Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  He groaned aloud.

  Then, without a word, he picked up a small table and stood it close to the chair of Tizzo. On the table he set a lamp and stood for an instant enjoying the sight of Tizzo’s face with almost affectionate eyes.

  “What shall I do in this world when I no longer have you to hate in it, Tizzo?” he murmured.

  Then he added: “But first I shall have to seal your mouth, my friend, for otherwise the screaming might make too much noise in the house and call too many servants here. They would be surprised if they saw a squealing pig being roasted alive, eh?”

  He stepped to the window and began to tug at one of the long, silken cords.

  And Tizzo held his bound wrists over the flame of the lamp on the table beside him.

  The instant agony knocked his chin against his breast. He remembered that old tale of the Roman hero who had allowed his right hand to consume in the fire in order to prove his love of his country. But he, when his skin was barely hissing with the heat, could hardly endure the torment.

  But in a moment, the pressure of his wrist caused the cord to snap. He tossed it into the fireplace and, in another instant, he would have managed to untie the other cords which fastened him into the chair. But it was too late for that. Marozzo, turning from the window, came jauntily across the room to his prisoner.

  “A hai!” said Marozzo. “What’s been burning? There’s a stench in the air.”

  Tizzo kept his scorched wrists close together in his lap, in just that position in which the cords had held them.

  “You smell your own idea,” said Tizzo.

  Marozzo paused, close to the chair.

  “By heavens,” he said, “there’s a cloud of smoke in the air across the ceiling! What does it mean?”

  He was about to draw back to pursue his inquiry when Tizzo, leaning as far forward as he could, reached out with both hands. One of them quite missed a hold; but with the left he caught the cloak of Marozzo close to the throat.

  The latter, wildly starting back, pulled Tizzo after him, chair and all. The hand of Marozzo was very swift. Still striving to free himself from the hand of Tizzo, he snatched out his dagger to strike, but here the plunging forward weight of the chair drove Tizzo towards the floor. He flung his arms around the knees of Marozzo and brought him crashing down at full length.

  Then, reaching upwards, he caught frantically at the dagger hand of the murderer.

  But the hand was relaxed; the dagger hilt fell from inert fingers. Marozzo lay stunned from the blow which the back of his head had struck against the tiles.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  UNEXPECTED ATTACK.

  A FEW SLASHES with the sharp edge of the dagger and Tizzo was free.

  He caught Marozzo by the hair of the head, jerked up the loose weight of the body, and bent the neck back over his knee. There, with the knife poised, twice he tried to stab and twice his will failed him. If so much as a glimmer of open eyes had showed, the blade would have been instantly in the heart of Marozzo, but it was a limp, lifeless form that lay there, and Tizzo sprang again to his feet.

  There was a flight of time like arrows past his ears. With each second of his delay, death was drawing closer in the house of Grifone Baglioni.

  There in the corner stood his axe. The sword had been left belted about his hips when he was tied into the chair. He reached the axe with a bound, dashed open the doors, and fled down the stairs.

  At the street door, a burly porter held up a hand.

  “What is this rushing, my master?” he asked.

  Tizzo, without speech, planted the heel of the axe handle between the eyes of the porter and was instantly out in the street.

  He knew the way well. And, ah, for a horse to shorten the distance!

  But there were only his straining legs to carry him up the steep way, through the dipping, staggered course of an alley, and so into the wider street and the piazza where the great house of Grifone stood.

  It was hushed; it lay still beneath the stars; there was only a thin arc of a moon hanging in the west, blood-red, looking like the blade of a vast, burning sickle.

  And Tizzo, panting a prayer of thanksgiving, raced on towards the door of the great house.

  He had almost reached it when a thin shadow streaked down the face of the palace. A stone crashed on the pavement below with such force that it split into a hundred pieces, recoiling and then lying scattered.

  It was the appointed signal of Grifone, and in this instant the heavy balks of wood would begin to dash against the bedroom doors. Those poor sleepers, startled by the sound of the falling stone, would perhaps rouse for a single instant with wonder in their minds. And then death would burst in upon them.

  Through the open doorway of the house he leaped and heard, with one terrible, resounding crash, the sudden thundering of the battering rams against a dozen doors.

  The great lower hall stretched before him, dim with the flicker of a few lights. And at the foot of the main stairway a full dozen of men-at-arms, in complete armor, barred the way.

  “Halt!” called a voice that broke out above the frightful turmoil of the house. And a pair of swords crossed in the path of Tizzo.

  The agony in his heart needed some outlet. With all the might of his body and the strength of his charge he swung the woodman’s axe. The exquisite Damascus steel alighted full on the ridge of a heavy helmet, and the steel split like wood — steel and skull beneath it.

  That tall, knightly body, falling, cleared a small gap in the crowd, and through that gap Tizzo sprang. The force of his leap wrenched the lodged blade of the axe out of the wound it had dealt; Tizzo was up the steps far before the soldiers, weighted with their armor, had moved a stride in pursuit. And, in fact, they did not rush after him; they remained at the post which had been assigned to them, merely thrusting the body of the dead man out of the way. On a night like this, with so much murder in the air, one more death here or there made very little difference. And what could a single man perform against the hands of the scores who swarmed through the upper part of the house?

