Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart (40 page)

‘Yes, you have something to say?’ the figure asked.

Psellos clutched at his throat. ‘Don’t kill me,’ he hissed.

‘I may or I may not.’ The figure laughed gently and reached up with knotted, aged hands to lower the hood. The puckered, sightless features of a silver-haired hag stared through him. The gale dropped at that moment, the snow falling silently around them. ‘It depends on your answers to my questions.’

Psellos looked around. ‘Then ask me,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

‘You have grand plans, visions of greatness.’

‘Don’t all men?’ Psellos shrugged, his face expressionless.

‘Your machinations have already brought about the deaths of many, many souls.’

Psellos’ gaze darted nervously across the crone’s face.

She continued; ‘And fate shows me what will come to pass if your scheming continues. On a battlefield far to the east, by an azure lake flanked by two mighty pillars, blood will be let like a tide,’ she extended a bony finger and pointed it at him, ‘and it will be your doing. Does this please you?’

‘My doing?’ Psellos squared his shoulders and tilted his pointed features haughtily at the crone. He was surprised to find that his voice had returned and thought of shouting to the nearby spearman. Then he touched his fingers to the hilt of the dagger tucked up his sleeve. ‘Bloodshed cannot always be avoided,’ he said, then wrapped his fingers around the dagger hilt, tensing his arm, ‘sometimes it simply begs to be spilled.’ He swung the blade out and round for the sightless crone’s throat. But her gnarled hand shot up to grapple his, shaking the blade from his grip. Then she clasped her other hand around his throat like a viper’s jaws and lifted him up and towards the edge of the balcony. He gasped and spat soundlessly, his legs kicking, his free hand thrashing.

The crone threw her head back, unleashing a shrill cackle into the night sky. ‘So you do not know the meaning of remorse. You are Fate’s pawn indeed!’ At that moment the storm picked up into a ferocious roar once more, hurling the stinging snow horizontally across the balcony, sweeping her hair back from her withered features. Her eyes bulged and her yellowed teeth were revealed in a baleful grin. ‘I have found out all I need to know about you, Psellos of Byzantium. And now . . . ’ she started, edging him ever closer to the lip of the balcony.

Panic shook every part of Psellos’ being as he saw the three storey drop onto the flagstones below. For the first time in his life, he was utterly powerless. Then the storm quelled once more, and she set him down carefully. Psellos panted, cupping his throat, trembling in disbelief.

‘Now I will leave you with one musing; as you sow . . . ’ she lifted one fingertip to his chest ‘ . . . you shall
reap!
’ She jabbed the fingertip into his breastbone as if thrusting a dagger. It burned like fire and he cried out once more, falling to the balcony floor.

As he threw up his hands to shield himself, cold hands pulled at his wrists and he struggled to beat them away, crying out for mercy.

‘Sir?’ a voice pierced the shrieking gale. ‘Sir!’

Trembling, Psellos blinked open his eyes. The numeros had him by the wrists and wore an anxious frown. The crone was gone.

‘What’s wrong?’ the spearman asked as the thick snow whipped around them.

Psellos scrambled up to standing. ‘Get your hands off me,’ he spat, pushing the soldier away. He staggered back towards the doorway, snatching glances up and around at the barbarous storm.

Over the howling, he could hear the faint shrieking of an eagle. As his panic subsided, he frowned, feeling a dull stinging on his chest where she had touched him. He pulled at his robe to see that there was nothing but a coin-sized, blood-red blemish on his breastbone. It itched, but that was all. His terror waned; if this was the worst the crone could do then he had little to fear of her.

His eyes darted across the storm as her words rang in his ears;
On a battlefield far to the east, by an azure lake flanked by two mighty pillars, blood will be let like a tide . . . and it will be your doing.

‘So be it,’ he said, a winter-cold grin spreading across his features.

Author’s Note

Dear Reader,

I’d like to thank you warmly for trying my work and I truly hope that the tale of ‘Rise of the Golden Heart’ has allowed you to escape to Byzantium for a precious few hours.

