The Saracen: Land of the Infidel by Robert Shea (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

placed along the corridor to douse fires.

The kitchen was on the north side of the building. It was dark as a cave. The cooking fire in the great fireplace, big enough for a man to walk into it, had been put out. They passed empty cauldrons, piles of full sacks, rows of barrels, all barely visible in the light of a half-consumed taper in a candlestick on a table. A large water cask surrounded by buckets and pots stood in the center of the kitchen.

Attackers could be hiding here. But Simon knew he did not have enough men to search. He must get to the Tartars and stay with them.

The pantry where the contessa kept her costly stock of spices imported from the East was below ground. Stefan lifted a heavy trapdoor, and one by one they climbed down a narrow flight of wooden steps without a banister. Grigor, bringing up the rear, held a candle to light their way.

A door of rough oaken planks bound together with iron straps stood before him. He felt his stomach knot as he walked up to it. What if he were too late?

Simon had ordered that the square black iron lock set in the door be left unlocked in the case the Tartars should have to escape. He pulled on the handle. The door was bolted from the inside, of course, with a bolt he had only that afternoon ordered the Monaldeschi carpenter to install. From the other side a voice asked a half-audible question.

"It is Count Simon," he said. "Let us in." Friar Mathieu added a few words in the Tartar tongue.

The bolt slid back and the door opened inward. Simon stepped forward to see how his charges had fared.

The storeroom was dimly lit by a small oil lantern. The two Armenians within had risen from chairs. They had their bows in[454] their hands, arrows nocked. They stood in front of the Tartars. John, the white-haired Tartar, and Philip, the black-haired one, sat on cushions on the floor, leaning back against the shelves of spice jars that covered three walls of the room. Their bows were on the table and their curving swords, in scabbards, lay in their laps.

Simon was pleased to see that they looked alert. It must be maddening to sit down here in semidarkness and do nothing while a battle raged above.

He reminded himself that if no one attacked the Tartars while the Filippeschi besieged the palace, his reputation would be ruined. He felt a momentary pang of anguish, and found himself actually hoping that the enemy would come here. Quickly he stifled the feeling.

Do not call on the devil. He may hear you and come.

XLIII

Hidden in the cellar behind a rack of wine barrels, Daoud watched the Frankish count, the old priest, and the two Armenians as they paused before the door of the spice pantry.

He thought: Man can plan and plan, but God will surprise and surprise.

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[455] 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[456] 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[457] 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[458] 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.