‘Allah provides,’ he smiled.
‘Could he provide a little more clearly?’ Tristán grunted.
Yusuf pointed up at the hills. Arnau peered off in that direction. Once more he could see the shapes of animals atop the higher slopes, but no sign of roads nor fortifications. ‘Here,’ Yusuf said with odd certainty.
‘Here?’
‘Here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I feel it in my blood. God is with us.’
‘Yours or ours?’ spat Tristán.
‘Oh my dear boy,’ Yusuf smiled, ‘can you not see that they are but one God, for we all know that there is only one God, and that Mohammed is his prophet.’
Tristán glared at the man, but Arnau smiled wryly. ‘We are engaged upon a mission of mercy, not one of violence. Perhaps even divided as we are, He still favours us as righteous men.’ He nodded to Yusuf. ‘Lead on, my friend.’
The Moor did so, veering off the small farm track they had been following and making for the slope of the dry and dusty hill to the south. ‘Why do they take the goats to such inaccessible places?’ muttered Tristán as they climbed.
Yusuf gave him a smile. ‘The low lands become parched during the summer, the seasonal streams running dry, but the high pastures remain verdant. Herders drive their animals past the treeline in the summer in search of the best feed.’
Passing across the crest of that first hill, they could see the next, higher slope beyond, and made for that. For fully an hour they ascended, climbing one slope after another, always aiming for that high pastureland. Passing across a ridge, Arnau was able to say now that they were truly in the mountains. Ahead lay a peak of grey rock jutting from forest, a defile plunging down beside it.
‘Even with the sun, it would be very easy to become lost up here,’ he said, uncertainty edging into his voice. ‘My faith in the Lord is strong, but I still fear for our chances of crossing such heights.’
‘Trust in Allah, but tie your camel, my friend,’ Yusuf laughed.
‘What?’
‘Faith in God is paramount, but it can never replace common sense. We will cross not because of faith and our own skills. We will cross because no peasant can resist an easy coin.’
‘You are full of riddles today,’ Arnau snorted, but followed as Yusuf, still laughing, rode on, making for the herd, which occupied the verdant green ahead. A boy sat on a rock, whittling away at a stick with a small knife, and a man old enough to have christened Methuselah was lying on the grass nearby, humming a quiet melody with his eyes closed.
As the three men closed on the goatherds, their horses huffing and thudding on the turf, the goats fled in panic, bells clonking around their necks as they sought some corner of the hillside where the travellers were not. The boy shot to his feet, pointed stick in one hand, knife in the other, the protection of his herd his only concern. The old man opened one eye and ceased his humming, but remained prostrate.
‘As-salāmu alaykum,’ Yusuf said in a genial tone, bowing his head to the pair.
‘Wa alaykumu as-salāmu,’ replied the boy in a wavering, uncertain voice, still watching them intently and brandishing his improvised weaponry. The old man made a muffled sound that could have been a greeting, his one open eye locked upon them.
‘We find ourselves in need of crossing the mountains without the interference of the caliph’s soldiers,’ Yusuf said, so directly that Arnau blinked in surprise.
‘Yusuf…’
The Moor turned with a smile. ‘You think mountain goatherds give a fig for the armies of the caliph?’ He turned back to the two peasants. ‘We can be very generous in return for guidance across the range, if that is possible?’
The old man’s second eye now opened and they both narrowed as he looked the three men up and down and then shot a glance at the boy. He nodded, and the young man lowered his weapons and chewed his lip for a moment.
‘There are ways.’ The boy straightened. ‘A gold dinar might unlock the gate for you, noble gentlemen.’
Arnau blinked, surprised at the gumption of the boy, asking for gold, a coin that these two would have to work many months to make. He saw the nervous look the boy shot the old man and knew then that the boy was just the voice and they were negotiating with the old man.
‘A dinar is a high price,’ Yusuf noted, ‘but we are men in need and fortunate enough to find ourselves in a position to afford such a price.’
