Greek Fire

by James Boschert

“I have an uneasy feeling that our lives are being bartered away along with most of the rest of the army,” Talon said to Max.

  “I agree, Talon. He is a weak man, that emperor. He just wants to save his own skin. I do not trust him anymore, not that I did much to begin with.” Max sighed and rubbed his stomach. “I am not sure if it is hunger or my bad guts,” he complained.

  “Even if we can escape this place it is a very long ride home, Max. Also, you have seen how good the Turks are. We will have to go like the wind.”

  “A good two days hard riding on the road, and that depends upon our horses. Now what?” Max pointed with his chin at the Emperor’s guard, who were opening their ranks. General Kontostephanos and some guards escorted the Turkish delegation back to the makeshift walls. The Turks rejoined their companions on the plain who had waited patiently for them, and without a backward look the group of horsemen rode away.

  “Here comes Alexios,” Talon nudged Max. “Well…have we surrendered and are we off to slavery? What happened?” he asked Alexios as he came up to them.

  “You will not believe me when I tell you!”

  “Tell us, man!” Talon and Max demanded. A chorus of other voices joined theirs as other men who had seen him rushed up wanting to know what had transpired.

  “The Sultan of the Turks, Kilij Arsan, sent an envoy, Gabras, that large man over there,” he pointed, “and that horse he brought with him and a sword were articles of good faith. The Sultan is allowing our army to leave the field of battle and go home!”

  For a long moment everyone just stared at him. Then there was pandemonium. Men hugged each other and shouted with joy and surprise. They were incredulous. Cheers had erupted elsewhere as the news reached men on the other side of the camp.

  “How can this be?” Talon asked Alexios when they had finished embracing him.

  “I do not know, but I swear by God that it is true. Even the Emperor cannot believe it and probably thinks it is divine intervention. I certainly do,” Alexios answered, his eyes shining.

  Max gave him a thump on the back that made him stagger. “I agree, God’s will, and we are going back to the city,” he said happily.

  “The Sultan wants peace. He is allowing the entire army to leave. There are conditions, however.”

  “What are they?” Max asked, suspicion in his tone.

  “The Emperor has to destroy two of his forts. One is called Dorylaeum; it is on the border we passed on the way here.”

  “Is that all?” Talon asked. He was still incredulous. This appeared to be far too good to be true.

  “If I understood the translator correctly that is about all there is to it. Please do not ask me why it has come about like this; I am simply glad that we are going home.” He indicated the feverish preparations being made by the rest of the army to leave. “We are going now, and none too soon for me. God be praised.”

  It took but a couple of hours for the Byzantine army to form up and prepare to leave the noisome place. As they marched out they left behind many graves and all the filth and detritus of an army defeated.

  Talon, Max and Alexios were invited by the captain of the Varangians, Asmundr, to stay close to them and the Emperor, who did not appear to be altogether aware of his surroundings. The first divisions left the temporary sanctuary of the fortifications to head south down the gorge. These men, the van of the surviving army, were led by General Kontostephanos.

  In the center came the Emperor surrounded by his personal guards and a dense contingent of cavalry, while behind them came the soldiers of the Antioch who that had first made it through the gorge and put up the defenses.

  They moved with great caution, as no one quite trusted the enemy despite the truce. The first troops who entered the canyon were greeted with a horrific sight. Their shouts of anger and dismay echoed back to the middle of the army where the Emperor and his men were placed.

  “What are they seeing?” Manuel called to his men.

  A runner came panting back to them. “A message from the general, Your Highness.”

  “What is it? What is it?” The Emperor shouted.

  “They have scalped everyone…and…”

  “And what?” bellowed General Mavrozomes

  “They…they have castrated everyone…everyone!” the runner gasped, then began to weep and wring his hands.

