Fallen Eagle

1st week of April, 1460

“The last of the reinforcements arrived today. Their equipment is being double-checked and replacements issued where needed,” Sir Silvanus reported.

They were in the map room again, the same cramped stone chamber that had become the beating heart of Theodoro’s war effort. These meetings had become a daily ritual as each part of the plan was fleshed out and every kink patiently hammered flat.

“The supplies?” Someone asked.

“Accounted for. Six months’ worth,” Silvanus answered.

It was a sizeable portion of the stores the Doux had hoarded in Mangup in anticipation of rebellion. Without them the city’s ability to endure a siege would be sharply reduced, but no one around the table protested. If the rebels managed to put up a long-lasting siege on the capital, then the plan had failed and they were all doomed regardless.

“Then we are all set,” the Doux said from his high-backed chair.

He surveyed the circle of officers. There was more than one pair of haggard eyes, and shoulders slightly hung from long nights spent poring over maps and ledgers. It could not be said they had not worked to polish their plan, Theodorus thought. He might have brought the vision, but turning thought into reality meant wrestling with a hundred small details pointed out by a dozen different people. That was fine, the devil, as they say, sat in the details.

“Go. Rest. Recover.” The Doux’s voice softened a fraction for his usual tone. “Today we stop thinking. Tomorrow we start doing.”

With that, the meeting was adjourned.

The officers broke apart into small clusters, voices dropping back to normal tones as they filed out. Theodorus rose with them. After a week of the physician’s badgering care he could finally stand without help, though his calf still protested and the elbow in its sling remained stubbornly stiff. He had been diligent about bedrest, keeping the leg as still as he could bear to hasten the healing.

Elias had surprised him. The court physician, for all his fluster and chatter, had proved surprisingly open-minded compared to most physicians of his age. When Theodorus suggested boiling water and surgical tools “to burn away impurities,” Elias had accepted the idea with almost boyish curiosity. He had noticed that throughout Stefanos’s slow recovery, and Theodorus’s own wounds, there had been a surprising lack of inflammation or secondary infection. No angry reddening around the cuts, no outstanding fevers that wouldn’t break, none of the creeping rot so common in medieval wounds.

That, more than anything, had convinced him.

Elias had begun tentatively boiling his own instruments at Theodorus’s suggestion. When asked how he knew such knowledge, Theodorus credited a wandering Arabic physician Theodorus claimed to have once met, knowing their methods were far more advanced than western ones in this time period. It was a thin story, but the doctor didn’t ask more questions. He seemed less interested in how the Captain knew such things than in the possibilities they opened opened up.

If they survived this war, Theodorus thought as he limped toward the door, that small change alone might save more men than any victory on the field.

It was into this maelstrom of thoughts, as he limped carefully away from the strategy room, that Sir Silvanus fell into step beside him.

“Finally done with all this theorising,” Silvanus said with an easy smile, throwing his head back in a dramatized sigh of exhaustion.

“To succeed one has to prepare for the worst,” Theodorus replied, lips quirking in an amused grin.

“Always so wise,” Silvanus said as he matched his pace to Theodorus’s slower gait, which for a man who usually cut brisk lines through the castle was a considerable concession. “I am definitely more in the camp of doing, so I am thrilled these preparations are over.”

“When we were preparing there was little chance of dying skewered by a blade,” Theodorus said. “In battle that outcome rises considerably.”

“An acceptable risk to stave off boredom,” Sir Silvanus grinned, flashing a row of pearl-white teeth. Theodorus could easily imagine why the ladies in court fawned over him.

“Will you really be going to battle?” Silvanus asked after a moment, his gaze flicking to the bound elbow.

Theodorus still could not so much as flex the joint. It remained swollen and the slightest movement caused him pain. He knew he would likely never regain full range of motion. His fighting prowess had been essentially slashed. He would never be more than a liability with a sword.

“Of course,” Theodorus answered, tone firm. “I have debts to settle. And I will do anything to make sure the plan succeeds.”

