The remainder of my time among the Oghuz passed swiftly. Nafisa was disappointed in my lack of interest in cuddling with her, but seemed to recover when I suggested we go riding. I spent the rest of our final two days with her roaming the hills surounding the encampment on Dor's back. There isn't much to write about that time, on the rare occasions when I had time to write; there was the stark, unrepentant landscape of the steppe, beautiful in its desolation, and the companionable silence between Nafisa and I thanks to our language barrier. She craved wildness, that girl, and each evening returned to her husband's camp only reluctantly. By the last night I was half-expecting her to turn Tüweleý away and gallop into the sunset, but she didn't.

My riding skills were slowly improving, largely thanks to Dor. The little horse was mellow and patient, traits that are apparently uncommon in stallions, and he seemed happy to oblige me in following Nafisa and Tüweleý at various speeds. The soreness in my thighs was an ever-present ache that I had resigned myself to, but by my last day among the Oghuz it had started to fade.

Saying goodbye was hard. I had waited until the last possible moment; the campfires had been allowed to die, the ambassadorial tents taken down, the animals packed and saddled. Ibrahim stood by, holding Dor by the bridle. Nafisa was crying into her scarf, while Athina waited nearby wearing her customary scowl. I hugged Nafisa hard and rubbed a hand up and down her back, trying to comfort her.

"I will miss you," I said.

Nafisa looked up when she heard the translation. She'd worn mascara today, and it was streaking down her face with her tears. She mumbled something in between sniffles.

"She begs you to enter her service," Athina said, then shook her head. "Do not."

"I cannot do so," I said. I had a feeling life among the Oghuz wasn't for me. I would be living on Etrek's generosity through Nafisa, and unlike Melchisidek the Oghuz chieftain had no fondness for me at all; he could banish me into the wild steppe at a moment's notice to punish his rebellious young wife, and might very well do so. Moreover, the Oghuz ate a lot of meat and very few greens—a diet like that had been interesting during my short stay as a guest, but imagining living on it long-term made my stomach roil.

"I will miss you as well, Athina," I said.

"Hmph," the old woman said, folding her arms across her chest. "Be well, child of a kinder world. To the north lie barbarian lands that bear you no friendship. Beware the Tartars, who will see your caravan as plump prey for their swords. Beware even more the Rus, who are also called Northmen—keep away from the rivers where their beast-headed ships prowl. If you are attacked, plunge a knife into your heart rather than fall into their hands; it will be a gentler fate than what they will do to you."

Well, that was encouraging.

"We must follow the Volga to reach the Bulgars," I said. It was impossible to avoid the river like Athina advised; it was the ambassadorial procession's guide.

"Then may God protect you and yours," Athina said, and made the sign of the cross over me. Had she been an Orthodox Christian before being enslaved? I should have asked her when I had the chance. Instead, however, I gently disentangled myself from Nafisa's embrace.

The girl took the opportunity to press gifts on me now, when we were in public and I had no way to politely refuse. There was a new saddle and bridle for Dor, which was made in the Oghuz style with a high back and front. The wooden tree was rimmed with tooled silver, however, and the the leather portions were dyed a brilliant scarlet and set with silver roundels. The bridle's bit and connectors were also silver, and there was a red tassel that hung from the little horse's forehead once Ibrahim put it on.

I was also presented with several sets of Oghuz-style clothing, which I was in no position to refuse; I'd had no opportunity to wash my own modern clothing, and it was starting to stink. I was given a pair of brown leather boots that reached my mid-calf, as well as three pairs of baggy felt pants that were secured at the waist with drawstrings. There were also several pairs of wool socks, as well as two long-sleeved wool tunics that reached my knees. There were two wool caftan-type robes that opened and closed down the front with bone toggles, one russet and one deep blue, and both were richly decorated with embroidery. Over them I was apparently supposed to wear a bright red leather belt that was four inches wide, set with silver plaques and connected via a large, ostentatious silver buckle. I also received a fox-fur hat that covered my ears, as well as a pair of tooled leather gloves lined with rabbit fur. The clothing paled next to Nafisa's own finery, but I could recognize the skill, effort, and expense that had gone into having this much clothing made on short notice; I was being gifted with regalia that was equivalent to that of the wife of a wealthy Oghuz nobleman.

