Strategos: Born in the Borderlands (44 page)

‘Another step and I’ll tear your throat out. By Allah, I should have slain you where you lay.’

Apion stepped back, shaking his head. ‘Nasir, I came home to this, I . . . ’

‘You did not do this, but you brought this upon them!’ Nasir roared.

‘Never! They were everything to me!’ But even as he spoke, Apion felt the truth of Nasir’s words burn on his neck. He retched, then doubled over to spew out the trickle of bile left in his belly.

Nasir arced his scimitar round and down onto the oak table, the blade embedding in the wood and the frame cracking. ‘You should have been here to protect them.’

The words cut like a blunt dagger through Apion’s soul. He had failed Mansur and Maria just as he had failed Mother and Father. The
Haga
they called him, the ferocious two-headed eagle, the demon swordfighter, the leader of men. All names unbefitting of a man who could not protect those he loved most.

He stood tall under Nasir’s gaze and cleared his throat. ‘You are right. I should have been here. You know how much they meant to me, Nasir. You more than anyone else.’

Nasir’s shook his head. ‘No. There can be no excuses for what has happened here.’ He wrenched his sword clear of the table and sheathed it. ‘We may once have been as close as blood kin. I remember our oath.’

‘ . . . until we’re both dust . . . ’ Apion mouthed.

‘I said I remember!’ Nasir roared. ‘But this changes things, it changes everything. Nothing will be the same anymore.’

What’s left?
A hoarse voice whispered inside Apion’s head.

‘Your presence offends their memory,’ Nasir spat.

There is something left, isn’t there?
The voice sounded rapacious.

‘Leave this place. Leave and never come back,’ Nasir’s shoulders broadened and he took a step forward. ‘Because I’m making a new oath, this time to myself. If our paths cross again after tonight,’ his brow wrinkled, ‘I
will
kill you.’

Apion heard his old friend’s words and deep down inside, a distant voice cried out, pleaded for Nasir to reconsider, but in his head the rasping voice was in full flow.
Yes, there is something . . . something sweet, something long, long overdue . . . revenge! Nothing stands in your way now.
His eyes were fixed on a distant point, far beyond the shattered table. ‘Those responsible for this will die, Nasir. What happened to Mansur will happen to them. I swear it. This is my oath.’

Nasir sneered at this.

‘Everyone who played a part will be cold and still, by my sword. The man who orchestrated this, all of this, he is a walking shade.’

‘You talk of death as if you were the reaper?’ Nasir spat, his eyes narrowing.

Apion felt a coldness wash through his veins and he looked his old friend in the eye. ‘Everything you have lost, I have lost also, Nasir: Mansur, like a father to me, and Mar . . . ’ Apion moved forward, Nasir shook his head.

‘Don’t you dare say her name!’

‘Maria. Maria was my closest companion as a child. She was my lover, the woman I dreamt of every night I was away. Her face, her scent, they soothed my mind.’

‘She was to be my
wife!
’ Nasir roared, then lurched at him, one fist crashing into Apion’s nose.

A metallic wash coated his throat as he stumbled back against the hearth. ‘I won’t strike you back, Nasir. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve got every right to hate me,’ he said as Nasir towered over him, chest heaving, fists balled, ‘but I warn you, stand back and let me leave.’

Nasir tilted his head back, grimacing. ‘So you ride out of the valley, leaving destruction in your wake.’

Apion stopped as he passed Nasir. ‘My words won’t help today, but I want you to know and remember that I am sorry, so, so sorry.’

‘Until we meet again, Apion,’ Nasir’s face was stony. ‘If it is on the battlefield then that would be apt.’

Apion nodded, pulled his crimson cloak around his body, then stepped out of the farm and into the warm drizzle. He stopped to glance back at the shattered door, for an instant his mind cruelly played back the memory of little Maria, her fawn hand pulling the door open on that first day.

Then the memory was washed away with the image of the dark door. This time it did not rush towards him. No, this time he beckoned it forward. He reached out for it, his scarred and knotted arm with the
Haga
emblem fitting perfectly over the arm in the image. Apart from one thing.

