1635: The Papal Stakes

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Valentino led the main charge toward the villa, approaching it at an oblique angle to stay out of the sightline of the fifteen men who had volleyed at the external guards. That fusillade did its job, dropping the four enemy silhouettes all at once, like an invisible wave knocking over straw men.

At the head of almost fifty mercenaries and assassins, Valentino reached the side door into the villa, which he guessed was a secondary entry into a great room. Never having been inside, and not having dared pump local inhabitants for information, his attack depended upon overwhelming force, not advance intelligence. However, even his profound superiority in numbers would not be sufficient if the fight became a protracted gun battle.

“This group has up-time weapons,” he hissed at his men, “so they will win if we keep our distance. But we will win a melee. So we volley and charge. Now, Arturo, take your group to the back of the villa; Ignatio, take your men around the front. Kill any external guards, keep anyone inside from getting out. Use any up-time weapons you find to hold off reinforcements from their perimeter patrols. Now go!”

The two units of half a dozen men rushed off into the darkness just as the fifteen musketeers caught up with the rest of the group along the southern wall of villa. “So if we’re supposed to charge, why not charge in now?” panted Odoardo.

“Because we have to seal all the possible exits first. Remember, no one is to be left alive. No one. Now, Linguanti, let’s give them something else to worry about.”

Valentino’s wiry lieutenant nodded and produced a ceramic bottle of olive oil about the same time a few shots spatted back and forth at the front of the house. He lit the linen wick jammed into the top of the bottle and nodded to Odoardo, who drew back his immense, trademark axe and smashed open one of the two shuttered windows along that stretch of wall. Two reports-pistols probably-boomed in futile retaliation the same instant that Linguanti lobbed the fire bomb inside.

Sherrilyn Maddox heard the volley, turned on her heel and started sprinting eastward, back toward the villa. Too focused on her job to be scared or surprised, she assessed the situation quickly: the attackers had infiltrated past, or eliminated, an outpost. Probably the southern one, since the sound of gunfire-and now, shouting-was spreading from the south of the villa.

She was about two hundred yards out and, fortunately, the root cellar lay right along her most direct approach to the villa’s rear entrance, which opened into the building’s great room. The four men walking the perimeter like she was might arrive in time to be useful, but not if they came rushing directly back toward the villa; whoever was attacking was professional, and would be sure to have set up ambushes to interdict reinforcements.

And damn it, she could already start to feel her knee stiffening like a rusted door hinge: unwilling to bend, threatening to break. But that was just too bad. Even if she was doing irreparable damage to it, she had to push it to the limit; the next five minutes could, quite literally, decide the future course of the Western World.

Refusing to limp, she glanced north toward the western skirts of Monte Cengio; two lamps burned brightly there. That signal meant Taggart had heard the attack and was even now collapsing inward toward the villa with most of his pickets. But there had been too little warning; he would not arrive in time, given how quickly the attackers were pressing their advantage. Sherrilyn could already see wisps of smoke rising up from the villa and heard gunfire at the front and then the back.

As she reached the root cellar and knocked a “shave and a haircut-two bits” tattoo on the door, she calmly accepted that she was the only relief force in a position to rescue her friends.

The cellar’s storm door banged back, and Rolf, the largest of the hidden reserve of three Hibernians emerged. She drew her Glock, waved it toward the villa, and resumed running. “Follow me,” she hissed at the forms already trailing her at a crouch.

As soon as the defenders’ two pistols fired pointlessly out the window, Valentino sent his men through the southern door of the villa.

Gunfire-flintlocks and one or two up-time weapons-barked a lethal salute as his men went through; three fell, a fourth staggered, but the next wave was in and firing back into a vast chamber seething with desperate, human chaos.

From what Valentino could make out as he entered in the third rank and dodged quickly to the side, they had been lucky enough to come directly into the villa’s large, and surprisingly plain, great room-which, to his eyes, was appointed more in the style of a vast, well-to-do farmhouse. The long, plain tables were littered with trenchers, utensils, a few pewter plates, all in the process of pre-cleaning, the leavings mostly scraped into feed buckets bound for whatever livestock they had out back. A dozen-maybe a score-of domestics of all shapes, sizes, and sexes were now running to and fro, some focused and purposeful, most shrieking and confused. A few were pushing smaller trestle tables over for cover; a few more-workers who had no doubt been furnished with the weapons of off-duty Marines-were attempting to reload, their quiver-fingered haste and inexperience ensuring that they would likely be dead before they even got the wadding snugged down against the ball.

