Chapter Text
When Nicolò began to hear the stirrings of a second crusade, he realised that he’d already made up his mind.
It was almost frustrating, the ease of that sudden understanding. He’d only spent the better part of five decades ruminating over every second he’d lived under the blinding desert sun, every moment he’d spent staring into dark brown eyes that had always gleamed with rage. Always, until… they hadn’t.
It was that last death that Nicolò played over in his mind far more than any of the others, that look of wide-eyed panic that watched as he was impaled upon a spear from an unknown hand.
He’d woken, of course he had, drenched in blood and groaning as his flesh knit back together. It was faster every time – at least, he thought it was – and it couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes before his eyes were blinking open to the blinding light of the desert sun.
Yet when he turned to the side, fingers already curling around the sticky hilt of his sword as he readied to continue the never-ending struggle, it was to find that there was no fight to be had.
Al-Kaysani – the name that he had only learned as it fell from the mouth of a young boy rushing to the Saracen’s aid, the name that had haunted Nicolò ever since – was sitting on the ground, legs crossed as he turned his own sword over in his hands.
The sword was unlike the one that Nicolò carried. While Nicolò’s was straight, Al-Kaysani’s looked jagged and brutal. A tribute, Nicolò had once thought, to the brutality of the Saracen people themselves.
Once, but… no longer.
Unsure, Nicolò had sat to mirror Al-Kaysani’s position. As he did so, he noticed something that caused him to stare.
There were many bodies around them of course, there always had been, the number only increasing as the siege continued—but there was one in particular that caught Nicolò’s gaze. Caught it, perhaps, because Al-Kaysani was staring at the very same thing.
The boy could not have yet reached 20. His face was almost clean-shaven, just a few wisps of dark hair showing where his scarf had slipped from his dark-skinned face, likely during the act of being beheaded.
There was no question as to who had killed the boy. Nicolò recognised the face as the one who had killed him, had launched a spear through Nicolò’s heart before Nicolò’s sword sliced Al-Kaysani’s throat for the—fifth? Or sixth time.
Blood still seeped from the boy’s severed neck, the same blood that mixed with Nicolò’s along the fiercely curved blade of Al-Kaysani’s sword.
And as his gaze drew back to Al-Kaysani’s sombre face, there was only one word that Nicolò could force past his lips.
“Why?”
Al-Kaysani jumped at the sound, his eyes going wide for a moment before he schooled his expression. Nicolò realised that the Saracen likely had no idea what had been said—only that he had said something.
It wasn’t the first time they had spoken to each other. Both had shouted and screamed and cursed when they’d realised that they couldn’t die, but in the heat of the battle it hadn’t mattered that they couldn’t comprehend exact words. But this… this felt different.
Al-Kaysani said something, and even if it had been a language he could understand, Nicolò didn’t think he would have heard the words. Shaking his head a little in an attempt to clear it from the haze that still lingered after death, Nicolò tried something else, and asked again in Latin.
The Saracen frowned, still confused. But when he spoke—
“I am tired of this.”
It was Nicolò’s turn to stare in surprise as he finally understood the words—spoken in Occitan, a language he didn’t know well but of which he had been able to pick up a few words from his fellow crusaders.
But what he was tired of, Nicolò would not come to know—for the man stood, and with one last, sweeping glance over the young body on the ground, Al-Kaysani turned and walked away.
Nicolò hadn’t expected that he would come to regret not following. And yet, almost fifty years later, there he was. Picking up his sword and leaving his country behind—the country that, in all honesty, had stopped feeling like his since his younger sister had passed of old age. Or perhaps… perhaps even before that.
Perhaps Nicolò should have realised he was lying to himself the moment he began to learn a language the rest of his community and church considered barbaric. He should have realised then that he’d made his decision.
He had just been too scared to admit it.
Scared of his own mind, his own body—of the unknown.
He still was, but he couldn’t rationalise allowing the fear to control him. Not when there appeared to be nothing on God’s earth capable of permanently hurting him.
Nothing, except perhaps loneliness and the haunting memory of eyes filled with sombre exhaustion.
And so it was that after decades of teetering along the edge of a knife, dreaming of a face that had been his death more times than he could count, Nicolò found himself on a ship across the Mediterranean even before King Louis VII announced his intention to join the crusade.
