by Tim Severin
Carolus listened in silence.
‘This happened when you were staying with Wali Husayn in Zaragoza?’ he asked when I finished.
I nodded.
‘Thank you. I shall be on my guard.’
I began to edge away towards the curtain. I was still deeply disturbed by my vision of the king on horseback, crying blood. I knew I should not speak about it, at least not until I knew what it might mean.
‘One moment!’ he commanded suddenly.
I froze, wondering if he was about to cross-examine me.
‘My nephew is headstrong. If there’s to be any fighting in Hispania, he’ll be in the thick of it.’ It was a flat statement of fact.
‘I am sure he will acquit himself nobly, Your Majesty,’ I answered diplomatically.
‘And you? Do you know how to wield a sword as well as you can manage a bow?’
It seemed that Carolus had not forgotten the day I killed two royal stags. I thought it wiser to say nothing and waited for his next remark.
‘I am very fond of my nephew. I hope that you and your companions among my paladins will see to it that his enthusiasm does not lead him astray.’
I bowed my head obediently. The king had already reached out and was twisting the second leg off the goose carcass. It was clear that my interview was over, and I slipped gratefully out of the room.
*
Hroudland’s poor opinion of Eggihard’s military leadership was to bring near-disaster on the western army and on me in particular. When we entered the foothills of the mountains marking the border with Hispania, the count persuaded Eggihard that a detachment of picked cavalry should scout in front of the main column. Naturally Hroudland put himself at the head of this detachment. He took Berenger, Anseis, Gerin and me with him, in effect creating his own roving command. His motive became clear within days. Simply put, our advance unit had first choice of any plunder that lay in the army’s path. We ranged across the countryside and helped ourselves to any valuables in the towns and villages. We met little or no resistance from our victims, and each evening gathered at our chosen campsite and piled up the booty we had found that day. Though the booty was meagre it reminded me of the scene when King Offa’s troops had sacked my father’s great hall. So, whenever possible, I waived my share of any loot. My comrades thought I was behaving strangely. To them the chance for plunder was a powerful reason to go to war, and Hroudland had an impatient, hungry look as he presided over the division of the spoils. He always kept a tenth for himself declaring that his expenses as Margrave of the Breton March had left him in debt.
Understandably the villagers and townsfolk were glad to see the back of us when we moved on. Quite how unpopular we made ourselves was made evident to me one bright day in mid-May. By then we were advancing around the end of the mountains, with their foothills to our left. That morning, as our unit prepared to fan out across the countryside, Hroudland asked me to take a couple of troopers and investigate a low range of hills in the distance. He believed there might be a rich village hidden somewhere in that direction.
I rode off as instructed, the two cavalrymen trotting behind me. We were so accustomed to lack of resistance that all three of us left behind our cumbersome lances and shields. Our only weapons were our cavalry swords and daggers. Very quickly we left the cultivated land and came into an area where the soil was too poor to sustain anything but thin, scrubby grass and clumps of small thorny trees. We came across an occasional cattle byre built of dry branches but saw neither cattle nor people, and resigned ourselves to a long ride as the hills were some distance away. Gradually the land sloped upward and, riding along reins slack, we allowed our horses to go at their own pace. By midday it was uncomfortably hot in the sunshine and when we stopped to water the horses at a small pool of tepid water I removed my brunia, the leather jacket covered with metal scales worn by every cavalryman, and tied it to my saddle. I had already taken off my metal helmet. The two troopers did the same.
We remounted and jogged along, following the faint trace of a path through the bushes. We reached the hills themselves and the land closed in around us as the path led higher. Here the ground was bare of vegetation, and the track grew more and more stony, twisting and turning around the spurs of the hills. After some time, one of the troopers called out to me that his horse had gone lame. The animal had stepped on a sharp stone; the sole of the hoof was bleeding. We were deep in the hills and I told the trooper to turn round and begin walking his horse back to where we had watered before. His companion and I would continue ahead for another hour and if we found nothing, as seemed likely, we would turn back and rejoin him.
