They rode as fast as they could without hurting their horses, camping outside Tzanicha and the Death Worm Marsh on the first night, riding at dawn the next day along the Tabriz road that branched east before the Satala ruins. At a point that seemed random to Herakleia, Hummay made them dismount to lead their horses through the woods and up a mountain trail.
“We near the fortress city of Paiperte,” he explained. “A city of gardens and orchards. It lies just within the lands of Great Seljuk. We must keep out of sight.”
Paiperte. Sounds like ‘pie pert.’ Like a pert pie. Herakleia looked to Hummay. “If it’s a fortress city, do you think Chaka Bey could have taken Ayşe there?”
“It is possible,” Hummay said. “The city lies halfway to Erzurum.”
“Paiperte is one of the ancient cities in my people’s homeland,” Simonis said.
Here Miriai butted into the conversation. “What are your people, by the way, dearie?”
“Armenians,” Simonis said.
“Ach, well, they’re certainly well-armed.” Miriai squinted at the sunlight reflected off Simonis’s armor. “Some of them, anyway.”
“Do you trust this man to guide us?” Za-Ilmaknun whispered to Herakleia. With one hand, he held his rainbow-colored mequamia stick, and used this to help him hike; with the other he pulled his horse (loaded with supplies) behind him.
“Samonas trusts him,” Herakleia said. “Samonas even seems to like him a little too much. I trust Samonas.”
“Yet this Hummay character joined the uprising mere days ago, did he not?” Za-Ilmaknun said. “I too am new to this rebellion, but he is leading us into unknown lands, while I am just tagging along…”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Herakleia said. “If he meant to betray us, I mean. I can’t even tell you how many wreckers we’ve had to deal with. Some were with us from the very beginning. Intensifying contradictions mean that their economic priorities align less and less with ours.”
She was thinking of Doux David Bagrationi, the last ruler of Trebizond. Son of the Iberian Queen Tamar, he had been appointed to rule the city by Herakleia’s father, and was loyal to him. Bagrationi had also been sympathetic to the uprising which had broken out following the usurper’s coup, and had used Trebizond as a rallying point for all the disaffected people across the dwindling Roman Empire. Herakleia had even slept with him—he was handsome, charming, powerful—to sweeten the deal. But as the uprising had radicalized, uprooting the old society and planting a new one in its stead—not merely replacing one emperor with another, as Bagrationi had first believed—he came into conflict with Herakleia and her supporters. Bagrationi wanted to compromise with the invaders. In the end, his own mother had joined Herakleia and the uprising in expelling him from the city. Bagrationi had also left with the annoying, mosquito-like cleric Sophronios the Metropolitan. The uprising had heard from neither of them since.
“Some of us are older and frailer, strategos.” Za-Ilmaknun was watching Miriai as she walked over the rocks and roots, the streams and moss patches, and then into the shafts of sunlight stabbing through the gaps in the gleaming pines that swayed in the wind. “We may not be so fortunate as to survive another battle.”
“Alexios told me you two could hold your own,” Herakleia said. “That people should be afraid of you, not the other way around. I saw what Miriai did with my own eyes…”
“Only God is infinite,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “As for us, we have limits. If Ibrahim Hummay leads us into a trap, we may perish.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Herakleia said.
Yet she found herself looking more at Za-Ilmaknun as their band hiked together through the woods. From her old world perspective, both he and Hummay were “Africans,” yet at this time even the idea of “Africa” did not exist, any more than the ideas of “Europe” or “Asia” existed, aside from a few mentions in Aristoteles. The reality was that these two men came from different parts of the world, and looked, spoke, acted, thought, in different manners. Za-Ilmaknun had skin that was light as an Arab’s, and he was dressed in an ascetic’s white robes, with straight, geometric facial features, plus the cross carved above his nose and between his eyes, which Alexios said glowed orange when Za-Ilmaknun got pissed off. At that point he would throw his magic around and quote scripture. Hummay, in contrast, was so dark he was almost purple, and preferred the finer things in life, dressing in silk with jewelry until Samonas had forced him to wear safer and more practical—yet uncomfortable and ill-fitting—armor for this mission. Za-Ilmaknun marched with purpose, while Hummay flowed from place to place, almost like he was a mirage more than a being of flesh and blood. Yet despite Hummay’s preference for palace life, he seemed comfortable on the road. He likewise possessed a more rounded, sensuous, and even effeminate figure—in contrast to bony Za-Ilmaknun—and it had taken some convincing to get him to wear one of Trebizond’s factory-produced swords at his side.
