The next half-hour was one of siege. Noli’s men came up the two stairways open to them. I kept an eye on the one through which we had entered, too, because it could be blasted open with a grenade. We used very short bursts to keep them from coming up the two ways; they replied with torrents of long bursts. It was amazing how so many bullets were expended with, as far as I knew, no casualties.
There was also shooting in the other part of the castle, way off. Then, silence.
After a while, we were silent, too, because we had used up the tommy’s ammunition and all but five bullets apiece in our automatic pistols. I carried the machine gun and its tripod to the top of one of the stairways and waited.
The time came when I wondered if everybody was either out of ammunition or almost so. Noli and his men had been forced to run out of the Hall so swiftly that they could only scoop up the ammunition handy. Caliban and the two old men had been forced to run from the plane with little chance to get much ammunition. The men stationed in the castle had supplies, too, but these were probably limited.
I had seen no evidence of anything except tommies, rifles, and pistols. I had the only grenade in the place, as far as I knew. Of course, everybody must have a knife. And there were the maces, bludgeons, spears, and battleaxes on the walls of various rooms.
I fired several rounds from the heavy machine gun down the stairs. When the gun ceased, seven reports came from below. Stone chips stung my back and bullets shrilled. Trish, at my orders, fired once down her stairway and got eight in reply.
“They’re out of ammunition, Trish!” I yelled. “I’m charging them!”
I threw an empty tommy down the stairs. Three shots were fired.
Trish did the same thing and got two bullets. They probably had at least a few more rounds.
Someone shouted, “Noli wants us! He’s got Caliban cornered! Caliban’s out of ammo! So are we! But we got the numbers!”
It was a trick. Otherwise, why let me know that they were withdrawing?
Possibly, most of them were out, and the few who still had some rounds would be left on guard.
I crept down the steps, going slowly, with the .50-caliber held in both arms. Faintly, the shuffling of many feet sounded. Then, silence. Most of those below had departed, though it might be just to the next room.
I went back up the stairs and did what I could have done before if I had had a good reason. I told
Trish to patrol back and forth between the two staircases while I was gone. With my automatic in its holster and a grenade in my pocket, and my knives, I climbed down the wall on the outside above the moat. I used the half-brick projections, a provision of some ancestor who had wanted as many escape routes as possible.
At the first window I came to, an embrasure so narrow I would have scraped off my skin if I had gone through, I looked in. The room had been emptied except for two men. Each was stationed on the side of the entrance to the staircase, and each held an automatic. I fired twice through the window. One did not die immediately, and he looked very surprised. I had one bullet left.
After the silence of a minute was the sound of running shoes. The men stationed below Trish’s staircase were coming to investigate. Some of them, anyway. Evidently they thought the two shots were from their colleagues, who probably had orders to fire only if they actually saw me.
They ran into the room and stopped short. They were bewildered. It was incredible, I suppose, that I could have come down the stairs, killed the two ambushers, and gotten out without the others seeing me.
My last bullet took one in the chest. The other two fired blindly at the window as they ran from the room. I went through, scraping skin off beneath my clothes and for a second not sure that I wouldn’t be stuck. I ran to the dead men, and ejected their clips. Their guns were all .45’s, so the ammunition would not fit my .38. From the three, I got six bullets for one clip and inserted it in a .45.
I called back up to warn Trish and then went up. She took the automatic and the crossbow, while I carried the big machine gun. I descended one staircase. Trish took the other. The two men were standing out in the hall between the two rooms and discussing what they should do. I fired at the stone walls at an angle to richochet bullets at them without exposing myself. They ran away and Trish killed them with three shots. That left four rounds in her automatic and three bolts for the crossbow. I had twenty rounds in the belt of the .50-caliber.
It was inevitable that some of those who had left would return on hearing the firing. I emptied my machine gun down the steps and blew three apart. When a man stuck his head out through the door below, I threw the machine gun at him. He dodged back in time to avoid being hit.
“There must be more than one outside that door,” I said. “We could go around them; there are at least five other staircases to the next story. But I don’t like to have them behind us. I think I’ll use the grenade.”
I went down the stairs while Trish, from above, kept her .45 pointed at the door. She had insisted that she was an expert in using the big powerful weapon, but I have no faith in its accuracy, especially if handled by a woman who, though strong, is still not a strong man. I did not want to be shot by the .45
while she was trying to hit our enemies.
I listened a while and determined that at least three men were talking out there. I could not detect the odor of more than three, but the gunpowder was so strong I was handicapped.
“Jesus Christ!” a man said. “He can’t have much ammo left, even if he did get all the stuff from the blokes upstairs. I say we ought to rush him.”
“Don’t be a dumbshit,” another said.
“Well, hell, if we stay here, he can go down another flight of steps and come up behind us. Or just leave us sitting here.”
“Fine,” said a third. “Let Noli and his bunch handle him.”
“Hell, they ain’t got any ammo left! What’ll they handle him with?”
“We got all that’s left,” the first man said, “and that ain’t much. Six rounds between us three. Don’t waste no more.”
“If they got more than we think they got, our goose is cooked,” the second said.
“We could take off,” said one who sounded like a Yankee. “Shit, this ain’t panning out like it was supposed to. This was supposed to be a breeze, a pushover. I ain’t seen anything like this since I was in the
Congo.”
“We took Noli’s money, and so we’re staying,” said another. “Besides, if we run out now, we’ll lose the other five thousand and maybe a hell of a lot more. There’s that gold he promised us.”
“How you gonna spend all that money if you’re six feet under?”
I pulled the pin on the grenade, counted to three, and tossed it. It struck with a metallic sound. There was a silence, then a series of yells and scuffle of feet. I flattened against the wall, turned my head away, and jammed my fingers in my ears. Even so, the roar half-deafened me, and the smoke billowing through the arch set me to coughing.
When the smoke was cleared, I looked in.
All three were dead against the walls, their clothes and parts of their bodies blown off. Unfortunately, the explosion had ruined two guns, bending their barrels slightly and set off the ammunition in the third and blowing it apart.
38
The crossbow bolts and the remaining bullets were disposed of inside the next two minutes. We were on the ground floor and crossing the great entry room, lit by a number of bulbs in artificial torches in sconces, when a shadow fell across us from above. I jumped and whirled; Trish screamed. A suit of armor that belonged to my 15th-century ancestor, John Loamges de Clizieux William Cloamby, Baron of Grandrith, struck the floor beside Trish. She fired up at the dark gallery, and a shadowy figure ran along the hall of the gallery, hugging the wall as it crouched. The .45 was emptied, but a richochet must have hit the man, because he staggered over and fell across the railing. A man appeared at the far end of the entry room with a pistol in his hand and fired. My bolt took him in the shoulder and he whirled with the impact and fell. I loaded the crossbow again, while another man ran out from the hallway and dived to get the fallen automatic. He fired and missed, too, and I did not. That was his only chance, because the gun was now empty.