Gordon Doherty - Strategos - Rise of the Golden Heart

Then he returned his gaze to his dagger blade and his thoughts darkened once more. The scarred features staring back at him from its polished surface were wrinkled in a frown. His amber locks were grey-streaked at the temples, and hung tousled and matted with sweat. His beard was equally unkempt. His thick brow shaded deep-set emerald eyes, lined with age and weariness, their gaze fixed along the length of his battered nose. What am I? he asked himself bitterly. A Byzantine boy brought up by a Seljuk guardian. A man who has slain like a demon. A strategos ill-suited to the empire of God. He looked to the small, wooden war chariot carving in his other hand. The shatranj piece was well-worn and stained with the blood of Mansur, his old Seljuk mentor. Then he looked to the white band of skin around his wrist where he had once worn a Christian prayer rope, and then to his forearm and the red-ink stigma of the two headed eagle that had supplanted his faith. What am I? he asked again.

He looked to both ends of the snaking alleyway. At one end, the remains of the citadel stood — shards of brick jutting from a hillock, now only manned by the goats that grazed on the grass there. At the other end, the red-brick town wall could be seen. Beyond waited a powerful Seljuk warband. But it was not their number that vexed him, it was the man that led them. Nasir would never relent, and he knew this. He lifted the cup of brackish water by his side and sipped carefully, then closed his eyes as a name rang in his thoughts. A name that had fused their paths through life.

Maria.

Nasir had pursued him like a starved wolf since she had died. Perhaps today was the day one of them would find peace.

He sheathed his dagger and took a deep breath, looking to the walls again. There, he caught sight of one of his men up on the battlements. One of just three hundred men of the Chaldian Thema waiting for the Seljuk assault to begin. In response to the Seljuk invasion, Apion and his army had been summoned south to the lands of the Charsianon Thema by the obnoxious Doux Fulco — a man nominally in charge of the eastern border defences and even more of a mercenary than the rogues he hired using imperial coin. The headstrong doux had then carved up the Chaldian ranks, sending just this few hundred here to guard Kryapege while leading the other nine hundred plus his own rabble of two thousand mercenary Rus and Normans with him inside Caesarea’s tall and broad walls. According to reports, Fulco and his men now awaited a similar fate there, besieged by Bey Afsin and the rest of his vast horde. In every direction, the empire was being pressed out of existence.

Years ago, Apion had thought that the empire could resist the Seljuk pressure. The border armies were dogged in their defiance if nothing else. But it was the man at the heart of the empire who had spawned decay and undermined their efforts. Emperor Constantine Doukas was a blinkered and parsimonious ruler, championing a regressive tax system that punished all but the rich. His reign had seen forts fall into disrepair across the land. Equally, the thematic armies had fallen into grievous condition with scant number and little equipment, some even falling out of existence altogether. Now mercenary tagmata led by men like Doux Fulco held sway, caring more for their gold than for the people they were paid to defend. A gentle breeze danced along the alleyway and stirred him from his thoughts. He shook his head and sighed.

Then, as if to remind him of its presence, the calico cat licked at his arm. He looked down, and the cat fell onto its back and writhed in the sunshine, purring.

‘To have such carefree days would be a fine thing,’ he smiled and stroked its full belly. Then it took to playfully biting at his fingers and grappling with his forearm. ‘But I imagine your day will be truly spoiled if you don’t have a drink to wash down your meal?’

He reached out to pick up the cup of water by his other side.

But his hand froze and his eyes narrowed on the water’s surface.

***

Tourmarches Sha ignored his burning thirst as he climbed the steps to the battlements of the east wall, his charcoal-dark skin glistening with sweat. It was a bitter irony that this arid, crumbling settlement was still known as ‘the cold spring’ given that the stubborn town well had run dry weeks ago. Even before that, the water it did yield was brackish and polluted. Indeed, there was precious little to say in praise of Kryapege other than its importance as a strategic choke point to the west of Caesarea and the Antitaurus Mountains.

Reaching the top of the eastern gatehouse, he straightened his conical helmet to offer some shade to his silver eyes. Then he rested his palms on the crenellations and ran his gaze along the line of the siege. Two thousand Seljuk warriors had this ruin of a town in their grasp. All along their ranks, fang-like speartips glinted, men grimaced in anticipation and horses and camels snorted in impatience.

Then he turned to look along the crumbling lower town walls. The single and depleted bandon of just over two hundred skutatoi stretched thinly along the battlements and the scattering of riders and archers inside the town were to face this storm alone.

His eyes fell on the nearest spearman. The man’s skin was slick with sweat and he wore only the lightest of tunics. His spathion was sheathed in his swordbelt and he gripped his kontarion spear firmly. But Sha eyed the soldier’s klibanion ; the iron lamellar vest lay by the man’s feet. Beside it rested his skutum , the crimson, kite-shaped shield adorned with a gold Chi-Rho emblem. In contrast, Sha wore his armour vest, weapons and helmet and carried his shield at all times despite the heat and despite his fatigue. He looked back to the sentry; a single arrow, let alone a volley, from the Seljuk warband outside and this man would be dead. He considered for a moment whether to bark his disapproval, then he saw a similar sight all along the dilapidated battlements. Weary sentries, baking in the heat, few having eaten or drank in days. Even the komes , their superior officer with the knotted white sash around his torso, had set down his armour.

As a tourmarches, answering only to the strategos, it was Sha’s place to bark them into order. But in his time as an officer, he had learned that sometimes a deft touch was most effective. He bit back his censure and instead held out his water skin — containing barely a mouthful of liquid — to the man. The soldier looked nervously to his superior. ‘Take your ration, soldier. Slake your thirst,’ Sha encouraged him. Then he squinted into the sunlight and nodded to the dust-coated embroidery of the Virgin Mary that hung proudly from a timber frame atop the gatehouse. Another precious breeze wafted across the battlements at that moment, lifting the fabric. ‘God knows you’ve earned it.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ the soldier nodded, poking out his tongue to moisten his cracked lips before gulping hungrily at the skin as if the tepid water was an elixir. ‘Sir. . the strategos. . he hasn’t come to the walls for two days now. But he will come soon, won’t he?’ he nodded over the wall to the Seljuk lines. ‘For when they advance?’

Sha stared at the man then shifted his gaze to the network of alleys leading into the heart of the town. ‘He will come when he is ready,’ was all he could offer. ‘In the meantime, be sure to wear your armour,’ he nodded to the klibanion by the man’s feet, ‘I know how draining it is in this heat, but better to be hot than dead, eh?’

The man saluted and immediately lifted his klibanion vest and buckled it on. Sha nodded in satisfaction as he saw the other men nearby follow suit, then he turned to flit down the steps and into the town.