Rora (24 page)

Mario had the distinct impression that the mountain itself had erupted, hurling fire hundreds of feet into the freezing air, and the blaze—logs stacked at the rim—was so hot that Mario felt waves like an ocean of heat flowing down the cliff over him, unnatural and threatening and sentient.

He barely opened his mouth to scream when Gianavel lashed out with his sword and cut something, and then the sky disappeared behind a wall of solid flame that flowed like lava down the face of the Castelluzo. Mario was aware of clawing the smooth rock for a better grip as the fire rushed down over him, and then the world disappeared with men screaming in horror and pain.

***

Pianessa came down three feet from the telescope, having leaped back as everything within the view of the telescope disappeared in a roaring circle of white that seemed to travel through the golden cylinder to erupt into his face.

Then across the distance he heard a roar pushed low across the valley by the cold, rumbling thick and heavy with cloud and the latest wisps of winter. The ground trembled beneath their feet and horses reared, straining at the reins, trampling those around them in sudden fear.

Pianessa staggered forward, reaching impoten
tly toward the mount where fire cascaded down the face as if to halt the destruction tearing down over his carefully marshaled troops, wiping them from that rock amid crashing impacts and distant screams that seemed faint and thin beneath the violence. Voices were shouting throughout the camp, and men were running in confusion.

One voice rose above the rest.

"Sire! Sire!"

Pianessa turned with a snarl, fiercely holding control. The sergeant stood close, but not so close that he might be struck down by the marquis in his wrath.

"Sire! What do we do?"

Staring strangely at the question, Pianessa seemed not to have understood the language. He looked again to the mountain to see other huge timbers leaping alive with fire, and then avalanches descended into defenseless troops clinging desperately to the wall, if any still lived.

Finally he barked, "Retreat!"

Instantly the sergeant lifted his arm across his chest to drop it, and an archer on the outskirts of the camp fired a flaming arrow in a high arch. In
the distance another arrow was fired, and then another until the arching signal reached the Castelluzo, where horns were heard to sound the call of retreat. But there was no retreating from that perilous face in the darkness, and still more fire descended from the ridge.

Then, faintly intermingled within the screams and howls and wounded cries, echoed the sound of muskets as a hundred flashes erupted along the skyline of white cloud, illuminated by the flames, each sliver of lightning reaching down the flaming face of the Castelluzo that had become the face of war.

***

Racing along the summit, Gianavel took only seconds to glance at each platoon to insure they were holding themselves behind cover as they fired into the motionless troops on the cliff face. He leaped a keg of gunpowder and glanced down to see a flaming graveyard of men screaming in pain and fear and almost hesitated.

He did not realize his mouth opened in pain and did not know his face reflected emotions unfit for a warrior before he turned away, rushing farther. But when he reached Jahier and his men jamming iron into the barrel of a two-thousand-pound cannon, he again looked like a commander that knew no mercy—no, there would be no mercy tonight.

"Have you loaded it like I said?" Gianavel shouted over the rifle fire and bellows and conflict.

"Enough powder to level a mountain!" Jahier shouted.

Gianavel threw his shoulder to a wheel and strained to push the can-non to the edge. "Hurry!"

Jahier took position on the other side of the huge barrel. He was straining with a dozen men who fell in behind them. But Gianavel heard his voice over the tide of moans that rose from the crest. "How long do you want the fuse!"

When the captain didn't respond, Jahier called out again, but by then Gianavel was at the fuse, ripping out his dagger to count silen
tly as he slid his hand down the powdered string. He slashed it and lit it within a heartbeat.

"Now!"

They pushed the cannon down the slight slope to the edge, and then its own momentum took it into the darkness like a whale disappearing into a white flaming sea of trapped souls.

With iron wedged tight into the barrel and gunpowder hard packed the entire length, the cannon would fire, but the expanding force would find no release, so the barrel would explode, lancing the Castelluzo with a thousand deadly missiles of iron that would penetrate flesh or bone or stone or whatever else was in their path.

Gianavel fell to a knee, counting.

"Seven seconds, second company
... four, five.

The explosion tore heated air from their lungs as it threw up a huge layer of sky past the summit, staggering them as it staggered the mountain, and then night took form as the shock wave hit and the carefully positioned barrels of oil ignited on the face of the Castelluzo like the breath of a dragon repelling those who had so foolishly attacked it in its lair. The flame blocked out the sky and the land together before a stunning rush of darkness closed on them and snapped shut like black fangs, and it was only then that Gianavel realized he had never heard the sound of it.

***

Mario rolled across a rock ledge, where he had miraculously fallen, and finally stumbled to his feet, trampling down men whose limbs were
grotesquely twisted and others who were not there at all as they writhed on the bloody rocks that were black in the darkness and starlight. He saw the slope of a rock and was upon it as he heard the rushing water beneath and wondered how he might descend to reach the holy safety of the flat earth when he sensed a rushing behind him.

He half turned to see wild-eyed men still holding swords rushing toward him and knew they would kill him for this, but they ignored him, shoving him between themselves as they surged past him to retreat from the rock, and suddenly the rock beneath his right foot vanished.

He had time to twist in the air to see the dark water on fire beneath him and then he was descending through the rushing night. He did not feel it when he struck a lower ledge that broke his bones and crushed his organs into jelly, and then he saw the water on fire and watched its approach until he knew nothing more.

Nor would he
remember riding the next day within a wagon bearing the wounded to Lucerna. Nor would his ravaged body remember its ride within another wagon three days later—a wagon that hauled those killed by defenders of Rora to a mass grave that, five hundred years later, would still not bear a single name of those buried there.

