Salaaming deeply in acquiescence, Francho enjoyed his unvoiced thought: That is what I most fervently work for, O Sultan.
Some days later, with Muza Aben Gazul, who was recovering from an arrow wound in the thigh, remaining behind with the major part of the army to keep Granada's defenses strong, the great gates of the city opened into a rosy dawn, and through the soaring horseshoe arch rode two thousand armored horsemen, five thousand archers, pikemen, and arquebusiers, plus the necessary supply masters, surgeons, grooms, and flunkies for the officers, and seven hundred sixty pack animals laden with munitions and supplies. Noting the proud light in Boabdil's eyes as he rode smiling at the head of his army, Francho could not help feeling sorry for the man, setting out so confidently to build his prestige with a surprise attack that was already doomed.
Guembri slung on his back, Francho rode on the right of the Sultan's high-spirited white steed, just behind the Abencerrage officers; to the left cantered the spike-helmeted Reduan and the captain Abdul Kerim Zegri. Francho allowed himself a grimace beneath his black beard; he was an uncomfortably vulnerable Judas goat. The light shirt of chain mail he wore over his yellow tunic could prove little protection against a stray crossbow bolt, and noncombatant or not, the fighting would be heavy and desperate, and he wished he were encased in his own armor of heavy jointed steel plates and visored casque, with a hefty sword of Toledo steel to his hand.
More than half the day had passed and they were already deep into the mountains, winding along a high, rocky ridge, when riders from their advance guard thundered around an outcropping of boulders and galloped toward the column. Noting the urgency of their pace, Reduan halted the march and spurred forward with several officers to meet them, leaving Boabdil frowning and impatient until his impassive general cantered back to him.
"An unlooked for happening, O Sultan. It means our objective will have to be changed."
"What is it?"
"Our scouts came across a party of mountain dwellers who were bringing their families into safety in the city. They reported seeing a great force of Christians, about twelve thousand men, riding like the wind through the Elvira pass in the direction of Alcala la Real!"
"Shaitan take them, the dogs! When was this?"
"Yesterday."
Boabdil pounded on the high forward cantle of his saddle. "Allah defend us, is that commander of theirs—what is his name, Tendilla—is he a djinn that he divines our intentions so readily? How could he possibly conceive that we would dare to attack his fortress?"
Reduan's face showed no emotion, perhaps because, as it had been rumored in the palace, the risky attack did not have his wholehearted approval. "It could be merely circumstance that the infidel called in his outpost forces at this time. Or perhaps we have not yet uncovered all the spies he has burdened us with for years. The fact remains that we have no chance to win that fortress with so many soldiers at his disposal, especially if we have lost our advantage of surprise."
Francho's heart skipped. It was cursed bad luck that the reinforcements called in by Tendilla were seen by the few Moorish trappers left in the mountains who then, just as unfortunately, happened to meet up with Boabdil's scouts. The wild and rocky defiles in that area were barely inhabited, and there were several different routes and passes through the jagged terrain. It would not have been unusual for the Spanish troops to have gone through to Alcala undetected. But now even Boabdil would not be foolish enough to charge the eagle's nest with his smaller force. Yet, having come this far, would he just return home, crestfallen and ridiculous? Francho nibbled on his lip.
"Let my Sultan not be dismayed at such ill fortune," Reduan continued with toneless reassurance, and beckoned to an officer who handed him a rolled deerhide map, "the warriors of the Prophet have more than one sting to their tail." Dropping his reins he unrolled the map partially and jabbed at a specific location. "Here, Excellence, at the Alpuxarras pass, the fortress of Alhendin, reconnoitered recently by my scouts. It is commanded by a cavalier named Mendo de Quexada and garrisoned, my informant reports, by not over a hundred and fifty men. These jackals have been cutting off our convoys, pouncing down upon merchants and travelers, harassing our peasants in the vega, and burning their villages and fields. But see you, Great Sultan, the Spanish force marching to Alcala must have been recruited from everywhere close by, and Alhendin is surely left with few defenders." Reduan's eyelids flickered in his pocked face.
