Category: Short Stories

It has been years since last Bahram slept. Sleep had become a horror, and nightmares snake up from the darkness of night to snap at dreams. As darkness closed in about him, he would see again that shocked face, and the mad creatures who leapt upon it, tearing and screaming in their barbaric Oghuz, in sadistic exultation. He would freeze again, as the voices about him circled again, cheering and laughing. Then, his whole body would shake, and he would light again the lamp he has doused five, perhaps ten times already. No, no, there was no time to rest. There never was. Better to at last rise again, from where he lay still as the dead, and again wander as he would always, in the vacated streets after even the robbers have gone to their beds.

Wandering was human. It made him feel human, especially in moments when he did not otherwise. Haxamanish wandered from Parsua to Anshan, Iskandar wandered from Yauna to Marvdasht, the Parthava wandered from Khorasan to Tysfun. Who was Bahram the Aswar to deny this shared nature, and remain idle in his home? So he did, night after night, some nights sharing the company of a wide and glorious moon, some nights alone but for his ailing soul, and all the painful memories that it stubbornly carried. Those nights were often longest, and worse, chilliest. Even on summer nights, the power of his emotion made him shiver and clutch his robe about his shoulders, breathing shallow so as not to inhale and let the air, the freezing sensation, enter into his body again. Gratefully, nights were never eternal, and day would always follow eventually, even in the last days of winter.

Yet the dawn was little comfort, for it reminded him with its grasping arms the face again, that he had no ability nor desire to forget. The man in that image was staring at him through the lens of the sun, still as shocked as he was on that day, but now it was directed at him.

“Why is mighty Bahram so small now?” That face would wonder, without having to speak. “Where is his brother, who shared the womb with him, but stood without that unsightly hunch in his back? Hello! I call upon Bahram’s other face, the one whose beard was combed, the one who rode alongside me once, the one who crashed against the Arab with the strength of three hundred Anushirvans!”

“Please, look away from me,” Bahram would mutter, for he could not help but speak. “Bahram the Aswar lays beside Mardavij Shahanshah, in his court where he fell five years ago. In his footsteps he leaves the corpses of the Oghuz who betrayed him, and those of the schemers Vushmgir Amir and Bajkam Ghulam.” He spoke it, for it was his lie, and a lie would never be believed inside the mind alone. 

Even to say the name of Mardavij filled him with the greatest joy that springs only from sorrow. To recall him, even while he lived, was to recall the sun, and nothing lesser. The men of Persia would see him pass, and they would whisper to themselves one name. Saoshyant, they would say. It would follow him as he proceeded, south from Tabaristan below the Mazandaran, down through the Alborz towards Ispahan, and out along the spine of the Zagros to Parsa. Saoshyant, Saoshyant, Sasan reborn again, body of Ziyar and soul of Zarathustra, the Persians would say. The Arabs would spit behind his back, but as he turned to look they trembled and averted their gaze. All knew him east of the Arvand Rud, well or poorly, they knew him nonetheless. He was fire, he was the river, and he was loved by Bahram.

That was the only truth Bahram would keep, if he died as he meant to. The only truth that the rain shall never fall upon, even as the vultures pick apart his heart. Not even Hormazd shall know, and when Ahriman feasts on his unclean remains, he will not taste even a hint of it. He would cut his beard, not missing it, tangled mess that it had become, and leave it behind him in clumps. He will throw his cap on the ground and stomp it into the earth, the detestable thing, and once again take up the sword and the horse, if great Mardavij would but call his name again. He would ride the breadth of Persia, from the Ufratu to the Hindu Kush, from the steppes above Samarkand to the Gulf below, not pausing for a breath if his Shahanshah would only command it. Bahram could recall bravery, somewhat vaguely, but the locus of it was empty. He could not be brave anymore, as he lives now not even half a man, not even a quarter of a man. He has nothing anymore to be brave for.

Tonight, the memory comes stronger than they ever have before. The Oghuz descend down from the sky all at once, like the dutiful vulture, but Mardavij lived still. With their knives and their anger, they hack and tear into their Shahanshah, as he lashes them with his Pahlavi tongue. There he lay, regal in the silver crown that adorned him, untouched in the violence, affixed to his head more loyal than any of his pushtigban, still glittering with the life that had left its bearer. 

“Will you not fight for your precious Dhimmi, your dog-lover, your fire worshipper?” Bajkam had said, standing above the corpse, dagger in his hand. None of the aswaran, who once braided their beards tightly and adorned it in jewels, who called themselves Immortal as they postured to each other, none of them would stand to face the traitor. Bahram had little anger for them; he was the same. They all knew that while there may have been thousands of Oghuz, while there have been tens of thousands of Arabs, there was only one Saoshyant, and he was fallen. This was the treachery that could not be unmade, not with the seas of blood they had waded through before, not with a sea of bloodshed the scope of the Indian Ocean. No amount of Arab flesh, cut and cast into the earth, would sate Hormazd that he would return Mardavij back to the living. So they all scattered, slowly over the months, escaping to every corner of the world so long as it was not Persia. Bahram had not seen any one of their faces since that day. They hide theirs as he does, from the sky, wherever in the world they live.

Some of his brothers could never live under the yoke of their ignoble defeat, and fled across the Hindu Kush, to join their cousins on the far side of those impenetrable mountains. They spoke the tongue and wore the garments of their host the Mahipala Shah. Some of them lived on as dhimmi, bearing the yellow belt and shying away at the sight of a muqti. They kept their silver close to their vestments, and feigned poverty when it was time to pay jizya. Some, however, abandoned their pride entirely, alongside their names, laid at the feet of those who wronged them. Bahram detested them, the cowards, for of them he was one. To think, without his light to guide him, he was docile as the Bavands. Like them, he burned righteous in his power. Like them, he submitted in his weakness. As a horse does. As a donkey does.

“Salaam, Bahram the Ayyar,” said a figure on the ground, which shocked Bahram as he gazed towards the sky. Instantly, he rankled against the title. Bahram the Ayyar, the Oghuz would call him, as they became lords and he became nothing. It was a name to mock him, to mark him, to diminish him, that a proud aswar could be demoted to a mere ayyar as soon as the fortunes of the Arab turned against him. It sounded to him an insult. Bahram the Meek, Bahram the Horn-Wearer. Bahram who carried the torch that blazed in his chest, until the fire within it extinguished, and he dropped the cold stick. He turned to face the one who vexed him so suddenly, only to find the shattered remnants of a face he once knew well.

“Salaam, Mazyar the Dhimmi,” Bahram spat. They did not kiss as brothers would. Instead, Mazyar lifted a single eyebrow, as was his habit, and Bahram could see under it an eye as heavy and dead as his own.

“That is as we say it now, yes? ‘Salaam.’ You know better than I.” Mazyar did nothing to hide the indignation in his voice. It was the same contempt Bahram held for himself, but dutiful rather than painful. The two men stood paces apart, but in between them was a world. For all his humiliations, an ayyar was an ayyar still, and a dhimmi was not. Mazyar was ragged as an Afghan, but for the yellow sash that looped about his waist, and Bahram knew that he was jealous. Mazyar would look at him and see his robes that were still well-kept, see the sword that he still wore, but Bahram would look at Mazyar and see the heart that beat steady in its conviction. For all the jizya has been taken from him, for all the temples that have extinguished before him, for all the comrades that have been killed beside him, Mazyar was a Persian still. His heart beat the steady meter of the Gathas defiantly under the screaming call of namaz. He paid dearly with all the wealth he had, but he did not pay with his soul. “Have you any wine to drink?”

“I have not either,” Bahram said, whispering and shaking his head slowly. He had not even clasped his eyes upon wine in years. Where it once rushed through the streets of Ispahan, as cask after cask was filled and emptied, the streets now ran dry of it. There was still drops of it in the city he was sure, locked away in palaces with deep cellars and opened on the decadent nights after the amirs starved by day. For ayyarun, who were told to be above such sinfulness, who were to represent themselves in the land of honor, the bottles closed to them forever.

“I had thought as much.” Mazyar turned away for a breath, and then righted himself again. “A shame; I could never sleep without it.” Bahram knew not from his mind but from his heart that Mazyar lied then. These two souls, one a traitor and one a commoner, remembered their calling in the same manner, and lay together sleepless, ever staring at the perfidious face of the moon. Mazyar put his hand to his face, observing intensely all the features of Bahram. “I know what it is you are intending.”

“Do not stop me,” Bahram said. It was a pleading whisper, no louder than the wind, but it broke the ambience like the roar of the Dahag. It was the truth, and now that it had been spoken, the viciousness of it ate him up. There was no shame in death as there was in life, living to prostrate, living to wait. He was trapped on this side of the world, and great Mardavij on the other, the barrier that separated them as strong as he was weak. He could no longer imagine how an eternal sleep would be any worse than an eternal awakeness, for in that sleep he could yet dream of days he has never lived, of victories he has never won, of silver crowns and the sea and nothing in between them. It was the ultimate lie, one so devious that even he could himself believe it, that it would be so simple just to strike down the barrier and once again be reunited with his Shahanshah. Mazyar eventually waved his hand dismissively, blinking a long, slow blink that almost seemed to chase the fatigue from his eyes. 

