4th Week of July, 1460
Suyren's dye workshop was an old lean-to pressed against the outer wall of a modest house near its lower quarter.
Its roof was patched with mismatched planks and reed matting, its floor little more than packed earth stained by years of spills. A proper guild hall in Constantinople or Trebizond might have had stone basins and broad tables fit for making the resplendent Byzantine purple dye, a fabric so valuable it was enough to purchase alliances with any Western King by simply offering a robe. This place had three blackened pots, two cracked vats lined with pitch, a row of drying poles, and a dozen women working with sleeves tied high above their elbows.
Theodorus ducked beneath the low lintel and entered into heat thick enough to feel like a damp cloth pressed over his face.
The air carried the sharp tang of fumes and coloured dyes. The women barely looked up as he entered, too busy plunging garments into warm dye baths or turning strips of wool with long wooden paddles worn smooth from use.
“So, you want to buy out my dye works, eh, milord?” Filotheos was a hard, thin reed of a man, all sharp elbows, narrow shoulders, and beady eyes. He could not have been much past thirty, yet half his teeth were already gone, leaving his mouth to fold inward whenever he spoke.
“Not buy it,” Theodorus clarified. “Invest in it.”
Filotheos’s expression did not look convinced.
“We would provide part of the coin needed to improve the operation,” Theodorus glanced toward the vats and the women working around them, noticing the redness around their eyes and stained hands. They weren’t even wearing gloves to protect themselves. And he shuddered to think on the lack of ventilation, “and in return receive a small share of the profits you generate.”
It was, in essence, a variation of the commenda-style arrangement he meant to spread across the north, only here Theodorus would be the one supplying the capital.
“And what exactly are ya lookin’ to do?” Filotheos asked, suspicion in every word. “This workshop here has been workin’ just fine, mind ya.”
He gestured around with the pride of a man indicating a prosperous manufactory rather than a lean-to industry filled with seasonal labourers hired for little more than a bowl of hot pottage and a few copper coins.
If the Principality had not been in such dire straits, with hungry people willing to take any work that kept their children fed, Theodorus doubted Filotheos would have been making nearly as much profit as he claimed, though he knew the man was exaggerating by degrees
“Tell me, Filotheos,” Theodorus said, “do you have any written recipe your workers follow?”
The merchant looked genuinely puzzled. “I told ’em enough how to make the colours that sell.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“They come as elegant and smooth as any in the Principality,” Filotheos insisted, recovering quickly into the familiar instincts of a trader. “Fine enough for noblewomen’s gowns, they are.”
Ever the merchant, he could not resist trying to sell the product even in the middle of a negotiation.
Out of the corner of his eye, Theodorus spotted items that had clearly been dyed before and were being darkened again to hide old stains. Others had been patched so many times that different parts of the same garment drank the colour in different ways, leaving them mottled.
“But I do not see you colouring gowns or noble dresses,” Theodorus said, cutting through the boasting without raising his voice. “I see rough wool, uneven batches, and colours that change from strip to strip.”
Filotheos opened his mouth to answer. Theodorus pointed to a hanging rack where there were a host of poor, scratchy garments that looked like they had been worn by beggars before arriving, and the man thought better of it.
“What you need is consistency,” Theodorus produced a simple handkerchief he had gotten from the capital. Its grey-black tincture was significantly better than FIlotheos’s own. “Vats of known size. Measured tinctures. Written recipes. Regularly paid labourers who are trained to follow the same process each time rather than guessing from habit and memory.”
He gestured to the workshop around them; there was no clean division between mordanting, boiling, rinsing, and drying. The whole process had been made to fit inside the rampant poverty that lived in Suyren.
“That is the difference between this workshop and the better dye houses in the capital. And it’s holding you back.”
Filotheos spat to the side, though carefully away from the cloth. “We don’t have enough noblefolk ’round here, milord.” he said, changing tactics.
“You travel from town to town, do you not?” Filotheos’s eyes narrowed as he understood the implication.
“What you lack most is not customers,” Theodorus said. “It is a guarantee of quality. Your dyes are inconsistent. If you can offer something reliable, of greater value, and still cheaper than what passes through the hands of larger merchants, then customers will eventually follow.”
“I don’t know, milord. That sounds too good ta be true.” Filotheos scratched at his patchy beard, looking toward the vats as though they might offer counsel. “With the Nomikos gone, I was honestly thinkin’ about sellin’ off the whole damn thing. There’s too much coin in the capital and a bigger market to boot. I ain’t got enough contacts to buy wool cheap and turn it good.”
He eyed Theodorus with a flicker of hope, small but unmistakable. Theodorus did not miss the shine in those beady eyes. If Filotheos thought he truly wanted the workshop, the price would rise high enough to insult heaven.
