Sidi

The art of command was dealing with human nature, and he had dedicated his life to learning it. He hung the sword on the saddle, patted the animal's warm neck, and glanced around: metallic sounds, wheezing of mounts, quiet conversations. Those men smelled of horse manure, leather, gun oil, sweat, and wood smoke. Rough in form, extraordinarily complex in instincts and intuitions, they were warriors and had never pretended to be anything else. Resigned to chance, fatalistic about life and death, they naturally obeyed without imaginations playing tricks on them. Tanned faces of wind, cold and sun, wrinkles around the eyes even among the youngest, calloused hands of taking up arms and fighting. Riders who crossed themselves before entering combat and sold their life or death for earning their bread. Professionals from the frontier knew how to fight cruelly and die simply. They were not bad men, he concluded. Nor are they oblivious to compassion. Only hard people in a hard world. Adventure, history and legend merge in a fascinating way. There are many Cid in the Spanish tradition, and this is mine.