The sun splashed fire across the mountains, a brilliant orange against the budding green clinging to the slopes. At their ancient feet, the pennants of Charles’s northern lords waved bravely above companies and battalions spreading out from the mouth of Roncevaux in a glimmering tapestry of martial splendor. Roland rode out with his small band of companions to greet the royal party. Outriders had already alerted Charles to Roland’s approach so that even before the champion could reach the clutch of bureaucrats enclosing him, the king cantered atop his finely groomed steed to greet him. As he drew close, he leaned from his saddle and clasped Roland’s hand in his.
“It’s good to see you, nephew,” he said.
“And you,” Roland replied with a wolfish grin. “We’ve supported Barcelona already against Saragossa.”
“Very good,” Charles beamed. “Very good indeed. Bring me your report.”
By evening a light wind billowed the canvas of Charles’s campaign headquarters, tugging the canvas while attendants set the last pegs in the shadow of the mountains. Even as the final support ropes stretched taut, couriers arrived from Francia with dispatches on everything from campaign supplies to holy festivals in Aachen to the spring tax collections. From just over the pass or from far-away Rome, all roads led to Charles’s court.
Within the canvas confines, thick carpets from far-off Persia blanketed the ground, hushing the slippered feet of clerics and functionaries—though the thin walls did little to muffle the noises beyond of men settling into their campaign routines. Roland ducked into the tent to find a young page who met him with a respectful bow. The youth then led him through the gaggle of courtiers who kept the machinery of the kingdom ever grinding forward. At the far end, the page opened a flap, gesturing for the champion to enter.
Within this portion of the tent, Charles sat at a worktable. He drummed fingers stained black from signing documents on the desktop and gazed absently at the shadows of guards taking their stations outside the canvas partitions.
Roland cleared his throat and bowed.
“Oh, yes. Do come in,” Charles said, his attention snapping back.
“Something bothers you, Uncle?”
“It’s nothing,” Charles shuffled through the papers on his desk. “Nothing at all.”
“What is it?” Roland pressed. “You can tell me.”
Charles studied him for a long moment then slumped back in his chair.
“I am wondering about the truth of dreams and visions. You know, I’ve heard of such things, but until now I thought they were only the purview of holy men,” Charles whispered. “When kings have them—well, they don’t always work out so well. Look at Pharaoh who sought out Joseph. The fatted cattle were consumed most ungraciously.”
Roland grabbed a camp stool and pulled it up to the desk.
“Well, I’ve heard tell the pope anointed you emperor,” he began. “God’s servant on earth, giving you right to more than most kings. I suppose it wouldn’t be unusual for God to want you to know something.”
Charles smiled wanly at his nephew. “Yes, yes. Thank you, Roland. But I’d have told you anyway, without the reminder.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Beware a priest bearing a crown. Well, where to begin? This dream—in it, I saw the gates of a fortified city and our men dying before them. And the heavens, they opened up fire and brimstone. Suddenly I stood amidst the apocalypse, more horrific than anything written by John, beloved of Christ. What could it mean?”
Roland hesitated. He had only expected Charles to debate dreams in some general sense, not to actually tell him of a vision. “I’m sorry, Uncle,” Roland hedged. “I’m a soldier who can barely read and write my own name. Such things as this, well, I am not the one to interpret them.”
Charles nodded, tapping his fingers on the side of his chair.
“Neither am I, for such things must be of God,” he mused. “And we need to talk of things that concern men.”
Roland nodded. “Our scouts have reached Barcelona,” he reported. “As we feared, the walls have been repaired.”
“That will raise the price to take the city.”
“It will unless we nullify that advantage,” Roland agreed. “The emir’s son Karim has been helpful. I’ve a way to enter the city.”
Charles studied him carefully and reached out to pat Roland’s hand.
“Pray God brings success to your plan.”
Roland’s eyes glinted with confidence. “He will not abandon us.”
