At first nobody noticed Narses enter the emperor’s box. He even had time to sit in Nikephoros’s old jeweled throne and watch the race below, as Paul stood nearby, and Axouch and Sulayman kept behind him, their strong veined hands on the hilts of the scimitars sheathed at their sides.
Four chariots were hurtling around the statues, pillars, and obelisks at the hippodrome’s long narrow central barrier, called the spina. Their wheels were rumbling, the horse hooves thundering clouds of dust, the charioteers’ whips cracking as the crowds screamed. It seemed half the city was here this afternoon—it was the Lord’s Day, after all. Church had gotten out a few hours earlier, everyone had eaten lunch, and now they were all getting drunk and betting the week’s earnings at the hippodrome.
Each chariot had one rider whipping the reins, four muscular horses gleaming with sweat, and a colored flag whipping in the wind: red for one, blue for another, green and white for the last two. These represented the old, defunct demoi, which had been a mixture of political machines, organized crime families, and what people in the old world might call soccer hooligans.
Not so different from old world political parties, Narses thought.
The four demoi had consolidated into just two, the blues and the greens, both of which represented the ruling class, just in slightly different ways. One demos politely supported the status quo; the other supported it with less politeness, depending on your perspective. Both diverted the energy of the masses. Rather than focusing on how the government was squeezing the poor to fight unwinnable imperialist wars, the people focused on chariot races and advancing their preferred demos in the senate. Yet centuries ago, during the Nika Riots, Emperor Justinian had united almost everyone in the City against him by raising taxes to pay for his Italian reconquests. The hippodrome had filled with rioters demanding his head. Justinian responded by ordering the army into the hippodrome to slaughter—with swords, spears, and arrows—something like thirty thousand rioters. Actually, the rumor was that Justinian’s whore of a wife Theodora had given the order to General Belisarius, the Bright Prince. Justinian himself had been ready to flee the city. The historian Prokopios described this man, in complete seriousness, as a literal shapeshifting demon.
Thankfully nothing like that could ever happen again, Narses thought, viewing the immense crowd.
Today, a hundred thousand people were still shouting nika! from the stone bleachers. This was how they cheered whichever chariot they were backing. Any further organizing around the different teams was forbidden on pain of blinding, nose-slitting, slavery, or property confiscation, depending on your judge’s mood and whether he had eaten a decent meal before sentencing you, and also how Roman you looked.
Now, rather than being divided into different demoi, the people were just one mass of fools.
“Treat ‘em the way you’d treat a woman,” a drunk Nikephoros had once told Narses. “Like a woman you’d like to fuck. You have to fuck ‘em the way you’d fuck a woman. Give ‘em what they want. Wheedle ‘em.” Nikephoros had wheezed with laughter. “Before your coronation, say whatever to get ‘em on your side. After your coronation, do whatever you want.”
Yet Narses had never thought about how to speak to the crowd. He looked to Paul. “What do I say, logothete?”
Paul cleared his throat. “Highness?”
“Tell me how to win them over,” Narses said.
“Promise to lower taxes on city residents. And to increase the grain dole.”
“Is that all? But does the treasury have the capacity to—”
“Of course not,” Paul interrupted. He was returning to his old disdain for Narses. “We’ve been bankrupt and devaluing the currency for years. We’ll worry about paying for everything later. We can always get another loan from the Venetians.”
“Another loan? How much do we owe them?”
“The exchequer is my business, highness, not yours—”
“Tell me, logothete.”
