Rounding a bend in the Tabriz Road, the expedition came to a brown plain many miles across ringed with snow-capped mountains, which were like jagged glaciers carving the dim clouds. In the stretching shadows of these mountains at the plain’s heart lay a walled city surrounded by green and yellow squares of farmland. This was Erzurum. And within the last few days, according to Amat al-Aziz, the inhabitants—
What to call them? Herakleia thought. The Erzurumites? Too Biblical. The Erzurumese? The Erzurumians?
Whatever they were called, the people of Erzurum had driven out the soft silken city Turks. These were fond of Ferdowsi, Islam, and Armenian wives (and half-Armenian children). But though these city Turks might have been amiable enough and given to drinking wine and reciting elegant rhymed poetry on divans, they had friends in the countryside, and now these Turkmen enforcers had come to chastise Erzurum for its transgressions. A vast disorderly host of tents, horses, people, and smoking pulsating campfires covered the plain, stretching into the foothills, a city around a city, surrounded by even greater masses of sheep—hundreds of thousands of white sheep. Herakleia had never seen so many people and sheep gathered in one place. The Turkmen were a mobile civilization, one powered by two energy sources: conquest, and sheep.
The Trapezuntines wheeled their whinnying horses around and hid behind the bend in the road, terrified they’d been spotted.
“We must return to Paiperte,” Hummay declared before they were even sure they were out of sight.
“That’s all you ever say,” Herakleia scoffed. “If you stub your toe, you want to go back. If somebody farts, you want to go back. If you bump your head—”
“We must also warn Trebizond,” Hummay said. “We must rendezvous with our reinforcements. Perhaps our army has even arrived by now—”
“You coward,” Simonis spat. “You don’t want to stand and fight? It’s a wonder you don’t ride sidesaddle, deprived of your manhood as you are.”
“Is this the proper time for a woman to criticize a eunuch?” Hummay said.
“My balls are bigger than yours,” Simonis said. “Any woman’s are.”
“I must inform you that I am still in possession of my balls,” Hummay said. “And, more importantly, my wits.”
“Yet not the manhood that comes with them,” Simonis said.
“Getting back to the subject at hand,” Herakleia said. “What’s the point of returning to Trebizond? There’s only a few hundred trained amazons there at most.”
“Trebizond has walls, strategos,” Hummay said. “Good, strong, safe, comfortable walls, behind which it is most commodious to hide in times of danger. You have also your semi-mythical basiliks. And did you not defeat the infidels only months ago, when they attacked your city?” Hummay looked to Za-Ilmaknun, Simonis, Surameli, and Euphrosyne, each of whom was Christian. “Apologies. You are not infidels. You are…fidels. True to your own faiths. All of us are sons and daughters of the Prophet Ibrahim, are we not? Well, this is awkward. Anyway. The Frangistani, I mean. Not the infidels. The Frangistani. Did you not destroy their invasion?”
“You’re blabbering,” Herakleia said. “You’re nervous.”
“Can you not see why?” Hummay gestured to the horde of steppe warriors that lay encamped around the bend.
“We destroyed the crusade invasion,” Herakleia said. “And the Roman invasion. But we lost a lot of good people, and we almost lost Trebizond. There were thousands of crusaders and Romans, it’s true, but they were alien to this place. They didn’t know anything about it. They were almost totally helpless here. These Turks, on the other hand, it’s like their natural environment, you know? They’ve gone as far as Assyria and Irak.”
“It’s true,” Miriai said. “Often they came to my caravanserai in Babylonia. They would get drunk and pick fights with people, or with each other.”
“They’ve been thriving here for awhile.” Herakleia was unable to keep from glancing at Simonis.
“At my people’s expense,” Simonis said.
“And I don’t even know how many are out there.” Herakleia gestured to the plain around the bend in the road.
“Tens of thousands at least,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “Perhaps a hundred thousand. A mighty host. The conquerors of entire nations.”
“This is an enemy we can’t defeat in battle,” Herakleia said. “The odds are a thousand to one. It’s nothing like when we fought the Romans or crusaders.”
“So what do you propose?” Simonis said. “Surrender? Flight? Should we allow these murderers to put my countrymen in Erzurum to the sword?”
