Rora (5 page)

She nodded and struck the reins. The wagon violen
tly broke from the frost with a crunch, moving from the cottage toward a series of caves. She would alert every house on the way, and within minutes everyone would be afoot with whatever food and clothes they could carry.

Gianavel ran back inside the cottage and emerged in seconds carrying three extra matchlock rifles with a bag of musket balls and two horns of powder. He heard the alarms of nearby bells, and then he ran deep into the orchard, where he came upon six friends—men he had known since his youth—pruning an orchard.

Turning toward him, one man with a greasy black beard cast aside his ax, understanding instantly. He strode forward as Gianavel tossed him a musket, and then the rest gathered.

"They're coming across the pass," Gianavel spoke quickly and passed out musket balls. "Does anyone have a rifle?"

Heads were jerked, no, no, though the big bearded man reached behind himself to the wagon and a sword—a broadsword of two hundred years' antiquity—rasped from beneath the straw. He lifted a hatchet and slid the handle into his belt.

"Bertino stands beside you," he rumbled.

Gianavel smiled, turned. "Follow me!"

Though they were all in their forties
, the men kept apace of him easily enough as they traversed the six-mile run to the lowest section of the trail that descended from the path. And when they arrived, the sun was starkly high in the blue cobalt dome of sky. Gianavel estimated that they had mere minutes before the army was upon them. He laid his rifle upon the ground as he knelt—the others followed his movements, breathing heavily, wordless, staring close.

Gianavel drew two lines upon the ground that spread into a wide funnel. "This is where the pass narrows before it enters the valley. We'll station ourselves on both sides of the ridge, and when they're direc
tly under us, we open fire."

"You know we are outnumbered," Bertino rumbled.

"Yes. But they don't know that."

All nodded.

"Listen closely," Gianavel spoke sharply. "Don't shoot for the soldiers—to kill a soldier means nothing! Shoot for the captain, the lieutenants, and sergeants! Shoot once, then move, and shoot again! Don't shoot twice from the same place! And don't let them see you move! If they see us moving, they'll know our number!"

Bertino stared down. "Strike them with confusion and fear."

Raising his face, Gianavel continued, "Yes! We must make them think we're a hundred! Shoot for the officers, move, and shoot again! And use solid cover—rocks and trees! They don't have to see you to shoot you!"

Bertino lifted his rifle without invitation. He whipped out his knife and severed the wick, twisting it quickly with his fingers to loosen the powder. Now it would light with the faintest spark, but he didn't seem settled by the odds. "This is an old weapon," he rumbled, "but good enough."

Gianavel passed out the flintlock pistols and spread a handful of musket balls on the ground where he'd drawn the trail. "Brothers, if we fail to turn them, you know what they'll do. The great massacre of twenty years ago will be repeated! They will slaughter our children! No one will live!"

Dark eyes of men inured to suffering gave no surprise.

Gianavel stood and pointed to three of them. "Go with Bertino to the west ridge of the trail! Stay inside the trees! When I fire, all of you open fire."

"If they retreat?" Bertino questioned.

Gianavel glared. "Don't let them escape!"

"Why?"

"Because they'll be back!" Gianavel gasped, then calmed for a moment. "Once blood is drawn, there can be no mercy. Mercy is what you show before the battle begins. In battle there is no such thing as right moves or wrong moves. There are only good moves and bad moves. Good moves kill the enemy. Bad moves get you killed. Fight like the bear defending her cubs—no questions, no mercy." Gianavel bowed his head, grimaced. "May the Lord judge me if I am wrong!"

"We'll be judged together!" Bertino declared and turned to the three. "Come!"

They trotted up the slope, rifles swinging rhythmically in their hands, and Gianavel loped toward the east, his breath already hard and fast, his body preparing for what it had prepared for all his life.

* * *

Chapter 3

Gianavel dropped to the ground beside a huge oak tree that spread a late penumbra of night through the forest. He was already charging his musket as they arrived behind him breathless.

"Remember," he whispered, listening for any sound of the approaching force, "shoot for the officers, then move and shoot again. Keep shooting! Keep moving! But don't let them see you move! If they retreat, follow them and hit as many as you can!"

"What if they break into the valley?"

"If they break through us, then let them spread out and follow them into the orchard! But don't be seen!" Gianavel studied their faces; some were following, some not. "Just do what I do!"

The ridge was thickly wooded and hid them easily, offering an abundance of solid cover against counterattacks.

Gianavel rechecked the plate to make sure none of the powder had spilled—a common fault of flintlocks—but very little was lost. As he leaned over the rifle, he wondered what it was that he was fighting for. Wondered if Angela and the children had reached the safely of the caves. Wondered if
he had missed a secondary approach of the enemy, if the rest of the valley had been alarmed, if they had enough weapons to defy the attackers, and what might happen if they failed.

But even as he wondered, he knew it was too late to doubt. He had to concentrate on the fight at hand. He heard the faint, distant clink of a canteen, bowed his head in prayer for so few against so many. He could only hope that it was enough.

