A little before dawn, when the camp had quieted at last, to rest for an hour or two and restore its strength for the march, Oliver followed the count into his tent. It was not the first time he had done that; Roland looked at him without surprise. “I think you should sleep tonight,” he said with careful gentleness.
Oliver blushed. That was not what he had been thinking of at all. He said so, bluntly.
Roland’s brows went up. Perhaps he believed it. Perhaps he did not. After a moment he shrugged, one-sided, and went about stripping for sleep.
“Roland,” said Oliver.
Something in his tone brought Roland about. He had his drawers in his hand. Oliver could count all the scars on the fine brown skin, the bruises of his struggle tonight and his hunt this morning, and one on his neck that men in the camp called the sweetseller’s brand.
“Roland,” Oliver said again. “There’s something you should know.”
And Oliver told him, all of it, word for word as he remembered it. Roland listened in silence that deepened the longer it lasted.
“I may have misunderstood everything,” Oliver said at the end. “You know how bad my Greek is.”
“Yes,” said Roland, soft and still. “I know.” His eyes were wide; in rushlight they seemed blurred, as if with sleep.
He shook himself suddenly, blinked, was Roland again. But not, quite, Roland. Roland was a wild man, everyone knew it. Such news as this should have driven him raving mad.
But Oliver was not everyone, and he had known Roland since they shared the nurse’s breast. He laid a hand on the slender shoulder, “Brother. Don’t think it.”
“Why?” asked Roland. “What am I thinking?”
“You know what will happen if you kill your father. Even a stepfather. You can’t do it. The king needs you too badly.”
“Kill? Did I say kill?”
“Roland - “
“Oliver.” Roland closed his hand over Oliver’s. “Brother, I won’t kill him. Even I am hardly that vast a fool.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Nothing.” Roland said it with appalling lightness. “Except thank you for the knowledge. And - yes, brother nurse, keep watch against treachery.”
“You’re too calm,” said Oliver.
He was. He was not trembling, that Oliver could see or feel or sense. He looked as if he had learned nothing more terrible than that his third-best charger had - a girth-gall. “I’m . . . almost. . . Yes, I’m glad,” he said. “I’ve always known what a snake that man is. Now he lays the proof in my hands. Let him strike at me. Then the king can deal with him.”
“And if you die of the stroke?”
“I won’t die. I gave you my oath, don’t you remember? I’ll never die before you. We’ll go together, or not at all. And,” said Roland, “it’s not you he wants, or will touch.”
Oliver was by no means comforted. But Roland had heard all he wanted to hear. He flung his arms about his milkbrother and hugged him till his ribs creaked, and thrust him away. “Go to bed, brother nurse. Here, if you will, but I tell you truly, I intend to do no more than sleep.”
“Here, then,” said Oliver, not even trying to match his lightness. And he kept his word. Two cloaks and a blanket were ample for them both; and Roland humoured a friend. He let Oliver take the outside.
* * * *
2
Oliver did not know whether to be glad or to be more wary than ever. Days, they had marched. They had broken down the walls of Pamplona, almost for sport, to soothe the Arabs’ fears, and left them there with the pick of the spoil. The ambassador from Baghdad lingered, and would linger, it was clear, until the king saw fit to dismiss him or his own caliph called him back. Likewise the envoys from Byzantium. The king was a battleground, and well he knew it; he seemed to find it amusing, when he troubled to think of it at all.
No one had moved to strike Roland. No dagger out of the dark. No poison in his cup. Not even a whisper in the king’s ear, to shake Charles’s confidence in his nephew’s loyalty. All that Oliver had heard might have been a dream. Or the Greek had prevailed, and Ganelon had turned his mind elsewhere, to other and easier prey.
Roland acted no differently towards him. For Oliver it was harder. Oliver was a very bad liar. He kept out of the traitor’s path, not gladly, but with every ounce of prudence in him. Ganelon murdered by Oliver was hardly less shocking a prospect than Ganelon murdered by Roland, and equally likely to ruin the Breton count. Which dilemma, too, the subtle snake might well have wished upon them.
Therefore they did nothing, not even to tell the king; for after all they had no proof. The days went on in marching and in encampments, and once the diversion of Pamplona. Beyond the broken walls, where the Pyrenees rose like walls shattered by gods, the army moved a little lighter. There were the ramparts; beyond them lay the fields and forests of Gaul.
It was the custom, and Roland’s own preference, that the Bretons with their heavy cavalry kept either the van or the rear. Through most of Spain, Roland himself had ridden first of all except the scouts; but as the hills rose into mountains, the king called him to the centre. Oliver followed, unquestioned; the count’s milkbrother and swordbrother, as inseparable as his shadow. Already the way grew steep; they had left their horses ahead with their armour bearers, and taken to surefooted mules. Not a few along the line chaffed them for that; Roland laughed and chaffed back, but Oliver set his teeth and endured.
The king, who was above all a practical man, had mounted his lordly bulk on a brother of their own beasts. No one, Oliver noticed, even looked askance at him. As always when he was at war, he wore nothing to mark him out from any common soldier, except the circlet of gold on his helmet. He greeted them both with his usual gladness.
