Attack on a Castle of Pirates in Montenegro

Note: Julian has engaged a Milanese soldier, Donatio, to accompany him and function like a bodyguard. Once they gain entry into the pirate keep, Julian has a special mission: to seek out, capture, and execute a particular individual. //

Our assault party of 103 men set out and we were immediately trudging through the woods, ascending a steep slope.  Since we were a mixed group of Zorzi company men and the marines and there was no common uniform, nor did we know each other prior to the last eight days, we wore red armbands to distinguish ourselves from the defenders of the keep.    

     There was a local guide at the head of our column, but I couldn’t see him.  As my instructor from the Zorzi company Claude had described, our mercenaries were the lucky point men leading three other comrades on each of the ten assault ladders.  The trail was narrow, and if anyone had thought to ambush us the attack on the fortress of Jaz would have ended right there.  Although we all had donned our breastplates and some of us our helmets, a group of men walking single-file can be dealt with quickly.  It was pitch-black and we were not permitted to carry any torches, so every other step one tripped on some branch or rock, and there were muttered curses.  

     I saw a red fox at one point and even in the dark I clearly glimpsed the color of its pelt.  Or did I imagine this?  “Did you see that fox?”  I whispered to the green-bereted marine behind me.

     “Sta zitto!”  Shut-up!  He hissed.

     Normally a soldier wearing full gear could march fifteen or eighteen miles per day, but that was over a good road.  There were no roads here and since our trek was uphill in the dark, with the ladders being dropped repeatedly, it took us three hours to reach the crest of the hill overlooking the Bay of Jaz.  We formed up under the canopy of the firs and in the east the sky was just turning gray.  Before us was a slope of two hundred yards which the pirates had had sense enough to clear–so they weren’t completely thoughtless–and beyond that lay the northern skirting wall of the fortress.  On the side facing us the rampart was only fifteen feet above ground-level, hence the strategy with the ladders.  It looked like ten ladders would be about right to cover most of the wall, if we could get them there, raise them up, and start climbing.

     Claude walked down the line, whispering to each team.  I was thankful: we had time to catch our breath.  I took off my black cape, rolled it up, and placed it at the trunk of a tree, to be retrieved later–if there was a later.   It wasn’t long before I was shivering.

      “The fire-step in the keep is about two-men wide,” Claude said when he reached us.  “Clear it of the enemy and get down.  On the right the wooden walkway leads to the front gate guard-tower.  If the three teams on your right need help or don’t make it, attack it.  Raise the lion.”  One man in our group of ten had a somewhat smaller banner bearing the Venetian lion, in case our standard-bearer Matteo was slain and his standard fell out of reach.  “And stay out of Matteo’s way.  Watch your heads.”  Because of the shelling from the ships.

     He proceeded down the line, and after he had spoken to each group, he stood at the shoreward end of the line, and we awaited his word.  I was wearing a German helmet called a sallet I had gotten from the ship.  It was a simple steel helm which covered your ears but left the face open.  Some of the men with a taste for style called it crude, but Claude called it functional, and that was enough for me. The one I had even had padding. It also had a   leather chinstrap which I now fastened, taking a deep breath, and asking for forgiveness for the violent acts I was about to commit.  I also purloined a small shield not much wider than my abdomen which I strapped loosely over my shoulders, so that the rim touched the base of my skull.  A small shield like this was not much use, but if an enemy ventured a downward swing with a sword it could at least shield your neck as you tried to squirm over the battlement.  And if the shield-rim knocked into your skull, a headache was preferable to head-launch.  Donatio had a length of rope tied around his waist, to bind the hands of Rastoder if we found him.  Always be an optimist.

     The sky was lightening and I could barely make out the green beret (he apparently had no metal helmet) of the marine behind me when there was a report of cannon-fire from Emo’s flagship off-shore and, some moments later, masonry flew up from the shoreward wall of the keep–but from what exact location we couldn’t see clearly.

     “Go go go!”

     The ten ladders with their teams following broke out in a run, but not such a fast one, as the four men with the ladders had to move at a uniform pace.  As our comrade Nestor had foretold on the beach, almost immediately two ladders went down as men tripped on this or that obstacle.  There were a lot of branches and tree-stumps in the field.

