Dark Horse

Thirty-Nine

Inside the cabin, Claudia lifted the lid of the carved wooden trunk.

'Looking for something?' Jason asked.

If they're gilded, I won't mind so much, but if they're… well, fresh… 'I want my knives back,' she said.

'Can you use them?'

One in each hand, pal. 'I can try.'

The grin was pure wolf. 'Remind me not to stand within six feet when you're wielding them,' he said. 'Or do you throw them, as well?'

Perhaps he genuinely didn't remember what he had done. Perhaps he just flipped open the lid of his chest and thought, my goodness, where did all those pretty severed heads come from?

'I suppose they come in useful at banquets when you've run out of glasses?'

'You found my cannabis, then.'

'Cannabis?'

'It's what you Romans call hemp. You burn the seeds, inhale the smoke and, in your case, hallucinate.'

This was no time to explain she'd been referring to skulls. 'Why haven't you loosened the sails?' she asked brightly. 'I mean that's what they're for, isn't it? Speed?'

'There's insufficient wind for canvas,' he said, extracting her knives from the side of his trunk, 'and even if there was, the Soskia would most likely capsize at this speed — Litja ba kula!'

Claudia was definitely getting the hang of this lingo. Litja ba kula. Son of a bitch. 'You certainly are,' she murmured sweetly.

'Sails.' He looked down at her, and for the first time she noticed that his eyes were grey. Grey and shining with excitement. The way a wolf's shines, when it sees a new-born lamb alone on the hillside. 'Sails, yes of course. Thank you.'

Wacko, sicko, thicko, psycho, think of him what you will but your life's in this maniac's hands. 'You're very welcome.'

Out on deck Jason began yelling instructions to the crew in their own language. The sail master protested, but he was overridden. Within seconds men were swarming up the rigging like monkeys, unhooking ropes at the top, hauling on ratlines at the bottom. To Geta, though, Jason muttered something else. Quietly. And Claudia didn't much care for the helmsman's grim answering nod.

They were hugging the coast so tightly, any minute it seemed one of those white tongues would lash out and engulf the ship. Not like Cressia. There the cliffs plunged steeply, but they were wooded and gentle. No less comforting to a ship's ribs, of course, but at least there was something to grab hold of. The Soskia is not going to crash! Repeat after me, this ship is not going to crash.

The foresail came down with a thud, bellying out over the vicious bronze ram and blasting the ship forward like a horse at full gallop. The change brought the rowing master scurrying up the ladder from the oar deck, waving his hands at the jib and shouting protests, egged on by the sail master. The captain turned his back on them both. As they rushed round to confront him, the mainsail exploded with a roar louder than thunder, hurling Claudia against the wall of the cabin. She was picking herself up when Jason ducked inside.

'Now is when it starts to get dangerous,' he said.

And here's me thinking it was a picnic. 'You mean oars and canvas will only work providing Azan doesn't follow suit?'

'I'm not looking to outrun him,' the Scythian said quietly. 'The Soskia's fast, but Azan's ships appear to have the edge.'

'Then what's the point of the sail?'

'These are your knives,' he said. 'Don't baulk at using them.'

'Oh, I won't.'

'I mean on yourself.' He pursed his lips. 'The only reason the crew haven't realized they're being chased by their own comrades is because I've kept them too busy to check. Since I told them they're Roman ships, they accept that they're Roman ships, but any second, someone is going to take a longer, closer look.'

'And?'

'Then I'm dead, so's Geta and, if you have any sense between those beautiful dark eyes of yours, so will you be.' He pressed the stiletto into her hand. 'May your gods give you the strength not to hesitate.'

There was a clattering sound in the cabin. Claudia had a suspicion it was her teeth. 'What's with the sails, then? Another distraction?'

'Sort of,' he said. 'Canvas with oars will destabilize the ship, certainly. More than sufficiently to keep the crew's minds off their pursuers. But also,' he jerked his thumb in the direction of the cliffs, 'there are those.'

She glanced at the pitiless white rocks flitting past in a blur. 'I can see why that might sustain a person's interest.'

'Geta's a crack helmsman,' Jason said. 'He won't hit any rocks before he's supposed to.'

Her blood ran cold. 'You-' Oh, come on. Even Jason wasn't insane enough to- 'You're not seriously going to wreck this ship?'

'Geta knows where to aim for, and with Targitaos to protect us there's a slim chance that you, me and Geta can make it out of this alive. When the time comes, do exactly what I tell you — and tosc.'

'How slim a chance?'

'Look at this coast. Hospitable it is not. But you said you can swim and that's an advantage these men don't have.'

