"What was that the fellow said, Mister Rahl?" Lewrie enquired of his Prussian ex-army artillerist, once Rodgers and Leutnant Kolodzcy had taken themselves below to his great-cabins for drinks in celebration.
"Herr Kapitan"-Rahl blushed-"de herr leutnant calls him de 'bastard'… de whore-son, unt son of an ape. De fisherman, he calls herr Leutnant Kolodzcy de 'Ostereicher Schwule.' In Cherman, he says dis, herr Kapitan. De zierlich Ostereicher Schwule."
"And that means…?" Lewrie prompted.
"Ach, Gott, herr Kapitan," Rahl whinnied. "It means de petite Austrian queer."
"Genau, Mister Rahl." Lewrie chuckled. "Exactly. Zierlich Ostereicher… Schwule? Damme, I must remember that."
CHAPTER 3
Leutnant Kolodzcy's certainty didn't look so good by dusk. The dhow had sailed itself out of sight down the coast from whence it had come, and as sundown came and went, and the lanthorns were lit on deck, and the wind died away, their anchorage became an oily-smooth and undisturbed millpond. They sent launches ashore to barter for fresh bread. But that was the only contact they had with the locals.
They were up and out on deck at the beginning of the Morning Watch, hands sluicing and sanding after stowing their hammocks, with the ship enveloped in a windless mist that denied them the sight of anything past the first fringe of trees ashore. By half-past four, they stood-to at the guns for Dawn Quarters, as they did every morning at sea, outside of a friendly harbour, should anything threatening loom up with the sunrise.
A faint lifting scend of offshore waves, the back-waves from the slight rale of surf on the shoreline, made Jester creak and complain as she was lifted and gently rocked, the anchorage still as glassy as some mirror's face and the waves too weak to break or foam, like lakewater.
Far off in the fog, on a rocky point far beyond the village, came the trout-splashing and grumbly yelps of seals at their morning feedings, now that it was safe to venture from their gravelly beaches after a dark and moonless evening. Monk seals, Buchanon had told him when they'd seen their first at Corfu, another variation of Lir's Children, writ-| ten about by Pliny, Plutarch, Homer and Aristotle. Wary as seals were of humans, he'd thought it odd that they were there at all, so near the rude settlement; perhaps it was a temporary fishing camp and not a permanent one.
By five, Lewrie sent the people below for their breakfasts after securing the guns. Aspinall came up from Copper Alley with coffee for them all, as the mists thinned slightly, expanding their circle of sight to about two cables. Toulon was especially playful and active after an eye-opening snack from the cooks, scampering about the quarterdeck and footballing a champagne cork from the previous nights gloomy supper in the great-cabins-pouncing and "killing" over and over.
In spite of his best intentions not to, Lewrie had been forced to treat Rodgers and Kolodzcy, to dine them in, which had meant breaking out a half dozen bottles of bubbly for them. Then he'd watch it positively flood down their maws with little hope of enjoying much himself!
"Breakfast be ready for ya, an' t'other gentlemen, in a quarter hour, sir," Aspinall prophecied.
"Good," Rodgers said with a bleak expression, between restoring sips. He and Kolodzcy had come aboard, just about the time the gunners had begun to secure the artillery. And, Lewrie thought, both of them looked so "headed" by their night's intake that a hot kiss and a cold breakfast might have killed them.
"Fine." Lewrie yawned, hunched into his boat-cloak against the raw nippiness of the mists and a rare predawn chill. "Thankee."
"Fresh bread, lashin's o' butter an' jam, sirs," Aspinall said with good cheer. "An' mutton chops, sirs. Do ya wish me t'break out yer last crock o' mint jelly, Captain, sir?"
Lewrie nodded sleepily. "Aye, Aspinall, that'd be right fine."
Rodgers looked a tad queasy at the mention of mutton chops, and Leutnant Kolodzcy just looked… half dead, and upset by it.
"Gottverdammte Nebel," he groused at the fog, stalking about in a white silk-lined cape. "Unt, gottverdamme die Serpski," he added with a petulant wheeze. He produced a mauve silk handkerchief.
