Fallen Eagle

4th Week of July, 1460

“With iron and blood?” Georgius looked more amused than anything. At least from what Theodorus could see across the cleared stretch of field. “I see my message reached you. I’m gladdened.”

A mocking smile sat on his face, and Theodorus was struck by a sudden desire to wipe it off.

“It reached me loud and clear, Georgius,” Theodorus called back, his voice carrying over the trampled grass and the nervous shuffle of armed men. “So I hope mine does too.”

He stood behind his squad of bodyguards. Even a discussion at the edge of the cleared killing ground around the bandit palisade was dangerous, and Theodorus had taken every precaution he could, which included the new suit of armour he had commissioned with help from the Doux back when he had been awarded control of Suyren.

It was a finer evolution of the old Sideris brigandine, all dark plates and grey contours, with overlapping strips of metal hidden beneath blackened leather and rivets set in clean, deliberate rows. A mantle of dark cloth fell from one shoulder, short enough not to hinder movement.

“You are a wanted criminal,” with his back straight and head held high, Theodorus carried an air of prestige that had been lacking when he had confronted Georgius half a year ago. “And you have resorted to stealing from destitute families with barely enough grain of their own to survive.” He gestured toward the half-finished palisade, the rough huts behind it, the sorry excuse for a stronghold Georgius had gathered around himself. “Look around you. This is the place you now call home, and the life you now live. Ruling over desperate cutthroats little better than armed farmers, men who would stab you in the back the moment they thought it profitable.”

Theodorus got his wish. Georgius’s amusement thinned from his face, and something colder seeped in beneath it.

“You can still turn back,” Theodorus continued. “With my new position, I can petition the Prince for a pardon on your behalf. I can welcome you back into our fold.”

He would never do such a thing, of course. Georgius was a volatile, heartless fiend, and there were too many old grudges between them to pretend forgiveness came so cheaply. But if a lie could end this battle without bloodshed, then Theodorus was not above trickery.

“You could return as a decorated captain, as our father was.”

For the briefest moment, Georgius’s eyes widened.

Theodorus knew from Iohannes and from former retainers that the middle Sideris brother had always tried to shape himself after their late father, or at least after the version of him Georgius preferred to remember.

“You can still win honour for our Principality,” Theodorus pressed, “for our family, and restore your name. Perhaps even your land.” He let the offer hang between them. “I beg of you,” Theodorus said, though his tone carried less of a plea than an offered chance at mercy. “If our blood ties mean anything to you, turn back now.”

For a long stretch, there was only the sway of the pine breeze and the rustle of armed men shifting their weight, all of them unsure what would happen after this unexpected offer.

Georgius eventually looked past Theodorus, his gaze sliding toward the man standing at his side.

“What about you?” he asked. “Going to stay quiet and let little brother do all the talking?”

Iohannes stood in his own black and grey armour, face drawn into a stern, stony façade. His jaw worked once before he answered.

“It is the best offer you are going to get, Georgius.” That he called him by name, without throwing an insult after it, was a tremendous show of personal control, at least for Iohannes. “I suggest you take it.” And even then his voice sounded as though it had been dragged over gravel.

“You suggest I take it?” Georgius repeated, and the smirk returned, uglier than before. “Then it is worth about as much as the dirt stuck between my toes.”

His men laughed behind him, the sound coming too quick and pleasing. If Georgius surrendered, they were all as good as dead in the eyes of the law. And without Georgius to lead them, surviving the siege was not even a possibility worth pretending at.

“My dearest little brother,” Georgius said, drawing the words out with poisonous warmth. “First you conspired to sell off your estate to this scheming viper here.”

He stared at Iohannes, gaze sharp enough to cut, but Iohannes held it without flinching.

“Then you fabricated an excuse to take my land from my hands. Whispered whatever lies you needed to those fools in the capital until they branded me unworthy of my own birthright. The Principality? A joke. As if I care one whit for the pompous fool who leads it, or any of the cunts who gave my land away because someone told them to.”

His face twisted into a snarl. “As for my father, he was a weak, wretched coward. Too sentimental, and too soft. Using him to draw some kind misguided sense of honour from me is a fool’s errand.”

Georgius spat into the dirt.

Theodorus felt Iohannes go still beside him. To spit while their father’s name hung in the air was something close to desecration.

