Strategos: Island in the Storm (2 page)

Part 1:
1069 AD
Two years earlier . . .

1.
The Rogue of the Black Fort

Psidias the tax collector was an eternally sullen man. The kind of man who would scowl at the sun for being too hot, then curse any cloud that came across it for blocking out the light. In his twenties, he had assumed he would become more at ease with himself as he aged, but now – at forty – he was more irritable than ever. He swept his cloak across his rounded shoulders in an attempt to stave off the chill February wind, his shapeless nose wrinkling in discomfort as the reins chafed on his palms and the juddering wagon pummelled his already numb buttocks. The rugged valleys and mountain passes of Colonea usually made for tedious progress on the route back to the west, but this time they seemed to be making better ground. He laughed bitterly at his momentary optimism. Almost certainly, their swiftness was down to the scant takings and the lightness of the wagon, he mused, glancing over his shoulder from the driver’s berth at the half-empty coin sacks. The populace was thin and scattered in this eastern
thema
of Byzantium, many of the taxpaying farmers and townsfolk having deserted the region for areas less prone to Seljuk raids.

He wondered how the poor takings might reflect on him, and his belly began to churn as he imagined his beaky-nosed superiors scrutinising him, questioning him. He looked up to his escort of four
kursores,
riding a few feet before the wagon, wearing felt caps, iron klibanion jackets and carrying spears and shields. These imperial scout riders had performed their jobs, they would receive no scorn when they saw the wagon safely back to the imperial treasury. His anxiety turned to jealousy and he scowled at the riders, only for the hooves of the nearest mount to throw up a cloud of dust that blinded him and coated his mouth with grit. Retching and wiping at his eyes, he made to roar at the rider. But the cry caught in his throat. For the offending kursoris had galloped ahead, his cap falling off as he hoisted his spear. The other three riders rushed ahead with him, all four looking up at the nearby scree-strewn and shrub-dotted rise.

Psidias squinted, leaning out from the driver’s berth to look up with them. A shadow loomed up there. No, many shadows. A wall of figures. Iron horsemen. Psidias gulped, his guts at once melting. ‘Seljuk raiders?
No!
’ he wailed.

But then the kursores before him relaxed their spears and broke out in relieved laughter. Psidias frowned, then noticed the garb of these unexpected horsemen: iron conical helms with broad nose guards. Mail hauberks and kite shields. Norman mercenaries in Byzantine service. Men who were paid handsomely to protect the outlying
themata
. Twenty of them. One led them down the rise. This one was assured-looking, with wisps of blonde hair licking from the lip of his helm. A confident smile grew on his round, red-cheeked face, and his cerulean eyes fell upon the wagon.

‘Crispin, of the borderland
tagma
, Lord of the Black Fort of Mavrokastro,’ the rider introduced himself to the kursores in his western twang. His tone was haughty but his voice carried well, as if amplified by the walls of the pass. Psidias noticed how his eyes darted back to the wagon as he spoke.

‘You are escorting the tax levy from Colonea?’ Crispin asked.

‘Aye,’ the lead kursoris replied.

‘Then you can return to your homes, your beds, your wives,’ Crispin grinned. ‘My men and I will see the taxes safely to the west.’

Psidias heard these jovial words and frowned. They curdled with the ice-cold glint in the man’s eyes.

The lead kursoris shared a similar frown with his three men. ‘I . . . I’m not sure we can do that, sir,’ the kursoris replied. ‘We have orders to see the wagon through to the Thema of Cappadocia.’ He held up a wax-sealed scroll.

‘Ah, I understand. But if you give me the scroll I will see the wagon safely to that land and I’ll make sure that your commander knows you acted appropriately.’ Crispin held out a chubby hand, waving his fingers in expectation of the scroll.

Psidias felt his throat dry as he watched the kursores’ faces darken. At the same time, the Norman lancers with Crispin exchanged furtive glances. And Crispin himself lost his hearty demeanour. Now his face matched his glacial eyes. He reached out and snatched at the scroll. But the lead kursoris held onto it. The pair grappled at an end of the scroll each, noses inches apart. ‘You know what disobeying an order from a superior entails, don’t you? You bloody fool? The lash will lick every last morsel of skin from your back!’

