Duchess Demetra I of Thessalonike.
6th March, 1105.
Demetra knew it was a dream. But she still could not awake.
The alleyway was there, right before her. The boy- after all these years she could not remember the lad's name- stood there grinning, holding the sword, daring her to challenge him.
She was five years old again; there was the little sliver of a blade her father had given her to play with, clasped between her tiny fingers. She felt uncomfortable, a grown woman trapped inside the form of a foolish child.
"I know what happened here. You were a local child, a little older than me, whom I'd seen playing with swords. I wanted to learn, badly, so I asked you to teach me. You didn't know who I was, but you were kind, so you obliged."
The boy kept grinning. "Your father almost killed me for what's about to happen. When he found out."
Demetra nodded. Her memory was strong and clear; this day had been the defining moment of her life, after all. "I could stop, this very second. I could put the sword down, and walk away right now."
"No, you couldn't. This already happened. This-" the boy swung, and the same parry which she'd made some twenty-eight years before reposted the first blow. The boy froze, blade scraping against blade. "This is all a dream, a memory. Only God knows why you've kept coming back here recently, in your sleep."
"I think I do, actually. You're not the simple peasant lad, are you? You look like him, and make the same motions, but your voice is different..."
The boy nodded. "I don't know what I am. A thought of your mind, a representation, an omen, a demon... you should ask the church, not me."
Demetra sighed. "Maybe. But I don't think you're a demon. Neither do I think you're a part of my over-active mind."
The boy shrugged, as they began their fight, rehearsed in Demetra's head for three decades. "Like I said, I don't know. But let's talk about you. Why do you keep coming back here? Do you really think you know?"
"Yes." Demetra was floundering; back here, she'd never held a sword before, and she wasn't too strong either. The sun shone bright in the clear sky, the long shadows of the walls played about her. A large courtyard, dazzled by the sun, held the shadowy figure of her father and Samuel of Edessa, the old Chancellor, in the real world a dead man.
"I think it's because everything has been so defined recently. I keep wondering what would've happened if all this hadn't come about, if I hadn't fought, or if I hadn't run away. I think that life would've been so different, my life-" parry, riposte, parry"-which seems to be so set by my nature, a nature created upon this day. I'm called the warrior-duchess. I held my city against a year-long siege, with the starving people fleeing from church to church. I upheld Roman honour better than most men of the Empire."
"Those you fought against are Roman too. How have you held up the Empire's honour?"
"I am Roman, and I bested them. I held through misery and cold until the armies of Constantinople arrived."
The dream-boy swung wildly, as the real one had so many years before. The alley became distorted, with everything bending inwards and outwards so that only the two of them mattered. Demetra caught the blow but reeled back.
"Armies of Constantinople? Not the armies of the Emperor?"
"I haven't decided which claimant I should back. How can I? Two foreign Georgian brothers, cousins of a weak Emperor, born in a far-off land, fighting over our frail realm. Why should I support either of the Bagrationis? They have done nothing for me."
"The moment is coming. We will talk again tomorrow evening. I will have more to say on the matter then, Demetra Basiliakos."
The boy slashed, and Demetra was not quick enough. He had not meant to hit her, all those years ago; and in the twisted world of dreams, his actions were beyond his control. Her face was cut, a smooth, bending line from her temple to her jaw. The pain seared through it, as the walls of the illusion began to collapse.
The dream-boy's voice came from a distance, as he himself began to waver and fade. "If you had run to your father, then you would've been coddled with words of consolation, and become a lady of the nobility. But you did not. You choose to run away, and spend a week with nothing but a blade, bitter tears, a city which did not recognise you and a badly-healing scar. You became a warrior this day. Would you do it again?"
And Demetra looked up, and whispered, "No."
-----
Demetra woke, gasping. The sheets were stained with her sweat, as Lachlan's worried face peered over her.
The Duke and Marshal of Thessalonica, Lachlan.
"What's wrong, Dem?"
Demetra exhaled, and smiled weakly at her husband. Lachlan was, along with Serapion, the one person in the real world whom she truly trusted. The tall, handsome man with the barbarous tongue was someone she had been suspicious of the moment his boat entered the harbour, all those years ago- but though it had taken a long time for it to come about, she now loved him dearly, after his many attempts to win her cold hard.
