Fallen Eagle-Chapter 37: Tar and Timber

Fallen Eagle-Chapter 37: Tar and Timber

In the southern corner of the Suyren castle town, the strangest ritual Kratos had ever witnessed cracked on at dawn, every damned day for the last week.
“Remember, loose joints, and make sure you go through the whole motion.” The sergeant veterans called out, miming the strange movements they themselves barely understood, but sure as hell enforced on all of the lot, painfully too. It was a targeted attack on his joints and the sore muscles that he’d had as cozy companions these last few days. Their strange Captain had named ‘em “warm-ups”. It was a bitter irony in the freezing cold, as they did jack shit to bite back the frigid pangs that came with the November wind.
Still, Kratos worked through it because that was lesson one: don’t slack. Slackers earned extra shovelin’, or a shift on the rooftops if the hawk-eyed vets - or God help you, the Captain - spotted you doggin’ it.
“Enough,” Speakin’ of the man - the boss man was, inexplicably, in an’ amongst the caked mud ‘warming’ himself up to freezing death along with the rest of the dirty bastards.
“Let’s run.” He said it once, and the whole herd broke, feet drumming frozen earth, breath smoking like chimneys.
When his pops had made Kratos join up for the roll this year, sayin’ he either got good or he didn’t havta come back at all, Kratos didn’t think he’d be prancin’ around like a startled sheepling from one end of town to the other. It was a bizarre sight, he was sure. He saw it in the eyes and glares of the townspeople as they trudged by, setting a steady pace.
The running tugged old strings. Back on the homestead he’d loved tag - legs burning, laughter ragged, dust in his teeth. He just hadn’t figured childish games lived inside army work. Nor had he seen any other company doing the same. Their lot alone, apparently, got to parade like fools at sunup. Still, the pace set was easy, though easy seemed ‘nough to wind the weaker of the sorry bunch that made up his ‘com-pa-nie’.
“Ahh. That hits the spot.” Agapios, oldest of the rabble - or rubble, as the Captain named ’em - rolled his shoulders as they cooled down and ate their slop. Kratos wasn’t sure how the man had slid past the levy, nor why he hadn’t sent one of his sons like any other graybeard with sense.
Like his pops had.
“Who would have thought we’d be eating like kings, eh, Kratos?” Agapios was always anglin’ for cheer in their ten-man group, and always nosin’ at Kratos’s silence. He lifted his wooden bowl high like some damn holy treasure, the thick broth wobblin’ like jelly.
“Yeah, they’re alright.” He hated givin’ the man anything, but the food was real and heavy and good. There was some scrap of mutton in there, he was sure, and a sour jolt of something new to his tongue the others called “salt”. Peas by the handful and grain enough to sit in his belly like a warm brick. The Captain might be odd, but whoever managed rations had a saint’s touch.
Didn’t mean Kratos wanted chatter. He wanted to serve his time, keep his head low, and walk home when it was done. No friends. No stories. No trouble.
“Were the portions just as good back on Probatofrourio, Christos?” Seein’ no reaction from Kratos, the geezer tried his luck at the mountain next to ‘im, with even worse results. If Kratos was quiet, the brute was downright mute. Didn’t even give Agapios the time a’ day, just grunted a dismissal into his food and continued groundin’ it down like a mill. The conversation died right then an’ there, pinning Agapios’s mouth shut. Blessings did happen sometimes.
After breakfast came the quick “feet-care routine,” which the men were forced to do like little lassies twice a day. They still hadn’t been taught to hold a spear or a shield, nor any of the drills Kratos had seen the other sleepy bunches around ’em run. Instead, they learned to walk fast in a strange heel-to-toe way, to stand pretty in a straight little pose, to turn and twist on command, and to grind through those bizarre routines an’ stretches the Captain swore would make ’em healthy enough to ‘see results down the line.’
“Ouch, these things certainly hurt, am I right?” Agapios quipped, light as a feather, while piercin’ one of his boils. “But I haven’t been feeling as terrible as the haggard sods in the other companies. We should count our blessings for that.” Agapios made small talk with the meek, scrawny things in their ‘De-kar-chos’, chatting like a midwife as his hands worked through the routine with unnerving patience.
