by Max Brand
“That is the ‘Two Gates,’” said Giovanpaolo.
“Which admits us into the higher city?” asked Tizzo.
“It admits us to that place,” answered Giovanpaolo. “And the question that now rides with us is this: Shall we—”
“We shall strike in with lance and sword and ax,” said Tizzo, “and God show Himself for the right!”
“Well said,” answered Giovanpaolo. “And who shall say where the favor of God lies, even the holiest hermit? Without that favor, we shall never win. The city is high, the walls are strong, and there are many valiant and strong men inside the citadel.”
“Which means,” said Tizzo, “that a small party must press up close to the gate and win that of San Pietro, then rush forward and gain the gate to the higher city.”
“At night?” asked Giovanpaolo.
“At night, the owl in every man awakens,” said Tizzo, “but at noonday the owl sleeps. At noon we shall approach the city. Such a small number that we shall seem to be friends at that hour of the day.”
“No, no. Night, night is the only time!” said Giovanpaolo. “Night is the only chance for small numbers against great.”
“Night which confuses the defendants confuses the assailants also,” said Tizzo.
“And in the daytime, we have a chance to recognize our friends, hate our enemies, and strike all the harder.”
“But the first men in the gate are bound to be slain,” said Giovanpaolo. “Who would lead such a forlorn attempt?”
“You speak to the leader,” said Tizzo. “That is I!”
CHAPTER 47
TIZZO ARMED HIMSELF; that is to say, he stood as a passive figure while three valets busied themselves in adjusting his armor.
They put upon him the cuirass, which covered both the breast and the back. Epaulières guarded his shoulders, brassards covered his arms. There were elbow-guards and coverings for the inside of the elbow joints, without which a side slash or an upstroke might disable the stoutest knight. The avant-bras guarded the lower arms. But first, of course there was a sort of steel mail nightshirt, which guarded the body under the cuirass and might turn the point of the deadliest crossbow bolt. Then there were the cuissarts to guard the leg to the knee, the kneeguards, the legpieces, and laminated coverings for the feet. The gauntlets, newly invented for Charles VII of France, were pieces of iron sewed upon strong leather gloves, and when all of this paraphernalia had been donned, Tizzo put on the great war helmet, with its visor, and its beaver, pierced with breathing holes.
When he was fully armed, he picked up his ax and walked a few paces, making strokes and parries here and there, after which he had various bits of the armor loosened to give him a freer action.
At last he was ready to start on his dangerous journey. His lance was given into his hand, and the battle ax which really was simply a woodsman’s ax was hung at his saddle bow. His sword was belted about him with strong chain. The spurs were fixed on his heels. His poniard, so useful for stabbing through the bars or the breathing holes in the helmet of a fallen enemy, was put into the scabbard over his right hip. And now, at last, he was ready for war. He was so armored that only the mightiest blow could crush in or cut through his steel plate. His whole body was clothed with a weight which was yet so subtly and cunningly hinged and laminated that he was able to move every limb with the most perfect freedom.
To Tizzo it was above all more important because he carried with him as a favorite weapon the blue-bladed ax. He now could trust to the armor to cause counterblows to glide from his body while with vast two-handed blows which he had learned from the foresters, he could wreak destruction to this side and to that.
In this party that gathered about him there were fifteen men in complete armor, and on horseback; there were also ten men armed with the harquebus. This more or less recent invention was a long tube of steel which shot out a great leaden bullet, and though the gun was slow to load and had to be balanced on a tall supporting staff, and though its range was not great, it was known that the bullets would pierce through the stoutest armor that ever was made to cover the breast of the most famous knight in the world. Thus a commoner, in a fortnight, could master an art which might bring down the greatest baron in the land. Farther north, in the realm of England, they still used the long bows whose arrows had pierced the steel plate of the knights of France at Crécy as though the metal were silk, but in the southland gunpowder was taken to more kindly.
There were twenty and five in the company which Tizzo led against the great and famous city of Perugia, perched on its height. Since Etruscan time, it had been a known place. Now a score and more of fighters advanced against it!
