"In the field on the hill."
"Well, go to the village fast as you can, and tell the men there to come and pick up their dead. Tell them not to fear, for the Emperor has sent me to take care of them."
With that the Count rode on.
This was the sight presented him when he made the ascent: A wheat field sloping gradually to the northeast; fire creeping across it crackling, smoking, momentarily widening; through the cloud a company of Turkish soldiers halted, mostly horsemen, their arms glinting brightly in the noon sun; blackened objects, unmistakably dead men, lying here and there. Thus the tale of the survivors of the massacre was confirmed.
Corti gave his lance with the banderole on it to the guide. By direction his Berbers drove their lances into the earth that they might leave them standing, drew their swords, and brought their bucklers forward. Then he led them into the field. A few words more, directions probably, and he started toward the enemy, his followers close behind two and two, with a rear-guardsman. He allowed no outcry, but gradually increased the pace.
There were two hundred and more yards to be crossed, level, except the slope, and with only the moving line of fire as an impediment. The crop, short and thin, was no obstacle under the hoofs.
The Turks watched the movement herded, like astonished sheep. They may not have comprehended that they were being charged, or they may have despised the assailants on account of their inferiority in numbers, or they may have relied on the fire as a defensive wall; whatever the reason, they stood passively waiting.
When the Count came to the fire, he gave his horse the spur, and plunging into the smoke and through the flame full speed, appeared on the other side, shouting: "Christ and Our Lady of Blacherne!" His long sword flashed seemingly brighter of the passage just made. Fleckings of flame clung to the horses. What the battle-cry of the Berbers we may not tell. They screamed something un-Christian, echoes of the Desert. Then the enemy stirred; some drew their blades, some strung their bows; the footmen amongst them caught their javelins or half-spears in the middle, and facing to the rear, fled, and kept flying, without once looking over their shoulders.
One man mounted, and in brighter armor than the others, his steel cap surmounted with an immense white turban, a sparkling aigrette pinned to the turban, cimeter in hand, strove to form his companions—but it was too late. "Christ and our Lady of Blacherne!"—and with that Corti was in their midst; and after him, into the lane he opened, his Berbers drove pell-mell, knocking Turks from their saddles, and overthrowing horses—and there was cutting and thrusting, and wounds given, and souls rendered up through darkened eyes.
The killing was all on one side; then as a bowl splinters under a stroke, the Turkish mass flew apart, and went helter-skelter off, each man striving to take care of himself. The Berbers spared none of the overtaken.