A man with a neatly trimmed beard dyed with henna and eyes as sharp as polished obsidian sat within the confines of his teak-wood carriage.
He was in his early thirties and possessed an air of sophistication that made the rough-spun tunics of the Northmen look like rags.
He wore robes of the finest Cordoban silk, embroidered with geometric patterns of gold thread - a style common among the elite of the Caliphate of Al-Andalus.
Even though the Frankish realm was currently gathering a crusade to the south, he had traveled across the stormy Atlantic and the North Sea in a swift dhow to gain an audience with the man known as Ragnar the Director.
Ragnar had long since made use of the trade networks to acquire spices and mathematical texts from the Arabs to fulfill the demands of his "R&D Department."