Lewrie felt a warmth along his left calf, the brush of a tail as it idly flagged his booted leg. Toulon had left off "killing" his cork to come to his side and look up with his yellow eyes half slit. Lewrie bent down to rub his chops and head, with Toulon half on his hind legs to receive his rubs.
"Achoo!" Leutnant Kolodzcy let go with a rather kittenish sneeze.
Toulon, startled, leaped atop the taut-rolled and tightly packed canvas hammocks stowed on the quarterdeck rails over the waist.
"Scare you, puss?" Lewrie teased.
But the cat stiffened, facing outward, his whiskers well forrud and his neck straining. His tail-tip began to quiver and fret as he let out with a quizzical "Murr-row!"
But he wasn't pointed towards the sounds of the seals, nor towards shore at all, where the village lay. Something about two points off the larboard bows had gotten his attention. A bit to seaward, deep in the mists.
"Company coming," Lewrie intuited. The year before, just one of the many odd, fey occurrences in this commission, Toulon had sensed the smuggler's tartane they'd been chasing along the Genoese Riviera, on a cool and windless dawn such as this one. Eerie, inexplicable-unless a body actually believed Mr. Buchanon's ancient blather, o' course!-but he had sniffed her out long before they'd spotted her.
"Oh… pshaw!" Rodgers groaned.
Too hungover t'say much else, Lewrie thought, grinning. After he saw them off, they'd surely had a brace more bottles of champagne in Pylades before retiring.
"Smell something, puss?" Lewrie asked. Toulon lifted his head to sample the air. Of course, he lowered his head to sniff hammocks, too. There could be a seaman going to sleep tonight in a blotch of ram-cat pee, Alan thought sourly, if this turns out to be a dead-bust!
"Murtff!" Toulon said, though, tail now thrashing vigourously, his forepaws clawing on the hammock canvas. He didn't sound anything near to happy. The cat let out a low, menacing trill, a "Wwhuurr!" of warning, and began to hunker down and bottle up.
"Company, sir," Lewrie reiterated, completely sure of his facts this time. He shared a wary glance with Knolles and Buchanon, who were more familiar with the eerie by then. It would be impossible to explain it all to Rodgers, anyway. It just was, no matter how improbable.
"Mister Knolles, pipe the starboard watch on deck. My respects to Mr. Crewe, and he is to reman the guns to larboard. Marines to get up and turn-to, double-quick," Lewrie intoned.
Toulon was peering outboard most intently by then, turning about to present himself sideways, as if to loom larger to a so far undiscovered challenger.
Then, from out of those mists where Toulon was staring…
"Boat!" Lewrie cried, the same time as the larboard bow lookout.
Ghostly, a dull grey phantasm that suddenly stood out stark upon that pearlescent fog… suddenly, there was a boat. A small, dhow like two-master. And, most ominously, a hint of others astern of her!
"Mmmuurrr!" Toulon moaned, rather murderous, capping it off with a vicious hiss-and finally, a spit.
"Sir!" Buchanon whispered from his left, pointing down over the larboard side, yet off to the larboard beam. "Lookit!"
Lewrie tore his gaze from the dhow, perhaps the very same one that had come near enough to "smoak" them the previous afternoon. He saw nothing.
"Lookit, sir!" Buchanon said with a shuddery hitch to his voice. "Closer aboard, Cap'um."
Wull, stop me! Alan frowned as he spotted something.
The sea was grey-dark, oil-slicked with dawnlight, and still so millpond-smooth and flat, with barely a wind-fleck, hardly a hint of a roller to disturb its faint glittering… yet disturbed by a tiny vee of a wake which spread back from the head of a seal. He saw the short be-whiskered muzzle, the sleek brown pate, a limpid eye… fleeing.
And far off, on the rocks unseen off the starboard bows, south of the village, there came faint splashing sounds, a fog-muffled dog-pack of frantic cacophany.
The bark of seals!
"Thought it a fair omen, havin' seals here, sir, after so many months," Mister Buchanon uneasily muttered. "Now, though… way 'ey're actin', Cap'um Lewrie…"
Andrews was on the quarterdeck, Cony by the larboard gangway bulwarks along with many of the crew, those from the West Country who had always believed, those newlies who'd seen and heard strange things and come to believe; especially after their ship's first eerie, eldritch encounter in the Bay of Biscay as she'd begun this commission, with the unspoken messages which came from the seals.
