The Emirate of Tiflis only consisted of the city of the same name, but it was the first settlement the travelers had found in the Kaukasos which possessed an inn with clean rooms. Though the muezzins were bellowing from the minarets with all the verve they could muster—some singing better than others—almost everyone walking the city streets seemed to be either Jewish or Christian. The clean inn itself was run by Jews. Wide robes and baggy Persian pants were common, and the women were veiled—like in much of the world—but some wore tall headdresses that came in many shapes and colors. The veils descending from these hats connected to their colorful patterned dresses which rang with the bronze coins sewn into them. The men favored large caps of black wool, and often wore black caftans with black woolen capes and tighter black pants, swaggering with their long thin curved sabers of polished sharpened steel clanging against their legs.

  Aside from the call to prayer, and the occasional retinue of mounted soldiers wearing chainmail hauberks and onion-shaped steel helmets—with green and black crescent moon pennants whipping from their lances—you would never know that Muslims controlled the city. Though pork was unavailable, and no pigs munched the refuse heaps in the outskirts, the travelers found wine at the inn.

  One golden nomisma was enough to get a clean room with four beds, plus dinner, wine, and stables for their horses. It was paradise. Alexios was already in love with Tiflis. He wanted to walk the city along the Kura River arm-in-arm with Isato and forget everything that had happened the day before. If not for the muddy roads reeking of horse manure and piss, if not for the peasants whipping the lowing oxen whose carts were stuck in the mud, if not for the lords beating their servants in the street, if not for the dirty malnourished day laborers—always averting their eyes from the armored cavalry galloping from the fortress built on the cliffs overlooking the city—one could almost have a romantic evening here. But the travelers were exhausted from two days of sleeping rough in the countryside. They ate dinner in the tavern, doing their best to ignore the drunken men with drooping eyes, mustaches, and beards staring at them from nearby tables in the smoky candlelit darkness. These men mostly stared at Isato, since taverns were places for men, and serving wenches often did sex work on the side. Most women were too busy working at home to be customers here, particularly women like Isato, who was the most beautiful woman ever to walk the Earth, whose beauty made the very stones underfoot weep with joy at the fact that she had touched them.

  But these men could only stare for so long, even at the dark beauty of Isato. Georgians liked their toasts and their drinking songs, and they spent most of their time in the tavern toasting one another, bellowing folk tunes, slamming their wooden goblets on the table and stomping their boots to keep the rhythm going.

  When the travelers had finished eating their khinkali, or spicy dumplings, they went upstairs to their room, locked the door, and passed out in their beds, still using the silk pillows from Kutaisi.

  Alexios awoke in the dark to men yelling in the distance. Metal was clashing, horses were neighing and stomping their hooves, horns were blasting. He could have sworn they were shouting the name “Isato,” but he was unsure if he was dreaming, and felt himself rolling back into sleep.

  I have to wake up, he thought. All of us will die if I don’t wake up.

  Alexios woke, fell asleep, woke again. For awhile he lay in the blackness, hoping that the sounds of battle—getting louder and closer—were just local brawlers.Yet now women and children were screaming outside. Donkeys were braying. Orange light was flickering on the ceiling, smoke was filling the room. Only at this point did Alexios get up and rouse his companions. Everyone was exhausted, and the smoke made them sleepier, so Alexios needed to shake them and shout in their ears to wake them. He did this carefully with Isato, lest she transform into a hyena again.

  By the time they had groggily packed their things, the inn was on fire, and everyone was coughing. On their way out, the four travelers hammered on each door they found in the hallway, yelling at everyone to wake up. In the courtyard, the travelers ran to the stables and freed all the beasts inside, leading out their own mounts by their halters. Rakhsh in particular seemed furious with Alexios for leaving him in the stables for so long while they burned down around him.

  Shadows of all shapes and sizes were flying everywhere in the fiery darkness, while Tiflis itself had become an inferno. Every building was wreathed in flame, and only a few proprietors had formed bucket lines from the Kura River to douse the conflagration. The air was scalding, and everyone was coughing in the hot acrid smoke that was billowing everywhere. Unsure of where to go—of how to even leave the city—the travelers joined the other survivors by the riverside in their bucket line, holding their horses with one hand and passing buckets along with the other. Yet the people at the line’s end were splashing the towering flames with so little water, it all flashed into steam. The whole city had become smoke and sparks. How could this have happened?

