At the midway point of the passage that led from the gate to the arms yard, Thomas North met Owen at the foot of the staircase to the upper gallery. “Is your team ready?”

  Owen looked at the four Wild Geese behind him-grim myrmidons in helmets and cuirasses, pistols and sabers held loosely but ready-and the two men carrying true up-time weapons: a Hibernian with an SKS, and Matija with another of those rifles and a shotgun for good measure. “Thomas North, the only thing that’s holding me up is yer flapping gums. Now let me do my work.”

  North smiled. “Hop to it, bog-hopper.”

  “Eh, fek you too, sassenach. Lads, on me.” And up the stairs he went.

  Donald Ohde spent a moment watching him go. “He’s heading straight into the worst of it.”

  North nodded, staying close to the wall as he edged back toward the arms yard. “Of course he is.”

  “My men are starting to go room to room on this level. We’ve hit a half dozen Spaniards who’ve tried to come out to see what’s happening, but the rest have hunkered down behind their doors.” He looked around at the thick walls that now kept Spanish reinforcements out of, but also trapped the attack team within, the confines of the Castell de Bellver. They heard rapid lever-action rifle fire contending with a short sputter of muskets as two of the Hibernians assigned to his team broke into another ground-floor room. “Like scorpions in a bottle, we are,” Ohde observed

  “Yes,” agreed North. “But we sting a hundred times faster than they do.”

  Sergeant Alarico Garza exited the governor’s office at a trot, crouching, his brows folded together tightly. His corporal tagged along. “What are the governor’s orders?”

  “I don’t know; his voice did not carry well from his hiding place under the desk.” A sharp report-much sharper than a musket-rang out in the courtyard; a bullet traveling at utterly fantastic speed took a divot out of the nearest archway. Garza reached up, pulled the corporal lower, and forced himself to think past his rage and ardent desire to throttle Don Sancho Jaume Morales y Llaguno until the coward’s tongue came bulging out of his mouth and his eyes went blank. “Did Diego go to defend the stairs as I ordered?”

  “Yes, Sergeant. But why do you presume they won’t come up through the towers?”

  “Because I wouldn’t. They’ve obviously come in through the old tunnel-although God knows how. So they are already right next to the main staircase. Besides, the towers are tight spaces, with many of blind spots and sharp corners on their stairs: hard to attack, easy to defend. No, the enemy must work quickly, and so they will press to take the main staircase, which is comparatively straight and wide. You must reinforce it now. I will get the other men to pull the torches from the cressets on this level and keep firing on the dogs in the arms yard whenever we get a glimpse of them.”

  “And what do we do about the enemies on the roof?”

  “I’ve sent half our men there, going up through the towers. They should be enough to rush the lazarette and take it in close combat.” So you hope, Alarico, but you heard the speed with which that up-time weapon was firing. Still, what other choices are there? “Now go.”

  Dakis, hearing increased noise on the roof, snapped an order at the man whose face had been savaged by the regular assistant’s first bottle. “You. Bring all available troops here. Go. Now!”

  Don Vincente drew his own pistol and went to stand near Dakis, who had to grab Giovanna by her hair to bring her to her feet. Frank started forward reflexively, saw Giovanna’s warning look, held himself in check.

  Obviously, Captain Vincente had not yet had the time to decipher the many layers of duplicity that now lay revealed: he blinked in surprise at Giovanna’s sudden, easy movements. “But all the blood…”

  “It wasn’t hers,” said Asher from along the wall. “It wasn’t even human.”

  Vincente turned and stared at Frank while holding the room at gunpoint. “And this was your escape plan?”

  “It was a fine plan-until you showed up, and ruined everything,” Frank retorted. Then he jerked his head at Dakis “And he didn’t help either.”

  Dakis laughed-but stopped when two sharp reports of an up-time rifle sounded from just beyond the door. Outside, from the fortified walkway linking the lazarette to the main roof, there was a short, strangled cry: the guard-and the summons he had been carrying from Dakis-were clearly gone.

