As Ali and Kamel left the Çatalca Line behind and rode deeper into Bulgarian territory, the war ceased to be an argument shouted in mosques or printed in newspapers.
It became something physical.
It pressed against Kamel's ribs with every step of his horse.
The warning nailed to the frontier post remained in his thoughts. Not quite a threat, but a seal—as though the border had closed behind him and the world had quietly decided what must follow.
A man could continue riding and pretend he remained free to turn around. Yet with every kilometre, the possibility became less real.
There would be no clean return, no undoing what had begun. This was an invasion. The first war in which Kamel had truly taken part. The Empire was moving forward again with men, horses, rifles and cannon, testing whether anything remained of the strength that had once carried its armies across continents.
And with that realization came a thought he despised for its softness.
What if this is wrong?
Ali appeared to possess no such doubt. He lifted his face toward the empty sky and shouted as though heaven itself required reminding.
"Allāhu akbar! Forward we go!"
His cry carried along the old imperial road, fierce and bright.
Kamel said nothing, he just kept his hands steady upon the reins and continued riding west.
The road beneath them looked ancient. Packed earth covered older stones polished by centuries of hooves, wheels and marching feet. In places it widened enough for two carts to pass. Elsewhere it narrowed between shallow ditches, hedges and trees bent by wind.
Dust rose beneath the horses and settled over everything like pale ash.
To their right, beyond fields recently cut for harvest, lay the village of İzzettin.
Its houses stood low and close together beneath roofs bleached by the summer sun. A slender minaret rose above them, visible from the main road as though stretching upon its toes to be seen. A narrow track branched toward the village through pasture, gardens and scattered trees.
Until recently, nearly a thousand people had lived there.
Families had prayed, worked and argued beneath those roofs. Livestock had filled the enclosures. Children had run between the houses.
Now there was nothing.
The old headman's people had been among the last to leave. According to the refugees, the Moss Men had driven them out.
The thought tightened something inside Kamel.
The villagers were Crimean Tatars—Muslims who had already been expelled once before, forced from their northern homeland by the Russians and carried across the Empire like dust swept from one threshold to another. They had settled in Thrace, built houses, planted orchards and tried to make themselves useful in land that had not originally been theirs.
Then history had found them again. First the Russians, now the Bulgarians. Different flags, Kamel thought. The same Slavic hunger.
He looked toward İzzettin longer than he should have.
Another Ottoman patrol was advancing along the side road toward the village. From this distance, its riders appeared as small dark shapes moving cautiously between the fields.
Kamel hoped they would find nothing. He hoped the Moss Men were merely frightened rumours—a handful of Bulgarian militiamen made larger by superstition and refugee terror.
But the silence surrounding İzzettin felt wrong.
No animals moved in the pasture. No dogs barked. No smoke rose from the chimneys. The wind passed through the trees without stirring anything that seemed alive.
The village stood beneath a hot sun, yet it possessed no warmth. It was peace without breath.
Then Kamel saw the flash.
A single sharp glimmer appeared among the bushes beside one of the houses, like sunlight catching glass.
It vanished almost immediately.
Kamel slowed his horse and raised his spyglass. Yet he found only leafy bushes, shadows and branches shifting slightly in the wind.
No face, rifle or movement that did not belong.
The flash did not return. Still, the unease climbed higher along his spine. He could not escape the feeling that someone was watching them—not from the countryside, but through it.
Ali's voice broke the silence.
"Look there. The German railway."
He pointed left, beyond the scattered trees and rolling fields.
The railway ran parallel to the road at a distance, two lines of steel cutting through the green countryside with unnatural straightness. German engineers had built it before Berlin seemingly abandoned Constantinople. The track remained solid, level and almost untouched by the recent fighting.
That, too, seemed strange.
Kamel had heard every explanation for Germany's withdrawal. Some blamed greed for Libyan oil. Others blamed religion, British pressure or the German Kaiser suddenly growing hateful of the Ottoman government.
Kamel believed none of the stories entirely.
Why build something so carefully, he wondered, only to walk away from it?
