Rora

by James Byron Huggins

  He spun to see Bertino angling the huge cannon so that it would blast full length along the wall and knew the reason why. They were overrun— all was lost. There was nothing to do but blast the artillery along the wall and hope they survived.

  Gianavel, too, heard the cry and turned his head for a frantic moment as Bertino paused the torch above the fuse, himself beset with Turks and regular militia storming the wall.

  Blake killed the last man before him and leaped back, dropping from the wall, and as he hit the ground. Gianavel landed beside him, still locked in combat with an attacker, but only one rose. As Gianavel gained his feet, the wall above them seemed to heighten in shadow as—

  The cannon erupted without sound.

  Blake did not witness what happened but the sun seemed to disappear in a roar that shook stone and earth. And when they scrambled back up the wall, all was red and white with flesh and bone and blood.

  What had been men innumerable, there was not a single cry or moan—all had been killed.

  Bertino had survived and was swinging the cannon toward the remnant as even more of the militia surged forward. There was no time for anyone to prepare, and they picked up whatever weapons they could find as the cannons took advantage of the respite.

  In a rhythm of rifle and cannon and rifle and cannon they kept the militia at a distant of a hundred feet. And while they had the advantage of stone to cover themselves, Pianessa's troops had no cover at all from the enfilade launched down the ravine that shredded stone and flesh alike in a continuous resistance.

  It seemed that they would never stop coming. They would charge and retreat, only to charge again to be turned at the last moment by point-blank cannon fire that should have won the day but didn't because there were just so many.

  Just ...

  So many ...

  ***

  In blood-soaked boots Emmanuel reached the heights of the mountains guarding Rora. He saw the human carnage that littered the crest and wondered how many men had died already. It was surely thousands, and the day was young. He knew they would fight all day and through the night if necessary. Whatever the cost, however grisly the price, Pianessa would not stop until the last man, woman, and child were dead and no home stood in this valley, consumed by the same flames.

  Twice errant shots had ricocheted off Emmanuel's iron breastplate, sending small pieces of lead into his chin and upper arm. He didn't know if it was friendly fire or purposeful hits from the Waldenses. But only a glance confirmed that Pianessa's forces were decidedly less in commanders and sergeants than when the battle began.

  Emmanuel understood the wisdom of selecting commanders for rifle fire, almost ignoring the troops. Yes, Gianavel was wise. He had trained his people well. But all the training in the world could not overcome such superior numbers. If for no other reason, the Waldenses would eventually fall because they did not possess the strength to endlessly kill the mass of humanity Pianessa was hurling at them.

  Like a flood rising from the valley below, Pianessa's troops stormed upward, swelling over rise upon rise, moving in hundreds and thousands. Everywhere Emmanuel turned there was blood—stones, bush, tree, and slope. Rivulets and streams of blood flowed past him like lines on a map revealing a thousand white roads bordered by thousands of scarlet streams.

  In all his life the Duke of Savoy had never imagined carnage on this scale; such total, defiant war where death was reduced to something no more important than a breath, and dead men were passed without a glance or thought or care.

  And there were so many of the dead now that Emmanuel could not begin to count. Long flat slopes were filled with them, and sometimes ten or twenty of them would slide past him in an avalanche of blood of viscera and human remains, an entire platoon destroyed at once by some close cannon blast.

  But like ants swarming over an anthill, they came, and there was no end to them, no end ...

  ***

  Gianavel's last shot had been calculated and proved critical. Blake had sensed that the captain held aim an amazing long time before he fired, then he understood why. The incredible shot killed a commander of unknown rank in the very midst of the maelstrom of attackers and for a moment Pianessa's troops faltered, uncertain.

  "Fire!" Gianavel roared.

  Twin blasts from either end of the battlement erupted into Pianessa's troops once more, and then riflemen dropped those closest to the wall, turning again. Blake felt no relief as he emptied rifle after rifle and then his last pistol at their backs, and finally they reached the far bend where further shooting was futile.

  Ears ringing painfully, skin burned again and again by powder and cuts and slashes, Blake stood.

