The sound of a clarion re-echoed from crag to crag: and down towards the river played the whirlwind, with dust and clangor and the shriek of steel. Spears went down like trampled corn. The battle streamed down the bloody slope, for nothing could stand that furious charge. The river shut in the broken host, for the ford was narrow, not easy of passage. From the north came the thundering ranks of horse, and on the south the waters were calm and clear. The Provencals, streaming like smoke blown from a fire by a boisterous wind, were hurled in rout upon the water. They were hurled over the banks, slain in the shallows, drowned in struggling to cross at the ford. Some few hundred reached the southern bank, and scattered fast for the sanctuary of the woods. In less than half an hour from the first charge the duke's men had won the day. They gave no quarter; slew all who stood. The duke rode back up the hill, Francesco by his side, amid the cheers of his men. Southwest they rode towards the sea, their hundred lances aslant under the autumnal sky. They were as men challenging a kingdom with their swords, and they tossed their shields in the face of fate. The audacity of the venture set the hot blood spinning in their hearts. To free Conradino from Anjou's clutches; to hurl damnation in the mouth of the Provencals. As for Francesco, he was as a hound in leash. His sword thirsted in its scabbard; he had tasted blood, and was hot for the conflict. On the fourth day they came upon the ruins of Ninfa, a town set upon a hill in a wooded valley. Vultures flapped heavenward as they rode into the gate; lean, red-eyed curs snarled and slinked about the streets. Francesco smote one brute through with his spear, as it was feeding in the gutter on the carcass of a child. In the market square the Provencals had made such another massacre as they had perpetrated in Alba. The horrible obscenity of the scene struck the duke's men dumb as the dead. The towns-folk had been stripped, bound face to face, left slain in many a hideous and ribald pose. The vultures' beaks had emulated the sword. The stench from the place was as the breath of a charnel house, and the duke and his men turned back with grim faces from the brutal silence of that ghastly town. Near one of the gates a wild, tattered figure darted out from a half-wrecked house, stood blinking at them in the sun, then sped away, screaming and whimpering at the sight of the duke, as though possessed with a demon. It was a woman, still retaining the traces of her former great beauty, gone mad, yet the only live thing they found in the town. The duke had reined in his steed at the sight, gone white to the roots of his hair. Then he covered his face with his hands, and Francesco heard him utter a heart-rending moan. When his hands fell, after a lapse of time, he seemed to have aged years in this brief space. "Forward, my men," he shouted with iron mouth. "The Frangipani shall not complain of our swords!"