Anvil of Fate

Epilogue

In the year 735 A.D., as the cold autumn winds again blew in from the sea and cast their rain upon the rich land of Aquitaine, Odo, Duke and Prince, lay himself down, weary, tired, and beset with fever. To Hunald, his son, he gave all his realm, and bid him hold it fast, lest Charles the Usurper come once more to steal these lands and sully the honor of his family.

History would not remember Odo, however, for it would not be written by his sons, but by those of Charles Martel. Pippin the Second would follow Charles with equal fervor and eventually subdue Odo’s beloved Aquitaine, and forge it into the loose confederation of clans and tribes that came to be called the land of the Franks. And after him Pippin’s son would be called Charlemagne and bend the lines of fate to his will in a long and glorious reign.

So the world would know little of Odo’s life and deeds. He would die unheralded by the scribes and largely unmentioned in the chronicles that recounted the events of his day. Yet, when the autumn would come each year, and the leaves would fail and fall in the fields of Aquitaine, some few would sing his name, and tell how he first fought, and prevailed, and turned back the Saracen horde, years before Charles was even a whisper at court. And that after his great victory at Toulouse the Franks were given precious years to forge the union that would bring them the strength to face and match the doughty warriors of the Ishmaelites.

The bards would remember how Odo stood bravely on the River Garonne that hot summer in the year 732, while the blood of Aquitaine flowed red before the besieged city of Bordeaux. And they would tell how it was Odo who came, miraculously alive from that carnage, spared by the hand of God and Fate, and how he raised the alarm through all these lands, summoning even his old enemy Charles to stand and fight with him once more. It would be said that Odo bid Charles to stand behind his shieldwall and be the anvil that would endure the heavy blows of the Saracen horsemen all that day. And they would say how the name martelus, ‘the hammer,’ should rightly rest with Odo, for it was he that fell like a hammer at dusk upon the enemy camp astride the old Roman road south of Tours, and it was he that unhinged the weave of their enemies, putting all their greed and pernicious desires to rout.

And here is a tale no man will ever know, for it is written only on the whispering fog of Time—that in the same year proud Odo lay his head down to die, the pale gray horse that had carried him to safety, Kuhaylan, lay down as well in the stall where Odo had kept him, and breathed his last…