The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

as your murderer. I won’t be able to set foot in al Andalus so long as they remember your name. I won’t be able to come back for you.”

God forgive me, God forgive me.

“I know,” I said. “Go.”

He rode out on the north road in the cool predawn dark the next morning.

Some months later, when my bones had healed and my eyes crusted over in a thick stratum of scabs and scar tissue, I asked Nasir to bring me a walking stick. I pushed myself slowly to his front door.

“Stay,” Nasir pleaded. “There’s no need for you to leave. How will your friend Hadid find you if you go?”

“He won’t return,” I said. “God grant it, I may go to him some day, but he won’t return.”

Thus I left the quiet of Nasir’s house for Cordoba, to live in the shadow of what was once my home, to erase myself from all men’s memories, and to pray for word that would lead me back to my beloved and my friend.

We have reached the wooded no-man’s-land inside the Catalan border, by the chill banks of the river Segre. Our caravan has been shrinking, the imam and the students long since left behind in Madrid, and many of the merchants stopped in smaller cities and towns along the way. Lazaro and his men make up the bulk of the caravan, save Miguel’s wagon and a Christian merchant we picked up, also bound for Catalunya. We file close together over the narrow road. At night, we sleep in the woods. We light no fires. Icy rain patters down on us in the day, heralding autumn in the North country. Even Mencia has fallen under the pall of silence that hovers over us. Although we have traveled beyond the chaos rippling out from Cordoba, unallied highwaymen and Visigoth war bands roam the wilderness in these parts. A fight has broken out among Lazaro’s men about whether to abandon Miguel, Mencia, and me, since traveling with Jews and a Moor so near the Pyrenees places them in danger. But so far, we haven’t woken to find them gone.

I walk alongside the cart with my hand resting on its upper boards while the mapmaker’s horses strain up a steep grade. Wet rocks bite my feet and several times I slip, but catch myself on the cart’s edge in time to keep from sliding under the wheels. My leg aches at the old break. The crash of whitewater roars up from the river gorge below. Lazaro’s men have ridden ahead, but when we finally crest the hill, we find them stopped.

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“Shhh.” Miguel quiets me.

“State your allegiance,” a strange man’s voice, speaking Catalan, booms over the road.

No one answers.

“State your allegiance,” the stranger tries again, in Castellano this time. The words are heavy in his mouth. He swallows the ends of them, and it takes me a moment to remember where I’ve heard his accent before. I am ten years old, jacketed in gold brocade and standing in the shadow of my father’s throne. A Visigoth chieftain with a heavy black beard and pale skin stands at the base of the dais, a gilt and sapphire cross glinting in the fox fur at his neck, an emissary from our ancestors’ long-vanquished enemies….

“State yours,” Lazaro says. The sound of swords drawn from their scabbards rings throughout the group of men arrayed on the path before us.

“I am Athanric of the Wese. We swear allegiance to his Holiness Pope John XVIII.” The Visigoth shouts to be heard over the river. A fine sleet begins to fall.

“Then we have no quarrel with you,” Lazaro says. “We go to the court of King Filipe of Roussillon to aid his cause in retaking the southern lands from the Moorish kings.”

“And yet you travel with a Moor,” Athanric says. He pauses, as if working out a problem in his head. “And Jews?”

I cannot see, but I feel the gaze of two score pairs of eyes turned on our wagon in the silence that follows.

“They’re no part of our caravan,” Lazaro replies.

“Then you will not object if we dispatch them from your company,” the Visigoth says. “We would be remiss in our Christian duty if we did not baptize them here in the river.”

Lazaro pauses. The cold gush of the river rises in the silence. An uneasy murmur works its way through his men. “No,” Lazaro says. “They’re no concern of ours.”

Mencia clutches my arm.

“Good lords.” Miguel raises his voice for the first time, and I am surprised at how strong and clear it is after so much silence. “I am a tradesman. My wife and I travel to Organa, no further, and this man is our servant. We are no threat to you.”

“A Jewish tradesman,” Athanric says. He thumps the flat of his sword against his leg. “And wearing no marks on his clothes.”

“It is not our custom in the south,” Miguel says quietly.

“Ah, but it is custom here,” Athanric says. His voice and the rhythmic beat of his sword move closer. “As well as law. And lawbreakers must be punished.”

Mencia cries out. Her hand jerks from mine. Her husband shouts and there is an awful, thick sound of fists on flesh and scrabbling in the wet dirt. Tearing fabric rips the wet air.

“Perhaps we will dispense justice here and now,” the Visigoth says.

Save us, I pray, shaking with cold and furious impotence. Save them. Save her. Don’t let anyone else suffer because I am helpless to stop it.

Mencia screams, longer this time and more pained.

This cannot be Your will, I say to God. If it is, I will not bow to it.

And then there are hoofbeats on the slope behind us, dozens, loud as war drums, kicking up stones and spattering mud as they skid to a stop behind our party.

“Look what we have today,” a man says. “Athanric of the Wese.” His voice is full of humor and menace in equal parts, and my heart near stops, for I would know it anywhere. It belongs to Adan Hadid. The man who gave up his life in service of mine. Who defied God’s law and rode out to save me on a Shabbat eve.

“This is none of your concern, de Lanza,” Athanric says.

“Perhaps,” Adan says, easy with his false name. “But I see you have taken some of my countrymen, so perhaps I will find it is my concern after all.”

The Visigoth swears in his own tongue. He calls to his men, and their horses stamp as they mount and draw away.

“Some day I’ll find you outnumbered,” Athanric shouts over the sound of his men’s retreat.

“Be sure it’s four to one,” Adan calls after him.

The pounding of their hoofbeats fades into the distance. Mencia cries quietly as her husband murmurs and soothes her. I am frozen, locked still as stone. My heart is the only thing moving. Will Adan recognize me, changed as I must be? And will Lazaro know his quarry by sight, or by name only?

Adan’s horse clops toward Lazaro’s band, grouped on the side of the road. “Gentlemen, if you’re in need of an escort, my men and I will be happy to accompany you for a small fee. Where are you going?”

“Roussillon.” Lazaro coughs.

“What do you say, shall we go to Roussillon?” Adan calls to his men.

“To Roussillon!” they shout in response, and beat their swords on their shields.

“With your consent, of course,” Adan says to Lazaro.

“Por supuesto,” Lazaro says, the strain evident in his words. “We would be grateful, sir.”

Adan spends several moments making sure Miguel’s cart is undamaged, he and his wife secure within it, and calls for a beaver-skin blanket to shield Mencia from the icy rain. Then we are off again, moving through the trees at a steady clip with Adan’s men riding in a protective circle around us.

I walk on, steadying myself with one hand on the cart. My legs shake with every step.

A horse veers close to me and slows to my pace. “Do these men know who you are, brother?” Adan says quietly.

I turn my face up to him, even though all I can see is the hazy, muted green of the damp trees all around us. Joy hits me like a wall, and I stop. The cart rolls on without me. “No,” I say.

“We’ll move faster if we place this man on a horse,” Adan calls up to Lazaro. “And bring him some spare boots.”