Ring of Fire(214)

Although even for Len, this is a doozy.





* * *



She found him where she'd thought she would—the one place it had never occurred to her to look the entire afternoon. The place she must have circled at least four times while she searched for him. Impossible not to, of course, since it dominated the Hradcany.





Len was sitting in one of the rear pews in the huge Gothic cathedral. Just staring at the altar, his shotgun across his knees. Ellie was sure he'd been there the whole afternoon. The handful of priests watching him were still nervous, clearly enough, but it was the kind of nervousness that had worn itself down after a few hours. A few hours while the bizarre intruder—monster from another world, with a monstrous weapon—just sat there and did nothing.





She slid into the seat next to him. "You might have left me a note, dammit!"





Len looked uncomfortable. "I started to write one, but . . . I don't know. I didn't know what to say. How to explain it."





Ellie sighed. Then, felt all her exasperation going away. That was the nature of the man, after all. She reached out her hand and stroked the back of his neck.





" 'S okay. I shoulda figured you'd unlapse your own way. You weird duck. What? You figure on protecting the cathedral all by your lonesome?"





She gave the priests a skeptical glance. "I don't think they'd be much help, if Holk's hordes came pouring in. Not that they will, without taking the Hradcany from Kastner. Which they won't."





Len flushed. "It's the principle of the thing, Ellie. Kastner's people didn't want me underfoot anyway, so I figured . . . Look, religious freedom's for everybody. That means Catholics too, even if the bums running the show here screwed up. And this cathedral's ancient. It's a holy place, even if I don't think much of the current tenants."





His hand tightened on the stock of the shotgun. "So anybody tries anything . . ."





"Ha! Saint Len and the Dragon, is it?"





Len's flush deepened. His eyes now seemed riveted on the altar.





"Will you marry me?" he asked abruptly. "I've been thinking about it all afternoon."





She studied him for a moment. "I'm not getting married in a fucking church, Len."





"You shouldn't swear in here."





"Not in a fucking church. I can't stand churches."





Len took a deep breath, sighed. His hand finally left the stock of the shotgun and came up as if to stroke his absent mustache.





Feeling the bare skin, he sighed again. "You are one hard woman, Ellie Anderson."





There was nothing much she could say, since that was true enough. So she said nothing.





Neither did he, for maybe five minutes. Then, finally, he looked at her.





"Was that a 'yes'?"





Ellie chuckled and went back to stroking his neck. "Yes, Len, that was a 'yes.' Just not in a fucking church. If you can't live with that, you can't live with me."





She looked at the altar, then at the priests. "But I don't mind if you decide to pull crazy stunts like this, now and then. So I figure we're square."





"Okay." He stroked his nonexistent mustache. "I can live with that."





4





The first detachments from Holk's army started showing up in the outskirts of the city early the next morning. By midmorning, they were exchanging shots with Kastner's men forted up in the Hradcany; by noon, with his men forted up in the Malá Strana. By mid-afternoon, most of Holk's ragtag army had poured into the city's west bank—as undisciplined as you could ask for—and decided they'd had enough of cracking their heads against Kastner's troops.





Holk himself showed up then, on his own big warhorse, and led the charge. He waved his sword to the east, very dramatically. That way! To the Stone Bridge!





Tanner stayed in the cathedral the whole time, Saint Len faithfully at his post in case the dragon showed up.





Ellie, on the other hand, joined the soldiers on the walls of the Hradcany. She had a better vantage point to see what was happening than Morris and Red did, across the river. So, using her CB, she kept them informed all day of the movements of Holk and his men. Insofar as that rabble could be said to have "maneuvers" at all, other than the mercenary equivalent of Brownian motion.





When Holk showed up, though, waving his stupid sword, she put down the CB and drew her pistol. Then, cursing a blue streak, clambered up on the wall and emptied the entire clip at him.





"Where'd you go?" Red asked her, when she got back on the CB. Ellie explained in a few curt sentences, about every other word of which was short and had an Anglo-Saxon pedigree.