Yusuf lives for a year before he sees Nicolò a second time. He is half convinced it was a dream, or a vision of madness that he awoke from death to see a Crusader speaking his tongue and with soft eyes.

He had used the word immortality, and Yusuf still didn't believe him, but the wounds which heal after every battle are a stark reminder. Even still, he's not foolhardy, he hasn't died again yet.

But the Crusader plagues his dreams, he searches for that face, those eyes among the living and the dead, but for a year he sees nothing.

He is escorting his General to the front lines, carving a path for him through the chaos. He bloodies his sword on many of the invaders, moving swiftly but getting tired in the long battle. Sometimes they have taken prisoners, and Yusuf had elected to guard them, learn some of their language and ask careful questions about one of their own. But not this battle, in this battle there is no mercy.

"Demon!"

There is a cry across the battlefield and Yusuf sees him, only-

This is not the same man who had tended to him after they killed each other. That man had been calm, wise, possessing a knowledge beyond what Yusuf could imagine.

This man is feral.

His eyes are wide and crazed. He's wielding his sword with brutality, cutting down man after man, but he is running for Yusuf, screaming in Italian.

"What the hell have you done to me?" Nicolò cries.

Their swords meet with a clang, vibrations buzzing up Yusuf's arm.

"Nicolò!"

"Release me from this curse!"

He lunges at him, full of fear and anger and Yusuf does not understand. This was the man that had explained immortality to him with such poetic words.

"You are the one who did this to me!" Yusuf parries back with his words and sword.

"Stop torturing me! Let me die!" He begs, teeth bared. Then Nicolò runs him through.

The other man pulls his sword free, then is caught by a crossbow bolt through the neck and they go down together, as they did the first time.

Yusuf is lined up among the rows of the dead. His brothers in arms are laid on the floor beside him, arranged but not yet prepared for funerary rites. His helmet and turban have been removed, but his armour and boots are still on. His hand is clutching his sword to his chest.

There is a hand in his hair, petting him gently to wake.

Yusuf bolts upright and scrambles away, brandishing his sword between himself and the other man. The point wavers between his face and throat.

The warrior Nicolò is there with him, but this one much more like the first. Settled, unnerving. A twin perhaps?

No, not a twin - by all that is holy - he is fiddling with the crossbow bolt that killed him.

"Good evening, Yusuf." And they are back to Arabic.

"What is happening to me? What is wrong with us?"

He doesn't just want the man dead this time, he wants answers.

"It is time you knew more."

Nicolò is wearing different clothes, his head wrapped in a scarf that is pulled down to show his face. These are more the clothes of Yusuf's own people than that of a Crusader. He stands and arranges the scarf to hide his face.

"Come. We do not belong in the place of the dead. Leave your armour, put this on."

Yusuf obeys and replaces his bloodied tunic with the one Nicolò hands him. The belt and scabbard he keeps, cleaning the sword thoroughly before putting it away. Nicolò stands at the doorway, keeping careful watch.

Yusuf follows after him. "Why did you kill me?"

Nicolò holds up a hand to stop him walking out into the street where a unit of soldiers pass by. "Not here."

Yusuf follows this foreigner through the streets of the city. He moves with an easy grace, it's almost hypnotic.

"I'm sorry you have been alone this past year." He says over his shoulder. There is a strange accent to his words. "I think it must have been difficult to detangle from the army and track you again."

"I knew a man from Cairo once." Yusuf said. "He fell from the city wall and woke up with parts of his life missing. He couldn't recognise his children, but knew his parents."

"You think this is what happened to me?" Nicolò says with a smile. "You are very clever, Yusuf, and not far off."

The city under siege is a tense place, women and children whispering among themselves, all in fear.

"I will take you outside the city." Nicolò says. "And I will answer any questions you have. But you must then choose your own path."

They escape the city in the dark of the evening and walk through the night. By the time the sun is rising they have made it through to nearby farms, mostly sacked for the invasion, but in the rubble they scrounge enough food for a meal. Some flatbread, root vegetables and water pulled from the nearby well make a passable stew that they cook in a pot left behind.

