Fallen Eagle

3rd Week of April, 1460

The brightness of the morning sun felt like a cruel joke. The canvas of the tent glowed pale gold, the air already warming. It was the sort of clear day that should have belonged to feasts or festivals. Inside Apostolos's chest, however, the weather was a leaden storm, heavy and churning, pressing against his ribs.

“I’m proud of you, son.” The words rose unbidden, an old memory breaking free from the shallow, fitful dream he’d been having. It was one of the few moments he shared with his father that had remained good and untarnished over the years.

Afternoons spent riding through the forest as his father taught him to mind the horses, to follow the narrow game trails, to keep his seat when the ground turned treacherous. How to hold a sword and a bow like a proper noble on the hunt should. If he tried, he could still breathe in the sharp scent of nettle and remember when he believed the world would always remain as it was.

They were the fondest memories he had of him.

And they were all that he had now.

“Apostolos.” The voice came muffled through the tent wall. Michail was already up despite the early hour. Or was it Apostolos who had overslept? He had cried himself to sleep, and the night had not granted him any dosage of proper rest. “Lord Philemon requests you in the command tent, my Lord.”

The designation felt wrong and too large, as if someone had draped his father’s cloak across his own small shoulders. Hearing it in his cousin’s mouth only heightened the strangeness. Yet the formality helped drive home that this was no layered, fevered dream. His father was dead. The world had not righted itself while he slept, no matter how much he wished for it to.

“Tell him I will be there shortly.” The voice that came out of him was barely recognisable. Roughened, lower, as if he were trying to imitate his father’s commanding tone and managing only a pale echo. How could that voice hope to carry the Nomikos fortunes? How could he hope to steer the family onward by himself?

He suddenly felt so very alone.

A hollow, dizzy sensation opened beneath his feet, as if the ground itself were tilting. “I have to dress myself,” he managed, the words scraping out of a throat gone dry. He needed time, a few breaths, anything. The House was in his hands now and he could not afford a single misstep. The army was broken, their banners tattered. They had raised their standard in open rebellion against the realm and they’d lost. Now, they were marching towards death’s door with the entire Nomikos bloodline standing directly along its path.

His thoughts began to spiral, each one sharper than the last. His body struggled to remember how to stand. Deep breaths, he needed deep breaths, but his chest refused to obey.

“Apostolos!”

The next thing he knew, Michail was inside the tent with him, hands on his shoulders, shaking him hard. The world lurched back into focus. Apostolos was on the ground, one knee sunk into the muddy earth, coldness seeping through the fabric of his trousers and staining them an ugly brown.

“Are you alright?” Michail’s eyes were wide with concern, dark hollows carved beneath them where sleep should have been. He looked as though he too had spent most of the night tossing and turning. Apostolos was not the only one fraying at the edges.

He needed to pull himself together. Not only for himself, but for all of them.

“I’m fine,” he gasped, though his lungs still burned, forcing himself upright with Michail’s help.

“Take a moment to steady yourself,” Michail said. Concern was etched deep into his features, his hand trembling faintly where it still hovered near Apostolos’s arm. “Showing up like this will not be good for anyone. We need to show strength.” The slight tremor in his lips betrayed how shaken he himself was, how badly he needed Apostolos to be the anchor for him to find his own footing.

“I understand, cousin.” Apostolos closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, forcing air in and out until the rushing in his ears quieted. He straightened his spine, gathering the broken pieces of himself and pulling them tight. When he opened his eyes again, the sun still shone just as brightly, indifferent to their ruin, which strangely brought some sense of peace to him.

Michail nodded, some of the tightness easing from his features as Apostolos’s colour finally began to return. “We managed to stall Philemon when he arrived,” he said. “He was injured and distressed, so it wasn’t hard to keep him from demanding too much too quickly. He will have calmed down now.” His face turned grim. “And he won’t prove an easy opponent to handle. He’ll want the baggage train, and leadership of the rebellion.” His voice took on a weary edge at that last word, as if the very thought exhausted him.

Apostolos inclined his head. He understood all too well that with his father’s death, the balance of power between their Houses - and over the rebellion itself - had shifted irrevocably. The weight of that realisation pressed against his shoulders as he pushed himself fully to his feet. He turned to the wooden rack at the side of his tent and reached for his outer burgundy garments, fingers fumbling with even the familiar fabric.

