Hundreds of refugees were sitting among the broken walls of Satala’s old brick Roman fortress, staring into space. Mostly women, children, and a few black-robed monks, they were too tired, hungry, and thirsty to even complain about the days of walking or the fact that they had already consumed the little food and water they had grabbed before fleeing for their lives. Only the smaller children whined. Some of the babies were too tired to cry, their eyes getting that glassy and otherworldly look which meant that they were approaching death.


    That afternoon, a dust cloud rose over the hills of yellow grass and green thistle on the northern horizon. At first, none of the refugees noticed. It was a child—dirty, thin, small, clothed in rags, his lips chapped, sitting against a brick arch—who first spotted the four rumbling carriages piled with supplies that rose above the wavering mirage. The boy stood, pointed, shouted—apparently he was the only one on watch. Everyone else turned their heads. The women were older, clad in colorful robes coated in dust, their faces saying that they had led hard lives of poverty, housework, farming, and child-rearing even before the Seljuks burned their homes and led their friends and relatives in chains to unknown lands.


    The refugees stood. For a moment they watched the approaching convoy with its one outrider, whose armor gleamed in the afternoon sun. Then they panicked. Screams rose into the air as they searched for their children, called their names, and seized their hands or carried them, scattering into the surrounding hills, the fields which had been farmland before the Battle of Mantzikert, though now they were choked with thistles whose thorns sliced welts that bled little gleaming rubies of blood that smeared their flesh. The women and children cried in desperation, gasped for breath, running as fast as they could—they were so tired and overburdened that most people could have caught them just by walking—terrified that it was going to end like this. Dragging their children or carrying them because their little legs were too slow, the peasant women could only run a little before they ducked down to hide behind bushes or trees. Those with crying babies drove themselves half-insane trying to silence them without hurting them—shoving the babies against their withered breasts, clutching them to their chests, kissing them, pretending to be happy and quietly singing lullabies even as tears gleamed in their eyes, begging them to stop. Everyone knew stories of Romans or barbarians getting annoyed with captured infants who screamed too much. The soldiers would hold them up by their ankles and slice them in half.


    But these were the refugees’ fellow peasants and workers approaching—those who had organized for power. It was Simonis the outrider who shouted in her broken Armenian that the convoy was from Trebizond and that they were here to distribute food, water, and medicine before bringing the refugees to safety.


    But by the time the carriages reached Satala’s ruins, all the refugees with any strength had fled. Only a few babushkas and elderly monks remained. They were crying, struggling to hide in the shadows, and groaning in terror, even as the carriages stopped and the Trapezuntines climbed out and offered them food and water. Until that moment, every stranger on the road had been a threat. The refugees’ experiences meant that even when Herakleia was holding a water skin up to them and begging them to drink, they saw an armored warrior brandishing his scimitar and screaming in their faces. Even when this nightmare vanished before their eyes, the idea that people would help them for nothing in return seemed too good to be true. Men were always looking for women to rape—so maybe men were using these women as bait to catch the refugees.


    “Not what I expected,” Herakleia told Simonis. “It doesn’t seem like they understand you.”


    “I told you, I’m only an Armenian by ethnos,” Simonis said. “I barely even know how to say hello in Armenian. Baref. It was just a secret language my parents used when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying.”


    Herakleia squinted at the refugees who were still fleeing into the distance, just dark shapes lunging through bright grass and thistle. “We need to find a translator. We don’t have time for this. We have to get back to Trebizond. Chaka Bey is going to send people to attack the first chance he gets.”


    “We’ll find someone,” Simonis said.


    Though the Trapezuntines were tired from their journey and from the morning’s defeat, they fanned out into the ruins and the overgrown farmland, shouting that they meant no harm, that they needed a translator. But even the elderly monks were ignorant of Roman.


