ggested that it might be very useful just
now.

"Suivez-moi!" he shouted. The archers stared at him and drew themselves
up straighter, but looked puzzled. Of course, Simon thought. The longbow
was a weapon favored by the English. He beckoned with his hand, and the
Englishmen ran to him. Good.

"My lord, I speak un peu Francais," said one of them, whose crested
helmet marked him as a sergeant. "If you give your orders to me, very
slowly--"

"Good," said Simon, pleased with the man's readiness to cooperate. He
explained what he wanted.

"Suivez-moi," Simon called again to the longbowmen, and their sergeant
repeated, "Follow me," in English. He trotted off, keeping the dark
brown mare to a pace that would allow running men to follow him.

When they came to Charles and his three mutinous lieutenants, still
arguing, the Roman mob had advanced close enough for Simon to be able to
make out individuals. They were almost all men, as far as he could see,
with a shouting, fist-shaking woman here and there, and mostly dressed
in the plain browns and grays, whites and blacks, of common folk. Men
with swords and spears made up the forefront. A few men on horseback
with lances and banners rode on the flanks of the mob. Someone was
carrying a red and white banner, a design of keys and towers.

For a moment Simon hesitated. He did not want to kill these people.

But there was no way of stopping the Romans, and no one else was able or
willing to act. If he did nothing, Charles's army would be destroyed and
Simon would probably be killed along with everyone else.

He remembered something Roland, his true father, had told him many years
ago: _No one who wants to live through a battle can afford to feel sorry
for the men he is trying to kill. Make sure you kill them first, and
then you can mourn for them afterward._

Putting his sympathy for the Romans out of his mind, Simon began to give
orders to his archers. He deployed them in a line stretching from the
Tiber to a thick grove of trees to the east. Through their sergeant he
told them to shoot at the front and center of the oncoming Romans. He
noticed that the voices of Count Charles and his antagonists had fallen
silent.

_They are watching me_, he thought, and hoped no one would try to stop
him.

When the Englishmen had their arrows nocked and their bows drawn and
aimed, Simon shouted, "Tirez!"

They understood that well enough.

The arrows flew in flat curves across th