287. The Most Important Problem.
[doyon~]
A human head floated up into the empty air like a light feather. That really shouldn't be happening. In the face of something that happened so terribly fast, there was a moment of shock, and then a clamorous crash followed right after.
Kwajik! Kwok! Chwarreuk- Seogeok! Taeaeaeang---!
[doyon~ doyon~ doyon~]
Then, one or two more heads bobbed up companionably into the air after the first. And then came the finale: jets of dark red blood.
He knew it was an utterly absurd thought to have, but Árpád of the Magyars, the practical ruler of his people, thought it anyway. Before that man charging forward so vigorously, everything looked simply too easy.
"Agh!"
"Kek!"
"Keok!"
"Kak-"
[Pushushut! Pyushut- Chwahak! Chwarreuk! Kwajik! Peong! Seogeok- Denggang-]
Swearing upon great Tengri, Árpád of the Magyars had never seen a spectacle like that in his entire life.
"Oooooooh-! Fylkir-Khagan! Fylkir-Khagan!"
"He is our liege! Kill all the arrogant Khazar bastards!"
"The Khagan has slain Zachariah! The Khagan has cut down Zachariah with a single stroke!"
"Kiiiiiiii-!"
[Pyung! Pyupyung! Hwiiiiii- Hwiii-]
Truly, without any aid, alone, the Fylkir of the North Sea—no, Khagan—had crushed the most infamous warriors of this steppe. Following in his great shadow were the Alan tribe on the left wing and the Pecheneg tribe on the right wing.
Unlike the Magyars, who had proudly left a thick insult right before the Khazar's face and declared independence, these were people who had remained under the Khazars, exploited like slaves. It was only natural that they harbored even more regretful thoughts and feelings toward the Khazars than Árpád or the Magyar warriors did.
Yet in the trail the Fylkir-Khagan left, in their charge toward the heads still bobbing up into the sky, there were emotions far beyond mere grudge.
To put a name to them: exultation, hope, longing, awe, and loyalty.
Feelings one and all rarely found upon the frost-settled, bleak steppe.
But, laughably, Árpád's own chest was burning with similar feelings rising up.
Yes, in a way, this was a simple thing. Any man of the steppe would do the same. No, whether from the steppe, the frozen lands, or the plentiful lands, any man or woman, elder or child who witnessed such a sight right before their eyes would roar out in acclaim.
"Magyars! We support the Fylkir's rear! This day, on this very spot, we erase the name of Khazar!"
"Yes! Gyula!"
"Let us go! Brothers!"
"Arrrrrrr!"
[Dugudugudugu! Pyung! Pyupyung! Shwaeeaek- Shwaeek-]
To follow that mad commander who actually increased his speed even after colliding with the foe, Árpád and the Magyar riders also plunged into the enemy, loosing arrows at the elite of the Khazar Khaganate who were committing to a final charge with death accepted.
[Dagrrak-Dagrrak-Dagrrak- Kkigigeok-pyung!]
Drawing his bowstring to the limit upon his galloping horse, Árpád watched his released arrow fly and bury itself in an enemy horse's head, then he pulled out the lance hung on his saddle and took aim.
"Uaaaaah-! For Khazar! For Sagarya Khagan-!"
A strong enemy who had embraced death. Then facing them properly was the warrior's duty.
"Chu! Chu!"
[Pureureuk! Pureuk! Dugudugudugu- DagrrakDagrrak!]
Árpád and the Magyar riders, who had acted as if they would charge with all their might, suddenly seized the reins and turned their horses' heads. Stopping their full-tilt run according to the intent of the humans on their saddles and swiftly changing direction with quick steps, the Magyar warhorses immediately avoided the enemy butting in like angry rams and began running to the side.
"You shabby Magyar slaves! Face us! Do not flee!"
The Khazar warrior, all the blood in his body rushing to his face at the sight of the Magyars fleeing right before his eyes, burst with rage, but in truth, both the Magyar and Khazar warriors knew all too well that this was the way of nomadic fighting.
Feigning a charge and fleeing. Feigning flight and charging.
[Kkigigeok- Pyung! Pyupyung! Shwaeeaek- Shwaeek-]
"You cowards-! Craven wretches! Slave scum-"
[Pak!]
"Agh!"
Suppressing the loud-mouthed one, conspicuous for the red fur decoration hanging from his helm, with his bow, Árpád fired arrow after arrow, burying the frantically pursuing Khazar warhorses into the dirt.
