Marilyn Todd - Dark Horse

'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.