“That I would see you like this,” he muttered. Bahram nodded, and they at last kissed each other upon the cheek once, parting as brothers, as equals again. Alone once more, he ambled in a half-daze, through the quiet streets of Ispahan, along thin roads that led between houses, boxed together tight as Immortals. Before him he could only see one thing; the sheer face of the great Soffeh, that looked over the city as a watchful sentinel. Imposing as a mother, it judges him sternly, but he is now beyond judging. He continues on, stopping little, drinking nothing. He does not think about the wear upon his body, or of the needling sensation in his lungs. All he sees is the peak so far ahead of him, that beckons him up after a long five years of silence.

To behold as Hormazd did seemed to change everything. The world was smaller, somehow, when it was looked down upon. Ispahan, which in Mardavij’s time was the center of the world, was but a town, when faced against the majesty of the sky that dwarfed it. The many thriving souls living within could not match the rank of the stars, innumerable and each more brilliant than the wisest of philosophers. Had Mazdak, Vishtaspa, or Hushtana, wisest of those who had ever lived, come to have seen them as Bahram did, they would tear their papyrus into a thousand pieces and forget their pretensions to wisdom before the host of the solar magi. To think Hormazd above could stand to watch the sun rise upon this miniscule city for centuries, even while it was growing from the first Persians. Kourush would lament his mere mortality, for although he ruled the world entire, above him the stars still roamed free of his law. A sight fitting to be the last.

There, before him, the sky brightened, the stars retreating to make way for the first light of dawn. The sky in the east bloomed silver, in a circle about the horizon. A silver crown. The wind rose, and Bahram at last recalled a fond memory. He was here once before, eight years ago, as the Persian army stormed the walls, driving out the garrison of the Muqtadir Caliph. His horse stood idle, a shame he thought he at the time he would not forget, when behind him approached the Saoshyant, who stole away from the battle moments before his victory.

“I knew one had been missing,” Mardavij had said, and when Bahram twisted his hips to face the approaching rider, Mardavij had leaned forward and planted a kiss upon his lips. Bahram must have made a face, for Mardavij then laughed. “Why do you freeze so? If the Arab were to kiss you in battle, he shall as well as wear your head as a diadem!” He reached out with a hand and patted Bahram on his rounded shoulder. “Come; ride with me today, and I shall give you a share of the victories. The salar will be none the wiser; you were with me.” As master and servant, they descended the mountain, racing side by side towards their prize conquest. In that moment, Bahram found within himself a shred of the bravery he needed.

“I follow you five years too late, Saoshyant, forgive my absence,” Bahram whispered to the sun.

And he leapt.

The report of blaring horns marked the return of the Legio IV Italica. The army came through the Via Aurelia, punctuated by the clattering of boots and the steady thump of swords on shields, singing their marching song in a rumble of voices matched only perhaps by the din of battle. Steel flashes in the sun, as it has for a thousand years past, over the hills of Latium, over Mare Internum. Above them, the red vexillum flew proudly in the wind, its golden letters visible for miles, declaring proudly the designation of its bearer.

“Come out, you thirsty dogs! Come out, you rankled goats!” sang the men, their heads unbowed beneath the watchful gaze of basilicas and churches. “Whores greet your clients, debtors greet your slaves. Italica, Italica, Italica is home!” Each verse was marked by the sounding of the horns again, in mighty bursts that scattered men and beasts alike. “The sea gives us salt, Roma puts it in our hands; we go tonight to gamble it away, and tomorrow beg Augustus for more!” 

The very foundations of ancient temples shook with the legion’s approach. Dust crumbled from above their helmets, some raining down on them and nestling into the cracks of the streets below. The people of Rome ducked into alleys, away from the rapidly-approaching wooden wall that was the vanguard. Some were slow, and paid for their error dearly as they were kicked out of the way. Heavy boots fell on legs and feet, but the cries of those struck could barely be heard for the chorus of the soldiers. As they marched up the main path towards the Palatine hill, the singing grew louder, the hammering of their blades on the Chi-Rho swifter, the footfalls more pronounced, as if they were being driven into the frenzy of battle again, like the barbarian-warriors of Germania. Until, at last, at the foot of the hill, they stopped, dead still and dead silent, before their emperor who awaited them, upon the steps leading up to the great Domus Augustana.

Anthemius adjusted his toga, thinking back on the morning. This garb was restrictive, folding this way and that in its own chaotic nature, and in the wind it tightened about the body in the manner of Apollo’s beasts. He looked over the field of helms, once, twice, once more again. They were strangers all. This had not been the case when they left. Where had they gone? He glanced quickly to his right and left, where he was comfortably flanked by the senator Flavius Pusaeus and the consul Messius Phoebus, hoping to match eyes with his loyal councilors. They were taught by the Stoic masters too well; they stared ahead, faces showing nothing but a facade of strength. The sea of heads parted, and one stepped forward. By the jewels embedded in his helm, he was a legatus, but he too was unfamiliar. That stranger then raised a hand high above his head in salute.

“Fortune of Augustus, merit of Traianus!” he reported. 

Anthemius extended his own outward, mimicking the statues of the Pax Romana. Encased in stone as those forms of the late emperors were, they cut the model of wisdom and authority; triumphant Antoninus Pius, serene Marcus Aurelius, stern Claudius Iulianus. He felt apart from them as Dis from the sun. 

“Legio IV, Augustus welcomes you home!” he said, mustering his bravery. Latin never came naturally to him, and he struggled even to tame his tongue enough to speak. Greek flowed from the tongue, swift and merry as wine, whereas Latin stuck in the throat as honey. He could do nothing but grit his teeth and continue on. “What name and station do you keep?” The man removed his helmet and stared up at the emperor, and Anthemius could see in his shock that he was youthful, perhaps of an age with him when he began military service, perhaps even younger. He lowered his hand and spoke.

“If it pleases Augustus, I call myself Aurelius Antigonianus. I return to you as Legatus of the Legio IV.”

“Answer me, Antigonianus.” The questions came suddenly, as a broken dam. Anthemius could not stop himself. “You left under the command of my comites, Torisarius and Hermianus. Where have they gone?”

“Torisarius lies in Narbo, Hermianus in Massilia.”

“With you were the Legiones V Scythica and VII Flavia Felix. Why does only one of three legions remain to me?” Aquilo of the Northern Wind sucked the air from his lungs. He looked over the faces of the assembled army again. They were the same as before.

“The Goths struck Scythica to a man; Flavia Felix abandoned their brothers in the field.”

“My son marched with you. Where is Anthemiolus? He was the dux of this force; you answered to him. Where is Anthemiolos? You were responsible for protecting his life with your own. Where is Anthemiolos? He was of an age with you; where is my child? Where is he?” By the end, he had entirely reverted to his native tongue. His left hand, grasping the folds of the toga, clenched so tight he could feel his nails as they bit into his palm through the fabric. His heart beat loud and swiftly; his breath came at pace. He didn’t need to hear the response.

“He remains where fortune of Augustus and merit of Traianus left him.” Antigonianus’ eyes flared as he spoke. They were mirrors; in them, Anthemius could see his own anger. He took a step forward, but found the hem of his cloth prevented him from approaching, constricting him tighter. He would be strangled, perhaps, right on the steps of the Domus Augustana, by the dress of his ancestors. He choked on some more mangled Latin. It was a question; it was an accusation; it was a condemnation. Before it became anything at all, Antigonianus raised his hand again. “Hail, Magister Militum!”

Anthemius turned to look, and there he was. Fire lanced in his heart at that pompous, smug face. At the toga he certainly was not wearing in the morning, that fell upon his frame naturally as if he were born into it. Ricimer the barbarian, who bloodied his hands with the corpses of emperors, who conspired with Aspar the Alan to puppet the generals of Rome from the shadows. 

“My brothers!” announced Ricimer, taking to the speech of Italy without the slightest taint or corruption. “We the Senate and the People of Rome are most delighted to see your faces again. The wives of the Seven Hills long for their husbands, and mothers their sons.” Ricimer held that gleam in the blue of his eye sharp as the reflection of the sun itself. “Only the greatest of legions, and with them the ablest of generals, return time and time again, never truly defeated.” Anthemius knew without question that Ricimer knew already the fate of his companions. He, who straddled the line between civilized and barbaric, had ears across both sides of the Alps. The rage threatened to boil over within him, damned be to the teachings of Proclus. “Perhaps if great Procopius had joined the field with his son, we would feast his victory in Narb-”

“Kill you!” Anthemius reached out with his free hand towards the magister militum. Ricimer ducked away, his speech dissolving into laughs as Phoebus gripped him. “Kill! You! Death!”

“Augustus’ humors are imbalanced,” muttered Phoebus sheepishly, struggling somewhat against the incensed emperor.

“Augustus’ humors are imbalanced!” repeated the barbarian, between barks. The senators eventually overpowered their master, and the three of them retreated back into the walls of the imperial palace. Anthemius did not struggle so much against their handling of him as he would have liked; battle, in truth, had left his body.