A second Ottoman patrol moved along the railway embankment. Twelve mounted scouts kept pace with Kamel's group, spaced widely enough to search the land while remaining within sight of one another. Beyond them, other patrols advanced across the frontier in similar formations.
The Army was moving forward with its eyes open. At least, that was the intention.
The Çatalca Line stretched across roughly forty kilometres. The farther the scouts moved from it, the wider the spaces between the patrols became.
The central road remained the easiest route west. It crossed open farmland, low rises and scattered villages, with only thin bands of woodland interrupting the view. Generals loved such country. It allowed columns to move quickly and artillery to remain close behind.
It also offered little shelter to anyone attempting an ambush.
A hidden enemy would have to be bold—or foolish.
The northern scouts faced darker hills and thicker forests toward the Black Sea, where a rifle could fire from ten paces away without revealing the man holding it. To the south lay marshes, damaged bridges and roads softened by water.
Kamel accepted the centre without pride.
Of the three Ottoman advances, theirs appeared the easiest. That meant they would also be the first to discover whether the appearance was false.
Still, the sight of the other patrol steadied him, for they were not alone.
The screen remained intact.
Yet the question that had followed him from the frontier did not vanish. It merely weakened as each abandoned Muslim farm appeared beside the road.
Walls still stood, fences remained. Trees planted by Muslim hands still bore fruit, though no Muslim remained to gather it.
Those empty places reminded Kamel why he had joined the Army. They reminded him why men had chosen to ride west instead of remaining hungry and silent in Constantinople.
His thoughts travelled farther back, toward another land taken from the Empire.
He remembered Libya.
Not Libya as a shape upon a map, but as salt upon the wind and sunlight against whitewashed walls. He remembered fishing nets drying near the shore, markets smelling of spice and seaweed, and the small dignity of a life that had finally become stable.
He had been recently married then. His wife had carried their first child in her arms and their second beneath her heart. Kamel had fished, traded small goods, carried crates and performed whatever labour kept his family fed.
He had owned a horse—not a grand animal, but a tough little mare he had treasured. He knew enough of rifles, blades, numbers and writing to be respected without needing to boast.
Then the Italians came.
Foreign uniforms entered the village. Orders were given in hard voices. Rifles were carried with the certainty of ownership.
The officers spoke of security, military necessity and fortifications.
One morning, the village had belonged to its inhabitants. By evening, it belonged to Italy.
Families were forced from their homes at gunpoint and given only minutes to gather what they could carry. Houses became barracks and strongpoints. Anything left behind was treated as abandoned property. A life could be uprooted with a gesture.
Kamel had fled across the sea with everyone he could keep together.
Now his wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters lived in a refugee quarter of Constantinople. The old moved slowly through overcrowded streets while the young cried from hunger. They slept beneath borrowed blankets, ate thin soup and learned that pride meant very little when a child needed medicine.
That was why Kamel rode with the scouts.
His wages bought bread and medicine. A few coins sent home could determine whether someone survived the winter or quietly disappeared into an unmarked grave.
If the Empire recovered land, perhaps his family might receive a house. A field. A future that did not depend upon crowded shelters and government charity.
Thus he understood Ali's rage. He understood why so many people believed this war righteous.
But the road west drew Kamel for another reason as well.
In Constantinople, among the hunger, filth and exhaustion of the refugee quarters, he had watched something form.
Hatred.
Not the sudden anger that flared during a fight and died before morning. No, it was something slower, something accumulated. A sickness settling into people who had carried too much grief for too long.
At first, the foreign warships had come to preserve the peace.
When Bulgarian armies advanced to the outskirts of Constantinople in late 1912, the Ottoman government appealed to the European Great Powers for protection. Britain, France, Russia and the others responded by sending an international fleet to anchor near the capital and along the Bosphorus, officially to protect foreign nationals and prevent the fighting from spreading into the city.
Their presence restrained Constantinople.
No one wished to provoke a bombardment or give the Great Powers an excuse to intervene directly.
But when the warships finally withdrew—and news of defeat, lost territory and refugee columns flooded the capital—the restraint disappeared with them.
The pressure that had been building beneath the surface burst into the streets.
