Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart (19 page)

‘They’re coming closer!’ Apion realised as he noticed that some of the darts had punched right through the shields this time. He turned to Dederic. ‘Give me light!’

Dederic looked at him, wide-eyed, then nodded as realisation dawned. The Norman scrambled out from the foulkon to grasp at the torch, lying on the forest floor where he had dropped it. Then he scurried back into the shield canopy, darts smacking into the dirt in his wake.

Apion tore a strip from his tunic, then handed it to Igor. The varangos hurriedly tied it around the head of an arrow shaft and held it to Dederic’s torch. ‘Ready? Break!’ Apion cried. As one, the foulkon parted, Igor stood and fired the flaming arrow into the depths of the forest. Then, just as quickly, the foulkon reformed. From the gaps in their shields, they watched as the arrow punched down. Sparks ignited the dried leaves all around it. In the glow, the silhouettes of their attackers flitted between the trees. They wore conical Byzantine helmets and padded vests. Apion counted more than fifteen of them before the flames died.

Another hissing volley of solenarion bolts hammered down on the foulkon. Three more varangoi crumpled.

‘I can’t see them properly. I need more light!’ Apion barked, ripping another strip from his tunic. The rest of the men followed suit.

Then one of Romanus’ riders nudged Apion, offering him a round, wax sealed clay jar. ‘Try this.’

Apion held the wax seal to his nose and caught scent of the acrid stench from inside. His eyes glinted, then he shot up and hurled the jar at the last of the embers from the fire arrow. At once, the jar exploded into an orange vision of hell. Apion watched as the Greek fire engulfed the forest before him like the dark door incarnate. A pair of assassins tumbled around, their skin and clothes ablaze, their cries falling mute as the flames drew the breath from their lungs. Another eighteen silhouettes remained only paces away, hurriedly nocking bolts to their bows.

‘Stand!’ Apion roared. ‘Their strength was the darkness. Now we can fight them. They have assumed that victory is theirs – look how close they have come.’ At this, the varangoi stood and formed a line, ready to charge. Then Romanus waved his dismounted riders to their feet likewise, and raised his spathion overhead.

‘Advance!’ he roared.

Like a mirror shattering, the line exploded forward, each man lurching out, hefting their axes and spathions.

Apion’s heart hammered on his ribs as he rushed for the assassin before him. The assassin threw down the solenarion and fumbled to draw his sword. Apion kicked the blade from the assassin’s grip and then swiped his own blade down, gouging a crimson trough through the man’s chest. Hot blood sprayed on Apion’s skin as the man toppled. Then he spun just in time to parry a swipe at his neck, before jabbing his sword hilt into this next attacker’s face, feeling bones crunch under the blow. The assassin fell away, his cheekbone caved in.

Apion stalked through the melee to locate his next opponent. He dodged under swinging spathions and swiping Rus axes. Then he saw that three of the assassins had isolated Romanus, and were driving at him with their swords. Romanus fought like a lion, parrying two strikes but taking a cut to his neck from a third, blood spidering over his moulded breastplate. Apion rushed to his aid, slashing the hamstrings of the nearest assassin and then sending a right hook into the jaw of the next, who spun away with a grunt, then twisted back round only to receive Apion’s boot on the bridge of his nose followed by the edge of the scimitar across his throat. Romanus despatched the third, punching his spathion through the man’s chest and kicking the corpse away.

The pair staked their blades in the ground, panting, hearing the rest of their riders cry out in victory before breaking out in solemn prayer, some dropping to their knees, others clutching hands to their hearts.

‘Who were they?’ Romanus puffed, nodding to the corpses before them as one of his men tended to his neck wound.

Apion pressed his boot on the body of the assassin he had punched, then rolled him over. The man was dressed as a skutatos, there was no doubt of that.

Igor answered, his eyes wide. ‘I recognise this cur from the Numera barracks.’

‘He is a soldier of the Numeroi?’ Romanus’ face was creased in a frown, then he looked at Apion. ‘Loyal to Psellos and the Doukids?’

‘Like a vile stench,’ Apion nodded.

