_De Verceuil offending Fra Tomasso would be even better than de Verceuil shouting at de Gobignon. If there were a way I could make that happen. Sophia, working through de Gobignon?_ Even though his Sufi training helped him keep his mind clear, puzzling out this new idea was beyond his present powers after all the wine he had drunk. Daoud let his head fall forward, and his eyes met the penetrating black gaze of John Chagan. John was drunk, and he did not speak the language of these people. But Daoud saw understanding in the crinkled brown face. John could not know Daoud was a Mameluke, but he knew him for an enemy. He looked at Daoud with the same icy determination to annihilate all enemies as Daoud had seen staring at him from under the fur-and-iron helmets of the Tartars at the Well of Goliath. And Daoud, slumped in his chair, felt the same implacable resolution he had felt that day, to fight back until the last invader was driven from the Dar al-Islam, the Abode of Islam. * * * * * The Tartar army appeared as a darkness across the eastern horizon, deepening as it spread. Curry-colored clouds towered above the gray-black line like mile-high djinns. The distant thunder of hooves reached the Mameluke commanders as they halted in the plain between the hills of Galilee and the mountains of Gilboa near a village called Ain Jalut, the Well of Goliath. A fierce sun beat down on yellow grass and dusty tamarisks. El Malik al-Mudhaffar Qutuz was mounted on a milk-white stallion from Hedjaz in the midst of his emirs. Baibars al-Bunduqdari rode a fawn-colored half-blood mare, part Arabian and part steppe pony. Daoud, in his early twenties and risen through the ranks of Baibars's personal guard to be second in command of the orta, fifteen thousand strong, sat on his sturdy Yemenite stallion before the other emirs. His red turban shaded his face and shielded his steel helmet from the sun. His chest was encased in the breastplate of an emir, steel inlaid with gold. The Mameluke emirs, bashis and muqaddams wore their fortunes into battle--gold bracelets and belts, jeweled rings, necklaces of coins. Jewels sparkled on their belt buckles and the scabbards and hilts of their scimitars, on their turbans, on the toes of their boots, on their fingers. Over their mail shirts and gold-inlaid breastplates the emirs wore velvet vests and long khalats of crimson or gold satin, lined with white silk, fastened with gold buttons, trimmed with silver thread at the collars and cuffs and hems. Silk turbans were wound around their helmets, red, blue, yellow, pinned with jeweled clasps and adorned with the plumes of rare birds. Tied tight around their waists were wide shawls printed with stars and crescents. Their boots were of soft leather, crimson-dyed, with silver spurs, gold buckles, and pointed toes. _And all that I have_, Daoud thought, _may be torn from me in an instant today_.