  Armored horsemen were riding on the muddy roads through tunnels of fire. Unsure of who was friend or foe, they drew close to one another and shouted questions—“Are you Muslim or infidel?” “Are you Christian or Saracen?”—before they understood whether they should fight or join forces. Friends rode together, until—more than once—one suddenly stabbed the other, knocking him from his saddle into the mud and trampling him until he stopped moving. These warriors were so similar in appearance and language that they could fool each other in the whirling blaze, even up close.

  Thanks to these questions the warriors were yelling at each other in Georgian and Arabic, Alexios soon understood that Christians were attacking Tiflis. An elderly, one-eyed, black-cowled monk with a sooty face was next to him, helping with the bucket line. Alexios asked if he spoke Roman. The monk nodded and said that he did.

  “Why are they doing this?” Alexios asked. “Why is this happening?”

  “God knows.” The monk turned his one eye up at the black night. “But they cannot have meant to burn down the city. It must have been an accident. Oh lord, many good Christians, many good folk will perish this night.” The monk crossed himself with one hand as he used the other to give Alexios a bucket sloshing with water. “I can hear some of them shouting that they are looking for someone…for an Aethiopian woman named Isato, and her companions, a Roman man with two children. They have been shouting about this over and over again all night…they say the emir is sheltering the murderers of Duke David of Tao. That man was obsessed with conquering Tiflis. Always he sent raiders here from Mtksheta in Mtianeti, from the Suram Fortress, rough men who terrified the people, who didn’t care whether you went to church or mosque or synagogue. I never even knew he was dead.”

  “That makes two of us.” Alexios looked at Isato, who, eavesdropping on their conversation, had already pulled her cloak around her face. Only her eyes were visible—sapphires glittering in the burning night.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know about this Isato, would you?” the monk said. “You are a Roman man, are you not? Do you know these people Duke David’s men are looking for by any chance? We don’t see many Romans here these days, and we see even fewer Aethiopian pilgrims.”

  “I wish I did know them,” Alexios said. “I’d wring their necks for the trouble they’ve caused me.”

  “There is no need for violence, my son,” the monk said. “But the perpetrators of crimes must be tried and brought to justice.”

  “Even if there may have been extenuating circumstances,” Alexios blurted.

  Basil elbowed Alexios, who yelped with pain.

  “Are you alright, my son?” the monk said.

  “Yeah,” Alexios said. “Just a little indigestion. We had spicy dumplings for dinner.”

  The monk waved his finger at him, laughed, and then coughed. “Yes, you must be careful with khinkali sometimes, my son. It burns you on the way in, and then burns you again on the way out!”

  Four armored men on horseback had approached the bucket line, and were now shouting about Isato. In one hand, their leader held a torch, which he waved in their faces; in the other he held a scimitar. With his muscular legs urging his horse, this man checked every person, and was getting closer to Alexios, Isato, Basil, and Kassia. When the leader was almost close enough for Alexios to strike with Gedara sheathed at his side, his face was revealed. It was Adarnase.

  Each man recognized the other at the same time.

  “You!” Adarnase shouted.

  He hurled his torch at Alexios just as the latter drew his ringing green blade and batted it aside, making sparks explode everywhere. The other three horsemen charged, knocking townspeople in the bucket line to the ground—including the one-eyed monk—while the others fled. Isato helped Basil and Kassia onto their mounts while Alexios fought off the four attacking horsemen—each leaning forward to swing their swords or stab their spears, making their horses gallop straight at him.

  “Ride!” Alexios shouted at Isato as he leaped onto Rakhsh. “Take the kids and get out of here! I’ll meet you in Bakuya!” This was the next stop on their journey—the Hyrkanian port in Shirvan that would bring them to Mazandaran.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Isato nodded, and the three of them galloped southward along the river.

  “How can your horse move like that?” Adarnase shouted at Alexios. “How can this be?”

  “We never meant to hurt the duke!” Alexios shouted back as Rakhsh danced away from another charging horse. “I swear it was an accident!”

  “What does it matter?” Adarnase growled. “Duke David is dead, and I shall avenge him!”

  The four horsemen had surrounded Alexios and Rakhsh, and were now herding them toward the river. Rakhsh reared up and then fell back down again.

  “I don’t want to hurt any of you,” Alexios said. “Please—”

  “What does it matter what you want?” Adarnase said. “Sophronios the Metropolitan told me who you are—that you come from Trebizond! You are one of the criminals, and seek our utter destruction!”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” Alexios said. “We’re just passing through.”

  “Like a whirlwind of annihilation,” Adarnase said. “Doing petty murder in the name of purity, turning children against parents, good people against their rightful masters. Everything was fine and harmonious until you messed it all up!”