“We are not interested in purchasing it,” Theodorus crushed that hope before it had time to grow roots.
Suyren had come into a small windfall after the first two Nomad Market days, but he had no intention of squandering it by buying every struggling trade that might one day prove useful. The plan he had in mind for dyes would take time to bear fruit, and even then the profit would come slowly. More importantly, he was not interested in smothering local business beneath the weight of the state. In his opinion, state monopolies were always in danger of becoming fat, lazy creatures without strict oversight. And he didn’t want to build a model that wouldn’t outlast him.
“You want ’em eating proper bread, right?” Filotheos said, nodding toward the women. “I’m not willin’ ta do that if I ain’t got the coin for it. Things are hard enough as they are.”
“What if I told you,” Theodorus said, “that I could secure you a steady supply of tartar for your dyes, and wool for your clothing?”
That caught Filotheos, suspicion warring with greed. Tartar scraped from wine casks was no glamorous thing, only crystalline residue left behind during the fermentation.
It was also a mordanting agent, a compound that helped colour bite more firmly into wool and other fabrics. It could smooth the hue and brightness. The difference was not always dramatic to an untrained eye, but in a trade built on small margins and stubborn reputation, those distinctions mattered.
“Tartar and wool, you say?” Filotheos licked his lips, missing teeth briefly showing.
“At a price that will not ruin you.” Theodorus nodded.
“Oy, oy, now we’re talkin’,” Filotheos grinned.
For all that he was only a peddler with a few vats, Filotheos knew enough to understand the value of anything that might set his product apart.
Dye workshops survived by buying woollen goods from local households, colouring them, and selling them on at a better price. Since dyeing was too costly and too troublesome for most families to do well on their own, the work naturally gathered around a few small operators with the vats, fuel, and contacts to manage it. It was centralized by necessity, or at least as centralized as clothing could become in a poor mountain town where half the economy still moved by habit and barter.
“You gettin’ it from where?” Filotheos asked, unable to keep the curiosity from his voice.
“My brother owns a wine plantation,” Theodorus knew he had caught his fish. “And we collect plenty of wool from our northern tithes. Wool we can forward off to you for a steady, agreed-upon price.”
Filotheos scratched at his patchy beard, eyes narrowed, “Alright, colour me interested, milord.” He held out a stained hand. “A part of the profits, as you call them, for your little tartar, wool, and measurement nonsense.”
Theodorus looked down at the offered hand for a moment before taking it. The man’s grip was dry, hard, and rough with work despite all his merchant’s evasions.
“We will need it in writing,” Theodorus said. “We can sign the documents at the Genoese office.”
The Italians had finally set up shop in Suyren, occupying what passed for the most prestigious location in the impoverished town. It was a tidy stone building near the market road, freshly cleaned, conspicuously repaired, and placed precisely where Theodorus could supervise them extensively.
“Aye, aye. You’ll get your damn scribble,” Filotheos said, waving one hand in irritation at the hassle.
He had been one of the first men to buy a plot using the small loan scheme Theodorus had set up, now that Suyren’s budding bureaucracy could actually support such arrangements with the addition of its first fledgling scribe. As expected, the first people willing to take advantage of the offer had been the better-off merchants in and around Suyren, whose land was the only one properly surveyed and assessed so far. They had starting funds, a greed for coin, and, just as importantly, enough financial understanding to recognize the opportunity in the offer.
Many of them had never come across the concept of a signature in any formal sense. The idea that a particular written name could bind a man to terms had taken explaining. The signature itself could prove little, of course. What mattered was the Genoese notary who witnessed and insured the contract.
That was the power of the Bank of St. George, and why it was useful despite all the dangers it carried. The institution knew how to track debtors, pressure guarantors, and was desperate to preserve its image as a reliable guardian of contracts.
Coincidentally enough, it was the initial funds from men like Filotheos that gave Theodorus enough room to dabble in the dye business, among other things.
Theodorus left the workshop and stepped back into a rapidly changing Suyren. The militia were well on their way to completing the beaten path planned to run from the town toward the latrine grounds, and he walked along a finished stretch now, quietly marvelling at the drainage channels cut along both sides and the uniformity of the packed earth compared to the rutted lanes around it.
In the distance, more houses were being re-daubed and patched over. Men stood on ladders with baskets of clay and straw, smearing fresh life over walls that had been allowed to crack for too many years. Women carried broken reeds away from old roofs while children gathered splinters and loose stones in little piles. Some homes had no hope at all and had to be rebuilt if anyone was to safely endure the winter inside them.
