Fallen Eagle

Chapter 85: Let us play a little game

The sun had long since passed its zenith, dragging its pale fire across the clouded sky with an imperious indifference to the men labouring below. Its glare washed the camp in a punishing white-gold, bright enough to half-conceal the dark bank of clouds massing on the horizon. Rain was coming. One could feel it in the heaviness of the air, though for now the heat still held the earth in a suffocating grip.Inside the ivory tent, the atmosphere was worse.

The air hung stale and damp beneath the cloth. Perfumes and scented powders had been scattered generously through the space, but they did nothing to dispel the oppressive heat. If anything, they made it worse. Sweetness curdled into musk, clinging to the throat and breaking men’s concentration.

“As we have stated before, a customs due of merely twelve years is far too little.” Camillo spoke in a smooth, measured tone, maintaining a veneer of civility that was utterly at odds with the outrageous demands he uttered. “And granting your merchants favoured status is not something open to discussion. It will not happen.” Beads of sweat rolled down his cheek, tracing glistening paths over flushed skin, yet he made no move to wipe them away. He kept his eyes fixed on the Theodorans across from him, unblinking, as if sheer force of gaze might press them into yielding.

“And the redrawing of the borders east of Funa is likewise a non-starter on our side.” Silvanus, by contrast, could not quite keep the edge of exasperation from his voice. “We will not surrender sovereign land. It is not enough to retain the fortress. We will retain authority over the outlying settlements as well.”

He ran a hand through his usually immaculate hair and frowned when it came away damp. He tried to smooth it back into place, though the effort was hopeless in this humidity.

“We have already made significant concessions by lowering the wine tariffs to a flat two hundred gold asper per botta,” Camillo countered, speaking as though he were offering some grand sacrifice rather than little more than a polished version of the predatory terms Genoese merchants had long since exercised upon the Principality. “We can instead-”

“Enough.”

The single word cut through the tent with such force that Camillo fell silent at once. Every eye turned toward the Genoese consul.

His gaze was glacial, his heavy face unreadable. He had indulged this first true round of proposals, listened with the careful stillness of a man weighing whether any profit lay hidden beneath the posturing, but it was clear now that he had found nothing worth the trouble.

“We will not reach an agreement today,” he said. “We resume talks in two days.”

His eyes moved over the assembled Theodoran officers with cool, almost bored appraisal. Further discussion would yield nothing except more stubbornness and wasted time.

Unlike every other noble gathered in the tent, he didn’t show the clear tracks of sweat on his face. One of the servants, a raven-haired woman with sun-warmed skin and striking, composed beauty, stepped forward the moment he paused. With a practiced hand she dabbed delicately at the tiny droplets beginning to gather on his face.

Theodorus watched her more closely.

There was something in the shape of her features, the cast of her eyes and cheekbones, that marked her as Tatar or perhaps from farther east still. Only when she bent did he notice the narrow collar resting at the base of her throat.

His eyes widened.

A slave.

Once seen, it became impossible not to notice the others. The servants nearby moved with the same careful economy, heads lowered, posture trained into perfect subservience. As though the simple act of meeting a lord’s eyes was insolence.

The Italian delegation rose then with all the polished propriety of men utterly certain of both their authority and their right to wield it.

“,” Camillo said, offering a slight nod as the delegation withdrew, most of them not bothering to spare the Theodoran officers more than the briefest glance.

“,” Silvanus returned, answering with a nod of his own.

The Theodoran cadre rose as well, though more stiffly, their garments clinging unpleasantly to their backs. The Doux waited until the Genoese had fully vacated the tent before moving to lead his own men out, refusing even the appearance of departing in the Genoese’s wake.

Theodorus paid those subtle games no mind. A pit had begun to form low in his stomach, deepening with every passing moment.

Indebted servitude was rare in the Principality. Part of that came from the fact that Theodoran nobles were poor. Most could scarcely maintain their households, much less fill them with human property.

Since his reincarnation, he had encountered very few slaves at all.

But Caffa was a major artery in the slave trade of the eastern steppe. More than that, before the discovery of the Americas and the rise of the Transatlantic slave trade, it was the single most important gateway through which enslaved labour passed into Europe. He knew that.

