Trumpets were blasting the dawn. Narses’s eyelids flickered. He had been sleeping inside a Venetian galley which lay on the Trapezuntine shore like a beached whale. All his bone and muscle ached from last night’s siege.

But the distant trumpets woke him. Their short, triumphant melody sounded like it was from a movie. None of the fools sleeping around him in the hold had ever heard of movies, but he remembered the old world where these things existed. His memories of this place were more fantastic than the imaginings of any wide-eyed storyteller, so he kept the knowledge to himself. The barbarians would think him mad if he talked about it.

Pearls before swine.

Sometimes he was even afraid to drink alcohol, since it could loosen his tongue, and before he knew it he would be describing how, in the old world, people were transfixed for hours every day by moving images which looked like shadow plays—only these images were more colorful and detailed than any shadow play, and you could hold them in your hand and even manipulate them in rectangular windows of metal and glass. They had a Medusa-like quality to them. Once you looked, it was hard to turn away.

Narses would sound like a holy fool if he spoke like this. Such words and concepts would seem like gibberish to the barbarians. They themselves were no more than a rabble of dumb brutes—scarcely able to communicate even with each other—but there were too many of these dark, hellish dragons for even a shining Saint George like Narses to slay. For the time being, he needed them. So far the only worthwhile thing about them was their music.

These trumpets disturbing his slumber, blasting across the barbarian camp and frigid Trebizond, mixing with his waking dreams—they reminded him of war movies. They sounded just like the triumphant music that accompanied footage of helicopters shooting missiles at peasant villages nestled deep in the jungle.

He smiled. No one here had even heard of helicopters. How was he supposed to explain such things to these fools?

In his old life Narses had been planning to become a lobsterman in his homeland, a place with an oddly Latin-sounding name called Maine, but he also could have easily joined the military or the police. Those were both a close second choice—they were all dream jobs. He wanted combat, and the military and the police were two sacred institutions which would cover your chest with medals if you protected the helpless and innocent from terrorists and criminals. Now he’d finally gotten a chance to experience the joy of a just war here in Romanía.

But it wasn’t only fun. The battlefield was where you proved your manliness, where you separated the weak from the strong. The human race was like a plant that needed pruning; one could breed strong bright humans like Narses just as one bred different kinds of dogs. Some were born to lead, others to work, still more to fight. It all came down to genetics. But these days too many people wasted resources. They were too expensive to take care of, and too frail, and also got in the way of normalcy. Criminals wanted to steal from hard-working people like Narses, and most leaders were too corrupt to oppose them. This nonsense went against nature. Even children wanted to be in charge of things—an absurdity on the face of it.

He remembered his dream, back in Marianos’s house, of the ghosts of all the fools he’d slain—how they had ganged up and crushed him.

I keep the darkness at bay, the ocean surging about the walls of Konstantinopolis, that longs to drown the column of Konstantinos Magnos. Hope is my guide. His Majesty the Emperor. And the Lord.

The trumpets continued blasting the barbarians’ war movie music. It was like an incantation, if that was the right word. That was what it had done for Narses, anyway, watching on screens in his family’s big house in Maine. The music was so glorious, it enchanted people so that they wanted to fight for their country. They were almost hypnotized into worshipping the sweetest death imaginable—to give your life for the flag.

But that was there. Here in Romanía, only the rarest Romans were strong and honorable enough to become soldiers. Many of these had given their lives in Narses’s last campaign, the march upcountry across Anatolia to Trebizond. His brother immortals, men who had died—men like Kentarch John—they had been betrayed by corrupt elites and vicious criminals. He had even lost his beloved war horse, Xanthos. Yet Narses’s brothers had also sacrificed themselves for the golden eagles, the SPQR standard, Our Sacrosanct Father His Majesty the Emperor, God’s Vicegerent on Earth, the chi-rho.

One cannot water the tree of faith except with blood. Their deaths were not in vain.

As for the barbarians, what did they believe in, aside from stale bread and cheese and rancid wine for their bellies, diseased whores for their beds, and brats rolling in the filthy streets of their wretched villages? Could any higher concepts spark to life in the dark emptiness clouding their souls? They fought for the nobles of Gallía in the vain hope that they, too, could gain their own little plot of land in order to suck the blood from a few withered peasants who would spend their lives hacking at clods of earth with rusted sickles.

Folly.

Narses must have been the first to wake in the Venetian ship, but now the barbarians around him were stirring, cursing, and taking the Lord’s name in vain in their impure bastardized Latin. For a moment, this sacrilege angered Narses. He was even going to order them into silence—despite the fact that he was still their prisoner—but then the music distracted him again.