* * * * *
Tizzo had said to the Lady Beatrice: “Do you love me?”
And she had answered: “In part, yes. But I am afraid to love you, Tizzo. You are here today, and dead tomorrow. How long will you live, Tizzo?”
“As long as my luck,” said Tizzo. “My happiness is that you will not die grieving for me.”
“I’d rather die fighting beside you,” said the girl.
“You speak words, but no answer,” said Tizzo.
“Tizzo,” said the girl, “to be frank, do you love me half as much as you love the naked face of danger?”
“No,” he said, “not half so much.”
“If you did,” she answered, “I should despise you. Spur forward. God help you. Ah, that I were a man to be able to see how you enter into this action.”
Giovanpaolo said, briefly, in making his farewell: “My army will follow you, coming up as close as the shelter of the hills warrants it. But the first and the main brunt falls upon you. Remember only this — that glory is not given to those who fall in vain!”
These things Tizzo was thinking of as he approached the walls of Perugia, content in two things. The first was that his party was so small that the watchers from the walls of the city could have no idea that this was an attacking force.
The second comfort was the nature of the men he had with him.
That Amadeo, the Corsican, was the sort who would die to prove himself a more honorable man with the sword than with the dice. There was the bulk of the carter, Alfredo, looking very vast inside a suit of complete armor and carrying at the bow of his saddle a huge spiked battle mace, the only weapon which, he said, he was sure that he could manage. But best of all, at the side of Tizzo rode a knight famous through six kingdoms and the empire — Henry of Melrose, the Englishman.
He, as he rode, could not help singing, and when Tizzo asked him what the song might mean, he only laughed aloud.
“We Englishmen,” he said, “have to sing of love when we are about to die!”
“I would rather sing of wine,” said Tizzo, tersely, and led his men on toward the great gate of San Pietro.
There were men on the walls above. There were men on the ground beneath. There were more men inside the gateway, when Tizzo arrived. A touch of the spurs sent forward his fine Barb mare, the gift of Giovanpaolo himself.
“Who goes?” called the languid voice of the captain of the gate.
“Friends of Jeronimo della Penna,” answered Tizzo.
A wild yell was his response.
“It is Tizzo! Close the gate! Close the gate!”
Several men with staves thrust the gate shut. The galloping horse of Tizzo arrived too late. But at the last moment he heard a voice cry: “The lock will not turn! It has been fouled!”
Truly, Antonio Bardi and Luigi Falcone had not been false to their word! The spiked breast plate of Tizzo’s Barb struck against the gate. It thrust open.
Spears pushed out at him; he waved them aside with a swift motion of his ax. A halberd descended, and glanced with stunning force from his helmet He pressed on through the widening gap of the gate, while a wild cry went up from the men on the ground, from the men on the great wall above.
“Strike! Strike! Strike!” cried Tizzo, and as his mare cleared the lips of the gate, he set the example with
the swinging of his ax.
They had swarmed out to meet him and they showed the valor that was worthy of a good cause. He saw a footman actually hurl himself at the knees of the mare and try to gather them inside his grasp.
The ax of Tizzo split the helmet and the skull of the man like cheese. The mare pushed on.
Then a bristling forest of spears lodged against the armored breast of Tizzo. He tried vainly to beat those thrusting points aside, when on either side of him rushed two mounted forms. The one was Henry of Melrose. The other was the carter. The Englishman swung a long, two-handed sword. The carter was wielding that mace which bristled with stout steel points.
“Melrose! A Melrose! A Melrose!” yelled the Englishman.
And the Italian shouted: “Tizzo! Tizzo! Tizzo! A firebrand! Sparks in your eyes and smoke in your brain! Traitors and dogs! This from the hand of a true man — and this — and this!”
With every phrase, he rose in his stirrups and discharged a blow. His riding was not of the most graceful, but his handwork was wonderful. The labor of his years had hardened his muscles. His terrible blows smashed strong helmets like paper, and the long, two-handed sword of Henry of Melrose, his favorite weapon, shore through the hafts of spears or halberds with his parries, and then clove the wielders to the life with terrible strokes.
