“You’ll have to wait,” Francesca told Aledis while the girls were taking down their tent to follow the soldiers. “When the king orders them to set off, none of them can leave the ranks. Perhaps when we make camp again ...”

Aledis looked at her inquiringly.

“I’ve already sent him a message,” said Francesca in an offhand way. “Are you coming with us?”

Aledis nodded.

“Well, help out then,” Francesca told her sharply.

Twelve hundred men on horseback and more than four thousand foot soldiers, all of them armed and with provisions for eight days, set off toward La Junquera, a town little more than half a day’s march from Figueres. Behind them came a huge train of carts, mules, and all sorts of camp followers. When they reached La Junquera, King Pedro ordered them to set up camp once more: a new papal messenger, an Augustine friar this time, had brought another letter from Jaime the Third. When King Pedro had conquered Mallorca, King Jaime had turned to the pope for aid; on that occasion, monks, bishops, and even cardinals had tried unsuccessfully to mediate.

Now once more King Pedro refused to listen to the papal envoy. His army spent the night at La Junquera. Was this the moment? Francesca wondered as she watched Aledis helping the others prepare the food. No, it was not, she decided. The farther they were from Barcelona and Aledis’s former life, the more opportunity she would have. “We have to wait,” she told Aledis when she inquired anxiously about Arnau.

The next morning, King Pedro ordered everyone on the march again.

“To Panissars! In battle formation! Four columns ready for combat!”

The order ran through the ranks. Arnau heard it as he was ready to move off with the rest of Eiximèn d’Esparca’s personal guard. To Panissars! Some of the men shouted the word, others merely whispered it, but all spoke of it with pride and respect. The pass at Panissars! The way through the Pyrenees between Catalan territory and Roussillon. That night, only half a league from La Junquera, stories of the feats of arms from the legendary battle of Panissars could be heard round every campfire.

Panissars was where Catalans—the fathers or grandfathers of the current army—had defeated the French. The Catalans standing alone! Many years earlier, Pedro the Great of Catalonia had been excommunicated by the pope for conquering Sicily without his consent. The French, led by Philippe the Bold, had declared war on the heretic in the name of Christianity, and with the help of some traitors had crossed the Pyrenees by the pass at La Macana.

Pedro the Great had been forced to withdraw. The nobles and knights of Aragon had abandoned him and returned to their own lands.

“Only we Catalans were left!” said someone in the night, silencing even the crackling fire.

“And Roger de Llùria!” shouted another man.

His armies depleted, King Pedro had to allow the French to invade Catalonia while he awaited reinforcements from Sicily, under the command of Admiral Roger de Llùria. He ordered Viscount Ramon Folch de Cardona, the defender of Girona, to withstand the French siege until Roger de Llùria could reach Catalonia. Viscount Cardona mounted an epic defense of the city until at length King Pedro authorized him to surrender.

Roger de Llùria arrived and defeated the French navy. On land, the French army was swept by an epidemic.

“When they took Girona, they desecrated the shrine of Sant Narcis,” one of the soldiers at a campfire explained.

According to local legend, millions of flies had come buzzing out of the sepulchre when the French defiled it. It was these insects that spread the epidemic through the French camp. Defeated at sea, weakened by sickness on land, King Philippe the Bold called a truce in order to allow him to retreat without a massacre.

Pedro the Great granted him the truce, but only in his name and that of his nobles and knights.

The Almogavars kept up their shouting all the way through the pass, challenging an enemy that failed to appear. Perhaps they too remembered what their fathers and grandfathers had told them had happened on this very spot fifty years earlier.

Those ragged men, who when they were not fighting as mercenaries lived in the forests and mountains and spent their time plundering and laying waste to the lands ruled by the Moors, ignoring whatever treaty the Christian kings might have made, took orders from no one. Arnau had seen it during the march from Figueres to La Junquera, and it was obvious again now: of the four columns into which the king had divided the army, three advanced in formation beneath their banners, but the Almogavars swarmed in an unruly mass, shouting, threatening, laughing at their enemy, daring them to come and show themselves.

“Don’t they have any leaders?” asked Arnau when he saw how the Almogavars ignored Eiximèn d’Esparca’s call for a halt and instead went on with their disorderly advance through the pass.

