The Company quitted Csongrád at first light. Mist clung low across the Tisza, a thin veil drifting over the reed beds and fishermen’s nets. Remy rode at the head, Morgan’s breath rising pale in the morning chill. Their path cut southward, the river a constant companion to their left, its slow course glinting whenever the sun broke through the layered clouds.

  They entered Sz?reg by midmorning, a village so small and industrious that it seemed to exist solely for its own survival. Remy observed the hurried movements of its inhabitants from women hauling water from communal wells, men sharpening tools, carts creaking under bundles of harvested reeds. A place where days repeated themselves until they became indistinguishable, where the people lived with the quiet certainty of those who had never expected more than toil. There was little to tempt the Company to linger, and even less to comfort weary travelers.

  After exchanging brief words with a pair of elders, they pressed onward. Beyond Sz?reg the land softened into marshy stretches veined with narrow streams. Soon they reached Algy?, a salt-trading village whose very air carried the faint sharpness of what they trade. Salt stations stood along the roadside, sacks piled in neat rows. Reed huts and floodplain farms spread outward, dotted with mills whose wooden arms groaned in the wind. Fisheries lined the backwaters, nets drying on frames like tapestries of knotted rope.

  Here they stopped to rest their horses. Remy tended to Morgan’s bridle and checked for any swelling in the hooves, while Jehan rubbed down her mare with methodical yet fond focus. She truly had grown fond of the mare. The villagers approached cautiously, wary yet curious about the armed company. Children peered from behind their mothers' skirts.

  Sir Gaston, as was his habit, set out to gather news. He moved from man to man, conversing in quiet tones, his posture relaxed though his gaze missed little. When he returned, he did so with the restrained irritation of someone bringing word he had expected, but had hoped to avoid.

  “Raider talk,” Gaston said. “Saracens. Far from here, but bold enough that the people trade rumors as though they were certainty.”

  Remy wiped rainwater from his cloak, though the sky had offered only a brief drizzle. “Ak?nc? or frontier irregulars?”

  “Ak?nc?,” Gaston replied. “Though whether true or not, no one knows. The riders here keep them at bay. Even so, these people fear shadows.”

  Remy could not fault them. Fear kept villages alive. Complacency killed them.

  Beyond such anxieties, the townsfolk knew little. Their lives were structured by the long rhythms of the plains -- planting, harvest, winter slaughter, the silent threats of drought or rising floodwater. They lived simply. Endlessly. Stale in their routines, though steady.

  The Company did not desire to tarry in Algy?. Neither Remy nor Gaston liked the shape of the place; it was too exposed, too easy for news of armed travelers to be carried elsewhere. So, with horses fed and watered, and the villagers’ cautious blessings murmured behind them, they mounted again and left the salt huts shrinking at their backs.

  It was late afternoon when Szeged appeared, a fortified river-port whose bulk rose with an authority unmatched by the villages before it. The castle stood near the river like a stern guardian, stone walls catching the last flare of daylight. Smoke drifted from chimneys in dense columns, and the clang of metal echoed faintly from within the walls. Barges crept along the Tisza, their hulls heavy with grain, salt, or wool.

  Finding lodging for ten heavily armed knights, two squires, and all accompanying followers was no simple task. They settled at an inn large by Hungarian standards, its beams thick, its hearth wide, and its owner loud in his enthusiasm to welcome men who looked capable of paying handsomely.

  They had scarcely removed their cloaks when the Városbíró arrived, flanked by two men in the county’s colors. The visit came in the name of the Ispán, and though no threat hung in the air, protocol demanded attention. Sir Gaston and Sir Aldred rose at once to meet them, both wearing the expressions of men deeply familiar with the tedious dance of local authorities. Remy remained in the inn’s common room, preferring not to involve himself in matters better handled by those whose patience exceeded hiss. He sat near the hearth, listening as the innkeeper, a large man with a nose red from drink, boasted freely.

  “Szeged,” the man declared, setting down a pitcher before Remy, “is the greatest salt depot in all the southern counties! Rich, prosperous, lively. You will not find a town that moves more salt than ours, not even across the Tisza!”

