Dark Horse

Forty Three

The instant the sun dipped behind the jagged peaks, the beechwoods turned to dark. Shadows appeared, shifting and menacing, and the gorge slipped into silence. These forests were home to all kinds of predator, Claudia reflected: boar, wolf, bear, snake. Just the place to be alone with a cadaver.

'Stay here,' Jason had growled, lowering a stiffening Geta against the bole of a spruce. They had reached the valley bottom, a dried-up river bed which only came to life in spring to drain away the snow melt. 'I need to do some reconnaissance.'

At the time, Claudia was just grateful for the rest. After a night which involved being kidnapped and trussed followed by shipwreck, mountaineering and artillery fire, not even the pack of hounds on her trail could prevent her from sinking into oblivion. A soft scuffle jolted her awake. She couldn't see anything in the blackness, but she sensed movement.

'Jason?' she whispered. 'Is that you?'

Amber eyes flashed in the gloom. There was a flicker of white as it turned, and then it was gone. A lynx, she reflected. After several hours in the heat, Geta was starting to attract attention.

After a while she stopped jumping at every rustle and scratch, each little slither and scrape. Maybe it helped that she was holding the twin-faced battleaxe. Maybe she was just getting used to the wilderness. But next time when she opened her eyes, Jason was stretched out on the ground not four feet away, one knee drawn casually up. She felt the weight of the axe in her hand. With one good swing…

'There's ten, maybe a dozen of them on our tail,' he murmured. He hadn't even opened an eye. 'Four hundred yards behind and closing fast.'

Claudia pushed her hair out of her eyes. 'I'm not surprised. Without the impediments of corpses and heavy weaponry, we could have made better time ourselves.'

White teeth flashed in the dark. 'You wouldn't be criticizing the captain's strategy by any chance, lieutenant?'

'My dear Jason, I would die before I criticized you.' Or if not, shortly afterwards, she suspected. 'I was merely making an observation.'

The flash of white grew larger. Another predator in the forest licking its chops. 'Good,' he said, 'because it's time we got moving.'

'In the dark?'

A soft chuckle rang out as he heaved Geta on to his shoulders and set off along the river bed. 'You're forgetting the occupation of the gentlemen behind us, lieutenant. Why do you think merchant ships won't sail at night? Because of a few paltry currents, the odd shallow channel, a couple of treacherous promontories? I think you'll find the threat man-made, rather than natural.'

'Then it can't be because they took place at night, those fires along the Liburnian coast.'

'So you did pack the cannabis.'

No, but I could sure use some right now. 'Someone once asked me, didn't I think it odd, those fires along the Liburnian coast,' she explained, trotting along behind. 'I assumed it was because they happened at night.'

'Tut, tut. I would have thought that you, of all people, would have known that darkness is the pirate's friend.' A callused hand patted Geta to illustrate his point. 'Now then. I reckon this is far enough, don't you?'

On the eastern bank he laid Geta flat behind a spruce, placed the axe and bow and quiver alongside and kicked pine needles over the blade.

'No reflection,' he stated quietly.

He is warrior born and bred, he knows what he's doing. He is warrior born and bred, he knows what he's doing. Claudia repeated the phrase another six times and still wasn't convinced. Something just wasn't right here. Her hand slid slowly down her thigh and over her knee.

'Something the matter with your leg?' he asked.

'Itch.'

'Not looking for this, by any chance?' From his belt he drew out a familiar thin blade.

Claudia's fingers flew to the empty strap at her calf. Shit. There was only one moment when he could have removed the stiletto. While she was asleep back there by the stream bed. And she hadn't felt a bloody thing…

'I was concerned you might have acquired a certain sentimental attachment to it,' he said, placing it neatly beside the buried axe. Slowly he took off the heavy gold torque round his neck. Unhooked the gold chain link belt. Laid them on the ground.

This is it. This is the moment the sick bastard has chosen. The time and the place.

She should have known.

With Bulis, with Leo, even with Silvia, he hadn't taken his victims away to torment at his leisure. He'd made sure there were plenty of people around when he killed them. Just as there were ten, maybe twelve behind him just now. The excitement of being caught was as important as the thrill of torture.

He drew his dagger. Laid that on the ground, too. Along with the scimitar from the belt which tied under his crotch. If he jumped her, she could pull on that belt. Make his eyes water long enough for her to grab hold of a boulder, bring it crashing down on his skull. But she had a horrid feeling jumping wasn't Jason's style.