"Don't start, Mister Buchanon, 'tis tense enough already," Alan said, feeling a shiver go up his spine, yet trying to maintain outward calm for his superstitious hands, who were turning to stare at their "lucky" captain.
The seals came to him, to Jester. Lir s Children. Cursed or blessed they were, the Selkies of the ancient pagan myths, and harbingers of that forgotten god of the sea, Lir, who seemed to hold the ship, crew and captain in the cusp of his hand, his favourites of fortune… or his unwitting weapons. Lir's Children, the seals. And they were fleeing, splashing into the sea for safety, though greater, toothier terrors awaited them there, who made meals of them; all their playful curiosity abandoned in the face of perhaps an even greater danger.
"Oh, 'tis a bad sign, sir," Buchanon all but whimpered; him, a man grown to the fullness of his strength and courage. "A bad cess."
"A bad business for certain, Mister Buchanon," Lewrie agreed, clenching his jaws stonily expressionless. "No matter it is our commanding captains wish. Cess, though? Don't think so. Hope not."
" 'Ere's no good goin'ta come from 'is, Cap'um."
"Perhaps not, sir," Lewrie allowed, with a tilt of his head to one side. He reached down to stroke his cat down the back, trying to gentle and cosset him, but Toulon was having none of it, came within a hair of lashing out blind with one claw-sprung paw as he gave out one more heartfelt, menacing growl. Yet, instead of springing down to take himself below to the safety of the orlop, as he did during gun-drill or battle, he stayed-hunkered up and sheltering against Lewrie s cloak, and licking his chops in fear, but he stayed.
"If God is just, sir," Lewrie sighed, "and Lir means to watch over us, too, o' course… I think he's warnin' us. Not dooming, hmm?"
"Watch our backs, do we deal with 'ese… wotchyacallems…"
"Serbs, Mister Buchanon." Lewrie nodded. "Aye, we're warned."
There were five boats, Lewrie could take note by then. Small, mostly, no more than thirty-five to forty feet overall, the bulk of them. All rigged with two masts in Eastern, lateen, fashion. Following last of all, a three-masted spectre slowly emerged from the fog. She was long, lean and low, a galliot or xebec-a war galley-of about seventy-five to eighty-five feet in length. The sun had at last arisen, lancing over the Balkan mountaintops from the east, setting light to the mists so that half the dawn's horizon was set afire with a most foreboding crimson and saffron umbra that backlit the galliot and made her stand out starkly black, every bit of rigging, every sail, every peering crewman cut from black paper and plastered to the sunrise… a silhouetted apparition.
Their pirates, it seemed, had at last arrived-pirates they'd been sent to seek, to discover and enlist. But, Lewrie felt deeply in the pit of his stomach, pirates their seeming patron Lir wished to have no truck with.
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning-
And the frightened seals.
Warned, aye, Lewrie thought grimly; aye, and thankee.
Now that their quest was ended, and their dealings with these strange creatures was about to begin… they'd been damned well warned.
CHAPTER 4
"Like treadin' water 'mongst a pack o' sharks," Will Cony said, scowling hellish-black as the rakish craft approached within hailing distance, dividing and passing down the larboard side, between the village and Jester's starboard side, or astern to flaunt their courage, almost under Pylades' guns, and within "close pistol shot."
"Like the Lanun Rovers at Spratly Island," Lewrie whispered,
"Well, sir… least there's only th' six. An' not thirty of 'em, this time," Cony replied with a mirthless snicker. "Manageable."
"Odd, how things turn out," Captain Rodgers commented, flexing his fingers on the hilt of his small-sword. "Coincidence, hey? Think back. I could swear this is the same lot you drove off from that Dutch merchantman in th' Hvar channel, Commander Lewrie."
"Then they've already had a taste of our iron, sir," Lieutenant Knolles vowed. "Perhaps they'll know to mind their manners 'cause of it."
"Perhaps, indeed," Rodgers mused impatiently, waiting for their vaunting show of seamanship and braggadocio to end, and the negotiations to begin.
"Deuced cocky buggers, sirs," Midshipman Hyde decided to say for them all.
"Anyone see artillery?" Rodgers snapped.
