Hart, Mallory Dorn

by Jasmine on the Wind

  Dolores gasped. "How do you know that? They are still so far away." She strained her eyes into the northern distance, rising up on her toes as if that would help, grabbing on to his arm for balance.

  "If I'm seeing right, only the first few riders are wearing steel plate, as do our knights. The mounted men behind are in Moorish chain mail and leather; it reflects little of the sun. And those mules must be carrying empty loads to confuse us. They think to come up on us from our less protected flank...."

  "But our pickets would eventually make them out."

  "They hope only to get close enough for their long-bowmen to rain fire arrows over our walls, which would do us great damage. The Moors have adapted our longer bow to achieve distance. They are coming this way and quickly..." But he continued to scrutinize the suspicious column, just to make sure....

  Suddenly he was sure. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the horses. "Come on, Dolores. We're going to have to run for it. They won't see us until we come from behind the trees, but when they do they'll realize we could give the alarm and their mounts are swift." Putting his hands around her waist he easily boosted her into her saddle and with a creak of leather swung up into his. He wheeled about, motioning her to follow. "As soon as you gain the top of the bank, dig in your heels and ride," he commanded. His frown was gone. An aura of excitement, of a warrior challenged, crackled about him. His eyes glinted.

  But then he blinked and regarded her with reservations as she yanked up her hood to cover her hair and drew the string tight about her face. "Are you frightened?" he asked.

  "Frightened? Madre mía!" She couldn't help the laugh that rippled from her in spite of their serious situation. "Is this the first time that I have had to run for my life, Francho? Vámonos!"

  The amused light sprang into his eyes again, and admiration too, as he saluted her. And suddenly, enemy bearing down on them or not, her heart grew lighter.

  He delivered his rascally grin. "You ride as fast as that little horse can go. I'll stay with you. We've tarried overlong. Vámonos!"

  Dolores swiftly guided her mount up the stone-littered break in the bank and he followed; and at the top, scrambling past the dead foliage that lined the stream, she swerved the animal toward the road, kicking the fat belly as hard as she could. "Vámonos!" she cried to her mount and then clung on for dear life as the startled animal spurted under her. Francho surged from behind her, holding his big horse neck and neck with hers. Cloaks billowing out, they galloped thunderously toward camp.

  She sneaked a quick glance at the strong profile of her companion. He wasn't smiling, the chiseled line of his jaw was set. But she knew the smile was there, the joy of a knight answering a flung gauntlet with his puissance—in this case, speed—and his arms at the ready. His sword belt, which he had turned behind him while they walked on the sand, was now returned so that the sword in its embossed scabbard was directly under his hand. He must have felt her eyes on him. The handsome profile turned, and he smiled encouragingly at her from under his wind-whipped hair.

  "What if they catch us?" she shouted.

  "They might kill us." He grinned.

  "Holy Virgin..." Dolores spurred up her horse again. But she felt only purpose, no fear. She was with him and irrationally she felt safe.

  As they came to the road at the end of the brush that lined the upper banks he spurted ahead to take a swift look north and she veered to join him, their horses' hooves drumming on the packed earth. "Keep going," he yelled. "Now they've surely seen us. And they're close...."

  She'd heard stories of midnight riders being chased like this by hairy demons from Hell, and the breathless suspense and pounding pace was all she'd imagined in spite that it was daylight. Lips pressed together, she tightened the grip of the one leg hooked over the sidesaddle horn and stiffened the other leg in the stirrup to keep herself steady in the seat, willing her limbs to take the aching strain. She had done the same thing on the way out, but it had somehow been easier when it was just for fun. She risked a quick glance back but could see little because of the billow of her cloak. When she faced forward again into the streaming wind she saw Francho had gotten a few lengths ahead of her. He realized it and looked back to reassure her, fighting to bring the charger's pace down to hers.

  And then, in the space of a breath, Dolores felt her mount check, lurch, and swerve to one side. She heard the animal's terrified shriek and knew a shriek issued from her own throat as well as she lost her grip and catapulted over the falling horse's head, the road and the sky and the world tumbling and flying all about her. A great pang of pure horror lanced through her. She was going to be killed! God, dear God! It all came almost at once, the brutal impact of the ground and the sharp crunch and crackling of dried branches, and the almost instantaneous mercy of blackness that snuffed out her consciousness and erased her terror.

