The Hill of Venus
hungered he now despised. Cursed with perversities, baffled and
mocked, the eternal trivialities of life made the soul sink within
him. Not all are mild earth, to be smitten and make no moan. There are
sea spirits that lash and foam, fire spirits that leap and burn,--was
he to be cursed because he was born with a soul of fire?
They were now in the midst of the great wilderness. On all sides
myriads of trees, interminably pillared; through their tops the wind
sighed and pined like the soft breath of a sleeping world. Away on
every hand stretched oblivious vistas, black under multitudinous green
spires.
The interminable trees seemed to vex the duke's spirit, as their
trunks crowded the winding track and seemed to shut in the twain as
with a never ending barrier. And behind them, with the muffled tread
of a phantom army, came the duke's armed array striding through the
night.
"Have you too suffered a wrong at the hands of the Frangipani?"
Francesco at last broke the silence, turning to his companion.
The latter jerked the bridle of his charger so viciously that the
terrified animal reared on its haunches and neighed in protest.
"Man, know you whereof you speak?" the duke snarled, as he came closer
to Francesco. "He has made the one woman the Duke of Spoleto ever
loved--a wanton!"--
They pushed uphill through the solemn shadows of the forest. A sound
like the raging of a wind through a wood came down to them faintly
from afar. It was a sullen sound, deep and mysterious as the hoarse
babel of the sea, smitten through with the shrill scream of trumpets,
like the cry of gulls above a storm. Yet in the aisles of the pine
forest it was still as death.
Then, like a spark struck from flint and steel falling upon tinder, a
red glare blazed out against the background of the night. A horn
blared across the moorlands; the castle bell began to ring, jerkily,
wildly, a bell in terror. Yellow gleams streaked the fretted waters,
and again the trumpet challenged the dark walls, like the cry of a
sea-bird driven by the storm.
The duke and Francesco looked meaningly at each other. The sound
needed no words to christen it; they knew that the Pisans had
attacked. They heard the roar and the cries from the rampart, the
cataractine thunder of a distant battle.
Pushing on more swiftly as the woods thinned, the din grew more
definite, more human, more sinister in detail. It stirred the blood,
challenged the courage, racked conjecture with the infinite chaos it
portended. Victory and despair were trammelled up together in its
sullen roar; life and death seemed to swell it with the wind sound of
their wings. It was stupendous, chaotic, a tempest cry of steel and
passions inflamed.
The duke's face kindled to the sound as he shouted to his men to
gallop on. Yet another furlong, and the spectral trunks dwindled, the
sombre boughs seemed to mingle with the clouds, while gray, indefinite
before them, engulfing the lightnings of heaven, loomed the great
swell of the Tyrrhene, dark and restless under the thunderclouds, that
came nearer and nearer. Ghostly the plains of Torre del Greco
stretched towards the Promontory of Circe, and, solitary and
impregnable, the Castello of Astura rose upon its chalk-cliffs, white
in the lightnings which hissed around its summit.
The duke's men had come up, forming a wide semicircle around the
leaders. At their feet opened a deep ravine, leading into the plain;
half a furlong beyond, although it seemed less than a lance's throw
across, rose the castle of the Frangipani, washed by the waves of the
Tyrrhene. The Pisans had attacked the southern acclivity, and the
defenders, roused from their feast of blood, had poured all their
defences towards the point of attack, leaving the northern slope to
look to itself.
As they rode down the ravine there came from the bottom of the valley
the sharp yelp of a dog. It was instantly answered by a similar bark
from the very top of the castello.
"No two dogs ever had the same voice," the duke turned to Francesco.
"They must be hell-hounds, whom the fiend has trained to one tune. But
what is that yonder? A goat picking its way?"
"A goat walking on its hind legs!"
"Are there horns on its head?"
"No!"--
"Then it is not the Evil One! Forward, my men!"
The pause that preceded the breaking of the storm had been unnaturally
long. Save for the gleam of the lightnings, the waters had grown to an
inky blackness. There came one long moment, when the atmosphere sank
under the weight of a sudden heat. Then the ever increasing thunder
rushed upon the silence with a mighty roar and out of the west, driven
by the hurricane, came a long line of white waves, that rose as they
advanced, till the very Tritons beat their heads and the nymphs
scurried down to greener depths.
And now a sudden streak of fire hissed from the clouds, followed by a
crash as if all the bolts of heaven had been let off at once. From the
ramparts of Astura came cries of alarm, the din of battle, the blaring
of horns, the shouting of commands.
The duke and Francesco had dismounted and were gazing up towards the
storm-swept ramparts. Shrieks and curses rolled down upon them like
the tumbling of a cascade.
Then they began to scale the ledge, the path dwindling to a goat's
highway.
Above them rose a sheer wall on which there appeared not clinging
space for a lizard. The abyss below was ready to welcome them to
perdition if their feet slipped.
After a brief respite they continued, the duke's men scrambling up
behind them, looking like so many ants on the white chalk-cliffs. The
air was hot to suffocation; the storm roared, the thunder bellowed in
deafening echoes through the skies, and the heavens seemed one blazing
cataract of fire, reflected in the throbbing mirror of the sea.
