“Those who do not work,” Narses told the captured youths, “shall not eat.”
Their training had begun as soon as they emerged from Lake Askania. But this process was intense enough to kill. Immortals, for instance, refused to give food or water to their students unless they fought for it. Because the students in Nikaia were already exhausted—and also because it was impossible for them to defeat their teachers in combat—the students attacked, got knocked down, and then lay on the ground, gasping, clutching a fresh bruise, sometimes cursing their fate and groaning for their mothers, families, sweethearts.
If tears came to their eyes—if they showed the slightest weakness—the teachers beat their skulls with their sword hilts. But if they showed progress, they got food, water, rest.
“Each looks as beautiful as Aphrodite rising from the sea,” Paul said to Narses.
Trusting his brothers to teach the students, Narses retired to the dead doux’s kastron, and Paul followed. A slave was ordered to throw the dead doux outside with the rubbish. Soon the century’s leaders joined Narses and Paul in the dining room, where they reclined on couches around a central table. For dinner Paul’s slave girls Zaynab and Clotilda served fried fish caught from the lake.
When no one blessed the meal, however, everyone noticed that Father Kosmas was missing. Concerned, Narses sent Tzanichites to find him—just after the kentarch had reclined on his couch, sighed, and groaned that he finally had a moment to relax.
An hour later Tzanichites returned and bowed to Narses.
“Forgive me, Domestikos. No one knows where Father Kosmas is. I could barely find any Nikaians to speak with at all.”
“The free citizens are too terrified to interact with us.” Paul gestured vaguely, reclining on his couch. “They hide in their homes, among the hills, or at the far end of the lake, awaiting our departure.” Paul looked at Narses. “Because someone keeps killing everybody.”
“The century has no priest,” Narses said.
“Someone may have killed him, God forbid.” Nemanjos crossed himself. “Or he may have run off, who knows?”
“A Jew.” Narses gestured for Kentarch Tzanichites to sit and rest. “We shall have to resume searching for the priest in the morning.”
“You must be anxious to depart the city as soon as possible, Domestikos,” Paul the Chain said. “Yet we cannot leave a leadership vacuum. There would be anarchy. We are charged by His Majesty the Emperor to restore law and—”
“Would you like the job?” Narses asked Paul. “Paul Katena, Doux of Nikaia. It has a poetic sound, doesn’t it?”
Paul shook his head. “With respect, Domestikos, my goal is to survive this campaign. The Nikaians would kill me as soon as the century departed the city. Besides, you know we are in the countryside, and that whatever delights we may find here cannot compare to those of the capital.”
At that moment Clotilda was pouring wine into his goblet. Paul ran his hand under her robe and up her thigh. Narses gritted his teeth beneath his lips. Why had he believed Paul when he had said that slave girls would drive the men into a frenzy?
“It would also be a step down from logothete to doux,” Paul added, as Clotilda left the room.
“You are the only one we can spare,” Narses said. “Everyone else is needed for our great project.”
Paul nodded, his blue eyes shooting daggers.
I should have manumitted that slave I met earlier. Narses looked away from Paul and into his wine cup. Would it be so strange to appoint a freeman doux?
“The matter is quite simple, really,” Paul said. “You must avoid losing more men. Then we’ll have no need for a priest. It’s as simple as that.”
Paul smiled at everyone, expecting them to laugh at his joke, but neither the slave girls, nor the doctor, nor his assistant, nor the tired and hungry kentarch, nor the quartermaster reacted. Narses said nothing further. Soon he retired to the room he had chosen in the mansion for himself, locking the door and bracing it with a heavy chest of drawers. In his bed he was joined by Euphrosyne and Nikephoros’s orange-haired daughter Eurythro as he dreamed, though even in his fantasies he never touched them.
Next morning slaves loaded the carriages with all the food they could fit. The century’s worn-out shoes, clothes, axles, weapons, and armor were replaced by requisitioning in the marketplace. Since Nikaia’s merchants were either dead or hiding, nothing was paid for. As for the items the soldiers had taken from the city, Paul the Chain and Stefan Nemanjos tabulated the amount belonging to each immortal. There was too little time to ship it all back to the capital, so Narses declared that his brothers would be reimbursed, at campaign’s end, for the items’ value.
They left the city at midmorning. With ninety-eight immortals plus Narses, two hundred students, one hundred and seventy-four engineers, several hundred slaves, and forty oxen and twenty carriages for the Basilik alone, as well as innumerable mules and camp followers, it took almost an hour for the column to march through the gate. Mounted on Xanthos, Narses waited for the final carriage—which was carrying part of the Basilik—to pass. The Domestikos was the last to leave.
