by Marilyn Todd
Was there an option?
One boat, which the Spaniard had hidden. Four killers. Three survivors, one seriously wounded. If she ran fast enough, she would not hear their screams as they burned alive in that room.
Her hands were shaking as she turned to face Tarraco, but one glimpse of his rigid jaw was enough. White knuckles gripped the cherrywood shaft of his lance and in his right hand, he weighted a short stabbing sword. For him this had become a crusade. A matter of honour. Self-respect. All those years of pandering to petulant old women, long nights making love with the lights off, there was a debt to be settled, for which he was prepared to lay down his life.
His dark eyes circled round to hers, and now he was looking past the reflection of the burning bushes, to lay bare her emotions and scour her soul.
‘You must go,’ he rasped. ‘Take the patrician back to Atlantis. This is my fight, not yours.’
Talons gripped Claudia’s gut. Orbilio, white from loss of blood, lying underneath the willow. Cal, sprawled red and helpless on the shingle. She had sworn to avenge the one, and now the other’s life depended on her rowing him to safety. Another box tree burst into flames. Due to the pressure of making that one vow of vengeance, Claudia had sought refuge with the one man outside the unholy mess in Atlantis—only to find him in it up to his eyebrows. And willing to die for the cause. This is my fight, he had said. He was right. Showers of resinous sparks hit the door, the door jamb, and the drapes.
But it was also Claudia’s battle.
Lais had left Orbilio for dead, and condemned Claudia to an agonizing death. That she was responsible for the death of a number of innocent victims was one thing. Now it was personal.
‘For goodness sake, Tarraco,’ Claudia winked as she swept aside the Golden Fleece, ‘someone has to show you how this thing is done.’
As she flung open the secret door, she thought she heard a man tell her that he loved her, but then again, it was probably the crackle of the flames around the threshold and the growl of the sky overhead.
‘Ladies,’ she breezed. ‘Am I interrupting your embroidery lessons?’
Eight eyes swivelled and suddenly each figure was frozen like marble. For one brief, delicious second, Claudia felt the same rush of power that Medusa must have felt when, with one look, her victims were turned to stone. But the moment was fleet, broken by the sudden rush for weaponry. Beside her, Tarraco began kicking over tables and chairs, to confuse and distract the enemy, then the sobering tribune and Pul lunged towards him.
Claudia advanced towards the self-styled Queen of the Lake and her lanky physician, brandishing the knife in her hand.
‘By the gods, you meddlesome bitch,’ Lais spat, ‘you’ve no idea how I hate you!’
‘You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?’ From the corner of Claudia’s eye, she was aware of three men slugging it out, and it was clear from Lais’ lack of action, that she expected her own men to win. Her assumption was probably correct…
Kamar, however, had gone straight into panic, giving Claudia a chance to shorten the odds. Jabbing the knife at his face, she danced towards him, and with each step she advanced, he backed up, until finally his back was hard up against the wall and the blade was an inch from his nose.
‘I surrender, I surrender,’ he squealed, holding both hands up. In the glow of the lamplight, Claudia noticed a satisfying weal down his cheek. ‘Let me go and I swear, on the life of my mother, I swear I’ll tell you everything. Names, dates, the lot! P-please. Let me go.’
Last time, buster, I believed you were scared. Now you’ve wet yourself, I know you mean business.
‘Scum.’ Lais turned on Kamar. ‘Sell me out, would you?’ Her lip curled back. ‘I don’t think so!’
Something flew past Claudia’s ear. Kamar screamed. His eyes bulged. ‘Lais?’ he spluttered weakly and, disbelieving, goggled at the cleaver protruding from the pit of his stomach. ‘Lais?’
‘How very kind,’ Claudia told her. ‘I didn’t realize you were on the side of the good and the great.’
Across the room, Pul dropped to his knees, blood pouring from a deep cut on his chest, and Claudia heard the clash of raw metal as Tarraco engaged Cyrus in hand-to-hand combat. Around the door, flames had taken hold of both tapestries, blocking the only way out.
‘You!’ The older woman sneered. ‘Think you’re a match for me?’
Nonchalantly, Claudia tossed her thin blade from hand to hand and back again. ‘More than.’
