3rd Week of March, 1460

  Every tumble and turn on the rocky path sent a jolt of searing pain through Theodorus’s left side, driving fresh fire into his elbow and calf, the wounded limbs protesting at every hidden stone and shallow hole in the track. The evening air was cold against his sweat-soaked back, the smell of dust and pine thick in his lungs. But every burst of pain carried him one step further from Suyren and one step closer to safety, so he gritted his teeth and powered through it.

  “You must explain to me what happened,” Stathis said at last, when he judged they were far enough from the city walls and any immediate pursuit. Behind them, Suyren had already shrunk to a smear in the orange light.

  “We were ambushed,” Theodorus answered through clenched teeth. “Adanis sent Apostolos after us, had a dozen archers waiting until we were caught alone.” If he stopped for a minute he could still feel the hiss of arrows brushing past his ear, the dull thud as they lodged themselves in his gambeson.

  “We?” Stathis asked, not missing the shadow buried in that single word.

  “Kyriakos…” Theodorus had to force the name out, and it was not only the pain in his side that made it difficult. “He saved me… and he paid the price.”

  Stathis’s eyes widened, then settled back into a grim mask, his hands tightening around the reins.

  “Then your cover was compromised,” Stathis concluded.

  “It must have been.” Theodorus nodded, jaw tight. A hole in the road sent another lance of pain through his calf.

  “Was it because of today’s information extraction operation?” Stathis asked. His gaze swept the rocky slopes and scrub on either side of the path, searching for any movement that did not belong.

  “No, it cannot have been,” Theodorus said, grimacing as he thought aloud. “I left Cassandra by the Nomikos common room. The guards thought her drunk; she has not woken yet. I popped the seal on the letter, and the result was nearly perfect. Adanis would have to be hunting specifically for it to even notice it had been opened once before.”

  Stathis raised one eyebrow. He had not been told exactly how Theodorus meant to lay hands on the rebellion’s secrets, and now the pieces were sliding into place.

  “Then how exactly did they…” He let the question trail.

  Theodorus thought back over every exchange of the last days, trying to find the barest hint that Lord Adanis had suspected him. He had taken care to appear utterly unthreatening - a self-serving, ambitious man with shifting loyalties rather than a loyal servant of Mangup. Courting Cassandra had been part of that mask, an extra tangle in which to snare suspicion, so that Adanis and Hypatius would see him as a man using the Nomikos name to climb in status, not as an agent with ties to the Doux.

  If Adanis had suspected him before, Theodorus knew he would have been dealt with long ago, quietly and efficiently. No, something had changed either in the last few days or during the actual end-of-season competition. Adanis must now suspect that Theodorus knew of the rebellion itself, but probably not its concrete plans.

  Theodorus opened his eyes fully, a calculating gleam turning the pain in his gaze into something sharper.

  That was fine.

  It meant he still held the true weapon in his hand, the secret that could be used to hunt the Lion in his lair and save the Principality.

  “I recognize that look,” Christos called from Theodorus’s side. The breakneck sprint of their escape from Suyren had eased into a ground-eating jog, their boots thudding over loose stones and ruts in the darkening road. “You are already plotting the next moves, Captain.” He flashed a crooked grin, breath coming hard.

  “Stathis, send out a messenger to my brother. Give him the letter I have prepared. It should explain the situation well enough and allow him to muster a small elite force to march to the capital,” Theodorus barked, iron in his tone. His mind moved along routes and timetables as he spoke.

  Stathis nodded. “We will have to wait until we are back at the camp.”

  “Hopefully it is not too far,” Christos quipped. The attempt at humour felt slightly forced, but Theodorus understood. This was Christos’s clumsy way of trying to lift the weight pressing on him.

  “Shouldn’t you be too tired to speak?” Theodorus asked, one eyebrow raised. Speed and stamina had never been Christos’s strong suit. Yet the big man had somehow kept pace with the horse-driven cart through the entire mad dash, no small feat given his tall, lumbering frame and the uneven terrain.

  Christos’s face darkened slightly. “After the battle at the Giant’s Tear I swore I would get into shape,” he muttered. To his credit, he had trained hard, building the strength and endurance to haul all that bulk around, trimming away the soft flesh he had carried back at the Probatoufrorio.

