The Silver Horn Echoes

by Michael Eging

  “Lies,” Blancandrin said curtly. “Emir, do not listen to this man. Charles would never deplete his defenses beyond the mountains. To do so would leave all southern Francia exposed.”

  “Ah, but he does, my dear general,” Honorius countered. “Charles swore before the altar of his great cathedral at Aachen that he would finish the Saxons during this campaign season. He believes his alliance with Barcelona keeps him safe, that it shields him from the might of your master, the caliph.”

  Suddenly Marsilion jolted upright. “Allah be praised!”

  Concern creased Blancandrin’s brow. “Please, my emir. We’re not prepared to launch an assault on the Franks. Barcelona would be at our backs with our supply lines vulnerable.”

  Marsilion’s gaze clouded for a heartbeat. Honorius, sensing him waver, pressed harder. “You can bypass Barcelona easily, Emir. You can be across the mountains and into fresh lands with plentiful forage before he can catch you.”

  “And then the Franks return from Saxony, and they are before us—with Barcelona blocking the return home!” Blancandrin insisted.

  “The Franks will be battered and bruised when they return from Saxony, even if they do win. They will be easy pickings, Emir—and it will take them precious time to regroup to mount a defense in any case. You can take control of a port, I’m sure, and so stay within reach of the caliph’s ships if need be. Perhaps Carcassonne? Now that would be a feather in your cap to take that city.”

  Marsilion looked out at the tiled rooftops of Saragossa, spread out behind strong fortifications and graced by elegant towers and minarets. Beautiful Saragossa was proud of its heritage and painfully cognizant of its singular defeat at the hands of the Franks decades before.

  “Send to the caliph!” he commanded Blancandrin. “We’ll petition him for support. My father’s bones lie on the fields of Tours, and Allah has given us an opportunity to seize a prize that has been denied us for a generation! Now is our time—our time to bring sword and cleansing fire to the infidels!”

  Blancandrin flashed Honorius a dangerous glance. But the Greek simply rocked back on his heels, a smug grin on his face.

  “Tell me, dear Emir,” he asked sweetly, “have you yet saddled the magnificent horses I brought on my last visit? You remember them, a gift from my master, the emperor?”

  AOI

  A low-slung ship, better suited to the warm middle sea than the choppy sullen breakers along the west Frankish coast, glided through the waves toward the dock as the crew shipped their oars. An officer called out a hail, first in Greek and then in German, as the ship’s flank grated against the pier. Bare feet dropped onto creaking planks, and sun-browned men bent backs to hurriedly tie ropes to iron rings embedded in columns jutting up from the sea.

  Demetrius stood upon the foredeck, tanned face turned toward the shore, and he adjusted the imperial cloak that flowed from his shoulders. Beneath a thicket of dark hair, his shadowed eyes scanned the track leading up from the water. No one stood upon either the pathway or along the rough-hewn dock that jutted into the waves. He rubbed absently at his carefully trimmed beard.

  The ship scraped one last time against the pylons as mooring lines were drawn taut. With a shrug, Demetrius jumped to the jetty and strode to the muddy track leading to what many in these parts considered a castle. He, however, held a different view, having lived and worked in fortifications from Antioch to Messina to Constantinople herself—each ringed by miles of stone walls and crenelated gatehouses that would put the muddy earthworks and wooden battlements of the Frank keep to shame. Still, it was what it was, and he marched blithely on. A herald hastened up behind him, motioning with each step for porters to follow with Demetrius’s trunks. From among the crew, two men dressed in dark garments and cloaks, scarves wrapped about their faces, fell into line as well.

  Voices echoed from across a field where a clot of men drilled in time-honored formations of shield and sword. Officers shouted orders, and the men locked shields, all the while maneuvering weapons and marching in well-ordered ranks. Demetrius hiked up his cloak and strode across the rutted ground toward them.

  “Well done, men,” a tall youth in dirty scale armor yelled above the tromping of the formation. “Well done, indeed!”

