Yet what could be done against foes without number?  Marsilius constantly pours them in.  The paladins are as units to thousands.  Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto?

The horses did not tarry, but fate had been quicker than enchantment.  Ashtaroth had presented himself to Rinaldo in Egypt, and, after telling his errand, he and Foul-mouth, his servant, entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh, and snort, and leap with the fiends within them, till off they flew through the air over the pyramids and across the desert, and reached Spain and the scene of action just as Marsilius brought up his third army.  The two paladins on their horses dropped right into the midst of the Saracens, and began making such havoc among them that Marsilius, who overlooked the fight from a mountain, thought his soldiers had turned against one another.  Orlando beheld it, and guessed it could be no other but his cousins, and pressed to meet them.  Oliver coming up at the same moment, the rapture of the whole party is not to be expressed.  After a few hasty words of explanation they were forced to turn again upon the enemy, whose numbers seemed perfectly without limit.

Orlando, making a bloody passage towards Marsilius, struck a youth on the head, whose helmet was so strong as to resist the blow, but at the same time flew off, Orlando prepared to strike a second blow, when the youth exclaimed, “Hold! you loved my father; I am Bujaforte!” The paladin had never seen Bujaforte, but he saw the likeness to the good old man, his father, and he dropped his sword.  “O Bujaforte,” said he, “I loved him indeed; but what does his son do here fighting against his friends?”

Bujaforte could not at once speak for weeping.  At length he said:  “I am forced to be here by my lord and master, Marsilius; and I have made a show of fighting, but have not hurt a single Christian.  Treachery is on every side of you.  Baldwin himself has a vest given him by Marsilius, that everybody may know the son of his friend Gan, and do him no harm.”

“Put your helmet on again,” said Orlando, “and behave just as you have done.  Never will your father’s friend be an enemy to the son.”

The hero then turned in fury to look for Baldwin, who was hastening towards him at that moment, with friendliness in his looks.

“’Tis strange,” said Baldwin, “I have done my duty as well as I could, yet nobody will come against me.  I have slain right and left, and cannot comprehend what it is that makes the stoutest infidels avoid me.”

“Take off your vest,” said Orlando, contemptuously, “and you will soon discover the secret, if you wish to know it.  Your father has sold us to Marsilius, all but his honorable son.”

“If my father,” said Baldwin, impetuously tearing off the vest, “has been such a villain, and I escape dying, I will plunge this sword through his heart.  But I am no traitor, Orlando, and you do me wrong to say it.  Think not I can live with dishonor.”