Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart (26 page)

It had been three weeks since the eighteen hundred men of the Chaldian Thema – four banda of skutatoi, one of toxotai and nearly two hundred kataphractoi – had set off from the verdant coastal area near Trebizond. They had headed south-west, mustering the men of the eastern themata as the letter from Apion had instructed.

Their first stop had been the city of Nicopolis to levy a tourma from the narrow-shouldered Strategos of Colonea. Sha smiled as he recalled the man’s initial belligerence and refusal. The man’s stance had quickly melted when Sha mentioned that the order came from the emperor and that the
Haga
would be coming to enforce the order. On paper, they should have complemented his column with another two thousand four hundred men; six banda of skutatoi and two of toxotai. In reality, there were less than four hundred men, and he could barely tell the spearmen and the archers apart – each wearing only a tunic, a few with boots, and a handful with shields and weapons. He had hidden his dismay though. At least these thematic troops had mixed well with their Chaldian brothers – some of them exchanging food and others playing dice, their banter rising and falling.

Next they had marched south-west from Colonea to cross into the rocky highlands of the Sebastae Thema. Some years ago, the thema soldiers there had retired to their farms permanently, stowing their swords and putting their lives in the hands of Doux
Ausinalios
and his mercenary tagma that had been sent to replace them. Now
Ausinalios
was to join Sha’s column. The doux brought with him two hundred Norman riders, five hundred Pecheneg horse archers, five hundred Oghuz steppe cavalry and over a thousand Rus axemen.
Ausinalios
’ army was welcome in terms of the numbers, but there had been an uncomfortable rift between them and the native Byzantine troops. Fights and goading had been commonplace on the march and in camp. One man had even been blinded in a dagger fight.

The sooner we meet with Apion and the emperor,
he thought, glancing south,
the sooner I will be relieved of this lot
. Decision made, he filled his lungs. ‘Rest is over. Douse the fires and ready yourselves to move out!’

‘Aye, we’re not far from the rendezvous point now,’ Procopius sighed.

‘By tomorrow we’ll be there,’ Sha replied.

Then a tinkling of water and an angry hiss split the air. Sha and Procopius spun to see Blastares, staring skywards, a look of bliss on his face. A plume of grey smoke billowed around his ankles as he emptied his bladder onto a campfire and the skutatoi nearby yelped as they scrambled clear of the spray.

The big tourmarches grunted and shuffled a few times to get every last drop out, then blinked, realising Sha and Procopius were gawping at him in disbelief. His blissful expression morphed swiftly into a scowl. ‘What’re you looking at?’ he growled.

Procopius screwed up his eyes in exaggerated fashion; ‘Not sure – hard to tell from here.’

‘Aye, well at least I can do more than piss through this, you old bastard,’ Blastares fired back, and then cackled, shaking his head in disbelief at his own comeback as he tucked himself away again.

Sha stifled a chuckle then turned to the edge of the plateau, looking out over the wrinkled network of valleys below. He raised a hand, readying to wave the men into a march towards the snaking path that led down there. But as he did so, something caught his eye and his breath. Many miles away, a dust plume approached from the west, rising from the broad valley that spliced Lykandos.

‘Ours?’ Procopius whispered, crouching by his side, an elbow resting on Sha’s shoulder. Then Blastares moved to his other side.

‘Got to be,’ Blastares affirmed.

‘They may well be,’ Sha agreed. ‘But if they are, then who or what is
that?
’

Blastares and Procopius followed Sha’s stabbed finger. There along the hilly ground south of the dust plume, a faint glinting pierced the heat haze. It was there and then not there at the same time . . . and it was moving, like an arrowhead shooting for the flank of an unsuspecting warrior.

***

Hooves echoed through the narrow, shaded pass. Himerius, the komes of the scout riders muttered under his breath. He had lost his felt cap that morning and now his bald pate was lobster-pink and crisp. The dust all around him was thick and clung to the throat. He winced as his mare stumbled and whinnied. No part of this pass was even close to level, with slivers of broken bedrock and scree under every step. So far, they had been forced to dismount to round piles of rockfall and to lead their horses through the narrowest parts. Then, when they ducked low in their saddles to ride under yet another jagged overhang, the serrated rock scraped his angry scalp.

