Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart (24 page)

Apion frowned as he swept his gaze around. The furnaces were lit, women were sitting at the looms and a small, bald smith seemed engrossed by a sheaf of paper with diagrams inked upon it. Through the double doors, in the yard, he saw two men buzzing around what looked like a fletcher’s workshop. Then he looked back to the smith – and caught the man’s furtive glance for a heartbeat before it was dropped back to the paper. Apion dipped his brow and strode over to the furnace area.

'You oversee this workhouse, smith?’

The man nodded, as if irritated by the interruption.

‘And how are the works going?’ Apion asked.

The smith took a moment to stroke his chin before looking up.

‘Slowly, we have had some difficulty with the materials. The ore has many impurities, and the wool is coarse and . . . ’

As the smith listed his complaints, Apion looked to the pile of ore in the adjacent storeroom. He noticed two things at that moment. The thick coating of dust upon the iron ore and the bead of sweat on the smith’s forehead, despite the relative cool of the workhouse.

‘ . . . we really are struggling to meet the emperor’s demands,’ the smith gestured to the furnaces, ‘but we’ve been working night and day to . . . ‘

Apion barged past the smith, then placed a hand against the furnace door, tentatively at first, then without fear. It was cold and only beginning to heat from the flames inside. He looked up at the others in the room. One of the lads carrying timber had a wet, red stain down the front of his linen tunic. Wine. The other lad’s clothes were pristine white, despite the soot around the works. Then he saw that another few faces had appeared in the yard outside. They looked anxious until the fletcher whispered to them and they hurriedly took up tools.

‘There have been no works here for some time,’ Apion stated.

‘I . . . how dare you suggest,’ the smith started, his eyes bulging. All around the workshop had slowed, eyes fixed on the scene.

‘You reek of wine!’ Apion spat back. ‘And your drudges have obviously come here in haste from the inn,’ he gestured to the lad with the stained tunic. Then he nodded to the white-robed lad, ‘or from prayer.’

‘This is an outrageous claim!’

Igor barged forward, lifting his axe from his back, hefting it up to strike at the man with the shaft. The smith staggered back and fell in anticipation of the blow, shielding himself with his arms.

Dederic stepped forward and caught Igor’s arm just in time. The gasps of the
onlooking
workers filled the cavernous workhouse.

Igor grunted and glared at Dederic, wide-eyed.

‘This is not how it is supposed to be,’ the Norman muttered, frowning.

‘Strategos?’ Igor bawled, looking to Apion.

Apion twisted round. ‘Dederic is right. If we knock this man unconscious, who will see our weapons forged?’

With a grunt, Igor stepped back.

Apion crouched by the smith and stared at him. ‘The emperor waits in the street outside,’ at this, the smith gawped to the shattered door and then to Apion, ‘and he is minded to execute those who have jeopardised his campaign.’

‘I . . . I . . . ’ the smith stammered.

‘You will not be hurt or punished, smith, unless you fail to do as I ask.’

The smith nodded hurriedly.

‘The emperor’s army is set to march into Seljuk lands to protect the empire, to protect you, to protect your family. Yet near half of them, over three thousand men, have only tunics and the grace of their god to protect them from Seljuk steel,’ he gripped the smith’s tunic, lifting him to his feet and pulling him close. ‘We need klibania, do you understand?’

The smith nodded hurriedly.

‘Iron is best but leather will do,’ Apion continued. ‘They need boots also – we have already visited the sot dozing at the tannery, so he knows his responsibilities. Helms, blades, spears and shields are in short supply also, as are arrows. You have a busy few weeks ahead of you, smith, but I’m sure your appetite for hard work has grown in the time you have taken coin to do nothing.’

The smith gulped, a steely resolve growing and replacing the terror in his eyes. ‘Aye, it has. Idleness has made me do some bad things.’

Apion pinned him with a gimlet stare and lowered his voice. ‘A man rarely finds opportunity to redeem himself for past evils. Seize your opportunity.’ At last. the man nodded vigorously and Apion released his grip on him. Then Apion strode back to the shattered door. Igor’s barked orders echoed around him as he left.

