AOI
Far across the mountain heights and at the very doorstep of Marcellus’s Gascon keep, a weary group of travelers beat down the rutted road, their mounts drenched in sweat and covered in mud. Guards stationed near the drawbridge stepped forward with their weapons at the ready, for these riders were not the usual day laborers or supply merchants with their slow wagons.
As the horses clattered to a halt, they lowered their hoods, revealing on the one hand a woman whose fair beauty shone through her mud-caked traveling garments. Even more startling to the guardsmen was the realization that her other arm was bound tightly to her body. The rider beside her was a younger woman, equally fetching, with raven hair and cheeks flushed with the autumn cold. Upon closer inspection, most of the party wore martial equipment bearing the royal eagle upon their crimson surcoats.
“Charles!” Aude said breathlessly. “Is he here?”
“You’re from up north?” the sergeant questioned, looking from one to the other in confusion.
Berta’s reply was sharp. “I’m daughter to the king! Now tell us where the royal court lies!”
The sergeant pulled suspiciously at his bushy mustache, his mailed hand jingling.
“They aren’t here, are they?” Aude asked quickly before the soldier responded.
“No,” the man admitted. “But we’ve had outriders from the army stop here over the past few weeks. They’re likely crossing from Spain now, I reckon.”
“Where?” Aude’s voice rose. “Show me!”
The guard surveyed the mountains that extended above the forest as far as the eye could see. He jabbed a finger toward a distant gap, hooded with shadows from the rising sun.
“Roncevaux. About a day and a half ride,” he said gruffly.
Aude already dragged her horse’s head around, followed closely by Berta. The rest of the company wheeled behind as if they were pursued by the very demons of hell—or were determined to catch them.
CHAPTER 26
Revelations
Oliver clambered over broken stones to stand atop an upthrust spar of rock. His breath streamed from his nostrils, nothing more than wisps of gray in the early-morning chill. The day since Charles had led the army into the mountains had passed uneventfully with the scouts patrolling their vantages over the nearby roads and reporting nothing. The count of the Vale stretched, continuing to scan the ridge and its scruffy trees. He took a deep breath of crisp air—a breath free from the dust churned by thousands of hooves and feet in the valley below.
We’ll be in Francia soon, leaving this bad dream behind us.
Yet it was more than a bad dream, for the count’s face bore scars from shattered metal and countless scrapes with Saragossans intent on burying him alongside so many of his comrades. More than that, horrid images haunted his memories of the men burned alive at Carcassonne, and though he wouldn’t admit it, he was glad the Greek fire had not been needed at Saragossa.
Shading his eyes against the sunlight, he scrutinized the landscape more closely, starting in the east, beyond the scattered huts and pastures. The sleepy landscape was quiet enough to lull a seasoned scout. Oliver schooled himself to keep on task despite his mind attempting to wander back to the ancient forests surrounding the vale.
Unbidden or not, it was a welcome thought. His father’s manor lay amid massive shady trees and broad fields of fertile land that yielded fruits and grain in abundance. Home. The word lingered like a prayer in his mind.
To the southwest, then south, he squinted above the scattered trees and meandering tracks. Nearby lowing of cattle added to the bucolic swelling that filled Oliver’s chest with each breath. Autumn would soon arrive, and with it harvest festivals and then long winter nights beside a warm hearth. Many years had passed since he’d sat at his father’s table before a roaring fire. Close friends ever surrounded his father’s board, laughing amid steaming plates and flavorful wine—as all the while bards sang the latest melodies from Aquitaine and Gascony. He paused and blinked, thinking he’d gotten a smudge of dust in his eye. Then he refocused on the horizon to the southeast.
“What’s this?” he murmured half-aloud.
Above the tops of trees and across the plain, a hint of dust rose. He glanced around for a higher perch. A gnarled tree topped another jutting rock not far off. The climb took but a moment, yet the added height provided a better view of dark specks that marked the land beneath the dust like a plague. He leaned out further and made out colored glints reflected from polished metal—snatches of contrast indicating armored men in formation under banners.
