1635: The Cannon Law (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  "Two," Frank called back. "We're coming out, unarmed."

  The white rag was followed by a face under a helmet, who looked into the darkened interior, said something over his shoulder and reached back for a torch. It turned out to be the sergeant Frank had met earlier, once it was lit up. Frank could see that the torch was a chairleg with some rags wrapped around it. Clearly these guys had had to improvise on the spot as well. Half of the sergeant's face was covered in black soot, the way soldiers got to be when they'd been shooting a lot with black-powder weapons. He was grinning, which Frank hoped was a good sign. He shouted something over his shoulder, out of which Frank picked out the word "dos," which he recognized as being Spanish for "two.

  "The sergeant vanished, and after a moment-punctuated by another groan from the ceiling timbers-the shout came back: "Come out, one at a time! With your hands up!"

  Frank heaved a sigh of relief. "You first, Piero," he said, looking nervously at the ceiling. Yeah, that's right, bartender's last to leave a sinking bar. Tradition.

  Piero nodded. "There is nothing left to say, Frank, except that when we meet again after this, the drinks are very much on me, yes?"

  "Get gone," Frank said, suddenly remembering what he was walking out into. At least most of the people who came here for shelter got away, he thought. Just me, Giovanna and Piero got caught. Then the little voice added, So long as the falling building doesn't kill the rest of the guys.

  "First one coming out!" he yelled, as Piero stepped up to the gap the sergeant had used, his hands in the air.

  Frank listened to Piero's scramble over the rubble. There were voices, and then a crash from somewhere up above. The ceiling groaned, and Frank hunkered down into the doubtful shelter of a broken table. He peered upward, nervously, squinting against the falling dust and grit, and then curled up tight with his eyes closed when he saw the ceiling began to drop again. A few seconds, and then he opened them again. In the middle, at the front, the ceiling was maybe five feet from the ground, where it had been nearly ten feet moments before. Please let that be where it gets stable, Frank prayed. Please.

  "Next one! Come out now! Hands up!" It was a miracle Frank heard the shout over the sound of his pulse hammering in his ears. He stood up and made himself walk, not run, over to the gap. As he stood in the gap, blinking in the too-bright torchlight, something began to give way in the collapsing floor behind and above him. Nails began to rip free and timbers cracked. Sounds like gunshots, he thought.

  The musketeers across the street thought so too.

  The last thing Frank remembered was fire, blooming like time-lapsed roses across the street, and swirls of dirty white smoke that seemed to glow like pearls in the torchlight. And Piero's face, horrified where he stood between two soldiers, under guard.

  It all went dark.

  Chapter 43

  Rome

  There was shouting by the time Ruy, Tom and the pope reached the stairs down to the lower levels of the fortress. By the time they'd gotten to the main part of the old fortress, there was screaming.

  "We must leave while the inner ward holds," Ruy said. "Over the wall or through the door?"

  "Which door?" The pope asked.

  "The one in the riverside wall," Tom said.

  "It is barricaded."

  "I saw as we entered." Ruy was negotiating the final turn of the staircase and emerging into the circular corridor that ringed the wall of the inner tower. "Without help, it will take much time to clear a way through."

  "Can't we just climb over the blockage?" Tom asked, "His Holiness seems pretty spry."

  Ruy chuckled. "The gate opens inward, Senor Simpson. The barricade keeps it closed. I did not examine closely-ah, excuse me." He flattened against the wall as a bunch of middle-aged men with arquebuses that looked like they'd had the rust hastily scraped off quite recently came up through the stairs they were about to use. "But I suspect that the barricade is nailed in place," he concluded.

  "It is," the pope said. "I saw it done."

  "Over the wall it is, I guess," Tom said. "We'll need rope."

  "Rope we shall find," Ruy said. "Or anything that might serve. Please to be observant as we pass along."

  Down two more flights of stairs, through a courtyard and a mad dash down the spiral corridor around the old tomb, and out in to the courtyard. They were on the east side, facing the river, which ran more or less due north-south by the fortress.