“It doesn’t look like it, does it?” said a veteran who had come to a halt beside him, as all the royal shield bearer’s personal guard had done.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, they do have their leaders, and they are careful not to disobey them. They’re not commanders like ours, though.” The veteran pointed to Eiximèn d’Esparca, then caught an imaginary fly in his fingers and waved it in front of Arnau’s eyes. The bastaix and several other soldiers laughed at his gesture. “They have real leaders,” the veteran said, falling serious all of a sudden. “In their company, it doesn’t matter whose son you are, if you have a name, or are some count or other’s favorite. The most important of their leaders are the adalils.” Arnau looked at the Almogavars, who were still swarming past them. “No, don’t bother,” the soldier said. “You won’t be able to pick them out. They all dress the same, but all the Almogavars know who they are. You need four things to become an adalil: skill at leading troops; to give your all and to inspire your men to do the same; to have the qualities of a born leader; and above all, to be loyal—”

“That’s what they say our commander has,” Arnau interrupted him, pointing to the royal shield bearer.

“Yes, but nobody has ever challenged his position. To get to be an Almogavar adalil you need to have twelve other adalils swear on pain of death that you possess all these qualities. There would be no nobles left in the world if they had to do the same in front of their peers—especially when it came to loyalty.”

The soldiers listening to him all nodded their agreement. Arnau looked at the Almogavars once more. How could they bring down a charging warhorse with nothing more than a spear?

“Below the adalils,” the veteran went on, “come the almogatens. They have to be expert in battle, to give everything for their cause, to be mobile and loyal. They are chosen in the same way: twelve almogatens have to swear that the candidate possesses all the required qualities.”

“On pain of death?”

“On pain of death,” the veteran confirmed.

What Arnau could not have imagined was that these mercenaries’ independent spirit was so great that they would disobey even the king’s orders. Pedro the Third had ordered that once all his army had successfully crossed the Panissars pass, they should head directly for Perpignan, the capital of Roussillon. Despite this, as soon as they had emerged from the pass, the Almogavars split off from the main army and headed for Bellaguarda castle, which guarded its northern entrance.

Arnau and the royal shield bearer’s guard stood and watched as the mercenaries rushed up the slope to the castle. They were still whooping and shouting as they had done all the way through the pass. Eiximèn d’Esparca turned toward the king, who was also observing the attack.

But Pedro the Third did nothing. How could he stop them? He turned back and continued on his way to Perpignan. This was Eiximèn d‘Esparca’s signal. The king had sanctioned the assault on Bellaguarda, but he was the one paying the Almogavars, and if there was any booty to be shared, he wanted to be there. And so, while the main force followed the king in battle formation, Eiximèn d’Esparca and his men set off after the Almogavars.

The Catalans laid siege to the castle. That afternoon and through all the next night, the mercenaries took turns chopping down trees to make their siege weapons: assault ladders and a big battering ram mounted on wheels that was swung using ropes suspended from another, higher tree trunk, and was covered with hides to protect the men underneath.

Arnau stood guard below the walls of Bellaguarda. How were they going to storm the castle? They would be advancing unprotected, uphill, while the defenders could fire down on them from behind their battlements. He could see them up there, peeping out and observing the besiegers. On one occasion he even thought someone was staring straight at him. The defenders seemed calm, though his own legs shook at the idea of their watching him.

“They seem very sure of themselves,” he remarked to one of the veterans standing guard beside him.

“Don’t be fooled,” the man said. “Inside the castle they’re having a far worse time than us. Besides, they’ve seen the Almogavars.”

The Almogavars. There they were again. Arnau turned to look at them. They were working tirelessly and now seemed to be perfectly well organized. None of them was laughing or arguing; they were all getting on with the task in hand.

“How can they possibly frighten the people inside the castle so much?” asked Arnau.

The veteran laughed. “You’ve never seen them fight, have you?” Arnau shook his head. “Just wait and see.”

Arnau waited, dozing on the hard ground through a long night during which the mercenaries kept on building their machines by torchlight.

