A Jester’s Fortune

'Da, use,' Mlavic most genially urged. 'Welcome. Tonight have great celebrating. No keg-meat, poohl No hard biscuit. Serb food is best in world. Good wine, no ratafia, poohl Plenty food, plum brandy. Boats go mainland, bring much! Ah, you like plum brandy, Capitan? I remember… see you ver' drunk… drink like man! Ostereicher girlie- man drink tea, ahahahah!' Mlavic slapped his thighs, he found it so amusing. And then had to rise and share it with his compatriots, so they could jeer at Kolodzcy, too.

It was growing dark, nigh on sunset, and pirates leaped and did fantastic gyrations as they danced and celebrated their prize, crying out boasts, jests, snatches of song as they capered round the fires-much like, Lewrie thought, the Muskogee and Seminolee Indians he'd seen in Spanish Florida, back in early '83.

'I have come from Ratko Petracic, sir,' Alan tried once more, hoping that once he'd relayed Petracic's orders, he could go back to his own ship, keeping his visit brief and himself both unsullied by contact with Mlavic and relatively sober. 'With his orders, sir.'

'What he want?' Mlavic almost sneered, surprising Lewrie. He had taken Mlavic for a docile, adoring follower up 'til then.

'He wishes you to come join him at once, sir. He needs every ship and man, he said. He has something planned.'

'What he plan?' Mlavic pressed, frowning and squinting, leery. 'No rich ship, there. Far from home.'

'He worries, he says, Captain,' Lewrie told him, patiently as he could, 'that without some successes, he might lose the enthusiasm of his men-some of his men, at least-and that they'd drift away.'

Are you one? Alan wondered; more a pirate than a patriot?

'Da, can happen.' Mlavic nodded, getting shifty-eyed again. 'So what he do, he need Dragan?'

'He said he would find a place to strike a blow. A blow against his enemies. Don't know quite what he had in mind, really, but-'

'He say that?' Mlavic questioned, sounding suspicious.

'He did, sir,' Lewrie reiterated, wondering if this 'did he, did he?' would go on all night. 'Something… holy, he said. He said to inform you that he needs your ship and your men, and for you to go to the coast and raise as many fighters as you can immediately. And go to him right after. I suppose he'll wait for your arrival, since he seems to think he needs all he can muster.'

Mlavic passed a gnarly hand over his face, as if he could wipe away semi-drunkeness. 'Kossovo Polje,' he whispered to himself with a grim shake of his head, as if he'd just seen the first glimmer from the Second Coming on the horizon. He was stunned, shaken to his roots.

'He recited Knez Lazar's lasd orders to us, Kapitan,' Kolodzcy prompted. 'Zo, id gannot be he plans a furder act ohf piracy.' Lewrie turned to see that Kolodzcy was still red-faced from Mlavic's insult, prim and grimly bland- faced-though with one brow up in sly chicanery.

'Where he strike blow?' Mlavic demanded, quarrelsome.

'Don't know,' Lewrie admitted truthfully, taking a sip of wine to cover his own duplicity. 'Not a Venetian port, he assured me. An act against his… your enemies, not ours, I gathered. Something that would keep his fleet eager, put heart in all your people, and… scare foreign traders, as well.'

'Kossovo Polje,' Mlavic whispered again, sounding reluctant, as if the Second Coming were real and he were about to be eternally damned as a hopeless sinner. He took a deep draught of wine, then tossed the bottle away like he'd tasted poison. 'Time? Time?' he muttered. He got to his feet awkwardly, crossed over to a stone crock sitting on a crate and opened it to take another slug. Plum brandy, by the smell, Lewrie reckoned; more powerful 'Dutch Courage.'

'Too soon, sir,' Kolodzcy whispered softly. 'He thinks id ist too soon. A pragmadic man, dhis Mlavic. In dhis for de money, sir, nod glory or holiness. Vhadeffer Petracic does, dhis one vill nod be vit him. He vill sail off, you see.' Kolodzcy sneered, making one of his 'poof!' conjuring motions again. 'He hess no vish to die for a cause.'

