The Saracen: The Holy War by Robert Shea (best ebook reader ubuntu TXT) 📗

hands flat against her belly and doubled over, weeping.

Daoud had just ridden through the northern gate of the town when he heard his name called from above. He saw a pale blond head, gleaming in the first rays of sunrise, looking down at him through the battlements of a square gate tower.

"Up here, Daoud, come up!" Manfred's voice.

"This is the best vantage point we could ask for," Manfred said when Daoud arrived on the tower platform. "Unless we were to climb those mountains over there."

Lorenzo was on the tower roof with Manfred, and Landgrave Barth, and six or so of Manfred's blond young noblemen, all in splendid cloaks of peacock blue, sunset orange, and blood-red. They wore glossy silk surcoats over mail that covered them from chin to fingertips. Manfred was in mail, covered by a knee-length yellow and black surcoat. He held his bronzed helmet, decorated with[275] three nodding ostrich plumes dyed emerald green, tucked under his arm.

"Have they come?" Daoud asked.

Manfred nodded, his face sterner than Daoud had ever seen it. "Anjou is in the valley."

Daoud looked out from the tower. Like a field of wildflowers, hundreds of their own multicolored tents, each one tall and pointed at the top, spread out over the rolling brown landscape just beyond the town wall. In front of the tents the divisions of Manfred's army were forming up in squares. The faint notes of a military band came to Daoud's ear. It was European music, which sounded jagged, harsh, and disconnected to him.

He saw the Sons of the Falcon now, over on the left, their rows straight, sitting quietly on their horses, moving little. They all wore red turbans wrapped around their helmets; he had insisted that they dress alike so as to be easily recognizable. They, too, had their band, a dozen men who played kettledrums, trumpets, hautboys, and cymbals from horseback. The band was silent now, but would play when the Sons of the Falcon rode into battle.

"Long ago the Romans called this town Maleventum, bad wind," said Manfred beside him, "because they believed that the winds from the north brought pestilence down from the swamps around Rome."

Just the sort of thing Manfred would know, Daoud thought.

"Even though the people who live here chose a more attractive name," Manfred went on, "we see that the ancients were not wrong. Look what plague the wind has blown down from Rome today."

Daoud's eyes followed Manfred's pointing arm to the narrow north end of the long valley in which Benevento lay. The road from Rome entered the valley at the north end and ran through it to the gate above which they were standing. Rows of tents filled the northern opening of the valley, and the tiny figures of horsemen and foot soldiers were forming dark lines across the light brown fields.

Last night peasants from that end of the valley had come flocking into Benevento with cartloads of possessions and stored crops. Even though they were supposedly supporters of the papal cause, the people who lived around Benevento felt safer under Manfred's protection.

But this valley was a stone coffin, Daoud thought. Hills on either side, squeezing together at the top of the valley, the town lying across the bottom end. In this box, how could he use the Sons of the Falcon well? He pummeled his brain.[276]

One thing he could at least achieve. He remembered Nuwaihi's report that the Tartars were with Charles's army. He turned to Lorenzo.

"It falls to you to finish the Tartars. Make your way into Charles's camp while the battle is on."

Lorenzo's mouth turned down under his thick mustache. "It will take time. I can take a wagon and go around through the hills and pretend to be a peasant offering to sell wine and food to Anjou's people."

"Take some men with you."

Lorenzo shook his head. "That would arouse suspicion. If I go alone, whoever is guarding Charles's camp will see no reason to fear me."

"I went alone into the Palazzo Monaldeschi to kill them, and I could not do it."

"And I, with my poor Sicilian skills, cannot be expected to succeed where Daoud ibn Abdallah, who was trained by the Old Man of the Mountain himself, failed. Is that what you are thinking?"

Daoud smiled ruefully. "Well—"

Lorenzo frowned at him ferociously. "You have given me the task. Let me carry it out as best I can."

Daoud gripped his arm, feeling muscle like oak. "Go with God, my brother."

"May your Allah bless your struggle today, Daoud." One last, long look from the dark brown eyes, and Lorenzo turned away.

Again, as he had with Sophia, Daoud felt anguish that he had not told Lorenzo enough of his gratitude, his respect, his love.

And if Lorenzo dies an unbeliever, I will not meet him in paradise.

Manfred was standing at the battlements, staring north at his enemies, looking, it seemed to Daoud, more sad than angry.

"Sire," Daoud said, "I know what you plan for today's battle. But I beg the favor of one change. Let the Sons of the Falcon be the first of your warriors to strike at your enemies."

Manfred turned toward Daoud, and as he did the melancholy vanished from his face. He looked cheerful and spoke briskly.

"Let us review the plan. My heaviest cavalry, the Swabian knights, will hit them first. The Swabians will try to break the enemy and drive them back up the field. Our foot archers will form up before Benevento and protect it from any Frenchmen who might evade our cavalry charge. Daoud's Sons of the Falcon will ride in[277] column up the west side of the valley, turn, cut the French knights off from their foot soldiers, and attack them from the rear."

Erhard Barth nodded. "Excellent, Sire. But, if I may, Herr Daoud has a good suggestion. We have seen the skill of his archers and lancers. Let them lead the way, forming a screen for us. Let them fill the air with arrows. The French will falter. Then the Sons of the Falcon will move out of the way." He spread his big, square hands apart to show how the Sons of the Falcon would part to left and right. "And we will hit them with a wedge."

