But his adversaries didn’t, not this time. Before charging, he stuck his pepperbox pistol around the corner and fired blind; several muskets sputtered back. Cocking the pepperbox again he heard angry orders in Spanish about wasting ammunition-and at that very moment he charged out, heading to the left.

  The firing resumed as he emerged from the staircase into a cross-fire from doorways to both the right and left. But the Spaniards’ fire was ragged. And to add to the general confusion, Matija leaned around corner to hit the right-hand doorway with his twelve-gauge shotgun. He fired without precise aiming, emptying the weapon with a rapid pumping action that made it sound like a long, pulsed roar of thunder. The incoming fire from that side-lively at first-tapered quickly. But probably not for long, Owen knew.

  As he took his first charging step along the broad walkway of the upper gallery, he ignored the second, further doorway on the left-where most of his adversaries were-and instead swung tight to the left again, into the first stairway, which led up to the roof. As he did so, two weapons from the further doorway discharged; one ball rushed past his unhelmeted brow in the same moment he felt a deep, hot, pain in his right thigh.

  But the events piled up too rapidly for him to keep track of; Owen did not bother to aim as he came around into the new staircase. He fired blind, then slashed his saber in tight, fast, serpentine arcs until a pistol roared. He saw the outline of a Spanish helmet as the hammer blow of the pistol ball crashed into his cuirass.

  Not the worst way to die, he conceded, as his back smacked down on the paving stones.

  Matija tossed the shotgun, swung the SKS off his shoulder and started hammering rounds back to the left, just as Owen disappeared into the stairwell that led to the roof.

  As his shots reverberated in that tight space, more of the assault team emerged; the Wild Geese were running past, firing on the move and staying close to the wall. The longer they stayed out of Matija’s field of fire, the longer he could suppress the defenders in the doorway that was their objective. But his magazine was just about dry He saw Spaniards going down as they exposed themselves to fire, saw one of the Wild Geese take two balls at brutally close range and topple over-and finally, saw two objects, each roughly the size and shape of a pomegranate, arcing out of the enemy-held doorway. He also noticed that they were trailing smoke and sparks.

  “ Grenades! ” yelled Matija, charging forward, heading away from their probable point of impact behind him.

  Apparently the defenders knew about counting down fuses: both grenades went off where Matija had been standing a second and a half before. He felt lancets of pain cut into his back, his buttocks, and the rear of this thighs. The shock of the blasts, while diffuse, shoved him sharply forward into one of the gallery’s arch supports head first; he rebounded from it, the world spinning. His head was suddenly full of a strange coppery smell and he reflected, Damn and shit, I thought death would hurt more than this. Why did I spend all that time worrying about it…?

  As Thomas North came to the head of the stairs, he almost tripped over the body of a Hibernian: the only man who had been killed outright by the grenades. He took a quick, professional glance at the walkway just beyond; two more of his men were down and motionless, Matija and one of the Wild Geese-little Dillon, from the look of his gear. The stairway up to the left was quiet, but that was not necessarily a good sign. Insofar as Owen had been bound that way, and was not in sight, it could be a very bad sign indeed. The further doorway-the one where they had expected the most resistance-was littered with Spanish bodies, and the last four Wild Geese were charging through it now, hacking, slashing and firing their pepperboxes at murderously close range. Those clunky revolvers had proven just the trick in a close assault. If the Spanish stopped to reload, the bog-hoppers cut them down with sabers, but if the defenders drew swords of their own, the Irish cocked the revolvers already in their hands and riddled them with lead.

  But their toehold on this second floor was tenuous at best. More Spanish regulars-this had been the level on which they had been billeted, evidently-were coming around the gallery from the left, led by a short, grizzled fellow, probably the senior commander. Some were already beginning to aim at the Wild Geese. Meanwhile, on the right, North saw movement in the doorways that Matija had suppressed with his torrent of shotgun fire.

