The enemy was quiet. Too quiet.

  After his brother had come to deliver his little speech, the small army camped at the base of his hill went straight to work with the clipped, practiced rhythm of laborers who’d done this before. Stakes were driven into the soil with dull thuds that carried up the slope. Mean little fences of sharpened timber rose in a rough ring, picket outposts and half-finished barricades tightening like a noose around his manor. By dusk, a circle of wood and men effectively choked them out.

  And yet, besides tightening that cordon, nothing followed the declaration. No immediate assault. No shouted ultimatum. Just… waiting. The initial unease that Theodorus had tried to spread among his defenders was stamped down by Georgius with hard words and harder stares. Obscene rewards had been promised, yes, but the group Georgius commanded was loyal and hardbitten. It would take more than pretty words and jingling coin to make them cave in.

  The quarter moon peeked from behind shredded cloud cover, offering little more than a pale smear of light. Down in the enemy camp, bonfires were placed with cunning, positioned so their glare spoiled any clean view of movement beyond them. From the walls, you could barely make out silhouettes crossing the firelight. You knew they were there, you just couldn’t tell what schemes they were up to or when they would sally out.

  Night raids were a real danger for any defensive force, and Georgius felt that danger like a stone in his gut. The advantage of a small fortified holding was that comparatively few men were needed to watch the walls, so as night settled, he sent most of his soldiers to rest in shifts while he himself joined the first night watch. Men followed commanders who knelt in the dirt up close, not ones who hunched over maps in candlelit rooms and gave orders from afar. He’d learned that from his father.

  The attack came a few hours after lights-out.

  A mass of torches flared to life all at once, as if someone had torn open the night and shoved fire through the wound. The torches bobbed and surged as men moved uphill, their flames guttering in the wind, throwing frantic shadows across the slope. It looked like a true rush, the kind meant to overwhelm by sheer terror and momentum.

  Georgius raised his arm and snapped a signal in the dark. “Shields and bows.” Beneath him in the courtyard, the nearest men stirred from their blankets, blinking and cursing under their breath, hauling themselves to the parapet with sleep still glued to their eyes.

  He watched the western lights; it was too few for a real assault. “Watch the flanks, this could be a distraction!” He bellowed as men cursed themselves into positions.

  As if to confirm the thought, one of the lookouts hissed from the shadow of the watchpost. “My lord, movement in the north! Ladders!”

  Georgius’s head snapped. Beyond the palisade, darker shapes flowed where there should have been only night, circling around the stronghold’s shoulder to the northern side. He saw the faint, upright lines of ladders being shouldered forward, the rungs catching moonlight for a heartbeat before vanishing again.

  “North flank!” Georgius barked. He threw the signal again, sharper this time, and men pivoted, jostling into new positions. “Bows to north, aim for the ladders!”

  A volley of arrows hissed up from the darkness adjacent to the scraping of ladders, loosed from the dark with no torches to betray the archers. Shafts slapped into the palisade with dull thuds, burying themselves in the outer timbers. The defenders, half-hidden behind planks and crenellations, came away unscathed.

  “Shoot!” Georgius snapped, and the defenders answered. Bowstrings twanged and arrows sailed into the blackness. It became a brutal exchange of unseen violence: hissing projectiles flying through the air to thunk and splinter against wooden shields in the black unknown, lasting for a few tense minutes.

  Then the sound slackened, the scraping eased, and the torches on the western flank bobbed away, dimming as if the night itself were swallowing them back up.

  Georgius narrowed his eyes into the darkness, straining for the wet cry of a wounded man or anything that would tell him their arrows had found bodies, but he heard nothing. After another uncertain volley, he lifted his fist, shouting “Hold!” to conserve their ammunition.

  The attack had lasted perhaps twenty minutes and then waned into nothing. It was timid. Testing. Like a finger probing a nasty bruise.

  Georgius let himself breathe once, then forced his voice to carry. “They’re scared!” he roared, loud enough for every ear along the wall. “See, men? They can’t take this fortress by storm!” He needed the words to lodge in his men like nails. It was a small victory in truth, he just had to make it seem larger than it was.