AOI
Over the next two weeks, the Franks marched westward along the southern verge of the Pyrenees in a determined reach for Sulayman’s home enclave at Barcelona. Not only for shoring up the morale of their ally did they desire the city—it boasted a port capable of landing supplies from Massilia so vital in prosecuting the campaign to bring Saragossa to his knees. Minor skirmishes were all that marked that journey, raids by small scouting parties testing strengths and probing for weaknesses as Marsilion’s army sought for advantage after their defeat on the plains. But these pinpricks did nothing to slow the inexorable advance of the Franks. Within days of their arrival about the city’s walls, they entrenched firmly, just beyond bowshot of the Saragossan occupiers on the battlements. Troopers broke out rations and prepared for the call to the first assault.
The siege had begun.
Ganelon perched on a rock among the men of Tournai like a predatory bird, his helmet, weapons, and shield stacked nearby. He tore into a stale biscuit and choked it down with a gulp from a water skin. His crag-faced uncle Guinemer hunched over his own kit, rubbing intently at a splotch of rust on the armor with oil and stone.
Not far away among the retainers, Julian cleaned and stacked weapons and armor, joking with his peers. Yet even focused on his tasks, he kept a half an eye on Ganelon and another out for Roland.
A knight in Charles’s livery approached on horseback.
“Take your position!” he shouted. “Await the signal!”
Ganelon waved in affirmation, and the man rode on to the next unit down the line.
“So, Charles really does mean to lay siege to the city,” Ganelon growled low enough for only his uncle to hear. “And the other half of our army sits on its arse in the Saxon March. The man’s a damned fool.”
Guinemer buckled his weapons about his waist and set his helmet onto his head. His gap-toothed mouth split into a wicked grin.
“Some say the vixen warming his bed has driven him mad,” he spat. “Brought down a curse from God!”
“One well-placed stroke, Uncle, and the kingdom will fall. Then the madness will end. Only then.”
Guinemer leaned in, lowering his voice even further. He glanced about for prying eyes—and ears.
“When is the time?”
Ganelon laughed and slapped his uncle on the back. “When is it ever the time to kill a king?” He scrambled from the rock, tossing his ration bag to a squire. “On your feet,” he roared to the men. “We’ve the king’s business to be about!”
Night lengthened the shadows that stretched across the earth from Barcelona’s walls. Wearing the darkness like a shroud, Frank troopers hauled siege engines into place. Around those machines, companies of troopers scrambled forward to critical points in the ravaged remains of houses and shops surrounding the fortifications. Those men remained ever vigilant against defenders that might attempt to sally from their bastions to disrupt the tightening Frank cordon. From those emerging Frank lines, two figures crept through the shadows and worked their way through the burned-out buildings. Close under the dizzying citadel wall, they entered a blackened building and scurried deep within to a staircase. Pressing against the fractured walls, they then navigated shattered steps upward to the skeletal rafters.
Roland tested the strength of one jutting timber. Satisfied it would hold, he skittered across to the tiled crenellations overlooking Barcelona behind her recently rebuilt walls. Karim followed along behind him.
From their perch in the building, they scanned the city’s upper ramparts for movement.
“Saragossa has troops throughout the city,” Roland observed. “You’re certain your people will be able to deliver the signal?”
Karim chuckled. “Of course. I thought your book taught you to have faith, Christian.”
“It does,” the knight replied. “But how is it you speak of faith? You’re an infidel.”
“No, you’re the infidel.”
Both men laughed.
“We are a people of faith,” Karim explained. “My friend, I believe in God as do you. Sons of Judah call him Elohim, and we know him as Allah. And Mohammed is his prophet. I’ve read your book, Christian—that and many others. We encourage education among my people. Better is the warrior who thinks beyond the battlefield.”
“We’ve clergy who do the reading,” Roland said after a moment’s pause. “Soldiers do the work of war. That is the order of things ordained by God. Though one day I’ll put my words on a page.”
Karim feigned surprise.
“And what would you write?” he asked. “Of glorious battles and great heroes dying in far-off lands? Those tales have already been written, my friend!”
“Written words can speak of the heart,” Roland said, averting his eyes to Barcelona’s dark walls.
