1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [186]
Beyond the fires that the besiegers had lit in the outer ward, the outer defenses were visible as vague firelit blurs. Only now they seemed to heave and writhe and move, and gleam here and there as the firelight caught on helmets, breastplates, and weapons.
"They begin the escalade early," Ruy said. "Foolish. Many more will die than might have in a dawn attack. Your Holiness, if you will go, you must go now."
Outside, in the firelight, the advancing columns were plainly visible, lit by the fires they themselves had set. From within the advancing columns—merging into a crowd as they neared the walls—little jets of flame marked where musketeers were optimistically shooting at the walls. From the walls themselves, jets of flame in answer as Guards emptied their pieces at the oncoming horde. It wasn't enough. It would never have been enough. Tom could already see ladders beginning to rise.
That sparked a thought, and he dashed over to the far side to check the riverside wall. Nothing so far, and he could see the Guards on that wall running to either end to hold the bastions. "Ruy," he called out, "we can get out through the gate in the river wall if we go now. I don't see an assault coming over the bridge."
Ruy had been urgently addressing the pope, then appealing to the bodyguard who were with him even here. Now he headed for the stairs down, surrounded by Swiss Guards and holding the pope's arm. He managed to make it look like a gesture of support for an elderly gentleman—only a few years older than he himself was, but in attitude the gap was decades wide—but in truth it was the nearest he could get to frogmarching the pope.
Tom carefully kept his face straight as he joined them. "His Holiness tried to order the Guard to surrender while we escape," Ruy said. "Their commander has refused the order. They will fight to the last to cover our flight."
The pope began to say something.
"No, Holy Father," Ruy said, cutting him off, "do not waste this. These men serve the Church in their way, serve her in yours that they do not do so in vain."
The laughing adventurer, making light of every difficulty, was gone of a sudden, Tom noticed. Ruy's face had set hard into the mask of a conquistador, intent on deadly purpose and grim slaughter to all who stood in his way. A far cry from the joker who'd simply waltzed in to a fortress under siege simply by asking nicely.
Oh shit, Tom thought, if Ruy's getting serious, we are in deep, deep shit.
Chapter 42
Rome
Frank looked at the gun on the shelf under the bar in front of him. He'd been halfway to giving the thing to the guys upstairs for the last hour. He'd kept it in case he needed it, but made sure it wasn't actually in his hand in case the assault started. He wanted to be down and in a posture of abject surrender immediately and with no possibility of being mistaken for a threat by even the most nervous musketeer. Which meant that it was pretty silly to have it here where it was guaranteed to be no use whatsoever. And it wasn't like he was in any shape to fight either. What with splinters in various bits of him, cuts and bruises and the pain from his hand, he really didn't feel like fighting at all.
The street outside was getting dim, and inside the bar it was almost pitch black. Frank had allowed one small candle, and made sure to stand well away from it. Maybe that Captain Don Vincente was a reasonably decent sort of guy and wouldn't order a massacre. That didn't mean that the musketeers across the street wouldn't do their level best to make sure there wasn't any resistance inside. The end of the bar where the candle was flickering and dancing was taking all the musket fire, with balls crashing into that part of the room a couple of times a minute. Piero, who was doing his level best to look nonchalant on a kicked-back chair with