Michail stepped in to settle a black cloak over his shoulders. The wool was coarse, smelling faintly of woody moss. Traditionally, a scion would wear black from head to toe for at least the first month following his father’s death, but Apostolos did not even have the means to do that properly, lacking the formal mourning garments while on campaign. This cloak was all he had to mark his grief.

“Let’s go,” he said. The dark fabric felt heavier than it had any right to be, dragging at his shoulders like wet sand. His voice carried that same wretched weight.

…

The mood in what passed for the command tent of the shattered rebellion was a disconcerting mixture of greedy cheer and urgent strain. Men spoke in low voices, the air thick with the clatter of armour, the rustle of maps, and the occasional sharp bark of laughter breaking through the dour ambiance.

Philemon sat on a common chair at the far end of the tent, but he had made it a throne. He reclined with an easy, confident posture, one leg crossed over the other, looking imperiously down upon the two young Nomikos nobles as they entered.

Apostolos felt like an intruder in someone else’s hall.

To Philemon’s right, the pale Circassian mercenaries were gathered in a loose knot, cheering and laughing with one another, utterly at odds with the rest of the tent. Some of them openly counted their new coins, gold glinting between scarred fingers. In a place of honour at Philemon’s side sat Ilnar, the giant warrior, sprawling across his pelt-covered armchair, which had somehow survived the battle entirely untarnished.

The final, and perhaps most telling, detail Apostolos noticed was the ground itself. Philemon’s stool stood upon a slight earth ramp, just high enough to raise him above the surrounding men. A small thing, but deliberate. There was no such raised spot prepared for Apostolos, he noticed. No place where he might stand with equal footing.

“Ah, Apostolos,” Philemon greeted, pointedly eschewing the proper honorific. “Thank you for joining us.” To any outside ear, it might have sounded like a simple, courteous welcome. But Apostolos knew he was owed the title of Lord now. The denial of it was a deliberate move. The games had already begun.

“Thank you, Philemon,” Apostolos replied, matching his choice. He saw the older man’s brows lower, even if just a fraction. “I was told you requested a meeting of me?” He pitched the tone as if this were an unimportant affair.

One of the things he’d learned the most with his father was that words, and the way they were framed, were among the most powerful weapons in courtly politics. The one who defined the terms of this conversation could claim the story of what had happened - and, with it, the right to lead. Today’s true battle would be for the narrative of the rebellion.

“Yes, thank you for arriving quickly.” Philemon’s mouth curved into a small, controlled smile, hiding his displeasure beneath its edges. “We have much to discuss about the future of the rebellion. Come, sit.” He gestured to a nearby seat among the lower stools and benches.

Apostolos remained standing. He felt his heart hammer against his ribs, but his feet refused to move. It was time to stand his ground, or he would be trampled underfoot and never rise again.

“Thank you for the offer,” he said, letting the words fall with careful politeness, “but I must first know what happened in the battle. How did we suffer such a terrible loss?”

The question hung in the air like a drawn blade, as did the fact that Apostolos had quietly ignored Philemon’s attempt to command him.

“An ambush, coming from the woods. The enemy had set up position on this stretch of ground, not on the main road. We were fooled.” Philemon spoke with a regret that sounded carefully measured, as if pitched to what he thought the moment demanded. “The woods bit in deep, and the column was broken on the narrow road, separated by a felled trunk. I wanted to turn back, judging the risk to be great. But Adanis…” He paused, arranging his face into a sorrowful grimace. “He wanted to push forward, to march on Kalamita and lay siege, to end the war quickly. He was always courageous like that. But this time, it proved foolhardy.”

Apostolos fought to keep his expression level.

“Was it truly my father who gave the order?” he asked. “The army was under your joint leadership.”

He had no doubt the man before him would shape events to his own advantage. Philemon was already laying stones for the story he wanted told.

“I was there, my lord,” the Italian scout commander said, stepping forward. His accent clipped the words, but did not imbue them with any semblance of meaning or truth. He was just another of Philemon’s creatures, another voice ready to echo whatever tale the man wished to spin.

“And no one else?” Apostolos’s gaze swept the tent. “Surely there are more men who would like to voice their opinion.”

“Everyone else perished during the initial charge that decimated our command,” Gioseppo replied, his tone professional, almost detached.

Convenient, Apostolos thought, though he did not allow the suspicion to touch his face.