"On the largest, sir," Lewrie pointed out. "Looks to be a pair of six-pounders forrud. She's gun-ports to either beam, but I can't see much beyond some very old, long-barrel swivels, or boat-guns."
"Just the one six-pounder or so forrud on the next-largest, sir," Midshipman Spendlove was quick to contribute. "And more swivels."
The seamen who crowded the rails of the pirate ships were armed, and were most happily brandishing their weapons, all but ululating like painted Red Indians. They were armed with curvy, scimitarlike swords and matching daggers, some very long and slim Arabee muskets with convoluted, curling butts, some inlaid with ivory or brass, like the Hindoo jezails Lewrie'd seen in the Far East, at Calcutta, or among the Mindanao pirates.
"Damme if 'at's a swivel-gun, sir," Buchanon exclaimed, pointing at the nearest forty-footer. "I could swear 'at's a falconet! A wrought-iron breech-loader! Barrel made o' hammer-welded iron rod bundles, an' hooped t'gether. Beer mug sorta iron cartridge gets stuck in the rear o' I th' barrel, an' wedged in place. Lord, sir, 'at was old in the days o' th' Spanish Armada! Blow up, peel apart, an' shoot backwards, if yer not careful with 'em, so 'twas said."
"Dhey are heffing grade need ohf you… unt your veapons, ja!" Leutnant Kolodzcy archly sniffed. "You see how I dell you? Ach, now we be beginnink."
"Dhey are heffing grade need ohf you… unt your veapons, ja!" Leutnant Kolodzcy archly sniffed. "You see how I dell you? Ach, now we be beginnink."
The local vessels had at last left off their pirouettes to show off their prowess, and their lack of fear, and were handing their sails and coming to anchor in a loose gaggle off Jesters bows, where they'd be safe from artillery fire. A boat was got down from the larger two-masted dhow and made its way to the galliot, even as a second boat was being hoisted over from her, and a boat-crew broke out her oars.
"What sort of side-party does a pirate captain rate, I wonder?" Lewrie japed. "What sort of honours should we award him, Leutnant Kolodzcy?"
"None, herr Kommandeur Lewrie," Kolodzcy prinked with asper sion. "You show him nothink. No gondempt… but no honours, eidder."
"No side-party, Mister Knolles. No pipes."
"Aye aye, sir."
The larger rowing boat from the galliot, another Levant-looking craft like a felucca without her single mast, was stroking over to the sloop of war, with two men in her stern-sheets, who stood while others sat and rowed or steered.
"De one from de dhow … de arschloch we speak, yesterday," Kolodzcy said sharply. "De odder, de taller-he ist dheir leader ve are havink to deal vit." The felucca reached Jesters side, her larboard side, below the already opened and inviting entry-port. Not the side of honour, as the starboard was in worldwide naval usage. Whether their leader was aware of this insult or deigned to sneer at his welcome, they couldn't tell, for he sprang from the gunn'l as soon as the boat bumped into the hull, and scampered up the boarding-battens to the gangway in a flash, eager and wolfishly smiling a dazzling white-toothed smile half hidden below a bristling, flowing set of moustachios. He looked about in appraisal, almost as if judging to the pence what the value of looting her might fetch him, before he was joined by his goat-skinned compatriot, a shorter, thicker-set fellow with a lush, unkempt beard.
There was a feast for his eyes, an untold Alladin's Cave of riches laid before him: artillery, muskets, swords, shot and powder… rope and timber, sails and blocks. Even Jesters hatch-covers would be the sort of well-crafted wealth far beyond his wildest imaginings.
Yet he put his hands on his hips, gazed upward at the height of the European mainmast, bared another dazzling smile… and laughed out loud! Like a child overawed by a stroll down the Strand past the toy-makers', Lewrie could conjure, the fellow actually shook his head with what he took for a "Well, what'll they think of, next?" marvelling.
"I speak to him, unt bring him to you, sirs," Kolodzcy offered primly, shooting his lacy shirt-cuffs and settling the hang of a dazzling fresh pale-blue waistcoat.
The fellow didn't wait for that, but, bouncing on his feet with impatience, sprang into action again and towed his compatriot to the end of the gangway, then onto the quarterdeck, where he'd espied the better-dressed officers.
