Climate of Change (40 page)

Several days later the Frank army at last moved out, leaving Pamplona a wreckage. The citizens' only hope for survival was to go out into the countryside beyond the savaged region and hope for help from the folk who had resisted the intrusion of the Franks. Many of them were relatives or friends, so this was feasible, but it was sure to be an unkind winter.

Haven and Keeper finally were able to go home to the family. They had lost both their money and the supplies they had bought, but were otherwise not too much worse for wear. Most residents of the city had lost far more.

They avoided the army's rear guard, which was commanded by Roland, and went quickly into the trackless countryside. The army had the main road, but moved like a slow python, stretching out so that its vanguard was two days ahead of its rear guard. Haven and Keeper, afoot alone off the road, were able to move significantly more rapidly.

They reached their farm in the mountains and made a full report, confirming what observers had noted. The Franks were leaving, heading for the pass at Roncevaux with their plunder.

“They sacked a Basque city after it cooperated with them,” Hero said grimly. “This is not to be tolerated.”

“But we have no army that can withstand them,” Haven reminded him unnecessarily. “Their forces are huge.”

“Fifty thousand,” Hero said. “But we may have a way. You say the tail end of it is dragging way out?”

“They have to wait for the main army to pass before they can move,” Keeper agreed. “They are loaded down with their ill-gotten loot.”

“Yes. Maybe we can relieve them of that.”

They spread the word, and organized quickly. Armed Basques came from all around, and others went directly to the key pass, setting up for an ambush. Haven went too, because she knew the men were going to need to eat while they waited for their chance.

The vanguard of the Frank army was already through the pass, and the main army was filing through. The baggage train was as usual waiting its turn. The terrain was both steep and littered with boulders, making cavalry useless; in fact the Franks were leading their horses through.

A sizable force of warriors had assembled behind the peaks on either side of the pass. They had made no fires, and kept complete silence. Not that there was much danger of discovery; the Franks in their arrogance had not even posted sentries or outriders to check beyond the high slopes. They were just wending their slow way upward.

Haven took over the field mess camp. She organized the other women who had come, Rebel and Crenelle among them, and they made up hundreds of small acorn bread, goat cheese, and water-skin meals to hand out to the men.

The Frank caravan did not travel by night, and did post sentries then. So the Basques waited. When morning came the Franks resumed motion, their troops soon outstripping the heavy baggage train. The horses strained to pull the overloaded wagons up the steep slope, and there was constant cursing.

Keeper brought the dogs to her. “I'm going to try to rescue the enemy horses,” he said. “You keep the dogs.”

Haven wasn't easy with this. Keeper was not a warrior. But of course they wanted to save the horses, who could do good work on Basque farms. “I will keep the dogs,” she agreed. She snapped her fingers, and the three dogs came to her, understanding that she was now the one in control.

It was time. Hero stepped up to the crest and lifted his right fist in a signal to the Basques on the far side. Immediately Craft pulled on a lever he had set up, and dislodged a great boulder. It started rolling slowly, gathered speed, and pounded other rocks into motion. In a moment a small avalanche was crashing down toward the Frankish column. Haven and the dogs peeked over the edge, watching the action from an excellent high vantage. She had no love for the Franks.

The avalanche was not great, but it did attract the attention of the troops below. Probably it looked much worse from that vantage; the defenders could not know how limited it was. They responded beautifully: they panicked. Men tried to flee up the opposite slope, or hide under the baggage carts. Any semblance of military formation vanished.

Then the Basques on both sides charged down the slopes. The main weapons they had were spears and clubs, buttressed by light leather armor. The Franks had superior weapons, but were disorganized, distracted by the descending stones, and caught completely by surprise. The Basques closed on them, striking with their spears and dispatching the soldiers almost before they knew they were under attack. Haven could not see the details, which was perhaps just as well as she had never been keen on human bloodshed, but made out the general pattern: Franks were falling and lying still.

She glanced at the higher pass. A contingent of Basques was there to make sure that no troops from the main Frank army came back to rescue their baggage train. The Basques would have no hope of defeating the main forces. But those forces were well along, going down the northern slopes, and perhaps did not even know their rear was under attack. If they tried to turn back, they would have trouble passing the Basque contingent before the job was done. Indeed, it seemed that no Frank troops were coming back.

Nevertheless, the Basques did not waste time. They rapidly
slaughtered the defending troops, closing in on the standard of the com mander. Once he was taken out, there would be no remaining resistance.

Then Haven spied something that alarmed her. A Basque had been wounded—and he was familiar. It was Keeper, leading a panicky horse. He staggered and fell.

Suddenly she and the dogs were charging down the slope, heedless of cautioning calls. She couldn't let her brother die!

She was holding cloth for bandaging, but she needed her hands to brace against the slope and boulders so as to maintain her balance. So she stuffed the cloth down the front of her blouse, getting it out of her way.

Breathless, she circled horses and reached Keeper. There was an arrow in his leg, just below the leather. It looked like a flesh wound. She knew what to do. “Hold still and grit your teeth,” she said.

“Haven! What are you doing here?”

“Saving you. Let me pull this arrow out.” She took hold of it and yanked, hauling it out. Keeper's breath hissed through his teeth, but he did not scream.

