Fallen Eagle

3rd Week of April, 1460

The morning broke with a brittle clarity that made every shape in the camp look harsher than it had the night before. Apostolos stood at the edge of the militia sprawl and took in the sagging tents, the muddied paths, and what had begun as a proud levy now turned into a midden heap of sorry men.

“Out of your sleeping holes, you lazy maggots!” The sergeant’s bellow tore through the cold air, but even his fury sounded spent. His voice rasped and cracked, as if it had already been used up days ago.

Men dragged themselves from their tents in ones and twos, blinking against the grey light. Cheekbones jutted beneath sallow skin, backs were hunched, and many limped as they shuffled into line. Some didn’t bother to hide the way they glared at the sergeant, ugly resentment simmering in reddened eyes as they lined up for the daily ritual of counting heads. Something that had become increasingly grim and miserable with each passing day.

“Two hundred and seven!” The headcount rang out at last. The number hung in the air, smaller than it had any right to be. It had been shrinking every day, not only from men who slipped away into the dark but from others who were simply left behind in villages barely able to stand, let alone march. They had sentries posted all along the perimeter to combat this exact issue, but they were as exhausted as the rest. Once the men realised that there was no good barrier preventing them from leaving, the trickle of runaways had turned into a steady seep.

“We won’t have an army by Kalamita,” Michail muttered beside him. His cousin was usually a well of dark, grumbling energy, but today even that seemed drained. “The only reason more don’t desert is that half of them can’t walk in a straight line for long.” He spat in the dirt.

Even the sergeants’ grilling sounded forced this morning, the insults and threats sliding off dull faces. Words alone could not force tired legs to march.

One of his sergeants ambled up to him. Behind the man stumbled a knot of prisoners, half-dragged, half-shoved forward, their ankles and wrists bound with rough cord. Apostolos felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“These ones here were caught last night, trying to slip through the picket line,” the sergeant reported. He was a stubble-faced brute with breath like rot, and every word he spoke seemed as foul as the air that carried it, both in smell and in content.

Apostolos swallowed. Beside him, Michail stared at the ground. He knew, along with everyone else what fate befell the men, and shuddered from the thought of it.

Apostolos did not even want to contemplate such an option. This was his levy, and he would mete out justice how he saw fit. “They will be whipped,” Apostolos said at last, the words coming out tight. “A dozen lashes each.”

The sergeant shook his head slowly. “The code is clear, my lord.” His eyes held a certain finality to them that Apostolos thought disconcerting.

“It’s execution for them.” The words silenced the teeming mass of men better than any shout from their spent sergeants.

The levy behind him, realizing their fate began to fidget, trying to unbind themselves or runaway. Their guards held them still, grips as tense as iron, as tense as their own gaze. They took no joy in holding men to their deaths.

“Madness!” Michail lurched forward, colour rising to his face. “That will be decided by the reigning officer, not you.” Execution for desertion was common enough on paper, but Apostolos held the theoretical final say for any punishment issued.

“The Lord himself commanded it, my Lords.” The sergeant’s answer landed like a hammer blow.

Apostolos felt weak. His father had twisted the final knife with that one word.

One of the men managed to shake himself free enough to run at Apostolos, eyes wide in panic. "Please! I have a son! You can't do this!" His words came out jumbled, frantic. He was tackled to the ground before he could finish, held down by the guards and his restraints.

“There is no executioner,” Apostolos tried, voice shaking. Surely that would be enough. Surely they could-

“It won’t be pretty,” the sergeant acknowledged, eyes as hollow as his tone. In his hand, Apostolos now noticed, he held a heavy blade. Not even a proper headsman’s sword. Just a crude length of steel, nicked and dull from camp work.

Apostolos realised they were all looking at him. The prisoners - boys, most of them, mud-streaked and wild-eyed - the sergeant, Michail, the whole levy stood waiting.

He wanted to refuse. To say no, not like this. His tongue felt thick and useless in his mouth. If he defied the order, his father would hear. And then there would be more than a handful of deserters to bury.

“Do it,” he forced out at last, the words scraping his throat raw. “Make it… as quick as you can.”

Reluctantly, horribly, the command was given.

