Shards of Empire Read online

  Seated at the center of this presence chamber was Alp Arslan, his long beard and mustaches giving him somewhat of the look of a hunting cat. He wore simple white, and he held a mace.

  As a hand against the Emperor's back thrust him into Alp Arslan's presence, a cluster of men spoke up at once. Envoys. Leo recognized them. No one troubled to interpret; no one needed to interpret the look of amazement on the Seljuk ruler's face, replaced quickly enough by a fierce triumph.

  “No!” From somewhere in the back, another man rushed forward and hurled himself at Romanus's feet, weeping, babbling out apologies and verses from the Book of Lamentations.

  “Forgive me, forgive me. When we lost, I should have known it was an omen of defeat. I have been a fool...” The strategos Basiliacus, whose force had been cut down but whose body had never been found, had his face pressed against the Emperor's feet.

  “In the name of God, sir, control yourself,” Romanus said. “I am hardly in a position to punish you for losing.”

  Basiliacus kissed the Emperor's boots and sobbed once more. At least, this hothead had one redeeming point: he was far more loyal than Leo's kin.

  Well, if there were any chance at all that Romanus might not be recognized ... folly, folly even to assume it ... Basiliacus had just given that away. No one betrays you as thoroughly as your dearest friends, Leo thought.

  Leo was a fool to assume for an instant that the Emperor's face might pass unknown—even without Basiliacus's outburst. The Turks were not fools, infidels and killers though they were. And they had Persians among them, and Persians were known to be outstanding spies.

  Alp Arslan leapt from his cushions.

  He shouted like one possessed, and his eyes gleamed with what could be madness as easily as triumph. Foam sprayed from his mouth.

  Beside Leo, the Varangian tensed; Turks at his side tightened their grips upon his arms and their weapons.

  “Down!” commanded the Sultan of the Seljuks.

  Leo felt himself forced to the ground, until he lay as low as Basiliacus. The Varangian toppled, brought down by the weight of guards. As two more Turks pulled at Romanus, though, he pulled away. His chains rattled. Then, as if he were subject, and not emperor, he went down on his knees before the victor: down upon his knees, then down onto his belly, kissing earth, or at least the carpets beneath his face. And Alp Arslan strode forward and placed his foot upon the neck of the Emperor of the Romans.

  Basiliacus gave another wail, then fell silent. The Emperor himself, humble as any slave! Why did the sky not darken? Why did the world not cease in that very moment?

  Leo closed his eyes and waited for the blade to seek his heart, or the axe to cleave his neck. The clamor of cheers, laments—and interpreters buzzing in their masters’ ears—fell silent.

  “Now,” said the Sultan of the Seljuk Turks to the vanquished Emperor of New Rome, “let me help you rise.”

  With his own hands, Alp Arslan raised the Emperor and clasped his hand, not once, but three times.

  An interpreter, a veritable gaggle of them, hovered nearby. No doubt the Sultan spoke some Greek; Leo had heard the Emperor speak to his Turkish mercenaries. But the interpreters translated, their voices buzzing all around the rich tent: regrets for the loss of a battle; promises that Romanus's person would be as sacred as Alp Arslan's own; assurances that Alp Arslan understood the dignity of princes and the waywardness of Fate.

  “Strike off my guest's chains,” he commanded. Men crowded around to obey.

  “These shall be your guard,” said Alp Arslan. “Now, who else do you choose to release from bondage? You have only to speak their names.”

  Romanus gestured. Basiliacus rose, dashing his hand across his face. One by one, the men herded into the Sultan's presence chamber clambered to their feet and were released.

  “Leo Ducas,” said the Emperor.

  “He bears the name of a man who deserted you,” said Alp Arslan. “Do you truly wish him free?”

  Romanus nodded. “He bears my son's name as well. In the battle, when he might have fled with his kinsman, no son ever showed a father greater loyalty. It is not always,” he remarked, “thus in Rome.”

  A man in rich Persian robes whispered into the Sultan's ears.

  “The lad named after the mountain cats!” Alp Arslan said, the interpreter tumbling after his words. “As I am myself. Yes, release him, and he will sit at your feet as befits a lion's cub.”

