It started with a nighttime thunderstorm, one loud enough to wake Narses from troubled dreams and even rattle his apartment’s windowpanes. Still sleeping on the floor, he rolled under his silk sheets and tossed and turned, but told himself that the noise was nothing to fear, just one of those late summer tempests. What was he: a child hiding under his bed, yelling for his mommy? And yet after he had fallen asleep again—and found himself beholding in his mind’s eye a black pall of hellish smoke covering the entire eastern horizon, churning up from a red sunset in great plumes—only then did his servants wake him.

  “Forgive me, sir.” Oromazdes shoved Narses’s shoulder, and the smoke vanished from his mind’s eye. “You told me to get you if there was trouble.”

  Narses lay there a moment, awake with his eyes closed. It was a relief to be free from that awful dream. It had seemed like a confirmation that hell was real, and that he would end up burning there soon if he failed to ask God’s forgiveness and act more like a Christian. Yet this policy choice would doom Rome to collapse. Narses believed in Rome, not Christ. He would sacrifice himself for Rome—

  “Sir.”

  Narses opened his eyes to the darkness. “What?”

  “It’s the criminals, sir. They’re attacking Chrysopolis.”

  Narses sat up, seized Oromazdes by the collar, and pulled him close. “What did you say?”

  Trembling and stuttering, Oromazdes repeated himself. Narses shoved the slave away and told him to light the apartment oil lamps. Donning his silk robe, Narses walked to the eastern windows which overlooked the Bosporos and Chrysopolis, at least in the daytime. Right now, it was night, and nothing was visible save a sky full of stars, and a vast blackness beneath the horizon.

  Narses narrowed his eyes, and was about to ask Oromazdes if he had lost his mind, when there was a white flash in the distance—one which illuminated all the gleaming wavelets rolling in the sea, as well as a dromon’s prow. This was followed by an orange flame, some distance to the right of the white flash, which leapt up from a dark huddled mass of half-ruined apartment blocks and warehouses on the Bosporos’s far side.

  Chrysopolis.

  The windows rattled. More dromons flashed white. More orange pillars of fire whirled in the night. And the windows rattled again. And again.

  Narses also heard what sounded, at first, like a gust of wind, though he later realized that it was thousands of men screaming. The gales carried the noise across the sea.

  Narses ordered Oromazdes to dress him in armor. Konstantinos he commanded to rouse the tagmata, but the slave told him that the men were already on alert, the artillery crews manning their stations along the walls, the infantry and cavalry assembling in the Hippodrome.

  “I was the last to know?” He gestured to Chrysopolis.

  Both slaves bowed their heads.

  “Useless,” Narses said. “Useless!”

  Once he was armed and armored, he left his apartment, bringing his bodyguards Sigurdsson and Ironside. (Both had been sleeping outside his door, as was their duty.) Carrying torches and walking quickly, they penetrated the vast chambers of the palace, their firelight too weak to touch the ceilings, so that the walls of glittering mosaics rose into darkness, the eyes of angels and emperors watching as the shadows shifted, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous silence.

  Outside, Narses and his bodyguards crossed grass lawns and gardens, climbing a stairway to the Sea Walls, and passing the Lighthouse Tower on their way to the City’s easternmost edge. Narses was once again frustrated with the Great Palace’s stupendous size. It took forever to go anywhere. He should have taken a horse. But they passed several artillery crews along the way, and Narses greeted them, reassured them—many were nervous—and checked their basiliks and ammunition.

  By the time he and his bodyguards had reached the peninsula’s northeastern tip—which was as close as they could get to Chrysopolis without taking a ship or swimming—the sun was rising in the east and burning his eyes. Even worse: red flags were hanging from Chrysopolis’s blackened walls. A fleet of three enemy dromons was anchored close to Leander’s Tower—erected on an islet just off Chrysopolis’s coast—and there was also that huge Khazar city-ship from Trebizond—what had they called it? Kitezh.

  It was true. The criminals were here.

  “So they have taken Chrysopolis,” Narses said to Paul, who had just joined him, and who was yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Where next will they go?”

  “Some of the men are calling the criminals phantoms,” Paul said. “The way they just appeared out of nowhere like that, it’s really frightened them.”

  That’s what that old fool Theodotos called the criminals. But they aren’t phantoms. They’re weaklings. They can be killed. Easily.

  Narses turned to the right, so that he was now facing a different small half-ruined city across the Bosporos.

  “Chalkedon,” Narses said. “Only a few stadia south of Chrysopolis. That’s it. The criminals will go there. They’ll surround us before they launch their final attack on the City proper.”

  “Chalkedon’s a city of cemeteries, isn’t it?” Paul said. “It won’t be a great loss. Chrysopolis won’t be either, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Will you be saying the same when the criminals take your limbs, eunuch? ‘Oh, it’s not a great loss.’”