Silvanus grew thoughtful at that, recognising something deeper beneath the simple words. “Debts with the old Lion?” he asked quietly.

Theodorus nodded once. What hurt most about the elbow was not the pain, but the memory it carried of the friend he had lost and left behind. This rebellion was no longer just about keeping the Principality alive. Not for him. It was personal now.

They crossed the threshold into the courtyard. Evening light pooled between the walls, catching on the crenelations of Mangup’s inner keep. Theodorus’s gaze drifted toward the gate, and he stopped short.

Filing into the barracks were soldiers he had not seen in a long time.

“Go on,” he heard Silvanus say beside him, an understanding smile colouring his face.

Theodorus gave him a brief nod and started across the courtyard, his limp more pronounced on the uneven stones.

The soldiers noticed his approach. The one at their head was a tall, broad-shouldered man built like a titan. He straightened and stepped forward.

“Captain?” Leonidas asked.

“Captain Leonidas,” Theodorus said, returning a brisk one-handed salute, as professional as he could manage, though he could not quite stop the smile that spread across his face.

“Captain Theodorus,” Leonidas replied, and the rest of the men echoed the salute. Their eyes, however, were drawn at once to the sling, the stiff leg, the signs of fresh hurt.

“What happened?” Leonidas asked, grimness tightening his features. There was almost anger in the question. “How did you get injured so?”

“That is a long story,” Theodorus sighed.

“We have time,” Nikos said. His tone was respectful, but a calculating glint entered his eyes. He had been the only one from the Probatoufrorio to meet Lord Adanis in person, and knew more than the others about the currents that flowed through Suyren.

“We have just finished reporting our arrival to the garrison,” he added.

“Well,” Theodorus said, gesturing toward the inner buildings where the smell of cooking was starting to drift out, “we can talk during dinner, then.” He said as he started for the common hall.

…

“Truly? You managed to save the Captain?” Leonidas could not help but blurt out, staring at a very satisfied Christos, who had, of course, embellished the story through a few cups of wine.

“With my own body,” Christos declared, already well into his drink. “Locked my shield in place to stop the hail of arrows coming for him.” He lifted his cup for another swallow, found it empty, and reached for the jug, only for Leonidas’s meaty hand to clamp down on his wrist.

“Clearly not quick enough,” Leonidas said dryly. “Or the Captain would not be maimed.”

“There were a lot of arrows,” Christos muttered, frowning, he had become unused to anyone casually restraining him. “That we made it out at all is a solid victory in my book.”

“But why did Lord Adanis ambush you, Captain?” Nikos asked. He sat beside Theodorus at the long table, his tone respectful but his eyes sharp.

“Because he found out I was working for the Crown,” Theodorus replied, his visage grim. He saw no harm in giving the veterans of the Probatoufrorio a mostly unvarnished account. Their loyalty to the Principality was beyond question.

“How? If I may ask.” Nikos pressed quietly, voicing the question everyone else was thinking aloud.

“Because they followed Stefanos,” Theodorus said. “I had sent him with a message to Mangup to warn the Prince.”

At the far end of the table, Demetrios and Orestis, who had been speaking in low tones, fell silent. Orestis wore an anxious expression as Demetrios described Stefanos’s condition, but now both men turned their attention to the Captain.

“I was careless,” Theodorus admitted. “And he paid the price.”

The sergeants of the Probatoufrorio drank in silence for a moment, the weight of the words settling between them.

“So that is why he is not here,” Leonidas said quietly.

“He is resting in the infirmary,” Demetrios answered. He looked remarkedly improved from what he had been a week ago, some of the hollow gauntness gone now that Stefanos had clawed his way back from the brink. “He still has feverish episodes and needs opium for the pain, but the worst has passed.”

Theodorus still couldn’t quite believe it. It was as if some stubborn thread refused to let the boy go. This was the third time Stefanos had stood on death’s doorstep and somehow stepped back.

“He had better not go and die on us after all the trouble our good sergeant went through to keep him alive,” Philippos grumbled, his usual sour tone doing a poor job of hiding concern.

