Pasha's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  ‘Dealt with?’

  Diego gave a numb nod and then helped his friend lift the huge brute and drag him off the street into the dark alley. As they stood, panting, Parmenio reached out for the sword in Diego’s hand. The Spaniard gave him a questioning look.

  ‘I don’t think the old lady and her family will take kindly to the arrival of new swords. They might question their origin.’

  Diego nodded and relinquished the knight’s weapon, which Parmenio tossed into the alley along with his. ‘I think we need to check back at the house again before we head off to see Skiouros,’ the Genoese said. ‘We got all three, but there might be others yet who know where we are staying. And since they somehow found out where we were staying, the place might not be safe.’

  Diego ignored the swell and dip of his troubled conscience and could do nothing but nod silently and follow as Parmenio descended the blood-soaked street once more, heading for the house of Ben Isaac.

  Five minutes later they crossed the threshold of their ‘safe’ house once more and tumbled wearily into the room they shared, only to find Dragi sitting in his best clothes on the bed.

  ‘You’re back! I have some excellent news…’ he frowned as he took in the spray of blood across both of his friends and the few small marks on them. ‘And it looks like you might have, too.’

  ‘It’s a grisly and slightly worrying story,’ Parmenio sighed.

  ‘Then tell it quickly,’ Dragi said, sitting up. ‘My business was unavoidable, but we have left our Greek friend too long.’

  *

  Skiouros’ attention was drawn from the door of the kiosk by the sound of shuffling behind him. Turning, he saw that his prisoner had finally awakened from his head wound and was struggling against the long coils of rope with which Skiouros had tied him very thoroughly, a muted cry coming through the thick wad of the gag.

  ‘Shhhh,’ he said quietly, watching another small group of ghazi marching along the path at the far end of the half-moon pool and the dividing hedges. As they disappeared from sight, he turned and scurried across to the bundle on the floor. ‘Five patrols so far, and they’re increasing in both number and frequency. They’re searching for you, my friend. And shortly they’ll be searching for me too. I’m rather surprised they are not already at my door, to be honest. But any time now I am expected at a review in the palace, and when I’m not there, it will be the end of matters for me.

  He smiled unpleasantly. ‘But bear in mind that I know what you are, and if they come for me, I shall make sure that you are dead before they find me. Now I think we have a few minutes before the next patrol, so we are going to have a little conversation, and when I remove that gag, you are going to remain silent. If you do not – if you feel the irresistible urge to scream – I shall give you a lump on the back of your head to match the one on the front. Do you understand?’

  The man continued to writhe and rage for a moment, but finally went still and nodded, his eyes hard and angry. Skiouros crouched over him and gently removed the corner of the gag. Without pause, the man cried out for help. Fortunately, Skiouros had been expecting the reaction and rather than lifting away the gag, he simply pushed it back into place, stifling the cry almost before it emerged. The sound of a man screaming would carry all too well in the night air, and it would not take the ghazi long to find the pair of them.

  Giving the prisoner a hard look, he reached out, forming his thumb and middle finger into an ‘O’. As the man stared in confusion, Skiouros delivered a sharp flick to the huge purple welt on the man’s forehead. The prisoner screamed beneath his gag and writhed in pain, his eyes wincing shut and pouring with tears.

  ‘That was for the shout. Would you care to try again?’

  After the man slowly subsided, he managed a sickened nod and slowly, Skiouros peeled away the corner of the gag. Once again he slammed it back into place as the man cried out. This time, he grasped the wide-eyed man by the ears and gently but firmly clonked his head back against the floorboards. He was rewarded by a muffled grunt and a sigh as the man’s eyes rolled up into his head again. Checking the breath and pulse to be sure, Skiouros rose. A shout echoed out across the garden and he swallowed. He was now pretty sure they were coming for him and there was not much he could do. He had perhaps minutes.