But dry, academic knowledge, and the reality of it were two separate things.

The collar at the woman’s throat seemed to linger before his eyes even after he looked away. Not because it was elaborate, nor especially cruel in appearance, but because of how ordinary it seemed to everyone else. That, more than anything, unsettled him. The ease of it.

A firm tap on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie.

“Theodorus,” Silvanus said quietly, giving a slight nod toward the entrance, where the Doux and Poseidippus had slowed to look back at him.

“Ah. Apologies.” Theodorus straightened at once, smoothing the cuffs at his wrists, trying to recover his composure. He rose too quickly, nearly toppling the stool he sat upon.

As he turned to leave, he inclined his head in a shallow bow of thanks toward the servant - no, the slave - who was already kneeling to wipe down the seat he had occupied.

Silvanus cast him a brief, puzzled look, but said nothing.

. . .

“The negotiations will no doubt be long,” Poseidippus said once they were mounted and cantering away from the neutral ground, his gaze never ceasing its slow sweep across the surrounding terrain.

Outside the tent’s periphery, everything was fair game, and the open war between both sides remained. “And if my dealings with those conniving sons of bitches are anything to go by, they will be full of pitfalls and traps as well.”

What passed for a stern, sombre tone in another man was open derision for the Papadopoulos noble.

“That is a tactic,” the Doux said, his voice thoughtful. “Pressure on the battlefield becomes leverage at the negotiation table. Our ability to withstand Genoese harassment will prove just as essential to securing a worthwhile peace as anything we say in those talks.”

He did not turn his head toward the Genoese camp, nor did he allow himself any outward sign of concern to break through his composure, but Theodorus caught the brief glance he had out of the corner of his eyes toward the distant standards of the Italian delegation.

“Then what is the plan?” Captain Athanasios asked. “If we remain still and only answer their initiatives we make ourselves predictable and risk being left flat-footed.”

Silence followed for a while as they rode back to camp. It sat awkwardly between them, broken only by hoofbeats and the usual noise of the camp ahead.

Theodorus barely noticed the parting words once they returned. The officers split off at once, not to rest, but to get back to the constant work of keeping the camp running.

Orders needed changing, watches had to be assigned, supplies counted, foragers accounted for. At least the negotiations had brought one small benefit: while the talks continued, the fighting paused, which meant the Theodorans could send out larger foraging parties with lighter escorts than usual.

“What is wrong?” Silvanus asked almost immediately, pulling alongside him once the others were far enough ahead not to hear.

“What do you mean?” Theodorus asked, keeping his expression flat.

Silvanus gave him a look that made it clear the act was pointless.

“You went quiet near the end of the talks. And on the ride back you hardly spoke.” He led Theodorus toward their usual place by the inner wooden palisade, where they could look out over the scarred ground beyond their walls. “And when Athanasios asked what we should do next, not a single stroke of genius came from you.” Silvanus had a singular talent for producing smiles that were both half-teasing, and half-concerned.

“I did not realize I was expected to keep miracles on me at all times as if playing cards in my back pocket.” Theodorus’s mouth widened into a bitter smile. “The enemy have made no serious mistakes so far. That leaves us reacting to them, and there is very little we can try that would not be dangerous, if not outright suicidal, given the difference in our numbers.”

“You should know better by now.” Silvanus smiled again, clearly trying to lighten the mood and draw him out.

Theodorus’s first instinct was to brush him off. To tell him to mind his own business. Most men of this age did not dwell on or consider slavery an abhorrent practice, it was simply part of normal life. A terrible thing that could happen to anyone. But Theodorus was not from this age. And this was one of the few crimes he could not just sweep under the rug.

He had too much control over himself to snap like a child, and too little energy left for pretending. So he let out a slow breath instead.

“I did not realize the Genoese servants were slaves,” he said. “I admit the sight of it unsettled me. To see people bought and sold so casually, and likely tortured and worked to death.”

Truth, carefully framed, was the best option in this scenario. He had achieved remarkable success with lies, omissions of fact, and truths molded with care, but there was always a cost to lying to the people closest to him, and he was tired of paying it when he did not have to.