“He is in good hands,” Demetrios said, a faint smile touching his lips. He had grown used to the court physician’s oddities over the last week to see the competency underneath.

“Can he receive visitors?” Orestis asked.

“Of course,” Theodorus replied.

“Come. He is probably asleep, but he will be glad to see you,” Demetrios said to Orestis, rising from the bench. Orestis stood as well, eager to speak with Stefanos and the two of them made their way out of the raucous bustle of a common hall filled to the brim with hundreds of reinforcements called from across the Principality.

“What will we do now?” Leonidas shifted the conversation back to harsher matters once they had gone. “We were called back to the capital in haste. Now I understand why.”

“I still cannot believe you marched through northern enemy territory just to come to Mangup,” Christos said, half disbelieving, half impressed.

“It was easy enough to skirt around Suyren’s main range,” Leonidas answered, waving a hand as if it were nothing. “And Elias has things well in hand there. Besides, we could not miss out on all the fun.” He grinned a predatory smile at the chance for glory.

“Do not worry, you are covered on that part,” Christos shot back, tongue in cheek.

Laughter rolled down the table, loosening the tension in the air. Easing it until they were just comrades again, not running the thin line between the Principality and ruin.

“I heard you have a new toy,” Leonidas teased christos.

“I doubt you could even hold it up.” Theodorus heard Christos say as the talk drifted into the easy channels of rough jokes, catching up to old news and fresh rumours, the clatter of cups and low jokes filling the hall.

Theodorus and Nikos stayed at the fringes of the conversation, content to nurse their drinks in relative quiet. The fire popped and spat in the hearth, throwing shifting light over Nikos’s thoughtful face.

“How does the war look?” the quiet sergeant asked at last, his voice low, serious.

“Grim,” Theodorus said, not bothering to soften it.

“Is there a plan?” Nikos asked.

“Of sorts,” Theodorus answered, a small, wry smile tugging at his mouth.

“One you helped devise, I assume,” Nikos said, catching that look. “An ambush?” he ventured.

“You know me too well,” Theodorus replied, genuinely a little surprised.

“I am only going by your past achievements,” Nikos said calmly, a small smile slipping past.

Theodorus considered him with more care. Nikos had a good head for tactics. He had been the one to complete the encirclement at the Giant’s Tear, seeing Theodorus’s movements and realizing he meant to encircle the Tatars.

“Well, this one has a few more layers to it,” Theodorus revealed, tone purposefully mysterios.

Nikos’s gaze sharpened. “What do you mean?”

“Let me fill you in on the details,” Theodorus said, leaning in as the noise of the hall washed around them, and began to speak.

Five hundred men stood assembled before Mangup’s main gate. At their core, a hundred and fifty of the Prince’s royal guard gleamed in breastplate and mail, purple cloaks snapping in the high plateau wind as they paraded through the upper streets to the cheers of the populace.

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It was a show, first and foremost. A bright, flashing display meant to lift spirits and, just as importantly, send a clear message to any eyes and ears hidden among the crowd: the army was on the move, and it was marching south, as expected. To meet with the ‘late’ Kalamita reinforcements to consolidate their strength. The predictable move, giving no hint of the real work that lay behind the move.

Theodorus sat in the saddle at the head of one of the central files, his militia contingent and the Probatoufrorio veterans arrayed behind him in neat ranks. He had been granted a command second only to the Megas Doux himself, a sub-commander in the field, equal to a Hypo Strategos, with captains like Leonidas now technically under his authority.

As a commander who had already won an unlikely victory in the north and cultivated a pious reputation he had already become a poster boy for the Principality and the valor of its armed forces. Now, his close brush with death at the hands of traitors had been carefully amplified by the Crown’s whispers, painting him as a living symbol of northern resistance - showing that the rebels did not control all of the north - and of God’s favour for the Principality. Now, he was being put on display.

That meant he had to endure the adoration of the crowd as they recognised him and began to chant his name. Children pointed, women cheered, and old men raised caps in salute.

