“Everyone else who went through that door disappeared,” Reprobus said. “But you thought somehow you, by dint of genius, would be different.”

  “I’m left-handed. My sword hand was still free.” He smiled at Gunnlaug, who was listening with sullen Norse attention, propped up against a bulkhead. “We get to the door. The blind man opens it and I usher him in. It’s all going according to plan. I’m inside the house, ready to ransack the place for this book.

  “Then he clamps his arm around my neck and throws me sideways, into this pit just inside the door. There’s a pit right there. A deep one, too.”

  Even the Factor’s guards were engaged now, leaning forward in their formation. The Factor alone looked severe and unamused on his lion-headed chair.

  “I almost fell in,” said Tyun. “I would have, if I hadn’t been expecting a shove. But I was. I swiveled and danced on the edge, and then I pushed him into the pit instead. He toppled in and started shouting for help. ‘Murder! Murder!’ I rushed to search the house for the book of lightning, unbelief, whatever. The problem was, it wasn’t really a house. More of a warren for Ismailite assassins. They were using the old man to lure rich foreigners to the house, then he’d throw the visitors down into the pit and they’d break their necks and his henchmen would rob the bodies. Because only foreigners were disappearing, no one asked questions.

  “Now here I was, running through this den of thieves—I really cannot stand thieves, you can never trust them—and I could hear the assassins stirring in the hidden tunnels under the house. Several of them climbed up a ladder and I could hear them coming for me, so I hid in the kitchen. I hid behind a sack of lentils. I was starting to wonder about the mullah who hired us. How did he know the book was there? Why did he really want us to go in there? Did he know that it was a trap? Was there any book at all? At this point, I saw this old woman—the widow, it turns out, of a brave ghulam foot soldier from the army of Khurasan—and she’s tied by her ankle to the brick oven, and there’s a dirty little pallet they let her sleep on, and she’s staring straight at me where I’m crouched behind the lentils.

  “Then three assassins came into the room, three killers trained in mountain fastnesses for deeds of utmost brutality, and they started yelling at her, asking where I was, and I saw her move her hand toward—”

  At this point in the story, there was a voice from the sky. “Silence!” it demanded.

  Tyun jumped. He looked up. The Factor touched his heart with his fingers. Tornik crossed himself clumsily. Nicephorus rose to his feet, ready to see Nicholas, flying thaumaturge, descend from the clouds.

  “Be—quiet!” enunciated the voice from over the mast.

  “I believe it is the stylite,” the cynocephale explained.

  Indeed it was the ascetic, yelling from the top of the pillar.

  “Hail, lonely servant of the Lord!” called the captain. “Can we not regale you with a story of adventure to pass this night away?”

  The scrawny man called down, “I have made my home on a pillar in the middle of the sea. Do you think I want to hear your clack?”

  At that, outraged sailors rose to their feet and started to shout back up, and Nicephorus bade them to respect the man’s sacred mission (“He is a holy man, please—please, he is holy!”) and Captain Tyun and Reprobus argued over whether the pillar was Doric or Ionic.

  Then a voice broke through the whole fracas: “Captain Tyun! No more! No more!”

  People fell silent.

  It was the Factor. There was shock at his fury. He pointed his finger. “These fucking jokes! Your fucking secret smile when you talk about thieves! All of it!”

  His guards had formed a box around him and were drawing their swords.

  Nicephorus noticed he himself was outside the box. The sailors were still on their feet. Some were looking at their weapons.

  “This juvenile bullshit!” snapped the Factor. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Factor?”

  “Try. Kill us. Try. We will hack up every fucking man on this ship and sail it to shore ourselves.”

  Gently, Tyun said, “What is this?”

  “The dreamer saw you,” the Factor announced.

  Tyun turned with a sweet smile and serpent’s eyes and said, “Saw what, pretty boy?”

