Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

13. Numb

It was the day of the Nativity of Christ. A faint orange glow tinged the night sky to the east and the land of southern Thracia was quiet and still, the fog clearing at last. The vast tracts of farmland either side of the dilapidated Via Egnatia were devoid of workers. The fields sown with garlic, chard, onions, dill, lettuce, cabbages and mint in the warmer months now lay brown and fallow. Then a clutch of riders burst over one hillside from the north, and raced onto the highway, haring to the east.

Apion rode alongside Romanus near the head of the column, their eyes trained on the eastern horizon. The chill winter wind had long since numbed his face and the land seemed to stretch on forever.

Then at last the mighty double walls of Constantinople rose into view, the moat before them sparkling in the dawn light.

Igor cried out at this; ‘Nobiscum Deus!’

‘Nobiscum Deus!’ The rest cried out in reply, raising their swords overhead.

God’s city, Apion thought, and barely a darker place in this world have I ever known.

‘Can you feel it, Strategos?’ Romanus gasped over the rush of the air.

Apion fired a glance at him. ‘Sir?’

‘It’s within our grasp now,’ he motioned with a clenched fist. ‘Everything we have talked of in these last days.’

‘We’re not inside the city yet, sir.’ Apion countered. The irony was that Romanus was probably at his safest near Psellos, for inside the city walls any assassination attempt could not so easily be disguised as brigandage or misfortune. Apion’s eyes swept along the tops of the walls as they approached the city.

The purple imperial banners and the embroideries of the Virgin Mary and the saints fluttered defiantly on every tower, and glinting helms and speartips ran the length of the battlements.

Numeroi? Apion wondered. Then he focused on the gate they would enter the city by — if any last-ditch treachery was to happen, it would be here.

The Golden Gate was the ceremonial entrance to the city. The smaller outer wall presented an ornate but squat arched gateway, adorned with sculptures of emperors past on prancing stallions and topped with a ceremonial gilded Cross. The tower-studded inner wall yawned with the vast, marble arch of the main gateway. The two flanking towers were more like citadels, broad and sturdy, and they formed only two corners of the colossal fort that extended inside the city, protecting this entrance.

All seemed sedate. As usual, the gates were open and the first throngs of daily trade traffic rode back and forth — wagons, mule trains and farmers hauling their wares on their shoulders.

Then Apion noticed something. A silhouette emerging from the Golden Gate. A clutch of over one hundred riders. They rode not with the lethargy of tired traders, but at an urgent gallop, haring for Apion and Romanus. The pair looked to one another. The wedge slowed.

‘Sir, be on your guard,’ Apion pleaded. ‘This may be a ploy.’

Romanus nodded with a brisk sigh. ‘Aye, be readied, men.’ He spoke over his shoulders to the rest of the wedge, while three varangoi moved to shield him.

But as the riders approached, Apion noticed that they too were varangoi, and he instantly recognised the one they surrounded. The slender shoulders and delicate features. The ice-cold gaze, the silver-streaked blonde locks tied tightly atop her head. The tension melted from his heart. ‘At ease,’ he said, ‘it is Lady Eudokia.’

‘At ease?’ Romanus cocked an eyebrow in an attempt to disguise his relief. ‘Then you must know a side to her that I don’t,’ he said with a dry chuckle.

Apion smiled at this, hiding the trace of guilt in his heart.

The varangoi escorting Eudokia slid from their mounts and formed a rigid line, axes glinting in the rising sun, offering curt nods to Igor and their comrades. Eudokia’s eyes narrowed as she looked to Romanus, and a chill breeze lifted a loose lock of her hair.

Apion kept his eyes fixed on the reins of his mount, wary of meeting Eudokia’s gaze. Their moment was gone, and now she was to wed the man who would lead the empire from the flames. Yet a more frosty welcome would have been difficult to conjure.

Romanus slipped from his saddle and bowed as he approached her, then lifted her hand and kissed it adroitly. ‘My lady, I have ridden at great haste, as you compelled me to. All is well?’ Romanus asked her.

‘I would not phrase it as such. But you are here now.’ Eudokia frowned, seeing the crusted blood on the armour of the emperor-to-be and his men. ‘You met with trouble?’

‘Trouble tends to follow a man when he is headed for the imperial throne,’ Romanus replied with a deadpan expression.

‘Indeed,’ she sneaked a glance back at the city walls. ‘Now let us not linger. The city streets writhe with enemies. But the gate has been garrisoned with men loyal to me, and the Imperial Way is lined with them too.’ She extended a hand to the varangoi who had accompanied her. Her gaze was hard. ‘My men will escort you. Once we are in the palace grounds, you can bathe, eat and have your bruises and scrapes tended to. Then we can talk.’

