The_Guiscard: I'm cursed with the attention span of a gnat, so when I write I unconsciously end up jumping to the parts my mind parses as the "most interesting." Thanks for the comments. I've been reading Furor Normannicus and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites.
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Chapter 6 – Italani Brava Gente
Salerno, Italy, June 1131
“Romanos is no fool, at least I don’t think so.”
“Aye, and neither are we any knights, at least last I checked.”
Pere de Flor, Condottiere of the Gray Landser Company, laughed. He slapped his lieutenant on the side arm. Isaac smiled, but he was not reassured. He watched Pere walking the circular paces he made in the morning.
They stood on one of the hilltops overlooking the coastal city. The yellow-white buildings were clustered together in the same short, narrow layout they had seen in Bari. Even from their vantage point the streets and alleys of the city were barely visible, anemic veins that ran asymmetric. Isaac could make out the black forms of the token garrison scampering under cover.
After the retreat at Taranto, the Landsers and the Croat detachment they were “attached” to found a messenger from Romanos Adrianos waiting for them in Benevento. He bore a terse letter from the marshal thanking the company for its service and providing a brief apology for the “logistical miscalculation” at Taranto. He wrote that they could proceed to their siege of Salerno with the full assistance of those Croats who were still in tow. Pere and Isaac concluded in quick order that the best course action would be to carry out a quick sack of the city, but leave the docks intact as to be able to contract a Frankish or African merchant galley to sail them out of Italy before the Calabrian army came. Isaac and Pere oversaw the siege with the company’s spare few engineers while Kocelj sat in his pavilion and brooded over his apparent abandonment, the end of his career.
“Two months without any foraging. And on top of that a campaign whose sole encounter was a hasty retreat. Captain, do our clients expect us, sullen and beaten back as we are, to obey some non-molestation clause in our contract as if it were the word of God?”
“No, not all. Just the word of a king.” Pere made a full circuit around Isaac.
“The word of a boy who knows of war as a set of pretty poems.”
“And his council, of course. They know the boy needs a reason for his people to tolerate him; like him even.”
Two of the crude mangonels on the closest hill on the right let loose with a roar of wood, machining and air released of tension. The boulders rose like birds and fell like anvils, flying hundreds of yards clear of the closest wall and tearing into the sandstone apartments sitting in its shadow. The crashing rippled up the hill face. Wood and shattered stone sprayed up in the air, then back down upon the neighborhood. A nebula of yellow dust rose over the southern end of the city.
Pere winced and rubbed the shaved hair at the back of his head. “That was much too close to the duomo.”
Isaac continued. “I never knew you were so learned on politics.”
“One has got to be, to serve in this position for very long without a whisperer’s knife in the back. Besides, I had a decent education on it a long time ago.”
Isaac inclined his head. “You’ve always told me that you didn’t live before taking the gray.”
A mangonel to the left fired. This time the stone fell true, cleaving a piece out of a guard tower.
“A previous life, then.” Pere waved at the Landsers operating the siege engine. “The point is, I’ll bet you’d not question the order at all, had it come from the Guiscard.”
Isaac snorted with laughter. “Blayve de Hauteville is not the Guiscard. Robert would not have bothered with such concerns as the favor of his serfs.”
Pere’s reply was cut off by the calls of the Landsers’ rear guard. They both sprang to attention. Up the opposite side of the hill came one of Pere’s runners, sweat flying from his brow and neck. He fell to his knees. Pere was at his side in an instant, holding his water skin.
“What is it, boy?”
The runner pulled at his sweat-soaked collar. “Reconnaissance… Calabrians. Three hours’ march from here.”
“How many? Did they count their numbers?”
“Seven, thousand.”
Pere patted the runner on the back. He unstrapped his water skin and put it in the boy’s shaking hands. He stood, rubbing his head.
Isaac stepped forward. “They’ve split themselves in half.”
“Yes, but seven thousand still beats nineteen hundred. At least this time we’ve got the high ground.”
---
The scar up Ljubomir Trpimirovic’s arm and shoulder came to him in Jaffa. Jogging in that jangling mail and tabard he hardly had any breath to shout commands to the half dozen men following him as they passed along the cobblestoned portside walkway. Perhaps it was for all the roaring blood in his ears, or one of those ice-packed silences that cut through a combat zone when an angel passes overhead, but all he could hear was the syncopation of their hoarse breaths, clomping footfalls and clattering of scabbards striking greaves.
