d
Christians to persecute them." Daoud shook his head. Even Christians
were treated better than that in al-Islam.

_I did not know. Somehow, out of all that I learned about the Christian
world, that detail about hats for Jews was left out. A little thing, too
trivial to be mentioned. What other deadly little omissions lie in wait
for me?_

He felt like a man in chains. He would have to keep Celino with him, and
the prospect infuriated him.

As they continued riding westward, Daoud heard the boy weeping. It made
him think of nights in the Mameluke barracks on Raudha Island when he
lay on his pallet, biting his knuckles so no one would hear him sob as
he cried for his mother and father and for himself so lost and lonely.

_I will help the boy bury his father. If it does not endanger us._

This boy, too, was lost and lonely. As Daoud had been while training to
be a Mameluke.

As Nicetas had been.

* * * * *

It had been a chilly day, the day that Daoud and Nicetas became friends.

Huge gray clouds billowed in the east, over the Sinai desert. In the lee
of a cliff formed of giant blocks of red sandstone, a dozen small tents
clustered.

On a restless brown pony with a barrel-shaped body, Daoud waited in a
line of nearly thirty julbans, Mamelukes in training, similarly mounted.
Soon it would be his turn to ride past the wooden ring that a pair of
slaves was swinging from side to side between the legs of a scaffold. In
his hand Daoud grasped a rumh, a lightweight lance longer than a man's
body, with a tip of sharpened bone.

On a low rise of brown gravel, Mahmoud, the Circassian naqeeb in charge
of their training troop, sat astride a sleek brown Arab half blood. He
looked almost regal in his long scarlet kaftan and reddish-brown fur
cap. His beard was full and gray, and a necklace of gold coins hung down
to his waist. The boys wore round caps of undyed cotton cloth and
striped robes, and they rode scrubby ponies.

From atop a galloping horse, each boy was expected to hurl his rumh
unerringly through the ring, whose diameter was two handspans. The ring
was attached to three strong, slender ropes. One rope suspended it from
the scaffold; the other two went out to either side, where the slaves
held them. Pulling in turn on the ropes, the two slaves swung the ring
from side to side.

The boy just ahead of Daoud in line was a new member of the troop of
young Mamelukes. His face was sm