And I don’t want you dead, after all, Lais, my love. I want you alive. Screaming for mercy in front of the families of those you have either murdered or driven to ruin. Oh, yes. I want you alive.
The place was a bloodbath. Against the wall, Kamar had slumped to the floor in a puddle of urine, gibbering, clutching the handle of Lais’ cleaver as thick scarlet fluid pumped through his fingers. Pul was back on his feet, the three men slithering and slipping in red, sticky pools as steel crashed against steel. The knees, Tarraco! Slash at the knees! But Claudia dare not call out, lest the tribune or Pul tried the tactic.
‘Well?’ she asked Lais. ‘What are you waiting for?’ Behind her, one of the rafters caught alight. ‘Old bones too stiff to take a young woman on?’
‘Bitch! You’ll pay for that.’
The more agitated Lais became, the more mistakes she would make, and in contrast, the calmer she portrayed herself, the more confident Claudia actually felt. She followed Lais’ glance to where her henchmen were fighting the wrath of her husband. No doubt that his passion doubled his efforts, but the battle could still go either way—
‘Then you’d better hurry,’ Claudia said. ‘I’m booked for a massage at eight.’
That did it. With a hiss of fury, Lais hurled a footstool through the air, and as Claudia ducked, she surged towards the table. Smoke had obliterated the three fighting men, but not the fruit knife Lais was after.
‘Shame,’ Claudia tutted. ‘Just four inches, eh? No wonder you couldn’t get enough of the Spaniard.’
Under the pancake of cosmetics, rage coloured her ravaged face and a claw lashed round the hilt of the fruit knife. Hard eyes glittered in the smoke-filled room, twin mirrors of the blaze round the door frame. Come on, come on, Claudia willed. Lunge at me, Lais. She twizzled her own thin-bladed knife in the air as a taunt. Lunge at me, you evil cow.
A stranger to physical action, Lais made an ineffectual thrust through the air.
‘Tut, tut.’ Claudia tightened her grip on the object she’d seized and hidden behind her back. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
Lais glanced round. She was alone in facing the enemy. She had no option but fight—
For a dance of twelve steps, they sized up and parried, oblivious to the flames and the smoke, until with a bloodcurdling scream Lais lost her temper. She charged forward, stabbing hard. Claudia dived, sticking out a judicious foot as she fell. Lais tripped, and Claudia smiled to herself. Gotcha. Dropping her knife, she grasped with both hands the piece of wood she’d concealed behind her back and cracked it down hard on Lais’ head. The harpy’s eyes rolled upwards and she sank face forward on to the mosaic floor.
‘Nothing communicates quite like a piece of four by two,’ Claudia told her unconscious majesty, picking a splinter out of her finger. ‘And how are you feeling, Kamar?’ The physician was incoherent with pain and fear and shock. ‘Up to standing trial? I think we can patch you up enough for that.’
The fire had taken a hold, crackling the rafters and devouring Lais’ prized treasure chests. Remus! The ceiling would crash any minute.
‘Tarraco?’ Suddenly she couldn’t see for the smoke. ‘Tarraco?’
She was coughing now, couldn’t speak. Tiles showered down, sending up clouds of plaster and clay and knocking Claudia off her feet. When the dust settled and she hauled herself upright, she could feel rain on her face. Shit. The ceiling at the far end had gone. Pinned under a rafter, Kamar’s feet twitched in their death throes,
/> Overhead, the flames spat and crackled. The plaster began to bow. The doorway was a wall of orange fire.
‘Tarraco?’ This time, Claudia’s voice had a tremulous quality.
‘Here,’ a voice rasped. ‘Over here.’
Stumbling across the overturned furniture, slipping in puddles of rain and blood, Claudia was aware of two men on their knees, their weapons long gone, slugging it out in a fist fight. Then one saw the knife which Claudia had dropped and he lunged—and through the black and red, the blood and the smoke, Claudia recognized Cyrus. She screamed as he reached it before her, his fist closing over the hilt. As Tarraco frantically clawed at the air, Cyrus raised himself high, brought up his fist, took aim, then…keeled backwards into the rubble.
‘What the…?’ The Spaniard turned. In the doorway, a man with high patrician boots was beckoning them towards him. He was barely able to stand.
