Chapter 250: Whose Head Might It Be

"Do not be among those who drink too much wine, among those who gorge themselves on meat, for a drunkard and a glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe one with rags."

-        Solomon, Proverbs 23:20, 21

Nikolas stretched his head forward revealing his sun tanned neck out facing right towards Yuri while teasing him continuously, while his steward and servant have all ran far away the moment after Yuri pushed Nikolas down from his donkey, afraid that their master may end up getting the two of them killed too.

"Where is your blade! You stupid soldier." Nikolas bellowed bowing down tilting his head looking at Yuri. "fine! I bet that you don't have the guts to…"

Yuri snatched a battle axe from the Varangian standing beside him, with a roar expressing the fume in his mind Yuri used all of his strength moving every bit of his muscle swinging down the axe right towards the neck of Nikolas. In the very last second of his life Nikolas rose his head up feeling the chill on his scalp of the incoming danger, and all he could see is the blade of the axe coming closer and closer to his eyes, until it occupied his entire eye frame.

Then, he blacked out losing all vision and feelings with the other parts of his body. His entire body has been chopped in to half from his neck, with his head flying off to a staggering four meters away from the impact of the axe, with his eyes and mouth still open revealing the shock and disbelief he has experienced in the last second of his life. The body collapsed on to the ground with fresh hot blood gushing out from the broken veins and arteries, forming a mini fountain and a small pond right in the centre of the main road connecting the Gate of Romania.

Yuri gasped for air heavily, the half of his armour, his boots, and the axe in his hand has been painted red with that spilling blood, and the crowd together with Nikolas' steward and servant in the surrounding dispersed howling in terror seeing this petrifying scene. Yuri stood there like a fiddle stick, remaining completely.

Now after all of this he started to regret his decision of chopping down this man's head. He knows very clearly that Antonius has made the law of no matter who he is what position he is in, he shall have a need make a compensation of equal value to the victim's life, and that means the murderer's own life. And this law has already been proved once in the past, when a captain of a ship broke in to a squabble with a fisher man and killed him with his blade, the admiral had him pay his debt by giving away his own life setting a clear example of discipline to the rest of the sailors on what they can do, and what they cannot do.

Yuri remains rooted there with a blank mind thinking of what to do now.

…

"Admiral, I would advice you to now shift your focus on land, there is now not much opportunities left for us in the Aegean region, please, look at this map, admiral…"

Back in the government manor of Thessaloniki in the Acropole district, Antonius and his men are now discussing about the governance of this city whether it is applicable to use the current simple system of law in Marmara over here or do they need to script a new one, future strategic plans for the brand new state, diplomatic relationship with the surrounding powers, ways of embracing the broad consumer market of the metropolis in to their current trade system with out causing a chaos in the common market.

"Admiral, take a look at here." Anjelo pointed am instructor's stick towards the nautical map spread on the ground. "From this point onwards we are mainly facing the properties of your old country men, the Genoese and the Venetians in the Southern Aegean. With the fading Ottoman influence in this area these two republics moved quickly seizing Ottoman Sultan's properties and isles left in the region, leaving no more islands to us."

"Which means that from now onwards if we are going to continue expanding on the sea, we are going to face my country men and the Venetians." Antonius concluded frowning.

"Yes admiral."

Abdullah followed closely pointing out another issue. "Admiral, I would like to suggest that although under master Orban and Jacob's efforts, our ships have a greater fire power than the Lombard, but I would still like to advice that we need to prevent all conflicts with them. Because I have checked on those fortresses before coming, and if we are going to take them down one by one it would take years, and by then they would have gathered a fleet large enough to crush us."

"I see." Antonius too knows the war potential of his mother nation having been born and lived there.

"I would like to indicate the fact that our economy too relies on these Lombards." Spoke Alexios who is in charge of the business and trade. "Remember, admiral, these Lombards and Normans are the dominant figures of the Mediterranean with their trade out post and colonies every where. They are our biggest buyers of native agriculture products, and also our biggest exporter providing us with discounted oak wood durable enough for assembling the kneel of our ships, raw iron to be made in to cannons and weapons, and till this day we still don't have our own currency! We are still using their currency, thus we simply cannot to have a conflict with them."

Antonius felt the front of his neck and sighed. "I don't like this feeling… It is like they have gripped hold of our throat ready to suffocate us at any time with out we even knowing… The feeling is just like our lives are dependant on the hands of other people."

"Sadly, that is the current situation, admiral." Sighed Anjelo. "Even we people from Florence felt the same way as you, and yet we cannot really do any thing about it, the world in the Mediterranean have been working like this for the past centuries, even the Komnenian emperors of the Greeks had to give special privileges to the Venetians in order to gather enough coins for his campaigns."

While the bunch of people discuss about the government affairs, Yuri banged the door open storming inside with half of his body still in red carrying the strong scent of blood, and it smells awful when the scent of blood is mixed with the aroma of Saracen Myrrh incense Furthermore Yuri stormed in carrying a pouch in his right hand, and that pouch is still dripping fresh blood on the floor as Yuri walks briskly.

"Yuri! What is the meaning of this!" Seeing this Julian came forth stopping Yuri.

Yuri shoved the still bandaged Julian to one side, then knelled down out of a sudden thumping his kneels right on the hard marble ground, tossing the linen pouch on to the stairs in front of Antonius' throne. The sticky blood keeping the linen cloth in tact broke apart, revealing what it contains inside; a human head, with the eyes and mouth still wide open as if it is trying to tell people the horrendous sight he saw just before his death.

Antonius leaned back on to his throne and questioned Yuri in a relatively calm tone. "What is the meaning of this, Yuri?"

Yuri kept his head low on the ground with out replying.

"Yuri, did you make yourself in to any trouble again?" Antonius asked for the second time.

Yuri got his head up staring at Antonius on the throne while maintaining that kneeling posture with a pair of eyes large as shells and a face red as cooked lobsters. He pointed at the head rolling down the stair case and started explaining the entire thing filled with resentment and irritation in his language.

"This filthy maggot over here is Nikolas, he was cursing and discriminating you in public under broad day light under the Gate of Romania! I ordered him to shut the hell up, but he dared to refuse! And he even reached his head forward under my blade insisting that I should chop his head off and show it to you, I was enraged by nis nonsensical and disrespectful words at that time, and thus I took a battle axe, and chopped down this maggot's head right on the spot!"

The atmosphere in the hall is frozen, as every one is staring at the head of Nikolas and observing the facial expression of their admiral trying to interpret some useful information. While for Antonius, his mouth did twitch for a bit seeing the head but quickly returned to normal. After a while Antonius left his seat going forward and lifted up the head with its hair and examined closely.

Yes, it is Nikolas.