Strategos: Island in the Storm (3 page)

A panicked
honk-honk
tore him from his thoughts. He looked up to see two
toxotai
– who had been diligently shooting their composite bows at a nearby tree trunk – now loosing skywards in an attempt to fell the skein of geese that flew overhead. When a fully deserved shower of goose droppings spattered down on their faces and tunics, they stumbled away, cursing, one of them spitting the oily filth from his lips and the other hurrying to put on his wide-brimmed archer’s hat to shield him from the onslaught.

‘The men are getting restless, it seems,’ Sha cocked an eyebrow, folding up his map. ‘Perhaps we should move on? Keeping them on the march keeps their minds focused.’

‘Move on?’ Apion replied. ‘If we had an enemy to pursue, Sha, I would have us on the march right now. But until Crispin breaks cover from his fort, we must wait.’

The pair looked around for some form of distraction, both picking up on a conversation between Blastares and Procopius, wandering amongst the men. Blastares was a bull of a man, Sha’s age, with a broken nose shuddering between his eyes and a shaven scalp. Procopius was a wiry, puckered officer in his fiftieth year with a pure-white, close crop of hair and a face like a dried prune. Apion had known this pair since his first days in the ranks. Now each of them was a tourmarches like Sha, leading a Chaldian tourma under his command. Each of them, like Sha, he trusted with his life. And together, this mismatched pair could provide some moments of light relief.

‘I hear you’ve taken on an apprentice artilleryman?’ Blastares grunted as he strolled alongside Procopius. The big man curled his bottom lip as if weighing his next words, then a mischievous glint appeared in his eye. ‘Good idea. An old fellow like you should be making plans for his dotage.’

‘Dotage? I . . . ’ Procopius’ nose wrinkled as he looked up at his hulking friend, then his eyes grew hooded. ‘You know what I say to the lad when I’m training him on
ballista
marksmanship?’

‘Nope. Don’t care either,’ Blastares feigned indifference, pretending to examine the treeline studiously.

‘I tell him to imagine that
you’re
standing at the target, bollocks out, dangling over the centre,’ Procopius walked a little taller as he said this, his age lines multiplied by his growing smile. ‘Hits the centre nearly every time.’

Blastares’ grin fell away, as if stolen by Procopius. ‘Aye? Well at least . . . at least . . . ’ Blastares stammered, his eyes darting as he tried to invent some riposte.

But a cry cut the pair off; ‘He rides!’

Apion looked over to the base of the tall pine. The toxotes who had been keeping watch up there thumped down onto the ground. ‘Crispin rides from the fort,’ the man repeated, taking up his bow and quiver. ‘He is headed into the forest, roughly a mile to the south.’

The words were like a whetstone to Apion’s senses. He shot to standing. All eyes looked to him, all eager to act at last. His riders had a chance of engaging Crispin before the Norman swept back inside the Black Fortress again, but his infantry would be too slow to traverse the forest floor. Still, he needed their numbers. His mind raced until he imagined the pawn line on a shatranj board. A crooked smile pulled at one edge of his mouth.

‘Skutatoi!’ he yelled to the eighty spearmen as they gathered in a square of rustling iron. Each of them hoisted their spears and crimson kite shields, pulled on their helms and wrapped their iron or leather lamellar klibania around their torsos, then strapped on their swordbelts holding their lengthy
spathion
blades. ‘Line the southern edge of the clearing,’ he jabbed a finger at the treeline, where a handful of pines had been felled and lay together. ‘Be ready.’

‘Yes, Strategos!’ Peleus, the short
komes
at the head of the bandon cried, hoisting the crimson banner of Chaldia.

‘And Komes,’ Apion added, jabbing a finger at the woodcutting area. ‘Take those too.’

Komes Peleus glanced to the pile of freshly-hewn sapling poplar trunks – eleven feet in length – then grinned in realisation. ‘The
menavlion?
Yes, sir!’

‘Toxotai,’ he then barked to the eighteen archers – including the two dappled with goose-droppings. ‘Wait on the flanks of our spearmen. Have your bows nocked and ready.’

‘Yes, sir!’ the archers replied in unison.

Apion turned to Sha, Blastares, Procopius and the nine Chaldian
kataphractoi
horsemen – already sliding on their iron klibania jackets and greaves, hoisting their lengthy lances. ‘Come. We ride ahead,’ he said as he swept his crimson cloak across his shoulders and slid his helm on, the black-eagle feather plume juddering.

