Fallen Eagle

Chapter 89: Burning the World

Democrito lowered the letter with great care, lest his hand betray the anger running through it.They were handcuffing him. Worse, they were treating him like some reckless child who had to be pulled away from a poor bargain before he ruined himself entirely.

As though he did not understand the cost already incurred. As though he had not watched the numbers worsen day by day, each fresh request for powder, every wagon of provisions, every hour paid out to mercenaries dragging the balance sheet further into ugliness. He understood that perfectly well. But the campaign had passed beyond the point where numbers alone could govern it.

A state was not a counting house. Kingdoms were not ruled by ledgers alone. Prestige and legitimacy mattered. Men obeyed power not only when it was strong, but when it looked strong.

If Genoa stepped back now, balking before a smaller rival after committing so much force and noise to the matter, it would look weak. That weakness would not remain contained to Theodoro. It would travel. It would be remembered.

If they pressed only a little longer, the Greeks would bend. He was sure of it.

They were surrounded, strained, and living on borrowed time. Desperation had begun its slow work on them already, creeping up the spine and settling deep in the gut. Democrito knew men. He knew when fear ripened into compliance. He was a , not a bubbling fool. He knew how to push desperation towards a higher bottom line.

One more week, perhaps two, and he could force them into terms worth having. He could preserve Genoese prestige. More importantly, he could preserve his own.

If only those fat fools in the Bank could see past their caution and their comfort.

His fist struck the desk before he quite realized he had moved. The inkpot rattled violently and toppled, spilling black pigment across the waiting paper in a dark, sudden rush. Democrito stared at it in silence as it spread over the carefully composed threat from San Giorgio, branching through the fibres like black blood through pale veins.

He drew in a long breath.

Rage would not alter the contents of the letter. Nor would pride conjure powder from empty storehouses.

He was first and foremost a merchant. A failed investment was a failed investment. No sensible man kept pouring coin into ruin merely because he had already spent much. Sometimes the wiser course was to step back, accept the loss, and salvage what could still be saved.

But he still had two weeks of provisions.

That was not nothing. It was time. One final span in which to press the Greeks harder, to make them feel the edge at their throat before he turned to peace. If he was being forced to bargain, then he would bargain from the strongest position he could still wring from the field to the negotiation table.

Democrito looked down at the stained letter one last time, jaw set hard.

He would not be finished yet.

…

The air inside the ivory tent had turned stifling again after a few blessed days of cool rain, and Democrito could not have wished harder for even the faintest breeze.

“Six and a quarter gold genovini per botta,” Camillo said, and the number landed like ash in the mouth of any merchant with an ounce of pride. Not because the payment itself was insulting. In truth, it sat close to the rate the Genoese had already paid the Theodorans before the war. No, what made it bitter was everything missing around it. There were no broader commercial privileges worth speaking of, no framework of treaties to dress the concession in gain.

“Ten years of customs dues at the port of Kalamita,” Camillo continued smoothly, “and a flat market-rate tax on all non-wine goods for both nations. You will retain Funa and its western vineyards, while granting us the poorer eastern lands. Finally, there will be a treaty of cessation of hostilities between our two states for a period of ten years.” That should be enough to renege on the deal later on to press the desperate Greeks once more. It was the best they could do, the best Democrito could do.

The silence that followed did not resemble the silences of their earlier meetings. Over the past two weeks, the two sides had dragged one another through every posture negotiation could offer: reason, pressure, delay, obstinacy, hints of compromise, carefully measured insult. It was almost ironic, Democrito thought, that they had sat down to diplomatic talks every two or three days while spending the days in between trying to annihilate one another.

This was as close to a white peace that Democrito could bring himself to name. He still had the Theodorans by their throats. An equal deal was out of the question.

The Theodoran delegation exchanged silent looks. After two weeks of bombardment, harassment, and the steady strangling of viable supply, they finally bore the marks of siege upon them. Their eyes had sunk deep from broken sleep. Gauntness had begun to pull at their frames under strict rationing. They moved like men worn thin by exhaustion, spending their days patching breaches in their works and their nights enduring fresh damage, all while holding back Baccio’s condottieri from the openings the bombards had managed to tear.

