1635: The Papal Stakes

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

As his feet shot over the battlements of the Castell de Bellver’s lazarette, Harry Lefferts heard the sound of the dirigible’s distant engines go through what sounded like a split-second of dopplering: they’ve spun them about. Sure enough, the balloon shed speed so quickly that, like the bob of an arrested pendulum, Harry did not travel all the way over the crenellated wall, but only swung forward, and-slowing-he could feel that he would start backward within the next few seconds.

Damn it, he thought, I said “slow down” not “stand on the brakes.” But no use crying over spilt milk; the end of his forward swing had brought Harry well past the inner rim of the lazarette’s battlements and into plain view of the two guards upon it.

They stopped, stared, mouths open as a black-suited ghost flew out of the dark at them.

Harry used that moment of surprise to hammer out rounds at the closest of the two, intending to use only two bullets. But the sway in his motion ruined his aim, and he had to track the target, firing as he did. The third and fourth rounds hit the Spaniard, who went down with a groan.

The other, startled out of his shock by the gunfire, had admirable reflexes: he had his miquelet musket up, cocked, and discharged almost before Harry could blink.

But the Spaniard’s speedy reaction came at the cost of accuracy; the musket ball whispered off into the night.

Harry stretched his legs downward as far as he could. He popped off one round at the second guard-just to make him duck-and then the back of his boots and calves came into jarring contact with one of the merlons of the lazarette’s battlements.

Harry flexed his legs, holding himself there, and released the rest of the landing spools. With an additional three feet of line, he was now able to pitch forward on to the roof, with slack to spare. Staggering ahead as the backward pull from the cable abruptly ended, Lefferts congratulated himself on a job well done-and looked up to see the guard almost upon him, sword drawn.

Since Harry was using both his hands-one free, one gripping his gun-to keep himself from falling nose-first on the roof, he knew he couldn’t bring his weapon to bear in time. So, with his weight already forward, and with the Spaniard’s backswept sword now arcing toward him, Lefferts did what he was best situated to do.

Harry’s tight, forward roll took the Spaniard by surprise. Granted, the surprise did not last long-not quite half a second-but it was enough. And it was fatal.

Harry came out of the roll awkwardly but was still able to wobble up to one knee, spin and steady himself with his off hand as he brought up the gun with the other. He knew he was going to do some piss-poor shooting now, but that hardly mattered: the Spaniard had turned and charged again.

When Harry fired, the guard was less than three feet away. Just to be certain, Lefferts fired three more times, almost draining the magazine. It was essential that this particular fight was over now.

And it was. A second after the guard fell, Harry was up, using the handset to signal for Dr. Connal to belay the grappling hooks down the line. Soon the dirigible would be moored in place, the others could join Lefferts, and the real fun could start. And he now had plenty of time in which to accomplish that.

Why, he probably had a full twenty seconds.

“That’s it,” muttered Thomas North when he heard the up-time pistol roaring atop the lazarette. “Gate team, on me. Stair assault team, on Colonel O’Neill. Ground level security, with Mr. Ohde. Ready?” Nods. Thomas nodded back and pushed open the door of the long-duration storeroom.

He had expected troops running in every direction, meaning a hard fight to even get to the gate. Or a score of them gathered in the arms yard, readying a skyward fusillade. What North had not expected was what he now encountered: a moment of absolute, stunned silence in the Castell de Bellver.

North did not stop to enjoy that second, or the striking architecture picked out by the torches flickering in their cressets; he sprinted to the left, and then turned left again into the wide passage that was the Castell’s inner gatehouse and portcullis. Several figures had risen from a table pushed up against the south wall; two more were scrambling to put on their helmets and get their weapons.

North raised his SKS and started firing. At this murderously close range, he felt no need to double-tap any of his targets. The weapon barked repeatedly, each shot momentarily illuminating the crowded, falling bodies. He had killed three of the five when the rest of his team moved past. One defender charged out to engage and died immediately; another took cover behind the doorjamb to cock his musket. He never got the chance to fire it; a flurry of. 44 Hockenjoss amp; Klott blackpowder rounds from two Hibernian revolvers chipped stone, and then clipped him. As the Spaniard came around, grasping his wounded arm, the next two bullets took him straight through the cuirass.