“Oh! You’ve a woman to send words to!” Karim appeared scandalized. His eyes crinkled with humor. “And here I thought you cared only for your men and that nag you call a horse! What would you write, soldier-bard?”
Roland jabbed him in the ribs. “Those words would be hers alone.”
Just then a bucketful of smoldering embers dropped from the top of the wall. The cinders flared briefly as they struck the ground before going out in a feeble puff of smoke.
“Our signal?” asked Roland.
“Now, my friend,” Karim replied, “is the changing of the guard. Hurry!”
They carefully navigated through the ruined attic and back to the ground. They rushed across the debris-strewn street, quickly pressing their bodies against the city wall by the ash pile. Karim patted at the stones until he felt a dark rope clinging to the heights above.
He tugged on it.
“After you, my Christian friend,” he offered.
“I’m thinking,” Roland observed, “that my face shouldn’t be the first over the wall. Or you might find it greeting you on its way back down.”
Karim knotted the rope around his hand.
“As you wish!” He laughed.
Agile as a squirrel, Karim crawled hand over hand up the wall. Roland jumped, catching the rope, and clambered up behind him, his boots slipping against the dusty stones. At the top, rough hands reached out to haul each of them in turn over the parapet to the catwalk where a silent clutch of partisans crowded in close, throwing robes and cloaks over them. In hushed tones, they urged the two toward a sliver of light shining from the door of a nearby tower. Once inside, they stepped over the torn bodies of Saragossan guards. The partisans whisked their charges down the stairs to the tower entrance where more bodies slouched inside the door to the street. There the entire group pulled their hoods over their heads.
“Move!” one of the partisans urged, pushing Roland to step more quickly. Above them, doors opened, and voices cried out as the relief guard discovered what had happened. Alarms rang out from the walls. Sentries’ horns blared over the tiled roofs and echoed through the alleys.
The partisans hurried through back byways until they reached a building deep in a ramshackle district of the city far from the agitated city troops. They crowded through an open door into a small room lit only by the faintest of starlight filtering through a single shuttered window. Roland edged to one wall, stepping carefully to avoid stumbling over some scrap of junk and giving away their position.
The partisans sucking in stale air remained the only sound punctuating the darkness.
“We must keep moving,” said a distinctly female voice.
“Praise Allah, Raisha,” Karim said, throwing his arms around a slender figure. “I feared you were rotting in a dungeon, or worse!”
Raisha urgently gestured toward a darkened pool of a doorway. “Move! Or the morning will find us all a head shorter when Saragossa realizes we struck from within.”
She wasted no more breath on words and guided the group down a series of crumbling steps to an ancient crypt beneath the city. At the bottom, she lit a torch from which the men brought a few more to oily, flickering life. Carved into the rock around them were egresses filled with moldering bones—Visigoths by the look of the rusty armor and Germanic blades.
“Sister,” Karim whispered. “We must get to the North Gate.”
Raisha’s dark eyes narrowed, her features barely more visible in the guttering light.
“Are you daft? They’ll cut us down before we cross the square! We’ll discuss our strategy after we have had time to consolidate forces. We must wait for the right opportunity.”
“That time is now,” Roland interjected. “It must be tonight!”
“It must? And why should we believe you, Christian?” she asked, a dangerous edge rising in her voice.
“Sister, this is Roland.” Karim took her by the hand. “He’s driven Saragossa as chaff before the wind. He intends to restore our father to his city.”
“The same Roland who slays any who refuse the Christian baptism?” she pressed. “Yes, we’ve heard the whispers from the occupiers.”
“Sister,” Karim said, “it’s not true.”
One of the men brushed Raisha aside and glared at Roland, the torches casting a red tinge on his bristly beard.
“Karim, we know you,” he snarled. “But we will hear it from the mouth of the infidel.”
Roland nodded his assurance to Karim then threw back his hood so all could see his face. The partisans crowded closer.
“Charles is here to protect his own kingdom from Marsilion,” Roland declared. “That is all. As Saint Michael is my witness, we’ll leave when this is done.”