Boabdil studied the map, once more prey to indecision. "But Alhendin is not Alcala la Real," he complained, disappointment adding petulance to his voice.
"We could do worse than recapture a powerful castle which commands the main route to the Alpuxarras valleys and a large part of our own vega," Reduan urged quietly. "It would be a tactically intelligent move. Now we know the border fortresses have been weakened of men considerably. If we use speed and surprise we can overwhelm several of these posts."
Boabdil considered a moment, eyes shifting restlessly over the map, then lifted his head. "So be it then." He raised an arm encased in chain mail enameled bright green, the color of the Prophet. "Let the Christian dogs fall to the wrathful warriors of the One True God. Let the fall of Alhendin prophesy our victories to come. Forward, together, servants of Allah!"
The column turned eastward, quickening its pace as it descended from the heights toward Alhendin. If the captains wondered at the speed of the Sultan's recovery from the letdown of Alcala, Francho did not. He suspected Boabdil's continuing present exhilaration marked secret relief and second thoughts at not having to tackle the formidable Alcala and its equally formidable commander.
The Sultan smugly smoothed his brown double-pointed beard as Francho rode by his side and glanced over at his minstrel with a self-congratulatory smile, inclining toward him slightly to keep his words private. "Astonishing, it is not, Jamal, how far we both have progressed since we met in the willow grove? You are Head Musician to the Great Sultan and ride a warhorse by his side; and I am beloved of my people, at last, and flash my scimitar under the enemy's nose. Muhammed, the beloved of Allah, has helped our petitions," he declared, his brown eyes filled with the unusual shine of pride.
Francho forced himself to smile back, even though the distress inside of him was rising almost to nausea. Because of his warning Tendilla would be waiting at Alcala with every available man that could be squeezed from the borders—but Boabdil would strike instead at Alhendin and continue to rampage among the other undermanned frontier strongholds. Tendilla would wait with his massed forces in vain, and Francho had no way to let him know where to dispatch his troops. Should the Moors actually retake the entire forward area about Granada, the Christian setback, bloody and costly, would be Francho's fault, however unintentional. Throughout the remaining length of the march, he mused blackly on his accidental culpability and suffered over his impotence, and deflected the Sultan's concern about his glum mood by blaming it on a bad stomach.
In spite of the stubborn and valiant defense by its outnumbered garrison, Alhendin was taken in a few days, mainly through the efforts of a huge taskforce of diggers. Reduan had observed that the castle was built on a packed fall of shale rather than the solid rock of the mountain and sent in sappers to undermine the walls, the men protected by wooden screens covered with thick, wet hides. Digging in constant shifts, the soldiers cut away the rock and earth base under the great walls and temporarily supported the stones with lumber props, which would be set on fire after the miners had gotten clear.
The small Spanish garrison showered down rocks and lances and heaved boiling pitch from the battlements, and many of the sappers, caught unprotected by the hides, died in a screaming agony of burns. But a greater and more important number of the castle's defenders also went down under the deadly volleys of Reduan's large complement of archers and arquebusiers. At last, seeing the burning torches being run up to the wall the hapless commander Quexada realized that even if he fought to the last man the castle was already lost, and so he chose to sur
render. Boabdil ordered Alhendin totally destroyed so that the place might never again house a nest of vultures to scourge Granada, and so it was, the walls blasted into rubble by cannon.
Twice more in the following week, with a terrible aching inside his chest, Francho watched from the shelter of the Moorish camp the bloody downfall of other Spanish outposts, first the fortress Marchena and then the castle of Albolodny, watched as the Moslem army swarmed over the unprepared and undermanned bastions and left the ramparts draped with the dead and the dying heaped up upon each other. The exhausted remnants of the Christian defenders from both castles were carefully rounded up, chained and herded into groups, and immediately packed off to Granada, where the exulting populace would spit on them as they were dragged along behind their mounted captors.
