Fallen Eagle-Chapter 23: The True Price of Victory

“Assemble!” The captain’s voice roared, slicing through the raw-throated cheers of his men. The elation of victory, so potent a moment before, began to recede, replaced by the familiar weight of duty. “You have won a great victory! But the work of a soldier is never finished. I want a full accounting of the injured and the dead. I want every weapon, every piece of armor, and every coin tallied from the fallen. Catch any horses that have not fled. Send a runner to Kerasia; their people must know the threat has passed. We will dismantle these fortifications and salvage what we can.”
The joy drained from the men’s faces, replaced by a bone-deep weariness. The promise of rest, so tantalizingly close, was snatched away.
“Later,” Theodorus said, his voice softening just enough to be a balm, “Later we will feast. We will honor our dead, and the spoils of this victory will be distributed. You have my word. But the aftermath of a battle is as crucial as the fight itself. This work must be done.”
“YES, CAPTAIN!” The reply was unified, immediate. The loyalty he had forged in them over the last two months was now a core of tempered steel.
Christos volunteered for the grimmest task: tallying the dead. He made his way to the eastern barricade, the nexus of the battle’s most savage fighting. The great timbers groaned, their fibers splintered and pale where Tatar axes had hacked away at them. Dozens of arrows bristled from the wood like the quills of some monstrous beast, and the earth before it was stained with dark, ugly patches that were already drawing flies.
His mind, however, was a world away, replaying the glory of the fight. He saw it all again - the terrifying charge, the splintering of lances against his shield, the surge of adrenaline as he held the line. He remembered the thrilling fight on the parapet, his billhook finding its mark. He even remembered the dumbfounded look on Sergeant Leonidas’s face and his poetic one-liner. It was the most alive he’d ever felt in his life, the thrill of it called to him once more.
“Christos.” The voice was quiet, pulling him from his reverie. It was Olympion, one of the recruits from his pentarchos. The man’s face was pale, his eyes holding a haunted, thousand-yard stare. The fighting at this barricade had scoured the youth from him. “Down in the abatis… I think some of them fell in. See if you can find any bodies.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Christos gave a lopsided grin and a thumbs-up. The victory was a fire in his blood, and he couldn’t understand the gloom that had settled over the others. They had won. That was all that mattered.
He peered over the edge into the deep ditch, its floor a nightmare of sharpened stakes and tangled branches. Two Tatar bodies were impaled there, grotesque scarecrows in the afternoon light. Then he saw a third figure, lying face-up. The man’s eyes were wide, frozen in a mask of terror, a dark pool of blood spreading from his stomach. Christos’s mind stuttered, unable to process the familiar, oafish face, the shock of black hair matted with blood.
“G-Georgios!” The name was a choked whisper, and then the dam broke. “Hold on, buddy! I’m getting you out of there!” The words tumbled out, fast and frantic, as he scrambled down the side of the barricade, ignoring the thorns that tore at his tunic and the sharpened branches that scraped his skin.
He crashed into the bottom of the ditch and crawled to his friend’s side. The stake, a brutal spear of sharpened oak, had punched clean through Georgios’s leather gambeson and deep into his gut. A dead Tatar lay beside him, Georgio’s broken-off spear still clutched in his hand. The nomad’s throat sported a gaping, bloody hole; he had taken one with him. Christos ignored it all, his mind refusing the evidence of his eyes. He grabbed Georgios by the shoulders, shaking him.
“Wake up, you idiot! It’s over! We won!” The body lolled, the head moving with a dead, boneless weight. Tears streamed down Christos’s face, hot and blurring. “Don’t do this to me, you bastard… Please… Don’t do this.” He pulled the body free from the stake with a wet, sucking sound, cradling his friend in his arms, ignoring the blood that soaked his own tunic. He hugged the still-warm body to his chest, his face buried in Georgios’s shoulder, his body wracked with great, heaving sobs that echoed in the sudden, terrible silence of the valley.
The tally of the dead is the true price of victory. By any measure, the battle had been a triumph. Theodorus’s sixty militia and peasants had broken a force of one hundred Tatar horsemen. Yet, the sight of the eight fallen Greeks being carried from the field silenced every cheer. There was no glory in this silent procession, only the grim duty of wrapping their comrades in coarse linen, their bodies to be returned to their families for the rites of burial. The initial elation had curdled into a heavy acceptance of their loss.
