Strategos: Born in the Borderlands (22 page)

His scar flared in a white-hot agony as he threw himself forward, exhaustion gripping his muscles and spots swimming in his vision, but he continued, stomping towards the banks of the Piksidis, begging for the wagon that was to take him east in the morning to be there, right now.

As he approached the riverbank the blood froze in his veins; someone was sitting there, upon a rock, silhouetted in the faint moonlight. Apion crouched, ready to turn and hobble away.

‘Relax,’ a gruff voice grunted. ‘We’re not enemies, yet.’

Giyath.
Apion’s skin prickled.

‘I can never sleep the night before joining up either,’ he eyed Apion furtively, ‘and all that talk at the table, it boils my blood.’

Apion moved to sit beside Giyath. The man’s face was a crease of untended fury for an instant and then his head dropped. He ran thick fingers over his shorn scalp.

‘It’s all very well to talk as if we are of the same blood,’ he looked at Apion, his eyes glistening in the moonlight. His words were weighted but his face was solemn now, unthreatening.

Apion wondered how many times he had actually spoken with Giyath over the years. Him aside though, there was Maria and Mansur, Nasir and old Kutalmish. They were his blood in every sense other than the physical. He relaxed with a sigh. ‘We practically are.’

Giyath cut him off, ripping a dagger from his belt with a rasp of iron. ‘I respect you as Mansur’s boy, but you’ve got to understand, for your own sake, if we ever met in the field, then I wouldn’t blink before sliding this into your guts,’ he grabbed Apion by the collar, pulled him close so the pair were nose to nose and Giyath’s breath stung in his nostrils, ‘to split your veins, to tear your organs, spill your blood into the earth.’

Apion’s heart hammered and his eyes darted from Giyath’s dagger, pressed against his ribs, to his burning features. He saw the inky depth of sadness in there, if only for a flitting moment. Then Giyath roared in an impotent fury and shoved Apion back from the rock.

‘Well then I pray we never meet in the field,’ Apion spluttered, prone, touching a hand to the pool of red trickling from the narrow gash on his ribs. Then boldness laced his blood as he stood, ‘for your sake as much as mine.’ He jutted his chin out in defiance.

Giyath stabbed his dagger into the ground and laughed a hollow laugh. ‘It’s not about me being better or stronger than you, Apion. That’s not the issue here.’ He looked up, now his eyes were glassy. ‘It’s the cold, hard truth of the battlefield. You’re with the thema. So even if you were a brother,’ tears rolled around his anvil chin and dripped to the ground, ‘it would be just the same: your blood or mine.’ He wiped angrily at his tears and turned away. ‘Now leave me, I want to be alone!’

Apion felt cold at the thought of returning to Kutalmish’s farmhouse. In the oddest way, he felt his only bond with another was this wretched one he had with Giyath, right now. ‘Why don’t you leave, Giyath, leave the Seljuk ranks? Here in the borderlands you could be neutral. You could tend the farm instead, make Kutalmish proud. War is coming but you don’t have to be part of it. You could be neutral, just like your father, just like Mansur.’

Giyath looked up at him once more. This time though, his eyes were dry. ‘Leave the ranks?’ He whispered and then slowly shook his head, eyes fixed on Apion. ‘Oh, no. You can never leave. You ask my father or Mansur and they will tell you so.’ He turned back to the river. ‘Now leave me.’

As Apion walked away, Giyath’s words circled in his thoughts.

Then a lone eagle cried, piercing the still of the night. He felt a presence nearby, but the land was empty as he peered into the darkness. Then he heard it from all around him and inside him at once, a whisper.

You may not see it now, but you will choose a path. A path that leads to conflict and pain. Much pain.

***

A dust storm raged in the dark outside and buffeted the timbers of the imperial waystation, making the space inside feel almost welcoming. The cloaked and hooded Bracchus cupped his gloved fingers around his watered wine and studied the clientele: punch-drunk, hunched and haggard seemed to be the common theme. These hovels were supposed to be a sanctuary to weary travellers, a place where imperial scouts and messengers could exchange their mount for a fresh one after a restful night’s slumber. Why anyone would feel safe enough to blink let alone sleep in this place was beyond him, yet in the candlelight, three bodies lay slumped and snoring in the bunks to the rear, veiled from the bar area by only a filthy curtain. Here he was; the master agente, executor of the emperor’s bidding and now a tourmarches, one step away from a strategos. He stifled a snort at the absurdity of it: unlimited power was within his grasp yet he was sitting amongst filthy rogues. He twisted at the snake band ring through his glove and for a moment, he remembered the time before, when he had no power, when people could take from him what they wished. Some took things that could never be replaced.

