That night, everyone turned in early. Gontran dreamt he was in a house with all the doors and windows bolted shut. Someone was still knocking, then pounding on all the doors and shutters, shouting to be let in. Gontran yelled for the someone to go away. But the pounding just got louder and stronger. Soon the fists would burst through, and a tempest would consume the house, destroying everything, remaking everything.

Gontran opened his eyes. Morning. Sparrows and swifts were chirping outside the window. Chanticleers were chanting clearly. Nobody was trying to break in. He was in a bed above the Death Worm tavern in Verona in the eleventh century. Milling crowds murmured in the paved streets that were already clop, clop, clopping with horse hooves. A blackbird sang, reminding him of an old world song.

After a quick breakfast, István’s servants procured supplies for the journey to Magyarorság. These included horses, weapons, armor, blankets, coats, changes of clothes, new shoes, food, water—everything required to journey along the Via Imperii. This august path of trammeled muck would bring travelers through the Alps via the Brenner Pass. Once they reached the little town of Innsbruck, they would swing east through the Duchy of Carinthia, take ship at the River Danube, and sail until they reached the twin fortresses of Buda and Pest, facing each other on opposite sides of the great river.

“There we relax forever,” István explained.

Everyone by then was mounted on expensive horses which were prancing out of Verona.

“All troubles end,” István continued. “We tell same war stories over and over, again and again, until we are old men, and our grandchildren say: ‘Stop! Enough! No more!’”

István laughed, and Benedek, Gabor, and Csaba laughed with him, although it was unlikely they had understood. Gontran forced himself to laugh also.

He regretted that he had barely seen Verona. With his stamina and health mostly recovered, he was feeling more like his mercantile self this morning. Part of him wanted to stay a little longer to sniff out deals, since almost anything you bought here you could sell for two or three times as much once you made it past the Alps. And then on top of that, always—the instant he was rested, fed, free of danger—a wide silk canvas would waver in his mind as if across the eastern sky, glimmering in his thoughts like a red sunrise, blowing in a warm lustrous breeze scented with cinnamon. He would hear the twang of the peculiar lutes they played in Dongjing mixed with the women’s chatter filtering out from the doorways. Rice wine would foam on his tongue as he conversed with the philosopher-administrators, floating on skiffs along artificial rivers built within palaces where the rooftops always curved up at the lower edges as if amused.

But István wanted to leave. He reminded Gontran that there was no telling when the Venetians would come looking for them. Only when the travelers made it past the Alps could they stop fearing entanglement in the Venetian web. The Serenissima was a watery Antaeus: dangerous on the sea almost wherever you went, but harmless on land—for now, at least.

And so István and his servants left Verona—“my sharona,” Gontran quietly sang, not even knowing why. Behind them, gray stone towers rose into spring clouds soaked in gleaming buttery sunshine. Gontran kept silent while the Hungarians around him conversed excitedly. He was unable to hear them over the single phrase echoing in his mind.

This is it.

This was the end of the life he had been living for the past year, ever since meeting Alexios in that dingy Abydos tavern. Whether Gontran went to Hungary or Metz—the Via Imperii stretched to the Baltic shore, after all, where blue waves unrolled glowing chunks of amber electrum on the sand—he was turning his back on the uprising. He’d had enough. It would never trouble him again.

One person can’t make a difference, he thought. My friends—can’t even call them that anymore—they’ll win or they’ll lose without me. Ra’isa, Diaresso, Alexios, Herakleia, you’re on your own. I’m sorry.

Sadness crept up his throat like a soreness, but he swallowed it down. Then he raised his eyes as he finished crossing the old Roman bridge that arced across the Adige River, which was swollen with purling meltwater. Ahead—beyond acres of brown farmland and tall thin cypresses burning like dark green torch flames—lay the snowcapped Alps, a wall of monster teeth sheltering warm Italy from wintry Germany.

When the sun had raised itself directly overhead and was cooking the backs of the travelers’ necks, István made them stop at a nameless fishing village next to Lake Garda. Just outside a tavern overlooking the vast gleaming waters, István gestured for Gontran to sit with him at one of two tables. The other was unoccupied. Csaba, Gabor, and Benedek, meanwhile, took care of the horses, ordered food—fish fried in batter, butter, herbs—and procured wine before joining them, sloshing it from a clay pitcher into clay cups. Another group of travelers soon sat at the nearby table: four young men with swords belted at their sides, all so close they were nearly rubbing elbows with István’s crew. Without looking at the newcomers, Gontran listened to their conversation. They were speaking Venetian.

He covered his face with his hand. Just once I wish I could do something or go somewhere without running into Venetians. I could travel all the way to the South Pole, trudge across the tundra for weeks without seeing a single living thing, arrive at Lake Vostok—frozen solid for a hundred miles down—and what would I find? A bunch of Venetians. They’d even be waiting for me on the other side of the moon. You can’t scratch your ass without bumping into twenty fucking Venetians.