He drew his hand closer, he saw the prayer rope flicker to the white band of skin in the image. That God could let this happen all over again sickened him to his soul.

Something inside him snapped.

In silence, he pulled the prayer rope until it ripped free of his wrist, then threw it to the ground.

With that, he leapt on his Thessallian and heeled the gelding into a fierce gallop. He would not rest until he had hunted them down.

All of them.

***

‘He was my good friend. Let me help dig,’ Kutalmish pleaded.

Nasir’s palms were blistered and his eyes stung with sweat but he waved his father away without reply and continued scooping earth from the spot where old Mansur was to be buried.

‘You are a strong-headed boy, Nasir; you are turning out like your brother was before he died. Why did you react to young Apion as though he was the perpetrator of this vile act?’

Nasir stopped digging and turned to his father, bathed in the pale orange of the coming dawn. ‘How can you defend him? Bracchus and his men came here to collect a debt of blood from him. He knew they would come here and he had a choice to stop this.’

‘Everything is black and white with you, isn’t it?’

‘I know that I am honouring Mansur by forever ridding this valley of Apion.’

‘What does she think of this?’

Nasir bristled; Maria lay in his bed, being nursed back from near-death by the old woman with the milky eyes and healing hands. ‘Maria should not be concerned with him anymore.’

‘So you did not tell him she lives? You let him ride off with a weight of guilt he does not deserve?’

‘It’s a blessing that I didn’t cut his throat from ear to ear.’

‘My, Giyath shines through in you, indeed, son.’

Nasir glared at his father, the old man looking frailer than ever, eyes red from weeping. ‘He’ll use his rage, he’ll thunder off and find the bastards who carried out this act
and
slaughtered his parents, I’ve gifted him that rage.’

Kutalmish frowned then whispered. ‘Forcing a man to face Bracchus is no gift.’

Nasir scowled and made to reply, then stopped as he noticed his father close his eyes and shake his head. ‘Father?’

‘A dark truth has been hidden, son.’

Nasir climbed from the grave. ‘Speak!’ He barked.

Kutalmish looked to the shrouded form of Mansur’s body. ‘Forgive me, old friend,’ he whispered, ‘but our oath was until death.’

‘Father, what do you know?’ Nasir realised he had his father by the scruff of his robe.

‘Apion will destroy Bracchus, son. Bracchus is a vile and dark creature who has brought misery upon our lives. Yet Apion will hate Mansur even more than Bracchus if he finds out the truth. A truth he was never meant to discover.’

‘How could he hate Mansur, how could he hate him as much as Bracchus? Bracchus killed his parents!’

Kutalmish’s features fell stony. ‘Bracchus was not alone that night.’

Nasir stood back, wide-eyed, then he frowned, glancing to the form of Mansur’s body. ‘Mansur? Never!’

Kutalmish closed his eyes, tears escaping and dancing down his lined cheeks. ‘He was a troubled man for a long time, Nasir.’

‘How could he be involved in killing Apion’s family? Bracchus is a black-hearted dog. Mansur was anything but!’

‘And maybe one day, long past, Bracchus was also a good-hearted soul. Just as, that one night, Mansur was as black-hearted as Bracchus. Life changes people, Nasir, brutally.’

‘What happened?’ Nasir demanded.

Kutalmish mouthed a prayer and then looked his son in the eye. ‘Apion’s father was the cavalry commander that led the charge on our caravan, Nasir. He was responsible for the death of Mansur’s wife and your mother too,’ his words trailed off with a sob.

Nasir’s mind raced. His hatred of Apion swirled with this revelation.

‘His father made a mistake, a big one. He saw Mansur and I, riding armed, took our caravan for a Seljuk supply train . . . and attacked. He realised his mistake and tried to call off his men, but by then it was too late. Since that day blackness welled in Mansur’s heart, it was all I could do to quell it in mine.’

‘I cannot imagine Mansur as a murderer,’ Nasir shook his head, then looked up to his father. ‘Apion told me of that night. He spoke of one masked figure that stood back from the slaughter of his parents. Could that have been Mansur?’