He heard her voice.
Don’t look, son, go with them, please, don’t look back.

But he had looked back. He could see that stinking alleyway in the backstreets of Trebizond; the three thugs had paid their bronze folles to have their way with Mother and Bracchus had left them to it, heavy-hearted as always. She had explained to him every day since he was old enough to understand that this was the difference between them living and dying of starvation, but still it felt to him as if she died a little every time she sold herself this way. He waited the usual short while it took and then made his way back round to the where he had left her. But when Bracchus turned in to the alleyway he froze to the spot: his mother stood naked and bleeding, one thug stood behind her, gripping her shoulders, the other hurled blows into her face, already swollen and discoloured. They laughed, laughed like they were playing a game. He made to sprint for her when a third thug hooked an arm around Bracchus’ neck and dragged him away. It was then she had pleaded with him.
Don’t look back!
But the gruff tones of the thug drowned her out.
Forget about ‘er, boy, you’ve got a whole new life ahead of you. You’re goin’ to fetch a pretty sum at market
, he slurred and then ripped from his neck the bronze Chi-Rho, Bracchus’ only possession of value and the one his mother insisted he could not sell for food. It was the last time he had ever contemplated God. Bracchus sunk his teeth into the man’s forearm until he tasted blood and heard the man roar. Then he wrenched free, twisting to go back for his mother, but froze as he saw the knife tear out her throat. Then the blood. Dark blood. The shrieking laughter. The finality of her body crumpling onto the scum of the alley floor.

A pang of sorrow stabbed his chest and then he thudded the table with a fist, clearing himself of sentiment. The drinkers nearest him in the waystation shot furtive glances his way, and then returned to their drinks. They were ignorant. Ignorant of the debt the empire owed him.

It was a debt that could never be settled; the urban guard were absent when they should have been there to protect his mother. The empire could at least be grateful for the fact that he had focused his initial vengeance on the vile underworld, like the racketeer under whose protection those three thugs had operated; safe until they had underestimated the filthy, homeless son of a prostitute.

He had found the thug who had tried to drag him away, talking of slavery; the fool was staggering down the very same alley, blind drunk, only two nights after the incident. Bracchus had knocked him from his feet with a wooden club, then hacked off the man’s arm, tore out his tongue and left him to bleed to death. The next thug, the one who had held Bracchus’ mother by the shoulders, was found nailed through the shoulders to the doorway of the racketeer’s headquarters, his rib cage ripped open, organs pulled free and left on the street for the rats to feast on. The last one, the thug who had slit his mother’s throat, disappeared one night, then his severed head was sent crashing through the window of the racketeer’s headquarters, empty eye sockets cauterised with a red-hot blade. The racketeer himself had paid his dues with interest; the rumour had spread that they found only his skin and a sea of blood on the floor of his office.

Bracchus felt the dagger clipped under his tunic onto his thigh. It had served him well over the years and his heart had blackened with its every use until now, when he knew only darkness. In that time he had channelled his spite, using shrewdness to rise into the emperor’s favour. Now he had license for his deeds, as black as he wished to make them. The Agentes were sent far and wide in the empire with licence to ignore the law, to spill blood, plot subterfuge and instigate unrest to suit the emperor’s whims, and the man in the purple now desired that the eastern borders stay volatile, limiting the power and reputations of the outlying strategoi. So it was a dark role for the darkest of people. But did the empire know what a demon they had hired in him? Now he was in a prime position to become a strategos. With that role combined with his role as master agente of the east, who could curb his power? No, nobody would take from him ever again.

The slats lifted and a gust whipped around his ankles as the door opened. Another hooded, hemp-robed figure strode in, face in shadows. The figure cast a glance around the tables until his eyes fell on Bracchus. Bracchus supped his watered wine and nodded to the seat opposite.