Paul rubbed his head and winced. “You’ll sleep easier not knowing. Thanks to the interest alone, we’ll never be able to—”
“Not another nomisma,” Narses said through clenched teeth. “I’m not paying those Latin scum a single nomisma earned with the blood and sweat of the Roman people. I don’t have to honor agreements made by previous emperors—”
“The Venetians will besiege the city, highness,” Paul growled, glancing at the Turkish bodyguards. “They’ll burn the City to the ground and execute us. Our relations with them are already fraught enough as it is, after the disaster in Trebizond and the Anatolikon themata, and the loss of so many cities, so much farmland, so many of the common folk either slaughtered or sold into slavery in the east.” He took a deep breath. “Hundreds of Venetian troops, plus the blind Doge Ziani himself, are resting in Galata even as we speak, in case you’ve forgotten. They have only three ships at the moment, but it won’t be difficult for them to call in more. So as I said, we’ll worry about that later. All you need to do right now is appeal to the mob’s bellies and their purses.”
“I require more guidance, logothete.”
“What? You? Is Narses the Great finally tongue-tied? You, who always have an answer for everything, an excuse for every mistake, always someone else to blame, anyone but yourself—now you don’t know what to say?”
“There are so many of them.” Narses forced himself to look at the crowd. He kept disdaining them as a mob of fools, yet even from the box he saw men, women, eunuchs, and children mixed among the masses, all cheering different chariots. Some audience members dressed like Bulgars, others like Armenians, Arabs, Jews, Turks, Latins. Even some Aethiopian pilgrims wearing white could be seen. Among the Romans, the richer ones sat closer to the racetrack and wore flashier silk and jewelry among the priests, while there were also different kinds of poor. Some were street rats born and raised in the City, here to enjoy the show and pick pockets if they could. Many were refugees who had fled here from the countryside thanks to the merciless Sarakenoi savages. The masses of poor at the higher seats even had their own wretched, semi-literate parish priests and monks sitting with them.
“You were always a natural at speaking to the men,” Paul said. “That much I can admit. Speaking to the people really isn’t so different. If anything, they’re even easier to fool than the soldiery.”
“But what of my plans?” Narses said. “I need soldiers to reconquer the—”
“You must promise them the sun, moon, and stars, and ask nothing in return. This is not the time to ask these fools to sacrifice.”
“But there are so many problems,” Narses said. “We’ve lost so much territory, and now you tell me we owe the Venetians money. What if someone in the crowd asks about this?”
Paul glanced at the two Turkish guards, then leaned in to Narses and whispered: “Blame the Jews, Turks, eunuchs, women, children, corrupt bureaucrats, previous emperors, forest gnomes, gremlins, it doesn’t matter, majesty, just blame someone else—anyone except the Latins.”
“But the Latins are the ones with the most power and the most money! They are the ones who cause us the most problems! They’ve taken advantage of all the systematic problems in—”
“They will destroy us if we turn against them!” Paul growled.
“Think of the ones you cannot talk about,” Narses said. “Those are the ones with the real power.” Comedians had spoken like this back in the old world. Yet they never discussed the rich and powerful for some reason. The most successful comedians, the ones worth tens of millions of dollars, who had hundreds of hours of TV specials and millions of views on the internet, ceaselessly complained that they were forbidden to speak their minds.
Paul took a deep breath. “Emperors often pose as defenders of the weaker party, majesty, especially in the face of the greed of the dynatoi—the rich landowners in the countryside. Yet I can’t be certain if that will work this time, considering the fact that there isn’t much of a countryside left to begin with, at least in the Anatolikon themes. And the western provinces will revolt if we raise their taxes by another hundredth of a percent…the real problem is the churches and monasteries gobbling everything up for nonproductive purposes, but they also toss a few crumbs to the poor now and then. The army is by far the treasury’s greatest expense—aside from servicing Venetian debt—and yet it cannot win a battle. If we cut funding to the military, we will simply lose more battles. And then there are the government officials drawing a salary from the treasury. If we cut their pay, they will strike, and the government will collapse. We cannot do one thing without messing up ten other things.”
“You aren’t helping, logothete.”
“The reality is that the less the emperor interacts with the people, the better. Keep it brief. There needs to be a certain mystique and distance to your majesty, o despota mou.”
