Strategos: Born in the Borderlands by Gordon Doherty Read Free Book Online Page B

was prone again.
     
    A shadowy figure loomed over him. ‘Raiders of Seljuk blood I can take but a Byzantine?’ The figure boomed.
     
    Apion shuffled back on the palms of his hands. Vision blurred, he could make out cinnamon skin and a flat-boned face. If it was Giyath then he was surely in big trouble. His eyes focused instead on a pony-tailed boy: younger than Giyath, perhaps his own age, nostrils flaring, eyebrows dipped in the centre like an angry bull. He looked like Giyath but without the broadness or the stubble, his gangly shoulders scaffolding a red, long-sleeved tunic.
     
    ‘You think you can take from my father? I think you’re a fool.’ The boy stalked forward and shook his fist, the knuckles bloodied.
     
    ‘I . . . ’ Apion stammered as the boy stalked forward, fists clenched.
     
    ‘Nasir! No!’ Maria screamed.
     
    The boy wheeled around. ‘And you, you call yourself a Seljuk? You could have your pick from the orchard, Maria, if only you’d not associate with his type!’
     
    With that, the boy Nasir spun around again and thrust his foot into Apion’s stomach. Bile leapt from Apion’s mouth and he curled into a ball, croaking for the breath that had been kicked from his lungs. His eyes seemed to pop from their sockets as he retched, his world on its side. Nasir stomped over to Maria, remonstrating with her and Apion saw only the whites of Maria’s bulging eyes.
     
    ‘Nasir, you idiot, you’re acting like your ape of a brother!’ She shoved him in the chest.
     
    Apion felt his hands scrape on the ground and at once he was up, hobbling towards Nasir’s back, a roar rent the air and he barely recognised it as his own as he clasped his arms around the boy’s neck, pulling him down. The pair tumbled to the dust, spilling over in a flurry of elbow and knees. Nasir ended it by pinning Apion to the ground, knees pressed into his shoulders.
     
    ‘You lay a finger on her and I . . . I . . . ’ Apion spat.
     
    ‘Hold your tongue, Byzantine.’
     
    ‘Get off of him, Nasir,’ Maria squealed, shoving him clear of Apion, ‘you’re hurting him!’
     
    ‘What?’ Nasir scrambled round to stand over him again, then snorted at the sight of the angry welt of scar on Apion’s leg. ‘A cripple? Well I won’t waste my strength on you. What happened to your leg? Were your parents crippled too?’ He mocked.
     
    A fury erupted in Apion’s chest and he hobbled forward. ‘You filthy Seljuk whoreson! ’
     
    ‘Apion!’ Maria slapped a hand across his neck. ‘Stop it, both of you,’ she gasped. ‘Animals!’
     
    Apion glanced at her and then shared a breathless and venomous glare with Nasir.
     
    Maria sighed, screwing her eyes shut tight and running her hands through her hair. ‘Apion, if you want to continue to share my family home then you’ll apologise to Nasir. Nasir, you behave more like yourself and less like your idiot brother and we might speak again,’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘Make peace,’ she demanded.
     
    As the tension ebbed from his veins and the crushing pain from his scar replaced it, Apion looked at the boy Nasir. He was no more than that; just a wiry boy, but whose words had stirred a murky anger deep inside him. Nasir cast him a mirror image, narrow-eyed stare.
     
    ‘For now, Byzantine,’ he growled.
     
    Apion bristled. ‘Likewise.’
     
    ‘Come on,’ Maria hissed, tugging Apion by the elbow as he and Nasir remained locked in a fiery gaze. ‘Move or Giyath will come up here and he won’t be so easily talked out of skewering you.’
     
    ‘Talked out of? I had the beating of Nasir!’ Apion protested as they descended the hill to Mansur’s farm, the goats skipping alongside.
     
    ‘The beating of him?’ Her words cut through his indignation like a razor. ‘We were on his property, trying to steal his family’s food . . . ’ her words trailed off as she saw the hole she was digging. Her skin darkened a little around the cheeks. ‘Well, enough about