Autumn of 1097. Night falls in the suburb of Roteros, a recently constructed neighborhood where the tanners work. El Cid’s soldiers make the rounds after curfew. It has been three years since they captured the city but, accustomed to raids and sackings, a tense calm has dampened their spirits. The population of Balansiya has been expelled from the medina and their cadi, Ibn Yahhaf, has been burned alive. It is the latest and most devastating affront to their people, even after decades of weathering insult after insult at the hands of the Castillian armies, who suffocate them with taxes and tributes. Their only hope, the Almoravid liberation, still seems very far away.