  “I had a rather difficult time climbing that damn barricade,” Christos said darkly. “But in the end I managed to save Leonidas and the rest of the bastards, so it was worth the trouble.” His mouth curled into a boastful smirk at the memory.

  The corners of Theodorus’s own mouth tilted up despite himself. He needed that. He needed to move past the rawness of his friend’s death, if only enough to keep going.

  “I hope they make it through this,” Christos said after a moment, his voice softer, almost wistful as he glanced toward the distant line of hills beyond which their comrades manned the old fort.

  Theodorus understood the feeling all too well. In the days to come, no one would truly be safe. “They will,” he said with quiet conviction. He wanted to believe nothing else. Probatoufrorio’s out-of-the-way location would likely shield them from the main fighting.

  Then a new thought cut through his planning. “Did Agape make it out all right?”

  “Oh yes,” Christos scoffed, some of his usual spirit returning. “Well enough she took extra luggage with her.”

  “What do you mean?” Theodorus asked, looking sideways at him.

  “Well, Captain…”

  “Heave-ho!” Christos bellowed, breath puffing in the cool air as he hauled at the rope with every fibre of his being. Or at least that was what it looked like to anyone watching from the packed-dirt sidelines. In truth, Christos was trying his hardest to look like he was giving it his all, and doing a damn good job of it if he could say so himself. His face flushed red, his arms trembled convincingly, and his guttural shouts sounded like a man dragging strength up from his very soul. It was an act so perfect he almost fooled himself, never mind the idiots on the other team.

  “Stop makin’ a fool out of yerself,” Kratos called from behind him on the rope, words squeezed out between grunts. “Yer makin’ it too obvious.” The shepherd-turned-militiaman hissed the words, breath hot on Christos’s back. “Looks like yer takin’ a shit or somethin’.”

  Christos felt a vein throb in his temple. “Oh yeah?” The annoyance sharpened him, and he unknowingly dug in, muscles surging as he used his full strength. The rope lurched their way almost at once, boots skidding as the other team stumbled. “You’ve seen me taking a shit, have you?”

  “You idiot!” Kratos hissed as their side started winning decisively.

  Christos realised his mistake and quickly eased up, letting the strain slacken in his arms. They were supposed to lose these competitions, but make it look like they were fighting tooth and nail. He had thought he was doing a good job, but now he was not so sure.

  The tug-of-war dragged on, boots carving furrows in the trampled earth, men shouting and sliding, the rope creaking and burning palms. Inch by grudging inch, Christos and the rest of Theodorus’s company ‘lost ground’ as intended, until at last their line broke and they stumbled forward in a heap, conceding the contest amid jeers and laughter from the watching garrison.

  “Whew, that was close,” Christos said cheerfully after they lost, clapping one of the other men on the back. Unlike him and Kratos, the rest had no idea they were meant to fail, so they met his chirpy tone with dark looks and muttered curses.

  Kratos smacked him in the arm. Hard. Or at least hard for someone as small as him. Christos barely felt it through the padding.

  Christos turned to him. “What?”

  “Yer acting skills are horrible, you know that, right?” Kratos complained. “Just try to be more like yerself and less like… whatever this is. It ain’t workin’. You’ll blow our cover.”

  “You know,” Christos began, brows knitting together. He had honestly thought he was doing rather well. “I’m starting to regret telling you about the plan.”

  Kratos grinned a gap-toothed smile. “Should’ve thought of that earlier.”

  They left the competition field and started back toward the rest of the company, the noise of the other games fading behind them into a blur of shouts and laughter. The mood between them grew quieter. The late-season sun was sinking, throwing long shadows across the yard.

  “I still can’t believe that bastard hasn’t shown up,” Kratos muttered, anger tightening his voice at the old man who was meant to be there with them.

  “Old bones like mine need some time to warm up,” a voice quipped from behind.

  They turned. There, decked out in a padded gambeson and ready for the competitions, stood Agapios.

  “Agapios!” Kratos gawked.

  “I hope you didn’t miss me too much,” the older man said. His eyes were still a little hollow, his smile a touch forced. Grief clung to him like an old cloak. It was not that he had magically moved past the loss of his comrades, only that he had finally forced himself out of the hut where he had been burying himself in memories.

