1635 The Papal Stakes (30 page)

Owen calculated. If he rushed the Spanish, his own men would certainly have time to take cover and then their pepperboxes would carry the day, at this range. If he was less suicidally minded, Owen might live by dropping flat, but then some of his own men would surely get cut down, possibly leaving the newcomers in charge of the situation. And if he waited—

Spaniard lifted his snaplock pistol impatiently: “Señores, I will have either your weapons, or you, on the ground—now. Juan, inform Sergeant Juarez that we have discovered a plot to—”

A hint of movement—a tall, stealthy figure—flitted up to the rear of the young Spanish officer, who must have seen the quick shift of focus in Owen’s eyes; he spun.

Or tried to. Behind the triad of Spaniards, the wraithlike form resolved into a man, up-time pistol already hovering at the rear of one guard’s head. There was sharp report, then, as the gun re-angled slightly, another report. The first man had barely started falling as the second bullet exited the young officer’s skull just above his ear, a jet of blood tracing the projectile’s trajectory.

The second guard, his rifle turning through a longer arc, had almost completed spinning about when another weapon spoke twice from farther down the arboretum’s path. The last of the three Spaniards doubled up around the first slug, and slumped over limply when hit by the second.

The unseen gunman emerged from the concealment of the arboretum’s vines. But no, Owen realized: it wasn’t a gun man.

It was a gun woman. The realization of which made Owen’s jaw sag.

Sherrilyn almost grinned when she saw the look on the faces of the pepperbox-armed gang that had sneaked in just ahead of them. “Keep those hands up, mister,” she said to the one who had been talking. “Same goes for your pals.”

“Eh?” he answered.

Thomas North pushed past the still-stunned down-time leader, nine-millimeter pistol secured in both hands as he moved quickly to link up with the rest of the Crew and Harry—

—Who sounded genuinely grateful. “Well, Thomas, you sure are a sight for sore—”

“Make your apologies, later, Harry. Right now, we—”

“Hey, I wasn’t apologiz—!”

“Well, you should be. First things first: what the bloody hell is going on here?”

Sherrilyn waved Felix and Gerd—whom they’d met just south of the rendezvous site—toward the guns of the nine buff-coated intruders: Irishmen, from the sound of them. As the two of them collected the weapons and held the Irish at gunpoint, Sherrilyn joined the group clustered around the door into the rectory.

Things had gone deadly quiet as soon as Thomas had opened his mouth. The other Irish fellow in the rectory—medium-sized, built square and deep in the chest, but light in the hips and legs—was looking at Thomas as if he had just devoured a newborn infant. “Feckin’
sassenach
. Of course. Here with some up-time mercenaries to assassinate Father Luke, using the chaos of the moment to sneak in and kill ’im.”

For a moment, the whole Wrecking Crew was speechless. “What?” Sherrilyn finally squawked, “What the hell is he talking about?”

But the Irishman wasn’t finished. “Well, yeh bastards, you’ve put your foot in it now. Drop your weapons or I’ll call the rest of the Spanish on you so fast that—”

Harry didn’t shout often, but when he did, it was a sharp, cutting baritone: “Shut up! Those gunshots have called the Spanish better than you could have. Now, the way I figure it, we’ve got maybe ten seconds. So hear this: I don’t know what the hell a
sassenach
is, but I’m here on orders from the USE. And I’m not here to kill the priest. Hell, I don’t even know who he is. But you want him out? Fine by me. Because right now, if we don’t work together, we’re all going to die together.”

The irate Irish earl frowned more deeply but looked less homicidal. On the other hand, at the arctic rate his mood was changing—

“Agreed!” barked the other Irish leader, the taller one who had been in Sherrilyn’s sights. “We work together, leave together, sort it out afterwards.”

