Alexios had everyone stand. The next step was to ask if Sargsyan, Gowri, Michael, and Artvadios wanted to join Alexios. Artvadios declared that he had sworn an oath to Ifridun, and would cheerfully follow the Shahzadeh over a cliff, if need be. Sargsyan said that he had trouble understanding most of Alexios’s lecture, but he was interested in anything that could keep him from getting enslaved again.

  “I’m just trying to get home,” he added. “Back to Ani.”

  “I was there not so long ago,” Artvadios said. “Much has changed in the last few years. It might not be as you remember it.”

  “Where else can I go?” Sargsyan said. “What else can I do?”

  As for Gowri and Michael, things were more complicated. When had anyone asked what they wanted? Neither was a person with thoughts, feelings, desires; both were objects to be used only for other people’s gratification. This meant that they were unused to thinking for themselves. Always—for every waking moment of every day, and even in their dreams—they thought only of what others wanted. As a slave, to put yourself above the master meant only abuse, humiliation, deprivation, perhaps even death—unless you intended to run away. And then where could you go? What place on Earth except Trebizond had declared slavery and feudalism extinct?

  Michael eyed Ifridun, then said that he would join. “One day,” he added, “I can go back to Samos, and look for my family.”

  Alexios nodded. “We can help you.”

  Gowri was the last to voice her opinion. As Alexios looked at her, he realized that he had no idea how she would react, since she had said so little in his company.

  Keeps her cards close.

  But at last, Gowri spoke—quietly and hesitantly. “In this Trabzon,” she said through Michael. “There are women who can fight?”

  Alexios nodded. “Most of the army consists of amazons. The kentarch who took my place is a woman, and the strategos—the person in charge of the city—she’s a woman, too.”

  “And these women,” Gowri said. “They fight better than men? They are stronger?”

  “Most of the time,” Alexios said.

  Gowri looked to Artvadios. “Could I defeat him in combat, if I learned about this farr of yours?”

  “No man has ever bested me.” Artvadios crossed his brawny arms. “Not since I was a little boy. And no woman has even made the mistake of trying.”

  Alexios raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she can be the first.” He turned to Gowri. “Did you understand what I was talking about earlier?”

  She shook her head. “Not all of it.”

  “Do you want a world without any bosses?” Alexios said.

  “Is such a thing possible?” she said.

  “That’s not what I asked. I didn’t ask if it can be done. I asked if it should be done.”

  Gowri glanced at Ifridun, then nodded to Alexios.

  He stretched out his right hand. “I’ll train you first, if you want.”

  She looked at his hand. “What is it that you want me to do?”

  “Take my hand,” he said.

  “It is improper. We are neither married nor family.”

  Alexios recalled how Amina had acted the same way back in Pirin. But most women were hesitant to touch men they did not know. “I won’t hurt you. We’ve been together the last few days. Have you seen me hurt anyone?”

  She shook her head.

  “Sadly, no.” Artvadios looked back to Bakuya. “There’s some who should be hurt.”

  Alexios lifted his hand toward Gowri. “Take it. Just for a moment.”

  Gowri stepped back.

  Artvadios groaned. “She is but a slave woman—or, excuse me, she was but a slave woman. Now she is a free servant. What does she possess except her honor? And you would even take that from her! Who would marry a woman who is known for touching strange men?”

  “Not all men care,” Sargsyan said.

  “We’ll never destroy the concept of class if we don’t also destroy the concept of gender,” Alexios said. “Both are pillars upholding the temple of exploitation, along with race and nationality. Like Samson, we must hug these pillars and crush them!” He looked at Gowri. “If you were falling over a cliff, would you hesitate to take my hand, if I stretched it out for you like this to save you?”

  She still refused. Alexios sighed. Then he ordered the men to turn away.

  “No one will see,” he said. “I’ll even close my eyes. No one will know but you.”

  “That’s still enough,” she said.

  “You just need to touch it for a moment.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I have some farr with me,” Alexios said. “I gained it from convincing Ifridun to free the both of you.” He nodded to Gowri and Michael. “And also from convincing him to let the oil slaves go. I can give some to you now, if you want. It’ll be enough for you to start training with me.”