‘Mansur came to me that night, his mind in pieces. He never spoke of his part in the events of the night. Yet, when he fell into a troubled, exhausted sleep, I lifted his scimitar from its sheath . . .’

Nasir’s eyes widened.

‘ . . . the blade was clean, Nasir.’

‘Then he took no part?’

‘He was there, Nasir. Whether or not he took part in the butchering of Apion’s family is secondary.’

‘But Mansur tried to do the right thing, to make amends – that’s why he brought Apion back to the farm, isn’t it? Yet it all came back on the old man like a blade,’ Nasir snarled, ‘the Byzantine people are poison!’

‘Nasir, it was not the Byzantines who started this. It is simply the way of man. Just as the healer lady said when she brought Maria to us.
Man will destroy man.
’

‘No, our people are different.’

Kutalmish’s head fell to his chest. ‘That is what Mansur said, all those years ago, on the night he lost his wife.’

Nasir’s eyes burned. ‘The difference is that I will not yield! I will fight these people until their empire is no more!’

22.
The Wrath of the
Haga

Inside the officers’ quarters in Argyroupolis, Bracchus and the bearded, cloaked man glared at one another in the guttering candlelight. The imperial agente had rode from the west, escorted by fifty tagma-quality kataphractoi, breezed into the town then beckoned Bracchus and dismissed the guards and the strategos with a flash of the imperial seal on his papers. Once they were alone, the man’s message had riled Bracchus to the core.
You are to go east, far to the east
, the agente had purred.

‘You effectively want me to walk into the Sultan’s heartland, into the lion’s jaws?’ Bracchus reiterated, stifling a gasp of derision.

‘The emperor wills it, Agente Bracchus. He granted you your power and so you must obey him.’

Bracchus struggled to suppress his rage. Here he stood, on the cusp of ultimate power, already the master agente of the eastern borders, and one step from becoming a strategos. Yet this man sought to take it from him. His chest tightened as he remembered the last time anyone had taken from him, his mother’s words echoing in his mind. Before he realised it, he had already clasped a hand to the hilt of the dagger strapped to his thigh. ‘I am only too well aware of my duty to the emperor,’ he hissed, eyeing the man’s jugular, within easy swiping distance.’

‘Then be aware that he can take your power from you, as fast as . . . the swipe of a dagger.’

Bracchus’ hand froze as he noticed the agente’s eyes on the movement of his arm. The man spoke a bitter truth: the emperor could turn every agente against Bracchus on a whim. He gulped back the impotent fury he felt. Only when the emperor was at his mercy would he be truly untouchable. Perhaps, he mused, he should play this game. ‘Very well,’ he spoke evenly. ‘If this mission is so crucial then perhaps the emperor will take requests for certain things that will aid my future service when I return.’

‘Naturally,’ the agente replied.

‘Good. I choose my men for this mission; I take as much coin as I feel necessary.’

The agente nodded.

‘And see to it that I return to a post of strategos
.
’ The agente frowned at this, but Bracchus cut in before he could continue. ‘One other thing, very important.’ He leaned forward, his grin spreading in the candlelight. ‘I want impunity. Total impunity. Right to the top.’

The agente nodded uneasily. ‘It can be arranged. You will be gone from the empire for some time, Bracchus. Years in all likelihood. When you come back,’ he broke into a cold grin, ‘
if
you come back, you will be furnished with these things.’

Bracchus grinned and nodded. ‘Then we leave before the sun has fully risen, as planned. I will evaporate into the eastern sands.’

***

Cydones stood beside the skutatos on the gate tower, watching the column of fifty heading away from Argyroupolis, headed east. His heart lifted at the sight and he knew the feeling was mutual among the ranks. The
tourmarches
Bracchus was a pox on the garrison no longer. He thought over the conversation he had overheard, concealed in the storeroom adjacent, then smiled: the imperial agente could bend the thema to his will no more. He looked skyward and wondered at the piety in praying for Bracchus to be exposed and executed in the Seljuk court. Then he started as the skutatos beside him grappled the edge of the watchtower.

‘Lone rider approaching from the west,’ the man shouted, peering at the figure, pale orange in the dawn light. ‘Ah, all is well, he is one of ours.’

