Fallen Eagle

2nd Week of April, 1460

They sent them out in knots of five, little fists of riders thrown into the hills past the impromptu barricades the enemy had put up.

Edae had drawn the short straw again. He was stuck riding with Izzet and Narket once more to his great and immediate dismay, and the pair of them had barely climbed atop their mounts before the noise started up once again. Joining them were two younger cousins from their own clan, boys just old enough to carry bows and foolish enough to speak of glory.

Their orders were to sight the enemy army beyond the rocky passes and send periodic reports back.

A simple job, their superiors had said. Edae wasn’t fooled for a second.

The ground climbed until they were in high hills. There were few entrances to the valleys beyond, and now, with the enemy’s tricks, there were fewer still. The land reared into steep, forested ribs that ran alongside steep ridges. Edae appreciated now that he was as far from the open steppe as he had ever been. Every narrow trail they tried either twisted back on itself or died against a wall of bare stone, leaving them few alternatives to guide their horses through unscathed.

Their beasts weren’t made for the pine and leaf-thickened air, and Edae couldn't blame them. Forests hid their fair share of secrets, not like the open steppes where you could see danger coming.

“We’re close to the main road,” Izzet murmured as they threaded between the pines. “Another ridge or two and we should see the rear of the army in the distance.”

“I’m sure you’d enjoy seeing the rear of those Greeks,” Narket jeered. “Perhaps I was wrong and they didn’t take your manhood. You took theirs.” He flashed a cruel grin, but there was something tight beneath it. Even Narket was unsettled by how deep the foliage pressed in.

Izzet turned, eyes flaring. “Shut up, you goat-fucker. I’m tired of your childish taunts.”

Their spats had been more frequent than before Izzet had left to ride with the main force. Whatever their last argument had been, it hadn’t ended prettily. Both wore bruises now, and both carried their pride like a fresh wound.

“Quiet,” Edae snapped.

Something was wrong.

They obeyed, and in the pause Edae heard an absence that unsettled him. No birdsong. No small scurry in the undergrowth. The forest sat around them like a held breath.

Then the world broke.

The crack came like a lightning strike. A tree ahead of them shuddered, leaned, and came down with a roar, branches whipping the air to splinters. Edae’s body moved before his mind could catch up. He wrenched Yildirim’s head hard to the side and the stallion skidded, hooves tearing furrows in the damp soil as the trunk slammed across the path, flinging bark and dirt over them.

Behind him Yele squealed, dancing back, nearly colliding with Narket’s mount.

“Watch it!” Narket shouted, his reaction a half-beat slow.

Another crack sounded behind them. A second tree toppled, smashing down across the trail they had just ridden, sealing them in. For a stillborn moment, there was only the heave of horseflesh and the rasp of quickened breathing from men realizing what was about to happen.

Then the bolts came.

They hissed through the greenery like angry wasps swarming, and one buried itself in Yildirim’s chest right up to the fletching. He screamed, a horrible bubbling sound, legs folding as if the earth had been yanked from under him. Another bolt slammed into Yele’s neck and the mare reared violently, warm blood spraying across Edae’s cheek.

Edae did not let himself think of the loss. He let go of the reins and threw himself clear as Yildirim went over, a dark thrashing mass of muscle and iron-shod hooves. The stallion crashed down where Edae’s legs had been a moment before, the impact shuddering through the ground. Edae rolled, shoulder stinging, pine needles and dirt grinding into his palms.

They’re aiming for the horses, not us, he realised, oddly calm beneath the roaring in his ears.

One of the cousins screamed as his own horse staggered - two bolts jutted from the boy’s belly. Another shaft hit the other’s mount in the head, and the animal crashed sideways, pinning the boy’s torso with a sickening crunch.

A harsh voice cut through the chaos from somewhere among the trees, speaking in Edae’s own tongue.

“Yield and you will not be harmed!” The voice came through the greenery clear enough, butEdae found it hard to believe it when he saw two of his comrades either dead or bleeding out in pain.

Edae froze, mind struggling to find a miracle escape. A bolt thudded into the trunk beside his head, splinters spraying across his cheek. No miracles would happen today.

