The heat of early summer clung to Constantinople, pressing damp air against the gilded walls of the palace.

The gardens beyond the Boukoleon steamed after rain, their fountains trickling faintly while the court gathered in the Chrysotriklinos.

Candles guttered in their golden stands, filling the vaulted chamber with a smell of hot wax and smoke.

On the throne sat Romanos III Argyros, Emperor of the Romans, a tall man with fine features and soft hands that seemed more at ease on parchment than on the pommel of a sword.

His robes shimmered with woven silk, but his eyes were clouded with uncertainty.

He had succeeded Constantine VIII two years before, inheriting the empire's crown but not its strength.

Around him stood the council, eunuchs in rich brocade, generals in polished armor, priests in dark robes.

Their voices rose and fell in anxious rhythm, each man pressing his fear into the air like incense.

"The Seljuks move again," said one, Nikephoros the strategos of Anatolia, a broad man with a beard gone silver.

"Raids into Persia, burning villages along the Araxes. Their horsemen sweep like locusts. The Persians cannot hold them. Sooner or later, they will test our borders."

A chamberlain with the smooth voice of a courtier leaned in.

"And what force will meet them, Basileus? The Armenians grumble, the eastern themes are hollow. And the Varangians…" He trailed off, glancing sidelong at the throne.

Romanos stiffened. "What of the Varangians?"

Silence followed. Then the chamberlain bowed low, hands tucked into his sleeves.

"They are gone, lord. The oaths of their captains are broken. Ships full of axe-bearers sailed north these past few years. Rumor names a new emperor among them, a wolf-king in the far north who calls himself son of the old gods. Many say the Guard has bent knee to him."

Murmurs rippled through the hall, whispers darting like mice through marble columns.

A foreign emperor, a pagan, stealing the empire's axe-wall.

Romanos shifted uneasily. "They are mercenaries. They will return when gold is offered."

Nikephoros' voice was iron.

"No, lord. These are not men who march for coin alone. Their loyalty is spoken of in blood-oaths, not contracts. And now their oaths belong to another. We face east with bare flanks while in the north the axe-bearers sharpen their blades for a wolf."

A bishop crossed himself.

"God scourge them for their faithlessness. Yet… what of our own? Even Rome's throne is bought and sold, if rumors from the West are true. Perhaps it is God's judgment that He takes away from us our guard."

The eunuch Theodore, sly as a snake, sneered at the bishop.

"God does not abandon emperors. Men do. It was Basil the Bulgar-Slayer who kept these raiders at bay, and Basil who commanded respect from the Guard. But Basil is long dead, and his throne stands empty of men who carry his will."

Romanos' hands trembled on the arms of his throne.

"The empire is eternal," he muttered, though it sounded more like a prayer than a command.

"The Seljuks are tribesmen. The Varangians, deserters. Constantinople has stood for centuries."

The councilors did not answer, for each knew how hollow those words rang.

They remembered Basil II, who had marched east and west with iron discipline, who had blinded fifteen thousand Bulgars in a single act of vengeance.

By comparison, Romanos' silken voice and trembling hands seemed pale shadows of imperial power.

Above, mosaics of Christ Pantocrator gazed down with golden, unblinking eyes.

The emperor looked up and felt no comfort.

Beyond the marble halls, the world shifted, and he could feel the empire's foundations groan.

---

Far from Constantinople's jeweled domes, the land of Persia burned.

The Araxes valley lay smothered in smoke, its villages charred to blackened ribs of timber.

Herds lay scattered, their bones bleaching beneath the summer sun. In the distance, minarets toppled, their stones dragged away for campfires.

From the ridges above, Seljuk riders swept down like hawks on prey.

Their horses were lean and tireless, bred for the steppe's endless miles.

Men in leather lamellar, bows of horn and sinew strapped to their backs, rode with whoops that carried across the valleys.

They struck at caravans and towns, seized grain, cut throats, vanished before the Persian garrisons could gather.

Women and children were bound and carried off, their cries lost in the thunder of hooves.

