Chapter 4
The Cossacks began singing,
Raise your cups, my brothers,
Make the crystal clatter!
Here's to fighting bravely
Here's to coming safely
Through the thick of battle
Hey-hey!
Through the thick and thin,
Through the cannons' din,
Through the muskets' rattle
"You have sung this at Rozłogi," said Helena.
"Yes, the old woman likes songs of Cossack glory, to make herself feel young again," said Jurko. "But while I am playing, I cannot dance. It's why I teach Parysz to dance Cossack dances, the male version, so you are more supple for swordplay."
"It is fun, and nice not to have to be decorous like a lady," said Helena. "Not that my aunt is decorous."
"Huh, she is one who says 'don't do as I do, do as I tell you," said Jurko. "Get ready, my love; they are trying to outrun us, but they won't, because we have the weather gage on them."
"What does that mean?" asked Helena.
"It means we are upwind of them, and can gain because they are in the wind shadow of the promontory they have sailed from. We shall have enough wind to draw close before we move into the wind shadow ourselves. And then we shall be going at speed, and the sail will be furled so as not to be an obstacle and rowing will bring us alongside – so long as we do it before they move out of the wind shadow. But that's up to the captain. I know how it works but not enough to captain a ship."
"You are tremendously knowledgeable, Jurko."
"I like to know what I am placing my trust and my life in," said Jurko. "Oh, see, ahead, the calmness where there were catspaws of spray from the waves where we have been sailing; and hear, he is ordering men to be ready at the oars, and sending others to lower the sail. And we hardly drop speed as we change, look!" his eyes were blazing. Helena crossed herself.
"I pray we come back safe," she said.
"Amen!" he cried. "Stand by, my cuckoo, and stand back for my men with grapnels."
Men with grapnels on ropes came into the bows and on the starboard side as the Cossack ship drew close to the galley. They could hear screams of terror.
"They'll be surprised today," said Jurko. "Right, stay right behind me and if anyone isn't a Cossack, hit him."
"Yes, Jurko," said Helena, swallowing hard.
The grapnels snaked out and bit into the planks of the enemy galley, pulling both ships closer together. And then Jurko was leaping lightly across to board the galley, Helena behind him, too scared to think of the gap she was leaping, concentrating on staying at his back. A man with a strange white headdress appeared up a companion way, swinging a big sword, not unlike a sabre, and striking for Jurko's back. Helena did not pause, but swung her own sabre across his body. He went down with a thin scream.
Jurko glanced back.
"Helena!" he cried.
"I ... I think I killed him..." said Helena.
"I owe you ... hold on, don't be sick yet," said Jurko, fighting his way through Ottoman guards. "Good girl, keep moving."
He had dispatched several, and the decks were slick with blood, the stink of the slaves below on the oars challenged by the stench of the blood and other body fluids on deck. Helena held on grimly through a nightmare of following Jurko, as he cut his way through the guards.
A lithe figure in fine brocade was challenging him then, a man with a rich turban and flashing finger rings.
"Pirate scum," spat the newcomer.
"Cossack scum, please," said Jurko. "Bohun is my name."
"Bohun! The scourge of Tatars and the Sultanate; but now you will die."
"You talk too much," said Jurko, smoothly advancing, cross-cutting into the attack. Attack, disengage, parry, disengage, moulinet, upstroke, and his assailant went down.
Several deck hands leaped in the sea and began swimming for shore.
"Let them go," said Jurko. "They will spread tales of our Cossack glory to terrify others. Have we got everyone?"
"Yes, ataman, I sent people below in your wake," said Kurylo. "So our falcon laid an egg named Parysz and it hatched into a Helena? It will please those of the lads who were uneasy at the physical affection you showed a boy."
"Damn you," said Jurko, without rancour. "My cuckoo, come, we will pray for the souls of those we have killed, and give thanks that they died, not us."
"I want to be sick," said Helena.
"Of course you do, sweetness," said Jurko. "Try to be sick away from the wind, over to starboard. Here's water to rinse your mouth and horilka to settle your belly. Wódka," he explained.
Helena went to the side to heave, and having rinsed her mouth and taken an experimental sip of wódka felt somewhat better. Once she finished coughing.
"Oh Jurko! I didn't think I would be able to kill anyone, but he was going to kill you!"
