Chapter 116: Something Dragged Up From Hell

4th Week of July, 1460

“Tell them what you told me,” Georgius commanded, his voice low.

He shoved the older merchant into the middle of the assembled circle, hard enough that the man stumbled and went to his knees. He was balding, soft-bellied, and sweating through fine clothes. Well, they were fine once. Now, one sleeve tore near the elbow, and dark stains spread where damp cloth clung to his belly. His eyes were wide as saucers, and Georgius had to hold back a laugh.

“I’m sorry, my Lord. I did not mean to presume-”

“I’m no lord,” Georgius said, stressing the word over the rasp of his sword being drawn slowly across the scabbard at his belt. “And you’d do well to remember that.”

The man’s shiny jowls glistened with sweat. “O-Of course, my deepest apologies.” He tried to bow, a difficult thing for a man of his proportions even before the ropes around his wrists dragged his arms tight behind him.

“The story,” Georgius said, prodding him with his boot to hurry him along. “My friends are dying to hear what lies you’ve been spreading among the villages on the Lord of Suyren’s behalf.”

His squad took that as their cue. They leaned in with ugly grins and exaggerated delight, a few pressing hands to their hearts as though overcome by the honour of hearing him speak. One dragged the flat of a dagger on his tongue, and the merchant gulped.

Georgius had caught word of the merchant through contacts in the hamlets closest to this base. Mostly kin to bandits already in his company, or to the families he now ‘harboured’ when hunger drove them into the hills. Others were villagers who stayed behind and passed whispers along for a small payment, enough to get by and enough to remember who could still hurt them if they forgot.

“The lord has issued a formal, unconditional pardon for any man accused of banditry,” the merchant began, voice trembling beneath the combined stare of Georgius’s men and the bandits who occupied this particular hideout.

Those useless farmers looked less amused at the man's terror, more serious at the news he bore. Their eyes widened at the mention of an unconditional pardon, and Georgius saw that cursed little flicker of wanting. He hated it more than anything. It was that want that lost him everything in that cursed siege. And it grew roots if left alone.

“Suyren is now firmly occupied b-by the Crown,” the fat man went on, glancing too often at the blade in Georgius’s hand. “No survivor of the Northern rebellion, nor any man who avoided its conscription, will be persecuted for such. You can return home, unburdened, as sons of the Principality.”

The hideout bandits exchanged looks. Many of the men swelling Georgius’s fighting strength came from exactly that breed. Fugitives. Deserters. Half-starved fools who had fled punishment, conscription or empty bellies. They had joined the bandit ranks in search of food and safety, but it didn’t take much time to realize a bandit’s life wasn’t that much easier than a farmer’s. 

The sods that populated this northern stretch of land fled to him because they were foodless, and they didn’t stop to think that perhaps those they would rob were just as dirt poor as them? Georgius knew they had plenty of doubts about signing up, and he kept a close eye on treason in his midst.

“The Principality is a much different place than when you left it,” the merchant recited, gaining strength from the men’s wavering. “The old nobility has been purged by the Prince with the will of God. In their place, the Lords Theodorus and Zeno have allowed villages and freemen a right of self-governance never seen before.”

Georgius could imagine the man using his hands when the ropes were off. A true merchant spoke as much with his limbs and posture as his tongue. No wonder his little brother had chosen men like this for his mouthpieces.

“You could even own your own plot of land, free from noble greed!” the merchant exclaimed, throwing himself into the performance to escape his terror. His muddy clothes pulled tight across his belly as he straightened, and the tremor in his voice began to dress itself as passion. “Haven’t you ever dreamed of owning the land you work on? Of paying a fixed sum of a tithe, and pocketing the extra?”

The hideout bandits looked enraptured by the argument. The tale told seemed a fantastical turn of events, only made less absurd by the rumours crawling out of the surrounding villages over the last few weeks. Each new scrap of news had weakened his men’s decision to remain outside the law.

Some of the bandits snuck glances at Georgius, wary now, as if they could not understand why he was letting the man speak this long or why he was letting them hear this.

“This is your chance to cleanse your soul,” the merchant said, laying out his own little holy bread for them, and the fools ate it right up. “To give up your sinful ways and ask God for forgiveness.”

A few of them were actually nodding along, probably without realizing they were doing it in front of him. Georgius watched the movement with a wrath that made his fingers tighten around the hilt of his blade.

