Not for a moment did the paladin stop, at once he sounded the horn for the second trial. What happened then? A bank of earth nearby began to shake violently, and out of it a dragon burst out, spewing fire and smoke from its mouth. The girl Leodilla trembled at the sight, but the other lady reassured her: "Don't be frightened, only the knight will be put to difficult trial by the beast."
Leodilla, pouting, seemed to mumble: "Serves him right, the traitor, this way he'll learn."
*
Orlando read in the little book, which stated: "Knight, you will have to endure more pain than any other person has ever had to bear. Heed this: your battle must be quick, otherwise the dragon will poison you with its breath. But don't you fear fire or poison, get underneath it and cut off its head. Then you must pull out all its teeth and sow them in that field you plowed. From that seed a host of armed people will be born, a force strong and daring, as you will find out for yourself with hardship."
And so began mighty Orlando's great fight with the dragon. The monster was covered with green scales and had wings of a different color. It also had a great big thrashing tail, three tongues and very sharp teeth, and spewed fire and smoke from its mouth and ears.
The dragon's fire melted Orlando's shield and burned his clothing, making his helmet and armor red-hot. At last, half-poisoned, half-blind from the great smoke, the paladin made his way underneath the beast's neck and, no one knows how, cut off its head.
This trial too was completed according to the rules of the magic book. The dragon's teeth now planted in the field below, Orlando was waiting to see what happened.
Soon he saw something sprout in the field. First emerged the helmet feathers; then little by little the torsos of many armed warriors appeared, and also their horses, and the trumpets and flags with which they were ready to go into battle. Having completely risen from the earth, they rushed at our paladin with lances at the ready, so Orlando was forced to cut down the fruit of that strange seed with his sword.
What purpose does it serve to count the blows that he dealt that day, says the poem, when we know that nothing can resist his Durindana?
*
Ludovico Ariosto says that Orlando's was "the extreme power to which few things in the universe could compare," to say that he was the strongest warrior that there ever had been, endowed since youth with that supreme force for the defense of the Christian faith.
And it is the faith that accompanies him all over these poems of knighthood, the bravest champion there is, the enchanted unbeatable knight, the greatest of all knights. So much so that for example in Luigi Pulci's poem one can even find a giant who is content to die by his hand, thanking God for having been killed by the most famous man in the world.
*
I don't know if the warriors brought forth from the ground were content to die by his hand like that giant. But that day they suffered a complete massacre by ferocious Orlando's hand, and died, all of them, right after being born. Did the count give that a thought? They had been yelling, "War, war!" And he, on the back of the great steed Baiardo, without shield or lance, exterminated all of them one by one.
Once they were dead, men and horses began to disappear into the earth whence they had come; they sank in all together, having therefore come into existence, lived and been buried in the same field, the poem says.