Christian and Jewish men were dragged from their homes and beaten—not for anything they had done, but for everything the mob believed they represented. Women attempting to flee were shoved, cursed and spat upon. Dresses were torn. Some were stripped and dragged through the streets while men groped, struck and humiliated them, using their bodies as outlets for rage and lust.
Terror itself became proof of guilt.
Even children were attacked.
Stones struck small backs. Hands pulled them from hiding places. Men screamed hatred into faces too young to understand the words.
Churches were forced open. Doors were smashed, altars overturned and sacred images smeared with filth. Christian and Jewish shops were looted in broad daylight while crowds watched as though robbery had become righteous merely because the victim worshipped differently.
For a time, Kamel tried to resist it.
He remembered one narrow alley—dark even at midday, hemmed in by leaning buildings and damp stone walls.
Several men had cornered two Christian girls there. Their skirts had been torn, their pale legs exposed, their faces bruised. Their blond hair was twisted in rough fists as hands dragged over them, forcing them down, pushing them toward their knees to beg for a mercy the men had no intention of giving.
Kamel stepped between them.
His heart beat so violently that it hurt. His voice trembled, but he forced it loud enough to carry beyond the alley.
The men laughed at first.
Then faces appeared at windows and doorways. Other people stopped to watch. The laughter weakened.
The city had not yet descended so completely that every boundary had disappeared. Hatred had loosened restraint, but some shame still remained when cruelty was forced into the open.
The men released the girls, and Kamel had quickly led them away, one trembling hand held in each of his. Their fingers were cold, and their faces carried a fear too large for them.
He reunited them with their parents nearby.
Their mother's dress had been torn, and she could barely stand. Their father's face was swollen and bloodied. He had been beaten and forced to watch while men assaulted his wife.
Still, they thanked Kamel as though he had performed some great act rather than merely refusing to stand aside.
Such moments became rarer with every passing day.
The Christians and Jews began disappearing almost immediately. Families escaped by road or slipped from the harbour at night with whatever they could carry. Homes stood empty. Shops closed. Entire streets fell silent.
Within weeks, much of Constantinople's Christian and Jewish population had vanished.
The government described the violence as a series of isolated disturbances. Ministers announced that order had been restored, while official reports insisted that nothing organised or systematic had taken place.
The Entente powers largely accepted that account because little reliable information escaped the city. Communications were watched, foreign correspondence intercepted and embassy personnel discouraged—or outright forbidden—from moving through the streets, supposedly for their own safety.
The emptied districts did not remain empty for long.
Muslim refugees crowded into abandoned rooms. New owners broke the locks upon shuttered shops and reopened them beneath different names. Furniture changed hands. Religious symbols disappeared from walls. Life rearranged itself around the absence.
Before long, the neighbourhoods looked as though no one else had ever lived there.
At first, that troubled Kamel.
Then he began listening to the people around him.
He listened in courtyards, coffeehouses and mosques. He listened beneath arches crowded with refugees. He listened while men cried during the night because darkness allowed grief to speak without shame.
The voices remained with him.
"Ya Allah, avenge our sons!"
"They defiled my daughter and burned my house!"
"They cut open children and slaughtered them like lambs!"
"Let the unbelievers drown in their own blood!"
The stories came from Macedonia, Kosovo and Thrace—from villages whose names had disappeared along with their inhabitants.
Stories of murdered men, violated women. Mosques burning while church bells rang. Neighbours becoming executioners overnight.
The city spoke endlessly of an Empire gnawed down to the bone by infidels and traitors.
The same argument returned in every crowded room.
The Christians had done this. Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbs—former Ottoman subjects who had rebelled against the order established by conquest and sanctified through centuries of rule.
Had the rebellions been crushed at their birth, people insisted, none of this would have happened.
Had those lands been broken completely—had their men and women been enslaved, their churches torn down and minarets raised in their place—the Balkans would still kneel before Constantinople. Trade would still pass through Ottoman hands. The borders would not have withered, and the capital would not be overflowing with beggars, widows and broken soldiers.
Mercy, they said, had weakened the Empire. Tolerance had poisoned it.