  All along the wall ahead of them, Tom could see guardsmen on the parapet, hastening in either direction toward the walls that had been threatened, while others remained to guard against the possibility of a further attack taking advantage of the diversion. Although if an attack came in, with half the men on this wall gone, they were screwed. Still, it should be pretty much impossible to get ladders around to this side without bringing them over the bridge, and there hadn't been any when Tom had been over that side before.

  To Tom's left, just visible above the storage houses built close under the wall in the northeast corner, he could see Guardsmen leaning out with guns to fire at targets right at the foot of the wall. As he watched, one of them jerked, his head fountaining up as someone below shot him. The body pitched back and then slumped forward. Beside him, he heard the pope mutter " Requiem aeternam dona eis domine…"

  Tom felt his stomach heave. I've seen worse, lots worse, he told himself sternly. Somehow it still seemed to get to him.

  Ruy was taking in the scene as well. "We have perhaps five minutes before they gain the walls," he said, in tones that spoke of a judgment formed from long experience. "The whole wall is engaged. There are no reserves. If the towers were not heavily engaged, those men would not need to lean over so. We may hope that the towers are protecting each other for the moment."

  There was a loud cheer from beyond the wall, and Tom saw the head of a long, crudely lashed ladder slam into the wall close to the corner tower to their left. Seconds later, two more appeared farther along the wall. "Ruy," he said, "I think we should be leaving. That's right next to our way out, if we're going over the lowest part of the wall."

  "A moment." Ruy was rummaging among a pile of planks and spars roughly stacked against the fortress wall. Tom recalled that the whole place had been sheathed in scaffolding a few days before, and realized that half of the work of readying the place for defense must have been taking all that down. And in these days before steel scaffolding poles and other modern conveniences of the building trade, scaffolding was lashed together. He joined Ruy.

  Ruy beat him to it. "Here." He lifted up a sizeable coil of hempen rope. "Not ideal climbing rope, but it will serve."

  "Right. I'll go first, we may need to clear a way. And, respect to you, Senor Sanchez, I do brute force and ignorance a whole lot better than you."

  "The province of the young," Ruy said, smiling. Tom could swear there was a hint of sadness in that smile. Whether it was for youthful folly or in remembrance of his own days of brute force and ignorance, Tom didn't know.

  The lack of reserves Sanchez had commented on had been more profound than Tom had thought. Men were streaming across the courtyard to get up to the walls, but they were few, pitifully few. There were a couple of hundred yards of wall to hold, and probably no more than three hundred men to do it. Tom didn't even bother to try to estimate the numbers as he strode- don't run, you might need the wind -around the inner castle toward the tower they had climbed in by.

  Tom recalled that it had a lower parapet on the river side. If the Spaniards hadn't troubled to get around to that side, there might be an easier way over there. They were just reaching the door of that tower when he heard the sounds of hand-to-hand fighting, the clangs and screams of men close enough to smell each other locked in a struggle with edged weapons. Somewhere, someone was using grenades. The fizzing crack of the little iron pots of black powder seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall, so maybe that meant the defense was holding well somewhere. Other hand, they've got grenades too.

>   Twice in the time it took to get to the tower door, men fell from the parapet, and Tom couldn't help feeling glad he'd never been in this kind of fight. The sight of the oncoming Swabians at Suhl dying in dozen lots still woke him at night with the cold sweats. The last screams of wounded men falling thirty feet onto paving stones wasn't going to leave him any time soon either. Ruy was behind him, bringing the pope along.

  Once inside the tower, the noise was if anything worse. "They're on the tower, Ruy," Tom said, guessing from the sounds he was hearing from above. "Do we fight our way through or look for another route?"

  "I may have been optimistic," Ruy said, "but this is the quickest way to the top of the wall now. Senor Simpson, ensure your gun is fully charged."

