GOD-LOVING, GOD-FEARING
I — On the Plain of Anzen
21st of July, 838 ADI — On the Plain of Anzen
(24th of Sha’ban, 223 AH)
Anzen,
Armeniac Theme,
Empire of the Eastern Romans
At dusk…
Though he could scarcely see them for the dying light, Theophilos the Amorian—Basileus and Emperor of the Romans—knew well what stood before him across the plain of Anzen: hundreds of banners, black as the coming night, and below them thousands of the Caliph’s fighting men. Their tents bristled with spears, and each heart in every man and steed was afire with zeal. When the day broke, so too would the quiet. Theophilos surveyed the Caliph’s forces, all black tents and black standards sprawling over the plain like a pool of tar, and he could not say with any conviction that his Romans were prepared. A voice in his mind, come as if from another world, from an angel of the Lord Himself, echoed that Anzen would be a place of bloody catastrophe.
The Emperor considered the reports of his scouts. The Muslim force was fewer by a sum of perhaps ten-thousand, though this provided only paltry comfort; for among them were the Caliph’s notorious Turkmen Guard, his own slave-soldiery which surpassed in their ferocity all other armies of the East. And neither were those armies to be disregarded—the Arabs and the Persians, the faithful sons of Khurasan and the fractious clans of the Maghreb, cross-bearing Armenians, and even a few wretched Greeks—all had proven their steel in holy wars and summer wars alike. Yet what disquieted Theophilos most were reports of the Muslim army’s commanders, two fearsome heroes of their faith.
The Afshin, a Sogdian prince very much distinguished in warfare, was the supreme general of the Caliph’s forces and it was he who commanded them across the red heath at Anzen. Not a year prior, Theophilos was aware, this man had quelled at last the decades-long uprising of the red-clothed Khurramites and seen their mad prophet Babak—the Emperor’s own erstwhile ally—paraded to his execution in Samarra. And it was this Afshin who now lay in wait, deep in Roman lands and probably at this very moment strategizing in advance of dawn, with the full strength of the Caliph’s army behind him brought to bear at Anzen. With him, too, had come the emir of Melitene, Umar al-Aqta, whom the Emperor’s soldiery called “Monocherares”, for war had taken from him one hand; but with the other he was the terror of every Roman garrison and village in the Anatolian highlands; he and his fighting men were veterans of many a frontier summer. And if these two were not enough, the Emperor knew from his scouts of another army looming a ways to the south of the Afshin’s—one commanded by the Caliph himself, al-Mu’tasim, and comprising the finest and most terrible of his Turkmen Guard.
Since their encampment on the hill from which Theophilos now surveyed Anzen, his own Roman generals were generous with their counsel and his manse was aflutter with whispers and the clinking of steel through the evening. But now, as night fell and the Emperor’s spirits with it, he dismissed these attendant generals. After a moment, he summoned two men alone; the other generals, seeing their passing, grumbled loudly that Theophilos should more rightly be called “Barbarophilos”—and perhaps they were correct, for the Emperor had sent away all his Roman generals to treat with his two most trusted men of war, Manuel the Armenian and Theophobos the Persian.
Manuel, an uncle of Theophilos’ own beloved wife Theodora, was a true akrites, hardened rather than weathered by decades of frontier warfare, and furthermore was a font of intelligence regarding the workings of the caliphal forces; this because he had spent a year in exile, commanding the armies of the previous Caliph, al-Ma’mun. Though he had escaped by trickery back the domain of the Romans and Theophilos had honored him supremely with the office of Domestic of the Schools, certain suspicions lingered among the officership about this Armenian who had fought alongside the infidel. Nonetheless, Manuel remained the Emperor’s single most trusted counselor in the concerns of waging war, and none among the generals could question his aptitude for fighting along the frontier. It was also Manuel who brought into the Roman fold the other “barbarian general”, the Persian Theophobos.
He had come to the lands of the Romans not as Theophobos, but as Nasr ibn Nasr al-Sasani; not as a distinguished general, but as an outlaw and a refugee; not as a Christian, not even as a Muslim, but as a Khurramite of Babak’s ilk—a sectarian of wild conduct and strange belief. Yet Manuel, and before long Theophilos, had seen something in this young Persian bandit, and they saw even more in the fourteen-thousand Khurramite rebels who came with him, bedraggled by exile but fierce and blooded already against the Caliph’s arms. Thus the Roman army had welcomed thousands of fresh fighting men, who laid down their heretical faith (or so it was supposed) in exchange for Anatolian lands and Greek widows; and it was, of course, Theophobos—the baptized, God-fearing Nasr ibn Nasr—who was to command this newly-constituted Persian Tourma. In the years since, his countrymen had shown their mettle in frontier raids and Armenian princely feuds of years prior, and Theophobos himself earned the Emperor’s personal esteem for his straightforward honor and fiery cleverness. Still, if the generals were impressed by this glorified Persian bandit, they did not allow it to be known.
So it was these two men, and Armenian and a Persian, who stood before the Emperor of the Romans on the eve of battle, and though it went unsaid all three knew that it was their counsel which would decide its course, and by the grace of God avert the almost-prophetic catastrophe that loomed so heavily over the plain of Anzen in Theophilos’ mind. So overpowering was the dread that, while otherwise he may not have, the Emperor forsook all his other generals and placed the affair entirely into the hands of his trusted barbarians. There was some token discussion of pitched battle, of fields and forces and charges of horses, but it seemed the two generals were in agreement that a pitched battle was foolhardy. A defeat would devastate the massed thematic armies and leave all of Anatolia vulnerable to the depredations of the caliphal army, and even a victory over such a force would leave the Romans in poor shape if and when the Caliph, marching on Ancyra with his Turkmen Guard, came around to challenge them.
No, a pitched battle would not be wise—a night assault on the Caliph’s camp in the dark of morning, to catch his soldiers groggy and unawares, was the most advisable course of action. This, Theophilos’ advisors intoned with some solemnity, for both of them knew well how their Emperor cared for justice, for honor, and above all else for spectacle. Just as they had foreseen, the young basileus frowned, and for a moment they feared he might send them away for their cowardice. But he did no such thing, nothing at all in fact, and so the generals made their case. The terrain, Manuel insisted, was altogether favorable to the enemy, whose Turkish riders had circled many a shouting company and silenced them with raining arrows on many a plain just such as Anzen. And whence this force had come, Theophobos added, a half-dozen others just as mighty could be mustered at the Caliph’s command; the armies of the East would wash away the Romans’ petty garrisons with sheer numbers, would lay waste to his very ancestral home of Amorion, would seize all of Anatolia if the Emperor was not prudent on this night.
The Emperor of the Romans closed his eyes and was silent for a long moment, listening to the crackling of fire and the shuffling of the soldiery all around. The prospect of descending upon the foe in the night like highwaymen was distasteful to the ever-principled Theophilos, and he knew his proud Roman officers would feel similarly. But victory, wisdom, life—were these things not exalted higher than honor and pride? The Emperor breathed deeply, not knowing if the words he was about to say would avert the catastrophe he sensed or bring it tumbling down upon them.
“So it is,” he said curtly. “See that your men do not settle too pleasantly in their tents. This mean work of the Lord should not be done in the light of day.”
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