Herakleia galloped along the Tabriz Road between the mountains toward the brown valley of Erzurum. Lightning flashed from the dim clouds as she approached the Turkmen horde encamped around the city, loosing arrows at the defenders on the walls, throwing the occasional ladder against them and climbing up, only to be thrown down again. There was seemingly little organization, but the besieging army’s numbers were so overwhelming that it barely mattered. The city was small, its walls were old. Sooner or later the attackers would break through. Some among them were also slamming a battering ram against the great wooden doors of the main city gate. The defenders were throwing down rocks and bricks and sometimes shooting arrows or dumping vats of boiling water, but the Turkmen covered themselves with shields.
It started raining. Thick cold droplets soaked Herakleia and her poor horse. Torrents were soon rushing down the mountainsides, the water glimmering in the lightning.
The Turkmen spotted her. Only one or two men rode out to meet her, but soon they were joined by dozens more, no doubt bored enough by the siege to brave the thunderstorm to see who she was.
Ghazis, she thought.
Only when they drew up their horses together and surrounded her did they realize that she was a woman. Immediately the men grinned and winked at each other, cracking jokes which she had no desire to understand.
“I am Herakleia.” She looked them boldly in their eyes. “Strategos of Trebizond. I have come to propose an alliance with your leader.”
Take me to your leader, we come in peace, she thought, feeling like an alien, not just around these men who had probably spent all their lives getting their way around women, but also the horde which had come from beyond the steppe. Wearing leather, fur, and chainmail, armed with bows and maces and swords and spears, some wore big fur caps, while others had donned steel onion-shaped helmets with chainmail headdresses that wrapped tightly around their throats.
Either none of the Turkmen understood her, or none cared to do so. Smiling at the others, one urged his horse forward to approach her. To Herakleia these riders seemed like the ancient kentaroi, so united to their mounts that man and horse became one, galloping across thousands of miles of steppe, switching mounts rather than stopping. When the riders were hungry, they drank their mare’s milk and blood. Did the riders also sleep on the saddles as the four legs thundered beneath them like steel pistons made of bone, muscle, and flesh?
Still smiling at her, the one who had approached tried to snatch her reins, but Herakleia punched his face so hard that his nose cracked beneath her fist. He fell from his horse and slammed onto the ground, splashing a crater of mud and rainwater that rose and fell. His horse whinnied and galloped away.
Herakleia’s improved mêlée combat skills (Novice, 3/10) were making a difference. She also gained a lot of XP for knocking this guy off his horse.
“So much for peace,” she said to the other Turkmen. “Cultural misunderstanding.”
The one who had approached her cried out and clutched his bleeding nose beneath the stamping legs of the nervous horses.
Frowning, the Turkmen drew their weapons and approached Herakleia from all sides. The spears darted at her and her horse; she pulled the first one away and smashed the dull end into the owner’s helmet so hard that the steel dented and he, too, fell from his mount, his blood mixing with the rain, though unlike the first attacker he remained on the ground, unmoving. Herakleia’s mêlée combat skills leveled up to Apprentice (4/10), but that wasn’t enough. She started drawing on her farr. Other spears stabbed at her; she deflected them all, moving in a blur too fast for eyes to follow, even as the lightning illuminated all the falling jewels of cold rainwater. Thunder boomed, the ground shook, the raindrops trembled, the horses reared, and some Turkmen—who worshipped the great blue sky god Tengri not so long ago—turned and fled. Others loosed arrows at her face; she batted them aside.
“First round goes to me,” she said.
Yet her farr was fading—she was fighting alone—and the battle was attracting the horde’s attention. Now everyone was filtering out of their yurts to see what all the noise was. More warriors rode out to help their friends. She cracked her spear across one man’s chest so that the wood broke, and the man cried out and fell, plunging into the rain. More XP went to her mêlée combat skill.
But for every man she defeated, a dozen took his place. They were everywhere. Her friends had warned her. Why would these men even bother to listen to a woman? Spearheads lunged toward her from every direction, and it was impossible to deflect them all, farr or no farr. As they jabbed at her, she fell from her horse, and someone seized the reins and pulled the wailing beast away. Then the men piled atop her, laughing and celebrating in the muck. Several held down each of her limbs so that it was impossible for her to rise. She screamed at them like a wild animal. And like a wild animal, they tied up her ankles and wrists and dragged her behind one of their horses through the slick mud to the camp. Everyone around her laughed, whooped, and praised Allah for this bounty that had fallen into their laps, a woman of marriageable age. To make matters worse, almost all her farr was gone. Only 5/100 remained.
