Dark Horse

Forty-Four

Who's Clio?' Claudia asked.

They were sitting beside a lake whose water was the green of newly sprung grass and whose clarity showed every fin and spot on the fishes and eels. On the rocks by the water's edge, a small fire crackled and spat from the juices dripping off a small deer brought down with one of Jason's lethal arrows, but there was no fear of Azan's men tracing them from its smoke. Twenty-four hours had passed since the wreck of the Soskia, and the wolf trick had been sufficient to give them the edge in making good their escape. Azan's thugs would not find them now.

Just as Claudia could not find her way home.

With careful precision, Jason had led her deep into the Illyrian hinterland, to the Land of a Thousand Waterfalls. Lying between high forested mountains, this unique valley comprised a succession of crystal-clear lakes falling one below the other in a series of breathtaking cascades as the valley floor dropped. Awesome, spectacular, inspiring, stunning. These were just some of the words to describe this amazing waterworld. Arguably the most beautiful place in the world. She had never seen scenery to equal it.

But then other words bubbled up to the surface of her brain. Trapped. Isolated. Disorientated. Lost.

She concentrated on the venison and refused to dwell on the fact that the landscape was every bit as forbidding as it was magnificent. With its treacherous chasms, plunging gorges and waterfalls that froze into solid white sheets in the winter, the environment was too harsh for man to colonize. This was the domain of the predators. Wolves, bears and lynx were the masters here.

That summed up the valley. Beautiful but deadly — like Jason. From the corner of her eye, she observed the solid musculature straining the thighs of his trousers. How many women had fallen for his dashing good looks? Been swept off their feet by his dazzling smile, easy manner and lilting Scythian brogue? How many women had thrashed beneath that burnished body in the throes of passion? Or simply in their death throes? The venison was succulent and sweet, but it could have been ash. Like the Scythian's gold belt, this ten-mile chain of green lakes was neither separate nor apart, but linked inextricably one to the other. Just as she was with Jason.

'Clio?' He sliced another chunk off the roast. 'I told you, she's a vampire. At least, that was the latest theory, but then, a few days earlier they had her pegged as a flesh-eating monster, which means by now they'll probably have her turned into a harpy.' He chewed without looking up. 'Why do you ask?'

Shortly after daybreak, the name had come back to her. Overtaken by kidnap, the shipwreck, Geta's death and an artillery attack followed by a frantic chase for her life, events at the Villa Arcadia had blurred into insignificance. Now they had clarified once again. Clio was the weapon with which Silvia had tried to blackmail Leo. Clio was the woman Leo had denied knowing. And Clio was the name which had tripped so lightly off Jason's tongue outside the abandoned shepherd's hut.

'Just curious at how you came to know her, that's all.'

'Me?' he seemed surprised. 'I introduced her to Leo. What's the matter? Something go down the wrong way?'

You bet it did, pal. Claudia waited until her choking fit subsided. 'She was your moll, presumably?'

'My…?' He tipped his handsome head back and laughed until tears filled his eyes. 'I must remember that. My — ' he rolled the word around on his tongue '- my moll. She'll love that.'

Claudia wondered why Clio might find that amusing, but noted he didn't deny it. Hmm. No wonder Leo was so keen to put Silvia on the first boat out of Cressia, if she was threatening to blow the whistle on his relationship with a pirate's floozy. Gossip like that could ruin a man. Hundreds of miles away in Rome, where they understood nothing of the situation out here,

Leo's behaviour could easily be construed as being in league with the rebels, effectively branding him a traitor — wait! Give back what is mine.

Very deliberately, Claudia sipped at the cool, mountain water. 'Was Clio the cause of the vendetta between you and Leo?' she asked casually.

Jason pulled off his boots, stretched himself out on the bank and closed his eyes. 'Now what vendetta might that be?'

Still playing games. Cat and mouse. She said nothing, glad beyond words of the knife down her boot. High in the whispering branches, green warblers sang their little hearts out. She nibbled at the wild raspberries she had collected. She could not kill him, of course. The paradox of her situation lay in that her very survival depended on the man who was intent on destroying her. But there would come a time, and probably soon, when paradox became confrontation. She was ready.

'Why did you leave the wolf heads behind?' she asked. About an hour after pulling their stunt, Jason had hurriedly stuffed the sack inside the bole of a dead beech tree. 'You didn't know at that stage we weren't being followed. We could have used them again to frighten them off.'

'Hardly.' He reached for a grass of blade and chewed lazily. 'If Azan's little playmates were still on our trail, there was no way they'd fall for that old chestnut twice. We'd only have wasted precious time trying, so I dumped them in the first dead tree we came across.'

'They were valuable.'

'No point in lugging around stuff we have no use for.'