North scanned the gate area: no guards left alive. “Lower the portcullis and smash the gears,” he ordered a large Hibernian who was already producing an iron-headed mallet. He pointed to another. “Corporal, we’ll have company clustering along the moat soon. Pull up the drawbridge, and watch the Spanish closely. No reason to fire at them unless they’re doing something productive. Keep a sharp eye out for them trying to turn the guns on the ravelins about to blow open this gate; shoot any who try it. Once we have the second floor in our control, you’ll put two overwatch marksmen up there.” The Hibernian nodded and moved to carry out his orders. Thomas turned, called back into the arms yard, “Gate secure.”

As Frank had expected, the gunfire on the roof-because of both its suddenness and intensity-stunned the Spaniards in the room into momentary immobility. The infiltrators, however, had expected this signal and the shock it generated. They reacted with the surety of long training. Asher’s bigger assistant swept up the knife that had been entrusted to him and, in completing that act, sliced through the neck of one of the guards. He started turning toward Captain Castro y Papas.

The small, average-sized assistant smashed one of his two long-necked bottles of ethanol full into the face of the closest guard; the guard fell to his knees, bleeding and dazed. Without pausing, the assistant swung the other bottle, cracking it less accurately against the side of the other’s head. While that fellow scrambled from the room, holding his ear, the assistant spun toward Dakis, the razorlike shards of a broken bottle in either hand. But Dakis had recovered in that brief interval and leaped away, over toward Giovanna.

Frank could hardly follow Vincente’s lightning reflexes as his arm shot toward his sword-which would be quicker to use, at this range, than his uncocked pistol-and jumped at him, grabbing at Don Vincente’s sword hand. “No!” he cried.

Vincente looked down into Frank’s eyes, wondering. Perhaps he had expected to see hatred. Perhaps fear. If Frank was sending the look he hoped, the hidalgo would see an appeal, even pleading.

Vincente frowned-just as the bigger assistant started closing in for the kill. Frank threw his hand out, turned to put his body between the long, scalpel-sharp knife and the captain’s body. “I said ‘no’-and that includes you too.”

The large assistant stopped, stared, was about to ask a question-but was interrupted by Dakis’ harsh voice. “Drop the knife.”

They all turned, looked. Dakis did have his gun out. He was holding it directly against Giovanna’s right temple.

Turlough Eubanks came sliding down out of the mists on the guide line-now lashed to an iron fixture in the lazarette’s roof-with a humming noise. He made a wide-legged landing, breaking his forward fall with one hand, securing his gear with the other. “How’re we doin’, Harry?” he grunted out.

“Good enough. Get down to their room and secure the hostages, then out to the walkway to help me hold off the bad guys.”

“As you say, but listen: the clouds are rising a bit. The balloon has to reascend and soon.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” He used the handset to signal that Eubanks was down and the line ready for the next man. “Are you still here?” he tossed over his shoulder at Eubanks.

But Eubanks was not there; he had already entered the small stone cupola that covered the tight, spiral staircase that ran down through the lazarette like a spine.

At the midway point of the passage that led from the gate to the arms yard, Thomas North met Owen at the foot of the staircase to the upper gallery. “Is your team ready?”

Owen looked at the four Wild Geese behind him-grim myrmidons in helmets and cuirasses, pistols and sabers held loosely but ready-and the two men carrying true up-time weapons: a Hibernian with an SKS, and Matija with another of those rifles and a shotgun for good measure. “Thomas North, the only thing that’s holding me up is yer flapping gums. Now let me do my work.”

North smiled. “Hop to it, bog-hopper.”

“Eh, fek you too, sassenach. Lads, on me.” And up the stairs he went.

Donald Ohde spent a moment watching him go. “He’s heading straight into the worst of it.”

North nodded, staying close to the wall as he edged back toward the arms yard. “Of course he is.”

