4th Chapter, 2nd Season
Cardinal points
Alfons, in order to not get stressed by the many conquests, gave Menorca and Mallorca to her wife, Sancha de Borgoña.
One this was achieved, a problem came.
-M'lord! Who is better Cardinal, me or Cardinal Ized? -an angry Cardinal Petrus asked.
Alfons, surprised, could find no words, so the quarrelling went on and on.
Suddenly inspired, Cardinal Petrus let go an arousing speech:
Heresy is like a tree, its roots lie in the darkness whilst its leaves wave in the sun and to those who suspect nought, it has an attractive and pleasing appearance. Truly, you can prune away its branches, or even cut the tree to the ground, but it will grow up again ever the stronger and ever more comely. Yet all awhile the root grows thick and black, gnawing at the bitter soil, drawing its nourishment from the darkness, and growing even greater and more deeply entrenched. Such is the nature of heresy, and this is why it is so hard to destroy, for it must be eradicated leaf, branch, trunk and root. It must be exorcised utterly or it will return all the stronger, time and time again, until it is too great to destroy. Then we are doomed.
No one understood all this mumbo-jumbo, but they liked it, anyway. As Cardinal Petrus considered himself Justicar of the Faith, he kept scourging the king till the agreed to go on crusade against Valencia. Sooner or later the king was going to do it, true, but Cardinal Petrus wasn't a man who enjoyed waiting.
The two armies, the aragonese led by king Alfons and the infidel raised by Abd el Rahman, met outside Valencia. To Alfonso's worry, he could see cleary that both Cardinals Ized and Petrus were more willing to kill each other than to fight the enemy, so he had a cunning plan...
Petrus (to Ized): Your time has come, that much I promise you...
Ized (to Petrus): Loathsome Vermin! You cannot witshand the power of my sword of Persecution!
-And you both -Alfons replied- cannot withstand the power of my rage... so, shut up.
Good old Petiniebla was going to say something about his farting power, but he realized it wasn't the moment.
Then, while waiting, Cardinal Petrus inspected the weaponry of his host. He was very disturbed by the idea of seeing a dirty pair of shocks. He had had a dream, and was to be sure that the enemy would run because of the fear that the Christian army would cause on them by its courage, not by its odour...
Suddenly, the Muslim army charged. They knew they were too few to defeat the Christian army, so the put all their hope into a desperate movement. When the alarm was raised, Judas Maccabeus shouted to the king, while pointing at the enemy ranks!
-The enemy! The enemy is attacking!
Steiner smiled inwardly and thought "Perceptive as ever, my little Judas..."
Cardinal Petrus turned to his aid de camp and asked: -Bring me my battle axe and the earplugs...
-Earplugs, sir?
-Of course, they're for me. I'm not going to allow the enemy screams to distract me of my holy work, that is, to have a nice massacre.
Thus the battle started...
Cardinal Petrus shouted: "Feel the wrath of Redemption!"
Cardinal Ized replied "Scourge and Purge!"
Then Judas let it go: "Fish and chips!"
As he noticed that everybody was looking at him, he replied "What? They robbed me the best sentences!". Thus the Christian army charged. The battle was brief, but bloody.
Under siege Valencia lasted for a month and a day, till it surrendered on July 21st, the same very ay that the emir of Badajoz declared that, unless Aragon paid a tax to him, he would declared war to Alfons, who answered:
-I would rather die than be disgraced by paying! La pela es la pela, nano (1)
"I like a man who takes violence seriously", the emir thought, once he knew the catalan answer. It didn't matter, really, as Dènia, the next step on Alfòns' way, surrendered on September 26th. However, there were some bad news.
Once Dènia was freeded from the Muslim, some messages came to Valencia, where Alfons was resting a bit.
The first came from Badajoz. Again, the emir asked for his money. As Alfons send him packing, Abd-al-Alla couldn't help but thinking
"Pity you've going to die, Alfons... you're my kind of maniac".
The second one came from Burgos. It was a short message from the Castillian king that "suggested" to Alfons not to go further conquering and to keep to the agreement that their grandfathers reached some decades ago about the borders. This meant that Aragon had reached its maxim extension.
-What? Raise the Army! We go to conquer as farther as Gibraltar! Steiner?
-Yes, my king?
-How are the Castillians doing, by the way?
-Very good. They've conquered six provinces: Toledo, Cuenca...
-Wait, wait... those are Castillian provinces, aren't they?
-Yes, but the Moors had conquered them at the beginning of the war.
Alfonso manages not lo laugh and says: Anything else?
-Mmmmh -Steiner takes a look on the documents-: La Mancha, Cordoba, Almansa and Granada.
-By the Holy Lamb! They're in our way!
-No, they're not... those provinces were conquered by the Almohade army last week...
The laughing mood of Alfonso spreads all around Valencia. Once he managed to get serious again, his armies march toward Almansa and Murcia.
Alfonso is in doubt... Which is going to happen first? Will the sieges bel ended in a victory for Aragon or will the enemy armies reach them first?
Will the two Cardinals keep fighting between them? Will Judas ever find a good catchy sentence?
(1) Catalan saying: "money is hard to get", so to speak...