The dromons got them across the dark Hadean river of time and memory without lighting any torches. Aboard Narses’s new flagship—also named the Wolf—boys at the bowsprit felt ahead through the night with long wooden poles to keep them from running aground. The trierarch whispered orders to the rowers.

  “Slow and steady, men. Heave, ho!”

  From the Golden Horn, Chrysopolis glowed in the east, its oil lamps glimmering like a chandelier between the bombed-out Galata Kastellion on the left and the church of Saint Demetrios in Konstantinopolis on the right. Ahead of the Wolf, however, Galata was dark. The city was a construction site by day, but uninhabited in the evening, save for a few vagrants and other wretches. These scattered like cockroaches at Narses’s approach.

  Once the men were assembled on the Galata pier, they marched up the hill through the city’s ruins to the gate in the ancient walls beneath the Tower. Beyond was countryside. Winding north, the old dusty road took them alongside the Bosporos shore past much older ruins. Long ago, Galata had been larger, and bold enough to build beyond its walls. Now, however, vines and trees were strangling the remains of hundreds of structures like constricting snakes in the darkness, breaking the brick with their green muscle.

  The fleet, meanwhile, rowed alongside the shore, keeping as close as possible without running aground, the boys at the bowsprits feeling into the water with their wooden poles. Every moment Narses feared that his dromons would be discovered and destroyed. All was silent save tramping sandals and, in the distance, gently plashing oars.

  The Diplokionion lay ahead. The name meant “twin pillar,” and referred to two huge pillars of Theban granite which were built beyond Galata’s northern walls, right alongside the Bosporos’s western shore, so close that the wavelets almost lapped at their foundations. These two pillars had once marked the northern border of Konstantinopolis itself, but now they rose in a wilderness some distance from the City. Sometimes emperors hunted wild boar in these forests.

  In silence the fleet docked. In silence Narses’s soldiers climbed back aboard—wincing whenever the wood creaked—and in silence the dromons rowed across the Bosporan surge. Nobody had gotten hurt. Nobody had drowned getting off or climbing back on.

  A miracle of logistics.

  As they rowed across the Bosporos, almost everyone on the ships watched the lights of Chrysopolis, terrified that the criminals would find them. But nothing happened. Either the criminals were unaware of their approach, or a trap was being set.

  “They’re all a bunch of phantoms, they are,” an old sailor murmured.

  The Wolf’s trierarch, who was named Georgios Mouzalon, silenced this man, then apologized to Narses. But Narses wondered if there wasn’t some truth to what the old man had said. No matter what was done, no matter how many times he destroyed the criminals, they kept coming back. They were like—what were those contrivances from the old world called? Like machines. Like a robot army that was destroying humanity and taking over the world.

  Frankenstein. We gave life to these monsters. We wanted them to help us. And how did they repay us? By betraying us and murdering us.

  The dromons drew closer to Asia. Narses began to think that they had done it—they had snuck across the Bosporos. He grew more excited and hopeful. Once his men had landed, it was guaranteed that a real battle would take place. He would finally get to face the criminals in combat on his own terms. But while his sailors were rowing across, the criminals could still sink them. Then there would be no battle, only a massacre.

  Soon, however, his sailors revealed that they were unable to find anywhere to dock on the Asian side. They could locate no piers or beaches near Chrysopolis. Trierarch Mouzalon whispered an apology to Narses, who answered only with silence.

  Historians never mention these sorts of problems. It’s always ‘they went from A to B, and then they fought.’ So much is left unsaid. And the silence can be deafening. They never really try to take hold of ideas, to grasp them in all their reality from every side. Instead, they’re always pushing an agenda, always leaving themselves open to criticism because they’re worried about where a more holistic approach with the data might lead. A holistic approach leaves them immune to criticism, but it takes them into the realms of the unreal.

  The oarsmen rowed slow and easy, while the boys at the bowsprit plunged their wooden poles into the waves, pushing the Wolf back whenever the water was too shallow, though who could even tell how close Asia was in the darkness?

  Time passed. Narses ordered Trierarch Mouzalon to sail only north, since south meant danger. Who knew how many basiliks were aboard the criminals’ ships? They had taken Chrysopolis and Chalkedon within hours. For all Narses knew, they could sink his squadron within minutes. He could lose everything—including himself—if the enemy found them too soon.

