Byzantine Wars 3: The Faraway

Night. The number of stars shining in the darkness never ceased to stun Gontran. He had been trapped in this game almost a year, and each clear night left him feeling the same—not only amazed at the sight of so many galaxies and nebulae, the planets so clear you could almost see their moons and rings, the clouds scarring their atmospheres, the green cat scratches in Venusian skies, the red staring cyclops eye of Jupiter, the sandstorm seasons of Mars. No, it wasn’t only that. The Earth orbited the sun, and not the other way around, and this fact was staring everyone in the Middle Ages in the face, and yet almost none of them even thought about it. Except for a few philosophers who had been dead for centuries, and whose copied manuscripts were being gobbled by worms and moths in the archives of one or two frigid Swabian monasteries, nobody knew. The way medieval people thought about things worked well enough—the sun and moon were planets, too, in their minds, since planet meant “wanderer,” and what did these lights do but wander? You planned the seeding, manuring, weeding, and harvesting by keeping an eye on them every now and then; what they were actually doing didn’t matter. In Gontran’s time, there were cloudless, moonless nights when you couldn’t even see Venus thanks to all the light pollution, yet people there generally knew that the Earth was moving around the sun. All the same, most were too busy to care that they were standing on the surface of spaceship Earth. Gontran didn’t blame them.

So much is obscured, he thought, looking at the silhouette of Ra’isa leaning over the side of the Paralos in the darkness. She was watching the starlight curve, flash, and bend in the dancing sea. Even when the universe is practically screaming in our faces, we can’t hear.

For a little while the Paralos and the Liona had stopped, and they were swaying as the Adriatic’s wavelets gently slapped their hulls. The crew ate a quiet dinner in the starlit dark, keeping the torches doused for fear of Venetian warships lurking in the night. The only light aboard was Talia’s two shining blue eyes.

Food was shared with the prisoners. The Venetian stores in the belly of the Liona were little different from Greek fare, or even the food in Gontran’s hometown of Metz in northern France. Absent the miracle of indigenous cuisine—the tomatoes, potatoes, squashes, jalapeños, peanuts, avocados, and corn of the New World; plus all the saffron spices of the East—medieval Christian cooking was bland at best, and often disgusting to Gontran’s tongue. Pickled fish, eel pie, and other nauseating monstrosities were the norm from London to Latakia. Salt was expensive, pepper rare, and sugar almost unheard of. The plainer fare was better—cheese, bread, roasted meat, all washed down with black Trapezuntine wine. Gontran was drinking more of it than ever these days to cope with the stress of being here. And yet as he thought about it, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Fighting for something that mattered wasn’t easy, but it was better than fighting for nothing at all. That’s the way it was back in the old world. Just going through the motions. Living—if it could be called that—through a slow-motion zombie apocalypse, one that was taking years to unfold. Never like in the movies. Reality was so much less dramatic, yet at the same time much harder to believe. You felt like you were alone even in the company of your closest friends and family, if you were lucky enough to have those to begin with. Everyone competing with each other in the rat race. What did Buddhists call it? Samsara, the game of life. Moksha meant breaking free from the karmic chains of the past—swelling your muscles, bursting out of the manacles, bending steel like it was soft as butter. It seemed so similar to Mazdakism, what Herakleia wouldn’t shut up about, “the key to not only understanding the world,” she said, “but changing it.”

Some Venetian prisoners thanked the Paralos crew for feeding them; others took the food without speaking; the officers refused to eat.

“Suit yourself,” Gontran told them. “We’re almost there. We should be back by tomorrow.”

“Might I inquire,” Capitano Loredan said, “what is it, exactly, that you intend to do with us?”

“We give some scratches here and there,” Ra’isa said. “Then we give you back to your friends.”

The Venetians’ eyes widened. Gontran and Ra’isa laughed together.

“Strange to feel so powerless, isn’t it?” Gontran said. “In the future, maybe you’ll think twice about enslaving everyone you can get your hands on?”

“Perhaps,” Loredan said.

“He will return to his old ways,” Ra’isa said. “The instant he goes to Venetian land.”

“And we haven’t even made you work,” Gontran said. “All we did was make you sit here.”

