Strategos: Born in the Borderlands by Gordon Doherty Page B

few seconds of life before he joined Mother and Father. No! Then they would have died in vain, Apion fretted, eyes darting around for any sign of hope as the henchmen emerged from his parents’ bedroom. He realised he still held the spathion but what use was a weapon he could barely swing against these two brutes?
     
    ‘He’s not in there,’ one henchman grunted and then extended a finger at the very shadows in which Apion hid, ‘so he must be in that room.’ Together, they stepped forward, scimitars in hand.
     
    Apion realised escape was his only option. If he could flee into the night, wake the soldier-farmers in the next valley, then these raiders could be trapped. He turned to the shutters, ready to unbolt them as quietly as he could. But when he turned he froze, they were already ajar, punched open from outside. Was this some kind of trick? Then he sensed the presence of the two henchmen behind him.
     
    ‘Too late to run! Ready to join your Father, boy?’ One henchman hissed.
     
    Apion spun, poised with the sword in a two-handed grip, trembling.
     
    ‘Now put that blade down,’ the second henchman hissed, his breath reeking. ‘Just close your eyes and it’ll all be over.’
     
    Apion felt the terror boil in his veins. He roared and swung the sword wildly, the blade glancing from the walls, showering sparks across the room, the henchmen leaping back. Suddenly, the leader stormed into the room and stopped, masked features examining Apion.
     
    ‘Is that a boy we have behind that veil? So this is Loukas’ runt?’ Then he pointed a finger at Apion. ‘Take his head.’
     
    Apion was frozen momentarily, eyes hanging on the tarnished ring on the leader’s finger, a snake winding around the band. Then he roared and wrenched the spathion up, the blade caught the leader’s finger, chopping clear a chunk of skin and bone. The leader staggered back with a roar while the blade flew from Apion’s hand, plunging into the gut of the second henchman, who touched the hilt in stunned silence, blood gushing from his mouth, before toppling like a log, dead.
     
    ‘Finish him!’ The leader rasped, his voice laced with fury as he clutched the bleeding stump of his finger and ducked back out of the bedroom.
     
    Apion staggered back as the first henchman lurched forward, sweeping his scimitar down. Spinning away, he leapt for the open shutters, then his mind flashed with a white light as the blade hammered down on the back of his helmet then ground into his flesh. He felt a hot streak of agony like nothing before, the blade tearing at his back, ripping through his thigh and hacking all the way down his calf to his ankle.
     
    Then he could see only the floor and a dark liquid pooling around him. His body grew cold and needled towards numbness. Blackness swam over him. He could hear only a dull ringing and the murmur of the intruders.
     
    ‘Now drag him outside, I want to see all three heads on spikes.’
     
    Apion felt his ankles being grappled and an unearthly agony stung him to his core.
     
    Then another voice called, the fourth intruder, from outside.
     
    ‘Imperial riders!’
     
    ‘Then leave him,’ the leader spat from the hearth room. ‘They can all burn where they lie.’
     
    Everything around Apion seemed to be growing distant. He could hear splashing and the smell of pitch grew thicker. Then there was a dull clatter of a torch being hurled to the floor, followed by a roar of fire and anxious yells as they ran from the building.
     
    The heat intensified until it stung through the numbness and was accompanied by the stench of crackling flesh. From somewhere, Apion found the energy to prise apart his eyelids: there, in the corner of his bedroom, lay the staring and unmasked features of the man he had struck down; a Seljuk man, engulfed in the inferno, the skin on his face blistering and exploding like a roasting pig, eyes clouded over. Apion turned away in disgust but all around him was a raging