Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

22. The Grey Land

The cawing of the birds faded and was replaced with the skirl of an angry wind. It roared and roared until he could bear it no more, and so he opened his eyes. At once, the roaring wind stopped and there was utter silence.

He was in no pain. All around was a grey and lifeless world. Mountains tapered up to jagged peaks that pierced a curious sky. It was as dim as twilight, but the sun was present, yet shrouded by a dark veil that seemed to withhold its brilliance. And it was cold. So very cold.

He looked down to see that his faded red tunic seemed to be draining of colour, turning as grey as the dust. At the same time, he felt his thoughts fall away like dead leaves from a bloom in the first frost of autumn.

‘I feared I would meet you here, Apion,’ a distant voice spoke.

He turned to see the crone. She shuffled across the still land towards him with the aid of a cane, her off-white robes betraying bony knees as she moved. Behind her and stretching off as far as he could see was her trail of footprints in the grey dust, as if she had journeyed far to be here. Her puckered features were etched with sadness. Then, as she came closer, she lifted the cane and held it out to him.

Apion eyed the walking aid. At once, his heart seemed to spark with fondness as he recognised old Cydones’ palm prints, worn into the top. For a moment, the fading memories and greying of his thoughts slowed.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘A place that every man visits eventually. A place that I have long grown weary of,’ the crone replied, looking up to the veiled sun, her sightless eyes slitted as if she could see and the sun was blinding.

‘I cannot remember how I came to be here. All I feel is a terrible pang in my heart — as painful as any wound I have suffered. Is it. . betrayal?’

The crone avoided his question. ‘This place soothes a man’s soul and takes away many things. . including some things best forgotten.’

Apion’s eyes darted as fleeting images of the battle pierced the numbness. ‘Am I dead? I must be, for the battle is over and I find myself on this lifeless plain.’ He thought of the frantic last moments of the fray, Romanus’ sword swinging alongside his own, seizing victory from the flames. Then the crone’s words danced across his thoughts.

At dusk you will stand with him in the final battle. .

‘. . like an island in the storm,’ he finished. Then he looked up at her. ‘This last part of your vision has come to pass?’

She shook her head. ‘Today was but a grim portent. The final battle and the island in the storm have still to come.’

‘But I surely will not be there to stand by his side?’ Apion said, looking to the skin on his forearms — the white band where the prayer rope had once been tied was gone. Then the Haga stigma started to fade until it too was gone. Now the network of scarring on the skin was disappearing before his eyes, leaving grey, smooth flesh in its place. ‘This place seems eager to draw the life from me, to drain me of those things that make me what I am.’

She reached forward, clutching at his wrist with her talon-like fingers. ‘Then fight it, before it gnaws into your heart — the one place that truly defines you.’ She raised a bony finger and pointed to the pair of grey, fang-like mountains, dappled with shadows. ‘Look, what do you see?’

‘I see a wasteland. What of it?’ he said, then turned his gaze once more upon his disappearing scars.

She stared at him, her eyes weary. Then she reached over, placing Mansur’s bloodied shatranj piece in his left palm, and Cydones’ cane in the other, before closing his greying fingers over these two items. She placed a hand on his breastbone and pointed to the jagged mountains again. ‘Let the iron melt from your heart, Apion, then look again.’

Apion frowned, shaking his head. ‘Then I must be dead inside and out, for I see only. . ’ he started. But he felt the hand holding the cane growing warmer. The draining of his thoughts slowed and then stopped. He thought of Cydones and the many days he had spent with his mentor, supping wine, playing shatranj, and with both men recalling the happy times in their lives. Like Apion, Cydones would speak little of the many years that spliced these precious and happy times. The old man had no family, and his life was entwined with the war. In Cydones, Apion had found a reflection of himself. These memories were rich and vivid. Their colour did not fade.

Before him, the shadows seemed to fade from the grey mountains and they turned a warm russet-gold. Then the veil fell from the sun, bathing the land in warmth and light. When he frowned at this, the crone pressed his fingers over the shatranj piece in his other palm.

At once, his thoughts were filled with old Mansur’s laughter. Memories of the years they had spent together danced in his mind’s eye. Orphaned, Apion had found a Seljuk father in the old man. Then his lips grew taut as he remembered the bitter truth that had followed. But the anger faded as a tear danced across his cheeks. Without Mansur’s mistakes, would the old man have grown to become the fatherly figure he was in his latter years? Without Mansur, would he ever have had those precious few years with Maria?

As his thoughts swirled, the mountains before him altered likewise. The jagged peaks relaxed into the rounded, gentle sloping hills of a valley. Beeches grew from seedling to sapling to verdant thickets in heartbeats. Then a babbling of running water filled the air and a gentle river spilled through the valley, in between the two hills. The ground below him rose up, lifting him to the top of another modest hill. Cicadas sang, goats bleated and the heat was like elixir on his skin.

‘I know this place,’ Apion spoke as he twisted to look around him.

‘And you must never forget it,’ the crone spoke.

Then he heard the lowing of oxen in the distance behind him. He spun round and looked down into the valley, and the sight wrenched at his heart. The weary farmhouse with the bowed roof. The goats. The ageing grey mare tucked into a patch of shade, munching on hay. Then, in the heart of the valley, a short stroll from the farmhouse, he saw a portly figure driving a pair of oxen along a square of flat ground, ploughing the soil. Mansur? His heart hammered under his ribs. Then it seemed to stop dead. Beside the farmer, a young woman stood in a frayed, red robe. Her hair was dark and sleek. ‘Maria?’

He glanced to the crone. ‘What is this?’

‘From darkness, you can find strength,’ she replied. ‘Many mourn what they have lost. The strongest use it to drive them onwards. That is what makes you what you are, Apion. That is why I came here. You must not give up.’

‘But this is not real.’

‘No, most of the things you see here live on only within your heart.’ The crone stared at him, then reached out to offer him something else. A lock of sleek, dark hair, bound together by a fine golden thread. ‘But not all.’

He took it, then lifted it to his nose and inhaled Maria’s sweet scent. He looked up to the crone, his eyes widening.

A smile had spread across the crone’s face. ‘Your old friend, Nasir, left it with me when he passed through here only a short while ago. At the last, he wanted you to know the truth.’

Apion gawped at the lock of hair and then at the figure down in the valley. ‘She is. . no, I saw her blood. She was. . ’ he looked back to the crone. She was gone. In her place a swirl of grey dust rose and then dissipated.

He set off at a sprint downhill as an eagle screeched out above him. The wind rushed past his ears and he slid down the scree at the foot of the valley, tumbling over, kicking up dust as he scrambled towards them. Maria turned to him. She was frowning. She looked older than he remembered. He held out a hand to her, stretching his fingers out as he ran to her. But then she started to slip away. He tried to cry out to her but found his voice was simply not there.

Then all around him the verdant valley crumbled like a fading dream.

Blackness overcame him.