As soon as they made it past the latrine trenches and to the outer tents, her nose caught the reek of horse dung, and she realized with disgust that they were dragging her through piles of shit. The women and children of the camp came out to stare at her, the children bundled in furs and wearing colorful taqiyah caps, the women wearing long patterned red dresses that clung to their slim figures, their hats made of jade jewelry and Roman and Abbasid coins and blue nazar amulets to ward off the evil eye, with long tails of white cloth descending all the way down their backs. Herakleia—coated in mud and god knew what else, spitting it from her mouth—must have looked like a swamp creature in their eyes. Two smithies, one holding a molten sword against an anvil, the other hammering it, were too busy at work—shouting “Allahu Akbar!” each time the hammer rose into the air—to even notice her.
Her captors brought her to a yurt that was bigger and more richly ornamented than all the rest, raised up on a platform of logs, and surrounded by black flags that were flapping in the wind and rain, as well as black horsehair standards topped with gold that gleamed with rainwater and blinded her as they reflected the lightning. At this point, waterfalls were pouring from the sky, and lightning was strobing almost continuously. Untying her from the horse, a number of men—who could say how many?—dragged her inside the magnificent tent. Once the flaps opened, a blast of heat struck her, and bright flames whirled in her face. She sighed, unable to move, lying in the mud that lay on the tent’s splendid kilim carpets, colored turquoise, more beautiful than any she had ever seen. Her attackers had gone down on their knees and were bowing to someone. She looked up, and saw a big man, fat and muscular, youthful and vigorous. Sitting straight-backed on a divan, he wore a red silk robe atop a blue patterned one, plus curved black pointy slippers that looked Seran to her eyes. With wide eyes and a small mouth, he likewise possessed a softer, more rounded version of Chaka Bey’s face, one set beneath a peaked cap with a wool brim.
“Malik-Shah,” she gasped.
He murmured something in Turkish and waved his big meaty hand, his fingers studded with gleaming jewels. Herakleia’s attackers picked her up and dragged her back outside. As she was leaving, she caught sight of slaves hurrying to wipe up the mud on the spectacular kilim carpets behind her.
The guards brought her to a nearby tent, also staffed with slaves, where a fire was burning beneath a bronze cauldron filled with water. Were they going to cook Herakleia? But the slave women wrinkled their noses, untied her, stripped off her filthy clothes and armor, and placed her in the cauldron, scrubbing the filth from her body with rags and soap, chatting with each other in Armenian. Veiled in colorful cloths that displayed their faces as well as a small part of their dark hair, they dressed in long thick red coats—belted around their waists—which stretched past their blue pants to their pointed shoes. Many guards stood behind them with their hands on their weapons, watching Herakleia’s nudity with indifference.
Sweating in the heat and working hard, the Armenian slave women soon pulled Herakleia out of the hot cauldron. They dried her with towels, then dressed her in an elegant green dress with gold nomismas and dirhams sewn into the cloth, complete with a sort of breastplate made of gold coins as well as a similar headdress. Her hair was tied into two long braids descending over her shoulders, and she was given wool stockings and high-heeled wooden clogs. White makeup was applied to her entire face, and rouge surrounded her eyes, which (along with her eyebrows) were lined with ink. In a novelty for Romanía, lipstick was then applied to her lips. Colored bright red and made presumably with beeswax, Herakleia feared that the luscious color came from cinnabar, a red alchemical substance derived from mercury. Romans had avoided wearing lipstick for a thousand years, associating it with the last few hapless, debt-ridden pharaohs whose decadent Egyptian empire Augustus had overthrown. The Armenian slave women assumed Herakleia had never encountered lipstick before and managed to communicate that she should not smush her lips—the lipstick was applied “cherry” style, marking only the center of her lips, leaving the edges unmarked. One red dot was painted on each dimple, and then a rose was painted at the center of her forehead. She was shown a mirror made from polished beaten brass, where she saw a damascened image of herself as the most exotic-looking woman she had ever encountered, a vision from an unknown world. It was amazing to think that only about an hour ago she had been wrestling like a pig in the mud.
“Holy shit,” she said. “I look incredible.”
“No talk,” a guard said.
She looked to the Armenian slave women and thanked them. They lowered their eyes and bowed, addressing her as: “khatun.” The same guard growled, but she frowned at him, then made an effort to memorize his face. Yet there was nothing memorable about his even features, his trimmed beard and mustache, his lightness and darkness, his strength and sturdiness, his mixture of youth and experience, his hawklike nose, his geometric brown eyes. People in the Middle Ages looked better than she had been led to believe. They bathed regularly, at least outside of the subcontinent which would later be known as “Europe,” and almost everyone was as physically active as old world athletes, and dressed in beautiful bright colorful patterns that were a stark contrast to the drab plain gray, black, and white suits, dresses, and branded sweatpants favored by the old world. Had this man possessed a less disagreeable personality, she admitted that she would have thought him handsome.