“I find it hard to believe that my father alone was the cause behind the decision,” he said quietly.

“The Principe also pushed for it,” Philemon added, the admission dragged out as though painful. “He was eager. Certain this was our victory.”

“The Principe?” Apostolos repeated. A murmur ran through the tent. Every man present knew how little real power the figurehead prince actually held over the rebellion.

“Yes. He is our leader, after all.” Philemon nodded deeply, as if he were not clinging to a paper-thin excuse.

“Forgive me if I am slightly surprised by this information,” Apostolos said, the edge of politeness sharpening his words, “but if the Principe made the decision, then my father has nothing to do with the disaster at hand.”

He needed to pry his family’s name out from beneath the wreckage Philemon was piling upon it. Otherwise, his claim to leadership would be tarnished.

“It was your father who guided the Principe into making the final decision,” Philemon said, his voice turning hard. “Or are you calling me, and our warriors, liars?”

He gestured sharply to Gioseppo. “I have provided a witness. I saved our army from the disaster your father brought down on us all, and I have tried to explain this to you as calmly as I could.”

Philemon raised his voice, letting it swell to fill the tent. Apostolos flinched from the sudden force of it, despite himself. He did not enjoy conflict, nor anger directed toward him.

“And what have you done?” Philemon pressed, each word honed with an edge. “You have refused my hospitality. You have called me and my men liars.”

Every sentence struck like a lash, each accusation landing across Apostolos’s back before he could find room to breathe. In Philemon’s mouth, he was already the condemned, forced to stand and listen to the charges against him.

“My lord, I did not mean to insult you,” Apostolos said. The words felt clumsy, insufficient. He could not allow himself be run over, but neither could he afford to openly offend the man who currently held the larger share of what remained of their strength.

“You did not mean to, but you have,” Philemon replied. “It was me alone who rallied the troops and organized our retreat from the battlefield. I alone suffered grievous wounds to keep this war afloat.”

He thrust out his bandaged right hand for all to see, the mauled fingers wrapped tightly in white linen, a dull crimson stain spreading with every emphatic gesture he made. “Is this not the truth?” he demanded of the assembly.

Murmured assents and low confirmations rose around the tent, a tide of agreement that pressed in on Apostolos from every side. Watching him as if vultures circling downed prey.

A trickle of sweat slipped down the nape of his neck, tracing a cold line along his spine beneath the weight of his cloak. He forced himself not to wipe it away.

“The Red Hands witnessed the grand escape led by Philemon,” Ilnar grunted, his guttural words rendered smooth by his translator.

Apostolos felt the blow land. That even mercenaries who had once taken coin from his father now declared themselves openly for Philemon was terrible news.

“As did the Lithuanian Band,” another hard-faced man added.

One after another, more mercenaries voiced the same sentiment. It was less a testimony to the truth of Philemon’s story and more a display of allegiance to the noble seated above them. Apostolos’s stomach tightened. He had thought Philemon spent the previous day nursing his wounds and composing himself. Now he saw that while Apostolos reeled in shock, Philemon had spent every hour buying loyalty, shoring up support among the mercenary companies. Even with half his hand gone, the man did allow himself to rest a single day.

“I apologize,” Apostolos said, forcing the words past the burning in his throat, swallowing back the tears that threatened to burst forth. Everything was falling apart.

Philemon regarded him with cool, imperious calm. “I trust there will be no problem handing over the baggage train to our friends for their meritorious service.” The words were laced with a double meaning that lay thick in the air: either he would sign away the last bargaining chip his side held, or it would be forcefully taken from him.

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“There will not be,” Apostolos replied, bowing his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Michail’s expression crumple into quiet despair. With that single sentence, Apostolos had effectively relinquished his last solid claim to authority within the rebellion. But without the support of the mercenaries hired under the Nomikos banner, they were powerless to resist.

“Sit,” Philemon commanded. He gestured again to the low seat in the shadow of his own raised chair. The position made the new order plain. Apostolos had been outmatched and outplayed, and his place in this rebellion was now set.

“Of course, my lord,” Apostolos said. He bowed once more and felt the shame settle in his chest like a stone as he moved to the indicated stool.

“We have those pesky scouts at our heels, seeking to drag us down,” Philemon announced to the tent. “We ride north, to Mangup.”

