The Rosa’s sails had been unfurled, and the wind was pushing them so hard that the rigging strained, and the whole ship creaked as it leaned into the surf, while oarsmen rowed forward to the drummer’s even rhythm. After back-paddling a little, the barbarians had now decided to attack.

From this distance Trebizond looked to Narses like a gray wall of towers descending a series of snowy hills to the sea; the thick Roman walls hugged churches and palaces inside. A ringing bell was echoing across the mountains; the Trapezuntines had spotted their attackers.

They’ve lost none of their vigilance in the last few months, Narses thought.

Aboard the ship, the sailors—smaller, darker, and swarthier than the warriors—were pointing at the buildings and speaking a bastardized Latin, one even greasier than the warriors’ dialect. Other sailors used signal flags to relay Robert’s commands to the armada, which was now spreading out behind them. The warriors, meanwhile, stomped their feet to the deck to keep warm. Steaming breath puffed from every mouth, and the ship was half-encased in ice. As soon as you smashed an icicle hanging from a yard, it reappeared elsewhere.

Narses paid little attention to this, however. He was staring at the city which had filled his dreams and nightmares for months. Never had he seen it from the water. During the first siege, he had attacked from the southern road; now the Latin fleet was attacking from the sea to the north. Yet the city looked different—and not just because Narses was viewing it from a different angle. The suburbs had grown beyond the walls, and the new buildings there were unfamiliar to Narses. In Konstantinopolis the suburbs consisted mostly of farmhouses and mansions separated by fields, royal hunting preserves where the emperors liked to practice their falconry, and copses for firewood. In contrast, the large new multistory rectangular structures in Trebizond seemed designed to hold many people. They were like the brick apartment buildings, the insulae of Konstantinopolis, but the Trapezuntine versions were made of wood.

A blunder to build everything of wood, Narses thought. Easy to burn.

Those buildings looked like they were already on fire. Narses kept hearing the sailors say the word “fuoco,” which must have meant as such in their barbarous tongue. Yet there were no visible flames. Black pillars of smoke were rising from the city and dissipating in a thick dark cloud that overhung its rooftops; the mountains walled the smoke in. Narses could smell the smoke even from this distance. The odor was acrid and poisonous and somehow different from regular woodsmoke. Were the criminals so foolish that they were already burning their homes before the barbarians could get them?

Narses bowed and shut his eyes, murmuring a prayer of thanks to God. His life had been so confused and out of control for so many months. Now he would set things right.

He looked up and smiled in the gray winter sunlight and the frigid sea breeze as a spare suit of chainmail was draped over his limbs, a sword (that was not Almaqah) belted to his waist, a helmet fitted over his head, and a heavy shield placed in his left hand. It was all so weighty he could barely move.

The barbarians almost never dismount from their horses, he thought. Hard to walk otherwise. They’re like walking tanks…

Bohemund and Sikelgaita watched Robert’s servants prepare Narses for battle. Sikelgaita looked like a female version of Robert, while Bohemund resembled, conversely, a younger version of the duke. Both were fully armed and armored: Bohemund with a longsword in its sheathe, and a shield over his back; Sikelgaita with an axe so heavy she needed to either lean it on her shoulder or wield it with two hands.

“You are their retainer, now.” Robert clasped Narses’s back and nodded to Sikelgaita and Bohemund.

“How can he get so close to the general?” Paul murmured to himself, seemingly unaware that he was speaking aloud.

“You will obey their commands exactly,” Robert added. “Doing what they say when they say it.”

“Yes, your grace,” Narses said.

Bohemund approached Narses. “The eunuch has warned us that the criminals defending Trebizond utilize similar magic tricks which we witnessed you using yesterday when you ran upon the water to our ship.”

Narses bowed. “That is true, your grace.”

“How can we do battle against a foe which knows how to run upon the water?”

“It will exhaust them to deploy such techniques, your grace,” Narses said. “Though they possess some unusual abilities, they are still flesh and blood. It would be my pleasure to handle them for you.”

“Because he did such a fantastic job of it the last time we were here,” Paul said.

Narses turned to Robert. “With your permission, your grace, I would like to dispose of Paul the Chain.”

Robert smiled. “Though I find the mere existence of eunuchs bizarre, I have some need for the expertise of this particular one.”

Bohemund cleared his throat. “There are supposedly hundreds of these divine warriors, these so-called immortelles defending Trebizond. Do you really believe you can defeat them by yourself, Narses?”

“I need only drink the soul of one, your grace,” Narses said. “The rest will take care of itself.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Bohemund said. “Until then, you will remain behind my men and follow my commands. If you hinder us, I’ll kill you.”

“Understood, your grace.”

Paul stepped forward but kept his distance from Narses. “I must also warn your graces about naphtha. The criminals used it to great effect in the last siege.”

“Fire that burns water,” Sikelgaita said, her thick Longobard accent making her words almost unintelligible.

“When I see,” she added, looking at Bohemund, “I believe.”

Paul bowed. “I beg your pardon, my lady, but in the case of Greek fire, a flash of light is often the last thing people ever see.”

