Ginger tells a story

"So I tell him so he knows, then I can waste him?" asks Ginger. Fusel says nothing.

Bêbe has finished pretending to be interested in talking to Mocz, so she's back to us, and appears discomfited that she has to sit next to Ginger now, as Fusel's got me in her seat. I get to get up, but Fusel's still barring me. I make an exasperated face for Bêbe and she sits.

"Welcome back, sergeant," says Ginger with a shit-eating grin, "I think you help our foreigner guest with aim?"

Now I do want to hit the little fucker, and try to get up again, but Fusel is expecting it, drops his arm quick and grips me just above the knee with some nerve trick, that stiffens me from hip to head, and makes me shut my mouth hard. And squeak. Which is very cool.

Ginger snorts appreciatively. He shouts to Mocz, "Boy, more vodkas," making that finger palm snap. Mocz quickly commandeers three shots from the Mensat's latest patrons (none for Bêbe) and hurries over. I'm just about recovered from whatever the fuck it was Fusel did to me as he takes our vodkas from Mocz. As he passes me mine, he whispers "sorry". This makes me want to cry. This is all too much: guns, fucking in a toilet, and Fusel coming over like a frightened dad; I can't handle it.

"Well, now we are comfortable, and sitting friend's together, I tell you what the shit is going on," says Ginger.

So in the rumbling clanking quiet that has just descended Ginger, sensing an audience, gets a puff in his chest and starts his story.

The story of dead monks on the hill, with mutter of translating

"During glorious years of rebuilding Svalt pride and land after war, when our great army clears the churches from catholic vermin race traitors. We take every mountain redoubt from the hook claw of these priest oppressors. We burn them out, and shoot them as they run out the big doors. Even old men run fast from flame, but bullet overtake them in even race!" Ginger laughs as he says this. Nobody else laughs, but I'm aware that everyone in the cabin is hanging on his words.

He's speaking in English, and although most Svalts can understand English (glorious hero education system) I can hear low-muttered translations going on.

"Our reach is long but we take our time to find everyone, and it is twenty years after war before we get to Leng." I notice Bêbe surreptitiously cross herself when she hears this word.

"This is regiment of blooded heroes, and tanks, and exploding horses." I learn much, much later that he's referring to a favourite trick of the Svalt army - strap short-fused dynamite to a horse and bolt it into villages where counter-revolutionaries might be (but usually weren't).

"It is same deal, we think, as many time before," and for a moment he stops, a moment of memory, and I realise he was there. "But it is not like before, where we blast and burn church and houses, and shoot them dead everyone.

"This is big place, stand black above the valley, with many walls and towers. The weather is close in and dirty. And many guns, some big, they have themselves.

"We fight for 2 days on the rock below in the shitting blizzard, and we never see faces of the bastards killing us. Then weather is better and we call the bombers in and drop gas on them. This quietens them to death.

"We go up, go through doors hanging off, and walls in splinters. We find one enemy, high in gatehouse, dead with blue face, and tongue sticking out - is good gas.

"And you know what? He is shitting old man Nazi." He leans back and necks the last of his vodka."You know what, friends? This is where we go now. We go to see dead monks on the hill. This name you all know, in our Svalti speech of heroes," and he looks around the cabin, skewering each in turn, raises his glass, and says, "Gethsemet."

There's a pin-drop silence, and all I can hear is the clank and rumble, until Bêbe starts crying again.