Fallen Eagle

1st Week of August, 1460

They reached the hideout somewhere between the last flash of afternoon and the dead end of dusk, exhausted, filthy, and breathing like beaten dogs.

Georgius had driven them through the Theodoran high ranges through the night. Some of the weaker fools had stumbled badly enough that Georgius had left them to their demise, though not before wringing some benefit out of the useless fools. The rest didn't complain in the slightest.

They knew what would happen if the Crown’s men caught them after the little trick they had pulled.

The sentries at the gate looked half-asleep when the band emerged from the dark, hunched shapes in the mountain gloom. They came awake quickly enough once Georgius stepped into the torchlight.

“Open the fucking gates,” he ordered, and they rushed to obey, still groggy.

The poor bastards still believed Georgius held their families hostage. They had no idea those same families were likely buried beneath half a mountain of broken stone by now. It was almost funny, in a grim sort of way. Men were easiest to lead when they thought they still had something left to lose.

“Everyone get some sleep,” Georgius said, already walking toward the best hut in the miserable little camp. It had a straighter roof than the others and fewer holes in the walls and that made it his.

“And tomorrow?” one of the men asked.

Georgius glanced back at him. The man shrank a little under the look.

“We’ll worry about tomorrow when it comes,” Georgius grunted, not breaking stride.

Nadia fell in beside him before he reached the hut. She looked nearly as ruined as the rest of them, hair loose from its ties, scratches running along her arms, dust clinging to the sweat on her neck. Her eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion, but the smile that touched her mouth had teeth in it.

It seemed she hadn’t forgotten about her promise.

“Aren’t you tired, woman?” Georgius muttered. His own bones felt packed with sand.

“Oh no,” Nadia said, catching his sleeve with one hand. “You’re not getting out of this.”

Georgius looked down at her fingers, then at her face.

“You won’t fall asleep, don’t worry,” she said, that devilish smile widening. “I’ll make sure of that.”

As she dragged him inside, Georgius could only let out a long sigh.

There really was no rest for the weary.

…

“Georgius, my boy. Are you awake?”

It was almost dawn when the soft knock came.

It didn’t wake him up. He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t even come close.

“Yeah,” Georgius said.

He had been lying flat on his bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling until the wooden beams began to blur together, illuminated by a faint trace of light from the window.

Dad opened the door almost scared like. Georgius had never seen him do that before. His hair was messy and he moved slowly, as if every step hurt.

He sat on the edge of his bed. Georgius didn’t move, just kept looking at the ceiling.

“Is Mother dead?” he asked, voice flat. There was no pain in it, there was nothing really.

Dad did not answer right away. Georgius saw him from the corner of his eye, saw the way his mouth opened a little and stayed that way. Dad looked scared, which felt utterly wrong to Georgius.

“Yes,” Dad said, and the word seemed to make him smaller.

Georgius waited for the crying to come back, but nothing happened. His eyes hurt too much already. His face felt thick and hot from all the tears he had spent in the dark.

For a while neither of them said anything.

Georgius didn’t know what he was meant to say. Maybe Dad didn’t either.

Then he heard his father move. Something scraped softly. A moment later, a weight settled across Georgius’s legs. It was cold even through the blanket.

He looked down through swollen eyes.

A sword lay there.

Not just any sword. His father’s sword, which had been grandfather’s too, brought all the way from the Morean Heartland. Georgius stared at it, then at his father.

“Why?” he whispered.

Dad did not meet his eyes. He looked down at the blade instead, his face tired and sad.

“A blade’s life starts and ends with its wielder,” Dad said quietly. His voice sounded rough, “and this one deserves a fresh start.”

The blade caught what little light there was, showing an edge that looked too sharp to touch. It felt too heavy for his arms, just like Dad had said.

“I…I can’t,” Georgius said, surprising himself.

He had wanted nothing more than to get strong enough for Dad to place that sword in his hands and call him ready.

Now the thought felt wrong.

“You have to,” Dad said, and this time his eyes found Georgius’s. “A true man does not run from hard things just because they hurt.”

