down till bodies
in their thousands littered the road. I was one of the few who, by God's
grace and by feigning death, lived."

The Tartars advanced to the Danube, he went on, burning everything,
killing all the people in towns and villages. They burned Pest to the
ground. On Christmas Day in the year 1241 the Danube froze hard. The
Tartars crossed and destroyed Buda. They advanced into Austria. Tartar
columns were sighted from the walls of Vienna. Europe lay helpless
before them.

"Only the hand of God saved us. He willed that at that very moment the
emperor of the Tartars in their far-off homeland should die," Sire
Cosmas concluded. "All the kings and generals of the Tartars had to
depart from Europe, with their armies, to choose their next emperor.
Those parts of Poland and Hungary they had occupied, they left a dead,
silent desert.

"Since then the Tartars have made war on the Saracens, which pleases us,
of course. But is the enemy of our enemy truly our friend? Permit me to
doubt it, good Fathers. We are no better able to fight the Tartars now
than we were after Mohi. I urge you to let the Tartars and Saracens wear
themselves out fighting each other. Let us not help the Tartars with
their distant wars, losing knights and men we might later need to defend
Europe against those devils themselves."

Sire Cosmas's words chilled Simon. He felt himself almost persuaded that
the Tartars were a menace to the world. It might be a grave error to
work for an alliance with them. And yet, for the sake of his family he
had accepted this mission. He could not back down now. Uneasily he
rubbed his damp palms on his tunic.

There was a murmur of conversation as Sire Cosmas finished and bowed.

Fra Tomasso, scribbling notes on a parchment, looked up and asked, "Did
you say that the Tartar soldiers have the faces of dogs, Sire Cosmas?"

Cosmas shook his head, looking himself somewhat sheepish, Simon thought.
"We spoke of them so because their pointed fur caps made them look like
dogs."

"I wondered, because Aristotle writes of men with animals' heads living
in remote regions," said the stout Dominican. He made a note.

Cosmas brightened. "They do eat the flesh of living prisoners. And I
hope I may not offend your chastity by telling you this, but they slice
off the breasts of the women they rape and serve them as delicacies to
their princes. Raw."

Simon thought of John and Philip and wondered whether they had ever done