Byzantine Wars 3: The Faraway

The Paralos crew decided to feign their continued enslavement in order to capture the Liona. This would be difficult, and it could mean fighting hundreds of sailors. Drosaik warned that the Liona’s crew was mostly Venetian, adding that even the rowers worshipped the lion of San Marco.

“Soon they worship god of the death,” Ra’isa said.

To prepare for the engagement, the Paralos crew first chained up Annibale, Morosini, Ludovici, and Battista (who were also gagged) in the hold. Since Annibale’s clothes were torn and disgusting, Gontran took a different black velvet doublet and tights from the drowsy, depressed, and hungover Marco Morosini—at sword point. Just as Gontran was finishing putting on his new clothes, which reeked of wine and sweat, he noticed the figure of Talia shining in the darkness like a bronze statue beside a pile of swords and miniature basiliks which the Venetians had stolen from his crew.

“I forgot about her,” Gontran said to himself. “Maybe we aren’t so screwed after all.”

Morosini tried to speak through his gag to Annibale, who shook his head—once—so angrily it was a miracle he didn’t break his own neck.

Gontran approached Talia, opened her firebox, and with his flint and steel smashed sparks into the piles of coal inside her. Once flames were leaping in her chest, he closed her firebox back up again. Two blue flames ignited in her segmented metal eyes, which focused as her head turned to face him, startling the Venetians, whose shouts of fright were muffled by their gags as they struggled to escape, their manacles ringing against the wooden pillar to which they were chained.

“Trouble?” Talia said to Gontran with her pipe organ voice.

“You said it.” Gontran picked up his pistol-sword from the nearby pile and tucked it into his belt. “Slave masters.”

“I hate slave masters.”

“I know.”

“Slave masters and merchants are all scum, reaping where they do not sow.”

“Hang on, let’s not tar everyone with the same brush.”

The Venetians watched, transfixed, as Talia and Gontran climbed back to the deck, the latter explaining the plan to the former. At first Gontran and the amazons thought they could position Talia by the mainmast and have her pretend to be a bronze statue, but—since statues usually lack flaming blue eyes and steam hissing from their segmented limbs—this was soon found to be impractical. She hid, instead, behind the red tenda di comando among the steering oars. Gontran smoothfed his hair and clasped his hands behind his back—which he straightened, pacing back and forth in the most Venetian way he could manage, as his crew returned to their benches and clasped themselves in their manacles, though this time these were kept unlocked. They hid swords at their sides. Since Dmitri Anatolyevich and Athanasius would have difficulty moving around, given that each was missing a leg, they were equipped with miniature basiliks. Ibn Ismail, with his one arm, had a sword. Doctor Ubayd, in the mean time, got his medical supplies ready.

“We let them come aboard, then seize them,” Ra’isa explained. “If they are problem, we will shoot basilik and sink them.” She nodded to the basilik, which was still leaning over the prow.

“That could jeopardize the mission,” Gontran said. “There’s almost no way Venice will work with us to begin with—and if we kill any of their leaders…”

“If we are slaves again, then mission is failure,” Ra’isa said. “If Venetians win, they kill us amazons, thinking us too dangerous. Then you, Gontran Koraki, they send to salt mines. You are soft man, soft like flower, so there you last not a day.” She checked his body up and down, a smile tinging the edge of her pursed lips.

“So we don’t have much of a choice,” Gontran said.

“We never do,” Ra’isa said.

The amazons hid belowdecks and armed their miniature basiliks while Gontran walked back to the red tenda di comando, as far from the bowsprit as possible. With a little luck, the Venetians wouldn’t recognize him until it was too late. In the mean time, the rest of the crew had gotten to work oaring the ship, though everyone’s muscles were still sore from yesterday. Now they were headed for the Liona, which soon pulled up alongside them. A crewman aboard the Liona tossed a rope, and Drosaik caught it, his chains ringing, as both ships rowed in reverse to slow to a stop.

Capitano Loredan climbed aboard with no one else save a brown-cowled monk, presumably his secretary, who was sunburned almost to a crisp, the white skin peeling from his nose and bald pate.

“Well.” Loredan smiled, his hands on his hips as he looked at the Paralos crew. “Well, well, well. We had worried there was some trouble aboard this fine ship, but it seems you’ve quite squared everything away, my dear Annibale.” He looked to Gontran—who was still standing as far off as possible in the red shade of the tenda di comando—and narrowed his eyes. “Annibale?”

