Fallen Eagle

Chapter 86: A Slow Pull That Tired Unto Death

“Get the warhammers into the damn gap!” Nikos bellowed through the rain and the hiss of crossbow bolts.Christos shoved the man beside him forward and into the fresh breach the Genoese cannons had opened yesterday. They had spent the night hauling earth against the palisade, trying to turn timber into something thicker, something that could swallow iron and stone instead of splintering under it, but one night had not been enough. The wall still looked wounded, the new-packed dirt too thin in places, the broken sections too obvious to any enemy with eyes.

The Italians had seen them working at first light and chosen their moment well. Instead of waiting for another day of bombardment, they came now, in the rain, while the repairs were half-done and the ground underfoot already turning to mud.

“Hyeaaagh!” Christos roared as he reached the fighting and swung his glaive in a hard arc at the first man trying to force his way through.

The blow landed cleanly on the Italian’s head and did absolutely nothing.

The sound rang back at him, metal on metal, and for a split second Christos could only stare. The polished helmet was dented no more than a cooking bowl might be from a spoon. Christos had seen rich armour before, on lords and captains, but not like this. Not this smooth, smothering wall of impenetrable iron. What was worse was that the metal men seemed no worse for wear when it came to speed despite wearing a goddamned fortress on themselves.

The knight marked him at once because for his size, or maybe because there was no room to reach anyone else, and stabbed with his sword. Kratos caught it on his raised shield, covering Christos’s flank - their teamwork much improved from the first days they’d been bunched together - and the blade skidded away with a shriek.

Inside the breach, the fight had collapsed into a butcher’s crush. Spears were too long to work properly. Men could barely draw back their arms, let alone thrust with force. And when they did land a hit, the Italians kept coming. Christos saw one of them take three spearpoints that would have gutted a lighter-armoured man, then drive his own sword through a militiaman’s chest before anyone could stop him.

The breach was narrow enough that only two men could pass besides one another, and the pikes braced behind them kept the enemy from flooding through altogether, but it was still slipping. Crossbow bolts struck and skipped, or bit shallowly unless they found a face, an armpit, a gap at the throat.

“We’re losing ground!” Kratos shouted, knocking aside another murderous cut.

Christos saw it too. The line was bowing inward. One more push and the Italians would have room to widen the hole with bodies.

He raised the glaive high in an obvious massive overhand strike, aiming straight at the knight in front of him. The Italian lifted his sword to meet it, bracing himself for what was sure to be a crushing blow, only for Christos to change the motion halfway through, dragging the blade off line and wrenching the shaft upward with both hands. The iron-shod butt came up from below and slammed into the knight’s helmet.

This time the metal gave, the front of his visor denting inwards.

The man dropped in a heap, not dead, but stunned and helpless. Four spearmen were on him at once, jabbing into the joints of his armour, under the arm, at the neck, behind the knee, until he stopped moving.

Kratos turned and stared at Christos, eyes wide with disbelief.

“Captain said blunt force works well,” Christos said flatly, already stepping toward the next man trying to force his way in.

Kratos shook his head once, wordless, whether at the advice or the madness of the way Christos had applied it. Then he raised his shield again as another Italian came through the rain. They were still going at full strength it seemed.

That was when the warhammer group charged into the fighting like a rampaging bull.

What remained of the Royal Guard had been held back as a reserve, one of the few trained corps left after the ambush that had gutted them while they killed scores of enemy mercenaries in return. They came forward now in small squads, pushing through the churned mud with the murderousness of men who had already lost much in this war, and looked eager to punish the enemy for it.

Each carried a warhammer instead of a spear. It was a cruel, compact thing made for breaking men inside their iron shells. One face was a heavy square of steel for smashing. The other narrowed into a beak, thick at the base and vicious at the tip, for punching into joins and weak points.

Christos had not understood before why the captains had wanted a squad of them so badly after seeing the metal men the Italians fielded.

Then he saw them work.

They did not fight like the militia, with long, desperate thrusts and wild chops meant to keep an enemy back. They got in close, almost chest to chest, behind raised shields and under the cover of the press, and struck short, brutal blows. Not at the breastplate, not where the armour was thickest, but at the places men had to bend if they wanted to move at all.