Neither was quick to match him. He was attended, as always. The Byzantines were there, and the men from Baghdad. And Ganelon, close at his side, riding a horse with an Arab look about the head. The man was all limpid innocence, the loyal counsellor attending his king.
Charles beckoned Roland in. Ganelon drew back with every appearance of good will, no dagger flashing in his hand, no hatred in his glance. Roland would not meet it at all. There was a pause while the mules settled precedence; then the king said, “Roland, sister-son, now that the land is changing, I’ve a mind to change the army to fit it. The way ahead should be clear enough for lesser forces. It’s the rear I’m wary of; the brigands’ portion. And the baggage can’t move any faster than it’s moving. I need you and your Bretons there. Will you take it?”
Oliver’s hackles quivered and rose. It was a perfectly reasonable order, presented in the king’s usual fashion: as a request, to be accepted or refused. The Bretons with their armour and their great lumbering horses would deter anything that a brigand might think of. And a brigand would think of, and covet, the baggage and the booty.
It was not the prospect of robbery that chilled Oliver’s nape. It was Ganelon’s expression. Calm; innocent. Barely listening, as if the hawk on the wing mattered more than the count in the rearguard.
It was too well done. He should be sneering, making it clear whose counsel it was that Roland breathe the army’s dust and shepherd its baggage.
As if he had realized the oversight, he lowered his eyes from the sky and smiled at his stepson. Oliver did not need to be a seer to foretell what Roland would do. Roland bristled; his mule jibbed and lashed out. Ganelon’s mare eluded it with contemptuous ease. “You,” said Roland. “What are you plotting? Why this change, now, when we’re so close to Gaul?”
“My lord king,” Ganelon said with sweet precision, “has been apprised by his scouts that the way ahead of us is steep, the passage narrow. He has need of both valour and vigilance, and in the rear most of all, where robbers most often strike. Who better to mount guard there, than the knights of Brittany?”
Smooth words, irreproachable even in tone. Oliver would happily have throttled the man who uttered them. Roland raised his head, his black eyes narrow, searc
hing his stepfather’s face. It gave him nothing back. “You want me there,” he said. “What if I refuse?”
“Then another will be sent,” said the king before Ganelon could speak. He sensed something, Oliver could tell, but he was too preoccupied or too accustomed to his kinsmen’s enmity to take notice. “I have reason to think that there may be one last stroke before we ride out of Spain: revenge for Pamplona, or a final blow from the rebels of Cordoba. Will you guard my back?”
Roland sat erect in the saddle, neatly and inextricably trapped. Ganelon himself could have done no better. Roland’s voice rang out over the song of wind, echoing in the passes. “Always, my king.”
Charles smiled and, leaning out of the saddle, pulled him into an embrace. “Watch well, sister-son. Half the treasure on my wagon is yours to share with your men.”
Roland laughed. “All the more reason to guard it! Come, Oliver. We’ve a king to serve.”
* * * *
“This is it,” said Oliver as they worked their way back up through the army. “This is what he was waiting for.”
Roland’s eyes were bright, his nostrils flared to catch the scent of danger. But he said, “You can’t know that. Probably he wants to poison the beer I’ll drink with supper, and needs me out of the way to do it. I’ll drink wine tonight, or water. Will that content you?”
Oliver shook his head. He could see their banner now, their men waiting beside the steep stony track, held there by the king’s messenger. They seemed glad enough of the chance to pause, rest, inspect girths and hoofs and harness buckles. The army toiled up past them. No chaffing now: it took too much breath simply to move.
Slowly, by excruciating inches, the rear came in sight. The men who had been guarding it were pleased to move up, away from the lumbering wagons, the oxen groaning and labouring, the drivers cursing in an endless half-chant. Roland’s Bretons fell in behind. They had all, uncommanded, shifted to remounts.
“You scent trouble, too, then?”
Oliver started, stared. Not all of the former rearguard had gone ahead. The Count of the Palace was there, watching over his charge, which was all here but the king himself; and Ekkehard, the king’s seneschal, riding on the wain with the royal plate. And, on a horse that had been bred in Roland’s own pastures, Turpin the high priest of Mithras in Rheims. As befit the priest of a warrior creed, he rode armed and armoured and his acolytes were also his armour-bearers. He grinned at Oliver, old warhound that he was, and breathed deep of the thin air. “There’ll be an ambush ahead. Do you remember this way, when we came out of Gaul? It narrows and steepens, and where it’s narrowest and steepest, the gorge they call Roncesvalles - they’ll strike there, if they strike at all.”
“‘They’?” asked Oliver.
“Basques, most likely: savages of these mountains. Pamplona is theirs, you know; it’s not Saracen, though sometimes it suits them to dance to Cordoba’s tune. I expect they’ll want to claim back what we took from them.”
He seemed remarkably undismayed at the prospect. Oliver eyed his greying beard and his eager face, and castigated himself for a fool. If there was a battle, it would be one that they could easily win. If it aimed chiefly at Roland, then his men would make themselves a wall about him. There was nothing to fret over but a few words spoken in a tongue he barely knew, and which he might well have misunderstood.
