1635: The Papal Stakes

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Ruy did not have to look around the staircase to know what was happening in the great room below. The assassins were reloading and preparing to charge the stairs. Prudence dictated that he should cede his current position: all their adversaries were able to aim at the one corner around which Ruy and his two riflemen could fire, whereas the cutthroats now ringing the base of the stairs were in a variety of positions. There was no longer a safe way to take a peek, find a target, and fire: any sign of movement attracted the discharge of two muskets charged with smaller shot. Ultimately, those odds favored the attackers. Retreating down to the hall would give him and his two rifleman better cover, from which they could concentrate their fire upon the landing at the top of the stairs. From that position, a lengthy stalemate might easily evolve.

But not victory. And now, to complicate matters, Ruy was finally hearing what he had been waiting for: gunfire being exchanged through the windows-and perhaps the door-at the back of the villa. Which could only mean one thing: someone-Sherrilyn, probably-had brought the root cellar’s reserve to the rear of the villa, and they were probably readying themselves to break in to relieve its defenders.

But if Ruy fell back from his position, she would have to fight her way through the door and into the teeth of more than twenty of the blackguards. Even if some of them attacked up the stairs, Sherrilyn’s group would suffer considerable casualties against those numbers. Besides, doorways were an attacker’s bane and a defender’s boon: they forced those rushing through it into a predictable area, an area which a reasonable defending commander could quickly convert into a funnel of death.

So, no, thought Ruy. He could not surrender his position at the head of the stairs, because only from here could his force support Sherrilyn’s entry into the room. And in order for her to be able to enter without all the assassins’ guns and blades trained upon her, she would need a flanking attack-or a diversion, at least.

Ruy scanned what he could see of the staircase without poking his head around the corner. It was almost entirely obscured by bodies, appearing rather like a ramp of corpses. Hmmm. That might do. He made sure his swords were secure in their scabbards and nodded for his two men to aim down the stairs as soon as they were done reloading. I am too old for this, he reflected as he checked that his. 357 magnum was fully loaded. Then again, I was always too old for this.

Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz sighed, crouched, and threw himself forward into sideways roll that carried him down the stairs.

For a moment, there was silence at the base of the stairs-and then bedlam. Fortunately for Ruy, the assassins were all so startled that they delayed, and then discharged their weapons too hastily. He was hardly a predictable target, either; his downward roll was made uneven by the same stair-piled enemy bodies that cushioned him as he went.

At the midpoint of the stairway, he reached his arms out to grab the flimsy railing’s sole balustrade with the flat of his palms, flexing his forearms and wrists against the sudden resistance and torque. The net effect was that his roll pivoted about that point: his feet and legs came around quickly as he clung to the balustrade, much as a fast-moving roller-skater might use the pole of a streetlamp to hang a fast ninety degree turn.

Ruy came off the side of staircase, letting the momentum pull him all the way around so that he came down on his feet, facing out into the room and into the eyes of his attackers, many of whom had lost track of exactly what he was doing, their vision compromised by the greasy smoke guttering up from the base of the stairs. Most of them had fruitlessly discharged their weapons in his wake, unable to successfully predict his motion. Consequently, those few weapons that were still being leveled at him marked the primary threats. Snatching the. 357 out of his holster, he fired at two of them and dove for the cover of a smaller, overturned serving table. Muskets roared after him-again, a split second too late.

Rolling up into a crouch and pulling his favorite rapier while bullets spat around and thumped into the tabletop, Ruy thought: Whenever you are ready, then, Miss Maddox…

Jerking back to avoid a musket ball that punched through the shuttered window through which he had hoped to access a target, Sherrilyn’s senior Hibernian Rolf froze as a sudden spasm of gunfire erupted from beyond the door-but was not aimed outward at them. “What the hell was that?” he asked.

The next sound gave Sherrilyn the answer to Rolf’s question: two distinctive. 357 magnum reports. “It’s Ruy! C’mon: pistols and swords. On me!”

