Final Throne / Season 1, Episode 12
Breach of the Basileus
The clash of steel on stone rings in my ears as I grip the hilt of my sword, the blade still warm from the last man it felled. Sweat stings my eyes, mixing with the grit of dust and blood caked on my face. The Theodosian Wall, once a mountain of stone, is a jagged ruin beneath my boots, its breaches gaping like the maw of some ancient beast. I, Constantine, Basileus of the Romans, stand at the edge of the eastern breach, my breath ragged in the predawn chill of May 29. The air tastes of iron and smoke, and the cries of my men—Greeks, Venetians, Genoese—cut through the dark like shattered glass. Below, the Ottoman tide surges, their torches a sea of flickering hellfire, their drums a heartbeat that shakes the earth. Eighty thousand against our seven thousand, now fewer. Far fewer. “Basileus!” Theodoros’s voice rasps behind me, raw from shouting orders over the din. His arm hangs limp, wrapped in a blood-soaked rag, but his good hand clutches a spear. “They’re coming again—ladders at the breach, and sappers at the base. We’ve got thirty, maybe forty left here. Marco’s holding the inner line with a dozen Venetians, but—” He coughs, spits something dark onto the rubble. “We can’t hold both.” I turn to him, my cloak torn...