The peasant strewn on the ground collapsed with a broken, primal scream, raw pain and sadness breaking out from him and seeping into everyone around him.

What followed burned itself into him.

There had been no proper executioner, no clean practiced stroke - only that dull blade in a trembling hand over a patch of churned earth. The first swing bit and stuck in bone instead of severing clean; the man’s muffled scream turned into a wet gargle as they wrestled the sword free. The second blow sent the head lolling at a sick angle, flesh half-hanging, eyes still rolling in confusion. Mouths twisted open from the uneven cuts, teeth bared in something that was not quite a scream and not quite a word.

It went on. Blow after clumsy blow. Blood and mud mixed underfoot, turning the ground into a slick, stinking paste. One of the condemned wept and begged in a voice that sounded far too young, another stared straight at Apostolos as the blade rose. He couldn’t look away.

Apostolos stood and watched because a lord was meant to watch. Because he had ordered it. His hands shook so violently he had to clasp them behind his back to hide it. The coppery stench filled his lungs, coated his tongue, clung to his clothes. When the last head finally toppled free and rolled to a stop, its eyes still wide and glassy, he thought he might vomit.

Michail stepped forward into the silence, placing a hand on his shoulder. He understood Apostolos was in no state of mind to speak, let alone give an order. “Pack up your tents. We march in fifteen.”

Several of the militiamen shot both of them looks of pure unadulterated hatred, as if they had ordered the winter, the march, and even this execution of their own free will.

“Now,” Michail snapped, the word cracking like a whip. The mass of bodies lurched into motion, fumbling with frozen ropes and damp canvas.

Apostolos stood rooted in place, staring at the pool of blood. No matter how he tried to shove it aside, it stayed. Those mangled necks, those eyes that seemed to accuse him even in death. It would follow him into sleep and drag him back to this patch of earth, again and again, long after the bodies were gone.

“Remember that their central command clusters around the centre third of the front of the column,” Silvanus’s squire lectured, voice solemn despite being no more than thirteen summers old. Silvanus did not mind the boy’s tone; in fact, he found it faintly amusing. “And their banners are both the tallest, and threaded with gold along the edges.”

As one of the few men in the entire host to own a full harness of plate, Silvanus alone had to submit to this slow, constricting ritual each time he rode to war. Still, if it kept him alive, he would bear it without real complaint.

“How am I supposed to see golden outlines through foliage, at the distance we’ll be at?” He mock-complained, turning so his squire could latch the plate sections of his armour into place.

“It is a lot of golden thread,” the squire insisted, undeterred.

Silvanus snorted. “The height of arrogance,” he mocked his adversaries. Pride was something to be flashed in bursts, not a continuous parade. Like a ceremonial sword, it lost its shine to dullness if used too candidly.

The tightening and fastening went on, buckles kissing into place one by one. As the last straps were drawn snug, a hush settled over the small tent, as though the canvas itself were holding its breath.

“My lord…” The boy’s voice had gone very small.

“I told you to stop calling me that,” Silvanus said lightly, already knowing where the question was headed.

“You’ll come back alive, won’t you?” the squire asked in a rush, eyes fixed on the trampled ground. His fingers worried at straps that were already tight, stealing a few more seconds before the battle took Silvanus away. The burden of a knight was to stand as an idol for those younger than him, a figure of sword and certainty. Silvanus had accepted that burden long ago, and grown to take pride in it.

“Do you know why they call me the Copper Sword?” he asked gently, resting a gauntleted hand on the boy’s shoulder.

The squire shook his head. He had his suspicions, everyone did, but Silvanus preferred to keep them all guessing. The truth was far too embarrassing to share.

“Because my blade has been coated in so much of my enemies’ blood that the steel itself is stained,” he said, letting a determined edge creep into his voice. "It isn't I who has to fear for my life, but the one on the other side of the battlefield."

It was a lie, of course, but as the boy’s shoulders loosened, and his eyes brightened with relief, Silvanus considered it one of the better lies he had told. “I’ll prove it to you tonight,” he added.

The boy nodded, swallowing hard, and together they stepped out into the morning, pausing only to mount his stallion.

Atlas was a great white beast already fidgeting beneath him, ears flicking, breath pluming in the chill air as if it too smelled what was coming. Today it would get to stretch its muscles properly.