After I left Apion at the end of ‘Strategos: Born in the Borderlands’ I often found my thoughts returning to him. In these moments I did not ask myself where I would take him next, but wondered instead where I would find him. So it has been a cathartic experience to enter his world once more, and I know that world has already moved on again without me since I wrote the final words of this volume.

Now, as always, a work of historical fiction weaves a tale around events of the past. The core aspects are based on solid historical fact, others are skewed slightly to aid a dramatic narrative and some are entirely fictional. I’ll try to summarise the main elements of the plot which I feel are noteworthy in these areas.

In 1067, Alp Arslan was at war with the Fatimids to the south of his dominion, offering a brief period of respite to the Byzantine borderlands. But only until Bey Afsin slew a member of the sultan’s court, then fled west with an army. His subsequent raids into Anatolia ripped through the heart of the poorly defended Byzantine Themata. The rogue bey led his men in the sacking of Caesarea, which saw the tomb of St Basil pillaged and the sarcophagus broken. My portrayal of Alp Arslan halting Bey Afsin at this juncture is fictional, but when Alp Arslan finally did bring Afsin’s raids to an end in 1068, he magnanimously pardoned his bey and welcomed him back into his ranks.

My depiction of Emperor Romanus Diogenes comes chiefly from the chronicler, Michael Attaleiates. Attaleiates’ History is considered slightly anti-Diogenes, but with a grudging respect for his bullish determination to right the wrongs of the previous imperial dynasties and to stop the decay of the armies. Attaleiates’ writings also provide priceless eyewitness accounts of Diogenes’ imperial campaigns. He tells how the emperor’s Syrian campaign in 1068 took them through Anatolia where he tried to muster the themata, but found them in a grievous condition:

For the most part they had been neglected, because no emperor had marched east for many years and they had not received their due pay having been subdued and turned to flight little by little by their opponents due to their wretchedness and ill preparedness for attack, and thus fallen into cowardice and impotency, of no good use. To put it plainly, their standards were dirty as if from smoke with easily countable, wretched attendants beneath them. They were greatly discouraged when reckoning how they would return to the old days of their former martial
honor
and get it back after so much time, since the men who remained in the legions were few and lacking in arms and mounts, a band of inexperienced youths with the most warlike and war-experienced opponents arraigned against them.

The campaign continued to the south east and culminated in the siege and taking of Hierapolis. Attaleiates records that the lower city was taken swiftly, but that the citadel was tall, well-defended and hardy, and that it took a ‘snowstorm of artillery’ to breach its walls. He goes on to describe how, while the citadel was being taken, the Emir of Aleppo marched from the west and fell upon the unprepared Byzantine units posted outside of the walls, routing the Scholae Tagma and capturing their standards. Romanus Diogenes only learned of the emir’s arrival whilst still battling to take the citadel. The emperor took to rallying his fearful army and then led a brave sally, eventually turning the emir’s forces to flight.

One place I have knowingly strayed from Attaleiates’ text is in my depiction of Romanus Diogenes residing on the
Istrian
frontier prior to his accession to the imperial throne. Attaleiates states that he was in fact exiled in his native Cappadocia at the time.

As for Michael Psellos; he has been hailed by some as a great thinker, by others as an imperial sycophant, and by some as a power-hungry and shrewd individual. Among modern commentators, Psellos' penchant for long autobiographical digressions in his works has earned him accusations of vanity and ambition. He rose to prominence in the eleventh century, spearheading the initiative to establish the University of Constantinople and serving at various times as a provincial judge and in the imperial court. It was in the reign of Constantine IX Monomachus (1042-1055) that he became an influential political adviser. He then played a decisive role in the transition of power from Michael VI to Isaac I
Komnenos
in 1057; then from Isaac
Komnenos
to Constantine X Doukas in 1059. Then, in 1067, the strident Eudokia
Makrembolitissa
decided to renege on the oath she had made to her husband and manoeuvred to raise Romanus Diogenes rose to the imperial throne. Psellos and the Doukids were bitterly opposed to his accession and then to his reign, and actively sought to confound him at every turn.

