A Place Called Armageddon (10 page)

He laughed again. ‘There is good hunting where I will visit.’

She studied the weapon. It was a fine example, plain, unadorned. Purposeful. She had one much like it upon the boat. ‘Are you good with it?’

‘A journeyman, merely.’

They did not speak again as he guided her down the alleys to the harbour, along the docks to her vessel. The captain eyed them suspiciously before taking her bag.

Leilah turned back, but Gregoras was already walking away. ‘You know where I am,’ he called. ‘Return, if you will.’

She did not mind that his farewell was gruff. Besides, she enjoyed seeing the vision from her dream so clearly realised on a sparkling Ragusan dock. She was almost tempted to follow him, to see if he would lead her right then to Geber’s book. But then she remembered: destiny awaited in another city, the one he swore he would never return to, the one that he was walking towards now – though by what path, for once, she could not see.

–
SIX
–
The Rescue

‘There is only one way for a gentleman of Scotland to face death, you coo’s arse,’ John Grant declared, ‘and that is, once he has made his peace with God, to get completely, utterly and overwhelmingly drunk!’

He spoke it in his native Gaelic, letting his tongue and throat shape and expand the guttural qualities that his audience loved to hear. They presumed him German and would not believe anything else. But as he lifted his goblet high while declaiming it, they took it for the latest in a series of incomprehensible toasts and pledged him back with roars and the draining of vessels.

He sat down heavily. It was getting harder and harder to stand. Next pledge he’d do sitting down. The one after perhaps prone. When he could speak no more, when his eyes closed and his head finally fell onto his arms, someone would come along and cut it off.

It was getting close to that time. He could tell by the way the room shifted to his gaze, and because the dozen faces in the cellar had begun to blur into just one – round, sweaty, flushed with aqua vitae, creased with tears. They were a sentimental lot, the pirates of Omis. They had grown fond of him. Stanko repeatedly declared that he loved the German like a brother, like a son. But Grant knew the pirate leader had killed several of each. They had grown even fonder of what he made them in his captivity – for distillation was an important part of his alchemical studies and he was fond of a dram himself. So now the pirates shed tears for both, liquor and life, coming to an end. They had given him a week, to complete one last batch. It was up.

Moving his head slowly to the left, Grant squinted at the fire beneath the cauldron. Closing one eye, he focused – and saw that the flames had got low. He checked the seals around the main glass vessel, and especially where the alembic joined the stag’s horn; grunted with pride. He had fashioned a fine still. Even Geber, the Arab master whose few writings he devoured, might have been impressed, considering the poverty of the raw materials he’d worked with. Yet now there was only a little more distillation to be had from the fermented oranges in the vessel’s belly. His life would be measured in one last burst of steam collected, in the drops that … dripped.

Life was irksome. He was ready.

He leaned, toppled. Giggling, he righted himself and shoved hunks of wood onto the fire. Bending, he blew exaggeratedly. Stanko, the chief, bent beside him, blew as well, covering the Scot in spittle. Flames grew, lapped wood. ‘Still more?’ the pirate yelled.

‘A little.’

‘Good. Drink!’

They clattered mugs. ‘Craigelachie,’ the Scotsman shouted. It was the war cry of the clan Grant, a rallying call for the men to gather on the hilltop so named and repel all enemies. He hadn’t cried it in his life in recent years. His clan, his family, he was an exile from their lands, from their regard. But now that his life was about to end, he wanted to be connected to them in some way.

‘I love you, German.’ Stanko grabbed him by the back of his head, pulling him close. ‘You are like a son to me.’

The words were kind. But Grant saw the cunning eyes, sunk in the sweaty face like olives in flatbread. Saw where they moved – around his neck, envisaging the cut that would sever. The head Stanko caressed would soon be floating in a pail of the liquor they all craved – though they would lament the waste – and on its way to the sultan.

‘And you are a lover of pigs,’ John Grant replied in English, smiling. He loved to insult them in languages, of which he spoke seven, and of which they understood not a word. He raised his mug again. ‘Craigelachie,’ he yelled, throwing on more wood.