  Tizzo, as he reached the hall above, saw a confusion of tossing lights and men and heard the crashing of the heavy beams of wood against the doors of various rooms. For more than he could see, he could hear, and from the left the wild screams of a woman plunged like a burning dagger again and again into his brain.

  GIOVANPAOLO, sworn blood-brother, was his objective; but he could not resist that frantic screeching of terror and sprang through the open doorway.

  What he saw was a female servant groveling on the floor and trying to fight off the burly man-at-arms who was tearing the jewels from her hands and neck. It was she who screamed so terribly, but at the farther end of the room stood the slender figure of the Lady Beatrice who, with a delicate French sword in her hand, fought as valiantly as a man and with some sense of fencing against another big invader, who laughed at her efforts and made half playful gestures with his sword.

  The cry of Tizzo rescued her from danger before he reached the spot. As for the brute who was plundering the serving maid, he received one of those stunning hammer-strokes with the back of the axe, and was spilled like a heap of old iron junk upon the floor.

  The man-at-arms in front of the girl, whirling as he heard that cry, swung his sword with a fine strength and made a downright stroke at Tizzo. He might as well have struck at a dead leaf which is thrust aside by the mere wind of a blow. His sword actually descended with such violence that the point of it lodged in the floor; and the circling axe of Tizzo once more cleft steel as though it had been wood. The man-at-arms, struck through the brain-pan, fell forward, crashing, and the voice of Beatrice was ringing at the ears of Tizzo: “Run, Tizzo! For your life! You are unarmed, madman, among all the swords. It is murder — Tizzo — this way — through the window—”

  “Save yourself if you know a way!” he panted. “Giovanpaolo—”

  He had that one glimpse of her as she stood beside the table on which the scrol
l of an unfinished letter lay. She could not have spent the evening in that male costume. How did she happen to have it on now? He had only the millionth part of a second to give to that thought and to the picture of her beauty as she stood by the flame of the lamp. Then he wheeled from her and rushed again into the hall.

  He could hear a great voice shouting: “To me, friends! — Hai! Semonetto!

  Semonetto! Hai! — Baglioni! Down, traitors! Ahai!”

  And through the hall rolled a tangle of men whose swords flashed and fell, aimed at a tall, white figure.

  It was the young Semonetto himself, of whom men said that among all the Baglioni there was not a better blade, hardly in Giovanpaolo himself. Now, clad only in his shirt, he struck such giant blows that the armored fighters broke back from him, then rushed forward to cut him down. Still with a warding buckler and with a living sword of light, he struggled against them.

  “Semonetto! — Semonetto!” — shouted Tizzo, and hurled himself into that fray.

  The unexpected attack from the rear, the great, ringing, hammerstrokes of the axe which stunned brains or smashed shoulders, split the crowd in two and let Semonetto leap through the gap.

  Never would Tizzo forget that figure. For Semonetto had been wounded in the head so that one side of his face ran crimson; and from a rent in his shirt high on the breast another torrent of blood was flowing.

  “Brother!” he gasped to Tizzo.

  “Flee!” shouted Tizzo, and from the lightning circles of his axe the murderers shrank for an instant.

  Semonetto, with one wild glance about him, sprang down the great staircase with Tizzo yelling: “No, no! That way is blocked! Semonetto!”

  But Semonetto, crazed with his wounds or deafened by the uproar which rang through the house as through a brazen cave, fled on down the stairs, and Tizzo turned to run upwards. He found, as he turned, that Lady Beatrice was beside him with that delicate splinter, that long dagger of a French sword in her hand.

  “Beatrice, save yourself!” he groaned to her. But she was already fleeing before him to show him the way through a narrow little door which was set flush against the wall, and so to the windings of a secret stairway. As Tizzo slammed that door behind him, he heard steel clash and break against it.

  He thrust the bolt home and fled upwards, pursuing the girl.

  “Do you hear me? Beatrice!” he panted.

  She waited for him at an upper landing, where a little narrow arched window opened over a roof.

  “Here is escape, Tizzo,” she said, “and yonder, in that hell — yonder is Giovan-paolo! Will you save yourself?”

  Beyond the roof, beyond the rough thing, he saw the moon hanging like a red flag of murder in the west, above the city of Perugia.

  There was the road to safety, and the girl pointing the way to it. He could save her and himself, perhaps, but in the meantime the man to whom he was sworn must be fighting for his life. He turned his back on the window with a shout.

  “Giovanpaolo!” he cried, and raced down the hall.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  TWO SPARKS.

  WHEN THE ASSAULT began, says the historian, Messer Astorre was roused, and called out to know what had happened. There was the vast crashing and shouting all through the house, as though the place were seized upon by thunder, but at the door of Astorre himself, and his wife, there was no disturbance. Only the voice of Filippo, the traitor, called out to him from the hall: “My lord! Your highness! It is your friend, Filippo! Open in the name of God! There is murder loosed through the house.”

