Strategos: Born in the Borderlands Read Online Free PDF Page B

forked beard, swigged water from his skin and then let his thoughts drift. He thought back to his old stamping ground, Constantinople: the tales of the rise and fall of emperors, often in inglorious circumstance, reached these outlying themata all too frequently. He still shivered at the report of the last emperor’s demise: the feckless Michael the Fifth had been pulled from his horse as he tried to flee the city, his pleas for mercy going unheard as the populace pinned him to the street and prised his eyes from his sockets. Emperor Constantine Monomachus now sat at the pinnacle of Byzantium and so far he had proved only how short-sighted a leader could be, disbanding garrisons all across the land in order to line the bare imperial treasury with a few pounds of gold.
     
    All the turmoil at the heart of empire meant that the border themata were left to fend for themselves, Cydones himself juggling the scant funds raised from the lands of Chaldia to mount an increasingly threadbare defence against the ever more frequent Seljuk incursions.
     
    You’re getting too old for this , a voice whispered in his mind. At forty-six years old he couldn’t disagree; the crudely bandaged thigh wound snarled rhythmically, every bone was racked with pain and his muscles seared even now, a half-day after the battle. Despite the fire, heaped high with kindling and brush, he felt the night chill more than ever. He had passed out shortly after the victory cry but fortunately Ferro had been on hand to grasp an arm and disguise the fall. The men had gathered the bodies of their comrades in an exhausted silence and then dug grave after grave. Cydones had narrated the Christian rites as his men buried each body.
     
    ‘Eat up, sir, there’s plenty spare,’ Ferro spoke hoarsely as he sidled over, easing his athletic frame down onto the earth to rest his back on a rock, pushing fingers through his dark curls. He threw a chunk of salt beef to his commander.
     
    Cydones examined the stringy strip of meat with disdain. Some wretched animal had died to provide this, but rations were plentiful only because so many men had died in this defensive sortie, men who would not be returning to their farmlands or their wives, mothers and children. ‘Aye,’ he smoothed his beard, ‘I’ve never felt so hungry and yet not, Ferro.’ He handed the beef back; a week with no meat or wine was his usual act of penance after so bloody an encounter.
     
    Ferro nodded gently, gazing around the camp fires dotting the plateau, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. ‘I’m dog tired, sir, but I’d prise out my own teeth to see the sunrise right now and to be headed for safe ground. Training and gathering supplies for the warehouse would be a pleasant task, for once.’
     
    Cydones grinned wryly. Ferro was his touchstone to reality. If the tourmarches was feeling the grind of being on a sortie then they truly were in a bad way. Ferro relished every chance to muster and set out with his infantry, temporarily freeing himself from the mire of tourma district administration that came with the role. He and the other tourmarchai were vital in allowing Cydones to run the Chaldian Thema as a whole. His mind chattered with the legal and taxation wranglings he had left neglected back in Trebizond and worse, the tense diplomatic meetings with the neighbouring themata . Not quite the ideals he had once strived for, he mused, touching the dull bronze Chi-Rho on his neckchain.
     
    His mind wandered back, as it often did after battle, to the lady of the forest all those years ago. Sometimes he felt sure the whole episode was just a dream, yet a twinge in his heart would see the words repeated over and again in his head. Be true to yourself, he wondered how closely he had followed that mantra. How many mass graves of Seljuk warriors could he really absolve himself of in the name of defending the rotting hulk of the empire? Killing one thousand to save one hundred. Worse were the