  Time to put his backup plan into motion, he thought, horribly aware that his backup plan was idiotic at best. Crouching again, he grasped the end of the extra rope he had uncoiled in preparation. Glancing through the window to make sure no one had made it into his gardens yet, he swung open the door and dashed out, around the corner next to the house, and to the nearest of the large beech trees, which towered above the compost heap that also served as his personal latrine.

  With a surprisingly accurate throw, he cast the end of the rope over the high, thick branch he had already decided upon for the purpose. Jogging back to the kiosk, he lifted the limp body of the prisoner and carried it from the building, pausing to gently close the door.

  Sweating and grunting under the weight of the burden, and grateful that the cook/assassin was a small man and not run to fat, he carried the limp form to the tree and tied one end of the dangling rope firmly to the prisoner’s bindings. Taking a deep breath, he leapt, grasped one of the lower branches and pulled himself up. Moving swiftly and lithely from branch to branch, he ascended to that high limb where he stopped, carefully positioning himself with his back to another branch and wedging his feet as best he could.

  With another preparatory breath, he grasped the rope and began to haul, the tendons on his arms standing out like ropes with the effort. Slowly, jerkily, the heavy bundle lifted from the ground and began to bounce and lurch up through the air towards that high branch, the rope sliding over the bark and making a sound like a quiet saw at work.

  For two minutes Skiouros hauled on the rope until the body was within reach. Heaving in exhausted breaths, he tied the other end of the coil tight to another branch, triple-knotting it for certainty, and then wound it round and round the branch to keep it high and out of sight below.

  Barely had he finished when a large group of men burst out of the hedges and emerged into the open area around the pool, making for the kiosk. Half a dozen ghazi were accompanied by another half dozen gardeners, including the head Bostancı among their number. A lot of shouting ensued, with the chief gardener apparently in charge. Men burst into the kiosk and searched it roughly. Moments later they emerged with Skiouros’ kit bag. Mentally he said farewell to the few personal items in there, grateful that for prudence he had left almost all his things with his friends.

  More angry shouting began and two more groups turned up through the gardens – one of Bostancı and the other of ghazi. Skiouros held his breath and sat as still as possible while two ghazi with spears darted around the sparse area close to the side wall of the kiosk and then crossed to the sizeable compost heap, spending several minutes jamming their spears into the muck.

  The Greek squeezed his eyes shut and prayed that his insensate companion, who swung gently back and forth on the rope, emitting the faintest of creaks that was inaudible below over the wind through the leaves, did not awake. As time passed and a second group combed this area and investigated the heap, he even panicked that the cold sweat running from his scalp and dripping from nose and chin might be loud enough as it hit the earth below to attract attention or that, God forbid, a drip might hit one of the searchers as they passed below.

  But as half an hour passed and the area was searched again and again, nothing happened. Not one of the men, miraculously, looked up into the tree, the attention of anyone who approached being wholly drawn by the compost heap that would make such an obvious hiding place.

  Now if only his friends would finally turn up…

  Chapter eleven – Of the gardener and the cook

  May 26th - Three days to the festival

  SKIOUROS had lost count of the number of times the compost heap had been searched. The scouring of the grounds for the mi
ssing cook and the disappearing gardener had waned but little with the light and for the first hour of darkness Skiouros had watched, fascinated, as small parties had continued to pry under bushes and search sheds by the guttering golden light of torches. Not once in the twilight had anyone bothered to look up. And now that blackness had claimed the branches and foliage, the chances of discovery had dropped drastically, even if they started to stare upwards as they searched.

  If he had dared to make a noise, he might have laughed.

  Watching four torches bob along in the gloom towards the palace proper, the dancing lights flickering intermittently, often hidden by foliage, he chewed thoughtfully on his lip. One thing was clear: he couldn’t stay here all night. It appeared that his friends had not come or, if they had, they had come too late and disappeared again. Either way, he would have to do this alone.

