A Place Called Armageddon (11 page)

No one stirred to stop them as they crossed the cellar floor. It was only when they reached the foot of the stairs that a voice came out with more than moans. ‘Stop them,’ Stanko said, lifting himself off the floor.

He was used to being obeyed, and swiftly. Stunned though they were, those who were still alive in the cellar rose to do so. ‘Go,’ Gregoras yelled, pushing the other man hard, drawing a small dagger at the same time. As the Scot stumbled up the stairs, the first pirate lunged at Gregoras. Ducking, he jabbed up, putting the blade swiftly, shallowly into the flesh just beneath his attacker’s chin. The man collapsed in the doorway with a cry. It was not a mortal wound, but he had lost blades in men when he had struck too deep and he had a feeling he would need all the weapons he had in what lay ahead. Besides, a blood-gushing pirate in the entranceway might slow the pursuit a little.

He turned to the stairs. The Scot was sprawled across them. ‘Ma legs dinna seem to want to work,’ he giggled. Bending, Gregoras got his arms around the other man’s chest and heaved him to his feet. Grant was all height and little weight but he was still not easy to drag up stairs. Gaining level ground, Gregoras ran the two of them down a small corridor, shoved Grant hard against the front door, reached round him to the handle, turned it and threw the Scot into the street, where he fell straight down, curled himself up and sighed.

Gregoras looked both ways. No one seemed yet to have reacted to the explosion – though from behind him he could hear Stanko roaring, the man he’d knifed screaming and feet crashing onto the stairs.

He bent to the prone man. ‘Listen,’ he hissed. ‘If those men catch us, they’ll kill us both. I have no intention of dying in this fleapit town. So either you get up and run, or I’ll let them spill your guts into the gutter.’

John Grant rolled onto his back. ‘Beautifully phrased, my friend. For did not the great Homer say …’ He belched extravagantly, assumed a pose to declaim.

‘Fuck Homer,’ Gregoras shouted. ‘Run!’

John Grant ran. The first few steps were to one side, the next to the other. But with Gregoras seizing an arm, the two of them began to make progress up the narrow, wet, steeply ascending street. They’d gone twenty paces before the first pirate emerged, and bellowed, ‘There! They are—’

His last word was cut off. Something took him in the back, throwing him forward. The two men ran on.

Leilah wasn’t sure why she shot. Instinct, she supposed. She had heard the faint crump of an explosion, then seen Gregoras bursting onto the street, accompanied by another. Relief at seeing him was mixed with puzzlement – she’d watched him go in from her vantage in the abandoned house. But who was that with him? Then the two had begun running, a pursuer had emerged and she had shot. It was only when the man fell that she looked again at the fleeing men – and caught a glimpse of this other as he passed beneath a lamp above some better-off-citizen’s door. His hair was red. A brighter red than she had seen even sported by the whores of Aleppo. It was not a red you saw often in the Adriatic; it belonged more to northern races than the darker locals.

And then she realised who he must be. When she’d rapidly left the tavern Gregoras had entered the previous night, she’d guessed he’d been there for the same purpose as she. Now they were bound to each other, did it matter which of them got the Turk’s reward? But the swaying, fleeing figures told her different – he was there to rescue the German.

She’d wasted her bolt. And her quarry had turned a corner. Snatching up bag and crossbow, she ran down the stairs and opened the door onto the
ulica
just as more pirates ran out of the house. A large man was shouting louder than the others, one hand clutching a long, curved sword, the other clamped to his neck.

She counted three, and followed.

It was not easy manoeuvring a drunk over slick cobbles. Shouts behind pushed Gregoras on, and the two men soon stumbled into the main square. It was at the top of the hill, the town built below and around it. Over the square loomed the bulk of the cathedral, St Marka, and Gregoras ran into its shadows, pausing for breath and thought.

Streets ran off down the hill from the square on both sides. In his brief stay there he had learned that the former lords of the island, the Venetians, had taken advantage of its siting to construct a unique system of air flow. For when the harsh winter
bura
blew, it could chill the stone balls of a statue. So the streets on the side of the town that faced it were curved to minimise the wind’s chilling effect. But the other side of the island would receive the mistral. In high summer heat, that wind could cool. So the
ulicas
that faced it were made straight to air the town.

