nconsistent hyphenation has
been standardised.

Thanks to Michael Shea for giving Project Gutenberg permission to
distribute _The Saracen: The Holy War_.

PROLOGUE

A summary of _The Saracen_ Book One, _Land of the Infidel_

_A.D. April 12, 1264 / 4th day of Jumada, A.H. 662_

Feverish, his arrow-wounded leg throbbing, Daoud ibn Abdallah lies in
bed after a night of battle and defeat. As dawn lights the
eggshell-white windowpanes in his room, he recalls the events that led
him to this bitter hour.

Daoud was born to an English crusading family that had settled in
Palestine. Captured by Muslims as a child, he was taken to El Kahira,
Cairo, chief city of Egypt, and selected for the Mamelukes, the elite
corps of slave warriors gathered from all parts of the Middle East to
serve the sultans of El Kahira.

He became a favorite of a leading Mameluke emir, Baibars. Young and in
need of comfort, he converted to Islam. He came to love the faith of
Muhammad, totally and humbly dedicating himself to its tenets and to the
welfare of the Muslim people. He studied with Sheikh Saadi, a Sufi
mystic, and with the Hashishiyya, the dreaded sect known in Europe as
the Assassins.

In those years the Tartars, invincible legions of mounted barbarians,
had come out of Asia, invading the Islamic world. A huge army led by
Hulagu, grandson of the Tartar conqueror, Genghis Khan, had already
conquered Persia and Syria and was poised to attack Egypt. And Hulagu
was sending ambassadors to the pope to urge Christian Europe to join
with the Tartars in destroying the Muslims.

Should Tartars and crusaders strike at Egypt simultaneously, the people
and faith Daoud has come to love would perish. Daoud has seen with his
own eyes how the Tartars obliterated Baghdad, its 200,000 men, women,
and children slaughtered to the last soul, the city leveled, a
wasteland. He is determined that the same fate not befall his adopted El
Kahira.

Baibars--having made himself Sultan of El Kahira--sent Daoud into the
land of the infidel. Because Daoud is blond and gray-eyed, no one would
ever suspect him to be a Saracen, as Christians call all Muslims.

Daoud's mission was to go to the court of the pope and use every means
necessary--from intrigue and bribery to assassination and outright
war--to stop Christians and Tartars from forming an alliance against
Islam.

He went first to Manfred, king of southern Italy and Sicily. King
Manfred'