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
A Genoese who had been a slave on Tirant's galley when the ship
went down spoke up. His name was Almedixer, and he was a very
discreet man and was knowledgeable about many things. He said:
"Captain, do you want me to make all the cattle run off so that
there won't even be a sign of one around? The Moors will go
running after them to get them back, and that will be the time to
attack their camp and fall upon them."
"If you can do that," said Tirant, "upon Carmesina's name I
promise to make you a great lord and give you villas and castles
and a great inheritance."
The king said to Tirant:
"Brother, if that's what you're going to do, I beg you to let me
go into the forest. And when I see the banner flying from the
highest tower I'll attack the center of the camp."
Tirant agreed, and ordered everyone to shoe their horses and
repair their saddles.
The Genoese took the hair of many goats, and mutton fat, and he
crushed it all together and put it in shallow pans, and he filled
more than seventy of them.
Right at the hour of midnight the king went into the forest
without any of the Moors seeing him. Almedixer took the pans of
grease he had made and went out of the castle at dawn, and put
them one next to the other.
Then he set them on fire. When the flames were going well, the
wind blew the smoke toward the cattle. And when they smelled the
odor they stampeded through the middle of the camp, bringing down
tents and injuring men and horses so that it seemed like all the
devils in hell were after them. They even ran into each other so
that hardly an ox or camel was left uninjured. Many Moors on
foot and on horseback pursued them to make them turn back, and
all the Moors were astonished, not understanding what had caused
the stampede.
When the oxen were gone, Tirant had the white and green flag
raised. The king saw the flag and rode out of the forest,
crying:
"Long live the Christians!"
As they had planned, Tirant also attacked from the other side.
Then the terrible, cruel battle unrolled. Whoever saw it could
tell the goings on of it all, for you could see thrusts of lance
and sword being given and taken that brought awful grief, and in
a few hours excellent knights were lying dead on the ground. All
the battles came together and made such a noise that it sounded
like the earth would fall in. You could see Tirant here and
there, tearing helmets from men's heads and shields from their
bodies, killing and wounding and doing the most astonishing
things in the world in his ever-burning fury. King Escariano was
doing very well, for he was a very good knight, young and
courageous. As for the Moors, there were some very good and
valiant knights, the King of Africa in particular who, because of
the death of his brother, threw himself against the Christians
most cruelly. The King of Bogia was also a very courageous
knight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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