Slowly, Edae dropped the bow he’d unstrapped, ready to shoot at the trunks around him, and raised empty hands.

Beside him, Izzet did the same, jaw clenched. The two cousins lay still now, bodies twisted among the churn and the dying horses.

Narket, of course, did not yield.

He hauled himself back into the saddle of the only mount still mostly hale, eyes wild. “Cowards!” he shouted in their tongue, whether at the unseen archers or at them, Edae didn't know. He drove his heels in, sending the horse lunging toward the trees as if rage could part them.

Another round of bolts fizzed through the air.

They struck the horse first, and the beast lurched, front legs buckling as Narket pitched forward, then sideways, a bolt blooming from his throat like a second, broken tongue. He hit the ground and lay still, eyes already glassing over.

What a fool, Edae thought, though the thought felt muted behind the numbness he felt at the horror that lay before him. He’d skinned and hunted much game in his young life, but never the human kind. He had never seen the raspy last breath of someone whose eyes lost their light.

The forest settled again, the echo of the crash fading into the whisper of disturbed leaves.

Edae stood very still, hands high, his heart pounding against his ribs. Both his horses lay on the ground. Yildirim’s sides heaving in ragged, uneven gasps, and Yele already gone, eyes rolled back and empty. Edae watched the future of his clan bleed out on the forest floor in the space of moments, the thought twisting in his gut.

With their mounts down and crossbows hidden in every shadow, he understood with bitter certainty that they were completely at the enemy's mercy.

Men surged out of the underbrush to surround them, pikes bristling in a ragged ring, the crossbows they’d used to pin them in tossed carelessly onto the forest floor. Edae quickly counted at least half a dozen he could see, with maybe more hidden deeper in the trees. All of them wore mail that whispered faintly when they moved, and all of them carried the flat, mean looks and brisk efficiency of men who’d long since learned how to kill and stopped thinking much of it.

He’d heard it said their enemies fielded mostly peasant rabble, levies shoved into padded coats and handed spears. If that had ever been true, it was not so here. They had committed their best men to this trick.

“How on earth did they find us?” Izzet muttered at his side. His eyes were wide with fear and bafflement, skittering from face to face as the soldiers closed in with bundles of rope and spearpoints levelled at their chests.

Edae racked his mind for an answer to that very question. It was a clever ambush, he had to grant them that. The obstructions they’d thrown across the main paths, the rugged landscape of these western mountains they'd chosen, and the easy ground they’d gained on the army without meeting any resistance from enemy scouts had all been designed to get them to take the bait and send their horses through the inhospitable terrain. It meant they’d cut along narrow, predictable lines. Edae imagined other squads and passages where the same ambush would take place.

The real key to their success was the heavy woods hemming in these particular passes. The thick trunks and low, clawing branches made it almost impossible to spot men lying in wait until you were practically on top of them, though it was true that it was just as hard for any of the enemy to see anything past a few horse-lengths ahead.

But when you already knew which handful of paths your enemy’s riders were forced to take, it became easy to sit and watch until they came.

They hadn’t taken any sort of main road because Edae had been insistent they keep to the woods to avoid patrols, but there were only so many places one could urge a horse through at any kind of speed. A few narrow deer tracks, a shallow, rocky gully, the half-cleared game trails hunters preferred. Their pursuers had clearly taken the time to find every one of them, and the knowledge to know which one they’d prefer. The only question was how.

The words spoken in his own tongue were a clue to the answer.

“They have nomads working with them,” Edae said, resignation settling on his shoulders like a wet cloak. It was the only way to know their tendencies and the spots they’d take their horses through.

Izzet’s head snapped toward him. “What?”

Edae could not fathom his incredulity. If one side had hired Tatar mercenaries, why couldn’t the other? “How on earth did they manage to contact the clans-”

“Silence!” The barked order came again in their tongue.

