For two days the Latins searched the city, returning multiple times to scream in Jamshied’s face. Smashing his tools or his finished work or even his body was out of the question—they needed him—but they tore apart his private quarters, stomping about his shop and shrieking, never thinking to check the coal.
Herakleia had been through a lot, but she was still shocked by their anger, and wondered if they used some sort of stimulant to keep up their energy.
The Roman bitch murdered their beloved duke. A satyr slew Hyperion.
Aside from these terrifying moments, the time the three fugitives spent hiding was mostly boring—and miserably cold. It never stopped feeling uncomfortable. To make things worse, Herakleia heard Latins shouting in Gaulish at Trapezuntines out on the street. She felt sorry for her comrades, but told herself that it would all make a difference in the end.
Each moment brings us closer to victory. Even if you destroy us, you can’t destroy our ideas.
The fugitives argued over their plans at night when the doors were locked and all the other candles and torches in the city had gone out. Joseph joined these whispered arguments, asking if they were going to hide in the coal forever. In Herakleia’s more doubtful moments she felt like the coal was just a new kind of prison, and that even if they escaped and lived long happy lives, a part of her would always remain under these charred rocks that coated her skin with grime, just as a part of her was still in the imperial prison.
War, she learned, didn’t just mean sacrificing others. It also meant sacrificing parts of yourself, at the very least. A chunk of her own bleeding flesh would never leave this place.
Yet it was thrilling, during the day, to hear the Latins driving themselves out of their minds as they searched the same spots again and again, their lords practically whipping their backs. Trebizond was small, there was nowhere to go. No ship had left the harbor, no footprints were in the snow, so the murderer must be here—but where?
The fugitives decided to wait until the Latins stopped ransacking the city and harming their slaves. When the time came, Herakleia and her friends could sneak out, find more friends, and smash the Latins again. Then, as soon as the Latins turned around to hit them, the fugitives would smash them somewhere else. They would keep striking and building their strength until the Latins feared to sleep in their own beds. The Latins would sleep with swords under their pillows, guards at their bolted doors, and guards to watch their guards.
The day would dawn when the last barbarian left.
They don’t all need to leave, Herakleia thought. Those willing to work with us can stay. The moment they swear us allegiance is the moment they stop being barbarians, and start being friends.
By the middle of the third day since Robert’s death, Herakleia realized that the Latins didn’t know what to do. Bohemund must have known that it was dishonorable for his father’s killer to remain on the loose—it looked bad for the new duke to begin his reign with such shameful failure. If the situation remained unchanged, Bohemund’s men might leave the city and find more honorable employment, particularly those who had yet to swear him fealty.
Yet Herakleia was impossible to find. How often had the Latins faced a determined enemy who refused to fight in the open? Centuries would pass before the invention of guerrilla warfare—a hard notion to even conceive of without guns or explosives. But the Trapezuntines had constructed some artillery and miniature basiliks, which likewise meant constructing new ideas about how to fight.
Always in Gaul, in Italía, in the Balkans—wherever the Latins fought—the enemy had presented himself in the open. Two sides marched onto a field and fought until one side chased the other away. When one side hid, it was behind castle walls, where they could be sieged, starved out, bargained with. Little deception was involved. Yet in Trebizond the enemy hid under your nose, and kept so close within the defensive walls it was almost as though they were even hiding inside the Latins’ armor suits.
This situation continued until the fourth day since Robert’s death. Then a new kind of commotion arose within the city. Rather than furious or miserable, everyone sounded excited and hopeful. It was midday. In the mornings, the Latins always searched for Herakleia with gusto, shrieking so fiercely it sounded like they were raking blood from the insides of their throats, tearing every last building and room in the city inside-out, and then outside-in, over and over, pushing Romans around, waving swords in their faces, clamping them in irons, cutting blood from their flesh, snapping their finger bones, all to no effect.