And as he prayed, he was grateful that he was stronger than he had been in his youth. He was aware of the strange but very real sixth sense that often warns a man of unseen and hidden dangers. He had trained to hone the edge of his greatest strengths—his mental alertness and pure physical strength, skill, and endurance—because he knew that something so basic could often decide life or death.

Now he was stronger than he had been in his youth. He was almost as fast, though age had indeed claimed a step, but experience compensated for its loss. Nor did he strike with the hectic energy of youth. Rather, he struck direct and with a sense of calm purpose that he'd never possessed in his youth.

Clink
...

Frowning, Gianavel turned his head.

Mario scowled as he stepped over the pedestal-slab trail that led down toward Rora. To maintain balance he was forced to lean back, jamming his toes deeply into the hard points of his boots. His legs visibly trembled at the strain.

"Curse this!" he rasped.
"These Waldenses aren't worth the trouble!" He looked to the stoic man alongside him. "Sergeant Major! How much farther do these fools live?"

"A half-league, My Lord," was the answer, and the red-bearded man pointed to where a long, level dirt trail bordered an orchard. "Their homes are not far beyond that field."

Mario grunted as he moved his canteen farther back around his hip. His rifle strap was cutting a deep line in his shoulder, and he kept moving it to another worn position. His anger projected a heated vehemence as he shouted, "Kill the children first so their mothers and fathers can watch! Then rape the women, take all you come near, and savor the pleasure of spilling heretic blood!"

A chorus of joyous agreement flooded the ravine, and Mario shifted the rifle strap again. He turned to ask the sergeant major another question, and it took Mario a moment to understand that the paint-red splattered across the officer's head looked like
...

Blood
!

The sergeant turned in a slow, light pir
ouette, eyes glassy, brains protruding through a ragged hole in his head over white fragments of skull dangling on tethers of red flesh, and fell to his face.

A plume of smoke rose from the ridge as the report of a rifle boomed in the canyon, and then Mario saw the hillsides erupt all around him with thunder and smoke. He staggered back, then forward, turning, shouting, screaming as chaos erupted around him.

***

Gianavel had heard the name and identified the commander in chief— Captain Mario.

You're next
—

Almost instantly Gianavel found another tree. He quie
tly raised aim at Mario who had stupidly drawn his sword and, even more stupidly, was bellowing commands.

Even as Gianavel pulled the trigger, the standard-bearer stumbled into the path of the bullet, and the captain was saved by the unintended sacrifice. Gianavel's shot hit the man dead center of the spine, and he fell forward, knocking the captain back across a boulder as the soldiers fell frantically into columns, aiming at either ridge.

Gianavel twisted behind a tree as they fired—a single thunderous discharge of white that hit the hillside, but only the hillside, in a voluminous rain of lead.

Almost before the sound struck the leaves about him, Gianavel moved again, keeping high on the trail for swiftness. When he reached his third shooting position, he saw that the column had reloaded and leveled once more. The second enfilade ripped through the foliage and bored into trees as Gianavel twisted back and reloaded.

Gianavel fired in the heartbeat to kill another sergeant, and then he moved again, listening to know where each of his men was firing from the slopes, knowing exactly where they were inflicting damage. He positioned himself to hit what they were missing. Gianavel smiled, for they were doing exactly as he had instructed them, hitting and moving, hitting and moving, and it was having a cumulative effect.

With four commanders struck down already, the ravine erupted in chaos. Gianavel saw no sergeants standing, only one lieutenant. The standard-bearer was also down, leaving no one to coordinate the musketeers who were leaving large holes in their firing pattern. A few men with crossbows were also firing bolts blindly into the thick skew of leprous-white boulders that littered the walls, and the firing continued from Bertino and his men.

Every one of the Waldenses was an accomplished marksman, taught by their fathers at a young age because both farming and hunting were skills that every man needed to know in order to survive. And now they were using those patiently taught hunting skills to save their lives in another way.

The first mistake of Captain Mario was that his men were so thickly crushed into the narrow trail that marksmanship wasn't vitally necessary to hit them. And, often enough, a single shot dropped more than one man. Although there were at least five hundred soldiers in the half-regiment, five fell every fifteen seconds as the defenders of Rora moved like lightning up and down the slope, always firing and moving, only to fire and move again.

Knowing that the others were doing the heaviest damage, Gianavel attempted to inflict the most effective strikes by taking that extra second to discern whoever seemed to be bellowing orders and then drop him from sight. He claimed twelve men with thirteen shots before he saw Captain Mario once more.

Covered with blood, but not his own, Mario broke from the wrecked formation waving his sword wildly above his head. His eyes were feverish and unfocused, and his steps were off balance as he ran through the broken formation toward the rear. Only by chance did his words carry above the howls and screams of the wounded.

"All is lost! Save yourselves!"

