The White Knight: Tirant Lo BlancMartorell, Joanot
General
The White Knight: Tirant Lo Blanc
Martorell, Joanot
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction; Adventure stories; Knights and knighthood -- Fiction
However, Tirant wanted to see for himself, and he found the six
of them with their heads cut off, covered with blood. When he
saw this he had his men come up, and he put one of them in charge
of the drums. There were one hundred sixty men, and they spread
out over the tower. Then, with the Albanian going first, they
went down to the warden's chamber. When the warden saw all these
men coming he got up, completely naked, took a sword in his hand
and tried to defend himself. Tirant swung an axe down on his
head and split it in half, and his brains fell out onto the
ground. His wife began to scream, and the Albanian, who was
nearest did the same thing to her that Tirant had done to her
husband. Afterward they went through the castle, and shot the
bolts on the doors to the chambers, and the noise of the drums
was so loud that no one heard a sound.
They went up to the towers and the guards there thought they were
the watch, and said nothing to them. And when they came near
they threw them off the castle through the merlons. One of them
fell onto the barbican and into the moat, and was saved. Soon he
got up and went shouting through the villa and everyone woke up.
The news spread through the villa, but in the castle they still
did not know, except for one man who was fishing. He heard the
noise and opened the windows of his chamber, and he heard many
people inside the castle. Then he began to cry out, and his
shouts were heard by those in the castle, but when they tried to
leave their chambers they found the doors bolted. The king, who
had been sleeping in the main tower, barricaded himself there
with the queen and a chamber-maid.
When day broke they put many flags on the castle towers, and held
great celebrations. All the outsiders in the villa fled. When
the commander saw that the castle had been taken and saw the
others fleeing, he attacked them and took many prisoners. When
he returned, they stationed many men in the villa and others on
the barbicans and in the orchards near the villa. When the
commander went up to the castle he saw that none of his men had
been killed or wounded, and he was the most astonished man in the
world: he thought Tirant must be more angel than human, because
nothing that he tried turned out to be impossible.
They searched the entire castle and found it full of many kinds
of food: millet and wheat, sorghum and panic-grass--enough to
last seven years, with a sparkling spring of water that came out
of a rock. That night the king took pity on the queen, and
calling down from a window in the tower, he said:
"Which of you is the knight I can surrender to?"
"Sir," said Tirant, "here is the commander, and a very virtuous
knight."
The king realized that this was the ambassador he had talked with
so many times, and he said to him:
"Since you have been sent to me as an ambassador, give me your
pledge of safety so that I can do my duty as a knight and a
crowned king."
Tirant answered:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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