. Come
now, wake up! Indolento! The podesta will hear of this, I promise you."

The clerk mumbled something without raising his head from his arms.
Erculio nodded with satisfaction and hurried across the chamber to
Daoud. He stood by Daoud's head.

"As-salaam aleikem, Daoud ibn Abdallah," the torturer whispered.

For a moment Daoud could not believe he had really heard it. The drug
that he had brewed in his mind had taken control of his ears. Or else
this was their way of tricking him into talking freely.

_But if they knew my Muslim name and that I speak Arabic, they would not
waste time accusing me of being a Ghibellino._

"Wa aleikem salaam," he replied. The uprush of joy he felt at finding a
friend here in this terrible cellar momentarily shattered the Face of
Steel. What madness this was, that the friend should be the source of
all his torment? He bit back hysterical laughter.

"Like you, I serve El Malik Dahir," Erculio said in Arabic. Hearing that
title, Daoud thought it even less likely that the little man was trying
to trick him.

"I have been watching you since Lucera, My Lord," Erculio went on. "You
have done well, even if it has been God's will that you should not
succeed. You have been clever. But you should have taken the tawidh off
before you surrendered. Do you think there are no Christians who can
recognize Arabic numerals?"

Now Daoud was sure the little man was an ally of some sort.

In Arabic he said, "Does the scar on the back of my leg look fresh?"

"It has healed so completely that no one would believe you got it a few
months ago. They know nothing of our Islamic medicine. You bear another
wound, though, that would have much to say to the observant--your
circumcision. That was why I had them put a loincloth on you and lay you
facedown on this rack."

"Lucky for me you were here," Daoud said.

"Not luck," said Erculio. "El Malik deemed it wise that, should you be
made a prisoner, one of his men ought to be among your captors."

_Even here, Baibars's hand reaches out to me_, thought Daoud, feeling a
rush of gratitude.

"Help me to escape," said Daoud. "The guards and the clerk are asleep."

Erculio brought his small hand downward in a gesture of flat rejection.
"There are a hundred men-at-arms on duty up above. The podesta himself
will be down here in an hour. Why can you not make up a story that will
satisfy him? Say you are a Ghibellino. That is what he believes, and
since it is