In the morning, there was a thick pillar of smoke rising from the city and no soldiers they could see. They went down to the road to meet a wagon full of refugees. Yusuf went ahead and spoke with them, determining the invaders had looted and pillaged into the night, then set fire to the place as they withdrew their forces west (away from them and back to Jerusalem) with their spoils.

They hadn't tried to hold the city, which meant the refugees he was speaking with were considering attempting to return after a day or two elsewhere. Jericho was their home, after all. They were hopeful of some organized military response from nearby areas might hold the city. Yusuf had his doubts – it could be retaken easily, sure, but Jericho's famed walls had been toppled by earthquakes long ago. This was how the Franks had simply overrun the place the day before and how so much of the populace had escaped. How could anyone hold Jericho against the invaders?

He returned to Nicolò as the wagon went on its way east. The morning light marked the first time he'd had a good solid look at the man. Not that he would call the visage 'good'. His skin was sickly pale where it wasn't smeared with blood or dirt. He had darkened hollows under his eyes. His eyes were also pale, an unhealthy hue of blue-grey like a cloud-ridden daytime sky or the sea under a haze. His hair was the color of dead grass, oily, straight, and matted down over his skull where it wasn't darkened with dried blood.

His face's proportions were odd. One of his eyes didn't open as much as the other and he had a mole on one cheek. His beard was patchy, like the first growth of some teenager, yet he was at least twice that in age. He was so repulsive looking that it was fascinating.

"You are an ugly bastard," Yusuf remarked, sizing the man up. Physically, they were roughly the same size with Nicolò slightly shorter, which still put them both of them on the large side for men of their time. Yusuf wondered how awful he looked in return, with both of them coming off weeks or months of military campaigning and the last week of intermittent combat. Yusuf had had more access to baths and laundry. The Franks, not so much. It was clear Nicolò's chain armor and ragged tabard had been in continuous use for too long. The tabard might have started off white with some odd Christian sigil on it, but it was splotchy now and rust-colored in spots. It smelled like his armor padding had mildew. Yusuf wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"Watch?" Nicolò pointed at the wagon that was getting further down the road.

Yusuf looked after it and scratched his beard contemplatively. He was still tired from the night, still dispirited and not sure what to do. "Yes. I suppose we could watch the wagon. I have no desire to walk through the horror that is Jericho in the morning light and it is empty for the time being anyway." He grimaced in the direction of the city, feeling again that he'd failed in not somehow stopping the entire mob of invaders by himself. Nicolò turned that way, too, for a long moment, then made the sign of the cross. He looked to Yusuf after, exhaling heavily. It looked like an apology.

"Perhaps God will listen to you. It's not like our prayers did any good," Yusuf said wearily. He hoped the Frank didn't understand him, as his words were some of the worst blasphemy. Was God really out there, keeping them alive? If so, why did He not clarify His purpose so that Yusuf knew better how to serve and what he should do next? He felt unmoored, drifting. Yusuf waited several long beats for some divine inspiration. The only thing that happened was that Nicolò took a few steps in the direction of the wagon and looked back at him. Well. It was a direction to go. And maybe that was all the sign he was going to get.

Yusuf might have wallowed in depression if it weren't for having someone walking next to him, occasionally looking at him as though expecting interaction. Yusuf eventually obliged. "How much Latin do you know?" No answer, but he was asking the question in Arabic. Yusuf tried to dig up his training in the language. "I don't know much of it myself, but let me see …" In Latin, he put together, "Do you understand me?"

"Yes," Nicolò answered immediately, his expression brightening. "I know Latin. I-" And there were a lot of words Yusuf couldn't make out. He waved his hand in negation at Nicolò, causing him to fall silent.