  The silence that greeted his words was eerie. Nothing whatsoever was said by anyone. The soldiers cast sidelong looks at the accompanying eunuchs, who looked elsewhere. Everyone was appalled by the news, but they had yet to see for themselves what the Turks had done as they marched back along the trail of destruction which littered the gorge.

  Not content with looting the remnants of the army baggage train and destroying the siege engines, most of which were still smoldering, the Turks had decided to confuse everyone by making sure that no one knew who and how many of their own had died in the battle for the gorge. It was an utterly ruthless thing to do but it was calculated and hugely demoralizing to the army that had to witness the result as it made its way back along the gorge.

  The horror of the sprawled, mostly naked bodies that were piled high along the road through the gorge shocked everyone. Exposed skulls gleamed red in the sunlight, although most were swarming with flies. As if that were not bad enough, the crotches of most of the corpses were blackened ruins of what had once been their genitals.

  Even the most hardened warriors were appalled. With every step they were forced to not only relive the battle of the previous day, but to witness the butchery of what the looters had left behind. Many men wept as they marched past the remains of their comrades; worse yet, it was almost impossible to identify individual comrades from the enemy. There was complete silence from the army other than the shuffle of sandals and the sobs of men who were undone by what they encountered.

  “I sometimes wonder at the suffering we men inflict upon one another and who rules it,” Talon murmured to Max.

  “No one rules over suffering, other than the Devil, who reaped a good crop today, Talon,” Max said as he stared out over the carnage.

  Alexios and his friends made an attempt to locate the body of Pantoleon when they arrived near the area where he might have been killed. The dog whined as it nosed around at the remains of one of its kin in the same area. There was no sign at all of Pantoleon’s body as they searched through the corpses of animals and men that were already bloating and beginning to stink after a day in the heat of the sun. It was a despondent group that proceeded to the entrance of the gorge.

  The men of the forward divisions emerged from the claustrophobic confines of the pass after two hours of fast marching to find that the enemy was waiting for them. There were howls of anger as the Byzantine army stared at the enemy and contemplated the march to come across the plains and into the distant hills with the Turks still harrying them.

  “So much for the promises of the Sultan! May he perish in Hell eternal!” someone shouted near the Emperor, who looked up from his blank contemplation of the ground. He had not been paying much attention up to this point, but now he lifted his head and asked what was going on.

  “We are confronted by Turks. They have broken the agreement already,” General Makrodoukas growled angrily.

  “They are Turcoman tribes, my Lord,” Talon offered.

  “So what is the difference? They are still Turks, are they not?” The general said, his tone acid.

  “Yes, my Lord, they are. But it is probable that the Sultan does not have as much control over them as he does the Seljuk.”

  “It does not make any difference now. We will have to fight them no matter what,” the Emperor said.

  They all looked at him. He appeared to be bracing up, which was a good sign. This was not the defeated man who had sat on a knoll in the gorge but the Manuel whom Talon had come to like in Constantinople.

  “If we hold the divisions together and do not allow our troops to become separated we should be all right, Your Highness,” Makrodoukas
said. “However, we cannot wait for those who are wounded and cannot either ride or walk. There aren’t enough of us to carry them and fight.”

  The entire army clustered along the banks of the river Meander and took what water they could for themselves and their horses before the orders went out that all the columns should form up into solid blocks of infantry with cavalry support on either side of them to chase the Turks off should they grow too determined.

  It soon became clear that the Turcoman riders were looking for easy pickings from an army they considered defeated. They would charge at the Byzantines with shouts and yells and loose off arrows, then gallop away as soon as the cavalry showed signs of giving chase.

  For all the attempts to close ranks and march forward, the foot soldiers were in poor condition; they lacked enough of both water and food for the journey back to the Byzantine frontier, which was a good two days’ march away.

  “I hope that someone on the other side of the border is waiting with fresh water and food, otherwise we are going to lose a lot of men,” Max remarked to Talon as they rode alongside the marching Varangians.