He guided Atlas toward the head of the small column of cavalry they had scraped together: minor nobles in faded colours, wealthy captains of the guard wearing their fortunes on their backs, and the odd pronoiar, warriors granted a scrap of land in exchange for turning up in armour when summoned.

Their gear was a patchwork of means and fortunes. Gambesons padded under rusty mail, sun-dulled lamellar that had seen better days. Silvanus alone wore plate that was more than a simple breastplate hammered thin and called good. The horses were no better off, most lacking any protection at all, a few draped in modest quilted cloth that might turn a glancing arrow if luck were kind.

It was a mark of their poverty, this line of under-armed men on under-armoured beasts. Silvanus felt no shame. He would fight for this barren piece of rock, for these threadbare banners and anxious boys, to his last breath.

“The enemy?” he asked Cosmas, the solitary wolf of their armed forces.

Cosmas wore the most eclectic armour of them all, looking more like a particularly successful bandit chief than a knight of the Principality. A battered brigandine sat over a patchwork of lamellar and mail, bits of mismatched plate strapped wherever they fit, all of it crowned by a wolf-fur mantle.

“Sighted,” Cosmas said. A sharp, predatory light fixed itself on the road below. “Around half an hour until their front passes through our position.” He was practically salivating at the thought. What a bloodthirsty creature. “They’re moving at a snail’s pace, so maybe three-quarters of an hour until our target is sighted.”

Silvanus glanced sideways at him. There were few men in the Principality who could give him trouble with a blade and Cosmas was one of them. On most days that was an uncomfortable thought. Today was one of the few exceptional days he was glad to have the wild wolf on his side. He’d been the one to finalize most of the details of the ambush itself during their strategy meetings in Mangup. His eye for such underhanded fighting came almost second-nature.

“The muddy track’s doing its work,” Silvanus murmured. Aloud, he raised his voice. “Let’s get into position, men. Fame, and most importantly, loot, await.”

His light tone drew a low roll of rough cheers from the cavalry around him. Men straightened in their saddles, eyes brightening at the promise of spoils. They moved as a unit along the forested slope to the earthen ramp they’d carved out of the hillside and smoothed into the forest floor.

Roots had been cleared, rocks dug up and crushed. Foliage was carefully cut back and then replaced to hide the work. The soil had been tamped again and again until it held firm, the incline measured so it would lend speed without breaking a horse’s legs. For a forest, it was as smooth a strip of ground as one could hope for, a hidden lane that began as a gentle rise among the trees before tipping down into a hungry slope.

It had been built with a singular purpose: to let their horses reach the highest speed possible before crashing into the enemy’s flank.

It was ingenious. And it would be the greatest weapon they possessed in this battle. They could not afford a prolonged engagement with the quality and numbers of their troops. They had to shatter the enemy in the opening blow.

Silvanus had to break them with one singular charge.

Down on the road, through the dense lattice of trunks and branches, he heard the heavy, punishing trudge of boots through mud, in a steady, dragging rhythm. The enemy's professional core struggling through the mud in their forced march.

He spotted them soon after the sound came. Men decked out in heavy mail and thorough brigandines, their armour a kaleidoscope of colours belonging to half a dozen mercenary companies. Curiously, among them marched lighter-armed figures, bare arms inked with geometric tattoos that wound over muscle and tendon like dark chains.

Circassians, Silvanus thought, amused despite himself. Those had not been cheap to hire.

Despite the confident set to their shoulders, Silvanus could see the strain. The subtle slowing of the march, the way the column rippled and narrowed whenever they hit a fresh patch of churned mud. The proud line of steel was beginning to look ragged at the edges.

Good.

Silvanus grinned when the part he had been waiting for finally came into view. The main section of the column, crowded around its heart. High standards flew in the wind, and even at a distance, he could make out the gleam of gold thread edging the richest banners. The command cluster. The prize.

Men were already looking to him, their horses half-restive under them, weapons checked and checked again until hands needed something else to do. The air around them thrummed with a tight, hungry anticipation.

He was the one who would give the signal to start this battle, no one else.