He bore it poorly.

“Your first time?” Sir Silvanus asked from his white horse, smiling broadly at the people as if born to this sort of thing. He stood tall in his stirrups, posture perfect, lips barely moving as he pitched his words for Theodorus alone. “You will get used to it. It might not look like it, but this is important.”

Theodorus straightened at once despite the pull in his calf. He might look sixteen, but in truth he carried more than fifty years of weariness behind his eyes. He had not expected to be quietly instructed by a younger man. It would not do to give a poor show.

They passed under the great arch of the main gate. Outside, on the packed earth just before the portcullis, the Megas Doux waited astride his massive stallion, armour lacquered a deep, commanding crimson. As the last ranks filed out, he raised his sword, the blade catching the pale spring light, and pointed it south toward the broken hills.

“Forward!” he bellowed.

The column rolled into motion, an armed river of five hundred men leaving their homes without knowing if they would ever see them again, boots beating a steady rhythm on the road. Behind them, Mangup’s walls loomed like the edge of the world. Ahead lay the open country, and the first steps of a plan that would decide whether the Principality lived or died.

The war for Theodoro’s very heart had begun.

Apostolos’s day began early, with the slow rise of the golden sun over the broken line of the Theodoran hills, bleeding light into the camp. The air still held the bite of night when he stepped out of the tent that had been allotted to him as one of the senior captains of the northern army. Canvas flapped, fires smouldered low, and the stink of men, horse and smoke clung to everything like a film.

He drew a breath, straightened his cloak, and went to work.

“Inspection! Assemble!” one of his sergeants bellowed, voice cracking across their little corner of the camp. Men lurched into motion at once, peasants in padded jacks scrambling to fall into crooked lines, clutching spears as if they might turn back into hoes at any moment.

Apostolos stood before them and, for the hundredth time, felt like a fraud.

His father had placed him over the least professional part of the host: the late-raised levies from Nomikos lands and their northern vassals, dragged from furrow and flock when the summons came. They were little more than a rabble, a smear of mud and old wool against the neat blocks of mailed men that made up the rest of the army his father had gathered. The contrast was not accidental. Apostolos knew well enough this command was a rebuke dressed up as responsibility.

He told himself he no longer cared.

The hollow ache under his breastbone called him a liar.

The inspection, at least, was mercifully uneventful. No new injuries. No glaring absences. No one foolish enough to try deserting on the second day of the march. It would have been worrying if there had been. The Principality was small enough that campaigns were measured in days, not long grinding months, and there were precious few places for runaways to vanish to. Every neighbouring lord spoke in another tongue and prayed to other Religions. A Nomikos peasant slipping across those borders wouldn’t live a good life with proper Orthodox Roman values.

If all went according to his father’s plan, they had another three days’ march ahead of them before they reached the agreed meeting point with the Makris forces. Their own column moved at the pace of the baggage train, slow and deliberate, scouts riding ahead to feel out the road while the supply wagons crawled in their dust. There was no glory in that, but there was reassurance, and that waas enough.

Apostolos forced himself to focus on the work, moving down the lines with meticulous care, checking straps, sallets, battered spearpoints. When the inspection was done he stayed with the men, issuing and confirming the allotments for the day – latrine duty, firewood, foraging parties, watch rotations. It was dull, thankless labour, but it kept his hands busy and his thoughts from circling too tightly around the insult of his posting.

Only when every argument over chores had been settled and each squad knew its place did he turn his steps toward the heart of the camp.

The command tent dominated the centre like some gaudy silk mushroom, all ornamented poles and rich fabric his father had seen fit to commission for the campaign. An informal council gathered there every morning, a net cast for any problems before they could grow teeth.

Apostolos arrived among the first. The tent felt too large half-empty, its maps and benches waiting like mute witnesses. His father was nowhere to be seen. Of course.

The first other figure to duck through the flap was a pale giant of a man whose muscles bunched and shifted under his bare chest like coiled ropes. Scars tracked white lines across his skin, half-lost among the painted whorls and jagged shapes that marked his torso.

