Alexios leaped onto one of the bone fingers—itself the size of a tower—and climbed the right hand onto the wrist, then ran up the arm toward the skull. The skeleton tried to shake him off, but its incredible size made it slow. There was enough time for Alexios to sheathe Gedara and grasp the bone with both hands to keep from falling.
Just as the skeleton was about to smash Alexios against the cliffs, he swung himself over to the arm’s inner side. The impact shattered the rock face and sent huge fragments tumbling down into the searing magma.
The skeleton groaned.
It feels pain, Alexios thought. It can be beaten.
The skeleton pulled its left hand from the outcropping where Basil, Kassia, and Rakhsh were cowering and tried to brush Alexios off. But he fled to the outer side of the right arm again, and then climbed up while the stone fingers scraped at him. When they came too close, Alexios gripped the bone beneath him with one hand—by now he was at the gap between the upper arm and the shoulder—and drew Gedara with the other, stabbing upward just in time. The blade, with its atom-thin edge, cut straight through the rock finger above him. This made the skeleton groan so loudly the sound almost shattered Alexios’s skull. It took all his strength to keep from dropping Gedara and covering his ears.
The skeleton lifted its left hand. Alexios climbed up onto the right shoulder, then sawed at the arm bone with Gedara. The groaning from the skeleton shook the cliffs and made the magma boil far below. Pillars of fire erupted like geysers, and the resulting heat scalded Alexios’s flesh, decreasing his health to 89/100. Smoke was rising from his clothes, and the tips of stray threads glowed red. Yet he kept sawing with Gedara, and the flying sparks made the symbols on the sword glow green, adding XP to his swordfighting skill (Intermediate, 5/10).
“Stop!” the skeleton screamed.
The sound was so loud it knocked Alexios aside for a moment and even subtracted one more health, but then he resumed cutting.
“Let my friends go!” Alexios yelled.
The giant skeleton growled and again tried to smash him against the cliff, but this time Alexios hid in the gaps between the bones, gripping the huge soft ligaments that connected the skeleton’s different parts. Boulders, rocks, and pebbles poured down around Alexios, some catching in the gaps, which made it harder for the skeleton to move. The huge segments of bone ground against each other.
You really didn’t think this one through, did you? Alexios thought as he got back to sawing.
“Stop, or we kill them!” the skeleton cried.
Alexios looked up. The skeleton was throwing its right hand at the cliffside where Basil, Kassia, and Rakhsh were hiding. There was no way for them to escape. Soon they would be crushed.
Gritting his teeth, Alexios sawed for all he was worth. Sweat matted his hair, dripped from his face, and stung his eyes. Gedara was now shining with heat, and fountains of sparks were pouring from the blade.
All of a sudden Alexios sawed through. Just as the right arm fell away, he grasped the shoulder, climbing to safety. The skeleton screamed so loudly Alexios soon heard nothing but a deafening ringing in his ears. Steam blasting from its wound rose toward the chasm ceiling, the clouds flashing with lightning and booming with thunder. The skeleton slowly covered the wound with its remaining hand, but steam shrieked through the gaps in its fingers.
Alexios looked down just in time to see the huge severed arm strike the cliff walls before plunging into the magma. It splashed liquid fire everywhere, then sank into the glowing depths.
Wasting no time, Alexios climbed across the shoulder and pressed his blade to the skeleton’s neck. The huge skull looked down at him. Flames cascaded from the voids in its gaping eye sockets and from its clenched teeth, yet they were less bright than before. It almost bit him, but he jumped back in time.
“Let my friends go or I’ll cut you apart piece by piece,” Alexios said. He was surprised by how vague his own voice sounded in his ears; only some of his hearing had returned.
“We hunger,” the skeleton said.
“Not my problem!” Alexios yelled. “You killed for money! That’s your problem!”
“We could do nothing else.”
“No one forced you!”
Now only embers glowed in the eye sockets, and steam had ceased to pour from the gaping arm wound.
“We cannot go on,” the skeleton said. Groaning, it began to fall.
Alexios sheathed Gedara and leaped to the cliffs. He grabbed them, nearly slipped and fell to his death, but hung on. The huge skeleton, meanwhile, swung down toward the distant river of magma and plunged inside, splashing molten rock up so high the droplets almost reached Alexios.
He spat down at the skeleton’s remains. The game voice announced that Alexios had gained enough XP to level up to Journeyman Swordfighter (6/10), a major step, considering the fact that characters often plateaued once they reached higher skill levels, since each subsequent level required so much more focused practice—often with feedback from a more advanced teacher.
