Goddam knight of the round table, too! Sixty years he's spent stewing in that crazy macho stuff.

He had the flap open finally. Thank God. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sudden burst of swordplay. Just a quick clash of blades before Sanchez and his opponents backed away. This was no idiot Gene Kelly or Errol Flynn movie where swordsmen pranced and danced all over the place smiling gaily and matching sword strokes for minutes on end. This was a deadly serious business where one good stroke or cut left a man dead or dying in a split-second. It was like watching angry rattlesnakes in a cage.

The pistol was coming out. Billy reached over with his left hand to work the slide and jack a round into the chamber. It was an old .45-caliber automatic, the Colt army model, with a heavy slide. He fumbled at it. He felt light-headed, the way he never did in a baseball game no matter how tight the situation. I'm not used to this! some part of him wailed silently.

The slide banged down. The weapon discharged and recoiled out of his hand.

It shouldn't have happened, but a worn sear-or one a gunsmith had stoned to a knife-edge-could slip. I should've checked the goddam thing when I had time!

The bullet ricocheted harmlessly from the floor and off into a corner. The pistol itself skidded across the floor. Right toward the Frenchmen.

How Sanchez knew what had happened Billy would never understand. The Catalan must have had eyes in the back of his head. He stamped a boot, lunged once-twice-skipped aside . . . caught the sliding pistol with the toe of a boot and send it neatly sliding back across the floor.

Okay, it wasn't done perfectly-the pistol was heading toward the far corner instead of the one where Billy and Sharon were standing. Still. Any sarcastic thoughts Billy had ever had about Ruy Sanchez and his flamboyant ways died a sudden death. Jesus, that crazy old man is good.

But the horror wasn't over. Sharon pushed past him and practically tackled the pistol.

"Sharon-it's armed!" Billy shrieked. The hammer was back, anyway, and the recoil might've been enough to cycle the weapon completely, jacking another round into the chamber. If so, that thing was as deadly as a rattlesnake itself. Some part of Billy's mind made a solemn vow-piss on the admiral and his goddam rules-that he'd never use anything but a revolver in the future.

Sharon hit the floor on her belly and scooped up the pistol. Billy held his breath . . .

Thank God, again. Apparently she knew enough about firearms to realize that the pistol was armed. She had the butt in both hands and was coming up to her knees. Billy started to step toward her, reaching out his hand.

But Sharon didn't even glance at him. "Ruy, look out!" she screamed, leveling the gun.

Billy twisted his head. Another one of Ducos' agents was down. Somehow Sanchez had slashed the man's throat. Damn near cut his head off, in fact. He was obviously deader than a mackerel.

Sanchez had picked up a wound himself along the way. Billy could see a red stain spreading across the doublet on the left side above the waist. It couldn't be too bad a one, he guessed, since the Catalan was still in fine fighting form. The wound didn't seem to be bleeding that much. Nothing like that horrible gushing spray of blood that had happened after Sanchez stabbed the first man in the leg.

The wound on Sanchez wasn't why Sharon had screamed, though. Billy felt himself grow more light-headed still. He wondered if he had any blood at all left in his brain.

One of Ducos' agents had a pistol. Where the hell that had come from, Billy had no idea. The Frenchman had backed up a few steps so he could get a clear shot at Sanchez. Unfortunately-even if Sharon was a good enough shot in the first place-Sanchez was between her and his opponents.

The pistol was some kind of smallish wheel-lock, not the big cavalry variety. An assassin's weapon, and probably no more accurate than-

Billy felt his head clear instantly, as well-trained reflexes took over. There was a small table just next to the door, not more than a step away. Atop sat a bowl of fruit. Those small Italian apples that Billy didn't like because they were too sour.

Right now, he could care less about their taste. They were also very hard-and, if not quite a big as a baseball, close enough.

The apple came into his hand as easily and comfortably as the pistol had not. A quick pitcher's stride-Billy had never dawdled on the mound-and the apple went flying.

Billy could hit the plate, three times out of four, from the sixty-foot range of a pitcher's mound. At considerably less than half the range, the apple hit the man right between the eyes.

His coach had clocked his fastball once at ninety-seven miles per hour. Billy was pretty sure he'd just broken that.

The apple splattered. It was just soft enough that the man didn't die. But he was hurled against the wall, the pistol flying out of his hand.

The pistol hit the same wall Billy was near. Wheel-locks were even touchier than old automatic pistols once they were cocked. The weapon discharged. The bullet hit the bowl of fruit and sent the apples flying everywhere.