“Ilnar.” Apostolos inclined his head in greeting.

The northerner did not so much as twitch in acknowledgement. He had never been one to lower himself to anyone.

At his side padded the translator, the odd man who shadowed Ilnar wherever he went. A lattice of geometric symbols had been inked across his face, though even those careful patterns were nothing beside the wild tapestry of colour and scars that sprawled over Ilnar’s body.

More captains trickled in by ones and twos. Mercenary leaders, most of them, and it galled Apostolos more than he liked to admit that so few bore Roman features or names. It was as if his father meant to purchase victory by the purseful while his own son was set to watch over peasants with blisters on their hands. But Apostolos had no standing to complain, not after letting Captain Theodorus escape, and he knew it.

There was little in the way of easy laughter or shared jests as the tent filled. These were not comrades, merely men bound together by coin and necessity. They traded nods, not stories, and weighed each other like rivals for the coming prize.

The only presence that offered Apostolos the smallest measure of comfort was his cousin Michail, who took up a place at his shoulder with the ease of long habit. Michail’s grumpy silence was preferable to most men’s attempts at conversation. As Apostolos’s second in command, he was at least one familiar stone in a shifting riverbed.

“Damn savages,” Apostolos muttered under his breath when he caught Ilnar and the translator sharing a few low, guttural grunts, the giant’s booming laugh rolling through the tent an instant later.

The sound set his teeth on edge. He folded his arms behind his back and fixed his gaze on the map table, doing his best to ignore the sting in his pride and the uneasy churn in his gut.

Lord Adanis arrived at last, as Apostolos had known he would, entering only once every other man was in his place. He stepped into the tent in a lustrous burgundy brigandine, its polished plates catching what little light filtered through the canvas. He had always come late to councils and morning assemblies. He despised waiting on other people and preferred to make them wait on him.

“At ease,” he said, a flick of his fingers dispelling the brisk salutes that had begun to ripple through the tent.

“Any issues?” he asked as he lowered himself into an opulent hardwood chair, the only one of its kind in the pavilion. It was as much a declaration as the brigandine - a reminder of how much wealth he was willing to drag onto a campaign.

None of the captains spoke.

“Well then, we continue with the journey. Have the forward scouts reported anything?” His gaze slid to Apostolos. His son had been put in charge of most of the humble work that kept the army moving - scouting routes, watering points, forage reports, the petty duties no one noticed until they went wrong. It was the type of thing that couldn’t be trusted to foreign mercenaries. In fact, men like Ilnar might even take offense at being told to count wagons and streams.

“The path is clear,” Apostolos replied, forcing his voice steady, “and we have marked the next few halts along the nearby streams.” He outlined the stopping points, where the ground was firm for camp and the water ran clean. Armies did not march without pause from dawn to dusk; frequent rests were needed to keep men from breaking down and morale from fraying. They had departed several days ahead of the agreed timetable for their reunion with Makris’s host, so they could afford the easier pace.

“Then we continue southwards,” Lord Adanis said. “The Crown’s army may already have joined with the Kalamita reinforcements by now.”

His words settled over the table like a thin chill. They moved on to the usual tangle of mundane questions that came with moving an army - fodder, delayed wagons, a quarrel between two companies - when a shadow fell across the entrance.

“My lord.” A dust-streaked messenger pushed past the guard and stopped just inside the tent.

“Speak,” Lord Adanis commanded, annoyance tightening his mouth at the interruption so near the end of their council. He was likely looking forward to retiring to his tent to dine and lounge as he had so far.

“I have ridden from Suyren, my lord. We have received urgent news,” the man said, his voice tight.

This was likely the information network his father had set up in the capital. When the royal army had marched south, their own agents had gone from Mangup to Suyren and then redirected to the army’s last known route once fresh reports arrived. It was a rough chain because no one ever knew the exact position of a host to know where to deliver the messages.

