Strategos: Born in the Borderlands

9. The Trail

The market square in Cheriana was abuzz in the spring haze. Under the towering, red-tiled church dome, the place was alive with activity; heckling, barging, swearing, all to the rhythm of a kettledrum beat and the ubiquitous aroma of cooking meat and horse dung.

Apion looked to the trader behind the stall once more. ‘Come on, your prices are surely a joke?’

‘You offer one nomismata when I ask for two? I won’t be beaten down because I am far from home!’ The swarthy trader shook his head with a fastidious grin and Apion noticed that the man looked like a younger Mansur with a tidier moustache.

Apion thumbed the single nomismata in his purse. He saw the trader was not for budging and racked his mind for another approach. Then he realised he was thinking in Seljuk; nearly a year of learning the language meant he could now use it interchangeably with Greek. He looked up with a glint in his eye and switched to the Seljuk tongue. ‘I’ll give you one nomismata and a bag of orchid root,’ he pressed the coin into the man’s hand, unclipped the hemp sack of root from his belt and nodded, ‘makes salep sweeter than honey.’

The trader frowned, then broke into a grin and then a chesty laugh. ‘As sweet as the mother tongue? Then we have a deal.’ Then he rummaged under his stall and produced a similar purse-sized frayed sack. ‘Here, fresh almond flakes; you are obviously a man of good taste.’

Apion grinned and took the pouch, clipping it onto his belt. ‘I’ll be back here regularly and I’ll make sure to stop here and give you my trade.’ He scooped up the hoes under one arm and hobbled back to the wagon on his crutch, the trader whistling to two of his hands to pick up the plough-blade and fodder Apion had purchased.

When the goods were loaded into the cabin and the trader gone, the grin fell from Apion’s face, the façade of light-heartedness was as close to happiness as he had come since last summer. The image of the ring on the dead agente’s finger had stayed with him, vivid behind closed eyelids, absent only when his anger piqued and he saw the dark door. Mansur had grown weary of his obsession over the Agentes and Maria rarely looked happy these days, troubled by his dark and brooding moods and shunning of her fellowship. She deserved better than this, as did Mansur, he mused. He looked to the drivers’ berth and the side where Mansur usually sat. But not this time: this was the third solo trip Apion had undertaken. The journey here had been uneventful, yet his guts had been in knots the whole time and he could not even bring himself to relax at Petzeas the ferryman’s tall tales.

For today he was to cross paths with an agente.

He had met an investigator on his first solo visit last autumn, and paid him to find out all he could about the Agentes, and it was on his second visit in the winter that the man had informed him of the Agentes meeting that was to take place here, today, and Apion planned to spy on the proceedings. He looked up to the sun. Midday. It was time.

He set off for the meeting point, his eyes narrowing as he hobbled towards a tight alleyway: beyond the blacksmith and tannery there was a dilapidated inn, crowned by two floors of crumbling tenements. Then, down at the end of the alleyway was a building in an even worse state — the old imperial warehouse — the door hanging from its hinges and two burly skutatoi flanking the entrance.

The alley narrowed as he hobbled down it, the walls towering above him, dulling the noise from the market square. A one-legged man sat by the inn clutching a carved wooden Chi-Rho, eyes staring through the begging bowl in front of him. Apion recognised the filthy tunic that barely remained in one piece — military issue. He thumbed the remaining coin in his purse and eyed the empty bowl, when a whinnying and grinding of cartwheels filled the alley. He stumbled back as a black-painted wagon rushed through the cramped space, halting at the ramshackle warehouse after the inn. The skutatoi at the warehouse doorway stood to attention at this. Apion ducked back into the doorway of the inn.

The wagon door opened and a broad, scar-faced figure dressed in a scale vest stepped down, followed by a slim man in a black cloak, black felt cap and dark-green silk shirt and leggings. The slim man seemed to hold himself with an air of arrogant majesty and the skutatoi at the doorway were instantly obedient, pulling the warehouse door open. The party disappeared inside and the skutatoi visibly slumped in relief.