  Almost as if to add impetus to his decision, the swinging body gave a muffled moan. Great. He was waking up. Wincing at the potential for discovery through noise, Skiouros reached across to a branch that hung, dead yet still attached, from the tree and snapped it off at the base with a dull crack. He held his breath for a moment but no one came running, so he slowly exhaled, and then leaned forwards.

  ‘Sorry, but I can’t have you struggling.’

  With a measured swing born of years of practice with his macana stick, Skiouros gave the helpless kitchen worker a crack across the back of the head with the makeshift club. As the swaying form went limp once more, he dropped the broken branch into the soft compost heap and surveyed his surroundings for the thousandth time since he’d ascended the tree. His options were somewhat limited.

  Ground level was unfeasible. The perimeter wall was simply too high and featureless. Skiouros might hope to climb it, but not dragging a rope or a body, and probably not silently enough to remain undiscovered. There was no way out of his chamber through the wall – he simply would not fit through the windows. And the wall gate was well enough secured and guarded at the best of times. With the heightened security following the vanishing of two staff it would be a veritable fortress.

  It occurred to him in a moment of humour that with two of them having disappeared, the cook’s quarters and movements were probably being scrutinised just as much as his. After all, the palace authorities could not know whether the gardener had taken the cook, the cook taken the gardener, or possibly even were both working in collusion? It would be a mystery for the guards to unwrap. But they would have to do it without evidence.

  Because his wandering gaze had settled upon the only realistic path.

  The ground was out as an option. That left him with the tree as his entire world. And the branches of the tree did not reach the perimeter wall, so he could not simply shift around the tree and drop over the side. But the outer branches of the tree did come close to the roof of his kiosk, which in turn butted up against that outer perimeter wall with only a seven foot climb instead of twenty-five.

  He smiled. There were, of course, at least a dozen things that could go horribly, horribly wrong with the plan, but it felt good to at least have a plan of action, and not simply be sitting in a tree waiting for a particularly astute guard to look up.

  Peering at the inclined roof of the kiosk – the slope making the whole surface visible from the ground and that being the reason the guards had not bothered climbing up to search it – he tried to estimate the height difference between the upper branch, around which he’d wound the rope, and the nearest low edge of the roof. It was perhaps a nine or ten foot drop from one to the other. But with the fact that the branch would inevitably bend beneath the weight, he could only rely on seven or eight feet.

  Hoping that the cook and he between them were lighter than he suspected, he braced himself and rose to his feet, steadying himself on a higher bough. For a dizzying moment he almost plummeted head first into the wet, stinking heap below, his legs having seized up and his feet bursting into prickly paraesthesia from lack of use. He wobbled and his legs seemed to flap around uselessly, forcing him to hold up his entire body with his arms. Slowly but surely, the life returned to his legs and feet and he managed to stand steady, taking an extra minute or two to bend and stretch, limbering up. Satisfied that he was sufficiently supple and mobile once more, he began to walk out along the limb, his hands still on the higher branch that ran above and parallel to the one beneath his feet. Slowly, carefully, and with sweat pouring from his brow and dripping from his nose, he edged towards the roof and stopped, his toes perhaps four feet from it and three above, unwilling to take another step with the limb beneath his soft boots starting to creak and bend alarmingly. This was the limit, then. At best, four feet across and three feet down underfoot.

  Nodding to himself and trying to picture the task ahead, he edged back along the branch and then paused by the swinging, torpid shape of the cook. A random search party of ghazi and Bostancı shuffled around the far side of the half-moon pool and scoured the vineyard, taking one row each. Skiouros waited nervously for several minutes until he saw their fruitless search move on to a small orchard some distance away, and then breathed again. Stepping up his plan, he grasped the body and with a great deal of strain and difficulty – and no few near misses with the drop to the compost heap either – managed to get the bound form over his shoulder. Gritting his teeth and breathing heavily with the effort, he unwound the coiled rope from the upper branch and, steadying himself and feeling his strength beginning to ebb, he began to edge painfully along the branch.