     “Keep going,” rasped someone ahead of me.  We couldn’t stop to watch what happened to the other teams.

     It was at that moment there was a report of fire from a gunpowder weapon we had been told the sentries on the north wall didn’t have and the man behind me in the green cap spun around and fell.  I kept going.  Three men were still sufficient to keep the ladder in motion.  It wasn’t very heavy.  My foot was hurting–never mind.  “Keep going!”  Did I say that?  Donatio drew nearer and assumed the position at the end of the ladder.  Thirty seconds to the wall.  I thought Claude had probably estimated that correctly.  Ten seconds gone, fifteen.  A branch snagged my right foot, but I tore the boot away, ripping the leather, and kept running, just barely keeping my place with the team.  Two more shots were heard, we’re all still here, keep going.  There was now shouting on the wall.  

     Two cannon-shots impacted the harbor wall of the keep.  That’s good, keep it up.

     “We’re almost there!” cried someone ahead of me.  This might even work.  We were at the wall.  “Raise it up, raise it up!”  The first two men ground the ladder into the earth two feet from the wall and Donatio and I pushed it up.  An arrow appeared in the ground by my right foot.

     “Bastards,” muttered Donatio.

     The two Zorzi men went up.  I only saw three other ladders against the wall but this was no time to cut and run, we had to start climbing, and for that matter we had to be quick about it.  I couldn’t see Claude and had no idea where he was.  Something whistled past my right ear – a quarrel from a crossbow?  Those were nasty things.  The only saving grace was that their mechanism took some time to wind.

     “Madonna,“ muttered Donatio.

     I climbed. 

     Scrambling up, I reached the top of the ladder.  There were the sounds of shouting on either side of me, and I had just placed my hand on the right tooth of the crenellation above me when I felt a rush of air above my head and there was a shower of sparks as a sword clanged into the stone.  More by instinct than by the benefit of seeing him clearly I seized the wrist of the defender with my left hand and yanked him forward.  The man flew into the air, one of his boots hitting my head as he fell past me.  I threw myself through the opening (scraped knee, never mind) and was at the feet of someone when I looked up to see a spear protruding through the man’s abdomen; it was one of the defenders.  To my right was an unknown red-armbanded comrade who had thrown the spear; he drew his sword and turned back to parry a swordthrust from another pirate.  There was no sign of the two Zorzi men.  Where did they go–  I lurched to my feet and drew my sword.  Trying to unfasten the small shield it slipped from my grip, bounced off the wooden fire-step and flew off into the void.  Xristos.  Another defender approached on my left, a huge man with an antique two-handed sword.  He shouted something in his tongue, and I didn’t need to be fluent in Serbian to know it was, “Come over here, boy!”

     I went over there.

     My former instructor in the blade, Ghirlandaio the lighthouse-keeper, was himself a tall man and had some useful instructions about dealing with big opponents:  “When you come up against a hulking fellow they will of course expect you to try and stay out of their reach or even run away.  Since you’re not so big, you’ll have to get in close, and the faster the better.  The big oxen will be surprised and most of the time won’t know what to do.  Don’t hesitate, get within their reach.  And remember, there’s this consolation: if it doesn’t work, when one of those hulks hits you with an ax or broadsword, death comes quickly.”  And there Ghirlandaio had roared with laughter and slapped his knees. 

      The two-handed sword had already begun its swing but I ducked underneath and kept going.  There was no time for jabbing; I thrust my shoulder into my adversary’s right ribcage.  The fellow went clean off the walkway, losing hold of his weapon as well.  Unfortunately, I had nothing to hold onto and went with him.

     In the three seconds we were in the air the pirate reached for my throat with his right hand and muttered some imprecation, but then we slid off a thatched roof, were airborne again, and crashed onto a long wooden table.  I landed on my adversary, who struck his head and was momentarily knocked unconscious.  His hands fell to his sides.

     We were in a walled enclosure with four tables.  Three men were standing around me by half-eaten bowls of porridge; they had apparently just risen, having heard the shots being fired from the ramparts. They stared at me open-mouthed.  We were in front of the mess hall.  The big man remained unconscious.

