Chapter 38: Charge Through Wheat and Men

Vito was the one to break the impasse.

His heels were on the horse’s flanks while the command came out short, built to carry across a whole rank of soldiers at once.

"Avanti!"

The wedge lurched forward as one mass, twenty horses together, leather creaking beneath them and iron shoes striking a rhythm against packed earth and the old, worn stone beneath it.

Vito felt the whole charge climb through his thighs.

The horse under him pushed itself eagerly, like it had been finally given permission to remember what its legs were for.

There was no room in the square for a proper gallop. Forty strides, perhaps, separated the point of the wedge from the crowd’s front rank. The horses had only just reached a hard, driving trot when the ground between them ran out.

That was plenty.

The hooves struck the pavement, and iron met ancient marble with a bright spit of sparks.

The farmers at the front began to lose their courage before the wedge had covered half the distance. Some boys dropped their tools and ran for the nearest doorway.

That was the invitation the rest had apparently been waiting for.

More fled after them, then five or six together, and suddenly the crowd was coming apart, villagers scattering toward the buildings around the square like water that had discovered cracks in a wall.

The men who remained had spent the last hour persuading themselves to be brave. Now they were learning that courage and standing against a cavalry charge were two entirely different things to carry inside one body.

The bishop’s voice cut through the uproar in short, hard bursts.

<anno data-annotation-id="fda25017-8972-7e7e-68c9-5d620a0416ef" data-title=""Μείνετε! Μείνετε στη θέση σας!"">"Μείνετε! Μείνετε στη θέση σας!"¹</anno>

The ones who obeyed locked themselves shoulder to shoulder, farm tools raised in front of them.

The wedge hit them at full force.

Horses struck men square in the chest and drove them backward into the press behind them, well away from pounding hooves. Riders hauled hard on the reins whenever an animal threatened to trample someone underfoot, because nobody had any particular wish to kill a man simply because he had chosen a very inconvenient place to stand.

The scabbards came down instead of drawn steel, while pitchforks and hoes clanged against the mail, their blades and tines unable to cut through it.

The whole front of the square became a messy, noisy melee. The riders and villagers pushed and shoved for space, every horse trying to make its own path through a crowd too thick to ride straight through.

One farmer stumbled backward over a half-buried column drum and went down hard, having been defeated by ancient masonry before any soldier had managed to hit him.

"Porca puttana, hold still, you damned animal!"

Some soldier wrestled his frightened horse with one hand while swinging the sheathed length of his sword with the other. He managed to catch a farmer across the shoulder hard enough to put him down without drawing blood.

"What is even happening?!"

"I TIRE of WINE.... I THIRST FOR BLOOOOOOOD!"

"Madonna, coglione! Are you trying to make a massacre out of a fucking riot?"

Vito took it all in at a glance.

Several farmers already sprawled along his wedge, knocked down by sheathed steel, bad footing, or horses with more enthusiasm than sense. His men were doing exactly what he had told them, which was reassuring in theory and considerably less reassuring in practice.

Their horses were rearing and sidestepping beneath them, riders trying to control animals that wanted to bolt while also trying to push through men they could not safely strike. Nobody had room to swing properly nor room to stop.

And, as usual, everybody seemed to attempt both at once.

Two men closed on him during the messy struggle.

His own sword stayed sheathed, just as promised, but that did not mean it was useless. Vito brought it up in both hands and held it like a quarterstaff.

The first man came at him lean and furious, swinging a hoe two-handed at the horse’s legs, apparently expecting the animal to stand there and accept it.

The horse shied sideways, dragging Vito with it, and the hoe swept through empty space. Vito turned with the movement, brought the sheathed sword down, and caught the man across the shoulder with it.

The blow spun the farmer halfway off his feet. The hoe clattered across the stone, and its owner followed it down in a heap, dazed and muttering curses while he blinked up at a sky he had not expected to be admiring from the ground.

"Bella mira, amico. At this rate, you’ll be harvesting me by winter."

There wasn’t much time to be amused, though, as one more farmer came in low with a pitchfork, ready to strike at the horse’s flank.

The animal shied away, so the farmer changed his mind and attempted to strike at Vito instead, driving for his leg with both hands locked around the shaft.

Vito twisted hard in the saddle.

The tines caught him high in the thigh instead of low across the belly, but even there they hit hard enough to sting with pain.

He slammed the scabbard down across the man’s knuckles to force him to drop the pitchfork.

Then he followed it with a boot to the chest, and the farmer went sprawling backward across the stone, hands clutching uselessly at the place where the kick had landed.

"You nearly had me, amico. I’ll have to give you that much."

Vito wheeled the horse around and scanned the square.

There was nothing left of the neat wedge he had started with. His men were scattered through the crowd, each caught up in a dozen separate and thoroughly ugly little fights, and he had no time to watch any of them properly.

To his right, a soldier finally got his spooked mare under control.

To his left, another went down hard beneath three farmers at once, only for two more men to drive them back with sheathed swords.

The scabbards cracked against arms, horses shoved sideways, soldiers shouted and farmers cried in pain.

The whole square had become the sort of place where a man could lose his horse, his teeth, and possibly his dignity before dawn.

Then Vito caught a convenient fact.

The way to the cathedral had parted open in the confusion, some narrow passage that cut through the worst of the meele, straight to the bishop.

Vito rode into the passage.

He cut across at a hard trot, the farmers breaking before the horse as bodies stumbled and twisted aside, some thrown into those behind them, all of them desperate to stay out from under its hooves.

Behind him, the square remained a great roar of men and horses, but the cathedral steps were ahead, worn smooth by years of negligence.

The bishop remained in his position.

He stood beneath the cross with his thick shoulders squared, one sleeve of his robes torn for some unknown reason.

Vito charged forward.

They were close enough now that, for the first time, he could see the bishop’s eyes clearly. They were dark, furious, and completely without fear.

The staff rose in both of his hands, ready for a blow that bore all the holy justice he’d been preaching since the Latins arrived.

Vito’s sheathed sword snapped to meet it.

<annotations style="display: none;">“Stay! Stay where you are!”</annotations>