Herakleia sailed the Paralos into the afternoon, standing on the deck with her arms working the steering oars to avoid all the different vessels ahead, adding XP to her strength skill. Varangian longboats with dragon prows and striped red-and-white sails rowed among Arabian dhows and Frankish cogs and Roman dromons as well as the occasional Venetian and Genoan ships, which were difficult to distinguish from their Roman equivalents. As for patrolling military vessels, they signaled with flags, hands, and shouts, but she ignored them. These then joined the armada which had been pursuing them since they’d left Konstantinopolis.
We’ll have to keep moving after sundown, Herakleia thought. They’ll never stop chasing us. But how are we going to deal with the darkness? We’ll run aground. Then there’s rumors of monsters in the Pontic Sea…
Her past self—or another part of herself, who could tell?—warned that an important navigational device called a compass had yet to be invented. This meant that they needed to use the sun, moon, and stars to find their way. But she was a princess, not a sailor. Her navigational skills were low.
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, she thought. Seems simple enough. As for the stars…
If she was still awake after sundown, she needed to find the north star. Hopefully those merchants knew how to sail at night. Dionysios might have known. He always had so many tricks up his sleeve…
She gritted her teeth and clutched her fists. General Narses had killed him. Narses had once been a palace excubitor, one who even learned about the farr from Dionysios, but then he joined Nikephoros’s coup, and chased her across Anatolia.
Narses, Nikephoros, Paul the Chain, Herakleia thought. They’ll experience the same torture visited upon me and so many others. They’ll be condemned to the stake—just as they condemned me.
The chance that she could do this kept her awake, even as she swayed with exhaustion at the steering oars, the voice warning that her stamina was low.
Herakleia had always been strong-willed. Early in her father’s reign most people in the Great Palace were either plotting coups, relaxing on couches, or praying to ikons in one of a thousand marble chapels. Herakleia, however, dressed in a man’s robes, practiced wrestling, swordsmanship, riding, and archery, read the classics, and pressured her father—Good Emperor Anastasios—to found schools, hospitals, orphanages, and food banks, since the grain dole had ended centuries earlier after the Arabs took Egypt. She had been a part of his reforms since the beginning, joining him in the popular assemblies he called in the Hippodrome, where the whole city sometimes showed up, and even slaves and women and children could propose laws, vote, make speeches, and elect delegates. The expense for these new programs was charged to the powerful, who were infuriated; the capital’s merchants and landlords and guild masters likewise complained that they had trouble making money when people could eat and sleep for free. Anastasios responded by intensifying the limits on profits. The green and blue factions united against him; he replaced them with a workers’ militia, which started months of street fighting. The city came close to burning down multiple times. Once the smoke had cleared, a moratorium was implemented on the purchase of land; large estates were broken up and divided equally among the peasants. Many of the rich were imprisoned or executed. The golden decorations in the churches were exchanged for tools like windmills and iron ploughs which were meant to make food production easier and more efficient. But all of this meant that Anastasios could barely take a step without surrounding himself with armored guards. Assassins attempted to kill him several times each year. But the people called him a saint.
While Anastasios always supported Herakleia, her mother Prokopia struggled to make her into a proper Roman lady. In Herakleia’s childhood, when Anastasios was campaigning in the Bulgar Khanate in the west or against the Sarakenoi to the east, Prokopia had forced Herakleia into a silk dress and then onto a sedan chair carried through the city by muscular slaves. This had been the girl’s first trip outside the palace walls, and one of her earliest memories. The sight of so many beggars horrified her. Though many women were among the wretched hordes of starving rags stretching out their hands and pleading for bread with bulging eyes, Prokopia had turned her face away.
She was from the House of Argyros—rich, educated, professional, and contemptuous of anyone who questioned the status quo. Anastasios had chosen her at a bridal show, and married her to placate the dynatoi. Except for Herakleia and her older sister Zoë, the marriage was childless, with both daughters far closer to their father than their mother. Emperor and Empress only appeared together during ceremonial parades just outside the Great Palace’s bronze doors in the Milion Square, where they marched in formal robes decked with jewels, their crowns weighed down with emeralds and rubies the size of apples, the pearls descending around their faces like waterfalls. Otherwise Herakleia’s parents refused to even look at each other. Prokopia was always whispering to her attendants and noble hangers-on, spending years planning coups that went nowhere. Such was the result of having power and education but no empathy. Prokopia’s strength was also low, which meant that she was always trying to convince others to fight her battles for her.