Banditry weighed on more than the stomach. Fear of Hell gnawed on common folk. Every burnt hut felt to them like another step down toward the furnace priests promised from their pulpits. Georgius had long stopped caring whether he would be scorched. If Hell wanted him, it could come armed.

But these simpletons still cared. That was why he had bothered bringing this little fattie along after catching him.

“Well, well, well,” Georgius said, clapping slowly, each strike of his palms echoing through the hideout with a dry, mocking crack. “That was a brilliant speech. Thank you, my kind sir.”

His proper speech and courteous words only made the merchant and the hideout bandits more uneasy. It reminded them that there was a former noble standing in their midst, and that whatever his blood had been worth once, he had become something far uglier than the lords they knew how to hate.

“It was such a high tale you spun that I almost believed you,” Georgius said with false amazement.

“It isn’t a tale,” the merchant said, his face darkening despite his fright. That he would actually defend Georgius’s brother in his presence showed just how much he didn’t understand his current situation. “The Lords really have-”

Whatever else he meant to say vanished when Georgius drew his foot back and drove his heavy boot into the man’s open mouth.

Teeth flew out with a wet crack, carried on a faint spray of blood aimed almost perfectly toward the hideout bandits. They reeled back from the casual violence, putting up hands as if to shield themselves from the blood, Georgius or both. The merchant screamed as he hit the ground, a shrill, animal sound that scraped against their ears.

Georgius caught him by the collar before he could squirm away, bunching the stained cloth in one fist and hauling him halfway up. That only brought another scream.

“Silence,” Georgius commanded.

The merchant choked down the noise into wet whimpers, blood slicking his lips and dripping into the dirt.

“You do not have the right to dictate anything to me,” Georgius said, leaning close enough that the man could smell the iron on his breath. “You came here to sow doubt and discord for your master. You will not succeed.”

He spat on the merchant’s face in disgust.

“You speak only when I tell you to speak, worm.”

The merchant trembled. Georgius let him drop back to the ground like a sack of rotten grain.

The defeat at his manor, as bitter as it had been to endure, had taught him plenty about his brother. He knew Theodorus’s first strike would not be against his walls, but against the spirit of the men around him. Georgius had sworn he would never suffer such treason twice. He was no bull-headed fop to lower his horns and charge at the same trap because the bait had been dressed differently.

He had already planned how to break this particular ploy.

“Do you really think any of this man’s words are true?” Georgius asked, looking around the circle and knowing his men were too afraid to answer.

“Lambros here thought the same, until he saw what happened to those who did.” Georgius gestured toward one of his men, a tall, lanky one with a dozen bruises staining his face and his fair share of broken teeth. Georgius had given him that treatment recently, though not for this business. That had been because the dumbass couldn’t keep his filthy hands to himself.

In exchange for not having his life ended right then and there, the bastard had quickly agreed to play his part in the ruse.

Lambros stepped forward with a stuttering walk that was meant to be part of the performance, though Georgius hoped the limp was real. He stood before the circle with his shoulders drawn in and spoke almost quietly.

“I went with another three as soon as we heard the message,” Lambros said. Each word carried a faint whistle through the gap where his two front teeth had been. “We weren’t cut out for fightin’ out here in the wilderness, and we thought it was as good an offer as any.”

The hideout bandits watched him closely now. It mirrored their thoughts exactly.

“We grabbed a few horses and made out in the dead of night to reach the nearest village we knew had the Lords’ men stationed in it. They were supposed to be ready to accept any bandit who turned himself in proper. There were whispers that the Lords even handed out jobs with quick pay to those who did.”

That much was true, which should hopefully make the lie more believable. Georgius would wager his little brother had arranged like this to make surrender seem simple, nearby, and tempting enough that a weak man would not have to cross half the north to meet him in Suyren.

He was hoping to sap Georgius of his strength without bloodying himself for the trouble. It was pathetic. Spineless. Exactly the sort of war his little brother liked to wage.

War was fought in front of another man’s face. It was won with blood on your hands and the enemy’s breath close enough to smell. Not with these womanly proxy schemes.

“They went ahead,” Lambros said, voice roughening. “Not for any plan of ours, mind you. I was tasked with hiding the horses if things went south. And they did.”

His face took on the haunted look of a man who had actually seen it happen. He was good at pretending, Georgius had to give the idiot that much. Or perhaps he was thinking back to Georgius’s boot and fists breaking him open in the dirt. Georgius liked to think so.

