Strategos: Island in the Storm

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘A brave man it is who steps forward in treacherous times,’ Diabatenus nodded firmly. ‘Now, you have surplus food, I understand. Grain, salted meats, fish, cheeses, honey, nuts?’

  Genesios hesitated before replying. ‘We have stockpiled for the winter, yes, but we are likely to need it in those cold, harsh months.’

  ‘I find coin often supplants the need for other things,’ Diabatenus grinned, lifting the heavy sack of coins from the back of his mount. ‘The emperor and his campaign army lie camped outside the walls of your old city, some ten miles south of here.’

  ‘The campaign army is in these lands? I had heard only rumour of this,’ Genesios’ eyes widened. ‘Then he means to buy our surplus?’ he looked to Nicholas and thought of the boy. He and many others would go hungry this winter without the surplus in the storehouses. But with coin they could replenish the stores over the next few months by visiting the northern market towns. He looked up to the handsome rider. ‘When I left Theodosiopolis I brought with me God and all that I love about God’s Empire. I will do anything for the emperor, God’s chosen one, anything for Byzantium.’ He smiled at the rider and beckoned him over to the silos.

  ‘In here you will find maybe a hundred wagon-loads of food and fodder,’ He opened the storehouse doors to reveal tightly bound bales of hay, hanging meats, various amphorae and brimming barrels of grain. ‘You should bring your wagons round from the west, as the ground is rough and . . . ’ his words trailed off as the acrid tang of burning resin curled into his nostrils. He turned around, frowning. The handsome rider was grinning, the kursoris beside him had lit a torch.

  ‘As I said, coin can bring about almost any possibility,’ Diabatenus’ grin grew. He turned to the kursoris, clapped a hand on the sack of coins then nodded towards the silo. ‘Put it to the torch. Earn your share.’

  The kursoris looked uncertain, glancing back over his shoulder from whence they had come, then to the faces of Genesios and little Nicholas, then to the sack of coins. His expression hardened.

  ‘No!’ Genesios roared as the man tossed the torch onto the hay bales inside the silo. Several more riders did likewise to the other buildings nearby. ‘What have you done?’ he crumpled to his knees as angry flames and thick black smoke billowed from the silos and storehouses. ‘You have killed us all. Now we will not last even until the winter, let alone through it.’

  Diabatenus grinned down at him and shrugged. ‘Then let me offer you some mercy.’ He nimbly swept out his spathion, hung low in his saddle and swirled the blade round in one stroke, hacking into the side of Genesios’ neck. The farmer shuddered where he knelt, the blade cutting deep, a spray of red showering his son before dark blood came in sheets.

  Genesios’ reached out to his son, longing to protect the lad, but the blackness of death swept him away.

  ***

  Diabatenus took a rag from his belt to clean the blood of his first ever kill from his blade. Damn, but that felt good, he realised. He had missed the raw, visceral power of the Hippodrome, but this was a fine substitute. He kicked his mount into a walk around the rising inferno. This will do it, he enthused. I will forge a chariot of solid gold once Psellos pays me for this.

  At that moment he felt utterly invincible. His charm, his looks, his wits and his abilities. Even his skin felt like cold, hard steel. So it was a surprise when he felt a dull blow in his flank. He turned round, frowning, expecting that one of his fellow riders had clumsily barged into him. Instead, he looked down to see the drawn, haunted eyes of the farmer’s little boy, gazing up at him. The lad’s face was smoke-stained and tear-streaked. He held the shaft of a hoe in both hands. Diabatenus’ gaze ran up the hoe shaft to where the blunt blade rested under the hem of his iron klibania. Blood washed from his flank in waves. He felt the urge to correct the lad, tell him he had been mistaken. You can’t hurt me, he thought, I am Diabatenus, Champion of the Races, Breaker of Hearts, Best of the Vigla . . . his thoughts fell away as he slid from the saddle, thudded to the ground then gazed up at the sky, his body growing terribly cold.

  The last thing he saw was the farmer’s boy stand over him with a heavy rock in his hands. A heartbeat later, the rock crashed down, and Diabatenus’ beauty was crushed into the dirt like an egg.

