Day of Deliverance by Johnny O'Brien

the roof will give us some cover for a few minutes as we climb.”
    “But…”
    Jack was frightened, but he felt himself getting angry. “Get a grip, Harry, or we’re all dead. Do exactly what Angus does… and don’t look down.”
    Angus stepped off the roof balustrade and onto a sloping slab of stone a few feet up the turret.
    “It’s not bad, the stone is easy to grip,” he whispered down.
    Fanshawe, Trinculo and then Jack started to follow Angus up the outside of the turret, placing hands, feet and even their whole bodies in exactly the positions that Angus showed them. They were pumped up with adrenaline and progress was surprisingly quick. After a few feet, Angus came to his first obstacle – a large stone overhang. By stretching his hand across the overhang he located a cloverleaf-shaped air hole, which give him just enough purchase to lever himself up and over. He rapidlyascended the next section and arrived at a further overhang at the bottom of the parapet. Repeating the manoeuvre, he suddenly found himself inside the stone parapet – a sort of decorative crown a good fifteen metres above roof level. From here, he was able to lean over and help first Fanshawe, then Trinculo and finally Jack up and into the parapet.
    They made it just in time. Looking across the roof from their position perched up in the shadows, they saw two figures emerge from the darkness.
    “Keep down!” Jack whispered.
    They crouched behind the low crenellated wall of the parapet. Fanshawe was exhausted. He plonked his bottom onto a narrow part of the parapet. Jack wished he hadn’t. There was a loud squawking as a fat pigeon made a brave bid for freedom from Fanshawe’s descending buttocks. But Fanshawe was unable to control his downward momentum and the poor bird was flattened.
    “Don’t move!” Angus hissed.
    Below, the two men cautiously approached the eastern turrets, their crossbows at the ready. They tested the locked doors on each of the two turrets in turn. Jack could hear them in furtive discussion and he strained to hear what they were saying. All he could tell was that they were not speaking English. It sounded more like Italian, or… Spanish.
    After a further search of the roof, the men crept back over to the open doorway in the north-west tower and disappeared down the staircase. Jack leaned his head on the stonework behind him and let out a long sigh of relief.
    Angus whispered, “They’ve gone. What now?”
    “We can’t stay up here – we’ll freeze to death.”
    “We should stay here for as long as we can stand it, then maybe drop back down when the service is finishing.”
    Angus peered down. “I reckon getting down’s going to be harder than coming up.” He thought for a moment. “I know… give me that.”
    He took his own backpack, and then Jack’s, and fiddled with the straps to tie them together. “Not perfect – but I can probably use this to sort of belay each of you down, across the overhang at least, so you can get a foothold.”
    As the service finished and people began leaving the chapel way below, they started their descent. Jack went first – initially dangling like a pendulum from the straps of the backpack. He hung in space for a moment and caught sight of the poorly lit street – a good sixty metres below. If Angus let go or if he slipped, he’d have about three seconds to live. At last, his foot touched the safety of a cloverleaf air hole and in a few minutes he had picked his way back down to the safety of the roof. The others followed and soon they were back at the open tower door. All was quiet. Then, as they started on their way back down the spiral staircase, Jack noticed another small wooden door – one they had not seen when they first entered.
    “Hey, what’s this?” He tried the handle. “It’s open. Come on!”
    There was no light, but they pressed on regardless, closing the door behind them. They didn’t know it, but they were now in the giant attic of