By then the chariot race was almost over. It was growing even more intense. Riders had stopped whipping their horses and were now whipping their opponents. Their chariot wheels were armed with whirling, ringing, razor-sharp steel spikes. One chariot used these to cut into another, and the latter chariot collapsed into wreckage, its horses fleeing in all directions, its charioteer tumbling into the dust before he was trampled by another set of horses behind him and then run over by the chariot they pulled.
“Ooh!” the crowd shouted, standing from their seats. Even Axouch was so excited he gripped Narses’s chair, and only remembered where he was and stepped back—blurting an apology in Turkish, “üzgünüm”—when Narses glared at him.
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Stretcher-bearers rushed out from the spina to carry the fallen charioteer to the Great Palace hospital while slaves struggled to move the wreckage in time. Too late; the other three chariots had already rounded the spina and were hurtling toward them. Hemmed in by the other two competitors, the lead chariot ran over the slaves—to Narses’s delight—and jumped over the wreckage. Its charioteer was almost flung forward into his own four horses, but he managed to climb back into his chariot and regain control.
“Porphyrios!” the crowd screamed.
This was the name of the greatest charioteer in history, a legend who had died centuries ago, and whose statue was on the spina alongside Herakles and the three-headed, six-armed Hekate. This pagan goddess, who had always seemed vaguely Serindian to Narses, clutched blazing golden torches in her six arms. An enormous serpent was wrapped around her supple body, her three heads were topped with spiked crowns, enormous hounds barked at her feet, and her six diamond-studded eyes glared like Medusa’s.
By then the race was ending. But who had even won? The second coming of Porphryios? Trumpets were blasting, a pipe organ was playing a sporty tune, and an atsinganou woman in a short skirt was dancing beside a column plated in blazing gold. A bear on a chain came too close to her; her terrified screaming thrilled Narses. Some sort of priest coated in white and gold vestments beside her was blessing the crowd with his crozier, while the crowd shrieked so loudly Narses barely heard Paul tell him to stand.
“Now is your chance, majesty! Go!”
Swallowing drily, Narses stepped to the box’s forward edge and raised his arms into the air. This was his destiny. He was without preparation, true, but not unprepared. People pointed at him, nudged each other, and their cheers grew deafening. Narses’s ears rang, and butterflies fluttered in his stomach. Keeping his arms in the air, he lowered his hands, which was the gesture for silence. It still took time for the noise to die down.
“Hello, Konstantinopolis!” he bellowed as loudly as he could. People had compared his shouting to Achilles. He sounded like ten thousand men screaming at once. Being a professional charismatic (7/10) also didn’t hurt.
The crowd cheered so loudly that Narses wondered if the City’s glass windows would shatter. Swifts were scattering from distant rooftops. He needed to fight the urge to cover his ears. But with the crowd’s encouragement, the words flowed more easily.
“I am General Narses,” he said. “Grand Domestik of the East and West, Commander of the Roman legions, servant to His Majesty the Emperor Nikephoros—and the Senate and People of Rome!”
Applause, screaming. Narses’s charisma XP increased.
Narses recalled the old rhetorical gestures, and deployed one of these, which almost looked like he was miming the act of holding a square sign with both hands on his left.
“Yet I come bearing sad news.” Narses pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. “I must inform you, o City of Byzantion, that His Majesty the Emperor Nikephoros now dwells with the angels in heaven.”
Shocked silence from a hundred thousand people.
“He died of a heart attack, o good and pious people of Rome,” Narses said. “And he sensed the end coming, long before it did. He has appointed me to be your guardian and protector—your augustus, your defender of the One True Faith. I have come here to ask your blessing.”
Silence.
Narses looked to Paul, and whispered: “What now?”
Paul shrugged.
“Tell us, o grand domestik!” a eunuch shouted from the crowd. “What was the result of your campaign in Trebizond?”
Half the city of Konstantinopolis roared with laughter. Narses glared at Paul before raising his arms for silence.
