Strategos: Born in the Borderlands (18 page)

Maria skipped from the wagon to glance round to the stables. She held up one finger.

One horse: that ruled out Bracchus, who would never turn up unaccompanied by his Rus partner. He inched forward and then stopped dead: the front door was ajar. He caught Maria’s eye and pushed a finger over pursed lips. Then he motioned for her to stay round to the side of the house. She hesitated, then her face tightened into a defiant sneer and she stepped primly back past the front door. Then something moved in the shadows inside, just behind the oblivious Maria. Apion’s flesh crawled.

A flash of iron blinded him as a towering, armoured figure bolted from the door, roaring like a lion to grasp her, lifting her from her feet. ‘Maria!’ Apion gasped, stumbling forward, clutching the scimitar.

A gaggle of laughter interrupted his run. The armoured figure grinned, spinning Maria in circles. She was laughing. Apion stopped in his tracks, realising he held his scimitar ready to strike in his trembling hand.

‘You idiot!’ Maria yelped, slapping at the armoured figure – Seljuk armour, Apion realised. Then Mansur strode to the doorway, grinning, watching the pair.

Apion frowned; someone had forgotten to share the joke with him. He moved forward, cocking his head to one side as he recognised the face inside the pointed Seljuk helmet. The dark skin, broad nose, ash-grey eyes and pony tail were unmistakable. His sword arm fell limp. ‘Nasir?’

Nasir spun to face Apion, flashing a full grin. ‘Apion!’

Before he could gasp or utter a mouthful of relieved abuse, Nasir had him in a bear grip, squeezing the air from his lungs. The scent of sweat, dust and oiled leather entered his nostrils.

Nasir jabbed a fist into Apion’s chest. ‘Well?’ Then he turned to Maria, cocking an eyebrow. ‘What a welcome, eh?’

Apion grinned but felt uneasy, noting how much his friend had bulked up. His shoulders, albeit draped in a mail hood, were broad and solid like oak branches and his chest seemed eager to burst from the scale vest hugging his upper torso. Even his face seemed so different, his jaw had broadened and his chin was shaded with stubble, Apion mused, subconsciously scruffing his fingers through his own sparse amber growth. ‘You’re a brave man for riding through from the east in your armour. If a Byzantine patrol had sighted you . . . ’

‘I’d have outridden them!’ He beamed.

‘Sounds more like his brother Giyath than the boy who left us last winter, eh?’ Mansur chuckled as he strolled from the farm and sidled alongside them. ‘Well, any boy’s a fool to take to the sword but let’s be thankful that he’s back and in one piece. You should think yourselves lucky; he hasn’t been round to see his father yet, have you? Came to see us first!’

Nasir shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well this place was first on my way home. And don’t tell Father I said this but Maria is a far better cook than he. So what’s on the menu?’

Maria swiped a hand at him, a ferocious grin etched on her face. ‘Goat poo if you’re not careful!’

‘That’ll do me nicely. Life with the riders means eating what you can get and when you can get it, drinking anything that doesn’t make you gag and sleeping in some of the most . . . interesting of places,’ he shot a wide eyed glance to Apion, cocking an eyebrow.

Apion half grinned in return as if all-knowing but really his chest felt itchy with envy at Nasir’s easy manner.

‘Come inside,’ Mansur beckoned, ‘I knew Maria’s goat poo pie wouldn’t go down too well so there’s a vat of root stew and an urn of salep waiting on us.’

Apion followed the three inside, feeling hidden behind Nasir’s broad frame. They settled at the table and Mansur began ladling his stew into bowls as Maria broke a freshly baked flatbread into quarters, curls of steam rising from its centre, while Nasir lifted off his mail hood and rested it on the chest by his side.

‘So you’re back for how long, until next moon?’ Mansur munched on his bread.

‘Just until the
bey
, our leader, comes for us again. The whole unit is on leave.’