Lewrie thought that Dragan Mlavic certainly appeared to be a man of two minds at that moment, struggling with his inner demons. Growling and muttering to himself, pacing fretful a step or two right, then left, pondering and sipping, pondering and sipping…

Let Petracic lead the bulk of the fleet to ruin, Alan wondered, then take over the remnants… and keep his ambitions small? That was one choice he imagined Mlavic was weighing. Simply toddle off and forget he'd ever heard the orders-ever heard of Ratko Petracic at all-was another. Survive, hole up somewhere safe and anonymous for a time, 'til it was safe to resume his filthy trade? Perhaps Kolodzcy had the right of it; at heart he was a follower of Mammon, a pragmatist or a coward who knew certain death awaited just weeks or months away if he obeyed. Lewrie took a draught of wine, most smugly enjoying Mlavic s dilemma of how he'd avoid his martyrdom.

'Hah!' Mlavic cried aloud, in a bellow that could have carried through a full gale, of a sudden. He put both arms on high and dashed out into the centre of his capering sailors, crying at the top of his voice. With a smile of such pure ecstacy it damn-near ripped his face in half, his mouth a gigantic red hole. 'Kossovo Polje!' he cried, followed by a flood of Serbian, which stilled that jangly, jumpy music, turned the dancers to stone in an instant. Mlavic was the only one dancing then- seeming to lope in a wide circle amid the leaping flames of the cook-fires, snouting to all, then to individuals, snapping his fingers with urgency. The only other sounds were the crackling fires and the sizzling of meat juices, the soft bubblings of stews or gruels.

'Perhaps, sir,' Lewrie muttered from the side of his mouth, 'he ain't as pragmatic as you suspect, what?'

'Perhabs he ist a fatalist.' Kolodzcy shrugged, as if it was no matter. 'Eastern folk vill make de besd ohf efen crucifixion.'

'Like 'if rape's unavoidable, relax and enjoy it'?' Lewrie felt like snickering.

'Zomethink like dhat, ja,' Kolodzcy tittered, finishing his wine. 'We heff deliwered de orders, Kommandeur Lewrie. Time to leaf, I am thinkink. Dhey vill get blint-trunk unt vork dhemselfes into frenzy. Unt vhat heppen afder to foreigners…'

'Aye, good thinkin', sir. Let's steal away, supper or no.' A ferocious din erupted from the Serbs, who were cheering and crying to the first star of the evening. Swords and scimitars were flashing red and amber in the firelight, and they were capering, dancing with glee, and making a wolf-howling noise. A wolf-howling that turned into some sort of hill-singing, or a long, involved battle cry, Lewrie noted as they began to steal away. Pagan, heathen singing, barbaric and bloodcurdling, like packs of wolves in a call-and-response chantey, from one mountain peak to the next.

Just then, though, up trotted Mr. Howse with Midshipman Spend-love, both panting and out of breath. 'Sir!' Howse gasped. 'Oh, it is ominous, Captain… ominous indeed, sir. You must do something, at once, I say!'

'What's ominous, Mister Howse?' Lewrie snapped, leading them further away from the singing and cheering.

'Prisoners, sir!' Howse tried to thunder indignantly. 'Won't let us in the stockade to see to 'em, sir. I've a dreadful feeling… there's something horrid happened.' He gulped. 'Knew this would turn out badly, right off, sir… you must put it right, sir. At once!'

As if anyone asked yer opinion. Lewrie sighed, still leading them down from the camp toward the beach.

'Wouldn't let you in, sir?' he quizzed. 'Mr. Spendlove?' 'Don't speak any English, sir… the guards,' Spendlove said, also out of breath, and sounding genuinely shocked.

'But we've seen the prisoners before, sir, no trouble before,' Howse insisted. 'This time, though-'

'Waved us off, sir… drew pistols when we got impatient,' the young midshipman carped. 'Could see through the logs, sir…'

'I could still see enough, sir,' Howse announced, getting some of his old irritable-with-the-world back. 'Been 'round sailors enough by now to recognise 'em, sir. I've eyes, haven't I? There are damn-all seamen in the stockade, and when I called out to them in French I heard no French in reply. Italian, some other foreign jabber neither of us could fathom-'

'Women and children, sir!' Spendlove burst forth. 'Started up a fearful racket, soon as they heard our voices.'

'What the Devil…?' Lewrie gasped.

'And dark as it's got, sir,' Howse rumbled, beginning to sound like himself again, 'I could swear, the brief