    A middle-aged woman with a strange, almost unearthly beauty stepped out of an olive orchard''s shadows. She was dressed colorfully like the rest, and flanked by two dark suntanned youths, one of whom looked shockingly like Hagop, the heroic young Armenian leader who had given his life to defeat the Latin occupation of Trebizond. Herakleia gasped at the sight, wondering at first if Hagop had returned from the dead. The youth’s brother nudged him before he blushed and looked away.


    “I speak some Roman,” the woman said. “My name is Katranide.”


    “Nice to meet you. I’m Herakleia, strategos of the Republic of Trebizond. Are these your children?”


    Katranide nodded, then put her arm around the taller boy who resembled Hagop. “Yes. This is Smbat.” She put her arm around the shorter boy. “And this is Ashot.”


    “They both look handsome and strong.”


    “Thank you. We were in the middle of marrying them off when the Seljuks attacked—”


    “I’m sorry to interrupt, but you all must be famished, and I don’t mean to keep you here. We have plenty of food and water—would you like some? We can talk and rest in the shade, and when you’ve had your fill maybe you can help convince the others to join us.”


    Katranide agreed. They returned to the Satala ruins, where the drivers and amazons had succeeded in distributing bread, water, yogurt, and honey to the babushkas and monks. Some of these were already cupping their hands around their mouths and shouting with their hoarse voices for the others to come back. Katranide, Smbat, and Ashot ate and drank only a little before they all grabbed water skins and bread loaves and rushed out into the countryside to tell the others that it was safe. Herakleia’s farr was fully restored by these acts of solidarity, and since she was still exhausted from two long days of traveling, fighting, and barely sleeping, she diverted the energy into her stamina. Yet at the same time, this “false” stamina could be depleted much more rapidly. It was only a temporary expedient, like a shot of caffeine meant to get her through the rest of the day.


    It took the entire afternoon to coax the refugees to the fortress ruins. During this time, the refugees sat in the shade, ate, gave food to the children, and thanked the Trapezuntines. While Jafer El-Hadi remained in his carriage, semi-conscious, bathed in sweat, Za-Ilmaknun and Miriai acted as doctors, enlisting as nurses any drivers and amazons who had the strength to work. Medicinal herbs were rubbed on wounds, which were then bandaged, and broken bones were splinted. Some babies were in a terrible state, but they were too young to be given food or water. They could only be helped when their mothers were rested and nourished enough to produce milk again. Their mothers ate and drank as quickly as possible, weeping as they hugged the babies close to their chests. Everyone else did whatever they could to help. Herakleia and Katranide helped one teenage mother with a small famished baby into the shade of the Roman fortress walls, then brought her bread, cheese, and water. Her baby was gray and unconscious, but still breathing, the heart beating slowly, faintly, arrhythmically. The mother wept even as she ate and drank, rocking back and forth, kissing her baby’s forehead, repeating the same Armenian phrase. Herakleia asked Katranide to translate.


    Katranide looked at her. “She’s saying: ‘May I go blind if I lose you, my beautiful son.’”


    Herakleia’s eyes widened. “Is there anything else we can do for her?”


    Katranide asked the mother, who shook her head.


    “It takes time for her body to change the food and water into baby’s milk,” Katranide said to Herakleia. “We can only wait, and while waiting, help others.”


    Herakleia was exhausted by this point—afternoon was turning to evening—but she took Katranide’s advice. After all, the refugees were in even worse shape than she was. Actually, she had no desire to stay here. Satala had once been a Roman fortress town, one which had fallen partly due to its poor strategic position in a valley surrounded by dusty rolling mountains, the blue curving Lykos River too distant to supply the soldiers and townspeople hiding behind the walls. Alexios had also told nightmarish stories about this place, something involving a giant skeleton in an underground lava pit. Yet it was too late in the day to return to Trebizond. The refugees and Trapezuntines agreed to camp for the night inside the fortress, though the walls were broken and charred from when the Seljuks had conquered it. Inside, the only remains of the fort’s structures were pieces of marble pillars lying in the dirt against the walls. Other travelers must have already moved them out of the way.