A tanned man with high cheekbones stepped out from between the trees as if the forest itself had produced him. He walked toward them at an unhurried, measured pace, spotless mail glinting off the rays of light that made it through the canopy, hand resting easy on the hilt of the sword at his side. When he stopped before them, he turned his head and began speaking to the other men in Greek. By his tone of command and by the way the soldiers’ attention sharpened and settled on him, Edae realised that the Tatar was not merely a guide - they had given him charge of this entire detachment. That sent a jolt of surprise through him.

“I am Sergeant Nikos Arslan,” the Tatar said, identifying himself with a clipped nod. “And you both are now prisoners of war. If you are smart, you will remain quiet and come with us.” His voice and expression were stern in a way that left no doubt he wasn’t playing at soldiers. “If you attempt to conceal any weapons, or are found to have some stashed away on you, you will be killed. Remove any such armaments now, and nothing will happen to you.”

Both men hesitated. They had no choice but to comply, but even parting with that scant edge of steel felt like walking willingly into a noose. Going into an enemy camp bare-handed was as good as a death sentence.

Something in the sergeant’s face eased seeing their reluctance. “I swear by the Sky above and the Wind that hears,” He said, not with the same sharp, careless tone as his orders, but with a quiet certainty that told Edae he was not merely paying lip service. “No harm will befall you if you comply.”

Edae exchanged a shocked look with Izzet. To invoke the ancient customs was not something that any true Tatar would do lightly. Izzet looked near-panicked, throat bobbing as he swallowed, but he still managed a small, jerky nod in Edae’s direction, as if asking him to decide for them both. Edae could not deny that the answering nod he gave back carried more than a little of the same fear.

They both removed the daggers they carried, handing the blades over and watching them vanish into enemy hands. Edae hesitated a heartbeat longer, meeting the sergeant’s gaze. There was nothing lazy in those dark eyes, and he had a feeling the man missed little. Working on a guiding instinct that surfaced to tell him not to try to fool this man, Edae reached into his satchel and drew out a short, stiff-handled braided lash. To any casual glance it looked like an innocuous tool for driving horses, but a kamchi carried an iron weight hidden beneath the braid at the grip, and in practiced hands it could do serious damage.

Izzet stared at him in surprise, not believing he’d hand over even his kamchi. No one but a true nomad would know that it could even be used as a weapon.

The sergeant’s eyes dropped to the lash and back to Edae’s face. He gave him a single, approving nod, and Edae felt he had earned a small measure of respect.

“Your kamchi,” the sergeant said then, turning his attention to Izzet. It was an order, not a question.

Izzet blinked, just as startled that a sergeant wearing Greek colours knew what it was called, but he slowly produced his own lash and, along with Edae, handed it over. The sergeant took Izzet’s, testing the heft briefly, then offered Edae’s back to him.

“Keep it,” he said simply.

It went without saying that Izzet would not enjoy the same courtesy.

A pained, strangled neigh from Yildimir broke Edae out of his thoughts. The stallion was struggling to rise, legs thrashing weakly, three quarrels jutting from his hide, one buried deep in the foreleg. Blood foamed at his nostrils with each laboured breath.

The sergeant stepped over and ran a practised eye over the animal. “One hit the lung,” he said quietly.

Yildimir tried again to pitch himself up, hooves scrabbling uselessly against the uneven ground before he slipped back down, sides heaving, wheezing in panic.

“He faces a slow death,” the sergeant went on. He turned to Edae, his expression not unkind. “May I?” It was custom to not let a beast suffer more than it needed to.

Edae took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, pain flaring at the loss of his friend, and at the knowledge he would have to let him go. There was no point prolonging the suffering, no matter how desperately some part of him wanted to cling to the faint hope the horse might yet live.

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Mercy, from men who had just ambushed him, was not something he had expected. He nodded once.

He had to bite down hard to keep his composure as the sergeant barked an order and a volley of bolts thudded into Yildimir’s body, each impact dull and final. The stallion gave one last shuddering breath and stilled. Edae blinked away the sting in his eyes.

Izzet stood a short distance off, staring grimly at his own beasts. Both horses lay bleeding near the ambush site, having dragged themselves only a little way before collapsing into stillness. No mercy was needed for them.

