A pretty good adventure story. Set in 1200 or so in Eastern Europe. Two guys, an African and a german, have been traveling companions for several years. One is older with years of martial experience and the other is also a fighter but, at heart, a physician.
After staging a fake fight to the death at a travelers tavern they plan to skip town with their gambling winnings. Before they do so a guy who figured out their ruse tries to get them to take along a teen boy to his family. They end up taking the ungrateful, surly, and insulting teen, the boy gets kidnapped after escaping, in a rescue attempt the African is captured. The captures fail to defend against a Viking raid and the boy convinces them to fight against the king who overthrew the boy's royal family, army builds on the march to the king's city, boy exposed as a girl by king's troops, something else happened, gal and Gentlemen sneak into religious leader's (like an Iranian mullah the final authority in the kingdom) castle to make him get king to abdicate, something else happens I don't recall, king is killed, German and gal do the deed, German and African hit the road.
I hate characters with foreign names in audio titles. I have a very difficult time keeping track of the names of characters and geographical spots. This was a short piece which is very good because Chabon has a long-winded and boring afterword that was included at the end. Because it is the Afterword. The words that come after. After as in the end.
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