“They have already done so once,” Umm Musharrafa said. “It was twenty years ago, was it not, when the Seljuk Ordu first came to these lands?”
“Eleven years ago this summer,” Jaqeli said. “They took possession of Erzurum without sacking it. I know, I was there when it happened. The city surrendered peacefully, its people and their goods were spared.”
“This time they won’t be so merciful,” Simonis said. “Erzurum only opened its doors to the Turks because they remembered what happened at Artze thirty years ago. Most of the people here are survivors of the sacking of Artze, which the Turks burned to the ground, along with tens of thousands of men, women, and children trapped inside its barricades.”
While Herakleia’s companions kept arguing about what to do, she recalled a thought that had come to her during the ride from Paiperte to Erzurum, when she had lost herself in memory of her silk road journey to the far side of the world and back again. She had been thinking of Konstantinopolis. Even the street beggars there felt only contempt for the uprising. After all, the bread dole came from the emperor’s hand, not Herakleia’s. The empire was literally their bread and butter, for the bread and butter came from the countryside, which the city exploited. But it wasn’t just beggars who were a problem, of course. The princelings, administrators, monks, scholars, and merchants who made up much of the city’s population were wedded not to their wives, but to the empire itself. Even the better-off slaves would defend it.
“Rome might not be perfect,” they often said. “But at least it’s not Trebizond!”
Anyone who complained about anything in Konstantinopolis would be told to move to Trebizond. Travelers had been saying that her city had become a byword for corruption, starvation, enslavement, prostitution, backwardness, idolatry, ignorance, philistinism. Whatever culture it produced was a joke. Its people ate only rats, and were lazy and foolish, but also dangerous. Romans were forbidden to venture there on pain of death—for their own safety, of course. Trebizond was really just a prison; its unfortunate people needed our prayers. They needed the Roman Emperor (don’t laugh!) to free them. These Trapezuntines, these supposed liberators of slaves, they were really just bandits who tricked the poor ignorant rabble into falling in love with the Asiatic yoke around their necks. In Trebizond, women were held in common, and forced to pleasure any man who demanded it. Churches were converted into brothels, mosques, or both, the Muslims bowing to Apollo while raping their harems of wives one after the other. Babies were roasted on spits like wild boar, their blood used in the rituals of secretive conspiratorial cabals to achieve eternal life. Christians were made the slaves of the Jews and Sarakenoi, ever in league with one another. Trebizond’s merchants were cheats, physically incapable of originality, stealing ideas from anyone foolish enough to do business with them. Its craftsmen produced only shoddy work that fell apart five minutes after it was purchased. Queen Herakleia of the Amazons executed rivals to her power by force-feeding them gunpowder and then setting them on fire. People were made to watch these poor condemned men, fallen from power and grace, as they ran around in circles outside the city gates, screaming like madmen, until they exploded like fireworks. People were constantly raped and executed there. If you imitated Herakleia’s ridiculous haircut, you would be executed immediately, without trial. Trebizond was New Babylon, Gog and Magog and Antichrist, home to an apocalyptic horde that had broken through the Iron Gates of Alexander and come to cover all the lands in darkness. Christians were an endangered species in this place. Queen Herakleia hunted them for sport.
No lie about Trebizond was too ridiculous to believe. And anyone who even raised an eyebrow at the absurd pronouncements of the imperial criers in Konstantinopolis was met with fury. In the uprising’s early days, Herakleia and many others had hoped that the people of Konstantinopolis would join them. But any Konstantinopolitans who believed in the uprising had either been silenced, imprisoned, exiled, or killed. Even if the uprising besieged the city and offered generous terms—give us your leaders, pay us a small annual tribute, and then run things as you like, we won’t even come inside the walls—Konstantinopolis would refuse with a united voice. No more empire meant that the people inside the city would have to get real jobs for the first time in their lives.
In some ways, Konstantinopolis was like the Italian merchant republics, in that the emperor could only stray so far from the people’s will. He was guarded by just a few hundred axe-wielding Varangians, who could never hope to fend off the city’s hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, were they sufficiently enraged—if, for example, their taxes were raised to cover the loss of Trebizond’s excise duties. They were no friend to Trebizond. Rome had sent two armies to destroy Trebizond without a word of protest from anyone inside Konstantinopolis. Rome would continue sending armies as long as it had the money, as long as its emperors drew breath.