And yet their backs were not bent. Not yet.

“We refuse.”

It was their pepper-haired knight who answered, and the words drew immediate irritation from Democrito and most of the men behind him.

“Seven genovini per botta of wine,” the knight went on. “We will not go lower. And the lands west of Funa are non-negotiable.”

Murmurs broke out at once from the Genoese side, sharp with consternation.

“They are not budging-”

“They must be on the brink of collapse-”

“They plainly do not understand their position-”

Democrito let the noise wash over him. This had gone beyond obstinacy. It was absurd. These men sat in front of him half-starved, sleep-deprived, their walls breached and their army ground down, and still they haggled over the last sliver of advantage as though they were midwives haggling down fish a copper shorter rather than soldiers bargaining with death at the door.

“Why?” Democrito asked before he could stop himself.

The Theodorans turned toward him.

“Your bellies are empty. Your walls are breached. You stand on the brink of death,” he said, each word traveling through the silence to the implacable greeks. “Why are you bargaining with your lives for scraps of advantage? You should concede. You know this is the best offer you will receive. We have already invested too much to accept less.” That his own time was fast running out, he did not need to tell them.

It was their leader, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, who finally answered him. He had spoken little throughout these negotiations, preferring instead to sit in grim silence, brooding over the proceedings with that same stoic expression fixed upon his face the entire time. Democrito could hardly fault him for it. He himself had resorted to much the same tactic.

A leader, after all, had to look invincible even when the ground was beginning to shift beneath his feet.

The answer came without hesitation. “Because our lives are cheap compared to the fate of the Principality.” There was no wavering in the man’s tone, no trace of theatrics or uncertainty. Just hard, immovable conviction.

He sounded like a fanatic.

Democrito did not believe a word of it.

The Theodorans were primitive, yes, and lacking in polish by any civilized standard, but they had not survived this long on empty fervour alone. They had proven resourceful, disciplined, and far more resilient than any sensible man would have expected from such a minor state. And this man had stood at the head of that effort from the beginning.

There was something else at work here.

For a brief moment, Democrito entertained the possibility that they somehow knew of his time limit and were merely stretching the talks until he was forced to withdraw. But he discarded the thought almost as soon as it formed.

The message from San Giorgio had only just arrived, and a message of such importance passed through extraordinary channels and his personal agents to reach him directly. The idea that some Greek had penetrated their channels, intercepted the contents, and conveyed them back to the Theodoran camp in time to shape the negotiations was absurd.

“Your Prince is truly an exceptional man to inspire such loyalty,” Democrito said, careful not to let irony drip into his tone.

He had, as it happened, met the man in question. John Gabras had struck him as thoroughly ordinary. An ageing ruler whose chief talent seemed to lie in abasing himself just enough before stronger powers to avoid being swallowed by them outright.

“He is,” the so-called Doux replied. “Destroying us will accomplish nothing. The Principality lays above all.”

His face remained impassive, but Democrito thought he caught something beneath that stony composure. Not weakness exactly. Not even pride. Something more restrained than that, and therefore harder to read.

A hunch took hold of him then, sudden and unwelcome. Perhaps the true strength of the Principality did not lie in its Prince at all, but in the man seated behind him. Not the deferential old ruler Genoa had expected to bend, but this hard-faced commander who spoke so little and yielded even less.

Which only made his conduct more perplexing. He should be working to preserve himself to keep hold of the destitute piece of rock he’d carved for himself. Not slowly fading away with a bluff.

“Very well.”

Democrito rose from his seat, the movement serving as an informal signal for the rest of his entourage to do the same. After nearly a dozen rounds of talks, they had reached no agreement once again.

Once they were well clear of the ivory tent, he turned to Baccio.

At the condottiere’s own request, the older man had begun accompanying him to the negotiations. He seemed to treat the proceedings as another battlefield, studying posture, hesitation, and tone the way another captain might study ditches and walls, hoping to glimpse the enemy’s next move before it came.

