Have a care, he warned himself. What happens today will be as God wants. I want only whatever God wants.
He jerked on the reins of his brown Arabian to turn toward the French charge. They were still far away. The valley was long. He called Omar and Husain to him.
"Bows and arrows. Spread out in a line. When we are formed up, advance at a trot on my signal."
He unstrapped his bow from his saddle and slung it over his shoulder and across his chest.
The five flag men lined up behind Daoud. On their right rode a naqeeb holding high the green banner of the Sons of the Falcon, inscribed in dazzling white lettering with a verse from the Koran: HAVE THEY NOT SEEN THE BIRDS OBEDIENT IN MIDAIR? NONE UPHOLDETH THEM SAVE GOD.
Omar rode down the line relaying Daoud's orders to the officers and flag men. When all was ready, Daoud raised his hand and brought it down. A single line of two hundred horsemen, they moved out at a trot. While his men could fire arrows from a galloping horse, the slower the horse was moving, the more accurate the shooting.
He could see what was coming at him much more clearly now. The middle and rear ranks of the crusaders were obscured by dust, but in the front ranks a hundred or more helmeted heads bent over the armored brows of their huge horses. The long poles of their steel-tipped lances pointed at him.
To be hit by one of those knights galloping at that speed, with all that weight of steel and horseflesh, would be like being hit by a boulder from a stone caster. If the Franks got much closer, there would be no stopping them.
Daoud unslung his bow. From the corner of his eye he saw the flag men, whose duty it was to watch his moves and signals, lift five red pennants high. He did not need to look to know that the Sons of the Falcon had all dropped their horses' reins, guiding their horses with their knees, and were drawing their bows.
His bow, like those his men carried, was double-curved, made of multiple layers of horn and hardwood. His arrow had a thick steel tip that could punch through mail armor like a spike driven by a hammer. He took aim at a big Frank in the middle of the line. The intersection of the limbs of the red cross on the Frank's white surcoat made a perfect spot to aim at. Between two beats of his Arabian's hooves, he loosed his arrow.