You are losing favor with the crowd, the game voice said.
“Our campaign was a stunning success,” Narses said. “We destroyed the criminals utterly. Trebizond is annihilated.”
“Then where are these criminals, o grand domestik?” the eunuch yelled. “Why haven’t you brought a single prisoner here to parade in triumph?”
More laughter. Narses looked to Sulayman and Axouch, and considered sending one to silence this heckler. But then Narses would have only one bodyguard.
“Where is my Gabriel?” an old woman cried. “He left with you for Trebizond almost a year ago, and we never heard from him again! Where is he? Where is my Gabriel? Where is my boy?”
“We have made many sacrifices,” Narses began, but by then too many people were shouting. Amid the cacophony, it was hard to make out full sentences, but Narses heard mentions of unaffordable housing, increasing food prices, a lack of opportunity and education, a paucity of hospitals, and on and on. Everyone was complaining about everything.
Paul was covering his face with his hand and groaning.
Time to try something different, Narses thought.
He raised his hands for silence. Nobody cared. So he bellowed for silence with his Achilles voice. This quieted them—for now.
“It’s true,” Narses said. “Many good men have perished to keep us safe and free. All sacrificed some, and some sacrificed all. But their blood shall not have been shed in vain.”
For an instant he recalled how his men generally died while screaming for their mothers, or yelling that they never should have signed up for the army, that it wasn’t worth all the money in the world. Only fools in the City or careerist military officers ever mentioned freedom or imperial glory. The soft pedants in Konstantinopolis—men who had never held a sword—were wilier in their defense of empire. They would say things like: “In spite of its flaws, Rome has been an overall force for good in history!” The empire’s vassals were merely expressing their agency (and not being forced to die in battle for Rome at sword point), Rome’s enemies were uncivilized pagan tyrants who violated people’s rights and oppressed their own women and boiled babies alive for fun, and so on. Rome might have made mistakes in the past, but now its cause was just.
Narses continued. “I promise you, good people of Rome, that all war widows will be taken care of. Taxes for city residents will be lowered, and the bread dole increased.”
This got a cheer. Narses’s charisma XP increased. With all this public speaking, he would level up to a master (8/10) before he knew it.
Glancing at Paul, who nodded, Narses continued. “But we must focus on Rome’s real problems—the machinations of foreign powers and their interference in our affairs. My men were led ably, and all went above and beyond the call of duty. Each and every one of them made me proud to be a Roman. Each Roman soldier under my command could kill ten, a hundred barbarians. But we must understand that the barbarians are strong, cunning, dishonorable, and lustful of our wealth, longing to sully the good virgins of the City. Though we made every effort to make peace with the foreigners, the Skythian hordes align with the Sarakenou satraps to destroy us—and they, too, are leagued with the Rus, the Seres, and even the last of the Khazars. Even the Armenians have betrayed us—”
“He’s just trying to scapegoat the City’s legitimate frustrations!” the eunuch in the crowd shouted. “The rich are the real issue, not defenseless minorities or faraway foreign powers. None of Rome’s problems will be solved by working with aristocrats or military officers like Narses—it will just make everything worse!”
“Shut up!” some members of the crowd yelled.
“Skythian supporter!” came another voice.
“This eunuch must be working for the Rus!” cried an old lady. “Or at the very least, he is repeating their anti-Roman nonsense!”
“If he likes the Rus so much, why doesn’t he move to Novgorod?”
Narses smiled. They do my work without even needing to be asked, and respond well when I blame foreigners. Nothing more pathetic than when a servant apes his master. I’ll see how far I can go. How deeply they’ll let me fuck them.
Once the crowd was ready, he continued. “The schismatic Latins, too, have joined this unholy alliance to destroy us.”
“No, your majesty, no!” Paul whispered, his eyes wide.
