A Place Called Armageddon (41 page)

Two eyes, dark holes in an oval of grimy white, stared up. ‘Will you get off of me, you great Greek lump? You’re squashing the future heirs of the Clan Grant.’

Gregoras rose, gently pulling his cloak off the prone man, who shakily stood. ‘Good to see you too, Scotsman. Can you tell me why it is that whenever I see you, you are always blowing things up?’

‘It’s my job, do ye ken?’ Teeth bared in a smile, splitting the almost solid grime. ‘An’ I love it.’

Gregoras peered closer. ‘Well, this last accident has taken your eyebrows.’

‘Ach, they went two weeks ago. No loss. I’ve discovered that it’s safer not to have bodily hair. Less to burn.’ He grinned again. ‘What make you here?’

Gregoras gestured to the twenty men behind him. ‘I was told it might be time, for …’ He pointed down the still smoking stairwell. ‘The Turk is close, is he not?’

‘Aye. But not that close.’ Grant slapped at an ember glowing on his doublet. ‘Come,’ he said, moving towards the steps. ‘We have a little time.’ He glanced back at Gregoras, who had not moved. ‘Don’t worry, man. Everything that can explode has exploded. For now.’

‘It’s the “for now” that concerns me,’ grunted Gregoras, reluctantly following.

Grant halted, looked back at the guards. ‘You can tell your men to rest up but be ready for my call. And tell them there won’t be room down there for those great bloody halberds. Swords are too big really. Long daggers and short axes will do the trick.’

Gregoras turned back, nodded at his lieutenant, who had heard as well as he. The Scot always spoke as if addressing a parade ground. The men started shedding weaponry, and Gregoras followed his friend down into the smoking pit.

He could see nothing at first, but Grant obviously could, for a lantern was lit, its beam slicing through the clearing smoke which was being sucked up the stairwell. Coughing, Gregoras looked about a large stone cellar. Several barrels and various pieces of glass and metal equipment were scattered about, and his feet crunched on shards. ‘Has the explosion destroyed much of your work?’ he asked.

Grant was setting a table upright, picking up a stone bowl. ‘Ach, no. This place looked much as you see. It was quite a small experiment, truly.’ He held the bowl out. The bottom was scorched and smoked slightly. ‘I thought I had the way of it sorted. It works seven times out of ten, but …’ He sighed, broke off.

‘The way of what?’ Gregoras asked.

‘Why, Greek Fire, of course.’ Grant shook his head. ‘It’s the proportions that are difficult. How much of that resin we brought from Chios to mix with the oxidising agent …’ He held up a plate; Gregoras got a whiff of foulness and coughed. ‘Aye,’ Grant laughed. ‘Bird shit, lovingly scraped off rocks on the shore. Full of saltpetre but of a dubious quality.’ He put down the bowl. ‘If you want to clear your head, take a sniff at that barrel.’

Tentatively, Gregoras leaned down over liquid, inhaled … and his head whirled at the sharp scent. He had to reach to a table to steady himself. ‘Aye,’ laughed Grant. ‘You don’t want to sniff too much of it. Makes you feel drunk and gives you a worse headache than that aqua vitae I was distilling for the pirates.’ He bent forward, sniffed himself. ‘It’s called naphtha, from some place east of here, name of Irak. It’s what does the burning. But I didn’t stabilise it enough, so …’ He gestured at his charred clothes, then continued, ‘Speaking of aqua vitae … could you use a drink?’

Gregoras’s head was still whirling a little. But if he was about to fight, a tot of the Scotsman’s liquor would not harm, but help. Just one. Two, and he’d want five. And then he might get careless. ‘Where do you keep it?’ he said.

‘In my quarters. Here …’ he replied, and led the way to a door in one of the walls. It gave onto a room of contrast to the one they’d left. Here was order, a bed, a basin, books and scrolls upon a table. The one thing out of place was the large glass vessel, the cauldron below it heated from a small fire, drops condensing and running through the alembic into a stoppered jar.

Grant lifted a jug and poured two measures. ‘Death to the Turk,’ he declared, and the two men shot the liquor back. It was far smoother than Gregoras had feared, and he was tempted to break his rule. But he put the mug down. ‘Should we not get ready to kill them now?’ he said.

‘There’s time.’ Grant sat, poured himself another, smiled when Gregoras demurred. ‘I have skilled men watching for signs.’ He pointed to the room they’d come from. ‘There is a door there that leads to a countermine that’s dug about twenty paces before the bastion. I’m almost certain that the Turk mine has nearly reached it.’