That meant grueling night rides, relay stations every few leagues, horses ridden to lather so their news would be as close to current as the land allowed. In a principality as small as theirs, speed of word could decide battles long before steel met steel.

“The royal army has turned north,” the messenger declared.

“What?” Apostolos and Adanis spoke almost together.

“They circled out of sight of Mangup, then turned about and swung west,” the messenger continued. Sweat had carved pale tracks through the dust on his face.

“How long ago was this?” Adanis asked, all irritation gone.

“Two days, my lord. Our agents slipped out of their camp that night,” the man replied.

“That would put them already at the southern border of our lands,” Apostolos said aloud, a shudder running through him. “We have to turn back.”

“We could also continue to the meeting point and consolidate our strength,” one of the mercenary captains suggested. Around him, the translators for the Tatar and Circassian companies murmured in low concert, passing his words along as their leaders frowned.

“While leaving the Crown’s men free to run amok in our lands?” Michail cut in. “They could even strike at Suyren.”

“With five hundred men?” the same captain asked. “They could not hope to storm Suyren’s walls, and a siege would drag on for months they do not have.”

“They had 6 months' worth of supplies,” Adanis pointed out, surprising Apostolos. He had thought his father half-distracted during the earlier debriefing, but for all his distaste of army tedium, Lord Adanis did understand their importance.

“It would still take time,” Sir Dysmas said, picking up the thread. “More than enough for us to join Lord Makris and strike the Crown’s men from behind. A siege of Suyren is unfeasible.”

“But raiding is possible,” Apostolos countered, the worry plain in his voice. “And, more importantly, they can cut our own supply lines while they march. They do not need to break walls to hurt us.”

“We have plenty of supplies of our own,” another mercenary captain said with a careless shrug. “And to raid their own land? The Crown would be a fool to turn his subjects against him.”

“Nomikos land is fair game,” Adanis said quietly.

The words settled slowly among the men. No one had expected the Crown to go on the offensive now. Spring planting was in full swing - if those fields burned, Nomikos land would suffer not just this year, but for several to come. Grain lost in spring echoed in winter.

“The plan is to lay siege to Kalamita, far to the south,” Adanis went on, and Apostolos could follow his line of thinking.

“Exactly on the other side of the principality,” Apostolos said. “We march away, and the Crown’s army has time to ride through our heartland, ruin our fields, then slip back to Mangup with our backs turned.”

“The siege could not last beyond the year’s worth of supplies we carry,” Sir Dysmas added wearily. “We would be chained to our wagons while our homes burn.”

“They would be overextended,” one of the captains argued. “If they push north and we push south, we catch them at Mangup and cut off their retreat. It is the clean move.”

Adanis considered. Silence took the tent as each man weighed the same choice. On the board of pure strategy, joining Makris and trapping the Crown’s host was the obvious answer. But every day spent chasing that trap left Nomikos fields open to fire.

And there was something else. This sudden wheel north was bold. Too bold for the Megas Doux. Someone else had guided the Crown’s hand. Someone who hated their house and favoured daring, crooked plans, Adanis thought. Captain Theodorus was coming for them.

“The true price of this rebellion would then be paid by us,” Adanis said at last. “Not only here, but in empty granaries when the banners come down.”

It was not enough to win. How the land would look after the winning mattered just as much.

“We encamp,” Adanis decided. “We send more scouts along our southern border - light riders in pairs. I want eyes on every road the Crown’s men might take into our lands. We move only when we know exactly where they are.”

A stir ran through the tent.

“And send a messenger to Lord Philemon,” he continued. “He is to turn his men and march to us. We regroup here, not at the southern point. With both forces together, we will answer the Crown from a place of strength.”

The Nomikos captains could not quite hide their relief. The thought of their estates and families left entirely exposed eased a fraction. Defending their own soil first felt right, even if it complicated the grand design.

The mercenaries were less pleased. Apostolos saw it in narrowed eyes and tight mouths: to them, this was the wrong military move, sacrificing the chance to spring a trap for fields that were not theirs.