The boy looked worried and glanced back at the old man, who gave him a three-toothed smile. He turned back to Yusuf, swallowing. ‘You misunderstand, master. The price is per person.’
Arnau nearly exploded with shock and was more than a little grateful that Tristán had no idea what was being said, for he felt sure that the squire would have argued by now, had he known the price the goatherds were asking. Even Yusuf looked a little taken aback now, and turned to Arnau, a question in his eyes.
‘Tell him yes, but no more than three. And that we may require his services for free upon our return.’
Yusuf nodded and agreed the terms with the boy and the old man. Tristán cleared his throat and said, very quietly, ‘What’s happening?’
Arnau gestured for him to move, and the two men walked their horses a little further back, away from the two goatherds as Yusuf spoke with them. Once he judged they were far enough away, Arnau glared at his squire. ‘You cannot speak Aragonese here. You’re going to have to be mute in Al-Andalus.’
‘Sorry, Brother. I can’t see too much inside this thing, and I can’t understand what anyone’s saying, and even when you and the Moor are talking, you talk in his language. It’s making me very nervous not having a clue what’s going on around me.’
Arnau sagged a little, realising how the man must feel. He pointed at the three men across the grass. ‘They know of a way across the mountains. It’s costing us dearly, but I’m willing to pay to avoid delays and run-ins with the caliph’s army.’
The squire sat silent for just a moment, radiating an air of suspicion. ‘And what if they’re just leading us a merry dance and we end up falling into a crevasse? You trust them?’
Arnau shrugged. ‘They are just farmers. They would not dare trick noblemen and warriors so. The risk would be just too great.’ Arnau turned at the sound of activity and saw Yusuf walking his horse in their direction, a broad grin on his face.
‘What is it?’ Arnau asked, as Yusuf brought his steed to a halt, and then switched to Aragonese, knowing they were far enough from the pair to go unheard, and repeated the question quietly.
The Moor chuckled, and then spoke in soft Aragonese. ‘This pair are cunning and have nerve to spare. Our three dinars, which they were surprised to see were actually Castilian maravedi, have merely bought us a trick. They will not leave their herd unattended, and neither is willing to let the other go off on their own.’
‘Then how can they help?’ grunted Tristán.
‘It seems that they are not the only farmers that use the mountain pastures and the hidden ways for their herds. Men from all along these hills on both sides of the range use them, sometimes even in the evening or pre-dawn light. The paths are marked to help them find their way and prevent them accidentally straying over a cliff.’
‘Marked? How?’ asked Arnau.
‘At every high point or fork, at every point of danger or visual marker the locals have driven stakes into the ground and topped them with cow skulls. They use them to navigate the hills.’
‘Mighty cunning,’ smiled the knight.
‘The three gold coins, then, have bought us nothing but skulls on sticks,’ snorted Tristán.
‘On the contrary,’ Arnau smiled, ‘they have bought us the secret to crossing the mountains in either direction. That is invaluable.’
With the aid of the young goatherd, they located the first marker, espying it from this very hill. A bleached white skull shone bright in the morning sunlight, standing atop a pole, wedged into a small cairn of stones at the base of a grey-brow
n ridge across a shallow valley. Arnau peered off in that direction. ‘If there is more than one path marked thus, how do we still make sure we are moving in the right direction?’
Yusuf gave him a sly smile. ‘Peasant folk are often the most practically bright of all people, my friend. They face the cows to the sunrise. To head south, follow the left side of the skulls.’
Arnau chuckled. ‘Clever, and so simple. We just have to hope than none of them have fallen over or been removed, then, but since they’re used by the farmers up here, they must keep them in serviceable condition. Let’s follow our bovine trail.’
It took half an hour to reach the marker they had spotted below the ridge and they turned back there to wave farewell to their expensive guides, but the pair had taken their herd and moved out of sight. From the marker, they located the south and followed the cow’s directions along the bottom of the ridge. At the far end, the hill plunged down into a deep valley. Arnau could see a waterfall off to what must be the west and wondered whether that deep valley marched miles back to join up with the pass they had not taken. Would the Almohads patrol side valleys? Might there be roving cavalry such as they had met outside Salvatierra in the deep vales of this region?