“I have no training in the arts of war,” Hummay had explained to Samonas back in the citadel when they had been preparing to leave. “I prefer loving to fighting, divans to saddleback, walking upon my own two legs to riding a horse or donkey, smooth marble hallways to jagged rock-strewn wadis, the dome of a mosque to the dome of the sky, the subtle interplaying flavors of finely cooked cuisine to tasteless camp grub, the jokes and stories of friends to the harangues and scowls of enemies, the music of fountains and lutes to the cacophony of hooves, the culture and civilization of a city to the wasteland of the wilderness in the hinterland, the scents of perfumes and flowers to the reek of sweat and animal dung, the sight of a map to the reality of struggling to follow one, the company of books to the troublesome experience of surviving an actual tall tale, the luminescence of torches and candles and lamps to the blinding sun and the cold indifferent moon, shadow theater to the terror of the darkness that lies beyond the campfire, and on, and on. For travel, as the infidel Frangistanis say, is truly a torturous travail.”
Back in Trebizond, everyone in the expedition had stopped to watch Hummay as he made this speech, all seeming to wonder when he would run out of ideas. Yet he fed off their attention, and looked at each of them as he spoke. When he finally stopped, Herakleia almost clapped. In a world without internet, computers, TVs, radio, or even (most of the time) books, all entertainment was live, and people hungered for stories. Anyone with the slightest eloquence would often be begged to keep talking until he passed out. An itinerant priest could convert entire countries if he was a decent storyteller. The story of Moses leading his people out of slavery had brought entire nations into the fold.
“Let us hope that this blade, by itself, merely scares your foes away,” Samonas had said, strapping the sword to Hummay’s side.
Herakleia trembled when she heard this. Simonis had said the same to El-Hadi. But she kept quiet.
“I think it shall scare me more than them.” Hummay had held up his arms while nervously eyeing the weapon, so sharp it seemed it could cut things without even touching them.
Now the expedition to rescue Ayşe had emerged from the woods and was climbing the mountains. Herakleia saw no path, and yet Hummay kept leading them upward around boulders and cliffs. Soon they could even see the imperial highway behind them. No one else was using it, as usual. Endless wars in this region meant that for years only the craziest merchants risked these roads. That’s what Gontran and Diaresso had done, and it had cost them their investments and nearly their lives.
Diaresso and Gontran, Herakleia thought. Wonder what they’re up to. Hope they’re doing well. They’ve been gone two weeks, haven’t they? Must be somewhere between Kriti and the Peloponnesos by now. Assuming they’re even still alive, and not chained up by Egyptian slavers.
She shuddered.
They volunteered to go to Venice, she told herself. I didn’t send them to their deaths. The plan made sense at the time. Back then we had no allies. It was just Trebizond and Kitezh. How could we have known that five different cities would join us after the Paralos left?
“The citadel of Paiperte lies upon a mountain that overlooks the winding River Akampsis,” Hummay explained, as they hiked up in the sun, the sweat dripping from their faces into the dust. “It is quite impregnable. A vast army would need to besiege such a place for many months in order to take it.”
“Where have I heard that before?” Herakleia said.
“They have never dealt with amazons,” said Umm Musharrafa. “Walls cannot stop us. Men cannot stop us. Those who do not work, and who live upon the work of others, cannot stop us.”
“They do not work, but they fight, for certain,” said Amat al-Aziz.