Igor looked to Apion and Romanus. ‘I doubt he is a mere infantryman,’ he said, plucking a solenarion bolt from the man’s quiver, then looking around in the darkness. ‘This work reeks of the portatioi – the dark-hearted bastards at the core of their ranks that live to spill blood. Torturers and cut-throats.’

‘They’ve followed us all the way here,’ Apion realised.

‘Strategos?’ Romanus exclaimed.

Apion’s reply caught in his throat as he heard the stretching of one more bowstring.

He leapt forward, punching Romanus back with the heels of his hands. A bolt sliced through the air and smacked into the tree where Romanus had been a heartbeat before.

Apion and Romanus gawped at each other.

The thudding of a lone set of hooves echoed somewhere in the darkness, heading south and growing fainter.

Apion mounted his gelding, holding Romanus’ gaze. ‘Out here we are in grave danger. Rest will have to wait. We must ride and reach Constantinople at haste.’

***

A thick fog had settled over the north of Constantinople, filling the valleys and even creeping over the peak of the sixth hill. The shadows of the few who were brave enough to tread these streets at night swirled and faded in the moonlight.

The broad northern imperial way was somewhat imbalanced, lined on one side with a dilapidated tavern and a selection of brothels, and on the other with the marble walls of the Cistern of Aetius. The way ended at the city walls and the Adrianople gate. The gatehouse towered high above, the crenellations and the tiny figures of the sentries silhouetted in the ghostly moonlight.

Hidden in the doorway of a derelict tenement a few doors down from the tavern, two gaunt and filthy men lurked. They watched as a drunken trader staggered from the door of the tavern, casting an ethereal orange glow on the greyness momentarily. He hobbled – partly from inebriation and partly from the festering wound on his leg. A purse dangled from his belt, chinking with coins with his every faltering step. The pair looked at one another and then nodded, before scuttling unnoticed through the fog to flank the drunk, each of them slipping daggers from their belts. Like wolves, they leapt upon the man, muffling his cries with a hand over his mouth. Then one of them hammered a dagger hilt into the man’s temple. The man crumpled, and the pair fumbled to free his purse. The first thief batted the hands of the other away, then the other pushed his accomplice back. In an instant, they were growling at one another, like scavengers over a carcass, hands bloodied, daggers levelled. Just then, approaching footsteps echoed down the street. Footsteps and the clanking of iron. They both snapped their glares round on the swirling mist down the street.

‘Numeroi!’ The first hissed, then scurried back into the silvery veil of fog.

The second grunted at this, flicking his gaze between the purse – still tied to the dead man’s belt – and the approaching footsteps. His eyes widened as shapes formed in the mist. Two ironclad numeroi of the city garrison bookended a pair of hooded figures, one hunched and small, the other tall, with ghostly silver eyes peering out from under the hood. Then, at last, the purse came free. He spun and scrambled towards the walls and away from the figures, slipping and sliding on the flagstones. He had run only a handful of steps when a pair of arrows punched into his back. The thief crumpled to his hands and knees, crawling, spluttering black blood from his lips. Then, when the tall, silver-eyed man clicked his fingers, one of the numeroi jogged forward and dragged his spathion blade across the thief’s throat and he fell still.

At this, the trader stirred, groaning, clutching his head. In a haze, he looked up at the four who had saved him. ‘God bless you!’ he clasped his hands together and bowed as he struggled to his feet.

‘Nobody must witness my presence here,’ the squat, hooded figure hissed, ‘
nobody!
’

The silver-eyed one by his side nodded at this, then slipped a sickle from his cloak and nicked the trader’s neck. The trader’s eyes bulged and he mouthed silent words of confusion as black blood haemorrhaged from the arterial tear. Then his skin drained of colour and he slumped to the ground.

Psellos stepped over the corpses and picked his way through the pooling blood. The deaths of these nameless individuals were an irrelevance to him at best. He looked up to the end of the street and the Adrianople Gate. The vast, arched timber gates were as tall as four men, hugged by bands of rusting iron, and barred by a length of timber hewn from a single, tall beech. When they reached the entrance to the gatehouse, another pair of loyal numeroi waited there.

‘Where is he?’ Psellos spoke abruptly.

‘On the walls, sir,’ the numeros replied, nodding up to the battlements.

