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With a rashness which seemed to the superstitious Spaniards like the safety of a man protected by magic, he spurred his ominous black barb into the very midst of the serried phalanx which Villena endeavoured to form around him, breaking the order by his single charge, and from time to time bringing to the dust some champion of the troop by the noiseless and scarce-seen edge of his fatal cimiter.
Muza swerved aside, just as the heavy falchion swung over his head, and by a back stroke of his own cimiter, shore through the cuirass just above the hip-joint, and the blood followed the blade. The brave cavaliers saw the danger of their chief; three of their number darted forward, and came in time to separate the combatants.
"A Jew!" replied Almamen, in a voice of thunder, and drawing his cimiter: "a despised and despising Jew! Ask you more? I am the son of a race of kings. I was the worst enemy of the Moors till I found the Nazarene more hateful than the Moslem; and then even Muza himself was not their more renowned champion. Come on, if thou wilt man to man: I defy thee"
The hall was crowded with as brilliant an assemblage of rank and power as Hungary could furnish. The queen entered, accompanied by her retinue. She was dressed in deep mourning, in the Hungarian costume, with the crown of St. Stephen upon her brow, and the regal cimiter at her side.
The Moor's horse stumbled over the ground, cumbered with the dead and slippery with blood, and his uplifted cimiter could not do more than break the force of the gigantic arm of De Suzon; as the knight's falchion bearing down the cimiter, and alighting on the turban of the Mohammedan, clove midway through its folds, arrested only by the admirable temper of the links of steel which protected it.
Villena's armour defied the shafts of the Moors; and as one after one darted towards him, with whirling cimiter and momentary assault, few escaped with impunity from an eye equally quick and a weapon more than equally formidable.
With barbaric genius they sent to the tzar a naked cimiter, accompanied by the following message: "This is a token left to your majesty by an enemy, whose revenge is still unsatiated, and who will soon return again to complete the work which he has but just begun." Such is war. It is but a succession of miseries.
But the blow of the heavy falchion had not touched him: and, seemingly without an effort, the curved blade of his own cimiter, gliding by that part of his antagonist's throat where the helmet joins the cuirass, passed unresistingly and silently through the joints; and Alonzo fell at once, and without a groan, from his horse his armour, to all appearance, unpenetrated, while the blood oozed slow and gurgling from a mortal wound.
"A Jew!" replied Almamen, in a voice of thunder, and drawing his cimiter: "a despised and despising Jew! Ask you more? I am the son of a race of kings. I was the worst enemy of the Moors till I found the Nazarene more hateful than the Moslem; and then even Muza himself was not their more renowned champion. Come on, if thou wilt man to man: I defy thee"
Villena's armour defied the shafts of the Moors; and as one after one darted towards him, with whirling cimiter and momentary assault, few escaped with impunity from an eye equally quick and a weapon more than equally formidable.
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