     My sword had fallen by my right knee and I grabbed it and leveled it at the figure on my right as my left hand drew the Cretan dagger, pointing it at the two men on my left.  The diner on my right was a boy, mostly-grown, about fourteen.  I wondered if anyone in that hole spoke Greek: it seemed unlikely. “Who speaks Italian?”  I demanded.  And I needed to get off this table.

     “I do,” said the youth.  Here apparently he counted as a man, since he was armed with a dagger like his two other comrades.  In fact there was not that much age difference between us.  “My father was Italian.  Probably.” he volunteered.  “We were about to go on guard-duty,” he explained nervously.

     Donatio ran in the door at the west end of the enclosure.  He had already lost his helmet but was otherwise unhurt.  “How much are you paying me for this again?”  He gestured with his sword-tip for the men on his left to move against the north wall of the room, and they complied.

      I threw the big fellow’s giant blade to the floor (I wouldn’t be collecting it for a souvenir: that thing was heavy) before dismounting from the table.  To the boy:  “Tell your friends to do whatever this fellow says,” The boy translated into Serbian.

     “Drop the daggers,” ordered my bodyguard.

     The three defenders complied.

     “Is any one of you Elsad Rastoder?”  I was going to ask this of every prisoner until I heard an answer in the affirmative, or until there was no one left to query.

     The two men and the boy jerked their chins to the left and made a clucking sound with their tongue: no.  Of course not, that would have been too easy.  But they knew who he was; all three captives looked behind me, towards the south wall where perhaps there were some barracks.

     “But you know him.  Who is he?”  I asked the boy.

     “One of the deputy commanders.  Maybe a tenente?”  Lieutenant.  The boy was not sure of his Italian.

     I was possessed by a strange urge to save the life of this youth.  Perhaps it was because I knew what I was charged to do later and hoped to perform some act of redemption.

     “What is your name?”  I demanded.

     “Joppo.”

     “Listen to me carefully Joppo: this is a castle of dead men.  If you will serve me for three years–and I will give you a small wage–I will grant you a new life.  And don’t take too long to think about it.”  I was going to say something about him being Italian but there was no time for that and it was nonsense anyway: loyalty to La Dominante had nothing to do with one’s ethnicity.  Individuals from all over Italy and Europe served Venice.  The company included men from Germany, I was a Greek, and Claude was French.

     Donatio looked at me with one raised eyebrow: you are departing from our orders.   

     Joppo took only two seconds.  “What shall I call you, master?”

     Kyrios was the Greek word for lord and of course Joppo wouldn’t know it and it would have been laughable to use it.  Messere seemed grossly inappropriate in addressing someone only a few years older.  Padrone wasn’t any better.  “Just call me Julian.”

     “Like the Holy Father?”

     “That was Julius,” I corrected him.  We would have to work on Joppo’s Italian.

     I went over to Donatio and ripped off part of his shirt, which was red, and tied the cloth around Joppo’s upper right arm.

     “Grazie,” intoned Donatio.

     I ignored him.  To Joppo:  “Now you are reborn.  Get the big man off the table.”

     The boy climbed atop the table and felt the man’s neck, put his ear to his chest.  “He is dead master.  His neck is broken.”

     “Come back down and–“ There was a terrific explosion out in the castle courtyard and the door and all the wooden shutters of the enclosure flew open.

     “A magazine,” explained Donatio.  “Even if they had few guns, they had seized some powder off some ship or other.  Emo hit it.”  He shrugged: and you see the result.

     The two pirates had fled, leaving their daggers on the ground, but Joppo was still standing there, or rather now cringing there from the explosion, his arms over his head.

     “The gate,” I said.  That was the most important thing.  Before Emo took off all our heads, Venetians and pirates alike.  The naval rounds were now coming in three or four a minute, and since I had been told the gun crews took not quite a minute to load the monsters, that suggested at least four guns firing.  To Joppo:  “Take your dagger and stay close to us.”  He hadn’t run, so he might as well have his weapon.  Joppo was the least of our worries at that moment.

     We ran out of the wooden hall to find the interior of the fort strewn with flaming timber, corpses, and pieces of corpses, mostly of the pirates but some dozen of our marines as well.  Men were running towards the eastern wall of the keep–fleeing?  There had to be a sally port there, but if there was, I didn’t see it.  In the southeast corner of the castle a blaze was roaring, the flames reaching the top of the battlements.  The former location of the magazine?