When there was no gap to find, they hammered the helmets and gauntlets instead, not always killing with one strike but ruining balance, numbing limbs, turning a dangerous man into a stumbling one.

To Christos, who had spent the last stretch of the battle feeling as if he were hitting church bells with a farm tool, it looked almost miraculous. The Italians were still terrifying up close, still sheathed in enough metal to turn aside most blows, but the warhammers gave that metal an answer. The armour no longer seemed invincible. It seemed cumbersome, expensive, and suddenly full of seams.

The rain helped too.

It ran off helmets and down visors and turned the breach into slick clay. The armoured Italians had come on like iron saints at first, unstoppable and gleaming even under the clouds, but now their footing betrayed them, sabatons slipping in the mud. Men who might have kept their feet on dry ground lurched when shoved, and once they went down the weight of their harness worked against them.

Christos saw one knight fall to a knee, try to rise, then take a hammer blow to the side of the helm that sent him sprawling hard enough for three men to bury spearpoints into the gaps of his armour before he could recover.

The countercharge led by the relief squads finally stemmed the tide.

The Italians began to fall in earnest then, not just to one thing but to all of it together. The close-range crossbow bolts that were capable of punching through if aimed right, the heavy hammers made for cracking plate, the mud that stole their balance, and the Theodoran stubbornness that made every step they made hard-earned.

The men on the line fought through the exhaustion of the last week with a hardness Christos would not have believed a month earlier. They had been a rabble of frightened farmers, fishermen, labourers, and town boys trying not to shame themselves while holding pitted spears in a shaking line. Now they held against mailed professionals in a storm and did not break.

Through the crush, Christos spotted one Italian in richer armour than the rest, his harness chased with decoration even beneath the mud. The man lifted an arm and gave a sharp signal. A horn blared from somewhere behind him.

The Italians did not rout. They began to pull back carefully, step by step, shields turned, dragging wounded where they could and leaving others where they could not. Even in retreat they were disciplined. Their total losses were light, and probably as many as on the Theodoran side, but every man of theirs felled would yield a mountain of loot, and was worth as many as ten of them on even ground.

This was a victory. A tiny one, but a victory nonetheless.

A ragged cheer ran along the line, men patting each other's backs and catching their breath.

It was not a strong sound. Too many men were panting, bleeding, or too tired to do more than rasp. But it was there all the same. They had thrown back the armoured demons.

But every man there knew it was only the beginning.

In the end, the Theodoran force had to endure two more days of assaults against the southern embankment before the palisade was secured properly.

Theodorus stood on the battlements and watched a contingent of lightly armoured riders and woodsmen disappear into the forest that had become their lifeline. Silvanus led them on his white destrier, far too fine an animal for this wet, ugly work. The trees swallowed them by degrees, until the bodies, and the pale flash of Silvanus’ mount, vanished between the trunks and green.

“Do you think this will delay them enough?” Stathis asked from beside him.

Over the course of the campaign, Stathis had earned his place a dozen times over. He had come in with the Suyren militia during the escape and begun as one more reliable man among many. Then the ambush had shattered the company, killed officers, maimed sergeants, and torn apart the neat order they had started with.

Vacuums opened in war, and men either shrank from them or grew into them. Stathis had grown. He was a captain in all but name now, even if no one had bothered formalizing it yet. Titles were things for gilded halls and post-war audiences. In war, they mattered less than whether men obeyed when you spoke and looked steadier after hearing you.

“Enough for the next supply run,” Theodorus said. “That will have to be enough.”

“The one in two weeks?” Stathis asked. He sounded doubtful, and with reason. The sheer manpower the Genoese were pouring into their new fortification suggested they would finish it well before then.

“No, the one in a few days,” Theodorus said.

That made Stathis turn fully toward him.

“Messengers have already been sent to Kalamita for an advanced resupply run.” Theodorus explained, not looking away from the forest, eyes boring into the canopy as if he could will the harassing sortie success. “Before, our problem was mobility. We didn’t have enough carts to move stores and keep them protected while on the march. Now we’re dug in and have ample storage space. There’s no reason to wait until we are fully choked out.”

Theodorus stretched his right arm and winced as pain pulled through the elbow. It had been improving steadily, but the recent cold and rain had made it ache again, a mean, deep sort of pain that seemed to settle into the joint and wait there. He lowered the arm and kept his eyes on the treeline.

