“Non. It is simple. You will soon have to make the decision, yes? And when that time comes, you do not want to be in my debt.”
I didn’t answer.
“You must discharge your debt in advance, then,” she said after a while.
“How?”
“Tell me the truth about you. Tell me what you have told no one else. Share your dark secret.”
The Bosnians and Germans and Marines had begun cooking. I smelled boiling pea soup, corned beef, onions, and coffee all mixed with the smoke of the wood fire, the smell of Gabrielle’s damp hair drying, the resin scent of the carpet of pine needles beneath us. I closed my eyes and from the forest I heard a woodpecker, distant and empty, as if an echo from the past, as if it were long dead and Gabrielle and I were the only two living things left in the world. My throat tightened, the same tightness I’d felt when Reggie mentioned my dead wife, so far from here, so long ago, a hundred and thirty years in the future.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’ve told you the truth.”
“Non. You show me the one man, but there is the other, the one you keep locked away. But when he comes out, men die. This I know. Which one is the real man?”
“I am only one man.”
“Ah, that much I believe. But who is he? What is his essence? However, you will not tell me today. So I go with you tomorrow, and you will be in my debt, and you will have to find a way to answer my question before you leave.”
THIRTY-ONE
October 11, 1888, near Brezna, Serbia
We ate and rested that afternoon and began the long, careful climb to the ridge after dark. We brought about half the Marines and Bavarians along, those who weren’t injured and seemed to be holding up better physically. The others we left behind to recover their strength. We would need them for the push on Kokin Brod later.
We also brought a half-dozen of the Bosnians, men Durson picked himself. We needed them as scouts, so we dressed them in Bavarian and Marine greatcoats and had them stash their fezzes in their pockets. If they kept their mouths shut they should blend in with the rest, and if all went well no one would see them anyway.
Durson led the way. It was difficult in daylight and all the more dangerous at night, even though the trail never required actual open-face vertical climbing. We took it slowly.
Gabrielle was not much inclined to talk during the climb. I wasn’t sure if she was “in a huff” over our earlier conversation. I didn’t think so, because so far I had never seen her show resentment or anger. She was about the most even-tempered person I’d ever met so a fit of pique was unlikely, but you just never knew with people.
I waited until a rest break and then made my way forward to find Durson.
“May I sit with you, Sergeant?”
“Of course, Effendi.”
I sat with my back against a tree trunk, facing the sergeant. We were no more than three feet apart, but I could hardly make out his silhouette in the darkness.
“How long have you and your men been out here, on this side of the border?”
“Thirteen days so far. I plan to start back to Uvats tomorrow.”
“I know. We need your help, but I can’t fault you for putting your men first.”
We sat silently for a little while.
“You mind me asking how you came to be here? It is a long way from South Carolina.”
“I was born to slavery, a field hand until the age of thirteen. Then my master sold me to a wealthy merchant, a man who made his fortune as a young blockade runner in the war. Now his ships travel all over the world. I was ship’s boy at first, then a seaman.”
I wondered how painful a memory that was, but nothing in his voice betrayed suffering. He spoke as if telling someone else’s story rather than his own.
“I didn’t know they used slaves as seamen,” I said.
“It is difficult to escape from a ship, harder still when you cannot read or write, and speak no foreign language.”
“Cevik Bey said you read and write.”
“Now I do, Turkish and Arabic, but not then,” he said.
“I see. So, hard to escape, but apparently not impossible.”
For the first time he chuckled, a low rumbling sound.
“No, Effendi, not impossible. Twelve years ago I swam ashore in Varna harbor. There was a cholera epidemic in the town at the time, so no one from the ship pursued me. In any case, it would have done them no good. The Turkish authorities do not return escaped slaves.”
“Did the Turks enslave you?”
“By then slavery was illegal in the empire. Of course, it was still widely practiced, but God guided my footsteps. I worked carrying and burning the bodies, of which there were many because of the sickness. I did not grow ill myself. An imam, Ilhami Baraket, noticed me, took me in. He is a scholar of the Hanifa school, the most gentle man I ever knew. I lived with him for over a year. He taught me to speak Turkish, to read the Koran, to write, and to question. When I was ready, he helped me join the faith of the prophet.”
“That’s when you took the name Ibrahim?”
“I was born Abraham. It is the same.”
“Ah. So, how did you like the circumcision?”
He made a face.
“That was my least favorite part of the ceremony.”
“I’ll bet. Had your master, the sea captain, been hard on you?”
“He was no harder on me than on any other man in the crew. But they could quit, if they chose to. Some did. Eventually, I did as well.”
“So you made yourself free and then joined the army to take orders from officers?”
“To defend the country and the faith which gave me freedom is an honor. And everyone takes orders from someone. Cevik Bey often gives me missions such as this, where I am away from the officers. That is better.”
Well, I couldn’t argue with that.
“Why don’t they make you an officer? You can read and write, which I guess is unusual for an NCO here. Captain Gordon says they make officers of men of foreign birth, and race doesn’t seem to be a huge problem in the empire.”
