Island in the Storm

14. The Gathering of the Horde

In a pine forest north of the plain of Khoi, a bleak and barely populated border district at the north-western edge of the Seljuk dominion, Bey Soundaq crouched by the rock pool, lifting and tossing pebbles into the shallow waters absently. He paused for a moment and gazed at his reflection as the water stilled, seeing the lines that dominated his face and the wispy, white strands of his thinning hair. An old man in a young man’s fighting garb, he thought, clutching a hand to the mail shirt that now hung loose on his withering frame. Feeling every one of his years and more, he swiftly lifted and threw another pebble to disperse the reflection.

He looked through the canopy of branches above into the unblemished afternoon sky and recalled the times in his youth, as the son of a lowly steppe rider. He had risen from his lot to prove his valour in the wars of Sultan Tugrul. He had become a bey — a leader of men — before he was twenty. Images flashed through his mind; of the many battles along the Byzantine borderlands, the epic clashes with the Fatimids, the thunder in his heart in the heat of battle. He remembered the end of one such clash. He had fallen to his knees and pressed his forehead to the blood-stained dust, praying to Allah. But, with a mixture of guilt and anticipation, his thoughts were not on his god, but on the path to glory that awaited him. It had seemed almost certain then. Tugrul had suggested he might be raised to lead a ghulam wing. A prestigious post indeed, and only a few steps away from the Sultan’s throne.

But in the years that followed he had been forgotten, swept aside by the countless other brave young warriors who had caught the eye of Tugrul and then Alp Arslan. Thus, at forty nine years old, he had moved no further forward. He spent his days patrolling these far-flung forests and mountain passes. He had a fine villa, slaves, and a brave band of ghazi riders who fought at his word. He wanted for nothing. Nothing bar the lost glory of his youth.

‘Where did it all go wrong?’ he sighed. Then he chuckled. ‘I still taunt myself with that question, when I know the answer full well.’ His mind’s eye flashed back to the day, sixteen years ago. Tugrul had despatched him and his riders to the Byzantine Thema of Chaldia, with a licence to ravage that border province. Plunder all the wagons that dare to travel their roads, break their trade networks, terrify the citizens and thin the garrisons! Tugrul had enthused. And so they had done as was asked. Within weeks, he and his men had woven a trail of desolation through the mountain passes of that land. Then they came to a small, hilltop village. An insignificant little settlement with barely a hundred or so farmers dwelling there. He had seen it as an easy picking that day. Yet he had left with his confidence shattered. A young Byzantine soldier had orchestrated a desperate and ingenious defence of the town, thinning his riders by drawing them onto a line of stakes, then scattering them with tarred pigs set aflame.

‘Set your mind at rest, old fool,’ he smiled bitterly at his reflection again, ‘the Haga has vanquished many men sharper than you.’

He twisted away from the rock pool and cast his gaze over his men. One hundred and forty three ghazi riders. They sat around, polishing their mail shirts and horn lamellar vests, darning their felt jackets or grooming and feeding their mounts. Some honed their scimitars and axes, others loosed arrows into a fallen pine. Some of these men had been with him that day. Others were the sons of men there that day but lost to the sword since. Time, it seemed, was slowly sweeping his name into the dust.

‘Ah, glory, perhaps we will meet after death?’ he chuckled with a shake of the head.

He made to stand to join his men who were cooking up a pot of salep. But he hesitated, noticing the horses’ ears prick up. He put a hand to the ground. Rumbling. His eyes narrowed, flicking around the surrounding treeline. His mind, still plagued with memories of that long lost skirmish, conjured images of Byzantine riders. Surely not out here, beyond their realm?

He rose and peered into the shade of the trees, seeing the branches judder, the dull outline of thrashing hooves and the shadow of an iron rider. The blood seemed to halt in his veins as the rider passed under a shaft of sunlight. Sparkling emerald eyes glowered at him from a shadow of a face. Memories of that day grappled his heart. Cold fear had him. His men rushed to take up their weapons, stretch their bows. Soundaq grappled the hilt of his scimitar and bared his teeth. ‘Come on then you-’ his nascent roar fell away. His men relaxed.

The rider was in Seljuk scale armour, and the handful of men riding behind were clearly ghazis. The lead rider prised his stud-rimmed helm from his head, revealing youthful cinnamon skin, a tuft beard on the chin, sleek dark locks held in a ponytail and those piercing green eyes.

What’s your story, lad? he wondered, edging forward, noticing that his escort wore white falcon feathers in the rims of their helms — like the steppe riders of old.

‘Bey Soundaq?’ the boy warrior said.

Soundaq nodded. ‘Protector of the northern passes. And you are?’

‘Bey Taylan, son of Bey Nasir,’ the lad replied.

