t aiming carefully, and all the arrows
whistled over Daoud's head.

The muscles of the black Yemenite stallion bunched and stretched under
Daoud as its hooves thundered over the plain. He stood in the saddle. He
turned and took aim along the shaft of his arrow at the center of the
Tartar's chest. The arrow went low, to Daoud's annoyance, and struck the
Tartar in the side of the stomach. But he must have been wearing light
leather armor, for the arrow with its steel point went deep into him.
The Tartar gave a short cry and dropped his bow, then fell, like a
stone, from the saddle into the sand.

Daoud wheeled his Yemenite about, then jerked the horse to a stop and
jumped from the saddle with his saif out. The Tartar had somehow risen
to all fours, but was vomiting blood into the sand. Daoud kicked him
with his red-booted foot and rolled him over on his back.

Holding his saif high, he looked into the face of Nicetas, contorted
with pain and fear.

"Oh, God!" he whispered. "Oh, God, no!"

He stood paralyzed. Their eyes met.

Nicetas said, "You have to."

"God be merciful to me," Daoud said, and brought the saif down.

XXVIII

Lorenzo's eyes ached as he stared through a peephole in the doorway of a
storeroom into the common room of the inn called the Angel. Alternating
his left and right eye at intervals, he stared at a bench by the
opposite wall, where a hooded figure sat alone, holding a cup of wine in
his lap. As Lorenzo had instructed him, the tavern keeper had put a
lighted candle in a sconce near where Sordello was sitting, so that
Lorenzo could watch his quarry.

The candle beside Sordello was one of only four in the common room--just
light enough for the innkeeper to be certain he was paid in honest coin
while making it hard for his patrons to see the color of his wine. It
was early evening, and there were only about six men and women in the
room. All of them except Sordello sat on benches at the one long table
near the wine barrel. Sordello, leaning against the rough-hewn wooden
wall, had to set his cup beside him.

The mercenary's square hand lifted the painted pottery cup into the
shadow of his hood. Lorenzo knew Sordello was under the tightly drawn
hood only because he had followed him diligently through the tangle of
Orvieto's streets from the house where a dozen of the brigosi Lorenzo
had recruited were quartered.

Daoud's secret army was growing. The evening after the contessa's
recep