  “Dreadful fish sauce in Chrysopolis.” Paul grimaced and rubbed his chest. “We’ll be better off without them.”

  “I promised the men we would lose no more land,” Narses said.

  “Did you now? Well, welcome to politics and strategy, where the promises don’t matter. Regardless of what we do, Rome usually ends up losing territory, year by year, even day by day.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “Ah, take it from me, majesty. I’ve been in this game far longer than you.”

  “Chrysopolis and Chalkedon have strategic importance. We cannot simply wave our hands, bury ourselves in books, and tell ourselves that these losses are insignificant, or that they aren’t even losses at all.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Much of the City’s daily food supply comes from Chalkedon, does it not? And both cities command the Bosporos’s eastern shore. Our allies will not be able to resupply us.”

  “What allies?”

  “The Bosporos is the throat of Rome, and the criminals are strangling it.”

  “What are you suggesting? An amphibious assault?” Paul shook his head and laughed. “Oh, majesty. You really are too much sometimes.”

  Narses checked Sigurdsson and Ironside, worried about what they would think when they saw his chief eunuch laughing in his emperor’s face. But the bodyguards were always careful to avoid reacting to anything Narses or his officials did in their company.

  They’ll have to fight in the trenches if they lose this gig.

  “…majesty.” Paul was still blabbering. “I mean no offense, but I can’t be certain we even possess the proper resources for an amphibious assault. And are your men even capable of—”

  “We can cross to Galata.” Narses pointed to the dim suburb on his left, across the Golden Horn, where scaffolding now covered many buildings. “That way, if the criminals discover us, we can take cover. We might lose the fleet, but we won’t lose the men. After that, we march north into the countryside, to the Diplokionion, where we re-embark. We’ll cross the Bosporos north of Chrysopolis, land on the Asian shore, then swing south and attack. We have eight ships, don’t we? That means we can bring one tagma—the Athanatoi, the best fighters. The other two tagmata will remain in Konstantinopolis to garrison the City.”

  “That’s risky, complicated, and predictable, majesty, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I mind.”

  “Plus, you’ll be cut off. We can’t supply you there—or rescue you if you get into trouble.”

  “We won’t.”

  “And the criminal fleet seems to be doing quite well with its artillery, wouldn’t you say? Would it not be more prudent to wait for them to attack us? After all, the City has never been taken, not in a thousand years. Such a feat would require tens of thousands of men, hundreds of ships and basiliks, a coordinated assault from multiple sides doubtless lasting months if not years—”

  “We do not know how many men the criminals have, nor are we familiar with their logistical situation. They could even be hiding more of their fleet to the north.”

  “Majesty, it does not matter. The attackers will almost certainly perish, and with little cost to ourselves. Many barbarian foes have beaten their heads against these walls, all in vain. We also still have the western regions, and Galata, besides, with plenty of fish, cheese, wine, grain, cattle, poultry, and so on. We should be fine, just hunkering down here. Once the criminals are destroyed, we can retake what is ours.”

  “That’s cowardice.”

  “Perhaps, but cowards often walk away from battlegrounds, while braver heroes are usually buried inside them. I’m a survivor, majesty, so you really ought to take this little tip from me. I’ve managed to survive your predecessor’s reign, as well as your own.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “So far.”

  Paul cleared his throat. “I didn’t make it this long by hurling myself right at my enemies whenever they upset me.”

  No, Narses thought. You survived by stabbing me in the back.

  “There is another danger,” Narses said. “The criminals may attempt to turn Konstantinopolis against us.”

  “Indeed, I doubt it would take much convincing at this point.”

  “I warn you, logothete, you go too far.”

  “I doubt I’ve gone far enough. The moment you and your men leave the City on this little harebrained expedition of yours, the people here will massacre those of us who remain behind. Then they’ll invite the criminals over to celebrate. They’ll have a party right on top of our corpses.”

  “I told you, two tagmata will garrison the City.”

  “In total you still only have, what, two thousand soldiers plus a thousand or so sailors you can depend on—at most? That won’t be enough—to take Chrysopolis or hold Konstantinopolis. Even if you committed everyone to attacking Chrysopolis, and even if you succeeded in driving off the criminals, you would still lose men, and that would increase your risk of losing this City. Staying here and waiting gives you the best chance for success.”

  “But what kind of success?”

  “Those without scruples tend to be the ones who go all the way, majesty. I find myself wondering at the fact that I should have to explain this to someone like you.”

  Narses balled his hands to fists and turned away from Paul. “I never have enough men. I never have enough resources. If only the empire was as strong as in the past. If I had the armies of Justinian, of Konstantinos, of Caesar, there’s nothing I couldn’t do, nowhere I couldn’t go. But instead, despite all my efforts, I’m trapped here with nothing, and always under attack from every direction, always the underdog.”