  Two new threats. For which he had two different answers. Which had both better work…

  North pushed forward to the low rim of the gallery’s walkway, kneeling and aiming his SKS at the grizzled commander to the left. Feeling his group of Hibernians close around him, peripherally seeing the muzzles of their weapons matching the trajectory of his own, he then screamed at the top of his lungs, “Harry! HARRY! Southwest, level two! Southwest, level two!”

  Then North and his three Hibernians leaned over their sights, training their weapons on the Spanish to the left.

  Harry cocked his head. “You hear that shouting?” he asked the Hibernian with him.

  “ Ja, that is Colonel North’s voice; I would know-and hate-it anywhere. Look.”

  Harry did, peering down at the far right-hand side of the second gallery, or, as per the prearranged codes, “Southwest level two.” And sure enough, he could see Spaniards readying muskets and swords in the rooms closest to the stairwell. But from North’s position at the due west lip of the upper gallery, they’d still be almost completely concealed.

  But not from the top of the lazarette.

  Harry braced the SKS, leaned so that the forestock was resting in between the merlons instead of monopodding on the banana-clip. He angled the weapon slightly, letting the tightly clustered figures drift into his sights. “Let’s hit ’em,” he said to the Hibernian and started squeezing off rounds.

  Concentrated as they were in the doorways, probably preparing to volley and countercharge, the Spanish went down in bunches. Even from this height, and in the dim light, Lefferts saw black spatters on the floor, corners, doors. Two of the defenders managed to scatter back into the rooms to avoid the deluge of up-time rifle bullets. Other than one who crawled back through a doorway, there was only feeble, indistinct movement among the Spanish bodies left behind on the gallery.

  “What now?” asked the Hibernian when there was nothing left to shoot at.

  “Now,” Harry answered with a grin, “we reload.”

  As gunfire roared on the roof and down in the galleries, Asher’s medium-sized assistant picked up Castro y Papas’ weapons. The Spaniard looked down, his feet wide, his arms folded. “And now what?” he asked Frank.

  “Well, you have a choice. You could stay here and be executed by your buddies.”

  “Or be killed by you-which would be far more merciful, actually.”

  “Or you could come with us.”

  “What?” said Don Vincente.

  “What?” said Giovanna.

  “No!” said the regular-sized assistant.

  Frank kept his eyes on Castro y Papas and shrugged. “It’s your choice. But you don’t have a lot of time to make it.”

  A new wave of fast, pounding up-time rifle fire from both overhead and below emphasized Frank’s final point.

  Sergeant Alarico Garza watched as half his men were slaughtered by the storm of fire coming down from above and cursed himself: I should have thought of that. With those guns, from up there, of course they’d be able to see and shoot down at anyone on the south side of the upper gallery.

  But the entire attack on Bellver had been such a complete and swift surprise, and the effects of the up-time weaponry had been so shocking, that there just hadn’t been time to think of everything. If only he had been as fit and alert and prepared as he had been when he was ten years younger No time for that; since the enemy fire from the lazarette was now stronger than ever, it was obvious that the attack he had ordered across the main roof had been a complete failure. That left Garza and his few remaining men little choice: they had to send a volley against the cuirassed intruders on this level and then charge to sword-range. It was not a pleasing prospect, but it was the only tactic that might succeed when fighting in close quarters against these positively satanic up-time guns. And the longer he waited “Ready on the line,” Gazra said, and saw the muskets of his command come up sharply as he drew his sword. “Volley,” he cried-but the guns that answered were not his own.

  Thomas North did not stop firing until he had expended half his magazine. He simply fired, rode the recoil back down, looked for a moving figure, centered on it, fired again. Now, as he stopped and looked up over his sights, he saw the grizzled enemy commander stagger, right himself, and then get shredded by four more rounds-two from his Hibernians, two more from the Wild Geese, who had finally cleared the room on the left and had turned to add to the barrage that swept the last cohesive Spanish unit away like dry leaves before a hurricane.