The ship bucked again, pitching her straight into his chest. It was solid, like cannoning into a wall, and his white shirt smelled faintly of cinnamon. Like Roman men, Jason shaved off the hairs on his chest, but not out of fashion or vanity. He shaved to display every nuance of the curved horns, flaring nostrils and thick muscular haunches of his clan totem, the bull. Man and bull. Man and bull. The Minotaur. Half man, half beast, all bad. As Claudia disengaged herself from the solid warm wall, the ship slewed sideways, generating a collective groan from the oar deck. There were sixty men on the benches down there. Sixty rats trapped in a cage. And the rat catcher was locking the door.

'You have beautiful hair,' he said, hooking his little finger in one of her curls before letting it spring slowly back.

'Thank you.' But it's mine and you're not having it, chum.

'Beautiful skin, too.'

All the better to cover your quivers. And you're not having that, either.

'Remember what I said about the knife,' he murmured. 'If the time comes, hold on to your resolve, because I promise you, that time is fast approaching. Zlat. I almost forgot.' He crossed the cabin and hefted a sack out of the corner. The sack rattled. 'I shall be needing this.'

'Loot?'

'Better,' he said with a wink. 'Heads.'

There is a time to faint and a time not to faint, and the time not to faint is when the ship you're on hits the rocks running. Claudia had barely managed to dig out a shirt and pantaloons and a pair of black leather boots when the first screams rang out.

'Grab the mast line,' Jason yelled. 'Don't let go until I tell you!'

Her hands had no sooner clamped round the rope than fifteen starboard oars shattered to splinters. The suddenness of the impact gave the oarsmen on the port side no time to adjust. Flying at speed and with only one wing, the Moth spun a hundred and eighty degrees on her axis, her port oars splintering like firewood before being flung against a jagged white spur. Screams turned to moans as water rushed in. The scramble for the hatches turned the oar deck into a holocaust, as the rowers trampled their injured colleagues in a desperate bid for safety.

'Jump!' Jason told her, swinging a quiver of arrows over his shoulder. 'Make for that star-shaped rock.' He repeated the instructions in Scythian for Geta.

Pointless to protest that the star-shaped rock was due south. The same direction from which Azan's ships were fast approaching. The water was warm as Claudia dived. No longer calm, but swirling with anger, it was no less turquoise, no less clear, and shields which had been ripped off the ship by the impact gleamed like underwater torches on the seabed. The surface had become a dangerous labyrinth. Clothes, timbers, ratlines and casks threatened to entangle, suck under or render her unconscious, but Claudia could not resist looking back.

She wished she hadn't.

Men with no arms, men spurting blood, men holding their guts in with both hands were surging over the rails, their screams hideous in the glorious calm of midsummer as turquoise slowly turned to crimson. Several deck hands had climbed the mainmast in a bid to escape by leaping on to the headland, but the black sails were full. With a sickening rip, the mast cracked. Faltered. Then slowly, elegantly, toppled into the water causing a surge which sent the flotsam spiralling in dangerous, unpredictable swirls.

Five minutes. Five minutes was all it had taken to kill a fully manned warship.

The cries from the drowning crew grew fainter and more pitiful, but there was no time to dwell on their fate. As Geta's great paw hauled her out of the water, shouts from Azan's lead ship could be heard bearing down on them. It was only to be expected, she supposed. A head taller than his men, Jason was easy to spot. Easier still against a white backdrop and flanked by an ox of a helmsman and a girl with dripping wet curls!

'We don't have much time,' Jason said. 'He'll open fire any second. Head for cover.'

'That's not cover,' she puffed, scrambling behind him, 'that's scrub.'

The Amazon's son grinned over the sack strapped to his shoulder. 'When it's raining arrowheads, you won't be so cynical. Now stop wasting breath and vlodor well climb.'

It wasn't so bad. A toehold here, a clump of coarse grass there to hang on to, one yard gained for every two taken, but at least the shore was receding.

'These clothes,' she panted. Obviously not Jason's. The shirt was, if anything, tight over the chest. 'I presume they're a dead man's I'm wearing.'

They'd reached a crack in the rock four feet wide which to the men, was no obstacle. 'Oh, please,' Jason protested' swinging her effortlessly over the chasm. 'They most certainly are not dead men's clothes.'

'Sorry.'

'So you should be.' He winked as he released her. 'They're women's.'

Better and better. Having a good laugh up there on Olympus, are we?