Apion frowned, eyes burning into the spot where the cloaked man had stood. The prey was in his sights.

He turned and hobbled inside the inn, ignoring the stench of vomit and the red-eyed clientele who hugged their ale cups and huddled around the bartender. For it was at the back, near the kitchen area, that there was a hatch leading into the derelict warehouse next door. At least that was what the investigator had told him. Apion’s blood fired as he considered how he would tackle the cloaked man. A quick death or a slow one — it all depended on whether the man had a full complement of fingers or not. Then something thudded into his shoulder and he looked up to see a toothless drunk staggering back, ale swilling over the edge of his cup, face contorted in a scowl.

'Watch it. . hold on, what's a young lad doing in here on his own?' Then his eyes fell on Apion’s leg and crutch. 'Where's your minder, boy?'

Apion’s skin burned as a few of the drinkers looked up, squinting at this twelve year old boy lurching through their drinking hole. His plan had been to slip through the inn to the hatch unnoticed. Now even the bartender was flicking glances towards him, eyes narrowing, mouth opening as he turned to his hired muscle sat by the bar.

Panic setting in, he stopped where he stood. Then his hand brushed against the small pack of almond flakes the trader had given him. An idea sparked in his mind. He pulled the pack from his belt and held it up. 'Kitchen?'

The drunk shrugged, grunted and turned away. The barman's features relaxed and he jabbed a thumb to the door at the rear of the inn. ‘Through there.’

Apion hobbled on, eyes fixed on a latched, cobwebbed timber half-door rising only to waist height, just before the kitchen door. Then as soon as he was beyond sight, he ducked down, unlatched the door and pushed through, closing it behind him.

The darkness of the space between the walls was complemented by the musty tang of damp timber and brickwork and the air was stale and thin. He saw a dot of light further on through the wall space, and moved gingerly towards it, careful to feel his way in the blackness with his crutch. His eyes were gradually adjusting to the blackness, so he could make out the dim outlines of the cavity, when an icy drop of water splashed on his neck and trickled down his back. Then there was a flurry of movement around his boots and a high-pitched shrieking. His heart thundered when he saw a myriad of glimmering eyes. Rats. He glanced back to the faint sliver of light from the hatch door, then screwed up his eyes and shook his head. To get this close and then succumb to fear, like the fear he had felt that awful night, would be unforgiveable. He sought out the dark door in his thoughts, sure that his fury would overcome any fear he felt. As the image came to him, he saw the arm again; the white band of skin around the wrist and that curious red emblem on the forearm. With that, he realised he was comfortable in the darkness. His breathing slowed to normal again.

Then, from the opposite wall, he heard a groan. His skin crawled. Then there was a hoarse yelp, followed by a nauseating snapping then shredding sound. He looked to the tiny spot of light up ahead and hobbled forward, straining to stand on the toes of his good leg, pressing his eye to the coin-sized hole looking into the warehouse. It was lit by a pair of oil lamps and in the centre stood a group of four men; the cloaked figure from outside, his scarred bodyguard and two more skutatoi. They were encircling something hanging from the rafters. Apion squinted to see what it was, then one of them moved to reveal it. The breath froze in his lungs: a figure, barely recognisable as a man, hung, bound by his wrists to a rafter, toes scraping at the ground but unable to take his weight. The man was naked yet wore a coating of dried blood; long hair matted brown and stuck to his face. His chest would expand, snatching in breath, then his whole body would shudder as he exhaled, whimpering. A stack of bloodied tools lay on a table nearby: a dagger, a hammer, a sickle and a spathion. Lying on the floor beside the man was a pair of fleshy masses, sinew and blood disguising their identity.

Then the cloaked man shook his head. ‘A pitiful end for you, isn’t it, soldier? You might be wondering how you can bargain with me to make this quick, to put an end to your miserable life without further suffering? Well, there is nothing you have left to bargain with. You borrow money from me, you belong to me. If you cannot pay me back, you die. . slowly.’

