A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

King of Heaven!
* * * * *
May thy fair soul escape the pains of Hell, And Paradise receive thee in
its bowers!"
Then did Roland know that for him, also, there "was no other way but
death." With dragging steps he toiled uphill a little way, his good sword
Durendala in one hand, and in the other his horn Olifant. Under a little
clump of pines were some rough steps hewn in a boulder of marble
leading yet higher up the hill, and these Roland would have climbed,
but his throbbing heart could no more, and again he fell swooning on
the ground. A Saracen who, out of fear, had feigned death, saw him
lying there and crawled out of the covert where he lay concealed.
"It is Roland, the nephew of the Emperor!" he joyously thought, and in
triumph he said to himself, "I shall bear his sword back with me!" But
as his Pagan hand touched the hilt of the sword and would have torn it
from Roland's dying grasp, the hero was aroused from his swoon. One
great stroke cleft the Saracen's skull and laid him dead at Roland's feet.
Then to Durendala Roland spoke:
"I surely die; but, ere I end, Let me be sure that thou art ended too my
friend! For should a heathen grasp thee when I am clay, My ghost
would grieve full sore until the judgment day!"
More ghost than man he looked as with a mighty effort of will and of
body he struggled to his feet and smote with his blade the marble
boulder. Before the stroke the marble split asunder as though the
pick-axe of a miner had cloven it. On a rock of sardonyx he strove to
break it then, but Durendala remained unharmed. A third time he strove,
and struck a rock of blue marble with such force that the sparks rushed
out as from a blacksmith's anvil. Then he knew that it was in vain, for
Durendala would not be shattered. And so he raised Olifant to his lips
and blew a dying blast that echoed down the cliffs and up to the
mountain tops and rang through the trees of the forest. And still, to this
day, do they say, when the spirit of the warrior rides by night down the