The partisans searched one another’s eyes for assurance—these were men who risked their lives and homes for even speaking with Raisha, the daughter of the fallen, though much-loved, house of Barcelona. Yet now they were being asked to cooperate with the Christians who bristled with steel at the gates and prepared to inflict even more damage on their city.
Roland remained uncowed, looking each man in the face in turn. Many searched his gaze and after a moment returned it with a stalwart nod or smile of their own.
“Good!” declared Karim. “Now we must take the gate!”
In the deepening night, the men of Tournai tumbled into their place in the Frank line, pressing forward behind large oval shields. Arrows whistled at them from archers perched along the walls. Atop his armored horse, Ganelon sat tall and straight, his once-fine surcoat bearing the lily of his house patched and stained—yet his armor remained in good order even after the long march south, days of nipping at Saragossa’s heels, and more days of digging in. Guinemer rode next to him, reviewing the preparations of the ladders and grappling hooks. The men loosed their weapons in their scabbards, knowing that scaling the walls would be a bloody affair that would exact a butcher’s toll on the units selected to climb first.
“So what are our orders?” Guinemer asked, returning his attention to his nephew.
“We attack the west wall,” Ganelon replied simply.
The older man adjusted his helmet, looking over the distance between the Frank pickets and the city looming before them. Already Frank catapults discharged pitch pots in fiery streaks through the darkening sky, followed by the hulking whirling of solid stone shot. Between the Tournai men and the wall lay a cratered desolation of broken buildings that risked slowing the men who would race to lift the ladders against Barcelona’s imposing fortifications and leave them exposed to the archers above.
“At night?” Guinemer asked. He winced at a thwump from a nearby catapult sending another deadly projectile into the sky.
“Aye,” Ganelon replied. “We’re to place ladders on the uppermost stones of the battlements.”
“And nothing of Roland?” pressed his uncle. “Has he run off on some special assignment to miss our bloodletting?”
“Mark me,” Ganelon hissed through gritted teeth. “After the noise of battle dies down, he’ll appear in the dawn light and climb over our cold bodies to claim the victory.”
Archers crept forward under the cover of the catapult volleys to positions among the ruined buildings. From there they popped up in ones and twos to fire arrows toward the upper crenellations. Enemy archers rushed for cover as the arrows scattered along the stone.
Ganelon waved his infantry forward under the ragged return volley that spattered among them. An impressive force indeed, he thought. The men trotted through the debris-choked street toward the wall—but he knew very few of them would survive to even place a hand on the upper battlement. Another angry swarm of arrows whistled through the air onto the warding Tournai shields. Three shafts lodged in Ganelon’s saddle, and his horse bolted sideways. Men close to him rushed to calm the steed and attend to their lord. Ganelon waved them off with a laugh, snapped the arrow shafts, and tossed them to the ground.
“If Peter slams shut the gates of heaven,” he roared, “then the fires of hell will keep me warm!”
His men let out a ragged cheer then surged into the killing zone, planted their ladders, and heaved them up to the parapets.
Across the city, the palace of Barcelona stood tall, its ramparts thick and well defended. Marsilion watched from a window high in an inner bastion. From that vantage point, his heart raced as the incoming projectiles crushed and burned indiscriminately.
Blancandrin rushed into the room, his features smudged with soot.
“My lord,” he said, dropping to his knees before the emir. “The Franks send men to assault the outer walls.”
“They’ll break against those walls,” Marsilion snorted. “Come morning the stones will be drenched in their blood.”
“But, my lord,” Blancandrin said, rising to his feet, “Charles would not spend his strength in vain. He must have something else afoot.”
“Sappers?”
“We’ve no evidence. But there must be something. We must be vigilant.”
A trooper, his mail coat shredded about the edges, urgently burst in and prostrated himself before the emir.
“What is it?” Marsilion demanded. “Quickly, man!”
Suddenly Blancandrin turned and bolted from the room without waiting for dismissal. Marsilion turned to look out the window and saw what his general had seen over his shoulder. Across the city’s besieged silhouette, the North Gate began to billow smoke in thick columns that reflected the red light from the burning of the city.
