The folly of mankind, Narses thought as he stood from Herakleia’s filthy, trembling body. The seed of our downfall.

For months he had longed to destroy this woman, particularly after that enchantress Zoë Karbonopsina—Herakleia’s sister—had seduced him during his wanderings across Anatolia. Even now, Zoë’s soul struggled to free herself from her prison in his heart, while he digested her life energies, her pneuma flowing like glimmering veins of gold in his arteries.

Yet if His Majesty learned that Narses had hurt Herakleia, he would finish his days tied to a stake, with flames roasting him like a stuck boar as he shrieked his life away, the smoke heavy with the odor of his cooking flesh choking him as it poured into the sky.

Narses could only take Herakleia’s farr, as a security precaution. He needed to leave her life energy alone. For now.

As he rode back to the citadel with his new prisoner roped to his saddle and struggling to keep up behind him on foot, Narses decided to manufacture her death. Once he had gotten what he needed from her, he would let her escape, and then have her shot with an arrow. None would learn what had transpired here. The two nameless barbarians who had helped apprehend her would also have to go.

Narses urged his courser to move faster, and Herakleia fell onto the filthy street and cried out. After dragging her a little, he stopped his horse and turned.

“For so many months you ran so fast from me,” he said. “Yet now your legs weigh you down.”

“Someone will stop you,” she growled as she struggled to her feet.

“But not you,” Narses said.

Trebizond’s wretched suburbs were quiet as Narses atop his courser cantered back inside the city walls, but the Latins he encountered as he ascended toward the citadel clapped and cheered when they saw that he had captured Herakleia. They shouted insults at her in their barbaric language, and some even spat or hurled whatever was at hand; he asked them to stop when a rock struck her chest. Yet they were already calling him notre bon grec, “our good Greek,” or notre homme, “our man,” which angered him.

I don’t do it for them, he thought. I do it for me.

Sailing the city ship called Kitezh to Trebizond had been difficult, and its crew had needed a little convincing before they manned the oars—Narses had threatened their families—but he had returned here with many prominent fugitives in chains. The subsequent news of the Latin leader Robert’s assassination had amused Narses, as had the successor’s failure to apprehend his father’s murderer. It came as no surprise that this Latin scum, puffed up on so many airs, had failed to progress without Narses. He himself was getting closer to his goal now that he had captured Herakleia.

Soon the last embers of the uprising will be snuffed out forever, he thought. All the fugitive leaders will be in our hands. Then His Majesty and I will restore the glory of Rome. We will make the Turks wish they had never come here. Once we have driven them back to the steppe, we will turn our attention to the lost provinces in the west. We will out-Justinian Justinian.

Narses nonetheless admitted that things had been difficult lately. As he looked back at Herakleia—stumbling behind him—he realized that these troubles had all started in the summer, in Troas when they had first captured her as she was returning from Sera. Not long afterward the criminals had freed her from the Great Palace and escaped in Rome’s best ship, murdering hundreds of his brother soldiers along the way, forcing him to give chase by land across almost all Anatolia—until he reached the backwater city of Trebizond, two weeks’ hard riding along broken roads from Konstantinopolis. Then the criminals had gotten lucky, and destroyed his besieging force.

Narses had barely escaped. The boy Romanos—how Narses longed to see that traitor again—was the only other survivor, save the conniving eunuch Paul. Then Narses had started working for these Latin wretches, doubting that he would ever win glory again.

Yet now the situation was improving.

He only needed to find the last criminal—Alexios. Herakleia would know where he was—or if he even still lived. Regardless, once Alexios was either dead or in Narses’s hands, his work in Anatolia would be finished. Narses would stand, yet again, on the broken backs of everyone who had questioned him. By the time he returned to Konstantinopolis, a year would have passed since His Majesty had sent him away.

Inside the citadel walls Narses dismounted, gave his courser’s reins to a slave boy, and dragged Herakleia inside by the rope wrapped around her wrists. He found the young duke Bohemund sitting in the dreary banqueting hall.

(Narses, as a man born and raised in the greatest city on Earth, thought all Trebizond third-rate. Even Nikaia was nicer.)

The woman named Sikelgaita was sitting beside Bohemund, her figure darkened by black mourning clothes, her eyes hollowed by sadness. Narses thought that was the real tragedy here, that Sikelgaita was no longer free to show the world her beauty. He had wondered repeatedly how long the Latins mourned. Years might pass before the poor woman could smile without fearing castigation from some priest.