  The herald stepped forward, placing fine shoes carefully amidst the mud, and announced above the din, “The esteemed Demetrius, legate of the Roman Emperor, requests to speak with the Frank champion!”

  The young man called a halt. The ranks rippled to a stop as men heaved in relief. Then the youth turned to face Demetrius directly. He wiped sweat from his begrimed face and managed a sketchy bow. “There is no champion here, good sir. Just men of the march.”

  Demetrius nodded to the herald to resume his place a few paces behind. “I seek William—William of the Breton March.”

  “He is dead, sir.”

  “Dead?” Demetrius could not afford to miss a breath, even though the news surprised him. “That is sad news indeed. Who is lord here?”

  “The lord of the March has ridden with Charles to Saxony,” Roland replied. “Only the home guard remains to keep watch over the henhouse. But come! Where are my manners? You’ve traveled far, and we’ve meat and drink.”

  Roland playfully booted at a hound that squirmed its way between the men as they entered the great hall. Servants stoked up the fire and began preparations to feed their guests. Demetrius blinked as he stepped into the building, taking a moment for his eyes to adjust to the shadowed interior that smelled of wet dog, smoke, and roasting meat. The Byzantine contingent followed a few paces back, gratefully accepting cups of Frank wine from the servants.

  “But why now?” Roland asked, tossing his gear on the tabletop. “The border has been quiet for nearly a generation.”

  Demetrius took a cup from a serving girl, swirled it gently, gave it a sniff, and finally sipped the contents. “Ahhh, very good! Now where was I? Oh, yes.” He took a seat at the long table, shedding his cloak onto a bench. “Marsilion knows that Charles marches to fight deep in Saxony. The emir covets the lands of southern Francia, as did his fathers before him. My lord, the Emperor Nicephorus fears that with such a move, the emir could cut off the empire from its Christian brethren.’”

  Roland sat across the table. “You’ve proof of this? Proof enough to bring to Charles?”

  Demetrius raised his cup with a dramatic flourish. “Of course!”

  The Greek nodded toward his two shrouded companions standing apart from the others. One man stepped forward quickly and bowed low. The other remained rooted in place, watching with dark, measuring eyes.

  “No need for that,” Roland said, gesturing for the man before him to rise.

  He straightened and lowered the scarf from his face, revealing lean, sun-browned features. He had dark eyebrows, a hawk nose, and a youthful beard that framed a genuine smile. “I am Karim, son of Sulayman, emir of Barcelona,” he announced. “My father is an ally of your king. And this—” he waved the other man forward. “This is Saleem, the very son of Marsilion himself. He bears information on his father’s court for the ears of Charles.”

  Roland set his cup down.

  “The son of Marsilion himself? Here? Why?”

  Saleem shrugged, his slender frame remaining stark straight. He did not make a move to unwrap the scarf. “I am the younger son of an unfavored wife—exiled to seek my own fortune in the world. There’s nothing for me in Saragossa, and so, here I am.”

  Roland nodded. It was a practiced, brief litany that Saleem had clearly had to repeat too often already. “I know what it means to be a captive of your birth.” He turned to Demetrius once more. “You have the advantage of me, sir. I am more than intrigued.” He finished his drink and called for another. “Now then. Tell me about this plot.”

  The room was quiet with just enough sunlight coming through the window to allow Gisela to focus on the detail in
her needlework. Bright patterns reminded her of the wildflowers of her childhood home in Aachen and usually served to divert her attention from the clattering arms that accompanied her son’s incessant drilling of the marchmen beyond the keep’s walls. And today she felt she needed the diversion. There were many days like this of late. Indeed her room was decked in tapestries stitched methodically by her own hands over the years, as well as those created by her mother and sisters in days long past. Scenes of warriors mounted on armored horses on hunts through verdant woods were interspersed with more idyllic scenes of gardens and dancing nobles, hanging ready to transport her to distant memories far afield from Breton March. She wrapped herself in these reminisces of another place and time, a lost world as out of reach as the march was from her brother Charles the king, or a separation as final as from her beloved William, Charles’s once champion and father to her son.

