The bombardment continued for the rest of the day and into the night. As quickly as ammunition could be produced, it was loaded into the basilik and fired. The two Venetian ships were sunk, their crews beheaded or dismembered by the burning iron balls hurtling past almost too quickly for eyes to follow. Some drowned, but most swam back to Galata, which was now targeted by the artillery. Narses told his crews to destroy whatever they pleased, even the Kastellion of Galata and its chain. This had protected Konstantinopolis for centuries, but it was no longer necessary. If anything, it was a hindrance.

  We burst the bounds of the past.

  All this infernal light and noise disturbed the people of Konstantinopolis, so they, too, came out to watch the spectacle of the ancient world ending, and the modern world beginning. Some crossed themselves, others stared and clutched their children close, while not a few cheered. Narses had never been popular in this place, and he had grown even more hated as he had raided the City’s churches to pay for his projects, but for the first time in months people volunteered to join his movement. Growing crowds of men approached him—as close as his bodyguards would allow—and, bowing to Narses, asked how they could help.

  “We’ll never take Galata without ships,” he told them. “We need ships. Wood. Shipwrights. We must reconstruct the fleet.”

  One man mentioned that he knew a fellow named Theophylaktos Leichoudes, his wife’s second cousin, once removed, who had experience building dromons, and some knowledge of their design. Within hours, the shipyards were busy again. Wood gathered from the countryside was sawed, planed, hammered into place.

  Time was moving faster. Life was breathed into the dying, decadent City, as new construction sounds echoed across roads and buildings from the Great Palace in the east to the Land Walls in the west.

  The trickle of volunteers became a stream, then a river. Paul and his logothetes set up their desks and chairs before the Milion, gathering papers and reed pens, and directed men to their proper tasks. An armada would be built, and these new volunteers would become its first sailors. Paul organized production and set quotas. More blacksmiths and alchemists needed training. Many materials needed gathering—metal, gold, bread, muscle.

  “We need factories,” Narses said. “Supply lines. Much needs to be done.”

  Konstantinopolis had so much potential, if only it could be unlocked. The sleepy teachers and lazing monks, the bookish priests scrawling abstruse biblical commentaries no one would read, the street urchins playing pranks on each other, the bakers’ sons who whiled away their lives waiting around for something that never happened—these were the limbs and minds which would build an unstoppable colossus, one that had never been seen before. Narses would harness them like horses, crack his whip, and have them pull his great chariot across the world.

  Within a week, the first dromon was constructed. Galata, meanwhile, was reduced to blackened, bombed-out, crumbling ruins. No one had seen any movement there in days. Narses wondered if the inhabitants had fled into the countryside, perhaps under cover of darkness.

  No matter. The Turks will snap them up. We were planning to sell them into slavery anyway. They have merely cut out the middlemen.

  Still, Galata needed to be liberated and rebuilt. Right now it was like a knife pointed at Konstantinopolis’s heart. With Patriarch Garidas’s help, Narses consecrated the new dromon, named it the Wolf (after his favorite animal), and ordered its crew and complement of marines—the third century from the Athanatoi Tagma, commanded by a kentarch named Michael Apsaras—aboard. The ship itself would be captained by a trierarch named Stylianos Damianos. The century’s artillery squad also came with their basilik, which was fitted over the ship’s port side in order to cover the disembarking troops.

  At last, everything was ready. There was no time for ceremony. Some family members clapped and cheered on the Prosphorion Harbor mole, a small band played a short martial ditty with drums and fifes and cornus, and that was that. The Wolf’s first training exercise would likewise be its first combat mission. Narses would lead them in person. He went aboard with his bodyguards as well as Spatharios Makrenos.

  “There is no training like combat,” he told his men, as they gazed at him. “We will go ashore to Galata and mop up any remaining resistance. Capture as many of the enemy alive as possible, and gather all treasure, all gold, at the pier. Remain inside the city. Do not—under any circumstances—go into the countryside. The penalty for desertion or cowardice is death. The penalty for going off-mission is death.”

  The marines and sailors bowed and said they would do as he commanded.

  Narses turned to the ship’s sailors, all of whom were lithe unmarried youths who looked at him with wide eyes. “After the marines and I have disembarked, the Wolf is to remain docked to the pier. Should we need to retreat, you will hold position until every man here is aboard. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, o autokratōr!” they cried in unison.

  Narses grinned. He was so proud of them, in a very un-Christian way.

  Ah, the sin of pride.

  “May God have mercy on our souls,” he said. “And bring us victory!”

  Everyone aboard the Wolf cheered, as did the family members assembled on the mole. “Ave Caesar,” they chanted, saluting him. “Ave victoria! Ave Roma!”

