Marilyn Todd - Dark Horse

'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.