Gordon Doherty - Strategos - Born in the Borderlands

An eagle’s piercing cry high above rent the night air and at once he was gone from the world.

He awoke to the sound of lungful after lungful of screaming. His own. He had the prayer rope clasped with both hands across his heart.

‘Apion!’ A voice echoed. A broad moustachioed face emerged from the misty confusion. Mansur shook him by the shoulders.

‘Father?’ Maria scrambled to Apion’s bedside.

‘Get out, Maria,’ he waved a hand at her. ‘Please, start the fire and prepare some salep. ’

‘Apion, be calm, please, you are safe, you are safe.’

He felt his chest heave more slowly and the screaming had died to a whimpering. His face was wet with tears. Glancing around the room it was all so peaceful, so quiet: the fire crackled through in the hearth room and the shadows of his bedroom danced lazily in the half-light from the flames.

‘Mansur, I’m sorry. I, I saw it all. As if I was there again. . ’

‘Easy, lad, take a deep breath,’ Mansur frowned, brushing a thumb across Apion’s cheeks, wiping the tears clear.

‘It was all like it was happening again for real. I felt every blow, the fire. . their bodies. . ’

Mansur’s eyes looked lined and heavy and he shook his head. ‘You have a heavy burden on your shoulders, lad. It is time you shared it with me. Come, let us have a drink and talk.’

The hearth room was pleasantly warm, the fire freshly loaded with logs. A rather grumpy Maria had prepared them each a cup of salep, a hot milky drink spiced with cinnamon and orchid root, and then trudged back to her bed to leave them alone. Apion had told Mansur everything, eyes hanging on the gentle flames as he did so. The old man had remained quiet while the story was told, even during the long pauses as Apion composed himself. As the grim tale progressed he found his words flooding out like a river, the images flitting before his mind’s eye.

‘I was dead. I swear death took me.’ He shook his head, gazing into the speckled surface of his salep. He took a sip, the creamy sweetness of the drink coating his throat, comforting him. ‘When I woke, my wound was cleaned and dressed and I was resting in a shaded dell, way up on the hills, miles from the farmhouse, a pleasant breeze cooling my skin. Everything was silent apart from a lone eagle calling somewhere high above. I did not feel the pain of my wound at first. My mind was blissfully free of the memories of what had just happened.’

Mansur frowned, confused. ‘The slave traders had found you and bandaged you?’

Apion shook his head, his face wrinkling. ‘If they had found me then, in the smoking ruins of my house, I would not be alive. No, only a woman was there; silver hair and eyes that were pure white — she must have been blind. She was old, older even than you,’ he paused a moment, checking to see if he had caused offence. Mansur issued a weary smile so he continued. ‘She dug at roots in the earth and hummed a tune to herself. Her voice was comforting to me in my state, something about it made me think of Mother. Then she came over and removed my dressing. I couldn’t look at the wound but she rubbed the root against my flesh and it took the pain away. I asked her who she was and she just laughed. Not at me, just a little laugh as if she had remembered a joke.’

Mansur was captivated. ‘Did she tell you how she had got you to this place?’

‘No, but she spoke to me while she reapplied my dressing. She said the burning timber that fell on me had saved my life, cauterising the flesh.’ He stopped and frowned. ‘She gave me my crutch and told me it was time for me to carry on with my life, but she had a single piece of advice for me.’

Mansur leant forward, nodding.

‘She said I would choose a path. A path that leads to conflict and pain. She told me to go anywhere I wanted. Anywhere except. . home.’

‘Where she found you?’

Apion nodded.

‘Then you left the dell,’ Mansur rubbed his moustache, imagining the scene, ‘where did you go next?’

‘Well I found myself hobbling on my crutch a long way from those hills. The pain came back gradually as I made my way back.’

‘Back?’

‘I went home, Mansur, despite what she told me.’ A tear forked from his eye. ‘The place was a charred mound of rubble. I kept looking at it, trying to see it, as if the ruin was not real. I spent days there, just sitting, staring into the ash. When the slave wagon came by, I barely noticed them as they shackled me. They packed my wound with salt, knocked me unconscious and took me into the city. I woke in a cellar, insects running through my hair, rats biting at my flesh. I survived in that place for over a month until the trader took his slaves to market. That’s when I ended up in the inn; one stinking cellar for another. Every day for the best part of a year they would beat me, spit on me, yet all I could see was the blackness of the ash. All I could think of was righting the wrong.’

Mansur held his gaze, the old man’s eyes were red-rimmed. ‘It’s over now, Apion. You are here and you are safe under my roof. Perhaps the old woman who tended to you was right. As dreadful as what you have just told me is, perhaps you should try not dwell on what happened at your old home. I realise that what I am suggesting would be far from easy, but to let go of this could be to give yourself a chance to live a happy life? Ask yourself what your parents would have wanted of their son; a blackened individual, joyless and bitter, or the boy they knew, the boy they loved and who loved them back?’

Apion looked at him solemnly and shook his head. ‘You speak wise words, Mansur, but I can’t even remember who I used to be before that night.’ He had tried so hard to remember the past as it once was: Mother preparing a meal of stew and bread for Father’s return from campaign. When he arrived, dressed in a leather klibanion, iron helmet and boots, Apion saw him as a model kataphractos. Then the three of them would spend the time outside of campaigning season tilling and sowing the modest farmland. Hard work, but happy times. Yet the memories were becoming flatter and more hazy over time.

Mansur’s face saddened at this and he gazed into the fire. ‘I know where you are, lad. Loss; it takes a long time to come to terms with it. Indeed it drives you to seek answers from the darkest of places before you finally make peace. . ’ his words trailed off, his voice breaking up.

Apion noticed that Mansur’s eyes glistened now. ‘Your wife?’

‘Ten years ago,’ Mansur spoke flatly, his grey crop shimmering with sweat, his face stony as he gazed into the fire.

Apion nodded. So Maria would never have known her mother. Suddenly he felt heart-sad for her. Mansur’s grief was there but not there, like its rawness had been chipped away and polished down to a smooth burden that he bore without question. He pulled at his prayer rope and wondered at his next words, whether Mansur would appreciate them.

‘Does it help to know she is with God now?’

Mansur did not look round from the fire but his face hardened a little. ‘God, if such a thing exists, makes our lives a constant struggle.’ He lifted his salep and supped thoughtfully.

Apion frowned. ‘You must have loved God once to say such a thing?’

Mansur turned to him and nodded. ‘When you lose what is dearest to you, you have a choice: worship or reject. I have made my choice.’

‘My mother and father, they were Christian. I am Christian. But, and I don’t know if I am betraying them in saying this, I can’t see why God could let what happened to them happen,’ his eyes darted around the flagstones as he searched for his feelings, then he looked up to Mansur.

‘That’s what makes me doubt it all, lad,’ Mansur replied. ‘If God created man, then why are we so foul and blinded? We live our lives for a few handfuls of seasons and we spend most of them making mistakes, terrible mistakes. Only when we’re grey and withered do we realise where we should have turned and when.’ He shrugged his shoulders and lifted one side of his mouth wryly. ‘By then, our children have grown into their own cycle of pig-headedness, doomed to blunder on until we are all merely dust.’ A log snapped in the fire.