"God! What work!" exclaimed the Pisan. It was the testimony wrung from him by the stress of sheer hard fighting.
"One of the viper-brood still lives," the duke turned to his companion, kicking with the tip of his steel boot the lifeless form of Giovanni Frangipani.
The Pisan turned to a man-at-arms.
"Take twenty men! Scour the lair from vault to pinnacle! We must have that other,—dead or alive!"
The rain had ceased for the time. New thunder-clouds came rolling out of the west. Flambeaux flared in the court. Black shadows danced along the ghostly walls. The wind moaned about the crenelated turrets; sentinels of the Pisans stood everywhere, alert for ambush.
The duke and his companions approached the door leading into the great hall. It lay in splinters. Stygian darkness held sway within.
Suddenly the duke paused, as if turned to stone, at the same time plucking his companion back by the sleeve of his surcoat.
Noiselessly as a ghost out of the door came the form of a woman. She was tall, exquisitely proportioned, and young. For a moment she paused on the threshold and looked out into the night. Almost immediately a second form followed, and paused near the first: that of a man. The woman seemed to stare blindly at the duke, with wide, unseeing eyes, as one who walks in a sleep.
With a choked, inarticulate outcry the duke snatched bow and arrow from the nearest sentry, and ere the Pisan could grasp the meaning of what he saw, or prevent, he set and sped the bolt. A moan died on the stillness. A form collapsed, shuddered and lay still.
The duke dropped bow and arrow, staring like a madman, then rushed towards the prostrate form.