Charles towered over Mandricardo. Frankish spit ran down into his beard. His temples throbbed timpani to the imperious bassoon of his voice.

"The sword is not the point! We are not here about the sword." The first syllable of Beji's translation had barely tumbled past his lips when Mandricardo launched into his by now familiar refrain.

"I will help you fight the Demon if you return the sword to me. I know you..."

Beji's mind, in spite of the bilingual cacophony and despite his better judgment, wandered. He didn't even attempt to translate.

No one seemed to notice.

Since the rodentine reconnaissance of a week before, Lord Mandricardo had been furious with Charlemagne's refusal to admit he had the sword Durendal. The Roland was dead. This was a certainty. The stones had confirmed it.

"The Roland will not return."

Mandricardo had grinned widely, lambsmeat gleaming, and danced a foolish little jig to his family's honor. They ate heavily and danced and laughed that night. With the Roland gone their return to Spain was imminent; unfortunately, the next morning life again soured.

Charles was stubborn and wily. Beji had a hard time keeping up with the flow of subtlety that ran through the first parley. He had been taught that the translator's job was not only to communicate what was said, but the texture, tone and subtext of the speech as well. Charles the Frank gave Beji more than a casual challenge. Beji also had the vague intuition that Charles understood at least part of what passed between him and his lord.

The hostilities had commenced afresh after the third negotiation. Mandricardo's forces were actually making headway and had established a foothold at the Gate of Swallows when the Demon struck.

His genesis and purpose were beyond the scope of mortal conjecture.

He was huge, his skin was as black as a cave and a baleful hatred raged in his eyes. He wielded only a tree trunk (the size of a horse's leg) and fought anything that moved. He fell first on the armies of Lord Mandricardo and then on the warriors of Charlemagne, sent to help what they thought to be a beleaguered Christian knight in black livery.

His fury was absurd.

He bent back all who opposed him and many who didn't. His attacks were capricious and wide-ranging: a wine train from the south (killing the mules and spilling fifty gallons of Bordeaux), a group of nuns from the convent at Rhymes (the sisters escaped, harried but unharmed) and, just this morning, Lord Mandricardo's own tent. He killed Mandricardo's cook and his first lieutenant. Mandricardo himself had been tossed into the camp's latrine.

So it was that Mandricardo had sought out Charles with the proposition of a concerted disposal. All hostilities between the two lords had ceased because the Demon was particularly keen to the scent of pitched battle. He seemed to delight in cutting a path through the middle of a melee, indiscriminately pulverizing on either side of the front. After the third such attack Mandricardo's men refused to take the field.

Forty-three of Mandricardo's men had fallen to the Angel of Hell (a Frankish priest had tried to exorcise the Demon but the monster had merely held him down and shat upon his neck), and they estimated at least twenty of Charles' men had suffered similarly. Dozens more were hurt - bruised and beaten by the brute's oak branch.

Beji's reverie was broken by a crashing wail a few yards into the woods. The Demon had been seen here just a few hours before, so the lords haggled and puffed at the forest's gate while the foot soldiers searched the leafy shadows for darkness' emissary. They had apparently found him.

Charles and Mandricardo stopped, mouths agape, un-understood arguments forgotten. Another crash. A scream. A thud.

Mandricardo summoned the spearmen he had kept close to hand for just this contingency. Charles ran to his horse and drew his sword.

A horse bolted from the forest, its rider dragging obscenely behind. His head had somehow been deflated. The Demon followed.

Beji was still busy with the picture of the horseman's head when he realized the monster had broken out of the undergrowth and was bearing down on them at a wicked pace.

Charles and Mandricardo took their ground, side by side, in front of the line of spears. Their fear was palpable. The Demon's skin was a horrible scaly black-grey; his head was covered in an odd grey-green mane of mossy... leaves. Leaves? Why would a demon have...

The Beast fell on the two generals with a swiftness and surety that Beji found both otherworldly and unsettlingly familiar. The creature snatched Charles' blade from his hand and hurled it, singing, end over end, into a tree. Charles was knocked backwards, heels over head, as Mandricardo was pushed away, arms windmilling, onto the point of a spear. Beji watched, disbelieving, as spear point and blood geysered beneath Mandricardo's mail-shirt. The spearmen scattered.

Mandricardo looked, puzzled, from the spear point to Beji, before tumbling backwards. The spear shaft groaned green wood and snapped under his weight.

Beji was digesting his lord's death when the wind went out of him, the world whirled round and he found himself staring into the hell-rimmed visage, the fiendish face of...

The Roland, covered in mud and drooling like an infant.