Dark Horse

Thirty-Eight

The whistling was light. Jaunty even. The whistling of a man looking forward to what he was about to do.

At first, Claudia thought the whistling was part of the birdsong. The dawn chorus had just started up, led by a blackbird solo before the rest of the choir joined in. This whistling was different. It had a tune. A rush of weakness enveloped her. Was that the last sound she'd hear? Not even the liquid trill of a warbler, the harsh chatter of a magpie, but the tune of her killer? Or would the last sound she heard be her own scream?

The whistling grew louder. Closer. Unbearable. Hands closed round the bar across the door. She shuffled backwards on her bottom against the stone wall. Pressed her backbone hard against it. Willed the stone to absorb her flesh.

'Zlat'

The bar didn't shift. With a grunt, he heaved again. Blood thundered in her ears, her heartbeat jumped out of its rhythm She felt sick. There was a dull thud from where the bar landed on the ground. A squeal of ungreased hinges. I'm going to die Oh, god, I'm going to die. Instinctively, Claudia curled herself into a ball.

'Sorry about this,' he said, and although the accent was mild, it was Latin he spoke. 'It was the only way I could — vlodor zlat!'

Even under the cloak, she squeezed her eyes shut. Footsteps covered the room in three strides, but miraculously Claudia's arms were sprung free from the rope. Rescue! She heard a primeval whimper and realized it came from her.

'Da vlodor stapo injio!'

For a moment, she couldn't believe it. I'm safe, I'm safe

I'm not going to die. Trembling hands pulled the gag out of her own mouth, but when she tried to push the cloak off, it weighed more than lead-covered ivory and it was left to other hands to pull it off. As the curtain rose, she saw the grey light of dawn streaming in through the rough wooden doorway of what looked like an abandoned shepherd's hut. Stank like it, too. Her eyes picked out the crude tamped earth floor. Rat droppings. Patches of mildew. A pair of boots — oh, shit. A pair of red leather boots.

The cloak was finally clear of her face. Her gaze locked with that of the pirate.

'Oh, no,' Jason groaned. 'Not you again.'

The expression out of the frying skillet into the fire drifted into her head. Here she was, being helped to her feet by the same son of an Amazon who'd chained Bulis in the grain store before generously setting it alight. The same Scythian warrior who doesn't bother employing heralds to deliver his letters, he sends them spear-post instead. The pirate who spitted Leo like a sardine and left him to die in unspeakable agony.

'Here.'

The perfect gentleman, he unhooked the goatskin at his belt and pulled out the stopper. Who'd think he drank wine — this wine, probably — out of the gilded skulls of his enemies and used their flayed skins to cover his quiver? Claudia hesitated, and discovered the uncomfortable truth that the need to rehydrate far outweighed pride. The wine was fruity and dry. More importantly, it was strong. With every gulp, her strength returned.

'This is Geta's fault,' Jason was saying. 'When I told him I wanted a woman from the Villa Ar- Ach, it's a long story. Just accept my apologies.'

'Absolutely.' I mean, who's to say it wasn't purely men that he butchered? Perhaps, underneath it all, a heart of gold beat inside that white shirt tucked into his pantaloons? Perhaps I'm the Queen ofBloody Sheba. When his people sacrifice to their sun god, they don't do it in the swift humane manner of Roman priests, stunning the animal before cutting its throat cleanly. Scythian sacrifice was as cruel as it was protracted. First they tie the horse's front feet together, then they pull on the rope. As the horse stumbles, so a noose is flung round its neck, with a short stick to act as a garrotte. The rope is then twisted, slowly, choking the poor beast to death. Choking. Claudia shivered. And pictured the bruises round Silvia's throat, darker than dragon's blood…

Suddenly Claudia understood why Bulis had been killed in the way that he had. It was a ritual in the Scythian practice of human sacrifice to tie the victim to a tree or ceremonial pole to garrotte them. She handed back the wineskin and hoped he didn't see her hand shake. 'We'll say no more about this little misunderstanding, then.' She edged her way to the door. 'After all, everyone makes mistakes.'