Valentino yelled, “Fire at will!” but hardly needed to: the murderous pack he had brought with him only needed the scent of blood to start killing indiscriminately. The second and third ranks had already fired their pistols into the milling crowd, many throwing the discharged weapons aside. Valentino conceded they were probably right in their implicit assumption that they would not have the time, opportunity, or need to reload them. Swords out, they began hacking through the mob. Men fell, the pink-froth of their rent lungs exposed; women screamed, run through, their bodies’ own weight dragging them off the swords that had mortally transfixed them. One, a heavy, sweat-stained cook, came roaring out of the press, a frying pan held ready behind her shoulder. Odoardo watched her approach with a sneer, and as she drew close, used one hand to casually flap his axe at her midriff. The woman stopped suddenly, stared down, saw her entrails coiling out, went down to her knees.

Screaming, crying, fists flailing, a young boy appeared from behind her, assaulting Odoardo, who barked out a laugh as his axe came down, hard.

The mortally wounded woman folded down over the small, ruined body with a great wail, and Valentino watched as Odoardo paused for the briefest of moments, clearly considering whether he should finish the job. An equally short-lived smile curled the left side of the ogre’s mouth; having evidently decided to let her die in both emotional and physical misery, he moved on-just as the discharge of an up-time gun cut down the mercenary who had been standing behind him.

Valentino peered through the falling bodies. His men were doing a lot of damage, but not to the right people. There were at least four of the renegade embassy’s Marines, now sheltered behind overturned tables near the base of the only obvious staircase to the upper level. As Valentino watched, the Marine with the up-time weapon put a bullet into any of the assassins who tried dodging through the thinning crowd to engage them directly. In the meantime, the other three were reloading their USE regulation flintlocks. If this went on “You men,” Valentino shouted, beckoning toward the musketeers who had just followed them in, “look there: the Marines behind the tables. Volley at them on my command-”

Valentino watched another of his own men fall to the Marine with the revolver, who then ducked down, apparently preparing to swap a freshly loaded cylinder into his weapon. As he did, there was a momentary break in the press of running, falling bodies “Now! Fire!”

Four miquelet muskets roared just to Valentino’s left. Two of the Marines went down, one trailing a rooster-tail of blood behind him as he fell.

Now almost deaf in his left ear, Valentino rose up, pointed with his sword, and screamed, “At them! Quickly!”

Sharon, having led the four clerics into her suite, moved purposefully toward its large, rough-hewn armoire against the wall. “Larry,” she said, “give me a hand, here.” One of the two Wild Geese guarding the doorway hastened to help; she shook her head, jerked it back towards his post. “You keep protecting us; Cardinal Mazzare can help me move the furniture.”

Larry Mazzare, deciding that the composure with which she made the odd request indicated that she was not succumbing to hysterical distraction, jumped over to comply — but was interrupted by the sound of heavy footfalls crossing the threshold. Looking up, expecting to see the approach of his death, he instead saw Lieutenant Hastings-in armor-with George Sutherland limping eagerly after him.

Sharon stepped away from the armoire at Hastings’ gesture.

The lieutenant grabbed his end of the armoire and nodded to Larry. “Your Eminence, if you would be so good, on the count of three…One, two-”

Larry heaved at the wooden mass; it creaked away from the wall — and revealed a narrow, five foot high by two foot wide faded section of wall.

Sharon gestured toward the secret door. “Apparently put in by the first builders. Who never finished the job. But it should be enough to-”

“Ambassador,” Hastings interrupted with an apologetic tone, “your husband sent me back here, in part to help you lead these men out to safety, but also to ensure that you did, in fact, come with us. He is concerned about your-”

Without a word, Sharon turned and ran-surprisingly quickly, for someone of her size-back towards the staircase and Ruy.

Hastings sighed, shrugged, went to the panel and pushed; it swung into the wall, revealing a black, narrow staircase leading down at a precipitous angle. “Your Eminences, you will forgive me if that is the last time I bother with formal titles; time is short. I will lead the way, Mr. Fleming will follow.” The more plain-faced of the two Wild Geese nodded. “Then Cardinal Mazzare, His Holiness, the father-general, and Cardinal Barberini. Mr. McEgan and Mr. Sutherland will bring up the rear. We move until we are out of the villa. Once there, those of us who can will run north toward Lieutenant Taggart’s outpost. Any questions?”

“Yes,” said Larry. “Why weren’t we told about this secret passage the first day we got here?”

