A/N: Linaxart provided four fantastic pieces of art for this fic! They can be seen by finding the Archive Of Our Own (AO3) version of this story under the same title and username. I am so privileged to have worked with her. You'll find her map at the bottom of chapter 1, the guys walking on chapter 3, and portraits of Nicolò and Yusuf in chapters 7 and 8 as they each respectively share a tender moment.
Beta services were provided by several people and I am grateful to all of them, for these have not been my best months for writing or brain function. Quincette helped me with Islam and cultural issues, along with some language pointers and story structure. Darkswanone helped me on writing, flow, and feelings. Treefrogie84 got me to spell Nicolò's name correctly. (They were technically helping me for another fic set after this one, and on behalf of Fandom Trumps Hate, but the advice was good so I applied it everywhere.) Lina helped me with some historical accuracy points. Again, my great thanks for helping me with this project.
1099 AD, July
Yusuf hurried anxiously through a cramped alley in Jericho, listening for signs of a struggle. He had seen three invaders chase a woman down here while she clutched a bundle to her chest. If they caught her, they would rape and kill her, or the other way around. It didn't matter to the monstrous men these Frankish invaders were. Some said they were possessed of demons.
Yusuf thought that was too kind; it implied they weren't to blame and he definitely blamed them. They were the ones who had chosen to march all day from Jerusalem so they could attack the peaceful city of Jericho – not some demon. They had overrun the city's incomplete walls without so much as waiting for the morn or attempting to negotiate a surrender. They had gone straight to killing simply because they could, and they wanted to. Their presence here angered and repulsed him, but he was not an angel or a demon who could win the day with naught but a wish. He was only one man.
He heard a garbled cry of pain and a rattle against a door to his left. Fearing he was too late, he tried to open it, but there was a weight against it. He shoved it open violently, stumbling over a Frankish man on the floor who was bleeding copiously from a slash across one side of his neck. He reached for Yusuf, who kicked the enemy's arm away in disgust. The man fell back, gurgling. His eyes rolled up in his head.
Only then did Yusuf lift his head. Two paces from him was another Frank, sword extended toward him, glistening red in the uncertain light of the oil lamp. The man was crouched in a combat stance but didn't attack. That was odd; he could have done so at any point while Yusuf was distracted. To Yusuf's relief, he saw the woman against the wall on the far side of the invader. She said, "He killed them! They came at me and he came from behind and killed them."
'Them'. Yusuf tried to blink away the tunnel-vision of combat. To his left was the third Frank – dead on the floor. He looked back to the woman. She was unharmed. The bundle she was holding was a baby. It was fussing in the healthy manner of an upset baby, not one that was wounded or dying (which Yusuf had heard enough times to know the difference – damn these invaders and their stupid unholy war). Next to her were two small children, barely more than toddlers. They clung to her robes, one on each side. They hadn't been with her when he'd seen her dart between buildings and accidentally attract the attention of these predators.
His eyes settled back on the Frank between them, who had, puzzlingly, still not attacked him. He recognized the man with a start. This was the one who had killed him four different times. They'd fought on the road to Jericho last week and before that on the walls of Jerusalem, and before that in front of the gates, and before that in Yusuf's very first battle, when they'd burned the first siege tower the invading Franks had tried to assemble.
"You!" He hated this man. He would have thought he was a curse sent by God to afflict the faithful with unstoppable foes, yet Yusuf himself was the same – rising from the dead and shrugging off his wounds, to the alarm and consternation of his allies. It was why he was hunting Franks alone. (Well, that and the men he'd been with had been killed. They didn't get up again. He did.)
With a snarl, he raised his scimitar toward the man, the tip of his blade extending next to the Frank's. The Frank batted it aside and held his place, baring his teeth in a threat that would have been more convincing if he'd been trying to hit Yusuf instead of his weapon. Yusuf looked at his scimitar, where some of the blood from the Frank's weapon had transferred to his steel. Frankish blood.
