While Pero Niño was doing among the enemies of his lord as a

While Pero Niño was doing among the enemies of his lord as a

wolf does among the sheep when there is no shepherd to defend them, it

befell that an arrow stuck him in the neck. He received this wound at

the beginning of the battle. The arrow had knit together his gorget

and his neck; but such was his will to finish the enterprise that he

had started that he felt not his wound, or hardly at all; only it

hindered him much in the movement of the upper part of his body and in

the turning of his neck. And this pricked him on the more to fight,

so that in a few hours he had swept a path clean before him and had

forced the enemy to withdraw over the bridge close by the city. And

the thing that hindered him most was that there were many lance stumps

and bolts in his shield. When he had got so far, the people of the

city, seeing the havoc that he wrought, fired many crossbows at him,

even as folk worry a bull that rushes out into the middle of the ring.

He went forward with his face uncovered and a great bolt there found

its mark, piercing his nostrils through most painfully, whereat he was

dazed, but his daze lasted but little time. And with this great pain,

he returned even more bravely to the fray, he pressed on more than

ever before. At the gate of the bridge there were steps; and Pero

Niño found himself sorely tested when he had to climb

them. There he received many sword blows on the head and on the

shoulders. At the last, he climbed them, cut himself a path and found

himself so pressed against his enemies that sometimes they hit the

bolt embedded in his nose, which made him suffer great pain. It

happened even that one of them, seeking to cover himself, hit such a

great blow on the bolt with his shield that it drove it further into

his head than it had been before.