Hastings looked at him squarely. “So you couldn’t tell anyone else about it. A secret passage is only useful if it stays secret. Any other questions? No? Then follow me.”

Ruy heard the two off-duty Hibernians he had awakened along with Hastings cursing at buckles and lanyards. “Can you equip yourself no faster?” he hissed in their direction, then leaned an eye around the corner at the head of the staircase to look down into the great room.

Drifts of oily smoke. Puddles and spatters of blood. The bodies of men and women with whom he had shared almost two months’ worth of meals, laughter, and fear lay scattered about. Being a lifelong professional, he cordoned off the emotional consequences of what he was seeing with the suddenness of snapping down the safety of a gun. What remained was tactical data, all seen in a second.

The firebomb the attackers had heaved into the room had not been particularly effective at spreading flame, and several of the slain had fallen into the densest part of the smoldering olive oil, largely smothering it. Given time, it might start a house-threatening fire, but that was at least ten minutes off: an eternity, in a combat such as this one. Only two Marines of the ready guard in the great room were still alive, one of them armed with a Hibernian’s black powder revolver. If it wasn’t for that fellow, the whole band of cutthroats would probably be halfway up the stairs by now-but the Marines could not hold out much longer. Ruy could hear the rush of feet, some heading straight for their makeshift parapet of tables, others angling toward the staircase itself. Which was, of course, their ultimate objective. They-rightly-presumed that the pope would not be housed on the ground floor. The Marines needed some assistance-and right now.

As Ruy raised the heavy weapon in his right hand, he saw the Marines begin to fire in a panic, saw the leading edge of assassins come into view, two of them falling dead or wounded, but others preparing to push over the top of the tables. Another one appeared at the bottom of the stairs. What fortuitous timing, Ruy thought as he looked down the sights of the up-time weapon and began to fire.

Ruy was used to the kick of the S amp;W. 357 magnum revolver that Sherrilyn Maddox had forced upon him when she arrived, and upon which she had trained him. However, having only shot at targets, he had never seen what a lead hollow-point would do to a man at a range of less than fifteen feet.

The two assassins who had been about to clear the table barricade, swords readied, went sideways as if hit by a battering ram. The red crater each bullet punched into the side of a torso was startling enough, but the wide spray of blood and tissue from both of the exit wounds was more reminiscent of the effects of grapeshot, to Ruy’s mind. Still, he decided, as he tracked over until his sights were centered on the openmouthed assassin frozen in shock halfway up the stairs, it was a most inelegant weapon. He squeezed the trigger and saw another red crater appear where the base of the cutthroat’s neck had been.

He leaned back behind the corner as the inevitable spattering of inaccurate counterfire from the rest of the blackguards snapped and bit away at the mortar. Well, he reflected, that will give them something to consider for a few moments-but only a few moments. He calmly thumbed the release, swung out the cylinder, fingered a readied speed loader out of his bandolier, and turned at the sound of the approaching Hibernians.

Except it was not them; it was his wife.

Ruy was not often surprised, but this was the exception that made the rule. “Sharon, you are back? I told you to run, sent Hastings and George to assist you!”

She stared at him, her own, rather diminutive, revolver in hand. “And since when do you tell me what to do?”

“That very spirit-which may now be the death of you-is also why I adore you so. But if you refuse to leave, then you must perform a crucial task.” He shook his head when she raised the revolver tentatively. “No, my heart, as ambassadora, you must send word to our friends: you must rouse Odo and begin signaling.”

That stopped her-as Ruy had knew it would. “But-but, the staff downstairs-”

“Are beyond help, dear wife. Those who were able to flee, have. The others are no more.”

Sharon swallowed. “Then we don’t have the time to send radio signals. We’ve got to-”

“Dearest,” he interrupted, “I am your chief of security, yes?” From the corner of his eye, Ruy saw her nod as he snapped the cylinder back into place and strained to hear the orders being shouted back and forth downstairs.

“Yes,” she allowed grudgingly.

“Then, wife, trust me in this,” he said, as the two Hibernians finally- finally! — came out of their billet, lever-action rifles and revolvers ready. “Your superiors will want all the information you can send on this event. And any survivors among us may need help, or may be fleeing for our lives. The more your superiors know, the more swift and effective their first assistance will be. Now-and prettily I ask it-please go.”

Eyes shiny, and without another word, she turned and ran back the way she had come.