  Then there was the possibility that the Roman dromons would need to lower their anchors at sea and use rowboats to ferry the soldiers ashore. That would take forever. It would also exhaust everyone, since each dromon possessed only one small rowboat. Yet it might be safer.

  Narses looked up at the night sky, wishing he could tell the time. No sign of dawn. Not a tinge of color in the east.

  The sun is always rising in the east. Always setting in the west. Funny, that.

  Several times, in his frustration, he almost ordered the dromons to run aground on the Asian shore, consequences be damned. He would get his men across the Bosporos, and that would be the end of it. But he also needed the artillery aboard these ships. To fight off the criminals, it was going to take everything he possessed.

  Northward the dromons wended their way, the boys prodding the poles, the crews whispering orders and acknowledgments, the sails furled as the oars dipped into the waves.

  How to find a safe place to dock in the darkness? Only now did Narses realize that he should have sent scouts, should have brought someone aboard who knew the land, although who knew it in darkness? Night was a foreign country—night without the gift of fire.

  The darkness of nightmares.

  No one had attempted a landing like this before. Whatever Narses did, he was always in uncharted territory, always first, always criticized by those who spent their lives sitting on the sidelines. He was a slow learner, yet unique in that—unlike almost everyone else—he never stopped learning. His foes were all too comfortable and content, so what reason did they have to learn about new things? In contrast, Narses was relentless. Nothing would stop him.

  At last the boys at the bowsprit found it—a rock beach. Shallow, with a gradual incline, the rounded stones clattering in the dark as the poles prodded them.

  Perfect.

  The dromons were maneuvered alongside the beach, close enough so that the men could leap into the water and then wade ashore. Soon they were all assembled on the land, eight hundred men who organized themselves into their centuries only by whispering.

  This is what months of training gave us.

  The dromons pulled away and sailed south. Domestikos Poghos informed Narses that they were ready to proceed.

  The men marched through the brush as the east glowed blue.

  This walk in the woods was less unpleasant than might have been expected, since the criminals had come this way the day before and left paths in the darkness. Soon the sun was shining red on the left, between the land and clouds. Narses—marching in the vanguard, as always—sighted Chrysopolis’s walls through the trees, straight ahead. He knelt and raised his fist. Everyone halted in silence. Within minutes, runners crashed through the brush to his left and right, whispering that every century was in position, their siege ladders ready.

  Narses narrowed his eyes. A marsh lay between the army and the walls. Narses’s men would need to advance across that marsh before they could reach Chrysopolis.

  Nobody told me about a marsh!

  Then he heard something. Everyone held even more still than before. All the leaves stopped rustling. The men held their breaths. What was that unearthly sound? A man was singing in Chrysopolis. For a moment, it sounded beautiful, and somehow familiar. Then Narses recognized it.

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  “Allahu akbar, allahu akbar!”

  It was one of those Sarakenou songs—the one they sang before praying to the devil. Narses’s men also recognized this.

  “Sarakenoi,” they grumbled to each other.

  The criminals were really Sarakenoi all along, Narses thought. Trying to trick good Christians into idol worship.

  “We aren’t just fighting a war of law and order,” he whispered to himself. “It’s also a holy war. One for the very soul of Rome.”

  Narses thought his men should have worn crosses, like the Latin knights. He also should have brought an ikon for them to march behind, though that was impossible. Most had been melted down. The rest were hidden in places which no priest, no matter how much he was tortured, would reveal. Now of course Narses believed in none of this religious nonsense, but it had power over the men. Occasionally he also had trouble avoiding the thought that someone was looking out for him. How else could he have survived so many near-death experiences?

  The men waited. They were huddled behind trees and bushes, kneeling in the grass, nearly all eyes on the distant line of masonry. Narses had ordered Trierarch Mouzalon to fire on the criminal fleet at sunrise. That would be their signal. At the first crash of thunder on the sea to the right, his men would attack Chrysopolis.