Silvanus studied him for a moment. At first he looked puzzled. Then his expression softened.

“Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

Theodorus almost laughed at the irony of his statement, but through a surge of will did not react.

“Slavery is abhorrent,” Silvanus said. “It is the practice of lesser men.”

Theodorus nearly did a double take at that. In his understanding of medieval life from his studies, slavery had usually been treated as part of life, no more questioned than hunger or bad weather. But Silvanus spoke of it without hesitation, as though the matter needed no debate at all.

The knight put an arm around his shoulders in an easy, familiar gesture. When he spoke again, there was a tiredness in his voice that reminded Theodorus of an older soldier trying to explain the world to someone younger.

“God commands us to love our neighbours. To enslave other men, or worse, fellow Christians, is a stain on the soul.” Silvanus crossed himself, and Theodorus realized that, unlike later catholic practices, the Orthodox church looked down and chastised slavery. “But that is the way of the world. We cannot stop the sins of others when we do not have the power to do so. No matter how much evil we see. No matter how much we wish we could stop it.”

He said the last part more quietly. And in his eyes, Theodorus saw that same sadness he had noticed before, though never fully understood. It did not look like abstract piety. It looked like memory.

A suspicion he had carried for weeks rose to his lips before he could stop it.

“Where were you knighted, Sir Silvanus? I know knights are only avowed in the western kingdoms.”

The question changed his expression at once. It was like touching an old wound. For all his charm and warmth, there were parts of his past Silvanus kept tightly guarded.

“Far away, my friend. Far away.” His voice was quiet. “You might think it an honor to be granted the title of Sir, but becoming a knight was one of the most shameful moments of my life.”

Theodorus thought about pressing more, but knew better than to push. There was enough pain in his tone that he did not want to unearth what lay beneath.

So they stood in silence and looked out over the land before them, already torn apart by the bloody work of siege warfare. Earthworks cut through the ground. Broken timber, ash, mud, and shattered stone lay scattered everywhere.

This was the truth of the kind of war bards liked to turn into glory in tavern songs. From a distance it became legend. Up close it was dirt, exhaustion, and men learning how much suffering a single patch of land could bear.

The deafening blasts of earth-shaking force had become so common that Christos could almost ignore them during the day. Almost. But that did not make them any less of a bastard to sleep through before dawn. No matter how much wool he shoved into his ears, no matter how loudly the men on the walls sang their chants and marching songs, none of it meant much when the canons hit hard enough that you could feel the tremor of it through the ground and into your bones.

So Christos rose that morning like a man dragged from the grave.

He shoved through the tent flaps and stumbled into the pale light of dawn, making for the small firepit near the cluster of tents that housed his new squad. One of the men was already there, crouched by the embers and coaxing nettle and twig into a weak little flame. He looked weathered even by camp standards. Soot streaked his face. His skin had the dark, baked colour of a man who had spent too many seasons under the sun, and his back held the slight stoop of someone long used to breaking it for another noble’s gain.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” the man said, shifting the pot of water that hung over the fire.

Christos only grunted. He did not even bother turning to face him at first, only stretched his shoulders and neck with a wince, trying to bully his body into wakefulness.

“What crawled up your arse?” Giannis spat onto the dirt. He was a farmer through and through, and like most men who had spent their lives among neighbours and kin, he put odd value on small courtesies such as morning greetings. And took issue if you didn’t follow the same creed.

“Morning,” Christos muttered at last, voice rough with sleep, not bothering to mute the yawn that pushed through.

“Ah, like a bawling sheep screaming itself hoarse.” Giannis mimed a contented sigh. “You truly are music to my ears,” he deadpanned.

Christos ignored him. “Still boiling water, Giannis?”

“Aye.” The man’s face darkened at once. “At this point I’m thinkin’ the sergeant’s just havin’ a laugh.”

In each ten-man squad, one poor bastard had to see to the boiling and the cooking. It had fallen to Giannis because, by the low standards of campaigning men, he was the best cook among them. Which mostly meant the food he made did not taste like absolute shit. The only man who had ever managed to turn stale grain and a few scraps of vegetables into something halfway decent had been Agapios.