“We don’t need to delay them for long,” he said. “Just long enough.”

He would not complain, though. In their desperate struggle, the rain was thei greatest ally.

They had already set up rain-catching stations across the camp, crude but effective things of canvas, barrels, and careful placement. Every fresh drop they gathered was one less bucket hauled, one less ration of firewood burned to boil fouled water. At this point, clean water that came straight from the sky felt like a gift from God.

“But the messengers can be intercepted,” Stathis cautioned.

“I’ve already accounted for that,” Theodorus said. "We don't specify any date or route. Kalamita will decide that, and the Italians will have to guess even if they catch our messengers.

His face remained composed, a commander’s mask worn smooth by habit, but worry still worked beneath it. He had learned quickly that looking certain was half of a commander's job.

“We cannot continue like this,” he said at last, more quietly.

Stathis did not interrupt. He merely watched him, patient enough to let the thought come out whole.

“The worst thing the Italians have achieved with this new fortification is not only that they have endangered our supplies.” Theodorus kept his eyes on the wet landscape before them as he spoke. The rain had darkened the earth, turned the ditches black, laid a sheen over timber and mud alike. “They are forcing our hand. They are thinning their main force around Mangup, yes, but they know we cannot easily assault them."

He paused, then let out a slow breath through his nose.

Stathis stayed silent, leaving the opening for Theodorus to expound on his reasoning. He had spent enough time with Theodorus by now to know that he thought of war in layers - there was rarely only one reason behind his every decision.

“The simple fact is that an enemy defending an entrenched position holds the supreme advantage in any engagement,” Theodorus went on, gesturing toward the improvised Theodoran fieldworks. It was little more than timber, packed earth, and a palisade scarred by shot and hastily mended again and again. But it was solid enough to safeguard them from an elite force nearly twice their number. “It is the reason we have survived at all. They know that. They want to draw us out from behind our works and into open battle. Because if we give them that battle, we lose.”

Theodorus had spent his life studying Medieval war to understand this universal truth. Defense trumped offense if all other factors were equal.

Medieval armies could show courage, discipline, even flashes of operational intelligence, but once a force lacked the tools to break a fortified position cheaply, courage stopped mattering as much as supply, timing, and leverage. The Principality of Theodoro’s entire military doctrine relied on this one principle. Relying on fortresses and sheer endurance to survive while surrounded by bigger enemies.

Their own army had only survived thus far by picking a strategy that weaponized exactly this strength. It was why they had been able to hold their ground against such a fearsome foe.

And the Genoese, having noticed that, were now forcing their hand beautifully. They were trapping them.

Theodorus closed his eyes for a moment.

He needed something that would force the Genoese to react before they were ready. Something that would make them move first.

When he opened them again, the hesitation was gone.

“Sir?” Stathis asked. He had seen the change already. The way stillness became intent. Not the posture of a man yielding to the trap, but of one who had decided to bite through it.

“It is time for our own gamble,” Theodorus said.

A hard smile touched his mouth, predatory enough to look almost out of place on his usually controlled face.

He had no intention of letting them be strangled politely.

“We cannot seriously be considering two hundred and seventy-five asper per botta of wine,” one of the Magnificos complained, his shrill voice scraping at Baccio’s ear. “That is nearly the market price we pay other producers.”

“And we still make a tidy profit on those transactions, do we not?” Camillo replied, perfectly unruffled. “The selling price in Caffa approaches four hundred aspers. Seven golden genovini or near enough. Does it not?”

“These are landlocked monkeys forced to trade through us!” the Magnifico snapped. He seemed personally offended that the figure was under discussion at all, especially after only the third round of talks had concluded just that day. “We should be squeezing them for every coin they possess after their past transgressions. As we always have.”

“What we have always done,” Camillo said, with a patience Baccio himself could never quite summon for greedy fools, “has bought us a decade of raids on our territory.”

The Magnifico drew breath to protest, but Camillo went on before he could.

“A modest concession that lowers our immediate take still leaves us strong margins and costs us less in the long run.” Camillo spread his hands in a subtle pacifying gesture. “Trade that continues is worth more than tribute wrung from men who then spend the next ten years setting our countryside on fire.” Camillo was crafty enough to realize conversation was more than just words. It was demeanour. Something he hoped Aniballe would one day understand himself. The thought of the foolish boy nearly brought a sigh out of Baccio.

