Fallen Eagle

4th Week of April, 1460

The cold, crisp air of the late night was utterly at odds with the withering heat of the command tent Theodorus spent his days in. The cool breeze and the smell of grass were a soothing counterpoint to the stifling canvas, the ink fumes, and the constant murmur of reports that had pressed on his skull since dawn.

He walked through the makeshift camp they had raised on a low hill, picked strategically for its proximity to the belbek river, from which he could glimpse Mangup in the distance and the great dark mass of troops coiled around it. Fires pricked the plateau like sullen stars, marking out the slow, patient strangling of the city.

The Genoese were spread thin over the massive tableland plateau that housed the Principality’s capital, but even thinned their strength was more than enough to hold them at bay. Their army, battered and filled with levies, could only anchor itself behind earthworks and stone, they couldn’t hope to punch through those defenses without taking atrocious casualties. And even if they did force the Italians back to enter Mangup, all they would get would be front row seats to the Italian bombardment that would gnaw at the stone ramparts.

Their men and their numbers were more powerful as a message than as a battering ram, a threat to be held at the enemy’s rear rather than hurled at their front. So Theodorus and the Doux’s high command had rationed the men carefully, keeping them far away from the front lines and focused solely on entrenching themselves.

Already trickles of the less wounded from the ambush were filing in to swell their numbers, however little. Enemy prisoners, regardless of the severity of their injury, were being brought to a makeshift stockade near the rear of the camp, men in foreign colours shuffling past under guard to serve as potential bargaining chips.

Theodoro's own severely injured had been turned back from their northern trek to Mangup. They were redirected instead towards Kalamita to attempt to recover under the Papadopoulos family physician and his staff.

Theodorus sidestepped the orderly rows of tents and the quiet squads that were winding down. Men muttered over slow bites and tired sighs, their conversations muted by the looming sight of the behemoth of an army they were contending with and by the knowledge that no clever ambush would even out the scales this time.

He made his way toward the heart of their own army, where the tents of the most senior officers were clustered. Their canvas was of the same rough weave as their men’s, only slightly larger, a little better lit, and the paths around them always under watch. Patrols passed more often here despite the late hour, their mail whispering against leather.

Theodorus stopped when he reached the largest of them, the Doux’s tent, which had a pair of guards standing upright by its flaps. Their spears were grounded but their backs were straight, eyes alert despite the late time.

They watched him closely as he approached. These were not conventional visiting hours.

“Sir.” The pair saluted, movements crisp for all their tiredness. Theodorus returned the gesture with a small wave of his hand, setting them at ease, then turned toward a deeper pocket of shadow at the tent’s side.

“I wish to speak with the Doux.”

Gennadios peeled himself from the darkness as if from nothing, one more piece of the night taking on shape. The veteran’s gaze flicked over him, weighing, measuring. Of all the times Theodorus had approached the Doux’s, there was one constant. The guards might change and rotate, but Gennadios was somehow always present, hidden in one corner or another. Theodorus was beginning to think the man simply did not sleep.

“Again?” The veteran’s scarred, twisted lip made the question look like a sneer, though the tone was flat. Theodorus had never once seen the man laugh.

“Yes.” Theodorus met his gaze without flinching. He had frequently come at such hours to discuss one detail or another with the Doux about the feasibility of the complicated maneuvers they were to attempt and how to corral the unwieldy army they were leading. For all his deep theoretical knowledge of military stratagems and concepts that men of this time could barely imagine, that knowledge needed to be tempered in practice.

He was increasingly familiar with the daily concerns of a fifteenth-century commander, yet his experience still paled beside the Doux’s, so he naturally sought the commander’s advice.

Today, however, it was not about stretched supply lines or where to pitch tents, and Gennadios seemed to understand that. His dark gaze met Theodorus’s own, unsettling him with how steady and unreadable it was.

“I’ll let him know,” was all he said before he limped through the tent flaps. The limp looked convincing enough at a glance, but his movements held the uncanny fluidity of someone playing a part, each step measured rather than truly laboured. Theodorus had ascertained that the man was at least partially faking his disability. He had no doubt Gennadios could strike with startling speed the moment he sensed any sort of danger.

