by Max Brand
“If the children die, I’ll try to give you reasons,” said Tizzo.
He had in his hand that common-looking ax with the head of shimmering blue steel, and the Borgia, glancing down at the weapon, saw the sunlight trembling on it. Cesare Borgia took a quick, deep breath.
There had been an outcry of horror from the people of the Rocca, and a sort of groaning sound from the men of the town. But now the voice of Caterina Sforza rang down clearly through the air.
“Do what you will with them! If they die, I’ll furnish more sons to the world, but there’s only one Rocca of Forli!”
As she spoke, she struck her body with her gauntleted hand so that the clashing noise came clearly to the ears of Tizzo. The two boys in red velvet dropped to their knees and began to scream supplications; the whole sky was rent with the groaning of the townsmen of Forli. But the executioner turned his head with a beastly grin to get the final order.
The Borgia looked at the light which trembled on the deadly ax of Tizzo. And the duke remembered, at that moment, a certain heavy helmet of the best Milanese plate steel with a great clean gash carved in it. Tizzo had delivered that other stroke. The head of the Borgia ached a little.
“The woman’s an animal,” said the duke to the executioner. “But let her children be. I won’t cut the throats of the calves. I’ll wait for the cow.”
The executioner released the wrists of the boys; and they flung themselves down weeping with relief in front of the horse of the Borgia.
Tizzo heard the quiet voice of Machiavelli say, “Don’t waste this opportunity. As long as you’ve decided to make a kind gesture, let the whole world see you do it. It will be remembered perhaps longer than a dozen bad deeds.”
Here the duke, without a word of answer, sprang from his saddle — a thing that few men could do in that burden of massive armor — and raised up the boys one by one. Cheers broke from the Rocca. The men of Forli raised an amazing yell of approbation. And Caterina Sforza, staggered and amazed after the crisis which she had defied, could be seen leaning against one of her soldiers for support.
Tizzo took off his steel cap and rode far forward with the sunlight red and flashing in his hair. He held up the helmet and ax to attract attention.
“Madame the countess!” he called. “Noble lady — do you forget me?”
“I see you and know you, thief,” said Caterina Sforza.
“I am no thief, madame,” said Tizzo. “But you see that we do not put hand on the helpless. And I remember that two people are in your hands.”
“You’ll see them long before the Rocca is won,” said the countess. “You’ll see them hanging from the walls!”
She turned and walked back from view.
The Borgia was saying softly, “What would you do, Machiavelli, with a man like Tizzo, who would have murdered me if the children were touched? Aye, and that in spite of the fact that he has sworn to be my man for three months? What would you do with him?”
“I think,” said Machiavelli, always quiet in his voice, “that before he has a chance to do serious harm, such a friendly enemy might be put out of the way.”
The Borgia laughed.
“Not at all!” he said. “Because of Tizzo, the men of Forli are cheering me. And Tizzo I shall reward — by letting him lead the storming party into the first breach the cannon open!”
IX. THE ASSAULT
THE CANNONS WERE up. Tizzo went back to the park of the pieces and watched them at work — all big weapons and all with names. Roberta was the largest of the guns, Giulia was the smallest, but Ardwina was the champion when it came to doing effective work on the walls of the castle. At the third round, big Roberta burst into fragments and knocked half a dozen men into perdition.
The master gunner merely said, “There goes a good many florins in carved work. But I’ve always said that a dance of nymphs was a silly thing to have around the muzzle of a gun. Some good big heavy metal bands should have been shrunk around the belly of Roberta and then she might never have burst. Smaller guns are the things. They’ll spit out their mischief faster.”