  For a few minutes the men cheered, ragged and relieved, slapping shoulders, muttering oaths about cowards and fools. Then the watch reset itself. Most drifted back to their posts or their bedding, trying to steal what sleep they could. Georgius went too, switching out with Lycomedes who went to command the night watch.

  They had barely lain down when a ruckus erupted all around the stronghold.

  It wasn’t the clean alarm of shouted orders or the familiar hiss of arrows. It was metallic - a loud, chaotic clanging that rolled through the dark in waves. Georgius was on his feet in an instant, heart hammering, as were several others nearby. Another attack? Already?

  They stared out into the night, listening as the sound drew closer and closer.

  “Pots and pans?” Lycomedes muttered as Georgius reached the palisade, disbelief and irritation braided together. His eyes strained through the torchglow, trying to pierce what the moon wouldn’t reveal.

  The racket reached its highest point then faded, leaving a ringing silence behind it. For a heartbeat, Georgius thought it was over.

  Then it erupted again, abruptly, off to the side.

  “They mean to make a racket to keep us awake,” Georgius grunted. It was a classic harassment tactic. You didn’t have to kill men to weaken them. Still, it wasn’t something a besieging army could keep up forever - they had to sleep themselves after all.

  “Men!” he called, voice hard as oak. “Stand ready. Do not stare only at where the noise comes from. They could be coming-”

  As if on cue, a lookout shouted from the eastern section of the wall. “There! Ladders on the east side!”

  Georgius gnashed his teeth and sprinted along the walkway. The eastern parapet came into view, and with it, shadowy figures with ladders surged forward under cover of the noise. His archers were already firing, arrows peppering the attackers, but the attackers moved with discipline, retreating in good order the moment they were spotted, dragging ladders back into the black as if they’d only wanted to see how quickly the defenders responded.

  Georgius saw that the purpose wasn’t to kill. It was to move them around like puppets, to keep them awake.

  The cycle repeated all through the night. Every time Georgius thought the last assault had come, another burst of noise would roll around the palisade fifteen minutes later. A clatter here, then ladders there. The night became a panicked rhythm of alarm, tension, silence, and then a fresh burst of danger a few minutes later. Georgius doubted anyone slept longer than the span of a prayer.

  When the sky finally paled toward dawn, he stood exhausted on the parapet, grit on his palms and a dull ache behind his eyes. He convened with Lycomedes and the captains in the thin, grey light. Everyone looked ruffled.

  “No one got a night’s sleep,” Lycomedes muttered, voice rough.

  “The fools besieging us didn’t either,” Georgius countered, forcing steadiness into his tone. “These tactics have their drawback. They try to break us early, to make us rash. But the acts will peter off. And as we grow tired, so will the men running around in the dark.”

  He turned to his soldiers, whose morale he could already feel wobbling. He needed to rouse them before doubt took root.

  “This is a battle of wills!” he shouted. “They want to test our resolve, to see if we break with words and noise. We will show them we cannot be tamed by petty tricks. We stand together!”

  A hurrah rose - thin at first, then stronger as men heard their own voices and remembered they still had them.

  Georgius looked out toward the enemy camp, where his brothers sat and connived against him. He would not give up without a fight.

  “Had a good night’s sleep?” Theodorus asked as he ducked into the tent, bringing a knife-edge of cold morning air with him. The canvas walls snapped softly in the wind outside, but inside a small fire kept the space warm. The smoke smelled of resinous pine and grease, clinging to the wool blankets draped over the crates they were using as makeshift tables like a second skin.

  “The best, thank you for asking,” Kyriakos said with a radiant smile, but the bags under his eyes betrayed the true story. He glanced past the flap, toward the distant silhouette of the besieged fortress, dark against the paling sky. “Though I’m not sure about those poor fellows.”

  “Wait until a week from now,” Theodorus replied, allowing himself a small, satisfied curve of mouth as he pressed a finger against the map to keep it from curling in the heat, “when they’ll barely be able to stand straight.”