His friends were so far off he could hardly see them. It took a long time to work his way around the chasm. His mountain climbing skill was only at initiate, but he worked so hard that he managed to level up twice, from beginner to novice (3/10). Once he arrived, Basil and Kassia clapped and cheered.
“That was amazing!” Kassia yelled.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Basil said. “If only you could have fought like that at Trebizond.”
“Still think I was just telling you tall tales?” Alexios said. “I told you this place was full of monsters! Now come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Let’s get the hell out of hell,” Basil said.
They searched the outcropping for a way to the surface. Basil had already found a path, but it was too steep for Rakhsh; Kassia was the one who discovered a route which the horse could take. Soon they had returned to the ruined bathhouse, which was shaking again. While Basil, Kassia, and Rakhsh ran outside, Alexios grabbed their things and jumped out into the snow just as the building plunged into the Earth.
For a moment, everyone stared.
“That was stupid, Alexios,” Basil said. “Next time leave the blankets. You could have been killed.”
Alexios responded only by falling back into the snow.
It was a relief to return to the cool fresh air. The clouds in the sky were gone, and dawn was glowing in the east, making the stars fade. Though all the travelers were tired, they decided to pack their things and leave. The heat from the fissure was strong enough to melt the snow and turn the dirt underneath to mud, and everyone feared that the gap would widen and swallow them up again. But the melting snow also exposed part of the Roman road, as well as a milestone which announced that, along a narrow valley that cut through endless mountains to the horizon, lay Konstantinopolis—thousands of stadia to the west. This was their path. (A different road led southeast to a town called Erzincan, which led deeper into the Tourkokratía.) Soon they would reach a fork, and they would take the branch leading south, while the other branch continued west to the City.
That’s where the emperor is, Alexios thought. And my ticket out of Byzantium.
He recalled how, months ago, he would have given anything to escape this place. But now he had so many friends and responsibilities, and he had also learned so much from these people. How could he abandon them to their fates, and go back to sitting in classrooms in Maine? Here he was somebody and could make a difference and help people. Back in the old world, he was trapped inside a different kind of game, one that was much harder than this one.
He looked down at the children on the saddle. Part of him wanted to rub their hair and hug them; another part thought of how difficult they were. In the evenings especially, when everyone was cranky and hungry and tired—that was when they got on each other's nerves. At the same time, Alexios would kill anyone who touched Basil and Kassia. They deserved none of the horrors they had experienced. In particular, the people who had murdered their parents needed to be brought to justice. Rome itself, the ultimate cause of their troubles, needed to be destroyed.
If Alexios lost Kassia and Basil, he would no longer think of his own safety. For those who harmed them, there would be no mercy.
Rakhsh trotted with an unusual eagerness from Satala’s ruins. Soon the children had fallen asleep on the saddle, with Alexios keeping them from slipping off. It must have been uncomfortable to sleep like that, and he had no idea how they did it. Yet he was happy to help. For once he felt like he was doing something right. His parenting XP ticked up slowly as a result of his efforts.
Only after a long time did he sigh with relief and relax—as best he could while riding a horse—unable to believe that last night’s experience in the chasm was anything other than a nightmare. Yet his clothes were still stiff from the subterranean heat, and when he looked back he even saw the air wavering above Satala's ruins.
I’ve done so many things that should have killed me, he thought. Strange to have memories of times when I should have died.
The Roman road took them toward Konstantinopolis for hours until they reached the fork. It was only visible in the snow due to the fact that the valleys the road had been following were suddenly blocked by a single vast mountain straight ahead. Romans liked to build roads in straight lines; they would plow through hills and mountains if it was possible. But this mountain ahead was too big even for them. No visible path led up its icy cliffs.
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Here the travelers dismounted to give Rakhsh a break. Kassia and Basil somehow had the energy to throw snowballs at each other while Alexios tried to figure out what their next move should be. Although the thick snow made it impossible to see the road beneath his frigid feet, he could guess where it led. Slightly to the right, along one set of valleys leading west, lay Konstantinopolis. Another set of valleys to the left went south to Melitené. Behind them, the valleys led back to Satala and Trebizond.
Mountains, valleys, mountains, he thought. That's eastern Romanía. Or is this Armenia?
One of Basil’s snowballs struck Kassia in the face; she began to cry. Alexios told them to stop, then checked Kassia to make sure she was alright. He found himself hugging her and saying everything was going to be fine. Then he glared at Basil and told him to be more careful.
“Do you see any doctors out here?” Alexios gestured to the snowy mountains. “Do we have any medicine in those bags? We need to take care of each other. What are we going to do if you really hurt your sister?”
“Sorry.” Basil was downcast.
“Don’t say sorry.” Alexios pointed at Basil. “Change your behavior.”