“As soon as the Lord’s men had them in close range, they swarmed them. Grabbed at them. Tried to drag them off to Suyren’s dungeons.”

The hideout bandits looked properly shaken now. The hope that had begun to creep in evaporated. Beneath Georgius, the merchant stirred and tried to speak, perhaps to call out the lie or plead for sense in the audience.

Georgius kicked him hard in the ribs.

The man folded around the blow with a wet gasp and did not try again.

“There’s only death for us if we go back, friends,” Lambros said, pressing the point with the care of a man repeating lines his life depended on. “If they take us to Suyren, do you know what our fate is? For thieves, they take a hand. For noble traitors, they cut the nape. But for disgusting bandits?”

He stepped forward, towering over the greener outlaws as his voice sank into the dark rhythm of a tale meant to frighten children away from the woods.

“They tie each of your limbs to a different horse, then set them to gallop in the four cardinal directions at full speed.”

One of the men crossed himself, shivering.

“I hear the only thing worse than having your limbs ripped apart,” Lambros whispered, “is the time after, when you’re still alive and bleeding into the dirt, screaming yourself hoarse. They say it lasts the time it takes a man to nurse a glass of wine. Slowly. And the pain you’re in…”

He let the silence do the rest.

Georgius watched the fear settle over them and felt something close to satisfaction. Hope was a pretty poison, but terror had always been the stronger draught. And they looked properly horrified now.

“W-What happened to you, Lambros?” one of them stammered, voice thin and cracking at the edges. “How are you here?”

“I escaped,” Lambros said gravelly, touching his tongue to the gap in his teeth. “Only because I managed to climb atop one of the horses quick enough.”

“But the injuries…?” another bandit asked, confused.

Georgius stepped in before the idiot could think too deeply on what lie to spin. “What do you think happens when a man tries to run from my camp and comes crawling back with his tail tucked between his legs?”

The bandits startled back as if struck. Even Lambros flinched, and that part, at least, was not a lie.

“He was lucky I didn’t kill him on the spot,” Georgius said, letting his gaze move slowly from face to face. “And the only reason I didn’t was that he told me this story. You won’t have that luck.”

The hideout bandits looked thoroughly disabused of the notion of fleeing now. Georgius relished their fear. It sat on them better, and was more useful. They knew what he was capable of, and that knowledge let him grip them tighter than coin, kinship, or any pretty oath sworn with a hand over the cross.

Exile had carved many lessons into him, and he’d had too much time to think on his mistakes. He had been too soft on his manor bannermen, letting codes of knightly conduct hold his hand when it should have been clenched around their throats. Maybe then they wouldn't have conspired against him at the first hurdle.

Honour, mercy, noble custom, all of it had been a chain he wore while lesser creatures chewed through the links behind his back. It was good, then, that as a bandit none of those shackles seemed to apply.

“But words are wind,” Georgius said, “and what matters are actions. I know what you think. That the food isn’t enough. That I’m hoarding it all for myself. That perhaps you don’t want to be a bandit, just as our good friend here said.”

He gestured down to the trembling merchant, who was trying to make himself as small as possible in the dirt.

“When you have these thoughts,” Georgius’s voice seemed to mold into the night, like a monster smelling blood. “I want you to remember this.”

The merchant understood before the others did.

He began to squirm away, hands tied behind his back, boots kicking uselessly against the dirt. His tunic had been dragged through mud, ash, and old leaves until it clung to him in filthy strips.

“No!” he cried. “No, please! I told you all I knew!”

The words came out ruined. Broken teeth mangled the sounds, and spit and blood spilled over his lower lip with every syllable. Blood had collected in the folds under his chin and soaked into the collar of his once-fine tunic.

Georgius caught him by the fraying hair at the back of his head and dragged him upright. The merchant screamed again, though it came out half-gurgled now. His heels dug furrows in the ground as he tried to brace himself.

“Sear this into your brain,” Georgius said.

He turned the man toward the circle and the bandits blanched at the sight. One of his front teeth still hung crooked in his gum by some stubborn thread of flesh, wobbling when he moaned. The others had left behind a pulped mess, gums split and swollen.

Georgius let them look. He wanted them to see what soft promises bought. 

“P-Please, I have a family…” The merchant’s mouth hung open in a loose, bloody gape.  His eyes darted from face to face, pleading with them. “Please,” he whispered, barely a word at all. “Have mercy.”

Georgius smiled as he opened the man’s throat.