“It is the principle of the matter.” The Magnifico flicked a hand at the proposal as though brushing crumbs from a tablecloth. “We would be seen as weak, granting concessions like that to monkeys.”

“Are we strong?” the Consul asked from his chair, his voice cool and imperious enough to quiet the tent at once. “Because from where I sit, all I see is a stalled siege, dwindling stores, and sickness beginning to creep through my soldiers.”

The Magnifico faltered, though only for a breath. “My lord, but with such a settlement we would emerge in a worse position than when the war began.” His jowls trembled when he spoke, even as he shot down the Consul’s argument. “What, then, would have been the point of this war?”

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“Weaker?” The Consul turned his head slowly, as though he feared he had misheard something too foolish to be real. “Do the customs tariffs of Kalamita mean nothing? Does the seizure of the vineyards west of Funa mean nothing?” Offense sharpened his voice. “Or do these things suddenly cease to exist because they do not pass directly through your ledger?”

The Magnifico’s mouth worked once, but no answer came.

“Just because you do not profit from certain concessions as immediately as you would like does not make them worthless,” the Consul continued. “It merely proves that, when forced to choose, you think first of yourself and only after of Ghazaria.”

That struck home. The Magnifico seemed to shrink where he sat, his outrage folding inward into something smaller and uglier. The sight of a greedy merchant folding in on himself never failed to please Baccio. It even almost drew a smile from him. Almost.

He had learned long ago that visible satisfaction in such moments only invited fresh trouble.

“But you are right in one respect,” Democrito said, and now the heat in his tone shifted, turning away from the merchant and settling upon Baccio with all the familiarity of expected blame. “These concessions are less than I had once considered acceptable. I am forced toward them because the men I hired cannot seem to break through timber palisades and dirt.”

His gaze hardened.

“I hired a substantial force. I promised you a handsome portion of the plunder, Baccio. Yet you and your clever boy have not even managed to pen a flock of mountain sheep.”

There it was.

Baccio had expected the blow before the words were even spoken. Democrito was laying the groundwork already, trying to cheapen his service before the accounts came due. A vulgar tactic, but an intelligent one.

He’d learned men became crafty very quickly when coin was about to leave their hands, and had had his fair share of clients who hadn’t wanted to pay. Baccio could hardly despise the instinct. In matters of profit and war, scruple was usually just another luxury purchased by the winning side.

“Once the fort is completed,” Baccio said, calm as still water, “I have every reason to believe the Theodorans will be near the end of their rope. Mangup itself has sent no diplomatic mission, no appeal, no formal overture. That tells me the true center of decision is not in the city, but in the army maintaining the field resistance. Corner that army, and it will be forced to negotiate for the principality’s survival.”

“And when, exactly, will that be?” Democrito asked. Contempt dripped from the question. “I am told the Theodorans have begun harassing the construction.”

“They cannot inflict meaningful damage with their numbers,” Baccio replied without haste. “Half a week at most until the work is done.”

“And until then,” the Consul said, each word clipped, “they remain free to resupply as they please, and to fill their stores with enough grain to endure us.”

As if the moment had been ordained by a higher force, the flap of the tent opened at that moment.

One of Baccio’s own messengers entered, bowed to the assembled men, and crossed straight to his side. He bent low and whispered into Baccio’s ear.

For the briefest instant, satisfaction threatened to crease Baccio’s face. He suppressed it at once, smoothing his features back into their usual placidity. So Aniballe had been right that the enemy would not simply sit and wait.

He’d learned over the years, to trust the boy’s instincts against common reason, so Baccio had posted additional sentries in the forest during the night, men with orders to watch for any movement in the forest, to catch any messengers. And now he’d been rewarded for this foresight.

“Perhaps not, Consul,” Baccio said.

That drew every eye in the tent back to him, their anticipation for the news he’d just received palpable.

“I have just received word that one of their messengers has been taken on the woods leading to Kalamita.”

The reaction among the Magnificos was immediate. Excited murmurs erupted amongst themselves. This might finally be the break that they needed. Democrito said nothing at all, eyeing him unblinkingly.

