The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 102

Time, O Malik Dahir, is our ally.

Daoud stood at his writing desk, smiling at the tiny Arabic characters with which he had covered the thin square of parchment.

El Malik Dahir--the victorious king. How well Daoud remembered the day Baibars had, with his help, a.s.sumed that t.i.tle.

Riding back from the victory at the Well of Goliath, the Mameluke army was camped outside Bilbeis, two days' ride northeast of El Kahira.

Tomorrow Sultan Qutuz would hold audience at Bilbeis, and soon after he would ride into El Kahira in triumph, a triumph Baibars had earned for him.

Baibars was alone in his tent when Daoud answered his summons. His blue eye glittered out of deep shadows cast on his face by a small oil lamp that hung in the center of the tent. With his own hand Baibars served Daoud kaviyeh from a pot on a brazier, and the two men sat side by side, turned toward each other.

"Again he refused me," Baibars said. "I have given him every chance, Daoud."

Baibars's face was calm, but Daoud knew that the fury of a Tartar was boiling within him.

A reddish haze obscured the tent for Daoud as he fought back his own rage at the injustice to Baibars.

"He thinks I want to be governor of Aleppo merely out of ambition,"

Baibars said.

"The sultan is a fool," said Daoud.

The single sighted eye transfixed him. "No, not a fool. He played the game of power well enough when he made himself sultan. No one could blame him for the murders of Ai Beg and Spray of Pearls. He restored order to El Kahira. His mistake now is in not trusting me. And that is an understandable mistake." Baibars stretched his thin lips in a sudden grin.

"Understandable how?" Daoud experienced that unsettling sense he often had that the one-eyed emir was always two or three jumps ahead of him.

"It comes of too much cleverness," said Baibars. "He does not believe me when I say I want to be governor of Aleppo because it is the first city Hulagu Khan will attack. He suspects me of a hidden motive. He thinks that if he gives me Aleppo I will break with El Kahira and claim all of Syria for my own, because that is what _he_ would do. But Hulagu Khan, seeking vengeance for the Well of Goliath, is coming from Persia with all his power. May G.o.d send to the eternal fire a commander wicked enough to divide the kingdom at such a time."

The kaviyeh Daoud held had cooled. He drained the glazed earthenware cup and put it down beside him.

"The sultan himself divides the kingdom," said Daoud, "by dishonoring you."

"It is more than dishonor. It is war. If he thinks me too dangerous to be ruler of Aleppo, it means that he thinks me too dangerous to live."

Daoud felt as if his heart had dropped into the cold, black bottom of a well. If Qutuz destroyed Baibars, he would destroy Islam and El Kahira and all of them. Daoud's whole world.

"What will you do?" said Daoud.

"I do not know what I will do," said Baibars, fixing his one eye on Daoud. "But you know that if he kills me, he will kill all close to me.

What will _you_ do?"

Daoud felt the edge of the headsman's blade on the back of his neck as he had not felt it since that day Qutuz demanded his death. The thought of being executed at Qutuz's command outraged him. It was one thing to die as a mujahid, a martyr in holy war for Islam, destined to be taken at once into paradise. But what a shameful fate, to be murdered because your own sovereign lord did not trust you.

"I am your slave, Effendi."

"Not slave, Daoud. You are as near a son to me as a Mameluke can be. Are you not the husband of my favorite daughter? I speak now with you because I must speak, and in all this camp you are the only one I can rely on absolutely."

Daoud felt tears coming to his eyes. He was embarra.s.sed, even though he knew it was a manly thing to weep easily. For him crying was rare.

Baibars rested a large, strong hand on Daoud's arm.

"Never to know any brothers but our khushdashiya, our barracks mates, never to know any father but the emir who trained and freed us, it makes us the hardest, the finest warriors in the world. But we long for the loving families we never had."

Daoud wiped his face with the sleeve of his robe.

They sat in silence for a long time, while Daoud, stroking his thick blond beard, grappled with what Baibars was asking of him. Asking, not in words, but in the s.p.a.ces between the words.

Baibars spoke. "Remember what the Tartar general, Ket Bogha, called Qutuz? The murderer of his master. The world belittles us because each sultan has climbed to the throne over the murdered body of the last sultan. Turan Shah, murdered."

He held up his left hand, his sword hand.

"I myself killed Turan Shah because he betrayed the Mamelukes. Next, Ai Beg, murdered. The Sultana Spray of Pearls, murdered. Ali, son of Ai Beg, murdered. Each murder weakens the throne itself."

"The throne is as strong as the man who holds it," said Daoud.

Baibars continued to look at his left hand, his head turned to the side in his one-eyed way. "Even so, Ai Beg did not himself kill Turan Shah and Qutuz did not himself kill Ali. If I kill Qutuz and take the throne with his blood on my hand, I am inviting every other Mameluke emir to kill me when my back is turned. The t.i.tle of El Malik, the sultan, chief sovereign of Islam, will be like a ball in a game of mall, flying this way and that."

Daoud felt as if he were standing at the mouth of an enormous black cave. It was one thing to know that Qutuz was not fit to rule. It was another thing to think of striking down the sultan, the anointed of G.o.d.

If Daoud entered this cave, he might never come out again. He might leave it only to fall into the flames of h.e.l.l. He seemed to see stars in the depths of the cave, as if he were looking into the world beyond the world. Somewhere among those stars, G.o.d dwelt in His paradise with those He loved around Him, the Archangel Gabriel, and the Prophet, and Abraham and Jesus, and the saints and martyrs of Islam.

_Is it G.o.d's will that I kill the sultan? How can I know?_

He could not know. But he did know that second only to his submission to G.o.d, the most important thing in his life was devotion to his emir.

As Baibars said, his khushdashiya and his emir were all a Mameluke had.

He leaned closer to Baibars.

"Whoever dishonors my lord Baibars deserves instant death at the hands of my lord's servant."

Baibars closed both eyes with a look of satisfaction.

"Have I asked you to kill--anyone?" he said.

"No, Effendi."

They sat in silence again. The desert wind hummed in the ropes of Baibars's tent, and the poles shifted and creaked.

"If someone wished to kill Qutuz," said Baibars, "he should recall that we are now very close to El Kahira. Once Qutuz rides on streets festooned with silks and carpeted with flowers, once people see him as the victor of the Well of Goliath, they will love him too much. They would never accept his being taken from them. We could not control their fury."

Daoud said, "Tomorrow, when he holds audience at the palace of the governor of Bilbeis, men from all over the district with requests for favors, with claims, with grievances, will surround him, clamoring.

Anyone could easily approach him."

Baibars nodded. "Let him be struck down before the eyes of many. Let it be like a public sacrifice. I would rather see it done so than by poison or ambush." His thin lips curved in a smile. "I seem to recall that you, too, have a preference for taking vengeance in public."

"If the other emirs demand that he who killed the sultan be punished,"