In Latin, Yusuf said, "I no. No Latin. Little. Little ..." What was the word for 'speak'? He couldn't bring it to mind. He reverted to Arabic. "This isn't a lot of help, but at least you are not as ignorant as I thought. Let's work on getting a language between us so we can discuss why neither of us can keep the other dead." He counted off numbers in Latin – he remembered those – and then repeated in Arabic, showing his fingers as he counted.

"Yes Arabic?" Nicolò said in a happy tone. He repeated the numbers in Latin confidently and the ones in Arabic with some hesitation. Yusuf corrected him on pronunciation. Nicolò repeated again carefully. Yusuf corrected, Nicolò repeated. He moved on to body parts and their accoutrements next. Nicolò was attentive and persistent, which struck Yusuf as impressive for a foreigner, even if there were certain letter sounds he didn't seem able to replicate. It was a good way to keep his mind off the two fallen cities behind them.

The morning heated quickly as the sun rose above them. They reached the crossing of the Jordan river, where there was a well-maintained ford. As it should be in any civilized land, on each side of the river, the ford included a pavilion surrounded by trees and a well that drew upon the river's water. Travelers could take rest for the heat of the day or wait their turn while some other wagon made its way across.

Nicolò went to his knees in the river, scooping it up to splash on his face and hair, then sucking draughts of it from his cupped hands. Yusuf paused next to him. There was a drinking fountain at each pavilion, but perhaps the Frank was unfamiliar with such things. Yusuf had heard that amenities taken for granted in Muslim lands were not to be found outside them. In any case, the sediment stirred up by the wagon going before them had mainly settled so Nicolò's behavior was merely odd rather than unsanitary. They resumed crossing after Nicolò rose, dripping.

On the other side, the refugees had unharnessed their oxen and turned them out in a paddock for the purpose.

"No … No run?" Nicolò asked, gesturing down the road and using the Latin word for 'run' as he had the day before.

"It's hot," Yusuf answered. "We'll rest through the heat of the day and then move on. I'll go see if they have anything to eat. You have to be as hungry as I am and I've heard you Franks are cannibals if left to your own devices." He wasn't angry about it, just matter-of-fact, a dry joke to himself he knew Nicolò wouldn't understand.

He spoke with those in the wagon. They'd seen the pair of them following, obviously, and had come to the decision among themselves that they meant no harm. They had no food they were willing to share, but they gave him a bowl and a cloth to clean himself.

Yusuf scooped up some water and carried it back to some shaded stones near where Nicolò was standing in the road. He washed his face and hands, enjoying the trickle of cool water down the back of his neck. It was summer in the Middle East and quite hot today. "You should not stand in the sun like that, stupid Frank. You're dressed badly for this weather in that heavy chain armor. You should rest in the shade like a sensible person, while you have the chance."

"Eh?"

"The sun. Solis." He pointed upward. Nicolò squinted at the blazing orb, his face scrunching up to a ridiculous degree, his upper teeth prominent. He looked to Yusuf, who said, "This is the shade. No sun. No solis." Yusuf waved his hand back and forth in the shaded area.

"The sun," Nicolò said, pointing at it. Yusuf nodded. Nicolò looked up again, not squinting this time, just staring. He kept staring. Seconds ticked by, with Yusuf expecting with each one that the man would quit staring straight at the sun itself, like he was defying it to burn his eyes out.

"What are you- Stop that!" Yusuf called to him. "You will blind yourself, idiot!" Nicolò rubbed at his eyes. "Come here!" Yusuf called, exasperated. Nicolò started in his direction and immediately stumbled because he was still rubbing his eyes, assuming he could see at all. Concerned, Yusuf hurried over to him and led him to the shade. He was embarrassed the refugees might see him actually aiding the Frank rather than simply traveling the same road with him, but there was no help for it.

He sat Nicolò on one of the stones and held up two fingers in front of him. "Can you see? How many fingers?"

Nicolò blinked and squinted. His eyes had watered such that tears tracked down from them. "Fingers?"

"Yes. How many?"

"How-?"

"Count them. How many fingers?"