Georgius held the words in his head for a while.

“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” he asked.

Dad went quiet.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

The smile he gave then was the saddest thing Georgius had ever seen. It was barely a smile at all.

“That is why I don’t deserve this steel anymore. My father used to say a Sideris pays his debts in iron and blood.” He stopped there for a moment. His hand hovered near the hilt, but he did not touch it. “I am done paying in those currencies.”

Georgius didn’t really understand everything Dad meant, but he knew something else.

That this was the day his father gave up being a soldier.

And the day Georgius became one.

Dad leaned in close and kissed Georgius on the forehead. Georgius hated when he did that, but couldn’t find it in him to move away right now.

“Happy birthday,” Dad whispered.

Georgius didn’t answer.

He stayed there with the sword across his legs, staring at the pale curve of the blade and the dim shine of the metal, not even lifting his head when Dad rose from the bed and left.

He just stayed alone in the room as the dark thinned into morning.

And made himself a promise he would never forget.

…

“How long have you been awake?” Nadia asked.

She stretched beside him like a cat, slow and shameless, dark hair spilling over one shoulder, her voice still rough with sleep.

“Long enough,” Georgius said.

He stared up at the ceiling. In the dark, the crooked beams looked too much like the ones from that room years ago. It was stupid, but they followed him everywhere, no matter how far he was from that place or that time.

“You rarely get a wink of sleep,” Nadia said, watching him more closely than he liked. “And when you do, you wake like someone’s trying to cut your throat.”

There was a faint note of worry in her voice that Georgius wasn’t sure he believed in, so he said nothing, keeping his eyes on the ceiling. A warrior did not show the chinks in his armour to someone he couldn’t trust.

And Georgius trusted no one.

Nadia’s gaze dropped to his off hand, and the sword gripped there.

Even in sleep, his fingers had closed around the hilt.

“Is it special?” she asked. "I see you already fussing over it."

Georgius turned his head just enough to glare at her. “Why are you pestering me so much today?”

She slapped his chest hard.

“Damn idiot,” Nadia snapped. “Fine, let’s talk about the deep shit we’re in. We just survived near death, and now we’re wanted fugitives.”

“We already were,” Georgius said.

“Not like we’re about to be.”

She rolled onto her side, turning her back to him with an annoyed huff that shouldn’t have mattered. For some reason, it did.

“My father’s,” Georgius answered. Nadia turned back toward him and the blade. “It is the last thing I have of him.”

Something thoughtful passed through Nadia’s eyes, and for once, she didn’t make a joke.

“Now it’s my turn,” Georgius said, seized by some strange instinct, “Where did you come from?”

“Interested now, eh?” Nadia asked, and there was a small, pleased curl to her mouth, as if she had won some petty victory by making him ask. “Nothing worth mentioning. A filthy little hamlet on the eastern border.”

“How did you end up here, then?”

“Genoese border conflicts aren’t known for being kind to common folk,” she said. Her eyes shifted away from him. “When they catch noble blood, they talk ransom. When what they catch is common, they look for other ways to make coin.”

“Slavery?” Georgius asked, his brow shooting up. “How did you get out of that?”

“Who says I did?” Nadia’s smile turned bitter. Georgius saw pain, old and ugly, the kind that had been left to rot rather than heal. It was much like his own. “I did what I had to do to leave, but you never truly stop being a slave. They make sure of that.”

She reached up and pushed aside the wild black fall of her hair, baring the skin beneath. There, half-hidden near the hairline, was a brand burned into her skin.

“That means nothing in the Principality,” Georgius said. “You could still live freely here.”

“You really are naïve when you want to be.” Nadia laughed, “Do you think my hamlet was spared? My family? I went back to ash. There was nothing left alive that I knew there.”

Her voice grew harder with every word.

“And the Prince? He was just as likely to sell me back for a handful of coin as to protect me. This little shithole calls itself a principality, but it’s one in name only. They’d bend over backwards for the Genoese.”

Georgius said nothing. There was little to say to that, and less that would not sound like insult.

“So I did what I had to survive,” Nadia whispered. “Whatever it took.”

