The Nonexistent Knight Read Online Free PDF

from religious ceremonies, triduums, novenas, gardening, harvesting, vintaging, whippings, slavery, incest, fires, hangings, invasion, sacking, rape and pestilence, we have had no experience. What can a poor nun know of the world? So I proceed laboriously with this tale whose narration I have undertaken as a penance. God alone knows how I shall describe the battle, I who by God’s grace have always been apart from such matters, except for half a dozen rustic skirmishes in the plain beneath our castle which we followed as children from the battlements amid caldrons of boiling pitch. (The unburied bodies that remained to rot afterwards in the fields we would come upon in our games next summer, beneath a cloud of hornets!) Of battles, as I say, I know nothing.
    Nor did Raimbaut, though he had thought of little else in all his young life. This was his baptism of arms. He sat on horseback in line awaiting the signal for attack, but did not enjoy it He was wearing too much. The coat of chain mail with its neckband, the cuirass with gorge guard and shoulder plates, the sparrow’s beak helmet from which he could scarcely see out, a robe over the armor, a shield taller than himself, a lance which he banged on comrades’ heads every time he swung it, and beneath, a horse he couldn’t see, such were the caparisons of iron covering it.
    The desire to avenge the killing of his father with the blood of the Argalif Isohar had almost left him. They had told him, looking at papers on which all the formations were set down, “When the trumpet sounds you gallop ahead in a straight line with set lance until you pierce him. Isohar always fights in that point of the line. If you keep straight you’re bound to run into him, unless the whole enemy army folds up, which never happens at the first impact. Of course there can always be some little deviation, but if you don’t pierce him your neighbor is sure to.” If such was the case Raimbaut cared no more about it.
    Coughing was the signal that the battle had started. In the distance he saw a cloud of yellow dust advancing, and another cloud rising from the ground as the Christian horses broke into a canter. Raimbaut began coughing. The whole Imperial army coughed and shook in its armor, quivering and shaking as it raced towards the Infidel dust, hearing more coughing getting nearer and nearer. The two dusts fused, and the whole plain rang with the echo of coughs and the clang of lances.
    The aim of the first encounter was not so much to pierce the enemy (as one risked breaking one’s lance against his shield and what’s more getting flung flat on one’s face from the shock) as unhorse him by thrusting a lance between his saddle and arse at the moment of wheeling. This was a risky business, as a lance pointing downwards can easily get entangled in some obstacle or even stick in the ground and jerk a rider right out of the saddle like a catapult. So the first contact was full of warriors flying through the air gripping their lances. And side movement being difficult, since lances could not be waved far without getting into a friend’s or enemy’s ribs, there was soon such a bottleneck that it was difficult to understand a thing. Then up galloped the champions and began clearing a way through the mêlée.
    Then they too found themselves facing the enemy champions, shield to shield. Duels started, but already the ground was so covered with carcasses and corpses that it was difficult to move, and when they could not reach each other they yelled insults. Here rank and intensity of insult was decisive, for according to whether offense given was mortal—to be wiped out in blood—medium or light, various reparations were laid down or even implacable hatreds transmitted to descendants. So the important thing then was to understand each other, not an easy thing between Moors and Christians and with the various Moorish and Christian languages; what did one do if along came an insult one just