Sherrilyn blasted four rounds blindly through the back door before she charged in. Between the bizarre events near the staircase, and the hail of nine-millimeter parabellum rounds punching through the timbers of the door they were hiding behind or next to, the entry’s defenders were either distracted or flinching away when she came bursting in with the Hibernians right behind her. That split second of confusion was all the advantage the relief force needed. Sherrilyn’s high-capacity automatic and the three Hibernians’ cap-and-ball revolvers thundered and flashed in a tight arc around the doorway, often less than a foot away from their targets. Assassins sprawled, some clutching wounds, others suddenly motionless. Two tried to run, but were cut down. Sherrilyn’s first post-entry order-“Down!”-didn’t come a moment too soon; the other assassins who, a moment before, had been reloading to flush out Ruy, turned and fired at this new, more considerable threat. Musket balls whistled overhead, struck the wall or sang out into the darkness-where Sherrilyn distinctly heard Kuhlman, one of the Marines who had just arrived from walking the perimeter, mutter “ Scheisse! ” Well, thank God for reinforcements-even if it’s only one man. “Kuhlman, covering fire from the door while we reload.”

“Yes, Captain,” Kuhlman shouted back, first firing his own flintlock and then the other undischarged enemy weapons that the Hibernians had leaned against the rear wall in readiness.

Larry Mazzare hurried into the kitchen’s basement, glad to be out of the secret passage: the staircase had doglegged under itself after they bypassed the concealed doorway into the northern wing’s hallway. A wedge of light slashed the dark ahead of Mazzare; he saw Lieutenant Hastings, still in the lead, gingerly raising the small storm door that opened into the kitchen, half a level above them.

“Is the way clear?” asked Vitelleschi’s admirably composed voice.

“I’m wondering that as well, Father. McEgan, on me; we’ll secure the kitchen and the way to the back door.” Hastings glanced back at Wadding. “Keep an eye on us; if we wave ‘all clear,’ tell the others and then run for all you’re worth.” The gunfire beyond the kitchen suddenly crescendoed into a mad thunderstorm; it did not sound promising to Larry.

But neither did George Sutherland’s calm comment two seconds later: “Someone’s entering the passage behind us, back up at the eastern hallway, I think. Here, lad.” He handed Patrick Fleming his prized, sawed-off double-barreled twelve-gauge, and quietly drew his preferred weapons for hand-to-hand combat: a short, broad-headed axe for his left hand, and a falchion for his right.

Fleming looked at the up-time weapon in his hands. “You’re the better shot, Sutherland. I’m just-”

“Lad, you don’t need to be a good shot with double-aught buck at spitting range. And besides, you may be a fine swordsman, but right now-no offense, lad-we need brute strength. We have to be sure that every one of them we hit goes down-and stays down.”

Larry Mazzare thought that sounded like a very good philosophy indeed. He crouched low behind Fleming, who made sure his pepperbox revolver was out and ready, and his saber was loose in its scabbard. “Your Holiness,” said Larry. He was surprised how calm he sounded.

“Yes, Lawrence?” came Urban’s voice out of the dark behind Larry.

“Wherever you are, I suggest to move to the side wall and stay low. Very low.”

“Thank you, Lawrence. You probably can’t see it, but I have already taken that exact precaution.”

And Larry, wondering if some part of him was becoming hysterical, thought: Evidently, the pontiff is also infallible in matters of faith and muskets…

Ruy, feeling the change in the battle’s tempo, popped up briefly from behind the table, fired once to pull the assassin’s attention back toward him, and yelled in his combat-stentorian voice: “Riflemen: fire!”

Obedient to his command, the sound of the lever-actions resumed at the top of the stairs. A few of the blackguards who had grown incautious in their eagerness to get a firing angle upon Ruy paid for their forgetfulness: they fell, dark maroon stains spreading out from sudden holes punched in their sweaty leather jerkins by. 40–72 rifle rounds. One stared at his wound, dazed; the other stared at nothing with lifeless eyes.

Now, thought Ruy with a smile, you are caught between Scylla and Charybdis, you murdering dogs. And it is time for me to find some better cover-perhaps a slightly larger table…

Valentino glared at the tableau before him. Twenty seconds ago, his forces had been ready-finally-to assault up the stairs, with plenty of men for the job. Now, with almost ten more casualties, and five more of the enemy in the room-one of which was a limping woman, strangely enough-the tide was reversing, and defeat was conceivable, if he did not do something immediately.

Fortune provided him with an opportunity: the older fellow-Ruy Sanchez, if Rombaldo’s intelligence was correct-had risen, and staying low, was trying to get behind a larger table. At the same moment, one of Odoardo’s group appeared at the entry to the north wing, shouting “A secret passage, leading to the kitchen. Don’t let them get out!”

Valentino, seeing that Sanchez’s course would put him briefly under the guns of the relief force that had come in the back door, screamed. “Volley and charge: attack into the kitchen!”

He grabbed two of his men as they prepared to pass. “But you two, come with me. We will hug tight against this wall and close on that miserable Catalan, the one giving the orders.”

