The travelers were reluctant to leave the copse. Several days and nights had passed without any sign of Adarnase or his men. No knights shouted, no horses neighed—no horse hooves thundered—beyond the trees. This place was so quiet and peaceful the travelers wondered if Adanarse had given up on his hunt. Even better, maybe he had been killed or injured.

  “What if he’s waiting for us to come out?” Alexios whispered to his family. “What if he thinks we’re too dangerous to attack a place like this? All the trees in this copse make his cavalry useless.”

  “He could drive us out like a herd of pigs,” Basil said. “If he set fire to the forest.”

  Alexios shook his head. “The copse is circular. We could flee in any direction. It’s too hard for him to cover every side—”

  “Not if he set fire to one side of the copse, Alexios—”

  “It might be better for him to watch and wait quietly from a distance. See how long it takes us to run out of supplies.”

  “I hope he’s gone,” Kassia said.

  “So do I, child,” Isato said.

  The travelers rested. Being on the run from Kutaisi to Tiflis—and then again a few hours later from Tiflis to the copse—had stressed both the humans and the horses. Just being able to sit, lie down, talk, eat, and enjoy the forest was in itself a luxury, though they always took turns on watch, all day and night. Kassia and Basil had noticed how these watches tired Isato and Alexios. Now the younger members of the family stepped up more often to help—with no protests from the adults.

  Sometimes the children left Alexios and Isato alone. She would lie in his lap in the sunlight, like back on the Sparhawk’s deck, and he would sing what he remembered of the ashik’s song.

  “Shen Khar Venakhi. Thou art a vineyard newly blossomed,” he sang. The tune was uplifting, very church choir-like, yet far more unique and sublime. “Shen Khar Venakhi. Young, beautiful, growing in Eden. A fragrant poplar sapling in Paradise. May God adorn you. No one is more worthy of praise. You yourself are the sun, shining brilliantly.”

  “That is such a beautiful song,” she said, kissing his lips, flashing her blue eyes. “The one I liked the most.”

  “Sedko told me about it,” Alexios said. “One of the Georgian kings supposedly wrote it while he was confined in a monastery. Thank you, Demetrios the First. Good job!” Then he kept singing: “You are fire, your dress is fire…”

  In the darkening evenings Alexios led the horses outside the copse to drink at the stream.

  You can lead a horse to water, he thought. Odd saying from the old world. People here would say: why would you have to make a horse drink? A thirsty horse will drink! And if he’s not thirsty, why lead him to water in the first place? Different kind of civilization, different kind of thinking.

  At the stream Alexios refilled the water skins, constantly peering in every direction—like a nervous deer—for any sign of danger. His eyes were illuminated green with night vision, but he saw only fields, streams, mountains. Clouds rushed past the moon and the first emerging stars. All was quiet save the occasional hooting owl or trilling nightingale. For whatever reason, humans had abandoned this part of the Kaukasos.

  “The whole world is empty,” Kassia said when he got back. “Only Konstantinopolis and Trebizond is full.”

  “Are we even still in Georgia?” Alexios asked Basil. “This place seems kind of different. Are we somewhere else…?”

  “I guess you could say that Georgia is the part of the Kaukasos where Georgian-speaking Christians are running things,” Basil said, consulting his map. “But that would exclude Tiflis, the capital…anyway, it’s between the Greater and Lesser Kaukasos mountain ranges. But I think we’re getting close to the eastern edge. After that, we’ll be in a region that’s called Arran or Shirvan, lying in the fertile plains between the Kura and Aras rivers. Cross the northern mountains and you’re in Dagestan, cross the southern ones and you’re in Armenia.”

  Alexios shook his head. “Georgia. Dagestan. Armenia. Places I’d only barely heard of before. I never thought I’d make it out here. Not in a million years. I’d just hear about these places sometimes, but never see them for myself.”

  “Why not?” Isato said. “They are not so far from Trebizond.”

  “He means from his old home,” Kassia said. “From what he calls ‘the old world.’”

  “This place he sometimes speaks of that lies a thousand years hence,” Isato said.

