Strategos: Rise of the Golden Heart

3. Cutting the Noose

Nasir buckled on his scimitar, straightened his scale vest then stepped out of his tent and into the light of a waxing moon and a glitter of stars. The blessed cool of night saw the soldiers of his warband both armoured and cloaked. The infantry were poised, mounted archers eager, all eyes on Kryapege’s walls. The artillery was primed. They were ready. He was ready. For twelve years he had been ready. He lifted a neatly braided lock of Maria’s hair from his purse, inhaled its scent and kissed it gently.

Forgive me, he mouthed.

‘Sir, I implore you, wait here,’ a voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘Let your men lead the tunnelling party. . ’

Nasir snapped his glare round upon the akhi captain, halting and silencing him. Then he placed his conical helm on his head. As the ornate noseguard slid into place and the mail aventail gathered around his shoulders, Nasir turned from the walls and set his sights on the small hillock just behind his readied ranks. To the rear of this rise, hidden from Byzantine view, a timber frame outlined a broad cavity, gouged into the red earth.

Nasir clicked his fingers. At this, some two-hundred akhi spearmen rushed to form up behind him. Only the whites of their eyes, speartips and helms showed above their shields. He waved them forward, their horn and iron armour rippling like the scales of a giant serpent as they snaked towards the tunnel entrance.

He slowed only when two men — a bulky figure and a smaller one, both wrapped in cloaks — cut across his path. The hooded pair stumbled as they hurried out of the way, the smaller of the two muttering some apology in a broken Seljuk tongue. ‘Cursed Mercenaries!’ Nasir grumbled as the pair made their way towards the artillery lines and the other Persian engineers.

Shaking the distraction from his thoughts, Nasir snatched a torch from the sapper who stood beside the tunnel’s entrance. Then he strode into its depths, the serpent of men diving underground with him. He marched past the collection of Persian workers, still fitting and making good the timber struts that held the tunnel in place. The tunnel descended sharply until the rock was damp and cool and the gloomy corridor rattled with the echo of iron and crunching boots. Then, when they reached one set of struts with a turquoise rag tied around each side, Nasir raised a hand. They were nearly under the walls of Kryapege.

At once they slowed the pace of the march, cupping their weapons gingerly, padding forward in near silence. They continued like this for several hundred feet, noticing the tunnel rise again, towards ground level. Then, up ahead in the torchlight a wall of red earth and rubble appeared, marking the tunnel’s end. This section was heavily strutted, given the proximity to the surface. Nasir grinned; from here, his column could spill into the heart of the Byzantine town and seize the walls under cover of darkness.

‘How far?’ he whispered to the head sapper.

The burly, moustachioed man wiped the sweat from his brow and squinted. ‘Seven feet,’ he replied, jabbing a finger upwards. ‘With my best men I can break through very soon.’

Nasir gave him a cold nod. ‘Then you must begin at once.’

Nasir turned to his waiting men, raising a clenched and shaking fist. ‘Let every swing of your blades stain the earth with Byzantine blood,’ he hissed through gritted teeth. Then he raised one finger. ‘But leave the Haga. For he is mine to slay!’

***

Apion stood in near-darkness. Expressionless iron masks hovered all around him in the chill, a faint orange underglow betraying their unforgiving, empty-eyed stares. He thought again of the past. He thought of the few he had once loved, and then the countless number he had slain since those precious few were taken from him. A ghost of that past was coming for him now.

Then the darkness and the silence were pierced by a dull, almost apologetic chink of iron upon rock, directly in front of him.

It was time.

At once, his gaze sharpened. He placed his helm on his head, the three black eagle feathers jutting from the crest and the cool, iron scale aventail slithering down his neck like an asp’s skin. He squared his shoulders, the iron plates of his klibanion rustling and his crimson cloak slipping back from his shoulders as he did so. He rested his palm on the ivory hilt of old Mansur’s scimitar and glared into the darkness. In the void, a vision formed of a dark, arched doorway, the orange glow behind it beckoning him forward, a sibilant voice beyond it taunting him. This image had plagued him even before his first days of war, the voice drawing him into the hell that lay behind the timbers. He knew for certain that he would walk in those flames today.