Christos’s jaw tightened at the thought.

“Maybe if you cleaned yourself proper, you wouldn’t still be the one hauling fresh water and changing buckets for the latrine line,” he said.

It was the sort of menial punishment the higher-ups liked to hand out to the filthiest soldiers, in hopes they might finally learn to wash their hands before eating and not spend half the season shitting themselves sick.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Giannis looked up sharply. “What’re you on about? I’ve been followin’ that stupid order. Wash before meals, wash before cookin’, wash after every damned thing, like I’m some little princeling scared of dirt.”

He held up his hands for proof. Beneath the calluses, cracks, and old scars, they were indeed clean. That only made the rest of him stand out more. His face was still streaked with grime, and there was dirt worked into the folds of his neck.

Christos snorted. “Aye. Your hands are clean. Shame the rest of you still looks dug out of a ditch.”

Giannis barked a laugh. “What, you want me bathin’ naked in the river with the rest of those fools?” He gave Christos a sidelong look and grinned, all yellow teeth and gritty challenge. “You into men or somethin’?”

“I’m just tired of looking at your ugly mug.” Christos shook his head, “And I don’t mean just bathing.” He bared his teeth and mimed Giannis’s foul breath with an exaggerated gag.

“Oh, sod off.”

Giannis flicked a spoonful of boiling water at him. Christos dodged a heartbeat too late and yelped when the scalding droplets struck his arm.

“Why, you-” He took two menacing steps forward, only to stop when Giannis raised the spoon again like a weapon. Christos narrowed his eyes, briefly reconsidering whether this battle was worth fighting before he had properly woken.

His attention broke away when the flap of their tent stirred and Kratos forced himself out into the morning light, bleary-eyed and half-dead. He glared at the sun as if it had personally wronged him.

“Morning, sunshine,” Giannis called from the fire, sounding far too pleased with his stupid joke. The only joy he seemed to get from his miserable duty was tormenting whichever poor bastard had slept worst.

Kratos turned that raw, waking fury on the farmer. “Shut the fuck up.”

Christos snorted.

Kratos was not what anyone could call a morning person. Not remotely. Not like Agape was.

The thought came and passed with the small, familiar ache it always left behind. Was she alright behind those walls? Or had disease eaten her up and that pup of hers as well?

Kratos trudged past Giannis toward the latrine line without another word, and Christos fell into step beside him. With his longer stride, every one of his paces matched nearly two of Kratos’s.

“Where’re we off to?” Kratos asked at last, eyeing him from the corner of one eye. God, he had an ugly face when he was tired. Then again, he had an ugly face when he was awake too.

“Northern forest,” Christos said. “Same spot.”

“Babysitting foragers again?” Kratos muttered darkly as they wove through the maze of tents and guy ropes. What had once been a neat lane through camp had already dissolved into its usual jumble. Sergeants were shouting from every direction, driving men to rearrange things back into order and cursing those too lazy or too stupid to pitch their tents straight.

“Would you rather be on sentry duty and have to stretch that voice of yours?” Christos said with a grin.

Kratos shot him a murderous look. His voice was truly awful, thin and cracked in all the wrong places, and the others mocked him for it whenever they had the chance.

“Maybe I would,” he said. “You lot seem to enjoy hearing it. You talk about it often enough.”

There was a mean little smile on his face when he said it, and Christos found he didn’t want to challenge him on that.

“I’ll tell you what I’d rather.” Christos gestured ahead as they neared the thickening smell of heat, dung, and piss. Beyond the row of rough wooden latrines stood the great mound of earth they had dug up for the pit. “I’d rather cover that whole damned hole by myself than listen to you sing for one minute.”

“Sod off.” Kratos shoved him sideways toward the nearest vacant latrine.

Christos laughed under his breath and thanked the higher-ups, not for the first time, for having the sense to order a truly massive pit dug for the camp’s waste. It meant they could last weeks longer before every step through camp reeked of shit, and besides, the displaced earth had served well enough in the earthworks. The pit had to be covered each day, but that was a small price to pay. Better that than smelling Kratos’s arse every time he went to relieve himself.