If he ran down one street, the way curved. Far harder to shoot the bows that many of the pirates would carry. If they ran down the other … they would be easy targets all the way to the water.

But as he stood in the shadow of the cathedral, pursuers’ voices getting ever closer, Gregoras could not remember whether the curved ones were to the left or the right. Nearing shouts meant he had to choose. And the decision could cost his life.

He poked the man beside him, and got a snore in reply. Putting one hand over the man’s mouth, he jabbed harder with the other. ‘Listen, Englishman,’ he whispered in that tongue, as Grant’s eyes opened, ‘we have to run now, and run fast, or we die. If you wish to do that, you can stay here till they find you. But I am going.’

‘And I’m coming with ye.’ John Grant had only slept for one minute. But he’d woken with an awful pounding in his head – and the equally vivid certainty that, despite the pain, he wanted to live. ‘By the by, I’m not bloody English, all right?’

The two men got into a crouch. Yelling pirates burst into the square. Gregoras seized an arm and moved. Right.

Wrong. As soon as he entered the
ulica
he knew it. He could see lights in the distance – ship lamps on water. The alley ran straight to it.

Shouts came from behind them. ‘There!’ they heard Stanko cry. ‘A gold
hyperpyron
for each of their heads!’

‘Run,’ Gregoras yelled.

The two men ran. Almost immediately something glanced off the left wall and skittered down the street. ‘Arrows. Weave!’ Gregoras commanded, darting to the side.

‘What, you mean like this?’ John Grant muttered. He always woke up sarcastic after too much aqua vitae. Wet cobbles, slickened from an overflowing gutter, and smooth leather boot soles took care of his swerving. As it was, he had to fight to keep upright and moving, his long body jerking up and down for balance, more sliding than running, like a boy on ice.

He fell and Gregoras, grabbing for him, went down too. Arrows flew overhead where they’d been. Judging from the cries behind them, men were tumbling there too.

Behind them all, at the top of the
ulica
, Leilah halted. She regarded the sliding, slipping men, the pursuers and the pursued, and smiled. Yet she did not dwell on the humour of the spectacle but pulled a bolt from the quiver and placed it in her mouth. Unslinging her hunting bow from her back, she put her foot in the stirrup, bent, breathed deep and with three fingers smoothly drew the string up till it notched. She took the bolt, moistened her lips, drew the feathers over the wetness, evening the flights, then lifted the crossbow and laid the bolt in its groove. A near-full moon gave her light enough to see. And since the
bura
was blowing on the other side of the island, wind did not affect the straight street. The men’s jerking movements did, the way they blended together and suddenly flew apart. She had to be careful. She did not wish to shoot her man of destiny.

She saw the German fall again, heard the pirates whoop as they ran faster, closer. She believed that Gregoras would survive, because she had seen him in that dream, in her charts. The other, the engineer that Mehmet feared would thwart his conquest, she had no mystical thoughts about. She only knew that to aid that conquest, and all that it would bring her, he must die.

It was in Allah’s hands, as ever. As the men below merged into a mass, then separated out again, she breathed out on one word – ‘
Inshallah
’ – and shot.

Gregoras snatched at the German or Englishman or whatever the hell he was, who was falling again, with two of their pursuers less than twenty paces off. Another group of five, including the shouting Stanko, were the same distance behind.

Thinking briefly that he’d had better odds in that other alley in Ragusa, cross-handed he drew his dagger and falchion – the short, heavy-bladed weapon ideal, for the
ulica
was narrow. The two pirates skittered, slowing, curved swords appearing from beneath folds of cloak. He braced himself, wondering which of them he should take first.

A hand closed over his dagger hand. ‘Gie me one of them,’ John Grant cried. ‘I’ll show ’em, murderin’ bastards.’ As he fumbled for Gregoras’s dagger, he raised his leather satchel high like a shield and cried, ‘Craigelachie.’

‘Let me go.’ Gregoras wrenched free of the other man’s grip, and turned – too late to do more than lift his blade against the one that fell. Steel clashed on steel with a force that sent pain shooting through his arm. The second man arrived a second after the first, his sword about to fall too. Gregoras threw up his dagger blade square across his head, though he was sure the scimitar would snap it.

