by Eric Flint
The voices from the left met the voices from the right just a few feet away from where he was hiding. They talked about searching the palace, and then faded toward the room that Heinz called a foyer: the room where all the shooting had been, but had now stopped.
Again, Otto thought he might cry. He couldn’t hide well: he was too big. Falling into and under the linens in the little wall-cave had just been lucky. He had to either find a way to run away from the palace, or at least a better place to hide.
Otto rose up out of the tablecloths and napkins, wondered which way he should go, chose the right because he was right-handed and proud of it. He might not think well, but he wasn’t a child of Satan, at least.
Otto crept as quietly as he could into the hallway to the right, staying on tiptoes as he did.
Just like Heinz had taught him.
* * *
O’Neill kneeled down next to Ruy, who was holding the bloody seam on his arm closed with a strip of cloth from one of the assassin’s sleeves. “Dr. Connal’s too busy?”
“He just arrived with the last of your men, from back near the great hall.”
“And?”
“And he is quite occupied keeping Father Vitelleschi alive. And after that, several of your other men.”
O’Neill nodded, hung his head. “A lot of good blood spilled today.”
Ruy grumbled. “Perhaps not enough good blood was spilled.”
O’Neill looked up, frowning. “Eh? Whose blood would you be referring to?”
“My own, Colonel. Because at a crucial moment, you apparently forgot your primary duty: to save the pope!”
O’Neill turned red, leaned forward, then leaned back. His color began returning to normal. “Exactly how,” he asked calmly, “did I fail in that duty?”
“By giving Sergeant Eubank the up-time rifle to save me! You should have used it on the assassins impeding you on the stair.”
“And in time, that is exactly what he would have done. By killing the bastards who’d tangled you up on the other stairs, Eubank would have been able to swing round to the side of the ones going sword-to-sword with us.”
“Unnecessary! He could have fired directly at them!”
“Ruy, you are a wonder with a sword and have one of the quickest battlefield minds I’ve ever met, but you’ve not spent much time acquainting yourself with the particulars of the larger up-time weapons, have y’now?”
Ruy squirmed a bit, told himself it was due to the pain in his left arm. “I am familiar enough.”
“No, y’stubborn Spaniard—”
“Catalan!”
“So then: no, y’stubborn Catalan, you just don’t understand some of the limits of up-time rifles. Yes, they’re very deadly. Yes, they shoot very rapidly. Yes, they’re very accurate. But what they’re not so good at—no better’n our own rifles—is working in close. I needed to get Turlough off the stairs, where we weren’t in his way. And with you and Giancarlo freed up, you could have stood guard on him while he blasted into the flank of the bastards who had us pinned on the stairs. To say nothing of keeping them off him when he had to reload: that rifle only takes ten rounds at a time. Besides, by the time I gave him the SKS, he was just the backup plan.”
“It seems to me he was the only plan.”
“Sorry to contradict yer esteemed self, but yer just flat wrong, Ruy. The knocking on the main doors started before we had made it to the main staircase. We all had three guesses who was comin’ in, and the first two didn’t count. Right enough, it was Hastings and the artillery. And that was the end of that. Sergeant Eubank was just icing on the cake.”
Ruy elected not to share the possibility that Eubank’s choice might very well have been right: fighting one-handed against three reasonably skilled assassins while Giancarlo was barely holding his own could have had a most disappointing resolution. Instead, Ruy said, “And you are apparently failing in your sworn duty yet again: the pope has not yet been moved, I observe.”
“Yer powers of observation are greater than yer memory today, my friend. Have yeh forgetten what the protocol is if we had assassins inside the perimeter, particularly if their access might have been other than just the front door?”
Ruy wished he had a free hand so he could smack his forehead; it wasn’t like him to lose track of something so basic. Then again, it wasn’t like him to lose so much blood—“A lead team has to check the evacuation route, ensure that there are no enemies lying in wait.”