Then Cydones broke into a wide grin. ‘He certainly is. Look, the black plumage . . . it’s the
Haga!
’

***

The gates swung open before Apion. The men cheered him as he entered, then their voices fell silent at the sight of the bloodstains coating his face and armour as the Thessallian galloped past. The six giant riders Bracchus had despatched to ambush him at the edge of the mountains had been fierce fighters, but their strength could not overcome his fury as he hacked them down, face stony, eyes staring.

He heeled his mount on through the town at a gallop. The place was just coming to life but everything around him was a blur of noise and colour. His eyes were focused on the barrack compound. He slowed at the iron gates, he and his mount panting, and roared up to the east-gazing skutatos in the watchtower. ‘Open the gates!’

The skutatos spun round and called down to the men in the compound. The gates opened with a weary iron moan and Apion slid from him mount, striding across the muster square towards the officers’ quarters.

‘Can’t keep away, can you?’ A familiar voice called.

Apion spun to see Sha, whose face fell at the sight of his friend’s bloodied features and burning glare.

‘Apion . . . what happened?’

‘Where is he?’ Apion growled. When Sha hesitated Apion grappled the collar of his tunic and snarled, blood dripping from his beard. ‘Bracchus, where is he?’

Sha’s brow wrinkled. ‘You haven’t heard? He’s gone, Apion, you don’t need to worry about him anymore.’

Apion pushed back from Sha and snarled. ‘Gone?’

‘It is true, he is headed east and will be gone for years,’ Cydones cut in, descending the staircase from the town walls.

Apion spun to face the strategos. ‘How long ago did he leave?’

‘Not long, just after daybreak.’ Cydones halted as he saw the gruesome apparition that was his new tourmarches. ‘Apion, what is wrong?’

Apion looked to him. ‘He had them killed. Mansur, Maria. They’re dead. Nepos too.’

Cydones’ eyes fell to the ground, searching, then he glanced back up. ‘Old Mansur? Who killed them? And Nepos, he deserted did he not?’

Apion shook his head. ‘No, no! It’s Bracchus, sir. He is an agente. He has engineered all of this.’

Cydones shoulders sagged and he sighed, a tinge of redness touching the rims of his eyes. ‘I knew of his imperial connections, but this? This makes him a darker soul than I ever realised.’

‘Sir,’ Apion croaked, the whites of his eyes stark against the congealing blood caking his features, ‘where is he headed?’

‘East,’ the strategos replied.

He affixed the strategos with a firm look, then hauled himself onto the saddle. ‘Then I must ride, sir.’

Cydones nodded. ‘Yes. Ride fast, Apion.’

***

Bracchus gripped the reins of his mount, squinted into the rising sun and wondered at the indignity of it all. He, the puppet master for so long, had been mastered by the emperor. Or more likely the agentes based in Constantinople who had the bend of the emperor’s ear, he mused wryly. Still, all options were open. He could follow his mission objectives to the letter and then he would return to the empire to a position where nobody would have power over him. Or he could infiltrate the Seljuk palace as ordered, and then negotiate with the Sultan. The power was still in his hands, he smirked.

‘Sir, messenger approaching,’ Vadim said, twisting in his saddle, squinting over his shoulder.

Bracchus raised a hand and the column of thirty – Vadim, six of his finest skutatoi bodyguards, squires and slaves. – stopped. Bracchus twisted in his saddle. ‘This messenger wears armour?’ He muttered. Then he noticed the rider wore a crimson cloak and black-plumed helmet, amber locks billowing from under the aventail in his slipstream and his features and garb were spattered in crimson. His eyes narrowed and he clicked his fingers and nodded to the two nearest bodyguards. The column turned to face the approaching rider and the two bodyguards moved to stand in front of Bracchus.

When the rider did not slow, Bracchus’ eyes widened. When the rider ripped his scimitar from its sheath and roared, Bracchus felt a long-buried sensation. Terror.