  There was a knock at the door. Gisela looked up.

  “Yes, do come in.”

  Roland cracked open the door. “Am I disturbing you?” he ventured.

  “My dear—no, not at all.”

  He slipped in, closed the door behind him, and took a seat on the stool next to her.

  “You have a talent for fine detail,” he observed. “You know, I could never do that.”

  She looked up at him, a smile touching her lips. “When my father and brothers rode to war, I learned to occupy my time. But you didn’t come to hear a mother’s silly stories, did you?”

  “I love your stories, especially of our family,” Roland admitted. “They make all this bearable. But you’re right—I needed to speak with you. Word has reached me of a danger to the kingdom. I must bear that information to Charles.”

  Gisela set the needlepoint on the cushion next to her with trembling hands.

  “What danger?” she whispered.

  “An attack from Iberia, south of the Pyrenees. Saragossa is preparing to wrest Aquitaine from the kingdom. The messenger must reach Charles on the Saxon frontier.”

  She looked up at him, remembering his face just years before as a young boy—a child with his father’s eyes. “But Ganelon ordered you to stay here at the march.”

  “Please, Mother, don’t command me in his name. Not in his name. His creature, the priest, watches my every move.”

  “And what would you have me say?” she asked in a hushed voice. She stole a reflexive look at the closed door, as if she could hear Petras’s breathing on the other side. “I must keep faith. I keep my vows with God. Ganelon entered into this marriage to watch over me, over the march.”

  Roland leaned forward, his voice urgent. “Taking to himself his dead friend’s wife—really, Mother. Father was barely cold.”

  She clenched her fists, bracing herself. “What are you saying?”

  He took her hands in his, the gentle touch of his calloused fingers smoothing out her knotted joints. “What you’re afraid to say, Mother. Father’s wound was clean—he was on the mend. It’s before us all.”

  She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “You’ve no proof of this!”

  “Mother,” Roland continued. “You are gentle and kind. You seek the best in everyone. I beg you, please set aside your nature. When you arrive at Aachen, look carefully through Father’s belongings. Tell me if you find anything amiss.”

  A pang tightened in her chest, nearly choking the next words that escaped her lips. “What kind of things?”

  “I don’t know. But there may be something that strikes you as out of place.”

  She pulled her hands from his, her voice shaking, “I do my duty to my husband, but you tear at my heart!”

  Roland’s expression softened, and he wrapped her in his arms.

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said. “But I must know the truth. That alone must guide my actions from here on.”

  Saleem felt drained and ashamed. Let one more lout ask me the tale, he thought bitterly. Are they so thick that they cannot understand why I am here? He stood in the midst of the fort’s yard, watching the comings and goings of the Franks with disdain. He swallowed hard, driving his scorn far down out of sight. Chickens and goats mingled freely with Roland’s squires. It was no real surprise, though. These Franks were but human flotsam lapping at the edges of the caliphate—barbarians playing at being civilized.

  The question had been posed many ways but remained the same. “What brings you so far from the court of your father, Marsilion?” Idiots. So their church forbade multiple wives—that didn’t stop them from siring braces of bastards on whatever comely housemaids would lift their skirts. And they knew what fate awaited those accursed offspring. His half brother Farad knew as well, he whose harlot mother Ashifa had gained favor in Marsilion’s eyes with her lithe body and flowered words. She whose Arabian family was more highly prized than the allied Visigoths of his own mother Braminunde’s royal house. Farad had been handed the keys to the kingdom. Farad was showered with glory in Saragossa, while Saleem ignored the stink of these beggared Franks’ muddy trackless “empire” while plying the only coin he had in this wilderness beyond the Pyrenees—information.

  It should be Farad begging for scraps from the Frank table. It should be Ashifa crying in the night for her lost son!

  A baby bawled, and a heavy-bosomed woman with field muck caked to her aprons set down a basket of potatoes to nurse it. The infant latched on desperately. Like a flea, Saleem thought.

  Like me.