Then came the scream of men not in agony (that was far more distant, five blocks into the core of the city where the melee was taking place) but attempting to embolden themselves and shrink the enemy. The dozen Ismaili mumin burst out, almost from the wall of the nearest dock house.
They were clothed in armor identical to Ljubomir’s own and that of his soldiers. The difference was in their tattered tabards. Through the spatters of blood and dust Ljubomir saw the solid green matte, the color worn by sworn men of the Fatimiyyuns. Three figures, seemingly clothed head-to-foot in robes cut from pure shadow, huddled behind the semi circle.
Before fear could clutch his gullet, he had charged forward, hacking at the closest unshielded mumin, slipping to combat blindness. His vision cleared in what seemed like hours later. The handle of his arming sword was slippery. He never carried a shield, but he felt his left hand wrapped around some handle of something. He looked down and dropped the severed arm to the ground, where it splashed. Attempting a step, he slipped in blood.
On his side, Ljubomir saw the sideways forms of his soldiers in melee. The six he had brought with him were among the best champions in the single combat exercises the regiments held between each other. Two of them lay nearby, one clutching at a dribbling stump where his shin had been, the other run through with a scimitar lost by its previous wielder. Five of the mumin lay still in the crimson that scythed across the road. Two others crawled in different directions, reflexive impulses to distance oneself from physical chaos.
He staggered back to his feet. He saw one of his men cleave a mumin down the front of his tabard, tearing the green fabric and splintering the shaft of his spear, held high in defense, in half. Before the mumin had fully fallen, Ljubomir’s knight caught another spear in the side, where it split his chainmail. The same attacker stumbled, fumbled for a short sword at his belt and hacked at the knight’s exposed neck.
Ljubomir saw a gap open in the melee. The three robed men stood there, slowly stepping back. He pushed himself forward, swinging blindly at any body that moved to block him. Suddenly, he was clear of the melee and running on dry ground.
If he remembered it correctly, he did not swing out his sword, but rather reached out with his free hand. His fingers closed around the rough cloth of the black robe. The woman’s black hair pulled free from the hood, her black eyes were shot open with animal terror. Her neck and face flushed to a darker tone than he had even seen.
He stayed his sword and in the second’s pause that passed, a spearhead ducked under the short sleeve of his mail. Steel bit through cloth, nerves and muscle like a heated nail through tallow. He felt it chip off the bone, inertia rattling him and sending the broad head tearing upward instead, the skin ripping up towards his shoulder. He could see none of this, only a bulge underneath the mail sleeve reaching for his face.
The spear cut away Ljubomir’s mind’s commands to his arm. He pulled away and his hand ripped away the woman’s hood with it. She stumbled into the dust with a wail. The spear was a short one, almost cut in the proportions of a throwing javelin. It dangled in his arm as he stepped back.
One of Ljubomir’s men tackled the disarmed mumin as he reached for a blade on his ankle. Turning forty-five degrees Ljubomir caught sight of the second robed man, no taller than four and a half feet he noticed in delirium, running to the woman’s side. The third charged at him with no weapons apparent in his hands. Stumbling, he swung with the pommel of his sword, using the assailant’s momentum to crack the brass lozenge across his face.
Dark blood oozed from under the hood, but the unarmed man kept on Ljubomir, hands frantic, devoid of reason, much less strategy. Ljubomir could feel the delirium falling over him again, only passing when one of the scratching hands gripped the haft of the spear in his arm and pulled down. He screamed. Somewhere, he found the presence of mind to shove an armored kneecap into the man’s chest and send him into the road.
Ljubomir’s own blood was excruciating in its vivid redness. It sprayed in weak bursts that dribbled onto the earth.
It was as only as he hacked at enough of his attacker’s neck for the hood to fall away that he realized his identity. The Sheikh of Jaffa, the man Ljubomir had darted through the city to demand a yielding of the city from; to circumvent any further bloodshed. He heard his sword clatter against the rough cobblestone. He looked up, the sheikh’s woman had disappeared, seemingly like some jester’s magic. That made the third one—
The third one was upon him, beating on his chest with weak fists. Through the red lens of his delirium he watched his good hand, wrapped in hard chainmail gauntlet, slap her away. She fell on her back, across the corpse of the sheikh. The hood fell away, the hair of the sheikh’s daughter unfurled like a tattered battle standard. Blood dribbled from her open mouth, held open as if trapped forever in the moment of an open outcry.
---
Krizevci Castle
Ljubomir woke from his memories with the smallest of jumps. However small the tremor, Zvonimir noticed it, his brow furrowed.
“Father, everything alright?”
