The Mistery of Belicena Villca circumstances ; the dawn , on the other hand , surprised them deliberating grouped in the center of the camp : according to the customs , in the absence of the Lords or Knights , they would choose a Champion among them . That charge fell on a guy who was so brave in war as short of insight outside it , known as Lugo da Braga . That boss was as perplexed as the rest by the sudden death and , after a long inspection of all the tents and places where the warriors had perished , he deduced that the cause of the evil was an unknown plague : the corpses , indeed , did not present any sign so far that would reveal what kind of plague had caused death , but what doubts could there be that it was a plague ? only a plague , according to the criteria of the Time , was capable of killing in that way ! Naturally , in the Middle Ages the plague was feared as the worst enemy , apart from those that the Lords designated as such and had to face .
The soldiers would have escaped then , had it not been for the compromising presence of so many dead Nobles ; they could not abandon the Count of Tarseval scot-free because they would be persecuted throughout Spain ; but you either couldn ' t carry a corpse contaminated with plague ; the right thing , Lugo explained , was to overcome fear and give a Christian burial to the dead . Thus , dominating the fear of contagion that seized them , the brave Almogavars were lining up the eight hundred and fifty corpses that were going to descend to the tomb ; they planned to excavate three types of tombs : a common grave for the Almogavars , another like it for the villains , and individual graves for the Knights . They were dedicated to that task , to make the crosses , and to pack what was convenient to return to the barracks , when someone discovered the liquefaction of the corpses and uttered the first cry of terror : pix picis ! pix picis !, that is , the pitch ! the pitch ! in within seconds they all ran to the corpses and found that an incredible process of organic decay was reducing them to a black and slimy liquid , similar to bitumen , but from which a more lightweight juice was released undoubtedly similar to black bleach : hence the slight identification with the pitch , made by a bedazzled Almogávar . But such an abrupt process of decomposition of a corpse was much more than those superstitious minds could bear without relating it to witchcraft and black magic . That is why as everyone ran , this time very quickly , towards the mounts , many who then had panicked exclaimed : bruttia ! bruttia !, that is to say , pitch ! pitch ! and others : lixivía ! lixivía !, that is , bleach ! bleach ! and , the least , pix picis ! pix picis !, the pitch ! the pitch !
Upon arriving at the Villa de Turdes , Lugo da Braga met with the astonishing spectacle that the pestilentia had been ahead of him . But there the ravages of the plague were tremendous : of the three thousand five hundred inhabitants of the Villa , five hundred died in the valley , along with the Count of Tarseval , and of the three thousand remaining , only five hundred were left alive , all from different regions and Races to those of the Tartessian Iberians . What happened had been analogous to what happened in the Count ' s camp : first the buzzing , then the scream , given in unison by all the victims , and finally the horrible simultaneous death . Apparently , there the transformation into bitumen was slower , but the symptoms in the exposed corpses could already be noticed . And nobody knew if that plague was contagious nor did they know its previous symptoms . Lugo da Braga then decided to flee of the region forever ; but before , he did the most reasonable thing , a reaction characteristic of the Epoch : he gave himself up to pillage with his two hundred companions .
There were now no Lords of Tharsis , no Knights or Nobles , to defend that patrimony . Lugo da Braga went to the Manor House and looted it conscientiously , but he did not dare to set it on fire , as his men claimed . He then retired to his country , taking with him an immense drove of horses loaded with booty . Of course they would all be pursued years later for that crime and many would end up hanged . Although no one could imagine it then , when the plague was taking over the House of Tharsis , still some of them were alive who would later claim their own . With this exception , most of the
132