Dark Horse

by Marilyn Todd

  Suddenly the boat rocked as Junius jumped down from the jetty. 'Bastard!' he shouted. 'Fucking bastard!'

  Fighting to prevent the boat tipping over, at first Orbilio thought the Gaul was swearing at him. Then he realized what had attracted the boy's attention. A swathe of blue cotton. Oh, no. He felt himself reeling and it wasn't from the movement of the boat.

  Junius sprang back on to the jetty. 'Where did you find this?' he shouted, waving the cotton in the fisherman's face. Shocked by the ferocity, he took a step back but Junius surged forward. 'Where?'

  'He wants to know,' Orbilio told Llagos with a calmness he did not feel, 'if this gown was taken from someone in the water.'

  'But this is a woman's gown!' the fisherman protested through Llagos. 'You think I would stoop to desecrating a woman's corpse?'

  Orbilio felt as though he was flying, weightless, high above the jetty. A hundred thoughts whirled in his head.

  A red-headed boatman. The Soskia wrecked. Her crew dead. Three rebel warships anchored close to the site. And somewhere out there, dead or alive, but indisputably alone was Claudia Seferius. While he, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, with the whole might of the aristocracy, the force of his wealth and the full authority of the Security Police behind him, stood by powerless.

  Junius had had every right to break his damn jaw.

  In the darkness of the perverse, inverse vegetation of the karst, a hand clamped over Claudia's mouth. When he'd said 'heads' she started to run, but he'd caught her before she had covered twenty-five paces.

  'Quiet,' he whispered harshly, as she squirmed in his grip. 'Azan's men are only a little way off. One sound, and you'll undo all my good work.'

  Bulis might have been fooled, Leo lulled into a false sense of security, but Claudia slammed the heel of her boot directly into his shin.

  'Zlat!' he hissed. 'Was your mother a mule?'

  Her answer was a second kick, which he contrived to outmanoeuvre, so she stamped on his foot. He jerked in pain, grunted; but the arm round her waist and the hand over her mouth didn't budge.

  'For gods' sake,' he rasped, 'all I'm asking you to do is run up and down the vlodor valley brandishing a few pieces of bronze.'

  'Mmm-mm-mm-mmf.'

  The hand relaxed slightly. 'What was that?'

  'I said you must be the spitting image of your father. By the way, did you ever find out who he was?'

  'You Romans,' Jason said, shaking his head, 'have an odd sense of humour.' Slowly he released the hold round her waist. The action didn't fool her. You're playing with me like a cat with a mouse, you sonofabitch. Playing me out, reeling me in. Giving me hope every time.

  'So then.' He clucked her under the chin. 'Are you going to help, or must I scare the zlat out of these bastards all by myself?'

  But hope was all she had—

  'Old trick,' he said. 'Wouldn't work in the Caucasus, but then -' he shot her his wolfish grin '- this isn't the Caucasus.'

  'Are you serious?'

  'Oh, yes, I'm pretty sure this is Dalmatia. Aren't you?'

  Don't think you can charm me to death, either, you slippery bastard. This might not be the moment you've chosen to kill me, but I'm wise to you, pal. From now on, Claudia Seferius sleeps with her eyes open. 'I meant, are you serious about brandishing a few bits of bronze and expecting it to scare the zlat out of a dozen seasoned thugs?'

  'Why? What did you think I was going to scare them with?' Grey eyes glittered in the darkness of the forest. 'Listen, lieutenant, while you were catching up on your beauty sleep, I built a fire to make it look like we were camped for a while.' He pointed up the mountain slope.

  'Then why this elaborate charade? Why not slip away while they're surrounding the camp.'

  She might not have spoken. 'We have to work tosc. Before they realize the fire is a ruse and while they're still concentrated in one group.'

  'If they split up, surely that makes it easier for you to pick them off one by one?'

  'Makes it easier to get an arrow in the back,' Jason said drily. 'Plus it takes time, backtracking, checking, covering our tracks. This way, they'll stay together until morning and we'll have a six-hour start.'

  All with a few bits of bronze. 'Good stuff is it, this cannabis?'