“Saint Michael’s bones!” he growled. He swung down off the limb to the uneven ground. Thoughts of home fled in the face of what could only be Marsilion’s armies moving like a roiling storm toward Roncevaux.
Roland warmed his hands at the smoldering coals of a fire. His fingers felt the bite of autumn even though the rising sun began warming his back. He raised his eyes at the sound of a squire skidding to a halt before him.
“Slow down there, lad.” None of the squires assigned to him were fresh-faced anymore. Every one bore scars that marked them as veterans.
“We found a man, sir!” the squire blurted out, his cheeks flushed. “In the baggage train. He’s dying—my lord, he calls your name!”
“Show me!”
The boy turned and ran. Roland raced with him through the still-stirring camp to the supply train, where even at this early hour men strained under the weight of equipment to be transferred back to Francia. The youth dashed through the rows, correcting his course until they approached what appeared as just another nondescript wagon on the fringe of the group.
“This is it, my lord.” With waving hands, the squire parted the workers who were already crowding around.
Roland pulled himself up into the cart, peeling back the canvas covering to find a sergeant kneeling next to a pale form that had bled out into the sacks of grain around him.
It was Julian.
“There’s not much more I can do,” the grizzled sergeant said as he pressed a cloth to the wound in the man’s midsection. “From the smell of things, it’s sliced his bowel, and rot has set in.”
“How is it no one found him earlier?” Roland demanded.
The sergeant held up a bloody rag in angry disgust. “They gagged him. We inspected the last wagons and only just found him.”
“Get Demetrius!” Roland crept close to the young man.
Julian groped at his collar, hands unsteady as they tightened and pulled him close.
“Proof, my lord …” The words rattled in Julian’s throat. His breath was acrid and the skin of his hands was hot and soaked with sweat where they brushed against Roland’s chest.
“Not now,” Roland said, pushing him back against the grain sacks. “We’ll get someone to stitch you up. Lie still.”
Julian groaned and shook his head. “I’m a dead man. Vengeance is for the living—Ganelon—he admitted. He killed your father. Oh, God!” Julian’s face contorted with pain.
“I’ll take care of him,” Roland promised, patting his hand. “Once we cross the mountains, we will bring him his due.”
But Julian heard nothing. Having held out to the last, his fevered body shuddered again. His eyes lost focus, and he ceased struggling for breath.
Roland gently disengaged the youth’s hands from his shirt, pressing them back upon his own chest.
“Rest,” Roland whispered. “Rest now, for you’ve done well. There will be payment for his crimes.”
He stood and looked around at the men who crowded the wagon.
“Take him,” he commanded. “Bury him overlooking the road to the pass, that he might always watch the way into his beloved Francia.” He leaped out of the wagon back into the bustle of the supply train.
Toward the center of the camp, a bell began ringing madly. Further along the row o
f carts, he saw Oliver frantically scrambling toward him, shouting as he went. Roland waved him over, intent on sharing this grim news. But Oliver’s breathless words sent a chill up his spine.
“Saragossa! Roland, we’ve been betrayed! There must be more than fifty thousand approaching from the southeast!”
Roland sucked in the chill air through clenched teeth, the report pushing aside any thoughts of righteous justice. He and Oliver raced for higher ground. Otun and Demetrius fell in with them at the hilltop. Oliver pointed out the host that darkened the fields below and swarmed through brush and trees.
Turpin huffed up the slope to join them. “We must warn Charles, Roland!”
“No one will get through the pass now that the army is gone on,” Demetrius protested. “The Hill People have reclaimed the road. Even an entire squadron of cavalry will not deter them.”
“And we don’t have one to spare,” Roland agreed.
Otun scratched a hand through his beard, surveying the outriders that extended from the mass of troops like fingers of doom.