I . . . do . . . not . . . fucking . . . believe . . . this . . . shit.

Frantically, Sharon tried to get a bead on someone. But it was impossible. The way Ruy was dancing back and forth, she'd be as likely to shoot him as one of his opponents. Even at this range, Sharon had no confidence at all in her marksmanship. She'd only gone to the firing range at Grantville-then, later, at Wismar-when her father or Hans had absolutely insisted. She didn't like guns and felt no affinity for the things whatsoever. Especially a great big heavy monster like this one, whatever the hell it was.

There was another of those sudden, terrifying clashes between Ruy and his opponents. Like watching men turn into sharks for an instant. It was all too quick for Sharon to follow clearly. When it was over, though, another of Ducos' agents was stumbling back against the far wall, his sword spilling to the floor. Blood spurted through the hands clutching his throat. That was pure reflex, though. As soon as the man smashed against the wall his eyes rolled up and he slumped lifelessly. Ruy must have severed the spine as well as the throat with that stab.

There were only two French agents left standing, now. But to her horror, Sharon saw that Ruy had been injured again himself. She hadn't seen it happen, but one of Ducos' men must have stabbed Ruy in the leg. Not the fatal kind of strike Ruy had landed at the beginning of the fracas, no; just a cut to the meat of the thigh. As wounds went, from a purely medical perspective, nothing much to worry about. Sharon was a lot more concerned about the wound that had now spread blood across the left side of the Catalan's doublet.

However, what was dangerous in a hospital was not the same thing as what was dangerous in a fight. Ruy was limping, now, pretty badly. And he'd lost a lot of blood, and-Sanchez or no Sanchez-he was a man in his late fifties. He couldn't possibly last much longer.

The two surviving Frenchmen sensed it. They started moving in for the kill. Slowly and carefully, to be sure.

Sharon glanced to her left. Billy was scrabbling on the floor for apples. No help there.

She took a very deep breath. She'd never smoked, was a big woman-and had a pair of lungs to match the rest of her chest.

"GODAMMIT RUY SANCHEZ GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY! LISTEN TO YOUR WOMAN!".

Sanchez instantly flung himself aside, coming to rest on his rump plastered against the wall right below his hat. He gave Sharon a grin that, for all the strain in his face, seemed genuinely cheerful.

"A request from my intended is like a command from God," he pronounced.

Sharon snorted. Took another breath and drew a bead. The two agents were staring at her now.

She decided marksmanship was pointless. She really had no idea what she was doing. On the other hand, she understood why they called these damn things "automatics."

"It was frickin' amazing," Billy would tell his friend Conrad later. "Truly awesome. She emptied the whole clip. Musta set some kinda time record, too. Sounded like it was on full auto."

A shake of the head, another quaff of beer. "A Colt .45 M-1911A1, to boot. Sure, it's an old warhorse-none of the fancy few modern ones we've got for plebes like you and me, Conrad old buddy-but it's still got enough firepower to shred a bull."

Another shake of the head, another quaff. "Point-blank range. Couldna been more than twenty feet. Frickin' amazing. She never hit the one guy at all and only managed to hit the other once. I grant you, in the chest, perfect center mass shot. Killed him deader'n a doornail. But. Still."

Billy wondered if he'd ever hear again. It felt like at least one of his eardrums had burst. Paralyzed, for sure. He'd never actually heard what a .45 sounded like fired in a closed room-thick walls, too-and wearing no ear protectors. It didn't help at all that he'd been positioned alongside the firearm instead of behind the shooter.

The one Frenchman still left standing seemed even more dazed than Billy was. Slowly, the man spread his arms wide and stared down at his body. He seemed a little amazed to see no blood.

Billy was downright astonished. How could she possibly have missed-at that range?

Sharon lurched to her feet and tried to do with the pistol itself what she'd failed to do with its ammunition. Hollering something that was probably obscene as all hell-Billy couldn't make out a word of it-she hurled the pistol at the Frenchman.

Alas. She was no more accurate than before. Ducos' agent didn't even have to duck. He just watched the pistol sail by at least two feet from his head.

When he brought his head back, though, there was a smile on his face. A damn cold one. Sharon was disarmed and while Sanchez was struggling to get back on his feet the old man was obviously having a hard time of it now. Leaving aside the wound to the body, his left leg was just about literally soaked in blood.