She reached up and kissed him. "I dreamt of the sword-fight again" she murmured, as she slipped out of bed and padded to the window. Lachlan followed her, wrapping his arms around her waist.
Demetra was not the most beautiful of women, and could not be said to possess an over-abundance of grace. She was thin and spindly, with ragged black hair and a certain awkwardness in her movements. But everyone loved her. She was wilful, and a true warrior- nobody in the city could best her with a sword. Despite her odd manner, she was still fairly pretty, and very regal; a true Roman, though the image was slightly marred by the long scar upon her right cheek. To others, it was a sad disfigurement; to her, a permanent reminder of the folly of youth.
Lachlan was different. Tall and jovial, he sported a fine moustache and a full head of raven-black hair, though he was more comfortable when it was hidden beneath an iron helm. Tales of his bravery and martial prowess had led the old Duke to invite him from long-lost Pictish shores to serve the Empire and wed his daughter. He had adapted to their faith and ways easily enough, though a heavy accent still shone through his now fluent Greek. He had fallen for the strange Demetra instantly. He'd known many women in his time, but none with such a reckless defiance as his wife- a long way from the timid, pampered Greek maiden he'd been expecting.
The two of them stood in silence, watching the waves upon the coast from their castle. It had been built in the time of Demetra's father, as a fortress from which they could hold out against all attackers. Her father had belonged to the days of the Doukas emperors- he had personally engineered the placement of the strong Andronikos on the throne, and in turn had mourned the Emperor's execution by the Turks, and the succession of a weak boy king. Byzantium had survived and prospered through his regent, one of the greatest minds the Empire had known- but once the boy king had become the Emperor in his own right, the Empire had begun to weaken. His Georgian Bagrationi cousins had both been held aloft by two different factions as better rulers- Hethum now ruled in Constantinople, while the Doux of Armeniacon tried to win the Empire for himself, with the unwilling Vakhtank, Hethum's brother, as a proxy.
Demetra sighed once more. "We support Hethum." Had the situation not been so grave, Lachlan would have smiled at her way of bringing up business in such a blunt and unexpected fashion.
"Are you sure? Arsenios and his cohorts still have powerful armies nearby..."
"Hethum saved the city. We couldn't have held much longer. We're in his debt- and I have no great wish to see a Komnenos take the throne. The last time that happened we ended up stuck with a weak succession of feeble bureaucrats, all because of the dying whims of Isaac. We lost Armenia because of him. Besides, I hear rumours that Amisos has fallen and Hathum's armies are winning in Bulgaria."
"Vakhtang might be able to assert his independence-"
"Arsenios will control him. He does that. No honour. No feel for war, just for coin." She sighed again, and Lachlan could see her knuckles turn white as she gripped the window-sill. He placed his chin in the curve of her shoulder, and rocked her back and forth.
"Will we have to go to Constantinople?"
Demetra smiled warmly. "Sorry, my love."
"Everyone there is a plotter. We will be in great danger..."
"You worry too much, O barbaric Latin lord. Nobody wishes us dead in the city."
Lachlan sighed. "Look at our city. All the churches, the happy people, our fortress... the Rotunda, the Arch, the Panagia Chalkeon... we live in the City of God, yet the power is held in the City of Man. Does that seem right to you? Does that seem Godly? Everyone gets sucked into plots and poison in Constantinople."
Demetra nodded. He was right; the city was beautiful under the light of the moon, with the reflection on the water above the still and silent town, with the people sleeping in their beds, safe in the knowledge that the warrior-duchess would keep them from harm. "Nothing is right about this world, husband. And power is the poison, not the city. If Thessalonike ruled the world, the poison would infect her just as badly."
She withdrew, motioning her husband to return to bed. The words of the dream-boy still rang in her ears as she fell asleep. "You became a warrior this day. Would you do it again?"
Welcome to Thessalonika, often called the City of God by Demetra's adoring subjects...
Presenting
The City of God
A Narrative AAR of the Basiliakos Dynasty.
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