     Men ran past me and I didn’t oppose them.

      I looked at the bodies of the pirates and wondered if one of them was my quarry.  Where was Rastoder?  How would I ever find him?

      I must have muttered aloud, for Donatio commented, “The dead are slow to reply.” 

     At ground-level there was a general melee at the wooden gate, where I supposed our men were pushing back the defenders.  Stone steps on either side of the gate led up to the ramparts where I for one had no desire to be, but at this point showing the flag was critical.  I couldn’t make out who was who on the steps.  Where was the standard-bearer, Matteo?

     A thought was stirring at the back of my mind.  Something was wrong here.  There didn’t seem to be enough of the enemy.  Over thirty bodies were in the courtyard, we had dispatched most of the defenders on the north wall, and another forty men were defending the gate–there was no retreat for them.  Those men were trapped.  But Claude had estimated there were as many as 300 pirates.  Even if thirty were running out the back gate, where were the other 170?

     I spun around.  There was a low-lying building along the south wall, presumably the barracks.  The doors were open but no one was issuing from the interior.  As I glanced there the fire from the exploded magazine was already igniting the thatch at the structure’s southeast end.

     A cannonball bounced off the southwest tower of the keep and was lost to sight.  That explained about the exploding magazine.  It had been directly in-line with the area of the southeast corner of the wall Emo wanted to reduce. If we were unable to secure the keep, storming the section of the wall south of the gate would be Emo’s next move.

     “Let’s go.”  I ran up the right-hand steps and joined our shoving, pushing troops attempting to force their way to the top.  It suddenly reminded me of our disorganized troop fighting the boys of the next district at the “bridge of fists” back in Venice when we had just arrived in La Serenissima, pushing our way forward, pushing, pushing…

     A rock bounced off my helmet and I realized my left foot was hurting, but didn’t look down.  On the contrary, I raised my head to see who was hurling stones in time to see Matteo five men ahead of me thrust the battle standard into the a defender and shovel the poor man off the firestep as if he were the odd pile of sweepings.  The standard was unfurled, and the attackers in our ships could surely see it. I was never so glad to see the flag of La Serenissima.  Our men cheered and no further cannonballs flew overhead.  Doxa to Theo, thank God.

     “Rear sally-port,” ordered Claude from the bottom of the stone steps.

     Forty of us turned and surged in a formless clump towards the eastern wall of the fortress.  I lost ground when I liberated a round shield from a motionless figure near the mess hall.  The fit was not bad; the man was about my size. 

     Squeezing out two-at-a-time from the wooden door, outside, we all saw two things: the first was a group of twenty or more pirates running for a village a half-mile away, and it looked like they would make it, for who could intercept them?  We could do nothing about them for now.  Thirty feet before me were three well-armed men heading in the same direction. 

     “Elsad Rastoder!”  I cried, still trying to carry out my mission.

     And one of the men turned around.

     At that instant ten combatants wearing red armbands ran around the corner of the fort and blocked the path of the nearer three men.  Perhaps they were a ladder team whose ladder had broken, or they had despaired of getting on the wall and were looking for another way in.  Whatever had happened, their appearance now was fortuitous.     

     I held up my left hand and the new arrivals stood in-place, although one of them muttered–entirely correctly, “We don’t take orders from you.”  One of the newcomers set up an arquebus perched on its stand–clearly not one of the Zorzi detachment, since our attackers today brought no firearms.  If that thing went off, I hoped the ball wouldn’t head in my direction.

     All three of the runners had drawn their swords, but the middle one, who had turned around first, was an old man perhaps in his forties.  He shrugged as if to say ‘I suppose the game is up’ and he didn’t seem surprised that it was.

     “This is Rastoder,” contributed Joppo, appearing at my side and pointing.

     “I am charged to seize this man,” I explained to everyone in Italian, pointing my sword at the Montenegrin.

     Unfortunately, Rastoder took a different meaning from my gesture and ran towards me.  He thought we were going to have a personal duel.  Some of our soldiers made as if to cut him off, but I said, “Let him come.”    