  “Can I not gain this farr myself?” she said.

  “At some point, someone must have,” Alexios said. “But I gained it from someone else—my teacher, Dionysios. I’ve been doing my best to keep the flame burning ever since.”

  Gowri was silent.

  “Look, we’re going to fight,” Alexios said. “We’re going to punch and kick each other. You’re with the boys, Gowri. You’re going to have to beat us up if you want to learn how to beat up other men. And this is the way.” He lifted his hand.

  “I do not wish to ‘beat up’ men, as you put it,” she said. “I do not wish to hurt anyone.”

  “Then what is it that you want?” Alexios said.

  She looked at the others. “The same as them. To go home.”

  “Back to Hind?” Alexios said.

  She shook her head. “I have family in Suram. That’s where I was born and raised. My husband is there.”

  “Sorry,” Alexios said. “To Suram, then. But it’ll be easier to get there safely if you know how to fight. And if you can teach your friends and family, it’ll make you all safer.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “You can,” Alexios said. “And it’s the last thing your boss wants. To read theory and do praxis—it’s the last thing the slave master in your mind wants. We have to overthrow him before we take down the slave masters in the real world.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Oops.” Alexios stumbled forward. And for just a moment, he touched her hand, and gave her enough farr to use. She gasped, blushed, glared at him, and then slapped his face so hard that he slammed down into the sand.

  “Ow,” he said, his cheek stinging. “I deserved that.”

  “What’s happening?” Sargsyan said. All the men were still turned away.

  “Never touch me without my permission,” Gowri said.

  Still lying in the sand, Alexios saluted. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “You’re not sorry,” she said. “You would do it again if you could.”

  “Eggs and omelettes,” Alexios said.

  “Can we turn around, now?” Artvadios said.

  Alexios climbed to his feet, brushed the sand off his clothes, and looked at Gowri.

  “I’m every man who has hurt you,” Alexios said, rubbing his cheek. “I’m every rich person who has looked down on you. I’m the one who made your life so hard. I enslaved you. I separated you from your family—”

  She swung her fist at him hard and fast. Even with Alexios’s knowledge of the farr, he barely dodged in time.

  “The best way to learn to fight,” he said, “is to learn by doing—”

  Gowri was still moving while Alexios spoke. He had dodged her right fist, but as she came up again she struck his stomach with her left elbow—knocking the breath from his lungs and hurling him back down into the sand.

  That’s how you know you’re doing a good job as a teacher. When your students beat you up.

  By this time, Ifridun, Artvadios, Sargsyan, and Michael had turned to watch. The first gasped; the second scoffed; the third stared; the fourth cheered, perhaps because he was tired of having to exhaust himself translating so much.

  “Great work,” Alexios mouthed, lying in the sand, unable to really speak since he was still breathless.

  “This is pathetic.” Artvadios drew his scimitar and tossed it aside, then adopted a battle pose as he faced Gowri. “It’s easy enough to bring down a slave—a former slave, I mean. But now you must fight a warrior who has never lost. Not to worry. I’ll go easy on—”

  Gowri’s right fist bashed Artvadios’s forehead so that he fell flat on his back, joining Alexios on the sand. For a moment, the Herakles of the Kaukasos was stunned into speechlessness, lying there as though he had wanted to make a snow angel in the sand, but had then forgotten to do so.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Sargsyan, too, was bewildered. Michael raised his hands and asked Gowri not to hurt him.

  She smiled warmly. “I never would.”

  “You moved so fast,” Ifridun said to Gowri. “My eyes could barely follow you.” He turned to Alexios. “Is this how the warriors of Trabzon fight? If that is so, it must be impossible to defeat them!”

  “Not true,” Alexios whispered. He was still lying on the sand, unable to speak louder. Only a little breath had returned to his lungs. “People can still beat us. An arrow shot from a well-aimed bow can still bring us down, the same as anyone else.”

  Ifridun approached Alexios and stretched out his hand. “Grant me the farr, as you granted it to her.”

  “Swear that you will fight only for the poor,” Alexios said, the sand on the beach puffing around his mouth. He nodded to Artvadios, who was climbing to his feet. “Swear in front of him.”