Despite staring directly at the entrance, Theodorus nearly missed his return. One heartbeat the flap hung still, and in the next Gennadios was there again, as if the shadows had simply thickened and taken shape.

He jutted his dented chin toward the tent. “All yours,” he rasped, then slid back to his silent post at the side, vanishing into the gloom as if he had never stepped out of it.

The interior was as spartan as the Doux’s chamber in the capital’s keep had been, bare of anything but the strictest necessities. A low cot, a wooden chest and a single lantern guttering on a wooden crate. The only concession to comfort was a simple desk, present here only because they were no longer on the march. Even that was barely more than a rough slab of common wood, knocked together by camp carpenters earlier that day.

Atop it lay neat stacks of parchment containing the finished drafts of the day’s work on the Genoese negotiations, each sheet squared atop the next. The Doux insisted on reviewing every line of text himself.

He did not turn from his work when Theodorus entered.

“Speak,” the Doux ordered, the word clipped and familiar, skipping any greeting as he always did.

“You know something.” Theodorus did not bother with preamble. He let the accusation hang in the air between them.

The Doux did not respond at once. He finished the inky line he had been correcting, then blew softly to dry it. Only when the sheen dulled did he place the sheet on top of the others, its corners aligning with almost surgical precision.

Then he turned to face Theodorus.

“Today we spoke of the Genoese inaction, their dismissal of our request to parlay,” Theodorus said, holding his gaze. He had seen something there. “You know something about their silence, don't you? What are the Genoese planning?”

The Doux looked at him as if weighing him on an invisible scale, some deep reasoning flickering behind that stony façade. For a moment the only sounds were the muted murmur of the camp outside and the soft crackle of the lantern.

He drew a slow breath, then seemed to reach a decision.

“If you have deduced this much, I will tell you,” he said at last. He faced Theodorus fully now, the lamplight carving stark shadows across his features, making the lines of his face look like chiseled stone. “Philemon has agents inside the capital and plans to open the gates to let the army march through.”

“Truly?” Theodorus’s breath hitched before he could stop it. If Mangup’s gates were opened, the Genoese could flood the plateau and conquer the Principality in a single night. Then reason caught up with the jolt of fear. The Doux would not be here speaking so calmly if the situation were not already in hand - he would be ordering a full-scale assault. Which left only one question. “How do you know this?”

“I received word from an agent Philemon cultivated amidst our ranks in the capital,” the Doux replied, as if reporting on the movement of wagons. “He will double-cross Philemon, and the plan will be foiled.”

“And we can trust this agent?” Theodorus asked carefully, probing for weakness in the neat simplicity of the explanation.

“Yes.” The Doux’s answer was iron. His eyes narrowed to slits, the warning in them as clear as any spoken threat: do not pry further.

As if to punctuate the remark, a slight commotion stirred outside, the faint echo of screams slipping through the canvas walls of the tent.

Both men moved out briskly to take stock of the situation, joining other officers who were emerging from nearby tents with the same intent. Lanterns swung, boots thudded on packed earth, and eyes turned as one toward Mangup.

They quickly saw that the frantic shouts were coming from the city. Along the face of the plateau, small, faint dark shapes were bounding down in an ordered retreat, scattering from the gates like spilled ink running down stone.

The plot, just as the Doux had stated, had failed.

Theodorus turned to him. “This changes the situation,” he said quietly. “The Genoese main plot to bypass Mangup’s defenses has failed, and they’ve been bloodied for their trouble. They cannot hope for a quick victory over the city now.”

“We control the pace now.” The Doux’s answering smile was unsettling, a thin, dark curve that looked less like satisfaction and more like the gaping maw at the mouth of a cavern, promising nothing good to whatever stepped inside. "And we'll bleed them for it."

Once again, Loukas had been ordered to do the impossible.

He really should have been used to it by now, but it still never ceased to amaze him, the outlandish requests high nobles and officers found ways to invent for him.

“Like this, sir Loukas?” one of the labourers assigned to the fortification work called out.

His men already knew how he preferred to be addressed. Loukas had never demeaned himself by asking for proper respect, but he could not deny the words always brought a small, private smile to his face. And that the men who most often employed them also seemed, by some miraculous coincidence, to end up with the easiest tasks on average.