Tubs of harsh lye soap were sloshed down the line, and each man dipped feet and hands into freezing water and scrubbed till the skin squeaked. Afterward, needles kissed the boilin’ pot, came out hissing, and were used to prick the usual bubbles and blisters that Kratos - and every field hand he’d ever known - had learned to live with. It felt like witchcraft, and useless to boot. Blisters were a way of life, and dirt a badge of the plow. The sting said you belonged, that you’d slaved proper for your betters.
But their Captain - a war hero who’d beaten back those thrice blasted, scum-of-the-earth nomads - was almost single-mindedly focused on the scrubbing for some godamn reason. Everyone, from bark-voiced sergeant to green recruits, was made to clean extremities and face at least four times a day. A parade of prissiness like he’d never seen, but which no doubt was a spectacle for fussy nobles who cared more about shine than steel.
The wandering thoughts made a poor guide for Kratos’s needle, and it struck closer to flesh than the red bubble of skin he’d meant to pierce. A hiss escaped him, and Agapios was there in an instant.
“Are you alright, Kratos?” The old man asked, eyebrows drawn as if he actually gave a shit.
“Ye, I’m fine.” Kratos tried to hurry ‘im off, to go back to playin’ with his feet, because that’s what this was.
“Here, I can show you how to hold the needle.” The old man started to plop down next to Kratos, somethin’ that brought heat to his neck. The geezer didn’t know how to keep to his own damn self.
“I don’t need ya to show me anythin’.” Kratos snarled. “What I need is ya back in your corner,” he struck his finger out, ending it in the old man’s chest. “And to leave me in mine.”
“Oh… okay, Kratos. Sorry.” The surprise and hurt on the man’s face didn’t please Kratos much, but watchin’ him shuffle back to his gaggle of gossipin’ maids did. He just wanted to be left the hell alone.
He couldn’t be like his brother Marios: cool, calm, collected, liked by everyone. Maybe his pops was right and there was somethin’ wrong with ‘im. The Captain had straightened out his other rowdy brothers, but Kratos doubted he’d flatten much here. He wasn’t like the others… he was worse.
A chill crept over him, the animal kind that says you’re bein’ watched. He turned and found the big oaf, Christos, face still as quarried stone, eyes boring into him.
“Whaddya want?” He challenged the mountain, his mouth movin’ before his mind did. When sense caught up, regret did, too.
Christos looked away - not cowed, just finished with whatever weighin’ he’d been doing. Kratos swallowed hard, the needle trembling a hair in his fingers, and bent back to his work.
Mournings were usually reserved for training, Kratos had heard, but their training was absurd to the extreme. They didn’t train at all, but instead were busy fur-ni-shing their living spaces: a spit of the worst quarter in town, a bleached-bone patch the Captain had snatched for them alone.
It fit, at first glance - a shitty place for a shitty levy - only now they’d been tasked with making sure it didn’t stay shitty for long. Their chief exercise had been, in fact, based around making the ruin less ruinous. They spent hours each day re-daubing walls so cracked you could feel the wind inside as sharp as out. It was a wonder half the shells hadn’t keeled over. Yet most beams were still right enough, gray with age but sound. The few timbers gone to rot were marked, the huts knocked flat, and their bones carted to patch the ones worth saving. The ones they now slept in.
Ironically, the pace set for thatching the roofs and daubing the walls was sterner than the run had been. If ya worked like a madman and finished your job early, you earned a longer sit until you started it all over again come afternoon. And if ya finished your work before the last bell sang, you got yourself an extra ladle. For people who’d been paid in screaming bellies and empty promises, it was a godsend. And enough reason to swallow nonsense orders whole, because failin’ meant no extra rest and no extra stew.
“Hand me some thatch.” The big oaf commanded from his perch on the roof, voice like a cart axle. He only spoke when the work demanded it. Agapios handed him a handful of the stuff, which the giant pressed into the hole of rotten thatch and tied it to the wood beneath.
“Tar.” He said, sparing Kratos more words, somethin’ he appreciated.
What he didn’t much appreciate was being ordered by a walking cliff, but he brushed a thin coat across the fresh thatch with the horsehair brush all the same, pulling the strands snug. The black stuff bled into the straw, holding it together. Apparently, this also kept the water out. Another bit of witchcraft to add to the Captain’s collection. They finished patching up the last hole and slid down their ladders.
