The old man remained silent, intent, as if his eyes were once again open under the linen blindfold that went from his brow, wrapped up in his turban, down to his nose.
“A ship came from Thuniss to the waters in front of Crabonaxis1 and the brigantes2 came down in large numbers … they wanted salt, they wanted timber, they wanted slaves … they wanted our blood, as always … they climbed up the watchtower while the men on top used up all of their arrows without wasting a single one … they were so many … and they could climb up to the top eventually … and they caught them, they castrated them and they disfigured them … then they made their way to the villages.
The balentes3 came from the mountains and from the other parts of the coast to find the Ten Horses Tower burned down and its defenders impaled among the arrow-riddled corpses of the brigantes … the plunderers had moved inland. The balentes were too few to attack them in an open field so they finished off the dying, buried their dead and tracked down their enemies without attacking them at once even if they had new weapons, bought from the Pisans, paid for with the gold of the matres4 and kept well-oiled … even a saintly man like you knows what is a crossbow, doesn’t he?”
The old man shuddered … and a voice welled up again in his mind, the voice of Daoud, the convert Jew, who looked at the Berber pierced by the hissing bolts who had broken through the Damascus steel armor and felled to the ground the formidable warrior between the lentisks of the clearing “They have crossbows, the crossbows that Sheitan, be he one thousand times cursed, delivered to the Franks and the Greeks to ruin the believers …”. He shut up suddenly, realizing he had spoken inadvertently, lost in the thought of those terrible moments.
“Not Sheitan, old man, but Guglielmo di Massaciuccoli, an old rascal from Pisa, who got us to pay through the nose for them … but grandpa told me that that time they worked wonders … iron-covered brigantes with their plate armors pierced through like pigs, one by one in the dust vomiting blood on the slopes of Monte Acutzu5 … and the balentes shot from well-hidden positions, protected by the bushes and by the archers … who could nothing against the armored Saracen warriors, but could nail the light-armored men who raided the shrubland looking for the crossbowmen … and it was then, while the night was falling, that grandpa got an idea.”
We were sitting in the krakkiri6, a fogu sturau7, with the stars above us, our black hoods over our heads, dressed in our chainmail armors oiled with olive dregs and sheep fat.
“They are too many”, grandpa said, leaning onto his matzocca8 “and without heavy cavalry we will never push them back into the sea. We can get heavy cavalry only if we borrow gold from Pisa to pay Angles and Teutons … but in that way we would just be switching from one slavery to the next.” “You travelled” Buikku9 said, sharpening a two-foot bolt “you saw how the Teutons and the Persians fight, and the Varyags from Rus as well, the ones that serve the Caesar who rules Bysantium … what can we do?”.
“People say that far away … where the sun rises, and perhaps even beyond that, some men live, as small as we are, their skin yellow as gold … or yellow as piss, according to others … these men learnt something that we also know … in sa gherra perdinti tottus, finzas su ki binciri10 … and so they figured out that when an enemy marches against you, you have to scare them, scare them with thoughts of huge, unreasonable threats, get them to believe that your strength is immense, superhuman and unmatchable, get them to think that your ten warriors are actually a thousand, that your horses are not one hundred but one hundred times one hundred, and your arrows a hundred times that … and the news must not come from you, but from one of them who has seen - or he believes he has seen - and comes back to tell the story … crazed with fear …”.
The old man was breathing slowly, while the old memories welled up … memories of a time when the sun was not only heat on your face, but dazzling light, sparkles on the sea waves, coloured flowers in wheat fields, flashing weapons and burning fires … arrows whistled while they were running among the bushes … their armor was not as much of a protection as something of a hindrance: crossbows bolts broke easily through them and they could not flush out the crossbowmen hiding in the wild olive and juniper bushes, those who had tried to get to them had ended up with a slashed throat or a spear in their back. Most of the Tunisian raiders were far away, towards the course of the river … and their group of five had made the mistake of chasing a young shepherdess hoping to bring her back to the camp to take advantage of her at leisure … but they had realized too late that she was running away without hurry … and she was choosing a precise path, not running crazily like a gazelle pursued by a pack of jackals … and when two of them had fallen into a hole covered with leafy branches, skewering themselves on reed bundles which had been tied together with rush leaves and kept apart from each other with a stone in the middle of the bundle, they had understood it was a trap … horned helms had appeared between the bushes … a deep beastly growl vibrated in the air and the hunters, turned into prey, were afraid to think to what could be chasing them in that heat filled with cicadas’ songs. Arrows, drums, horn calls in their ears and the breath is becoming short, and that growl behind you …
“And if the enemy thinks that a thousand men are getting to him and not just ten … or that those who torment him are daemons vomited out from Earth’s innards or generated by a magic spell … he will be looking back while he’s racing away … and you will wait for him by the wayside and you will put a spear through him head on …” Run, run as much as you can … the hillside is steep but we can do it because over there the creek is already showing and our gulet11 is in the waters just behind … and we can do it if we run, if they don’t catch us, if they think we are dead too, if Daoud and the other guys climb up till here … Abdhul wasn’t anymore with them and turning around they see him fallen on the ground, with two arrows in his neck, spitting red drool, his mouth already covered with flies … they run away crazy with fear while the drums are getting closer and closer behind them, they run on the track that should lead them to the sea …
“A ship came from Thuniss to the waters in front of Crabonaxis1 and the brigantes2 came down in large numbers … they wanted salt, they wanted timber, they wanted slaves … they wanted our blood, as always … they climbed up the watchtower while the men on top used up all of their arrows without wasting a single one … they were so many … and they could climb up to the top eventually … and they caught them, they castrated them and they disfigured them … then they made their way to the villages.