The timing had to be immaculate. The section they struck had to be precise. The fate of the Principality hung on it, on this little strip of forest, on their mismatched cavalry contingent, and on his single signal.

Silvanus’s eyes honed in on his target, chasing that cold, narrow feeling of focus he had ridden with in tournaments and jousts. This was no courtyard and there was no pretty knight with a blunted lance, but the sensation was the same - the world shrinking to a single point he meant to smash.

This would be the most important charge of his life.

The air seemed charged and waiting, as if even the leaves held their breath.

Silvanus knew it was time.

He raised his sword.

A coppery vein ran through the steel, lending it a dull, rusted hue that could not be mistaken for anything else.

A century of horses lurched into motion, beginning at a slow trot, careful to keep formation as they filed onto the hidden lane. Hooves drummed the earth in a growing rhythm as they picked up into a canter, the incline lending them momentum. Then a light gallop. Then the ramp pitched steeper and they tipped into a full-blown charge.

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The wind ripped at Silvanus’s visor as they thundered down the earthen ramp, the trees blurring at the edges of his sight. The speed was wrong, almost unnatural, as if the earth itself had given way beneath them and they were falling toward the enemy rather than riding.

The enemy column rippled. Men hesitated, heads turning toward the sudden roar pouring out of the forest. The march faltered and then stopped altogether, officers shouting, hands fumbling for weapons, standards jerking as men tried to drag their units into some semblance of formation.

It was too late. They had a scant few seconds to react and less than a minute to live, Silvanus promised.

A horn sounded somewhere in the distance, loud and clear, and then a volley of bolts hissed overhead in a unified barrage, loosed by the archers and crossbowmen they had hidden along the trees. Silvanus barely registered it. He couldn’t have heard it properly even if he had tried.

All that existed was the field in front of him, the widening eyes of soldiers below, the panic twisting their faces as they scrambled to form up, and the flash of rich cloth and embroidery around the command cluster. The wind roared against his ears.

There - the faces he had wanted most to see. The two traitor nobles, pale under their finery, their expression caught halfway between fear and disbelief, though the Principe was nowhere to be seen.

Sir Silvanus grinned under his visor at the fear stamped across their features.

They were close now. This was it.

The horses crashed into the disordered mass of men, steel and flesh colliding in a dreadful, splintering impact.

And the world exploded.

“A fallen tree?” Adanis asked, brows knitting together.

“Yes. The hollow trunk and dead wood around it suggest it is fairly old, but natural,” Gioseppo reported, fist clenched in salute.

“Will we have to cut it down?” Philemon asked, his expression similarly displeased. They were more than through with any sort of delay.

“No.” The Italian shook his head. “The road is only partially obstructed, we can move around it.”

“Then do so,” Adanis commanded, eager to be done with the matter and press on. “We can’t afford to get bogged down here and let the Crown army regroup at Kalamita.” He could already imagine the siege dragging on for months if that happened, his hard-won momentum bleeding away into mud and boredom.

Philemon’s mouth tightened at the direct order. He waited a few breaths, then gave Gioseppo a deliberate nod of his own, as if to ensure that the order was clearly seen as passing through him. Adanis was growing tired of these petty games.

The woods pressed in close on either side. The thin, muddy road had already slowed their advance, forcing wagons and infantry to crawl and making the column stretch thinner than he liked.

When they reached the fallen giant, Adanis could not help a curse. The tree sprawled across the road like the corpse of some ancient beast, and at least two-thirds of the path was blocked. It was enough that they lost sight entirely of the forward stretch of the vanguard, where their elite troops were meant to be leading the way.

An ideal place for an ambush, he thought grimly. If the Crown army had not been confirmed on the main road, he would have turned the entire column around rather than squeeze through this choke point.

His senses sharpened at the thought. He could not have said why, but they did. An immediate sense of danger crawled up his spine. In the low, constant thrum in his ears, he heard something else start to emerge. A distant sound, gaining strength, rolling toward them like a tide. It filled him with a mounting dread.

He turned his head toward the forest, toward the sound.

“Thunder?” Philemon asked, staring up at the cloudy sky, utterly oblivious to the danger closing in.

“Cavalry. An ambush!” Gioseppo shouted, his keen ears catching what the others had missed.