So, while much of my portrayal of Psellos’ behaviour and deeds is entirely speculative, he was clearly a shrewd operator. You have to question how one man can remain at the side of the imperial throne for so long while emperors (God’s chosen ones) come and go. It was Psellos’ role as kingmaker and his hand in the events that followed the Syrian campaign (which I will cover in the next volume of the series) that proved fuel enough for me to draw the darkest possible conclusions.

Regarding the themata; Apion’s home – the Byzantine Thema of Chaldia – was a bastion of the imperial borderlands for many centuries. However, by the mid-eleventh century, many themata were in the process of becoming, and some had already become, ‘
ducates
’. In other words, they would have been ruled primarily by a doux rather than a strategos, and the border tagma commanded by the doux would have diminished the importance of the strategos’ thematic armies. I have portrayed Doux Fulco as Apion’s ostensible superior in this respect. However, I do confess to exaggerating Apion’s position and the doggedness of his thematic ranks.

One question that has been raised about ‘Strategos: Born in the Borderlands’, that is likely to be raised again from this volume, is my depiction of Byzantine soldiers using Latin war cries. After all, in the eleventh century, Latin had been a dead language for several hundreds of years and the people of the Byzantine Empire undoubtedly spoke Greek.

The cry of ‘Nobiscum Deus’ was attested to in Maurice's '
Strategikon
' (written in the 6th century AD) and then referred to in John
Haldon's
'Warfare, state and society in the Byzantine world, 565-1204' where it is grouped as one of many practices that 'remained constant throughout the existence of the empire.' The paucity of compelling evidence of any one particular Byzantine cry – possibly Greek – usurping this, and the likelihood that the original, simple, Latin phrase would have gathered an air of mystique after centuries of use, led me to stick with the Latin. Certain phrases can and do transcend the death of their parent language while maintaining their semantic origins. Indeed, a friend pointed out to me that the Irish Rangers' (a British Army regiment) cry is in Gaelic, which most of their men can't speak. Added to this, many other Latin phrases persisted right up to the end of the Byzantine Empire, albeit partially
graecofied
(e.g. skutum =
scutum
, kontoubernion = contubernium). I don't think we'll ever have concrete proof either way, but I think there is a certain romance in the notion of a war cry from antiquity echoing through the centuries.

Regarding heraldry, historians believe that, by 1068 AD, both the Seljuks and Byzantines had come to use the double-headed eagle as their symbol of power. This image is thought to have represented their declaration of power over the east and west. Interestingly, on the Byzantine side, Emperor Isaac I
Komnenos
(1057-1059 AD) adopted the symbol, having been inspired by legends of the
Haga
(the actual Hittite myth – not the fictional Apion!). However, I have deliberately neglected to depict this symbol on Byzantine and Seljuk banners, as I felt it would cause some confusion in the narrative, being identical to Apion’s
Haga
stigma.

There are hours of discussion to be had on many more aspects of the history. As ever, I’d be delighted to hear from you on these or any other aspects, and I can be contacted at my website (below).

In the meantime, rest assured that Apion’s journey is not over yet. The
Haga
will return, and I hope you will too.

Yours faithfully,

Gordon Doherty

www.gordondoherty.co.uk

Glossary

Akhi
: Seljuk infantry armed with long anti-cavalry spears, scimitars, shields and sometimes armoured in lamellar.

Armamenta
: State funded imperial warehouses tasked with producing arms, clothing and armour for the armies. They were usually situated in major cities and strongholds.

Bey
: Seljuk military commander, subordinate to an
emir
.

Ballista
: Primarily anti-personnel missile artillery capable of throwing bolts vast distances. Utilised from fortified positions and on the battlefield.

Bandophorus
: The standard-bearer for a Byzantine
bandon
.

