Swords for hire - III

A small squad of warriors immediately escorts them, while the larger group goes on with the massacre of the Balearics. They continue walking in the dwindling afternoon light up to a small grove of wild olive and wild pear trees … here the group stops and starts preparing for the night. “We won’t be stopping for long, German … justlong enough to eat and set up some campfires … do you know what Frontinus wrote in his book on military tactics? In the far-away land of Catai military commanders pretend they are setting up a camp, light up fires and build shelters, then they keep on marching rapidly in the night … we shall do so and will leave the Catalans dumbfounded.”
Far away the rumble of cavalry waxes and wanes like the noise of stormy seas … the squad has attracted the attention of the victors. “They are looking for us …” whispers Hanno with his mouth sore because of the split lips and the fly bites. “Oh … they won’t find us … and it will be better for them … it will be neither the first nor the last Hispanic skull that we smash”. The old warrior sits down on a stone and unfastens the leather pannier that he carries around tied to the back of his armour. Two pieces of gray bread appear together with a pumpkin wrapped up in woven rushes, several dried onions, a leather flask. Other soldiers are walking around nearby, chewing on their meals.
At the sight of people eating, Hanno realizes he has a devastating appetite … just like a man that has not eaten the whole day and has endured the weight of his full armour for that whole day. One of the guys approaches him holding up a leather strip upon which several large bread sheets lay, each of them so thin as if made of parchment. “Ne, ndi olisi pani?” with a harsh smile he shoves under Hanno’s nose those dark, ash-speckled sheets. Another guy approaches him with one of those semi-opened pumpkins … it gives forth a strong rancid smell, not unpleasant but powerful. The man thrusts two fingers in and pulls them out covered in a yellow-greenish mush that he puts in his mouth, sucking on it heartily … then he holds the container out to Hanno.
“I suggest that you accept, German”, the old man says, chewing reflectively on an onion, “Bobore, ‘balente’ from Augusta, is quick in taking offense … su kasu martzu ki faghede Tzitza Peppa esti su mellusu de tottu sa Barbazia …” The balente nodded vigorously, a mischievous smile on his face … and Hanno makes up his mind and imitates him … he feels between his fingers the soft cheese and a crawling and soft movement … and when he pulls his fingers out a swarm of tiny white-ish maggots that lively spring toward his face. “Ah yes I almost forgot … the best part of the taste is due just to those maggots … do not let any of them escape.” Hanno eats bread, rotten cheese, maggots, and onions as he manages to, gulping the whole stuff down with a wine so strong to seem liquor.
As his hunger cramps become less sharp, the men stoke the campfires and the squad prepares for leaving the place. “I am Gabinius from Villanova,” the old soldier says, and pointing at the squad “These are balentes from different parts of the island … you have already met Bobore, this is Vissente, this is Marieddu … he comes from the suburbs of Karale, just like me … and has a deadly hate for the Balearics.” The two death dancers of the afternoon clash bowed slightly. “I am Hanno from Hainau … I fight for whomever pays me … I come from Carinthia, if this means anything to you … and belong to a war school, the one of Hagen from Munster … he already brought us to war several times … and this time I thought it was going to be the last one for me … I wonder what happened to my mates.”

(continues)

“Ne, ‘ndi olisi pani?” “Hey, do you want some bread?”

“balente” valiant man

“su kasu martzu ki faghede Tzitza Peppa esti su mellusu de tottu sa Barbazia” “The rotten cheese prepared by Auntie Peppa is the best in the whole of Barbagia”

Barbazia or Barbagia one of the sub-regions of Sardinia

Swords for hire - II

A battle that had been fought incompetently since the very start, with the choice of a totally unsuitable battlefield … “One does not line up one’s own cavalry in a bog, hell!” Hanno had emphatically said when he had come back from the leaders’ meeting, where he had clearly and squarely stated that there was no hope of driving the Catalan infantry off the top of the hill even with five thousand knights, let alone with the five hundred German and English that Pisa had managed to scrape together.
Despite this he had lined up his men. When their turn had come, they had charged furiously, sweeping away the Hispanic and Moorish horsemen as a plane shaves the bark off a young birch tree … but they had had to stop in front of the stockade of sharpened posts behind which the Catalan infantry had lined up. After just a moment and a signal with the iron glove from Hagen and his English colleague James of Cork … leaving the horses in the trusted hands of their squires, the mercenary knights had dismounted and had set out towards the fenced camp brandishing axes and maces. The iron-covered men had opened a way for themselves through the posts under the terrified eyes of the infantrymen and of the archers, coming finally into contact with the Catalan infantry … in the fearsome melee that had ensued, the infantry cohorts had been decimated by the fury of the dismounted knights, but the infantry masses, ten times as numerous as the knights, had started tightening around the mercenaries. The old Hagen had gotten his men to close ranks and signalled retreat. The German mercenaries had passed through the furious Catalans as a metal wire in an ironsmith’s extruder, leaving bloodied shavings on the mud field.
Hanno, hit in the head by the mace of a Hispanic infantryman, had been one of those shavings. He had been carried for a while on the shoulders by Valdemar, a scarred Saxon … then they had been intercepted by a squad of Occitan cavalrymen and the last image that had impressed itself on Hanno’s frightened eyes had been Valdemar’s axe cutting through the shanks of a horse, bringing down the enemy lancer … then everything had disappeared into nothingness.
Now those strange hairy soldiers were carrying him to safety … and this was enough for him. They were climbing up a small valley covered by tangled, meagre shrubs, when a group of Balearic irregulars armed with dagger and falchions came out of a ravine: they were hauling the corpses of many fallen men. The soldier that was carrying him put a knee on the ground and unloaded a sore and panicking Hanno … it was not yet over then! He was able to pull himself up to see the clash starting out vicious and frantic and quickly end. One of the small men drew two short swords out of the crossed sheaths on his back and confronted the Balearics hopping like a dancer … the swords swirled and in a flash two enemies fell on the ground dying with their heads split and their throats open … another enemy tried to disembowel him with his dagger by sliding down on the ground, but the guy jumped nightmarishly high, spinning around on himself and landing past the line of his enemies, mowing down two more with a frightening ease.
Leaning on his elbow, sore, Hanno looks astonished at the leather-covered men mercilessly massacring the Balearics. “We learned to jump so high when we fought against the bird-men … quite a long time ago” a cold voice whispers in his ear in a harsh and hissing, but otherwise perfect, German. “Pull yourself up, German, let us not linger on with this select society …” A man, his gray hairs weaved with bronze and gold rings and an iron collar appearing below his gray mantle, helps him up … hobbling, they leave the furious slaughter behind them.