I will free you from this darkness, Narses thought. You can no more hide behind these robes than the sun can hide behind the clouds.

Narses disliked most women, but Sikelgaita was different. There was just something about her. And now that Robert was gone, she was available.

When Narses entered the banqueting hall with Herakleia, both Bohemund and Sikelgaita looked up from the cups of wine that they had seemingly been nursing for days. Their expressions changed from sadness, boredom, and weariness to anger. Bohemund bolted from his seat—knocking it to the floor—and charged Herakleia, screaming as he swung his enormous sword through the air. Narses knew this was all for show, however—all for the benefit of the watching guards, who would tell the whole city how the young duke had nobly avenged his father—so it took little effort to restrain Bohemund, even as Herakleia cowered behind Narses.

Sikelgaita was next, pulling a dagger from her belt and stabbing at Herakleia. Narses held Sikelgaita back.

“We must let her live, your graces,” Narses said, blocking Bohemund with one hand and Sikelgaita with the other. “She knows where the criminals are.”

“What does it matter?” Bohemund said. “She killed my father!”

“Your father, the murderer,” Herakleia said, standing to her full height.

“I will silence her,” Narses said, speaking before Bohemund or Sikelgaita could respond. “Don’t worry. She will speak to me, and then she will be silenced forever, lest she ensnare anyone else in her spells—as she did your father, may God rest his soul. I warned him, but he would not listen. Will you make the same mistake, your grace?”

Before Bohemund could answer, Narses pulled Herakleia back into the hallway. As Narses left, he saw Bohemund drop his sword and fall into a nearby chair, where he cried like a child. Sikelgaita hugged him and cried into his shoulder.

“A popular lady you are,” Narses said as he pulled Herakleia along the cold dark corridors, following the two Latin guards. “It’s no surprise you tricked half the country into turning against their rightful leaders.”

“It was no trick,” Herakleia said. “You have no idea how angry people are.”

Narses turned to face her. “Angry? Listen now, princess. Do they sound angry to you?”

In the citadel’s silence—the Latin guards had also paused—it was easy to hear cheering in the streets outside.

“Of course the Latins are happy you captured me,” Herakleia said. “How many Romans are cheering you?”

Narses raised his right hand into the air. “I am.”

“Good for you.” Herakleia narrowed her eyes. She had noticed the B-shaped scar on his arm. This was exposed, now, as his sleeve had fallen when he had raised it.

“You’re one of us,” she said, glancing down to the identical scar on her own arm. “You’re—what was his name? The jock, Boucher. It must be you.”

“What does it matter?” Narses followed the Latin guards up the stairs. “Only a little of him remains. Here in Romanía, I am Narses. Which one were you? That Asian bitch?”

“I was Darius,” she said.

Narses laughed. “The n—?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Herakleia said. “We all knew you were into Nazi shit. Everyone thought you were going to be the one to do a mass shooting. Narses the Nazi.”

“Now you can see, all I needed was a new beginning. The weaklings in charge of that place, they’re nothing like Romans. They aren’t as strong.”

“You don’t even talk like him anymore. That guy was barely verbal. But you…you sound like…”

“A Roman?” Narses said. “What else could I be, except what I am?”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The two Latin guards brought them to her room. Narses thanked them in carefully accented Gaulish—an annoyance—and then dismissed them, though the guards had already departed without bowing.

“They treat you like garbage,” Herakleia said. “Yet you still play fetch for the scraps they toss you from their feasts.”

Narses shut the door. He looked around Herakleia’s room, then sat by the table, gesturing for her to sit on her bed. She remained standing.

“All I wish to know is what happened to your friend Alexios,” Narses said. “Tell me, and I will leave.”

She crossed her arms and looked out the window.

“We can do this the easy way,” Narses said. “Or we can do it the hard way.”

“Your language consists only of clichés,” Herakleia said. “It betrays a lack of culture.”

Narses smiled. “What has all your culture led to except this? None of your books or teachers helped you escape me. As it turned out, I was faster, stronger, better.”

“Whatever you do to me, my friends will make you pay.”

“We could bring about this payment faster if you told me where they were. Then I could find them.”

“With your army of lowlifes?” Herakleia scoffed. “You could never beat Alexios one-on-one. Like a coward you hide behind your uniform and your lackeys.”

“That is not so, princess. I defeated you by myself, did I not?”

She stepped toward him. “Care for a rematch?”