‘I thought you might want your dagger back.’ Orbilio grinned.
‘Then why did you give it to Cyrus?’ Tarraco returned the smile, hauling himself to his feet. One arm hung limp and useless at his side, there was a cut down his cheek, a slash near the collar bone and what looked like a stab wound in his thigh.
Claudia had a notion that she’d be the one working the oars back to Atlantis.
Miraculously, though it was charred and smoking and black, the door jamb was no longer alight. Drips of water trickled down and over the threshold. How..?
‘That was the purpose of your atrium pool?’ Marcus asked. ‘Emergency fire-fighting equipment? Now are you two going to stand there all day, or do I have to carry you both, one on each shoulder?’
Hauling Lais across the smoke-filled chamber by her dyed hair (and none too worried about any obstacles the bitch might encounter), Claudia paused, panting and coughing, in the doorway. ‘Do me a favour, Orbilio,’ she wheezed. ‘Next time, come to the party earlier, will you?’
‘What?’ he flashed back. ‘And break up your cosy girl talk? No fear.’
She watched him stagger down the atrium, his prisoner firmly secured, though still unconscious. Perhaps it was just as well, in the long run, that Lais was alone in facing trial and public execution. Isolation and loneliness at the end of her life would be just as much punishment as being hated and reviled, laughed and spat on. The minions might have got away, but without their mastermind, they’d be simple thugs, easy to trace. At least Lais would get her comeuppance.
Oh, no! ‘Where’s Pul?’ she shrieked. ‘Where the hell’s Pul?’
‘Calm down,’ a thick accent soothed, and Claudia followed the direction that his bloodied finger indicated.
Flat on his back, his walrus moustache pointing up to the open sky through the rafters, the massive Oriental stared up at the rains through one slanted, almond eye.
But only one eye.
A spear was sticking out of the other.
‘Is speciality of mine.’ Tarraco shrugged modestly.
When she laughed, the laughter felt good. But for some reason, her eyes had filled with salt water, and there was a low humming sound in her ears.
Outside, Orbilio had tied Lais to a post and was fetching the one boat which hadn’t been holed.
‘What will you do?’ she asked Tarraco.
The roof of Lais’ hidden chamber had long since collapsed, melting and contaminating the contents of her treasure chests. The storehouses had gone, kitchens, two whole wings, there was precious little left of the villa. Tuder wouldn’t have recognized the place now. But the ancient Etruscans who buried their dead here might, though.
‘There is nothing left, that’s for sure,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Nothing to salvage, nothing—’ he broke off, blinked and looked away ‘—to stay for. I shall go back to Spain.’ Suddenly his dark, dark eyes were boring into hers. ‘I don’t suppose…?’
No, Tarraco. Don’t suppose. Please—never suppose. Something wet dribbled down Claudia’s cheek. The rain, of course. What else. Louder and louder, the strange humming sound filled the air.
‘W-what?’ She cleared her throat and started again. ‘What’s that noise?’
On the foreshore, Orbilio was using every last ounce of effort to heave Lais into the boat.
‘That?’ Tarraco let out a snort of ironic laughter. ‘That is Memnon. The colossus. Did I not tell you that, one day, you would listen with me as he calls to his mother, the dawn? The statue is hollow.’ There was a sad, sad smile in his eyes. ‘The warm air makes a resonance. Like a song.’ Claudia stared up at the sky and out across the lake to Atlantis. The torrential rains were easing to a drizzle, soft and gentle on the waters of Lake Plasimene. The thunder and lightning had burned themselves out, and now the sky was bright in the east. The fluke heatwave had finally been killed by a fluke storm.
Who says life does not mirror nature?
As she heaved on the oars, with Orbilio slumped white-faced and asleep in the bow and Lais out cold, Claudia listened to the mournful song of the fifty-foot colossus.
‘Hey!’ She cupped her hands round her mouth to ensure her voice carried back to the island. ‘I haven’t thanked you,’ she yelled, ‘for saving my life in the tomb.’
‘No,’ a deep voice echoed back, ‘but you will.’
As she reached for a kerchief to blow her nose, Claudia felt something hard under the seat. A woodcarving. Curious, she pulled it out. A peacock, with all its tailfeathers displayed. Laughing through her tears, Claudia squinted back to the island, to the man with dark eyes and a long mane which hung like drapes to veil his expression, but he’d been swallowed up by the island.