He breathed from his stomach, moving the air in slow circles inside and out once again. The racing of his blood slowed and his bare arms cooled. “Of course. I’m sorry, you were saying?”
His eldest frowned, he had his mother’s intuition. “I said that I am more than old enough to serve in an officer’s position—“
“You are twenty-one years. Of course. You are absolutely right.”
Zvonimir looked surprised now. He leaned back, his palms planted in the trim grass. “I… am.”
Sweat clung to him though they sat under the shade of the tallest tree in the castle garden. “You’ve only one child of your own now, and your constitution is at its apex in all likelihood. Perhaps it’s best that you purge these demons from your body now rather than later.” He flexed his scarred arm.
Zvonimir opened his mouth, but no words came. Ljubomir laughed and patted his shoulder. “In the next war, I promise. I will talk to Romanos, he says you have great potential regardless.” Something creeped across the broken branches on the other side of the trunk. Ljubomir looked as his eldest son and saw the look of innocence across his seraphic features. He grinned and grabbed around the side of the trunk. “And who’s this small spy here?”
Five-year-old Petar laughed, struggling to break free from Ljubomir’s grasp. “Don’t cross the assassin of Krizevci Castle!”
Ljubomir rubbed his hand through the would-be assassin’s mop of brown hair. “Tell me then, Whisperer, where is your brother Ivo?”
Petar finally broke free, prying loose Ljubomir’s left hand, from which the numbness had never fully relented. “Ivo is with the monks!”
“Doing what?”
“Reading!”
“Who are they reading?”
“Boethius!”
Ljubomir had to smile at that. “And who brought the Consolation to the monastery first?”
“You did!”
Ermyntrude emerged from the western doors. Under the spring sun she looked no older than Zvonimir. Petar ran to her before she had crossed even half of the grass. He jumped and she lifted him up not without some effort. “Gah, you’re going to be the death of my back soon enough, little one.”
“Not like you to be out here and enjoy a radiant day,” Ljubomir said.
“Some of us have work to do.” She looked at Zvonimir. “And just because your tutor is on campaign doesn’t mean you’re free to sit about here. Don’t you have a wife and son to look after?”
Zvonimir shugged. “Have you seen them anywhere lately? I seem to have misplaced them.”
“Oy.” She muttered something Norman and set Petar back down on the grass. “Besides, the diocese bishop’s presence is requested by the open council.”
Ljubomir was genuinely surprised. With King Gavril on holiday with the Western Emperor and the council spending ever waking hour on the Calabria affair, he had hoped to be effectively useless for several months. “You don’t say?”
“I do. An important message from Rome has arrived, it seems. Sealed with His Holiness’ wax emboss and all.”
He rose to his feet, wiping the wet grass from his trousers. He would need to change back into his robes if the papal messenger was still skulking about the open council chambers. “Is that all?”
“Just that.” She bent in her skirt and kissed Petar on the forehead. “That, and the war is over.”
Salerno, Italy, June 1131
“Romanos is no fool, at least I don’t think so.”
“Aye, and neither are we any knights, at least last I checked.”
Pere de Flor, Condottiere of the Gray Landser Company, laughed. He slapped his lieutenant on the side arm. Isaac smiled, but he was not reassured. He watched Pere walking the circular paces he made in the morning.
They stood on one of the hilltops overlooking the coastal city. The yellow-white buildings were clustered together in the same short, narrow layout they had seen in Bari. Even from their vantage point the streets and alleys of the city were barely visible, anemic veins that ran asymmetric. Isaac could make out the black forms of the token garrison scampering under cover.
After the retreat at Taranto, the Landsers and the Croat detachment they were “attached” to found a messenger from Romanos Adrianos waiting for them in Benevento. He bore a terse letter from the marshal thanking the company for its service and providing a brief apology for the “logistical miscalculation” at Taranto. He wrote that they could proceed to their siege of Salerno with the full assistance of those Croats who were still in tow. Pere and Isaac concluded in quick order that the best course action would be to carry out a quick sack of the city, but leave the docks intact as to be able to contract a Frankish or African merchant galley to sail them out of Italy before the Calabrian army came. Isaac and Pere oversaw the siege with the company’s spare few engineers while Kocelj sat in his pavilion and brooded over his apparent abandonment, the end of his career.
“Two months without any foraging. And on top of that a campaign whose sole encounter was a hasty retreat. Captain, do our clients expect us, sullen and beaten back as we are, to obey some non-molestation clause in our contract as if it were the word of God?”