Claudia thought of Geta, lying several hundred yards away and not a pretty sight any more. And she thought about the axe, whose vicious blade was right now embedded in a silver birch, glinting like a malevolent eye in the sun.

'You used those wolf heads on the Soskia, didn't you?'

Volcar talked about the pirate ship howling like banshees after blood. The sound would have been made by the bronze sculptures impaled upon the same spikes that held the torches the night the little Moth anchored off the villa when she was lit up brighter than a midsummer noon.

'I presume the objective was to drown the screams of the women and children you'd captured.'

The Scythian groaned and covered his face with his hands. 'Good god, woman, your husband must have gone to his grave with his ears plugged. Don't you ever let up?'

In the calm reflection of the lake, she watched two swans flap lazily across the canyon. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. Like the oars of the warship. The swans were long out of sight before she asked, 'How did you know my husband was dead?'

'Same as I know everything else that happens at the Villa Arcadia. I make it my business. Now for heaven's sake, will you let a man sleep.'

Claudia pictured the battleaxe embedded in his heart, instead of the birch. But the forest was dark and she would never find her way back to the coast. 'Why?' she asked. 'Why is the Villa Arcadia so important to you?' What's the link?

Faster than a cobra strike, Jason was on top of her, pinning her down. A hundred and eighty pounds of immovable muscle smelling of cinnamon and raw masculinity.

'I have a cure for women who talk too much,' he rasped, drawing his lips down on hers.

A girl doesn't dance for her supper in a rough tough naval tavern in just a bangle and some skimpy bits of cotton without learning the odd trick or two. Jason might be strong and athletic, but compared to a drunken sailor who hasn't had a woman in weeks, he was a baby.

'There go my chances of fathering children,' he wheezed.

'I don't kiss killers.'

'So I noticed.' Eyes watering, he tried to unbend and found being doubled up much more comfortable. After a few minutes in which his face eventually lost its green tinge, he said, 'I make no apologies for what I've done.'

'That's a coincidence, because neither do I.'

He hobbled on to all fours, then hauled himself upright with the help of a stripling. 'They need to change the name of this valley,' he said, wiping the cataract of sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. 'Call it the Land of a Thousand and One Waterfalls.' He staggered into the lake up to his groin.

'Is it my imagination or is there steam rising off the surface?' he asked.

Still trying to charm me, eh? Even when you've admitted the atrocities, you're still trying to charm me. Cat and mouse. The old I-know-that-you-know-and-you-know-that-I-know-that-you-know routine. Bluff and double bluff. How can I possibly be the monster you think I am? Do I look like a sick, depraved killer? No, you don't, Jason, and that's your camouflage. Just like the mild little man back in Rome who went around strangling women for kicks. So meek, so well mannered, so utterly trustworthy that his victims literally invited him into their homes. But you, Jason. You're a wolf in wolf's clothing, and that's the genius of your disguise. No one suspects you to be worse than you are. Except me. I know what you are.

Yet she could still taste the mint on his breath and feel the imprint of his lips on her own, and the lips were not rough or chapped, and his breath had been warm, and the place where his hands had gripped her shoulders tingled and burned, and… and the sensation was far from unpleasant.

He waded out of the shallows and hauled on his red leather boots. 'Nothing quite like having your nuts twisted then marinated in ice-cold water to put a chap off his post-prandial nap,' he said, tweaking the axe out of the birch. 'So I suggest we knuckle down to the real business we came to this place for. Sorting out Geta.'

Claudia gulped. 'Define "we".'

'Straight choice,' he said. 'Either come with me and help. Or I tie you up and leave you here until I've finished.'

Tied up at the mercy of a playful psychopath like Bulis? I'd rather drink poison. On the other hand… 'What exactly are you proposing to do to him?' she asked.

'Why the hell do you think I've carried Geta on my shoulders all this way?' For twenty long seconds, hard grey eyes bored into hers. 'I'm going to bury the poor bugger, of course.'

The demon yawned, stretched, then settled back to sleep.

It had its victim exactly where it wanted it.

On the end of a string.

No hurry.

None at all.

When Jason said bury, of course, he meant it in the broadest sense of the word. As in 'disposal of body'. He did not mean inter, neither did he mean cremate. Fire, he explained, stripping the helmsman of his clothes, was Targitaos the sun god's holy gift. To defile this gift with human flesh would be an abomination and an outrage, so Scythian custom decreed that corpses be exposed.

'Exposed?' Different cultures, different customs, fair enough. The Egyptians embalmed. Britons interred. The Gallic and Nordic tribes favoured cremation. In parts of the land of Kush they were even rumoured to bury their dead upright in pits. But no civilized society, repeat none, left their loved ones to be picked clean by carrion!

