Legends Never Die: The Masks We Wear (ch. 64) (Patreon)

Hadi Husain really wasn't sure how he ended up being important enough to be invited to a meeting of commanders under the watch of Admiral Mustapha Jabour. He came from a middling family of little acclaim, he was in his late teens and the only reason he was a commander at all was because of a favor owed to his father. Unless his father had far greater connections than Hadi ever suspected, he should be well below notice of just about everyone in this room.

And that's how he liked it.

Ambition was for fools. So long as you had a full belly, a cup of wine, and a warm bed to sleep in -- what more could you possibly need? Prestige? Glory? He didn't even want to be a commander in the first place, what would he do with them?

“The Romans have grown bold,” Admiral Mustapha began. He was a man that looked like he had led a life of glory, and what did it earn him? A missing eye, and a head and beard full of white hair as the man was pushing seventy. And he was still working. Still chasing glory. Why not retire and spend your days in luxury? What was the point of being able to afford luxuries if you never bothered to enjoy them? “For this, they must be reminded that their days of glory are long since behind them,” said the man whose past glories should be long behind him.

Hadi kept his sentiments to himself because the other commanders greeted the words with exclamations of enthusiasm. A good half dozen faces knelt before a long table with Admiral Mustapha at the head of it. Hadi was glad to be on the other end of the table, near the exit. If he was lucky, he would be sent on an errand and could use that as an excuse to miss the meeting entirely.

“Worse, the Romans have fallen to relying on a pagan to build their fortress on our land,” Admiral Mustapha growled lowly. “But Allah has seen fit to punish the Romans for their sacrilege. A number of prisoners have managed to escape the slave camp.” As he spoke, he made a gesture before one of the slaves pulled open the curtain to the tent they were in, revealing…

A horrifically sunburnt man and a child. The man was little more than skin and bones, leaning heavily on the child for support. Hadi nearly stood to help him walk, but the man ended up collapsing heavily at the foot of the table.

“Zafir was an agent of the Caliph, sent to infiltrate the pirates on Crete and direct them subtly to raiding the Roman coastline. He, along with a few others, managed to escape from the pagans, and he comes with a tale to tell -- in two weeks, the pagans will perform a ritual. An opportunity to catch them unaware.”

Wasn't that… like… really convenient? Hadi looked around to see if anyone else shared his suspicions, and in doing so drew attention to himself.

Admiral Mustapha looked to him, “You have a question, Captain?” He asked, and Hadi cursed his luck.

Well… might as well. Better a little attention than a spear through the gut. “How much do we trust this information?” He asked, and for a man that was a stray breeze away from death, Zafir narrowed his eyes in a fierce glare.

“You doubt me?” He demanded, speaking with the edge that Msdi recognized in high nobility. Or self-important people.

Yeah, kinda. “I merely find it strange that a half dead man and a child managed to escape. And of all those that escaped with you, only the two of you managed to evade capture.” He ventured, trying to float the idea to the room. Because, that was weird, right? Say a dozen men escaped, and the ones that were caught weren't the child and man that couldn't even stand on his own?

“It was the will of Allah.” Of course it was. “The pagan neglected to guard Alim carefully, and he aided in my escape. The leader -- Siegfried -- is but an arrogant boy who all but bragged about his plans,” Zafir said with a hateful sneer. Yeah. Right. So… the one person that this Seigfried talked to was also the one to escape. Hadi glanced at the others and… no. Nothing. He seemed to be the only one that heard those alarm bells.

“The pagan is but a boy rising high on the tall tales spun about him. Likely by his own hand,” Admiral Mustapha decided and… Hadi had fought in a duel before. Probably the most terrifying thing he had experienced in his life. The flashing of blades, the stinging pain of getting cut, and the pit of guilt that opened in your gut when the high of victory faded and you realized you had killed a man. It had been a sizable affair, and probably the biggest event of his life -- big enough to be the talk of the town for years to come.

But, after he won, do you know what didn't happen?

Rumors that he slaughtered a dozen guards and ripped someone's head off with his bare hands. Maybe there was some degree of exaggeration going on there, but that meant that something insane enough had transpired that head ripping seemed like a reasonable spin on the story. In his experience -- both from the rumors about his duel, and what he heard from others -- a close fight became a one-sided beat down, and an effortless one at that. Not ‘he killed him, his guards, bathed in their blood, and ripped off people's heads.’