“It’s been quite painful enough, thank you.” Loredan eyed Ra’isa. “And rather terrifying to see a woman like this—if you can even call her a woman—the way she has quite forgotten her place. You let these women control you—and that is your problem, you see—”

Ra’isa roared and swiped at him like a cat, and Loredan cried out in fear—“oh, Jesus Christ, save me!”—though she never actually touched him. Once more, Ra’isa made Gontran laugh. Brother Domenico Malatesta gulped deeply and then crossed himself, his chains ringing with his movements.

“There’s no use in talking to them, uncle,” Annibale said. “They live only to torture us like demons.”

“Yes, very demonic,” Ra’isa said. “Certainly I am.”

“Verily, thus has always been the way of the Saraceni,” said Brother Malatesta. “They have always been a blight upon this Earth, a confused mass of dark rabble.”

“We aren’t all Saracens, you know,” Gontran said.

“The rest of you are heathens,” Malatesta said. “Heathens, schismatics, and apostates, all destined to burn in eternal hellfire.” He laughed maniacally at Gontran. “You think you’ve won, heathen, but your torment is just beginning!”

“I’m sure.” Gontran smirked at Ra’isa.

Some members of the crew with better eyesight had noticed an orange glow on the horizon. It was too early for sunrise, and besides, the light lay to the north.

“Venesia,” said Agustin Ludovici, one of Annibale’s friends. This was the first word he had spoken since being chained up.

“Should we attack?” Gontran said to Ra’isa. “What do you think?”

“We can surprise them,” she said. “They never expect us at night.”

“There’s the trouble of navigating the lagoon,” Gontran said. “I hear it’s hard enough by daylight.”

“I can see.” Talia’s blue eyes suddenly blazed in the dark beside him. “I will guide you.”

“We can head straight for the doge’s palace,” Gontran said. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen pictures. I might be able to guess where it is. Maybe we’ll be able to talk with the doge when he’s going to bed—or something.”

“You think we will fail,” Ra’isa said. “You have felt like this since we left Trebizond.”

“It’s a fool’s errand, the whole thing,” Gontran said. “And I’m the biggest fool of all, because I know it, and I don’t have to be here, and yet here I am, helping you out.”

“A fool and a flower at the same time,” she said, watching him.

Ra’isa then came close to him and did something strange, when it was too dark for anyone else to see. Drawing her face close to his, she blew on his lips, and then left before he could say or do anything.

Butterflies fluttered in Gontran’s stomach. What was that?

“You may have seen the sun,” he suddenly found himself singing in English, “but you ain’t seen it shine!”

“What is this song?” Zaynab whispered to Zulaika al-Jariya. “What are these strange words?”

“They come from another world,” Zulaika said.

The officers cleared their plan with the crew, with various members suggesting more details. Once they arrived in Venice, a small team would leave the Paralos to search for the doge. The Paralos, meanwhile, would be kept ready to sail, while the prisoners would be transferred to the Liona. Once the small team returned to the Paralos, it would depart for Trebizond. In the morning, after the Paralos was long gone, the Venetians would find their friends in the Liona.

“They will tell awful stories about us.” Zaynab pouted. “How we fed them our own food, gave them clean water, treated them honorably, and made jokes at their expense.”

“The horror,” Gontran said.

“It is better than going in there by day,” Halevi said. “Most of the crew can stay aboard the Paralos to keep it ready to sail at the first sign of trouble.”

“If only the Narentine called Drosaik were still with us,” said Zulaika al-Jariya. “He was the only one among us who has been to Venice, aside from the prisoners. And they will tell us nothing, if we ask them.”

“So a small team will go inside,” Gontran said. “Me and the amazons. Talia, you’re going to have to stay here—you’ll attract too much attention. No offense.”

“I take none,” she said.

“Somehow we get into the doge’s palace,” Gontran continued. “We convince him—or the senate, or whatever—to ally with us in exchange for—”

“Trade,” Ra’isa said. “When we destroy Rome, we let the Venetians trade.”

“And we pay them back for all their losses,” Halevi added.

“They’ll never go for it,” Gontran said. “They’re just going to attack us. They already did attack us, remember? Twice! Once in Trebizond, and again, right here! I tried to make friends with these guys.” He jutted his head at the Venetian officers. “They wouldn’t listen. Don’t ask me why their bosses would be any different. They’ll probably be worse.”

“We have orders,” Ra’isa said. “The council gave us.”