Ibrahim packed the clothing away as I tried and failed to find words to express my gratitude to Nafisa. In a rush of affection I kissed her forehead, cheeks, and hands, which made her giggle through her tears, then hugged her tightly. My eyes were wet when I reluctantly pulled away, and my voice cracked as I bid her farewell one last time. I then swung myself up into Dor's saddle, sitting sideways as Muslim propriety dictated, and we set off northwards.

Nafisa stayed and watched us, growing smaller and smaller with distance, until she vanished over the lip of the horizon.

Traveling in the 10th century is boring. I had gotten a bare taste of it before the ambassadorial procession had made camp with the Oghuz, but it hadn't been enough to prepare me for the day-to-day slog through the hilly steppe. There is a little time to write with each evening, which is fine, since there is so little to actually write down.

We travel all day, with breaks for prayer and meals. Each evening, there is a prayer, and Hamid and Ibrahim erect three small tents—two for Melchisidek and Ahmed, to protect them from any potential weather, and one for me, to protect me from that as well as guard my modesty. The slaves cook a communal meal, and everyone eats out of the same small pot. The horses are hobbled and turned out nearby to graze through the night. I take the time before retiring to my tent to write next to the fire, while the Muslims finish the last of their nightly prayers. Then, we all go to sleep, and rise again at dawn. There is the first of the morning prayers, another quick meal, the animals are retrieved from their pasture and readied for travel, and then we set off again and the whole cycle repeats.

There's nothing to do during the day but talk, which means that my conversational partners were limited to Melchisidek, who was the only one who spoke Greek. Possibly there were other educated Muslim nobles in the ambassadorial procession, but I never met them; it violated propriety for me to seek out strange men, even just for something as innocent as a chat about the weather.

Melchisidek and I told stories about our childhoods, friends, and families, as well as pointed out interesting birds, cloud formations, and flowers. We debated the philosophy of the ancients and explored each others' perspectives of historical events. We also told riddles, or rather Melchisidek did since I didn't know any. I've recorded some of the interesting ones:

She sleeps by day and flies by night, but has no feathers to aid her journey... a bat.

You use a knife to slice his body, then weep beside him when he is dead... an onion.

Give him food, and he will live; give him water, and he will die... a fire.

He is armed with dozens of spears, and ruthlessly attacks his master's beard and mustache... a comb.

I was able to guess none of them. The only riddles I've ever encountered before this time-traveling misadventure were in The Hobbit, and even then I couldn't remember them well enough to recite them.

As the days passed we encountered other Oghuz tribes, and had to ask the permission of each chieftain to travel through their land, but never again made the lengthy, three-day stay that we had made with Etrek ibn al-Qatagan's tribe. Melchisidek explained that that was because Etrek was the only Muslim chieftain, and the rest were pagans that the ambassadorial procession had no wish to associate with.

"Do the tribes often fight among themselves?" I asked.

Melchisidek stroked his mustache, thinking, then answered: "Each chieftain thinks himself a king, and is always seeking to expand his kingdom and steal the herds and women of others. The Oghuz make treaties and break them in a season, and are constantly making war upon their neighbors."

I started including Nafisa and Athina in my prayers. I'm not sure if I truly believed in God or if I just wanted the assurance that there was a higher power protecting me, but I began praying before I slept every night.

We eventually reached the northern edge of the freshwater Caspian Sea, which marked the end of the Oghuz lands between the Caspian and Aral seas, and now entered the truly lawless barbarian lands that were controlled by one warlord or another along the banks of the Volga. The ambassadorial procession now held an air of wariness. Watchmen were posted along the perimeter of the camp each night, and scouts were sent ahead wherever we traveled to make sure the way was safe.

The Volga was so vast I could barely see across it, even after we passed the initial marshy watershed that marked where it emptied into the Caspian. We saw no beast-headed ships as Athina had warned against, but there were fishing vessels and barges carrying trade-goods. Sometimes the procession hailed them as they drew close to the shore, to ask for news or to trade. On those occasions Melchisidek sent Ibrahim and Hamid out with coins, and we dined on fresh perch, char, and eel, or massive pike and sturgeon that the slaves purchased and prepared.

One night, I asked Hamid to boil a kettle of water for me, and I bathed myself in the privacy of my tent with a rag and some lye soap that Melchisidek was kind enough to purchase for me. I tried to do this every other day, which the slaves accepted without fuss or complaint. Their masters bathed their hands, feet, and faces before every prayer in order to ritually purify themselves, so the process of drawing and boiling water was common for them—and with the Volga so near to hand, there was no shortage of water to be had. On one occasion I also tried to order Hamid to wash my clothes, but this order was received less than happily; boiling water for a bath was one thing, but washing a woman's undergarments was apparently demeaning even for a slave.