(continues)

Swords for hire - I

Swords for hire

Giorgio Astara

When he comes to, Hanno von Hainau feels his mind plunging back into a nightmare that unconsciousness had briefly removed. He is pinned below a dead horse and the weight of his armor is wearing him down. He has trouble breathing in the searing heat of his barbute … his mouth and nostrils are full of coagulated blood and he can feel a whirring and swarming that he guesses produced by big avid flies. Hoarse voices are heard around … smothered wailings, curses, cries …
Hanno has seen enough battles to know what is going on … groups of irregulars and auxiliary troops are roaming around the battlefield killing off the wounded and taking the spoils of the dead … and he does not have any doubt that his turn will come soon … and confusedly recalls the lawns and the forests of his Carinthia … he will forfeit his life in the mud of this damned island, among dark-haired, pale-skinned, violent and litigious Latins, crazy as animals without a master …
Heavy steps and raucous breathing near by while he feels strong tugs at the straps of his helmet … and when they rip it off him he sees two dark Balearic warriors, with gap-toothed mouths, bone earrings and armed with clubs … he asks himself whether they would abuse him alive or dead … and cannot find any reason why they should be so compassionate to kill him first … tears of anger and powerlessness roll down his face while the two rascals put their hands on him … then they just disappear out of his sight, as if the earth itself had swallowed them …
"Kust'è ankora biu…" a dry voice says "Tirandeddi su ferru de inpizzusu". Rough hands start unfastening the straps of his armour … two dark faces, framed by bushy beards and leather cervellieres look at him anxiously "Esti mesu mortu, fattu fattu…". A flask of water is splashed on the face of the wounded man, then the plates of his armour are cautiously moved off his body. “No tenit ossus truncausu … ma est tottu prenu de sanguni mei in cue …” a lighter and finer voice … skilled hands feel the broken body of the young German. “Bobore, caricarinceddu in palas … tocca ki sind’andausu de innoi … troppus faccis nieddas …”.
Hanno feels himself being hoisted on the shoulders of a man who is as wide as he is tall, covered from head to foot in a goat fleece mantle, with the horned skull of the goat fastened on the top of his helmet. From that position he can see the two felled Balearic men, their throats ripped open, their eyes bulging, still looking menacing. A small squad of dark men, armed with bows and arrows, daggers and round shields saved him from death. They carry some other wounded knights on their shoulders or on stretchers, and cross the shambles in the searing afternoon sun, without paying attention to the bands of Balearic men, hired by the Aragonese crown, that just uphill keep furiously attacking the Pisan city guards that slowly are withdrawing from the battlefield, abandoning to their own fate the Genoans crossbowmen, the English pikemen and the German horsemen, all mercenaries, that fell defending Pisa’s flag against the Aragonese in this mud field of southern Sardinia.
Hanno remembers distinctly how he got in this Island of fevers and folly: on a teetering and stinky Genoese ship, together with the whole squad at the orders of the old Hagen from Münster, who at 34 years of age still had to leave for war each spring, together with the young men of his small war school, sometimes paid by the Linz bishop to fight against the Mongols or the Poles, this time paid by Pisa to fight against Aragona.

(continues)


“Kust'è ankora biu” “This one is still alive

"Tirandeddi su ferru de inpizzusu" “Take off his armour”

“Esti mesu mortu, fattu fattu…” “He is half dead, be cautious”

“No tenit ossus truncausu … ma est tottu prenu de sanguni mei in cue …” “He does not have any broken bones … but there is blood everywhere in there”

“Bobore, caricarinceddu in palas … tocca ki sind’andausu de innoi … troppus faccis nieddas …” “Bobore, hoist him on your back … come on, let’s go away … too many ‘blackfaces’ ”