  'I told you before, you talk too much.'

  From the sack he extracted several metal wolf heads and laid them carefully on the bed of pine needles. Precious little moonlight filtered down to the bottom of the gorge, but in any case the heads had been painted black. No reflection, she thought idly. These things were not meant to be seen. But why not? She picked one up. The workmanship was superb. The wolf's mouth was wide open, its jagged teeth sharp as she ran her finger along, and its engraved expression terrifyingly real.

  'What's this?' Instead of a mane, a cylinder of black canvas trailed behind the wolf's head. Black canvas. Like the Soskia's sails.

  Jason grinned as he impaled each bronze piece on an arrowhead. 'You'll see.'

  He placed three arrows in each of Claudia's clenched fists, splayed out the shafts then adjusted the height so that she was holding the wolves in three tiers.

  'Whatever you do, don't drop one,' he urged. 'Hold them as if your life depended upon it, because, lieutenant, it does. Azan's men mustn't find out.' Clutching five tiers of bronze heads in each of his own fists, he led her back up the slope. 'When I give the word,' he whispered, 'you let out a scream, then walk - this is important - you walk back down to the river bed. Understand? Then you hold up your wolf heads and run like hell until I tell you to stop. Do you understand?'

  'Not remotely.'

  'That's what I thought. Now scream.'

  Claudia screamed. At Jason's nod, she turned and picked her way down the track. Halfway down, her heart lurched. A lone wolf let out a bloodcurdling howl from the hill above. Others joined the ghostly chorus, and by the time she reached the

  river bed, Claudia didn't need anyone to tell her to run. The canvas tubes billowed out behind the carvings in her hand. Hold them up, he had said. Hold them up. She lifted her arms, and amazingly the wolves howled louder. Dozens of them, and suddenly Jason was running beside her, grinning like one of his engraved metal heads, and as they raced up and down the dry river bed, the air howled in through the bronze jaws and out through the black canvas windsocks.

  'Simple but effective,' he said, slowing to a halt. 'As I said, Azan's boys won't be keen to separate while this pack's on the loose.'

  He was right. Claudia's scream would convince Azan's thugs, when they eventually found the camp fire, that their quarry had been scared off by wolves who had scented the helmsman's corpse. Jason quickly dismantled the bronze heads from his arrows while Claudia threw the battleaxe and quiver over her shoulder. This time, he was far too busy to notice the stiletto which slipped silently down the side of her boot.

  The demon was happy. It was an exhilarating experience, knowing a person's life - no, wait, their destiny - lay in your hands.

  To tell them ? Or to keep them in the dark? That was also part of the thrill. The power of decision- making. Making decisions about their lives.

  The demon looked into the future. It saw hundreds of people innocently going about their own business, not knowing there was one who walked among them with the power to break their spirit and condemn their soul to destruction.

  Sometimes slowly.

  Sometimes not so slowly.

  Perhaps, in time, the demon might learn how to juggle several victims at the same time. Like with insects or small, furry mammals. Impale them on a pin or a stake. Pull off a wing or a toe at a time. Watch them squirm, each in different - but distinct - stages of annihilation.

  The demon was past pulling wings offbutterflies and beetles. Nailing kittens to trees had lost its appeal.

  Bigger game was so much more fun.

  Forty-Four

  Who's Clio?' Claudia asked.

  They were sitting beside a lake whose water was the green of newly sprung grass and whose clarity showed
every fin and spot on the fishes and eels. On the rocks by the water's edge, a small fire crackled and spat from the juices dripping off a small deer brought down with one of Jason's lethal arrows, but there was no fear of Azan's men tracing them from its smoke. Twenty-four hours had passed since the wreck of the Soskia, and the wolf trick had been sufficient to give them the edge in making good their escape. Azan's thugs would not find them now.

  Just as Claudia could not find her way home.

  With careful precision, Jason had led her deep into the Illyrian hinterland, to the Land of a Thousand Waterfalls. Lying between high forested mountains, this unique valley comprised a succession of crystal-clear lakes falling one below the other in a series of breathtaking cascades as the valley floor dropped. Awesome, spectacular, inspiring, stunning. These were just some of the words to describe this amazing waterworld. Arguably the most beautiful place in the world. She had never seen scenery to equal it.

