Shards of Empire Read online

  A wail sounded across the battlefield. Leo twisted his head so quickly that blood welled anew. Thy brother's blood calls out to heaven ... Was that the cry, Abel's blood appealing to God? Hardly: there were no innocents here.

  Again, that heart-stopping wail. Leo almost laughed. It was one of the cats, the countless thousand cats that prowled this land each night as the sun slept. Did they follow their masters out onto the field? They were sunlike themselves, the cats around Lake Van, white and gold, with golden eyes. They had no place on a field of battle.

  No more than you. Or anyone else. Now, that thought really made Leo laugh. What choice had he? What choice had he ever had? The time was coming when no one—man, woman, child, or the smallest beast—would have such a choice. And he worried about a small and yowling cat? Absurd. Better it slink back to its back streets, or, if it were very fortunate, to a child that cherished it.

  He would never have children now, Leo thought. The idea of fatherhood had never moved him: now, it drew tears from his eyes. But his sons and daughters would only have been pawns in the game, as he was.

  With an effort, he thrust himself back into his unquiet dream, staring eyes open at the indigo sky in which the stars gleamed like the tesserae in a church's apse.

  After awhile, the blue formed into folds, rustling across the maimed land as if they were the cloak of some searcher in no particular fear or hurry. Again, the cry of the hunting cat, louder now. Nearer.

  The cat sounded disturbed; and that was not the only noise that troubled the field of dead and dying. Wheels, as of some chariot; and Leo didn't think that the Turks used such things. Who would drive in a chariot over a bloody field? Nothing from this time or place. He shuddered. Here, at a bloody crisis, the bones that underlay this field might well be feared; they might rise to inspect their new brethren.

  And he had not strength now to raise his hand and ward himself against such restless, warring spirits.

  The chariot wheels rumbled nearer and nearer. The cat's cry rang out again. In a human voice, that would be joy. Leo bit his lip until more blood ran against a scream.

  Something wet touched his face. This time, he did scream, only to find himself soothed. He felt as if he lay in noon light. With a moan, he shut his eyes. He could not bear to look, not from the too-bright light, but at the eyes that saw him now, defeated and debased.

  What felt like a gentle hand wiped the filth, the blood, and the tears of fury and defeat from his mouth, then lingered on his brow. He remembered such tending from his childhood, before he grew too old for a nurse and he had turned out such a disappointment that he had been sent away with an uncle who betrayed him.

  The hand pressed on his brow as if it sensed the anguish of that thought. Well, it was true! he insisted. The pressure intensified. The hand warmed, easing some of the inner hurt.

  Why did it comfort him and not the Emperor?

  Perhaps Romanus, too, felt its compassion. Or perhaps it was a sign. A private sign from God, just for Leo Ducas? He managed a chuckle and sensed a pat, as if of approval, upon his brow, which no longer felt quite so fevered.

  Show me your face, he begged silently. Show me. For an instant, the stars shivered and the sky seemed to change. He had an impression of compassionate dark eyes, a gentle mouth held taut by courage, and a veil the color of a moonless night being drawn across them.

  Then fingers slipped down over his eyelids as if closing them before weighting them with coins.

  Benediction.

  Rest.

  He heard chariot wheels he surely must have imagined rumble away into the distance.

  Silence.

  Leo woke to light prying at his eyes. Not noon, then. And the full heat of the day had not yet begun to beat down. He opened his eyes and came immediately under attack. His armor cut into him like daggers. He did not know how he would further disgrace himself first—by vomiting again or by soiling himself like an old man turned child a second time.

  The battlefield came to obscene life—the hum and buzzing of fat-fed insects and the cries of the wounded, fevered, and dying. The land stank of blood and ordure and a more subtle fog of treachery and hate. A horse not yet fortunate enough to die whickered at a footstep, then screamed, or would have screamed if it had more sense. Leo's eyes filled with tears. His horse had died swiftly.

  Pleas for water, for God, God's mother, or men's own mothers, mercifully unable to see the human tatters of the flesh they had borne and tended, went up, punctuated by the occasional scream as someone shifted, or a sobbing whimper. One hoarse, cracked voice sang a childhood song with the simplicity of delirium. It started to tease Leo's consciousness away from the field with its intolerable freight of misery, but he reeled it back in.