Basil kept quiet.
But of course it’s not completely his fault, Alexios thought. It’s the situation we’re in that makes him behave like this. It’s what makes all of us act like this…
Soon they were on Rakhsh, riding south. After a few minutes, Alexios began to speak out of boredom. He also felt bad for snapping at Basil, and doubted that the boy had meant to hurt Kassia.
“Living here has changed my mind about a few things,” Alexios said. “In the old world—”
“Here we go,” Basil said.
“What? You don’t want to hear about it? Are you busy right now?”
“I’d rather be left alone than hear any more stories about that place.”
“No offense, but you’re pretty unimaginative for a kid.”
“I want to hear about it,” Kassia said. “I like to hear about the—what were they called—the contrivances. The mēkhanoi.”
“I was going to talk about how people in the old world have such low expectations for their own behavior,” Alexios said. “Like, here in Romanía, you only get praised if you go above and beyond, while in the old world you get praised for doing the bare minimum. That’s one reason people there are lazy, rude, ignorant, and narcissistic.”
“Reminds me of someone I know,” Basil said.
Alexios ignored him. “A lot of the people there are just like giant walking babies. They’re nothing like people here.”
“Why would you praise someone for doing their job, Alexios?” Basil said.
Alexios shrugged. “I guess we think it encourages them? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because most of their jobs don’t really matter. People back there live off the world’s poor, sucking their blood like big swollen ticks, and then dehumanizing them in order to justify their exploitation. They say the poor are lazy and stupid, while they themselves need this constant annoying affirmation, since they can see that their own ‘work’—what little of it they do—is meaningless and makes no positive difference. But people here, you know, they live off the fruit of their labors. Most people, anyway. It seems to make them happier, even if they aren’t nearly as rich—”
“Tell me about the mēkhanoi,” Kassia said. “This is boring.”
“Kassia, do you think you’d like to be an engineer?” Alexios said. “When we get back to Trebizond? We’ll kick out the Latins and the Romans and make the city stronger than ever. Then maybe you can build some of these machines—these mēkhanoi—if you want.”
“Maybe,” she said. “You’re still not telling me about them.”
“Did I mention washing machines?” Alexios said.
“No.”
“Let me guess,” Basil said. “It’s like that bronze throne we heard about, the one the emperor sits in to scare barbarians. It has birds that flap their wings and sing, and he can raise it up to the ceiling. Steam somehow makes it move, but it terrifies the barbarians. Only instead of terrifying barbarians, you use it to wash things—”
“Washing machines are a little different,” Alexios said. “I’ve noticed how often people here do laundry, and how those people are almost always women. It takes so many hours out of their lives. So many times I’ve passed a river here and seen women washing and drying their clothes. In the old world, you don’t have to do any of that. You put your clothes in a machine, dump in some soap, and press a button. Then you come back an hour later and your clothes are clean.”
Basil shook his head and laughed. “More tall tales.”
“Then all you have to do is dry the clothes,” Alexios said. “For that, we have another machine called a dryer.”
“In the old world you just have machines for everything.”
“Pretty much. Even for loneliness. That’s how people meet friends and love interests.”
“With machines?” Basil said. “How does that work?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” Alexios said. “It’s almost like a game of chance, or even like a sort of automated matchmaker. Imagine like a sorting machine that matches you with people who live nearby, and then sends you the results.”
“Why can’t people just go outside?”
Alexios chuckled. “Forget it. Let’s just focus on the dryer. You toss the clothes in, and they get heated up and spun around for an hour until they’re dry. The only real work you have to do is folding the clothes and putting them away. Of course, that’s also because we have many more clothes than people here. We have a lot more of everything, and machines are part of the reason why…”
“It sounds so nice,” Kassia said. “Mama was always doing the laundry. She was always washing, always farming, always working.”
“How can any of that be true, Alexios?” Basil said. “Are people or animals pushing levers inside these machines of yours?”
“No.”
“How can the machines work without people or animals? Do they use steam?”
“Some of them used to,” Alexios said. “A long time ago. Now almost none of them do.”
“So how do they work?”
“Well, of course you need people to build them,” Alexios said. “You need people to design and maintain them. You can’t do anything without people. But machines just make people stronger and more efficient. These ones we’re talking about run on electricity. Like the lightning you see in thunderstorms.”
“You move the machines with lightning?” Kassia said.
Alexios nodded. “More or less. I don’t really know how it works because I’m not an engineer. But you can make electricity other ways. Lightning comes down from storms because of all the friction from the clouds rubbing together, just like when you rub your hair and touch a metal doorknob and get a little shock. If you can dam up a river, and get the water to make a wheel move, stick some magnets—lodestones—in the wheel, and then connect the wheel to a copper thread, you can turn the water’s energy into electricity, and then use that to power your washing machine.”