“No, not all. Just the word of a king.” Pere made a full circuit around Isaac.
“The word of a boy who knows of war as a set of pretty poems.”
“And his council, of course. They know the boy needs a reason for his people to tolerate him; like him even.”
Two of the crude mangonels on the closest hill on the right let loose with a roar of wood, machining and air released of tension. The boulders rose like birds and fell like anvils, flying hundreds of yards clear of the closest wall and tearing into the sandstone apartments sitting in its shadow. The crashing rippled up the hill face. Wood and shattered stone sprayed up in the air, then back down upon the neighborhood. A nebula of yellow dust rose over the southern end of the city.
Pere winced and rubbed the shaved hair at the back of his head. “That was much too close to the duomo.”
Isaac continued. “I never knew you were so learned on politics.”
“One has got to be, to serve in this position for very long without a whisperer’s knife in the back. Besides, I had a decent education on it a long time ago.”
Isaac inclined his head. “You’ve always told me that you didn’t live before taking the gray.”
A mangonel to the left fired. This time the stone fell true, cleaving a piece out of a guard tower.
“A previous life, then.” Pere waved at the Landsers operating the siege engine. “The point is, I’ll bet you’d not question the order at all, had it come from the Guiscard.”
Isaac snorted with laughter. “Blayve de Hauteville is not the Guiscard. Robert would not have bothered with such concerns as the favor of his serfs.”
Pere’s reply was cut off by the calls of the Landsers’ rear guard. They both sprang to attention. Up the opposite side of the hill came one of Pere’s runners, sweat flying from his brow and neck. He fell to his knees. Pere was at his side in an instant, holding his water skin.
“What is it, boy?”
The runner pulled at his sweat-soaked collar. “Reconnaissance… Calabrians. Three hours’ march from here.”
“How many? Did they count their numbers?”
“Seven, thousand.”
Pere patted the runner on the back. He unstrapped his water skin and put it in the boy’s shaking hands. He stood, rubbing his head.
Isaac stepped forward. “They’ve split themselves in half.”
“Yes, but seven thousand still beats nineteen hundred. At least this time we’ve got the high ground.”
---
The scar up Ljubomir Trpimirovic’s arm and shoulder came to him in Jaffa. Jogging in that jangling mail and tabard he hardly had any breath to shout commands to the half dozen men following him as they passed along the cobblestoned portside walkway. Perhaps it was for all the roaring blood in his ears, or one of those ice-packed silences that cut through a combat zone when an angel passes overhead, but all he could hear was the syncopation of their hoarse breaths, clomping footfalls and clattering of scabbards striking greaves.
Then came the scream of men not in agony (that was far more distant, five blocks into the core of the city where the melee was taking place) but attempting to embolden themselves and shrink the enemy. The dozen Ismaili mumin burst out, almost from the wall of the nearest dock house.
They were clothed in armor identical to Ljubomir’s own and that of his soldiers. The difference was in their tattered tabards. Through the spatters of blood and dust Ljubomir saw the solid green matte, the color worn by sworn men of the Fatimiyyuns. Three figures, seemingly clothed head-to-foot in robes cut from pure shadow, huddled behind the semi circle.
Before fear could clutch his gullet, he had charged forward, hacking at the closest unshielded mumin, slipping to combat blindness. His vision cleared in what seemed like hours later. The handle of his arming sword was slippery. He never carried a shield, but he felt his left hand wrapped around some handle of something. He looked down and dropped the severed arm to the ground, where it splashed. Attempting a step, he slipped in blood.
On his side, Ljubomir saw the sideways forms of his soldiers in melee. The six he had brought with him were among the best champions in the single combat exercises the regiments held between each other. Two of them lay nearby, one clutching at a dribbling stump where his shin had been, the other run through with a scimitar lost by its previous wielder. Five of the mumin lay still in the crimson that scythed across the road. Two others crawled in different directions, reflexive impulses to distance oneself from physical chaos.
He staggered back to his feet. He saw one of his men cleave a mumin down the front of his tabard, tearing the green fabric and splintering the shaft of his spear, held high in defense, in half. Before the mumin had fully fallen, Ljubomir’s knight caught another spear in the side, where it split his chainmail. The same attacker stumbled, fumbled for a short sword at his belt and hacked at the knight’s exposed neck.
Ljubomir saw a gap open in the melee. The three robed men stood there, slowly stepping back. He pushed himself forward, swinging blindly at any body that moved to block him. Suddenly, he was clear of the melee and running on dry ground.
