Soldier From the Sky, Book Four: Mad Dog

By M.C. Clary

Soldier From the Sky
A twice-told tale of love, war, time and treasure in six books

World War II. Nick Mancuso, a Brooklyn-born, deadeye gunner on a B-24 bomber is severely wounded in aerial combat, bails out over the wintry Apennines and loses consciousness while still in his parachute, his last thoughts on his lover, Theresa.
He awakens displaced in time, under the care of Italian partisans. By ancient magic and force of fate he’s become his own medieval ancestor and leader of a peasant rebellion in collusion with the tyrant's dangerously enchanting daughter.
To return to Theresa and parallel existence Nick must fight for his life in a world of hidden treasure, superstition, star-crossed love, intrigue, brutality and betrayal, and show fierce bravery in an epic battle for gold, glory and survival in 14th Century Italy.

Book Four: Mad Dog
In a time of plague, pestilence and papal wars, Nico earns gold and reputation as a hand-to-hand boxer and the name ‘Mad Dog’. He dreams of a black-haired temptress, has mystical apparitions of a celestial city with towers of light, foresees himself as legendary warrior. He remains silently intent on destroying the Montagna blood and gathers a rebel gang.
Concurrently in 1944, Nick has shards of memory from intertwined lives. The partisans tell him he is an American flyer, and, although his perceptions are in flux, he is intimately familiar with one of them, certain he knows her from distant time and place.
The Baron Montagna sinks into dementia and San Michele to decrepitude. Gold is scarce. A huge papal army amasses in Perugia, commanded by infamous, brutal knight Sir John Sudbury. Lawlessness spreads and the nobles pay Nico for protection.
Nick, amazed by the wonders of 1944, only knows he must get home. People from dual memory are waiting, counting on him to defend their families.
Harvests and herds fail. The sickly and destitute take to the roads. Sudbury’s army of mercenary, dissolute and savage warriors threaten all of Italy.
When the failing Baron Montagna loses his signet ring and fortune to his overlord, Nico’s rebels ambush and kill a squad of soldiers transporting gold. He anonymously passes the gold onto the baron who uses it to reclaim the ring. Soon after, the baron’s son deserts Sudbury and returns to San Michele to usurp the Montagna title. Nico has a trickier, more powerful enemy.
Nick dreams of Theresa and others from both centuries, but can’t accurately place them. Nico, likewise enchanted, assumes Theresa is the dark, mythological goddess Sibylline and that he is fated to be her warrior. When plague infects San Michele, he cares for the dying and grieving, earning loyalty from many families.
Sudbury vows to burn San Michele and bring the fabled Jewels of Saladin to the pope. The new baron orders all men, noble and peasant, to defend the town walls. Nico proves deadly with a bow, merciless with a sword. When his sister is trampled by two of Sudbury’s drunken soldiers, Nico travels to Perugia and kills them. He takes an arrow deep in the gut and flees on horseback, bleeding to death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.C. Clary
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015

M.C. Clary

M.C. Clary is a world traveler, shepherd of strays, visitor of the night, singer in the rain, bronco buster, gold digger, hell raiser, zombie killer writer of fact and fiction in all their many forms, He lives and works in a crow's nest looking over Manhattan.

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Soldier From the Sky

a novel in six books

by M.C. Clary

c2015 Michael Clary

All rights reserved

Cover design by Larry Carroll

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for use of brief quotes in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Generations of men are like leaves,

In winter, winds blow them to earth,

But when spring comes again,

budding wood grows more. And so with men.

One generation grows, another dies.