. . .

The crossings over the river had become a different kind of trial from those first cautious forays. In the beginning, every man had taken his time, testing each step against the pull of the current and leaning hard on the guide rope strung across the water. Now there was no such luxury. They half-ran through the shallows, boots slipping on stone, bodies pitched forward, dragging themselves by the rope as much as by their own strength.

“Move quick, or our Italian friends’ll put a stone through your face,” Nikos called from the rear of the line.

The half-Tatar sergeant did not bother dressing the warning up. Getting struck by cannon fire during a crossing was no distant fear. It was a real enough possibility that the forays were timed between shots, every man listening for the lull and praying it would hold long enough to reach the opposite bank.

As though summoned by the thought, an explosion tore into the water off the right side of their line.

The stone crashed down with such force that the sound seemed to split the air apart. Spray erupted high enough to drench the nearest men, and the shock of it broke their footing all along the rope. Curses rang out as several lost their balance and went stumbling sideways into the river.

“Grab on!”

Christos caught one man by the arm with his right hand while his left clenched the rope so hard his knuckles went white. The current was not murderous, but it was strong enough to drag a panicked man downstream if he lost his footing badly enough, and Christos had no wish to drown himself like a fool.

“Move!” Nikos roared.

They lurched forward again in a confusion of splashing legs and ragged breath. Men hauled themselves along with both hands when they had to, boots scraping uselessly over slick stones beneath the water. One soldier slipped to his knees and came up sputtering. Another nearly dragged the man behind him down before both managed to right themselves.

By the time they reached the far bank, they were shivering not only from the cold bite of the river but from the shock of how close the shot had come. Some bent double with hands on their thighs, coughing water and curses into the dirt. Others stood rigid, breathing hard, eyes fixed back across the river as if half-expecting the next stone to come screaming after them already.

Christos dragged himself up onto the bank with water streaming from his clothes and looked back just in time to see Nikos staring across the river with a narrowed, thoughtful expression.

“Hm. The Genoese have started staggering the shots,” the sergeant muttered.

“What does that mean for us?” Christos asked, curiosity getting the better of it.

Nikos turned his head toward him. “It means they’ll likely keep one cannon ready to fire every time we try a crossing.”

Christos saw more than a few men swallow at that. The thought of facing the river was bad enough. Facing it while knowing a gun might be waiting each time they stepped into the water was worse.

Nikos did not leave them long with their thoughts.

“It’ll be another hour before they can fire again!” he barked, voice cutting through the lingering shock like a whip. “Move out!”

The men scattered into their assigned directions with the ease of hard practice. Whatever fear still clung to them had to be carried on the move. Christos fell in beside Kratos, the two of them well accustomed by now to the forest, to the foragers, and to the harassment that came with escorting them.

“We’re on the west side,” Christos called, angling his pace at once as they moved to join the group assigned to that flank.

“We’re switching again?” Kratos asked.

“Looks like it.” Christos eyed the woods, ready to spring on a moment’s notice. “The horsed bastards changed sides again. Command’s got the scouts climbing trees each dawn now, trying to spot where they’ve made camp before we head out.”

They fell in beside two other grim-faced militiamen from the original crown levies, men who no longer wasted breath on talk before entering the trees.

Kratos grunted but did not complain further. He understood the reason well enough. Before command had begun adjusting to the direction from which the Italians were expected to strike, the foraging parties had bled men at a steady rate. Too many groups had been caught light on the side that mattered. Now they shifted strength where the danger was greatest, sending four men instead of two to the flank most likely to be tested. It had made all the difference. Since then, casualties had thinned to a trickle.

Still, that did not make the forest ahead look any friendlier.

. . .

The forest was quiet.

Too quiet.

There had been other days when the horsemen did not fall upon Christos’s own group, but he’d never been on a foraging expedition where he had not, sooner or later, been sent running to reinforce another squad. The Italians always showed themselves somewhere. If they could not cut men down outright, they at least liked to feign a charge and scatter the foragers, forcing them to drop their supplies onto the ground.