Both of them sat, faces in shadows.

‘What do you wish of me, master?’ The agente hissed like a snake.

Bracchus felt a surge of exhilaration; some agentes resented being led by any man other than the emperor, but this one was totally obedient. He fixed his gaze on the man’s eyes, shaded under his hood. ‘The strategos, Cydones, is mobile, mustering and taking stock of the thema
,
’ Bracchus paused, toying with the idea that he could just as easily order the strategos dead with his next sentence. Perhaps the time for such an order would come soon, he mused, but for now, all that mattered was that he and he alone would be left to rule Argyroupolis, free of meddling of so-called superiors. ‘He must be kept from Argyroupolis for some time, until next spring at least. Keep him busy; pay our Seljuk friends well to keep him from the town.’

A wide grin spread across the agente’s features. ‘Consider it done, master.’

13.
Argyroupolis

The wagon had found every pothole in the road that wound through the mountain pass and a dust storm had blown all day, puffing the contents of the land through the slatted wagon cabin with gusto. Apion’s plan of sleeping through the journey to Argyroupolis after his wretched night’s rest had been blown away with the storm. He groaned, wiping his eyes as if he could clear the fug from his mind, then peeked from the slats of the cabin: the sky was now showing patches of blue as the wind seemed to ebb at last. Then he caught the familiar scent of market: salted and fresh meats, cooking stews and roasting vegetables, all mixed in with the less savoury cocktail of dung and sweat. Then the squabble of the traders, the tinkling of goat bells and the gentle chords of a well-tuned lyre.

This was Argyroupolis. The gateway to the northern coastline and one of the key fortified settlements on Byzantium’s eastern flank. He surveyed the town: about a third the size of Trebizond and ringed by a squat limestone wall. Its position, snug in the mountain pass leading to the northern coast and western themata, meant it was always going to be a critical stronghold, the slopes towering above the walls like flanking titans, defying those who tried to enter the imperial heartlands beyond. Outside the town there was a run-down archery range and a series of dilapidated timber huts, but the town was very much the oasis of life in this mountain wilderness.

‘Alright, lad, get your kit together,’ the hoarse driver called from the front. ‘You’ll be handing over another two folles, by the way,’ he stopped to hack up another lump of phlegm. ‘My horses are knackered. I’d never have driven them through that normally!’

‘Okay,’ Apion croaked, realising his own throat was coated with the dust. The storm had sprung up in the morning as he left Mansur’s and the wagon driver had rolled his eyes and tried all he could to dissuade Apion from hitching a ride.
You’d have to be a bloody maniac to travel in this weather!
But Apion had made his down-payment for the journey the previous week and a further clutch of six folles had swayed the man pretty quickly. All the while, Mansur and Maria had stood by the farm doorway, watching him in silence. Mansur couldn’t understand his mood that morning. Maria, however, could. She had almost winced when she set eyes on his torn expression and then had avoided his glare after that. He loathed himself for it but he still wanted to hold her, to smell the scent on the nape of her neck.

Then the wagon driver barked to pull him back to the present. ‘Move it! I’ve got to be in and out of here and back in Trebizond by tomorrow or I’ll get my balls cut off!’

Apion slung his satchel over his shoulder and braced himself. He winced into the brightness, then slid gingerly out of the wagon.

He was stood under the shadow of the main gateway, the iron-studded timber gates lying pushed back and held by a dune of dust. The wind still had a bite to it, lifting dust that stung the flesh. He pulled on his cloak, aware of the glare of the two skutatoi stood at either side of the entrance and another two stationed above them on the crenelated gate towers, three times the height of a man. They looked as tired as he felt, dust lining their tunics and packing the cracks in their leather klibania.

‘Here,’ he tossed the coins to the driver, then his shoulders slunk as he realised he only had one more folles left.

‘Hmm,’ the driver weighed the coins in his hand and eyed him furtively, a sour whiff of wine on his breath. ‘I might need another two. That back wheel took a pounding on some of them roads, and the horses need fodder and a good watering.’

Apion frowned. ‘Well sorry about that, next time I’ll fill in the potholes before we set off!’ He tucked his purse into his belt in refusal. ‘Make sure it’s the horses that get a drink and not you.’

