Gordon Doherty - Strategos - Born in the Borderlands

Then the memory was washed away with the image of the dark door. This time it did not rush towards him. No, this time he beckoned it forward. He reached out for it, his scarred and knotted arm with the Haga emblem fitting perfectly over the arm in the image. Apart from one thing.

He drew his hand closer, he saw the prayer rope flicker to the white band of skin in the image. That God could let this happen all over again sickened him to his soul.

Something inside him snapped.

In silence, he pulled the prayer rope until it ripped free of his wrist, then threw it to the ground.

With that, he leapt on his Thessallian and heeled the gelding into a fierce gallop. He would not rest until he had hunted them down.

All of them.

‘He was my good friend. Let me help dig,’ Kutalmish pleaded.

Nasir’s palms were blistered and his eyes stung with sweat but he waved his father away without reply and continued scooping earth from the spot where old Mansur was to be buried.

‘You are a strong-headed boy, Nasir; you are turning out like your brother was before he died. Why did you react to young Apion as though he was the perpetrator of this vile act?’

Nasir stopped digging and turned to his father, bathed in the pale orange of the coming dawn. ‘How can you defend him? Bracchus and his men came here to collect a debt of blood from him. He knew they would come here and he had a choice to stop this.’

‘Everything is black and white with you, isn’t it?’

‘I know that I am honouring Mansur by forever ridding this valley of Apion.’

‘What does she think of this?’

Nasir bristled; Maria lay in his bed, being nursed back from near-death by the old woman with the milky eyes and healing hands. ‘Maria should not be concerned with him anymore.’

‘So you did not tell him she lives? You let him ride off with a weight of guilt he does not deserve?’

‘It’s a blessing that I didn’t cut his throat from ear to ear.’

‘My, Giyath shines through in you, indeed, son.’

Nasir glared at his father, the old man looking frailer than ever, eyes red from weeping. ‘He’ll use his rage, he’ll thunder off and find the bastards who carried out this act and slaughtered his parents, I’ve gifted him that rage.’

Kutalmish frowned then whispered. ‘Forcing a man to face Bracchus is no gift.’

Nasir scowled and made to reply, then stopped as he noticed his father close his eyes and shake his head. ‘Father?’

‘A dark truth has been hidden, son.’

Nasir climbed from the grave. ‘Speak!’ He barked.

Kutalmish looked to the shrouded form of Mansur’s body. ‘Forgive me, old friend,’ he whispered, ‘but our oath was until death.’

‘Father, what do you know?’ Nasir realised he had his father by the scruff of his robe.

‘Apion will destroy Bracchus, son. Bracchus is a vile and dark creature who has brought misery upon our lives. Yet Apion will hate Mansur even more than Bracchus if he finds out the truth. A truth he was never meant to discover.’

‘How could he hate Mansur, how could he hate him as much as Bracchus? Bracchus killed his parents!’

Kutalmish’s features fell stony. ‘Bracchus was not alone that night.’

Nasir stood back, wide-eyed, then he frowned, glancing to the form of Mansur’s body. ‘Mansur? Never!’

Kutalmish closed his eyes, tears escaping and dancing down his lined cheeks. ‘He was a troubled man for a long time, Nasir.’

‘How could he be involved in killing Apion’s family? Bracchus is a black-hearted dog. Mansur was anything but!’

‘And maybe one day, long past, Bracchus was also a good-hearted soul. Just as, that one night, Mansur was as black-hearted as Bracchus. Life changes people, Nasir, brutally.’

‘What happened?’ Nasir demanded.

Kutalmish mouthed a prayer and then looked his son in the eye. ‘Apion’s father was the cavalry commander that led the charge on our caravan, Nasir. He was responsible for the death of Mansur’s wife and your mother too,’ his words trailed off with a sob.

Nasir’s mind raced. His hatred of Apion swirled with this revelation.

‘His father made a mistake, a big one. He saw Mansur and I, riding armed, took our caravan for a Seljuk supply train. . and attacked. He realised his mistake and tried to call off his men, but by then it was too late. Since that day blackness welled in Mansur’s heart, it was all I could do to quell it in mine.’

‘I cannot imagine Mansur as a murderer,’ Nasir shook his head, then looked up to his father. ‘Apion told me of that night. He spoke of one masked figure that stood back from the slaughter of his parents. Could that have been Mansur?’

‘Mansur came to me that night, his mind in pieces. He never spoke of his part in the events of the night. Yet, when he fell into a troubled, exhausted sleep, I lifted his scimitar from its sheath. .’

Nasir’s eyes widened.

‘. . the blade was clean, Nasir.’

‘Then he took no part?’

‘He was there, Nasir. Whether or not he took part in the butchering of Apion’s family is secondary.’

‘But Mansur tried to do the right thing, to make amends — that’s why he brought Apion back to the farm, isn’t it? Yet it all came back on the old man like a blade,’ Nasir snarled, ‘the Byzantine people are poison!’

‘Nasir, it was not the Byzantines who started this. It is simply the way of man. Just as the healer lady said when she brought Maria to us. Man will destroy man. ’

‘No, our people are different.’

Kutalmish’s head fell to his chest. ‘That is what Mansur said, all those years ago, on the night he lost his wife.’

Nasir’s eyes burned. ‘The difference is that I will not yield! I will fight these people until their empire is no more!’

Inside the officers’ quarters in Argyroupolis, Bracchus and the bearded, cloaked man glared at one another in the guttering candlelight. The imperial agente had rode from the west, escorted by fifty tagma-quality kataphractoi, breezed into the town then beckoned Bracchus and dismissed the guards and the strategos with a flash of the imperial seal on his papers. Once they were alone, the man’s message had riled Bracchus to the core. You are to go east, far to the east , the agente had purred.

‘You effectively want me to walk into the Sultan’s heartland, into the lion’s jaws?’ Bracchus reiterated, stifling a gasp of derision.

‘The emperor wills it, Agente Bracchus. He granted you your power and so you must obey him.’

Bracchus struggled to suppress his rage. Here he stood, on the cusp of ultimate power, already the master agente of the eastern borders, and one step from becoming a strategos. Yet this man sought to take it from him. His chest tightened as he remembered the last time anyone had taken from him, his mother’s words echoing in his mind. Before he realised it, he had already clasped a hand to the hilt of the dagger strapped to his thigh. ‘I am only too well aware of my duty to the emperor,’ he hissed, eyeing the man’s jugular, within easy swiping distance.’

‘Then be aware that he can take your power from you, as fast as. . the swipe of a dagger.’

Bracchus’ hand froze as he noticed the agente’s eyes on the movement of his arm. The man spoke a bitter truth: the emperor could turn every agente against Bracchus on a whim. He gulped back the impotent fury he felt. Only when the emperor was at his mercy would he be truly untouchable. Perhaps, he mused, he should play this game. ‘Very well,’ he spoke evenly. ‘If this mission is so crucial then perhaps the emperor will take requests for certain things that will aid my future service when I return.’