The Storm by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2019-12-25T23:00:00+00:00

MELROSE, panting, struggling, nevertheless still whispered his prayer, “Almighty God, I do not ask for the power to swing a sword. Let me only have the strength to draw a dagger and use it. A single blow—one gesture of glory is all that I ask for—one drop out of the infinite sea of Your mercy!”

They had, in fact, reached the highest level of the cellar, and before them there was a straight way towards the outer door; but Melrose was almost too exhausted by pain and the frightful effort of moving his witless limbs to stand erect any longer. Both he and Tizzo reeled from side to side as they moved down the hallway.

And still the prayer, in a new form, was issuing from the lips of Melrose. “Glorious God, I ask not to strike with any weapon, but with my bare hands let me grasp one villain by the throat before the steel is struck into me from every side. Let them hew me to pieces—or let them keep and burn me inch by inch afterwards. But let me strike one blow before I die—”

That panting, broken whisper continued, drowned from the hearing of Tizzo because the rout of the pursuers was spreading back again through the upper stairways.

He could hear the wild voice of della Penna screaming, “They are here! Two grown men cannot hide in a rat-hole—but look in every corner. If we lose them, I shall go mad—mad—mad! If you fail to take them—every man of you look to himself. Swiftly, swiftly! Be everywhere with wide eyes. Your swords ready. Take them alive if you can, but even dead they will be beautiful pictures to me!”

That screeching voice of rage sent small shudders down the back of Tizzo as he worked his way down the hall. Then he heard running feet approaching from the rear.

They were coming very quickly. But here, thank God, was the outer door. One warder remained there at his post with the same partizan which Tizzo had seen in the grasp of the jailer before.

The approaching rush of many feet had put the jailer on his guard. He stood now with the great weapon held at the ready, that is, slung sidelong across his body, the head gleaming above his left shoulder. It was an engine designed to strike down horse and man. It made the infantryman the peer of the mounted warrior. And now, into the view of the sentry there came the vision of the great, staggering, wavering gray-headed man, and beside him the tense, lithe figure of Tizzo.

He stared and elevated his halberd for the stroke when Tizzo, with a cry, ran straight in on him, his smaller and more active ax poised to strike.

It was not for nothing that he had crossed blades with the best of the swaggering young blades of the town, and that he had performed such feats with the ax that every clod in Perugia knew of the strokes of Tizzo. The halberdier, the

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