by Eric Flint
“Denise, slow down,” she hissed.
The girl ignored her. By the time Noelle reached the level where the door was supposed to be, Denise was already scratching at the stone walls.
“Cut it out,” she said. “You’ll just break your fingernails. Let me do it.”
Denise peered at her. “And how will you not break your own nails?”
Noelle started whistling. Softly, but it was the sort of whistle that carried well.
Yankee Doodle, which segued into When the Saints Go Marching In. Denise started to chime in, but broke off—wisely—after a few seconds. Denise had her own quite impressive whistle, but it was the sort to summon dogs, not carry a tune.
Suddenly, a crack appeared in the stone wall. Until it did, neither woman would have had any idea that a door existed at all. It was no wonder the people in the cellars had never been detected by the city’s conquerors.
The crack widened. Widened.
A whisper came through. “Who’s there?”
“That’s Judy!” said Denise, excitedly—but she didn’t lose her good sense and training. She’d still spoken in a whisper.
“Denise?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Noelle’s here too.”
The door swung open further, and now they could see Judy Wendell’s face. Which suddenly burst into tears.
“Oh, thank God you’re here,” she said, stumbling out of the narrow passageway into the tower. Noelle eased the girl down to the floor, cradling her.
Denise, meanwhile, pressed herself into the passageway and went down those stairs. A few seconds later, she emerged into a room of some sort. She couldn’t see it very well because the only lighting was provided by three candles in the hands of—
The two royals barely registered on her at all. Two seconds later, she had Minnie enfolded in her arms. Her friend barely had time to drop the candle onto the floor.
Neither said anything, for a while. Denise could hear exchanges between Noelle and Judy and the two Habsburgs, followed after a while by Lukasz’s voice. Later, she’d marvel that the big hussar had managed to squeeze his way down that tight passageway, but for now her only thoughts were of Minnie.
Eventually, Minnie said: “I knew you’d come for me. Took your time about it, though.”
“Give me a break. Nobody told me you were even alive until not long ago.”
She could feel Minnie’s head nodding on her shoulder. “Well, sure. Good tradecraft. You didn’t need to know, at first.”
“Jesus. Still a Goody Two-shoes, I see.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Minnie said: “Well…not so much. I think I’m pregnant. Not sure yet.”
“You slut.”
“Hey, I learned it all from you.”
“Did not!”
“Did too. I was an innocent orphan. Missing an eye, on top of that.”
They fell silent again, for a while. Then Denise said: “Not to worry. We’ll deal with it.”
“I wasn’t worried, I was just telling you. I like him. A lot.”
Again, they fell silent. Their embrace hadn’t lessened at all.
“I’m really glad to see you, Minnie,” Denise said eventually. “But I gotta tell you… You really stink.”
“You try living in a cellar for months.”
“I’m not criticizing. I’m just saying.”
They were interrupted then, by Noelle. “Come on, girls. We’ve got to get moving.”
Finally, Denise and Minnie separated. “Get moving where?” asked Denise. “We can’t leave this soon—the Ottomans are bound to smell a rat.”
“Who needs to smell a rat when they can smell us?” That came from Judy Wendell, who stepped forward out of the gloom. “God, I need to take a bath for, like, hours. Hours and hours. Now that we can finally get some water we don’t have to ration.”
“Yes!” hissed Minnie. “There’s a well not far away. But we never dared get water from it.”
* * *
Fortunately, there were several buckets in the annex. Before long, the cavalrymen were trooping back and forth from the annex to the nearby well. At one point an Ottoman official came out to inquire about their profligacy with the sultan’s well water, but he retreated hastily when Lukasz and Jakub began berating him for the foul and filthy nature of the quarters they’d been given.
Rather than trying to bring heated water down the narrow staircase in the tower that led to the cellars, it was decided that once night fell it would be safe enough for the people hiding in the cellars to come out, one at a time, and use the tub on the annex’s ground floor that Jakub had found. The tub was moved into one of the smallest rooms on that floor, which had apparently been a walk-in pantry at one time. Jakub would stand guard, to fend off any curious Ottoman in the unlikely event one of them came into the annex.
The two Habsburgs went first, Cecilia Renata and then Leopold. Rank hath its privileges. Then it was Judy Wendell’s turn.
When she arrived at the newly created bath room, however, Jakub had her wait a bit. “We’ve got fresh water coming, but it isn’t hot enough yet. There’s a stool inside you can sit on.”
Twenty minutes later, he knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said.
He had a bucket in his hand, which he emptied into the tub. “This won’t take long,” he said, and left.
To Judy, it seemed to take forever. But Jakub probably didn’t spend more than a few minutes filling the tub, one bucket at a time. It was a lot of work.
Finally, it was full. Judy stood up. “Praise be—and my fervent thanks. Will you marry me?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
Startled, she looked at him. “I was joking.”
“Yes, I know. I’m still thinking about it. Now, enjoy your bath. If you need anything, I’ll be just outside.”
A moment later, he was gone, with Judy now staring at the closed door.