“A pampered boy getting by with the merits of his father.” For a moment, Hadi thought the words were directed at him by another one of the commanders. “He likely stands on the shoulders of his vassals. In any case, it should be his undoing.” That… well, maybe that could be the case. After all, he was a prime example of how far nepotism could carry you. However, in combination with the head ripping rumor… Hadi had his doubts.

From there, his original concerns were waved off essentially as the entire line of question was dropped, leaving Hadi feeling a little foolish for speaking up at all. Perhaps he was overthinking things? Everyone seemed pretty confident, so he was probably overthinking things. Admiral Mustapha was an old man that had seen the Umayyad dynasty fall to the Abbasid, he was a veteran of a thousand and one battles. So, it was probably going to be fine.

“This opportunity means that we will be attacking without the full force,” Admiral Mustapha stated and Hadi's reaction was the exact opposite of everyone else's. They reacted with excitement, eager for glory. Hadi felt nothing but despair. Simply put, the more commanders on the battlefield, the less expectations that would be put on him. “It shall be our opportunity to remind the Romans of their place. We will secure Crete, and it will act as our forward base for a full scale invasion of Anatolia. In time, of course.”

The news wasn't a surprise. Hadi saw the war coming from a mile away. Pretty much the moment he heard of Emperor Leo's death, it was pretty obvious that there would be an invasion -- the man left behind a child on the throne, and Caliph al-Mahdi's own son, al-Hadi, was eager to prove himself.

Hadi's only concern was that he was the unfortunate tip of the spear. And the thing about spears was that they often broke.

“We shall attack late into the night of their barbaric ritual, when they are drunk with their guard down. We attack by the sea, hitting their harbor, taking it, after which we shall raze their settlement to the ground but the fortress itself must be maintained. I will give the pagans this -- they chose an excellent position. After we take it, we will make use of it.” The Admiral continued and, one by one, the commanders each received a task or a formation. Mercifully, Hadi wasn't in the vanguard. However, as the other names were called out and given tasks that Hadi would have preferred -- namely, securing a disembarking location -- he began to worry.

Those fears were confirmed when the Admiral looked to him, the tent steadily emptying out until it was only the Admiral, Zafir, and the kid. “Your concerns do you credit, commander. We must be prepared for the possibility of a trap.” Oh, thank you Allah- “You will be placed in command of the reserves for quick response. Our approach will be staggered, and I will trust your judgment on what to do in response to any foul play by the pagans. I have high expectations for you, Commander Husain.”

Uh… please don't? “... You honor me, Admiral Mustapha,” Hadi managed to get out. He had to swallow the words of ‘I refuse, you damned bastard!’ Why him!? Why did he open his mouth in the first place!?

“Zafir and the child will be placed under your command. Should this prove to a trap…” the Admiral trailed off.

Zafir's gaze hardened, “I'll take my own life as recompense.” He swore, and Hadi didn't have any doubts that he'd actually do it. That's not something you should be proud of, you know? Loyalty could be taken too far and everyone made mistakes….

Hadi's gaze went to the child, seeing his own expression was highly troubled.

At least he found one kindred spirit. The fact it was a kid… well, he hoped that said more about the kid than it did him.

…

Hadi never wanted to be in command of a single boat, but now he found that he was in command of fifty. They were all arranged in formation behind him, and he had been rather quick to hand the reins over to Zafir -- who, after two weeks of recovery, still looked half dead but could now stand on his own. Zafir was a navy man. Spent his life on a boat. Ergo, it made sense to put someone who actually knew what a bow was in charge of what should be done on a boat.

On each boat were around two hundred men -- fifty sailors with a hundred and fifty soldiers. Who were also under his command. Near ten thousand men.

Allah certainly did love his tests.

“Can barely see a damn thing,” Hadi muttered to himself -- it was in the middle of the night, and while the stars were out in force, reflecting upon the lapping waves of the sea, the moon was but a sliver. To make matters worse, a low curtain of mist clung to the sea, obscuring everything before them. Some distance ahead of them, Hadi could just barely make out the other half of the fleet. A full hundred ships with nearly twenty thousand men. They would sweep across Crete, secure it, and when the invasion began, they could launch simultaneous attacks throughout Anatolia.

“It is good for us. Our approach will only be discovered when it's too late,” Zafir replied, standing next to him. His skin was scarred from the sunburn he suffered, but he still seemed strong.