But after the midday meal, after filling their bellies with wine and bread and pork, the Latins found it difficult to keep up the energy. Rather than smashing wooden doors to splinters, they contented themselves with pulling them off their hinges and hurling them into the street. Rather than bawling with rage all the time, they merely yelled most of the time. Rather than shoving Romans into the street and kicking their stomachs, they merely pushed, and called the Romans “Greeks” instead of “dogs.”
The Latins were still dangerous, but no knight could keep up such frightful activity forever.
Why even be a knight, if it means you have to work?
But today their tone had changed. Herakleia had started to believe that the Latins were only allowed to be angry, but now they sounded amazed, and they even seemed more energized than usual after the midday meal. Trumpets blasted the air, the first anyone had heard since Robert’s death. The usual smashing stopped, and the Romans, too, went silent, doubtless hiding in their homes, taking advantage of the Latins’ distraction. Even Jamshied’s hammering had ceased.
Then, after a few moments, Herakleia heard people cheering by the wharf. A familiar something permeated the back of her mind, a rage she somehow knew. It felt like a ghost was watching her.
“What is happening?” Ra’isa whispered.
“I was wondering the same thing,” Herakleia whispered back.
“I wish to see,” Ra’isa whispered. “But then they will see me.”
“They’ll recognize me, too,” Herakleia said. “Maybe we should send Joseph, if he wants to go.”
“I’m not leaving,” Joseph said. “I don’t care if the Messiah himself is out there starting the End of Days. I’ve been hiding in a mound of coal for four days—and not for nothing.”
“Suit yourself,” Herakleia said. “I guess we’ll never know what’s going on.”
Jamshied pulled his wheelbarrow into the courtyard and shoveled coal from the ground.
“It is a ship,” he whispered. “The biggest I have ever seen. I never knew men could build ships like this one.”
“What?” Herakleia said.
“It is like a city,” Jamshied said. “A city with sails, oars, and a hull. It is bigger than Tarabizun. Now I must go. If I remain, there will be suspicion. But I will return and tell you more.”
Herakleia groaned as Jamshied left. In the mean time, the cheering which had begun at the wharf was getting closer to the blacksmith’s shop. The heralds had brought their trumpets from the citadel and were blasting them on the street. Men were also chanting one word, but it was hard to make out. At first she assumed it was Latin, until it grew clearer:
“Narses! Narses! Narses!”
She would have slumped and clutched her head if she had been able to move.
The bastard is back, she thought. I had almost forgotten him. I guess I assumed he had died somewhere out on the sea. Maybe our good luck is over.
“What is that sound?” Ra’isa whispered.
“It means we’re in trouble,” Herakleia said.
“Why?” Joseph said.
“Did I ever tell you the story about General Narses?” Herakleia said.
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Ra’isa and Joseph were silent.
“He’s a mass murderer,” Herakleia said. “A war criminal. Stronger and more experienced than Bohemund. He led the first siege against us, then helped the Latins take the city.”
“Is he a Roman?” Ra’isa said. “He has a Roman name.”
“He is,” Herakleia said. “And the Latins must really love him to cheer him like this.”
The parade grew louder as it approached the blacksmith’s shop. The heralds had organized themselves into a kind of wind section, and now they were blasting a triumphant two-note song from their horns: duh-DUH, duh-DUH, duh-DUUUUH! While they played, the Latins kept chanting Narses’s name, stomping their metal boots and clashing their swords until they all worked out a good rhythm, having spontaneously created a symphony, and apparently without a conductor.
Just as Herakleia was about to cover her ears to keep from going deaf, the parade moved on from the blacksmith’s shop. She could hear it passing the church—where the priests and monks were chanting songs of their own, and ringing their handbells. Then the parade entered the citadel gate. Trebizond calmed a little, yet the mood in the street sounded lively. The Latins conversed with one another as friends. For a little while, at least, they gave up on shouting orders and acknowledgments. A few were even laughing.
Some time later, Jamshied returned to shoveling coal in the courtyard.
