Press pack for Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel 'Sidi' (2019)

"Sidi, Sidi," they cried. Diego Ordóñez laughed contentedly, brutally, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand.

"They call you lord, Ruy. Do you hear them?... They call you lord."

The Iberian Peninsula of the 11th century was structured into kingdoms that warred with one another; sometimes Christians fought against Muslims, whom they called Moors, but other times, Christians and Muslims came to blows amongst themselves. This was a turbulent world in which the word "Spain" did not exist yet, and "Reconquista", the Conquering Back, was a term forged in the same crucible where the steel for swords and scimitars was melted. Shifting alliances wove a tapestry that intertwined the lives of cursed figures and legendary heroes. There were men, however, who embodied both, depending on the point of view from which the story was told. One of them was Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, Ruy Díaz for short, a tough and skilled Christian warrior later known as El Cid Campeador, the Lord Conqueror. Earning that muslim nickname, feared and respected on both sides of the border, cost him hatred, betrayal, death, and resignation. And it made him immortal.

In his novel 'Sidi,' Arturo Pérez-Reverte has recreated the hero's prequel: his first months of exile, when that proud and self-confident nobleman, diplomatic, brave, and unknown, forged his own legend. "I was born of myself," famous Spanish writer Lope de Vega would say six centuries later. And this phrase could be applied to Sidi; indeed, to all the heroes created by this writer's unmistakable genius.

"A frontier tale" is the phrase that completes the title of this novel. Both words alert the reader about what they will find upon opening the magnificent cover drawn by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau: a new and personal vision of the iconography of the Cid. "Sidi," the title chosen by the author, is no coincidence: it underscores the character's mixed heritage as an embodiment of the Spain where he and his troops (tough men in a tough territory) fought for their lives.

Regarding the way in which a historical event is told, the author himself defined it twelve years previously in his novel 'Un día de cólera' (A Day of Anger): "This story is neither fiction nor a history book." This definition is also valid for 'Sidi,' a novel that constitutes a double borderline concept: close to the American Western genre, with a sharp, direct, and sensory style, it also moves along the blurry line between reality and fiction that underpins every historical tale written by Pérez-Reverte. 'Sidi' is a powerful mortar that effectively keeps together documented historical pieces with the rigor and thoroughness that characterize him.

"The Ride", "The City", "The Battle", and "The Sword" make up the four parts into which this compact novel is divided, where the ferocity of a handful of men, told in a language measured in its anachronisms and chosen for its effectiveness, manages to keep the reader suspended in the story, mesmerized by the events, until the very end.

"The Ride" focuses on the introduction of Rodrigo Díaz and his army: 11th-century mercenaries led by an infanzón (a lesser nobleman), hired by the burghers of Agorbe to pursue a Moorish raiding party ravaging the countryside between the Guadamiel River and the so-called Sierra of the Jew. This vast no-man's-land between Christian Castile and the Muslim kingdoms to its south and east is the landscape that functions as another character in the story. In this part of the book, the reader witnesses the waiting, the uncertainty, the camaraderie forged more in silence than in words, the tension of an enemy who never materializes. Loneliness is felt as the inevitable companion of a leader familiar both with betrayal and affection, yearning for the warmth of his family, planning his tactics, accepting possible failures, and remaining unmoved by victory. And the frontier is seen as an immeasurable open range through which sparsely described characters move, but are still recognizable by their gestures, attitudes and looks. The readers are led towards a disordered cloud of dust among the hell of sweat and metal under chain mail, blinding them with the shine of the armor, deafening them with the terrified neighing of the horses and taking them through the throb of blood gushing from the gashes of flesh opened by expertly handled blades.

In the second part, "The City," the author slows down the action and invites the reader to explore the urban life of a medieval Spanish city, the palace intrigues, and the complex web of threads the hero must weave in order to retain the title of "Campidoctor" (Lord of the Battlefield) off the front line, earning the respect of his ally without betraying his own rules. Or at least without betraying them completely, by maintaining the extremely difficult and almost Homeric balance between deceitful daring, pride, and courage, which in this part of the novel also extends to sex. On the other side of the Christian kingdoms, the refined and cultured life of Zaragoza, a Muslim "taifa" (a small kingdom, sometimes barely more than a city state) and the unique and respectful relationship between its powerful king, Mutamán Benhud, and Sidi himself, is in sharp contrast with the attitude of Christian Count Berenguer Remont of Barcelona and his court of Frankish knights. All of them are pieces on the gray squares of a deadly game of chess.