The partisans fought with a hodgepodge of weapons, most of them pilfered from kitchens and butcher shops or rescued from the graves of moldering Visigoths beneath the city. Though poorly equipped, they fought tenaciously against the troops guarding the city’s entrance until their blood began to pool among the rough cobbles of the square before the portals. What started as a skirmish quickly grew to an outright battle with combatants from both sides rushing into the fray.
Then clattering rose through the street, the harbinger of approaching cavalry—hooves striking the broken cobbles in a hammering staccato.
Blancandrin cantered along the thoroughfare with a squadron of elite lancers at his back. He stood in his stirrups to scan the carnage before the gate, marking the lightly armored Frank champion among the knot of partisans. With a growl in his breast, he dropped back into the saddle and drove his spurs into his horse’s flanks.
“To the gate! Crush them!”
The order echoed through the squadron, and the lancers charged into the chaos, a wedge of armor driving toward the gate. Partisans fought tooth and nail against the weight of the new threat. They threw their bodies at the troopers. The horsemen discarded shattered lances and drew sabers for close-quarter fighting, swinging them down again and again until they dripped of blood and stained their garments in gore.
Blancandrin bore his straight Syrian sword, forged of the finest Damascus steel, to cut through sinew and bone until it wedged in the shoulder of a partisan who shrieked under the bite. Blancandrin kicked a foot out of his stirrup and planted it in the man’s face. The doomed wretch clawed at the general’s leg. He ripped the blade free then scanned the square.
The partisans were melting away into the alleys, and Roland was gone.
Deep in the darkness of one such alley, Karim and Raisha caught their breath. Around them the battered partisans choked down emotions while lancers continued to ride down stragglers in the open square. The armored cavalry had turned the tide on them.
“They’re too many,” Karim said, wiping grime from his face. “And more are coming. Can you hear them? How will we get through to open the gate?”
Roland craned his neck to get a better look through the billowing smoke from pitch-flamed buildings. Lancers continued to work their sabers, dropping partisans like so much wheat in a field, but the skilled horsemen pulled short of the narrow alleys where they could be overwhelmed in the tight quarters.
“I’ll open the gate,” he said finally. “Can you get your men over there?” He pointed to the far end of the square, where a building began to creak and groan as fire undermined its framing. “Anchor against that building and hit them hard in the flank.”
Raisha rubbed at her face beneath her veil and readjusted her pillaged helmet.
“You’re mad, Christian,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’ll be exposed once you step into the square.”
Karim clapped a hand on Roland’s shoulder.
“You’re a brave warrior,” he said. “But you cannot do this alone.”
Roland gripped Karim’s shoulder in return. “Where’s your faith, my friend?”
A dangerous grin broke across Karim’s face.
“Allah have mercy on your infidel soul,” he said.
Raisha and Karim passed back through the remaining partisans, whispering orders and pulling the men after them, and then together they slipped into back alleys. Within a few moments, Roland stood alone but for a few wounded stragglers. Durendal gleamed when he lifted the cruciform hilt to his eyes, the simple intersection lines of blade and cross guard momentarily becoming the focus of his attention.
“Dear God,” he whispered, “give me strength to face this.” He kissed the reliquary and balanced the sword in his hand, his fingers flexing around the hilt. But he did not have to wait long.
Shouts broke out a short distance down the street. The partisans assaulted the Saragossan flank with all manner of edged and blunt weaponry. Knives, rusted swords, clubs, and pitchforks tore at horses and men with ferocity born of desperation. Blancandrin bellowed orders, and his men wheeled about to engage the ragtag threat that erupted from the shadowed debris. Brave men and women would breathe their last tonight, bleeding out on the cobblestones under the hooves of the general’s troopers.
Roland gauged the enemy movements, his muscles tense, until the last of the lancers finally turned and committed to the counterattack on the partisans. He sucked in a hot breath and sprinted across the corpse-littered square to the gatehouse. A brace of guards charged forward with a shout to meet him. But they were not prepared for the steel that greeted them. Durendal wove a web of death that drove them stumbling back. Roland thrust his shoulder into one man, knocking him into another who was attempting to sound a horn. The man lost his balance, and Roland plunged the sword into his throat to silence him for good.
