.

Kassar was on top of the ball. Daoud kicked his pony's ribs hard and
galloped after him.

As Kassar swung low from his saddle to hit the ball, Daoud drove in on
him. Kassar glanced up, fear flashing across his broad face. Whatever
passed through his mind was his last thought. Daoud swung his mallet up
from the ground, smashing it into Kassar's jaw. The force of the blow
knocked the white cap from his head. His pony ran free of the melee.
Kassar reeled, unconscious, but his horse nomad's instinct held him in
the saddle.

Daoud jerked his pony around to race after Kassar. In an instant he was
beside his enemy.

He was about to kill a khushdashiyin, a barracks comrade, in open
defiance of the code of the Mamelukes and in front of his emir and his
sultan.

_I am a dead man_, he thought as he swung the mallet high.

His body felt cold as death, and he hesitated. As he did so, Kassar
turned his head, and Daoud saw consciousness struggling to return to his
glazed eyes.

This was Daoud's last chance to avenge Nicetas.

He heard a distant roar of command from the naqeeb Mahmoud, but he
ignored it.

He brought the mallet down with all his strength on the Kipchaq's
glistening black hair. The shock of the contact ran up his arm and into
his shoulder. Kassar started to fall. Daoud struck again with the
mallet.

Kassar pitched from his pony's back. As he struck the ground, Daoud
smashed the mallet into his head a third time, just as if he were
hitting a ball. He tried to hit hard enough to knock Kassar's head
right off his neck. Daoud saw the head suddenly distorted, flattening,
and knew the skull was crushed. Kassar lay on the ground on his back,
only the whites of his eyes showing, his mouth hanging open. Dust half
obscured his body.

Daoud heard shouts from the bystanders, but he paid no attention to what
they were saying. He saw riders, the other players, racing toward him.

A silence fell on the playing field.

"Get down from your horse." It was Mahmoud, who had run out into the
field on foot.

As Daoud and Mahmoud walked across the field, the naqeeb said, "You will
answer to El Malik Qutuz and to Emir Baibars for this. Fool, whatever
your quarrel was, could you not have settled it in private? Have you
forgotten that Baibars is a Kipchaq? He will not forgive you."

Despite his joy at seeing Nicetas's murderer dead, Daoud now felt terror
clutching his throat as he approached the two seated figures in their