Theodorus knew that idle hands would lead to brooding minds and chose to give them the best prayer for a troubled soul: work. He directed them to break down the wagon fortifications, wrenching the thick oak planks of the crenelated parapet that had been built onto the side of the central wagon. With the groaning of stressed wood, the makeshift fortress was slowly deconstructed. The most difficult task was reattaching the wheels to the heavy wagon itself. Using long timbers as levers and their combined strength, they hoisted the massive chassis just high enough for the heavy, iron-rimmed wheels to be slid back onto the axles and secured with cotter pins. The wagon that had been their bastion was, once again, just a wagon.
Near the fires, a makeshift infirmary had been established, if it could even be called that. It was a place of quiet agony. The critically wounded lay on bedrolls under scavenged tent flaps. Theodorus had basic knowledge of sanitation and germ theory, which placed him centuries ahead of the brightest minds in medicine in his current time, but which seemed to be an utterly ineffective weapon in the face of the gruesome post-battle injuries.
Once their own were tended to, Theodorus turned his attention to the enemy dead. "Dig a separate pit," he commanded. "Their wounded will be treated as well."
A murmur of dissent rippled through the men, voiced by Ilias, one of Leonidas’s veterans whose hatred for the Tatar menace had grown in the years of conflicts he’d had more than his share of. He knew firsthand the atrocities the nomads inflicted upon their victims. "Captain, they are Tatar raiders. They would have given us no quarter. Why should we show them any honor?"
Theodorus walked over to Ilias, his gaze firm. "We show them honor not for their sake, but for ours," he said, his voice low but clear enough for all to hear. "They were men, and God alone is the judge of a man’s soul. To desecrate a corpse is to interfere with that judgment. We are not savages. We are Greeks. We will act with the honor of our ancestors. To desecrate their corpses is to stoop down to their level."
The speech, simple and direct, extinguished the dissent. Theodorus's authority, won by a victory that seemed impossible, was now absolute. They dug the pit, and they laid the Tatars to rest, a final act of grim, disciplined respect in the shadow of their hard-won triumph.
The act of treating human corpses with respect, besides appealing to Theodorus’s modern sensibilities, was pragmatic in its nature. As he walked past the dozen captured Tatars, bound and kneeling under guard, he saw the hatred simmering in their eyes. The act of burying the dead would help in pacifying the nomadic hostages, even if only a little. He was under no illusions that they wouldn’t run at the first chance they saw, or kill them if the roles were reversed. But he hoped to impress upon them that the Greek code of honour would protect them from harm if they behaved and lent credence to the claim he’d made that they’d be allowed to be ransomed back to the Khanate.
The most relevant reason, though, was Theodorus’s wish not to cause a diplomatic incident. Given the size of the raiding party and the presence of a fair number of finely armoured nomads, Theodorus had deduced the presence of high-ranking individuals in the enemy force, likely minor clan beys. By treating their bodies with courtesy and attempting to save the wounded, he wanted to minimize the resentment the Clan heads would hold towards the Principality, potentially holding the door open to a future diplomatic resolution. The last thing the Principality needed was an escalation of tensions with the Khanate. If a high-ranking bey perished, or, God forbid, a member of the Khan’s own lineage, the Crimean might very well order a full-scale invasion of Theodoro, something he wanted to avoid at all costs.
The captives were thus disarmed, and their limbs were tied with whatever rope the army had on hand. These men were his most valuable prize: living proof of the Khanate’s aggression and potent bargaining chips. Their fate, however, was not his to decide. His duty was to deliver them; he could only hope the Prince would make the right decisions.
Around the camp, the work continued with grim efficiency. Piles of steel formed as men stacked Tatar sabers, collected composite bows, and salvaged arrows, even pulling them from corpses and the wooden barricades. Another pile glittered with the meager valuables of the slain: silver trinkets, worn coins, and personal charms. Runners were sent to the ravaged hamlets so the villagers could unbar themselves from their fortified houses and make the hours-long trek to claim their belongings.
When they came, they brought word with them of the destruction the Tatars had wreaked, burning the hamlets down to the smallest shed. Although there were no casualties among the surviving villagers, they were suddenly destitute and would have to face the coming winter with no roof over their heads.