Giulia, for instance, was firing about once in ten minutes, being swabbed out with water and sponged dry in between shots, so that she might not become too hot in the throat. For that heat might crack the metal, it was felt. But big Roberta and her kind could hardly be discharged more than once in twenty minutes. Tizzo watched the flight of the balls, seeing the ponderous round masses turn into, almost invisible streaks of darkness, wraiths, shadows flying headlong through the air. These little streaks of speed then landed with terrible force against the wall of the Rocca. The master gunner, being a true artist, did not scatter his fire but concentrated it on one place. On this spot, the surface of the masonry began to look pock-marked, and presently it was seen to have been battered into wavering lines. After that, the tremendous assault caused whole rocks to commence falling from their places; the outer skin of heavier and better-fitted and cemented masonry was being stripped from the wall, and the rubble of the central stuffing quickly went to pieces under the bombardment.
This was not carried on without trouble. The Rocca had plenty of artillery and from the walls, after a time, these guns began to do heavy execution. But, as Cesare Borgia said, “The malice of Caterina keeps that fire from being effective. Instead of concentrating all of it on my battery of heavy guns and trying to disable them, she has, to scatter her fire all over the town that’s risen against her.”
“Angry men throw away their brains,” answered Machiavelli.
A shout of joy from the besiegers and of dismay from the besieged now accompanied the crashing noise of the downfall of a whole upper section of the wall. A cleft appeared, running straight through it; and the following discharges quickly widened this gap.
“Now, Tizzo,” said Cesare Borgia, “you shall have the honor of being first through the breach. Pick your men for the work.”
“Give me some of those Swiss; and a few wild Gascons,” said Tizzo. “And my own company of Romagnol peasants to follow as soon as we’ve established a foothold. Has enough rubbish fallen to let us pass the moat?”
That was reported practicable; the storming party gathered quickly.
Tizzo looked over those volunteers, the rangy big Swiss, the quick little Gascons, and his own more sluggish peasants. He put the cat-footed Gascons in the front line and jumped on the wheel of a gun to make a speech.
He merely said: “Lads, we’re the wedge. Once we get past the wall, the whole weight of the army will fall behind us to drive us home. There’s plenty of loot inside the Rocca to fill your arms and bend your backs. There’s plenty of glory in the breach, also, and the duca who has an eye to see you and remember you. Here’s a flag for you to follow and so — come on with me and the devil bite the heels of the last man into the breach!”
As he ended, he waved over his head the “flag,” which was simply the bright jacket which had been pulled from the dead body of one of the duke’s soldiers and stuck on the blade of Tizzo’s sword. He held that in his left hand and the blue-headed ax in the other. And when the storming party looked up at the fringe of red hair that curled up from beneath the edge of his steel cap, and saw the smile on his face, they uttered one deep, quick shout of impatience.
Tizzo took them on the crest of their enthusiasm and led them at a run. They were instantly out of the shelter of the houses which were being battered down in places by the vengeful fire of guns from the walls of the Rocca. They crossed the moat, stumbling and staggering on the loose, uncertain surface of the broken masonry.
A storm of fire struck them here. With a flanking tower on either side of the breach, Caterina’s soldiery had posted themselves well and they maintained a heavy fire from little cannon, from arquebuses, from crossbows. In addition, a solid body of troops was posted behind the breach and several cannon had been dragged up to help in the defense.
It was a bullet from one of those cannon that tore in two the first man in the breach, a grea
t, long-striding Swiss. A thin red spray whipped through the air and struck into the face of Tizzo as he ran on into the gap in the wall.
He saw the range of arquebuses before him, and a tall knight in complete armor that shone like silver, in command. The knight steadied a flag standard with one hand and waved his sword over his head with the other, shouting out the command to fire.
“Down! Down on the ground, lads!” yelled Tizzo, and set the good example by diving for the ground.
The volley from the arquebuses thundered in his ears. He sprang up, casting a single glance behind him. Smoke veiled the line of soldiers inside the breach; but behind him it seemed that half of his chosen company of a hundred had been struck down in that murderous moment. A few, right about him, were on their feet, but wavering. His own action rallied them. He let them have a glimpse of the waving standard on his sword; then he ran straight through the smoke toward the place where the splendid figure of the knight glimmered through the mist. The sweeping stroke that was aimed at him he ducked under, and came up with a lifting blow of the ax. It drove right through the weaker plates under the raised arm of the knight; it clove straight into the body, and the knight fell dead, his splendid armor clashing in a heap, the standard toppling idly to the ground.