  Leo swayed as the Turks unchained him and ushered him, behind the Emperor, to a tent nearby. Alp Arslan sank onto cushions of Persian brocade behind a low table, intricately wrought. At a gesture, Romanus joined him. Leo was waved to cushions nearby. Near him, with a grin, settled the gulam who had brought them in. Leo supposed he had earned the right. He took a deep breath. His head throbbed from the color and the clamor and the growing realization that he was not immediately to die.

  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies ...

  Hammered brass dishes appeared beside him, heavily laden with lamb and fragrant breads. “Use only your right hand,” whispered Basiliacus, who had been a prisoner longer.

  Perhaps only hunger that made Leo dizzy. Please God, he did not keel over in a fit.

  “You are my guest,” announced the Sultan, “and you must eat and grow strong again.”

  Romanus Diogenes inclined his head.

  “What treatment do you expect to receive?” asked Alp Arslan.

  “If you are cruel,” said the Emperor, “you will take my life. If you listen to pride, you will drag me at your chariot wheels. If you consult your interest"—the Basileus’ eyes narrowed—"you will accept a ransom and restore me to my country.”

  Leo sat up as straight as he might. Now, he must pay attention, very close attention, as the dance of kings, armies, ransoms, and treaties began. For begin it would: why else had Alp Arslan spared a conquered Emperor?

  “I have promised you your life,” Alp Arslan replied. “But had Fortune smiled upon you, not me, what would you have done?”

  There was no gentleness in Romanus’ smile. He took bread with his right hand and tore it across. “I would have beaten you to death,” he said.

  This time there was a lag in the translation. Several of the envoys supplied the missing words. The Turks milling around the tent muttered, some with anger, others—much to Leo's astonishment—with approval. The grins on their faces were even fiercer than the smile upon the Emperor's.

  The Sultan's smile was mild, deliberately so. “I,” said Alp Arslan, “will not imitate you. I have been told that your Christ teaches gentleness and forgiveness of wrong. That he resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.”

  “So He does,” agreed the Emperor.

  As if aware that he had won that point as well as the battle, Alp Arslan changed the topic like any noble host.

  “You fought well,” he told Romanus. “I myself would not have trusted so much to strangers, and I surely would have guarded my own camp. But I should hope that if Allah withheld his gift of victory I fought as bravely as you and that my son Malik-Shah would stand by me as your lion's cub defended you.”

  Wait for it, Leo told himself. Soon, the bargaining would begin in earnest and would last ... he only hoped he could hold out.

  The throbbing in his temples intensified. He longed for wine, but the Turks would serve no wine—whether it was true or not that it was forbidden them. He watched the scribes, attentively writing down every word spoken by his master and theirs. They knew both languages. The time would come when all would have to ...

  His attention drifted away, to be brought back with a jolt—

  “Ten million gold pieces?” Romanus echoed the demand Alp Arslan had evidently just made, his voice incredulous. He laughed, as if the sum were an absurdity. Leo detected the shock in that carefully accomplished laughter. A bargain would be struck, a ransom set, and a treaty signed. It would simply—if the word could be said to apply—take longer than anyone anticipa
ted.

  With drums and horns and flourishes of banners, Alp Arslan rode out with the Emperor of the Romans to set him on his way back to his throne—and their treaty.

  The townspeople of Manzikert and Khilat, jaded with the rich spoil they had lugged off the battlefield, ceased their gleaning to watch Alp Arslan and the Emperor ride out. There should have been soldiers hereabouts—wounded men, traveling slowly; officers on weary horses; officers and soldiers and auxiliaries, willing to rejoin their Emperor now that Romanus was freed, and his surviving men with him. Most likely, those who were not dead had shed their armor or turned their coats.

  Master of all he surveyed and puppetmaster of much that he did not, Alp Arslan grinned the predatory satisfaction of a full-fed hunting cat. His smile widened as he saw Leo, riding with the other Romans among his Turks.

  “The lion shall lie down with the lamb,” Leo had heard him say as he and Romanus wrangled over the treaty. But Romanus was no sheep, nor had he allowed himself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. By now word of his capture, or his death, treason being what it was, must have reached the city.

