Ring of Fire(215)
"Fer chrissake, Ellie—with a 9mm automatic? What're you, nuts? That's gotta be at least six hundred yards. You'd be lucky to hit the river at that range."
"It's the principle of the thing," she stoutly insisted.
Chapter VI: Discovered Check
July, 1633
1
By the time Holk finally got his men organized—using the term loosely—it was almost sundown. He began to send men onto the Stone Bridge, but the small detachments retreated quickly once they started getting peppered by shots fired from the flintlock-armed men now perched behind the barricade.
So far as Ellie could tell, looking down on the bridge from the distance of the Hradcany without binoculars, that initial volley—using the term loosely—didn't do more than scare off the thugs. She didn't think a single one of them had even been wounded.
Ellie was sure Morris hadn't ordered the volley. The Stone Bridge had a span of some five hundred yards, with a little dogleg in it about one-third of the way across from the west bank. The flintlocks had started firing as soon as Holk's men made it to the dogleg and came in sight of the barricades—a range of well over three hundred yards. Maybe James Fenimore Cooper's fictional marksman Natty Bumpo could hit something with a flintlock at that range, but ghetto-dwellers with meager experience with firearms hadn't much more chance than Ellie had with her 9mm.
Red confirmed her assessment. "Naw, just buck fever. Morris is fit to be tied. Good thing he ain't a cursing man. He's doing a pretty good job right now of flaying them alive with proper language. He's even waving his sword around."
Ellie stared at the now-darkening western bank, dumbfounded. "Morris has a sword? Where the fuck did he get a sword?"
Red's chuckle crackled in the CB. "Judith had it made up for him, believe it or not. Presented it to him this morning, scabbard and everything. She even had a special scabbard made up so he could sling his rifle on the horse."
Ellie burst out laughing. "Judith Roth—the gray eminence. It's like they say: 'behind every successful man there's a woman.' "
"No shit. And you should see the collection of women she's got around her, right here on this end of the bridge. Every prestigious matron in the ghetto, near as I can tell. Oh, sure, they're all being proper as you could ask for—but you can't fool me. Patriarchy be damned. That's the biggest collection of political clout in one city this side of old Mayor Daley's grave."
A moment later he added, in the satisfied tones of an longtime union agitator: "We're pretty well organized over here, actually. If Morris can just keep those eager beavers from wasting all the ammunition. And if he can keep from stabbing himself with the sword. He handles it like a butcher knife. Except he ain't an experienced butcher. Personally, I wish he'd start swinging the rifle around. THAT he knows what he's doing with."
Ellie shook her head firmly, even though Red couldn't possibly see the gesture. He was perched in the cab of the Dodge Ram, over half a mile away. "It's the principle of the thing, fella. You don't rally troops with a rifle. You do it with a sword. Haven't you ever seen any movies?"
* * *
Had Judith Roth heard the exchange, she would have disagreed. She was watching Morris also, and while she'd have admitted that he wasn't exactly handling the sword with panache, he was doing a fair job with it nonetheless. There was certainly no danger that he'd stab himself. Cut himself, maybe. Judith had made sure that the sword's tip had been blunted when she ordered it made.
Still and all, everything considered, she thought he looked superb. The horse was magnificent, Morris himself looked very distinguished in his nobleman's garb—the big plumed hat helped a lot—and nobody watching on this side of the river really had any more idea than Morris did how a sword should properly be held anyway. It was enough that he had one and was swinging it around authoritatively while bellowing authoritative-sounding orders.
Most of all, he didn't look afraid. Not in the least. In fact, he looked downright fearless.
And that was such an odd sensation, for Judith. That her husband was a brave enough man, in those myriad little ways with which people confront the challenges of daily life, Judith had known for many years. But that was the quiet courage of a husband and a father and a countryman, not the same thing at all as the dramatic valor of a commander on the battlefield.
She wasn't really that surprised that Morris could do it. But she was well-nigh astonished that he could do it so well in public.
One of the women standing next to her, on the far side of the little square where the barricades had been erected, spoke softly in her ear. "I am very glad your husband is here, gracious lady. And you also."