  Kyriakos eased down onto his folding stool, joints creaking as if even the furniture were tired, and leaned over the command table. His gaze traced the inked lines and crude markings they’d made together when gathering information from yesterday’s foraging trips. “What are the plans for today?” he asked, voice light, but attention sharp despite the fatigue.

  “Well, today-” Theodorus began.

  “I can’t believe that actually worked.” This time it was Iohannes who sauntered in, cloak dusted with frost, eyes clear and focused. He took in the scene in the tent like a man checking a balance sheet, weighing his assets.

  “Neither can I,” Kyriakos said, half laughing, half admiring. He made himself comfortable, placing his boots up on the command table, heel planted dangerously close to Theodorus’s careful notes. “Half in disbelief myself.”

  “Had a good night’s sleep?” Theodorus asked his brother without missing a beat, as if the interruption hadn’t happened at all.

  “Are you going to make that joke to everyone who walks in?” Kyriakos raised a brow, amused, and Theodorus flicked a hand at him to get the boots off the parchment.

  “Adequate,” Iohannes answered, struggling not to smile.

  “Are you ready to depart?” Theodorus asked, steering the conversation forward before it bogged down in banter.

  “Yes. The horses are ready to take me back to my estate,” Iohannes nodded. There was relief in his posture, even if he tried to mask it as duty. “But are you sure you don’t need help with the siege? I can-”

  Theodorus raised a hand, firm enough to stop the sentence mid-stride. In truth, he could already see how it would go: Iohannes would hover, insist on being consulted on every choice, and worry himself sick over the best course of action. His perfectionism, while generally useful, would not help in the siege. He didn’t have the keenest mind for military matters. He was also prone to worrying incessantly over little details, from which friction might arise.

  It was best to avoid that problem altogether. More than that, his departure kept the command structure clean. Two commanders was not ideal, but it was better than three, and Theodorus suspected Kyriakos and Iohannes would eventually clash, as their personalities were exact opposites.

  “It will let you free up your mind and continue to handle affairs at home,” Theodorus said evenly, “and pacify the villages snatched away from Georgius. They’ve been antsy following the raid, correct?”

  Iohannes nodded, expression grave. “I can also steal away the remaining few he held onto while he is besieged.”

  “Exactly,” Theodorus said, tapping the map with one knuckle, not hard, but decisive. “He’s pinned. We should use that.”

  “Very well, brother,” Iohannes said, his mouth pressed into a thin line of uncertainty.

  “It will be fine,” Theodorus told him, expression confident and firm, voice pitched so it landed cleanly and stayed there. “We have things well in hand. Nothing untoward will happen. This siege is ours. I promise.”

  Kratos was having a grand old time since being conscripted into this phony-ass war.

  Yeah, right.

  He was fuckin’ miserable. His boots were always wet, his back always sore, and his temper sat in his throat like a bone. Even water had turned into some holy treasure now. Not that Kratos blamed the fools for treatin’ it like gold, given the ridiculous steps they had to go through before it was ‘proper’ drinkable. They said the water from the small stream was dirty, full of sickness and rot, but Kratos had taken a small sip and didn’t see what the big deal was. Tasted just fine to ’im.

  Meanwhile, the Captain was up to his usual antics again, and the rest of them had to suffer for it, same as always.

  Yesterday had been a hurricane of things to do under the not-so-patient, not-so-careful eye of the damn sergeants. They’d learned how to pitch tents and mount picket outposts back at Suyren, but never under the threat of having to actually use them, so the knowledge gained a new edge when they’d done it this time around.

  Suddenly, knowing how to lash poles so the canvas didn’t sag, how to dig the shallow trench around the tent so rain ran off instead of in, and how to set the sharpened stakes so they’d bite a man mattered more than they had in training drills. The sergeants had taken that to mean they could heap punishment upon the militia more judiciously, something they did with a kind of ugly glee.

  Kratos couldn’t see it as anything other than torture. The whole thing looked like a big fuckin’ training exercise dressed up as war, with everyone on edge, jumpy and snappin’ at each other, and where one wrong step would get you beat. The work pace was frantic, but strangely not too different from the weird off-season competitions and work they’d had back at their little Dung Quarter in Suyren.