One of the more sensible decisions of the high command had been to split the levies assigned to the Kalamita ambush construction work into specific teams: one for hauling, one for trench digging, one for foraging and supply, and one for wood construction. The last team - his woodworking team - had been granted the largest share of men, which Loukas chose to interpret as an acknowledgment of the intensive, indispensable nature of their work.

The system had its merits. It allowed previously ignorant peasants, over the course of a few weeks, to gain at least the barest shred of proficiency in the tasks they were now expected to perform. To Loukas, the difference was like night and day. They were by no means expert labourers, but they had begun to understand the tells of the wood, the weight of a beam, the give of damp soil, and, most importantly, what Loukas wanted from them.

They no longer ran about like headless chickens, and he was mercifully spared the torment of having to explain every little thing from first principles whenever a new order came down.

The problem lay not with the men, no, but with the utterly heinous, bizarre task he had been handed.

“No, you have to brace the beam at a half right angle from the ground," Loukas said, moving closer. He took the stake from the man’s hands and adjusted its angle. “Otherwise the wall won't be braced properly and the beam will move when we pour out the dirt and rubble.”

“Are we really building a palisade sir?” the man asked, wiping sweat from his brow with a dusty sleeve, muscles straining as he hauled the heavy stake back into position.

“I don’t properly know what we’re building, in truth, my good man,” Loukas admitted with a sigh. He would not claim to have built many palisades in his life, but he had fashioned the ones at the ambush site, and he had seen more than his fair share in his youth, back when he had stood on the other side of the orders as a levy himself.

Whatever this was, it was not any palisade he recognized.

Instead of a single line of raised stakes, the upper command had, in their infinite wisdom, instructed them to erect two such lines, drawn tightly together and braced between one another, filled to the brim with dirt, rubble, and whatever else they found on hand to fill in the gaps.

It was a macabre architectural massacre that offended Loukas's very aesthetics as a master woodcarver, but he couldn't help the sinking feeling that there was a very deliberate use for the bizarre construction. Earth was used in two-story buildings sometimes, and used to help dampen the sound of footsteps on the upper floors, something Loukas had done on occaasion to his more well-off clients. Could this serve a similar function?

“Ho there!”

He heard the familiar call from farther afield, closer to the front where massive earthworks were taking shape, and further still lay the massive army of damnable Italians, who watched their every move from the safety of their own lines.

“Antonis,” Loukas called back, already a little exasperated. Despite the ridiculous amount of work weighing on all of them, Antonis somehow always found time to wander over and check on him. Loukas appreciated the man’s simple friendliness, but the work did not care for friendship or good humour; it still needed to be done within the impossible timeline they’d given them.

“How’s the digging going along?” Loukas recited by way of greeting. The phrase had become almost a catchword for him, so often did he use it throughout the day. Antonis made a point of summoning himself every hour like clockwork.

“Slow and steady, my friend,” Antonis answered with a cheerful smile, all crooked teeth and salt-white beard. “Slow and steady.” He finished his own line, and Loukas sometimes wondered if it was a private joke only Antonis understood.

“That is not what I wanted to hear,” Loukas admitted. “We need quick and fast, my friend. We're nearly ready with this section. Do your men have the dirt ready for hauling? Shouldn't you be overseeing them?” he asked, his tone edging toward complaint despite himself.

“Peace, friend. Everything will take its time.” Antonis laid a hand on his shoulder, and as always, that easy warmth of his found some way to thaw Loukas’s irritation. “The earth for your section is already in place." Antonis gestured to a veritable hill of dirt hauled out of the earth ahead of their section. "And the men can dig for themselves. It is simple enough work to leave unsupervised for a few minutes. Just putting holes in the ground.”

It never ceased to amaze Loukas how light Antonis’s thoughts could be, how they seemed to skim over the surface of worry without ever quite sinking in.

“Building all these palisades this quickly is anything but simple, let me tell you,” Loukas muttered, almost petulant, glancing back at the broken stretches of stakes being hammered into the base of the inner ditches that lined their intrepid camp.

“The military command is full of surprises, it seems,” Antonis laughed, the sound booming across the works. “I’ve been in many campaigns, but never one quite as exciting as this one.” He sounded almost pleased by the absurdity of it.

