Gordon Doherty - Strategos - Born in the Borderlands

‘Come within three stadia and you’ll get a bolt through your chest,’ Procopius nudged Apion with an elbow. ‘Finely constructed aren’t they? Could do with a couple of trebuchets too, even just to scare the shit out of them, eh?’

Apion nodded at the old soldier’s words; the giant stone throwers, the city takers as they were called, were capable of hurling man-sized rocks over eight hundred feet. Almost four times the height of a man and with a throwing arm the same height again, they could shatter men and walls alike, but they were rarely brought out for a field battle given their monstrous weight, questionable accuracy and lack of manoeuvrability, even when deconstructed.

Then the ballistae fired, bolts whistling through the air and troughing into the ground between the Byzantine front lines and the Seljuks, sending puffs of dust from the earth where they landed.

‘Let’s see how brave they are now, eh?’ Blastares said.

‘Aye but let’s hope first they don’t have any long-range devices of their own,’ Procopius countered.

‘I suppose,’ Blastares grudgingly backed down, fleetingly eyeing the skyline for any sign of approaching missiles.

Apion offered a sly grin at Procopius; not many could shut Blastares up with one line. Then he noticed a group of some fifteen unarmoured men shuffling forward, each stooped under the weight of the iron cylinders they carried, flexible piping coiling from the tip of the cylinders to a handle on the side, some kind of pump for whatever was inside. Apion assumed they were some kind of devices to aid the ballistae. When the men carrying them forked out to stand not on the front of the square with the artillery, but on the flanks, one just to the side of his own bandon, he cocked an eyebrow.

‘You’ve never seen the Greek fire before?’ Procopius asked. ‘Because when you have seen it, you’ll never forget.’

The old soldier’s words were drowned out by the gallop of the Byzantine scout riders, who hared out into no-man’s land, unarmoured, bearing only a clutch of spears with strips of purple cloth tied to their base. One by one, the test missiles were located and marked by a spear.

‘How much do you reckon he’s holding back?’ Procopius squinted over at the strategos.

‘Holding back?’ Apion asked.

Procopius smirked wryly. ‘I reckon there’s another hundred, hundred and fifty feet in those devices if we get the right tension.’

‘I pray you’re right,’ Sha muttered, his attention taken by the sudden rippling on the Seljuk horizon. ‘They’re coming!’

‘And we’re waiting,’ Apion spoke evenly. Then the Seljuk war horns moaned like an army of lost spirits. Apion’s skin rippled and the ground started to shake as if a thousand titans were coming for them. The ethereal blur on the horizon sharpened and the closer the mass came, the more ferocious it appeared. He glanced along his ranks: the skutatoi were braced, faces etched with doubt. A murmur of fear rippled through the air. This would be his first full-scale battle and as an officer too. Doubt surfaced in his mind and his tongue shrivelled in his mouth. At the same time he tried to resist squirming as his bladder seemed to have swollen suddenly, pressing, demanding to be relieved.

‘Ha, not so funny now, is it?’ Blastares whispered, leaning in to him. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. By the time you’ve got blades swinging in your face, it’ll be the least of your worries. Besides, one of their lot might be kind enough to open your bladder for you.’

He turned to Blastares and saw the grin of nervous excitement and determination on the big soldier’s face. Hearing words of encouragement being shouted by komes’ up and down the front line, he realised that the rest of his bandon needed to feel ready like Blastares. He turned to them and to a man, their eyes were fixed on him, expectant. He gulped back the terror that tried to catch his tongue, took a breath deep in his lungs and drew his eyes across their number, then bellowed. ‘Stay strong in your hearts, men. The Falcon of the proud Seljuks comes to show us his power, but we have our mighty strategos,’ he stabbed his scimitar towards Cydones, ‘the legend of Chaldia!’

Blastares gripped his shoulder and punched a fist into the air. ‘And we have the Haga! The ferocious two-headed eagle flies with us!’

Apion’s bandon erupted in a cheer, rousing and far louder than the surrounding units. Then the banda flanking his also erupted in a cheer. ‘ Stra-te-gos, Stra-te-gos! ’ Was mixed with chants of ‘ Ha-ga! ’

‘Just remember,’ Blastares added with a wink to Apion on one side and Sha on the other, ‘I’ve got your flanks covered. You cover mine, eh?’

Apion flashed a grin in return but the burly soldier’s words were drowned out by the Seljuk advance, as the war horns died the trilling battle cry of the Seljuk infantry filled in with an even greater noise. The Seljuks were still within a fair distance of the outer artillery range markers when another buccina wail came from Cydones’ cavalry wing. At once the artillery units buzzed around their devices and, like an angry snake, the line of ballistae recoiled across the square front. To a man, the Byzantine square held their breath. Then the Seljuk infantry centre was riven with a series of troughs, the dust thrown up tinged with crimson and the air filled with screaming.

‘And again!’ Procopius yelled, bashing his sword hilt on his shield. The rest of the ranks around them joined in the chorus of celebration. But when Apion glanced to Procopius, the old soldier’s face had returned to its usual puckered expression.

‘Procopius?’

The old soldier leaned into his ear. ‘We’ll take encouragement where we can get it, but Tugrul isn’t that stupid. They’re testing our true range at the expense of a few hundred cheap infantrymen.’

Apion squinted until he could see the battered Seljuk front ranks: barely armed men, similar to the Byzantine light infantry. Some clutched daggers, some were empty handed. Behind them, the glimmering ranks of iron-clad soldiers were untouched and safely out of range.

‘How can they fight for their leader when he treats them like that?’ Apion barked through the dust cloud that whipped back over the thema ranks.

‘They’ve got no choice. Beggars, brigands and the like,’ Sha said. ‘They run forward, they may live. They run back, they will die. Tugrul demands, they obey.’ Volley after volley of ballista bolts pummelled the wretches and the sun was dulled momentarily by the dust thrown up. The thick ranks of Seljuk light infantry were already in chaos. Those who chose to continue forward slowed as their fleeing colleagues hared past them in the opposite direction. At the same time, the Seljuk archers loosed volley after volley of arrows into the deserters. Chaos reigned.

‘Bastards!’ Blastares spat. ‘A few less mouths to feed, that’s all they were brought here for.’

Apion wondered at the men of the light infantry in the Byzantine ranks, currently tucked inside the skutatoi outer wall. On another day would they not have been committed to death in the same fashion? Mansur’s words echoed in his mind. These are the choices of the strategos.

There was then a lull until the dust cloud swept past them. The cream of the Seljuk ranks stood, still cupped in a crescent like a viper’s jaws around the rough crater of the longest lying ballista strikes. The Byzantine cheers fell flat and the plain was still and silent. Then, suddenly, the silence was shattered with the terrible wail of the war horns and raucous jeering of the Seljuk ranks. The Byzantine buccinators filled their lungs and blasted a howling response from their instruments. The Chi-Rho banner bearing the image of the Virgin Mary was hoisted high in the air and, to a man, the thema cried out in defiance.