Fallen Eagle-Chapter 1: An Inheritance of Ash

“Promise me, son…promise me you will rid these infidel scum from this world…Don’t let…don’t let them destroy our family…our home.”
The air in the cot was thick, a cloying miasma of sweat, stale blood, and the damp, earthy scent of the reed-strewn floor. It clung to the back of the throat, a taste of decay and desperation. Nikos Karagiannis stared into the fever-bright eyes of a man he did not know, a stranger whose calloused hand gripped his with a desperate, burning intensity as he let out his heartfelt plea.
This man was not his father. His had died in a sterile chamber coated in the faint scent of antiseptic and quiet despair, a thousand miles and a thousand years from this place, begging him not to throw away his talent on books and history. Like then, this deathbed promise felt like an ironclad request he could not run from. As the unwilling puppeteer of a boy who once called this man father, Nikos did just as he had when he had promised his father he’d join the army: he lied.
“F-father…” Nikos marshalled the features of this unfamiliar face, forcing them into a mask of grief-stricken resolve. He tightened his grip, mirroring the dying man's pressure. “I will wet my blade with the blood of the infidels and carve a path to heaven for you. I will keep our family safe. I promise.”
A ghastly smile cracked the man’s lips, stretching the dried blood that crusted the corners of his mouth. It was a flash of life in the final embers, terrifying and beautiful. “T-thank you, my son.” His eyes, for a moment, lost their feverish glaze and found a flicker of peace. Then they rolled back, and his breathing descended into a shallow, guttural rasp.
A deferential knock preceded the entry of an older man, white streaking across his beard and hair in great flashes. "Master Theodorus, I'm sorry to disturb," he murmured, his voice soft with sorrow and urgency. "Young masters Georgius and Iohannes have brought Father Mikael and the blacksmith. We must cut the arrow out now. The barbs… they bite deep."
The Greek names and the mention of a clergy man were to Nikos like water to a dying man. He was a sponge, desperate to absorb any drop of information. In this new and bizarre reality, ignorance was a death sentence.
“Of course, bring them in immediately. We mustn’t delay.” Nikos stood by his “father’s” bedside, a silent sentinel, his mind a whirlwind of calculation and analysis beneath a placid surface.
It had been, by his best estimates, less than an hour since he’d awoken here. One moment, he was chuckling at a truly abysmal student dissertation on the Carolingian dynasty, a rare moment of levity in an otherwise dreary afternoon. The next, a searing pain had erupted in his chest, followed by an infinite silent darkness.
There had been no warning, no transition. Was he dead? Had he reincarnated? What would happen to his cats? Andronikus was likely meowing for food now. Who would give Boudicca her insulin injections?
He forced the panic down, reverting to his ingrained methodology. Observe. Catalog. Analyze. The rough-hewn wooden walls, the thatched roof, the packed-earth, reed-covered floor - all uselessly anachronistic, common in lodgings from as far back as the Bronze Age up to the 18th century. The use of Greek-style names, however, was a significant clue. Iohannes, Georgius, and a likely religious figure called Father Mikael all pointed to the Byzantine sphere of influence, sometime between the late Roman period and the fall of its last remnants.
Carefully lifting the coarse linen blanket, Nikos chanced upon another crucial piece of the puzzle. The armour of the dying man consisted of small, interlocking curved metal plates stitched to a leather backing - a klivanion, a form of lamellar armour distinctly Byzantine. Nikos also noticed the broken arrow protruding from the man’s lower abdomen. If the servant was right about the arrow being barbed… even if they removed it, the internal damage was done. Sepsis would follow shock and blood loss. In a world without antibiotics, this man’s fate was sealed.
The final information of interest was the servant’s referral to Nikos as a “young master”, the same title used for Georgius and Iohannes. Brothers, then. The sons of this dying lord. And he, Nikos, was about to meet the brothers of the boy whose body he had just inherited. Men who knew him intimately, who would expect a shared history he did not possess.
Nikos took a deep breath, composing his features into a mask of solemn grief. Silence would be his shield, anguish his camouflage. He had to be a ghost, present but unnoticed, until he could paint an accurate picture of his current situation.
The door flew open with a violent crash, slamming against the wooden wall. A young man, barely out of his teens, filled the doorway. His black curly hair was matted with sweat and grime, wild strands plastered across a face that was a younger, fiercer echo of the man in the bed. His amber eyes burned with a furious, desperate energy.