In the cavernous main hall of Albolodny Francho lingered unobtrusively in the background while Boabdil and his commanders discussed their next moves. Since Boabdil seldom dismissed him, the others were as used to his inconsequential presence as they were to the mute M'jambana hovering always close to his master. But although he had been equal to the necessary display of joy at the Christian surrenders, a perpetual moist film rode his forehead as he burned out his brain trying to devise some way to let Tendilla know where Boabdil's forces were raiding.
He listened dully as Reduan labored to convince the Sultan it was time to return to Granada; they had captured three important strongholds, destroying one, leaving a third of their army to hold Marchena, and now needing to leave another third to garrison Albolodny. As reinforcement to his argument to withdraw, Reduan offered another plan. "Let us confound the enemy together by returning to Granada to renew our supplies and then quickly attacking in another direction—toward the sea. If we act swiftly and strike here"—Reduan's finger jabbed again at the map— "there is no possibility their border commander will anticipate us."
The dozen spike-helmeted officers in the surrounding group, their weather-creased, mustachioed faces stern, muttered approval. Now Francho had roused and found himself listening carefully, although he still held his appearance of nodding off. Boabdil, although unwilling to break up his triumphant campaign in the mountains in anticipation of the plaudits and new recruits his victories would bring, finally had the sense to listen to his wily general and reluctantly agreed with Reduan's plan. But on one point he was adamant.
The tall egret plume in his turban trembling, the huge sapphire fastening it flashing in the light of flaring torches bracketed on the bare stone walls, the Sultan announced firmly, "We now have an opportunity to avenge Vizier Comixa for the capture of his niece and her great dowry. The commander of this castle has spit out that a large convoy of Christian merchants and travelers left Jaen en route to Baza and will soon be somewhere about Quezada. Their escort is not large, they have no inkling we are in the vicinity. Tomorrow I want a part of our troops detached to go after this prize. On their return we shall depart here immediately."
One of the mailed and spurred captains spoke up. "Great Sultan, Quezada is dangerously close to Alcala la Real, where the enemy waits in full force and sends out daily patrols."
"True, but a small troop can avoid discovery, strike quickly as an adder, and disappear into the wilderness again. Tendilla expects a full army from the direction of Granada, not from the northwest. Surprise will again be on our side."
Reduan shrugged; he knew Boabdil had his mind set. "Very well, Excellence, it shall be done. I shall give the expedition into the hands of Captain Ahmed ben Fatar, and he shall handpick the men to accompany him. We will set a time limit for the detachment's return beyond which they will be left behind, so that the event of chance discovery will still not give the infidel time to reach us here."
"So it please you," ben Fatar spoke up, heightened color on his dark cheeks, "but I am not too familiar with the defiles and passes of that area."
Another officer chimed in, "That can be soon solved. With some coaxing the former commander of this castle indicated one of his men to be native to these parts. I removed the man from the prisoner convoys, and he is now languishing in the keep. To save his miserable infidel skin he has agreed to guide us along obscure but fast trails through the mountains."
Stretched out on a high-backed bench in the shadows Francho felt every nerve in his body tighten with tension. He had earlier thought of releasing a Christian captive to carry a message, but the vanquished had been chained together and removed so quickly from each fort that freeing one of them had been impossible. But now there was just one, and a prisoner who seemed so tractable he might not be under heavy guard. Attempting to get him away from the castle was a perilous risk, but at least it was the positive action Francho's conscience craved.
Therefore, just before dark, he took himself a casual stroll about the vast castle courtyard, sniffing the wind, greeting the guards stationed about with an airy wave of the hand, stopping here and there for a pleasant few words with the rugged soldiers cooking their suppers over small fires. The men treated him with respect because of his constant proximity to their ruler, and some because they had heard him perform or enjoyed the voice he raised to cheer them during the strenuous marches. Many gave him a friendly grin. He had made a habit of lackadaisical wandering about the camp whenever the Sultan did not require his presence, and the sight of the tall Head Musician in his long tunic stopping to watch the smith at his forge or to examine with a soldier a worn crossbow ratchet was not unusual.
