“Your father.” Varro said, slapping his forehead.
“What are you talking about, Varro?”
“If the prefect’s guard are following me and killing farmers, then there’s a good chance the prefect himself is involved. And if that’s the case and your father’s investigating this, every day he stays in Crow Hill, surrounded by Cristus’ men, he’s in danger.”
Catilina narrowed her eyes.
“The men following you are Cristus’?”
“One certainly was. I know his face well.” He crouched down and rolled the unconscious body over so she could see his face. “This man had lost money to me in dice games. He’s definitely one of them.”
“And the others?” Catilina asked, staring into the peaceful face of the unconscious man.
Salonius stepped into the centre of the room.
“Excuse me, my lady, but you knew about them. And what do you mean ‘others’?”
Catilina sat back and stretched.
“I saw them leave the fort; four of them all cloaked up and secretive. I’ve been a mile or so behind them all the way. They’re not particularly observant.”
“Shit!”
Varro turned to Salonius.
“There’s two more somewhere. They could already be at the way station up the valley.”
The young man nodded and pointed at the body near the window.
“I suspect our friend will know where they are.”
Varro pushed his shoulders back and rubbed his side.
“Well he’s not waking up in a hurry. Get him tethered and gagged. Make sure he’s absolutely secured and push him under the bed. I doubt he’ll wake til the morning anyway, but I don’t want to lose him.”
He turned to Catilina.
“I think we need to talk. Can I buy you a drink?”
She flashed him a devastating smile.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve said that, my little rabbit.”
Varro smiled for a moment and then noticed Salonius grinning in the background.
“And you can stop smirking and get to work on him. When he’s secure, come downstairs and join us. I’ll get you a drink in.”
“With pleasure, sir.”
Varro glared at Salonius and then turned to escort the lady in her travelling clothes down the stairs to the bar.
Chapter Seven
Adana awoke feeling unusually sore and disoriented. What had he been drinking last night? He tried to reach up to touch his sore head and realised something was dreadfully wrong with the world. His surroundings slowly swam into focus and it took a moment to realise he was upside down and swinging gently back and forth. He squinted at the figures in front of him. Ah, yes…
Varro grasped the stick he’d been idly tapping his leg with and held it out to stop the man swinging.
“I’m afraid you might be in a little trouble here, my friend.”
Next to him, Salonius smiled nastily.
“Care to tell us a little about yourself?” Varro asked in a friendly, sing-sing voice as though speaking to a difficult child.
“Who are you people?” the dangling man asked innocently.
Varro smiled happily and swung the stout, young, green stick he’d been holding at the man’s head. The impact made him yelp and left a long red line across his cheek and temple.
“Some bad things have happened to me recently,” said Varro in his happy tone, “and this is really beginning to lighten my day. In fact, I daresay the longer you hold out, the happier I’ll get!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” The man hanging from the tree finally became aware that he was cold and struggled to lift his head enough to see his body. He was naked. “What are you doing with me?”
“Oh, the naked part? That’s entirely unnecessary and gratuitous, I’m afraid” Varro laughed. “I just wanted to humiliate you a little. Now tell me who you are.”
“My name’s Marco. I’m a smith from…”
He was interrupted with another sharp thwack from Varro’s switch and yelped again. A sore red line crossed his chest. Varro leaned forward grinning.
“You can skip the most blindingly obvious lies. I can’t remember your name but I think it starts with an ‘a’. I know you’re in the prefect’s guard and I know you have appalling luck at dice. How’s about you come clean, or do I get to have more fun?”
The man coughed, shaking on his tether.
“Ok, I’m one of Cristus’ guard. And yes, my name’s Adana. We were sent by the prefect to keep an eye on you. Rumours have reached him that you’re on to something important and he sent us to protect you.”
“Indeed.” Varro grinned and gave a sharp flick of his switch, leaving a nasty line across the man’s hip. “Damn. I was aiming for somewhere delicate there but you moved.”
“Hey!” the man shouted in pained panic.
“Come on” cajoled Varro. “You haven’t even asked about your provost companion who you know damn well I left dead back in that barn. We’re not stupid, Adana. Just irritable and armed!”
He gave another swipe, this time across the buttocks and much harder than before. The switch came back down by his side glistening and a drip of blood dropped from the end to the dirt. The man shrieked.
“I’ve got so much more energy in my arm,” grinned Varro, “I could go on like this for hours.”
Catilina stepped into view.
“Varro, you may be having fun, but that’s all. He’s a professional soldier, like you. And a good one, if he made it to the prefect’s guard. You need to step this up.”
Varro raised an eyebrow. Catilina cleared her throat.
“Adana, tell us where the other two are.”
The dangling man frowned. “Other two?”
With a sigh, Catilina crouched down by the undergrowth at the side of the road and broke off a length of sharp, woody plant stem. With a look of concentration, she gritted her teeth and broke the foot-long stem into three pieces. Reaching down under the bemused gaze of Varro and Salonius, she retrieved Varro’s belt knife and used it to cut the ends of the three pieces at an angle. As she sheathed the knife again, she shrugged.
“My father made it a rule at Vengen that all ladies needed to be taught how to defend themselves, given the fact that there are such a large number of off-duty soldiers there at any given time, and not all of them are gentlemen. I watched the first class and decided that being able to trip someone up and bite them wasn’t good enough. I asked my father’s adjutant, Captain Cialo, and he and Mercurias came up with a diagram of what they called pressure points. It’s quite fascinating, really.”
Catilina held two of the sticks in her left hand and grasped the other tightly in her right. Slowly, she turned the hanging man so that he was facing away from then and crouched down. With one slender, immaculately manicured finger, she traced the line of muscle running from below his ear to his shoulder. Almost teasingly, she stopped half way along and drew a line inwards towards his spine with her nail. A couple of inches in, she stopped, and with a forceful thrust, pushed the sharpened end of stem into the man’s muscle. He screamed and jerked around on his rope like a fish on a line.
Salonius’ eyes widened and Varro grinned, as the blood started to run in a slow stream down along his neck and into his hair, Catilina gave the end of the stem, sticking out of the flesh, a little tap and then turned him back to face them. The man’s eyes were scrunched up tight, tears streaming up his face.
The elegant lady smiled at him.
“Adana, I would very highly recommend you start answering Varro’s questions. There are more than a hundred pressure points. I can only remember thirty or so, and we’ll run out of points before we run out of sticks, but you really don’t want to get that far.”
The man shook his head defiantly, his mouth clamped shut and his eyes closed tight.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, soldier.”
She turned to Varro. “Care to have a go?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he replied lightly. “Where next?”
She spun the dangling figure round again and pointed to a spot on the back of the man’s leg, just above the knee. “That’s a good one.”