That was the first blood for the assailants in this fierce attack. They drew more immediately, however. A little Gascon came running in with no other weapon than an old-fashioned war club that had steel spikes sticking out of its head. With that he brained one of the arquebusiers. And yonder was a tall Swiss striding through the press delivering terrific blows with a two-handed sword that had a blade five feet long. Arms and heads could be lopped off neatly by the sway of such a weapon I And here came others, and others; the living half of the storming party rushed into the court of the castle and swept before them the soldiers of the guard. One of the cannoneers was cut down even before he could discharge his piece. A ghost had leaped at him through the mist of smoke.
The joyous shouting of the storming party as it swept that inner court clean was echoed with a tremendous uproar of delight from the entire town of Forli.
But now Caterina Sforza showed herself as able a commander and as brave a soul as any trained general. The big doors at the base of one of the towers beside the breach were thrown open, and a solid stream of heavily armored men charged out to man the breach.
That unexpected blow struck Tizzo’s men into a confusion and cast them back, not toward the moat but deeper into the interior court. Tizzo saw the first rush of the main body of the Borgian army reach the moat and sweep up toward the breach, but there the unexpected appearance of a new wall of steel checked them; fire from the walls told heavily; that wave of attack suddenly yielded and washed back.
“Captain,” panted one of his stout peasants, a fellow now freshly dipped in blood, “Captain, we’ve fought our way into the trap, but we’ll never fight out again.”
Tizzo looked desperately around him. The mass of heavily armed men in the breach was a force with which his own forlorn hope could not expect to deal. For the moment, all pressure from the outside had ended. He had about him hardly two score of his original hundred, and more of them were falling every moment as guns from the casements around the court were turned on these intruders. And from a window of the big central court, Tizzo saw the face of the captain of the defense herself, Caterina Sforza with the visor of her helmet raised, and laughter in her handsome face.
It was death to remain in the court; it was impossible to cut through the living wall of defenders in the breach.
Tizzo had a dozen hands help him to swing around that undischarged cannon. This he pointed at the heavy door of the central tower, in one of whose upper windows he had seen the countess. The burning match lay on the ground beside the gun; the powder horn for priming was still in the dead grasp of the artilleryman. So Tizzo primed and touched the match to that cannon.
The force of the explosion jumped the gun back for a yard; but the great door of the tower was beaten open by the shot.
The tower! The tower!” shouted Tizzo. “We’ll be safe enough inside those walls. Come on, lads!”
They went on with a yell of delight. Through the wide door they passed into a sort of armory, the walls set around with all manner of weapons, and suits of armor hanging from central columns. Behind them followed in a swift charge a full hundred of the men-at-arms who had been manning the breach, but the heavy door was slammed and propped against them; and while they vainly battered and hacked at the door, Tizzo led a score of his men to the story above.
From that very place Caterina Sforza had been looking out and laughing her triumph, the moment before.
Well, she could take her laughter and her triumph to another place now. Down distant corridors, Tizzo heard shouts of fear and a wild stampeding of footfalls. The soldiers had fled from their posts. They even had left their well-charged arquebuses behind them at the casements and the long arrow-vents in the wall.
Tizzo had those arquebuses manned instantly. The muzzles being depressed, a single volley knocked over half a dozen of those gallants who were trying to batter a way through the door below. That blow from above was enough for them. They scattered as fast as their heavy armor would let them run. Some of them rejoined the diminished line of fighters who manned the throat of the breach. Some of them fled blindly for their lives. That shout began to go up which destroys the soul of a fighting force: “Treason! Were betrayed! We’re lost! Treason!”
“Aim at the men in the breach,” Tizzo commanded. “Let them have a bit of hell from the rear and see how they like it. We have the game in our hands. They’ve trapped us, friends, but we’ll eat our way into the heart of the Rocca. The duke will throw another attack at them in a moment. A dozen of you are enough for these guns. The rest of your follow me!”