“My men are starting to go room to room on this level. We’ve hit a half dozen Spaniards who’ve tried to come out to see what’s happening, but the rest have hunkered down behind their doors.” He looked around at the thick walls that now kept Spanish reinforcements out of, but also trapped the attack team within, the confines of the Castell de Bellver. They heard rapid lever-action rifle fire contending with a short sputter of muskets as two of the Hibernians assigned to his team broke into another ground-floor room. “Like scorpions in a bottle, we are,” Ohde observed

“Yes,” agreed North. “But we sting a hundred times faster than they do.”

Sergeant Alarico Garza exited the governor’s office at a trot, crouching, his brows folded together tightly. His corporal tagged along. “What are the governor’s orders?”

“I don’t know; his voice did not carry well from his hiding place under the desk.” A sharp report-much sharper than a musket-rang out in the courtyard; a bullet traveling at utterly fantastic speed took a divot out of the nearest archway. Garza reached up, pulled the corporal lower, and forced himself to think past his rage and ardent desire to throttle Don Sancho Jaume Morales y Llaguno until the coward’s tongue came bulging out of his mouth and his eyes went blank. “Did Diego go to defend the stairs as I ordered?”

“Yes, Sergeant. But why do you presume they won’t come up through the towers?”

“Because I wouldn’t. They’ve obviously come in through the old tunnel-although God knows how. So they are already right next to the main staircase. Besides, the towers are tight spaces, with many of blind spots and sharp corners on their stairs: hard to attack, easy to defend. No, the enemy must work quickly, and so they will press to take the main staircase, which is comparatively straight and wide. You must reinforce it now. I will get the other men to pull the torches from the cressets on this level and keep firing on the dogs in the arms yard whenever we get a glimpse of them.”

“And what do we do about the enemies on the roof?”

“I’ve sent half our men there, going up through the towers. They should be enough to rush the lazarette and take it in close combat.” So you hope, Alarico, but you heard the speed with which that up-time weapon was firing. Still, what other choices are there? “Now go.”

Dakis, hearing increased noise on the roof, snapped an order at the man whose face had been savaged by the regular assistant’s first bottle. “You. Bring all available troops here. Go. Now!”

Don Vincente drew his own pistol and went to stand near Dakis, who had to grab Giovanna by her hair to bring her to her feet. Frank started forward reflexively, saw Giovanna’s warning look, held himself in check.

Obviously, Captain Vincente had not yet had the time to decipher the many layers of duplicity that now lay revealed: he blinked in surprise at Giovanna’s sudden, easy movements. “But all the blood…”

“It wasn’t hers,” said Asher from along the wall. “It wasn’t even human.”

Vincente turned and stared at Frank while holding the room at gunpoint. “And this was your escape plan?”

“It was a fine plan-until you showed up, and ruined everything,” Frank retorted. Then he jerked his head at Dakis “And he didn’t help either.”

Dakis laughed-but stopped when two sharp reports of an up-time rifle sounded from just beyond the door. Outside, from the fortified walkway linking the lazarette to the main roof, there was a short, strangled cry: the guard-and the summons he had been carrying from Dakis-were clearly gone.

Dakis shouted toward the door. “If you enter this room, the hostages die.” He snugged the muzzle of his pistol closer against Giovanna’s temple; Frank felt as though he was going to pop straight out of his own skin. “And the woman will get the first bullet, right through her brain.”

Castro y Papas looked at him sideways. “You wouldn’t,” said the captain, his gun still held steadily upon the others.

“I would-and you’d better be ready to do the same. We have to hold off whoever is on the stairs-and the roof-until some one comes to check the lazarette. And this little bitch”-he prodded his pistol deeper into Giovanna’s temple-“is the only way to keep them at bay.”

“Yes, but you are only bluffing. You wouldn’t kill a woman-a pregnant woman.”

“Idiot. Of course I would. And don’t give me any of that merda about hidalgo honor, you ass; this is war.”

“Is it?” asked Don Vincente in a strange voice.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Of course it is. Now draw your sword and take the husband in hand; if I’m forced to kill the bitch, you’ll need to immediately threaten the other hostage to make them back off. You can do that, can’t you, noble sir?”