‘Ready?’ he hissed to the iron masks around him.

The masks nodded in silence.

Let the past come for me.

***

The air was growing stale and thin in the tunnel, and Nasir’s breath came and went like fire in the gloom. His teeth grated as he watched the head sapper and his engineers chip carefully at the rock face. They were heartbeats from seizing victory. A breath from ending the Haga’s days, he enthused, his grimace bending into a rapacious grin. Then he frowned.

The head sapper was stepping back from the tunnel end, confusion pinching his features.

Nasir followed the man’s gaze; the centre of the rock face had crumbled away under the sapper’s chiselling. But instead of more rock as expected, a hole the size of a coin had appeared. Darkness lay beyond.

‘We should still have another six feet to go, should we not?’ one hunchbacked sapper asked his leader. ‘Did we misjudge our depth?’

The head sapper shook his head, pushed his eye to the hole. Then he twisted round to Nasir, his face pale, his mouth agape and his pupils dilated in panic.

The breath caught in Nasir’s lungs as an acrid tang curled into his nostrils from the opening. For just a heartbeat, the tunnel was deathly silent. Then his eyes bulged in realisation. He swept his hands up. ‘Back. . BACK!’

The roar had barely left his lips when an almighty crash shook the tunnel. At once, the tunnel end crumbled like a falling veil. The coin-sized hole became a gaping maw from which a clutch of demons glared out, a dull orange light dancing across their iron faces. Then the dust of the fallen rock swept over the Seljuks. Nasir staggered back, gagging and wiping at his eyes.

As the dust settled, he saw the reality of what stood inside the countermine — men in iron masks, conical helms and klibania. A pair at either side held miniature battering rams, still caked in the dust of the thin partition they had just demolished. The band of them in the centre carried iron canisters under one arm and held leather-bound iron siphons in the other, gentle flames licking from the ends.

Siphonarioi. The dreaded Greek fire throwers.

In their midst stood an amber-bearded warrior with three black eagle feathers on his helmet, his deep-set eyes shaded under a dipped brow.

The Haga raised one hand, and it was enough to send the Seljuk warriors scrambling backwards, toppling over one another.

‘At them!’ Nasir screamed, ripping his blade from its sheath to rally his men.

But his words were drowned out by a thunderous roar as the Haga dropped his hand and the siphonarioi unleashed their fury. The tunnel was filled with wrathful orange plumes and an acerbic black smoke. The akhi warriors fled in panic, screaming, many ablaze from head to toe as the fire clung to them like wet clay. In moments, blackened bodies fell to their knees and then toppled to the dust.

Nasir pressed up against the tunnel-side behind one strut. His skin was tormented by the searing heat but he was untouched by the spouting flames. Cutting out the glare of the blaze through narrowed eyes, he saw the Haga watching the destruction like a scavenger waiting for the predator to finish its meal. Then at last the siphons fell silent, leaving a carpet of fire and thrashing men. With a roar, Nasir leapt out from the strut and charged over the flames. He pushed past the screaming inferno that was the chief sapper and leapt for the Haga, scimitar raised over his left shoulder.

In a flash of iron, the Haga spun to him, ripping his own blade from its scabbard. They clashed at the edge of the carpet of fire. The flames licked at their boots. Their swords met in a screech of iron, sparks dancing and adding to the fiery hell all around them. For the briefest of moments, the pair’s faces were inches apart, grimacing as they fought for supremacy, each pushing their blade towards the other. Nasir’s lips trembled with rage as he saw the Haga’s features illuminated in the firelight; the callous emerald eyes that had haunted his every thought. At last, Nasir slid his blade from the contest and ducked back. As the Haga stumbled forward under his own momentum, Nasir ripped his scimitar up, the tip scoring across his foe’s face. The Haga staggered back from the blow, but he was unblinking, his face set like stone despite the blood that washed from the bridge of his nose and his cheek. Then Nasir lunged forward, the tip of his blade plunging towards his enemy’s heart.

At the last, the Haga swept his scimitar up and parried, then he drove forward, deftly and fiercely, swiping his blade in a flurry of silver. Nasir felt the force of each blow and could only parry. In moments, he had been driven back into the carpet of fire and then he tripped over the smoking corpse of the head sapper. He flailed, toppling into the blaze.