Theodorus scrapped those wherever he could and moved families, sometimes forcibly, into new locations. He had also begun clearing the closest row of houses near the keep’s walls. All of those homes would have to come down for the earthworks he planned to build, and the people living in them had neither liked nor forgiven the order.
That there were so many improvements within arm's reach was a bit misleading. It might lead one to think that Medieval societies did not know about these simple improvements. But that was not necessarily the case, although insular regions were much less technologically advanced than cosmopolitan Europe.
It wasn’t that the Nomikos didn’t understand these concepts, but it mainly came down to a lack of coin, manpower, and authority. For all that Adanis behaved like a petty tyrant, he was weary of an uprising and had to tread carefully.
That wasn't as much of a concern as, after the rebellion, Suyren had been amongst the hardest hit in terms of their male fighting population, and the Crown had shown its strength in crushing uprisings so they would be reticent to attempt another so soon.
Theodorus had also enacted plenty of popular measures to ensure popular consent, and was firmly backed by the Prince. Aside from these concerns, these improvements had been thus far at the expense of the militia's time, which should be spent patrolling and maintaining military readiness. The last factor to consider was the cost, of the endeavour. Suyren had started to build a treasury fund from the Market days and the loan scheme. None of this would be possible without Theodorus essentially using Italian coin to kickstart the economy.
That there was so much improvement to be made was only because of Adanis’s previous mismanagement of the economic matters of Suyren, and he was wasteful even by noble standards.
Theodorus, by contrast, was extremely frugal. He had reduced the free alms handed out after feasts to use the bones, fat, and offal directed for his own means. Another policy that was far from beloved.
The militias themselves looked more hale and organized than they had only weeks before. They reacted to commands with greater speed, held their ranks with something approaching confidence, and could now manage the most basic manoeuvres without dissolving into a confused knot of men.
Their bodies had begun to fill out as well. The hollow-cheeked, half-starved look they had carried on arrival was fading beneath regular meals and hard work.
That the conscription had favoured men with stronger constitutions helped. A sturdy frame recovered more quickly when fed properly.
They were still far from anything resembling true combat readiness, but they could at least march and hold position, and that alone opened possibilities.
Theodorus pondered that it was probably time to send them on patrol into the surrounding countryside. He had taken enough risks by allowing the north to remain fairly unsupervised so far. Now that Suyren’s immediate crisis was past, it was time to take a firmer hand.
He reached the tail end of the beaten road, where the militia buzzed over the ground like ants around a disturbed nest. The wide path split there. The right branch led toward the latrine grounds, while the left angled closer to the riverside.
“Everything going according to plan?” Theodorus asked as he approached.
Ahead of him, a woodcarver was engaged in an animated discussion with one of the militia foremen Theodorus had managed to snag from Mangup. The two men stood beside a set of shallow dug-out pits, gesturing at the riverbank, the rising wooden frames, and the piles of stone waiting nearby.
“Ah, my Lord.” Loukas turned with quick alertness. “As much as the funds allow, and the people, lazy as they are,” he added distastefully.
“You would complain if it were raining rainbows and God Himself gave you a vision,” Antonis, by his side, said.
Antonis was a sergeant from Mangup, a broad, weathered man whom Theodorus had identified as having a knack for organizing large construction efforts. Theodorus had done his due diligence in recruiting whatever useful men he could from Mangup to, though he had been forced to choose sparingly.
“I would not,” Loukas said vehemently.
The denial held little weight. Both Antonis and Theodorus knew him too well by now.
Despite the man’s difficult personality, Theodorus could not complain about the work he had put in. Loukas was irritable, proud, and allergic to being told anything he already thought he knew, but he did wonders with what was available.
“The mixing pits are just about done,” Loukas said, pointing with a calloused hand. “The foundations for the warehouses are done too.”
“So quickly?” Theodorus asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
The pronoia funds for the endeavour had finally arrived, and Theodorus had immediately tasked Loukas and Antonis with constructing the large mixing yard he intended to place along the Belbek’s riverbed.
Inspections were still being conducted by Iohannes and his scribe across the different lime deposits. They had already recommended improvements to select kilns and mining sites, mostly by soliciting local crafts and tradesmen. Since production would take time to increase, Theodorus had chosen to begin with a smaller mixing site and expand as output rose.
“The people can work if properly motivated,” Loukas said.
“You’ve been driving them like slaves, you mean,” Antonis replied.
Theodorus frowned. “You are supposed to give them breaks.”
Loukas looked mildly offended by the implication that human weakness should be allowed to interfere with proper work.
They had taken to hiring from Suyren’s local labour pool to help with the warehouses and mixing yards, paying them in hot porridge and broth rather than coin. In an economy as scarce as Theodoro’s, payment in kind could be more valuable than small wages. A few copper coins might not buy a meal at all in the current market, not with famine stalking every calculation, but Theodorus could arrange for one to be made from Crown stores at very little cost.