Don Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas seemed to consider the order judicially for a moment. “No, I can’t,” he answered. He turned and shot Dakis in the head.

When Harry heard the two SKS reports, just beneath him, he dropped the handset and hustled over to the southern side of the lazarette’s battlements, holstering his. 357 automatic and unslinging his own SKS as he went. Damn, but the party is starting early. Peering around the merlon, he saw why.

Evidently a guard had escaped from Frank and Gia’s room-where, now, he heard a single shot. That was not according to plan, but he’d handle that later. The escaping guard had been fleeing over the walkway when Eubanks had come down to the landing that gave access to it, as well as the prisoners’ room. Eubanks had thought and fired quickly, bringing the man down. But in the process, he had further alerted the Spanish to exactly where their enemies were: a dozen of the men tasked to walk patrols on the roof and tend the bay-pointing culverins were now closing on the walkway, running at a crouch and drawing weapons.

Oh well, I hate waiting anyway, thought Harry as he snapped an AK-47 magazine into the SKS. He drew back the bolt, let it fly forward with a sharp clack, and leaned over the sights.

The light was not good, but with watch fires and cressets mounted on the other three towers, he could still see target outlines. He dropped the sights, leading the closest of the responding guards, exhaled slightly, and squeezed the trigger. He recovered and squeezed again. The running figure tumbled into a long forward slide and lay still. Which Harry only saw peripherally as he moved on to the next target…

Owen Roe O’Neil came to the top of the stairs, and paused; the basic lesson of fortress combat, particularly when one had the advantage, was to waste no time. Press a charge and take some casualties, particularly if it will allow you to take an important defensive position. But here, with so few troops behind him, and constant training in the duck-and-weave tactics extolled by the up-timers and that damned sassenach, he decided, Let’s spend a moment seeing what we’re up against. He swept the capelline helmet off his head, put it on the tip of his sword, and, raising it to eye level, had it “peek” around the corner.

The response was immediate: two discharges from the right and perhaps four from the left sang off the sandstone, sending chips and dust flying. His battered helmet banged down the stairs.

He smiled down the staircase at the dark figures behind him. “You know,” he said, “That little volley means a whole lot of them are reloading now, or are down by one readied piece…”

Thomas leaned out of the Castell’s broad entry passage to look around the entirety of the arms ground. North squinted across the arms yard. The men with Donald Ohde had now swept through all but three of the ground-floor rooms, one of the Hibernians getting wounded in the process. As he limped behind, Paul Maczka of the Wrecking Crew took his place as point man for entering the next room.

As they set up for the assault, one of the other ground floor doors banged open and several Spaniards came charging out.

“SKS’s: supporting fire!” called North to the suitably equipped members of his team. They leaned over their sights, took hasty aim and fired, usually two shots per figure just to be sure. The muzzle flashes and crashing reports-intensified by Bellver’s constraining walls-lasted only five seconds; by then the Spanish were all on the ground. One was writhing; the rest were still.

From across the arms yard, Donald Ohde waved his thanks and then gave Paul Maczka the signal to enter the next room. He and the Hibernians did so, one kicking the door as another went in low. Two flashes and reports, a moment of quiet, and then Paul came out, giving a thumb’s up to Donald Ohde.

Which was the very moment that a clutch of muskets from the upper gallery fired down into the arms yard; two of the balls hit one of the Hibernians mid-torso; he went down backward, his blood spattering back into the room he had just cleared. Another one hit Paul, who twisted around and fell against the wall, either dead or stunned.

Donald and his men crouched and scooted to head back to the room they had just exited. North elevated his weapon, looked for targets on the second floor gallery, saw faint movement, and shouted “Suppression!” Long, bright up-time muzzle flashes led angry roars up at the place where he had seen the movement.

Using the cover fire, Ohde and his team charged out, one pulling Paul back through the doorway he had just exited, the rest making directly for the last room to be secured on the ground floor. One objective completed, thought North, but if Owen can’t take the head of the stairs, and we don’t link up with the element in the lazarette…

North decided he didn’t want to think about that. He concentrated his focus on the second floor gallery and wondered if this might be a good moment to swap his current magazine for a fresh one.