***

The outcry, like a huge wave building at sea and approaching the shore in the darkness of night, swept over the camp before the first stragglers arrived in groups of two or three, supporting each other with staffs and their own shoulders. Almost all had lost their rifles and weapons, and some were still smoldering in the cool evening, even their bare skin creating steam like rising frost.

Bloody wounds had white ghosts hovering over them, the blood warming the air a
bove them into steam, and few spoke as they collapsed in a bivouac that was prepared. But the makeshift field hospital had been designed to handle only a small number of wounded, and in no time all the blankets were claimed. And still they shambled in from the night, sometimes in teams of twenty and thirty, and finally every cot, bedroll, wagon, and tent cover was lined with bodies like the cargo of a slave ship.

Pianessa stalked beside the telescope, ignoring it all. He spoke to no one, answered no questions.
Then a ravaged figure, almost utterly black with his face scarred and a red beard half burned from his face, emerged from between torches. Seeing him, Pianessa lowered his arms, staring.

Sergeant Major Duncan was a travesty of the man he had appeared before the battle. His eyes were flat and dead like a man who had seen the depths of hell. He spoke direc
tly to Pianessa. "My Lord?"

With a scowl, Pianessa stared. "Yes?"

"Have you fortified the camp?"

Pianessa cursed quie
tly and looked away. He voiced disdain born of contempt. "Gianavel wouldn't dare attack my camp."

"This man knows war," the sergeant countered sharply. He did not blink at Pianessa's angry gaze.

"Sergeant, you are wounded. I will deal with the security of the camp." When Duncan did not move, Pianessa regarded him as if he were mad. "Did you not hear me?"

"I heard "Duncan replied in a dead tone. He took several steps forward, his eyes no longer responsive to life. "This man knows war, Pianessa. I have never seen his equal. He ambushed us with torches hidden inside jars of clay."

Pianessa squinted. "What?"

"Jars of clay," Duncan said distinctly. "They were on the cliff the entire time that we were climbing. All of them, waiting with torches concealed within jars of clay. We could not see the flames, but the flames could burn. Then they broke the jars at the same time by some prearranged signal.
They waited until we were in their very face, ignorant and exposed, before they struck. This man is wise."

Teeth gleamed as Pianessa muttered, "See to your wounds, Sergeant. That is an order."

For a moment it was not certain whether the sergeant was conspicuously disobeying an order or if he simply could not compel himself to move. Then he said, "Pianessa, use caution. We killed six thousand of these people in the valley and did not lose a single man. But this man has killed six thousand of us in a single night."

For a moment all was still, and it seemed the sergeant would say something more. Then with the same deadness with which he'd arrived, he departed.

Pianessa stared after him immobile, then glanced at a few of those standing nearby. His voice was bitter. "Insure that all those returning are stripped of weapons and arms."

A lieutenant hesitated.
"But, sire ...
why
?"

"As potential spies, you fool!"

Pianessa stared after the outburst, as if inviting a challenge. But there was no challenge as the lieutenant spun instantly away.

Then an explosion from within the camp itself sent a shock wave to the edge of the great plain itself. The cold retreated at the mushrooming ball of fire that reached incredibly high—a tongue of fire almost instantly
swallowed by night—and the distant mountains echoed the surge again and again and again.

"The powder store," Duncan muttered as he rose from a crouch. "This man is wise
..."

Pianessa staggered. "Gianavel attacks my camp?"

Even as he spoke, a bullet fired from somewhere in the darkness hit a wagon. It was impossible to tell who had been the intended target but Pianessa wasn't waiting for the answer. He reached his horse in three strides and pulled the reins hard to bring it about as he shouted to his lieutenants. "Remove the camp to El Torre!"

"In the dark? But, sire—"

"Do it!" Pianessa roared and then thundered off in the night as another shot sailed from the darkness and struck down the lieutenant who had been foolish enough to show himself as someone in command.

***

Leading a band of men stealthily through the night, Gianavel crouched in the darkness. It had been easy enough to pursue the retreating troops from the Castelluzo, continuously reducing their number with sniper attacks from the shadows. They had not mainly targeted officers because it was impossible to determine who was in command, since everyone was shouting at once for retreat. But those with uniforms that displayed even the faintest semblance of authority had been the first to fall, nevertheless.

Reloading and firing, reloading and firing, thirty men from Rora shadowed the troops for the entire mile back to their camp, and the death toll continued to climb with every step. Finally, even when they reached the relative sanctity of their perimeter, some men had managed to crawl through the line to penetrate the camp and lay into the powder stores—wagons
bearing gunpowder and mortar rounds—to destroy them before slipping out again in the confusion.

Bertino and two others came up behind Gianavel, who slid from around a tree where he'd killed another who was speaking to Pianessa.
The bullet had been aimed for Pianessa himself, but it was impossible to focus clearly in the darkness because Gianavel could barely see the sights of the barrel.

"Gianavel!"

"Yes ..."

"They're retreating!"

Gianavel nodded. "Keep harassing them until they remove the camp from the edge of the Pelice."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going after Pianessa."

Bertino grabbed his shoulder. "No! If you die, we're lost! We will have no one to lead us! Think!"

Face glistening with sweat, Gianavel revealed nothing as he took several deep breaths, turning his head toward the camp. "Very well. Keep up the attack until they have withdrawn. Remember: If we let them make camp in the valley, we're lost. Make them retreat!"

"You will stay with us?" Bertino whispered, and fear, for the first time since Gianavel had known him, was unconcealed and pure in the big man's eyes.