The flames enveloped the right side of his face, clinging to his flesh. Unearthly pain gripped him. He scrambled back from the blaze to the strut behind which he had sheltered. There he beat at the flames until at last his skin was free of them. Over his own screaming, he heard a lone voice.

‘It doesn’t have to end like this, Nasir. Leave, while you still can,’ the Haga spoke.

Nasir winced at the stinging agony and the pungent stench of melted flesh on his face. He looked up across the carpet of flames, dipped his brow and pinned his nemesis with a gimlet stare. Then he gripped his scimitar, readying to strike again. At this, the Haga shook his head in resignation, then turned and nodded to the men carrying the battering rams.

With a crash, they battered at the nearest struts of the Seljuk tunnel. The wooden posts cracked and bent and a shower of earth and rock rained down around Nasir in a grim portent. Through the tumbling rocks, Nasir fixed the Haga with his glare, raising his scimitar point like an accusing finger. Then he turned, just as the battering rams shattered the struts completely. This time the tunnel capitulated. Nasir leapt back from the rockfall and fled back through the tunnel, leaping over the charred corpses of his men, hearing the abruptly severed screams of the stricken that were caught under the collapsing earth.

He burst from the end of the tunnel, only paces ahead of the collapse, then toppled to his knees, panting. Rubble and dust shot out of the tunnel behind him and then the entrance collapsed too. All around him were the few of his tunnelling party that had escaped. They lay blackened and groaning like shards of a shattered blade.

Nasir struggled to his feet, batting away the helping hands of his men, some bringing balms and bandages. He lifted his scimitar and looked upon his reflection. The skin was gone from his jaw and cheek, and the sinew and muscle underneath was blistered and angry, while the white of one eye was blood-red and bulging. A voice barged into his thoughts uninvited. The ghosts of his past have all but destroyed him. . when you next look upon a mirror, think upon those words. He shook the crone’s musings from his mind with a low growl. The pain and the disfigurement were a fine price to pay if it meant the Haga would be slain today.

Then he heard a faint chanting rise from within the walls of Kryapege.

‘Nobiscum Deus!’ mixed with ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’

He turned his searing gaze upon the town.

***

Apion and two skutatoi bundled the trio of captured Seljuk akhi from the countermine, then on through the lower town and towards the eastern gate. The Chaldian soldiers and the native garrison alike chanted and cheered as he passed, their breath clouding in the dawn chill. Even the townsfolk joined in, roused from doubtless fitful sleeps, hope sparkling in their eyes at last.

Stow your hopes and be ready to fight for your lives, he thought as he marched through them. His body still trembled with shock from the clash with Nasir, and the dark door lay ajar in his thoughts. Today was far from over.

The skutatoi shoved the three captured akhi up the stairs onto the battlements and Apion followed. There, he looked to the east. The first orange of dawn licked at the horizon, framing the plume of dust that stretched from the mouth of the collapsed Seljuk tunnel. He saw that Nasir’s men were in disarray. For the briefest of moments, he considered the possibility that these three prisoners could live beyond today. Then the chanting behind him fell to silence, and the dry cackle from behind the dark door rattled through his thoughts as if mocking him for his naiveté.

He felt all eyes upon him: the soldiers of the thema, looking to their strategos; the people of the town, desperate for a show of authority. Apion looked over his shoulder and shared a glance with his tourmarchai. Sha, Blastares and Procopius offered him stony looks, knowing what had to come next. Without ceremony, Apion drew the dagger from his belt and wrapped a forearm around the chest of the middle of the three akhi, while the two skutatoi did likewise with the remaining pair.

Apion composed himself. The Seljuk prisoner had been stripped of his weapons and his skin was black with soot, his eyes wide with terror. He could feel the man’s heart thundering through his horn vest. Apion felt pity pawing at his chest for an instant, then shook the emotion clear and steeled himself.