Christos felt that was the point of it as much as the killing. To make every trip into the trees feel hunted, to wear on them.

Each day the foragers had to push farther from camp than the last. The easy pickings had long since been stripped bare. Good firewood, edible greens, anything worth hauling back, all of it lay deeper now, in less familiar stretches of forest.

So where were the enemy?

“Where the hell are they?” Kratos muttered under his breath, voicing the same thought.

“Don’t jinx it,” one of the foragers grumbled back, shifting the weight of his bundle. “Just be glad. We got our load. Let’s get the hell out before someone comes riding us down.”

No one argued with that. Men had already begun to angle themselves for the return when Kratos stopped short and tilted his head.

“Do you hear that?”

“Come on, Kratos,” Christos said, already half-turning.

Kratos did not move. His brow furrowed. “It sounds like… hammering.”

There was something uncertain in his voice, as though he could not quite believe what he was hearing himself.

“You’re imagining things,” Christos tried to rein him back.

But Kratos was already moving off through the undergrowth.

“Damn him,” Christos muttered, and went after him.

At first he heard nothing except the ordinary sounds of the forest, but as they pushed farther from the others, a different noise began to find its way through the stillness. Soft, rhythmic thuds. Not loud. Not close. Yet too regular to be mistaken for anything natural.

Kratos slowed. Christos did the same without needing a word. Both of them understood at once what the other was thinking.

If something was being built ahead, then the enemy might be just beyond the next screen of trees.

They moved more carefully then, easing through the brush until they found a thick growth of shrubs overlooking a distant clearing. Christos sank down beside Kratos and peered through the leaves.

“It can’t be,” Kratos whispered.

Christos’s breath hitched in his lungs, eyes wide like a deer’s. He could not believe what he was seeing.

“The bastards have given up trying to hit our front banked palisade,” Athanasios said grimly as the latest Genoese barrage thundered toward the far encampment across the river.

The shots came in with a howl that seemed to tear the air open. Two stones screamed overhead and vanished into the earth beyond in plumes of dirt and splashes of water. The third struck true.

With a cracking roar, the cannonball smashed into the palisade and burst a jagged hole straight through the timber wall. Wood exploded inward in a spray of splinters and shattered stakes. Men nearby threw themselves flat or stumbled back from the breach, some shouting warnings, others simply staring for half a stunned second at the gap now punched through what had, until that moment, passed for shelter.

The timing was no accident. The foraging parties were even now beginning to return in force, splashing across the river as quickly as they dared so as not to be caught by a stray shot. The cannonade barrage, Theodorus realised, was meant as much for their minds as for the wood itself. The Genoese commanders were not merely battering fortifications. They were proving that nowhere near the river was safe, not even the rear camp men had begun to think of as comparatively secure.

His eyes narrowed as he watched the smoke drift.

The enemy were making ruthless use of their guns. That much was plain enough.

They had never reinforced that smaller palisade with earth. Until the Genoese had raised their own earthen rampart to improve their angle of fire, hitting the far bank with any consistency had been little more than a distant possibility. No one had thought it worth the labour to prepare against what had seemed, then, almost a fantasy.

Now that oversight threatened to cost them dearly.

“They are firing at maximum range,” Theodorus said, studying the line of impact with cool appraisal. “They will not be very accurate from that distance.”

“They do not need to be,” Athanasios countered. “They only need a small breach to order an assault.”

That was true enough.

Theodorus watched men already rushing toward the damaged section, some carrying spare timber, others only their own bodies and whatever tools they had close to hand. A breach made by shot could become a road for infantry in very little time if left unattended, especially when fear did half the work for the attackers.

“We need to pack the breach with earth.” Theodorus said aloud, gathering the men’s attention.

“We can raise an earthen ramp behind our side of the palisade,” Silvanus said, turning the notion over, understanding Theodorus’s reasoning in an instant. “It will swallow their shots well enough. It doesn’t need to be elegant. If the bank is thick enough, they will spend more stone and powder than the damage is worth.”

He glanced toward Theodorus, who answered him with a grin, pleased to see Silvanus, after many after-hours conversations, start to think along the same lines.