  He was startin’ to understand, a little, why the Captain had had them workin’ like laborers for so long before the spear work. The work of a soldier, Kratos was realizin’, involved an awful lot of buildin’. Too much, if you asked him.

  And now his squad had been tasked, of all things, with crawling along the muddy riverbank in search of some damn carcass or whatnot in the small river. A waste of time. They trudged through slick rock and sucking mud, eyes narrowed against the low morning glare on the water. Every ripple looked like somethin’ floatin’. Cold water sprayed up sometimes when someone slipped, and then you were wet on top of already bein’ cold, shiverin’ while you tried not to eat mud.

  He’d heard - through Agapios’s incessant gossipin’, of course - that they’d been given the ‘honor’ because Christos, the Captain’s favourite, was on their squad. It was like the rules bent for him because he could lift more, hit harder, and had a mean scowl.

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  Kratos was comin’ to curse his luck, bein’ picked for the Giant’s squad. Christos just walked ahead, uncaring of Kratos’s inner ranting, eyes deadset on their path.

  “Eyes forward, Kratos.” He gave terse orders every now and then, like he was a little prince himself.

  “I am,” Kratos said grumpily, even though he wasn’t. He’d been saddled with coverin’ the latrine last night, so his mood wasn’t the brightest. He was one of the ones they picked for that duty most often. Sergeants said it was ’cause he tried to slack off at any given opportunity. Kratos said it was ’cause every company needed a whippin’ boy, and Kratos had the kind of ugly face that made men point and go, yeah, him. Put him on the shit job.

  “No, you’re not,” Christos said, not even botherin’ to turn his head.

  Something about his certainty irked Kratos. And something about him being right irked Kratos even more.

  “How would your highness know that? You’re not even lookin’, are ya?”

  “I don’t have to,” Christos rumbled, uncaring. “I know you.”

  Kratos gnashed his teeth. The oaf sounded just like Pops. That’s what his father always said when a mistake had been made and they needed someone to blame. It was never Marios, of course. It was always Kratos who fucked up. Even when he hadn’t.

  “Do ya now?” Kratos couldn’t help the light barb. “You o-mi-niscient like the Lord now? Ya can read into my thoughts?”

  “It’s omniscient, you twat,” Christos shot back, givin’ him a nasty side-eye that could’ve peeled paint. “And for you, I might as well be. I know your type.” He said the last part in a tone Kratos knew all too well and didn’t like. Not one damn bit.

  This was the part where Kratos would normally shut up, swallow it, let the big man have his smug little line. But being stuck sharin’ a tent with two other unfortunates in the fuckin’ cold left him feeling like he didn’t want to just keep quiet like a good little boy. As did the thought of droppin’ dead in some random siege just ’cause his Captain had brother issues and needed to prove a point.

  So he answered back

  “And what is that fuckin’ supposed to mean?”

  The giant turned a fraction at that, like the words had finally found a place to land, but he didn’t ease his pace. “It means the latrine was poorly covered,” Christos said. “You could smell the stink of it from a mile away.”

  “I didn’t hear no complaints about it,” Kratos challenged, chin lifting like that settled the matter.

  “Next time you might,” Christos grumbled. His eyes never left the riverbank, scanning for whatever dead thing they’d been sent to find, like the argument was just background noise to real work.

  “Why the fuck do you care about that?” Kratos snapped. “Are you my pops?”

  Agapios, keeping step beside them in their little staggered formation, leaned in and whispered, “Careful. You don’t need to antagonise him. You gain nothing by it.” Kratos ignored it like it was smoke.

  “’Cause you sure act like it,” Kratos went on, louder, and meaner, “you’re deaf like ’im to boot.”

  Christos stopped.

  The rest of the line behind them faltered, boots squelching to a reluctant standstill. Kratos’s heart kicked hard in his chest, galloping like it wanted out, but he kept the sneer on his face.

  Christos turned fully then, slow as a storm deciding where to break. “I care,” he said, voice low, “because if you cover it poorly, disease spreads. And then we’ll have men spilling out their guts into the dirt because an idiot kid thought he didn’t have to put in the work.” His face was set in a nasty scowl. His spear was still in his hand like a threat he didn’t need to wave. “I care because if that same idiot kid dies from drinking river water after direct orders not to, it reflects poorly on the company.” His eyes narrowed further. “And on me.”