The infidel had been allowed to survive, prosper, master new technologies and forget his place. Now he had returned with rifles, artillery and bayonets to seize lands that, in their eyes, belonged by right to the faithful.
Had the old conquests been completed without restraint—had those territories been made wholly Allah's—then Constantinople would still shine as the crown of the world: the beating heart of the House of Osman and living proof that God favoured its dominion.
Kamel had heard such words many times before. But it was inside the Süleymaniye Mosque that they finally hardened into something more.
He had entered only to escape the rain.
The courtyard was packed with men. Some stood barefoot upon the cold stone. Others huddled inside threadbare coats. A few wore tarnished medals pinned to sleeves that ended in empty folds of cloth.
They were refugees, veterans, beggars and wanderers from every corner of the Empire—men united less by birthplace than by loss.
Hunger had hollowed their faces. Anger had sharpened what remained.
Beneath the great domes, the imam's voice carried through the hall.
"For years," he said, "we held out our hands in patience. We showed them the Book. We asked only that they leave us in peace. We did not rush to the sword. We did not answer every insult with blood."
A murmur moved through the congregation.
"And what did they give us in return?"
His voice rose.
"They burned our villages. They drove our families onto the roads. They mocked the call of the adhan while our women fled barefoot through the mud. They mistook restraint for weakness and mercy for fear."
The imam leaned over the lectern.
"The Book is not a charm meant to soften those who spit upon it. It is law. It is command. It is judgment. When patience is answered with fire and mercy repaid with chains, the Book does not forbid the sword."
His gaze swept across the hall.
"Are you not men? Are you not believers? How long will you watch others take what belongs to you while pretending silence is virtue?"
His hand struck the wood.
"I say go. Take back what was torn from you. Take their lands, their wealth and their honour by the right of those who have been wronged. This is not cruelty. It is reckoning."
The hall answered with shouts.
"The Prophet did not beg forever," the imam continued. "He endured until endurance became humiliation. Then he rose."
The crowd surged in response.
"So shall you."
A sword flashed above the gathering. Men shouted for Edirne, for Sofia, for blood and redemption.
Then an old scholar rose near the edge of the hall.
He was small and narrow-shouldered, with a neat white beard and a plain robe worn thin around the cuffs. He did not shout or raise his arms.
He simply waited until the noise weakened enough for him to be heard.
"Brothers," he said calmly, and the word cooled the room for a moment, "the Book also speaks of patience, restraint and judgment tempered by mercy."
The hall grew quieter.
"We are not the Almighty. We do not see as He sees. The Book is without error, but we are not. A man who spills blood believing himself righteous must one day answer for how he understood the words that led him there."
Doubt moved through the crowd like cold air beneath a door.
"Zeal has destroyed nations as surely as cowardice," the scholar continued. "Beware that in seeking justice, we do not unleash wrath. Beware that when claiming Allah's will, we do not mistake our own hunger for His command."
For one brief moment, men listened.
Then the imam stepped forward again. He did not shout.
"You speak truth," he said. "The Book is perfect. Man is not."
He allowed the agreement to settle before continuing.
"And so, when interpretation threatens to divide us, what must we do?"
He did not wait for an answer.
"We look to the Prophet. To his life, his judgments and his actions."
The room tightened around his words.
"Did he not fight when fighting became necessary? Did he not take land when land was denied him? Did he not seize captives when his enemies sought to enslave his people? Was his mercy endless—or did it end when endurance became humiliation?"
A darker murmur answered.
"We are not guessing. We follow the example placed before us. The truth was shown to the unbeliever, and the unbeliever rejected it again and again. When truth is rejected with fire and chains, war is not corruption."
The imam's voice hardened.
"It is law."
He looked toward the old scholar.
"Mercy is not owed to those who have shown none. Patience ceases to be virtue when it becomes self-destruction."
The crowd answered with fists striking stone and boots scraping against the floor. The scholar attempted to speak again, but his voice vanished beneath the noise.
He was not beaten, he was simply erased.
Kamel had stood among them, feeling certainty settle across the hall like a blade sliding into its sheath.
Then the imam raised one hand.