  As the Wolf’s crew cast off, unfurled the two lateen sails, and rowed the ship across the Golden Horn in time to the drummer—everyone doing well, considering this was their first time at sea—Narses had little trouble imagining the old winged goddess of victory flying out of the clouds, her flesh gleaming as though made of diamonds as she crowned him with a laurel wreathe.

  Yet Narses was also worried. He had worked so hard on these men, this ship, these weapons. Something like ten percent of the churches in the City had paid for this investment. Would there be any returns? Or would all be lost?

  “Stay close to me,” Narses said to Makrenos.

  Makrenos bowed. “Yes, aphéntēs.”

  Narses never tired of hearing his favorite soldier acknowledge him. Yet Narses had been burned before. Once more, he recalled Kentarch John, a man he would never forget, slaughtered outside Nikomedeia’s walls.

  A city named for some ancient, half-forgotten victory over the Medes, Narses thought. That time, though, when John died, the Medes beat us.

  Then there had been Zo? Karbonopsina, the barbarian steppe beauty, daughter of the traitor emperor Anastasios, queen of the silk road, dwelling in a felt tent in the hills among horses and warriors. Dressed in the translucent veils of the Sarakenoi—what sort of modesty was this?—she spoke with a bookish Konstantinopolitan accent. Narses had felt an odd attraction for her, one that had disgusted him and which he had fought to suppress.

  But only weak men longed for women. Only weak men thought of women.

  Finally, the boy Romanos had betrayed and abandoned him—as had Narses’s imperial predecessor, Emperor Nikephoros Komnenos.

  Father.

  Everyone had either betrayed Narses or perished in some gruesome way. And so as the rowers oared the Wolf closer to Galata’s pier, and as the wind filled the sails and made the hawsers twist and the masts creak, as the band played an uplifting marching song back on the mole, Narses stepped closer to Makrenos.

  I should never have brought him, Narses thought. I should have kept him safe on the southern shore. Ships are safe at harbor…but ships are not made for harbors. They are made for the sea.

  Following the commands of Trierach Stylianos Damianos—the sailors’ captain and teacher, one of the few men in the City with any sailing experience—the Wolf’s crew maneuvered the ship alongside the Galata pier. A young rower named Manuel Sergopoulos jumped onto the wooden platform, turned, and reached out his hands to catch the line flung him; he then tied it around the nearest mooring post, following Trierarch Damianos’s instructions. It only took him a few tries to get the bowline knot right.

  “No, no!” Damianos shouted. “The rabbit goes through the snare. Not around the snare!”

  “Through the snare, not around the snare,” Sergopoulos repeated.

  The marines, in the meantime, had already leaped onto the pier. Narses joined them with his bodyguards Axouch, Sulayman, Sigurdsson, and Ironside. Spatharios Makrenos he kept close enough to touch. Despite the chaos of these movements, the century managed to form up on the pier in good order, with Narses at the front and center beside the standard-bearer and Kentarch Apsaras, who ordered the century to draw swords and march forward. His dekarchs repeated his command, the drummer boy played the song which meant “advance,” and the third century moved into Galata. The pier shifted under their weight. This must have made the troops nervous; few if any could swim. Had they plunged over the side, their armor would have dragged them down into the dark depths. How many skeletons lay in the silt below, their bones picked clean by the sardines and bluefish of the Golden Horn, their skulls still wearing ancient Corinthian helmets?

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Meanwhile, back aboard the Wolf, the artillery crew was covering third century’s advance with the basilik.

  Narses had never liked Galata. It was the empire’s foreign concession. Many Latins and Sarakenoi of all kinds dwelled here, as did the Jews and those more wretched Romans who were attracted—due to their own inborn frailties—to barbarism. Together, this melting pot, stewed with corruption, reduced Galata to a den of sin, a rebirth of the Aegyptian fleshpots, where gambling, drinking, whoring, and brawling were ubiquitous. The dead criminal gang leader Herakleia had spent much time here when she was a mere palace princess, prostituting herself in exchange for tainted ideas from the east, plotting her uprising even as she lived a honeyed life on the back of the Roman taxpayer. She liked Mazdakism, yet she was one of the richest people alive. How ridiculous. How ironic.

  All this depravity in Galata was a stark contrast to the Holy City of Byzantium across the Golden Horn, humming with church songs, wreathed with burning clouds of frankincense.