"Two." Nicolò wiped his face.

"Good. Don't look at the sun," he chided. "How do you know if your eyes will heal from that? Maybe the healing only works on cuts and things. Stupid Frank." With a sigh, Yusuf sat down on the next stone, shaking his head in exasperation. It was amazing the invaders had managed to defeat them in any capacity. Ignorant savages, the lot of them.

Nicolò was looking at him, a half-forgotten smile on his face. He seemed to be studying Yusuf's features. Yusuf noticed and looked back at him, wondering at the intensity Nicolò could put in something as simple as looking at a person. Very quietly, Nicolò said, "Sei bello." It was like it slipped out unintentionally, the sort of thing you said when confronted with the obvious.

"What?"

Nicolò straightened abruptly, the smile vanishing. His skin reddened like some delayed reaction to the sun. He pointed upward. "The sun. The sun bello. Sole bello."

"I don't understand. What is 'bello'? Bright?"

Nicolò shook his head, made a dismissive wave of his hand, and looked away. "No Arabic."

Yusuf gave the back of the Frank's head a long look, suspicious about the exchange. He would have assumed the man was insulting him for calling him stupid, but he wasn't reacting like someone who'd issued an insult. Then again, who knew with Franks? Yusuf grunted and picked up the bowl with the cloth. "Here. Take this. Clean yourself. You're disgusting." Nicolò was a bit cleaner than he would have been without the moment in the river, but he could still do with some scrubbing.

Nicolò took the bowl and bowed his head formally and saying, "Thank you," in Arabic. For once, he had the pronunciation right.

"Ah, so you know that word already. I have not taught you that. You're welcome," he added belatedly as Nicolò wiped down his face. One of the refugees called out for the midday prayer. Yusuf looked in their direction and winced. He wasn't sure how he felt about things between himself and God. He'd managed not to dwell much on the supernatural aspects of his life-beyond-death until Nicolò had cut himself and directly attributed the ability to Him. If He were real, then what of all the prayers where he'd simply gone through the motions for the sake of family and community?

Nicolò looked between Yusuf and the others. "You …? God?" He made a very abbreviated pantomime of prostration for prayer.

"No," Yusuf said. "I am filthy." He wore blood-stained clothing he'd slept on the ground in. "A little hand and face wash is not enough to take off the pollution of killing people last night." It was an excuse. He could have made himself presentable. He could have cleaned with river water or the fountains provided for this express purpose. He could have even done tayammum and cleaned with sand. But even though he'd prayed a dozen times since fleeing Jerusalem, he'd never done it with the thought that God was actually paying attention to him.

If his healing was proof of such a thing, then it meant God was on the side of the Franks as well, for here was Nicolò with the same gift. It seemed more reasonable that God had nothing to do with it and Nicolò was wrong. But if that were the case, then he had no explanation for the healing at all. If there were no divine purpose to it … then the only purpose it had was the one they made of it, just like anything else in their life. He puzzled over this while they waited, coming to no final decision.

By the time the travelers moved on, Yusuf had added water, ox, wagon, bowl, river, road, rope, brick, stone, tree, grass, mud, and dust to Nicolò's rapidly growing repertoire of words, along with basic colors and shapes. By dusk, they should make it to the town of Shuna that had been mentioned the previous night.

Yusuf was not familiar with this land, having started his life some twenty-four hundred kilometers west in a place that would later be known as Tunisia. Most of his adult life had been spent in Cairo, still five hundred kilometers away by the straightest course. He'd taken trading trips as far north as Damascus, but they'd gone by way of Beirut, sticking to the coast.

He observed the landscape of scrubby, rugged mountains rising over green, fertile valleys as Nicolò doggedly counted to one hundred over and over again. He made for an odd companion and not for the first time, Yusuf wondered why the man continued in walking with him, further and further away from the lands his people had taken. Further into danger, into lands where he distinctly did not belong. Yusuf had no social currency here to protect himself, much less an invader. But maybe if they went far enough, they would leave the shadow of war, he could find someone to translate this man's words, and they could have a proper conversation.