Homer, The Iliad, 6:181-5

∞

Book Four

∞

Mad Dog

Mad Dog

Chapters

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

Old World People

Italy 14th Century

Popolo minuto

Bianca Mancuso, Niccolo Mancuso’s mother

Maffeo Mancuso, Niccolo’s father, peasant farmer

Maria, Maffeo’s widowed sister, Niccolo’s aunt

Giorgio Mancuso, Niccolo’s eldest brother

Violante Mancuso, Niccolo’s eldest sister

Ambrosio Mancuso, Niccolo’s older brother

Annunziata ‘Nightengale’ Mancuso, Niccolo’s older sister

Roberto, Mancuso cousin, soldier in the Gold Rose Army

Fiore Grosso, butcher for Montagna House

Imelda Grosso, Fiore’s wife, tanner

Leo Grosso, eldest Grosso son

Beppe ‘Big Mouth’ Grosso, second son

Francesco, Grosso cousin

Claudio Panettiere, village baker, dairyman

Flore Panettiere, Claudio’s wife, loomer

Rosana, Panettiere daughter

Pasquale, Panettiere son

Giovanni Bonati, woodcutter, builder, Niccolo’s brother-in-law

Sebastiano, blacksmith

Maximo, Sebastiano’s son

Levi, a traveling glover

Rebekah, Levi’s wife

Rachel, daughter

Aaron, son

Galiana Massaro, a village girl

Marco Massaro, Galiana’s older brother

Scryer of St. Celestina, forest forager, seer, healer

House of Montagna

Baron Carlo Montagna, Signore of San Michele

Rodolfo Montagna, eldest son, Vatican banker

Filippo Montagna, second son, Knight of Gold Rose Army

Antiocha Montagna, sole daughter, Signorina of San Michele

Eduardo Vallone, Montagna physician

Renaldo Greco, Montagna consigliere

Arturo, Renaldo’s nephew

Friar Tomasso, Montagna Franciscan counselor

Helmut, Knight/Palace Guard

Franz, Knight/Palace Guard

Corina, Montagna maggiordomo, midwife, duenna

Captain Patrice Renouard, Field Marshal with Filippo Montagna

Enemies of San Michele

Pope Gregory XI, Ruler of Christendom

Sir John Sudbury, Mercenary Knight, Commander of Gold Rose Army

Lorenzo Datini, youngest son, House of Datini, Knight of the Gold Rose

Count Vittorio Valori, Signore of Sarago

Cardinal Paulus Valori, uncle of Count Valori

Father Umberto, Dominican agent for Sudbury’s Gold Rose Army

New World People

1944

Giuseppe Farini, Nick Mancuso’s grandfather

Angela Farini, Nick Mancuso’s grandmother

Giulietta ‘Skinny’ Mancuso, Nick’s sister

Theresa Mangiardi, Nick’s girlfriend

Carmine Gitano, dock crime boss

Niccolo/Nick Mancuso, peasant rebel, B-24 belly gunner

Dr. Pietro Orsini, Resistance operative, Allied airmen rescue

Chiara Orsini, Resistance fighter, Allied airmen rescue

Miro, Resistance fighter

Carlo, Resistance fighter

Imilia, forest forager, hunter

∞

22

When Nico was sixteen caravans brought warnings of new pestilence and famine. Pope Gregory pronounced them heavenly signs that Italy beyond the Papal States, particularly Florence and her allies, naming the Valori and Montagna, had fallen to demonism, decadence and ruination. New age wickedness insulted god and tempted his wrath. The pope foretold earth-rending doom and by the fall of Nico’s seventeenth year, it appeared as if the pope had god’s ear.

The sheep wool and rabbit fur came in thicker than usual and the most punishing winter in memory arrived in early November, when the hickory and chestnut trees were still golden, before butchering and storage of winter victuals. Wind-driven ice and blinding snow corrugated the plains and piedmont in a matter of days. Icy rains and wind enraged the sea, whipped the coasts and battered boats.

Spring came too soon in the south and in the Kingdom of Sicily a volcano shook the earth’s mantle. Torrential summer storms thundered off the mountains bringing mold that destroyed summer and fall harvests. In the Romagna basin, pallid air and yellow sky lay listless, deadly dry for months. Crops withered and the heat gave rise to clouds of grasshoppers churning across the grass fields and crops like curtains of doom.

Nico obeyed Maffeo’s paternity and communal law until one day during the barley harvest of the second bleak season. The midday air was quiet as glass, the fields drenched in June’s butter light, dusty with barley awns. Paesanos past the age of ten, both genders, worked the harvest from first light to sunset. Men drove teams of oxen and mule carts, boys sickled and women and girls gathered, tied the barley sheaves and stood them in conical stacks.

Annunziata had come to have such a sweet voice that Maffeo called her his ‘nightingale’. She, Rosana and other girls sang as they worked, mocking a song popular in the palaces.

Behold the springtime which makes the heart rejoice.

It is the season to fall in love and to be happy.

We enjoy that air and weather, which itself may be called happiness.

In this lovely season everything takes on loveliness.