  “We are losing men already, Max. Look at how many wounded are being left behind.”

  Alexios looked back to where Talon was pointing. There were men lying where they had fallen to arrows that were fired into their massed ranks by the agile Turks. These men would be finished off and their corpses plundered before they were cold. Their piteous cries reverberated among the numb men who marched on with faces set like stone trying to ignore them. Every one of them knew that within an hour it could be himself lying there begging for help. In one or two cases a comrade would break ranks and bring some water to the wounded man.

  In one horrific case the man reached up and gripped his comrade by the tunic in a desperate hold and begged to be killed before the Turks got to him. His companion wept as he stabbed the wounded man to death and then ran back to the rest of the men wiping his dagger on his tunic.

  “I am witnessing the defeat of one of the largest armies ever to have been sent against the Turks,” Alexios said, his tone despairing. “I think this side of the empire is gone forever.”

  He turned to his companions and said, “If I am wounded to the point where I cannot ride my horse then I wish you to take my life.” His face was tight as he spoke, but it was clear to Talon and Max that he meant it.

  They did not say anything, averting their eyes and riding on, while watching for more visitations from the enemy riders.

  *****

  The Turcoman tribes people were not to be denied their chance to harry the army, and the attacks continued all that terrible day as the Byzantine army staggered towards its own borders.

  At one time Talon noticed a large Turk pointing out the Emperor and his contingents and wondered what he was telling his men. Just to make life difficult for him Talon loosed an arrow directly at the man, but his horse shifted and the arrow embedded itself in another rider just behind his target. There were howls of anger but a man was down and the Byzantine men nearby who had witnessed the action called their appreciation to him. The distance was well over one hundred yards.

  “You are quite the bowman!” someone called. Talon looked around. He noticed the Emperor staring at him.

  “Where did you learn to shoot so well? On a horse at that!” Manuel called over to him.

  Men around them began to take notice.

  “I learned from our enemies, your Majesty,” Talon pointed to the retreating Turks.

  “It is a useful skill. Why do we not have more men like that?” Manuel demanded, but the question was a rhetorical one and his attention drifted off.

  Then Talon noticed that a very large group of Turks was assembling off to their right. “They are going to charge! Be prepared!” he called.

  “Max, Alexios, stay together. They’re going to make a bid for the Emperor. He would be the best of prizes for them.”

  Alexios nodded. “I agree. We should stay behind the pike men and the Varangians. Use that bow to good effect, Talon.”

  The more experienced officers on the flanks had seen what was about to happen and halted their men then faced them out. This was no skirmishing group come to loose arrows. These men were going to try and break the wall and get to the Emperor.

  With blood curdling screams and yells the Turcoman cavalry smashed into the Thracian spearmen and all too quickly broke through to engage the Varangians in a vicious close quarter fight to the death. It became a mad melee of horses and men fighting hand-to-hand, howling at one another. Men fell and were trampled to death if they still lived as they fell. The screams of wounded men and horses filled the air. Talon could hardly see in front of him from all the dust, but he loosed arrow after arrow into the ranks of the attacking horsemen, knowing that approaching mounted men were the enemy.

  But then the wall of Varangians caved and a determined group of riders pressed through, hacking down at the Norsemen on either side who could not retaliate with anything but their axes. Their spearmen defense having broken, it was up to them to fight the harder.

  Several staggered backwards, brandishing their axes and shouting abuse at the Turks who could not see their objective clearly for the dust and the crush of men, but this appeared to make them all the more determined to break through. Talon drew his sword and urged his horse into the fray. Max was at his side screaming something as he dismembered a man in his path. Talon drove his sword forward and felt it jar on a man’s body armor before it drove on into his chest. The man’s mouth opened in a wordless scream and he fell out of sight.