  Christos walked up to him and clapped a meaty hand on his shoulder, the force of it nearly toppling the old militiaman. “We’re glad to have you with us.”

  Agapios’s smile softened at that, some of the strain easing from his face. “You were right. I was just wallowing in self-misery,” he admitted. “But you really need to work on your motivational speeches.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kratos said, hurrying to join in.

  Christos laughed. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  The three of them shared a chuckle there on the edge of the field. It struck Christos how they had never gotten along particularly well before. Yet after the other two men from their squad had died, it was as if their absence had sealed the three of them together, a rough little knot of the living trying to fill the spaces the dead had left behind.

  “What did I miss?” Agapios asked once their laughter faded.

  “Nearly the whole of the competition,” Kratos was quick to point out.

  “We’re squarely going to finish in third place,” Christos explained, shrugging. The shouts and cheers from the other events in the courtyard washed over them, banners fluttering in the breeze above the packed earth.

  “You don’t seem too upset about that,” Agapios said, frowning slightly.

  “It’s just a competition, who cares?” Christos tried to sound nonchalant. After regretting telling Kratos about the plan, he did not feel like sharing much more of anything now.

  “Sure,” Agapios drawled. He did not look convinced.

  “God, yer a terrible liar,” Kratos muttered, rolling his eyes.

  “Well, besides being completely truthful, I have to go attend to some important matters,” Christos said, seizing on the first excuse as he spotted someone at the edge of his vision.

  “Are ya tryin’ to sound like the Captain with that prissy speech?” Kratos teased, but Christos was already peeling away from them.

  He slipped along the periphery of the courtyard where the competitions still raged, circling past groups of shouting men and clattering practice weapons. His gaze fixed on a slight figure weaving through the bustle with a woven basket at her hip. He trudged after her as surreptitiously as a man of his size could manage, waiting until she turned into a quieter side corridor before cutting in front of her.

  “Hey there, beautiful,” he began. “Are you going somewhere? Mind if I join you?”

  Agape turned and looked him up and down with a slow roll of her eyes. “Yes, I’m off to go check on my lover, but you can tag along.”

  “Oh, sounds spicy,” Christos played along. “Your man must not treat you right for you to have to do that.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Agape said, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face. The lantern-light caught in her eyes, but her expression stayed flat.

  Christos glanced up and down the corridor to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. “We’re leaving today,” he murmured. “I need you to pack your bags.”

  “Already done,” Agape replied in the same low tone.

  Of all the answers he could have expected, that was not one of them. “What?”

  Agape looked very pleased with his confusion.

  “I was told earlier today by Demetrios that we would be leaving,” she explained.

  So she had been told at about the same time as he had. Good. Of course the Captain would have thought that far ahead.

  “I’ve already packed all the supplies for us three,” she added.

  “Three?” Christos asked slowly.

  “Yes.” Agape straightened a little.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Christos said, realising what she meant. “We’re not taking the pipsqueak with us.”

  “I’m not leaving without her,” Agape said. She set her feet firmly on the corridor floor, already bracing herself for the coming argument.

  “It is a military camp. We are going to war,” Christos emphasised. “Even if we wanted to bring the kid, which we don’t, it is not a pretty place for children to walk around in.”

  “It isn’t for women either. Does that mean you won’t take me?”

  Christos opened his mouth for a retort and found nothing ready. She pressed on before he could recover.

  “She won’t be fighting, you doofus. Neither will I. She’s coming, and that’s final.”

  “It isn’t. And that’s final too.”

  They stood there glowering at each other in the narrow passage, neither willing to give ground.

  “I’m right here, you know?” a small, quiet voice said from what Christos had taken for Agape’s shadow.

  “Jesus Christ, kid!” Christos nearly jumped out of his skin. Where in God’s name had the child come from?

  “See? You won’t even notice her,” Agape said, struggling not to laugh at how he had been startled by a little scrap of a kid barely up to his waist.

  “But when I do, it will be extra annoying,” Christos muttered, watching as the child stuck its tongue out at him in open challenge.