He cast one last look back at the skutatoi forming up in a line by the fallen pines and swept his spearpoint across them. ‘Stand firm. You are my anvil.’

‘Yes,
Haga!
’ the spearmen replied with a roar as Apion and the twelve riders broke into a gallop and vanished into the southern forest.

***

Crispin crouched in the undergrowth, looking through the trees to a small village in the clearing beyond. A tavern, a kiln, a tannery and a timber grain silo stood at the centre of the settlement with just a few dwellings around them. No walls, no sentries. A hundred or so people milled to and fro, going about their daily business. A peaceful Seljuk settlement within Byzantine lands.

Crispin turned away from the sight and met the gaze of his seventy men, crouched behind him. He fished in his purse and drew out a gold
nomisma
claimed from one of the tax wagons. He bit into it, then threw the coin to the forest floor, the tooth marks clearly visible in the much-debased coinage. ‘Pah! Nearly every imperial coin we take is but scrap metal. In there,’ he jabbed a finger at the settlement, ‘we will find fine Seljuk coin – silver dirhams and gold dinars.’

Just then, the sound of hooves from behind stirred him. He twisted round looking past his riders. It was a freckle-faced, red-haired rider from the garrison he had left back at the Black Fortress. ‘Sir,’ he panted, his face pale, his brow knitted. ‘One of our scouts came in just after you left; he sighted a detachment of Byzantine soldiers just a few days ago. They were headed south, towards these woods.’

‘How many?’ Crispin’s eyes narrowed.

‘A hundred or so, maybe. A thematic levy.’

‘A
hundred
thematic wretches – and I will call them farmers, for they are not soldiers – are sent to oppose us, and you shit your robes about it?’

All Crispin’s riders jostled in laughter.

‘Perhaps they will tangle themselves in our tent ropes and fall upon our caltrops again – like the last lot!’ Crispin added. His men struggled to control their laughter now.

Reddening with anger and embarrassment, the rider snapped in reply; ‘They are no rabble of ordinary soldiers. They are Chaldians, led by the
Haga
.’

The laughter faded.

Crispin’s top lip twitched and he cast a sour glare around his riders. He had heard much of this stubborn strategos.
Heard much, yet seen nothing
. ‘So the mention of a man’s name is enough to silence you, is it?’ He drew out a small purse on his belt and shook it. ‘Then perhaps the rattle of good coin will be enough to bring the colour back to your cheeks?’ He produced a pure-gold
nomisma
from the purse – shining with a lustre unlike the robbed tax money. ‘Remember what our true paymaster said? Throw the borderlands into chaos. Let them know poverty, famine and fear in equal measure. And if you come by the
Haga,
slay him, and you will never want for gold again.’

A grumble of agreement sounded around his riders, each patting the similar small purses they carried.

‘But we can turn our attentions to these Chaldians later,’ Crispin said, lifting his conical helm onto his head, the nose guard sliding into place between his ice-cold eyes. He glanced up through the canopy of leaves to the clear, sapphire sky. ‘This fine day is wearing on and I am tired of sitting in the shade. What say you we whet our blades on Seljuk bone before lunch?’ He flexed his fingers on his longsword hilt as he said this.

Wordlessly, his seventy men rose with him like a pit of snakes readying to strike. With a rustle of iron, they hoisted themselves onto their nearby mounts and gathered into a rough wedge formation. Crispin took his place at the head of the wedge, then kicked his mount into a trot. When the trees grew thinner, they clustered closer together and sped into a gallop, levelling their spears. When they burst into the settlement clearing, they unleashed a guttural roar that shook the forest.

Crispin set his eyes on the nearest of the villagers; a man, frozen in shock, his arms clutching at his two young sons. ‘Ya!’ he roared as his spear punched into the man’s chest and trampled the two boys while the other riders spilled past him and swept around the settlement like raptors, spearing down terrified Seljuk families who tried to flee, hacking down with their longswords at those cowering in hope of mercy. In moments, the air was alive with screaming and a song of iron. Acrid black smoke billowed from the houses as his men put them to the torch.

‘Bring me all they have!’ Crispin cried out, tasting the bloodspray on his lips.