“When the Seljuks came to these regions, many cities surrendered without a fight,” Herakleia said. “Or with only token resistance.”
“These are the border regions, strategos,” Hummay said. “The lands of the ghazis and the akritai border lords—half infidel, half Muslim. They have changed hands many times over the years, from infidel to Muslim and back again. Cities open their gates because the other side will probably return to take power the following summer. But the Seljuks also offered a better deal than Rūm, did they not? Lower taxes, religious freedom.”
“The Romans are partly at fault,” Simonis said. “They conquered Armenia only recently, and settled our warrior princes to the west, to give them good careers in Konstantinopolis, so that they would invest themselves in the empire. Emperor Basil—Herakleia’s father’s predecessor—wasted our soldiers in fights against revolting Roman nobles and Bulgars, on the other side of the Aegean, in the empire’s western regions, leaving us defenseless here in the east. The mountainous nature of our lands also kept us divided and bickering, unable to unite to stop the Turkmen raiders, the hundred thousand sipahis who swept over us. Then again, some of us welcomed them. After all, the Sarakenoi did not press the Chalkedonian issue on us, when the Romans would not stop talking about it.”
“The Chalkedonian issue?” Herakleia said.
“Chalkedon the ominous,” Simonis said. “We Armenians say that Christ is fully divine and fully human in one nature. The Romans say that he is one person in two natures, human and divine.”
“What?” Herakleia said.
“All that matters is that you understand that the Roman and Armenian churches have differing opinions on the nature of Christ,” Simonis said. “Small differences can sometimes make big differences.”
“Hang on,” Herakleia said. “Not all Armenians are Christians. We’ve run into Muslim Armenians who speak only Kurdish. Things can get complicated.”
“Yes, yes,” Simonis said. “I meant Armenians who follow the Armenian Apostolic Church. This is a majority.”
“So why is that a problem?” Herakleia said.
“This is a question for priests,” Simonis said.
Herakleia looked back to Za-Ilmaknun. “Deacon? Your thoughts?”
“The Aethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is in concordance with the Church of Armenia on this most vital issue.” Za-Ilmaknun bowed as he walked with his horse and mequamia. “Christ’s human and divine natures are united in one nature of the Word of God incarnate.”
“I think the difference really has to do with the question of money and power,” Simonis said. “The patriarch in Konstantinopolis and the pope in Rome both agree—surprisingly—that Christ’s nature was partly human and partly divine, while the Armenian, Syriac, and Aethiopian churches, the Church of the East, and the gnostikoi—”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Miriai cleared her throat. “‘Gnostikoi,’ you mean Mandaeans like myself, dear.”
“They all say that his divine and human natures are united,” Simonis continued. “Who knows? This may make it simpler to commune one-on-one with god, especially in lands like these which have been troubled by cataclysmic war for many centuries, before even the days of the Sarakenoi, when the Romans and the Persians practically annihilated the whole region in their great death struggle.”
“The wars of Herakleios,” Herakleia said. “One of my namesakes. They took place five, six hundred years ago.”
Hummay cleared his throat. “But their effects are still deeply felt. The Prophet, may peace be upon him, arose to save the world during that catastrophe.”
Za-Ilmaknun nodded. “That time is halfway between us and the days when Christ walked the land of olives and wine, milk and honey.”
“In such chaotic cases it may be difficult to find learned priests who have been educated in the so-called ‘correct’—or orthodox—view,” Simonis said. “It’s therefore up to the individual to draw her own conclusions, as I have, namely that it’s all a lot of nonsense.”
Herakleia rolled her eyes. What a brave stance to be against organized religion.
But she needed to remind herself that while atheism was relatively commonplace in the old world, there wasn’t even a word for it here. At best, people might call it simple irreverence or impiety—a lack of interest in dying of boredom every Sunday in church.
Simonis continued. “Probably the debate was just about finding an excuse to keep money in these regions rather than sending it to Konstantinopolis. We wasted so much time and energy on these debates without focusing on the real issues, the way the uprising does. That’s one reason Armenia was lost. But there are others.”