It didn’t matter that Nicolò didn’t know where to look, save for sailing across the sea. Al-Kaysani had said he was tired—and whether he meant of the fighting, or of the dying, or of Nicolò there was no way to know, but there was one thing of which Nicolò was sure.
Al-Kaysani wouldn’t be at the scene of the crusade. Which meant Nicolò would need to find him himself.
And yes, he was aware that finding a single person in such a large world could take years. Decades. Centuries, insofar as he could imagine a time that distantly into the future. But if Nicolò had one thing, it was time, and he had decided how he was going to spend it.
It didn’t matter if it took until the world was dust under his feet—Nicolò needed purpose, and this was the only purpose he could think to find.
After returning from the Holy Land all those years before, Nicolò had thrown himself back into his church, trying to rekindle the faith that had been torn asunder by sights of blood and ash, by the screams of women and children still echoing through his nightmares as sharply as they had the red-run streets of Jerusalem. He had searched through the holy scriptures for a clue, scouring the pages of the Bible for any reference to people being brought back to life.
Well, aside from the obvious, of course. He couldn’t believe that he had died for anyone’s sins bar his own—and it seemed that his punishment was eternity in the lands of men, never to be granted entry into Heaven.
And eternity was a long, long time to spend alone.
As his friends withered and his family died, Nicolò couldn’t help thinking that there was only one person in the world who was like him, only one person who could not only understand—but be able to stay. And as Nicolò was forced to move cities and regions to avoid accusations of making deals with the devil, the dreams of Al-Kaysani became his one constant.
Oh, there were other dreams of course, dreams of battle-hardened women which didn’t make any sense. But those were flashes compared to the dreams of Al-Kaysani, and somehow, without realising it, Nicolò began to look forward to putting his head down to rest so that he could see those dark eyes again.
And in that, he believed he had his answer.
—~—
Nicolò started his search in Jerusalem.
It was half a century since he had last been there, but it was the last place he had seen Al-Kaysani. The place was changed—no longer what it once was, and yet neither what Nicolò had expected.
Walking through those streets didn’t feel real. And Nicolò didn’t find what he was looking for.
He tried Acre, Damascus, Tripoli—all the way north to Antioch, where the memories fell upon him like wolves once more. Yet no matter how weary he felt, he forged his way forward, still asking in improving Arabic after a man he felt he knew.
“Al-Kaysani? Do you know a man named Al-Kaysani?”
It was months, years of asking the same question, and Nicolò grew so accustomed to hearing the same answer that when he received something different, he almost did not recognise it until the man he had bumped into along the banks of the Orontes River was half way through his sentence.
The man spoke rapidly, both due to native mastery of the language as well as being in an apparent rush, irritation over being held back to talk to a Frank clear—but Nicolò understood the gist.
Al-Kaysani, trader.
Nicolò tried for more information, but all he could understand was that the merchant family hadn’t been heard from in some years—and that they originated somewhere south and west.
He had been going in the wrong direction.
Still, he could not allow that to get to him—he would take the small victory, as now he finally had a proper place to start. He would check in at the ports in the south, in the west, all along the Mediterranean if he had to. Al-Kaysani was from a merchant family, which meant that Nicolò would be able to find him.
So he made his way back south, faster this time, stopping only in towns along the coast and speaking only to merchants. A few more recognised the name, gave him a more focused location.
Ifriqiya.
A long way to travel for sure, but the further south Nicolò went, the lighter he felt, as if God were carrying his feet with a blessed swiftness, as if the path he followed was finally right. Nicolò’s belief in this only strengthened when one night just south of Tripoli, he was gifted a dream unlike the others.
For this time, when he saw Al-Kaysani’s face… Nicolò recognised his surroundings.
He woke with a broken laugh.
Jerusalem. Al-Kaysani was back in Jerusalem.
The irony didn’t cut as deep as the certainty bolstered his spirit, and Nicolò began to move through the lands far faster than before, no longer needing to stop and ask. He knew where he was going, he knew where Al-Kaysani was—and even though he couldn’t describe entirely why it was so, the thought felt more uplifting than anything else he had experienced since the last time a sword had pierced his skin.
Unfortunately, however, it would seem that through a terrible twist of irony, time was not on Nicolò’s side. For as he travelled back through the Holy Land, he stumbled upon crusaders just outside of Damascus.