  Now Galata was reduced to ruins. Iron balls from the basilik had smashed the buildings to rubble. Fires had raged, towers had crumbled. Narses had ordered the artillery crew to target the Latin churches, the mosque, and the synagogue; now these were smashed. It was as though an army had already sacked this place, putting the populace and even the animals to the sword, carrying away all valuables, dismantling the buildings brick-by-brick. No chickens clucked in these streets, as they did in Konstantinopolis. No dogs barked, no cats meowed, no horses whinnied, no donkeys brayed. Back in Byzantium, children whacked wooden wheels with sticks, women gossiped by the wells and fountains, men argued over important intellectual issues, eunuchs schemed, priests and monks sang and chanted, the atsinganou strummed their lutes and danced and told fortunes for money, turtledoves cooed from ancient olive trees whose thick branches twisted above the sunny courtyards.

  But only eerie silence reigned here in Galata. It was interrupted by the waves splashing the shore, an occasional mournful breeze, and the third century’s sandals tramping through rubble scattered on cobblestones as the army musicians played. Here had been a theater, there a forum, an aqueduct, churches, porticoes, baths, mills, a slaughterhouse, hundreds of houses. It was like Konstantinopolis in miniature, now destroyed.

  Soon the third century was out of sight of the shore. Climbing a gentle hill, they advanced into Galata’s maidan square in the shadow of the great tower, tall and massive. Several thoroughfares converged here from all directions. The tower was built into the city walls, beyond which lay countryside, fallow farmland, firewood copses, and long dusty roads that led north and west into the Bulgar Khanate. The maidan was out of basilik range, at least if you were firing from the Prosphorion Harbor, so the buildings were in better shape; Galata Tower was even in prime condition. Signs advertising taverns and fast food thermopolium joints swayed back and forth, creaking in a stale breeze blowing from the east.

  “Wow, you can get a roast mallard here for practically nothing,” one soldier said, eyeing the prices listed at a thermopolium. “They’re practically giving them away!”

  “Roast mallard, a good tug, and a wash in the baths, all for an obol,” said a soldier beside him. “A real pleasant Sunday afternoon, all things considered.”

  “Silence in the ranks!” Kentarch Apsaras yelled.

  Soon he ordered the column to halt. His eight dekarchs echoed his commands.

  The soldiers eyed the streets converging on the maidan square. A pebble rattled somewhere to the left. Everyone turned in that direction. Could it have been a mouse? A rat?

  But it was nothing. After a moment, the whole century seemed to sigh with relief.

  Kentarch Apsaras smiled at Narses. “Well, majesty, it looks like our work’s already been done.”

  “San Marco!” someone screamed on the street to the left. This cry was echoed to the right. In an instant, all the streets were filled with Latins shouting the Venetian battle cry. They had been hiding inside the buildings, along the alleyways, behind stacks of hay and the larger amphorae, waiting for the moment to strike. Waving swords, spears, knives, rocks, farming implements, hammers, axes, and even sticks and splintered wooden beams, the filthy mob converged on the third century from every direction. A bearded, curly-haired Jew loosed an arrow that punched straight through Kentarch Apsaras’s forehead—right underneath his steel helmet brim. The kentarch went rigid, dead before his face could even form a surprised expression, and he collapsed onto the cobblestones—like a marionette whose strings had been snipped—his armor rattling.

  Narses took command of the century and shouted orders, though even with his Achilles voice he was unable to hear himself over the clashing weapons and screams of anger, pain, and terror. All was chaos. The Romans fought back-to-back, surrounded on every side by ogres. Yet the century’s outer layer would be exhausted within minutes, while the inner layer of soldiers were unable to assist. It was the centurion’s job to blow his whistle and have the ranks change position—“front rank move back, second rank to the front!” But Kentarch Apsaras was dead. Most of the men probably didn’t know, they must have been waiting for his commands, already confused—and his blood-soaked whistle was dangling from a chain around his neck. Narses tried to reach it, but too many people were in the way. It was almost too crowded to even lift his rhompaia. His bodyguards Sigurdsson and Ironside had stuffed mushrooms into their mouths the instant the trouble started, and now they were hurling their axes into the enemy and roaring like animals. Axouch and Sulayman stabbed their scimitars, shouting: “Allahu Akbar!” Narses had asked them not to do this earlier, but they didn’t care. The century attacked with their swords, using the Roman battle cry: “Agios Georgios! Saint George!”

  Lower shield, right foot forward, stab with the right hand, right foot back, raise shield, repeat.

  Bodies toppled to the cobblestones. So tightly packed was the ogre mob that some dead bodies stayed standing upright, held there by the still-living people around them.

  Narses needed to get Apsaras’s whistle. The mob was going to destroy his entire century. And even if Narses survived and escaped, a defeat like this could lead to his overthrow back in Konstantinopolis.

