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all Spain; but they could neither move a corpse contaminated with pestilence; the correct,
explained Lugo, was to overcome the fear and give Christian sepulture to all the dead.
Therefore, dominating the fear to the contagion that they suffered, the brave
almogavars aligned the 850 corpses that would descend to the sepulchre; that had planned to
excavate three kinds of tombs: a mass grave for the almogavars, other equal for the villagers,
and individual tombs for the Knights. They were dedicated to that work, and to make the
crosses, and to recue the convenient to return to the barracks, when someone discovered the
liquefaction of the corpses and released the first scream of terror: pix picis! pix picis!, that's to
say, the pitch! in a few seconds everyone ran to the corpses and they realized that an incredible
process of organic disintegration were reducing them to a black and viscous liquid, similar to
the asphalt, but from which emerged a swifter juice similar to the black bleach: from there the
identification with the pitch, made by a startled almogavar. But such abrupt process of
descomposition of a corpse was much more than those supertitious minds could bear without
relating it to the sorcery and the black magic. For this reason when all ran away, very fast this
time, to the mounts, many who fell prey of the panic exclaimed: bruttia! bruttia!, that's to
say, tar! tar! And others: lixivia! lixivia!, it means bleach! bleach! And, the rest pix picis! pix
picis!, the pitch! the pitch!.
When they reached to the Village of Turdes, Lugo de Braga encountered with the
amazing spectacle that the pestilentia had reached before him. But there the havocs of the
plague were tremendous: from the 3500 dwellers of the Village, five hundred died in the valley,
with the Count of Tarseval, and from the rest three thousand only five hundred were alive, all
coming from different regions and Races of the iberans of Tartessos. What occurred had been
analogous to what happened in the encampment of the Count: first the buzz, then the scream,
realized with one voice by all the victims, and at last the horrible simultaneos death. It seems,
that the transformation of the lye was slower there, but the symptoms were already expossed
in the corpses. And no one knew if such pestilence was contagious neither its previous
symptoms. Hence, Lugo de Braga decided to run from the region forever; but before, they did
the most reasonable, common reaction of the Age: he pillaged the village with his two hundred
companions.
The Lords of Tharsis not existed anymore, nor Knights or Nobles, to defend that
patrimony. Lugo de Braga went to the Seignioral Residence and he plundered it thoroughly, but
he didn't dare to burn it as his people claimed. Then he left the country, taking the booty with
him. Naturally, all of them would be persecuted years later for that crime and many would end
in the gallows. Although no one could imagine it then, when the pestilence attacked the House
of Tharsis, there still remained some of them alive that later would claim their own. With this
exception, the majority of the members of the House of Tharsis had died of the same cause and
in the same calamitous night, in such distant sites as Seville, Cordova, Toledo or Zaragosa.

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