‘The only damned grace is that we are in the shade,’ he croaked, shaking a fist at the offending rock as he sat tall once more.

Niketas, the young rider behind him, laughed stoically at this. ‘Just think of ducking into the shallows of the river, sir.’

‘I’m thinking of the state of my mount after six or seven sessions of stumbling through this crack in the ground.’ He patted his grey on the neck. ‘They won’t be replaced or tended to if they are injured – we’re not tagma riders, lad.’ The spite in his tone silenced his fellow rider. He closed his eyes, sighed and then twisted in his saddle to the youngster. ‘I’m sorry, Niketas. A grumpy old bastard like me and heat like this do not mix well.’

But Niketas’ gaunt features were illuminated with a smile. He was pointing ahead.

Himerius spun forward again to see that the pass was opening out above them, the blue sky yawning overhead. The rushing of the rapids met his ears before the tumbling waters came into sight. A smile cracked across his aged features. He closed his eyes, clutched the Chi-Rho on his neck chain and mouthed a prayer to God.

Then he blinked at the clatter of a small rock tumbling down the side of the crevasse. He squinted up into the sunlight. Confusion wrinkled his features at what he saw up above.

A single man, crouching. He wore a jet-black pony tail and grey eyes that seared under a v-shaped brow. One side of his face was an angry smear of scars and drooping flesh. He wore a scale vest and a fine Seljuk conical helm. Then the man stood tall and barked. At once, both sides of the pass writhed as warriors rose. There were hundreds of them, and hundreds more behind. Himerius dropped the Chi-Rho, his entire being suddenly awash with icy cold dread.

‘Get back to the column!’ he roared. ‘Warn the
emp
. . . ’

His words were ended in a gurgling roar as a spear punched through his throat and a pair of arrows hammered into his chest.

***

Nasir crouched above the craggy pass, biting his lip in vexation. All along the high flat ground beside him, his three thousand men were stilled likewise, breath bated, crouched or lying flat. His eyes never left the thirty scrawny imperial scout riders below. They could not be allowed to foil his plan.

When the sultan had given him the opportunity to redeem himself, sending him west to seek out and counter Romanus’ expected campaign, it had been a fine gift indeed. Then, when a lone rider had come to him just days ago advising him of the Byzantine route, it had been like a gift from Allah. This was his chance to seize glory. This was his chance to slay the
Haga
. But now, only a mile from the edge of the broad valley where the ambush was to take place, these scout riders could ruin it all. One glance upwards. One careless noise from his warband.

Then the clack-clack of a tumbling pebble rang out. He shot a deathly glare at the akhi whose shuffling had dislodged the stone. Then his breath stilled as the echo of the falling stone died.

The lead rider gawped at it and then up at the edges of the pass.

The Byzantine locked eyes with Nasir.

There was no turning back now. Nasir stood to his full height, filled his lungs and ripped his scimitar from its sheath. ‘At them! Kill them all!’

As one, his warband rose to hurls spears and loose arrows upon the Byzantine scout riders. The old rider crumpled mid-cry, convulsing, his body punctured. The cluster of riders behind him descended into chaos. The quickest to react kicked their mounts into a turn, only to crash into those behind them. Backs exposed, these riders were swiftly pierced with missiles and slid from their mounts, corpses tangling under hooves.

Nasir slid down the scree-strewn pass side then leapt forward to hack at the panicked mass of riders. A clutch of akhi joined him, jabbing their spears forward at man and mount alike. He wrenched one fleeing rider from the saddle and smashed his mace into the back of the man’s skull, crushing his head. Then he tossed the corpse aside and looked for his next foe.

Only a few Byzantines fought on. One, a gaunt-faced young rider who had fallen from his horse, hobbled towards a riderless stallion further back in the pass.

‘That one!’ Nasir stabbed his mace towards the fleeing young rider, sinew, skin and bone dangling from the tip. ‘Stop him!’

