the emblem of the Russian Empire: a two-headed eagle as a symbol of Russian princes and, later, Russian tsars, but could not fathom how that was possible.
They shared the cramped cabin under the steer box with three more men: two merchants and a fat idle boy. Those three would enter no conversations but turn away, hiding their faces. They wore the clothing of common men but their faces and hands were too white and well-groomed. Thomas winced, irritated by the company of sleek traders (if those were traders). He spent most of the daytime on deck, watching dolphins. Twice he saw the huge oblique comb of a sea serpent, but it vanished before he could call the wonderer.
Once a ghostly ship sailed by. The sailors made much ado, shouting of a trouble brewing. Thomas moved away with disgust, lest their sweaty unwashed bodies touch him in their bustling about. In wars and travels, he had seen not only ghostly ships but whole ghostly cities, not to mention castles, towers, and minarets! And ghosts of caravans, oases, and lone men could be seen in hot Arabia almost every day.
Oleg, attracted by the clamor, climbed on the upper deck in haste. “What’s up?”
“A vision,” Thomas replied sarcastically. “For all to see. But, unlike you, they neither exult not thank gods. And what do
“Surely it can,” Oleg replied confidently. “To another vision.”
“I see… But that’s a concern of theirs. Let them fight each other as they like. But can they harm live men?”
“Definitely! If live men get lost in contemplation, treating it as a circus, and let their ship crash into rocks or another ship.”
The ship sailed without letting the shore out of sight. In times Thomas could make out the ruins of ancient towers or remnants of old cities. That fertile land had seen many nations and states changing each other. Thomas had heard, with half an ear, only about the most powerful of them: the Hittite Kingdom, Lidia, Midia, Ahmenids. There had been the empire of Alexander the Great, then the Seleucids, the kingdom of Pontus, Pergamum, the possessions of Romans and, at last, the state of Seljukids, which was destroyed a year before by a mighty Crusader host from far northern lands.
All the way to Constantinople, the ship was followed by dolphins who jumped in waves and looked with gleaming curious eyes. The sailors told Thomas that dolphins had once been men who went into the sea to avoid war and grief and live happily ever after, with only a vague memory of kinship that attracts them to people. Thomas tossed fish and slices of bread to dolphins, thinking seriously of whether he would become a careless dolphin to escape the bitter human life where a man had to take each step by fight. He failed to resolve it at once, even as he recalled the immortal mages following his tracks and the unknown traps waiting ahead.
As the ship rounded a cape, some golden sparkles flashed in the sun far ahead. Oleg heard Thomas sigh loudly at his side. The knight’s face was excited.
The place was visited by Hittites, Macedonians, wild men of Pannonia, Italy, Scythia, Hyperborea. Everyone who came from north had to follow the same path, which their feet had trampled into a broad trodden road, and the one walking from south had another path, but both of them were doomed to meet here.
The Emperor had the city broadened immediately. For a start, he blocked the neck of land between Europe and Asia by a tall stone wall, then raised hundred and forty large battle towers on it, to protect the wall, to house soldiers, their weapons and provisions. The wall that fenced the new capital off the sea was guarded by eighty more towers.
Inside the walls, Constantine built palaces, fortresses, luxurious houses for high officials, massive barracks for his imperial guard, sumptuous temples (those were then ruined to raise churches, no less sumptuous, on their solid foundations), high guest mansions and storehouses. He also built prisons and had broad cellars dug under them: ordinary for plain prisoners, secret for particularly dangerous ones, and the most secret for the personal enemies of the Emperor. The secret torture chambers looked at the bay, and dead bodies in sacks, with boulders tied to their legs, were shook off into the water. Near the most secret torture chambers, there were secret treasury rooms, also graded by accessibility: the most important ones could only be visited by Emperor himself.
During his last visit, Oleg had noticed how thoroughly Constantine had been decorating the capital city, how ruthlessly he ravaged his other lands, driving the best masters and craftsmen together into the old Byzantium — and how fast Byzantium was changing to majestic Constantinople, as polished slabs of marble and basalt, statues of gods and heroes, centaurs and chimeras had been brought there from all around.
Constantinople looked unassailable. The old Byzantium had got shy and lost in the magnificence of the capital city, turned into one of its quarters, neither the poorest nor the richest one.
His shoulders flinched, as though of a sudden blow of the cold northern wind.
Thomas watched closely the growing walls, his eyes glittered with professional interest. “No one, for thousand years, has taken this stronghold by storm… Have you been inside?”
“I have,” Oleg replied. His voice sounded strangely muffled. Thomas turned to him in surprise. Oleg nodded. “Yes, I have been there! Both inside and outside.”
“I see a wonderer’s life is good,” Thomas sighed. “You can get where a man with sword is not allowed.”
The wonderer’s face stiffened as if he tried to recall something buried deep in his memory. Thomas did not dare to break the silence: in times, the wonderer looked very mysterious. The knight would take no notice of such trifles before he’d been dragged by life across different countries, peoples, and customs. Though that had only made the Christian hold in his soul stronger, he learnt to feel the souls of others.
Oleg came back from his brooding. “If the Secret Seven keep their whim to get your cup, a man of theirs shall be waiting in Constantinople,” he warned Thomas. “This gate from Asia to Europe can be escaped by no one!”
“There are more people in Constantinople than ants in a forest! We shall get lost to view.”
“We shan’t if they put a man at the moorings.”
Thomas put his palm on the sword hilt. Oleg knew it without looking back: hundreds of times had he seen this gesture, habitual for Thomas in every trouble.
“Whom are you going to slash? There are lots of people on the pier.”
“May we disguise?” Thomas suggested warily.
Oleg gave a long look over his proud figure, distinctive at any distance in his gleaming armor. “How?” he