The balentes3 came from the mountains and from the other parts of the coast to find the Ten Horses Tower burned down and its defenders impaled among the arrow-riddled corpses of the brigantes … the plunderers had moved inland. The balentes were too few to attack them in an open field so they finished off the dying, buried their dead and tracked down their enemies without attacking them at once even if they had new weapons, bought from the Pisans, paid for with the gold of the matres4 and kept well-oiled … even a saintly man like you knows what is a crossbow, doesn’t he?”
The old man shuddered … and a voice welled up again in his mind, the voice of Daoud, the convert Jew, who looked at the Berber pierced by the hissing bolts who had broken through the Damascus steel armor and felled to the ground the formidable warrior between the lentisks of the clearing “They have crossbows, the crossbows that Sheitan, be he one thousand times cursed, delivered to the Franks and the Greeks to ruin the believers …”. He shut up suddenly, realizing he had spoken inadvertently, lost in the thought of those terrible moments.
“Not Sheitan, old man, but Guglielmo di Massaciuccoli, an old rascal from Pisa, who got us to pay through the nose for them … but grandpa told me that that time they worked wonders … iron-covered brigantes with their plate armors pierced through like pigs, one by one in the dust vomiting blood on the slopes of Monte Acutzu5 … and the balentes shot from well-hidden positions, protected by the bushes and by the archers … who could nothing against the armored Saracen warriors, but could nail the light-armored men who raided the shrubland looking for the crossbowmen … and it was then, while the night was falling, that grandpa got an idea.”
We were sitting in the krakkiri6, a fogu sturau7, with the stars above us, our black hoods over our heads, dressed in our chainmail armors oiled with olive dregs and sheep fat.
“They are too many”, grandpa said, leaning onto his matzocca8 “and without heavy cavalry we will never push them back into the sea. We can get heavy cavalry only if we borrow gold from Pisa to pay Angles and Teutons … but in that way we would just be switching from one slavery to the next.” “You travelled” Buikku9 said, sharpening a two-foot bolt “you saw how the Teutons and the Persians fight, and the Varyags from Rus as well, the ones that serve the Caesar who rules Bysantium … what can we do?”.
“People say that far away … where the sun rises, and perhaps even beyond that, some men live, as small as we are, their skin yellow as gold … or yellow as piss, according to others … these men learnt something that we also know … in sa gherra perdinti tottus, finzas su ki binciri10 … and so they figured out that when an enemy marches against you, you have to scare them, scare them with thoughts of huge, unreasonable threats, get them to believe that your strength is immense, superhuman and unmatchable, get them to think that your ten warriors are actually a thousand, that your horses are not one hundred but one hundred times one hundred, and your arrows a hundred times that … and the news must not come from you, but from one of them who has seen - or he believes he has seen - and comes back to tell the story … crazed with fear …”.
The old man was breathing slowly, while the old memories welled up … memories of a time when the sun was not only heat on your face, but dazzling light, sparkles on the sea waves, coloured flowers in wheat fields, flashing weapons and burning fires … arrows whistled while they were running among the bushes … their armor was not as much of a protection as something of a hindrance: crossbows bolts broke easily through them and they could not flush out the crossbowmen hiding in the wild olive and juniper bushes, those who had tried to get to them had ended up with a slashed throat or a spear in their back. Most of the Tunisian raiders were far away, towards the course of the river … and their group of five had made the mistake of chasing a young shepherdess hoping to bring her back to the camp to take advantage of her at leisure … but they had realized too late that she was running away without hurry … and she was choosing a precise path, not running crazily like a gazelle pursued by a pack of jackals … and when two of them had fallen into a hole covered with leafy branches, skewering themselves on reed bundles which had been tied together with rush leaves and kept apart from each other with a stone in the middle of the bundle, they had understood it was a trap … horned helms had appeared between the bushes … a deep beastly growl vibrated in the air and the hunters, turned into prey, were afraid to think to what could be chasing them in that heat filled with cicadas’ songs. Arrows, drums, horn calls in their ears and the breath is becoming short, and that growl behind you …
“And if the enemy thinks that a thousand men are getting to him and not just ten … or that those who torment him are daemons vomited out from Earth’s innards or generated by a magic spell … he will be looking back while he’s racing away … and you will wait for him by the wayside and you will put a spear through him head on …” Run, run as much as you can … the hillside is steep but we can do it because over there the creek is already showing and our gulet11 is in the waters just behind … and we can do it if we run, if they don’t catch us, if they think we are dead too, if Daoud and the other guys climb up till here … Abdhul wasn’t anymore with them and turning around they see him fallen on the ground, with two arrows in his neck, spitting red drool, his mouth already covered with flies … they run away crazy with fear while the drums are getting closer and closer behind them, they run on the track that should lead them to the sea …
(continues)
(previous)
1 Crabonaxis
2 brigantes: brigands
3 balentes: valiant men
4 matres: mothers
5 Monte Acutzu
6 Krakkiri
7 a fogu sturau: with our fires out
8 matzocca
9 Buikku: Sardinian version of the name that in Italian is Salvatore
10 in sa gherra perdinti tottus, finzas su ki binciri: In war they all lose, even those who win
11 gulet: a kind of sailing vessel