Nasir leapt over the pile of the dead and hurled his mace as the young rider reached out to mount the stallion. The weighty metal bludgeon spun towards the man’s head and Nasir grinned in bloodlust. But the young rider stumbled and the mace only scraped across his crown, tearing the felt cap and a section of scalp clear. Heedless of this gruesome injury, the rider mounted and heeled the stallion into a frantic gallop.

Seljuk arrows hissed and smacked against the sides of the pass, some punching into the man’s back. But the rider did not fall and in moments he was gone. The drum of hooves died and for a heartbeat, the pass was silent bar the panting of the Seljuk warriors.

‘Sir, we should consider turning back. If the Byzantines know we are coming . . . ’ an akhi panted.

Nasir spun to him. It was the man who had dislodged the stone. In one motion, he pulled his scimitar from its sheath, then drove it hard into the man’s gut. The akhi’s eyes bulged and blood pumped from his lips, then Nasir ripped his blade clear. As the corpse toppled, he cast his gaze around his men in the narrow passage and the swathes of them lining the tops of the pass.

‘There is no turning back. Riders, mount! Spearmen, be ready for a quick march. To the north!’

***

Apion’s belly groaned. It was loud enough to draw startled looks from Igor and his axemen. He stared at the hardtack he had been holding for some time now, touching his parched tongue to his cracked lips. Hunger and thirst seemed to be playing dice with him and every other man sat in the shade at the northern edge of the valley.

‘You’d be as well eating rocks,’ Igor croaked, mopping the sweat from his brow.

‘Washed down with a cup of dust,’ Philaretos, sitting nearby, rasped with a throaty chuckle, his eyes shaded under a scowl.

The ruddy-faced and sweating Gregoras smirked at this, his beady eyes fixed on Apion.

Apion shrugged in resignation and placed the biscuit back in his ration pack. Himerius and the riders were not due back for a while yet. Even then the water would rightly go to the infantry first, so it would be near sunset by the time they received their share. He looked to Romanus, striding along the lines of his column, offering words of encouragement to his men. The emperor had insisted on being the last to receive water.

‘We’re being led by a good man,’ Dederic muttered absently, by his side.

Apion looked to him. The little Norman’s face was bathed in sweat. He had taken to carving at a wooden stake, hewing it vigorously into a point.

‘Preparing that for the fat lord?’ Apion nudged him with an elbow.

Dederic nodded. ‘Something like that.’ Then he looked up, squinting at the sun. ‘Tell me, sir . . . in your time leading the ranks, you must have had to make tough choices?’

‘Indeed,’ Apion replied instantly, ‘Almost every day. I have had men and their families retreat from their defences and their homes, ceding hard-won ground to the Seljuks but saving them from unavoidable slaughter. I have allowed captured ghazi
warbands
to return to their lands unharmed – thinking that perhaps the next time we meet on the battlefield they will remember that. I would say these were good choices.’ Then he thought of the bloody massacres he had led, the wailing of children spattered in their parents’ blood, the stench of burning flesh. His thoughts spiralled back to those last days on Mansur’s farm – the time that spawned that darkness. He flicked a finger at the Chi-Rho banner hanging limply nearby. ‘And, by that God of yours, I have made some terrible choices in my time.’

‘They say a man’s choices will define him,’ Dederic mused, tracing the tip of his stake through the dust. ‘But what if he makes the wrong choices for the right reasons?’

Apion heard the question, his thoughts snared once again on Mansur’s farm and on that last day he had ever laid eyes upon it. His poor choices had led to that day. ‘Then he will live to regret it evermore,’ Apion replied absently, staring into the dust.

Then his thoughts were curtailed by the echoing
clop
-clop of hooves. He shot his gaze to the Scorpion Pass.
Approaching horses?
he wondered, firing glances to Igor and Romanus.
No, it is too soon, surely.

Gregoras was the first to stand, his eyes darting, his tongue poking out to moisten his lips. Then the infantry rose and stretched on their toes like a crop field rippling in a breeze, their faces eager.