Then the Frank knight lunged through the gatehouse door. Another guard charged, lowered his shoulder, and crushed Roland into the doorjamb. Roland drove his knee into the man’s groin and yanked the guard’s own poniard loose, driving it underneath his armpit. The guard struggled to keep Roland pinned against the building while his breathing became ragged. Roland twisted the blade and opened the wound further until the man crumpled at last. Roland shoved past him, racing up the stairs to the gate mechanism.
He reached the great winches on the upper level. Three guards rushed him, and a saber whistled through his light gambeson, slicing cloth and skin and flooding the garment with blood. But the cut continued wide, leaving the attacker open and his feet splayed. Roland smashed Durendal’s pommel into his face with a crunch of metal on bone then wrapped his foot around the man’s extended leg, toppling him down the stairwell even as the knight pivoted to deflect the second guard’s saber cut with Durendal’s flat. The third tried a flank attack, but Roland raked his poniard into the man’s belly, and the man sank to his knees, blood and entrails spilling through fingers that tried to plug the murderous hole.
Roland crashed into the final man, flattening him against the gate’s mechanism, and pounded his face over and over again. A crack of skull against the iron gear left blood and brains streaking downward when the guard sank to the floor.
Roland cast back the locking lever and gripped the lift chains. Gears clacked with each slow turn. He heaved, arms and shoulders cracking while blood dripped from his sleeve. The pawl clicked over the ratchet tick by tick, his neck muscles bulging with the effort and his breath coming in shortened gasps. The gate shuddered and groaned and slowly started to rise. Pain throbbed from his wounds but he ignored it and heaved harder, his body straining and cracking. Lights crackled in his vision, lungs burning. Finally with a resistant groan, the counterweights tipped and the gate started to rise on its own.
Roland staggered downstairs to slump in the doorway of the gatehouse, and Durendal slipped from his slackening fingers to clatter on the ground.
Frank horns sang out from the smoldering rubble outside the gate accompanied by armored knights thundering toward the open portal. From his position at the head of the charging column, Oliver yelled commands to engage the Saragossan horsemen and drive them back. Behind the cavalry echoed the solid tromp of the marchmen’s boots, led by Kennick, arrayed in tight formation with shields interlocked and spears bristling to engage Blancandrin’s dismounted reinforcements.
Otun ranged on the edge of the formation where his ax spattered blood from Saragossans that dared to challenge the tight-knit wedge.
The tall Dane roared with pleasure, blue eyes delighted at the prospect of carnage. When he drew abreast of the gatehouse, the Dane spied Roland and, ignoring Kennick’s yells, rushed through the melee to reach his master’s side. He plucked Durendal from the ground and marked the flow of blood from the knight’s fingers. Roland sagged into his arms. Otun wrapped one arm around his master and, brandishing his ax like a cleaver with the other, forced his way back to the marchmen. Troopers quickly parted ranks and then folded in again to enclose their champion in a shield of iron and bone, dragging him forward along with them.
The marchmen’s progress behind Oliver could not be stopped. A rushing flow of men crowded through the gate, driving Blancandrin’s lancers deep into the city.
Morning dawned with the sky obscured by a thick shroud of smoke. Allied Frank and Barcelonan forces had continued the fight against Saragossa through the night—driving the emir’s men before them, building by building, street by street, in one bloody skirmish after another. Outside the palace, Saragossan troopers formed up into ranks. Their once-proud arms and armor were battered and stained with soot and gore. Tattered banners hung limply in the still morning air.
Marsilion shuffled from the palace to his waiting horse. The sound of hooves clattering up the main thoroughfare caught his attention—a messenger atop horse frothing in sweat.
“My lord!” he called to the emir. “A message from Blancandrin!”
Marsilion raised his hands to the silent sky. “Yes, yes?”