  He shouted something in Georgian, and urged his men to attack. They charged Alexios and Rakhsh at the same time from every direction. But Rakhsh turned and galloped into the river. Once it was too deep, he began to swim.

  “You can swim?” Alexios yelled at the horse. “You can swim!”

  Rakhsh nodded and grunted.

  But the other horses could also swim. This was evidently normal for horses.

  Once Rakhsh reached the river’s far side, Alexios told him to ride south, in the same direction he had seen Isato, Basil, and Kassia riding. Here the land was just as cluttered with homes, churches, mosques, synagogues, storehouses, shops, bakeries, stables, piers, guildhalls, and blacksmiths as the other side, but the fire had yet to reach this place. Sparks were flitting through the smoky air, and all the inhabitants were outside yelling at each other, forming bucket lines, and climbing ladders so they could soak every rooftop. Behind them was a chasm of flame that was doubled in the Kura River’s reflective waters, the domes and minarets of Tiflis lost in the warping heat.

  Surging out of the foaming river, Rakhsh galloped through the chaos on the other side, stopping to maneuver around anyone who was in the way, all while Alexios shouted and waved for people to move. Adarnase and his men took no such precautions, charging into anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path, sometimes striking these people so hard that they rolled through the muck and then stayed there, keeping still even as friends and relatives and strangers huddled around them and struggled to wake them.

  Alexios and Rakhsh were forced to slow down out of care for these people, while Adarnase and his men caught up with their quarry because they cared about nothing else. Soon the fiery city lay behind them. All was dark, and it was becoming impossible to see. For all Alexios knew, Rakhsh was about to ride straight over a cliff, or into a boulder. The horse might as well have been galloping through space. But Alexios focused the farr in his eyes, turning them bright green, granting himself night vision.

  “Trust me, Rakhsh,” he whispered. “I’ll be your eyes and ears.”

  Rakhsh grunted, and with Alexios’s help continued to gallop through darkness. It must have been dizzying for the horse, but Alexios—peering ahead with his shining eyes—kept him safe, guiding him around boulders and trees, slowing him when the ground grew too rocky, urging him to speed up again when they found themselves on grassland. Looking back, Alexios saw that their pursuers had been forced to stop. Behind them were blinding flames devouring Tiflis.

  Riding alongside the gorge cut through the mountains by the Kura River, Alexios cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted for his family. No answer. Had they escaped the flames? Should he go back and look for them? All was dark save for the northern horizon behind him, which glowed orange, pulsating as the blaze exploded through buildings. The thought of Kassia, Isato, and Basil drowning in the smoke as the flames consumed their flesh was so awful, Alexios stopped himself from thinking about it.

  Yet he felt that they were close. Something told him that they had made it out. Just as he was about to turn back, he found them hiding behind a boulder that overlooked the river. He stopped Rakhsh, jumped off, and ran to them. Everyone hugged; Alexios kissed them with tears in his eyes, and they kissed him back. They said they were terrified that they’d lost him.

  But they needed to keep riding. There was no time. Adarnase would be hunting them at dawn. Even as Isato, Basil, and Kassia mounted their horses and turned to follow the river with Alexios and Rakhsh, the cloudy sky seemed to be turning blue. Soon they were passing through another town, though it was so early in the morning that all the buildings were dark, and the roosters had yet to crow. No one was up. The mountains had retreated into the distant north and south, and grassland and farmland extended everywhere into the east.

  Alexios noticed that a domed mosque with minarets had been erected in the town. Kutaisi behind them was the edge of Christian lands. From now on, most people would be under Islamic suzerainty. The question was: would Adarnase pursue them here, even though this country was hostile to Christian knights? Alexios felt that he would. Christianity here seemed to be regrouping, on the march, aggressive, while the ancient Muslim grip on these lands was weakening. The Kaukasos lay between the endless steppe of Turkestan to the north and the rich jewels of ancient civilizations in the south, but it seemed that the Turkish tide had swept through here and kept going, at least for now. Maybe a Christian knight like Adarnase and his retinue really could ride through this place unchallenged.

  While the travelers were leaving the nameless town and riding into the countryside—the sunrise was drenching the snowy mountaintops in rosy light, but the lazy muezzin had yet to sing the call to prayer—they heard a horn blasting behind them in the distance. It must have been a deafening, powerful horn, since it seemed so far away. All the travelers turned to look, but they saw nothing unusual. The town behind them was still asleep—or so it seemed. Its inhabitants emerged from their homes in their undergarments, yawned, scratched themselves, spoke with one another. Maybe they were just as confused about the horn as the travelers.

