Alexios, at that time, was with three amazons from first century’s artillery squad. Together they were dragging a cannon called a basilik up the stone steps to the walkway on the city’s western wall. The basilik was so fresh from the blacksmith that it still felt warm; Jamshied had only fitted the iron barrel into its wooden carriage moments ago. Although the carriage had wooden wheels, it was still difficult to haul up the steps.
“Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho!” the four soldiers shouted.
There was only enough room on the stairway for two to push and two to pull. Yet they soon reached the top. Third century’s first artillery squad was commanded by Dekarch Ra’isa, a young veiled Kurdish refugee from Isfahan who had arrived in Trebizond only a month ago. A natural leader, she had distinguished herself with a curiosity about black powder weapons which allowed her to strike distant targets with unusual accuracy, and had volunteered to lead the city’s first artillery unit. Few others had joined her in this enterprise, since the new basiliks were prone to bursting and could maim, blind, or kill their crews. Alexios was assisting first artillery squad because its fourth member, Fatima of Aleppo, had just given birth.
Gasping, their bodies aching, the squad wheeled the basilik into place behind the battlements. Since the wall had been built long before anyone had dreamed of black powder weapons, there was little space for recoil. An earlier test firing had resulted in a basilik falling back over the side and getting dented in the city below.
But first artillery squad had trained for this. While Alexios rushed down to the citadel armory to grab an iron ball and a torch, Ra’isa aimed the basilik. Another amazon—Sopo Jaqeli, a Laz from nearby Ardahan—shifted the barrel according to Ra’isa’s commands. A second amazon—Maria Elena, from the Bulgar Khanate—stuffed black powder inside and fitted the firing hole with a thin rope fuse which had been dipped in rock oil. Ra’isa then used a kind of screw to adjust the basilik’s vertical aim, noting with a wooden stylus the measurements in a wax tablet that hung around her neck, just over the folds of her green hijab. Only a few months ago, Ra’isa had been an illiterate peasant, until she had heard one day about a distant city called Trebizond which would teach women how to read books and kill slave owners.
When Alexios returned, the amazons were shouting “hurry!” Handing the torch to Ra’isa—who held the fluttering flame away from the fuse—he pushed the heavy iron ball inside the barrel before beating it to the back with a repurposed broomstick. Sopo Jaqeli and Maria Elena fastened a rope to the basilik’s wooden carriage to stop the recoil from pushing it over the wall.
“Ready to fire!” Alexios yelled.
“Stand clear!” Ra’isa shouted.
Everyone stepped away and plugged their ears with their fingers, though Elena and Jaqeli each needed to keep one hand on the ropes. Alexios looked at where the basilik was pointing: straight at the distant shore where the Roman armada was landing troops. Closer to the city he discerned a trio of unhorsed knights dressed in unusually heavy armor staggering across the sand to the beached ships. These three he had seen escaping the wreck by the harbor—the first triumph of Trebizond’s second siege. One of the three knights even seemed to know something about the farr—
“Fire!” Ra’isa screamed.
The torch lit the fuse, and the flame raced inside the barrel. The explosion was so loud it almost shook Alexios’s bones from his flesh. Hot smoke puffed everywhere, but the wind blew it away so that Alexios saw the iron ball swoop over the heads of those three fleeing soldiers, shatter a few upraised lances held by disembarking knights, and then punch through the hull of an approaching galley. Wood splinters burst outward, twisting and tumbling before they splashed into the waves.
Looking at Ra’isa, Alexios pumped his fist. “Nice shot, dekarch!”
Before she could thank him, Jaqeli and Elena were jumping with her, cheering, and hugging each other. Alexios was also gratified by the big boost to his artillery skill. This was the first time he had helped fire a basilik in combat, which meant that he leveled up from Beginner to Novice.
But first artillery squad celebrated briefly. At that moment thousands of enemy soldiers were disembarking from at least a hundred ships. First artillery squad got to work on the next iron ball. The galley they had hit was still moving; the wound in the hull was so high it almost touched the deck, and little seawater seemed to be getting inside.
