He had been just about to try to trick the Tartars into letting him into
the spice pantry when de Gobignon and the others came down the stairs.
He suppressed his fury and forced himself to stay calm.
The spice pantry door opened for de Gobignon and those with him. From
his hiding place Daoud caught just a glimpse of the Tartars, both
sitting with sheathed swords in their laps, their two guards standing in
front of them. Their refuge appeared to be lit by a single lantern.
Daoud was perhaps only twelve paces from the doorway, but the cellar was
mostly in darkness, and he was dressed entirely in black, his head
covered with a tight black hood, his face masked. For ease and silence
of movement he wore no mail. The garb of a fedawi, a Hashishiyya
fighter.
With gestures de Gobignon ordered his two Armenians to stand guard
outside the door. One set a candle in a sconce high in the cellar wall.
Then they unslung their bows and nocked arrows and stood on either side
of the door, which closed behind Gobignon and the old priest. Daoud
heard a bolt slide shut with a clank.
Baffled, he bit his lower lip. What demon had inspired de Gobignon to
come down from the battlements and join the Tartars just at this moment?
Now he could not get to the pantry door without being seen and having to
fight the two Armenians outside. That would alert those inside, and the
door was bolted from within. He took deep breaths to clear his head of
frustration.
He would have to change his plan of attack.
* * * * *
To get into the Monaldeschi palace he had used a peasant's cloak and
high boots like those he had worn last summer when he'd landed at
Manfredonia. It had been an easy matter paying a few silver denari to a
farmer and then helping with the loading and unloading of sacks of rice
being delivered to the Monaldeschi. Once inside the palace courtyard it
had been the work of a moment to slip away from the carts and hide
himself in the maze of dark rooms on the ground floor of the palace.
There he had shed the peasant costume, leaving his black Hashishiyya
garb, and he'd pulled the hood and mask over his head.
But the very thing that made it easy for him to get into the palace with
that cartload of rice left him shocked and uneasy. The Monaldeschi were
preparing for a siege. He had seen screens against fire arrows being set
up on the roof and householders in the neighborhood locking their doors
and fleeing.
Someone had warned the Monaldeschi. When the Filippeschi came tonight,
their hereditary enemies would be ready for them.
Heart pounding, he pondered. What if the Filippeschi called off the
attack? He tried to tell himself that it would not matter. Even the
expectation of a siege would so distract the Tartars' protectors that he
would be able to get at them.
And, he promised himself, if he came out alive, he would search out and
repay whoever had betrayed him.
He had rechecked his weapons--the strangling cord, the Scorpion, the
tiny vessel of Greek fire in its padded pouch, the disk of Hindustan and
a dagger, its blade painted black. After nightfall he would seek out
the Tartars' apartment, which he knew was on the third floor of the
palace, where the best rooms were. In the meantime, he had hidden in a
corner of the kitchen behind a large water cask. He had squatted there
and waited, taut as a bowstring, to find out whether the Filippeschi
would attack.
When he heard the first battle shouts through the narrow embrasures on
the ground floor, he let out a little sigh of relief. Of course Marco di
Filippeschi would go through with the attack. Even without surprise, he
was doubtless better prepared tonight to fight the Monaldeschi than ever
before in his life. And Marco was not the sort of man who, once
committed to a course, would turn back.
Even as these thoughts passed through his mind, Daoud had been surprised
to see the two Tartars with two of their Armenian guards stride past
him.
Of course, he thought, de Gobignon must have realized that the Tartars
might be a target, and he was moving them to a safer place.
For a moment the Tartars had been abreast of him. Two poisoned darts
from the Scorpion would do it.
But, just then, a dozen or so Monaldeschi archers, crossbows loaded and
cranked back, had trotted into the kitchen and nearby rooms and taken up
stations by the embrasures. Daoud, his body aquiver with excitement, the
little crossbow already in his hands, had sunk back into hiding. If he
shot the Tartars, he might have been able to escape the two Armenians,
but so many men-at-arms would certainly kill or, worse, capture him. And
once they discovered who he was, Sophia, Ugolini, all those working with
him, would swiftly be in the hands of the Franks.