  North jumped up, tapped the Hibernian to his left on the shoulder. “On me,” he said, as he sprinted over to the stairway leading up to the roof — and found Owen Roe O’Neill on the ground, the lower left side of his cuirass mashed and crumpled. Remembering the derelict cars he had seen being disassembled for parts and metal in Grantville, a term came to mind: Owen’s armor looked as though it had been “sideswiped.” But apparently not breached. The leg wound, however Owen’s eyes fluttered open, focused with surprising speed, and swiveled over toward North. “Ah, Jayzus Christ. So I got sent to hell, after all.”

  “No such luck; you’re still alive, I’m afraid,” said North, suppressing a grin and helping the Irishman stand.

  “Not by much,” commented O’Neill, looking down at the dead Spaniard, who’d fallen back against the stairs, his head half sheared away by a saber cut.

  “No.”

  “Just enough,” grumbled Owen, with a hand on his left side. “The barstard’s shot crushed my ribs, I’m thinking.”

  “Might have done for one or two, at that. Looks like his gun was charged with small lead pellets. Lethal if fired into a mass of unarmed men, charging around the corner. On the other hand, a small pellet of soft metal like that is much less likely to get through your cuirass-but it will hit you like a battering ram.”

  “Like two battering rams, if you please. Now, let’s get up to the roof and-”

  “You are staying here, Colonel O’Neill. Take command of this level; make sure our men go room to room. I’m going to the roof.”

  For once, O’Neill was either too tired, too dazed, too pained, or too sensible to argue; he simply waved North on his way with his pepperbox revolver.

  North shouldered his SKS, drew his automatic, and, back flat against the wall, worked his way upwards.

  It was a short, uneventful journey. At the top, there were two bodies, one of a man who had dragged himself back under the high, narrow cupola that covered the staircase; he had since succumbed to the wounds in his torso. The other was a Spanish regular who had apparently been using the cupola as a safe spot from which to return the fire raining down from the lazarette. Apparently, the position had not offered quite as much cover as he had hoped. Beyond the two bodies, the roof was devoid of motion or sound.

  Well, we just might have pulled this off, thought North, who, taking cover against the possibility of hidden stragglers, shouted, “Castle!”

  Harry’s answering cry of “Keep!” from the top of the lazarette was followed by one of the hillbilly’s customary wisecracks. “What took you so long?”

  Which meant that they owned the whole building.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Ruy did not have to look around the staircase to know what was happening in the great room below. The assassins were reloading and preparing to charge the stairs. Prudence dictated that he should cede his current position: all their adversaries were able to aim at the one corner around which Ruy and his two riflemen could fire, whereas the cutthroats now ringing the base of the stairs were in a variety of positions. There was no longer a safe way to take a peek, find a target, and fire: any sign of movement attracted the discharge of two muskets charged with smaller shot. Ultimately, those odds favored the attackers. Retreating down to the hall would give him and his two rifleman better cover, from which they could concentrate their fire upon the landing at the top of the stairs. From that position, a lengthy stalemate might easily evolve.

  But not victory. And now, to complicate matters, Ruy was finally hearing what he had been waiting for: gunfire being exchanged through the windows-and perhaps the door-at the back of the villa. Which could only mean one thing: someone-Sherrilyn, probably-had brought the root cellar’s reserve to the rear of the villa, and they were probably readying themselves to break in to relieve its defenders.

  But if Ruy fell back from his position, she would have to fight her way through the door and into the teeth of more than twenty of the blackguards. Even if some of them attacked up the stairs, Sherrilyn’s group would suffer considerable casualties against those numbers. Besides, doorways were an attacker’s bane and a defender’s boon: they forced those rushing through it into a predictable area, an area which a reasonable defending commander could quickly convert into a funnel of death.

  So, no, thought Ruy. He could not surrender his position at the head of the stairs, because only from here could his force support Sherrilyn’s entry into the room. And in order for her to be able to enter without all the assassins’ guns and blades trained upon her, she would need a flanking attack-or a diversion, at least.

