As the rock-cragged hills above Trebizond came into view, I turned with great reluctance and resignation to the task set before me, and determined that if the emperor required a spy, a spy I would become. Since I was no priest any more, I might at least try to earn the freedom promised me. All things considered, this seemed the most sensible course, though I little knew how or where I should begin, nor less yet how to insinuate myself into the proceedings.
Feeling as I did-alone and forsaken in a godless world-I decided simply to let fate fall as it would. Sure, it was all one to me. Accordingly, the moment the planks touched the long stone quay, the emperor's envoy sent word to King Harald that his presence was required. He was to bring with him twenty of his fiercest and most loyal warriors; the emperor's emissaries desired a bodyguard-to enhance their prestige, no doubt. The rest of the Danes would remain at the harbour to provide protection for the merchant ships. Apparently, the more brazen Arab pirates operated from the very quay, looting full-laden ships before they even left the harbour.
The Danes quickly established the watch, ranging themselves along the quayside in guard groups of three or more. Meanwhile, in response to our command, we assembled on the quay beside the envoy's vessel-twenty warriors, Jarl Harald, and myself-to receive our instructions from the imperial envoy, a tall, thin-shanked old man with huge ears and a face like a goat's, complete with a small, wispy white chin beard. The envoy's name was Nicephorus, and he served as eparch-which, as I was informed with elaborate disdain, happened to be a particular variety of very senior court official, eighteenth in rank to the emperor.
As we stood on the quay, waiting to conduct the eparch and the members of his company to the place of meeting, I was startled and dismayed to see the Komes Nikos emerge from the eparch's ship. He walked directly to where Harald stood, glanced at me and gave a slight-but-perceptible nod of recognition before addressing himself to the king.
"The eparch sends his greetings," Nikos said coldly. "It is expected that you will place yourselves under his command while we remain in this city. The eparch's desires will most often be delivered through me. Is that agreeable to you?" Although he asked the question, his manner implied that it would be this way whether Harald thought it agreeable or not.
I relayed these words to my master, who nodded and grunted his rough approval. "Heya," he said.
"Then you will follow me," Nikos said imperiously. "We will escort Eparch Nicephorus to his residence."
We left the quay, walking slowly so that the merchants and dignitaries behind us were not left too far behind. In this way we entered the city, moving in stately procession along a narrow central street.
From the sea, the city had seemed little more than an overgrown fishing village, which is how it had begun. And though it apparently boasted some of the most varied and important markets in the empire, it still possessed something of its old nature in the small, tidy, and quiet streets lined with simple, lime-white houses of the square Greek kind we had been seeing ever since entering the Black Sea.
To my inexperienced eye, the city appeared compact, confined as it was to the low hills between the rough crags rising behind, and the sea spreading before. There was a handsome colonnaded forum, a wide house-lined central street, a basilica, two public baths, a small colosseum, a theatre, numerous wells, a taberna, and three fine churches-one formerly a temple to Aphrodite. The whole was surrounded by a low wall and deep ditch of Roman construction.
As I came to know the place, I discovered a feature which charmed me more than anything else I saw, and these were pools which threw water into the air for the sheer delight of the sight and sound alone. These fountains, I was to discover, the city possessed in profusion-sometimes with carved marble statuary, sometimes merely with unshapen stones for the water to play over, but almost always in the midst of a small, carefully-tended green or garden, where people might sit on stone benches beside these pools, talking to one another, or simply enjoying a moment's peace in their daily activities.
On the day of our arrival, Eparch Nicephorus was received in the forum by the magister and spatharius, who stood at the head of a small group of lesser officials, extending their hands in friendship and greeting.
