All Roads Lead to a Rome
My name is not important, so I will introduce myself to you by telling you three important things about me. My name was my father's before me, and his father's before him; though he decided to give me his own name, he also decided to give it to one of my other brothers. As the point of a name is to have something distinctive to call a man, my name is a failure.
It is important, however, that I am my father's son. As my father was called the Dragon, so I sometimes call myself Son of the Dragon when I must call myself something. This, of course, is also a failure as a name, since my father had many other sons, some illegitimate. But most of my brothers have distinct names and see no need to adopt an assumed name as I do, so my assumed name is successful in practice in spite of its theoretical failing.
It is also important that I was born to be a prince of the Romans, and by this I must clarify two things. First, my older brother’s death is not my fault. Second, I must clarify that I do not claim to rule the old Roman city, long since overrun by Goths; nor the newer Roman city my people call Tsarigrad, long ruled by the Greeks who called themselves Romans and lately (as I shall shortly discuss) seized by the Turks with their great fleets of steamships and galleys; nor the city named Rome that sits where the Tanais River meets the Cimmerian Sea, at the heart of the Golden Empire’s railroad network. Instead, I am a prince of a Roman people, abandoned by Rome a millennium ago but still speaking Latin amongst themselves in what was once the province of Dacia.
Not quite the same Latin as spoken by the church in Rome or by Venetian traders, of course; it is a sort of country Latin, practical but not erudite. The Latin tutor greatly misliked it and forbade me and my brother from speaking during lessons, lest our fluidity in the wrong sort of Latin lead the sultan’s sons astray. If they were to pick up a Latin dialect other than the proper scholarly one, Venetian would be the most useful.
Speaking of the sultan’s sons brings us a third important thing: While still a boy, I was sent away as a hostage with my younger brother, part of an arrangement to make an enduring peace between my people and the Turks—the sort of enduring peace that involved total subjection of one party to the iron-fisted rule of the other. The old sultan decided that we should be raised in the ways of his court, which was a partial success; thus, in every land I am a foreigner, even in the land that is mine by birthright.
It is often said that all roads lead to Rome, though not which; as I consider my childhood uninteresting, I will begin my story on the day that my road led me to the newer Rome, which must also be considered as the day that I became a man.
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1. First Blood
“Up! Up!” The boot in my side was unwelcome and surprising. Half-awake, I reached within for my magic; suddenly, my arms felt heavy, strength sapped by the cold iron cuffs wrapped around my wrists under the silken sleeves of my shirt. Though my brother and I had never shown any evidence of magical talent in front of the sultan’s men, our father had been widely feared because of his potent magics, and the sultan’s guards were canny and cautious. For years, I had buried most of my father’s lessons in the back of my mind and instead tried to force the flames of magic deeper within myself so that the bracers would not weigh too heavily on me.
Anti-wizard bracelets are most commonly enchanted with a crudely formed curse of weakness, one that is so inefficient as to require constant fueling. Every scrap of magic that I touched would be sucked into them and turned against my own muscles. In theory, a wizard strong enough to power the enchantment at its full strength with magic to spare might be able to perform magic still; before that, however, he would find himself prostrated on the ground, totally paralyzed with weakness, which rendered most trained uses of the magical arts impossible. The jaw is a muscle, as are fingers; words and gestures are essential in the shaping of finer magical parameters in nearly any useful spell.
I forced down my inner flames, exerting great effort to raise my weakened fist to my chest in a sign of obedience. If I proved myself loyal, perhaps one day, I would be sent to lead an army or govern a province, my hostage status long forgotten. Perhaps—once I was a safe distance from the sultan’s court and my father’s reputation mostly forgotten—they might even risk taking the cuffs off my wrists.
Next to me, my brother—filled with enthusiasm that seemed unfortunately genuine—was already scrambling to his feet, and the eunuch walked past him to instead put his toe in the side of another prince. We had spent the night sleeping on the fifth deck of Sultan Allaedin’s flagship, a dual-paddlewheel firebox-driven steamship whose outer hull was inlaid with sophisticated wards against curses. As this was the top deck of a vessel designed as a mobile court, the stars were blotted out only by a thin layer of tent fabric, and we had slept accompanied by some of the finest riches of the Sultanate.
