I shook my head, forgetting, and dissolved the world into needles of blinding pain. I swayed, stunned and sick, and he sprang up and caught me. ‘What’s the matter? Didn’t stop one, did you? Ach … not from this side.’ The questioning in his voice had turned to certainty without any answer from me. ‘Not a local. Might’ve known, the way you came barreling in like that.’ He propped me against the doorpost and searched my scalp with blunt fingers, causing me more bouts of agony. ‘Well, that’s nothing!’ he concluded, with infuriating briskness.
‘You try it awhile and say that!’ I croaked at him, and he grinned again.
‘No offense, friend. Just relieved your dome’s not cracked, that’s all. A bump and a little blood, no sweat. But that arm of yours, that’s different.’
‘Doesn’t hurt as much –’
‘Aye, maybe; but it’s a blade in the muscle. Could be dirty, if no worse. Hold on a moment …’ The blade he himself had used to such effect flashed in his hand, and I was astonished to see it was no knife, but a fully-fledged sword, a sabre of some kind; he twitched it adroitly into a scabbard on his belt, unhooked from beside it a ring of huge old-fashioned keys and locked the warehouse door behind him with one of them, muttering to himself the while. ‘C’mon now, nothing to worry about; I’ll see you right. Just lean on your old mate Jyp – that’s it! Just round the corner a few steps – lean on me if you like!’
That seemed a daft idea – he was such a short man. But as he bore me up by my good arm I was astonished to realize he was hardly any shorter than me, and I am over six feet. It was next to the others he’d looked unusually small; so how tall were they?
This close, too, he didn’t look so ordinary. His face was bony, hard-jawed, but his features were open and regular; a bit Scandinavian, maybe, except that expressions played across them like shifting light. Lines appeared and disappeared, making his age hard to guess; early forties, maybe, by the lines about the eyes. Below them the remains of a tan welded together a great blaze of freckles across his cheekbones. His eyes were calm, wide and intelligent. The look in them seemed remote and far-seeing, till I caught the twinkle that matched the mercurial expressions and the wry smile. I rarely take to people on sight, men especially; but there was something instantly likeable about him. Which was pretty damn surprising, as I couldn’t have placed him in any way. Liking, of course, doesn’t have to mean trusting; but right then I’d very little choice in the matter.
Together, like a pair of companionable drunks, we staggered down towards the seaward end of the lane; but before we reached it my old mate Jyp, whoever he was, manoeuvred us across the road and down a dank and evil-smelling back alley to emerge into a much wider street, like all too many I had tramped down that night. In this one, though, was what I’d been looking for all along; a single building bright with lights, and the unmistakeable look of a pub, or perhaps even a proper restaurant, about it. Grimy diamond-leaded windows glowed a warm gold between peeling shutters, and above them a sign spanned the building, brightly painted even in the dim light of the flickering lamps on the wall below. My head was clearing in the cold air, and I stared at it, fascinated; this must be one of the little specialty places. The sign read TVERNA ILLYRIKO in tall letters, red upon black, and beneath them Illyrian Tavern – Old Style Delicacies – Dravic Myrko, Prop. On a board above the door I saw repeated Taverne Illyrique, Illyrisches Gasthof, the name in every language I could recognize, and a good few I couldn’t.
‘Come along, we’ll get you fixed up here!’ said Jyp cheerfully, and added something else I wasn’t sure I’d heard.
‘What was that?’
‘Not a bad place, I was saying, so long as you steer clear of the sea-slugs.’
I closed my eyes. ‘I’ll try to. Where are they? On the floor?’
‘On the menu.’
‘Christ!’
That did it; I had to stop and retch, painfully and unproductively, while Jyp watched with sympathetic amusement. ‘Guts empty?’ he enquired. ‘Pity; a good puke can help, when you’ve had a dunt on the head. Like with seasickness; if you’re going to throw up, at least get something inside you to throw, that’s what I always tell ’em. Ammunition, as it were.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ I promised, and he chuckled.
‘All right now? Mind the steps, they’re worn.’ He kicked open the faded red door with a ringing crash. ‘Hoi, Myrko! Malinka! Katjka!’ he shouted, and bundled me inside.
Half an hour earlier I might have welcomed the gust of smells that came boiling out. There were a hundred I couldn’t put a name to and a few I didn’t care to, but there was also garlic and paprika and beer and frying onions. Now, though, the mix made my aching stomach shrivel.
‘It’s you, is it, pylot?’ came a hoarse answer from inside. There was the sound of somebody shovelling coal into a stove. ‘Malinka’s out, you’ll just have to make do with me.’
‘Got a friend here, Myrko,’ Jyp shouted. ‘Hey, what’s your name, friend? Stephen? Myrko, this here’s Steve, he pulled some Wolves off my back and stopped a knock or two while he was about it. Needs something to set him up. Katjka! You’re in demand! And bring your puncture repair kit! Now, me old mate, just you sit down there …’
I slumped onto a high-backed wooden settle, trying hard not to jolt my head or my arm, and stared around at the room. I’d seen touristy Greek bars trying for this kind of look. Now I realized what they’d been imitating. Here, though, the bunches of dried herbs and sausages dangling from the rafters, hams in sacking, huge slabs of salt cod, octopi looking like mummified hands, bloat-bellied wine-flasks with crude labels of dancing peasants, and shapes less identifiable, weren’t plastic; their fragrance hung heavy on the air, and the faintly trembling light of the lanterns that hung between them gave their shadows a strange animation. They were real lanterns, oil lanterns; you could smell them, too. I glanced around, and saw no sign of switches or power points anywhere on the walls; and come to that, the outside lights had been lanterns too. Their light was strictly local, and bright only in the centre of the room; the tables there were empty, but from the more shadowed ones in the corners I could hear the low buzz of voices, male and female, and the music of glasses and cutlery well wielded.
A tray clattered on the table in front of me, a bottle full of some pale liquid and a little narrow-necked flask of the same, no glass. A squat, rounded little man with the face of an amiable toad leaned over me and grunted. ‘On the house, friend! Anyone who takes a crack at Volfes does us all a favourrr!’ He had an accent as heavy as the spices in the air, heavy and guttural. There was a rumble of agreement from the shadowy depths of the room, and I was astonished to see the glint of glasses being lifted.
‘You should’ve seen him, Myrko!’ enthused Jyp. ‘They’d got me down, got my little sticker away, and he comes for ’em with a goddamn great iron bar! Three of ’em, and he fells two, the third gets a crack in before I get my blade back and open him up a bit! Went for ’em baldheaded, he did, just like that!’
Myrko nodded soberly. ‘Wish I had ssseen it! That was bravely done, my lad. Now get that down you, it’s for drrrinking, isn’t it? Sovereign rrremedy!’ I grasped the little flask gingerly, and tilted it to my lips. There was a trick to the shape of it; it shot the whole lot at the back of my throat. If you want to know what it felt like, tie a plum to a rocket and fire it down your gullet, preferably during an earthquake. I breathed out heavily, expecting to see the air glow, and Myrko poured me another while the flask was still in my hand. Suddenly the chill inside me lessened, my shivering stopped; I felt the blood pulsating in my veins, and the pounding in my head became bearable. I downed the second flaskful, and let him fill another before I held the bottle to see the label. ‘Tujika’ I said, with sudden understanding. ‘Slivovitz. But about three times as strong as any I’ve tasted before!’