“If we must fight,” he observed, “we’ve got the good ground.”
“Fight we must,” Oliver said. “But how long can we be expected to hold alone?”
“We must hold until Charles’s passage north is assured,” Roland replied.
“But Marsilion—” Oliver pressed. “If we call Charles back, we can finish him once and for all! If we do not, and we cannot hold …”
Roland scanned the forces below. The banner men rallying to the emir of Saragossa were not yet visible, but the numbers darkened the plain beneath the foothills. Calculations of approaches and countermeasures laid out across that same landscape with each step he climbed higher on a nearby rock, but one thought threaded through them all, refusing to be ignored.
If I’m given the rearguard, I swear before God that Charles will not lose a single man, horse, or mule in the crossing.
“There is a great danger if Charles doubles back and the Saracens overrun our position,” he observed with a coldly even voice. “The army could be slaughtered just as they emerge from the pass. We must hold on our own. I will not call Charles back.”
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. Roland met his gaze.
Turpin placed a fatherly hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “Sound the horn, Roland. Let the Oliphant call Charles back.”
Oliver shook his head and shrugged off Turpin’s clasp. “No. Roland is right.”
“And if they overrun us? They could take Charles from the rear!”
“On home ground,” Oliver reassured Turpin. “And it will be the Saracens that are stretching supply lines through the Hill People.”
Demetrius nodded in somber agreement.
Roland drew himself up to his full height there upon the rock, a confident smile spreading across his features. While this campaign had matured the champion of the Franks, some of the brawling young bravo remained. And he stood prepared to defend this ground for the sake of honor.
“We’ve beaten greater numbers before,” Roland said, his voice carrying to the men who even now began to congregate around them. “We’ll do it again. Assemble the men!”
Oliver saluted with a clenched fist over his breast, spun on his heels, and sprinted back to the camp.
Scant moments later, Frank war horns blared assembly, and the rearguard sprang into action. Men tumbled into motion, tugging on gambesons, mail shirts, and helms They buckled on swords and daggers, slid arms into shields, and mounted their Frank warhorses, those beasts that oft in the past had rolled back ranks of the foe before their terrible onslaught.
While Roland shrugged on his own armor, squires scurried about him buckling other accoutrements to his person. It was then he realized how scant his marchmen were in relation to the battalions that surged across the plain—a thousand against Marsilion’s entire battled-hardened army. These were his men, veterans who had marched the length of Francia and Spain without complaint. They had survived to stand this day as the breaker against the surging tide of steel before them.
A squire led Veillantif, sleek and black, through the ranks, the horse clad from head to flank in steel and leather. Roland signaled for the youth to stand with the steed. Then he scrambled up the spar of rock that only a handful of minutes before he had used to survey Marsilion’s forces.
“My brothers!” he shouted. A hush fell upon the ranks. “My brothers! We are betrayed, the peace broken, and the enemy numerous! But we are soldiers! We know our duty, for we are the iron fist that subdued Spain!” A raucous cheer echoed off the mountains and thundered across the fields between them and Marsilion’s host. “If we call the king to our side now, our whole army will be destroyed, along with our brave bandons. Charles must not be slaughtered on these slopes! Like Gideon of ancient days, God even now embraces us in His strength!” Roland’s voice rose over the acclimation of the rearguard. “We are His soldiers, and this is the test of our faith! We cannot fail. We must not fail. We will not fail!”
Turpin stepped forward, clad in his familiar white surcoat over his mail, arms outstretched toward the sky. His bald head glistened as if crowned by an angel’s touch, his blue eyes filled with a martial holiness.
“Men of Francia!” he cried. “You’ve heard your champion. Now I speak as your priest! Confess your sins now. Pray to the Lord God for mercy!” He genuflected, touching each point of the cross on his breast, and bowed his head for a moment. Then he raised his eyes, extending his hand and tracing the points of the cross over the host. “I absolve every last one of you!”