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  “Well, when I do, it will be extra wonderful,” Agape replied pointedly. She glanced down, and the pipsqueak immediately shifted into her best behaviour, hands folded, smiling shyly.

  “What is it they say? ‘Happy wife, happy life?’” Agape asked, far too innocently. “I wonder what they say if the wife isn’t happy.” Her smile sharpened at the edges.

  “Yes, honey,” Christos gulped.

  He sure hoped that saying was true, because at the moment he was finding very little happiness in any of it.

  The story brought a faint smile to Theodorus’s lips.

  “Sometimes we only realise when good things happen after the fact,” he said. Christos’s expression twisted into something conflicted, as if he did not entirely agree but lacked the heart to argue it.

  “The camp,” Stathis called, nodding toward the rise ahead.

  In a shallow dip between two low hills, about twenty tents clustered together beside a narrow stream. Smoke from a few cookfires drifted lazily upward, swallowed by the evening sky. It was a spot they had chosen carefully, close to the road leading to Mangup but tucked away from prying eyes.

  The mood in the camp was joyous when they first came into view. Men laughed, drank, and called out to one another, having been told they were celebrating the end of their militia duty. But that easy cheer died quickly as they saw their captain approach, collapsed at the back of a cart, bloodied and wounded, with arrows jutting from his arm and leg.

  Questions rose at once and rippled through the ranks like wind through tall grass.

  “What happened?”

  “Is the Captain all right?”

  “Who did this?”

  Theodorus was swiftly ushered toward the command tent they had set aside for him. At Stathis’s barked order, a trestle table was cleared and dragged to the centre of the space. Now came the ugly business of dealing with the arrows lodged in him.

  His left elbow was little more than dead weight at this point, and he could not move it at all. His calf he could still flex, but every motion sent a brutal spike of pain up his leg. Swelling was already thickening around the wounds, hot and tight beneath the skin.

  “Get me clean linen, water, strong wine, and the sharpest blade we have,” Theodorus commanded, forcing steadiness into his voice as he dug through what patchy memory he had of battlefield medicine. “Boil everything.”

  A handful of men bolted from the tent at once, nearly tripping over the flaps in their haste. The entrance was still swaying when Demetrios burst inside, eyes wide as they adjusted to the dimmer light.

  “My Lord!” he cried, almost sprinting to the table where Theodorus lay.

  “Demetrios,” Theodorus managed, attempting something like a smile.

  “What happened?” Demetrios asked, staring at the arrows as if he could not quite believe they were real.

  “Adanis ambushed us,” Theodorus said.

  Demetrios’s mouth fell open. “What—but how did he suspect us?” He was still wrestling with the thought when another voice cut through the tent.

  “What happened?” Agape demanded of the armed men clustered at the edges of the space.

  Christos started, then immediately moved to intercept her.

  “What are you doing, woman? The Captain is injured. Go back outside,” he said, trying to steer her toward the flap.

  “What?” Agape brushed past his arm, her eyes already fixed on Theodorus stretched out on the table, jaw clenched against the pain.

  “Now is not the time—” Christos began.

  “I can help,” Agape said flatly. "I've helped in childlabour and some wounds back at Kerasia."

  "This is not some peasant farmhand-" Christos began.

  “Let her stay,” Theodorus cut in. Something in him trusted her more than the hard-bitten soldiers hovering nearby. This would need a careful, steady hand, not just courage and brute strength.

  “Go wash your hands,” Theodorus ordered her, then turned his gaze to Demetrios. “Both of you. Thoroughly.”

  They nodded and slipped out of the tent.

  Barely five minutes later, the supplies had been brought in, steam curling from the boiled water, the metal tools laid out in a neat, glinting row. Agape returned with damp sleeves and scrubbed-red hands, the impromptu surgeon ready at the makeshift operating table as the men gathered in tense silence around their wounded captain.

  “We start with the elbow,” Theodorus said, voice rough, grimacing at the crude tourniquet biting into his upper arm. His hand twitched uselessly on the pallet beside him. “The arrow cut almost cleanly through, so it's easier to push the arrow through the joint, then cut out the point before pulling.” He forced the words out with the flat authority of a man giving orders on the field.