Why had I slept on the sultan’s flagship? As I finished pushing my magic out of mind, the answer came to me. The previous day, the new sultan had ordered that his princes be granted the opportunity to prove their worth and breeding by leading his soldiers into battle against the dastardly foe who had cursed the old sultan with misfortune, leading to his unfortunate demise in a riding accident. The attack was to take place just as dawn broke, blinding the defenders of Constantinople with the light of the rising sun in their faces as we disembarked.
We had been in the middle of a lesson with two of the old sultan’s sons, half-brothers of the new sultan, when an officer arrived to convey Sultan Allaedin’s wishes; my younger brother, naturally, had insisted that as we were princes, we, too, were covered by the sultan’s order to bring all the princes aboard the fleet’s flagship. There, we gathered with eleven Turkish princes, the new sultan’s half-brothers, cousins, and uncles, adding up to a company of thirteen princes—an unlucky figure, though not one recognized as such by the Turks. When they laughed off my worries, my brother forcefully erased his own look of misgiving and joined them. And then night fell, and we had slept, waiting for the morning.
My thoughts lingered on the misfortune of our numbers as I made my way to a servant who helped me don armor of plated mail, the anti-mage cuffs still heavy on my wrists, strength returning only slowly to my arms. With some effort, I strapped on a saber to my waist, a shield to my left arm, and then picked up a flanged mace with my right arm, the sensation of excess weight slowly lessening. Behind me, I heard a series of small, heavy thumps.
“Radu!” The girlish squeal announced that the sultan’s youngest half-sister, Gulben, had escaped her minders again. The skinny, knobbly-kneed redhead was barefoot and carrying a bundle of mail in her arms, metal links washed with gold. “Wear this—it is my big brother’s old shirt, from when he was small. It will keep you safe!” The intemperate girl planted a kiss firmly on my brother’s forehead as she handed him the bundle. “For luck!” she shouted as she ran off from whence she had come.
From behind, I could see the tips of her ears turning a shade of pink that nearly matched her hair. I could not see how she had business on the ship, but even back then, without his adult growth, my brother was accounted handsome—and Gulben was even then a talented enchantress who could beguile her minders. Her spellwork was skilled and subtle, especially considering her young age.
Soon after Gulben’s departure, Pasha Mustafa arrived on the scene. At that precise moment, he was third in command of the assaulting fleet. He found my presence among the old sultan’s half-brothers and sons surprising and amusing, but once he had finished laughing, he focused his attention on briefing the whole company of princes as one. He gave them orders to advance to the front of the ship, which meant descending to the fourth deck, as the fifth deck did not extend the whole length of the ship; from there they would lead the charge into the city, he told them.
In the distance, we could see the distant white lines of the sea walls that protected Constantinople from marine attack. Though the sea walls were said to be lesser than the great Theodosian fortifications on the landward side of the city, marine attacks were notoriously difficult to manage. It was an audacious and shocking strategy, though perhaps that meant the walls would not be well-guarded or maintained.
It was then understood among the princes (albeit not explicitly stated by the pasha) that they would be shouting down words of encouragement as the marine soldiers disembarked onto the beach of Constantinople, an understanding accompanied in some cases by relief and in others (including that of my eager little brother) by disappointment. But the fourth deck was crowded with marines as well, and at the very front a line of mechs, which I thought would be a rare sight—the marines of the Sultanate were trained in boarding actions, and many lighter vessels could not be boarded by heavy-footed mechs.
Had the flagship been packed so full that there was no choice but to pack it to the gills with marines on every level? Even then, why would the mechs be so high off the ground? Surely it would be difficult to unload them from the fourth deck, high above the water—unless they were there to maneuver bombards, but then, I saw no great bombards on the fourth deck, only a few light swivel guns sitting in mountings light enough to be manhandled by sailors. The engines rumbled more loudly, the sound vibrating up through my feet and drawing my attention to what was happening underfoot. I felt a twinge along my cuffed wrists as I sensed the elemental gates within the fireboxes being opened wider than was safe, the flagship accelerating to a reckless speed.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Past the marines and mechs, the white walls of the city grew closer and closer still; then there was a great shock beneath our feet and a noise like thunder as the sultan’s flagship rammed into the walls of the city. The ship’s prow smashed into the wall and continued forward, leaving white stone to either side of us. The paddlewheels groaned as they stilled, though that sound faded quickly in my ears as I lost my footing. Thousands of tons of stone, metal, and wood had met in an audacious ramming action; we all slid forward, impelled by the great force of collision regardless of whether we were eager or reluctant.