The news cast a dark pall over the army, as they shuddered to think of what would have happened if the Tatars had been allowed to continue unimpeded deeper into the Theodoran countryside. Theodorus now knew the aim of the Tatar campaign was likely to incite fear and devastation. Otherwise, why go through the trouble of burning down frontier hamlets? If they hadn’t defeated the Tatar threat, most of the harvest collected in Kerasia and in the wider north would have gone up in flames.
As it stood, only a tiny portion of Kerasia’s harvest was lost during the evacuation, and Kerasia was a mostly shepherding settlement. Other villages in the north were almost completely agrarian, and their evacuations would have been a much messier affair. They would not have been able to transport all of the harvest in a few wagons and would have had to leave it at the mercy of the raiders.
In many ways, they were lucky the raiders had invaded through Kerasia. Theodorus had, of course, established various plans and evacuation protocols depending on the direction the raiders attacked from. He had even prepped another battle site, but it was for the best that it wasn’t necessary in the end.
Theodorus found Sergeant Leonidas overseeing the loading of salvaged timbers onto a wagon.
“The harvest in the northern fields is safe,” Theodorus began, his voice low. “We were lucky that they struck from the east. Had they come from the west, more of the northern harvest might have been lost.”
Leonidas nodded, wiping sweat from his brow. “Your preparations were sound, Captain.” The praise was simple, genuine.
“Preparations are for the last battle. Now we must think of the next one,” Theodorus said. He looked toward the road leading south, towards the capital. “Leonidas. You are the most senior and respected veteran here. I have drafted a letter informing the Doux of the battle.” He retrieved a small folded paper from his waist and a small, captured Tatar banner from his belt - a triangular pennant of black horsehair. “I want you to deliver both it and this. I believe the Doux will listen to you. Take one of their horses as well as proof. Ride for the capital and do not stop. Be careful.” Theodorus fixed a serious stare in Leonidas’s direction. “The Tatars have fled to the countryside and we do not know where they may have ended up. Take no chances.”
Leonidas took the banner, his expression hardening with resolve. “I understand, Captain.”
“Leave as soon as possible, when we finish wrapping up things here.”
Leonidas saluted and, without another word, moved to select a tough-looking steppe pony from the captured herd they’d acquired.
No sooner had Leonidas retreated than Nikos approached. Since being placed in charge of the five-man Pentarchos his leadership skills had begun to show through. He had a calm, humble attitude that resonated with the men. And he carried himself with quiet purpose. Theodorus, recognizing this, had given him the grim task of sorting the gathered captives. “Captain, we found someone.”
Theodorus turned from watching the road. “Who?” For Nikos to bring this to his attention, he had to be important.
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“His armor is finer than any we’ve seen, iron plates stitched into boiled leather. A high-ranking captive. He’s unconscious, his left leg mangled… his horse fell on it during the charge. We had to put the beast down to pull him free.” He paused, unsure. “He’s losing blood. He won’t last the hour.”
“Is it their leader?” Theodorus asked.
“I’m afraid not, Captain. But he must be of importance.”
“Show me.”
Nikos led him to a space cleared near the infirmary. The Tatar lay on a crude stretcher, his long black hair fanned out against the dirt. He was well-built, his skin tanned from a life on the steppe, but a waxy pallor now lay underneath. The quality of his dark lamellar armor and the fine steel of his sheathed saber spoke of wealth and status. His breathing was a shallow, almost imperceptible flutter. One leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, the bone clearly shattered, the flesh a ruined pulp of muscle and cloth.
Theodorus knelt, his assessment swift and clinical. “The leg cannot be saved. We’ll have to take it.” He gestured to a nearby crate. “Fetch one of the tourniquets.”
Nikos retrieved the crude but effective device - a length of leather and a short, stout piece of wood - that Theodorus had insisted they prepare before the battle.
“Tighten it high on the thigh, here,” Theodorus instructed, pointing. “Cinch it until the bleeding stops. Then you will use the saw. Cut above the knee. When it is done, you will take a branding iron from the fire and cauterize the stump. Dress it with the clean linen and wine. After that, his survival is in his hands.”