“If he is my only link to you two idiots,” Georgius continued, “then there are no blood ties left to speak of. You are just sheep I will have to cull-”

“You are outnumbered and surrounded, same as last time, filthy cur,” Iohannes cut across him, unwilling to hear anything more out of his mouth. His voice was utterly glacial. “This will end much the same, with one key difference. This time I will not let you escape. I will end your wretched existence once and for all, and cast you into whatever dark infernal pit has been waiting for you.”

The promise came out cold and steady, a prayer spoken into a wind with no mercy in it.

Georgius laughed. “Now there is the half-Tatar I know and love.”

Iohannes turned his back on him and began walking out of the cleared field. “This was a waste of time, like I told you.” He did not spare Georgius another glance as he passed into the sparse trees.

“You give me no choice, then, brother,” Theodorus said.

He drew a slow breath, forcing the heat in his chest down into something colder and more useful. Then he lifted his voice so that every witness near the palisade could hear him clearly.

“By the powers vested in me as Steward of the North, I hereby denounce the traitor Georgius Sideris as a wanted criminal. Any man of this Principality who brings me his head shall have all absolvable crimes forgiven and will be handed a sum of fifty hyperpera, to be evenly distributed between all parties.”

Georgius’s men took the news exactly as Theodorus had expected, with widened eyes and sudden greed. Fifty hyperpera was enough for a careful man to live comfortably for the rest of his days, and Georgius’s ranks were filled with precisely the sort of men who would be tempted by such a sum. The pardon mattered too, as it was a free pass back into civilization. Something unheard of and dreamed of for men who had lived in the wilderness in squalor.

It was almost too good to be true. But even if the men suspected something foul at play, a noble’s word still meant something when spoken before so many witnesses. It would denigrate Theodorus's image to go back on it, and that might sway them to act.

What they did not see were the caveats hidden beneath it. Theodorus could only realistically absolve lighter crimes, as he was not the Metropolitan, and there was nothing forbidding him from handing the reward and then pocketing the money back after punishment had been meted out.

“Dead or alive, it does not matter!” Theodorus called, throwing more kindling onto the fire. This condition certainly made it easier to collect the reward. “All I need is his head.”

Georgius’s smile tightened until it looked almost canine. “Fire at will,” he called.

His men hesitated, looking from Theodorus to Georgius and then to one another. That tiny delay told Theodorus the bounty had done its work.

“Shoot right the fuck now, or I’ll skewer you where you stand!” Georgius bellowed, drawing his sword. The blade came free, glinting in the daylight.

The volley that followed was pitiful. Dozens of arrows leapt from the bandit line with more panic than discipline, their flights crooked and poorly timed, burying themselves into the ground several paces short.

“Retreat,” Theodorus ordered.

His men closed around him, shields raised and shoulders tight, withdrawing by practiced steps rather than breaking into a run.

They reached the trees in good order. The forest was no lush shelter, only a thin scattering of pines across dry, uneven ground, with scrubby bushes spread out underfoot.

After a tense walk, they spotted one of the forward pickets they’d placed to deny entry into their camp. He did not ask for a password only because it was Theodorus who led the entourage.

Two-man pickets watched the outer approaches, close enough to hear a whistle from the next. Behind them waited spearmen and crossbowmen where the trunks narrowed the path, with shields stacked nearby. A few sharpened stakes had been driven into the obvious gaps, though nothing so grand as a palisade.

Past that stood the camp itself, orderly rows of military tents arranged on the driest ground they could find. Guy ropes were marked with scraps of cloth, cookfires were kept low, and every squad had been told where to form if the horn sounded.

Stathis greeted him outside the campsite with a crisp salute.

“We’ve set up outlying patrols and pitched the tents,” he said as they walked.

Around them, men moved between the camp with axes, mallets, and coils of rope, clearing enough space for the coming work. Nearby, a soldier sat on an overturned log with his helmet beside him, carefully scraping dried mud from the links of his mail.

“The men are already felling the surrounding trees for work on the palisade,” Stathis continued. “We’ve dug a few test holes to see if the soil grows damp, but it is as you said. There is nothing so far. Dig far enough, and you start striking limestone.”

Christos opened the flap of the central command tent as they approached. Inside, Zeno was speaking with Federico over the rough arrangement of supplies, a stack of tally sticks laid across the central table.

“How did it go?” Zeno asked as soon as Theodorus stepped past the threshold.

“About as well as one could expect,” Theodorus said, making for the unoccupied folding stool beside him.

Iohannes did not bother with even that much restraint. “We must order an immediate assault.”

