Strategos: Island in the Storm (36 page)

‘No!’ Apion hissed, seeing this impetuous wedge plunge ahead like a dagger, racing at a full charge for the Seljuk right. The emperor too was signalling frantically for them to return. Buccinas howled and banners waved in futility as the riders bore down on their target.

Then, as if turned by a strong wind and a double moan of the Seljuk war horn, the entire advancing ghazi line swung around into a well-ordered retreat. The kataphractoi wedge drove into the space the enemy had occupied moments ago, the brunt of the charge wasted on thin air. They raced on after the retreating Seljuk riders, but the nimble ghazis melted away before them and reformed behind them like droplets of oil in water. The kataphractoi charge slowed now, the horses tired from the exertion, the impulsive riders realising their folly in being cut off from the allied lines. Worse, each ghazi rider had now stowed their lance and pulled their bow from their back. Those nearest raced to encircle the impetuous kataphractoi and in a heartbeat they had nocked, aimed and loosed. A chorus of
thock-thock-thock
echoed across the plain. At such close range and at such volume, many of the kataphractoi were stricken – arrows aimed for the few gaps in their armour at the knees, eyes and upper arms. Likewise, horses reared up, limbs peppered with shafts. In moments, the wedge of three hundred riders were in pieces. Many dead, many groaning where they had fallen. Another clutch of ghazi swept in to strike down the few who remained, hacking them with their scimitars or knocking them from their saddles and running them through with their lances.

The rest of the Byzantine line watched this, the gap remaining at some three hundred paces as the Seljuk retreat matched the Byzantine advance. Apion looked over his shoulder to the gruff-voiced kataphractos behind him. ‘Now, you will stay in line, yes?’

‘Yes,
Haga,
’ the rider replied sheepishly.

As the Seljuk lines continued to fall back to the south, the emperor gave the signal to slow to a walk. At this, the Seljuks also took to walking their mounts away from the Byzantine advance, keeping the gap steady. Then they twisted in their saddles, lifted their bows skywards and loosed a volley of many thousands of arrows at the Byzantine infantry centre. Every skutatoi heart there froze.

‘Keep your shields high, lift them when I say and we will be fine,’ he heard Sha bawl from the walking ranks, the Malian watching the dark cloud of missiles that cast the Chaldians in shade momentarily. ‘Shields!’ he cried. The rattle of iron arrowheads on shields was cacophonous, and vastly outweighed the meaty thuds and yelps of those caught out.

Without hesitation, the ghazis then turned their bows as one to aim at Apion’s cavalry flank. The volley rained down on Alyates and his lightly-armoured kursores. With a series of guttural grunts and shrieks, those riders were punched from their saddles and mounts stricken likewise.

‘Kursores, fall back!’ Alyates bawled, snapping off one arrow shaft that had lodged in his klibanion. ‘Strategos, you have the front,’ he nodded as he and his more lightly armoured kursores fell back behind Apion’s heavier riders, out of arrow range.

Apion nodded in understanding, then bawled to his riders as, with a rattling thrum, another dark cloud of Seljuk missiles was loosed; ‘They fire from the edge of their range, and their arrows will be lucky to harm you. For you are encased in steel, as are your mounts, slide your shields into your backs, keep moving at a walk . . . and do not look up!’

‘What, why?’ the mouthy, gravel-voiced kataphractos behind him grunted.

Apion braced as the arrow hail pelted down all around them. The missiles danced from his helm and armour and the men around him. Only one man fell foul of the volley, a grim, wet, thwacking sound coming from behind Apion’s shoulder. He glanced round to see the gravel-voiced rider there gawping upwards, an arrow shaft quivering in his ruined eye socket, the tip buried deep in his brain, blood spilling through his mail veil in gouts. The rider slid from his mount in silence and crunched to the ground, dead. ‘That’s why,’ Apion growled to the others.

‘We cannot offer any counter attack?’ Alyates spat, riding level with Apion again. His eyes swept along the Byzantine lines as if seeking out some form of answer.

Apion replied curtly. ‘That is exactly what they want. Look,’ he nodded along the Byzantine lines to the mere handful of bodies that had fallen in the first two volleys, ‘they cannot break our lines if we stay together. They mean to anger us into abandoning our formation. If the balance of numbers was not so delicate then we might have been able to charge them, but - ’

‘But that dog, Tarchianotes, has melted into the ether with half of our army?’

