He stepped forward, feeling the heavy wood under his feet and then, instinctively, hesitated. There was a sudden creaking of winches and with several times the speed with which it had been lowered, the drawbridge swept up as cannons boomed out from the ramparts.
Cesare's hesitation gave him the seconds to fling himself clear; another step or two and he'd have been too far advanced on the bridge to do anything but be swept forward into the citadel's gate where the Countess and her men were waiting to receive him.
He landed heavily on the side of the moat, grasping at strong plants to prevent himself from slipping into the deep, muddy water. His advance guard were with him immediately under the very walls of the stronghold to help him clear and, under the orders of his lieutenants, the Borgian cannons and falconets were replying, like thunder drowning the roar of a rapids.
“Are you hurt, Sire?”
He pulled himself up and, with heavy vengeance vowed in his heart, waved aside his men's concern.
“She shall be paid for this treachery,” he said.
For the rest of that day and well into the next, Cesare's cannons cracked and thundered and the citadel shook and lost pieces of its scarred old stone. The recruited citizens stood eagerly by with great cartloads of faggots, waiting for the order which inevitably grew nearer.
They were firmly for Cesare Borgia, now. Talk had raced through the town of his offer to parley?an offer to parley when he had the strength to crush all resistance almost before it had begun. And hadn't she dealt with that generous offer in just the way one would expect from such a mean-hearted tyrant? And hadn't Cesare Borgia given out the usual order to his troops that no woman of Forli was to be molested under pain of death? And weren't their two most respected councillors languishing in the citadel, probably being tortured even now if they hadn't been killed already? There was hardly a man in Forli who would not have risked his life for Cesare and for revenge on the oppressor of his life's years.
The Borgian cannons, concentrating on forming a breach, soon had dangerous cracks zigzagging down the walls of the citadel and the citizens stroked their bundles of faggots as if they were lovers, waiting and ready for the order.
The obvious approach of the end seemed to fire Caterina Sforza-Riario with madness. As the walls began to crack under the furious onslaught of the attackers' cannons, she had both the elders of the council brought out and hanged from the ramparts before the eyes of their fellow citizens. Their bodies were left swinging over the breach which was rapidly forming in the walls, while cries of hatred and revenge burst from the lips of the townsfolk gathered in a vast mass behind the lines of Cesare's ready troops and the busy cannons.
Cesare watched the gap in the walls with a grim smile. He saw the vain attempt of the defenders to fill it in with earth and stones, watched them scatter or be blown to pieces as his cannons continued a relentless punishment.
“Tell the citizens to move forward with their faggots,” he ordered. “Another dead hit and the time is with us.”
The carts, swaying and creaking, with the Borgian army advancing slowly just behind, moved slowly, ominously, toward the moat, while the cannons redoubled their fire to keep the defenders at bay.
The bodies of the two hanged councillors had fallen and were lost somewhere under the debris.
“They shall be well revenged,” Cesare muttered to one of his lieutenants. “This misguided woman shall learn that it is not for her to meddle in men's affairs and oppose the foremost army in Italy.”
The gap in the wall had broadened and the defenders had given up attempts to seal it as more and more sections were swept away under the unceasing bombardment. They could be seen, beyond, forming a wall of falconets ready to hotly receive the invading forces. There was activity too on the ramparts, where the smaller, more wieldy guns were being swiveled in an effort to cover the impending attack.
The citizen army moved like an exodus across the intervening space, slowly covering it, approaching like death, the grim defenders of Forli's suicidal stronghold.
Soon they had reached the broad, murky expanse of the moat and although some carts had been overturned by the guns on the ramparts and some of the citizens floated facedown in the waters, they set quickly and determinedly to work, piling both carts and faggots into the depths.
Cesare had ridden forward to be in the vanguard of his forces, just behind the first spearhead which would take the brunt of the defensive counterattack. The cannons, which had moved nearer, played over the heads of the bridge-builders, aiming with greater and greater accuracy, shot after shot through the gap in the wall beyond which the ranks of the defenders were trying not to break but to organize and reorganize as death took its toll of their lines.
Steadily the rough bridge forged across the moat. The citizens, volunteers to a man, worked with vigor and courage. Cesare's men stood waiting for the word to storm over the light, rocky pathway which was being made and hurl themselves through the waning fire of the defense whose ranks and guns they could clearly see in some confusion through the broadening gap.
Almost before the bridge was completed, Cesare gave the command for which his men had been waiting. The first lines of the attack had to jump the last four feet to the debris of the citadel's wall. They were met with a scattered fire from within and rocks and missiles from above, but forged on and in, pressed forward by those from behind until they were all over the courtyard and spouting up into the ramparts.
The faggot bridge was finished. The army pounded over, the citizens seized the arms of the dead to fight against their Countess, Cesare crossed and joined in the hand-to-hand fighting in which the weight of his men's numbers was a crushing advantage.
So quickly had the invasion of the citadel come that the defenders had had no time to withdraw across the smaller inner moat and into the tower where munitions and provisions were stored. Attack and defense together in a great, struggling mob, swept over that small moat, preceded by a few paces by the Countess and her personal guard.
“The tower, the tower!” Cesare roared, seeing the danger. Locked in there they'd be able to hold out for a week or two.
Behind him came his fresh body of men through the gap. Nobody to engage them. They swept in his wake over the inner moat, through the struggling dogfights and up into the tower.
The fighting was short and bloodcurdling. One by one, giving their lives with a devotion which flamed an aura of death around them, the Countess' guard fell until only she was left, knocked to the stone floor, a point of steel at her throat and one of Cesare's Swiss mercenaries grinning with lustful delight over her prostrate body.
CHAPTER 7
A great wood fire had been made in the dungeons. Its red and sparkling heat was fighting to keep the chill of the thick, stone walls at bay. Along one wall a couch had been placed on which Cesare was lying eating the meat from a leg of chicken. On mats on the floor his four or five principal lieutenants were quaffing wine, filling their glasses from a barrel which had been brought from the stores, and themselves devouring pieces of fowl which they were roasting on spits over the fire.
“When are we going to get up this beauty, Sire,” one of them asked with a slight slur to his speech as he rose and crossed the dungeon. Cesare followed him with his eyes and his glance took in the defenseless form of the proud Countess. She was naked, stripped of all her austere covering. She was stretched out on the great wheel of a rack to one side of the gloomy, shadowed room.
“When I've finished with her,” he said, swigging a draught of wine and passing his glass to one of the men for a refill.
“Seems such a pity to keep her waiting,” the man replied. “She obviously loves us.”