this morning have been a dust bowl or a pleasant meadow, but now it was carpeted with blood and broken bodies and bathed in a mist of buzzing flies. Manuel Komnenos’ army had been shattered, utterly shattered.

  Byzantine spearmen in their thousands lay peppered with arrows. One of these skutatoi was pinned by a Seljuk lance so his corpse knelt, head lolling back over his shoulders, arms dangling. His mouth was agape and his eyes gone as the crows tore at the flesh of his empty sockets. This was the grim fate of the three themata that the emperor had invested so heavily in, every one of those fresh recruits in newly crafted armour was now but a corpse. Then there were shattered piles of man and horse. Flesh and bone. This is where the tagma riders had made their last stand, it seemed. Now they lay still, men with their necks twisted at absurd angles, many with dark, blood-encrusted puncture wounds on their chests where Seljuk lances had pierced their iron klibania and ruined their bodies. The toxotai had clustered together at the last with no other troops to protect them, he realised, seeing the shattered heaps of archers near the centre of the plain. Here the butchery was extreme. The archers, devoid of armour bar the small shields some wore strapped to their arms, lay in pieces. Limbs lay scattered, far from their bodies. Heads were cleaved open like ripe fruit and some had been sliced clear of the neck. Manuel’s fine manoeuvres on the training field had brought him little providence. The Seljuk host he faced had given no quarter.

  Taylan’s face crept into his thoughts again. Could his son really have carried out this atrocity? He thought of the crimson gorge, barely half a mile distant. Perhaps it runs in the blood? A cruel voice hissed in his mind.

  A groan from the battlefield startled him and the others. A nearby toxotes, lying face-down, shuffled to rise up on his elbows. His back was bristling with arrows. He held a Chi-Rho amulet in his trembling grasp, and lifted it to kiss the piece. Apion picked his way through the mire to crouch before the man.

  ‘What happened here, soldier?’

  ‘We came here to make camp, but . . . but they were waiting for us . . . in the hills. They knew we were coming. They knew exactly where we planned to stop and make camp.’

  Apion’s lips trembled in anger. In his mind’s eye he saw the shrivelled, gull-face of Psellos. You foul-hearted bastard.

  ‘They swept down from the hills and came at us like spirits,’ the man stopped and coughed up a lungful of black blood, his face greying. ‘They clutched arrows in their fists like the spines of a porcupine . . . loosed them like demons, one every few heartbeats. They swept past the . . . infantry ranks. Drew the kataphractoi from us then annihilated them on the hills. I . . . I managed to loose only half my quiver before we were overrun.’

  ‘All of you fell?’ Apion whispered. ‘What of Manuel Komnenos?’

  ‘They took the kouropalates . . . drove him away at the end of a whip like an ox.’

  A stiff breeze searched under Apion’s armour as he ran his gaze around the edge of the field. What had become of Romanus’ trusted man?

  ‘Help me stand, sir. My legs are numb,’ the toxotes whimpered. ‘I want to find my brother . . . he’s a toxotes too. I heard him calling out during the battle. Sounded like he was in trouble.’ The man’s voice faded to a wet hiss, and the only other sound was the wind, the buzzing of the flies and the cawing of the birds. Apion saw the arrows had pierced the soldier’s spine.

  ‘You sleep, soldier. I will find your brother and bring him to you.’

  ‘Sleep, sir? Yes . . . that would be a fine thing,’ the toxotes smiled weakly.

  Apion drew his dagger and reached down to nick the man’s femoral artery. The archer felt nothing, his eyelids closing as his lifeblood washed away in seconds. Better this than the hour or more it
would take him to bleed to death. Apion lay the man down, clasping the archer’s fingers over his Chi-Rho.

  He stood, unable to escape the awful scene no matter where he looked. His crimson cloak licked up gently as the breeze came again. The buzzing of the flies seemed to grow louder and louder, the cawing more shrill. ‘Let us make haste from this place,’ he said hoarsely. ‘A Seljuk horde roams nearby. We cannot stay in the field, we cannot face an enemy that has done this. We must fall back behind Sebastae’s walls.’

  ***

  Diabatenus’ head spun as he stirred from the blackness of sleep to the sound of drumming rain and the incessant splash of a leak. He came to with a groan, prised open his good eye and felt a headache come on as thunder rolled across the heavens outside. A flash of lightning quickly followed, briefly illuminating his shabby room. It was early morning, he guessed. He poked his tongue through his gummed-together lips and sat up, suppressing a groan as he saw the ruddy features of the whore he had bought last night, snoring by his side. Tits that taste like honey but a face like a veteran’s shield, he smirked.

  He sat up at the edge of the bed. The grim reality of his room in the slums south of the Forum of the Ox greeted him: desiccated timber floors and walls, the shutter hanging on one hinge, revealing Constantinople’s iron-grey morning outside, the leaky roof, few possessions bar a trunk of ragged clothes and his old riding helm – plumed with black and red feathers – and a collection of empty wine amphorae. Indeed, he had added two more to the collection last night – or was it three? A foul waft from the nearby fish market pervaded the room and dismissed his curiosity.

  He scratched at his scalp and stretched, unsure quite why he had awoken so early on such a foul day. He picked up his helm and, as usual, he held it so he could see only the good half of his face in its reflection. His mother’s words came to him then;