"No. Bury me out here. Let him think you never found me. Bide your time,
as he did. Give him no reason to fear you. He fears you already, or he
would never have done it this way."
"Before the year is out, you will look down from paradise and see him
burning in hell."
"I'm sorry. I was never strong enough to be a Mameluke."
"No. You _are_ strong."
"Not strong enough to live," said Nicetas, so faintly Daoud could hardly
hear him. "Good-bye, Daoud. Remember the Greek I taught you. You may
meet someone else who speaks Greek."
"I will never meet anyone like you." The tears spilled out over his
eyelids, and he did not try to brush them away. The hand he held
squeezed his, weakly, then relaxed.
Daoud bent forward and touched his mouth to the split, dust-coated lips.
No breath came from his friend's body. A curtain of shadow swept before
his eyes, and he thought he was going to faint.
He thrust himself to his feet as Nicetas's head fell to one side.
He threw his arms over his head and screamed.
Arms still upraised, he dropped to his knees.
"Oh, God!" His voice echoed back from the walls of the crevice. "God,
God, God!"
The pain in his heart was as if a rumh had impaled it. He felt that he
must die, too. He could not bear this loss. Never to see his friend
smile again, never to hear his laughter. That body he had loved, nothing
now but unmoving, empty clay.
He looked over at Nicetas, hoping to see a movement, the flicker of an
eyelid, the rising of the chest. Nothing. Daoud would never again look
on in admiration as the Greek boy rode wildly, standing in the stirrups
shooting his arrows at the gallop or casting his spear unerringly at the
target. They would never, as he had dreamed, ride side by side into
battle.
Daoud crumpled to the ground in the position of worship, his forehead
pressed against the sharp, broken stones. But he was not worshiping. He
simply did not have the strength to hold himself upright.
It seemed hours later when he at last stirred himself. Sobbing, he
carried Nicetas out to a place near the mouth of the crevice, where the
sand had drifted in, and with his hands he dug there a grave. All along
the base of the hillside were many loose brown stones, chipped away by
the eternal wind. With bleeding hands he piled the stones high over
Nicetas's body, but tried to make the pile look like a rock slide, so
that no one would know someone was buried here. He knelt, weeping and
talking to Nicetas's spirit, until the sun was low in the west.
* * * * *
As Nicetas had told him to do, Daoud had pretended, when he came back
from the desert, that he had no idea what had happened to his friend.
The naqeeb had declared that Sudanese tribesmen or wild animals must
have gotten him. Daoud was not alone in his grief. Many of the boys in
the troop had liked Nicetas.
Even Kassar had said words of sympathy, his face expressionless and his
slanted eyes opaque. Daoud held in his rage, a white-hot furnace in his
heart, and in a choked voice he thanked Kassar.
At first he went about in a daze, unable to think. He told himself that
in spite of his dissembling, Kassar would be on guard. He would have to
choose a time to take his revenge when Kassar would be preoccupied. And
Daoud himself must be alert at all times. Kassar might not be satisfied
with killing only Nicetas. In spite of these warnings to himself,
Daoud's mind remained numb. He was, he told himself, like a mall ball,
hit one way by grief, the other way by rage, unable to take control of
his destiny.
That thought of mall gave him the beginning of a plan.
He let three months go by from the day he found Nicetas. His plan was
very simple. It left much to luck, and it might fail utterly--Kassar
might anticipate what he was going to do and turn the moment against
him, killing him and claiming he was defending himself. Kassar's friends
might thwart Daoud.
He would have only this one chance. If he failed, he would be dead or
crippled. Or worst of all, cast out of the Mamelukes to spend the rest
of his life as a ghulman, a menial slave. But if he succeeded, Nicetas
would be avenged before Baibars and Sultan Qutuz and all Daoud's and
Nicetas's khushdashiya.
Whatever punishment might befall him then, he thought he could bear it
for Nicetas's sake.
_The Warrior of God is a man who would give his life for his friends._
On the day Daoud decided to act, the Bhari Mamelukes, the slaves of the
River, rode out to play mall. Emir Baibars al-Bunduqdari led them across
the bridge from Raudha Island to the Nasiri race course, their training
and playing ground, within sight of the great pyramids built by the
ancient idol-worshipers of Egypt. The people of El Kahira watched with
shining eyes as their guardians assembled on the field. Baibars's
tablkhana, his personal mounted band, playing trumpets and kettledrums,
cymbals and hautboys, rode before them. Sultan al-Mudhaffar Qutuz came
down from the citadel of El Kahira to watch the games as the guest of
his Mamelukes.
The troops of julbans, Mamelukes in training, brought up the rear of the
parade on their little ponies, with their naqeebs riding before them,
the oldest boys in the lead and the first- and second-year boys on foot
at the end. They wore plain brown shirts and white cotton trousers and
caps. No special marks of rank were allowed these young slaves until
they became full-fledged Mamelukes.
