George leaned halfway back to his cover, said, “Be ready. There will be more than one of them creeping up on us to-”
Larry Mazzare saw a flash and heard a cannon go off just in front of him-or so it seemed, the sound shuddering savagely between the tight, rough-hewn stone walls. Intense pain in both his ears was accompanied by a ringing deafness. Then another gunshot went off-this was not nearly as loud. Something hit him in the legs and he was falling backwards.
And then the darkness of the secret staircase seemed to vomit out men with swords and axes, one after the other. Although hit several times, George seemed miraculously unaffected. The first attacker he caught on the point of his falchion, and with a lithe twist of the hips, re-angled the weapon so the groaning man slid off. That almost balletlike turn imparted extra force to the axe, which he brought around to cut deeply into the next assassin’s ribcage, the blow flinging the man to the side.
More were coming-and George took a step back and to the side, exposing his belly to Larry’s gaze. Mazzare hissed. The front of Sutherland’s torso was a mess, spilling blood from a terrible wound in his belly. There was a bright, manic look in George’s eyes. The man was already dead, for all intents and purposes-and he knew it, and planned to wreak a terrible last vengeance.
Mazzare snapped out of his fog. Grabbing Fleming, he yelled, “Shoot! Shoot! Why don’t you-?” and only then felt that the arm under his scrabbling hand was utterly limp. Peering closely, Mazzare saw there was a bullet hole just above wide-eyed Fleming’s left eyebrow.
That was when the next attacker that George killed-blood spurting vigorously-landed directly across both Fleming and Larry. “Trouble,” grunted George hoarsely. And looking up, almost through the Englishman’s legs, Larry could indeed see what had prompted his warning: three more attackers were coming down. The one in the lead was as lithe and spare as a weasel; George cut at him, the effort showing-and this blow was slow enough that the attacker was able to dodge low and roll. The weasel came up with a dagger, less than a foot in front of Mazzare, who, discovering that he was coated with the last casualty’s blood.
Behind him came another assassin with a cutlass, and behind him Larry was too dry to swallow but felt the reflex tug painfully at his throat: this man was as large as George and carried an immense, although somewhat short-handled, axe and a spent fowling piece. And he was smiling. Unscathed, somehow casual and contemptuous despite his swift approach, he clearly presumed that the next several moments would give him the pleasure of striking his immense adversary down.
George struck a falchion blow at the fellow with the cutlass, who parried and dodged sideways-but that move put him directly into the inbound arc of George’s axe. His neck half severed, the assassin seemed to topple sideways-right alongside where the weasel-like assassin was preparing to lunge, dagger first, toward George’s flank.
Mazzare, his throat too dry to speak, croaked out a warning that emerged as something less than a word; he flung out a hand at the little backstabber.
Who, stunned by Larry’s glancing blow, recoiled-thereby putting him just barely back into George’s field of view.
George, hearing Larry’s sound, possibly perceiving the movement at the low periphery of his vision, wrist-snapped the falchion around into a backhanded cut, even as the little assassin jabbed his dagger into the only target he could reach in time. George’s right knee.
The falchion cut into the murderer at the same moment he tore his blade free in the kind of swiping motion usually used to hamstring an opponent. Blood flew up at Mazzare again; the small body of the weasel crashed into him, rolling him off the right side of Fleming’s corpse, where Mazzare felt his body bruised by a stone. Or a brick. Or maybe it was…Larry grabbed desperately at the object.
George swayed, his right knee quaking, ready to buckle, as the ogrelike axe man jumped down the last step, weapon high.
But George was not done; his axe came round sloppily, unsteadily, but with enough strength to force the ogre to draw up short, twist away, the edge of the English broad axe cutting a seam in the assassin’s cured leather cuirass.
The ogre had his own degree of skill, however. Going with angular momentum of the axe’s glancing blow, he spun and brought his own axe around in an arc that, even in the dim light of the basement, gleamed like a lethal silver crescent.
Larry saw George try to parry, saw the contemptuous grin glimmer on the ogre’s face as he cheated his weapon’s angle down, and saw the head of the axe bury itself to the haft in the lower left side of Sutherland’s torso.
Larry got his hands out from under him as George began to sway and his weapons fell from his hands and clattered on the stones. The ogre left the axe in the wound for a moment, then wrenched it around and then out, bone-splintering sounds accompanying the process. George Sutherland pitched backward and lay still.
The ogre seemed to gloat for a moment, peering at the pale clerical faces at the other end of the basement; Vitelleschi had found, and raised, a short sword in defiance.
The ogre guffawed, hefted his axe. “So,” he said, “who’s next?”
“You are,” said Larry. He raised the object he’d rolled upon and finally grabbed up-the shotgun George had given to Fleming-and squeezed one of the triggers.
The flash and sound of thunder seemed to leap from the muzzle up into the ogre, battering into the massive body along its rear left flank. An array of broad, bloody pocks rippled into existence along his spine, lungs, and lower neck. The immense man whirled unsteadily, axe raised, gargling on blood; his unfocused eyes roved down, found Larry, lost him as the axe arm swung — and spasmed, dropping the weapon. The ogre emitted what sounded like a cry of irritated amazement as he fell; he quaked once and was still.
Larry’s first thought was to apologize to the pope: some Christ-like man he had become since the start of this evening-but what he did was spin around at the sound of stealthy feet on the stairs. And thought: Please no, Lord. Not again. Not me. Do not make me choose between my vows and my pope But as the steps on the stairs came closer, instinct took over. Larry sat up, braced himself, held the shotgun with both hands, and fired up into the darkness. Two screams, one short: a clattering tumble and a body rolled down, half obstructing the stairs. Larry immediately perceived the tactical advantage imparted by that corpse-it would be hard for attackers to find reliable footing anywhere near the body-choked base of the stairs-even as he heard a limping retreat heading back upward, then curses and a muttered consultation among an indistinct medley of voices.
As Larry began searching for Fleming’s pepperbox revolver, he called into the dimness of the basement behind him, “Antonio.”
“Y-yes?”
“Come over here and try to find the extra shotgun shells. George must have had at least three or four reloads. And do it quickly; we’re going to have more company.”
Sherrilyn staggered in her attempt to run forward, felt her knee about to give, forced it to hold, felt something shift inside it-which triggered a starburst of pain that sent arcing flares racing all the way up into her groin.
— which she ignored. She snapped her eyes at Ruy in between shots at the assassins still trying to crowd into the kitchen; he was half obscured by smoke, and was now hopelessly mixed into a melee with three of the assassins.
Good luck, boss, she thought as, gun in both hands, she resumed blasting away at a handful of assassins who, unable to force their way into the kitchen, had rounded on her and the Hibernians, and were closing with swords raised and desperation in their eyes.
Valentino watched a handful of his assassins close with the up-time-armed mercenaries. His men would not prevail, but they did not need to-not for Valentino’s purposes. They only needed to delay those reinforcements long enough for the pope to be crushed between the hammer he had sent rushing into the kitchen, and the anvil Odoardo was bringing in through the secret passage.