    Broken walls still better than no walls, Herakleia thought.


    Fires were started, more food was cooked, and the stars came out. All the babies survived save the one Herakleia and Katranide had seen earlier. This child perished, and the teenage mother had been wailing for hours while people took turns trying to comfort her. The woman’s name was Sahakanuysh.


    We could have saved the baby if we had come sooner. Who knows who the baby might have become.


    Others worked on other things. Carriages were pushed into the wall gaps, and Katranide’s children Smbat and Ashot volunteered to take the night watch. Herakleia thanked them in Armenian: shnor-ha-ka-lu-tyun. By then almost everyone else was wrapped in blankets and asleep, and she was sitting against the wall and doing her best to stay awake as the last few Trapezuntines conversed by the fire. Dekarch Euphrosyne asked her if it was appropriate to rely on two young civilians to keep them safe that night.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    “You want the job?” Herakleia said.


    “No, strategos,” Euphrosyne said. “But I can take it if need be—as can anyone in our squad.”


    “Everyone’s tired,” Herakleia said. “Those two kids might be the only ones with any energy left. We won’t be able to fight if we’re all too tired to even stand.”


    Euphrosyne frowned. “What are your orders, strategos?”


    “I’ll take a nap and check on Smbat and Ashot in a few hours.”


    “But all of us slept last night except for you.”


    “It’s the sword of Damocles of sleeplessness. It comes with being in charge.”


    “It seems not wise, strategos.”


    “Stay up and keep an eye on them.” Herakleia waved her hand. “I don’t care. Do what you want.”


    Euphrosyne looked to Simonis, who had been listening to their conversation. Herakleia fell asleep soon after, so drunk on exhaustion that part of her would have cared little if she had never woken up.


    At least when I’m dead, I won’t have to worry about any of this. I did my best…you’re all on your own…


    Even the quiet crying of Sahakanuysh stopped bothering her. A baby was also wailing, but Herakleia didn’t notice. She slept without waking until morning. In her consciousness lurked the awareness that something was wrong. Something was prowling the valley outside the fortress’s broken walls, flashing eyes that swirled like blue galaxies. Miriai appeared in her dreams and warned that a demonic creature she called a daiwi was coming. Nonetheless, Herakleia was so tired that she drifted deeper into sleep. In those realms of exhaustion were dreams of Ay?e. The Seljuks were dragging her away, and Herakleia was fighting them, trying to save Ay?e, who kept begging for help. But no matter how hard Herakleia fought, too many armored soldiers blocked the way. It was impossible to help her. They brought Ay?e across the mountains, rivers, and valleys, all the way behind the curtain walls of Erzurum Theodosiopolis, the city of minarets in the dusty plains. There Chaka Bey was free to do as he liked with her—to shut her up in a dark dungeon, the way Herakleia had once been shut up. To be strapped to a table and tortured, just as Paul the Chain had tortured Herakleia.


    “Ay?e!” she shouted.


    Herakleia bolted upright to the morning sun—to the smell of smoke and cooking food, to pleasant chatter in several languages, to nickering horses. Had she actually shouted? She looked around. Nobody seemed to have noticed. Either that, or none of them wanted to talk about Ay?e. It was too awful to contemplate. Herakleia’s heart was still beating, and she was taking deep breaths, her clothes damp with sweat.


    I have to help her. I can’t leave her.


    Smbat and Ashot had done a good job keeping themselves awake; everyone had survived. Herakleia’s “nap,” as it turned out, had lasted all night. This time her stamina was truly restored.


    At this point, they all needed to do was pack up and return to Trebizond. There was just one problem.


    “It is poor Jafer El-Hadi, strategos,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “His fever has worsened. If we do not remove his leg, the gangrene will consume him utterly.”