Silence fell.
"And to those who still doubt," he said gently, "let me ease your hearts."
He paused.
"Yes, peace remains possible."
The congregation listened.
"We may surrender. We may kneel. We may place our weapons, pride and faith into the hands of those who have already shown us the shape of their mercy."
His voice grew colder.
"We may gamble that the chains will be lighter next time. That the blade will stop before reaching our throats. That our women will be spared. That our children will be permitted to live quietly beneath foreign rule."
He looked across the gathered refugees and veterans.
"You know where that road leads. You have seen Libya. Macedonia, Kosovo, Thrace. You have seen the refugees. You have buried the dead."
Anger spread once more through the hall.
"To surrender now is not peace. It is erasure. It is the slow death of a people. It is watching your homes seized, your faith mocked and your daughters carried away by men who do not regard you as human."
The congregation surged.
"Will you accept such rule?" the imam demanded. "Will you live upon your knees beneath them? Or will you rise as your fathers rose—with sword and fire—and determine your fate with your own hands?"
The answer came before he finished.
"Do not fear death," he cried. "Death has meaning. Every martyr before you carved the path upon which you now stand. Their blood was not wasted. Their wars were not empty."
His hand rose.
"If you fall, you will not fall forgotten. You will fall standing."
Men wept. Others laughed. Some embraced as though already departing for war.
"Rise," the imam commanded. "Take up arms. March not as scattered men, but as one people. Let Edirne hear your footsteps. Let the enemy learn that we are not broken and will not wait meekly for slaughter."
His voice struck the domes.
"For Allah, rise and fight!"
Whatever restraint remained did not bend, it snapped. And the hall became a storm trapped inside stone. Men screamed until their throats broke. Some fell to their knees. Others pushed toward the doors as though the march had already begun.
Kamel felt the fury enter him, and before long he shouted with the rest.
"Death to the infidels!"
"Edirne is ours!"
"Drive out the pigs!"
The chants spread, sharpened and darkened.
"Tear down their churches!"
"Take their women!"
"Spill Christian blood!"
"No priests left breathing!"
"Burn everything!"
"Wipe their seed from the land!"
Kamel flinched, yet his mouth remained open as his voice continued joining the roar. He hated the words. Hated how easily they came. Hated that they no longer pointed toward armies, borders or armed men.
They pointed everywhere. Homes, churches, mothers. The line between sacred war and slaughter disappeared. One man shouted a prayer. Another shouted a curse. There was no longer any difference between them.
Faces transformed around him. Men wept while calling for blood. Others grinned with their teeth bared. Rage filled the places where grief had lived.
"Blood for blood!"
"No mercy!"
"Leave none behind!"
"Even their children!"
"Cleanse the land!"
Kamel shouted louder—not because he believed every word, but because silence felt like stepping in front of a stampede.
The congregation was no longer a gathering. It was a weapon, and Kamel stood inside it.
That day had changed him.
War was no longer enough for the men surrounding him. They wanted purification.
Now, riding the old imperial road toward a city his people still considered their own, Kamel returned to the same question again and again.
Was it truly Allah who demanded such things? Or merely men shouting loudly enough to drown out doubt?
The Winchester struck softly against its leather strap with each step of his horse. It was american steel, foreign weight on his back.
Even their rage had been armed from abroad.
Kamel had heard rumours in the capital and along the marching columns. Counterfeit money printed in distant cities. Loans offered with invisible chains. Rifles moving through channels everyone pretended not to see.
Americans, Frenchmen, Britons. Each claimed to be helping. Each profited. Each pushed the wounded Empire toward whatever cliff best suited his own interests.
None of it felt righteous. It felt weak. A dying state borrowing breath. A wounded Empire accepting weapons from smiling hands that would never lift a finger to save it when payment became due.
Yet Kamel found no comfort in that understanding, only fear.
If the Empire failed here—if Edirne remained lost, if the frontier held and the retreat continued—then this would not be another defeat.
It would be collapse. A state folding inward, a people scattered. A faith pushed back until it became a story whispered by hungry mouths inside dark rooms.
Kamel tightened his grip upon the reins.