For a still moment there was nothing but confusion. Men glanced at one another, as if the very idea could not take root. An ambush here? It would have been a stretch to assume the Crown could reach this point ahead of them, let alone have the time to prepare an ambush.

A loud, blaring horn shattered whatever fragile disbelief remained.

“On me!” Adanis yelled, his voice edged with panic.

Out of the treeline, he could finally see the source: a mass of at least a hundred cavalry bursting from the forest, galloping downhill at full tilt, hooves tearing up the loam.

Around him, men scrambled to form a protective ring. Dysmas was at their head, barking orders, dragging bodies and horses into place to shield their lord.

A volley of crossbow bolts nearly shattered it. The shots poured down on them like a deadly, iron rain. Men dropped with choked cries, horses screamed as they went down in flailing heaps. The protective squadron around Adanis faltered, and he saw Dysmas pitch from his saddle, a bolt driven into his hip.

“Dysmas!” Adanis shouted, his horse dancing beneath him as he hesitated, every instinct pulling in a different direction. The mass of horses was nearly upon them. If he stayed, he would be swallowed. He would die here, trampled into the mud. All his plans, all his ambitions, would end at this nameless patch of road.

He could not allow that.

“Charge!” he roared, the sound tearing out of his chest raw and primal, born of fury at the insult of it all as much as fear. It was the sound of a cornered lion.

Men around him surged forward, throwing themselves between him and the oncoming wave, trying to meet it with a disjointed, desperate counter-charge.

The horses struck.

The charge tore into them like a storm given flesh.

Horses thundered down out of the trees, iron-shod hooves pounding, the sheer force of their speed driving a wall of steel straight into Adanis’s men. Lances slammed into bodies with sickening, meaty cracks, ash shafts shattered on mail and bone, splinters exploding outward like jagged rain. Men were ripped from their saddles as if plucked by an invisible hand, hurled backwards into the mud. Others crumpled where they stood, spiked clean through before they could raise shield or spear.

There was too much of a difference in speed. His men had barely managed a stumbling counter-charge while the enemy hit them at a full gallop. The clash was no contest at all.

Through the chaos, Adanis saw a single figure driving straight toward him - a gleaming knight in full plate, the armour catching what little pale sunlight filtered through the canopy. The man’s great white stallion was a match for Adanis’s own mount, long neck stretched, muscles bunched beneath its hide as it devoured the distance between them.

A chill of pure terror washed over Adanis.

The white horse never even broke stride as it reached Dysmas. One iron hoof came down squarely on Dysmas’s head which burst like an overripe melon under the weight, and the stallion pounded on, red spray scattering in its wake.

“Dysmas!” Adanis’s voice cracked in rage.

He hauled himself higher in the saddle, forcing his horse to meet the charge. The knight’s visor seemed to flare with light as he bore down on him, a faceless angel of steel descending with murder in his hands.

Adanis dragged his sword free in that thin, trembling strip of time between life and death.

It was not enough.

The white knight’s lance punched into his belly a heartbeat later, sliding between the weaker plates of his half-armour.

For an instant, there was only a dull, numbed shock.

Then the full force of the impact followed, a brutal hammer blow that tore him from his saddle. The world spun, sky and trees and screaming faces whirling together as he crashed into the mud.

Pain erupted through him, white and blinding, unlike anything he had ever known. He could only imagine the injury he’d received from the blow. He had not been fully decked in plate as they had been on the march, not expecting a pitched battle. They were woefully unprepared for this.

Around him rose the din of dying horses and struggling men, a cacophony of shrieks and roars and wet, choking coughs. The mud was slick and cold against his cheek, staining his light brown mane until it clung to his face like a filthy curtain. Every breath felt like dragging broken glass into his lungs. Horses galloped past so close he could feel the wind of their passage on his skin, each one missing him by a hair’s breadth.

Above him, the shining knight reined in and looked down. From this angle, visor haloed by pale light, he seemed almost like some terrible holy fiend come to pass judgement. A hint of copper hair had escaped from beneath the helm, catching Adanis’s eye. A horrible thought that he was being struck down by one of his own blood flickered through him.

“Good riddance, you traitor,” the knight said.