Georgius remembered how she had looked when he first reached the hideout. Women were not treated kindly by outlaws. Men lost whatever thin leash held them back once law and custom stopped mattering, especially when they already believed hell was waiting for them.

Georgius found her shoulder and squeezed it.

Nadia turned her face toward him.

“What will we do now?” she asked, unwilling to speak more on the matter.

“What do you mean?”

“We could run.” Her voice was quieter now, almost wistful, though she tried to hide it. “There’s nothing holding you here anymore, is there? Your brothers are gone. The Principality will hunt us after what we did. There’s no point staying and waiting for a noose.”

Georgius considered it.

He had never expected to win a war against the Crown. That had never been the point. He had stayed only because of hatred and revenge, and that kept him here still.

“I don’t know if my brothers are dead,” he said. “I doubt the avalanche killed them both.”

“And if it did?” Nadia pressed.

Georgius lay still for a long moment.

He had already written off his own life. Somewhere along the way, that had become easier than thinking of what came after. But now Nadia was dangling something else in front of him. A road. A different name. Some filthy corner of the world where no one knew him.

“We’d need coin,” he said.

“We can rob a caravan,” Nadia answered, as if she had already been building the life in her head. “Or sell off the grain from the last raids. Just one quick job.”

Georgius could not help the rough smile that tugged at his mouth.

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Maybe.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelPhoenix. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Nadia leaned in to kiss him, but was stopped as hurried footsteps came from outside the hut.

“Georgius,” Lambros called, voice thin with panic again.

Nadia stilled, her eyes going wide.

Georgius froze. Something in him already knew what was coming.

“The Crown,” Lambros said through the wall, small and scared. “They’re here.”

Georgius closed his eyes. Something left him then.

He rose from the bedding, sliding away from Nadia’s warmth, then bent and pressed a rough kiss to her forehead.

“Where are you going?” Nadia asked, catching his arm with both hands. Her fingers dug into him hard enough to hurt.

“To finish this,” Georgius said.

He dressed calmly. Tunic, belt, boots, knife, then his father’s sword. Nadia said something behind him, perhaps his name, perhaps a curse, but Georgius did not turn back.

The camp had woken into terror. Men stumbled between the huts half-armed and pale-faced.

Georgius walked through them without speaking. Men shifted aside before him, looking to him for command or some other fool’s miracle. There was none. This hideout was trapped high in the mountains, and unlike the last one, there was no way out of this one. They did not even have a proper palisade, just a ditch.

He climbed the rough steps to the rough wall. Below, the mountain path opened into the approach before the camp, where nearly thirty horsemen waited and, at their head, Theodorus.

“Hello, little brother,” Georgius forced his mouth into a sinister smile. It was a performance. He knew how this would end, but it was the only part he knew how to play. “I do wonder how you always manage these surprise visits.”

The avalanche should have buried his brothers or at least enough of their men that pursuit wouldn’t have been possible. His trap had been perfect. There had been no way for them to know it beforehand.

So just how had they come through untouched?

“Get it up on the battlements! Force it up there!” a soldier shouted over the din.

The armoured cart lurched forward under a hail of stones and panicked arrows, stumbling to a halt as it collided with the hideout’s wooden palisade. A man climbed over its frame, pushing over a heavy ramp. The plank slammed down onto the lip of the bandits’ flimsy palisade, and the structure shuddered under the impact.

Men swarmed through acrid smoke rising from the carts below. Beneath that cover, Genoese men-at-arms tipped baskets of hot coals against the base of the palisade, drenching them in water, then drew back as the wood cracked and spat under the heat.

Theodorus regarded the scene coolly from behind the advancing line. It was the same method they had used against the Genoese siege works, only possible because he had both Genoese professionals and Pronoia men-at-arms at hand for the complex manoeuvre.

Federico had refused to place his men in the thickest fighting. So the Genoese handled the coals and the flanks, while the Pronoia took the first bite through the palisade. Theodorus had petitioned to keep some of the mobile armoured wagons from the rebellion, citing their need to retake Suyren, and now they were coming in handy.