  He could feel the eyes upon him, this stranger in their midst. Even here, in this backwater armpit of Europa, one could see travelers from far lands—Celts, Turks, Rus, and judging by overheard snatches of conversations, even Ethiopes ventured this far north. But no one had ever seen the likes of Saleem before. Arab by name and by dress, but bearing an odd mix of a Saracen’s dark skin and the light hair of a Germanic noble. The alabaster walls of Saragossa were gone for good, exchanged for the rancid grime of the Frankish hinterlands, but the wary distrust was the same. A burly sergeant stalked by, and his eyes swept over Saleem with a flinty hardness. Saleem fingered the jeweled dagger at his waist. Such a look in Saragossa would not openly be tolerated, though even there he had felt such looks at his back.

  Karim emerged from the great hall and crossed the muddy ground, a grin upon his face. He thumped Saleem on the shoulder when he drew near.

  “Why so glum, my friend?”

  “Oh … let’s see …” His eyes swept across the yard. “We are consigned to a shit-hole nest of lice-infested Germans. I betray my own blood that has washed their hands of me. How could I not be overwhelmed with joy?”

  Karim’s smile faded into sudden disquiet.

  Now it was Saleem’s turn to slap Karim on the back. “‘Why are you so glum, my brother’?” he mocked. “We are on a mission to save a barbarian kingdom from the evils of the decadent south. What more could we desire?”

  AOI

  The courtyard surged with the activity of a handful of troopers who saddled their horses and made final preparations for the journey. In that group, Demetrius and his companions—with their brightly colored travel clothes, burnished armor, and exotically furnitured weapons—stood out from the homespun heavy wool of the marchmen. Kennick, at the ready with Roland’s great roan, held the spirited beast’s head as Roland buckled his shield and sword in place behind the saddle, snugged the girth, then swung up onto her back.

  “Sir,” he said. “The men will fight for you, as surely as they did for your father.”

  Roland reached down and squeezed the man’s shoulder.

  “Ganelon rules here by Charles’s command,” he said. “I’m willing to risk myself. But I won’t ask the men to join me in disobeying his order.”

  Roland took the reins from Kennick and touched his heels to the steed’s flanks. The horse danced away, and the remaining members of the party fell in—Oliver, the B
yzantines, the pair of youths from the distant south, and a handful of Frank soldiers as escort. Roland raised a hand in salute to those remaining behind and then urged his horse toward the gate.

  “Men of the march!” Kennick roared over the milling soldiers crowding the courtyard. “Will you send your master off in silence?”

  The men broke into a raucous cheer as the party rumbled across the drawbridge.

  Far above, Gisela stood at the bedroom window casement, thoughtfully rubbing her rounded belly as she watched Roland’s company reach the road and break into a gallop. A nursemaid in a simple linen smock took Gisela’s hands in hers.

  “Come away, my lady,” she said. “You’ll catch the death of cold.”

  “Death of cold?” Gisela’s eyes remained on the company that now raced between the fields to the forests beyond. “My son leaves me with a heavy burden. Death might be a comfort.”

  The nursemaid tugged at Gisela’s hands.

  “Please, my lady. Let’s not have such talk. You’ve a child to be concerned with.”

  “More than one, Ruth. Though it seems I’ve already failed the oldest.”

  Buds dotted the tree limbs with a thin veneer of green as all around the Breton March the forest struggled to emerge from its winter slumber. Along the rutted road, the men rode in silence, now at a brisk walk intended to cover the miles without exhausting their mounts. Roland, his cloak flowing behind him like the wings of a great predatory bird, sat tall in his saddle several yards ahead of the rest. Oliver urged his chestnut steed to catch up and filled his lungs with great draughts of the crisp air, glad to be out of the closeness of the keep once again.

  Roland grinned at his friend then squeezed his knees to his horse’s ribs. The mare burst willingly into a long gallop. Oliver laughed and with a flick of his reins took up the challenge, chasing after him. The men of the company frantically followed behind as the two youths raced through farm and field before Roland finally slowed his heaving horse to allow Oliver to reach his side once more.