1635: The Papal Stakes

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Harry saw Gerd slide down the roof, Sherrilyn going over to him. But where had the shot-?

“Muzzle flash: base of the belvedere on the main roof,” snapped Fabrizio Marcoli from directly behind him.

So the Spanish had their own shooter on the roof? What the hell-? Harry tracked over with the rifle, asked, “Do I have a shot?”

“No shot. He’s on the far side of the belvedere,” Fabrizio announced. Harry saw that Fabrizio was right-and then started to wonder how the Spanish had not only known to put a sniper in the belvedere, but to put him on the side away from Harry’s own position Back in the courtyard of the Palazzo Giacomo, a faint arc of light traced itself against the gathering darkness. Harry rapidly tracked over to the left, just in time to see an oil lamp, or maybe a molotov cocktail, flare angrily on the second-story gallery. And were those silhouettes up there? With weapons?

Harry was staring so hard at the shadowy figures that he almost missed the small, bright wink of light from behind the louvered shutters of the window closest to the impact point of the oil lamp Harry ducked, realizing: Holy shit; they have us spotted and ranged.

And he heard, an instant after the distant report of the gun, Fabrizio grunt and fall.

Harry spun, hair raising up. No. No no no Fabrizio was stretched out his full length, coughing, eyes rolling listlessly. A bullet-hole just under his heart was leaking out his life faster than any up-time surgeon could have staunched; in any century, this kind of sucking chest wound was a death sentence. A quick one, perhaps, but that was the coldest of all possible comfort.

Harry closed his eyes and felt his molars grinding together. He’d come here to rescue Giovanna-and he’d just gotten her brother killed.

Captain Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas was fast-terribly fast. He crossed to Frank in a single step, grabbed him with both hands and hurled him bodily away from the window. Airborne for at least five feet, Frank crashed into, and slumped down along, the opposite wall.

“Beast!” Giovanna screamed at the Spaniard as she dashed to her stunned husband’s side. “Murderer!”

Don Vincente had stepped back from the window. “Signora Stone, I may have just saved his life-”

That’s when the gunfire started in the courtyard, and an explosion slammed the roof in the adjacent room, quaking half the plaster off the ceiling.

Harry swung back up into his firing position, slammed the Remington into his right shoulder, and jerked his scope over to the courtyard. As he did, he saw the tail end of another small flash, right next to where the first one had been, but now half-obscured by the leaping oil flames.

Before Harry could react, he felt a red-hot poker lance into his right shoulder, just above the clavicle, and push out the other side with the force of a sledge-hammer. Lefferts went off his stool, but kept his grip on the rifle. Damned if I’m going to jar the scope out of alignment now, he thought.

He threw himself upright without delay and snugged the gun tight-agonizingly tight-into his savaged right shoulder. He dropped the crosshairs on some movement he saw through the louvers and fired. At that precise moment, the dark arches lining both the second and ground floor galleries of the courtyard’s loggia were raggedly illuminated by a volley of murderous fire.

John O’Neill was so stunned by the sudden wave of fire- an ambush! we are betrayed! — that he almost didn’t feel the two-headed battering ram that slammed through his cuirass and stuck his chest, almost penetrating the buff coat beneath. As he fell backwards, he was vaguely aware that the lefferti in front of him were going down in windrows. He felt the overlapping mental and physical shocks combine and verge toward confusion-and then he turned off his mind. He thought only so much as was necessary to get moving, a trait taught by years on battlefields. He started to roll up into a crouch, checking his pistol, and the situation.

Which was not good: three of the Wild Geese who had charged in with him were down. But like him, two were unwounded and rising, thanks to their cuirasses and buff coats. The third man, Fitzgerald, was having a hard time getting to his feet, trailing a useless left arm. His bicep had been torn through, and was probably still attached only because the Spaniards were using loads of multiple, lighter balls. Lethal against the unarmored troops they had evidently been expecting, but much less so against layered armor.

