A Place Called Armageddon by C. C. Humphreys Page A

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