The man vaulted from the saddle, prostrating himself before the emir’s slippered feet. He looked up from the dust, and Marsilion impatiently waved him to his feet. “The general bids you to heed his words. The city has fallen between the palace and the North Gate. You must withdraw before the Franks can cordon off the southern thoroughfare.”
Marsilion bristled, tugging impatiently at his jutting beard.
“No,” he growled. He kicked at the messenger in frustration. “We must hold!”
“My lord,” the man pleaded, “your men bleed to secure your passage from the city!”
Past the units assembled before him, Marsilion strained to see and hear the sounds of conflict in the streets beyond. Smoke hung thick and acrid over the city, marking the path of the most intense fighting. The nearby buildings cracked and crumbled from the bombardment.
Leaving galled Marsilion, but the tide was clearly against him. But even though they forced him from Barcelona, he suddenly thought, Sulayman would be burdened with nothing but a shell—the city was only a shadow of the metropolis the traitor had fled. That same ruined shell would be a millstone around Charles’s war efforts. At least there was satisfaction in that.
“Very well,” he conceded. “Tell the general we will withdraw.”
Not long after, as he made his way in defeat out the South Gate, Marsilion heard the clear peal of a horn ring brightly off the walls of the city.
AOI
Barcelona’s battered gates remained open for Sulayman’s troops, who streamed into the city not so much in a victory parade as in a reunion of loved ones who had endured two sieges and the Saragossan occupation. The swarming populace choked the thoroughfares to greet their kinsmen, as well as the rumbling wagons behind them filled with tough field-baked bread and other foodstuffs. Once the crowds dispersed, the Frank army entered in a much more workmanlike fashion, carrying tools and materials to reset the gates and rebuild the fortifications.
Accompanied by a small party of his companions, Roland rode into the palace grounds, bypassing the celebrations erupting around them on the garden paths so recently vacated by Marsilion. In a small side courtyard, Karim met them with brief words of greeting and led them to a grim, squat building connected to the rear quarters of the emir’s residence. Thick iron bars garnished its stark windows. A soldier awaited them with jangling keys, selected one for the outer portal, and turned the lock.
Roland crowded past him even though the door protested with a groan. Kennick, Oliver, and Otun followed him through, Otun ducking his head to avoid leaving his brains smeared on a rafter.
“This is the first we’ve been in here since cleaning out the Saragossan scum,” Karim spat and stepped through after them.
A rushing stench from the darkness enveloped them, causing them to cover their noses with their sleeves. The soldier lit torches and handed them out before leading them further down into the pits beneath.
The main stairway was crude stone, the edges rounded and worn, creating a treacherous pathway into the pit. Roland and his companions cautiously followed the soldier deep into the earth where at the bottom a narrow corridor opened to a series of dark cells, many of the doors ajar. The search party spread out, calling for survivors. But rather than joyous responses, they found only brutalized, butchered bodies flung into the moldering straw inside the cells. After a thorough search of each cell, the men gathered near another door at the far end of the corridor. The soldier who accompanied them fumbled through the keys until he found one to spring the primitive lock.
Beyond lay another dark staircase descending into a pool of blackness, drips of water leaking in from the sewers and plumbing above. This time the steps were slick and narrow, and the men crept downward much more slowly before once more placing their feet on smooth flooring. Again they swept through empty cells where their guttering torches revealed only mildewed straw and scurrying rats. Roland scanned the cellblock, cursing that their search was in vain, when Kennick emerged from a rough-hewn doorway at the dark far end, covering his nose and mouth with his hand.
“More?” Roland asked.
Kennick nodded. “Slaughtered these too.”
“Our sources said there were men here—live men,” Roland said.
Otun tested a last closed door, but it wouldn’t budge. He heaved his massive shoulder into it, causing the hinges to groan and the wood to crack. The Dane redoubled his effort, muscles straining and back leveraging against it. With a scream, the hinges burst apart, and Otun stumbled past the sagging door. He reappeared a moment later and waved to the jail master, pinching his nose against the reek. The guard handed him a smoky torch that the Dane waved in front of him before stepping into the moldy straw and whatever else lay beyond.
“Over here!” he called out. “Here! Two live!”