  ***

  Apion stood on the battlements of Theodosiopolis, clasping his helm underarm as he gazed into the clear, unspoilt morning sky. But his thoughts were dark and murky. Two days had passed since Diabatenus and his riders had been sent out. And it seemed that they had simply vanished into the ether. Romanus had insisted they keep word of this from the rest of the army. We bury this news and we split the army. It is our only option now. Tarchianotes’ regiments will forge southeast towards Chliat, and I will lead the rest at a slower pace towards Manzikert.

  He looked down to the vast camp outside of the city. Half of the site now lay empty. To the south, the rumbling was just beginning to fade as eighteen thousand men slipped over the horizon, despatched on the most direct route to Chliat to seize the fields, forage and fodder there. Not just any men either – the cream of the campaign army. The Scholae Tagma, the Hikanatoi Tagma, the Stratelatai Tagma and the Vigla Tagma – more than eight thousand cavalry, many of them the precious heavy kataphractoi. The hammer of the campaign. Supplementing them were the four hundred strong pack of Pecheneg riders. The infantry of the Optimates Tagma, the Anatolikon Thema and the Charsianon Thema, plus the bulk of the foot archers from the other themata had been despatched behind them at a quick march. Doux Tarchianotes had been entrusted with this fearsome and fast-moving corps.

  ‘Strategos,’ Sha called from the end of the battlements. ‘We are to leave within the hour.’

  Apion turned and nodded to the Malian. So it was to be that Romanus and the remaining half of the army – twenty two thousand strong – were to march directly for Manzikert. The makeup of this half was troubling.

  There was a solid core. The infantry of the Chaldian Thema, the Cappadocian Thema and the Colonean Thema along with Prince Vardan and his two thousand Armenian spearmen. These men would happily bleed for the empire, without question. And the siege engines loaded onto the wagons would be well utilised on Manzikert’s walls by Procopius and the artillerymen.

  The makeup of the cavalry presented more issues. He saw Igor readying his Rus riders, polishing their white armour and honing their axes. These thousand riders were fierce and loyal, but as cavalry, they were not the most nimble. There was Bryennios’ western army – five thousand strong. One in ten of these men were heavily armoured kataphractoi. The rest were the more lightly-equipped kursores. These western riders were brave and skilled, but they had yet to face a Seljuk foe in full battle. This fact tossed up memories of Manuel Komnenos’ over-confidence the previous year. Then there were the two thousand Oghuz archer cavalry and the five hundred Norman lancers; men with no love of Byzantium other than for the gold coin minted in her treasuries. Lastly, there was Scleros and the seven thousand of the magnate armies. They busied themselves strapping their overly ornate weapons to their belts and backs, supping neat wine and boasting with each other as to how they would smash the skulls of the Seljuk garrisons. This rabble were yet to be tested in a battle of any kind. They had been involved in skirmishes with brigands along the way, but had never been seriously challenged. Would they stand firm and charge hard, should the need come? His gaze snagged on the one who stood solemnly amongst them. Andronikos Doukas. The young man was something of an enigma. Heedless of his shackles, he polished his armour and checked his horse’s snaffle bit and scale apron. Probably the best soldier amongst them. Yet the son of John Doukas would ride into this battle with not so much as a dagger to wield. Your father has a lot to answer for, Apion mused, batting away the sliver of sympathy he felt.

  Just then, the buccinas blared and the standards were raised above the myriad banda of infantry – assembled now in an offensive formation to present a broad front nearly a mile across. The priests raised the campaign cross, chanti
ng as they walked before the formed ranks. He flitted down the stone steps and gladly departed the ghost city of Theodosiopolis, taking the reins of his Thessalian from Sha then riding to the front of the column where the emperor sat astride his dark stallion.

  ‘Ha-ga!’ the men of Chaldia chanted as he passed them, men from other themata joining in.

  Romanus beheld him as he approached. Apion nodded, sliding his helm on his head. Romanus nodded in return, then raised his bejewelled spathion overhead. The chanting fell away. ‘Forward – to our destiny!’ the emperor cried.

  They headed east, turned south to cross the Araxes River then journeyed through the broad Murat Su valley. It was early afternoon six days later – six days with scant half-rations but otherwise without incident – when they came to the top of a green hill. On the brow, the emperor halted the column. He raised a hand and pointed south, down the slope that lay before them.