Federico turned from the table, while Zeno merely lifted a brow.

“That is quite a precipitous decision,” Zeno said. “What has brought it about?”

“We have to send a message.” Iohannes struck the central table with his palm, rattling the inkpots and making one of the tally sticks jump. It was clear that although he had refused to show it before Georgius, he was nearly beside himself. “Traitors must be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly.”

“We know they do not have a ready water supply,” Federico said, shrugging in a casual manner. “Their defenses are ramshackle. So why go through the trouble and risk our men?”

“Because every moment we waste gives that imbecile brother of mine another breath he has not earned,” Iohannes snapped.

Theodorus placed a steady hand on his shoulder. Iohannes’s jaw tightened, though he did not pull away.

“And the payment offer?” Zeno asked, turning the question to Theodorus. “How did it land?”

“Well,” Theodorus said.

Their first opening gambit mirrored the one they had used the last time he had besieged Georgius, though this time it was poised to do greater damage. Back then, Georgius still had something close to an army. Now he only commanded a den of hungry criminals.

“Even from a distance, I could see the shock on their faces,” Theodorus continued. “Nearly his entire cohort is composed of men willing to kill for coin. A pardon and fifty hyperpera will not leave them sleeping peacefully.”

“Between the lack of water, the treachery, and the state of their defenses, even if they have a substantial store of food, which I highly doubt, they seem unlikely to withstand a proper siege for long.” Zeno put a hand to his chin, thoughtful now.

“The decision is obvious then,” Federico declared, already turning as though to leave and begin giving orders.

“It is a mistake to wait,” Iohannes insisted, refusing to yield. “Every day we give him is another day he has to cook up some treacherous scheme.”

Federico looked unimpressed by the argument. Iohannes was far from a seasoned general, and his current rashness only made him seem foolish in the eyes of the Italian.

“Waiting would also likely see the families inside the camp die within days,” Theodorus said, voice dour. “My brother is not the kind of man to share food with those who cannot help him achieve his aims.”

He enjoyed playing in the chessboard of war, but battling against a player who used innocent families as pawns left a bitter taste in his mouth. There were rules even bastards tended to follow, if only because breaking them made the world harder to govern afterward.

“It is an unnecessary risk,” Federico said, spreading his hands as if explaining something to a child. “If maintaining a standstill can resolve this matter in a matter of a week, we gain little by forcing the issue. I will not risk my men in such an assault without need.”

Iohannes looked irate enough to start the argument again, and Theodorus could already feel the fracture lines in the tent.

This was the downside of an army composed of so many different origins and obligations. Disagreements rose naturally, loyalties pulled in different directions, and every decision had to pass through a tangle of pride, caution, and competing responsibilities. Leading a multicultural force was as much about diplomacy and personal management as war.

“Perhaps we can meet in the middle,” Zeno said, his tone calm enough to blunt the sharper edges in the tent. “We wait four days. Long enough to sap their strength and morale before ordering an assault. That should grant us a decisive advantage over their defenses, while still leaving enough time that some of the civilians inside might survive.”

It was still a callous decision. Plenty would perish in those four days, especially if Georgius was as ruthless with his supplies as Theodorus feared. But it was also the only middle ground both men seemed capable of reaching without turning the command tent into another battlefield.

“Very well,” Federico said at last, though his expression made it clear he found little satisfaction in the compromise. “We can use the time to construct proper apparatus for the assault, at the very least. Anything that keeps my men from being butchered against a wall because we chose haste over sense.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I suppose we have no choice,” Iohanne’s words came out with effort. He turned from the table and left the tent with a brusque sweep of his arm.

Theodorus watched him go and felt a sinking weight settle somewhere beneath his ribs.

It did not come from the part of him that thought in numbers, logistics, and siegecraft. It came from somewhere older, buried in the original Theodorus, in the memories of a boy who had known Georgius. That Theodorus knew the way Georgius could turn spite into action when cornered.

They were making a mistake.

Theodorus rose.

“Where are you going, sir?” Stathis asked, falling in after him as naturally as a shadow.

“Getting answers,” Theodorus said, and gave nothing more away.

He left the command tent before anyone could stop him and crossed the camp toward the Pronoia section. He asked after a particular officer until a spearman pointed him toward a smaller cluster of tents near the outer fires.

He found him seated beside a low campfire, prodding at the coals with a stripped branch. The flames caught the lined hollows of his face. He had the look of a man thinking too far into the past and finding little comfort there.

