Boucher was having fun.
The Hikanatoi Tagma had been unable to find this manual everyone was so crazy about, but they’d had a great time marching to Smyrna, a small southeastern coastal city where you could smell the citric tang of the orange orchards by the sea. At each village along the way, the inhabitants reacted differently to their arrival. Sometimes they fought—although they only had scythes, pitchforks, and rakes, with no armor but their linen tunics, and little training or discipline, their ranks often breaking before the fighting even started. Other times the inhabitants fled into the fields, carrying their little children on their backs, screaming for everyone to run, rushing to the copses where they could hide. Some—like at a village called Leandros—attempted to convince Boucher that they knew nothing about the manual.
It didn’t matter. He and his men cut them down. It was a reasonable, measured response to the lawlessness and anarchy of the uprising. Boucher thought it was funny. It was just like a video game, just like an action movie. They were fucking these people up. They were destroying everything. One moment the villagers would be screaming and crying and trying to get away, and then his Almaqah blade would slice them or his horse Xanthos would trample them, and they would fall to the ground, bleeding, crying out, cursing him. Some with stronger spirits would throw dirt or rocks. Others would try to crawl to safety. Because it was annoying to dismount, he sheathed his sword at this point and used a spear—driving it into their backs and twisting, almost like he was skewering worms. That did the trick.
Traitors, liars, criminals, all of them, he thought. They get what they deserve. If you don’t want to get in trouble, don’t break the law. Simple!
Once the Hikanatoi Tagma had finished off the villagers, their homes would be burned. Sometimes the men would find babies crawling around, crying, and generally being annoying. Boucher and his men would toss them into the flames. The squeals would only be a problem for a few minutes. Then everything would be quiet except for the roaring fire.
Better than letting them grow up into traitors, he thought. Better than letting them waste resources.
Pillars of smoke rose into the sky from horizon to horizon. Some villagers closer to the coast had fled behind Smyrna’s walls, making it easier to burn their homes. Boucher and his men would arrive and torch everything within a few minutes before moving on. As Paul the Chain said, criminals were everywhere, and because they had turned so many towns and cities astray, destroying these places was the only way to save what was left of Romanía.
Boucher was a hunter-killer.
Smyrna, on the other hand, was ready for the Hikanatoi. Boucher and his men had been fighting all day, so they were tired by the time they arrived in the evening. After a brief council of war, he and his officers decided to set fire to the city and kill anyone who tried to escape. Smyrna had a stone wall, but most buildings inside were wood, so the archers shot fire arrows, loosing one volley after another until the whole city was burning so brightly it hurt Boucher’s eyes, even from a bowshot away. The heat warmed his face, like he was standing before an oven, and the aroma of cooking meat filled the air. People, as it turned out, smelled like pork when they got roasted. Plenty of dogs, cats, horses, cows, goats, and chickens also met the same fate.
Not everyone died in the fire, however. Some fled to the Hikanatoi and begged for mercy in the name of Jesus and Mary and whoever else they could think of. Killing them was easy. These people knew the rules of war, and it was obvious they were against everything that was good and noble and true, so all the killing was justified.
Other traitors piled into boats and either rowed or sailed away from Smyrna, but Boucher’s archers just used them for target practice.
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After a few hours, everyone was dead. By then the fire had run its course, so Boucher ordered his men inside the city to ensure the job was done. He joined them, announcing that once all the houses in the city were checked, the Hikanatoi could call it a day. The men cheered.
As it turned out, they found no one left alive. Plenty of corpses were charred—people clutching each other, parents trying to protect their children from the flames, one big burned skeleton covering two smaller ones. But everyone was dead. The manual was probably hidden in the flames, now, where no one could find it. Paul the Chain mentioned that if the lower classes learned the techniques written inside, fighting them would be harder.
“The immortals, you know,” Paul said, his bright blue eyes darting back and forth inside his pale, puffy face. “The Zhayedan, they can be quite a nuisance.”
“I just have to wonder if it’s really a great idea to destroy so many villages,” Boucher said, wandering the blackened ruins. He was tired and starting to doubt himself. “Plus one coastal city. It was fun, but it seemed a little too realistic, you know what I mean?”
“It doesn’t matter, Domestikos,” Paul said. “Many refugees have fled the depredations of the eastern hordes and come to Konstantinopolis over the years. They’re in need of new homes, new lands. All of these places will be repopulated. The important thing is to protect Romanía, and that is what we do here.”
Soon they were resting in a tent, laughing with the other officers over the day’s stories.
“There are always more of the lower orders to replace the ones we kill,” Paul the Chain explained to Boucher. “There’s a limitless supply of poor. Plenty of loyal citizens from across Rome will happily roam here and rebuild. Or we can import barbarians. In a few years, no one will know the difference. They’ll pump out plenty of laborers and money for us—and happily, too.”
“We just needed to shake things up a little, Domestikos,” Dekarch Mourtzouphlos added. “Sometimes people need to be reminded who’s in charge.”
Ignoring the Dekarch, Paul continued. “We’ll make the initial investment back a hundred times over. The only major difference about these places will be the loyalty of the new residents. Rather than embracing criminality and failed ideas, they’ll embrace civility and the government and everything good about their homeland—normalcy, you know—since we’ll make sure that only the best people get to move here. Sometimes a little pruning is necessary to make our country’s garden thrive more beautifully than ever before. Sometimes we need to mow the grass with our scythes.”
Paul the Chain grinned at Boucher in the glowing embers. Although Paul creeped Boucher out, he was sharp, which must have been why he was accompanying the expedition.
Despite minor misgivings, it had been the most amazing day of Boucher’s life. At first he hadn’t been sure about getting sucked into a board game, but his skills were so far above those of the villagers that killing them was effortless. His character—General Narses—had spent a lifetime training for combat. He was also equipped with the best weapons and armor, as well as Xanthos, the best war horse, a gleaming muscular steed who was almost the size of a bus.
No one could match Narses. It was so much better than boring Maine, where teachers threw him in detention for no reason. On top of all that, his men here worshipped him. Now they were all covered in blood and charred filth, and each had killed a whole bunch of people, but they still bowed and averted their eyes whenever he appeared. Boucher also liked that he was taller and stronger than everyone.
This is the life, he thought. You kill, you’re strong, you win fame and glory! What more could a man want?
When the Hikanatoi Tagma was leaving the ruined city to bivouac on a hill near the road, their baggage train finally caught up to them. Arriving slaves erected luxurious tents complete with animal skins for floors, and even an enormous porcelain bathtub which they filled with scalding water taken from a cauldron heated over a fire. Then the camp followers in the baggage train supplied food, women, and wine to any soldiers who could pay.
That wasn’t the end of it. Not only could Boucher take a hot bath, but he was also tended by several slave girls, who oiled and scrubbed his muscles. At the same time, he was too tired to play with them, and had always found women annoying. When they had finished their work, he dismissed them, said his prayers, and went to sleep.