another parts Part I. The Ambush “Those who have never heard the whistle of arrows are fond of talking about war. But when they finally hear it for the first ...

“After Nicaea, we believed the worst was behind us. We were wrong. Sometimes victory is more dangerous than defeat—it makes a man too confident in himself.” ...

“In my youth, I imagined that every victory was followed by trumpets, songs, and the division of spoils. At Nicaea, I witnessed my first victory after which ...

Part I. Beneath the City Walls “Nicaea was the first fortress I would have to take by assault. Until that day, I sincerely believed a siege was nothing ...

Part I. The Last Evening “A man rarely notices where one chapter of his life ends and another begins. Sometimes the boundary is a river. Sometimes it is a ...

Part I. The Second Rome “Some cities astonish a man with their walls. Others with their palaces. But there are cities that change his very understanding ...

“A man rarely notices when one world ends and another begins. There is no wall, no boundary stone, no river dividing one from the other. You simply wake one ...

“Until Rome, we were pilgrims. When we left it, we were crusaders. Yet the greatest revelation for me was not the Holy See, but the city itself—a city that had ...

“We thought we were marching with our duke. Only after several weeks on the road did I understand that an entire world was moving with us.” From the ...

“It seems strange to me now that we spent so long preparing for an expedition which most of us believed would be over within a few months. No one intended to ...