nce, and people began shouting in
Italian.

"Stand aside! Let me through!" Simon shouted. If this were an assassin,
reverence for the mass, even for the pope, must be set aside. Again and
again the shout rose, "Ex Tartari furiosi!" It was harder to move
through the crowd. People were struggling to get away from the man
making the uproar.

Simon stopped, shoved men right and left to make room, and pulled his
scimitar from his scabbard.

People around him turned at the unmistakable rasp of steel on leather, a
sound that so often preceded sudden death. They saw the Saracen sword in
Simon's hands and drew back. As Simon hoped, more people noticed and
fell over one another trying to get out of his way.

Like Moses' rod parting the Red Sea, Simon's scimitar opened a path for
him.

Simon saw a young man with a tangled mass of brown hair whipping about
his face and a brown beard that spread over his chest. He was big and
broad-shouldered, and he wore a plain white robe, ragged and gray with
dirt, and sandals. In one hand he held a dagger.

_Blood of Jesus! He must have come here to kill the Tartars._

Terrified people had opened a circle around the white-robed man, and as
he moved toward the front of the cathedral the open space moved with
him.

"Stop!" Simon cried.

Baring greenish-looking teeth in a snarl, the man swiveled his shaggy
head toward Simon, then immediately rushed at him.

_He's crazy_, Simon thought, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He crouched, holding his sword out before him, diagonally across his
chest.

"Do not kill him!" boomed a deep voice that Simon recognized as de
Verceuil's.

The man with the dagger hesitated now, just out of reach of Simon's
sword.

_Am I to risk my life to keep this madman alive?_

But de Verceuil's demand made sense. They must try to find out who sent
the man.

Simon took a deep breath. He had practiced sword fighting innumerable
times, but only twice in his life had he come up against an armed man
with a look in his eyes that said he was willing to kill.

_But this is no different from practice_, he told himself.

He feinted to the white-robed man's left, then jumped forward, lifting
his sword high and bringing the flat of it down with all his strength on
the hand that held the dagger. The dagger tumbled through the air. Simon
saw at once that the man had no martial skill.

The madman darted forward in a crouch to retrieve his dagger, and as he