“Done,” said Harry—

—Just as the first of the Spanish came charging in through the same doorway that Harry had used, the one that led back to the staff quarters and the kitchen in St. Isidore’s annex.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

John O’Neill, still half-blind with rage and distrust, had taken a step closer to the
sassenach
—who turned away, and leveled his up-time pistol at the oncoming Spanish. Two ear-splitting snaps—reports, but so unlike the hoarse, throaty roars of muzzle-loaders—dropped the first Spaniard who came through the door, a middle-aged man with a sergeant’s sash. The three with him brought up their own pieces, but the wide-barreled carbines of Lefferts and one of his men were already trained on the doorway. Their discharge was thunderous, painful within the close, walled space—and John checked to be sure that the weapons had not, in fact, exploded. But the effects were clear enough: the cuirass of the first Spanish soldier was riddled by holes, and, as he went backward, a wide spray of blood preceded his fall. One of the two behind him must have picked up a ball, as well; his left arm buckling as the impact pulled him in that direction, the Spaniard’s own piece discharged, sending a lead ball spalling off the antechamber floor, through a window and whining out into the arboretum. The discharge of the second up-time weapon—another of these slim yet monstrously powerful musketoons—followed an eye blink behind the first. It made a red ruin of the wounded soldier’s head and arms, and must have clipped the third in the leg; he dropped with a moan. That sound was cut short by a single shot from the woman—the
woman?
—with Lefferts’ band; the Spaniard crumpled backward.

John knew he should act, should do something productive, but for the moment, all he could do was think:
A woman?
John had heard the rumors, but refused to believe them.
A
woman
? Traveling with soldiers—no, raiders—in the field? How did they all—?

Noise. It came from just beyond the side-door of the rectory, the one that led out into the small garden that was tucked into a small niche between buildings of the annex. The Spanish would have had to climb a wall to get there this quickly, but—

“Lefferts, Owen—here!” John was moving as he snapped the order, leaping to the side of the door, drawing his sword in the same motion.

The door burst open even as he landed beside it. He saw a pistol in his face, snapped his wrist to convert his sword’s unsheathing into an abbreviated back-handed cut. Blood sprayed into his face at the same moment that thunder and powder-grit exploded against his reflex-shut eyes, and sent a bolt of searing lightning across the top of his right ear.

Which no longer worked.

He noticed.

As he fell.

Backward.

And landed with a crash that he felt rather than heard, but it jarred him out of his daze.

Just in time to gasp as someone fell on top of him. Weapons were discharging above and around John as he pushed the person—well, the body—off of him. Judging from its half-severed hand, it was the corpse of the Spaniard—the captain of the guard, from the look of his blood-spattered gear—who had almost shot him in the face. But John’s sword slice had not been what had killed the hidalgo: three perfectly round holes in his cuirass were clearly the cause of death. And the only person near enough to have done the shooting was the woman, who was already stepping sideways to get a better angle out into the garden. Staggering forward one step, John surveyed the situation out there, saw a knot of swordsmen entangled just beyond the door, and smiled.

At last: the perfectly uncomplicated and spine-tingling rush of combat.
Oh, how I’ve missed it
he thought, as he headed for the melee with great, bounding strides.…

At least that bigoted Irish bastard isn’t dead; there would’ve been hell to pay for that
, reflected Thomas as he swapped magazines and took stock of the situation.

In addition to the three Spaniards he and Sherrilyn had gunned down, four more had been killed coming in from the kitchen and pantry area, and three more by the rectory’s garden door where—for some idiotic reason—the earl and a few of his bog-hoppers had gone outdoors to have a little sword fight. But Matija and Sherrilyn were moving in that direction, too, and they’d be sure to make a quick end of that little machismo-induced melee. Of greater concern was the doorway that led from the rectory anteroom into the short corridor leading to the apse of the church. That was where most of the on-duty guards would no doubt fall-back, make a plan…

Which would involve a flanking maneuver. Probably making use of the same arboretum through which North had entered, since it was easily accessed from the front of the church. But that flanking move would be a feint only. The widest, yet shortest approach route was through the anteroom corridor linking to the apse—

“Harry—”

“Yeah, I know. You take Felix and George, as well as any Irish that aren’t needed in the rectory, and cover the corridor to the church. Donald, Gerd, and I will set up a cross fire in the arboretum; they’ll be coming that way, too.”

Thomas waved to George. “You heard Harry; on me, Sutherland. And you—” he turned to a particularly well-groomed Irishman who had just recovered his pepperbox revolver “—how are you with a sword?”

“I’m better with a scalpel.”