  Ifridun placed his right hand over his heart. “I swear.”

  How do I know I’m not creating another Narses? Alexios thought. But I need Ifridun. I need Artvadios. All of us together can train so many people, we’ll have an army in no time.

  Ifridun stretched out his hand again, and this time Alexios took it.

  “Don’t let the farr fade,” Alexios told Ifridun. “Fight for what’s right. Fight for the vast majority of the world—Mother Earth’s teeming masses, the toilers of the Earth.”

  A moment later, Alexios also made Artvadios swear to fight for the workers and peasants and women, the children and downtrodden, the prisoners and slaves, the weak and the sick.

  “Help the poor destroy the rich,” Alexios said.

  “Long as it doesn’t conflict with the oath I swore him.” Artvadios nodded to Ifridun.

  “Anyone who wants to change sides is welcome to join,” Alexios said.

  “Alright,” Artvadios said. “I swear.”

  Alexios gave him the farr. Laughing, Artvadios and Ifridun were soon sparring, punching and kicking, the former grappling with the latter and hurling him into the sea. The water splashed, roared, foamed, but Ifridun recovered quickly, darting out of the waves and hurling himself into Artvadios—who caught him and rolled and tumbled in the sand.

  Alexios then granted Sargsyan the farr, and the old soldier joined the fray, holding nothing back as he punched and kicked at Ifridun, who treated him no differently from Artvadios.

  Maybe the shahzadeh really has joined us, Alexios said. We should always find contradictions in the ruling class and try to split them, the way they always do the same to us. Everyone can change their minds, given enough time and dedication, but the ones with the least to lose and the most to gain change faster than others. This doesn’t mean that we have to compromise with the ruling class or tail their reactionary ideas. Our job is to raise people—workers or otherwise—to the level of revolutionaries. We must always stay true to science.

  Gowri watched the sparring, but kept her distance, and had her knees and elbows bent, ready to fight if she needed to. Only Michael remained.

  “Do you want the farr?” Alexios asked him.

  The boy nodded.

  “And you’ll remember,” Alexios said. “Fighting a war is for adults. You can only help us on the sidelines until you’re grown up. Not everyone has to fight all the time.” Alexios looked to the city in the distance. He had said the same things to Basil and Kassia. “We’re going to have a lot of people back there to train, and I can’t do it without you.”

  Michael said he understood. At Alexios’s behest, the boy then swore to dedicate his life to ending poverty—to tearing out its cause by the roots. Alexios then granted him the farr. The boy’s eyes flashed, and he smiled for the first time since Alexios had met him. Before long, he was grappling with the men.

  Soon they had tired themselves out, as people often did when they got their first taste of power. Here Alexios introduced them to the farr’s negative aspects—that it exhausted you far more than regular exercise, and that you would be debilitated if you failed to restore through theory and praxis the energy you had expended.

  “It’s been like that for me for weeks, actually,” Alexios added. “There’s been so little I’ve been able to do. My family and I…we were so isolated from everyone, wandering Mingrelia and Georgia and Shirvan…”

  Gowri crossed her arms. “Why did you even bring them here to begin with? Did you not know how dangerous it is?”

  She’s growing bolder, Alexios thought. Now that she’s free and strong. “I told them it was too dangerous, just as you said. They came along anyway.”

  “You never should have let them,” Gowri said.

  She has her own lost family. Her own guilt.

  Weary and sweaty, Alexios and his students returned to Bakuya, washed up, changed their clothes, and settled down to dinner in the courtyard with the few oil slaves who had woken up. Most were so exhausted that they slept through the evening. At Alexios’s request, Ifridun permitted the royal caravanserai’s servants to sit and eat if they wished. Discussion of Mazdakism and the farr continued, with Alexios’s students doing most of the talking, and raving about how it had changed their understanding of the world and granted them so much strength. Alexios mostly kept quiet, only interjecting now and then to correct anyone who went astray, checking sometimes to ensure that his students understood what they were discussing. Yet for the most part, they satisfied him. Dialectical materialism was difficult to shake, once you had grasped it. To return to the mysticism of idealism and metaphysics was like reverting to infantilism. But this was not to disparage children. Many, if not all children were natural dialecticians who simply, over the course of many years, had the dialectics beaten out of them.