“And if we fail, we find allies someplace else,” Gontran said. “Sicily, where the Normans will kill us. Pisa, Genoa, Ragusa, and Amalfi, where they’re all too busy killing each other to listen. Either that, or they’re too weak. They’re too terrified of the Venetians and the Normans to do anything outside their little corner of the Mediterranean.”

“There is Fustat,” Ra’isa said.

“As likely to ally with Christians as Christians with Saracens,” Gontran said.

“We are not all Christians,” Ra’isa said. “We could be useful to them.”

“We’ll see.” Gontran turned to the crew members and chained prisoners watching him in the darkness, their eyes flickering blue in the light from Talia’s two flames. He found Capitano Loredan. “We’ll take him. He’ll be our hostage and our guide. He should be able to show us straight in to wherever the doge is. You hear that?”

Loredan nodded nervously. Annibale, sitting beside him, rolled his eyes.

“Once you get us to the doge, we’ll let you go,” Gontran said. “Mess around with us, and we’ll cut your throat and kill your son. Is that understood?”

Loredan nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes, of course, anything.”

“You’ll talk to your fellow Venetians once we set foot in the city,” Gontran said. “You’ll tell them what’s going on—and tell them to let us through.”

Loredan nodded again.

“He is big shot,” Ra’isa said. “The Veneti will do as he tells them.”

Gontran turned to his crew. “So is that it? Anyone want to add anything else? Is everyone ready to go to Venice?”

“Yes,” a few of them said.

That was pretty weak, Gontran thought.

“No one on this ship want to come here,” Ra’isa said, standing in front of Gontran. “We never wish violence on these people, these Veneti. Before they come to Trebizond, I never hear of them. I never in my life hear the word ‘Venice.’ Yet they come to me and make me slave—not once, but twice. We should fight them. We should kill them for this. After all, what they do to us, they have already done to many more. But we are better. We need their help. We will do something very hard tonight. We will make Venice from an enemy into a friend.”

Another faint cheer.

“This is first step,” Ra’isa said. “We make friends with Venice, then attack Konstantinopolis. With Venice fleet, and Trapezuntine-Kitezhi army, the Romans cannot stop us. We will take the great city and rule there. Peasants and workers will take Rome and never let go. There will be no more emperors and no more slave masters. And it all starts here! We will change the world here!”

This time the cheer was louder.

“We are fast,” Ra’isa said. “Smart. Strong. And we fight for what is right. We will win. And what we do tonight will make a better world—even if not all here live to see it.”

“For Trebizond!” Gontran shouted.

“For Trebizond!” the crew shouted.

One by one, they transferred the prisoners to the Liona, leaving only a skeleton crew aboard. Capitano Loredan and Annibale remained on the Paralos. The sails of both ships were unfurled, and the wind filled them.

“You’ll never get away with this, you dogs!” Annibale shouted. “Our friends will kill you all!”

Just then, David Halevi the Kitezhi gagged him. Soon enough, this was the case for every prisoner except Capitano Loredan. Aboard the Liona, the prisoners’ chains were fastened to wooden pillars in the ship’s hold.

Talia stood at the Paralos’s prow with Capitano Loredan beside her, using her arms to signal instructions to navigate the lagoon. Gontran kept far behind them at the port steering oar, with Ra’isa at the starboard. The Liona was sailing so close to their stern that the bowsprit almost poked Gontran’s back, the ship’s meager crew doing their best to follow the Paralos.

The orange glow in the night coalesced into little flickering stars on the horizon. These grew into torch flames shining against buildings and islands, the light wavering in the sea in long graceful columns that stretched all the way to the Paralos’s hull. In the faint light Gontran saw Talia raise her right arm, the signal to pilot the ship to starboard. Ra’isa lifted her oar from the waves as Gontran worked his own oar, the Paralos’s dark bowsprit swinging against the fire-illuminated architecture that lay before them.

Even from this distance, and even at night, Gontran saw that the Venice lying before him was a different city compared to the one he knew from the old world. All its Gothic and Baroque domes, arches, and campaniles had yet to be built. Plenty of houses and towers were present, to be sure, but these looked like they belonged to any medieval castle and village you could find in France. Venice was only unique in that it seemed to float on the water, like the kelp on the Sargasso Sea.

A floating city, he thought. A city on the water.