“For instance?” Herakleia said.
“The rulers of my people are weak,” Simonis said. “They only come to power by inheritance, so they have no skill, and know only one moral code: retain power at any cost. Ally with anyone, betray anyone, say anything, do anything, so long as you remain in power. What does it matter if entire lands and countries are lost to the Turks? If they drive our people from cities we have occupied for millennia?”
“I believe that’s called opportunism,” Herakleia said.
“Our lands are also surrounded by powerful enemies,” Simonis continued. “Konstantinopolis has its walls and its oceans, but what does Armenia have? The moment we attack one enemy in the east, another attacks from the west. It is an impossible strategic position, and truly a miracle we have lasted here as long as we have. Yet sometimes I’m ashamed of my past and want nothing to do with it. It was weak, and the Turks enslaved us because of this weakness. To be a Trapezuntine is strong.”
“People are angry,” Herakleia said.
“A profound statement, strategos,” Simonis said.
Herakleia continued. “No—what I meant was: Christians don’t seem fond of being ruled by Muslims.”
“That is what the priests, scribes, and nobles tell us, yes,” Hummay said. “Of course they hate being ruled by foreigners. But what do the common people care, so long as they can prosper and live in peace, raise their families, till their soil? They are not so firmly committed to the faith as are the rich and powerful, for they have less investment in such things, and often must be goaded to attend their respective temples each week or to wash and pray five times each day, and can be seen daily breaking the most basic religious rules. What is a church, what is a mosque, what is a temple compared to the pleasant company of a beauty picnicking with you in the countryside for an afternoon? And then there are many kinds of faiths in these regions. The Greeks and Armenians are Christians, for example, but they differ as to the nature of the hypostasis, as you have said.” He nodded to Simonis.
“Sometimes it infuriates me,” Simonis said. “In Trebizond, the way different faiths are tolerated. Every temple of every faith should be destroyed.”
“Now, now.” Herakleia looked back at the other amazons and at Miriai and Za-Ilmaknun, all of whom were believers. Za-Ilmaknun was a deacon. Miriai was Mandaean. Some people called these people “Christians of Saint John,” except they weren’t Christians, they just really liked baptism—in the River Jordan, if they could get to it; other rivers if they couldn’t—every week. Other even more obscure groups might have been present in Trebizond: Samaritans, Druze, Nestorians, Manichaeans, even some Maniot pagans who still sacrificed to Zeus. At least one Zoroastrian fire-worshipper was there. Umm Musharrafa, leading her own horse as well as the extra they had brought for Ayşe, was a Turkish Muslim. Amat al-Aziz and Nazar al-Sabiyya were Jewish Arabs, Kata Surameli was a Christian Georgian, Jiajak Jaqeli was a lightning worshipper from the steppe cairns. Everyone here was some kind of believer. The Romans insisted that uprisers were spawns of Satan, but in reality they welcomed every religion, though their leaders were rarely pious. Samonas was a Christian, but he neither mentioned his faith nor went to church.
“You only chastise me because you know so little of what the priests do,” Simonis said to Herakleia. “You have so little experience. You come from this ‘old world’ you speak of, which you have told us is mercifully bereft of the plague of priests, and you have only been here for a few months.”
“Part of me has been here for years,” Herakleia said. “Another part has only been here since last summer. I know. It’s confusing.” She looked at Hummay. “Like the hypostasis. Three persons in one godhead. Or something.”
“You have never seen the monks in monasteries grow fat on the labor of the peasants breaking their backs in the fields,” Simonis said.
“Here we go again,” Euphrosyne said. “She always talks like this.”
“If you complain,” Simonis continued, “the priests bring out their books and say that they were ordained by god to drink your blood.”
“I’m sure that’s exactly how they put it,” Za-Ilmaknun murmured.
“If you keep complaining,” Simonis said, “the priests will have you flogged. Or they will place you in the stocks. Persist, and they will have the local magistrate drive you out of your home, and they will steal your land.”