With that the cloaked man nodded to his bodyguard who squeezed his knuckles and hammered a right jab into the man’s ribcage, the cracking of a rib echoing throughout the warehouse. The tortured man spun on the rope and Apion saw the raw crimson triangle where his nose had been and the bloody dark patch that used to be his genitals.

He ducked back from the eyehole and clamped a hand over his mouth, bile coating his tongue. Then he bit back his disgust and forced himself to look again, for if the cloaked man had a missing finger and the ring. .

The cloaked man nodded to one of the military-dressed figures. ‘Keep him here. Make sure he lives for another day.’ Then he rummaged in his purse and pulled out a pair of coins. Apion’s eyes widened as the man’s hands were illuminated in the lamplight, the tarnished ring catching the glow, but it was all too clear; the man was missing no fingers.

Apion closed his eyes. The torturing of this soldier was despicable, yet he felt only guilt that it was somehow lessened in importance now that this agente was not the man responsible for the slaughter of his parents. He bit into his lip, tasting blood. No, he resolved, I can do good here. When they leave I will free the tortured man.

Then he heard the cloaked man continue. ‘We travel for Trebizond tomorrow, to meet with my master. We will be back to finish this wretch’s life before we depart.’

Apion’s eyes darted around the darkness; so the Agentes had a master, back in the city he had served as a slave. Trebizond held the key.

He shot up to press to the eyehole again; the four men had turned their backs on the tortured soldier and were discussing something in hushed tones. But the tortured man was not still, no, his wrists were wriggling. Apion willed the man to find strength and had to stifle a gasp of delight when the soldier did this, slipping free of his bonds and crumpling to the floor. But the four spun around at the noise. The tortured soldier pushed to standing, his limbs wobbling like a drunk man such was his pain, but he staggered to scoop up the spathion from the table, then with a hoarse and pitiful cry, he lunged to punch the blade down through the shoulder of the first military man, the sword disappearing up to the hilt and the military man’s eyes rolling in their sockets. The tortured man struggled to pull the blade free with his shaking arms, and in a flash of iron it was all over, the second military man swiping his sword across the tortured man’s neck. The tortured man was silent; his head tilting back from the gaping wound, his remaining blood soaking him in an instant. Then he crumpled to the floor and was still.

Apion stifled a gasp of disgust.

The agente was still and silent for a moment and the silence seemed to cause the military man to shrink. ‘Keep him alive. That was my order. A simple order.’

The military man shook his head. ‘No, sir, I was just protecting you, he would have come at you next. . ’ the man’s words ended with a grunt as the agente’s bodyguard thrust a dagger up through his jaw, piercing his brain. With a sucking noise, he ripped the dagger free, clutched the man’s lifeless body just long enough to wipe his dagger blade on the man’s sleeve, then dropped the body like a sack of rubble.

‘Most. . disappointing,’ the agente said. ‘Come; let us leave this mess for the two outside to deal with. We should now depart for Trebizond today instead of tomorrow.’

With that, they were gone. Apion was all alone in the stinking wall space. The air seemed to grow short again and his mind spun with a thousand voices. He staggered back to the hatch and burst into the inn, ignoring the shouting as he barged past one table, spilled ale foaming from knocked over cups.

He staggered out into the alley just as the black wagon hared past and despite his panting, he still could not find breath. To tackle these shadowy figures would be far harder than he had ever imagined. Cunning, lethal and underhand they were, without morals or conscience. They were not just lone-operatives hiring brigands, like the agente killed by Tarsites; the agente today clearly held sway in the ranks of the thema as well. To face them he would have to embrace the darkness within himself. He questioned his motivations, rubbing his prayer rope as he hobbled.

He threw the remaining nomismata into the bowl of a one-legged beggar in passing.

‘God bless you, boy,’ the beggar called.