Outside, Romanus waited on horseback. The varangoi clustered around him. Philaretos and Gregoras looked on with narrowed eyes.

Apion squinted as he looked up to the emperor. ‘It is as we thought,
Basileus
. Some treachery has seen the armamenta lie idle for months. But it is rectified now. Igor is posting his men here to oversee that the works are completed with haste.’

‘Good,’ Romanus nodded, the tension easing from his expression just a fraction. ‘Now we must ride around the farmlands and muster what other men we can.’

***

Zenobius lay flat on his belly, inching forward until he could curl his fingers around the lip of the armamenta roof and peer down into the flagstoned street below. While he had taught himself to disguise his emotions, it meant they were all the fiercer in his heart. The signal from his man in the emperor’s retinue had been too late. Psellos would think him some kind of fool. Childhood memories swirled in his agitated mind. His mother’s promise of greatness seemed ever more distant and he heard the drunken jeers of Father and his cronies as they beat him.
Father was right. I am a curse!
At this, his expressionless face twitched and the beginnings of a frown wrinkled his brow. But he clenched his fists until his nails broke the skin and his palms bled.
No,
he insisted, his face settling once more,
this is merely a setback.

He looked to the nearby stables where a dappled grey was loosely tethered. It was time to move on to the next step of the plan.

***

Apion walked with Romanus, Igor, Dederic and Philaretos in the watery morning sunshine by the banks of the Halys, north of the camp. It had been a hectic few weeks of kicking the armamenta into life and rounding up what few recruits they could find in the nearby farmlands, villages and towns.

Just outside the camp on a patch of flat ground clear of rhododendrons and rocks, the skutatoi of the Opsikon Thema were being put through their paces by their
kampidoktores
. The gruff man orchestrated the drill of running and leaping with a chorus of barks and a gleeful and sadistic grin. Adjacent to this, the thock-thock of arrows punching into wood rang out as the toxotai of the Bucellarion Thema fired into rings of tree trunk, each emptying one quiver before taking up another.

Then, further north, the imperial tagmata trained. One glance could distinguish these more ancient regiments from the mercenary rabbles on the borders led by the likes of Doux Fulco. The skutatoi of the Optimates Tagma – the only infantry unit that could present with every man armed and armoured – formed up in a silvery line, those with the longest spears to the fore, their green banners splicing the line at regular intervals of each bandon of three hundred men. One barking command saw their flanks fold swiftly to form a defensive square. Then,
buccinators
by the side of the river raised their horns to their lips. The wail of the instruments rang out and the earth shook; from the banks upriver, the kataphractoi of the Scholae Tagma mock-charged this square. They were a fine sight; fifteen hundred mounted men encased in iron, thundering forwards together in a thick wedge. At the last moment, they split into two and broke around the square. Then the men of the Optimates cheered as they fended off this ‘charge’.

Apion noticed a contented smile touch the corners of Romanus’ lips as he watched. Then the emperor turned to those with him, recounting the next steps for the campaign once more. ‘A trade flotilla is due to come downriver within the week. They will bring the last shipment of arms and armour from Ancyra and they will ferry us upriver.’

‘Another week of training should surely see the vermin of the themata hardy enough for the march,’ Doux Philaretos said with a sneer as they peeled away from the riverbank.

Apion bit his tongue at this.

Then they came to the men of the Thrakesion Thema. They had been bolstered with the extra few hundred that had been mustered in the last weeks.

Apion eyed the man who barked them into formation. It was Gregoras, the ruddy-faced strategos. The new recruits of his thema were easy to spot, their shoulders bowed under the weight of all they carried. Apion thought of Philaretos’ jibe and sighed. Then he strode from the emperor’s group and past Gregoras. All the men in the Thrakesion ranks broke into a muted murmur at the disturbance.

‘What do you think you’re . . . ’ Gregoras barked at Apion.

