their cressets; he sprinted to the left, and then turned left again into the wide passage that was the Castell’s inner gatehouse and portcullis. Several figures had risen from a table pushed up against the south wall; two more were scrambling to put on their helmets and get their weapons.
North raised his SKS and started firing. At this murderously close range, he felt no need to double-tap any of his targets. The weapon barked repeatedly, each shot momentarily illuminating the crowded, falling bodies. He had killed three of the five when the rest of his team moved past. One defender charged out to engage and died immediately; another took cover behind the doorjamb to cock his musket. He never got the chance to fire it; a flurry of. 44 Hockenjoss amp; Klott blackpowder rounds from two Hibernian revolvers chipped stone, and then clipped him. As the Spaniard came around, grasping his wounded arm, the next two bullets took him straight through the cuirass.
North scanned the gate area: no guards left alive. “Lower the portcullis and smash the gears,” he ordered a large Hibernian who was already producing an iron-headed mallet. He pointed to another. “Corporal, we’ll have company clustering along the moat soon. Pull up the drawbridge, and watch the Spanish closely. No reason to fire at them unless they’re doing something productive. Keep a sharp eye out for them trying to turn the guns on the ravelins about to blow open this gate; shoot any who try it. Once we have the second floor in our control, you’ll put two overwatch marksmen up there.” The Hibernian nodded and moved to carry out his orders. Thomas turned, called back into the arms yard, “Gate secure.”
As Frank had expected, the gunfire on the roof-because of both its suddenness and intensity-stunned the Spaniards in the room into momentary immobility. The infiltrators, however, had expected this signal and the shock it generated. They reacted with the surety of long training. Asher’s bigger assistant swept up the knife that had been entrusted to him and, in completing that act, sliced through the neck of one of the guards. He started turning toward Captain Castro y Papas.
The small, average-sized assistant smashed one of his two long-necked bottles of ethanol full into the face of the closest guard; the guard fell to his knees, bleeding and dazed. Without pausing, the assistant swung the other bottle, cracking it less accurately against the side of the other’s head. While that fellow scrambled from the room, holding his ear, the assistant spun toward Dakis, the razorlike shards of a broken bottle in either hand. But Dakis had recovered in that brief interval and leaped away, over toward Giovanna.
Frank could hardly follow Vincente’s lightning reflexes as his arm shot toward his sword-which would be quicker to use, at this range, than his uncocked pistol-and jumped at him, grabbing at Don Vincente’s sword hand. “No!” he cried.
Vincente looked down into Frank’s eyes, wondering. Perhaps he had expected to see hatred. Perhaps fear. If Frank was sending the look he hoped, the hidalgo would see an appeal, even pleading.
Vincente frowned-just as the bigger assistant started closing in for the kill. Frank threw his hand out, turned to put his body between the long, scalpel-sharp knife and the captain’s body. “I said ‘no’-and that includes you too.”
The large assistant stopped, stared, was about to ask a question-but was interrupted by Dakis’ harsh voice. “Drop the knife.”
They all turned, looked. Dakis did have his gun out. He was holding it directly against Giovanna’s right temple.
Turlough Eubanks came sliding down out of the mists on the guide line-now lashed to an iron fixture in the lazarette’s roof-with a humming noise. He made a wide-legged landing, breaking his forward fall with one hand, securing his gear with the other. “How’re we doin’, Harry?” he grunted out.
“Good enough. Get down to their room and secure the hostages, then out to the walkway to help me hold off the bad guys.”
“As you say, but listen: the clouds are rising a bit. The balloon has to reascend and soon.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” He used the handset to signal that Eubanks was down and the line ready for the next man. “Are you still here?” he tossed over his shoulder at Eubanks.
But Eubanks was not there; he had already entered the small stone cupola that covered the tight, spiral staircase that ran down through the lazarette like a spine.
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