Romanus clicked his fingers to his weary kataphractoi riders. ‘Indeed, there is much to talk of,’ he nodded, remounting and heeling his stallion into a trot. His gaze hung on Eudokia until he broke into a canter and moved ahead with his escort towards the gate.

Eudokia watched him go and then turned to behold Apion, Igor, Dederic and the handful of weary varangoi who had survived the sortie. Then she moved her mount over to Apion.

He felt awkwardness pull at his thoughts as he searched for some form of greeting.

‘They nearly slew us, my lady. Psellos had riders track us all the way. They waited until we had rendezvoused with Romanus and then they struck in the forests to the north. I fear that before he ascends the throne, they will. . ’

‘Apion,’ Eudokia stopped him. Her voice firm, but her eyes were heavy with sadness.

‘My lady?’ Apion frowned.

Eudokia took a deep breath. ‘The subterfuge was widespread. While you were gone. . ’ her voice trailed off. She held something out to him.

Apion stared at Cydones’ neatly folded white robe and cane.

***

The winter morning was crisp and clear. Apion sat on the edge of a fountain in the frost-speckled palace gardens, the skeletal trees standing watch around him. He was dressed in his woollen tunic, trousers and crimson cloak. He wore his hair knotted back from his face, his eyes red but dry. His mind was numb after days of grieving and his chest seemed to be hollow and devoid of feeling. The chill December air stung at his nostrils as he searched for his reflection in the fountain’s waters, but found only the uninvited image of old Cydones’ shattered body. A good-hearted man who had fought for the empire until he could no longer wield a sword. Slain by his own kind in the heart of that empire while he readied to sleep.

He thought of the solemn boat journey past the southern sea walls that morning. Cydones’ sarcophagus had sat near the prow of the ship for his final journey. You always did prefer sea travel, old friend, Apion reminisced. A half smile touched his lips before sorrow stole it away. The ship had docked near the Golden Gate, and then the sarcophagus had been taken to the Monastery of St Nikolaos where he was buried with ceremony befitting his gallant life. Xiphilinos, the Patriarch of Constantinople, led the prayer, as he had done for the handful of others who had lost their lives in these last months.

The image of Psellos burned in Apion’s thoughts.

He did not notice the screeching of an eagle from high above the gardens. Then a silvery-haired figure appeared beside him. She traced her fingers in the fountain’s waters.

‘I chided you before for the blackness in your heart,’ she said, ‘but I now realise I was wrong to do so.’

Apion did not turn to her.

‘It was something your old friend once said that made me realise this. No man can exist with an entirely pure heart. Darkness has no meaning without light, and light must know darkness to have any purpose. Darkness and light are entwined. To be a man is to be both.’

Apion’s eyes welled with tears once more as she said this. ‘Then you must know that darkness will cast its shadow on my heart today.’

She nodded. ‘I know this. I will not chide you for what happens today. But promise me something, Apion,’ she clasped his arm. ‘After today, let the hope that lies before you flourish. The Golden Heart is rising. All we have spoken of before lies in your grasp.’

Apion saw Psellos’ image again. Now it flickered and he saw the dark door, the voice behind it whispering. ‘Aye, but that is for tomorrow. Today, darkness will reign.’

A set of footsteps snapped him from his thoughts. ‘Who are you talking to, sir?’

He looked up to see Dederic approaching, a fur wrapped around his shoulders. He glanced to his side. On the edge of the fountain where the crone had sat, a creeping winter vine was coiled, its tendrils stretching out over the water’s surface. An eagle cried overhead.

‘Sir?’ Dederic asked again.

‘Are they ready?’ Apion asked, his breath clouding in the chill.

The Norman nodded, firing glances around the gardens. ‘The north hall is empty. The varangoi are waiting on us.’

Apion swept his cloak around his shoulders and followed Dederic inside the palace. This man was noble and he would make a fine tourmarches right enough — just as Cydones had suggested. The thought of the old man’s features sent another pang of grief through his chest. Then Apion steeled himself; those who had hurt him in the past had paid dearly for their crimes. Now others would suffer his wrath. Slaying Psellos would pose risk of civil war and so he could not slake that thirst. . yet. But he could show the adviser just how close a scimitar blade could plunge into his realm of duplicity. His heart thudded under his ribs and the blood pounded in his ears. He focused on the image of the dark door. He longed to feel the flames behind lick at his skin.