It was almost like being caught in a vast, joyous whirlpool, one large enough to swallow entire armadas, a darkness of surging foam and huge, cosmic waves flashing with lightning and shaking with thunder—this great romantic reaction against supposed reason. It led down to infinite depths.

There is no truth save God’s truth. We can only ride the whirlwind.

As the trumpets played, he imagined himself trooping to death in a military parade. His armored shoulders were squared, his back straight, his legs stomping the ground—left, right, left, right—and he was surrounded by an army of buddies marching in lockstep, their legs pumping like the steel pistons of a huge powerful machine pounding Mother Earth again and again. The pleasure was deep. His Majesty the Emperor Nikephoros was watching from the Great Palace balcony, nodding and clapping. When the soldiers reached him, all turned their faces in his direction, sharing in the glory as the patriarch and the nearby priests raised their hands and jeweled Bibles and intoned their blessings to God.

His Majesty is the restorer of honor, Narses thought. For he will have all dominion. All the oikouménē will be Roman again. Emperor Nikephoros will return the world to sanity and expel the extremists. I swear I will come back to you a triumphant conqueror, Emperor Nikephoros. All my victories I dedicate to your name, and to Christ Jesus. The moment these Latin barbarians outgrow their usefulness, we shall sweep them aside, as a broom sweeps filth.

Narses’s eyes were still shut in the Venetian galley’s hold. It was amusing to think of things which were beyond the conception of the lazy idiots who surrounded him.

The Latins had only defeated Trebizond last night thanks to their numbers; thousands of Latins had perished attacking the city’s western wall. Narses himself had won many sieges. He knew full well that if negotiations failed, and if that first big push failed, you could find yourself camped outside a city’s walls for months. A combination of disease, hunger, and cowardice would carry off dozens of men each day. Sometimes child soldiers would flee because of homesickness, and after they were caught, command would order them executed.

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Yet now the chaos of victory was so intense that the barbarians had forgotten to chain up Narses or cover his mouth with that iron muzzle of theirs. He had beat a strategic retreat from Trebizond during the first stage of the barbarian assault, helping Duke Robert’s wife Sikelgaita and Duke Robert’s son Bohemund to safety after Trebizond’s miniature basiliks destroyed their ship, the Ark. Hopefully that would count for something in Duke Robert’s eyes.

By then Narses was so tired he could barely lift his limbs, especially since all his farr was gone. He had been almost unable to replenish it since the youth Romanos had stolen it from him.

One day the boy will pay. I gave him everything. I saved his life. And all I received in return was treachery.

Once Bohemund and Sikelgaita were safe, Narses had slunk off to the nearest beached ship, one beyond the range of Trebizond’s fiendish weapons which were terrifying the Latins. Then he had climbed aboard to sleep. It was a good place. After all, too many people had been moving around in the poorly illuminated camp, and it was also chilly, wet, and snowy outside. There were many wounded, for the Trapezuntine devilry mutilated men like nothing Narses had ever seen. War could be brutal, but the Trapezuntines, in their dishonorable embrace of Seran weaponry, had achieved something truly special. Latins were crying out in agony and reeked of blood, which annoyed Narses. They had brought far too few doctors, who themselves knew only how to use leeches to bleed men, not how to heal them. If the scalding metal flying through the air buried itself in your flesh, it could fester with gangrene, the viridescent darkness consuming your heart from the inside, as a maggot grows swollen devouring a hunk of rotten meat.

Plus, there was a chance that if the Trapezuntines had actually defeated the Latin assault and then counter-attacked on the beach, the sailors would pilot the ship to safety—all while Narses slept in the hold, as soundly and peacefully as a baby in his mother’s arms.

Men were already getting up around Narses and climbing the ladder to the deck. Some were urinating over the side into the gentle Euxine waves, which in the absence of stormy weather was even more placid than the Middle Sea. Both bodies of water were often as flat as mirrors, gleaming like oil. Red roses and white cherry blossoms could cover them for months at a time from horizon to horizon in the summer’s warm golden sun.

In contrast, Narses remembered the great world-encircling Ocean-Sea. It was impossible to behold without sailing beyond the Herakleian Pillars, dodging leviathans and Sarakenou corsairs along the way. Few Romans these days ever bore witness to the hoary locks of Okeanos, but Narses had seen that foamy brine every day in the other world, in Maine. There the waves roared up past the clouds like mountains, drawing such strength into them from the greenish depths like arteries swelling with blood-dark wine…

Ah, this horn music, what an expression of his soul! The barbarians had won the battle, and Narses had been a part of it. Trebizond was finally taken. Now they just needed to hold it, and stomp out the last sparks of resistance.

All will be perfect, pure, and clean.