Chapter 29
Pescia, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Italy
Mike Stearns wasn’t sure what had caused him to wake up, at first. He was not what people meant by a heavy sleeper, but he’d never been fidgety in the middle of the night, either.
Christ, I’m getting old, was the first coherent thought that filtered into his mind. Mike had recently turned forty, an age which he’d always considered one of life’s inexorable benchmarks.
Up to thirty: I’m still young!
After thirty: Still on the young side.
After forty: Stop kidding yourself, buddy. Middle age has arrived.
Fine. Early middle age. The key word is still “middle.”
But then he heard a faint noise that he realized was an actual noise produced by something other than himself. Not something in a dream.
Produced by someone else.
Someone here. In his bedroom.
Someone near.
He flung aside the blankets and threw himself onto the floor, in as close to a roll as he could manage—which was an actual roll, in fact. Mike had always been athletic and he was still in pretty good physical condition.
The roll didn’t go more than a foot, though, before his torso slammed into something.
Someone’s legs. That someone issued a little grunt and collapsed onto Mike, his knees digging into his ribs.
Mike heaved himself up, which lifted the someone and sprawled him across the bed. Then, now on his feet, turned and seized the someone by the scruff of his neck.
Details were emerging. Dawn had arrived and enough light was coming through the window curtains for him to see.
Male. On the young side. Nobody I know.
That’s a knife in his hand. Not a Bowie, no—but it wasn’t designed to spread butter, either.
All of that passed through his mind in a second or two.
The man squawked again, louder.
Have to put a stop to that until I know what’s happening.
Mike’s reflexes might have slowed some over the years, but he’d lost little if any of his st
rength—and he’d been a very strong man since he was a teenager. He lifted the man’s torso off the bed, dragged him a couple of feet to the left, and slammed his head against one of the bedposts. Then repeated it; once, twice.
The man was no longer conscious and the knife was no longer in his hand. He might have a broken skull, too, but Mike wasn’t concerned about that at the moment, nor about the blood that was starting to soak the bed sheets.
There was very little likelihood anyone would have come into Fakhr-al-Din’s villa in order to murder Mike Stearns. He was almost certain he’d just been an incidental target. A stranger—large; male—that the assailants wanted to get out of the way while they attended to their actual target.
Mike bent over, opened the lid of his trunk, and came out with a revolver in one hand and a small box in the other. It was the same Smith & Wesson Model 28 Highway Patrolman .357 Magnum that he’d used to kill a man on the day of the Ring of Fire. That was still the only time he’d ever killed a man with it—or with any other weapon he’d wielded personally. Mike had gone straight from civilian to major general.
The revolver was still in its clip holster. He slid it out. He had nothing to attach the holster to, since all he was wearing was a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, so he just tossed it on the bed. Then, opened the box, shook out a handful of bullets and stuffed them into one of his pockets.
For a moment, he considered putting on his shoes, but decided against it. There might be very little time at his disposal, and bare feet would be quieter anyway.
Carefully, he opened the door to his room and peered out into the corridor.
It was empty. He was on the top floor of the three-story villa. Fakhr-al-Din and Khasikiya slept in a room one floor down and all the way across the building. The emir’s guards slept in rooms on the bottom floor, except that one of them was always stationed on guard outside the emir’s chambers.
Quickly, making almost no sound in his bare feet, he moved down the corridor to the staircase. There he paused, listening. He heard nothing until—
Something between a shout and a scream exploded from below, followed by a hoarse grunt. Then, another grunt; then, the faint sound of what sounded like a body falling. That was followed by the much louder sounds of a door being broken in.
Still trying to be as quiet as possible—which was only possible at all because he was barefoot—Mike raced down the stairs. Once he neared the floor below he sprang over the last two risers, twisting his body as he went, and landed facing the direction from which the noises had come. If he’d misjudged and there was a man in the corridor in the other direction, he was in a world of hurt.
But he didn’t think there would be, because whatever men were available to the attackers would mostly likely be breaking into the emir’s quarters.
He’d guessed right. The corpse of the guard was slumped against the wall to the left of the doorway. One man was in the doorway passing through, and Mike thought he could see at least one other in front of him. It took him a split second to steady himself before he brought up the revolver in both hands, cocked the hammer, and fired.
One shot only. Mike was partial to revolvers for several reasons, one of which he’d readily allow was silly romanticism on his part—he’d sweet-talked his father into taking him to see the Clint Eastwood movie Dirty Harry when he was barely six years old. But among the other reasons was the fact that a man armed with an automatic pistol was prone to blasting away indiscriminately. That could be done with a revolver, but the weapon didn’t favor it.
His aim was good, too. The bullet struck the target in the middle of his back, slightly below the shoulder blades. At this range—the man wasn’t more than thirty feet away—the high-powered bullet would have punched right through his torso and destroyed his heart in the process. He fell forward into the room beyond.
In the course of falling forward, the man he’d just killed stumbled into the man in front of him. Between the impact and the sound of the gunshot—a .357 Magnum fired inside a corridor was loud; Mike’s own ears were ringing—that man turned around.
