Strategos: Island in the Storm (37 page)

All around him, the screams of Byzantine kataphractoi rang out as the ghulam hacked into them. Apion swung this way and that in the confusion. Through the forest of horse limbs and fallen men he saw that the other two wedges of kataphractoi had come to aid his. They were holding their own, just, and the breach in the akhi line remained open. His fleeting thoughts of barging through the chaos to aid his comrades were scattered by the sound of onrushing hooves behind him. He swung to see a pair of ghulam, lances levelled for his chest, eyes fixed on him. He braced, readying his mace to take one of these curs down with him. At that moment, Igor and a wave of white-steel varangoi riders broke through the akhi ring just a handful of paces away, and crashed into the flanks of these two riders, dashing and trampling over them. Moments later, the Rus riders were swarming around Apion and hacking down the other nearby ghulam. The Varangoi swung their fierce breidox axes to and fro, taking Seljuk riders in the flank and crushing them. Limbs were lopped off and skulls spliced in showers of blood. The infantry of the themata poured in through the gap Apion’s riders had made and through the second gap the Rus riders had forced in the akhi ring. Thousands of them flooded onto the slopes of the hummock, cheering in victory. They pulled the ghulam from their mounts, despatching them with swift jabs of their spears and swipes of their spathions, then they turned upon the remnant of the akhi ring. Apion saw Romanus surging through the fray now also. His silver and white armour glistening as he urged his army on to the command tent, now only guarded by a clutch of panicked ghulam riders.

A hand grasped Apion’s bicep. ‘Victory is in sight!’ Blastares panted, pointing up to the Seljuk command tent, his face streaked with other men’s blood and his chest heaving. The big man ran on with the men of his tourma. Apion saw Sha and the less sprightly Procopius move for the command tent likewise, streams of Chaldian spearmen and archers flooding in their wake. The ghulam there threw down their weapons, and the last few clusters of akhi spearmen did likewise.

A cheer rang out, guttural and desperate. Romanus rode to and fro before the Seljuk tent rousing further choruses of this. ‘Nobiscum Deus!’ they cried over and over, all eyes falling on the campaign cross, being hefted to the top of the hillock by the priests.

Apion sought out and sheathed his lost scimitar, then pushed through the crowds of cheering soldiers to join the emperor. Igor was there, along with Alyates, Bryennios and Philaretos. He heard them conversing.

‘We have lost but a few hundred kataphractoi and skutatoi,
Basileus
. This is a decisive victory,’ Philaretos enthused, ‘and a magnificent one!’

Apion bypassed them, then glanced around the shade of the silk awning at the crest of the hillock. It was devoid of life bar the handful of kneeling ghulam. A few timber chests sat there, open but empty. A table stood, a half-finished cup of red wine sitting beside four daggers dug into the table top, still bearing the torn corners of the map that had been splayed out there. He traced a finger over the cracked oak surface. ‘This is not victory,’ he muttered to himself, looking south to see that the ghazi lines had withdrawn just a mile or so and now waited there. Galloping to join them was the white-garbed sultan and his bodyguards.

‘But the men need to believe it is,’ Romanus whispered, having come alongside him. ‘It is a start, but no more.’

‘So what now?’ Apion asked, looking out from the shade of the awning around the shimmering and parched plain. ‘The hottest part of the day lies ahead. Perhaps we should retire to Manzikert to rest the men?’

Romanus shook his head. ‘We have taken a regiment of the sultan’s spearmen and a wing of his heavy cavalry. But the man himself and the vast majority of his army still loom out there.’

Apion squinted to the south with the emperor. A heat haze danced on the plain, part masking the thick Seljuk ghazi lines that had withdrawn there. Watching, waiting.

‘And Manzikert?’ the emperor continued, nodding to the north and the distant outline of the black-walled bastion. ‘The fortress offers shelter but little else. It has been stripped bare of the food and fodder we found in its cellars, Strategos. We cannot return there lest we wish to starve or fight on tomorrow as weaker men. We must push on and seize victory on this fine plain today.’

