Gordon Doherty - Strategos - Rise of the Golden Heart

With a swift wrench of his wrist, it was over. The Seljuk’s hot blood flooded across his arm and he caught the man’s weight, lowering his body to the battlements. He crouched there for a moment, shame creeping over his heart. Then he looked out to the enemy lines, already being marshalled into position for a frontal assault on the eastern walls. As the Seljuk war horns wailed out, he sought out the figure of Nasir, standing in their midst.

What choice did you give me?

***

All along the Seljuk lines, laments rang out at seeing their comrades executed. Eyes turned this way and that, then, almost universally, they looked to Nasir. They looked at his mutilated features with a mixture of horror and expectation.

The blood pounded in Nasir’s ears. He looked along his readied lines as the rising sun bathed his ranks from behind. The gentle heat stung like fire on the melted flesh of his face.

‘Ready the artillery, ready the men. This town will be razed into the dust by noon!’

At this, a raucous cheer filled the air.

Nasir raised his left hand.

‘Catapults, ready!’

At this, the crew around the six bulky timber frames groaned, taking the strain, bending the stone-throwing arms back.

‘Ready!’ they cried.

Then Nasir raised his right hand.

‘Trebuchets, ready!’

‘Ready!’ The crews around the two hulking devices responded, fifteen pairs of men straining at the end of the ropes, holding the giant timber throwing arms almost at their full stretch.

Nasir’s brow dipped and he threw both hands forward, towards the walls of Kryapege.

‘Destroy them!’

A deafening cheer filled the plain as the two sets of crews pulled down on their devices to gain every last morsel of extra power before letting loose their load of rocks.

This was the fatal mistake.

All along the lines of the Seljuk artillery, sharp cracking rang out as the tensed ropes split. The ropes whipped up from the devices and the throwing arms spluttered, dropping their payload or hurling it weakly or wildly askew. One crew was struck with the lashing ropes of their device, the lead crewman’s eyes dashed out by the ferocity of the thrashing tether. Another could only gawp in terror as the massive boulder on his catapult hopped up just a few feet before coming down upon him, crushing him like an egg.

Only one crew’s device remained intact — having been a fraction slower than their comrades. The lead crewman examined the ropes, then spun to his leader. ‘The ropes have been half sawn!’

Nasir’s eyes bulged as he looked across his line of siege engines, hanging limply like snapped branches after a storm. Then he yelled back at the men of the last trebuchet; ‘Loose your weapon!’

‘It will fall short of the battlements,’ the man started.

‘Do it!’ Nasir bellowed.

The man nodded, then barked his crew into loosing at less than full stretch. The timber arm swung round and hurled a jagged limestone block towards the walls. The distant Byzantines on the battlements to the right of the eastern gate watched in silence, only scattering moments before the missile smashed into the base of the walls below them. Dry and in extreme disrepair, this section of wall shuddered and crumbled. The few sentries too slow to disperse toppled with the stone and were crushed, their screams drowned out by the thunderous collapse. As the dust cleared, the lower town of Kryapege was revealed through the gaping fissure — wider than any other on the decrepit walls.

At this, a roar erupted from the watching Seljuk ranks.

Nasir drew his scimitar and raised it overhead. ‘Forward!’

The akhi burst into life, their boots drumming on the dust, spears levelled, eyes peering over shield rims. The camel archers followed closely, forming a thin line behind the infantry. Screening the rear, seven hundred strong, were the ghazi riders who heeled their mounts into a gentle canter, their faces etched with anticipation as they picked arrows from their full quivers and nocked them to their bows. Nearly two thousand men washed towards Kryapege’s walls.

Nasir leapt onto his mare and raced to the head of the ghazis. ‘With me!’ he cried to a group of forty of the riders, waving them to the front. ‘Put your bows away, today you will use your swords and lances as we drive the Byzantines onto the spears of our akhi.’ He twisted to the rest of the riders. ‘The rest of you, stay to the rear and let the Byzantines feel the pain of an arrow storm!’ he roared, punching the air.

‘Allahu Akbar!’ the Seljuk ranks cried out in reply, then burst into a chorus of ululating battle cries.

Nasir led his forty riders to the fore. He scanned the battlements and was pleased with what he saw. There were even fewer Byzantine soldiers than he had anticipated. The precious kataphractoi riders were penned inside the town now and could not use their might on the open plain to threaten his army. There were barely fifty men stretched across the walls — all toxotai. Then, for the second time that morning, doubt gripped his gut like an iron fist. The Byzantines were few indeed — too few. One toxotes atop the gatehouse seemed to be watching their advance intently, and he was gripping something — a red rag. Then the man held it in the air and swiftly swiped it from side to side.

At that moment, Nasir noticed something from the corner of his eye. He twisted in his saddle to look back over his left shoulder; behind and to the left of his advancing ranks, the red dust of the ground itself puckered. A circle as large as a grand yurt crumbled away. His eyes locked on this unearthly sight. The Seljuk advance slowed, men looking over their shoulders likewise. Then he heard the men on his right flank burst into a babble of confusion. His head snapped round; the same spectacle lay behind that flank too. The men looked to the two gaping holes in the ground behind them and then to their leader. Nasir realised what was to rise from those pits, but a heartbeat too late.

Like dead warriors rising, a clutch of Byzantine kataphractoi riders poured from each of these tunnels that had been dug from inside the town. There were barely twenty in each party, but every one of them, horse and rider, was clad in iron. The riders were crowned by gleaming conical helmets, plumed with coloured feathers. Their faces were hidden behind triple-layered mail veils, their bodies were wrapped in iron lamellar with vivid cloaks draped on their backs and their arms were encased in splinted greaves and plated gloves. Composite bows and spathion blades were strapped to their backs while curved paramerion blades and viciously flanged maces and war hammers hung from their belts. Even the mounts looked demonic, wearing iron scale coats and plate facemasks, breath clouding before them in the last of the dawn freshness. These two wings of kataphractoi lowered in their saddles and levelled their lengthy kontarion spears, decorated with a knotted triangle of crimson cloth near the tip, held on one arm that was protected by a small round shield strapped to the bicep. Then they charged for the ghazi rear like two sharpened talons.

‘ Nobiscum Deus! ’

Nasir stood on his stirrups and twisted to bellow at the ghazis. ‘Turn!’ he cried. Then he realised that this group of riders had never been this far west before, and had never faced kataphractoi.

The ghazis to the rear at first seemed bemused by the hubris of this handful of charging Byzantine riders, whom they outnumbered hugely. They simply raised their shields, expecting the riders to hurl missiles and then peel away at the last moment. But as the kataphractoi thundered to within fifty paces, the ghazis realised the charge was no feint and they jolted into action, some turning nocked bows upon the Byzantine riders. With a chorus of twanging bowstrings, a cloud of arrows hissed through the short distance between the Seljuk rear and the kataphractoi. Cries rang out, shoulders were thrown back where arms were pierced, and a cloud of crimson puffed into the air where one rider was felled — an arrow through the eye. That apart, the kataphractoi had weathered the storm and were now only paces away.