And stumbled truly was the correct term. The crusaders did not appear to be as organised as they had been in the past, though perhaps that was only due to Nicolò’s increased experience. The pair he ran into were just wandering along the road on the outskirts of the camp, sharing a skein of wine between them—and when they saw Nicolò, the one on the left took three attempts to pull his sword from its scabbard. Then he spoke a guttural language that Nicolò didn’t understand.
Nicolò had to hold in a sigh. It was hardly the first time he had encountered unsavoury types on the road – the fact that he was labelling men he would have once considered comrades as such was not lost on him – and he knew that if needed, he would be able to fight his way out of the conflict.
But he also, unfortunately, recognised that if the crusaders were already here, then his pale face would no longer be welcomed kindly by the people living in the Holy Land. He was already greeted with suspicion in towns, suspicion that was only somewhat soothed when he spoke to the Turks in their own language—but with attacks on the horizon, it would only grow so much worse.
Nicolò had no choice. He could wait for everything to pass, or…
He could attempt to join with the crusaders, and follow them through to Jerusalem.
Neither option was particularly pleasant. He still believed that Al-Kaysani was likely to want to avoid the crusade just as much as Nicolò did himself, but he wouldn’t get far through the Holy Land alone.
And when the men raised their swords and gave him an ultimatum of their own making, Nicolò was simply too tired.
“I’ll go with you,” he said, speaking in his native tongue first—and when they frowned, he switched to the Latin he had learned as a priest. “I’ll go with you.”
Only one of them understood, and nodded sharply to the other before reaching for Nicolò’s sword. It appeared they weren’t as drunk as Nicolò had originally hoped.
They brought Nicolò to one of the larger tents, though it was clearly not the most decadent. The man inside was a knight, a commander, but not a king—and he eyed Nicolò with the kind of annoyance that was almost relatable.
“Who is this?”
The man spoke French—not the Occitan that Nicolò was better versed in, but the langue d'oïl spoken further north than the Mediterranean. Nicolò was starting to get a headache, along with a growing appreciation for the prevalence of Arabic in the Holy Land. A common language made things so much easier.
“A traveller,” one of the men replied in kind. “Didn’t want him to give away our location to the heathens.”
The commander looked about to explode. Nicolò couldn’t really blame him. “If we arrested every single traveller on the road, we would not have the food to feed them.”
“Am I a prisoner?” Nicolò asked carefully, wanting to speak before one of the men suggested making it so he wouldn’t need any food.
“Are you a threat?” the commander replied. And, well, that was rather an open question, wasn’t it? Nicolò could be a threat if he wanted to be. If they gave him reason to be.
“No,” Nicolò replied simply. “I am… on something of a pilgrimage.”
The commander sized him up, then cast his gaze to the sword that one of the men still held in his hands. “A pilgrimage? And you know that fighting in God’s name against the heathens is the most holy of all causes? That it will absolve you of all sins?”
Nicolò was already regretting his decision to enter the crusader camp. He’d thought it was the best option, but now he was facing a repetition of his past, he felt a little sick to the stomach. But as much as he wished to decline the offer, he did not think that alerting these men to the fact that he was not exactly on a pilgrimage to find God was a good idea.
So he grit his teeth, and took the only option he seemed to have.
“I would be honoured to join you.”
The commander’s smile had too many teeth, yet seemed tight at the same time. “Good. You there, return this man’s sword. We march at dawn. Damascus will be ours on the morrow.”
Nicolò forced a smile which fell away the moment he ducked out of the tent. The two men who had brought him in followed, and Nicolò tried not to snatch his sword as it was handed back to him.
“You don’t seem like you belong here,” he said as he slid the weapon back into its scabbard. His French wasn’t nearly as good as his Arabic had become, but the men seemed to understand what he meant. Actually, while he didn’t know enough to be able to tell for sure, he was willing to bet these men spoke the language just as badly.
“Our King is not far,” one shrugged. “We were separated, but we shall all be together for the battle tomorrow.”
The other's smile turned a little sly. “The froschfresser might think the city will be his, but it won't.”
“Sieges can take a long time,” Nicolò said, replying to the first.
“Not this one. Everyone is saying it will be over in a week at the longest. And when it is, the Fleur-de-lis won't be what's flying from the walls.”
Nicolò didn’t say anything else. He didn’t think there would be much point.
They left him in a sea of tents to find his own way, walking away with the skein once more passing between them as if nothing had happened, their words cutting through the air in hard syllables that made Nicolò long for the soft sounds of his own tongue. French wasn’t too dissimilar in tenor, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t his.