  Kassia nodded. “Where everything is similar but different.”

  “Some of us are getting a little tired of hearing about it,” Basil said.

  “These places still exist there,” Alexios said to Isato. “But they’re very exotic, if you’ll forgive the term.”

  “Why would I need to forgive such a term?” Isato said.

  “It others people,” Alexios said. “It others entire regions and cultures. Dehumanizes. Makes it easier to justify exploiting them. But what other word can I use to describe these places? They’re distant and unknown. Obscure. Most people back in the old world have barely heard of them. It’s not easy to get out here, either, and not just because of the cost. The different governments in these regions are always shooting at each other because the histories are so complex. It would make more sense if they could just come together to solve their problems.”

  “Perhaps some things never change,” Isato said.

  “Change is the only constant,” Alexios said. “They fight because their bosses back where I come from are making them fight. They make money from war.”

  “That is a terrible, evil thing,” Isato said. “How can people permit such evil?”

  “The bosses share a little of their wealth with their subjects,” Alexios said. “Just enough to keep them from getting pissed off.”

  “Can such a situation last forever?” Isato said.

  “You can only push people so far,” Alexios said. “People can only lie to themselves so much. A truth they discover on their own is hard to shake.”

  Aside from the looming threat of Adarnase, the only problem was food. The travelers were in a survival situation out here, and their supplies were dwindling. None of them wanted to steal from peasants—the nearest farms must have been at least an hour’s ride from the copse—but if the travelers openly purchased food, the peasants might tell Adarnase, who must have been offering a reward for their heads. Nobody wanted to risk that.

  “I’m already tired of running for my life, Alexios,” Basil said.

  “You signed up for this,” Alexios said. “It’s still not too late. I can try to take you back to Trebizond if you—”

  “No,” Basil said.

  Their options were: head east across the Arran plains to the Hyrkanian Ocean, or head north to the Greater Kaukasos Mountains, then turn east to the Hyrkanian Ocean. The former option risked discovery by Adarnase; the latter would take longer but was probably safer, even if the shepherds in the mountains and foothills likely had fewer supplies to spare, and even if those mirrors had been flashing earlier. That was where the Avars lived, and the Mountain Jews. But maybe these people were also less interested in working with the feudal domains that spread across the plains below their lofty heights among the eagle crags, where Prometheos himself was bound and tortured for stealing fire from the gods and giving it humanity. Why farm, and expose your blood and sweat to priests and landlords, when you could hunt in the mountains, herd sheep, and exchange cheese and wool for whatever you needed?

  The travelers voted to leave for the mountains at night. Even Rakhsh nodded his assent. He was, as Alexios repeated, a very good horse.

  The sun set, the moon and stars emerged, and in the darkness the travelers bid farewell to the copse, their home for days. Returning to grass fields, splashing through mountain streams, Alexios felt a growing dread with every step he took away from the copse. Every step meant it would take longer to flee back to that place and hide. And although it was night time, the travelers were exposed. Anyone could have attacked at any moment from any direction. Constantly Alexios looked around with his night vision, worried about the drain on his farr, but he saw nothing of interest—no flashing irises glowing back at him. The travelers and horses walked in silence.

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  Hours later, by the time night was turning blue with morning, they saw that they had drawn closer to the snowy mountains. The ground might have been ascending, and there were farms here, even vineyards, complete with dirt paths between them.

  How convenient, Alexios thought. Other farmers didn’t even bother with paths…

  In the distance, at the center of the farmland and rising above it, was what looked like a church and a fortress combined. It was surrounded by thick, sturdy walls and towers of gray stone, and featured several large outbuildings, though at their center was a vast cathedral, its huge steeple topped with a sharp, gray-blue cone.

  The travelers stopped to stare at this place.

  “Could be a monastery,” Alexios whispered. “Out in the middle of nowhere. How these places keep from getting sacked, I’ll never understand.”

  “They must have made a deal with the local powers,” Isato said. “It is that simple. Pay high taxes, and you can live and keep your homes.”