“Father! I have brought the Priest! Hang on!” he yelled, striding to the bedside and shoving Nikos aside with a contemptuous force that sent him stumbling.
“Move, coward!” he spat the words without sparing a single glance towards Nikos, gripping his father’s hand with his own blood-soaked ones.
The raw hatred in the words took Nikos by surprise.
Coward? Why?
The reason dawned on him as he examined his own clothes: they were clean. The others were caked in mud and blood. There had been a fight, a battle, and he - Theodorus - had not been there. Nikos took the opportunity to feign shock and retreat to a more inconspicuous corner of the room.
A host of individuals were now filing into the room. A portly man in the flowing black robes of the orthodox clergy clutched a wooden cross with trembling hands. That confirmed we were somewhere around or after the Catholic-Orthodox schism of 1054, though the possible timeline remained terrifyingly broad. Beside him stood a stout man with calloused, soot-stained hands who looked like a man heading to his own funeral. The blacksmith. He held a long, sharp steel knife with a white-knuckled grip. A gaggle of maids followed, carrying white linen towels and basins of water, their faces pale with fear.
The last to enter moved with a different kind of authority. Taller, in his late twenties, with close-shaven dark hair and the angular features of aristocracy he shared with his brother and father. Yet there was a weathered, tanned quality to his skin and a darkness to his eyes that hinted at a mixed heritage. His eyes, tight with stress, found Nikos in the corner.
“Theodorus,” his voice was a low baritone, his tone clipped and devoid of warmth. “How is Father?”
Nikos could only shake his head, staring at the floorboards, letting the silence convey a grief he did not feel but desperately needed to project.
“...I see.” The words were flat, final.
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“These Tatar scum know no honour!” The younger brother exploded, his voice cracking with rage and grief. The maids were startled at the outburst. Father Mikael looked terrified. “We must give chase and hunt them all down!”
Tatars
? The word sent a jolt of ice through Nikos’s veins. The word was a common denomination of the semi-nomadic Turkic and Mongolian peoples of the eastern steppes. Tatars in the Byzantine world meant the northern frontiers, or worse…
“And how do you plan to do that, Georgios, pray tell?” The older brother, Iohannes, retorted, his voice a blade of cold steel.
“We gather our men! The men of all landed Greeks who call themselves nobles! We march our army northwards and we skin these infidels along with their thrice-damned horses!”
“With whom? The same men who holed up in their little manors while the Crimeans massacred our people?”
Crimeans?
The pieces clicked into place, bringing with them a sickening, horrifying clarity. A Greek-speaking Byzantine northern frontier. Crimean Tatar raids. There was only one place, one time, that fit. The Principality of Theodoro. A tiny, isolated Christian state on the Crimean Peninsula. A final, flickering ember of the Byzantine world, surrounded by enemies. The Genoese choking them from the sea, the Crimean Khanate raiding them from the north, and eventually the Ottoman invasion, an apocalyptic event whose onset triggered its destruction.
“When you march northwards with your handful of foot soldiers,” Iohannes continued, his voice dripping with scorn, “they will fill your body with arrows and carry it back to Chufut-Kale, laughing all the while that another slave delivered himself unto them.”
“You are a fool, Iohannes!” Georgius spun on him, his face contorted with rage, his father forgotten. “You would see us corralled like sheep, weak as lambs, waiting for the slaughter!” He took a step closer, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. “Then again, maybe you don’t mind that, do you?
Tatar filth.
”
A murderous fury flashed in Iohannes’s eyes. “You will not address the future head of this estate in this manner,” he hissed, his own hand finding his weapon. “You will learn courtesy, curr!”
“You speak as if Father is already dead!”
“Look around you, imbecile.” Iohannes gestured to the dying man. “Our father was brave and valiant, just as you claim to be. He is bleeding out with his guts spilled by a stray arrow, as you will be too after that comment.”
Georgius lunged, his sword rasping from its sheath. Iohannes answered in kind. A maid shrieked in fright. The old servant threw himself between the two brothers, his frail body a pathetic shield.
“My Lords! Please! Your Father…”
The faint, agonized moan from the bed seemed to penetrate the brothers’ rage. They froze, shame momentarily eclipsing their hatred. They sheathed their swords with sharp, angry thrusts.
“You are right, Demetrios,” Iohannes said, his composure returning. “I apologize. Father Mikael. Markos. Please, carry on with the procedure.”