They had reached a seam in the rock, where they paused for a moment to
let their brains rest. There was hardly room for the duke and
Francesco on the ledge, so narrow was the rocky shelf, and the latter
was pushing close against the wall when he was suddenly forced to look
up. He heard the din of the encounter above. The Pisans, having
attacked the Frangipani from the south, were driving them out at the
north. Suddenly two bodies whizzed by him, thrust over the ramparts in
the fierceness of the assault. Another came; he seemed to have jumped
for life, for he kept feet foremost for a distance through the air,
before he began to whirl. These fell clear of the scaling party, and
were impaled on the broken tops of the stunted trees, that bossed the
side of the precipice. One came so near the duke that his flight
downward almost blew him off his narrow perch. His head struck the
ledge, while his body caught in the bushes, hung a moment, then dashed
after its comrades below.
Just then the end of a rope fell dangling by their side, let down from
the ramparts above. The duke tried to grasp it, but it shifted beyond
the gap. Down the rope came a man, then another; they both gained a
foothold on the narrow ledge. No sooner were their feet on it, than
the duke sent them headlong to the bottom. Then grasping the rope
without waiting to see if a third or fourth were coming down, he
shouted to Francesco to follow. Perilous as was the task, it was no
more so than to follow the steep and narrow goat's trail, and in a
brief space of time they swung into a courtyard which was deserted.
Anticipating no attack on this side, the defenders of Astura had
turned their whole attention to the southern slope, where the Pisans
were scaling the walls. The roar of the conflict seemed to grow with
the roar of the hurricane, and, as one by one the duke's men leaped
into the dark square, and the muster was complete, Count Rupert turned
to Francesco.
"I feared lest they might clean out the nest before our arrival," he
said, then, pointing to a distant glare of torches, he gave the word.
They caught the unwary defenders in the rear. No quarter was to be
given; the robber brood of Astura was to be exterminated.
"Conradino!" was the password, and above the taunts and cries of
Frangipani's hirelings it filled the night with its clamor, rode on
the wings of the storm, like the war-cry of a thousand demons.
Notwithstanding the fact that a few of the most daring among the Pisan
admiral's men had scaled the ramparts and, leaping into the
Frangipani's stronghold, had tried to pave a way for those lagging
behind, their companions-in-arms were in dire straits. For those of
Astura poured boiling pitch upon the heads of the attacking party,
hurled rocks of huge dimensions down upon them which crushed into a
mangled mass scores of men, unable to retain the vantage they had
gained under the avalanche of arrows, rocks and fire.
In a moment's time the situation was changed.
Noiselessly as leopards, the duke's men fell upon their rear, raising
their war-cry as they leaped from the shadows. Those on the ramparts,
forced to grapple with the nearer enemy, abandoned their tasks. The
Pisans, profiting by the lull, swarmed over the walls. Taken between
two parties, a deadly hand-to-hand conflict ensued. Above the din and
the roar of the hurricane, of the clashing of arms, above the cries
of the wounded, the death-rattle of the dying, sounded the voice of
the Duke of Spoleto.
"Onward, my men! Kill and slay!"
Side by side the duke and Francesco leaped into the thickest of the
fray, both animated by the same desire to come face to face with the
lords of Astura, spurning a lesser enemy.
For a time they seemed doomed to disappointment. Had the Frangipani
been slain?
The zest of the conflict pointed rather to their directing the
defence. Else their mercenaries would have left Astura to its fate.
Suddenly an unearthly voice startled the combatants.
"Guard, devil, guard!"
There was the upflashing of a sword, and a hoarse challenge frightened
the night.
Giovanni Frangipani saw a furious face glaring dead white from under
the shadow of a shield.
He stopped in his onward rush, blinked at the duke as one gone mad.
"Damnation, what have we here?"
"By the love of God, I have you now!"
"Fool, are you mad?"
The hoarse voice echoed him, the eyes flashed fire.
"Guard, ravisher,--guard!"
"Ten thousand devils! Who are you?"
"Your obedient servant,--the Duke of Spoleto!"
The Frangipani growled like a trapped bear.
He raised his sword, put forward his shield.
"On with you, dog!" he roared. "Join your wanton under the sod!"
"Ha, say you so?" cried the duke, closing in.
Their swords flashed, yelped, twisted in the air. A down cut hewed the
dexter cantrel from the Frangipani's shield. His face with a gashed
cheek glared at the duke from under his upreared arm. So close were
they that blood spattered in the duke's face as the Frangipani blew
the red stream from his mouth and beard.
The duke broke away, wheeled and came again. He lashed home, split the
Frangipani's collar-bone even through the rags of his hauberk. The
Frangipani yelped like a gored hound. Rabid, dazed, he began to make
blind rushes that boded ill for him. The swords began to leap and to
sing, while blinding flashes of lightning followed each other in quick
succession and thunder rolled in deafening echoes through the heavens.
Cut and counter-cut rang through the night, like the cry of axes,
whirled by woodmen's hands.
Suddenly the Frangipani parried an upper cut and stabbed at the duke.
The sword point missed him a hair's breadth. Before he could guard the
duke was upon him like a leopard. Both men smote together, both swords
met with a sound that seemed to shake the rocks. The Frangipani's
blade snapped at the hilt.