“Come on,” the sergeant said, not without a note of sympathy, as ropes were looped around their wrists and drawn tight. They were led through the trees to the attackers’ horses, picketed farther from the clearing. Of the cousins’ mounts, two had bolted in blind panic into the forest. The attackers made no move to pursue them; a few lost animals were not worth the trouble, and they seemed to be prizing speed.

“Let’s move,” the sergeant commanded in Greek as he hauled himself into the saddle. “We can’t afford to stay here. Back to camp.”

Izzet and Edae were hauled up behind two of the scouts like sacks of grain, hands bound. The small group began to thread its way back through the forest, the sounds of the struggle already fading into the damp hush of the trees behind them.

…

The journey took upwards of four hours.

The horses were kept at a quick, punishing pace once they reached the open road. Wind tugged at cloaks and manes alike, hooves drumming half-moon patterns on the packed earth. The surety with which their escort chose each turn told Edae that this route had been studied extensively. There was no hesitation, no glancing about for landmarks.

By the time they arrived, the sun was well past its zenith, sliding toward the long stretch of afternoon. The army had already begun to settle around a low rise that overlooked a scattering of shallow dips and hollows. From atop it, one could see a decent distance in every direction.

Edae noted, with the distant part of his mind that always took stock of such things, that the position straddled one of the few creeks in this region. It was a thin, stubborn ribbon of water cutting through land that otherwise looked more starved of greenery than any part of the Principality he had seen so far. Out here it was a lifeline, which made the camping location a practical choice, if not a particularly grand one.

They reached what passed for the outer perimeter of the fortification, if it could even be called that. There were no palisades, no trenches, no earthworks. The army had simply parked their carts in a rough straight line, forming a barrier of wood and wheels against the eastern and northern approaches.

They were hailed by a pair of weary-looking peasants in padded gambesons, spears in hand. The two men looked more bored than alert, with a droop to their shoulders that spoke of a tiredness that had not yet turned to full exhaustion, but hovered on the brink of it.

“Straighten yourselves!” Sergeant Nikos’ bark cracked through the warm air, his tone like a lash. The sentries jerked upright as if yanked on strings.

“Now, conduct the intruder protocol,” he went on, cold and precise. “If there is a mistake, I’ll be sure to report it to higher command.”

That sharpened them more effectively than any spear prod. One of the levies launched into a stilted series of calls and responses that Edae could only assume were meant to identify the sergeant and his prisoners. The man’s voice shook slightly as he spoke, as if even repeating the formula wrong might earn him punishment. Some sort of layered security measure, Edae thought with surprise, this was something that had been absent in their own camp.

They were soon led past the line of carts and into the camp proper. Sergeant Nikos sent one of the guards pelting off toward the center of the encampment with a brief order, no doubt to alert whoever was in charge. They led Edae and Izzet in the same general direction at a far more measured pace, ropes biting into their wrists as their escort urged them along.

Edae’s first firm impression was that the camp was a pale echo of the rebel host he had just left behind. The men here looked poorly equipped with rust-spotted mail, mismatched shields, and bundles of cloth for shoes. They did not carry themselves with the same grounded, dangerous certainty of those who had killed more than once, unlike the mercenaries of the rebel host who walked as if they owned the ground under their boots. These soldiers shuffled, struggled with their equipment, and occasionally glanced toward their superiors as if wondering what they were supposed to do.

They were as outmatched as rumor had painted them. And yet, as Edae moved through the camp, he found it was not quite as hopeless as he had imagined. There was order to the way the tents were laid out, logic in the positioning of the picket lines, and the cookfires close to the creek. Someone, somewhere, had thought this through, and the camp hadn’t descended into the utter chaos he’d expected.

The looks, however, were just as he’d pictured.

Weary, suspicious eyes tracked them as they rode by, men pausing their tasks to stare and look. Faces hardened when they saw the bound prisoners. Edae caught more than a few nasty glares and could not quite suppress the small, wry smile that tugged at his mouth. Prejudice, it seemed, grew just as readily in this camp as in the rebel one.

The stares never lingered long, though. As soon as their owners registered the sergeant at the head of the little procession, they dropped their gaze or turned away. Sergeant Nikos glared back at anyone who dared watch too long.