“Lycomedes,” Theodorus greeted as he approached.

Stathis remained a few paces back, watching the exchange with interest.

“Sir,” Lycomedes said, surprise moving across his face as he started to rise. He had clearly not expected the acting commander to come seeking him directly.

“At ease,” Theodorus said, taking a seat on a nearby log that had been roughly shaped into something like a stool. “I wanted to speak to you about something.”

“About Georgius?” Lycomedes guessed.

He had once served as Georgius’s primary lieutenant after the inheritance debacle, before defecting at the end of the black siege. Since then, Iohannes had taken him into his own service as a senior officer among his men-at-arms.

“Yes,” Theodorus said.

Lycomedes’s expression grew grim at the confirmation.

“What do you make of this place?” Theodorus asked. “Of my brother’s tactics so far. Of the fact that he chose this hideout to keep the families captive.”

Lycomedes looked into the fire for a moment, puzzled rather than merely thoughtful. “It is a strange location, to say the least. Not one I would have expected him to choose. For all his faults, Georgius is no fool in military matters. He had to know that if he was caught here, a siege would be untenable.”

The answer matched Theodorus’s own thoughts.

“What if I told you this was not originally the bandits’ main hideout?” Theodorus leaned forward, eyes fixed on the older officer. “I had already deduced the original location when I served as an aide in Suyren. It lies farther north. This place was chosen later by Georgius to gather all the families inside it.”

Lycomedes’s brow furrowed deeper with every word. “I suppose the plateau would make escape more difficult for unarmed, weakened civilians,” he said slowly. He looked as though another thought had come to him and lodged unpleasantly in his throat.

“But?” Theodorus prompted.

“Apologies if this seems far-fetched, my Lord,” Lycomedes said slowly, as though he disliked his own conclusion, “but it reeks of a trap.”

Theodorus’s eyes flared. He suspected as much as well. “Do you suspect what kind?” Theodorus asked. “Knowing my brother as you did.”

“I cannot hazard a guess, my Lord,” Lycomedes said, shaking his head. “Only that he is willing to do anything.”

His gaze slipped back into the fire. Lycomedes had been something close to a mentor to Georgius once.

“He has grown even more ruthless than before. I always knew him to be willing to do whatever he thought necessary. That was part of what made him dangerous, and part of what made men follow him. But to sink so low as to kidnap families and keep them in those conditions…” His mouth tightened, and he looked away from the fire as if it had accused him. “I never thought him capable of that.”

“It is not your fault,” Theodorus attempted to assure him. “He always had a dark streak in him.”

“No,” Lycomedes murmured. He shook his head and let it hang low. “I did fail him. I should have cut him down when I had the chance.”

The sun had fallen low enough that its last light bled through the pines in dull, copper strips. It seemed to darken faster with the words, turning a purple bruise spreading across the sky.

Theodorus placed a hand on Lycomedes’s shoulder. “We will catch him,” he promised.

He was not sure whether he was trying to reassure Lycomedes or himself.

All Lycomedes gave him was a faint smile in response.

Theodorus left him beside the campfire with his thoughts, his face turned back toward the flames as though he were seeing another day inside them, one where sin had rained down from the high heavens, and no one had stopped it in time.

“What will we do?” Stathis asked once they were far enough away. If the possibility of a trap disturbed him, he did not show it. He remained as steady as ever. It was part of what made him invaluable.

“Call Iohannes and Federico back to the command tent,” Theodorus said, his expression hardening with every step. “I will break my brother’s scheme on its knees.”

“The west side is on fire!” one of the greener bandits screamed, running along the inside of what passed for their palisade like a headless chicken.

Georgius caught him by the shoulders hard enough to make the boy gasp. Around them, men stumbled out of huts and lean-tos, half-dressed and wild-eyed, turning in useless circles as orange light licked up beyond the western wall. Smoke was beginning to drag itself over the camp, thick and bitter, filling the enclosure.

“Calm the fuck down,” he snarled.

The bandit stared at him, eyes huge, breath coming too fast to be of any use. Georgius slapped him across the face. That cut through the panic better than any sermon might have.

“Get the water from the washing vat and douse the flames. Form a bucket line to the breach, and if any man drops his pail before I tell him to, I’ll nail him to the fucking wall myself.”

"But we're already short on water-" the bandit began to protest.

Georgius struck him again, harder this time. "Go." He ordered again. The bandit didn't stick around to be ordered a third time.