He led the way at a run out of the room and up the winding stairs. Two stories above, half a dozen frightened defenders threw down their weapons and begged for quarter. Tizzo granted it. He gained the very top of the tower and leaped into an embrasure of the rampart, standing on top of the cannon which stood there. From that height he could overlook the breach and see the masses of men forming confusedly for the next assault on the breach.
And now it was that he began to wave his improvised sword.
“Shout, boys!” he said to the dozen men around him. “Cheer a few rounds, and then listen!”
They gave a hearty cheer, and in the silence that followed they heard a wild yelling of joy from the men of the Borgia beyond the walls. A wave of them started for the moat; another wave and another followed. Here and there soldiers were knocked over, but the rest hurried on, blind with the enthusiasm of victory.
Before them stood a solid mass of the heavy men-at-arms of the Rocca. But on that line the arquebuses from the lower story of the tower were playing. Struck at from behind, attacked from in front, that massive line of practiced fighters held their ground not a moment but scattered right and left, and the inflooding troops of the Borgia rushed on to the fruits of victory.
X. THE EDGED TOOL
IT WOULD NOT be many minutes now, Tizzo knew, before the rioting soldiery of the duca had penetrated into every part of the castle; and somewhere in the Rocca were his father and Beatrice. They must be reached at once.
It was true that the Borgia controlled his men carefully during nearly every emergency, but when a stronghold had been taken by open assault, there was only one sort of a reward that could be offered to the victors — the sacking of the place. And when the wild-headed victors found women —
Tizzo looked grimly over his little group of prisoners. There was one elderly fighting man with a grizzled head, his face now as gray as his hair. Tizzo took him by the arm with a strong hand.
“In the Rocca,” he said, “there are two prisoners. One is the Englishman — the big Englishman with gray hair and a red face — the Baron Melrose. And there is a girl — Beatrice of the Baglione. Do you know where they may be kep
t, now?”
A dull eye rolled toward the face of Tizzo in utter lack of comprehension. Fear had benumbed the brain of the prisoner. Tizzo used a powerful stimulant: snatching a handful of silver out of his purse, he jangled the ducats in front of the man.
“This money goes to you, if you can tell me where they’re apt to be found. If you can lead me to them before some of the raiders reach them — you get this money today and a whole purse of it tomorrow.”
The man opened his mouth and eyes as though he were receiving both spiritual and mental food.
“I think I know where they could be found,” he said. “Follow me, highness. Quickly, because they may be clear on the opposite side of the Rocca.”
He set off at a run, down the stairs, and then at full speed along a corridor that rose and fell and twisted and angled. Not a single man of Tizzo’s company followed. Doors right and left invited them to hunt for plunder.
And the whole castle was turned into a screaming-house. The shouts of the men were nothing. It was the thin screaming of the women that drove like sword-strokes through the brain of Tizzo.
They were in one of those endless corridors which most Italian fortresses were apt to have for a rapid means of getting from one part of the place to another.
Groups of plunderers lurched into the runway, here and there, but the shout of Tizzo made them scatter before his coming. He had thrown off his steel cap so that his red hair would make him more readily known.
And wherever he was seen, the men of the Borgia gave him a cheer — and went on about their business which would strip the famous Rocca to the bone long before noon of that day.
The panting voice of Tizzo’s companion halted him, led him now through a side door and up another winding stairs into a tower where there was a great noise of trampling and battle.
So he rushed up into a big room with an old, vaulted ceiling that rested on stout piers. At the head of the stairs a half dozen of the Borgians were fighting against a larger band of the defenders of the Rocca. And yonder in a corner he saw what he had been praying for sight of — Henry of Melrose, unarmored, but with a sword in his hands, heedless of the outcome of the fighting as he held his place in front of a smaller, slenderer figure. That was Beatrice Baglione. It must be she — now he could see the color of her dress — now her face, like a star to a sailor.