The food once given out freely as alms would now be used to pay for work at the mixing station. It was cruel, and only worked due to the rampant unemployment and abject poverty of Suyren, but was incredibly useful in practice, and Theodorus had promised reductions in hearth tax payments for each person on a given household that volunteered. He was essentially giving up on future income to pay less now. A loan of a sort, something all his latest strategies boiled down to. Something he was more than willing to do because he was sure of his innovations and plans. He had centuries of advanced knowledge to make the dividends far exceed whatever he was giving up to accelerate his timeline.
This system would not aid those most disadvantaged who couldn't work, but there simply wasn’t enough wealth and food lying around to give away for nothing. Not without compromising his plans. He could only hope the Church would alleviate the burden. But with the Prince's announcement of the Church's wealth confiscation, that seemed unlikely.
“And you’ve been evaluating the workers?” Theodorus asked, turning to Antonis, who had been given charge of that particular task.
“We’ve found a few who seem to have a good head on their shoulders,” Antonis confirmed. “Offered them positions here once the yard is finished, if they want them. The steady pay convinced them more than anything.” His expression tightened as he looked back toward the labourers moving along the riverbed. “Everyone here seems desperate.”
“When food is scarce, the ones who suffer most are those in the towns,” Theodorus said.
That had been one of the reasons he had pushed for Suyren’s mixing yard in the first place. The people needed employment almost as badly as they needed food.
“And the farms?” Theodorus asked.
“The pigstead is done,” Loukas reported. “The goat pens are practically finished. Haven’t started on the chickens yet.”
He spoke as though the very mention of such humble structures offended the dignity of his craft.
“I would appreciate it if you did not hand me such boring jobs in the future,” Loukas added, groaning openly now. “It is such a tedium.”
Theodorus gave him a slow, sinister smile.
Loukas groaned again, louder this time. “You’ll owe me another one of our conversations, you know.”
Of all the things Theodorus had expected might be necessary to pry the master woodcarver away from Mangup, he would never have guessed that abstract discussions would prove the most tempting bribe. Loukas had become enamoured with the ideas Theodorus described, and worse, he remembered them.
“We must discuss more in depth your improvement for the bull-led plough,” Loukas said, practically salivating at the thought.
“Later,” Theodorus said, trying to placate him and growing suddenly uncomfortable.
Antonis noticed the discomfort at once and looked far too amused by it.
Theodorus would have to be more careful about what he divulged in the future. Loukas was uncannily astute when it came to piecing together underlying principles from casual remarks, and some of those principles bordered dangerously close to the revolutionary for a man of the fifteenth century. An improved plough was harmless enough in theory, but the mind that understood why it worked might begin asking how Theodorus had thought of such a thing.
“For now, we have work to do,” Theodorus said, straightening in the saddle as his tone grew more serious. “A great deal more.”
He looked out over the riverbed, the half-dug pits, the timber frames, the workers hauling baskets, and the packed road leading back toward Suyren. Beneath the dust, sweat, and disturbed earth, something new was beginning to take shape.
A nascent industry in the north.
The start of a revolution, if he survived long enough to see it through.
Suddenly, a thin shadow appeared against the sun-baked horizon.
Loukas noticed it first. He lifted a hand above his eyes, squinting into the white glare. “What is that?”
The shape drew nearer, wobbling at first through the heat shimmer, then resolving into movement, hooves, and a man bent low over a horse’s neck.
“A horseman,” Antonis said, his voice turning grave. “And he is riding at a desperate pace.”
Theodorus felt something shift inside him before he knew why. He nudged his horse forward, then urged it into a canter to meet the rider halfway.
The man who reached him was a sun-parched farmer, face grey with exhaustion beneath the dust, lips cracked and breath coming in ragged pulls. The horse beneath him was worse, foam flecking its mouth and dark sweat streaking its flanks. It looked half ready to collapse where it stood.
“My Lord,” the farmer rasped.
“Report. What happened?” Theodorus asked, and iron entered his tone.
“Pantelis sent me,” the man said, struggling to force the words past a throat gone dry from hard riding. “Mikros Elos has been put to the torch.”
Theodorus felt the pit drop out of his stomach.
This threatened to undermine everything.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The day had begun much the same as any other, with a hard, hammering sun beating down from a cloudless sky. It was the sort of heat that made a man think he could brew a pot without troubling himself to light a fire, if only he had the patience to set the thing out on a stone and let God’s own furnace do the rest.
Pantelis certainly felt as though he were being boiled alive under it.