Men who saw the display lurched toward the vats, shoving one another aside, while a few of the captive villagers were dragged from where they had been huddled and forced into the line. At least that gave the useless bodies he had hanging around the camp something to do.

What a pack of idiots. Where had they thought they were running? There was nowhere to escape inside this little camp. It was a trap, a cramped, filthy, miserable rat-hole with too many mouths and no way out.

Exactly as he had planned it.

“Petraches!” Georgius barked.

The lazy bastard emerged from one of the cottages, shirt hanging loose, belt half-fastened, sword scabbard dragging crookedly at his hip. Through the half-open door behind him, Georgius glimpsed three women crouched close together in the dimness, bruised, trembling, and clutching scraps of clothing to themselves. Their faces turned away as soon as they saw him looking.

“Yes, boss?” Petraches mumbled, fumbling with his sword hilt as he swayed on his feet.

“Are you fucking wasted?” Georgius demanded.

“No, boss,” Petraches said and nearly retched in the attempt. His eyes were red and unfocused, his breath sour enough to reach Georgius from two paces away.

Petraches had once been worth more than the rabble around them, at least enough to frighten peasants and keep lesser men in line. Now he was worth about as much as the old men being shoved toward the burning gap with buckets in their hands.

Georgius did not need him anymore.

“Go lead the defense on the west side,” he ordered, smiling without warmth.

“They’re attacking?” Petraches’s eyebrows shot up as he squinted toward the west side, as if only now noticing the giant blaze crawling up the palisade. His eyes widened in almost comic horror when his slow mind finally caught up. “Already?”

He sounded panicked, which made Georgius want to hit him again.

“Fucking get in there,” Georgius snapped, shoving him toward the smoke and shouting. “I’m putting on my armour. I’ll join you after.”

He marched toward the central hut, leaving Petraches behind to bellow slurred orders at men barely less confused than he was.

Georgius had to hand it to his brother. After that first little trick of placing a reward on his head, he had thought the whelp would commit to the slow game. This rat-hole had been built to tempt exactly that. All they had to do was wait a while, and the place would fold like a house of cards. So why were they making a move?

Then again, the palisade was little more than bundled kindling pretending at military architecture. Setting fire to it during a night raid was hardly a miracle of genius, and it's not like there was much pushback. The arrows fired from his side were little more than hunter shafts loosed by peasants with shaking hands. A determined assault would tear through them if no one gave it something else to bite.

They probably felt they had nothing to fear.

“What’s happening?” Nadia demanded, intercepting him at the hut.

Outside it waited the dozen men Georgius still considered useful, hard-eyed bastards who kept their weapons close and their heads clear enough to follow a real order. They were not the whole of his force, just the part of it worth saving.

“What do you think is happening?” Georgius smiled. “They’re just burning a little wood to ward off the cold.”

A few of his men chuckled slowly at the joke as mayhem coursed around them.

“This isn’t a time to be cracking jokes!” Nadia yelled, wild-eyed, her composure gone.

“They’re attacking from the east side!” a boy shouted as he ran toward them, breathless and wide-eyed. Another disastrous piece of news that seemed to rattle no one.

Well no one but Nadia.

“Fucking do something, bigshot!” Nadia seized him by the collar, hiding her terror under fury.

Georgius understood the fear. She could play try to play a damsel in distress when the place fell, but plenty of villagers could testify to her cruelty. If she were taken, there would be no pretty end waiting for her.

Understanding did not mean he would tolerate it.

He backhanded her. Hard. She hit the packed dirt with a wet gasp, one hand flying to her mouth. Probably cracked a tooth, too.

“How many times do I have to tell people?” Georgius said, looking down at her with flat disgust. “Calm the fuck down.”

The boy, meanwhile, stared at him as if staring at the devil, utterly gobsmacked.

“Get the rest of the reserves to the east side,” Georgius ordered. “Tell Petraches to put every warm body on the wall. Arm the elderly and the women if he has to.”

The boy’s face went pale. Even he understood what the order meant. Pressing frightened civilians into a wall would not stop a real assault. Georgius was ordering them to a slaughter just to buy a few minutes of time.

“Go do it,” Georgius said, drawing closer, “or I’ll cut that pretty neck of yours before they get the chance, little boy. We’ll be right behind you.”

The boy fled fast enough that Georgius wondered whether he would carry the order or just run. It hardly mattered.