'Has to be a willow,' he said, hacking away at the canopy with his battleaxe. He had stripped off his white shirt, revealing not only the bull, but tattoos of wryneck birds and cranes. As he chopped, the lynx on his back bared its fangs in a snarl as his muscles expanded. 'Willow is our sacred tree.'

Claudia thought of the leaf pattern engraved on the gold torque which glittered round his neck. Everything was symbolism with this race. The ritual every bit as important as the act. A point to bear in mind when Jason felt the bloodlust come upon him.

'The body has to be wrapped in an untanned skin.' His mouth twisted at one corner as he held up the velvety hide of the deer they had just eaten. 'Although I'd like to think there is a certain flexibility in the definition of "wrap".'

Either that or slaughter half the herd. Geta was a big man.

'According to legend,' Jason said, binding the hide tight, 'Geta's homeland was settled when two brothers followed a white stag to a beautiful and bountiful land. Hence the sacred deer skin.'

'You've gone to a lot of trouble,' Claudia said. 'You must have been fond of him.'

'Geta?' Jason gave the red mop one last affectionate pat. 'Not particularly, but he served me well and we are, after all, brothers in blood and Scythians take care of their own. It our code, and since Geta came from the Danube delta, it is to freshwater that he must return.'

'What about you?' Claudia asked quietly. 'Where will you return to?'

Jason stopped what he was doing and looked at her. For the first time, she saw a flicker of raw emotion behind those grey eyes. 'Without sons to carry the bull on their chests, my spirit will have nowhere to go.' Then he brightened. 'But if the bull is stamped on the chests of my sons? Then so long as my corpse lies where the sun and the moon can shine down on it, I'll be happy. Now then.' He hefted Geta over his shoulder and began to heave it up through the branches. 'Let's get this ugly lug settled once and for all.'

With Jason, of course, mere exposure wasn't enough. Having wrestled his compatriot up to his leafy bier, he insisted on adorning it with sacred insignia. Preferably, it would have been a crane, like the ones which migrate from the Danube delta in autumn to overwinter in Egypt, returning again in the spring to breed. Geta had to make do with a widgeon laid in his lap. But Jason's deadly arrow did manage to find a water serpent, the helmsman's clan totem, to place on his chest. And finally, in lieu of a reaping hook, he left the axe.

'Since we have no more use for it,' he added with a natty smile.

Clambering up the rocks between one of the hundreds of waterfalls, Claudia paused to look back down the valley. As the lakes fell away, to become pools of liquid emerald dwarfed by vertical walls of white rock, she had a bird's eye view of Geta's final resting place. A bizarre eagle's eyrie, flat on the tree tops, where his bones would eventually fall through the branches, back to the earth, the battleaxe along with them. Macabre, but then we all have rituals, she thought, remembering the sacrificial haunch of venison she had left under the willow, covered with spikes of lilac-blue vervain, when Jason hadn't been looking.

Geta might have kidnapped her twice — once on the night of the fire, and once again as she was leaving Nanai’ — and he might have been a pirate without conscience who had willingly crashed his own ship and let the crew drown rather than share the treasure he believed hidden by his captain in the cave, but the great flat-faced, slant-eyed ox had died saving her life.

Vervain was sacred to Venus, and although Venus could not possibly be the same goddess of love that the red-headed barbarian claimed as his clan protectress, maybe — just maybe — this Argimpasa of his, whose symbol was the serpent, might recognize the sanctity of the offering. For good measure, Claudia had strewn marigold petals, as well. Flowering all year round, they symbolized everlasting life and Geta would appreciate that, because, she suspected, he would already be at the helm of some celestial warship raiding the dark shores of Hades!

But a few flowers are one thing. Jason's determination was quite another.

He had carried the corpse for twenty-four hours simply to reach a place where willows and water combined. Altruistic? To give a fellow countryman the send-off he felt he owed him? Or a determination to follow the ritual, no matter what obstacles stood in his path? She considered the way he had worked. Not just with Geta's funeral rites, but in every detail from the low, insolent bow on the prow of his warship to the slow, mimed handclap. From the casual way he took out the eye of his opponents with the slingshot to the planning well in advance of the wolf howls. He would undoubtedly argue his was a methodical nature, others might call it controlling.

To a killer, control is everything. Control empowers him. Lifts him above the material plane to a metaphysical level.

The key to her survival was to deny him that chance.

At the top of the last cascade, Jason pointed. 'Smoke,' he said. He was carrying his own quiver and bow now, and without encumbrances they were able to travel much faster. 'Too much for a single house, it looks like there's a settlement over the ridge. With luck, we can buy horses from them.'

'To strangle or ride?'

He flashed her his wolfish grin. 'I'll let you know when we get there.'

