Lothar sat cross-legged on the bed, polishing the bastard sword with a white linen cloth. The arming sword Count Werner had given him had met its end. This bastard sword was his trophy from Averardo. With Averardo dead, the ransom was void. But by tournament rule, his armor and warhorse belonged to the victor.

The Arabian charger was every bit the equal of Lothar's own Nisaean. Together with the full harness, even after accounting for battle damage, it was worth close to a hundred gold coins.

Prajna asked abruptly, "As Champion Knight—what reward did Count Leopold offer you?"

Lothar smiled. "He wanted me as his vassal. Baron of Wienerwald. Even painted me a picture of rising to Count someday. I refused.

"So it became a cash grant, plus a promise to send supplies once we're established in the Holy Land. Weapons, shields, armor, arrows. Or grain, seeds, smiths. The promise is vague: how much we actually get depends on whether Leopold decides I'm worth investing in."

"That's to be expected." Prajna nodded, offering no further comment.

"Let's sleep."

The lamp was put out. Prajna lay on her thin pallet on the floor, as she always did. But tonight, perhaps because of their increased Affinity, the air between them felt less distant than before.

In the darkness, Lothar watched the perfect line of her profile in the moonlight, unable to close his eyes, until her lashes trembled. She seemed about to open her eyes and catch him staring. He shut his own in a hurry.

Early the next morning, Lothar called on Count Leopold once more, politely declined the offer of a midday feast, and requested permission to depart. From Leopold's hand, he received a heavy pouch: one hundred florins, freshly minted by the Republic of Genoa, far purer than the average solidus. A florin weighed 3.5 grams, one gram lighter than the Eastern Empire's newly issued solidus.

"Solidus" was a catch-all term, covering both the solidus proper and the nomisma: any gold coin struck by the Eastern Empire. By regulation, all such coins were 4.5 grams. But the purity varied wildly depending on the era of issue.

Empress Lagaya's new solidus was full-weight, full-fineness gold, on par with Genoa's florin. That alone showed she was serious about rescuing the empire's ruined currency, not just a decadent placeholder. Otherwise, the Eastern Empire's markets would soon drown in Venetian and Genoese coin.

At this time, the gold-to-silver exchange ratio was twelve to one. One pure gold coin was worth twelve silver coins of equal weight. But since silver pennies typically weighed little more than a gram, in practice one florin bought roughly forty silver denarii.

In truth, such conversions were rarely clean. The widespread use of silver tableware had so debased most silver coinage that it was often worse than the gold.

One king of Gaul had minted "black coins" containing only one-tenth silver. An Eastern Emperor had issued silver-washed coins with less than one-twentieth silver content. Some backward regions still used utterly worthless bronze coinage. The currency of this age was chaos: every feudal lord with a mint could strike his own.

Still, some rough benchmarks held. A pig cost about one and a half florins. One florin bought fifty loaves of decent bread, unadulterated with chaff or grit. A quality warhorse like Lothar's Nisaean ran about sixty florins, six times the price of the steppe ponies the Magyars rode.

A top-tier royal destrier could reach five hundred florins. An ordinary packhorse was about five florins. A year's rent at a town inn: six florins. Building a castle cost roughly two thousand florins.

A fine hauberk for an elite man-at-arms or lesser knight: thirty florins. A custom-fitted full knight's harness: fifty florins. A royal four-wheeled carriage: about two hundred and forty florins.

These were rough figures, prone to swing with supply and demand. In later centuries, plagues and city quarantines would send prices spiraling out of control. And this was the Middle Ages. A single drought could send the price of bread surging a hundredfold, with grain speculators quick to exploit the shortage.

Once the speculators had made their fortunes, the local lord would typically find a pretext to execute them and confiscate their wealth. This both calmed public outrage and wrung every last copper from the peasantry's fingers into the lord's coffers.