  “We must play the hand we are dealt, majesty.”

  Narses looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know about cards, majesty? They’re a new sort of game that comes from Sera, I’m told, like so many interesting things. An amusing manner of passing the time, and perhaps gambling money or other—”

  “Forget it.” Narses waved his hand. His old world self knew about playing cards, of course, but his Byzantine self was ignorant of the concept. For a moment he had been confused.

  He turned back to Paul. “The criminals are bold, but cautious. They will view us the same. You are wrong when you say my battle plan is predictable. They will not expect us to launch an immediate attack—to sally from a castle as impregnable as this one. They will expect us to hide, as you advise us to do.”

  “But I think they know their man, majesty. Especially if Herakleia is with them.”

  “Herakleia,” Narses said.

  The name was like a punch to the gut. He had barely thought of her in months. The last time he had seen her, she had been in Kitezh, and his prisoner, until the murderous criminals had freed her.

  “That woman is a coward,” Narses said. “She will have sent this army under the command of some other fool while she hides in Trebizond.”

  “Who was that man who used to obsess you so? Alexios Leandros, wasn’t that his name? The one who fought so bravely at Trebizond?”

  Alexios, Narses thought.

  So many memories returned to him. Narses had been obsessed with finding this boy ever since they had met in the Great Palace garden, when that old fool Dionysios had died freeing Herakleia from the imperial dungeons. Alexios had been there. Always he was there.

  Alexios and Herakleia.

  Narses had been so distracted by the need to rebuild the empire that he had forgotten about these characters. Konstantinopolis itself was so isolated and protected that the rest of the world seemed like it was of no consequence. One needed to make an effort to think about it. The City acted on the world, not the other way around.

  But then sometimes the world reminds you that it exists. Narses looked to the red flags draped over Chrysopolis’s walls. These had intruded on his imperial dreams like Oromazdes waking him from his slumber—shoving his shoulder—only hours ago.

  “Perhaps Alexios is the one Herakleia sent,” Paul said. “Or that Latin you dislike, the one who shot you with his basilik, what was his name? Guntram, Gontran something or other? He was supposedly in command of that ship that escaped, but we never quite knew for certain—”

  “Do not speak these names in my presence,” Narses growled. “No one may ever speak their names unless I ask them.”

  Paul bowed. “Of course, majesty. Forgive me.”

  “Tonight we will slip out of the City—myself and the Athanatoi Tagma. Under cover of darkness, none of our enemies will know what we are doing until it is too late. We will drive the criminals out of Chrysopolis and return here before anyone in the City even knows that we left.”

  “I almost hesitate to ask, majesty, but do you mean to take me along as well?”

  “Come if you wish, or hide like a woman in the Great Palace. Just make sure to lock the doors. And hope they don’t use ladders or battering rams.”

  “That isn’t very reassuring.”

  Narses left Paul for the Hippodrome, and relayed his orders to the men. Hikanatoi Tagma would man the Sea Walls, Exkoubitoi Tagma would garrison the Great Palace, while Athanatoi Tagma would attack Chrysopolis at nightfall. Until then, the Athanatoi would be confined to the Hippodrome, where they would rest and eat.

  “Tonight we will only travel with our weapons, armor, and three days of cooked rations,” Narses said to the men assembled on the hippodrome bleachers. “By morning, we will have given these sons of bitches a surprise they’ll never forget. I will give you battle, my men—battle, and victory!”

  The men stood, cheered, pumped their fists, and chanted his name. Narses raised his fist into the air, and looked at all he had accomplished. There were thousands of strong young men with his name on their lips. Tents. Supplies. Slaves. Horses gathered from the stables. Everything needed for conquest. And when he had first returned to the City from Trebizond, what had he possessed? Nothing. Barely the clothes on his back. He had been a prisoner, a slave, the lowest of the low. And now he was emperor. Now he had three tagmata which would follow any command without question, even if he ordered them to march to the ends of the Earth. The City, for the most part, was pacified. All the different factions had either joined him or perished. He was building a new way of doing things, forging a new society from the wreckage of the old. Soon he would wipe out these criminals for good, and one day he would see all his other enemies across the world joining them in hell. So many would end up there, Satan would complain about the lack of space.

  The men spent the day oiling armor, sharpening blades, checking supplies. Narses had banquets set up, and ordered everyone to stuff themselves for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, though the wine he provided was so watery, none of the men got drunk no matter how hard they tried. Slaves kept busy cooking three days of rations for eight hundred soldiers, plus the same number of sailors.

  Some men wrote or dictated letters to family. Others agreed to take care of each other’s possessions if they died. Narses wanted to ban this kind of morbid conversation, but Paul stopped him.

  “They aren’t all going to make it home, majesty. You must grant them this right.”

  “It is demoralizing,” Narses said.