The thought made him rake the terrain with his eyes, yet he saw nothing moving. It took a few minutes for them to find the next marker and, in fact, they found two. A white skull on a pole off to the west along that valley marked one such route, while another stood proud on the peak opposite. That, they reasoned by way of the direction from which they’d arrived, was the south, and so, with deep breaths, they located the nearest trail down the scree slope and began to cautiously lead their horses down it.
Half an hour later they were down, and at the end of the hour they were staggering up the last stretch of the slope opposite. Reaching the marker, all three men heaved a sigh of relief, only to have that relief wrenched away at the sight of what awaited them. They were not at the height of the range yet, for sure. From here the ground fell away into a deep valley once more to their right, a sharp ridge marching off ahead, rising all the time. Some squinting into the sunlight located two more staked skulls, but a little collective reasoning identified the one that stood at the horizon above the ridge as the southernmost. As they agreed on making for that one, none of the three voiced the ever-present thought that just because the marker was to the south did not mean it would lead them through the range to the southern side. They would have to trust to providence and go south in the hope that it worked.
Four more hours they toiled across ridges, over peaks and down deep valleys, each becoming more and more weary and worrying that they had somehow become turned around. None of them knew how wide the range would be, including their guide, for Yusuf had only traversed the Sierra Morena through the pass himself.
Mid-afternoon brought disaster. Through no fault of the squire’s, Tristán’s spare horse slipped on a scree slope. A broken leg doomed the poor beast, and Arnau with great sadness was forced to put the poor beast out of its misery. Distributing the gear among the remaining animals, they set off once more. Arnau was beginning to become truly worried by the time they were climbing the next peak. The sun was now clearly on its descent, and he did not like the idea of camping out high in these mountains any more than trying to traverse them in the dark. Ranges like this were the haunt of bears and wolves and wild boar, which all became especially dangerous after dark.
He was just scanning the area to try and identify anywhere they might be able to set up camp that would present only one direction open to danger and was defensible if called for, when they crested the next rise and he almost cried out in relief. They had emerged onto a small plateau, and for the first time, instead of peaks and gorges lying in their path, he could see for miles. Valleys ran down south and east from here like grooves torn in the earth by a vast plough, each leading from these heights down to a brown, flat, and incredibly welcoming plain. He could even see, in the distance, the shape of a town.
‘Can we make it before dark?’ Tristán asked, peering into the distance hungrily.
‘I’m certainly going to try.’
Yusuf nodded, even he showing visible relief. ‘We have no need to study the markers from here. The valley directly ahead leads straight down to the plain. It will take almost an hour to get down from the peaks into that valley bottom, but once we’re down, we should be able to mount up and ride. We’ll make good time then. In two hours, we might even be in town. By the time the sun sets we shall be on the plain.’
‘And from there, to Cordoba,’ breathed Arnau, a thread of trepidation once more slipping into his tone of relief.
7. Qurṭuba
1 July 1212, Cordoba
Despite the ever-increasing danger and the threat of mortal disaster looming, Cordoba was still a welcome sight. Following their difficult mountain crossing, the three men had descended from the Sierra Morena along a deep-sided green valley that ran in a southerly direction and spilled them out onto a plain not dissimilar to the one on the northern side of the range. The sun had been sinking as they arrived and, not wanting to risk the local town, they had found an old ruined hut in the low foothills and stayed there overnight without a campfire.
The next morning, they had ridden out once more, and realised that if it had been nerve-wracking riding through Almohad lands north of the mountains, the tension and danger had increased tenfold here. Despite the need for haste, they simply could not use the larger roads, for in addition to the usual civil traffic they had already encountered, albeit in much larger numbers, not an hour passed here without some patrol unit or small knot of warriors, some on horses, some marching along in perfect time, all heading north-east.
