At first it bewildered Bellarion that two commanders, each of whom had for aim the destruction of the other, should appear so sedulously to avoid an engagement. But in the end, he came to understand the spirit actuating them. Each fought with mercenary troops, and just as it is not the business of mercenaries to get themselves killed, neither is it their business to slay if slaughter can be avoided. They fought for profit, and whilst prisoners were profitable, since they yielded not only arms and horses, but also ransoms, dead men yielded nothing beyond their harness. Therefore they demanded that their commanders should lead them as nearly as possible into a position of such strategical advantage that the enemy, perceiving himself at their mercy, should have no choice but to surrender. To this general rule the only exception was afforded by the Swiss, who were indifferent to bloodshed. But of Swiss there were only a few on Facino's side, and none at all on Buonterzo's. At the end of a week, after endless manœuvres, matters were very much as they had been at the beginning. Buonterzo had fallen back again on Firenzuola, hoping to draw Facino into open country, whilst Facino, refusing to be drawn, lay patiently at San Nicoló. Three days Facino waited there, to be suddenly startled by the news that Buonterzo was at Aggazano, eight miles away. Suspecting here an attempt to slip past him and, by crossing perhaps at Stradella, to invade the territory of Milan, and also because he conceived that Buonterzo had placed himself in a disadvantageous position, leaving an opening for attack, Facino decided upon instant action. In the best house of San Nicoló, which he had temporarily adopted for his quarters, Facino assembled on the morning of the 10th of May his chief officers, Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, Koenigshofen, the Swiss Werner von Stoffel, and the French commander de Cadillac. In a small plain room on the ground floor, darkened by semi-closed shutters to exclude the too ardent sun, they were gathered, Bellarion with them, about the plain deal table at which Facino sat. On the table's white surface the condottiero with a stick of charcoal had drawn a map which if rough was fairly accurate of scale. In the past week Bellarion had seen and studied a half-dozen such charts and had come to read them readily. Charcoal stick in hand, Facino expounded. 'Buonterzo lies here, and the speed at which he has moved from Firenzuola will constrain him to rest there, whatever his ultimate intention.' Carmagnola interposed. He was a large young man, handsome, florid, and self-assured. 'He is too favourably placed for an attack from the plain. At Aggazano he holds the slopes, whence he can roll down like an avalanche.'