If he remembered it correctly, he did not swing out his sword, but rather reached out with his free hand. His fingers closed around the rough cloth of the black robe. The woman’s black hair pulled free from the hood, her black eyes were shot open with animal terror. Her neck and face flushed to a darker tone than he had even seen.
He stayed his sword and in the second’s pause that passed, a spearhead ducked under the short sleeve of his mail. Steel bit through cloth, nerves and muscle like a heated nail through tallow. He felt it chip off the bone, inertia rattling him and sending the broad head tearing upward instead, the skin ripping up towards his shoulder. He could see none of this, only a bulge underneath the mail sleeve reaching for his face.
The spear cut away Ljubomir’s mind’s commands to his arm. He pulled away and his hand ripped away the woman’s hood with it. She stumbled into the dust with a wail. The spear was a short one, almost cut in the proportions of a throwing javelin. It dangled in his arm as he stepped back.
One of Ljubomir’s men tackled the disarmed mumin as he reached for a blade on his ankle. Turning forty-five degrees Ljubomir caught sight of the second robed man, no taller than four and a half feet he noticed in delirium, running to the woman’s side. The third charged at him with no weapons apparent in his hands. Stumbling, he swung with the pommel of his sword, using the assailant’s momentum to crack the brass lozenge across his face.
Dark blood oozed from under the hood, but the unarmed man kept on Ljubomir, hands frantic, devoid of reason, much less strategy. Ljubomir could feel the delirium falling over him again, only passing when one of the scratching hands gripped the haft of the spear in his arm and pulled down. He screamed. Somewhere, he found the presence of mind to shove an armored kneecap into the man’s chest and send him into the road.
Ljubomir’s own blood was excruciating in its vivid redness. It sprayed in weak bursts that dribbled onto the earth.
It was as only as he hacked at enough of his attacker’s neck for the hood to fall away that he realized his identity. The Sheikh of Jaffa, the man Ljubomir had darted through the city to demand a yielding of the city from; to circumvent any further bloodshed. He heard his sword clatter against the rough cobblestone. He looked up, the sheikh’s woman had disappeared, seemingly like some jester’s magic. That made the third one—
The third one was upon him, beating on his chest with weak fists. Through the red lens of his delirium he watched his good hand, wrapped in hard chainmail gauntlet, slap her away. She fell on her back, across the corpse of the sheikh. The hood fell away, the hair of the sheikh’s daughter unfurled like a tattered battle standard. Blood dribbled from her open mouth, held open as if trapped forever in the moment of an open outcry.
---
Krizevci Castle
Ljubomir woke from his memories with the smallest of jumps. However small the tremor, Zvonimir noticed it, his brow furrowed.
“Father, everything alright?”
He breathed from his stomach, moving the air in slow circles inside and out once again. The racing of his blood slowed and his bare arms cooled. “Of course. I’m sorry, you were saying?”
His eldest frowned, he had his mother’s intuition. “I said that I am more than old enough to serve in an officer’s position—“
“You are twenty-one years. Of course. You are absolutely right.”
Zvonimir looked surprised now. He leaned back, his palms planted in the trim grass. “I… am.”
Sweat clung to him though they sat under the shade of the tallest tree in the castle garden. “You’ve only one child of your own now, and your constitution is at its apex in all likelihood. Perhaps it’s best that you purge these demons from your body now rather than later.” He flexed his scarred arm.
Zvonimir opened his mouth, but no words came. Ljubomir laughed and patted his shoulder. “In the next war, I promise. I will talk to Romanos, he says you have great potential regardless.” Something creeped across the broken branches on the other side of the trunk. Ljubomir looked as his eldest son and saw the look of innocence across his seraphic features. He grinned and grabbed around the side of the trunk. “And who’s this small spy here?”
Five-year-old Petar laughed, struggling to break free from Ljubomir’s grasp. “Don’t cross the assassin of Krizevci Castle!”
Ljubomir rubbed his hand through the would-be assassin’s mop of brown hair. “Tell me then, Whisperer, where is your brother Ivo?”
Petar finally broke free, prying loose Ljubomir’s left hand, from which the numbness had never fully relented. “Ivo is with the monks!”
“Doing what?”
“Reading!”
“Who are they reading?”
“Boethius!”
Ljubomir had to smile at that. “And who brought the Consolation to the monastery first?”
“You did!”
Ermyntrude emerged from the western doors. Under the spring sun she looked no older than Zvonimir. Petar ran to her before she had crossed even half of the grass. He jumped and she lifted him up not without some effort. “Gah, you’re going to be the death of my back soon enough, little one.”