  ‘Look. At last we are on the cusp of all we have strived to achieve,’ he said to his retinue, his voice but a whisper in the dry, hot air.

  Apion gazed south, fixated on the black-walled fortress town, less than half a mile away, standing proudly where the hills faded into a dry, dusty flatland.

  Manzikert!

  A pack of swallows swooped and darted above the compact, tall and well-architected structure. The tiny silver dots of Manzikert’s Seljuk garrison strolled back and forth on the battlements. The fortress was small – not much bigger than the citadel of Trebizond, but it was well situated on top of a small hill by a fresh brook.

  He gazed on past the fortress. The dry plains of Manzikert stretched out for many miles to the south. They ended somewhere in the heat haze, and from that same haze sprouted an imperious mountain range. The tallest of these, Mount Tzipan, was snow-capped and rugged, and just behind its slopes, Apion noticed a shimmering sliver of blue. Lake Van. His mind turned over all he had been told of this land and the many maps he had scoured on this march. Somewhere, behind the mountains on that lake’s northern shores lurked Chliat and its fertile farmlands. Hopefully those lands would soon be under the control of Tarchianotes and his men and grain and fodder would be forthcoming. But it was the nearer fortress that drew his gaze once more. He beheld Manzikert and felt a chill of the unknown on his skin.

  Destiny, he mouthed.

  As he knew they would, the crone’s words came to him.

  I see a battlefield by an azure lake flanked by two mighty pillars.

  He looked to Romanus, his eyes falling to the golden heart pendant on his breast.

  At dusk you and the Golden Heart will stand together in the final battle, like an island in the storm. Walking that battlefield is Alp Arslan. The Mountain Lion is dressed in a shroud.

  He scoured the horizon and frowned. The land was empty and at peace. Bar a modest Seljuk garrison on Manzikert’s walls, oblivious to their observers, neither the sultan nor his forces were anywhere to be seen. He had seen to it that Komes Peleus and Komes Stypiotes – two of his most loyal men from the Chaldian ranks – had ridden with Tarchianotes’ half of the army, and had implored them to make sure that any signs of danger were communicated to the emperor at haste. There was nothing in the scene before him to rouse fear. But he recalled something he had forgotten from his childhood, before he had first walked the dark road to war. On a day as fine as this one, he had watched a family of robins working tirelessly in the clement air to construct a nest of twigs and feathers atop an old poplar tree near his parents’ farmhouse. The mother robin had flitted to and fro, bringing twigs to the branch, while the hatchlings clung to the branches near the trunk and cheeped as they watched on. The sight had captivated him and he had remained fixated until nearly dusk. The nest complete, the birds had settled in their new home. Apion had turned to go back to his own home, when he felt a stiff breeze pick up. Moments later, it was a gale and then a storm. Grey clouds scudded across and then filled the sky, bringing night in moments. A stinging, chill rain battered down. The gale and the deluge served to bend the poplar in its wrath, casting the new nest from the branches. The hatchlings were dashed on the ground or swiftly pounced upon by foxes. In the end, only the elegiac song of the mother robin remained, piercing through the roar of the storm.

  He cast another glance across the idyllic, summer-bathed countryside and shivered as if it was the dead of winter.

  ***

  Tarchianotes scoured the green valleys ahead. It had been a hard march, but his many wings of kataphractoi and regiments of skutatoi and foot archers had nearly reached the shores of the great lake – and in good time. The towering mountains either side loomed over them like giants, casting them in shade as if separating them from the fine day above. He watched every bend ahead, wondering when he would see the blue waters.

  ‘Chliat is but a mile away, sir,’ Komes Peleus, riding by his side, shouted over the thunder of so many hooves. ‘Does it not worry you that we have yet to sight a single Seljuk rider?’

  Tarchianotes nodded by way of reply, casting the small komes a dismissive look. They had found some of the wheat fields burnt to ash and some still ripe with crop. But he wasn’t looking merely for small parties of terrified Seljuks. When they reached the end of the valley, a murmur of excitement and anxiety broke out as a pleasant waterside breeze wafted over them and the land ahead revealed the azure waters of Lake Van, bathed in sunshine. And there, nestled just a few miles away along the lake’s shores, stood the dark-brick fortress of Chliat. A small but sturdy fortress that resembled something of a boil on the pleasant bay. Tarchianotes raised a hand for a full halt, just at the edge of the valley’s shade. The thunder of hooves and boots ceased at once.