Hadi certainly hoped so. Everyone was biting at the bit for glory, while he hoped that he would spend the night standing on the ship waiting for something to happen.

Far beyond them, Hadi saw what had to be the pagan settlement. There was a cascade of light from a large bonfire on the beach that had many people dancing around it. He saw hundreds of them. It should be a sign that everything was going according to the plan -- that the pagans would be too drunk to put up a fight, and completely unprepared for one in the first place.

It wasn't until they began to near that he realized why he felt so uncertain.

“Where are their ships?” Hadi asked, looking into the harbor, bringing Zafir's attention to him. Hadi pointed at the harbor, seeing some vessels, but the reports claimed that the pagans had a hundred ships. So, if this was a celebration… Why would their ships not be in the harbor?

Something was wrong. Hadi felt it deep in his gut as he began to scan the fog, searching for the missing ships. There were no sign of them. Not even when the ships reached the harbor, sailing through the open mouth, and approached. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. It was as if a noose was closing around his neck, and by the second, it was drawing tighter.

The people on the beach were too inebriated. Admiral Mustapha saw the trap and mistook it as an opportunity because it was only then the attack began -- a dozen ships landing on the beach, the warriors jumping off to commence the attack. The sounds of sudden panic echoed out, traveling over the water… Greek. Hadi didn't know the language, but he recognized how it sounded.

Why would pagan barbarians be speaking Greek as they died?

“Break off the attack!” Hadi shouted out over the water, but it was little use. Even if anyone heard his words, they didn't pay them any heed, he was but a single voice in a chaotic symphony. He stepped forward, his hands on the bow, seeing the ships enter the harbor, the others landing on the sandbark, creating a clog.

The attack came without any warning. In the darkness of night, as their warriors attacked the slaves that had been used to build the fortress, arrows marked with fire began to fill the air in a large volley. They went up, streaking from behind the palisade, to land on the ships and the people on them. The threat of fire was minimal, even if it was a dangerous combination with tar to seal the planks. However, the point wasn't to burn the ships. It was to induce panic.

“That bastard!” Zafir shouted, looking out over the sea into the mist to see three ships. He shouted like this was a personal attack on him. Hadi focused more on the ships themselves, noting their unique design. Lower in the water, but faster. Much faster. A full wind filled their sails, and the mist seemed to part for them. The ships ventured close to the chaotic mess that was the landing, firing arrows all the while. The fire, Hadi realized, was to help the archers aim.

They also revealed something.

A man. Blood red hair, with cheeks covered in a scruffy beard, wielding two axes. He leapt from the side of his ship, jumping no less than twenty feet, to land on one of their ships. The very first thing he did was behead a man, disarm another, then bury an axe in a third's skull so deeply that it reached his jaw. All within the span of a single breath.

Ah. The head ripping… yeah. That made sense now.

“We have to do something! Order the attack!” Zafir demanded, and Hadi gave him a sharp look, just barely able to keep the horror off of his face.

What an incredibly stupid thing to suggest. That guy -- the Pagan Siegfried, if he had to guess -- decided he was going to fight an army of ten thousand on his own. Why in the everloving fuck would he ever willingly put himself anywhere near him? No. He was going to stay far away where it was perfectly safe and he wasn't in head ripping distance.

Though, frustratingly, he very much doubted that Zafir would accept such reasoning.

“He's a single man and he's jumping between ships. Clustering together is the last thing we should do,” Hadi replied, and a brief look of shame passed over Zafir's face. “The best thing we can do is isolate him. His ships are running interference, but the damage they can actually do to us is negligible. They're baiting us to give chase and break up our formation.” That probably wasn't true, but it could be and that is what mattered. There were still the odd hundred ships still missing and Hadi already had his fill of surprise attacks.

He’d been right. The pagans saw this coming. They allowed Zafir to escape to pass false information on so that they would fall right into this trap. The slaves on the beach were likely told that they were given the day off or that they had received their freedom. In the darkness and on approach, it would make it easy to obscure their numbers and who was drinking. Even now, through the cluster of ships, Hadi saw a heavy iron chain being raised up between two towers that marked the harbor entrance -- trapping the odd two dozen ships within.

On the deck of one, Hadi saw Admiral Mustapha attempting to rally his men. It wouldn't be enough.

Hadi Husain knew who he was. He knew what he was. He was a lazy, unambitious man that could be content with a simple trouble free life. The only reason he’d accepted the commission as a commander at all was because he was told he would be stationed somewhere uneventful for a good twenty to thirty years. Hadi also understood that he was smart. Smart enough to recognize what was and what wasn't worth the effort.