The cunning of thirty years of battle lived in his hands.
So the brunt of the battle was rushed away from Tizzo, and he was given a clean passage. He could even afford one turn of his head, to see a new rider at the foot of his little squadron, a mere lad, as it appeared, clad in gaudy armor, swinging a one-handed sword of the lightest fashion, and crying out in a voice which carried with it a certain sweetness that was familiar to the ears of Tizzo.
He knew the cry. It was the wild-headed, the flame-hearted, the glorious Beatrice who, once more, had followed him into the very lion’s jaws of danger!
And he, half-exultant, half-groaning, spurred on the Barb mare and, with a sweep of his battle ax, glanced the keen blade from the helmet of the captain of the gate and drove it sheer down through the shoulder of the man, mortally wounding him.
They had won the gate of San Pietro. But there still remained before them a veritable wilderness of danger. How long would it take the forefront of the charging host of Giovanpaolo to reach the gate and assist his vanguard?
Tizzo, looking back, saw a stream of dust pour around the shoulder of a hill, beyond the gate, and through that dust fluttered pennons, and the flashing of armor.
They were coming as fast as true heart and strong horses would bear them. In the meantime, from the top of the wall, rocks and immense javelins began to descend as the wall guard joined in the battle. To remain near would be death, one by one, to all the band which Tizzo led. But forward?
He could hardly tell what lay forward. There was the inner gate, to be sure, which communicated with the heart of the higher city. They could not hope to win this, but they could at least make a thrust in that direction.
That was why, rising in his stirrups, he shouted: “Forward all! The higher gate! The ‘double gate’! Ride! Ride!”
And in a small but savage tide his followers, every one, rushed behind him along the way which he showed.
Here, to the left and to the right, men were running to meet this mysterious and insane attack in the middle of the noonday. Above him, the bells of the town had just begun to beat out the wild alarm. But Tizzo led the charge straight up toward the higher gate, where the wall arose like the sheer face of a mountain, bristling with armed men.
A troop had issued from that gate. Tizzo, with the carter on his left hand and Baron Henry of Melrose on his right, smote that troop before it could form, struck it as a sledge hammer strikes a brittle stone, and smashed it. The recoiling troopers poured back through the higher gate. And with them rushed Tizzo and his companions!
CHAPTER 48
COULD TWENTY-FIVE MEN win the double gates of Perugia? No, not at midnight, not at dawn. But in the sleepy hour of the noonday, when all Italy disposes itself for sleep — yes, that was a different matter. Men, still yawning, rose, heard the alarm bells, the shouting and the clashing in the streets, and rushed forth with bewildered minds. And before them were the weapons of the small, determined group.
They had, actually, with one rush cleared both the outer and the inner gate. But here all progress ceased. The inner guards were now at work and they came strongly on. These were the chosen men of Jeronimo della Penna, and they fought like heroes, as Tizzo soon learned.
Here was no chance to fell a few with blows and drive the rest by fear. In those days, the men of Perugia were the most desired mercenary warriors in all of Italy, and now the men of the town lived up to their reputation nobly. Shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, they pressed in with their shields raised, their swords always thrusting like the bright tongues of snakes. Fools cut and carve; wise men use the point.
And the charge of Tizzo was wasted, foiled, beaten back, back toward the jaws of the gate. A little more and they would be thrust out through the gates, and then all the thunder of hoofs down the street, as the forefront of Giovanpaolo’s riders approached, would be in vain.
Tizzo, striking with all the force he could lend to his terrible ax, was seconded by the full press of all his men, and still they had to give back, though the street began to run blood before them.
It was then that a voice shouted suddenly: “Melrose! A Melrose! Tizzo! Tizzo! Tizzo!” and there was a sudden thrust of armored knights from the dim mouth of an alley.
“Tizzo! Melrose!” they shouted, and at the same time they were crying: “Bardi! Bardi! Falcone! Falcone!”
