And they gave Rodriguez a good bed on the ground in the tent of the three leaders, the tent to which he first came; for they honoured him for the gift of song that he had, and because he was a stranger, and because he had asked permission to fight for them in their battle. And Rodriguez took one look by the light of a lantern at the rose he had carried from Lowlight, then slept a sleep through whose dreams loomed up the towers of castles.
Dawn came and he slept on still; but by seven all the camp was loudly astir, for they had promised the enemy to begin the battle at eight. Rodriguez breakfasted lightly; for, now that the day of his dreams was come at last and all his hopes depended on the day, an anxiety for many things oppressed him. It was as though his castle, rosy and fair in dreams, chilled with its huge cold rocks all the air near it: it was as though Rodriguez touched it at last with his hands and felt a dankness of which he had never dreamed.
Then it came to the hour of eight and his anxieties passed.
The army was now drawn up before its tents in line, but the enemy was not yet ready and so they had to wait.
When the signal at length was given and the cannoniers fired their pieces, and the musketoons were shot off, many men fell. Now Rodriguez, with Morano, was placed on the right, and either through a slight difference in numbers or because of an unevenness in the array of battle they a little overlapped the enemy's left. When a few men fell wounded there by the discharge of the musketoons this overlapping was even more pronounced.
Now the leaders of that fair army scorned all unknightly devices, and would never have descended to any vile ruse de guerre. The reproach can therefore never be made against them that they ever intended to outflank their enemy. Yet, when both armies advanced after the discharge of the musketoons and the merry noise of the cannon, this occurred as the result of chance, which no leader can be held accountable for; so that those that speak of treachery in this battle, and deliberate outflanking, lie.
Now Rodriguez as he advanced with his sword, when the musketoons were empty, had already chosen his adversary. For he had carefully watched those opposite to him, before any smoke should obscure them, and had selected the one who from the splendour of his dress might be expected to possess the finest castle. Certainly this adversary outshone those amongst whom he stood, and gave fair promise of owning goodly possessions, for he wore a fine green cloak over a dress of lilac, and his helm and cuirass had a look of crafty workmanship. Towards him Rodriguez marched.