“Do you mean the fact that they’re setting down camp just outside the Italians’ cannon range, as if taunting them?” Loukas shot back. “Daring those metal men they have walking about to come pay us a visit?” Loukas had spent the last few nights wide awake, listening for the first blare of a horn, half-convinced it would be the signal for their doom. “We’ve been here four days. I do not know why they haven’t simply decided to kill us all. They must be able to tell we are just rabble.”

“Can they?” Antonis asked mildly, as they walked along the outer edge of the earthworks. Men stood there openly drilling, ranks forming and reforming under shouted orders. From a distance, with their mismatched gear and borrowed colours, Loukas thought they looked rather like monkeys dressed in stolen clothing. “They look at us, and all they see is men in fine armour and good arms, working with surprising efficacy, some openly drilling.” Antonis said, a gleam in his eye.

Loukas followed his gaze to the makeshift soldiers and, for a heartbeat, tried to see them as the Italians would: not as farmhands and shepherds dragged from their villages, but as a neat line of armed men standing behind angled wood and fresh-cut earth.

Many of the Mangup men had been integrated into Kalamita squads to bolster the workteams' numbers without overly compromising the work's quality with a surge of inexperienced newcomers. The few they'd integrated either had some vague experience with wood, or were helped along by the more experienced labourers on the bare basics.

This tale has been pilfered from NovelFire. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

But from what he understood, the rest of the Mangup men were serving as glorified bodyguards. Lazing around the perimeter or parading themselves in boisterous marching sequences. Supposedly, they had been hammering in discipline and marching formations into them for the past few weeks, while the kalamita men had been focused on the fieldworks. Loukas had just thought them less refined versions of the detestable Royal Guard, but apparently they were playing their own part in deterring the enemy.

It made a twisted sort of sense. By specializing the portions of the army on each section of the duties an army was supposed to conduct, that being both engineering and combat, it made the army appear competent at both, when in truth each half was only passable in one. Loukas couldn’t help but think the ruse would be easily seen through, though.

“They’re just levies dressed up. Half the armour is mismatched or ill-fitting,” Loukas said, unable to keep the skepticism from his voice. “They’ve got entire stations set up just to sew together pieces of scrap into something useful.”

He thought of the intricate chaos of that particular operation. Dented breastplates were hammered flat and strapped over padded jerkins, odd greaves were tied to bare shins with braided rope and old visors were ripped from ruined helmets and riveted onto kettle hats that had never been meant to carry them. Bit by bit, they were cobbling together something that at least looked like proper armaments from a distance.

“We aren’t even protected by any sort of defenses yet,” he went on, looking at the outer line of unbroken palisade they'd built. “The outer wall is just trunks smacked into the earth twice, corded with fine rope and called passable. A heavy gust could knock it over." Loukas sneered, offended that he'd been ordered to build such a structure. "They could charge us at a whim and we’d be fodder if we stood atop it.”

“But yet they aren’t.” Antonis flashed him a gap-toothed grin, marching bread and hard years having chewed through his teeth long ago. “They’re afraid of being sandwiched between the Mangup garrison and our own troops.”

“More fodder,” Loukas snorted.

“Enough to threaten their rear while they fight us,” Antonis countered easily. “Even a peasant rabble can sabotage a few cannons if left unsupervised. And doing so would make their whole siege ridiculous.”

That thought gave Loukas pause. Perhaps there was some method to the madness after all.

“But if they turn their cannons around, all this work will amount to children’s play,” he muttered. “I can’t fashion wood into being stronger than iron. No matter how magical or whimsical the demands of the higher-ups, they have to understand at least that much.”

He spoke while watching a group of men wrestle a log into a simple scaffolding meant to run along the inner double-layered palisade, its height, and that of the inner palisade, diminutive when compared with the flimsy outer wall. From another direction, a line of foragers returned with their afternoon haul, the wagons rolling between unfinished sections of wall, the gaps opening like crude gates to swallow them in.

“Moving the cannons is possible,” Antonis allowed, “but they’re using ship-heavy bombards.” At Loukas’s confused look, he chuckled. “They’re not made for land. Turning them is a several-hour process, and each shot by itself is expensive. I’d wager these strange fortifications are being built with that in mind.”