  Agape nodded once, jaw set. Demetrios paled, his thoughts clearly dragged back to the last time he had seen such work done, when he watched Lord Konstantinos die screaming on a blood-slick bed. The tent felt suddenly smaller as the men pressed in around the table, the air thick with sweat, leather and the sharp tang of hot wine.

  “I’ll need people to hold me down,” Theodorus said.

  Four grim-faced men stepped forward at once, Christos among them. They took their places at his shoulders and legs, rough hands closing around him with surprising gentleness.

  “You will also need this, Captain.” Stathis produced a leather-wrapped stick and held it out.

  Theodorus stared at it for a heartbeat, the reality of what was coming settling over him like a weight. Then he took it and bit down, jaw clenching until the muscles in his neck stood out like cords. He gave Agape a savage, determined nod.

  She began to push.

  The pain was unlike anything he had ever known. Fire shot up his arm and into his skull as the arrowhead ground its way through ruined flesh and grating bone. Time frayed and stretched, turning into a series of blinding bursts, his entire world reduced to the taste of leather, the roar in his ears, and Agape’s small, steady hands working at his elbow while Demetrios moved beside her, pale but focused.

  For what felt like an hour, Theodorus hovered on the edge of blacking out and never quite fell. Men muttered prayers under their breath. One of them had to look away, eyes fixed on the tent wall instead of the mangled joint.

  “You have to push harder. Let me do it,” one of the men blurted finally, watching the arrow refuse to budge that last inch.

  Agape’s eyes flashed. She drove the shaft forward in one hard, clean motion, forcing the barbed head out through the back of his arm. Theodorus’s whole body arched, a muffled howl tearing against the leather between his teeth. She shot the man a nasty look. “I’m trying to be gentle,” she said.

  The man’s eyes went wide.

  “I told you my woman is strong,” Christos grinned darkly, attempting a quip, though worry dragged at the edges of his voice and his knuckles were white where he gripped Theodorus’s shoulder.

  Once the gleaming arrow points were exposed, they were cut free with the heated knife. Then the shafts were drawn back through the wound with slow, steady pulls while Theodorus shook and gasped around the chewed stick. Wine and water were poured over the torn flesh to wash away blood and dirt, running in pink rivulets off the table, and honey-soaked linen was pressed in to seal and soothe as best they could.

  The calf wound was, mercifully, a less delicate business. The arrow had missed the joint, and the flesh there yielded more easily while they pulled out. Still, by the time Agape finished and stepped back, Theodorus was drenched in sweat, drool on his chin, his face ashen and drawn. He lay flat on the table, chest heaving, eyes staring up at the canvas roof as if it were a distant sky.

  Stathis ducked back into the tent with a crudely stitched leather sling. Together they eased Theodorus upright enough to slip it under his arm and across his shoulder, binding his left arm tight to his chest to immobilise the ruined joint. Every small adjustment wrung another shudder from him.

  “We have to make for Mangup,” Theodorus said at once, still panting, as if afraid that if he stopped giving orders, he might simply collapse.

  “You need to rest,” Demetrios replied immediately, horror and concern still warring on his face.

  “We are barely an hour’s trek from Suyren,” Christos cautioned. “They could mount an assault.”

  “For one man?” Stathis shook his head. “They do not even know we are camped out here. We did not share that information with anyone outside the company. They will know we have left, yes, but to deal with the fifty of us they would need to levy a sizeable force. I doubt they will trouble themselves so much for one man.”

  “I still want to depart immediately,” Theodorus said. He was done taking chances, done trusting in what enemies would not do. “We will sleep overnight on the road and meet the Megas Doux in Mangup, where we can recover and prepare.”

  “Very well, Captain.” Stathis saluted, the decision accepted. “But you should rest.”

  “I will rest when we get there,” Theodorus replied, managing a thin, stubborn smile.

  A commotion rose outside the tent, a muddle of raised voices and hurried footsteps that cut across the low murmur of the men. Stathis went to check, pushing aside the flap, and returned almost at once.

  “My lord…” He stood there, blanching.

  “What is it?” Theodorus asked, already bracing for the worst.