Nicolò sits in the dirt on a ridge and gestures for Yusuf to take the place across from him. He asks in an awkward phrasing. "What were you told when you first resurrected?"

It is the first sentence Nicolò has said that was stilted, usually so fluent.

"You told me," Yusuf answers, stressing the pronoun, "that we are immortal. We would live and die and live again." He runs at the spot in his belly where the straight sword had pierced him the day before. "I didn't believe you."

"You know now that it is true. And what else did I say?"

"That there are others like us, that can share in our burden."

He feels like a student at his childhood mosque again, proving his memory to the ulama.

"You said we are bound together. I'm finding that hard to believe too. There is no place in my life for my repeat murderer."

Yusuf glares at him, expecting a fight, but Nicolò's face gives nothing away. Totally impassive. A battle of wills, and one that Yusuf lost.

"You said I could ask questions."

"You may not like the answers." Nicolò waved a hand. "But I shall try."

"Why did you kill me?"

Nicolò thins his lips, but replies. "The first time, because your people were the ones I was taught to hate. I know better now."

"You killed me yesterday." Yusuf pointed out.

Nicolò laughed. "I am sometimes quick to learn, sometimes slow."

The next question ferments a while in Yusuf's mind. "If I cannot die, what is to become of me? Life eternal is not natural."

"Nothing that lives, lives forever." Nicolò replies, the cadence of a familiar chant. "One day you will die. Our wounds will stop healing and it will be our end. But there are many centuries to go yet. You are still new."

New. He doesn't feel new. "Then how old are you?"

Nicolò barks a laugh that feels just a little too harsh. "That is a difficult question."

The sun has risen now and Nicolò turns his face towards it.

"Have you studied the stars, Yusuf?"

"I am not a scholar."

"But you know of the movement of the stars and the planets."

Yusuf inclines his head.

A long fingered hand spreads out and passes in front of him, tracing a path in the morning sky. "All of the stars travel the same way, slow, but onward, onward, yes?"

"Yes." Yusuf wonders if the man has lost his mind again.

"But the planets do not have this path." The hand turns to a point, and the finger wiggles like a dance, back and forth. "Their movement is different. You, the others like us, and the rest of this damned world, you live like the stars. Your life goes through time straight, one day after the next. I am not like the rest. My life is back and forth and detached from the way you live yours."

"What do you mean by this?" Yusuf demands.

For the first time, Nicolò looks sheepish. "I killed you yesterday, and you awoke at the same time, the same place. But when I die, I wake at different times, different places. This bolt," he tosses it to Yusuf and it lands in the dirt by his knee, "it killed me yesterday, but I woke up many years from now. I lived several lifetimes in those places before returning here and pulling it from my neck."

"You asked me how old I am. By my best guess, I am somewhere in the realm of 200 years old. The one that you met first was older, the one yesterday was younger."

"Older, so, you don't remember cooking me fish?"

"Is that what I did?" Nicolò has a soft smile. "No, I haven't yet lived that life."

"It was short." Yusuf feels the need to confess. "I killed you."

"Well then, in that case I look forward to it."

Yusuf feels confused, tracing the words of this strange man over and again in his mind. "So you have seen the future. Have you seen the past?"

"No, no." Nicolò says. "My first death was the first we shared. Until that day I was an ordinary man."

The city stirs in the distance, and Yusuf hears the adhan calling for fajr prayer. The start of a new day.

"You said there were others."

"Yes. You have been dreaming about them."

"Oh," Yusuf breathes, "the women."

"They will be dreaming of you, too, until you find each other."

"Why? Why do we live again? Why are there others, what is this all for?"

Nicolò puts hands up in a shrug. "I believe it is because we are meant to find each other. It's like destiny." He tilted his head back and looked down his nose at Yusuf. "As for what to do with our long lives... what would you do with yours?"

Yusuf hadn't considered. He was a warrior and there was an invasion to defend against. "I have more work to do here."

