Tom rubbed at his eyes. The courtyard between the inner keep and the wall was sheltered from the wind and there were two hundred men in it and on the wall around it doing their level best to burn their own weight in black powder. A few bombards were still firing, lobbing shells out over the walls in an attempt to drive off the crowd of Spaniards at the walls. The assault had been going on for nearly twenty minutes, now, and everyone who could work a gun was doing so. The Swiss Guard knew that an attempt was being made to get the pope to safety, and a few of them had grinned savagely at Tom and Ruy as they cast about for a way to get out.
They'd tried the riverside wall already. By the time they'd got up onto the upper level of the walls and gone along to find a place to rappel down, there was a spillover from the assaults on the north and south walls, and there was only a narrow gap that was not now covered by Spanish soldiers awaiting their turn at the ladders. For all the bravery of the Swiss Guards, there was no driving them off, now.
The grenades had been exhausted in minutes. There were more in the armory, but with everything else that had had to be done to get the fortress into a condition fit for even the little defense they could manage, there had been too few hands available to fill many of them with powder. The men on the walls were reduced to tossing rocks and cannonballs over the walls in an attempt to put the attackers off, but it was unlikely to achieve much.
Possibly, if the defensive works had actually been finished, the fortress might have held longer. Or at all. For now, there were small parties at the top of each ladder who had beaten off three concerted rushes at the wall, but the attackers were not retiring after each attempt. They were ranged at the bottom of the wall and any man who showed himself over the battlements received a hail of bullets for his trouble. There were already forty or fifty casualties, most of them dead. They wouldn't want for last rites, either. The place was full of priests. Tom had stayed with the pope by the river gate while Ruy went to discuss the escape further with the commander of the Swiss Guard. Hopefully, there would be some kind of diversion, but Tom couldn't imagine what.
Another man fell from the wall above them, and hit the ground with the boneless finality that could only mean one thing. The pope started forward. Tom was about to restrain him, when he saw the elderly cleric kneel down by the corpse and make the sign of the cross.
Tom went to one knee beside him. "Your Holiness? Please be quick," he said as gently as he could over the noise of battle. "The man is surely gone beyond any comfort you can bring him."
"I know," he said, and Tom saw in the firelight that the pope's eyes were bright and shining, his face blank with distress. "But he will not go there without my prayers to speed him on his way. He—will—not."
Tom realized that what he had taken for distress was, in fact, overwhelming fury. "It's all wrong, isn't it?" he said, embarrassed at the banality of the sentiment in a place where men were dying every second.
"All wrong, yes," the pope said, closing the dead guardsman's eyes and crossing himself again after a briefly murmured prayer. Tom didn't know enough Latin to understand what he'd said.
"These men"—the pope gestured at the broken thing beside him, the brains leaking onto the ancient flagstones, the smells of shit and blood and piss reeking the man's death even over the stench of powder-smoke—"have pride that they die before I am taken. And Borja knows this. Signor Simpson, I have not learned enough English to say it well, but—"
Tom didn't have enough Italian—or, at least, not enough of that class of Italian—to follow all of it, but the sentiment was clear enough. He hoped that, wherever he was, Borja's ears were burning. And the pope was right. Borja's attempt to capture the pope was as good as a death sentence for all two hundred of these tough, wiry men from the Alps, no matter that they went to their deaths grinning savagely and determined to heap up the corpses of their attackers on the way.
Whatever else he had ordered today in Rome, Borja had ordered the murder of two hundred men who, Tom was sure, he would have gotten along with famously if he had met them elsewhere. His Episcopalianism notwithstanding, Tom couldn't help feeling that there might well be something to a church that had a man like this at its head. Sure, the fellow was a notorious crook when it came to money and nepotism, but still—
He sighed. "Your Holiness, let's get back under cover, please?"
The pope nodded, rose stiffly from his knees and moved back with Tom under the shelter of the wall. "I thank you, Signor Simpson. It seems that once again I am to be saved to continue God's work by the United States of Europe."
Tom grinned. "Any time, Your Holiness. It isn't like we can piss the Spanish off any more than we already did."
The pope smiled back. "This is true. But one Spaniard deserves to be pissed off a great deal, I think."
"You're picking up English idiom quite well, there, Your Holiness," Tom said, trying not to snigger like a schoolboy. The idea of priests swearing was kind of amusing. Hearing the pope do it was hysterical.
