ide Baibars's yellow one. The signal to halt.
Daoud raised his arm and shouted the order to his troop. The Mameluke
right wing rumbled to a stop and turned their horses to face the
fighting that had just passed them by. Reining up his horse, Daoud put
his bow back in its case.

He blinked as bright bursts of light flashed above the distant ranks in
the center of the Mameluke army. Swiftly that part of the field was
enveloped in thick clouds of brown smoke. A moment later he heard
popping sounds like the cracking of innumerable boards. The dim shapes
of horses plunged and reared in the smoke.

He heard his men muttering to one another behind him.

_They think it is sorcery._

Daoud, having seen the Tartar army in action when he visited Baghdad
disguised as a Christian trader, recognized the fiery noisemakers.

He turned and shouted, "It is not magic. I've seen this before. It is
like Greek Fire, but it does not hurt. It just makes noise and smoke."

He saw smiles of relief among those who had heard him. They would pass
the word to the others farther back, and the troops would settle down.

He peered anxiously into the chaos of smoke and dust and horses and men,
trying to see the Tartar standard, with its long black tails, and
Qutuz's green banner. They had been close together when he last saw
them. Now he could not find them.

A movement near the western horizon caught his eye. He saw a bit of
green waving just below the blue Galilee hills that separated this plain
of Esdraelon from the coast. Qutuz's banner, smaller, farther away.

Despair clutched at Daoud. But Qutuz could be feigning a retreat to lure
the Tartars into spreading themselves too thin. Then he saw the black
Tartar standard, much closer, in the midst of a furious melee of
fighting men and falling horses half obscured by dust. Qutuz would not
leave part of the center behind to fight the Tartars unless he were
running away. Daoud remembered the tightness he had seen in Qutuz's face
before the battle, the hopelessness in the sultan's voice.

_He is fleeing in terror. We are all dead men. Islam is lost._

Daoud looked to the east and saw that Baibars was still sitting
motionless, a small figure at this distance on his fawn half-blood, the
bearer with the yellow standard sitting behind him.

Daoud turned in the saddle and swept his gaze over the long line of his
own troop. Their red turbans bobbed up and down as their horses danced.
The wind was fr