"My brave little bird! Thou, my greatest of treasures, how well you have guarded the heart I gave you, and the body it likes to continue beating within!" cried Jurko. "My life is yours to command!"
"Then make sure you keep living," said Helena.
The women who were being transported were brought on deck.
"They were destined for the Sultan's own harem," said Kurylo. "That ornamented fellow you cut in half was some high muck-a-muck sent to pick them out; and most are yet untouched, being saved for him."
"That might enable them to get good husbands back in Poland," said Jurko.
"What will happen to us?" asked one of the frightened girls.
"You'll come back to Poland with us and we will try to get you back to your own homes," said Jurko.
"Jurko, do we have a blacksmith to free the galley slaves?" asked Helena. "I went down and they are chained to the oars in their own filth, we must take them home too."
"I ... yes, of course we must" said Jurko. "And if nothing else they can join up with us."
The blacksmith was sent for, and soon the sound of his hammer rang as he cut chain after chain.
"I hate to be a bearer of bad tidings, but there's a galleass bearing down on us," said Kurylo, as the girls and the loot was being carried over to the Cossack ship.
Jurko looked out, and could see the three-masted, oared bastard war-ship of the Black Sea and Mediterranean.
"Get some of the men to hurry back to the ship and turn it as if fleeing before a superior force," said Jurko. "You slaves, will you fight to keep your freedom and to free others?"
"AYE!" it came from several throats.
"Helena, back to the ship; we will lie in wait here. They may hope to save a ship unsunk and the slaves in it, but we will give them a surprise."
Helena almost protested, but nodded.
"Yes, ataman," she said.
And then Kurylo was helping her onto the Cossack ship, and they were pulling away as Jurko lurked, waiting.
.
.
.
"You're a girl? I didn't know girls came that brave," said Ihor.
"Why shouldn't we?" said Helena, with a toss of her head.
"Well, I didn't mind puking my guts up because you did but if it was only because you are a girl, I am shamed," said Ihor.
"The ataman told me to go to the rail to puke, so I suppose he expects it of anyone," said Helena. "Oh! I hope he will be safe!"
"Bohun leads a charmed life," said Ihor.
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.
.
"What have you got us into, now, Ataman?" asked Kurylo, quietly, as they waited under the fallen sail for the warship to range alongside.
"More loot and a warship of our own," said Jurko. "We lie low here under the fallen sail; they will look to see if we got the girls away, and will go below to check if we holed the ship. And any below will be taken by the slaves. Then we kill anyone left on deck and storm the galleass before it can cut the ropes to their grapnels and get away, free the slaves there, and the slaves bring it back with us. And if we don't hole this ship, we can likely sell it, too. Think how much a ship is worth – it's well worth saving the galley slaves and not holing the ships."
"You'll be a magnate yet like Jarema," said Kurylo, using the Cossack version of Prince Jeremi's name.
"That's the idea," grinned Jurko. "Hush; they are close enough to grapple."
The solid thunk! of the first grapnel being thrown was followed in rapid succession by several others, and janissaries poured on board. Several went running down below decks to check on the slaves, others into the hold, and down the companionway into the quarters of the officers and slave pens. Jurko listened for sounds of sudden battle and grinned.
"Let's go steal us a warship," he said.
The Cossacks leaped up from under the sail, their athletic dances permitting them to do so without difficulty, except for one poor fellow who got tied up in rope and fell over.
The others ignored him; he had his sabre to get himself out, and if he missed out on the fun, that was his problem. They surged through the few janissaries on deck, and over the gang-plank set up for them, onto the other ship.
All the troops had been sent across, and the fight with the captain and his officers was short, bloody, and brutal. Jurko slid down the companion way, and cut off the head of the fat time-keeper whose drumming kept the beat for rowing, as the man went for him with a cleaver.
"Our blacksmith will be along to free you presently," said Jurko. "You will have to elect a drummer to follow us up the Dniepr."
"Bohun!" called one of the rowers.
Jurko stiffened.
"Havrylo?" he said. "I thought you died at the time they took Vassyli!"
"No, I was knocked out; I came to here, chained to the bench," said the former Cossack. His hair was white. "I don't know what happened to Vassyli."