“He carried instructions requesting resupply before the week’s end,” Baccio went on. “If we can intercept their convoy, we can force their hand. Their position will become unsalvageable.”

Baccio kept his face still, but his thoughts sharpened to a point. Here it was at last, the hook that would pierce the fish trapped in their little pond.

They had them now. All that remained was patience, a steady hand, and the slow pull that tired it unto death.

The cramped confines of the felt-woven prison had become Apostolos’ closest companions.

He knew every corner of the tent now, from the sag in the rear wall where the rain gathered before sliding down, to the rough seams in the fabric and the stale smell of wet wool that clung to everything. He had shared this narrow space with his fellow officers from the moment they joined the Genoese host, and in the long, sleepless days since, he had been left with little to do but think.

Think on the rebellion’s true nature.

Think on the lies that must have carried it this far.

Think on the neat, poisonous scheme Philemon had almost certainly spun to win Genoese support, dressing ambition up as opportunity and betrayal up as alliance.

Now he understood that his father, the Principe, and their entire host had been props from the very beginning.

And once he grasped that fully, another truth followed with it, cold and plain enough to hollow the chest.

His House was doomed.

“That’s it,” his cousin Michail declared suddenly, lurching to his feet with a burst of anger that the tent could scarcely contain. “I’m breaking out of here.”

Apostolos reached up and caught his arm with a tired hand. “To go where, exactly?”

“Home,” Michail said, as though the answer needed no thought at all. “North. To our kin.” His eyes fixed on the tent’s entrance with open hatred. “They cannot keep us here.”

“We are not prisoners,” Apostolos said for what felt like the thousandth time. “We are honoured guests.”

Even to his own ears, the phrase sounded thin.

Michail let out a bitter snort. “You cannot possibly believe that. We may not be in chains, but they took our army, our stores, even our personal weapons. We are powerless here, and they made certain of it.”

“And what would running north accomplish?” Apostolos asked. “We would mark ourselves enemies to both the Italians and Theodoro alike. We would have neither allies nor strength enough to defend our home.”

“We take what wealth we still have and flee,” Michail shot back. “Better exile than a grave.”

“I refuse.” The word came out at once, sharper than he intended. “You may run and abandon our lands, our name, and our inheritance if you wish. I will not.”

“Not to mention,” he added, more coldly now, “that escape would not be simple.”

His voice rose with the last words, not from certainty so much as outrage, because the alternative was intolerable. He would not be remembered as the lord who yielded up his land and left behind only a broken line and a dead tree of ancestry. To surrender his houses’s fate, to walk away while breath still remained in him, to cut down their vaunted trunk willingly - he could not bear such a thought.

“Apostolos…” Michail said, and now the anger in his voice had thinned into something quieter, something closer to pleading.

Apostolos turned away before he could hear more. He was too full of fury to trust himself with the rest of the conversation, too raw to endure one more argument that pressed against the same bruise. He pushed through the flap and stepped out into the rain.

Guards stood posted beyond the tent, Genoese men-at-arms with damp cloaks, and smooth helmets glistening with droplets. They did not bar his way. They did not need to. Their presence was reminder enough that he was only free to walk where they let him. The sort of freedom given to a pig before slaughter.

The rain had settled into something heavy and relentless, not a storm but a steady drowning from the sky. It drummed on tents, turned pathways into slick ribbons of mud, and left every fire sullen and smoking. Apostolos walked without direction, letting the cold soak into him as though it might leach out the anger.

The Genoese camp remained orderly even under the downpour. Lines of tents were kept with soldierly precision. Supplies were stacked under coverings where they could be. Sentries moved on schedule. Men hauled timber, carried tools, repaired guy ropes, inspected wagons stuck axle-deep in the filth. It was a disciplined army, far from the sorry levy he’d commanded.

But discipline had not spared it from rot.

The signs were already there, plain enough to any man who had ever watched a camp linger too long in one place. Too many coughs. The sharp stink of latrines overflowing into wet soil. Disease was not marching through the ranks yet, but it had found the gate and tested the latch. It was only a matter of time.

He had remained with the Genoese for one reason only - hope, thin and humiliating though it was, that if he stayed useful and contributed to the siege, then perhaps the Genoese would leave House Nomikos in possession of Suyren once this ended. Not independent, not untouched, but still alive and possessing a modicum of their former strength.

