The vulture hopped closer, filling the air with the rank odor of carrion. Cocking its white head first to one side, then the other, it regarded the fallen man.

Cai tried to shout or scream at it. The words stuck in his parched throat. He scrabbled for a rock, for anything to throw, but his hand found only sand. He threw the sand. The bird stepped back and continued to regard him.

“You won’t have my eyes,” he whispered to it. Older soldiers he’d known in the Crusade told stories of vultures attacking the still-dying, going first for the eyes.

He struggled to sit. Savage pain in his left leg stopped him. He lay gasping, choking on dust and dry air, while tears of agony ran down his face. When the worst of it ebbed, he forced himself to look at the wound.

Blood oozed from a deep cut that ran down the outside of his left thigh. He didn’t remember being wounded. He didn’t remember much beyond the July heat, the fury and stench of the battle, and the endless day, trapped without water in the bowl of Hattin. He knew if he didn’t die of thirst, the wound would fester and kill him.

Exhaling loudly, he curled his right leg up as far as he could and, using his right arm, pushed himself into a half-sitting position, gripping his knife in the other hand.

“There. Now try for my eyes, damn you,” he muttered to the bird.

“There you are.” Alain peered down at him. He still sat his horse, but he looked wrong.

The arrow, Cai thought. He shouldn’t have an arrow in his throat. He blinked in the fierce sunlight, and Alain disappeared.

His friends, Alain and Louis, had been just beside him in the milling crowd of soldiers. Arrows dropped on them from all around. He looked back, shouted to warn them—too late. He never knew what killed Louis, but he’d seen the arrow pierce Alain’s throat, had seen surprise crumple his friend’s face, seen him fall, blood spouting from his mouth.

Cai wept. He tried to wipe the tears from his sandy face but couldn’t without falling over. It didn’t matter; the searing heat dried them almost immediately.

When the Saracen riders found him later that day, he was still propped up, barely conscious, calling his friends and trying to scare the bird away.

The lead rider saw him first. “My Lord,” he said, gesturing to Cai’s drooping form. The five men drew rein and dismounted, approaching cautiously.

He tried to fight them, waving the knife and croaking threats in Latin. They took his knife and laid him down.

A man dressed in a striped robe and a blue turban knelt beside him. “Be still,” he ordered in Arabic. “I am Zaahid, a physician to Saladin.”

Cai regarded him. They will kill me, he thought. But he couldn’t make himself care what they did. He was nearly dead and could think of no reason to retreat from the edge of that darkness.

“I am Zaahid,” the kneeling man said again.

Though he understood the man’s words, Cai did not answer.

Zaahid tried again in Latin.

They spooned water into his mouth, slowly to prevent his vomiting, and washed his face and hands.

“I am called Cai,” he said at last.

Zaahid nodded. He poured water over Cai’s leg, washing away the dust and dried blood, and then spread honey over the wound. Finally he wrapped a strip of clean, white linen around Cai’s leg. Cai shivered in pain but managed not to cry out.

“I live two days’ ride from here,” the physician said. “We will take you to my home to tend you. When your leg is healed, you may then go where you will.”

The Saracen, his enemy, was offering him life. How could he accept? His friends were dead in that horrible valley. Everything he valued was gone—his friends, his horse, his honor. Despair, deeper than the fear of death, settled like a caul over his heart.

“Better to leave me,” he whispered.

“To do so would be a sin.”

Cai shook his head. “It would only be my sin.”

Zaahid finished binding Cai’s leg and stood. “Shall I leave you to your friend?” He gestured toward the vulture, who had hopped a few feet away when the Saracens rode up but still watched, in unholy patience, for the man to die.

Cai hesitated, cursing his cowardice, then shook his head, not meeting Zaahid’s gaze. He said, almost to himself, “Not that.”

The man who been spooning water into his mouth lifted Cai’s head and pressed a cup of water mixed with honey and poppy juice to his cracked and bleeding lips. Cai drank it, wincing at the bitter taste of the poppy.

While Zaahid repacked his medical bag, he observed Cai, noting when the terrible rigidity of pain left him. “Do you think you can ride?” Zaahid asked.

Cai nodded. He suspected he would fall off immediately but wouldn’t admit it.

“We found your horse, waiting for you.”

“Where?”

