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Updated: June 17, 2025
The Seljuks heard the terrible, quick clanking of armour as the great troop began to move, and the Guide of Aquitaine swept down in a storm of steel, bareheaded, his fair hair streaming on the wind, his eyes on fire in the setting sun, his great sword high in air, the smile of destruction on his even lips. "The White Fiend! The Wrath of God!" screamed the Seljuks.
There was some fighting every day, when he was able to overtake the swift Seljuks in some narrow place. They fled when they could, but when they were brought to bay they turned savagely and fought like panthers, yelling their war-cry: "Hurr! Hurr!" which in the Tartar tongue signifies: "Kill! Kill!"
Immediately the sky appeared to darken, a cloud of arrows and javelins broke from all sides upon the çlevoted Seljuks: immense masses of stone and marble were hurled from all directions, horses were stabbed by spears impelled by invisible hands, and riders fell to the ground without a struggle, and were trampled upon by their disordered and affrighted brethren.
Fifty steps of ivory, and each step guarded by golden lions. Crossed the desert on a swift dromedary. The difference between a camel and a dromedary is the difference between a hack and a thorough-bred horse. That celestial alphabet known to the true Cabalist. The last of the Seljuks had expired.
Many others died there, and were buried quickly; but the bodies of the Seljuks were dragged aside, out of the line of the march; and it was high noon, for all that had happened had taken place in about two hours.
The first came tearing down, his horse's nostrils streaming with blood, himself wild-eyed, with foam-flecked lips that howled the words of terror. "The Seljuks! The Seljuks!"
"If you were always what you are at this moment," he said, "and if you had a thousand such women as yourself to ride with you, the King would need no other army, for you could face the Seljuks alone. "But you think that by the time I have to face them my courage will have cooled to woman's tears, like hot vapour on a glass." She smiled, but gently now, for she was pleased by what he had said.
"Effendi," he said, leaning forward and pointing a forefinger at me by way of emphasis, "there are castles on the mountains near Zeitoon that have never been explored since the Turks may God destroy them! overran the land! Castles hidden among trees where only bears dwell! Castles built by the Seljuks Armenians Romans Saracens Crusaders! I know the way to every one of them!"
But in the valley the King's army was pressing on and up toward the place where Gilbert had fought yesterday, where the bones of the slain Seljuks were already white, and the gorged vultures perched sleeping in the noonday sun.
As he unlocked the massy gate of the burial-place, he heard behind him the trampling of a horse; and before he had again secured the entrance, some one shouted to him. He looked up, and recognised the youthful and voluptuous Alschiroch, the governor of the city, and brother of the sultan of the Seljuks.
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