Marilyn Todd - Black Salamander

She dared not look at him.

Across the cave, she heard him inhale deeply. ‘I’m a huntsman, not a warrior. I told you.’

‘But first and foremost, you’re a trapper.’ You baited this trap. And removing the rope rail was not to impede the Spider’s men. It’s to hinder my progress, should I try to escape. A thousand emotions thundered in her head. ‘Dammit, Arcas, this whole bloody thing is a set up.’ Choreographed from the start…

Faster than she could have imagined, he sprang across the floor. ‘No!’ she screamed, making a bolt for the cave entrance, but already he was upon her, thrusting her on to her face as deft hands tied her wrists with strips of leather. ‘Let me go, you duplicitous bastard!’

‘You know I can’t do that,’ he panted, hauling her upright to a sitting position. ‘Although if it’s any consolation, this doesn’t make me feel good.’

You arrogant sod! It’s me tied like a sacrificial hog, yet all you’re concerned about are your own bloody feelings! She squirmed, and the bindings bit into her flesh.

‘One million Celts died defending their homelands, did you know that?’ he said sadly. ‘A million more taken to be sold into slavery. That’s half the population, Claudia. Half! No one held it against the old king when he pleaded submission, we’d been brought to our knees, many tribes wiped out completely. But times change. We are strong again. We will fight back.’

All right. He’s not like the Spider, a raving, sick psychopath. Let’s debate this in a civilized fashion.

If you call being kidnapped and hog-tied civilized. ‘Under Roman occupation,’ she said quietly, ‘civil war is a thing of the past, surely that’s worth celebrating. Or have you forgotten how you GauCelts used to be at one another’s throats? You and the good folks of the Auvergne, for instance. It’s not so long ago you sought to annihilate the whole bloody tribe.’

With an irritated flick, he sent the stopper winging over the floor and gulped greedily at the liqueur.

Wrong, Claudia thought. Don’t rub him up the wrong way. We’re being civilized, remember? ‘I can’t condone the loss of two million,’ she said with commendable calm, ‘but after two generations of peace the population is not only back to its original level, numbers are actually swelling. With men at home, instead of off fighting, lands have become fertile and prosperous-’

His fists clenched, and he rammed a punch into a pile of blankets. ‘Goddammit, we’re a vassal state! Don’t you have any conception of what that might mean?’ He shook his silver mane and his anger seemed to fall with it. ‘Well, that’s of no consequence. We need the last piece of the map, Claudia, and I know what you think of me, but I swear, you have my word as a Sequani nobleman, that once it’s in my possession, I shall personally see you to safety. My word.’

A vision flashed through her head. Of him giving his word to Marcus, of their gripping forearm to forearm, staring deep into each other’s eyes as they weighed one another up.

‘Is Junius dead?’ she asked woodenly. And knew the answer.

‘It was part of the plan.’ He shrugged.

Ah, yes. The plan. I was forgetting. Right from the very beginning, Sequani spies must have informed the Spider that Theo was acting for Galba. The Treveri and the Helvetii might not know the senator was about to double-cross them, but by the gods, the Spider did. The rock fall was his signal to swing into action. After that, it was watch-and-wait time. Someone-probably Arcas-would have kept an eye on the convoy, doubtless laying a trail for the hapless travellers to follow which would lead them to the plateau where they’d see a plume of smoke, and in their frazzled state they wouldn’t think to ask themselves, who lights a fire in midsummer?

Guided to the village, it’s plain sailing. From then on, they’re in the Silver Fox’s hands, dancing to whichever tune he pipes. He would be well aware of Theo’s role, and it wasn’t that he mistrusted him. He wanted the lad close to keep tabs on him. For similar reasons, he recognized in Orbilio a man who was not what he claimed to be, and wanted him at the back, separated as far as possible from the man who was collecting the maps.

‘That day the Spider’s war party descended on us,’ she said sombrely. ‘We weren’t in any danger.’

‘None at all.’

‘You signalled the charge by leaning on your sword, letting the sun send out a message.’ Then it was playtime. Lead them a dance. Sow seeds about headhunting Gauls. Sow panic. Pandemonium. Make them trust you.

‘I tried to warn you, Claudia,’ he said thickly. ‘How often did I say to you, trust nobody?’ Almost to himself, he added, ‘But you wouldn’t listen.’

No self-pity, Hanno had said. And no compassion, either…

Claudia thought of the ewe with her lambs, her cut throat pumping blood. She thought of the horse breeder, whose stock Arcas had so heartlessly stolen. Never mind that family might starve, be forced to leave the lands they had worked for, spend the rest of their lives in poverty. This was in the name of ‘the cause’. Try as she might, Claudia could not contain her rage. "What bloody cause? Did Arcas and his brutal leader imagine they could take on the might of Rome? With or without the chaos of the new Republic, did he not know how great the army numbered? How far the Empire stretched? No, of course not! To the Sequani, a few hundred miles was big territory. Oh, you stupid, stupid, ignorant sods! Sending good men into battle when any soldier could tell them, the whole bloody lot would be slaughtered!

Doubtless Theo had tried, but the Spider, in his arrogance, wouldn’t listen.

Double-cross upon double-cross.

Where would it end?

Now, though, one other thing, finally, made sense. Dammit, you silly bitch, you only have yourself to blame for this predicament. You should have been suspicious from the start when it was Arcas acting alone who came to rescue you. Not, she thought, because Orbilio holds a torch for you. No. He’d have tagged along for the simple reason he always had, to play the bloody hero!

She wondered what he was doing. The sun would be shining in Vesontio. The parade would be long over, the banquet underway. Wine would be flowing like nobody’s business, business contacts set up, orders placed as sucking pig and roast boar were wheeled in. There’d be dancing and music, jugglers between courses, acrobats, poets and mime. He’d have gone to the barracks, established Theo hadn’t turned up, and then what? Unable to proceed further on his own, would Marcus have gone to the party? He’d notice her absence. Maybe check up on her lodgings, but she’d checked out, he would find. He’d be cross, call her names, and when he calmed down he would see that she’d simply slunk back to Rome and since he was only concerned with his precious map, he’d be happy knowing it was not in rebel hands. Right now, she thought, he’d be feasting on lobsters and quail, taking his pick of a score of young women He would never know that the Spider, having searched her room, had then arranged her kidnap (no doubt a rebel fed false information to a gullible Junius that the Neptune Gate was perfectly safe). He would never know how, in order to retrieve the final portion of the map, the rebel leader had tested her resolve by trying to unnerve her with Theo’s head-with a whole cavalcade of heads-culminating in that harrowing human sacrifice which was the wicker man.

Marcus Cornelius would never know the Spider’s tactics. How, under torture, some people talk, others never will. How the Spider could tell (from heaven knows how much experience) which type he was dealing with, and having assured himself that tough measures would fail with Claudia Seferius, arranged for Arcas to effect a rescue.