Before us, like an array of mirrors in the October sun, shone the serried ranks of the steel-cased Borgia soldiers, their lances in rest, waiting to receive us.  Their leader, a gigantic man whose head was armed by no more than a pot of burnished steel, from which escaped the long red ringlets of his hair, was that same Ramiro del’ Orca who had commanded the party pursuing Madonna Paola three years ago.  He was, since, become the most redoubtable of Cesare’s captains, and his name was, perhaps, the best hated in Italy for the grim stories that were connected with it.

As we rode on he backed to join the foremost rank of his soldiers, and his voice—­a voice that Stentor might have envied—­trumpeted a laugh at sight of us.

“Gesu!” he roared, so that I heard him above the thunder of our hoofs.  “What has come to Giovanni Sforza.  Has he, perchance, become a man since Madonna Lucrezia divorced him?  I will bear her the news of it, my good Giovanni—­my living thunderbolt of Jove!”

His men echoed his boisterous mood, infected by it, and this, I argued, boded ill for the courage of those that followed me.  Another moment and we had swept into them, and many there were who laughed no more, or went to laugh with those in Hell.

For myself I singled out the blustering Ramiro, and I let him know it by a swinging blow of my mace upon his morion.  It was a most finely-tempered piece of steel, for my stroke made no impression on it, though Ramiro winced and raised his stout sword to return the compliment.

“Body of God!” he croaked, “you become a very god of war, Giovanni.  To me, then, my lusty Mars!  We’ll make a fight of it that poets shall sing of over winter fires.  Look to yourself!”

His sword caught me a cunning, well-aimed blow on the side of my helm, and thence, glanced to my shoulder.  But for the quality of Giovanni’s head-piece of a truth there had been an end to the warring of a Fool.  I smote him back, a mighty blow upon his epauliere that shore the steel plate from his shoulder, and left him a vulnerable spot.  At that he swore ferociously, and his bloodshot eyes grew wicked as the fiend’s.  A second time he essayed that side-long blow upon my helm, and with such force and ready address that he burst the fastening of my visor on the left, so that it swung down and left my beaver open.

With a cry of triumph he closed with me, and shortened his sword to stab me in the face.  And then a second cry escaped him, for the countenance he beheld was not the countenance he had looked to see.  Instead of the fair skin, the handsome features and the bearded mouth of the Lord Giovanni, he beheld a shaven face, a hooked nose and a complexion swarthy as the devil’s.

“I know you, rogue,” he roared.  “By the Host! your valour seemed too fierce for Giovanni Sforza.  You are Bocca—­”

Exerting all the strength that I had been gradually collecting, I hurled him back with a force that almost drove him from the saddle, and rising in my stirrups I rained blow after blow upon his morion ere he could recover.