The Eyes of Argos

The Eyes of Argos is an alternate history short story first published in Amazing in the January 1986 issue. It was reprinted in the Harry Turtledove collection Agent of Byzantium and in the collection There Will Be War IV: Guns of Darkness, edited by Jerry Pournelle & John F. Carr, 1987.

Although set in the same timeline as the short story Departures, it takes place some 700 year later in the year 1305 AD. It introduces Basil Argyros who, in this story, is still an officer in the army of the Byzantine Empire. He commands a scouting force in an army in the steppe country north of the Danube. The army fights a battle with the Jurchen and suffers an unexpected defeat due to the nomads' use of a new magic involving the "evil eye".