"Ratko Petracic," he boasted, thumping his chest and naming himself to them, as if it should mean something to them, before Leutnant Kolodzcy could even open his sour-pursed mouth. Petracic gave Kolodzcy a withering, amused once-over from head to toe, before turning to his companion of the bearish beard and goat-hair weskit and slithering out a comment that made them both chuckle.
"Well, go on, sir," Rodgers urged. "Say the bloody how-de-dos. Name us to the bugger."
"Boog-er," the bearded one parroted, then laughed, nudging his
leader. "Ha, boog-er!"
Kolodzcy smoothly performed the introductions, no matter what the pirates had said about him or how rowed he was. "Dey are, chentlemen, Kapitan Ratko Petracic, leader of dis seagoink bent. Unt, Kapitan Dragan Mlavic, who ist second-in-command… main leutnant of his… fleet.
"Fleet, mine arse," Midshipman Hyde muttered to Spendlove, just loud enough to be heard, drawing a scathing glower from his captain.
"Mine-eh arse," the shorter pirate repeated once more. "Arse!"
What is he, a bloody magpie? Lewrie wondered.
He didn't look quite sane, for starters. Dragan Mlavic had beady little black eyes that threatened to cross, did he leave them open too long, which made him blink rather a lot. His face was pockmarked and rough-textured, a tad swarthy and full-all round knobbiness to cheeks, nose and forehead. Lewrie gave him an up-and-down, with one brow cocked, as Kolodzcy garbled off some gilt-and-beshit politenesses. The short pirate chieftain could easily be dismissed, he thought. Mental defective, borderline loony… something like that? He'd traded a drab brown homespun knee-length smock this day for a white cotton one, gaudy with red and blue embroideries. Under that rank goat-hide waistcoat, o' course. His very baggy pyjammy-trousers, which gathered below the knee like an Ottoman version of proper breeches, were the roughest sort of homespun. His shoes were little better than goatskin versions of Red Indian… what'd they call 'ems?… moccasins? There was a round knit skullcap… Well, the weapons, o' course, jammed into a wide belt-a brace of all-metal Arabee flintlock pistols with barrels over a foot long, a very expensive-looking scimitar in a parrot-green leather scabbard, both sword and scabbard awash in brass, brads, inset ivories and… damme… gem-chips? Bolstering his arsenal, though, was a very plain butcher-knife of a dagger, with rough wood hilt, hardly a haft at all beyond a black-iron ring-guard, in a rough, hairy sheath.
The other, Ratko Petracic, was an entirely different breed of cat, and Lewrie put him down as a damned dangerous customer. He was too self-possessed, too sure of himself by half. Too handsome and cocksure, this'un! He wore soft leather boots to the knee, made from a coral-red dyed hide; shimmery burgundy pyjammy-trousers, a flowing smock of startling white and sewn with gold thread, silver thread and ornate with sequins. His waistcoat was of hide, too, though of a very short-haired, very sleek fur. He sported no headgear, just a full, lush mane of shiny brown hair clubbed back at the nape of his neck. His weapons consisted of a pair of gold-inlaid Arabee pistols, a gem-studded scimitar in a red velvet scabbard set with gilt fittings and a magnificent dagger on his left hip in a silver-and-ivory, jewel-bedecked scabbard, which made an impossible forty-five-degree bend. Atop the hilt of the gilded dagger there was set an emerald the size of a robin's egg, clutched in elaborately fil-igreed real-gold claws!
Aye, he knew what a raffish, dangerous impression he was making, Lewrie realised; he'd planned it this way! Put on his best to overawe!
"He asks me, are we de British Royal Navy vich hezz so vahry much silver to buy brot unt sheep," Kolodzcy was explaining, leaning to and fro from translatee to translatee. "I tell him we are. He ist askink, do we fight de French. I say we do. He asks me, do ve dell de druth… ve take many rich ships, oud ad sea. I say ve dell druth, alvays, unt daht dhere are vahry many more rich ships… good bickinks. Kapitan Petracic is askink… he vould vahry much like de riches dhat we take. Uhm… Gott in Himmel, was ist das? Ldcherlich! Umph!"
Kolodzcy leaned away from the pirates.