One day, we spotted riders on the horizon.

"They are most likely Tartars," Melchisidek pronounced.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

"For now, their scouts will watch us," the old man said, "until they decide whether or not to attack."

"What happens if they do decide to attack us?"

Melchisidek sighed. "We have some guards," he admitted, "but not enough to fend off a raiding party. We can run, but their steeds are lightly burdened and faster than ours. Our most sensible course of action would be to offer them money to leave us alone, but Sousan al-Rasi is loathe to do so."

After several minutes the rider vanished behind the hills, and al-Rasi, the leader of the ambassadorial procession, sent out a rider to discover if there was a larger number of people, Tartars or otherwise, nearby. The rider never returned, and as the afternoon progressed the procession's air of wariness became one of teeth-grinding tension. Al-Rasi called a halt after a few hours, and conferred with several local boatmen as well as high-ranking nobles in the procession. Melchisidek and Ahmed were invited to attend, but as a woman I had to wait with the slaves.

"Our leader believes it is wise to ford the Volga," Melchisidek announced upon his return, his tone suggesting that he didn't agree with al-Rasi.

I looked towards the river, which was muddy and cold and not particularly inviting.

"Is that not dangerous?" I asked.

"Yes," Melchisidek said.

"And can the Tartars not simply follow us across?"

"Yes, they can."

"So why are we—"

"Sometimes, daughter of Briggs, we must bend to the will of those above us, even if they are bereft of Allah's wisdom," Melchisidek said, his tone bordering on curtness. I decided not to pursue the issue.

The procession's most important possessions were loaded onto the barges of the boatmen, which started across with an accompaniment of guards to ensure that they would be returned on the further shore. The presence of the guards had been light and, logically speaking, should not have comforted me much in the face of a Tartar raid, but I felt suddenly vulnerable now that they were crossing the river ahead of us. I looked towards the horizon, and saw a trio of dark riders watching us.

"Do you see them?" I asked.

"I see them, child," Melchisidek answered. "There is nothing we can do."

The riders merely watched, motionless, as clumps of the ambassadorial procession broke off and began fording the river. At this point the Volga was very wide but not terribly deep, its channel no longer swollen with spring snow-melt. It was still a treacherous and difficult procedure, however, and there was a great deal of cursing and jostling as the animals were forced across. The camels were particularly reluctant.

Finally, it was our turn. Ours and a group of other noblemens' possessions were loaded onto the barges, which started across, and we were to follow on our mounts, which now bore no burden other than their riders. Dor snorted and tossed his head as I urged him into the river, balked for several seconds as the water hit his knees, but then surged into the current. I gritted my teeth as water flooded my sneakers and lapped around my thighs. It was so cold! Melchisidek called out an instruction for me to pull my feet out of the stirrups in case Dor foundered and drowned, so that the little horse wouldn't drag me down with him. I felt the moment when the riverbed suddenly deepened and Dor began kicking against the water, swimming into the current. We were being swept downstream; I told myself over and over not to panic, that so long as Dor kept his head above water and made steady horizontal progress then everything would be fine.

And everything was fine, for a time. We reached the middle of the river where the current was strongest and the further shore a dark blot of land against the horizon. Dor's progress slowed, and he began to pant as he stretched out his neck above the water. I patted his neck and murmured encouragement, then looked up when Hamid began to yell.

The two slaves had been riding double on their swimming mule, but now there was only Hamid sitting on the animal's back. Downstream from the mule, there was a terrific splashing going on, and I saw Ibrahim's arms and hands flailing above the water. He had fallen off! Later, I would learn that he had lost one of his few possessions into the water and overbalanced while trying to retrieve it before it floated out of reach, but at that moment all I saw was a panicking man in deep water struggling to stay afloat.

I reacted without thinking, pulling off the burqha and slipping out of Dor's saddle into the current. I was a strong swimmer thanks to growing up with a love of the swimming pool in my parents' backyard, but a still, clear, chlorinated pool is a lot different than an ice-cold river. From shock at the water temperature I gasped out the breath of air I had been holding, and had to raise my head and gulp air again before paddling sideways through the current. I could go faster underwater with my head submerged, but the procession's progress had kicked up the sediment in the riverbed; it was too murky to see and know where in the river I was positioned in relation to Ibrahim.

