Rora (33 page)

They knew when to shoot, when to move, and had extra stores of cannon and ammunition at each fortified retreat. Every
inch of ground Pianessa gained cost him thirty men. But one glance told Emmanuel that Pianessa cared nothing for the loss. He would drive his entire militia off a cliff if it would force his victory.

With fierce, bellowed commands the marquis rode up and down the ascending troops, threatening soldiers and commanders alike with death if they did not accomplish his instructions swiftly and completely. He shot one soldier who hesitated with a ruthlessness that both inspired and terrified. Men charged up the mountain for blood or fear, but they charged, and at the summit the war heated until the cliff itself could not be seen but for the long streaks that Emmanuel glimpsed starkly against the face, wondering vaguely what it was until he realized it was blood.

With broken blades they beat them back till crimson ran the wall, Gianavel and Blake fighting savagely against the tide, but it was only a matter of time. Then Blake sensed rather than saw frantic movement at the end of the battlement and heard the warning.

He spun to see Bertino angling the huge cannon so that it would blast full length along the wall and knew the reason why. They were overrun— all was lost. There was nothing to do but blast the artillery along the wall and hope they survived.

Gianavel, too, heard the cry and turned his head for a frantic moment as Bertino paused the torch above the fuse, himself beset with Turks and regular militia storming the wall.

Blake killed the last man before him and leaped back, dropping from the wall, and as he hit the ground
. Gianavel landed beside him, still locked in combat with an attacker, but only one rose. As Gianavel gained his feet, the wall above them seemed to heighten in shadow as—

T
he cannon erupted without sound.

Blake did not witness what happened but the sun
seemed to disappear in a roar that shook stone and earth. And when they scrambled back up the wall, all was red and white with flesh and bone and blood.

What had been men innumerable, there was not a single cry or moan—all had been killed.

Bertino had survived and was swinging the cannon toward the remnant as even more of the militia surged forward. There was no time for anyone to prepare, and they picked up whatever weapons they could find as the cannons took advantage of the respite.

In a rhythm of rifle and cannon and rifle and cannon they kept the militia at a distant of a hundred feet. And while they had the advantage of stone to cover themselves, Pianessa's troops had no cover at all from the enfilade launched down the ravine that shredded stone and flesh alike in a continuous resistance.

It seemed that they would never stop coming. They would charge and retreat, only to charge again to be turned at the last moment by point-blank cannon fire that should have won the day but didn't because there were just so many.

Just
...

So many
...

***

In blood-soaked boots Emmanuel reached the heights of the mountains guarding Rora. He saw the human carnage that littered the crest and wondered how many men had died already. It was surely thousands, and the day was young. He knew they would fight all day and through the night if necessary. Whatever the cost, however grisly the price, Pianessa would not stop until the last man, woman, and child were dead and no home stood in this valley, consumed by the same flames.

Twice errant shots had ricocheted off Emmanuel's iron breastplate, sending small pieces of lead into his chin and upper arm. He didn't know if it was friendly fire or purposeful hits from the Waldenses. But only a glance confirmed that Pianessa's forces were decidedly less in commanders and sergeants than when the battle began.

Emmanuel understood the wisdom of selecting commanders for rifle fire, almost ignoring the troops. Yes, Gianavel was wise. He had trained his people well. But all the training in the world could not overcome such superior numbers. If for no other reason, the Waldenses would eventually fall because they did not possess the strength to endlessly kill the mass of humanity Pianessa was hurling at them.

Like a flood rising from the valley below, Pianessa's troops stormed upward, swelling over rise upon rise, moving in hundreds and thousands. Everywhere Emmanuel turned there was blood—stones, bush, tree, and slope. Rivulets and streams of blood flowed past him like lines on a map revealing a thousand white roads bordered by thousands of scarlet streams.

In all his life the Duke of Savoy had never imagined carnage on this scale; such total, defiant war where death was reduced to something no more important than a breath, and dead men were passed without a glance or thought or care.

And there were so many of the dead now that Emmanuel could not begin to count. Long flat slopes were filled with them, and sometimes ten or twenty of them would slide past him in an avalanche of blood of viscera and human remains, an entire platoon destroyed at once by some close cannon blast.

But like ants swarming over an anthill, they came, and there was no end to them, no end ...

***

Gianavel's last shot had been calculated and proved critical. Blake had sensed that the captain held aim an amazing long time before he fired, then he understood why. The incredible shot killed a commander of unknown rank in the very midst of the maelstrom of attackers and for a moment Pianessa's troops faltered, uncertain.

"Fire!" Gianavel roared.

Twin blasts from either end of the battlement erupted into Pianessa's troops once more, and then riflemen dropped those closest to the wall, turning again. Blake felt no relief as he emptied rifle after rifle and then his last pistol at their backs, and finally they reached the far bend where further shooting was futile.

Ears ringing painfully, skin burned again and again by powder and cuts and slashes, Blake stood.

Thousands of men littered the ravine, piled like carpet for three hundred feet. Bodies and arms and legs protruded into the air like rolling hills seen from a height with broken pikes and rifles and the banner of Pianessa, somehow erect but torn and shot through and through, waving drearily in the overheated air.

"Reload!" Gianavel shouted, and frantic movement began along the wall—no
questions, no complaints.

Each man had been hit, and Gianavel worst of all with at least a dozen cuts, but no one uttered a word. Working mechanically, they quickly positioned their rifles and within two minutes Blake had reloaded his
eight pistols. He shoved one after another into the twin belts across his chest, careful not to slam them too hard and dislodge the ball.