“Not like you to be out here and enjoy a radiant day,” Ljubomir said.
“Some of us have work to do.” She looked at Zvonimir. “And just because your tutor is on campaign doesn’t mean you’re free to sit about here. Don’t you have a wife and son to look after?”
Zvonimir shugged. “Have you seen them anywhere lately? I seem to have misplaced them.”
“Oy.” She muttered something Norman and set Petar back down on the grass. “Besides, the diocese bishop’s presence is requested by the open council.”
Ljubomir was genuinely surprised. With King Gavril on holiday with the Western Emperor and the council spending ever waking hour on the Calabria affair, he had hoped to be effectively useless for several months. “You don’t say?”
“I do. An important message from Rome has arrived, it seems. Sealed with His Holiness’ wax emboss and all.”
He rose to his feet, wiping the wet grass from his trousers. He would need to change back into his robes if the papal messenger was still skulking about the open council chambers. “Is that all?”
“Just that.” She bent in her skirt and kissed Petar on the forehead. “That, and the war is over.”
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Interlude – Africaine
Two miles outside El-Arish, August 1131
“Please watch your step, Khalifah.”
“I am not so old as to break my neck here, friend.”
“Yes, Khalifah, but the caltrops the Franks are so fond of…”
N’Guna, Khalifah of the Fatimiyyun and Protector of the Copts, known to the Franks as the King of Egypt and Conqueror of Nubia, looked upon the stretch of tan land that once comprised half of what he imagined was his heartland. Imagined, of course. Simply imagined.
The crescent moon’s light painted the city a blemished white. A few torches guttered on the low walls and on the corners of the masjid’s symmetrical roof, where a rough-hewn crucifix sagged. The sporadic illumination the khalifah could discern the hunched shapes of hundreds, perhaps thousands of humans passing through the city’s western portal out onto the road that wound past the rocky hill he stood upon. Eventually, the road would jackknife away from the sea and towards Suez, now the easternmost frontier of the Fatimiyyun. There they would seek refuge.
And I am honor-bound to provide it. “Tell me, friend. Who are those I see fleeing the city?”
The khalifah’s guide adjusted the scarf he wrapped across his face against the evening chill. “Not fleeing, Khalifah, driven out.”
He saw his breath crystallize in front of his face like smoke from a fine pipe. He sat on the nearest boulder, belt medallions jingling. “Driven?”
“Yes, by orders of the new Christian imam the Slavs have placed. Enforced by their garrison.” The man counted off the fingers of a pale hand. “Copts, the few residents of the Nestorian quarter, Monophysites and of course the Jews, Khalifa. They’ve emptied out the Jewish quarter.”
And of course they will flee west. It was N’Guna’s grandfather who had ended the schizophrenic reign of the blasphemer al-Hakim, who singlehandedly destroyed the reputation of all Seveners with his mad decrees repealing the protected status of the people under the dhimmi and daring to proclaim himself the manifestation of God on Earth. N’Guna’s grandfather banished the Sevener cultists who fell so far as to worship al-Hakim. He declared the lands of the Fatimiyyun to be from his reign onwards as tolerant towards all those Ahl al-Kitab who had suffered under al-Hakim’s grip. N’Guna’s father had upheld this pledge and N’Guna himself had sworn before God and the imams of the Ahl al-Kitab in his realm to be the third continuation of the edict of toleration. When the Kingdom of the Nubians sought to attain the throne of Rum by purging their lands of the Copts, it was N’Guna’s grandfather who had taken in the exiled and shattered the kingdom’s African holdings, telling them to seek their throne in Hellas itself.
His grandfather had been a shrewd governor. Without the harvests of gold and silver reaped by the zakat tax on the Ahl al-Kitab, there would have been little means for the Fatimiyyun to continue their pledge of aid to the impoverished, even with all the provinces straddling the Nile under their stead. His father’s military would have turned on him in the fashion of the emperors of Rum.
“My mother, is she well?” She was his sole tutor in statecraft, and a masterful one. She had been the only one among his faithful that he trusted to manage the provinces of Jerusalem, their frontier against the onslaught of the Turks. That had been no more than a year before the Slavs made their first landing. Now she sat behind the walls not two miles away from where he stood, but completely out of grasp.
“Yes, Khalifah. The Slavs stayed true to their great imam’s pledge to preserve her status and sheikhdom. That is one oath they have kept, at least.”
Driven out of the Sinai. He turned his gaze back towards the retreating column. How can I be protector of anyone if I cannot protect my own mother? His grandfather would have shattered his jaw with a single backhand, so that he could never speak such folly as to play at being Khalifah ever again.