That they were converging to help defend the pass across the mountains against some expected attack from the northern kingdoms seemed undeniable, and the last thing the three men needed was to be caught up in that nightmare. Their guise seemed to be holding up with the ordinary travellers they had met on the road, but none of them felt like testing it against the Almohad military.
Consequently, they moved along farm tracks and small village roads at best, those often running parallel more than a mile from the main route from Ubeda to Cordoba along the southern edge of the mountain range. More often they were forced to cross scrubland or cleverly-irrigated farmlands, keeping a low profile. The dreadfully slow pace of their progress ate at Arnau’s nerves.
The days wore on, plodding slowly, being forced to move into terrible terrain time and again simply to avoid the possibility of bumping into dangerous travellers. Nights of sleeping rough and keeping watch through the darkness made them all jumpy and tetchy. Days of watching every hint of movement on the horizon became wearing.
At dusk six days into the journey, they had found a large estate of olive trees and had camped down in a dip somewhere at its heart and risked a small fire. Moving on the next morning they had passed through a hamlet as the sun set and Yusuf had risked speaking to one of the locals. Cordoba, a toothless, weather-beaten farmer had said, was still sixteen miles distant. The information had disheartened Arnau, for he had been expecting to pass through into the city long before now, and this meant that they were covering less than ten miles a day, despite setting off before dawn, stopping only briefly for rest and food breaks, and riding until after dusk with regular changes of horse. The cautious manner of their journey was slowing them down frustratingly.
Thus it was around noon when they finally reached the city that had once been the capital of Al-Andalus, and before that even of Roman Iberia. Arnau was already twitching, knowing that their potential rendezvous with their quarry was only viable before the noon prayer. The great city, walled by successive empires, sat on the north bank of the wide river like a giant fortress. Yusuf, familiar with the city as only a native could be, directed them around the northern periphery in a circuit, bringing them to the western side, where the Bab al-Chawz, the entrance they sought, lay.
The gate lay in a sha
llow ‘V’ shape where the walls dipped slightly inwards, and Arnau could not help but feel as though they were being funnelled between fortifications. Gleaming armour and bright colours were in evidence on the wall tops, between the sharp-pointed battlements, and Almohad flags flew at intervals all around. The hum of city life that issued from beyond the walls was somehow different to the Christian cities of the north, reminding Arnau of the time he had spent on the island taifa. There was a noticeable difference in the sound, more richly-woven as an aural tapestry, and somehow perfectly fitting with the odour of Cordoba, which was a heady mix of flowers, spice and animal dung that was sweet and pungent at once.
All manner of life was flowing into the city, the guards at the gate watching everyone like hawks, occasionally selecting lone travellers or small groups to question or search. Arnau fretted, knowing that they couldn’t afford to be searched. At first glance they would not show up as anything other than locals, but the opening of bags would inevitably spill out the whole damning story.
Yusuf moved close to his side and spoke in a low voice. ‘Perhaps we would be best served waiting until the call to prayer, when the streets will fill up and the guards will be busier and more distracted?’
Arnau shook his head, replying similarly in Arabic. ‘We cannot afford to wait. The man will be at the caravanserai, but only until that call goes out. If we wait for it, we will miss him and that will mean we have to delay an entire day. As it is, the adhan could be called any time, and we already run the risk of being too late.’
Feeling tense and frustrated, and not even daring to look at Tristán, whose nerves he could feel crackling in the air like lightning, Arnau walked his horse forwards a few steps again as the queue moved. The minutes passed, the guards at the gate hauling aside some poor wretch, searching him and finding something of which they disapproved, dragging him inside for further examination. They closed on the gate, two more groups in front, then one. Arnau suspected the guards were pulling one visitor in every five or six out to check, and that put him, Yusuf and Tristán in real danger of being selected, so as the two men in front were admitted without incident, Arnau felt every muscle in his body tighten in expectation of trouble.
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