Bandon
: The basic battlefield unit of infantry in the Byzantine army. Literally meaning ‘banner’, a
bandon
typically consisted of between two hundred and four hundred men, usually
skutatoi
, who would line up in a square formation, presenting spears to their enemy from their front ranks and hurling
rhiptaria
from the ranks behind.
Banda
would form together on the battlefield to present something akin to the ancient phalanx
.

Basileus
: The Byzantine emperor (feminine:
Basileia
).

Bey
: The leader of a Seljuk warband.

Buccina
: The ancestor of the trumpet and the trombone, this instrument was used for the announcement of night watches and various other purposes in the Byzantine forts and marching camps as well as to communicate battlefield manoeuvres.

Buccinator
: A soldier who uses the
buccina
to perform acoustical signalling on the battlefield and in forts, camps and settlements
.

Chi-Rho
: The
Chi-Rho
is one of the earliest forms of Christogram, and was used in the early Christian Roman Empire through to the Byzantine high period as a symbol of piety and empire. It is formed by superimposing the first two letters in the Greek spelling of the word
Christ
,
chi = ch and rho = r, in such a way to produce the following monogram:

Daylamid warriors
: Fierce and rugged warriors from the mountains of northern Iran. It is thought that they may have fought with twin-pronged spears (though many argue that this is a mistranslation and that they actually fought with double-edged blades).

Dekarchos
: A minor officer in charge of a
kontoubernion
of ten
skutatoi
who would be expected to fight in the front rank of his
bandon
. He would wear a red* sash to denote his rank.

Doux
: One of the titles for the leader of a Byzantine
tagma.

Dromon
: Byzantine war galley with twin triangular sails. Capable of holding up to three hundred men.

Droungarios
: A Byzantine officer in charge of two
banda,
who would wear a silver* sash to denote his rank.

Emir
: Seljuk military leader, roughly equivalent to the Byzantine
strategos.

Er-ati
: A Seljuk warrior name.

Fatimid Caliphate
: Arab Islamic caliphate that dominated the area comprising modern-day Tunisia and Egypt in the Middle Ages.

Follis
: A large bronze coin of small value.

Foulkon
: The Byzantine heir to the famous Roman
testudo
or ‘tortoise’ formation.

Ghulam
: The Seljuk heavy cavalry, equivalent to the Byzantine
kataphractos.
Armoured well in scale vest or lamellar, with a distinctive pointed helmet with nose guard, carrying a bow, scimitar and spear.

Ghazi
: The Seljuk light cavalry, a blend of steppe horse archers and light skirmishers whose primary purpose was to raid enemy lands and disrupt defensive systems and supply chains.

Haga
: A ferocious two-headed eagle from ancient Hittite mythology. Also the basis for what would become the emblem of both the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Sultanate.

Kampidoktores
: The drill master in charge of training Byzantine soldiers.

Kataphractos
: Byzantine heavy cavalry and the main offensive force in the
thema
and
tagma
armies. The riders and horses would wear iron lamellar and mail armour, leaving little vulnerability to attack. The riders would use their
kontarion
for lancing,
spathion
for skirmishing or their bow for harrying.

Kathisma
: The imperial box at the Hippodrome in Constantinople. This was connected directly to the Imperial Palace via the Cochlia Gate and a spiral staircase.

Kentarches
: A Byzantine officer in charge of one hundred Byzantine soldiers or the crew of a
dromon
. A descendant of the Roman centurion.

Kentarchia
: A notional unit of one hundred Byzantine soldiers, commanded by a
Kentarches.

Khagan
: The title of the Seljuk chieftain prior to the era of the sultanate.

Klibanion
:
The characteristic Byzantine lamellar cuirass made of leather, horn or iron squares, usually sleeveless, though sometimes with leather strips hanging from the waist and shoulders.

Komes
: An officer in charge of a
bandon
who would wear a white* sash to denote his rank.

Kontarion
:
A spear between two and three metres long, the
kontarion
was designed for Byzantine infantry to hold off enemy cavalry.

