“I think it’s controversial for me to do this,” Alexios said. “I know so little about it. We don’t have an academy or anything like that, and I only learned with my teacher for a few days. All I’ve got is that little knowledge, a book, and some experience.”

“Alright,” Basil said.

“Becoming a Zhayedan warrior is a big deal,” Alexios said. “I feel like in the past, maybe when we were more organized, when we weren’t even called ‘Zhayedan,’ it must have been a decision people made when they were older—five or ten years older than you two, at least.”

“Are you saying we aren’t old enough to make up our own minds?” Basil said.

“If your parents were around, I would want their permission,” Alexios said. “But they aren’t, and your mother asked me to take care of you, so here we are.”

“But what makes becoming a ‘Zhayedan’ so serious?” Kassia said.

“I don’t know if you can leave once I initiate you,” Alexios said. “You have to assume that once you’re in, you’re in.”

“Why is that a problem?” she said.

“I’ll give you a little of my farr,” Alexios said. “Once I do that, you’ll need to keep cultivating it in yourself and the people around you. Don’t let the farr fade. Otherwise I don’t know what will happen. You may die.”

“How do we ‘cultivate’ it?” Basil said.

“By helping the exploited,” Alexios said. “By working alongside them toward universal human liberation. That’s what creates the farr and makes it grow. In the past, before exploitation, when all humanity lived in the wild, there was no private property. People could only ‘own’ what they carried. For almost all the time humans have been on Earth, that’s the way things have been. We’ve just been bands of wanderers.”

“How can you know that?” Basil said.

“Hundreds of years of scientific research,” Alexios said. “Mountains of evidence. Entire libraries packed with books. That’s how. Nobody even denies it, where I come from. There’s a small group of nuts who insist that the world is five thousand years old, and then there’s everyone else. Either they don’t know about it, or they know but they don’t care. Then, finally, there’s a small group of us which knows and talks about it constantly.”

“And you can’t show me any of this evidence now,” Basil said.

“‘I am human; nothing human is alien to me,’” Alexios said. “Since almost all of that research has yet to be undertaken, you just have to take my word for it—and also trust yourself. Trust your complete lack of interest in harming anyone or stealing from anyone except out of desperation. Trust your strong sense of fairness. Trust your curiosity. This is the way the vast majority of human beings have always behaved.”

“Alright,” Basil said.

“So in the old world,” Alexios said, “where a tiny ruling class extracts a surplus from the world’s workers—it seems like things have always been like this, but this situation is actually an aberration. In the past, psychopaths—if they even existed at all—were limited by what they could physically carry. Today in Romanía and Tourkía they are limited by their bellies, as I told you earlier. In the future—if we don’t stop them—there will be no limits to their bizarre and unnatural greed. The farr is a powerful antidote to this disease. When the exploited classes work together, there’s nothing we can’t change.”

“You keep talking about history and philosophy,” Basil said. “I mean, practically, how do we cultivate this farr?”

“I’m cultivating it right now,” Alexios said. “By talking with workers, peasants, women, children, students, and radicalizing them against the system that exploits them. Joining hands with them and risking your neck to fight for freedom—nothing is more exciting, rewarding, or meaningful. But once I give you the farr, you will need to give it to others. You cannot sit idly by while others take risks and do the real work of the uprising. If you think you alone can change the world without involving yourself in social movements, the farr will transform you from exploited to exploiter, from victim to vampire—a living death. If you think you can do anything alone, all by yourself, like a superhero, your farr will fade.”

“But if this energy is so strong,” Kassia said, “why are people like the Romans still in control?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Alexios said. “How can such a tiny minority exploit such a vast majority for such a long time?”

“Right,” Kassia said. “So answer it.”

“There are many ways for the Romans and other oppressors to organize against us,” Alexios said. “Don’t let the workers have weapons. Don’t let them learn to read, because then they can read books like our manual. Don’t let them have an education—a radical dialectical materialist education like the one I’m giving you now. Don’t give them a chance to organize. Keep them separated and isolated. Make them compete with each other for scraps. Distract them. Terrify them. Bribe them. Abuse them. Trick them. Kill, imprison, exile, or co-opt anyone who steps out of line. Provide a safety valve—like the idea that if you just work smarter and harder, you can be rich and free—if you just believe hard enough. Or there’s the idea of a heavenly afterlife where everyone will be free and equal so long as you do what you’re told here on Earth.”

“So you are an unbeliever, then,” Basil said.