If I’m one of Malik-Shah’s consorts, I might be able to get this guy in trouble. Have to learn his name.
After all, Herakleia had used her feminine wiles to seduce and then destroy the crusader Duke Robert the Crafty—who, as it turned out, was not so crafty as his name suggested.
At least when it came to keeping his dick out of crazy.
For Herakleia to enchant another potentate with her body would be no problem, especially with such beautiful clothing and makeup.
“Hūrīya,” the slave women whispered to each other, smiling at her.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“You are like the women promised in the heaven of the Sarats’en,” an older slave woman said.
“What if people who go to heaven prefer men?” Herakleia asked.
“In the true heaven, there are no men,” the slave woman said, glancing at the surly guard.
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“No talk,” he repeated.
“Hell is filled with demons like you, Tamghach,” the slave woman said. “You wretched eunuch.”
Tamghach raised his mailed hand as if to strike her—murmuring her name, which was Anahid—but this only made the slave woman stand stronger and prouder. The other slave women stopped working and stood by Anahid’s sides, glaring at Tamghach, who lowered his hand and muttered something in Turkish.
Once the Armenian slave women finished doing Herakleia’s Extreme Makeover: Seljuk Edition, they veiled her. Then a pair of dripping-wet Armenian slave men brought a small covered litter inside the yurt. Tamghach shackled Herakleia’s wrists and ankles in irons and ordered her inside, walking behind the litter with Anahid as the slave men carried Herakleia a short distance over the mud, through the rain, past some stray baaing sheep, a merchant and his sopping Baktrian camel loaded with cloth bags and wooden boxes, and Turkmen galloping past and whooping at each other, presumably on the way to Erzurum’s walls—which, however, Herakleia was unable to see from here. Then the slaves hauled Herakleia’s covered litter up the log stairs to Malik-Shah’s yurt.
It was frightening to be carried like this. As the litter swayed, Herakleia gripped the armrests of the chair inside, worried that the slaves would stumble and drop her, as rainwater spattered the windows’ edges, and lightning threatened to strike the gold-capped horsehair standards.
Just past the grand yurt’s entry flaps, the slaves set down the litter and then opened its little wooden door. Tamghach ordered her out.
“Short trip,” she said through her veil.
“No talk,” the guard grumbled.
Herakleia frowned. “Is that all you know how to say?”
“If only.” Anahid wiped the rain from her face on her cloth sleeve.
The guard looked to Malik-Shah, who was still sitting on his divan on the other side of the fire blazing at the yurt’s center, the flames whirling up toward the covered hole in the ceiling, which allowed the smoke to escape while keeping out the rain and admitting the cloudlight flashing with lightning. It was cozy and warm here, and the air was dry and smelled of woodsmoke. Sitting at Malik-Shah’s right was an older gentlemen, dressed with a similar elegance, though on his head he wore a white turban wrapped around a black cap. To Herakleia’s old world eyes, he looked almost Indian, while Malik-Shah (and most Turks) had a more Asian appearance.
The two men sitting on the divans had stopped talking and were staring at her. Malik-Shah lowered his head slightly and gestured with his right hand to an empty divan, which the two Armenian slave men—after bowing and removing their muddy shoes—set before the two potentates. Tamghach brought her there and grumbled for her to sit. She did so. Once the slave men had left, Herakleia removed her veil. Anahid stood beside her and bowed to the two grand Turks with her right hand over her chest. She then proceeded to translate their discussion from Persian to Roman. (Malik-Shah was apparently a city Turk, and had spent his entire life speaking Persian as his first language. His brother Chaka Bey, in contrast, had spent his life making war in the saddle, and so Turkish was his first language.)
“So,” Malik-Shah said. “We have before us the mighty Princess Herakleia of Rūm. We have heard much about you.”
Anahid stared at her after translating this. “Forgive me, I didn’t know you were a princess. When I first saw you, I thought you were a mud person.”
Herakleia bowed to Malik-Shah. “Sultan, I have come to—”
“You have slain three of my warriors,” Malik-Shah said. “And wounded three more.”
“They attacked me,” Herakleia said. “I came here to propose—”
“Justice must be done for these crimes of yours,” Malik-Shah said.