  Remy offered a polite nod. The boast was not entirely empty. Salt here flowed like lifeblood through every alley and onto every barge. The innkeeper continued with pride, describing their vast fishermen’s quarter, the bustling market square where Balkan and Ragusan merchants traded side by side, their goods spread in a riot of colors.

  Remy knew Balkan traders well enough by their accents, their coins, and their goods. But the Ragusan merchants intrigued him. Dalmatian in origin, seafaring by nature, yet here they were upon the Tisza, far from their Adriatic shores.

  He stepped outside to find one.

  A cluster of them occupied a corner of the marketplace. Their cloaks bore the salt-stained wear of long travel. Though they spoke Venetian and Istriot dialects among themselves, they switched comfortably into Slavic when he addressed them. That alone set him at ease. Remy was always fond of how easily a man switched their tone and demeanor when they spoke the same tongue.

  Remy questioned one, a middle-aged man with shrewd eyes and fingers clearly stained from ink or dye. The merchant welcomed the conversation as though delighted that someone bothered to ask meaningful questions rather than haggle mindlessly and that he couldn’t exactly refuse Remy after a look at what Remy wore and how he spoke.

  What Remy learned was considerable.

  Ragusa’s greatest strength, the merchant explained, was its salt. Salt was not merely business, it was the axis around which their entire republic spun. Ragusan ships traveled to Szeged, Buda, Transylvania wherever salt could be acquired and from there they transported it along the Danube, the Tisza, the Sava. They monopolized Balkan distribution routes with a precision born of centuries.

  “Hungary,” the merchant said with a touch of reverence, “is among the richest mining realms of the region. Silver from Upper Hungary, gold from Transylvania, our people compete fiercely for the minting contracts. It is the lifeblood of our dealings with the Mediterranean.”

  He described shipments bound for Italy and the East. Profits that dwarfed lesser trades. Salt was only the root as the branches extended into barley, wheat, cattle, cured hides, wool, tallow and goods ferried to markets in Italy, southern France, even North Africa. Their appetite did not end there. Timber such as oak, beech, walnut was vital to their shipbuilding. The Balkans and Hungary supplied it in abundance.

  “And sometimes,” the merchant added with a casualness Remy found distasteful, “we purchase slaves. Slavic, Hungarian, Bosnian, Vlach… and occasionally captured Turks. They sell well in Mamluk lands and in certain Italian markets.”

  Remy’s face must have hardened. The merchant’s eyes flickered, shifting swiftly away from the subject.

  Seeing the disgust he made no attempt to hide, the merchant veered toward safer ground like luxury cloths from Italy, Florentine woolens, Venetian silks, Mediterranean spices. Olive oil in sealed amphorae. Wine from the Dalmatian coast. Glassware, metalwork, books, devotional items, relic cases set in silver. Fine trinkets enough to adorn the homes of lords and the altars of monasteries.

  Remy let him speak. The man’s pride was infectious, and he gave truth willingly, so long as the topic remained honorable.

  “And your coins?” Remy asked.

  “Reliable,” the merchant said at once. “We offer letters of credit, notarized contracts, and loans at respectable rates. Discretion is part of our trade.”

  Remy did not lack for coins. He carried more than he should, enough to tempt even honest men. But he had interest in networks, those that stretched beyond kingdoms and rivers. Ragusan connections were worth cultivating. So he offered a sizable investment in florins, sliding the sealed pouch across the table with quiet resolve.

  In return, he asked for letters to be delivered to merchants in Buda, in Transylvania, and along the Dalmatian coast. The merchant agreed, delighted by the trust and the profit. Though he paled after Remy assured them that he would hear if they did not do what he had asked.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  When Remy returned to the inn, Sir Gaston and Sir Aldred had concluded matters with the Városbíró.

  The Ottoman presence pressed heavily upon the southern horizon, though from Szeged’s walls one saw nothing but the slow-moving Tisza and the flat, endless lands beyond. Yet Remy could feel it always, the shape of an empire sitting just beyond reach, its shadow lengthening year by year across the Balkans. Serbia lay already under the Turk’s dominion, its princes bent into vassalage, its strongholds serving as stables for Ottoman garrisons. And from those conquered lands flowed the Maros, a river that, by its very nature, carved a ready-made corridor into Hungarian soil.