“I don’t care what people believe as long as they help us,” Alexios said. “Now, to continue. The ruling class has so many options. There are so many things they can do. In many ways, it’s much easier for them than for us. They see the system more clearly, and know that they must maintain ideological control—in the Middle Ages, mostly through priests—to make it difficult for the workers to see as clearly as the ruling class does. All of us want to escape, and so the ruling class takes advantage of that by providing cheaper, easier escapes—churches, theater, festivals—rather than the real thing. They also maintain physical control via small groups of heavily armed and well-trained soldiers. As for us, we have many challenges. Our strength lies in our numbers, but organizing those numbers takes a great deal of work—which is especially hard because we ourselves also need to work in order to survive. It’s exhausting for us, while the rich can relax on their couches and order their running dogs to take care of everything.”

“You make the situation sound hopeless,” Kassia said.

“No,” Alexios said. “It’s not hopeless at all. Telling people it’s hopeless is just doing the ruling class’s work for them. The system that has given them wealth and power is ultimately predicated on infinite growth, which is unsustainable. Rome reached the limits of her growth, and so she collapsed in the west. Feudalism, too, will one day reach the same limit, as will the economic system in the old world. As workers grow stronger and more knowledgeable and aggressive, the exploitative classes grow weaker and more ignorant and passive. Change is inevitable.”

“But if the Zhayedan are so powerful,” Kassia said, “how come there aren’t more of them?”

“The word means ‘immortal’ in the Persian language,” Alexios said. “At least I think it does. A man named Mazdak is one of our teachers, but his ideas aren’t so different from many other great thinkers who have conducted the same scientific analyses and reached the same conclusions. We’re called immortals, but only because of our ideas, not our bodies, which are just as malleable as anyone else’s.”

“That’s a disappointment,” Kassia said.

“Exploitative societies,” Alexios said, “exploitative modes of production—they generate ideas like Mazdakism because exploitative societies are fundamentally unfair, so even if you capture and kill every Zhayedan, their sparks continue to spread and blaze up into fires. Deep down, everyone knows that things don’t need to be this way—that all of us were once free, and because this was true in the past, it can also be true in the future.”

“So you keep telling us,” Basil said.

“Nonetheless,” Alexios said, “the power of the Romans and people like them all over the world is still strong. The power of bribery is strong, too. Why believe in a far-off revolution, for instance, when you can take some money right now? Thus does the tiny minority raise up vast armies—and their foot soldiers can even come from poor backgrounds. These are people who should be our comrades, yet they betray us.”

“Why?” Kassia said.

“It is often easier to accept this state of affairs as normal and natural,” Alexios said, “and to look at revolutionaries as deviants, kooks, trouble-makers. Despite all the power the farr gives you—the greatest being a scientific understanding of the way human societies work—it’s still a hard life. I mean, look at me. Look at what I have—nothing except a sword, some clothes, a little money, and you two. That’s it. In lots of ways I’m not very different from a wandering holy fool. But I know how the world works. I know how to use dialectical materialism to solve problems and answer questions which are beyond the grasp of most educated people—why are prices rising, why are wars happening, why are diseases spreading, why don’t more people rise up? It’s all linked together. I know all these things, and I also know how to fight with a sword—and how to train others to do the same. I was confused, angry, and frustrated before because I didn’t understand why no matter how hard I worked and no matter how intelligently I worked, I couldn’t get ahead. Now I understand why.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Maybe you’re just jealous,” Basil said.

“I’m a sign that the system is failing,” Alexios said. “If the system is producing lots of people like me, that means that it’s in trouble. If the system provided for my material wellbeing and made me happy, why would I ever question it? But it doesn’t provide for me. In its death throes it has maimed and killed the people I care about the most. Even people who come from relatively wealthy and privileged backgrounds are being cannibalized by an even tinier, wealthier, and more privileged minority because the system has nowhere else to go and nothing else to feed upon. It is cornered, exhausted, afraid, and lashing out desperately in all directions. Now the time is ripe for all of us to join together to bring this monster down for good.”

Alexios opened his hands to Kassia and Basil.

“Will you join me?” Alexios said. “Will you become Zhayedan warriors? I’ve told you that this path isn’t easy. It’s full of problems and frustrations. But if God himself gave me the chance to go back, to be ‘normal,’ I would never accept. I would never have it any other way.”

Kassia and Basil looked at each other. Then they gave Alexios their hands.

