“Is the way clear?” asked Vitelleschi’s admirably composed voice.
“I’m wondering that as well, Father. McEgan, on me; we’ll secure the kitchen and the way to the back door.” Hastings glanced back at Wadding. “Keep an eye on us; if we wave ‘all clear,’ tell the others and then run for all you’re worth.” The gunfire beyond the kitchen suddenly crescendoed into a mad thunderstorm; it did not sound promising to Larry.
But neither did George Sutherland’s calm comment two seconds later: “Someone’s entering the passage behind us, back up at the eastern hallway, I think. Here, lad.” He handed Patrick Fleming his prized, sawed-off double-barreled twelve-gauge, and quietly drew his preferred weapons for hand-to-hand combat: a short, broad-headed axe for his left hand, and a falchion for his right.
Fleming looked at the up-time weapon in his hands. “You’re the better shot, Sutherland. I’m just-”
“Lad, you don’t need to be a good shot with double-aught buck at spitting range. And besides, you may be a fine swordsman, but right now-no offense, lad-we need brute strength. We have to be sure that every one of them we hit goes down-and stays down.”
Larry Mazzare thought that sounded like a very good philosophy indeed. He crouched low behind Fleming, who made sure his pepperbox revolver was out and ready, and his saber was loose in its scabbard. “Your Holiness,” said Larry. He was surprised how calm he sounded.
“Yes, Lawrence?” came Urban’s voice out of the dark behind Larry.
“Wherever you are, I suggest to move to the side wall and stay low. Very low.”
“Thank you, Lawrence. You probably can’t see it, but I have already taken that exact precaution.”
And Larry, wondering if some part of him was becoming hysterical, thought: Evidently, the pontiff is also infallible in matters of faith and muskets…
Ruy, feeling the change in the battle’s tempo, popped up briefly from behind the table, fired once to pull the assassin’s attention back toward him, and yelled in his combat-stentorian voice: “Riflemen: fire!”
Obedient to his command, the sound of the lever-actions resumed at the top of the stairs. A few of the blackguards who had grown incautious in their eagerness to get a firing angle upon Ruy paid for their forgetfulness: they fell, dark maroon stains spreading out from sudden holes punched in their sweaty leather jerkins by. 40–72 rifle rounds. One stared at his wound, dazed; the other stared at nothing with lifeless eyes.
Now, thought Ruy with a smile, you are caught between Scylla and Charybdis, you murdering dogs. And it is time for me to find some better cover-perhaps a slightly larger table…
Valentino glared at the tableau before him. Twenty seconds ago, his forces had been ready-finally-to assault up the stairs, with plenty of men for the job. Now, with almost ten more casualties, and five more of the enemy in the room-one of which was a limping woman, strangely enough-the tide was reversing, and defeat was conceivable, if he did not do something immediately.
Fortune provided him with an opportunity: the older fellow-Ruy Sanchez, if Rombaldo’s intelligence was correct-had risen, and staying low, was trying to get behind a larger table. At the same moment, one of Odoardo’s group appeared at the entry to the north wing, shouting “A secret passage, leading to the kitchen. Don’t let them get out!”
Valentino, seeing that Sanchez’s course would put him briefly under the guns of the relief force that had come in the back door, screamed. “Volley and charge: attack into the kitchen!”
He grabbed two of his men as they prepared to pass. “But you two, come with me. We will hug tight against this wall and close on that miserable Catalan, the one giving the orders.”
The larger of the two tossed away his spent miquelet-lock pistol. “Suits me fine,” he grumbled, “Let’s gut that old man.”
Smiling to himself, Valentino let his two eager men lead the way, crouching low behind them.
Sherrilyn heard the enemy bastard scream his orders, ducked as the volley of double-charged miquelet muskets sent smaller projectiles spattering around them, and heard a groan as one of her Hibernians took a ball in the arm. Back by the door, Kuhlman cursed again-but whatever his wound was, it left him alive enough to curse.
She raised her automatic, aimed into the charging pack-and flinched her finger off the trigger as Ruy’s agile shape danced momentarily into her sights. “No, don’t!” she screamed at her troops-and in that moment, almost two thirds of the charging assassins veered off into the kitchen.
What the fu-? And then, eyes widening, Sherrilyn knew: they’d found the secret passage and hoped to trap the escapees in the kitchen cellar between two forces. She bounded to her feet, sagged when her knee almost buckled, and started firing into the rest of the sprinting cutthroats. “Up and fire! They’re going for the pope!”
As Luke Wadding watched, Lieutenant Hastings, who had been moving stealthily toward the door joining the kitchen to the great room, suddenly found himself the apparent target of more than a dozen wildly charging assassins. A long, heavy sword now in his right hand for parrying, Hastings gave ground, firing his pistol as he did so. And, being armed with an up-time pistol he rained ruin upon those approaching agents of Satan.
They went down one after the other, sometimes requiring Hastings to spend two bullets to be sure of stopping them. And even then, about half them were not dead yet. Most were mortally wounded, but some even rose to fight again.
McEgan, similarly armed with a sword in one hand and his pepperbox revolver in the other, came alongside the lieutenant’s left flank, his marksmanship a bit less precise, but he accounted for at least three, killed or incapacitated, before his weapon was spent. Two of the assassins still had charged pieces of their own as they entered; one missed wildly, slain as he fired, and the other put a small pellet through Hastings’ left shoulder. If the Hibernian officer noticed, he gave no sign of it.
But then his own seemingly inexhaustible weapon was spent, and the press of attackers pushed them back.
Wadding’s heart quickened with pride at the courage of the two men, but his throat was tight with the certainty of the outcome: there were too many of Lucifer’s own servitors hemming them in, now. Despite their having killed several of the assassins with their pistols, their enemies now beset them to the front and flanks, and only their agility and training turned aside blows that would surely have slain them. Hastings took off an arm at the wrist; McEgan, parried and pierced a lung before blades hammered him back even further, closer to the basement door.
A rapier went through Hastings’ right thigh; a cutlass rang a glancing blow off McEgan’s capelline-helmeted head. They did not fall, but staggering, gave even more, precious ground-which allowed their foes to press them even more closely.
From behind, Luke Wadding heard the voice of his beloved pontiff. “Can they win, Cardinal Wadding?”
“If God wills it, Your Holiness,” Wadding rasped out. “If God wills it.”
What? They can approach us without making a sound? Larry thought, when, from the secret staircase that led down into the kitchen cellar, there was the rapid clack-flash-boom discharge of a miquelet-lock pistol at startlingly close range.
Fortunately, George Sutherland had kept himself off to the side, partially covered by the edge of the doorway; the ball uttered a sharp screech as it clipped a chunk of the stonework off that corner.
With surprising speed for so large a man-and one with a weak ankle, no less-George was in the doorway, arms working like a bear that had been taught to thresh wheat ambidextrously. The sword hit the gunman with a leather-slicing sound that gave way to a scream — which ended almost as soon as it had begun; the axe landed with the sound of a heavy bone splintering. The exchange was conclusively punctuated by the thud of a limp body.