  Thousands of men littered the ravine, piled like carpet for three hundred feet. Bodies and arms and legs protruded into the air like rolling hills seen from a height with broken pikes and rifles and the banner of Pianessa, somehow erect but torn and shot through and through, waving drearily in the overheated air.

  "Reload!" Gianavel shouted, and frantic movement began along the wall—no questions, no complaints.

  Each man had been hit, and Gianavel worst of all with at least a dozen cuts, but no one uttered a word. Working mechanically, they quickly positioned their rifles and within two minutes Blake had reloaded his eight pistols. He shoved one after another into the twin belts across his chest, careful not to slam them too hard and dislodge the ball.

  He looked up to see Gianavel approaching.

  Stalking the battlement, Gianavel visually checked each man for wounds, not trusting their words. Several had been hit by grazing shots, but none were seriously injured.

  At the far end of the wall, leaning heavily on the forty-pounder, Hector was completely blackened by soot. He raised his face as Gianavel approached.

  "Reloaded, Captain."

  "Good." Gianavel examined the remaining rounds. "Next time, fire before they're so close. Try to take their momentum before they reach the wall."

  "I'll give them something to dance over."

  At the other end Bertino was quickly scraping out a bore, inserting another fuse. He raised his face and only his white eyes were visible in the black. "We've only got thirty more grapeshot, Joshua."

  "How many do we have at the second wall?"

  "Fifty for each cannon." Bertino scowled and rubbed his face with his blackened forearm—it did no good. He leaned on the huge cannon for respite.

  Gianavel looked down. "Load the second cannon with grapeshot and all the remaining powder. Jam the barrel and put in a twenty-second fuse. If they overrun the wall ..."

  "I know what to do. Just make sure you're behind that second wall when it goes off. It's going to kill everything on this side of the wall and everything on the other."

  "You make sure you're behind that second wall," Gianavel said sternly.

  "Worried about me?"

  "I can't afford to lose a good soldier."

  Bertino turned to his support. "Give me that sledgehammer and grapeshot, boy. Have it ready when I need it."

  In a moment Gianavel was back beside Blake, and at the far bend of the ravine they saw Pianessa’s troops slowly pushing a huge forty-pounder into the gap. They were straining to roll it free of the slope so that it could be used to reduce the battlement.

  Gianavel spun to Hector as the old man cried, "Help me swing her around!"

  Together they lifted the cannon hitch, tilting it forward, and Gianavel shouted, "Enough! Fire!"

  "It'll go wide!" Hector shouted.

  "Fire!"

  The old man touched a torch to a thimble full of powder, and the cannon thundered. The ball hit to the right of the distant forty-pounder, but Gianavel had foreseen the effect, and a dozen men were struck with sliced stones that spun through the air like knives. They writhed on the ground, some rolling pitifully back down the slope, leaving the cannon unguarded. And at that moment Gianavel made a decision that set Blake's heart racing. He moved to edge of the wall and looked at Blake.

  "Come on
!"

  In such a situation, Blake would realize later, a man makes a decision by what he has brought to the battle, by what he decided within himself long before the first blow was thrown. Men do not become heroes in a war; they are heroes before a war. War is only the place where their heroism is most easily seen.

  Blake saw the ground and dropped from the edge. He knew Gianavel intended to race to the cannon before replacements could reach it. What Blake did not know is what Gianavel intended to do when they arrived, and then they were there.

  Anticipating the worst, Blake got off a quick shot at the startled troops, staggering and shouting only twenty feet away. They had not expected or seen their approach and were wildly surprised at the attack, but their surprise wouldn't last.

  Instantly Blake dropped his rifle and fired a pistol and then another, casting one aside as quickly as he fired to draw yet another. He didn't take time to understand what Gianavel was doing.

  "Come on!" Gianavel yelled and Blake didn't need encouragement.

  He flung the last pistol aside and ran the scant three hundred feet back to the wall as shots hummed past them. Then the ravine exploded in an earth-shaking roar that knocked Blake from his feet. He hit the ground assuming he was dead or dismembered and didn't thank God or anything else when he realized he was not.