Whatever Allah intended—and whatever men claimed to intend—one truth remained as hard as the road beneath him.
This war was no longer about glory.
It was about whether his people would still exist when the shouting ended.
The imperial road continued west between broad stretches of farmland, pale with dust and empty beneath the summer sun. Harvested fields lay upon either side, broken by orchards, low fences and occasional clusters of abandoned buildings.
Then the countryside narrowed.
The fields drew back as woodland closed around the road from both sides. Tall trunks rose behind dense undergrowth, while branches reached overhead and tangled together above the riders. Sunlight survived only in scattered shafts, flickering across the road as leaves moved high above them.
The air beneath the trees felt cooler.
The sound changed as well. Hooves no longer struck the road with the open rhythm of the farmland. Their passage returned from the trunks in short, hollow echoes, making it difficult to judge what lay ahead—or behind.
The road curved gradually to the left, following a narrow creek hidden among reeds and shadow.
Kamel followed Ali into the bend.
His companion rode several lengths ahead, upright in the saddle and visibly pleased with himself. Ali possessed the confidence of a man who had already decided that every frightened rumour would prove false. To him, the silent woods were merely woods, the empty road merely an open path toward victory.
Kamel watched the trees.
He tried to return his thoughts to Constantinople, to his family and to the reasons he had ridden west. Yet the deeper they travelled beneath the branches, the harder it became to ignore the unease gathering in his stomach.
Ahead, a small stone bridge emerged from the shade.
It was short, broad and ancient, its pale blocks worn smooth by generations of wheels and hooves. Dark water moved beneath it through reeds and exposed roots.
Black Creek, the refugees had called it.
Ali recognised it immediately.
"Finally!" he shouted, his voice carrying too brightly beneath the trees. "Black Creek! Water and rest await us. Come, Brother Kamel—ride!"
He urged his horse forward as though they were travelling through friendly country on a summer afternoon.
Kamel followed more slowly.
Ali's excitement carried him toward the bridge, but Kamel continued studying the roadside—the hedges, the undergrowth and the shadows between the trunks. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound beyond the horses and the creek. That was what troubled him.
The forest was not silent, it was holding itself still.
For several moments, Kamel saw nothing he could name. Only leaves, branches and sunlight shifting across the ground as they advanced.
Then something changed beside the road.
A patch of foliage moved without the wind. It was no more than a tremor, gone almost before he noticed it. A moment later, something flashed among the leaves—a brief silver glimmer, too straight and too sharp to belong to the forest.
Kamel narrowed his eyes.
There, stretched low across the road and nearly invisible against the dust and shadow, was a thin length of transparent cord. It looked no thicker than fishing line, and for a heartbeat he could not understand why it was there.
Then instinct seized him.
"Ali—watch out!"
The warning came too late.
The line snapped upward from the roadside, pulled taut at precisely the height of a mounted man's throat. Ali rode directly into it.
His body jerked backward as though an invisible hand had seized him by the neck. His hands tore free of the reins, and a wet, strangled gasp escaped him as the cord sliced through flesh. Blood sprayed across his collar and the horse's mane before he was dragged from the saddle and thrown flat onto the road.
The Winchester strapped across his back struck the ground beneath him, driving painfully into his spine and knocking the breath from his lungs. His horse shrieked, lurched sideways and bolted into the trees.
Ali rolled through the dust with both hands pressed against his throat. Blood poured between his fingers in bright, pulsing streams. He managed to drag himself onto one knee, but the effort lasted only a moment. His strength failed, and he collapsed again, coughing blood and clawing uselessly at the earth while his ruined throat produced nothing but a bubbling, desperate rasp.
Kamel stared in horror.
For several seconds, his mind refused to understand what had happened. Then he hauled sharply upon the reins. His horse stopped so violently that it reared, front hooves striking at the air while Kamel struggled to remain mounted.
His eyes searched the trees, the ditches and the undergrowth beside the road.
There was no rifleman. No uniform. No movement he could identify.
Only forest.
Then he heard footsteps behind him.
One quick step, followed by another.