As the sun slowly breached the horizon, he felt its warmth on his face. He leaned in to whisper in the man’s ear, speaking in the Seljuk tongue. ‘It was a brave act to march into that tunnel, and I commend you for that. But I cannot release you, for my people would strip the flesh from your bones before you even reached the gates. And I cannot send you into slavery, for I know only too well the horrors a man can suffer at the hands of a Byzantine master.’ With that, he pressed the dagger against the man’s throat. ‘Forgive me.’

‘Your god will never forgive you,’ the Seljuk croaked as the two skutatoi either side despatched their prisoners swiftly.

Apion hesitated for but a moment, his eyes falling to the white band of skin around his wrist. At once, his heart hardened. ‘Tell me,’ he whispered into the akhi’s ear. ‘Who is my god?’

With a swift wrench of his wrist, it was over. The Seljuk’s hot blood flooded across his arm and he caught the man’s weight, lowering his body to the battlements. He crouched there for a moment, shame creeping over his heart. Then he looked out to the enemy lines, already being marshalled into position for a frontal assault on the eastern walls. As the Seljuk war horns wailed out, he sought out the figure of Nasir, standing in their midst.

What choice did you give me?

***

All along the Seljuk lines, laments rang out at seeing their comrades executed. Eyes turned this way and that, then, almost universally, they looked to Nasir. They looked at his mutilated features with a mixture of horror and expectation.

The blood pounded in Nasir’s ears. He looked along his readied lines as the rising sun bathed his ranks from behind. The gentle heat stung like fire on the melted flesh of his face.

‘Ready the artillery, ready the men. This town will be razed into the dust by noon!’

At this, a raucous cheer filled the air.

Nasir raised his left hand.

‘Catapults, ready!’

At this, the crew around the six bulky timber frames groaned, taking the strain, bending the stone-throwing arms back.

‘Ready!’ they cried.

Then Nasir raised his right hand.

‘Trebuchets, ready!’

‘Ready!’ The crews around the two hulking devices responded, fifteen pairs of men straining at the end of the ropes, holding the giant timber throwing arms almost at their full stretch.

Nasir’s brow dipped and he threw both hands forward, towards the walls of Kryapege.

‘Destroy them!’

A deafening cheer filled the plain as the two sets of crews pulled down on their devices to gain every last morsel of extra power before letting loose their load of rocks.

This was the fatal mistake.

All along the lines of the Seljuk artillery, sharp cracking rang out as the tensed ropes split. The ropes whipped up from the devices and the throwing arms spluttered, dropping their payload or hurling it weakly or wildly askew. One crew was struck with the lashing ropes of their device, the lead crewman’s eyes dashed out by the ferocity of the thrashing tether. Another could only gawp in terror as the massive boulder on his catapult hopped up just a few feet before coming down upon him, crushing him like an egg.

Only one crew’s device remained intact — having been a fraction slower than their comrades. The lead crewman examined the ropes, then spun to his leader. ‘The ropes have been half sawn!’

Nasir’s eyes bulged as he looked across his line of siege engines, hanging limply like snapped branches after a storm. Then he yelled back at the men of the last trebuchet; ‘Loose your weapon!’

‘It will fall short of the battlements,’ the man started.

‘Do it!’ Nasir bellowed.

The man nodded, then barked his crew into loosing at less than full stretch. The timber arm swung round and hurled a jagged limestone block towards the walls. The distant Byzantines on the battlements to the right of the eastern gate watched in silence, only scattering moments before the missile smashed into the base of the walls below them. Dry and in extreme disrepair, this section of wall shuddered and crumbled. The few sentries too slow to disperse toppled with the stone and were crushed, their screams drowned out by the thunderous collapse. As the dust cleared, the lower town of Kryapege was revealed through the gaping fissure — wider than any other on the decrepit walls.

At this, a roar erupted from the watching Seljuk ranks.

Nasir drew his scimitar and raised it overhead. ‘Forward!’

The akhi burst into life, their boots drumming on the dust, spears levelled, eyes peering over shield rims. The camel archers followed closely, forming a thin line behind the infantry. Screening the rear, seven hundred strong, were the ghazi riders who heeled their mounts into a gentle canter, their faces etched with anticipation as they picked arrows from their full quivers and nocked them to their bows. Nearly two thousand men washed towards Kryapege’s walls.