“Where is my pallium?” Anthemius tore the toga from his body, still consumed by his anger. It landed in a heap upon the peristylium floor. 

“Where is your mind?” Phoebus could have cut the image of master Proclus, how inflamed he was. “Brother, this is most unlike us! Would that our master in Alexandria see you; you have given yourself to an animal’s nature!”

“Where is my son?” Even at his full height, Phoebus could not stand quite so tall as Anthemius. “He is gone! Where is my son?” Alone, surrounded by his fellow students from over four decades ago, his anger was swallowed whole by the void in his heart. He collapsed on the ground, nose planted firmly into the heap of cloth that was once at his feet. The darkness enclosed his eyes, soaking up the stains upon his face. Everything of his body felt heavy; he had transmuted to lead. For a long breath, nothing in the world moved at all; then, he felt a gentle hand on the back of his neck.

“Leave him be,” came the voice of Phoebus, and the touch was gone. “Bother him not with the matter of Leo Macellus. He can find his response on his own time.” 

“To your feet now,” Pusaeus said, seemingly ignoring the order of his elder. He grasped Anthemius under the arm and assisted him to stand. “Let us have you in bed.” Deftly, with the practiced hand of one who has served too long in politics, he slipped a vellum sheet into his emperor’s hands. Together, the two crossed the peristylium and to his personal bedchambers. There were too many steps between the two. The home grew cavernous.

“Where is my son?” he asked Pusaeus. The senator did not respond.

“Lie in bed and your humors will balance, Augustus.” Pusaeus left him only with the sound of dissipating conversation, as he resumed chatter with Phoebus in Latin far too quick for Anthemius to catch up with. His hands unfolded the sheet. The cut of the words were distinctive of Leon’s own hand. Its sloppiness was disconcerting. He imagined that face now, poring over his own words, brow furrowed in that usual mix of disappointment and annoyance.

“Anthemios Patrikios,” it began, in the bellow of the old general. “Every manner of report I hear regarding you is falsehood and slander. I am told by my informants that you have been defeated in Septem Provinciae. I am told that you have lost two and more than half legions, alongside the money that I granted you to pay for them. I am told, most importantly of all, that you have still not yet plucked that weed Ricimer from your ear. I will not shame you by asking the return of the gold. However, these failures are not becoming of you. Recall that I raised you to posts in Konstantinopolis that you have taken to admirably. Recall that I outmaneuvered the traitor Olybrius and his barbarian to place you in the city of the Caesars. Fix your mistakes immediately. In exchange, I will continue to do as I always have and ignore the obvious lies I have been fed.” At the bottom, written larger than perhaps the entire body of the letter, is the signature of the emperor in the east. “Leon Sebastos.”

Anthemius let the vellum fall from his hand to the ground. He felt nothing for that condemnation; no fear, no indignation, not even embarrassment. The only thing left within him was a heavy tiredness and the pull of the ceiling, which he continued to stare at, mind a void but for the designs above him. Not even his eyes moved, until hours later when he felt he could blink again. Had he fallen asleep? He could not say for certain, except that when he laid down the sun was low as the ripest peach and that now it was breaking over the Apennines. He moved to sit, finally looking down at the page, and reached out, perhaps to review it. If he read it a second time, it might have transmuted to be more charitable towards him.

“Anthemios Sebastos,” it now wrote, in a hand that was certainly not that of the emperor Leon. “You will die within the course of two years.”

He dropped the page as if it were fire, his heart the hooves of a quadriga. What happened to the message? Could he have been so fatigued as to have misread it the first time? How could that be possible? He remembered seeing, if nothing else, the signature at the foot. It was no longer there. He scrambled to his feet and wrapped an abolla about his shoulders. He was still a student of Proclus’, and thus capable of thinking. It could have been a spy, infiltrating the Domus Augustana as he slept to lay a warning. One of Leon’s? One of Ricimer’s, meant to threaten him? Either way, the response was clear. If it were Leon, it was to pressure him to move against Ricimer, and if it were Ricimer, then this empty intimidation cannot go unpunished. He strode with new purpose, summoning his scholarians with a flick of the hand.

“I have been informed,” he began, choosing his words carefully, “of treason that festers within the very heart of Rome.” The scholarian to his left, who he knew as Decius Marius, nodded.

“Augustus, you are wise to say so.” His hand went for his spatha. “Ricimer’s hand penetrates even the Senate.”

“Tell me of this.”

“The senator Romanus has dared to question the integrity of your rule, yesterday as you recovered from illness.” 

“Not illness; poison. Romanus has attempted to remove me. Go forth to accost him, whether he is at Senate or leisure. Bring me his head.” Anthemius could feel a spark of righteous satisfaction as Decius gripped his helmet in a sharp salute. The scholarians exited the imperial palace punctuated by the clack of steel scales. It may well have been that the Fates have not misallocated. At last, the serpent’s head will be crushed under the boot of an emperor, and Rome saved once more the horrors of barbaric tyranny.

Later in the day, under the zenith of the sun, a delegation of senators approached the steps leading up the Palatine hill. Anthemius came out to meet them, and saw with relief Pusaeus among their ranks. He meekly stepped forward, uttering some side talk with his fellows.

“Fortune of Augustus, merit of Traianus,” began Pusaeus, before Anthemius could address him.

“What business has the Senate with me?” Anthemius asked.

“We come with concerns,” said Pusaeus. He paused, constantly glancing back at his fellow senators. “The motions of the Senate have paused, due to unforeseen circumstances.” Another pause. “Some blood-maddened men of the Scholae Palatinae broke into the Curia Iulia and ambushed Senator Romanus as he was advocating a motion. They cleaved his head from his shoulders right in the hall.” This he whispered almost conspiratorially.

“If these men are scholarians, they are loyal,” said Anthemius. “I ordered the death of Romanus, on the charges of his obvious treason.”

“Treason, Augustus?”

“Was it not obvious?” Anthemius looked over at the gathered mass of senators. They were obviously afraid. Anthemius had no sympathy for them; if they feared him, it was because they were traitors. “Romanus was a mere puppet of Ricimer’s.”

“It is so, but-”

“And Ricimer was a traitor. He, Goth that he is, had informed the tribes in Gallia of Torisarius’ advance towards Narbo.”

“I am not certain-”

“The blood of my Anthemiolus rests in the grooves of his fingers! His treason led to my son’s death; he might well have slipped a dagger into his back!”

“Brother, let me speak!” Anthemius nearly stepped back, hearing Pusaeus’ outburst. “We come not as friends of Ricimer, but as loyal Romans in both blood and temperament. Were it the death of a single senator, on the orders of unconquerable Augustus, we would continue on.”

“Then, what-”

“Our brother. Phoebus the Consul.” Pusaeus turned away, towards the direction of the Curia Iulia. “Our fears have come true. Barbarians, later in the high morning, came to the Senate house and butchered the consuls in retaliation. We knew nothing of it, except that they lie as their barbaric nature. Yet, if it were true-” He did not finish his thought.

“Where is the Scholae? We go after them. Hunt these rats and burn them from their nests!” Anthemius wished he had thought to tie a sword upon his belt. The time to draw it would have been then. Pusaeus didn’t speak, stunned in horror as he was. Anthemius looked over his shoulder and saw, and he too feared.

A horde of barbarians, to the size of a legion, filled the streets below the Palatine. They faced the Scholae who stopped them, as if the two armies were ready to meet for open battle. Two lines of shields, only two body lengths apart in some places, spathae waving in the air in mimicry of strikes.

“Part. We have no intent to slay Augustus. For now.” Ricimer’s voice, alongside his wide frame, carried over the silent scholarians. He stepped forward, both hands up, and passed through the line of soldiers, behind him his nephew Gundobad, in the same motion. “Procopius!” He shouted that name, meeting the eye of Anthemius. “These men I bring with me are the foederati of your city. They are the shields who guard the land where Caesar’s ashes rest; not your legions. Not your Grecian-blooded androgynes. Not your pagan consul, who’s execution I ordered in the name of Christ. These men guard Rome from her enemies without, and her enemies within. Yet, if it is the will of Augustus that we are no longer needed, then it shall be so.” He turned to his nephew and barked some orders at him in Burgundian. Gundobad nodded, and relayed them to the army behind him. “Henceforth, we abandon Rome. If you seek our protection again, you may find us in Ticinum. If we yet remain there.” With that, he shouted a few more orders, and the rumble of footsteps escorted the barbarians as they marched through the streets, tracing the path of the Legio IV, jeering in their many tongues at the Romans as they passed. 

“The Scholae alone cannot hold the city, brother,” said Pusaeus, watching them leave. “Ticinum is no mistake on the part of the barbarians. There resides the Scirian Odoacer, with his army of twenty thousand. Can a single legion hope to stand against that? Can three?” Anthemius answered only with silence. How could the Fates be so cruel? Do they intend to strip him, one after another, of his family, friends, and allies? How long will it be before he loses his wife, his old master, his fellow students, one after another, taken by the gods who detest his joy? Only Auster of the Southern Wind answers, silently bristling the air with African dust. 