  After dinner, the students rested. In the morning, everyone was up. Everyone ate. Everyone learned. Now the courtyard was full of student groups. Alexios’s own students were explaining the basics to all those oil slaves who had volunteered to join the uprising. Some had been wary, upon being asked this question, suspecting that it was a trap. Others refused to join, and likewise refused to provide an explanation for their decision. Alexios—who was elected the agha, or leader of the new revolt—said that they should be free to do as they pleased. If they wanted to leave, let them.

  “Slaves tend to make poor soldiers,” he added.

  “They will warn the shirvanshah for a sack of dirhams, Eskandar Agha,” Artvadios whispered into his ear. “They will say that you have turned his son against him.”

  Alexios grinned at Artvadios. “They’re right.”

  Artvadios laughed.

  Days passed. More people joined the uprising. The few merchants and nobles in the city wanted nothing to do with them, and were horrified with how quickly Bakuya had been lost. Some tried to escape the city with valuables and sacks of coin and jewels loaded onto carriages, but the Zhayedan trainees caught them before they could leave, and forced them to pay their slaves and workers for a lifetime of theft. This meant that the old ruling classes could only leave Bakuya with the clothes on their backs and some water skins and sacks of food. Some refused to go, saying that it was suicide to venture out into the wilderness like this—they’d be picked up and enslaved in no time. Yet the old ruling classes likewise refused to serve the uprising. This was the attitude taken by the priests of various faiths as well as the monks and mystics who were always busy chanting to the fires in the Ateshgah Fire Temple. Alexios discussed the issue with his newly elected council and with the assembled workers outside the city walls—the only place where there was enough room for everyone—just like back in Trebizond. The question was: should the Bakuya uprising support people who refused to cooperate? The answer the slaves, women, and children gave in the assembly was a resounding no!

  “Let them work, as we have!” cried an old Jewish slave woman named Rebekah. “Let them cook and clean, let them care for infants, let them scoop up black rock oil, let them farm in the fields—then they can eat and sleep here!”

  The workers’ assembly roared with laughter, cheered, clapped. Even the Brahmin ascetics and the handful of Buddhists in the Fire Temple would be forced to work in exchange for food. Not a crumb would be given for free. And if, after a hard day’s work, these people wished to continue bowing and kneeling and chanting in the Fire Temple, they would be welcome to do so.

  This decision caused problems. Monks and mystics were not known for their flexible opinions. At first these people pretended that nothing had changed. They continued praying in the Ateshgah Fire Temple, venturing into the streets in the morning to sit, bow their heads, and hold out their wooden bowls and beg for alms. Out of habit, some workers gave them food; others slapped it out of their hands. By the end of that first day, the fire worshippers were hungry. In the evening, men of all faiths gathered in the Ateshgah Fire Temple. Before dawn, the strongest among them raided the uprising’s food stores—though the workers were ready. Having trained now with the farr for several days, it took little effort to knock down the mystics, many of whom were skinny skeletons, worn down from lifetimes of mortification.

  Alexios was proud of what the newly proclaimed Bakuya Republic had already managed to achieve, and more often he was wondering if his presence here was even necessary, just like back in Trebizond. He had indeed created a new Trebizond; he seemingly made Trebizonds wherever he went. The workers voted on how to spend their resources—their food, money, tools, labor power—and prepared for the inevitable attack from Shirvan as best they could, though most of the city’s garrison had fled the previous night, taking many weapons and supplies with them.

  But although some uprisings were started by infuriated women shouting that they needed bread to feed their families, other uprisings focused on class and paid too little attention to gender. This meant that while Bakuya had abolished slavery and feudalism, in practice such systems still existed inside the home. Women were still compelled to work for men in the kitchen, to clean their clothes, raise their children, and generally subordinate themselves to their fathers, husbands, and even their grown male children. Alexios reminded the Bakuyans that the uprising would never succeed unless it reached what he called a critical mass. All forms of exploitation needed to be overthrown, not just the master-slave or lord-serf relation, but also the gender relation between men and women.