The Frank rearguard knelt as one. Roland drew Durendal and followed suit on his perch above them, pressing his lips to the cross guard.
“Before Saint Michael,” Turpin shouted, “there is but one requirement of penance! Take up the sword and fight for Charles! And strike hard!”
The rearguard roared their approval, banging weapons on shields and multiplying their voices in another booming staccato that reverberated off the mountains.
“Dear God,” Roland prayed, his words low and intended for God alone, “do not be silent this day. Speak through our deeds. And if we must die to fulfill our duty, take us into Your arms.” He raised his eyes to the pass and the pathway north. “Aude,” he continued, “forgive me, for my trial is at hand.”
He jumped down from his perch and thrust Durendal into the air, the sun dancing across the surface of the blade. His voice rose to join the chorus of war.
CHAPTER 27
Roncevaux
The soldiers in the Frank column sang melodies punctuated with laughter with each step they marched north out of the Roncevaux pass into Francia. Brothers, cousins, and friends, they moved with a flowing martial order honed through hundreds of miles on the march and countless days in battle.
Charles and his retinue traveled among them. With the terminal end of the pass in sight, a weight fell upon the monarch’s shoulders heavier than his shield and coat of mail—a burden that dragged on his bones and threatened to cave in his chest. Riding close behind, Naimon watched the king withdraw further and further into himself. He planted his heels in his horse’s ribs to catch up.
“Something bothers you,” he ventured.
Charles focused his eyes on his counselor as if emerging from a dream.
“I’m sorry, old friend,” he said, his voice dry and cracked. “I slept poorly. Most likely badly digested beef.”
Naimon offered Charles his water skin. The king took it and drank deeply before handing it back.
“Go on,” Naimon urged. “Please, sire, go on.”
“You know me too well, don’t you? Am I but an open book?”
“Nothing so simple, my king,” Naimon replied with a warm smile. “Not just a common book. Rather a richly illuminated manuscript colored by a master of ink.”
Charles laughed, but the sound was anything but cheerful. “Simple
r to read events on the page than to make sense of them as they happen. But such is the lot of man, is it not? A divine creature chained to the flesh and subject to the buffetings of mortality.”
“True. And poets, philosophers, and clergy will debate interpretations of things until the final trump. And then the earth will be consumed anyway. But until then we must survive as best we can. I’m your friend and offer you an ear and my heart.”
Charles nodded.
“Well then, that is what we must trust in,” he said. “You see—I had a dream, and in that vision Ganelon charged me, ripping a lance from my hand and shattering it to splinters. Before I could ask him what he intended, I opened my eyes once more and knelt before the altar in Aachen. And as I prayed, a boar and a leopard leapt from the shadows to attack me. But a great hound burst through the cathedral doors. It fought bravely until the other two beasts bore it down in a pool of blood. Yet with its sacrifice, the noble creature saved me.”
Naimon tugged at his beard, salt and pepper eyebrows knit together. “Well, I’m no soothsayer. But could the vision represent peace by shattering the lance of war? And the hound could represent all the brave men who died to secure that peace?”
The haunted shadow refused to lift from Charles’s eyes. “What you say is possible,” he said as he turned to look back at the mountains. “But the chill in my bones refuses to be warmed by it.”
AOI
The hillside was alive with activity as Oliver directed the cavalry to their positions on the wings of the battle line. The marchmen sat upright in their saddles, lances tall and straight, banners defiant in the scattered breeze. Otun strode toward Roland. At his back, a band of Dane archers were braced by a number of their brothers from the Frank infantry. The champion paused from surveying the foothills and pointed to a stone ridge to the left.
“Hide your men there among those rocks,” he said. “That should give you a clear enfilade as they navigate the approach. Plenty of time to teach them their lessons this fine morning.”
Otun bared his feral grin. “Lessons?”
The Silver Horn Echoes Page 29