The lead kursoris’ face had drained of colour, but he did not let go. ‘An order to commandeer tax revenue would come in the form of another scroll, sir,’ he replied through gritted teeth. ‘And I see no such thing.’

Crispin glared at the rider, then, like the passing of a storm cloud, his face relaxed and he let go of the scroll, leaning back in his saddle with a guffawing laugh. ‘Ah, the simplest of misunderstandings!’ he beamed. His riders laughed with him. The kursores did not. ‘My orders, of course. Here,’ he said, rummaging at something under his cloak.

Psidias saw what happened next in a blur. Instead of a leaf of paper, Crispin pulled out a curved dagger. The blade swept up and across the kursoris’ neck, and a hot, crimson spray leapt from his torn throat. Gawping, Psidias heard the panicked cries of the other three riders as they were skewered and punched from their saddles on the end of Norman lances. There was a moment of near-silence, with just the skirling afternoon wind and the fading
clop-clop
of the fleeing, riderless kursores’ mounts. Then the Norman riders looked to the wagon. They eyed Psidias like ravenous gulls.

Psidias grappled the wagon horses’ reins and tried to lash them into a gallop, only for something to flash before him and shudder into his chest. A Norman spear shaft. He looked at the blood haemorrhaging from the massive wound. There was pain for just a few moments, then a numbness raced around his body. He lifted his head with great effort, seeing Crispin dismount and approach, a broad grin etched on his face.

Ah,
he thought as his life slipped away,
I should have learned to smile more often.

***

Apion hauled himself up and onto the highest branch of the pine, needles showering him, their sharp scent spicing the warm May air. He cocked an apologetic eyebrow to a nestling woodlark disturbed from its slumber, then shaded his eyes from the morning sun to cast his gaze across the land. Here, at the edge of this clearing, he could see for miles. The forest roof – a verdant jumble of ash, poplar, walnut and pine – stretched for some distance. The woods were surrounded by the craggy, burnt-gold and shrub-dotted lands of Colonea and overlooked in the east by the sheer, black-basalt hillside that stood taller than any other. It was practically a pillar of rock, with just a narrow, winding path offering a route to the top. Perched up there, like a rotting but defiant tooth, stood the Black Fortress of Mavrokastro.

He swept his gaze across the rippling heat haze around the fortress, but saw nothing. No movement bar a few lone trade wagons. Then he saw a glint of silver atop the battlements.
Come out, you cur!

Crispin and his Norman lancers had been pillaging the imperial tax and grain wagons and terrorising local villages with little reprisal since winter. They had come to these lands as allies, taking the emperor’s coin and his grant of the nigh-on impregnable fortress in exchange for their service in the border tagmata. They had behaved well and fought nobly at first. Then Crispin had decided to carve out his own little empire.

Stifling a sigh, Apion descended the pine to a chorus of cracking twigs, then thudded to the clearing floor below. Here, a
bandon
of his thematic ranks tried to keep themselves busy. The sounds of chattering and the chopping and hewing of wood echoed around him, while the scent of millet stew and roasting mutton spiced the air. He had led these hundred and seven men from his homeland of Chaldia a week ago, marching from the northern coastal city of Trebizond. They had marched at haste and without complaint, leaving the lush greenery of northern Chaldia behind, ascending into the dryer, hotter highlands of the central Anatolian plateau before crossing into this neighbouring thema.

‘Nothing?’ a baritone voice asked. He twisted to see Sha, the coal-skinned Malian
tourmarches
who had been his second in command ever since he had attained the position as the Strategos of Chaldia. At thirty-nine, Sha was five years Apion’s senior. His shorn scalp had grown in enough on this march to betray patches of grey and the corners of his eyes were well-lined.

Apion shook his head, brushing the pine needles from his tunic and flicking them from his boots. ‘Crispin has grown wary since he was last caught on the field with his men.’

‘Not that he came to any harm!’ Sha snorted as they strolled amongst the men.