Tom was saved from bursting out laughing altogether by Ruy reappearing.
"What're we doing?" Tom asked.
"A diversion is arranged, and we should take cover while it comes to pass." Behind him the keep of the Castel Sant'Angelo seemed to explode as people—mostly men, but some women as well—began pouring out of the door and fanning out to head for the bastions and the various buildings under the walls.
Tom wondered about that for a second or two, and then a horrible thought presented itself. "What have you arranged as a diversion, Ruy?" he asked, with a horrible suspicion that he'd already worked it out.
"The good captain and I discussed it, and it seemed a shame that all that powder would be wasted for want of time to shoot it at the enemy. And it certainly makes for an excellent alternative to surrender, yes?"
"Ruy! That building is a fuckin' world historical monument! Are you out of your—" Tom stopped. "Yes, you are, aren't you?"
"Indeed. And I notice that you have followed me every step of the way, Señor Simpson." It was dark under the wall, and Tom could not see Ruy's face very clearly, but his imagination clearly supplied the grin. A great deal of humor with more than a tint of malicious glee.
"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. "Did I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, not say that the Almighty would provide? His personal vicar on earth shows us the way."
"Right," Tom said, grinning in spite of himself, "that's what I call service."
The grain stores proved to be cool and, relative to the din outside, quiet. Ruy was with the guardsmen at the door doing something with the powder train. Inside, there were already a dozen or more civilians taking shelter, perched on the sacks of grain that lined the walls. Some, with more presence of mind, had found places where the bags were stacked like sandbags. A couple, junior priests from the looks, offered nervous grins when Tom led the pope in with them to crouch down.
Ruy came back, and between him and four guardsmen, the shelter was getting cramped. "The powder-train is lit. Perhaps a minute?"
"What about the men on the walls?" Tom asked, realizing for the first time that unless those guys had noticed what was going on, they had had no warning.
"Most will live," Ruy said, somewhere in the gloom beside Tom. The sounds of battle, the clatter of metal and the hoarse yells of men struggling for life and death, were growing closer. "More than if this assault should continue. Much of the blast will remain inside the fortress, except for our little diversion."
"Yes, but—"
Tom was cut off by a glaring flash and a mighty slam like the gate of hell. Lights flashed in front of his eyes, and for a panicky moment he could not breathe, felt as though he was submerged under miles of lightless ocean, and then his vision began to come back through the purplish-green afterimage of the doorway.
"Guess you got your earth-shattering kaboom," he said, and then realized he hadn't heard a word. Shit, deaf on top of everything, he thought, and staggered to his feet.
He could see nothing. He pulled out his flashlight and tapped it a couple of times to get it to come on. He'd more or less avoided using the thing for months at a time, battery-recharges being as tough to come by as they were, and the little light seemed almost indecently bright in the gloom. The Swiss Guards were blinking and looking about. Two of them hauled the pope gently but firmly to his feet. Tom noticed that everyone in the room had the beginnings of a nosebleed, and he could feel a warm wet trickle on his own top lip.
"The barricade is gone," Tom heard, and looked around. Ruy's voice had sounded like it had come from a very long way away indeed, but the wiry Catalan was stood right next to him, and had been bellowing. He'd already been up and about while Tom was gathering his wits.
How does he do it? he wondered. If I've got half his energy at that age, I'll be glad. Half his energy now would be good, too.
"Right!" Tom yelled back. He switched to the rather coarse German he'd used with his mercenaries and hoped the Swiss would understand. "Follow Sanchez! I'll come behind!"
They seemed to get the message. Tom limped after them, checking his gun as he went. Somehow the shock of the explosion had made his ass hurt worse, and it definitely felt like the cut there was bleeding again. Riding back was going to be a stone bitch. Here's hoping I live long enough to suffer with that, he thought.
Outside the grain store things seemed eerily quiet and clear, although Tom had to wonder if that was in part due to the deafness. He certainly couldn't hear his own boots on the flagstones of the courtyard. All of the junk that had been out in the courtyard had settled or tumbled over, and there were lumps of shattered masonry everywhere. There were fires here and there. The air had temporarily cleared, but the smoke was already starting again. Here and there shocky-looking survivors were staggering about, looking dazed.