"The Battle" is the heart of the novel: a night attack, the Battle of Monzón, and the Moorish king's pressure to confront his brother Mundir, King of Lérida, leave the reader breathless. All of this is told with a restrained and perfect flow of vocabulary, at the service of the overall action. Christians and Moors fighting together under the same oath of loyalty to the King of Zaragoza; men from two worlds who are separated by borders, languages, and religions, are transformed by the battle, for a brief spell of time, into a blood brotherhood.

"The Sword" closes the story with a tale of revenge and a well-deserved and mythical reward. The reader, upon finishing this story about a handful of brave men, understands why El Cid is still a legend in Spain and beyond.

"If I falter, I die; if I retreat, I die; if I do not win, I die."

At the time of the story, Spain is nothing more than an amalgam of Christian and Moorish kingdoms whose warlike and harsh history was forged in a game of plotting, blood, crowns, steel, honor, loyalties, and betrayals on both sides of the borders, where a king was worth only what he was willing to pay the men who defended his piece of land. In this landscape, El Cid advances in zigzag like a knight's piece moving blindly across a blurred chess board where the enemy changes position every day. Never was a hero so Spanish, tough, dry, and resilient, an almost geological incarnation of the land that gave him birth.

In 'Sidi,' Arturo Pérez-Reverte recovers that rawness, sacrificing the hero to recreate the mercenary. Therefore, in this frontier story, we don't find the idealization of legend, but rather the epic of a man. 'Sidi' is also an invitation to reflect on historical events which, if they did not happen exactly like that, they could have.

"Two hundred lances," he thought, stirring in the darkness. Two hundred men relied on him to earn a living, and he was responsible for them. The fate God dealt him—and there was no fate, good or bad, that didn't also depend on the person casting it—would be chained to the fate of everyone else. For better or worse, the immediate future of his people would depend on his successes or failures."

'Sidi' can also be read as a lesson in leadership. The protagonist functions as the captain of an improvised army of loyal men and knows that his strength lies, in part, in how he is able to retain the loyalty of his followers. His retinue roams through this novel like another protagonist, driven by rules unthinkable in the civilized world, but necessary in hostile territory. Arturo Pérez-Reverte states that to delve deeper into leadership, he consulted, in addition to Rodrigo's biographies, other more specific texts: from Napoleon's maxims and studies on combat by Ardant du Picq and Guy Debord, to Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War,' or the samurai codes of Taira Shigesuke and Jocho Yamamoto. All of these allowed him to refine the idea of ​​command and governance of men in extreme situations.

"If a warrior is going to die and is ready to do so, he acts as if he were already dead [...]. Just as if his life were not his own. Then he fights with all his might, remains united with his comrades, and does not seek salvation, but rather tries to inflict as much harm on the enemy as possible."

Once again, we are faced with an ensemble novel that completes Arturo Pérez-Reverte's gallery of classic heroes, but unlike previous character of his, like the 17th century swordsman Diego Alatriste and the 1930s wartime spy Lorenzo Falcó, this time it is not a solitary hero. 'Sidi' is well inside the author's characteristic literary territory. Like in 'The Hussar' or the 'Alatriste' saga, it is a story of camaraderie, war, and friendship, and shares with those other novels the recognizable way of looking at a world subject to the singular rules of loyalty and honor. As a narrative construct, 'Sidi' is also directly related to his previous novels set in Napoleonic times, 'Cabo Trafalgar' (Cape Trafalgar) and 'A Day of Anger,' due to its characteristic way of recounting and understanding certain historical passages as a succession of events that rest on the shoulders of a handful of men in the position of killing or dying.

Once again, this story, like those others, is narrated by the voice of a writer who wields words like a photographer does a camera's zoom, moving in or out on the scene according to the needs of the story with the seasoned efficiency of a war reporter and the fresh, intuitive talent of a true storyteller. 'Sidi' is also the adventure of a handful of warriors lost in enemy territory who head toward the distant sea in the Levant, while selling their skin dearly in order to try and survive. In this story, among many other sources, emerges Xenophon's 'Anabasis,' a Greek Classic school reading by Arturo Pérez-Reverte that was decisive in shaping the future writer's imagination.