“É un pirata!” the monk shouted, pointing at Gontran with a soft hand.

The Paralos crew threw off their chains, drew their swords, and seized Loredan and his secretary. Diaresso aimed his crossbow at the Liona—the enemy crew was still only staring at them—while the amazons climbed up from the hold clutching their miniature basiliks. Gontran drew his pistol-sword and also took aim at the Liona.

“Venetian crew!” he shouted. “In the name of the Republic of Trebizond, surrender or die!”

The Venetian crew members looked at each other for a moment, and then—standing from their rowing benches and drawing their swords—they screamed: “Viva San Marco!”

Hundreds leaped aboard the Paralos, and their swords clashed against those of the Kitezhi and Trapezuntines as the ship swayed. Both sides fought hard. Bodies that looked like they’d been drenched in red paint tumbled to the deck, and men missing limbs crawled on the blood-soaked wood crying for acqua or voda or neró as sailors’ bare feet stomped their faces and crushed their hands. Gontran fired his pistol-sword into the chest of an old bald toothless man who was charging him, waving a sword—whose white beard stretched down to his chest, now red with blood as he fell to the deck, clutching his spurting wound.

Critical hit! the game voice shouted, granting Gontran additional XP for his dexterity skill.

He folded the pistol-sword’s blades around its barrel—the metal scalding his fingers—just in time to deflect a blow from a spear wielded by a boy who looked like Joseph. Gontran froze, staring at him, unable to believe his eyes. Growling, the boy stabbed at him again, but Gontran seized the spear in his spare hand, pulled it loose, and smashed the boy’s face with the blunt end, knocking him to the deck. Holding his bruised face with one hand, the boy crawled away and hid beneath a pile of bodies. Gontran watched him for a moment before returning his attention to the battle.

Things went as expected. Though the Liona had greater numbers, the Paralos had amazons, while Talia swept through the enemy like a screaming buzz saw, their bodies thumping to the deck around her, their red blood spraying everywhere. They had never seen anything like her. What was she? A knight who was armored, head to toe, in bronze? But how could a woman fight like this—how could these women move too quickly to see? Earlier they had surrendered without complaint; now they were like lions attacking a flock of sheep.

Soon enough, the enemy crew was either fleeing to their ship or falling to their knees, dropping their weapons, and begging for mercy. Different voices cried “pietà!” across the Paralos deck.

The enemy survivors were manacled using the chains stored in their own ship. As for the enemy dead, they were dumped over the side, their comrades crossing themselves and murmuring prayers. They had lost dozens, most of them to Talia—who was drenched in gore, the blood dripping from her fingertips. As for the Paralos crew, seven had perished—including Doctor Abu Ubayd—while fifteen were wounded.

Eighty crew members left.

Ra’isa, Zaynab, and Zulaika al-Jaryia were bandaging their wounds while the other two amazons searched the Liona with Talia for Venetian stragglers.

Capitano Loredan and his monk secretary, who was named Brother Domenico Malatesta—truly a bad head in every sense of the term—had survived. Gontran brought up Annibale and his friends from belowdecks, removed their gags, and chained them together with the Capitano and the monk under the tenda di comando. They were given water, as were the captured enemy sailors, though Annibale had the audacity to demand wine, as only befit his noble station. Gontran held the cup of water to his lips, but Annibale turned his head away.

“Suit yourself.” Gontran gave the water to Annibale’s father Loredan, who drank, and then nodded his thanks. Soon he was staring at Talia as an amazon washed the blood from her bronze armor.

“What—what is that?” Loredan said.

“Good question.” Gontran turned to Talia. “Hey, what are you?”

“I am an automatōn,” she said with her pipe organ voice. “By Hephaistos built.”

“How can that be?” Loredan said. “Hephaistos—wasn’t he a pagan deity?”

“He is the master craftsman, and he constructed me,” Talia said.

“Blasphemy,” Brother Malatesta said. “She is but a demon animated by the spirit of Satan, nothing more.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Gontran winked at Talia, though he was unsure she understood.

He next searched for Diaresso, who was by the Paralos’s bowsprit, keeping away from everyone for some reason.

Turning back to the captured Venetian leadership, Gontran asked: “Listen, is there anything else we can do?”

Brother Malatesta cleared his throat. “Grant us our freedom, and throw yourselves into the sea.”

He looked to his friends to see if they would laugh at his joke, but they were silent.