The man had turned on his own for some reason. Did he want the woman all to himself? If so, why wasn't he attacking Yusuf? Yusuf knew the man wasn't afraid of him. Never in their clashes had he been hesitant or fearful. He didn't look fearful now – just … determined. There had to be another reason. Curiosity stayed Yusuf's hand.
Yusuf wiped his blade on the forearm of his shirt, again giving a perfect opportunity for attack and warily watching his foe to see what the man would do. Instead, the Frank's sword point dropped a few inches and he relaxed slightly. So. They would not fight this time. Good. He was getting tired of killing the same man and the woman and her children were more important anyway.
Defiant of the danger, Yusuf sheathed his weapon. Behind him, he heard someone pounding on a door in the distance. There were yells and the distant din of altercations as the chaos continued. Yusuf held up a placating hand to the man – one of them had to be the voice of reason here. He tried to shut the door. The dead man's arm was in the way. He kicked it aside and shut it anyway.
Turning to the invader, Yusuf challenged him in Arabic, "Why are you doing this?"
The man answered in a tense, hurried voice – several sentences in whatever Frankish dialect he spoke. Not only did Yusuf not know the words, he didn't even know which language they were from. He heard 'Jerusalem', though. Yusuf said, "Wait. Stop. Small … smaller words?" He doubted even that would be enough for him to understand, but they might as well try. "Do you know Arabic?"
The invader hesitated, then said simply, "Jerusalem."
"What about it?"
The man's sword tip dipped lower and he straightened. To the casual eye, he was simply holding the sword down and out, angled. Yusuf could see he was still poised, just not as much. The man looked between the two dead Franks, then back at the woman who was quieting the baby. Looking back to Yusuf, the man pointed at the woman with his free hand.
The Frank said in halting Arabic, "No Jerusalem. No women." He made a stabbing gesture with his sword, to the side. "No children." He made a short slash. He shook his head, his expression turning upset. "No. No." He shook his head and waited a beat as though hoping Yusuf could make sense of this. He gestured between himself and Yusuf and lifted his sword as though to set himself for an attack. "Yes … men. Yes God."
Yusuf tilted his head, outraged at what he was thinking the man meant. "You mean you don't want what happened at Jerusalem to happen here? The killing of women and children?" His voice turned angry. Why did this arrogant Frank get to 'decide' these things? And now?! Here? Less than a week before, this man had chased him out of the city and fought him on the road as he'd defended refugees fleeing the invading hordes of Franks. "You were in Jerusalem! You helped take it! You fought me there!" His voice rose with each sentence.
The man pressed his lips together and his brows furrowed slightly in concentration. He said nothing. Yusuf suspected the stupid Frank didn't know what he was saying. Yusuf also didn't care much, as the opportunity to tell off the whole Frankish invasion force through this one man wasn't one Yusuf was going to pass up. He drew himself up and continued, "Where were you with this conscience when Ma'arra was sacked and our people were eaten? You draw the line at women and children, but it's fine to butcher those who would defend them? What were you going to do to those fleeing Jerusalem if you had managed to catch them? If I and the other guards hadn't turned to fight there on the road?"
The man shook his head and waved his free hand in negation. "No … No Arabic."
"Of course, you don't know Arabic, you uncivilized monster!" Enraged, Yusuf spat at the man's feet. "You're ignorant! You're an ignorant Frank who came here for coin! Valuing money above all else while you mouth blasphemies about a holy mission! When did you change your mind if what happened in Jerusalem offended you so much? When you found its coffers too empty for your pleasure? Or was it when you ran out of innocents to put to the sword?"
The man said nothing. He was looking from the spittle to Yusuf. There was something very chilling about the way his eyes hardened and his face blanked. He put both hands on his sword hilt and the point rose between them again. He settled into a fighting stance.
The frustration and despair of the last two months ran through Yusuf. He sneered, "Here you are in Jericho to repeat the whole thing again! And again! And again! Until we are, all of us, dead! That's what you want, isn't it?" He reached out, palm toward the invader, and put it at the tip of the weapon. "Go ahead. Strike me down, then! Another corpse for your-"
The man stabbed him without hesitation or letting him finish, putting the point of his sword and a good handspan of the blade through his palm. Yusuf flinched at the pain, but he did not budge. The woman yelped. Yusuf pulled his hand back when the invader did nothing more. The wound healed.
