1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [187]
Frank cringed again as the cannon along the street banged—where, Frank wondered, did all those guys writing about old battles get the notion that cannon roared? This one made a huge bang and then shook the building and Frank's teeth. A roar was more drawn out, kind of. He tensed up for the crash, not that he ever did so in time, and then relaxed as he realized they'd missed again. That had made him giggle at first. Missing the broad side of a building was the standard of bad marksmanship. And then Frank had remembered what the captain had said; if he didn't want to simply smash up the cannon, he had to fire from along the street and make a hole in Frank's wall by bouncing cannonballs off it at an angle. A lot of that façade was wooden paneling between brick arches, and a fair proportion of that was already pretty busted up. Only the door was closed completely, although there was a chunk of the brickwork missing from one side of it already.
It wouldn't be long, anyway. They were getting a shot off every three or four minutes. Frank had no idea whether that was quick or slow for three guns, but they'd kept it up for two hours now. They'd only missed a few shots, and the ones that had hit had got in between the columns of the brick arches that made up the front of the ground floor of his place and smashed the woodwork out of its supports. Frank wasn't too happy about what was happening to the brickwork, either. He wasn't an engineer, but there was one column that looked like it had had most of its outer face smashed away. And this building had been standing hundreds of years on those columns; Frank wasn't sure about how well they'd hold up with one of them shot away and all the others battered by a couple of dozen cannonballs.
Piero coughed on the falling dust. It was pretty constant now, although when the cannons hit they produced a massive shower. Which was damn strange, actually. Given how much housework Giovanna had them all doing upstairs, it wasn't like there was any dust left in the place. "Seems like cannon are harder to aim than they look, eh?" he said.
"Looks like," Frank said. "That makes, what, three or four misses?"
"I count five, with that. I don't like the look of that wall, either."
"I was wondering about that, too." Piero's presence was helping a lot. If he'd been on his own, he'd have gone completely nuts by now. One or two prisoners, the captain had said, and they'd decided on two. Piero was the only other realistic candidate. The Inquisition had to have Frank, no question. Of everyone who was left, Piero was the one with the most family connections and money and so had the best chance of getting off with the aid of a good lawyer and a little luck, probably with no more than a dose of intimidation by being shown a fully stocked torture room. Which was, apparently, standard procedure before questioning anyone. Piero planned to confess to a couple of years' worth of drunkenness, adultery and general misbehavior to keep them from torturing him because they suspected he was hiding something. He'd joked that if he was lurid enough in the details he could get the Inquisition to boot him out just to keep him from killing the priests with jealousy.
Piero took a swig of wine. "I could wish it was safe to step out in the street and surrender."
"We'd get shot. Whoever that inquisitor is, he got those guys with the muskets plenty stirred up." Most of the day had passed with no more than a desultory few volleys of fire from across the street, which had scattered a few splinters of glass and wood about the place and served to keep everyone's heads down. But being mostly out of sight of officers and not being in any position to do much other than waste ammo, the soldiers had settled into a rhythm of a shot every few minutes, apparently more for looks' sake rather than anything else. When the cannon opened up, the musketeers had stopped