Daoud slung his bow across his back and drew his long,curving saif from the scabbard. The noonday sun flashedon it as he held it high. His men roamed and brandishedtheir own swords.
The band had caught up with them, and the trumpets andhautboys screamed death to the enemy while thekettledrums rumbled.
There was nothing left to protect Charles d'Anjou now.There was not even time for the French leader to run. Heseemed to know it. He had his sword out and he held upa white shield with a red cross.
Urging the Arabian on, shouting the name of God, Daoudraced toward triumph....
ILLUMINATUS! (with Robert Anton Wilson)
SHIKE: TIME OF THE DRAGONS
SHIKE: LAST OF THE ZINJA
ALL THINGS ARE LIGHTS*
THE SARACEN: LAND OF THE INFIDEL*
*Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1989 by Robert Shea
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American CopyrightConventions. Published in the United States of America by BallantineBooks, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, andsimultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-92181
ISBN: 0-345-35933-X
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: April 1989
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 Abdallahlies in bed after a night of battle and defeat. As dawn lightsthe eggshell-white windowpanes in his room, he recalls the eventsthat led him to this bitter hour.
Daoud was born to an English crusading family that had settledin Palestine. Captured by Muslims as a child, he was taken to ElKahira, Cairo, chief city of Egypt, and selected for the Mamelukes,the elite corps of slave warriors gathered from all parts of the MiddleEast 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 tolove the faith of Muhammad, totally and humbly dedicating himselfto its tenets and to the welfare of the Muslim people. He studiedwith Sheikh Saadi, a Sufi mystic, and with the Hashishiyya, thedreaded 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 hugearmy led by Hulagu, grandson of the Tartar conqueror, GenghisKhan, had already conquered Persia and Syria and was poised toattack Egypt. And Hulagu was sending ambassadors to the pope tourge Christian Europ