He laughed. “You know, it’s so nice seeing you here. You have no idea how much trouble you put me through. And to be sure, I will never let you leave this place. You will never escape justice again.”

“I may be good at getting captured, but I’m even better at escaping.”

“We shall see.” Narses stood and backed her against the wall. “Now tell me, princess. Shall I find Paul the Chain, your old friend, that he might join us? He’s somewhere in the palace right now.”

She was silent.

“I will not ask again.”

A tear came to her eye, and she wiped it away, then looked down. “Alexios left months ago. He went to Sera to find allies.”

“Sera?” Narses snorted. “Impossible. Too distant. A fool’s errand. It would take him at least a year to come back. And why would he have left at all? Things were going so well for this place, weren’t they?”

“We knew the Romans would come back.”

“I do not believe you.”

“If you already knew the answer, why did you ask?”

This woman disgusted Narses, but he forced himself against her. “I am close, princess. Tell me the truth.”

“I’ve told you all I know. You promised you would leave.”

“Who would honor a promise given to a traitor?”

Herakleia struggled against him, but it was easy to hold her down. He was much stronger, and he still had plenty of farr.

Yet he stopped. It was a wasted effort. Narses could torture her every day for a year, and still she would keep silent. He needed to find another way to make her talk. Paul had already hurt her back in the Great Palace, and His Majesty had locked her in the pit for days, to the point where she was inured to her own suffering. At best, torturing her would only lead to false information. What made her lose control was the suffering of others.

The prisoners, he thought.

“I just remembered.” He stepped back. “When we took Kitezh, we found some of your friends. We paraded them through the city, then brought them back to the ship. Would you like to see them?”

She looked at Narses. “The crier said you would execute them.”

“They live. Perhaps we could meet them together.”

He brought her out of the citadel. They mounted a courser together, though her wrists were still bound. Narses had eschewed dragging her through the street again because he needed to move quickly. For all he knew, this Alexios could have raised an army, and they could even be marching back to Trebizond right now. Turks, in particular, were always a concern.

Narses kicked his horse’s sides, and the beast galloped along the streets to the harbor so fast that the people walking there barely moved out of the way in time. When they turned to see who was flying through the crowded city, Narses and Herakleia were already gone.

They dismounted at the wharf. Kitezh was the only vessel Narses had encountered which was too big to be moored to a deepwater dock. Instead, anchor needed to be dropped some distance away in even deeper waters. It was slow, annoying, and inconvenient to take a rowboat there—Narses liked everything done quickly—but Herakleia was too awed by Kitezh to notice.

As soon as their oarsmen had brought them to the city-ship’s dock, Narses pulled Herakleia along the streets, which were as quiet, now, as Trebizond’s suburbs. They encountered no one save a few babushkas shuffling about. In the ridiculously designed structure which the Kitezhi, in their ogreish tongue, called the Cremelena, Narses passed more Latin guards, who were keeping watch over the various rooms here in which the city-ship’s leaders were locked. Prisons or jails of any kind were hard to come by in the eleventh century, especially those on a scale which Narses required, which meant that the conquerors of both Kitezh and Trebizond found themselves with more prisoners than they knew what to do with. Narses would have liked to construct some kind of holding area away from the city to keep the dangerous barbarians separate from the more cooperative ones, but he would have needed to build walls of stone to hem them in—barbed wire being but a dream—and at the moment the necessary resources were simply unavailable. And so with Kitezh, he confined the more dangerous prisoners to their quarters. Killing them was out of the question due to the labor shortage. Sedko Sitinits, their leader, was living almost as luxuriously as before Narses’s arrival, and even in the company of his wife, who for some reason was called Vasilissa the Wise.

More like Vasilissa the Stupid, Narses thought.

He longed to punish them for daring to question His Majesty, but keeping them in their quarters in the Cremelena was the best he could do.

Never know when you might need them.

In one guest room, however, Narses had locked more important prisoners—a Latin, an Aethiop, and a Sarakenos. At first, like Herakleia, they had refused to even tell their names, and under Paul’s torture they had revealed nothing but useless contradictory nonsense. Only when Narses offered clemency to the less-important people aboard Kitezh in exchange for information from his three important prisoners did they begin to cooperate.

The first was a Latin named Gontran Koraki, one who owed money to every gangster in Romanía. He also called himself the katapan of the Paralos, a stolen dromon which was now back in imperial hands, all thanks to Narses. In Gontran’s drunken foolishness, he had joined the Trapezuntine criminals—even fighting in the first siege and wounding Narses with a newfangled Seran contraption. He still carried it, too.