But Alexios was almost too preoccupied to notice. As he rushed down to the city to grab another iron ball from the citadel armory, he saw how busy everyone was. Children, clutching handfuls of arrows, were running past him up to the archers on the western walls. Even Kassia and Basil were among them. He rubbed their hair as they passed, confident that they knew what to do, yet also worried for their safety. They were so small compared to everyone else, yet the children had trained for this, and almost everyone in the city who was strong enough to help wanted to. Jamshied the blacksmith was churning out arrowheads as fast as he could, meanwhile, the door to his shop wide open to release the blaze inside as the bellows gasped for breath. Men and women who had lost limbs in the wars then fitted the arrowheads to wooden shafts.
Most of the Workers’ Army, however, was in the Daphnous suburbs, to which the Northeast Gate remained open. Together with the peasants and workers these soldiers had formed a bucket line, and were doing their best to douse every building with seawater to guard against fire. This meant that the members of the line needed to go inside each house, climb the stairs, and then lean out the windows in order to soak every outer surface. Rooftops were impossible to wet with this backward method, but because of the recent blizzard they were covered with snow.
The city elders were making black powder in the citadel armory. This unpleasant process involved evaporating urine into saltpeter crystals and then mixing those with the ground-up wooden remains of cooking fires. The final ingredient needed here was brimstone, which Trebizond was forced to import from the volcanic island of Melos in the Aegean Sea; this hellish and accursed material (which the city’s last few priests had inveighed against) smelled like rotten eggs. When these three ingredients were combined in certain proportions, a single spark would—thanks to something called “valence electrons” which Alexios had learned about in his high school chemistry class—make the mixture explode.
“God be praised for valence electrons,” some Trapezuntines had said, their eyes flashing in the bursts of light which heralded the dawn of the gunpowder age, at least in this part of the world.
They had only figured out these processes a few weeks ago. This was thanks mostly to Alexios, Herakleia, and Gontran racking their old world memories, as well as Trebizond’s workers doing their best to copy the remains of the massive basilik the Roman legionaries had brought to the previous siege. Gontran also had some ammunition left for his Seran pistol-sword, which the workers had examined. He himself was ignorant of the precise formula the Seres used for their black powder weapons, which in those lands were called fire spears.
At the moment the city possessed three operational basiliks with enough ammunition for a total of twelve shots. Twenty-three miniature basiliks (which Alexios would have called harquebuses) had also been constructed and then distributed to the amazons on the walls, with enough ammunition for about a hundred shots between them.
Our ideas are far ahead of our technology, Alexios thought. It takes time to figure out the entire manufacturing process—to find just the right formula for black powder, to standardize both basiliks and ammunition, to build big vats for piss that won’t leak, and then to gather all the different materials. The list of things to do just goes on and on.
As Alexios was returning with another iron ball, one of the other two basiliks on Trebizond’s western wall fired. From the distant shore, a plume of sand, light, smoke, water, and armored bodies burst upward. The orderly columns of Roman soldiers that had been assembling there scattered.
Eleven shots left, Alexios thought. Maybe by the time we run out, Jamshied can cast one or two more.
“We must hit ships!” Ra’isa shouted at the second artillery squad. “If we hit one ship, one hundred soldiers die, and the enemy loses many supplies! Aim for ships!”
“We were aiming for ship!” shouted an amazon from second artillery squad, an escaped harem slave named Zulaikha al-Jariya.
Alexios thought it amazing that both of these people spoke different mother tongues and had only started learning Roman as a lingua franca in the last few months.
Groaning, Ra’isa aimed her basilik once more, again noting the coordinates as she adjusted the vertical and horizontal planes to follow her target, which was the ship she and her squad had just hit. This galley was racing toward the beach, its sails straining with wind, its rowers working their huge oars as fast as flapping bird’s wings, churning white milky foam from the deep. On the deck were dozens of mounted knights ready to charge down the ship’s huge wooden gangplank all the way to the beach. Alexios even discerned the anxious horses stomping their legs.
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But were these even Roman ships in the first place? The knights and the ships themselves had so many flags and pennants with patterns and colors wholly different from the more restrained red and yellow chi-rho design favored by Rome, which utilized standards and even the occasional golden eagle rather than flags. He had only seen these new soldiers from a distance, but they also seemed much more heavily armored than typical Roman legionaries. They were so heavily armored, in fact, that if they were unhorsed, it was difficult for them to even stand up again.