That was all Apostolos wanted now. To preserve something - anything - from their House.

He lifted his eyes and fixed them on Mangup.

The fortress loomed through the rain like something carved out of the mountain rather than built upon it, broad and immovable, its mass swallowing the horizon. Apostolos had always hated what it meant, who it represented.

But now he looked to it, at how even under cloud and distance it radiated the old, stubborn power of a place that had learned how to endure siege after siege and still remain itself.

Apostolos set his jaw.

He would not yield yet.

“That is quite a fearsome face you have there.”

The voice came from his side in heavily accented Greek, thin and reedy.

Apostolos turned at once, and distaste tightened his mouth the moment he saw who had addressed him. The painted warrior sat at ease as though they were two men sharing a roadside fire rather than enemies trapped inside the same ugly arrangement. He was sharpening a light axe across a whetstone, slow and careful, drawing a clean edge from it.

“Don’t look so delighted to see me, I’ll blush,” the man said with a dangerous smile.

“What does a translator want with me?” Apostolos asked brusquely.

He had not forgotten how the Red Hands, the Circassian band his father had hired at a dear cost, had switched the moment disaster struck and thrown their lot in with Philemon. Men like these always found a way to call treachery practicality.

“Only conversation,” the warrior said, still smiling. “As one prisoner of circumstance speaking to another, can we not all just get along?”

That it came from a mercenary killer with painted skin and a blooded axe in his hand was absurd enough to be amusing, or so the warrior thought. Apostolos didn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

The warrior sighed. “A hard audience.”

He set the axe aside with surprising care and rose in a single fluid motion. The easy humor left his face so quickly it seemed to have been a mask all along.

“Come with me,” he said, and turned as if the matter were settled.

“Where?” Apostolos demanded. He was not about to trail after traitors without an explanation.

“Ilnar wants to see you.”

That was all the man offered. He kept walking, confident enough in his expectation that Apostolos would follow that he did not even look back.

Apostolos remained still for a few moments, suspicion holding him in place. He did not know what the Circassians wanted, but they had little reason to be content with their own lot. Their baggage train had been seized by the Genoese and now they were trapped, serving new masters for a payment that insulted what men like them usually charged. If resentment lived anywhere in this camp, it would live among those who killed for coin and found themselves cheated of it.

Against his better judgment, he followed.

He would hear what the savages had to say. At the very least, their anger might be useful. The thought was not an honorable one, but for the first time in his life, honor had begun to feel less like a guide than a burden. Honour had not saved his father. It had not saved Suyren from disgrace, and it would not preserve House Nomikos simply because he suffered nobly.

The translator led him toward a portion of the Italian camp that seemed to obey a different set of laws than the rest. The Genoese and their hired captains kept their quarters in lines and angles, all neat canvas, stacked equipment, tethered animals, and the familiar orderliness of men who wanted their war to look respectable. The Circassian enclave sat among that discipline like a dark stain that would not wash out.

It looked disordered, almost careless. Tents stood at odd distances from one another, some patched with hides or scraps of fabric that did not match. Spears and shields leaned wherever there was room. Saddles, bundles, and butchered game hung where another camp would have kept clean passageways. The Circassians did not operate along neat lines, but they looked just as competent and deadly.

Men lounged in low huddles, their faces set in simmering anger, as if ready to break out.

Other warriors moved through the space bare-chested despite the cool damp and falling rain, their skin striped and marked with paint that the recent rain had failed to wash away. The colors had dulled in places but not vanished, clinging stubbornly to flesh. Some turned to watch him pass. Others did not bother. Their indifference felt more threatening than open hostility.

The translator pushed aside the flap of a larger tent and gestured him inside.

Crossing the threshold felt like stepping into another country.

The air within was warmer, thick with animal musk and old leather. Grisly trophies adorned the interior: antlers, hides, claws, and skulls of exotic beasts. Apostolos knew enoufh of hunting to know they were not simple or easy to kill.

A cluster of Circassians stood and crouched around a low table in the middle, their heads bent close, their guttural speech pitched low, as if discussing something important. The language rasped through the tent like stone on stone.

“Ilnar,” the translator called.

Apostolos’ gaze followed the sound and found the giant looking up at last. The man fixed him with a curious, measuring stare. For all the upheaval of the last weeks, for all the reversals and humiliations they'd suffered, Ilnar still sat enthroned in his damned pelt-covered armchair.

