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.
The demon was happy. It was an exhilarating experience, knowing a person's life — no, wait, their destiny — lay in your hands.
To tell them? Or to keep them in the dark? That was also part of the thrill. The power of decision- making. Making decisions about their lives.
The demon looked into the future. It saw hundreds of people innocently going about their own business, not knowing there was one who walked among them with the power to break their spirit and condemn their soul to destruction.
Sometimes slowly.
Sometimes not so slowly.
Perhaps, in time, the demon might learn how to juggle several victims at the same time. Like with insects or small, furry mammals. Impale them on a pin or a stake. Pull off a wing or a toe at a time. Watch them squirm, each in different — but distinct — stages of annihilation.
The demon was past pulling wings offbutterflies and beetles. Nailing kittens to trees had lost its appeal.
Bigger game was so much more fun.
Forty-Four
Who's Clio?' Claudia asked.
They were sitting beside a lake whose water was the green of newly sprung grass and whose clarity showed every fin and spot on the fishes and eels. On the rocks by the water's edge, a small fire crackled and spat from the juices dripping off a small deer brought down with one of Jason's lethal arrows, but there was no fear of Azan's men tracing them from its smoke. Twenty-four hours had passed since the wreck of the Soskia, and the wolf trick had been sufficient to give them the edge in making good their escape. Azan's thugs would not find them now.
Just as Claudia could not find her way home.
With careful precision, Jason had led her deep into the Illyrian hinterland, to the Land of a Thousand Waterfalls. Lying between high forested mountains, this unique valley comprised a succession of crystal-clear lakes falling one below the other in a series of breathtaking cascades as the valley floor dropped. Awesome, spectacular, inspiring, stunning. These were just some of the words to describe this amazing waterworld. Arguably the most beautiful place in the world. She had never seen scenery to equal it.
But then other words bubbled up to the surface of her brain. Trapped. Isolated. Disorientated. Lost.
She concentrated on the venison and refused to dwell on the fact that the landscape was every bit as forbidding as it was magnificent. With its treacherous chasms, plunging gorges and waterfalls that froze into solid white sheets in the winter, the environment was too harsh for man to colonize. This was the domain of the predators. Wolves, bears and lynx were the masters here.
That summed up the valley. Beautiful but deadly — like Jason. From the corner of her eye, she observed the solid musculature straining the thighs of his trousers. How many women had fallen for his dashing good looks? Been swept off their feet by his dazzling smile, easy manner and lilting Scythian brogue? How many women had thrashed beneath that burnished body in the throes of passion? Or simply in their death throes? The venison was succulent and sweet, but it could have been ash. Like the Scythian's gold belt, this ten-mile chain of green lakes was neither separate nor apart, but linked inextricably one to the other. Just as she was with Jason.
'Clio?' He sliced another chunk off the roast. 'I told you, she's a vampire. At least, that was the latest theory, but then, a few days earlier they had her pegged as a flesh-eating monster, which means by now they'll probably have her turned into a harpy.' He chewed without looking up. 'Why do you ask?'
Shortly after daybreak, the name had come back to her. Overtaken by kidnap, the shipwreck, Geta's death and an artillery attack followed by a frantic chase for her life, events at the Villa Arcadia had blurred into insignificance. Now they had clarified once again. Clio was the weapon with which Silvia had tried to blackmail Leo. Clio was the woman Leo had denied knowing. And Clio was the name which had tripped so lightly off Jason's tongue outside the abandoned shepherd's hut.
'Just curious at how you came to know her, that's all.'
'Me?' he seemed surprised. 'I introduced her to Leo. What's the matter? Something go down the wrong way?'
You bet it did, pal. Claudia waited until her choking fit subsided. 'She was your moll, presumably?'
'My…?' He tipped his handsome head back and laughed until tears filled his eyes. 'I must remember that. My — ' he rolled the word around on his tongue '- my moll. She'll love that.'
Claudia wondered why Clio might find that amusing, but noted he didn't deny it. Hmm. No wonder Leo was so keen to put Silvia on the first boat out of Cressia, if she was threatening to blow the whistle on his relationship with a pirate's floozy. Gossip like that could ruin a man. Hundreds of miles away in Rome, where they understood nothing of the situation out here,
Leo's behaviour could easily be construed as being in league with the rebels, effectively branding him a traitor — wait! Give back what is mine.
Very deliberately, Claudia sipped at the cool, mountain water. 'Was Clio the cause of the vendetta between you and Leo?' she asked casually.
Jason pulled off his boots, stretched himself out on the bank and closed his eyes. 'Now what vendetta might that be?'
Still playing games. Cat and mouse. She said nothing, glad beyond words of the knife down her boot. High in the whispering branches, green warblers sang their little hearts out. She nibbled at the wild raspberries she had collected. She could not kill him, of course. The paradox of her situation lay in that her very survival depended on the man who was intent on destroying her. But there would come a time, and probably soon, when paradox became confrontation. She was ready.
'Why did you leave the wolf heads behind?' she asked. About an hour after pulling their stunt, Jason had hurriedly stuffed the sack inside the bole of a dead beech tree. 'You didn't know at that stage we weren't being followed. We could have used them again to frighten them off.'