  “Let me get to the body!” he yelled at his retinue. “Let me get to Apsaras!”

  “Aphéntēs!” his retinue cried.

  They swung their weapons even harder, as if that was possible, grunting, sweat and blood spraying everywhere. Though they had barely even trained together, they stepped toward the kentarch’s corpse, and covered Narses as he knelt to pull the whistle free. Yet he was unable to get it over Apsara’s helmet. Narses ordered his retinue to stand back, then he swung his gigantic rhompaia sword through Apsara’s neck, severing the head. Then Narses pulled the bloodied whistle free and blew it as hard as he could—one long note meaning “change positions!” Blood spurted from the whistle’s far end.

  Training took over in the men’s minds. Like steel contrivances, the outer ranks stepped back behind their comrades while the men who had been behind them stepped forward. These were fresh troops, eager to fight, and frustrated by the lack of orders to do so. The barbarians, meanwhile, were exhausted and enraged from so many days of continuous bombardment, and seemed to have no organization at all. They were relying on numbers to win this fight. But organization, training, and willpower was what won the day, all else being equal.

  Barbarian bodies piled up. Other barbarians needed to climb over them, and some slipped on the bloody limbs and fell onto awaiting blades. Narses blew his whistle a second time, a third time, the salty taste of blood never leaving his lips. He was covered in it, as was everyone. The battle was now “coming down to the triarii,” as the old Roman expression had it, though triarii had ceased to exist centuries ago. This meant that the weary men resting at the rear—the center—would soon move up the ranks and fight at the front again, though they were probably too tired by now to even lift their arms. Axouch, Sulayman, and Makrenos were stabbing with much less vigor, though Sigurdsson and Ironside seemingly possessed limitless energy. Their arms had been slashed, and blood was flowing from the wounds, but they fought as though the battle had begun only seconds ago. The reek of blood and guts was stifling.

  The barbarians kept coming. Like a swarm of insects, they flooded the streets converging on the maidan.

  Retreat? Narses thought.

  He had a moment; he seized it and looked back the way the century had come. Barbarians were everywhere.

  Surrounded. Cut off from artillery. The Wolf might not even know we’re under attack.

  Even using the farr, even draining the energy of the barbarians around him, his eyes burning with light, Narses could only do so much. Galata’s entire population had attacked. Even the whores from the brothels were waving whatever weapons they could pick up—meat cleavers, a fire poker—and screeching as they assaulted Narses’s infantry, or slashed them with their sharpened fingernails, or bit them hard, tearing flesh from his men’s bodies and spitting it away. Rocks—some the size of a fist, others much larger—smashed the Romans’s helmets. Children were hurling them down from the rooftops. One Venetian even had a Latin crossbow, and was shooting bolts.

  “Kill the Narsites!” the Galatans shouted. “Kill Narses!”

  “We aren’t going to make it!” a legionary shouted.

  “All is lost!” another yelled. “Retreat! Retreat!”

  Panic seized them. Some shrieked in terror, crying like children, fighting with each other to escape. But there was nowhere to go. Tears were pouring down the slave Iwannis’s face; he was hiding behind Narses.

  We are all going to die here!

  Narses kept close to Makrenos. No one was going to touch him. Makrenos and Narses would be the last ones to die—they would die in glorious battle together, back-to-back. And if Narses was lucky, he’d take a few of the enemy with him.

  Straight into hell.

  Something crashed into the Great Tower of Galata. Massive bricks hurtled down onto the barbarian horde, crushing them to bloody splattered flesh. A crack sounded in the distance. It was the Wolf. Somehow they had learned of the battle—maybe they had heard it—and now they were firing the basilik. The gun was so powerful (and so distant) that the ball had arrived here first, followed by the sound.

  So many stones had fallen that the panic shifted to the attacking mob. They stared at their fallen comrades, stepping back in horror. Almost before anyone could react further, another ball slammed into Galata Tower. More stones fell and crushed more people—dozens by now were lying on the maidan in misshapen piles of blood and skin, shattered bone sticking out from torn muscle. The Venetian crossbowman was among them.

  The mob broke and fled. A second wind came to Narses and his men. But they remembered their training, and—following Narses’s whistle—pursued their opponents in squads. None went alone.

  “Ave Victoria!” Narses shouted, raising his bloodied rhompaia into the air. “Ave Victoria!”

  He turned to Makrenos to congratulate him. But the spatharios had fallen. A crossbow bolt was buried in his neck. Dark blood gushed from the wound, and his blank eyes stared at the cloudy sky.