“We’re through! Andiamo! Andiamo!” came the shout as part of the wall sagged, split, and collapsed inward.

The resistance was lighter than during the Genoese assault. The first bandits were hopelessly outmatched by trained, armoured men, and a bloody hole opened around the breach. The Pronoia drove in with shields and short weapons, the Genoese pressed from the sides, and the militia were pushed into the gaps behind them. That had been the only way Federico accepted the immediate frontal assault Theodorus had demanded.

Beside the rabble facing them, the militia looked nearly soldierly now. They wore proper gambesons and carried something close to spears, not farming sickles, unlike their counterparts. They stood in formation while sergeants bellowed them forward one step at a time.

However, while Theodorus noticed they were taking little damage, the troops weren’t advancing either. The reason appeared through the smoke moments later. The bandits, desperate and cornered, were driving frail old men and women into the press, arming them with kitchen knives, rusted cleavers, and even stools. Their faces were pale with terror.

The militia could not bring themselves to butcher a wall of frightened bodies, and Theodorus could hardly blame them.

Up on the battlements, the assault was beginning to lose its bite, Theodorus could see it in the way the men slowed near the breach.

There was little danger of defeat now, not with the palisade already cracked open and the bandits outmatched in arms and discipline, but that was not enough. A question hung over the nearly defeated bandits and, in fact, this whole operation - where was Georgius?

Theodorus did not know what game was being played, and ignorance left him with only one sound choice. He had to finish this quickly and decisively, crushing whatever plan Georgius had prepared before it had time to unfold.

“Federico!” Theodorus shouted over the din.

The Genoese captain understood the meaning, face darkening as he muttered something under his breath before barking orders of his own. His men moved with obvious reluctance, but they moved, tightening along the flanks to support the push through the breach.

“We will commit ourselves!” Theodorus bellowed to his own squad.

Christos looked at him with surprise. It was a risky move that placed them in danger in what was already a won assault.

“To the front!” Theodorus ordered, giving no one time to think better of it.

They pushed toward the breach through the smoke and splinters. Theodorus could hear the crackle of the palisade behind the clash of weapons, and by the time he reached the front, the scene was grim.

The bandits had shoved families into the way.

Old men with shaking hands and thin boys holding farm tools were caught between the spears ahead and the armed men behind them, gaunt faces pinched in fear. At the back, bandits struck and skewered anyone who tried to back away.

“Surrender yourselves!” Theodorus shouted, forcing his voice above the panic. “Lay down your arms and you will not be harmed!”

The words were swallowed by the noise, but his sergeants caught the command and repeated it, bellowing down the line until the offer rolled through in rough, uneven echoes.

The families stared at them, trapped between hope and fear. They needed one final push.

“Open the centre!” Theodorus ordered.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. It was a stunning command. Splitting the formation in the middle made them vulnerable, inviting a rush straight through the heart of the line. Theodorus had to manhandle the nearest militia into moving, but soon enough the gap widened, narrow at first, then broad enough for four people to run abreast.

“Through here!” Theodorus shouted. “Run, now!”

The first woman stumbled forward, more due to a trip than any attempt at fleeing through what seemed an obvious trap. When she wasn’t skewered, though, she made a break for it, running with abandon, and that was enough to trigger the flood.

Families surged through the opening, malnourished bodies limping, crawling, and stumbling over one another in their need to escape. The bandits screamed threats at their backs, but threats meant less once the first few had passed safely through. A few outlaws tried to melt into the fleeing crowd, but their armour and better boots marked them plainly enough. Federico’s men cut them down with cold efficiency before they could reach safety, and they eventually stopped trying.

Left with no other options, the bandits started surrendering, dropping axes and going to their knees.

“Move forward!” Theodorus ordered relentlessly.

The militia closed ranks again and advanced, stepping around the frightened civilians being pulled to the rear. Once the bandits on the ground surrendered, those defending the palisade lost whatever stomach they had left. Some threw down their bows and raised their hands. Others jumped from the wall in a mad attempt to flee into the forest, a few landing badly and breaking their legs. Only a handful managed to limp away into the trees, chased by arrows all the while.