Apion turned to him. ‘Permit me this one thing, sir.’

Gregoras’ eyes narrowed and his lips grew pursed. ‘Be swift, strategos.’

Apion carried on before stopping in front of the recruit at the end of the line. He was gaunt and unshaven, with nervous eyes and foul teeth.

‘At ease,’ Apion said.

He lifted the pack from the recruit’s shoulders. ‘A column is only as strong as its weakest point,’ he barked to the line, lifting from the hemp bag three pots, a hand-held grain mill, a small sack of barley, another sack of wheat. Then he shook his head and crouched, lifting the sack by its corners and tipping out a pile of tools and blankets.

‘A marching soldier must carry only what he needs. The temptation is always there to be prepared with everything you might need, but think only of the essentials.’ He kicked the sack of barley to one side, then all but one blanket, then the majority of the tools. ‘You carry your weapons and your armour, a cloak or a blanket – not both, two skins of water, one sack of grain, one pot, a cup, and a mill,’ he said, scooping each of these things back into the pack. ‘I have spent months in the arid east with only these things.’

He noticed one squat recruit nearby stifling a smug grin, firing glances at the man whose possessions were on display. ‘Don’t look at this man,’ Apion patted the gaunt recruit on the shoulder, handing him back his pack, then scowled at the short recruit’s pack before sweeping his gaze across the rest of the line, ‘for he isn’t the worst offender.’ At this, the squat man’s face froze in alarm, fearful that he would be made an example of next. ‘Sell what you do not need to the touldon or at the next market we cross. When you are clashing swords with a seven foot Seljuk, you will not be glad of an extra cooking pot. Though he may find use for it after he has cut off your balls and fancies a meal.’

A flurry of nervous laughter was followed by the thudding of knees hitting the dust and the clatter of packs being unloaded.

As he left the line, he nodded to the seething Gregoras then made to catch up with the emperor and his party. He noticed that one deathly pale recruit was kneeling but not unloading his pack nor chatting with his comrades. He seemed to be more interested in Romanus and his party, still walking some distance away.

‘Zenobius!’ a komes cried at the soldier. ‘Get on with it - empty your pack!’

***

The Halys babbled incessantly in the darkness and the sky was studded with stars and a waning moon. At the heart of the camp, crackling torches illuminated the night and cast an ethereal glow up onto the gilded campaign Cross erected by the emperor’s tent.

Gregoras, the Strategos of Thrakesion, was seated at the campfire, eating a strip of greasy goat meat, staring silently into the flames. Paces away, Apion, Romanus, Philaretos and Dederic sat around a small table just outside the tent. On the table was a shatranj board, a plate of fruit and a jug of wine.

Philaretos’ eyelids drooped, then he jolted awake. Hearing Igor and the pair of nearby varangoi sentries chuckling at him, he rubbed at his eyes and scowled them into silence. Then he drummed his fingers on his knee and tapped his foot. Then he shuffled and scoffed, drained his wine cup and stood, casting an accusing finger at the shatranj board. ‘Torture, this is. Watching even more so than playing. Give me a sword and a thousand men any day.’ With a further sigh, he stood and stalked over to sit next to Gregoras at the nearby campfire, where he took to honing his spathion on a whetstone.

Apion and Romanus looked at one another, chuckling.

At the same time, Dederic stood. ‘The doux has a point; there is a certain level of patience required for this,’ he said, nodding to the board. ‘A level of patience that turns the mind to otherwise loathsome tasks.’ He strolled over to his fawn stallion, tethered only paces away, then took to brushing at the beast’s mane and coat.

Romanus chewed on a piece of dried fish then supped at his watered wine. ‘Just us then, Strategos?’

‘Aye,’ Apion nodded, lifting a pawn forward from his front rank.

The emperor lifted a pawn of his own, moving it out over two squares to allow development of his chariot piece. His face was stern, his mind clearly not on the game. ‘There is one thing the men must learn. Something long forgotten by all but our border armies. Not just how to fight, but how to fight the Seljuk war machine.’