The words sounded distant and muffled, as if spoken from under water.

Adanis tried to push himself up, bewildered that the killing blow had not followed. His arms trembled and slipped and he forced his gaze to drop to his middle. A massive, gaping hole stood in the place of his guts where the lance had hit, ragged edges of flesh and torn cloth around a splintered shaft still lodged deep inside him.

He tried for a weak laugh at the sight, but the attempt tore a ragged cry from him instead. Pain wracked his whole body.

So this was how it ended.

Adanis was not a weak man, but tears came anyway, hot and helpless. Not only from the agony tearing through him, but from the weight crushing his chest that had nothing to do with steel.

The weight of regret.

Regret for not pushing his House to greater heights when he’d had the chance. For not honouring fully the sacrifices he’d made along the way. For the little broken fawn he would leave behind, alone in a world he had failed to make safe for her.

A silent apology went out from him, wordless and desperate. In the end, his brothers’ deaths had bought nothing. His House would end here with him, a proud, vaunted tree cut clean at the trunk. He had not protected them. He had not protected anyone.

Between the fading shapes of the battleground and the blurring edge of madness ringing in his ears, something caught at the corner of his vision.

Weaving between the rampaging hooves and the sprawled bodies, a small golden shape skittered across the churned earth.

A golden hare.

His brothers had never believed him. Everyone had thought him half-mad when he spoke of it, but he had seen one in the woods that day, long ago. Just not the animal they’d expected. He had found a little girl, hair the colour of the sun and a smile as bright as it, lost in the forest and wandering its tangled paths.

“I’ll be with you soon… my love,” Adanis whispered, lips barely shaping the words.

In his mind, he was already back in those woods, chasing her laughter through the trees, stealing away moments hidden under branches and dappled light. His hunt would continue in another life, one where he would have to seek out his purpose all over again.

He would have to find his golden hare once more.

“An ambush!” Gioseppo barked, with a sharp urgency Philemon had never heard from the Italian.

Philemon had to stop still just to make the words fit inside his head.

“What?” he managed. For a second he wanted to scoff, but men were already panicking around him, bolting about like headless chickens, horses snorting and sidestepping as riders cursed and shoved. Chaos spread faster than any order he could have given, and with it came the ugly realisation that this might actually be real.

“On me!” Adanis roared, the sound snapping Philemon into reality.

It was then that he saw it.

A mass of cavalry thundered down toward them out of the trees, lances levelled, hooves churning mud into spray. And they wore the purple of the Principality.

A cold wave of trepidation washed through him. How? They were on this pass, and not the main road? Impossible. Were the Crown’s men covering every single route through these hills?

“My lord!” Gioseppo reacted first. He wrenched Philemon’s reins, spinning his horse around before Philemon could protest. “We must go!” he snapped, not as a suggestion, but as an order.

Thinking could come later. Survival first. Philemon tried to urge his horse away, to tear himself free of the tightening knot of soldiers.

That was when the bolts came.

A hissing cloud of quarrels arced out of the treeline and fell among them. Men toppled from their saddles as high, ragged cries of pain cut through the roar of hooves. One rider pitched backwards with a bolt through his throat, and another folded over his saddle horn to slide bonelessly to the ground. Whatever formation they might have held, whatever organised retaliation they might have mustered, shattered at once.

Philemon was swallowed by his mercenaries and bodyguards, shields and raised arms closing around him. He had paid good coin to keep those men armoured to the teeth, more as a show of force than any real fear for his life, but now it was paying off. Plates rang and bolts bounced, lodging in mail or glancing off helms.

This was a life and death situation, for he was barely armoured at all. He despised the weight, the chafing, the way armour made him feel trapped in his own skin. Now that distaste felt very much like stupidity.

There was no more time to dwell on it. The cavalry was nearly upon them. Philemon was going to die here. Ignominiously. Unacceptably.

“Break the charge!” Gioseppo bellowed, seizing control of the moment in a way only a veteran could. The Italian proved his weight in gold simply by not panicking. Philemon had military experience, but never this up close, and certainly never in such a dire situation.