Kamel began to turn, but an arm locked around him before he could reach his weapon. Someone wrenched him backward out of the saddle with such force that his hands tore free of the reins.
His horse panicked and fled.
Kamel struck the road upon his back. The Winchester beneath him dug into his spine, and the impact drove every breath from his lungs. Dust burst across his face and filled his mouth. For a moment, he could do nothing but lie there coughing soundlessly while his blurred vision struggled to focus.
Something stood above him.
At first, Kamel thought it was part of the roadside—a bush torn loose, perhaps, or a clump of vegetation caught in motion. Then it moved like a man.
Strips of green and brown cloth hung from an enormous body, woven together with leaves, twigs and dried grass. The camouflage broke apart the shape of its head, shoulders and limbs until Kamel could scarcely tell where the forest ended and the figure began.
His terrified mind finally supplied a name.
One of the Moss Men.
The figure raised a knife and dropped upon him.
Kamel reacted without thought, catching the attacker's wrist with both hands. The blade stopped only inches above his heart.
For one brief moment, neither man moved.
Then the Moss Man began forcing the knife downward.
Kamel's arms trembled almost immediately. The attacker was immense, heavier than any ordinary soldier and frighteningly strong. He did not curse, snarl or show the slightest strain. He merely pressed with slow, measured force, as though the outcome had already been decided.
The point pierced Kamel's coat and bit into the flesh beneath.
Pain burned through his chest. He cried out and pushed against the attacker's wrist with both hands, but the knife continued descending. The Moss Man was too strong. He applied pressure without haste, forcing the blade through cloth, skin and muscle as though Kamel's resistance were no more than an inconvenience.
Kamel possessed no training for a struggle like this. He had never learned holds, counters or the careful violence practised by professional soldiers. He acted entirely from panic.
Twisting beneath the attacker, he dragged one knee upward and kicked as hard as he could into the Moss Man's ribs.
The blow knocked the figure sideways and bought Kamel a single precious moment.
The Moss Man did not fall awkwardly. He turned with the impact, rolled smoothly across one shoulder and came to rest several paces away upon one knee, knife still held securely in his hand. He had been displaced, not defeated.
Kamel did not wait to discover the difference.
He rolled onto his side, planted one foot beneath himself and began scrambling upright. His only thought was to run—to put the road, the trees and as much distance as possible between himself and the camouflaged creature watching him.
He had barely risen when the Moss Man moved.
The attacker crossed the distance almost instantly and caught Kamel by the ankle. One violent pull tore his leg from beneath him.
Kamel struck the road chest-first. His hands scraped across dust and stone as the Moss Man dragged him backward. Before he could turn, the attacker had wrapped himself around the captured limb, locking the ankle beneath one arm and pressing his weight against the knee.
For a confused instant, Kamel did not understand what was happening.
Then the pressure began.
His leg was forced sideways while the rest of his body remained trapped against the ground.
"What are you—?"
The Moss Man shifted once.
Something inside Kamel's knee gave way with a thick, sickening crack.
The pain arrived an instant later.
It tore through him so violently that his vision turned white. His scream echoed beneath the trees as the joint twisted apart, bone and ligament failing beneath the deliberate pressure.
Kamel kicked wildly with his free leg, striking at whatever he could reach. His heel caught cloth, perhaps flesh, but the Moss Man had already released him.
The attacker rolled away again, knife still in hand, and rose at a safe distance.
Kamel remained on the road, clutching his ruined knee. His ears rang and his vision swam while waves of pain made the forest tilt around him.
The Moss Man began circling.
He did not rush to finish the killing. He moved slowly through the road's edge, almost blending back into the foliage whenever shadow crossed his camouflaged body.
Kamel tried to stand.
His injured leg collapsed the moment he placed weight upon it.
He struck the ground again and began crawling, clawing at the packed earth with both hands. Dust filled his fingernails as he dragged himself away, his useless leg trailing behind him.
"No," he gasped. "No, please."
He could not die there.
His wife needed him. His children needed the money he sent home. His parents, brothers and sisters were waiting in Constantinople, believing that he would return once the fighting ended.
He dragged himself farther down the road.
Then he saw Ali.