Just then, a dismounted Norman lancer emerged from the largest home in the village – a two-storey stone farmhouse. The man’s face was spattered red and he tucked his tunic back over his groin as he stepped over a broken, semi-naked and lifeless form in the doorway – the Seljuk woman he had just defiled. In the other arm, he carried a small wooden chest. ‘Good coins, sir!’ he cried to Crispin, biting one, before taking a blazing torch from a comrade and hurling it into the farmhouse as an afterthought. ‘Hundreds of them - ’

His words ended in an animal grunt as two arrows thumped into his throat. He gawped at Crispin, then crumpled to his knees, the coin chest toppling and the contents spilling across the earth.

Crispin swung in his saddle, following the flight of the arrows. Thirteen imperial riders had emerged from the northern treeline. The central one – crimson-cloaked with a black eagle feather plume and a beard as grey as his iron armour – was still scowling behind his quivering bow, one eye shut tight, the open one emerald green. First, cold fear grabbed him as he recognised their kataphractoi garb. For a moment, he imagined the forests to be full of these ironclad Byzantine lancers. But he quickly saw that the woods were empty bar these thirteen. His fear melted and his rapacious grin returned.

‘Riders!’ he bellowed, summoning his seventy from the razing of the village. ‘At them!’

His men reformed into a wedge behind him and the earth shuddered as they charged for the treeline. The black-plumed Byzantine bowman and his twelve seemed frozen for a few heartbeats, then they turned and fled, some throwing down their weapons in terror.
The Norman cavalry charge,
Crispin enthused, levelling his lance and training it on the back of the lead rider,
not a soul can stand against it!

The going underfoot became uneven as they raced into the forest, branches thwacked on his helm and his armour, but the wedge remained together. He saw the lead Byzantine rider glance back at him again and again as the gap closed. The glinting emerald eyes were sharp, but lacking something, he realised.
No fear?
A shaft of sunlight blinded him momentarily and he realised the forest was thinning. Another clearing lay just ahead. At once, the Byzantine thirteen leapt over a fallen pine and into this glade. Crispin heeled his mount into a jump too, then he heard the lead rider cry out.

‘Rise!’

From behind the fallen pine rose a wall of imperial skutatoi. Their faces were twisted in fury as they roared and hoisted up spears, the like of which he had never seen before – long and thick. Myrtle, ash and poplar saplings, carved to jagged tips. Crispin gawped helplessly as his stallion plunged onto the colossal lance before him, the tip piercing the beast’s breast armour, flesh and heart, the lance barely moving such was its weight and so firmly was it grounded in the soil at the butt-end. Sky and earth changed places as Crispin was catapulted from the saddle. He heard his stallion’s dying whinny and many more of his comrades and their mounts. Then, with a crunch of iron that shook him to his core, he thumped down onto the dust, rolling over and over. His soldier’s instinct had him instantly grasping for his longsword and struggling to his feet. But he halted as a maw of Byzantine blades and speartips shot for his throat and hovered there. He glanced at each of their faces, pitiless, furious, then locked eyes with the black-plumed, emerald-eyed one with the iron-grey beard who approached on horseback. He walked his mount in a circle around Crispin, hand hovering above the ivory hilt of the Seljuk scimitar he wore on his swordbelt.

At last, this rider dismounted and strode through the teeth of Byzantine blades, coming nose to nose with Crispin. ‘I should cut out your heart and throw it to the forest dogs, cur, but I fear your blood might poison them.’

***

They marched the disarmed Norman prisoners back through the forest, ignoring their foreign curses. When they reached the Seljuk village, Apion thrust his boot into Crispin’s back, sending him sprawling, his helm tumbling from his head. Only sixteen of the Norman’s fellow riders had survived the menavlion snare and they too were bundled along unceremoniously at spearpoint. The fifty Byzantine skutatoi he had sent on ahead were already working tirelessly with the surviving Seljuk villagers, hoisting bucket after bucket of water from the village well and fighting the myriad fires that roared in the houses. The stench of burning flesh wafted over him and he fought the urge to retch. Once more, he longed for the satisfaction of slicing this dog’s head from his shoulders, or forcing him to walk into the nearest blaze, to be burnt alive. But the brief was for Crispin to be taken alive, lest the many other Normans in imperial service took umbrage.