Daoud's troop, the boys in their fifth year of training, rode
immediately behind the Mamelukes. Each boy carried a mallet, which was
as much part of his equipment as his bow, his rumh, his dabbus, and his
saif. The mallets were made of cedar and were large and heavy. They had
to be, to drive a wooden ball half the size of a man's head.
Slaves had pulled perforated water barrels in carts over the field to
lay the dust. Baibars and the sultan and the highest-ranking emirs
seated themselves on cushions in an open pavilion facing the center of
the field.
Daoud's teammates chattered excitedly. They loved mall, and to play
before the sultan was a special honor. Kassar, the captain of their
team, boasted that he would make ten goals that day. Theirs was to be
the second match.
Hefting his mallet, Daoud watched the first match, also between two
teams of fifth-year trainees. Each team of eight riders tried to drive
the wooden ball between a pair of stone pillars painted with red and
yellow stripes, defended by the other team. With every crack of a mallet
against the ball, a roar went up from the watching Mamelukes.
A judge with an hourglass called time halfway through the match, to let
the field be watered again and the teams change ponies. By the end of
the match, the dust was so thick Daoud could not see who had won. But he
did not care. He felt utterly calm. He was past anger and past fear. He
thought only of watching for the right moment.
Now it was time for their team.
Kassar, Daoud, and the other six riders lined up on the east side of the
field, the eight members of the troop they were playing against forming
on the other side.
The judge set the wooden ball, yellow with a bright red stripe around
its middle, in the center of the field. The sultan held out a blue silk
scarf and dropped it. Kassar and the captain of the other team raced at
the ball from opposite goals, screaming their war cries. Kassar whirled
his mallet over his head, and his pony's legs were a blur in the dust.
He reached the ball an instant before his opponent. His mallet slammed
into the ball with a crack like the splitting of a board, and the ball
flew halfway toward the enemy goal.
The ball was in play, and now the other riders could join in.
_You will make not even one goal today, Kassar_, Daoud thought as he
galloped across the field with his team.
The players on the other side were trying to hit the ball away from
their goal. Kassar had ridden into their midst, his pony nimbly
following the ball. He held his mallet low to hit through the legs of
the opposing team's ponies. Two of the opponents had stayed back by
their goalposts to deflect the ball should Kassar hit it.
Kassar was on top of the ball. Daoud kicked his pony's ribs hard and
galloped after him.
As Kassar swung low from his saddle to hit the ball, Daoud drove in on
him. Kassar glanced up, fear flashing across his broad face. Whatever
passed through his mind was his last thought. Daoud swung his mallet up
from the ground, smashing it into Kassar's jaw. The force of the blow
knocked the white cap from his head. His pony ran free of the melee.
Kassar reeled, unconscious, but his horse nomad's instinct held him in
the saddle.
Daoud jerked his pony around to race after Kassar. In an instant he was
beside his enemy.
He was about to kill a khushdashiyin, a barracks comrade, in open
defiance of the code of the Mamelukes and in front of his emir and his
sultan.
_I am a dead man_, he thought as he swung the mallet high.
His body felt cold as death, and he hesitated. As he did so, Kassar
turned his head, and Daoud saw consciousness struggling to return to his
glazed eyes.
This was Daoud's last chance to avenge Nicetas.
He heard a distant roar of command from the naqeeb Mahmoud, but he
ignored it.
He brought the mallet down with all his strength on the Kipchaq's
glistening black hair. The shock of the contact ran up his arm and into
his shoulder. Kassar started to fall. Daoud struck again with the
mallet.
Kassar pitched from his pony's back. As he struck the ground, Daoud
smashed the mallet into his head a third time, just as if he were
hitting a ball. He tried to hit hard enough to knock Kassar's head
right off his neck. Daoud saw the head suddenly distorted, flattening,
and knew the skull was crushed. Kassar lay on the ground on his back,
only the whites of his eyes showing, his mouth hanging open. Dust half
obscured his body.
Daoud heard shouts from the bystanders, but he paid no attention to what
they were saying. He saw riders, the other players, racing toward him.
A silence fell on the playing field.
"Get down from your horse." It was Mahmoud, who had run out into the
field on foot.
As Daoud and Mahmoud walked across the field, the naqeeb said, "You will
answer to El Malik Qutuz and to Emir Baibars for this. Fool, whatever
your quarrel was, could you not have settled it in private? Have you
forgotten that Baibars is a Kipchaq? He will not forgive you."
Despite his joy at seeing Nicetas's murderer dead, Daoud now felt terror
clutching his throat as he approached the two seated figures in their
splendid robes at the side of the field. Now that the deed was done and
could not be undone, he dreaded facing these two mighty judges.