Suddenly his grey Andalusian, Fog, stood over him, nuzzling his hands. Relief washed over Cai, along with the memory of the strange figure in blue that Fog had followed through the Saracen lines. He touched Fog’s soft muzzle. Not everything was gone.

They lifted him onto his own horse. Balanced uncertainly, clutching the saddle with one hand, he stroked Fog’s neck, murmuring to him in Welsh, his native tongue. As they moved, he thought Alain rode beside him. The image wavered in the sunlight and vanished if he looked directly at it. He was still desperately thirsty, and his leg hurt so much he wanted to pound it, just to make it stop.

They halted for prayers at a tiny oasis. Zaahid offered more opium. Knowing the dangers of the drug, Cai tried to refuse.

“Take it,” Zaahid insisted gruffly. “I don’t want to force you, but you cannot ride without it.”

By the end of the second day, Cai was drifting in and out of consciousness. He stayed on the horse only because of his grip on Fog’s mane. One of the other men mounted behind him, to keep him in the saddle, and Zaahid led the Andalusian.

He had sent a messenger ahead to inform his seneschal that they would arrive that night. When they reached the narrow trail that led up to a small walled fortress, it was dark, but torches had been set along the path. Their acrid smell tainted the clean desert air. As they rode past the flambeaux, the last man in the line extinguished each flame.

Cai felt that he was floating through darkness into a hellish, retreating light that vanished when he passed it. As they rode through a tall gate and entered the courtyard, the light from the smaller torches seemed to explode into a dazzling glare. People gathered around them, welcoming their lord. The man riding with Cai dismounted. In the excitement of the return, Cai was momentarily ignored.

Cai’s horse trotted across the courtyard to a water trough. When he reached it, he stopped suddenly. Cai collapsed and slid to the ground, grunting in pain. Fog drank cautiously, watching the strange men and horses at the other end of the enclosed space, stopping occasionally to nudge his fallen rider, who lay on the ground laughing uncontrollably at the absurdity of falling off his own horse.

From her room on the second floor, Noor observed the horsemen as they rode up the twisting trail. Five men and a riderless horse. Why were there six horses? She counted again. One horse carried two men. Her brother led that one, but she didn’t recognize it. She wrapped a black shawl around her head and shoulders and hurried down to meet them.

In the usual chaos of returning, servants and grooms milled around the horses and the dismounting men. Dust and noise swirled in the courtyard. She pushed between the horses.

“Zaahid,” she cried, holding out her hands.

“My dear,” he said, evading her. “We’re filthy and hungry. Can you arrange food while we bathe?”

A movement caught his eye. Cai’s horse was wandering across the courtyard toward the water trough. Noor followed his glance, and at that moment the horse stopped and its rider toppled off.

Zaahid hurried across the courtyard, Noor close behind.

“Mustafa,” Zaahid called.

His apprentice, a tall African, appeared from the dispensary across the courtyard.

“He is a Frank,” Noor remarked seeing the Frankish dress and fair skin of the fallen man.

“We found him,” said one of the others.

Cai lay in the dirt, still laughing and trying to fend off his horse, who kept nuzzling him.

“Found?”

Zaahid gestured to the men behind Noor. “Take him to the bath. Strip him and burn those clothes. Shave his body and bathe him thoroughly. I will join you shortly.” Then he spoke to Noor: “Food, please. I’m very hungry.” He grinned.

“You’re always hungry, brother.”

While Noor waited for Zaahid to bathe and change, she ordered bread and cold lamb, figs and dates, fruit juice poured over snow brought from the mountains.

Dressed in a clean white robe, his hair about his shoulders, Zaahid met her in the solar. After a long embrace, she poured iced juice for both of them and let him eat in silence.

When he was nearly done, just nibbling on some figs, he asked, “When did you arrive?”

“Yesterday. But I’m settled in.” She paused. “I brought little with me. Ali is fussing about every detail—and deliriously happy.”

“He missed you terribly.”

“And I have never been so lonely.”

Zaahid leaned across the small table toward her. “And the divorce is done?”

“Yes.” She twisted the gold bangles on her left arm. “God be praised.”

Zaahid took another fig and ate it, taking small, slow bites.“I know a fortress in the desert is not your first choice—to live in or to practice medicine in. But you’re safe here. In any case, Aadil won’t pursue you.”

