1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [180]
Tom nodded. "We Americans call him 'Murphy.' "
"Truly? Then you are not a people as wholly divorced from reality as I had thought. But no matter. Were we to steal exactly sufficient boats to accomplish our task, nothing is surer that one of them would spring a leak, or we should be struck by a random shot in the dark. Nothing, but nothing, would be surer. But if we provide ourselves with more boats than we need—"
"Then if all of them float, then we've gone to a lot of wasted time and effort, yes, I see what you're saying."
"Logic. Reason. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, am truly a master of these disciplines. Ah, here are the very craft we require."
While they had been talking Ruy had been leading them down a set of steps to where a wooden jetty was home to a couple of dozen rowboats. Most of them looked like they could take a couple of passengers at least in addition to whoever was going to be rowing them. There were even a couple of bigger models. They were all unattended. And all lacked oars. Well, that made sense. Like not leaving the keys in your car. Tom looked around for somewhere that might be an oar-storage shed, but wasn't seeing one anywhere. And then he heard the sound of splintering wood over the sounds of the battle on the far side of the river.
Ruy's direct approach in action again. He had gotten the Marines organized ripping the simple bench seats out of several of the boats, to use as paddles, it looked like. They were using their forage axes to pry the things out, and had so far manage to free one of them. Well, if it's that simple, Tom thought, and stepped into one of the smaller boats that they almost certainly wouldn't be using. Now, the Marines were all well-built guys, tough, wiry customers that no one would want to mess with casually. Tom, on the other hand, still had the build of a nearly-pro footballer and hadn't stinted any on his exercise regime since the Ring of Fire. One swift tug, and a thwart came up in his hand. A twist and the pegs at the other end gave way. He ripped out three in quick succession, during which time the Marines had gotten one more out. "How many more do we need?" he asked brightly, noting the look on Ruy's face.
"Three more should suffice," Ruy said, momentarily at a loss for words, which Tom judged entirely worth the grazed knuckles he'd picked up.
Tom looked across. It was maybe two hundred yards, and the river didn't seem to be in full flood; there was a little mud showing under the jetty on this side, and the same on one a little upstream of the fortress on the other. It wouldn't be so bad. From here, with a little effort, they could get across to the shadows under the bridge on the other side. Hopefully, the boats wouldn't be noticed, because with only Captain Taggart and three Marines to keep an eye on them, they were relying entirely on stealth for that part of the mission. Tom couldn't help feeling that maybe, just maybe, they needed a bit more planning than they were doing. On the other hand, Ruy had been pulling crazy stunts like this for longer than Tom had been alive, so maybe he was approaching this as just another routine rescue of a major spiritual leader against thousand-to-one odds. Done it a dozen times before. Could do it again in my sleep. Suitably embellished with appropriately Catalan curlicues and declarations of honor and willingness to dare all in pursuit of his goal, of course.
Tom couldn't help thinking, as he helped drag the boats off the mud and into the water, of Sean Connery in all those action-movie roles he had played well into his fifties or sixties. Not that that was any guide to reality, but it was getting remarkably easy to imagine Ruy with a Scots accent.
The paddle across the river, the sweating, sore back and blistered hands apart, proved to be fairly easy. Pulling the boats up on to the mud below the river wall, only a little trickier. Tom's boots, filled as they were with a hair over two hundred and seventy pounds of footballer, sunk a bit