He gestured down the slope. A staggered patchwork of half-finished palisades, ditches, and thick earthen redoubts that hundreds of men had laboured under for five days. It was impressive how much their army had transformed the landscape in record pace.

In a sense, an army of peasants was uniquely suited for this type of ugly, grounded work. He could not imagine pompous italian mercenaries working with such perseverance knee-deep in earth and grime.

Yet as Loukas saw the supply wagons pulled into the gaps, he felt in his gut that it wasn’t just for convenience.

“Notice how the outer palisade is being made almost to the same height as the wagons,” Antonis went on. “They’re meant to interlock with them, to make a continuous wall.”

Loukas nodded slowly. He had known as much, he knew the defenses they were building more intimately than anyone else.

“This means we can throw up defenses quickly. We plug the gaps with the wagons as a temporary stopgap, letting us start work on the inner palisade even if the outer one isn't quite finished yet.” Antonis spoke with a gleam in his eye.

"The inner palisade is the key," Loukas felt his own widening in dawning understanding. "The initial two day rush was to throw up a screen over the first and have barely passable defenses as quickly as possible. To allow us start up work on the real inner ones while hidden from the enemy."

Antonis grinned. "Though why they want to hide the second ones so much I could not tell you," he stroked his voluminous beard, twirling the tight, black curls with his finger, "nor why they insist on filling it up with dirt."

Loukas's mind snagged on those damned dampened footsteps. There was something there, he knew it.

“Our little commanders might be unreasonable sadists,” Antonis said, clapping Loukas on the shoulder, breaking him out of his trance, “but perhaps you have to admit they’ve fooled you as to the reasons behind their moves. They are not as clueless as we like to think.”

Antonis laughed, a boisterous sound utterly at odds with the grim necessity that permeated the camp around them, where men slaved away in the tiny hopes that their home wouldn’t be destroyed.

“This is not a joking matter,” Loukas said, annoyance creeping into his tone at Antonis’s levity, which Loukas found he might very well envy.

“Stressing will not allow you to do your job better, my friend. You stress too much.” Antonis tried for levity, but this time it slid off Loukas like rain off oiled leather.

“You do not worry enough,” Loukas snapped. The anger was more at himself than at Antonis, but it came out sharp all the same. Upset at not instantly seeing the underlying reasoning for the construction he was building. Loukas was a master, but some military commander was working off some underlying principle he misunderstood? Preposterous.

The commanders were thinking like master woodcarvers, taking advantage of every block of timber in more ways he couldn't conceive. Loukas felt stupid. And he prided himself on being anything but.

They reached a quieter rise beneath a heavy oak overlooking the besieging army. The branches above them creaked softly, leaves whispering in the wind as if commenting on the madness below.

“Look around you.” Loukas shrugged off Antonis’s companionable arm and pointed at the spectacle spread out before them - the distant banners, the glint of metal, the sprawled chaos of campfires. “We are an inch away from perishing, all of us. And you are cracking jokes and taking breaks.” His voice flew with the wind, leaving a heavy silence in its wake.

Loukas immediately wished that he could snatch it back, but was too prideful to admit so openly.

Antonis’s face fell, the usual easy mirth draining away. He grew very quiet.

“I too know what’s at stake,” he said at last, voice low, face suddenly hard and older. “I have friends, family. People counting on me inside those walls.” His hand clenched into a fist at his side. “If it were up to me, I’d charge headlong into their army and claw my way back to my little girl. But God didn’t make life that easy.”

He turned to Loukas then, any trace of humor gone from his eyes.

“Whining and complaining won’t solve our problems either,” he added, the words pointed but not cruel.

Loukas swallowed, the retort dying on his tongue. He understood, in that moment, that Antonis carried the same weight he did. He had simply chosen to bear it with jokes and smiles instead of curses.

Both men fell into an uneasy silence as they looked out over the spread of dangerous men and dangerous weapons before them, the wind tugging at their clothes, the distant rumble of two armies at work to destroy one another.

In the end, they were but simple logs in the massive, burning edifice that was war - and that was what galled them the most. That they could only place their faith in the men building it, and hope they could somehow escape the fire.