Surprise flickered across several faces. With their pitiful numbers, they could not dream of assaulting the capital. They should detour as soon as they could towards Funa and regroup their forces.

“Worry not, men,” Philemon continued, almost jovial. “Unlike the late Lord Adanis, I am not keen to rush headlong into slaughter.”

Apostolos swallowed the bile that surged up his throat, fists curling white-knuckled in his lap as he forced himself to silence. Philemon invoked his father’s name as a cautionary tale and a jest in the same breath.

“This war is just beginning,” Philemon said, his smile stretching into something that made Apostolos’s skin crawl.

A shiver ran through him before he could stop it. He could not help but wonder what, exactly, the man had in store for them all.

“Get up,” Markos said from the doorway.

Zeno woke at once, the pale blue of early morning washing the room into clarity. The tone in the slave’s voice was not a casual one.

“What is the matter?” Zeno was on his feet in an instant, throwing off the covers. He reached for his clothes, shrugging out of his night-tunic and pulling on his undergarment with economical speed.

“We’ve received news from outside the capital,” was all Markos said. There was a tightness under his words, his eyes raking over Zeno’s still nude body in a thorough, appraising glance before flicking back to the corridor.

Zeno stilled for a heartbeat. “And?” he prompted, gesturing sharply for Markos to continue as he moved towards the doorway.

The slave caught him lightly by the sleeve, drawing close enough that his thin lips brushed Zeno’s ear as he whispered, “We lost.”

The words struck like a slap. A jolt of cold energy shot through Zeno’s body, driving away the last clinging remnants of sleep.

“How?” he asked, his voice barely more than an exhale as they set off down the still-empty corridors, footsteps echoing in the quiet palace.

“An ambush on some southern pass,” Markos said at last. He bit into his thumbnail as he spoke, the nervous gesture an old tic his masters had never quite managed to beat out of him, no matter what cruel methods they tried. “The army is decimated. Less than half of them survived.”

The news landed like a bell tolling in the empty silence. In a single strike, the Crown had struck a terrible blow at the rebellion’s chances of success.

“What do we do now?” Zeno asked. A faint tremor coloured his voice.

“That is what we are on our way to find out,” Markos replied. He turned and led them on, through dimly lit corridors and meandering passageways that twisted beneath the palace like roots. The air grew cooler as they descended, the faint cling of moisture following them. Thin rivulets traced slow paths down the stony walls like veins, catching what little light there was as they spiralled down the staircase.

There was already someone waiting in the cellar they favoured for their meetings. Despite the hood and the layers of heavy fabric, Zeno recognised her immediately.

“Arsinoe,” he said, greeting his sister. His tone was glacial.

Their exchanges had been almost entirely factual and mission-bound, trading information and threats, not affection. True to her word, Arsinoe had kept to his shadow, watching his every step, ensuring Zeno did nothing even remotely untoward.

“Zeno, it is good that you’ve arrived quickly.” The fact that they addressed each other by name, like distant acquaintances instead of siblings, spoke volumes of what lay between them now. “Today is a terrible day for us all.” Her melodic voice carried a faint note of sadness, but was more composed than grieving.

“I’ve heard.” Zeno did not bother with courtesies. He drove straight for the heart of it. “What are we to do now?”

“I’ve received word from Master,” Arsinoe said. “He is heading north, on the road to the capital, but he is being bogged down by harassing horsemen from the vile scum.” She spat the last words with utter disgust. Of late, Arsinoe had taken to using that term for the enemy as if it were a title. “He will arrive at the capital in two days, and we are to have everything ready by then.” Excitement sparked in her eyes, gleaming sharp in the dim light.

“Everything ready? And what do you mean by that?” Zeno asked, though he already suspected the answer.

“Do not play coy, Zeno.” Arsinoe’s rebuke was sharp, and the fact that she was nominally his superior galled him more than he cared to admit. “We shall open the gates to prepare Master’s grand conquest of the principality, of course,” she said, a note of glee threading through her words.

“For his ragtag, barely held-together army?” Zeno could not help the scoff that escaped him at the sheer madness of it. “He will not even be able to hold the capital. If we come under siege, we will face enemies from within and from without. And the Principe is hardly the most charismatic of leaders to hold men’s loyalty.”

“You do not have to worry about that. The Principe has been captured,” Markos said quietly from beside him.