“What will we do now?” Nadia asked from the ground. Her voice had broken into something close to sobbing, though Georgius knew better than to trust tears from her.

He hauled her upright by the arm, rolling his eyes. “Inside.”

His chosen men followed without question, slipping into the hut while one of them pulled the door shut behind them. The place stank of sweat and too much sex. Georgius caught the smell and felt a flash of irritation at himself.

Damn the viper at his side. He had never been this lustful before her.

“Open the trapdoor,” he ordered.

Nadia went very still.

Two of his men shoved the straw bed aside, revealing the rough wooden panel beneath. One pulled the ring up, and damp, cold air breathed out from the darkness below. Another lit up a torch before lowering it into the hole.

A sheer drop emerged in the wavering light, cut into the limestone. It was narrow enough that a broad man had to turn his shoulders to plunge into it, and had a rope ladder hanging in the wall.

“What is this?” Nadia asked, her voice suddenly careful.

“Our way out,” Georgius said.

His men began dropping into the dark one after another. Nadia peered down after them, her eyes widening as torchlight revealed the carved passage below.

“And you didn't think of telling me?” she asked, turning on him with fresh anger.

“Women don’t need to know military plans,” Georgius deadpanned.

He was not remorseful in the slightest. He would be caught dead before he trusted her fully, and even then, he might rise from the grave just to correct the mistake.

“Now move. We need to go quickly-”

Nadia caught him by the neck and pulled him into a deep kiss before he could finish. Georgius stiffened from surprise as she pressed herself against him with sudden, shameless heat, clinging to him like terror had burned into hunger.

“If we make it out,” she whispered against his neck, breath warm despite the smoke-choked air, “I’ll want you.”

Georgius hated that he didn’t have a ready comeback.

She gave him a quick, wicked look, then dropped into the hole after the others.

Georgius muttered something foul under his breath and followed her down into the dark.

“Quickly,” Georgius gestured with two fingers, and his men started forward through the carved passage. The passage did not last long. After a short descent, it opened into a wider space that stole Nadia’s breath away.

The chamber beyond was spread outward into darkness like the hollowed belly of some ancient beast. Pale stone hung from above in long, jagged teeth, some thin as candles, others as thick as a man's arm.

Torchlight moved over the walls and made them glimmer in places, revealing strange folded curtains of stone and ribs of white rock.

“What is this place?” Nadia asked, unable to hide her wonder.

“The reason I made this hideout in the first place,” Georgius said.

He could not help his grin. He had known his little brother would find him sooner or later. Theodorus was too clever. And someone like that wasn't beaten by conventional methods. Georgius had spent plenty of nights thinking about how to do so, how to overcome such a fearsome foe. This was his answer.

“The little thing we built above was just to house the bait,” Georgius said as he led them unerringly through the underground chamber. “Now I have him right where I want him.” The hollow walls carried the malice in his tone to every far corner.

This place had once held water, enough of it to carve paths through the stone before disappearing into the earth. It was a perfect escape route.

Georgius had learned of it from the bandits who had roamed these dry hills before he whipped them into something useful. No one outside them would know it existed, and certainly not the fools now busy clawing at the hideout above.

“But what can you do with this?” Nadia asked, still flabbergasted as she minded her steps through the rocky floor.

“I’ll show you.”

Georgius climbed into another man-made passage, shorter and rougher than the first, a little throat cut into the rock to connect the chamber with the slope beyond. The climb was hard in armour and harder with weapons and supplies, but they managed.

They emerged through a secluded entrance hidden behind placed brush and thorny scrub. From the outside, it would have looked like nothing more than another ugly tangle of bushes clinging to the hillside.

They had climbed partway out of the crater where the hideout sat. From here, Georgius could see the whole miserable place below. Fire still clawed at the west side, though the blaze had begun to gutter now.

The bait was likely realizing Georgius wasn’t even there now. Georgius would not be surprised if the whole place surrendered within moments.

It did not matter. They had served their purpose.

“What now?” Nadia asked, slightly out of breath like the others. The pace had been hard.

“Now we climb.”

He led them up the slope, where the incline grew harsher and the already thin woods turned even more scraggly. The night attack worked in Georgius’s favour now. Even if Theodorus had sentries watching the surrounding countryside, they would be staring toward the fire, not toward a handful of shadows moving above it.

After a short walk, they reached the place.

