1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [176]
A couple more shots and then there was shouting from outside. No more shooting. He got up and looked out of the window, holding the flag out and waving it as vigorously as he dared. Every last bit of him wanted to dive back behind the barricade and cower there like a mouse.
Someone across the street leaned out of his window and shouted something at Frank. Problem number one, he thought. "No hablo español!" he shouted back, hoping that that was the right language, and at the same time using pretty much the whole of his vocabulary in it.
"Momento!" came the shout back, followed by something that included what sounded like "capitan." Were they telling him to wait for an officer? He hoped so.
A nervous wait. Five minutes? An hour? The soldiers across the street were leaning out of their windows and hollering to where, Frank could now see, they had a barricade of their own up. Somewhere to watch the action from shelter. Their barricade was a lot more professional looking than the ones Frank had been squatting behind all day, and there seemed to be a fair number of horses down there, too.
Frank squinted against the glare of the setting sun, which had now moved around to shine the other way along the street. Definitely horses, maybe two dozen. What use were cavalry going to be? Or maybe they just had a lot of officers here. And then Frank remembered what else horses did on battlefields. He couldn't see them from where he was, but he was willing to bet there were at least a couple of cannon waiting behind that barricade. Looks like we did this just in the nick of time, he thought.
Then a couple of guys emerged from behind the barricade and began walking briskly up to where Frank was. One of them was holding a pole-arm of some sort, Frank couldn't remember which name went with which weapon, but it was the one with a big spike and an axe-blade. Some sort of white cloth had been tied to it.
Frank sighed in relief. They were willing to talk, then. Best news he'd had all day. When the two soldiers got closer, Frank saw that they were an officer-type, all fancy clothes and waxed moustaches and wearing a sword, and another, older guy who, if you cut him in half, probably had "sergeant" written right through him. When they reached Frank, the sergeant immediately planted the staff of his weapon and began to lean on it with the air of a man who could, in that position, loaf all day. The officer took a considerably more martial stance, feet apart, hands clasped behind him.
"I am Don Vincente Jose-Maria Castro y Papas, Captain in the army of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain," he said, in good, if accented, formal Italian. "To whom do I have the honor of speaking?"
"Uh, Frank Stone, of Lothlorien." Frank was impressed in spite of himself. This guy was being polite and civil even though he and his men had spent all day being shot at and firebombed by Frank and his guys. Maybe the fact that no one had gotten badly hurt yet helped. "I was hoping we could discuss surrender," he went on, realizing as he did so that, hippie upbringing or not, sensible tactical decision or not, he felt deeply ashamed.
Don Vincente's iron mask slipped a moment. He seemed, for just an instant, genuinely saddened. When he spoke again, he had softened his tone still further.
"Señor Stone," he said, "I am a man under authority. I have orders to accept no surrender and to reduce your resistance by force of arms. Apparently the Inquisition does not want you to surrender voluntarily. The most I can say is that I have no orders to ensure the death of you and all your comrades, and, more, that I would refuse orders to fire on a flag of parley. But I cannot take your surrender."
Frank looked back at Don Vincente. The man seemed genuinely upset by what he was being ordered to do. "Is there some way around your orders?" he asked, "We've only held out long enough to let the women and children get away."
"Some of them," Don Vincente said.
Frank just looked at him, hoping like hell that that didn't mean—
"We discovered a woman, a cripple