Alexios closed his eyes and squeezed their hands. The little farr he possessed moved through his flesh and into theirs—two farr points for each child, leaving Alexios with just one. But this had the contradictory effect of increasing his own farr up to 10/100.

The more you share it, the more it grows, he thought. That which you give away, you keep forever. That which you keep, you lose.

The children let go and looked at their hands. Something was flashing in their eyes. Then they ran—slightly faster than most people ever could have run—while leaping from the bigger boulders and soaring through the air, laughing as they chased each other. At one point Kassia threw a rock at Basil, who slashed it to dust with his knife.

“Don’t use up your energy all at once,” Alexios said. “Remember what happened to me?”

Basil and Kassia ignored him. Within minutes the children were drenched in sweat and lying on the ground, gasping for breath and staring at the sky.

Maybe this is why we don’t train children, he thought.

“Come on, guys,” Alexios said. “I can’t carry you back to the caravanserai.”

“Then just carry me,” Kassia said.

“I’m going to give you a little more energy,” Alexios said. “But we have to use it to get back, alright?”

The children agreed. He gave them each two more farr points, leaving him with 6/100, and then together they returned to the caravanserai in the evening just before the gates were locked. For the entire walk Kassia and Basil spoke with a lively energy that was unusual for most medieval children, who were often too tired from working all the time to act this way. The three of them even sparred a little with their blades, and Alexios was shocked at how well the children fought, thinking to himself that most adults would have trouble defending themselves from these little monsters.

It’s amazing what some farr can do, he thought.

When they got back to their room, Kassia and Basil were ravenous. This time Alexios avoided the tavern and grabbed dinner straight from the kitchen. The children gorged themselves in their room, guzzled water as elephants would have, and then passed out, leaving Alexios to clean up their mess and put them into their beds.

Still have a thing or two to learn, he thought, watching them sleep. But they did a good job. They learn quickly. I don’t know if I would ever want to fight them…

Just as he was sitting down to eat and relax by himself—a rare luxury when caring for children on your own—someone knocked at his door. Grumbling about how it was impossible to have any alone time, Alexios thought it might be Miriai the laundress to blabber endlessly about the World of Light again, but when he opened the door he found someone unexpected. He was an Axumite in a white robe. Notably, the man had a crucifix tattooed on his forehead above his handsome, regular, almost geometric face. Alexios recognized him from the brawl the night before.

“Blessings be upon you,” the Axumite said in Roman, bowing and clasping his hands together.

“Hi,” Alexios said. “I’m sorry—I never got a chance to thank you for helping us last night—for saving our lives. Would you like to come in?”

“I would,” the man answered. “Along with my companion.”

Alexios bowed and stepped aside. The Axumite walked in and sat before the food. All of his movements seemed to be part of a fluid dance, while his companion—who had been standing in the dark hallway out of view, and whose face was veiled—walked in the refined, straight-backed fashion of royalty, like a tiger in human form. The companion carried nothing, while the Axumite wore a heavy pack and used a walking stick of gleaming wood shaped like the Greek letter tau.

Alexios sat with them. “Have you eaten?”

“We have not,” the Axumite said. “May we partake of this bountiful feast?”

“Please,” Alexios said.

The Axumite closed his eyes, lowered his head, and murmured a prayer in a language unknown to Alexios. His companion did the same. Then with their right hands they ate. The Axumite did so in a relaxed and even uncouth open-mouthed manner. His companion—she turned out to be a woman, when she unveiled her face, one with blue glassy eyes which contrasted strongly with the pure blackness of her skin, and her great mass of curly black hair—she chewed quietly with her mouth shut, taking only tiny bites, somehow never dirtying her fingers.

Alexios stared at them.

“I am Deacon Dawit Tewodros Za-Ilmaknun,” the Axumite said. “We hail from Aethiopia, the first country mentioned in the Holy Bible, though you Romans often call it Axum. This is my acolyte, Isato of Zagwe.”

Keeping her blue eyes averted, Isato nodded to Alexios, who bowed once more.

Andromeda, he thought, seeing her face wreathed in stars.

“My name’s Alexios Leandros,” Alexios said. “Kentarch of the Workers’ Army of Trebizond. The children, who are sleeping now and quite tired, are named Basil and Kassia.”

“We shall endeavor to leave undisturbed the little ones,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “Although it seems they sleep so soundly, they would not wake even if a battle were raging right outside this very door! You have worked these poor ones to the bone today, Kentarch Alexios!”

“You can just call me Alexios. And yes, we all worked hard today. I was trying to teach them some self-defense, ideological and physical.”