“We can’t win by fighting,” Herakleia said to her companions. “We have to make a deal with the Turks.”
“What?” Simonis said.
Herakleia looked at her. “We’ll tell them they can sack Konstantinopolis. And that we’ll help them.”
Everyone stared at her in silence.
“That is madness,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “Princess Isato and I went on pilgrimage to Konstantiniyye the Great to cure her spirit sickness, to ask the blessings of the thousand saints whose miracle-working bones lie interred in its magnificent churches. A million innocent people dwell in Konstantiniyye, of many different kinds. There are a thousand churches for both Greeks and Latins, and even the temples of the Jews and Muslims. They do not deserve to be butchered or sold into slavery!”
“We’re supposed to be helping slaves, workers, and peasants,” Euphrosyne said. “Women and children, too. We’re not supposed to be butchering them.”
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“We’ll give Konstantinopolis a chance to surrender,” Herakleia said. “And allow anyone who wants to leave to—”
“These Turkmen raiders will never agree to such an arrangement,” Hummay said. “They won’t even speak with you to begin with—”
“Do not interrupt the strategos,” Simonis said.
Hummay bowed to Simonis with his hand over his chest. “Apologies.” He turned to Herakleia. “Strategos, I know these people. You must hearken to me. They will take you a-prize the instant they see you, and carry you away on horseback to Malik-Shah as his hundredth concubine. Just think about the difficulty of his choice, in considering this bargain your propose! Malik-Shah can risk his own head by traveling halfway across the world to assault an impregnable metropolis, or he can lock away a Roman princess in his harem and enjoy his life of carefree wealth and relaxation out here. Which would you choose?”
“A harem is not a good place for anyone, strategos,” Umm Musharrafa added.
“The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward,” Herakleia said. “There’s a thousand Roman princesses in Konstantinopolis Malik-Shah can put in his harem.”
“But is that the fate they deserve?” Hummay said.
Herakleia crossed her arms. “What have they done for us?”
“Did you not use to be one of them?” Hummay said.
Herakleia clutched her hands together and cried: “Oh, won’t someone please think of the royalty!”
Some of her friends laughed nervously.
“I know those people,” Herakleia added. “Just as you know the Turkmen. I’ll take these supposed antichrists of the steppe over good Christian nobles any day of the week.”
Hummay sighed. “Your inability to listen to naysayers has taken you far, strategos, but one day it will get you killed. Either that, or you will suffer for the next fifty years the fate of a living death as the plaything of Malik-Shah and the eunuchs of his harem! Do you not even recall that a mere three days ago, you killed the man’s brother?”
“I’m done discussing this,” Herakleia said. “All of you should head back to Paiperte. And to be safe, in case I fail, the whole city needs to be evacuated to Trebizond. There’s no way Paiperte can stand a force like this.”
“Except you’ve forgotten something, strategos,” Euphrosyne said. “You aren’t a princess anymore. Nobody in the republic is above criticism.”
“What?” Herakleia said. “You want to take a vote on this?”
Euphrosyne nodded. “Of course.”
“Then what do you propose?” Herakleia said. “All I’ve heard is people saying I can’t do this, I can’t do that—”
“We should attack.” Simonis looked to Miriai. “I’ve seen her in a fight. She could wipe them all out just by waving her arms and singing a little. And this one here.” She turned to Za-Ilmaknun. “When that cross on his forehead starts shining, it is not good to stand in his way.”
“I only caught a little whiff of the spirit sickness of Princess Isato.” Za-Ilmaknun rubbed the cruciform scar on his forehead. “The āsimati of the demoniac zar or protective adbar spirits. I cannot help it any longer. Now I tremble with indignation at every injustice, as she does. But I only fight well in minor brawls. I cannot battle an entire army.”
Miriai smiled a mouth full of bad teeth at Simonis. “As for me, I am afraid you are incorrect, my dear. To summon the great heavenly river Piriawis from the World of Light carries great risk.”
“Convenient,” Simonis said. “It only works when we don’t need it.”