  “Let women’s work be socialized,” he said. “And by that I mean concentrated and industrialized—made more efficient so that fewer people need to do it. And let everyone take turns doing it—including the men. Pay wages for even the most commonplace women’s work. Abolish the institution of marriage and allow women to do as they please.”

  There was grumbling, even from some women, especially the older ones, the few widows who had found a kind of liberty in the old society when their husbands had died. Alexios reminded them that Trebizond’s victorious army consisted mostly of women, and that without them, his city never would have gotten anywhere.

  “Perhaps that may work for Trabzon, Eskandar Agha,” an old man said. “But for us…”

  “God created man first,” a Christian added. “Eve he formed out of Adam’s rib, as a helpmeet.”

  Ah, the delicate topic of religion, Alexios thought. Not a problem when it helps the uprising—but a severe problem when it hinders it.

  “Are we not all equal in the eyes of God?” Alexios said. “Is God obsessed with our genitals? Does it matter to God, whether we have a penis or a vagina? Do all men have penises? Do all women have vaginas? What of eunuchs? Does God examine us on an operating table before admitting us to heaven or casting us into hell? His ways are not our ways. What matters to Him is whether we believe in the truth—and whether we take care of the world He has made for us, whether we work to heal this sinful place.”

  Artvadios, standing behind the gathered workers, nodded, smiled, and clapped silently. It seemed the old warrior believed only in following Ifridun. And for now, Ifridun was in favor of the uprising. He had even renounced his title as shahzadeh, insisting that everyone address him as brother, son, or uncle. All that remained of Ifridun’s old life were his rich clothes, his expensive damascened scimitar, and Artvadios, whom he refused to release from his oath. Bakuya only accepted this old feudal relationship because Artvadios had no problem with it.

  “He’s the one thing I can’t let go of,” Ifridun said.

  “I’ll prove myself worthy of being released sooner or later, your majesty,” Artvadios said. “Er—excuse me, Ifridun.”

  Soon enough, the workers and slaves voted on Alexios’s proposals. The split was deep, and often formed among lines of gender and age. Younger women tended to support him; older men tended to be against him. Yet medieval society was young, and the fact that children could vote—children, who were exploited, especially as unpaid farm workers, almost as heavily as women, and often married as soon as they had their first period—this meant that the proposal passed. From now on, women’s work would be socialized, and men would take turns doing it; marriage would be a personal choice, to be dissolved as easily as it was proposed. Property would no longer be a factor in marriage, since everyone’s necessities were guaranteed regardless of marital status. Childcare would likewise no longer be an issue, since the entire city would care for children together.

  The passage of these proposals reminded Alexios that he was becoming less necessary to this uprising. What uprising is an uprising that does not ignite other uprisings elsewhere? Bakuya was taking on a momentum all its own. This also helped him grow more cognizant of how the Bakuyans’ interests were out of alignment with his. While they wanted to build up their city and find ways to gather oil more efficiently so they could exchange it (as well as the city’s famous handwoven carpets) for necessities which were difficult to find in this part of the world, Alexios needed to locate his family and continue on his voyage east to find the dragon that the spirit Hawajat had spoken of, and save his friends in Trebizond. In some ways he felt no closer to this goal than when he had first awoken in the Naryn-Kala bimaristan.

  This need troubled him more every day. It was almost like he was in Trebizond all over again, tortured by visions of his friends and family being crucified. Yet how could he abandon the Bakuyans to Shirvan, especially since Alexios was responsible for getting them into so much trouble in the first place? It seemed they could care for themselves, but what if Alexios left them, and then heard, months later, that the city had been massacred, the survivors sold back into slavery? He was horrified about the fates of Isato, Basil, and Kassia, but were the Bakuyans less human? There were also far more of them here.

  It was a hard decision, but Alexios chose to remain in the city until it was on a firmer footing. Perhaps when it had official recognition from neighboring powers he could leave with a clear conscience. This choice proved fateful. When summer was coming to an end, scouts announced that multiple armies were marching on Bakuya.