"Perhaps."

"What do you mean, perhaps?"

"You were recognised when you died yesterday. You weren't lost in the battle, your body was recovered with honour." Nicolò was infuriatingly correct. "What would the General do, I wonder, with an un-killable guard? Trust him?"

"What else can I do?" Yusuf balls his fists up.

Nicolò lets the anger pass, and says in his same steady tone, "I said I would answer your questions, then you may choose your path."

"You've lived the future. Don't you already know?" The words come out pointed and cruel.

"Some things I know, but I have learnt not to meddle with the past. I can only guess, and I have been wrong before."

"There are other fronts in this war." Yusuf muses. "Other places I could fight."

Nicolò's face turns to the horizon again. "Alright."

This confusing man, who is at once his enemy and his mentor, who knows too much but has parts missing. A man unstuck from time. He doesn't offer anything back, and for a brief moment Yusuf feels pity.

"And what about you?"

"What of me?"

"I mean, what will you do? Where will you go?"

Nicolò swallows, and his eyelashes flutter as he blinks rapidly. Some sand in his eyes, perhaps?

"I will go where I am needed." He says, finally. His voice is rough, "I will do the good I can do."

"Well then." Decisions made, Yusuf gets to his feet. He reaches out a hand to help up his murderer, and Nicolò grasps him by the forearm. "I am sure this is not the last time we shall meet, Nicolò di Genova."

Nicolò's hand falls away from his own, limp.

"I'm sure it's not." He returns.

They stare at each other, each unwilling to move. Nicolò's hand rests on the pommel of his sword.

"Allow me to walk with you until evening prayer." Nicolò asks. His phrase is awkward and stilted, bidding on Yusuf's hospitality. "It will be a long journey to the next battlefront and it is not good for men such as us to be alone."

Confused, but respectful, Yusuf replies, "as you like."

They disassemble their little camp, taking the last of the vegetables and wrapping them in a makeshift bag. After assessing the surrounding geography, Yusuf selects a point in the distance and they begin their walk. It's a comfortable pace once they make the road, with a smattering of conversation, pointing out this plant or that marker for the other's opinion. Still, Yusuf doesn't trust the other immortal, least of all his stories of living other lives. It was so strange and far fetched that it was too big to believe.

When the sun hits its peak, they rest for an hour in the shade of a large tree. Yusuf compliments Nicolò on his handle of Arabic, and the other man is bashful in return.

"I had a good teacher." He says, and the look on his face leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

Yusuf doesn't pray as they journey, doesn't trust the man enough to put his sword out of reach and close his eyes. When Nicolò learns his worry, he laughs.

"I wouldn't worry about that, my friend. Of the two of us, I am the better swordsman right now. I would only take you in a fair fight."

"Is that so?" Yusuf returns. He doesn't mention the endearment that slips out so easily, but he dwells on it as they walk.

One or twice they meet another one of Yusuf's people on the road and Nicolò hides his face. He still offers a greeting of peace as Yusuf barters for a small portion of food, but refuses the invitation to sit with them for the meal.

"They think you are a deserter," Yusuf says once they have continued down the road.

"I guess I am."

Evening comes and they have barely circumnavigated the battlefield, going as they have at such a great distance. Nicolò's eyes begin to dart out to the horizon and further, making his own plans.

"Stay the night." Yusuf says before he can doubt the words. "Sorry, I just, I mean, it is dangerous for you to travel alone in this land. Permit me to ask a few more questions."

"As you like." Nicolò returns.

They make camp below an outcropping of rock, hardly more than a shelf. They make do with their foraged vegetables, enough to feel fed but not full. They had both been on military rations, and the slow walking pace was less strenuous than fighting a war.

"Do we do this often in the future?" Yusuf asks. At Nicolò's arched eyebrow he clarifies, "share a meal?"

The other man gives a small, hidden laugh, but does not answer.

A few minutes later he says, "how strange it is to see life through your eyes."