Apion wondered what Cydones the strategos thought of the Seljuk army levying troops from within imperial borders, walking freely from the east to come off-duty on Byzantine land.

‘So with the riders, have you bloodied your sword yet?’

‘Apion!’ Maria mumbled in disapproval, through a torn piece of flatbread held in her lips. Mansur’s brow creased almost imperceptibly.

He shrugged, wide-eyed.

‘Come on,’ Nasir snorted, ‘you were all going to ask that one eventually.’ He glanced at Apion then dropped his eyes to his stew, stirring it with his wedge of bread. ‘We rode for three months around the east of Armenia. Building wells, protecting the villages from bandits. Good people, those Armenians. They still can’t believe the Byzantine Emperor has abandoned them.’ Nasir shook his head, taking a mouthful of stew. ‘So that part of army life was good. After that, we headed south for a few weeks. Then we moved east until the world dried up under us.’ Now his gaze fell back on his stew and his expression fell with it. ‘Out east it is a different world. Definitely not like here.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘With sand in every direction, burning your skin and blinding you, every man out there seems to distrust every other man.’ He stirred his food. ‘Byzantine and Seljuk patrols pass each other at times, under orders not to engage, what with the truce. Yet all it takes is one sly look from either side, one petty insult hurled over the shoulder . . . ’ he moved to tap his sword hilt, ‘ . . . so, yes, I’ve bloodied my sword.’

Maria put a hand on Nasir’s arm, then looked up at Apion with a frown. Apion’s skin burned.

Mansur cleared his throat and cut in. ‘Well, you two boys have a lot of catching up to do, I imagine?’

Both looked up at Mansur, then at each other, finally sharing a smile.

‘So what better way to do that than with a trip to Trebizond? Late winter market starts tomorrow and is on all week. It’ll take you a day’s ride on the wagon to get there,’ Mansur munched. ‘Spend a day there and then head back – Kutalmish and I need some good iron tools to plough the frozen fields.’

Nasir nudged his elbow. ‘Apion?’

Apion grinned back at his friend. With Mansur and then on his own, he had travelled far and wide but not for six years had he been to the thema capital. The buried shadow of his old quest for revenge touched his thoughts momentarily, but he shook his mind clear of the image.

Then he glanced at Maria, still studying Nasir’s broad jaw. His chest itched.

He affixed Nasir with a sincere look. ‘Whenever you’re ready, I am.’

***

It was colder than Apion could ever remember and he and Nasir were perched on the drivers’ berth of the wagon, tucked into thick woollen leggings, leather boots, tunics and woollen cloaks. The incessant snowfall continued, adding to the thick blanket of white on the ground and ensuring their progress was slow, night already having descended upon them. Despite this, there wasn’t far to go and they had both agreed to carry on.

‘Is there no end to it?’ Nasir shivered as clusters of snow whipped across the wagon, carried by a deathly wind. He shot a furtive glance at Apion, before shuffling to pull his cloak tighter around him.

‘I’ve never seen weather like this,’ Apion shuddered, ‘Mansur says his father’s father used to tell stories of the steppe, where the snow lay higher than a man on horseback at times.’ He screwed up his eyes to peer at the ground ahead; the snow was still only knee deep, he guessed, but the camber of the road was lost in the snowfall and it was only the frozen waters of the Piksidis that had kept them on course in the whiteout. ‘I think we’re still on the road,’ he muttered, ‘but there might be an easier route.’

‘Another short cut?’

Apion wrinkled his brow and cast a disdainful glance at his co-driver.

Nasir was smirking. ‘She told me all about it, the fallen rock. She said you saved her life,’ he began with a keen tone.

‘Yes. Sharpness of thought, that’s what I used. That and a bit of muscle . . . ’

Nasir cut him off, ‘ . . . saved her life after nearly killing her with some idiot plan involving lacing a mountain road with oil?’

