Marilyn Todd - Scorpion Rising

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…