The macabre ritual that ensued was like nothing Nikos had ever lived through. He, along with the other two sons, was forced to hold their father down. The priest babbled prayers, his voice shrill with terror. The blacksmith, Markos, his face a grim mask, took his unsterilized knife and began to cut.
Their father writhed and screamed. It was not a human sound, but the shriek of an animal in a trap, a raw, piercing cry that vibrated through the very floorboards. Nikos’s mind recoiled, desperately trying to compartmentalize the horror, to retreat into the methodical categorization and overview of his present situation, plotting out his next steps. Forcing order upon the madness that was occurring.
Eventually, the screaming stopped. The thrashing subsided. Theodorus' father’s body went limp, his life spilling out onto the blood-soaked linens along with his entrails. He was gone.
In the suffocating silence that followed, the household fractured. Georgius stormed out, swearing retribution. The maids and Markos the blacksmith vanished like smoke. Father Mikael mumbled a hasty blessing over the corpse before Iohannes ordered two grim-faced warriors to carry it away in a makeshift stretcher.
Iohannes remained, staring vacantly at the bloodstain on the cot for a long moment. He turned his cold eyes on Nikos.
“Things will be different now that Father is gone, Theodorus,” he said, his voice flat and menacing. “And cowardice like yours will not be allowed to fester any longer. You can be sure of that.” He headed for the entrance, but lingered there for a moment.”If you had been there, Father might still be alive.”
With that parting poison, he too was gone.
Nikos was left alone with the old servant, Demetrios, who knelt by the empty cot, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. An impulse, part pity, part cold calculation, moved Nikos. He walked over and placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder, standing with him in the quiet room.
Eventually, Demetrios began to speak, rambling through his tears about his late master, sharing memories of a man Nikos had never known. Nikos listened, a comforting, silent presence, gently steering the conversation with quiet, leading questions. The stories formed a mosaic of a troubled family: Georgius, whose pride was so fierce even as a boy that Lord Konstantinos had to command him to share his toys; Iohannes, always brooding, who would seal himself in his chambers for days until his father personally coaxed him out. And then there was Theodorus -
him -
the poet, the sensitive son who was bullied by his brothers, yet always defended and encouraged by a father who never shamed his tears.
Each small story, told between the sobs of his closest friend and advisor, painted a stroke in the vast portrait of Lord Konstantinos’s life. Each anecdote revealed his character: a kind, deeply naive man whose heart led him to love a runaway slave, a decision that cost him his honor and exiled him to this forsaken border. His life was a tragedy, but its details were a lifeline.
Nikos learned of Georgius’s pride, Iohannes's authoritarian streak, Theodorus’s reputation, and a dozen other tiny threads. Each was insignificant on its own, but together they wove the complex tapestry that was the Sideris Family. A wave of self-disgust washed over him; he was using this old man’s raw, honest grief as a tool, a resource to be mined for information. But the survivor in him, the part that was screaming in terror at the abyss he’d been thrown into, knew it was necessary.
When the stories were finally spent, the sun was a low fire on the horizon, and the room had grown cold. Both men were hollowed out by the emotional toll. “Thank you, Young Master,” Demetrios whispered, his voice a dry rasp.
That heartfelt thank you hurt more than any insult. This old man had no clue that the young master he had looked after with grandfatherly affection since his birth was gone, replaced by a cynical and jaded History professor. Nikos helped escort the old servant back to his room, each step feeling hollow. He wished Demetrios a good night and promised to see him come morning.
Returning to the spartan cot he had woken on, Nikos lay down, the rough straw pressing into his back. It had only been a few hours, but the man who had woken here was gone, lost across a gulf of centuries. He was now adrift, mentally scrambling to map the terrifying contours of his new reality.
The historian in him felt a perverse, thrilling ecstasy at the prospect of witnessing history and its mystified events firsthand. The man, Nikos Karagiannis, was paralyzed with a primal fear of a world without sanitation, without knowledge, a world of casual brutality and death.
And deep within him, a tiny, dangerous ember of an idea began to glow.
Promise me you will rid these infidel scum from this world. Don’t let them destroy our family. Our home.
The weight of his false promise hung like an invisible chain. An echo of the original Theodorus, the one who loved his father with all his heart, urging him to keep his promise.
His rational mind screamed at him to flee. He should gather what he could and disappear before the Ottoman tide crashed against these walls. He was a historian; he knew how this story was supposed to end - in fire, slavery, and oblivion. Yet he felt an impossible, irrational pull toward the promise.
He wondered, with a tremor that was equal parts terror and hubris, if he could possibly keep it.