In reality, Anastasios loved a princess of Rus, Olga Grigorievna—her hair golden flax, her eyes blazing sapphires, her skin pale and gleaming porcelain—who acted as Herakleia’s surrogate mother. Olga was also the first woman she met who told her that she was worth more than her virginity—that she was more than just a baby-making machine. This happened after Herakleia’s sister Zoë was lost in a Skythian raid while traveling to marry the Khagan of the Khazars.
“All of these men,” Olga whispered, “and many women, too, they think women are good for nothing but sex and raising children. Even an enslaved man can count on his wife to be his personal servant. But we can do anything men can, and more. Once, long ago, we ruled the world.”
It was dangerous to talk like this in the palace. People were listening everywhere.
“We’ll free ourselves,” Olga said. “One day soon. And we’ll take back what belongs to us.”
A plague outbreak carried off both Prokopia and Olga when Herakleia was still young, leaving her alone with her father. To combat the plague, Anastasios instituted a strict quarantine, providing free food and medical care for everyone. The cost was charged to the rich, many of whom were reduced to penury. Later, Anastasios was forced to campaign to the east and west, fighting traitors among the dynatoi who were bribing barbarians to invade Romanía. While Anastasios was away, he forced the rich to reside in Konstantinopolis, where it was easier for his spies to keep an eye on them. Still, the palace needed more bodyguards, and hostages taken from rich families were used as food tasters. Every meal with them was awkward.
As Herakleia had matured, she urged her father to be more careful. From reading every history she could get her hands on, she had not only grown her education skills, but also learned that any bodyguard could be bribed, many Emperors met violent ends, and it was often their bodyguards or closest supporters who assassinated them. His men should therefore be drawn from peasants and workers—those who directly benefited from his policies, the young who had learned to read and write at the new schools, people who were Mazdakists.
But by then Anastasios had been emperor for years. He had grown full of himself, insisting on walking among the people and reducing his bodyguard in order to show off his popularity. The predictable result was that a man almost stabbed him during a procession on the Sunday before Pentekost, just as the people—all barefoot and dressed in white—were wishing Anastasios long life, and shouting for God to multiply his years.
“Your popularity doesn’t matter,” Herakleia argued, tears in her eyes. “The dynatoi will kill you the first chance they—”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll look out for myself. I’ll do better. You needn’t worry about your old man.”
“They’ll kill you,” she said. “You can’t take risks like this. You have other people to think about. What will happen to the poor if you die? What will happen to me if—”
“Perhaps we ought to marry you off,” Anastasios said.
This always stopped Herakleia. Her father sometimes mentioned marriage as a joke.
“That isn’t funny,” Herakleia said. “All princes are bastards.”
Anastasios raised his white, bushy eyebrows. “Then perhaps we ought to declare you our successor.”
Herakleia stared at him. This he had never mentioned.
“But—”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a woman ruled,” he said. “There is the Empress Irene, for one, unpopular as she was, though she, too, was an iconoclast. You are strong, bright, charismatic, and beloved of the people—far more so than she ever was. You drive the rich and their toadies in the priesthood and the university out of their minds, always an important quality in a good person. The people of the city and the countryside as well as the army will all acclaim you.”
“They say I’m possessed,” she murmured. “All they want is to pack me off to a nunnery and have my tongue slit or my eyes put out.”
“You would be a good empress, Herakleia. You would preserve my legacy. I have been thinking more about retiring, you know—a thing no emperor has done since Diocletian. I’m getting too old for this. I think so often of residing in our palace across the Golden Horn, where I could relax in the garden and write my memoirs…”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“You will have to stay here even if you retire. Soldiers need to guard you day and night.”
“I can’t keep fighting forever,” Anastasios said. “A new generation needs to take up the torch. We need to keep the holy fire burning. Once I die, historians will heap a mountain of abuse upon my grave. But the winds of change will eventually scatter it all.”
“You’ve been reading too much Mazdak, father.”
He smiled. “One can never read enough. There is always more to learn from the real world, from books—”
“Father—”
“It’s kind of you to care about me.” He kissed her forehead. “But I’m a survivor. I know what I’m doing.”
The coup came within weeks. General Nikephoros, working with the remnants of the Greens and Blues, the merchants and bureaucrats and landlords and priests—all the enemies among the dynatoi Anastasios had made in his long career—murdered him. They stabbed him in his room, cut off his head, thrust it on a pike, and paraded it around the City. His body was dismembered, his limbs nailed to city gates across the land. Before they could catch Herakleia and do the same to her, she fled the City and joined the uprisings spreading across Romanía, hiding in their secret base at Trebizond. The peasants and one of their noble sympathizers, Trebizond’s Doux David Bagrationi, asked Herakleia and her friend, a guard from the Great Palace named George Vatatzes, to travel to Sera to procure a manual which, according to rumor, could teach them Mazdakism and Seran martial arts. With this knowledge they could defeat the Roman legions once and for all.
