The Saracen: Land of the Infidel Part 57

A hundred half-formed thoughts crowded Daoud's mind. His eyes burned, and pain pounded at his chest.

All he said was "What happened to you?"

"It was Ka.s.sar," Nicetas whispered. "He got me with his first arrow.

Then he shot the pony and it fell on me. He rode me down. He took my bow before I could get free."

_After all this time!_ Daoud thought. Ka.s.sar had said nothing, done nothing, since the day Nicetas beat him at casting the rumh.

Two years Ka.s.sar had waited.

He bent forward to take Nicetas in his arms, but the Greek boy shook his head. "Do not move me. It will hurt too much."

"Where are you hit?"

"In my back. Still in me. I broke off the shaft."

_Why was I such a fool, to think we were safe?_

"It can't be a very bad wound."

Nicetas closed his eyes. "Bad enough that he could use me for his pleasure and I could not fight him off."

A dizzying blackness blinded Daoud. His skull felt as if it were going to burst.

"By G.o.d and the Prophet, I will kill him."

"I want you to."

"Did he do any more to hurt you?"

"Yes, he got me here." He parted his hands and raised them from his stomach. His white cotton robe was caked with black blood, and there was a tear in the center. The wound was not wide, but Daoud knew that it must be very deep.

"He made sure to use his rumh, you see."

"Because that was how you beat him."

Daoud wanted only to hold Nicetas and cry, but he sensed that what would most comfort the Greek boy would be talking about what happened to him.

"After the rumh, I lay very still and held my breath. He thought I was dead. He left me lying there with the pony. Took my weapons and my water bottle. I crawled here. In the sun. Yesterday afternoon. I bled and bled."

_He is going to die_, Daoud thought. He did not want to believe it. For a moment he was angry at Nicetas. Why had he been such a fool as to come out here alone? And then at himself. Why had he let him go?

And then at G.o.d.

_Why did You let this happen? Do You hate us because we love each other?_

"I knew you would come for me, Daoud. I stayed alive to greet you."

Daoud took Nicetas's hand. "I will take you back."

"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 h.e.l.l."

"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, G.o.d!" His voice echoed back from the walls of the crevice. "G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d!"

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 Ka.s.sar 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 Ka.s.sar.

At first he went about in a daze, unable to think. He told himself that in spite of his dissembling, Ka.s.sar would be on guard. He would have to choose a time to take his revenge when Ka.s.sar would be preoccupied. And Daoud himself must be alert at all times. Ka.s.sar 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--Ka.s.sar might antic.i.p.ate what he was going to do and turn the moment against him, killing him and claiming he was defending himself. Ka.s.sar'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 G.o.d is a man who would give his life for his friends._