"Not even that, if there are many of the traitors," replied Roland; yet he raised his horn. The gorge re-echoed to the blast.
From end to end the long line of horsemen wavered and halted, amazed at the note. But a second blast sent them wheeling back to the rear. Cries of alarm and bewilderment burst out all along their scattered ranks. Those nearest the ox-wains shouted to the drovers to turn back. But the Vascons goaded their beasts on into the jam of backward-wheeling Franks.
Then, when all in the gorge was wildest flurry and confusion, high up the steep slopes and along the cliff crests a thousand horns brayed out the battle-note, and in a twinkling the heights swarmed with armed Vascons.
"Lost! all is lost!" cried Roland.
"Thor aid! We die, brother; but we die as men. Ho, Rhine wolves! turn! turn again! We cross the wall!"
The wild cry roused the great war-count from his despair. Out flashed Ironbiter, and the black stallion bounded after his fellow.
"Christ and king! Christ and king! Upon the pagans! Follow me, Franks!"
A hundred or more riders wheeled at the call, to charge after their leader. And as they charged, the gorge behind them darkened with clouds of spears and arrows, with avalanches of rocks and tree-trunks. From van to rear a shriek went up from the host,--a wail of despair, soon lost in the screams and groans of mangled victims.
Little did the heavy Northern armor avail its bearers. Neither shield nor hauberk nor helmet of bronze or iron could withstand the ponderous Vascon missiles. The very completeness of the Frankish war-gear was fatal, for its weight impeded the efforts of the warriors to escape the trap. Penned in the gorge like sheep for the slaughter, the Franks charged back, to trample their fellows behind, or vainly sought to scale the heights after the nimble Vascon drovers.
Pierced through by arrows and darts, mangled by logs and stones, the doomed warriors fought and trampled one upon another, in frenzied struggles to escape that terrible downpour. But above them the Vascons mocked their cries for mercy with yells of triumph, and drowned their pitiful shrieks with the crash of the war-hail.