Below, the Soskia's timbers lay strewn across the sea bed. The corpse of the bow officer lay pinioned beneath the upended cooking brazier, and the square mainsail, bogged down by water, had enveloped the wreckage like a black shroud. But it was the pennants — the red pennants, those ultimate symbols of aggression, which now bobbed so passively — that seemed to sum up the pathos.

Claudia heard a soft, hissing noise coming up from her right.

'DIVE!' Jason yelled.

The clatter was like pebbles being hurled round inside a copper cauldron. 'What the hell was that?' she asked, picking a juniper thorn out of her arm.

'Arrows,' Jason said. 'But then his archers always were crap. He won't waste time or ammunition with that ploy again.'

Good. We can slow down. Claudia adjusted her pace accordingly, but she had barely grabbed hold of the next tuft of grass when a vicelike paw swooped out of nowhere. 'Patoviki,' Geta growled, hauling her up by her wrist. "Bastarvac Azan gabanja i patoviki.'

'Shrapnel,' Jason translated. 'He said Azan's loading his ballista.'

'Didn't you miss a word out there?'

'Not one I could repeat to a lady.' To Geta, he pointed at a stand of stunted pines. It seemed a long, long, long way up. 'Two, maybe three volleys,' he told Claudia, 'before we're safe.'

'Tell this flat-faced oaf I've got the message about hurrying, he can let go now,' she shouted.

'I already have,' he said, laughing.

Bumping against Geta's ironclad side, she felt strangely protected when the first shoosh of iron bolts came scything through nothingness. With an unceremonious thud, he slammed her down behind a diminutive cypress and threw his body on top of hers.

'Wide,' Jason yelled, scrambling to his feet. 'Keep climbing, but when I give the word, scrabble as fast as you can to your left.'

'Why not right?' she panted, groping for a handhold.

'Because that's where the volley went wide. Azan will expect us to either continue straight up in a bid to get out of range, or hook right in the hope that his artillery master won't make the same mistake twice.'

'Won't he?'

'He'll broaden his shot to encompass both possibilities. Which means our best tactic is waiting until he's taken aim — then run like blazes.'

Her toe found a slender root to balance on. 'What if the artillery master reckons the same way that you do?'

'You talk too much,' Jason said. 'Now… Left!'

Claudia didn't need any prompting with the second whistle of iron bolts. She was behind a twisted stump before you could blink, but this time the bounce of metal against rock was considerably closer, slamming chunks out of the stone just six feet away. Also, the bolts were much larger. Fifteen inches long, maybe more. The further the range, the heavier the missiles to cover the distance. And thus, of course, the more deadly.

One more. Only one more volley and we're safe.

'This time,' Jason shouted, 'no zigzags. You just keep running.' He hadn't glanced back once, she reflected. He'd just counted, knowing exactly how long it would take to load, take aim and fire.

'Mountain goats will have nothing on me,' she called back, but her limbs betrayed her confidence. Clammy hands made the rocks greasy. Jellified legs could not get a foothold. She was losing more ground than she was gaining, slithering sliding, slipping inexorably downwards. Come on, come on' don't do this to me, she told her body. But her body refused to listen and, like a teardrop, Claudia Seferius continued to slip down the rockface.

'Kluv,' a gruff voice muttered softly and, looping a bearlike arm round her waist, Geta swung her on to his hip.

'NOW!' Jason called, but Geta, too, had been counting, even as he came back for Claudia. Before his captain had opened his mouth, the big ox scuttled across the rocks like a crab, but his burden was hindering him. With Claudia under his arm, he had only one free hand to find a grip on the slippery rocks.

'I can manage,' she said, but he refused to let go, even when the whistling began.

At first it was faint. Faint and oddly comforting. Like a mother's shush when her baby is crying. Then it grew louder. More strident. Geta had barely found a small outcrop of scrub than the ballista's load exploded into the stone. Azan's weapons master had predicted Jason's move. He had fired higher, straight up. Direct hit.

Claudia's breath was expelled as Geta fell on her, and she heard a squeal, as some small, furry mammal caught the blast of a bolt and was sent spinning down the hillside. Metal and rocks rained down over them until finally, mercifully, the last bolt clanged harmlessly down the slope.

'You all right?' Jason called down.

'Da,' Geta grunted, hauling himself on to his knees.

'Absolutely bloody da! ' Claudia shouted.

The pines might be pathetic specimens, stunted and twisted and rooted in gravel, but she had never seen a more beautiful stand. Just as no flat-faced, slant-eyed Scythian ox had ever looked more handsome!

