Free Strategos: Island in the Storm by Gordon Doherty

all gone. Now just two spearmen in vivid green and yellow tunics and trews stood guard at the door, and a single slave girl remained to prepare some herbal brew for the prince. Vardan beckoned Apion over to sit on the stool beside him.
    ‘What you said, it is true, Apion of Chaldia?’ Vardan asked, one hand ruffling his beard, his eyes gazing into the middle-distance.
    ‘Just three miles to the south, over seven thousand ghazi riders roam. They have destroyed all in their path so far. Farms, towns, even walled cities have fallen to them.’
    ‘Many of my kin have been summoned by Byzantine Emperors of the past, few have returned,’ Vardan replied swiftly. ‘I presume that is why you are here – to plead for the help of my army?’
    Apion nodded. ‘Our infantry are still a week’s march away. We need just enough foot soldiers to pin the Seljuk horde, then we can bring our cavalry to bear.’
    Vardan smiled wryly. ‘So you do come to prize away the young men of my villages? You have yet to persuade me why I should grant you this.’ He sat back in his chair and sighed, eyeing Apion. ‘Who am I speaking to?’ he mused. ‘Are you a delegate, a learned man of some sort, Apion of Chaldia?’
    ‘I have neither studied the scrolls of the great libraries, nor attended the new universities of the empire far to the west. But I have been schooled in war – the cruellest of mistresses. I have learned many black lessons on the plains and passes of these borderlands. Many times I have been certain that I have seen all war has to show me, yet she still astonishes me at every turn.’
    The prince chuckled at this, eyeing Apion’s battered nose and scarred features. ‘I thought as much. You do not have the look of some soft-skinned envoy. Tell me who you really are.’
    Apion hesitated, judging the situation. If hook-nose and his cronies had still been here, he would have lied. But he needed this man to trust him. Truth breeds truth, he decided. He pulled up his sleeve, revealing the red-ink stigma of a two-headed eagle.
    Vardan’s face split in a not altogether reassuring smile. ‘The Haga? ’
    Apion nodded.
    Vardan laughed under his breath. A laugh that chilled Apion. ‘If you had come to my gates and hailed my sentries as so, I would have had you shot through without a second thought. Your trail is black indeed.’
    Apion did not flinch. ‘I understand. When farmers see me setting light to their village, they do not realise I do it only to deny shelter to invading riders. When I burn or cut down my enemy in their hundreds, I do it only to save the thousands they would otherwise slay.’
    Vardan tilted his head to one side. ‘Hmm. They used to call me Vardan the head-taker. You know why? Because when I was a boy, the warriors of a neighbouring tribe stopped my father’s grain wagon. They raped and killed my sister. They tortured my father, nailing him to a tree. It took him three days to die. It was me who found him, on that last day. His dying gaze was on my sister’s corpse. He had seen all they did to her. My grandfather was the prince of this town at the time. He reacted weakly. He demanded the killers pay my mother for her loss. They paid, yet the coins did not soothe our pain one scrap. Only months later, I heard they had murdered again. So I took up my sword one morning, and came back at night with their heads. I never heard of any further suffering at their hands.’ He gazed into the fire with a wistful half-smile.
    Apion’s mind flashed with memories of his early days in the ranks, of his slain parents, of the vile Bracchus. ‘Then we may be more alike than you might imagine.’
    Vardan beheld him for a moment, then chuckled. ‘Perhaps, Haga, though my name is known only in these mountains. Yours echoes all across the borderlands.’ He sat a little straighter. ‘You know much of war, that much is clear. But what do you truly know of my people, of whose lives you ask?’
    ‘I know that your tribe and