by Eric Flint
The dozen grenades were still snug in their respective compartments. They were ovals, longer than the spherical designs typical amongst down-time armies. Although they were patterned after models seen in up-time books, they were filled with black powder, meaning that they could not generate the same high pressure explosions. However, the weaponsmiths that Dolor had set to the task had determined that the black powder would do its best work if more tightly contained inside a shell more robust than those used currently. Also, its surface was marked by a grid of deeply scored lines which, had one looked inside, were reprised on the interior of the weapon’s body, as well: all so that it would fragment more evenly, generating a more predictable and lethal spray of shrapnel.
Dolor nodded to Rombaldo who reached in and lifted out the grenades like a crate of oversized eggs. Underneath were four black powder revolvers and three double-barreled shotguns, two of them matches for the one in Radulfus’ hand. Those three were all copies of the fourth that lay in special, reinforced padding, away from the others. It was the weapon that had been lost by one of the up-time armed Wrecking Crew when two of them dropped through a hole they had blown in the roof of the Insula Mattei during the failed Roman rescue attempt. The heavy, overbuilt copies made from it had been difficult and expensive enough, but it was the ammunition that proved to be the almost insurmountable challenge.
Although several of the shells had been made from the odd material that the up-timers called “plastic,” most were down-time replicas in brass with crimped tops. Like the guns they were intended for, they were heavy and fabulously expensive, each fitted with a French-manufactured primer that had cost its weight in silver. Slightly more, actually. However, the first copies of this kind of shell—the up-timers dubbed it “buckshot”—did not function properly; the shot emerged with only a fraction of the force generated by the down-time reproduction cartridges. At which point, Dolor instructed the gunsmith to dissect one of the few, precious intact rounds of ammunition.
What they discovered both amazed and bemused them. They had presumed that, like all other up-time cartridges, wadding played little or no role. But in the shotgun shells, particularly the ones loaded with black powder, the wadding proved to be both comparatively extensive and subtly complex: without it, the individual projectiles did not exit the barrel in a reliable pattern or with optimal force.
The four Hockenjoss & Klott percussion cap revolvers—all from the original manufacturer—had been comparatively easy to procure. One had belonged to the young male hostage, Frank Stone, taken from him when he surrendered in Rome. Another had been snatched from a dead Marine by one of the few assassins who escaped the failed attempt on Urban’s life in Molini. He had carried it back to Rombaldo along with his report, too naive or stupid to foresee that his faithful return would ultimately be rewarded with a garotte: one less trail that might lead back to the masterminds who had planned the attack. The last two revolvers had been acquired through careful and quiet negotiations with private owners, always conducted through intermediaries.
Dolor stood and moved back from the chest. “You know which weapons are yours. Clean them. Then practice loading and unloading until you may do so as swiftly as you did when we finished training south of Basel. Use the blanks we have for that purpose: do not handle the actual ammunition.”
“When will we use them?” breathed Martius eagerly.
“Soon enough,” Dolor replied and drifted back to the radio. Sitting, wondering if Javier de Requesens y Ercilla would send a reply, Dolor let his hand slip inside his dark charcoal-colored cloak and checked that his private weapon—the one that only Rombaldo knew he had—was situated properly under his armpit. He ran his finger over the top of where the shrouded hammer rested against the weapon’s frame, the smooth up-time metal always a wonder to touch.
Some might have considered the weapon a battle trophy—he had come by it in the process of defeating the Wrecking Crew—but Dolor took no pride in possessing it. He had taken it from the body of one of the Crew’s two female members: a heavy Englishwoman by the name of Juliet Sutherland. She had been shattered beneath his cavalry’s hooves and would have died a long painful death. He had approached her with the one percussion revolver he’d had at the time—Frank Stone’s—and, looking in the direction where Harry Lefferts was hidden with a sniper rifle, Pedro Dolor put a single bullet into the back of her bloody and partially crushed head.
