Even as these thoughts passed through his mind, Daoud had been surprised to see the two Tartars with two of their Armenian guards stride past him.
Of course, he thought, de Gobignon must have realized that the Tartars might be a target, and he was moving them to a safer place.
For a moment the Tartars had been abreast of him. Two poisoned darts from the Scorpion would do it.
But, just then, a dozen or so Monaldeschi archers, crossbows loaded and cranked back, had trotted into the kitchen and nearby rooms and taken up stations by the embrasures. Daoud, his body aquiver with excitement, the little crossbow already in his hands, had sunk back into hiding. If he shot the Tartars, he might have been able to escape the two Armenians, but so many men-at-arms would certainly kill or, worse, capture him. And once they discovered who he was, Sophia, Ugolini, all those working with him, would swiftly be in the hands of the Franks.
Seething with frustration, he had watched an Armenian open a cellar trapdoor. The two Tartars and the two Armenian guards descended out of sight.
Daoud, still crouched behind the water cask, then decided that God had been kind to him. Even if he had been denied this opportunity to kill them, at least he had seen where the Tartars were.
He had sat in his hiding place, relaxed but alert, listening to the Monaldeschi bowmen shout encouragement to one another as they fired on the Filippeschi trying to cross the piazza. The arrow slits were cut through the thick walls in angled pairs so that two archers side by side would have a full field of fire. After a while Daoud began to despair of ever getting into the cellar.
Several times servants came running to fill buckets from the cask to put out fires in the atrium. Crouched in the darkness behind the cask, Daoud saw, grouped around it, buckets, pots, and kettles, all sorts of vessels, already filled with water for immediate use.
Long after the battle began, a pageboy came running down the stairs to the ground floor with an order for the archers to come up to the roof.
They left only one man to watch through the arrow slots. His back, sheathed in a shiny brown leather cuirass, was turned toward Daoud. The noise of fighting from outside was loud enough, Daoud thought, to mask any sound he might make.