Inside the palace, two varangoi waited on them, one carrying a crackling torch. They offered curt nods and then led Apion and Dederic to the north hall, a large room studded with sculptures and busts. The varangoi moved to one statue and pushed it to the side, the grumble of marble upon marble echoing throughout the room. Behind the statue lay a small but thick timber door. Apion and Dederic looked to one another as one varangos unlocked it. From there they were led along a dark and musty corridor, lined with cobwebs as it descended.

‘This passage is known to none other than the varangoi,’ the nearest of the two guards whispered back over his shoulder. ‘Even the emperors have never known of its existence.’

‘But it takes us there?’ Apion spoke abruptly.

‘Right into the heart,’ the varangos nodded solemnly. They walked on until the varangoi stopped. ‘Look, we are here.’ He pointed to a trap door on the floor of the corridor. ‘Are you ready?’

Apion took the swordbelt holding his scimitar from the varangos and Dederic took his longsword likewise. They wore no armour, but they would not need it. ‘We’re ready,’ Apion nodded.

The varangoi hauled at a ring of iron and the trap door creaked open, revealing only darkness below, along with the whimpering of broken men.

Apion buckled his swordbelt and then nodded to Dederic. Then he dropped into the space below.

With a muted thud he landed, crouching, enshrouded in his crimson cloak. He perched there, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then, as Dederic thudded down next to him, he saw the iron bars and the gaunt faces of the prisoners. Some were riddled with torture wounds, some without eyes.

‘If these men are here on Psellos’ orders, then perhaps they are innocent. Should we free them?’

Apion leant in to his ear. ‘I have no doubt that their crimes are fabricated to suit the whims of that creature. But less than forty feet above us,’ he stabbed a finger up, ‘the Numeroi no doubt muster for their morning drill, clad in iron and armed to the hilt. Thousands of them.’ His face fell grave. ‘No, we came here for one reason, and we must not be distracted.’ Then he turned to scan the prison walls. His gaze caught on the hulking timber chest at one end. It was just as the varangoi had described. ‘Come, help me,’ he beckoned Dederic towards it.

Together, they shifted the chest to one side, and both recoiled at the vile stench that rose from the opening and the descending staircase it revealed. A sweltering heat came from down there, along with the animal moans of a man in agony and the hoarse cackling of another.

As they entered the opening and descended the steps, Apion thought of all he had been through with Cydones, all the man had done for him first as his leader and then as his adviser. His teeth ground like a mill and he felt his vision tremble. He rested his hand on his scimitar’s ivory hilt as they emerged into the filthy cavern. It was lined with bloodied torture weapons and a naked man lay strapped to the table, his body twitching its last as his lifeblood leaked from the gaping gash across his throat. At the far side of the chamber, three men stood, backs turned: one was bald and muscular and wore only a loincloth; one was slight with a crooked shoulder, and the third was tall and flat-faced. They bantered as they tended to glowing irons and sharpened serrated blades.

Apion stepped forward into the centre of the room, his eyes cast in shadow and his snarl illuminated by the glow from the brazier. Dederic sidled up to stand beside him. The tall, bald torturer lifted the blade he was polishing, then looked in the reflection and saw the pair. He cried out.

Then the three spun. The flat-faced man took up a glowing poker from the brazier while the slight one grappled the shaft of an axe. The bald one in the middle hefted a blade in each hand.

Then the big torturer’s gaze dropped to the red-ink stigma on Apion’s arm. ‘You are him? You are the Haga! You have made a big mistake,’ he rasped, his face twisting into a motley-toothed grin and his breath poisoning the air. ‘You make my job too easy. Now you will die like the old fool did!’ The big man’s hoarse cackling filled the cavern.

Apion simply glared until the torturer’s confidence faltered. The dark door barged to the forefront of his mind like a pulsing black heart. Then his eyes bulged and he bared his teeth, roaring as he leapt for them, ripping his scimitar from its sheath.

From the prison cells above, the hoarse cackling that had haunted the dreams of those in the cells tapered off nervously. Then there was a rhythmic scything of iron into flesh and the wet splatter of gore, followed by the searing of burning flesh and cries of pain like they had never heard before. On and on this noise continued, until at last it fell silent.

Then, at the sound of ascending footsteps, Zenobius shuffled back into the shadows of the cell in which he had hidden. The two figures that emerged from the stairs were coated in blood. The leader of the pair wore the look of a predator that had just fed, his emerald eyes staring through a mask of crimson.

His time would come, Zenobius vowed.