  Kratos blinked, and the heat in his chest flared hotter. “God, you even saw that?” he spat. “Are you followin’ me? What? You got some secret crush or somethin’ you wanna share?” He hated people nosing around where they weren’t invited. They always had an opinion, and always thought they got to shape you with it. “What I do is none of your business.”

  Christos took a few thundering steps. The giant towered over Kratos and invaded his space. “You think you’re a hotshot,” Christos began. His voice wasn’t loud, but it had weight. “That the world is out to get you, so you can spit and snark and do whatever you please.” He leaned closer, and there was something in his eyes that wasn’t just anger, something sharp and knowing. “You’re scared of trying and doing things poorly, so you’d rather not try at all.”

  Kratos’s grip tightened on his spear without him meaning it to.

  “And you jest and demean the other men,” Christos continued, “ ’cause you know they got somethin’ you don’t.” His accent slipped as he spoke, the rough edges smoothing into something almost proper for a peasant.

  “Guys,” Agapios cut in, desperate to avoid the confrontation, pointing downriver, “I think I see something on the river-”

  “You some sort of sage now, are ya?” Kratos surged forward, shoving his forehead up into the giant’s chin, hard enough to sting his own skull. He wanted to make Christos move. Wanted to make him blink. “You should step aside before I skewer you and roast you like the fat hog you are.” His voice shook with fury.

  Christos didn’t flinch. He leaned in instead, breath hot and foul, washing over Kratos’s face like a dare. “You hate it, don’t you, little boy?” he murmured. “You hate it that they’re happy when you’re so miserable inside.”

  Kratos swung before he even knew he was doing it.

  He whipped his spear up and Christos caught it almost casually, like he was plucking a stick out of the air as his offhand veered down - a heavy slap aimed to smack the shit out of Kratos.

  Kratos twisted out of the way then kneed the butt of the spear hard, making it slide through the giant’s grip. It shot forward, nearly skewering him through the socket, if Christos hadn’t jerked back at the last possible instant that is.

  Kratos didn’t waste that. He kicked the giant on the side of the knee and Christos’s leg buckled. Down the giant went, one knee hitting mud with a wet slap.

  Christos looked surprised by the fight Kratos was putting up. Maybe he was realizing that Kratos really hadn’t been trying in the off-day competitions. There were rules in them, and Kratos didn’t know of any life and death struggles that involved any of that. The fools just never seemed to realise that, and underestimated Kratos.

  “You snivellin’ little-” Christos snarled as he surged back up, fury pouring off him in waves. His eyes went wide, enraged, perfect for the handful of riverbank mud Kratos had just thrown at ‘em.

  It slapped into the giant’s eyes like a curse.

  Next thing he knew he was knee deep in the mud, boots sliding as Christos manhandled him through his half-blind rage. Kratos darted inside the spear’s reach, shoulder-first, trying to turn the giant’s weight against him.

  A forearm like a timber caught him across the chest and shoved him, putting him on his back with a heavy thud.

  “Enough!” someone shouted.

  Agapios and two others threw themselves between them like men trying to stop a landslide with their hands, grabbing at Kratos’s shoulder and Christos’s spear arm.

  “Both of you- stop, damn you!” Agapios hissed.

  Kratos jerked free, still buzzing, still hungry to spit something sharp. Christos took a step forward anyway, a growl rolling up out of him like thunder in a barrel.

  Then the air sang.

  A high, thin hiss, followed by a wet, awful thump.

  Kratos’s head snapped toward the treeline on the far bank. The woods looked innocent, yet arrows flew out, a sudden hail that turned the riverbank into a killing ground.

  One of the men behind Agapios made a noise that wasn’t even a scream, just a shocked exhale, and folded. Another arrow punched into a shoulder, spinning a soldier sideways. A third caught someone in the throat, and the man stumbled backward with both hands to his neck, eyes wide and disbelieving as blood bubbled through his fingers.