I gained my feet after going over the edge of the deck, alighting on a block of stone and then stumbling forward over several broken bodies scattered in the heaped ruin that had been a great sea wall. Something clattered off the shield strapped to my arm, perhaps an arrow or javelin. A weapon—I had been holding a weapon, I remembered, before the collision. A flanged mace, and there had been a saber at my belt. Reaching, I found the saber and drew it, realizing I was already within the clash of men desperate to fight, to live. Behind me, I heard the high-pitched whoop of my brother, excited and perhaps not quite understanding the gravity of the situation we were in. He may have wanted to cover himself in the sultan’s glory and earn the praise of the men of the court, but I simply wanted the both of us to stay alive.
With a hiss of escaping steam, a mech shuddered weakly to its feet before falling back over, the loss of steam pressure immobilizing it as surely as if its legs had been crushed or its firebox had given out. Behind me, I heard a growing roar of footsteps and shouting and steam boilers as men from the rest of the sultan’s fleet climbed onto the deliberately wrecked flagship from the aft side; ahead, I could hear shouting in Greek and the jingling of armor in motion. The Greeks did not have any mechs ready, at least not here. Then the whistle of an arrow reminded me that perched on top of the rubble, I was visible, and that visible men are targets.
I leaped down from the piled stone rubble that had once been a wall, my feet touching down on cobblestones three steps ahead of my brother’s eager shouts. I prayed he would stay behind me. Even if he had kept his grip on his spear during the jump down to the cobblestones, he was by growth and stature not well-equipped for battle.
Then I was turning aside a spear thrust with my shield. My only defense against the enemy soldier’s next attack was to step forward inside his greater reach, and so I did, striking his helm squarely with a forceful blow of my saber. The blade did not slice through the metal, but it creased it, and the man fell, not to rise again.
I had never killed a man before, and this death, bloodless though it was, would echo in my dreams for years after. I swung again at a man whose spear was still stuck in one of the sultan’s men, my saber catching him in his uncoiffed neck. My brother’s cheers behind me faltered as blood sprayed wildly. Inner fire raged deep inside me, begging to be unleashed. If I but let go, my breath would feed the fire—and the fire would feed the anti-mage cuffs around my wrist, bringing me low. I rushed forward, my lungs filling raggedly with the cool morning air.
“Wait—wait for me!” My brother’s boyish voice sounded distantly in my ear, and I stopped, leaning against the wall of a building, holding my breath tightly as I struggled to keep my magic from rendering me helpless in the middle of the battlefield. Then I looked back. A too-small boy holding a bloody-tipped spear stood in front of my eyes. My inner fire tamped down, I raised my bloody sword high in a salute, greeting my nearly unrecognizable brother.
Behind him, the main bulk of the sultan’s army pressed forward, the ground shuddering as a pair of mechs cleared the heaped rubble of the walls and landed on the cobblestones. One mech tripped, crushing one of the sultan’s soldiers and crippling another as it smashed face-first on the cobblestones; the other landed evenly on both legs and pounded forward without hesitation.
“Quick—step to the side here,” I told my brother. “And wipe your spear clean. Let the mech take point; there is no need to risk being trampled.”
Following my own advice, I took several steps parallel to the wall of the building and away from the road before I wiped my own blade clean. Then I looked over myself and my brother for signs of injury as the first mech pounded by, boiler rumbling. We were both splashed with blood, but none of it was our own. I held my hand over my brother’s mailed chest to keep him back as the second mech rose to its feet, assisted by a mechanic and a trio of burly soldiers.
“The glory is to be found at the very point of the sultan’s spear,” my brother whined, eager to join the men streaming by in the wake of the first mech. “Not the butt of it.”