"De Kapitan Petracic sayink he ist master ohf dis goast… unt… unt!" Kolodzcy gargled, outraged. "Ve are owink him… tributes! His share!"
"Tell 1m t'go buy a hat, shit in it an' call it a brown tie-wig," Rodgers barked. "The bloody nerve o' th' man!"
"Plenty… blood-ey… nerve, Ratko Petracic," the short man hoorawed, as good a sycophant as Clotworthy Chute any day, Lewrie told himself. Once he got over his shock, o' course. His shock of hearing English from the hairy churl-and the smug look of satisfaction on Ratko Petracic's face. "Plenty bloody nerve," indeed! Lewrie thought.
CHAPTER 5
"He speaks English?" Rodgers blanched, staring at Petracic.
"Not bloody word," Dragan Mlavic informed him soberly. "But I do. Little."
Least we can do 'thout this mincin' pimp Kolodzcy from here on out, Alan silently hoped.
There was a brief palaver between the smirking Ratko Petracic and his chief lieutenant. Then, "I listen careful, British man. Then I tell him what you say. But Captain Petracic says we will talk. In Serbian. Your…" Mlavic gave Leutnant Kolodzcy another of those scathing head-to-toe glances, as if he still couldn't quite believe his eyes or that such creatures lived. "Your translator help us, da?"
"Bud, ohf gourse," Kolodacy seethed, though smiling rigidly.
There was another brief outburst of Serbian, which to Lewrie s ears seemed like gargling, from the handsome Petracic.
"Captain say… rain, soon. We go below… talk, yes? You have good wine? We talk," Dragan Mlavic urged. "No good sailing today."
"Inform the captain, uhm… Petracic," Rodgers offered, turning a lot more civil, "that we will indeed repair below to the great-cabins and talk. But… there must be no more talk of paying him tribute."
"We see, British captain." Mlavic smiled and lifted one chary brow. "We see."
The first hour of talking and swilling (Lewrie's wine, with which Rodgers was damn liberal, and the Serbs putting it down like they were fresh-parched from Hell!) consisted mostly of boasting. Ratko Petracic told his listeners what a great seaman he was, how many villages he'd raided, how wealthy he'd become, how many throats he'd cut and how many Turks now roasted on Shaitan's Coals because of his sword or the actions of his bold warriors. How Venetians gave him a wide berth when they saw his sails and took themselves elsewhere. How the fierce Ragu-sans shook in their boots and would not pursue him when he boldly raided one of the outlying ports. And blah-blah-blah…!
"Unt de Croats?" Kolodzcy queried. "They run from you, too?" "Ha!" Dragan Mlavic sputtered. "Croats… poo!" He spat upon the black-and-white-chequered sailcloth deck covering, highly insulted.
"Here, now," Lewrie grumbled. "Have a care, tell him. Spit on his own damn deck… but not mine! Damme, was he born in a barn?"
Kolodzcy posed the question to Ratko Petracic directly, resenting his role being usurped by the barely intelligible, and partisan, pirate. A babble ensued as Mlavic tried to ask the question in his place, and Petracic put up one hand to silence his lieutenant. Petracic put a noble expression on his face, one of deliberate musing, before replying.
"He say…" Kolodzcy interpreted slowly, "he hess no fear ohf de Croats. Serbs are… fiercer fighters. He hates Croats! All true Serbs hate Croats, forever. Untrustvorthy… murderink… whores. 'Ungar-ian whores. Catholic. Uhm, suffice to say, sirs, he despise dhem. He make mahny vile accusations."
And ain't you a good little Austrian Catholic yourself, Kolodzcy? Lewrie wondered. He was torn between the play of expressions of both Lieutnant Kolodzcy and Petracic; one all but biting his cheeks to remain diplomatic, and the other-feigning, Lewrie was dead certain- noble long-suffering.