  Dakis shouted toward the door. “If you enter this room, the hostages die.” He snugged the muzzle of his pistol closer against Giovanna’s temple; Frank felt as though he was going to pop straight out of his own skin. “And the woman will get the first bullet, right through her brain.”

  Castro y Papas looked at him sideways. “You wouldn’t,” said the captain, his gun still held steadily upon the others.

  “I would-and you’d better be ready to do the same. We have to hold off whoever is on the stairs-and the roof-until some one comes to check the lazarette. And this little bitch”-he prodded his pistol deeper into Giovanna’s temple-“is the only way to keep them at bay.”

  “Yes, but you are only bluffing. You wouldn’t kill a woman-a pregnant woman.”

  “Idiot. Of course I would. And don’t give me any of that merda about hidalgo honor, you ass; this is war.”

  “Is it?” asked Don Vincente in a strange voice.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Of course it is. Now draw your sword and take the husband in hand; if I’m forced to kill the bitch, you’ll need to immediately threaten the other hostage to make them back off. You can do that, can’t you, noble sir?”

  Don Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas seemed to consider the order judicially for a moment. “No, I can’t,” he answered. He turned and shot Dakis in the head.

  When Harry heard the two SKS reports, just beneath him, he dropped the handset and hustled over to the southern side of the lazarette’s battlements, holstering his. 357 automatic and unslinging his own SKS as he went. Damn, but the party is starting early. Peering around the merlon, he saw why.

  Evidently a guard had escaped from Frank and Gia’s room-where, now, he heard a single shot. That was not according to plan, but he’d handle that later. The escaping guard had been fleeing over the walkway when Eubanks had come down to the landing that gave access to it, as well as the prisoners’ room. Eubanks had thought and fired quickly, bringing the man down. But in the process, he had further alerted the Spanish to exactly where their enemies were: a dozen of the men tasked to walk patrols on the roof and tend the bay-pointing culverins were now closing on the walkway, running at a crouch and drawing weapons.

  Oh well, I hate waiting anyway, thought Harry as he snapped an AK-47 magazine into the SKS. He drew back the bolt, let it fly forward with a sharp clack, and leaned over the sights.

  The light was not good, but with watch fires and cressets mounted on the other three towers, he could still see target outlines. He dropped the sights, leading the closest of the responding guards, exhaled slightly, and squeezed the trigger. He recovered and squeezed again. The running figure tumbled into a long forward slide and lay still. Which Harry only saw peripherally as he moved on to the next target…

  Owen Roe O’Neil came to the top of the stairs, and paused; the basic lesson of fortress combat, particularly when one had the advantage, was to waste no time. Press a charge and take some casualties, particularly if it will allow you to take an important defensive position. But here, with so few troops behind him, and constant training in the duck-and-weave tactics extolled by the up-timers and that damned sassenach, he decided, Let’s spend a moment seeing what we’re up against. He swept the capelline helmet off his head, put it on the tip of his sword, and, raising it to eye level, had it “peek” around the corner.

  The response was immediate: two discharges from the right and perhaps four from the left sang off the sandstone, sending chips and dust flying. His battered helmet banged down the stairs.

  He smiled down the staircase at the dark figures behind him. “You know,” he said, “That little volley means a whole lot of them are reloading now, or are down by one readied piece…”

  Thomas leaned out of the Castell’s broad entry passage to look around the entirety of the arms ground. North squinted across the arms yard. The men with Donald Ohde had now swept through all but three of the ground-floor rooms, one of the Hibernians getting wounded in the process. As he limped behind, Paul Maczka of the Wrecking Crew took his place as point man for entering the next room.

  As they set up for the assault, one of the other ground floor doors banged open and several Spaniards came charging out.

  “SKS’s: supporting fire!” called North to the suitably equipped members of his team. They leaned over their sights, took hasty aim and fired, usually two shots per figure just to be sure. The muzzle flashes and crashing reports-intensified by Bellver’s constraining walls-lasted only five seconds; by then the Spanish were all on the ground. One was writhing; the rest were still.