We rode on. Soon the road dwindled to little more than a footpath, obliging us to walk our horses cautiously in single file. To our left the hillside rose very steeply, a bare slope of loose scree and shale. It climbed at least a hundred feet to a ridge whose jagged outline reminded me of a cock’s comb. On our right the ground fell away equally steeply, dropping into a dried-up river bed. Here, the slope was dotted with boulders of every size and shape. They had broken away from the crest and rolled down the hill. Some had come to rest part of the way down, but most had tumbled all the way into the ravine below.
My companion was the more accomplished horseman, and as the path grew even narrower, he offered to take the lead. My own horse, a chestnut mare, had a nervous disposition and was reluctant to proceed.
After some twenty minutes of slow progress she lost her nerve entirely. She came to a halt, shivering and sweating, and would go no further. I kicked her hard in the ribs and shouted at her. She put back her ears, stiffened her legs and refused to budge. I kicked again and shouted even louder. My shout came back to me as an echo from the steep slopes all around. As the sound faded I heard a gentle clatter. Looking up and to my left, I saw that a small section of hillside close to the path had come loose and was sliding downhill in a thin trickle of gravel. The flow halted, there was a final rattle of the last few pebbles, and a brief silence. Then a sharp, much louder crack sounded. I shifted my gaze higher up to the cock’s comb of the ridge above me just in time to see a moderate-sized boulder break free and slip downward a fraction. It was about the size a man could encircle with his arms. It hung motionless and time seemed to stand still. In a heartbeat it began to roll, tumbling end over end. It gathered speed, first making small leaps, and then as it struck a rocky ledge it was thrown outward, bounced, and flew with even greater force, hurtling downward in a series of destructive arcs.
I shouted a warning to my companion, less than ten paces ahead. He had already seen the danger and put heels to his horse’s flanks. The animal jumped forward, and this action saved them. The boulder went spinning past them and crashed on down the hill.
‘Are you all right?’ I called out. I was struggling to control my mare. The animal had been terrified into action and was scrabbling with its hooves, lunging from side to side. I feared we would slip off the loose surface of the path and plunge to our destruction.
‘A near miss,’ came back the call, and the trooper gave a confident wave to reassure me. ‘We’ll be on safer ground soon.’
Underneath me the mare was still shaking with fright so I nearly missed the same ominous warning, a sharp crack and then the first thud as another rock, slightly smaller than the first, broke away from the ridge line and began its lethal descent towards us.
‘Look out!’ I yelled.
Again the boulder was careering a deadly path down the slope.
By then I knew it was no accident. Someone on the crest was trying to kill us.
For a second time the boulder missed. It leaped through the gap between us, bounding down the slope with a great crashing. Shards of rock flew up whenever it struck another boulder.
I bellowed at the trooper to come back. He flung himself sideways from his saddle, landing on the slope above him. He had the reins in hand, hauling on them, trying by brute force to make his horse turn on the narrow path. The animal gave a whinny of protest and spun on i
ts haunches, turning so that its front hooves were clawing on the loose gravel of the upper slope as it tried to find a purchase. At that moment the trooper himself lost his footing and, arms flailing, slid down under the belly of the horse.
The tangle proved fatal. A third rock came tumbling down. It was larger than the others, and halfway towards us it struck an outcrop of rock and split into two. The smaller part, no larger than a blacksmith’s anvil, bounced higher and higher until it struck the trooper squarely and with tremendous force. I felt the thud of the impact, and then the scream of the horse as in the same instant the collision smashed the beast over the edge of the path. The trooper, his hand still twisted in the reins, was dragged away with his mount. Beast and man went slithering down the slope in a sickening whirl of hooves, arms and legs, bouncing off the rocks as they followed the fatal boulder that had outstripped its victims. Finally they came to a rest in the bottom of the ravine. Neither could have survived that terrible fall.
