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The space between heartbeats has been shortening.
Yusuf can’t explain how he knows this, only that the first time it had happened, the battle around them had moved further along, than it had in the most recent instance of the same. For surely this curse has been brought to him by the knight with eyes the same color of the wine-dark seas, who crossed those same oceans to kill Yusuf’s people at his god’s whim. It’s been days since this man, who clasps his chest and emphatically repeats
Nicolò
, first threw down his sword and refused to take the next step in their blood-drawn dance.
It haunts him that he can still feel the thrust of his blade into this man’s side, long moments after that sword had been thrown down. He still sees those eyes cloud over in death whenever he closes his own, before sleep takes him. He sees it when he allows death to take him once more, hoping that the penance of hunger and thirst will finish what this
Nicolò
cannot. In that final breath there is the yawning cavern of his own stomach; the salt-caked crack of his own dry lips, and the clouds in the other man’s eyes as he died once more at Yusuf’s hand.
The sensations repeat once, twice, thrice more before his companion realizes what is happening. War-calloused hands grip his forearms, furious whispers in languages he cannot fathom send him off into death once more.
Greet him as he bursts back into life.
Thus passes the seventh night of their acquaintance; a holy number to them both, shrouded in this strange cycle of life, and death, and grief. Yusuf sees the cresting sunrise in bursts, a background to the endless hunger, the maddening thirst, which he refuses to quench. There is enough light to be dawn, when he feels those hands on him again this time sliding under the back of his neck; feels the strength of the conqueror’s arms as they lift him to a sitting position. He knows, better than most, just how powerful this Nicolò is, though even he finds it easy to forget in the face of the man’s kindness. Yusuf shakes against this man’s chest, succumbing once more to the hunger and thirst, this time cradled in a new position.
It is the dawn of the eighth day, and as Yusuf’s vision comes back into focus, it is this familiar face that fills his vision. He feels a soft sponge against his lips, stinging and soothing the harsh cracks thirst has left behind, and this time when he hears Nicolò’s voice, Yusuf registers the desperation behind the words, as well as the words themselves:
“Drink, please. Do not leave me to this damnation. Please.”
His mother had always said learning Latin was important for the son of merchants, but Yusuf can’t imagine this is what she had in mind for him. He opens his mouth, closes his lips around the sponge, sucking the sweet water from it. When Nicolò would pull away, Yusuf lifts a feeble hand to clutch at his wrist.
“More.” The word is clumsy on his tongue, which feels swollen despite - because of? - his thirst. “Please, more.”
Nicolò smiles, and it is the first time Yusuf associates that expression with life (it will not be the last, though he hardly knows it now.) His hand is carefully removed from Nicolò’s wrist, and the man shakes his head slowly. Instead, he shifts Yusuf in his grasp, settling him in the space between his thighs so that Yusuf can lean against him. It’s awkward, and embarrassing, to be fed like a small child - tiny bites of water-soaked bread, and then more water, and then a handful of dried dates. Uncomfortable, but Yusuf does not know when he can last recall being so cared for.
When night falls, Nicolò wraps Yusuf in blankets he can only assume were taken from the dead - though they are a long ways from Jerusalem’s walls now. He opens his mouth to protest, but closes it once again when he feels the other man’s warmth pressed against his back. It should be mortifying, and yet it is not.
He drifts off into blessed sleep, wishing there was a word in any of the languages he has ever learned, to tell this strange man about the warmth that blooms in his chest, and travels down his arms and his legs. Instead, he presses his back against Nicolò’s, and vows to find the words tomorrow.