The Master of Verona

It was too late for the Paduans to stop. Through the screams of both men and mounts Pietro heard the snaps as the horses on the left broke their front legs. They pitched forward, throwing their riders headfirst into the ground. Held in the saddle by his stirrups, one rider's neck was broken as his own horse toppled end over end. The other Paduan was thrown clear, landing in an ignominious heap of broken bones.

Had the Scaliger not waited to the very last moment, the two approaching horses would have leapt the living hurdle with ease. As it was, he left it almost too late. Using the hitched leg under him he barely had time to propel him sideways off the falling beast. He rolled shoulder over shoulder clear of the massacre.

The three remaining attackers rode past, hardly understanding what had happened. Before they could come to grips, the defenders were upon them and they were cut to pieces. Pietro stunned one Paduan with the flat of his blade alongside his helmet, setting him up to be killed by Antony.

Cangrande, meantime, was on foot, facing down an oncoming rider. He gripped his mace with one hand on either end and blocked the downward blow. He twisted and jabbed back with the head of the mace in a move Pietro recognized from one of his old fightbooks. It was called the Murder Stroke, and had Cangrande been holding a sword the man would have been sliced open. Instead, the mace pulped his ribs. Cangrande hauled the man's carcass out of the saddle, mounted, and spurred the battle on.

"Dear Christ," breathed Pietro. "He is the Greyhound."

Behind the charge, under the arch of the Porte San Pietro, a trampled pile of bodies shifted. Some were dead, some dying. All but one bled. In the midst of the carnage Asdente feigned injury, biding his time. When his men had been cut down in their flight he'd used their fallen bodies to protect himself. Now he lay among them, on the city side of the bridge, watching the backs of the defenders as they rode into the fleeing Paduans. He watched, waiting for his chance. His withered, scarred, and twisted face was slack in a picture of death, but his eyes were vivid, his mind hard at work. Impossibly, Cangrande had slipped past the ambush at the north gates. But he won't escape now

.

Asdente required a horse. There. An obliging latecomer to the fray approached, oblivious to the bodies of dead Flemings whose condotierre would never be paid. Asdente had lost his sword in the scrum but there was an obliging morning star in a nearby limp hand. Covertly he grasped it. It had a good, long chain attaching the spiked ball to the wooden handle.

Timing was important, and the Toothless Master knew his senses were blunted with drink. He needed a trick. He slowly reached his left hand out and grasped a part of his plunder, a fine linen tablecloth now covered in blood.

The rider was almost under the arch. Asdente leapt up and threw the cloth, which snagged on the man's helmet, momentarily blinding him. In that moment Asdente hit him full in the chest with the heavy spiked ball. The rider hit the ground with a wet smack. Asdente swung the ball again, and again, pulping the man's helmet and the head within. The linen covered the knight's dented face like a shroud, glued by gore.

The Toothless Master grinned. "That's one." Stepping into the dead man's stirrups, Asdente raised the square shield of the fallen rider. It would be his passport — no one would look too closely at a man bearing a Vicentine shield.

He could escape easily now. But escape was not his plan. He galloped over the bridge, his horse leaping over the prone figures of men and beasts that littered it. He carried the dripping morning star low on his right side, ready to bring it down in a deadly arc over his head to smash a skull.

The skull of a Dog.

Numbers no longer mattered. The cavalieri spread themselves out to chase the fleeing Paduans. The Vicentines had what all soldiers on horseback throughout history longed for most — a scattered army on open ground.

Mariotto and Antony rode together, following Antonio Nogarola in pursuit of at least a hundred men running down the road to Quartesolo. Some turned to fight. Most fled. Mariotto considered it ungentlemanly to hack into a man whose back was turned. Instead he used the flat of his sword to club them down. Antony used a stolen mace caked with Flemish blood to crack shoulders and skulls. Most would live, though if their bones would ever knit from those blows Mariotto wouldn't care to say.