“One hundred were killed in the initial strike alone, crushed beneath the boulders. Another fifty were wounded fleeing down the plateau,” Eraldo intoned into the wide space of the tent, his voice cold and precise as a knife. It cut cleanly through the suffocating silence that filled the pavilion. “We have heard no word from the agents placed in the capital. They can be assumed lost. As for the army camped atop the hill-”

“Enough,” one of the Magnificos that littered Democrito’s tent snapped, silks rustling as he shifted. “We have heard enough of this unmitigated disaster.”

“No,” Democrito corrected him, tone glacial. “We have not heard enough. He has not heard enough.”

He fixed his gaze on the man kneeling in the center of the tent, in the one patch of bare earth deliberately left uncovered without the rich carpets that layered the ground around him. There was only churned mud, a little island of dirt reserved for animals and failures. For a pig like him.

Dozens of eyes beneath feathered hats and jeweled caps stared down at the disgraced Theodoran noble. The man’s eyes were fixed on the ground, his expression a hollow mask of apathy and despair. He knew his fate would not be kind after this, whatever form it took.

Democrito found that his misery was a poor substitute for the bitter defeat he tasted in his mouth. But he would not shy away from the loss. A modest man shut his eyes to failure, a great one learned from them.

“Continue,” Democrito commanded, forcing each syllable past the fury he was burying beneath the formality of rank.

Eraldo cleared his throat softly and resumed.

“As for the army camped atop the hill, they have completed their preliminary fortifications while we have waited. Our scouts report that, although they have not finished building their palisade, the gaps are being temporarily stuffed with wagons, serving as makeshift walls. The rebel survivors have identified these same wagons as the ones used in the ambush against them to great effect, proving their sturdiness.”

Democrito’s fist clenched at his side. While they had been biding their time, waiting for a scheme that had crumbled into dust, their enemies had quietly entrenched themselves on the flank. This siege had just become twice as hard as they had planned for.

“They have also begun work on a series of ditches and rough abatis along their flanks, framing a narrow stretch of riverbank where stakes can't be planted. ” Eraldo went on. “Their rear is covered by the Belbek River, so while they have camped the lowest hill in the region, their position is uniquely suited to stake their claim to the southern forests, maintain a link to Kalamita, and ensure long-term water supply.”

The words hung heavy in the pavilion, a tally of failures and missed chances that no one dared to name aloud.

"Access to the southern forest means easy forage opportunities."

“They've entrenched themselves in a scant few days? Inconceivable, a group of peasants can't do that.”

“Are they peasants? We've seen them decked out in full military attire.”

Democrito’s eyes narrowed. He turned his head slightly to the side, toward a young man with a carefully groomed moustache and piercing brown eyes set in a sharp, sun-browned face. He stood apart from the others, off to the side in a position of slight honour, separate from the gaudy nobles and rotund merchants, and was dressed in an immaculately kept red-white gambeson.

He was also one of the few men who actually seemed to be thinking of solutions instead of complaining about the problems.

“Aniballe.” Democrito addressed his Consigliere Militare, and the buzz in the tent thinned, then faded entirely.

Silence stretched as the young man mumbled under his breath, eyes closed, brows furrowed, running through invisible lines and numbers only he could see. It was a blatant discourtesy not to answer the Consul at once, but no one rebuked him. They all waited for his judgment, his intellect.

"There is one more piece to the puzzle than the distinguished Magnificos here realize," Aniballe said at last, opening his eyes. "I had my men climb some of the high pines in the enemy's periphery, and they discovered something most fascinating."

"Climbing atop trees?" One of the nobles laughed at the absurdity. "Are we having our men scale the forest like monkeys now?

Democrito's already low opinion of the man dropped even further. He only thought in gold and prestige. War was waged with iron and grit. And that was why Democrito had proper officers present, to offset the stupidity of his circle when it came to military matters.

"Aniballe, continue." He said, eyeing the Magnifico with such steel that he quieted immediately.

"Thank you, Messere," Aniballe bowed, unruffled by the interruption. Democrito had found he did not care for such things in the slightest, and took most insults with a placid smile. "My men found that they are building a second wall behind the first."

A wave of interested murmurs swelled throught the tent like a wave.