But as O’Neill swayed upright, he saw the real horror of what such double loads could do. The unarmored lefferti, who had been given the presumably easy job of securing the bottom level of the loggia, had caught the brunt of the volley; a dozen were strewn across the width of the courtyard, motionless. Three more were rising unsteadily, their clothes tattered and blood-smeared from multiple wounds.

So John O’Neill did what he did best. Tossing his pistol over to his left hand and drawing his sword with the right, he screamed, “At them!” and led the charge toward the loggia.

Sherrilyn looked over the shallow roof peak as the terra-cotta tile fragments blasted skyward by Gerd’s demolition charge ceased to rain down. The explosion had blown open a hole, but not as big as they had hoped or planned. Two at a time could get down into the room below, at most. “Matija, Donald, suppressive fire. The rest of you, follow me.”

She scuttled over to the edge of the still-smoking hole-and almost fell in when her weight prompted a little more of the ruined structure to collapse. “Damn it, this is going to be tough. George, Paul, you’re going to lower Felix and me down for a look-see.”

Paul frowned. “I thought we were just going to jump down and-”

“Nope. We’ve had too many surprises already. So we take it one step at a time from here on; it might just save our lives.” She got her foot in the rope loop that had been prepared for this eventuality, pulled her. 357 Smith and Wesson revolver and looked over at the waiting Felix-who had the team’s CQC entry weapon, a sawed-off 12 gauge, ready. She nodded to George Sutherland, who held the rope in his massive hands. “Okay: down we go.”

As John O’Neill charged, Owen winced. But whether the earl of Tyrone called for a charge by chance or design, it had been the right call. The Spanish had obviously fired all barrels, trusting to inflict so many casualties in that first terrible sheet of flame and lead that the intruders would break. John’s charge took them by surprise, and although he had only half a dozen Wild Geese following him, they were in armor and were closing with sword and pistol against musketeers caught in the act of reloading. Owen listened to the battle he could not see; from the sound of it, the lightly armored Spanish were tossing aside their firearms and going for their much smaller swords. So unless they had overwhelming numerical superiority, the battle for the lower level of the loggia promised to be a very one-sided fight. But the upper gallery Owen elevated and aimed his pepperbox, securing it with his left hand as Lefferts and North both had counseled. “Fire on the second level, lads. Make ’em corpses or keep ’em busy.”

Owen’s timing was indeed fortuitous. The Spanish musketeers on the second floor had finally sorted themselves out after dodging the oil flames and reloading. They now rose and brought their weapons to bear-but they had not expected four revolvers aimed up at them. The flurry of pistol fire dropped three of the Spaniards-and then another two went down an instant later. A pair of lagging, distant reports announced that the Hibernian riflemen back at the signal building had brought their own weapons into play.

For the moment, the tide seemed to be swinging back in their favor-but Owen put aside the seductive thrill of pushing ahead with the attack. The Spanish expected us, knew we were coming. If we get the initiative, we should use it to run. As quickly as possible…

With bits of roofing tiles crumbling down around them, Sherrilyn and Felix dipped down into the room adjacent to Frank’s, separated from it by one thin wall. They had a scant moment to survey the shattered finery before two Spanish soldiers swept around the doorway, firing pistols as they came. Another two stayed back, sheltering behind the doorway and discharging their pieces as well.

It was like some insane video game, Sherrilyn thought as she pounded rounds out of the. 357 magnum and wished she had stuck with the nine-millimeter this time: magazine size was an entry team’s best friend. She saw the first two Spaniards go down, felt a bullet sing past her ear. She fired through the wall at the third Spaniard sheltering behind it; he dropped screaming into the open doorway, clutching a ruined groin. Felix and the last of the defenders traded shots. The Spaniard went backwards, but so did Felix. Sherrilyn grabbed him, kept him on his rope, yelled: “Pull us up! Now! ”

John O’Neill came back out from under the roof of the loggia’s lower tier, his sword drenched red. He saw that Owen had killed no small number of the musketeers on the second level. And that he was forcing the rest to keep their heads down, for the nonce. So now Having heard the expected breaching charge go off on the roof in the midst of his attack, John looked up expectantly at Frank’s window. Just beyond it there was the sound of gunfire-a lot of it-then silence. Ah, so the Wrecking Crew had gotten inside. Excellent. No time to waste. “Fitzgerald,” he shouted, “with me,” and ran over to the foot of the window from which he expected a rope ladder, and then the hostages, to descend. Any second now.

