A Feast Unknown

After loading the bazooka, I put it on my shoulder and Trish aimed and fired it. The explosion was ten feet below the spot where I had seen the rocket’s jet. We ran forward with the hope that the nearness of the hit would upset and delay them. But their missile exploded on the ground about forty feet behind us.

I halted again, and loaded, and Trish fired. This time the missile hit about ten feet to the right of their estimated location and approximately a foot below the crenellations. The crenellations disappeared, and so did the bazooka men.

Meanwhile, our pursuers had rounded the plane, which had ceased to explode but not to burn. They began shooting at us. I turned with the bazooka loaded with our last missile and fired at the group. They threw themselves on the ground, and the missile went over their heads and blew up a tree on the edge of the meadows. However, they all jumped up and ran away behind the protection of the plane. I knew they would be back in a minute, so I threw the tube down, and we ran to the drawbridge.

We had to jump a gap of eight feet, which was easy for Trish even with her burden of weapons. A

submachine gun in the battlements began firing at us. We got into the courtyard before he could bring his spray of lead around to catch us. The mob behind us, and the men above, were not all of Noli’s forces.

Explosions inside the castle told us that Caliban was meeting resistance from others.

I tried to raise the drawbridge, but the chains had been sawed apart. A head, silhouetted against the glare, appeared above us, and the short snout of a tommy poked out. Trish aimed carefully. The bullet screamed off the stone, and the head withdrew.

“Where’s Doc?” Trish cried. “I want Doc!”

So far she had been as much aid as the best of men. But the time was to come when I would have to watch her because she might turn against me. That would not be, however, unless she got a chance to talk to him.

“We’ll find him,” I said.

We went through the closest of the nine entrances in the courtyard. This led up a narrow winding staircase for four stories, at which point an iron-bound oaken door blocked us. Noli’s men had used the other two routes to the battlement walls. They had not found the key to unlock this and had refrained from blowing it open. I turned the huge dragon-headed knob six times to the right, pushed in on it, and turned it three times to the left. It opened slowly with a slight squeaking despite all my stealth.

There were three bodies on the stones and three men standing. One was on my right and looking down into the yard, presumably for us. The other two were looking towards the flames. They were ma

We stepped out. I shot the man with the tommy in the back with my crossbow. The other two did not hear or see us. I reloaded and aimed just as one man turned towards us. My bolt caught him in the belly, and Trish’s two shots carried the other backwards and against the stone wall.

I looked down at the bridge. The last of the men from the Hall was just entering the courtyard. I pulled the pins of two grenades in rapid succession and tossed them down on the bridge near the end of the gap. When the smoke cleared, a fifteen foot gap existed between the bridge end and the lip of the moat.

Trish and I poked the dead men’s tommies over the embrasure within the yard and fired blindly down. A storm of bullets chipped stone off and one knocked Trish’s weapon from her hand. It fell down into the yard. I think they must have emptied the clips in their automatics and rifles and reloaded and emptied them again. They shot as if they had an inexhaustible supply of ammunition.

37

Somebody suddenly realized that they were short of bullets. He shouted an order. I peeked over the edge and saw several men ru

The next half-hour was one of siege. Noli’s men came up the two stairways open to them. I kept an eye on the one through which we had entered, too, because it could be blasted open with a grenade. We used very short bursts to keep them from coming up the two ways; they replied with torrents of long bursts. It was amazing how so many bullets were expended with, as far as I knew, no casualties.

There was also shooting in the other part of the castle, way off. Then, silence.

After a while, we were silent, too, because we had used up the tommy’s ammunition and all but five bullets apiece in our automatic pistols. I carried the machine gun and its tripod to the top of one of the stairways and waited.

The time came when I wondered if everybody was either out of ammunition or almost so. Noli and his men had been forced to run out of the Hall so swiftly that they could only scoop up the ammunition handy. Caliban and the two old men had been forced to run from the plane with little chance to get much ammunition. The men stationed in the castle had supplies, too, but these were probably limited.

I had seen no evidence of anything except tommies, rifles, and pistols. I had the only grenade in the place, as far as I knew. Of course, everybody must have a knife. And there were the maces, bludgeons, spears, and battleaxes on the walls of various rooms.

I fired several rounds from the heavy machine gun down the stairs. When the gun ceased, seven reports came from below. Stone chips stung my back and bullets shrilled. Trish, at my orders, fired once down her stairway and got eight in reply.

“They’re out of ammunition, Trish!” I yelled. “I’m charging them!”

I threw an empty tommy down the stairs. Three shots were fired.

Trish did the same thing and got two bullets. They probably had at least a few more rounds.

Someone shouted, “Noli wants us! He’s got Caliban cornered! Caliban’s out of ammo! So are we! But we got the numbers!”

It was a trick. Otherwise, why let me know that they were withdrawing?

Possibly, most of them were out, and the few who still had some rounds would be left on guard.

I crept down the steps, going slowly, with the .50-caliber held in both arms. Faintly, the shuffling of many feet sounded. Then, silence. Most of those below had departed, though it might be just to the next room.

I went back up the stairs and did what I could have done before if I had had a good reason. I told

Trish to patrol back and forth between the two staircases while I was gone. With my automatic in its holster and a grenade in my pocket, and my knives, I climbed down the wall on the outside above the moat. I used the half-brick projections, a provision of some ancestor who had wanted as many escape routes as possible.

At the first window I came to, an embrasure so narrow I would have scraped off my skin if I had gone through, I looked in. The room had been emptied except for two men. Each was stationed on the side of the entrance to the staircase, and each held an automatic. I fired twice through the window. One did not die immediately, and he looked very surprised. I had one bullet left.

After the silence of a minute was the sound of ru

They ran into the room and stopped short. They were bewildered. It was incredible, I suppose, that I could have come down the stairs, killed the two ambushers, and gotten out without the others seeing me.

My last bullet took one in the chest. The other two fired blindly at the window as they ran from the room. I went through, scraping skin off beneath my clothes and for a second not sure that I wouldn’t be stuck. I ran to the dead men, and ejected their clips. Their guns were all .45’s, so the ammunition would not fit my .38. From the three, I got six bullets for one clip and inserted it in a .45.