  No. You live. Yet. See what you can do for your Emperor. See if he lives. He cannot be far away.

  Hesitantly, he attempted to rise.

  Hoofbeats pounded through the earth, the vibration nearly piercing his temples. The dying singer's voice grew weaker: he too was afraid for such short life as might remain to him.

  Leo froze where he lay. Those were not the hoofbeats of such a horse as he had ridden, but of the agile mounts of the steppe archers. The Turks surveyed the field of which they were masters, and they laughed and shouted as they rode.

  God send that they did not take it into their heads to shoot a triumphant volley of arrows into their vanquished enemies.

  So, you still wish to live, Leo?

  Inconceivable as it seemed, he did. Surviving one battle, it also seemed, made him a wiser man than he had been just the day before, when he was still a Ducas, still his uncle's loyal man, and his uncle had not been a traitor.

  The thin, delirious song started up again. Pity, as well as fear, made Leo's eyes run, and he fought it: dead men did not weep. He remembered that song from when he was a child playing in the inmost courtyards of their fortress of a house prestigiously close to the Imperial Palace for all its shabbiness, back when the world was innocent and no shadow of blame or fear touched him or anyone he knew.

  The Turks turned. One of them pointed to the singing man and cried out something. All of the other men laughed. The first man gestured at the others, who spread their hands out or reached for bows. Except for one, who shook his head and turned away. The first man shrugged, then spoke. His words were scornful, but a definite command. Drawing his bow, he laid arrow to it and shot. The song ceased.

  Bile filled Leo's mouth. All he would have to do was scream, and an arrow would find him. Like the arrows of Apollo, swift to their mark—though if a Turk resembled Apollo, Leo had yet to see it.

  Wait, then. They will think you are dead. You bear no arms particularly worth the having, compared with what other pickings they can find here. Wait, and under cover of darkness, creep away.

  For his life's sake, he listened. Gradually, he realized: he could pick out words from the Seljuk's conversation, enough like that of the mercenaries he had soldiered with ... And what good was that? Should he try to bargain his way to freedom?

  No, but he might learn something. Learn something and slip away until he found a general, Bryennius, perhaps, or an officer like Attaleiates, whom he still trusted, and tell them, for whatever good that would do a renegade Ducas. It might profit him not at all, but if it saved lives for the Empire, even at the cost of his, he would count it a job well done.

  Back and forth across the field the Turks rode. Officers, mostly, though now Leo realized that the fourth man, the one who had shrugged as if reluctant to fire at the delirious soldier, was a different type of person altogether. For one thing, he was a gulam, one of the slave-soldiers who bore arms, yet held himself in subjection to a noble. Leo had heard of the mamluks, as had all the army; and he had a healthy fear of them. So, this was a slave-soldier: unusual, if he were capable of judgment and moderation, then?

  But no, judging from the laughter. This man—Kemal, as his scoffing comrades called him—was a reluctant companion of theirs. His master had
tried to give him to the vizier, but he had been such a wretched creature that the minister had refused.

  “What good are you?” jeered one of the Turks. “What would you do? Would you bring us the Emperor of the Romans as prisoner?”

  Another shout of laughter at what sounded like an old taunt. Even the wounded men who were almost maddened by thirst had fallen silent.

  “If it is the will of Allah,” said the mamluk. He smiled, as if scoffing at himself.

  Leo held his breath, forced himself to lie still. Men stiffened after they were dead. How long after? Would the Turks know? No doubt, his uncle Andronicus would have sneered at him for a coward; but he had stayed here, while Andronicus Ducas had withdrawn. He would be sending fast riders to his father, the Caesar John, who had always opposed Romanus. His elder kinsman would return from banishment, celebrate Romanus’ death with every evidence of piety—and every inward sign of joy—and settle down as soon as was decent, and probably before, to the choice of a new Basileus. A successor was obvious: Michael, Eudocia's son, born in the purple and, better yet, a Ducas on his father's side. His family would be ecstatic, and so would Psellus. It meant advancement and vengeance; and both were very sweet.