“We’ll be freeing you soon enough,” Gontran said. “We don’t plan on hurting any of you.”

“It would be better to kill us,” said Marco Morosini, one of Annibale’s friends, still hungover from last night. “For the shame of losing to a pack of women.”

“Try not to feel so bad,” Gontran said. “Lots of people made the same mistake. You’re just the most recent.”

Morosini was unable to say anything in response.

Gontran turned to Capitano Loredan. “Now are you willing to listen to our proposal?”

“We do not speak on strictly honorable terms,” Loredan said. “Not as equals, I mean.”

“Yeah, equality, my favorite word,” Gontran said. “But is it really possible for any two people to be perfectly equal?”

“In the eyes of the Lord,” Brother Malatesta said.

“Shut up,” Annibale growled.

“Listen,” Gontran said. “You can hear us out, if you want, or you can just wait here until we drop you off in Venice. It’s your choice.”

No answer came from the Venetian officers.

True believers, Gontran thought. God himself couldn’t change their minds.

He turned to the other prisoners, who were sitting all over the deck in the morning sun, their hands chained behind their backs, including the child with Joseph’s face who had attacked Gontran during the battle. Drosaik had already identified the few Liona crew members who were slaves and who could be relied upon to join the uprising; one slave, he said, was a kurac who lapped at the boots of his masters like a thirsty dog—Jacopo Orlandi, an unransomed Pisan captured in a forgotten sea battle near Cyprus, always hopeful that his captors would release him if he just worked hard enough, always eager to rat out his fellow slaves.

As for the few other slaves who had been trapped aboard the Liona, they were from across the Mediterranean, and wanted nothing to do with Venice. These might be persuaded to join the uprising. There was a Touareg from Sicily, Hassan Ali, bereft of his black and blue veils for months, and anxious to cover his face now that he had a chance to do so. He was joined by two Kretan Arabs. One was simply named “the Cordoban,” though he had apparently never even been to Cordoba. “It is just a family name,” Drosaik explained. “That’s all I know.” The other Kretan was named Abu Hafs. Diaresso spoke with all three, relieved to have found more fellow Saracens. Finally, there came four Sclavenians from Servia and Dalmatia—Stjepan, Kulin, Krvaš, and Radoje, all Drosaik’s friends, young men, thin and tired. Such people the Venetians always assumed were Narentine pirates, which meant that they were killed or enslaved on sight.

“Lot of new names to remember.” Gontran met their eyes. “Welcome aboard, everyone. You can fight for us if you want, or we’ll drop you off somewhere along the way—”

“You fight the Veneti?” the Cordoban said.

“We’re trying to make friends with them, but they aren’t making it easy,” Gontran said.

“I will join you if you fight them,” the Cordoban said. “And fight you if you join them.”

“It might be easier if we dropped you off on the way,” Gontran said. “The Narentine islands aren’t far from here.”

“Yes, you can drop us off.” Drosaik looked away from his Sclavenian friends. “We would so appreciate it. Any of the outlying islands would be—”

“This ship is not public service.” Ra’isa looked up from bandaging the wounded. “We have mission to destroy slavery. No time for drop-offs.”

Drosaik looked at her. “But it might only take you a few hours, it’s hardly out of your way at all—”

“Slavery does not wait. How many will die, even as we argue here?”

“So you ally with slave masters to destroy slavery?” Drosaik looked at Gontran. “Is that it? Is that your plan?”

“A mission to death,” said Hassan Ali. He had cut a black cloth from a dead Venetian, sliced a slit for his eyes, and wrapped the rest around his face. “If you sail north, you shall surely die.”

“Rome is a greater threat than Venice,” Ra’isa said. “We focus on one foe, allying with others in the mean time.”

“You do not know your true enemy,” the Cordoban said. “Rome is weak, while every day the Veneti grow stronger.”

Hassan Ali nodded. “You join with a rampant lion to kill an old ailing dog.”

“That’s your opinion,” Gontran said. “We have a different perspective. Take it or leave it.”

“We leave it,” said Stjepan, who until then had been silent. “All of us.”

Ra’isa stood. “Then will you be our prisoners, too? Our passengers?” She gestured to the Paralos. “Is this warship or pleasure cruise?”

“Hang on a minute,” Gontran said. “You always like putting things to votes, so let’s put it to a vote with the crew. These guys want to go home. I think we should let them. It could bring about a lot of good will around here. It doesn’t sound like the Venetians are too popular in these parts.”