“Our fastest time yet, the sun hasn’t even reached the midpoint,” Agapios chirped, ever the songbird. The other sheeplings in their ten-man knot ate it up, a few grinning through chapped lips.
“Oy, where are you off to, Christos? We’ve done our bit for the hour.” Agapios asked the mountain as he was already ghosting away.
“I’m helping the others,” the mountain said, not breaking stride. He shouldered over to a crew slopping buckets of clay slurry onto a bed of twig and reed, raising the hut’s floor a step above the rains.
Kratos watched, begrudgingly impressed. He’d never seen so many fancy ways to build a damned shack, but some of the men swore this was common in the big cities. He didn’t know none of that. He’d yet to see even one in Suyren that had gotten this type of special treatment. Not for folk like them. Not that he was complainin’. He hadn’t never slept so far from the cold and wet as he had here. He’d rather not share his house with three other unfortunates, but even that was a fr cry from the half dozen back home, so he’d make do.
The thought brought a pang of pain, of the kind you couldn’t grit your teeth through and be done with. There was no home to go back to, not since the northern thievin’ devils took their due on their last visit. Ash didn’t make a roof. Memory didn’t make a door.
He looked to the giant to take the sting off of things, letting his mind wander. He’d never seen such a stubborn piece a’ stone as Christos. The man was downright obsessed with work, barely speaking a word to anyone else. Worked with the Captain ‘fore he’d said. Knew what it meant to work under ‘im. If that’s how ya ended up after a spell with the Captain - jaw locked, heart nailed to a ledger of chores - maybe Kratos ought to consider dippin’ out early.
Life threw plenty ‘a work your way without ya havin’ to go search for it. And they might not’ve been drilling with spears, but Kratos’s shoulders were spent from hauling tar buckets and climbing ladders till the rungs blurred. Damn, not even his house back home used any kind of special tar. He was living like a lordlin’ out ‘ere, if lordlings could even stomach livin’ ankle-deep in mud and sleepin’ to the sound of men snoring in chorus.
He just had to coast through the rest of the season, and he’d be fine.
Christos woke miserably. He wasn’t filled with scrapes or bruises; in fact, he’d never felt healthier. But there was a subtle feeling, an itch he couldn’t quite scratch, a subtle pang not of pain, but of discomfort. The feeling nagged without a name.
He looked to Agape’s still form beside him. She slept softly, like a lamb folded in meadow grass. The home they’d picked half at random had been made theirs in two weeks.
A proper wooden table had been fashioned from the still serviceable wood of the rotted houses in their periphery. The hearth now burned with a healthy fire. Their floor was newly refurbished with clay slurry and thatch, thumped and rammed by Christos himself with the log-rammer the Captain had conjured from thin air. It sat a good step above the small ditch that lined the outer portions of their redaubbed walls. The patched roof didn’t whisper a drop, though the rain ticked steady on the tar. They weren’t cold, they weren’t wet, they had nothing true to complain about.
And yet Christos couldn’t help but feel wanting for something. Habit tugged him upright before thought could argue. The Captain would be waiting; he couldn’t dally long. The need to rise quickly brought a small measure of satisfaction he didn’t examine too closely.
Agape woke up to his clumsy attempt at rising quietly from bed. “Going already?” She moaned sleepily, a yawn escaping her. Late-night escapades had worn them both, he thought with a private, crooked smile. He came home each day with too much energy and nowhere for it to go.
“Yeah. Morning roll call won’t be long now.” He said, pulling on clothes with quick, practiced motions now that he could abandon all pretense to stealth.
Agape sat up and similarly layered wool on linen, her fingers quickly roping her hair back. She’d taken most of the work of tidying up the house during the day, fetching water, having dinner waiting for him, although Christos came home filled with two hearty daily meals from his militia work. The captain had said they were working extra hours, but Christos didn’t think the soldiers much minded when the extra hours came with full ladles.
“Off to the river again?” he asked, meaning the silver creek that raced around Suyren. It was a pretty sight and awfully fast, but he saw how the people there washed their nasty clothing from the same water they took to drink. Something he now knew was ill-advised.