A wall of timber had been built into a narrow cut along the hillside, hidden behind brush and the natural fold of the slope. Behind it waited several dozen boulders, huge dark shapes packed together above the wood. Some were as large as carts, others smaller but still heavy enough to crush a man into paste if they found him on the way down. Wooden braces held the mass in place, reinforced with crossbeams and thick wedges driven deep into sockets cut into the soil and stone.

“What in God’s name…” Nadia whispered.

Georgius smiled.

His closest lieutenants had built it in secret over several punishing weeks. The work had been brutal, dragging stones up the slope on log sleds greased with rendered fat, using families who had made the mistake of defying Georgius at the wrong time. People assumed he had just killed them when they disappeared, but why waste fresh bodies when they could be sent here to labour until their hands split and their bodies failed?

Georgius stepped toward the retaining wall and studied the slip-pin mechanism through the dim moonlight. A thick locking beam held the strain, pinned in place by a removable peg and rope system.

Below, the west fire finally died. The screams too, which told Georgius the camp had likely surrendered.

Georgius rested one hand on the retaining beam, feeling the pressure of all that waiting stone, then he laughed, the sound coming out of him as a harsh rumble.

He could imagine his brothers down there, only now realizing he was long gone, though with no idea of where he was or how he had done it.

Now all it would take was one little push from him, and they would die beneath the weight of their own treacherous ambitions. Crushed under their own betrayal.

His hand closed around the pommel of his sword.

Then he hesitated.

Memories rose without permission. Sun-dappled days in his mother’s arms, her hand smoothing his hair while he squirmed. His father laughing at something childish Georgius had said, broad and warm and alive.

And him, fantasizing about his little brother in his arms, wishing he would come as quickly as he could.

Georgius tightened his grip until his knuckles ached inside the glove. The blade in his hand was precious. Oiled clean, its edge bright where the torchlight touched it, showing its fine workmanship. It was as light as a feather in the hand of a trained man.

It felt heavy now. So heavy.

He gritted his teeth as another memory came, darker this time. His father on that damned bed, the same one his mother had died in. Strength bleeding out of him as he shook and screamed and wailed as he thrashed on the threshold between here and the everafter, Georgius struggling to hold him down, struggling to fight back the tears. All because of a fucking barbed arrow. He had died protecting their home, believing his sons would inherit something worth keeping.

How saddened would he be, Georgius wondered, if he could see what his son meant to do?

His gaze dropped toward the fire below, and whatever softness had touched him burned away.

His father was dead. His brothers had betrayed him. Even the Principality he had grown up swearing to protect now wanted his head on a spike, and he knew Heaven was not waiting for a man like him.

There was nothing left to him.

So there was nothing left to lose.

He would kick, struggle, claw, and bite until his last breath left him, not because he had anything worthwhile to live for, but because he would not give his enemies the satisfaction of watching him quit. That was who he was. The whole world could line up against him, but Georgius Sideris would still face it head-on.

He was no coward, after all.

So he swung.

The pommel of his sword struck the pin squarely, prompting a wooden crack that seemed far too small for what followed. The locking beam lurched free, and the retaining wall shuddered before the whole gave way in a burst of splinters.

The boulders tilted slowly, as if the hillside itself needed a moment, then the entire mass began to gather speed.

The sound grew monstrous. Wood snapped as the first line of boulders tore down the slope, grinding over earth and limestone with a deep, grinding roar that filled the night. A pine took the first blow and vanished in a crack of timber, its trunk breaking like a dry bone. Another was ripped out by the roots, dragged sideways, and crushed beneath the stones as smaller rocks bounced ahead of the main wave like hounds before a hunt.

The hillside came apart beneath them. Brush, dirt, splintered branches, and stone poured downward toward the camp where his brothers, his enemies, and all the miserable little people he had heaped together waited below.

For a moment, Georgius stood with the sword still in his hand, aware of the terrible thing he had just done.

Then he turned away, unfazed.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“We aren’t staying to look?” one of his men asked.

“In the dark?” Georgius looked at the idiot who suddenly remembered the value of silence. “We won’t see anything worth seeing, and I don’t want to be around when the survivors realize where the boulders came from.”

No one argued after that.

Georgius started up along the sloping edge of the plateau, his men following close behind. The roar continued below them, followed by distant crashes that shook through the ground beneath his boots. He did not look back. Looking back was for men who expected mercy from the past.

They crossed the ridge and began descending the far side, deeper into the dark.

It felt fitting, in its way. His own long descent into the black below.

There was no going back now.