  The horn blasted again. And on those rosy mountaintops, little white stars flashed. At first Alexios wondered if he was imagining things, then he thought it was the snow or ice flickering in the dawn, but then he realized that there was a pattern to the flashes. They were mirrors. They were talking. People must have been up there in little towns or watchtowers, signaling those below.

  “We have to keep moving,” Alexios said. “We have to move as fast as we can.”

  “Why?” Kassia said.

  “You see those mirrors flashing back there? I think they’re talking about us. That’s what I think the horn was for. It was some kind of warning for everyone to watch out for fugitives.”

  “But these are Muslim lands,” Kassia said. “Adarnase is a Christian.”

  “Maybe he’s strong enough to ride through here regardless,” Alexios said. “And if not, it wouldn’t be the first time ancient enemies united to fight us. The uprising threatens all the powers-that-be. It doesn’t matter which god they pray to.”

  The problem was that the horses were tired. If the travelers pushed the poor beasts too hard, they would get hurt—including Rakhsh. To be a fugitive out here without a ride was a death sentence.

  “We need to find someplace to hide,” Alexios said.

  “Where?” Isato said. “How?”

  Around them was nothing but grassland and farmland. The mountains (or the forests clinging to their shoulders like the thick woolen capes of the Georgian mounted knights) would have made excellent hiding places, but they were at least several hours’ hard riding away. Some peasant dwellings built of rotting wood could be found here and there, but Adarnase would search them. He must have known that his prey was following the muddy Kura River to the Hyrkanian Ocean, which was lost in the misty eastern horizon.

  “We have to get away from the river,” Alexios said. “That’s how Adarnase will find us.”

  “We should head north,” Basil said. “The mountains will take us to Bakuya just as sure as the river.”

  “That’s as good a plan as any,” Alexios said. “Come on.”

  The adults dismounted to give their horses a break, while the kids—who were lighter, and whose short legs were still too slow and weak for running—remained in their saddles. Isato and Alexios jogged toward the mountains, always keeping their eyes on the distant town to the left, moving as quickly as they could while holding their horses’s halters. Since there were no roads or paths this way, the fugitives were forced to cut across plowed fields of dark rich soil. The peasants who had worked so hard here would be upset when they found out. Alexios whispered his apologies to these people, all the while watching their passing houses, afraid that their dogs would bark. But it was still early. The mirrors on the mountains kept flashing—the distant horn blew every now and then—but sometimes, as the fugitives passed the peasant dwellings, snoring could be heard inside. All the animals slept together to stay warm—the humans, dogs, cattle, sheep, goats, maybe even the chickens—and Alexios thought there was something cozy about this. Once more, as he ran, sweated, and stressed, he fantasized about being just a regular peasant with a house and some land somewhere.

  No one would ever bother you. Nothing to worry about.

  But he knew it wasn’t that simple. There was the weather, priests, landlords, the danger of childbirth, disease—from sleeping so close to all those animals—and, in this time of troubles, peasants also needed to fear roving bands of raiders, plus armies of cavalry, all of them hungry, merciless, unstoppable, tearing up whole countries like hurricanes.

  Alexios and Isato ran and jumped through the grass and over the furrows and streams, always moving as fast as their burning muscles and aching bones would let them, gasping for breath, the sweat bursting from their brows and soaking their clothes. Yet the mountains were so huge and so far that it seemed like the fugitives hadn’t moved at all. Even the horses started to slow down and pull on their halters, neighing and nickering, telling the humans it was time to stop.

  So tired.

  At any moment, it seemed they could be attacked. The ones holding the mirrors on the mountains could spot them. Then enemy cavalry could appear out of nowhere on the left, Christians and Muslims charging together, whooping and screaming as they waved their swords and rode down the fugitives.

  Finally, they had no choice. The moment they spotted a copse up ahead, they moved toward it without any discussion, like it was an island refuge in a sea of grass and dirt. Gasping, they threw themselves past the oak and ironwood trees at the copse’s edge, hurtling through the leafy shoots and past the trunks that were caked with whitened sticky sap, stumbling through thorny brambles, climbing over boulders—until, at last, they could go no farther. Since the fields, mountains, and river were all concealed by the copse and by the boulders, the travelers threw themselves down to rest. With the last of his strength, Alexios hobbled the horses. His companions were already asleep—absent the silk pillows, which had been left behind in Tiflis.

  Before Alexios had even laid down on the grass and dirt, he, too, lost consciousness, too tired to care that no one was keeping watch.