Scorpion Rising

Twenty-Eight

Stepping out of the shadows, the Whisperer smiled. Better and better, the Roman whore, too. Proof that the old gods were wise gods, and on his side. He cocked his ear to their low, insistent growls as they rumbled through the tunnels and caves. To their wails and keening cries. The gods were calling out to the Druids for blood. Blood to redress the balance and turn back the tide of neglect. His smile broadened. Who was he to disobey their demands?

'It is time,' he said, testing the rope that bound the bitch's hands behind her back. 'Tonight, at midnight, the battle cry will echo over this land, the earth will drink of the blood of the innocent and there will be carnage like no one has seen.'

He jerked her head back by her chestnut hair.

'Throats will be slit from here,' he touched her earlobe with the tip of his knife and ran it slowly under her chin, 'to here,' he said softly. 'Hands will be hacked off at the wrists, eyes gouged out, tongues will loll in the gutter, then let's see what language you speak, when you're bleeding to death and in pain.'

'Kill me, maim me, this is only one part of life's cycle,' she said, fixing him with her cold brown eyes. 'Do what you like with my body, for my soul is out of your reach.'

He laughed. 'Oh, Beth, Beth, do you seriously think I'm going to kill you?'

He threw her to the ground like the rubbish she was.

'The others, yes. Like that blonde cow this morning, oh, Beth, you should have seen her face! Saw me charging down naked, thought I was going to rape her, the conceited, stuck-up, arrogant cow!'

He shook his head as he tied the bandana around his neck.

'I wouldn't sully myself with one of you bitches, not in a million, two million years. I was naked so no blood would show on my clothing — and oak, Beth. What a masterstroke, to kill her under an oak, don't you think? Using your own beliefs to confuse you. Sowing another seed of fear, making sure you'd not feel safe on your own land. Isn't fear a wonderful weapon?'

'You do not scare me,' she replied steadily, even though he knew she'd cracked her knee when she fell.

'No?' He blew on his ring, then buffed the silver to a shine on his pants. 'Maybe when you see Dora crucified on her own oak, you'll feel differently, or Mavor's head rolling to a stop at your feet. The novices, ah, perhaps that'll change your mind, when I set them alight and use them as torches, or how about seeing babies hacked to death in their crib?'

'Your brutality only serves to reassure me that you will not be reborn again. Your soul will be demolished by the three-headed dragon. Your evil will end with your death.'

'Evil?' He was astonished that she could even think such a thing. 'This is not wickedness for its own sake, you fool. This is expedience, woman. Necessity.'

With the carnage of innocents, Rome would be set buzzing. Blinded by anger and grief, they won't have time to form an organized response. Got you, you bloody bastards.

'Surprise is my weapon, surprise and fear. For in panic and disarray, their armies will be led into traps, cut down in places they hadn't predicted, and the winter is Gaul's ally's, not Rome's.'

By spring, there would not be a legionary left in Aquitania.

The Druids will be returned to their rightful position, men will have power over their own bloody families and Gaul will be the proud nation that it once was. That is not evil, Beth. That is justice. And you,'

He lifted his eyes to the bitch on the ledge.

'Maybe I won't take you as my whore after all. I'll leave you up there to rot, slowly, a symbol of Rome's influence in Gaul. Day by day growing weaker. Withering away, frightened, alone, with only ghosts of the past for companionship. Won't that be nice?'

'What will be nice is watching you paraded in chains round the streets of Santonum, while your own people mock you, because you know what you are? You're a coward.'

'Coward?' He could hardly believe it. 'I am no coward, you acid-tongued bitch. I am Ptian!'

'Ptian?' She was genuinely surprised. 'The Scorpion's deputy? I–I thought you were just one of the guards.'

'For three years I have been all things to all people. Three fucking years, kowtowing to this one, kowtowing to that one, smiling when my heart has been pained, nodding when what I really want to do is put a knife through their ribs, but no longer.' He squared his shoulders in pride. 'Ptian has stepped out of the shadows.'

'Ptian?' she scoffed. 'That's not a name, that's the noise someone makes when they spit.'

She spat and made it sound like his name.

'Be careful,' he warned. 'Do not insult me, for the name of Ptian will live forever among my people. Ptian will save Gaul from itself. With the right military leader and a sound intelligence network, the old order will be restored. Ptian will make kings of the Druids, for he is a warrior, a general, a leader of men. He is-'

'A snivelling coward who kills women, and why? Because he's too puny to take on a man.'

'Why, you-' Kicking the rubbish that was Beth out of his way, he reached for his bow. 'No one calls me weak, you bitch! I am no coward!'

'What else should I call someone who sneaks up on defenceless young girls because he knows he'd lose to anything stronger?'

'Bitch.' The hand that notched the arrow trembled with rage. 'You bloody bitch.'

