Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

by Gordon Doherty

  Gregoras could barely manage a frown, his face greying. ‘What?’

  ‘The Seljuks have known our route all along this campaign. I know you had something to do with it. I found your coin near the body of the murdered sentry at Melitene.’ He plucked out the pure-gold nomisma and held it before Gregoras.

  The dying man laughed a weak laugh. ‘Ah, Psellos has given out many of those in the last year. We have all taken coin at times, Strategos. I took mine for delaying the works at the armamenta. Yes, I took Psellos’ bribe, but only because I feared what might befall me had I refused. But I have had nothing to do with the ill-fortune on this campaign. Aye, there is a dark bastard at work, but it is not me.’

  Apion saw nothing but truth in the man’s eyes.

  Then Gregoras’ pupils dilated and his head slumped forward.

  Apion frowned, backing away.

  Then the clatter of ladders rang out all along the walls.

  Apion spun to the sound. The matter of the traitor would have to wait.

  He smacked his gelding on the rump to send it galloping back from the fray, then he turned to the walls, looking for a ladder to climb. Arrows smacked down all around him and he could only snatch glances over his shield rim as he ran to the nearest ladder. But it was already thick with skutatoi, unable to force their way onto the battlements. The sight was the same all along the walls. Despite the sheer weight of Byzantine numbers, the akhi on the battlements were holding steady. Apion knew that just a few hundred men could fend off many thousands if marshalled well, and these akhi were ruthless. And they weren’t just akhi, he realised, squinting. Some of the men on the battlements held two-pronged spears. Daylamid spearmen, he realised. Rugged and burly mountain warriors and tenacious whoresons who would fight to the death. This was unexpected. Doubt swirled in his thoughts as he wondered what other surprises awaited them.

  He saw skutatoi topple back from the ladders, their faces cleaved by spear thrusts. One fell away when the top of his head was sliced off like a piece of fruit, brains and blood showering his comrades below. Then one ladder was pushed back from the walls, toppling to the ground, snapping the limbs of the screaming men who clung to it and scattering those in its path, making them easy targets for the Seljuk archers.

  Next, a pair of Seljuks appeared at the battlements, carrying a wide urn of something. They moved to the top of one packed ladder and tilted the urn, unloading a heap of glowing sand on the climbers. A terrible screaming rang out as the scorching sand penetrated every gap in the skutatoi armour, fusing with their skin. One skutatos fell from the top of the ladder, clawing at his face. He roared, thrashing to pull off his helmet and klibanion, heedless of his horribly shattered leg. His skin was ruby red and blistered and one eye had burst in the intense heat. The stench of his melting flesh pierced the air before the stricken man was peppered with Seljuk arrows.

  The sight was the same all along the walls. There was no bridgehead, no foothold to allow them to press onto the battlements. Apion looked to the siege tower; it was yet to spill soldiers onto the battlements. ‘The tower is the key – fill the tower!’ he cried.

  ‘It is full already!’ one skutatos roared, staggering, clutching at an arrow shaft in his thigh. ‘They won’t lower the drawbridge.’

  Apion frowned, then pushed through to the rear of the tower, arrows thudding into his shield as he did so. Indeed both floors of the tower were packed with skutatoi. But many were the young, feeble boys who had been rounded up to bolster the numbers of the Bucellarion Thema. He pushed through and flitted up the stairs to the second floor. The air was stifling in the cramped space.

  The pair who held the drawbridge rope wore the expressions of terrified lambs.

  ‘What are you waiting for – another ballista strike to cripple your tower? Our men are falling like harvest wheat out there!’ Apion roared. ‘Lower the drawbridge!’

  The first man gulped and nodded. The second – a man of his own age with a thick dark beard – was white with fear, his hands trembling.

  ‘I . . . I can’t,’ the man stammered.

  Apion pushed him away, grappling the rope in his place. Then he fixed the first man with a glare. ‘Are you ready?’

  The man gulped and nodded again.

  Apion cast a glance around the fearful faces surrounding him. ‘How many years have you spent, fearful of Seljuk raids? How many of you have lost those you love to this war?’ He stabbed a finger at the drawbridge. ‘Out there you can change this; stand together and you can bring it to an end. Know this and you will know victory.’