Soundaq’s eyes widened. ‘Nasir?’ he uttered in realisation, glancing once again over the familiar armour he wore. The high-ranking Bey Nasir had been one of the young warriors who had swept him aside. ‘Have your men dismount, Bey Taylan,’ Soundaq said swiftly, bowing as he realised the gap in rank between he and the boy warrior. ‘I will see to it that you are fed and that your mounts are watered.’

‘We have little time to sit and eat,’ Taylan replied curtly, drawing his scimitar and sweeping it through the air once, twice and again, as if slicing up an imaginary opponent, before drawing the blade close to his face to examine the edge. ‘In the south, on the plains of Khoi, the sultan musters an army. To the west, the Emperor of Byzantium wanders eastwards blindly. And with him,’ he paused, his eyes growing distant, ‘is the Haga.’

‘The scourge of the borderlands?’ Soundaq replied. His heart thumped in a way it had not done for many, many years. Like a war drum.

***

Alp Arslan stood by his tent at the centre of the vast, sun-baked and writhing mustering plain, hands clasped behind his back, his green silk yalma fluttering in the breeze of the oft-passing clusters of horsemen. He wore a leather band around his head to keep his hair from his eyes, and the ends of his flowing moustache were knotted on the nape of his neck. The drills were rotated to allow every ghazi wing to have a chance to show their prowess, while those not in practice would rest and have their mounts graze on the fine pasturelands near the river that bordered one edge of the plain. He cast his eyes across the many thousands of his mustered cavalry. Apart from a small wing of a thousand ultra-heavily armed and armoured ghulam and a regiment of a few thousand finely armoured akhi spearmen — all collected from Baghdad by Nizam — the rest were ghazis. Some twenty thousand of these nimble and deadly riders. And there were more to come, he realised, seeing the small bands of border patrols trotting down the paths of the surrounding mountains, flooding into this plain like meltwater streams to join the horde.

‘It reminds me of long past days,’ Nizam said, shuffling from the tent to stand beside him. The aged vizier nodded with a wistful look in his eye. ‘When your Uncle Tugrul and your father formed the hordes that won the first of the sultanate’s lands. Those lands were won almost entirely with steppe cavalry. Master archers who bewildered the foot soldiers and lumbering riders of Persia.’

Alp Arslan smiled dryly at this. The unattainable days that Tugrul had taunted him with were here again, it seemed. ‘Aye, but then we had hunters in crude leathers and furs; now we have finely-garbed soldiers,’ he proffered a hand to the nearest sweeping wing. Each man wore horn, iron or felt armour, a thickly padded cap or a conical helm, fine leather boots and linen trousers. Each man carried a composite bow, a scimitar, a teardrop shield and a short, light lance. Some had lasso ropes dangling from their belts, others had war hammers or axes. ‘None of them finer than Bey Taylan’s White Falcons,’ he nodded to the nearly five thousand strong wing who outshone the rest. Each of them were now well-trained or training in the art of the reverse shot and the knuckle hold — five or more arrows clasped between the fingers of their draw hands. Indeed, many of them now boasted the feathers that marked them as master archers.

‘The nock and draw is an impressive spectacle, but the reinforced stirrups. . ’ Nizam nodded. ‘I am no strategist, but they have been something of a masterstroke.’ As if prompted to justify this praise, a cluster of some one hundred White Falcons swept past and stood tall and steady on their stirrups. The dark-skinned and moustachioed riders each closed one eye behind their nocked, stretched bows, their dark locks and falcon feathers fluttering in the slipstream. Then they loosed. Thwack! Not a single arrow missed the target board.

Nizam nodded in approval; ‘Exceptiona-’ Thwack!

His words were cut off as another volley hammered into the target, the archers nocking another arrow from their knuckles an instant after loosing the last. Then another, and another. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! And so it went on until their quivers were empty.

‘Bey Taylan deserves much praise for his initiatives,’ Nizam concluded, shaking his head in near-disbelief. ‘He has revived near-forgotten arts and blended them with new ones.’

‘Well you can lavish praise on him now, Vizier,’ Alp Arslan grinned, pointing to the nearest of the mountain tracks to the north. There, winding down the rocky mountainside was Bey Taylan. In his wake, some seven hundred more ghazi riders followed. They headed straight for the sultan’s tent.

‘Sultan!’ Taylan barked, sliding from his saddle and dipping to one knee before Alp Arslan in one motion. He scooped his helmet from his head, the mail aventail rustling, then looked up; ‘I bring the riders of the northern borders, and Kurdish mercenaries from beyond, as instructed.’

‘Fine work again, Bey Taylan,’ the sultan said.

Nizam nodded. ‘Now this force can march west with confidence.’

‘But we do not yet number enough to tackle the Byzantines. We have twenty four, maybe twenty five thousand horse. They have forty thousand in their ranks,’ Taylan countered.

Alp Arslan smiled. ‘You never stop thinking, probing, looking for a weakness, do you? You will make a fine second man to a sultan one day, Taylan. Perhaps when my son, Malik, inherits my throne, you will be by his side?’