Seething with frustration, he had watched an Armenian open a cellar
trapdoor. The two Tartars and the two Armenian guards descended out of
sight.
Daoud, still crouched behind the water cask, then decided that God had
been kind to him. Even if he had been denied this opportunity to kill
them, at least he had seen where the Tartars were.
He had sat in his hiding place, relaxed but alert, listening to the
Monaldeschi bowmen shout encouragement to one another as they fired on
the Filippeschi trying to cross the piazza. The arrow slits were cut
through the thick walls in angled pairs so that two archers side by side
would have a full field of fire. After a while Daoud began to despair of
ever getting into the cellar.
Several times servants came running to fill buckets from the cask to put
out fires in the atrium. Crouched in the darkness behind the cask,
Daoud saw, grouped around it, buckets, pots, and kettles, all sorts of
vessels, already filled with water for immediate use.
Long after the battle began, a pageboy came running down the stairs to
the ground floor with an order for the archers to come up to the roof.
They left only one man to watch through the arrow slots. His back,
sheathed in a shiny brown leather cuirass, was turned toward Daoud. The
noise of fighting from outside was loud enough, Daoud thought, to mask
any sound he might make.
He slipped from behind the cask and picked up a wooden bucket full of
water. Carrying the bucket he stepped, silent on his soft-soled boots,
to the cellar trapdoor. Keeping his eyes on the crossbowman, he put the
bucket down and, holding his breath, grasped the handle of the trapdoor
and lifted it. The archer moved as Daoud crouched by the open trapdoor.
Daoud froze. But the man's back remained turned. He was only shifting
from one arrow slot to the one beside it, to get a view of the piazza
from a different angle.
When the archer was settled in his new position, Daoud crept down the
cellar stairs, bucket in one hand, and lowered the door over his head.
He watched the archer until the slab of wood cut off his view. He was in
a pitch-black cellar smelling of wine.
He saw a crack of light from under a door and heard voices. He was about
to go and knock, pretending to be a man-at-arms with a message. When the
two Armenians within opened the door, he would douse their lantern with
the water he was carrying, and then move in on the Tartars in the dark.
Just then the trapdoor above had opened. He hid behind the wine barrels
as de Gobignon, the friar, and two more Armenians came down to join
their Tartar charges.
* * * * *
Stones were slamming into the walls in such rapid succession that the
building was continually shaking. This must be the climax of the
Filippeschi attack. Next would come a rush of all the fighting men. They
would storm the palace and either break through or be driven off.
Probably, Daoud thought, the attack would fail. But even so, it would
give him the opportunity he needed.
The two Armenian guards held their bows laxly, resting their backs
against the wall by the door. The candle in the sconce was six paces
away from the guards. Silently he lifted the bucket of water he had
brought down with him and moved it out in front of the wine barrel rack
so that later he could quickly reach it. Then he loaded the Scorpion,
drawing back its string.
He stepped out from behind the barrels, aiming for the eye of the
nearest guard, and fired. The steel dowels snapped forward, propelling
the bolt through the eyeball and into the skull. The man collapsed
without an outcry. His body, clad in leather and steel, hit the stone
floor with a crash.
The other Armenian gave a shrill shout in his native tongue. He stared
in horror at Daoud, and his heavy compound bow was up, the iron
arrowhead pointing at Daoud's chest.
Daoud had already taken the disk of Hindustan out of the flat pouch on
the left side of his belt. Dropping the Scorpion into its pocket, he
transferred the disk to his right hand. The disk was heavy; by Frankish
weight it would probably be half a pound. Its center was of strong,
flexible steel; bonded to its edges was a more brittle steel that would
take an edge sharp enough to slice a hair lengthwise.