  “It is Stefanos. He is…”

  Theodorus tried to rise, instinct driving him up from the table. Fresh pain tore through his arm and leg. Christos caught him around the shoulders and forced him back down before he could rip open the newly dressed wounds.

  Demetrios sprinted out of the tent. A few heartbeats later he burst back in, pale, with two men behind him carrying Stefanos between them. The younger man’s tunic was soaked in blood, his skin ash-grey, his head lolling against his chest. Theodorus felt his stomach drop. Stefanos already looked half dead.

  “Get him on the table,” Theodorus commanded.

  The men hesitated, glancing at him.

  “But you-” Christos began.

  “Now!” Theodorus snarled, trying to throw himself off the trestle table when no one moved fast enough. The men rushed to stop him and, in doing so, had no choice but to shift Stefanos onto the table he had just vacated. They eased him down as gently as they could, but he still gasped weakly when his back met the wood.

  “What happened?” Theodorus demanded, eyes snapping to the two soldiers.

  “We were following Othon, as you commanded us, my lord,” one of them said, still breathing hard. “He left the castle in a hurry, riding south on the road to Mangup. We thought it suspicious and trailed hard after him.”

  “But by the time we closed the distance, Othon had already ridden him down,” the second man added, voice tight, “when we reached them, Stefanos was on the ground and Othon was over him with his sword. He struck him before we could stop it.”

  Theodorus’s jaw clenched as he realized the truth in an instant. They had been watching Stefanos. They had seen him slip out of Suyren with the message, and from there the line led straight back to him. That was why Adanis had grown suspicious, and why they’d been ambushed in the first place.

  His good hand balled into a fist, and he brought it down on the edge of a nearby crate with a dull crack, gritting his teeth.

  It was all his fault.

  “And then?” he forced out.

  “Once we cut Othon down, we meant to carry Stefanos back at once,” the first man continued. “But as we were lifting him, three more men appeared from the scrub. They had been following as well.”

  “Charilaos took charge,” the second said. “He led us against them. It turned into a brutal fight. We killed two. The last one fled into the hills.”

  “Where is Charilaos?” Theodorus asked.

  “He took the letter and rode for Mangup,” the man replied. “We carried Stefanos back, but, my lord… he was skewered clean through.”

  Theodorus looked down at Stefanos. The wound was low and to the side of the abdomen, the linen already soaked through, a dark stain spreading. Not central enough to be a clean gutting, but not far enough away to put him at ease. If the blade had pierced a bowel, the spleen, or the liver, Stefanos was as good as dead, even if the bleeding stopped.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Two hours,” the men answered grimly.

  For Stefanos still to be breathing, the sword had likely missed the worst of the organs, yet that gave little comfort. Perhaps a bowel, perhaps a kidney. Either would still kill him.

  “Stay with us, please, Stefanos,” Demetrios choked out, tears running down his face as he gripped the younger man’s hand with both of his.

  Even in the best case, Theodorus knew, once a blade was torn out, the risk of bleeding inside was dire. If any major vessel had been nicked, no amount of linen or honey would save him. Though the fact he was alive indicated that probably wasn't the case.

  “Clean the wound and wrap him up,” Theodorus said, forcing order into his tone, trying to impose structure on the chaos pressing in from all sides.

  The rebellion had not even truly begun, and already they had paid a steep cost in blood. Theodorus watched the men move and thought bitterly that they were only at the first step of the road.

  After Stefanos was as well cared for as they could manage, Theodorus dismissed everyone from the tent, until only he and Demetrios remained with the boy. The lanterns burned low, filling the canvas space with a dim, wavering light. Stefanos lay on the table, pale as porcelain, his breathing shallow and uneven.

  “Tell me he will be alright, my lord,” Demetrios whispered between hiccuping sobs. His fingers trembled where they gripped the edge of the table.

  Theodorus weighed the truth in his mind. Stefanos might survive the next twenty-four hours, but beyond that the chance of him seeing another dawn was in the single digits.

  He could not bring himself to say it. Instead he stepped closer and laid his right hand firmly on Demetrios’s shoulders, squeezing with a strength that carried all the words he could not voice. Demetrios’s face crumpled. The realisation broke over him in full, and he cried all the harder, knowing now that Stefanos was likely to die.