“Get back to work! Nothing to see here,” he snapped, scattering knots of onlookers before they had the chance to become a crowd.

By the time they reached what passed for the central command tent, the message had clearly run ahead of them. A ring of guards already stood waiting, spearpoints angled skyward. They saluted Sergeant Nikos as he approached, then let their eyes slide to the prisoners, their expressions turning flinty and closed as stone.

“Keep guard over them. I will report to the commanders,” Sergeant Nikos said, then ducked through the tent flaps and vanished inside.

Edae took the opportunity to look around the camp with more care, letting his eyes wander and fixing details to memory, doing what he knew best: reading a landscape, and tracking its signs.

The tents were set fairly far apart, with clear lanes between the different clusters and a main path wide enough for men and carts to pass without jostling. And though there was occasional hesitancy, few men stood idle. Most were bent over tasks - mending gear, tending cookfires, carrying wood or water - while order was enforced by shouting sergeants and the handful of veterans scattered through the ranks. It was a sharp contrast to the militia quarter in the rebel camp, a disorganized jumble where tents had been thrown up wherever there was space and guy-ropes crisscrossed each other like a spider’s web.

What struck him most here, however, was the cleanliness. Or rather, the lack of uncleanliness.

The men came in lines from where he knew the creek lay, their hands clear of grim and smelling faintly of ash. Through the usual smells of a field army - mud, sweat, smoke and worry - there was surprisingly little stench of filth, hardly any sour reek of waste or animal dung. From the faint squeal of a pig and the distant lowing of cattle, Edae knew they kept animals on hand, likely penned in a corner of the camp rather than wandering freely through it.

It was a puzzle. On the one hand, their rank and file were just as ill-prepared as they’d been told. On the other, the camp and order that permeated through it was just as high as the rebels’ professional force, perhaps higher in some respects. He hadn’t seen anyone playing dice or cards yet at the very least.

The tent flaps rustled, and Sergeant Nikos stepped back outside.

“Get in,” he said in the Turkic tongue, jutting his chin toward the opening.

Izzet and Edae both moved to obey. Edae had taken a single step when Nikos’ hand came down on Izzet’s shoulder.

“Wait,” the sergeant added. “Not you.”

Izzet froze, plainly taking this as a bad omen. “I also have information,” he blurted, voice a touch too high. “Things that could be relevant.”

“Tinç,” Nikos said calmly, assuaging Izzet's fears. “I told you no harm would come to you, and I meant it. Wait here.”

The calm in his tone did what the words alone might not have. Izzet swallowed and nodded, though the motion was shaky.

Edae ducked into the tent with Sergeant Nikos at his back.

Inside, a half-circle of officers waited for them. The arrangement was similar to the rebel headquarters, though everything here was reduced in scale. This tent was no cavernous pavilion, as here the canvas walls were close enough that Edae could have crossed the space in a dozen strides; there were no tapestries or gilt hangings, no needless decorations. And there wasn’t a weirdly fancy rug lining the floor.

Edae found that he liked it better this way.

A plain wooden table stood in the center, bearing a few weighted-down papers and a rough map. Fewer officers were present than there had been in the rebel tent, but they looked more of a set piece. They wore the same cut of coat, the same badges on their belts or sleeves, the same wary, professional attention. It was less of the hodgepodge he had seen among the rebels, where noble retainers and mercenary captains stood shoulder to shoulder with competing customs and loyalties.

“Let us begin the interrogation,” one of them said.

The speaker was a bald, thick-necked man whose face looked as if it had been cut from stone. His scalp was shaved smooth, his eyes set deep under a heavy brow. “Tell us your name.”

Surprisingly, it was Sergeant Nikos who stepped into the role of translator, repeating the question in Edae’s tongue.

“Amet,” Edae answered.

He saw no reason to speak the truth. He would not give them anything that might tie him back to his kin, and his true name was sacred, bound up in blood and memory. That still meant something to him. Even if it didn’t to the men in this tent.

“What is the name of the man who came with you?” came the next question.

