A Place Called Armageddon by C. C. Humphreys

the East, its tone refined. I would guess you are from the city, and well born.’
    He grunted his reply. ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘Then why not return there? The views your poet speaks of are there.’ Her eyes searched his. ‘So is your heart, is it not?’
    ‘No!’ He was surprised at the savagery with which he shouted it – until he remembered what he’d already revealed to this stranger. And so he did not hold himself back, as he had not held back before. ‘That city took my heart and crushed it. It took my face and destroyed it. It is a sickened place, it is about to receive its mortal wound and I … I could not be happier.’ He turned to gaze out to the east, his voice quietening, yet losing none of its intensity. ‘I will never return there, not even to gloat among its blackened stones. Never!’
    Passion again, of a different kind. Leilah liked her men to be passionate. And she was always interested when a man declared he would not do the very thing he must.
    In the silence after his storm, a bell tolled. She counted ten. ‘I must go,’ she said, turning.
    Anger passed from his face. ‘As must I.’ He reached, caught her hand. ‘But I meant it when I said I would like you to return.’
    ‘And I was serious when I said I would like to.’ She squeezed his fingers hard, then stepped away. ‘Do you have anywhere for my … relief?’
    He gestured to the back door. She picked up her bag, went out onto the walled porch. She squatted, then used rainwater to wash herself, shivering the while.
    By the time she returned, Gregoras was dressed. She finished dressing too, and finally they both donned their masks. Once done, they drew back and stared at each other. ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I prefer you bare.’
    He chuckled. ‘And I you. But the stone merchants I go to meet might not.’
    As he opened the door, he stooped beside it to pick up a bag and something else. She smiled. ‘Will the stone merchants appreciate a crossbow?’
    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