     Donatio shook his head, but I regarded Rastoder.  He unwounded and only a little winded from his sprint out the back-gate.  If he had twenty years’ experience with the crews of the Bay of Jaz he had to know how to defend himself, and probably did so well.  There was no reason for us to fight and since childhood everyone had drummed into my head not to make matters more dangerous than they already were, but the man was nearly upon me.

     I stepped slightly to my right and the Montenegrin’s overhead slash glanced off my shield–good thing I picked that up.   There was nothing wrong with that opener, but my opponent followed it up with a weak horizontal thrust at my waist.  His right wrist was facing downward—mistake–just long enough for me to beat his sword out of his grip with a sudden, vicious down stroke.  You picture your blade parallel to the ground, moving through that of your opponent, striking as close to your adversary’s hilt as you can manage. It was one of the rare times when my attempt at that stroke had the intended result. Then the tip of my blade was at the other’s throat.

     “Now bind his wrists,” I directed Donatio.

     “Where were you imbeciles?”  Demanded Claude, who appeared on my left.  He was addressing the team that had run around the wall.  The marines had already made quick work of Rastoder’s two comrades.

     I saw now that one of the men who had run around the castle was Nestor, the veteran.  He caught my eye and his look said, what did I tell you?

     “Sir, the brigands pushed our ladder off.  Before we could raise it a second time, they rolled a boulder over which snapped the ladder in two.  That was the end of us climbing.  I and the boys knew there is always a sally gate somewhere.  We could hack through it, but it would take time. We ran around, and here we are.”

     “Take thirty men and search the village.  You know what to do.”

     “Certo.”  Nestor turned away, but Claude wasn’t finished:  “And Nestor–“

     The Zorzi man turned back.

     “Leave the women alone.  We may need to put a garrison here.  We don’t want Cesio and Ciro being stabbed in the back in the marketplace.”

     “That wouldn’t be any loss,” quipped the veteran.  “But as you say.”  He nodded and went off down the beach with a mixed group of marines and mercenaries, including the soldier with the arquebus.

     For my part, I would have let all the pirates run.  Afterward we would garrison their fort or tear it down, and either way there would be no pirates in the Bay of Jaz for twenty years.  Eventually, they would return or establish themselves in another bay.  But that would be another day, years later.  I was just thinking the battle was over and it hadn’t been too costly when we heard two cannons fire–what in the name of Jesus—

     I left Donatio and Joppo with our prisoner in the vicinity of the mess hall and followed Claude and others at a run–or in my case limping; my foot was beginning to bother me.  There was too much running, and the shield was also heavy.

     Leaning my right elbow on the western parapet, I saw with my fellows that one vessel at a quay to our south had been set ablaze, and three vessels were now in the bay:  Emo’s ship, then the Fulmine, from which we had disembarked last night to begin our trek, and a third vessel, which had fired at us:  more pirates.

     That explained about the undergarrisoned keep.  This crew had been off on some mission or other, returned to find the golden lion flying by their front gate, and they were expressing their displeasure. Were we now going to be besieged?

     “Emo will take care of them,” said Claude confidently.  Another cannon fired and we ducked.  The ball flew over our heads.  “Poor gunnery,” commented someone.

     Whoever the enemy captain was, he clearly wanted to continue his bombardment, but both the Venetian ships approached–boarding no doubt being their intention, and the marauder turned to the northeast, passed the Fulmine with sails unfurled, and raced out of sight.  All this took place in less than thirty minutes.

     The battle was over.

     Now back to my mission.  “I’ll be in the north field,” I advised Claude, standing up.  I wanted to get Rastoder out of the keep before someone ran him through on general principle.  Donatio was only one man and I didn’t know if Joppo could do anything at all.

      I rejoined my small group and we exited through the same sally gate and climbed the hill.  For some reason (but I didn’t disdain their company) two marines also followed us, perhaps to see what would happen.  They went through the pockets of some of the corpses as we proceeded through the courtyard. “There will be coins,” they said. As we passed it the ruin of the magazine was still a furious blaze; the pirates must have captured quite a store of powder.

     In the cleared field to the north of the skirting wall we forced Rastoder to kneel with his hands bound behind his back.  One of the marines was admiring a new sword he had taken off some adversary.