Ra’isa eyed him. “Democracy works only when it suits you, flower.”

Gontran checked with the rest of the Paralos crew members. Most, at that time, were busy tending their wounds; a few were giving the prisoners water. When Gontran explained the situation with the Venetians’ freed slaves, the crew’s reaction was almost unanimous: drop them off on the Narentine Islands. Visibly amused, Ra’isa had been watching Gontran speak with the crew—what he was doing was called canvassing, wasn’t it?—and she smirked and nodded when he told her the results. He had gained leadership XP, in the meantime, and was getting close to leveling up to Intermediate (5/10).

“These islands are like a hornet’s nest,” Capitano Loredan growled. “The Narentini pretend to be fishermen, but they become sharks the moment they are aroused by the scent of blood. They will kill us all, take our ships, and—”

“So they’re Venetians, basically,” Gontran said. He looked at Ra’isa. “It’s always projection with these guys. They think they’re angels, meanwhile all the terrible shit they do to the rest of the world, they say the rest of the world is actually doing to them.”

Loredan sat up. “The Repùblega follows rules, laws, regulations. We have an assembly much like that which you utilize aboard this fine vessel of yours, called the Concio in our tongue, in which all citizens choose the doge, the highest and most powerful office in Ła Repùblega de Venesia. We only take the most reasonable, moderate actions. Really, we are more similar than you realize—not like these barbarians without culture, these thieves.” He sneered at the freed slaves.

“Yeah, I know all about that,” Gontran said. “It sounds pretty familiar. The citizens get to choose from a few rich candidates to explain the decisions of the rich to everyone else. That’s how it works, isn’t it? And meanwhile, half the people living in your country are disenfranchised. They either don’t vote, or they can’t vote.”

Why do I always instantly become a Mazdakist the moment I find myself arguing with aristocratic shitheads? Gontran thought. The Mazdakists take things too far…all we need is a liberal democracy that doesn’t get corrupt, that has good checks and balances.

“That’s preposterous,” Loredan said. “Anyone is welcome to vote if they wish—”

“Do the slaves vote?” Gontran said. “The prisoners? The peasants on these plantations you want so badly? The women? The children?”

Loredan laughed nervously. “Ridiculous. Shall we ask newborn babes their opinion of political matters as well? What about the birds in the trees? The fish in our nets? Shall we pause our process of decision-making to consult the fish?”

“And they only vote once every few years, don’t they?” Gontran said. “The real decisions are all made behind the scenes.”

“It’s only natural that those men with property, those with the most to lose, should have the greatest interest in the Repùblega’s political affairs. We cannot let the majority tyrannize the rest.”

“I’ve heard enough.”

“But they will kill us,” Loredan said. “If you bring us to the Narentini—”

“We’ll keep you safe,” Gontran said. “We need you for our own purposes.” He looked to the freed slaves. “That’s the deal. We let you guys go, but you also need to let the Venetians go.”

“I would cut all their throats, given the chance,” Drosaik said. “After seeing what such men have done to their fellows.”

“You can’t do that,” Gontran said.

Drosaik looked to the other freed slaves. After conferring with one another, they nodded their agreement to Gontran.

“The Narentines cannot be trusted,” Loredan said. “They will kill us in our sleep!”

“Yeah, well I’m going to kill you while you’re awake if you don’t shut up,” Gontran said.

The Paralos crew was divided among the two ships, which then set sail eastward to the Narentine Islands. The Liona’s crew had wanted to elect Diaresso katapan, but he had refused—perhaps out of modesty—so instead they chose David Halevi the Kitezhi, a man from among their ranks. As they departed, the crews made sure to pull down the Venetian flags on the two vessels, storing them belowdecks. The Paralos still had its red flag, but the Liona sailed behind it with no flag at all. The sailors considered this a bad omen.

“We should make a new red flag for you.” Drosaik eyed the prisoners. “We can use their blood to dye a white sail canvas.”

“No offense, but that’s insane,” Gontran said. “And, like, not in a good way. The Venetians might have been bastards, but they never made flags with our blood.”

“Their entire city is built with blood,” Drosaik said. “Its walls and rooftops are wrought from the congealed blood of slaves.”

Gontran laughed uneasily, unsure of how to react. Part of him started to wonder if maybe these Narentines were right.

“Is it true?” Gontran whispered to Ra’isa. “Are we wasting our time with these Venetians? Maybe we should be trying to ally with all these other people here.”