    She looked at the driver, lying in his carriage where there was now more room, since many of the convoy’s supplies had been used up. El-Hadi had turned so pale his skin was almost translucent, the stench of death hovering about him. Herakleia helped Euphrosyne carry him out of the carriage and set him on a blanket near the fire, where one of Za-Ilmaknun’s surgical tools—a small metal poker—was lying on a broken tombstone, its metal glowing in the flames.


    Sensing that something unpleasant was about to take place, the other refugees and Trapezuntines and even Bob the Silent Seljuk Prisoner (whose hands were still tied behind his back) went outside the broken walls. Only Za-Ilmaknun, Miriai, Herakleia, Euphrosyne, and El-Hadi remained.


    El-Hadi was swaying by then, dripping sweat and murmuring with his eyes closed, praying to Saint Sara the Black Kali in an unknown language: “Om Krim Kalikayai Namah—Om Kali, Om Kali!” His clothes were soaked, and the wound on his leg had blackened, rotted, turned green. To Herakleia’s eyes the wound looked like makeup for a zombie movie rather than something El-Hadi had suffered in battle.


    “He must drink alcohol,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “Much alcohol. This procedure is quite painful, and it is the only anesthetic we here possess.”


    “Not sure he drinks,” Herakleia said.


    “Is God not all-merciful?”


    Herakleia and Euphrosyne looked at each other, then lifted El-Hadi’s head. Simonis brought a wineskin and tried pouring its contents down El-Hadi’s throat, but he spat it out.


    “Jafer,” Herakleia said. “Listen to me. You need to drink this wine.”


    “No,” he groaned.


    “An amputation without anesthetic is pretty hardcore,” Herakleia said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”


    He writhed back and forth and struggled to escape, but he was too weak. Za-Ilmaknun set his rainbow-striped mequamia walking stick against one of the carriages and withdrew his knives as well as a saw from a packet inside his backpack, laying them on a cloth. Then he wrapped a thin rope tightly above El-Hadi’s knee. A blanket was folded into a pillow and set under El-Hadi’s head. Herakleia, following Za-Ilmaknun’s commands, shoved a wooden chew stick into El-Hadi’s mouth. Euphrosyne and Simonis held his arms while sleepy Smbat and Ashot—called over from outside the courtyard—held his good leg. Miriai also stood by, ready to assist, working to avoid bickering with Za-Ilmaknun. In the mean time, the Afrikan doctor had removed his white shirt and tossed it a good distance away, exposing his flabby chest. He announced that he would soon begin. After washing his hands, his tools, and his target with wine, he crossed himself.


    “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen,” he said.


    El-Hadi was too delirious to notice. Za-Ilmaknun took a deep breath, then began to cut. The blood that burst out of the veins looked just like the red wine Za-Ilmaknun had poured over his hands and tools a moment before.


    El-Hadi’s scream was the worst thing Herakleia had ever heard. As a soldier who had combat experience in three major battles, Herakleia was no stranger to sickening noises, but El-Hadi sounded neither human nor even animalistic. He sounded unearthly. His eyes widened, he bolted upright, he struggled to free himself, but Za-Ilmaknun shouted to hold him down, and everyone threw their weight on him, and as his muscles and veins swelled even his fellow cart drivers returned to the courtyard to restrain him. When El-Hadi exhausted himself and realized that there was no escape, he fell back and spat out the chew stick.


    “Do not take my leg,” he said. “Please do not take it—”


    Herakleia shoved the chew stick back into his mouth. “It’s your leg or your life!”


    By then Za-Ilmaknun had cut through the skin, muscles, and tendons, and was now sawing through the first section of bone. The grinding was sickening. El-Hadi was shrieking again, until he passed out. Everyone gasped with relief, but they all continued holding him in case he woke up. Za-Ilmaknun finished cutting through one section of bone, then resumed slicing through the muscle and tendon on the other side, before he sawed through the final section of bone and tossed the dead limb over his shoulder. It thumped in the dust.