The larger of the two tossed away his spent miquelet-lock pistol. “Suits me fine,” he grumbled, “Let’s gut that old man.”

Smiling to himself, Valentino let his two eager men lead the way, crouching low behind them.

Sherrilyn heard the enemy bastard scream his orders, ducked as the volley of double-charged miquelet muskets sent smaller projectiles spattering around them, and heard a groan as one of her Hibernians took a ball in the arm. Back by the door, Kuhlman cursed again-but whatever his wound was, it left him alive enough to curse.

She raised her automatic, aimed into the charging pack-and flinched her finger off the trigger as Ruy’s agile shape danced momentarily into her sights. “No, don’t!” she screamed at her troops-and in that moment, almost two thirds of the charging assassins veered off into the kitchen.

What the fu-? And then, eyes widening, Sherrilyn knew: they’d found the secret passage and hoped to trap the escapees in the kitchen cellar between two forces. She bounded to her feet, sagged when her knee almost buckled, and started firing into the rest of the sprinting cutthroats. “Up and fire! They’re going for the pope!”

As Luke Wadding watched, Lieutenant Hastings, who had been moving stealthily toward the door joining the kitchen to the great room, suddenly found himself the apparent target of more than a dozen wildly charging assassins. A long, heavy sword now in his right hand for parrying, Hastings gave ground, firing his pistol as he did so. And, being armed with an up-time pistol he rained ruin upon those approaching agents of Satan.

They went down one after the other, sometimes requiring Hastings to spend two bullets to be sure of stopping them. And even then, about half them were not dead yet. Most were mortally wounded, but some even rose to fight again.

McEgan, similarly armed with a sword in one hand and his pepperbox revolver in the other, came alongside the lieutenant’s left flank, his marksmanship a bit less precise, but he accounted for at least three, killed or incapacitated, before his weapon was spent. Two of the assassins still had charged pieces of their own as they entered; one missed wildly, slain as he fired, and the other put a small pellet through Hastings’ left shoulder. If the Hibernian officer noticed, he gave no sign of it.

But then his own seemingly inexhaustible weapon was spent, and the press of attackers pushed them back.

Wadding’s heart quickened with pride at the courage of the two men, but his throat was tight with the certainty of the outcome: there were too many of Lucifer’s own servitors hemming them in, now. Despite their having killed several of the assassins with their pistols, their enemies now beset them to the front and flanks, and only their agility and training turned aside blows that would surely have slain them. Hastings took off an arm at the wrist; McEgan, parried and pierced a lung before blades hammered him back even further, closer to the basement door.

A rapier went through Hastings’ right thigh; a cutlass rang a glancing blow off McEgan’s capelline-helmeted head. They did not fall, but staggering, gave even more, precious ground-which allowed their foes to press them even more closely.

From behind, Luke Wadding heard the voice of his beloved pontiff. “Can they win, Cardinal Wadding?”

“If God wills it, Your Holiness,” Wadding rasped out. “If God wills it.”

What? They can approach us without making a sound? Larry thought, when, from the secret staircase that led down into the kitchen cellar, there was the rapid clack-flash-boom discharge of a miquelet-lock pistol at startlingly close range.

Fortunately, George Sutherland had kept himself off to the side, partially covered by the edge of the doorway; the ball uttered a sharp screech as it clipped a chunk of the stonework off that corner.

With surprising speed for so large a man-and one with a weak ankle, no less-George was in the doorway, arms working like a bear that had been taught to thresh wheat ambidextrously. The sword hit the gunman with a leather-slicing sound that gave way to a scream — which ended almost as soon as it had begun; the axe landed with the sound of a heavy bone splintering. The exchange was conclusively punctuated by the thud of a limp body.

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.

Meanwhile, his two men had jumped toward Ruy, who, sword trailing indolently, simply raised his immense up-time pistol and shot them down as they came. One fell limp, the other collapsed, holding his thigh and sobbing in a pitch as high as a woman’s.

Spotting Valentino approaching through the smoke, Ruy raised his gun again, fired, and dodged-just as Valentino did the same. Both missed; both now had empty pistols. Valentino cast his away; Ruy reholstered his primly, and drew a main-gauche for his off-hand.

Valentino walked through the smoke, heavy rapier in his right hand. The Catalan’s eyes flicked down to the assassin’s empty left. Valentino watched two opposed forces war very briefly in the bantam hidalgo’s eyes: practicality versus honor, he supposed. With something that might have been a shrug, Ruy resheathed his main-gauche. What Valentino thought was: strutting idiot. What he said was: “Are you ready to die now, old man?”