‘Almost? How can you know at all?’

‘Well, it’s a science, like the other,’ Grant replied, lifting his mug to stare at it. ‘If I were the Turk, I know where I would dig, for I have examined the soil all around and it’s only fit, solid enough to support shafts, in a few spots along the whole length of these walls. Then it’s a question of studying the lines over there, seeing where the Turk is trying to make us
not
look.’ He put down the mug, jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘He’s about, och, twenty-three paces that way, by my reckoning. Except of course it’s not Turks who dig, but our fellow Christians, Serbs from Novo Brodo, by the tongue I’ve heard a few times at night. I recognise it and know their skills well, for I learned the same trade beneath the same ground as they.’

‘Twenty-three paces? And you twenty out?’ Gregoras half stood. ‘Should we not …?’

‘Sit!’ commanded the Scot. ‘My men will tell us in plenty of time. And for God’s sake have another dram.’ He poured another tot before Gregoras could cover his mug. ‘You make me nervous with this abstemiousness. And I haven’t seen you for an age.’ He grinned as Gregoras sipped. ‘So? What news of the world?’

Whenever the people of the city met, each would ask the other for news – whether the ship the emperor had sent out two weeks before had returned; whether the latest Turkish assaults on the boom had come close to succeeding, so the enemy’s two fleets could unite; how many more attacks upon the walls the city could resist, for the Turks had come at night twice recently, once at the St Romanus gate, once at the palace, and had only just, and after long hours of hard fighting, been driven back each time. So Gregoras talked of his knowledge of this, and of something more recent, which he had witnessed himself at the emperor’s side: Constantine, striding into a hall full of shouting Venetians and Genoans, and putting his body between the rivals, between the many who had drawn their daggers there, accusing each other of cowardice, of betrayal. Using his voice and his tears to calm them, to beg that they save their hatred for the enemy and not give him succour and their own people despair with their enmity. He had succeeded in forcing an accord. But there would be no love between the Italian rivals.

Gregoras paused to take a small sip and Grant interrupted. ‘My friend, I have heard all this and more than perhaps even you know. This, my finest distillation,’ he said, lifting his mug, ‘draws all officers here eventually. There are nights when I cannot move and feel more owner of some dark bothy in my native Highlands than a man of science.’ He shook his head. ‘Nay, lad. I was asking after news of you. How’s the girl?’

Gregoras was never quite sure which drunken night it was on their journey from Korcula that he had told Grant the whole tale. The drinking had also drowned his memories of what exactly he’d told. Not so for Grant, who seemed to recall everything, perfectly. He thought immediately of Sofia, that laugh she’d given when she’d surprised him with Thakos. That look in her eye. He had not come near her since. He was not sure what he would do when he did. Theon was the emperor’s adviser as Gregoras was his soldier. He did not wish to see tears in Constantine’s eyes, calling on two brothers not to fight and so aid the enemy, just as he called on the Italians.

‘I have not seen her in a while,’ he said.

‘Not since Ragusa. I know.’

Gregoras frowned. ‘What girl do you speak of?’

‘The one you saved from those assailants. The pocket Venus who showed her gratitude by fucking your eyes from their sockets that same night.’ He grinned. ‘What was her name?’

Truly, Gregoras thought, I have to be more restrained in what I tell people when in my cups. But the memory the Scot conjured was not unpleasant; far from it. ‘Leilah,’ he said, with a quick smile.

‘To her, then, lad,’ Grant said, lifting his mug. ‘And to a swift reunion of your loins.’

It was a toast Gregoras could not refuse. Draining the mug, he felt the liquor surge through him, bringing a question: where was Leilah now? Would she meet him again in Ragusa as he had offered? If Constantinople survived, would he even be returning there?

Grant raised the flagon. If he had kept his eyebrows, he’d have raised them too, so it was his brow that wrinkled in query. Gregoras considered another tot. He’d had two and they tasted fine. But then a man rushed in, one near as filthy as the Scot.

‘M … m … master,’ he said. ‘They are close.’

‘So soon? I doubt they’ll be here yet awhile.’ Reluctantly, Grant put the flagon down. ‘But just in case, Lascaris, order your men down to wait here, close for our call. Let them breathe while they can.’

Gregoras moved swiftly through the wrecked cellar and to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Come,’ he called, and heard the order passed, his men assembling.

