The victory tasted of ash and cold river water. In the temporary camp, a miserable collection of canvas shelters hidden in a fold of the hills, the rain continued its patient work, turning the ground to a thick, sucking mud. The green, chemical fire of the raid was long extinguished, but its ghost lingered in the air, a sharp smell of ozone and burnt promises that clung to their wet wool coats. The elation of the attack had bled out hours ago, replaced by the quiet, methodical accounting of its price.
Four were dead. Six were wounded. The numbers were small, precise, and impossibly heavy. Sineus watched as a man with a shattered arm had his wound dressed, his face a pale mask of sweat in the gloom. Another lay still under a thin blanket, his breathing shallow and ragged. These were not the abstract casualties on a general’s map. They were men he had shared bread with, men whose names he knew. This was the interdependence he had chosen, and its cost was tallied in shallow graves dug into the soft earth.
His head throbbed, a dull, persistent ache behind his eyes. It was the residue of the memory-noise he had woven into the French command structure, the price for turning his art into a blunt instrument of chaos. Every choice had a cost. The Lodge had taught him that. But the Lodge’s costs were clean, abstract things—honor, duty, a piece of one’s soul. This was different. This was blood and mud and the faces of the dead.
He saw Alessandro Volpe sitting apart from the others, under the meager shelter of a dripping oak. The inventor was hunched over a small crate, his back to the camp. He was cleaning his tools, his hands moving with a slow, deliberate precision. A brass gear, a copper coil, a delicate glass vial—each was wiped clean of grime and blood and set down in perfect order. It was the work of a man trying to impose a small, controllable logic on a world that had none. He was not grieving. He was rebuilding his armor, piece by piece.
Sineus felt a pull, a sense of shared responsibility that was entirely new. In the Lodge, success was his, and failure was his. Here, the victory belonged to all of them, and so did the loss. He walked over, his boots sinking into the mud with each step. He stopped beside the inventor. Alessandro did not look up, his focus absolute on the intricate mechanism in his hands.
From his coat, Sineus took a roll of clean linen bandage. He held it out. He said nothing. The gesture was the only language he had for this moment, a simple, practical offering in a world stripped of courtesies.
Alessandro’s hands stilled. He remained hunched over his work for a long moment, the silence stretching between them, thick with the sound of the rain. Then, slowly, he looked up. His eyes were dark, hollowed out by exhaustion and grief, but the cynical fire in them was banked to a low coal. He looked at the bandage, then at Sineus’s face. He gave a single, sharp nod.
He reached out and took the bandage. His own hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked rag, the frayed ends of it like a severed thread against his skin. As he unwound the dirty cloth, Sineus saw a deep gash across his knuckles, the skin split open from the steam-craft’s collision. It was a small wound, a minor cost in the night’s brutal ledger, but it was real. Alessandro wrapped the clean linen around his hand, his movements still precise, but slower now. The act of acceptance was a crack in his armor, a concession that cost him more than Sineus could guess.
— It was a clean strike, — Sineus said, his voice low.
— It wasn’t clean enough, — Alessandro replied without looking up. He finished tying off the bandage. — They’re not grieving. They’re adapting.
As if summoned by his words, a figure splashed through the mud at the edge of the camp. It was one of the scouts, a boy of no more than seventeen, his face pale and slick with rain. He ran to Alessandro, gasping for breath.
— They’re moving, — the boy said, his voice a strained whisper. — The main force. They’re not heading for the river crossing anymore. They’ve rerouted.
Alessandro stood up, his weariness falling away, replaced by a predator’s sharp attention. — Where?
— North. Through the Khavron Pass, — the scout said. — It’s a bigger convoy. Much bigger. Wagons, artillery, a full company of infantry as escort.
The cold reality of the scout’s words settled over the camp like a shroud. Their victory on the river had been a feint. They had destroyed three barges, yes, but they had only trimmed a branch. The root of the problem was not only intact; it was now moving faster, along a more protected route. They had not won a battle. They had merely confirmed the enemy’s primary axis of advance.
— A fortress, — Alessandro murmured, his gaze distant. He was seeing the terrain in his mind. — The pass is a natural fortress. High walls, a single road. An ambush there is suicide.
Sineus felt the weight of their incomplete victory. It was the core lesson of attrition. You could win and win and win, and still lose the war if the enemy had more pieces to place on the board. The price of their raid was not just the four dead men in the ground. It was this new, more desperate gamble they were now forced to take.
— We need a map, — Sineus said.
They unrolled a stained oilskin map on the same crate where Alessandro had been cleaning his tools. The lantern light cast their faces in sharp relief, a small island of purpose in the immense, indifferent darkness. The Khavron Pass was a jagged scar drawn across the mountains, a chokepoint that funneled all traffic onto a single, exposed road.
— We can’t fight them there, — one of the Carbonari said, a man with a grim face and a fresh bandage on his arm. — Not head-on. They have a hundred soldiers. We have sixteen who can still hold a rifle.
— We won’t fight them head-on, — Alessandro said, his finger tracing the high ridges above the pass. — We will fight the mountain.
The plan they forged was born of desperation and a grim understanding of their own limitations. It was a simple, brutal piece of physics. They would not engage the soldiers. They would use the last of their explosives to bring the mountain down on top of the convoy. It was an all-or-nothing gambit. If it worked, they could cripple the French supply line for weeks. If it failed, they would be trapped on the high slopes with no chance of escape.
Sineus looked at the faces around the map. He saw fear, yes, but he also saw a hard, unbending resolve. He saw the same look that had been in Elina Petrova’s eyes on the riverbank. It was the look of people who had already lost everything and had decided to turn their loss into a weapon. He was one of them now. His fate was tied to theirs.
The rain finally stopped. The air grew still and cold, thick with the smell of wet earth and the faint, metallic tang of coming snow.
They had to bring down a mountain.