Sikelgaita threw her head back and ululated with laughter, her long blonde braids shaking behind her. Whenever she spoke, she always seemed to be singing.

“I pray for us, things will be different,” she said, after she had calmed down.

The Rosa pulled alongside another larger vessel which was transporting destriers and coursers. This was the ship that would attack the city first. All the Rosa’s knights (save Robert) climbed aboard the second vessel—named the Arca—and kicked their boots into their horses’s stirrups, climbing onto their saddles with the help of their squires. An attendant gave Narses a spare ride. The horses were coated in mail as well as colorful caparisons. Pennants glimmered from the lances placed in the arms of the knights, many of whom were now crossing themselves, murmuring prayers, and doing superstitious rituals related to their various good luck charms.

Once the knights were ready, they gathered before a sort of long, wide drawbridge on the ship which was raised up, at that time, by chains. The drawbridge was located halfway along the port side, where the gangplank could usually be found. When the ship was close enough to the shore or the wharf—whichever was easiest to attack—the attendants would lower the drawbridge, and the knights would thunder across and assault the city. This was presumably the plan, at any rate. No one had gone into specifics for Narses’s benefit. Actually, at that moment Bohemund was making some kind of speech to his men in debased Latin. Once he had finished, he repeated the speech in Roman for Narses as well as the knights, sailors, and attendants who were Roman-speaking people from Venetia and southern Italía.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“We have trained for this, men.” Bohemund looked back and forth, his visor still pulled up over his face. “We shall move quickly, and see if it is possible to penetrate the city and open the gates. Maybe the Greeks are less prepared than they seem. We will go as far as we can, but if the situation becomes too dangerous, we will—at my signal—return to the ship or rendezvous with the main attacking force. Our objective is merely to probe their defenses. Do you understand?”

“Understood, your grace!” the knights cried in unison. Most, however, had answered in their barbarous dialect; Narses could only assume that this is what they had said.

“Now I know it is true that we have all of us heard many stories concerning the famous beauties of Trabzon,” Bohemund added.

Some men laughed. Others were too nervous.

“We will endeavor to locate a pretty virgin for every knight present.” Bohemund nudged Sikelgaita. “We will even find a handsome stud for my stepmother.”

She growled something to him in whatever dialect they spoke. Her words were so fierce that he winced and backed away.

Soon drums were pounding and horns were blasting in the armada gathering behind the Arca, but the billowing wind distorted these sounds. Bohemund blew a single long note on his whistle, and the knights lowered their visors and lined up in rows of two. Because the deck was so cramped, this line snaked around the Arca’s two masts and then ended where it began. Yet the squires helped the anxious horses into position; the beasts stamped their legs and snapped their teeth. Narses was at the very back of the line by himself, but Sikelgaita and Bohemund—facing the raised drawbridge—were right behind him at the line’s front.

Then, almost before Narses even knew what was happening, Latin priests—clad in white robes—and Latin monks—bald, shaved, and wearing brown habits—were singing by the bowsprit, chanting, bowing, and making the sign of the cross in the four directions, blessing the fleet, shaking holy water everywhere, pleading with the good Lord in profoundly formal and legalistic Latin to have mercy upon His children.

Narses frowned. Schismatics.

The Arca’s sailors oared them toward the gap between the harbor’s sheltering wall and Trebizond itself. Only there was a problem. Yelling and shouting and blasting their own trumpets, the criminals in Trebizond and at the harbor wall suddenly raised up a heavy iron chain from underwater. This blocked the harbor entrance.

Almost before anyone aboard the Arca could react, they crashed into the chain, and all the ship’s planks groaned and creaked as though the iron links were about to tear through the wooden hull. So hard was the impact that a priest at the bow was thrown into the icy waves. A monk tossed him a rope, but the priest had already plunged beneath the cold dark surface, his body unmoving.

Not the best omen, Narses thought.

Yelling and gesturing, the oarsmen back-paddled as hard as they could while a few sailors climbed the masts and rolled the sails into the yards. Archers on the nearby harbor wall, meanwhile, were loosing fire arrows straight down at the Arca.

This cannot be happening, Narses thought.

The wind was so strong that most of the arrows were doused or scattered before they struck the ship. One, however, swooped so near to Narses the fletches graced his helmet. It pierced the deck, and from the shaft’s burning oily cloth a flame blossomed like a tulip of heat and light.

Narses’s horse shrieked, reared, and—despite his high riding skill (Master, 8/10)—threw him into the air. He panicked, thinking in that instant, as he flailed in the wind, that he was going to fall over the side—there was no farr in his veins to save him—but he was so heavy that he crashed onto the deck. This knocked the breath from his lungs and left him with 95/100 health, but he still possessed the strength to roll away as his horse stomped and kicked. Other wailing horses were either hurling their unlucky riders into the sea, trampling their attendants, or knocking the oarsmen overboard.