     I raised my hands in the general direction of Rastoder, as if taking an oath:  “What I do now is at the order of Senator Andrea Mocenigo.”  Joppo translated.

     Rastoder looked up at the mention of the name, but betrayed no emotion.

     I knelt on one knee.  “You know the penalty for piracy.” Death. “Tell me: were you among the men who kidnapped Senator Mocenigo’s daughter and sold her to the Mamelukes in Egypt?”

     Rastoder made some reply.

     “He said he knows nothing about any daughter of Mocenigo, but he has taken and sold many prisoners,” came Joppo’s translation.

     Perhaps that was true, and perhaps it wasn’t.  I tried another tack:  “Why would the senatore have a special interest in you?  What did you do?”

    Rastoder spit on the ground, which needed no translation.

     There was some reason for me to be standing in front of this man, but perhaps it was not my destiny to hear about it this day.  Something caught my eye: it was the ring on our captive’s right hand, and I remembered the other part of my instructions.  I pulled the ring off his hand and examined it.  The stone was indeed a sapphire, but on the face of it there was a blackened etching of a two-headed eagle.  The eagle of the emperors of Constantinople.  I held the ring under his face.

     “Did your family fight at Constantinople?”  I asked.  Rastoder was of course too young to have been there–it was seventy years ago–but his grandfather or some other relative might have served in some detachment.

     “My grandfather took it from a Greek officer,” came the translation.

     Then curse you, I thought.

     Rastoder twisted his head about and gazed to the east. He spoke and Joppo’s translation came: “We await the coming of the Lord of the Horizon.  It is Him we shall serve.  Every year His forces draw closer.  Oof!”

     I had just dealt him sudden blow on his left forehead.  Rastoder fell over on his right side. The Lord of the Horizon referred to the Ottoman sultan.

     I put the ring in the pocket of my tunic and massaged the battered knuckles of my right hand.  “What did you say?”  I hissed.

    “He said–” began Joppo.

   “I heard what he said!”  I shouted. “Return to the mess hall and fetch the two-handed sword.”  There were many tree-stumps on this slope on which to stretch Rastoder’s neck.

     “What if someone has taken it, master?“

     “No one will have taken it!  Bring it here.”

     Joppo regarded me doubtfully.  

     “If anyone bothers you, tell them you are with the Zorzi company and show them the armband.”  

     Not with the greatest enthusiasm, Joppo went off.

     Donatio shook his head.  I was departing from the lines of the play yet again.  “You don’t know how to use such a weapon.”  He was implying I would just make a mess of things.

     “Do you speak Turkish?”  I asked Rastoder in that tongue, but although he seemed surprised he merely shook his head.  I decided to leave it at that.  I was through talking.

     My new charge wasn’t gone long.  As I predicted, no one had taken the old-fashioned broadsword.  Joppo ran back cradling it in his arms.  Not without a sense of theatre, he drove it into the ground near my right arm, where it remained standing.  “Here it is, master.”

     By now I had cooled off somewhat.  My father used to say, “When you lose your temper, catastrophe draws near.”  Which was not to say that keeping calm ensured there would be no catastrophes.  I decided Rastoder wasn’t going to enlighten me as to why the senatore wanted him dead, and in fact I might never know.  And really, I didn’t need to know.  I had heard enough.  For a moment I considered asking him to let me be free of it; that is to say, to forgive me for taking his life, the request of the executioner.  But from what we had heard thus far it was likely Rastoder had no interest in any such antique conventions.  I knelt in front of our prisoner.  My left hand crept towards my belt.  With my right I pointed to the pirate’s antique sword.

     Rastoder followed my gaze and gave a sudden gasp as I slid the Cretan blade under his ribs and pierced his heart.  He was dead before he hit the ground.

     It was the first time the basalis had drawn blood and I regretted that this was the occasion.  There was nothing to be proud of.  I wiped the blade on the prisoner’s pantaloons and slowly exhaled.

     To Donatio: “You’re right.  I wouldn’t have known how to use the big blade,” I admitted, sheathing the knife.

     “At least that was quick,” nodded Donatio.