Gregoras was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Not so much with his perch in the bell tower of Santa Emilia, though it was colder than that saint’s tits, the wind finding every scar and ache in his body and jabbing them. What jabbed most was that in the time he’d sat there, close to two hours, at least ten men had gone into the house opposite him and only two had come out. Each time one entered, he would hear bursts of singing, toasts, sentences of execrable Croat poetry. Heat would rise too, making him shiver all the more.

The night had come, perhaps even the hour. The victim’s name was a secret and so, in the taverns he’d visited, it had been proclaimed in the loudest of whispers.

Johannes Grant, German, was about to die. And the site of execution was no secret either. Who was going to tangle with the pirates of Omis in their own nest?

Am I? Gregoras wondered. He’d begun to doubt it as the pirates’ numbers grew with his stiffness. He knew what he should do: return to the vessel he’d hired, make sail for Ragusa. The odds were too great. He was too late.

And if he did? He’d be sailing back to a hovel. The ducats he’d been advanced had bought him the stone for his house. The finest came from Korcula and he had used that business as cover for this other. But he needed the balance for the masons to build it. Besides, the advance would have to be repaid if he failed. One didn’t fail Giustiniani. He would lose all.

He had no choice – and could wait no longer. Cursing, he descended to the
ulica
and waited till two more pirates came swaying up the hill and went in. Cursing still, he followed.

At first he thought that he’d stumbled into an alchemist’s den. An uncle had dabbled in the hermetic art, and he’d had equipment such as this. But Gregoras swiftly realised that the main scent was not of heated metals, but of oranges. It was not the philosopher’s stone that was being conjured here, but what the Arabs called
al-kohl
.

He was in a small distillery.

From being near frozen, Gregoras was immediately – and unpleasantly – warm. Apart from the equipment, fifteen pirates were belching and farting as a musical accompaniment to the many toasts they gave. But at least the fug meant that he was not the only one masked. He would not immediately be spotted as an intruder. Besides, everyone’s focus was on the room’s centre. On one man there.

He had seen this before. Death’s approach drew everyone’s attention. Hell or heaven beckoned. There was life and soon there was to be its opposite, and the transition fascinated. No one wanted to miss a moment.

But this man would have been hard not to stare at. In contrast to the pirates, generally shaped like barrels, he was tall and slender. They were dressed in a motley collection of colours, he in soberest black. Their faces were as rounded as their bellies, his thin and long. What separated them most, though, was the colouring. The pirates to a man had the black hair and burned complexions of their race and trade. Their prisoner was so white he looked as if he had never seen the sun, but had spent his life underground, in places such as this. A pallor only emphasised by the long, curly red hair that fringed his face in a halo of flame.

In only one way was the condemned man akin to his captors – he was utterly, sprawlingly drunk.

Beneath his mask, Gregoras licked his lips. He could have used a draught himself. But vying for the barrel that the newcomers were even now tipping on its side, seeking dregs, would have drawn attention he would prefer to avoid.

It was hopeless. And he could sense that the bloody climax was approaching. The flames beneath the cauldron were lapping violently up its sides, steam was escaping from cracked seals, forming on the ceiling and running in sudden spurts onto men who yelped, then leaned closer. While the roundest, sweatiest pirate there had just taken his hand from the back of the prisoner’s head and was now fumbling beneath his robes.

Hopeless
. Gregoras turned to go. He had no desire to witness life’s sudden end. He’d seen it enough, from very close at hand.

Then the prisoner spoke – and the language halted him. He had spent half a year shackled on a slave galley’s bench with nothing to do but row, try not to die … and learn the tongue of the slave shackled next to him.

The words were spoken in English. And they turned Gregoras back into the room, with a little hope.

The words were: ‘Come on then, ye bastard. At least I’ll have some company at the gates of hell.’

With liquor, it was always a puzzling transition for John Grant. One moment he was happily laughing at the situation – in this case, the absurdity of him, a lad from Strathspey, dying in some cellar God-knows-where, at the hands of pirates, Christ on a carthorse, at the behest of the Turk, may his liver boil, for knowledge he was sure he no longer possessed. The next he was angry. No, not merely angry: red-eyed furious. He had it from his father. One moment the mellowest of drunks, the next, striking out at any he could reach for reasons he didn’t explain.