“My man knows me so well.” Agape winked as she finished tidying herself up, moving over to smooth over Christos’s clothing.
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“Yes, he does.” Christos reached for her bum, not to feel for it - though it was nice enough - but for what she had in her back pocket. He fished out a ball of bread. “Off to pay your daily charity to the city’s unfortunates?”
Agape’s eyebrows knit themselves into a knot. “She’ll starve if we don’t do anything, and Valeria says there’s more like her suffering.”
“I don’t know what lies
he
is feeding you,” Christos said, heat flaring despite himself, “but while we might have bread for one little twat, we don’t have enough to feed his whole family of rats. If he’s not just pocketing the extra food to fill his belly, that is.”
“If
she
is, I’d be more than happy to see her
fat as a pig,” Agape turned, pouting. “Why d’you care what I do with my bread? It’s not like we need it!”
Christos held her from behind, sighing. “I don’t want folk taking advantage of you, is all.”
“I don’t need ya looking out for me like a damn fuckin’ damsel.” Agape’s foul mouth and fouler accent came out when her temper got the better of her. “You’ve been on my case all week.”
The thought of apologizing coursed through Christos, but the words had trouble coming out. He held Agape silently until she worked herself loose with a huff and shouldered her bundle, pouting Christos trudged out after her, if only to say goodbye.
They stepped out together into the crisp morning, and split at the lane: her toward the river with bread tucked safe, him toward the yard with the nameless itch still riding his shoulders.
Christos headed out to the line before the heart of their no-longer-ramshackle quarter, quietly marveling at the change.
A shallow ditch now lined not only the houses but the entire outer perimeter, drawing away the deluge that had soaked through the rest of the town. Firm footpaths of thoroughly stomped pottery, branches, and small stones made up the best pavement he’d seen in the whole of town, cutting a simple path through their own ‘Dung Quarter’ as the locals had called it. He bet that name would lose its luster fast.
In a corner, a stack of thick, heavy logs. Dragged over from the nearby woods, hauling the wood with half work of bundles of hemp rope and half agonizing shoulder haul that left men sore and complaining of the cold and rain. Stripping them of the smaller branches had been another battle altogether.
A line of militia already waited on the Captain. They were on time; they were tidier than when they’d stumbled in weeks ago. By every measure they were improving. To Christos’s eye, though, they were soft. House-menders and joggers, not soldiers. They didn’t know the weight of a weapon.
And neither did he.
Christos clenched his fists as he took a place at the edge of the formation and kept his silence. The easy camaraderie here hadn’t found him the way it had back in Probatofrourio.
“Oy, Christos, how are you doing today?” Agapios, the oldest in their company, called out to him, his voice sounding perpetually weary, but in a friendly sort of way.
“Fine.” His words came out too terse and too rough. Christos felt an instinctive need to keep the old man away.
“Wonder what the Captain’s got for us this week.” Agapios swept a hand at the improved lanes and roofs. “It’s been an eventful few days.”
“Who can say?” Christos eyed a lithe, sun-tanned figure approaching in his brown gambeson. Kratos was always wearing an ugly mug, and the Captain’s enforced hair shearing had only accentuated his glare. The kid wore a foul mood like armor.
“Maybe you can, you’ve been with the Captain the longest, maybe you could ask him?” Agapios pressed; his words held no double meaning, but Christos disliked them anyway. He hadn’t expected to be building homes and pavements, so he clearly didn’t know the Captain as well as Agapios thought he did. The tame rhythm they kept to here was a mockery of the grueling hell he had lived in Probatofrourio.
“Maybe,” was all Christos said, ending the conversation right then and there. Agapios sighed and drifted off.
The Captain arrived with his usual entourage of Stefanos and Demetrios in tow, walking toward the middle of the assembly to announce the day’s work, and in this case, the week’s start.
“We’ve focused on your dwellings,” He began, voice made for holding a crowd. “And you might have wondered for what purpose. You’ve not touched a spear, nor a weapon of any kind.” He’d always had a way with words, holding them to his whims with unnatural ease.
“It’s because you aren’t ready.”