     Still on one knee, I noted Rastoder was wearing a cross, but didn’t touch it.  Taking my cue from the marines, I checked his pockets: no papers, but yes, there was a leather pouch in the right sinus.  I emptied twelve coins onto the ground.  Four were mint-new gold coins with Our Lord on the obverse and an unknown coat-of-arms on the reverse.  The rest were small denominations from the Papal States and Venice.  There was also a small ruby.  A significant plaything for a mere tenente.

     “A day of good fortune,” commented Donatio.  

     “What are these?”  I indicated the gold coins.  Nothing about their design was familiar to me.

     “It is the coat of arms of Hungary,” advised the Milanese.  “The Hungarians call them gulden, but their worth is about the same as a ducat.  The ruby would fetch twenty or thirty ducats.”  As a soldier who traveled to many shores, Donatio had a ready idea of the value of different coins and weights of gems.

     I stared off into the distance.  When I had accepted this assignment, I stupidly assumed this was another personal or family matter.  Bring back my daughter; and oh, please get rid of this person who has offended me.  Certainly messere.  I even thought that Rastoder was perhaps the captain who had seized Caterina, but Mocenigo’s letter had not said this.  These pirates might have taken his daughter–but what if Rastoder had nothing to do with that?  What if he was simply here, passing through or whatever.  

     When the Montenegrin called the Ottoman sultan by one of his titles it threw this whole matter into a different light. There were many small states and locales where Christians owed allegiance to Sulayman, that was nothing new, but you didn’t expect to hear such words from a pirate.  And yes, pirates and thieves would have coins and booty from all over Europe.  But what if Rastoder had been a Turkish agent?  The Hungarian coins also bothered me.  Had Rastoder had business there?  Business for the sultan?  What if I was in fact carrying out a mission for the Senate or the shadowy Council of Ten?  The latter received ambassadors, carried on what they called diplomacy, investigated accusations of treason, and were known to dispatch assassins and send men on who knew what other dark missions.  But wouldn’t they employ their own agents?  Wouldn’t they have a small army of them?  What would be the point of using–well, me.  

     Or what about this: what if this entire expedition was undertaken simply to find and do away with Rastoder?  No, no, that would be fantastic.  Admiral Emo was already bound for Montenegro, and Mocenigo would not have known beforehand if I would even take the assignment.  And furthermore, wasn’t Venice at peace with the Sublime Porte at this time?  But that meant nothing. 

     Too many questions.  I wasn’t angry at Mocenigo, whose instructions had been straightforward, but what did it all mean…

       Rising stiffly, I clutched the sleeve of Donatio.  “Find the two men who were with Rastoder and examine the bodies.  See what manner of men they were and what weapons they had–if the marines didn’t pilfer them already.  Were they wearing crosses, did they have any papers.  And bring me word.”

     He nodded and went off. 

     I slapped four coins adding up to about sixty soldi into Joppo’s right palm.   “Here’s your first month’s pay.”  This was proving to be a good day for a young person who was supposed to have come to a sudden end.  My new assistant looked astonished.

     “And come here so I can lean upon you while we go search for the surgeon.”

      “Very good master.”

      We were just hobbling down the hill and I was wondering if I was going to faint (I seemed to have a talent for that) when the head of the marines, Sebastiano, appeared, with two marines following behind him.  The left sleeve of the captain’s shirt was entirely torn away and his left shoulder was bound-up with a white cloth, but otherwise he seemed unhurt.  He carried a sword in his right hand and looked ready to use it.

     Sebastiano inspected our proceedings from a distance of ten paces.  “Was it someone important?”  He asked.

     “Capitano,” I nodded in an abbreviated bow, “I was charged by Senator Andrea Mocenigo with confirming the death of this man.”

    “Yes, Claude spoke to me about it.  A mysterious business.  Now it is confirmed.  We need all Zorzi men below.”  He pointed his blade at Joppo.  “And I do not recognize this boy.”

     It was a dangerous moment.  If Sebastiano decided to kill Joppo, I could not oppose him.

     “Capitano, a pirate perished, but this boy serves Venice, as you can see from his armband.”

     Which meant nothing, nor could I interpose myself between the boy and the officer before he did anything.

     Sebastiano considered this, then tilted his head magnanimously.  “As you like, but come down.  We are assembling.”  He turned with his marines and strode off.

     Joppo had narrowly escaped death twice this day.

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