“What did you make of it?” Democrito asked.

As ever, Baccio did not answer at once. The man had a habit of sitting with a question for a few moments, as though turning it over on his tongue before deciding whether it was worth swallowing.

“They were too stubborn for men in their position,” Baccio said at last, frowning slightly. “They are waiting for something. Something they believe will break the deadlock.”

Democrito gave a slow nod. So he was not alone in seeing it.

“I want the guards doubled,” he said. “The patrols as well. Whatever else it is your men do, increase it. If you want the full payment you were promised, nothing can go wrong now, Baccio.”

The condottiere looked at him for a long moment. He understood the implication well enough, and Democrito could see him weighing whether to let the mention of payment pass unanswered. Whatever he found in the Consul’s expression convinced him not to press too far.

“Very well, Consul,” Baccio said. “But when we finally break open their camp, I trust my men will have full rights to the loot sizeable plunder from the countryside besides.”

There was a shrewdness in his eyes Democrito felt he had not given enough credit to before.

Baccio was suggesting they be loosed upon the Theodoran countryside. Even if Genoa concluded a ceasefire with the Prince, the condottieri would not necessarily be bound by its spirit. Not in any meaningful way.

Democrito considered it, and found himself liking the idea more with each passing second.

They could always claim the mercenaries had grown unruly from disappointment over reduced pay. They could make a show of attempting to restrain them, loud enough for appearances and useless enough to change nothing.

Up until now they had avoided ravaging the countryside too thoroughly, partly because the campaign had been expected to end quickly, and partly because Genoa had hoped soon to own these lands, if only through a humbled tributary.

That consideration no longer mattered.

“Very well,” Democrito said, a slow smile growing on his lips.

A Genoese merchant always got his due.

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The sun seemed slower to crest out of view today. Or perhaps that was only Theodorus’s imagination turning against him. Hunger and sleeplessness did strange things to the mind, and neither made for good company when a man had to think clearly.

The days had been lengthening steadily, and it was more noticeable here in the valleys beneath the shadow of the great capital. Usually they counted the hours until the mountains swallowed the light and spared them from the constant pounding of the Genoese cannons.

Now he found himself eager to see it shine longer. It meant more time before having to face the music on the latest daring concerto he'd composed for their army. It meant more time to think on the mistakes he'd made to reach this situation in the first place.

He had miscalculated.

He had believed the Genoese would abandon the invasion once they understood the sheer labour involved in breaking the relief army's camp. Any sensible merchant should have balked by now. The costs had grown too high, the progress too slow, the returns too uncertain.

But pride had a way of dulling a man’s best instincts, and even those of traders who prided themselves on cold arithmetic fell into the classic sunk cost fallacy. The Genoese had poured too much into crushing a smaller neighbour, and now could not bear to admit they might have to turn back with anything less than triumph.

A hand slipped into the edge of his vision, offering a familiar cup.

“Have some more to drink?” Silvanus asked, approaching from the camp below, where the mood had grown quiet and sombre in recent days.

“We still have wine?” Theodorus asked, surprised.

“Last jug.” Silvanus shook the nearly empty skin by way of proof.

“Shouldn’t we save it, then?” Theodorus raised a brow. He knew well enough that wine was one of Silvanus’s few real vices. The knight nursed a cup at sunrise and another at sundown, even now, though the measures had grown painfully thin.

“There might not be another chance to drink it,” Silvanus said with a crooked smile. “Wouldn’t want to leave the Italians any of the good stuff.”

His teeth had begun to yellow like the rest of the men’s. His hair was untidy, and the sharp line of his jaw stood out more than it had weeks before. At last even the gallant, well-groomed knight was beginning to fray at the edges.

“Such a grim sentiment,” Theodorus said, taking the cup and sipping it carefully.

“Nonsense,” Silvanus replied, grin spread wide across his pepper-haired stubble. “I mean that tomorrow we will be drinking fresh Theodoran wine, not this stale swill. So we had better finish it now while we still have a taste for it.”