The merchant bucked against his grip, legs kicking once, twice, then weakening as the strength ran out of him with the blood. His eyes remained wide, fixed on nothing, frozen in terror like a gaping fish.

The bandits stood frozen around them for a long moment until a few startled awake and stepped back quickly after, trying to put distance between the body and them. As if distance would let them avoid his fate.

Georgius released the merchant’s hair, and the body collapsed into the dirt with a heavy thud. Blood ran beneath him in a crooked line, finding the low places in the earth and seeping there.

“I won’t forbid you from running, in truth,” Georgius said offhandedly, wiping his blade on the dead man’s tunic, “I’d love it if you did. It will give me a reason to catch you.”

No one answered. They stared at him as if he had stopped being a man in their eyes and become something dragged up from hell.

Good.

It was a demon his brother had awakened in him, and a demon inspired a cleaner sort of obedience than a lord ever could.

Theodorus had torn away the last soft, useless scraps left over from his father’s teachings. Now that creature would be unleashed back at him with all its terrible strength.

A Sideris pays his debts in blood and iron after all. And when his little brother finally understood what he had made, Georgius meant to be close enough to see it in his eyes.

Mikro Elos had been turned into something halfway between a village and a fortress.

Veteran men-at-arms and hard-nosed sergeants moved through the scorched lanes, shouting instructions at struggling militia as they barked the whole place back into order. 

It had only been a few days since the attack, but already blackened beams had been dragged away, ash shoveled into heaps, and the worst of the burnt houses marked for rebuilding from the ground up. Arguably, the thing the militia had learned best so far was construction and fieldwork, so in that sense they were right at home. They knew how to dig, haul, cut, stack, and curse while doing all four.

Mikro Elos was conveniently placed near the centre of the highlands where they believed Georgius’s bandits roamed and hid most of their bases. It was also the site of the first major attack against a chartered village, and Theodorus had no intention of underestimating the psychological vector of the attack. 

It might have been strictly more sensible to wage war behind the walls of Suyren, but that might send a message for the outlying villages that they were on their own. And bandit insurgencies survived, thrived even, in that sort of environment. So Theodorus had set up here instead.

Besides the politics of the decision, it also gave him an excuse to repay the village in a practical way, by carrying out the repairs it would need under the guise of a military operation. Under ordinary circumstances, he could not order the mobilization of most of their militias to work over twelve hours per day to undertake a reconstruction effort of this magnitude.  As it was burnt houses were being rebuilt, rethatched, and mended at record pace. Even damages that weren’t cause by the bandits were being fixed up. 

The greatest measure of their work, however, went to the granary. They had expanded the burgeoning earthworks on its perimeter and set up a proper abatis around the small military headquarters now operating from within the fortified storehouse.

The work doubled as a field exercise for the militia. They had to learn how to raise an earthwork from nothing, establish a perimeter, assign watches, conduct patrols, forage, and keep order, operating within hostile territory that was, for the moment, relatively safe. 

The great disadvantage was the cost. Carts of timber and meals for the men had to be hauled from Suyren, potentially prone to delays and accidents. 

Suyren itself was lightly defended now, but Theodorus and Zeno felt it worth the risk. With the Crimeans pacified, the Genoese bound in a trade agreement, and the exiled Tatar tribes tied into an alliance with Suyren, the chance of an attack against the town was low enough to tolerate.

“The desertions from the bandit camps haven’t been as high as we expected,” Stathis reported over the din of preparations outside. “So far, only a few dozen have accepted the pardon and fled their mountain outposts.”

“Surely some information must have slipped through, though,” one of the sergeants questioned.

Stathis glanced toward Charilaos, who stepped closer to the old leather map spread across the table. The thing was now heavily annotated with fresh markings.

“We managed to cross-reference the accounts of the escapees with information we already had from previous thefts and sightings,” Charilaos said, tapping one marked ridge with two fingers before dragging them toward a narrow pass. “From that, we’ve confirmed two more key hideouts where the bandits are thought to be sheltering, or at least gathering supplies.”

“Just how many do they have?” another sergeant muttered.

It had been three days since the attack on Mikro Elos. Despite sending a careful scouting party after the tracks Georgius left behind, they still had nothing useful on his current location. The frustration in the room was palpable.

That did not make it tolerable.

“If you have nothing of value to add, do not speak.” The remark came from Zeno, and it was utterly cold. He did not even look up, his eyes moving across the reports detailing Suyren’s day-to-day proceedings. 