  “Did you know he had begun writing poetry, my lord?” Demetrios forced out after a moment, trying to speak through the tears. “He practised his letters every day, always gave his all-”

  He went on haltingly, the words coming in fits and starts, talking about the sides of Stefanos that Theodorus had never fully seen. The little jokes, the stubborn pride of a one-armed boy who refused pity, the way he would sit up at night squinting over scraps of verse. Demetrios laid out the tapestry of Stefanos’s life one thread at a time.

  It reminded Theodorus of another bedside confession, another life bleeding out, the same shadow of death, and a fresh new start. As he did then, he stood by quietly, listening more than he spoke, offering only a few spare words and rough comforts in the pauses between Demetrios’s stories, his good hand resting on the old man’s shoulder.

  After half an hour that felt like a lifetime, Demetrios’s voice was spent. He sagged in his stool, red-rimmed eyes fixed on Stefanos’s face. Theodorus murmured an excuse and called softly for the guards waiting outside.

  “I will stay here, praying for his recovery, my lord,” Demetrios said, not looking away from the table. His voice was hoarse, worn down to the bone. “I will not give up on him yet.”

  Theodorus gave him a sad, tired smile and let the guards help him out. His legs felt like they were made of lead.

  Outside, the men had gathered around the main tent in tense clusters. The news had spread piece by piece, rumour racing ahead of fact. Theodorus had already issued a gag order on everyone who had been inside, trying to stop panic and keep control over how the truth would reach the ranks, but murmur and whisper still swirled through the camp like smoke. Faces turned toward him as he took a position where all could see.

  “Many of you are wondering what is happening. Why I am injured. Why everyone is so tense,” Theodorus began, pitching his voice so it carried over the low rumble of the crowd. “The truth is, I was ambushed by Lord Adanis. He sought to have me killed.”

  He let the words hang. Gasps and sharp curses answered him from the ring of men. He needed them to feel the betrayal, to taste it, so he could turn that bitterness toward his own purpose. He did not even need to lie.

  “He sought to kill me because he is setting up a revolt against the Principality,” Theodorus continued, “dragging his lands, and your families, into an open war against the Prince.”

  Various reactions rippled through the men, some shocked, some disbelieving. They trusted their captain implicitly, and the mentality cultivated in the peasantry in the Middle Ages led them to believe what their superiors said as fact. But Theodorus pressed on to fix the seed more firmly.

  “Why do you think he has gathered so many soldiers in Suyren?” he asked. “He has called in his levies and hired mercenaries, not to protect you, but to strike at the crown. He threatens the stability of our homes and raises his hand against the God-anointed Prince of our realm.”

  He could feel their unease turning to anger, their fear bending into something harder.

  “But he will not win,” Theodorus said, voice rising. “Just as he did not manage to kill me by the grace of God, he will not succeed or move past us.”

  A murmur of approval passed through the crowd. His tone had taken on a sermon’s cadence, and he knew well enough how to lean into the faith of men raised on liturgy and icons.

  “I will journey to Mangup,” he declared, “to join with the royal forces and beat back the traitor.” He swept his gaze over them, meeting eyes wherever he could. “When I met you, I promised I would mould you into men you would not recognise by the end of your tenure. Did I not keep my promise?”

  The men exchanged glances and nodded, some calling out agreement. For many of them, this simple seasonal recruitment had changed their lives, given them skills and a pride they had never known.

  “I ask you now to join me,” Theodorus went on, “for this revolt is a treachery not only against the crown, but against all the northern folk dragged into it. Against you!”

  A roar of approval rose up, raw and fierce.

  “For the Prince!”

  “Death to the traitor!”

  “To protect the North!”

  Voices overlapped and surged into a single wave of sound. Theodorus stood in the centre of it all, smiling as if buoyed by their faith, though inside he still bled for Stefanos and the others already lost. He forced himself to take that pain and twist it into resolve, into fuel for what would come next.

  He had an army.

  Now he had to use it.

  “The Captain escaped,” Apostolos reported nervously, eyes fixed on the wooden floorboards of Adanis’s study.

  Adanis stared at them too. He was standing exactly where Hypatius had died not an hour before. If he looked long enough, he could almost see the blood still there, soaking into the grain.