Noor poured herself more juice. She offered the jug to Zaahid, but he shook his head.

He was right. A fortress in the desert was not the place she would have chosen to live or practice in. Moreover, she was not entirely sure that her ex-husband would leave her alone. He was a petty, vindictive man who had hurt her and broken their marriage contract by interfering with her medical studies.

“Well, I can care for your women patients,” she said carefully. She would miss the city and her friends. Already she felt lonely.

“Yes, and that’s needed. They won’t come to me.” He smiled, not seeing the resignation in her face and voice.

She told him about her journey from Baghdad with a small, heavily armed escort, men of Zaahid’s household. “They were very kind and efficient. They packed my books and loaded the mules in less than a day.”

Zaahid nodded. “Good.”

“The trip was arduous—hot and dusty. We traveled at night for most of the three weeks.”

“And you were in a palanquin.”

“No.” She glanced away. “I rode. The men were exquisitely respectful.” She took a fig but didn’t eat it.

He started to speak, but she cut him off. “You know I hate being confined in a palanquin.”

Zaahid sighed. His headstrong sister often disregarded his advice, even his orders.

“When I arrived,” she went on, “you were away with Saladin.”

“At Hattin,” he whispered. “A terrible slaughter.” He looked up without meeting her eyes. “The Amir trapped the Crusaders in a waterless valley for two days. He set fire to the grass and kept them from water. Men and horses went mad. They died from thirst. Thousands of them.” He walked to the open window. “I will no longer go to serve Saladin.”

“Tell me about this prisoner,” she said. “How did he escape?”

“He’s not a prisoner. And I don’t know how he escaped the cordon. We found him, half dead, fending off a vulture.” Zaahid smiled. “Should I have left him to die of heat and thirst?”

“He was running away?” Noor stood and paced around the room, ignoring his question. “What will you do with him?”

“Heal him, if possible. And then he can go where he pleases. He’s not a stray dog, Noor.”

“He sounds like a coward.”

“I would have run away too,” Zaahid whispered into the night.

After a thorough scrubbing, Mustafa and two other attendants shaved Cai’s body and dressed him in a clean nightshirt. They put him to bed in the infirmary, a large open room. Each sleeping space contained a cot and was separated by curtains from the others.

The muezzin’s call for dawn prayers woke him. Thirsty, unsure of where he was, he tried to get up, but weakness and pain stopped him. Around him three different voices murmured in prayer.

When the prayers ended, an African came into the room, opening shutters and pulling back the curtains to let in the dawning light. Cai remembered him vaguely.

“I am Mustafa,” he said to Cai. “The Hakim will attend you this morning.”

Fevered and too exhausted to speak, Cai nodded. Mustafa touched his forehead, went away, and came back with water. He lifted Cai’s head so he could drink. The water soothed Cai’s dry tongue and throat but left him slightly nauseated.

He slept and woke again to the scent of oranges. A man who looked familiar sat beside his bed, peeling an orange. He held out a section. “I am Zaahid,” the man said in Arabic. He finished peeling the orange, arranged the sections on a small plate, and set it on the bed beside Cai. He looked to be about thirty, with large intelligent eyes in a round face, and fine-boned hands.

“I remember,” Cai answered in Arabic. He put a small section of orange in his mouth. Its fragrant sweetness almost convinced him that he had died and somehow merited heaven.

Watching Cai intently, Zaahid began to peel another orange. “I have no need for a slave,” he said. “And I do not want a prisoner. I don’t think you are able to travel at this time. If you will be my guest until you’re healed, you and your fine horse may go where you will.”

Cai had assumed he was a prisoner. “You are generous,” he said carefully. Hattin had convinced him that all Muslims hated Christians, hated everyone. Soldiers killed each other, but to do so in such a hideous way was not battle; it was slaughter, with no quarter given. Even cattle were not killed so cruelly. Yet here was this man, giving him life.

Zaahid did not answer. He stood and put back the sheet and blanket covering Cai. “It’s beginning to heal,” he said, almost to himself. “But I want to remove some of the dead flesh.”

Cai studied him. He had seen Crusader doctors take knives to wounds, cutting away necrotic flesh or an entire limb. “No,” he said.

Zaahid’s head came up. “What?”

