1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [202]
"Please, what is the plan?" The pope was also eyeing the stream of people fleeing from the inner keep. Tom noticed also that there seemed to be rather fewer jets of fire from various windows, as the musketeers and arquebusiers fell silent.
"Your Holiness, this fortress will not be surrendered. Shortly, there will be a struggle on the walls as the defenders seek to escape. There will be an explosion, a mighty one although not, we think, sufficient to level the castle."
"You think?" Tom was dumbfounded. He'd picked up a little about up-time demolitions, enough to understand that it was a precision business that was done carefully and patiently with calculations to umpteen decimal places. Matters were certainly more rough-and-ready in the seventeenth century, but, still, there were limits.
"We were pressed for time," Ruy said, and Tom could see enough of his silhouette to see that he was shrugging.
"How did you persuade the Guard?" the pope asked. "I had understood that they would fight on here so that the enemy would not suspect—?"
He was switching back and forth between Italian and English in a single sentence. Tom found it surprisingly easy to follow. So long as he didn't switch to Spanish for Ruy's sake, because all Tom could remember how to say in that language was to explain that he no habla it.
Ruy shrugged again. "It was not hard. These men are proud that they are known for never surrendering, Your Holiness. But the Swiss are a practical folk, very hardheaded. I explained that the best manner in which to ensure that their mission was successful was create so much confusion that the Spaniards did not realize you were gone until it was too late. I promised on your behalf that word would be given when you reached a place of safety so that the survivors might rally to you. In fact, it was one of the lieutenants of the Guard who suggested evacuating the keep and firing the magazine."
"How are we getting out?" Tom asked, realizing that Ruy was being surprisingly reticent on this subject.
"Ah, now there we have a further trick to play." As he said it, four guardsmen ran up, each carrying a small keg under one arm and a bundle under the other. They headed straight for the barricade piled behind the river gate.
Tom put two and two together and realized that he wasn't going to like this, not one bit. He looked around himself. The wall they were sheltering under was the medieval inner ward, which was a square of four bastions connected by walls, under which an assortment of outbuildings and sheds had been constructed. The spare stonework of the later tourist-attraction castles was something that happened after the castle fell in to disuse. A working fortress needed all kinds of interior structures. Right in the middle of the inner ward was the cylindrical structure that had started as Hadrian's mausoleum and was now the fortified citadel of the papacy. So there was going to be an explosion there, and unless Tom missed his guess there was going to be an explosion next to the door right by them. As far as he could see, there was shelter from one, but not both.
The guardsmen came back from the barricade behind the river-wall gate, one of them trailing a stream of powder from the keg under his arm. The other three were pulling on plain clothes from the bundles they'd been carrying. Makes sense, Tom thought, that livery is kind of distinctive. Which didn't advance the matter at hand one whit.
"Ruy, we are screwed!" he yelled, over a sudden and thunderous cheering that seemed to come from every direction at once.
"Not yet, Tom. Not until I finally get to have my wedding night, at any rate."
"Jesus, Ruy," Tom said, suddenly wincing at the thought of blaspheming in front of the pope, who didn't actually seem to mind. "Where do we take cover?"
"There," the pope said, pointing along the wall. There was, maybe twenty yards away, a cluster of blocky stone buildings just under the bastion they'd come in over. "Grain houses. Very strong."
"See?" Ruy was grinning as he stood up in the firelight.