1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [123]
"Now!" shouted Mademann. He rushed out of the alley toward the prince and princess.
A shot rang out almost immediately. Then, another.
The shots had come from behind him. Which idiot—?
To his consternation, Charles saw that at least one of the two shots had struck the soldier holding up the front end of the table. The man was already collapsing. Much worse, so was the table.
And God damn all quick-thinking princes!
Ulrik caught the edge of the table and tipped it so the table would fall on its side and provide them with a barricade.
Tried to, rather. The soldier holding up the rear end was too confused to understand what the prince was trying to do. He was still trying to hold the table up.
Baldur kicked him out from under it. The soldier was flung onto his back, his head hitting the street hard enough to be knocked unconscious. Baldur caught his end of the table. He realized what Ulrik was trying to do and followed suit with his own end. A moment later the table was lying on its side with its heavy top facing their assailants. Ulrik and Baldur crouched down behind it. The princess did so herself, without needing to be told.
What a mess. Still, the situation favored them. Locquifier—another idiot!—fired a shot from his percussion cap pistol at the table top. The wood splintered, but it was thick enough that the bullet didn't penetrate.
That left Locquifier effectively disarmed, of course, because his percussion cap pistol only had one barrel. No way to reload in this downpour.
The first idiot had been Ancelin. At least he'd had the sense to discard his pistol now that he'd fired both barrels. He drew a knife and ran toward the right end of the table.
That was now the only sensible tactic. Get around the ends of the table so they had access to their targets.
Mademann made to follow Ancelin. His foot slipped on one of the wet cobblestones and he fell, dropping his pistol. The weapon skittered off across the cobblestones, coming to rest ten feet away.
"Merde alors!"
By October of the year 1635, the Ring of Fire was four and half years in the past. Over that period of time, even though they numbered in the thousands, up-time firearms had come to be worth a prince's ransom.
Fortunately, Ulrik of Denmark was a prince.
He owned three of the weapons, in fact: a bolt-action Browning .308 rifle, a Smith & Wesson .40 automatic pistol with a ten-round magazine, and a Colt Detective Special .38 caliber snub-nose revolver.
He was carrying the revolver today, as he normally did in everyday matters. The little gun was easy to conceal in regular clothing, which the automatic wasn't. Ulrik had been quite sure the queen would have objected had she realized he was coming into her presence armed. The revolver had a six-round cylinder, but Ulrik only had five of the chambers loaded. He disliked carrying the weapon with a loaded chamber under the hammer, even if the man who'd sold him the gun insisted it was quite safe.
So. Five shots, and he had no way to reload since he wasn't carrying any spare ammunition. He didn't have that much anyway. The ammunition for up-time guns was also very expensive. By now, they were all handmade reloads.
He was pretty sure there were at least six assailants, from what he'd seen before the table came down.
The Americans called it Murphy's Law.
Mademann scrambled after his pistol. On hands and knees because when he'd tried to stand up he'd just slipped again.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Ancelin was close to the table. André Tourneau was very close also, at the other end. He had his pistol at the ready.
Suddenly, a figure rose from behind the table. The prince, from the hat, although it was hard to be sure. Hats got rather shapeless in this sort of downpour.
Tourneau immediately fired a shot. He'd rushed it, Charles thought.
So he had. The shot struck the very edge of the table and caromed off somewhere in the distance. The only damage it did was to send a little spray of splinters flying.
One of the splinters struck