Apion nodded with a caustic gurn.

‘Does Tarchianotes realise just what he has done? If I live beyond today, it will be with great pleasure that I track down and slice the cur’s wart-ridden, scowling head from his shoulders.’ Alyates snarled as he raised his shield, falling back as the next cloud of arrows hissed for the right flank.

Apion braced as the arrows thudded down around him, one jarring his shoulder as it smacked against a lamellar plate there – the armour holding good. ‘Think only of the foe before you today,’ he called back to Alyates.

The morning wore on and the tense procession continued, the Byzantine line progressing southwards across the plain as a solid front with the magnate armies and the Oghuz riders following a quarter-mile to the rear. The Seljuk riders kept the constant gap between them as they continued their retreat at a walk, loosing fearsome clouds of arrows at leisure. They proved skilled at this, as when the emperor gave the order to slow or speed up even by just a fraction, the Seljuk lines adjusted their pace to maintain the gap at the farthest possible killing distance. Worse, when the Byzantines took to loosing arrows in reply from their own modest companies of archers and archer cavalry, the missiles fell just short of the withdrawing Seljuk host.

Apion glanced over his shoulder, seeing the path they had taken from the camp and the Fortress of Manzikert – now a few miles behind them to the north. The parched plain they had advanced across was sparsely littered with the bodies of the infantry and riders who had fallen to the constant rain of arrows – no more than a hundred though – easy to spot given the clouds of flies that buzzed over the corpses and the vultures that swooped to peck at the flesh. They had some time ago passed by the spot where the headstrong kataphractoi had broken ranks and raced headlong into their own slaughter, and the vultures were thickest there. Another volley of arrows pattered down on Apion’s wedge, shaking him from his observations. A missile skated from the rim of his helm, sending a shower of sparks across his eyes.

‘Now, they must offer battle!’ Alyates said, the young Strategos of Cappadocia pointing just ahead.

Apion squinted through the heat haze to see the hummock in the plain with the silk awning atop it. The Seljuk command tent. The retreating ghazi line had all but backed onto the bottom of this hummock and as the Seljuk riders looked this way and that for direction, the gap between them and the Byzantine advance was narrowing rapidly in their hesitation and their arrow hail faltered. The hummock itself was ringed by akhi spearmen on the lower slopes and a thick cluster of some eight hundred ghulam riders at the top. These iron masked riders were every bit as fierce as the Byzantine kataphractoi. Suddenly, from the ghazi line, the white-garbed Alp Arslan and a handful of bodyguards broke back, up the hill, through the double ring of defenders and into the shade of the awning.

Alyates’ eyes scoured the small hill. ‘The sultan took to battle in a death shroud. Now, perhaps, he will find use for it!’

‘He wears that garment only to inspire his men to victory,’ Apion countered, ‘their resolve will only be stronger for it.’

‘Let us test that theory, Strategos,’ Alyates said, breaking out in a broad grin, his eyes darting to the Byzantine centre.

Apion twisted round to see the source of Alyates’ sudden encouragement. There in the Byzantine centre, the campaign cross had been hefted aloft, and the purple imperial banners were being chopped down, signalling both flanks should advance like pincers in an attempt to envelop the ghazi line and the hilltop tent. The buccinas sang to confirm it.

‘This is it,’ Alyates gasped. ‘Take the kataphractoi forward, Strategos, let us seize the Seljuk camp! I will have the kursores rain their arrows on the defenders in support.’

‘
Nobiscum Deus!
’ the men of the Byzantine line roared as they broke forward, the two wings of cavalry at each end folding round the foot of the hummock in an attempt to corral the ghazi horde there. But the ghazi were swift to break, flooding round the hill’s lower slopes and slipping from the closing Byzantine pincers and off to the south. A few hundred fell to Byzantine horse archers, but the rest burst south towards Mount Tzipan in a plume of dust, leaving the hill tent and those guarding it to their fate.

‘Ignore them!’ some unseen commander bellowed. ‘Take the Sultan’s tent!’

Apion swept round towards the hill’s southern slope as part of the right cavalry pincer. He afforded a southwards glance at the fleeing ghazi.
Too easy?
He wondered. His musing lasted only an instant, the first cries of engagement tearing him back to the hill and the command tent. He lay flat in his saddle and levelled his lance. He saw the triple-line of akhi spearmen halfway up the hummock brace, snarling faces peering over turquoise and tan shields, spear butts wedged into the burnt gold scree for stability. Behind them, hundreds of ghulam riders atop the hummock shuffled, readying to spur their mounts into a downhill charge at their attackers should the akhi line be breached and the Seljuk command tent threatened.