He tipped back his head and drained his cup in one swallow.

Theodorus smiled despite himself and offered over his own.

Silvanus glanced at it, brow lifting.

“You’ll need it more than I will tonight.” Theodorus said by way of explanation.

Unlike Theodorus, who was little better than a half-starved invalid due to his elbow, Silvanus was meant to play an active role in what was coming.

“Now who is being grim?” Silvanus asked, snorting, though he accepted the cup all the same.

Theodorus’s gaze drifted upward, drawn to the great fortress above them. To the hand of fate that had placed him here, and forced upon him the task of saving this rocky little island of Romans. He wondered if he’d truly changed fate so far, or if this was just a repeat of history. A useless struggle.

How had the Principality survived to be crushed by the Ottomans in the first place? Certainly they’d faced their fair share of crises even before the Turks’ armies had even landed on their shores. It was a wonder they'd been a state up until the Ottoman invasion.

“Think we’ll make it?” Silvanus asked more quietly, following his line of sight.

Theodorus wondered, not for the first time, what made men of this age take up arms and offer their lives for a Prince they might never truly know. There was no concept of a country, of borders drawn and fealty earned for anything more than honour and God. And honour seemed a thin blade to hold against fear. Perhaps that was why they clung so fiercely to heaven. To afterlives. To the promise that suffering meant something beyond itself.

In some ways, Theodorus wished he could rely on such comforts.

“We have to,” he said.

There was steel in his voice, and no room in it for doubt. Silvanus caught the last failing light in those pale eyes and seemed to find something there worth trusting, because he straightened at once and gave a slow nod.

“My lords,” a messenger said with a bow as he made his way up to them. “The Doux has summoned you to the command tent.”

Theodorus and Silvanus exchanged a brief glance.

It was time.

Nikos had spent many nights in the grass when he was young. They had never quite let go of him.

His grandfather had been a force of nature, the kind of man who seemed too large for old age, even when age had finally begun to stoop his back. Decades earlier, he had led their scattered clan across the faint line that divided the Principality from the Crimean Khanate. What had begun as a desperate migration from open steppe to sharp hills had slowly hardened into something else.

The search for a new home.

Nikos had always felt the pull of open ground. It lived in the old prayers his family offered beneath the sky, in the way his feet carried him farther than they needed to, just to see what lay beyond the next rise, and the next after that. There was something in a wide horizon that made his chest feel looser.

His grandfather had understood that. Perhaps too well.

“This is our land now,” he used to say, his voice quiet in a way that carried more weight than shouting ever could. The old man’s hair had already gone grey around the nape by then, ancient by his clan’s standards, though his hands still held frightening strength. “That steppe out there is no place for our kind anymore.”

Nikos still remembered the feel of those fingers tightening around his hand the night he had said it. The old man’s grip had been hard enough to hurt.

“Your father never felt the call of the wind as you and I do,” he had murmured. “But you must fight it, child. Forget your dreams, or you will spend your life measuring what could have been instead of what is.”

Even then, Nikos had seen something deep in the old man’s eyes. Not fear exactly. Something sadder than that. The pain of a man who had left everything behind and survived only by teaching himself not to look back.

Years later, when Nikos declared that he meant to go to the capital and seek military work, his father had forbidden it outright. His mother had begged him to stay. But his grandfather had understood him at once.

He had seen that Nikos was trying to make those rocky hills a home. To have something more than an empty stomach and spilt blood from clan skirmishes.

So when Nikos had run that very night, he had done so with the old man’s blessing.

In the years since, he had learned to keep that old yearning in check, like his grandfather had. He had buried it beneath duty, habit, and the rough order of army life. But on nights like this, with the dark pressing close and the earth breathing cold beneath his boots, he felt it again. The old thrill. The strange freedom of wind against skin, and a horizon waiting just out of sight.

“Eyes up,” he whispered, banishing the thoughts.