‘Cheeky runt!’ The driver snarled, and then whipped his horses on into the town.

‘Quite right, lad. He’d rob his grandmother blind, that whoreson,’ one skutatos offered with a snort of derision. ‘You’re here to sign your life away, eh?’ He added, eyeing the sword belt.

Apion winced and tried to straighten up, hoping to disguise his lop-sided stance. ‘I am. The strategos, he is here?’

‘The strategos? He is with the
protomandator,
chief of heralds, mustering the thema. He will be gone for some time. At least until next spring. Until then . . . ’ the skutatos rolled his eyes and shot a glance at his colleague. ‘ . . . well let’s just say that since that new tourmarches took charge here,’ he shook his head and sucked air through his teeth, ‘things have been harsh. Damned harsh, eh, Peleus?’

‘Aye,’ the other skutatos added wryly, casting an eye into the town. ‘Stypiotes is right. Cydones used to run this town, and if you thought he was a hard bastard . . . ’

Apion nodded. ‘But until the thema is mustered there must be a place for new recruits to the permanent garrison?’ He waited until both the soldiers shrugged. ‘Then I’ll take my chances.’

‘The new tourmarches has made this place his kingdom. He won’t give you any chances,’ the guard called Stypiotes shook his head with wide eyes.

‘Thanks for the warning.’ He gave the pair an uncertain nod and passed in under the shade of the walls. Mercifully, the tiresome gale outside dropped away once inside. The interior of the city fell somewhere between the might and grandeur of Trebizond and the ramshackle chaos of Cheriana: in the centre of the town, a granary and a red-domed church bookended a row of three-storey tenements and a line of workhouses, smiths and inns completed the border of the market square. The market square itself was a tight squeeze with colour and noise crammed in to make best use of the limited space of the flat between the mountains; traders, shoppers, animals, slaves, spices, textiles, exotic fruits, farming tools and crop stores all mixed in a swirl of commerce. A pair of chickens scuttled around his feet, their owner cursing in Armenian as he chased them, stooping to catch them only for each one to flutter clear of his grasp.

Apion hopped clear of them, his shoulder barging into something.

‘Watch it!’ A burly, red-faced man snarled, grappling the wicker basket of vegetables he carried.

‘Sorry, I . . . ’ Apion started.

‘Oi!’ A saucer-eyed woman screeched as he stumbled back onto her bare toes.

‘Sorry!’ he yelped as she hissed and hared past him.

‘Get out of the way, bloody idiot!’

Suddenly the market town seemed to be writhing around him as traders poured to and from the bottleneck leading to the main gate. The place was alive with purpose and it was as if he was the only soul who had no business being there. Every face was creased with importance and every body moved in haste, while he bounced between them, clutching his satchel, his heart pounding at every bump or curse. His braced knee trembled from weakness already and he felt cold inside and out.
This isn’t home,
he almost retched. Then a thundering of hooves rumbled through the dusty ground and a whinny pierced the air together with the familiar cursing of the wagon driver. He spun just as the crowd parted.

‘Whoa!’ the wagon driver howled, his face stretched in alarm as he reined his horses back but it was too late, Apion could only shudder at the two mounts’ bulging and bloodshot eyes as he crumpled under their flailing hooves, throwing an arm across his face. Then he felt the shuddering blow of a pair of hands hammering onto his side, knocking the wind from his lungs, throwing him from the horses’ path.

Prone in the dust, Apion winced, clasping a hand to the grating agony that rose through his scar. He sat up: the street was cloaked in a cloud of dust and a general rabble of excitement filled the air as the crowd slowed momentarily, no doubt eager to witness some mangled body under the hooves. Instead, they groaned as they laid eyes on Apion.

‘Pah! Not even any blood,’ one well-wisher commented. With that, the crowd began to melt into a stream of people in a hurry once more.

‘Fool!’ The wagon driver spat, then peered down at him. ‘ . . . It’s you! Would’ve served you bloody well right to get trampled.’

‘On your way, traveller!’ A baritone voice bawled across the sea of heads from the other side of the street. The wagon driver’s head snapped round to glare at the source but then his face fell and he grumbled, nodded and then urged his horses on.

