A lethal contingent of the Invisible College still crouched behind stalagmites, muskets and pistols at the ready. They were unaware of their commander’s fate, but were still positioned to block our escape through the tower vent.
“Devise a strategy, Ethan,” Catherine ordered, as if it were obvious I’d have prepared a plan that incorporated her decision to murder Wolf Richter by burying him alive. “How will you kill the rest of them?”
“There are too many,” Pasques groaned. “Eight or nine.”
More than I counted in the courtyard: reserves coming up from the woods? “Trying to fight through would be suicidal.” I looked at Pasques. He’d tied a bloody bandage where a bullet grazed his head, which made him look even more formidable, but he was also wounded in the side. A delta of blood had spread on the floor, and he had to be weakening. The rope Gideon had given me was still wrapped around his torso.
“The Brazen Head is a curse,” Astiza warned as she knelt to stanch the wound with a scarf. “You saw the desiccated husk of Christian Rosenkreutz, and now Richter has joined him. Let’s trade it for escape.”
“No,” said Catherine. “They’ll cut our throats once they have it, to keep their power a secret.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because that’s what I would do.”
“Rather ruthless, Comtesse,” I remarked.
“I’m the only one of us who is realistic. Practical.”
I’d seen nothing endearing about the monks of the Invisible College. She might be right. “A fighting retreat, then. The floor of the cavern slopes uphill toward its ceiling, but also toward the surface. I hear water somewhere. Maybe there’s escape that way.”
“And if not?” my wife asked.
“Then I’ll sell my life as best I can and you women can plea for mercy by surrendering the automaton. I haven’t come this far to give up now. Catherine, give me Richter’s pistol and yours on the altar.”
“I will not.”
“You know I’m the better shot. Trust me, or give up to them.”
“Only if you form alliance with me to keep the Brazen Head.” She ignored my wife, instinctively trying to attach herself to whichever male was most convenient—for advantage, not friendship.
“We’re a family,” I offered. “Like in Paris.”
She surrendered the guns reluctantly, along with a bullet pouch and powder horn. It was a relief to finally be armed again.
“Pasques, can you still shoot?”
“With pain. But this gun doesn’t require much aiming.”
“Ready the blunderbuss. Astiza and Catherine can drag the machine while we battle. Harry, when I tell you, run to the top of the cave as fast as you can. Hide until we come.”
“Promise to come, Papa.”
The dimness gave us a start. We crept from the bronze chamber door and began climbing the uneven floor of boulders, grateful for the cave’s murk while hating its reflective metal mirrors. Their only advantage was that the reflections confused the enemy about exactly where we were. They also didn’t know Richter’s fate. Harry rambled ahead. The automaton banged and skipped on the rocks as it hung between the women, carried like a casualty of battle. Pasques and I followed, guns ready. There was silence from the waiting henchmen, and then a wary call. “Baron?”
We didn’t reply. The farther and faster we climbed, the harder we were to hit. Astiza and Catherine were frantically pulling and pushing the machine. Yet the floor was a chaotic field of boulders that had fallen from the ceiling, and the pitch was steep. Our progress was agonizingly slow.
“What have they done with Richter?” men called behind us.
We didn’t answer.
“They are escaping!”
The surviving members of Richter’s gang emerged from behind cover, and Pasques’s blunderbuss went off with a roar. Our opponents shouted and scattered, and we scrambled a few more yards. Then answering gunfire crashed, bullets chasing us like hornets. Pasques grunted and stumbled, and I knew he’d been hit again. By Thor’s thunder, he was a target big as a barn. Ricochets whined and pinged.
I knelt with Catherine’s pistol, took a moment to steady my breath, and shot. The closest one collapsed, and the others darted for cover again. A gasping Pasques frantically reloaded.
“Catch up to Harry!” I shouted to the women. The automaton flopped behind them, its expression blank as a marionette’s. I let myself drop lower into a crevice between two boulders, ramming and priming.
Our pursuers reloaded as well. The gun duel continued, Pasques and I crouched behind rocks and succeeding in keeping them pinned. Each roar of the blunderbuss set shot rattling through the cavern like pebbles in a can. My shots were measured. I heard another yell of pain from our foes, and then a bullet clipped fragments of rock uncomfortably close to my face. I blinked against the grit, eyes watering, and aimed again.
A shot, and a man went down.
“Remember, the American is a sharpshooter!” Yet shadowy figures were crawling up both sides of the stone cavern, seeking to flank us. I looked backward. The women were almost out of sight, a glint of brass showing near the end of the cave.