  Remy stood outside the inn on the second morning, blue cloak pulled tight against the wind off the river, listening to the distant hammering from the fortress. Szeged might have been a thriving salt-trade center, but its prosperity made it all the more enticing to enemies who relied on speed rather than siegework. The ak?nc? swift, lightly armed raiders, the martolos auxiliaries, and the be?-sandjak contingents stationed in Ni?, Vidin, and the Serbian territories, all of them knew the Hungarian frontier as intimately as shepherds knew their pastures. The thought sat uneasily with him.

  Raids rarely struck Szeged itself as its walls and garrison were enough to dissuade the reckless. But its satellite villages, those thin, vulnerable rings around the Szeged, were another matter entirely. They burned under the hooves of the Saracen raiders with disturbing regularity. The crops around Deszk on the Maros route, the Oroszlámos settlements, the Királyhalom region all had tasted the torch. Makó, lying eastward in Csanád County, was struck often enough to be half-haunted by the expectation of flames. Apátfalva and Maroslele suffered similarly; F?ldeák, poor thing, lay on the edge of marshland and therefore was spared only when the waters swelled.

  The Maros corridor was the most tormented of all paths, bent, twisted, and worn by the relentless pounding of raiders’ hooves. It was, Remy thought, a kind of open wound upon the land. Even north of Szeged, where safety increased, the stories persisted. Algy? apparently had petitioned for aid to strengthen its weak fortifications. Sandorfalva and the settlements around the Tisza wetlands of Dóc were no strangers to stolen cattle or the orange glow of burning grain lofts. It was a constant, grinding attrition, of small acts of violence that eroded a region far more surely than a single decisive battle.

  The Városbíró had described these matters at length the previous evening, though Remy suspected the man’s purpose had been twofold. To warn, and to manipulate. According to him, ak?nc? detachments could ride sixty to one hundred twenty miles in two or three days. They moved with the efficiency of wolves, striking suddenly, burning houses and food stores, and capturing any peasants sturdy enough to walk and valuable enough to ransom. If caravans laden with salt crossed their path, the raiders would gleefully strip them of both cargo and beasts of burden, vanishing southward by nightfall before word could reach the garrisons.

  Whenever danger swept near, the Hungarian peasants fled into the marshes, into great, tangled expanses of reeds, mud, and half-sunken willow. No cavalry could pursue them there. The raiders might burn the villages, but the people often escaped into the watery place until the threat passed. Some refugees, driven by desperation, sometimes stumbled all the way to Szeged’s gates, seeking entry under the sheltering arms of the city’s walls.

  Remy had listened quietly as the Városbíró spoke, watching the man with an expression that Leeuwenhoek might give to a curious organism under a lens. The official had a talent for theatrics, his hands lifting, his voice rising, his brow furrowing at all the approved moments. But in the end, the purpose behind the speech lay naked that he wished to employ Remy’s company for Szeged’s benefit. He desired protection, free of charge if possible, or at least under the guise of civic duty.

  “And so, Sir Valois,” the Városbíró had said, eyes narrowing, “one must consider what becomes of travelers who refuse the needs of a vulnerable city. We are, after all, under the authority of the Ispán. Certain… difficulties may arise.”

  Remy, who had little tolerance for posturing, had finally replied with calm clarity, his voice low, his diction precise.

  “Our goal is fixed,” he told the Városbíró. “Our path does not bend to satisfy opportunists. We will not be hired by coercion, nor frightened by the suggestion of legal consequence, nor tempted by coin. My men will not serve a cause unaligned with our purpose.”

  The Városbíró had stiffened. The silence stretched like drawn wire.

  “And,” Remy added, “if you are foolish enough to imagine we are mere vagabonds, then perhaps you should read again the Archbishop’s letter of introduction and asked again what a Millis Christi carrying a papal bull, of meant even in this land. It explains very plainly who we are, and what manner of trust is placed in us.”