They must be Latin mercenaries, Alexios thought. Purchased by the emperor, working only for pay rather than ideals.
As he lost himself in these thoughts, Ra’isa shouted: “Stand clear!”
Alexios, Elena, and Jaqeli backed away. With one hand they covered whichever ear was facing the basilik; with the other hand they seized the ropes attached to the carriage.
“Fire!”
A deafening flash, a bursting smoke cloud, and the iron ball screamed through the air and buried itself in the distant ship’s hull. This time the wound was so deep that white foaming water splashed outward before gushing inside and filling the hold. Soon the men on the ship were throwing themselves overboard and struggling, in their heavy armor, to swim to shore. Some knights were even urging their horses to leap from the deck into the waves. Before long, the ship had descended beneath the sea’s gurgling surface. Alexios’s artillery skill leveled up again and now reached Apprentice.
Hey, game voice, is that all I get? I sunk an entire ship!
It was just an assist, the voice said. You should be happy you got as much XP as you did.
This is bullshit.
The basilik units on Trebizond’s wall were pointing at the sunken ship and shouting at each other. Soon they were yelling their congratulations at first artillery squad; within moments the entire city was roaring with cheers. This was the second ship Trebizond had destroyed, and without one casualty on the workers’ side.
So far, Alexios thought.
But by then most of the remaining hundred or so enemy vessels had already disgorged their soldiers. Many ships were stuck in the sand, forcing the sailors to leap overboard and push the hulls back into the sea with their bare hands or dig them out with shovels. Those few ships which had escaped into the water were furling their sails and rowing backward. Some, turning too quickly, crashed into others; sailors were trying to push them apart with their oars.
Maybe they don’t even know about basiliks, Alexios thought. The Romans might not have told them. These mercenaries, whoever they are, must have been planning for an easier arrival.
Even the enemy soldiers on land seemed confused. Most were fleeing into the distance, but some were still too close to the city due to the positions of their disembarking ships. The leaders were waiting for their men, or vice-versa.
They can’t know that we only have ten iron balls left, Alexios thought. They must be terrified. Well, no one forced them to come here.
The city’s three artillery squads each fired one more shot. One iron ball tore a hole through a sail; the second took off a man’s head before burying itself in the sand; the third made a horse explode into blood, intestines, and legs.
Seven iron balls left.
Joseph—an orange-haired youth from the orphanage—ran up the steps and shouted that the strategos had ordered them to cease fire and prepare for Roman siege ladders. Ra’isa swore while Alexios acknowledged the command. Then Joseph ran along the wall to pass the word to the next artillery crew.
“We miss once and she says stop,” Ra’isa growled. “Al’ama! She knows nothing.”
“We should probably save our ammunition for when we’re sure it’ll make a difference,” Alexios said.
“Of course you side with her,” Ra’isa said. “You are her lover.”
“Number one, that isn’t true. Number two, what do you care?”
“I care only in your dreams.”
“You’re the one who brought it up. Now let’s get going, dekarch. We have a lot of work to do.”
Ra’isa bowed sarcastically. “Yes, Kentarch Leandros.”
The three artillery squads left the basiliks and moved naphtha tanks and siphons to the walls. Children handed up long wooden polls with hooked ends which were meant to stop siege ladders. Although the city’s moat was frozen, Alexios never would have wanted to test that ice with his weight—nor with the weight of a dozen armored men climbing a wooden ladder at the same time.
The children brought up more arrows for the archers. Jamshied was shouting that he needed more apprentices—more furnaces, hammers, anvils, iron, bellows, coal—more everything.
“I cannot work like this by myself forever!” he yelled, his voice loud enough to be heard across the city.
Ra’isa looked to Alexios as though she wanted to be ordered to assist the blacksmith.
“Our place is here,” Alexios said. “We need to get ready for the assault.”
Next, he stopped Joseph—who was then passing by—and asked him to tell Jamshied to rest. There was no sense letting the city’s blacksmith kill himself from overwork.
Soon enough, the wall defenders sat against the battlements, eyeing the Romans, who kept their distance. Children brought the defenders bread, cheese, and water. Within minutes the cold reasserted itself; until then they had been fighting so hard that they’d barely noticed, and were soaked in sweat. Yet because of the sacks of black powder and the naphtha tanks it was too dangerous to light braziers here to keep warm; Ra’isa had already doused her torch. The defenders could only wrap themselves in blankets.
