Without answering, he stood there brooding, chin in hand, striving to master his bitter vexation.
“If you had heeded me yesterday—” Bellarion was beginning, which was very human, but hardly generous, when Facino roughly cut him short.
“Peace!” he growled. “What is done is done. We have to deal with what we find.” He turned to Stoffel. “We must retreat across the river before Buonterzo thrusts us into it. There is a ford here above Travo at this height of water.”
“That,” ventured Stoffel, “is but to increase our separation from Carmagnola.”
“Don’t I know it?” roared Facino, now thoroughly in a rage with himself and all the world. “Do you suppose I can perceive nothing? Let a messenger ride at once to Carmagnola, ordering him to fall back, and cross below Rivergaro. The river should be fordable just below the islands. Thus it is possible he might be able to rejoin me.”
“It should certainly be possible,” the Swiss agreed, “if Buonterzo pursues us across the ford, intent upon delivering battle whilst the odds are so heavily in his favour.”
“I am counting upon that. We draw him on, refusing battle until Carmagnola is also across and in his rear. Thus we’ll snatch victory from defeat.”
“But if he doesn’t follow?” quoth Bellarion. And again, in spite of what had happened, Facino frowned his haughty impatience of this fledgling’s presumption. Unintimidated, Bellarion went on: “If you were in Buonterzo’s place, would you follow, when, by remaining on this bank and marching down the valley, you might keep the two enemy battles apart so as to engage each at your convenience?”
“If Buonterzo were to do that, I should recross, and he would then have me upon his rear. After all, if his position has advantages, it has also disadvantages. However he turn he will be between two forces.”
“Which is no disadvantage to him unless the two can operate simultaneously, and this he can prevent once you have crossed the river by leaving a force to watch you and dispute your passage should you attempt to return. And for that a small force will suffice. With a hundred well-posted arbalesters I could hold that ford for a day against an enemy.”
“You could?” Facino almost laughed.
“I could, and I will if the plan commends itself to you.”
“What plan?”
It was a plan that had occurred to Bellarion even as they argued, inspired by the very arguments they had used. He had been conning the ground beyond the water, a line of shallow hills, with a grey limestone bluff crowned by a dense wood of lofty elms commanding the ford itself.
“Buonterzo should be drawn to pursue you across the river, which might easily happen if you cross in full sight of his forces and with all the appearance of disorder. An army in flight is an almost irresistible lure to an overwhelming force. It was thus that Duke William of Normandy ensured his own ultimate victory at Senlac. The slopes across the water offer no difficulty to a pursuer, and the prospect of bringing you to an engagement before Carmagnola can rejoin you should prove too seductive. It should even render Buonterzo obstinate when he finds his passage disputed. And for this, as I have said, a hundred arbalesters will suffice. In the end he must either force a passage, or decide to abandon the attempt and go instead against Carmagnola first. But before either happens, if you act promptly, you may have rejoined Carmagnola by crossing to him at Rivergaro, and then come round the hills upon Buonterzo’s rear, thus turning the tables upon him. Whether he is still here, attempting to cross, or whether he is marching off down the valley, he will be equally at your mercy if you are swift. And I will undertake to hold him until sunset with a hundred crossbowmen.”
Overwhelmed with amazement by that lucid exposition of a masterly plan, Facino stood and stared at him in silence. Gravely, at last, he asked him: “And if you fail?”
“I shall still have held him long enough to enable you to extricate yourself from the trap in which you are now caught.”
Facino’s bewildered glance sought the dark, comely face of Stoffel. He smiled grimly. “Am I a fool, Stoffel, that a boy should instruct me in the art by which I have lived? And would you trust a hundred of your Swiss to this same boy?”
“With confidence.”
But still Facino hesitated. “You realise, Bellarion, that if the passage is forced before I arrive, it will go very hard with you?”
Bellarion shrugged in silence. Facino thought he was not understood.
“Such an action as you propose will entail great slaughter, perhaps. Buonterzo will be impatient of that, and he may terribly avenge it.”
Bellarion smiled. “He will have to cross first, and meanwhile I shall count upon his impatience and vindictiveness to hold him here when he should be elsewhere.”
VIII
The Battle of Travo
The morning sunlight falling across the valley flashed on the arms of Buonterzo’s vanguard, on the heights, even as Facino’s rearguard went splashing through the ford, which at its deepest did not come above the bellies of the horses or the breasts of Bellarion’s hundred Swiss, who, with arbalests above their heads, to keep the cords dry, were the last to cross.
From his eyrie Buonterzo saw the main body of Facino’s army straggling in disorder over the shallow hill beyond the water, and, persuaded that he had to deal with a rabble disorganized by fear, he gave the order to pursue.
A squadron of horse came zigzagging down the hillside at speed, whilst a considerable body of infantry dropped more directly.
The last stragglers of the fugitive army had vanished from view when that cavalry gained the ford and