He turned back into the stone room, saw the Scot, a pickaxe in his hand, standing by a now open door that led into a deeper darkness. His teeth glimmered in the torchlight. ‘Welcome to Hades,’ he said.

‘Should I give you a coin, Charon, for the ferrying of my soul?’ Gregoras muttered as he stepped past him into blackness.

‘Maybe later. You may survive, if you listen carefully.’ Grant moved in front of him as he spoke, and Gregoras followed, slipping the first two steps, for the ground he expected to be level sloped. And he found he could see, for there were torches every five paces, their flickering light falling on earthen walls and roof and the wooden props that supported them. The tunnel was narrow and low enough to make him uncomfortable, and Gregoras suddenly found himself yearning for the ship he’d vowed never to take again, the open space of its decks. Then the passage levelled, widening into a chamber that he could stand up straight in, and reach neither wall with outstretched arms from its centre.

It also ended in another earth wall, the man who fetched them pressing his ear against it. ‘Are they … beyond that?’ Gregoras whispered, hand going to his short sword’s grip.

Grant laughed, replied in a normal tone, ‘You do not need to whisper. They cannot hear us yet.’

‘How do you know?’

Grant pointed. ‘That tells me.’

Gregoras followed the finger. On a little shelf left untrimmed in the building of the wall, he saw a drum resting, a small one such as a child might use. ‘Do you have time for music down here?’ He could not help the whisper.

‘Nay, lad, look closer.’ Gregoras bent. ‘Do you see the pebbles upon the skin? See how they move?’ Gregoras nodded. ‘They bounce with each stroke of a Serbian pickaxe upon the wall. They do not bounce too high … yet. But soon enough we’ll have to turn from these stones to those.’ He grabbed a torch from its bracket and brought it nearer to the wall. The light indeed glistened on other stones, larger ones, embedded in the earth. ‘When the first one of those falls, that’s the time not just for whispers, but for silence. The Turk will be just a few heartbeats away.’

His lieutenant coughed behind him. Gregoras turned to see him in the narrow doorway, waiting for orders. He swallowed. ‘What would you have us do, Scotsman?’

Grant was bent, studying the pebbles on the drum. ‘Hmm,’ he said, more softly. ‘Perhaps a little closer than I thought.’ He straightened. ‘Do? The Serb miners will be there, thinking they have some time yet before they get underneath our bastion. But they will be on guard for this countermine too, so Turkish soldiers will not be far behind. Their plan is to dig beneath the tower, prop up the walls with wood, then burn that down, causing the earth to fall in and the tower above with it. My men will do the same to their diggings, cut down their props, collapse their mine.’ That glimmer came again, lips parted over teeth. ‘All you have to do is drive the Turks away, fifty paces will do, and keep them away long enough for us to do that. Kill as many of their miners as you can, for they are irreplaceable … Oh, and listen hard for my call …’ he pulled a small silver whistle from his doublet, ‘above the dagger play. Because we cannot hold the earth up for long.’

‘How long?’ was all Gregoras got out before he heard the man at the wall hiss, ‘Master?’

Both turned. The man was pointing at a stone in the wall. It seemed to jiggle and then, quite suddenly, it fell. ‘Hmm! Yes. Swifter than I thought,’ Grant whispered. ‘Fetch your men.’

Gregoras turned, hissed a command down the passage.

Grant gestured at his man, who moved away from listening and snatched the torch from the wall, stabbing it into the ground, snuffing flame, putting them into the dark. All Gregoras could do, he did – unstrap his buckler from his back and slip his hand through its grips, draw his long-bladed dagger, listen. He heard his men’s harsh breaths as they filed into the darkness, the sudden fear it brought making them inhale deeply in air that was already foul, and limited. He pulled at the shirt beneath the breastplate, freeing its grip from his neck. He felt a little faint, and reached a hand out to the earthen wall to steady himself. Behind him, men armed themselves. Before …

He could hear it now, the muffled fall of metal on earth. It was rhythmical, a steady time being kept, and he thought he could also hear something beyond that, some hum. When he listened more closely, he recognised it. The men the other side were singing a hymn, one he knew well. Serbs, he thought, of the Orthodox faith as they were. Kill as many of them as you can, the Scotsman had said. Well, Christians killed each other as regularly as Christians killed Turks. The sultan had thousands of Christ’s followers in his army, while a Turkish prince, Orhan, a pretender to the throne of Osman, defended the walls with his infidels. And then there was Amir.