He forced himself out of bed regardless. A field did not care that a man’s bones were tired, and weeds did not wait politely for cooler weather. Life as village headman was rarely free of trouble, and every new dawn seemed to bring another cartload of it for Pantelis to drag uphill by himself.
Those troubles had only multiplied since he agreed to that damned charterwork the Lord had him sign.
“Ah, Pantelis, just the man I was looking for.”
Ezequias approached with his slow, easy shuffle, the walk of someone who never seemed in any hurry to reach the place he was going. Pantelis couldn’t say he didn’t envy him for that.
“I have to count up the bushels of wheat we have in storage as part of the charter,” Ezequias said.
As the resident priest of Mikro Elos, Ezequias had been the unfortunate saddled with the clerical duties the Lord had heaped upon the village, so the priest now had to do God’s work and the Lord’s new nonsense besides.
“And you want to do this right now?” Pantelis asked, squinting toward the low rise where the fields waited for him. “I need time in the blasted fields while the sun’s out, and while we aren’t busy worrying about harvesting the wheat.”
“For your little canal system?” Ezequias asked, teasing him, though on someone so kind, it came out more like a gentle joke.
“The boy promised it would fix the waterlogging,” Pantelis grumbled darkly.
He didn’t want to do the work, and neither did the villagers he had pressed into helping him. Not with the village already short on hands. But if digging those narrow little trenches could make the wettest fields give them more come harvest, then Pantelis couldn’t bring himself to ignore it.
“For all that you complain about the new Lord, you still follow his advice,” Ezequias pointed out as they walked through the quiet village. “A rare thing. I know how stubborn you can be.”
Around them, a few thin chickens clucked in the dust, pecking at nothing much and finding even less. Doors creaked open as people stirred from their hovels, emerging not with any great burst of cheer, but with something Pantelis had seen too little of before. Hope. A poor, fragile ember of it, but more than they had before.
Pantelis didn’t want to let that go just yet. And if that meant doing what the little Lord said, he would.
“The newest batch of the Lord’s grain has arrived, so it is best we do the inventory now,” Ezequias said, “Scripture praises the faithful servant who is found diligent in his keeping. If you are so set on following the Lord’s orders to the letter, then we ought to attend to it properly.”
“The boy’s no God,” Pantelis said with a harrumph. “I’m just hedging my bets. Don’t want him cracking down on us just yet.”
He was not pleased by the priest’s smiling look. "He hasn't given us cause for concern yet, has he?"
“Give him time,” Pantelis grunted, “Nobles sometimes need a bit of time to find themselves again. When he remembers who he is, he’ll be back to squeezing coin from us like wine from bad grapes.”
He had grown too weary of such things to believe good fortune could last long. A village like Mikro Elos learned caution the same way a dog learned to flinch from a raised stick. Or at least Pantelis did. The fools he lived beside seemed content to wag their tail hoping for a treat.
“Sure thing, old man,” Ezequias said, laughing, wrinkles deepening with the gesture.
Pantelis’s brow only sank lower.
They reached the central house they had begun using as a granary, which just so happened to be the place Pantelis had once lived. Funny how things turned out.
A cluster of villagers moved around the building despite the early hour, readying tools as poor and mismatched as the hands that held them.
“Already at it, Jorgos?” Pantelis called out to the stout blacksmith.
Jorgos stood near the doorway, hammer in hand, putting the last strikes into some brace or hinge. From the grip he used, Pantelis was not entirely sure whether the man was beating a sword or a nail.
“Ah, Pantelis,” Jorgos greeted with a grin. “Just putting the finishing touches on this damned thing. Took us the better part of three weeks to make all the improvements the Lord wanted on this old house. I have to say, I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to move back into it. It’s starting to look like a proper thing.”
“If it has food and a place for hay, I can sleep anywhere,” Pantelis deadpanned.
“Hear, hear,” Jorgos said cheerfully. “We’re about to go to the fields and dig those little trenches. Need them ready for next season, you said. Very important, you said. I’m assuming you’ll be joining us?”
Ezequias gave Pantelis a knowing look, his brows lifting with irritating innocence. “Just hedging your bets?”
Pantelis’s face darkened. “Later,” he told Jogos, “have to count grain sacks first.”
He jerked his chin toward the parked carriage sitting beside the doorway of their new granary, its wheels half-caked in dry mud and its bed still heavy with the Lord’s grain.
“Don’t forget,” Pantelis added, turning back toward Jorgos, “dig along the places where the rain likes to sit.”
“Because that’s where the waterlogging happens,” Jorgos finished, waving him off. “I know, I know. You’re always on our case about it.”
“So maybe one day it’ll stick in that thick head of yours,” Pantelis snapped, though there was no real bite in it.