Say what you like, however much blood this Scythian sun god demanded, the offerings worked. Targitaos certainly protected his own! Dirty, thirsty, white as ghosts from the dust, but by Croesus, the three of them were alive. ALIVE. Claudia felt strangely light-headed as she threw herself into the welcome umbrella of shade. Having survived shipwreck and shrapnel, how hard could it be to make it a hat-trick and escape from this pair of scalpmongering pirates?

Geta puffed up behind her. 'Litja ba kula!' He snorted, lumbering on to the soft cushioned floor. 'Vlodor bastarvac Azan.'

'I'll drink to that,' Claudia told him, 'but look on the bright side. We're out of range now.'

'Who told you that?' Jason asked, raising one eyebrow.

'You.' Don't pines smell heavenly? That little murmuring sound they make. So comforting. And the way the branches creak. Really softly. Like rocking a cradle. 'You said once we reached this stand of trees we'd be safe.'

'That's not the same as out of range,' Jason said dryly, clearing the ground of pine needles with the back of his hand. 'The ballista has a range of over three hundred yards and, as you can see, we're barely a hundred and fifty.'

'Janus! How big will the bolts be at that range?'

'Up to a yard.' He didn't seem remotely fazed by the enormous gap he measured out between his hands. 'Lethal stuff, huh?'

'So what's the plan? Remain here till dark then make a break for it?'

'That's what Azan will be wondering, even as he musters a mulun. Er, posse.'

Posse? Claudia flapped the dust off her trousers. 'Call me thick, but am I right in saying we can't stay because we'll be hunted down like stags, but then again we can't go because we'd never make it through another five volleys of shrapnel?'

'A fair assessment.' (And this is what he considers safe.) 'I warned you our chances were slim.'

'Not prone to exaggeration, are you?'

'Ah!' Under the soft layer of leaf litter, Jason seemed to find something of interest. 'Perfect.'

It was, of course, a stone, and Claudia found herself gripped by a sudden urge to hurl herself down the slope and take her chances with Azan.

'You see, it all depends on how accurate an eye his ballistics master has,' Jason said, loading the stone into a small pouch on a string attached to his belt. 'Or not,' he added cheerfully 'Once I've taken it out with the slingshot.'

The shade was welcome and no mistake. Them pine needles made a comfy soft nest to park his butt and Geta found himself drifting. Aye, and why not? He'd not slept for two moons and he were fair shattered. Especially after rowing all the way to Cressia last night. He wriggled to get comfortable. Worth the effort, though, fetching a woman from the Villa Arcadia for his captain, like what Jason had wanted. And although the tight-lipped bugger didn't say owt, Geta reckoned he'd have been right pleased with that little present! As nice a way of saying thank you for bringing him on this expedition as Geta could think of, particularly after the last bloody fiasco. Kind of balanced things up, like.

Cursing, he shifted position once more, but the rough bark still dug into his back. Bloody land, that's the trouble. Ain't right for a Danubian boatman to be stuck ashore and no ship to go back to. He wriggled again, and decided to put up with the discomfort. What the hell. The rewards were well worth a sore bum, and it weren't for long, after all. Besides. He was that bloody weary. Limbs like sodding anchor stones. Eyelids heavier than the lead markers on the depth lines, making things hard to focus. All the same. Geta sniffed. He'd rather have a ship's wale at his back any day! Planks under his feet, something solid, something reliable, something you know how'll behave. Aye, and he ought to have the sky over his head, too. A bloke can't see buggery under this canopy. Stars. That's what a bloke needs to see. Stars to steer by, stars to look up at like the old friends they are, bright shining comforting stars. Not sodding pine cones. This canopy turned the world darker than stormclouds.

Storms. Aye. He'd known storms in the Aegean that had lasted a week and he'd never felt this bloody tired. But it weren't about lack of sleep, were it? Thing is, it just weren't proper, a helmsman having to drive his own ship on to the rocks. Fully manned, too. A fly settled on his cheek and Geta wanted to wipe it away, but his hand was too heavy. The fly flew off anyway. Terrible. Terrible it were, hearing the anguish of men he'd shared suppers and whores with, seeing their blood turn the sea water red. Living through that's bound to catch up with a fellow, and though he'd seen shock affect men in lots of different ways, Geta knew there weren't nowt a good kip couldn't put right.

'Huh?' He forced his drowsy eyes open. 'Oh, it's you, lad.'

'Who were you expecting?' Jason said, settling his tall frame beside him against the pine.

'Did yer get him?'

'Damn right I did.'

'What about them other two ships? They carry ballistas, as well.'

'Them, too,' Jason said. 'First shot every time.'