Contrary to the song, bee swarms had dwindled and the hives were brittle, making pale, bland honey. A damp spring brought back black mold that ruined much of the early wheat for a second year. Barley was critical to the Montagna bank and winter provision, and grasshoppers could hatch at any time. Siesta was prohibited until after harvest. Men found slacking had their hands painted with bubbling tar, and their harvest allowance reduced. It was punishing labor in baking heat. Bodies ached, tempers quickened and fights happened.

Nico was sickling alongside Giorgio and Ambrosio when Giorgio sent him to fetch a water jug and their midday meal. As the least son, he was expected to placidly serve the elders and he obeyed, if not hastily. In only three years, six more harvests, he would be gone forever from San Michele. If after that he ever saw the fields again it would be as a soldier, returned with troops and torch to burn and bury the Montagna house. The image in his head was so clear it was as if he could see his fate and future.

Walking along the cart road, back to the fields with a basket of food and clay jugs of wine and water, he saw Fat Leo, backed by his brother Big Mouth Beppe, their two cousins and three others bullying Ambrosio, swatting him across the head and face with his own hat, making him grab for it. Ambrosio was ungainly, knobby, kept quiet and to himself, unlike Giorgio, who lorded his age and liked giving orders to his youngers, especially Nico.

Ambrosio had fleshy, floppy ears that Leo and the others made fun of, a shallow voice and harmless presence. Leo was a couple of years older and at least three stone heavier. He was a meathead who had inherited his father’s brute hands and mean nature. He had moon eyes for Annunziata and showed off for her and the other girls by bullying their brothers, like it was all in fun. He brayed laughter, feinted left and slapped the hat across Ambrosio’s reddening cheeks, entertaining his lackey cousins.

A bolt of rage rose and knotted in Nico’s throat. The years of having to sidestep Leo, and now seeing Ambrosio’s hapless humiliation made him want to push Leo’s fat face into the dirt, to choke his donkey laughter, beat his mouth pulpy, to avenge, amend and make him hurt. Rising animus put an acrid taste in Nico’s mouth.

The water and wine jugs and wicker basket slid from his hands. He raced toward the laughter, shoved Giorgio and the guffawing cousins in to scatter and gave Leo a harsh, open hand smash across the back of his blocky head. Get off him, Nico commanded with a threatening glare new to all of them.

Leo spun and came at him, full-weight. Nico sidestepped and was able to lock his arm around Leo’s throat, grip his own wrist and apply strangulation. But the big boy’s bulkiness and feet were off-kilter. They collapsed into the freshly mown barley rubble.

As they went down, Leo threw Nico over and landed seated atop his chest. I thought you were a Mad Dog? Titty dog! He grabbed a fistful of Nico’s hair. I’ve had enough of your weirdness. He pounded Nico in the face. That’s my hex.

Titty dog! Titty dog! Big Mouth Beppe led the chant.

Till Nico kicked his legs and pelvis up in a momentous throe of energy, locked his ankles around Leo’s neck, and instantly pulled him backward, using Leo’s falling weight to heave himself forward, and ended seated on top Leo’s chest. He dug his left knee deep into Leo’s windpipe, with choking, murderous pressure. Leo’s larynx was folding inward and in seconds his tongue was out and eyes bulging. Before anyone saw, the knife flashed from Nico’s tunic, its stone-sharpened tip resting just under Leo’s left eyeball.

His gang fell silent and stepped backward, afraid of their own superstition and what demented Nico might do to prove the suspicions right.

Don’t close your eyes or I’ll take both. His was deliberate, ready to mutilate Leo without remorse or restraint of punishment.

Stay calm, Giorgio said. Please, Nico. It was a joke.

Leo emitted a hoggish grunt, and farted.

The pig salutes me! Nico laughed. My name is Niccolo! he pointed his knife at the cowardly faces gathered around him. Who wants to call me Mad Dog? He returned the blade point to Leo’s eye. Who wants to call me Mouse Turd?

They looked away, and at their feet, afraid to aggrieve or aggravate him.

You can stop, Giorgio said. We were playing.

I’m playing too. Nico laughed and pricked the skin just beneath Leo’s eye, bringing a driblet of blood. What’s my name? Say my name.

Niccolo. There was terror in Leo’s eye. Niccolo. We’re friends.

"Say it with the respect Sibyl deserves. You know