Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart (4 page)

The skutatoi shoved the three captured akhi up the stairs onto the battlements and Apion followed. There, he looked to the east. The first orange of dawn licked at the horizon, framing the plume of dust that stretched from the mouth of the collapsed Seljuk tunnel. He saw that Nasir’s men were in disarray. For the briefest of moments, he considered the possibility that these three prisoners could live beyond today. Then the chanting behind him fell to silence, and the dry cackle from behind the dark door rattled through his thoughts as if mocking him for his naiveté.

He felt all eyes upon him: the soldiers of the thema, looking to their strategos; the people of the town, desperate for a show of authority. Apion looked over his shoulder and shared a glance with his tourmarchai. Sha, Blastares and Procopius offered him stony looks, knowing what had to come next. Without ceremony, Apion drew the dagger from his belt and wrapped a forearm around the chest of the middle of the three akhi, while the two skutatoi did likewise with the remaining pair.

Apion composed himself. The Seljuk prisoner had been stripped of his weapons and his skin was black with soot, his eyes wide with terror. He could feel the man’s heart thundering through his horn vest. Apion felt pity pawing at his chest for an instant, then shook the emotion clear and steeled himself.

As the sun slowly breached the horizon, he felt its warmth on his face. He leaned in to whisper in the man’s ear, speaking in the Seljuk tongue. ‘It was a brave act to march into that tunnel, and I commend you for that. But I cannot release you, for my people would strip the flesh from your bones before you even reached the gates. And I cannot send you into slavery, for I know only too well the horrors a man can suffer at the hands of a Byzantine master.’ With that, he pressed the dagger against the man’s throat. ‘Forgive me.’

‘Your god will
never forgive you,’ the Seljuk croaked as the two skutatoi either side despatched their prisoners swiftly.

Apion hesitated for but a moment, his eyes falling to the white band of skin around his wrist. At once, his heart hardened. ‘Tell me,’ he whispered into the akhi’s ear. ‘Who is my god?’

With a swift wrench of his wrist, it was over. The Seljuk’s hot blood flooded across his arm and he caught the man’s weight, lowering his body to the battlements. He crouched there for a moment, shame creeping over his heart. Then he looked out to the enemy lines, already being marshalled into position for a frontal assault on the eastern walls. As the Seljuk war horns wailed out, he sought out the figure of Nasir, standing in their midst.

What choice did you give me?

***

All along the Seljuk lines, laments rang out at seeing their comrades executed. Eyes turned this way and that, then, almost universally, they looked to Nasir. They looked at his mutilated features with a mixture of horror and expectation.

The blood pounded in Nasir’s ears. He looked along his readied lines as the rising sun bathed his ranks from behind. The gentle heat stung like fire on the melted flesh of his face.

‘Ready the artillery, ready the men. This town will be razed into the dust by noon!’

At this, a raucous cheer filled the air.

Nasir raised his left hand.

‘Catapults, ready!’

At this, the crew around the six bulky timber frames groaned, taking the strain, bending the stone-throwing arms back.

‘Ready!’ they cried.

Then Nasir raised his right hand.

‘Trebuchets, ready!’

‘Ready!’ The crews around the two hulking devices responded, fifteen pairs of men straining at the end of the ropes, holding the giant timber throwing arms almost at their full stretch.

Nasir’s brow dipped and he threw both hands forward, towards the walls of Kryapege.

‘Destroy them!’

A deafening cheer filled the plain as the two sets of crews pulled down on their devices to gain every last morsel of extra power before letting loose their load of rocks.

This was the fatal mistake.

All along the lines of the Seljuk artillery, sharp cracking rang out as the tensed ropes split. The ropes whipped up from the devices and the throwing arms spluttered, dropping their payload or hurling it weakly or wildly askew. One crew was struck with the lashing ropes of their device, the lead crewman’s eyes dashed out by the ferocity of the thrashing tether. Another could only gawp in terror as the massive boulder on his catapult hopped up just a few feet before coming down upon him, crushing him like an egg.

Only one crew’s device remained intact – having been a fraction slower than their comrades. The lead crewman examined the ropes, then spun to his leader. ‘The ropes have been half sawn!’

Nasir’s eyes bulged as he looked across his line of siege engines, hanging limply like snapped branches after a storm. Then he yelled back at the men of the last trebuchet; ‘Loose your weapon!’

‘It will fall short of the battlements,’ the man started.

‘Do it!’ Nasir bellowed.