  So much had led up to this point in his life. These criminal monsters had interrupted his plans for almost two days. They had transformed his great industrializing City into a battleground. These dark gales blowing in from the east would smother the little flame of industrialization which Narses was cupping in his hands. And even before then, for months the criminals had been lurking in the shadows, watching him, scheming against him, all while he thought they were dead. At times he wondered if they would ever leave him alone. He just wanted to live in peace and prosperity—to build a world of riches for his people. A place like the old world, where everyone was happy. Everyone except a few insane, miserable losers who were just like the criminals of Trebizond.

  Everything that took place in this year, it was all about the criminals.

  Then it happened. One crack on the right—loud enough to shake the bones in his flesh—then another. Many cracks and booms. White flashes against the cloudy sky.

  Narses drew his rhompaia and pointed it at Chrysopolis. This was the signal for the runners, who had been watching him. They nodded and disappeared into the brush.

  His men stood. At first they only walked through the forest toward Chrysopolis. It was exhausting to sprint and scream the whole way—they were carrying ladders, armor, weapons, and food, after all—and they needed to save their strength and stay in formation. But once they reached the marshes, they moved faster. Some got stuck in the muck or plunged into sinkholes, others clumped together or spread out due to changes in the terrain, but most kept up the pace, their eyes either on the walls ahead or, underfoot, the tangled lumps of grass, roots, and brambles.

  No one was visible on those walls. To the right, the trees had fallen away, and the sea was displayed, as was Galata, Konstantinopolis, and even the two glowing pillars of the Diplokionion. Closer still, in front of all these landmarks, Narses’s fleet had engaged the criminals. He had a perfect panoramic view of the battle. And he could see already that his dromons were outclassed. The city-ship of Kitezh was delivering what, in the old world, would have been called a “broadside.” Dozens of its basiliks were blasting iron balls toward the dromons, which only had one basilik each. One dromon was already sinking, its crew either drowning or swimming for their lives while clutching barrels, oars, broken wooden boards, anything that would float. It was Narses’s new flagship, the Wolf.

  Is there nothing the criminals will not destroy?

  His seven other dromons were making for Konstantinopolis, the wind puffing their sails—now torn with holes—as their crews rowed frantically. Kitezh and its support ships refrained from taking the bait and pursuing—the artillery on the Sea Walls could have destroyed them, but did they know this?—and held position. One last basilik from a support ship—was it the Paralos, back from its journey to the west?—fired a ball which rattled through most of the oars on the port side of the nearest Roman dromon, shattering them. Slivers of wood flew through the air and tore through flesh as the rowers clutched their eyes and screamed.

  Narses shook his head. How can the criminals possess this? Why are they always so strong? Why are they always surprising us? They’re supposed to be the weak ones, not us!

  No matter. The plan had been for the dromons to sink the criminal fleet and then blast a hole in Chrysopolis’s walls with their artillery. Now it was up to Narses and his men to take the city on their own. They would drive the criminals back into the countryside, then use whatever basiliks they could find here to destroy the criminal fleet.

  Difficult. But not impossible.

  At that point, to Narses’s surprise, things were looking up. He discovered, as he drew closer to the unmanned walls, that the criminals had already blasted blackened gaps into the masonry, and had then neglected to patch them. Siege ladders were therefore unnecessary. Narses and his men were over-prepared.

  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

  He was so close to the walls, he discerned the cracks in the ancient, almost cyclopean stonework. Who had even built this place? The Phoenicians? Noah? Shem? Antediluvian Gilgamesh, from the Book of Giants?

  Now the marsh lay behind the advancing soldiers. Here was grass, vegetable gardens, farmland. Narses’s men were running. He was running. Everyone headed straight for the gaps in the walls. Some had thrown their ladders aside and drawn their swords.

  “Trebizond!” came a thunderous roar.

  It was so loud, it nearly knocked Narses back. Armored silhouettes suddenly covered the tops of the walls. They held miniature basiliks with wooden stands, or they were propping them on the battlements. Narses was so close, he saw the tiny orange sparks fuming with blue smoke at the tips of their rope fuses. Within seconds, the gunners had taken aim and pressed the lit fuses to the firing holes.

  It was a staccato crack-crack-crack rattling all along the walls. Bullets zipped past Narses, snapped through the grass, punched into the mud, smacked the air above his head. His men fell head-first onto the ground and then lay there, unmoving. Other men had collapsed and were bawling like animals at the slaughterhouse as they clutched wounds spurting blood. Acrid smoke blew everywhere in a thick fog.

