"Theroulde and Herbert have seen him also. As you love our Lord, do not peril your life. Why has Zeyneb come to Clermont, save to do what failed at Cefalu?"
"Faugh!" growled Richard, "will not God despise me, if I shiver at every gust of danger?"
"As you love my Lady Mary, do this!" pressed Herbert shrewdly, and at Mary's name Richard submitted meekly as a lamb. Thus all that evening Longsword grumbled at the precaution, and swore he would wear no more mail till he came face to face with the unbelievers. But he grumbled no longer, for just as the stars told it was past midnight, he was waked from sound sleep by a blow that sent him to his feet blinking and staggering. And lo, the wall of the tent against which he lay was pierced clean through by a dagger that had broken against the Valencia shirt; for a bit of the blade lay on the canvas. Herbert and De Carnac were swearing loudly that they had not closed an eye all night, but it was Louis who darted into the darkness, and came back with a strange fellow held in no gentle grip. He dragged the prisoner to the dying firelight; they saw his coarse villain's blouse, a spine so bent that he was nigh hunchback, a poll of coarse black hair that scarcely came up to Richard's elbow, a face not unhandsome, but with black eyes very small and teeth sharp and white. One shout greeted him, as he was held before the fire.
"Zeyneb! Zeyneb, the slave of Iftikhar Eddauleh!"
The fellow held down his head, and twisted his face as if to defy recognition.
"Ha!" cried Renard of Toul, "he has a dagger-sheath in his belt! Empty? Ah, the crows will love his bones!"
Richard had found his tongue.
"And does my Lord Iftikhar," asked he in Arabic, "think it cavalier-wise to send out assassins like your worthy self, when he cannot reach his foe with his own arm? This and the deeds at Cefalu put me greatly in his debt—let him be well paid!"
"The arm and eye of the grand prior of the Ismaelians reach to farthest Frankland, my Cid," quoth Zeyneb, standing very limp in Louis's clutch.
"And the arm shall be soon lopped off," retorted the Auvergner. But at that instant his firm hold weakened. Untimely slackening! with a lightning twist and turn Zeyneb had slid from De Valmont's clutches, as if of oil; gone in the dark before the knights could cry out. The night swallowed him as if he were a spectre.