Za-Ilmaknun narrowed his brow and shook his head. But then he shrugged as if he had reconsidered and now agreed with Simonis.
“I know more about bad people in charge than you think,” Herakleia said. “Or I should say, exploitative systems that place exploitative people in charge. Where I come from, rulers aren’t ordained by god. They’re ordained by the market—”
“I’ve heard you talk a lot about this, strategos,” Simonis said. “It’s absurd. When there’s so much work to be done. Everyone has a job here, an obvious purpose. Everyone has their place, for better or for worse, even the beggars. For me, as a woman, my place was worse than a beggar’s, or at least I thought so, otherwise I would not be with you. My parents wished me to marry a rich, a terrible man, so that I could die giving birth to his children. Each woman must have five or six kids if she wants two or three to live to adulthood. Beggars have their own problems, yes, but at least they can live. At least they don’t have to worry about dying in bed, bringing forth the seed of some monster, as though I am myself a field to be plowed. When I heard about the uprising, I took my chances. Better to a have a chance of living than the certainty of dying.”
“The old world is one step forward, two steps back,” Herakleia said. “I’m not going to idealize the future, the present, or the past. One shouldn’t negate the other. For all their negatives and positives, each makes the other possible.”
“Yet you are trying to make your future impossible, aren’t you?” Simonis said.
“I want to make it better,” Herakleia said. “Things can actually change. Everything can change. Nothing is static.”
By then the city of Paiperte was visible in the distance. It was the usual kind of Anatolian valley settlement, beautiful, pleasant, orderly, the white buildings with red rooftops constructed around a winding lemonade river, and green farmland surrounding the buildings for miles—stadia—farsakhs—parasangs—in every direction, extending into the rising hills and the criss-crossing mountain chains of the Armenian highlands. Orchards, gardens, apricots, pomegranates.
All of this lay in the shadow of long thick shockingly massive fortress walls rising on a rocky hilltop. A large black flag fluttered above its main gatehouse.
“I know at least one possible future,” Herakleia continued, looking at the fortress. “The Turks will rule these lands for centuries, and do a good job.”
Simonis cleared her throat.
“For the most part,” Herakleia added. “But the Franks are always hungry for cheap land, resources, and labor. As capital’s power grows, it will control the country through the Sultan, if you can imagine that.”
“It is difficult to believe, strategos,” Simonis said.
“It’s mostly German banks, I think, which will squeeze every penny they can out of this place,” Herakleia said. “About eight hundred years from now. They’ll force the sultan to take on debts to construct railways, then raise taxes among the poorest people to pay the debts. Missionaries will arrive to set up schools which will westernize Romans and Armenians and anyone else who resents living under the Ottoman yoke. With their western connections, these minorities will grow wealthy and powerful, and the Ottomans will resent them. Some will even be strong enough to form their own nations—the Greeks and Bulgars and Serbians, closer as they are to the western powers. Finally, when the Great War begins, the Turkish nation will come close to annihilation. Varangian Rus will invade from the east, while the deserts will crawl with spies from Ultima Thoúlē, inciting the Arabs to revolt. The Turks will scapegoat the Romans, Armenians, and Assyrians, enslaving them and wiping them out in death marches with the help of the Kurds, who will become their next target. One man alone will save the Turks from losing their country, a military commander who will never lose a battle. For decades, until my own time, his people will look on him as their father, their national god. Monuments to him will fill every town and city in these parts, and often fill every building as well.”
“You sound like a prophet new inspired, uttering these strange words,” Hummay said. “As heathenish as it may be for me to say.”
“It’s just one possibility,” Herakleia said. “If the Republic of Trebizond survives, history will play out differently. Things are already different here from the way I remember. Last time I checked, no one in the Middle Ages had the farr.”
To eat lunch, they found a place to rest sheltered by boulders which blocked the view of the city ahead as well as the road behind them. Here, while the others ate and drank, Herakleia kept watch with Hummay, peering over the boulders at Paiperte.