"What does this mean?" Democrito asked. From the rebels, he'd learned the Theodorans to be unorthodox in their methods, contriving complex strategems from seemingly nonsensical actions. That was why he'd named Aniballe his second.

He had many more experienced officers with immaculate pedigrees and experience at his disposal, but none approximated the young noble in sheer creativity. Aniballe had a singular quality of treating the battlefield like a playground - and thriving in it.

“It is most interesting, Messere Consul,” Aniballe stepped toward the center of the tent as if the packed earth itself were a stage. “I believe they mean to wear down our cannon fire.”

He let that hang for a heartbeat, then continued, voice growing more animated.

“The outer wall they built so quickly is nothing but a disposable throwaway, a bright bullseye to aim our canons at, wasting the shots. " His teeth sneaked out of his lips, sharp fangs twisted in delight.

“But that is useless if we just aim at their main fortifications and ignore these ones,” one of the officers interjected.

"That is impossible." Aniballe seized on him like a dog thrown a morsel, devouring it with glee. "The low hill they've placed themselves on is surrounded by flats for quite a few miles. It means that we do not have an angle to fire upon with our cannons."

"Then we have to...just break apart the initial barrier to get at the second?" One of the Magnificos tried.

"Exactly!" Aniballe exclaimed exuberantly. "That is the sort of stupid mistake they want us to make! That would cost a veritable fortune, for the outer palisade is built in such a way that it is not tightly bound together, instead of full sections collapsing only a few logs will for each successful shot, and every time we miss the small gap we make even slightly, we will not even hit the second palisade." Aniballe's jubilation was utterly at odds with the Magnifico he had just insulted, who was purple-faced and about to retort, but couldn't get a word in before Aniballe continued his animated speech.

"They know no defenses they raise can truly stand against our guns, so they seek to attack something else instead - our profit. It is ingenious! Ingenious I tell you!” A smile bloomed on his face, sharp and almost boyish. “They might lose to a full-blown assault with their temporary fortifications, yes. But they could likely dent our numbers considerably, incurring a significant cost in lives.”

He spread his hands, warming to the subject.

“And crucially, if we are pinned in an assault on their hill, it would open our camp and artillery to a sortie from the castle. While it is unlikely that either front would be in real danger given our superior forces, it is not so unlikely that we can ignore the risk.”

Aniballe’s hands moved in wide, animated arcs as he spoke, his glee almost contagious. He was genuinely delighted that the enemy had proved so cunning, so creative in their attempt to bleed Genoese purses.

Democrito felt no such delight, only a slow, burning annoyance.

“They are not fighting to win the battle,” Aniballe said, voice rising to a crescendo. “They are fighting to make it as costly as possible for us! They know that direct engagement is risky for them, so they are attacking our bottom line! The one thing they are certain we care about-”

“The profit margin,” Philemon murmured from where he knelt on the bare dirt, his voice thin in the charged silence that followed, as men realized the insidious fighting tactics of their opponents.

Democrito regarded him, eyes burning through the fop. “This entire endeavour has turned out to be much less worthwhile than you promised.” His tone was as sharp as a knife drawn across glass. “What was meant to be a low-risk investment to finally remove a thorn from our side has become the exact opposite. We are overextended in enemy territory, with sizeable wealth and resources committed for far too little return.”

His frustration was written plainly across his face, his displeasure seeming to shrink the pig kneeling before him even further. The Gazaria was not in the economic position it had once been, they could not afford setbacks at this juncture. He could not afford setbacks.

Democrito rose from his chair and descended the small set of steps to stand before the Makris patriarch. “I took out a loan on you, Philemon,” he said softly, almost conversationally. “And you have failed to pay it back.”

He fisted a hand in the man’s filthy, matted hair and yanked, forcing his head up. “You must think us Italians some backwards idiots, like the little shepherds you rule over,” he hissed. Then he slapped him across the face, hard and unrestrained. Philemon toppled sideways into the mud, the remnants of his once-fine garments soaking through and turning the same dull brown as the ground beneath him.

“You are finished,” Democrito whispered, the words cruel and intimate. Around them, the nobles held their breath. They knew he would make an example of this one. People had to be reminded that Democrito could not be cheated and expected to take it lying down.

“I will wring as much benefit from you as I can, be certain of that,” he went on. “I will use you up like a rag to wipe away the filth you have smeared upon my name.”