“Precisely, and rather than send the pope all the way up the stairs, I’ve sent two of my less wounded lads to see if the main hallway is still clear of the colloquium’s many honored and obstructive guests. If so, we’ll go to the priory that way. Easier on the pope. And my walking wounded.”
As far as Ruy could tell, that included almost all of the Wild Geese, including O’Neill himself. “A prudent choice. And I see they’re reloading while they wait.”
O’Neill nodded. “And not just our arms, either. We’ve got almost two pepperboxes for every man, now, thanks to the murderous bastards who are no longer in need of theirs. If there’s more of ’em, we won’t have another situation like this one, where we shot ourselves dry because there was never enough time to swap cylinders.”
Ruy nodded. “That was clearly part of their plan. To trade casualties one for one if they could with the revolvers, and then close to range so it was blade against blade. That was their greatest strength.” He looked around the foyer. “But not great enough, evidently.”
O’Neill smiled, looked up as one of his men trotted down the short flight of stairs that descended into the receiving hall, dodging pools of blood as he came. “Escape route is clear, sahr.”
O’Neill stood. “That’s my cue.” A commotion at the door made him turn. “And apparently it’s your lady-wife’s cue as well.” He waved toward the entrance. “Doctor, we’ve got a wounded Spaniard over here—pardons, a wounded Catalan.” O’Neill’s smile was warm, if wicked. “I believe his ego has been cut through and through.”
With a laugh, O’Neill left—and Sharon filled the spot he left, eyes on nothing but Ruy.
Who leaned back and sighed: and now, everything is right with the world.
Chapter 41
Kneeling next to Ruy, Sharon tried to keep the tears from escaping her eyes but failed. “Damn you,” she wept softly.
“Damn me?” Ruy replied, his eyes wide. “But why, my love? We have saved the pope!”
“Yes, and almost died doing so. I’m not going to be a widow, Ruy Sanchez. Not again, and especially not your widow.”
Ruy’s strong teeth unveiled yet another of this maddeningly irrepressible smiles. “Ah, I see: it would be unfair to any suitor who might follow me once your mourning period is over. Yes, I suppose it would be inconsiderate to die, since who could follow in my footsteps, or my—?”
Even now, with his arm looking like a gutted fish, he can slip in a double-entendre. What an insufferable, maddening, resilient, wonderful man. She hugged him hard, once, then stood back up. “And now I have to go.”
Ruy nodded. “Vitelleschi. He will require all your arts, I suspect.”
“More than mine,” she said in a low tone. “I’m going to need to keep Sean Connal with me as well. And I don’t even know if we can risk moving him. But if he has a major bleeder—well, nothing I do is going to matter.” She kissed Ruy’s hand. “Gotta go.”
Turning to Finan, she ordered, “Find Leo Allatius, immediately.”
“He’s the Greek Roman Catholic, yeh, ma’am?”
“Cretan, but yes. He was trained as a physician. I need his hands out here.” Sharon stared at the bodies around her. “I won’t be able to perform enough surgeries fast enough to save all these men, not if he can’t stabilize them. And find Larry—er, Cardinal Mazzare as well.”
“He’s a physician, Ambassador?”
“No, but, at some point, he took a course in first aid.”
“First what?”
“Never mi
nd.” Sharon began moving up the stairs toward Vitelleschi, her core quivering with trepidation over what she might find. “Just get them here, and anyone else who knows how to bind a wound or stop bleeding. Otherwise there will be more dead men before this day is out.” She looked behind her. “A lot more.”
* * *
Turlough Eubank shook his head, trying to clear it. Damn it but those bombs were loud enough to wake the dead. Or even me old Da. And in this bloody tunnel, just the noise of their boots slapping down and their gear clanking was enough to make a man ready to stick a badger in each ear, if that would keep the sound out.
O’Neill turned back toward him, keeping his voice low. “Sergeant, you fit and able?”