He motioned for the others to circle left around the ancient oak ahead. The response came as a soft chirp in the dark, so slight it might have been mistaken for some night creature in the brush. It pulled at him, another small sound of childhood hunts.

They moved forward through the undergrowth with slow, patient steps, the way men of the steppe had always stalked game. No haste. No wasted sound. Each foot found the ground before taking weight. Each branch was brushed aside, not broken. They passed between shrubs and low branches as if threading a needle, letting the cover swallow them whole.

Nikos kept low as they advanced, one hand near the knife at his belt, the other brushing lightly against the bark they wandered through, as though the land itself were guiding him. He listened more than he looked. The rustle of grass. The creak of wood. The faint hiss of wind moving through the leaves above. Nothing sharp. Nothing human.

Good.

A little farther on, the smell he'd been looking for found him instead.

The smell of pitch, grease, and dry wood.

He slowed and raised a hand.

There, half-hidden beneath a rough cover of canvas and stacked brush, lay the first store. Barrels, sealed jars, bundles of spare kindling, coils of rope rubbed down with fat, tarred cloth, and all the other humble, ugly things an army needed to keep fires lit and that his had stripped itself bare of for this operation.

Nikos studied it in silence for a moment.

They had been planting scores of them over the past few nights, hidden in places where they would do the most harm. Each night, Nikos led his group out between the lapses in Genoese patrols and set another cache in place.

The rains had both made it easy and hard for them to do their work. The damp fog that settled in at night helped mask them into the surroundings, but it also made them wonder whether all their labour would come to nothing.

For close to half a week, however, the skies had cleared, and that gave them a chance.

Nikos turned toward one of his men.

“Izzet, you take this post,” he said quietly. “Light it when I give the signal.” The tatar youth looked to him a moment before nodding.

Enlisting former prisoners to help carry out such an important operation had earned Nikos more than his fair share of scrutiny. But he was well accustomed to that particular feeling.

He looked to the others. “The rest of you move. You know your stations.”

A line of shadowed faces met his gaze beneath the dark canopy, each one giving a silent nod. He had chosen them with care. These were men he had come to know well in the weeks he'd spent overseeing the prisoners and whom he trusted not to bolt the moment freedom opened before them.

The group split into pairs, each man trailing off into the night like beasts stalking the forest. Nikos wasn't spared from the necessity, as he made his ways forward with his own partner.

“So the attack will happen tonight,” Edae said, his voice barely above a whisper. He was too cautious to risk a mission over something as foolish as speaking too loudly.

“Yes.”

“Your plan is bold,” Edae said as they moved through the undergrowth. “But does your captain understand what kind of destruction it will bring?” His tone was almost curious, not just damning.

Nikos glanced at him while stepping around a thornbush.

“Nature is holy,” Edae said. His face was stern, almost severe. On another youth it might have been comedic. On him, it felt ominous. There was something in the boy that made mockery feel unwise. “And this plan is an affront to it.”

“Then why do you join me?” Nikos asked, curious.

Edae fell silent at that, thinking on it with the same grave stillness he seemed to bring to everything.

“Because you promised me a home for our people,” he said at last. His voice came so softly it might have been mistaken for wind passing through the leaves. “And I will hold you to that, Nikos, son of Celil.”

A chill ran down Nikos’s spine.

It was absurd, in a way. The boy was little more than a sapling beside him, still green, still untested. And yet when he spoke, the woods themselves seemed to listen.

Nikos crouched and brought flame to his torch.

“I would not hold myself to anything less,” he said.

The fire took quickly, running through the fat-wrapped cloth until the torch flared bright in his hand. Its orange light licked at the dark like something hungry. As Nikos watched it grow, he felt that same hope rise in him once more, fierce and painful and impossible to put down. The hope that one day his people might have a place in these harsh hills. A real place, not merely a refuge, even if some part of him would always yearn for the open grass beyond the horizon.

He touched the flame to the cache.

The fire caught at once.