Those battle cries were enough to tell Tizzo what was happening. His foster father and his sworn friend, Bardi, had collected some of their chosen retainers at this critical point, and now they were driving in to make a diversion in his favor.
That charge struck the enemy, staggered it, thrust it aside, and here beside Tizzo a visor raised and he saw the sweating face, and the bald forehead of his foster father, Falcone.
“Ha, Tizzo!” cried the knight. “Now to the real glory!”
A rush of pikemen poured down the street, men running shoulder to shoulder, the forward ranks bent over so that three rows of bristling spears stuck out in front. And this wave of fighters struck Tizzo and his friends. They hewed vainly at the spear-points. A forest seemed falling upon them. The horse of Falcone went down, and he himself and the brave carter struggled on foot, quickly borne down, when a great shouting came thronging through the gate for which they fought.
“Baglioni! Baglioni!” roared the newcomers.
It was Giovanpaolo in the forefront of his charge. They rode down those stout pikemen. They scattered the valiant men-at-arms. But there and then the keynote of the battle was established. For no man asked for quarter. Dismounted knights fought with the truncheons of their spears, with their swords, till these were broken, with their poniards, with their hands and teeth.
No swift movement could be expected. Here on one side fought the men of Giovanpaolo to regain the possessions of a lifetime. On the other side struggled those who had seized the goods of the banished men. To be defeated was to pass into exile again, and to be captured was to be slain without mercy later. Therefore, every step of the fight was marked with slaughter.
That first thrust of the men of Giovanpaolo brought their famous leader right up to the side of Tizzo, where he shouted: “Well done, my miracle. Ah, Tizzo, with one more like you, I could conquer the world! Forward, forward! Always forward! But these dogs still are biting when they die!” Indeed, they were still biting.
And then the advance struck the chains.
All forward movement stopped at once. From side to side in the streets were stretched great bars of iron, padlocked at the sides and jointed with heavy iron. Raised as high as the breast of a horse, they halted the animals. No beast could leap that height, uphill and onto the pikes that bristled in oppositi
on.
So the advance was checked; and in the meantime the forces of Jeronimo della Penna, gathering force and confidence, with harquebus and with crossbow began to pour in a terrible fire from every raised place. A bullet which missed here was sure to strike there. The caroming lead left devastation behind it. One ball of lead drove through three armored bodies and a cry went up: “We are against a fall! It is murder, not battle!”
A wild panic was beginning, and if it gained head would wash the forces of Giovanpaolo out of Perugia — out of Perugia, and forever.
Then a voice called to Tizzo: “My lord! Tizzol Here is a way through the barriers! I hold the anvil, and you strike, Tizzo!”
That was the shout from the husky throat of Alfredo, the carter, as he thrust under a joint of the chain a great wooden block, such as might have once been the joist of the awning of a shop. It lifted the joint of the chain and Tizzo, without a word, seeing his chance, swayed in the saddle, spurred the Barb mare forward, and smote with the full force of leaping horse, swaying body, and driving ax.
The stout iron was shorn in twain. The chain of iron bars fell, clashing, and at once the riders of Giovanpaolo rushed forward up the street. The harquebusiers, grown confident, thrusting the muzzles of their guns closer and closer to the target, were taken by surprise and died almost to a man, and in a moment.
Those of the party of della Penna who filled the street were numerous enough to have beaten back the charge of Giovanpaolo, but the breaking of the chains seemed to dismay their spirits.
They fled as far as the next chain and there they rallied once again.
“Tizzo! Tizzo!” went up a shout from the army of the invaders. “Tizzo, where is your ax? Open the way for us.”
And again the blue-bladed ax of Tizzo glanced through the noonday sun, and the chain was shorn through at the jointing.
As it fell, Tizzo cried out: “Ah, blessed be the Saracen who forged you, noble steel! Blessed the ore that yielded you like a mother to the world, and the wise brains that gave you lore. Forward, my braves! Forward, forward! Strike and slay!”