Since both he and Theodorus had insisted on joining the campaign, they were attempting to manage the town from afar through messengers and hastily written orders. It was a clumsy arrangement and one that could not last long, which made a decisive campaign all the more necessary.

“If I hear another man moan about our situation like a child,” Zeno continued, finally lifting his gaze, “I will ask him to leave.” 

The men grew quiet at that.

Theodorus fully supported it. For all intents and purposes, this was a military campaign. How the men conducted themselves mattered just as much in times of preparation as in battle itself.

“I apologize, my lord,” the berated sergeant said, thoroughly cowed now.

Many of their now-senior officers had been promoted during the rebellion, filling gaps in Theodoro's officer corps left behind by the dead and wounded. They were inexperienced, and it showed.

“I do not care for apologies, only actions,” Zeno did not relent, nor did Theodorus expect him to.

Breaking these men’s poorer habits fell to them, and that meant demanding excellence before the habit of mediocrity had time to settle in. A sergeant who learned to complain in the command room would complain in front of his own militia.

“Carry on, sergeant,” Zeno said, signalling to Charilaos with a small motion of his hand.

Charilaos inclined his head and returned his attention to the marked map. “We’ve managed to get a better scale of their numbers. They likely still have around one hundred and fifty armed bandits among them, though I use the term loosely. Georgius’s personal band is closer to thirty-five men, a mix of his own veteran men-at-arms and the more experienced bandits he supplanted in order to take control of the wider groups.”

A few grim looks passed through the room at that. Their own field force hovered around forty men, taken from a total of seventy total troops stationed in Suyren. They had been forced to leave a portion behind in the northern capital to at least man the gates and bar them if trouble came their way. Zeno and Theodorus had also chosen to keep most of their true men-at-arms in the town, to ensure a smaller force could still maintain order and guard the current mixing yard building effort. For this campaign, they had brought the militia in full, with only Stathis, the five sergeants in charge of each ten-man Dekarchos, and Theodorus’s bodyguards led by Christos, properly paid warriors.

“As I said,” Charilaos continued, “they are not all armed bandits. Most are little more than peasants with pitchforks, pitted spears, and stolen bits of ill-fitted armour. Georgius’s military organization is also lacklustre. The entire operation is heavily spread out, and each bandit camp functions mostly without his direct input. He passes through from time to time to impose order, but most of the bandit camps operate independently, and he would have extreme difficulty raising them into a combined force.”

“Then why haven’t they defected?” Christos asked, though the question came tentatively.

“Because Georgius rules with an iron fist,” Theodorus answered. He had taken it upon himself to question every former bandit that defected so far.

The answer drew every eye toward him.

“Every survivor describe the same thing. He uses brutality judiciously to impose a sense of discipline in the gathered cutthroats, deserters, and starving farmers. Their hodgepodge organization is only held together by one thing. Their fear of Georgius.” Theodorus looked down at his compiled report, expression grim. “Your estimate of two hundred men was no exaggeration, Charilaos. They likely had more than that, even. The reason they only have 150 now is that the missing men and their families were all used as examples at one point or another.”

The gathered men looked sickened, despite the fact that they had already experienced war with the rebellion. This was a war of a different kind.

“He has also likely been kidnapping the criers and merchants we sent out to spread word of the pardon,” Theodorus continued. “Though for what purpose we still cannot say.”

“That is only more reason for them to flee, isn’t it?” one of the sergeants asked. “If they are living in such miserable conditions, they can just slip away from the camp, climb down from the mountains, and walk into any random village, taking their families with them to protect them.”

Theodorus was glad to hear the question. He had tried to cultivate a habit of asking questions among his officers, because an army where no one dared expose confusion was an army that eventually died of it.

“They can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “Georgius holds their families captive in the main hideout, under heavy guard by part of his own loyal cadre.”

The room seemed to grow colder.

This was where Georgius had been placing the families fleeing from northern Theodoro, keeping them as prisoners. A crude system, but horrifyingly effective. Every bandit in those scattered camps had a leash around his throat, and Georgius held the other end from somewhere in the mountains.

“Surely they won’t fight to defend such a man,” one of the sergeants said, appalled and unwilling to believe otherwise. “We can assault any hideout at will. Their morale will shatter.”

Theodorus only grew sadder at the statement. Explaining Georgius’s depravity weighed uncomfortably on him.