Indeed, the small army sent to tackle Crispin some months ago had caught the Norman and his full force of some six hundred lancers, camped on the flatlands to the north. The imperial army had attempted to sneak upon the camp at dawn while Crispin and his men still slept, hoping for a rout. Then disaster had struck, as – part-blinded by the gloom – the imperial soldiers had tripped on tent pegs and fallen on hidden caltrops, before the Normans rose from their tents and came at them, swords flashing. It had been a rout indeed. Despite seeing off that force, Crispin had since been careful to ride out with just small, swift packs of riders – never more than seventy or so – striking the tax wagons and villages and sweeping back into his formidable stronghold to tally his plunder.

‘We can only keep a constant vigil, Sha. Crispin will tire of inactivity soon enough.’

‘Just how much plunder does a man need?’ Sha scowled.

Apion stopped by the well at the centre of the clearing and drew himself a cup of water from the bucket hanging there. ‘Plunder might have been his purpose at first, Sha, but you saw that grain caravan.’ His mind flashed with images of the gory stain that remained of the wagon drivers. The grain itself had been left untouched. ‘He has come to crave the lustre of blood.’

The pair sat down by the well and fell silent. Sha pulled out a tattered map, plucking a stalk of wheat and twisting it between his teeth as he studied it. Apion fished out a well-read letter from his purse. He read it over once more and frowned. Lady Eudokia’s handwriting threatened time and again to drag his mind back to that brief and passionate moment they had shared, just before she had wed the emperor, Romanus Diogenes. Indeed, that she had dabbed her sweet-scented lotions upon it was more distracting still.
Focus, man
, he scolded himself, taking a sip of water from his cup and reading;

Stay vigilant, Apion, for Psellos seems to know of the emperor’s every move. You must march to the Black Fortress in the lands of Colonea, where the foul advisor’s coins have bought the venal hearts of our border forces. Then I beg you to muster every man you can and hasten to my husband’s side on his campaign to Lake Van. Only there can you shield him from Psellos’ further ruses . . .

He looked up at the cloudless morning sky and thought of the black-hearted Psellos and the Doukas family back in Constantinople, of their seemingly bottomless vaults of gold, of their insatiable desire to depose Emperor Romanus and take the throne for themselves, heedless to the toll of lives. Doukas was a swine indeed, but Psellos? Psellos was the jackal-god, so blinded by his quest for power that he would happily set the empire to flame just to be master of its blackened corpse. And Crispin was just the latest in a line of many who had taken Psellos’ gold.
So I’m chasing the tail of the snake when the head bears the fangs?

He rubbed his temples as if trying to massage the thoughts away, then looked over to Sha. The Malian scoured the map intently, but every so often he would pause in his thoughts, trace a finger over the leather bracelet he wore on his wrist and let a faint smile touch his lips. Apion found the smile infectious. Sha had just a year ago been presented with a gift of slaves – a mother and two children – from a trader the Malian had rescued from brigands. Sha had freed the slaves that same day, offering them his home if they would tend to his farm while he was away. Months later, there was no doubting that Sha had found love with the mother, and fulfilment with her children. This threw his thoughts back to the emptiness that awaited him in his own home – the silent, empty keep on Trebizond’s citadel hill. He folded up the letter. Memories of his dalliance with Eudokia were but a spark to reignite those of his true, lost love.

Maria.

With his mother and father long ago slain and no children to call his own, he was alone. Even Mansur, the old Seljuk farmer who took him in as a boy, had been snatched from him at the end of a blade. And until last winter, he had long thought Mansur’s daughter, Maria, walked with them in the land of the dead. Until the crone had come to him.

You told me she lives
, he mouthed into the ether as if addressing the absent crone, one finger sliding into his purse, stroking the lock of sleek, dark hair in there.
But you cannot tell me where, and this world is vast. That, old woman, is a tortuous gaol for a man’s mind.

His gaze grew distant, trawling all that had happened since the crone’s revelation. He had sent messengers and hired scouts to scour the borderlands in search of her. Some had searched the eastern themata, others had ventured far into Seljuk lands. All had come back with nothing. He sighed and tried to turn his thoughts back to his next move, thinking of where Crispin might strike next.