Catalan Vengeance

We were Spanish troops in Sicilian ships
And the King of the Greeks had sent to hire
Our thousand spears to scour the Turks
From his eastern realm with sword and fire.
We drove the Turks to the Iron Gates
But the faith of a Prince keeps not the day.
We were bandits now, said the King of the Greeks,
So he hanged our Captain and stole our pay.

The crusader Kings of the East we told
Of our own hard fight and the Greek kings shame
But the German laugh and the Frankish sneer
Said a rabble of spear was but fair game.
From the wine dark sea we marched on west
Till we cam to the Duke of Athens land.
His herald said: Wear chains or die.
By Kephissos River were forced to stand.

We made our camp on a grassy hill
In the midst of a league of marshy ground
That a light-armed man might cross with care,
Where an armored horse must soon sink down.
Our hundred best at the marshs edge,
Six hundred hid in the reeds behind,
While a thousand horse of the Dukes own troop
Ride along the stream to surround our line.

An arrows flight from our waiting spears
The knights formed ranks with a joyous sound.
Now the first rank comes at a walk, now trot.
Five hundred ride for the killing ground.
At a hundred yards we see their blades,
But the horses hooves are what you fear.
Five hundred tons of steel and flesh
And you bar their path with an eight-foot spear.

At fifty yards their lances dip.
We grip our pikes in gauntlet hand,
As a steel-shod thunder drowns our cries
And the ground shake s so we can hardly stand.
They smashed our line and trampled all
Who stood to fight, who turned to flee,
And plunged in over the marshs edge
In the red-soaked blood to the horses knee.

The knights looked up and saw our troops
Still standing on the farther shore.
Form up! called the Duke in knee-deep mud,
Well crush these dogs with one charge more.
They sank in mud to the riders thighs.
Push on! the Duke of Athens said.
So we hurled our darts and fired our bows:
Five hundred trapped and the rest are fled.

Free pass and ransom! the Duke he cried,
But we know the worth of a French knights word.
So we cut his throat and stripped his arms
And left his flesh for the dogs and birds.
I crawled out onto the shaky ground,
As the crows dipped low on stiffened wing.
Where a young squire moaned with his face-plate gone,
Cut his right hand off for its golden ring.

Rich gifts they brought these Frankish knights
Who called us bastard Spanish curs.
We had arms and mail and a Dukes own helm,
Two bushels brim with silver spurs.
My comrades lie in the white Greek soil,
But they do not rest in the earth alone.
Five hundred knights and a Frankish duke
Share a pool of mud for a marking stone.

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