“The Greeks have not brought their own mechs to bear yet—the sultan’s mechs do not bleed as you and I might,” I said as the second mech rumbled forward, moving more slowly. “We would slow them down if we got in front of them.” I did not say that fighting too near the mechs brought its own risks as
“I wish I were fighting with our mechs,” my brother said. “If not for these cuffs—I bet I could bind with one of them, a linked pair.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But we were already in the vanguard in the first moments over the walls of Tsarigrad; I am sure we are covered in glory.”
“Tsarigrad? I thought we were taking Constantinople,” Radu said, giving me a quizzical look as he compared our native name for the city with the one used by the Greeks.
“Tsarigrad is Constantinople,” I said. “Now, let’s move—the mechs are ahead, and that officer is giving us a look of concern.”
Radu’s eyes widened. “But then—if Tsarigrad is Constantinople, the Greeks stole this city from the Romans!”
“Not quite,” I said, breaking into a slow jog to join the flow of men and leaving Radu behind for a moment. “We can talk later,” I added when my brother had caught up with me, forestalling whatever questions he might have had. Radu had been too young to pay much attention to our history tutor before we left Wallachia, and his education in Osman hands had been focused in a rather different direction.
***
The battle for Constantinople seemed long and wearying, though I later learned that it was considered stunningly swift. The fighting was intense but short, the main part of the fighting over before the sun had set. Of our company of princes, five survived the day, though one was crippled, both legs broken in the fall from the fourth deck. The four of us still standing were summoned to an audience in one of the captured palaces of the city, overlooking the sea.
The summons had been given in the name of Sultan Allaedin, but contrary to my expectations, we only met Pasha Mustafa in the audience chamber. He conveyed the thanks of Sultan Allaedin, and as a token of the sultan’s esteem for his loyal princes, offered us our choice of a selection of prizes, taken from the share of the booty that the sultan’s officers had set aside as suitable for the sultan himself. No higher honor could possibly be granted to us than the sultan offering us a choice from his own most coveted prizes.
And what prizes they were! By size, the largest prize was a horse; the smallest was a mechanical brass calendar-keeping device the size of a book, the position of the wandering planets represented by jeweled beads set in movable arcs against engraved illustrations depicting the constellations with their fixed stars. Each was exceptional, symbolizing the hopes of one of the sultan’s officers of currying his favor by providing the young leader with an incomparable gift that would always remind him of the gifting officer.
The sultan’s sole surviving half-brother had the first choice. After considerable time examining what I thought were his favorite two choices, he passed up the beautiful blonde wearing silver earrings and the beautiful brunette wearing golden earrings to pick, instead, a jeweled dagger. The prince turned to face Pasha Mustafa, speaking loudly and clearly.
“I swear that if I ever cause my dear beloved elder brother the least bit of sadness, I shall plunge this enchanted dagger into my own breast.”
Pasha Mustafa nodded approvingly and waved him on his way. The next prince, an older cousin or uncle—I do not know which—quickly chose the blonde with the silver earrings, the one that the sultan’s brother had spent so long examining. He made as if to leave the room and then paused as Pasha Mustafa cleared his throat. The prince stammered, eyes widening, the wrist of his prize in his right hand as it drew close to its chest.
“I, too, swear that if I ever cause my dear beloved sultan worry, I shall plunge this—” The man faltered, eyes focusing on the delicate fingernails of an implement totally unsuited to threats of impaling oneself.
Pasha Mustafa raised his eyebrows.
“Um. I shall drop dead of horror and anguish at that very instant,” the man said gamely, flushing with embarrassment beneath brows salted with gray. “For I have loyally served the sultan’s father, and so I shall serve him.” He thumped his breast with the fearful and confused woman’s hand before hastily departing.
When the man had gone, Pasha Mustafa laughed. Then he turned to me. “Ah, you two.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “This game was not meant for you, but I have prizes from the sultan, and I say you each have earned a winner’s prize. You are princes, after all, albeit of a lesser people. As you are the elder, Prince Vladimir, I will give you the choice before your brother.”
Nervously, I stepped forward. My eyes skittered from prize to prize. The horse had a coat that shone like gold. I could feel the tug of magic upon a sword, tugging at my right hand. A crystal goblet glowed to my sight, pulling at my left hand. But no; I was young, with the impulses of youth, and the brunette pulled my eyes.
“I choose that prize,” I said, pointing at the brunette with a finger that quivered nervously.