'And hides in the shadows, too scared to come out. That's why you kill women, Ptian.' She spat his name in saliva. 'You didn't rape her, for the simple reason that you can't. You're half woman yourself, you spineless freak.'

Fuck. Missed. As he notched another arrow, a foot kicked at his shin. He grabbed the priestess by the scruff of her silver robe and landed a punch on her jaw. Beth dropped like the scum that she was.

'Feel better?' the bitch on the ledge sneered. 'Does it feel good, hitting women twice your age who are tied up and defenceless?'

Fuck and double fuck. He watched his arrow bounce off an urn to drop harmlessly among the bear skulls.

'I won't waste good weapons on useless trash,' he snarled. 'You can jump the twenty feet and break both your legs or you can stay up there and starve, I don't care!'

'Can't even shoot me, dear god, what a loser.'

The scorn in her voice ripped through his brain. Bitch. He would show her. He would look that bitch right in the eye as he shot her. He moved close to the shelf. Forced his hands to stop shaking. The leg, he decided. The thigh. That would fucking well hurt. He clenched his fingers round the handgrip. Drew back the string. As he lifted his bow, a candle tumbled towards him. He laughed as he ducked. Did she think she could burn him with that stupid thing? The flame was extinguished within the first second. Pathetic. Bloody pathetic.

The Whisperer was still laughing when the lid of the silver urn crashed down on him.

Since the stone splintered his ribs, crushing his lungs and his liver, he wasn't laughing for long.

Claudia had no idea how long she sat on the shelf, listening first to the death rattle twenty feet below and then, when it finally stopped, hearing nothing but the echoes of thunder.

Had he killed Beth with that punch? She didn't think so, but there was no movement from that heap of fine silver linen. Only an ominous trickle of blood.

One by one, the candles round the chamber started to gutter. The wind, perhaps, or simply the dying of wicks. How long before someone came to replace them? Hours? Days? She looked at the handprints that speckled the walls and realized that, if Ptian's rebels won, it could be centuries before anyone came this way again.

The battle cry was going up tonight, the call that would signal rebellion, and suddenly Claudia understood the importance of midnight. Midnight is what the Scorpion had planned all along. He wanted her to hear it, be part of it, to witness the slaughter then take the story to Rome, let them know what his army had done. What it is capable of in the future. That's what he meant by getting his life back. He was challenging Rome to come out here and fight, knowing that by spring the Druids would have backed the rebel army, the tribes would have united, and that millions of warriors were no match for Rome.

That was the Scorpion's revenge on the woman who double-crossed him.

Not death in the sense that she had envisaged. His revenge was a living death in which she was doomed to constantly re-live the horror. Whenever she looked at a child in the street, he knew she'd see the mangled corpses of novices. That was what he was condemning her to. Waking up every night with the screams of the tortured ringing in her ears, unable to block out the carnage that she'd been forced to watch. Every night, every day, she would be tormented by Marcus starving to death in that godless pit, knowing she was this close but could not save him…

Tears flowed. Candles snuffed. Thunder echoed along the tunnels.

The gods were enjoying their retribution.

If there was any bright spot in this terrible mess, she supposed it was that the Scorpion's deputy had not lived to gloat over the bloodbath. She had at least done that much for the Hundred-Handed, for Gaul, for herself, for Rome. But they would all be like him, that was the trouble. Embittered rabble who'd been shunned by society because their own people couldn't stand their whingeing and whines. Scum too lazy to put in an honest day's work, they wanted everything on a plate. They were bullies and boors, dim-witted and craven, soured by everything except their selfimportance.

And the bastards were armed to the teeth.

Time passed. More flames died. Then finally she heard a moan.

'Beth?'

The silver heap stirred. A chestnut head lifted. 'Claudia?'

'Beth, are you all right?'

'I… think so.' She wriggled herself into an upright position and licked the trickle of blood that ran down a cheek that was swollen and red. 'What happened? Where did Ptian go?'

'Straight to hell.'

Beth followed the direction of her finger and groaned. 'Holy mother, what has become of us? What are we come to,' she whispered.

Claudia stared. These women! They never ceased to amaze her. A monster lies dead and Beth feels sorry for him?

'What time is it,' she asked, 'can you see?'

'Time?'

'Is it midnight yet?'

Sensing the urgency, Beth shuffled over to one of the tall marker candles. 'Very close, why? He can't give the battle cry now.'

Claudia tossed down the knife she'd strapped to her thigh. It was her back-up plan, had the lid missed its target. And while Beth sliced through the rope that bound her wrists, she explained about the signal that would ignite Gaul. It would be lit by Manion, not by Ptian.

