Eric Flint: Ring of Fire III

“Seems we’ve got their attention,” muttered O’Neill through a controlled smile.

“See what you’ve done now?” O’Brian’s voice was tinged with careful remonstrance. “They seen the earl of Tyrone’s colors. They’ll think John is wid’ us! They’ll think-”

“Let ’em think. They do so much of it as it is, a little more can’t hurt. Aye, and let ’em worry a bit, too.”

“But-”

“But nothing. Here’s the Great Man himself.”

Thomas Preston had emerged from the commander’s tent. He was an older man, one of the oldest of the Irish Wild Geese that had flocked to Flanders after the disaster at Kinsale, thirty-four years before. And Irish soldiers had been flying to Flanders ever since: leaving behind increasing oppression and poverty, they had swelled the ranks of their four tercios now in the Lowlands. Mustering at slightly more than twelve thousand men, many of the newer recruits had been born here, grown here, learned the trade of the soldier here. And all knew that the recent consolidation of the Netherlands, and the consequent divisiveness amongst their Hapsburg employers, made their own future the most uncertain of all.

Preston did not look approving-or happy. After a few sharp phrases, he sent the runner back down the hill; he waited, arms akimbo, a dark scowl following the young ensign’s return to O’Neill’s honor-guard.

“Colonel O’Neill,” the ensign panted before he’d come to a full stop, “Colonel Preston would have the commander’s password from you.”

O’Neill looked over the thin fellow’s head-he was not much more than a gossoon, really-and stared at Preston. “Oh, he would, would he?”

“Yes, sir.” A second group of pickets had come to flank the youngster. “Apologies, but Colonel Preston is most insistent. New security protocols, sir.”

“Is that right? And those are his fine ideas, are they?”

“No, sir; they are Hugh O’Donn-I mean, the earl of Tyrconnell’s, sir.”

Ah, but of course. The ever-innovative earl of Tyrconnell’s legacy lived on in the camp he had abandoned almost a month ago, in the first week of April. O’Neill’s gaze flicked briefly to the small O’Donnell coat of arms fluttering just behind him. Or, maybe he had not abandoned it, after all…

O’Neill urged his mount forward. “The commander’s day-sign is ‘Boru.’ ”

“Very good, sir, you may-”

But Owen Roe O’Neill had already passed, his entourage-including two officers from John O’Neill’s Tyrone tercio — following closely behind. The monks, however, were detained by the guards at the staff tents.

O’Neill said nothing, gave no sign of recognition as he approached the commander’s tent, with Preston’s pennant snapping fitfully before it. Preston was equally undemonstrative. O’Neill stayed atop his mount, looked down at the older man and thought, Sassenach bastard, but said, with a shallow nod, “Colonel.”

Preston was not even that gracious. “Where is the earl of Tyrone?”

“I expect he’s enjoying a nap about now.”

Preston’s mustache seemed to prickle like a live creature. “Yet you fly his colors.”

“I received your instructions to come without the earl. I have done so. But he is symbolically here with us in spirit-very insulted spirit-Colonel Preston.”

“Damn it, O’Neill: the whole point of excluding him was so that you wouldn’t be carrying his colors.”

Owen, bristling reflexively at the profanity, found his anger suddenly defused by puzzlement: “You were worried about his-his colors?”

“Yes, blast it. And why did you bring those bloody Franciscans with you?”

O’Neill looked back down the low rise: most of the monks had moved past the first checkpoint, were drawing close to the second, where the commander’s day-sign was to be given. Two lagged behind with the handcart, near the staff tents. “I assure you,” muttered O’Neill,” they’re not my Franciscans. I’d not bring-”

The flap of Preston’s tent ripped open. O’Neill gaped: Hugh Albert O’Donnell, in cuirass, was staring up at him, blue eyes bright and angry. “The Franciscans who came in with you-do you know them? Personally?”

“No, but-”

Hugh wasn’t looking at him anymore. His strong neck corded as he shouted: “First platoon, down the hill! Guards: take hold of those monks. Immediately!”

Owen Roe O’Neill was, by all accounts and opinions-including his own-excellent at adapting to rapid changes on the battlefield. But this was not a battlefield, or rather, had not been one but a slim second ago. And that change-from common space to combat space-was not one he easily processed.

Stunned, he saw the nearest monks pull wheel locks from beneath their robes and discharge them into the second set of pickets at murderously close range. Further down the slope, one monk pushed the handcart into Tyrconnell’s staff tent while his partner drew a pistol on the guards there.

In the same moment, the grimy soldiers who had been skulking to and fro in the trenches came boiling out, not bothering to dress ranks. But stranger still, they seemed in perfectly good order, operating not as a mass, but in groups of about five men each. This chaotic swarm of small, coherent teams streamed downhill, several tossing aside practice guns and pulling real ones, others drawing sabers and short swords. O’Neill’s own guards retracted, clustered tight around him, weapons drawn, as the leading infiltrators drew grenades and shortswords from beneath their robes and closed in-

Just as the first teams from the trenches caught the assassins in the flank with a ragged chorus of pistol fire. Snaphaunces and wheel locks barked while a strange, thick revolver-a “pepperbox?”-cracked steadily, firing five times. When the fusillade was over, only one of the monks was still on his feet; a few on the ground moved feebly. A second wave of soldiers-sword-armed-closed the last few yards and finished the bloody execution. An alert trooper kicked the one lit grenade down the slope and away from the cart-track, where it detonated harmlessly.

Down at the staff tents, the monk who had drawn a pistol had evidently not done so any faster than one of the guards. The two weapons discharged simultaneously and the two men went down-just as the monk who’d trundled the hand cart into the staff tent came sprinting back out. The other guard who’d been slower on the draw went racing after him-and went airborne as the tent exploded in a deafening ball of flame.

By the time O’Neill had his horse back under control, the whole exchange was over. Almost twenty bodies lay scattered along the cart track, small fires guttered where the staff tents had been, and men of the Preston tercio were carrying two of their own wounded off to where the Tyrconnell regiment’s young surgeon could tend to them. With his ears still ringing from the explosions, and his veins still humming with the sudden rush of the humor the up-timers called “adrenaline,” Owen could only feel one thing: that he was glad to be alive.

Then he turned and saw Hugh O’Donnell’s eyes-and wondered if his sense of relief was, perhaps, premature.

“Why did you bring John O’Neill’s colors, Owen?” O’Donnell’s voice and eyes were calm now. But most of the others in the commander’s tent-those belonging to the staff officers who would have been blown to bits if they hadn’t already been summoned here-remained far more agitated.

Owen relied on the tactic that had always served him well: when your adversary has you on the run, that’s when you turn and hit back-hard. “Maybe you should be asking yourself that question, Hugh O’Donnell. A Sassenach”-he glared at Preston, who glared right back-“tells the earl of Tyrone not to come to a council of the colonels? Well, let me tell you, even if John O’Neill is not ‘permitted’ to sit and talk with the regal likes of Preston-or you-I will come bearing his standard, and with it, the reminder of his authority-and that of his clan.”