Yusuf feels a bitter taste in his mouth, like he has eaten a spoonful of sumac. He feels the need to protest that he is not a child, when the memory of his nephews protesting the same holds his tongue.

At the thought Yusuf swears. "My family," he says, "I haven't been home for a year. How am I supposed to tell them?"

"That is the one question I cannot answer." Nicolò looks confused and uncertain in a way he hasn't looked before. "You never told me what you did."

"What did you do?"

"I haven't decided either." Nicolò bundles up some fabric into a makeshift pillow and spreads out on his back on the other side. He had surrendered the covered area to Yusuf and the fire they built. "Sleep on it, Yusuf. There is no need to make a decision tonight."

Yusuf sees the other man's eyes open in the dim light and he gazes openly at the night's sky.

"How beautiful."

"What?" Yusuf asks.

"The stars."

Yusuf cranes his head up. The stars are the same as they have always been. A stunning depiction of the Creator's majesty, but nothing he hadn't seen before.

"You forget what you miss, when it's gone."

"Don't tell me the heavens themselves are destroyed in the future." Yusuf warns.

Nicolò laughs. "No, no, not quite so dramatic. Hidden, yes, but not destroyed."

Yusuf imagines a world layered in cloud, where not even the light from the moon can be seen in the ink of the night, and he shudders.

"You said you had more questions."

"Why do you always wake before I do?"

"You can sleep through anything." Nicolò says easily, then he looks over at Yusuf, bashful again. "oh, you meant, when you die." Yusuf doesn't even nod, too startled by the way this personal information slipped through his lips.

"The first few times are slow. I merely have more experience waking, and larger wounds take longer to heal. Trust me, I would rather we wake together."

He keeps bidding Yusuf to trust him, a strange bet and not one he's sure will pay off.

"We live and we die." How easily Yusuf says this now. "How far does that stretch? If I lose a finger, is it gone forever?"

"It re-grows. Same with a limb."

"What about a head?"

"I've never seen it, and I don't intend to, thank you very much." His face is a picture of horror and confusion.

"I was only curious." Yusuf mumbles. "Can we starve?"

Nicolò makes a face. "It is not a pleasant thing. You want a loyal friend to nurse you, as you die and revive. Your body eats itself first."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"No, I didn't. They gave me their food, and I defended their bodies from rats and theft until there was food again."

"From theft? Why would - oh."

"Yes." The silence stretches into the darkness.

Another question comes unbidden into Yusuf's mind. "Does this war ever end?"

"All things end." Nicolò says. He has closed his eyes and looks surprisingly peaceful. "But this conflict lasts longer than most. I feel there is always blood shed into these sands. Sleep, Yusuf. There will be more time for questions in the morning."

Yusuf bristles under the assumption that he will stay in the morning, that they wouldn't part ways as he had planned. He cracks the logs of the fire into embers and lets them glow out. He is asleep before they die.

the thrum of hooves in orange sand, red clothes flapping at speed, dipped in blood. Another woman, her arms uncovered, a lion on her chestplate, urging the horse on, a double bladed axe at her hip.

Yusuf wakes with a choked gasp. Nicolò is already up, his dagger drawn.

"It's alright." He chokes out. "Just a dream."

This hardly settles Nicolò, but he sits back down. "The others." He says, voice grave.

Yusuf rubs a hand down his face. "Yes. The women."

"How are they?"

Yusuf waves a hand. "Just a dream."

"Not these dreams. They show you as they are."

"Then shouldn't you know?"

"I do not have the dreams as you do." Nicolò has a strand of sadness in his voice. "Perhaps because I have already met them."

Oh, Yusuf realises, the others that are to share their burden, they must be his companions in the future.

"I saw they were on a horse, riding hard. There was blood dripping from their weapons."

A choked laugh. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"What kind of women are they?"

In the darkness, Nicolò is barely visible, he can't make out his face. "They are more incredible than you can imagine. Go back to sleep Yusuf. You won't dream of them again tonight."