He looked up to see Gianavel approaching.

Stalking the battlement, Gianavel visually checked each man for wounds, not trusting their words. Several had been hit by grazing shots, but none were seriously injured.

At the far end of the wall, leaning heavily on the forty-pounder, Hector was completely blackened by soot. He
raised his face as Gianavel approached.

"Reloaded, Captain."

"Good." Gianavel examined the remaining rounds. "Next time, fire before they're so close. Try to take their momentum before they reach the wall."

"I'll give them something to dance over."

At the other end Bertino was quickly scraping out a bore, inserting another fuse. He raised his face and only his white eyes were visible in the black. "We've only got thirty more grapeshot, Joshua."

"How many do we have at the second wall?"

"Fifty for each cannon." Bertino scowled and rubbed his face with his blackened forearm—it did no good. He leaned on the huge cannon for respite.

Gianavel looked down. "Load the second cannon with grapeshot and all the remaining powder. Jam the barrel and put in a twenty-second fuse. If they overrun the wall
..."

"I know what to do. Just make sure you're behind that second wall when it goes off. It's going to kill everything on this side of the wall and everything on the other."

"You make sure you're behind that second wall," Gianavel said sternly.

"Worried about me?"

"I can't afford to lose a good soldier."

Bertino turned to his support. "Give me that sledgehammer and grape-shot, boy. Have it ready when I need it."

In a moment Gianavel was back beside Blake, and at the far bend of the ravine they saw Pianessa’s troops slowly pushing a huge forty-pounder into the gap. They were straining to roll it free of the slope so that it could be used to reduce the battlement.

Gianavel spun to Hector as the old man cried, "Help me swing her around!"

Together they lifted the cannon hitch, tilting it forward, and Gianavel shouted, "Enough! Fire!"

"It'll go wide!" Hector shouted.

"Fire!"

The old man touched a torch to a thimble full of powder, and the cannon thundered. The ball hit to the right of the distant forty-pounder, but Gianavel had foreseen the effect, and a dozen men were struck with sliced stones that spun through the air like knives. They writhed on the ground, some rolling pitifully back down the slope, leaving the cannon unguarded. And at that moment Gianavel made a decision that set Blake's heart racing. He moved to edge of the wall and looked at Blake.

"Come on!"

In such a situation, Blake would realize later, a man makes a decision by what he has brought to the battle, by what he decided within himself long before the first blow was thrown. Men do not become heroes in a war; they are heroes before a war. War is only the place where their heroism is most easily seen.

Blake saw the ground and dropped from the edge. He knew Gianavel intended to race to the cannon before replacements could reach it. What Blake did not know is what Gianavel intended to do when they arrived, and then they were there.

Anticipating the worst, Blake got off a quick shot at the startled troops, staggering and shouting only twenty feet away. They had not expected or seen their approach and were wildly surprised at the attack, but
their surprise wouldn't last.

Instantly Blake dropped his rifle and fired a pistol and then another, casting one aside as quickly as he fired to draw yet another. He didn't take time to
understand what Gianavel was doing.

"Come on!" Gianavel yelled and Blake didn't need encouragement.

He flung the last pistol aside and ran the scant three hundred feet back to the wall as shots hummed past them. Then the ravine exploded in an earth-shaking roar that knocked Blake from his feet. He hit the ground assuming he was dead or dismembered and didn't thank God or anything else when he realized he was not.

He scrambled up the slope ahead of Gianavel and cascaded over the lip of the wall, figuring that one of these maneuvers was going to result in a broken neck. Gianavel landed on top of him and they separated fast to remount the wall.

In the distance, it looked like a meteorite had hit the mountain. The ravine itself was enlarged, as though the fist of God had struck the earth, annihilating stone and flesh and iron, leaving a compact, crusted scar of black.

No one
close to the detonation had lived.

Gianavel s face was intense.

They heard no sounds, glimpsed no movement.

Blake looked at the captain. "What is it?"

"They're just stunned." Gianavel bent and groaned as he heaved a series of deep breaths. Blake was watching, himself barely able to breath: "You all right?"

"Yes," Gianavel whispered. "I'm okay
."

"You're hurt."

Blood was flowing heavily from Gianavel's arm. Blake noticed it had not been there before the blast and knew the Vaudois had caught a piece of cannon or rock. But Gianavel could not have cared less.

If it were mortal, he would know soon enough.

"Here they come!" Bertino shouted.

Blake saw them surging around the bend and knew instan
tly their intent. They were coming full force without cannon or cover fire, intent to surge over the wall like a river surging its banks.

"Fall back!" Gianavel shouted.

Racing side by side they reached the secondary wall at almost the same time.

"Get down!" Bertino bellowed as his boots pounded the gravel behind Blake. On top of the wall, Blake took a heartbeat to catch a glimpse that he would never forget—three hundred men swarming over the wall like locusts, all raising rifles and pikes. Their howls and cheers sounded like a river roaring up the ravine.

"Get down!" Gianavel shouted and colliding hard with Blake to carry him completely over the wall.

The Vaudois shouted some indistinct warning, and before they hit the ground, the ground rose up to hit
them
—a concussion caused by whatever great force had just moved the mountain. Then the sky again vanished in a cloud of dust and smoke that flowed over them like an ocean, smothering and soundless.

***

Pianessa's rage knew no bounds.

Though they appeared to be gaining ground on the mountainside of the Bagnol they were paying a terrible price. And as bloodless as the marquis was, he knew he could not win the battle if
all
his troops were killed.