“Don’t be too long,” Jorgos said, unaffected, gathering up his tools and waving them goodbye.
He led a party of villagers toward the sole patch of arable field they had in the north, wretched as the thing was. They were called Mikros Elos for a reason, after all. Little Swamp. A damp patch of land cupped by hills, sucking up rainwater and giving back little when autumn came.
By the granary doorway, a group of the Lord’s men-at-arms were grabbing grain by the sackful and hauling it inside under the directions of a short woman who looked ready to bite the next fool who placed something where it did not belong.
“Over in that corner, not this one,” Katerina snapped, clearly swallowing a few harsher words by the tightness around her mouth. She had always had a short temper. “Ah, Pantelis. Here to see the magic food arrive?”
“I see the hauling's harder than it ought to be because of the steps,” Pantelis observed. “Knew we shouldn’t have done it.”
By far the most demanding of the Lord’s mandated improvements had been raising the granary floor off the ground. That had meant building a sizeable wooden platform, lifted on poles, then lining the supports with smooth guard stones meant to stop rats from climbing up. The whole thing looked like a house trying to stand on its toes.
“You complain about everything, old man,” Katerina said with a sigh. “I think it looks far finer than anything we had before. And look, it even has a vent!”
She pointed upward at the square opening cut near the top of the wall, where a little wooden frame had been fitted to let stale air escape without letting rain pour through. They had received the wooden piece in one of the grain deliveries, along with most of the materials needed to improve the granaries. After that, it had only been a matter of following the instructions written on parchment while Father Ezequias read them out, line by line, as if reciting a scripture.
“Too much prissiness,” Pantelis grumbled, because saying anything else would have felt too much like giving the Lord credit. “Is all the grain here?”
“It better be,” one of the men-at-arms said. He was a gruff-looking fellow with dust on his boots and a face baked red from the road. “Took the better part of a day to haul our arses here.”
That he and the others carried proper weapons showed that the Principality was at least taking the threat of banditry seriously when it came to transporting grain through the countryside. Pantelis could appreciate that much, even if he would not say it aloud.
The desertions in the nearby villages had been steep in the early days after the rout in the north, when survivors had begun trickling home with horror clinging to them like mud. Mikro Elos had not been spared from men who took their families and vanished into the hills, choosing hunger and knives over waiting meekly for the next disaster. But after the Lord made the rounds and announced all that chartering business, the tide seemed to have slowed.
“Well, that is all we have for you,” the gruff soldier said, wiping his brow with the back of his wrist. “Got to move on to the next village.”
With no more ceremony than that, the dozen men-at-arms took their places beside the horses and wagon they were escorting through northern Theodoro. The merchant who owned the wagon had apparently tagged along as well, using the Lord’s convoy as an opportunity to try to sell his wares wherever the road carried him. Bolts of rough cloth, iron odds and ends, and a few clay jars were tied down behind the remaining sacks.
Pantelis had no idea why. Did the fool not know that half the villages around here had hardly any coin ready to spend? And he wasn't the only one. They'd gotten their fair share of traders passing through Mikros Elos, each more destitute than the last. This one at least had actual goods to sell.
As they watched the small column creak away down the road, wheels grinding over dry ruts, Katerina folded her arms and said, “I guess the Lord is a man of his word after all.”
“It is early days,” Pantelis cautioned.
“This is the second payment in grain he has sent,” Katerina countered, “along with the usual inspection to check that everything is on track. You have to admit his words have not been hay so far, old man.”
“Good things don’t come to those who wish hardest,” Pantelis said, watching the departing wagon shrink beneath the hard summer light. He wondered whether the third payment would truly arrive, or whether some excuse would crawl out of the castle before then. “Keep your head on your shoulders instead of letting it float up in sweet clouds.”
They needed that grain to last until harvest. Even then, it would be close enough to make a man’s teeth hurt. A few spoiled sacks, a poor yield, one bandit raid, and all their careful counting would be worth less than chaff in a storm.
Katerina blew air out through her nose, unimpressed by his gloom. “You know what they told me, old man? The Lord has offered to send a surveyor to Mikro Elos, so we can be one of the first villages to have its land valued and assessed.”
Pantelis turned to face her, his eyes sharpening. That was no small offer.
“It seems you made an impression on him,” Katerina said, watching him with a sly little tilt of her head. “And it must have been a good one.”
Pantelis was not too sure about that. In his experience, making an impression on a noble was only safe if the noble forgot you existed by supper.
“I believe that is meant for taking out the loans to buy our own plots,” Ezequias remarked, his tone thoughtful rather than eager. “An interesting idea.”
“And one that would have us indebted to the Italians,” Pantelis said, finishing the obvious thought for him. “I’m not too keen on that.”