“Our officers . . . are not terrible men, but the best of them are ambitious, and so take credit for the achievements of their subordinates. It is not easy for a common soldier to gain the eye of Istanbul.”
Too bad. From what I’d seen so far, Durson had what it took.
After the break, we resumed our trek. We climbed the steep mountain footpath for almost three hours before reaching the crest of the ridge. From there the trail joined a dirt road which followed the spine of the mountain. It wasn’t a super highway, but it was broader and much more even than the footpath. The ridge gained height toward Brezna to the northwest, but much more gradually than the mountain trail.
I moved with Gabrielle and noticed she increasingly favored her left leg, where she had been wounded. When we stopped for a break where the trail met the road, I made her fold back her skirt and let me examine the wound. I had three of the Marines stand around us with greatcoats spread wide to mask the light of the wooden match I used to look at it.
“It is fine,” she said.
“It is not fine. I should have stitched the cut closed when I wrapped it. It’s broken open and is bleeding again. At least it doesn’t look infected.”
“It is fine,” she repeated. “Wrap it tightly and, if you wish, you may stitch it once we reach the village.”
So I wrapped it up with the last of the clean bandage linen from my kit bag.
After no more than half an hour marching up the road, Durson passed the word to stop. After a moment one of the Bosnian riflemen came silently back along the column and found me.
“Chavush Durson say Fargo Effendi come forward,” he whispered in Turkish. “Very quiet please.”
I patted Gabrielle’s arm and followed the rifleman forward to the head of the column. Gordon, Durson, and two more Bosnian riflemen crouched in a circle at the side of the road behind some granite boulders.
I joined them.
“You should have been up here with me,” Gordon whispered. “Find out what the holdup is.”
“The scouts have found a guard post,” Durson offered without me asking. “Two men, one asleep, the other watching the road.”
“They got close enough to see the sleeping guard?”
“They heard his snores, Effendi. We will silence them.”
One of the Bosnians silently drew a long thin-bladed knife which for a moment gleamed in the faint starlight, but Durson put his hand on his arm and shook his head.
“Can you take them without killing them?” I asked. “It would make negotiating with the hajduci a lot easier if we brought these guys in still alive.”
“I think so as well,” Durson said.
I translated for Gordon while Durson gave his orders to his two scouts. They stripped off their greatcoats, equipment, and jackets and then set off, silently and unarmed, in the broken scrub beside the road.
We waited in deafening silence for half an hour. Then one of the riflemen came trotting down the road and whistled softly. We rose, Durson picked up the rifle and gear of one of the scouts, and I picked up that of the other.
“Your men move well at night,” I said.
“For two years we have patrolled these hills, sometimes on this side of the border, sometimes on the other side. Most of these men have been with me that entire time.”
Fifteen minutes walking took us to the edge of the wood southeast of Brezna, the one we had seen the previous morning. Before us there was nothing but a thousand yards of open ground.
I hefted the leather roll of gold sovereigns Gordon had given me. The roll was about an inch in diameter and four inches long, but it weighed almost as much as my Webley. A hundred gold sovereigns is nothing to sneeze at. If I held it in my fist like a roll of quarters, and I hit someone really hard, I’d break their jaw and, unless I hit them just right, most of my fingers.
I opened one end of the roll, shook out five of the gleaming gold coins, and handed the rest of the roll back to Gordon.
“This has got to be more cash than everyone in that village put together has ever seen in their lives. If we walk in with the whole ransom, there’s no reason to let us go, so I’ll take these five as a down payment. I’ll take one Marine with me to guard our two prisoners going in, and I’ll send him back for the rest of the money once we work out the exchange.”
I stuffed the gold coins in the pocket of my overcoat, unholstered the Webley, and handed it to Gordon along with the Mauser rifle.
“Take care of these. I’m getting kind of attached to the Webley. Better keep Gabrielle’s shotgun, too.”
“You’ll want the Marine armed, surely. There are the prisoners, after all.”
“The prisoners are tied up. Your guy and I can take care of them. If there’s trouble, one rifle won’t get us out of it, but it could make things worse.”
“I go,” I heard.
Gordon and I turned to the beefy, square-faced Sergeant Melzer, the Bavarian NCO. He handed his Mauser to one of his men and then made a fist the size of a small ham and held it up.
“Prisoners will not make trouble.”
Melzer. The last guy I expected to pitch in and lend a hand. Huh.
The five of us walked toward the town: prisoners in front, then Melzer holding a rope tied around each of their necks, then me helping Gabrielle along. There was enough starlight to see the creases of pain in her face, even though she insisted her leg was fine.
After ten minutes the outline of the town emerged from the background darkness, its sloped roofs cool black against the slightly warmer black of the night sky. The air was chilled, but sweat ran down my face and it was not simply from the exertion of the walk. Any minute I expected a challenge or a shot, and the closer we got without a challenge, the more likely a panicked outbreak of fire became. Finally, no more than twenty yards from the first buildings in the town, I told Melzer to stop and had Gabrielle instruct the two prisoners to call out and get the town’s attention.
It took a few minutes before anyone responded, and then there was a lengthy and heated exchange. Gabrielle gave me a running translation.