Nasir leapt onto his mare and raced to the head of the ghazis. ‘With me!’ he cried to a group of forty of the riders, waving them to the front. ‘Put your bows away, today you will use your swords and lances as we drive the Byzantines onto the spears of our akhi.’ He twisted to the rest of the riders. ‘The rest of you, stay to the rear and let the Byzantines feel the pain of an arrow storm!’ he roared, punching the air.

‘Allahu Akbar!’ the Seljuk ranks cried out in reply, then burst into a chorus of ululating battle cries.

Nasir led his forty riders to the fore. He scanned the battlements and was pleased with what he saw. There were even fewer Byzantine soldiers than he had anticipated. The precious kataphractoi riders were penned inside the town now and could not use their might on the open plain to threaten his army. There were barely fifty men stretched across the walls — all toxotai. Then, for the second time that morning, doubt gripped his gut like an iron fist. The Byzantines were few indeed — too few. One toxotes atop the gatehouse seemed to be watching their advance intently, and he was gripping something — a red rag. Then the man held it in the air and swiftly swiped it from side to side.

At that moment, Nasir noticed something from the corner of his eye. He twisted in his saddle to look back over his left shoulder; behind and to the left of his advancing ranks, the red dust of the ground itself puckered. A circle as large as a grand yurt crumbled away. His eyes locked on this unearthly sight. The Seljuk advance slowed, men looking over their shoulders likewise. Then he heard the men on his right flank burst into a babble of confusion. His head snapped round; the same spectacle lay behind that flank too. The men looked to the two gaping holes in the ground behind them and then to their leader. Nasir realised what was to rise from those pits, but a heartbeat too late.

Like dead warriors rising, a clutch of Byzantine kataphractoi riders poured from each of these tunnels that had been dug from inside the town. There were barely twenty in each party, but every one of them, horse and rider, was clad in iron. The riders were crowned by gleaming conical helmets, plumed with coloured feathers. Their faces were hidden behind triple-layered mail veils, their bodies were wrapped in iron lamellar with vivid cloaks draped on their backs and their arms were encased in splinted greaves and plated gloves. Composite bows and spathion blades were strapped to their backs while curved paramerion blades and viciously flanged maces and war hammers hung from their belts. Even the mounts looked demonic, wearing iron scale coats and plate facemasks, breath clouding before them in the last of the dawn freshness. These two wings of kataphractoi lowered in their saddles and levelled their lengthy kontarion spears, decorated with a knotted triangle of crimson cloth near the tip, held on one arm that was protected by a small round shield strapped to the bicep. Then they charged for the ghazi rear like two sharpened talons.

‘Nobiscum Deus!’

Nasir stood on his stirrups and twisted to bellow at the ghazis. ‘Turn!’ he cried. Then he realised that this group of riders had never been this far west before, and had never faced kataphractoi.

The ghazis to the rear at first seemed bemused by the hubris of this handful of charging Byzantine riders, whom they outnumbered hugely. They simply raised their shields, expecting the riders to hurl missiles and then peel away at the last moment. But as the kataphractoi thundered to within fifty paces, the ghazis realised the charge was no feint and they jolted into action, some turning nocked bows upon the Byzantine riders. With a chorus of twanging bowstrings, a cloud of arrows hissed through the short distance between the Seljuk rear and the kataphractoi. Cries rang out, shoulders were thrown back where arms were pierced, and a cloud of crimson puffed into the air where one rider was felled — an arrow through the eye. That apart, the kataphractoi had weathered the storm and were now only paces away.

At this, the Seljuk riders fumbled, throwing down their bows, struggling to pull their scimitars from their sheaths and heel their mounts round to face their foe. But they were too slow.

The two kataphractoi wedges plunged into the Seljuk rear, the momentum carving the ghazi riders open like fangs tearing through tender meat. The ghazis were armoured only in quilt vests — no match for the tip of a Byzantine kontarion — and they were felled in swathes. Blood spray filled the air as spears gutted and impaled the ghazi riders, whose panicked sword swipes did little to trouble their ironclad Byzantine attackers. In moments, the Seljuk rear was in turmoil.