  Nicephorus steeled himself. “I saw you with the Northerner late at night on the docks in Bari,” he said. “I saw her go out to the Venetian ship, the trireme. And I can’t help noticing, I mean, if you look at it, I can’t help noticing that in the battle, your own ship didn’t take much damage, and none of the people who boarded were killed, but the attack stopped before—”

  “Because the Greek fire projector exploded,” said the captain. “It exploded. Exploded.” He made a blossom with his hand.

  “So what I want to know,” said Nicephorus, “is what you were talking with her about. Why were you talking with her on the docks, the night before we left?”

  Tyun was still smiling, but Nicephorus could tell it was simply a rehearsal of the muscles. The con man was worried. “Easy,” he said. “I was delivering a message to their captain.”

  The Factor leaned down under his lion-headed chair and took up his sword and scabbard and drew forth the sword slowly.

  “I was telling them no deal,” Tyun said. “Because you offered me twice as much as them.”

  “Then,” the Factor accused, “you waited to see if they’d offer you even more to betray us?”

  “No waiting,” said Tyun. “She immediately told me to go shit in my own mouth.”

  “You asked her, though,” said the Factor.

  “Of course I asked her,” said Tyun. “I am a man of business.”

  “You kissed her,” said Nicephorus.

  “Goodbye,” Tyun clarified.

  “And you swear,” said the Factor, “that it was a negotiation, but you still pledged loyalty to Bari when we left the dock that next morning?”

  “I swear to the Lord God of Sabaoth.”

  “You are an unbeliever,” said Nicephorus quietly.

  “I swear to the gods of my people. I swear by all the bodhisattvas and the devas and the Asuras and the Trinity and the Trimurti and Mohammed (peace be upon him) and the saints and all the company of Heaven.”

  “He is swearing to the dead air,” said Nicephorus.

  “Dreamer,” said Tyun, “I imagine your head as a catkin about to blow: an ugly lump bristling with dainty, feathery little instruments and devices that burst out in a flurry, spread everywhere, and do no one any good.”

  The Factor did not lose the thread. “So you swear: no relation with this woman except negotiation?”

  “Are you asking,” Tyun said, “if we’ve fucked?” He put his hands together. “Yes. We have. After I met her in Venice, the Northerner and I fucked for some days. This,” he said, indicating the prisoner, “is not how I would wish things turned out, but she should not have tried to kill me.”

  “Fuck you,” said the woman. She held up her bound wrists. “This man, he is scum.”

  “Point with the fingers of both hands at once,” Tyun suggested. “It makes it easier when you’re shackled.” He said to the Factor: “I can promise I am still in your pay. The Northerner and I are done. I am yours. My men and I are firmly pledged to collect the corpse of the Blessed Nicholas for Bari.” The saint hunter crossed his arms.

  “These Venetians: They outnumber us,” said the Factor. “You and your girlfriend…”

  “Since the attack,” said Tyun, “my strategy has changed. We have hostages. We can use them. That, Factor, is what we will do. That is why they are worth keeping.”

  “You’ve been sleeping next to her,” said the Factor. “Playing your stupid games. Dice.” He shook his head. “I don’t trust you.”

  “Nor I you,” said Tyun. “But you will keep your guard at the ready, and I will no longer go near the lovely Gunnlaug. Since the dreamer seems to want to keep an eye on me, I’ll sleep next to him instead. Are we happy?”

  So, trapped somewhere between anxiety, misery, and excitement, Nicephorus found himself twenty minutes later lying beside the saint hunter on a reed mat, facing resolutely away, unable to sleep, feeling the man’s warm breath tickling his neck.

  In a whisper no louder than a midnight sigh, the saint hunter murmured, “Do you feel safe now, dreamer? Do you feel safe with me beside you?”

  Nicephorus did not move. He shut his eyes. He felt a finger gently rub across the stubble of his tonsure in slow circles. “Where I come from, everyone wears their hair like this,” said the saint hunter. “You remind me of home.” Tyun moved his hand down from the monk’s head to his waist, and left his hand casually crooked against the cincture, as if it had fallen there without intent.