Rifles were cast aside like kindling as soldiers spun as one and charged back down the trail, heedlessly crushing the wounded and climbing, climbing to escape the death raining down upon them without mercy from the ridge. Like men freed at last from a cavern where some hellish plague had been melting flesh from the bones of the living, the untouched fled the bat
tle they had so earnestly sought. Blindly, they cast off whatever weapons they had borne to facilitate escape from these demons that fired on them from the shadows.

The cry echoed throughout the valley everywhere and at once.

Retreat
!

But Gianavel had no intention of letting them
retreat. They had brought this fight to him on their terms—terms they considered well enough when they thought they would be slaughtering defenseless victims with no fear for their own lives.

No, that would not stand.

Gianavel would finish it on his terms.

Followed by his men, the Captain of Rora raced along the slope, firing again and again to drop ten more before the chaotic flight from the unexpected ambush reached the first switchback. And to the very last, at the farthest limit of what the rifle could reach, Gianavel dropped his final man, using elevation to throw the musket ball in the high arch of a rainbow, before the panicked soldiers were frantically gone.

When it was over, the air was thick with gunpowder, and the barrels of their weapons were hot to the touch. Gianavel looked down through the ravine to see the wounded writhing on the trampled frost, howling and pleading and screaming in agony and fear. He raised his face to see Bertino step from hiding on the distant slope, the stock of the matchlock hard against his shoulder.

Bertino looked at the wounded. At Gianavel.

Frowning, Gianavel stared across the wounded. Rora had no prison to hold them. To take them into the village would occupy half the population with tending the wounded, and their people and resources were already too few.

This was the fundamental truth of men who terrorized men: They considered mercy and compassion to be weaknesses of their victims until
they themselves were met with terror and stopped cold. Then they begged for mercy, hoping the compassion of their intended victims would be their salvation.

Stoically, sadly, Gianavel drew his sword. He turned to those around him, head bent, and they repeated the movement.
They stood sword in hand, waiting for the command. Gianavel's voice was cold and controlled and tragic.

"Be merciful
... Do it quick."

***

Gaping, Pianessa stared in silence at Captain Mario's ravaged figure. Bloodied and bruised, his face swollen from contusions, the captain held his cap with uncharacteristic humility as the marquis had absorbed the details of the battle. It took Pianessa a long time to decide upon a suitable reply, which sounded not so suitable when spoken.

"Fifty?" he asked. "They killed fifty of my men?"

Mario nodded tightly.

Pianessa was silent, then, "And they wounded forty more?" For some reason he was compelled to repeat it: "They killed fifty and wounded forty more?"

Mario held out his hands. "It was an ambush!"

"How many were there?"

"Perhaps ... a hundred."

"
A hundred
!''

Mario gazed about as if someone would help him, but no one came forward. His voice was tentative. "They must have hired mercenaries."

"Mercenaries!" Pianessa scoffed, and jerked back angrily. "And what would they pay them with? Sheep?" He stared away and fell to brooding, gazing at nothing. "No, not mercenaries ... no ... what did those peasants call this man?"

A second Inquisitor now accompanied Incomel—a heavyset man whose gray robe stretched taunt over his expansive gut. He was totally bald and also seemed to have no hair on his hands or face or eyebrows, as if he was completely shaved or totally hairless from some unnatural means. It was certainly a strange appearance—even disturbing.

Mario searched the queer, dolphin-like image for a long moment before looking again at the marquis.

Pianessa continued to gaze into shadows with a peculiar fixation. He did not seem as confused; he was merely astounded. He mused deliberately, "I killed over fifteen thousand of these peasants without losing a single man. And this man has already cost me fifty
..."

Incomel spoke, "Should I inform the Duke of Savoy of your casualties?"

Pianessa s eyes were like blackened coals, smoldering with a heat beyond white. The threat of violence burned there, deeply fed and closely banked. "Thank you, Inquisitor, but I shall inform Savoy with what he needs to know.... Do you understand me?"

Incomel bowed. "Of course."

Now that the Inquisitor had spoken, Mario focused on him openly. "Fifty pieces of gold was promised ..."

Incomel laughed. "That was for an attack, Captain, not a retreat."

Mario stared bitterly.

A guard appeared in the distant portal of the hall as Pianessa continued to contemplate. Then the marquis finally recognized the shadow looming across the hall and raised his head.

"Yes?"

The guard spoke loudly enough for the Inquisitors to hear: "Ambassadors from Rora, My Lord! They humbly but urgently request your attention!"

The Inquisitors moved gracefully toward a corridor and exited the hall—no words, no gestures, no questions. Pianessa stared after them until they were gone, then made a slashing gesture for Mario to follow. When he was utterly alone upon his throne, he nodded to the guard.

In seconds two men stood before the massive black marble throne, and Pianessa stared over them. He seemed surprised at their dust-cloaked condition and weapons and scowled as they knelt.

The one who appeared to be a pastor spoke first. "My Lord Marquis de Pianessa, I am Descombie, and this is Sergeant Michael Bertino. We come as peaceful ambassadors for the valley of Rora, one of Your Lordship s territories."