The sting the words might have carried at the beginning was watered down by the easy work. The levy didn’t look too unkindly to their strange Captain anymore. “How could you work to the level I demanded if your homes were in shambles, if you went to sleep every night shivering in the cold?”
Nods answered him. Most had expected worse than roofs and stew.
“Trust me, the work will change now.” He declared into the cold, misty air. “We have settled our living situation. So now we begin the final stretch of preparation before you take on a levy’s full duties.”
He gestured to the Suyren fortress in the distance. What had once looked like an imperious eagle was now a common sparrow in Christos’s eyes. He had lived in its shadow for too long and had gotten to know too many of those who lived there.
“We will use the skills that you’ve learned during construction to begin work on the outer wooden palisade of the fortress.” They were going to keep working like common labourers? The hope that had surged in Christos’s chest dampened once more. “The pace will increase, and the extra duties I’ve imposed upon you - boiling water, collecting firewood, equipment maintenance - will continue unabated. Remember, the work never ends.”
He nodded to the veterans, who fanned out from behind him. “Begin your warm-up. It goes without saying that the morning runs will run concurrently to our other work for the foreseeable future.”
The levy moved as one, almost cheerful at the promise of more work of the easy kind. They rolled shoulders and circled hips, bending and twisting through the little motions, playing at soldiery while the cold nipped ears and noses. Laughter pricked the air; a few groans did, too, the harmless kind that comes with stretching a stubborn joint.
Christos stood stock still amidst the circus, trying to take in the fact that the next week would be dedicated to a pointless building effort once again. His stillness drew the Captain’s eye.
“Stratiotes, a moment if you could.”
An order disguised as a request. Christos stepped out at once.
The Captain led him next to the pig pens that had been the bane of the levy’s existence ever since they’d settled here. The Captain had since struck a deal with the swineherd: when the culls came, the company would get the leftover bones. In exchange, the men hauled pig manure every day to a quieter spot further away from the quarter - beyond even the southern edge of town, where the town and the Dung Quarter sat. The men would then cover it in ash to keep down the smell and the flies. Something both the farmer and the company men appreciated.
“You’re dissatisfied with the schedule and the work,” the Captain said, blunt as a cudgel. He spoke into the small, constant waft of pen-stink, as if to anchor the talk in something plain.
Christos hesitated, keeping himself closed up. “No, sir.” He didn’t want to seem insubordinate to someone who had done so much for him.
“Yes, you are.” The Captain’s voice was the crack of a whip, and Christos felt its lash cleanly, prompting a wince. “We’ve known each other for some time. Speak freely, Stratiotes. I dislike hedging.” His eyes narrowed to a spindly squint. “And I dislike self-serving lies even more.”
“I-” The sound caught. He’d been wrestling with this for days, a shape he couldn’t name. “I’m not sure what we’re doing, Captain. The pace…” He began slowly, breaking through the thought that clung to his mouth, savouring it before spelling it out. “It is soft.”
“The men…”He flicked his chin toward the yard where men laughed through their stretches. Something the veterans didn’t scold so long as the motions stayed honest. Something impossible at Probatofrourio, where you found yourself gasping for breath.
“They are soft.”
That was it
, Christos realized with a start. That was the splinter. The thing that had needled him since he’d arrived.
“This whole place is soft, Captain. They live as if they don’t have wolves at the border, drooling themselves at the prospect of sinking their teeth into us. Suyren sits little farther from the line than the villages do, but they act as though they’re nestled in an iron garden.” His breath smoked, the words coming out faster. “They play at war and convince themselves they could hold against anything. What have we learned? How to thatch a roof and daub a wall. We’re no stronger than when we started, just better housed.” The captain listened silently through the rant, his expression unreadable.
“We’re just as weak as when we started…”
“Sheep waiting for the slaughter.” The captain finished his thoughts, saying the line with a grim smile.
Christos rushed to correct himself. “I did not mean to criticize you, Captain-” A hand forestalled his retort.
“You are correct, Stratiotes,” The captain began, almost conversational. “You have likely felt I was letting them off the hook when compared to the regime I instituted at the Probatofrourio. And that is correct.”
He started walking the quarter’s edge; Christos fell in beside him without being told. “There were several factors that allowed me to implement such a draconian system in Probatofrourio. The first and foremost was the imminent threat of a Tatar raid. You were much more aware of it than the people flocking to Suyren.”