A hand caught his arm before he could grumble further. Katerina’s grip was tight, and when he looked at her he found no trace of teasing left in her face.
“This could be our ticket out of this trap, Pantelis,” she said. Her eyes burned with a hard, desperate light. “Don’t you think it’s worth a shot? We were willing to cross over to Lithuania, for Christ’s sake. How is this so different?”
“We had no choice then," Pantelis found it hard to refute her, so he did what any sensible coward did when cornered by the truth. He looked away. "We do now. It’s a big risk.”
“For a chance to be free,” Katerina whispered, speaking the word as though it were a small bird that might fly off if startled. “Don’t you think Cleo would have wanted that? Or your wife?”
The names struck deeper than Pantelis had braced himself for.
That gruesome winter near two years past came unbidden. The air had seemed hellbent on freezing men in their beds, slipping through cracks in the walls and biting fingers black if one was careless. Mikro Elos had suffered a bad harvest that year, and en extraordinary tithe to boot. By winter they were rationing already, and thin arms and empty bellies are poor companions to help fight the cold.
It was nothing new. When real bad harvests came, people died. Everyone was already expecting a few to go.
That hadn't made it any easier when Cleo caught a fever that winter.
Pantelis stared toward the road, though the distance blurred until he could hardly make out anything beyond the shimmer of heat. Another hand settled on his shoulder, quieter than Katerina’s, steadier too.
“They are with God now, in a better place,” Father Ezequias said softly, and Pantelis prayed every night that it was true. “But we are still here.”
“Fine,” Pantelis said, turning away from both of them before his face betrayed too much. His thoughts were a churned field after rain, all mud and broken lines, which was why he couldn't think straight. Otherwise, he would never say what he was about to. “I’ll speak to the Lord and we’ll see about buying a plot of land. One to call our own.”
Katerina and Ezequias shared an honest smile, small but bright enough that Pantelis felt it even with his back half-turned. For a moment there was hope in the air, the dangerous sort, the kind that made people look at the same poor dirt and imagine it might someday be theirs. But damnit, they deserved at least that much.
He should have known it wouldn't last long.
They heard the sound of hooves rise in the distance and all three turned toward it. The rhythm was too frantic to be the wagon coming back, which left them puzzled.
Then came shouting, faint at first, carried thinly over the fields.
Pantelis broke into a sprint as quickly as his old body allowed.
“Call the village in!” he shouted back at Ezequias and Katerina, both of whom now looked alarmed. “Have them fall back into the granary!”
“Where are you going, old man?” Katerina yelled after him. “You’re just killing yourself! You can’t fight!” Pantelis didn’t slow down in the slightest.
He ran past the last houses and toward the northern field, breath tearing rough through his chest. By the time he reached the low rise, his knees felt like rotten hinges and his heart felt like it was giving out.
The field was already a massacre.
Lean, dangerous-looking men swept through the churned earth on a dozen horses, cutting down villagers who scattered between the shallow trenches they had only just begun to dig. The bandits rode with the easy cruelty of men who had done this before, circling loose and fast, driving the villagers away from one another like dogs snapping at sheep. A man fell near a half-dug channel, hands clutching at his belly. Another tried to swing a mattock at a passing rider and was struck across the face for his courage.
They had the thin sort of meanness only bandits carried, all sharp bones, hungry eyes, and mouths set in ugly grins. Yet these were no starving fools with rusted knives. Pantelis saw proper blades, decent saddles, and bows slung across backs.
And the timing… right after the grain delivery.
The thought struck him cold. This was planned. Coordinated.
At their head rode a well-built brute with soft black curls spilling around his face. He sat his horse with ease, shouting orders while the others wheeled around him.
After a certain, arbitrary number of casualties, the bandits let the rest of the villagers scatter in disarray. It was not mercy, just another step in a carefully calculated plan.
Then one of the riders swung down with a torch.
“No!” Pantelis screamed as fire kissed the green shoots of the wheat meant to sustain Mikro Elos for the year to come.
The flames caught faster than seemed possible, running through dry grass and licking hungrily at the tender crop. Smoke rose in thin grey threads at first, then thickened into a dark smear against the cruel blue of the sky. Pantelis felt something tear loose in his chest. Those fields had never given much, miserly old dirt that they were, but they were all they had. Mikros Elos's sole hope. Now gone up in flames.
“Ah, is this the headman you spoke about?”
The lead bandit cantered his stallion toward Pantelis, who dropped to his knees as if his legs had finally remembered they were old. The man sat tall in the saddle, broad-shouldered and easy, watching the ruin around him with the interest of a man inspecting livestock.
“Yes, commander,” said another voice.
