o the fire!" shrieked the woman in the doorway.

Motioning the others toward the gate, Daoud turned his horse sideways
and swung the crossbow in an arc to cover the attackers. The men stopped
their rush, but the tall woman pushed her way through them, screaming
curses.

Her hulking husband joined her, his long arms reaching for Daoud. He
looked able to knock a horse to the ground.

Daoud used both hands to aim the crossbow at him, gripping the horse
with his knees. He hoped the threat would be enough to stop the man. He
did not want to shoot the innkeeper. If anyone were killed, the deed
could follow them to Orvieto.

As he hesitated, the huge man drew back his arm and threw the dagger
with the force of a catapult. Daoud heard a thump and a groan behind
him. Daoud's thumb pressed the crossbow's release, and the string
snapped forward with a reverberating bang. The innkeeper bellowed with
pain, the cry dying away as he collapsed. The bolt probably went right
through him, thought Daoud.

As the man's dying groan faded, his wife's scream rose. She fell on her
knees beside him, and the other men crowded around them.

"Blood of Jesus! Pandolfo!" the innkeeper's wife wailed.

Jerking the reins with his left hand, Daoud wheeled the horse out the
gate.

_God help us, now they will be after us._

Which one of his people had been hurt?

He found himself, in his anger, hoping it was Celino.

The three other horses and the donkey were bunched together outside the
gate, on the dirt path that led through trees to the Appian Way. Some of
the men from the inn were out there, too, but when Daoud swung the
crossbow in their direction, they backed into the inn yard.

"Leave me here," the old man gasped. "I am dying." So it was he the
dagger had hit. They would have to leave him, Daoud thought, and his son
would insist on staying with him. And the vengeful crowd from the inn
would tear the two of them to pieces. All this fighting would have been
for nothing.

Celino spurred his horse over to where the old man swayed in the saddle
clutching his stomach. "Sorry to hurt you, but we are not leaving you,"
he said. He pulled the groaning wounded man across to his own horse and
swung one of his legs over so that he was riding astride.

Daoud saw blood, black in the faint light of the crescent moon, running
out of the old man's mouth, staining his white beard.

"Can you ride a horse?" Celino barked at the son.

"Yes," the boy s