  At that, Astorre took a sword in his hand and turned the key, with his own hand opening the door on his destruction. As the door yawned, Ottaviano da Corgnie struck savagely through the opening and made a great wound in the head of Astorre, striking him to his knees. While he was still down, Filippo, who had called to him like a friend, plunged a sword into the body of Astorre.

  That hero, though he was dying, was not yet dead. He managed to gain his feet and struck some great stroke with his own sword, so that for a moment the press of men failed to get through the door. He might even have succeeded in driving the scoundrels out of the room, except that his poor wife, in a frenzy of screaming terror, came like the wind and threw her arms around him to save him from further blows.

  Then Filippo — it was he himself — with his sword ran the poor woman through the shoulder and with the same stroke drove the blade of his weapon right through the body of the Baglioni. Then Astorre felt that he had his death. He put his bloody arms around his wife and kissed her.

  “Alas that I, Astorre, should die like a coward!” he said.

  Men could not tell what he meant by that saying, unless it were that he had always prayed to die on the field of battle, fighting in armor and on a horse, as a noble knight should do.

  He fell, and as he fell his wife was dragged down with him because she was still pinned to his body by the sword of the traitor.

  Filippo, it is said, put his foot on her back and tugged three times to drag out his weapon, and when that was done they dragged her by the hair of the head to a corner of the room, where she fell fainting. But when the rest of the murderers saw Astorre lying on the floor, they still could not believe that such a great warrior had died so quickly.

  They seemed to feel that his glory must be as strong as armor about his naked body and that they would have to hew at him as at a man clad in steel plate. It is true that over fifty wounds were received by his senseless body, so that he was hewed almost to pieces, but as though by a miracle — it was in fact the work of a kind saint, said some men — the face of Astorre was not touched, so that when he lay in death with his body covered he looked like a glorious Greek hero, asleep.

  When His Highness, the young Semonetto, had escaped in the upper hall by means of the battle axe of Tizzo and his own strong sword, he fled down the staircase, dripping blood as he ran, and so came to the men-at-arms at the bottom of the stairs, They tried to stop his flight, but he struck down two of them, killing one, and the force of his attack carried him straight through the armored crowd.

  They followed and clung to him, however. His sword struck showers of sparks from their armor, as he raged among them, and for a moment they fell back, in awe of this man.

  In that moment, he leaped into the street and, perhaps, might have escaped. But here he saw a poor serving lad, a mere page of twelve or thirteen years, who was driven by the swords above to leap from a window, and this poor boy was crushed to death on the stones of the street in front of Semonetto. He only lived long enough to gasp out: “Semonetto — my lord — avenge me!” Then he died.

  This is told by three witnesses who saw the lad fall, turning over and over in the air until he struck the ground. They say that Semonetto, when he saw this death and heard those dying words, turned straight around, forgot all care for his own safety, and rushed back against the men-at-arms from whom he had just escaped.

  IT is certain that there, in the corner of the house and the street, he was surrounded and, still fighting till death reached him, was at last cut down. Before he fell, he laid on the ground five armored men, and it is said that his sword was broken in two before they managed to push in close and overwhelm him with blows.

  It was a second miracle that he, like Astorre, was never wounded in the face, during all this terrible medley of blows.

  Men said that if this Semonetto had lived, not even Nicolo Piccininni would have accomplished such feats, because in all things, even in his cruelty, he was above other men. Of all the Baglioni who died that night, he was the strongest of hand, the tallest, the most beautiful to behold. He was a man without fear. Other men were brave, but he was fearless. He did not know the vice of cowardice, because it was not in him. When men fled from the field of battle he never thought it could be through fear, but always attributed it to malice and treachery. That was why his hand in revenge was often so terrible and his soldiers feared him like an angel of fire.

  After his d
eath, his absence was felt like a curse, and like a blessing, in Perugia.

  Berardino of Antignolle had already burst into the room of the old man, Guido Baglioni, the father of so much strength and valor and himself, men said, among the wisest of the men of his time.

  When the door was burst in, the murderers found that the old man had risen from his bed and that he had taken up a sword in a corner of the room. So many blades came at him, that he had to use both his blade and his left arm to ward off the strokes. And then a soldier leaned and stabbed the old man in the breast.

  The strength and the courage of this ancient hero were wonderful. Though his body was shriveled with time, his heart was still like that of a youth. He caught the soldier who had given him the death blow by the ridge of the helmet and hurled him to the floor.

  Then he dealt two or three more strokes among his enemies and, like Astorre and Semonetto, before him, he made a little clearance among the slayers before his death. He was a man who believed in destiny, and when he felt the drain of blood passing from him, he leaned on the point of his sword and said: “My time has come to me!” Then he fell on his sword and died.

  Some men say that of all the deaths among the Baglioni that night, that of old Guido was the most terrible and the most noble. Like the scorpion, he stung himself to death rather than submit to the hands of his enemies. There was not much mourning for him except in his family which survived, for he was a very shrewd, hard-fisted man of business as well as the father of the tyranny in Perugia.

  THE chief object of all that midnight attack was the person of Giovan-paolo, the most famous of all the house. Astorre was perhaps as widely known for his commanding of mercenary armies in the service of various cities through Italy, but it was known by all that Giovanpaolo was the great brain of the house of the Baglioni.