She and Vatatzes had ridden across Skythia, passing into Sera through the great desert with its huge brick watchtowers, mountain monasteries full of statues and paintings and Diamond Sutras, and endless dunes which were like ocean crests of sand. It took six months to reach Dongjing. The terminus of the silk routes, this was a city of black curving rooftops where the white gravel streets were as wide as the Hippodrome was long. Near the White Goose Pagoda she and Vatatzes found a guide to bring them to a place called Tiger Mountain, the home of Sera’s warrior monks. This was a dangerous journey, for the monks warred with the Seran Emperor. The travelers needed to sneak through forests and marshes, travel deserts and tundra, cross rivers and seas and lakes and even the Great Canal, avoid military checkpoints and bandits, until at last they reached their destination.
High above a nearly vertical stairwell lost in the clouds were ancient structures filled with men and women in red cowls. These people knew how to run along walls as though upon the ground, how to leap twenty feet into the air—how to fly—how to bat speeding arrows away with a sword, to be in two places at once, to return to life after death and be enhanced by new powers from the afterworld, to use charms to find hidden treasure, to see the future or the past as clearly as the present, to win card games, to pick up unknown musical instruments and play them like a master, to control minds with the magnetic look or chain the will of others with incantations, to leave one’s body, to defeat an entire army singlehanded, to summon the wind and rain with magic spells, to make young children sleep.
Each monk was a living dictionary consisting of hundreds of martial arts moves. Their power, the divine farr, came from theory and practice. To teach peasants and workers to read and write, to show that their problems were shared by millions around the world—this made one’s veins pulse with energy. But one also had to listen, strategize, and interpret the peasants’ desires through Mazdakism, reminding them that they could never compromise with those who thirsted for their blood.
Herakleia had been born a princess, but all this traveling, fighting, learning, and training transformed her into a warrior.
In the past these monks had worshipped an ancient mystic whom they called the Awakened One. He taught that all life is suffering, that the world is an illusion constructed to lead humanity astray for mystical reasons beyond understanding, and that one must remain passive and meditative and suppress thought and focus on bodily sensations even as millions perished of starvation, disease, or the ravening maw of war—as entire nations were exterminated or enslaved, as children were sold into slavery, as women were raped en masse, pumping out offspring until they died in childbirth. But Mazdakists taught these monks a basic ethical principle: to remain passive, make excuses, or be silent in the face of injustice meant aiding the oppressor. To say that both sides were wrong aided the oppressor.
“The world is real,” the monks told Herakleia and Vatatzes. “It is not an illusion. Therefore we must tear up poverty by the roots.”
Vatatzes had been skeptical, saying that as a Christian he understood why people might believe the world to be an illusion. After all, the Bogomil heretics in the Bulgar Khanate said such things, maintaining that reality was a creation of the devil, and that Jesus only ruled over heaven. But when Vatatzes argued that everything was subjective, that there was no objective truth, that everything was just an opinion, one of the monks suddenly knocked him down.
Vatatzes cried out and asked the monk why he had done this.
“If my fist is an illusion,” the monk said, “why did you fall?”
After this, whenever Vatatzes slipped into subjectivism, the monks punched him until he stopped. They maintained that violence was often the only way to deal with such people.
“My mother taught me that all violence is wrong,” Vatatzes said.
“But not the violence of the state,” one monk said. “Not the violence of the landlord throwing tenants out of their home. Not the violence of the slave master whipping his slave. Not the violence of the army exterminating an entire people. It is insanity to question that violence. But when the poor unite to oppose your violence with their own violence—that is wrong, correct?”
Vatatzes was silent. Herakleia rolled her eyes, annoyed by his addiction to debate.
“These people only argue the unreality of the world because, like infants, they refuse to face it,” the monk continued. “They always come from wealth, and refuse to acknowledge that private property is theft. This is why they bury their heads in the sand. But once the world reminds them of its actual existence, they can change their minds. And besides—if reality is an illusion, why not give all your belongings to the poor? Your property is an illusion too, is it not? Put your money where your mouth is, else thou art a hypocrite!”