By Lothar's current reckoning, his total wealth stood at: one hundred gold florins, eighty gold solidi, nearly five hundred silver denarii, the two silver goblets Otto had given him, two steppe warhorses, one Nisaean charger, one Arabian, two packhorses, and one spare set of fine chainmail with a great helm. A solid portion of the silver had come from the ransoms Hans had collected from defeated opponents. This was enough to equip ten men in leather armor with iron swords and spears, or to hire a small mercenary company of thirty to fifty men.

"War is a furnace that runs on gold," Lothar muttered, tallying his small treasury. "Making a name in Jerusalem won't be so simple. The battlefield isn't the tournament ground. Personal valor can't match a disciplined company of soldiers. At least, Hans and I can't."

Prajna was a close-combat defensive Retainer; she could protect him on the field, but sweeping the enemy before her was asking too much.

Back at the inn, Laine had settled the bill, packed all the gear, and was waiting outside with the horses. "My lord, your mount is ready. Provisions and fodder are both prepared. When shall we depart?" Laine's bow was deeper than usual, his voice thick with awe.

Modell knelt beside Lothar's warhorse, ready to serve as a mounting block. Since Lothar had killed the werewolf knight Averardo, both men looked at him with entirely different eyes, bordering on reverence.

Hans, by contrast, acted no differently. In his mind, Lothar killing a werewolf was only natural. The infamous Gatekeeper of Hell herself served his lord. What was one mangy wolf?

Lothar's voice snapped hard.

"On your feet, Modell! If I need servants, I'll buy them. What I need now are brave warriors, not groveling slaves. Never debase yourself before me again. Laine—the same goes for you."

As the two men stood blinking, Lothar swung into the saddle and barked, "We ride. Now."

In truth, a loyal slave could be a fearsome asset on the battlefield: the Mamluk cavalry of the Ayyubid Sultanate proved that. But Lothar could not stomach the degradation of it. He had a long road ahead before he fully adapted to this world, and he hoped he never would.

By afternoon, Lothar's party drew rein before a small town. A burned town. Charred ruins, collapsed roofs, the acrid reek of smoke and scorched flesh hanging thick in the air. Headless bodies lay by the roadside, black clouds of flies boiling over mouths, nostrils, and wounds.

The clatter of hooves sent the black swarm into the air. Feral dogs tore at bodies already rotting in the summer heat, utterly fearless of the living.

Veteran soldier that he was, Modell read the signs. "The bandits left recently. There are still live embers in the ash."

Lothar frowned. "Doesn't Babenberg's border patrol keep order here?"

"They must have tried. Look—that body there. Marks on the neck and shoulders from armor straps. A man-at-arms. Someone's stripped the gear from his corpse."

"Can we track them?"

Lothar's voice was calm.

Such things happened every day. It was the signature of the age. Not just bandits: noble feuds regularly burned villages. Men and women alike were dragged off as serfs; the old and the sick were slaughtered to spare the burden. Lowborn lives had never been cheap.

Modell studied the ground carefully, then nodded. "They left in no rush. They're hauling captives, baggage, livestock. The cart ruts are deep. We follow those, we'll find them."

Lothar turned to the group. "Someone once said: in war, the nobles provide the arms, the rich provide the coin and grain, and the poor provide their sons. When the war ends, the nobles win greater titles, the rich win greater wealth, and the poor go looking for their children's graves. The best war is worse than the worst peace."

His eyes moved across the dead. An old man still clutched a farming tool split by a sword. An arrow had pierced his throat, though someone had retrieved the shaft. A peasant's life wasn't worth the cost of an arrow to bury with him.

"But war will never disappear. I can't change this era. But this I swear: if I become a lord, I will do everything in my power to protect the people of my lands. I will root out bandits. I will keep the enemy beyond my borders."

Laine and Modell wore strange expressions. In this age, almost no one used the word "people." Were serfs even human?

"Modell—lead the way. We hunt these bandits. In the name of the Heavenly Father, we send them to Hell."

He had to admit: a large part of his motive was the Milestone. But a large part, too, was the hope of saving those who'd been taken. Blood for blood. Tooth for tooth.