Those guys, apart from a couple of sentries watching along the bridge, had taken the sensible view that two hundred Swiss Guards weren't going to be attempting a daring breakout any time soon and had gotten comfortable, with small fires here and there and a fair few of them stretched out either side of the road exercising a soldier's privilege of racking out when nothing interesting was happening.
Meanwhile, down on the river, there was actually still some river traffic. There were boatmen who ran a taxi service, and a few were still plying for hire. Tom had no doubt that some of those boats were carrying refugees, sneaking out of the city by one of the many routes the invaders couldn't watch. There weren't many, though. Just enough for cover. The rest of the boats were clustered at piers up and down the river, tied up against the day when the shooting stopped and people wanted rides again. If they could just get the pope on one of those boats and downstream out of the city, they could retrieve the horses and get the hell out of Dodge a lot faster than any pursuit could be organized and get after them. That would give them a chance to break contact, and once they did that and lit out across country, the chances of getting caught before they had the pope well on his way to whatever sanctuary his people thought best were actually pretty small.
The trick was going to be bringing that happy outcome about without indulging in what looked like a messy and elaborate suicide.
"Did we even bring a rope?" Tom asked, trying to figure out how the hell they were going to get over that wall.
"Have faith, Senor Simpson," Ruy said. "We are about the Lord's work."
"On a mission from God, eh? Put like that, I've no reason to worry at all. I'm certainly not thinking that, in fact, you don't have a plan of any kind at all for this. Not in the least."
"Plans? Faugh. The playthings of lesser intellects. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, need no plan. Insult me no further with such talk, Senor Simpson. We must steal, I think, four boats."
"Four boats?" Tom looked around, wondering what kind of counting system the old guy was using. They'd started out with Ruy, Tom himself, Doctor Nichols, Captain Taggart and six Marines. Three of the Marines had stayed with Doctor Nichols, leaving six to get across the river. Either Sanchez was planning on stealing really, really small boats, or he was improvising madly and a spare or three were going to come in to it somewhere.
"Indeed. Four boats. To ensure that none of them sink. Listen, Senor Simpson, to the voice of experience."
"This is going to be good, isn't it?"
"The best advice always is. As you are aware, all pursuit of the profession of arms is attended by a most malign imp, a hell-spawn shat from the very asshole of Satan himself, whose sole delight is in ensuring that if, in the affairs of mortal men, it can go wrong, it will."
Tom nodded. "We Americans call him 'Murphy.' "
"Truly? Then you are not a people as wholly divorced from reality as I had thought. But no matter. Were we to steal exactly sufficient boats to accomplish our task, nothing is surer that one of them would spring a leak, or we should be struck by a random shot in the dark. Nothing, but nothing, would be surer. But if we provide ourselves with more boats than we need-"
"Then if all of them float, then we've gone to a lot of wasted time and effort, yes, I see what you're saying."
"Logic. Reason. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, am truly a master of these disciplines. Ah, here are the very craft we require."
While they had been talking Ruy had been leading them down a set of steps to where a wooden jetty was home to a couple of dozen rowboats. Most of them looked like they could take a couple of passengers at least in addition to whoever was going to be rowing them. There were even a couple of bigger models. They were all unattended. And all lacked oars. Well, that made sense. Like not leaving the keys in your car. Tom looked around for somewhere that might be an oar-storage shed, but wasn't seeing one anywhere. And then he heard the sound of splintering wood over the sounds of the battle on the far side of the river.
Ruy's direct approach in action again. He had gotten the Marines organized ripping the simple bench seats out of several of the boats, to use as paddles, it looked like. They were using their forage axes to pry the things out, and had so far manage to free one of them. Well, if it's that simple, Tom thought, and stepped into one of the smaller boats that they almost certainly wouldn't be using. Now, the Marines were all well-built guys, tough, wiry customers that no one would want to mess with casually. Tom, on the other hand, still had the build of a nearly-pro footballer and hadn't stinted any on his exercise regime since the Ring of Fire. One swift tug, and a thwart came up in his hand. A twist and the pegs at the other end gave way. He ripped out three in quick succession, during which time the Marines had gotten one more out. "How many more do we need?" he asked brightly, noting the look on Ruy's face.
"Three more should suffice," Ruy said, momentarily at a loss for words, which Tom judged entirely worth the grazed knuckles he'd picked up.
Tom looked across. It was maybe two hundred yards, and the river didn't seem to be in full flood; there was a little mud showing under the jetty on this side, and the same on one a little upstream of the fortress on the other. It wouldn't be so bad. From here, with a little effort, they could get across to the shadows under the bridge on the other side. Hopefully, the boats wouldn't be noticed, because with only Captain Taggart and three Marines to keep an eye on them, they were relying entirely on stealth for that part of the mission. Tom couldn't help feeling that maybe, just maybe, they needed a bit more planning than they were doing. On the other hand, Ruy had been pulling crazy stunts like this for longer than Tom had been alive, so maybe he was approaching this as just another routine rescue of a major spiritual leader against thousand-to-one odds. Done it a dozen times before. Could do it again in my sleep. Suitably embellished with appropriately Catalan curlicues and declarations of honor and willingness to dare all in pursuit of his goal, of course.
Tom couldn't help thinking, as he helped drag the boats off the mud and into the water, of Sean Connery in all those action-movie roles he had played well into his fifties or sixties. Not that that was any guide to reality, but it was getting remarkably easy to imagine Ruy with a Scots accent.
The paddle across the river, the sweating, sore back and blistered hands apart, proved to be fairly easy. Pulling the boats up on to the mud below the river wall, only a little trickier. Tom's boots, filled as they were with a hair over two hundred and seventy pounds of footballer, sunk a bit deeper than everyone else's, and it was all he could do not to lose one of them.
There were steps up to the esplanade. Tom was just craning his neck to see if there was any cover at the top when Ruy started strolling up them, for all the world as if he was on a pleasant evening promenade without a care in the world.
"Are you nuts?" Tom hissed, wondering as he did so why he was trying to whisper. Between all the shouting and shooting and the regular firing of bombards from inside the fort, even if he could have been heard, anyone who might have been listening was probably halfway to deaf anyway.
Ruy turned back and the low light of the evening, the moon not yet risen, revealed a wide grin. "Senor Simpson, nothing is surer to make a sentry want to shoot than the sight of a man creeping up on the fortress he guards. So, we do not creep up."
"But those guys," Tom said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the several hundred soldiers waiting on the opposite bank of the Tiber. "They're going to see you for sure."