“But they’re right on the northern frontier.” Christos couldn’t wrap his mind around that.
“Peace has reigned between our nations for many decades, harkening back to the time of the Golden Horde.” The Captain explained as they paced along the length of the shallow water drain outlining the quarter. “Small raids have been frequent, yes, but these never strike deep enough to trouble the people here. A proper çapul hadn’t happened in ages. For them, the raids are stories they hear, not a burden they feel.”
Christos's eyes followed the swale as it meandered, guiding the rainwater down its sloping funnel. He had thought this was a burden that all Theodorans shared.
“The second point,” The captain continued. “Is that most of the people in our company are the weakest, least fit. That is no accident.” He left the why hanging on purpose. “If I started them at full tilt, they would collapse in a day.”
Across the field, another company ground through spear drills, faces set, shafts braced, boots thudding in a single, grim cadence - a hard contrast to their own lot trotting the length of town.
“I had to build the bodies first,” the Captain said. “Hauling logs, filling buckets, digging ditches, the morning runs, the hearty meals - every piece is a tool so they can keep up when the intensity comes. I cannot enforce iron discipline for their whole levy by playing tyrant. Not with this group.”
His gaze slid over the runners, the laughs puffing white in the cold. “Camaraderie doesn’t only come from surviving a storm. It also comes from stacking stones together in clear weather.”
Christos watched the men rib one another as they jogged, full of light talk, easy smiles, and fuller faces than when they’d arrived, a harsh contrast to the pike line’s clenched jaws.
“But I also need a standard,” the Captain said. “Diligence and excellence won’t stick if I hammer them onto mud. They must be cultivated.”
Their steps brought them beside the original latrines: two deep cuts in the earth with mean little wooden outhouses squatting over them. The smell rose in a thin, steady ghost. “And to cultivate, I need men who carry the line for the others.”
He turned square to Christos. The movement tugged at a memory - another night, another ditch, another talk that had shifted the ground beneath Christos’s feet.
“What do you mean, Captain?” Christos asked, startled by the clean intensity in the Captain’s eyes.
“You have seen the truth of our situation. The tidings for this Principality are darker than they seem, Christos.” It was the first time the Captain had neglected to call him by his title. “I need you to grow beyond your current role.
They
need you to become more than who you are.”
Christos’s gaze drifted to the runners. The grins, the breath-clouds, the unguarded ease, and - at their head - the grim-faced, sun-browned youth who carried his fury like a shield. Sullen and angry at the world, like Christos had once been too.
Christos set his features into granite. Finally, the road ahead was clear. Perhaps that was what had gnawed him most, not knowing how his blunt, violent blade fit into this peaceful little corner. But now the shape stood plain. He knew what the Captain wanted from him, what he needed to do. He would become the bellows that forged men by its heat.
The Captain extended his arm, beckoning. Christos held it steady. “Okay, Captain.”
The promise set like cooling iron. He would be the weapon the Captain needed and the principality lacked. And when the wolves tested the fence, they would find more than just tar and timber waiting. They would find men who understood their weight - and held it.
“You r-require yet m-more tools, C-Captain?” Theophylac forced out the words, the effort a familiar enemy he fought each day. “And the amount of m-meat scraps you are currently using…k-keeping the poor satisfied is difficult.” It was yet another stone added to the pile already on his chest. If the commoners weren’t soothed by alms, they might riot - and it would be Theophylact’s head on the pike when it happened.
“A simple investment, my Good Steward.” The Captain replied with his usual geniality. “It will make the collection all the easier if my company is well-equipped, well-rested, and well-fed. Peasants hide fewer coins from men who look like they can actually find them.” He put a hand over Theophylact’s shoulder, a gesture that he couldn’t deny gave him some semblance of security. “And picture the day you hand over the tithe entire. The smile you’ll earn from your lord will be worth ten carts of tools.”
Theophylact could picture the sweet moment: a clean ledger, a long breath leaving him, and praise spoken by his Lord in full view of the household. His position secure once more.
“I g-guess you are right, Captain. It is j-just…” Theophylact cursed himself for the hesitation. He should just confess his troubles. The captain had never judged him like the others did. Just because he spoke poorly, or because he wasn’t the most charming. The insufficiency seemed to cling to his skin.