  "Right," Tom said. He worked the slide, checked that the magazine was full, and checked the safety. "Ready," he said. This was, if anything, going to be the easy part. Without even trying too hard he could get a shot off every second or so, and at these ranges even his notoriously poor marksmanship would be no handicap. And the guys coming over the wall were coming over with swords and knives and pikes. So long as he didn't let any of them in range, he was fine. Rate of fire, he murmured to himself, trying not to think about what actually happened to men who took a blast of heavy shot at close range. Especially when he'd have to be at close range to see it happen.

  Another body fell from the wall, this time right opposite where Tom was standing waiting to go in to the tower. He had his back to the grain-store that was built under the wall here, side-on to the door ready to dash through it, gun at the ready. He had no idea whether that was the right way to do it, but he'd seen cops doing something like it on TV. In the absence of any actual training, it was all he had to go on. His own troops had been hot as you could wish for on standing up and taking it like men in a firing-line. This SWAT stuff was pretty much beyond them. Or they grew up in cities and were used to casual violence at close quarters.

  "In your own time, Senor Simpson," Ruy said, "I have His Holiness behind me."

  "Okay," Tom said, and took a deep breath. "Let's go."

  He made the turn into the door look a lot more casual than he felt and moved quickly but without running across to the stairs. There wasn't much to see down here. On the way in, there had been guys sitting around waiting their turn on watch or catching some shut-eye. Now, it was empty with the remains of a meal and drinks spilled off the table in the middle of the floor. Up the stairs, one step at a time. The sounds of combat got louder, and Tom flinched as he heard another grenade go off. "Where are they getting all those grenades?" he asked. "I thought those things were rare?"

  "There are armories here and at Ostia," the pope said. "They have had ample time to fill them." Tom realized the old man-it was possible to think of him as an old man in a way it wasn't of the not-much-younger Sanchez-had spoken English. Quite good English, as well. So it was true about him being a whiz with languages. He realized he'd stopped to woolgather, and took a look up the stairs before continuing.

  "What is it, Senor Simpson?" Ruy asked. "Is there a problem?"

  "No, just a pause for thought."

  "This may be the voice of instinct," Ruy said. "Do you counsel finding another route?"

  There was a flurry of screams and curses among the clashes of metal above, and a sudden crack and a puff of smoke in through one of the arrow slits. "Not yet," he said. "I think that means they're still holding up there." He began to walk forward and up the stairs.

  "I find one must trust instinct in these matters, you know," Ruy said, almost casually, as he followed Tom. "To place faith in reason when battle is joined is to submit to rank superstition. No man can think fast enough."

  "True," Tom said. "Although all the battles I've been in have been a mite more formal." He held up a hand to signal a halt. The door onto the lower level of the tower's fighting platform was right ahead. "Let me check if they're still friendly."

  He leaned his head out of the door and saw that the platform was elbow-to-elbow with Swiss guards, or at least the part he could see was. He had no idea what was going on up at the top. Two of them had grenades and were lighting fuses, while another dozen or so were gathered around the tops of two ladders with their halberds at the ready, the closer ones jabbing at whoever was trying his luck. Tom decided to establish their bona fides the best way he could, and stepped smartly over to the nearest ladder, shotgun at the ready. The guy on the ladder looked at Tom, away from the halberd he was trying to get past one-handed for a critical moment and squawked as the back-spike of the thing laid open one side of his face. He clutched at the wound with the hand that still held his sword and lost his footing. Trying to hold his face and his grip on the ladder with nothing but his hands proved too much and he fell. Fifteen feet, at least. Tom winced.

  He worked the slide, and without letting himself pause to see what was happening, walked the shots down the ladder. Screams and cries and a round of cheers were the result he got. That, and a bunch of shots from below. He stepped back hurriedly as near-misses flung up chips of stone from the wall he'd been leaning over.

  Ruy joined him. "His Holiness is waiting in the tower," he said, "I think we should try elsewhere, yes?"