  “Well, Lion's Cub? Sorry to be leaving us?” Kemal rode up to him. “The Lion's Cub is my luck!” Kemal had announced to the other mamluks, who were less skeptical than they had been.

  The man who had captured an Emperor hurt Leo's eyes with his splendor. For half a dinar, Kemal had acquired an undented helmet. For another, he had purchased three cuirasses—perhaps not mail of the best quality, but quite good enough for a mamluk who had scarcely a decent weapon to his name just days before.

  Leo steeled himself not to flinch at the slap on his back. He thanked God for his own part in the treaty. He had his armor and weapons, enriched by gifts of “the mountain lion to the lion's cub.” Alp Arslan had taken a liking to his captives. So the Emperor rode not as a client but as a prince, dressed in Persian silks rich enough to satisfy Alp Arslan's desire to honor the man he had embraced and signed a treaty with, the emperor who had brought him half a world in thrall.

  Perhaps it was that liking—and Alp Arslan's plans—that stopped this escort from being the vanguard of an invading army. It was not the banner of their Allah that made Leo shudder; it was the wilder things that flew with it into his consciousness—the sense of a great wind sweeping down from the East across Anatolia, to New Rome itself, and even across the Middle Sea.

  Surely, Romanus saw that, or he would not have insisted so on his release. No mean bargainer himself, he had not had to cede the ten million gold pieces of the sultan's first demand. The terms were still severe: one and a half million gold pieces, a staggering annual tribute and a supply of soldiers, and the loss of Manzikert itself, Antioch, Edessa, and Hierapolis. A daughter of Romanus would be packed off to marry the eldest son of Alp Arslan, God pity her.

  Romanus was free to ride back to Constantinople and impose this treaty on his Senate. How could the Emperor ride at Alp Arslan's side, as easy in Seljuk dress as if he were born to it, laughing as if he had been the victor? Did he truly think he could simply ride through the Golden Gate into Constantinople, up the Mese, and into the palace?

  Leo's Emperor tossed back his head and laughed on the road. His face caught the sunlight like a mask.

  The fields beneath the unpromising hills turned gold and brown as the Emperor rode west toward Dokeia. The day was cool for autumn. Several storms marched across the horizon.

  Leo's mouth was foul with the taste of hellebore, a safeguard against madness. His dreams had worsened. At first, men had kicked him awake. Now, Ducas is going mad, he could hear the other officers whisper.

  For now, however, he could not be denied the duties that were his. Thus, he still could wait outside Romanus’ quarters for his summons. The entrance was guarded by two of the few remaining Varangians. The nearer of the pair grinned at him.

  “Bad night?” he asked in heavily accented Greek.

  Leo shrugged.

  “You dream? We heard shouting.”

  “The storm woke me,” Leo muttered.

  “You dreamed.” The Varangian touched a piece of metal that gleamed at his throat.

  The two Varangians chuckled.

  “Dreams. A goose stepped on his grave, eh, Thorvaldr?” He chuckled. “Be grateful that's all the goose did, yes?”

  The Northerner thus appealed to patted Leo on the shoulder with an immense hand. The other polished his axe.

  “Tell us your dreams, young lord.” Leo had the Emperor's favor, or the Varangian would not thus jest with him. Or make jest of him.

  “You heard the storms last night,” he began.

  The Varangian nodded. “Only land storms. You ought to see them on the swan road, when the water spouts ... Once, I saw a waterspout punch through a knarr and suck it down without leaving as much as a rope or shield.”

  “Let the lad tell us...” the one called Thorvaldr cut in.

  “I was seeking shelter from the storms. I came to a house beneath a cliff. I looked through a window. Looked down.” Leo shook his head as if to clear it. “I saw a loom.”

  “On the floor? That is not where the women of my steading keep their looms.”

  “Nor women in the Empire either.”

  “Fine silk they weave,” chuckled the guardsmen, with an appreciative glance at the crimson of his sleeve.

  “But it was not silk that strung the loom. It was the Empire that was the loom, and the threads—riders, back and forth...” Leo put a hand to his head. In his dream, the riders had darted back and forth at horse-killing paces, the warp and weft of a terrible tapestry being woven.