  Aghast, Francho sawed his mount to a rearing, whinnying halt and jumped off on the run toward the pitiful bundle lying too still on the mound of dead leaves and branches which the wind had drifted and held against the irregular rock outcrop alongside the road. His heart pounded with dread, with terror that she might have suffered a fatal injury, that she might be dead.

  "Dolores!"

  Just as he reached her he saw her move and slowly flop over on her back. Relief shook him. The Lord, the Savior and all the good Saints be thanked! "Dolores?" He knelt beside her, fearing to touch her until he knew where she might be injured. Her face was smudged, scratched, bruised on one cheek but otherwise unharmed. The wide, gray eyes opened, blank, unfocused. "Dolores, querida, speak to me, are you all right?" he implored, squeezing her limp hand.

  Consciousness swam back into her eyes. She blinked and took a deep breath. "What...?"

  "Your horse went down and you flew over her head." He lanced a desperate glance over his shoulder. "Quickly. Can you tell me if you are injured? Try to move, little sister," he urged her, using the old name of affection learned from Tía Esperanza.

  Now memory had reached her too. She lifted her head and tried to struggle up. "The Moors..." He watched her arms move stiffly and her legs; nothing broken there. He got his arm under her and lifted her up to her feet carefully, noting the pallor of her face. "Where does it hurt?" he asked as she winced. He pressed gently at her clavicle, her breastbone, for shock often hid the pain of broken bones.

  "Here, here," she groaned, pointing under her breastbone.

  "You've cracked a rib, maybe two," he muttered. "You'll have to bear it." He stepped watchfully away from her to see if she could stand. She did, swaying. Her face was drawn but determined. "Wait here."

  Her horse was on its side, huffing and struggling weakly to get up. Francho needed only one quick glance at the splintered white bone jutting through the bloody hide of the bent leg to know the horse was through. The little mare rolled her eyes wildly at him as he strode up and struggled all the harder to rise, whinnying in pain. He snicked his sword from its scabbard and came up to the doomed animal from behind, calling softly to her to calm her and as the nervous head stilled for a moment, he plunged the point of his weapon with unerring aim through the terrified bulging eye and into the beast's brain. He heard Dolores's anguished scream but he had no time for such grief. Jerking his gore-dripping sword from the dead horse he swiftly wiped it on the turf beside the road, resheathed it, and in a second had brought his horse up to where Dolores stood.

  She had hidden her eyes with shaking hands. Roughly he pulled them down. "If we don't ride now they'll be on us in a few minutes and they'll show no mercy. Pull up your skirts, you'll have to ride astride. If your ribs are broken I won't lift you, but I'll help you gain the stirrup and you throw your leg over. Sit forward up there. I don't want you falling off again."

  In spite of her pain and the shock still gripping her, her chin came up. "I did not fall off. I was thrown."

  He could hear the thundering hooves behind, he didn't need to turn around. "Do it! Now!" he roared, and she hitched up her skirt
s with speed. He grabbed her arm as she put her foot in the high stirrup and with that leverage and a hand under her rump practically threw her up on the lofty, cantled saddle. He vaulted on behind her, jerked the nervously prancing stallion about, and dug in his spurs unmercifully. A momentary glimpse back showed him the closed-visored forward riders, one flying a captured Spanish pennon on his lance, bearing quickly down on them. Drawn bows had appeared in the hands of the men following them, now riding with their knees only as they galloped. A few minutes and they'd be in range to let fly their deadly missiles.

  Francho's stallion shot ahead, hooves striking sparks, uncaring of the extra weight. At that moment they spied the encampment gate ahead of them being flung open. A battalion of Spanish horsemen boiled out and rode rapidly straight for them. "Someone had eyes in their head, God be thanked," he yelled in Dolores's ear. "If luck is with us we'll reach them before the Moorish devils reach us."