Thomas stared, then realized, judging from the easy, elegant diction, that this “bog-hopper” was telling the truth. “Then get in the rear, Doctor, and order your two mates here to cover this door. Swords and pistols, and stand to the side until I say; they’ll come hard, when they do. George, Felix, either side of the door. Shotguns out, pistols ready. Doctor, do be good enough to watch the door leading back into the main annex. If you detect any—”

Shotguns started firing rapidly out in the arboretum; the fast-paced
BOOM-thra-thunk-BOOM-thra-thrunk
sequence was consistent with a rapid pumping of double-aught rounds downrange.

Thomas edged close to the apse-hallway door, cheated it open a sliver—

And saw the double-doors at the apse-end of the corridor swing wide, the Spanish bursting through them three abreast, swordsmen in the lead, musketeers behind.

He let them come half the twenty feet. Then he pulled open the antechamber door. Too far into their charge and too far away from cover to settle in for a gun battle, the Spanish came harder, the musketeers shouting for clearance, hoping to get a shot.

Thomas leveled his pistol and said, “Now!” He aimed at the point man, but did not fire. Felix and George leaned around the door jamb and started pumping shotgun rounds into the Spanish at a range of eight feet.

The first rank went down as a wave of tattered and bloody corpses, revealing the second rank, one or two of whom had taken minor wounds from the .33 caliber balls that that slipped between the bodies in front of them. At their center—and now clearly revealed for Thomas—was the target he expected to find: the career NCO, a little salt mixed into the pepper of his campaigner’s beard. That career soldier had realized any spot in the first rank was suicide, but had also known he had to be present to press home the charge. He had to get in among the enemy with both a sword and tactical acumen that had been honed by decades of experience. He, the seasoned Spanish sergeant, was arguably the most potent weapon of the epoch, having been forged along a bloody trail that stretched from Madrid to Maastricht to Macau and back again.

Thomas, with an easy easy but firm grip on the nine-millimeter, let the tip of the bead rise up into the v-notch of the rear sight, saw the sternum line of the sergeant’s cuirass aligned there as well, and squeezed the trigger. And again, for good measure.

The sergeant went down.

Sic transit gloria mundi est
, reflected Thomas.

As the next rank closed in, Thomas stepped back and the Irish jumped up, pepperboxes thundering. Still giving ground, Thomas started targeting the musketeers between the heads and shoulders of the Wild Geese.

The Irish—credit to be given where credit was due—seemed to intuit the overall strategy. After littering the doorway with Spaniards, they too backed up to the let the last of them rush into the antechamber.

Felix and George’s reloaded shotguns thundered into that press from either side. The space was suddenly choked with falling bodies, helmets, weapons, and blood. A nuisance, really, Thomas conceded as he found an opening and fired two quick rounds at one of the musketeers hanging back at the church doors—

—Who fell. Two of his comrades ducked behind the walls of the apse; an equal number snapped off return shots. One musket ball hit the doorjamb, another hit one of the last Spaniards still standing.

“Cover! Back!” ordered Thomas, obeying his own command.

George, Felix, and the Irish tucked back out of sight in the antechamber, although not before one of them took a ball in the upper leg, and another was clipped near along his left calf.

Harry’s voice came from behind. “Thomas, hold them here.”

He turned and nodded at the American who was leaning in through the arboretum doorway. Harry returned the nod, motioned for Ohde to stay in a covering position and led Gerd forward at a crouched sprint, sticking close to the side of the church and making for its entrance. A reciprocal flanking action: just as Thomas would have done himself.

“Now what?” asked the Irish surgeon from where he was staunching the one Irishman’s thigh-wound.

“Now, we play peek-a-boo with the musketeers.” Thomas leaned out, took a shot at nothing. Ducked back. Then he edged the rim of his helmet out beyond the doorjamb.

Two musket blasts responded, one of which sent a ball whining into the rectory itself, eliciting a mighty, if indistinct, oath from one of the Irish who had evidently finished amusing themselves playing at swords in the garden.

Thomas studied the litter of Spanish equipment at his feet, saw an undischarged musket, toed it to one of the Irish pistoleers in the antechamber. “Shoot it,” he said.