The irate mob in front of the Palazzo Giove hushed suddenly, hearing the fusillade of gunfire just up the street, as well as one or two reports nearly overhead, evidently coming from the belvedere. Juliet frowned; even though she wasn’t seeing the battle with her own eyes, the pace sounded wrong. The firing should have been very much one-sided, and not so much of it, but now The tall doors of the Palazzo Mattei di Giove seemed to emit a metallic bark: the immense lock had been undone. And then the doors themselves seemed to fly inward on their hinges, so quickly that This is planned, Juliet thought, and jumped aside, nimble despite her size.

A split-second later, the doors were fully open, revealing a darkened courtyard…Which suddenly belched out a wall of flame and thunder as a waiting platoon’s musket volley drove straight into the core of the crowd.

For a moment there was no further sound. It was as though, surprised or outraged or both, the world was holding its breath. Then the screaming started: a chorus of agony from shattered bodies lying upon each other, mingled gore spreading across them.

As Juliet moved farther away from the gateway, she heard the sound of hooves, hammering down in a thunder against the courtyard’s flagstones. The riders-armored, swords drawn, pistols ready in fore-saddle braces, crested morions pulled low-swept out of the Palazzo Giove, ignoring the crowd to the south of the doorway, and smashing through the stragglers to their right, to the north.

Six, Juliet counted: no, eight. And behind them, firing occasionally to rout those who did not flee fast enough, were foot soldiers. Who also turned north as one body.

Toward the fountain and the shattered gateway into the embattled courtyard of the Palazzo Giacomo.

They knew we were coming, Juliet realized, knew it all along. And they fooled us; they fooled me.

Suddenly gripped by terror-more because she had been outwitted than in response to the peril at her heels-she turned and ran for her life.

Sherrilyn handed Felix off to Donald as they got back behind the roof peak. Matija, bleeding from a through-and-through gunshot wound in the upper left arm, hooked a thumb at the belvedere. “I think we got one. Their fire has dropped off.”

Donald almost fell when Felix lost all strength in his legs and collapsed. And Sherrilyn could see why: what she had first thought was a belly wound had actually been a little higher than that. The bullet might have clipped the lower periphery of the right lung.

“What now?” Ohde asked as Paul came over to support Felix.

Sherrilyn shook her head. “We’re pulling out.”

Matija was dumbfounded: “We’re-?”

“Look, if we stay on the roof, we’ll still get sniped at. Harry’s got no angle on their shooters in the belvedere, so no help there. The hole Gerd’s package blew in the roof is too small and the Spanish are all over it, so we can’t get in fast enough, even if we wanted to. And it sounds like the courtyard has become a shooting gallery, with the bad guys doing almost half the shooting. So we’ve got only one option left: we run like hell.”

And they did.

John O’Neill, looking up, saw no immediate progress at Frank Stone’s window. His gaze turned to the empty pepperbox revolver in his hand, and he realized the moment of truth had come: reloading. Under pressure. In combat.

However, the weapon had made a fine mess of the Spanish who had been in the loggia. Particularly since the Wild Geese had loaded their first cylinders with double shot. The two Spaniards who survived the subsequent swordplay-the ones closest to the door-had darted through and barred it.

So, staring at the pepperbox as if he might bend it to his will, John O’Neill began the reloading process. He snapped the locking cap into the “off” position, thumbed the hinge release and broke the weapon open. Well, not so bad so far…

Don Vincente reentered the room and nodded to the hall behind. “Ezquerra, I think they have abandoned their attempt to come through the roof. But oversee the guards in the adjacent room. And mind: the up-timer weapons shoot through these walls. With great effect.”