Apion hobbled on and did not look back. When he pushed into the centre of the market square, something caught his eye from atop the town gates. He stopped and looked up. His blood ran cold and the bustle around him fell away.

Three new heads adorned the spikes above the gate. His heart wept as he recognised the features of Tarsites and the two archers who had accompanied him that day by the river.

It was mid-morning and the valley air was pleasant under a thin veil of cloud. Mansur strolled over to the wagon and rummaged in the box behind the driver’s berth, the chickens and goats clucking and bleating in misguided expectation of being fed. ‘Your mood troubles me today, lad. I’m not so sure sword practice is the best idea?’

‘I am sure,’ Apion replied. He had returned from Cheriana yesterday and found his thoughts incessant and chattering, but one thing was sure: if he was to find and face the master agente, then he would need to be ready to fight and fight well. He and Mansur had been practicing for the best part of a year now, and Apion’s good leg and both arms were leaner and stronger for it, but he knew he had not yet stretched himself to his full potential.

Mansur threw one of the two scimitars to him and Apion caught it by the ribbed and well-worn ivory handle. He hefted the light blade in his grip and eyed the edge: this was Mansur’s scimitar, while the old man used Kutalmish’s, from years past when they had both been Seljuk soldiers. He remembered Mansur’s words when they had first practiced with the weapons. Now I beg you, be careful; they call this weapon the lion’s claw for a good reason. The curve means that all the force of a strike is channelled into the section that makes contact with your foe — it can cleave a man’s head in one blow.

‘So do you want to practice or admire your reflection in the blade?’ Mansur smirked.

Apion issued a half-grin in return as Mansur began to circle him slowly. Then Mansur executed a flurry of swipes, lightning fast, before Apion’s face. Apion tried his best to disguise a flinch and kept his eyes on Mansur: the old man’s movement and poise exactly as it was back when they had fought with poles, but there was something different when practising with the blade, an icy reality that one slip, one slow parry and he would be spliced open. His scar flared, the damage of a scimitar was already written all over his body. Added to that, where Apion had once found his crutch a steadying centre point, it now felt like a hindrance and he wanted to throw it to one side, to bring his other hand round to hold the blade steady, yet he knew if he was to do so he would crumple to the dust after a few moments of agony. He shook his head clear of the thoughts and glanced to Mansur’s footsteps, knowing that the old man’s right knee always bent a little before he lunged.

When Apion noticed Mansur’s knuckles whiten on his sword hand, he shot a glance to the old man’s knees and saw the left knee bend. Confused, his body tensed and he pulled the scimitar up to parry but with a flash of sunlight on iron, he found himself empty-handed, his scimitar spinning through the air to land by the point in the dust, quivering.

Mansur’s scimitar tip hovered by Apion’s heart. ‘Never, never, assume anything of your opponent, lad.’

Apion gawped at the glinting blade, frowned and then squinted up to Mansur. ‘I will master this. It might take time, but I will.’

Mansur stabbed his own blade into the ground then wrapped an arm around him. ‘I know you will. You possess a sharp mind, lad and I wish you would not put it to use only with the sword, but if mastering the sword makes you the happy boy you were before this obsession you have with the Agentes, then I will teach you all I know.’

***

Summer turned to autumn, dappling the green lands of Chaldia with gold and every day Apion focussed his efforts on sword practice and every night he pored over what little he knew of the Agentes. This night, however, Mansur and Apion sat opposite each other at the table, the shatranj board separating them, each with four pieces left in the game that had run into its sixth night. Apion examined every possible move again but there was no option that would not result in exposing his king, neatly tucked into one corner behind his pawns and flanked by a rook.

