第106章

And after this fortress was taken he departed and went against Comdovy,[520]which was one of the principal cities of the kingdom of Orya,and besieged it;and,learning this,the King of Orya came against him to defend his territories,and brought with him one thousand three hundred elephants,and twenty thousand horsemen,and he brought five hundred thousand foot-soldiers.Crisnarao,being aware of the approach of the king of Orya,left the city without assaulting it,saying that he preferred to fight the King in person and his army rather than to attack the city,and that there would be plenty of time afterwards to take it;and he went forward four leagues from it,leaving a force to prevent the escape of the people from the city if they should seek to flee to the coast.And he arrived at a large river of salt water crossed by a ford,[521]and on the other side of the river was the King of Orya with his army.King Crisnarao halted his army on this side of the river,and sent the King a message that if he desired to fight with him he would retire from the river two leagues,so that he (the king of Orya)might pass the river unmolested,and as soon as he had passed he would join battle;to which message the King of Orya gave no reply,but on the contrary made ready to give battle.And King Crisnarao,seeing his determination,crossed the river with all his forces and elephants,and in the crossing of the river there were heavy encounters on both sides,and many were slain.Notwithstanding this,King Crisnarao crossed the river,and on the bank fought so bravely that he defeated the King of Oria and put him to flight,in which defeat he took many horses and elephants.

And after the King had done this he told Salvatinea his minister that he purposed to turn back to the fortress,which had not yet experienced his strength,and he went against it,and stopped there two months besieging it;and he took it.

And he gave the command of it to Salvatinea,who left in it,from his army,for captain one of his brothers,in order that he himself might go forward with the King through the kingdom of Orya.And the King,passing the river once more in pursuit of the King of Orya,and taking and ravaging all the country which had no reason for expecting him,arrived at a city called Comdepallyr,[522]where were all the chiefs of the kingdom,it being the chief city in that kingdom.And he laid siege to it,and remained there three months without being able to capture it,and in the end he took it more by reason of his numbers than by force of arms;in which fortress he found many people of high rank whom he made captive,amongst whom was a wife of the King,and one of his sons who was a prince,and seven principal captains of the kingdom,all of whom he sent by road to Bysnaga.

And he went forward a hundred leagues into the kingdom,finding no one to bar his progress till he got to Symamdary,[523]which was a very large city,in which he halted for six months,waiting for the King of Orya.He sent many messages to say that he was waiting for him in the field,but he never came.And in this city he did many works,and gave alms to the temples,and erected therein a very grand temple to which he gave much revenue.And he commanded to engrave on it an inion which says:--"Perhaps when these letters are decayed,the king of Orya will give battle to the King of Bisnaga.If the King of Orya erases them,his wife shall be given to the smiths who shoe the horses of the King of Bisnaga."And after this was done he returned,leaving the greater part of those lands to the temples,and came to Bisnaga where he rested some days.And he sent to call the son of the king of Orya who was taken captive in the first fortress,and told him that as people said that he was a very active man and was very dexterous with both sword and dagger,he would be pleased to see him fence.

The young man said that since His Highness summoned him he would do what he could,and asked that this might be put off till next day.And when the next day came the King sent to call him,and also sent for one of his own men who at that time was very expert in the art,[524]that he should fence with him.And when the son of the King of Orya saw him,being offended with the King for sending a man to fight with him who was not the son of a King but only a man of humble birth,he cried out to the King:--"God forbid that I should soil my hands by touching a man not of the blood royal,"and saying this he slew himself.And his father,hearing how his son was dead,wrote to Salvatinea (asking)by what means he could ransom his wife who remained in the power of the King,since his son was dead;to which he made answer that he should arrange the marriage of his daughter with the King,and that afterwards the King would restore him his wife and lands (or,would take only his lands).[525]This counsel he accepted,and he sent ambassadors to Bisnaga to arrange a marriage with his daughter,with which King Crisnarao was well content;and when the King of Orya knew his will (in the matter)he sent him his daughter;and with the coming of her they were friends.And Crisnarao restored the lands on the other side of the river,and kept those on the hither side for himself.