Ezquerra, suddenly neither lethargic nor incompetent, nodded, but paused. “Don Vincente, if I am no longer by your side-”

Vincente held out his hand.

The sergeant gave him a well-oiled leather case of some length.

Vincente nodded his thanks and moved slowly in the direction of the window.

John O’Neill slid a new cylinder out of its pouch and tapped off the wooden band that kept the preseated percussion caps snugly in their places. Then he started sliding the cylinder down the axial arm.

Next to him, Gerald Fitzgerald nodded upward. “Movement overhead, Lord O’Neill. Near the window. But it doesn’t look like-”

A long muzzle flash jetted from between one of the ground floor windows’ shutters. As if side-kicked by the accompanying roar, Fitzgerald fell over with a groan, the shot having punched clean through his buckled cuirass and the buff coat beneath.

John, with the practicality born of long battlefield experience, accepted that Gerald was dead and there was nothing to be done but to reload before the Spanish bastard did.

With the cylinder securely seated on the arm, he snapped it back up into position. Almost ready. And if the first fellow who appeared at the window overhead wasn’t Frank, John would have a nice surprise waiting for him…

Don Vincente had opened the leather case and removed an up-time shotgun.

Frank gaped. “That shotgun. That’s mine. From the bar.”

“Yes.” Vincente cycled the action expertly.

Frank pushed Giovanna away, while squirming back against the wall and holding up his hands. “Hey, now wait a minute-”

But Vincente did not bring it up or even aim it in his general direction. Instead, he walked briskly to the window.

As Owen helped up the last of the lefferti, he looked backward through the courtyard gate into the piazza. The once-bold rioters were fleeing past, running for their lives, no doubt driven off by the huge volley he had just heard from farther down the street. Damn it, there was no doubt left: the rescue attempt had been expected and was a failure. Now the only question was if they could escape before it became a full-fledged disaster.

Unfortunately, Owen had been hearing telltale signs that such a dire outcome might indeed be imminent. The discharges of the Wrecking Crew’s up-time arms were no longer coming from inside the Palazzo Giacomo, nor even near their planned entry-point on the roof; instead, they were dwindling, going back the way they had come.

Owen, knowing he’d get an argument he didn’t have the time for, turned to tell John the fight was over, and that he’d bodily drag the earl to safety, if he had to.

That was when Owen saw that the window above John O’Neill was opening. “John!” Owen shouted, and sprinted in his direction.

John replied with an annoyed “What?” Damn it, why does Owen have to start fussing at me while I’m loading this contraption? I just have to snap down the-there, locked. And loaded. As Harry always liked to say.

Finished, and feeling a great sense of pride, John swung the weapon upward-just in case the movement Gerald had seen at the window was something other than a prelude to the escape of Frank and Giovanna…

A figure was already in the window above. From which bright thunder roared down at the earl of Tyrone, the same kind of thunder that Harry’s shotgun made.

Driven down to his knees by a torrent of crushing, searing hammers that cut through his body in a dozen places, John O’Neill almost fell, but pulled himself upright again. He raised the pepperbox Another yellow-flaring thunder-bolt struck him down from above; the brief burst of excruciating pain it caused became sudden numbness.

So, John thought as he collapsed forward, that fellow in the window wasn’t Frank, after all.

Owen felt his throat constrict as he saw one of the last two princes of Ireland smashed to the ground by a second full load of double-aught buckshot from overhead. He emptied three chambers at the window-just as the dim figure there jerked back sharply.

Owen arrived at John’s side, already shouting orders. “Synnot, get over here. The rest of you, cover us.” With Synnot’s help, Owen got the mumbling, bleeding John O’Neill up off the ground. “We’re leaving,” he ordered through his tears. “Everyone: fighting withdrawal.”

Harry, blood coating his burning shoulder, noticed that the stock of the Remington was sticky and wet. As was his shirt. And the table upon which the rifle was resting. And the sandbags upon which it was stabilized. “Signor Lefferts, you not look so good,” said Benito.