“They are weak,” Ra’isa said. “That is why. Venice works to conquer the world, and what do these Narentines do? They fish, they fight among themselves, they steal what they can from passing ships. They have no vision, no organization. We can be friendly with them, but they are useless to us.”

“Ra’isa—”

“You are more familiar with these parts, are you not?” she said. “You traveled and worked in the Adriatic, the Gulf of Venice, with your friend Diaresso for years before coming to Trebizond, is that not so? Tell me, did you ever think of the Narentine pirates?”

“No,” Gontran said. “Not really. I was actually thankful that the Venetians mostly cleaned things up. It made working out here so much easier, at least as long as you played by the Venetians’ rules.”

“You see?” Ra’isa said. “You argue for me.”

It wasn’t long before an island was sighted. Sansego, the freed slaves called it—a small northwestern outlier in the Lussino Archipelago—a patch of curving green forest and sand recumbent on the languid blue sea. It had only one small fishing village, an abbey of quiet brick, and a few fishing boats lying on the white beach, but one of these would be enough for the slaves to find their way home. As it turned out, Sansego was even Radoje’s birthplace, which naturally meant that he invited everyone aboard—save the prisoners—for dinner in his village. The Trapezuntines and Kitezhi politely declined.

“You do not want to eat the food on Sansego,” Drosaik whispered to Gontran. “It is no good.”

The two ships rowed as close to the beach as they dared, as villagers emerged from their huts of mud and thatch to see what the fuss was about, shading their eyes in the setting sunlight and shouting questions to the sailors in Mediterranean pidgin. A few answered while Gontran and Ra’isa bid the freed slaves farewell, and asked them to put in a good word for the uprising among their countrymen.

“I will do what I can,” Drosaik said. “But you must know, if you succeed in making common cause with Venice, all these islands here will swear themselves your enemies.”

“Well, what are you gonna do?” Gontran said.

They shook hands, and the freed slaves leaped over the side and waded to shore. To Gontran’s surprise, Diaresso was among them. Gontran grabbed Diaresso’s arm before he could go and demanded to know what he was doing.

Diaresso shook him off. “Touch me again and I shall kill you where you stand, giaour.”

Gontran stepped back. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you—”

“I tire of this place. I tire of your folly. There is more to my life than working with you, Gontran.”

“But you don’t even know these people!” Gontran cried. Tears were suddenly burning his eyes. “You have no idea how they’ll treat you—”

“At this point, I will take the devil unknown to me, rather than the devil I know too well. Besides, they are going.” He nodded to the two Kretan Arabs and the Touareg from Sicily. “I have spoken with them. They have vouched for the honor of the Narentines.”

“Diaresso, you can’t do this.”

“Our partnership is over, giaour. I will not give up my family for you.”

“But Diaresso—you’re like my brother.”

Diaresso wiped tears from his eyes. “‘Like’ is the most important word in that sentence. I will choose my true family over those who are ‘like’ my family. I will choose my true family over those who risk my true family’s lives.” He leaped over the side.

“Diaresso!” Gontran shouted. “But what about Tamar?”

“We are no longer lovers,” Diaresso said over his shoulder as he waded to shore. “She is strong, and will find another man to care for her, if she even needs one. Besides, she was fond of you, was she not?”

“Diaresso!” Gontran shouted.

Everyone was staring at Gontran. Ra’isa restrained him as he struggled to leap over the side.

“It is his choice,” Ra’isa said. “Diaresso is not your pet. He is a man.”

Gontran turned away from the freed slaves walking to the beach, where Radoje was already embracing those villagers who were presumably his family members. They were celebrating, leaping and crying out for joy, clearly having never expected to see each other again—wondering even if they were still alive.

First I lost Joseph. Now I’ve lost Diaresso. By the end of this mission, will I have anything or anyone left?

“We’ve been together for years,” Gontran said. A tear ran down his cheek; Ra’isa wiped it away with one of her long dark elegant tattooed fingers. “Since I came to the Mediterranean, he’s been with me. He’s always been by my side. It’ll never be the same without him.”

“This is his path.” Ra’isa looked to the sea. “He has his own way. As for us, we have ours.”

Before long, orders were given to sail north. The crews of the Paralos and the Liona rowed away from the island of Sansego, turning their prows north to Venice, the wooden beams creaking in the wind, the hulls tearing the placid waves.