Petracic got to his feet to pace and gesticulate, waving with both hands now, and beginning to sound gruff and rankled. "Well?" Rodgers demanded, as the diatribe continued. "Still rants, sir," Kolodzcy replied, one ear tilted for a pithy bit. "He exblainink Balgan hizdory. Holy King Stefan Nemanja. Saint Cyril unt Saint Methodius, who conwert pagan Slavs to Christians, in de Orthodox Church, long ago… King Stefan, first of Nemanjas, build huge empire. Greater general dhan Byzantine, Belisarius. Son, Saint Sava the Wanderer found Serbian Orthodox Church. King Milutin Nemanja, he defeat fildy Bulgars… no bedder dhan slant-eye Tartars. Richer dhan Byzantine Empire. All of goast to Adriatic… far south into Macedonia unt Greece, conquer Albanians. Vould have conquer Constantinople, too, 'til de veak as vater cowards allow Durks across Hellespont. Unt Croats too stupid to be true Slavs… too jealous. Dhey look to Vienna, Rome… become Catholics. Whores to Budapest unt Vienna."
"Uhm… this'11 take long, d'ye think?" Rodgers softly wondered.
"Ach,ja, herr Kapitan," Kolodzcy said with a patient sigh. "He speak of Stefan Uros… Stefan Dushan… dushan meanink 'soul.' A last Nemanja, Uros. Daht ist vhen Durks come, unt he was veak. 'Ungarians from de vest svarm to take empire. Croats vit dhem. Comes final leader, elected prince… Knez Lazar."
"Aahh," Dragan Mlavic uttered, sounding like a mourner at a funeral; and Lewrie was amazed to see tears moisten his hard little eyes as his lips trembled in genuine sorrow!
"Comes time of Kossovo," Leutnant Kolodzcy translated, as the fierce Ratko Petracic ranted on. "Grade baddle. Durks vin, Serbs killed. He recite poem to us."
"Jesus," Lewrie whispered, pouring himself a glass of claret in frustration. "A long'un, I'd expect. 'Hear me, Oh Muse'…"he cited from The Iliad. In English, of course; he'd been bloody awful in Greek.
"Grey bird fly from Jerusalem. Falcon. Really ist Saint Elijah, bearink Holy Book. Comes to de Tsar… Prince Lazar, unt asks ohf him vhat kingdom he vish… heavenly or earthly? Knez Lazar choose heavenly kingdom. He say:
"He built a church on Kossovo …
Then he gave his soldiers the Eucharist…
Then the Turks overwhelmed Lazar…
And his army was destroyed with him,
Of seven and seventy thousand soldiers,
"Dhen, all vas Holy, all was honourable. Unt de guteness of God vas fulfilled," Kolodzcy interpreted for them.
Ratko Petracic stopped orating, arms out to his sides as if he were being crucified, his head hung, and unashamedly weeping.
"Uhmph, I say…" Rodgers squirmed uneasily, and Lewrie felt the urge to look away. Such blatant public displays of tears were bred, or whipped, out of English gentlemen. Even Lewrie, who was more prone to expressing his enthusiasms or disasters (more proof, he thought, that he would never make a true gentleman if he lived an hundred years!) was not this open with his feelings. Why, it was unmanly… foreign, certainly!
"Kossovo Polje," Petracic said, looking up and lowering his arms to wipe away his tears on his sleeves.
"Kossovo Polje," Dragan Mlavic echoed, his voice broken. "De Field ohf Black Birds," Kolodzcy said. "Durks leaf bodies naked, for carrion birds to devour. June twenty-eighth, 1389."
Petracic started speaking again, clearer, his voice infused with a low, bitter anger even after over four hundred years.
"Grade Serb Empire dies, long before Byzantine, in 1453. No one come to help Serbs, he say," Kolodzcy began translating again. "Every hand against us. Croat, Byzantine, 'Ungarian, Austrian. Beginnink ohf Durkey in Europe. Could heff sdopped, defeaded, but no. Too jealous. Vorld vish grade Nemanjic Serb kingdom to die. Zo dhey could pick our bones, like de black birds, he ist sayink. Grade, holy sacrifice de Serbs made. Zo daht Europe should live. Unt de Croats, de Slovenes, Albanians, Bulgars… take from Srpski Narod… Serb Beoble, effrydink dhey own. Some love conwersion to Islam, he say. Some are traitors… Catholic Croat traitors, who vish to make Serbs Catholic sheep." "Ah." Rodgers nodded as if it all made perfect sense. Petracic barked out a question. Kolodzcy took pause, recoiling back into his chair for a moment before replying, long, slow and wary.