Behind Manfred, all on glossy palfreys and wearing mail shirts, rode his Swabian knights, Lorenzo Celino and Erhard Barth in the first rank. The Swabians' grandfathers had come to Sicily to serve the Hohenstaufens, and they still spoke German among themselves. Like their king, they wore no helmets, but most of them had fur-trimmed hoods drawn tight around their heads to protect them from the February wind. Above them fluttered the yellow Hohenstaufen banner with its double-headed black eagle. The column of knights, four abreast, stretched westward down this main road. The lines of helmets and pennoned lances disappeared over the crest of a pass cutting through the bleak mountain range that formed the rocky spine of Italy. Snow outlined the crevices in the rocks that towered above the army of Sicily. Manfred's host moved at a leisurely rate Daoud found typically European. The march west, after they had assembled at Lucera, had taken two weeks. The mounted warriors were held to the pace of the foot soldiers. Twice the army had been struck by sleet storms that changed the road into a river of mud. Rather than press on, as Baibars would have, Manfred had ordered his army to halt and seek shelter in hillside forests. In some of the valleys the army had been able to spread out and march briskly over frozen fields and pastures. But then, along a mountainside or through a pass, the road would close down again, and the flow of troops would slow to a trickle. Daoud turned back to Nuwaihi. "Were you close enough to the road to see the Tartars I told you of? Two small brown men with slanted eyes?" "Yes, effendi, they were riding near the head of the Franks. Just as you told me, they had eight mounted men wearing red cloaks guarding them. And before and after them marched many men carrying crossbows." _Their people are such masters of war. How they will laugh at the idiotic way Christians fight each other._ Daoud wondered whether the enemy army were mostly Frenchmen, or as mixed a host as Manfred's troops were. Manfred's thousand knights and four thousand men-at-arms included Swabians, south Italians, Sicilians, and Muslims. _If only, instead of three scouts, we had three hundred men lying in ambush along that road, we could have broken Charles's attack and perhaps killed him and the Tartars then and there._ Daoud thanked Nuwaihi, Abdul, and Said and sent them to join the Sons of the Falcon, riding today as the rear guard. He rode back to Manfred, hoping he could persuade the king and his commanders to use wisely the great army they had assembled. Soon Manfred, Erhard Barth, several of Manfred's German and Italian commanders, Lorenzo, and Daoud were dismounted and gathered in a field beside the line of march. Manfred's orderly had brought a map of the region and spread it out on the ground, weighting the edges with rocks.