"Cut it a little fine there, didn't you?" Paul hissed at Gerd.
Harry was tempted to add his own admonishment, but manfully resisted. What could you expect? "Cutting it fine" and "let Gerd handle the fireworks" were pretty much a given. Which, of course, was the reason Harry had given him the assignment in the first place. As hair-raising as the results might be.
He levered himself up and peered over the rail. The Algerine vessel was an already an inferno. Several more pirates had been killed outright by the blast, at least as many injured-and the intact members of the crew were paying no attention to anything except getting their two dinghies overboard. They didn't have a prayer of stopping that blaze, and they knew it.
By now, Grabnar had them far enough away that there was no danger of the fire spreading to Harry's own ship. He rose to his feet and took a few seconds to study the pirates working at the dinghies. By the time he was done, Sherrilyn was on her feet also and standing next to him, reloading her ten millimeter. A bit guiltily, Harry looked around until he spotted his own pistol, lying against the rail a few feet away. But there was really no rush, and the weapon wasn't going anywhere. He could reload later.
"You're the best rifle shot we got except maybe Ohde," he said to her. "Go to the stern and get Paul's rifle. Between you and Don, you ought to be able to keep them from launching either of those dinghies."
The pirates did manage to get one of the dinghies into the water. Or Sherrilyn did, if you believed her later boast that one of her rounds had cut the last remaining line and dumped the dinghy before any pirate could get into it. Either way, it didn't matter. That dinghy drifted off, unoccupied, while Donald and Sherrilyn systematically slaughtered any pirate who tried to lower the other one.
At the end, not more than half a dozen pirates threw themselves into the sea to get away from the holocaust that their ship had become.
"Get us closer and we can pick 'em off!" Ohde hollered.
Harry shook his head. "Waste of ammo, Don. Just let 'em be. They'll all be dead anyway, in less than ten minutes."
People had swum across the English Channel from time to time, Harry knew, in the world he'd left behind. But they hadn't been Algerine pirates picked at random, they'd been people who'd trained for it for years. And he was pretty sure they'd done it at the narrowest stretch of the Strait of Dover, which was still many miles away. And he was dead sure they hadn't done it in January. Maybe if he were wearing a wet suit-and assuming he was a good enough swimmer in the first place-a man could make it to the French shore, well over ten miles away. But these pirates didn't stand a chance. Hypothermia would take them under before they got a mile.
No, there'd be no inconvenient witnesses to make awkward comments about the little group of disreputable-looking travelers who'd be arriving in London soon. Disreputable didn't matter, certainly not in Southwark. Dangerous as demons did, until the demons finally bared their fangs at the Tower.
George came up out of the hold. "You all right, love?"
"It was horrible. Look at this!" She'd never relaced her vest, having concentrated entirely on just getting out of the way once the shooting started. Her breasts were more impressive than ever, now that she hauled them out in her hands. "They're frostbitten!"
George ambled over. "Not to worry. Come down below and I'll take care of the problem. Between me and some rum-especially me-they'll be as good as ever in no time."
"Right." She stuffed the medical objects in question back where they'd come from. Then, gave Harry a very haughty look. The sort that would have fit a real dame far better than did her face.
"See? Didn't I tell you? It was jealous rivals did me in."
"I never doubted you once," said Harry. Proving, despite his flamboyant reputation, that he followed the eleventh commandment with devout scruple even if he was none too diligent about the other ten.
Chapter 14
Magdeburg
"Well, go in, why don't you?" Eric Krenz had his arms crossed and his hands tucked into the folds of his heavy coat. "It's cold, Thorsten. I always hated January even before an up-timer told me we're in the middle of what they call 'the Little Ice Age.' "
Thorsten was very cold himself, it being one of those clear-skied days in midwinter when everything seemed to turn to ice. But he still wasn't ready to take the last few steps to reach the entrance to the settlement house. Mostly-so he told himself, anyway-because the settlement house was actually a large and impressive-looking monastery. The oldest surviving structure in the city, in fact, founded centuries ago.
The Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, as it had formerly been known. The literal translation into English was "the Monastery of Our Loving Women," but it was actually a convent dedicated to the Virgin Mary-and it was still referred to as such by Magdeburg's more devout inhabitants, who cast a skeptical eye on the new activities to which the ancient building was being put today. The Lutherans, perhaps oddly, even more than the Catholics from whom the monastery had been seized after Gustav Adolf established his control of the city and began rebuilding it from the devastation left by Tilly's army in 1631.
But perhaps that was not so odd. There weren't that many Catholics in Magdeburg, which had been the center of Lutheranism in Germany since the previous century. Or, at least, not many who made a point of it. Feelings could still run high about the horrible massacre, which had happened less than three years earlier. Since the emperor had allowed the Catholics to retain the small cathedral of San Sebastian not far from the huge Lutheran Dom, and his soldiery-the CoC, still more so-kept the religious peace in the city, Thorsten imagined the city's Catholics were inclined not to make a fuss about the former Kloster.
"Thorsten, I'm freezing. And we've only got a one-day leave. Either shit or get off the pot. If you can't work up the nerve to see the Americaness again, then"-Eric snatched a hand from beneath his coat and pointed to the north; then stuck it right back-"there's a nice warm tavern not two blocks away."
A tavern sounded… very tempting. Warm, good beer-and most of all, a familiar and comfortable situation. As opposed to marching into a monastery-become-peculiar-charity-project, where lurked a young female who intimidated Thorsten almost as much as she attracted him.
In the end, the decision was made for him. The big door to the settlement house opened and Caroline herself emerged. With the same incredible smile on her face that Thorsten vividly remembered.
Did more than remember, actually. In the weeks since he'd last seen her, he'd used the memory of that smile to fend off the image of Robert Stiteler being slaughtered. That worked very well, he'd found. He was having fewer and fewer nightmares and flashbacks as time went on.
"Do you always make a habit of this?" she asked him cheerfully.
Peering out the same frosted window through which Caroline had first spotted Thorsten Engler standing outside, Maureen Grady smiled almost as widely as Caroline. "Well, this is shaping up nicely. I am so fond of men who aren't always cocksure about everything."
Anna Sophia, the dowager countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, half-rose from her seat near the window and looked out also. "Is that the young man you mentioned to me last week?"
Her nineteen-year-old sister-in-law Emelie, born a countess of Oldenberg-Delmenhorst but the new countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt since her marriage the previous summer, rose from her chair and came to the window also. "Nice-enough looking fellow, I will say that. But are you sure he's suitable for our precious Caroline?"
Maureen started to say something, but broke off in a half-choked laugh when she spotted the expression on the face of the older countess. Anna Sophia was looking very prim and proper indeed. Much the way a middle-aged and eminently respectable lady reacts to something unmentionable being spoken aloud in public. Silence, that somehow still manages to exude wordless disapproval.