The battle was effectively over, and the fire on the western side of the camp was already guttering out, smoke thinning into the hard mountain air, but for Theodorus, that meant nothing.

“Search every hut!” he yelled, far from relieved despite the speed of their victory. “Find Georgius at all costs!”

Under his command, men split into squads and spread across the sad encampment, kicking down doors and tearing shutters loose with almost reckless abandon, pausing only enough to not get skewered should Georgius be waiting with a full squad on the other side.

Theodorus questioned anyone they found, bandit and civilian alike, though most shook too badly to speak or swore they had not seen Georgius at all.

Their breakthrough came from a small boy hiding in one of the huts with his family.

“I s-saw him going to the central hut,” the child said, trembling violently. His mother clutched him against her, staring at the soldiers as if she expected them to butcher the whole family where they knelt.

Apparently, Georgius had told the families that was exactly what would happen if the Crown ever found them.

Theodorus left Stathis to calm them and led his squad toward the central hut.

Christos and Kratos took opposite sides of the door, weapons ready. Theodorus stopped before it, taking a deep breath. Georgius could be behind that door. There was nowhere else left for him to be.

At a signal from him, Christos and Kratos kicked the door in together, weapons raised and shoulders braced for the strike that might come from within.

The inside was empty. Just as Theodorus had feared.

“What?” Christos muttered, stepping into the hut, staring around in disbelief.

It seemed impossible, yet Georgius had escaped. He could still be in one of the unsearched huts, with soldiers still combing through the camp and dragging frightened people out into the open, but Theodorus felt he wouldn’t. Georgius did not hide. That would be too cowardly for him.

“Search this place,” Theodorus ordered, his command absolute. “Wreck everything if you have to.”

The men obeyed, tearing apart the bedding and kicking open a lone chest tucked in the corner. It did not take long before Kratos found the trapdoor beneath the bed.

Theodorus’s heart nearly stopped when they hauled it open.

A dark hole plunged beneath the hut - narrow, and man-made. An escape route, and one clearly prepared long before this morning.

“The damn rat got away,” Kratos spat.

“It isn’t just that,” Theodorus said, feeling a rush of cold coming on.

This was too prepared. The location, the escape tunnel, the way the entire hideout had folded so quickly.

If Georgius had never meant to defend this place, then the trap was the place itself.

Theodorus’s mind raced through the possibilities. Fire was the obvious answer, but there was no oil slicking the walls, a counterattack against the camp made little sense with only a handful of men, and in this desolate crater there would be nowhere to escape afterward.

Wait. A crater.

Theodorus looked beyond the hut, toward the steep sides of the mountain cupping the hideout like a crude bowl.

The terrible answer struck him.

“Evacuate everyone!” Theodorus bellowed as he burst out of the central hut.

Nearby soldiers turned toward him in confusion. Federico caught him near the doorway, one hand snapping out to seize his arm as Theodorus moved toward the gate.

“What is happening?” the Genoese captain demanded.

“Georgius isn’t here,” Theodorus said, gripping Federico’s arm in return. “This place is a trap. He means to unleash an avalanche from the hillside.”

“An avalanche?” Federico’s eyebrows rose sharply. The only reason he did not dismiss the outrageous claim was that he had never seen Theodorus this panicked before.

“We have no time to debate it,” Theodorus said. “If I am wrong, we lose little. If I am right…”

Federico, to his credit, did not waste another breath, turning and shouting in Italian, voice cutting through the camp. His men moved a moment later, first in confusion, then with mounting speed as Theodorus’s own sergeants took up the order. Theodorus yelled until his throat burned, driving men toward the gaps in the palisade and ordering them to drag the civilians with them.

A frantic ballet began inside the shattered hideout, with soldiers hauling elderly men upright by the arms and half-carrying them toward the exit. Women clutching children stumbled between discarded weapons and broken doors.

“Drop your weapons!” Theodorus shouted when he saw men struggling under too much weight. “Leave the plunder. Take as many people as you can!” he shouted urgently.