“Right as rain, m’lord.”
“Then keep up. The priory is just ahead. And pass the order: seal the tunnel behind us.”
“Aye, sir. Seamus?”
“Sahr?” came a stone-dulled but echoing reply from the back of the line.
“Time to close it up. Make it lively.”
“Yes, sahr!”
After a few moments, Eubank heard the distant door shut with a bang and a sharp snap: a sound of great finality, more so than usual.
Satisfied, Turlough shuffled forward.
* * *
Otto, having found refuge in a closet of the music room, had held his breath while men clanked past. The Irish, probably: only the floppy metal plates that stretched down their necks from the back of their helmets made that sound.
Otto crept out—still on the tips of his toes—and saw a door standing open to the basement, where the clanking sound had gone, and was getting fainter with each passing second.
Then he heard more voices approaching from the hallway: many different accents this time. And coming toward him.
Otto stared around, thought he might start crying. He didn’t want to follow the Irishmen down into the basement, but that was the only way to escape the others who were coming. And maybe he’d find another place to hide down there. Otto, still on his toes, ran to the open cellar door and went down.
The cellar was not particularly large—it was the smallest room he’d seen in the palace. But somehow, the Irishmen had disappeared. And there weren’t enough places for them all to hide. So where had they gone? Had they vanished into the air like the spirits in the stories that he loved but which also frightened him? Were the Irishmen magic?
A sharp clack, with a faint squeal right at the end, came out of one of the tall dusty wardrobes at the far end of the cellar. Wishing he hadn’t forgotten his cleaver back in the little cave where he had been hidden by the tablecloths, he crept forward, both curious and fearful.
The wardrobe was slightly ajar; he stuck a finger in, opened it a little wider.
And there was the answer to the mystery: the Irishmen hadn’t disappeared. They had gone through a narrow door hidden in the back of the wardrobe, which went directly into the wall. Otto looked closer, noticed a thin line of light leaking around one side of the door. It grew fainter as he watched. Feeling at the edge of the secret door with his finger he found that this one, too, was ajar.
He swung it open carefully, silently, saw a distant light dwindling in the blackness of a narrow, low tunnel, one which he would barely be able to fit through. But it was better than staying in the palace. There were too many of the pope-lovers there.
Otto slipped inside, snatched his finger away from something that cut him as he grasped the door to close it behind him. Annoyed, he pressed on, never noticing the slivers of rust that had lodged in his flesh like tiny shark’s teeth, shed from the ancient—but freshly broken—lock.
* * *
Pedro Dolor had not been able to resist watching the rear of the palace when the attack started. He had told himself that it was worth the risk of emerging from his hidden hole in the wall, that what he witnessed might provide important clues as to how successful the attack had been.
But in truth, Dolor also had to admit that watching the attack was a matter of professional curiosity, of how well Borja’s thugs had planned it. What he saw was about what he had expected.
After the large blast announced the start of the attack—and called Dolor out of his rathole—there had been a short delay. Then a tradesman appeared running down the road that led almost to the foot of the house in which he was hiding, faint sounds of gunfire trailing after him. However, despite the assassin’s attempt to stay close against the buildings on the southwest side of the street, the Hibernian sniper in nearby St. Vincent’s Church obviously spotted him and knew him for an enemy.
When the man was about forty yards away, the Winchester in the bell-tower began a relentless series of slow, aimed shots. The first kicked up dirt, the second tore a horizontal gout of mortar out of a building’s wall, and the third seemed to have no effect whatsoever—until, two seconds later, the man fell face down in the street and did not move.
Approximately a minute after that, another figure appeared from the other direction, and on the street that passed directly beneath Dolor’s vantage point. He was a completely nondescript and unremarkable figure except for two details that were significant to an experienced assassin’s eye. Firstly, this fellow was also dressed as a tradesman, and had a satchel over his back. Not too uncommon; similar figures could no doubt be found on almost every street of Besançon. Secondly, however, he was strolling casually—despite the muted sounds of gunfire now emerging steadily from the palace behind which he was walking.