The war horse of one of his ghulam snorted from behind. He heard hooves kick at the pebbles. “Friend, I will take my leave of you now. Doubtless you have a family to return to?”
“Yes indeed, Khalifah. I shall give your regards to your honored mother.”
Two miles outside El-Arish, August 1131
“Please watch your step, Khalifah.”
“I am not so old as to break my neck here, friend.”
“Yes, Khalifah, but the caltrops the Franks are so fond of…”
N’Guna, Khalifah of the Fatimiyyun and Protector of the Copts, known to the Franks as the King of Egypt and Conqueror of Nubia, looked upon the stretch of tan land that once comprised half of what he imagined was his heartland. Imagined, of course. Simply imagined.
The crescent moon’s light painted the city a blemished white. A few torches guttered on the low walls and on the corners of the masjid’s symmetrical roof, where a rough-hewn crucifix sagged. The sporadic illumination the khalifah could discern the hunched shapes of hundreds, perhaps thousands of humans passing through the city’s western portal out onto the road that wound past the rocky hill he stood upon. Eventually, the road would jackknife away from the sea and towards Suez, now the easternmost frontier of the Fatimiyyun. There they would seek refuge.
And I am honor-bound to provide it. “Tell me, friend. Who are those I see fleeing the city?”
The khalifah’s guide adjusted the scarf he wrapped across his face against the evening chill. “Not fleeing, Khalifah, driven out.”
He saw his breath crystallize in front of his face like smoke from a fine pipe. He sat on the nearest boulder, belt medallions jingling. “Driven?”
“Yes, by orders of the new Christian imam the Slavs have placed. Enforced by their garrison.” The man counted off the fingers of a pale hand. “Copts, the few residents of the Nestorian quarter, Monophysites and of course the Jews, Khalifa. They’ve emptied out the Jewish quarter.”
And of course they will flee west. It was N’Guna’s grandfather who had ended the schizophrenic reign of the blasphemer al-Hakim, who singlehandedly destroyed the reputation of all Seveners with his mad decrees repealing the protected status of the people under the dhimmi and daring to proclaim himself the manifestation of God on Earth. N’Guna’s grandfather banished the Sevener cultists who fell so far as to worship al-Hakim. He declared the lands of the Fatimiyyun to be from his reign onwards as tolerant towards all those Ahl al-Kitab who had suffered under al-Hakim’s grip. N’Guna’s father had upheld this pledge and N’Guna himself had sworn before God and the imams of the Ahl al-Kitab in his realm to be the third continuation of the edict of toleration. When the Kingdom of the Nubians sought to attain the throne of Rum by purging their lands of the Copts, it was N’Guna’s grandfather who had taken in the exiled and shattered the kingdom’s African holdings, telling them to seek their throne in Hellas itself.
His grandfather had been a shrewd governor. Without the harvests of gold and silver reaped by the zakat tax on the Ahl al-Kitab, there would have been little means for the Fatimiyyun to continue their pledge of aid to the impoverished, even with all the provinces straddling the Nile under their stead. His father’s military would have turned on him in the fashion of the emperors of Rum.
“My mother, is she well?” She was his sole tutor in statecraft, and a masterful one. She had been the only one among his faithful that he trusted to manage the provinces of Jerusalem, their frontier against the onslaught of the Turks. That had been no more than a year before the Slavs made their first landing. Now she sat behind the walls not two miles away from where he stood, but completely out of grasp.
“Yes, Khalifah. The Slavs stayed true to their great imam’s pledge to preserve her status and sheikhdom. That is one oath they have kept, at least.”
Driven out of the Sinai. He turned his gaze back towards the retreating column. How can I be protector of anyone if I cannot protect my own mother? His grandfather would have shattered his jaw with a single backhand, so that he could never speak such folly as to play at being Khalifah ever again.
The war horse of one of his ghulam snorted from behind. He heard hooves kick at the pebbles. “Friend, I will take my leave of you now. Doubtless you have a family to return to?”
“Yes indeed, Khalifah. I shall give your regards to your honored mother.”
I really love the dialogue in that scene, and your knowledge and research on the histories of Egypt and medieval Europe are showing through. Do you study history as a student?