Now the hidden enemy turned his attention on me. I was the only target remaining. I kicked my feet out of the stirrups and swung myself down from the saddle, stumbling as I landed on the broken ground. I made no attempt to make the mare turn but pushed past her flank, leaving her where she was as I ran for my life back the way we had come. The loose ground crunched and shifted beneath my boots, though thankfully not loudly enough to drown out the warning thud and clatter of the next boulder as it was launched down the slope. I looked up and judged its path. Then I dived to one side, flattening myself against the hillside, feeling the ground shudder beneath me as the rock careered off the rocks. It missed me by a yard or more, and then I was up and running, away down the path and around the next corner in terror.
I had gone perhaps twenty paces when, to my horror, I heard someone chasing down the track behind me. I dared not look over my shoulder and expected a lance point in my back at any moment. Then, to my relief, my panic-struck mare came slamming and barging past me, almost knocking me off the trail. The creature had managed to turn herself around unaided, and was bolting. I reached out, grabbed a stirrup with both hands as she pushed past me and clung on. I was bounced and dragged beside her down the path, and I feared she would run off the track and fall, taking us both down to our deaths. But somehow she managed to carry me, half running, half dragged, for more than a mile before she slowed enough for me to heave myself back into the saddle and gather up the reins.
By then we were well away from the ridge, and I rode on shakily until I caught up with the trooper walking his lame horse. By a stroke of luck we came across Hroudland very soon afterwards. He was out with a score of cavalrymen, checking on his patrols.
As soon as the count heard what had happened, he went galloping off at full tilt, hoping to catch the hidden attackers before they left the scene.
But it was too late. He returned some hours later, riding up to our camp at the head of his men, faces covered in dust, their horses lathered and weary. His first words were, ‘Patch, you were lucky. We found marks up on the ridge where a lever was used to dislodge the rocks. But the enemy was gone.’
‘What about the trooper who was knocked off the track?’ I asked.
‘A mangled corpse. One of my men clambered down to take a look. All blood and broken bones.’ He swung himself down from the saddle and walked over to the campfire, his face serious. ‘Tomorrow I’ll call the men together and warn them to be more on their guard.’
‘Any sign of a village where the attackers could have come from?’ asked Berenger, who had been scouting out on our left flank.
The count shook his head.
‘If there had been, I’d have got the truth out of them.’
Then I noticed something odd. One of Hroudland’s riders had come back with an extra brunia tied to his saddle which, I presumed, he had salvaged from the corpse of the dead man. A brunia was a costly piece of equipment and most of the mailed jackets worn by the men were on loan from the royal armoury; it seemed strange that the mysterious assailants had not stayed long enough to plunder their victim.
Chapter Sixteen
THE AMBUSH AND THE TROOPER’S death cast a shadow over our advance. We were still in Vascon land, yet to enter Saracen territory. So we should have had a peaceful journey because the Vascons were Christians like ourselves. Instead with every mile we travelled, we were met with increasing hostility. The Vascons hid their stores of food, blocked or polluted wells, and if we asked directions, they sent us in the wrong direction. Hroudland had begun drinking heavily again and, in keeping with the prickly mood of our troops, he became erratically aggressive and surly. When we reached the Vascon capital at Pamplona, he proposed to Eggihard that the army should storm and ransack the city to repay the Vascons for all the trouble they had caused us. The city walls were still as derelict as when I had seen them on my way to Brittany; they would not have withstood a determined assault. Eggihard bluntly told the count that the army had come to Hispania to assist the rebel Saracens, not plunder the Vascons, and there was a blazing row between them. Hroudland stormed out of the meeting and rode away with his vanguard, leaving the main army to fend for itself.
With Hroudland in such an ugly mood I made a habit of keeping out of his way as we pushed on to Zaragoza. I was thinking about Osric and wondering what had happened to him. It was three months since I had given him his freedom and left him with Wali Husayn. Part of me hoped that he had been able to leave Zaragoza and return to the place where he had grown up, but another part of me was looking forward to meeting him again. I had come to appreciate that nothing had replaced his companionship since the days when King Offa had sent me into exile. I suppose that I was falling victim to long-delayed feelings of loneliness. No longer having Osric by my side had made me realize just how much I had relied on him as a mentor and a confidant, and so I eagerly anticipated our meeting and the renewal of trust that it would bring.