"They blinded him; but we rescued him. His mind went, but he is something of a prophet," said Jurko. "We can catch up later; we have two ships to steal."
"My, you have become ambitious!" laughed Havrylo. "What will you do with a fleet, challenge the king of Venice?"
"Buy land and build a nice house for my lady love," said Jurko.
oOoOo
"Jurko! You are safe!"
Helena threw herself into Jurko's arms when he returned to the Cossack vessel.
"Hush, my sweet, my cuckoo, of course I am safe!" said Jurko, wishing that an armful of Helena was not so intoxicating when he had promised to wait as long as she wanted. His body reacted to her being pressed against him, and her soft young breasts felt delicious against his rib cage.
He smiled down at her.
"Did you succeed? Are all the poor slaves free?"
"Yes, and we are going home now," said Jurko. "We have ourselves a warship the like of which no Cossack could build, and we can sell the galley too. I know a Jewish Merchant in Kijów who was bemoaning the fact that he had no bigger ship to take his wares downriver, and he will pay well for it to carry Polish red beetle to colour the world's cloth, aye, and he can make changes to the slave pens to carry horses or cattle too, I wager. He'll probably pay some of the galley slaves to row as well."
"Oh, excellent!" said Helena. "And there's a big difference rowing for pay than rowing as a slave."
Jurko did not bother to enlighten his beloved that some slaves became so bent and deformed that rowing was all they might do. No need to distress her unnecessarily, nor to tell her that he had at times been thanked by galley slaves for the release of death.
No, it did not have to be the traditional way. They still had as much loot, more, in fact, with the ships. Jurko had no idea what a ship was worth, but probably as much as several villages. And he had the lion's share of any loot because as captain, he took the most risks. And he planned the raids, to make sure his men got back as many of them as possible alive and barely damaged. It had never before occurred to him to do anything but rape and kill the women, kill the men and scuttle the ship. But this way ... this way was better.
They sailed all the way up to Kijów in triumph, with makeshift Polish flags at every masthead.
This is to say, they mostly rowed their way up to Kijów, tide and wind being against them, though the big lateen sails of the galleass were designed to catch every speck of wind, and there were a sufficiency of men amongst the former galley slaves, and one of the female slaves who was a fisherman's daughter, who knew how to work them, and turn them to the wind, so that they tacked up the broad Dniepr. Jurko had his lady and his goods on his new flagship, and they stood in the prow, on the forecastle, waving to the people of the city.
Helena had, at Jurko's insistence, gone below to put on a gown and her plaits, worn pinned in a cap.
"Now you know what I do, and we shall use this ship to raid along the coast where slaves have been taken, and take merchant ships of the Ottomans," he said. "But we wrote to Jarema – Jeremi – so I should deliver you to him."
"I suppose so," sighed Helena. "I am not sure if I am fully cut out to be a Cossack, but I have enjoyed learning how to be one, and I will not neglect to practise if he takes me into his household until I feel ready to wed you."
Gently he cupped her face, and gave her a rapid, chaste kiss on the lips.
"You do not know how much it fills my heart with joy to know that you say 'until' instead of 'if'," he said.
"I ... I believe I love you, Jurko, though I do not like the smells of battle, I ... I am so proud of your prowess, and your ability to rescue people."
"My cuckoo!" he pressed a slightly less chaste, though still brief kiss on her lips. "I want you safe, and now you have seen with your own eyes, you will be happier, I think, being a lady than being a Cossack."
"I could sail with you and stay on the ship," she said, wistfully.
"When we are wed; but then we can share a cabin and sleep in each other's arms," he said. "But I dare not think of that. I ... I fear that Jarema might have plans for you, and may have a husband suitable for a princess, as a landless Cossack is not."
"Then I will run away and go raiding with you as Parysz," said Helena.
"Unless you fall in love with his choice," said Jurko. "And, sweet Helena, I am trying to steel myself that you might. I ... I only thank God above that you love me in some measure, and have not taken a disgust for me for my way of life. It is why Cossacks do not take their women to war; they are too likely to be upset by our wildness and freedom."
"It is but envy," said Helena. "Not all men, I think, would accept their woman being so free.
"I think you may be right," said Jurko, much struck. "And there is the prince!"
He waved, and the prince's eyes lighted on Helena with some surprise.