Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  No swift movement could be expected. Here on one side fought the men of Giovan Paolo 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 Giovan Paolo 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 opposition.

  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 Giovan Paolo out of Perugia — out of Perugia, and forever.

  Then a voice called to Tizzo: “My lord! Tizzo! 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 Giovan Paolo 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 Giovan Paolo, 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!”

  AND at that moment a hurly-burly of charging cavalry rushed down the street and encountered them. There was the cry for Jeronimo della Penna. There was the screeching voice of della Penna himself. That charge beat the Barb mare of Tizzo to its knees.

  It was not so much a man as a horse that had brought Tizzo almost to the ground; for in the forefront of the defenders of Perugia rode a fellow in beautiful Milanese armor on a gray stallion so beautiful that Tizzo never had seen the like of it even in the stables of Grifonetto. Perfectly trained, the great charger made short curvets every time his rider raised the sword-arm, and so gave a terrible added momentum to the descending force of the blow. Besides, with his steel-shod hoofs he worked like two good fighting men to make a way for his master.

  A crossbowman who pressed up beside Tizzo, seeing the havoc the war-horse worked, called to him: “Watch this quarrel from my arblast, my lord, Tizzo, and you will see the gray horse strike its last blow!”

  And Tizzo had answered: “Let the horse be! He who kills the good gray horse has done a murder!”

  A moment later, he could repent what he had said, for in the next surge of the fight his own companions were borne back for a moment and the gray monster swept down on him. It reared and one striking forehoof glanced from the armored head of the Barb mare, flinging her down on her knees.

  With that same fall, the guard of Tizzo was thrown wide and the descending stroke of the swordsman fell full on his helmet. That well-fashioned, exquisitely tempered steel turned the sword. It fell with a blunted edge on his shoulder plate, but the blow had been enough to daze him.

  Other strokes came from right and left. A footman, springing through the press when he saw his opportunity, cut off the retreat of the rider by driving his dagger three times into the breast of the Barb before she could rise again.

  Tizzo, springing clear of the stirrups as the mare fell dead, struck the heel of his ax into the face of the murderer. The visor was smashed by the blow. Blood spurted forcefully out from the breathing holes of the helmet as the man fell on his back.

  BUT the danger had thickened around Tizzo suddenly. The men of Jeronimo della Penna, having gained a little ground in that forward surge, closed about Tizzo, shouting: “We have him! Strike! Strike! Tizzo is ours!”

  “Yield!” shouted the knight on the gray horse. “Yield yourself prisoner to me, rescue or no rescue!” It was the voice of Marozzo.

  Tizzo, for answer, aimed a blow that made the fellow reel in his saddle. But as he fought, Tizzo knew that only the excellence of his armor was saving his life. Immense strokes rang against it. In a moment he would be overwhelmed. And, in the distance, he could hear the agonized cry of Giovan Paolo and see the frantic efforts of that great fighter to rescue a friend.

  Help came in another way. A horseman in gilded armor, a slight figure, managed to leap his mount to the side of Tizzo with a spare charger on the rein.

  “Here, Tizzo!” cried the voice of Beatrice.

  Tizzo leaped into the saddle through a shower of blows and, swaying his ax from that vantage point, saw the girl pitch forward on the bow of her saddle, stunned by many strokes. Either her helmet had been insecurely put on, or else the blows had snapped the fastenings, for now the helmet was knocked from her head. Beneath it there was no coif of chain mail belonging to the hauberk which most fighters wore for a greater security. She had avoided that crushing weight; and now her head was naked; her hair flowed free.

  Tizzo, groaning, drove his new horse between her and the press of danger, but not before he heard the shout of Marozzo: “It is the Lady Beatrice. A thousand, two thousand ducats to the man who takes her alive!” And a moment later, as Tizzo sweated and fought, he heard the same voice yelling: “After her! After her! Giovanni — Tadeo — Marco! — With me and after her!”

  Tizzo, looking askance, saw that the girl had forced her horse through the mouth of a narrow valley and was fleeing at full speed; but after her ran the great gray stallion of Marozzo like a greyhound after a rabbit.

  Then a wave of hard-fighting men swept up to him from behind — a wave whose steel forefront was composed of Luigi Falcone, the terrible sword of Lord Melrose, Giovan Paolo himself, and that terrible, long-striding carter.

  He gave them no thanks for saving his life. And through a gap behind their advance, he drove his horse presently down the side alley.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  TIZZO AGAINST MATEO.

  SHE WOULD FLEE where? All through Perugia the tumult was not spread. Here and there men would be arming and issuing from their houses singly or in groups. But the major portion of the fighting citizens must be gathered about the focus of uproar where the forces of Giovan Paolo had burst through the gates of the town. In all the rest of the city, where would Beatrice find a harborage?