Shaking the thoughts away, Nicolò moved to find a place. Less organised as the last crusade or not, a war camp is a war camp, and it did not take Nicolò long to locate a fire surrounded by weary soldiers who barely looked up as he slid in among them.
This… this was familiar. The tired faces lined with fear, hidden below a layer of bravado in the hopes that no one would notice. Toasts to a victory they were sure was in their grasp, a victory they knew many would not see. They didn’t yet bear the pure, back-breaking exhaustion of a months’ long siege, but nor were they ignorant of what was to come.
It was familiar. But after years of walking through the desert, walking among the so-called barbarians, it no longer felt like it was a place Nicolò belonged.
He sat quietly, took food when it was offered but declined any drink that was not water. He considered finding a place to sleep, considered sneaking away – after all, he had nothing to fear of a desertion charge – but he’d barely thought of the notion when the sound of a scream cut through the usual din of the camp.
Nicolò jumped up immediately—but those around him hardly flinched.
“What was that?” he asked instinctively—and when he received only blank looks, he tried not to groan in annoyance as he repeated his question in clumsy French.
“It’ll just be the heathen again,” one of them replied. “Probably won’t talk.”
“I would have by now,” another muttered. The first turned to him angrily, and he held up his hands. “If I was a heathen, questioned by good Christians. I wouldn’t give up information to them.”
The pair continued to squabble, but it held no interest for Nicolò. He turned to another man, unsure of why he was curious but finding that he needed to know. Perhaps it was the boredom of sitting still all night.
“Why are they questioning him? Do they believe he has information on the city walls?” Nicolò asked. “Last time we didn’t really—well. I would have thought you’d just kill him?”
“They did,” the man replied. He glanced about, then leaned a little closer. His breath stank of wine. “I heard they tried to kill him when they caught him sneaking around the camp, but…” He crossed himself with a shudder as he finished, “The heathen came back to life. Mark of the devil, if you ask me.”
Nicolò barely heard the last few words—he was up before they had left the man’s mouth, hurrying toward the sound of the screams.
They stopped before Nicolò made it all the way, but he spied the commander from before heading toward a tent that was slightly separated from the others around it, as if no one else wanted to be too close.
The commander – Thierry d'Alsace, Nicolò had learned from listening to the others – frowned as Nicolò approached.
“You again,” he huffed. “Find a corner, sleep. You’ll need it.”
Thierry went to step past him, but Nicolò stepped in front of him—a bold move, but a risk he felt he needed to take.
“I heard you were questioning a heathen,” Nicolò said. “I speak Arabic, and I thought to offer my assistance.”
Thierry considered him for a moment, and Nicolò was sure he was about to be sent away for impropriety. But then, Thierry nodded.
“He has yet to speak a word,” Thierry said. “My officers know very little of their tongue.”
“I have travelled some these past years,” Nicolò said, knowing he was stepping further into dangerous waters. “I speak it well.”
Thierry considered for another moment longer—then nodded. “Say exactly what I say, and always report the truth. I will know if you do otherwise.”
Nicolò didn’t see how, but agreed nonetheless.
“And what is your name, soldier?” Thierry asked.
“Nicolò di Genova.”
Thierry nodded, and then pushed aside the flap entrance of the tent and stepped inside.
When Nicolò followed, the first thing that struck him was the smell. It was iron and decay, rot and death, and it clung in his nose and cut through his mind with the memory of a battlefield and a sword through his heart. He did his best not to gag, but was not sure that he succeeded—
But then a gasp drew his attention, and Nicolò stared.
Almost fifty years of agonising over a decision. Two years scouring the Holy Land, searching for one man in millions.
And Al-Kaysani was just… there. Right in front of him.
He was on the ground, tied to the pole in the centre of the tent, hands behind his back. The man’s hair was different, a little longer perhaps—but still just as matted in blood as the last time Nicolò had seen him. His clothes were tattered and bloody, but either way Nicolò could still see that they were not clothes intended for a battle. Not armour. They were not too dissimilar from what Nicolò was wearing himself.
When their gazes met, Nicolò let out a breath of his own. He had imagined this moment – well, not exactly in this way, but he had imagined seeing Al-Kaysani again – so many times, but he had not truly prepared himself for the maelstrom it would awaken in him. There was still some anger there, of course, the twinge of remembered pain, but it was not as prevalent as he would have expected.
