'Lord commander! Here!' called the remaining scout.

De Bracineaux joined the man at the edge of the clearing. 'What have you found?'

'It appears to be barley meal,' replied the knight, stooping low over a pale heap of sodden matter.

The commander knelt, and removing a glove, picked up some of the soggy stuff. He rubbed it between his fingers, held it under his nose and sniffed. 'I think you are right.'

'There must be a quarter of a barrel spilled there,' the knight pointed out. 'Either someone was very careless -

'Or in a very great hurry,' concluded the Templar commander. 'Too great a hurry to salvage what he had spilled.'

'And there,' said the scout, pointing to four shallow, evenly spaced indentations. 'Those could be from the wagon wheels.'

D'Anjou approached and sat on his horse a little distance away. 'Does anyone smell what I am smelling?' he asked, lifting his beak-like nose into the air. 'Something has given up the ghost.'

De Bracineaux walked to where d'Anjou, head tilted back, was sifting the air for the scent. 'It is somewhere off through there,' he said, pointing across the clearing towards a stand of taller trees.

Sergeant Gislebert and the additional men arrived just then. De Bracineaux met them in the centre of the clearing. 'There is something dead in those trees just there,' he said, pointing to the place d'Anjou indicated. 'Start your search there. Call out if you find anything.'

The Templars hastened off into the wood, and almost immediately the cry came back. 'Commander! There is a grave!'

Baron D'Anjou smiled as he dismounted, '/may never be right, but this nose of mine is rarely wrong.' He followed the commander into the wood and they quickly arrived in another small clearing to find the Templars standing beside a wide rectangle of mounded earth. A crude cross was pressed into the soft dirt, and around it were the spent stubs of burnt branches.

De Bracineaux took one look at the mound and said, 'Dig it up.'

The knights hesitated. One of their number made bold to reply. 'My lord commander,' he said, pointing to the cross, 'Christians are buried here.'

'Unless you wish to join them,' growled the commander, 'do as I say. Dig it up!'

Still the knights hesitated. 'My lord,' said Gislebert, speaking up, 'the shovel is in the wagon back there.'

'Damn the shovel, Gislebert! You have swords, do you not? Hands? Dig!'

Slowly, and with great reluctance, the Templars began to burrow into the soft wet earth with their bare hands. With every handful of dirt they removed, the stink d'Anjou had noticed grew stronger.

Soon the men were holding their noses with one hand and digging half-heartedly with the other as, slowly, five human forms began to emerge.

'Dig, damn you!' cried de Bracineaux, growing impatient. The soil was less damp nearer the bodies, and the stench all the stronger. The Templars continued to scoop away the dirt, one or two with tears streaming down their beards, the rest clutching the edge of their cloaks to their faces. Slowly, individual bodies were revealed. There were five of them; two big men in dark brown cloaks laid out on either side of a slender man in black.

'Hold!' called the commander, bending near. 'What have we here?' He pointed to the one in the centre. 'Pull the hood away from his face.'

The nearest knight did as he was told, and pulled the hood of the corpse's dark robe from his face. The flesh was wan and waxy, but the cold ground had prevented the body from bloating so it still resembled the man that had been. The beard was black against the bloodless pallor of his skin, and the lips held the hint of a smile.

'It looks like a priest,' said the Templar, pulling a small wooden cross from beneath a fold in the robe.

De Bracineaux nodded. 'What about these others?' he said, indicating the corpses either side of the priest. Another knight pulled back a hood covering one of the faces. Here the worms were at work on the eyes; the sudden sight of squirming, half-empty sockets proved too much for the knight, who jerked back his hand as if he had been burned.

'A Spaniard,' observed d'Anjou. 'Judging from their clothing, so are the others.' Indicating the priest, he said, 'Do you think that could be Matthias?'

De Bracineaux nodded. 'Five dead,' he mused. 'If the villagers at the last place were telling the truth, she has only six left.'

'Do you want me to bring the archbishop to see the priest?' asked Gislebert.

'He insists they never laid eyes on one another,' replied d'Anjou.

'Bring him anyway,' the commander ordered, 'for all the good it will do. By the Rood, I wish I had sent him back; the man is a very millstone.' Turning to the knights standing nearby, he said, 'Well? Search the rest of the area, and be quick about it.'

In the end, they found nothing else-save the ragged remains of three human carcasses which had been gnawed by animals. The dead were Moorish, from what they could gather from the remains and scraps of clothing. Of the company that had been attacked, no further signs were found, so Commander de Bracineaux ordered his scouts to begin scouring the area, working out in ever-widening circles from the camp, in the hope of raising the trail again.

The day ended without success, but the next morning one of the scouts found a small heap of rocks beside a nearby stream-and another on the opposite side, pointing the way. 'They passed this way, and marked the place,' the scout told them. 'They seem to be heading into the mountains.'

'Hear that, d'Anjou?' said the commander. 'We have found the trail.' Lifting his eyes to the mountains in the distance showing above the trees, he continued, 'The hind is swift, but the hound is persistent. We will yet run her to ground. And when we do, I will tear her apart.'

Despite Danji's revelation and the urgency of her warning, Cait dined with Hasan again that night, and also the next. In any event, she had little choice. Rognvald and the knights were still away, and she could think of no reasonable apology she might offer to excuse herself without rousing unnecessary suspicion-all the more since she ardently professed to enjoy their evenings together. And she did enjoy them, albeit somewhat warily now as she tried to determine the nature of the danger Danji had intimated.

She perceived no change in Prince Hasan; he remained as charming and engaging as ever, and each evening's meal was pure enchantment from beginning to end. Still, the worm of doubt had begun to gnaw its way into her heart. Was he, or was he not, the man she thought him to be?

During the day, she pondered this question, turning it over and over in her mind. On the one hand, she could not discern anything amiss in either mood or manner: he was solicitous, thoughtful, respectful and polite in every way. On the other hand, there was Danji. If she was telling the truth-and Cait had no reason to doubt her-Hasan was not at all as he appeared.

Although she looked for any opportunity to speak to Danji alone, she did not see the slender young woman again-but she did notice that Jubayar was much more attentive and present than previously.

On the second day, the storm subsided and by dusk the sky had cleared. Cait decided to try the prince's integrity for herself. When they met for dinner that evening, she said, 'The storm has abated, and that is a blessing. Therefore, I was hoping we might ride to one of the valley settlements and enquire whether anyone has word of AH Waqqar.'

'Of course, my lovely Ketmia; if that is what you wish,' replied the prince smoothly. 'After so many days shut inside, even the most splendid palace becomes dreary as a prison. We will ride down to the valley and see if the seeds I planted have borne fruit.' He paused, as if considering the matter more thoroughly. 'Although -' he began, then hesitated. 'No, it is not important.'