Ruy spent a split-second appreciatively watching-savoring-her movements seen from the rear. Then he began giving orders to the Hibernians. “They will come again any second, attempting to overrun both the Marines down in the great room, and us at the head of the stairs. They may also try to send someone farther into the villa, down the corridor into the north wing. You, Corporal, see if you can get an angle on the hallway into the north wing; we need to keep all their men bottled up in the great room for as long as we can…”

“ Minge! ” swore Valentino as he surveyed what had become of the men he had sent charging forward toward the tables and the stairs. At least half of them were down, most wounded and so severely shocked that they could barely move or moan. “Linguanti, get another of those firebombs ready.”

“ Si, but-”

“Just do it.” Valentino spent a precious second considering the claustrophobic battlefield. He could send more men to rush the barricade of tables again, but now that tactic had become very expensive-perhaps cripplingly so. Either the gunman hidden near the top of the stairs was very good, was not alone, or both.

Besides, men who fought for riches-even such as his had been promised-were more savage than stalwart. At this range, firearms could hardly miss and the damage they inflicted was shocking to see, even for hardened killers. True, far more of those who had fallen were wounded rather than killed outright, but here, in a villa at the ass-end of nowhere, those wounds were a death sentence, anyhow.

Which meant he needed to keep the men moving, fighting, busy-too busy to count their losses, and hear the keening moans of their dying fellows. Fortunately, the wailing would only start when the wounded tossed off the shock, by which time this battle would be over. Unless Valentino tarried here in this great room. So he had to act-now. Waiting for all his men to reload cost too much time, too-so the fire bomb was best. And once he got past the last two Marines…

Valentino measured distances: once his men reached the tables, the entry to the kitchen was only ten feet farther along to the right. About twelve feet directly behind the tables was the door leading out to the rear of the villa, where the firing had finally stopped; from the sound of it, Arturo’s group had run into one of the revolver-armed guards.

Valentino needed to secure those two areas-the rear door and the kitchen-even though his ultimate target was probably up the stairs. However, once he cleared the Marines, he could, so to speak, turn the tables on the defenders; the trestle tops would not protect his men from up-time ammunition at that range but they would provide full concealment until they popped up to shoot. And if he could get a half dozen sheltered there to send a volley up the stairs…

“The firebomb is ready,” said Linguanti.

“Good, get ready to throw it just short of the base of the stairs on my count of three.”

“But, Valentino, there is no target there. And it might prevent us from assaulting up the stairs once we-”

“I don’t want the bomb to kill people; I want its smoke to blind them. And don’t throw it on the stairs, but a few feet in front, so we can still get up them. Now, Odoardo, look there-” Valentino pointed. “You see that corridor just to the right of the main entrance?”

“ Si.”

“It apparently goes off into the north wing. There might be another staircase back there. At any rate, when you take a group in that direction, it will distract the bastards at the head of the stairs.”

“I’m not putting myself in the sights of that-”

“If you go first, you won’t be the one shot-not if you move fast enough. Just make sure the next man is close behind you.” He needed to get Odoardo out of there before he started balking at the casualties. If the big man did so then others would, too. Every man Odoardo took with him was one more who wouldn’t be looking nervously around to see if his mates were fearful, if they were starting to think more about retreat than riches.

“Okay. And if there’s no staircase?”

“Come back here, report, and prepare to assault up the stairs.”

“I told you, I’m not going to-”

Valentino wished Odoardo was dead already. “Idiot. Listen: we will have the stairs blocked by smoke, and will have cleared whoever is at the corner. And you’re not to be in the lead; you command from the second rank.”

Odoardo smiled. “I’ll get a dozen men.” He turned to inspect the clutter of faces behind him. “Hey, you three, and you-”

Valentino turned to Linguanti. “On my count of three, you throw the bomb where I told you. And then, you follow the last of Odoardo’s group. Two seconds after they’ve crossed the open area. Keep that oaf on the objective, do you understand?”

“I understand-enough to hate the task already.”

“My sympathies.” Louder: “Odoardo, stand ready. The bomb will be thrown in one, two, THREE…”

Half-blind in the darkness of the staircase, Cardinal Luke Wadding tried to control how rapidly he was breathing. Even back in Ireland, sought by English bounty hunters, he’d never been as close to being murdered as this. To keep his teeth from chattering, he muttered at Hastings’ broad back: “Where does this passage lead?”

“There are two exits,” the lieutenant explained. “The first comes out behind a wall-hanging in the hallway of the north wing, just beyond the stone wall of the kitchen. The other goes down into the kitchen’s basement.”