Kontoubernion
: A grouping of ten Byzantine infantry who would eat together, patrol together, share sleeping quarters or a pavilion tent while on campaign. They would be rewarded or punished as a single unit.

Kursoris
: Byzantine scout rider, lightly armed with little or no armour.

Milareum Aureum
: The gilded bronze mile pillar situated just north of the Hippodrome in Constantinople.

Nomisma
: A gold coin that could be debased by various degrees to set its value.

Numeroi:
A Byzantine imperial
tagma
, stationed in Constantinople. They guarded the prisons, the walls, the site of the Baths of Zeuxippus and parts of the Imperial Palace.

Paramerion
: A one-edged, slightly curved blade carried by the
kataphractoi
.

Pamphylos
: A small, round-hulled Byzantine cargo ship, used typically to transport horses and artillery.

Portatioi
: A shadowy subset of the
Numeroi
. It is thought that they were employed as torturers.

Rhiptarion
: A short throwing spear.
Skutatoi
carried two or three of these each.

Salep
: A hot drink made with orchid root, cinnamon and milk.

Shatranj
: A precursor to modern-day chess.

Signophorioi
: Byzantine standard bearers for the
tagmata.
They would carry sacred purple and gold banners on campaign.

Siphonarioi
: Operators of Greek-fire throwing siphons. They operated large siphons mounted on towers or walls, and it is thought that they also carried smaller, hand-held siphons into field battles.

Skribones
: Byzantine medical personnel who would carry the dead and wounded from the battlefield.

Skutatos
: The Byzantine infantryman, based on the ancient hoplite. He was armed with a
spathion
, a
skutum
, a
kontarion
, two or more
rhiptaria
and possibly a dagger and an axe. He would wear a conical iron helmet and a lamellar
klibanion
if positioned to the front of his
bandon
, or a padded jacket or felt vest if he was closer to the rear.
Tagma
skutatoi
may well all have been afforded iron lamellar armour.

Skutum
: The Byzantine infantry shield that gives the
skutatoi
their name. Usually kite or teardrop-shaped and painted identically within a
bandon
.

Solenarion
: A wooden channel that can be fitted to a standard bow to create a rudimentary crossbow. This allows quick aiming and firing of short, weighty darts.

Spathion
: The Byzantine infantry sword, derived from the Roman
spatha
. Up to a metre long, this straight blade was primarily for stabbing, but allowed slashing and hacking as well.

Strategos
: Literally ‘army leader’. The
themata
armies of Byzantium were organised and led by such a man. The
strategos
was also responsible for governance of his
thema.

Tagma
: The
tagmata
were the professional standing armies of the Byzantine Empire. They were traditionally clustered around Constantinople. These armies were formed to provide a central reserve, to meet enemy encroachment that could not be dealt with by the
themata,
and also to cow the potentially revolutionary power of those
themata.
They were well armoured, armed, paid and fed. Each
tagma
held around five thousand men and was composed exclusively of cavalry or infantry. In the 11
^th
century AD, some of these
tagmata
were moved closer to the borders to deal with emerging threats. In addition, a raft of smaller, ‘mercenary’
tagmata
were formed in these regions, comprising largely of Rus, Normans and Franks.

Thema
:
In the 7
^th
century AD, as a result of the crisis caused by the Muslim conquests, the Byzantine military and administrative system was reformed: the old late Roman division between military and civil administration was abandoned, and the remains of the Eastern Roman Empire’s field armies were settled in great districts, the
themata
, that were named after those armies
. The men of the
themata
would work their state-leased military lands in times of peace and then don their armour and weapons when summoned by the
strategos
to defend their
thema
or to set out on campaign alone or with the
tagmata
. The manpower of each thema varied vastly, with some able to field only a few thousand men while others could muster as many as ten or fifteen thousand men. The diagram at the front of the book depicts the structure these forces would be organised into. In the 11
^th
century, the thematic system was in steep decline, with the
tagmata
gradually taking over as defenders of the borderlands.

Tourmarches
: A Byzantine officer in charge of the military forces and administration of a
tourma.