The four ascended the stairway until they emerged onto the battlements. This, the inner wall, stood tall and clear of the carpet of fog. The limestone walkway was bathed in clear moonlight, the towers that studded it were as large as forts. Looking back into the city, only the Hagia Sofia, the Imperial Palace, the Aqueduct of Valens and a militia of fine columns rose above the fog. Looking west, out of the city, the outer wall and the moat were swamped by the fog, and the countryside and crop fields of Thracia were likewise cloaked.

Psellos saw the lone figure standing in the shadows of a crenellation. The rider’s face was bathed in sweat, his hair matted to his forehead as he clutched his helmet underarm. He strode to the man. ‘It is done?’

The man’s eyes gave it away before he spoke.

‘No, sir. Romanus lives, though many of his retinue were felled. I have ridden for days without food, rest or shelter. To be sure that news would reach you while you still have time . . . ’

‘And the
Haga
? I trust that at least this troublesome thorn has been pruned?’

The man’s lips trembled. ‘He fought like a demon, sir. The men – Romanus’ men – they fought on his word.’

‘You and your men failed.’ Psellos cut the man off, his chest tightening. ‘Yet you purport to be one of my finest?’ He had promoted this fool into his portatioi on a day when he had been suffering from a crushing headache. The folly of his hasty actions would be costly. He looked to Zenobius. ‘Zenobius is an example I had hoped you would follow. He sets aside his soul, his fears, his wants, and he never fails me. Never.’

The rider’s lips flapped uselessly and he nodded hurriedly.

‘Zenobius, afford this man a lesson in efficacy.’

The albino turned his expressionless gaze upon the shivering rider and grappled him by the throat, crushing the cry of fear from the man’s larynx. Then he reached down with his free hand to grasp the rider by the belt. Finally, he lifted the man up and over the dipped section of the crenellations. The rider thrashed like a sturgeon, then the albino released him. His body fell into the fog like a stone, his roar hoarse and muted. Then, a wet crunch of bone echoed between the inner and outer walls.

Psellos inhaled the chill night air through his nostrils and looked to the north-west. ‘It is nearing dawn. Romanus must be only a short ride from the walls.’

‘You should have sent me,’ the albino spoke flatly.

‘Aye,’ Psellos mused. ‘Your time will come, Zenobius.’

‘I could have a dagger in Romanus’ back even before he reaches the Forum of the Ox?’

Psellos chuckled dryly at the albino’s stolid tenacity. ‘Once Romanus is inside the city, it will become too dangerous to attempt an assassination. The balance of power will remain, we must bide our time.’

‘Hmm,’ Zenobius replied flatly. ‘And what of the Strategos of Chaldia – I could have his throat opened before noon?’

Psellos sighed, his nose wrinkling as he thought of the aftermath of Nilos’ murder. The man’s death had put the fear of God into the people, but it had also swayed the Optimates Tagma to favour Romanus Diogenes’ rise to the throne. ‘He will die, but we do not need another martyr. No, we have to pick our time to slay the
Haga
.’ Then he
wagged
a finger, a smile creeping across his face. ‘But in the meantime, we can wound him.’

Zenobius’ silver eyes betrayed absolutely nothing. ‘Torture?’

‘No. I have found out much about his past in these last months,’ Psellos mused. ‘To hurt the
Haga
, you must hurt the few that he loves.’

***

Cydones stepped out onto the balcony of his sleeping chamber, then pulled his woollen cloak tight around his shoulders as the bitter fog rolled around him.

‘A lungful of night air and a bellyful of salep before I sleep,’ he chuckled wryly, wrapping his fingers around his cup, enjoying its warmth.

At this hour, the streets were near silent and he wondered what the great city that was spread out below him might look like. He thumbed at his Chi-Rho necklace, but it did little to fend off the air of melancholy that descended upon him. His memories of the place were all from his boyhood, and they were anything but happy. He wondered, given the tension in the palace since they had arrived – was anyone truly happy in this, God’s city? Indeed, the mutilation of the noble and affable strategos, Nilos, had cast a dark shadow on his faith. Cydones felt the chill reach his heart as he remembered Apion reluctantly describing the body they found.