“What? There’s no outside exit?”

Hastings’ dim outline shrugged. “They never finished that part of the escape route. You can see, on the west wall, where they obviously planned to run a tunnel out into the back. But it’s almost solid rock there.”

Antonio Barberini’s voice quavered in fear. “But we have no reason to go down to the cellar-just into the north wing and out the side exit, there.”

Hastings shrugged as he neared the landing that would give them access to the first door. “If the north wing isn’t secure, then we’ll have to head down into the cellar, come up into the kitchen and run to get out the back door of the great room.”

Wadding calculated, swallowed. “We’d have to cross about eight feet of open space.”

“I know,” said Hastings with a nod. “And I know you are all brave men. Now, quiet, all of you.”

Odoardo ran across the smoky, blood-spattered room. He was in front of the main entrance when a new weapon spoke from up at the head of the staircase behind him: a deeper, powerful, spiteful report, followed by two more in rapid succession and a faint click-clack, click-clack.

The two mercenaries immediately behind Odoardo sprawled, one screaming, the other ominously silent.

Odoardo reached the northern hallway, which evidently led to the servant’s quarters. He spun, leveled his short-barreled fowling piece at the head of the stairs, and fired. The gun sounded like a small cannon going off. The charge of pellets tore up the rude railing, the top step, caused jets of ruined plaster to gush sideways out of the landing’s far wall. It killed no one, but his shot still had the desired effect: the gunman flinched back long enough for the rest of Odoardo’s ten men to cross the open space to safety.

Linguanti, the last over, skipped an extra step when another round from the lever-action rifle roared at his heels. Odoardo looked at him. “Now what?”

“Now we check down the hall.”

They hadn’t gone ten steps before fire chipped divots out of the right-hand wall of the corridor; they threw themselves snug against the left-hand wall.

“Damn it!” Odoardo complained.

From farther down the hall, another spattering of small-arms fire went away from them, toward the door on the northern end of the villa. Odoardo thought he heard Verme, the Corsican, shouting about a lost finger. “They’re holding off Ignatio’s boys, too, from the sound of it.”

Linguanti nodded. “Probably a very narrow doorway from the servants quarters to the outside. Easy to defend.”

“Yeah,” Odoardo sighed. “And I guess we can’t get to them, either. Unless we want to get slaughtered.” He finished tamping the wadding down against the single-aught sized pellets with which he had reloaded his weapon. “So who do we kill now?”

Sherrilyn Maddox felt two aches in her legs: one came from the knee that now surged with pain at every careful step, and the other was a painful tautness in her calves that came from wanting to continue to sprint, flat out, to help her friends.

But that was the fool’s move, despite the sounds of a firefight emanating from inside the house. The exchanges outside had been ominously brief, even though the Hibernian guarding the back doors had unleashed a steady stream of lever-actioned lead at the assassins who had been sent to neutralize him. Judging from the cries and fitful writhing of several indistinct shadows, he had killed or wounded at least two of them, but then a quartet of muskets had volleyed in the general the direction of his muzzle flashes-and all was stillness.

That had been only twenty seconds ago, so perhaps the murdering bastards had not yet sorted out their casualties and their next move, but Sherrilyn had decided to spend that time closing the distance quietly, not starting a running gun battle. With almost no moon out, and no light source behind the attackers, targets did not become distinct until you were within fifteen, even ten yards. And even then…

Sharon crouched lower, pointed to her eyes, then to the frontal arc across which the enemy was distributed. The three Hibernians, lever actions at the ready, nodded and raised their weapons slightly, ready to bring them up.

They got within twelve yards before the apparent leader of this group came walking out from the back of the villa. He scanned the surrounding area, and a moment later he must have spotted the four shadowy figures approaching in postures of stealthy menace. He brought up his gun, turned to shout.

Sherrilyn went down on one knee and brought her Glock 17 up into a two-handed grip. She squeezed the trigger twice; the leader went backwards-and around him, muskets fired off hastily into the darkness, murdering the air over the Sherrilyn’s lowered head as her three Hibernians set to work.

The echoing cracks of the. 40–72 rounds and the creak of the lever actions seemed to set the rhythm for the harvest of death at the rear of the villa. Working from the flanks to the center, noting where the wild-firing muzzle flashes had been, North’s well-trained men cranked round after lethal round into their targets.