  But the gunners had missed Narses and most of his men. As the criminals reloaded—as they exchanged their used basiliks with fresh ones handed to them by the helpers at their backs—Narses leaped through a gap in the walls. On the far side, he met another wall—one made of long spears with tips of razor-sharp steel waiting for him, clutched by men and women and eunuchs, Muslims and Christians and Jews and god knew who else, all ugly wretches looking poor and exhausted and filthy.

  All the criminals roared as they lunged forward and jabbed their spears in Narses’s face. This was where the farr took over. He felt his eyes burning, saw shadows shifting and light shining wherever he looked, gleaming on the sharp blades stabbing at him. His men fell beside him with spears planted so deep in their chests, the spearheads were poking out through their backs.

  Skewered meat.

  But Narses fought past them. He knocked the spears away and brought criminals to justice, slashing faces with his long rhompaia, separating arms and legs from torsos, darting like a specter through a dark crowd of people who were now holding almost totally still from Narses’s perspective.

  It was glorious. Narses had always loved fighting in battles, especially when he was winning, and when his cause was just. These monsters, after all, had attacked him. They had been attacking him for the last year. All he wanted was to live in peace!

  In slow motion the criminals looked at each other and backed away. Roman legionaries they could deal with, but an immortal was beyond their skill. Some, he noted, could keep up with him, parrying his thrusts and herding him away from their more vulnerable friends. Narses took the life energy from one just by glaring at her.

  That bitch Herakleia has been teaching them the farr.

  Criminals by the hundreds armed with spears and swords were here in the streets adjoining Chrysopolis’s broken walls. Hundreds more were up on those walls pointing their miniature basiliks down at Narses. They fired, and from Narses’s perspective the bullets flew through the air as if people were throwing them at him rather than blasting them out of steel tubes. Since he was moving so fast, he could evade them, but only for so long. This was why he had built an army in the first place. He could not do everything alone.

  More of his men entered the city and engaged the enemy. Many fell on both sides. It was hard to tell how the battle was progressing. Narses wanted to find Alexios or Koraki, since they must have been nearby. Wherever there was some disaster, some wound in the flesh of history, one could always find those little maggots writhing at the heart of it. Perhaps even Herakleia was here.

  But instead, Narses found someone—something—unexpected. It was the bronze statue he had seen long ago in the city-ship of Kitezh, back when it was moored near Trebizond. Except now this statue was moving by itself. Blue jets of flame were flaring in its eyes, and steam was rushing from the segments in its limbs as it ran toward him holding a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, knocking down any legionaries in its path. It was even saying something—it could talk! Its voice was peculiar, and Narses was unable to understand the thunderous words pouring out of its mouth, which merely opened to speak, but lacked lips.

  Nobody told me the statue was alive!

  For a moment, Narses marveled at the sight of this thing, wondering what he was even looking at, before it was attacking him—moving with him—matching his speed. In just a few movements, it had bashed Narses’s rhompaia aside—he almost dropped it—and it was stabbing its sword toward his heart. The point of the enemy’s blade came straight at him, and he was unable to dodge. Narses thought it would skewer him, just as the criminals’ weapons had skewered his men. This thing, this contrivance whose name was unknown—the fires in its inner furnace hot enough to make the air around its bronze segments tremble as though in terror—it was going to take his life.

  But it was made from neither flesh nor blood. It was forged of bronze, and therefore easier to destroy.

  Summoning all his farr—draining away the last of the life forces of Zo? Karbonopsina, Hagop the criminal, and Nikephoros Komnenos trapped in the prison of his chest, so that they all finally vanished forever—Narses hurled a wave of energy at this mechanical contrivance. It was like a gust of wind strong enough to level a brick wall. The bronze monster was blasted to pieces, and these were scattered everywhere, trampled underfoot by the criminals and legionaries who were fighting so hard, few even noticed. Bronze armor was everywhere, pieces of mechanical engines were everywhere, and some of the mechanical parts were still moving.

  Narses laughed. Close call.

  Then he threw himself back into battle.