Hah, actually the sum of my academic background in history is a single Byzantine history course I took on a lark in my last semester of university, but what an education it was. On the first day we were told that a more accurate title for class would be History of Medieval Steppe Cultures, the Near East and the Balkans in relation to the Eastern Roman Empire, since it's impossible to tell one of those stories without the others. In a way I sort of regretted taking it, since it was everything I wanted in a class and by that time it was far too late for me to change my minor without being condemned to two more years in the salt mines. I'm flattered by your suggestion, though. I like to call myself a history nerd/hobbyist.
I'm pretty much going off what I remember of the Fatimids. Al-Hakim Amr Allah was definitely is a historical figure, he really did appear to be a kook and hated by the other caliphs of the time. The official line says he went on an unescorted road trip one day and "disappeared" (a line the class loved), but I'm pretty sure we know what that really means. His followers really were banished as heretics, though their descendants are known today as the Druze, one of, if not the only Arabic minority the Israelis allow into their military. They believe that al-Hakim was the Mahdi and that he's going to return in the future for the Shia version of Rapture 2: The Electric Boogaloo. They're pretty much the Gnostics of Islam, as they describe themselves as Muslims while every other denomination disowns them.
On a side-side note, al-Hakim was the guy who ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with chisels, one of the rationales Rome used to justify the first Crusade. His son later hired some Byzantines to repair it.
I'm pretty much going off what I remember of the Fatimids. Al-Hakim Amr Allah was definitely is a historical figure, he really did appear to be a kook and hated by the other caliphs of the time. The official line says he went on an unescorted road trip one day and "disappeared" (a line the class loved), but I'm pretty sure we know what that really means. His followers really were banished as heretics, though their descendants are known today as the Druze, one of, if not the only Arabic minority the Israelis allow into their military. They believe that al-Hakim was the Mahdi and that he's going to return in the future for the Shia version of Rapture 2: The Electric Boogaloo. They're pretty much the Gnostics of Islam, as they describe themselves as Muslims while every other denomination disowns them.
On a side-side note, al-Hakim was the guy who ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with chisels, one of the rationales Rome used to justify the first Crusade. His son later hired some Byzantines to repair it.
Once again, I have to remark that you are a very gifted narrator. I especially like this bit:
And like General_BT said, your historical knowledge shows through. Which I consider of a prerequisite for writing historical fiction.
Really a beautiful picture. Event hough I doubt that the Croatians do already have got the technological advance "mangonels".
And like General_BT said, your historical knowledge shows through. Which I consider of a prerequisite for writing historical fiction.
On a minor note, I've been trying to keep a brisk schedule in terms of updates, but in all likelihood the coming week will be a hiatus as I will be on holiday with no guaranteed Internet. In fact, I am typing this in Inchon-Seoul airport on a three-hour layover.
What's so bad about a Croat Empire?
Hey, don't worry about the delay in updates... we'll be here waiting patiently for the next one!
Okay, maybe not so patiently , but we'll be here waiting.
Hey, don't worry about the delay in updates... we'll be here waiting patiently for the next one!
Okay, maybe not so patiently
, but we'll be here waiting. 
As future events will prove, I don't think Emperor Borna considers himself a full-blooded Croatian unless it's strategically advantageous to do so. He knows fully well that he's in the running to inherit all the Croat territories and vice-versa for Gavril. He's about a decade older than Gavril and ascended at only a slightly older age than him, plus he had to learn how to play The Game at an imperial scale, as opposed to a kingdom that's basically the Balkans and Swabia. But basically, the birth of Gavril singlehandedly ended the possibility of that union and everyone knows it, including him.
The popular rumor among elites and common folk alike says King Zdeslav, Gavril's dad, married off his sister to the western emperor's eldest son in a far-flung attempt to unite Eastern and Central Europe into one gargantuan Germano-Croat Empire stretching from the Balkans to Alsace (Zdeslav had no children at the time he arranged the wedding). I like to think that in a time before journalism and reliable stenography, the records and the motives of previous kings are effectively sealed off forever to everyone except maybe the council members who served under them, and they usually aren't talking. One thing both Gavril and Ljubomir are going to wonder about is how well they actually knew Zdeslav.
The popular rumor among elites and common folk alike says King Zdeslav, Gavril's dad, married off his sister to the western emperor's eldest son in a far-flung attempt to unite Eastern and Central Europe into one gargantuan Germano-Croat Empire stretching from the Balkans to Alsace (Zdeslav had no children at the time he arranged the wedding). I like to think that in a time before journalism and reliable stenography, the records and the motives of previous kings are effectively sealed off forever to everyone except maybe the council members who served under them, and they usually aren't talking. One thing both Gavril and Ljubomir are going to wonder about is how well they actually knew Zdeslav.