Black Salamander

VIII

Nobody disputed the importance of retrieving the dead. The problems seemed to revolve more around which method would prove the most effective considering the paltry equipment available, and it was getting on for midday before the squabbling subsided and the detail finally set off.

Claudia had no idea whether this mattered to Nestor’s killer or not, but on the pretext of wanting her horoscope cast, she made her way down the line to Volso’s rig, only to be disappointed. He’d had an appalling night, he said (crumbs, who hadn’t?), and today, he was very sorry, but he just didn’t feel up to it. Peering closely, Claudia was inclined to agree. Cadaverous to start with, even poor dead Nestor looked in better shape than the astrologer. As she turned away, she noticed Dexter approach from the opposite end of the cart, offering Volso some of his sulphur and garlic pastilles…

Six long hours later, the bedraggled party returned. Not with Hanno’s grandson or the two soldiers. Not with supplies retrieved from the pack mules. Not with any mule meat hanging from poles. Instead they were carrying two of their own!

The eventual consensus had been that the best way to recover the bodies was not to try and cross the ferocious rapids and work upwards, rather to backtrack up the gorge and work down, and in this the party had been successful only in that one of the drivers had broken his arm scrambling down the hillside and another had sprained his ankle coming to his aid, and it didn’t help there was no doctor in the convoy.

An awful lot of told-you-so’s rippled round the group.

With her knowledge of herbs and the aid of a few essentials packed in her trunk, Claudia dosed the injured men with henbane, which at least dulled their pain and made them sleepy, but morale had hit rock bottom. The dead still lay where they’d fallen, there had been no sign of the army, and without mule meat, where was their supper?

‘I know we’re short of horses,’ Theo said, washing the dust off his face, ‘but Hanno, you’ll have to sort out which one we can best afford to lose.’

However, the old muleteer didn’t hear. Wracked with sobs, his old bony body hugged itself, keening quietly in grief and despair, as he pictured his grandson’s corpse mouldering in this humid valley, being pecked by buzzards, gnawed by rats…

Theo did not press the point. No one had an appetite, anyway, and when one of the mares whinnied softly, she didn’t realize how lucky an escape she had had.

A camp fire was lit, for comfort more than for light.

And so a second night passed.