Apion nodded. ‘Then push on we must,
Basileus
. But we should be careful, for the sultan seems eager not to offer battle on this plain,’ he pointed to the area a few miles behind the Seljuk mass. ‘See how the flat ground breaks up there? Rocky tracts, scree, folds, ditches and hills speckle the land. And then a few miles further on there are the valleys and the mountains that ring Lake Van,’ he said, thinking back to the snare in the valley and the snarling Bey Soundaq.

‘I will pursue him, but not into those valleys,’ the emperor ceded. ‘Better starving men tomorrow than corpses this evening.’

Apion looked over his shoulder. There, Philaretos, Alyates and Bryennios were discussing the next moves amongst themselves, and the vast Byzantine ranks were moving down the hummock’s slopes, back down onto the plain. Some distance north, he noticed the rabble of the magnate armies still catching up. Nearly seven thousand men. Untouched, untested. A sea of sweating, scowling faces, hands clutching spears, axes, clubs and ornate blades. Scleros was mounted at their head, in his preposterous armour, with the prisoner, Andronikos Doukas, by his side. At that moment, Doukas squinted up towards the awning, his sweating, handsome features glistening like his shackles. ‘And what of our reserve,
Basileus?
’

‘Let us hope that today does not call for us to use them,’ he cocked an eyebrow. ‘But they might yet make the difference. They look fearsome enough, after all,’ he grinned wryly. ‘Now, Strategos, let us focus our thoughts on what lies ahead. Go, help Alyates reform the outflankers on the right. I need you to be ready. For when we engage with the sultan’s horde – and engage we must – I need you by my side.’

***

The Byzantine advance and the cautious Seljuk retreat continued as the afternoon wore on and soon the hillock with the awning – like the Fortress of Manzikert – was but a bump in the northern horizon behind the Byzantine line. Now the rocky majesty of Mount Tzipan and the surrounding green hills and valleys loomed over them, less than a mile away. As they came onto the rougher ground leading to these hills, the march was plagued by the rasp of parched throats and the stench of drying blood. But still they marched, slowly, steadily, driving the ghazi line back onto the first of the coarser terrain. Still though, the ghazi arrows came in rhythmic showers, and handfuls of Byzantine men were felled by each volley.

‘Soon they must run short of arrows?’ Alyates panted, riding near Apion.

‘No, they each carry three, sometimes four quivers. They will have enough to loose upon us until dusk.’ Apion replied, ducking as the latest volley smacked down around them.

‘Then we will accept their surrender at dusk!’ Alyates grinned, plucking a shaft from his shield and throwing it down.

Just then, a stiff northerly breeze picked up. It was at once cool and fiery, throwing up stinging particles of hot dust. A thick cloud of this dust billowed up and shot across the ground towards the ghazi line. The ghazi line, walking south but twisted in their saddles to look and loose north, were cloaked by this dust cloud. Their next volley faltered, arrows driven askew by the gust, pattering harmlessly into the ground. Most of the archers gagged and yelped at the stinging dust, wiping at their eyes, coughing and spluttering. A raucous cheer rose up from the Byzantine lines and the priests took to lifting the Campaign Cross and the Holy Virgin of Blachernae as if claiming responsibility for nature’s intervention.

‘Ah, dusk, dawn or on this fine afternoon,’ Alyates beamed. ‘What does it matter when God is with us?’

Apion pulled a wry smile. ‘If God was with us, then he would have struck Tarchianotes down with some foul pox before this campaign set out. He would have sent Diabatenus’ horse tumbling into a gully. He would have torn the heart from Psellos when he was a child. Thank the men of our ranks, not God,’ he pointed to the infantry in the Byzantine centre. There, Sha led the Chaldians in continuing to scoop up dust in the bottom lips of their shields, tossing it in the air to be caught by the northerly bluster. The men of the other themata and the Armenian spearmen had followed suit. His lips played with a smile as he watched Sha rally them to continue. The Malian was a Strategos in all but name, he realised.

But Alyates did not hear his words. ‘Look, they come to battle, at last!’ the Cappadocian Strategos cried.

Apion followed Alyates’ gaze. Indeed, the ghazi riders were sending out packs of riders from their retreating line. Pockets of a few hundred wearing cloths and silks across their faces to protect them from the stinging dust. They swept towards the Byzantine lines, then veered out towards the flanks.