  The memory of that moment amused him now. The Városbíró’s expression had transformed immediately. first the irritation of a man thwarted, then the dawning realization that he had nearly offended those placed under ecclesiastical protection. At last came the retreat, swift and graceless, as the official coughed, stammered, and muttered something about “misunderstandings.”

  Remy exhaled slowly as he looked across the river. Jehan had joined him silently, her gaze following his.

  “Do you believe the Városbíró’s tales?” she asked.

  “I believe the parts that matter,” Remy answered.

  “And the rest?”

  “Designed to sway us,” he said. “Or frighten us. Or both. Fear is a common currency in borderlands.”

  She nodded softly. Her mare snorted and pawed at the ground.

  Behind them, the fortress released another echoing hammerstrike. Sir Gaston emerged from the inn, buckling his cloak as he approached.

  “You heard what the Városbíró said,” Gaston remarked, falling into step beside Remy. “Any thoughts?”

  Remy’s reply was simple. “We stay until our obligations are met. Then we leave.”

  Gaston’s eyes flicked toward the river. “It is a troubled place. The people are tense.”

  “Tension is expected,” Remy said. “But we cannot become wardens of every village that trembles. We follow our purpose, not theirs.”

  Gaston accepted this without argument. Though there was confusion as well, knowing who Remy was, and what he does for those who need aid.

  But Remy knew that they couldn't be anywhere and so he could only save those who he can reach.

  For he also feared of history diverting from what he knew.

  He was only its witness afterall.

  Within the city, movement continued at its usual pace of merchants shouting, horses clattering along cobblestones, fishermen dragging nets from the Tisza’s shallow banks. Women carried amphorae of water. Children ran through the narrow alleys. And always, at the edges of sound, the river murmured steadily, as though indifferent to the strife that unfolded along its banks.

  Remy glanced once more toward the southeast, imagining the unseen line where Ottoman lands began. There, somewhere beyond sight, riders prepared for their next foray, following a tradition of predation older than most nations. The Hungarians knew it. The Serbs knew it. The peasants who fled into marshes knew it best of all.

  But Remy did not fear them, not for himself, nor for his company. He feared only delays, diversions, and entanglements that would pull him from his intended course.

  Inside the inn, the fire crackled warmly. The air smelled of trout and onions. Sir Eamon argued loudly with Sir Aldred about the merits of Irish horseflesh. Sir Theophilos studied a local map with quiet intensity. Sir W?adys?aw cleaned his sword with the slow, reverent motions of a man preparing for a pilgrimage and expecting danger. It was, Remy reflected, a moment of stillness amid a landscape defined by danger.

  He allowed himself that respite.

  Yet the land beyond Szeged held no such peace. The Maros corridor lay scarred, abused by decades of raiding. Villages rose and fell with the tides of war. Salt caravans ventured forth knowing full well that the next bend in the road might hold either prosperity or ruin.

  And still, the people endured.

  Remy admired that in them, especially of the people of this era, their stubbornness, their instinctive flight into marshes, their survival against odds that should have broken lesser folk. Humanity, he thought, often bowed but did not break.

  The Városbíró had tried to use this fear to ensnare them. But Remy was neither a sellsword nor a fool, and the archbishop’s letter shielded them from petty coercion. Szeged’s authorities might desire their service, but they would receive none of it, not freely, not by trickery, and not by attempting to drape duty over manipulation.

  Their purpose lay elsewhere.

  Remy returned to the common room, where Jehan had taken a seat by the window, studying the fishermen hauling their baskets across the muddy bank. She looked thoughtful, perhaps troubled, though she masked it well.

  “Rest,” Remy told her quietly. “We leave soon.”

  She nodded, her eyes flickering up to his before returning to the scene outside.

  The wind beat against the shutters, carrying the faint, far-off howl of the plains.

  Perhaps it was only wind.

  Perhaps something else.

  The Ottoman frontier breathed on Hungary’s neck. Szeged felt it.

  So did Remy.

  But he would not be stayed.