Harry nodded, waved him toward the signal building. “Go over there. Tell them, ‘lights out.’ Send runners to order withdrawal.” After a moment, he gestured at the one remaining lefferto. “You go with him.” There was no point risking another youngster’s life by keeping him up here, since he didn’t really need spotters anymore.

As the two young men’s feet pounded down the stairs, Harry swayed back into the firing position, gritting his teeth as he set the stock into his brutalized shoulder. Through the scope, he could see Juliet running with the rest of the fleeing rioters but, being heavily built, she was quickly falling to the rear of the crowd.

Juliet was pumping her legs as fast as she could when there was a blast behind her. She went down, her left buttock apparently aflame. But no, it was just a pistol-shot through the thick of the flesh. Flesh, she allowed, of which she had plenty to spare. She struggled back to her feet, her lungs burning almost as badly as her rear end, and tried to resume running.

Sherrilyn, the last to cross the ladder, jumped off its last rung, turned, and pushed it down into the street. Covering her, Donald fired his shotgun at the distant belvedere, jacked another round into the chamber, jerked his head at the knotted line running down the front of the church. “You first,” he said.

“No: it’s my-”

“Sherrilyn, you’ve been first in and last out the whole way. Now give it a rest: git.” He fired another round at the belvedere; a short scream suggested that his shot had found its mark.

Sherrilyn started down the rope, feeling like some target at the country fair: Step right up and try your luck! Shoot the teacher off the rope! Three tries a dollar!

George, just below her, had stopped in mid-descent, looking-no, staring-down the street that ran the length of the western edge of the insula Mattei. The cords stood out on his suddenly flushed neck as he screamed, “Juliet! Juliet! ”

Sherrilyn turned, looked up the street, caught sight of a Spanish horseman, the scattering rioters, the litter of bodies, the distant but approaching Spanish infantry-and somehow, framed by it all, she saw the Spanish cavalryman who had shot Juliet gather his horse carefully and then spur it straight at her. He was smiling as he came. Smiling. Smiling as he rode her under, the hooves crushing and splitting and breaking the body that they churned through and over. And when she was a crumbled, barely moving lump of bloody flesh behind him, he turned in the saddle to look at her. And he was still smiling.

“JULIET!” screamed George, who slid down another ten feet, leaped from the rope, and landed off-center. He tumbled, came up like a gymnast and, loping badly, still sprinted in the direction of his stricken wife, screaming, again, “Juliet!”

Owen came out of the courtyard at a sprint, right behind the wounded Piero. He turned as he exited, grabbing a handful of what was left of the doors and pulled them shut: felt the thud as two musket balls hit them a moment later.

Owen turned-and found himself facing a cavalry charge.

Jayzus! “Fire what you have!” he shouted to the clustered Wild Geese. He raised his pistol and started squeezing off rounds. The sustained barrage from their pepperbox revolvers slowed the charge, the riders clearly baffled to encounter so steady a volume of fire from such a small group. But they came on, even so.

The next ten seconds seemed longer than most days Owen had lived through. Caught in a whirl of horses, blazing guns, and falling bodies, there was no time to give orders or even think. Owen dodged, fired, lost his grip on John, fired again, which sent a horse tumbling toward him. He scrambled away, saw a Spaniard loom out of the smoke and chaos, pistol raised, hammer falling. A flash, a boom-and Synnot, who was still close beside him, carrying John with one arm, went down with a bullet through his forehead. Owen brought his own gun to bear, fired back, and missed. But even so, the Spaniard spilled out of his saddle, albeit in the opposite direction from what Owen would have expected.

It made no sense, but Owen had no time to be puzzled; having spent the last three shots in the cylinder, he let the pistol fall on its lanyard, ready to draw steel. But, through the smoke, he saw the last three Spanish cavalrymen had already reversed, leaving five of their number behind. Only now did Owen register the more distant shots he had missed hearing during the melee, and which probably explained the mysterious demise of the last Spaniard he had faced. The rifles of the Hibernians and Harry had come to their aid like angels-angels of death, of course, but angels nonetheless.

