Eric Flint: 1635: The Cannon Law

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."