He could have made it a second quicker, so that it could only have been read as a mercy killing, but that would have been leaving a tactical and mental advantage unused. He had wanted Lefferts to see what had become of his fine plan, what it had done to his followers. Lefferts, while skilled, was still an amateur then, and such a scene was likely to send him either into a killing rage that would have delivered him neatly into the hands of Dolor’s waiting troops, or would have broken his spirit, which would have been almost as useful in the long run. However, there was evidence that Harry’s reaction followed a third and far more dangerous course: he learned from it, and resolved to learn more, to become a true professional. Unfortunate, since Dolor was not in the habit of trying to improve his enemies. However, that was an occasional and inevitable consequence of the job, and at least if he ever faced Lefferts again, he had the advantage of knowing that the up-timer would be more careful and so, more formidable.
The pistol Dolor had later recovered from Juliet Sutherland’s body was called a snub-nosed revolver. It had a perversely short barrel, upon which was engraved the legend “S&W .357 Magnum.” However, the short barrel, like the shrouded hammer, meant that the weapon was very unlikely to snag on clothes when drawn from a concealed holster and its cartridges made it unusually powerful for so small a gun. Consequently, the reason Dolor kept it for himself was probably the same one that had led Juliet Sutherland to choose it. Because her role in the Wrecking Crew usually involved interacting with people at close ranges, she did not frequently use a gun, but when she needed a weapon, its effect had to be shatteringly decisive.
Once again, ammunition had presented a special challenge. It was hard to find, even the down-time manufactured cartridges that were of distinctly diminished effectiveness. However, the quality of the reproductions turned out by the German gunsmiths was worth the two gold escudos he had paid for each shell. Fitted with a lead bullet scored by a cross-cut tip, even the black powder rounds were devastating when used against unarmored targets at point-blank range.
He turned. His associates were splitting up, each retreating to a separate corner or bed to commence cleaning their weapons, several of them lavishing more tender affection upon these tools of mayhem than he had ever seen them express toward any living creature. He had been right to deny them ready access to all but one of the weapons during the weeks of waiting; they were like children, unable to keep from fiddling and fussing over their new toys. The likelihood that one of their number would have cleaned a weapon too close to an open window or would have decided to carry one concealed, just once, out into the street, was too great to have risked over the past six weeks.
The telegraph began its muted chattering once again; Javier de Requesens y Ercilla was giving Borja his money’s worth and more than, self-importantly reporting minutiae that could not conceivably have any bearing upon the tactical and operational concerns of Rome’s newly arrived group of thugs-turned-assassins.
Dolor felt one urge to smile ruefully, another urge to smirk, but suppressed both. Instead, he looked out the window into the fading light, his eyes following the dusk-silhouetted steeples and roofs of Besançon. It was a pleasant enough view, actually: a second story vantage point with few obstructions despite being one of a tight cluster of buildings served by an equally tight tangle of narrow streets—alleys, really—that were nestled near and behind St. Peter’s church. The rent was surprisingly low because the building backed on the parish’s graveyard, with all but one of its windows looking out over that dismal view. The other—not much more than a shuttered slit bored
out of the wall to provide a cross-draft—gave unto an almost lightless alley.
But Dolor had been particularly pleased by the space, not only because it was both central and yet comparatively inaccessible, but because if he and his men had to flee, he had a ready warren of small streets into which they might disappear. Or, if the night was moonless or overcast, they could also use the main windows to hop down onto the roof of a first story extension and then slip over the low cemetery wall to flee through the tombstones, as invisible as ghosts.
Dolor heard Rombaldo—it was his tread—leave the main room and enter the one where the telegraph kept up its fitful rattle. “So, the self-satisfied dandy is once again playing at being an intelligencer, at earning his coin.”
Dolor nodded.
Rombaldo shifted uneasily, as he often did when Dolor did not take up a proffered entree to conversation. “Of course, we might have learned of the arrival of Borja’s new assassins a little earlier, if we had ever figured out where Javier the Fop was leaving and getting his drops.”