After the Paralos worked its way through the first porto—the Lido inlet, according to Loredan’s whispered instructions—Talia ordered them hard to port. Gontran lifted his oar, and Ra’isa paddled. Now the wind was blowing against them, so the crew reefed the sails and rowed without a drum, the oars sloshing through the sea, the water dripping from the paddles’ ends making Gontran wince.

Wanting to see more, he peered into the blackness. At this point Venice was a nightmare of murky shapes looming out of the dark, for there was no moon. When the Paralos swung to starboard once again—now heading northwest—they faced the island called Rivoalto, or Highstream, at the lagoon’s heart. Here torch flames flung sparks into the sky, which flitted among the stars like fireflies. At Rivoalto’s core, more buildings were clustered together—thick, heavy, seeming to sink into sludge like old matrons overburdened with pearls. Gontran also made out churches, the larger ones looking like they’d been gouged from Konstantinopolis, hauled across the Balkans, and dropped here, the domes piled atop each other like mushrooms on rotting trees. The sea was also covered with long narrow gondolas, which themselves were loaded with mounds of fruit, fish, and vegetables—not to mention barrels, casks, boxes, and sacks of who knew what.

Even at this time, Gontran thought. Must be around midnight.

Many gondolas carried so many people that they sank into the sea up to the oarlocks, forcing the passengers to bail out the fetid water spilling over the sides. The lagoon was so crowded here that some gondolas were forced to make way for the Paralos and the Liona. Someone on the piazza was plucking a lute in a style that sounded Spanish or even Arabian to Gontran’s old world ears; a show of some sort was also taking place there with the actors wearing white masks.

Gontran swallowed nervously. Far more people were around than he had expected. As the Paralos approached the mooring posts before the castle at what must have been Saint Mark’s Square, the rowers lifted their oars, and Gontran and Ra’isa guided the ship to the piazza—which was a grass field rent by a stream where several apple trees were growing. On every side of the piazza—save the one facing the sea—rose towers, fortresses, and churches. It was crowded there, too, and the mooring posts were also nearly all taken by empty gondolas. A soldier watching the mooring posts by the piazza strode over to the two dromons—which were large compared to most of the other vessels present—and, shaking his head and waving his hands, shouted something in thickly accented Venetian that Gontran was unable to understand, though he could guess at the meaning: “You can’t park that here!”

By then, Gontran was with Loredan at the bowsprit. Talia had hidden herself belowdecks, and the amazons were behind him and keeping out of sight of the piazza, having loaded their miniature basiliks and sheathed their swords at their sides.

Gontran jabbed Loredan’s back with his pistol-sword. “Make this happen. Get us inside the doge’s palace.”

Loredan cleared his throat. “I am Capitano Loredan returning with part of my war fleet. I must speak with Monsignor el Doge. It is quite the emergency, I assure you.”

“Capitano Loredan.” The soldier by the mooring posts bowed. He then added something in Venetian, speaking too quickly for Gontran to understand.

Loredan answered in even faster Venetian, and spoke with an increasingly angry tone. The soldier bowed once more, then stepped back.

“Now we go,” Loredan whispered to Gontran.

A plank was lain from the ship to the pier, and Gontran, Loredan, and the amazons descended it. Behind them, the crew had already armed themselves, spreading buckets of water across the deck in case of fire arrows. The skeleton crew on the Liona, meanwhile, climbed aboard the Paralos, leaving only Halevi the Kitezhi behind to keep any nosy Venetians from discovering the prisoners tied up in the ship’s hold. Gontran saw Ibn Ismail flip the Paralos’s hourglass using his one arm.

“If we don’t get back in half an hour,” Gontran had told the crew, “you guys sail out of here, understand? They attack, you leave. Don’t wait for us. You’ll never be able to fight them off.”

The Trapezuntines and Kitezhi had agreed. Halevi was in command, now. Gontran liked him well enough, but he wished that it had been Diaresso.

Only a few people who were milling about the piazza noticed Gontran, Loredan, and the amazons crossing the grass and the little stone bridge over the stream, with the soldier who had originally tried to stop them now escorting them and even announcing their arrival to the two guards who stood at the gate to the doge’s palace, which was made of iron carved with winged lions rearing on their hind legs and roaring. These guards opened the gate for Loredan and his captors, who entered the palace with what could even be called nonchalance.