Mazaka by Mykalus Kane

My name is Mykalus Kane and I'm a nosy Cappadocian. I'm from Kilikia not to be confused with Rough Kilikia but it's all part of Cappadocia. See that island in the the river? That's called Elaioussa, it's where old Archelaos spent most of his time fishing for catfish until he married the governess Pythodoris who wore the old fucker out. I'm from the city of Mazaka and I live in one of the few fortresses that don't belong to the bloody king. Mazaka is the metropolis of the people and some call it Eusebeia Argaios because it's situated at the foot of Mt Argaios, which is the highest bloody mountain in Kilikia and the summit is always covered in bloody snow. If you climb to the top on a clear day you can see both the Issic and the bloody Pontic Sea. Some call the Issic sea the Mediterranean and the Pontic the Black Sea. It's all bloody Greek if you ask me.
   I run a little stall selling wood and there's a bloody big forest around Mt Argaios so I make a decent bloody living. Mazaka is nice but there's not a lot of bloody water. They say it was a bloody stupid place to have built a city here in the first place, but the king liked it because there was a lot of bloody timber and stone. The trouble is it's surrounded by desert, so essentials have to be brought in from quite a long way away. Mazaka don't have any walls around it, because they say it's never been a target for invaders what with it being in the middle of fucking nowhere. Like I say, the fields are barren and uncultivated and pretty bloody useless but the sand is good for mortar and that's bloody useful! The ground is rocky so you don't get many tent dwellers about which is a shame as I think camping is a nice cheap alternative to having to fork out for a fucking hotel up in Sinope. Pay through the nose you do in Sinope! It does have a nice branch of Woolworths though, where my new bird got some pick n' mix. She's from Tyana in the district of Tyanitis. She cooks and cleans and don't shut up!
   The plains outside the city are dry and volcanic and there are larva pits everywhere, which are bloody dangerous. If you don't keep your mincers peeled you can fall down one and you ain't gonna catch a cold! There's a lot of marshes too and the gases drift over the larva pits and ignite a proper little firework display, but not always in bloody November!! The gas from the marsh sometimes permeates into the city and it don't arf pen and ink in the summer. Only last week old Maninnikos was walking a big herd of cattle and one of his cows fell into some larva and the smell of roast beef attracted a pack of dogs and a lion. He beat them off with a scythe as he's handy is old Maninnikos. That fucking lion scratched him a bit though, he had to visit A&E in Herakleion.
   Last year King Ariarathes, I call him Hairyarse, decided it would be a good idea to dam the Melas river thus turning the plains into a lake. He even went as far as building little islands in the lake because he was off his bloody rocker! The dam broke causing a great deal of devastation. Several villages in Cappadocia ended up being washed down the Euphrates river towards Babylon and the villages belonged to a mob called the Galatians, who were said to be the ancestors of the French! Not a lot of people know that. Anyway, because of that, old King Hairyarse had to pay 300,000 bob in damages to the Galatians by order of the Roman senate. So what does he do, he goes and dams another river and the same thing bloody happens, this time he destroys Mallos, a lovely old town, and the Romans fine him a second time. Seems the fucker never gives up. Mad as a box of frogs. Up on the Pontic coast is the upmarket city of Sinope and they're all a bunch of merchant bankers. Bootos says the city is built of slabs made from crystal and onyx but I say Bootos is talking cobblers cos when I was there I only saw bloody marble!! They use carved stone for the handles of their daggers and they bloody well need 'em cos there's a lot of cunts in Sinope. Well nice talking to ya, now fuck off, my tea's getting cold!