“Pasques, time to retreat.”
“I’m bleeding from the leg now. A bone is broken.”
“Can you crawl?”
He swore. Then, “I can drag myself.”
“We can’t allow them to get around us.”
It was fifty yards to the cavern’s upper end, with Pasques a wounded walrus. I’d wiggle and dodge five precious yards uphill, find a scrap of shelter, reload, and fire, forcing our pursuers to duck and pause. They gamely fired back, bullets singing, and I feared that the closer we came to the women, the more likely it was that a bullet would find my son.
The French policeman left a steady trail of blood, using his gun as a crutch and lever. He had no time to load and fire anymore.
Finally we neared the end. Catherine was prone, skirts tangled with the brass boots of the enigmatic android. Harry had to be beyond.
“Is it possible to crawl through?” I asked as we caught up.
“Narrow,” Catherine reported. “Your son is exploring, your wife following.” She lowered her voice. “Too tight for Pasques.”
I felt tantalizing fresh air. “Leave the machine if you must.”
“I’ll leave all of you before I leave the machine.” She wriggled ahead, pushing the android, and it jerked and bobbed as it was crammed into the tunnel. “Astiza, get back here and help!”
I looked at the policeman, my enemy and odd ally. He had a sweaty sheen, teeth clenched, pain immense. He looked at the exit, then at me, and shook his head. “Take the rope.” He shed it like skin. “You may need it. Go, go!”
The mad monks of the Invisible College were crawling closer. A brave one traded shots to force me down to load and then sprang up to charge, his bayonet ready. I cocked and shot with my ramrod still in the barrel. It took him in the chest like an arrow, and he pitched back.
“Pasques, your blunderbuss! I’ll hold them off while you squeeze.”
“It’s broken. Go, follow the others. Now!”
“You’re wounded.”
“And slow. And likely to get stuck, greased with my own blood. Join your family. It’s too late for me.”
Another volley of shots and the policeman cried out as he was hit yet again. Our assailants were converging. It was foolhardy to linger. I crawled past him into a hole tight as a rabbit’s burrow. I got my shoulders through only by extending one arm forward and one back, as if swimming. I held the climbing rope that Gideon had given us like an offering and kicked like a tadpole. Astiza grabbed my outstretched wrist and hauled. “Leave your coat!”
I let it slip and finally popped through.
“It’s too narrow for Pasques.” Ahead I saw dim light and heard rushing water. Deliverance, except what if our pursuers followed?
Catherine forced her way back past me, her body slithering along mine. “Pasques!” she called impatiently. “Now!”
“I cannot fit, Comtesse.” It was sad resignation.
“Try!”
“I’m shot through, half-emptied, and too big. The monks are almost on me. Au revoir, Catherine, and now I have the courage to tell what I was always afraid to admit before: You became the only thing I ever cared about.”
“Pasques, you idiot! Come!”
“I love you, madame. I apologize, but it is true.”
“What are you talking about? Are you insane?”
“I always loved you. I couldn’t say it before. Dying excuses my boldness.”
“Imbecile!” She stretched her own trembling arm.
As did he. But instead of grasping Catherine’s hand, he reached up with mighty arms and yanked at the fractured ceiling of the cave. There was a crack as a boulder came loose. The men behind him cried out. More shots came. Then the boulder came down with a crash, there was a rumble of others, and the exit was sealed, dust puffing toward us. Pasques had entombed himself.
We were on one side, the monks on the other. They could excavate, but it would take hours. They could retreat back the way they’d come and emerge from the tower, but that would take time as well.
Time enough, perhaps, to get away.
Catherine backed out, muttering curses.
“He sacrificed himself,” Astiza said.
“The fool loved me,” Catherine said with disbelief, but wonder, too. It was not an emotion she was accustomed to.
“For that you call him a fool?” I said crossly.
“Love invites weakness.” Her own voice betrayed doubt at this belief. “And I deserve a prince, not a policeman.” She said it doggedly, dealing with his death in her own warped way. “He was a good companion, but a tool, nothing more. I never told him anything different. I never promised. I never encouraged.”
“Yes, you did,” I said. “You allowed him to hope.”
She sensed our condemnation.
“You think I should cry for an oaf? I’d have saved him if I could. But the Brazen Head is the key—the Brazen Head and me. Thank your pagan gods that I’ve delivered you with it.”
And she crawled back past us, batting Harry aside and yanking on the android. She dragged it like a corpse, or lover, toward the pale light.