Apion stood, teeth gritted at the fiery pain running the length of his scar. He peered across the crowded street to see who had spoken. There, on the opposite side stood a man with a typical Byzantine felt cap, but under the cap were broad, charcoal-dark features, eyes fixed on him, white as snow with piercing silver irises. From the distant lands of Africa, Apion guessed, he had seen men with the same skin in Trebizond, selling exotic creatures from their homeland to the rich of Byzantium. He had the fresh features of a man in his early twenties and wore a rough off-white and sleeveless tunic with a red sash around his torso and he rested his athletic frame on a spear. The crowd thinned a little and Apion hobbled across to the man.

‘You saved me?’

The African nodded, then pointed to Apion’s sword belt. ‘Conscript?’

Apion’s skin prickled. Was it that obvious? Then the man’s expression creased in dismay as it fell on his quivering leg. His leggings may well have disguised the scar and the brace but his weakness was not so easy to hide. Apion pulled his cloak over his legs. Maybe this was all a mistake. A distant part of him longed to say no to the African, longed to chase after the wretched wagon driver and beg to be taken back home to the farm. Mansur would welcome him back, surely. Then he screwed his eyes shut tight until he saw the image of the dark door, of Bracchus. He tensed and fixed his eyes on the man. ‘Yes, I’m here to join the thema.’

‘Sha, dekarchos, leader of ten,’ he pulled at the red sash. ‘Or I would be if we had a full complement. I’m part of the permanent garrison here,’ the African offered his hand.

Physically, he could see why this man was a leader: young, with broad shoulders and a torso that was honed and lean. Apion gripped him by the forearm. ‘I’m Apion.’

‘Well, we need every man we can get, but . . . ’ the African’s voice trailed off, his eyes falling again on Apion’s withered leg. He shook his head and looked Apion in the eye. ‘There are barely four hundred in the garrison, covering the whole of the east of Chaldia.’

Barely four hundred?
Apion wondered at this and the size of the thema border, stretching for miles north and south.

‘Second thoughts?’ Sha’s eyes narrowed. ‘We need men, but we have no time for passengers.’

Apion shook his head. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Come with me, I’ll get you signed up.’ Sha smiled but his tone was one of resignation rather than enthusiasm. Then he pointed to the scimitar. ‘That’s a fine sword going by the hilt. A conscript bringing in equipment is always welcome.’

Perhaps now was not the best time to mention that it was a Seljuk weapon in the sheath, Apion mused. He looked for a change of tack. ‘You are from Africa, are you not? Egypt?’

‘Close. Mali, in the heart of the sands.’ He patted a hand to his chest. ‘Been a long time since I was there though. I was taken into slavery as a boy and served many a Persian master. Then one day I was bought by a Seljuk master who thought I was a broken soul. So he neglected to guard the gates of the slave quarters one evening – so I took my freedom. The only way I could run was west and so here I am. What about you, you’re from the north or the west?’ Sha nodded, eyeing Apion’s pleated amber locks.

Apion wondered at this. His heart lay with Mother and Father, yet with Mansur and Maria at the same time. ‘Let’s just say my roots are here,’ he pointed to the ground.

Sha smiled at this. Then they stopped by the barrack compound and the man’s smile faded.

The compound was small, squat and unremarkable, tucked into the corner of the town. A smaller northern and western wall met with the sturdy town walls, segregating from the throng an area maybe ninety feet on long and wide. The inner walls were thin and had no walkway, only a timber tower by the left of the wide iron spiked gates provided an elevation overlooking the city. Through the spikes, Apion saw shapes flitting across the muster yard in the centre, skin and shining metal, orchestrated by the barking of an officer, yelps of pain and then the smash of iron upon iron. A single skutatos stood atop the timber tower, leaning on the edge of the inward facing lip, eyeing the goings-on below with a troubled look.

‘Attention!’ Sha called up to the skutatos on the tower. The soldier jolted upright, spun and grabbed his spear, then, upon seeing Sha, he relaxed.

‘Dekarchos coming through,’ he bawled down to the gates. Two more skutatoi eventually shuffled over to unbolt the iron gates and wrench them open.