Most of the defenders watched the Romans unload their troops in the distance. Whoever the enemy general was, he had figured out Trebizond’s basilik range and ordered the disembarkation to proceed farther from the city. The fleet had done its best to oblige, but some ships were still crashing into each other. Masses of soldiers, resembling an ant colony, were marching into the distance, their black armor glinting in the sunshine. Men who were dressed in plainer clothes were already setting up tents and palisades and digging trenches in the hard soil.
This isn’t like the last siege, Alexios thought. There’s more of them this time. And although they aren’t perfect, they’re much more competent.
Herakleia gave the order to rest. The artillery and miniature basilik squads descended from the walls and removed their armor in the citadel courtyard while a few fresh troops took their places, watching the enemy and guarding the naphtha tanks and black powder bags to ensure that no one accidentally ignited them. Though the artillery crews were tired, they joined the other soldiers and workers in the Daphnous suburbs, who were still dousing apartment buildings with seawater.
This task was much less interesting than firing basiliks at enemy ships. Every member of the bucket lines did their best to keep from spilling, but the water running down from the buildings had frozen in the streets. These were not only slippery—there wasn’t enough gravel—but the cold seeped up through everyone’s shoes and boots. The buckets’ metal handles were frozen; Alexios gripped them using his shirt sleeves as makeshift gloves; the water still splashed him, and his clothes hardened in the cold. Yet the workers could never quit. These buildings were their homes. The soldiers’ families lived inside; many people present had helped construct them; the soldiers and workers would labor until they dropped from exhaustion, doing anything to keep them from burning.
Soon a trio of horsemen rode out from the camp in a wedge formation; the man at the front carried a large white flag.
Hopefully a sign of things to come, Alexios thought.
Herakleia, who by then had descended from the citadel to assist in the suburbs, moved to the western wall with Alexios and the members of the workers’ council. The three enemy horsemen stopped just before the moat. They were so close that Alexios discerned their blue eyes—and likewise saw that one was a woman. All looked Varangian to him.
“Greetings to the city of Trebizond!” their leader shouted in heavily accented Roman. “I am Robert de Hauteville, Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, Prince of Benevento, and leader of the army sent in the name of Christ—and with the blessings of the Holy Fathers in both Rome and Constantinople—by His Majesty the Emperor Nikephoros II.”
Latins, Alexios thought. That’s who they are. Latin mercenaries—puffed up on quite a few titles.
“I have merely come to offer the usual terms,” Robert continued. “If Trabzon surrenders its leaders to us and swears an oath of loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor, all sins will be forgiven.”
Where have I heard this before? Alexios thought.
“Your lives and property will be spared,” Robert continued. “You will be permitted to continue going about your business as before.”
You mean we’ll be stuck with the landlords, tax farmers, and priests again, Alexios thought. With everything controlled by Roman officials appointed in the capital, and guarded by soldiers who have no connection to Trebizond.
“Should you reject these terms,” Robert continued, “we will destroy Trabzon entirely, and kill or enslave everyone within.”
Herakleia, who was standing next to Alexios, turned back to the city, where the streets, courtyards, and windows were full of soldiers, workers, and peasants, all straining to listen to the duke’s powerful voice.
“Well?” Herakleia yelled. “What do you think, Trebizond? Should we accept his terms?”
“No!” five thousand voices screamed together. The sound was so loud that Alexios, laughing, covered his ears.
“Very well,” Duke Robert said, when the noise had died down. “May God have mercy on your souls.”
He wheeled his horse around and galloped to the distant camp. His two companions followed.
Alexios turned to Herakleia, who looked sweaty and exhausted.
“Guess we’re screwed now,” he whispered.
She frowned, then shouted to the city that everyone should rest up as best they could.
“These Latins must be anxious for battle,” she added. “They may attack tonight. We must be prepared.”
Only a few soldiers were posted to the walls to watch for this possible attack. With all the gates closed, everyone else ate leftover bread baked the day before. Once they had filled their stomachs in the warm houses behind the walls, they collapsed into sleep, their exhaustion overpowering their anxiety. Though it was still afternoon, the city was silent, and nothing moved in the streets.