From the depths of the cell staggered two emaciated men, pale skin covering their bones nearly without the benefit of flesh. One of them, garments in rags, shuffled into the torchlight. His scraggly-bearded face was covered in fleabites and matted, lice-infested hair that was the same color as the darkness. The other crouched just outside the circle of light, skeletal hands thrown up to cover his eyes from the brightness. Roland handed off his torch and offered the first captive a hand. But instead of taking it, the man reached for the crucifix around the knight’s neck.
“Christian men?” he croaked, his words heavily accented.
“Good God,” Oliver whispered.
“Yes,” Roland replied. “Men of Charles, king of Francia and emperor in Rome. You are Greeks?”
The man pressed the holy symbol firmly to his lips. After a moment, he said, “I am Leo. This is John. We served on a warship. Ambushed by pirates …” His voice cracked from disuse. He cleared his throat with difficulty, and Oliver handed him a water flask. The man gulped some down, handed it off to his companion, and continued.
“After the battle, our ship sank near the Gates of Herakles. We were picked up by the caliph’s men.” He forced a smile, exposing shattered teeth. “You can imagine, he had a few questions for us to be sure. But in the end, he sent us along to Saragossa, fearing the empire would attempt our rescue.”
“Why would the empire mount a rescue for just two men?” Roland pressed.
Leo helped John to stand, and the Franks saw for the first time the man’s twisted fingers, a painful symbol of the Saragossans’ questioning. In the wavering torchlight, a wicked glint reflected in John’s eyes.
“Secrets,” he said, placing a swollen finger to his mouth.
Where the original Roman walls of old Barcelona butted up against the palace, an ancient building still smoldered—the smoke but another smudge like so many that continued to rise above the city. Within, the ground was thick with broken rafters and ash. Soldiers diligently searched through the rubble alongside Sulayman’s courtiers and Charles’s friars. Charles and Sulayman stood nearby watching their progress, Aldatrude with them and dressed in filmy silk.
A courtier shouted from deep in the ruin, suddenly careless of the soot and grime streaking his expensive robes. He disappeared into a stack of stone and wood that teetered in delicate balance like a house of cards. A breathless moment later, the man struggled back into view, his arms wrapped tightly around a scorched bundle. In his excitement, he caught his foot on a broken rafter and spilled gracelessly into the ash. His comrades rushed to help gather his burden, but he righted himself, cheeks reddened beneath the soot smudges, and snatched back his prize. He skittered over the rubble to Sulayman and Charles, fell to one knee, and lifted his find for their examination.
Charles deferred to Sulayman to open the sooty canvas. The emir gingerly tugged the corners open, exposing a codex of bound vellum pages beneath his trembling fingers.
“What is it?” Charles asked, leaning over Sulayman’s shoulder, the anticipation on his face growing.
Sulayman simply beamed with delight.
Aldatrude pushed a loose stand of hair from her face as she read the letters on the cover of the volume. “Father!” Aldatrude exclaimed. “It’s the great scholar Aristotle!”
“You can read this?” Sulayman asked, clearly pleased.
“Oh, yes,” she said, lowering her eyes demurely. “Father encouraged me to learn Latin and Greek. And this—this is De Anima! Scholars at Father’s court believed no copies still existed.”
“Indeed, I had feared this one lost as well after that bastard Marsilion had the run of the palace,” Sulayman grumbled.
Charles took the document from Sulayman, opening the cover with reverent care and scanning an inner page.
“I wish to God I were better with my own letters,” the king murmured, his eyes roving the page, intoxicated at each flourish, swoop, and curve of the Greek letters.
“My friend,” said Sulayman, “let this be my gift to you. For my family, my people, and my city. I wish there were more we could do to show our gratitude.”
Charles shook his head. “No.” He took Sulayman’s hand in his, placing it on the book. “This is a treasure for all our people. It’s not something I can ask of you or take from your city.” He swept the site with his eyes. “But we can recover these and set our scribes to copying that we might preserve them. We will learn together, my friend.”
Sulayman embraced the Frank king. “Excellent! Then let us get started!”