Suddenly she was cold. Very cold. Paralysed with the cold. 'I don't want to die,' she found herself bleating.

'Nobody wants to die, Claudia.'

A red boot gently covered the metal with a thin layer of pine needles. No reflection, she thought dully. No reflection, because in his warped mind, no one can see what he's doing. Not even him.

'Now then,' he whispered. 'I think it's high time we used our heads, don't you?'

Relief surged through her limbs, making them shake. 'Absolutely,' she said. Silly bitch! Fancy thinking it was some kind of ritual! 'I knew you'd come round to my way of thinking,' she said.

'Excuse me?'

'Ditching Geta and the weapons, and putting our brains into action instead of our muscles.'

'Actually, that's not what I meant.' Jason picked up the sack at Claudia's feet and leisurely began to untie the string. 'I meant, it's time to bring these heads into play.'

In the brightly lit courtyard, scented by lavender oil and garlands of roses and herbs, Orbilio stared at the fisherman standing with his thumbs looped into his belt. 'Are you sure?'

Thick, brown and heavily scored, the fisherman's skin was like leather and only the muscles which bulged out of his cheap linen shirt testified to his age being somewhere on the good side of thirty. The fisherman cast a quizzical glance at the priest, who translated.

'He say there iss no mistaking what he hef seen. Three — ' he verified the number with the fisherman, who nodded vigorously '- three pirate warships anchored off coast of Dalmatia, also the wreck of the Soskia. Many bodies, he say. Not pretty.'

Orbilio made rapid calculations. Half a day to send a message to the garrison on the Istrian mainland at Pula. Half a day for them to send word to the nearest trireme. Half a day before that trireme made it up to Dalmatia. Bugger. 'Does he know what happened?' he asked.

Liagos put the question to the fisherman, but the fisherman shook his head. The first thing he knew of trouble was the stream of flotsam swept down on the current. He had picked up some of the items. Clothing. Rope. A cask of ale. But as soon as he turned the headland and saw Azan's ships, he turned tail and ran.

'What was he doing out there in the first place?' Orbilio asked. It was a long way from Cressia.

'His sister marry a hunter from Dalmatian mainland. He go to trade lobster and crab for boar meat from forest,' the priest explained. 'Iss great delicacy, since no boar left on Cressia now.' He grinned. 'He make much money and much friends when he visit his sister.'

Orbilio didn't smile. 'But the wreck was definitely that of the

Soskia?'

'Soskia, ja,' the fisherman said, and told Llagos how outlines of red painted moths on the galley's splintered oars had testified to the broken vessel's identity.

Marcus began to pace the courtyard, where moths of a different kind were fluttering round the torches set on the walls. 'I don't understand it,' he said. 'Jason?'

'Maybe whirlpool suck her in,' Llagos suggested. 'Many whirlpools in ocean.'

'But not there, or your fishing friend would have known about it.' As would Jason.

'Maybe freak current.'

Maybe, Marcus thought. In which case, the damage would have been severe — but not fatal for a seasoned warship. 'I'd like to see the stuff he picked out of the water,' he said.

The fisherman's face darkened at the priest's translation.

'Tell him,' Orbilio said patiently, 'that he can keep everything he found. I just want to look.'

The leather skin relaxed, and the three men, one tall, one short, one somewhere in between, wound their way down the cliff path. On the jetty, Qus and Junius were already waiting. Their search of the villa, the estate, the town, the island had yielded nothing.

'The only unusual thing,' Qus said, stepping forward and saluting, 'was a goatherd, who claimed he saw a man with red hair in a rowing boat just before sunset. But then — ' he shrugged his massive shoulders '- the boy's a musician, a dreamer, a poet who lives in his head.'

Witnesses, as Orbilio knew only too well from experience, could be sublimely imaginative. Nevertheless, he filed this little gem in the ledgers of his mind and ignored Junius's murderous glower as he clambered into the boat. A sad catch, he thought, holding a torch above the sorry assortment. Shirts of a cloth he would not wipe his boots with. Frayed lines. A red painted moth on part of an oar, a souvenir to hang on the wall of the fisherman's cottage. In the stern lay a cask of rough ale, a collection of rings and torques stripped off the corpses. Dead men's boots. Dead men's belts 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.