CHAPTER 79
The Land across the Water
APOTHEOSIS
Just as plague erupts every seventh year, so every seventh century Tartarus, that sea of grass at the world’s roof, expurgates its unruly children. In the middle of the last century, the hordes of Gog abandoned the steppe and invaded … everywhere. The thundercloud rolled swiftly over Russ-Land, surveyed Europa’s poverty and turned south to the Holy Land. The horsemen did not distinguish between Ebionite and Marian; all life was their enemy. The Oltremarines and the Ebionites had to choose whether to fight together or die separately.
Their combined armies, led by the Old Man of the Mountain, turned back the storm at Ain Jalut.43 Afterwards the Old Man vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, and with him, the alliance. One question remained: who would strike first? King Tancred, in whom the Guiscard bloodline had reached an apotheosis of sorts, did not hesitate. Following his recapture of Jerusalem,44 he scattered the Radinate into the desert from whence it had sprung.45 The tribes returned to scavenging,46 and Akka47 began to look covetously on the Middle Sea. Crusade is riddled with ironies, but the greatest48 must be that it created a rival to Etrurian interests much worse than the Radinate.