  Peleus gawped at the fortress. ‘We have come too far. The emperor was clear that we were not to approach the citadel.’

  ‘We have come just as far as I wished,’ Tarchianotes sighed, his gaze fixed on the fort. Just a few hundred helms and spears glinted atop Chliat’s walls.

  Peleus frowned, seeing Tarchianotes’ gaze remain on the fortress. ‘Sir, the emperor was adamant we should not attempt to take Chliat until the two halves of the army are united again. They have all the artillery and the bulk of the infantry. We should turn back, harvest what crops are still left. Grain and fodder are our priorities.’

  Tarchianotes ignored the little komes, his eyes now drifting beyond Chliat and eastwards along Lake Van’s shores. There, the land seemed to be writhing, shapes spilling from a col between two mountains onto the broad shores to ride along the waterline, moving towards Chliat.

  Peleus saw it too, his eyes bulging. ‘Sir . . . is that . . . ?’

  Tarchianotes’ eyes narrowed. Riders, hundreds of them. He made out their conical helms, mail shirts, spears and vividly painted shields.

  ‘A raiding party? Perhaps it’s the field burners returning to Chliat?’ Peleus stammered. A hundred other voices of the riders just behind them made similar suggestions.

  ‘These are no mere raiders,’ Tarchianotes replied. ‘Look,’ he pointed a finger at the tall golden banner bearing the double bow emblem that bobbed out from the col, carried by many hundreds more riders. ‘The sultan has come to protect his holdings.’

  Hundreds became thousands and thousands more followed. Peleus’ eyes danced over the mass of Seljuk riders. ‘There must be twenty or thirty thousand of them – at least as many of them as there are us, sir. They are coming this way. Shall I give the order to take up battle lines?’

  Tarchianotes gazed at the thick swell of enemy horsemen, now almost dominating Lake Van’s shores. He shook his head. ‘No. The risk is too great. We don’t know what other forces they have in the vicinity.’

  ‘Then what-’ the komes started.

  ‘We are as yet unseen. So we withdraw,’ Tarchianotes replied flatly. ‘Turn the column around and back into the valleys before the Seljuk riders sight us.’

  Peleus stared at him, lips quivering as if to contest the order.

  ‘Did the emperor not say we were to avoid any
major engagement?’ he said, parroting Peleus’ earlier words.

  ‘Aye, he did,’ Peleus nodded as the signophoroi silently waved their banners, herding the column into a gradual turn back into the shaded green valley.

  Peleus rode alongside him as the mass of Byzantine riders and foot soldiers hastened back the way they had come. When they came to a forked valley, the komes seemed to slow, looking up the northerly fork which led to the flatland and Manzikert.

  ‘Fall into line, Komes!’ Tarchianotes barked at him, guiding the column to the westerly fork.

  Peleus’ brow knitted. ‘But sir, the north track is the swiftest one that takes us back to the emperor?’

  ‘And the west track takes us away from the enemy. Many, many miles away and back into safe imperial territory. It takes us to Melitene,’ Tarchianotes snapped.

  ‘Melitene? But . . . does the emperor know of this plan?’ Peleus frowned, thinking of that faraway Byzantine city, his gaze switching from west to north.

  ‘No, Komes. I am using my experience as a doux. A battlefield commander should know when it is right to stay and fight and when it is right to withdraw.’ Then he stroked his neat beard.

  ‘But the emperor must be told of our retreat, and of the threat that hovers nearby,’ Peleus insisted.

  ‘You are a swift rider?’ Tarchianotes asked.

  ‘Swift enough,’ he beckoned Komes Stypiotes, another Chaldian, to him. ‘I will take my fellow Komes too, if you will permit it?’

  ‘Very well. Ride, and ride at haste. Tell our emperor of this unexpected Seljuk presence and urge him to make haste back to the west likewise.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ the komes nodded hurriedly, before heading north towards Manzikert with his comrade.

  Tarchianotes watched the pair go, then, when they had slipped out of sight, he turned to four riders who served as his personal bodyguards. He nodded to them. In silence, the four peeled away from the column and headed north too.