“Izzet,” he replied.

Apologies Izzet, but we share no blood, and there is no way to lie in a believable fashion.

“Do you serve as a scout for the forces of Lord Philemon Makris and Adanis Nomikos?” The man’s gaze never wavered from Edae’s face.

The names rang a bell in Edae’s ear, but only in a distant, muffled way. He remembered the gleam of coins in a pouch more clearly than the titles of the men who had wanted nomad eyes and horses.

“Yes,” he answered.

“If you agree to provide us with factual and truthful information about their army,” the commander went on, each word measured, “you will not be harmed in any way and will be released when the war ends. Keep in mind we will verify this information, and if we discover any falsehood, your life will be forfeit.”

The calm voice and utterly emotionless face behind the obsidian eyes told Edae the man meant every word. There was no bluff there, no anger - just a statement of fact, as simple and hard as stone. “Is that clear, Amet?”

“Yes,” Edae said, and swallowed to moisten a suddenly dry throat.

“How many of your people do the rebels have working under them?”

“Around thirty-five.” Quills scratched on a scrap of parchment somewhere to his right as someone took notes.

“And are they all presently being used as scouts?” Another officer prompted, glancing up from the makeshift map on the table.

“Yes, in their totality, my lords.” Edae added the honorific deliberately, letting a thread of deference into his tone in the hope that a little courtesy might soften their treatment of him. It cost him nothing to try.

“How many scouts did the rebels send across the ravine we had blockaded?” the bald commander continued, unhurried. If the show of respect had any effect, Edae did not see it. The man’s expression remained implacable. Either he restrained himself well, or he simply didn’t care. Perhaps both.

“Around thirty-five,” Edae replied.

That drew a low ripple of murmurs from the line of officers, some eyebrows rising.

“The nomads?” one of them asked, clearly seeking clarification.

Edae nodded once. “All of them.”

“Did they not send any other force of scouts across the ravine?” The commander showed the first wrinkle of an expression he’d seen so far, his eyebrows drawn inward.

“No,” Edae said. Then a thought rolled slowly along the inside of his skull, gathering weight. They were clearly caught off-guard by the fact only 35 scouts in an army of 1500 had been sent through, and that they'd all been nomad mercenaries.

Perhaps there was a way here for Edae to make himself useful to his captors, useful enough to be worth keeping alive. “I believe they think us nomads expendable,” he added, offering the thought in a careful tone.

Silence followed his words, a stillness that seemed to thicken the air inside the tent. A few of the officers exchanged brief, sharp looks and one leaned close to another to mutter something under his breath.

“What makes you say that?”

The question came from a younger officer, younger even than Edae, which in itself was surprising. More surprising still was the look in the youth’s eyes: a cold, silvery steel that did not match his years.

For an instant it felt as though an old, weighty soul were staring through him, weighing and measuring. The idea was absurd, given the smoothness of the boy’s face, but so was his presence in this meeting. He sat at the left hand of the bald officer, a place of clear importance. That fact alone put Edae on edge.

He chose his next words with more thought behind them, tasting them in his head before he spoke. “We nomads were told we were to scout out your army from afar,” he said, “and shadow it closely, but without any support from the main force. We were expected to live off the land.”

“Without their support?” The young captain leaned forward slightly. “Where are they headed to?”

“East,” Edae said simply. They had shared very few details with the nomads, but that much at least they had given them. “They ride east.”

“East where?” another officer pressed. This one had a neatly trimmed beard and flaming copper hair that caught the lamplight like burnished metal. His fingers drummed once against the table, impatient.

Edae shook his head. “I do not know,” he admitted. “They gave us only the directions to where we were to meet their informants, so that we could warn them of your movements.”

“We will need that location,” the bald commander said flatly, brokering no disagreement.

Edae conveyed what he knew, reciting the landmarks and distances as best he could remember them. He was not certain how they would verify any of it, but he had seen enough of these men, not least the calm threat in those obsidian eyes, to know better than to underestimate them.

“Why do you feel that the nomads are expendable?” The young captain’s look was piercing, as if his simple question were only the outer skin of something layered beneath.

