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.”
A gust of laughter greeted his words.
The eyes of the Countess were still able to give a feeble reflection of their earlier glitter although by now she was hurt and exhausted and thoroughly humiliated.
Cesare looked at her as his strong teeth pulled at the chicken flesh. Would any of her subordinates have expected quite such a physical beauty? When she lashed them with her tongue would they have pictured those glossy, firm breasts, high and perky with their small impudent nipples? When she scowled and barked an order would they have thought of that tight waist with its rather sinewy, muscular stomach? When she ordered men to the dungeons and had them hanged from battlements would they have thought of those soft, feminine buttocks, that bottom which asked for caresses? When she rode through the town to order a massacre of reprisal, supervising its execution, would they have considered those warm thighs and those fleshy hips with the moss of pale hair and the heavy overlap of flesh between those white, tapering columns? She was really a beauty. She could have taken her place in an elegant court as one of its prime beauties at any time, except that her attitude had decided that lines of severity were to be drawn between her brows, that her mouth was to be hardened into grimness and her eyes, which could blaze and spark like any insulted courtesan's, should grow to contain the disgust for her fellow creatures which gleamed constantly in them.
They had watched her writhe on the rack? and it had to be admitted she had borne her punishment like a martyr. They had humiliated her, her eyes wide with horror had revealed just how much, with their mauling of her breasts and the supple contours of her naked body. But Cesare had reserved her principal humiliation for himself. He had yet personally to repay her for the near loss of his life on the drawbridge and also he was impressed with her looks and hauteur.
He grinned as his lieutenant took the leg of fowl he was munching and with a quick movement thrust it up between her straddled thighs into her cunt. The Countess gasped and swore. The lips of her vagina opened and then closed over the knobby, half-chewed meat.
“You wouldn't think a chicken would have enough guts to do that to a Countess,” his lieutenant jested, and there were fresh guffaws from the spectators. The man moved the fleshy bone around in her for a few seconds and then, tiring of the game?or perhaps being made too hot by it?withdrew the leg and flung it across to a corner of the room.
“Well seasoned,” called another. “Why didn't you eat it.”
“By the look of her Ladyship it might have poisoned me.”
Cesare swung himself off the couch and crossed to the rack. He stared at the inert body spread-eagled across it. The Countess glared back at him. All she wanted was a dagger, her eyes seemed to say, and he'd regret these humiliating tortures and liberties to which he'd subjected her.
Cesare lowered his eyes over her body. He could see the small blue veins on her white breasts and on the taut flesh where her thighs ran into her hips. He reached out his hand and stroked it softly over her breast, gently savoring the butteriness of the firm skin beneath his fingers. He could feel his lust rising in confined warmth at his loins. His eyes glittered and he looked up at hers again and saw something like fear in them for the first time.
“Leave us,” he commanded.
His men ceased their jesting immediately and began to gather their belongings prior to departure.
“Later, perhaps, we too may pay her out for her treachery to you, Sire,” murmured his principal lieutenant as they passed the rack on their way to the steep stone steps that led up the wall to the dungeon exit.