“Fucking now, you bastardi!” Gioseppo snarled, not allowing the bodyguards even a heartbeat of hesitation. They tore away from Philemon and Gioseppo, angling their horses to meet the onrushing wall of lances. It was a hopeless venture and every man there knew it, but they did it anyway.

Philemon and Gioseppo’s mercenaries spurred their mounts in the opposite direction, galloping full tilt away from the charge, even as the line buckled and broke behind them. Men were skewered and trampled like flies while lances punched through mail and flesh, jerking bodies from saddles. Hooves came down on limbs and ribs with sickening crunches on those unlucky enough to fall, one man was sent spinning through the air after receiving a full charge from a Crown cavalryman covered in a wolf pelt of all things. Screams rose and were snuffed out in an instant beneath the crashing tide of horse and steel.

They had barely covered a few desperate strides when the charge rolled over the remnants of the line and reached them. Riders peeled away from the main mass and honed in on Philemon, their visors only half-lowered, leaving their mouths exposed. He could see the cruel smiles there, white teeth bared like animals.

A line of ice slid down his spine.

They were looking for him.

This was the Doux’s ploy all along. Of course it was. Damn that insufferable bastard, Philemon thought, hatred flaring even through the fear.

“Protect me!” he cried to the men still riding at his side.

Gioseppo and the few mercenaries in his direct employ hesitated. The Italian had been keen enough to send Philemon’s household guards to die buying them time, but his courage frayed when the lives at stake were his own. Italian son of a whore.

“Or it will be for naught!” Philemon roared, voice cracking. “All the promises, all your payment gone!” He hauled on his reins, trying to squeeze a few more feet of distance from his horse.

The Italians made up their minds.

They wheeled as one to meet the oncoming horsemen. The impact was every bit as brutal as the first, bodies slamming together as steel ringed on steel. Blades hacked and thrust in wild, close quarters, and the air was full of flying mud, splinters of broken lances, and ugly red sprays that coated struggling men.

As if summoned from the air itself, two riders came upon him from an entirely different direction, completely bypassing the countercharge. Did they come from our lines?

That didn't matter right now. What mattered was that they came on relentlessly as hounds, horses eagerly eating up the distance with long strides.

Philemon hauled his sword up, arms shaking. To call him unskilled with it would have been generous. He had always despised blood and pain, always preferred coin and words to decide matters.

Now he was face to face with death, and those two things were all he had left to put between himself and it.

“Aaaagh!”

Philemon ducked the first blow almost by accident. The knights had expected him to fight back, not to flatten himself against his horse’s neck like a child hiding under the covers. The wild swing whistled over his head. The second, however, had all the time in the world to correct its aim and go for his now-stationary body.

Steel bit into his side, carving through fine cloth and the boiled leather beneath, leaving a long, burning gash. Philemon howled, the pain ripping the reins from his fingers. He pitched sideways, tumbling from the saddle in a flail of limbs, more in blind instinct to escape the sword than any planned move. By sheer luck, a second stroke meant to finish him sliced only air where his head had been.

“Stand still, you traitor!” the knight bellowed somewhere above him.

All around him, the fight was devolving into madness. Horses reared and plunged, men screamed, and even their bannerman fell to the ground like Philemon, impaled by a lance. The banner of the Makris Sigil, their rally point and the mark of their command, toppled and fell with agonizing slowness. Philemon saw his faith fall down with it. They were doomed.

No! This can’t be it!

Philemon staggered up, clutching his side, and ran. He darted between galloping horses, slipping in the mud, shoving past men locked in life-and-death fights, desperate only to put distance between himself and the riders hunting him. Twice he nearly went under, hooves crashing down inches from his skull.

A blade kissed across his back. Fire lanced through him and he went down hard, face-first. His robes spilled around him in the muck, once-fine cloth instantly sodden, his hair and face streaked with filth.

Is this how I die? The thought blazed up, raw and furious. It cannot be like this. There is so much yet to do.

“It’s the end of the line for you, little noble,” one of the horsemen laughed.

The sword came down in a clean, merciless arc. Philemon roared and threw his hands up, seizing the blade with his bare fingers. Steel tore through flesh. Half the fingers of his right hand vanished in a spray of blood; both palms split open to the bone.

