Read Online Strategos: Island in the Storm by Gordon Doherty - Free Book Online Page A

shoulders as they rode up the winding mountain path. It was mid-September and dark, clear nights like this brought with them a biting cold, especially at this altitude. He wore a long-sleeved tunic both for warmth and to hide his red-ink Haga stigma – figuring it might distract those he was to parley with. With him were his trusted three, plus the young rider, Kaspax. They had set off from the imperial army and ridden hard for a day, moving due east to these mountains while the Seljuk horde busied themselves terrorising the Byzantine settlements in the lower foothills just a few miles south.
    He glanced to the mountaintop above. It glowed orange, silhouetting a stocky timber palisade wall, watchtowers and sentries. Philaretos’ reaction to his plan rang in his thoughts once more.
    The Armenian hill princes? Have you lost your senses, man?
    Apion chuckled dryly at the memory. The doux was bound to rubbish whatever plan he put forward – the man was still pickled with shame over being routed at the Euphrates camp. As they rounded the last section of path leading up to the hilltop town’s gatehouse, he saw the four sentries standing before the gates brace. One of the sentries called out to challenge Apion and his night visitors. Momentarily, Apion wondered if Philaretos had been right. For it was a feral cry, a challenge.
    ‘Apion of Chaldia,’ he replied. ‘I come on behalf of Emperor Romanus Diogenes.’
    The torch near the gates guttered in the chill breeze and for a moment, the lead sentry’s face was illuminated: dark-skinned, scarred, with a rich green headscarf on his scalp and a thick beard on his chin. His nose wrinkled and he spat on the ground. ‘Byzantines,’ he growled, his mail shirt rustling as he squared his shoulders. ‘You come to speak with Prince Vardan?’ The men beside him laughed. ‘I see no reason why I should let you keep your lives, let alone open our gates to you.’ As he said this, twelve shadows rose up from behind the palisade walls accompanied by the tune of stretching, creaking bows. The dancing torchlight revealed something else. On either side of the gates, two limp bodies dangled, impaled through the chest on roughly-hewn spikes, throats cut, flesh grey, their eyes gone to the crows. It looked as if one of them at least wore the battered armour of a Byzantine spearman.
    Apion kept his gaze on the lead sentry. ‘You have family in these mountains and the surrounding plains?’
    The sentry lost his steely gaze for but a moment, then the scowl returned. ‘What is it to you?’
    ‘I come to offer your prince a deal that will see all in these lands, Byzantine and Armenian alike, spared the edge of the Seljuk sword.’
    The sentry frowned. ‘You speak of the horde? They are some way west of here – I heard they sacked Iconium?’
    Apion held his wavering gaze. ‘They tore the place apart but we drove them off. I saw the blackened ruin they left behind. Now they are here, only miles away, and they are not yet tired of slaughter and plunder. All I ask of you is that you let me speak with your prince.’
    The lead sentry’s scowl faded and his shoulders slumped just a fraction. A time passed then, wordlessly, he nodded to his comrades, who hurried forward to strip Apion and his men of weapons. When one of the sentries tried to take the hemp sack from Apion’s saddle, Apion clamped a hand over it. ‘That is for your prince alone,’ he said with the barest of smiles. Next, a creaking of timber rang out and echoed around the Cilician mountains as the gates swung open.
    Escorted closely, they trotted along the hay-strewn dirt path that led through the close-packed town. It was a jumble of stone-walled huts and larger villas, clinging to the rounded mountain top, with a sturdy, high-walled and fortified manor at the apex. Torches sputtered and flickered, lighting their way, and he saw the wide-eyed looks of children and adults alike who peeked from the doors of their homes, eager and