  From across the arms yard, Donald Ohde waved his thanks and then gave Paul Maczka the signal to enter the next room. He and the Hibernians did so, one kicking the door as another went in low. Two flashes and reports, a moment of quiet, and then Paul came out, giving a thumb’s up to Donald Ohde.

  Which was the very moment that a clutch of muskets from the upper gallery fired down into the arms yard; two of the balls hit one of the Hibernians mid-torso; he went down backward, his blood spattering back into the room he had just cleared. Another one hit Paul, who twisted around and fell against the wall, either dead or stunned.

  Donald and his men crouched and scooted to head back to the room they had just exited. North elevated his weapon, looked for targets on the second floor gallery, saw faint movement, and shouted “Suppression!” Long, bright up-time muzzle flashes led angry roars up at the place where he had seen the movement.

  Using the cover fire, Ohde and his team charged out, one pulling Paul back through the doorway he had just exited, the rest making directly for the last room to be secured on the ground floor. One objective completed, thought North, but if Owen can’t take the head of the stairs, and we don’t link up with the element in the lazarette…

  North decided he didn’t want to think about that. He concentrated his focus on the second floor gallery and wondered if this might be a good moment to swap his current magazine for a fresh one.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Frank flinched as the door burst open. A man in a cuirass, equipped exactly like those he had seen in the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei, came in at a crouch, a wicked-looking up-time rifle in his hands. Its muzzle swung swiftly, surely, in Don Vincente’s direction.

  Frank jumped in front of Castro y Papas, arms spread wide in a covering gesture.

  The man in the doorway snarled “Shite.” Then, louder: “You want to be rescued or not, Francis Stone?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to kill him to do it.”

  Don Vincente threw down his pistol in disgust. “Evidently not.” He turned to Frank. “How well you have learned the lessons of Rome, Frank. Deceit piled upon deceit. You have outdone your enemy, in this. Dakis was right: this is war-and I was a fool. I may have been a fool for one second, and he may have been a brute and a monster-but I was still a fool.”

  Frank took a step toward the man he had once again started to consider a friend. “Vincente, tell me: is it ever right to kill a pregnant woman?”

  Don Vincente frowned, then looked away. “No. Of course not.”

  “So you were not a fool; you were a man with a terrible decision to make. And you made the right one.”

  “Right for you, at any rate.”

  “Yes, it helps us escape. But it also lets you keep your soul.”

  Turlough Eubank shook his head in annoyance, shouted, “Two minutes!” and ran back out the door toward the fortified walkway.

  Peering around a different merlon-no reason to give the bastards a consistent muzzle-flash to aim at-Harry Lefferts saw that Turlough Eubanks had at last arrived in his position just beyond the door into the lazarette. And just in time.

  At some predetermined signal that Lefferts failed to detect, almost thirty Spanish rose up from behind the culverins, from out of the two closest towers, and from the cupola covering the stairs down to the upper gallery. A few paused to knock the torches from the cressets affixed to the towers; the rest charged for the fortified walkway that was the sole means of access to the lazarette. Lefferts measured their progress, assessed that he had maybe two seconds to spare, and spent it scanning the rest of his kill-zone. Sure enough, he spotted movement on two of the other towers: low, stealthy hints of arms, shoulders, heads over the edges of the battlements. These were the positions of marksmen assigned to kill him as he fired down at their charging comrades. Good luck, he thought, as he lined up the closest of the advancing Spanish and fired. The man went down, clutching his leg. Harry lined up another, got off a clean center-of-mass shot-and ducked, rolling behind the merlon and coming up on its opposite side.

  At that same moment six, perhaps seven muskets roared from where Harry had seen the marksmen on the roofs of the other, lower towers. He popped up in his new position, took quick aim, and fired steadily at a spot on the east tower where dispersing gun smoke partially obscured motions consistent with reloading or exchanging spent weapons for fresh, preloaded ones. A surprised cry, a curse, sprawling bodies, moaning-and then Harry had to shift his focus back to swatting down the men charging the fortified walkway.

