Gordon Doherty - Strategos - Rise of the Golden Heart

At this, the Seljuk riders fumbled, throwing down their bows, struggling to pull their scimitars from their sheaths and heel their mounts round to face their foe. But they were too slow.

The two kataphractoi wedges plunged into the Seljuk rear, the momentum carving the ghazi riders open like fangs tearing through tender meat. The ghazis were armoured only in quilt vests — no match for the tip of a Byzantine kontarion — and they were felled in swathes. Blood spray filled the air as spears gutted and impaled the ghazi riders, whose panicked sword swipes did little to trouble their ironclad Byzantine attackers. In moments, the Seljuk rear was in turmoil.

Nasir could only watch. His riders were being cut to pieces. He clenched a fist. Do not let them break and charge again! As if his thoughts had been heard, the ghazi did not scatter before this onslaught. In moments, they had absorbed the shock of the kataphractoi charge. Now they were clustering around the Byzantine riders and retaliating with venom, hacking speartips off, then driving their scimitars up and under the iron plates of kataphractoi body armour, bringing forth torrents of blood. Now the seemingly invincible Byzantine riders were locked in a mortal struggle, discarding their spears and ripping their spathions and maces from their baldrics to fight for their lives. Many of Nasir’s ghazi would die in tempering their might. So be it, he thought.

He turned back to his spear line. They had slowed, casting glances over their shoulders at the cavalry melee. ‘To the walls!’ He rode round behind them and whacked the flat of his scimitar down on their backs. But still they were hesitant. He saw fear on their faces, and followed the gaze of one — fixed on the breach in the town walls.

The breach was filled with a blur of silver. Another cluster of kataphractoi — this time only ten of them — picked over the rubble and then trotted out before the walls. The crimson-cloaked Haga led them forward at a slow trot on a broad and muscular chestnut gelding. His face was now obscured behind a triple-mail veil. Those flanking him were the ones who had been by his side for some years, Nasir thought, seeing the coal-skinned Malian to the Haga’s right and the brutish rider saddled alongside another aged comrade on the left.

Nasir grimaced at his own hesitancy, then he battered his sword hilt against his shield and kicked his mare into a gallop up and down the front of the akhi line. ‘We have nigh on one thousand spears! Do not let his myth blind you,’ he cried, pointing his scimitar tip at the Haga . ‘He is but a man! Like the many of our people that he has slain, he will bleed!’ He drummed his sword hilt on his shield once more, in time with his words. ‘He will bleed! Onwards!’

At this, the Seljuk spearmen seemed roused once more and resumed their advance. Only a hundred paces separated them and the Haga’s meagre contingent of riders. His thousand akhi would envelop this tiny pocket of riders and impale man and beast on their spears. Best to make use of what weapons I possess, he thought, twisting in his saddle to wave his Syrian camel archers forward. ‘Let them feel the wrath of your deadly hail!’ Nasir roared. But then he turned back to see that the Haga had also raised a hand. At this, the ten kataphractoi flanking the Haga had taken up their composite bows, each nocked with flaming arrows — torch wielding skutatoi scurrying away from them and back into the town. Nasir’s eyes locked onto the flaming tips. Then, just as the akhi bounded ever closer to the Byzantine riders, the Haga dropped his hand.

The ten fiery missiles arced up and over the Seljuk spearmen, over Nasir’s head, to hammer down around and into the line of camel archers who were still nocking their own bows. With a chorus of terrified lowing, the camels thrashed and bucked, throwing their riders. Then they scattered, some ablaze, away from the town. The terrified beasts found themselves confronted with the rear of the melee between the ghazi riders and the kataphractoi, and they raced headlong into and around this fray. The horses in that conflict whinnied in terror at the arrival of these blazing creatures. Then they, too, scattered in panic from the scene. Some ghazi riders were thrown to the ground, their skulls dashed against rocks. Others were dragged like wet rags, feet tangled in stirrups, their mounts in blind flight. Even the surviving Byzantine kataphractoi in the centre of the melee broke away, struggling to control their mounts. But the ghazis were scattered, as were the camels.

As the dust of this furious exodus began to settle, Nasir looked all around him. His camel archers were gone, and only a handful of seventy or so ghazi riders had reformed, clustering behind him. Before him, his akhi spearline had halted less than twenty paces from the Haga , paralysed by fear after seeing almost their entire mounted reserve dismissed with one volley of flaming arrows. The Haga and his riders glared back at them.

Then the crunch-crunch of boots on earth rang out as the Byzantine skutatoi marched from the town gates. There were barely two hundred of them, and they carried with them a dust-coated Chi-Rho crimson banner. The Haga raised a hand and they marched out to form a shallow line in front of him. The line was only one man deep, but it matched the width of that formed by the Seljuk akhi. They came to a halt and then they each lifted a rhiptarion overhead, the slender javelins trained on the akhi ranks. Then the surviving kataphractoi who had risen from the tunnels — only twenty two left in total — split into two groups once more before clopping round to form up on the flanks of this line like pincers. Finally, atop the gatehouse, a handful of fifty toxotai archers clustered, arrows nocked to bows and trained on the Seljuks stood on this perfect killing ground.

The opposing lines eyed one another.

One of the Seljuk spearmen looked up at the tips of the arrows trained upon him, then at the arc of Byzantines facing him on the ground. Then he looked over his shoulder, to the east. The only direction left open. Then he looked up at Nasir, eyes bulging, before throwing down his spear and turning to run for the rising sun. In one fluid motion, Nasir tore the composite bow from his back, nocked and loosed an arrow that punched into the deserter’s spine. In a spray of blood, the man crumpled. At this, the few others whose gaze had been drawn to the east now fixed their eyes forward.

Silence hung over the standoff momentarily before Nasir roared to his ranks. ‘Do not fear the few who stand before us. Their deception is a measure of their character, and they have run out of guiles!’ he roared. At this, a rumble of defiant jeers rang out from the Seljuk ranks, and they bristled, fixing their eyes on the skutatoi line. ‘But now we come to it — only courage and steel will seize victory!’ He levelled his scimitar at the Haga . ‘Forward, men! Take glory in the name of Allah!’

The akhi ranks exploded in a chorus of roars. ‘Allahu Akbar!’

At the same time the Haga , in the Byzantine centre, lifted his scimitar and roared; ‘Stand your ground! For the empire!’

With a thunder of boots and iron, the Seljuk swarm raced forward.

***

First, the Byzantine rhiptaria hammered down on the akhi front line, the javelins punching through shields and driving through flesh and bone. Ninety or more of the Seljuk spearmen fell under this hail.

Then the akhi charge smashed into the Byzantine line with a clattering of shields and screeching of iron. Blood jetted into the air where spears punched through armour and flesh. Limbs spun from bodies as spathions and scimitars were swept to and fro. Stricken men disappeared underfoot where their corpses were churned into the dust. The few ghazi riders who had regrouped loosed arrow after arrow into the skutatoi ranks, and the toxotai on the walls replied in kind with volley after volley.