  The journey was slow and achy, and full of trepidation, but in three minutes’ time he was approaching the kiosk again, this time with his prize. Aware that his earlier calculations of weight and distance allowed only for him, he stopped several feet short of where he’d reached last time. He tried not to think of what could still go wrong and instead flooded his panicked thoughts with amazement that so far it had gone so well. Carefully, he leaned his forehead against the upper branch to keep himself steady and free his hands. His eyes took in the drop below, now with no soft heap in evidence, and he concentrated instead on the immediate task. Slowly, carefully, he threw the rope over the upper branch a yard or so further along, then adjusted it to allow six or seven feet of rope between branch and body, before looping it once around the limb and taking the weight.

  Wrapping his arm around the branch, the bough beneath his armpit and hand grasping the rope tight, he braced himself and took three breaths, counting slowly. On the third, he tipped his body to the right, the unconscious cook slipping from his shoulder and plummeting into the air.

  The sudden jerk on the rope as the body reached full stretch and bounced to a halt almost pulled Skiouros from the branch, and he struggled to hold onto the rope. Even then, he felt a foot of it slip through his fingers before he managed a tight grip once more.

  For a heart-stopping moment he stood there, precariously balanced on the springy outer end of a branch, his captive swinging back and forth below him and the rope stinging his hands as he held it firmly. Not for the first time this week, he wondered what in the name of blessed Saint Nikolas he was doing.

  A distant flicker of light announced yet another small search party doing the rounds, and the panic began to rise. He was much more open now, and anyone deciding to do another sweep of the half-moon gardens would almost certainly spot him. The pivotal point had passed, and now he had no option but to move on, and fast.

  Gritting his teeth, he held onto the rope and lifted his leg, reaching out with his foot and nudging the dangling body. The swing increased, and as it came back he gave it another nudge, then another, and another, each push adding momentum to the swing. In half a minute the cook was rushing back and forth through the air like a heavy pendulum.

  This was it. Skiouros cast up to the Lord the prayer of the desperate and, as the cook reached the top of his swing, released the rope. The body half flew, half fell, hitting the sloping roof of the kiosk with a dull crack. Skiouros winced. There was a very good chance that
any random searcher within earshot would hear that and come to investigate. Suddenly, time was extremely pressing. Ignoring the rope altogether now, Skiouros edged quickly along the branch to where he’d tested earlier and braced himself. The limb beneath his feet gave an ominous warning creak and even as he launched himself, he felt the timber crack.

  The world exploded into panic and blurred action as he fell through the air with a lot less momentum than he expected, the broken branch taking away a great deal of it, and hit the eaves of the kiosk with his chest, expelling all the air from his lungs. His eyes wide and his breath coming in gasps, Skiouros struggled for purchase, trying to climb up over the edge and onto the slope of the roof. His heart almost failed as his scrabbling hand, instead of finding a grip, dislodged a tile, which whipped past his head and hit the ground with a ceramic smash.

  That had done it. If he’d miraculously remained unnoticed until now, that would attract the attention of everyone this side of the palace building. The situation went from bad to worse as the entire line of tiles, from eave to apex, started to slide down with the bottom one’s support now absent. One by one the tiles hurtled past him to crash on the ground. And if he’d believed things could get no worse, the unconscious form of the cook started an inexorable slide down towards the edge of the roof.

  A moment of awful dark comedy ensued, as he fought desperately and struggled up and over the eaves, using the wooden struts that had supported the now-missing tiles for handholds. And while he managed to slump face first onto the slope of the roof, the cook’s body slid past him in the other direction, picking up momentum as it descended.

  With wide eyes and a squeak of alarm, Skiouros reached out with his right hand, grabbing the ropes that bound the man tight, his other fingers taking the terrible strain of two bodies on the wooden strut.