Anthemius, wordlessly, turned and descended back into the empty palace. It seems he could no longer delay the passing of the Roman age, when the sun shone eternally from the strait of Atlas to the mountains of Colchis, and along the coasts of Panticapaeum through to where verdant Numidia met arid Garamantia. His regret seeped into the cracked walls, an echo of when Domitianus raised these once-pristine stones to a form worthy of feasting kings and demigods. Now the mice scurry about the androns, having become the new masters of the house. One, a pale creature with large ears, rests in a beam of light, staring up at the sad emperor, before finally coming to its senses and running under a door that, in the myriads that line every courtyard, could easily have been missed.

Except, Anthemius had never seen that door before. Carved of wood in the deepest maroon, it set itself apart from the ancient faded portals with which it stood in lockstep. He reached out with a hand, stumbling towards it, compelled by the eternally weaving hands of the Fates. One touch against the door and it folded back, to a room so dark it emitted it against the sunlight outside. Anthemius wrapped his abolla tighter around himself and stepped inside.

There, at the far end of the room, sat the same mouse, haunches rested in a wide bowl of ceramic. There was no question that it was looking at him. Beside it lay a knife, of a sort far too brutish for the table but perfect for cutting the throat of a bull. All three of them stood before a lararium, its frescoed genii all staring downwards at their feet. Down at the mouse. Anthemius took one halting step towards the fantastical scene. He knelt down before the lararium, knees just touching the bowl. His right hand enclosed about the handle, his left around the body of the mouse.

“Is this what you ask of me?” he whispered. In the grey shadow, the mouse seemed almost to nod. Anthemius looked up at the panel, in the eyes of the three genii. “Very well. To me. To my house. To my family.” With that, he slid the blade across the mouse’s neck. It shrieked, a sound like the eagles that soared over the Alps, over the heads of victorious Romans and their slain enemies, over the sun. Then everything was quiet again, but for the blood dripping back into the bowl.

“Please.” The solemn genii remained silent and still. “Iuppiter Rex. Mars Ultor. Sol Indiges.” His voice reflected in the dark back to him. “Dis Pater. Minerva Invictus. Iuno Bona. Please.” He knew what he was asking for, but he had not the words to describe. It was a call, as the abandoned child would to the sky, as the wounded beast to the tallest tree. Hear him, please. “Apollo Pythius. Mercurius Lux. Venus Genetrix-”

“Prokopios Anthemios.” 

Anthemius turned suddenly, striking the bowl with his knees and sending it skittering to the corner. His eyes landed on the figure behind him. The voice came from a woman, short and bony, flinty and angular as the blade in his hand. Though her eyes were hard, her face was gentle, and she reached out with both of her hands. “Child. What has become of you?” Anthemius, in his heart, knew without her saying as to who she was. He pressed his face into the hem of her stola.

“Mother,” he whimpered, feeling her hands lace through his hair. Tears sprang from his eyes, like they had for Anthemiolos. 

“You received my letter, then,” said Venus Genetrix, mother of emperors.

“Why did you tell me of my fate?”

“It was a gift, given to one who we loved, and who loved us.” Venus patted Anthemius’ head, bending not an inch to face him. “We, distant upon Olympus we may be, knew as our temples were burned, as our images were torn down and replaced with the Chi-Rho. Though I tried to stay the anger of the gods, it was but one hand against the sea. Nona allotted your years, but in her fury Morta cut them short, and weaved the ends upon the threads of malefactors. In defiance of them, I thought to warn you, that you might command Rome once more to stand against even the judgment of gods, as once did Iulius Caesar before you.”

“Then it is possible?”

“No longer.” Venus looked up at the ceiling, seeing in the umbra what Anthemius could not. “With the death of Iulianus, we starved, and the empire starved with us. Our vengeance came to bear upon the shoulders of Christian and Roman alike. We struck the lands of Africa and Aegyptus with fire, withering the crop and turning the black earth to gold. We struck the lands of Germania and Sclavia with frost, rousing the far tribes to anger and jealousy until they turned their swords upon Gallia. By the time our anger dissipated and we realized our error, the tides had turned irreversibly. Dusk has already set upon the world of the Latins.”

“What will become of my kin? Of myself?”

“In Elysium, the emperors before you wait eternally in sleep, for a day when the Queen of Cities will shatter.” Venus wiped a single tear from her face, which shone with the brightness of a second sun. “There, you will see your wife and your son again. There you will see your brothers Iulianus, Maxentius, and Aurelianus. There, in Elysium, where all that remains to us is our hope.”

And Anthemius, at last, wept a city’s worth of sorrow in the arms of the goddess.

Some nights, the moon’s face is full enough to consume the entirety of the east. It perches between the peaks of mountains, glaring down through a multitude of grey eyes that spot its face like warts. Its dim blue fills the space of the sky above, staining it the color of the ocean at midday. So bright was it that not even the stars dared show tonight, having scattered to the far reaches of the horizon, but for one long strand of silver to challenge its hegemony. It was the Dragon’s Tail, the brightest stars the sky could muster, always appearing just after the last light of the sun departs, always in that straight arrow as the other stars around it wax inconstant and ever shift. Northward, it says, night after night, to the wanderers below. Northward to wider steppes and plentiful snowmelt, to conifers and reindeers and the salt of the seaside wind. 

 Below, on earth, a mere mortal stares up at eternity, perceived as much as he perceives, daring the indignation of a god. Only him and the sand and the snow. One soul, in the midst of a sea of the dead. His name is See-Horizon, though it had not been said in some years. He was known by others; Stilts, Dwarf, Horse-Thief, Stranger, Trader, Scum, but never See-Horizon. The last time he heard his own name was right here, or at least not too far away. Upon these jagged moulds of the earth, gold peeks out through layers of white like a fried dough glazed with sugared milk. He had a horse then, and with it came the world. All the corners of this once-hospitable land he could have, so long as they were under her hooves. The sand shifts, as if nervous, under his boots. Snow was often of an even worse temperament. Alone here, he is truly naked underneath the blanket of night. The only path left leads north.

With his eyes closed, he can see again the green plains where now there is only sand. Upon a lonely dune, with a reed flute pressed to his lips, those plains begin to take clear form, becoming hills full of grass, shivering from the touch of the rabbits and the wind. He would chase hawks on the back of his mare, screaming challenges at their cowardice and singing songs in a low bellow like grandfather taught him. That was how a voice was to carry over greater distances on the wind. If he felled a rabbit, he would ride rings around it, shooting its remains again and again until it was embedded with more feathers than a duck. Then Mountain-Sky would trot up, officious and straight-backed, and pull on his ear.

“Enough! You waste perfectly good prey!” Mountain-Sky said, in that old memory, as he had many times before. See-Horizons could not have had more than one hundred moons within him.

“Why? There will be other rabbits,”  See-Horizon replied, rubbing where the skin still pinched. Mountain-Sky had grown first, and his grip was strong. 

“Today. Tomorrow, they will have all run off, having seen their tribesman’s body.” Mountain-Sky grabbed the lead on Mosquito. He had become too crafty, and knew when See-Horizon was planning to escape. “Maybe to Ma-Zo plains, maybe to Lan-Lang. Then we starve while they feast on our misrule.” 

“Then we follow!” See-Horizon raised his little bow triumphantly and waved it. “Neither Papa nor I fear the Long-Chins and Braided-Brows. We are Fire Spears! We will make them chicken-faced!” He pulled back on the string and let it loose, the vibration sounding in the air as he whistled the sound of an arrow. Mountain-Sky huffed, and closed his eyes at See-Horizon.

“First bring down a deer, and then think to hunt man. For now, go pick up your arrows,” he said, and that was that. The details become unclear after. Some vague recollections remain, more as streaks of color, hints of smells and sounds, a blur of vague happiness. They must have eaten well. It would have been the last time they did.

It would not be one more cycle of the moon until they would no longer find themselves alone. Fire Spear land was quickly overrun from the south; a trickle of outsiders at first, but come the crescent of the second moon it was a storm. The open plains were awash with grazing sheep, cattle, strange horses and stranger people. They pulled wagons of animals and bore not only bows and spears for hunting, but gleaming swords and blackened fire-lance. They were Ma-Zo and Lan-Lang, yes, but also Yu-Jan and Er-Qi and even some that Fire Spears have never battled against before. See-Horizon had watched them from hills in their columns, rivers of black hair and brown wool, hands on his bow and hatred painted upon his face. Those who saw him shied away, mostly children. He would bare his teeth at them, as if the mighty wolf, and delighted at how he smelled their fear. They should fear, he had thought. They were invaders. Fire Spears had no mercy in their hearts for invaders.

See-Horizon, in the present, puts down his flute, observing the land that encases him. This was their path once. The remains of their migration had been blown over by dust, obscured forever except to the infinite memory of the sun. However, he could recognize the form of it, the way they met in the wave-like form of his namesake. The invisible scar that cleaved straight towards it, where the Dragon’s Tail trailed like a lazily pointed arm. Now it is the only thing that belongs to him alone, the last son of Fire Spear’s plains, the road that led out of his home.