  Ruy scanned what he could see of the staircase without poking his head around the corner. It was almost entirely obscured by bodies, appearing rather like a ramp of corpses. Hmmm. That might do. He made sure his swords were secure in their scabbards and nodded for his two men to aim down the stairs as soon as they were done reloading. I am too old for this, he reflected as he checked that his. 357 magnum was fully loaded. Then again, I was always too old for this.

  Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz sighed, crouched, and threw himself forward into sideways roll that carried him down the stairs.

  For a moment, there was silence at the base of the stairs-and then bedlam. Fortunately for Ruy, the assassins were all so startled that they delayed, and then discharged their weapons too hastily. He was hardly a predictable target, either; his downward roll was made uneven by the same stair-piled enemy bodies that cushioned him as he went.

  At the midpoint of the stairway, he reached his arms out to grab the flimsy railing’s sole balustrade with the flat of his palms, flexing his forearms and wrists against the sudden resistance and torque. The net effect was that his roll pivoted about that point: his feet and legs came around quickly as he clung to the balustrade, much as a fast-moving roller-skater might use the pole of a streetlamp to hang a fast ninety degree turn.

  Ruy came off the side of staircase, letting the momentum pull him all the way around so that he came down on his feet, facing out into the room and into the eyes of his attackers, many of whom had lost track of exactly what he was doing, their vision compromised by the greasy smoke guttering up from the base of the stairs. Most of them had fruitlessly discharged their weapons in his wake, unable to successfully predict his motion. Consequently, those few weapons that were still being leveled at him marked the primary threats. Snatching the. 357 out of his holster, he fired at two of them and dove for the cover of a smaller, overturned serving table. Muskets roared after him-again, a split second too late.

  Rolling up into a crouch and pulling his favorite rapier while bullets spat around and thumped into the tabletop, Ruy thought: Whenever you are ready, then, Miss Maddox…

  Jerking back to avoid a musket ball that punched through the shuttered window through which he had hoped to access a target, Sherrilyn’s senior Hibernian Rolf froze as a sudden spasm of gunfire erupted from beyond the door-but was not aimed outward at them. “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  The next sound gave Sherrilyn the answer to Rolf’s question: two distinctive. 357 magnum reports. “It’s Ruy! C’mon: pistols and swords. On me!”

  Sherrilyn blasted four rounds blindly through the back door before she charged in. Between the bizarre events near the staircase, and the hail of nine-millimeter parabellum rounds punching through the timbers of the door they were hiding behind or next to, the entry’s defenders were either distracted or flinching away when she came bursting in with the Hibernians right behind her. That split second of confusion was all the advantage the relief force needed. Sherrilyn’s high-capacity automatic and the three Hibernians’ cap-and-ball revolvers thundered and flashed in a tight arc around the doorway, often less than a foot away from their targets. Assassins sprawled, some clutching wounds, others suddenly motionless. Two tried to run, but were cut down. Sherrilyn’s first post-entry order-“Down!”-didn’t come a moment too soon; the other assassins who, a moment before, had been reloading to flush out Ruy, turned and fired at this new, more considerable threat. Musket balls whistled overhead, struck the wall or sang out into the darkness-where Sherrilyn distinctly heard Kuhlman, one of the Marines who had just arrived from walking the perimeter, mutter “ Scheisse! ” Well, thank God for reinforcements-even if it’s only one man. “Kuhlman, covering fire from the door while we reload.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Kuhlman shouted back, first firing his own flintlock and then the other undischarged enemy weapons that the Hibernians had leaned against the rear wall in readiness.

  Larry Mazzare hurried into the kitchen’s basement, glad to be out of the secret passage: the staircase had doglegged under itself after they bypassed the concealed doorway into the northern wing’s hallway. A wedge of light slashed the dark ahead of Mazzare; he saw Lieutenant Hastings, still in the lead, gingerly raising the small storm door that opened into the kitchen, half a level above them.

  “Is the way clear?” asked Vitelleschi’s admirably composed voice.