Despite being the senior officer, Silvanus possessed a humility that meant he did not fear learning from younger men. That quality alone had made him more dangerous than most.

“We patch it tonight,” Poseidippus declared. “Before the Genoese can turn those guns upon us again.”

“The men are already beginning to feel the strain of the enemy’s trombas, despite all our efforts,” Silvanus cautioned, weariness roughening the edges of his voice. These days, exchanges between him and Poseidippus increasingly sounded less like counsel among allies and more and more frequent. “Having them spend the night hauling and shovelling earth will do little for morale.”

“They can rest the day after,” Poseidippus said, dismissing the concern with a flick of impatience.

Theodorus let the argument drift past him and looked instead toward the Doux, who stood in silence staring at the rear encampment across the river.

“Sir?” he asked quietly.

The commander did not look at him. “They have shifted their attention from our front to our rear,” he said at last, his voice low and heavy. “In some ways, that is far more troubling.”

“Commanders!”

A messenger came stumbling toward them, breathless enough that the word tore out of him half-broken. The discussion around the breach fell still at once.

“Report,” the Doux barked, already tense, as though some part of him had been waiting for precisely this.

“The foraging party reports a construction being built in the heart of the southern forest.”

“A construction?” Athanasios repeated, utterly confused.

“A palisade,” the messenger explained. “They are building a fort south of our position.”

The shock that passed through the officers was almost physical.

“That is-” Silvanus began.

“A disaster,” Poseidippus cut in flatly. “They mean to establish a permanent fortification to cut us off from our supply line to Kalamita.”

The mood darkened at once. The idea was bolder than any of them had anticipated. To begin another fortification while already engaged in a siege was no small undertaking. It risked stretching Genoese strength thin, exposing labourers and troops alike. But if the work were allowed to stand, the consequences could be ruinous. The Theodorans had endured much already and survived mostly whole, but to let themselves be slowly ringed in and strangled from the rear would turn hardship into catastrophe.

Theodorus felt his eyes drawn northward, toward the unseen heart of the enemy camp.

The earthen rampart. The calculated use of artillery, not only to destroy fortifications, but to wear at them psychologically. The relentless cavalry harassment of the foragers, the masterful biological and psychological warfare. And now this, a new fortification meant to tighten the noose.

Whose mind was behind it?

There was patience here, and a sort of mind that understood how to combine physical pressure with fear, inconvenience with spectacle, and always in ways that forced reaction rather than allowed initiative.

Theodorus drew a slow breath and steadied himself, looking towards the Italian camp with silvery steel eyes.

The war had just become more dangerous.

And if he meant to come out of it alive, he would have to be sharper than their hidden foe.

The wind touched his cheeks with a softness almost tender, stirring his hair as lightly as it stirred the canopy below.

Up here, removed from the stale murmur of intrigue and the false courtesies of men willing to kill for a handful of silver and call it honour, was the only place Aniballe ever felt something like peace. The world made more sense at a height. Men became smaller. Their ambitions quieter. Their vanities less convincing.

Only here could he do what he did best.

Think.

“What are you doing, Aniballe?” came a raspy voice from below.

He glanced down through the branches and found Baccio standing at the foot of the tree, broad as ever, his weathered face tipped upward in mild irritation.

“Thinking,” Aniballe replied, accompanying the answer with an easy smile, warm enough to be disarming.

“Is that your attempt at seeming normal?” Baccio asked.

He sounded amused, though with Baccio that feeling lived in subtleties. His face rarely changed enough to announce anything plainly. A lesser man might have mistaken him for perpetually dour. But Aniballe had spent enough years under his teacher’s eye to know the small variations in his mood and its minute tells.

Aniballe nodded. “Did it not work?” he asked, keeping the smile in place a moment longer just in case.

“It is too wide,” Baccio said. “And the proper response in such a moment is not joy, but embarrassment.”

The smile vanished from Aniballe’s face at once. A faint frown took its place. He found the whole business of social expression exhausting. Men wrapped meaning in layers of performance, half-truth, and ritual until even the simplest feeling had to be acted out before it could be understood. Why they could not simply say what they meant remained, to him, one of the more tedious mysteries of human society.