“Oh, even better.” Zeno rolled his eyes, the gesture doing little to hide the cold weight settling in his chest as the true scope of the disaster unfurled before him. “The rebellion is over, then, and our necks are forfeit.”

“Always so melodramatic, brother.” It was Arsinoe’s turn to roll hers. “This simply means the flimsy pretences we have been using are no longer needed,” she explained as if Zeno were a small child. “Our Master will lead this principality to new heights.”

“You have gone completely insane, sister,” Zeno spat. All the careful plans he had woven in his mind were unravelling in an instant, he needed Philemon to come. This was a complete, unmitigated disaster. What was he supposed to do now?

Arsinoe’s hand shot out, pale fingers closing around his neck. Her touch was almost gentle, a caress masquerading as a threat. “And you do not see the full board, dear brother,” she murmured with a sickly sweet smile. “You are but a small pawn in his game. All you see are the smoke and mirrors, like everyone else.”

A shiver slid down Zeno’s spine at the conviction in her voice. What did she know that he did not?

“Throw the torches!” Silvanus shouted, and a moment later flaming brands arced through the night, tracing brief streaks of orange before landing among the tents on the outer ring of the rebel camp.

Men screamed as fire bloomed from scattered points across the darkness. Canvas crackled and caught, sparks leaping greedily from tent to tent. Silhouettes lurched and collided as startled soldiers rushed for buckets, shouting for water, stumbling over guy-ropes and one another in the chaos only made worse by the haphazard sprawl of tents along the camp’s periphery.

The strike was meant as a diversion more than anything - a way to strip sleep from the enemy, to fray nerves and shorten tempers. But the flames were taking their heaviest toll only in the levy portion of the host, Silvanus noted, with a cold, distant sort of assessment. The rebels had ringed their camp with their peasants, using them as a living barrier to shield their centre and elite troops from night raids.

It was an utterly callous strategy, and although it had done its work, it also meant that, over the last two days, there had been a steady stream of desertions from the levy lines.

Silvanus had given strict orders not to pursue deserters or stragglers, which provided more courage, more fuel, for men to break off from the camp. By the rate they were going, the rebel host would not have a levy detachment by the time they reached Mangup.

Aside from desertions, there were plenty of stragglers who simply fell behind, left by the wayside - men limping on raw, blistered feet, too exhausted to keep pace with an army that scarcely cared if they lived or died.

They were down to perhaps a hundred levies left to throw away and sacrifice. Silvanus suspected most of those were northerners, clinging to the relative safety of numbers for as long as they could, hoping to ride the army’s shadow north towards the capital and slip away only once they were close enough to home.

“Despicable,” his second-in-command, Stamatis, muttered darkly as they watched men flail against the spreading flames, some of them catching fire themselves in the struggle. “They don’t even have any sort of command structure or officers to coordinate a response. These men have been abandoned in all but name.”

Silvanus shared the anger in his voice. These were their own folk: peasants dragged from fields and villages, pressed into service to fight against their kin. He held them no ill will. If anything, his hatred was reserved for those who had arranged them like kindling.

“It’s almost over,” Silvanus called as he wheeled his horse away, signalling to the rest of his men, who bounded back towards their own mobile camp. The damage was done, and every ounce of sleep stolen from the enemy was one taken from his own men as well. There was no point in lingering. “Mangup will sally out to trap them before they turn east onto the road for Funa.”

He swung down from the saddle and tied his horse to the hitching post with a secure double knot, fingers moving by habit. “Our army is nearly catching up,” he went on. The Crown host had been straining to march in the rebels’ wake, trying to maintain the brisk pace they had used to reach the ambush site in the first place. Integrating the Kalamita levies into their ranks, however, had proved a challenge, and their speed had dipped as the commanders chose cohesion and discipline over blind haste.

Silvanus and his cavalrymen had spent the last days harrying the fleeing rebels, feigning charges at every natural chokepoint, always aiming at the slow, lumbering baggage train the enemy guarded with ferocity. It was the only avenue of pressure they had found that could force the main body of the rebel host to slow or break formation, anything else they just ignored and kept marching, sacrificing anything but their lives.

The night raids and the feigned charges were exhausting work, but one that wore far more heavily on the rebels, who lived in a state of constant stress and worry at being caught by the main body.