  “The Emir of Tiflis or whoever’s in charge of these lands can’t be too crazy about having Christian monasteries around,” Alexios said.

  “Perhaps the wine is good,” Isato said. “The monks may possess some secret technique for making delicious wine.”

  Alexios imagined a tentacled monster in a pit in the monastery’s dark cellar, devouring people and shitting out golden eggs—or something. A wine press, but for people. He shuddered. He had been in Byzantium too long.

  “I don’t want to know,” he said.

  “Are women even allowed in monasteries?” Basil asked.

  “Depends on the monastery,” Alexios said. “Depends on how annoying they want to be. Should we ask for sanctuary, or just keep going?”

  “A big Christian place like that must be friends with Adarnase,” Kassia said. “Isato is right. How else could they survive out here? They’ll tell Adarnase. They’ll act like our friends, then send out a messenger when we’re asleep.”

  Basil and Isato agreed.

  Alexios sighed. “I guess we’ll skip the monastery. So much for sleeping in a bed tonight.”

  “Now you are the one complaining about beds,” Isato said.

  Alexios smiled. “Look, I’m serious about my sleep, alright?”

  “If you like sleeping in beds so much,” Isato said, “perhaps you should have chosen some other profession. The knights errant of tales spend much of their nights sleeping out under the moon, do they not?”

  “If only we could want what we want,” Alexios said.

  “Alright, Alexios,” Basil began. “We can have these philosophical discussions later—”

  “Do you ever wish you were someone else?” Kassia asked Alexios. “Do you ever wish you could be more normal?”

  Alexios shook his head. “That’s like wishing I didn’t exist. And in a world like this, what’s worse than being normal? What’s worse than thinking slavery is normal?”

  “Enough,” Basil said. “We should get moving before we’re spotted.”

  “Ever the practical one,” Alexios said.

  They circumnavigated the monastery, sticking to a dirt path with ruts left by passing carriages. At this point the travelers were close enough for any watchmen on the walls or towers to see them.

  Monasteries don’t usually have armed guards, do they? Alexios thought. This one seems to be guarding something important.

  As morning wore on, cocks crowed, and peasants left their homes to plow their fields. These peasants here had teams of fat lowing oxen pulling the plows. Most of the peasants Alexios had seen earlier in his travels were forced to yoke themselves to their own plows in order to pull them. Here in Arran or Georgia or Kartvelia or Shirvan or whatever it was called, people were doing better.

  Rich dark soil was gouged from the earth, and seeds flung inside. All was watered by the mountain streams melting from mountain ice, the nutrients in the ground nourished and enriched and restored by the churning Mother Earth, who gives and gives and gives and asks nothing in return.

  We are all her prodigal sons. Every morning we leave her, every evening we come back and beg her forgiveness. And every evening, she forgives.

  Alexios reflected that it was late in the season for planting, but maybe the climate here was so mild that the peasants could harvest more than one crop each season?

  Might explain their wealth. And the chubby oxen.

  It was funny. All peasants knew exactly how much labor they put into their fields, and exactly how many crops the fields gave back. They knew exactly how much their lords took, exactly how much better off they themselves would be without any lords to steal their crops. Every peasant therefore knew that the lord was his enemy—to be endured when the lord was strong, and destroyed when he was weak. But in the old world, this relationship was obscured. Some workers thought their wages were a reward from their bosses, when in reality they were just a tiny percentage of the value the workers generated. Here in the Middle Ages, these ignorant peasants, who couldn’t write their own names, who had no idea what lay more than fifty miles in any direction, nonetheless had a much clearer idea of economics than a modern highly educated workforce.

  One step forward. Two steps back.

  Still, there wasn’t much solidarity here. The air itself was dull without the farr charging it with crackling electricity. Doubtless the peasants cared for themselves and their families and little else.

  There is no society. There is only me, the people around me, and my immediate goals. Just have to work a little harder and smarter. With a little luck, we’ll get through the winter alright.