_Baibars is a Kipchaq, but it was Baibars who bought me for the
Mamelukes_, Daoud thought. _I wonder which will mean more to him this
day._
Baibars and Qutuz sat side by side on cushions in the shade of a silken
canopy. Baibars wore an egret's plume, symbol of valor, on his green
turban. His wide, harsh mouth was tight under the red mustache, his good
eye as empty of feeling as the blind one that was crossed by a vertical
saber scar.
_Beneficent God, if I must die for what I have done, let it be a quick
and clean death. And then I will join Nicetas._
El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz, Sultan of El Kahira, a Mameluke of a
Kurdish tribe, was somewhat older than Baibars. His face was
criss-crossed with tiny wrinkles. His beard, greased so that it jutted
like the prow of a galley, was such a flat black that it must surely be
dyed. He wore a large black turban and full black robes with gold
embroidery.
Daoud fell to his knees and prostrated himself before the sultan.
"Get up and take off your cap," said Qutuz without preliminary. Daoud
rose to his feet, lifting his cap from his head.
"Look at that blond hair," said Qutuz wonderingly. "I thought he had the
look of a Frank about him, Bunduqdari."
"I could have told you that," said Baibars flatly. "He belongs to me. He
is known as Daoud ibn Abdallah. His parents were Franks. We took him
when we freed Ascalon." He talked to Qutuz, Daoud noted, as if they were
equals.
Baibars turned his one eye on Daoud. "Why did you do this?" he said
softly. "You are not a fool, and you would not kill out of foolishness."
"Effendi, he killed my friend," said Daoud, making himself stand
straight and look levelly at Baibars. The emir might sentence him to
death, but he would show himself a true Mameluke. He would not cringe or
beg. He would honor Nicetas.
"How do you know?"
Daoud told Baibars how he had found Nicetas in the desert and what he
had said to him. He kept his voice level, trying not to let his fear
show.
"You should have reported this to me!" shouted Naqeeb Mahmoud, his white
beard quivering. The naqeeb would bear some blame, Daoud thought, for
this breach of discipline.
But Daoud only turned to him and threw his own words back at him, "Among
Mamelukes, he who is strongest rules."
Perhaps he should not be so defiant, he thought. Both the sultan and
Baibars liked to show themselves to be men of great generosity.
_Yes, but not to a julban who has broken the law._
"He cannot kill his comrade and go unpunished," said Qutuz. "He should
be beheaded."
At the words, even though he had thought himself prepared for them,
Daoud felt something shrink with dread inside him. He felt the blade
slicing through his neck. The sultan had spoken. His life was over.
"He is too valuable to be beheaded," said Baibars. "Believe me, My
Lord."
_Valuable?_
Daoud felt as if he had fallen from a cliff and a strong hand had
reached out and was dragging him back. He was breathless with a relief
he barely dared to feel. He tried to keep his face and body still as the
two great ones debated his fate, but he could not stop his fists from
clenching.
The sultan's eyes narrowed, and a deep crease appeared between his brows
as he turned to Baibars. "Is this Frankish murderer a protégé of yours,
then?"
Baibars nodded. "I have seen reason to take a personal interest in him,
if it please My Lord."
What did that mean? What had Baibars seen in him that day in the slave
market, and why had Baibars come there that day?
_I have long watched for such a one as you, who could have the outward
look of a Christian knight but the mind and heart of a Mameluke. One
like you could be a great weapon against the enemies of the faith._
"It does not please me," said Qutuz shortly. "There is too much breaking
of rules among the Bhari Mamelukes." He spoke, Daoud thought, as if he
were not originally a Mameluke himself.
"There is a law among Mamelukes more binding than any lesser rule," said
Baibars quietly. "He who feels himself greatly sinned against must
strike back. If he cannot do that, he is not enough of a man to be a
Mameluke. Even as this foolish boy said, the strong must rule."
Daoud saw grave approval in Baibars's brown face and realized that it
did not matter at all to Baibars that Kassar was a Kipchaq. His joy grew
as he realized that he had Baibars on his side.
Daoud remembered Nicetas's dying words--_I am not strong enough to be a
Mameluke_.
_But together we were strong enough to do what had to be done._
Qutuz said, "If all Mamelukes believed only in the rule of the
strongest, we would have chaos."
"Only if it were not certain who _is_ strongest," said Baibars quietly.
Baibars and Qutuz sat looking at each other in a grave and thoughtful
silence that seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, Qutuz turned away.
"I must allow you to discipline the Bhari Mamelukes--or not discipline
them--as you see fit, Bunduqdari. That is your responsibility."
"Thank you, My Lord," said Baibars with just a hint of sarcasm.