  She didn't answer. She rode before him in the necessarily tight grip of his arm, leaning against him as he bent into spurring up the horse. What he could see of her profile which was close to his own was distressingly pale and set. She bit her lip, a tear sparkled in the corner of her eye. He could hear her moan. His heart contracted, and a momentary picture jumped into his mind of this young woman lying in a still huddle on the leaves, tumbled up in her cloak and perhaps dead with a broken neck. His little sister of the inn....

  He put his cheek to her cold one to comfort her, feeling the dampness of her tears of pain. Dear Jesu, he could have lost her.

  The great horse was becoming winded, he felt it lose speed under the extra hundredweight and a bit more, although they still galloped just out of arrow's range from the enemy, who were now crying out insults and charging ferociously at the Christian forces riding to stop them. It would be a hair's breadth escape, Francho knew, hearing the whirr of arrows that were as yet falling mercifully short behind them.

  And then they were surrounded by their own horsemen, caballeros, lancers, bowmen, shouting at them and waving them back toward camp, not stopping their own headlong countercharge but parting and pounding by on either side of the double-mounted riders as a rushing river flows around an obstacle. But as they rode Francho recognized one of the stragglers still coming up behind the main body and yelled out to stop him, a young man in the Count's company of fighters. "Ho, Canterigado, to me, to me," he shouted, sharply reining in the charger and gripping Dolores as the horse reared. He heard the man's horse neigh as he brought up short too, and in a few seconds the rider cantered up to where Francho's horse was standing and blowing, with heaving sides, flanks glistening with sweat.

  "Greetings, Don Francisco. It seems we arrived at an auspicious time for you," the young man grinned, attempting a joke.

  "So you did. Señor Gregorio, I would ask you to take my mount and bring this lady back to camp. Carefully. She was pitched from her horse and may have some badly injured ribs. Bring her immediately to the quarters of the Queen and see Her Majesty's physicians are alerted to her condition. I will take over your horse and join the battle."

  They could both hear and see the nearby melee of men and horses as the larger Spanish force (some of whom had not dodged the deadly rain of arrows and already lay littering the ground) closed with the desperate marauders, who Were still beyond their objective of getting close enough to the encampment to fire it.

  "But sir, you have no cuirass, not even chain," the young man pointed, hiding his chagrin at being sent back, for this was the son of the lord in his district in whose complement he served and to whom he had pledged his arms. "Then take mine, señor," he offered generously, "we are almost of a size. There was no time for me to don full armor."

  "I will, and thank you, Canterigado, I am grateful." They dismounted and with nimble fingers Francho helped the man undo his breastplate hooks from the back plate. In turn Canterigado aided him to don the steel cuirass and to swiftly lace on the greaves, which would protect his shins. He even offered his helmet, which Francho refused, for a man's helmet was a most personal possession.

  Canterigado swung himself up on the stallion, who backed and stepped, not sure he cared for a rider not his master. Francho talked soothingly to the beast and rubbed the wet nose. He tossed up his cloak to the young man and then turned his attention to Dolores, who had been slumped silently during the five minutes which the whole exchange had taken. She released her chewed lower lip from her teeth and looked down at him, eyes clouded with pain, the tip of her nose pinched and reddened with cold.

  He was as grave and as silent as she was as he gazed up into her bruised face. He could say nothing because there was a miserable confusion of emotion inside of him. It was better for her that Canterigado ride her up to headquarters.

  Finally she relieved the tension of their silence and his undefined feelings which he knew were mirrored in his eyes by smiling weakly and insisting, "I was thrown, Don Francisco."

  He smiled back at her with grateful warmth, and somewhere inside him a pressure that had been building up went away. He kissed the gloved hand she held out, the glove soiled and rent from the life-saving soft pile of leaves and debris she'd been thrown into, and saluted her. "I pray you will soon recover your well-being, Doña Dolores. Go along slowly, Master Gregorio. The lady is in discomfort." He stepped back and slapped the stallion's rump to get it going.