Pedro did not even sigh in disappointment at Rombaldo, who, try as he might, never quite got the hang of genuine intelligence work. “We did not need to know, before or now. Requesens sends everything of value to Rome and we have the codes. Obversely, shadowing Requesens to learn the locations of his drops would only have given him the chance to spot us, to learn that someone was already watching him.”
Rombaldo’s reply came after a pause and was pitched in a lower, stubborn tone. “Well, if we knew where he drops instructions to his sell-swords, we’d at least know about their plans ahead of time.”
Dolor turned and looked at Rombaldo. “We already will. Unless you think Javier will show enough initiative and impertinence to issue any such orders himself.” Rombaldo shook his head. “So whatever Borja’s group might do, we will hear it first from Borja.”
Rombaldo nodded, met Dolor’s eyes for another moment, then looked away and walked back into the other room.
Leaving Dolor alone. As he preferred.
Part Two
Tuesday
May 6, 1636
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing
Chapter 9
Estève Gasquet peered through the 4x Dutch telescope. The security cordon around the majestic doors leading into St. John’s Cathedral had not visibly changed. General control of the crowd and a few lower-sensitivity access points to the building were being covered by a special detachment of army guards. Gasquet did not recognize any of them from the patrols he had observed at the city’s walls, towers, or gates. These were apparently picked troops, now serving as living barriers.
Positioned back from them, and only half-seen, were three-man teams of the Wild Geese. And although it was a certainty that troops of the Hibernian Mercenary Battalion were someplace nearby, Gasquet hadn’t been able to spot them. They were probably in similarly-sized groups, hidden in positions from which they could respond rapidly, or as individual marksmen in concealed perches.
Beside Gasquet, Klaus Müller grunted something about breakfast. Estève ignored him. It was a bother to have the big Swiss along at all, but it was unavoidable. Only one of the Swiss could reasonably claim to be ill on the very day that Ignaz von Meggen meant to present his scraggly band of hopefuls to Urban. And of course Eischoll had to be there to control the others’ reactions in what might prove to be a situation requiring both prudence and delicate timing.
Gasquet snugged the telescope’s eyepiece tighter. Müller was certainly not up to that job. He was about as subtle as an irritable bull and was large enough to look out of place among the other smaller, and in some cases, teenaged hopefuls. So, leaving him out of today’s proceedings kept the group of would-be Swiss Guards looking a bit puny, a bit impoverished, and so, a bit pathetic. The less seriously they were taken, the less scrutiny they were likely to attract.
“Do you see them yet?” Müller sounded eager, as if this was some kind of parade.
“No.” Gasquet watched the crowds pouring in through the Porte Noire, filling the square that radiated out from the cathedral’s steps. This wasn’t just any morning mass; it was being offered by Urban himself, and the faithful were emerging to get their extra bit of holiness. He suppressed a sneer. As if a pampered, nepotistic, noble-become-pontiff could confer extra holiness upon anything. All just part of the pious charlatanry that Estève Gasquet had left behind years ago, along with the family and farm upon which he’d grown up.
If he had been a superstitious man, Gasquet might have seen the sudden increase of morning light as a deistic reply to his atheistic contempt: a golden beam sent to seek out and reveal hidden assassins such as himself and the Swiss oaf whose stomach was now grumbling louder than he was. But no, it was just the sun rising above the overlapping silhouettes of Mont St. Stephen and Gran Bregille behind them. “Move back a bit,” Gasquet muttered.
Müller wriggled to the rear, into the deeper shadow cast over them by the blank northwestern wall of the cathedral’s impressive canon house. Lying on the flat roof of a shed built up against it, they were functionally invisible. Anyone looking in their direction would be staring almost directly into the rising sun, while they remained within the crisp-edged, ink-black shadow of the house’s peaked roof.
Conversely, their vantage point, while not particularly high, gave them an unobstructed line of sight to the cathedral’s open doors ninety-five yards to the west, and an almost complete view of the Porte Noire one-hundred twenty yards to the north.