  Too late: some had already arrived at the mouth of the narrow, stone chute-and Harry smiled as they discovered that it, too, was defended. Hunched low, and sheltering in the doorway of the lazarette, Turlough Eubank could not be seen beforehand-and could hardly miss the attackers: the walkway was hip high, and less than three feet wide. For a man to rush it, he had to enter that narrow tight space. And three of the Spanish did just that before the rest realized that not only was the walkway directly defended, but that the weapon doing so was like the one on the roof: it could apparently fire endlessly. Two more of the guards closed on the walkway, but with less eagerness than had those now piled up at its entrance. Harry took advantage of their hesitation: he put a round into each one’s chest.

  Behind him, Lefferts heard the cable-whine that signaled the approach of the third man of his element-the Hibernian-descending in the bosun’s harness. The whine ended with a thump, a curse, and then the sound of a weapon being unslung. “Just in time!” Harry called over his shoulder. “Join the party.”

  On the Castell’s main roof, the charge was wavering, particularly among the Spanish closest to the apparently unassailable walkway-and Harry knew he had them. Double-tapping each one quickly, he fired at those in the front, forcing them to either die or-in the case of the lucky ones who were not hit because of the darkness and his hasty shooting-flee. The Hibernian threw himself down into a crouch behind the adjacent merlon, raised his own SKS-a conventional model; no thirty-round clips for him-and began adding to the volume of fire.

  It was impossible to know which finally broke the Spanish: their massive casualties, or the fact that there were now two of the demon-rifles spraying death down at them. Whichever it was, fewer than ten survivors managed to reach cover; perhaps an equal number lay on the roof, trying to stifle groans that would mark them for a second bullet. Harry could feel the lull in the action settle in, quickly swapped magazines, turned to the white-faced Hibernian. “Damn,” said Harry, just to keep the mood light, “I sure could go for a smoke about now.”

  If anything, the Hibernian became more pale.

  Sergeant Alarico Garza ducked as another bullet chipped away at the rim of the gallery. The nonstop thunderclaps on the roof above were not a good sign; there were a few musket discharges mixed in, but almost as afterthoughts. It sounded like a one-sided slaughter up there.

  And for the first time in over twenty years, Garza hit a fork in his decision pathway for which he was not prepared: What now? If our men lose the roof, then Experience reasserted: Do your job. And your job is to hold this level. And right now, that meant holding the staircase that the enemy had just probed, and suppressing their activity in the arms yard.

  But to counteract his enemies successfully, Garza needed to know more about them-and he knew almost nothing, other than that their weapons all seemed to be copies of, or actual, up-time firearms. How many were there? How much knowledge did they have about the Castell? How did the ones on the roof get there? Sergeant Garza was compelled to admit that each of these urgent queries was also utterly imponderable and so he lacked any hope of acquiring answers-which was not a good sign.

  His corporal returned, crab-walking low with a small box.

  “You found more grenades?” Garza asked.

  “Four,” replied the corporal.

  “Good. Get them over to the men watching the staircase. Are they ready, otherwise?”

  “Yes, Sergeant-but they were hasty responding to the probe. Too many of them fired.”

  Garza swore at himself: Yes, because you weren’t there to enforce discipline, to make sure that only two fired at first, and then two more when there was a clear target, and so on. “What are they down to?”

  “Two loaded muskets. But all the pistols are still charged.”

  Garza shrugged. “That is not so bad; pistols are better at these ranges. You’ll never get a chance to reload, anyhow. So, pistols, swords, grenades.” He mused. “Against these devils, knife range would be best, but we can’t hope for that. Now, off with you-and remember: no quarter asked or given.”

  “No quarter,” repeated the corporal with a gulp before he continued on toward the staircase.

  Owen Roe O’Neill finished giving his men their instructions and made sure their assault order was precisely as he had directed. “Now,” he said, “let’s to it.”

  It had been a long time since he had uttered a war-cry-his Netherlands employers considered it a sign of irremediable Irish barbarity-but he loosed one now, to stiffen his own nerve. Because he had insisted upon being first around the corner-and knew exactly what that meant.