dy 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 bee