  “Allow them to make the best of this situation, to conclude their business on Earth. They have friends and family they must provide for as best they can.”

  “None of it matters.” Narses hardly even saw Paul or the Hippodrome. In his mind’s eye were the cities of Chrysopolis and Chalkedon burning across the sea.

  “You don’t think you’re going to die, do you?” Paul said.

  Narses looked at him. In his memory he saw the priests and monks in the Orphanage of Saint Paul. They towered over Narses like giants as tall as buildings—he was barely old enough to walk—and they beat him if he even dared to look at them when they were issuing orders.

  There was no way to fight back. He was small, weak, alone. What could his pudgy limbs do? At any time the monks could kill him. Everyone knew about the little skeletons buried in the graveyard.

  Then Narses was a man. Many years had passed. A barbarian horde was galloping over the mountains toward him, surrounding him, hooting and chanting like celebrating demons.

  Too many. No escape.

  Someone smashed his head, and everything vanished.

  Then Gontran Koraki was riding a horse down a mountainside straight at him. The Latin scum’s miniature basilik was raised, he fired it into Narses’s back. Warm blood sprayed Narses—his own blood—and the searing pain was nothing like he had ever felt.

  Then Romanos was swinging the Almaqah blade, and Narses stumbled over the edge of the Kerasos cliffs, and plunged over the side, tumbling through the air down toward the icy sea.

  Had he prayed to God, as the wind whipped past him? No. Of course not. All he could think was: this is bad, this is going to hurt.

  In the second Trebizond siege, how close had he come to death, when iron balls had been flying over his head? One had taken off his helmet and cut his scalp. The women criminals shooting at him from the walls had laughed and bared their asses at him in mockery.

  And then in the labyrinth, a raging minotaur had almost gored him to death.

  Narses should have died so many times. Death stalked him like his own shadow. He wrestled death as Jacob had wrestled the Angel in the Promised Land. But Narses himself had become death. Now Death feared him—feared that Narses would kill Death, would make even Death die.

  “I have come closer to death than you could ever imagine,” Narses said to Paul. “Even in your worst nightmares.”

  “But you never believed it could actually happen to you. Never in your bones.” He gestured to the Hippodrome, to the men. “The idea that this—all this—could end for you.”

  “How is it possible? When you are dead, you sense nothing. Therefore you cannot sense when you are dead.”

  “Lucretius said as much. So you do think death is impossible, even if you’ve seen many people die.”

  “I know only what I see.”

  “Then there is no ascension to heaven, no descent to hell?”

  “Men have seen such things. They have seen angels, the spirits of the dead. Miracles.”

  “Who can trust them? Do they even trust themselves? Many people have seen things which were not there. In the darkness a tree can look like a man, or a man like a tree.”

  “I don’t trust them. I don’t trust anyone.”

  Paul laughed. “Priests and laymen are just as clueless as the rest of us. None of us know for certain what happens when we die. All we can say, as simplistic as it sounds, is that something certainly does happen.”

  “Only the things we do survive us,” Narses said. “To retake Chrysopolis, to destroy the criminals, these deeds will outlive my own death by a thousand years. A small part of me will go on when schoolchildren read about me and talk about me. It is the only way to escape death I know of.”

  “Indeed.”

  The men in the Hippodrome took a long nap in the afternoon, got up to eat once more, and then checked their supplies. Priests moved through the ranks, blessing the men. Across the Bosporos, meanwhile, the criminals had spent the day taking Chalkēdon, the sky echoing with the basiliks’ thunderclaps only a few times before the imperial garrison surrendered. This at first chagrined Narses—all Konstantinopolis had been either watching the battle or whispering about it—but he consoled himself with the thought that tomorrow morning, when he and his men attacked, the enemy would be tired from fighting so much. Perhaps they would even be distracted from celebrations, like the Trojans dancing around the giant horse given to them by wily, bloodthirsty Odysseos. The fools would think themselves unstoppable. They would be ripe with pride, like wine grapes so swollen on the vine, a breath of wind makes them burst. A night assault was the last thing they would expect.

  In the evening, Narses watched the sun descend and the City’s dim oil lamps glow to life. The blue sky turned yellow, then orange, then red, and finally dark blue. Clouds gathered to block the stars, as if at Narses’s command. It would be a black night, perfect for an attack.

  By this time the men were watching him in silence, awaiting his signal. Everything was prepared. They were organized into their respective centuries, under the command of their kentarchs, themselves under the command of Domestikos Poghos. Narses had told them to sit or even lie down in order to save their strength.

  “You will need it tonight,” he said.

  Later, Narses raised his hands, ordering them to stand. The signal was given. In silence they marched out of the hippodrome gate, through the City and to the Neorion Harbor, where a squadron of eight dromons waited to ferry them across the Golden Horn to Galata.