“The prisoners say they have been captured by the English. The man in the town thinks they are making the joke.”
“It’s no joke. The English are here. Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules The Waves!” I shouted at the top of my lungs—in English, of course, which they might not understand but were likely to recognize.
“He says to wait.” Gabrielle translated the reply which came after several seconds of silence. “He goes to fetch the voivoda—the village chief.”
She shifted her weight and sucked in air sharply.
“You leg is killing you, isn’t it?”
“No, it is merely painful.”
And then she slumped against me, gradually at first, but as I tried to support her she went limp in my arms and became dead weight. I got one arm around her back and the other under her legs and picked her up. I felt my arm under her legs grow warm and wet with blood.
“Get ’em moving, Melzer. We’re going in.”
THIRTY-TWO
October 11, 1888, Brezna, Serbia
After ten minutes of loud and animated discourse in broken German with a couple of the locals, the boss-man of Brezna showed up, still fastening his belt around the long peasant smock he wore over baggy trousers. He was younger than I’d expected, late thirties or early forties, and tall but not particularly muscular. It was hard to read his expression. His eyes were deep set, masked in shadows, a shock of unruly black hair fell across his forehead, and a luxurious flowing black moustache covered most of his mouth.
“You are English?” he demanded in excellent German.
“We’re with the English expedition. I’m American, and the woman is French. She has a wound which needs attending.”
“Yes, bring her along to my house. Your man, too. He is English?”
“No, Bavarian. We brought two of your guards with us.”
He barked an order in Serbian and two villagers leapt forward to cut the two prisoners free. Two more offered to carry Gabrielle, who was starting to stir in my arms, but I shook my head.
“Let us hurry,” the chief said and led the way. “You have come about the English scientist, Dr. Thomson?”
“He’s Scottish, actually.”
The chief laughed.
“Yes, he told me. This is a curious expedition the English mount, to send an American, a German, and a French woman in to rescue their Scottish scientist. But I believe it. The English seem always willing to spill the blood of friends and subject nations, provided it is for a noble cause and makes England richer.”
“Everywhere I go,” I said, “people love the English.”
He laughed again and held open the front door of a two-story stone house. I carried Gabrielle into the brightly lit front room, and the chief hurried past me. The house smelled deeply of garlic and cooked cabbage and stewed tomatoes.
“Bring her this way, into the kitchen. Put her on the stove.”
On the stove?
The stove took up half the kitchen and was more like a large brick oven built against a massive stone chimney. There were doors and nooks in the front and on the sides, but the top was bare glazed brick.
“Go on,” the chief encouraged me. “In the winter my wife and I sleep here.”
I put Gabrielle gently on the warm stove top as a woman came down the stairs at the back of the kitchen, tying her hair up in a kerchief. She was in her thirties, stout of build, average height or a bit shorter, but with strong features, a clear complexion, and dark, piercing eyes. She hurried to Gabrielle’s leg and began peeling back the blood-soaked bandage, frowning and shaking her head. She barked an order to her husband, the chief, and he answered with stubborn dignity but then started to leave.
“I return with water. You stay here.”
Gabrielle was fully awake now, although still pale, and she prop
ped herself up on one elbow. She and the woman conversed in Serbian a bit, and the woman turned to me and scolded me. I couldn’t understand the specifics, but the general tenor was clear enough. Serbian sounded like a pretty good language for scolding people.
“Her name is Mirjana Radojica. Her husband is Jovo Radojica, the voivoda. She says you are a fool.”
“No argument from me.”
Mirjana pointed to the wound and asked a question, and when Gabriele answered I caught the word azhdaja: dragons. Mirjana frowned, nodded solemnly, and patted Gabrielle comfortingly on her unwounded leg.
“Ask if she has needle and linen thread so I can stitch up your leg,” I said.
Gabrielle translated, which set off another series of dismissive remarks aimed in my direction.
“She says men cannot even sew buttons on shirts. She will stitch my leg, and do it so there is only a small scar when it heals, instead of it looking like the seam in a quilt. Those were her words,” Gabrielle explained.
“Got it.”
Presently the chief—Jovo Radojica—returned with a bucket of water and moved quickly around the kitchen gathering bowls and pans at Mirjana’s direction, pouring water in them, fetching clean rags and jars of ointments. I backed away to get out of the traffic pattern and saw Melzer watching through the door to the front room. I gave him an encouraging smile, and he shrugged in reply. I had to admit that, whatever else happened, it was hard to think of ourselves in much danger. This was all just too . . . domestic.
“The woman fainted,” Jovo Radojica said to me from across the room. “We should loosen her clothes.”
Without looking up, his wife hit him hard in the upper arm with the back of her hand.
“You don’t speak German!” he protested, rubbing his shoulder.
“Know enough,” she answered in an accent thicker than his. She unbuttoned Gabrielle’s jacket, and she breathed more easily.
“You know what Mirjana means in Serbian?” Jovo asked me. “It means obstinate. Her father gave her this name, and he cursed all of us when he did.”
The Forever Engine - eARC Page 25