“Is that so?” Za-Ilmaknun said. “Yes, travel can be most dangerous, as we full well know, for we have come a long way from our own homeland, across deserts and seas, the dunes of Nubia and the waves of the Mare Erythraeum, even fighting the Blemmyes of Punt and the headless men whose faces lie within their chests. We purpose to Rome to purge our sins, having left Holy Jerusalem only one month prior to our arrival in this place, visiting many shrines along the way.”

“You mean you’re headed to Konstantinopolis?” Alexios said. “Sorry to say, but the only purging you’re going to find there is the purging of political opponents. But there’s also plenty of sin to go around.”

“You sound like not a Christian,” Za-Ilmaknun said.

Alexios shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

“Very well,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “There are many paths to god. One cannot survive in the Holy Land if one judges—else I should have to strike every person I meet with my mequamia!” He gestured to his walking stick, painted with colorful stripes, which he had leaned against the wall. “In this region of the world so many people profess so many different faiths, many I had never even heard of before our coming here.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” Alexios said.

“May I ask your purpose in this place?” Za-Ilmaknun said. “We don’t often see travelers with children, unless they be traders in slaves.”

Alexios laughed. “I’m actually rescuing them from slave-traders—and you did the same when you helped us last night. We come from a land where slave traders are killed on sight.”

“Then it is a blessed land,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “This Trebizond of yours. I am sorry to tell you that it lies beyond my knowledge. I think I have heard of it, but that is all.”

“Not a problem,” Alexios said. “It’s about two weeks’ travel to the north, in the Pontic region of Rome. Axum, for me, is mostly a land of myth and legend, so I think we’re even, more or less. Now, to answer your question about our purpose here. We’re looking for Sabians. They worship a god named Hermes Trismegistos and supposedly live not far from this caravanserai.”

“Sabians?” Za-Ilmaknun said. “Apologies, but we know nothing of such things. Why, may I ask, are you in search of these obscure people?”

Alexios sighed. “There’s a lot of trouble in Trebizond, and we’re looking for help.”

Za-Ilmaknun turned to Isato. “Indeed. As a matter of fact, we have not just come to your room to take advantage of your hospitality, for while on pilgrimage we are obliged to render assistance to those in need. We therefore wish to discuss a pressing issue—your attacker.”

“Barsúmes, you mean?”

“Is that his name?” Za-Ilmaknun said.

“We call him the devil,” Isato said. “And the devil only.”

Alexios was shocked by her voice’s singsong beauty, and found himself wishing that she spoke more often. Then he felt that he was betraying Herakleia, and told himself to stop thinking that way.

“When we drove out the devil from the caravanserai the night before,” Za-Ilmaknun said, “we did not kill him, for even devils have a right to live, and such an unholy act would sully with bloodlust our sacred journey. Yet because of our mercy, which may have been a mistake, we have heard that he is now in the nearby village of Pirin. There he tells the people that much money can be earned from capturing the three of you. He says that Caesar will exchange three golden talents for your three bodies so long as your hearts continue to beat within your chests.”

“Oddly poetic of him,” Alexios said. “In a horrible way.”

“Ah, I embellished his declarations.” Za-Ilmaknun bowed. “There was no poetry in them—only basic everyday practical stuff. I did my best to pierce his thoughts with verbal jewelry. It’s one of my responsibilities as a debtera—an ordained deacon, a mendicant witch doctor.”

“Oh,” Alexios said.

Isato cleared her throat. “This devil Barsúmes seeks to enlist warriors to help him. Handsomely he will pay anyone who can hold a sword. We thought you should be informed.”

“Once he has gathered a large enough force,” Za-Ilmaknun said, “he will attack the caravanserai and capture the three of you.”

“And if you flee, he will follow,” Isato said. “To the ends of the Earth.”

“So you can’t kill him yourself,” Alexios said. “You’re just telling me that’s what I have to do.”

“Violence we avoid as much as possible.” Za-Ilmaknun glanced at Isato. “We merely present the facts. You may draw your own conclusions.”

Evening had descended, in the mean time, and the orange-pink sky flared through the window. Unable to think of what to do, exhausted from his long day of teaching Kassia and Basil, Alexios lost himself for a moment contemplating the colors.

Just then, someone shouted outside, and his voice rose above the murmuring in the courtyard and the braying donkeys and camels. It was Barsúmes. He was outside the locked gate, and demanding that the caravanserai turn over Alexios and his two child companions.

“Speak of the devil,” Alexios said.