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

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