Each raid fed their legend, and the name of Seljuk began to weigh heavy even on distant tongues.

In one burned-out village, the air still thick with ash, Toghril Beg dismounted.

Broad of shoulder and sharp of eye, he strode among the ruins while his men dragged spoils into heaps.

Beside him walked his brother Chaghri, younger but no less sharp, his hand resting casually on the hilt of a curved sabre.

"Look well, brother," Toghril said, nudging a broken spindle in the dirt.

"The Persians cannot protect their own. Every hearth we burn makes more tribes flock to us. Already the clans of the Oxus swear our banner."

Chaghri nodded, spreading a goatskin map across a fallen beam. Lines scratched in charcoal marked rivers and passes.

"Their leaders quarrel in their courts. Each raid we make fattens our herds and our legend. The more they fail, the more we rise."

Around them, their beys gathered.

Fires were lit, and the night came alive with the smell of roasting mutton and the neigh of tethered horses.

Warriors sharpened arrowheads, singing in guttural tones.

Children of the steppe, hardened by hunger, danced around the fire while old women tended wounds and boiled stolen grain into broth.

One bey spat into the dirt.

"And beyond Persia lies Anatolia. Rich land, soft people. The Romans grow weak. I have seen their patrols, fat men in bronze, stumbling after us like oxen."

The laughter was cruel, rising like the crackle of firewood.

But Toghril's gaze was colder.

"The Romans are not yet broken. Their walls are tall, their gold deep. But I have heard a thing, their axe-men, the Varangians, are gone. Deserted to follow a northern wolf-king who spits on Christ. If true, then Constantinople's arm is broken. And a man with one arm cannot hold a shield."

The fire popped, throwing sparks into the dark.

Each man sat in silence for a moment, the thought settling like snow.

Chaghri spoke again, his voice low, almost reverent.

"We are the dawn. The tribes stir from the steppe, and nothing can bar the sun when it rises. Persia is the first shadow to fall. Rome will be the next."

The beys struck their spears against the earth in assent, a pact born in fire and smoke.

Afterward, the shamans came forward, casting omens into the flames.

They tossed bones into the coals, read the cracks and blackened veins. Their chants rose into the star-strewn sky, calling on Tengri to bless the riders of the dawn.

The warriors answered by lifting their bows, arrows notched, and loosing them into the night with howls that carried far beyond the valley.

Some arrows fell into the ruined village, clattering among broken stones. Others arced high, their fire-tipped shafts vanishing into the dark as though already aimed at distant walls.

By morning, the Seljuks rode again, their horses drinking from streams choked with ash.

Behind them lay silence, broken only by the mourning of those few Persians who had survived.

Ahead lay more valleys to plunder, more villages to burn, more tribes to bind under the crescent banner.

---

That night in Ullrsfjörðr, while his jarls slept and the forges dimmed, Vetrulfr stood alone upon the headland.

The fjord spread black beneath him, ice drifting like shattered glass upon its surface. Above, the stars burned cold and sharp.

He remembered other skies, the glow of Constantinople, the gilded halls of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, when he had stood not as wolf-king but as captain of the Varangian Guard.

He had heard whispers then, carried by merchants and soldiers alike: of tribes stirring beyond Persia, of horsemen swift as stormwinds, of a people called Seljuks.

Basil had laughed at such tales, saying Rome's sword was long enough to strike any foe.

But Basil was gone, and in his place sat softer men, rulers with silken hands and anxious eyes.

Vetrulfr gripped the wolf-cross at his chest.

"How far have they ridden, I wonder?" he murmured to the wind. "And when the crescent rises, will Constantinople still stand?"

The sea answered only with its endless sigh.

Yet in that silence he felt the shape of things to come, empires tottering, horizons burning, and a tide of riders from the east that even wolves might one day have to meet.

He had fought against the banners of Islam for over a decade of his life.

And should the horsemen from the far east come to worship such a god, it would only unify them into a terrible, and terrifying force.

One that he knew was no longer his problem. But could not help but be curious about all the same.

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