The man nodded, then barked his crew into loosing at less than full stretch. The timber arm swung round and hurled a jagged limestone block towards the walls. The distant Byzantines on the battlements to the right of the eastern gate watched in silence, only scattering moments before the missile smashed into the base of the walls below them. Dry and in extreme disrepair, this section of wall shuddered and crumbled. The few sentries too slow to disperse toppled with the stone and were crushed, their screams drowned out by the thunderous collapse. As the dust cleared, the lower town of Kryapege was revealed through the gaping fissure – wider than any other on the decrepit walls.

At this, a roar erupted from the watching Seljuk ranks.

Nasir drew his scimitar and raised it overhead. ‘Forward!’

The akhi burst into life, their boots drumming on the dust, spears levelled, eyes peering over shield rims. The camel archers followed closely, forming a thin line behind the infantry. Screening the rear, seven hundred strong, were the ghazi riders who heeled their mounts into a gentle canter, their faces etched with anticipation as they picked arrows from their full quivers and
nocked
them to their bows. Nearly two thousand men washed towards Kryapege’s walls.

Nasir leapt onto his mare and raced to the head of the ghazis. ‘With me!’ he cried to a group of forty of the riders, waving them to the front. ‘Put your bows away, today you will use your swords and lances as we drive the Byzantines onto the spears of our akhi.’ He twisted to the rest of the riders. ‘The rest of you, stay to the rear and let the Byzantines feel the pain of an arrow storm!’ he roared, punching the air.

‘Allahu Akbar!’ the Seljuk ranks cried out in reply, then burst into a chorus of ululating battle cries.

Nasir led his forty riders to the fore. He scanned the battlements and was pleased with what he saw. There were even fewer Byzantine soldiers than he had anticipated. The precious kataphractoi riders were penned inside the town now and could not use their might on the open plain to threaten his army. There were barely fifty men stretched across the walls – all toxotai. Then, for the second time that morning, doubt gripped his gut like an iron fist. The Byzantines were few indeed – too few. One toxotes atop the gatehouse seemed to be watching their advance intently, and he was gripping something – a red rag. Then the man held it in the air and swiftly swiped it from side to side.

At that moment, Nasir noticed something from the corner of his eye. He twisted in his saddle to look back over his left shoulder; behind and to the left of his advancing ranks, the red dust of the ground itself puckered. A circle as large as a grand yurt crumbled away. His eyes locked on this unearthly sight. The Seljuk advance slowed, men looking over their shoulders likewise. Then he heard the men on his right flank burst into a babble of confusion. His head snapped round; the same spectacle lay behind that flank too. The men looked to the two gaping holes in the ground behind them and then to their leader. Nasir realised what was to rise from those pits, but a heartbeat too late.

Like dead warriors rising, a clutch of Byzantine kataphractoi riders poured from each of these tunnels that had been dug from inside the town. There were barely twenty in each party, but every one of them, horse and rider, was clad in iron. The riders were crowned by gleaming conical helmets, plumed with coloured feathers. Their faces were hidden behind triple-layered mail veils, their bodies were wrapped in iron lamellar with vivid cloaks draped on their backs and their arms were encased in splinted greaves and plated gloves. Composite bows and spathion blades were strapped to their backs while curved
paramerion
blades and viciously flanged maces and war hammers hung from their belts. Even the mounts looked demonic, wearing iron scale coats and plate facemasks, breath clouding before them in the last of the dawn freshness. These two wings of kataphractoi lowered in their saddles and levelled their lengthy kontarion spears, decorated with a knotted triangle of crimson cloth near the tip, held on one arm that was protected by a small round shield strapped to the bicep. Then they charged for the ghazi rear like two sharpened talons.

‘
Nobiscum Deus!
’

Nasir stood on his stirrups and twisted to bellow at the ghazis. ‘Turn!’ he cried. Then he realised that this group of riders had never been this far west before, and had never faced kataphractoi.

The ghazis to the rear at first seemed bemused by the hubris of this handful of charging Byzantine riders, whom they outnumbered hugely. They simply raised their shields, expecting the riders to hurl missiles and then peel away at the last moment. But as the kataphractoi thundered to within fifty paces, the ghazis realised the charge was no feint and they jolted into action, some turning nocked bows upon the Byzantine riders. With a chorus of twanging bowstrings, a cloud of arrows hissed through the short distance between the Seljuk rear and the kataphractoi. Cries rang out, shoulders were thrown back where arms were pierced, and a cloud of crimson puffed into the air where one rider was felled – an arrow through the eye. That apart, the kataphractoi had weathered the storm and were now only paces away.

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.