“The general Narses has captured your friends, strategos,” he whispered. “The Frangistani merchant, and the Zanj. I do not know their names.”
“Gontran,” she said. “Diaresso.”
“The annoying one is also with them,” Jamshied said. “The secretary at all our meetings who thought he was our king.”
“Samonas,” she said. “At least they’re alive…”
“For now,” Jamshied said. “They look bad, strategos. Others have also come with them. People whose manner of clothing I do not recognize.”
“We have to help them,” Herakleia said.
Jamshied laughed quietly. “How did I know you would speak like this? I almost wished not to tell you.”
“Ra’isa and I can sneak into the citadel at night,” Herakleia said. “We’re Zhayedan. We can do this.”
“But if they find you,” Jamshied said, “then all of this hiding will have been for nothing. Then when they catch you, they will torture you, and you will tell them I hid you.”
“You assume too much,” Herakleia said. “I’ve been tortured before. It doesn’t work.”
Jamshied ignored her. “And I will tell them of the others I know, the ones hidden in the city who have weapons, who will fight. You are the queen spider, strategos, and my shop is the center of your web, such as it is. Pull the spider out, and the web is torn apart.”
“We already explained,” Ra’isa said. “We will die before we let them touch us.”
Jamshied crossed his arms. “If we lose you, we will have no leader.”
“The workers can choose another,” Herakleia said.
“That is not so,” Jamshied said. “We are not fools, but we need good leaders, and sometimes they can be hard to find. Where were we before we came to this place, or even heard of it? How much of my life did I spend living in ignorance—until the day I heard the word Tarabizun?”
“Once you see Mazdakism, you can never unsee it, anymore than you can unsee the theories of gravitation or evolution or relativity—”
“I was ignorant once. I can be ignorant again, strategos.”
“These same people risked everything to help me,” Herakleia said. “I have to—”
“The enemy does not throw their leaders away on foolish adventures,” Jamshied said. “They are disorganized otherwise—just look at them now, without their duke! It is foolish for us to break with such basic strategy. You are familiar with shatranj, are you not? If the shah is helpless, the game is over.”
“I’m not the king,” Herakleia said. “The uprising is the king. And all of us are pawns.”
“That is not so,” Jamshied said.
“You’re just worried you’ll be discovered,” Herakleia said.
“How can you tell me this?” Jamshied said. “Sometimes you frustrate me so much, strategos. Every moment you have been here, I have risked my life. And I know that I must sacrifice, if need be, for the greater good. But you, too, must sacrifice your death for the same cause. So long as you live, there is hope of victory. For even now our king on the chess board is one move away from being cornered. Why risk it for a few pawns?”
Herakleia breathed deeply.
“Besides, it is their plan,” Jamshied said. “The barbarians know you are friends with these men. They will use them to draw you out. It is a trap. If they capture you, strategos, you know what they will do to you.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t been through before,” she said with tears in her eyes, shuddering at her memories of the imperial dungeon.
“It is not just that,” Jamshied added. “The uprising could end.”
“No,” she said.
“This Gontran and Diaresso and even Samonas, they are good men,” Jamshied said. “If annoying. They will do their duty.”
“So what are we supposed to do in the mean time?” Herakleia said. “Just let the Latins torture and kill my friends?”
“We must hold on,” Jamshied said. “Wait for the Latins to relax, as they did before. Then we strike.”
The fugitives did not need to wait long. Next morning, a crier walked through the streets, shouting in heavily accented Greek that the ones called Gontran, Diaresso, and Samonas would be executed if Herakleia remained hidden. Hearing these words, she tried to climb out of the coal pile, but Ra’isa held her back, glaring at her. Jamshied’s words had affected them both. Herakleia almost fought Ra’isa off, but then gave in, and sank beneath the cold black rocks, her hands clutched to fists.
Death, she thought. What does it even matter? You live, then you die, and that’s it. One day we’ll all be dead. All of this will be gone, and no one will remember any of it.