  The formation shattered. Men shouted questions at the same time they shouted warnings. Spears dipped. Shields came up too late. Somewhere, someone yelled, “From the woods!” like that explained anything.

  “Shields!” Christos bellowed, voice ripping through the panic. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a command that slammed order onto chaos by brute force. “Form up now!”

  Another arrow cracked into the titan's helm with a sound like a hammer on a pot and he staggered on his feet. The man man shot in the neck went down, twitching. Three of their squad were already skewered proper.

  “Agapios!” someone screamed.

  Agapios’s voice rose, sharp and frantic. “Shields! Get the shields up!”

  They snapped into something like a circle, a broken, desperate knot around the fallen, shields overlapped where they could, shoulders jammed together. The air smelled of damp earth and iron. Arrows clattered off wood with vicious little impacts. One buried itself into a shield rim and vibrated like a struck string.

  Kratos peered over the shield edge and saw movement spilling from the trees.

  A force coming at them fast and sure, easily double their number - ten, maybe fifteen men all dressed in tough mail that caught the thin light like scales. Their faces were cut with old scars, the kind you didn’t get from accidents. They moved like they’d done this before. Like they’d been waiting for the moment the squad got split and stupid.

  Kratos’s stomach turned cold.

  “Christos!” he barked, half coughing mud, half choking on the sudden truth. “We need to run!”

  Christos’s jaw tightened so hard the muscles jumped. His eyes flicked to the wounded men at their feet, then to the line of attackers closing in, then back again.

  Agapios’s voice cracked, desperate. “We can’t! If we run, they’ll die!”

  “They’re gonna die anyway,” Kratos snapped, harsh as gravel. “And if we stay, we die with ’em!”

  Agapios shook his head violently, as if refusing hard enough could change the world. “No, no, we can-”

  Kratos grabbed Christos’s sleeve, fingers digging into mail and wool. “I was a fool,” he blurted, desperate to convince the giant. Suddenly, his pride didn’t seem too high on his priority list. “You were right, so let’s move on and leave. Please. Or we’re all finished!”

  Christos’s face twisted - fuming, furious, not at Kratos, not even at the enemy, but at himself. At the choice. At the fact that being big didn’t mean you could carry everyone. Pain flickered in his eyes, raw and quick, then he threw his head back and roared.

  “Fall back!”

  Agapios snapped around like he’d been slapped. “No!” he yelled, voice breaking. “I won’t leave them! Tassos! Makis! Karolos! I’m coming!”

  Kratos seized Agapios by the arm. “You’ll only get yerself killed!”

  “Let me go!” Agapios bellowed, eyes gone wild. “We can’t let them just die!” He wrenched and shoved, and the force of it shocked Kratos, tearing himself loose and launching himself toward the nearest fallen man.

  “Goddamnit!” Kratos heard himself snarl, and then he was moving too, cursing every step, hating the old fool.

  They reached the closest of the shot men - Makis - wheezing wetly, eyes unfocused. Kratos and Agapios heaved him up, arms under his shoulders, hauling him against them. The man was limp as a sack of grain, too heavy for how little life he had left in him.

  “I’m going for Karolos!” Agapios yelled over the clatter of arrows.

  “They’re already on ’im!” Kratos shouted back, seeing the attackers spill nearer now, blades out, grinning. “There’s no time!”

  Agapios tried to bolt anyway, but Christos slammed an arm across his chest and held him down like a bar. In the same motion, the giant hooked Karolos’s belt and dragged, pulling both Agapios and the wounded man backward through mud and rock.

  “We leave,” Christos said, thunderous and final.

  “But-” Agapios gasped, trying to twist free.

  “They’re dead.” Christos’s voice went flat. His eyes, however, were horrified, like the words were knives he had to push into his own gut. “We aren’t.”

  Agapios sagged at that, defeated so suddenly it looked like someone cut his strings. He followed out of inertia, stumbling as Christos hauled them back.

  They ran.

  Not a clean retreat. A frantic, scraping disengage, their shields raised, bodies hunched, feet sliding as arrows chased them. Wood rang with impacts and feathered shafts sprouted from shield faces. Kratos’s lungs burned. His arms shook from holding Makis up, then from holding his shield, then from both at once.