  “He fled the castle and we saw him leave the town through the southern exit,” Apostolos continued. His voice scratched at Adanis’s nerves. He wished the boy would simply stop speaking.

  Unfortunately, his wish did not come to pass.

  “A-and his company, Father…” Apostolos swallowed. “They are also gone. It seems the Captain was already planning an escape, and he took all his men with him.”

  The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. The only sound was the faint whistle of the wind outside.

  “How did this happen?” Adanis asked quietly. The calm in his tone was more dangerous than any shout.

  Apostolos licked his lips. “The end-of-season competition meant most of the garrison were off duty, my lord. I did not wish to cause a scene by cutting the Captain down in public. Murdering him in front of everyone would have raised questions.”

  He risked a glance up, then hurried on as Adanis’s expression did not change.

  “The ambush was perfect,” he insisted, words starting to tumble over each other. “We had him alone. The archers were in position. We brought him down, I swear it. But someone opened the doors to the storehouse and gave him a path to escape. I do not know who. By the time the men reached the courtyard, he had already been carried off.”

  His voice faltered, then picked up again, more desperate. “It should have worked. If not for whoever opened those doors, he would be dead.”

  “Did we find out who did so?” Adanis asked. His gaze remained on the floorboards, seeing not the polished wood but the memory of red spreading across them.

  “We questioned the servants, but they all claimed innocence,” Apostolos said. “Two of them have gone missing from the castle. The steward’s records show that the Captain had helped secure them both positions in the household.”

  He spoke a little too quickly, a little too eagerly, and Adanis heard the attempt to shift the weight of failure away from himself.

  “So,” Adanis said, a dangerous undertone creeping into his voice, “you let the Captain escape from our own backyard, untouched, and you have not even found the traitor in our midst who helped him?”

  “We injured him and brought him down. He cannot have gone far-”

  “You did not even manage to kill him!” Adanis roared, the calm shattering. His hand slammed down on the desk with a crack that made the inkpot jump. “My men tell me you hesitated.”

  Apostolos’s eyes widened. “That is because the Captain-”

  “Is not your friend,” Adanis cut across him, voice low and venomous. He came around the desk in a slow, prowling circle, like a caged lion. “He is a threat. And you are a disgrace.”

  The words struck harder than any blow. Apostolos lifted his head at that, hurt and anger burning in his eyes.

  “And you have hidden from me that you are raising a rebellion,” he said.

  Adanis stilled. The room seemed to tighten around them.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “The Captain told me,” Apostolos replied. “That is why you wanted him dead, is it not? Because he threatened to uncover your treachery.”

  “It is not treachery,” Adanis said in a frigid tone, each word clipped. “It is for the good of our house.” That, for him, was the end of the discussion.

  “Then why-”

  “Leave,” Adanis commanded.

  Apostolos stood there for a heartbeat longer, jaw clenched, then gave him a long, furious glare. “He was my friend.” He turned on his heel, and the door thudded shut behind him.

  In his wake, a scuffed soldier stepped into the study, helmet tucked under his arm, dust and blood staining his mail. He looked as if he had come straight from the road.

  “The message?” Adanis asked at once, turning to him. “Did you get it?”

  The soldier shook his head, throat working. “The Captain had men protecting the messenger, my lord. They ambushed us. The other two are dead.” He hesitated, eyes flickering toward the floor. “Othon… he is also…” He could not finish.

  Adanis snatched up his inkpot and hurled it at the wall. It struck the stone with a ringing crack and shattered, ink streaking down in a black stain.

  “Leave me,” he said quietly.

  The soldier bowed his head and withdrew, leaving Adanis alone in the study.

  For a long moment he stood where Hypatius had died, the chill from the wood seeping into his bones. The Captain had escaped. Their rebellion, at least in part, was uncovered. The army would stir, the Prince would be warned, and the Principality would not be taken sleeping.

  So be it.

  If subtlety had failed, he would abandon it. He would hasten his plans and rouse his levies for war. The south would burn all the same, and the Captain who had slipped his grasp would be hunted down amid the chaos he was about to unleash.

  None of them, Adanis swore in the quiet of the study, would survive his wrath.

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