  He remembered then the Lady Atlanta. Her charity was greater than the sea; her kindness was without l
imit except to traitors. And Beatrice, riding for her life, surely would remember this friend.

  Tizzo drove his horse at frantic speed straight for the palace of the Lady Atlanta.

  There were, as he had expected, small, hurrying groups of men-at-arms proceeding toward the battle. As they saw the fugitive, they cried out to stop him and asked which way the fighting inclined. But Tizzo gave them no answer. They might as well have been howling dogs.

  Twice his horse skidded at paved turns and was almost down. But at last he had reached the entrance to the courtyard of the famous house and found inside it half a dozen men in full armor who were beating with maces and axes at the main door of the house. And inside the house the shrill voices of frightened women ran up and down the stairs as they fled for safety and found no place to go.

  Tizzo, lifting himself in the stirrups, shouted: “Baglioni! At them, men! No quarter! Baglioni! Baglioni!”

  He turned in his saddle as though waving a charge to follow him, then spurred straight across the courtyard. They did not wait for him. A last shower of blows burst in the entrance door, but three of the men-at-arms who had followed Marozzo scattered to this side and that, yelling as though hot steel were already in them.

  Mateo Marozzo himself, with only two companions, pushed through the opened doorway and there turned. They could see, now, that there was but a single rider coming at them, and Marozzo knew that single horseman very well indeed.

  “It is Tizzo!” he yelled to his companions. “We are three and he is only one. Call back the others. Living or dead — two — three — four thousand ducats! Five thousand ducats! In the name of God, strike hard — be valiant—”

  To try to push through that doorway on foot seemed a madness. Tizzo did not attempt it. His spurs bit cruelly deep into the tender flanks of his horse as he hurled it straight toward the threshold. Like a true warhorse, taught to charge even at a stone wall, it leaped the lower steps in splendid style, and, striking the smooth, polished tiles inside the great doorway, skidded and was flung from its feet. But the swinging ax of Tizzo, before the horse fell, had cloven through the helmet of one of those defenders.

  AS the charger crashed against the wall and dropped with a broken neck, Tizzo leaped clear of the fall and then he saw the man he had struck to the brain make a stumbling run with his armored, empty hands extended. Right against the tall curtains of red velvet that cloaked a side doorway the man plunged and when he fell the curtains came with his fall. That was not all that was involved. For when the outer door was closed, the inner hall was dusky dim even in the middle of the day. Four graceful lamps of silver hung by silver chains from wall brackets about which the looped cords of the curtains were also fitted. They were deep lamps of an Arabic pattern and filled full every day with a scented oil whose burning carried a gentle fragrance up the main stairway and through all the rooms of the great house. These lamps were torn down, brackets and all, by the fall of the man-at-arms who lay across the open threshold, now, with the velvet heaped in great folds about and above him. The spilled oil was instantly ignited; the flames leaped wildly and made the shadow of Tizzo spring and dance before him like a dark giant posturing on the staircase as he attacked Marozzo and the other.

  Mateo Marozzo, halting with his companion at the first broad landing, shouted: “Stand with me, Tadeo! Two to one and the slope to climb is good odds even against a red-headed devil like Tizzo. Stand fast and strike hard!”

  And a wild glory came up in Tizzo, so that he danced rather than ran up the steps. Out of his throat rang the words of the song of the grape harvest.

  “September, golden with stain of the sun; September, crimson with blood of the grape;

  Under my feet the juices run And into my soul the joys escape!”

  And he shouted, as he reached them: “Oh, Mateo, now we should have music for this dance! Sing, dog! Sing!”

  That Tadeo was a good, stout fighter, and now he made a sweeping stroke with his two-handed sword that could have cleft the head of Tizzo from his shoulders as neatly as a flower is snipped from the throat of its stalk. But Tizzo dipped his head under the blow and struck from beneath, upward.

  The ax, well-aimed, snapped the rivets at the base of the cuirass and with its flawless edge slashed through the chain mail of the hauberk beneath; only the bone of the ribs stayed the stroke, and a great, red gush of blood poured out from the wound.

  The man gave back.

  “Forward, Tadeo!” yelled Marozzo. “Forward! Forward! Brother, we strike and conquer together!”

  Shouting out this, he turned and fled with all his might up the stairs.

  But Tadeo, ignorant of this desertion, deeply wounded and tormented with pain, drove bravely in at Tizzo again.

  “Your master has left you!” cried Tizzo. “Give back, Tadeo! Save yourself, man! The traitor has taken to his heels.”

