Black Salamander Read Free

lust.
    With just one warning rumble, the whole hillside started to tremble and then, as though a giant hand sliced it through with a sword, the outcrop began to slip its moorings. Slowly at first. As though reluctant to leave home. But then it found freedom—and flight.
    Day became night as great crashing boulders roared past. Horses shrieked, soldiers bellowed out instructions, men were shouting as their womenfolk wailed. Whole trees were uprooted, gouging out the mountain road and sending down mudslides in great slimy torrents.
    For what seemed an eternity, stones hurtled down, branches, tree roots, great chunks of soil, until the only sound left was the rain, spitter-spattering down on the wreckage. Low moans and groans rippled along the stunned line of travellers, muted sobbing broke out, the occasional whimper. Even the panic-stricken horses had been numbed into pitiful snickering. Claudia clung to the rock like a limpet as the pitchy air slowly cleared, leaving an incongruously pleasant smell of freshly turned earth in its wake.
    ‘Thank you, Junius.’ She spat out a mouthful of rock dust and pine needles. ‘You can move away any time you feel like it.’
    ‘Oh. Right. Yes.’ The young Gaul gave an embarrassed cough as he took a pace backwards.
    Claudia wedged a finger between her teeth to stop them chattering and gave a tight-lipped nod of thanks to the man who had just saved her life. Ever attentive, always on hand, Junius’s eyes never seemed to leave his mistress, not once and on occasions (this was one of them) Claudia was given to wondering whether his feelings were perhaps more than professional… Then she remembered, and laughed. Hell, she was three, maybe four years older than him, and with muscles like iron and his Gaulish good looks, he’d have his pick of young women. His obedience, his obsessive reliability, simply reflected a pride in his work.
    The dust settled quickly in the downpour and Claudia finally prised herself away from the security of the rock face to confront the chaos which surrounded her. A string of pack mules had taken the full force of the blast, cascading to their deaths in the chasm below. Five rigs had also crashed down, hers included, and forty paces of mountain road had—or were about to—give way. A red-haired young groom gingerly tried to unhook some of the horses, but before the first two were free of the reins, another section of road collapsed, tossing carts, mules and groom down the ravine like carved wooden toys. Their screams rang harrowingly in Claudia’s ear, and she had to steady herself not to pass out.
    With jelly-like legs, Claudia made her way back up the line where, miraculously, Drusilla was fine and where Junius and the driver were both being hailed as heroes. Quite right, too. Clemens, a little, round, list-maker of a priest, was conducting a head count and Theodoras, representing the army, took stock of the damage. Glancing over the precipitous edge, Claudia grimaced at the tangle of trees and smashed rocks which blocked the narrow valley, and at the twitching bodies of mules, their blood staining the canvas ripped from mangled rigs. One wheel spun slowly, as though turned by an invisible hand.
    She shuddered.
    The road behind was impassable—hell, it was not even there—and the party had neither equipment nor manpower to shift the blockage below.
    They were trapped.
    In the background Clemens’ voice was reassuring shell-shocked journeyers that fatalities were lower than feared. One muleteer, he said, plus one of the drivers and two soldiers had died trying to usher the civilians to safety. We must all give thanks, he said. Make sacrifice, now, to the Lares, for protecting us on these perilous roads—
    She blocked off his trumpery. Give thanks? For being trapped in this canyon? The sides were too steep for horseback, they’d have to scramble on foot, and in any case, where the hell were they? That’s why she had sent Junius to backtrack on the