The highway ahead cut straight through the mountains along a green valley of farmland and olive orchards. After Narses had been following the column for some time, he looked back at the city. The inhabitants were returning from the hills.
Everyone hates us, he thought. Everyone hates me.
Not far from the city they found Father Kosmas impaled on a wooden pike. Flies were buzzing around his bloated flesh, devouring his bulging eyes, and drowning themselves in his blood. Tzanichites ordered his men to remove the priest from the pike and bury him by the roadside. Everyone was crossing themselves and saying prayers. Narses felt depressed.
First John, now Father Kosmas, he thought. One by one, only the best among us lose their lives.
“Skythioi?” Paul the Chain said to Narses, jarring him.
“It is an ancient punishment, long gone out of style due to its brutality.” Narses glared at Paul. “One only more bookish characters might know.”
“Domestikos, are you suggesting that I had something to do with this?” Paul said.
“I have no proof,” Narses said. “Only suspicion.”
“Well, that is all you are ever going to have. Make sure to suspect someone else. Like the Skythioi, for instance.”
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Once Father Kosmas was buried, a ceramic tile carved with the letters IC XC NIKA was placed over the mound.
Déjà vu, Narses thought. That’s what they called it in the old world.
The immortals, engineers, slaves, and followers bowed their heads in silence. Narses clutched his fists.
“Many of us will end this campaign in the same fashion,” Paul murmured.
God willing, you’ll be next, Narses thought. One setback after another. One loss after another.
When the column got moving again, Stefan Nemanjos rode up to Narses, oblivious to how he was trembling with rage.
“This is a problem, Domestikos,” the quartermaster whispered. “The men are terrified of proceeding without a priest. Without absolution, without the proper burial rites, their immortal souls are in jeopardy—”
Narses lunged to the side and seized Nemanjos by his tunic, nearly pulling him from his horse. “What do you want me to do? All the priests and monks from Nikaia have fled. Who among them would join us?”
“I—I mean this completely respectfully, Domestikos, but perhaps we should send someone back to Konstantinopolis to retrieve another priest.”
“Who? Who would go? Who would join us?”
“Me, sir. I am happy—”
“Oh no,” Narses said, “you can’t escape that easily, you coward.”
“Domestikos—”
“You would never return. The moment you got back to the capital, you would make some excuse and beg His Majesty the Emperor to send someone else in your place. Or you would go into hiding. You would flee all the way to the Holy Mountain—to Mount Athos!”
“Sir, I—”
“I know a rat when I see one.”
The quartermaster pursed his lips.
“Yet even if you are a rat, I need you here.” Narses released Nemanjos. “As for finding another priest, we can’t replace Father Kosmas right now. At Ankara we will find someone to minister to the men’s spiritual needs.”
“Sir, again, with respect, the Skythioi rule these lands,” Nemanjos said. “We are bound to be attacked before we reach Ankara.”
“I will lose no more men,” Narses said.
Nemanjos stared at him. Then, with permission, the quartermaster returned to his previous position in the column—at the center, surrounded by as many immortals as possible. Narses, in the mean time, ordered the column to tighten up. Since they were in danger of attack, the Basilik and the baggage needed protection.
Seventy-five stadia per day, Narses thought. Twenty days to reach Trebizond. At least.
Somehow he remembered that in the old world, no location was more than a few days’ traveling from any other. It was unimaginable for most people living in that place to spend so much time traveling. To march from Konstantinopolis across Anatolia to Trebizond was almost akin to leaving the Earth for Mars. But he told himself to stop thinking about the old world, a place he might never see again.
I will never defeat the fugitives. I will never succeed in my goals. And even if I do, I will feel nothing but emptiness. There is no point to any of this. It’s just a game.
That day they crossed the River Sangarios along a massive stone bridge constructed long ago by Emperor Justinian. On the far side they refilled their casks with cool sweet water from the flowing river. Such was Narses’s frustration that he stared into the wavelets and thought for a long time of throwing himself off the bridge with all his armor on.
You will do no such thing, the voice said. If you die here, you die in the world you came from.
You’ll miss me, won’t you? Narses thought. You’ll be bored.
Much time has passed since new blood has entered the game. The other players either died or were so absorbed that they forgot themselves completely.