Apion’s skin burned under the carapace of cold as Nasir roared with laughter before breaking down in a coughing fit, almost choking on an inhaled snowflake. Enjoying his friend’s discomfort, the glow on the horizon went almost unnoticed.

Then they both blinked at the sight, then turned to grin at one another.

‘Trebizond!’ Apion chattered.

***

They approached in silence, only the crunching of wheels in fresh snow could be heard. The crenelated city walls grew more massive as they neared and then Apion realised that what he thought were skutatoi lining them were in fact six spikes with a shapeless mass stuck on the end of each. The torchlight up above guttered and the features of the severed heads were momentarily apparent; empty, staring eyes, mouths agape, flesh grey, hair matted with blood and sinuous matter trailing from the neck. A distant memory of poor Tarsites touched his thoughts.

They passed inside the arch of the city’s main gate, Nasir staying quiet as agreed while Apion explained the purpose of their visit to the gate guards. Inside the city was muted, the raucous babble he remembered was but a distant echo from neighbouring streets, the weather seemingly having herded the populace indoors. He shivered and looked up to the skyline, the structures of the packed city outlined faintly by the torchlight from the streets. The great church still dominated the centre of the place as he remembered, the snow-covered
Chi-Rho
on its dome stark against the night sky. A city of god? He felt the urge to scoff at the idea, remembering his time in the cellar drinking hole.

They parked the wagon on the market square, across from a small inn that Mansur had recommended as being Seljuk-friendly. Nasir headed inside while Apion locked up the wagon and tethered the horses in the empty stable nearby. ‘Feed them well,’ he said, tossing two bronze
folles
to the shivering attendant. He stroked the grey mare’s nose and petted the other’s mane, eyeing the snow heaped on the market stalls. ‘You two huddle together; I’ll see you get plenty more fodder tomorrow morning.’ He turned to stride across the street for the inn when a clopping of hooves stopped him in his tracks.

‘Single file,’ a voice barked.

He twisted round: a column of kataphractoi bedecked with crimson Chi-Rho banners trotted across the market square. One rider trotted more slowly, falling back to the rear as the column passed Apion. The trailing rider wore a green cloak, green plumage on his helmet and shoulders and had a forked beard. Apion’s eyes widened as he recognised the garb – the strategos! He straightened up to disguise his lameness, taking the pain in his withered leg
.

Cydones nodded, eyeing him. ‘Mansur’s farm boy, Apion, isn’t it?’

Apion nodded.

‘Well, you’ve come a long way since I last saw you. You were walking with a crutch, were you not? And the scimitar? That’s a fine and somewhat controversial weapon for a Byzantine boy to be carrying in the capital of the thema
.
’

‘It is Mansur’s weapon,’ Apion replied.

Cydones smiled. ‘I know it is, by God I would recognize that blade at a hundred miles. Has he been teaching you the art of swordfighting?’

‘He is a fine teacher,’ Apion nodded, wondering how Cydones knew the old man. ‘You must have fought against him, when he was in the Seljuk ranks?’

‘In the ranks, is that what he told you?’ Cydones chuckled.

‘He was,’ Apion was indignant.

Cydones lifted a hand. ‘Easy, lad. I know he was a fine warrior in the past, but he was more than a man of the ranks, he was an
emir
, a Seljuk strategos. Led Tugrul’s armies like a lion. Probably the finest tactical mind that has ever crossed the imperial borders. His ghulam wing shattered an entire tagma, left them ragged and bleeding with one feigned charge that disrupted their lines and then a real one that finished them.’

‘Mansur? A strategos?’ Apion’s mind reeled. Mansur the peaceful farmer, the waddling old man, the caring father. Then he remembered that day at the Lykos, the ambush, Mansur’s swordfighting was awesome, not like that of a common soldier of the ranks.

‘Yes, a leader of men, and a damned fine one too. With his right-hand man, Kutalmish, they were nigh invincible at times. He taught me a lot too, you know, had me in a few close scrapes!’