'If it's any consolation, I'll have Geta's dokion — blood, for this.'

Claudia didn't doubt it. He'd probably drink it out of the helmsman's skull, too. While the helmsman was still alive.

Outside, it was pretty obvious that the strapping Geta, he with the stamina of a bear and the life expectancy of a butterfly in frost, hadn't delivered his package to a different region of Cressia. Peaks which had previously been little more than jagged shadows on the horizon suddenly loomed stark and uncompromising before her. Her heart jumped. Only a narrow channel of crystal clear water separated her from the pitted, white karst. Ducking under the lintel, Jason looped his thumb in his cloak and hooked it over his shoulder and Claudia realized that the gold she'd seen glinting at his neck from the cliffs of the villa was in fact a torque engraved to resemble overlaid leaves of willow, while the gold at his waist proved to be links of chain forming a belt. The buckle comprised two interlocking gold serpents. Well, they would be, wouldn't they. There are always serpents in paradise.

She was just debating which way to saunter nonchalantly off, no hard feelings what, when, from the corner of her eye, she saw him stiffen.

'Zlat!'

Now Claudia's Scythian might be on a par with her Cappadocian, but she was getting the gist of the lingo. Zlat, for instance. Not one for the kiddies. Nor, probably, was:

'Litja ba kula!'

Shielding her eyes with her hand, she followed his gaze to the three ships streaking up the Dalmatian coast. Her heart skipped again, only louder. The navy! The Imperial Navy had rooted him out! Then she realized the ships were much smaller than Augustus's triremes. In fact, they were identical in almost every respect to the Soskia. Including the red flag of war.

'Mijela da navo Azan.' He frowned. 'That means, those are the ships of Azan.'

It's Minerva. She hates me, that goddess. She's got it in for me, the bitch.

'That way.' His fingers clamped round her upper arm. 'Run.'

'You run.' Claudia dug her heels into the dry, dusty soil. 'I'm staying.'

'Don't be stupid. The island's uninhabited, no one'll know you're here.'

'Fishermen pass. I can signal.'

'This island is sladni. Cursed. Last summer, the shepherd and his flock died of some kind of smicu — what do you call it? Pulmonary infection.' He grimaced. 'Not a pleasant way to go, bleeding from every orifice.'

Claudia tried not to think about Leo.

'After that, the inhabitants abandoned the place, so even if someone sees you, they'll take you for the spirit of the plague calling them to their deaths. Now hurry. Please. We're wasting precious time.'

'You're wasting it.' This is a civilized world we're living in. 'No one believes in shapeshifters and ghouls any more.'

'On Cressia, the islanders think Clio's a vampire.'

Clio. Clio. Where had she heard that name before? 'I'm still taking my chances.'

'Vlodor plut! Don't you understand? If I leave you behind and Azan's men see you, there's no telling what will happen. They're animals, believe me.'

That's rich, coming from you. 'I can hide,' she said. 'In the hut. And it's not far to the mainland. I can swim it.'

'Dammit, woman, there's no telling Azan's men won't find you anyway. And you might swim like a mermaid, but you'd never beat that coastal current.'

Which, when you put it that way, really only left Claudia one option.

She belted behind him down the cliff path to his ship.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Claudia had never set foot on a pirate ship before and that if she never, ever repeated the experience it would still be way too soon. But you had to hand it to the crew for the speed they got a hundred and twenty feet of wood shifting.

At the captain's first yell, they were halfway to the galley before their eyelids had even opened from where they'd been sleeping out on the sand. Every man to his station, the operation to weigh anchor was as smooth as a greased bolt. While sixty oarsmen slithered below the covered deck and the bow officer took up his station, the rest of the crew cast off and made ready for battle, protecting the wales with overlapped shields and checking the ammunition for the ballista amidships.

'Why did you tell them they're Roman warships?' she asked. You didn't need to be a linguist to know that 'da navo Augusto' wasn't the same as 'da navo Azan'.

'Inside the cabin,' Jason growled.