Terrific. An adventuring psychopath who knows that I'm wise to him and doesn't care. He's played on my fear of his headhunting tendencies, not just with the wolf heads but by deliberately keeping me in the dark about Geta, and he's keeping the pressure up still. Same old game he'd played with Leo when he delivered the war spears. First in the boat shed, then in the stables, then in the bath-house door: creeping that little bit closer each time, making Leo aware of what he was doing, taunting him, even. But still Leo fell into the trap. And why? Because Jason had taken care to coat it with his special honey.

'But I don't have a sweet tooth,' she whispered to the forest.

For now, though, she was safe. Jason the pirate moved under cover of darkness, sneaking in, sneaking out, leaving no trace. Jason the butcher liked to take risks. He preferred to operate when people were buzzing around, because the fear of discovery was every bit as thrilling as the agony of his helpless victim. It underscored his superiority over the rest of the human race. Highlighted his supremacy over mere mortals. Allowed him to rise above them.

Claudia's instincts had been right on target when, with Azan's thugs crowding in, she had believed that was the moment Jason had chosen to kill her. Her error lay not in the timing… but in the location.

'You're going back to the Villa Arcadia, aren't you?'

'What makes you think that, lieutenant?'

'Because you have unfinished business there,' she replied. Me.

The demon laughed.

Far from subsiding, Clio's anger had bloated into a great balloon of outrage. Like a cripple's hunch, it sat on her back, throbbing with fury, ugly and violent, and screaming for justice.

This wasn't fair.

This was not how it was supposed to be.

She should have been rich by now. Returning home to her hilltop village in fine clothes and foolish shoes, riding in a litter, her litter, carried shoulder high through the streets by slaves, her slaves, tossing alms to street beggars like petals.

Instead, she was stuck in this hell-hole with no food and no means to earn food and she had certainly left it too late to start socializing with the townspeople now! Tolerating a vampire on the outskirts of their community was one thing. The bastards probably even bragged about it to their neighbours. But that wasn't to say they'd countenance one in their midst.

'This isn't my fault!' she yelled at the sky. 'I've done nothing wrong!'

Her fists tore up tussocks of grass, pummelled chunks out of the drystone walls, hurled rocks at the carrion birds pecking at the piles of rotting intestines.

'Bastards!' she screamed. 'Bastards, the lot of you!'

Jason. Leo. Every man, woman and child in the town, including that runt of a priest. Especially that runt of a priest.

'I hope your soul burns in the Lake of Fire for eternity!'

Llagos could have spared her this, the dirty, sneaking, peeking bastard pervert. As the most respected priest on the island, his voice carried influence. They would have listened to him. Now they shunned her. As a result, Clio was destined to starve slowly to death, unable to get off the island because even if she could pay, no one would take her.

'Damn you all,' she shouted. 'Damn you and your ludicrous superstitions!'

That little Persian creep didn't help. Muttering to himself in his own unintelligible language as he pored over livers and entrails, finding portents in everything from clouds to wave formations to lizard prints in the dust. And the silly sods drank in every one of Shamshi's dire warnings!

'When the moon wears a halo and little lambs bleat, so Cressian cradles will rock.'

That, apparently had been his first pronouncement upon arrival at the Villa Arcadia two years ago, a prediction any fool could have made. After the midsummer revelries, there was always a rash of new-born babies in spring. But Shamshi had banked on the islanders' innate apprehension of foreigners. His ways could not possibly be their ways, they reasoned, so his predictions must truly be a gift from the gods. And when he said that before the sun rises thrice more over their heads, a woman shall die, they knew it to be true. At first they had tried to make Clio herself the victim. Nudge the prophecy along a bit. Help the cause. But they hadn't needed to. From her hilltop eyrie, Clio had watched another solemn funeral procession wind its way out of town, where a woman in traditional dress was buried with her hands folded over her breast. An old woman, by the size of her. Probably the cobbler's ancient mother, which meant Shamshi had seen the old crone and recognized that she'd been near to death.

Yet the islanders still believed that every word which dripped off that miserable fraud's tongue was a result of his divinations!

'It's not fair!' she screamed. 'It's not bloody fair, I've done nothing wrong!'

She hadn't harmed these people. Why did they hate her so much that they would let her starve to death rather than help her?

'May your souls shrivel in the Lake of Ice,' she cried. 'May your children and your children's children be cursed!'

Bastards.

She could not turn to Silvia, because Silvia knew why she was here, and Silvia would be looking after Number One. In any case, Leo's cousin from the Security Police was ensconced at the Villa Arcadia now, and that would make things doubly difficult. Stealing food would be well nigh impossible, there were just too many people around, sooner or later Clio would be caught, which would be worse than throwing herself on Silvia's mercy in the first place.

But she had to do something. She couldn't just sit up here and waste quietly away. Leo owed her. Clio smashed a stone against the side of her cottage. Croesus, how Leo owed her.

Which meant someone, somewhere had to pay.

Fast.