A moment later, other flames sprang to life across the forest, one after another, kindred spirits sharing that same wish. Fires lit by his own men, spreading hungrily through the hidden stores and biting into the trees around them.

Smoke climbed high into the night.

Nikos bowed his head for a brief moment and offered a silent prayer to the forest spirits that would perish here today. He had taken up Christianity in name, as the Principality would accept no less, but in his heart he had never wholly abandoned the faith of his ancestors.

Then he rose and watched the flames gather strength.

If burning the world was what it took to carve it out, then so be it.

He could only trust that the fire would lead somewhere worth reaching.

The wind blew dry from the south, and Aniballe could taste dust and earth on it.

It still amazed him how violently the land could change in this corner of the world. The southern coast of Crimea, washed by the Mediterranean’s cousin waters, reminded him at times of his hometown of Bari. The mountainous heart of the Principality evoked the Alps in miniature, all stone and height and narrow passes. And farther north, he had been told, the land opened into endless steppe. It was a country made of contradictions, stitched together from terrains that ought not to belong to one another.

The people were much the same.

Here, at the edge of the world, clung the last remnants of the old Eastern Roman order. Aniballe had grown up in the shadow of men who called themselves Holy Roman Emperors, and in every Duke, Consul, and Doge liked to measure himself against Rome’s dead greatness. In truth, most of them probably stood closer to the old Romans than these Greeks did in blood, habit, or bearing.

And yet that scarcely mattered.

For all their poverty, their roughness, their backward little hill-state, the Prince of Theodoro possessed something none of those grander men did. The legitimacy of history. By the mere accident of having been too small and too remote for anyone to finish off, they remained one of the last true remnants of Roman rule in the world.

It amused Aniballe, in a cold sort of way, that he had found a worthy adversary here of all places. Among perhaps the least Roman of peoples, attached to perhaps the most Roman of states.

“Still up there?” Baccio called from below, gazing up at the towering tree Aniballe had made his fortress.

“It helps me think,” Aniballe answered, not taking his eyes off the enemy camp. He scarcely did so these days.

“What is there to think about?” his teacher asked, probing, trying to slither his way into Aniballe’s inner thoughts.

“They are not done yet,” Aniballe said.

“And you need sleep.” To another man, at a distance, Baccio’s tone might almost have sounded paternal. Aniballe knew better than that.

He understood very well what Baccio wanted from him. Victories. Advantage. Insight sharpened into profit. The old condottiere had no use for sentiment unless it could be spent.

Aniballe preferred it that way. Emotions were slippery things. Greed was dependable.

“Come down,” Baccio said. “We have night sentries to-”

“Quiet.” Aniballe interrupted him, prompting a deadly silence from Baccio at the casual disrespect.

Baccio stared up into the branches. Aniballe had gone rigid atop the treeline, staring toward the southern forest.

Something was wrong, he could feel it in his bones.

The feeling coursed through him as orange light burst up through the dark.

Fire bloomed from a point in the forest, bright and blazing and wholly unnatural.

For a heartbeat, surprise held him still. Then another blaze rose farther along the forest. Then another. And another after that, spreading in scattered points through the southern woods.

Understanding hit him all at once.

The wind. It blew from the north.

The Theodorans couldn’t resupply themselves from Kalamita anymore, not with the Genoese works and fortifications cutting the way through. So they’d decided to burn it all.

Aniballe all but threw himself down from his vantage, dropping hard to the ground below. Baccio was already staring toward the distant flames across the river, his brow furrowed, his expression sharpening as realization caught up with him.

“The southern fort,” Aniballe said, breath coming fast. “They mean to burn it down."

Baccio’s eyes widened. If the fort fell and the Theodorans resupplied, it would be an unmitigated disaster.

A moment later, both men were riding at a sprint for the camp. They arrived to find the camp already in uproar.

Captains of the Company were converging from every direction, voices crossing over one another in a din of shouted orders, questions, and half-formed reports. Men ran between the tents with torches in hand, the orange light lashing across polished breastplates and drawn faces. Whatever order the Genoese camp had possessed a quarter hour earlier had been broken cleanly apart by the fire in the south.