His friend lay where he had fallen, one hand still resting against the wound in his throat. His eyes remained open, staring blindly into the branches overhead. The blood beneath him had spread into a dark pool and was already sinking into the dust.
Ali was dead.
Kamel looked desperately toward the curve behind them.
Hasan and the others were close. They had been following only a short distance behind. Surely they had heard the horses, the struggle and Kamel's screams.
Help would come.
It had to.
Through the ringing in his ears, Kamel listened for hoofbeats.
Instead, a rapid burst of gunfire hammered through the trees.
The shots came too closely together to be ordinary rifle fire, one sharp mechanical eruption followed by the screams of men and horses beyond the bend.
Someone shouted a warning.
Another voice cried out.
A second burst cut both of them short.
Then came several scattered shots, a final scream—and nothing.
The silence returned with terrifying speed.
Only moments earlier, Hasan and the entire patrol had been alive.
Now there was no one coming.
Kamel stopped crawling.
Cold fear settled through him as softly as the surrounding shade.
Behind him, boots pressed into the dust.
The Moss Man was approaching again.
He walked with the knife hanging loosely at his side, utterly at ease. There was no urgency in him, because Kamel could no longer run. The unhurried pace made the attacker seem less like an angry soldier than a creature savouring the certainty of what would happen next.
Kamel twisted onto his back and reached frantically for the Winchester strapped beneath him. His fingers shook so violently that they slipped repeatedly from the leather.
"What are you?" he shouted.
The Moss Man continued walking.
"What do you want from us?"
There was still no answer.
Kamel pulled the rifle partly free, gritting his teeth as the movement disturbed his shattered knee.
"Why are you doing this?" he demanded. "By what right?"
The Moss Man stopped several paces away.
His concealed head tilted to one side.
For a moment, he appeared to be searching for the proper words in a language that was not his own.
Then he answered in slow, heavily accented Turkish.
"I am an extension of his will."
The words were not spoken with anger. They carried the solemnity of a vow repeated many times.
"I fight because it is my duty," the Moss Man continued. "I suffer because it is my duty. I die because it is my duty."
He raised the knife slightly.
"Death is my duty."
Kamel stared at him.
There was no hatred visible beneath the camouflage. No rage or excitement.
Only absolute conviction.
Kamel finally tore the Winchester free and began dragging it around toward the attacker.
Then movement appeared beside the road. A second Moss Man detached himself from the undergrowth to Kamel's left.
Another rose among the trees to his right.
A third stood near the bridge, so perfectly concealed that Kamel could not understand how he had failed to see him before.
The forest seemed to produce them one after another. They had been there throughout the struggle, watching, waiting.
Kamel's hands stopped upon the rifle.
The first Moss Man could have called for help at any moment. A hidden marksman could have killed Kamel before he ever left the saddle. His desperate resistance had changed nothing because the outcome had never been uncertain.
This had been a trap from the beginning, not a duel, not even merely an ambush, an execution.
Kamel sensed movement behind him.
He tried to turn, but a hand seized his shoulder and pulled him upright against a camouflaged chest. Another arm locked across him, pinning both shoulders and trapping the rifle beneath his body.
He felt the presence of a man at his back.
Then he saw the knife. It drove between his ribs and into his heart.
Kamel stiffened.
For one blinding instant, pain filled everything. His fingers opened, and the Winchester dropped into the dust.
Then the agony began fading into a terrible cold.
The forest tilted. The branches above him blurred together, their green shapes dissolving into pale light. Sound withdrew until even his own breathing seemed to come from far away.
As his strength vanished, a voice spoke beside his ear in the same deliberate Turkish.
"Go into the abyss, warrior of the false prophet."
Kamel tried to think of his family.
Darkness reached him first.
His body was lowered onto the imperial road beside Ali's. Behind the curve, Hasan and the rest of the patrol lay scattered among fallen horses and abandoned weapons, destroyed before most had understood where the attack came from.
The Moss Men gathered what they required and disappeared once more into the trees.
Within minutes, the road was empty. The creek continued beneath the old stone bridge.
Leaves stirred overhead and the forest returned to silence.