Árpád himself was no Fylkir of the North Sea. If horse charged against horse at full power, it was not that one of the two would die, but a high probability that both would perish.
Such brutish fighting was only for those facing death.
[Dugudugudugu- doyon-doyon-doyon- Seogeok! Kwajik! Puhwahak- Agh! Keok! Tengri preserve us! Yiaaaaa-! doyon-]
Of course, there was always an exception.
A man advancing alone, cleaving through the charge of the Khazar Khaganate's most elite, the most powerful cavalry the steppe could present. Watching that form right beside him, Árpád and the Magyar riders even forgot to shoot their bows.
And the valiant riders of the Khazars, who had resisted to the end, were cut down upon the cold steppe, not a single one left remaining.
"Aaaaaah-!"
"We have won! We have won-!"
"By the power of the sky! By the power of Tengri! By the power of the Fylkir-Khagan!"
"Shoot whistling arrows into the sky! Let the heavens know we have triumphed!"
"Fylkir-Khagan! Fylkir-Khagan!"
[Hwiiiiiii- Hwiiiiiii-!]
The red glow of dusk and the blood soaking their bodies. In a world filled entirely with the color red, the surviving humans and horses were all drunk on madness, spewing out all manner of bizarre sounds and gasping ragged breaths in their uncontrollable excitement.
Amid the clamor of the Magyar brothers rampaging just the same, Árpád strove to control his wildly pounding heart, for the eyes of every human and beast standing upon this sacred ground of victory were directed at only one man.
As if living in another world alone. The man sitting proudly upon his saddle, looking around him. When he lifted the helmet that had covered his head and face, heavy with the blood of man and beast that sent a chill through the air, a face not quite human was revealed within.
A beautifully flowing beard, hair shaved at the sides and grown long only on top, swept smoothly back. Thick eyebrows and green eyes flashing beneath them.
In a world entirely red, a presence gleaming green all alone.
Before his gaze, the people and horses who had been screaming madly all fell silent, and soon accepted a single truth deep within their hearts.
This being before their eyes could not be beaten. This man was truly the strongest of all.
[Dagak-dagak-]
The only one moving in a world that had stopped. Helgi Ragnarsson looked all around, beholding those who had shared in this day's glory, and then raised his great sword high into the sky and shouted.
"Brothers of the steppe! We have won—!"
"Yiaaa—!"
[Hwiik—! Hwiik—!]
"Fylkir Khagan! Fylkir Khagan!"
"Helgi Ragnarsson! Helgi Tengri!"
The sun slowly set and the world was bathed in violet, but the ruddy glow on the people's faces showed no sign of fading. The cheers and battle cries soon grew louder with the shouts of the North Sea army and the Bulgar warriors who joined the field afterward.
And so the battle on the plain north of Itill came to an end.
*****
Sagarya Khagan was dead!
The news spread across the steppe like a wildfire that ignites and consumes everything in an instant, then traveled to every corner of the world.
In truth, Helgi Ragnarsson himself, the man who had achieved this monumental feat, was content merely to have punished the Khazar Khanate that had tormented Kiyiu's somewhat weak-willed (?) followers and people, and to have incidentally secured the trade route called the Volga and the great trading city of Itill.
But the outcome of this war was far more significant than Helgi himself had imagined, and the ripples it sent forth were far greater, shaking the world above and below.
The mighty Oghuz Khanate and Kimak Khanate, near the Aral Sea, had been planning to cross the Volga for a massive raid as soon as spring arrived. These two nomadic empires had no choice but to immediately and completely revise every plan.
Their common sense simply could not comprehend the battle reports delivered by the spies from across the river.
Firstly, it was said that this Fylkir of the North Sea Khagan (they thought Fylkir was a name, not a title) had smashed the famous Iron Gate of Itill with his bare hands.
What sort of infantile story fit only for a child's bedtime was this!
Yet the events that followed were even harder to believe. He led the light cavalry of the Alan and Pecheneg tribes and crushed the notorious Khazar heavy cavalry in a head-on assault, then pursued the fleeing Sagarya Khagan and, at last, separated his head from his body.
What kind of mythic tale worthy only of shamans' chanting was this!
Yet as time passed and the number of chattering mouths grew, it was only confirmed that all of it was true.
