Daoud, Lorenzo, and Barth all bowed in assent. Daoud felt a surge of joy. He had succeeded in persuading Manfred to strike at Charles. Manfred's reasons for not wanting to move were sound ones, he knew. He had spent long hours considering them himself, but he was certain that if Manfred did nothing, he was surely doomed. At this moment Manfred and Charles were nearly evenly matched, Manfred a little stronger, Charles growing in strength. To a great extent it would be luck--or the will of God--that determined the outcome. Daoud could not control luck or God. But he could make the best possible plan and give his all to it. Suddenly, he badly wanted to get back to Sophia in Lucera. Usually he enjoyed being out with the troops, overseeing their training. Today he begrudged the time. Every moment seemed precious. Three months would be gone before he and Sophia realized it. Then he would be riding with Manfred's army, perhaps never to see her again. He must make sure she would be safe no matter what happened. Perhaps Ugolini or Tilia could help. Sophia would want to travel with the army--with him--north. She was not a woman to pine at home while men marched away. He must discourage her; it was too dangerous. But to discourage her would probably be impossible. * * * * * Simon listened to the drumming hooves behind him on the dirt road and thought, _I will be hearing this sound all day long every day for months_. He supposed that after a while he would no longer notice it, but today, the day after his departure from Chateau Gobignon, his ears seemed to ache from the incessant pounding. And the hoofbeats were a constant reminder that he was really leading the Gobignon host to war. All summer long the conviction had been growing upon him that this was a bad war, and all the suffering it caused, all the deaths and mutilations, would be on his conscience forever. No matter that the pope had proclaimed it a holy crusade against the blasphemer Manfred. Popes could be wrong about wars. Simon's father, Roland, had vividly described for him the horrors of the Albigensian crusade of a generation ago, when knights of northern France had fallen upon Languedoc like a pack of wolves--like Tartars, in fact--reducing it to ruins. And that crusade had been proclaimed by a pope.