He screamed through the unbearable pain. “I will not be finished here!” he spat, voice breaking into a savage rasp. “Never like this!”

For the first time, the knight hesitated. His eyes went wide with surprise and a flicker of fear at the sheer stubbornness of the man bleeding at his feet, then they narrowed in cold callousness. It was time to finish it. He brought back his sword arm to end Philemon’s life, but stopped halfway through

His mouth sagged open in a slow exhale as a blade burst from his chest, point blooming crimson through his breastplate. He stared down at it in disbelief, blood bubbling from his lips as whatever words he meant to say died there.

He toppled from the saddle in slow motion, armour thudding into the mud beside Philemon.

Behind him, Gioseppo sat his lithe horse, sword still extended, chest heaving. His face was streaked with dirt, a dark line of blood pouring down from his hairline to his jaw. His light armour hung battered and dented, one pauldron nearly torn free.

The sky broke open to usher in an orange sun that framed his back through the parting clouds. To Philemon, dazed and on his knees in the dirt, the Italian looked like an avenging angel.

“Quickly,” Gioseppo rasped. “We leave now.”

He reached down. Philemon raised his good hand automatically, uncaring of the fire tearing through his side and back. His ruined right hand dangled uselessly. Gioseppo’s eyes flicked to it and, for a heartbeat, widened in open shock at the mangled fingers and torn palms.

There was no time to linger on it. He caught Philemon by the wrist, hauled with all his strength, and dragged him up across the saddle.

The moment Philemon had anything resembling a seat, Gioseppo spurred his horse. The animal lunged into a full gallop, almost wrenching Philemon from his precarious perch. He clung on with his left arm, teeth grinding against the waves of pain that came with every jolt.

He forced himself to look around as they tore through what remained of the high command.

It was a massacre. More than three in four lay dead or dying, sprawled in twisted heaps of velvet and steel. Of those still moving, half clutched at wounds, blood leaking between their fingers. The standard-bearer lay facedown in the mud, the great banners of both Houses trampled and half-buried, their colours smeared in brown and red.

Philemon catalogued it all numbly, as if he were watching someone else’s disaster. Then his gaze snagged on a figure in burgundy, sprawled on his back, a shattered lance jutting from his stomach. The man’s face was frozen in a mask of pure despair and regret.

Adanis, the Northern Lion was no more.

It was an unmitigated disaster.

Missiles rained down upon them, giving Philemon no time to think on the ramifications of what had occurred. Bolts and arrows shrieked through the air, punching into men and horses alike, adding fresh misery to the already-shattered core.

“The enemy!” Philemon cried, head whipping about in panic, searching for more signs of thunder at a distance.

“Keep your head down!” Gioseppo barked back. “Their cavalry won’t be back for a second pass soon, if at all.”

He spoke through gritted teeth, every word rough. It was then Philemon realised the hand he was gripping for balance was slick with blood that was not his own. Gioseppo’s sleeve was soaked dark, the leather beneath clearly cut.

“Where are we going?” Philemon gasped. Each stride of the galloping horse sent fresh pulses of agony through his side, across his back, into the ragged ruin of his right hand. Oh God, how it hurt.

“Away from the battlefield,” Gioseppo grunted.

“Crossing all the way back through the column?!” Philemon’s voice pitched higher, thin with hurt and fear. “We’ll have to cross the whole ambush!”

All around them, bolts hissed through the forest gloom, arrows threading among them in a denser, faster rain. Men dropped to their knees or simply vanished under their horses, formations fraying and knitting together again in ragged clumps as officers screamed themselves hoarse trying to restore order.

“There is no way forward.” Gioseppo said, jaw tight. "Backwards there is still a chance."

Philemon grasped his meaning immediately, and all that he needed. Philemon also realized that forcing their way forward, even if they broke loose, would only push them closer to Kalamita and deeper into enemy-held territory, with no friendly line to fall back on. The road behind them, for all its horrors, was the only path they could be reasonably sure was not choked with traps and fresh troops.

Their only hope was to carve their way through the length of the ambush and come out the far side still breathing.

Philemon could not let that hope go. Not yet. Not while he still had breath to wheeze and blood left to spill.

He had hardly taken another breath when masses of enemy infantry came charging through the forest.