e other boys. He was the only Frank among them, and to talk
to them at all he had to learn their various languages--Turkish, Kurd,
Farsi, Circassian, Tartar. They would not bother to learn the Norman
French, which was still the language he heard in his dreams. Most of the
boys slept two by two in the field, but Daoud had no close friend to
share a tent with.

"Go!" shouted Mahmoud the Circassian to Nicetas.

The Greek boy stood up in the saddle, and rode down the field with a
warbling scream that was a perfect imitation of a Bedouin war cry. His
trousers billowed against his long legs. Daoud watched his handsome,
straight-nosed profile as he turned to fix his eyes on the swinging
target. The lean-muscled bare arm drew back and snapped forward. The
long black pole of the rumh whistled through the air, shot smoothly
through the ring and landed upright, quivering, in the dune beyond it.

Daoud heard murmurs of appreciation around him. At the naqeeb's next cry
of, "Go!" Daoud kicked his pony in the ribs and plunged forward to try
his own cast.

He tried to ignore the fear of missing that knotted his belly muscles,
tried not to think at all about his desperate need to make a good cast.

He guided his mount with the pressure of his knees. He squinted his eyes
against the wind of his rush and fixed them on the ring. His body moved
up and down with the action of the horse, and the ring swung back and
forth. He twisted sideways in the saddle, steadying himself with one
hand on the pony's back. Grasping the rumh at the middle so that it
balanced, he lifted it high over his head. The little horse's muscles
rippled under his palm. If he fixed his gaze and his aim on the point in
space that the ring occupied at the lowest point of its arc, and
released his rumh just as the ring reached the extremity of its swing,
the target and rumh should arrive together.

The pony had carried him opposite the ring now, and he took a deep
breath and whipped his arm forward.

His lance reached the right spot--an instant too late. He wanted to
throw himself down from his horse and weep with frustration.

He heard groans and curses from behind him. Not once this morning had
the troop had a perfect round. He rode around to the back of the
scaffold, where the two slaves were sitting until the next boy should
take his turn. The ghulmans kept their eyes down, their black faces
expressionless. Angrily he yanked his rumh out of the sand and rode bac