  But then other words bubbled up to the surface of her brain. Trapped. Isolated. Disorientated. Lost.

  She concentrated on the venison and refused to dwell on the fact that the landscape was every bit as forbidding as it was magnificent. With its treacherous chasms, plunging gorges and waterfalls that froze into solid white sheets in the winter, the environment was too harsh for man to colonize. This was the domain of the predators. Wolves, bears and lynx were the masters here.

  That summed up the valley. Beautiful but deadly - like Jason. From the corner of her eye, she observed the solid musculature straining the thighs of his trousers. How many women had fallen for his dashing good looks? Been swept off their feet by his dazzling smile, easy manner and lilting Scythian brogue? How many women had thrashed beneath that burnished body in the throes of passion? Or simply in their death throes? The venison was succulent and sweet, but it could have been ash. Like the Scythian's gold belt, this ten-mile chain of green lakes was neither separate nor apart, but linked inextricably one to the other. Just as she was with Jason.

  'Clio?' He sliced another chunk off the roast. 'I told you, she's a vampire. At least, that was the latest theory, but then, a few days earlier they had her pegged as a flesh-eating monster, which means by now they'll probably have her turned into a harpy.' He chewed without looking up. 'Why do you ask?'

  Shortly after daybreak, the name had come back to her. Overtaken by kidnap, the shipwreck, Geta's death and an artillery attack followed by a frantic chase for her life, events at the Villa Arcadia had blurred into insignificance. Now they had clarified once again. Clio was the weapon with which Silvia had tried to blackmail Leo. Clio was the woman Leo had denied knowing. And Clio was the name which had tripped so lightly off Jason's tongue outside the abandoned shepherd's hut.

  'Just curious at how you came to know her, that's all.'

  'Me?' he seemed surprised. 'I introduced her to Leo. What's the matter? Something go down the wrong way?'

  You bet it did, pal. Claudia waited until her choking fit subsided. 'She was your moll, presumably?'

  'My . . . ?' He tipped his handsome head back and laughed until tears filled his eyes. 'I must remember that. My -' he rolled the word around on his tongue '- my moll. She'll love that.'

  Claudia wondered why Clio might find that amusing, but noted he didn't deny it. Hmm. No wonder Leo was so keen to put Silvia on the first boat out of Cressia, if she was threatening to blow the whistle on his relationship with a pirate's floozy. Gossip like that could ruin a man. Hundreds of miles away in Rome, where they understood nothing of the situation out here,

  Leo's behaviour could easily be construed as being in league with the rebels, effectively branding him a traitor - wait! Give back what is mine.

  Very deliberately, Claudia sipped at the cool, mountain water. 'Was Clio the cause of the vendetta between you and Leo?' she asked casually.

  Jason pulled off his boots, stretched himself out on the bank and closed his eyes. 'Now what vendetta might that be?'

  Still playing games. Cat and mouse. She said nothing, glad beyond words of the knife down her boot. High in the whispering branches, green warblers sang their little hearts out. She nibbled at the wild raspberries she had collected. She could not kill him, of course. The paradox of her situation lay in that her very survival depended on the man who was intent on destroying her. But there would come a time, and probably soon, when paradox became confrontation. She was ready.

  'Why did you leave the wolf heads behind?' she asked. About an hour after pulling their stunt, Jason had hurriedly stuffed the sack inside the bole of a dead beech tree. 'You didn't know at that stage we weren't being followed. We could have used them again to frighten them off.'

  'Hardly.' He reached for a grass of blade and chewed lazily. 'If Azan's little playmates were still on our trail, there was no way they'd fall for that old chestnut twice. We'd only have wasted precious time trying, so I dumped them in the first dead tree we came across.'

  'They were valuable.'

  'No point in lugging around stuff we have no use for.'