* * * *
The steeper the way grew, the closer the walls drew in, the slower the baggage train travelled. The clamour of the army, echoing in the gorges, began little by little to fade. They had drawn ahead. Too far, Oliver began to suspect. There were only their small company, and the drivers, and such of the women and servants as had not gone ahead with their masters; and the wains lurching and struggling up the mountainside. Behind, there was nothing to see but stone and scree and steep descent. Ahead, Oliver remembered dimly, was a bit of almost level, then another bitter ascent, little more than a roofless corridor, to the summit of the pass. Already it was growing dim below, though the sky was bright still. If night found them on the mountain. . .
Roland had sent scouts ahead and, while the cliffs were still scalable, to the side. None of them had come back.
A signal went down the line. Dismount and lead your horses. Oliver obeyed it, but struggled forward, to draw level with Roland. For a long while he could do nothing but breathe. Roland climbed in silence, not even cursing when his horse stumbled.
“You might,” said Oliver between hard breaths, “sound your horn. Just for prudence. So that the king knows how far back we are.”
Roland’s hand found the horn where it hung at his side: a beauty of a thing, an olifant bound with gold and hung on a gold-worked baldric; the only adornment he would wear, whose sword and armour were as plain as a trooper’s. But he did not move to raise the horn.
“Roland,” said Oliver, “brother, sound the horn. If we’re caught here we’re too few, the pass is too steep; we’ll barely hold till the king can come back.”
“No,” said Roland.
Oliver drew breath once again, and flung all his passion into it. “Roland, brother, sound the horn! It’s I who beg you. I’ll bear the shame if shame there is, and no army waits for us above.”
“No one will bear the shame for me,” Roland said. “How large an army can a pack of savages muster? We’ll fight them off. Or don’t you think I’m strong enough for that?”
“I think your stepfather has something hidden here, and that is your death.”
“Are you calling my mother’s husband a traitor?”
Mad, thought Oliver in despair. God-mad, as they said men were when they were chosen to be sacrificed: going to their deaths willingly and even with joy. And gods help the man who spoke ill of the man he hated.
Oliver shut his mouth and set himself to climb and watch, both at once, as much as his struggling body would allow. He kept close to Roland’s side, his battle-station, though his wonted place on the march was well apart from the count.
At the level they paused, a moment only, to replenish their strength. The cliff-walls closed in above. There was still no sign of the scouts. Roland did not mention them; Oliver did not want to. When they moved on again, Turpin was beside them, leading his fine warhorse, whistling tunelessly between his teeth.
The creaking of wains echoed and re-echoed from the walls. The lead ox threw up its head and snorted, balking in the gate of the defile. Its driver cursed and thrust in the goad. The ox lowed in pain, but stood fast.
Through the echoes of its cry, Oliver heard thunder.
Not thunder. Stones. Great boulders, roaring and tumbling down the cliffsides, and men howling behind them. Howling in Arabic. Allah-il-allah!
Saracens. They fell like hail out of the sky, bearded, turbaned, shrilling sons of Allah; they filled the pass behind, thick as locusts in the plains of Granada. The trap was sprung. The bait could not even cower in it. There was no room.
Oliver almost laughed. So, then. That was what they had meant, the conspirators, when they spoke of turning the king against the enemies of Byzantium. It would not have been hard to win Cordoba to their cause, if it cost Baghdad its ally. Then the traitor need but see to it that Roland was given the rearguard and led to expect nothing worse than a pack of brigands; and leave the rest to the armies of Cordoba.
They were, at most, fifty men. If there were less than a thousand about them, then Oliver had lost his ability to reckon armies. And the wagons to defend, and the way closed on all sides, and no escape but through the armies of Islam.
Roland saw them and laughed. By some freak of fate and the army and the echoes about them, his laughter sounded light and clear in almost silence, the laughter of a man who loves a battle. It danced with mockery. It dared death to take him. He leaped up on a wain though darts rained down, and called out: “Here, men! Here’s a fight for us. Who’ll take first blood? Who’ll die for our king?”
“I!” they shouted back. And in a rising roar, till even the echoes fled in terr
or: “Montjoie! Montjoie! Montjoie!”
The enemy faltered. But they could count as well as Oliver, and they had seen how ill the train was disposed, sprawled all down the narrow pass, no room to draw together and make a stand. The small company that clustered in the rear, their horses useless on that steep and broken ground, the enemy all but ignored; they fell on the train itself, their howls drowning out even the shrieks of women and the death-cries of horses and cattle.
The Bretons frayed at the edges. Hands reached for pommels, men braced to spring astride their horses. Roland’s voice lashed them back, away from the stumbling, hindering, helpless beasts, into a formation they all knew. Then, fiercely, forward.
They drove like a lance into the column. And for a little while, no one resisted them. Oliver grinned in his helmet. There was a use after all for the Roman foot-drill that the king had inflicted on them - a game, he said; an idea he had, that Roland, always apt for mischief, was willing to try. Now it served them in this most impossible of places, drove them into the enemy, mowed the attackers down and swept them aside under the hoofs of panicked beasts.
The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories [Anthology] Page 37