Nasir could only watch. His riders were being cut to pieces. He clenched a fist. Do not let them break and charge again! As if his thoughts had been heard, the ghazi did not scatter before this onslaught. In moments, they had absorbed the shock of the kataphractoi charge. Now they were clustering around the Byzantine riders and retaliating with venom, hacking speartips off, then driving their scimitars up and under the iron plates of kataphractoi body armour, bringing forth torrents of blood. Now the seemingly invincible Byzantine riders were locked in a mortal struggle, discarding their spears and ripping their spathions and maces from their baldrics to fight for their lives. Many of Nasir’s ghazi would die in tempering their might. So be it, he thought.

He turned back to his spear line. They had slowed, casting glances over their shoulders at the cavalry melee. ‘To the walls!’ He rode round behind them and whacked the flat of his scimitar down on their backs. But still they were hesitant. He saw fear on their faces, and followed the gaze of one — fixed on the breach in the town walls.

The breach was filled with a blur of silver. Another cluster of kataphractoi — this time only ten of them — picked over the rubble and then trotted out before the walls. The crimson-cloaked Haga led them forward at a slow trot on a broad and muscular chestnut gelding. His face was now obscured behind a triple-mail veil. Those flanking him were the ones who had been by his side for some years, Nasir thought, seeing the coal-skinned Malian to the Haga’s right and the brutish rider saddled alongside another aged comrade on the left.

Nasir grimaced at his own hesitancy, then he battered his sword hilt against his shield and kicked his mare into a gallop up and down the front of the akhi line. ‘We have nigh on one thousand spears! Do not let his myth blind you,’ he cried, pointing his scimitar tip at the Haga. ‘He is but a man! Like the many of our people that he has slain, he will bleed!’ He drummed his sword hilt on his shield once more, in time with his words. ‘He will bleed! Onwards!’

At this, the Seljuk spearmen seemed roused once more and resumed their advance. Only a hundred paces separated them and the Haga’s meagre contingent of riders. His thousand akhi would envelop this tiny pocket of riders and impale man and beast on their spears. Best to make use of what weapons I possess, he thought, twisting in his saddle to wave his Syrian camel archers forward. ‘Let them feel the wrath of your deadly hail!’ Nasir roared. But then he turned back to see that the Haga had also raised a hand. At this, the ten kataphractoi flanking the Haga had taken up their composite bows, each nocked with flaming arrows — torch wielding skutatoi scurrying away from them and back into the town. Nasir’s eyes locked onto the flaming tips. Then, just as the akhi bounded ever closer to the Byzantine riders, the Haga dropped his hand.

The ten fiery missiles arced up and over the Seljuk spearmen, over Nasir’s head, to hammer down around and into the line of camel archers who were still nocking their own bows. With a chorus of terrified lowing, the camels thrashed and bucked, throwing their riders. Then they scattered, some ablaze, away from the town. The terrified beasts found themselves confronted with the rear of the melee between the ghazi riders and the kataphractoi, and they raced headlong into and around this fray. The horses in that conflict whinnied in terror at the arrival of these blazing creatures. Then they, too, scattered in panic from the scene. Some ghazi riders were thrown to the ground, their skulls dashed against rocks. Others were dragged like wet rags, feet tangled in stirrups, their mounts in blind flight. Even the surviving Byzantine kataphractoi in the centre of the melee broke away, struggling to control their mounts. But the ghazis were scattered, as were the camels.

As the dust of this furious exodus began to settle, Nasir looked all around him. His camel archers were gone, and only a handful of seventy or so ghazi riders had reformed, clustering behind him. Before him, his akhi spearline had halted less than twenty paces from the Haga, paralysed by fear after seeing almost their entire mounted reserve dismissed with one volley of flaming arrows. The Haga and his riders glared back at them.

Then the crunch-crunch of boots on earth rang out as the Byzantine skutatoi marched from the town gates. There were barely two hundred of them, and they carried with them a dust-coated Chi-Rho crimson banner. The Haga raised a hand and they marched out to form a shallow line in front of him. The line was only one man deep, but it matched the width of that formed by the Seljuk akhi. They came to a halt and then they each lifted a rhiptarion overhead, the slender javelins trained on the akhi ranks. Then the surviving kataphractoi who had risen from the tunnels — only twenty two left in total — split into two groups once more before clopping round to form up on the flanks of this line like pincers. Finally, atop the gatehouse, a handful of fifty toxotai archers clustered, arrows nocked to bows and trained on the Seljuks stood on this perfect killing ground.