  God, don't make me sneeze.

  The riders had divided into several groups, trotting, occasionally slowing to a walk or even stopping, as man after man dismounted and roved the battlefield. Greatly daring, Leo allowed his eyes to fall open as if that was how he had lain all night. He saw the gulam called Kemal kneel swiftly and catch up a sword from the ground, examine it, and throw it down, unworthy of his attention with so much richer booty on the ground. Soon the Turks would be gone ... wouldn't they?

  And then he could move. Just not yet.

  Aye, and he would make sure before he fled of the Emperor's fate.

  A voice sang out over the battlefield. The Turks all dismounted. Facing sunward, they prostrated themselves as if before an Emperor. Shoulder to shoulder, they knelt—one man somewhat apart from the others—chanting prayers. These did not look to be pagan rites, but rituals, duly and carefully observed, with exultation underlying what sounded like set prayers.

  Thank the Bearer of God for her mercy and intercession, the Seljuks were occupied by their air-scrubbings, bowings, and chantings. Leo sank back down, seeking, for the first time, a position that eased the weight of armor on his back. Though he had lost blood and most likely started a fever, he found himself able to push away just a trifle from the tangle of wounded, or dead, or dying men in which he had fallen. They were stained with muck and blood, but he could recognize red leather boots: the boots of an Emperor.

  Romanus groaned. He stirred and tried to rise.

  Dear God, no!

  Leo summoned any strength he had and tried to hurl himself at the older man, force him back down onto the ground where he could hiss caution in his ear ... as if Romanus had listened to counsels of prudence all this entire God-cursed campaign. But as Leo hurled himself at the Emperor, Romanus overbalanced, and they went over not in a neat pile, but in a tangle. A kicking tangle.

  “Ho!”

  Kemal again, damn him, scouring the battlefield for portable wealth.

  Let him just see two men, bled out and dying, clinging together in their last moments. A babble of prayer ran through his thoughts and would have forced itself out his lips, had fear not locked them. Let him turn away.

  Again, Romanus kicked. A clean patch on one boot—the crimson, finely made boot that only an emperor might wear and that had been a gift to him from his loving wife the Basilissa Eudocia—caught the light of the sun.

  Kemal turned around. His eyes narrowed even more than by nature. Their cunning darkness lit with greed, hope, and a sudden astonished surmise. He raced over to where the Emperor lay, seized the boots, and tugged hard. The boot came off in his hand. Kemal spat on the filthy leather, rubbed it, and when he removed his hand, he stared at the Imperial color.

  A rush of butterflies, incongruously gleaming, innocent on that field of death, made the gulam leap back. He recovered in an instant, delighted by his fortune.

  “Allah be praised!” he shouted. “They shamed me, the men who would not have me as their servant. Would he, they asked, bring us the Byzantine Emperor as prisoner? Would he? I, I, Kemal the worthless, the fool—behold, I am justified, my brothers! For here is the Byzantine emperor. And he is my prisoner.”

  Then it really was the end of the world. Well, best to leave it swiftly and with whatever honor he might salvage.

  Leo snarled and launched himself at the gulam, who whirled and struck him down.

  From a distance, someone was calling Leo's name. Stubbornly, he refused to turn back, to turn around. Beneath him, the ground shivered. There had been no place to hide upon the earth, but there might be sanctuary in it; and he might see the faces he had dreamt of all the night he had believed he was the only man left with life enough in him to have to survive.

  “Leo! Wake up, man! We need you!”

  What need had anyone ever had of him? Poor relation, unsatisfactory son, cat's-paw nephew, inept defender: better to retreat below, into the darkness.

  The voice grew louder, and Leo became aware once more of his own body, huddled, chin practically cupped against his knees like a newborn, cowering from the light.

  “Leo!”

  “Like Arslan ... the Lion ... this? This boy?” That was Greek, horribly, barbarously accented, in a voice Leo identified with loathing as Kemal's.

  “Our khan is called Alp Arslan, a lion of the mountains.” Pride and even delight quivered in his voice. “I have caught me an Emperor and a lion's cub.”

