1190 AD: three years have passed since Jerusalem fell to the Saracens, and the largest crusading army ever assembled marches to recover the city. In its ranks are six men, foot-soldiers, who belong to no great lord's household or retinue. When the army's leader dies en route, they fear its disintegration, or that such as they may be abandoned or sacrificed to preserve the rest.They need to find a way home, then, either through feared seas or across hostile lands. Their journey begins with a betrayal (of their oath to God and the Church) and a theft (albeit from a thief), and thereafter their sins are compounded by lies and duplicities that their poverty forces upon them.For a while their luck holds; but then they come to a great city, the strangest, largest, richest city in Western Christendom. When one of her citizens, a man of ancient, honourable lineage, is murdered in the streets, the failed crusaders discover that their sins have been marching with them, step by step, and now demand a reckoning.