Ibrahim was attempting to dog-paddle towards the barge, which was sensible, but was quickly being swept past it. He also wasn't a very good swimmer, and could barely keep his head above water. He would sink lower and lower, up to his nose, then seemed to kick and heave himself upward again—an exhausting routine, one that he probably wouldn't be able to continue for much longer. I stroked towards him, past the barge where people were yelling in Arabic, and once I was directly upstream of Ibrahim I let the current sweep me towards him, moving with it so I knifed through the water towards him. My extremities were going numb from cold.

I caught up to Ibrahim and wrapped an arm around him as he began to sink again, which is where the trouble started. Ibrahim, in panic, climbed on top of me and dunked me under mid-breath. I surfaced a moment later with him on my back, coughing and sputtering, and began stroking upstream towards the barge. Every inch was a battle against the current, and Ibrahim was a dead weight clinging to my midriff. I was quickly becoming exhausted and could no longer feel my fingers. Someone on the barge threw out a rope towards us, and it was only two yards away. Inch by inch I clawed my way through the water toward it, feeling myself growing weaker and weaker, finding it harder and harder to keep myself and Ibrahim above water.

At last, though, my numbed hands caught hold of the rough rope, and all I had to do was cling to it as the people on the barge hauled us aboard. Ibrahim and I crawled over the edge of the barge and onto its rough planks, panting and shivering uncontrollably.

We were surrounded by strange people, all of them male. Now accustomed to Muslim propriety, I felt suddenly shy and vulnerable. Ibrahim removed his soaked tunic and draped it over my head, and I wrapped the dripping garment over my hair and face. I had been wearing my 21st-century clothing beneath the burqha, and must have looked very strange. People politely avoided touching or looking at me as the barge was punted with long poles towards the shore. We reached it, and Hamid, Ahmed, and Melchisidek were waiting for us when we disembarked.

This was the time for the afternoon prayer, and Hamid set up the tent for me to change inside as Ibrahim boiled water for his masters to purify their feet, faces, and hands with. My teeth were chattering as I retired to the dim interior of the tent and changed out of my wet clothing, putting on the Oghuz finery that Nafisa had gifted me with. I pulled the burqha on overtop the clothing and exited, then went to the horses.

Dor, Mayyadah, the slaves' mule, and Melchisidek's nameless gelding had all made it across the river and were contentedly cropping grass as the afternoon prayer droned on in the background. Dor looked up when I approached, and seemed to vaguely enjoy me petting his nose and neck. I checked my saddlebags and retrieved my journal, which had survived the crossing undamaged, and wrote several paragraphs of the day's events before the prayer ended. The slaves rolled up the prayer rugs and stowed them away, and Melchisidek and Ahmed came to join me near the horses.

I glanced towards the horizon on the far side of the Volga, and saw that the trio of riders had swelled to a long line that stretched along the hill. Ahmed hissed a few words in Arabic under his breath when I discretely pointed.

"They are indeed be a raiding party of Tartars," Melchisidek said. "Perhaps we have foiled their plans... for a time."

"Will they cross as well?" I asked.

"They must, if they wish to continue pursuing us," the old man pointed out.

Ibrahim and Hamid reloaded our packs and accouterments, and we set out again, now on the western side of the Volga river. The rest of the day passed with no sign of the Tartars. I was curious enough that I wished we could talk to them; culturally and linguistically speaking, were they similar to the nomadic Oghuz? Did they eat similar foods? Why had they chosen to become fearsome robbers and brigands? I pestered Melchisidek with these questions, to which he knew few of the answers, and sundown approached.

Night came, and the evening prayer was said in the direction of Mecca. I wrote the rest of the day's events in this journal by the light of the fire. The slaves, unable to speak with me and required by Muslim (Sharia?) law to interact with me as little as possible, cooked me choice bits of meat in a savory sauce, and presented the dish to me with deep bows of respect. It was the most they could do to show gratitude for saving Ibrahim from being swept away. I thanked them with the one word of Arabic that I knew, then retired to the tent and slept.

The Tartars attacked at dawn.

Notes:

Okay, so I lied about meeting the Vikings this chapter in favor of a dramatic cliffhanger. But I swear we will meet the Vikings in chapter seven. Really. Pinky promise.