Taylan seemed oblivious to this praise. His brow was knitted in a frown as he looked over the horde. ‘I will think of the future only once this clash is over. We must address the shortfall in our numbers.’

Alp Arslan tried to disguise his own doubts over this very matter. ‘There is no time for such deliberation, Bey Taylan. We ride for Lake Van tomorrow.’

***

The armies retired to the sea of yurts nestled in the shade of the surrounding mountains, and Taylan was the last man at the heart of the dusty mustering plain, his chestnut mare snorting and shuffling a few paces away, munching on the remains of some fodder. His shadow stretched long across the flat ground as the sun began to sink below the western horizon. He watched a thin coil of red-gold dust whip up in a light breeze, then dance across the deserted field.

It had been a good day, he mused. And tomorrow? Tomorrow would be the first step in his journey to confront the Haga. His mind raced and his heart rapped on his breastbone.

A lone eagle shrieked high above, stifling his growing hubris. But he glanced up to see only an empty, dusk sky, streaked with pink, orange and sapphire. The bloodlust returned. ‘I will play my part,’ he called into the ether, ‘I will form the spear that pierces the beast’s heart! The Haga and his empire will burn!’

‘To hear those words makes me wonder if Bey Nasir is still alive and well,’ a frail voice spoke, only inches from his ear.

Taylan swung round. The dancing plume of dust had taken form as an elderly woman. Her spindly frame was wrapped in a white robe. Her silver, wispy hair framed a face puckered and lined with great age. Her sightless eyes were milky yet utterly fixed on him.

‘And if only he had listened to my words, perhaps that might still be the case,’ she added.

Taylan clasped a hand to his scimitar hilt but, as if guided by a warm, invisible hand, it fell away again, all alarm swiftly draining from his veins. ‘You knew my father?’ he asked.

The crone smiled wryly at this. ‘Which one, Bey Taylan. . which one?’

Taylan frowned at this, expecting shame to wash over him at the implication. But for once, it did not come. ‘Bey Nasir. My true father. You knew him?’

‘I did. I also know your blood father, Apion.’

Taylan shook his head. ‘Do not use his name. Father hated his name.’

The crone’s face lengthened. ‘When a father bestows nothing upon his son but his own hatred, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. And hate is such a poisonous word. Bey Nasir once thought he hated everything about Apion. He talked only of destroying the Haga. Words almost identical to yours today.’

Taylan looked to the dust, his eyes darting. Finally he looked up again. ‘If someone had taken all you had, would you rest until you had redressed the balance?’

‘Apion took nothing from you. He gave life to you. Nasir died on Apion’s blade only because of his own mule-headedness,’ she said, frowning now, one bony finger wagging. ‘And your mother lies ill — growing frailer by the day — and you choose to whittle away your time clashing swords and snarling about men you know little of.’

Guilt clutched at Taylan’s heart. It had been so long since he had visited Mother. Too long. Every time he visited, he longed to speak to her as he had once done. As a boy, he could talk with her freely. They would spot birds and butterflies in the gardens of their home, go to market in the mornings and cook together in the afternoons. A lost age, he realised. And soon she would be but memory.

Come closer, son, there is something I must tell you. .

A volcanic sorrow threatened to erupt at that moment, and he only just suffocated it with a mask of ire. ‘So you expect me to forgive him. . the Haga?’

‘I expect nothing of any man,’ the crone snorted at this. ‘And I repeat, you have nothing to forgive Apion for. But know this: I was with Nasir at the last. I walked with him into the grey land. He lamented his years of bitterness, longing to return to them and relive them well. Longing to bestow something upon you other than his hatred.’

Taylan contemplated her words, seeking out an answer in the dust around his feet. ‘But I swore to avenge his death.’

‘By slaying Apion, your blood father? One of the few men your mother still cares for? You would break her heart.’

‘But she has not spoken to the Haga in many years,’ Taylan replied.

‘Yet she has never forgotten him. She would mourn him and her grief would be strong. More,’ she stabbed a finger at him, ‘she would mourn you, Taylan, were you to lose yourself to war as Nasir did. That grief alone might be too much for her.’ She placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Men are defined by their choices, Taylan. Now it is time for you to choose: slay the Haga and break your mother’s heart, or stow your blade and let go of this false vengeance.’

Taylan felt a stab of panic in his breast, memories of Mother in her hospital bed flashing before him. ‘But. . the hatred has become me and I it. Without it, what would I be?’

‘Find out, Taylan. Find out.’

He looked up. She was gone. The dust plume danced once more and then the breeze faded and it was gone. A fading eagle’s cry sounded.

At once, his emotions went to war, combing over her reason and seeking fault with her every argument. At last, he strode with purpose for his mare, vaulting onto the saddle. He drew his scimitar and glowered at his reflection in the blade. He saw nothing but his sparkling green eyes. A pang of grief and unspent anger broiled in his veins as he glanced up into the empty sky.

‘You cannot ask a man to go against his heart, old woman!’