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István and his servants watched him with concern, as though they expected him to blow their cover at any moment. They had also stopped speaking Hungarian. The Venetians must have been listening for the peculiar shushing sounds of the Hungarian tongue, especially for the one word Hungarians loved above all others: Magyarorság.

István’s group instead struggled to converse in Venetian. They praised the lake, the fish, the scenery, the food. Each man present at István’s table spoke with exaggerated Italian accents and mannerisms. Words like “molto bene,” “bellissimo,” “delicioso,” “pesci,” and—yes—“mamma mia” were shouted repeatedly while they gestured to one another, holding their thumbs to their forefingers while pretending to guzzle their wine. This was the only way to mask their accents; to have kept quiet would have looked suspicious. Gontran recalled how Italians often frowned at him for his Frenchness the instant he said words like “buongiorno” or “grazie,” so he did his best to seem as Italian as humanly possible.

In order to defeat monsters, we must become monsters.

Amidst the fake conversation at István’s table, it was easy to eavesdrop on the Venetians. When Gontran discovered what they were discussing—animatedly—he stopped talking and slumped in his seat.

“It is astonishing that they captured it!” the first Venetian said. “A ship, a fine ship worth at least a thousand golden solidi, and in perfect condition, as though they had sailed it straight out of the shipyards of Romagna and into our hands!”

“A goodly load of merchandise was aboard as well,” the second Venetian said. “The finest women you could ask for. Asses like this, tits like this.” He made cupping signs with his hands. “So lovely, even Christ on the cross would have popped a chubby.”

The Venetians laughed.

“And they had a statue made of bronze,” the first Venetian said. “A peculiar contraption seemingly powered by steam, most remarkable in its ingenuity, very much like the inventions of Archimede, but shaped in the form of yet another gorgeous woman.”

“Romagna is full of them,” a third Venetian said. “Positively bursting at the seams with them. Gorgeous Greeks and Slavs. I tell you, I’m saving up for a villa stocked with such women. I’ll have a big garden with a fountain and a wall, a real paradiso, a real garden of earthly delights, and when I’m a rich old man, all I’ll do is frolic with naked slaves all day.”

“That’s how the Great Turk lives,” the first Venetian said.

Horny bastards, Gontran thought. Why don’t you squeeze one off instead of making fools of yourselves?

“Yes, I’ll be the Great Turk,” the third said. “I’ll sleep each night on beds made of women. I’ll eat every meal off the bellies of women. I’ll drink wine from the mouths of women.”

“I’ll take five shits a day from the asses of women,” the second said.

More laughter. Gontran was disgusted.

“The Loredani were hunting the ship for days and days,” the first said. “They’d had some trouble with it. It seems they captured it before, but then it slipped out of their grasp. The second time’s the charm, as they say. Now there’ll be no escape. The ship’s been towed into the Arsenale, the crew chained up in the ducal palace. They just have to find their captain, a Frank who ran off from le saline de Clugia a few days ago. He might even still be in the area. The guy abandoned his crew. Can you believe it? What a coward!”

Gontran was trembling with rage.

“He could even be nearby.” The second nodded to Garda. “Frogs love lakes, don’t they?” The man leaned over to Gontran and nudged him with his elbow. “Hey amico, seen any frogs lately?”

The Venetians laughed. Gontran glared at the second one.

This man clapped Gontran’s back. “No need to be sour! I’m just messing with you! It was just a joke! Lighten up! Have a sense of humor! Be more sociable!”

It was over before Gontran knew what had happened. The Venetians were spasming on the ground, choking on the fountains of blood welling from their throats, which they were clutching. Their eyes bulged for a moment, but soon the Venetians were silent and still as black pools expanded around them, the blood trickling from their necks, the game voice shouting about critical hits and telling him he had leveled up to Intermediate Brawler (5/10). How had he even done this? Gontran approached the lake and cleaned his blood-drenched sword, clothes, and hands in in the water. He was trembling. Only a faint memory of what had happened flashed like lightning in the storm clouds of his mind.

“Are you mad?” István exclaimed. “I cannot take you anywhere!”

He and his servants had leaped from their seats and drawn their swords. Now they were staring at Gontran as if at a rampant lion. Something crashed in the tavern doorway. Everyone looked: the serving wench had dropped a platter of dishes and then fled inside.

Gontran walked to the horses. “I’m going back to Venice,” he said to István.

“Velence?” István said. “Why?”

“Situation’s changed,” Gontran said.

“I’m not going there,” István said. “It is mouse trap, and we are the mice. It is city of death. I return to the home. I return to Magyarorság. To the life.”

Gontran went back to István. They shook hands, wishing each other luck, fortune, God’s grace. Then Gontran nodded to Benedek, Csaba, and Gabor, and they to him. After he searched the dead Venetians’ pockets for coins—so focused on his new mission that he neglected to count them, though the men had been rich—he left a golden solidus stamped with Charlemagne’s face on the table, mentally apologizing to the serving wench for the mess. That left thirty-six solidi for Gontran, a small downpayment on the hundred and twenty golden nomismas the bastard Loredani had stolen from him.

Soon enough, Gontran was riding a horse along the road east to Venice.