Therefore no one wondered when he stopped before the iron-bound portal of the keep for a casual glance up at the first pale stars of evening, which covered his surreptitious study of the grim walls of the dungeon tower, topped by a crenellated roof and pierced by a few window slits.
The keep stood to one side of the court. Nearby, running around two walls, were the long, narrow, timber stables from which came the snorting of horses waiting to be fed. Across the great expanse of court stood a double-story barracks building that housed most of the Sultan's remaining army, with the rest of the soldiers lodging in tents pitched along the wall and in the center.
Francho cocked an ear at the offkey singing of one of the guards inside the keep, threw up his hands in mock indignation for the benefit of anyone who might be looking his way, and sauntered in the open portal, obviously to correct the soldier's pitch. A few minutes of pleasant banter later he emerged again, having gained valuable information. There were four guards on duty, their vigilance relaxed since they had only one iron-fettered prisoner to look after. The Moors had not found the keys to the keep, so the dungeon above was only barred, not locked. And the key to the prisoner's manacles was shoved into the sash of the pot-bellied guard who had been singing a coarse ditty as he pared his corns and who was now, in good-humored deference to the tender ears of the Sultan's favorite musician, only humming loud.
But reconnoitering the keep had only solved part of Francho's problem. It was at the sight of a troop of men carrying in water in buckets and jars before night fell that Francho's wild ideas for getting the Spanish captive out of the castle coalesced into a plan that had a chance.
The castle had no well. Water was brought from a mountain stream outside the walls and stored in huge brick cisterns. Since it was not their intention to leave their conquerors any comforts, the surrendering defenders had deliberately broken these storage tanks and allowed their contents to spill out, also smashing the great pottery vessels used to transport huge quantities of water at a time. The Moors had been working hard to repair the damage to the cisterns, but meanwhile five thousand men and hundreds of horses, mules, and camels depended on what water could be brought in several times a day by bucket and jug.
Sighing his thanks to God for this, Francho returned to the castle to find the Sultan preparing to send a servant in search for him. Boabdil's finicky digestion worked better if he dined with music.
***
One minute a moonless midnight lay silent upon the darkened barracks and ranks of tents in the castle courtyard, a gl
oom punctuated by areas lit by guttering torches as guides for the watch; the next minute the stillness was broken by nervous whinnying floating from the stables. And in hardly the passing of another minute plumes of gray smoke puffed past the lantern at the stable entrance. The horses began to scream with fright, jerking at their halters and kicking at the walls as a hungry crackle of orange flame shot its way along the dry timber walls in several places.
A disheveled groom stumbled out as Francho watched, hiding behind a nearby tent. "Fire! Fire!" the man screamed. Two soldiers patrolling the area came dashing toward the growing flames, raising the alarm as they ran. "Fire in the stables! Turn out! Fire!" Bright, lurid flames raced upward to left and right, reaching for the stable's thatched roof.
Heads popped out of tents as the dread cry of fire went up and half-dressed men tumbled from the barracks, grabbing at the water buckets sheltered under a canvas beside their building. The portal to the keep tower, the closest structure to the stables, flew open, and two of the guards dashed out to see what the shouting was about. "Allah save us!" one of them yelled back, pointing to the sheds connected to the stables by a common roof. "The powder! The wind is blowing the flames in the direction of the powder stores!"
A helmeted sergeant ran past the keep followed by a hodgepodge of sleepy-eyed men. "Don't gawk there!" he shouted at the staring guards in the keep doorway. "There's water in the trough. Bring buckets, helmets, anything you've got, wet down those powder sheds, hurry." The guards ducked back into the keep, quickly emerged with what vessels they could find, and dashed off toward the stone watering troughs in front of the burning stable.
"The horses—cut the halters and let the horses out!" another officer bellowed as hideous screams and whinnyings came from the smoke-filled stables. Clapping wet turban ends over nose and mouth, soldiers and grooms ran through the stifling smoke and heat with knives to free the animals.
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