“Send word to the fort,” Baccio barked at once, forcing his voice above the chaos. “Evacuate the men and supplies immediately.”

He was trying to beat structure back into the confusion, but it was already obvious that the southern fort was lost, and Baccio was operating as such. There had been no rain for days so the forest had dried just enough for a blaze like this to spread with terrifying ease, and once such a fire took hold in dense woodland, there would be nothing anyone could do. The fort had been cleared all around and earthworks might stop the inferno from spreading to the walls, but men would die from the smoke easily enough, thus making the situation untenable.

Ironically, the Theodorans’ primitiveness meant they held such a great untamed forest so close to a capital. Its ruggedness meant that the fire would spread quickly enough. By some quirk of fate, they had the means to disassemble their fort.

Then another thought struck him, sharp enough to make him go still.

Perhaps it was not fortune at all.

The low hill they’d placed themselves upon had blunted the effectiveness of Genoese cannon fire. The river at their back had sped the construction of their camp and made easy encirclement far more difficult.

Aniballe had thought that was the limit of foresight for how the Theodorans had picked their camp. But now he saw the truth. The most logical move for Genoa had always been to cut off the southern approach through the forest, and it now proved to be a weapon waiting to be used the moment desperation demanded it.

They had been had. Every move he’d made had been foiled and seen through from the very start.

With the wind blowing north and the river beside them, the Theodorans would scarcely need another day before sending a party through to Kalamita and re-opening a supply line. If the fort was still upright, they could even commandeer it and man it themselves before them.

Everything the Company had spent weeks building toward was being undone in a single night.

Aniballe clenched his cheek so hard it bled. He could accept the strike of genius to counter their canon, the unnatural endurance to withstand poisoned wells and nights with no sleep. But to have his plans foreseen weeks in advance? To have been outsmarted in the game he most favoured? It was unacceptable.

Messengers had only just begun to ride out, and a detachment of fifty had already been sent across the river to salvage what they could from the southern fort, when another cry rose from the outer line.

“The Theodorans!” a lookout shouted. “They’re sallying out! All of them!”

Shock rippled through the officers.

Aniballe turned towards the enemy, eyes venomous and teeth bared.

Of course they would attack now. The fire had wreaked havoc on their southern forces. The forest fort could no longer threaten their rear if they sallied out, and the burning forest cast enough wild, hellish light across the plain to make a night assault possible. What should have been darkness had been turned into their ally.

“Where are they headed?” Baccio demanded, rounding on the lookout.

“To the western fort!”

“The west?” Gian Carlos asked, startled. The brute of a captain looked almost offended by the choice.

“It is one of the farthest and most isolated forts,” Aniballe said, even as his squire hurried to help him into his armour. “Reinforcements will take longer to reach it. They are striking at the point where our line is weakest.”

“It does not matter,” Baccio cut into their conversation, well aware that men nearby listened to it. "We will crush them all the same."

His own squire was fastening him into a magnificent suit of Milanese plate, all dark gleam and cruel edges, armour fit more for a prince than a mercenary captain. Around them, the Company was gathering with remarkable speed. Men poured into formation in the shifting firelight, four hundred strong in the main fort alone, armed and armoured and eager for slaughter.

Baccio stepped forward then, looming over them like some mailed giant out of an old tale.

“This is their final struggle,” he roared, using that full battlefield voice he kept in reserve for the moments just before bloodshed. Men all around them straightened at the sound, shoulders tightening, heads lifting as if the noise itself had shoved courage back into their bones. “And we will crush it underfoot!”

A great cry answered him at once, savage and eager, swelling up from the gathered ranks in one violent voice.

Aniballe listened to it and felt the heat of the burning forest carried on the wind. The orange glow to the south licked at the edges of the night, throwing the whole camp into a restless half-light. In that moment, with the Company roaring around him and the enemy already on the move, he understood with perfect clarity what this was.

The final move in their deadly game.

The one that would decide who truly walked away the victor of this war.