“They will fight,” he said. “Not for him, but under fear that Georgius will execute their families if they lose the hideout or abandon it, as he threatens to do. Even if we overpower them in an assault, many will likely fight to the death because they believe surrender means their wives, children, or parents, siblings will die.” He looked across the gathered men, letting the truth settle before he finished. “We would not only be killing bandits. We would be killing farmers with sticks, men fighting for their families. We would be killing our own.”

The men seemed to stoop beneath the weight of it, their eyes falling to the packed-earth floor. Georgius had found a way to turn even their code of honour into a weapon against them. It was a true war on terror, like the ones Theodorus recognized from his own time.

“Why?” one of the sergeants asked, lifting his head to the ceiling as if appealing to God rather than his commanders. “They could attack the main hideout if they banded together.”

“They don’t know where the main hideout is,” Theodorus said. He almost had to admire the ingenuity of it, macabre as it was. “Each man is sent straight to a hideout where he cannot freely leave,” Theodorus continued. “Only Georgius’s trusted henchmen know the routes between them. There is no way to communicate from one hideout to another without Georgius learning of it, and each camp has far too few men to threaten the main complex on its own. Some tried.” He paused, his voice hardening. “They are not here to tell us how far they got.”

A few sergeants exchanged disgusted glances, and even Stathis stared at the map with a clenched jaw.

“So they have multiple hideouts across the countryside, they outnumber us several times over, and even if we kill every man in those camps, we still lose in the end,” Charilaos said, summing up the factors arrayed against them with a bitter, lopsided smile.

His eyes, however, were not defeated. “Perfect,” They were narrowed in anger and determination. “Wouldn’t make for a proper tale without it.”

The dark jest turned the mood just enough. The despair did not vanish, but it was forced to share space with something fiercer. Pride, perhaps, or stubbornness. 

“There is a way to end this decisively without more bloodshed,” Theodorus unveiled. The sergeants leaned forward almost as one, filled with a feverish hope that made him slightly uncomfortable. 

 They believed he would provide the answer because he had done so before. Because he was the master strategist who had helped engineer victory over both the Genoese and the rebels against all odds. It was terrifying to be the object of such faith.

“We strike at the main camp,” Theodorus said. “If we free the families Georgius holds there, or if we capture and kill Georgius himself, this entire charade ends. Once the threat to their families is removed, his operation crumbles. All he would have left would be hungry men who hate him.”

“But we don’t know where he is,” Charilaos pointed out. “Or this main hideout, for that matter.”

“We do now,” a familiar rasping voice said from the suddenly opened doorway.

Gerasimos stood there looking as though the wilderness had chewed on him and decided he was too stringy to swallow. Dirt streaked his face and beard, and pine needles clung to the hem of his cloak.

The announcement buoyed the men inside immediately.

“I swear, my good man,” Charilaos said, his grin returning in earnest now, “do you wait behind doors just to surprise us?”

The old hunter did seem to have an uncanny gift for arriving at exactly the right moment.

“Do you mean Georgius, or the hideout?” Zeno asked, eyes sharp at the information and unwilling to waste even a breath on theatrics.

“Both,” Gerasimos answered.

Unlike yesterday, however, he did not plop down into a chair. He remained by the doorway, one hand resting near the knife at his belt, body angled as if he expected to leave again before the room had finished reacting.

“He went through rough country and passed two hideouts on the way,” Gerasimos said. “We had to skirt around them, but we managed it.”

He said it as if describing a walk taken in poor weather. The feat was anything but. Each hideout muddied Georgius’s passage with fresh tracks from the bandits stationed there, and every detour risked losing the trail completely or getting skewered in the process.

“You can sit,” Stathis said, motioning toward a chair.

“I think rather that you'll want to stand,” Gerasimos replied, jerking his chin toward the open door. “Our reinforcements have arrived, after all.”

Theodorus and Zeno rose at the same moment, as if some unseen signal had passed between them.

Behind Gerasimos came two tall, lithe men in fine clothing, their silhouettes uncannily similar in the poor light. Then the light shifted, and the resemblance broke apart.

“Hello, brother,” Iohannes greeted, his tanned skin and almond eyes betraying his half-Tatar heritage, and his stern face denouncing the dire situation.

“Vi saluto, my friends,” said the fair-skinned man beside him, tipping a dark green feathered hat to those assembled. “I am here on behalf of the most Serene of Republics to assist you in your endeavour.”

Theodorus and Zeno exchanged a look, and with it, a dangerous smile.

It was time to take the fight to Georgius. And grant him a taste of his own terror.