He would not shed it needlessly. As a knot of ghazis drove for the mail-clad ferengi beneath the eagle banner of Rome, Bruno kissed once more the Lance which he held secure behind his shield, ducked under the first sweep of a scimitar and neatly thrust his man through the breast-bone. Four inches, no more, twist and recover and ready to parry the next slash with his blade. For fifty of his hundred breaths Bruno stood firm amid the whirling single combats between desperate ghazi and confident deserters, Jopp, Tasso, and the rest of his bodyguard protecting his back. Like a machine he parried high, cut low, twisted his shield to deflect a point or curled it to take a blade flat across its face. Every few seconds the snake-tongue blade licked out and another enemy fell back. Then, as one man desperate for glory swung a clumsy blow directly downwards, Bruno parried it automatically, thick edge against blade-tip. The scimitar snapped, the point flew on, its razor edge gashing open the Emperor’s left eyebrow. As he saw the blood flow down, and felt it half-blind him, Bruno relaxed. He thrust the man off with his shield, split his skull with a backhand twist, and took his first pace backwards into the protecting line behind him.
“Sound the trumpet,” he remarked.
The platoons of Lanzenbrüder on foot were moving even before they heard the signal, clumping down the hillside, forming into two lines that converged from either side of the confused battle in front of them. As they met resistance they started their harsh mechanical shouting, trying to keep in step on the stony hillside, always thrusting to the right and guarding to the left. There were no ghazis left, only the demoralized. As he saw the battle clear, the commander of the mounted knights eased his men forward in a careful trot, trying to work his way round his own infantry and get space for the one climactic charge which would carry all before it.
The Caliph, striding forward at the head of his personal guard, saw the shredding away of his attack with incredulity. Never before had his wishes been ignored. But all over the valley men were slinking to the flank or rear, getting up from the ground and retreating; ignoring the battle as if they were so many secret Christians. He looked round, not so much to find space for flight as to see if there were further supports he could call up. Behind him there was only his pavilion. Between it and him, the figure of his commander of cavalry, mounted on his famous mare. Er-Rahman cleared a throat to call to him, to wave him indignantly to the battle. Bin-Maymun saw him first. Across the battlefield he too waved, an insolent gesture of farewell. And then he too was off, accompanied by a cloud of his men withdrawn from their pointless skirmishing with the Christian light horse. The Caliph saw suddenly the eagle-banner of the Rumi in front of him, with beneath it the one who must be the Caliph of the Christians. He raised his scimitar and ran forward, bounding over the rocks with a cry, “Cursed be those who add gods to God!”
Jopp, who had made his way into the front rank to shield his Emperor while they patched his eye, took the scimitar slash on the flat of his shield—the matchless blade cut through wood and leather till the shield hung only by its iron rim—and stabbed the unarmored man neatly through ribs and heart, the triangular blade driving on till it snapped the spine. As he dropped his point the Caliph, Falcon of the Quraysh, rolled off it to lie on the hillside. The delicate blade of Cordova snapped beneath a hobnailed boot.
With the fall of the Caliph and the precipitate retreat even of his bodyguard, the battle focused suddenly on the Caliph’s pavilion of green silk, most obvious piece of loot on the hillside. The bacheliers of the Camargue reached it first, on their half-wild ponies. Eunuch guards were speared on ten-foot goads, the wild cowherds sprang from their barebacked ponies, ran screeching inside.
“Tell them, Berthe,” snarled Alfled, crouched behind the inner curtain. “They must be Franks.”