Suddenly Narses recalled Alexios, the one who had defeated him—only by luck—in the last siege. Perhaps that wretch was still in Trebizond, with Herakleia.

The social rejects responsible for all Narses’s difficulties were finally within his grasp.

This chance for vengeance was what made him bolt upright and finally forsake his dreams and daydreams. Soon he was outside the ship and crossing the beach toward Trebizond. No one stopped him. Most of the barbarians who could still walk were mustering in their camp near those trumpets. At this point the only person who seemed to care about Narses was Paul. Thankfully the eunuch seemed to be elsewhere at the moment, but he would be dealt with shortly. Narses was sure of it.

Though he’d had nothing to eat or drink in almost an entire day, Narses quickened his pace to a jog. When he entered Trebizond and found himself walking among miserable, filthy workers, slaves, and peasants, he kept his hand on his sword hilt. This vermin was dangerous and untrustworthy. All had sold their souls for a pack of lies, betraying God, Country, Emperor.

Speaking of souls, he thought.

Narses’s farr had been depleted since leaping off the deck of the sinking Ark yesterday. It would taste so sweet, to sap the strength of these lowlifes. Just one old man—hobbling like a tattered coat upon a stick—contained enough energy to make the furnace in Narses’s heart blaze with white flames.

They should all be destroyed.

All had forfeited their lives the instant they had sworn allegiance to these violent criminals. It was justified to utilize their spirits for a higher purpose. The weak must make way for the strong. They were lazy, they were neither hard nor smart workers, they needed to pay.

Yet it might anger Duke Robert, Narses thought. I must be cautious. My time will come.

Narses staggered past the wounded vagrants who were groaning in the streets, many still lying where the barbarians had cut them down. In the past it might have infuriated him to see barbarians even looking at Romans the wrong way, much less raising weapons against them, but these scoundrels were no longer Romans. And in fact, many had never been Romans to begin with. Plenty of Jews and Sarakenoi were lying among the dead, as were Varangians and even a few Armenians, Turks, Persians, and God knew what else. Narses wrinkled his nose at the stench of this unclean blood. Trebizond, it seemed, had been attracting insects like a fresh pile of dung.

But that was an unclean image, and Narses hated such things. Everything always needed to be clean and orderly both within his mind and around his person.

Where is Alexios? he thought. Where is Herakleia?

The city inside the walls was small. It only took minutes to walk up past the burnt buildings and shattered gates to the citadel. Here in the frigid courtyard the surviving miscreants in the so-called Army of Trebizond were still tied up. Most were women, and all were shivering. Though their wrists and ankles were bound, they were huddling together to stay warm. Narses stopped, crossed his arms, and laughed at the sight of these defeated enemies.

“How do you like your little revolt now, you peasant scum? Maybe now you’ve learned your lesson! If you women don't do what you're told, what can you expect save the wrath of Holy God, as embodied by me? I am the wrath of God! And I have come to chastise you mightily! 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay!'”

No one looked at him, though they had all tensed up. He approached the nearest prisoner—a young, dark Sarakenou woman covered in dirt and gore. Absurdly, she was even veiled in green.

A woman abused by her male relatives, he thought. Forced to wear the veil. She has no mind of her own. It is my duty as a good Christian to enlighten her.

“Where is the one called Alexios?” Narses said to the Sarakenou woman

She averted her eyes.

Narses seized her shirt and hauled her to her feet.

“I shall not ask again,” he began.

She spat in his face.

Growling, Narses threw her down onto her friends. She fell on them hard, and many groaned in pain.

Now all the prisoners were watching Narses. Some inched away.

“I shall begin executing prisoners,” he said, “one by one, unless someone answers this question: where is Alexios?”

Silence.

He drew his sword, still surprised that he was holding an inferior Latin blade. The fact that his weapon was not Almaqah infuriated him. Romanos had stolen it.

Is there anything the boy didn’t steal?

Narses approached the woman he had tossed aside and aimed his sword at her face. She winced and backed away.

“Where is he?” Narses said.

“I don’t know,” she answered in thickly accented Roman. “No one knows.”

“Liar!”

“I swear,” the woman said. “We think he left Trebizond last night. No one has seen him. Ask anyone.”

“What lunacy, to trust a pagan,” Narses said. “What can you swear upon except the devils you worship?”

Somehow the woman struggled to her feet and faced Narses.

“Ra’isa, don’t,” someone said.

“I speak truth.” The woman glared into his eyes. “He is gone.”

“Then what of Herakleia?” Narses said. “Where is she?”

Inadvertently—it seemed—this Ra’isa glanced at the citadel.

Narses sheathed his sword and walked there.