It seemed hours later when he at last stirred himself. Sobbing, he carried Nicetas out to a place near the mouth of the crevice, where the sand had drifted in, and with his hands he dug there a grave. All along the base of the hillside were many loose brown stones, chipped away by the eternal wind. With bleeding hands he piled the stones high over Nicetas's body, but tried to make the pile look like a rock slide, so that no one would know someone was buried here. He knelt, weeping and talking to Nicetas's spirit, until the sun was low in the west.
As Nicetas had told him to do, Daoud had pretended, when he came back from the desert, that he had no idea what had happened to his friend. The naqeeb had declared that Sudanese tribesmen or wild animals must have gotten him. Daoud was not alone in his grief. Many of the boys in the troop had liked Nicetas.
Even Kassar had said words of sympathy, his face expressionless and his slanted eyes opaque. Daoud held in his rage, a white-hot furnace in his heart, and in a choked voice he thanked Kassar.
At first he went about in a daze, unable to think. He told himself that in spite of his dissembling, Kassar would be on guard. He would have to choose a time to take his revenge when Kassar would be preoccupied. And Daoud himself must be alert at all times. Kassar might not be satisfied with killing only Nicetas. In spite of these warnings to himself, Daoud's mind remained numb. He was, he told himself, like a mall ball, hit one way by grief, the other way by rage, unable to take control of his destiny.
That thought of mall gave him the beginning of a plan.
He let three months go by from the day he found Nicetas. His plan was very simple. It left much to luck, and it might fail utterly—Kassar might anticipate what he was going to do and turn the moment against him, killing him and claiming he was defending himself. Kassar's friends might thwart Daoud.
He would have only this one chance. If he failed, he would be dead or crippled. Or worst of all, cast out of the Mamelukes to spend the rest of his life as a ghulman, a menial slave. But if he succeeded, Nicetas would be avenged before Baibars and Sultan Qutuz and all Daoud's and Nicetas's khushdashiya.
Whatever punishment might befall him then, he thought he could bear it for Nicetas's sake.