  An arrow clipped Kratos’s upper arm, a sudden hot, wet sting he felt under his sleeve. He hissed and stumbled, almost dropping his shield.

  The weight on his shoulder suddenly vanished.

  “Run,” Christos ordered, taking the wounded man off Kratos’s shoulder like he weighed nothing.

  “You run too!” Kratos snapped, breathless, furious. “You stupid-”

  “I’m slow,” Christos said, his mouth curved in a nasty, bloodied smile, dirt still crusted at the corners of his eyes where Kratos had thrown it. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  Kratos hated him for that smile. Hated how it steadied him.

  He, Agapios, and a third man broke hard for camp, sprinting over the last rise as arrows finally fell short. They hit the first tents like crashing waves, shouting over themselves, grabbing at soldiers, dragging attention like hooks.

  “Ambush!” Kratos yelled. “In the riverbank! Ten- no, Fifteen of ’em in mail!”

  Men spilled out, half-dressed, hands going to weapons, captains shouting questions. Within minutes a rescue team was moving, a wedge of disciplined men heading out at a jog.

  It was then that a giant stumbled into view, bloodied head to toe, and breathing like a bellows.

  Christos stopped in the center of camp, towering and drenched in red, and for a moment the noise seemed to fall away around him. His eyes were fixed on nothing.

  On his back, Makis’s arms hung slack, head lolled against Christos’s back at a wrong angle. No movement. No breath.

  He was already dead.

  “What a disaster.” Theodorus dragged a hand through his hair hard enough to tug at the roots. “Good thing my brother left when he did.”

  “It is only three men, Theodorus,” Kyriakos said, though the tightness around his eyes didn’t match the words. He kept his gaze on the map and the neat little counters marking their lines. He'd been roused from his sleep by the commotion and stomped towards the command tent.

  “Every man lost is a tragedy.” Theodorus felt the weight of that keenly, more than he wanted to let show. “But more than that, it’s a psychological blow. We start a siege, and already we’re losing men to those we thought were hapless defenders. It changes how the men move. It adds a different tension to every order.” He hadn’t anticipated that his brother would leave a contingent of men to ambush them at the riverbank. It was a sizeable investment to leave a group of men outside the fort just to prolong the amount of time the contamination at the river for as long as possible. A daring, reckless move. And it had paid off.

  “That’s good,” Kyriakos said, and laid a steadying hand on Theodorus’s shoulder. “Some of them might’ve taken this to be an elaborate field exercise. They’ll treat it with the seriousness they need going forward.”

  Theodorus allowed himself a thin smile at the gesture. “And we will as well. We’ll send a patrol triple the size to take the carcass out and the bodies of our fallen. Show the men we react to offenses seriously.” His finger traced the ring of their outer works. “We’ve nearly finished the picket line, so the construction work can finally slow down.”

  “We won’t build siegeworks or trenches?” Kyriakos asked.

  “We can plan to build battering rams and ladders,” Theodorus said. “Not because we intend to throw bodies at the walls, but because men need something to do to keep their discipline, and it will add to the psychological pressure we mean to induce.” He leaned closer to the map, the calm in his voice sharpened by conviction. “But if we have to win this siege by storming the castle, we will have lost it in truth. I plan to have them open their gates to us of their own volition.” His eyes lifted, catching the firelight, holding a dangerous gleam. “And the work for that starts now.”

  3rd day of the siege

  If Georgius thought he would actually get some rest in the morning, he was sadly mistaken. Dawn brought no mercy, only noise. The enemy was back at the frying pans again, every clang sounding like it was happening inside his skull, only this time they had sprinkled in a new wrinkle to their little war of nerves.

  “Ten hyperpera!” a militia serving as a herald called near the walls, voice pitched to carry like a herald. “A full pardon, and land of your own! Granted by the Prince himself, and yours to seize if you deliver us the traitor Georgius!”