The opposing lines eyed one another.

One of the Seljuk spearmen looked up at the tips of the arrows trained upon him, then at the arc of Byzantines facing him on the ground. Then he looked over his shoulder, to the east. The only direction left open. Then he looked up at Nasir, eyes bulging, before throwing down his spear and turning to run for the rising sun. In one fluid motion, Nasir tore the composite bow from his back, nocked and loosed an arrow that punched into the deserter’s spine. In a spray of blood, the man crumpled. At this, the few others whose gaze had been drawn to the east now fixed their eyes forward.

Silence hung over the standoff momentarily before Nasir roared to his ranks. ‘Do not fear the few who stand before us. Their deception is a measure of their character, and they have run out of guiles!’ he roared. At this, a rumble of defiant jeers rang out from the Seljuk ranks, and they bristled, fixing their eyes on the skutatoi line. ‘But now we come to it — only courage and steel will seize victory!’ He levelled his scimitar at the Haga. ‘Forward, men! Take glory in the name of Allah!’

The akhi ranks exploded in a chorus of roars. ‘Allahu Akbar!’

At the same time the Haga, in the Byzantine centre, lifted his scimitar and roared; ‘Stand your ground! For the empire!’

With a thunder of boots and iron, the Seljuk swarm raced forward.

***

First, the Byzantine rhiptaria hammered down on the akhi front line, the javelins punching through shields and driving through flesh and bone. Ninety or more of the Seljuk spearmen fell under this hail.

Then the akhi charge smashed into the Byzantine line with a clattering of shields and screeching of iron. Blood jetted into the air where spears punched through armour and flesh. Limbs spun from bodies as spathions and scimitars were swept to and fro. Stricken men disappeared underfoot where their corpses were churned into the dust. The few ghazi riders who had regrouped loosed arrow after arrow into the skutatoi ranks, and the toxotai on the walls replied in kind with volley after volley.

But the Seljuk numbers were telling, and they drove the skutatoi line back towards the breached walls. Meanwhile, the kataphractoi held back. Still and silent. Watching.

‘Crush them!’ Nasir cried over the din of battle, firing his steely glare across the fray at Apion and his waiting riders.

‘Steady!’ Apion growled to his clutch of ten as the skutatoi line backed towards them. Then he flicked a glance up to ensure the two groups of riders on the flanks were holding back likewise.

The skutatoi were being overwhelmed by the akhi. The centre was bending inwards like a bow. But, hubris coursing through their veins and in their haste for a decisive victory, the Seljuk spearmen did not notice the orderly manner of this bending.

But Apion saw the moment like a hammer hovering above an anvil. The akhi had lost their flat front. They were hungry for blood.

‘Break!’ he bellowed. The skutatoi line heard his command and broke back at the centre, like a pair of doors swinging open. The two halves rolled up like a coiling rope, forming two small, packed masses of speartips and snarling faces. The Seljuk lines spilled around these two pockets of resistance.

Nasir’s cries to them went unheard as he saw the snare.

‘Forward!’ Apion roared. In harmony, the three pockets of Byzantine kataphractoi charged into the fray. Each of the iron riders lay low in their saddles and extended their spears. Apion raced at the head of the central wedge. The blood thundered in his ears as his body juddered with each stride. Ahead he saw the frenzy of the warring infantry and the mass of disorganised akhi, backs turned.

The nearest akhi spun around. His blood-spattered face flashed with panic for a heartbeat, before he roared to his comrades. A cluster of them turned, instinctively swinging their spears down to meet the oncoming cavalry charge. But they were too late.