Yusuf wakes early, before dawn, when only a dim light brushes the horizon. Nicolò rolled onto his side during the night, his arm flung behind him. His fingers are twitching in a dream, and his face spasms with emotion. Yusuf decides not to interfere, he doesn't know what he would say anyway.

He goes down to the river to wash and to pray, content with the distance between them to protect him from attack from his enemy. Is he still his enemy? Yusuf doesn't know. There is so much he doesn't know.

When he returns, Nicolò is awake. He has stripped off his shirt and is doing some strange exercises dressed only in his loose pants. He lies flat over the ground, with only his toes and hands touching the earth, and lowers and raises himself quickly. His lips are pursed as he breathes tight rapid breaths in and out as he pushes himself up and down against the ground.

"What are you doing?"

He responds with the rising and falling beat of his exercise. "They are called push-ups." With that he holds himself steady, so low to the ground and so long that the muscles in his arms and back tremble with exertion. Then, with a gracefulness Yusuf has never seen before, his back bends and he somehow flicks himself to his feet.

He stretches his neck then groans. "I do not feel as fit for battle as I would like."

"I thought you said you were the better swordsman." Yusuf says dryly.

Nicolò laughs, the first bright and easy laugh Yusuf has heard and says an unfamiliar word, "Touché."

He takes up his blade and swings, loosening his wrist and moving his feet easily. "Before I woke here, I was taking a holiday." He looks distracted in the familiar routines of practice. "The body is the same, but you would be surprised how much strength and stamina is in the mind."

He changes his grip on his sword and raises it. "Spar?"

Yusuf recoils. The thought of trading friendly blows with the man that killed him twice over repulses him.

Something shifts under the skin of Nicolò's face. His smile doesn't drop, nothing really changes, and whatever shadow is there is gone by the time he sheaths his sword.

"Another time, perhaps," says the man outside of time, "I will wash and be with you soon," and he quickly leaves.

Yusuf kicks apart the cooled coals and buries them in the dirt. If he's a bit sharper than usual with his actions, he's only letting out the frustration of his new reality. Life is death and his enemy calls him friend. Nicolò is acting as if the invitation to sit and camp with him was an ongoing one, will he ever be free of the infuriating Frank?

Yusuf mutters under his breath, building up his anger on purpose until he's almost at boiling point.

Nicolò arrives back from the river, his long hair wetted back and knotted with a strand of leather.

"Thank you for the evening." Nicolò says, collecting his sword and dressing quickly. "I will take my leave and make for the coast, find some way to do some good in this war."

At once, all the heat of anger leaves Yusuf and he is filled with nothing but pity. Together they erase the signs of their camp and collect their things, the silence heavy between them.

Nicolò inclines his head in salute and farewell then turns away. He marches away, keeping a soldier's pace as he circles up to the ridge. Yusuf doesn't move from his spot, rooted and stuck as the only link to his future and understanding of what is happening to him hikes away.

"Wait!" He calls with a strained voice. He is halfway up the hill to Nicolò before he can call out again so the other man hears him. "Wait. Stay with me one month more."

Nicolò won't meet his eye. "Why?"

"It will give me time to learn your language." Yusuf is surprised to realise that the words coming from his mouth are true. "You said this war continues on. We can take the time to find a way to fight together."

Nicolò hasn't yet covered his head, his hair is curling around his neck and ears as it dries. "You don't need to learn Italian, I thought my Arabic was quite good."

"I need Italian to teach you Arabic."

Nicolò's eyes soften. "I never said you taught me Arabic."

"It's true though, isn't it?"

Nicolò laughs. "Si, yes, it's true."

"Then I must learn." Yusuf spreads his arms out, like it is the simplest thing in the world to tie himself to his murderer. "I will go with you to the coast, and you can teach me on the way."

The moment hangs there between them, then Nicolò steps to the side and gestures to Yusuf, after you.

When the month runs out, neither one of them ask for a second. They don't need to. From then on, it is never a question that they travel together. It bears true for all of their lifetimes.