Edae hesitated under that gaze. “One of their leaders,” he said at last, “the one they call Principe.” He tasted the word with distaste. “He despises us, called us heathens and wretches before he commanded us to leave the camp. They sent us west with no way to call for help, no banner to rally to, no promise of support. They do not care if we live or die. Only that we are useful to track you.”

He gave voice to suspicions he had kept locked in the quiet corners of his mind, but voiced to no one aloud.

Edae heard a slight strain creep into Sergeant Nikos’ voice as he translated, an angry roughness that had not been there before. Around the tent, low conversations rose and fell as the information passed from ear to ear.

“And the other ‘heathen’ mercenaries?” the young captain pressed, his mind reaching for something. “I am told the rebel army has quite a few. Did he not speak against those as well?”

“He did,” Edae confirmed. “Often. But they are many in number, and strong of arm and sword. I do not know the reason, but they have remained at camp. We did not.”

“Thank you, Amet.” The young captain inclined his head in a small, deliberate nod.

The gesture, slight though it was, surprised Edae. Such acknowledgment from someone of a higher rank was not something he had expected, least of all from a Greek commander to his Tatar prisoner. It slipped a thread of hope into his chest, a sense that perhaps he might yet return home alive.

…

“That will be all, Amet,” the bald commander said at last, his tone making the dismissal plain.

The questioning had run close to half an hour by Edae’s reckoning, so thorough were their inquiries. Names, distances, numbers, habits, arguments overheard, even the way fires were laid in the rebel camp. At some point midway through, many of the officers had drifted back to their duties, leaving only three behind: the copper-haired captain, the man carved from stone, and the young, unsettling captain with the old eyes.

Edae bowed as he knew he was expected to and allowed himself to be led outside.

At the tent’s mouth he was met by a strange, jarring sight as half a dozen of his own brethren gathered together, all bound and nervous-looking. Some bore cuts and bruises from the ambushes, others the hollow, stunned expressions of men who had run out of fear and landed in numbness. A few met his gaze with flickers of recognition or desperate questions they did not dare voice.

“You’re going to be detained and held in a periphery of the camp now,” Sergeant Nikos informed him, falling into step beside him. “You will be under guard and bound, but you will not have to worry about food or water. I’ll see to that personally.”

The Sergeant spoke it as a straightforward promise, not a favor. And despite himself, something in Edae believed him.

“I’ll hold you to that, Nikos Arslan,” Edae replied, not shying from his eyes.

The sergeant’s mouth quirked into a brief half-smile. He turned his head, and the image was gone, his features having settled back into cool professionalism.

“You,” he said to a frazzled-looking Izzet, who had been watching the exchange with almost painful intensity. “Inside.”

As Izzet was ushered past the tent flaps and Edae was being led away by a pair of veterans, understanding hit him with a cold jolt.

So that was how they would verify the information.

They were going to question each of the survivors separately and then compare every answer, line by line. None of the men would know what the others had said, what they had admitted or concealed, so the only way for their stories to truly align would be to tell the truth. Omissions would stand out, and each lie was beyond risky. Edae saw some of his kindred reaching the same conclusion he had, their eyebrows jumping out of their eyes.

It was ingenious. Uncomfortable admiration mingled with the chill in his gut. Edae was starting to grasp how this ragtag army had managed to ambush them so completely and beat them so badly.

Despite being outnumbered, they had funneled them with the clever use of blockades and a fresh trail to follow, knowing the enemy wouldn’t resist the urge to send men through. Now they meant to squeeze out every drop of invaluable information about the rebel army they could using their new captives. They’d achieved a crucial victory in the information war. All without losing a single man of their own.

This was an army of paupers led by a cabal of cunning beasts. Wolves one and all.

The thought might have scared him more if it had not also, in some dark way, impressed him.

It was then that another realization slid into place, one that almost drew a chuckle from him at its bitter neatness. “Vay…” he murmured under his breath, staring up at the bruised sky overhead.

They had asked him his name, and he had lied. He should have known the Sky Father would see fit to punish him for that.

He was the one who’d given him his name after all.