Shortly after walking past the rear gate to Granvelle’s gardens and grounds, the man doubled back, casually producing a small sack from the larger one he’d carried over his shoulder, and then lighting a fast-burning fuse which protruded from its top. A few more steps and he slung it over the low wall; it landed with admirable accuracy right between the two guards at the gate.
The blast knocked both of them over. One did not move. The other did so, albeit feebly, and was going for his pepperbox revolver when the man came through the battered gate and put a bullet through his brain.
—and then stopped, looking around suspiciously.
That was the instant at which it became apparent that the Wild Geese had plans and contingencies of their own. What Dolor had noted, and the strolling fellow could not have seen, was that, moments after the first, muffled explosion had occurred, and right as Dolor was emerging from his hiding spot, two of the four guards who had been near the gate had fallen back. They had taken concealed positions in a small grove, one hidden between a suitably stout tree trunk, the other behind a strategically placed—and reinforced—cart.
As the fellow who’d thrown the bomb began crouching, realizing that half of the anticipated guards were missing, those same guards opened fire. It was long range for their pepperbox revolvers, but their target had only two barrels on his pistol and after discharging the second, he cursed audibly and bolted back out the gate—which was when a ball hit him in the back. He went down in the dust, heaved himself up, made it around one of the two tall stanchions on which the garden doors hung—and promptly came under fire from the belltower at St. Vincent’s. He tried to run, slumped against the outside of the garden wall, pushed off again.
He had gone two steps when the fourth rifle round hit him in the back. The fine red mist was quickly lost in the small eruption of dust made by his body hitting the ground.
Moments later, the intermittent gunfire in the palace was drowned under a sustained surge of larger weapons fire: big, quick firing rifles like the Hibernians’ Winchesters, and another, sharper tattoo from what was, unmistakably, an up-time shoulder weapon.
And then all was silence.
A predictable outcome, Dolor reflected, as he slipped down into the crawl space and made sure the floor board above him was securely wedged in place so that it would neither rattle nor give way easily. He crawled back toward his hole in the wall. They might have killed the pope, but he doubted it. Which was unfortunate, but all would not be lost so long as at least one of the attacker
s lived and was capable of implicating Borja.
But even that would only be corroboration. Because if the enemy’s radio experts had not done so already, they would soon crack the trapdoor code which protected the radio records he had allowed them to discover. Which contained every bit of evidence one could wish to establish Borja as the architect of the assassination plots, save his name.
All in all, that would be enough for Olivares’ purposes.
And more than sufficient for his own.
Chapter 42
Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz looked up as the door to the small salon opened; O’Neill sauntered in, a small wrap on his left hand, a larger one binding his right thigh. Ruy smiled. “Feigning injury to better play the part of the hero, are you, Colonel?”
O’Neill smiled back. “Monstrous piece o’ shrapnel did this,” he said, patting his leg. “The size of the biggest gnat you ever saw.”
“And the hand?”
“One of those bastards cut me deep with a dagger. Must have gone in—oh my, let’s see now—a quarter of an inch.”
Ruy reached out for his glass of wine. “Legendary wounds, good sir. My own pales besides them.”
O’Neill looked meaningfully at the glass. “Any left?”
Ruy nodded toward the bottle at his feet. “There is.”
“Feelin’ generous?”
“I am.”
“Is it rioja?”
“Sherry.”
O’Neill made a warding gesture. “And why would you be drinkin’ shite like that?”
Ruy sighed. “Because, my good Colonel, all my many virtues aside, I have succumbed to, and ultimately acquired, the tastes of my homeland’s oppressors.”
O’Neill grunted. “Well, I guess we Irish know a thing or two about that, too.” He sat beside Ruy. “Just heard back from Grantville.”