That was when they heard a crack splitting the hillside.

For one terrible moment, the camp seemed to hold its breath. Men froze with heads raised, listening to the high slopes above them.

The mountain answered.

A grinding roar rolled down from the heights, deep enough to be felt through the soles of the feet. The sound of boulders tearing loose grew until it swallowed shouts, prayers, and every other human thing beneath it.

Panic erupted all at once as men surged toward the narrow gaps in the palisade, soldiers, civilians, and surrendered bandits crushed together, all enmity forgotten by the same animal need to survive. Someone forced open the gate from within, and the whole camp poured toward it in a desperate flood.

Such was the mayhem that some of the frailer villagers fell in the crush. Theodorus saw one old woman go down near the gate and vanish beneath stamping feet before anyone could reach her. Her cries disappeared under the thunder of stone and feet.

There was barely enough time for Theodorus himself to be escorted out, and that was with Christos manhandling any unfortunate who barred the way through.

The boulders struck the hideout like the judgment of God.

The western palisade collapsed inward in a spray of splinters. Timbers flew end over end. Huts vanished beneath a wave of stone and dust, ramshackle walls bursting apart as if made of dry reeds. The earth shook hard enough that Theodorus staggered, one hand snapping out to catch himself against Christos's broad back.

He could not look away.

Those who had been too slow died where they stood. Elderly men, injured bandits, women who had not made the gate in time. He saw faces turn upward in terror the instant before rock took them, bodies disappearing beneath the deluge in a shower of sawdust and blood, thrown into the air together until the whole hollow became a choking grey ruin.

Silence followed. People stood scattered beyond the palisade, covered in dust and too stunned to speak. Bandits stared back at the ruin with dawning horror as they understood what Georgius had done to them. Everyone looked at one another with pale faces, aware they had stepped aside from death only by a handful of heartbeats, and that plenty of others hadn’t come out.

Theodorus was just as frozen. Georgius had used innocent families as bait, trapped them there because he knew Theodorus would try to save them. The entire place had been built into a killing ground around that certainty. Theodorus could not escape the thought that the destruction was partly his fault.

He fell to one knee and gripped the dirt beneath him. Loose stone and pale dust filled his palm.

“Commander,” Stathis said, appearing at his side, voice faint with worry.

Theodorus tightened his hand around the coarse rocks until they bit into his skin.

“We give chase,” he said.

His voice was low, a smoking ember beneath ash, and his eyes stayed fixed on the ruined hollow.

“I won’t let him escape.”

Not this time.

Gerasimos had followed boar, wolf, deer, and more animals than he could count. But there was one prey that was more dangerous and slippery than the rest combined. Man.

A boar did not think to walk over stones and roots because mud held prints well. A wolf did not double back through dry needles to lead them down a false trail. Men were different. Men lied with their feet.

And Gerasimos was finding that the challenge of tracking them through all the misdirection was thrilling.

The little lordling had not steered him wrong yet. He had promised Gerasimos a hunt, and thus far the quarry had been only of this most dangerous kind. First, they had teethered at the edge in the Kalamita hills, where one mistake meant death. And now they were meandering through the northern highlands after a party of fugitives that knew their business, that much had become clear. Whoever they had leading them through the woods was good at covering his tracks, and smart enough to understand how to use the forest.

Better still, he was afraid.

Gerasimos could almost smell it.

He crouched near a patch of hard earth where the animal path bent between two low oaks, one hand resting on the neck of the hound beside him, posture rigid and nose working furiously. He was a deep-chested brute, grey around the muzzle now. Gerasimos had raised him from a pup into the best nose in Suyren.

He hadn’t seen him since Adanis had cast Gerasimos out. But that hadn’t seemed to matter to the beast, who’d thumped his tail all the same when he saw Gerasimos waltz back into Suyren’s kennel after years, as if time were a thing only men wasted effort resenting.

“Find them,” Gerasimos murmured.

The hound lowered his snout to the ground, but didn’t seem to reach any obvious trail, which was strange.