As day dawned and the sun rose over the horizon, Eiximèn d’Esparca ordered his troops to deploy round the castle. The shadows of the night had barely dispersed in the first timid light of day. Arnau looked round to see where the Almogavars were. This time they had obeyed the order, and were drawn up beneath the walls of Bellaguarda. Arnau peered up at the lofty castle. All the lights inside had been extinguished, but he knew they were waiting inside the walls. He shivered. What was he doing there? The morning air was chill, but his hands were sweaty on the crossbow. There was complete silence. He could die. The day before, he had often seen the defenders staring straight at him, a mere bastaix: the faces of those men, which then had been blurred in the distance, now appeared clearly before him. They were there, waiting for him! He shivered again. His knees were knocking, and he had to make a great effort to stop his teeth from chattering. He clasped his crossbow firmly to his chest so that nobody could see how his hands were shaking. The captain had told him that when the order to advance was given, he should run toward the castle, seek cover behind some boulders, and fire his crossbow up at the defenders. The problem would be to reach those boulders. Could he do it? Arnau found himself staring at them. He had to run there, hide behind them, fire his bow, duck down again, fire a second time ...

A command rent the air.

The order to attack! The boulders! Arnau got ready to sprint toward them, but felt the captain’s gloved hand holding him back.

“Not yet,” said the officer.

“But ...”

“Not yet,” the captain repeated. “Look.”

He pointed toward the Almogavars.

From among their ranks, another cry went up: “Awake, iron!”

Arnau could not take his eyes off them. Suddenly, all of them took up the cry: “Awake, iron!”

At this, all the Almogavars beat their spears and knives together until the sound drowned out their voices.

“Awake, iron!”

Their steel weapons did start to awaken, sending out showers of sparks as the blades clashed against one another or on rocks. The thunderous noise deafened Arnau. Bit by bit, hundreds and then thousands of sparks flashed in the dark, and the mercenaries were soon surrounded by a halo of bright light.

Arnau found himself waving his crossbow in the air and shouting with them: “Awake, iron!” He was no longer sweating or trembling. “Awake, iron!”

He glanced up at the castle walls: it seemed as if the Almogavars’ battle cry would bring them tumbling down. The ground was shaking, and the bright glow from the sparks grew and grew. All of a sudden, there was the sound of a trumpet, and the shouting changed into a mighty roar: “Sant Jordi! Sant Jordi!”

“Now you can go,” shouted the captain, pushing Arnau forward in the wake of about two hundred men who were charging ferociously up the castle mound.

Arnau ran to seek cover behind the boulders alongside the captain and a company of crossbow men. He concentrated on one of the scaling ladders the Almogavars had placed against the wall, trying to aim at the figures who were fighting off the mercenaries from the top of the battlements. The Almogavars were still shrieking like madmen. Arnau’s aim was true: he twice saw his bolts strike defenders below their chain-mail protection, and the bodies fall back.

As one group of attackers managed to scale the castle walls, Arnau felt the captain’s hand on his shoulder, telling him to stop firing. There was no need to use the battering ram: as soon as the Almogavars had appeared on the battlements, the castle gates opened and several knights galloped out to avoid being taken hostage. Two of them fell to the Catalan crossbow fire; the others succeeded in escaping. Deserted by their leaders, some of the castle defenders started to surrender. Eiximèn d’Esparca and his cavalry forced their way into the castle and laid about them, killing anyone who resisted. The foot soldiers poured in after them.

After he had rushed inside the castle, Arnau came to a halt, crossbow over his shoulder, dagger in hand. It was not needed. The castle yard was strewn with the dead, and those still alive were on their knees, unarmed, begging for mercy from the knights who strode around, broadswords at the ready. The Almogavars were already plundering the castle’s riches: some had entered the castle keep; others were stripping the bodies with a greed that Arnau could not bear to watch. One of them came up and offered him a handful of crossbow bolts. Some of them had missed their aim, but others were stained with blood, and a few still had lumps of flesh caught on them. Arnau hesitated. The Almogavar, an older man who was as tough and wiry as the bolts he was holding out, was surprised at Arnau’s reaction. Then he smiled a toothless smile and offered them to another soldier.

“What are you doing?” the soldier asked Arnau. “Do you think Eiximèn is going to replace your bolts for you? Clean these off,” he said, throwing them at Arnau’s feet.

In a few hours it was all over. The surviving men were shepherded together and manacled. That same night they would be sold as slaves in the camp that followed the Catalan army. Eiximèn d’Esparca’s men set off again to regain the main army. They took their wounded with them, leaving behind seventeen Catalan dead and a blazing fortress that would no longer be of any use to King Jaime the Third and his allies.