Apion’s shoulder shuddered as his spear burst through the neck of the nearest Seljuk spearman, almost tearing the man’s head off. Shaking his lance free of carrion, he carried on, bracing as he then plunged the spear into the chest of the next man. The shaft of the spear splintered as he tried to wrench it free, and he threw down the useless weapon. Another akhi leapt up and swiped a blade against his forearm, shattering the splinted greaves there and cleaving into his flesh. Apion stifled a roar of pain as blood washed from the wound, then kicked out at his attacker, leaving a nearby skutatos to despatch him.

He twisted in his saddle to see another kataphractos hacking through the melee, only for a scimitar blow to scythe through the rider’s already-torn armour, cleaving the man open from shoulder to lung. By his other side, a fellow rider from his ten was barging his way through the fray manfully, only for a Seljuk spear to burst through his chest from behind, sending him toppling from his mount, limbs flailing. His riders were taking heavy losses, but the skutatoi spears were holding good and the akhi were beginning to panic. Many hundreds had fallen and now some were backing away from the fray, their eyes darting to the east once more.

But this glimmer of hope was swept from his thoughts as a clutch of akhi rushed to surround him, swords and spears hefted to lacerate him, and the pocket of remaining ghazi riders had circled around to aid them. In one motion, he reached over his shoulder and lifted his spathion from his baldric, and with the other hand, he pulled the flanged mace from his belt.

The first spearman that leapt for him would have felt nothing. Apion’s blade passed through his neck without resistance, blood showering like rain, and the man was dead before his body hit the ground. The next akhi slid to his knees, aiming his sword-strike at the unarmoured legs of Apion’s mount. Apion saw this, flicked his sword up and caught it overhand, then threw it down like a spear, the blade punching into the man’s gut.

Barely able to snatch a breath, Apion spun just in time to see a ghazi rider swing down at him with a hand axe. He dipped to the left, the axe blow whooshing past his helmet. Then he grappled the rider’s shoulder and took purchase to swing his mace up and round with venom, bringing the blade-sharp flanges of the weighty iron head crashing into the ghazi’s helmet. The mace smashed through the iron helm as if it was made of parchment, and then shattered the rider’s skull like an eggshell. A spray of grey matter and black blood burst from the rider’s right eye socket, coating Apion’s veil and spilling inside the eyeholes. The familiar stench of death permeated his senses once more. He drew his scimitar and sought out his next opponent.

These were the fleeting moments when he did not hear the voices of the past. When he was beyond the dark door, consumed by its fire. When he could see only his next foe and hear only the shrill song of battle.

At last, he found himself surrounded only by comrades. Now the Seljuk infantry were breaking in droves, throwing down their spears and running to the east. His sword arm was numb and trembling. The dark door faded as his heartbeat slowed and he heard the rasping of his own breath.

Only a handful of ghazis remained. Nasir was in their midst, berating the deserters and cutting down those nearby. His face was twisted in fury. But, at last, he relented. ‘Withdraw!’ he cried, waving his riders back. As a group they turned and heeled their mounts into a gallop.

As one, the Byzantine ranks broke into a chorus of cheering; ‘Nobiscum Deus!’ they cried. Then the familiar, rhythmic chant rang out; ‘Ha-ga! Ha-ga! Ha-ga!’

The riders gathered around Apion and looked to him. ‘Sir? Give the order!’ Sha panted. The Malian was coated in gore, readied to kick his mount and give chase.

Apion looked around to see that nearly half his men had fallen and many were injured, yet those still standing seemed eager to give chase too. ‘No, it is over,’ he said as he watched the remnant of the Seljuk force flee towards the now fully risen sun.

Then, silhouetted in the distance, Nasir twisted in the saddle, hurling some defiant cry over his shoulder and lifting something from his back.

Apion only saw the arrow at the last. He slid to one side in his saddle, but not soon enough. The arrow smacked into the collar of his klibanion, gouging one of the iron plates from the leather binding and tearing the flesh on his shoulder. The blow sent him toppling from his mount and he thudded to the dust.

At this, the chanting fell into a shocked silence. Sha, Blastares and Procopius rushed to surround him, throwing their veiled helms to the ground and leaping from their mounts. Apion waved them away and pushed himself up to stand, grateful that his agony was concealed behind his veil.

‘The siege is over,’ he snarled, snapping the arrow and clutching at the wound, ‘get back inside the town.’