  He scrambled up the slope ahead of Gianavel and cascaded over the lip of the wall, figuring that one of these maneuvers was going to result in a broken neck. Gianavel landed on top of him and they separated fast to remount the wall.

  In the distance, it looked like a meteorite had hit the mountain. The ravine itself was enlarged, as though the fist of God had struck the earth, annihilating stone and flesh and iron, leaving a compact, crusted scar of black.

  No one close to the detonation had lived.

  Gianavel s face was intense.

  They heard no sounds, glimpsed no movement.

  Blake looked at the captain. "What is it?"

  "They're just stunned." Gianavel bent and groaned as he heaved a series of deep breaths. Blake was watching, himself barely able to breath: "You all right?"

  "Yes," Gianavel whispered. "I'm okay."

  "You're hurt."

  Blood was flowing heavily from Gianavel's arm. Blake noticed it had not been there before the blast and knew the Vaudois had caught a piece of cannon or rock. But Gianavel could not have cared less.

  If it were mortal, he would know soon enough.

  "Here they come!" Bertino shouted.

  Blake saw them surging around the bend and knew instantly their intent. They were coming full force without cannon or cover fire, intent to surge over the wall like a river surging its banks.

  "Fall back!" Gianavel shouted.

  Racing side by side they reached the secondary wall at almost the same time.

  "Get down!" Bertino bellowed as his boots pounded the gravel behind Blake. On top of the wall, Blake took a heartbeat to catch a glimpse that he would never forget—three hundred men swarming over the wall like locusts, all raising rifles and pikes. Their howls and cheers sounded like a river roaring up the ravine.

  "Get down!" Gianavel shouted and colliding hard with Blake to carry him completely over the wall.

  The Vaudois shouted some indistinct warning, and before they hit the ground, the ground rose up to hit them—a concussion caused by whatever great force had just moved the mountain. Then the sky again vanished in a cloud of dust and smoke that flowed over them like an ocean, smothering and soundless.

  ***

  Pianessa's rage knew no bounds.

  Though they appeared to be gaining ground on the mountainside of the Bagnol they were paying a terrible price. And as bloodless as the marquis was, he knew he could not win the battle if all his troops were killed.

  They had ascended to the very crest, but the fighting had still not come to blows. Along the ridge, the Waldenses had positioned a series of cannons in cave-like indentations, like a honeycomb. None of the cannons could be attacked from the flanks, and though each cannon had a limited scope because of the walls of the cave, they had positioned them so that they crisscrossed. Each cannon had only to fire upon what was directly in front it. If it was not in front of one cannon, it was in front of another. But every inch of the slope was scarred by grapeshot that had the lethal tendency to skip across the downward sloping cliff as rocks skip across a smooth lake.

  To Pianessa's further irritation, many of the balls didn't even kill his men but simply blew off a foot or a few toes. Still, they could scarce climb with half a foot, so they remained crippled and uselessly alive. But more than once Emmanuel saw Pianessa pause long enough to kill the wounded, an action that inspired those around the traitor to rise on mangled feet and stumble forward.

  Emmanuel turned at footsteps that raced up behind him. Drawing his sword to kill, he saw a runner who stumbled breathlessly into Pianessa's back before the marquis hauled him around with a burly arm and shouted, "What is this?"

  The runner was so out of breath he could not speak.

  Pianessa struck him. "What is it!"

  "Gianavel!" the boy shouted and pointed. "The Pelice!"

  For a moment Pianessa scowled. "Gianavel is holding the Pelice? He's not on this side of the valley?"

  The boy's head shook.

  Teeth bared in a snarl, Pianessa hurled the boy away and advanced without a word. Doubtless, Pianessa had wanted to personally defeat the captain in combat. It would have done great repair to his marred reputation as a military commander. For despite what was said openly within Pianessa's castle, even throughout Piedmont, Gianavel had become the prince of his people. It was competition the marquis neither desired nor needed. And now, even if Pianessa won this war, he would never reclaim his fearsome reputation unless he himself defeated the captain.

