Gordon Doherty - Island in the Storm

‘Not that he came to any harm!’ Sha snorted as they strolled amongst the men.

Indeed, the small army sent to tackle Crispin some months ago had caught the Norman and his full force of some six hundred lancers, camped on the flatlands to the north. The imperial army had attempted to sneak upon the camp at dawn while Crispin and his men still slept, hoping for a rout. Then disaster had struck, as — part-blinded by the gloom — the imperial soldiers had tripped on tent pegs and fallen on hidden caltrops, before the Normans rose from their tents and came at them, swords flashing. It had been a rout indeed. Despite seeing off that force, Crispin had since been careful to ride out with just small, swift packs of riders — never more than seventy or so — striking the tax wagons and villages and sweeping back into his formidable stronghold to tally his plunder.

‘We can only keep a constant vigil, Sha. Crispin will tire of inactivity soon enough.’

‘Just how much plunder does a man need?’ Sha scowled.

Apion stopped by the well at the centre of the clearing and drew himself a cup of water from the bucket hanging there. ‘Plunder might have been his purpose at first, Sha, but you saw that grain caravan.’ His mind flashed with images of the gory stain that remained of the wagon drivers. The grain itself had been left untouched. ‘He has come to crave the lustre of blood.’

The pair sat down by the well and fell silent. Sha pulled out a tattered map, plucking a stalk of wheat and twisting it between his teeth as he studied it. Apion fished out a well-read letter from his purse. He read it over once more and frowned. Lady Eudokia’s handwriting threatened time and again to drag his mind back to that brief and passionate moment they had shared, just before she had wed the emperor, Romanus Diogenes. Indeed, that she had dabbed her sweet-scented lotions upon it was more distracting still. Focus, man , he scolded himself, taking a sip of water from his cup and reading;

Stay vigilant, Apion, for Psellos seems to know of the emperor’s every move. You must march to the Black Fortress in the lands of Colonea, where the foul advisor’s coins have bought the venal hearts of our border forces. Then I beg you to muster every man you can and hasten to my husband’s side on his campaign to Lake Van. Only there can you shield him from Psellos’ further ruses. .

He looked up at the cloudless morning sky and thought of the black-hearted Psellos and the Doukas family back in Constantinople, of their seemingly bottomless vaults of gold, of their insatiable desire to depose Emperor Romanus and take the throne for themselves, heedless to the toll of lives. Doukas was a swine indeed, but Psellos? Psellos was the jackal-god, so blinded by his quest for power that he would happily set the empire to flame just to be master of its blackened corpse. And Crispin was just the latest in a line of many who had taken Psellos’ gold. So I’m chasing the tail of the snake when the head bears the fangs?

He rubbed his temples as if trying to massage the thoughts away, then looked over to Sha. The Malian scoured the map intently, but every so often he would pause in his thoughts, trace a finger over the leather bracelet he wore on his wrist and let a faint smile touch his lips. Apion found the smile infectious. Sha had just a year ago been presented with a gift of slaves — a mother and two children — from a trader the Malian had rescued from brigands. Sha had freed the slaves that same day, offering them his home if they would tend to his farm while he was away. Months later, there was no doubting that Sha had found love with the mother, and fulfilment with her children. This threw his thoughts back to the emptiness that awaited him in his own home — the silent, empty keep on Trebizond’s citadel hill. He folded up the letter. Memories of his dalliance with Eudokia were but a spark to reignite those of his true, lost love.

Maria.

With his mother and father long ago slain and no children to call his own, he was alone. Even Mansur, the old Seljuk farmer who took him in as a boy, had been snatched from him at the end of a blade. And until last winter, he had long thought Mansur’s daughter, Maria, walked with them in the land of the dead. Until the crone had come to him.

You told me she lives , he mouthed into the ether as if addressing the absent crone, one finger sliding into his purse, stroking the lock of sleek, dark hair in there. But you cannot tell me where, and this world is vast. That, old woman, is a tortuous gaol for a man’s mind.

His gaze grew distant, trawling all that had happened since the crone’s revelation. He had sent messengers and hired scouts to scour the borderlands in search of her. Some had searched the eastern themata, others had ventured far into Seljuk lands. All had come back with nothing. He sighed and tried to turn his thoughts back to his next move, thinking of where Crispin might strike next.

A panicked honk-honk tore him from his thoughts. He looked up to see two toxotai — who had been diligently shooting their composite bows at a nearby tree trunk — now loosing skywards in an attempt to fell the skein of geese that flew overhead. When a fully deserved shower of goose droppings spattered down on their faces and tunics, they stumbled away, cursing, one of them spitting the oily filth from his lips and the other hurrying to put on his wide-brimmed archer’s hat to shield him from the onslaught.

‘The men are getting restless, it seems,’ Sha cocked an eyebrow, folding up his map. ‘Perhaps we should move on? Keeping them on the march keeps their minds focused.’

‘Move on?’ Apion replied. ‘If we had an enemy to pursue, Sha, I would have us on the march right now. But until Crispin breaks cover from his fort, we must wait.’

The pair looked around for some form of distraction, both picking up on a conversation between Blastares and Procopius, wandering amongst the men. Blastares was a bull of a man, Sha’s age, with a broken nose shuddering between his eyes and a shaven scalp. Procopius was a wiry, puckered officer in his fiftieth year with a pure-white, close crop of hair and a face like a dried prune. Apion had known this pair since his first days in the ranks. Now each of them was a tourmarches like Sha, leading a Chaldian tourma under his command. Each of them, like Sha, he trusted with his life. And together, this mismatched pair could provide some moments of light relief.

‘I hear you’ve taken on an apprentice artilleryman?’ Blastares grunted as he strolled alongside Procopius. The big man curled his bottom lip as if weighing his next words, then a mischievous glint appeared in his eye. ‘Good idea. An old fellow like you should be making plans for his dotage.’

‘Dotage? I. . ’ Procopius’ nose wrinkled as he looked up at his hulking friend, then his eyes grew hooded. ‘You know what I say to the lad when I’m training him on ballista marksmanship?’

‘Nope. Don’t care either,’ Blastares feigned indifference, pretending to examine the treeline studiously.

‘I tell him to imagine that you’re standing at the target, bollocks out, dangling over the centre,’ Procopius walked a little taller as he said this, his age lines multiplied by his growing smile. ‘Hits the centre nearly every time.’

Blastares’ grin fell away, as if stolen by Procopius. ‘Aye? Well at least. . at least. . ’ Blastares stammered, his eyes darting as he tried to invent some riposte.

But a cry cut the pair off; ‘He rides!’

Apion looked over to the base of the tall pine. The toxotes who had been keeping watch up there thumped down onto the ground. ‘Crispin rides from the fort,’ the man repeated, taking up his bow and quiver. ‘He is headed into the forest, roughly a mile to the south.’