  “Did you see the weaver?” Now the blue eyes were intent on his.

  The Varangian's hand had slipped off Leo's shoulder and again touched the silver at his throat.

  “The weaver, lad...” He had heard veterans urging recruits in just that way to speak, on nights when soldiers scarcely out of boyhood huddled head down, afraid or ashamed to talk.

  “She had bloody hands,” Leo breathed. “And her hair ... it was serpents...”

  “That is seithr, power of the deepest black.”

  A man pushed past Leo, his leathers and armor reeking of dust and horse and sweat.

  “Leo Ducas! Get in here!” The Emperor's shout from within his quarters made all three of them jump.

  “In you go,” said Thorvaldr.

  He could have dispensed with the honor.

  The battered table on which Leo usually wrote his emperor's letters had been overturned, and ink had splattered the rugs beneath it. Back and forth Romanus strode.

  “Never mind all that bowing,” ordered Romanus. “Did you note the last messenger?”

  “Yes, sir.” Leo bent to turn the writing table upright. A pity nothing could be done about the ink. He looked about for the pen and whatever document Romanus had not seen fit to trust him with ... ah, there ... crumpled beneath a chair lay a stained letter. Leo picked it up, read the name “Eudocia” on it, and handed it mutely to the Emperor, who burned it.

  “He seemed frightened.”

  Romanus barked laughter that hurt to hear. “You think I'm a Persian, boy? You think I would kill the messenger who brings bad tiding?”

  “Sir, you wouldn't ask a boy that question,” Leo said. “You sent for me?”

  “You do serve me, don't you—Ducas?”

  Leo stood silent, allowing the Emperor to meet his eyes. Compelling it. I called my uncle Judas. I fled his side, repudiating his treachery. I fought before you until I fell. Oh yes, I serve you.

  “Have you heard from the City?”

  “You mean from any of my family, sir? They'd hardly write the family disgrace now, would you?”

  Time to be greatly daring. “Have you heard from home, sir?”

  Romanus had a son named Leo, other children. Still, it was his Empress-wife who counted now. He had written her as soon as he might, a letter in his own hand, carried by the fastest means, reassuring her as wife, asking counsel of her as Empress.
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  Now, again, he had been writing her—a letter so private he would not call in even a confidential and aristocratic secretary. Romanus stood over the fire, rubbing his hands together as if they would never be warm.

  During her reign with her previous Emperor-husband, Eudocia had saved Romanus’ life. That time, he had been dux of Sardica, a fighting general for whom an older woman, much mewed up, might easily develop a passion. Now, he was not her lover, but her husband; not a lucky general, but a defeated Emperor. How much was he relying on her this time?

  “Sir...”

  Romanus sank into the chair Leo had set back for him. He gestured toward a stool and at the wine.

  “And I alone escaped...” he muttered.

  “The news from Constantinople is that bad?” If Romanus quoted the Book of Job, it must be nothing short of calamity.

  “Worse than I could have imagined. The entire city bubbles like fermenting tavern swill. The Emperor is dead ... no, the Emperor is a prisoner ... no, it doesn't matter what the Emperor is.

  “I have written to Alp Arslan. He promised me troops, allies. Let's see how good the word of a Turk is. It can't help but be better than the word of a Roman these days.”

  “Not all Romans, sir.”

  Leo rescued the winecup and pitcher, poured, and served.

  The Emperor drank. And if my word were no good, you would not dare that without a taster!

  Romanus set down his cup, more carefully this time. “No sooner than the news of the defeat—and I wouldn't have lost if it weren't for that Caesar John's Judas of a son!—reached the City, those damned court officials called a council.”

  Another gulp of wine. The Emperor filled his cup, then filled Leo's. “Don't give me that look, boy. You have a better chance than I do of wearing the diadem now. Those stoneless wonders decided to ignore the Emperor's fate, whatever it might be, and Eudocia and her sons ... that fool of a Michael ... were to be invested with full imperial power.”

  Eudocia had to want him back, Leo thought. A less welcome thought hit him. His mother Maria had made the best of a scholar husband: but had her husband been a defeated general, would she want him back? Would she prefer that he be honorably dead—or see to it herself?