A few short strides, stepping over debris and bodies, brought them to the gate. Before looking more closely there, Tom looked up at Hadrian's mausoleum. The whole top was missing. All of it. The heavy, thick walls at the base had channeled the blast straight up and burst the upper floors like a suppurating boil. The jagged rim of the drum at the top was stark against the flame-lit clouds of smoke above, crowned with a rapidly swelling mushroom cloud, a cloud that looked like a flying saucer lifting off when seen from below as Tom was looking at it. The papal apartments that had stood atop the great drum of the fortress were gone completely. Probably in orbit, he thought. Bits of 'em, anyway.
He turned to the gate. Ruy was beckoning. The gates were cracked, partially open, but had fallen off their hinges. "Jammed!" Ruy shouted. "Push!"
Again, the words seemed to come from a very long way away. Tom hoped that the dim rumble as of a receding freight train was his hearing coming back.
"Right," he murmured. "Brute force and ignorance, coming right up." He handed off his shotgun to someone, not looking around as he weighed up where best to push. He wasn't quite up to the bulk he'd had as noseguard for his university, but he was still in damned good shape—better, in some ways—and had plenty of mass. He set a shoulder against one leaf of the gate and heaved. A little lift to the push, and he felt it start to shift. Damn thing must weigh two tons, he thought, panting with the effort. His right ham began to burn, and the gash in his ass-cheek sprang a leak again. Something in the shoulder he was shoving with began to flare a whining little spike of pain into the joint, but he pushed on.
And then it gave, and he had to clutch at the gate to keep from falling on his face. Ruy, followed by two guardsmen, eeled through the gap, then two more, and finally someone was tugging at his sleeve and offering him his shotgun back.
"Thank you, Your Holiness," he said, and escorted the pope out into the cool night air.
To find the way was blocked. His hearing was definitely coming back. "I have orders, Don Ruy," someone was saying.
"And you are following orders?" Ruy replied. "It seems an age of miracles is upon us."
"Most droll."
"Stand aside, Quevedo," Ruy said.
Tom moved forward to see what the trouble was. There seemed to be only a couple of soldiers there, and one older guy, although still younger than Ruy, who looked like an officer type if Tom was any judge.
"No, Don Ruy," the other man—Quevedo? Sharon mentioned him, Tom realized—"It beggars belief that you do not have His—ah, I see you do."
Tom had the presence of mind to get between Quevedo and the two soldiers with him and the pope. The guardsmen pulled out an assortment of long knives and pistols that Tom hadn't noticed them carrying before. A quick check to either side showed that there didn't seem to be any other soldiers close by. The men under the walls, if they had been as shocked as those inside by the explosion, had recovered by now and the one ladder Tom could see had a steady stream of men going up it. It wouldn't be long before those men started looking for gates to open. He worked the slide of his shotgun. "Ruy," he said, loud and clear, "one side, please."
"No," Ruy said, "I have a debt to pay. Get His Holiness clear."
Tom wasn't about to argue with the crazy old guy. Fuck it, he thought, I'll apologize later, and raised the shotgun to his shoulder. He got a bead on one of the soldiers and was surprised by a flare of the musket the man was carrying going off. He jerked the trigger compulsively and sent the shot somewhere over the rooftops of Rome. Where the Spaniard's shot had gone, Tom didn't see, but to either side the guardsmen snarled and leapt forward while Ruy went at Quevedo like a like a springing trap.
In the time it took him to work the slide for a second shot, the two soldiers had gone down under a flurry of knife-thrusts and one pistol-shot, a guardsman was bent over and clutching a wound in his side, and Ruy was booting Quevedo in the face to free his sword from the man's neck, into which it had gone nearly three quarters of the width. Blood was spurting everywhere, and Quevedo's face had gone slack as his head flopped to one side.
"I never did cure him of that fault in his guard with the back-sword," Ruy remarked, casually, as he flourished an already-bloodstained handkerchief to clean his blade. "And I am now glad I did not."
Quevedo thumped to the floor as he spoke the last words, and was clearly dead by the time Ruy sheathed his blade.
Tom turned and saw that the pope was assisting his wounded guardsman. "Not bad," the pontiff remarked when he saw Tom looking. "And you have good doctors, not so?"
"Three of 'em," Tom said, grinning. "Let's git."
They slipped unseen to the boats, while behind them the fires in the ruins of the Castel Sant'Angelo began to take hold and light the night sky once more.