Read Online The Pirates of the Levant by Arturo Pérez-Reverte - Free Book Online Page B

vital importance as merchants and traders, despite the heavy taxes imposed on them because of their religion. When times were hard, they were the ones who lent the governor money or wheat or whatever he might need. In addition, there was the role they played in the slave trade: on the one hand, they mediated in the ransoming of captives and, on the other, they owned most of the Turks and Moors sold in
Oran. After all, regardless of whether they worshipped Mary, Mohammed or Moses, as far as everyone — Jew, Moor Spaniard — was concerned, a silver coin was a silver coin. As Don Francisco de Quevedo would have said, Sir Money a powerful gentleman. And the man was a fool who would bother going to light a candle at anyone else's altar.
The dog barked again in the distance, and Alatriste touched the well-primed pistol at his waist. In a way, he thought he wouldn't mind if the dog kept on barking so that Moors in the encampment, or at least some of them, were awake, with scimitar in hand, when Sergeant Major Biscarrues gave the order to attack. Slitting the throats of sleeping men in order to steal their livestock, women and children was easier than slitting their throats while they were awake, but it would take a vast amount of wine to wash the blood from his memory.
'At the ready.'
In a whisper that gradually grew louder, the order passed down the line. When it reached me, I, too, passed it on, and heard the words move off into the crouching shadows until it vanished like the fading of an echo. I ran my tongue over my cracked lips and then clenched my teeth to stop  them chattering in the cold. I tried on my espadrilles, removing the rags in which I had wrapped both my sword and blade of my half-pike to avoid making any inopportune noise. I looked around. I couldn't see Captain Alatriste among the various silhouettes in the dawn light, but I knew he was lying with the others close by. I could see Sebastian Copons, a dark, motionless figure, smelling of sweat, greased leather and s burnished with oil. There were similar figures among lentiscus bushes, the prickly pears and the thistles that in Barbary are called arracafes.
'We attack in two credos' time,' came the new order. Some, either out of devotion or simply to calculate the time, started mumbling the creed out loud. I heard them all around me, in the half-darkness, in different accents and intonations: Basque, Valencian, Asturian, Andalusian, Castilian; Spaniards who only came together to pray or to kill.
Credo in unum Deum, patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et trrae ... Such pious murmurings as a prelude to bloody battle always struck me as odd; all those male voices whispering holy words, asking God to let them survive the fight, to capture gold and slaves aplenty, to be granted a safe return to Oran and to Spain, laden with booty and with no enemies nigh, for as they all knew — Copons and the Captain had both emphasised this point — the most dangerous thing in the world was fighting Moors on their own territory and then withdrawing and finding oneself pursued down those dried up riverbeds and through that arid landscape, beneath the implacable sun, with no water, or else paying in blood for each drop, or being wounded and falling into the hands of Arabs, who had all the time in the world to kill you. Perhaps that was why the murmur was spreading among the crouching shadows: Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero ...
After a while, I found myself mechanically murmuring the same words, without thinking, like someone singing along to a particularly catchy ballad. Then, when I realised what I was doing, I prayed with real devotion: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi, amen. At the time, I was still young enough to believe in such things, and a few other things besides.
'Forward for Santiago ... for Santiago and Spain!' The words were spoken in a howl, punctuated by a few sharp blasts on the bugle, while the men scrambled to