Free Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

or the time-dulled sword of a grandfather’s grandfather. Within a week of setting out for Atil, their ranks were swelled—like a gangrenous leg, as Zelikman remarked—by two or three thousand beardless fools, dodderers and men crippled by anger, aimless in their aim for revenge. Creaking leather and the snorting of mules, snatches of off-key ballads, the clop of hooves and the patter of bare soles, the rattle of hayforks and lances. In the teeming camps the nailheads of the night itself were loosened, it seemed to Amram, by snoring. They ate what they found, charred wheat in the ashes of granaries, dregs and roots and small birds. Five times a day a terrible wind blew through them and bent them like grasses to the ground.
    As they moved north, synagogues began to outnumber mosques, and the towns showed no sign of ill treatment by the Rus, who had stopped only long enough to sell, peaceably, the amber, furs, timber and honey they brought with them from the north. This evident discrimination against the Muslims of the southern littoral outraged the Brotherhood, for it was seen as proof of the diabolical arrangement that the usurper, Buljan, had struck with the Northmen. And indeed, Filaq, Jew though he was, found little sympathy for his cause as they drew nearer to the capital, in the heart of Jewish Khazaria, where regard was high for the conduct and merchandise if not the uncouth manners of the Rus. Though there were expressions of regret over the reports of devastation wrought by the Northmen in the south, there was no direct experience of rapine to outweigh the testimony of rich pelts and sweet honey and the finest Baltic amber, and anyway, it was said, everyone knew that southern Khazars were inveterate malcontents and, furthermore, addicted to exaggeration.
    “In Baghdad during the Days of Awe this year, the Muhammadans burned Jewish prayer houses and put to the sword any who would not profess Islam,” they were informed by the babaghuq, or mayor, of Sambunin, a Jewish Khazar town only four days’ ride from Atil. The babaghuq had ridden out with several city dignitaries wearing fine mustaches, backed by a well-armed if small party of soldiers, to demand the immediate surrender of the mutineers and to offer them, in the event they were unprepared to oblige, a generous emolument of five wagonloads of gold in the hope that the clink of dirhams might encourage the Brotherhood of the Elephant to leave Sambunin unmolested. In closing, the babaghuq quoted a remark widely attributed in the north to Buljan, who claimed in turn to have only been transmitting the wisdom of the kagan, Zachariah, sequestered in his forbidden palace on his sacred island:
    “If the great Caliph in Baghdad sees fit to permit his Jews to be burned, it would be improper for the kagan of the Khazars not to ensure that his Muslims receive the same treatment.”
    That night in their camp on a point of land north of the ransomed city, the Brotherhood of the Elephant spitted five hundred sheep and feasted on fresh apples with honey and pistachio nuts, a parting gift of the city fathers. Zelikman had eaten little and smoked long and now he sat staring into a campfire, stealing frequent glances toward Filaq. The Frank’s unshaved cheeks sported patchy new wisps, and his golden hair hung filthy and lank.
    “This is madness,” he said at last.
    “I agree,” Hanukkah said, nodding once, taking a swallow of the tart sharab the merchants of Sambunin had been kind enough to provide. He fixed his eyes gravely on Zelikman and lowered his voice and said, “What is?”
    “It’s no more mad than any business we’ve failed at in the past,” Amram said. “And maybe less. Yes, our numbers are few, if you discount the civilians—”
    “As you must.”
    “And I do. But the fighting men are of good quality.”
    “True,” Hanukkah said. “That is true, Zelikman. He has a point.”
    “And they’re angry,” Amram went on, “but not so blinded by the