“ Grenades! ” yelled Matija, charging forward, heading away from their probable point of impact behind him.
Apparently the defenders knew about counting down fuses: both grenades went off where Matija had been standing a second and a half before. He felt lancets of pain cut into his back, his buttocks, and the rear of this thighs. The shock of the blasts, while diffuse, shoved him sharply forward into one of the gallery’s arch supports head first; he rebounded from it, the world spinning. His head was suddenly full of a strange coppery smell and he reflected, Damn and shit, I thought death would hurt more than this. Why did I spend all that time worrying about it…?
As Thomas North came to the head of the stairs, he almost tripped over the body of a Hibernian: the only man who had been killed outright by the grenades. He took a quick, professional glance at the walkway just beyond; two more of his men were down and motionless, Matija and one of the Wild Geese-little Dillon, from the look of his gear. The stairway up to the left was quiet, but that was not necessarily a good sign. Insofar as Owen had been bound that way, and was not in sight, it could be a very bad sign indeed. The further doorway-the one where they had expected the most resistance-was littered with Spanish bodies, and the last four Wild Geese were charging through it now, hacking, slashing and firing their pepperboxes at murderously close range. Those clunky revolvers had proven just the trick in a close assault. If the Spanish stopped to reload, the bog-hoppers cut them down with sabers, but if the defenders drew swords of their own, the Irish cocked the revolvers already in their hands and riddled them with lead.
But their toehold on this second floor was tenuous at best. More Spanish regulars-this had been the level on which they had been billeted, evidently-were coming around the gallery from the left, led by a short, grizzled fellow, probably the senior commander. Some were already beginning to aim at the Wild Geese. Meanwhile, on the right, North saw movement in the doorways that Matija had suppressed with his torrent of shotgun fire.
Two new threats. For which he had two different answers. Which had both better work…
North pushed forward to the low rim of the gallery’s walkway, kneeling and aiming his SKS at the grizzled commander to the left. Feeling his group of Hibernians close around him, peripherally seeing the muzzles of their weapons matching the trajectory of his own, he then screamed at the top of his lungs, “Harry! HARRY! Southwest, level two! Southwest, level two!”
Then North and his three Hibernians leaned over their sights, training their weapons on the Spanish to the left.
Harry cocked his head. “You hear that shouting?” he asked the Hibernian with him.
“ Ja, that is Colonel North’s voice; I would know-and hate-it anywhere. Look.”
Harry did, peering down at the far right-hand side of the second gallery, or, as per the prearranged codes, “Southwest level two.” And sure enough, he could see Spaniards readying muskets and swords in the rooms closest to the stairwell. But from North’s position at the due west lip of the upper gallery, they’d still be almost completely concealed.
But not from the top of the lazarette.
Harry braced the SKS, leaned so that the forestock was resting in between the merlons instead of monopodding on the banana-clip. He angled the weapon slightly, letting the tightly clustered figures drift into his sights. “Let’s hit ’em,” he said to the Hibernian and started squeezing off rounds.
Concentrated as they were in the doorways, probably preparing to volley and countercharge, the Spanish went down in bunches. Even from this height, and in the dim light, Lefferts saw black spatters on the floor, corners, doors. Two of the defenders managed to scatter back into the rooms to avoid the deluge of up-time rifle bullets. Other than one who crawled back through a doorway, there was only feeble, indistinct movement among the Spanish bodies left behind on the gallery.
“What now?” asked the Hibernian when there was nothing left to shoot at.
“Now,” Harry answered with a grin, “we reload.”
As gunfire roared on the roof and down in the galleries, Asher’s medium-sized assistant picked up Castro y Papas’ weapons. The Spaniard looked down, his feet wide, his arms folded. “And now what?” he asked Frank.
“Well, you have a choice. You could stay here and be executed by your buddies.”
“Or be killed by you-which would be far more merciful, actually.”
“Or you could come with us.”
“What?” said Don Vincente.
“What?” said Giovanna.
“No!” said the regular-sized assistant.
Frank kept his eyes on Castro y Papas and shrugged. “It’s your choice. But you don’t have a lot of time to make it.”
A new wave of fast, pounding up-time rifle fire from both overhead and below emphasized Frank’s final point.
Sergeant Alarico Garza watched as half his men were slaughtered by the storm of fire coming down from above and cursed himself: I should have thought of that. With those guns, from up there, of course they’d be able to see and shoot down at anyone on the south side of the upper gallery.
But the entire attack on Bellver had been such a complete and swift surprise, and the effects of the up-time weaponry had been so shocking, that there just hadn’t been time to think of everything. If only he had been as fit and alert and prepared as he had been when he was ten years younger No time for that; since the enemy fire from the lazarette was now stronger than ever, it was obvious that the attack he had ordered across the main roof had been a complete failure. That left Garza and his few remaining men little choice: they had to send a volley against the cuirassed intruders on this level and then charge to sword-range. It was not a pleasing prospect, but it was the only tactic that might succeed when fighting in close quarters against these positively satanic up-time guns. And the longer he waited “Ready on the line,” Gazra said, and saw the muskets of his command come up sharply as he drew his sword. “Volley,” he cried-but the guns that answered were not his own.
Thomas North did not stop firing until he had expended half his magazine. He simply fired, rode the recoil back down, looked for a moving figure, centered on it, fired again. Now, as he stopped and looked up over his sights, he saw the grizzled enemy commander stagger, right himself, and then get shredded by four more rounds-two from his Hibernians, two more from the Wild Geese, who had finally cleared the room on the left and had turned to add to the barrage that swept the last cohesive Spanish unit away like dry leaves before a hurricane.
North jumped up, tapped the Hibernian to his left on the shoulder. “On me,” he said, as he sprinted over to the stairway leading up to the roof — and found Owen Roe O’Neill on the ground, the lower left side of his cuirass mashed and crumpled. Remembering the derelict cars he had seen being disassembled for parts and metal in Grantville, a term came to mind: Owen’s armor looked as though it had been “sideswiped.” But apparently not breached. The leg wound, however Owen’s eyes fluttered open, focused with surprising speed, and swiveled over toward North. “Ah, Jayzus Christ. So I got sent to hell, after all.”
“No such luck; you’re still alive, I’m afraid,” said North, suppressing a grin and helping the Irishman stand.
“Not by much,” commented O’Neill, looking down at the dead Spaniard, who’d fallen back against the stairs, his head half sheared away by a saber cut.
“No.”
“Just enough,” grumbled Owen, with a hand on his left side. “The barstard’s shot crushed my ribs, I’m thinking.”
“Might have done for one or two, at that. Looks like his gun was charged with small lead pellets. Lethal if fired into a mass of unarmed men, charging around the corner. On the other hand, a small pellet of soft metal like that is much less likely to get through your cuirass-but it will hit you like a battering ram.”