Spun around—except the weight of his falling comrade knocked him off balance and he just barely kept his footing. He also had a very startled expression on his face.
Mike cocked the pistol, took aim and fired again. And, again, his aim was good. Good enough, anyway. He’d been aiming for the man’s heart and struck him four or five inches higher. But that wound was even deadlier, because Mike hit him in the so-called “sniper’s triangle.” The assassin’s aorta was severed and blood came gushing out of his mouth. He fell instantly, as if a string holding him up had been cut.
Mike raced forward. He could hear shouting and screaming in the rooms beyond. One of the shouting voices he recognized as Fakhr-al-Din’s. The screams sounded like they were coming from Khasikiya.
When he reached the door, he faced the problem that the entry was blocked by the corpses of the two men he’d killed. He couldn’t see into the room itself because the entryway was a short corridor of its own—six feet long, roughly—which opened to the right into the emir’s chambers.
Nothing for it. Doing his best to contain his revulsion, Mike got through the doorway by stepping on the corpses. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been barefooted. He could feel blood coating parts of his feet.
But it was over and done within a few seconds. He had his revolver held in front of him, expecting someone to come around the corner to investigate the gunshots.
There was no one, though. From the din coming from within—Khasikiya was still screaming, which he took to be a good sign given the situation—he suspected the remaining assailants had been too preoccupied to wonder about the gunshots.
He was about to find out. Once again, he sprang forward, half-twisting, and landed on his feet facing into the chambers with his revolver held in both hands.
For an instant, his mind couldn’t quite process what his eyes were seeing. Then everything sorted itself out.
One man was lying off to the side, still alive but clutching his chest. Presumably he’d been stabbed by Fakhr-al-Din. The emir himself was on his back with a second man pulling a knife out of his stomach and getting ready to stab him again. Off to the right, Khasikiya was struggling with a third assailant. He had a knife in his hand also but so far as Mike could see the woman hadn’t been badly hurt yet.
He didn’t spend any time thinking about that, though. Fakhr-al-Din was about to be murdered. His wife would have to wait.
There was no time to cock the pistol. Mike just fired. And…almost missed. Luckily, the bullet grazed the arm that the assassin was using to hold the emir down, jerking him aside just enough for the stab to strike Fakhr-al-Din in the hip instead of his torso. The injury produced was gory but not deadly.
Now off-balance and half-sprawled across the emir, the assassin stared up at him. Mike didn’t want to risk a head shot but he had no choice. If his aim was off on a body shot, he might hit Fakhr-al-Din instead of his assailant.
Settle down, dammit. He made himself cock the pistol and squeeze the trigger instead of jerking it.
And didn’t miss, this time. The bullet struck the assassin in his left eye. He fell backward, the wall behind him splattered with blood and brains.
That left—
He turned to the right and saw that the man wrestling with the emir’s wife was now just trying to fend her off so he could deal with Mike. For her part—bless the woman!—the plump and middle-aged Khasikiya was still shrieking—more with fury than fear—while she clawed at the assassin.
Mike couldn’t remember how many bullets he’d fired. He thought he still had one left but he wasn’t positive. He knew from things he’d been told by men with more experience than he had in a gunfight that you almost always fired more shots than you’d remember afterward. He might be empty.
He stepped forward two long paces and smashed the revolver’s gunbutt into the man’s forehead. Hard. He let go of Khasikiya and started t
o slump but Mike held him up by his blouse and struck him again.
Hard. He thought he heard the skull break. It might not have, but there was no doubt the assassin was unconscious.
One left. He turned again and looked at the assassin who’d been lying propped up against the far wall. His hands had now fallen away from his chest. There was enough light in the room for Mike to see that the assassin’s eyes were open and he was staring at…
Nothing. He’d died from his wound, apparently.
Khasikiya was now cradling her husband, softly sobbing. Mike looked at the couple and decided they could wait for a bit. He needed to make sure there was no more danger.
He dug into the pocket of his sweatpants and started reloading. His memory had been right, as it turned out—he did have one round left. Normally, he only loaded his revolver with five bullets, leaving the chamber empty as a safety precaution. But under these circumstances he wanted a fully loaded weapon, so he filled the whole cylinder.
Then, left the room and hurried down to the ground floor, the revolver held out ahead of him.
But there was no danger left. The door in the entrance leading out to the street was half-open. It didn’t look as if it had been smashed in, so Mike assumed someone had picked the lock. He’d tried to persuade Fakhr-al-Din that the lock on that door had been an antique—practically medieval—and that at the very least a crossbar should be installed, but the emir had shrugged the warning off.
Mike didn’t spend any time fussing over the door, though. What was done, was done. Instead he hurried down another corridor to the chambers where the guards lived.
One guard—the one on duty—had been killed already in the assault. The other two…
Dead. Both of them. Their throats cut while they were sleeping, obviously.
Mike lowered the revolver and headed back up the stairs. By the time he got back to the emir’s quarters, Fakhr-al-Din was conscious and even alert. Well, sort of alert. He looked ten times as weary as Mike felt. Khasikiya was still cradling him, but she’d stopped weeping.