  A defensive shield formation protected the shouting man, overlapping boards and iron-rimmed ovals, angled like a roof, a moving little fortress of its own. There were three criers in total, wandering around the edge of the manor in slow loops, trading off lines between the drumming of metal pans and the dull thump of hand drums. They’d pace a few steps, stop, shout, then let the racket swell again, always just enough to keep nerves taut, never letting you get comfortable with any single sound. When one man’s voice grew hoarse, another in the formation would take his place shouting.

  “Think of your family!” the herald went on. “Your loved ones! What has Georgius done for you, except separate you from them? Do you think your children will be glad to learn you are dead? What if they learn you’ve won them a whole plot to till in the years that come?”

  “Fucking shoot them all,” Georgius snarled from the battlements, red-eyed and shaking with a fury sharpened by sleeplessness. His voice came out hoarse, like sandpaper. “These fucking bastards spewing their lies deserve only arrows for teeth.”

  Lycomedes murmured at his side, careful, as if approaching a wounded dog. “My lord-”

  “What?” Georgius snapped, whirling on him like the sound itself had teeth.

  “We are wasting arrows,” Lycomedes said, jaw tight. “The criers are completely protected.”

  “They cannot be seen badmouthing me with impunity,” Georgius spat, gaze flicking back to the shielded figures below. “This is the second day.”

  “And the men haven’t slept more than an hour for two days straight,” Lycomedes replied, voice low enough not to carry to the others, but heavy with truth.

  That was no exaggeration. The enemy seemed inexhaustible. The clanging pans were constant harassment, except when they weren’t. That was the devil of it: there was no rhythm to brace against, no steady drumbeat you could learn to ignore. Noise would erupt in one corner, then die, then start again somewhere else. It came braided with shouted promises, with insults, with the sudden hiss of the occasional arrow volley, with the scrape of feet as ladders were dragged into position and then withdrawn. Every avenue of attack differed, every sound meant something might be happening, and that unpredictability strangled sleep in its cradle. Even when exhaustion finally won and a man’s eyes closed, the next burst of clatter yanked him awake, heart racing, convinced the wall was falling.

  And beyond the noise, the enemy’s industry was visible even in daylight. Ladders had been built en masse, and a battering ram was in the works in the distance, timber frame taking shape under a tarp, men moving around it like ants around a carcass. They threatened assaults often, but never quite committed to one. Their numbers forced Georgius to keep calling his men to stations, disrupting rest that barely existed.

  The fulcrum of their strategy, however, happened at night. The sound did not cease. The raids did not falter. And the enemy, impossibly, seemed not tired in the least. Georgius could not fathom what was happening. Were they made of iron and spite? The thought curdled in his gut.

  “Ladders on the east side!” the lookout called.

  Georgius rose with only willpower to sustain him. His limbs felt full of sand. His mind lagged a half-breath behind the shout, as if even his thoughts were exhausted. When he spotted them, they were already close, the call had come late. Even the lookouts were beginning to fray.

  On the east flank, shadowy figures rushed the ditch with ladders, the rungs dreamed against the dawning sun. The first ladder slapped down over the gap with a hollow thunk, and a cluster of men surged onto it, hunched behind shields. Georgius felt his throat tighten. For one sick moment, it looked like they might actually commit.

  “Loose!” he rasped, and his archers answered, arrows fanning into the dark. Some struck shields with sharp cracks. Some hit the ladder rungs and skittered off. One man cried out and slipped, dropping to a knee at the lip of the ditch.

  But then, from behind the ladder team, sustained arrow fire answered, forcing Georgius’s bowmen to duck back. The attackers used the moment as cover, not to press, but to withdraw.

  The main problem, Georgius ran in his head, was that the manor was small enough that no one could truly escape the sound strategy. There was no deep courtyard to retreat into, no far barracks where the clanging dulled to a background hum. Every corner of the stronghold was within reach of the noise. Even when it stopped, the expectation of its return stuck with everyone.

  There were no timed intervals, no predictable pattern, no single location they favored. They appeared at random, disturbed everyone’s sleep, and vanished again. They must be getting tired, Georgius told himself, clinging to the thought like a plank in rough water. They have to.

  But the night kept proving otherwise.

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