  “As well you were no better warrior, gulam, or it would be a dead man and his kitten you dragged back.”

  The clamor of armor, dropping from a man's grasp, the edged laughter of a scuffle that was only partly a jest, mutters of “he's luckier at finding than fighting...”

  Kemal's laughter brought Leo's aching head slowly around. The Turk who had captured an Emperor sounded more assured now: he could afford to be, for he had won himself such fame as the Turks might well celebrate for a thousand years.

  Fabric billowed and sloped overhead: they must be in some sort of tent. Sheltered, then. Tended after a fashion. No, not after a fashion: well-tended. The army's own medical corps could have done no better. Perhaps it could not have done as well; the Turks might have with them Egyptian or Jewish or Persian physicians, and they were the finest in the world.

  Outside, Leo heard shouts and whoops. There must be enough spoil from the camp—from the Emperor's own baggage train—to assuage the greed of a thousand such armies, let alone the folk of Manzikert and Khilat.

  He opened his eyes. The light did not thrust in at them like a lance in the brain. He stared up at the billowing fabric until a tall figure blocked his view.

  “Leo, you're alive! Thank the Bearer of God!” The sound of that voice, as much as the warmth and strength of the handclasp that accompanied it, teased Leo the rest of the way back from the darkness he had courted.

  He glanced up at the Emperor. The arrogance was long gone from his face. He bowed his head and his lips moved in brief, fervent prayer.

  “I was certain you were dead, boy. So were...” A jerk of the head meant the Turks. “Except for him. He insisted that his luck had turned from the time he too had been a captive so wretched that the vizier would not accept him.”

  “I heard,” Leo muttered. He paused. Then he confessed what he believed to be the truth. “I should have died,” he whispered.

  “When I saw you fall,” the Emperor said, “at first, I thought you had the luck. But now, I am glad that you did not.”

  Tears poured down Leo's cheeks. With his unbandaged hand, Romanus wiped them away. The Basileus, kneeling at his side.

  “You don't kneel to me,” Leo forced the words out. Scandalized, he tried with what little strength he could muster to force the Emperor back onto his feet. The older man moved his hand away. Leo hea
rd the rattle of the chains they both wore.

  “I used to tend my Leo when he was sick,” said the Emperor. His Leo. The son he would most likely not see again. One hand was bandaged. Though Romanus still wore the dress of a common soldier: apart from that, he might have been the Emperor Leo had seen all that summer.

  No, perhaps not: the anger, the strain, and the rising tide of rashness were gone, leaving a man with a grave, pale face. Certainly, he would be pale; he had lost blood enough. No doubt he knew he faced—along with any other survivors—losing the rest of it. Slowly, if what men said of the Seljuks could even be half believed, and in great torment.

  Unless, of course, he could strike a bargain that could win them all their lives and a chance to regain what had been lost. In that case, where would Leo stand? At his Emperor's side, facing his kin? He hoped he would have the courage.

  Shouting rose outside once more. This time it did not subside.

  The Emperor pressed Leo's hand.

  “Help me up,” Leo begged. The Emperor moved to stand between Leo and the entrance to the tent, crowded now with Turks, heading toward them.

  Leo began to struggle upward. Romanus turned swiftly, for all his wounds and the chains that burdened him, and helped pull him up. He staggered once as if he stood not upon his feet, but on the rocks of Mount Ararat, dizzy with the height. A huge, fair man with blood in his matted braids steadied him with a grunt of approval, then moved to stand before the Emperor.

  “Better move aside,” Romanus ordered under his breath.

  Seljuks grasped the Autocrator's sacred person by the arms and dragged him, his chains clattering, from the tent. When Leo, the Varangian, and some of the others lunged to restrain the guards, they were themselves forced along in Romanus’ wake, so much human booty in Alp Arslan's triumph.

  Even the tent abandoned in the Byzantines’ camp was not as splendid as this council chamber—this divan of the Seljuks and their Persian ministers. Brighter than the mosaics of Constantinople, carpets covered the ground, one strewn on top of another in a rich display of patterns, wool and silk, in crimsons and rich blues. Cushions lay atop them.