Herakleia and Vatatzes trained with these monks, studied, and even fought Seran soldiers whenever they encroached upon the monastery. One day the two Romans were given the manual, which combined Mazdak’s theory with Seran praxis. This they brought home, journeying to the west, sailing along the dangerous monsoon routes from the coastal city of Zaytun, around Hind, across the Arabian Ocean, and thence to Egypt. They were so exhausted that their divine strength—called qi in Seran, energeia in Greek, farr in Persian—ebbed away. More than a year had passed since they had left Rome, but the legions were still looking for rebellious peasants—or their allies. Almost as soon as they disembarked at Abydos, the Romans killed Vatatzes and captured Herakleia.
Now she was sailing the Paralos out of the Bosporus and into the Pontic Sea. It was evening. Alexios the handsome youth had fed the horses, watered them, brushed them, shoveled their dung over the side, and now he was petting them and even trying to soothe them; they were nervous on the ship. He was here to relieve her. She was so exhausted she could barely stand. Her whole body ached, and strange memories were flitting through her consciousness from a place called high school. Once, she had been a dark-skinned man with the odd name of Jackson. Now she barely cared about her transformation into Herakleia. Other issues were more pressing. For instance, what had happened to the Frankish slave girl in the palace—what was her name—Clotilda? Was she still there? Or was she a traitor?
They also had bigger problems. What were they supposed to do about the six dromons chasing the Paralos? After clearing the Bosporus Herakleia had continued sailing north into the Pontic Sea, afraid of leading the Roman navy east along the coast to Trebizond. Few ships risked the open ocean like this, but the Romans followed nonetheless.
Alexios took the steering oars, but Herakleia remained by his side, joining Diaresso and Gontran on the deck for dinner. She hadn’t slept since her rescue. Even in the palace dungeon, she had gotten little sleep. Her stamina had fallen almost to zero.
“It is difficult to enjoy this meal,” Diaresso said, “with the polytheists chasing our very heels. We must eat quickly.”
“I’m all out of ideas,” Gontran said.
“Wait a minute,” Alexios said. “I remember something I saw in a movie once.”
“What is a ‘movie?’” Diaresso said. “Something which moves?”
“Forget it,” Alexios said. “Do you know if the Paralos has a rowboat somewhere? Like a skiff or something?”
No idea, Herakleia thought, chewing her food, her eyelids fluttering.
“What do you need a rowboat for?” Gontran said.
“Here’s my idea,” Alexios said. “We put a couple of torches on the back of the Paralos. After it gets dark, we send someone out in a rowboat tied behind us. At the same moment, we snuff out the torches here while someone on the rowboat lights two identical torches there. Then he unties the rowboat and jumps into the water. Using the rope, we reel him back in. Then we turn hard to port and head to Trebizond. The Romans keep chasing the rowboat in the dark, thinking it’s us. Hopefully we’re over the horizon by the time the Romans figure out the trick.”
“A clever ruse,” Diaresso said.
“Yeah.” Gontran stood. “There’s just one problem. We don’t have a rowboat.”
“Maybe we could build one,” Alexios said. “There might be supplies in the hold. This ship has given us everything we need so far.”
“Why would it ever stop?” Herakleia said.
Everyone looked at her.
“Just because something has been happening up until now doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll keep happening forever,” she added.
The men laughed uneasily. It was taking them time to understand that they were in the company of a woman who was more intelligent and experienced than any of them. Though it was easy for someone like Alexios to join a liberation movement, it was harder for him to understand that women’s liberation was an integral part of that.
Alexios lit a pair of torches and attached them to holders overhanging the stern. Taking a third torch, he brought Herakleia to the hold and helped her into a hammock so she could sleep. Then Herakleia watched him search the hold for anything he could use to make a rowboat or even just a wooden platform. Maybe if he could find some barrels, he could hammer or lash them together so that they would float in the sea. Then he could hammer two torches into place.
Among all the sacks and amphorae he found plenty of barrels belowdecks. These were filled with water, wine, and olive oil, and would take time to empty. A little more ransacking produced a chest of drawers packed with carpenter's tools, including hammers, nails, and saws. There was even a pile of spare beams for mending the hull.
“This ship has everything,” he said.
“Alexios,” Gontran said from above. “You’d better get up here.”
The boy climbed the ladder to the deck.
“The wind’s stopped,” Herakleia heard Gontran say. “And the Romans are rowing hard.”
“They have awaited this opportunity,” Diaresso said. “For this moment, they have been saving their strength.”
Herakleia was so tired, it was impossible to resist the need to sleep. But as she drifted off, she heard the drums in the distance pounding again. The pace was rapid. The Romans were gaining on the Paralos.