Well, John Grant had his reasons. These fish-fuckers were going to kill him. He had little fear of dying and few reasons to linger longer in this world. He’d given up all he loved when he’d taken the exile’s road. He had found nothing worth living for upon it. But that didn’t mean he wished his death to serve this sea scum’s purposes. And after he’d made them the finest aqua vitae seen in this desert of decent
al-kohl
?

Ingratitude, that was it. Ingratitude had always made him mad. Like the time he was expelled from the university in St Andrews just because he blew up a very small barn. Had he not been close to a major chemical revelation? And when he returned to his glen to share his discoveries with his family, his clan, they rejected him. Well, he’d show them too.

There was a toast they gave at home and John Grant spoke it as he slowly unfolded himself from behind the table. It was usually pledged to someone else, but Grant decided to give it to himself. ‘May I be half an hour in heaven before the devil knows I’m dead,’ he whispered in Gaelic.

Stanko had found what he’d sought in his robes and produced it now – one of the largest and dirtiest knives Grant had ever seen. ‘What do you say, German?’ he said, his piggy eyes narrowing as he tried to focus on the man rising before him.

John Grant looked down. ‘This,’ he replied, in Croat this time, pulling a small stoppered vial from his belt. ‘And for the last bloody time, I’m Scots, you pig’s arse.’ Flicking the plug off, he lifted a seal from the still, squinted against the sudden gush of steam that exploded out, and tipped the contents of the vial in.

Gregoras was already moving. He had been in his uncle’s cellar once when a mistake had been made. Something added in incorrect proportions. The results had been devastating.

He heard the whine of the still, saw froth bubbling from its seals. Stanko saw him coming. ‘Who are you?’ he said, starting to rise, turning to his men. ‘Who’s this cunt?’

Gregoras grabbed an edge of the table. It was not huge, but it was solid oak and he had to bend to tip it over onto its side. Then he jumped over it and yanked the red-haired man over it too.

There was a moment of silence. Silent men anyway, for the equipment was still frothing and emitting a low, almost animal groan. Until Stanko leaned over the table and stared blearily down. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

Gregoras peered up. He couldn’t think of anything to say. And then he didn’t have to, because the room exploded.

The force of it drove the table back, tipping it against them. Men screamed, some in terror, some in instant agony, as pieces of metal and glass drove into flesh. There had been a few lamps, but all of these were blown out save one that hung from a hook on the ceiling. It wasn’t dislodged but swung violently from side to side, shafts of light piercing the acrid smoke that almost instantly filled the room. Those who weren’t screaming were coughing.

Someone must have got the single door open, because there was a sudden rush of air, the smoke sucked away. Gregoras shook the cloak, dislodging the debris that had accumulated. His face and the Scot’s were about a hand’s breadth apart.

‘And who, by Christ, are you?’ John Grant asked, in Croat.

There was no time to reply before another voice interrupted. ‘That was my question.’

Stanko was looking down at them again, the same bemused expression as before in the too-close-together eyes. Only one thing was different, Gregoras noticed. The pirate chief now had a large shard of glass sticking through his neck. He seemed to notice it too, the moment Gregoras did. He squinted at what protruded just below his chin, reached fingers up to explore. When he touched one jagged end, his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell away from their view.

Gregoras was up on the instant, dragging the Scot to standing, assessing the room. Those who were not badly wounded or dead were dazed, coughing against the lingering smoke, staring wide-eyed before them. ‘Come, and quickly,’ he said, and tugged the other man around the table and over the writhing pirate chief.

‘A moment.’ John Grant dipped down and snatched up a satchel that had spilled to the floor. He straightened. ‘Guud. Now, where are we going?’ Grant was staring amiably at the havoc they were stepping through. His ears were still ringing with the explosion, which had also driven out his previous fury. A man was leading him somewhere. Speaking English of all languages. He thought it unlikely that a demon guiding him to hell would be speaking English. Or perhaps the words of his last toast were being honoured: the devil didn’t know he was dead yet, with so many more obvious sinners to deal with.