The cart bounced up a ramp onto a narrow street paralleling the freeway, causing the iron barrels of the rearward-facing culverins to bob up and down under the oilcloths. The rest of the caravan was close behind.
A deep roar, and then another, sounded ahead, and Thomas, straining his ears, caught the distant rattle of gunfire.
"Gladhand's started," Gaudete observed grimly as he snapped the whip again.
They slowed before making the right turn onto Spring Street, so as not to skid across the wet cobblestones. The noise of gunfire was much clearer now, and Thomas pulled the pistol out of his pocket and carried it in his right hand.
After they crossed Temple Street, Gaudete ran the horses up the curb on the right, so that the cannons in back faced across a dark lawn in the direction of the tall bulk of city hall 100 meters away. The six following carts drew up beside them and dozens of men with rifles began hopping out and lining up on the sidewalk.
"The fighting's still around front, on the Mainstreet side," Gaudete said, climbing down to the pavement. "Quick, some of you, train these cannons so that they bracket the building."
Thomas clambered down and watched as several men, the backs of their wet sealskin jackets glistening in the lamplight, unchained the cannon carriages and pulled off the covers. Four of them slipped handspikes into iron rings in the carriage trails; laboriously they lifted them and rolled the cannons forward, swung the barrels into the correct positions and carefully lowered the trails to the pavement. "All set, Cap'n," gasped one of the men.
"Good. Hop up there, Rufus, and fetch me that big box from under the seat."
Thomas climbed back up into the cart and slid a heavy wooden box over the lip of the seat-rail to the waiting hands. Gaudete supervised the prying open of the lid and lifted out a one-kilo iron ball with a heavy chain dangling from it.
"This'll mow their lawn for them," he grinned. The men standing around grinned too, though they didn't understand. "We can shoot from here," Gaudete said. "The curbs will stop the recoil. Just be sure none of you stand behind the cannons. Okay, load!"
Another box was brought forward and ripped open, and a cloth bag full of powder was thrown into the muzzle of each cannon and shoved home with a rammer. A wooden disk was pushed in on top.
"Okay, now," Gaudete said, "load this chain shot; one ball in each cannon." The men were lifting Gaudete's unorthodox ammunition—two cannonballs connected by about ten meters of heavy chain—out of the box when, with a blinding, shadow-etching flash of lightning, the rain began again.
"Quick!" Gaudete screeched as the thunder was echoing away. "Cover the touchholes! Get that shot loaded!"
From the driver's bench Thomas watched the frantic work as sheets of rain thrashed onto the pavement; and suddenly he noticed that the surface of the street was alive with tiny, wriggling creatures. They were in the cart as well, and he bent down to pick one up. It was a frog. More were falling every second, dropping with the rain to shatter and die on the cobblestones. The street, the sidewalks, the whole landscape, was covered with tiny dying frogs.
The men had noticed it and became uneasy; the two carrying the shot had paused, and were blinking up at the sky.
"Load, you bastards!" Gaudete howled, waving a pistol, "or I'll see the color of your livers!"
In the next glaring flash of lightning Thomas saw, starkly illuminated in black and white, the two cannons pointing to either side of city hall, their glistening wet muzzles connected by a drooping length of chain. Wedges were now being pounded in under the breeches so that the muzzles were slightly raised from the absolute horizontal position.
"Okay!" yelled Gaudete. "Twenty of you run to the fighting, trade a few shots, let 'em see you, and then run back here with them chasing you. Halfway across the lawn you drop flat, and we'll touch off both these cannons simultaneously, with the chain stretched between the cannonballs. That'll cut most of them in half. Then the rest of us can charge in and finish them."
Gaudete designated 20 men and sent them forward through the rain. Skidding and slipping on the new pavement of perishing frogs, they made slow progress.
"Damn, why can't they hurry?" fretted Gaudete, twisting the ends of his mustache. Two more cannon blasts cracked a block or so away and were followed by a fast drum solo of gunshots.
Thomas sat on the driver's bench of the lead cart, shivering and brushing frogs off his wet clothes. He hefted his pistol nervously. I don't like this, he thought.
There's death in the air. It feels like the last night of the world.
"Hey!" Gaudete stiffened and pointed. "I see them!"
Thomas stared into the blackness, but could make out nothing. Then a white whiplash of lightning lit the lawn like a football stadium, and Thomas saw their men running before a tide of pursuing androids.
"Gunners ready?" yelped Gaudete.
"Ready!" called the two gunners, huddled over the breeches to keep their slow matches lit and the vent primes dry. Frogs bounced unnoticed from their hats and shoulders onto the street.
"They're down! Fire!"
Thomas was standing on the bench to improve his view at the moment the gunners touched match to prime. A deafening, stomach-shaking roar was followed instantly by a high-pitched screech like a million fencing foils whipped through the air. The cart beneath his boots was wrenched violently out from under him and flung in broken, spinning pieces for a dozen meters down the street.
He landed hard on his hip, but rolled quickly to his feet, his gun ready. His first thought was that the androids had set up a cannon of their own somewhere north on Spring, and their first shot had struck the cart.
Then he saw the appalling carnage that was sprayed and strewn everywhere; blood was splashed as if from buckets across the nearby building fronts, and the broken bodies of his cohorts lay on the street and sidewalk, mingling now with the frogs that still rained out of the night sky. Nearly half of the 80 men who'd been standing by, ten seconds earlier, were dead.
The others, mystified as to what weapon had so devastated their companions, flung down their rifles and ran away north and south on Spring Street.
The androids, completely unharmed, made short work of the several men who'd flung themselves flat on the lawn.
Thomas stood on the fouled pavement, rain running from the sleeves of his dangling arms and from the barrel of the gun that hung in his limp right hand. One cannon must have gone off before the other…
As the police troops bore rapidly down on him, Thomas walked listlessly to the largest section of the wrecked cart and lay behind it. He patted his pockets: two spare clips. I can, conceivably, kill 27 of them before they kill me. He thumbed off the safety catch and, raising the pistol, got one of the foremost androids in his sights and fired.
The open windows let in the morning sunlight, a cool breeze, and the sound of shovels grating on cobblestones as Gladhand, still dressed in his old sweater of the night before, was wheeled along the brightly tiled hallway. He looked tired, but joked with the nurses who escorted him. He carried a paper wrapped parcel in his lap.
"Here we are," smiled one of the nurses, looking a little haggard herself. "Number 12."
They steered Gladhand's wheelchair through the doorway into the narrow but cheerfully painted room. Sitting up in the bed by the window was Thomas. His left arm was bandaged and trussed in a sling.
"Have you smoked a cigar in your office yet?" Thomas asked.
"No, but that's on the agenda. How are you?"
"I give up, how am I?"
Gladhand grimaced and wobbled one hand in the air in an it-could-be-worse gesture. "The nerves of your left hand are dead, cut by a sword you apparently parried with the inside of your elbow. The nerves may grow back—I think I read about that happening somewhere—but until they do, your left hand will be paralyzed."