Absurdly, that chair had survived everything.

They exchanged a few curt grunts in their own tongue, after which Apostolos was gestured toward a low seat near the table.

He chose to remain standing.

Ilnar’s mouth curled in amusement. “Keep your pride, little cub. It is all you have left.”

Apostolos’ expression hardened. “Did you summon me here merely to mock me?” He would not let himself be toyed with by men who had sold one master for another and now sat in the dark as if they were kings of some hidden realm.

“No,” Ilnar said. “We called you to strike a bargain.”

The giant leaned back as he spoke. Half his face lay in shadow, the other half caught by the wavering lamplight, so that he and the men around him seemed almost unreal, like monsters in a children’s tale. In some ways, they were worse than even those.

“What sort of bargain?”

“The sort that makes us free men again.”

For a moment Apostolos said nothing. The answer hung in the tent like a blade not yet drawn. Around Ilnar, the Circassians watched him with the still patience of hunting dogs awaiting a signal. There was eagerness in the air, but it was tightly held, not reckless. These were not men indulging a fantasy. They had thought on this already.

“You want to break out?” Apostolos asked, his brows rising.

It made sense that they would not swallow captivity, however well disguised. Yet another thought followed close behind. “And your pay? What of the money they promised you if you remain?”

“Pennies,” Ilnar said with a snort of contempt.

“Better pennies than nothing,” Apostolos replied, probing for any hint of deceit.

“But not worth slavery over freedom,” Ilnar said. The translator rendered the words into Greek, though the sentiment had already been clear enough from the man’s tone. Then the giant tilted his head. “Do you know what our likely end is here?”

Apostolos remained quiet, not quite knowing how heartless mercenaries used their troops in battle.

“To be spent,” Ilnar said. “Used up in some assault when our captors decide our lives are worth less than their own. Or to rot where we stand from fever and bad water.”

That struck harder than Apostolos would have liked. He had clung, however uneasily, to the thought that he might still prove useful enough to the Italians that they would preserve his House out of convenience. Hearing Ilnar speak it so plainly made that hope feel thin, almost childish. Ilnar’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair until the knuckles stood pale beneath his skin.

“I do not intend to die for another man’s cause.” He gritted out.

Apostolos gave a faint, humorless exhale. “I had thought that was precisely what mercenaries did.”

Ilnar only smiled at his provocation, and there was nothing warm in it.

“You are naïve, boy.” His smile was a cruel thing. “A mercenary always fights for himself first. You would do well to remember that.”

Apostolos held his stare, unaffected. “Then what is your plan?”

“We leave in the night, when the sentries change. We have watched the rotations. We know where the gaps are, where vigilance slackens, which men drink, which men trust the rain and darkness to do their work for them. Our cage is not one of bars, but of habit.” Apostolos eyed the translator, that was quite the exquisite turn of phrase.

Apostolos frowned. “I still fail to see where I come into this. Why do you need me?”

“Need?” Ilnar laughed, and the sound rolled through the tent like distant thunder. “Need is too strong a word. More men mean more confusion. More movement. More chances for eyes to look the wrong way.”

Apostolos’ mouth thinned. “So my men and I are to be expendable.”

He could see it clear enough. The Red Hanfs wanted more possible targets to make any one group less easy to pin down.

“No,” Ilnar said, though amusement still lingered in his face. “You distract for us, and we distract for you.”

He fixed Apostolos with a knowing look. He could understand the warriors better now, his involvement in their plan was just them hedging their bets.

“They have guards outside our tents,” Apostolos said, quick to point out the issues with the plan. “If you recall.”

“Dispose of them then,” Ilnar said, as if discussing the butchering of a goat.

Apostolos stared at him. “Kill them? Are you outside of your mind?” He pitched his voice higher. “I will not take part in such a dishonorable act.”

“Dishonorable?” Ilnar threw back his head and laughed, it was a loud and boisterous thing. The men around him grinned or muttered in approval. “There is no honor in war. Only you Europeans enjoy pretending otherwise.”

Apostolos stood his ground, refusing to yield.

“Fine,” Ilnar said with a roll of his eyes. “We will deal with your little guards for you.”