And so, the Khagans of the Oghuz tribal confederation and the Kimak tribal confederation had no choice but to recalculate in their heads.
'Would the gain from crossing the Volga be greater than the loss from directly confronting Fylkir Khagan?'
'Do we possess the ability to smash the Iron Gate of Itill and annihilate the Khazar heavy cavalry?'
This simple calculation concluded without much deliberation, and the Khagans of the two mightiest tribal confederations on the steppe near the Aral Sea reached the exact same conclusion.
'Cultivate friendship with Fylkir Khagan, and instead, raid the turbaned ones to the south!'
'Build amity with Fylkir Khagan, and instead, extort the desert ones (Taklamakan) to the east!'
Normally, when massive powers like the Khazars and the North Sea clash in earnest, both sides are weakened and inevitably open to attacks from their neighbors. But this Fylkir of the North Sea Khagan had started a war as winter ended and finished it before true spring even began.
And so the two Khanates, trembling with fear, hastily dispatched envoys like thieves whose feet had fallen asleep.
Unlike the case of the nomads, for whom survival was at stake, the reactions of the two empires surrounding the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea were not dissimilar.
First, the Abbasid Empire, whose neighbor's nameplate had changed without warning, was dazed as if slapped out of nowhere. It tensed before the thoroughly unbelievable rumors of a heathen monarch and the vivid, audible, and visible transformation of Itill.
What were the intentions of these new pagans? What god did they believe in, and where had their ruler come from? Could this 'North Sea' be that 'North Sea' the fugitives of western al-Andalus (the Umayyads) had spoken of? If so, how vast was their empire!?
As confusion and fear enveloped the already complex courts of Samarra and Baghdad, and the ruler of Egypt, who was locked in a war of nerves with the ruler of Baghdad over Syria, hummed a tune at this northern chaos that had arrived like a surprise gift—
The Byzantium, which already knew the Fylkir of the North Sea had taken the field, was astonished for an entirely different reason.
Constantinople. Undeniably and beyond all doubt, the largest and most beautiful city in the world west of the Taklamakan Desert in this era. And in the whitest place of all in that great city, the Palace of the Bull and Lion (Boukoleon).
Emperor Mikhaíl held in his right hand a soft, textured paper letter sent from Itill, and in his left hand, the reports of Roman military officers detailing the course of the battle.
"My dear Fylkir has grown stronger in the meantime."
Mikhaíl let out a hollow laugh and shook his head as if he could not keep up. The wise sovereign of Byzantium, now called the Majestic instead of the Debauchee, lifted his head and met eyes, one by one, with the key figures who composed his court.
"Our decision to stand in solidarity with that Fylkir of the North Sea was proven right this time as well. Admiral Niketas, from the eyes of a soldier who has dedicated long years to the Empire, how would you explain this war between the Khazars and the North Sea?"
On the first floor of the Boukoleon Palace, the massive, ornate table used as a council chamber, the documents that had been in the Emperor's two hands settled down quietly.
The famed general who had reclaimed the Empire's long-lost ancient land, Megalokastro (Μεγάλο Κάστρο, Crete, Chandax). Niketas Ooryphas, and the others seated at this honored Emperor's table, had all already read the report of the North Sea-Khazar war.
"A war that began last winter was finished before spring arrived."
Though the conditions varied, simply compared, the Roman Empire had spent six years striving for Megalokastro, Chandax. The Fylkir of the North Sea, who had finished off an empire in less than half a year, had already surpassed the common sense and experience of Grand Admiral Niketas Ooryphas.
"In my inadequacy, I simply cannot consider this the achievement of the same man."
The figures in the hall nodded in unison, and the hollow laugh at the corner of the Emperor's lips deepened.
"I shall send a congratulatory envoy. Let it arrive in Árós in time for the Fylkir's return. And I must send a separate man to Damian."
Rome and its Emperor wished to draw ever closer to the North Sea and the Fylkir. To become, as it were, like one family.
☆☆☆☆☆Reference☆☆☆☆☆
Briangotts, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
Here's a map from around 1015 that helps you understand Central Asia a bit better...!!
It's a power map of the region also called the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. To put it simply, you could say Helgi swallowed up the territory of the turquoise Pecheneg Khanate in a single battle, lolol.
Now there's no enemy left to oppose the North Sea on the Black and Caspian Seas... Though there are powerful nomads beside them...! Time is on the North Sea's side...!