  The night was dark and long.

  When the dawn came, the ascetic on the pillar was standing with his arms spread to greet the sun, and one leg raised and pointed at the northern pole.

  * * *

  —

  The ship came to the Dodecanese Isles, white in the blue of the sea.

  The glare was overwhelming.

  “Yet,” said the Factor quietly to Nicephorus, “we still must squint to see. We still travel through the Land of Darkness, hmm?”

  The Factor’s guards took watches of four hours, rotating sleep carefully so six were always awake and armed.

  * * *

  —

  The Genoese at Rhodes told them the Venetians had passed through two days before.

  Captain Tyun did not go near the Epiphany’s Venetian captives. They were fed down in the hold and allowed only a few minutes each day to parade around the deck and shake out their limbs.

  Once, while they were on parade, the Northerner called out to Tyun, “Mutiny! Kill this Bari Factor! I promise: Venice, she pay you when we in Myra!”

  “You don’t have that kind of authority, blossom of the northern summer,” said Tyun, and turned back to his work.

  * * *

  —

  The monk had taken to sitting near Musarat, the cook. She seemed safe, or at least indifferent. She took his modest help for granted. She asked him to cut up fish, and he did, deftly.

  When the galley was under sail, Tornik would join the monk and Musarat. His pretext was talking with the monk. Tornik and Musarat never spoke to each other directly. Musarat rarely spoke at all.

  At first, only the monk would talk; so, to put the other two at ease, he would tell stories of wonders he’d read about, stories of travel: The Arimaspoi, one-eyed people of the North. The mirror of Alexandria, which burns ships with refraction. The adventures of the Argonauts, who sought the Golden Fleece. (“They would never think of killing one of their own number,” he said by way of example.) The hidden tomb of Solomon, glittering with gold. The coffin of the Prophet Daniel, which was fought over so fiercely by two sister towns it finally had to be encased in crystal and hung on chains off a bridge exactly halfway between them, where it impeded the fishing.

  He was good at ancient yarns, and soon others came to listen. He was aware there was a utility in his storytelling: As long as I speak to them in the manner of a person with a past and a future, he thought, they will not agree to kill me. When he noticed Tyun listening, he spoke more softly.

  Tornik would not even look up at Musarat’s eyes. The monk asked him helpful questions, things that might make the old cavalryman appear to best advantage. In this way, they aired Tornik’s life story, though the Armenian was a terrible storyteller.

  In his middle years, Tornik had found himself without a wife (she had died) and without kids (they had gone off to seek their fortunes in Trebizond, on the Black Sea) and so he had fallen in love with a horse. The horse was named Akritis. He bought the horse excellent barding and himself riding armor and spear and sword and mace and bow and joined the Byzantine cavalry. He sold his family’s house in Ani because the armor and the horse were expensive, and he was sent off in a cohort guarding a mountain pass at the Cilician Gates, which he did for years, happily with his horse. At night, standing near the campfire, he would lean against Akritis’s flank as he chewed. He would sleep by Akritis’s side.

  Akritis had a thousand winning ways. The horse understood silence and the blank moods of men. And in battle he knew Tornik’s will before Tornik did himself. The horse was noble and an excellent tactician, a brave and passionate warrior.

  “You can’t love an animal,” said Tornik, “until you’ve killed alongside them.”

  In the years of Tornik’s youth, the Seljuk Turks had swept out of the Khazar steppe with their flocks of thousands driven before them, and they had, to the astonishment of the world, defeated all the walled and settled cities. They swarmed the battle elephants of Persia and brought them down. They took even famed Baghdad, seat of the great caliphs. The Seljuk Sultan demanded to be crowned with the ancient diadem of Persia and invested with seven robes representing the seven realms of heaven and earth. Before many years passed, the Seljuk Sultan was proclaimed master of the known world at Friday prayers each week in pulpits across the deserts and the mountains and all the way to the distant sea.