He turned, looked for John, and discovered him pinned beneath a horse, inarguably dead. Probably had been from the first shotgun blast that had ripped down through his body. Only sheer animal vitality had kept him going after that.

Owen reached out, took a firm hold on the earl’s traveling cloak, just below the embroidered pattern of the Tyrones, and yanked hard. And again. On the third try, it came free, and clutching it as he waved his remaining men into their retreat, Owen wondered for whom have I taken this cloak? Who is left of the line of the O’Neills who might justly receive it? And if there are none such, then what good is it at all?

For more than a man named John O’Neill had died in Rome that night. Half the hopes of Ireland had expired with him.

Harry sighed, glad to have saved Owen-anyone-out of all this mess. He had just started thumbing fresh rounds into his empty rifle when the figure of a dark-cloaked man-not much more than a speck, since Lefferts was not using the scope-emerged from the ranks of the of the Spanish foot and walked up behind Juliet. For a moment, he stood very still, watching her drag her broken body away. Then, looking first toward George, who had been tackled by the rest of the Wrecking Crew, and next, vaguely in the direction of Harry himself, he took a step forward. The man drew a revolver, large enough to be the one that Lefferts had seen in Frank’s bar, and shot Juliet in the back of the head.

Then the dark-cloaked man stepped back into the ranks of his soldiers. For they were clearly his soldiers; they parted before, and then closed around, him like a sable tide making way for whatever power had conjured it in the first place.

Even as George screamed wordlessly at the now-steadily approaching Spanish infantry, Sherrilyn grabbed both his cheeks, hard, and pulled his face down to look at her. “We need you,” she shouted.

If it wasn’t for the two Hibernians with the lever actions, she was pretty sure they’d all be dead by now. But those long-range rounds had struck down so many of the foot soldiers’ lead rank that they had scattered into the lee of the buildings for cover. Facing this fire immediately after watching their cavalry cut apart by the revolvers of the Wild Geese, the renowned Spanish infantry had apparently decided against making any headlong rushes. Yet.

“George, listen. You have to carry Felix,” she lied. “You’re the only one strong enough. He needs you.”

“Juliet needs me, she-”

“No. She doesn’t. Not anymore. Here’s Felix: carry him.”

Harry stared at the ruin of the plan that he thought, at first, had come together. But instead, it had come apart. The Wild Geese were leap-frogging to the rear in fire teams of three. Sherrilyn had hoisted Felix onto George’s back, who seemed bowed, like a tired draft horse about to drop in its traces. Piero was keeping what was left of the lefferti moving together along the streets that lay between the Spanish and the Crew’s main line of retreat, thereby serving as a flanking screen.

The boy that Harry had sent with Benito to spread the withdrawal orders came pounding back up the stairs. “Signor Lefferts?”

“Yes?”

“You must go.”

“Yeah, I was just about to stroll on home. Where’s Benito?”

The boy made a face. “He got shot. Not killed, though. Not yet, anyway.”

Harry’s jaws tightened.

“Any orders?” the boy asked.

“Orders? For who?”

“Why, for me, sir.”

“Yes. Here are my orders: run like hell. Then get lost. And don’t get found.”

Thomas North looked over at Sean Connal for the fourth time in as many minutes. “That’s too much gunfire,” he opined. “Too much, for too long.”

“So you’ve said. And so I’ve agreed.”

North stood. “Then I’m retasking this force to provide a base of covering fire for a retreat.”

“We need a diversion. If Borja has any forces waiting here in the Trastevere, we’ll need to draw them away from the Crew’s path of retreat. We’ll also need to keep them busy long enough so that they miss detecting and following these boats-or we will never get out of Italy alive.”

“Excellent points. I hope you have an equally excellent plan.”

“It just so happens I do.” North turned to the one lefferto who had been left with them. “You. Are there abandoned houses in the north side of Trastevere?”