Six seconds later, Sherrilyn rose, charged the last ten yards, and found herself standing amidst the sprawled bodies of her attackers. She resisted the urge to spit on them. Instead, she hissed orders. “Corporal, find the man they killed back here and get his revolver. We’ll need it. You and you; watch our flanks. And be alert; our perimeter pickets will be inbound as well.”

“And what next, Captain Maddox?” asked the corporal.

“Next, we bust in there and save our people. So reload all your weapons now; you might not have another chance.”

Valentino, who had just finished getting his men organized for another general rush at the Marines’ table barricade, froze: gunfire at the back of the villa. And those were not his guns: the reports were too sharp and loud, and they came with the bam-bam-bam speed of multiple up-time weapons. Christ’s balls, they had a reserve force, hidden somewhere near the building! So now, there was only enough time to “Charge!” he screamed, firing a captured flintlock pistol at the barricades. “We have to seize the back door now!”

Emboldened by their numbers, and the now sufficient volume of smoke roiling up from the oil fire at the base of the stairs, nearly twenty of Valentino’s men rose and sprinted forward.

The Marines rose up to fire back, dropped several, were blasted down by the answering volley.

As Valentino’s men reached the table, two lever-action rifles roared down the stairs at them, dropping the first two to reach the makeshift barricade, as well as two others who tried to assault up the staircase itself. From the look of the hits they might not be dead, but were certainly out of the fight.

Many more survived, though, to get behind the tables and turn one around to face up the stairs. Seeing that, the rest of Valentino’s men dove for cover behind it, quickly grabbed hold of the other table and worked it around to match the position of the other. Within moments, one of his smarter mercenaries had found the unemptied revolver that had allowed one Marine to give them so much trouble; that fellow began snapping shots back up the stairs, where the volume of fire began to fall off.

The rearmost half-dozen who charged across the great room were now able to push past the tables and, without breaking their stride, they made it to either side of the back door, panting.

Finally, thought Valentino feeling the sweat that ran along his brow and down his sides, they had control of all the villa’s points of egress. “Reload!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Prepare to sweep the stairs!”

The firefight suddenly became so loud that Sharon could easily have believed it was going on right outside the radio room. She wondered if-how-Ruy could survive such a nonstop barrage of enemy fire-but then shut off the part of her mind that had spawned the question and the thousand mortal terrors she could feel clamoring behind it.

She looked over at Odo, who had frozen into immobility as the firefight surged. “Ambassador,” he asked, “should we perhaps-?”

“Keep sending,” she interrupted firmly. “That’s our job, so we keep doing it.” She drew her small revolver from her pocket and trained it on the door. “No matter what.”

Larry Mazzare tried to force himself to remain calm as Lieutenant Hastings eased open the panel behind the wall-hanging in the north wing’s hallway, but he couldn’t keep from holding his breath. Within this stairway-built and hidden at the core of what, to external observation, looked like the villa’s central, load-bearing stone wall and kitchen fireplace-the noise in the rest of the house had been dim. They had heard faint cries, and the dull, distant thrumming of gunfire, but it had been impossible to gauge how close, or how much of it, there was.

As the panel opened and light shone in, the answer became obvious to all of them: they were at the epicenter of a vicious firefight. Moans, smoke, surging spasms of gunfire, screamed orders, and running feet vied with the stink of burning oil, wood, and gun smoke-all of which drove home the point just how bad the situation was in the villa’s interior. Worst of all, none of the voices they heard were familiar to them.

Antonio Barberini asserted, “I don’t think it’s safe to go out there.”

“No,” answered Hastings, “it isn’t.” He began closing the door. “To the cellar, then.”

Odoardo sighed again; he didn’t really want to go back to the great room and charge up those stairs, no matter how much that asshole Valentino assured him he’d be all right. He looked over Linguanti’s shoulder to determine if Valentino was readying such an assault-but suddenly forgot why he had decided to glance in that direction. He poked Linguanti, a sudden malign smile stretching from one well-tufted ogre-ear to the other.

Linguanti, looking up, saw that expression, saw Odoardo’s eyes fixed gleefully on something behind their group. Linguanti turned around and saw what the big man had noticed: one of the smaller wall-hangings in the northern hallway had swung out slightly, as if it had been a narrow door opening. It was now closing again, soon to be flush against the wall.

“That,” said Linguanti, with a demonic grin to match Odoardo’s ogrish one, “is quite a piece of luck.”

“Yeah,” said Odoardo, hefting his fowling piece in one hand and his axe in the other, “let’s go that way.”