“It can only be done defensively at best,” Miriai continued. “Only in desperation, to bring back the balance. For if the World of Light interferes too much in Ruha, in the World of Darkness, on this our fickle earthly plain, there will be retribution. Darkness is always mixed with light, and lightness with dark. To favor one too much—to drown an entire people on this plain in invisible waters they cannot escape—it is wrong, for these Turkmen, they bring all their families with them on these journeys, do they not? An entire nation lies encamped around Erzurum. To destroy it invites upon us a far greater catastrophe. What really is the difference between them destroying us, and us destroying them?”
“If they had your power, they wouldn’t hesitate,” Simonis said. “They didn’t hesitate. Most of my people, except for a few mountain villages, have been either enslaved or killed by the Turks!”
“Yet some among your people have willingly joined them, have they not?” Miriai said. “Their rulers have taken wives from among your people. Does your culture not intermix with theirs? And these Turks came here for many reasons, too, not just to plunder, but because there are even greater foes driving them here from the northern wastes.”
“That’s no excuse,” Simonis said.
Miriai continued. “Oft in my inn they spoke of how they feared no one save a people they called Mongyol, the Golden Kings, dwelling far to the east by the Watery River, the Amur Black Dragon. Or is that too uncomfortable a truth to admit?”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Simonis looked at Herakleia. “This old bat, one of our ‘friends,’ is making excuses for Armenia’s destruction.”
“You misunderstand me,” Miriai said. “You misunderstand deliberately because you are full of pain, and you wish to take revenge and kill them and in so doing, kill yourself, for the pain is unbearable, and you have lost much. Make no mistake, there will be retribution. One day they will pay for what they have done. Your people will get their land back. Already the Turks begin to pay because we are here. Yet even these Turks did not annihilate in one fell swoop your entire people.”
“They would if they could,” Simonis said. “They only saved us for slavery.”
“I won’t do it,” Miriai said. “There is no word, or combination of words, which will convince me, not in any language. For words are not always magical incantations. They are made of earthlier stuff.”
“Then why are you even here?” Simonis said.
Miriai shrugged. “I was bored.”
Simonis rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe my ears.”
“So these are our options,” Herakleia said. “Either I go alone and try to convince the Turkmen to help us, or we attack and everybody dies. Anyone else have anything to add?”
“You forgot me,” Hummay said. “I wish to return to Trebizond.”
Herakleia nodded. “Right. The third choice is: we run away like cowards and abandon Erzurum to its fate. Anyone else? Any other options?”
No one spoke. The vote was taken. Everyone save Simonis and Herakleia voted to return to Trebizond. Simonis voted to attack. Herakleia voted to pursue diplomacy with the Turkmen.
“Motion carries.” Miriai flashed a smile of uneven teeth. “Is that not how you put it?”
“All of you can go back,” Herakleia said. “But I’m going forward.”
“That’s not how it works, strategos,” Euphrosyne said. “That’s what you taught us. Everyone says what they want before the vote is taken; after the vote, everyone respects the majority.”
“Then let me go,” Herakleia said. “Take another vote to allow me to leave.”
“You are our leader,” Euphrosyne said. “You cannot throw your life away like this. And if you are captured, we will have to risk more lives to save you.”
“You don’t need me,” Herakleia said. “And you don’t need to rescue me. Euphrosyne, you’ve already proven yourself a fine leader many times. You understand things better than I do. The republic would be in good hands, if they elected you strategos.”
“But it’s a waste of life,” Euphrosyne said. “A waste of knowledge and experience.”
“I’m just one person,” Herakleia said. “Let me try to talk with them. I’m willing to take the risk. I’ve done crazier things.”
Euphrosyne shook her head. “Your selfishness, your refusal to submit to authority, it truly knows no bounds. Sometimes I think, strategos, you are only here for your own aggrandizement and comfort. You are not ready for sacrifice—the true sacrifice of putting the majority first.”
Giving up on Euphrosyne, Herakleia looked at Hummay. “What are you even planning to do once you get back to Trebizond? Who are you going to ask for help? These people terrify everyone! The city’s basiliks and walls won’t save you from a hundred thousand Turkmen. Nothing will. Dialogue is our only option.”