The column’s troubles began on the river’s far side. Skythioi had taken this territory after the disastrous Battle of Manzikert a decade ago, when they routed a Roman army and captured Emperor Diogenes IV. Having no desire to ransom someone they despised, the Skythian King Arslan ordered Diogenes strangled with rope. When the emperor gasped for breath, the Skythioi pulled his head back and poured molten gold down his throat, since he was famous for being Rome’s richest man. Diogenes’s body was then stuffed and mounted in the throne room at Kayseri Hisar, the capital of the Tourkokratia, the Skythian lands, where it greeted Roman ambassadors—sent by the new Emperor Basil—who were anxious to retrieve it as well as the standards lost in battle. None of the ambassadors succeeded in their aims.
Since then, this part of the Opsikion Theme—and much of Anatolia’s hot dry uplands away from the coast—had been prowled by Skythioi. A few walled cities like Nikaia, Nikomedeia, and Ankara were safe, but to stray from their environs meant that you might have your tongue torn out. As a result, trees and shrubs and grass were now reclaiming the highways between the cities. Neither towns, nor villages, nor even individual houses could be found; sometimes the only evidence of a village’s log cabins was a group of apple trees growing in a glade. Occasionally the column stumbled past a building’s foundations or a broken milestone so smoothed down it was hard to distinguish from a rock. Soon the immortals at the column’s front were forced to cut a path, grounding the column’s progress to a near standstill. The trees were so thick that horses were unable to pass through.
Nemanjos clutched his head and looked back to the long line of oxen-drawn carriages behind him. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
With proper roads we could journey all the way to Trebizond in a few weeks, Narses thought. Now I wonder if we can even reach Ankara.
“We might return to Chrysopolis,” Paul whispered to him, “and find a few ships to bring us to Trebizond.”
Narses looked at Paul. “Leave us whenever you please.”
“Good, then before I go, I just have one question,” Paul said. “How many times must I be proven right before you listen to me, Domestikos?”
“I will die before I take a eunuch’s advice,” Narses said.
“If possessing testicles makes men into fools, then I’m glad mine were removed,” Paul said.
Narses dismounted from Xanthos, gave the black destrier’s reins to a slave—telling him to watch over the horse with his life, or he would lose it—and then joined the immortals at the column’s front. There he drew his Almaqah blade and—with the divine farr—helped his brothers clear a path, the power burning in the furnace at his body’s core. He worked here not only to assist the immortals, but also because he was growing anxious and needed to take his mind off the fact that they were exposed. The way to Ankara lay along a thousand stadia of valleys situated between low mountains. Many times he spotted riders in the woods and on the peaks, their eyes gleaming beneath white turbans or peaked felt caps. As soon as he met those eyes, they would vanish. At any moment, hundreds, thousands of horsemen could gallop over the mountains, whipping their horses, waving scimitars, loosing arrows from composite bows, kicking up a dust storm thick enough to blacken the sun, screaming with joy…
Skyth has never met immortal in battle, Narses thought. Who will draw first blood?
With his farr and stamina failing, he ordered the column to stop several hours early when it was still mid afternoon. Everyone except the immortal teachers needed to construct fortifications. The students were supposed to learn to use the farr as soon as possible, but then they might seize the first opportunity to join the Skythioi. They might even become Skythians themselves. Arming them was also dangerous, as was undoing their restraints. It might have been better if the column had never taken any students at all. How could they hope to learn when everyone was too busy to teach them?
This is a catastrophe. Paul was right. But I’ll never admit it.
Narses watched the woods that rose above the remnant of the road, the dark mountains wailing with birds and insects all the way up to the sky.
A slow-moving column. Too many prisoners. Ample chances for ambush. How could the Skythioi resist? They must know we’re here.
Narses found Outrider Philippikos, who was cutting down a cypress with his axe. The general was about to order the outrider to scout ahead, but Philippikos would be killed if he went alone. Sighing, Narses gathered food and water from Nemanjos and then brought Philippikos to Tzanichites and Paul the Chain.
“Outrider Philippikos and I are going to see how much more of the forest lies ahead.” Narses wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Kentarch, you are in command, now.”
Tzanichites gulped and bowed. “Sir.”
“Do not allow the logothete to interfere,” Narses said to Tzanichites while eyeing Paul. “Proceed to Ankara regardless of whether we return.”
“Sir,” Tzanichites said.
“Don’t get lost, Domestikos,” Paul said. “It would be terribly dreary without all the positivity and good feelings you bring to this expedition.”
Narses scowled at Paul, then brought Philippikos to the camp’s edge and plunged into the woods.