Pantelis recognized the boy who spoke. One of Iohannas’s lads who had fled into the mountains and turned to banditry. His hollow face looked ashamed and half-starved. Pantelis couldn’t even hate the lad.
“How kind of him to deliver himself to us," the man laughed. It was a hearty, hacked out laugh. "Let us go to the granary and see this food of yours,” the commander said.
At his words, two of his men seized Pantelis and hauled him upright. They dragged him back toward the village centre, forcing him across the same earth he had worked stubbornly for decades. It had never yielded much to him, and now, against all reason, he wished it might hold him fast in place and refuse to let him go.
It did no such thing.
The bandits shoved and jostled him every step of the way, laughing among themselves as smoke drifted behind them. They cracked jokes about the villagers who had fallen, argued over whose horse had nearly stumbled in the mud, and spoke with open hunger about the grain waiting ahead. By the time they reached the centre of Mikro Elos, his people had barricaded themselves inside the granary.
The lead bandit narrowed his eyes at the stout building. Its wooden walls had been reinforced until the old house looked almost squat and stubborn, and the outer timbers had been smeared with clay daub and limewash to make them harder to burn. The pale coating still looked fresh in places, chalky against the rough planks.
“What is that?” he asked.
A small, foolish bloom of hope opened in Pantelis’s chest. With all the Lord’s fussy improvements, the granary had become far more resistant to assault, meant to serve as a fallback point in case of attack. Pantelis had grumbled about that too, naturally, but now the sight of it nearly made him weep with relief.
“You won’t get anything out of us,” Pantelis taunted, unable to stop the harsh smile that tugged at his mouth.
The bandit leader looked at him properly for the first time, and Pantelis looked back. And was struck with horror.
The face was familiar... He looked like the young Lord who now ruled from Suyren - a rougher, older, wilder version of him. And he smiled a savage thing red with borrowed blood and menace.
“People of Mikro Elos!” he bellowed toward the frightened souls hidden behind the reinforced wood. “Hand over your food right now, or we will burn this filthy little village to the ground and kill your beloved headman here. And your precious brothers and kin as well.” He brought his sword to Pantelis’s neck. A similar scene played out with a dozen or other survivors from the massacre at the northern field.
The cold bite of the blade pressed just beneath his jaw. Pantelis could feel the shock pass through the granary even though no one inside spoke. Behind a narrow gap in the barricade, he caught a glimpse of Katerina’s black mop of hair moving wildly as she argued with someone out of sight.
Terror filled him. He knew how foolish the villagers could be. They were his villagers after all.
“Don’t listen to him!” Pantelis roared, straining against the hands holding him. “Don’t give him what he wants! We're dead anyway!”
“Quiet,” the Sideris bandit growled, clamping a meaty hand over Pantelis’s mouth and gagging him as easily as one might silence a barking dog.
For a while nothing happened. The silence inside the granary stretched until it hurt. Pantelis tried to shout against the hand over his mouth, tried to twist free, tried to make them understand that one old fool was not worth a winter’s worth of food. His people had children in there. They needed the grain more than they needed him.
Then the bar shifted and the door groaned open.
Pantelis’s heart sank so deeply that his whole body seemed to follow it. Tears filled his eyes before he could stop them, hot and humiliating on his weathered face. Why would they do it? Why would they give up the last of their precious reserves for a foolish old man who had spent half his life snapping at them?
The bandits surged inside with whoops and laughter, celebrating as though they had won a proper battle instead of bullied starving villagers into surrender. Sacks were dragged out, split open, counted badly, then thrown onto horses and backs. One man shoved Father Ezequias against a wall hard enough that the priest was left dazed on the floor.
Pantelis watched it all as though held upright by strings. Every sack they took felt like a body leaving the village.
By the time they were finished, the granary looked hollowed out, and the people doubly so.
When they had taken all they could carry, the bandits took to reneguing on their promise.
They threw torches overhand to the closest outlying buildings, setting them on fire. And grabbed at the comeliest women that they could spot.
The villagers who resisted got skewered for their trouble, and had no choice but to watch their kin and wives be carried off, bound in ropes and screaming in agony, as they mounted their horses and turned toward the village road.
The leader finally released Pantelis. He dropped to the ground without needing to be pushed, too exhausted even to catch himself properly. Dust filled his mouth. He heard a babe’s cries in the background.
Pantelis forced himself to look back one final time, committing the murderer’s face to memory.
“I want you to leave my little brother a message,” He said. Fire and smoke trailed in the background, seeming to gather around his silhouette as if the ruin itself had chosen him for its herald. “A Sideris always pays his debts in blood and iron. And his have come due.”
That was the last thing Pantelis heard before the pommel of a sword struck him down, and blessed darkness took him.