"See? You have no power over me!" He thrust his hand closer to the invader, bypassing the tip of his blade, heedless of the danger. All the invader had to do to run his whole body through was straighten his arms. "Is this all you have? Killing and killing and killing again?" His voice dropped to a growl. "Your entire people are a pathetic excuse for human beings."
The invader swallowed, looking from his blade to Yusuf's hand to Yusuf's face. His eyes stayed there for a long beat, as the tip of his blade sank to the floor. Up close, he looked far more haggard than Yusuf would have expected any victor to be. He looked tired and worn and uncertain, his eyes hollow, dark lines under them, his lips chapped and cracked, grime over every part of him. For half a second, Yusuf felt pity for him. He was hard to hate anyone who looked so wretched. The man's lips parted and his expression softened. But then he stepped back to a more proper combat distance. He was still dangerous. Yusuf drew his scimitar.
"No!" the man yelped. He'd stepped back, but his weapon was still down and it did not rise. Yusuf, feeling himself a gullible fool, hesitated. There was no reason why he shouldn't kill him, was there? Just because he looked miserable didn't mean he wasn't still an invader. Yusuf didn't want to, but he didn't know how else to resolve their impasse. Into that moment, the invader offered, "Peace?"
Yusuf's lip curled to hear that come from an invader's lips. "You know that word?"
"Peace," the man repeated hopefully. He followed it with several incomprehensible sentences in that foreign language of his. The invader held one hand out to the side, palm open. It was not a surrender. He wasn't even sheathing his weapon. But it was a cagey attempt at a peaceful gesture. Yusuf could see that. Without taking his eyes off Yusuf, the man gestured behind himself at the woman and children. In Latin, he said, "Run?"
His grudge against this man could wait for another day, when he hadn't just stumbled on the man defending a Muslim woman and her children. Yusuf answered in Arabic, because his Latin consisted of a few hundred disconnected words, derived from poems and scientific essays, not conversation. "Yes, they should run." Yusuf looked past him to the woman. "Do you know how to get out of here?"
She nodded. "I came back for the children. I did not know it would be so bad. Is it true they will kill everyone?" She made a confused gesture at the invader.
"I don't know. I have heard terrible things, but I left Jerusalem the day the siege broke." He indicated the man. "This one would know better than I and we see what he thinks of his countrymen." Grudgingly, he had to admit the man had (at least and apparently) found some manner of breaking point with the rest of the monsters, if the two dead Franks here meant anything.
The woman said, "I know how to get out through the sewers so we don't have to go near the gates, but I would have to get to the tanner's street first." She looked down at the two children.
"I will come with you and make sure you get out safely," Yusuf said. He turned to the invader and said in badly conjugated Latin, "We run. Good-bye."
The man nodded once, then went to the woman's side and knelt to gather up one of the children, who cringed away from him.
"No- What-?" Yusuf said in surprise. The woman made an objecting noise as well, but she didn't dare to interfere. The man's other hand still held his naked and bloody sword. He picked up the child. The boy keened and pushed at his shoulder but didn't struggle beyond that.
"Do you not even understand Latin?" Yusuf asked in outrage, wondering if he had misspoke, although by necessity he was back to speaking Arabic. "We are leaving. Not you."
"We run," the man said in Latin, standing. The tip of his sword described a small circle, perhaps indicating the room. "Good-bye?"
"You don't even understand Latin," Yusuf said in disbelief, no longer a question. His head pulled back. "You are a Latin! A Frank! How ignorant are you?" The man ignored him to turn to the child in his arm. He said soothing things to him in his own language. "Stupid Frank," Yusuf muttered.
Frustrated, he looked at the woman, who held the baby and had the toddler, a little girl, on the other side of her. If she had to lead the children, then the going would be slow. But if the invader carried one and Yusuf carried the other, then they could hurry. He hadn't intended to keep company with the man … but he supposed he could be useful for now. To the woman, Yusuf said, "Fine, then. I'll take the other."