Sometimes Allah was kind. Sometimes the cowardly thing to do was also the smart thing to do.

“Sound the retreat,” he said, making Zafir round to him. “To call off the attack. We'll regroup under my command,” Hadi stated, and that made his stomach do flips. He's pretty sure he had some nightmares that started off a lot like this.

“What about those trapped within?” Zafir demanded, his tone thunderous.

Hadi watched as an arrow found the eye of Admiral Mustapha. His vision seemed to expand because he could also see the Pagan jumping on board another ship, covered head to toe in blood. The ships still effortlessly dodged away from the few that were attempting to attack them and lock them down.

A braver man would risk it. They had the numbers. Twenty thousand against a mere two. Topple the towers, allow their fellows to escape… but it would come at a cost. A risk. Committing to that attack left them far too vulnerable.

“We leave them,” Hadi heard himself say, bile climbing in the back of his throat. Twenty ships. Roughly three thousand warriors. A punishing loss, but not a crippling one yet. Zafir looked every bit as sick as Hadi felt. “Sound the retreat. We can't engage them on their terms.”

A horn was blown, the signal for the retreat. The ships that had been at the back of the cluster broke off first. Once they were gone, rejoining his fleet, the second layer of the cluster had more room to maneuver, allowing them to join sooner. The very last layer, the ones that were trying to get inside the harbor… it was already too late for them. One ship was burning uncontrollably, another lacked enough men to sail it, and a third was currently being attacked by the Pagan.

“What do we do now?” Zafir demanded to know as the ship gathered itself up. He could feel everyone looking at him, their eyes asking that same question.

He didn't know. He had absolutely no idea. Where were all the other commanders? Why was it up to him of all people?

“Sail around the harbor, I want to see something,” Hadi instructed. The ships. It all came down to the ships -- they were faster by half. His army -- and that fact nearly made him puke -- might be the larger of the two, but a concentrated attack would make it difficult to bring those numbers to bear. Each ship carried a hundred and fifty warriors, making the battlefield segmented.

There was a tense heavy silence on the ship as they shifted course, the only sound coming from the battle in the harbor. It was a lost cause. The only ones that didn't realize that were the ones still fighting.

The ship rounded a coast, and Hadi still found no sign of the ships. What he did find was a place to disembark -- and a plan sprung up in his mind. To land, send up the army, and to attack the settlement from both sides. Simply put, the Pagans didn't have the numbers to truly contest them. Especially if a portion of their army was in their ships, like they seemed to be.

Then he looked to the hills that the beach gave way too. There was no reason for it. He had no evidence. He just felt it in his gut -- that was a trap.

“We're moving on,” Hadi decided. “They're attempting to bait us into landing. To save the trapped soldiers. The moment we do, they'll attack and we won't have the organization to repel them.” No one should have believed him. There was only empty shadows and mist, but all of a sudden, everyone looked at the landing point more fearfully.

Should they return back to base? Write it off as a failure? But…

Admiral Mustapha was dead. That bastard. Hadi wasn't really in charge of the fleet, but… but he gave the order. When the Caliph heard that he left three thousand men to die with nothing to show for it…

Hm. He'd die. He'd definitely be executed.

Hadi wracked his memory for something, anything that would save his neck. He almost laughed when he came up with the answer.

“Chania. We sail for Chania down the coast. If the pagans wish to give chase, they'll be forced to fight on our terms. We'll raid throughout Anatolia and the Greek Peninsula to prevent the Romans from mustering up a proper response,” Hadi decided. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

It would buy time for some other asshole to take charge of the situation, and when it came time to take responsibility for any failings during the campaign, it'd be their head on the chopping block.

“As you command… Admiral Hadi.” Zafir acknowledged and that… that was going to take some getting used to.

…

“Oh,” Thorkell muttered, scratching at his scarred eye, watching the fleet of ships sail right on by, ignoring their ambush entirely. “That one is pretty sharp,” he acknowledged, leaning on his Dane Axe as he watched them go. Based on the number of ships in the fleet, it seemed that Siegfried's trap hadn't managed to take as large of a bite out of their numbers as he had hoped.

His lips curled into an easy smile. “Ah, well. At least Siegfried won't be bored. It's about time he found someone to cut his teeth on for tactics.”

Looks like they had an interesting war ahead of them.