He spat on the man. The wad of saliva struck Philemon’s cheek with a wet sound, and the noble flinched, shock flickering across his hollow features. Through the apathy and despair, something else burned to life - a thin, stubborn flame of indignation, the outrage of a man who had lived like a king among these mountain monkeys and could not swallow such humiliation, even knowing he was utterly at their mercy.

That defiance brought a slow smile to Democrito’s face.

“Tonight,” he said lightly, almost amused, “you spend the night with Fulvio.”

The monkey’s face went corpse-pale at that, all trace of pride draining away, as the meaning of Fulvio’s name settled in.

“N-No, Please Signore- Messere Consul. I will make it up to you, I promise.” He started babbling apologies, words tumbling over each other in a panicked rush, but Democrito only smiled while two guards stepped forward and hauled him up by the arms.

“All my wealth, I have coin, men, land! Please! No - no, you can’t do this!” he protested, heels digging into the carpet’s edge before they dragged him off the bare patch of earth and toward the tent’s opening. While the pig was dim, he knew enough to understand that wherever they were taking him, the night would not end kindly.

Around them, the assembled nobles exchanged low, amused chuckles. This was nothing out of the ordinary in the Republic; every proper lord kept his own torturer the way others kept hounds. In a world where backstabbing was common and loyalty hard to purchase, fear remained the one currency that never lost its value, spent liberally to keep retainers in line.

As the Theodoran’s ragged screams faded from the tent, the silence inside grew thick and expectant.

Democrito listened to the last fading note of despair as a man might listen to the dying echo of a bell. Then he smoothed the front of his doublet, reclaiming his chair at the head of the tent with measured, unhurried steps.

“This siege,” he said at last, voice mild, “is no longer tenable.”

The words dropped like stones into still water. A few men shifted, the idiotic Magnifico, who had questioned Aniballe, even opened his mouth to speak, but thankfully thought better of it.

“We have lost the element of surprise. The hill army has entrenched itself. Mangup still stands.” He counted the points on his fingers as if reciting a ledger. “To take the city by force now would require time, shot, and blood in quantities I do not care to pay. It would not meet the threshold of a sound investment.”

He said the last word with faint contempt, as if disgusted that he had been pushed into such an unprofitable corner.

“So.” He leaned back, fingers steepled. “We will change the shape of this game.”

He let the pause stretch just long enough to pull every gaze back to him.

“They offered to speak, so we will. Tomorrow at dawn we raise a flag and request formal talks with the Greeks, Romans, or whatever these vermin call themselves.”

A wave of surprise, relief, and, in some quarters, frustration swelled through the tent. To come this far, commit this much, and now to talk with the orthodox bastards that had plagued their colonies for decades? It was blasphemy. But none of them dared voice it. They all knew how close their neat little plan had come to collapsing under its own overreach.

Democrito’s mouth curved into a slow, dark smile.

“Their position is not as strong as they believe,” he went on. “They think because they have survived our first blow, because they have scraped together some clever little earthworks and wagons and tricks, that they are safe. They are not.” His eyes glittered. “They are outnumbered. Their capital lies under our shadow. Their trade depends on our goodwill. Their future lives or dies on this small venture, and how much we are willing to invest into destroying them.”

He tapped the armrest, once, the sound audible in the dead quiet.

“If I cannot crush them with overwhelming force,” Democrito stated into the air, speaking with the conviction of someone who already knew the foregone conclusion, “then I will bleed them dry with ink instead. Concessions. Guarantees. Treaties.” He savored the last word. “We will bind them to us with paper so thick they cannot breathe without paying us for the air.”

A few of the Magnificos chuckled, reassured now that the matter had been translated back into the familiar language of profit and leverage.

“These sheep farmers will come to the table thinking they have won a reprieve,” Democrito continued. “They will walk away with their throats collared, their children pledged, their ports tithed. They will not die in a glorious storm of cannon-fire.” His smile sharpened. “They will die slowly, smothered by obligations and debts and signatures. And they will thank us for the privilege, because we will call it peace.”

Democrito would not allow himself to lose. Not to rocks and peasants and mountain walls. He would stake his pride, his very livelihood on that.