Herakleia cleared her throat. “The Republic of Trebizond will compensate you for—”
“This diya you speak of,” said the older gentleman sitting on Malik-Shah’s right, “it only applies between Muslims, or when a Muslim commits a crime against a giaour. When a giaour slays a Muslim, there is only qisas—retaliation. And you have slain three.”
Being unfamiliar with Islamic jurisprudence, Herakleia had no idea how to answer. She noticed that the older gentleman possessed a huge white beard that was so carefully trimmed it looked like it was made of cotton rather than hair. And although both men were clearly angry with her, they were also curious.
Slave women set a low wooden table piled with food between them, bowed, and departed. But nobody even looked at the food. Herakleia was sweating from the heat of the flames behind her and the thickness of her new clothes. Rain pattered outside the tent, thunder boomed, and crashing noises and shouts and cries came from the distance, in the direction of Erzurum. The baaing of sheep was also never difficult to hear.
“Then why take me prisoner?” Herakleia said. “Why not just kill me?”
“Interesting question,” Malik-Shah said.
“We have decided to hold you for ransom,” the older gentleman said. “You will be exchanged for six of your own giaour warriors, three of whom we shall kill, three of whom we shall wound. Trabzon will accept this, or you will be made a jariya of the sultan’s harem.”
Herakleia had heard this word, jariya, before, but could not place it. Anahid told her that it was an Arabic term meaning royal concubine.
“Trebizond will never accept your terms,” she said.
The older gentleman smiled. “That is what we have assumed. Thus have we ordered our slaves to make you more presentable—in preparation for your fate. But these are actually generous terms, considering the other crimes you have committed. The Sultan’s brother Chaka Bey came to your city to make peace, to forge an alliance, and you humiliated him and drove him out—for what reason, we cannot say, save the frailty of women. Now we have received word that Chaka Bey is slain, as is the band of picked warriors he took with him to free Paiperte from your clutches.”
“You must also answer for these crimes,” Malik-Shah said to Herakleia. He spoke with a stern tone, yet seemed fairly placid given the fact that he was conversing with his brother’s killer.
Herakleia cleared her throat, and then—once more, not knowing what to say—addressed the older gentleman. “Excuse me, but you haven’t introduced yourself—”
“I am Abu Ali Hasan ibn Ali Tusi,” he said. “Nizam al-Mulk, Grand Vizier to His Majesty the Sultan Malik-Shah.”
“Nizam al-Mulk.” She bowed to him. “I’ve heard of you. Both of you are famous as patrons of the arts and sciences, builders of schools—”
A wooden crash came from the distance, followed by the roars and cheers of thousands. Malik-Shah tensed up, then covered his face and muttered to himself.
“You must understand,” Nizam al-Mulk said to Herakleia, “neither of us is supposed to be here. We both much prefer the pleasures of the city to the discomfort of military campaigns.”
Sounds like Hummay, Herakleia thought. He was working for these guys only a couple of weeks ago.
“Though your partisans drove us out of Erzurum on our inspection tour of the realm,” Nizam al-Mulk continued.
Malik-Shah chuckled. “I never saw you run so fast in your life. You didn’t even have time to tie your belt!” Malik-Shah stood from his divan and waddled back and forth. “You were running about with your pants around your ankles, like a child learning to use the latrine!”
“It is unseemly for you to act like this, o my sultan,” said an unamused Nizam al-Mulk. “Especially before a prisoner.”
“You’re just embarrassed.” Malik-Shah sat back down.
Nizam al-Mulk turned back to Herakleia. “We barely escaped with our lives. And to our great fortune or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, the Turkmen horde was pasturing their flocks close by, for these lands are excellent for grazing. The Turkmen only agreed to aid us in exchange for the right to sack the city.”
“Erzurum will be utterly destroyed,” Malik-Shah said. “Down to the last brick, the last particle of dirt, the last strand of thatch. Its populace will be either enslaved or put to the sword. Paiperte and Trabzon will suffer the same fate.”
“Sultan,” Herakleia said to Malik-Shah. “Think of the consequences to the treasury—”
“You misunderstand,” Nizam al-Mulk said. “Rum is an unimportant province of the realm which we picked up by accident—and due to the rather amusing incompetence of the giaours, with which you have also some experience, as I gather, since neither the Rumiyān nor the Frangistanis were able to take your little city.”
Malik-Shah nodded to her. “The story goes that you wrapped that Frangistani dog around your finger—that you twisted his head right off his shoulders while you were rocking your thighs against his.” He wagged his finger. “We shall be more cautious.”