Cai thought perhaps he should be more circumspect. The son of a minor prince in Wales, he had learned to fear little in life. And after Hattin he feared nothing—death least of all. Yet he said, “I’d rather die than lose my leg.”

They studied each other.

“The dead flesh must be removed,” Zaahid said.

Cai continued to regard him, then asked, “Do you use…?” He paused, searching for a word. His Arabic was limited. “Worms?” He gestured vaguely.

“Worms?” the other man asked incredulously.

“To clean the wound, without a knife,” Cai continued. He felt foolish, but made a nibbling motion with his fingers along the top of his good leg.

“Ah,” Zaahid said. “Yarqa. Yes, we use those.”

“Maggots,” Cai said, in Latin and French and Welsh. “Better than a knife for wounds. They eat only the dead flesh,” he added in Arabic.

Zaahid laughed and gestured to Mustafa. They spoke rapidly in a language Cai did not recognize. Then Mustafa disappeared into the courtyard. Going to look for yarqa, Cai hoped.

Letting his fingers hover above the red, swollen line edged in blackening flesh, Zaahid traced the length of the cut down Cai’s thigh. He touched Cai’s leg but not the wound itself. “Painful?” Zaahid asked.

Cai nodded.

“It will be for a long time. There is a lot of damage to the muscles.”

“Will I walk again?”

Zaahid was silent for a moment. “I should think so. But you might be lame.”

Cai’s fever returned. For days he went in and out of delirium. They bathed him and fed him cool foods and gave him water laced with honey. When the fevers stopped, he slept deeply for three days and woke at last feeling weak but clear-headed, and no longer sick.

His first thought was that Zaahid might have amputated his leg to save his life. He lay quietly in the dark, trying to sense the presence of his leg. It was futile; he knew a limb could be gone even if the body still felt it. He opened his eyes to the early-morning sun streaming in the doorway. Mustafa was at the other side of the room, tending to a child. Cai struggled to a sitting position. Without looking, he reached out and gingerly touched the place where his leg should be. It was there. It hurt, but he was whole.

Tears started in his eyes. He wiped roughly at them, embarrassed by the flood of relief overwhelming him. He lifted the covers. The wound had started to close into a ragged, lumpy scar. The maggots had worked. His mother had used them, and in Cordoba he had learned from a friend studying to be a doctor that Muslim physicians also used maggots to clean wounds. A Crusader surgeon would have taken the leg off. He owed his limb to Zaahid. How, he wondered, would he repay that debt?

“Ah, you are awake at last,” Mustafa said from the foot of the bed. He was very tall, and darker than any human Cai had ever seen. He wore a long shirt and loose trousers, with a white apron over them. His blue turban made him seem even larger than he was. “Are you thirsty?”

Cai nodded. Mustafa moved to help him, but Cai waved him off and reached for the cup Mustafa held out. He knew enough to drink slowly though he was desperately thirsty.

“The Hakim will attend you shortly,” Mustafa told him.

Cai drank more water and waited. What would happen now? He vaguely remembered Fog standing over him. Had he hallucinated that image—the way he had “seen” Alain? He shook his head, unable to separate what had actually happened from his fever dreams. And what about the mysterious blue figure who had led Fog from the battle?

But what did the future hold for him? He had his life. Even if he was free to leave, where could he go? He couldn’t go back to the Crusade, nor could he go home.

Zaahid entered the dispensary, accompanied by a tall young man with fine hands and large black eyes who wore no turban.

“Good morning,” Zaahid said.

Cai nodded, his attention taken by the assistant.

“Allow me to introduce my sister, Noor Hakim.” Zaahid turned to the stern-faced woman beside him. She wore trousers and a long shirt of dark red linen. Her hair was tied back, and she wore no jewelry.

Cai dropped his glance. He knew not to stare at Muslim women.

But she took his wrist in her hand and felt his pulse. “Much better,” she said. “The maggots did their work well.”

Zaahid peeled back the sheet to show Cai’s wound, exposing much more of his leg than Cai was comfortable with in the presence of a woman. Noor stood on the other side of the bed, and she and her brother both examined the pink, healing gash. No black flesh remained. Cai vaguely remembered them applying the maggots and the almost tickly feeling of the creatures doing their repellent, healing work. When they were full, they simply dropped off and could be collected to be used again.