  They nodded, some shouting in agreement.

  ‘Now, are you ready?’ Apion roared.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ some called. ‘Yes, Haga,’ cried others.

  Now he ripped his scimitar from his scabbard and held it aloft. This time he cried; ‘I said . . . are you ready?’

  ‘Yes, Haga!’ came the reply. Even the uncertain bearded man he had pushed away had taken up his spear and held it in shaking hands, his jaw clenched.

  ‘Onwards!’ Apion cried out, then scythed the scimitar down on the ropes. The drawbridge toppled onto the battlements and the white heat of the day flooded the insides of the tower. Snarling daylami and the din of battle awaited them.

  Apion leapt through the dark door and into the fray.

  ***

  The fighting on the battlements was ferocious. The stonework was slick with blood and littered with skutatoi corpses. Still the Seljuk akhi and daylami were holding good around the gatehouse, but Apion and his men had established a foothold on the walls and now more and more reinforcements were piling up there through the siege tower. On the ground outside, the Byzantine battering ram had reached the gates and now smashed at the timbers like a giant demanding entry.

  Apion pulled his blade across the swipe of an akhi scimitar, then kicked out at the man’s gut, sending him over the edge of the battlements and plummeting down into the city streets.

  Then a daylami spear came forking down at him like lightning and he toppled backwards to dodge the blow. He sprung to his feet and swiped at his challenger. The scar-faced man wore only an iron conical helmet and a light horn klibanion, and he was fast and nimble for it, evading Apion’s strike. The man then feinted to jab his spear at Apion’s gut, and followed up with what he thought would be a death blow to the throat. Instead, Apion ducked right, pulled his war hammer from his belt and swung it round in a wide arc to bring the pointed head crashing into the daylami warrior’s left temple. The man’s helmet flew from his head as his skull crumpled under the blow. Blood gushed from his ears and nostrils, then his eyes rolled in his head and he crumpled to a heap.

  Apion leapt over the body to thrust his scimitar between the twin prongs of the next warrior’s spear. But the man was strong. He freed one hand to smash a fist into Apion’s nose. Apion’s head was filled with white light and the crunching of breaking bone and cartilage. He fell to his knees, shaking his vision clear just as the twin-headed spear edged towards his heart. Apion’s limbs trembled as he pushed back with his scimitar, but the daylami would not relent. The man pushed until the prongs ground against Apion’s klibanion. The speartips parted the iron plates to pierce the skin of his chest, then ground into his breastbone. Apion saw the past flit before him.

  Then the pressure fell away and the spear clattered to the ground. His foe staggered back, gawping, clutching at the spurting stump where his arm had been. His eyes were fixed on the severed limb by his feet, still gripping the spear shaft.

  The thick-bearded skutatos who moments ago had been paralysed with fear inside the tower leapt forward to finish the daylami. Then he twisted back to Apion; ‘Haga!’ he barked in acknowledgement before plunging forward into the fray. Another wash of fresh skutatoi spilled from the towers and onto the walls and then more joined them, finally winning the battle of the ladders. Then Igor and his comrades leapt into the walls just ahead. Their once pristine, white armour was now spattered with blood and their faces streaked in
gore too. The big Rus swung his axe overhead and unleashed a cry that seemed to shake the walls and his blade cut through man after man, cleaving bones, lopping off limbs and splitting skulls.

  At this fervent onslaught, the remaining few daylami seemed to lose their infamous nerve, and scrambled back to take shelter in the gatehouse towers. At the same time, the walls shuddered as the battering ram smashed the gates apart.

  Apion panted as the men of Chaldia flooded past him. He glanced around the battlements and the ground either side of them. Skutatoi lay dead or dying, hundreds upon hundreds of them. Nearly a third of the toxotai had been slain too, having bravely exchanged fire with their Seljuk counterparts above the gatehouse. A clutch of kataphractoi lay broken near the gates, where they had fallen foul of a ballista barrage.