The trail was here, Gerasimos knew it. The ground had been chosen well, to be fair. Across narrow animal paths, drowning in green nettle, that left little in the way of tracks such that a lesser tracker might have lost them a long time ago. But he wasn't an amateur - he knew the signs of fleeing prey. They had been here. He was sure of it.

Gerasimos ran two fingers across the ground and found a faint dusting near the exposed root of an oak. It looked like old dirt at first. Too pale, perhaps, too fine. He rubbed it between thumb and finger, then brought it to his nose.

It was garlic crushed with mint.

A smile pulled at his cracked lips.

“Clever bastard,” he said.

One of the younger scouts looked at him. “What is it?”

“They’re trying to spoil the dog’s nose.” The hound sneezed hard as if in answer to his statement, shaking his head.

"They can do that?” The scout sounded surprised, and Gerasimos had to struggle not to show his disappointment. They’d saddled him with only green offshoots and peasants so far. At least during the rebellion, he was working with other hunters.

"Of course they can. It's an old trick poachers use to throw off a hound's pursuit." Gerasimos answered. This told him plenty about the nature of the foe they were chasing. Gerasimos had been tasked with bringing numerous poachers to justice over the years. He knew their type, and that was half the battle, really.

Young men liked to imagine tracking was a matter of good eyes and quick feet, when there was so much more than that packed into it. Patience was a key skill to have, for one. For another, the willingness to look like an idiot while staring at moss for half an hour.

So that’s what Gerasimos did, and it was just as well, because he found that the trail did not run where it should have.

Men fleeing in panic left marks across the easiest ground, but these men avoided even the wet moss shining dark on the northern face of stones, and even where the ground dipped into a damp fold, they chose the higher stones and roots instead.

They were good choices, and impossible to track conventionally. They were also terribly predictable. There were only so many pockets of high roots and loose rock a squad could pass through without leaving a trace.

Gerasimos moved along the edges of the clean ground, crouching beside a long stone half-hidden under needles. A patch of lichen had been rubbed pale at the edge, a change so slight that his scouts didn’t even notice it after he pointed it out.

He followed it until the trail changed.

Near a patch of thin ash trees, the signs became easier. A boot heel pressed into a damp strip beneath rotting leaves. A broken twig lay fresh and pale against darker litter. The prints led downhill toward a shallow gully, readable enough that even the youngest scout found them.

“There,” the boy said, pointing. “They went that way.”

Gerasimos stared at the trail. “No,” he answered. “It’s too clean.”

He crouched near the print and studied its depth. One man. Limping a little. Dragging the right foot more than the left. Weak, tired, possibly wounded from walking in the dark. The sort of man a fleeing group might leave behind because he could no longer keep pace.

The scouts exchanged looks, but the hound sniffed the print, then whined, uncertain.

“Aye,” Gerasimos said, pleased. “Our dear friends wanted us to love this trail. They gave us the weakest one and sent him stumbling pretty as a bride down the easiest slope.”

“Then the rest went where?” the younger scout asked.

Gerasimos turned slowly, letting the forest arrange itself in his mind. If he were tired, hunted, and had one weak fool to spare, he would indeed have gone downhill. But if he were an experienced fugitive, he would go where no sensible fugitive should want to.

His eyes settled on a tangle of windfallen pines above the gully.

“There,” he said, and they climbed it in short order.

At the edge of the tangle, he found what he wanted.

A handprint on bark, and a strip of a torn sleeve on the wood.

“There you are.” Gerasimos let out a low breath.

The hound nosed the wool, then lifted his head toward the higher trees with a growl deep in his chest.

He motioned the scouts forward with two fingers, “Send word back to the main force,” Gerasimos smiled, showing old teeth. “Tell ‘em we’ve found our men.”

Theodorus regarded his brother from Boudicca’s saddle, forcing himself to sit straight.

He had ridden through the night with the advance party, through the path Gerasimos had laid out for them, because this was one blow he would not leave to another man.

Now Georgius stood cornered before him at last.

The whole miserable saga had dragged on too long, bleeding into one disaster after another until the line between justice, revenge, and simple necessity had grown dangerously thin.

This ended here.