Orestis, who had volunteered for the thankless, bloody task of caring for the dying and wounded, spoke hesitantly, his face grim. “Captain, there are others. Stefanos…he, he has lost his arm. The bone was exposed. We had to cut it out. I’m not sure he will make it.” Orestis looked like a man adrift, his gaze vacant and self-recriminating. “If he dies, it will all have been my fault…”
“Do not give up yet, Orestis.” Theodorus placed a hand on his shoulder, his voice firm. “That is an order, you pulled him out of the fighting and applied the tourniquet as soon as you could. You did all that was possible. The boy’s breathing is stable and his colour is already recovering. The boy will live. And it will be because of you.”
Orestis’s shoulders relaxed, a flicker of appreciation in his hollowed eyes. “Thank you, Captain.”
The air in the cavern was hefty, weighted down by the damp chill of stone and the sour scent of fear. Glykeria watched the shadows thrown by the single flickering torch dance on the walls, turning familiar faces into monstrous caricatures. Most of Kerasia’s strength was outside, facing the Tatar horde - men who’d never held a spear properly, now pretending to be soldiers. Here, in the belly of the earth, were the children, the elders, and, worst of all, the men whose courage had evaporated at the first scent of blood.
“I wonder if they’re alright…” a tall, reedy man named Romanos whispered, his voice trembling.
“It’s a hopeless fight, how could they be alright?” A stout midget whose belly strained the seams of his tunic answered. Antonios had been among the first to volunteer for the battle until he heard the enemy’s numbers. Then he’d tucked his tail between his legs and joined this sorry bunch. “They’re outnumbered nearly two to one, and every one of theirs is worth two of ours. It’s not a battle. It’s a suicide.” Since then, he’d taken up the important work of demoralizing the group with pessimistic remarks, declaring the battle lost from the onset. Glykeria would have preferred if he had just run.
“Then are they…” Romanos said tentatively.
“They must be, and soon we will too. This cave is a deathtrap.” Antonios declared.
“We should run,” Romanos insisted, his voice cracking. “I know a path across the river. We can lose their scent in the water.”
A ripple of panic went through the huddle of women. One clutched her baby tighter, her eyes wide with terror. They couldn’t dare to swim across the river with the kids on their backs, and without the men here…
“Shut yer damn traps, ya hillbilly cowards.” The voice was a low growl from the darkest corner of the cave. Zisis had taken to sit there sullenly after being forced to migrate to the cavern and fall for the ‘nomad’s scheme’. For him to stop his tantrum, the comments must have irked him quite a bit. Glykeria knew how stubborn he could be when it came to sulking like a little child.
“No one’s talking to you, old man. Keep your thoughts to yourself.” Antonios sneered.
“Maybe ya should follow yer own advice. I won’t keep my damn thoughts to myself when they ain’t the wrong ones. But I’d shut my damn trap if I had any like yours.” Zisis picked at his nose nonchalantly.
“Are you trying to pick a fight, Zisis?” Antonios rose from his seat in a moss-eaten rock.
“Are ya?” Her husband mirrored him, extracting himself from his little corner. “Talking about running fer yer lives when yer brothers and friends are out there fighting for yours?”
“They’re fighting a hopeless battle! They’re going to be massacred!” Romanos screamed, his tone cracking like he was trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.
“They’re dying for what’s on the line!” Zisis roared back. “I’d have half a mind to pick up a weapon myself if my bones weren’t dust! It’s a damn embarrassment you’re in here with the women!”
“I warned you to keep your thoughts to yourself,” Antonios said, taking a menacing step forward.
“Do it then, ya bastard! Kick my arse in front of the children and women ya want to abandon. I’ll take it standing like a man, and I’ll protect them to my dying breath, because they’re my kin. Just as I’d do for ya.” It was at times like these that Glykeria remembered why, out of all the men in Kerasia, she’d married the greatest fool of them all.
Old Zisis took a step forward and, in a gesture that surprised everyone but Glykeria, pulled both Antonios and Romanos into a crushing hug.
“Wha-? Get off of me!” Romanos squawked
“What are you doing, old man?” Antonios grunted, struggling against Zisis’s surprisingly strong grip.