Herakleia grew even more tense at these words. Whatever she did, whatever she thought of, the Seljuks stopped her. They were always ten steps ahead. The recent victories in places like Paiperte and Erzurum, all the cities wishing to join the uprising—it had been a fluke. Great Seljuk must have been focused elsewhere at the time. But now the boot was coming down.
Nizam al-Mulk continued. “Our real wealth lies in places like Isfahan, Merv, and Baghdad. The true threat to us is this revolt of yours spreading. We cannot have slaves, peasants, and the merchants and artisans of the cities forgetting their place. Nor can we have women or children doing the same. Surely you understand. We will make an example of you and your revolt, princess. Where the Christian Empire of Rum failed, we shall succeed. We shall teach the people that there can be no prosperity if the different parts of the body politic—the arms and legs—revolt against the head.”
“What if I told you there was a better place to send the Turkmen horde?” Herakleia said.
“Where would that be, o wisest of princesses?” Malik-Shah said.
“To Konstantinopolis,” Herakleia said.
The two men looked at each other and laughed.
“We have a fleet,” Herakleia said. “We have soldiers who can do things you have never seen. Ask yourselves: how was I able to kill or wound so many of your men on my own?”
“One wineskin full of wine halfway turned to vinegar will do the same.” Nizam al-Mulk seized a bundle of purple grapes from a plate on the low table. “God knows, a single barrel of wine will lay low an entire tumen just like that!” He snapped his fingers.
Herakleia continued. “We also have weapons whose powers are unknown to you. They can break the walls of Konstantinopolis.”
Malik-Shah turned to Nizam al-Mulk. “The Arabs attacked Konstantiniyye centuries ago, did they not?”
“With hundreds of ships.” Nizam al-Mulk chewed his grapes, spattering his white beard with purple juice. “And hundreds of thousands of men. The giaours destroyed them.”
“I suppose Allah had better plans for the Arabs.”
Nizam al-Mulk laughed, then placed his hand over his chest and spoke with a strong Arabic accent, emphasizing the ‘kh’ sounds in every word, which made him seem as though he was hawking up phlegm and talking at the same time. “They were sinful, very sinful, o my sultan. Perkhaps they khould not khuite so khlearly see the destrukhtion of Khonstantiniyye as khlearly as they saw themselves!”
Malik-shah laughed. Then he held his hands in the air palm-up, closed his eyes, bowed his head, and—with the same strong Arabic accent—solemnly spoke. “It was a khood thing for us, that Allakh made us markh our entire army khalfway akhross the world, and then khompletely destroyed it. We khave learned mukh from you, o lord. For Allakh is all-wise, all-merciful.”
They aren’t believers, Herakleia thought. Or at least they don’t believe that god is controlling every last little thing.
Nizam al-Mulk turned to Herakleia. “Truly we had no idea you would be so amusing, princess. Have you thought of a career as an entertainer, rather than as a queen of slaves?”
“You might find more success,” Malik-Shah said to her. “You should listen to the Grand Vizier. He’s full of good advice. All he really does is advise people, in fact, whether they want him to or not.”
Nizam al-Mulk shrugged. “Well, it’s gotten us this far.”
My friends were right, Herakleia thought. Right as always. There’s no reason for the sultan to listen to me. No way to change their minds.
She sighed quietly with despair. Then she told herself that it wasn’t over. The situation with Robert had been worse. But was she going to have to go through another round of imprisonment and torture?
I don’t have it in me. I can’t do this again.
Nizam al-Mulk turned to Herakleia. “We have dispatched a messenger to your people—to the little band of yours hiding along the Tabriz Road, but also to Paiperte. They will have the terms for your release soon enough. And we suspect those terms will be rejected. In which case, you should do your best to accept your fate, princess. To say yes to life. It will make things easier for all of us.”
Tamghach the guard stepped forward and bowed. He had been so silent this entire time, Herakleia had almost forgotten he was standing behind her.
Nizam al-Mulk nodded to him. “Bring her to her own yurt. See to it that she has all the necessary comforts.”
Tamghach grasped Herakleia’s arm and pulled her to her feet. She struggled against him.
“You can’t do this!” Herakleia shouted.
Malik-Shah leaned forward and tore a hunk off from a steaming loaf of pita bread. “Everybody always says that. ‘Oh no, you cannot do this, please, we have families, no, no!’ But it didn’t take me long to realize that, actually, I can do this.”
“The Sultan does as he pleases,” Nizam al-Mulk said. “All is as Allah wills.”
Herakleia’s head fell. A wave of self-loathing threatened to overwhelm her.
“You belong to me, now,” Malik-Shah said.