.
No breath came from his friend's body. A curtain of shadow swept before
his eyes, and he thought he was going to faint.

He thrust himself to his feet as Nicetas's head fell to one side.

He threw his arms over his head and screamed.

Arms still upraised, he dropped to his knees.

"Oh, God!" His voice echoed back from the walls of the crevice. "God,
God, God!"

The pain in his heart was as if a rumh had impaled it. He felt that he
must die, too. He could not bear this loss. Never to see his friend
smile again, never to hear his laughter. That body he had loved, nothing
now but unmoving, empty clay.

He looked over at Nicetas, hoping to see a movement, the flicker of an
eyelid, the rising of the chest. Nothing. Daoud would never again look
on in admiration as the Greek boy rode wildly, standing in the stirrups
shooting his arrows at the gallop or casting his spear unerringly at the
target. They would never, as he had dreamed, ride side by side into
battle.

Daoud crumpled to the ground in the position of worship, his forehead
pressed against the sharp, broken stones. But he was not worshiping. He
simply did not have the strength to hold himself upright.

It seemed hours later when he at last stirred himself. Sobbing, he
carried Nicetas out to a place near the mouth of the crevice, where the
sand had drifted in, and with his hands he dug there a grave. All along
the base of the hillside were many loose brown stones, chipped away by
the eternal wind. With bleeding hands he piled the stones high over
Nicetas's body, but tried to make the pile look like a rock slide, so
that no one would know someone was buried here. He knelt, weeping and
talking to Nicetas's spirit, until the sun was low in the west.

* * * * *

As Nicetas had told him to do, Daoud had pretended, when he came back
from the desert, that he had no idea what had happened to his friend.
The naqeeb had declared that Sudanese tribesmen or wild animals must
have gotten him. Daoud was not alone in his grief. Many of the boys in
the troop had liked Nicetas.

Even Kassar had said words of sympathy, his face expressionless and his
slanted eyes opaque. Daoud held in his rage, a white-hot furnace in his
heart, and in a choked voice he thanked Kassar.

At first he went about in a daze, unable to think. He told himself that
in spite of his dissembling, Kassar would be on guard. He would have to
choose a time to take his reve