'A snivelling coward who kills women, and why? Because he's too puny to take on a man.'
'Why, you-' Kicking the rubbish that was Beth out of his way, he reached for his bow. 'No one calls me weak, you bitch! I am no coward!'
'What else should I call someone who sneaks up on defenceless young girls because he knows he'd lose to anything stronger?'
'Bitch.' The hand that notched the arrow trembled with rage. 'You bloody bitch.'
'And hides in the shadows, too scared to come out. That's why you kill women, Ptian.' She spat his name in saliva. 'You didn't rape her, for the simple reason that you can't. You're half woman yourself, you spineless freak.'
Fuck. Missed. As he notched another arrow, a foot kicked at his shin. He grabbed the priestess by the scruff of her silver robe and landed a punch on her jaw. Beth dropped like the scum that she was.
'Feel better?' the bitch on the ledge sneered. 'Does it feel good, hitting women twice your age who are tied up and defenceless?'
Fuck and double fuck. He watched his arrow bounce off an urn to drop harmlessly among the bear skulls.
'I won't waste good weapons on useless trash,' he snarled. 'You can jump the twenty feet and break both your legs or you can stay up there and starve, I don't care!'
'Can't even shoot me, dear god, what a loser.'
The scorn in her voice ripped through his brain. Bitch. He would show her. He would look that bitch right in the eye as he shot her. He moved close to the shelf. Forced his hands to stop shaking. The leg, he decided. The thigh. That would fucking well hurt. He clenched his fingers round the handgrip. Drew back the string. As he lifted his bow, a candle tumbled towards him. He laughed as he ducked. Did she think she could burn him with that stupid thing? The flame was extinguished within the first second. Pathetic. Bloody pathetic.
The Whisperer was still laughing when the lid of the silver urn crashed down on him.
Since the stone splintered his ribs, crushing his lungs and his liver, he wasn't laughing for long.
Claudia had no idea how long she sat on the shelf, listening first to the death rattle twenty feet below and then, when it finally stopped, hearing nothing but the echoes of thunder.
Had he killed Beth with that punch? She didn't think so, but there was no movement from that heap of fine silver linen. Only an ominous trickle of blood.
One by one, the candles round the chamber started to gutter. The wind, perhaps, or simply the dying of wicks. How long before someone came to replace them? Hours? Days? She looked at the handprints that speckled the walls and realized that, if Ptian's rebels won, it could be centuries before anyone came this way again.
The battle cry was going up tonight, the call that would signal rebellion, and suddenly Claudia understood the importance of midnight. Midnight is what the Scorpion had planned all along. He wanted her to hear it, be part of it, to witness the slaughter then take the story to Rome, let them know what his army had done. What it is capable of in the future. That's what he meant by getting his life back. He was challenging Rome to come out here and fight, knowing that by spring the Druids would have backed the rebel army, the tribes would have united, and that millions of warriors were no match for Rome.
That was the Scorpion's revenge on the woman who double-crossed him.
Not death in the sense that she had envisaged. His revenge was a living death in which she was doomed to constantly re-live the horror. Whenever she looked at a child in the street, he knew she'd see the mangled corpses of novices. That was what he was condemning her to. Waking up every night with the screams of the tortured ringing in her ears, unable to block out the carnage that she'd been forced to watch. Every night, every day, she would be tormented by Marcus starving to death in that godless pit, knowing she was this close but could not save him…
Tears flowed. Candles snuffed. Thunder echoed along the tunnels.
The gods were enjoying their retribution.
If there was any bright spot in this terrible mess, she supposed it was that the Scorpion's deputy had not lived to gloat over the bloodbath. She had at least done that much for the Hundred-Handed, for Gaul, for herself, for Rome. But they would all be like him, that was the trouble. Embittered rabble who'd been shunned by society because their own people couldn't stand their whingeing and whines. Scum too lazy to put in an honest day's work, they wanted everything on a plate. They were bullies and boors, dim-witted and craven, soured by everything except their selfimportance.
And the bastards were armed to the teeth.
Time passed. More flames died. Then finally she heard a moan.
'Beth?'
The silver heap stirred. A chestnut head lifted. 'Claudia?'
'Beth, are you all right?'
'I… think so.' She wriggled herself into an upright position and licked the trickle of blood that ran down a cheek that was swollen and red. 'What happened? Where did Ptian go?'
'Straight to hell.'
Beth followed the direction of her finger and groaned. 'Holy mother, what has become of us? What are we come to,' she whispered.
Claudia stared. These women! They never ceased to amaze her. A monster lies dead and Beth feels sorry for him?
'What time is it,' she asked, 'can you see?'
'Time?'
'Is it midnight yet?'
Sensing the urgency, Beth shuffled over to one of the tall marker candles. 'Very close, why? He can't give the battle cry now.'
Claudia tossed down the knife she'd strapped to her thigh. It was her back-up plan, had the lid missed its target. And while Beth sliced through the rope that bound her wrists, she explained about the signal that would ignite Gaul. It would be lit by Manion, not by Ptian.
'I'll try to stop it,' she said, as Beth dragged the ladder against the ledge. 'But there's a chance I won't be able to, that it's already too late, you must run and round up the women. Take them into the woods then make for Santonum. Rome is not as unprepared as they think.'
That was a lie, she had no idea how prepared the legions might or might not be. But once again, if Aquitania was on the brink of insurgency, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio would not have left his post.
Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was not a gambling man.
Scrambling down the ladder, she gagged at the mangled mess beneath the giant stone lid. She had seen him around the place many times. One of the volunteers who patrolled the men's palisade, but without the bandana, of course, which would have drawn attention to himself. It was why he'd been able to kill Sarra so easily. An opportunist thug, who thought himself clever. The name still made her spit.
'You need tighter security checks in the future,' she began, but Beth was removing the silver ring from his finger and tears flowed down her face. 'Save your sympathy,' she snapped. 'The bastard didn't deserve it.'
The ring was a phoenix, she saw in the lamplight. The bird that rose triumphant from the ashes. Ptian had taken this as his emblem. How ironic that it was ashes that finally killed him.
'That's not the point,' Beth sobbed, closing the lids on his sightless eyes. 'Whatever his faults, you see-'
She broke up and looked up at her.
'Ptian is still my son.'
In the centre of the world, between earth, sky and sea, at the point where the realms of the universe meet, Rumour greeted old friends. The news they brought to the halls of echoing brass was sad. One of their most frequent tellers-of-tales would visit no more. The man who whispered into the ears of the Druids was dead.
Together, they mourned his passing in murmurs.
Countless doors and numerous windows carried the murmurs away.
Where they faded and died on the wind.
Flying down the path to meet Manion, Claudia thought it was not death spirits that hovered like bees, it was tragedy that danced in the air.