“That is not the issue,” Apostolos said sharply.

The air in the tent tightened, neither side yielding, each measuring how far the other would bend before breaking. Then Ilnar flicked two fingers and one of the warriors stepped forward and produced a small folded letter.

“What if,” Ilnar said, holding it up between thick fingers, “we told you we have something of yours?”

Apostolos saw the wax at once.

Nomikos.

The seal struck him like a blow. He took an involuntary step forward, all the tension in him turning suddenly sharp and immediate. “Where did you get that?”

The men around the table rose with quiet speed.

“Calm yourself,” the translator said, and this time there was no mockery in it, only seriousness. “Some fool tried to slip into camp to bring it to you and was about to be captured. Had we not found him first, you would never have seen it.”

Apostolos forced himself still, though only barely. “May I read it?” he asked through clenched teeth.

Ilnar passed it over.

The moment it touched his hand, Apostolos saw the seal had already been broken.

His head snapped up. “What is this?”

“There is no point to your anger,” Ilnar said. “Without us, you would not have read it at all. And I trust you will find it untampered with.”

Apostolos’ jaw worked once. Then he unfolded the letter.

The script was his sister’s.

By the time he reached the end, his hand had begun to tremble.

He felt pressure gathering behind his eyes, but he swallowed it down with effort. He would not weep here, in front of wolves.

“Do we understand one another now?” Ilnar asked, extending one broad hand to seal the arrangement.

Michail’s words returned to him with unpleasant clarity. He had hated hearing it from his cousin. Now his sister was saying the same. He’d been too stubborn to let go of his forefather’s legacy, but it was time to face the truth.

He lowered the letter and made his decision.

“Not quite,” he said.

That answer brought a frown first to the translator, then to Ilnar.

“Why not?” the giant asked, his voice losing some of its easy humor.

“Because there is one flaw in your bargain.” Apostolos looked from face to face around the table, letting the silence stretch just enough to make them attend. “There is no trust in it.”

Ilnar’s eyes narrowed. “We are offering you a road out of this camp.”

“And yet you make an offer through deception and the words of someone who does not even lead you.”

Apostolos fixed his stare upon Ilnar, and then turned it towards the unassuming translator.

“Is that not so?”

For the first time, the man’s composure slipped. His eyes widened a fraction before the expression vanished again, smoothed away beneath a grin.

“How did you see through it?” he asked.

His voice was no longer the light, careful pitch of a subordinate making himself harmless, but a deep bass filled with the easy menace of a predator no longer bothering to mimic prey.

“I heard who directed the backward charge at the Kalamita Hills,” Apostolos said. “And I have seen your warriors in the rain, bare-chested in the cold, displaying their tattoos as if the weather itself had no claim on them. I am told the number and complexity of those markings speak of rank and accomplishment.” His gaze settled on the long sleeves of the man’s undertunic. “So I asked myself what kind of warrior would remain covered while lesser men showed their skin so freely.”

The translator smiled faintly.

“A man with nothing worth showing,” he challenged.

“Or a man,” Apostolos said, “who has no need to show anything at all.”

For a moment no one in the tent moved.

Then the man laughed softly, and there was something dangerous in it. He reached to the collar of his undertunic and pulled the garment loose.

It was a tapestry unlike any other.

Geometric patterns flowed across his skin in dark, intricate lines, layered and interlocked so densely that they seemed almost like armor of another kind, worked not in steel but in ink and scar. They stretched from neck to stomach and spread across him with a precision and confidence that eclipsed even Ilnar’s display. If the others wore achievements, this man wore a history.

Apostolos inclined his head, not deeply, but enough to acknowledge what stood before him.

“Might I know the name of the true leader of the Red Hands?”

The man touched his chin in thought, as if considering whether Apostolos had earned that much.

“Since you have guessed so far, you may,” he said at last, “My name is Aslan.”

Apostolos repeated it quietly. “Aslan.” The name felt strange in his mouth. “And what does it mean?”

Aslan’s smile sharpened, amusement and threat sharing the same space in it.

“You have not earned quite that much yet.”

He extended his hand.

“Now,” he said, “do we have a bargain, little cub?”

Apostolos looked at the offered hand, then at the letter still trembling faintly in his own.

He took Aslan’s hand in a firm grip.

And with that, he set his course.