“They pay the Bogomil heretics to rise up in the west,” Narses went on. “While paying the criminals and traitors in the east to murder innocent families and burn our holiest and most ancient churches. They toss beautiful, precious, unbaptized babies to the flames! The land where Christ walked is now under the profane dominion of ravening pagan hordes!”
The crowd listened in rapt silence. Narses was making up this speech as he went along, yet he felt himself believing his own words even as they poured from his mouth. Not all of it was nonsense, either, as evidenced by Paul clutching his head, pacing back and forth, and growling swears. Latin merchants were a legitimate problem in Konstantinopolis, and the Sarakenoi had tried to take the City many times over the centuries. Yet Rome’s ethnoi, or minorities, were already under even more pressure than the average Roman. With the exception of the Latins, these groups usually protected themselves by bending over backwards to display their patriotism. Often they would report on their own communities without even being asked, and bring forth traitors in their midst—flinging their own people, in effect, to the Roman wolves.
“We have been betrayed, o good people of Rome,” Narses said. “And the traitors are in our midst. The Latin merchants squeeze good hardworking Romans, and they work together with the traitors and corrupt bureaucrats. We must purge ourselves of this filth, o good people of Rome. Let this be a clean city. If these criminals like working against us so much, they can do that outside our walls and borders, outside our homeland. I ask you now to drive them out.” He extended his hand, as though in friendship. “Drive them out!”
The crowd chanted with him. “Drive them out! Drive them out!”
“Join me, o good and noble people of Rome,” Narses continued. “We need a new Defense Force to venture out and stop the insane Sarakenoi, the cunning Seres, the Rus hordes—to take the fight to the enemy before they take the fight to us! I need men—who remember what a man is—to join me. I need women to be good strong mothers, raising good strong children. Let men be men, not eunuchs who corrupt and confuse the youth. Let women be women. Let Rome be Christian as it once was, not polluted with pagan filth. Let us return to the normalcy, civility, and institutions of the hallowed past. Let us work hard to bring back the traditions and universal empire of our ancestors, for work will set us free! Let Rome be for Christian families—let Rome be kind again!”
The crowd was screaming with excitement. Narses realized that while many different kinds of people lived in Konstantinopolis, the majority was united by their Roman identity. And it was no lie to say that Rome was threatened: the barbarians would burn the City to the ground and sell the population into slavery if they could. Though divisions of all kinds existed here, most Romans gained from imperialism and colonialism, since the ruling class understood that their security depended upon sharing at least some of the spoils of empire with enough bureaucrats, aristocrats, soldiers, landlords, and merchants to keep the rest of the population in line. The more ambitious members of the lower classes were also diverted from rebellion by the prospect of advancing to the top by hard work in the military or bureaucracy. Everyone knew, for instance, that the emperor Basileios the Makedonian had been born a wretched peasant. He was a self-made emperor, and his dynasty had lasted centuries. All the current imperial houses were related to him.
Yet now things were getting out of control in the hippodrome, just in a different way. Rather than directing their anger against Narses and the flailing Roman government, the crowd was pouring onto the racetrack, stripping the clothes from any ethnoi they could find, tying them to the pillars in the spina, and coating them with dust and horse dung. Some barbers were even cutting their hair. Narses watched as the crowd, acting on its own, hung these random people with nooses, or set others on fire. Their wails rose into the sky along with the smoke from their burning flesh. Narses recognized some of the atsinganoi performers among the dead, including the beautiful woman with the short skirt. His eunuch heckler was also among them.
Narses chuckled. “Serves him right.”
It happened fast. Some members of the crowd deputized themselves as leaders and led the Romans through the gates, shouting that they needed boats—they were headed to Galata to put the Latins in their place. Within moments, the hippodrome was empty, and the City outside was echoing with screams, crashing wood and glass, and wailing donkeys and horses. Crowds sang the old song: “Roma, O Roma!”
Except for the hung and burnt corpses on the spina, Narses was left alone with Axouch, Sulayman, and Paul—who was shaking his head, covering his face, and muttering swears.