The Catalan now gave a true shrug. “I have always been ready to die.”

Valentino did not let Ruy complete the word “die” before he leaped to the attack. A quick pass-lunge, parry, riposte, slash, and lunge back-confirmed what he’d been told; although the bastard was old, his vitality and skill was undiminished. So, now to end it quickly Valentino came in again, leading with a long athletic leap and a thrust that he wrist-rolled- moulineted — into a shallow overhand cut. The Catalan stood his ground-as his style and pride predicted he would-and met him, blade pushing up against blade. For a moment, they were locked almost side by side: exactly the position that Valentino had been attempting to achieve. He shook his left forearm sharply: the scabbarded dagger that was strapped there slid down into his hand. And as the Catalan tries to stay at close range-with which he will attempt to diminish the advantage of my longer reach-I shall slip this between his ri A bright light exploded in Valentino’s right temple, staggering him. Peripherally, he saw the Catalan’s sword moving out of his field of view, lowering. He understood; the old fool was not such a fool after all-and not such a creature of sterling honor as he had been told. Rather than working with the blade, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz had fallen back on one of the most basic-and some would say base-tricks at the disposal of a swordsman: with his sword already raised point high, and close to his adversary, he had merely run it up along Valentino’s own blade, maintaining the lock with it until he slid it off. And slammed his sword’s half-basketed hilt into the larger man’s lowered head.

Valentino, aware that he had less than a second to recover, tried to buy himself time. He cut at the Catalan-who was no longer there. But, to Valentino’s great surprise, he heard movement behind-and then felt movement inside-himself. The point of the old man’s weapon emerged from his chest, snapping the sternum as it came out.

There were other cuts after that-two, Valentino thought-but he barely felt them. He was only aware that, as his hidden dagger fell from his hand, and he saw the floor coming up at him, the Catalan snorted out a sharp, derisive laugh. “Once a street thug, always a street thug,” he said a moment later, standing over the assassin. It might have been an epitaph.

At any rate, Valentino correctly conjectured, they were the last words he would ever hear.

Ignoring remonstrations and warnings from all around, Maffeo Barberini, who knew himself to be deeply unworthy of the office and title of Pope Urban VIII, moved quickly to the side of George Sutherland.

“My son,” he whispered forcefully.

The Englishman’s eyes fluttered open, moved about uncertainly: blind. The pale lips in his blood-clotted beard moved feebly.

“Who-?”

“It is I, the pope. I fear to ask it, that you might refuse, but-my son, would you take a blessing from me?”

“Why-why would I refuse, Father?”

“Because-well, what manner of Christian are you?”

George seemed to smile, brighten. “I’m a Christian of my own conscience, Father. I don’t…I don’t…I believe…”

And as George’s coughing of blood suddenly returned, and whole-torso spasms began to wrack his body, Urban VIII, tears starting from his eyes, commenced the speediest, yet most heartfelt rite of extreme unction that he had ever carried out.

Luke Wadding clutched his crucifix, kissed it, and felt his heart explode into a hundred “Our fathers” and “Hail Marys” for each of his companions, for surely, he hadn’t enough time left to say even one such prayer. Anthony McEgan, whose sturdy defense of the left flank of lightly armored Lieutenant Hastings had kept that worthy from death at least half a dozen times, was slow coming back from a riposte that wounded an enemy. The adjacent assassin swept out his cutlass, opened a nasty cut across McEgan’s right forearm. The Irishman snatched it back-at just the moment he needed it to protect against a hand axe wielded by a cutthroat who’d slipped into his left flank. The axe made a crunching sound as it caved in the lower left side of McEgan’s cuirass. The blow did not penetrate, but over the wounded man’s grunt, Wadding heard the snap of ribs. Hastings’ protector was thrown sideways, writhing as he fell.

The other assassins rushed to get in at the lieutenant, so eager that they bunched up, knocking together. Hastings, dripping sweat and blood from almost half a dozen wounds, was still alert enough to discern which of the assassins was too hemmed in by his mates to effectively parry. The tall Englishman slashed with his sword; the targeted cutthroat staggered back, now weaponless and clutching the stumps of three missing fingers.

But the remaining assassins continued pushing Hastings back, and still more came behind them.

Wadding wanted to close his eyes while he gave his cross a final kiss, but would not do so. I owe it to this man to watch his last sacrifice. I shall not look away; I shall not blink.

