Gordon Doherty - Strategos - Born in the Borderlands

‘You have brought this upon yourself, Loukas!’

Father could only muster a pained snarl in reply.

‘Take him down,’ the leader sneered, ‘make it slow. . then bring me his head.’

Apion’s stomach lurched at the words. He stepped forward from the shadows but his feet froze on the floor as one of the henchmen jabbed his scimitar hilt into Father’s face. A dull thud of metal on cracking bone was accompanied by the light patter of blood on the flagstones. Apion’s throat clenched, mouthing a silent scream, as Father toppled to the flagstones, sprawled across Mother. The henchmen flicked their scimitars over and over in their hands and circled Father, like butchers eyeing a fresh slaughter. Then Apion felt a change, like a roaring river suddenly drying to a trickle, his fear was gone. What was there to fear when all was lost? His eyes fell on Father’s battle gear resting in the shadows by the table. The helmet, the klibanion and the spathion.

Apion strode from the shadows, taking the helmet and placing it on his head, the rim resting on the bridge of his nose and the mail veil icy cold on his face, the leather aventail dangling around his neck and shoulders. The flickering torchlight bathed him but the intruders were captivated with their work as he approached them, prodding Father with the razor tip of their scimitars, puncturing his flesh, showering the hearth with blood. Father roared in pain at each prod but his face was drawn and exhausted as he cradled the bloody form of Mother underneath him, his spirit conquered. Father’s eyes were dimming but as Apion took up the spathion, their eyes met. Father extended a hand out past the legs of his torturers, reached out, then shook his head, his mouth haemorrhaging blood.

‘No,’ he spluttered as Apion lifted the weighty blade.

Then the leader stepped in between them, still oblivious of Apion, and snarled. ‘Now finish him!’

One of the henchmen wrenched Father’s head back by the hair and the other swept his scimitar down. Apion’s stomach turned over at the ripping of sinew as Father was beheaded, eyes staring, mouth agape in shock. Apion’s mouth gaped likewise to scream but his voice was simply not there.

‘Now find this dog’s child and bring him to me!’ The leader turned to the silent intruder, ‘and you, you useless whoreson, go outside and make sure nobody gets in or out of this place before we burn it to the ground.’

In a nauseous blur, Apion moved back into the shadows, to his bedroom; this would buy him a precious few seconds of life before he joined Mother and Father. No! Then they would have died in vain, Apion fretted, eyes darting around for any sign of hope as the henchmen emerged from his parents’ bedroom. He realised he still held the spathion but what use was a weapon he could barely swing against these two brutes?

‘He’s not in there,’ one henchman grunted and then extended a finger at the very shadows in which Apion hid, ‘so he must be in that room.’ Together, they stepped forward, scimitars in hand.

Apion realised escape was his only option. If he could flee into the night, wake the soldier-farmers in the next valley, then these raiders could be trapped. He turned to the shutters, ready to unbolt them as quietly as he could. But when he turned he froze, they were already ajar, punched open from outside. Was this some kind of trick? Then he sensed the presence of the two henchmen behind him.

‘Too late to run! Ready to join your Father, boy?’ One henchman hissed.

Apion spun, poised with the sword in a two-handed grip, trembling.

‘Now put that blade down,’ the second henchman hissed, his breath reeking. ‘Just close your eyes and it’ll all be over.’

Apion felt the terror boil in his veins. He roared and swung the sword wildly, the blade glancing from the walls, showering sparks across the room, the henchmen leaping back. Suddenly, the leader stormed into the room and stopped, masked features examining Apion.

‘Is that a boy we have behind that veil? So this is Loukas’ runt?’ Then he pointed a finger at Apion. ‘Take his head.’

Apion was frozen momentarily, eyes hanging on the tarnished ring on the leader’s finger, a snake winding around the band. Then he roared and wrenched the spathion up, the blade caught the leader’s finger, chopping clear a chunk of skin and bone. The leader staggered back with a roar while the blade flew from Apion’s hand, plunging into the gut of the second henchman, who touched the hilt in stunned silence, blood gushing from his mouth, before toppling like a log, dead.

‘Finish him!’ The leader rasped, his voice laced with fury as he clutched the bleeding stump of his finger and ducked back out of the bedroom.

Apion staggered back as the first henchman lurched forward, sweeping his scimitar down. Spinning away, he leapt for the open shutters, then his mind flashed with a white light as the blade hammered down on the back of his helmet then ground into his flesh. He felt a hot streak of agony like nothing before, the blade tearing at his back, ripping through his thigh and hacking all the way down his calf to his ankle.

Then he could see only the floor and a dark liquid pooling around him. His body grew cold and needled towards numbness. Blackness swam over him. He could hear only a dull ringing and the murmur of the intruders.

‘Now drag him outside, I want to see all three heads on spikes.’

Apion felt his ankles being grappled and an unearthly agony stung him to his core.

Then another voice called, the fourth intruder, from outside.

‘Imperial riders!’

‘Then leave him,’ the leader spat from the hearth room. ‘They can all burn where they lie.’

Everything around Apion seemed to be growing distant. He could hear splashing and the smell of pitch grew thicker. Then there was a dull clatter of a torch being hurled to the floor, followed by a roar of fire and anxious yells as they ran from the building.

The heat intensified until it stung through the numbness and was accompanied by the stench of crackling flesh. From somewhere, Apion found the energy to prise apart his eyelids: there, in the corner of his bedroom, lay the staring and unmasked features of the man he had struck down; a Seljuk man, engulfed in the inferno, the skin on his face blistering and exploding like a roasting pig, eyes clouded over. Apion turned away in disgust but all around him was a raging orange; the flames had engulfed his home already. Death was coming for him. He searched for the opening line of the Prayer of the Heart and made to close his eyes, when he caught sight of his own reflection in the blade of the spathion, still lodged in the burning Seljuk’s guts. He grimaced at the image, the weakness he portrayed. Behind the blade, he saw two charred masses where Mother and Father had fallen, the flames having consumed their flesh already. Were they to have died for nothing? Did their killers deserve to walk free? A desperate cry rasped from his lungs and he lurched to prop himself onto his elbows and then pulled his torn body forward, the searing hot iron helmet tumbling from his head and rolling into the inferno. The heat pulled the air from his lungs as he tried to breathe and the room above him seemed to be solid with a jet-black smoke. With a grimace, he pulled himself on through the hearth room on a black slick of his own blood, a smoking timber beam crashing down by his side barely registering as he fixed his eyes on the doorway.

The roof groaned as he clasped a hand to either side of the doorframe. The intruders were gone and there were no imperial riders to be seen. The night lay in front of him and out there he would find the creatures responsible for this. All of this. Tears stung his cheeks as he hauled himself clear of the doorframe. He roared out into the night, then, behind him, the roof collapsed. The cloud of flames hurled him through the doorway, then a glowing beam crashed down on top of him, landing with an unearthly pain up the length of his butchered leg, gouging into his back with a rapacious sizzling of flesh. His lungs had nothing left in them to scream with and he felt darkness rush in.