  Claudia thought of Geta, lying several hundred yards away and not a pretty sight any more. And she thought about the axe, whose vicious blade was right now embedded in a silver birch, glinting like a malevolent eye in the sun.

  'You used those wolf heads on the Soskia, didn't you?'

  Volcar talked about the pirate ship howling like banshees after blood. The sound would have been made by the bronze sculptures impaled upon the same spikes that held the torches the night the little Moth anchored off the villa when she was lit up brighter than a midsummer noon.

  'I presume the objective was to drown the screams of the women and children you'd captured.'

  The Scythian groaned and covered his face with his hands. 'Good god, woman, your husband must have gone to his grave with his ears plugged. Don't you ever let up?'

  In the calm reflection of the lake, she watched two swans flap lazily across the canyon. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. Like the oars of the warship. The swans were long out of sight before she asked, 'How did you know my husband was dead?'

  'Same as I know everything else that happens at the Villa Arcadia. I make it my business. Now for heaven's sake, will you let a man sleep.'

  Claudia pictured the battleaxe embedded in his heart, instead of the birch. But the forest was dark and she would never find her way back to the coast. 'Why?' she asked. 'Why is the Villa Arcadia so important to you?' What's the link?

  Faster than a cobra strike, Jason was on top of her, pinning her down. A hundred and eighty pounds of immovable muscle smelling of cinnamon and raw masculinity.

  'I have a cure for women who talk too much,' he rasped, drawing his lips down on hers.

  A girl doesn't dance for her supper in a rough tough naval tavern in just a bangle and some skimpy bits of cotton without learning the odd trick or two. Jason might be strong and athletic, but compared to a drunken sailor who hasn't had a woman in weeks, he was a baby.

  'There go my chances of fathering children,' he wheezed.

  'I don't kiss killers.'

  'So I noticed.' Eyes watering, he tried to unbend and found being doubled up much more comfortable. After a few minutes in which his face eventually lost its green tinge, he said, 'I make no apologies for what I've done.'

  'That's a coincidence, because neither do I.'

  He hobbled on to all fours, then hauled himself upright with the help of a stripling. 'They need to change the name of this valley,' he said, wiping the cataract of sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. 'Call it the Land of a Thousand and One Waterfalls.' He staggered into the lake up to his groin.

  'Is it my imagination or is there steam rising off the surface?' he asked.

  Still trying to charm me, eh? Even when you've admitted the atrocities, you're still trying to charm me. Cat and mouse. The old I-know-that-you-know-and-you-know-that-I-know-that-you-know routine. Bluff and double bluff. How can I possibly be the monster you think I am? Do I look like a sick, depraved killer? No, you don't,
Jason, and that's your camouflage. Just like the mild little man back in Rome who went around strangling women for kicks. So meek, so well mannered, so utterly trustworthy that his victims literally invited him into their homes. But you, Jason. You're a wolf in wolf's clothing, and that's the genius of your disguise. No one suspects you to be worse than you are. Except me. I know what you are.

  Yet she could still taste the mint on his breath and feel the imprint of his lips on her own, and the lips were not rough or chapped, and his breath had been warm, and the place where his hands had gripped her shoulders tingled and burned, and . . . and the sensation was far from unpleasant.

  He waded out of the shallows and hauled on his red leather boots. 'Nothing quite like having your nuts twisted then marinated in ice-cold water to put a chap off his post-prandial nap,' he said, tweaking the axe out of the birch. 'So I suggest we knuckle down to the real business we came to this place for. Sorting out Geta.'

  Claudia gulped. 'Define "we".'

  'Straight choice,' he said. 'Either come with me and help. Or I tie you up and leave you here until I've finished.'

  Tied up at the mercy of a playful psychopath like Bulis? I'd rather drink poison. On the other hand . . . 'What exactly are you proposing to do to him?' she asked.

  'Why the hell do you think I've carried Geta on my shoulders all this way?' For twenty long seconds, hard grey eyes bored into hers. 'I'm going to bury the poor bugger, of course.'

  The demon yawned, stretched, then settled back to sleep.

  It had its victim exactly where it wanted it.

  On the end of a string.

  No hurry.

  None at all.