'But-'

'And stay there,' he ordered, pushing her into a small wickerwork structure at the stern. (Cabin? Pig pens were cosier.)

From below, the rowing officer set the beat, first for the drummer, then, once the Soskia was underway, for the flautist. Above, on the pig pen's reinforced roof, the boots of the steersman clumped up and down as he barked orders to the men who worked the galley's giant steering oars. For whatever reason Jason was running from Azan, he was making a bloody good job of it. The Moth flew through the water.

And Leo thought he could outstrip this sleek, bleak killing machine! The Medea was only a third of the size, only a third of the power. What on earth was going through his mind when he set off after the galley?

'Tosc!' Jason cried. Faster.

Could the Moth fly any faster? Claudia ventured out on to the bucking deck, grabbing on to the red painted rail to steady herself as she leaned out. The speed was exhilarating and as she put her face to the wind, her hair was swept like a pennant behind her. She forgot about Leo, about scalps and war spears, about Bulis and odd fires along the Liburnian coast. She luxuriated in the tang of pitched timbers, the taste of salt on her lips, the sound of timbers creaking as the Soskia scythed through the sea.

'I told you to stay inside,' a voice growled.

'I'm not in anyone's way.'

'Look around. Can't you see?'

Ah. Those rumbles among the crew, the glowers, the dark mutterings to their captain were about her, were they?

'The fleet's gaining and the men think you're the cause of their bad luck,' Jason rasped. 'In fact, the general consensus seems to be that if lead weights were attached to your feet and tossed over the side, that luck would change.'

He didn't need to shove her this time. Claudia was back in the pig pen before you could say oink.

'I've told them you're our hostage, more valuable than the treasures inside all the temples of Pula, but right now, the crew's skins mean more to them than booty. Step outside again, and I can't answer for someone taking the law into their own hands.'

What next with this man? There was no logic Claudia could employ, no rational argument. He'd tried to kidnap her once, on the night of the fire, but when the alarm horn sounded, he'd knocked her out, the quicker to make his escape. By then he had already killed one poor sod, then it was Leo's turn a little later, with an attempt on Silvia's life the same night. Yet, when he saw Claudia trussed up and gagged in the shepherd's hut this morning, he seemed surprised. So much so, he practically tripped over himself to apologize, and now he was cosseting her like a new-born babe. During trials in the basilica in Rome, Claudia had listened to killers claiming not to have remembered committing their crimes, but then they would say that, wouldn't they, when they'd been caught red-handed? They had no other defence. But now, seeing Jason, Claudia wondered whether there wasn't substance behind the concept after all. A genuine blanking out of things too horrible to contemplate on a conscious level?

In which case, it made him even more dangerous. You'd never know what triggered the change, only that it would be swift. Next time, stuff the pros and cons of staying on sladni sodding islands. Eat my dust, you sick Scythian bastard.

'Geta,' he called. 'Var te stluja da Soskia dur mileja kanal dara?' Can you take the Soskia through that channel over there?

The shock of red hair shook violently, the general gist of his reply seeming to be along the lines of 'not at this speed, I can't'.

'Zlat.' Jason walked over and clapped a hand round Geta's shoulders. 'Plu Azan mjbelo,' he said under his breath. Azan's gaining.

'Azan?' Geta hissed.

Mijela da navo Azan,' Jason replied softly. 'Bo Augusto.'

'Zlat!' The helmsman cast a worried glance round the ship, and for the first time, Claudia realized that the others couldn't make head nor tail of the exchanges between the captain and his second-in-command. Interesting. The crew weren't Scythian, then. Inside the pig pen, she stared up at the mast and asked herself, was this a good thing or a bad thing? And did it matter? After all, she only had the one scalp. This way Jason and Geta would at least get half each.

Then the copper quadran dropped. The crew might not be Scythian, but they were no less Azan's men. The same Azan, who was steaming up behind them, gaining fast. How long before some sharp-eyed sailor noticed those streaming red pennants were not Roman?

It was zlat right enough.

Claudia was in it up to her neck.