  Talon spurred his horse into another man and found that he was facing the large man he had fired his arrow at earlier. Talon stared into the fierce brown eyes of the rider, seeing the distinctive, somehow familiar scar that ran down his right temple to stop at his eyebrow. The man bared his teeth and swung a curved sword at his neck. Talon easily parried the blow and returned it with one of his own, stabbing up in a feint to the man’s eyes. Up came the shield and his sword flicked down to drive at the man’s midriff. But the horseman was suddenly falling out of the way. One of the Norsemen had hacked the front legs off the luckless horse so that it fell in a welter of blood, screaming its agony.

  The Turk tumbled to the ground, but as quick as a cat he was on his feet, and another man who had seen the event kicked his horse alongside. Seizing a stirrup the man held on as his comrade rode away from the fighting, out and away from the mass of struggling men. As though this was a signal the rest of the Turks abandoned their efforts to reach the Emperor and hurriedly left the field. Talon watched as they streamed away out onto the plain, leaving the Byzantine army to nurse its wounds.

  Talon stared after the retreating Turks. Now he remembered the man. It was the same one he had met in front of Hagia Sophia. And he was also the emissary who had all but begged the Emperor to stop at the now infamous gorge. Talon felt a cold chill of superstition.

  He shook his head and made the sign of a cross over his chest then looked about him. His first thought was to find Max. He saw him dismounted, kneeling next to another man lying prone. Talon knew with a sinking feeling that it was Alexios before he reached them. He glanced around him to make sure that the Emperor was well protected and then dismounted.

  Alexios was lying with his upper body cradled in Max’s arms. Alex’s teeth were bared in agony. His thigh jerked and bled while blood flowed between his fingers as he clutched at his midriff. Max had a nasty looking gash on the side of his head. Talon wondered how his helmet had been dislodged. There was a lot of blood pouring down his face as he held Alexios, who was staring down at the large gash in his side. He also had a wound just under the front of his left knee, which Talon knew must be agonizing.

  Talon did not ask any questions. Quickly, he ripped a strip off his own sleeve and bound it around Max’s head to stop the immediate bleeding, and then tore away the the armor and opened Alexios’ tunic to lay bare the area of the wound. He peered hard at the inside of the w
ound to see how deep it was. He was worried that he could see the blue of his friend’s intestines just under the surface, but that might have been his imagination. It would need stitching, but of course there were no tools for this to be found anywhere now.

  “It is bad but not mortal,” he told them. All the same, it needed serious medical attention and he could not provide it here. “I must bind you up quickly and prevent more loss of blood.”

  He tore some cloth from the cloak of a dead man nearby and, making a thick wad, pressed it against the wide open wound, then wrapped strips of cloth around Alexios’ torso, binding it firmly in place. Even so blood seeped through the bandages, which worried him. He then did the same for the knee wound. The pain was so great that Alex passed out for a couple of minutes, which allowed Talon to complete the task unhindered. That wound alone meant that Alexios would be unable to walk away from this place.

  “How does it feel?” he asked when Alexios came to his senses and ground his teeth from the pain.

  “It hurts like Hell,” he gasped. “God help me, but I should never have lifted my shield at that moment.” His face was gray and he licked his dry lips. “Is there any water? I am parched.” He stared up at them with unfocussed eyes. “Are they going to leave me here?” he asked, trying hard not to show fear in his voice.

  “No,” Max said. He touched his head where the bandage covered the gash.

  “Will you be all right, Max?” Talon asked with concern.

  “It will take more than this to put an end to me. God save us but that was close.” Max gave a lopsided grin.

  Talon smiled back, but it was a worried look he gave his friend. He wondered if God had even been present to witness this last fight.

  Talon looked about him at the mess left from the skirmish. The Turks had done much damage. Men lay about either dead or wounded, while those still unhurt began to form up again in preparation to continue the march. There was a water skin lying not very far away. He retrieved it before anyone else could as it was a precious commodity now and allowed Alexios a sip of water. Max pointed to Alexios’ horse. “Do you think you can ride?” he asked.