None of the wise elders could have predicted that the entire steppe could dry; there would be days of rain and days of sun, and the flowers would bloom again, so long as the brave Fire Spears hunted plentifully and kept their horses hale. However, that was as it had become, as the green grass turned to yellow, and brown dirt poked up through the bed like spots of hairlessness on father’s head. Where the rabbits had been so fat that even See-Horizon could bring down at least one in a day, they came to hide cleverer than the polecat, and run faster even than the ripples in the grass. The new plain was no friend to children; only the quickest hand and the sharpest eye could chase down prey, and those hands and eyes could just as easily come from a stranger as a Fire Spear kin. There was no peace out here; they needn’t pretend for long.

“There will be no future for these invaders, or there will be no future for us,” said Grandfather Hawk-Wisdom, over the entrancing open flame in the night, as the summer set down for the year and winter rose up. He looked in the eyes of all the men, then the boys. See-Horizon met his gaze and puffed up his chest. Grandfather must surely see his warrior spirit. He was nearing on one and a half hundred moons. His body grew against the current of hunger; he was ready to battle.

“How? These outsiders are vicious,” said Grandfather Blue-Virtue, though his hand grasped his bow as tightly as his withered muscles would still allow him. A few mutters of concurrence rang around the fire, with no clear source as to which individuals made them. “They come from the South; land of the No-Horses. They bring their hunting-weapons, made for men and not beasts.” This forced Grandfather Hawk-Wisdom to silence, until Uncle Sun-Shadow, still young and angry in temperament, shouted so loud that even the grandfathers were stunned.

“This steppe belongs to us! Our hunt goes to their mouths, and we content ourselves with hunger!” This lit a rage in all the men. Raised voices clamored alongside. “Look at us; we have nothing left to roast in this fire! What are we to do if a Whisker-Ear stole from our salt? Now they steal from our land, which is much the same. Whether you, grandfathers, say good or evil, I choose to drive them out. In the morning!” Many uncles stood and unslung their bows, and not even the hoarse cries of Blue-Virtue could make them return to rest. Cries of “The morning! The morning!” rose as the uncles and cousins, many having indeed not eaten, returned to their yurts. The sated children sheepishly followed, looking back at old Blue-Virtue as they ran back to the embrace of their mothers and fathers. See-Horizon’s father patted him on the head, and he shrugged off the hand, miming another shot of the arrow. Mountain-Sky sullenly stood, giving a sympathetic look to Blue-Virtue.

“Will I go as well?” Mountain-Sky had asked, catching up to father. In truth, he must have already known, for he asked the air. See-Horizon did not hear father’s reply, but it certainly was longer than a mere confirmation or disagreement. His voice was low, sometimes felt more than heard. In the quiet dark, it was silent but to Mountain-Sky, whose ears See-Horizon could not hear through. 

When the morning at last came, Mountain-Sky was there, diligently mounted, with bow slung over his shoulder, his breath erupting in the early dawn. He looked the picture of a grandfather’s story. See-Horizon had run out on foot to see his brother off, waving with both hands and shouting. The silent figure had no response for him, and left. It would be moons again when their gazes would meet, as Mountain-Sky returned years older, upon a horse draped with the limp form of father. See-Horizon ran out to meet them; he saw Mountain-Sky’s face, dry of both tears and life, and he knew then that the Fire Spears had paid for their victory more dearly than if they had lost.

That night, they watched father’s body burn, the smoke carrying his spirit into the sky to become one of the many stars. See-Horizon had not cried, but the weight of the smoke silenced him, hand grasped in his brother’s as if he were only eighty moons old. 

“He was a good hunter,” Mountain-Sky had said after some long silence. “He will ride along the White River. Our victory will see to that.” He spoke more to himself, once again, than to anyone else. “Those Long-Chins. Braided-Brows. They learned to fear the arrows of the Fire Spears.” 

See-Horizon looks up, at the beautiful chain of them, ever-present above his head. He squints at the forms, trying to pick out the visage of his father. They are too far away; each white spot in the sky is the same as any other. Is father even up there? Has Mountain-Sky joined him since? See-Horizon stops, drawing an arrow, one of but four remaining, and nocking it into the bow. He pulls back and looses, allowing it to sail into the sky. His arm had become stronger since he had last seen the Fire Spears, but he cannot shoot the moon from the sky, no matter how much he wishes. Instead, the arrow dives into a patch of snow, bouncing on a shallow angle and skidding with disjointed clatters. See-Horizon does not bother collecting it; it’s no good to him anymore.

Indeed, even the expulsion of the outsiders could not change the tides of fate. Slowly, the entire plains turned more yellow than green, and in the next winter the first snow fell upon the land. See-Horizon did not leave the yurt until it had been moved off of him for fear of it, and even then would not step on ground that had been dusted white. It was an unnatural thing; clouds were made for rain alone. Grandfather Hawk-Wisdom accused bad cultivation of the land. He would repeatedly lambast the various failings of the Fire Spears, mostly to those too young to remember clearly the battles against the outsiders. See-Horizon was beyond hearing what that coward had to say; he did not fight as he urged others to do, and many uncles lay in ashes while the grandfathers huddled in their yurts by their daughters. Try as anyone might, nobody knew of any method to banish the snow and restore the winter rain, and thus in some years the tribe came to forget any fear they had of it.

See-Horizon had become too accustomed to the look of the snow, its sharp feel, its harshness against the eye. He scoops a handful of it and lifts it to his mouth, slurping the half-melted slush and trying not to touch the sand beneath with his tongue. This is his river now, his rain, since the true rivers had grown brown and opaque and froze during the winter. As to why the water itself had become undrinkable, he could not say even now. He can only assume that evil spirits threw dust by the fistful, by the spadeful, into the water as it trickled from the mountains, and by the time it came down to the steppe it had become more mud than water entirely. Not quite sated, but tiring of the effort, he lays down upon the open earth, on top of a patch of open sand, and looks up at the sky, daring the ancient riders on the Dragon’s Tail to come down and feather him. Grandfathers had gone to sleep just like this, and never woken again, frozen to the earth and immovable. The fingers on their corpses would snap as it was shaken, and not even the fire of a sky burial could warm them anymore. What difference did it make now, for those who were so alone that even life had come to mimic death? He had no way to choose life or death. If he was meant to die as they did, shivering in the ground, there was no power in the world that could avert it anymore.

The true end of the Fire Spears would come after, for as their domain grew sparser, more would dare to encroach upon it, even the No-Horses. See-Horizon had seen them for the first time around this portion of the year. He was surprised at their strange yurts; cubed rather than rounded, solid in the body rather than covered.

“Look!” He had exclaimed to Mountain-Sky, riding up to the side and knocking on its facade with a fist. A cry from within rose up, muffled by the solid wall. “How do they bundle this up? How do they carry it? If they set it down here, it will never move again!” Wordlessly, Mountain-Sky had ridden some circles about it, looking closely but almost fearing to touch. He trotted back to See-Horizon’s side and led Mosquito by the lead again, much to both of their annoyance.

“No-Horses have their own way of things,” Mountain-Sky said, as if he knew any more than he obviously did. “Best not to bother them. They are the ones who gave the Ma-Zo their man-hunters. Who knows what they are capable of?”

“Why come this far north then? No-Horse plains are in the south, with all of their trees.” See-Horizon pat Mosquito’s mane as they followed, and she shook her head slightly as if in protest against Mountain-Sky’s direction.

“I cannot guess.” Mountain-Sky looked towards the distant afternoon sun.

“You hate fun.” See-Horizon was stronger now; his voice was deepening. Soon it will be like father’s, though even then he was struggling to recall how it sounded exactly.

“Will I play the part of Grandfather Blue-Virtue?” Mountain-Sky closed his eyes for but a second, and opened them again. “Very well; these No-Horses are a strange people indeed. The matter is, No-Horses graze at the grass like prey. Their plain is still plentiful, but their bottomless bellies drive them to always seek more grass, which is why they have come into our land. They dig rivers through the earth and dump what they dig up into our stream sources. They have three noses and six eyes and spit fire on stones to turn them into man-hunters.” Mountain-Sky had intended to continue speaking but was interrupted when a man emerged from a nearby yurt, so large was he that if he were a Long-Chin or Whiskered-Ear he would break the backs of any horse he sat upon.

“Leave, Stilts! Go into the grass!” he shouted at the pair, and waved a stick at them. Mountain-Sky quickly raised his horse to a canter, and thus Mosquito reluctantly followed suit. The two brothers, having gone far enough away so as to not be within the No-Horse settlement, shared a look. 

“Stilts?” See-Horizon had put on a mockery of the No-Horse man’s nasally and high-pitched voice. He almost wanted to laugh. Mountain-Sky, however, was covered red in an anger he did not even have for the outsider tribes.

“We have no reason to come back here.” Mountain-Sky straightened his back, and urged their horses away from the encampment. It had, in time, turned out to be a lie.

For as one came, so did more, and soon the entire plain was dotted with No-Horse. What little of the grass remained receded, ever northward, or was pulled up and left in burning piles, the ash spreading across the dust in a circle about the No-Horse encampments. The No-Horse were of a habit to hammer at the earth with shining spears, and from that earth grew a mockery of the grass; thin reed-like strands, budding but never flowering, fed with water that no longer came from the sky. What was to become of the Fire Spears? What was to become of their home?