The game was a welcome distraction to him. It had been three months since that day in Cheriana, but the image of poor Tarsites’ severed head still sent a shiver through him every time he closed his eyes. Every fortnight since, he had taken Mansur’s wagon into the market at Trebizond. In those visits, he had spoken with more rogues, racketeers, assassins and swindlers then he could remember, all to no avail, the unsavoury characters dismissing him as just a boy, or falling silent and tight-lipped at the first mention of the Agentes. The backstreets of the bustling city held the answer to it all, an answer that was as yet utterly elusive. His knuckles whitened as he ground them into the table, seeing the dark door in his mind, the knotted arm reaching for it.

‘It’s tortuous, isn’t it?’ Mansur grinned.

‘Sorry?’ Apion looked up, startled.

‘The game,’ Mansur nodded to the board.

Apion shook his head. The old man was worried for him, he could sense it. ‘Every move I plot in my head looks good,’ Apion spoke, his words echoing both the puzzle of shatranj and the riddle of the Agentes, ‘until I see the move after that and then the next. All moves lead me to a place I don’t want to go.’

Mansur nodded. ‘So do you sacrifice a piece to take one of mine, perhaps? Is it worth it?’

Apion frowned, looking the old man in the eye. ‘No, that opens too many doors.’ They held each other’s gaze for some time.

Finally, a piece of firewood snapped and Mansur nodded, then tapped the board with a sigh. ‘In shatranj, sometimes sacrifice is the only option. Imagine how the strategos feels, he must make such choices when it is not wooden pieces that are at stake but living, breathing men: whether to send a unit of infantry to their deaths to allow the rest a fighting retreat; to have his cavalry pierce an enemy flank knowing that it will slow their advance but then the horsemen will be hopelessly lost in a nest of speartips as a result; whether to leave his bowmen out front for one last hail of arrows knowing it will critically thin the enemy charge but that the archers will die for it. These are the choices of the strategos.’

Apion frowned and shook his head. ‘I don’t envy the man who has to make that call and then to try to rest at night with the knowledge of what he has done, but I would rather take up the mantle and face the guilt that comes with it and stand against fate, than wander blindly to my death at the whim of another.’

Mansur grinned wryly at this. ‘Then take up that mantle — make your move!’

Apion studied the board again: he had his king, a knight, a rook and three pawns left; Mansur with his king, vizier, a chariot and a pawn. Mansur was positioned around Apion’s bunkered pieces and the onus was on Apion to break forward and make the most of his numerical advantage. He had soon learned the lesson to avoid rushing to victory on impulse, but also that hesitation could sap confidence. ‘Protect the flanks,’ he muttered, ‘but to win I must expose them?’

Mansur smoothed his moustache and considered the comment. ‘Such is the nature of the game. Expose the flanks if you must, but develop the centre in doing so, forcing your enemy to defend.’

Apion studied the board, mapping out the moves his pawns and his knight could make. Then he thought of the oft-passing columns of Byzantine thema soldiers, always the same make up of a head of kataphractoi cavalry, a body of skutatoi infantry and a tail or flanks of toxotai archers with a mule and wagon train to the rear. No elephants, chariots or other such exotic units in sight.

‘Cavalry and infantry; that’s what a real strategos has to work with, isn’t it? That’s what Cydones has in his ranks?’

Mansur looked up as though he had heard a long forgotten voice. ‘Cydones?’ The old man nodded. ‘He is a fine strategos. He manages Chaldia well and leads the fighting men like a lion. His tools are indeed the infantry and the cavalry; the anvil and the hammer. Yet those tools are not enough. No money comes from Constantinople to fund the defence of the empire anymore. Still, that man has been the thorn in the Seljuk advance for over two decades!’

‘The Seljuks won’t stop, will they? Cydones can never win.’

‘As things stand, Cydones can only delay the coming of my people. This will remain the case while the Byzantine emperor chooses not to support his outlying themata adequately and the Seljuk Sultan believes war and conquest is tantamount to glory. The Falcon is a driven individual; Tugrul sees every moment of hesitation as a drop of lost glory.’