  More than anyone else, Pianessa knew the security of a powerful military reputation. It was the central truss in his kingdom and, if removed, might precipitate a domino effect that could collapse the rest. For if others followed the Waldensian s example, they could, for certain, harass Pianessa from Piedmont, regardless of his militia and papal endorsement.

  Walking boldly up the cliff, Pianessa dared the thickest onslaught of cannon and rifle fire, but Emmanuel was not surprised. While Pianessa was a beast in human form, he was also a soldier of dauntless courage. And when he took the field, he acted as if he were impervious to the death that struck on either side, killing hundreds. Emmanuel understood—Pianessa's very fearlessness was the heart of what made him so feared.

  And, now, the summit was within reach.

  Six hundred feet of blackened earth, broken stone, and broken men lay in flame and smoking blood and splintered weapons along the Pass of Pelice. It was as though a volcano had erupted to send a firestorm along the ravine, destroying what could be destroyed and burying everything else in the dead dust of an open grave.

  ***

  Rora's defenders rearmed with prearranged weapons. The second wall had been equipped so that they would have to carry nothing from the first. Each man grabbed a loaded rifle, and Blake donned two additional belts of pistols. His re-loaders were miraculously uninjured and settled behind him, trembling.

  Blake looked back at them. Both of the young boys were frightened as they should have been frightened. But they had courage—great courage. He understood deeply why these Waldenses were so willing to the death to defend their children, not to mention their way of life.

  Pausing, Blake smiled faintly. "We'll be all right, lads. Just keep doing what you've been doing."

  They nodded, almost in tears.

  But some commander within Pianessa's militia was no fool. He knew what they had done just as he knew they probably did not have a third wall to fall back to. Even now, dim shapes could be seen advancing through the fog-like shroud. Then silhouettes emerged, rifles leveled at the waist, and fired as soon as they saw the second wall—fired in a long, cascading staggered volley that sent hundreds of rounds over their heads o
r rebounding futilely off stone.

  Then Hector and Bertino opened up with the last cannons and the entire militia of Piedmont charged. Within seconds they were before the wall and Rora's defenders rose up, aiming and firing, killing as fast they could pull the triggers. Men fell before their faces and were instantly trampled down by others who climbed with hysterical fear and haste over the dead and wounded alike, caring nothing for another man, and the battle was eye to eye and to blows once more.

  Gianavel, dagger and sword in hand, took a position upon the wall and struck only once before a man fell back. Then Blake began pulling pistols from his belts and firing them as fast as he could. He could not kill them all, it’s true, but he could kill one with each shot, and he had eight shots.

  Blake fired, and fired, and fired.

  And fired his last.

  ***

  Emmanuel summited only seconds behind Pianessa, but when he looked down into the valley he did not witness the massacre he had expected. Rather, the long slope into the valley of Rora was deserted except for the exhausted militia of Piedmont that stumbled, drunken on blood, toward level ground.

  At the last moment the Waldenses had fallen back from their fortified positions. They had probably reached the valley in seconds and disappeared into the trees, taking unseen trails or perhaps one of a hundred narrow ravines that crisscrossed the floor.

  It was stunning and disheartening that they had charged into the very face of death to finally gain victory and not find a single dead man. But Gianavel would leave none of his wounded and would probably even carry off his dead to make Pianessa believe they were unsuccessful in either an attack or defense. Or, Emmanuel considered, perhaps the Waldensian, out of honor, would simply not leave a man behind.

  For either purpose, the effect was the same.

  Distant fires cast a long column of smoke into the air and Emmanuel could see from a well-worn path they were near a village of some sort. He saw Pianessa staring about, as if counting how many of his men remained. Although six thousand troops had attacked the slope, less than two thousand reached the summit. Many if not all had been wounded, but they continued to advance, fanning widely and without pattern into the wood line. They fired into every crevice or bush that might have held an enemy, pausing only long enough to see that they hit nothing before moving forward again.