A better plan, Daoud thought. He had underestimated Barth. And perhaps the king he served.

Manfred nodded. "Go to your men, Daoud. You will have my orders shortly."

Looking into the faces of the two hundred men he had picked and trained over the past year, Daoud felt a great weight on his chest. He could even read the expressions of some in the front. Mujtaba, earnest. Ahmad, fierce. Omar, determined. Nuwaihi, who had first sighted Charles's army, eager. It was frightful enough to face one's own death in battle, but to know that he was leading to their deaths men he knew and loved—the burden was great. These men were like his children, and they would follow him to destruction, and he wished before God that he did not have to think about that.

Gathered in a semicircle, the Sons of the Falcon listened silently as Daoud spoke to them from horseback. He made his voice big, so that it echoed from the walls of Benevento, behind his men.

"You are fighting not only to help King Manfred keep his throne," Daoud shouted. "Not only to protect the kingdom of Sicily from conquest by these greedy foreigners."

That was ironic, in a way, because, to be sure, the Hohenstaufens were not native Sicilians. Nor were these Muslims. But both they and the Hohenstaufens had lived in Sicily for generations, and surely that gave them more right to rule here than the French.

"You are fighting for Islam!" he cried. Their wild cheering rang in his ears.

"You are fighting that you and your families may profess the faith and live by the faith. This right, your wise rulers of the house of Hohenstaufen have granted you. But if Charles d'Anjou rules this land, your mosques will be turned into churches, your mullahs will be hanged, your Korans will be burned, and your children's children will never hear the sweet words of the Prophet, may God commend and salute him. They will be raised as Christians and[278] will never know they were anything else. For us this war is jihad! Holy war!"

The waves of their cheering swept over him, and their scimitars flashed in the rising sun. He had told them the truth, but there was an even greater truth he had not told them. They were fighting, not just for Islam in Sicily, but for Islam everywhere. If Manfred won this battle, it would end, for this generation at least, the threat of Christians and Tartars uniting to destroy Islam. But how to explain that in these few remaining moments? Enough that they knew that they were fighting for the faith in their own land.

Seeing their eagerness, he felt proud of them, and proud of himself. The weight of sadness he had felt when he first faced them was lifted, and his heart beat strong within him.

The cheering faded quickly, replaced by a murmuring. Men were pointing past him. A faint rumbling came to his ears.

At the north end of the valley a long line of horsemen was moving forward, bright banners fluttering above them, and creamy clouds of dust billowing up behind them.

Barth rode up to him, his eyes bright, his thick lower lip curving upward in a smile. "King Manfred has agreed to let you attack first. The Swabian knights are now ready. We will be behind you. Slow their charge, and then we will smash them." He struck a mailed fist into a mailed palm.

Exultation bubbled up within Daoud like a desert spring. Dizzy with joy, he thought Baibars must have felt like this when he alone led the Mamelukes against the Tartars at the Well of Goliath.

A certainty that the battle was as good as won spread through him.

"If we leave you any Frenchmen to smash," he said to Barth, who laughed, saluted, and rode away.

Have a care, he warned himself. What happens today will be as God wants. I want only whatever God wants.

He jerked on the reins of his brown Arabian to turn toward the French charge. They were still far away. The valley was long. He called Omar and Husain to him.

"Bows and arrows. Spread out in a line. When we are formed up, advance at a trot on my signal."

He unstrapped his bow from his saddle and slung it over his shoulder and across his chest.

The five flag men lined up behind Daoud. On their right rode a naqeeb holding high the green banner of the Sons of the Falcon, inscribed in dazzling white lettering with a verse from the Koran:[279] HAVE THEY NOT SEEN THE BIRDS OBEDIENT IN MIDAIR? NONE UPHOLDETH THEM SAVE GOD.

Omar rode down the line relaying Daoud's orders to the officers and flag men. When all was ready, Daoud raised his hand and brought it down. A single line of two hundred horsemen, they moved out at a trot. While his men could fire arrows from a galloping horse, the slower the horse was moving, the more accurate the shooting.

He could see what was coming at him much more clearly now. The middle and rear ranks of the crusaders were obscured by dust, but in the front ranks a hundred or more helmeted heads bent over the armored brows of their huge horses. The long poles of their steel-tipped lances pointed at him.

To be hit by one of those knights galloping at that speed, with all that weight of steel and horseflesh, would be like being hit by a boulder from a stone caster. If the Franks got much closer, there would be no stopping them.

Daoud unslung his bow. From the corner of his eye he saw the flag men, whose duty it was to watch his moves and signals, lift five red pennants high. He did not need to look to know that the Sons of the Falcon had all dropped their horses' reins, guiding their horses with their knees, and were drawing their bows.

His bow, like those his men carried, was double-curved, made of multiple layers of horn and hardwood. His arrow had a thick steel tip that could punch through mail armor like a spike driven by a hammer. He took aim at a big Frank in the middle of the line. The intersection of the limbs of the red cross on the Frank's white surcoat made a perfect spot to aim at. Between two beats of his Arabian's hooves, he loosed his arrow.

The flight of Daoud's arrow was the signal for the red flags to go down. Two hundred arrows whistled across the rapidly narrowing gap between crusaders and Sons of the Falcon.

Daoud saw the man he had fired at throw his arms