“We are kin, you and I.” Zisis’s voice cracked, his grip tightening around the two men. “I understand ya, I do. I’m scared shitless of those damn nomads, same as you and I don’t wanna die in this damp hole.” He began to sniffle, a loud, undignified sound. “But we can’t run forever. That’s no way to live.”
Disarmed by the old man’s raw confession, Antonios’s bravado crumbled. “My cousin… he’s out there fighting,” he blubbered, his face crumpling. “What if he…?” He couldn’t finish, burying his face in Zisis’s bony shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.
“My dog, Herakles the third…” Romanos wailed, his voice a high-pitched keen. “He ran away in the commotion! What will I do without his soft cuddles?!”
The three men clung to each other, a wretched, sobbing chorus of fear and misery that echoed in the cavern.
THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.
Glykeria’s palm connected with the back of each of their heads in a swift, practiced succession.
“Ow!” yelped Romanos.
“Ouch!” exclaimed Antonios.
“Owie! Woman, what’d you do that for?” Zisis howled, rubbing the back of his head.
“Stop embarrassing yourselves,” She snapped, but there was no bite to it. Her husband’s antics had seen to that. “All three of you. We have company.” She gestured to a lone figure walking up the trail to the mouth of the cavern. The sobbing petered off as every head turned, instantly alert. A slight boy with a neat ponytail and a timid look was approaching. A collective sigh of relief went through the cave. Well, almost everyone.
“It’s the savages! They’re back!” Zisis shrieked, scrambling into a wobbly fighting stance. “Hide the children!” It was a poor one, as it didn’t help him to see the second smack coming.
“Owwieee, ya hit the same spot, woman!” Her idiot husband massaged the growing bulge on his head. She sometimes wondered if his head grew in size, maybe he would become smarter. She would certainly keep doing her part to make it happen.
The young soldier looked flustered by the commotion. “Greetings and salutations, villagers of Kerasia. I am a soldier of the Probatofrourio garrison,” he said, his voice earnest. He was beaming, his smile a dazzling sunrise in their gloomy cave, looking every bit the gallant gentleman. “I bring joyous news. The captain has won! The raiders are defeated! I am to escort you back to the valley.”
“Like hell ya are!” Her husband, on the other hand, looked like an obnoxious child in comparison. “Ya can’t fool Old Zisis, ya damn nomad!”
“N-nomad? I am Pavlos of Pothosi Village. I assure you, I am of Greek heritage.” Pavlos proclaimed, not knowing how to react.
“That’s exactly what a thieving nomad would say!” Zisis declared, wagging his finger in the young man’s face as if he’d just found irrefutable proof he was a secret barbaric nomad in disguise. Glykeria hit him again.
“Owwwwwiiiiiie!!” He yelped. Glykeria’s accuracy was uncanny after years of putting up with her husband.
“Please forgive my husband,” she said, holding back a sigh. “He is prone to overdramatizations. Lead on, soldier.”
The group shuffled out after the soft-spoken soldier, leaving Zisis stewing in the cave entrance. “No one ever believes old Zisis!” he muttered to the empty air. “But one day you’ll see! You’ll all see!” A moment later, he hobbled after them.
Glykeria smiled to herself. For all his bluster, her idiot husband would follow them into a nomad’s trap and back again, just to make sure they were safe.
The rugged mountains of the Theodoran heartland bled into the gentler, rolling hills of the steppe, the winding goat trails giving way to the wide, churned-earth tracks of the Crimean herds. In the distance, Chufut-Kale rose from a vast plateau, a jagged crown of stone against the sky - the seat of the Great Khan. For Seit, it was not a sanctuary, but the site of his judgment.
He had fled the battle only to find the forest paths blocked, the great oaks felled in a deliberate, final checkmate. It was then, in that moment of trapped helplessness, that Seit had been forced to acknowledge the terrifying intellect of his opponent. The Theodoran commander had not simply won; he had orchestrated their annihilation.
The result was a catastrophic symphony. It was the first time in recent memory that the Theodorans had handed such a humiliating and devastating victory over the Great Khan. Worse, none could dismiss it as simply a border skirmish by an overzealous bey. The Khan himself had sanctioned this raid, sending his own heir, Nur Devlet, on what should have been a simple punitive expedition. Now the Kalga-Sultan was missing, presumed dead, his force of one hundred elite riders shattered, and Seit was the ranking survivor and the bearer of these disastrous news.