  The civilized nations did not know what to make of these Turkish invaders, who were accustomed to living in tents scented of lanolin and mutton, but who now wandered through the empty, tiled pleasure palaces of the emirs they’d defeated. It was whispered they barely knew how to use chairs, let alone sit upon the throne. Their sultan could not understand pastry. The Seljuk Sultan and the Caliph of Baghdad glowered at each other from their palaces across the city’s central square.

  The Seljuks burned the Armenian city of Ani and slaughtered everyone in it; the streets themselves were blocked with bodies. When Tornik heard about this, hundreds of miles away at his garrison post, he mounted his beloved Akritis and rode off to a lonely place, and when there was only the horse to witness his sorrow, he wept. He thought of people he’d known—his cousins, his sister’s family, his sister herself—all slaughtered. Sitting on the back of his horse, arms useless at his sides, he sobbed like a child, thinking of those streets and markets and courtyards now blackened with smoke, of the white, torn mountains above the massacre. Akritis stood firmly beneath him, as if the horse recognized Sorrow and stood at attention while it shuffled past before them.

  That night, Tornik had a dream that Akritis was attacked by a mighty lion, and that the lion’s claws tore the horse’s flesh into strips, and he saw the horse buck and rear and then die. Tornik woke up. He felt disaster nearby. He got up and went to check on his beloved steed. Akritis stood deep in the shadow. The horse watched in silence until his friend approached, then whickered. Nothing was wrong. “But I knew then,” said Tornik, without explanation.

  The Turks gnawed their way west into the Byzantine Empire. When the Emperor called for a force to assemble to stop them, Tornik volunteered. He was sent north with his horse and joined a great column of tens of thousands marching under the imperial banner. They confronted the Seljuk Sultan, Alp Arslan, and his small army at a town called Manzikert, near Lake Van.

  Alp Arslan stood on a hill overlooking the two armies and fired three arrows into the air to announce his sovereignty. And so the armies, one winged like an eagle, the other a crescent, met upon the rugged plain at Manzikert.

  Mounted on Akritis, with hymns sung all around him, Tornik marched into battle.

  It was at this point that Tornik’s story always came to a halt, because he would insist on adjudicating the battle, now more than fifteen years done. The Emperor of Byzantium had everything in his favor. Yet he lost disastrously. He lost everything. Tornik was still smoldering with rage at the impossibility—the incompetence. It was ours to win.

  Tornik would sketch out the battlefield using whole-wheat paximata as the mountain and some millet for the Turks, and then he’d start arguing about tactics: What was the Emperor thinking, sending off a whole division to another town right before the battle? Was the rearguard just incompetent or did they actually betray the Emperor on purpose? When the Seljuk cavalry retreated, were they actually scattering or were they trying to draw pursuers into an ambush? When the Emperor sailed with his troops from Constantinople, a mottled dove flew down and landed in his outstretched hands. Any beardless hoplite could tell you he should have strangled it right there and counted whether there were more dark feathers than light. Who sets out on a military campaign with that kind of augury?

  Nicephorus noted that while Tornik described Manzikert in painstaking detail, it was always from above, as if he’d seen it with the archangels. The cavalryman was arguing with someone unseen. He got more and more petulant. He circled again and again around the same points. He was arguing with history itself, which once had been wind upon a plain, and now was fallen stone.

  He argued this way, Nicephorus realized, and did not speak of his own experiences—the saddle, the arrows, the glint, the swords of the enemy—because in this battle, there at Manzikert, must have been where Akritis, his beloved horse, had died.

  Never mentioned, always present.

  Once Nicephorus realized this, Tornik’s dull descriptions of the marching order of the infantry or the incompetence of the retreat seemed throttled with poignancy. The monk no longer interrupted to try to skip the story forward. He just listened. Musarat, too, was still. She couldn’t have understood Tornik’s schematic diagrams of cavalry battalions (his terminology was impenetrable), but she must have heard the weeping behind it, though his face was dry; he merely touched his mustache with his hand and fell silent.