Nihilism gave way to hopelessness. Tears came to her eyes, but she was unable to wipe them away.
I’m sorry.
Yet another cold gray miserable day passed. On the sixth day since Robert’s death, Herakleia felt that something in the back of her mind—that ghost—again. It had been pulsating there ever since Narses’s arrival, like a dull toothache, sometimes stronger, sometimes fainter, and she had been doing her best to ignore it. Now the pain was almost unbearable. It must have been Narses himself. He was coming for her—draining his farr to search for her. Doing so made it likewise easier for her to feel him, especially with her Beginner Telepath skill. It was like he was waving a torch in the darkness, and he was getting closer.
“I have to go,” she said.
“What?” Ra’isa said.
“Narses is coming,” Herakleia said. “I have to draw him away before he finds this place. He’ll kill all of you.”
“Strategos—”
“You know what to do, Ra’isa,” Herakleia said. “Jamshied was wrong. The uprising has so many good people who would make great leaders—and you’re one of them.”
“Strategos, don’t go,” Joseph said.
“Do as Ra’isa and Jamshied tell you,” Herakleia said. “If they kill me, don’t let my death be in vain.”
Without waiting for their response, Herakleia climbed out of the coal pile. She was about to run through the blacksmith’s shop and make a break for the suburbs and the Satala Road, but the something was so overpowering, she could barely stand.
He must be right outside.
As Ra’isa and Joseph pleaded with her to stay—their voices whispers—Herakleia turned in the other direction, to the courtyard walls. These were cold, icy, covered in snow. Yet she had 5/100 farr points left, and the gladius and tantō Jamshied had given her were still tucked at her side. Their hilts had been digging into her gut for days.
Let’s see, Narses, if you still know how to run.
Burning through one point of farr, Herakleia leaped onto the top of the wall. It was strange to see Trebizond again—strange to see something other than stones or darkness. She could see the hospital, Gabras’s mansion, the walls, even the citadel—Trebizond, the city at the world’s end. At the wharf, too, was the ship Jamshied had described, a breathtaking sight. For a moment she stared at it, this object that would have been spectacular enough, had it been only a dream.
Descending into the next courtyard, she leaped up once more, crunching through snow, the chill wind whipping past the mink coat she had stolen from Robert—ruined, now, thanks to days of rubbing coal.
Had the miners never mined it, I’d be dead.
Leaping over another wall, she landed in the Lower Town’s streets. These were deserted, and looked worse than ever. All the doors and windows were broken, all the buildings were charred, and in addition to the shit and piss the Latins had brought with them from their filthy homeland, there was now dried blood slathered everywhere. It was horrible.
In the distance she could see the open gate to the Upper Town, which looked no different, save for the fact that a man in black armor was sitting atop a horse in the middle of the street, flanked by Latin knights on either side.
Narses.
She locked eyes with him. The anger in her mind almost suffocated her, but she fought it off, turned, and ran. Most of her farr was gone, but she poured her last two points into her legs, arms, and chest so that she sprinted at an astonishing speed out the Northeast Gate, through the burned ruins of the Daphnous suburbs, and past her fellow Romans—so haggard and tired they had no time to look at her, though she recognized her friends from the mines Ghiyath, Masud, and Hagop, all together again, shuffling in the cold.
As the three horses thundered behind her, getting closer, she swung away from the sea and made for the south, gasping as she climbed Mount Minthrion. If she could just reach the Pontic Mountains, she might be able to escape. The horses would have trouble following her, and Narses—weighed down with armor—would have to chase her on foot. South was where Alexios was, and maybe she could find him again—
Something huge and heavy knocked her down. She slammed onto the ground and gaped there, the air pressed from her lungs, still trying to turn over and draw her gladius. But the knights—Chlotar of Metz and Hilduin Venator—were already on top of her. One held down each arm as Narses dismounted from his horse and approached. Touching Herakleia, he drained her farr away.