Apparently, this. Windswept nothingness, land of starving, land of too-cold and too-hot. See-Horizon kicks at a patch of sand, watching it billow away. He had learned to hunt scorpion; to close his eyes as he eats. The memories ache in his head like snow. Forget it all, please. Forget Mountain-Sky and the crotchety grandfathers and Mosquito. Live alone, knowing nothing else, and eat the scorpion with ravishing hunger. Instead, they only come back faster, and more vividly. He had wandered in thought, not even seeing the ground beneath. The sky is awash with pictures, and chief among them the Dragon’s Tail, brighter than ever before, cutting a line through them. 

They were never meant to stay long. The earth wouldn’t allow it. How See-Horizon had been blind to that truth for so long, clinging onto the lie of homeland, he couldn’t say. He had cursed the grandfathers to their faces, grabbed Mosquito sharply by the lead and rode out into the pale sand. He had within him one hundred and sixty defiant moons; they burned like suns in his chest. It would be too long before he heard the sound of hooves approaching from behind, and he slowed down to meet them. He had figured that Mountain-Sky would come fetch him, as he had always done.

“Please understand,” Mountain-Sky had said. “Look around you; this is not our home.” Mountain-Sky. There was no question in his voice. “The grass retreats north, and like the reindeer we must chase it. Why do you fight the Grandfathers’ decision?”

“There are rabbits still, somewhere in this land. Our home still. Perhaps there.” See-Horizon pointed, some shifting in the distance. A tunnel underground. A rabbit, perhaps. One of the last ones, a hope that the Fire Spears could continue. In his heart he knew, it must be. Until it emerged, scuttling on eight legs and waving its stinger in cruel defiance at these strange and giant interlopers. He was certain Mountain-Sky could see the disappointment stain hot on his face. 

“Ha!” Mountain-Sky barked, joylessly. “Go on then; eat the scorpions. Dig in the ground for hares leaner than grandfather corpses. The deer have long since stopped wandering through; why do we stay?”

“There is nothing at the end of the world!” See-Horizon wanted to sound confident, but he was betrayed by his reddened face. The betrayal stung his cheeks until they burned like embers. His throat ran thick with anger and hidden resignation. “Northwards is more of this. Sand and snow, and all of the Long-Chins we banished.”

“Rather die out there than here.” Mountain-Sky shrugged. “I am not a No-Horse. I cannot eat their grass. You can have my share of it.”

“Then die a nothing!” See-Horizon turned away, ashamed at having meant it. “I am a Fire Spear! If I must be, I am the only Fire Spear!” A period of silence followed, except for the whistles of the wind and the flapping of clothes. “I will stay; I will steal from these invaders, and eat their fluffy grass-meat if I must! I will kill them and drive them out and water the grass back with their blood!” He raised his bow in the air, feeling the needle-sharp wind strike his bony hands.

“Normally I would grasp your lead and force you along with our caravan,” Mountain Sky said, before pausing. “I would rather you came because you saw it as we do.” He looked up, and See-Horizon did the same. “When you follow us, seek always the Great Rat, keeping it always centered and ahead.” He pointed out the stars, so dim in the sky that even were See-Horizon to squint he could barely distinguish them. “Both the sun and the moon should always be at your back. Trust no other stars; they will hop from your left to your right, and you will be lost forever.” 

“Go, then,” See-Horizon whispered, and he did. Suddenly, he was alone.

The moons passed, and the rains did not return, nor the rivers, nor the steppe, nor the Fire Spears. Instead, See-Horizon, armed with his two hundred moons, learned a great many new words, and practiced them to himself as Mosquito wandered.

“Gold.” The mare shook her head. Was she shocked at the sound of his voice? It had changed much; he almost sounded like father. “Bun. Chief. Butcher. Baker. Sword. Steel. Silver. Copper.” Mosquito pawed at the sand. “Stilts. Dwarf. Thief. Trader. Scum.” The sun hang low in the sky, and See-Horizon approached a village, veiled in hearth smoke. “Village. Hearth.”

Descending from Mosquito’s back, he left her in the middle of the square. Satisfied, he went looking for a bakery. The baker, disappointingly but not shockingly, refused to sell and chased him out. Though his stomach protested, See-Horizon knew better than to beg. Better to sleep hungry than to sleep hungry and be beaten as well.

However, when he returned to the town square, he could not find Mosquito where he left her. For some time, he ran about the village frantically looking for her, knocking some people away to the tune of curses. When he found her again, she was carrying a No-Horse girl, while she giggled to her friends.

“Mosquito!” See-Horizon shouted, running up and grasping the lead from her hands. She pulled back, shrieking. “Off! Off!” The tugging made Mosquito restless, and she thrashed against the both of them.

“Horse-Thief! Horse-Thief!” the girl shouted, baring her teeth at him and kicking with her free leg. As to where so many people suddenly burst from, he could not say, but See-Horison found himself quickly shoved onto the ground. Blows landed from all directions, and no matter where he batted away and kicked he could not hit even one. Quickly, he was pulled to his feet and dragged out to the village limits and shoved roughly away. He looked back at them. Some had their swords. He would not return, nor would he recover Mosquito. Instead, he forced himself to look away at anything in the world but at them. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, and when he opened them, there they were. The procession of the Dragon’s Tail, dim but certainly present, and they called without a voice. His blood awaits him; go north.

That had been just about a moon ago. He looks up at its face, once again having been restored to its fullness. His hunger had left him ages ago; all he lived on was hope. All he thought of was the past, but something in his bones calls him to wonder. He must be near now; what would the Fire Spears say? Would they miss him, as he was wishing they did? Would they have thick and hearty stews, like before, when the grass was green? Why had the landscape not changed? He breaks into a full sprint, towards the tallest dune he could find, leaping towards its round peak. When it became too steep to run, he bears down with his hands and digs into the snow, climbing like a wolf. One hand before the other, upwards and upwards, finally collapsing where it flattened. He looks out, and his heart tore against his chest.

Before him, at the very foot of the dune, another village. Not so different from any other, except further north than he could have imagined any No-Horse traveling. The boxed square homes, the smoke, the fields of No-Horse grass; had he left at all? He wanted to dig out his eyes. They betrayed him! Led him in a circle, all to end up in the same place. He looked up, wondering if the Dragon’s Tail had somehow led him wrong. It was such a clear, straight line, surely he could not have misinterpreted it? As dawn broke, and the first light of the sun pierced through the sea-colored night, he found that the Dragon’s Tail was not there at all.

He slowly sits down and lets himself slide down to it, landing on his feet in someone’s patch of No-Horse grass. With luck, he might beg the villager to spare his life. It may take a year’s ride’s worth of begging, but perhaps whoever lives there can save it as well with food. He hears a distant shout, and the sounds of angry stamping, more curses, in a low bellow that carried great distances. 

“Dirty Braided-Brow boy, I-” the voice froze. See-Horizon looked up slowly, at a shocked face too familiar.

“Mountain-Sky?” See-Horizon was too weak to do more than stand, staring into his brother’s eyes. His beard was gone; as was his bow. In his hand he wielded one of the crooked spears. Mountain-Sky broke into a cry, reaching out and picking up See-Horizon.

“Come out of the cold,” he whispered.

The home was warmer than any yurt See-Horizon could remember, although he remembered them little. Even here, in this land of nowhere, it was somehow too warm. It smells off; acrid and bitter, though completely unfamiliar. He sits on an elevated board, before another elevated board, where he rests both his arms and his chest against. Mountain-Sky brings out a pot and cups, and brushes away See-Horizon’s hands before setting all of them down. As he pours out the water within, suddenly the smell comes into sharp focus.

“I will not drink that,” See-Horizon said plainly.

“Perfectly good ‘tea,’ and you will not drink? You have not changed.” Mountain-Sky sat down and raised his cup to his lips with a loud and repulsive slurp.

“Tea.”

“Yes. I imagine you must have had some, having lived so near the Nu-Ren.” See-Horizon looked up curiously. Mountain-Sky stammered, and corrected himself. “Have you been calling them No-Horses for all this time?”

“They do not speak much to me, I do not speak much to them.” See-Horizon, reluctantly, mimicked his brother. The drink tasted as bad as it smelled.

“Well, you are with us now. I am glad.” Mountain-Sky had already finished the drink, and had gotten up. “Surely you have eaten millet-buns. I cannot imagine you having not.”

“Yes.” See-Horizon closed his eyes at his brother while his back was turned.

“Good. Aunt Steadfast-Wind has really taken to milling; we can get these for cheap.” He came back with more boards, these rounder and slightly concave, and slapped down two sticky golden orbs. See-Horizon picked one up, and lifted it to his mouth. Indeed, just as tasteless as it always has been. He sat there, half-listening as Mountain-Sky continued talking about this and that, he couldn’t say for sure. In his mind, he battled against himself. This was not the Fire Spear tribe; this was not his home. As sleep dared to overcome him, See-Horizon chose at last to speak.