"I do not know where you get your patience," Yusuf said as Nicolò began another recitation of the Arabic words he'd been taught so far. "You need to give me some of it, for I am running short." Nicolò hesitated, smiled personably at him, then went back to counting. Yusuf groaned softly and rolled his eyes, but Nicolò continued. The numbers were the worst.

Shuna was not a metropolis. If Yusuf had known how minor it was, he might have chosen a different direction. The walls were no more than a high plank fence and the gate was shut – not surprising, given there was a war going on a day's walk to the west. They opened to let the wagon in after some negotiation. They closed it again when Yusuf and Nicolò approached.

"May we enter?" Yusuf asked politely, stopping a few strides from the closed gate. Nicolò was several strides further back, shifting his weight uneasily, hand on the grip of his sword.

"No," the guard said brusquely from behind the closed gate. He could be seen through a narrow slit between the planks. "Go away."

"Sir." Yusuf brought his hands together in a conciliatory gesture, undeterred by the refusal. This was a negotiation like any other mercantile work. "It is getting dark. I ask hospitality, in the Prophet's name."

"You look like trouble. You both do. I said no."

Yusuf sighed and spread his hands, showing how open and inoffensive he was. "We are hungry. We are tired. We are filthy from war. Please. I beg of your better nature."

"I said no."

He tried another tack. "You can ask the wagon you let in before us. We caused them no trouble. I am a simple soldier from Jericho and before that Jerusalem. I have fought to defend this land and all in it. We carried children out of Jericho and to safety. We ask nothing extravagant. Only what your honor requires you provide."

"You do not know me!" the guard said, raising his voice in indignation. "You question my honor? Where are you even from? You're obviously not from around here. I've never seen the likes of you!"

Well, that would be because he was in a backwater in the middle of nowhere, but Yusuf didn't say that. Still, he would have expected a gate guard to be more familiar with travelers from far regions. "I am a Maghrebi from Mahdia by way of Cairo, which is how I joined the force of Fatimid Egyptians and rallied to Jerusalem's defense."

The guard was silent for a beat because there was nothing in that recitation that was impeachable. "And what about him?"

Yusuf glanced back at Nicolò, who was watching warily. He could no longer pretend they weren't traveling companions. As shameful as that was in a general way, Yusuf found the man easy to be with. That would be difficult to explain, given the social mores of the day. He turned back to the guard. "That is Nicolò. He has turned his blade against the invaders. He is no longer among them."

"I do not care what he has done! You may take your blades and go down the road. We don't want either of you here."

Yusuf wasn't making any progress wheedling. It was time to turn things up a notch. "We are both very hungry. If we cannot find hospitality here, we may be forced to take our blades to one of these many farms and small houses, to appeal to them for what a beggar is due."

"I should kill you where you stand for that threat to our good farmers!" The guard said, rattling the mechanism for the gate in some pretense that he was going to burst forth in attack.

Yusuf was unimpressed. "Perhaps you should, but you won't. If you come out and fight, then we will account for ourselves against you. Which of you or your men wish to risk it against two seasoned soldiers who have nothing to lose? Would you deprive your fine town of Shuna of a defender in these perilous times, when you could simply provide us with food?"

He heard the guard start to say something – a continuation of his bluster – but it died in his throat. Yusuf could see the man grimace and dither through the narrow slit – because he knew Yusuf was right: feed us, or we'll go rob one of these nearby farms and you'll never hear the end of it. Or such was the threat. Yusuf thought he'd rather starve than descend to brigandry, but he was already starving and he wasn't above saying things he probably wouldn't carry through with. They weren't quite lies. Finally, the guard asked, "Do you have money?"