“An excellent outcome. Better than the knife,” Noor went on.

Zaahid looked at Cai’s face and laughed, clearly enjoying his surprise. “We train our women to be physicians,” he explained.

“I met a few in Cordoba,” Cai said, his eyes still averted.

“So that is where you learned your Arabic.”

Cai nodded.

“And your stallion is Andalusian?”

“You found him? Where? Where is he?”

Zaahid finished examining Cai’s leg and covered it. Noor was writing notes but listening intently. “You rode him here,” Zaahid said. “Right now he is in the pasture behind the stables. My mares are intrigued.” He smiled. “My stud, less so.”

Cai frowned, struggling to recall what Zaahid had told him earlier. Was he a prisoner? Or a free man? Would Zaahid really let him go when he recovered? Would he let him have the horse? He might want to add Fog to his stud and keep the foals for himself.

Cai thought back to Fog as a long-legged colt, dark gray with a black mane and tail. Cai had gone to Cordoba to study, and his father had given him enough money for a horse. He bought the colt and trained him. Later, when he left al-Andalus to join the Christian knights trying to recapture the Holy Land, he kept Fog as a war horse, even though the smaller, lighter Andalusians were not ideal as battle horses.

“He was waiting not far from where you lay,” Zaahid continued.

At that Cai did smile.

After looking at his tongue and the sample of urine Mustafa had collected from him earlier, Noor asked, “Are you hungry?”

Cai thought about that, not sure how he felt about food. He said nothing, hoping she would go away.

Noor watched him. “A returning appetite is a sign of returning health,” she said, so formally that she could have been lecturing.

“I am a little hungry,” Cai said, though he didn’t know what they would bring him.

Zaahid and Noor discussed hot and cold foods with Mustafa.

“Perhaps some bread and a mild cheese,” Zaahid said.

“And green tea to drink?” Noor suggested.

Zaahid nodded, already turning. “Maybe a bit of salad later.”

He walked away, Noor following. At the door she glanced back and found Cai looking directly at her.

Mustafa brought him a slice of bread sweetened with honey and a tiny chunk of cheese.

“You have been very ill,” Mustafa said. “And long without food. You must start slowly, like a small child, and learn to eat again.”

Cai nodded. The bread with honey tasted better than he thought it would.

“Zaahid Hakim said you should drink chai also.”

“What is that?”

Mustafa held out a small porcelain cup full of a pale green liquid. “A bitter herb that the people in Cathay drink. It cools your humors and refreshes. Our traders bring it. Drink,” Mustafa urged.

It smelled like grass and tasted bitter, but Cai liked its clean flavor.

To round off his first meal, Mustafa gave him two dates. “Don’t tell them.” The young student grinned at Cai, his white teeth startling in his dark face.

As a medievalist in college and a nearly life-long member of the Baha’i Faith, I have long been interested in the interactions between Western Asia’s three monotheistic religions, especially as fodder for a novel. Unlike most Western historical fiction set in the 12th century, this story does not focus on Europe or the geopolitics of the Crusades. Instead, the driving force of the story is Cai’s journey from losing his faith in the terrible battle of Hattin to regaining some form of belief, influenced by Islam’s emphasis on learning, the freedom it accords women, and its spirit of inclusiveness. The novel is an attempt to portray a community where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam lived together in a strained but fruitful peace.

Cai, a Welsh knight, Noor, a female Muslim physician, and Sadiq, the grandson of a scribe, are all searching for a way to fit into a society that has no comfortable place for any of them. Led by a mysterious djinn, Cai escapes the slaughter in the Valley of Hattin. Though wounded, he is saved from a slow death in the desert by Zaahid, a Muslim physician who brings Cai to his desert home. There he and his sister Noor, also a physician, heal Cai’s wounded leg. Shattered by the violence of both sides, Cai no longer accepts the idea of redemption through war. Purposeless and friendless, he is gradually drawn into the lives of those who rescued him and of Sadiq, an orphan trying to become a calligrapher.

Danger still looms, however. Pursued by Noor’s violent and vengeful ex-husband, Aadil, the new friends travel to Fes. There each confronts the loneliness of being an outsider and the very real danger posed by Aadil. Their eventual journey back confirms them on the paths they have chosen and sets the stage for a sequel.