  Still, some peasants greeted the travelers with “dideba Iesos,” others said “salaam aleikoum.” The former group wore wooden crosses around their necks; the latter wore white turbans on their heads. There was even a Jewish village the travelers passed, where they met a man wearing a black skullcap riding a donkey. Though he was in a hurry, he still greeted them with a “shalom.” Otherwise the peasants were indistinguishable, wearing red or blue tunics of worn cloth that stretched either to their knees or ankles. (For religious reasons, Jews wore gray cotton instead.) Even after all this time in the medieval world, the clothing still looked strange and even silly to Alexios. He also observed the odd phenomenon, which he had never gotten used to, of beautiful women working on these farms—milking the cows, scattering feed to the chickens that clucked as they poked about the grass. In the old world, beautiful people were hard to find outside cities; in the medieval world, the opposite was true. You could hardly pass the outskirts of a village without meeting someone—clutching a heavy wooden pale sloshing with river water in each hand—who possessed the shocking good looks of a movie star.

  Something about modernity, Alexios thought. Something about pre-modernity.

  The fortified monastery was still within sight. It lay behind the travelers in the distance, and was almost lost in the mist rising from the fields and vineyards, the purple grape clusters swelling on the vines and the rotting wooden stakes covered in moss and lichen. After saying hello, no peasant had given the travelers a second glance, which made Alexios think that Adarnase had missed this place—for whatever reason—and that they should therefore ask these people permission to sleep in their homes for the day. It would even be enough to just rest out of sight of the road, where at any moment a band of knights could come riding—gleaming in armor, faces masked with steel—a sight nobody wanted to see. Those assholes always meant trouble. Basil and Kassia were also getting tired and cranky. Soon they would start whining and bickering.

  Not doing it for myself, of course, Alexios thought. Not tired at all. Just concerned about the children.

  There was nowhere else for the travelers to go. The mountains were always too far, and flat fields stretched in every direction. Alexios wondered if they should have knocked at the monastery gate after all. Maybe there was nothing too strange about the monks. Who knew? They might even be nice!

  Then the thought of being forbidden to even think about women—let alone enjoy their company—occurred to Alexios. He shuddered.

  What kind of a life is that? Life without women isn’t life at all! It’s just a living death…

  Alexios could tell the monks that he and his companions were pilgrims. They’d get fresh warm bread straight from the bakery ovens, wine from the vineyards just outside the doorway, beds behind thick stone walls. Hot fires blazing in the hearths, snapping at the brick.

  Would have been something, he thought, his stomach rumbling. Too bad.

  Just as he was about to say that they should start trying to communicate with the peasants—just as he was about to think that maybe Adarnase had given up—the ground rumbled. All the travelers stopped to listen. Alexios peered in every direction. Where was the sound coming from?

  There, straight ahead, from the mountains. Dark shapes bobbing up and down above the fields. Dark but gleaming in the sun. Riders. Horsemen. A lot of them. Dozens at least. Two banners held at the front—one with a red cross on a white background, the other with a white crescent on a green background—both whipping in the wind. Christian knights and Muslim ghazis riding together.

  “Nice to see people getting over their religious differences,” Alexios said. He turned to his companions. “Get back on your horses and ride!”

  “Where?” Isato said, as she and Alexios helped Basil and Kassia onto their mounts. “We have nowhere to go!”

  “Wherever we go, they’ll spot us,” Alexios agreed. “We have to head back to the monastery.”

  “Though there is no guarantee they will open their doors to us,” Isato said.

  “It’s all we’ve got,” Alexios said. Recalling Isato’s predilection for transforming into a giant hyena whenever she got angry, he pointed at her. “And try to stay calm!”

  “Nothing makes a person calmer than being told to be calm!” she growled.

  “I’m scared,” Kassia said.

  “I’ll protect you,” Alexios said. He remembered little Kassia covered in blood, standing with a dripping knife above Barsúmes’s quivering gurgling body. “And hey,” Alexios added. “Maybe you’ll protect me.”

  “Enough talking,” Basil said. “Let’s get out of here!”

  The travelers wheeled their neighing horses around and galloped back toward the distant monastery. Horns were blasting in the distance behind them. They had been spotted.