FREE STORIES 2012(78)

Prum’s men appeared at the windows of the abbey: each one was greeted by the slow but steady roars of two, sometimes three, pre-sighted Winchesters. Half of the renegades sprawled back. The door guard returned fire from deeper in the archway, but did not even have an angle on—or probably know about—most of the squad that was charging in his direction. Winchesters snapped rounds at his muzzle flash. It was impossible to tell if he was dead, wounded, running, or reloading.

Wright was pacing Thomas on the charge, Quinn’s own nine-millimeter in his long-fingered grip. Volker and Winkelmann rose up out of the bushes in front of them, leading the way to the gate by about ten yards. Damn it, how did Quinn manage to get those two positioned before I had even—?

But there was no time to wonder at the obvious—that Larry Quinn had indeed grown proficient as a soldier—because they were coming upon the archway. The fellow in its shadows—the one who had returned fire at the other squads—cast away the musket he was reloading and drew his small sword. He went down under a flurry of bullets from the four lead attackers. To the south, a single musket spoke; Winchesters answered, probably announcing the end of the soldier manning the road outpost.

Thomas, panting, threw himself against the interior wall of the arched entrance to the abbey. “Wright, Volker, Winkelmann: according to what little we learned of the interior from the farmers in Ringschnaitt, we’ll go up the stairs to the—”

“We know, sir; Major Quinn told us. Leapfrog advance?”

Damn smart alecks. “Stop asking the obvious, Winkelmann. Start us off.”

The rest of the First Squad arrived as the four of them rounded the doorway and started up the staircase.





***





They encountered only three men on the way to Prum’s audience chamber—all trying to run away. One made the mistake of bringing up his weapon; the other two sensibly surrendered. However, Thomas reflected, perhaps the first one was the most sensible of the three: the quick bullets he got were infinitely preferable to what the townspeople of Biberach were likely to visit upon any survivors.

As Thomas’ men dodged into Prum’s audience chamber, a familiar voice spoke from the darkness along the rear wall: “Donner.”

“Blitz,” replied Volker and Wright in unison.

Quinn leaned out of those shadows. “Quickly, back here. I’ve been covering the approach to the girls, but I can’t get them out.”

The dark at the rear of the room concealed a passageway to a row of hermitage cells. All locked. All with sounds of whimpering coming from behind the thick, dark timbers. Thomas started snapping orders. “Volker, get some men up here and take these locks off. Presuming, that the mutinous Major Quinn will allow you to take orders from me any more.”

Volker slunk away like a child detecting the first impatient tones of what might turn into a full-blown parental argument.

But Quinn just smiled. “I wasn’t in the least mutinous, Thomas: I did exactly what I said I’d do. Just not the way you envisioned it. And actually, let’s be clear about one other thing: for this operation, you were my employee.”

“Don’t distract me with the facts, you impertinent Yank. Why they hell didn’t you tell me what you had in mi—?”

“Because, Thomas, would you have agreed to this plan quickly?”

“What, are you mad? Agree to this—?” Thomas had planned to indicate Prum’s awkwardly-fallen corpse along with the others of his makeshift court who had not known to keep their heads down and out of Templeton’s scope-aided field of fire. But then the three girls emerged from their prisons with grateful sobs, and Schoenfeld was heard raging in a further cell, obviously none the worse for wear. “Well, um, I suppose I wouldn’t have.”

Quinn smiled. “Right. And there wasn’t time to argue. You agreed that there was no way to be sure how long Prum would let Johann live. And the only reason Johann had his head in Prum’s noose was because we didn’t explain things to our artist friend before he went off on his quest.. So every minute mattered, and I didn’t have the right to ask anyone else to go in and get our sniper a shot at Prum. I was the one who put Johann in there: it was on me to start the wheels moving that would get him out.”

North looked away, wondered if he’d have had the nerve—or more to the point, the fine sense of ethics—to have done what Larry had done. “Well, you may be a lunatic, but at least you’re an admirable one.”

Larry shrugged. “Not so much of a lunatic to miss that we really did need a pathfinder group to find a concealed route to some reasonable assault positions. And as soon as I realized that, I saw how I could put the rest of my plan in place while you were bringing up the platoon. So either way, the best thing was for me to go on ahead with my four men.”