***

Apion gathered all his might and smashed the blade down on the first bodyguard, the giant of a man spinning on the spot, his helmet falling to the ground in two pieces, skull cleaved. The second bodyguard stumbled back in fright as his colleague’s body crumpled to the dust and Apion thundered away then circled back around and came charging for the column again.

‘Protect your superior!’ Bracchus roared, kicking a boot into the bodyguard’s back. At this, the rest of the bodyguards drew their spathions and rippled into a line across the mounted figures of Bracchus and Vadim.

Apion hared directly for the centre of the line then at the last moment he swerved, swooping past the end of the line and beheading the man at the edge. He galloped on and up the mountain edge before racing back. The four remaining skutatoi moved round to form a line in front of Bracchus, but this time their eyes betrayed panic. Then Apion sheathed his scimitar and pulled a bow from his back. Riding at full pelt for the centre of the line, he nocked an arrow to the bowstring, stretched and loosed it, the missile punching through the face of the bodyguard directly in front of Bracchus, who flinched at the spray of blood. Then he loosed another arrow that caught the next bodyguard in the throat.

‘Take him down!’ Bracchus roared to his two remaining men and Vadim.

‘With pleasure, sir,’ Vadim growled and heeled his mount into a gallop after Apion, the two bodyguards stalking out to the flanks.

Apion saw the three only as dull shapes. Only one being existed in the world right now and that was Bracchus. Vadim’s sword came smashing down at him as the big Rus tried to intercept, but Apion swiped his scimitar blade to parry, then smashed the hilt of the sword into Vadim’s face. As the big Rus toppled from his mount, moaning, Apion lay flat in his saddle and heeled his mount into a charge for the unprotected Bracchus, who was grappling for his sword, eyes wide in panic. He raised his scimitar, then closed his eyes, seeking out the faces of Mother, Father, Mansur and Maria. Then he tensed his shoulder to stab through Bracchus’ chest when suddenly a white-hot pain streaked through his leg and his world was turned upside down in a thrashing of hooves and pained whinnying.

He scrambled back from the Thessallian; the beast was writhing on the ground, chest punctured by a rhiptarion thrown by one of the bodyguards. The spear had also ripped into Apion’s thigh, tearing across the old scar. He heard Bracchus roar with delight, then he felt the ground shake from thunderous footsteps. He looked up just in time to see Vadim’s double-headed axe arcing down on him. He scrambled away just as the hefty blade split a rock where he had lay. Then he pulled round to face the big Rus, feeling his weight push down on the thigh-wound, urging him to crumple to one knee. The other two bodyguards completed a circle around him.

‘Now finish him, just like his Seljuk whore and her father!’ Bracchus’ face was pinched in malice.

Apion sought out hidden reserves of energy to spin at the flurry of sword thrusts and axe swipes, enough time only to defend, no time to strike out. Vadim’s axe blade ripped across his neck and for an instant he feared it was all over, hot blood washing down his chest, but it was not arterial and his strength stayed with him at first, but his limbs began to tire and each parry became weaker, slower as his blood drained into the ground.

Panting, he saw what looked like a dust cloud approaching from Argyroupolis, then he braced as Vadim’s face curled into a grin and the big Rus lurched for a death blow, hoisting his axe two-handed. Apion ducked back and let his foe’s momentum carry him past, the blow falling to the dust, then he saw the glimmer of opportunity; before Vadim could turn to face him again, Apion wrapped his scimitar blade around the Rus’s neck and ripped it back. Vadim spun to face him, snarling, but the lifeblood was already flooding from the gaping wound, soaking the dust. His face greyed and his expression changed to one of confusion, and then he crumpled to his knees. The axe toppled to the ground first, then Vadim fell forward and was still.

The two remaining bodyguards looked less certain now as Apion faced them, emerald eyes searing under his frown. He lurched for the first and hacked down on his shoulder, the man falling in a fit of convulsions, then spun to chop into the second’s neck but he hesitated as this man dropped his sword, hands raised. The scimitar blade hovered at his neck. Apion saw terror in the man’s eyes, a twinge of pity formed in his heart. Then he remembered the catalogue of atrocities he had been involved in as Bracchus’ bodyguard. In one swipe he beheaded the man.