Basil shook his head. “That’s definitely one of the stranger things you’ve told me.”
“Do you still think I’m making all of this up? That I’m just nuts?”
“Kind of.”
“You thought that about my so-called ‘tall tales,’ and look where that got you.”
“This is different,” Basil said. “You aren’t talking about anything we can see here. It’s all in your ‘old world.’”
“One day you’ll see,” Alexios said. “One day we’ll be able to build this stuff in Trebizond, and you’ll tell me you were wrong.”
“Sure I will, Alexios.”
“Who knows,” Alexios said. “Maybe sometime we can figure out a way to go back. Maybe I can take you with me, if you want to go.”
“I want to see it,” Kassia said. “I want to see the big metal birds that fly without flapping their wings.”
Alexios laughed. “You should see the helicopters. It’s like…imagine a carriage made of metal. On top there’s just like a long metal plank. It spins around so fast that you can barely see it. The plank is curved, and because of differences in air pressure above and below—”
“We get it, Alexios,” Basil said.
“I still don’t understand what you’ve got against me,” Alexios said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Basil said. “None of it does.”
“You still think we aren’t going to make it,” Alexios said.
“Try to look at things from someone else’s perspective for a change,” Basil said. “Almost everyone I’ve ever known is dead.”
“I’m still alive,” Kassia said.
Basil sighed. “That’s why I said almost.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve lost everything,” Basil said, slumping. “My family, my friend Joseph…everything I’ve ever known. It’s all gone. All that’s left are a few memories and the clothes on my back, and my sister. That’s it.”
Alexios raised his right hand and—unsure of what to do—hesitantly touched Basil’s back. Basil shook him off.
“Don’t touch me,” Basil said.
“He’s only trying to help,” Kassia said.
“No, he isn’t,” Basil said. “He got mom killed.”
These words struck Alexios like a punch in the gut.
“That’s not true,” Kassia said. “You can’t—”
“It’s alright,” Alexios said. “I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to deal with this. It’s just…nothing like this ever happened in the old—”
“Enough with the old world,” Basil said. “I don’t want to hear about it anymore. There’s no point in talking about things that can’t be.”
Alexios shook his head. “You sound like my uncle Eugenios.”
“If you’d been through what I’ve been through, you’d sound the same,” Basil said. “I’ve been through things it takes other people a lifetime to experience, if they ever do.”
Alexios fell silent, as did Basil and Kassia. Somehow even Rakhsh seemed annoyed. The horse felt tense below Alexios’s legs.
I guess everyone’s done enough talking for now, Alexios thought.
They rode on, and Alexios’s mind wandered. The main concern at this point was finding enough food for themselves and especially for Rakhsh. Thanks to Alexios’s intermediate knowledge of horse-rearing (as well as uncomfortable conversations with the prickly stableboy Leon, now deceased), he knew that Rakhsh needed about nine pounds of fodder per day, or roughly two percent of his bodyweight. Maybe in the summer Rakhsh could have foraged on his own, but in the winter with snow covering everything there was no food for anyone, not unless they wanted to eat roasted pine cones. All they could rely on were the supply bags Alexios had grabbed moments before fleeing Trebizond.
The lack of towns or cities—the travelers had yet to see a single inhabited house—also meant that it was impossible to trade. In theory they could hunt, but Rakhsh was unable to consume meat. As a result, Alexios had already begun to ration their food. The next morning while they were having breakfast beside the road—or where Alexios believed the road to be—Kassia asked why their portions of food were getting smaller. Alexios showed her the bag which held their loaves of bread.
“How else can I make this last until we get to Melitené?” he said. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Sorry,” she said.
“You didn’t plan for this, Alexios,” Basil said.
“Here we go, everything that ever happened since the dawn of time is my fault,” Alexios said.
Basil mockingly imitated Alexios’s speech.
“Look,” Alexios said. “I did my best. Do you think this was all a mistake? Should I have left you back in Trebizond?”
“We’d be warm,” Kassia said. “And we wouldn’t be hungry.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Alexios said.
“I thought you told us everyone back there was going to be just fine,” Basil said.
“When we free them, yes.” Alexios was already rolling up their blankets and packing their bags. “Until then, things are going to be rough. So we need to get moving. There’s no telling when the Latins will split everyone up. They might sell the city’s entire population into slavery. If that happens…”
“We’ll never see any of them again,” Kassia said.
“So as you can see,” Alexios said, helping her and Basil into the saddle, “there isn’t a moment to lose.”
He urged Rakhsh onward, and they continued their ride to the south.