The curved blade never fell. Something opened in the assailant’s throat like a second mouth, spewing forth steel. A crossbow bolt, barely hindered by neck gristle, slammed into Grant’s still-raised satchel, knocking him over.

The other man stepped back, giving himself room to swing. Closing, Gregoras punched him with the falchion’s curved finger guard, straight and hard on the nose. The man went down, wrapped in his dying companion. Beyond them, the other pirates had caught up. Yet their eagerness had increased their speed. Trying to stop before their fallen, writhing comrades, the first two lost their feet, slammed onto the ground, slid into what became a mound of bodies. Those behind them, Stanko leading, fared no better.

A flesh wall blocked the alley. It was a chance. ‘Go,’ Gregoras yelled, lifting and turning the stunned Scot, pushing him from stumble to run.

Leilah had just raised the crossbow, loaded again and brought it to sight, when the two figures disappeared round the corner. She lowered the weapon, watched the pile of pirates finally separate, rise, run, leaving the man she’d killed by mistake on the cobbles. She considered pursuing, taking another shot. But Korcula’s citizens were stirring, roused by the mayhem. Doors were opening, voices screaming for the night watch. She would find it hard to explain her armed self, once they discovered she was a she. It was time to vanish.

As the yelling pirates rounded the corner, Leilah aimed into the sky, pulled the trigger. It was a waste of one of her beautifully fashioned bolts, but she couldn’t remove it to shoot; it was too hard on the weapon, all the energy that should have launched the projectile jarring to the stock and bow, while straining the braided rope that bound them together.

As she turned back into the square, filling with the first of the townsfolk, she shrugged. She would have another chance to catch up with this German, if Allah willed it. If not …

‘
Inshallah
,’ she said. Pulling the crossbow over her shoulder, covering herself and it with her cape, she headed down one of the curving alleys towards her vessel.

Gregoras had left his skiff in a cluster of similar fishing boats, indistinguishable each from the other. But he had told its Ragusan captain to hang a red lamp from his mast, and it was this that he spotted as he burst out of the water gates and onto the docks. ‘There,’ he yelled, shoving his companion towards it. Glancing back, he saw the pursuit emerge from the gateway, halt, spot them, start running again. They had barely a hundred and fifty paces of lead. He could only hope that the considerable purse he’d given the captain had bought obedience. His order had been to keep the sails furled on the mast, oars in the rowlocks and the vessel on a single tie, ready to cast off fast.

They reached the boat. The captain rose from behind the gunwales. In a glance, Gregoras saw that he had not been obeyed. Three ropes held the vessel to the dock. The sail lay in folds upon the deck.

Shouts came from behind them as he and Grant scrambled aboard, the small vessel tipping with their weight and velocity. Steadying, Gregoras bellowed, ‘Cast off!’

The man shook his head. ‘Feel that?’ He tipped his head into the breeze. ‘You know what they say: “When the
bura
sails, you don’t.”’

Instead of hot anger, Gregoras felt as cold as that wind. ‘
You
don’t,’ he said, and bending at the knees, he placed his hand in the other man’s chest, stood straight and launched the captain over the side of his vessel into the water. Using his falchion, he slashed the three ropes in three sharp strokes. ‘Row!’ he yelled, then leaned over to the dock, giving it a huge shove. The boat moved away, as Grant gathered the oars and dropped them into their locks.

The first two pirates had reached the jetty and were running down it, screaming. The rest were close behind. Reaching over his shoulder, Gregoras lifted his crossbow above his head with one hand, the other delving into the quiver at his hip. Thrusting the front end onto the deck, he shoved his foot into the stirrup, pulled the string to its notch, had the weapon raised as he dropped the bolt into its channel. There was no question of aiming, no time to do so. The closer of the pirates was three paces away when he pulled the trigger.

The bolt sent the pirate flying back, his sword arm smashing into the other’s face. Both sprawled on the dock. Grant had got one oar in, was struggling with the other. Dropping his weapon, Gregoras grabbed the second oar, leaned out and pushed it against the jetty. A big shove, and some current began to take them. There was now a patch of water between them and their pursuers.

An arrow smacked into the mast. Dropping the other oar into its lock, Gregoras shouted, ‘Row,’ and bent again for his bow.