He had done what he could. He had warned that petty fool Nur of the risks, pointed out the obvious trap, and had been humiliated for his caution. All because he suggested they add more warriors to the raid. Warriors that might have turned the tide of the battle! He cursed Nur’s name in his heart and hoped the cretin bled out on the forest’s floor.
Now, he had to salvage the unsalvageable. He sent riders with the Khante’s banner to the edge of the frontier, a rallying point for the ghosts trickling out of the wilderness. They came in ones and twos, haunted men with stories of being hunted through the forests by roving bands of Greeks. The final tally was a deathblow: of the one hundred who rode south, fewer than thirty remained.
“It’s a disaster,” Seit said for the umpteenth time, pacing the confines of his command tent. He ran a hand through his long, dark hair, his fingers coming away with a few loose strands. He stopped, forcing his hand down. Keeping his hair pristine was hard enough without his anxiousness ruining it.
His second-in-command, Tevfik, sat calmly on his mahogany campaign stool, a steaming cup of thyme tea cradled in his hands. “A disaster you played no part in, my Bey,” he said, his voice a steady counterpoint to Seit’s agitation. “And one you explicitly advised against.”
“That will be a footnote in the story of the Khan’s dead son!” Seit snapped, resuming his frantic circling. “Nur Devlet’s arrogance led us to ruin, and I will be the one who pays the price for it.”
"The Khanate is weaker today than it was yesterday,” Tevfik said, his voice a calm anchor in the storm of Seit’s anxiety. “But our clan, my Bey, is not. In fact, this debacle has left Clan Bozkurt more powerful.”
“Oh?” Seit sneered, halting his frantic pacing to glare at his second-in-command. “Enlighten me. I am in no mood for jests.”
“Every other bey who rode with Nur Devlet has lost a son, a nephew, the core of their personal guard,” Tevfik explained, taking a slow sip of his tea. “They are not just grieving; they are vulnerable. We are whole. We have lost the least amount of face.”
“Face is meaningless when the Khan decides to remove my head!” Seit threw his hands up in exasperation. “He will need a scapegoat, and I am the highest-ranking survivor. It does not matter what I did or did not do!” He resumed his pacing. Gathering the survivors hadn’t been solely an act of command; it had been a desperate attempt to buy time, to delay the inevitable, agonizing he would have to deliver in Chufut-Kale.
“Then make it matter,” Tevfik said simply, his eyes closed in contentment as he savored the aroma of his tea.
Seit stopped dead. The words cut through his panic like a saber thrust. Of course. He was not just a survivor; he was the primary source. The story the Khan and the other beys would hear would be the one
he
told. He controlled the narrative. The frantic energy in his chest did not vanish; it coalesced, hardening from wild fear into a cold, predatory focus. Seit’s mind raced with the possibilities of how to exactly manipulate current events in his favour.
“Come,” Tevfik said softly, sensing the shift. He gestured to a cushion beside his small, mahogany folding table. “Sit. Drink. I find it clears the mind.”
Seit eased onto the cushion, the tension finally draining from his shoulders. He accepted the offered cup, the delicate porcelain warm against his fingers. “What would I do without you, Tevfik?”
“Die from worry, I should think,” Tevfik replied, a rare, soft smile touching his lips.
Seit let out a short, genuine laugh. “I’m not sure I can deny it.”
“What do you think of the tea?” Tevfik asked, his expression turning serious, watching Seit for the slightest tell. He took great pride in his homebrew infusions.
Seit took a deep gulp and, with a force of will, commanded his expression to morph into a flawless, satisfied smile. “Exquisite, as usual, my friend.” He’d never had the heart to tell Tevfik he didn’t actually enjoy tea at all. One of these days, he would have to tell him the truth, but not was not the right time. The current moment was inopportune.
The plan solidified in his mind. He would tell a story so exquisite, so politically necessary, that the Khan would not be able to punish him and would, in fact, find himself forced to reward his sound judgment. He would take that miserable fool Nur’s reckless, foolish end and reforge it into a heroic tragedy. Seit wasn’t worried about the specifics. The result was already guaranteed. Because when it came to spinning a lie, no one was better than him.