‘Break the spear wall!’ Apion cried to his kataphractoi wedge and the other two wedges riding just ahead. ‘Take one man down and the rest will follow!’

The rightmost wedge of kataphractoi hit the akhi spear line first. A dull, crunching noise marked the shattering of bones on shield bosses and the piercing or crumpling of armour on akhi lances. This first wedge fell back downhill, the momentum lost along with six riders. The second wedge punched into the akhi, desperate to break the hardy ring of defenders. This time, one akhi was run through on the tip of a kataphractos’ lance, dark blood showering through the air, the man lifted from his place in the line and carried with the rider on inside, trampling the spearmen in the two ranks behind. But the victorious rider’s joy was short lived. A clutch of the ghulam riders rushed down from the tip of the hummock to thrust their spears into him at all angles. His body fell, torn and sheeting blood. Meanwhile the rest of the second wedge found themselves repelled as the akhi line closed up, shrinking the defensive ring by shuffling uphill a few steps.

Apion led his charging wedge at the akhi line next. He set eyes upon one giant of an akhi, moustachioed and roaring, his face covered in battle scars. This foe’s face came and went as the dark door pulsed into his vision, rushing for him, crashing back on its hinges, the flames beyond engulfing him.

He felt a dull roar topple from his lungs as he punched his lance through the giant’s chest, showering organs and dark blood from the man’s back, the tip of the spear tearing the throat of the akhi behind as well and pulling the weapon from his grasp. Trampling over another akhi, he realised he was inside the momentarily ruptured akhi ring with just a handful of his riders. Here, the polyglot cries of war were thick and desperate. He twisted this way and that, seeing the tear-streaked and snarling faces of the other akhi as they lunged for him and his men. One leapt up to slide his spear under the klibanion of the nearest kataphractos. The rider fell and was butchered in seconds, white bone and blood gaping through his mangled armour. Apion felt his limbs move in a numb and sickeningly familiar sequence. In a single motion, he drew his scimitar from his belt and swept it round, hacking the lance tip from one Seljuk spearman, scoring another across that foe’s chest and then punching the tip into the next’s shoulder. His Thessalian reared, kicked and gnashed, its hooves crushing the face of one foe and its teeth crippling the spear hand of another. Still, the akhi line fought fiercely, desperate to close the breach.

‘Hold the breach!’ Apion roared, a few more of his riders bursting inside the akhi ring – thirty or so men in total. ‘Hold the-’ his cry halted as he felt the ground judder. His head snapped round to the rise of the hummock and the tide of iron ghulam riders pouring down from there, their lethal lance tips only paces away and trained on him.

‘
Turn!
’ Apion bellowed to the smattering of his riders – all engaged in the melee with the Seljuk spearmen. They did their best. Twelve or so managed to swing away from the clash with the akhi and face the coming threat.

The clang of iron upon iron that followed shook the plain. Apion felt his heart thunder as the ghulam riders swept over him and his riders. A lance tip aimed for his heart stayed true until he brought the hilt of his scimitar round on it, diverting it so the spear ploughed through and dislodged a handful of plates from his klibanion, scoring the flesh of his hip. But the sheer momentum of the ghulam rider hit him like a rock thrown from an onager, punching him back from the saddle. As he fell, he dropped his scimitar and grappled at the rider, wrapping his arms around his attacker’s torso and pulling the man down with him. They tumbled over and over in the dust as the rest of the ghulam wedge charged on past them. The fallen ghulam rider brought his steel-gloved fist crashing into Apion’s face. The thick and familiar crack of his nose breaking filled Apion’s head and coppery blood trickled down his throat. Apion swung a knee up into the man’s gut to send him sprawling, winded. He leapt up, only to stagger back from the man’s sudden recovery and lunge with a scimitar. Instinctively, Apion drew the savagely flanged mace from his belt and the pair circled. He ducked just under the swipe of the man’s scimitar then reached up to grapple his foe’s wrist and brought his mace sweeping down onto the man’s crown. The ghulam’s helmet and skull crumpled under the fierce blow. Blood and eye matter spurted from the rider’s veil and he at once fell limp and collapsed.