Everyone watched Herakleia in silence. In the dim cloudy light, as the wind whirled about them, their eyes seemed to glow as they sat atop their uneasy horses.
“You’re all afraid,” Herakleia said. “You don’t want to stand and fight.”
“Watch your tongue, strategos,” Simonis snapped. “I am not afraid. Do you not recall, I voted to attack?”
“I certainly am afraid,” Hummay said. “If they capture me, a traitor to their cause, it makes me nervous just staying here so close to where they are. A scout could find us at any moment. We must depart at once with all haste!”
“All I fear is that we will never win,” Simonis said. “That all our struggles will lead to nothing. That evil is actually beloved of god. That the slave power cannot be defeated.”
“I can defeat it,” Herakleia said. “This is the only way. We could lose everything we’ve gained if we turn back now. Things have been going so well for us for the last few months, but all of us know that can change.”
After a pause, Kata Surameli piped up. “Why not let the strategos go, if that is her wish? If she succeeds, it could change everything.”
“I agree,” said Jiajak Jaqeli.
“An alliance with the Turkmen.” Simonis covered her face with her hand. “God help us.”
“But that’s where we were before all of this started.” Herakleia looked at Ayşe. “We were working out an alliance with their Seljuk masters, until an unseen factor asserted itself.”
“You risked everything to save me,” Ayşe said. “But now you wish to willingly place yourself in the same sort of danger?”
“I can fix this,” Herakleia said. “I can make this right.”
“The Seljuks are not the masters of the Turkmen,” Umm Musharrafa said. “No one is, not even the Turkmen themselves. They go where they please and strike where they please, like a flock of birds or a school of fish. No one controls them. Each family looks at the others and follows along if things seem to be going well, if the pastures and plunder are rich. If not, they separate. I assure you, strategos, though there may be some kind of nominal Turkmen chieftain on the plain of Erzurum, even if you can convince him to join you, that is no guarantee that he can convince his own people to do the same.”
“Konstantinopolis is the richest jewel this side of the Amu Darya,” Herakleia said. “And the Turkmen cannot take it themselves.”
“What do you mean?” said Euphrosyne.
“We have basiliks,” Herakleia said. “We have Kitezh. We can use the city-ship to transport troops across the Bosporos and blockade Konstantinopolis from every side. Then we can use the basiliks to break the walls. It’s our only chance. These raiders are always going to be confined to small things otherwise. The water alone terrifies them.”
“But what forces will you unleash,” Miriai said, “if you transport them across the water into Thrakia, and the lands that lie beyond?”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Herakleia said. “If the Turks conquer Europe, it’ll save us the trouble.”
None of them knew what she meant by the word ‘Europe,’ since the concept only came into existence in the nineteenth century—it was merely a rebranding of the term ‘Christendom’—so they said nothing.
“All in favor of letting me go?” Herakleia raised her hand.
Kata Surameli, Jiajak Jaqeli, and Umm Musharrafa joined her. Sighing, Za-Ilmaknun did the same.
“I cannot see any other way out of this situation,” he said. “The strategos has argued most convincingly and eloquently. Whatever choice we make is difficult.”
Five hands were raised, meaning that they were tied. The rest refused to raise their hands. In this case, the situation called for rock-paper-scissors, which Herakleia had taught the uprising months ago. She faced off against Euphrosyne, who hated this game because she always lost. Rookie that she was, she threw rock, and Herakleia was ready for her, throwing paper. Euphrosyne groaned, and Herakleia cheered.
“I’m out of here!” she shouted, wheeling her horse around. “Get back to Paiperte!”
“You cannot do this,” Euphrosyne said. Tears shone in her eyes. “You cannot throw your life away! You have been trying to do this since first I met you, like you wish to punish yourself for some crime you have committed which none of us know about. Please stay with us, strategos, please listen—”
“Don’t come back for me!” Herakleia said. “I’ll either join you with a Turkmen horde at my back—or you’ll never see me again.”
“But sister,” Ayşe began.
It was too late. Herakleia galloped around the bend toward the plain.
“Strategos!” Euphrosyne screamed, throwing her helmet onto the muddy road. “Strategos!”