‘Outflankers, ready!’ Alyates bellowed to his kursores.

‘Harry them,’ Apion said to Alyates, buckling his veil in place again. ‘My kataphractoi will engage, but only if you can draw them close enough to our lines. We must not be drawn into the rocky tracts,’ he insisted, looking to the ever more jutting and jagged folds of land that surrounded each flank of the Byzantine march.

The first pack of Seljuk riders darted for the Byzantine right like a flock of swallows, coming with light lances levelled as if to charge Alyates’ kursores riders, then, at the last, hurling their spears like javelins and wheeling away. These weighty lances punched a raft of the more lightly armoured kursores from the saddle and a few kataphractoi as well. Alyates led the kursores forward in pursuit, trying to corral the ghazis before they could slip away. The nimble Seljuk riders were swift though, especially with the strengthening wind at their backs.

‘Pull back!’ Alyates snarled after a few hundred paces as the ghazis swept up and over one fold of shrub and dust-strewn land to disappear into an unseen dip beyond. A few riders raced on oblivious, and Alyates roared at these. ‘I said pull back!’ he loosed an arrow that whizzed past one disobedient rider’s ear to reinforce the message. Soon, the kursores were back with the right flank.

‘They will not tolerate constant harassment, Strategos. And nor will I,’ Alyates growled, seeing the next pack of ghazis coming for them in the same formation. The sight was the same over on the left flank, where Bryennios’ men were being pulled from their lines by these small packs.

‘I know. I feel it too. But they must. If our cavalry flanks start disintegrating into these shallow valleys in pursuit of a few hundred riders, our centre will be exposed. And we don’t know what lies in those valleys.’

Apion scoured the land ahead. Just a half mile onwards, the folds grew more severe and then the steep, green-sided valleys rose up, many of them already pooled with shade as the sun worked its way towards the western horizon. It was a confused and maze-like terrain. He glanced to the Byzantine centre, hoping Romanus would stay true to his plan of retreating instead of entering those valleys. The northerly gust from earlier had now picked up into something of a gale in these corridors of land, circling and sweeping around their legs, pulling on their shields, seeing their banners pulled horizontal, rapping in the squall. And the dust now stung every eye in the battle, Byzantine and Seljuk alike.

The ghazis continued to retreat in their lines, sending out small packs to continue the harassment. Now Alyates began to lose his cool. The Cappadocian Strategos roared and waved his riders on after the next harrying ghazi pack, chasing sixty of them up to the brow of one gentle valley.

Apion watched the kursores go. When they slipped over the brow and out of sight, the breath stilled in his lungs.
No, you fool!
A heartbeat later, the clash of steel and cries of men sounded from beyond that brow. Apion’s blood chilled. Moments later, the kursores reappeared, Alyates leading the retreat, a hundred or more of his riders missing, many more bloodied with gaping wounds. Pursuing them in a frantic gallop - instead of the sixty ghazis they had gone off after – were some fifteen hundred of these riders.

‘Ambush!’ one rider cried.

Apion’s eyes widened, fixed on the lead ghazi. He saw the shaded features under the conical helm, the scale vest, the broad shoulders.
Taylan?
He mouthed, feeling all else drain from his thoughts. Then the lead ghazi held his head high and the dimming sunlight revealed the snarling, scarred features of an older warrior.

‘Riders, fall back!’ Apion cried, stirred from his trance. Alyates and his kursores joined the rest of the Byzantine right in flooding back from the ghazi charge. As one, they bent in behind the infantry centre as if to take shelter.

‘Refuse the flank!’ Apion bellowed as he passed the Chaldian infantry at the right of the Byzantine centre. Sha, Blastares and Procopius acted immediately, bringing the Chaldian front swinging back like a great arm to catch the ghazi charge. The ghazis were riding too hard to pull out of their pursuit, and hundreds of them ran onto Sha’s spear line and the volley of rhiptaria loosed from it. Blood shot up as man and mount were run through and screams rang out as riders were catapulted from the saddle.

Those ghazis who had slowed in time hurried to turn and flee back to the main ghazi line. But as they swung their mounts round they saw only Apion and the cavalry of the Byzantine right sweeping back out from behind the infantry lines and arcing round, blocking their path back to the south.