“Every day bled away like this will make the pitched battle even more decisive,” Stamatis said as he trudged towards his small tent, boots squelching in the cold earth. “It works to our favour, this game of attrition.” He paused to glance back at the still-burning smears of orange on the horizon where the enemy encampment smouldered. “We just have to catch them before they reach Funa.”

“We will,” Silvanus promised. “Get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll trap our fish.” He let out a low chuckle, prompting more from his men. A touch of humour was a necessary luxury when you were sleeping cold on the ground with your saddle as a pillow.

“Try not to fall asleep yourself,” Stamatis called over his shoulder. Silvanus had insisted on taking first watch; he had always believed commanders should lead from the front, not doze while their men shivered under the stars.

Silvanus fixed his gaze on the distant glow of the rebel camp. He had scattered his own horsemen into many small camps around the enemy like thorns in a circle, close enough to see any movement, far enough that a sudden coordinated breakout would not reach the web of riders.

As he stared out into the night, listening to the distant shouts and muffled chaos, Silvanus made himself a simple, hard promise. He would not let them slip away.

…

“They’ve increased their speed again,” Stamatis noted the next day from atop his mount, squinting at the dust plume smearing the horizon ahead.

Silvanus’s brows drew together. Stamatis caught the change at once.

“What is it?” he asked.

“They’re too desperate to get just a little further ahead,” Silvanus said slowly. “This is not the pace of men heading for Funa and safety. This is a sprint for the capital.” He narrowed his eyes, that cold knot in his stomach tightening. “What could they possibly hope to find waiting for them there?”

The sinking feeling barely had time to settle before the pounding of hooves cut across his thoughts. A frantic gallop, coming from the north, not the south.

The rider did not slow. Even when he was nearly upon them he tore forward, and Silvanus had to wrench Atlas aside, the horse bunching under him and leaping out of the man’s path.

“Ho!” Silvanus barked, then saw the rider’s face. Harried, pale, eyes wild with pain. He lurched in the saddle, barely coherent, one hand clamped uselessly at his side where a quarrel had punched through the mail. Blood had bloomed across his armour in a dark, spreading flower.

Stamatis surged forward and grabbed the reins, hauling back hard. The horse reared, snorting, then wrenched its forelegs down and in the motion flung the rider from the saddle. The man hit the ground with a wet thud.

“Stratiotes!” Silvanus was already dismounting, moving to the fallen soldier at record pace. The man’s unfocused eyes searched blindly until Silvanus’s shadow blocked the sun above him. “What happened? Who did this?” he demanded, voice hard, clipped.

The soldier’s lips moved, but the sound that came out was barely audible.

“Did you come from Mangup?” Silvanus asked, leaning closer. The man managed the faintest nod.

“What happened?” Silvanus bent until he could feel the man’s shallow breaths against his cheek, straining to catch every syllable. Silvanus tightened his grip around the man’s hand and cradled his head in his other palm. The skin beneath his fingers was cold. The man was already in his death throes.

Whatever this soldier had dragged himself here to say, he had paid for it with his life.

“The capital…” The words were little more than a rasp. “It is under siege.”

Silvanus’s shock hit him like a blow to the chest. How? The sheer impossibility of it left him momentarily breathless. The rebels had no other forces. To field a second army large enough to besiege the capital would have bled them dry. Even Philemon could not simply conjure such numbers from nothing.

“By who? More mercenaries?” Silvanus asked, the words forced out in a harsh whisper. He willed strength into the dying man, willed him to hold on just long enough to spit out the truth.

The soldier shook his head, the movement weak but unmistakable. Silvanus felt his breath hitch in his throat, a cold dread spreading through him like frost.

His teeth almost chattered as he made himself ask, “By who?”

For a heartbeat, the man’s eyes cleared, a sudden, haunting sharpness cutting through the haze of pain and death.

“The Genoese,” he whispered.

The Cross of Saint George fluttered proudly in the wind, like a ship’s sail filling under a warm sun. Light poured down from above and shattered across the sea of metal below, glinting off rounded salets and spotless cuirasses in a dizzying scatter of bright stars. The smooth plates turned the day itself into a mirror.

It was the pinnacle of Italian armour-making, a marvel of craft and industry, the envy of every court that could not afford it.