With this in mind I rode ahead of everyone else during the final few miles of our approach to Zaragoza, through the orchards that surrounded the city. After several days of uncomfortably hot sunshine, the sky had partially clouded over and a slight breeze made the morning pleasantly cool. I had decided to put on full armour, helmet and brunia, and was carrying my battle shield and sword, hoping to impress any herald that Husayn would send out to welcome us, for the wali would surely know of the approach of Hroudland’s vanguard, even if Eggihard and the main force lagged several days behind.
Riding through the lines of plum and orange trees, I was reminded of the day I had first come there with Wali Husayn after our journey through the mountains. We had used the very same track for I recognized a small wooden bridge that crossed one of the many irrigation channels. Now, of course, the trees were in full leaf, their fruit nearly ripe, and there was just enough breeze to gently sway the laden branches. I was happy and relaxed as I rode, turning over in my mind what I might discuss with Wali Husayn. I hoped there would be the chance to share another pleasant evening meal beside the reflecting pool in his palace. All around me the orchards were very quiet except for the croaking of several ravens that circled over me. I saw no one. The hoof beats of my horse, the same nervous mare that had saved my life, were muffled by the soft earth between the fruit trees. I savoured the calm and stillness, glad to be clear of Hroudland and his snappish temper. He and his escort of riders would be at least a mile behind me. I felt an unexpected surge of pride at the idea that after two months’ march from Brittany, I would be the first person in the army to sight Zaragoza.
A movement some distance ahead caught my attention. A small troop of horsemen was moving at a walk across my path. They appeared and disappeared among the lines of tree trunks. It was difficult to tell their exact number but I recognized them immediately as Saracens; their mounts were their typical small, high stepping horses. They wore flowing mantles and I identified them as cavalrymen, for they wore helmets and carried lances. I congratulated myself that Wali Husayn had sent out an escort to greet Hroudland and
bring him into the city, showing the count the same honour that the wali received from his own followers. For days I had been telling the count that Husayn was a civilized and cultured nobleman and I was hopeful that such a courtesy would help dispel Hroudland’s sour temper.
The riders were crossing my path about a hundred paces ahead and had not seen me. Perhaps they were not expecting a lone rider. So I called out a greeting. I saw the little group stop and turn in my direction. I reined in my horse and sat quietly as they trotted towards me. In my mind I was already rehearsing the formal phrases of welcome in the Saracen tongue which Osric had taught me.
The Saracen cavalrymen must have been fifty paces from me when I noted the colour of the scarves around their helmets and the banners tied around their lances. It was a plain green. With a sudden lurch in my stomach I recalled that every one of Husayn’s servants and soldiers had worn crimson.
Something was very wrong.
The riders were still coming towards me at a purposeful trot. My alarm sharpened my senses. Even at that distance I could detect that they were deliberately keeping their horses in check. It was not the disciplined riding of well-trained cavalry. Belatedly it dawned on me that they were hoping to get very close before I realized who they were – the enemy.
I snatched on the reins and wrenched my horse’s head around and kicked hard. The mare threw up her head in outrage and broke into a gallop. I leaned forward in the saddle and shouted in her ear, urging her on as we flew between the trees. Behind me I heard a triumphant cry and then whoops of excitement as the troopers took up the chase.
For them it must have been as easy as running down a wounded deer. My mare was not a creature to win races. She was very ordinary, more suited to a thirty-mile march than a mad, short sprint. Her timidity gave her extra speed at the outset, but she could never outpace the Saracen horses now in pursuit.
I stayed low, ducking under the branches of the fruit trees, occasionally feeling the lash of twigs and foliage whipping across my helmet. I felt the mare leap an irrigation ditch, and urged her on. The whoops and yells grew louder and nearer, and in what seemed only a few minutes I could feel the mare tiring beneath me. Her head began to droop and her breath was coming in gasps. I knew that very soon she would stumble and go down. We came to a clearing in the orchard, no more than thirty paces across, and rather than take a spear in the back, I pulled up the exhausted beast, and turned.