'Not bad for an Eastern boy, I suppose,' Geta said.

'Reassuring, is it, that I've not lost my touch?' Jason flashed a sideways glance at his friend. 'Rather like someone else I might mention, not a million miles from where I'm sitting. That was fine work back there, Geta.'

'All in a good cause, you crafty bugger.' He were too weary to laugh, and it ended up as a wheeze. 'You're sure Azan don't know?'

'Positive.'

Geta leered. 'Tell me again how much is hidden in that cave over the ridge?'

'More than you can carry, that's for sure, you greedy bastard.'

'All gold?'

'Every last item. Coins, statues, bracelets, pendants-'

'Crowns?' he chuckled. 'I've always fancied a crown, see. Kinda goes with me red hair, don't yer think?'

'Better than a tiara, certainly.' Jason whistled softly under his breath as he adjusted the tension on his bow string, polished the wood with his shirt, ditto the blade on his short sword. It was a tune Geta remembered from way back in his childhood. A Scythian love song about star-crossed young lovers, sung in every house and every felt yurt, over every campfire and in every riverboat from the Caucasus to the Danube and north, over the plains.

'That's all I need, a bloody lullaby,' he muttered.

'So sleep,' Jason said.

'You reckon it's safe?'

'The rest will do you good, you ugly lug. You look knackered.'

'I am knackered.' Geta winced as the bark caught his backbone again. 'Half an hour, then, but no more. Kick me, hard as a mule if you must, but we can't afford to hang about, lad. Not now it's starting to get dark. If Azan sniffs booty up here, he'll be after us faster than a bullet from your bloody slingshot.'

'Azan knows nothing about our private pension fund,' Jason assured him. 'And here's something to cheer you up. He's that pissed off at having all three artillery masters out of action, he's given up. So you rest easy and I'll wake you when it's time to leave.'

'Mind you do, son, because if it gets much darker, we won't be able to see our way up this bloody mountain.' But already his limbs were slack, his head starting to loll.

'Your problem is, you worry too much,' Jason told him with a laugh, patting the solid block that was the helmsman's shoulder.

'Aye, well that's the trouble,' Geta chuckled, his voice slurring as he abandoned himself to the gentle current of sleep, 'when a helmsman has to wreck his own ship, you lousy bastard!'

'By Acca! For a Danube man you don't half nag.' Jason laughed. 'But if it makes you sleep easier, then I promise I won't make you crash any more ships. At least, not this week.' But he was wasting his breath. The current of sleep had already swept Geta up and carried him with it.

'What was that about?' Claudia asked as Jason sauntered across to her. She didn't much trust the chummy way those two had sat conferring and although she'd noticed no sudden change in the pirate captain, it occurred to her that there might not actually be any external indicator. In fact, his very charm may well have misled Bulis into trusting him. The same sense of reasonableness that had proved so fatal for Leo and, no doubt, countless others. Claudia Seferius would not make the mistake of trusting him, that's for sure!

'I was putting Geta's mind at rest about the stash of treasure over the ridge,' Jason said, stropping his dagger gently back and forth on a stone. 'Although I may have been a tad economical with the truth in implying that Azan had given up his desire for pursuit.'

Claudia squinted through the branches to what looked suspiciously like a war party making preparations to manoeuvre their rowing boat to the nearest accessible landing point.

'Croesus, Jason, what the hell did you do to piss Azan off so badly?'

Jason tossed her his bow. 'What do you think?' he said, passing his quiver over as well. 'I double-crossed him, of course.'

'About the treasure stashed over this hill?'

'You want the full list? Or would you prefer to get going before they catch up with us? Here.' When the strap of his battle axe landed on her shoulder, her knees nearly buckled with the weight. 'Oh, and you'll have to carry this, too.'

'I am not touching that sack.'

'Yes, you are.'

Scalp hunter or no scalp hunter, there are times when a girl simply has to make a stand. 'Excuse me, but I'm standing here like Diana of the Forests, bow in one hand, quiver on my back and bent double with a bloody battleaxe while you ponce about carrying diddly squat. Why don't you carry the damned sack?'

'Because,' he said patiently, 'I shall be carrying Geta. In case you hadn't noticed, he died while I was sitting with him.'

'What?' The great flat-faced, slant-eyed ox was dead? 'How?'

Claudia felt herself swaying. Had he slit Geta's throat back there when she wasn't looking? One more double-cross in a lifetime of double-crosses would hardly notice.

'From the bolt he took saving your life,' Jason said, sheathing his dagger. 'So kindly pick up the sack and get your arse up that hill before I lose my bloody temper.'