The characters

Rodrigo Díaz, Sidi

"His name already sounded legendary, and he knew it. Not only because he was the humble Castilian nobleman who had dared to demand an oath from a king, but because he had been fighting since the age of fifteen, and no one had a record of arms like his." When a man becomes a legend, he usually loses his humanity. History catalogs the facts, and collective memory idealizes and transforms them into engravings, manuals, critical studies, and public monuments. Only literature is capable of restoring flesh to the statues in public squares, and breath to the unknown men whose deeds told in song we barely remember today. The Cid who has survived to our day, the most famous version in Spanish people's memory, is the Cid who conquered Valencia, a prestigious, powerful, and respected warrior. This story focuses on the other, younger Cid: the one who rides during his first six months of exile, when, after the oath of Santa Gadea that so infuriated his king, he leaves Castile with a band of forty or fifty loyal men to seek a living on the dangerous border of the river Duero, under no other banner than that of his own survival. The Cid of this novel is a leader made of silence, authority, and courage, with a sense of justice forged in the loyalties that are born around the fire of a bivouac after burying the dead, dividing the loot, and praying to God more out of habit than faith, after the final ride.

Alvar Fáñez, Minaya

"He had pockmarked features and steel scars: one of those faces that needed a helmet and chain mail to look complete.

"And you, Minaya? Why did you come?"

"I was bored in Burgos," he gave a short, dry laugh. "Ever since we were kids, I've known that one never gets bored around you."

A distant relative and friend of Ruy Díaz since childhood, he has pockmarked features and steel scars. Slow to think and diligent to execute, he is the perfect soldier of the Castilian army.

Diego Ordóñez

"It was Diego Ordóñez who raised a hand.

"Do we need prisoners?"

"No […]. We can kill anything that moves, man or animal."

The fierce man smiled. Satisfied.

"I like the plan."

Tough, brutal, and experienced. Famous for killing three members of the Arias clan in Zamora, when he challenged the whole city after the death of King Sancho. His ideal habitat is burned-out houses, floors littered with corpses and a portion of the loot on his back. A magnificent and fearsome warrior, fond of assault and slaughter.

Mutaman

"He was an attractive man, tall, with a good build. He must have been around forty. He was unarmed, except for a silver and ivory dagger in his belt." King of Zaragoza, at odds with his brother Mundir, king of Lérida, Tortosa, and Denia. Cunning, ambitious, brave. A tough negotiator who hires Sidi for a job that only the Castilian warrior could pull off.

Raxida

"Her skin, or her flesh," he noted, "emanated a pleasant warmth that had nothing to do with perfumes, penetrating through the silk of her dress. Her well-defined, full, sensual lips stirred disturbing sensations in the Castillian." Mutaman's sister, with whom she has lived in the palace since her widowhood. A strong, seductive, intelligent, cultured, and defiant woman, she lived with a freedom unusual for her time.

Yaqub Al-Jatib

Leader of the Moors of Zaragoza in the army of Ruy Díaz. Loyal, pragmatic, intelligent, and brave.

Berenguer Remont II

"Handsome, tall, he sported a reddish-blond beard with a curly mustache. His manner was one of languid authority which assumed as a matter of course that the highest authority in that part on Earth was God and himself, in that order." Count of Barcelona. He murdered his twin brother to avoid sharing the position. He despises Ruy Díaz and his followers and, supporting Mundir, confronts the Castilian's horde and the army of the king of Zaragoza.

Friar Hernán

"He was young, but he did not lack fortitude. Friar, monk, or warrior, the Duero frontier would temper anyone who survived there for any length of time."

Friar. Son of settlers, he provides spiritual service to Ruy Díaz's army. Adept with the rosary, but also with maps and the use of a crossbow.

The Landscape

"Above the camp, in the black vault of the sky, thousands of luminous stars revolved very slowly around the master star; and Orion, the hunter, was already showing his quiver on the shadowy edges of the ravine. Every landscape can have four or five different meanings, but they saw only one."

Sidi's Host

"Most of them were frontiersmen, hardened by raids and skirmishes, which they knew about from having experienced them, not from being told about them. The proof that they had learned the right lessons was that they were still alive. Apart from the adventurers—approximately a third of the host—the rest were Rodrigo's men from their hometown of Vivar, united to their leader by proximity and family ties. This allowed him to tighten the screws on them a little more, as individuality was diluted in the group's discipline. Between them, they had seventy years of combined military experience. Even the young men were seasoned troops, hardened by skirmishes [...]. They had discipline and patience. And Ruy Díaz intimidated them all. He had ridden alongside them before and knew them well. Even by their way of moving, he could guess their mood."