As though he had never existed.
Black Salamander
Marilyn Todd
What better opportunity for a lovely young widow than to join a trade delegation to Gaul? It would raise her profile as a wine merchant, give her plenty of contacts. And let’s not forget the promise of riches for delivering a certain pouch, sealed with the sign of the black salamander.
But before they can reach their destination, a rockfall kills five of Claudia’s party, stranding them in hostile territory.
When it becomes clear that one death was not accidental, all Claudia wants to do is to get out of the valley and hand over the pouch. But it seems there are those who will go to any lengths to stop her.
Plunging her into a deadly game of high treason, in a land where warriors still hunt human heads, and where wicker-man sacrifices are far from rare…
Claudia’s latest mystery, Black Salamander, is coming soon in ebook from Untreed Reads.
The opening scenes follow here.
I
Don’t you just hate it when that happens? Claudia pulled her wrap tight to her shoulders, gritting her teeth as the trap bounced over yet another rut in the road. You’re presented with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to join a prestigious trade delegation to Gaul (expenses paid of course) at the time of year when Alpine meadows are at their lushest. Yet here you are, twelve days into the trip, and you haven’t seen a single Alp—not one—thanks to weather which has turned out more January than June. It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s windy, and that isn’t the half of it.
‘Are we clear of the danger zone yet?’ she asked the driver, poking her head through the gap in the canvas which shielded the car from the rain.
It was only last year, remember, that Augustus finally persuaded the Helvetii that resisting the might of the Roman Empire was not entirely to their advantage, and even then his charm hadn’t been universally appreciated. A burned village here, a town sold into slavery there, his tactics hadn’t exactly won the tribes over and Libo, the tilemaker, had already paid the ultimate price. A taciturn, some might say secretive, individual, all he’d done was wander off the path to relieve himself in the bushes. He’d been found where he squatted, a stab wound straight to the heart.
‘Dunno, miss.’ The driver shrugged. ‘Hope so.’
How very reassuring. Claudia glanced round. Protected by pines, this mountainous terrain was perfect
for a guerrilla attack, the delegation a sitting target as they skirted this deep-sided gorge. She shuddered. Wooded slopes fell two hundred feet to meet white waters swirling over jagged, black rocks. High above, their granite-topped tips were obscured by low heavy clouds. Would a hostile clan attack an escorted convoy in broad daylight? One could never tell with the Helvetii. For a hundred years, they’d been a thorn in Rome’s side.
‘Hello, gorgeous.’ A shiny wet face poked its head under the awning. ‘Hard to credit yesterday was the midsummer solstice.’ He shook himself like a dog. ‘Thought you might be feeling the jitters, what with the road barely wide enough for a wagon. Ha.’ His eyes rolled upwards. ‘Did I say road? Not like Rome, eh? Anyway, I’ve brought a skin of wine to take your mind off the lumps and the bumps and the bruises.’
Without waiting for encouragement (which was probably as well, because the wait would have been lengthy indeed), Nestor leaped into the moving rig, securing the canvas behind him. ‘According to Clemens,’ he said, referring to the stumpy little priest who seemed to know everything, ‘this is the border between Helvetia and the land of the Sequani.’
Thank heavens! A Gaulish tribe, friends of the Empire! It was to their capital, Vesontio, the delegation was headed, which means they’d arrive in what? Three days from now?
‘That river down there marks the boundary.’ Nestor edged a fraction closer as he unstoppered the wineskin and Claudia reminded herself of the promise she’d made yesterday. Namely that if this stocky little architect touched her up just one more time, she’d rip out his gizzard and feed it to the wolves she’d heard howling in the night.
Not that Nestor was poor company. Far from it. Relentlessly chirpy and a fount of tall tales garnered from travels which had taken him the length and breadth of the Empire, hours which would have otherwise dragged on this wet, miserable journey spun past. When it came to spooky legends, Nestor had no match. He talked of Helvetian bear cults, of deep, sacred caves guarded by the skulls of seven bears arranged in a ring, and chilled her blood with tales of Druids, making human sacrifice by burning their victims alive in effigies made of wicker.