  Tadeo did not seem to hear. Groaning, he flung himself at Tizzo and struck again, mightily, with the long sword, The ax swung in a lightning arc. The blade of the great two-handed sword snapped like glass — and Tadeo, throwing aside the useless weapon, snatched out a poniard and grappled Tizzo in mighty arms.

  They fell together and rolled over and over to the bottom of the stairs, the clashing armor making an immense uproar. Only the confusion of that fall prevented Tadeo from driving his poniard through the breathing holes of Tizzo’s helmet. But as they reached the level of the floor at the foot of the steps, Tizzo’s own dagger found the rent in the side armor which his ax already had made. Through that he stabbed twice and again, deep into the vitals.

  Tadeo fell prone. Still, with his last of life, he dug his poniard blindly into the tiles of the floor.

  A ROAR of fire was in the ears of Tizzo; thick, rolling clouds of smoke billowed up the stairway. For the flaming curtains had kindled the woodwork of the lower hall. It was still possible to leap across the threshold to the safety of the courtyard beyond, but the fire had licked its way to the ceiling. It had run up the carved wood at the sides of the stairs. The whole house was being given to the flames!

  But Tizzo turned and sprang back up the stairs.

  Somewhere in that house was Mateo Marozzo searching for the Lady Beatrice. And even the noble dignity of Lady Atlanta would be unable to shield her young friend.

  On the upper level Tizzo ran into a great, empty hall where smoke was already circling before the painted faces on the frescoed walls. The roar of the fire was increasing momently behind him.

  A locked door on his right he burst open with a hammer-stroke from the back of the ax, and as the door sprung wide, he heard a wild screaming of many women.

  There they were, heaped together like sheep afraid of the cold — or the wolf. He saw their hands held up and their faces distorted by screaming as though murderers were already dragging them by the hair of the head.

  But neither the Lady Atlanta nor Beatrice was among them. Either would have stood like a proud tower among all these cowards.

  He rushed from that room, through the length of the hall again, shouting: “Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice! It is I! Tizzod Beatrice, in the name of God—”

  He seemed to hear voices, but as he comes to a halt, listening, he knew that it was merely the distant screeching of the serving women.

  Another locked doorway barred his way. His ax beat it open and he sprang into a bedroom in wild disarray. The curtains had been half ripped from the great four-poster bed. A tapestry sagged from the wall in deep folds, making a forest scene tumble topsy turvy as though waves from a green sea were breaking over the woodland scene.

  And still there was no sign or sound to lead him.

  He held up both hands. From the ax in one of them, warm blood trickled down over his right arm. He prayed aloud, panting out the words like a sobbing child: “Kind St. Christopher, noble patron of the unhappy, sweet St. Christopher, the guard of the traveler, show me the way to my lady, and I vow on your shrine two candlesticks of massy gold, set around with pearls, and on t
he altar I shall spread—”

  But here he saw a flight of winding steps which rose from a corner of the room and his prayer was interrupted.

  UP those stairs he ran, till the winding of them had him dizzy, and past one narrow tower room, and then past another, until he came to the wildest sight his eyes would ever see.

  For there on the open loggia at the summit of the tower stood Mateo Marozzo in broken, stained armor, sword in hand, and in the corner of the loggia, facing him, was the noble Lady Atlanta, with her white nun’s face and her cowl of black; and behind her on the loggia railing, dizzily poised against a background of narrow towers and the sun-flooded sky, stood Lady Beatrice. The loosened hair blew over her shoulders; the sun burned on her gilded armor.

  If a thousand words had been spoken, they would not have told Tizzo more than this silent picture.

  “Mateo!” he shouted.

  His voice staggered Marozzo as though it were a stabbing point of steel. Then, whirling, Marozzo sprang at him with such a screech of hysterical fear that even Tizzo was daunted.

  That was why the sword-stroke of Marozzo glanced from his helmet and drove him back half a step. And Mateo Marozzo, springing past, was already at the head of the winding stairs.

  There Tizzo overtook him. The blade of his ax split the steel helmet like a block of wood. And as he stood back, he could hear the body falling with a loose, pausing, clashing uproar down the stairs.

  “The house is burning!” he shouted to Lady Atlanta. “Drag your screaming women fools to put out the flames. Beatrice, I come again, quickly. Stay here in quiet. — Beautiful Beatrice, I adore you! Farewell!”

  CHAPTER XX.

  THE FINAL STROKE.

  THEY WERE GONE from the courtyard, all the men and the horses. And Tizzo, running fast, left the smoking house of Lady Atlanta without another thought. Now that the beast Marozzo was dead, Atlanta would know how to bring her screeching household back to its senses. They had at least a fair chance of saving the house. And the uproar of the battle called Tizzo like the sound of a thousand trumpets. Angels could not have made a music that would have been sweeter to his ears.