Apion wondered what would become of the borderlands if the expected invasion occurred. If the Seljuks were to sweep over the land then his life and his quest would be swept away with their charge. Then, as his eyes hung on his pawns, he saw the killer move. He picked up a pawn and moved it away from the other two, pinning Mansur’s chariot against his king. He looked up, grinning.

Mansur pushed his vizier one square forward then cocked an eyebrow. ‘Checkmate!’

Apion’s heart sank; he had exposed his own king and trapped him in the corner. His brow knitted. His first victory over the old man remained elusive. ‘It’s impossible!’ He fumed.

‘Then how is it possible for me to win time after time?’ Mansur asked calmly.

‘I don’t know, our pieces are of equal power, I’ve tried matching your sequences of movements, and I’ve tried striking out with my own patterns. . ’

‘Our pieces are of equal power, but we are not.’ His words were blunt.

Apion stared at Mansur. Was the old man mocking him?

‘The most powerful weapon in shatranj is the mind of the man who controls the pieces.’ Mansur tapped a finger to his temple and then moved his vizier back to the square it had been on. ‘You are getting better and better. I haven’t been that close to defeat in a long, long time. Had you moved your knight around my flank, you would have limited my next move,’ he pushed his vizier forward, ‘and I would have been forced to expose my king just as you did.’

Apion saw the pattern like a ray of sunlight.

‘You would have won. A boy of twelve years beating a man on his last clutch of summers. You should be proud.’

‘I could have won. . should have won,’ Apion’s spine tingled.

Mansur swept a hand across the board. ‘You are starting to see the board from above, like an eagle, soaring on a zephyr, looking down on the formations. The higher you soar, the greater your eye will be for weaknesses in the enemy line.’

Apion held Mansur’s gaze as the old man’s eyes sparkled in the firelight. ‘Like a strategos?’

‘See like the eagle and you are the strategos!’ Mansur grinned.

‘Better to be the Haga, with two heads to see the battlefield?’ Apion grinned in return.

Mansur laughed at this. ‘Well put.’ Then the old man held his gaze. ‘To see you smile is like a tonic for me, lad. Does it not make you feel good when you smile, when you let go of your troubles?’

‘It does,’ Apion nodded. ‘But I do not seek out the thoughts that trouble me. Since that day by the Lykos, they come to me incessantly, they will not leave me alone.’

‘You can change that, lad. Let go of this obsession over the Agentes and live the life you have now. Do you think you can do that?’

Apion saw the hope in Mansur’s eyes and held his gaze for a moment, then glanced away to the hearth, and nodded. ‘I will try.’

***

Later that night Apion could not sleep and went to the stable, brushing the mane of the grey mare and speaking to her softly. Then he heard the clopping of hooves. The mare’s ears perked up. Apion looked out into the darkness.

A black-robed and veiled rider trotted up to the gateposts, stopped and waited.

Apion eyed the figure, uncertain, then hobbled forward. ‘What do you want, rider?’

The rider was stock-still. ‘You wanted answers?’

Apion’s eyes narrowed and his skin prickled. ‘Who sent you?’

‘My boss will tell you what you want to know. Tomorrow, noon, downriver by the old mill. Bring five nomismata and come alone.

With that, the rider heeled his mount into a gallop back downriver and was gone.

Apion watched the dust trail in the moonlight. Of all those who had scoffed at his enquiries, or fallen silent at the first mention of the Agentes, there was one who had offered him just a sliver of hope. At the dockside inn, Apion had placed a purse of coins on the table and old Kyros had eyed it in silence. After what felt like an eternity, Apion thought this was another dead end. Resigned, he stood, scooped up the purse and began to hobble away. But Kyros called him back. The old rogue nodded to Apion and said he couldn’t promise anything, but would see what he could do, insisting that more money would be needed. Apion had expected that he would never hear from Kyros again, but it now seemed that the old rogue had been serious. If money was what it took then so be it, Apion thought. He had acquired a purse of nomismata through bartering for just this purpose. But one question hung on his mind.

What price for revenge?