  "Maybe," Tom said. There were Spanish soldiers all around the bottom of the tower, some trying to aim arquebuses in the press and others waiting their turn at the ladders. In the firelight from the bonfires atop the outer defenses they seemed like a lot of demons, jostling for a chance at the condemned sinners. The shadows under their helmets made them seem faceless and sinister, and the forest of bright-whetted weapons they were carrying reflected the firelight so that they swam in a sea of flames. The view along the riverside wall was little better. Some of the soldiers had spilled around and were in the shadows along that wall, but there seemed to be a nice long section of wall with no attackers. Tom couldn't see anyone coming over the bridge, but the other side was a hundred yards away, easily, and there was no real light over there to see what was going on.

  More shots spanged from the breastwork, and a guardsman staggered back clutching his face, blood starting between his fingers. Tom was about to go to the man's aid, dithering briefly between that and reloading his shotgun, when something landed on the parapet next to him. Something small and round and black and shiny, with a fizzing fuse.

  He was halfway back to the doorway before he yelled "Grenade!" and Ruy was ahead of him. Naturally faster reflexes and less mass to get moving. It's going to go off any second, Tom thought-and then his back and legs were on fire and he was pressed up against the opposite wall of the stairwell he'd come up and there was a flashing somewhere in front of his eyes and darkness to either side and he could hear a strange noise. He felt, suddenly, very tired.

  "-Senor Simpson? Now is not the time to-" Ruy was shaking his shoulder, gently but firmly. "Ah, you are awake, I see."

  "What…?" Tom muttered. It sounded like an alarm clock going off, if he could just hit snooze-and then he remembered where he was. Or where he had been. "How long was I-ow!" The pain in his back and legs returned.

  "A few seconds, no more," Ruy said. "And thank you for shielding me from the blast. You don't seem badly hurt. Some fragments, no more."

  "Feels worse," Tom grunted. He tried to look around to see how bad it was, but his back hurt like hell.

  "Some small cuts to your legs, and one in your ass, Senor Simpson," Ruy said. "Your buff-coat prevented the worst elsewhere, and you were already out of the worst of the blast."

  "Got to get out," Tom said, grabbing hold of what he decided was the salient point. "Got to get the pope out."

  "Yes, but are you well enough to-"

  Tom had been here before. It wasn't the first time he'd taken a mild stomping and played on, after all. He stood up, took a deep breath, winced at the literal pain in the ass, and said, "If we've got to, we've got to. How's the wall doing?"

  " Hijo de -" was Ruy's only response. There was a sound of metal moving very, very fast. A scream, an
d a gurgle, and Tom turned round to see that the doorway out to the tower's lower fighting platform was blocked by Spanish soldiers, the first of whom was already collapsing with his face a mess of blood and his crotch bleeding out. Sanchez was holding the door with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

  Tom spotted the shotgun he'd dropped, but it was too far away. So he reached for his pistol instead. One of the soldiers in the doorway was struggling to get his halberd through, while another was armed with either a very long knife or a short sword. The kind they called a hanger, Tom recalled. The short blade was no use where Sanchez was concerned. The tip of the saber he had brought licked out like the tongue of a snake and opened the man's gut in a neat thrust-and-twist action after batting the man's blade just fractionally aside. As he hunched forward over the wound Sanchez punched the blade in again, making a neat gouge in the man's throat. The halberd the next man had was now in play, but Sanchez caught the thing with his dagger and, hardly moving his arm, flicked the saber around and across the wielder's face, stepping around the halberd to get in close. The sword came back again to cause the next man to try to get through the doorway to sway back out of reach of the wicked and bloody edge, getting sprayed with drops of his friends' blood for his trouble.

  Tom got his pistol up and into the correct stance. He was a lousy shot, but he couldn't miss at this range, and he began to methodically punch away at centers of mass. Effective though the breastplates these guys wore might have been against down-time firearms at any reasonable range, against a 9mm round at not much more than knife-fighting distance, all they did was make a thunking sound as the bullets went through. Tom shot six times, taking five enemies down.

  Just targets, he repeated to himself each time he pulled the trigger, trying not to think about it. Sanchez had stood back.

  And then men in Swiss Guard uniforms surged across the doorway, taking advantage of the hole Tom had opened in the melee.