Again and again King Alonso bows to the saddle-bow, and again and again from three thousand voices comes the cry, “Viva el Rey! Leon! Leon to the rescue!”
Nor, in this moment of triumph, as he lingers on the brink of the river, proudly contemplating the gallant body of knights, who crowd round him to touch, if possible, the nobler charger which bears him, his mailed hands, his rich saddle-cloth, and the royal standard borne before him, does he forget Bernardo.
Calling to him in a loud voice he commands him to leave the van of the army and place himself at his side.
Then raising the crossed hilt of his jewelled sword before his face, he utters a brief prayer, and turns towards the thousands of eager visages upraised to his.
“O men of Leon,” are his words, contemplating them with moistening eyes, “to this brave knight—Bernardo del Carpio—I confide the land. Where he leads, follow!”
CHAPTER XX
Death of Sir Roland the Brave
N front of the many valleys opening out from under the dark range of the Pyrenees, they met—the Gaul and the Spaniard. The Emperor Charlemagne with good cause curses the fickleness of the King of Leon, who had invited him to inherit his kingdom, and instead came out to offer him battle. Personally, he is not mentioned as taking part in the battle—indeed, it is said he was encamped eight miles off, near Fontarabia, but he sent forward the flower of his chivalry, those doughty paladins, to be sung by the romanceros and troubadours to all time: Guarinos, ferocious Ferragol, Sir Oliver the Gentle, handsome Gayferos, and Roland the Brave, who went mad for the love of Angelica, mounted on a powerful steed, which bounds and caracoles as if preparing for a tourney, firmly ruled with one hand, while with the other he carried aloft his famous sword Durindana, followed by his vassals and retainers, in short hauberks and upright caps, with round targets like the Moors.
The two armies met on undulating ground, descending from the chain of the Pyrenees in front of the Pass of Roncesvalles—through which the French had marched into Spain confident of victory—a close and terrible defile, narrow and deep, cleft into precipitous cliffs following from St. Jean de Luz and the defile of Guvarni on the French side, among almost impassable gorges, which back the city of Pampeluna close on the province of Cantabria, the land of Pelayo.
As a forest of lances and spears set on a plain of gold did the glittering helmets look from afar in the radiance of the sunshine, darkened by clouds of arrows, and the blades of javelins and lances cutting the light of day as the ranks closed in deadly strife of quivering spears and flying pennons falling round wounded horses, the blast of trumpets and cries of dying men.