The gun came up, on target.
“Traitor!” he said. Not quite shouting.
He fired the first barrel; an instant later, the second.
Both rounds struck the chancellor squarely in the chest. Oxenstierna was wearing no armor and in the heat produced by the fire in the tavern’s main room, he’d had his buff coat unbuttoned and open. The heavy .62 caliber bullets punched into his heart and knocked him off his feet.
He might not be dead yet. But that was now a meaningless technicality. He would be within a minute or two, and there was no doctor in the world, not even the Moor, who could have kept him alive.
The tableau remained frozen—though now with everyone’s eyes fixed on the body of the chancellor.
Then one of Oxenstierna’s staff officers muttered a curse and drew his own pistol. Two of his fellows began following suit.
The colonel who’d drawn first was bringing his pistol to bear on Erik when Erling Ljungberg’s automatic began firing. Three shots took him down; two shots each did for his would-be partners.
The shots were fired so rapidly they almost sounded like a single noise. A sort of tearing thunder, in the confines of the tavern room.
The three staff officers joined the chancellor on the floor. All three were just as obviously dead as their master.
Again, the tableau was frozen. Then all the Scots drew their pistols. For their part, the remaining staff officers held up their hands—part in protest; part in surrender—and stumbled back a pace or two.
“Hold!” Erik shouted. “All hold!”
Again, a frozen tableau. Now, everyone was staring at Hand.
He pointed to the door. “Captain Stewart, go outside and see to it that the Västergötlanders have the area under control. Then ask Karl Hård af Segerstad to come in here. Then check to see the dispositions of Colonel Hastfer and his Finnish regiment.”
The Scot officer holstered his pistol and left.
The rest of the Scots began holstering their own pistols. It was obvious there would be no further gunfire. Not now, after Ljungberg had ejected the clip and slapped in another one. He was not holstering his gun. He had it pointed squarely at the surviving staff officers and was bestowing a grin upon them that Erik thought would probably give some of them nightmares later. Erling Ljundberg held his post as the king’s chief bodyguard because, just as Anders Jönsson had been before him, the man was utterly murderous.
The immediate crisis over, Erik hurried to Gustav Adolf’s side. Not knowing what else to use—he’d make it a point to be prepared for this, in the future—he snatched off his hat and rolled up the brim.
Just in time. As the doctor had foreseen, the king was going into convulsions. Erik managed to shove the rolled-up hat brim into his cousin’s mouth before he could damage himself.
Then, he waited out the convulsions, restraining the king as best he could. Within seconds, two of the Scots were assisting him.
After the king relaxed and fell asleep, Erik rose to his feet.
“And now what?” asked Ljundberg.
Excellent question. Erik groped for an answer.
It came to him within seconds. “Go get the prime minister and bring him here, Major Graham. Gordon, you go with him.”
Wilhelm Wettin arrived an hour and a half later. Quite puzzled, obviously. Erik realized he hadn’t instructed Graham and Gordon to tell him anything, just to bring him here. Scots tended to favor literal interpretations.
By then, the bodies of the chancellor and the three staff officers slain by Ljungberg had been carried into a side room. Gustav Adolf was resting on a narrow bed which had been brought into the tavern’s main room by servants. In the absence of any advice from Nichols—he wasn’t about to trust any of the doctors Oxenstierna had assigned to the king—Erik hadn’t been willing to risk moving his cousin any farther than necessary.
Wettin stared at Gustav Adolf. “Is he…?”
“Yes, he’s back. But—as you can see—he’s still subject to ills.”
Wettin shook his head. It wasn’t clear if the gesture was one of negation, denial, or simply to clear the man’s brain. He probably didn’t know himself.
“Where is Chancellor Oxenstierna?” he asked.
“The traitor is dead,” Colonel Hand said in a flat, cold tone of voice. “At the king’s command.”
That was stretching the truth. You could even argue it was mangling the truth beyond all recognition. But for the moment, Erik didn’t care—and who was there to dispute his claim? The surviving staff officers had been placed under arrest and taken away. The tavern keeper and his servants were so petrified they could barely speak.
“You can go look at his body yourself, if you don’t believe me,” he added, jerking his head toward the far door. “He’s in a room just beyond.”