“I cannot stay,” he said. Mountain-Sky’s face changed quickly.

“But you found us! We have made a home!” His voice muffled by the bread. “Where would you go?” See-Horizon looked out through the square hole by which they sat, at the empty sky, at the growing pinkness of it.

“North.” He blinked, and for a lightning’s flash he could see it again; those stars, further on away from the sun. “I found the Fire Spears, yes. I need to find the steppes.” Mountain-Sky shook his head.

“You have gotten too old. Maybe I start calling you grandfather.” He stood up. “I assume you need some things. A yurt. Food. Water. Wagon. Horse- where is Mosquito?” His gaze met See-Horizon’s icy glare. “Horse.”

“Yes.”

“Here you are.” Mountain-Sky put down a little pouch of leather. See-Horizon looked at it incredulously. It was not any of those things. He loosened the pouch and tilted it upside down. Out spilled nothing but brass discs.

Today was the beginning of the world. Destiny has come to rest here, in these very fields, in this the Year of the Migration 857. All the eyes of the dhimmi are upon one man; the Sultan Mehmed, the blood and seed of Osman. The man who brought the Turks to the gates of Konstantiniyye, the man who has one hundred thousand brave souls at his command. He gazes up at the sky of clearest glass, in the corner of his eye peeking the silver sun. It is the eye of his father Murad, looking down upon him from his rightful place at the right hand of Allah. How proud he would be to see this day! How he would weep such tears, and they would drip upon his widened lips, to see his son in his moment of glory, crowning himself by his own hand that most ancient and revered of names. Perhaps, in Cennet, he will have forgotten the shame of his boyhood, and see him at last as the man he has become, just over twenty years and a conqueror unequaled on earth. The magnificent guns, craft of the master Orban of Hungary, bellow like proud lions his name; Qayser-i Rum, Qayser-i Rum, we hail and worship the coming of the new Emperor of the Romans.

Today was the end of the world. The fortunes of this revered empire, already long depleted and in as much debt as the state itself, had at last run down its last drops, in this the Year of Our Lord 1453. All the eyes of Christendom were on one man; the shameful brother Konstantinos, blood of the once-mighty Komnenoi. The Patriarchs of Rome shall laugh to hear it; that Konstantinopoulis, that ecclesiastical thorn in their sides, had at last been plucked, and it was he, the last Palaiologos, who would see that it falls properly. The sun shone weakly through the haze of war-smoke, dim as the eyes of his older brother, weak and stumbling in his too-early old age. Would Ioannes, in Heaven, turn his head away, seeing what has befallen the city he labored so long to protect? Does he pretend, before God, that this weak and hunchbacked spindle hobbling still on earth in his later middle-age of almost fifty years, is of no relation to him? Konstantinos asks these questions to the sky, but the only answer that follows is the roar of the cannons, dragons snarling his name; Kaisar ton Rhomaion, Kaisar ton Rhomaion, we thirst for the blood of the last Emperor of the Romans.

“My pashas! Summon to me my pashas!” Mehmed shouted, and accompanied by a hardened look did his aide Akshamsaddin go forth. The impatience boiled in his blood; his great triumph smelled so near, but these so-called generals continue to play the part of the old man, shuffling with slowed feet even on the assault. Even now, as he observed Akshamsaddin returning, two turbaned heads in tow, did they seem almost afraid to approach. When at last they arrived, Mehmed could see their faces and know them. The shorter and fatter of the two, Halil Pasha, was the first to speak.

“We will not be quorate, Sultan. Ishak Pasha has been called away to press the failing assault at Myriandrion, and with him goes the others.” said Halil, in his characteristic low whisper.

“Zagan, brother, when I assembled our forces here, I knew certainly that we had more pashas than this! Has the war gone so poorly?” Mehmed exploded, loud enough to drown out that sniveling Halil. He dared not even give him more than a glance; the snake ired him. Zagan Pasha gave his fellow a little smile, and whether it was of sympathy or smugness Mehmed didn’t care. It was reward enough to see that worm rankle.

“They are too virtuous, your loyal pashas,” Zagan said, in timbre deep as a Mughal infidel’s shaman. “They fight tirelessly against these bastard Greeks in your glory. Ishak Pasha has promised me himself, in the midst of their Latins. Tonight, when the Christians are at their Pentecost; we shall push through their walls at Mesoteichion, and the Queen of Cities shall be ours.” Halil seemed to make a move to speak, and Mehmed shouted over him before he could.

“I shall promise him a ship laden with gold, and another for you as well, brother,” he said. “That is, if it can be done with by tomorrow. When we began this war, it was Rabi al-Awwal; now it is already Jumada! Would you have us sit on our swords until Ramadan, so we can attack as we starve? Go! At once!” He clapped his favored upon the shoulder, and the tall pasha bowed as the dhimmi did, striding away with a confident step. Alas, Halil Pasha remained.

“Sultan, no war in history has been won in but two moons. You are asking too much of us.” Halil tapped his foot in place of pacing. It was almost even more vexing.

“Then I will be the first! Now go! Follow your brother Zagan Pasha, unless you would prefer he become your uncle! Go! You gamble with your head!” With his screams, Mehmed pushes away the traitor, sending him stumbling out towards the city. In his mind, he knew; Halil Pasha doesn’t gamble with his head, he has already lost it.

“Do I interrupt?” asked Giustiniani Protostrator, creeping up behind his emperor with uncharacteristic grace. His Greek was tainted with the Latin lilt from his homeland; Konstantinos had since grown used to it. “I must caution you with respect, Serenissimo, on your habits. Have you never seen a tragedy? Who broods most overlong shall come to an ignoble and ironic fall.” Maybe if the day had been better, if the sun was brighter, if the guns were quieter, he might have laughed. Now, his beard, once close-cropped, had grown so long as to tug on the edge of his lips, disallowing him to smile.

“I assume you mean to give me good news. Wouldn’t you otherwise be with your fellow Latins on the Myriandrion?” He didn’t turn, he didn’t take his eyes off of those flashing bombards for a second. It would eventually be Giustiniani who would approach and lean over the balcony as he did, peering with a heavy squint. Blachernae Palace was tall, just tall enough to see over the Theodosian walls at their doom. Konstantinos didn’t even have to look to know that the face of his compatriot fell. It was apparent in the slight stammer that followed. He was a soldier, not a courtier; that alone made him more admirable than any sebastokrator. Now that the fate of the empire  truly lay in the balance, suddenly the once-bustling court of the city emptied out, and the brave and virtuous nobles of the dinner table fleed on precious war galleys for Italy. Rome for the Greeks, Greeks for the Empire, and now the only ones left to defend it are foreigners; the Genoese Commander, the Venetian Admiral, commanding Aegean mercenaries of mongrel Frankish blood. Konstantinos would scoff if he were alone.

“Not quite, though surely you have already imagined as much.” Giustiniani shielded his eyes, more out of habit than purpose. “I have it on the word of our good friend Duce Halil that the final push will be tonight. They imagine us to be feasting while they clamber through the cracks left by their guns; then we are slaughtered to the man.”

“Not even if we each had the strength of ten men.” Konstantinos finally tore his eyes away from the horizon, landing them on Giustiniani. Though separated by fifteen years, the two had become twins, in their raggedness. Heavy bags, scraggly beards, streaks of grey in both their hair and their skin. They could swap armor and pass for each other on the field; let the loyal warriors throw themselves in front of Turkish spears to protect the mere protostrator while the basileus is gored. Such gruesome irony was regular in all other corners of the world, why not Konstantinopoulis as well? “How much were we when this began? Nine thousand? Seven? Five? We cannot be more than five now. How much are they? Fifty? One hundred?”

“One hundred Turkish individuals? We must sortie immediately!” The joke fell on heavy silence. Eventually it was Konstantinos who spoke, his whisper carrying despite the wind, despite the ever-present roaring.

“You’ve been able and loyal in my eyes, Ioustinianos. Thank you. Leave me alone to my thoughts.” Giustiniani bowed and disappeared as he arrived, a ghost, no more than a voice in his ear and a flash of a younger face scarred with misfortune. No company remained to him now, except Eurus the East Wind, tugging ever at his cloak of Tyrian purple. What right had he to wear it now? When his ancestors donned the purple, they ruled the entirety of the world; Hispania to Armenia, Britannia to Mauretania. He could not keep a single city.

Orders were shouted, and men of all ranks scrambled to have them carried out. Figures painstakingly taken and reported by eager officers, proud Turkish warriors assembled into neat ranks of gleaming swords and spears. None of it could impress their sultan, a cloud having formed about his head. He could only imagine today, his day of victory, being neutered once again, as it was when he was not yet thirteen. Those first days of rulership left him ambitious, wanting glory. He could barely contain his bloodthirst when the Christians, led by their precious Pope in Rome, raised their armies against him. He had known no war before, but he knew even then that his Turks were brave and under him would meet any challenge. Imagine his anger, staring up at the face of his appointed Halil Vizier, when he expressed his so-called reassurance that his father was renouncing his abdication and graciously returning to lead the armies again. He carried the resentment for eight long years, and tomorrow, whether win or loss, he will have his vengeance both upon the Christians and upon his Pasha. Soon, Allah always says; soon. Patience, greatest of the virtues, returns upon those who observe it. If only the hours were not so long.

