Daoud inclined his head. "Your family's love of falconry is well known to your admirers in the lands of Islam. My lord the sultan considers you an old friend and hopes that you will see fit to help him in his time of need."
Manfred held out his hands, palms up. "If I can."
"Now the Tartars have fallen upon the lands of Islam," Daoud said. "They have conquered Persia. They have a hundred thousand mounted warriors in the field, and allies and auxiliaries. They have leveled our holy city of Baghdad, destroyed it utterly, and killed every man, woman, and child who lived there, even the Commander of the Faithful, our caliph himself. These are no fanciful tales, Sire. I have fought against the Tartars. I have seen with my own eyes the ashes of Baghdad and the heaps of its dead."
The scene of desolation arose in his mind as it had so many times before, the gray plain where a city had been, the unbelievable sight of a landscape strewn with rotting, headless corpses as far as the eye could see. To put it out of his mind, he hurried on with what he had to say.
"Now their armies advance through Syria, threatening the realm of my lord, the Sultan of Cairo. We have had word that Hulagu Khan, commander of the Tartar armies in Persia, has sent two high-ranking emissaries to the pope. They are sailing across the Middle Sea now, from the island of Cyprus to Venice. Hulagu Khan wants to form an alliance with the Christian rulers of Europe to attack us from both directions at once, east and west. Our whole people, our whole Muslim faith, could be utterly wiped out."
Manfred nodded grimly. "And all of Christian Europe would rejoice at your destruction. Not I, certainly, but the rest of them. What do you propose to do about these Tartar emissaries to the pope?"
"For that I will need your help, Sire. I, too, will go to the pope's court. I understand that he resides at Orvieto, a small town north of Rome."
"Yes," Lorenzo put in, "and there he will stay. He has not set foot in Rome since he galloped in to be crowned at Saint Peter's and galloped out again. He is terrified of the Roman mob. As well he should be, since most of their leaders are in our pay."
"Trade secrets, Celino," said Manfred, raising a cautioning finger. "So, you will go to Orvieto. And then?"
"I will present myself at the pope's court as I have here, as David, a merchant of Trebizond. I will take up residence with—friends—who can help me reach the ears of men of influence. I will spread stories throughout Orvieto—true stories—of the horrors the Tartars have perpetrated everywhere they have gone, of their determination to conquer the entire world."