“ Si. Many. I know of one near the Via Aurelia-”

“Fine. Now take this. It is an explosive. You understand that? No? Hmm, let’s try a new approach: this box goes BOOM! Now do you understand? Excellent. Take this to the house you mentioned. Light this fuse, like so. And then run away as fast as you can. Do not stop until you hear the boom. Then find a hiding spot, get rid of all your lefferto rubbish, and walk away.”

“Why? I am proud to be a lefferto and I will not-”

“You will be dead if you do not do as I tell you. The attack has failed. The Spanish will find many dead lefferti. They will search very hard for the rest. Do not be stupid. Get rid of the lefferti clothes and doo-dads and do not look back. Go into hiding for a week, at least. Can you do this?”

“ Si. I-”

“Excellent. Go. Now. Dr. Connal?”

“Yes?”

“You stay here with the boats.” North held up a hand. “No complaints. Someone has to guard our ride home.” He turned to his own men. “You two come with me. I suspect our rifles will be needed to help Captain Lefferts with his fighting withdrawal. Which, if my ears don’t deceive me, is rapidly approaching.” He scooped up one of his favorite up-time toys-an SKS semiautomatic carbine-and ran toward the Ponte Cestia at a crouch.

For one terrifying moment, as new gunfire crackled out over the Tiber behind him, Harry Lefferts feared that the Spanish had boxed him in. That they had somehow known he planned to withdraw by boat after traversing the Isola Tiberina and had therefore put a blocking force at the bridge.

But the steady fire was coming from Thomas North’s anchor watch. The Limey had apparently pulled his team forward. As Harry reached the Ponte Fabricia, he dropped to a knee and reloaded his Remington for the third time. He looked up intermittently to wave the rest of the Wrecking Crew past him, then the Hibernians, and then the Wild Geese. By the time Owen Roe came along, bringing up the rear, having expended the last of his ready pepperbox cylinders, the Spanish had started closing the distance. They were getting bold again.

Despite the fading light, the early moon showed Harry a good target at just over fifty yards: a foot soldier whose slightly heavier and more weapon-festooned outline suggested a senior sergeant, marshalling the advancing troops. Harry raised his rifle, ignored the incendiary throbbing in his shoulder, let the crosshairs float down to settle on the silhouette and squeezed the trigger. He did not wait to see the result; he simply turned and ran.

As he passed North and his men, there was a loud explosion in the distance, somewhere in the north of Trastevere, from the sound of it.

Harry continued to run until he reached the boats. Thomas North and his two Hibernians were already close behind him by the time he got there. They jumped over the sides together. Waiting hands grabbed them while others-white with clutching poles and oars-pushed the shallow-bottomed punts off and out into the swifter current. As the oars started to creak in the locks and the boats picked up speed, Harry looked back over his boats and the city.

In his own boat, Owen Roe O’Neill sat in the thwarts, empty-eyed, clutching the bullet-tattered cloak that had belonged to the earl of Tyrone. George Sutherland was alternately weeping and laughing. Matija, the bleeding from his arm wound staunched, watched with dull eyes as Dr. Connal moved away from Felix and sat next to Harry.

“Let me look at that shoulder, Captain Lefferts.”

“I’m just Harry, Doc. And I can wait. Finish up with Felix, first.”

“I have finished. He’s dead, Harry.”

The pain as the doctor started cleaning the shoulder wound was welcome. Resisting that pain made it easier to resist the deeper, sharper agonies that were cutting down into his soul. Gerd. Juliet. Felix. John O’Neill. Several of the Wild Geese. Most of the survivors wounded. And scores of rioters and lefferti littering the streets of Rome. Their jaunty hats trampled. Their faux sunglasses shattered.

Harry reached into his chest pocket and drew out his own sunglasses. They were the ones that had given birth to, and had become the trademark of, the myth of Harry Lefferts: commando, ne’er do well, adventurer. And above all, a man who could not be beaten. He looked at his own, distorted reflection in the glasses, ghostly in the fading light. Unbeatable. Uber cool. Yeah, right.

Harry snapped the glasses in two and threw them into the Tiber.