The Cannon Law—ARC(34)

Ruy took Sharon's elbow and urged her back down the street. "This should be amusing to listen to," he said, irritation coming through the veneer of good humor he usually projected. "And if we retire a little I shall be able to fight down the urge to call out that—" Ruy trailed off in a low, monotone stream of obscenities. Sharon's own grasp of Spanish—still less Catalan dialect—didn't let her follow more than a few words past the pithy description of what the officer's mother had done for a living. While drunk. With toads.



"Calm, Ruy dear. Getting annoyed with stupid people for being stupid really does no one any good."



"Ha! Did not your up-time Charles Darwin say it? Survival of the fittest? Did I not have clear duty here and now I should improve the next generation of Italians out of all recognition. I pray only that he did not breed before today."



"You think he's going to die?"



"May god grant in his infinite mercy that he should, Sharon." Ruy's tone was suddenly quite grim. "Forty years of military experience, ha!"



Sharon leaned in to Ruy, holding his arm tight. "Bad memories, love?"



"Yes. Of serving under officers like that fatuous, incompetent, deluded dullard." He sighed. "Oh, for a certainty more of his men will survive this day than not, but that will be in spite of him. He has orders to clear a disturbance from the home of some notable, and thinks to make a bold gesture. Ah, here it comes—"



A hunting horn blew from where the head of the cavalry column—thirty or forty mounted men, Sharon guessed—had turned the corner.



"It is as if the Sight were on me, Sharon." He cast his eyes heavenward. "No warning to the crowd to begin dispersing. An advance too rapid to let them disperse, but, since he bids them charge around the corner and left them too little street to achieve a gallop, not fast enough for true cavalry shock."



The sound of clattering hooves from the corner, building to a brief thunder overlaid with wild yells and screams. Then, a sound of a general melee.



Ruy covered his face with his hands. His voice, muffled: "Now, we hear the sound of horsemen in among a crowd. Some have been trampled, of course, but those who remain are frightened, angry and are carrying knives. The horses"—Sharon shuddered as she heard one of the animals scream—"cannot use their strength, and are crowded by people with knives. The rear ranks of the cavalry are pressing in, some of the horsemen broke through the crowd."



"Is there anything we can do?" Sharon asked, hearing another horse scream in pain, a noise that cut through what she knew must be the sound of sabers coming down on flesh. Screams, shouts, the clatter of hooves. And, to the ears of a trained nurse—trauma surgeon, rather, by any standard that mattered, these days—the sound of lacerations, fractures and God alone knew what-all other butcheries.



Ruy's face was bleak. "Does my lady have a preference in prayers for the dying?"



"How did you see this coming?"



Ruy waved a hand. "Rome is a town full of priests. Well-behaved. One might expect the militia to be less than brilliant. But it was when I saw that—" He stopped and took a breath. "No, I shall forego the curses for the moment. When I heard that fool give orders for a charge in column I knew there would be a disaster. There are orders one gives to disperse rioters, Sharon, and there are orders one gives to instigate a massacre. That idiot picked the wrong orders for either."



Ruy's tone had been blunt and professional. Sharon had a suspicion that Ruy had, in his time, taken part in both sorts of military action. The suave hidalgo gentleman's airs he affected had been earned on dozens of battlefields on more than one continent.



"I guess you'd know if anyone would. Say, it sounds like the fighting's over." She felt for her medical bag, which now went everywhere with her; she'd been caught with insufficient supplies once before. "I think it's time to go check on the wounded. Detour on the way to the committee place, I think."



"There is nothing I can do to dissuade you?" Ruy hardly paused for an answer before looking up to check where the sun was. "There is a bright side, by all the saints. We shall arrive at the Freedom Arches in time for lunch, and I shall finally discover what a pizza might be."



Sharon wiped her hands on the last of the boiled rags that a nearby taverna owner had provided to make up the stock she'd carried. "I guess this dress is ruined," she said. She looked down. Both sleeves were soaked in blood, and the bodice was just as plastered. The condition her skirt was in didn't bear thinking about.