The sight drew a small, satisfied smile to Democrito Lercari’s lips. This was the most sophisticated armour money could buy, and it was the standard equipment for his personal army, present in the most common infantry ranks. The sheer weight of wealth arrayed here could have bankrupted a small state - one exactly like the backwater little Principality whose soil they were currently trampling, he mused. The same Principality that had served as a thorn in Gazaria’s carefully tended garden for far too long.

He turned to his attendant, a man of sharp nose and sharper angles, the very picture of Italian aristocracy carved into his narrow face. Once, men like Eraldo had commanded their own salons and factions in the Republic. Now he was reduced to carrying Democrito’s ink and messages after Genoa had indebted itself to France to escape the Milanese grasp - a situation Democrito’s own family had helped engineer for their benefit. They had betrayed the Republic for profit, and then been betrayed in turn by others who had done the same for France.

Political exile was the softest punishment they could have arranged for themselves, all things considered. To be sent to serve ‘on the other side of the world,’ among these barbarian fringes, was almost a kindness. And Eraldo knew it, so he could not, in good conscience, complain.

“Look at them, Eraldo,” Democrito said with open disgust, gaze sliding up to the shapes manning the distant walls. “Ants, one and all, shifting about in their burrows.”

“Yes, my Consul. Inferior peoples,” Eraldo replied smoothly. His voice was always pitched to a soothing melody, careful and measured, hiding the hatred that no doubt festered in his heart. Democrito did not mind. The Republic was a body that thrived on intrigue and backstabbing - it was the milk they had all been weaned on, what made them strong. A careful man kept his enemies far away, but a great one kept them close enough to breathe on him. The constant threat of a knife in the back helped a man stay sharp.

And Democrito was nothing if not sharp.

“Though, like ants, their greatest strength is their home,” Democrito went on casually, plucking a grape from a nearby plate and popping it into his mouth. “It might be stark, ugly, carved straight into the rock itself. But I have to hand it to them. It is resilient.”

“A relic from a bygone era,” Eraldo said, dismissing the fortress with a flick of his eyes, knowing exactly what Democrito wanted to hear. He likewise understood he was always being tested, weighed, measured, to see if he would overstep some invisible line. “One that will not withstand what we have brought to bear.”

He gestured towards the low earthen banks of their position, where rounded metal hulks were being set up between the more traditional trebuchets they had brought along. The great bombards squatted there like iron toads, their dark maws tilted towards the principality’s walls.

Detaching the guns from his fleet and dragging them through the detestable, broken hills had been more than half a nuisance. Under normal circumstances, it was not something they could have accomplished without losing a few pieces to ambush or accident. It was one of the many reasons he had never bothered to conquer these pitiful savages before. The cost-benefit had never been in his favour. And Democrito measured all of his actions by that singular metric.

“Loud explosions and brute force are useful tools, Eraldo,” he said, tone almost leisurely, “but one must always use everything in his arsenal to achieve proper results. Victory isn’t enough.”

He spoke as if lecturing a slow but promising pupil, seeking to broaden Eraldo’s cramped horizons. The more dangerous the man became, the more amusing it would be when he inevitably tried to turn against Democrito.

“We must destroy them while spending as little as possible,” he went on, eyes never leaving the rising line of guns. “And I did not account for a months-long siege in my calculations.”

Eraldo remained silent, his sharp profile turned towards the walls, mind already turning over what Democrito might have arranged. Over why the Consul himself had come all this way to deal with such a minor affair personally.

A loud tromba blared from the periphery of their burgeoning camp, the call cutting through the murmur of labourers and the rhythmic thud of hammers.

“Ah. Our friends have arrived,” Democrito murmured. He rose from the low sofa and stepped towards the mouth of the embroidered velvet tent he had claimed as his command post, its rich fabric a small patch of Genoa amid the dust.

Moments later, a procession shuffled into view and came to a halt before him - dusty, stained, filthy figures, one and all. One slightly better dressed one detached himself from the group and bowed low in a show of respect.

Democrito deigned to favour him with direct address. “Welcome, Philemon Makris.”

Philemon bowed even lower, almost folding in half. “My lord, my agents are ready. The capital will soon be yours.”

Democrito’s smile widened. He lifted his gaze to the morning sky where the Genoese banner still fluttered, swelling on the breeze as if preparing itself for the glorious occasion. Upon Saint George’s crimson cross sat its crown, and two beasts upheld it on either side.

With great wings reared and dangerous talons spread wide, the Genoese gryphons stood poised to strike.