Daoud scaled the disk at the candle that rested in the sconce at the
door to the pantry. It sliced through the candle's tip, just below the
wick. The flame went out, plunging the cellar into total darkness. The
disk rang against the stone wall, then clanged to the floor. Daoud's
trained hearing registered the place where it fell. The Armenian's bolt
whistled past him and hit the wall with a sharp crack.
Voices from inside the spice pantry shouted questions. That must be the
two Armenians who had first gone in there with the Tartars. The man
outside answered, and Daoud could hear fear in his voice. De Gobignon
would not want to open the door to help the Armenian, for fear of
endangering the Tartars.
Somehow, he had to be made to open the door.
Daoud stood still, listening to the guard's rapid, heavy breathing, the
scraping of his boot soles on the stone floor.
After a moment he tiptoed to the side of the chamber, retrieved his
disk, and dropped it into its pouch in his tunic.
Silently picking up the water bucket in front of the wine barrel rack,
he drifted closer to the guard, thinking of smoke, as the Hashishiyya
had taught him, to make himself move even more quietly.
He heard the Armenian sling his bow over his shoulder, and the
slithering of his sword coming out of his scabbard.
Daoud set the water down and crept close to the guard, utterly silent,
listening for the many small noises that would tell him where the man
was and how he was standing--breathing, swallowing and the licking of
lips, the creak of leather armor, the rustle of cloth, the clink of
steel. Slowly and very carefully Daoud reached out toward the guard's
throat, then with a sudden movement seized it, his thumb and fingers
gripping like a falcon's talons.
His action had the desired effect. The Armenian screamed, forcing air
through his constricted throat again and again.
He tried to slash at Daoud's arm but missed.
With his free hand Daoud grabbed the guard's wrist and gave it a sharp
turn. He let go of his opponent's throat and used both hands to force
his sword arm down. He straightened the arm out and brought his knee
down hard on the elbow, throwing all his weight on it.
The guard screamed with pain, and his sword clattered to the floor.
Daoud kicked it off into the darkness, then danced away. The Armenian
fell back against the spice pantry door, groaning in pain and fear.
Daoud heard muffled cries from the other side of the door. They demanded
to know what was happening. They begged to know what was happening.
The Armenian's agonized voice cried out to them, also begging, to be let
in, to be saved from the man who was killing him in the blackness.
Daoud readied himself, finding the water bucket again in the dark and
picking it up. He held it with both hands, by the handle and by the
base. He would have only a little time to use it, before they found some
way to stop him.
He heard the men on the other side of the door slide back the iron bolt.
It was the only thing they could do, Daoud thought. The other Armenians
could not bear to keep the door shut and let their comrade die.
The wooden door swung inward. Light sprang out into the cellar from only
one oil-fed lantern, but dazzled Daoud because he had been in complete
darkness since he put out the candle. He now saw the man he had been
fighting, a squat man with a thick black mustache, tears of pain running
from his eyes, his right arm dangling limply.
In the fraction of an instant before his enemies saw him, Daoud took in
everything in the spice pantry.
De Gobignon was standing just inside the door, holding his beautiful
scimitar out before him in his right hand. With his left hand he
reached for the wounded guard to pull him in. On either side of him were
the other two Armenians, bows drawn, ready to fire. Beyond them Daoud
glimpsed the Tartars, also with bows loaded and pulled, and the old
priest.
But the most important thing in there was that small, weak flame
flickering behind sheets of horn in a box-shaped lantern on the table in
the center of the room.
Daoud stepped as close as he dared into the doorway and raised the
bucket high, heaving the water in a stream at the table.
He heard a bow thrum and an arrow whistle past his shoulder. His eyes
met de Gobignon's just as the light went out.
Like a stone fired from a catapult he hurled himself, crouching low,
into the pantry.
Landing silently inside the room, he changed direction once, twice, a
third time, ending up at the door. He slammed it shut and bolted it.
They should all now be thoroughly confused.
In total darkness, seeing with his senses of hearing, smell, and touch,
he began to stalk the Tartars.