  As he vaulted onto Canterigado's patiently waiting horse, he heard Dolores's voice float to him, "God keep you in his hands, Don Francisco." Setting a breakneck pace toward the clang and clash of the battle raging raggedly over a stretch of the valley ahead of him, he thought one more thing about Dolores—that she was a remarkably indomitable woman. No, lady, for that's what she had become, just as surely as he had been turned into a gentleman.

  Then she disappeared from his mind as he flashed out his sword and, yelling "Santiago and Mendoza for Spain!" plunged into the thick of the melee, hacking energetically through to relieve Von Gormach, whom he had spotted holding off two Moorish swordsmen at once.

  ***

  After six months and twenty days of siege, on the festival of Santa Barbara, patron of thunder, lightning, gunpowder, and explosives, the strategic city of Baza officially surrendered. Ferdinand and Isabella took possession of the city in pomp and splendor at the head of their armored cavalry and tramping legions, amid pealing bells, the triumphant blare of horns, and earth-shaking artillery booms. A bright red standard displaying a huge white cross was run up to fly over the ancient battlements of Baza as a stream of the proud banners and emblems of Spain cantered through the gates.

  Cidi Yahye, leaden-hearted but determinedly gallant, had his troops drawn up to attention as Their Catholic Majesties rode to the city's Alcazar, to which he would soon bid farewell forever. The citizens of Baza, their empty stomachs growling, watched in hollow-eyed silence from window and street how the mighty Christian noose was growing ever tighter around the Moorish neck.

  Chapter 12

  "Greetings, Don Iñigo," Ferdinand boomed from behind his writing table, the weatherbeaten skin around his eyes wrinkling in a smile as his commander was shown into the private study of the royal apartments in the Baza palace.

  Tendilla came across the thick carpet bathed with patterned sunlight from the arabesque grills on the windows and bowed solemnly, hand on heart. "Your Majesties," he murmured. He did not remove his brimless felt hat.

  "We trust the Christian captives have been taken care of? What were their numbers?"

  "Five hundred and two, sire, counting thirty children. All were fed and their sores treated. The last of them were dispersed this matin, singing praises to their monarchs for the gifts of money to see them to their homes."

  "Thank you, my lord." Ferdinand leaned back against the small, rolled pillow that protected his neck from the hard, high back of his chair. His wife, sitting to one side in a more comfortable chair, had her feet up on a small stool.

  Ferdinand came right to the point. "My lord, what we m
ust discuss now is the subject we could not take up before the rest of our advisors this morning. We are sore troubled by the lack of information from Granada. Have you received any more communications?"

  "No, Sire, and the problem has become acute. My best source of information was recently removed from his post, having unwisely aroused the ire and suspicions of his enemies. In fact," Tendilla added dryly, "he lost his head. Quite literally. My other informants in the city do not have sensitive enough positions. The hard fact is it will take some time to fill so important a breach in my sources."

  Ferdinand grimaced and slumped tiredly in his seat. He rubbed a smoothed and polished oval stone between impatient fingers. "That is not good, my lord. We must have adequate tidings from the Alhambra. It is our good fortune that the hatred between the various Moorish princes so far keeps them from uniting powerful forces to repel us. But the Grand Sultan Boabdil in Granada is our good fortune. His nature is weak, he is conciliatory. We strongly feel he will prove no obstacle in our path when we are ready to demand surrender of the capital city itself."

  Isabella nodded. She wore a simple, unadorned gown which lent her the look of any ordinary matron, except that for three nights, along with Ferdinand and the royal ministers, she had been closeted until far into the mornings working to coordinate the urgent administrative affairs of the city, the prosaic lot which befalls conquerors. Now she sat wielding her embroidery needle and gold thimble, enjoying a short relaxation. But her blue eyes were as alert as if nothing had claimed her sleep the nights before.

  Tendilla stood silent, waiting.

  "This morning we reported in council that Cidi Yahye's response to the courtesies we have showered upon him is gratifying; he will go to Almeria and beard El Zagal. He believes he can persuade the crafty old man that he cannot win against our superior forces and resources, that surrender is his own best hope and the salvation of his people."

  "I find it hard to believe that wily demon intends to reach Allah's garden without his sword in his hand."