Then there was the burnt-face Aethiop named Kambine Diaresso, who tailed this Gontran, Narses thought—with some amusement—like his shadow.

As for the Sarakenos, he was named Samonas, and had endured torture with cowardice, blubbering like a girl at the sight of the heated knife Paul had plunged inside him.

“You removed your testicles,” Narses told Samonas. “I will remove whatever remains of your genitals.”

These three criminals endangered Rome, and Narses intended to return them to Konstantinopolis to face justice. No punishment was too severe for their crimes. They would be paraded along the Mese before their execution in the Hippodrome, to the delight of His Majesty and the populace, ever thirsty for the blood of Rome’s enemies.

Narses could still hear their cheers. “Blood! Blood! Blood!”

Someone will die in the Hippodrome, he thought. Either them, or me.

There was also a life-sized bronze statue of a woman in the room. She was of a level of craftsmanship which impressed Narses. From a distance, the statue might have looked like a real person. When Narses had first come to this room, he had drawn his sword in fright; the eunuch Samonas, who evidently possessed some technical know-how, had just finished assembling her.

Now the prisoners were unable to hide their excitement at seeing one another again. Gontran and Samonas, in particular, shouted Herakleia’s name and hugged her, while Diaresso followed. As they all asked each other how they were doing, Narses thought that he would let them marinate for a little in their happiness. It would be that much more painful when he took it away.

“Princess,” Narses said, when he could wait no longer.

The conversation and laughter stopped, and all the criminals looked at him. Samonas even gasped with fright. They had almost forgotten him.

“What do you want?” Herakleia said.

Narses stepped forward and, with one hand, lifted the trembling, whimpering Samonas into the air by his neck. Gontran and Diaresso lunged toward Narses, but he was so strong that it only took one hand to push them both away. His stamina declined slightly.

“You have already wasted enough time,” Narses said to Herakleia. “Where is Alexios?”

Gontran and Diaresso looked at her as Samonas choked in Narses’s iron grip.

“This pathetic eunuch of yours will not last, princess,” Narses said.

“Tell him nothing!” Samonas gasped.

His friends were silent, even as the eunuch was moments from death. Yet this would achieve nothing. Narses needed the knowledge locked inside the eunuch’s mind.

Frustrated, Narses threw him against the wall. Samonas lay on the floor and turned away, clutching his neck, his chest rising and falling.

Pathetic.

Narses turned back to his prisoners.

“Alexios could not have gone east,” he said. “It’s too far. Nor could he have gone north—since then he would be with you.” He nodded to Gontran. “To go west makes no sense. It leads only to danger. To me. To His Majesty. Therefore…”

He watched the prisoners’ reactions, but all struggled to wear stone expressions over their faces.

“He went south,” Narses said. “He’s looking for allies—even among the Sarakenoi, since he has no honor, no faith.”

The prisoners were silent.

Narses left the room and watched the Latin guard outside lock it. Wrapped in thought, Narses saw, felt, heard, tasted, smelled—experienced—almost nothing as he walked out of the Cremelena, paced the streets of Kitezh, and had himself rowed back to Trebizond.

We must send riders south, he thought. Re-establish contact with Konstantinopolis so His Majesty can treat with the Sarakenoi. Offer bounties. Whatever they desire. Even land. I’ll need Bohemund’s permission. But the youth seems pliant enough—

Narses was interrupted, as he stepped off his rowboat and onto Trebizond’s docks, by the sight of a mob of lawless rioters looting the suburbs. They were Trapezuntines. The Latins had locked them out of the inner city. He paused to watch.

Typical of Herakleia’s underlings, he thought. Destroying their own homes. Stirred up by the Rus, no doubt.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands were shouting, running, smashing whatever they could get their hands on. A large group was even pounding on the Northeast Gate. Guards on the walls brandished bows and arrows, but refrained from shooting.

I would kill them all if I could, Narses thought. I would drink their energy, thirsty as a fish. But then who would do the farming and mining?

On Narses’s way up to the citadel, he heard the looters shouting Herakleia’s name. They must have found out that he had captured her. It had taken little time for the news to spread.

They are so attached to Herakleia, he thought. Though she brings nothing but defeat. If they won’t give up their ideals, perhaps we really will have to kill them all. Trebizond was always a backwater anyway, and the trade routes have long since shifted. It doesn’t matter now, and it won’t matter later.