“They could have taken Ayşe to that fortress,” she said.
“Indeed,” Hummay said.
“We need to find out if she’s inside,” Herakleia said. “What if she isn’t in Erzurum? We’ll lose days going back and forth.”
“Yes, someone must investigate,” Hummay said. “Yet I cannot, for half the world knows Chaka Bey’s kapuji-bashi. Even the lizards that dart upon the sunny rocks greet me as such.”
“Someone else has to go,” Herakleia said.
She looked at the members of the expedition. It consisted mostly of Middle Eastern women, plus two Black men. Hummay was already excluded, while Za-Ilmaknun could perhaps venture into Paiperte, though he would still attract attention as a sort of exotic Christian dervish who hailed from realms beyond the knowledge of most people in these parts. As for the women, it was unusual for them to travel alone, unless they were beyond childbearing age (which none here were). All likewise had striking appearances; this was one consequence of seizing power for themselves. Jiajak Jaqeli the Kipchak had blue eyes and red hair that turned heads wherever he, she, they went. Kata Surameli was an Alanian—like Queen Tamar—hailing from a land on the eastern edge of the Euxine Sea where everyone seemingly possessed an unearthly angelic quality, with long thin noses, vast spiritual eyes, and enormous sensual lips. Miriai had her own prettiness, and was too fragile, at least when she wasn’t doing a smackdown. Umm Musharrafa was the typical beautiful Muslim woman who concealed herself beneath a black burka that ended up attracting more attention than if she had simply exposed herself in the same way as Christian women, who allowed their faces to be seen even if the rest of their bodies were covered. Simonis was the typical beautiful Armenian while Euphrosyne was the typical beautiful Roman, while Amat al-Aziz and Nazar al-Sabiyya were two typically beautiful Jewish Arabs. Their femininity acted also as a weapon, for men would underestimate them and then die because it was better to capture and enslave a woman than to kill her. But perhaps Herakleia was biased.
“None of us can go into Paiperte,” she said. “We’ll all attract too much attention. For a beautiful woman to travel alone, it’s unheard of. The most ‘normal’ one out of all of us is you.” She nodded to Za-Ilmaknun.
He was startled. “Me?”
“You should go into Paiperte and ask around to see if Ayşe is there,” Herakleia said.
“Oh, he’ll just muck it up,” Miriai said.
“I will not ‘muck it up.’” Za-Ilmaknun glared at her. “I never muck anything up, save the mucking up of our foes! But there is a problem. I speak with a Roman tongue, strategos, because I learned the liturgical texts in Axum. But as for the languages of the Muslims who dwell in these parts—Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Persian—I know but a few practical traveling terms, that is all.”
“I speak them,” Miriai said. “I’ll go.”
“You volunteer?” Herakleia said.
Miriai nodded. “And you don’t have to worry if I get hurt or killed. I know you always blame yourself when things go wrong. So you can rest easy knowing that I choose to go and help you find your little Seran friend.”
Herakleia winced. “If you say so. You can take a horse, and pretend to be a merchant come to the city to sell produce from the countryside.”
“The old ladies selling milk and cheese often use donkeys to carry their goods,” Umm Musharrafa said.
“A horse is the best we can do,” Herakleia said. “Ask around, Miriai. If you’re not back by sunset, we’ll have to go into the city to look for you.” Herakleia turned to the members of the expedition. “Agreed?”
They agreed. Soon Miriai was on horseback, descending toward the city along a path which Hummay had pointed out. Herakleia watched Miriai until she vanished into Paiperte. Then Herakleia continued watching the bustling streets in the distance, covering herself with a shawl to keep the sun from burning her flesh.
The expedition spent the afternoon napping, for the most part, with various members taking turns keeping an eye on the two different paths to their mountain hideaway—the one leading up from the road, the other leading down to Paiperte. When the sun was setting, there was still no sign of Miriai. When the expedition began to discuss heading into the city to look for her, they came under attack.