Larry Mazzare fired, cursed himself, fired again, heard a groan up the staircase, winced when a pistol discharged down in his general direction. The balls chipped the stone less than two feet from where he’d positioned himself, kneeling half-covered at the doorway, with a firing angle all the way up to the bend in the staircase.

He couldn’t see the bend, but he had a pretty good estimate of where it was. Like many priests and pastors in Appalachia, Larry was an experienced hunter-and his case, an excellent one, especially with a shotgun. Hunting pheasant, quail and turkey to put meat on impoverished tables and charity dinners in his parish had given him a passing acquaintance with aiming by sound as much as sight.

The assassins had tried rushing down twice now, and he’d sent up two rounds each time, ready to fire more-but that had broken their spirit. However, his ability to drive them back was now reduced to one round in the pepperbox, which had only five chambers. He turned to Antonio, who was, in a ghastly juxtaposition of activities, rifling through George’s pockets as the pope was gently sliding the big man’s eyes closed with his palm.

Trying not to sound impatient, Larry asked, “What have you found, Antonio?”

“Eh…eh, not much. Maybe most of them are under him. But it would take two of us to roll him over so-”

“Antonio. What have you found?”

Cardinal Antonio Barberini held up two shotgun shells, one in either hand. “These.”

Sherrilyn was already running for the kitchen door before Rolf had blasted down the last of the assassins who had rushed them, firing from a range of less than two feet.

Hobbling desperately, Sherrilyn pressed the magazine release, heard the empty box clatter down even as she had the other out, up, and into the grip in one smooth motion. She cocked the action, thanked the powers above for seventeen-round magazines, and staggered forward.

She found herself in a veritable obstacle course of enemy bodies: many motionless, many more writhing or crawling off in some deluded hope of escape. However, at least half a dozen live ones were preparing to carve up the last poor defender, who- Good god, that’s Hastings! She brought up the Glock and started squeezing off rounds, aiming as best she could, praying she wouldn’t hit the lieutenant, but knowing-knowing-that if she wasted one split second, he’d be dead anyway.

The bodies fell faster than she fired-and she became aware that one of the Hibernians had arrived alongside her, adding to her fusillade.

When the last of them fell, she saw Hastings on the ground. Oh god, please no: please don’t let me have been the one who killed him But Hastings raised up on one elbow, clutching a leg wound with one hand, pointing toward the cellar with the other. “Down there,” he gasped, “the pope-”

Larry got the two shotgun shells in the breech just as he heard the thunder of feet coming around the corner above him. There was a determination to the sound that he hadn’t heard before; they had decided it was do or die, evidently.

Larry had come to the same decision long ago; he raised the shotgun, realized he’d never have the time to use the last round in the pepperbox, idiotically had a pang of regret for leaving any ammunition unexpended, and saw the first clear sign of movement in the dimness above him. He fired: screams, a man fell down the stairs, clutching his face and sobbing out his last breaths.

But they kept coming, Larry fired again, and this time, one actually staggered out of the darkness, still mobile enough to take a weak swing at him with a falchion before he collapsed. Larry jumped back, the pope and others clustered behind him.

More bodies came out of the dark rectangle that was the secret passage. Larry raised the shotgun one-handed, like a club; Vitelleschi moved to stand beside him, short sword out. Wadding was crying-evidently to God-“Help us; help us now!”

The assassins loomed out of the darkness — and Larry was startled by God’s own thunder roaring over his shoulder and sweeping his enemies before him. Dumbstruck, he wondered: Good grief, can Wadding actually call down God’s wrath? But then, a sideways glance showed him the visage worn by divine vengeance this day: it was the powder smeared, high-cheekboned face of Sherrilyn Maddox, whose pistol maintained its steady thunder of death and damnation upon the would-be assassins of God’s own Pope. The last few of them turned and fled back up into the darkness.

Larry staggered forward as two of the Hibernians pushed past Sherrilyn and began edging up the staircase cautiously. Then he heard-very faintly from above-Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz addressing the last few cutthroats who apparently encountered him when reentering the hall of the northern wing. The Catalan’s merry tone raised the small hairs on the back of Larry’s neck: “Ah,” he said, “do not leave yet. Tarry awhile.” Then Larry heard the scuffling begin and the first body hit the floor.

Larry, oblivious to the Hibernians now charging up the narrow stairs to help Ruy, looked at his watch, wondering how many hours it had been since the first rattle of musketry had startled Vitelleschi to silence in the Garden Room.

He discovered that, all told, it had not quite been five minutes.