    Miriai handed him his red-hot tool from the fire. Using this, Za-Ilmaknun cauterized the blood vessels that were still bleeding from the stump. When the bleeding stopped, he rinsed the wound in wine and sewed the skin flaps around it, which he then bandaged. This took far longer than the initial cutting. Having finished, he washed his hands in water, then wine, then water again, and put his shirt back on. (Wincing, Miriai handed him the shirt, saying that he should cover up for Ptahil’s sake.) Then he disinfected his tools, and replaced them in his pack. His assistants, meanwhile, congratulated him as they released El-Hadi, who was still unconscious, though color had returned to his face.


    “Let him rest for as long as he needs.” Za-Ilmaknun retrieved his mequamia. “The smithies of Trebizond will construct a prosthesis for him upon our return.”


    Herakleia, Euphrosyne, and Simonis brought El-Hadi to his carriage, laid him on a blanket, and then wrapped him up, placing another blanket under his head.


    “Poor Jafer,” Herakleia said. By then the others had already left to help everyone pack up to leave. But when she spoke, El-Hadi opened his eyes and looked at her.


    “My leg,” he said.


    She seized his hand. “You were very brave. Very strong. Like always.”


    “Is it gone?”


    She nodded.


    He looked away, shut his eyes, pulled his hand from hers and covered his face.


    “No more acrobatics,” he said. “No more walking. No more working. No more anything! I’m just a cripple now. Just a burden.”


    “We’ll take care of you and your family, always. You’re one of us. And no one is a burden. There are other things you can do.”


    “Like what?”


    “We’ll find something you like. Something that matters.”


    “I’m useless now. I’m nothing.”


    “That’s not true. You’re a brave warrior, and you’ve sacrificed a lot. We’re going to find the ones who did this and make them pay, Jafer.”


    “My son will never know me as I was. He’ll always think of me as a cripple.”


    “Stop saying that word! No one will think of you like that!”


    “Why wouldn’t they? All I can do now is sit around all day. While the others walk, run, play, work, I will be trapped in my own body!”


    “We’re going to have a prosthesis made so you can still move around on your own. And you will learn new skills.”


    “Ah, new skills. Wonderful! Always easy to learn.”


    “You can learn to read and write, if you want. You can become a teacher or a scribe. There is so much work to be done, and we’re desperate for your help.”


    “All I want is my leg back. And my wife…she married a full man, not a man missing a limb. She will hate me. She will search for a new husband.”


    “That’s not true. All of us care about you. We will all take care of you. You are not alone and never will be.” She took back his hand. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Jafer.”


    He withdrew his hand and looked away. “Sorry will not bring back my leg.”


    “Strategos,” Euphrosyne said.


    Herakleia turned. Behind her was a small, dark, armored woman, her black curly hair tied behind her head. Her eyes were red with fatigue, and deep tired shadows swelled around them. It was going to take more than one good night’s sleep to recover from this trip.


    “The time has come,” Euphrosyne said. “We must go.”


    Herakleia nodded. “Let’s get out of here. And you need some rest.”


    Euphrosyne nodded. “Simonis will be on patrol today. I will sleep beside our patient.”


    Herakleia took her aside, and whispered: “You don’t need to do that. He isn’t in the best mood. You should be able to sleep—”


    “My fatigue will pass. His leg will never return.” Euphrosyne looked to the bloody patch of dirt where the operation had taken place. Someone had already buried the leg while Herakleia was speaking with El-Hadi.


    With everything gathered and packed, the elderly, the wounded, and those mothers with babies were placed in the carriages. Everyone else (save Simonis on Bob the Silent Seljuk’s horse) was forced to walk. Herakleia even gave up her seat to an old tattooed Kurdish lady who had some experience driving carriages. Soon enough, the convoy left the ruined Roman fortress, heading north to Trebizond.