He did not know when the compulsion suddenly befell him. Hours Konstantinos stood, near-catatonic, watching the sun as it passed down its path toward the sea. Then, as his hand commanded, he unclasped the purple cloak that wrapped around him and threw it over the balcony. Then, he removed the heavy diadem from his head, and off it followed. Rings, clasps, embellishments of all kind, a river of gold and jewels descended from the Blachernae and crashed against the stone roads beneath. The exertion weighed on his old lungs, and he had to stop to catch his breath. How would he face the endless swarm of his enemies if he could barely win a battle against his own clothes? No, God says, speaking to him in his own mind. Think nothing of victory. Tonight you will die, laying in the earth alongside your loyal army, with no markings between you to distinguish. Today you are but Konstantinos of Konstantinopoulos, and you will know humility, the greatest of virtues. Konstantinos nearly wept. If only it needn’t have been forced upon him.

It was likely early in the morning, with how much Zaihao’s stomach rolled. The ground rose and fell rhythmically, in time with his own chest. It made him even sicker. The ship was breathing with him; the waves were breathing with him. It was disgusting. When he leaned his head against the delightfully cool wall, he could see Ma, standing huddled against the far corner, revulsion drawn upon her face. The air was too hot. Zaihao wanted to die. He wanted to go home. He wanted to see the sun. He looked to his mother again, not daring to open his mouth. Please, Ma, sense his pain.

“Here! Gold Mountain!” came the cry from above, in terrible Chinese, and Zaihao immediately stood up. His head was clear; his stomach was settled. Golden Mountain. All that time spent on the seas, crossing the ill-named Peaceful Ocean. He wobbled to his feet, alongside the hundreds of eager faces that surrounded him since they cast off. Slowly, the gates of the hold slid open, and some handful of pale men nervously entered. They stared at the passengers. The passengers stared at them. For a long second, nobody moved, as if they were two armies facing each other, as if they were in Canton again, trading gunfire for the fate of the Empire.

“Uhh . . . Gold Mountain?” said one of the pale men, breaking the stillness, and the life force returned to all of the people. Passengers clambered over the cargo, charging past the dockworkers in a wave of desperation. Even if Zaihao wanted to stay in the dark, vomit-scented chamber, he would be jostled out into the clean air by swarms of angry hands. Cries of relief, frustration, and excitement, in dozens of dialects, surrounded him. Like rats.

“Ma!” he shouted into the crowd. Where was she? Everywhere he looked was a stranger. He wrestled on the open deck with a mass of men, spinning around and around, struggling to look over much larger shoulders. “Ma!” His voice came out almost silent in the din. He couldn’t hear it in his own ears; if he didn’t feel the movement of his mouth, perhaps he didn’t say it at all. He kept shouting, pushing fruitlessly against the crowd, until at last he realized that everything had gone still. Why had that happened? Zaihao gathered himself up on his tiptoes. Finally, he saw.

At the pier had gathered a crowd. They looked, curiously, up at the incoming crowd, both seeking something familiar in the other. There was an invisible barrier between them, emanating from one figure; a pale man, dressed in a disheveled blue coat. He, from his lower perch, somehow looked down upon them, with his wet brown eyes. He raised a slow hand up, and with the command of an assured general waved gracefully. This broke the barrier. The locals surged forward, shouting names and expressions of filiation. Brothers, spouses, children, and countless relations met. At last, Zaihao could see his mother’s nervous face peeking between the arms of a long-separated pair. The whirl of bodies shifted, bringing the two together again.

“Treasure,” Ma said, coolly, as if he hadn’t stepped out of her sight for a second. “Stay near me now.” She beckoned with a practiced hand, calling him to her side. Zaihao did as he was instructed, but looked around curiously for the pale fellow. He was gone.

“Did you see the man?” he asked Ma. “With the brown beard?”

“Do not trust the pale faces,” Ma responded, sharply. “They are no friends of ours, no different from Great-Aunt. Remember; no matter where we hide, we are still imperial blood; these white men will drink us like wine.”

“G’morning, Dad,” said Clara, having snuck up behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Normally this would make him jolt, or jump, something to that effect. However, today he barely moved, hunched over he was in front of that newspaper. “I said ‘g’morning.’”

“Yes. G’morn,” he mumbled. “These traitors. This ‘Congress.’ I will send them a letter once again; this is truly the last straw.” He rustled the paper in such a way as, annoyingly, to obscure the words.

“Your Imperial Majesty, ever punctual!” came a chipper voice, from across the room, and a steaming plate was shoved down in front of Dad. He peered right over the plate at the restauranteur. His face bore an impish grin, which grew strained as he turned his face to Clara. 

“. . . Your Highness.” He left quickly after that. She tried to focus on the page, the one that had ired Dad so.

“Page Act?”

“Unconscionable!” Dad blustered, as he does sometimes when he is in a mood. “Just this morning, I extended my royal protection to a ship of Chinese. Just this morning! Undesirable? This won’t be the end of it!” His rant was cut short by a fierce tremor, and Clara reached out to steady him. Luckily his spoon didn’t splash its contents. “Thankee.”

“Of course.” The shakes had gotten worse since last year, with the Nativists. The newspapers went wild with it; the Emperor vs the American People. His Majesty Joshua Norton; not so loyal to San Francisco? More on page six. They could’ve killed him. They could’ve killed her twice over. 

“I can walk; don’t bother.” Dad struggled to his feet, leaning hard on his umbrella. The saber at his side rattled gently with the effort. “Don’t bother.” She did nonetheless.

Zaihao could not say exactly why he and Ma left home. It had something to do with Great-Aunt, who kept the throne on behalf of cousin Zaitian. Perhaps now some other name. Great-Aunt had no love for him, or perhaps no love for Pa. Somehow, this meant he and Ma couldn’t stay in Beijing. It was Master Smith the missionary who arranged for them to stow away on the ship bound for Gold Mountain. Master Smith who taught him English, or as much as he could. Zaihao practiced a few words aloud, while he had silence in his mind. 

“‘Hello, my name is Zachary,’” he said to the air. Apparently it was common in the Beautiful Country. “‘I am Zachary.’ ‘Good morning.’” Ma nodded along.

“That sounds correct,” she said. Sometimes they would pass others on the streets, and Ma would reach out to them, as if to give them commands. If they noticed, they would shuffle away. If they didn’t, Ma would suddenly remember herself and pull back, becoming even more withdrawn into herself.

Zaihao could not begin to guess what fate could have befallen Pa. Perhaps his head hung from the walls of the Forbidden City. Perhaps he withers away in a dungeon, more cramped even than the ship’s hold, going mad as he sings Tang poems at the walls. He didn’t know exactly what sort of power Great-Aunt wielded, but even he knew that the whole of China, from the court of the Forbidden City to its far corners, feared her name. They say “Cixi” as the way they would say “Cao Cao;” in hushed whispers, lest they by some turn of fate appear. Surely Pa and Ma were no exception.

“. . . Now the Pacific Appeal,” Clara said. She held Dad tight by the arm.

“Yes, yes, I remember,” he grumbled, but patted her hand with his free one. “The tremors do nothing to my mind.” That was a lie. He has been falling over his own words more and more, and memories besides. He had taken to staring into the distance, at some distant item only visible to his eyes. Even his beard had suffered the toll of time, having taken on a speckle. “Yes, the Pacific Appeal. The Fourth and noblest of the Estates. The Pacific.”

“This way,” Clara said, guiding him down a path that would cut through Chinatown. His grip on her tightened. He wobbled a little, and had to stop and right himself.

“Tremor? Nonsense.” The Emperor in him faded and flickered like the embers in coal. Clara shook her head.

“There!” Zaihao pointed into the distance. The bearded man. “I saw him again; I must know who he is to the Gold Mountain people.”

“Do not follow him,” Ma said. “Do not leave my side.” 

“But I-”

“Do not.” Ma reached out and grabbed his wrist. He froze. Her face was shattered, like porcelain. It was then that he realized she was scared, far more so than he was. His curiosity burned in his chest like a disease. He slowly pried his mother’s hand off of him. She made little effort, in the end, to resist.

“I will stay,” he said. That was that.

“Huang Di,” followed Clara wherever she went. They stared at Dad with reverence, the words following in mutters behind them. Occasionally an older fellow would approach them and offer them some samplings of Chinese food. Dad never refused. In Chinatown, the memories lurk in dark corners. She walked quicker, past the packed residences, past the orphanages, past home. Past her mom, she couldn’t say, as she turned her head away from those middle-aged ladies who sold themselves in the night. Past her dad, she couldn’t say, as she glanced sideways at the aging men at their gambling tables, dreaming of gold veins long dried up.

“Clara,” Dad whispered, and she realized how far she had dragged them. “Clara. Please. I can’t keep up.”

“Sorry.” The warm air dropped to a chill.

“You can’t be racing away from your subjects when you are Empress of these United States, you know. And they all are. Even your-”

“I know,” she said. That was that.