“You can tell me, friend. What ails you?” Concern softened the Captain’s brow, and for a perilous moment, Theophylact felt a boy’s prickle behind the eyes.
“In t-truth,” he began, forcing himself past his roiling emotions. “The HypoStrategos has b-begun to question the need for the s-supplies. When I s-said it was for you, he asked why. He wanted t-to know what you were d-doing with them.” Theophylact’s hands fluttered like wild birds, their flight path an erratic mirror of his inner self. “H-he even s-suggested that perhaps we should not be so c-candid with our s-supplies.”
“He did, did he?” The Captain’s expression cooled, the genial mask thinning. “Did he ask about anything else, my good Steward?”
“W-well,” If there was a time to beg help, it was now. Thephylact decided to go for broke. “He also q-questioned me about the tithe and how its collection was p-proceeding. If t-there were any troubles. One thing led to another and I told him of our b-brilliant plan. But he thinks it is f-foolish…”
“I see…” Complication crossed the Captain’s face. Not anger, but a dangerous assessment that made Theophylact’s stomach tighten. Had he erred, sharing the plan that would surely solve Nomikos’s woes?
“We must be careful what we share with the Hypostrategos, Theophylact,” the Captain said, voice dropping a step.
“W-what? But why?” Theophylact asked, genuinely puzzled. The Captain leaned in closer, and instinct drew Theophylact in to match him.
“Do you not think he’s moving to gather power, my good Steward? That can be dangerous for you.”
“W-what?” The word croaked out. Nonsense surely. Yet the Captain’s tone lent the words credence.
“Think, friend. Since arriving, what has the Hypostrategos done?” The Captain’s eyes did not leave his. “He seized the armory keys and took the measure of its stock.” He let the point hang, clear as the cut of a knife. “Ask yourself what a man counts first when he means to rule.”
“T-That was to clear the inventorying b-backlog.” A most welcome help to Theophylact’s packed schedule.
“But he’s long since finished, and have you ever heard more about its state? Or any requisitions pertaining it? Should they not pass through you?” The Captain’s eyes were incriminatory, his whispers guiding Theophylact through the maze of shadowy plans. “He has effectively curtailed you from its management. And now he meddles in the general stores?”
Theophylact’s brain stilled, snagging at the thought. But the Captain kept going. “And he wants to know much about the tithe, and how we plan to collect it? Did he, mayhaps, suggest that he could take care of it on your behalf?”
“H-He did.” Theophylact breathed, not believing the pieces as they clicked together with a dreaded sound.
“He is trying to undermine you, Theophylact.”
“N-Nonsense,” Theophylact said, more out of reflex than belief.
“Is it? Why else pry into affairs beyond his station?”
He replayed every meeting in a flash - the gentle questions that were really measures, the compliments that felt like weighing a coin, the smile that never reached the eyes - seeing for the first time the picture painted by the Captain’s words.
“He means to wrest influence in Suyren,” the Captain went on, voice low. “He’s reaching for our lord Adanis by striking at his most loyal servant. You.”
The words dropped a pit out of Theophylact’s stomach. The preposterous theory had, in fact, been hiding in front of him the whole time. A traitorous viper was aiming its fangs at his liege lord, and injecting its deadly poison into his most loyal servant to do it. He likely thought it would be child’s play to swoop away the stuttering Steward’s power. He thought, like all the others, that Theophylact was an ignominious fool!
“W-what c-can we do, C-Captain?” If not for the Captain, the whole foul skein would’ve slipped past his trusting gaze. The Captain had answers. He always had answers.
“We let him think he is in control, friend.” The captain’s countenance was dark in the shadowy contours of Theophylact’s small chamber. Theophylact’s cozy nook felt suddenly full of dark corners that could hold foreign ears. “Subtly oppose him, draw the line where your functions begin, and his end.” Theophylact realized the Captain’s hand still rested on his shoulder - steady, present. One of the few he could trust.
“And tell me everything,” the Captain added. “We will weather this storm, friend.” His eyes narrowed; his smile widened by a hair. “Together.”

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Chapter 37: Tar and Timber