1635 The Papal Stakes (84 page)

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.