"No. I left all my possessions in Jericho and before that, in Jerusalem. I have nothing but what you see, which is why I humbly beg of you-"

"Oh, shut up!" The guard turned to speak to someone behind him. "Go get them some bread and sweetwater. I am done with this!"

"Thank you," Yusuf said, dispensing with the act of negotiation. His shoulders slumped with how tired and hopeless he truly felt. He wiped at his brow. It had been a very long day and the idea of ending it without food or refreshment, still clad in these stinking rags and battered armor, sleeping on the ground somewhere was thoroughly disheartening. One out of three was better than nothing.

As they waited, the guard said, "I had a cousin in Jericho. How did it go?" His voice was different now, he, too, having dispensed with the act. Now he was simply curious about events and worried for his family.

Yusuf took a step closer to have a genial conversation. "Many escaped. The invaders didn't surround the city. They just poured in one side. They seemed more interested in stealing than killing. It was not so in Jerusalem, where they surrounded the city and sought to kill all. We had to fight our way out and then they sent men to harass us as we fled."

One of those men had been Nicolò. Yusuf had beaten him to the ground and tried to cut off his head, thinking and hoping that would end the man's menace. He'd taken an ax in the spine from one of Nicolò's allies before he'd managed to finish the job. Nicolò had been the one to remove that ax, once he was restored, and to pat Yusuf's face in an absurdly friendly fashion before being run off by a surge of Yusuf's compatriots. It had been a strange exchange and the last time he'd seen the invader until he found him defending the woman in Jericho.

The guard laughed sourly. "Ah, you were not willing to fight to the death, eh?"

Yusuf pulled himself from his memories and laughed just the same. "Oh, I was willing." And he had – twice at least. "God had other plans for me."

"From the look of your armor, you very nearly did not survive for those plans."

Yusuf looked at his damaged splinted mail and the hole-riddled tabard over it. "There were several hard battles. I was very lucky. I hope your cousin has been lucky as well."

"Insha'Allah."

Yusuf nodded. "Insha'Allah."

Someone came up behind the guard, who opened the gate enough to pass Yusuf a basket and a jug. "My thanks to you," Yusuf said, taking the items and backing up.

The guard raised his voice in the same irritable vein he'd used for haggling and refusing them entry. "Keep going until you are out of sight of the town. I do not want to see you loitering and planning trouble!"

"No, of course not," Yusuf muttered. The basket contained a few hard loaves of bread. He handed half to Nicolò and tucked the jug under his arm. It was less than he'd wanted or even expected. This was truly a beggar's ration and no more than a bribe to make them go away, but there was no one to complain to about the uncivilized treatment.

To Nicolò, he gestured further down the road and said, "We go. Do you know 'go'?" Nicolò didn't answer, already busy stuffing his mouth with bread. "It's like 'run', "but slower. Slow 'run'."

Nicolò said something in Latin, around a mouthful of food.

"I don't know that word," Yusuf said.

Then Nicolò swallowed enough to say something else - bread in Latin, holding up what was left of his loaf. "Panem."

"Ah, that one I know." Yusuf repeated bread in Arabic. They had eaten all they'd been given by the time they were out of sight of the small town. He assumed the contents of the jug were supposed to be mint tea. It was sweetened and there were indeed a few mint leaves floating in it like an afterthought, but that was all one could say of it. He passed the jug of sugar water to the Frank and tried not to think about it when he drank after the man later. It was a necessity of travel. At least for the time being they had their bellies full. "I don't want to travel all night," Yusuf declared when they were well away from the town. "Let us stop over there where those three palm trees are."

"Three."

Yusuf's head jerked around. "Yes, three! You caught that word in among the rest, did you? Good for you."

"Good."

Yusuf side-eyed him, thinking back through all the words they'd exchanged that day. 'Good' had not been among them, but he'd said it often enough. "Yes, good."

"Good." They settled under the trees, finding the ground softer here than the stony hilltop the night before. They brushed aside the fallen palm leaves to clear spots large enough to lie down. Nicolò said, "Sleep? Watch?"