  Yet cries of victory rang out when one bull-like soldier scrambled up to the top of the tallest gate tower, grasping a crimson banner of the Chaldian Thema. It was Stypiotes, the big komes. He hefted the banner high and waved it. At this, the remaining Byzantine soldiers outside the walls broke into a raucous cheer.

  The outer walls had fallen, Apion realised as he unclipped his mail veil. Then he drew his gaze across the maze-like streets that clung to the inner city slope, and up to the citadel perched high on the acropolis. Handfuls of akhi fled through those streets, headed for the stronghold. They carried their spears and shields – clearly determined to fight on there.

  Just then, the Byzantine infantry spilled through the shattered gates and poured into the market square. The emperor rode into the city in their midst, punching the smoke-streaked and crimson-spattered imperial banner towards the acropolis. ‘Onwards!’

  The battle for Hierapolis had only just begun.

  ***

  Seljuk arrows and deadly iron bolts rained down like a storm from the rooftops onto the tapering, sloping street that led up to the citadel gate. The flagstones were littered with slain skutatoi, and the gutters ran red.

  Apion inched forward to poke his head out from one alleyway and look uphill once more. The street rose sharply, past the granary and the crumbling barracks, then it narrowed and rose from the land around it like a ramp as it came to the arched citadel gate. The smooth limestone walls of the round-cornered bulwark shimmered in the afternoon sun, lifted from the city around it by a steep, rubble-strewn slope. The stronghold was five storeys tall, and looked as though it had been set there by giants. The crenellations ringing its flat roof seemed impossibly high from this angle, with iron glinting in the sun betraying the akhi, archers and ballistae up there. The gate was the only way in and it looked as sturdy as the walls, made of thick timber and barred and studded with iron. Already, several brave charges had faltered; the ramp before the gate was carpeted with broken skutatoi corpses and the battering ram they had tried in vain to bring to the gate. There has to be a way, Apion affirmed.

  Then, as if willed by this frustration, one brave komes burst from the next alley and onto the rising, tapering street. He held his shield overhead, his arm juddering with every arrow strike, his step faltering as he picked his way through the dead. Then, with a hoarse cry, he beckoned his ninety remaining skutatoi with him. They roared in reply, holding their shields overhead to brave the worst of the hail. They reached the ramp and came within paces of the unmanned battering ram.

  Yes! Apion clenched a fist, readying to wave his own men out to support them.

  ‘Take the strain!’ the komes roared, swiping his spathion forward to usher his men around the device. Then the two ballistae mounted atop the citadel dipped like the beaks of watching birds of prey. The komes’ eyes widened under the rim of his helmet and he staggered back. The ballistae loosed. One bolt hammered into the spine of the ram and a sharp crack of timber rang out; the device was ruined. The other ploughed into the skutatoi, blowing their tight formation apart. At once, the arrow storm from the rooftops turned on the scattered men. Their cries were short lived and the street was piled higher with corpses.

  Apion stared at the sight. He ducked back only when another arrow smacked against the whitewashed wall, inches from his eye, sending a shower of dust and grit across his face.

  ‘Back!’ he hissed, waving his eighty dirt, smoke and bloodstained men flat against the wall. This alley, like all the others they had stolen through to get here, was deserted. Doors lay ajar, belongings lay discarded. The populace had been evacuated. The Seljuks had anticipated the fall of the lower city walls. Planned it, even. Doubt was taking shape in Apion’s gut as he thought of the hidden traitors in their midst.

  In the alley directly across from Apion, Sha and his contingent were pinned down too. All up and down the broad street that ran steeply up the hill towards the citadel gate, the scene was the same. The army had been fragmented and immobile like this for over an hour, pinned down in the labyrinth of alleys. Apion looked to the rooftops all around the citadel. The granary, the bathhouse and the tenements were packed with Seljuk archers, pointing to targets, nocking their bows and loosing with ease. The buildings themselves were bristling with akhi, who had so far fended off Byzantine attempts to storm them.

  Just then, Komes Peleus returned. He darted across the street, diving into the alley beside Apion, a storm of arrows smacking down in his wake. ‘Many hundreds of them, sir. I lost count after that,’ the little Komes panted, jabbing a finger up to the rooftops. ‘I don’t understand it. Laskaris signalled . . . ’ Peleus started.

