1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [179]
Which was bad enough. But to get a chance to get blown up on the way to the sheer walls and alert guards, they first had to get past what looked like, allowing for the dim light, the entire Spanish army. All of whom had their attention very, very firmly fixed on the aforementioned sheer-walled fortress and its alert guards, et cetera.
The plan to get across the river seemed sound enough. Most of the wall was pretty well lit up with bonfires that the besiegers had lit, just outside accurate shooting distance. The exception was on this near side, where the fortress stood right at the riverside. The main defense here was the river itself, and getting across the river to the esplanade under the fort walls basically meant coming right under the fort's guns. So there were no fires there, and the fires to either side cast long, deep shadows right along the wall. Once they got that far, they would be all but invisible. The Spanish commander had apparently decided that sending men over there was a waste, a certain slaughter as there was no cover anywhere on the Ponte Angelo. He had simply left a guard force on the near end of bridge to contain any sally the defenders might make.
Those guys, apart from a couple of sentries watching along the bridge, had taken the sensible view that two hundred Swiss Guards weren't going to be attempting a daring breakout any time soon and had gotten comfortable, with small fires here and there and a fair few of them stretched out either side of the road exercising a soldier's privilege of racking out when nothing interesting was happening.
Meanwhile, down on the river, there was actually still some river traffic. There were boatmen who ran a taxi service, and a few were still plying for hire. Tom had no doubt that some of those boats were carrying refugees, sneaking out of the city by one of the many routes the invaders couldn't watch. There weren't many, though. Just enough for cover. The rest of the boats were clustered at piers up and down the river, tied up against the day when the shooting stopped and people wanted rides again. If they could just get the pope on one of those boats and downstream out of the city, they could retrieve the horses and get the hell out of Dodge a lot faster than any pursuit could be organized and get after them. That would give them a chance to break contact, and once they did that and lit out across country, the chances of getting caught before they had the pope well on his way to whatever sanctuary his people thought best were actually pretty small.
The trick was going to be bringing that happy outcome about without indulging in what looked like a messy and elaborate suicide.
"Did we even bring a rope?" Tom asked, trying to figure out how the hell they were going to get over that wall.
"Have faith, Señor Simpson," Ruy said. "We are about the Lord's work."
"On a mission from God, eh? Put like that, I've no reason to worry at all. I'm certainly not thinking that, in fact, you don't have a plan of any kind at all for this. Not in the least."
"Plans? Faugh. The playthings of lesser intellects. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, need no plan. Insult me no further with such talk, Señor Simpson. We must steal, I think, four boats."
"Four boats?" Tom looked around, wondering what kind of counting system the old guy was using. They'd started out with Ruy, Tom himself, Doctor Nichols, Captain Taggart and six Marines. Three of the Marines had stayed with Doctor Nichols, leaving six to get across the river. Either Sanchez was planning on stealing really, really small boats, or he was improvising madly and a spare or three were going to come in to it somewhere.
"Indeed. Four boats. To ensure that none of them sink. Listen, Señor Simpson, to the voice of experience."
"This is going to be good, isn't it?"
"The best advice always is. As you are aware, all pursuit of the profession of arms is attended by a most malign imp, a hell-spawn shat from the very asshole of Satan himself, whose sole delight is in ensuring that