The view from the small roof also confirmed that the windows of Le Boucle were overflowing with flags and pennants, as if in preparation to celebrate some festival. The new flag of Burgundy was particularly prominent, a reversion to the one that had existed before the French crown’s fleur-de-lis and the Hapsburg white and red had been added to it. And the colors of the old flag—diagonal stripes that had originally been blue and gold—had been subtly reshaded into the teal and orange hues of Bernhard’s own House of Wettin.
A minor commotion at the Porte Noire drew Gasquet’s attention. A group of men bearing makeshift wooden crosses were struggling through the crowd there. Gasquet fixed his telescope upon that area and adjusted the focus; Ignaz von Meggen’s face swam into view, his most ardent—which was to say, genuine—followers close behind him. Norwin Eischoll and the rest followed in their wake.
Whatever von Meggen was saying, the crowd grudgingly parted before him and the cross he held aloft. In surprisingly short order, he made it to the foot of the stairs and began calling up to the Irish Wild Geese. From a concealed position, another of their number stepped out: tall, slim, red hair glinting in the sun. Owen Roe O’Neill. He stared down, discovered the source of the commotion, and his shoulders slumped slightly, as if in resignation. He patiently listened to von Meggen, whose erect posture and visibly corded neck suggested a passionate appeal.
O’Neill looked away once or twice, nodded about as often; it was clear that he was not enjoying this part of his duty. At all. Eventually, von Meggen finished. O’Neill looked over his shoulder, exchanged quick words with some unseen party in the cathedral’s narthex, then turned back, put his hands on his hips, and stared down at von Meggen.
The crowd had grown silent.
O’Neill hung his head and motioned with one hand for von Meggen to ascend the steps. But when the rest of the Swiss made to follow, O’Neill’s stance changed instantly to one of readiness: the other Wild Geese snapped-to, as well. His command, “Hold!” was clearly audible despite the distance. The rest of his instructions were not, but their content was clear: the rest of the Swiss reversed their course and stopped in a knot at the base of the cathedral stairs. At which point, von Meggen was waved up. But before the young freiherr entered, O’Neill made him pause again. Two of the rank-and-file Hibernian Mercenaries emerged from the cathedral. They searched von Meggen’s person in a brisk, efficient fashion that told Gasquet that this simple act—checking for concealed weapons—had been strategized and
trained, just like the rest of their actions.
Evidently the significance of that was not even lost on Müller. “If it comes to it, those soldiers will be men to be reckoned with.”
“And that is one of the reasons we are watching them, studying them.”
“So that we might better fight them when the time comes?”
Dolt. “No. So that maybe, we will not have to fight them at all. They are creatures of training and habit. That may show us ways to avoid, or trick, them.” Gasquet ignored Müller’s increasingly puzzled frown, raised a hand to mute the question that was struggling toward enough coherence to push past his lips. “Your idealistic von Meggen is being allowed inside.”
“Yes, but he’s the wrong man. He doesn’t want to kill the pope; he wants to protect him.”
If there was a just god or a useful devil, he would certainly have picked this moment to strike Müller down for stating the obvious, a habit that was just one step above buggering goats, in Gasquet’s opinion. “The moment the guards intercepted your friends, it was clear there would be no killing of a pope today, no convenient shortcut. And frankly, we held out no real hope of doing so.”
“Then why are we—?”
Gasquet did not have the patience to let Müller finish. “Von Meggen is getting a new, essential weapon for us. We call it ‘trust.’” The vapid expression on the Swiss’s face told him that explication was required. “If von Meggen seems genuine, they are likely to grant his request to consider making you all members of the Pontifical Guard. However, if your fellows aren’t allowed to swear their service today—well, then our job becomes more difficult.”
Müller nodded: possibly he comprehended, possibly he just wanted to act as though he did. “So when will we find out which it is?”
The doors to the cathedral began closing. Gasquet squinted at the shadows cast by the sundial in the enclosed gardens of the cloister just north of the cathedral. “About an hour now.”