Adanis raised a hand and the murmuring died. “This is my decision,” he said. “I will answer for it. Until then, you will follow it.”

A low grumble rolled from Ilnar’s chest. His translator listened, then gave a thin smile.

“You paid the coin, it is true, lion-man,” the translator said in accented Romani. “But our people expect battle and glory. We follow you so long as there is one.”

“There will be,” Adanis replied, voice hard as iron. “On ground of our choosing, not theirs.”

4th Week of March, 1460

“Keep that sword away, it’s bumping into my side,” one of the guards complained from the back of the caravan. He was meant to be passing for a common caravan guard, but the sharp, offended tone and the way he held himself screamed Royal Guard from a mile away, Loukas thought.

“I don’t exactly have much space here to angle it,” came the smoky reply from his compatriot somewhere in the cramped dark of the covered cart. Canvas creaked, wood groaned, and mail rustled every time one of them shifted. “Where do you want me to store it? Snuggle it between your buttocks?”

Of course, he was Royal Guard as well. The whole trip - spent packed in like salted fish, and forced to keep their heads down and tongues quiet - had them all on edge. They had to endure it until they were close enough to the building site. But Loukas had found that tempers frayed quickly among men who were used to space, deference, and polished armour, not bumps and dust.

“I’d like to see you try that, I swear I’ll-”

“We’ve arrived.” The murmur came from beyond the hanging tarp. The cart driver - another of their kind in disguise - kept his voice low.

“Finally.” The first guard let out a breath that was almost a growl.

One by one the three men squeezed their way out of the caravan that had been their jolting prison for most of the day. Loukas blinked in the harsh daylight, the smell of crushed earth and fresh sap replacing the warm fug of sweat and old wood. They stood at the edge of the place that would decide this war.

Before them lay a steeply inclined valley, a double road running wide and pale along its spine, wagon ruts already cutting faint grooves into the soil. On either side, untamed wilderness pressed close: dense woodland, tangled underbrush, and the dark suggestion of deeper forest beyond. It was a natural place for an ambush, Loukas thought, the land itself narrowing a traveller’s choices to one path. Their task was to make it even more murderous.

A guard outpost squatted at the chokepoint where the road pinched tight. Men watched from behind a rough palisade; spearpoints and helmet crests rose and fell against the sky. Anyone who could not prove their identity would be politely turned away with warnings that the road ahead was unsafe, that the Principality was at war and no caravan had any business wandering into its teeth.

They passed the checks quickly enough to see that, on the far side, the valley was already beginning to change. Dozens of men hurried back and forth, shouting to one another as they hacked at undergrowth, marked lines in the dirt, and began digging the soil. Smoke curled from cookfires in a rough temporary camp thrown together to house the hundreds of labourers and soldiers expected from Kalamita.

“Well, get to it, woodcarver.” One of the guards gave Loukas a perfunctory gesture, half-wave, half-dismissal, and all but shooed him away.

Loukas swallowed the sting to his pride. He was a master woodcarver of the capital, not some village joiner to be waved off like a boy. Reaching that rank at just thirty years of age was an achievement he cherished with pride. There were only six masters in the entire Principality, two of them in Mangup itself, and he was the youngest of them all. The Prince’s own halls bore his work.

To the average Royal Guard, though - most of them younger sons of noble houses, raised with a sword in hand and a sense of their own importance - he was just a craftsman. Useful, perhaps, but not important.

It did not matter. Not today. He had been summoned because he was good at what he did, and here his skill would sing louder than any title. There was something strangely thrilling in that.

They had tasked him with directing the construction of the battleworks that would turn this valley into a deathtrap. He was one of many craftsmen the Principality had poured into this project, but one given a position of important in this framework. The time window was brutally short, and every day counted.

All the better, Loukas thought.

He ran his hand over a freshly felled trunk, already measuring it in his mind, seeing where it might stand, how it might split. A grin tugged at his lips, unbidden and boyish. They had no idea how this valley would look once he was done with it.