  ‘Laskaris is long dead,’ Apion cut him off. ‘We have been lured into this, Komes. There are far more men garrisoning this city than we were led to believe. And they’re no militia – they are the sultan’s best men.’ He stabbed a finger at the pure white tunics and the horn vests worn by the archers. ‘And they’re keeping us pinned down here.’

  ‘What for?’ Peleus’ eyes widened.

  ‘I fear the answer to that more than any of the missiles that might tear my throat out.’

  Then a defiant cry rang out from above. Apion looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. Three storeys above, a pair of skutatoi had somehow fought their way onto the bathhouse rooftop and were struggling with the Seljuk archers at the roof’s edge. Then a bundle of akhi appeared behind them. With the flash of a scimitar, one skutatos crumpled out of sight. The other toppled from the roof, screaming, limbs flailing. Then he crunched onto the ground, blood, entrails and grey matter exploding from the shattered corpse. Apion turned away, sickened.

  ‘We have to take the citadel, we need the high ground,’ he spat, flexing and unflexing his fists. Far down the hill, he could see Procopius and his crew waiting in frustration beside the two remaining catapults – the only thing capable of breaking through that citadel gate. Yet the aged tourmarches and his men could not hope to move upon the citadel while the two ballistae on the stronghold roof were trained on anything that approached. Nothing could break through. Not while the ballistae remained. He closed his eyes and breathed. His heart slowed and he imagined himself as an eagle, soaring over the sun-baked city. Then he thought of the men of the campaign army as shatranj pieces and the walls of the citadel as enemy pawns in a tight square. Every piece he tried to move had to best the enemy pawns in order to break into their midst. But the knight . . . the knight could move up, over and inside their lines.

  He blinked, his eyes sharp and focused, then looked to Peleus. ‘You are a climber, Komes?’

  Peleus frowned.

  ‘I have seen you climbing the cliffs outside Trebizond.’

  Peleus nodded, bemused. ‘Aye, keeps me limber, sir, and falcon eggs fetch a good price at market. What of it?’

  ‘Can the citadel walls be scaled?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Apion pinned him with his gaze. ‘Can they be scaled, Komes?’

  Peleus’ face was etched with doubt. He risked a glance around the corner. ‘They look sheer and smooth, but there will be gaps in the mortar. In theory, yes. But the archers on the rooftops will pick . . . ’

  ‘Do not fear the archers
,’ he flicked his head up, to where the Seljuk marksmen were still scouring the streets below for easy targets, ‘they are clustered on the roofs and streets here, around the northern side. They’re not paying attention to the other side, and they won’t expect climbers,’ he cocked an eyebrow with a ghost of a grin, ‘as that would be a foolish plan.’

  Peleus looked up, the fear and doubt on his face dissolving as he squared his jaw and nodded briskly. ‘Then yes, we can do it.’

  Apion clasped his shoulder, then looked to two toxotai near the back of his group. ‘Steal back downhill. Take word to Tourmarches Procopius. Tell him that the ballistae will soon fall silent. Tell him that when they do, he must unleash a storm of rock upon the gates.’

  Then he turned to the bandophoros and pointed to the filthy crimson Chi-Rho banner on the staff he carried. ‘I’ll be needing that.’

  Finally, he beckoned Peleus and seven others equally lithe and light. ‘Now, come with me.’

  ***

  Apion pressed his back against the southern wall of the citadel and filled his lungs with a few good, deep breaths. He looked to the eight with him. Like him, they were dressed only in boots, tunics and swordbelts. A few were still stretching their limbs so they were supple enough for the climb.

  They had picked their way through the alleys unseen to come round to the south of the acropolis mount. A brief glance around had confirmed that only a few Seljuk archers had part-sight of this area and in any case, they seemed to be focused on the scurrying Byzantines below the gates on the north side. So, Apion and his men had picked their way up the scree of the acropolis mount unseen. That had been tense enough, but the most perilous part of the plan had still to come.

  He turned to the walls, running his palms across the surface. The blocks were vast indeed, but they were also old, and in places the mortar between had crumbled.