“I had thought you said you ordered men to climb the trees,” Baccio continued, lifting his left eyebrow while the right remained still, “Not that you climbed them yourself.” It was a fascinating peculiarity Aniballe had noticed emerged whenever he was questioning one of Aniballe’s supposed absurdities.

“When I gave the order, they told me they were not monkeys,” Aniballe said. Irritation sharpened his voice. “So I did it myself.”

Baccio absorbed this without visible surprise, probably now realizing why Aniballe had requested that his whole squad was to be in charge of the entire army’s latrine duty until the end of the campaign.

“Are you coming down?” he asked after a moment. “They are holding another strategy meeting.”

Aniballe’s expression tightened at once, distaste gathering plainly.

“Are they truly so unbearable for you?” the older man asked, sighing.

“The men in that tent are apes who know nothing of war,” Aniballe said, and once he began, the words came with increasing force. “They speak of coin, pride, precedence, slights, and petty vanities as though such things were strategy.” This hatred was not something he shared casually. He was a poor conversationalist, but he knew enough not to shout his hatred for the magnificos to the high heavens. “Each believes himself wiser than the rest because he has lived longer, shouted louder, or purchased more men. They are imbeciles in silk.”

“It is still important that you attend,” Baccio said, unaffected by the outburst, but not contradicting him.

He had always pushed Aniballe toward participation all the same, toward conversation, toward the tiresome exercise of enduring other people. He called it practice, as if learning to withstand fools were a discipline like any other.

Aniballe did not move from his place among the higher branches. He remained still, gaze fixed on the enemy camp in the distance.

“I need to see how they react to the little surprise I have placed behind them,” he said.

“You think they will react? You know they are penned in. There is little they can do.”

“Something will come.” Aniballe state. He said it with such certainty that Baccio fell silent.

For a few moments only the wind moved between them, hissing softly through leaves and stirring the branches beneath Aniballe’s boots. Baccio wanted to know more, he could tell.

“Their methods…” Aniballe said at last, more quietly now. “I have never seen anything like them.” There was a strange brightness in his voice, a kind of restrained exhilaration. “The men we captured say they boil their water, then pass it through sand and charcoal. They believe it cleanses the taint from it.” He almost laughed at the wonder of it. “And the secret of their walls, they say, is dirt. Dirt!”

This time he did laugh, though softly, the sound more astonished than mocking.

They had thwarted him again and again, but not by relying on the old, stale formulas every competent commander knew by rote. Not with the same dry repertory of siegecraft and attrition. They adapted. They invented. They reached for solutions from angles he had not anticipated, and in doing so they had made themselves interesting in a way no enemy had managed in a long while.

Baccio seemed to understand that there was no pulling him down just yet. Aniballe needed the height. Needed the distance. Needed to study the shape of the men across from him as one might study the contours of an unseen beast moving beneath dark water. That was the only way to break them.

“Be back before dark,” Baccio said.

It was not a request.

Aniballe knew better than to test the limits of that tone. Not because lateness was some grave offense, but because Baccio had decided to rein in Aniballe. That was the nature of the understanding between them.

He did not turn to watch the older man go. He remained there, unblinking, his attention fixed on the enemy camp.

Somewhere beyond those walls and trenches was a mind that did not move like other minds. Someone who looked at the world and found answers where other men saw only custom. Someone capable not merely of resisting him, but of forcing him to think harder, to reach farther, to sharpen himself against a worthy edge.

The thought stirred something in him that felt too bright to be called simple excitement and too cold to be called fear.

He had wanted this for a very long time.

At last, in the privacy of the leaves and the wind, he let the thought take shape.

So. There you are.

Not a brute in armour. Not another merchant captain dressing greed in the language of necessity. Someone else. Someone who sees patterns where others see walls. Someone who knows that war is not won by strength alone, but by changing the paradigm - the battlefield upon which it is fought.

That is rare. Rare enough to be precious.

I want to see who you truly are, my friend.

I want to see whether you can keep pace once I stop treating you like the others.

I want to see which of us understands the board better when all the easy pieces have been stripped away.

Let us play a little game, shall we?