As men plunged beneath the waves, their screams turned to gurgles. Their armor so weighed them down that the water silenced them as they sank into the depths. A few unarmored sailors grabbed at the floating oars which had fallen with them, calling for help, but soon the cold took them.

Only a few arrows had struck the Arca by now, but because of the freezing weather the wood was dry as bone. Fires engulfed the ship, and glowing sparks flitted through the air like playful demons. The horses, charging back and forth along the deck, leaped over the side and wailed as the near-frozen waves swallowed them. Weighed down with their chainmail and caparisons, the beasts had no chance.

Coughing in the smoke, Narses had picked himself up by then and was unsure of what to do. Were there rowboats? Fire was everywhere, and so hot that his armor was searing his flesh and subtracting health. He thought of pulling his armor off; but then if he escaped this place, he would be defenseless, and the criminals would capture him, a fate worse than death.

One of the masts splintered, swung down, and smashed a hole in the deck, knocking planks into the air. A nearby deckhand who was wreathed in flame fell and rolled back and forth, clawing at the fire tearing and blackening his skin. He screamed so fervently—he sounded like a stuck pig—that even Narses himself was moved to help him. But just as Narses started looking back and forth for a bucket to douse the deckhand with water, the man went limp, though the fire was turning his hair to ash, and melting his face to puddles of flesh that gathered on the deck beside his exposed cheekbones, the bubbles in the fat snapping and popping. Before long, only a skull would remain.

An idea occurred to Narses. He crawled forward, wincing as the heat burned him—his armor was hissing like a skillet over a cooking fire—and drank down the man’s spirit before it could escape to paradise or plummet to the Hell of the Damned. The game voice announced that his farr had been recharged to 50/100.

Now Narses reared up, groaning with satisfaction. Was he the only one left aboard? He spotted Bohemund and Sikelgaita huddled at the ship’s stern behind a wall of searing smoke and flame. They were trying to remove each other’s armor, burning their fingers in the process.

Cowards, he thought. They believe it better to be captured than to drown or burn.

By now the ship was plunging into the waves. These were spilling over the side, dousing the fires while washing burned corpses into the deep. A wall of blue-green water lapped at Narses’s legs. The metal hissed, and steam shot up, but the ocean was so cold it felt like a thousand knives stabbing his feet.

Narses waded through the water to Bohemund and Sikelgaita. He seized the youth with one hand and the battle maiden with the other, then leaped into the sky just as the ship’s last timbers sank into the boiling mass of white foam, burnt wreckage, and blue corpses.

Soaring through the air as high as he could manage, Narses fell back to Earth—his farr dwindling from the effort of carrying people like this—and collapsed on the beach outside Trebizond’s walls. These now looked taller and more massive than ever.

Narses had never been much of a jumper, but this particular leap upgraded his skills from Novice to Apprentice (4/10).

I’ll have to jump more often.

Just as he was about to gasp with relief and laugh—just as Bohemund and Sikelgaita were about to thank him and say they’d been wrong about him all along—an arrow whistled into the beach beside his head, blasting his eyes through his helmet with sand. As he was spitting and trying to lift his visor—the sand had jammed the joints—another arrow thumped into the beach, followed by another, then another, all getting closer.

They don’t care about wasting arrows, he thought.

Something on the wall cracked so loudly Narses jumped, and then something else whistled past his head and thumped into the sand.

For an instant, he was at the first siege of Trebizond, not the second, and that rider was galloping toward him while firing an iron ball into Narses’s shoulder.

Then Narses returned to the present, and looked up at Trebizond. A puff of gray smoke was drifting from the wall. Criminals were on the battlements, each wearing an iron helmet. They were better supplied this time. And although most were aiming bows and arrows, a few used what Narses could only describe as miniature basiliks—fire sticks, lightning sticks, what else to call them? These newfangled Seran weapons were so large and heavy that they needed to be either braced on the wall, or held up by wooden supports. Narses scoffed.

Only bad things come from Sera.

As he watched, someone—man or woman, who could say?—pointed a miniature basilik at him. Telling the criminals’ gender was difficult, since they were so desperate they often forced their wives, daughters, mothers, and even grandmothers to do the men’s work of fighting.

No honor.

Red sparks and gray smoke exploded from the fire tube, and something struck Narses’s head and knocked him back into the sand. He got up and pulled off his helmet. The projectile had punched a hole the size of a fist through the top. He felt his scalp, then looked at his hand: it was covered in blood. Yet he lived. The ball must have only skinned him. He had lost another three health, in the mean time, leaving him with 92/100.

Back on the battlements, the criminals were pumping their fists and cheering. A few women even bared their disgusting asses at him. But before Narses could respond, more arrows flew his way, and even more projectiles. The whole city was wreathed in smoke, the dark gray clouds flashing fire.

Gasping, out of breath, terrified of being captured or killed, Narses, Sikelgaita, and Bohemund picked themselves up and sprinted toward the Latin ships that were beaching themselves in the distance, where masses of armored barbarians were already wading through the surf, and knights led by Duke Robert were gathering beneath his enormous red and blue standard, which was whipping in the wind.