Blood welled out. She hauled the cloth from her blouse and wrapped it around his leg, tying it tight to stifle the blood. The dogs crowded close, concerned.

Meanwhile, a man was coming for the horse. He was a Frank. He had evidently fought free of the attacking Basques and was about to try to escape on the horse. But the horse, spooked by the carnage, was shying away.

Then Haven recognized the Frank. “That's Roland!”

“The commander?” Keeper asked. “Where's my spear?”

“You can't fight him,” she protested. “You're wounded.”

Roland heard her. He turned to look. “The fair kitchen maid! You are helping these savages?” He drew his sword.

Haven realized they would both be dead in a moment if they didn't get away from there. She tried to haul Keeper to his feet. But it was too late; Roland was striding toward them, lifting his sword. “Death to traitors!” he shouted.

“We're not traitors!” she cried with useless defiance. “We never
were your people.” She overbalanced, trying to lift Keeper, and sank down to the ground with him.

Roland put both hands on his sword, about to slash it through both of them together. The dogs growled and leaped at him, but he ignored them; he had leather armor on his legs. Then he screamed and collapsed.

There was a spear through his back, hurled so hard that it had penetrated the armor. It must have reached his heart, for he was clearly dead. Hero came charging up. “Didn't anybody tell you to stay out of trouble?” he asked Haven.

She laughed, somewhat hysterically. “I forgot.” She felt dizzy; in a few hours she knew she would be reacting with fear, horror, and other debilitating emotions, but right now she was reasonably steady.

The battle was over; Roland had been one of the last to be killed. Haven felt a tinge almost of regret. He had not been a bad man, merely arrogant and careless. If it had not been for him, she and Keeper might well have fared worse than they had.

But now it was time to tend to their remaining wounded. The other women were making their way down into the narrow valley that was the pass, carrying cloth to be torn into ban dages. They would do what they could for whom they could.

Meanwhile, Craft was helping organize the plundering of the baggage wagons. Much of the ill-gotten Frank loot was useless to Basques, but much was good. Soon a line of men was proceeding downhill, loaded with their trophies. Surviving horses were turned around and hitched to reloaded wagons, which moved much better downhill than they had uphill. Before very long, the last of the Basques were departing, leaving only wreckage behind.

“As the Franks left Pamplona,” Haven said with a certain grim satisfaction. Vengeance was complete.

Historically King Charles was far more successful elsewhere. In fact he fashioned one of the major empires of the time. He was known as Charlemagne. Frankish chronicles had little to say about the ignominious defeat of their rear guard in the pass of Roncevaux.

Roland was an officer of Charlemagne's court about whom little is known, but he does not seem to have been a figure of much distinction. He was the commander of the rear guard, who was careless about defending the baggage train, and paid for that neglect with his life. Thus he became a historical nonentity. However, several centuries later, he was the basis for a series of legends relating to Charlemagnian times, much as Sir Lancelot was for Arthurian times in England. Thus the drab historical prefect became the phenomenal legendary Roland, greatest of heroes. Why the mythmakers chose him for this undeserved honor we don't know; perhaps it was their need to explain away one of Charlemagne's ignominious moments. Roland's carelessness was mythically fashioned into a heroic effort to save the rest of Charlemagne's army from annihilation, at the sacrifice of his own life. In this manner the legend went greatly beyond the reality.

After the decline of the Olmec culture in what is now southern Mexico, the Maya culture rose to prominence in the Yucatan area. This prominence can be considered as three six-hundred-year sequences: 300 BC to 300 AD was the Classic period; 300 to 900 was the Late Classic, and 900 to 1500 was Post Classic, or Florescent period. This was when the erection of stele and the use of hieroglyphs were abandoned. Block masonry was given up for pure concrete construction for walls and vaults, and surfaces were covered with a thin veneer of finely ground and meticulously squared and faced rectangular stone. The prior naturalistic design gave way to highly formalized geometric patterns. The orientation of buildings was changed. There were severe disruptions and population shifts between these periods, about which there has been much conjecture. For the purpose of this narrative, there is no mystery: climate was the root cause of the mischief. When intense, prolonged drought came, starvation followed, there was desperate war for diminishing resources, and the sophisticated religious and governmental structures collapsed in chaos. When and where the climate improved, the Maya rebuilt and flourished again—until the next drought.

But one area was largely free of this problem. This was a city now known as Dzibilchaltun, whose continuous occupancy may represent a New World record: perhaps 4,000 years. Much of that time it was a minor settlement, and though in Late Classic times it may have been
the largest population center in the Yucatan, with anywhere up to 100,000 people by some estimates, but more likely in the 10,000 to 20,000 range, it remained politically minor. This may be because it was on the fringe, near the northern coast of the peninsula, away from the cultural center. Even its true name is lost to history; “Dzibilchaltun” translates to “place where there is writing on flat stones.” But why did it remain so steadily occupied, when other cities rose and fell? Because in a region that had no rivers, it never succumbed to drought. It had about a hundred wells tapping into groundwater circulating four to five meters below the surface, with natural openings in the limestone cap providing ready access.