Somehow, the thing that was flooding through him was… relief.
He was torn from his thoughts by a mostly unwelcome voice.
“They always are a shock to see,” Thierry said in French, though his expression was not as hateful as Nicolò would have expected. “Ask him why he was in our camp.”
That was not the question Nicolò would have expected the commander to want answered, to be honest, but he turned to do so nonetheless, clearing his throat before speaking in Arabic.
“He wishes to know why you are here.” Nicolò’s words were slow, careful—and not just to ensure that they were understood, but because he could tell from his expression that Al-Kaysani recognised him, and he was unsure as to what the other man was thinking.
His response provided little illumination. “You’ve learned Arabic.”
Thierry shifted. Nicolò wondered if it truly was the first time Al-Kaysani had said anything since being caught.
Well, Nicolò reminded himself, a bitter taste curling over his tongue. Anything other than screaming.
“I thought it best,” Nicolò replied. “We didn’t understand each other last time.”
“You did when I spoke Occitan.” Al-Kaysani tilted his head a little, as if its position against the pole was uncomfortable. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you have come to question me.”
Nicolò went to reply, but was cut off by the sound of French.
“What is he saying?”
“He isn’t answering the question,” Nicolò replied. He was expecting an angry response.
He didn’t get one.
“Petrus,” Thierry said.
Nicolò was confused for a moment—but then someone he hadn’t yet noticed moved from beside a table that had been pushed up against the side of the tent, and that confusion melted away.
The man was thin, and older than you would expect to find in a crusader camp. But Petrus held the knife in his hand like he was comfortable using it, and as he moved forward, Al-Kaysani flinched.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Nicolò said quickly. “Allow me to try again.” He turned to Al-Kaysani, and switched back to Arabic. “You have to give me something to say, or they will keep hurting you.”
“Why do you care?” Al-Kaysani replied—though he asked the question as if he already had an answer in his mind. “The last time we met—”
“Was a long time ago,” Nicolò interrupted. “I’ve—”
“Been looking for me?” Al-Kaysani grinned when Nicolò flinched, but it was a tight thing, with no warmth to it. “Does that make it my turn to ask you why?”
Nicolò had to grit his teeth to stop himself from childishly reminding the other man that he had been the one to ask first. “Why were you sneaking through this camp? You must have known it was a bad idea.”
Al-Kaysani was quiet for a moment—and for that moment, Nicolò didn’t think he would receive an answer. Until—
“I was looking for you.”
No.
Nicolò frowned.
That was impossible, that—didn’t make any sense—
“I don’t believe you.”
“You were looking for me, I know it. Why is it so hard to believe I was doing the same?”
Nicolò shook his head. “I only got here a few hours ago, you look like you’ve been here for—”
“Since yesterday.” Al-Kaysani frowned. “I think.”
“Genova,” Thierry snapped, and Nicolò knew he was running out of time.
“Just give me something else I can use,” he said, almost pleading though he wasn’t sure why. “It’s your head.”
Al-Kaysani got an interesting look in his eye as he replied. “It’ll grow back.”
“But it’ll still hurt.”
Al-Kaysani pressed his lips together at that. “All right, Genova. But I do not know what you could say that would make this better. Looking for information is worse than looking for a person, and regardless. We both know that isn’t the question he actually wants you to ask.”
Nicolò sighed. “And I don’t suppose you have managed to discover the answer since we last met?”
Al-Kaysani shook his head, and Nicolò felt the loss of a hope he hadn’t truly realised he’d been carrying. “Have you?”
“No.” Nicolò held the other man’s gaze for a moment longer, then turned back to the French commander. “I don’t believe he knows anything of Damascus,” he said. “I think he’s a traveller, as I was.”
Thierry eyed him. That expression was beginning to irk Nicolò a little, but he tried to remind himself that he could not be harmed. Not permanently, anyway.
“Very well,” Thierry eventually said. “Petrus. Take a break. I shall return in a few hours.”
Nicolò felt his breath leave him in a sigh, and allowed himself one last look at the man he had crossed a sea and several deserts to find.
For several long seconds, Al-Kaysani just stared back.
“Genova!”
Nicolò turned and scurried from the tent without another glance—
But he was hardly a step outside when hands grabbed his shoulders and pushed him down to his knees—and then the unmistakable bite of cold steel pressed hard against his neck.