'I'll try to stop it,' she said, as Beth dragged the ladder against the ledge. 'But there's a chance I won't be able to, that it's already too late, you must run and round up the women. Take them into the woods then make for Santonum. Rome is not as unprepared as they think.'

That was a lie, she had no idea how prepared the legions might or might not be. But once again, if Aquitania was on the brink of insurgency, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio would not have left his post.

Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was not a gambling man.

Scrambling down the ladder, she gagged at the mangled mess beneath the giant stone lid. She had seen him around the place many times. One of the volunteers who patrolled the men's palisade, but without the bandana, of course, which would have drawn attention to himself. It was why he'd been able to kill Sarra so easily. An opportunist thug, who thought himself clever. The name still made her spit.

'You need tighter security checks in the future,' she began, but Beth was removing the silver ring from his finger and tears flowed down her face. 'Save your sympathy,' she snapped. 'The bastard didn't deserve it.'

The ring was a phoenix, she saw in the lamplight. The bird that rose triumphant from the ashes. Ptian had taken this as his emblem. How ironic that it was ashes that finally killed him.

'That's not the point,' Beth sobbed, closing the lids on his sightless eyes. 'Whatever his faults, you see-'

She broke up and looked up at her.

'Ptian is still my son.'

In the centre of the world, between earth, sky and sea, at the point where the realms of the universe meet, Rumour greeted old friends. The news they brought to the halls of echoing brass was sad. One of their most frequent tellers-of-tales would visit no more. The man who whispered into the ears of the Druids was dead.

Together, they mourned his passing in murmurs.

Countless doors and numerous windows carried the murmurs away.

Where they faded and died on the wind.

Flying down the path to meet Manion, Claudia thought it was not death spirits that hovered like bees, it was tragedy that danced in the air.

The Hundred-Handed are slaves to their system every bit as much as we are, Swarbric had said.

For three centuries, the Hundred-Handed have provided spiritual guidance for small, isolated communities who rely on this forest for their very survival This time the words were Orbilio's. In leading by example, the priestesses set high moral standards Poor Beth.

I am not against love, how could I be? Love is the pivot upon which the world turns.

Claudia had been thinking in terms of marriage, of couples, of men kicked out at forty to start afresh, when Beth had been referring to an altogether different kind of love. That of a mother for her own child.

The Hundred-Handed do care, she realized. But they were born into a society that valued others higher than themselves, and Swarbric was wrong. They weren't in thrall to their own system. They selflessly dedicated themselves to those who looked to them for spiritual guidance.

Our system is far from ideal, Beth had said, adding that she would lay down her life to preserve it, flaws and all, in order to retain the respect of the people they served. We cannot teach them that nature is constant if the very College that serves it keeps changing.

Except Beth had had to sacrifice more than her life. She'd had to sell her own son and endure the worst pain any woman could suffer. Every day, she would wake, fearing for his welfare. Was he eating enough? Was he sick? Did his new family love him like she would have done? Did they beat him? Every single day, she'd have lived with this ache in her heart.

Only to have her worst fears realized.

Bitter at being abandoned, Ptian grew up hating women and she was responsible for making him the monster he was, at least that's the guilt that she carried. And at last Claudia understood why Beth allowed Gurdo to keep Pod. Pod symbolized the son she'd been forced to sell and by letting the Guardian of the Spring keep his mysterious foundling, she might, in some small way, make reparation. It was the same reason that she'd kept Clytie's death secret 'Right on time,' a voice said from the darkness, and Claudia smelled nutmeg even through the torrential rain, and twin points of lightning flashed in eyes that were neither blue nor green.

'For what?' she retorted. 'Rebellion?'

'No,' he corrected, with a broad grin. 'Victory.'

He stepped out from the shelter of an overhang of rock. 'How well do you know your own history, Claudia?'

So calm, she thought. So bloody confident. And that was the thing. The Scorpion trusted his own confidence and success. Big mistake.

'Me,' he said, 'I've read a lot about Rome and its conquests lately. There was so much to learn, too.' His smile widened. 'How three generations of civil war ripped it apart, yet through all that scheming and backbiting, Julius Caesar still managed to conquer most of Gaul.'

She said nothing.

'Then, after his assassination when the rifts ran even deeper, I read how Rome went on to conquer Egypt.'

'And Spain, and Galatia, and Raetia.'

'My point exactly,' he said evenly. 'Which is why I want what is best for my people.'

'Oh, you'll feel victory, Manion. You'll feel it slice through your belly in the form of cold steel, slow, agonizing, it'll take you three days to die.'

He moved closer, and his seascape eyes danced. 'Surely, after all the confidences we've shared,' he whispered, 'you wouldn't allow that to happen?'

'No.' Claudia's smile was as cold as the Arctic. 'I have herbs that'll stretch it to four.'

Without hesitation, her knife plunged into his heart.