Yusuf sighed and looked up and down the road as best he could see. He didn't know where they were going or even why they were continuing this way, except that the first civilized town they'd come to sensibly wanted nothing to do with them. He was too tired to deal with it, both spiritually, given his uncertainty of what to do or where they were going, and physically in that he'd slept very little the night before and marched an entire day with nothing but a couple half-sized loaves to eat. "Do you think we need to watch?"

Nicolò was quiet for a long pause, then said, "No. Sleep."

"Good. I was-" Yusuf stopped, tossing aside a stone from his resting spot. "You understood what I said."

Nicolò was already lying down, curling on his side as he had the night before, facing Yusuf. "Sleep?"

"You understood what I said," Yusuf insisted, wondering to what degree he'd been underestimating the man's understanding.

"No Arabic," he said sulkily.

Yusuf didn't buy that for an instant. "You lying bastard."

Between strangers, those were fighting words if they were understood – both the accusation that he was lying and the slur to his family. But Nicolò only looked over at him in the darkness and enunciated with particular care: "No. Arabic." Then: "Sleep. No watch."

Yusuf snorted, but he was amused and impressed at Nicolò telling him off within the limits of his language. "Stupid Frank." His voice was warm, not insulting. He chuckled as he felt across the ground before he laid down, making sure there were no other stones or sticks that would poke him as he slept. The man was a good distraction from Yusuf's many other concerns.

"No Frank. Genoese. From Genova … I Genoese."

"I see you're not arguing the part about being stupid." Nicolò didn't answer, nor did he turn his head toward him in the inquisitive manner of someone who didn't know what had been said. Yusuf smirked and laid down on his back. If he were right about what Nicolò understood, then he was a more patient and humble man than Yusuf had so far given him credit.

Minutes passed. Staring up at the dark palm leaves against the darker sky, Yusuf thought about the distinction. He'd assumed Genova was a city or district within the larger Frankish empire, assuming the Franks had an empire. He didn't know. His family didn't trade outside of Muslim lands – it was a long way from Cairo (or Mahdia), it was dangerous, and non-Muslims tended to be a bunch of barbarians these days. Or so he'd been told.

Curious, Yusuf asked, "Genoese people are not Franks?" Nicolò made a noise but said nothing. Yusuf said, "You can't pretend you don't understand me. Are Genoese men not Franks?"

Nicolò took a moment to put the words together. "Genoese men are? Are no … not Franks."

"Huh." He thought about his own identity as a Maghrebi instead of one of the Fatimids or Turks or the locals. He wondered if the Genoese/Frank difference was something a person would notice if they knew what to look for, the same as most could see he himself wasn't from these parts. "Is it insulting that I call you a Frank?" Nicolò didn't answer. Yusuf went on, "'Stupid Genoese' doesn't roll off the tongue as well. I'll have to think of something else to call you. Maybe just ugly bastard. Do you know what ugly bastard means?"

He knew he was toeing the line between friendly teasing and mortal insults. He definitely had no right to friendship, which meant there was only one reasonable way Nicolò could interpret Yusuf's words. When Nicolò propped himself up on his side facing Yusuf, Yusuf felt his heart beat faster and his hand found the hilt of the scimitar he still had at his waist. He didn't want to use it. He regretted his words if they were going to lead to fighting. Nicolò stared in his direction. Yusuf didn't breathe. It was too dark to read the man's expression, but there was no sword in his hand. After a long pause, Nicolò said as sternly as though it were a command, "Peace."

"Peace," Yusuf repeated. He started breathing again and released his weapon. His sass had gotten him into trouble before, but it seemed he was not in trouble now. Maybe the opposite.

"Peace," Nicolò said again in a less disagreeable tone as he laid back down. "Sleep."

"Sleep," Yusuf agreed. He was smiling when he shut his eyes.